Dead Laptop Sketch

I had my laptop boot up three times saying the time/date wasn't set. The third time I ran the little diagnostic program, which instantly said it couldn't find the hard drive. Rest of the diagnostic went fine. I figured the hard drive thing was a fluke, it found the hard drive before I ran the diagnostic right? Rebooted and that was it. It never found the hard drive either.

I heard/saw/read a joke thing once, maybe one of those lists of stupid things IT people have had to deal with. It involved a guy trying to hold what ever piece of equipment the computer couldn't find up to the monitor so the computer could see it.

I took the laptop down to Jane's Computers. He says the hard drive is fine, but the computer won't recognize any hard drive connected to it. It the connection or the motherboard. The conversation went KINDA like this:

"The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking, Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model."

He didn't charge me for taking a look at it, even though I tried to offer him something just for his time. So Thumbs up to: Jane's Computers at 1725 S. Rainbow Blvd. right at Oakly Blvd. Las Vegas, NV 89146. Phone (702) 597-0600. Apparently no website though.

I went to Fry's and got a USB enclosure. Took the hard drive out of the laptop and stuck it in that. Then I thought, wait, I know the laptop is set up to try and boot from USB, I could just plug it in and boot and still a working laptop right? Nope. It starts to load windows and reboots. Googling around the Internets I see that lots of people are trying to install and boot Vista from a USB drive and it isn't easy. I was hoping that since it is already installed, which appears to be the difficult part, that I could get it to work but apparently not.

I had planned on maybe getting a new laptop in a few months. I just wanted to wait long enough for all the new stuff coming out of CES was out and slightly lower in price. I want both Windows 7 and Office 2010 on it already, no upgrading. I want small, because I have big screens on my desks that I can plug it into and small is better to carry around when I'm not at my desk. But I do kinda want something with a graphic card so I can play games when I'm out somewhere away from my desktop computer. My current laptop played WoW initially, but sometime between installs it got upset with it. Now it plays (well, before it died) but it wouldn't render the world correctly. Not that I have really even played WoW since leaving Perth, but the new expansion is coming out and I'll at least check that out.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this surprisingly video trailer for, "Office 2010: The Movie!"

...you know... this means I am going to have to install iTunes again doesn't it? $#!+!!!

An Apple a Day Won't Keep the FCC Away

I was going to write a post summarizing the Apple iPhone "shenanigans" and "goings on," but then I found this lovely post on Rickman's Posterous that does a great job of collecting all the stories and links.

I do miss my iPhone. But I had to sell off my contract to Richard when I left Australia. That didn't stop Telstra from sending me a $1000+ bill for breaking my contract. Fortunately, my friend Lisa's boyfriend works for Telstra and had brokered the deal for me. A quick email to him and he straightened it out.

At the moment I am just over joyed to be waiting. New 3Gs phone is out and I'm not stuck with the old one. All this flak over the Apple Application Store being sorted out. And hey, maybe I won't be restricted to AT&T in the near future. Why did I choose the iPhone in the first place you might be asking yourself if you were even still reading this post at this point? For all the cool aps? The slick, easy to use interface? Because I'm an Apple fanboy? No, because a few years ago I made the mistake of choosing iTunes as my media player for all the audiobooks and few TV shows I buy. Now DRM won't let me choose a new application.

Before I go, one of the links about the story is a must read: Google Pulls Apple from Search Results.

Google's official explanation for removing Apple from its search results came from Vice-President in charge of search, Marissa Mayer, "Those search results duplicate a lot of the functionality of other sites. For example, people can find cell phones on many other sites. We just think this makes it easier for our users."

P.S. don't be an idiot and try to google "apple.com" to see if it works or not, its a humor piece and isn't true. However, you can go over to his mailbag page and read some emails and comments from people who did think it was real.

On-Demand Entertainment

I’ve made the jokes in the past about the year 2000 coming and going without flying cars, jetpacks, and the silver jumpsuits. Please don’t send me any links for flying cars, jetpacks and silver jumpsuits; because yes, I know there are various websites where there are prototypes. Granted, almost 2010 and still not actually available in Wal-mart, but that crap really isn’t what I’ve been waiting for.

My prediction for the future has always been about on-demand TV. I imagined that new episodes would still come out as normal, but you could watch them whenever you want. I imagined it would be a subscription service of some sort that is also bolstered by normal commercials, except that the company would have some demographic information about you so that the commercials you saw would be suited to you. Maybe there would be subscription levels that eliminated the commercials. I dreamed up the basic idea as a kid back in the mid-80’s when I got annoyed that every Saturday I would see episodes of “Thundar the Barbarian” and “Battle of the Planets” that I had already seen even though I knew there were episodes that I hadn’t seen.

One of the big, unforeseen problems that appeared to have delayed my prediction coming true, was the rise of DVD sales. It is still coming true, it’s happening slower than I thought; because companies have to be weaned off DVD sales before it will really take off. For example if you go to Hulu.com, a legal streaming website from Fox, NBC, and other studios, you will only see full seasons of older and not-as-popular shows. Anything they think they can still make money on by selling on DVD, they will only show a few recent episodes of that expire as new episodes come out. It is still good if you want to watch current episodes online or if you miss an episode, just don’t expect to be able to watch The Office from season 1 episode 1 to current. The office DVD boxed sets are still making them money.

I think there is some turbulence in the DVD world though; the rental market especially seems to be bouncing around. When I left the country five years ago, it seemed like you couldn’t find a street corner without a Starbucks and a Blockbuster video store. Yeah, Starbucks is hurting, but I can still stop for a Frappuccino (tm) no matter which direction I am heading when leaving my house, and yet I only know of one Blockbuster around here that is still open. Everybody I know has a Netflix account now. Granted, the type of people I am likely to hang around is also more likely to adapt to this new paradigm (Wow! I’ve always wanted to legitimately use “paradigm” in a sentence.) I do wonder though, what this is doing to the DVD sales.

Speaking of Netflix, a subscription based streaming site, has also started to do streaming. I am a bit annoyed that a lot of the stuff that I was looking forward to watching right away isn’t available for streaming yet; I just signed up for their 2-week, free trial today. But what if you don’t want to watch TV on your computer? You just decided that your child didn’t really need that kidney transplant after all, and instead you bought that spiffy, giant, LCD HD-TV! There are already tons of adapters that allow you to connect your computer to your TV. Netflix goes on and on about that on their site. It’s just a step away from having your cable box do all that instead of your computer.

I’m telling you, it is going to be the wave of the future. The only thing I am worried about is the corporate greed. Now, I’m not one for labeling big corporations evil for wanting to make a profit, but just like the bloated music industry, the TV and Movie industry isn’t going to want to be slimmed down or miss one possible penny. I recently went to iTunes to buy True Blood season 1. They waited until the season was over to make it available, so you couldn’t buy a season pass and watch it as it aired. Now that it is available they also are charging $2.99 an episode for standard definition, which is usually the price for the high definition (HD) version. Sorry, not enough money left on my gift certificate I had to pass. I just borrowed the DVDs from a friend. And quite frankly, the amount of money they are charging for digital shows is about the same as what they charge for the boxed DVD sets. The same price even though they don’t have to press the DVDs, box them up, ship them to the stores, and have the retailer mark it up. The point of all the above is that I am worried that we are going to wind up paying more to just watch normal TV.

I’ve tossed around some thought to how this will fall out. Because of how business works, I see the broadcast companies being the service providers you subscribe to. The production companies, the people that actually make the shows you watch, would be the content providers. I imagine the quality of the shows will be much better because you won’t be watching just any old crap that is on. You’ll always have your line-up of favorite shows regardless of when they first aired. I do wonder how that will affect the line-up of shows; will we still have a bunch of sappy, barely funny sitcoms that keep coming back season after season, while critically acclaimed and well written shows get canned? I also thought that maybe they wouldn’t release new episodes like they do now, each episode airing at a fixed time each week. But instead maybe they would just dump a bunch of shows online at once each week. The problem with that is I can see shows starting to missing deadlines like other industries.

I’m sure there will also be some nightmare distribution thing that will go all wrong and screw things up and everybody will complain. But, there ya go. That is what I’m waiting for.

Audible vs. iTunes... FIGHT!

I finally decided on what books to get from Audible.com, I got Book 10 and 11 of The Dresden Files even though they don't have books 1-9 available yet. I actually went out and bought the first book, "Storm Front" in paperback, decided I liked the series and figured I would get up to book 10 eventually. I am also expecting them to catch up on the rest of the series pretty soon. I know that books 1-4 were already recorded once on Audio for another company. I wrote Audible and Jim Butcher, the author, if they had any information about the earlier books becoming available on Audible.com but so far I've gotten no response.

I also found out that the soon to be stupidly renamed, SciFi channel, did a TV series based on the books that lasted 12 episodes before it was canceled. It is available free and legally on Hulu.com, but I'll wait till I'm caught up with the books to watch it.

I also finally got season 2 of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" from iTunes. At the same time I realized that I never downloaded the last episode of season 1, titled "What He Beheld." Thinking back I remember that was the first time our internet connection in the house in Perth got shaped down to modem speed. I had started the download, left the house and when I got back it said it still had an estimated time of 40some hours. I didn't log back into the iTunes store for a few months and forgot about it.

I got into a multi-email exchange with iTunes customer service trying to get them to let me download it. Note that I don't say, "re-download" because it had never been fully and successfully downloaded in the first place. It is ridiculous to me that I have spent several hundred dollars on the iTunes store last year and yet I have to go through this crap to download an episode that I have clearly already paid for.

They are out nothing but a fraction of a fraction of cent in bandwidth to let me re-download something. Seems like a very fair exchange to keep a loyal customer. I swear sometimes Apple is going out of its way to piss off their customers.

The first email was a macro'ed:

Your request for a refund for "What He Beheld" was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.

To which I responded

Your response was carefully considered; however, it did not match my request.

I do not want or nor did I ask for a refund. I want the episode that I have clearly paid for but never got. It was never completely successfully downloaded but instead was interrupted due to a bad internet connection. It should have been available the next time I checked for available downloads, but it never came up again and I don't have it.

Eventually, after being scolded for the fact that this purchase was from just over a year ago, they allowed me to re-download it.

But this whole incident just highlights why I stopped buying audiobooks from iTunes. When I buy them straight from Audible.com, I am safe in the knowledge that if anything were to happen to my iTunes library, as it does every 6th update or so, I can re-download all purchases from the Audible website at any time.

I just spend the last few days rebuilding my iTunes library from when I reformatted my laptop last month. I now have the library pointed to my F: drive which is what my external drive maps too when plugged in. I duplicated the library on both my external drives so as long as either is plugged in as the F: drive it will work. And later when I get my desktops re-setup, I can set them up the same way so they will work as long as I have either of the external drive plugged in as the F: drive.

So tell me about these here comic books...

I have been involved in a lot of conversations about the comic book industry in the days leading up to the Watchmen Movie and at one point I always shoot off about how the industry is due for another very large change.

Before I start let me say two things:

1. I no longer have the source for this, I think I may have gotten a lot of what I am basing this on from a pod-cast interview and not something I read which is why I can't find it.

2. If you think comic books are about nothing but people in spandex shooting 'beams' at each other (pew pew), I'll bet you money I can find you a comic that isn't about super heroes that you will read and then say to me, "Wow, that was good! What else can you recommend?"

The first big change in this chain was when comic book publishers decided to keep the price of comic books low. They were for kids and 25-35 cents was what kids could afford. Because of this the newsstands started to stock fewer titles. They have only so much shelf space and a regular magazine that sells for more, means more profit for them.

This caused the appearance of comic book specialty stores. In some ways this was good for the industry because it allowed the independents to come in, but it also meant that the sales numbers for comics dropped to a fraction of what they had been doing. In order to maintain profits they had to raise prices to the few bucks each issue costs today.

But now a lot of people think they are too expensive and look for ways to save money. Enter mail-order places where you can order your comic books online, pay much less, and have them mailed to you. Adding to this is the number of people who have stopped buying individual issues and have ‘gone to the trade’ as they call it. Meaning, they are buying the trade paperbacks (aka graphic novels) which reprint a run of the issues usually encapsulating one story arc from 6-8 issues. They can be bought in the comic store but also in major bookstores and even from those mail-order places for much cheaper.

This is where we are at now. The problem I foresee is that comic book stores operate on a very tight budget and they are always at risk of going out of business. Let me also throw in here that the collectable market is dead. If you are saving those old comics thinking they will make you rich one day you are sadly mistaken. If, like me, you are just bagging, boarding and collecting them because you can’t stop then you are just sad. Actually, I am going to start ‘going to the trade’ myself. Seriously, I’m tired of lugging those big white boxes across the world.

The point of the collectable market being dead is to point out that the comic book stores aren’t making a lot of money buying and selling back issues.

What I see happening in the future is comic book stores going away, more trade paperbacks and such in bookstores. Currently the Manga books from Japan are doing incredible in bookstores and the U.S. comic publishers are going to find the formula to match that. I think this will herald a giant change in how books are produced, written, serialized, advertised, etc. I think that independent publishers are going to be hit very hard by this and won’t come back into serious play for awhile. I do however, think that after all the turmoil, say 10 years from now, that things will be better than they are now.

Comic book publishers are also trying things with publishing online, but I don't think that is going over to well. People like to hold something in their hands and read it. Snuggle up in bed with a book. But, if we can get some advances in electronic paper anytime soon, that may change. We will also need some better way of handling electronic purchases - I bought the damn thing, it's mine, I should be able to control how I store it and be able to get at it later. I'M LOOKING AT YOU ITUNES!

The wild card in this mix is the movies. Lots of movies based on comics, doing well, is keeping the publisher's (more specifically the major corporations who own the publishers) profits up.

But that’s just my opinion and I reserve the right to change it as new evidence is presented and time goes by.

This is what I'm reduced to

Alright a real quick post. Yeah, they are just coming fast and furious while I sit here jobless. I'm burning so much creative energy I have to wear different colored socks just to get myself grounded.*

I just caught up to current with The Big Bang Theory tv show. Yes Cameron, I already caught up with Dollhouse. I just love Amy Acker as Dr. Claire Saunders. She was cute on Angel, but there is something about her on Dollhouse with the scars on her face that just fascinates me. I'm hoping this steams from a natural male-protector role and not something creepy. I already have enough interesting problems for other people to deal with.

I am so glad that we have Joss Whedon back doing TV. Now if we could just get another Aaron Sorkin show going I could rest easy.

No Cameron, I haven't watched anymore of the second season of Terminator. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I told you before, I'm going to get the whole season from iTunes.

Anyway, about Cameron. He interrupts like that all the time. What I wanted to post about was the lyrics to the theme song for The Bing Bang Theory written and performed by The Bare Naked Ladies. It goes like this:

The Bing Bang Theory Theme Song - Bare Naked Ladies

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

I have one small problem with it. The line in the background "we built the pyramids" right after "We built a wall" just doesn't work. First of all it is redundant. Secondly, it throws the rhythm off right in the middle of a very fast rhythmic part of the song. Next time you are watching the show, sing along and try replacing that line with "Not to mention pyramids." I think you'll find it works much better.

*I was joking about the socks. I only own two types of socks: black dress socks and short, white, athletic socks. Wearing one of each would do the opposite of grounding me. If you witness me wearing such, you should alert the medical authorities immediately as I have most likely gone off my medication. Okay! Okay! MedicationS - plural.

Waiting for Pancakes

I'm sitting here, staring at the progress bar in iTunes, waiting for version 2.0.2 of the iPhone software to finish downloading and installing so I can leave to go get my weekly pancake fix.

Note to Apple, "more information" <> "step by step install instructions". When I click a link that says "more information" I kinda expect something that tells me what is in the patch.

Anyway, I realized I hadn't posted that the official web site for my current game, Interzone Futebol, went live last week. Though, I should mention that since we are launching in Brazil the whole site is in Portuguese. http://www.interzonefutebol.com

Share and enjoy.

Paying for Digital Download of TV Shows, Part 2

I just don’t understand why I never have time to write. Its like all I do is wake up, go to work, come home and eat, watch Daily Show, Colbert Report, Tonight Show, and Conan and its time to go to bed.

So starting up where I left off last. I have since bought 3 episodes of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." That does confirm that you can indeed buy shows from the American iTunes store even if you are coming from a non-U.S. IP address. All they care about is a U.S. billing address on the credit card.

As far as the show goes, believe it or not I’m watching them on my iPod screen. I used to laugh at the thought of watching videos on a little iPod screen. On one of my recent plane trips the guys next to me asked me how the video was on the iPod screen and I told him I hadn’t watched any. He said that somebody had told them that it was much better than you would expect. So long story even longer, I tried it and it is so watch-able!

I was lying in bed watching it and it occurred to me that from the distance I was holding it up it was actually be the same size as a decent sized television across the room. I tried to take a picture to illustrate this, but it didn’t work out due to lighting issues. In the old days I would have started dragging lights around, but I figured you guys would get the concept. To be honest, it was about halfway through dragging the lights around and taking some test shots that didn’t work out too well I figured you guys would get the concept.

I was explaining it to my friend Brad at work, showing him how good the video looked. He held it up to get the 'tv across the room effect' and then took it one step further. He held it even closer and "BAM! You got yourself a 40 inch plasma baby!"

Anyway, it’s so cool to have a portable television. I’m waiting for Jeremy to arrange to get his mattress delivered at the Ikea and am I bored watching some 5 year old bang his head repeatedly into the soda machine? Nope, I watching Summer Glau kick some ass! Granted the kid was kind of entertaining for a few minutes.

Oh and that reminds me… Cameron, not only is issue #12 of "Buffy: Season 8" out, but so is the first issue of the new "Serenity: Better Days" mini-series.

iTunes Artwork LIES!

I was going to write up part 2 of "Paying for Digital Download of TV Shows" but although I did succeed in buying and downloading the second episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles" (which the internet seems to have settled on the acronym "Terminator:TSCC" which I will adopt) with my U.S. iTunes account, I haven't actually watched it yet. I just checked that it played, which it did although appeared to be stuttering slightly. That may just because my machine needs a reboot after running and updating the giant memory hogging ComicBase comic book data base. Its also my older, less powerful machine as my newer one isn't working after the move to Perth. I looks like its the motherboard.

Anyway I copied the episode over to my new iPod and it appeared to run on that fine. Better than fine actually, it looks really good on the tiny iPod screen. Much much better than I expected.

Now as to why I haven't watched it yet is because all that messing with iTunes has got me looking into why iTunes can't import the album artwork for the CDs I've imported. I can find them on Gracenote (aka CDDB) , which is where iTunes gets its track and art information. But even if I copy the album and artist information over exactly, iTunes still complains it can't find the album artwork.

For example I have The Eagles - Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2 which I had entered originally entered as "Eagles Greatest Hits, Volume 2" -note the comma. I changed it to match Gracenote and still iTunes fails. I don't have a lot of CD's imported, maybe 35ish if you count each CD for some compilations and all the CDs included in the Monty Python Instant Record Collection CD version (which has different sketches than the original vinyl records). It wouldn't take too long import the artwork in manually for the 25ish it pretends it can't find artwork for. But its driving me nuts trying to figure out iTunes is lying to me and not working automatically.

Also Foxtel is up and working and The Daily Show and the rest of my shows are one. I still don't believe its actually working... in both rooms. The guy had to run new outlets for each AND he installed a phone line in my computer room which had an phone extension running across the hall from the bedroom. Now the only thing that I need to cover with one of those rubber "cord you are running across the hallway" protectors is the power extension cable because there is no outlet on the wall where I have the TV entertainment center set-up in the living room. The point being he did it all, wham bamm, done and he was out of here in no time. Installation in the apartment in Brisbane took all day!

Paying for Digital Download of TV Shows, Part 1

I am looking at a few TV shows online that I want to watch such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Burn Notice, Dirty Sexy Money and season 2 of Heroes and Dexter. These are currently running or have just completed their run in the states but are only few episodes into their run here in Australia. One of my many deeply seeded problems is that once I’ve missed an episode, which I have on all the above, I won’t watch any more till I can fill in that hole. The current over arcing problem I have having which is the genesis of this long winded rant is that there are quite a number of episodes of these shows available as digital downloads on Amazon and the iTunes store for $1.99 USD.

One problem I have with buying the digital downloads is that once I buy something I am an anal retentive pack rat that must collect and horde all my treasures. With digital downloads I don’t have anything physical to clasp my frequently washed yet still grubby little hands onto. I need something to put on a shelf and display for all to see and admire.

“Yes! Look in wonder at my collection, admire my Lord of the Ring extended editions and bask in the glory of my William Gibson documentary.”

I have sort of gotten over that issue with regard to buying unabridged audio books from Audible.com. I have acknowledged the glory of being able to sort through the book covers in iTunes. I also know that if something happens to my computer I can download the lost files again from Audible with no hassle. Something happening like say just for an example just off the top of my head: I have them all on my work computer and the company suddenly goes under and I don’t get a chance to copy them all off my hard drive; I won’t be screwed. For that peace of mind I am somewhat willing to jump through the hoops they make me, a legitimate customer, go through when dealing with the Digital Rights Management also known as DRM. I’m pretty sure iTunes doesn’t offer you the ability to re-download a file you may have lost and although I haven’t checked into Amazon’s policy in that regard I’m going to bet it’s similarly a one shot download deal. This is also one of the reasons I prefer to buy a music CD and rip it into iTunes rather than buy it from the iTunes store. Though, I hear that the RIAA’s new hard line claims that is actually stealing, but lets not digress this rant into that ramble.

I don’t know if I can make the digital leap with television and movies yet. With audio books I know I have access to them in all the places where I want to hear them. I copy them to my iPod which I can listen to via headphones or through the car’s stereo system. Copying them from computer to computer is easy; in contrast with anything else iTunes / iPod related where it’s a pain in the ass. With a DVD I know I can just pop it into any player; be it an actual player in the living room attached to the TV, built into the computer, or even built into the latest console gaming system (thought lets not get me started again on region coding). I also get cool extras like commentaries and deleted scenes with the DVD collections.

The main point of all that can be boiled down to the increased chance of failure the phrase “in my computer room on a monitor” has when added to the question “Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and cuddle up in front of the latest Dexter episodes?”

Now the question I am asking myself is this: am looking at this all wrong? Should I just view the $1.99 like the fee for renting a movie or even seeing it in the theatre? Of those TV shows mentioned above, several of them are shows I know I’ll only watch once. If I was watching them as they aired during their regular season I wouldn’t even be thinking twice about them. So what if I spend two bucks to catch up with season two of Heroes. And lets say I do delete the files in a week, a month, or when I’m upgrading computers should I care? It’s only 2 bucks an episode to watch them NOW and I can still buy the damn DVD box set later when it comes out. Though looking at the prices for Dexter’s first season on Amazon: 12 episodes that would be $24 dollars for all the downloaded episodes versus the discounted price of $28 dollars for the boxed DVD set. I do see there is an option for $19 dollars to download the entire season, but this doesn’t really count for the stuff I am talking about since most of their seasons aren’t complete yet. Amazon doesn't appear to offer digital downloads of shows whose DVD boxed sets aren't available yet or at least not for Burn Notice. iTune's "buy all episodes" button is the same price as buying all the episodes individually for the incomplete 7 episode season of Terminator but does have a discounted $19.95 "Buy Season" button for all 12 episodes of Burn Notice.

I should throw in a couple of other issue such as living in a third world internet country known as Australia where there is no such think as an unlimited internet plan. You either pay out the nose for going over your download limit or they knock your internet speed down to dial-up speed for the rest of the month. Let’s also not forget the issue of storage space. These files tend to eat up hard drive space pretty quickly and become more and more unwieldy to try and transfer from computer to computer where DVDs sit nicely on the shelf and look pretty.