GregHowley.com

Ruminations on the Longevity of Electronics

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:26:00 -0600

I've been putting some thought recently into my gadgets. As a certifiable geek, I do love my electronics, but while I've gotten an amazing amount of mileage out of some of them, others have seemed to crap out almost instantly. And because the exercise will amuse me, I'm about to review the devices out of which I've gotten the most and the least mileage.

Samsung YP-U2J

In early 2007, I wrote about having purchased a new mp3 player that looked like a usb flash drive. Guess what? I still use the thing almost daily. It wouldn't work well for music, but for podcasts, it's brilliant. It charges in a usb port at the same time you're dragging and dropping files into the thing via Windows Explorer. No software required. And it's got FM radio and voice recorder functionality that I've infrequently used. The buttons are worn almost off due to constant use, but it still works as well as the first day I got it.

DT Lenovo Q150

I bought this machine less than a year ago to act as a server when the box I'd used as my primary PC back in 2004 started freezing all the time and was no longer suitable for use as a server. The PC is tiny and low-power; it seemed ideal for use as a server.

Although the Windows 7 install with PS3 Media Server works great for real-time transcoding mp4 and avi files to the Playstation 3, playing YouTube videos from the actual box will cause it to overheat. So watching Tabletop or The Flog from our TV screen is only possible if I use the stupid PS3 browser, which will cause streaming video to actually skip.

Oddly, when the box overheats, the only symptom is that the HDMI out stops working. Since that's my only display, this is a bit of a problem. I'm now considering fans built for laptops as a possible solution.

LG Dare

My wife has had her LG Dare phone for something like four years now. It's internet capable, but she doesn't use it as a smart phone. Still, she loves that phone, and the battery lasts for three days at a time. Compared to my phone which sometimes needs charging by 10am, that's pretty impressive.

My Dell XPS

I've knocked Dell in the past, but I've had my current PC for something like three and a half years and I'm still using it to play new release video games. I upgraded the graphics card once to play Skyrim, and I'm feeling no immediate need to replace the PC. I expect to have it for at least another year or two, which will be some kind of record for me.

Asus K72 Laptop

Linda's laptop is another story. We did a lot of research before buying it last year and decided to get a HP or Asus laptop. Perhaps we should have gotten HP. The thing has weird intermittent freezing and memory issues, and I'm fairly sure it's hardware. Given that it's her primary work computer, this is not cool.

Creative Nomad Jukebox 20GB

Talk about an ancient piece of technology- I DJ'ed my wedding in 2004 using this mp3 player. I've owned it for nearly ten years. And it still works great. The only problem? I had a hard drive crash not long ago, and now my entire music catalog exists in only two places. First, on actual CDs in a box in the attic. Secondly, on this mp3 player. And the special software that I need in order to retrieve the mp3 files from the Nomad will only run on Windows XP. I've tried a VM, but it didn't recognise the USB connection. I have an old windows XP box, but the CD drive is broken. My only solution may be to undergo the painfully slow process of re-ripping all my music. That's going to take hours, and I'm not looking forward to it.

PAX East 2012 Highlights

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:41:00 -0600

In the near future, I'm planning a series of articles going more into depth about my amazing weekend at PAX East, but for now, I'll share a few brief highlights.

The GeekDad/GeekMom panel

I'll have to delve more into this in detail later, as there's a lot to cover, but the Raising the Next Generation of Geeks panel was far better than I'd expected. There's apparently a video of the panel online, perhaps through Twitch TV or Wired.com, and I'm going to need to review it to take notes and digest things.

Tabletop

The board game area was another highlight of mine. I only played two new board games this year: Robo Rally and Dominion, but I enjoyed both of them quite a lot. I plan to write up some board game reviews in the near future, and I'll probably try to post them at The Secret Lair.

MC Frontalot

I got a picture of me and MC Frontalot. Eeeee!

Meeting Mike and Jerry

While walking down a random hallway, a couple friends and I ran into Mike Krahulik, the Penny-Arcade artist. The guy who actually draws the cartoons that led to the convention we know as PAX. Despite being flanked by two armed guards, he was very gracious and very willing to sign our convention passes with his pseudonym, Gabriel. About an hour later, while painting a plastic figurine near the tabletop and D&D area, my friend bumped into Jerry Holkins, the other half of the dynamic duo - Jerry does the bulk of the dialog writing for the comic. He texted me and since we were nearby in the tabletop game area, we wandered over and obtained the second autograph. Both Mike and Jerry were amazingly down-to-earth. Nice guys.

There is more, but it will need to wait. Life intervenes.

Why I love PAX

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:17:00 -0600

Over the years, there have been many nouns with which I have identified. But right now, there are exactly two that describe and identify the core of my self-image, and neither should come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. The first is father. The second is geek.

I love belonging to the widespread online community that congregates on discussion boards and blogs to ruminate over the latest happenings in Fringe or Doctor Who, debate the merits and shortcomings of the New 52, exchange Starcraft 2 strategies, speculate on whether 5th Edition D&D will suck, or just look at stills from Borderlands 2 and share a collective "eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

PAX is where I can go to be amongst those people. I can stand and enjoy MC Frontalot surrounded by ten thousand other nerds. I can sit and play a game of Dungeons and Dragons with a group of strangers who aren't completely lacking in social skills and who don't have terrible BO. I can sit at a panel and chat with developers about the direction of my favorite game franchises. It's a place where people can let loose and be juvenile and nerdy and not worry about being judged. Last year, I saw a group of ninjas "sneaking" down a crowded hallway, hugging the wall.

This weekend, I go to be with my people.

You can see some pictures I took at last year's PAX East here.

Pax East Anticipation, Part 3: Saturday night concerts

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:07:00 -0600

As the final part in my series of articles geeking out about the impending convention in Boston next week, I thought I'd talk about the big concerts on Saturday night, for which I'm very excited.

Video Game Orchestra

These guys are very good. Last year, this Asian chick was rocking out on a violin to the Final Fantasy theme, and the crowd was going crazy. Not the highlight of the evening, but still extremely entertaining.

Paul and Storm

I've only ever seen Paul and Storm as openers for Jonathan Coulton, but I've seen them twice now already and they're very entertaining. In a similar way to The Bobs, they're as much stand-up comics as they are musicians. And their "X is my Y cover band" joke has some serious legs. Join me on Google Plus if you don't know what I mean. The joke is ubiquituous.

Jonathan Coulton

Coulton is probably why most people are headed to the concert. Amongst the geek crowd, Re: Your Brains and Code Monkey are practically anthems. But those songs aren't really my favorites. My favorite song of his may actually be Future Soon, about an awkward kid, picked on in school, who daydreams about the future when he'll build an orbital science lab from which he'll mastermind his conquest of the planet Earth. I also love I'm Your Moon, which is about Pluto and its demotion from planet status. Other favorites include Ikea, Mandelbrot Set, and Big Bad World One.

I don't yet have Coulton's latest album, but I have a feeling I'll buy it next week in Boston. Maybe I'll get it signed.

MC Frontalot

I can't say that I'm into all nerdcore music. MC Chris has one or two good songs, (most notably Fett's Vette) but I'm more of a Frontalot fan than I am a nerdcore fan.

I've never yet seen MC Frontalot in concert, although I've seen him close up at last year's PAXE, manning his own merch booth. Maybe I'll get a picture this year.

My favorite Frontalot songs are Braggadocio and Final Boss, which I hope he plays at the show. I'll Form The Head, about Voltron, is probably the best song from his newest album, although he probably won't sing that one since it's done on the album with a few other MCs. Ditto Captains of Industry, which he sings with MC Lars.

Pax East Anticipation, Part 2: Age-related panels

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:08:00 -0600

This week, I'll detail three more of the panels I'm looking forward to at this year's PAX. The first is on Friday at noon, and it's called Gamers With Jobs Presents: Gaming For Grown-ups.

Who said this was a young man's game? The gaming industry is getting older and so are its players. How have we changed as gamers as we become parents, responsible employees, business owners and (horror) adults? Do we spend more to play less? Do we wax nostalgic for an era that never really existed? Join us as we delve into what gaming means to us in our 30s, 40s and (gasp) 50s as we stumble ever closer to the grim reaper's dark embrace.

Ken Levine's on this panel. Should be interesting.

On Saturday night, there's a panel on the other side of the age scale, and it's called Raising the Next Generation of Geeks.

Should you let your toddler play Skyrim? What's the best way to introduce your child to RPGs? How do you handle it when your kid doesn't want to play a game because he thinks he'll lose? What do you say if your daughter says she likes "Twilight" more than "Buffy?" These questions and many more will be discussed by writers for GeekDad.com, GeekMom.com, and geek parents in the audience. Come share your stories and advice for how to ensure our kids grow up to be geeks like us! Don't have kids? Show up and find out what may be in store for you if you ever do!

My wife and I have been playing board games with our daughter for about a year now: Ravensburger Labyrinth, AnimalLogic, Castle Panic, Ticket to Ride, and even Small World. I keep my daughter well away from any video game with violence stronger than what you'd see in a Popcap game, but she has played Pixeljunk Monsters, Plants vs Zombies, Journey, and Super Mario Galaxy. Given that most of these are games I've played and enjoyed myself before I ever had kids, I think it says something.

We've also struggled with the issue of not wanting to play when my daughter has been afraid to lose. The spot-on nature of the panel summary makes me think I'd probably enjoy the discussion.

Lastly, a Sunday afternoon panel called How Young Is Too Young for Games?

HEY GAMER PARENTS: Are you excited to tabletop with you kids? Do you wonder if an iPad game is better than TV for your children? Come join the discussion/ranting as an all-star cast of leading Kid Games Developers, Wizards, and Mad Scientists discuss parenting issues and opportunities around gaming and the development of games specifically for kids.

Of all the panels, this is the one in which I'm most interested. My own daughter has largely lost interest in TV and movies and instead wants to play on the iPad all the time, so I'm totally down with the subject matter.

The Walking Dead

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:13:00 -0600

I've been playing TV show catch-up, and I just finished watching episode 10 of The Walking Dead. And as I sit here thinking over the episode, I'm realizing a few things.

It should go without saying at this point that if you're not current in the show, there will be spoilers here.

Generally, I'm not at all a fan of episode of any show that have main characters at odds and at each others' throats. And yet I really enjoyed this episode, largely because the writing is so good and the characters are showing their depth. I'm speaking specifically of Rick and Shane and their relationship. It's complex, and I really like it despite the fact that I generally hate love triangles.

So what exactly is it about this episode? What did it tell us about these characters? We know these guys are friends from way back. And when Rick brings up a couple topics that are very difficult to talk about, Shane handles it well. He doesn't loosen his gun in its holster and consider killing his friend. But later, during a fistfight, Shane completely loses control and takes things to the next level. He'd have killed Rick given the chance. Rick, on the other hand, is amazingly good at keeping control of himself. He will kill, but he does it very deliberately rather than on the spur of the moment or in a blind rage as Shane would.

I love the fact that after engaging in mortal combat, the two friends pack back up into the same car, bind their prisoner, and head back home. Obviously, the issues that have come up in this episode won't be forgotten, but they didn't in and of themselves constitute an ending.

I've unfortunately already been spoiled about upcoming events, but I'm still looking forward to seeing things play out. One last thing I'd like to mention is that it seems strange that after having noticed people that were turned into walkers by mere scratches - one assumes from walkers' fingernails - the guys would thing nothing of using a knife to stab a walker and then using that same knife to cut their own hands to draw blood as bait. Wouldn't that stand a good chance of transmitting the same infection that a walker's fingernails could?

Pax East Anticipation, Part 1

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:23:00 -0600

It's three weeks until PAX East. Three weeks from today, I'll be there in Boston, surrounded by tens of thousands of other nerds.

I cannot wait.

Last year was my first year at PAX East, and I absolutely loved it. In the tradition of Bruce Willis's Die Hard movies, I've decided to call this one Pax East 2: PAX Easter. Last year I discovered Castle Panic, saw some amazing cosplay, and tried out the 3DS before it went on sale. I thought I'd take this time to share some of the awesome things I'm looking forward to this year.

Jordan Mecher is giving this year's keynote. After Wil Wheaton's keynote 2 years ago, it seems hard for anyone else to stand up, but Jane McGonigal did a great job last year. Jordan Mecher is the guy who created Prince of Persia and Karateka back in the eighties, by the way.

Friday night at 9pm, Jerry Holkins is showing what they've got for the third video game in the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness series, which I've been looking forward to for some time. I loved the first two.

Saturday Afternoon at 1:30, there's a panel in which Mike Mearls is going to be talking about 5th Edition D&D. I'm looking forward to that one too.

There's also the Omegathon, in which thirty-two randomly-selected attendees are chosen to compete in random games for big prizes. They start Friday night playing the old arcade X-Men game, and finish Sunday evening with something unannounced.

There's bound to be plenty more, and I certainly plan to spend a lot of time on the game floor over the weekend. My plan at this point is to write up one of these anticipation articles each week leading up to the event. We'll see how that goes - I've got a newborn, and time is hard to come by right now.

Book Releases

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:35:00 -0700

As I look forward into what's coming this year, I find it odd that movies, television, and even video games are not what I'm looking forward to most. The Avengers and Hobbit movies, the return of Homeland and Game of Thrones, and even Thief 4 and Dishonored don't excite me quite as much as the selection of books that should be coming out this year.

Blackout

Firstly, Mira Grant's Blackout, sequel to Feed and Deadline. The Newsflesh series is excellent, and I couldn't put down either of the books. This May, the third book in the series comes out. After the cliffhanger on which the second book ended, I'll be at the brick and mortar bookstore on release day to grab my copy.

A Memory of Light

It's been twenty-two years since Robert Jordan's The Eye of The World was released. As far as epic fantasy fiction goes, the Wheel of Time series is on the absolute top of the list. About three books in the series suffered from too many characters and needless uninteresting exposition, but overall the series is amongst the best fiction I've read. On 1/8/2013, the fourteenth and final volume in the series will be released. Given how Brandon Sanderson has rejuvenated the series, I'm very excited for the culmination of Jordan's masterpiece.

Cold Days

I'm always looking forward to another Dresden Files book. Changes was the best book I read in 2011, and Jim Butcher hasn't ramped back the intensity much since then. I don't know exactly when Cold Days will be released, or whether it will be this year, but when it's out, I'm gonna eat that book up like a famished beagle going after a hamburger that just fell off the grill.

Little Brother 2

I'm the first to admit that I've got Cory Doctorow on a pedestal. From his roots with the EFF to his BoingBoing posts on privacy, copyright, and DRM to his coining of the term whuffie, Doctorow is a visionary and a damn good author. He also touts the importance of technical proficiency, and lives what he preaches. He's no computer programmer, but Cory likely knows a good bit more than I do about subjects such as software encryption and jailbreaking phones.

Little Brother is one of my top ten favorite books of all time. I've read it twice and convinced nearly a dozen other people to buy copies of the book. It's a young adult novel, but that designation is no longer a deterrent to adult readers, as series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games have shown. Cory hasn't yet announced an official name or a release date for his sequel, but he's mentioned it more than once. It's coming.

Ella Lisette Howley

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:41:00 -0700

Ella Lisette Howley was born on February 13th, 2012 at 12:56pm. She's now home with her family, and Lia is thrilled to be a big sister.

She was born 8 pounds, 5 ounces - a big baby. Not quite as much hair as Lia had, but she's healthy and gaining weight quickly - she'll be out of the newborn diapers before we know it.

Stop ACTA / TPP

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:28:00 -0700

First it was SOPA/PIPA, and now it's ACTA/TPP. You can get more info here, but the bottom line is that ACTA is a treaty rather than legislation, and as such nobody needs to vote on it. It was negotiated in secret to reduce the likelihood of public opposition, it reinforces the shakiest portions of previous flawed legislation, and amongst other things it treats generic medications as illegal.

You can visit KillACTA.org or use the below form to email officials, either with your opinion or the pre-filled form letter. This thing is ridiculous. I don't know if we stand a chance to stop it, but I'll do what I can.

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country's officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it!

I urge you to vote no on ACTA and to communicate its severe problems to your colleagues. ACTA's vague language locks us into obsolete copyright and patent laws, preventing democracies from updating their laws to unlock new economic and social opportunities.It criminalizes harmless remixes by ordinary users if they achieve 'a commercial scale' (art 2.14.1) which many amateur videos do on sites like Youtube. And it criminalizes legitimate websites by making them responsible for user behavior ('aiding and abetting' art 2.14.4).Worse, it permanently bypasses the democratic process by empowering the 'ACTA Committee' to 'propose amendments to [ACTA]' without your approval. (art 6.4) In other words, it's impossible to know what you're voting for.The global movement against the US law SOPA showed that internet freedom is a crucial issue which belongs in the legislative process of each country. You should view ACTA as an attempt by a handful of companies to circumvent the democratic process, and you should vote against it.Thank you. Please reply if you have any questions.

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Life Without Google

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:26:00 -0700

I switched from MetaCrawler search to Google search back in the late nineties, and I've never looked back. Google is teh best!!1 Right?

I've felt the same slight bit of apprehension as the rest of you when thinking about just how much of my information Google controls, but I've generally just rationalized things: everybody uses GMail, YouTube, and Picasa, so I'm not really doing anything that everyone else isn't doing. Right?

I thought about things again recently when I was reading SOPA-related articles, including this one in which the MPAA refers to Google as an opponent who controls that platform, the platform being The Internet. Does Google really control the internet? Not really. Not technically. But to a lot of people and from many perspectives, they do.

Even the recent Google privacy policy announcement didn't really bother me. Not that much. Not until I read the following in Google's privacy policy FAQ:

What if I don�t want to use Google under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service?
If you continue to use Google services after March 1, you�ll be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. If you�d prefer to close your Google Account, you can follow the instructions in our help center. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can.

First off, I've got to say that it's awesome that Google is giving users the freedom to take their data and leave. By making it easy for users to export data and close an account, Google is going above and beyond what most companies in their place would do, and that - to me - is Google following their famous "don't be evil" rule.

That said, when I read that closing my Google account was the alternative to accepting the new privacy policy, I found it more than a bit intimidating. Close my Google account? Great Odin's raven! I can't!

Leaving Google

Let's look at the steps I'd have to take to close my account if Google ever decided that they were supporting SOPA, advocating casual murder, or something equally heinous. Firstly, I'd have detach my various @greghowley.com email accounts from GMail. That's actually the easy part. I've tried hard throughout the years to use the @greghowley.com email accounts rather than the @gmail.com account, so it would only be a matter of removing the email forwarders and finding a new mail client. Still, there are quite a few places that have the @gmail email address, and google's services require it. I'd have to keep hold of the account for a while, making sure to respond to anyone who emailed me there to let them know to use one of my other email addresses instead.

Next up, my Google Plus account. I really do like Google Plus, and I've got a number of friends there that abhor Facebook with an unholy vehemence. For serious. For the most part, I get better intelligent debate from the Google Plus crowd than I do on any other social network. But if push came to shove, I've still got Twitter and Facebook. It'd be tough, but I could let Google Plus go.

I have a lot of pictures on Google Plus and Picasa, but Google makes it relatively easy to export them, so I could back them up at home or on another of the web's ubiquitous cloud photo services. There's YouTube as well for many of my videos. I'm not sure if they let you download your YouTube videos - I'll need to check on that.

I use the Google cache a lot for bypassing my work firewall when I need to read programming articles on Wordpress, which is blocked as "social networking", but I suppose I could get by without it. There have to be other search engines with cached pages available, right?

There are a lot of other things permanently tied to my google account as well: my blogspot comments and my login to StackOverflow for starters. I can let those go too, but what a pain.

Oh no. Google Reader. How could I stop using Google Reader? Upon checking, I've got 98 subscriptions to rss feeds in Google Reader, and since 10/31/06 I've read 67,679 items. Granted, many of those "reads" may have been just clicks to bring up the text for a second, but I use Google Reader a lot. It's how I keep up with Boing Boing, Joystiq, and The Secret Lair. It's where I get a lot of my news. I guess I could find another rss reader, but I do really like Reader.

Let's see, what else? I don't use GChat that much, and I can retrieve my Google Docs and back those up elsewhere. Chrome is my favorite browser, and I'm pretty sure I can configure it to use another search engine - I'm fairly sure that I won't need an associated Google account there. Ooh, maps. Google maps would be hard to stop using. I could do it though. I know that there are other similar services, and I've heard some good things about the Waze and Skobbler apps.

Anthony and Cleopatra! My phone! Android phones are always signed into Google. The integration is seamless. I'm not sure if I'd be able to continue using an Android phone if I wanted to quit Google entirely. Maybe Cyanogenmod would allow me to better break with Google; I don't know. The whole Android thing is a deal-breaker. I really don't want to go over to iPhone; I'm too invested in the customizability of the Android platform.

So yeah, as it turns out I cannot leave Google. And that reliance on them makes me very uncomfortable. So I'm going to be making an effort to at least detach myself a bit. I'm going to try to stop using Google's search engine. This will deny them a large portion of the personal information they've been getting from me. They'll still have access to my email through gmail, but using another search provider can have other benefits as well.

The Search Bubble

By now, you've likely heard of the search bubble and how your search results can be effectively filtered by customizing them to what the search engine thinks are the most appropriate results for you. If you haven't heard about the phenomenon, do some reading. Watch the TED talk linked from the above search bubble page.

I've decided to try a non-Google search engine. I've changed the engine associated with my browser to DuckDuckGo and installed the DuckDuckGo Android app. The engine works well and doesn't hold onto my searches. Maybe I'm still addicted to Google, but at least this is a small step towards reducing my reliance.

Big Media, SOPA, and the Public domain

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:09:00 -0700

Intellectual Property. In today's world, it's a necessary designation. Without copyright law, people could invest huge amounts of time into a book, a software project, or a film only to have it redistributed for free or sold by those without the legal right to it. The premise makes total sense, and few would deny that copyright law should exist.

But the ideal world is not the real world, and in the real world copyright is broken. I've been saying it for years, but just recently there have been a few developments that have forced me to take a fresh look at things. I'm not arrogant enough to delude myself that more than a half dozen people will ever read this, and so I'll resign myself to the fact that this article is largely to codify my own thoughts. But in the interest of readability I'll try to keep this as concise as possible.

SOPA

I participated in the SOPA blackout last Wednesday more for solidarity than in expectation that anyone would take note of my site's removal. Due to the ad nauseum coverage of the topic in the blogosphere I won't say much about SOPA/PIPA. To me, the bigger story is Chris Dodd flaunting the MPAA's bribery of the Obama administration. Seriously, WTF. We need to get the money out of politics, or this will cease being a democracy and turn into a plutocracy.

Public Domain

The other thing I read that just chapped my ass is the news of a supreme court decision that public domain works can be copyrighted anew. I can understand the claim that the matter doesn't touch on the constitution - public domain isn't free speech - but that doesn't mean that this decision is right or that it makes any sense. I'm not a lawyer and don't have that great an understanding of how far-reaching this decision actually is. But if some corporation can come in and copyright Mozart or Mark Twain, I will be pissed.

The public domain is what allows great sites like Project Guterberg and Audiobooks For Free to exist. Jules Verne, HG Wells, Lewis Carroll, and Charles Dickens won't be upset that someone else is depriving their great-great-great-great grandsons of income. Heck - there are probably 314 descendants that would want to split the cash anyway.

Movies use the public domain all the time. Scrooged, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and every remake of Alice in Wonderland, War of the Worlds, or The Three Musketeers you've ever seen relies on the public domain. Ditto Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Peter Pan, and even The Wizard of Oz and its various spin-offs. Without the public domain, I'll guarantee you that classic movie monsters wouldn't have the popularity they do today. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even the original George Romero film Night of the Living Dead all fall under the public domain, and look at the wealth of vampire and zombie books and movies out there.

Why Have Copyright?

The reason copyright exists is to foster and encourage creative works. As this article on Ars Technica aptly explains, it seems to be doing just the opposite. The article makes so many good points and links to so many excellent sources that I cannot begin to enumerate them here. Look at the patent-squatters and the abandonware. The public domain is dying, and ironically, the only thing helping is the very piracy that big media is trying to squash.

Piracy

I'll spare you the countless articles I could link about the billions of dollars the MPAA says they're losing to movie piracy. Those books are as overcooked as the roast my family made for Christmas this year. It's been many years since I first heard someone point out that the college student who downloaded $12,000 of music from Napster wouldn't have actually spent that money on CDs if Napster wasn't available in 1999. It seems like a no-brainer, but this is the kind of math that the RIAA does to calculate their numbers, and then they double the figures just to be safe.

I've got a ton of respect for authors such as Cory Doctorow and Scott Sigler who make their complete catalogs of fiction available online for free. They feel that obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy. Know what? Despite making their works available freely online, both authors regularly appear on the New York Times bestseller lists.

Lots of people today get their media through illicit filesharing. This is at least in part because the distribution channels are effed up. Digital distribution of video games is well-covered by services such as Steam, GameFly, Direct2Drive, and the new EA Origin service. If you're pirating games, then I've got no sympathy for you. Even movies I understand, even if I don't condone the practice. The theater-going experience isn't what it once was. Home theaters have improved quite a lot, and people can be obnoxious with cell phones during public movie screenings.

Television is a different matter. There once was a time when you'd turn on your TV, sans cable, and watch whatever was on. Boy have things gotten more complex.

Let's say that there's a guy - for purposes of illustration we'll call him Schmeg - and he likes four TV shows: Dexter, Game of Thrones, Fringe, and The Walking Dead. These are on four different networks, and three of them aren't available over-the-air. If Schmeg wants to watch his four shows, he's looking at over $100 per month. Just to watch four TV shows. It makes no sense, and it's hard to imagine anyone on a realistic income making such a lopsided investment. I'm realizing now that I'm actually rehashing an argument I've already posted, and so I'll stop here.

You need to shut up now, Greg

Yeah, I know, I know. This rant has carried on a bit too long and become a bit too far-ranging. I'm probably also preaching to the choir if I predict the few who might actually read this.

Homeland Nearly Gave Me A Coronary

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:38:00 -0700

I'm writing to tell you about one of my favorite TV shows this year. Ready for a surprise? It's not science fiction. I know, right? You didn't think I watched any TV shows that weren't Fringe, The 4400, Farscape, Game of Thrones, Terra Nova, Falling Skies, or The Walking Dead. Okay... I do watch Dexter.

Anyway, this show is called Homeland, and the closest other show I've got to compare it to is 24. The thing is, Homeland doesn't have a resident badass. Instead, it's got a lot of investigation and intrigue, and damn good characters.

The series follows Carrie Mathison, a CIA operations officer who, after conducting an unauthorized operation in Iraq, is put on probation and reassigned to the CIA's counterterrorism center in Langley, Virginia. While she was conducting the operation in Iraq, Carrie was warned by an asset that an American prisoner of war had been turned by Al-Qaeda. Carrie's job is complicated when her boss, Director of the Counterterrorism Center David Estes, calls Carrie and her colleagues in for an emergency briefing. It is then that Carrie learns that Nicholas Brody, a U.S. Marine Sergeant who had been reported as missing in action since 2003, has been rescued during a Delta Force raid on a compound belonging to terrorist Abu Nazir. Carrie comes to believe that Brody is the American prisoner of war that her asset in Iraq was talking about. However, the federal government and her superiors at the CIA consider Nicholas Brody a war hero. Realizing it would be next to impossible to convince her boss, David Estes, to place Brody under surveillance, Carrie approaches the only other person she can trust, Saul Berenson. The two must now work together to investigate Brody and prevent another terrorist attack on American soil.

Saul Berenson is played by Mandy Patinkin, and Carrie Mathison is played by Claire Danes. I remember Clare Danes from Terminator 3 and Mandy Patinkin from The Princess Bride, but haven't watched the two of them in action much other than that. I'll tell you - they're amazing. Morena Baccarin is also a major role, which should delight fans of Firefly and the V remake. Plus, it's on Showtime, which means that you get to see her boobs. This did not upset me.

Homeland, like Dexter, has some downright amazing writing. It's also got some fantastic acting. Everyone - even the kids - pull off their roles brilliantly, and you absolutely believe it.

When we watched the twelth and final episode of the first season, my heart was literally racing. I swear - I put my hand on my chest and my heart rate was notably increased. I can't think of any TV show I've ever watched that's done that. I cannot wait for season two, and I may have to purchase the DVD set once it's released.

The Movies of 2012: Tripletake

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:59:00 -0700

I've taken a look at the upcoming movies of 2012 not once, but twice now. But somehow, there are still movies I've overlooked. I've discovered a few more that look intriguing, so I figured I'd share here.

As an aside, I'm now realizing that I need to read The Hunger Games before March 23rd or else my wife is likely to go to the movies without me. They'll almost certainly screw up the film version, and I prefer not to have the surprises in what's likely a great book spoiled for me by an inferior film.

The first movie I want to talk about is Chronicle. It's a "found footage" movie, like The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, but rather than stalker witches or urban monsters, this one's about three teenaged friends getting super powers. One gets telekinesis, one gets flight, and one becomes invulnerable. Sounds potentially good. There's a trailer here for the movie, due out February 3rd.

Sometimes the premise of a movie is so over-the-top ridiculous that you've got to love it. Take for example, moon Nazis. That's the premise of Iron Sky, in which groups of Nazis secretly fled to the moon at the end of World War 2. In 2018, having built up their fleet, they return in force.

Nazis always make good villains, and if this is done well the movie could be some good ridiculous fun in April. Iron Sky Trailer

Lockout is a film that could be hit or miss. There's a lot of cliche here, and potential for cheese. Government agent convicted of a crime he didn't commit blah blah blah rescue the president's daughter from a prison in outer space. I'll read the reviews before I buy my tickets on April 20th. Lock-Out Trailer

I'm interested in Looper, primarily because it's a time travel movie that seems like it might have more brains than TimeCop. (ohh, TimeCop, you're such a terrible movie)

The synopsis doesn't include much info, but from what I gather the main character works for a mob, and his job is to kill people who come from the future. Probably to prevent changes to the timeline. But one time, he goes to kill a time traveler and recognises an older version of himself. And he hesitates, and lets himself live.

There are a lot of places this could go. It could be interesting, or might stink. All depends on the writing. I'm hopeful. See Looper on September 28th. Looper Trailer

I heard about Gravity quite a while ago, when there were two movies vying for the same name. The one in which I'd been more interested has been renamed G, which is a horrible name. It's painfully difficult to search for any title that's only a single letter. There's no word about the movie G, in which gravity begins to go away, but the movie that won the name Gravity is slated for November 21st.

In Gravity, two astronauts are stranded on a space station after a meteor impact and fight to survive. The premise is so generic that the movie will completely be made or wrecked based on the writing and acting. Gravity Trailer

Lastly, a movie that I can't find much info on. It sounds interesting though. Cloud Atlas will star Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant. I'm hoping that the awesomeness of Tom Hanks and Hugo Weaving can make up for the fact that Hugh Grant is in there. It's directed by the Wachowskis, and apparently interweaves six stories and has a sci-fi futuristic edge, jumping from the 1850s to the dystopian future. Characters apparently switch roles and even gender. I'm so confused about this one that I don't know what to say. But it's supposed to come out in 2012, so hopefully we get more info soon.

Too Many Books

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:24:00 -0700

I have a problem. Too many books and not enough time. This is a problem I've had for many years, as I can look back at a post that I made on this blog in 2008 wherein I go over the many books on my to-read shelf. The sad thing is that eight of the novels that were on my to-read shelf back in 2008 are still there. I've got somewhere in the vicinity of 25 books on my to-read shelf, and I'm thinking that it's time to get rid of the ones that I'll likely never get around to reading.

Collecting Dust

The books that remain from back in 2008 are Aasimov's Foundation Trilogy, The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks, Roald Dahl Omnibus, Alien Earth by Greg Burke, The Elder Gods by David Eddings, Medalon by Jennifer Fallon, Robert Jordan's full-length novelization of his short story New Spring, and Wonder Woman: Mythos. Foundation has been near the top of the stack for a while, but there always seems to be something else I'd rather read. The rest of them in this stack are books that I'd still like to get to at some point.

Unshelved

A few of the books I just need to give up and admit that I'll never get around to. I bought Neal Pollack's Alternadad back when my daughter was less than a year old and being a dad was still a novelty. In retrospect, buying that book was something of an impulse decision - it's not the kind of book I generally enjoy. I started reading Dean Koontz's The Face at least twice, and couldn't get into it. I'll probably get rid of that one too. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a book I picked up primarily because of the game by the same name - I figured that if the book was good enough to have a game based on it, it might just be worth reading. I'm not sure I'll ever find out one way or another, because I have too many books. Finally, that Frankie Manning Bio. This one I'll keep, but I'm not sure I'll ever read it. Frankie was an amazing person, but biographies are hard for me. I'd like to think that I'll read it some day.

Backburnered

I've already mentioned more than once on this blog how I quit reading George R R Martin's A Dance with Dragons about halfway in due to abject boredom. I've also reshelved a collection of stories by Lester Del Rey after reading about 60% of them. They were good stories, but I'm going to have to come back to them later. I did the same thing with the four-story collection Mean Streets. I read the first story (A Dresden Files tale) and I might come back and read the three others at a future date. Maybe.

Biblia Prima

Yes, I just totally made up that pseudo-Latin phrase - an indulgence at which I'll make no attempts at an excuse.

The foremost of the books that I'd like to get to after I finish reading Feed is Stephen King's new novel 11/22/63. I know very little about it - I know that it's about someone travelling back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination - but I know that Stephen King is a good author, I know that my father-in-law read it and recommends it, and I know that it's Goodreads's Best Science Fiction book of 2011, beating out Ready, Player One by a narrow margin.

Side Jobs is a Dresden Files story. Actually, a group of short stories. And I eat those up. This book is the greasy batch of french fries that I'm saving for myself after I read a few of the celery sticks on my to-read shelf. I plan to read through it very quickly and enjoy it quite a lot.

A friend recommended Cordelia's Honor, so although I know close to nothing about the book, I got a copy and I plan to read it. If I like it as much as some people seem to suspect I might, I'm led to believe that there are a number of other books in the series. This won't help my overweight to-read shelf much, and so I've put this one aside for now.

I didn't enjoy the first book in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series nearly as much as I've enjoyed his Dresden Files novels, and so I didn't rush on to Academ's Fury, but I do plan to read it. The Dresden Files novels got far better as the series progressed, and I hope that the Codex Alera series does likewise.

I picked up Alan Dean Foster's Cachalot many years ago when I lived in the Colt Building in Hartford. Someone had left it out in the communal hallway, on top of what I think were mailboxes. The books were free for anyone who was interested, so I'd grabbed a few. It seems like an interesting science fiction tale, and I hope to read it once my to-read shelf has slimmed down a bit.

Lastly, the sequel to the book I'm currently reading: Deadline. It's a zombie story about news media. My current impression puts it somewhere between World War Z and V for Vendetta. I'd say that's a good place to be. Checking Mira Grant's website, the NewsFlesh series' numbering system seems to be bizarre (2, 3, 4, 4, 6) but the three chapters I've read so far of the first book are very good, and I may eventually read all of them. If I can figure the order in which they belong.

The Future

There are a lot of other books I want to read - books that I'm barely restraining myself from purchasing. Yes, I do have a problem. I really want to read Cory Doctorow's story Makers. I want to pick up that Patrick Rothfuss story Wise Man's Fear that everyone's talking about. I understand that book two in that series wasn't nearly as good as the first. I want to pick up Room by Emma Donohgue and Embassytown by China Mi�ville. I read about both recently on other blogs and they sound great. I also found out about Lev Grossman's book Magicians because it might be turned into a TV show, and then following that line of research I found out about Paranormals by Christopher Andrews. While reading about Feed, I found out about Dead of Night: A Zombie Novel by Jonathan Maberry. I want to read them all. At some point, I'd also like to go through The Hunger Games, which Linda has on her iPad. I understand that those books are also hard to put down.