For just £29,000, you get a 2-seat car that's faster than a Porsche Carrera GT and less than half a second slower than a Ferrari Enzo around the Top Gear test track. Watch and be amazed:
May 2006 Archives
Warning: This review includes movie spoilers.
X-Men: The Last Stand is unsatisfying fare for all but the most indiscriminant of movie-goers.
The plot goes something like this:
1. Cyclops goes to sulk at Alkali Lake. Jean Gray comes back to life as Dark Phoenix and kills him. Everyone mourns.
2. A company announces it has developed a "cure" for the mutant gene. A range of emotions are expressed. Storm continues her tradition of silly and/or obvious statements.
3. Charles Xavier and Magneto go to the childhood home of Jean Gray to try to convince her to not destroy the planet accidentally. She gets angry and kills Xavier. Wolverine cries like a little girl. Everyone mourns.
4. Rogue goes off to get cured so she can make wild monkey-love to Iceman.
5. Magneto continues recruiting his Brotherhood to fight the cure and hides out in the woods. Wolverine goes to find Jean, who has joined Magneto, and Magneto kicks his ass.
6. The Brotherhood takes over Alcatraz, which is where the cure is being produced and stored.
7. The X-Men stop them with a big battle. Magneto is "cured" of his powers and runs away. Wolverine kills Dark Phoenix/Jean Gray and cries like a little girl. Everyone mourns.
8. Magneto makes a metal chess piece wobble (implying the cure is temporary) and the movie ends.
After the credits, there's an additional short bit that suggests Professor X might have transferred his consciousness to a new body, but that's a pretty lame attempt at reconciliation.
So let me sum up: Three of the founding X-Men get killed, Wolverine cries TWICE, and there were at least three incongruencies with the comics (e.g., according to the film, Juggernaut is a mutant).
The whole film seems rushed -- we never get the chance to think about what's going on before we're bombarded by a new set of explosions, gun battles, or general violence and mayhem. Nobody gets any real opportunity to act (except Storm and Wolverine, and those attempts were pitiful), let alone develop characters beyond what we learned in the previous films. Sure, the special effects were fine and dandy, but the writing and overall plot just didn't do the finale justice, especially when compared to the excellence exhibited in the first two movies. Brett Ratner was true to his history -- this movie is a big-time action movie. The problem is, the first two were all that PLUS so much more.
My conclusion is that this is a sad way to end what would have been by far the best comic book film trilogy ever produced. Now, I don't even expect I'll buy the DVD of X-Men: The Last Stand when it comes out.
My Rating: 6 (out of 10)
Whereas most web quizzes are trivially easy for any reasonable fan of the topic, this X-Men quiz on MSNBC.com is fairly tough. It even throws in a couple of questions that have little to do with the X-Men, just to test your mettle.
I got a 77%...how did you do?
Constantly finding new tidbits of info, great links, and what-not on the web and wanting a way to keep it all nicely organized? The new Google Notebook extension for the Firefox browser is an excellent tool. With a single right-click in Firefox, you can save web content to your own private Notebook area, which is fully searchable. Give it a try.
If you're like me, there's no telling the number of different formats of audio and video files you find making their way to your PC's desktop. Captured or produced by new gadgets, sent by friends, or grabbed from websites, these media files usually play in some app I have installed, but not always.
When you just can't figure out exactly what that odd AVI file is, grab the GSpot Codec Information Appliance. GSpot, a free app, first analyzes the codecs installed on your machine. Then, you point it to an AVI file and it tells you the 4CC video codec info, audio codec (if any), bitrates, and various other interesting and/or useful tidbits. If there's no codec on your system to play the file, GSpot will even point you in the right direction to get one.
Very nifty...thanks, Steve G!
I live in a city with a name that few people not from here seem to be able to spell correctly: Cincinnati
Despite being the home of the first professional baseball team, the headquarters of Procter & Gamble and Federated Department Stores (among other large firms), and part of the name of a popular sit-com (WKRP in Cincinnati, Cincinnati seems to be regularly misspelled in various creative ways.
Using Google Trends, I found out that the most common way to misspell this city's name is "Cincinatti," but other mistakes are also common:
Thankfully, the search frequency of the correct spelling - Cincinnati - is magnitudes higher than any of the misspellings, but it's interesting to see such widespread ignorance. Imagine that many people spelling it "Misisipi". OK, never mind.
I've received this request a few times, and I've finally gotten around to coding it up.
Here is a complete list of all GearBits posts, in reverse chronological order (newest at the top), with each post's primary category, date posted, and number of comments.
From looking at that list, I also noticed that these are the most heavily commented posts so far:
Lost & Forgotten 70's & 80's TV Shows (466 comments)
Samsung DLP TV (232 comments)
The Llama Song (165 comments)
Scientific Atlanta DVR Not So Hot (138 comments)
WheresGeorge.com (122 comments)
Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD Hi-Def DVR (98 comments)
Enjoy...
Weather Underground (at wunderground.com) has an interesting new feature: an animated, weekly map of flu (influenza) activity in the US.
Nearly every day, we hear statements to the effect of "the world is getting smaller." This, of course, is a metaphor for how access to places on the planet we'd previously only read about is getting easier, faster, and more trivial. But it's a lie.
For a while, the world did indeed seem to shrink. In the early part of the 20th century, radio brought us sounds from remote places. Then, with the rise of film reels in the 1930s and 1940s, and television in the 1950s and 1960s, we saw images of these far-flung locations, distant events, and foreign peoples. The 1970s and 1980s brought us cable television and greatly expanded real-time news coverage, which seemed to bring these distant things just that much closer, both in space and time.
Then, we got us the Internet and the World-Wide Web. In the mid- and late-1990s, we were all about connecting each other even more tightly. Email made it trivial to get text messages to each other. We could send photos, which closed the distance that separated us. CUSeeMe and other video/web-conferencing apps enabled us to see each other in real-time, too, making it seem like we were just in the next room. The world did indeed seem like it was growing smaller by the moment.
But then we got the big idea that we didn't need to be constrained by the physical universe. People began inventing alternative, purely digital existences. They started out as MUDs (multi-user domains, or dungeons) and then grew both in sophistication and scope. And they also started generating a whole lotta content that existed only on the web. We moved beyond merely putting images of paintings in the Louvre on the museum's website -- we had started creating art that had no physical counterpart.
Sure, the Internet/Web was referred to as "cyberspace", suggesting that it had some otherworldly dimensions. But for the most part, we used it merely as a reflection of this tangible world we exist in every day.
These online worlds -- the Sims, the WoWs, the Second Lifes -- combined with the social networking spaces -- MySpace and Facebook, as two examples -- are effectively now making the world a bigger place. All this new content -- the what, the where, and the when -- is creating more "space" that we can, and often feel compelled to, explore.
While our ability to communicate with each other improves in both synchronicity and richness, the amount of space -- both physical and virtual -- is increasing at a faster rate than our communication can keep up with. The upshot is that we are getting more and more overwhelmed by the possibilities of how -- and where -- to spend our time. And this will only continue as new virtual spaces multiply, grow, and become increasing sophisticated.
What are the social implications of this? I've some ideas, but we'll definitely all be surprised as the specifics play out. Should be interesting, to say the least.
Less than two weeks now until X-Men: The Last Stand hits movie theaters!
[cue girlish scream of joyful anticipation]
EarthQuest Generates First Property Ownership Lawsuit
Search giant Google's latest service, Google EarthQuest, has developed into a sizable component of the company's overall revenue base, and has now generated the first known lawsuit between physical and virtual property owners.EarthQuest combines the Google Earth 3-D mapping service launched several years ago with Google's recent acquisitions, gaming titles World of Warcraft and The Sims, and online property research firm Zillow.com.
The result is the first full-planet, geographically accurate massively multi-player online game. EarthQuest provides players with the chance to "buy" the rights to digital versions of real property, whereon they can then build virtual homes, buildings, or develop other, creative uses for the space.
The recently filed lawsuit contests two real-world neighbors, John Henkin and Wade Godby, both residents of Coral Gables, Florida. Godby claims that Henkin has artificially reduced his physical home's property value by buying the virtual space corresponding to Godby's yard in EarthQuest and erecting what was described as "a 75-foot digital phallus" on that spot. Henkin claims no wrong-doing as his purchase of that space in EarthQuest was valid within the parameters of the service, and erecting such a structure does not violate game rules.
Apparently, the feud between Henkin and Godby has been long-standing. Those living near the quarreling neighbors recount trashed Halloween and Christmas decorations, yards defaced with lime, and several instances of wireless network disruption emanating from one or the other household. A court date for the suit has not yet been set.
Customs Dogs Sniff out Stolen Office Supplies
Inspired by the MPAA-trained dogs trained to find DVDs in luggage, Staple Depot today announced that it has trained a half-dozen German Shepherds to detect stolen office supplies being smuggled home at night in office-workers' briefcases, bags, and purses. The company is working to lease out these dogs, who will be positioned at the exits of large office buildings.A spokesperson for Staple Depot, the recent office supply mega-chain formed when Staples merged with Office Depot, stated that the company had invested in this effort as "an innovative solution to a growing threat to the health and morality of American business." Said the company representative, "Staple Depot believes that fighting terrorism and crime go hand in hand. After all, terrorists need Wite-Out and binder clips just like the rest of us."
DHS Home Searches Contested by Angry Liberals
The US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) recently initiated "Terrorist Roundup" program, which includes warrantless searches of selected homes and businesses within the United States, has ruffled the feathers of some citizens and residents.The most recent round of physical property searches was defended by the outgoing DHS Secretary, Michael Chertoff. "Wiretaps have proven to be a useful tool for fighting terrorism here and abroad. Property searches are the next obvious step in rooting out terrorists who are already here in the US where they can do the most harm. Seeking warrants in these cases only reduces our ability to protect Americans."
One property owner, whose house was inspected at 3am yesterday by the FBI, complained, "Ain't we got no rights no more? What happened to the gall-dang Constitution?"
Attorney General Harriet Miers dismissed this criticism: "If you've nothing to hide, like any good American, there's no reason to be concerned about opening your home up to these rather unobtrusive searches." The ACLU has vowed to contest the legality of this program in US federal court.
Google Trends is a relatively new service from Google. In a nutshell, it gives timelines of search traffic for user-selected terms in a line graph format with news volume underneath. Overall, it looks very much like a stock chart.
Here are some interesting comparisons (try to guess which choice will come out on top before you click each link):
Apples and Oranges (finally!)
Back when I started GearBits in March of 2003, I had no idea what to expect -- would this be around in a year? Two? What would it morph into?
Well, despite a short hiatus in 2004, GearBits is still here, and this is the 1,000th post published on this site.
Granted, posts can be sporadic -- this isn't my occupation, after all -- but I think folks are still finding things of value here on the site.
And, as I originally promised, the posts here on GearBits have strayed a bit from technology into politics, science, society, travel, and other topics. But the category post counts show that technology-centric topics still remain the majority (Mobile & PDAs and Computing are the most populated)
I'd also like to thank Mitch, Ken, and Sam for their early contributions -- co-blogging was a lot of fun. Maybe someday I'll scrounge up some friends with a wee bit more time on their hands for another go at that model.
So, will GearBits be around for another 1,000 posts? You got me...we'll just have to wait and see. :-)
Ever on the lookout for a more reliable replacement for our Omnifi DMS1, I nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw an ad for the SMCWAA-G Wireless Audio Adapter from SMC Networks (pictured to the right).
At first blush, the specs looked just about perfect based on the requirements I laid out nearly two years ago:
- Has a display -- CHECK!
- Has 802.11g wireless networking -- CHECK!
- Serves up Internet MP3 streams -- CHECK!
So, here's a brief review after using this thing for about a day now (Googling turned up no actual reviews of this unit, so I felt it was my technerd duty to post one). Granted, I did not try out every feature yet, and I didn't even install the MusicMatch UPnP audio server software that came with it (I already had the TwonkyVision UPnP app running on our HTPC for use with the Omnifi). So, consider this a "first blush" review only.
Hardware
Inside the box is what you'd pretty much expect.
In the photo below, from upper left, going clockwise is: the SMCWAA-G itself, a CD-ROM and some sparse paper documentation, the wall-wart power adapter, a 6' CAT-5 cable, the remote control (with 2 'AAA' batteries), and some bargain audio cables.
Looking at the back of the unit (below), you see the following (left to right): antenna, Left and Right analog audio jacks, RJ-45 jack, reset button, and power jack.
The size of the unit is surprising -- it is MUCH smaller than I expected. It's roughly half the size of an external 3.5" HDD, in case that helps. Here's a photo comparing the SMC (top right) with the Omnifi (top left) and our Series 2 TiVo (bottom).
Notice that the front of the unit has no buttons or any means at all of interacting with the SMCWAA-G (that round thing on the left of the front panel is the infrared sensor). All control is done with the remote (shown to the right). The remote is rather generic-looking (nearly identical to the Omnifi remote), but seems to have all the necessary buttons and is fairly easy to read (although it's not lighted, so managing the SMCWAA-G in the dark might be a PITA).
Setup
Plugging in the unit asks the user to select a language (Note: all screen shots are actual photographs of the screen, and my camera wasn't 100% focused every single time...my apologies for any fuzziness).
Notice that the display fits six lines of information -- four lines of menu choices and a top and bottom line of labels and button prompts. Not too terrible a user interface for such a small screen.
Once the language is chosen, the SMCWAA-G launches into a "Configuration Wizard", which actually does a decent job.
The wizard takes you through the few steps of selecting and setting up the unit's wireless connection. Once I had added the unit's MAC address to my router's authentication list, it worked like a charm. The unit reportedly supports 128-bit WEP and WPA, but I didn't test that.
Menus
Once setup is complete, the unit offers a "home" menu. This menu lists all available UPnP servers on your network (I have just one) as well as "Favorites" (tracks that have been tagged as such) and "Internet Radio" (SMC provides a proprietary Internet radio service via Radio678.com, which I have not yet tried).
The menus within a particular UPnP audio source depend on how that UPnP server structures its menus, so the following screen shots show how TwonkyVision shows up on the SMCWAA-G (as mentioned, I did not attempt to use the unit with the MusicMatch software it came with).
All in all, you get quite a bit of information on the screen when a track is playing: Artist, Title, Album, and play time are shown inside the center box, and the date, time, signal strength (left), volume (right), and playback options (e.g., shuffle, repeat, etc.) around the periphery.
The SMCWAA-G works just fine with streaming MP3 sources from the Internet. I added links to an .m3u playlist and TwonkyVision served them up via the EZ-Stream just perfectly. So no complaints there.
Surprising Features
The EZ-Stream SMCWAA-G has some really nifty features that you won't find well-documented online or on SMC's website. For one, the audio out is variable (volume on the remote is controlled by the + and - buttons), so you don't need to grab a second remote (or walk up to your stereo) to change the volume or mute the sound.Another cool feature will be appreciated by anyone who has a sizable music collection. Scrolling through hundreds of artists can get pretty tedious. The SMCWAA-G has a "Jump To" button on the remote to solve this problem. Hitting "Jump To" lets you enter in letters and numbers using the remote's phone-like number pad (i.e., for a "U", hit the "8" button three times). Spelling out the first one or more letters of a track name, artist, or album will jump you right to it without scrolling. This is similar to the "Power Scroll" function on the Sonos wireless audio system (but the SMCWAA-G is about 1/10th the price ;-). Note that the , . - and "space" marks are available by hitting the "1" key multiple times.
A third thing that's interesting is that the SMCWAA-G actually offers some audio-based help items in its menu. Selecting one of these help topics causes the unit to broadcast (I assume from some internal memory) a pleasant-sounding woman's voice describing various features and options the unit has. As I've never seen this done before, this innovation surprised me.
There are some other functions and features listed in the manual, but I've not tried them out, so I won't list them here.
Final Thoughts
So far, we've had no complaints about sound quality, but most of our stuff isn't encoded at any fidelity likely to satisfy a true audiophile. The unit claims to play MP3, WMA, protected WMA, and WAV, but I've only so far tried it on MP3. The networking setup was truly painless -- that was especially impressive. The display is as clear and bright as I could hope. The text is too small to be easily read from more than, say, 12 feet away (give or take), but that should be adequate for most uses. Given that the screen pivots, most users should be able to position it for maximum readability, which helps some.Some nice-to-haves on the unit would have been some form of digital audio out (everything's digital until it gets to this unit, so why not just pass it on?) and some font options (maybe to cram more lines in on the display or make the text bigger to be read from across a larger room). But those are really quite minor detractions (to me, at least) from what's a fairly solid piece of kit.
All in all, I'm happily surprised. I have a hunch that if Lori also gives this a thumbs-up (and I see no reason she wouldn't), the EZ-Stream SMCWAA-G will become the new king of the family room and our twitchy Omnifi will be relegated to some lesser-used part of the house. Well done, SMC!
From the "who wudda thunk" department comes this CNET story: Digital SLRs bring lens quandary.
The article discusses the increasing variety of sensor sizes in digital SLRs, meaning that those who buy lenses for these cameras have to understand what is commonly referred to as a "crop factor" (the article explains it...read, read).
With any technology that reaches the mass consumption level, there will have to be some learning and familiarization. So it's not really surprising that there's some confusion.
However, I did notice that the article says some DSLRs are moving towards a 4:3 image aspect ratio (the standard 35mm film aspect ratio is 3:2). So, will 4x6 (inch) prints go by the wayside in favor of 4.5x6 or some other new standard size? That will not make the photo album manufacturers very happy.
I expect that DSLRs and other removable-lens cameras will remain tools for the serious hobbyist and professional, with everyone else getting fixed-lens cameras. If you have no need for the flexibility of an SLR and you're not willing to put up with the added bulk and complexity (let alone cost), there's no reason you should.
