I watched Versus last night. Definitely a gem in the rough, but pretty close to polished. I have to take exception with the few reviews I read that called it flawed or uneven. If you view it in the spirit in which I think it was intended, it succeeds quite well. Think of it as an homage to early Sam Raimi (around Evil Dead 2), with the style aesthetic of Pulp Fiction, and you're halfway there.
Add in the roots of over-the-top bad-guy posturing and absurd macho street fighting from shows like GTO, and you've come most of the way. In any case, it's going to assume a place next to Wild Zero and Bio-Zombie in my Asian zombie gallery.
I got the two-disc Special Edition, with the director's cut and a disc of extras. I browsed the extras disc, but haven't watched it all. Among other things it includes a short 'side story' film, called "Nervous". The main disc is like four movies in one. There is the version I watched, Japanese with English subtitles. Then there is the English dubbed version. I watched a bit of that for chuckles. It made the movie seem like a Sandy Frank extravaganza.
The other two versions are commentary tracks. I watched a bit of each. The first is a commentary track in Japanese by the director and members of the cast. It's subtitled, and seems like lots of fun. Everybody is giggling and making fun of each other and telling anecdotes about the filming.
The second commentary track is with the director and someone else I didn't recognize, in English. Turns out Ryuhei Kitamura speaks pretty good English. I watched a tiny bit of that, when he was telling how he hired the main bad guy. He was on the set for three weeks before they began shooting his scenes, so he did unit direction for Kitamura, and did all the cooking! Lots of fun to hear stuff like that.
So yeah, Alan, I'm definitely going to force you and Tom to watch this baby. It's not perfect, slows down now and then, but is overall a buncha fun.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Sunday, August 10, 2003
The Coast
I almost forgot to mention this, but Jean, Kelly and I are going to the coast . We're staying in Florence, Oregon, and it is such a relief to be able to drive to a vacation spot for a change. No eight hour ride in the bus that has no rest stops (i.e. airliner), no sharp sinus pains on descent to the airport, no checking and unchecking bags. Can you tell I hate travel?
So we're driving out and taking things at our own pace. I'm packing books and my laptop, and probably video games, for those quiet evenings. The room has a kitchen, so we'll be preparing most of our own food (another problem with most travel, restaurant food tends to make me feel pretty crappy after a couple of days).
So we're driving out and taking things at our own pace. I'm packing books and my laptop, and probably video games, for those quiet evenings. The room has a kitchen, so we'll be preparing most of our own food (another problem with most travel, restaurant food tends to make me feel pretty crappy after a couple of days).
Cha Cha
Jean and I have been practicing nearly every day for our cha-cha class. It's lucky for me that Jean has a sense of humor, since I still stumble despite all the practice. I think I've improved some, but I doubt I'll ever go beyond a basic competency.
Last Tuesday was our second class, and I was so befuddled by what the instructors were trying to teach, that I ended up standing on the sidelines while just about everyone else danced. No matter how closely I watched, I wasn't able to pick apart the steps well enough to replicate them, or even imitate them loosely. I was very frustrated. The instructors seem more intent on moving the mid-level dancers forward than helping the hopeless clutzes, and I guess I can't blame them.
We've 'learned' two dances, the Travelling Cha-cha, and the Southern Nights Cha-cha. Jean grabbed another one off the Internet, the Western Lights Cha-cha, and we've been practicing it on our own. Learning a dance step is for me a lot like solving a bug in my product at work. I have to create a model for what I think is happening, and then try to prove it. In this case, I guess the bug is in me, and by modelling the patterns in the dance, I hope to fix the bug in my ineptness. It was just today, after working through the Western Lights for the umpteenth time, that I recognized a symmetry patttern that'd been there all along. It took me days to see it.
Like anything I try to learn, I find the topic coloring other areas of my perception. I've begun to see my music collection in binary: songs that are good for cha-cha, and songs that aren't. Most of my collection isn't cha-cha material. Yesterday I said to Jean that I thought the old song Third Rate Romance would be a good cha-cha song. I ended up hunting down a CD of songs by the Amazing Rhythm Aces (since iTunes Music Store doesn't carry them -- yet) and bought it today. I've got to get the old CD player set up in the basement again so we can practice to it.
We've got one more evening to practice, then it's back to Tuesday night Cha-cha class, for another round of confusion and humiliation. Wish me luck!
Last Tuesday was our second class, and I was so befuddled by what the instructors were trying to teach, that I ended up standing on the sidelines while just about everyone else danced. No matter how closely I watched, I wasn't able to pick apart the steps well enough to replicate them, or even imitate them loosely. I was very frustrated. The instructors seem more intent on moving the mid-level dancers forward than helping the hopeless clutzes, and I guess I can't blame them.
We've 'learned' two dances, the Travelling Cha-cha, and the Southern Nights Cha-cha. Jean grabbed another one off the Internet, the Western Lights Cha-cha, and we've been practicing it on our own. Learning a dance step is for me a lot like solving a bug in my product at work. I have to create a model for what I think is happening, and then try to prove it. In this case, I guess the bug is in me, and by modelling the patterns in the dance, I hope to fix the bug in my ineptness. It was just today, after working through the Western Lights for the umpteenth time, that I recognized a symmetry patttern that'd been there all along. It took me days to see it.
Like anything I try to learn, I find the topic coloring other areas of my perception. I've begun to see my music collection in binary: songs that are good for cha-cha, and songs that aren't. Most of my collection isn't cha-cha material. Yesterday I said to Jean that I thought the old song Third Rate Romance would be a good cha-cha song. I ended up hunting down a CD of songs by the Amazing Rhythm Aces (since iTunes Music Store doesn't carry them -- yet) and bought it today. I've got to get the old CD player set up in the basement again so we can practice to it.
We've got one more evening to practice, then it's back to Tuesday night Cha-cha class, for another round of confusion and humiliation. Wish me luck!
Billboard Mis-steps
Apparently there's some kind of promotional campaign to sell more pig meat. Jean and I were driving on I-205 today and I read aloud from a billboard: "Time flies when you're having pork."
Jean looked up in time to see the billboard, and said, "What? That's not even ... stupid!"
Another sale lost...
Jean looked up in time to see the billboard, and said, "What? That's not even ... stupid!"
Another sale lost...
Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Software Links
Friday, August 1, 2003
How To Be A Player
It's just two months shy of three years since I purchased my ReplayTV, so it's appropriate that I now feel free to open it up and tinker. The newer models come with more disk space, networking capabilities and enhanced display features, but mostly, the only thing I crave is more space. This is less to add more programming than it is to record at a higher quality setting, but since I'm now recording a couple of shows that Jean and I watch, as well as my usual fare, having extra space for those shows as well is likely to be a bonus.
I've gotten into the habit of recording all my shows in 'extended' mode, which is sub-vcr quality, and shows noticable digital artifacts, when the action is heavy. The benefit is that my 30GB disk can support around 30 hours of programs. Going up to 'medium' quality would cut that to 15 hours, and 'high' would bring it down to 10 hours.
So I was reading Matt Haughey's excellent PVRBlog (Personal Video Recorder weB-LOG) and followed his link to the ReplayTV FAQ. There I learned that it is possible to upgrade the disk drive of your ReplayTV, just like Tivo owners have always been able to do. The catch is that you have to have a Windows or Linux box with IDE cables to carry out the enhancement.
Now I have a few friends with Windows boxes, but only one of them also owns a ReplayTV unit. That's my work buddy Burr. So I floated the concept of the project to him, and he agreed. We did the first pass over lunch on Monday, me buying a 160GB Western Digital drive at Costco and taking it to his townhouse. It's a good thing his friend John was visiting, because he had some helpul tips that got us unstuck a couple of times.
Unfortunately, I got a little greedy, and tried to use the 'copy programming' option of the cloning program to preserve all the shows on my original disk. It didn't work, and we had to try again today. This time I skipped that step. It worked like a charm, and the whole process took less time, to boot! Granted, there was no programming on the drive when I booted it up, but the ReplayTV OS worked fine, and all my preprogrammed shows were in the 'to record' listing.
I set it up this evening, and sure enough, at 6:30 pm it began recording 'King of the Hill', a show Jean has gotten me hooked on, just like she got me hooked on Lucky.
So how much recording space do I have now? At 'medium', just shy of 68 hours. So I can more than double my capacity while raising the quality of the image. If I continued to use 'extended' I'd get nearly 137 hours, but I doubt it will come to that.
I've gotten into the habit of recording all my shows in 'extended' mode, which is sub-vcr quality, and shows noticable digital artifacts, when the action is heavy. The benefit is that my 30GB disk can support around 30 hours of programs. Going up to 'medium' quality would cut that to 15 hours, and 'high' would bring it down to 10 hours.
So I was reading Matt Haughey's excellent PVRBlog (Personal Video Recorder weB-LOG) and followed his link to the ReplayTV FAQ. There I learned that it is possible to upgrade the disk drive of your ReplayTV, just like Tivo owners have always been able to do. The catch is that you have to have a Windows or Linux box with IDE cables to carry out the enhancement.
Now I have a few friends with Windows boxes, but only one of them also owns a ReplayTV unit. That's my work buddy Burr. So I floated the concept of the project to him, and he agreed. We did the first pass over lunch on Monday, me buying a 160GB Western Digital drive at Costco and taking it to his townhouse. It's a good thing his friend John was visiting, because he had some helpul tips that got us unstuck a couple of times.
Unfortunately, I got a little greedy, and tried to use the 'copy programming' option of the cloning program to preserve all the shows on my original disk. It didn't work, and we had to try again today. This time I skipped that step. It worked like a charm, and the whole process took less time, to boot! Granted, there was no programming on the drive when I booted it up, but the ReplayTV OS worked fine, and all my preprogrammed shows were in the 'to record' listing.
I set it up this evening, and sure enough, at 6:30 pm it began recording 'King of the Hill', a show Jean has gotten me hooked on, just like she got me hooked on Lucky.
So how much recording space do I have now? At 'medium', just shy of 68 hours. So I can more than double my capacity while raising the quality of the image. If I continued to use 'extended' I'd get nearly 137 hours, but I doubt it will come to that.
Thursday, July 31, 2003
I bought a vibrating cellphone
I bought a vibrating cellphone battery at Fry's yesterday. I don't think I'll ever use the feature, it's just that it was the only slimline battery on the shelf for my model. Cool thing is it was less than $30. I remember when these things cost $100 to replace, which is probably why I waited so long...
I got tired of noting the battery charge for my old battery at 50%, making a two minute call, and getting the 'low charge' warning beep. The old battery is the original, probably three years old. So it was time, it was time. This new one alledgedly has a standby time on the order of seven days. We'll see.
I got tired of noting the battery charge for my old battery at 50%, making a two minute call, and getting the 'low charge' warning beep. The old battery is the original, probably three years old. So it was time, it was time. This new one alledgedly has a standby time on the order of seven days. We'll see.
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