08.11.2008The Dark Knight

I broke my own rule yesterday when my wife and I went to go see ‘The Dark Knight’.  I’m not a fan of seeing movies at a theater, but we had free movie and refreshment coupons.  We originally were planning on seeing it with some friends in IMAX format, but they sold out the IMAX show while we were in line so we ended up with a mere mortal presentation of the film.

I have to say that ‘The Dark Knight’ is probably the best Batman treatment I have ever seen.  Many of the fight scenes do a great job of capturing the intensity of Batman as portrayed in the comics and especially recent graphic novels.  I was also very happy to see Bruce Wayne injured, not because I like seeing people get hurt but it shows that Batman isn’t invincible.  And this film also does a great job at looking at how far Bruce Wayne will go to protect the inhabitants of Gothic City.  Lastly, kudos on the decision that Christopher Nolan takes with the Rachel Dawes character.

And Heath Ledger’s Joker.  Wow.  The Joker in this movie isn’t just some goofball with a green/white face that makes bad jokes and puns; the Heath Ledger Joker is a psychopathic badass that is every bit and probably more clever than anybody the good guys throw at him.  Although the Caped Crusader has some nifty tricks up his sleeve, the Joker always seems one step ahead of him and the law.  If nothing else, Heath’s final performance should be viewed as required viewing for aspiring actors looking for an example of batsh*t crazy (sorry for the pun, I couldn’t resist).

The movie isn’t perfect in my mind.  Harvey Dent/Two-Face is wasted on the Nolan Batman franchise with an in and out performance that reminded me of Scarecrow’s screen time in ‘Batman Begins’ (although there is speculation that Dent’s fate may not be so obvious), and the entire Lau angle is an unneeded plot complication and a waste of time.  I also think the Reese blackmail subplot wasn’t well thought out and just added time to an already long movie.  The end result is that the film is more complicated and longer than it really needs to be.

Even with those reservations, I completely understand why people are interested in multiple viewings of this movie.  Nolan has set the bar high with ‘The Dark Knight’ and I think the franchise will do well if he doesn’t keep discarding the villains.  I realize that Nolan was likely counting on using the Joker again, but that isn’t going to be easy to do at the same quality level given Heath Ledger’s death.

08.06.2008Cali State Computers Can’t Handle Pay Cut

According to The Sacramento Bee, the antiquated payroll system in use by the State of California to pay it’s employees would require at least six months of reconfiguration to issue federal minimum wage checks to state employees.  The culprit is apparently the fact that the entire payroll system is COBOL-based, a near-death computer language popular in the 1970s.  As the post reports:

“COBOL programmers are hard to come by these days,” said Fred Forrer, the Sacramento-based CEO of MGT of America, a public-sector consulting firm. “It’s certainly not a language that is taught. Oftentimes, you have to rely on retired annuitants to come back and help maintain the system until you’re able to find a replacement.”

That puts Governor Schwarzenegger in a tough position as he just fired the best candidates for systems reprogramming (the part time workers and consultants) in order to conserve cash.

(via slashdot)

08.06.2008Radiohead’s House Of Cards Video

As shown here, Radiohead has released a video for it’s song ‘House of Cards’ that used laser and data capture software to capture 3D data instead of traditional cameras and light.  The interesting thing about this concept is that as a result of the process, there is a dataset available that can be utilized by visualizers to produce different representations of the same data.

Some of the different visualization efforts produced so far are available for view at the House of Cards YouTube group.

08.05.2008Aurora

The Aurora Concept Video (as seen on LifeHacker) is an interesting look into what the future of web browsing might look like.  The UI vision in this concept video is interesting as there are elements I picked up from several of the current OS offerings mixed with new interaction ideas.

I think the thing I find most interesting about this video is that with increases in bandwidth, OS improvements, and raw horsepower available to last-mile customers, none of what was presented seems overly outrageous or even amazing in a jaw-dropping kind of way.  Scary, isn’t it?

08.04.2008Cheap Catalyst Could Turn Sunlight, Water Into Fuel

I’m intrigued by a Wired front page story featuring an article that discusses a recent discovery that may aid in solar power becoming a mainstream source for power.  Solar power is currently restricted by the simple fact that solar panels need to be exposed to sunlight to generate electricity.  Clouds and nighttime periods make the technology at best an occasional power supplement and at worst an expensive niche power generation technique.  While traditional research methods seem to be concentrating on improving battery capabilities to store solar generated energy, this approach uses water to store the energy from sunlight in the form of hydrogen.

As the article explains:

The new catalyst is remarkable because its made of common materials and can operate at room temperature and normal pressure. Without the need to heat and pressurize the water, the energy needs and cost of running the process overall are much lower. And that could make a standard solar array on a home a viable source of electricity for creating all the hydrogen a household would need.

Electricity is key to powering everything digital.  Should this technology prove viable, it could reduce the amount of fossil fuel’s required to generate electricity as homes, office buildings, and other structures could depend on solar energy.  From a foreign-dependence and pollution angles, this is good news indeed.

07.15.2008MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

One of the local alternative stations (no, not KROQ this time) has been playing 3 tracks from MGMT’s album Oracular Spectacular.  MGMT is a New York based 2-pc. synthpop band that has some interesting hooks and an overall sound that reflects it’s overall synthetic existence but yet utilizes some deft hooks.

‘Time to Pretend’, ‘Electric Feel’, and ‘Kids’ are the tracks receiving the most local airplay but there are other gems on this album, specifically ‘Weekend Wars’ and ‘Pieces of What’.  The album isn’t perfect by any means, but it is a very interesting album in that it combines an overall positive feeling via light and technically sophisticated melodies while maintaining a surprising (at times) lyrical edge

The best bet here is to take a listen somewhere and evaluate it.  If it’s something you find interesting, go out and either download it via iTunes or buy the CD and support the artist.

07.02.2008Diablo 3 Announced

In my younger days, I was as avid a computer games player as anybody today.  I concentrated on a few games to feed my obsession, games like Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Anarchy Online. 

And then there was Diablo I/II/LOD.  The time I spent looking for miscellaneous Diablo loot by doing Baal and Mephisto runs far exceeded the total time I spent grinding my Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies, the time I spent getting to BR20/CR5 in Planetside, the time I spent playing RTCW to improve my gameplay, or any other effort I put forth on any other of the games I played in.  Literally hundreds of hours over a several year period were spent playing the Diablo series of games.  I grew older, my priorities shifted, and Blizzard started putting it’s push behind WoW so I figured Diablo had run it’s course and was done.

Well it turns out that Diablo is going to be back for a 3rd installment.  After reviewing the PC Mag story and the 1up.com writeup, I’m left with some brief and probably premature impressions.

I like the following about what I read/saw:

Game Engine: The game engine looks strong.  They’ve retained the isometric perspective (although tweeked a bit) and have done a seemingly great job with things like creature scaling, interactive environment, and textures (with one notable exception I explain below).

Performance: While I realize the gameplay shown was just a demo and likely tweeked/enhanced for sellability, the gameplay looked smooth and didn’t appear to be struggling.  Hardware is only going to get better by the time this is released so there is at least some hope that the game will be playable by what will then be mid-line rigs.

Viewable Demo: So many times when a game is announced, there isn’t anything other than artist renderings of what the game will look like.  The clip on 1up.com shows a full 20 minutes of gameplay through an entire section including one boss.  I have to applaud Blizzard for getting that done before announcing the game to the public.

Having said all of that, I do have a couple of concerns:

Color Palette: One thing I didn’t really care for is the choice of color palette used in the demo.  Diablo has always been a dark, dare I say gothically skinned game with lots of browns.  The demo appeared very blue to my poor eyes, a bit too clean compared to previous Diablo efforts.  I’m hoping that Blizzard keeps an eye on the online petitions circulating requesting a change in the overall color palette.

Vaporware: Blizzard seems to deliver what’s promised, I just hope they haven’t bitten off more than they can chew with this effort, WoW, and the upcoming Starcraft II release.  Sony Online Entertainment suffered from too much product in the pipeline too quickly, I’d hate to see Blizzard have to make some bad choices.

Subscription Model: If Blizzard forces a monthly subscription on players, I suspect this game will fly like a lead balloon.  I’m hoping that Blizzard decides to keep the game free to play online even if a larger amount of money is needed upfront in terms of sales price.

I’m going to keep an eye on this, if the game isn’t subscription-based and not too outrageous in terms of cost, I’ll buy it.  While I’ll never play an online game the same way as before committments, there is room for distractions.