reviews

Review: MacBook Air

Posted on by grahams

My MacBook Air finally arrived on Friday, after more than three weeks of anxious anticipation. This machine is replacing my old 1.67Ghz Powerbook G4, which now belongs to . Now that each of us has our own Mac, we are freed from the scourge of Windows. Corinna was reluctant to “switch” while she was finishing her masters, fearing learning new shortcuts and whatnot would slow her down while working, but now that she can learn at a more leisurely pace, she doesn’t seem to mind. Just before Christmas, the boot disk in our PC died, and the frustration of getting that machine back in working order was finally the last straw. After the new year, I began posting the eyepieces I won at Stellafane to eBay to get the money for a new laptop.

I was interested in the Air from day one, but after they started showing up in the local Apple Stores and I actually got to play with one, it was game over. For me, the tradeoffs that most people see weren’t really existent… I walk to work as often as I can, so a lighter machine is a huge win. And most of the time, my old G4 was plenty fast, so the slightly slower processor in comparison to my work MacBook wasn’t really much of an issue either. The only thing that really concerned me was the slower rotational speed of the hard disk, but after playing with it in the store it didn’t seem to be much of an issue (not to mention that eventually there will be faster discs in that form factor that I can upgrade to in the future). I ended up ordering a 1.8Ghz machine (with a traditional hard disk).

The machine is simply awesome. When I’m holding it I feel like if I left go of it, if it didn’t hover in place it would at least gently float to the floor (I haven’t tested this out yet). As you’ve likely heard in just about every review of the machine, it feels way sturdier than you’d expect given it’s size and weight. I’d venture to say it even feels sturdier than my Powerbook, which always felt like a tank to me. I feel like I could drop it from the roof of NRH and still use it when it hit bottom (of course, the floating would help).

I read some reviews criticizing the battery life, and frankly, I just don’t see any problem. Sure, when I was downloading a 10GB file using the 802.11g, the battery life was shortened. But whenever I’m using the machine in a more normal setting, I get 3-3.5 hours out of the battery. I’m sure I could stretch it further if I disabled Bluetooth and WiFi, but whatever. As far as I can tell, it lasts longer than my Powerbook battery ever did.

The screen is gorgeous, even if it is glossy (why can’t you make the matte finish a BTO option on all the lines, Apple? I’d happily pay more!) The LCD backlighting is so bright at full brightness it is almost uncomfortable. I haven’t really trained myself to use the multi-touch stuff much at all, honestly, it seems mostly like a novelty. I’ve been wrong before, though, so I’m going to see if I can make it useful. My guess is that when a 3rd party releases a trainable gesture system, it might become more attractive. I just don’t zoom photos enough to get a semi over the pinching. :)

I haven’t played with Remote Disc… I bought the external drive, but honestly I probably won’t be using that all that much either. I’ve gotten to the point where optical discs are the new floppies. I pretty much buy all of my music and software online these days, so it’s pretty rare that I need an optical drive. The only time I watch movies on a computer is when traveling, and I always ripped DVD’s to the hard disk for travel anyway (as the optical drive devours precious battery).

I don’t really have many gripes with this machine.. I seem to sometimes get a double login prompt when unlocking the machine, but I don’t know if that’s a Leopard problem or specific to this machine. It is also strange not hearing the optical drive initialize every time I wake it from sleep. It’s like trying to sleep in the country after living in a city, the silence is disconcerting. All in all, it’s pretty awesome.

Review: In Bruges

Posted on by grahams

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a very-advance screening of next year’s “In Bruges”, which comes out in March.  I knew almost nothing about the film going into it, other than it co-starred Colin Farrell, which is never a good sign for me.  But I fell in love with this dark comedy within the first 5 minutes.  The story follows two hired killers as they lie low in Bruges, Belgium after a particularly high-profile hit.  Ken, played by “That Guy” Brendan Gleeson plays Ken is making the most of this unexpected Belgian holiday, even if Farrell’s Ray is completely bored and itching to return to London.  With no desire to give away the plot, let’s just say that things don’t go according to plan…

Any dark crime comedy has it’s share of hijinx, double crosses, and surprises, and often these can feel formulaic.  The plot of In Bruges seemed fresh and engaging, rarely evoking the “how many times have I seen this before?” sentiment.  If I had to pick one criticism of the film, it was that there were some ShakyCam shots early on that were a bit annoying, but after the first minute or two I stopped noticing.  We were sitting rather close in the theatre, as well, which may have contributed to the discomfort.

Review: Stop and Shop EasyShop

Posted on by grahams

The Stop and Shop on Pleasant Street (right on the Watertown/Waltham line) has introduced the greatest improvement to grocery shopping since the barcode scanner.  They call it EasyShop, and while I won’t say it makes shopping fun, it seriously decreases the pain.

When you first arrive at the store, there are a bunch of little handheld barcode scanners with color LCD panels on their backside, all locked up in a little kiosk.   You scan your discount card and and one of the scanners unlocks for you.   There are plastic and paper bags at the kiosk for your use as well.  Then, as you shop, you scan the items you wish to purchase and bag them right away, in your cart.  It tells you the price of anything you scan, giving you an option to add it to your order or forget about it.  It keeps a running tally of everything you’ve bought, and you can remove anything from your order with a button press and a scan.   For produce, they’ve set up little self-weigh stations that allow you to enter the produce code and print a barcode label.

Once you have everything you need, you head over to one of the self-checkout lanes and scan a little “I’m Done” barcode, then return the scanner to a rack.   After scanning your discount card again your entire order is instantly transferred to the self-checkout register and all you have to do is pay and you’re done.  This is so fundamentally better than any of the previous attempts at “self-checkout” systems, which too often relied on scale platforms after the register to keep track of the weight of things you’ve scanned at an attempt to ensure you aren’t taking more than you’re paying for.   In my experience, about 60% of the time these scales malfunction requiring one of the employees to come over and swipe their card.

There were only a few suggestions I had for the system:

  1. Right now, to checkout using EasyShop, you have to use the general self-checkout lanes, which are often being used by people not using EasyShop.  So you sometimes still have to wait around for the person in front of you to deal with all the usual frustrations with self-checkout.  It would be nice if they had one or two EasyShop only lanes.  Since there’s no need for a conveyor belt or such, these could be much smaller.
  2. As far as I can tell, in order add produce to the order you have to print out a barcode label using their printer.  When I’m using my cloth reusable bags, I often just keep one bag for produce and don’t put my produce in the clear produce bags they offer.  This means that not only is it wasteful for me to have to print out one of these barcode labels for each vegetable I buy, but once I’ve printed and scanned it, I have nothing to stick it to, since the produce isn’t in one of the plastic baggies.  It’d be nice if there was an option that allowed me to be less wasteful.
  3. It’d be neat if they could come up with some way to help keep the tops of the bags open in my cart while I’m shopping. 

All in all, though, these are minor suggestions, and I’m sure they will refine the system as time passes.  Some people may be annoyed by the occasional “cha-ching” the scanner-phaser emits as it notifies you of a super-deal (a.k.a. advertisment)!  This only happened to me 2 or 3 times in a 30 minute shopping trip and I quickly learned not to even look down when the cha-ching sound struck.

I noticed that the deli at this same Stop and Shop has a little computer kioskto input your order into…   Next time I need some deli supplies I’ll be sure to give it a swing and report back to you

Review: Flatwire

Posted on by grahams

Flatwire Photoset
Originally uploaded by seangraham

In college, and I split the cost of a surround sound setup. Jon purchased the receiver and I purchased a set of speakers to complete the 5.1 setup. After I graduated I lost the use of Jon’s receiver, so I bought my own, which I used for the first few years living in Boston. After my retreat to New Jersey and subsequent return, Corinna and I decided that the living room in her old condo was simply too small, and the walls too fragile, to mount all the speakers to. So my glorious surround sound setup collected dust for several years.

Having moved into a new, larger, house and having bought a ridiculously large television, it only seemed to make sense to have a nice sound system.. Unfortunately, there were a few problems with this plan:

  • There are condos above and below us, so there was no access from above or below.
  • Corinna and I had no interest in unsightly wires running around the living room.
  • I don’t trust wireless speaker setups, and besides, I already have 5 perfectly good speakers.
  • We didn’t want to rip the walls down solely to run speaker wire.

Given all that, I assumed that others would likely have this problem, so I began searching around for a solution. After some research I settled on Flatwire. Basically, you glue Flatwire to the wall, tape over it with joint tape, then feather joint compound over the whole kit and caboodle to conceal it. I was somewhat skeptical, but after reading some good words I decided to take a bit of a leap of faith and shell out a few hundred bucks on the gear. I got 100′ of flat speaker wire, 8 wall boxes, the spray adhesive and extra-wide joint tape.

We found pages and pages of illustrated installation instructions on the company’s site, and they were a little intimidating.. Fortunately, Corinna and I sat down and carefully read them, making sure we understood each step before any installation started. Once we invested this time it became clear that this installation really wasn’t as complicated as it seemed at first. The instructions are just very detailed.. After understanding all the steps, all it takes is some solid patience…

We used a chalk line to snap out all 4 routes around the living room.. What became apparent quickly was that while it may seem that keeping the wires level would be really important, in a 100 year old home which isn’t terribly level anywhere else, what really mattered was keeping the lines a consistent distance from the ceiling. We took time to make sure we had enough space along the entire runs to account for any sags in the ceiling. Once we were confident in all of the chalk lines, we began the first run. It seemed logical to start with the shortest run, which was the front right speaker. We measured the length of the run, and then measured out and cut the appropriate length of wire. The instructions advised us to test this length of cable before proceeding, so we connected two of the wall boxes to either end and hooked up the stereo and a speaker. Everything worked great, so we disassembled the whole setup and began gluing the wire to the walls. First, we mounted the first wall box to the wall and connected the wire to that box as a kind of anchor while we glued. The glue is really, really sticky, and didn’t necessarily spray straight out of the nozzle, so it took a little practice to shoot straight.. Fortunately, any misfiring would be covered up by the spackle anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. After getting this first run glued to the wall we mounted the second wall box and connected the other end of the wire to it. After reconnecting the speaker and stereo to this first run, we successfully tested this first run. The instructions advised testing each run 3 times: Before gluing, after gluing, and after spackling. This would have taken us forever, so after this first run we only tested after gluing (and obviously after painting).

After this first run, we glued the remaining 3 runs to the wall and mounted all of the wall boxes, testing all of them successfully. With each run we became faster and faster as we became more familiar with the process. We started this process around 11am and finished gluing and testing around 4pm, just in time to jump in the shower quickly and catch The Police at Fenway. The next day Corinna began taping and feathering the wires.. This took her a few days, mostly because of the amount of spackle needed to really hide the wire combined with drying time. She may correct me, but I believe it took three passes to really smooth it out. After getting the paint on the walls Thursday night I mounted the speakers Friday and we took the system for a test-drive.

While I’m no audiophile, I do appreciate good sound, and as far as I can tell, the Flatwire doesn’t color or distort the audio in any perceivable way. The stereo sounds wonderful and bass and treble response seem identical to the traditional speaker wire I replaced. To be honest, I can’t really find any flaws in the system. It’s expensive, and it requires spackling finesse which may be beyond some (including myself), but if you are in a similar bind to me, it seems like a perfect solution.

Posted on by grahams

Tonight,

[info]coco_b

  and I met up with the film club to see a special preview screening of “Hot Fuzz” at the Brattle. “Hot Fuzz” is the latest film from the guys who created “Shaun of the Dead”. “Fuzz” is officially released here in the states in about a month, but the guys (Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost) are going around the US doing some screenings to build up buzz.

The screening was at 5:30pm, but our passes were first-come, first-served, so I figured we’d get into Harvard Square around 3pm, grab some lunch, and then buzz by the Brattle occasionally until we saw a line starting to form…  Well, we stuck to plan until the “buzzing” part;  After lunch, we did our first pass by the theatre and there was already a line 100+ people long..  So we got on line a bit after 3pm, and stood there until 5:15ish when the doors opened.    The show started about 10 minutes late, but Edgar, Simon, and Nick came out, introduced the movie, and then we were rolling..

Sweet Jesus is this a funny film..  It is every bit as clever as “Shaun of the Dead”, but from filmmakers that show a bit more confidence (and a bit more budget).  The film never really felt slow for me, and when I wasn’t laughing hysterically, I had a broad smile on my face…   There was a point towards the end where I thought I might be really disappointed by the ending, but then it took a fantastic right turn…  In fact, I think the actual ending was funnier in light of where I thought it was going…

I don’t want to spoil it too much, so I’ll just say that this movie is great, and you need to see it.

After the flick, the guys did a lengthy Q&A session, which was quite enjoyable…   They mentioned future projects they are all working on together, but didn’t give any details…  They mentioned they announced “Hot Fuzz” 9 months before they started writing the script, and wanted to avoid announcing anything too early again…  Whatever it ends up being, based on their first two films (and what I’ve seen of the BBC series, “Spaced”), I’ll be at the third on opening weekend!  

RiffTrax

Posted on by grahams

Last night I watched Episode 1 with commentary from RiffTrax. RiffTrax is the brainchild of Mike Nelson, formerly of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  If you were a fan of MST3K, you already understand the basic premise behind RiffTrax:  Mike (and friends) record a snarky commentary track to a film and release it as an mp3 file.  Simply load the file into whatever media player you choose, press play and follow the audio directions.  I understood this all in principal (especially since I beta-tested the same concept a few years ago when

[info]patrickwonders

 was experimenting with DVDTracks), and I loved MST when it was on the air, but I couldn’t tell if this would work or not.

When I saw that they had done Episode 1, I couldn’t resist..  The first thing you notice is that the commentary is delivered in a zip file containing an unprotected mp3 and a text file.  The text file contains some basic information and also a guide to mapping “movie time” to “audio time” with some dialog snippets to help you in case you pause or stop the film for whatever reason and lose sync between the two.  My biggest concern was the issue of sync, but the RiffTrax guys handled it very well…  At the start of the audio file there is some introductory matter, and then there were instructions to pause the audio track after a countdown and to un-pause it after “A long time ago…” faded off the screen.  In addition, they have a “robot” named DisembAudio which occasionally recites a line of dialog so you can tell if they were in sync.  In practice, I found that it didn’t really matter if they were out of sync, even if it was by a second or two, but also that unless you were pausing or whatever, you didn’t have to worry about sync at all.  

As far as content goes, Mike has Kevin Murphy at his side for this one, who you may recognize better as the voice of Tom Servo on MST.  Other tracks feature Bill Corbett, who voiced Crow and was also a writer on the old show.  While the commentary for Episode 1 started off a little slow (just like the movie!), once they got into a groove it was like old times again.  It was a great experience, and if you are an MSTie, you owe it to yourself to grab one of their tracks and give it a go.   Obviously with my small sample size, I don’t know how much the quality varies, but for 2-3 bucks, it’s a pretty good deal.  I might even consider renting some REAL stinkers and just buying the RiffTrax that go along with them to make them watchable. :)

This Weekend

Posted on by grahams

Friday night I hung out with a bunch of friends from work… It was John’s birthday and he had a bunch of people over his house and then we went to watch some Minor League hockey. The game was terrible, we left after the second period, but it was good spending time with these guys (and gal) outside of work for a change.. I didn’t get home until past 1am…

Saturday and I just chilled out for most of the day, for the first time in a long time. She had been powering through one of her last assignments of her masters, and even though she still has more work to do in the next few weeks, she decided to take a “personal day”, which I appreciated, because I’ve felt like I’ve had a part-time girlfriend for awhile now. :)

Today the two of us took a walk in the snow “storm” and grabbed some lunch at Moogy’s. I had the film club tonight, while she had to stay home to resume her schoolwork. We saw The Ice Harvest. It was OK, but it was a little too predictable. It straddled the line between slapstick and serious, and I think if it veered a bit closer to slapstick it would have been better (and the predictability wouldn’t have been as noticable). I got home and found that one of the traps I set out for our little “mouse friend” had been successful. I had set out both spring and glue traps, because I wanted the little bugger gone, and he wandered into one of the glue traps. I’m not a fan of them, because they seem a bit like torture, but it got the job done, and I dispatched the poor guy as soon as I found him. I have more traps out in case he has any friends..

Drove In

Posted on by grahams

Last night , Audra, and myself made another trip to the Mendon Drive-In to see The Skeleton Key and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Skeleton Key kinda sucked… It was from that class of thrillers/horror that isn’t PARTICULARLY bad, but is so bloody mediocre that it really isn’t worth watching… I don’t want to spoil the “big surprise”, but trust me when I say you’ve seen it before. 40-Year-Old Virgin, however, was surprisingly funny. It was kind of refreshing, because recent comedies seem to try to beat you over the head with big obnoxious, raunchy, or blatant humor, while this movie was subtler. Audra described it as a romantic comedy for guys, and I don’t think that’s inaccurate.

I also noticed while moving my leg around near the boom box we were using for audio that it seemed to be effecting the reception (beyond usual human-body effects on radio reception). Not sure if this was just wishful thinking or an actual effect, but it was amusing nonetheless.

I am going to be lazy this weekend, mostly sleeping and playing video games…

Resurrection coming in stereo

Posted on by grahams

I saw Murderball, a documentary about Olympic Quad Rugby, on Sunday with the film club. Now I knew nothing about Olympic Quad Rugby (a.k.a. Murderball; a.k.a. Paralympic Quadriplegic Rugby) going into the film, but it seems to me that after this film this sport will be much more widely known. The sport is intense, and the players literally beat the shit out of each other and their chairs. It’s like rugby, but instead of using shoulders and elbows to take out the carrier, you use a big metal chair as fast as you can get it going. I think we are trained by culture to think of quadriplegic people as helpless, but this film will literally rewrite your definition of even what the word ‘quadriplegic’ means.

The movie focuses mostly on two people, Mark Zupan, a player for the USA Paralympic Rugby team and Joe Soares, a former player for Team USA who was dropped from the team and now coaches Team Canada. The bitter rivalry between the two teams is perfectly captured, both with the “action” scenes as well as some scenes where Soares is referred to as a traitor. The soundtrack is pretty good too, with several of the game action scenes backed by Ministry which I still have a soft spot for (by “soft spot” I actually mean “whips me into a frenzy”). Anyway, enough babbling, go see this movie.