Movie updates

We don't get to see many movies, so when we make it to the theater, it's a bigger deal than normally. So, in order of appearance...

Wolverine

A buddy and I saw it on opening night at Alamo Drafthouse. Hugh Jackman IS Wolverine, but Liev Schrieber is the better actor, but both of these guys are good. Sabertooth is MUCH better and more accurate to the comics in this movie than the original X-Men. Daddy likes!

Star Trek

I convinced our managers to take us to Alamo Drafthouse for our quarterly offsite to see Star Trek in opening week. I figured I would like it going in, and it didn't disappoint. Space being actually silent and ships not all aligned on z-axis made up for any questionable parts about drilling to a planet's actual core, and creating a black hole at said core rather than just near the planet. I heard a lot about the lens flares on the bridge, but I didn't notice them in a negative sense.

Angels & Demons

My wife and I had a date and this time, she just wouldn't go for seeing Terminator: Salvation, so we saw Angels & Demons...at Alamo Drafthouse. Entertaining and interesting, and I thought I had it figured out but it got me.

Up

We saw Up in 3D at a local theater, strangely not the Alamo. We all really enjoyed it. I saw some 3D movie content earlier, and this time the glasses were smaller and not obviously red-green like the Dolby ones. I'll have to do some research to find out the differences - this was our first 3D movie experience, and four adults, two eight-year-olds, and two four-year-olds managed to keep the glasses on, which I thought was quite a feat for the kids.

The 3D was really well done, and I had no eye problems/headaches wearing these glasses over my prescription glasses. A lot of the kids were trying to grab stuff coming out of the screen. They had bins to recycle the glasses upon exit, but we kept ours. Pics to follow.

Technorati Tags: Movies,3D,Alamo Drafthouse,Wolverine,Star Trek,Angels & Demons,Up

Pandora and the Music Genome Project

I know what your thinking, and no, that's not the name of my latest story.

I've heard about the web music app Pandora for a long time, but never checked it out. Recently I remembered it and pulled it up. Going to the website presents a front end that lets you specify an artist (or a song) that you like, and Pandora starts playing something by that artist.

 

Pandora builds a queue of music based off of your initial selection and the Music Genome Project. Basically, it analyzes your selection and assigns the song certain attributes that it matches against songs in its database. Subsequent songs are automatically queued up and played.

I've started with various musicians I like and also tried some obscure ones. The vast majority of times I've enjoyed what I've heard, with some obvious matching selections but also some bands that are new to me. It's great for parties or just hanging around if you are tired of your current media selection or don't want to create a custom playlist (or are too lazy to hit Shuffle).

There is also a Pandora app for mobile devices, but I'm not sure how great this is due to it always being on and streaming data/music. I could see your battery draining due to the Pandora app, but as I don't have a phone with that kind of capability I'm basically talking out of my Napster. I'm sure it works - why offer it otherwise.

Technorati Tags: Pandora,Music Genome Project,MP3,streaming music

Sweet tools for the impending Zombie Apocalypse

I'm behind in catching up with my RSS feeds, so I just saw this thing from CoolTools:

For all the firefighters out there that read my blog, this is nothing new. Just your standard multipurpose tool for prying. And chopping. And slicing. And wedging. And busting various things open.

I guess if you have to have the very best to kill zombies, spring for the titanium version at $550. Your children's children will thank you for it.

Technorati Tags: CoolTools,Halligan bar,zombies

NaNoWriMo kickoff

Midnight on Halloween was the NaNoWriMo kick-off, what's called a Midnight Write. It was held at Dragon's Lair, and when I got there about 11:30pm, there were about 25-30 people already there at tables set up with laptops at the ready.

By the way, Dragon's Lair is a great games/gaming/comic book/book store. Very family-friendly, and a large selection. Nice people too!

Anyway, the Midnight Write was also a potluck, and I was planning on bringing some cookies but other Halloween stuff loomed over our horizon. There was quite a bit of food, though.

Luckily someone had set up both a donation pot as well as a coffee pot.

So here I am in Central Nerdistan, among my people of course, and at five minutes to midnight we get warned about a whistle that will shake us to our very foundations. I mean, it's supposed to be THAT loud.

We gird our loins.

Fifteen seconds until midnight, and the countdown begins. We think we hear a faint whistling sound, but nobody in the back (wargame table) room is certain if that was the Whistle of Doom or one of the store cats meowed. We spend a few seconds looking at each other, and then one of the moderators comes in and lets us know that, indeed, that was the whistle.

We write!

The store can only stay open until 2am, so at roughly 1:40am I break away from my keyboard, an almost wordless husk. Sort of. 50,000 words over 30 days is roughly 1667 words a day. I hit just over that number, which was my goal.

So how was the Mini 9? Basically, it was great. The only problem I had was with the placement of the apostrophe. It is on the row under the home row, so I usually hit enter instead of apostrophe when I was writing contractions. This led to a lot of "did nots" instead of "didn'ts," etc, which is a bonus when you are counting words!

The machine was much more solid than I expected, and at first I was hesitant about the screen size and resolution, but in practice I had no problems with it while using it.

It was getting a lot of attention though, and I probably could have sold a few had I had a box of them that night.

Back to word count, unfortunately I'm just over 2300 now, and the server is down so both my NaNoWriMo word count widget is down as well as the ability to upload my word count. Such is life! I'm pretty far behind both where I should be and where I wanted to be, but I'm not giving up yet.

Technorati Tags: Dell,Mini 9,Inspiron,NanoWriMo,Dragon's Lair,Austin

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and NaNoWriMo

My good friends at Dell hooked me up with an Inspiron Mini 9 laptop/netbook to use for participating in and blogging about the National Novel Writing Month. It is a pretty sweet, tiny machine.

My wife wants to use it all the time! I'm going to have to distract her somehow during November. She seriously is crazy about it. It came with Ubuntu Linux on it, but I swapped out the 4GB flash disk for the 16GB flash disk that comes with the high-end XP Pro config. I also factory-installed XP and loaded Word. Nothing against Linux, per se, but I want to use Word for this project.

The Mini 9 is sturdier than I expected, and I like the fit and finish. It comes in black and white, and this one is white, which looks pretty nice.

The drawback? I'm a touch-typist, and I'm a little concerned about the keyboard. To get everything in a package that small, some of the keys had to be reduced. This may not be a problem for many, but I am using it in what amounts to a typing contest (of wills), and my large hands and I will soldier on and report back how it goes.

After a week of configuring it, hooking it up to wireless, browsing, and email, I like it. It feels solid and the keyboard is sturdy, albeit cramped on the sides. It is the smallest laptop I've ever used. Actually, I love that it is so small when I'm carrying it around, and I can use something other than my huge XPS backpack.

Technorati Tags: Dell,Inspiron,Mini 9,netbook,XP,Ubuntu,NaNoWriMo

New recipe for roasted stuffed jalapenos

My parents got me a jalapeno roaster as a gift, and I have really been giving it a workout.  You basically core jalapenos, stuff them with, uh, stuff, and roast them for an hour.

I usually try to take all the seeds and membranes out, as some people still think they are pretty hot without them, but feel free to leave an amount in that suits your tastebuds.

I've been known to top them with pieces of bacon but I've not been doing this lately.

My most recent recipe is to start stuffing them with (American) Neufchatel cheese, then shredded pork barbecue (from HEB), and topped with apple or pineapple chunks.

I'm still working on coming up with something for roasting dogs. I feel like it needs to be more complicated than just putting them on a grill!

Technorati Tags: Jalapeno,roaster

SIGGRAPH miscellaneous

Here is a smattering of stuff I saw at SIGGRAPH that I thought was interesting, in no particular order.

This is an "ultra-efficient" BRAMMO Motorsports Enertia Electric Motorcycle at the AMD / BOXX booth. It was a prize for the "Creativity for a Greener World" contest.

 

This is just a badass motorcycle! Tim Cameron is an artist as well as motorcycle rider, and this is his V-Rex creation, which was spawned from his Dreambike. Here is more information about him.

I started taking some pictures in the Art area before I was politely asked for my press pass. Whoops! I need to make cards for my blog! Pictures were for press only, but I got away with a nice shot of these mathematical sculptures from Bathsheba Sculpture. Very beautiful pieces!

I didn't think I'd get one but I was able to stand in the longest line at SIGGRAPH to get a wind-up walking teapot from Pixar's booth. This is my first, and it is number 58, whatever that means. Well, I know what it means...but not what it MEANS. This year the teapot celebrates Renderman's 20th anniversary. Here is an article from 2006 describing the differences between teapots from the Pixar booth and the teapots for the user group. Apparently someone is selling their Renderman teapot on craigslist...for $75! Good luck with that!

Technorati Tags: AMD,BOXX,BRAMMO,Enertia,Tim Cameron,V-Rex,motorcycles,Lightwave,math,Bathsheba Sculpture,Pixar,Renderman,teapot,SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH, day 2

Today I started with Technical Paper: Image Collections & Video, which is definitely my favorite so far. The papers include some nice and novel techniques for image compression, image and video resizing and a technique for using large collections of photos (a la Flickr collections) to generate multiple views of content and finding paths through photos based on everyone else's photos.

Following that, I went to the technical paper on Parallelism, with a few tidbits on Larrabee, the upcoming Intel architecture.

Next I had a quick lunch and did a run-through on the exhibition Floor, where I talked to some Autodesk and Adobe guys about work-related stuff. A company called Point Grey Research had a Smart car with a camera called Ladybug 3, which was hooked up with a Dell XPS laptop for some 360 degree panoramic shots, and I got my picture on the display. I'm in the yellow shirt.

 

Later that day was a Tech Talk from Intel - Why 3D Application Development is Driving Graphics-Industry Convergence. This was okay, but I couldn't stay for long.

Technorati Tags: Noah Snavely,Phototourism,Point Grey,Smart car,Intel,SIGGRAPH,Parallelism,Larrabee

Autodesk Users Group and Party

Monday night we went to the Autodesk Users Group and Party. It was at the Shrine Auditorium.

We sat through almost five hours of bladder controversy and demos of Maya, Mudbox, 3D Studio MAX, a lot of stereoscopic demos and industry tidbits. The stereoscopic demos were very nice and done using Dolby 3D Digital Cinema.

We looked totally hot. The glasses were really good. I had absolutely no problems wearing them over my glasses, and they worked flawlessly. They showed stereoscopic scenes from Star Wars, Coraline, Kung Fu Panda and many others. The announced versions of Maya, Motion Builder and Toxik supported stereoscopic in the viewport. Of course, you need a way to display stereoscopic images! A minor technicality, but they also supported the red-green anaglyph mode in the viewport just in case you weren't made out of money.

The meeting had some really great content, but waaaaaaay too long.

After the meeting everyone rushed out of the auditorium to another part of the building to a...party. Make that a semi-rave-like-performance-art-party-thing. Drinks were free, but crushing lines turned us away.

The party was put on by Massive Black, a studio full of really talented people and the force behind www.conceptart.org. Andrew (Android) Jones was there doing what he does best - a combination of live art performance mindbomb. I really like what he does, and his personally-industrialized wearable Wacom tablet is pretty nice too!

The food was a good mix of Asian flavor, but the teriyaki chicken kabob things went too quickly, especially when some dude walks by me and knocks my plate over. Dessert was endless chocolate-covered strawberries, pears with pomegranate (I think) and these fruit pastry things...I'm drawing a blank as to what they are named.

Technorati Tags: Autodesk,Maya,Mudbox,3D Studio MAX,Motion Builder,Toxik,stereoscopic,Massive Black,concept art,Android Jones,Andrew Jones,Wacom

SIGGRAPH 2008...finally!

I'm going back to SIGGRAPH, after a loooooong absence of...six or seven years?



I have been out of the workstation and graphics markets for a while, and I'm starting to get involved once again. My main reasons for going are to take the classes and some work projects.

I've been tasked with generating usage models for various lines of businesses, basically figuring out how do users actually "use" our machines and develop some processes for either making the experience better, faster, both, etc. Almost like developing benchmarks based on actual customer usage. I'll be dabbling in everything from ultramobile to workstations.

I'm also working on a graphics benchmark that scales with graphics power, as some of our current benchmarks represent the 3D load with strictly cpu-based rendering, ie no benefit of mega-uber-graphics over integrated graphics.

This isn't just a work trip, though! I'm going early back to San Fran to meet with my friend Dave to catch some Star Wars action that I'm not sure I can mention yet (correct me if I'm wrong!), and then we'll be driving down to LA for SIGGRAPH.

This should be a great trip, great experience, and hopefully the return of my regular attendance to SIGGRAPH!

Coffeeshop blogging

So I have a new laptop and it comes with an integrated camera for all your photoblogging needs as well as potentially embarrassing coffee spills. I'm at a local coffeeshop working on some, uh, work.



Once I set another laptop up for my wife, we'll be able to try video chat using Sightspeed, which from what I understand is similar to Skype video chatting, but I could be totally wrong as I've never used Skype before!

Happy Thanksgiving from...THE VIOLATOR!

I was flipping through a Bed, Bath and Beyond circular in the mail the other day. Imagine my horror and surprise when I stumbled upon this...product.



Luckily online viewers aren't treated to such a sight.

Harmonica Hero

Someone sent this out today and I can't stop watching it!



Now I definitely need an Xbox 360!

Thanks Louis!

Moleskine Notebook

My wife bought me a Moleskine notebook a while back, and I love it. It is the hard pocket-sized ruled notebook, and it is perfect for carrying everywhere and taking notes, ideas, drawings, etc.



I have all kinds of variants of the composition notebook, both softcover and hardback, for work, and that's great for work. When I'm on my own, though, I want something smaller. There is a pocket-sized composition notebook, and although I've seen a few friends use it I prefer the Moleskine, as did Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway!

Still want to learn more about Moleskine? Try The Moleskinerie. I'm like, whoa!

Already have a Moleskine and want two? Check out this hack (literally!).

Thanks again, honey!

Guitar Hero 2

I got Guitar Hero 2 for my birthday, and I love it.

We have Dance Dance Revolution, which we all think is great, and I still really like Parappa the Rapper. Guitar Hero's basis is still the tried and true rhythm game, but the controller sets it off. It is a lot of fun.

I was going back and forth on wireless versus wired controllers. There was a guitar controller that I liked, but it was wired. I eventually decided on the wireless guitar, and it was the right choice. With kids, cords are a no-no, and with the wireless you can move around more and even sit back on the couch and play.



We had some friends over and at the end of the night we fired up Guitar Hero, and it was even more fun. I borrowed another wireless guitar from work (for, uh, testing), and we had some guitar/bass faceoffs. What's funny is if the TV volume is down far enough, all you hear is the clicking and clacking of the keys and the picks.

I have the actual Red Octane Guitar Hero branded semi-Stratocaster-style guitar, but you can pick up a generic guitar (in semi-Explorer-style) for about half the price, and I'll be picking up a second guitar pretty quickly.

I've heard a lot of jibber-jabber of how playing Guitar Hero can help your ability playing real guitar. As someone that's taking lessons playing real guitar, I don't see it. The closest I think one could get to Guitar Hero/real guitar synergy is maybe practicing with a metronome. Or light pattern recognition, but translating buttons to notes and chords? I don't think so.

My high def woes

So I really want to jump on the high definition movie race, but I have a small problem.

Our main TV is downstairs in the living room. We have another TV in the master bedroom. We watch movies on both of these, and have been known to start a movie downstairs and continue/finish it upstairs. We also have a portable DVD player for the car to keep some sanity (ours as well as our kids) on long trips.

Let's say I get a high def disc...I'll need to get at least two players! Limiting ourselves to only watching some movies downstairs won't score very highly on the WAF.

If it's a kid movie? Fuhgeddaboudit! I'll need some way of watching it in the car. You try disappointing your kids and see how that goes.

Even though, personally, I think Blu-Ray will eventually win the format war, I want to hedge my bets right now. I could always get a combo player, but right now I only see the LG BH100 as being able to play both HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs, as well as conventional DVDs. Bad news - Google Product Search shows those bad boys almost hitting $1000...and don't forget I would need two!

Still not too many details on the rumored Samsung Duo HD BD-UP5000.

Right now there is no compelling reason to drop that amount of cash when normal DVDs in progressive scan mode look just fine.

I can see you!

Some interesting fallout from the Google Street View's Privacy-B-Gone mode. Slashdot picked up a Wired story about some privacy complaints from the picture-taking-van, as well as Wired finding a lot of interesting features from the photos.

Unfortunately, Denver, CO, is the closest place to me with Street View enabled.



I've seen a van drive around our subdivision with cameras, but so far no luck finding front views of our house online, which may not be a bad thing.

My plan for World Dom...I mean High Definition

I've been wanting to jump on the High Definition bandwagon for a while, more for watching movies than anything else.

As to the competing formats, HD DVD and Blu-Ray, I'd be happy with either one if I knew every movie was going to come out on both. As it turns out, at least for now, there are some titles that I want exclusive to each one of the formats. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think eventually Blu-Ray is going to win, but it's going to be a long time. In the meantime I need to figure out how to get both....

I think I just got approval from the CFO to get an Xbox 360 + HD Drive. I should probably get it before she reads this.... Why the 360 and not the PS3? I know more people with the 360.

That's basically it.

I know I'm going to be happy with either High Definition video format. I'm getting ahead of myself with my blog posts, but I've seen examples of both, and Daddy likes!

I don't have all the time in the world to play games. Xbox Live is very nice, and I like having the opportunity to play with my friends when I get a chance.

But what do I do about Blu-Ray movies? The answer came to me a few days ago. I'll build a computer with a Blu-Ray drive and connect it via HDMI or DVI to the TV! The 360 covers the HD DVD angle.

Bada bing! Both formats. Thank you, Cleveland. Good night.

I put a preliminary system together today, and it worked like a charm. I have to figure out the best place to put it, as the Wife Acceptance Factor is both critical and slippery to grasp. A regular desktop stuck next to the TV has a low WAF, so I need to figure out how to shoehorn the components into a small form factor chassis, or at least one that is similar to my home theater components.

Definitely more to come.

Six Degrees of Freedom!

Yesterday I emailed my manager to see if I could purchase the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator, a six degrees of freedom (6DOF) controller for 3D applications. I've used 6DOF controllers for a long time, and I love them. Also, at $59, the SpaceNavigator is A SCREAMING DEAL!

An hour or so later my manager stops by my desk and hands me a box - a SpaceExplorer! Very nice!

Uh oh - I'm running Vista. Will it work? I notice that there are Vista drivers on the website. After a quick download and installation it works like a champ in SketchUp. I also was able to load SolidWorks on my system yesterday, so I'll give that a shot.

$59 is truly a bargain for a great piece of hardware. Definitely recommended if you use CAD or DCC applications, Google Earth...even a Mac!

Creative Fatal1ty mouse "review"

Here is a write-up I was asked to do for our gaming group about the Fatal1ty gaming mouse from Creative:






Day Zero with Fatal1ty mouse:


Is this just some coked-up competitor to the double-awful Razor mouse, or an actual contender for the Logitech G5 gaming mouse throne (my opinion)? Only time will tell, but here are my initial thoughts…more of an OOBE tonight, with gaming details coming this weekend.

• Box: I missed the "Open Here" sign and was trying to slide the middle part out to the side leaving the outer ring intact (similar to our printer "Wrap" ID language). Finally I stumbled upon the hinged part and noticed the magnets. I like this a lot, and one of the only other places I've seen hidden magnet closures like this is on Asian DVDs (some mid- to high-end collector's editions). Very nice!
  
• Mouse: Okay, Mr. Wendel has definitely made more money than I have playing videogames. I'm okay with that. This mouse is a little poseur-tastic, though. If I eat this mouse, will I gain more of Fatal1ty's powers? I think I'm against the idea of a celebrity mouse, but I wouldn't buy a Jonathan Ive monitor either.
  
• Finish: I really like the textured button 1 and button 2 - good feel. I like but don't love the rubberized sides. My thumb slides around on it a little too easily. I hate the glossy black button 3 and wrap-around detail. This will scuff, attract fingerprints and eventually transition to dull black.
  
• Buttons: Button 1 and 2 have nice solid clicks. Depression of scroll wheel feels and sounds good. Scrolling of scroll wheel sounds and feels cheap. Button 3 click is lame and dissatisfying. It's a hollow sound unlike all the other buttons. It sounds and feels cheap and suggests that it will be the first point of failure.
  
• Weights: Nice design for swapping weights quickly. Easier and faster than the Logitech G5. Lame implementation of retention mechanism - the fit isn't tight so moving the mouse causes the weight column to move, producing a clicking, something-in-my-mouse-is-loose sound.