Last weekend Jenn and I checked out the Fulton Street Artisans' Market. Not very large, but worth the swing by. I'll drop in again I think. Video below.

Half watched Clash of the Titans yesterday. Really crappy movie. Bad casting, bad mythology, just overall bad. If you are scraping the bottom barrel of recent DVD releases and thinking of giving this a watch, skip it, really, don't bother. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1008.php#p1044 Random Non-Sequiters

Spent a good portion of the day today in Google Reader, reading feeds and watching embeded vids. While I don't do these marathon Google Reader sessions as much as I used to, it's still nice to veg out on the internet for a whole day every once in a while.

Let's Go Surfing

- [UPDATE] FeedRoller V0.62
source: The Portable Freeware Collection

Nice RSS Ticker type scroller. First one I've seen that works well. Portable app, so no install. And you can import OMPL files or you can just directly add feeds to the configuration text file. Nice.

- How to be alone
source: swissmiss

Neat Video/Poem.

- Jazz Packing
source: swissmiss

How many Hipsters can you pack into a Jazz.

- The Rise of Collaborative Consumption
source: swissmiss

don't own, share?

- Desktop Fun: Popular Movie Fonts
source: the How-To Geek

Font's from the logos of popular movies

- Virtual Router: create a wi-fi hotspot using a wifi-enabled PC and a wired internet connection
source: freewaregenius.com

Rarely do you get an ethernet connection anymore instead of a wi-fi connection. But if so, this software looks interesting.

- Flipboard | personalized social magazine
source: swissmiss

Flipboard looks like a nice alternative to Google Reader. Not worth the price of an iPad to me yet. But hey if they come out with cheaper ones before Christmas, then maybe.

- DIY Book Binding
source: swissmiss

Neat video. Neat Bookbinding jig.

- Tiny Little Camper
source: Neatorama

Cool little vehicle.

- Got Dark Side Flare Ups? You Need Vaderex!
source: Neatorama

Ask your doctor if your lightsaber stays lit for more than 4 hours.

- Chillbots Robot Ice Tray
source: Neatorama

nice.

Yesterday I did a post on how everything was feeling pretty covered techwise, so today I'll muse abit about what could be new and next.

Good Ubiquitous Voice Recognition/interaction - The ability to ask your device to fetch information and speak it back to you. "What's the weather?" "What's Jenn's schedule today?" "What's the current price of Grapenuts in the supermarket?" And then beyond a single call and response, the ability to continue to have that conversation deepen in context all while constantly connected thru a bluetooth earpiece or something similar.

Small Smart Cars that drive themselves - This would be huge. 30 minutes to an hour or more extra day for reading or watching video. Travel becomes a completely different experience, suddenly a 4 hour or 5 hour drive becomes much more practical as a weekly occurrence (or even daily occurrence if you can do your work enroute as your car becomes a personal traveling cubicle) Leave the driving to a computer.

Augmented Reality - Your smartphone connected to glasses that present a heads up display and also constantly communicating via audio, giving you real time information about the people, places and things where you are. Not in a smartphone stare at a screen and click buttons look up way, but more like a true digital assistant at your side providing constant running commentary (some of which will be likely to be very entertaining).

A personal PVR life recorder - Constant background recording with the ability to push a button and save the last 5, 10 or 20 minutes to a highlight real of the day. Blogging would be taken to a whole new level. There are Orwellian concerns of course, but make that video searchable using the voice recognition tech mentioned above and you'd have an amazing system of augmented memory and immersive way to share experiences with people.

A nano-assembler 3D Printer - Create objects from base materials. Eliminate the need to mass produce all manner of small consumables. Download the file, hit print, instant object.

A post job (or seriously reduced-job) economy - Not really tech, but when you look at all the above, we're not going to need as many people doing as much as what they do now, so we're going to have to start thinking about what people are going to do all day with increased free time.

The seeds for all of the above already exist. If you squint, you can see the outlines for all of this in the devices around us. It'll be interesting to start to see them take shape, and how they'll effect society around us, which is used to moving much slower than all of this is likely to happen.

There's a lot of great tech out there. In the last 3 to 4 years it's all become very very affordable too.

So if your a a typical tech focused geek, I'm guessing your geared up with the below:

• Smartphone -- You've got a touchscreen, you're loaded with apps, the world of information and communication is at your fingertips 24/7 (as long as you can get a wi-fi or 3G signal)
• Laptop -- It's got enough power to game and video edit on the go. But mostly you're flippin between the Dee O C, the eX eL eS, and the Pee Pee Tee. You still have your desktop, but other than an occasional need for it's pair of dual screens the laptop gets you by.
• Netbook -- On the go a lot, then you're probably netbooked up. You were hesitant at first about the smaller screen and smaller keyboard, but you realized that you mostly were just checking and responding to your gmail and watching the occasional youtube video anyway, and more often than not, the netbook is what you grab on the go. It's so much easier to throw in your tech bag than the laptop. In fact sometimes you feel the laptop gets left behind with the desktop often enough that while you're out they talk about you and how it used to be, behind your back
• MP3 player -- Your MP3 player doesn't get left behind, but it does spend a lot of time on the bottom of your tech bag because, well it's just so easy to stream Pandora or podcasts on the Smartphone, the MP3 player seems like too much trouble to dig down deep for.
• eReader -- For those that still like to get lost in a good book when not immersed in the blinking world of LEDs and LCDs, an eInk reader has already been a must. No need to burden the tech bag with the latest couple novels in dead tree format. You've got a library on the go with gigs more space yet to fill. Amazon next day book delivery? Why would anyone wait that long? It's all about the 30sec dee double u el dee.
• Tablet -- The new hotness, whether you are an early adopter in the cult of Apple with the iPad, or dabbling on the fringe with an Android based import. The tablet has already become a must have, even though now several months in, you're not quite sure that you really needed it as much as you thought you did. Still it's bling bling trek tech not to be without.
• Camera/Camcorder -- Whether you're just Smartphone snappin, or dedicated Flipin' or givin your neck a work out with a DSLR hulk of steel/plastic and glass, your picture taking needs are covered. Seriously your Flickr's blowin' up and vids are drippin from the Tubes and even Mom and Dad don't want to wade through all that media your postin.
• The Big Screen with all the boxes and remotes -- Kirk didn't see this coming. It's was supposed to be the big screen in front of a chair, but you've got the hook up with media streamers and PCs, a DVR, a DVD (and even still a VCR although your embarrassed to admit it.) then there's Wii's and Xbox 360 all tangled together with cables, cords and wires too. So many plugs powered on the AC is to the max just so your living room can chill.

And beyond the gear there's the social. Sure you've had the blog since way when, and your flickr goes back years, but all the action is in your Facebook and Twitter. All teched up with the content generators of Buck Roger's dreams and really, it's all reduced to the one hundred and forty character streams.

So as you scour the latest Gizmodo and Engadget feeds you wonder what's next-- and day after day you realize that they're still bringing the new and shiny, but with each passing post it's starting to look like that real next next is past. You're on the other side of next-- and that-- that is very interesting indeed.

When I see stuff like the video below where this guy gives a tour of his 100 sq foot house. It really makes me want to better organize my space.

I read this paper on cities online that I saw retweeted by p2wy on twitter.

Unless adequate meaning can be conveyed by telecommunications, information exchange will involve the movement of people. An effective transportation network will allow a high proportion of required information exchange to take place via short walks (say < 10 minutes each way) with secondary information exchange; an intermediate proportion to take place by moderate overhead mechanical transport (say < 30 minutes each way); and only a small proportion requiring high overhead mechanical transport (say from 30 minutes to 1 hour each way). Journeys that occupy in total much of a working day will in general be ruled out. The distribution of both pathlengths and journey times should follow an inverse-power scaling law favoring the small scale -- where the number of paths is inversely proportional to their length [7].

Basically near trips you can make several of, larger distance trips you are likely to only want to make one or two of on a given day, and much larger trips that are lengthy enough (say 2hrs plus) that you are unlikely to do them often.

The above clip is focused on walking around a city. I don't live in a walking city. I live in suburbia, but I don't see any reason the above wouldn't apply to cars as well. It's the time commitment rather than the distance that would seem to be the real principle in play.

Just as an exercise, I used a radius tool page built on Google Maps to plot 5 miles (10 minutes at 40 miles an hour) and 20 miles (30 minutes at 40 miles an hour)

10 minutes

I found it to be a interesting visual, of how far people are likely to travel and what level of effort it represents psychologically.

Also in the same article was a section discussing the working of a city like a brain and not a computer.

There are two possible information architectures for a complex system. One is the von Neumann architecture with a memory/processing separation supporting unambiguous information exchange, in which functionality is explicitly controlled. The other is the recommendation architecture with a clustering/competition separation supporting meaningful yet slightly ambiguous information exchange, in which functionality is defined heuristically [8, 14]. A competition subsystem interprets the outputs of submodules as a range of alternative behaviors, and quickly selects one of the alternatives. This process depends critically on consequence feedback to determine appropriate system behavior.

Since reading the above, I've been noodling around the above concepts comparing the idea of structures that should be established to guide routine non-changing work vs the different structures needed for dynamic constantly evolving work. So this paper has sparked some ideas on that topic for me as well.

Some headcam video of me playing with a Boogie Board

Played with one of the $35 Electronic LCD Boogie Boards in Brookstone. It's also available at Think Geek. Neat device. Fun to play with, but I couldn't imagine anything practical I'd use it for, so I passed on buying one. Maybe if it was $20 instead, I wouldn't have been able to pass it up.

One unexpected use of the new camcorder. Taking the footage from it and converting little clips to Animated Gifs.

The below is 1.5 megs so it might take a minute to load and start to play.

I would imagine that once upon a time it was a full service post office.

If you need to actually mail a package or get stamps or something-- the service part of the post office is actually located in the Rogers Plaza mall around the corner.

Rogers Plaza is the creepy dead mall in town. That store on the far left isn't even a store, it's a giant digital poster of a store posted over a vacant space.

Today is the anniversary of my and Jenn's first date. I wouldn't normally steal from a VH1 logo but it really has been the...

Best Year Ever.

Jennifer has been the best part of my day. Every day. I could go on and on, but I'll keep this post short--

I love her and look forward to each upcoming day adding up to Best Year Ever, year 2, 3, 4 ... you get the idea.

Jenn and I went to Jeff's 30th Birthday party yesterday. It was a Zombie themed event. We brought along some graveyard cupcakes and wore our Zombie best. Links to more and video are below...

Jenn has a nice Blog write up with pictures and here is a flickr photo set of the event.
Some video of the event:

A purpose driven marker

Watch the video above, it's an interesting talk with a very interesting "real-time" cartooning that follows the speakers ideas.

There are some interesting ideas about motivation beyond the profit motive (focusing on autonomy, mastery and purpose) that I found worth dwelling on a little.

Some thoughts

The Tablet continues to be a fun device. It's still not a replacement for the netbook or the desktop or the phone, but it has found it's niche uses for me. the tablet is all about consumption (maybe if my particular one was a little quicker it would be good for note taking scribbles too, but as is, it's a great reading device.)

While I look forward to getting a slightly faster one of these in 6 months to a years time perhaps, for now, I realy don't have any other device categories on my radar.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - last Tuesday Jenn, I and a couple friends from work checked out the 90s TMNT at the Wealthy Theatre. The movie holds up and after having watched it again, I'm a little disappointed that they are remaking a new live action one. It really doesn't seem like they need to.

On the topic of the Wealthy Theatre, Jenn and I continue to enjoy dropping in there for their old films many a Tuesday. I really like the non-commercialism of the venue and it's also an interesting crowd. I'd love to see more little theaters like this pop up, it would be neat to see one of these digitally driven screens regularly display popular Television too. I'd enjoy regularly seeing Star Wars Clone Wars, Caprica, Doctor Who or such similar shows in such a venue if they were offered. I'm not sure if those groups could regularly pull in a crowd, but even a 75 to 100 seat theater experience would be great for those genre type favs.

Twitter and Social Media - I've been a little burned out on twitter and social media lately. I've been entertaining some thoughts in my head that twitter and facebook may be the 2010 mass redux of CB Radio. I'm not entertaining that very strongly though, I think the short status update of format of twitter is with us to stay, although I think there will slowly be more and more metadata added to these them to the point where they become more an early 90s realtime yahoo index than just the vanity updates they are now. I figure eventually we'll all move to some other real time heads up display of information we care about piped into our sunglasses or such and Twitter and Facebook will sort of become background bit players of sorts into that larger picture. As for me, I'll keep playing a little in the social network worlds right now, but as of late, there seem to be diminishing returns.

What's happening online - I did some rearranging of my Google Reader feeds today. I pushed down some tech blogs from my "hot list" and promoted up some general purpose and offbeat categories. Tech sites have really felt stagnant of late. Watching endless articles on the Android Phone of the day or the 1,000th story of the week on iPad or iPhone has gotten pretty tiresome. Maybe we are just hitting a tech plateau at the moment but even with E3 this past week there just doesn't seem to be much interesting being created out there right now. Just lots of refinement more than anything else.

White Ear Bud World - I've still been giving alot of thought to what I've been calling the white earbud world, so named after the stories 8 or 9 years back about how people with iPods were disappearing into their own audio cocoons. I think with all the media available via the internet and all the platforms between, tv, computers, tablets, consoles, phones etc, that you can experience it on. Audio was only the begining. Add in Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader Streams, and you can completely customize a feed of info, entertainment, and activity to completely dominate your available attention from wake to sleep. The white ear bud world is now.

But what about mass - Along with my thoughts on the white earbud world, I've also been giving alot of thought to mass market experiences and corporate dependence on them. Corporations need to relentlessly consolidate and cut costs all while relentlessly growing and increasing market share. Up until now the best way to do that has been to grow big and push out competition in your market space and eventually center choice around a handful of dominate offerings from one, two or three majority become monopoly players. But does the white ear bud world run counter to that? Will we care much about these mega corp mass offerings as we get more and more focused on our own niche interests? Or will all our own niche interests consolidate along mostly similar lines eventually too? How individual is the individuality currently in play right now?

Doctor Who - Jenn and I have been working our way through doctor Who recently. We're somewhere in the second Season now, and have watched a handful of episodes with David Tennant. I'm still not sold on him over Christopher Eccleston yet. I was really digging Eccleston's romps through these stories, but it's a good series so far, and I'm hoping that either Torchwood or Sarah Jane Adventureres that have been teased in the Who series that we have watched so far prove to be similarly entertaining when we get around to trying them out. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1006.php#p1029 Movies

I saw Splice this past weekend. The first 1/3rd of the movie is interesting enough. the 2nd and final thirds of the movie are just pretty bad. There's a couple fairly creepy sex scenes in this film that if you see them, you'll probably want to unremember them.

The two main characters are cast as sort of uber-hippster-yuppie-dinks. I mean they really take a certain type of stereotype to a new level. They own an orange pacer.

In anycase, skip this one. Skip it on DVD too. Skip it on cable, just skip it. If you really want to watch this film.. Just add Species to your queue instead. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1006.php#p1028 Some Misc thoughts on the Ekken M001 Tablet.

Touchscreen - The touchscreen is slow and laggy, you really can't draw on it, and although tapping things with your fingers works fine, there's a bad habit of it accidentally selecting items while you are scrolling pages.

The touchscreen does work much better with a stylus though. No Stylus was included so I pressed back into service a couple older styli I had from my Pocket PC days. Scrolling with the stylus works much better, you still might accidentally select a list item here and there on occasion, but I think with practice accidental selections are more minimal.

One note, if you are looking to hand-scribble notes or draw directly on this tablet, you'll pretty much be out of luck. It's a little too slow as far as screen response for that, so unless you are incredibly patient, drawing is pretty much out of the question.

Video - Video is a mixed bag. If you convert the video to an MP4 within specific parameters you'll do ok and you can play back pretty serviceable/clear stutter free video on the device. Youtube is a slightly less impressive experience. Basically the Youtube videos stream well, but only in the low quality mode typically seen on feature phone handsets. Still, sound is good, and you can make out the picture, so the Ekken is a go for Youtube.

Comics - I downloaded Droid Comic Viewer (ACV) and it works pretty well. Both CBZ and CBR. The 7in monitor is exactly the same size as my Asus netbook screen, so I'm accustomed to viewing comics on this size screen. If you are ok with tiny, yet readable type, you should be fine with the comic experience on this device. One note, I did turn off some of the fancy transition effects etc. and that helped with speed. You will notice however, if you hit a double page spread there will be a noticeable lag as the device renders/sizes down the oversized page, but all in all, pretty good. The nice form factor of this tablet, more than makes up what would otherwise be a faster experience on the netbook. One last note, I did have some issues accidentally selecting comics from a large list (that scrolling problem I mentioned above), one work around is not to have more than 15 or so in any given folder so that you do not need to scroll and you can instead just switch between folders.

For an even better comic reading experience, it helps to prepare the comics and downsize them before loading onto the M001.

If you want Comics to read really fast, it's worth taking the time to prep/resize them for the ekken

CBZ’s and CBRs are about 4 times bigger than the screen of this device, so it has to pull them out of the archive and resize them and that can take anywhere from 2 sec to 10 sec depending on the particular page. and some pages are so big that you will get out of memory issues.

To speed things up, What I did was:

1. Use a file renamer program to change all CBR extensions to RAR -- ExtensionRenamer.exe

2. Use WinRar (like WinZip) to “unzip” all the comics into there own folder.

3. Download/install the Resize Powertoy from Microsoft for XP or this clone for Vista

4. Do a search on JPG in the comic folder, so all the jpegs show up in one search window (even though they are in different folders, this will make resizing them all at once easy instead of doing it folder by folder.)

5. Select all the images in the search window and then right click and “Resize” --> Custom resize originals (using the context menu power toy) all the images to fit within 800px x 800px (This will resize those pesky doublepage spreads properly too.)

Sounds like a little bit of work but once you have the software installed, it really only takes a few clicks and then the comics are optimized for the Android. The nice thing is, you can do an entire collection or folder of comics at once doing the above too.

Music - Mp3's played back great. The large screen makes this a very nice Music player. The built-in speaker is loud and the there is a headphone jack available as well. The music player will play in the background while you do other things too.

eBooks - I installed FBReader and it works well for ePub documents.

Wi-fi - Wi-Fi and web browsing works well. Wi-Fi was easy to set-up and the device remembers your locations and automatically connects to your approved Wi-Fi hotspots whenever you are near one. Browsing, Switching to portrait mode, gives you a 800px tall screen to work with, so in the browser you can read alot of text without starting to scroll. Redraw's could be a little snappier, but wait time for the page rendering isn't too bad, and is for the most part very useable.

Google Reader - Google Reader has a nice mobile version of their app that works well on this device. I've also tried NewsRob (which didn't work well for me) and Greed (which worked better, but crashed on occasion for me-- the crashing may very well have more to do with the sheer number of feeds I have however.) None of these apps work as well as Scoop on my WebOS Palm Pre, but the mobile version of Google Reader is serviceable and the larger screen let's you much more comfortably tackle larger pictures and sections of text than on the phone. I'm still on the look out for an excellent Google Reader experience on this device, instead of the current good and ok ones.

Twitter - I've been using Twitdroid on my Tablet. It works well for Twitter. I've only had one bug whereby on occasion the time stamps on tweets become a little non-nonsensical, but generally they are correct, and although I still prefer my WebOS Palm Pre's Tweed app for Twitter. Twitdroid on the tablet works well.

App Market Place - The Ekken M001 does not come with the App Marketplace installed, so all the apps above have been installed from SD card or from a "non-official" app store marketplace application: AndAppStoreClient. Since most phone devices support the official App Marketplace, it can sometimes be a little bit of a chore to find the .apk files needed to install some popular apps from the SD card. But generally for the Free Apps, it's not impossible and a little googling eventually turns up what you need.

Chat - Other than Twitter I haven't tried any messaging apps really, although the keyboard on the Ekken works well, I'm still not really sold on the touchscreen keyboard idea. I still like to feel the keys under my fingers, so for now anyway, I'm not planning much typing of any kind.

Document - The device has documents to go. I haven't tried everything, but .doc, .xls, and .ppt seem to open and have basic editing capabilities.

PDF - PDF's open well on the device using the built in app.

Photos - This tablet works well as a photo frame too.

So what do I think of a "third device" so far?

One week in, I'm digging the tablet for media consumption. For me, Comics, Google Reader and eBooks are the killer apps for this device. It really is nicer than a laptop to hold a 7" tablet and kick back onto the couch or in bed and sink into consuming some readable content.

If the screen was more responsive, I could see making handwritten notes on the device and then emailing them to my phone becoming a several time a day occurrence.

Without a keyboard though, content creation is a real chore, it can be done, but really nothing beats a physical keyboard for writing a body of text, working with a spreadsheet, or just arrow keying around the screen quickly. As tablets come on the scene, netbooks are not going to go away. And while I'm sure as these devices get more prevalent that bluteooth or attachable keyboards will become common, once you add a physical keyboard, tablets sort of cease to be tablets in some regard I think.

In closing, the Eken M001 at $100 is a nifty device, with more positives than negatives for a select range of tasks, ideal for tinkerers and hobbyists who want to start playing with the tablet future now, but aren't quite ready to drop $500 to the Church of Apple yet.

C2E2 Chicago Trip April 2010 from Chris Karath

Above is a 23 minute video of last weekend's trip to C2E2. First half is C2E2, Second half is Chicago and Millennium Park. Most of the Still pictures were taken by Jennifer: C2E2, Millenium Park and Downtown Chicago A few were taken by me, as was all but one of the videos.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1004.php#p1021 Facebook is starting to annoy me.

I never really wanted to be on Facebook, it was always too AOL feeling to me. I always kept my profile pretty minimally filled out. I've never got into the apps, and frankly before I hooked my Twitter account to Facebook, I really never made any posts to it either. But Facebook is where other people I do want to follow have chosen to be, so I ended up on there.

Until I integrated Twitter to FB, I never posted and my Likes section on FB has always told people to read this blog, if they want to know what I like. So I've never really been active on the service. But Facebook being the juggernaut that it is, has always been a good place to share links back to my blog, which has always been my preferred place to collect and share info about me.

Facebook seems to have changed it's mission drastically in 2010. It's not even maintaining a pretense about people keeping connected to people anymore. It's now all about keeping connected and delivering structured data to corps. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Generally speaking, I've been pretty open with my online profiles, I've never really cared to much if they got scraped, because, well, scraping most sites doesn't provide a whole lot of useful structured data. And corps really don't have the time to take unstructured data and compile it into structured data on an individual level. Corps have no interest at all in a typical individual, Corps are interested in Mass. It's Superman III and Office Space, take a penny or two from thousands or millions of people and you can make some money, but you generally can't take enough from one person (barring the purchase of a house, or car or a few other large purchases, to make targeting individuals that profitable.)

Facebook is taking things to another level. They are allowing corps to take data about my friends and associate it with me (and worse, thru my friends-- take my data directly). So even if I choose to share very little structured data about myself, my FB "friends" are probably not that savy, and you can, statistically speaking, learn a lot about a person from the company a person keeps.

You're likely to have similar interests, financial backgrounds, religious and political beliefs as your friends, or at least in aggregate a good database will be able to say: this person based on their friends is 75% likely to be a Democrat who likes iPhones, etc.

Sure that's not 100%, but for a Corp, 75% may be good enough to warrant targeting an ad to you, or maybe accepting or denying your participation in some venture.

Facebook's present course is likely to make your Friends list equivalent to a Credit Score. And that's a very interesting road to travel down. (A road that South Park recently lampooned on a personal level-- without seemingly the foresight to extend it to the corporate realm.)

I have a pretty modest amount of Facebook friends. A grand total of 30. I don't accept a lot of miscellaneous friend requests. I've even been known to deny family requests as odd as that seems. Of that 30, I just counted about 16 people that I actually keep up with and see regular posts from on Facebook. Of those 16, maybe there are 8 or so that Facebook is my primary way of keeping up with them (as many of the others are on Twitter or have blogs or gasp-- I regularly talk to in Real Life.)

So Facebook's recent privacy changes has me thinking, are those 8 to 16 worth it? And if I do shutdown and or minimize my account does it matter? Can you really opt out of this type of online mentality and forthcoming system? Will this stuff just follow to Twitter and Gmail etc, soon enough?

That's my rant for now.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1004.php#p1020 Let's Go Surfing

- A rebuilt, more real time Google documents
source: Official Google Docs Blog

This is a really nice upgrade. Spreadsheets becomes very usefull as a simple project/todo list tracker for groups now.

- Paradigm Shift debuts $130 EER-051D e-reader
source: Engadget

$130 now you're talking. I think I still like the look of the Kobo eReader better, but It's nice to see these prices coming down to something reasonable.

- American anime pioneer Carl Macek passes away
source: Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

:( This is the guy who squished together 3 different Anime and made Robotech.

- Progress Bar Clock cute little freeware clock for geeky screen watchers
source: The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia

Neat.

- TinyPay: Sell Anything Online Within Seconds
source: MakeUseOf.com

Interesting

- New York Gets Destroyed, 8-bit Style [VIDEO]
source: mashable.com

Really cool video on theis page of 80s Arcade Games destroying New york, give it a click and then give it a watch.

It's Monday. I had last week off. Actually I stayed too connected to email at work for most of the week.

Adam and Comfort (The Uniques) stayed the night last Wednesday. That was alot of fun. Saturday and Sunday Jenn and I were in Chicago for C2E2 a comic convention at the McCormick center and just as a getaway in general. Jenn has a nice write up on Saturday on her blog. (One for Sunday is coming soon, I'd imagine) Sunday was alot of fun just exploring Chicago and Millenium Park, the bean etc. I'll be putting up some pictures and videos some time later this week.

Now back to the craziness of work. The Chicago break was nice, unlike the rest of the week, it really wasn't until the weekend hit and the work emails stopped that I really tuned out fully.

It's good to unplug from all the unnecessary work politics.

Of course, I'm firmly back into it today.

Happy Monday.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1004.php#p1018 Let's Go Surfing

- Bannersketch Free Web App to Create Online Banner Ads
source: MakeUseOf.com

This does a surprisingly decent job.

- Desktop Cooler and Warmer Its about time
source: The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia

Cool.

- For $20, Make Your Own Ebooks [DIY]
source: Gizmodo

I have an older digital camera that would be perfect for this.

- In Honda's Future, We Are All Rolling Meat Puppets [HandsOn]
source: Gizmodo

Neat video, especially the rolling around with the iPad

- Warning: Your reality is out of date - The Boston Globe
source: del.icio.us/cshirky

Nice buzzword: Mezofacts.

- College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly
source: del.icio.us/cshirky

Interesting.

- Marvel Sends Letter To Creators About Apple iPad Urging They Stay Positive
source: Bleeding Cool

Also includes some shakey, but interesting video.

- ComiXologys iPad Comics Reader App In Pictures
source: Bleeding Cool

Comixology App. Basically the same as the Marvel App, but open to other creators.

- Brightest Day In Pictures
source: Bleeding Cool

Sometimes, I'm glad I'm not keeping up with this stuff. Maxwell Lord is back too? Really?

- Bits from Bytes' new 3D printer extrudes with the best of 'em
source: Engadget

Hey, look for $3,000 you can buy a replicator. Pirated Action figures are almost a reality for the hobbiest.

- Death Note, Bleach, and C2E2
source: Blog: Adam and Comfort's Blog

- Uniques: Uniques Tales #2 Released
source: Blog: Adam and Comfort's Blog

Read it

- X-Men Poster and Farewell, Around Comics
source: Blog: Adam and Comfort's Blog

Nice Poster by Comfort.

The iPad is a mini TV to use while you're watching TV. If it alarms you that in a few years everyone will be watching TV on a small screen while they watch TV on a big screen, I'm sorry. That is the way things will be. But don't blame the iPad. Without it the same thing would be happening — is happening — on smartphones and laptops.

All video was shot on my iPod Nano, so no zooming unfortunately. Clips were edited together essentially in the order and length they were taken in, except for a few I cut down to get rid of a thumb over the camera here and there. For it's size, the iPod Nano is a great little video camera. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1004.php#p1013 - I went to Best Buy today on iPad launch day and played with one of the floor models. It's a very nice device. Nice responsive screen, well balanced in the hand. Clean, well thought out software blended seamlessly with quality hardware. Apple does nice stuff. The iPad is snappy too. Even with it's single tasking, one application at a time model of use, jumping into and out of apps was fluid and not as much a hassle as I would have thought. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the device in the store. Apple will sell a bunch of these too.

After a little more shopping Jenn and I came home, and with the rain starting to fall outside, we took a nap. Jenn is a little bit more of a power napper than I and I woke up earlier than she did. But the rain outside was relaxing and I decided to reach for my Palm Pre and start to surf some Google Reader items.

Laying there surfing on my phone, I realized, the iPad that I had held earlier in the store would not replace this use case for me. The Pre can be held with one hand, and with the use of just one thumb, I could flick to the next article, star favorites to read later, email others, and even open some to the actual web page in the Pre's Webkit based browser (the same foundation that underpins Safari) and look at everything except Flash video. (and Flash is coming soon to the Pre)

The iPad sort of requires one to sit up and use both hands, and I do not see myself using it laying in bed on those days where I wake up too early to get up.

The iPad is not huge, but it's not pocketable either. I don't carry a manbag of any type (outside of to and from work) so that is going to limit my use of an iPad device after work.

That leaves two locations I can think of where I'd regularly use this device. Work and at home on the couch.

I have the first Asus Eee PC 7” Netbook, the one that started the whole netbook segment. It's still going strong. Firefox browser gives me full access to the net. And Open Source Apps like Open Office, Gimp, Scribus, and Inkscape make it a very powerful productivity device. The built-in Webcam makes it great for Skype and the Solid State Harddrive keeps it almost completely silent. Plus it has a keyboard, a feature I'm using right now to type this blog from the couch while Jenn plays Dragon Age beside me on the living room TV.

The iPad has a nice onscreen keyboard. In the store I was surprised at how well it worked holding it a hand on each side and typing quickly with both thumbs. But even after a few minutes the weight of the device was evident and quick thumbtyping is no match for even the Eee PC's ¾ sized keyboard. So it's hard for me to imagine the iPad fully replacing my netbook when I want to work on a blog post or type up some notes in a meeting at work.

Mind you, I really want to like the iPad, I want to justify going right back out to that Best Buy and dropping the coin to get one, but laying in bed today with the rain falling and my Pre in hand thinking about it, I could really only come up with two use cases where It would really beat my phone and netbook combo that I already have. Those two uses would be: Surfing the net specifically from the couch. And reading comic books (and I suppose if they ever dropped ebooks down to a more reasonable price:ebooks as well)

I can really see that the iPad would be a fantastic device to surf the net on the couch. And just flipping thru the photo application in the store-- you really need to flip through the photo application in the store, the iPad would be a wonderful addition to any coffee table to share photos with guests, provided of course that I actually ever had guests over that hadn't already seen all my photos on my blog or Flickr-- but I digress; flipping thru the Photo App, I can see how nice it would be to read comics on this screen. The images are crisp, and flipping between pages is fluid and fun. and pinching to zoom on a screen that size is a real delight.

So those are the two uses I came up with after having played with the device and taken my nap and spent some quiet time musing on the subject: Couch Surfing and Comic Reading. Not exactly quite worth $500, for me anyway.

Now I'm not typical. I already have a highend Smartphone and a capable netbook. My Living room TV has a Mac Mini hooked to it that can already play back Youtube and video from the web. Thanks to Jenn's ove of this generation of console games, we are fully outfited for gaming too. For anyone who doesn't already have that kindof technological ecosystem in place, the iPad could be a great shortcut to much of that functionality. And if you're a more normal technologically equipted person, not fully set-up in that way and you think the iPad would be great for you, go for it. It's a great device, and Apple has a great record of supporting their hardware, so you'll likely get years of use out of your iPad and really enjoy it, and in one fell swoop, you'll sort of equal in one device what I'm doing with a half dozen or so.

For me though, I'll probably wait awhile and see if Asus or Google come up with a nice Linux/Android/or chrome capable tablet maybe for half the price that will enhance my couch surfing and comic reading. It seems likely they will, and I can probably wait 6 or 7 months until they do. Summer is coming up afterall, and when this spring rain settles down, I really should get off my couch and enjoy some outdoors. I hear the cool breezes are touch sensetive and the vibrant colors of the flowers coming soon can't be beat, even by Apple's beautiful screen. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1004.php#p1012 Why I won't Buy an iPad (And think You Shouldn't, Either)

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing on the iPad.

I agree with most of his points. The only real issue I see, is if you want to play in this space, NOW, iPad is you're only choice, unless you are resourceful enough to completely roll your own solution, or unless you want to pay twice as much for something no where nearly as elegantly designed.

One good quote in regards to the web from the article that applies to more than just the iPad:

The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.

The Collapse of Complex Business Models

A good article that looks at why change can't come from inside the institutions that the change disrupts. Clay Shirky also trots out a Rupert analogy in his article on complexity:

To pick a couple of examples more or less at random, last year Barry Diller of IAC said, of content available on the web, “It is not free, and is not going to be,” Steve Brill of Journalism Online said that users “just need to get back into the habit of doing so [paying for content] online”, and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp said “Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use.”

Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact. Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full, because, spelled out in full, it would read something like this:

“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”

Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.

The above is a very interesting point of order. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1003.php#p1011 • I did some cleaning
• I had some pizza
• I played with a robot that I drove around the apartment with a wifi camera
• Jenn and I took a walk outside
• We went and got some groceries
• We watched the Season finale(?) of Caprica
• It was a good day.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1003.php#p1010 Random Non-Sequiters

Monday is zooming along pretty quick. Caught up on a bunch of emails this morning, since I was out last Friday.

Looking forward to the evening.

And is it too early to say, looking forward to the weekend?

Videos

Incase you missed them, here's some recent videos I've upladed.

- Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers: Is It the King of Ereaders?
source: TechCrunch

Kindle Aps for Tablet computers (including the iPad) it's a mouthful, but nice to see this will basically be ready at iPad launch. They need to get the prices back down again though. There have been a couple books I've wanted to buy and read on Pre recently but $14,99 is just too much for a digital book for me. They need to get the price back down to $9.99 for new stuff at least.

Went out to a office function of Jennifer's at Peppino's downtown Friday night. Had a good time there. It was good to put so many of her workplace people's face's with their names and stories I've already heard.

Saturday, we ran some errands, and did some shopping. Checked out the new Hobby Lobby that moved from Jenison to Grandville. Huge store. Surfed a lot of internet, but really came up short on much interesting.

Saw this week's Caprica. At the end, the promo said that next week is the season finale. Only 9 eps, that's a bummer, would be nice if there were more, as Caprica is the only show we are watching in anything close to real time (ie: the day of or the next day after it plays.) Not really any shows I'm major excited about currently airing.

Read the first 3rd of Adam and Comfort's new comic project that they are working on as a brief hiatus between the first and second “seasons” of The Uniques. It's good stuff and it's going to be a fun story visually for sure too. I also listened to a 40 min interview with them this am. Scroll down to the player and then jump to the 1:20:00 mark and give it a listen.

Finally gave up on inkjet printers this week. Ordered a Color Laser Printer. We'll see how that goes, at least the ink cartridges won't be dried up when I need to print. Gotta, love toner that way.

Ordered a robot, Wowee Rovio too. It was up on Woot! Last week and I couldn't pass it up. Will likely terrorize the cat a little with it soon.

Let's Go Surfing

- Facebook Kicks Off Implementation Of QR Codes
source: TechCrunch

Facebook is going to make an easy to use QR code feature that will give you a QR code that will link back to your Facebook profile. This is an interesting preview of the future I think. I can imagine a world soon where people and business will have these QR codes on everything and some phone driven camera will be constantly scanning for the code images and layering on relevant information about the people and places around you through something like this. Of course, GPS might beat QR to the punch for places, but you could certainly imagine a party or convention where everyone has a QR Tee-shirt of some kind, so that people could look up info on the attendees, etc. It'd be a novelty but I could see it happening in the near future.

Of the below, Green Lantern Katma Tui was a great get. Shark is silver age fun. And even though I'm not particularly a fan of the Skittle Corp concept, the Sinestro Corp figures do look nice. And if I can eventually have all the Metal Men, that would make for a nice display as well.

Katma Tui


Korugar and Katma Tui


John Stewart and Katma Tui


Shark


Green Lantern and Shark


Sharks


Aquaman and Shark


Mantis


Mantis and Darkseid


Metal Men Iron


Iron Man and Iron


Hal Jordan vs Sinestro Corp


Hal Jordan vs Sinestro Corp


Taste the Rainbow

Sure this is very Luke/Owen/Beru... but still for a web series, it looks pretty good.

I think I posted the teaser trailer before, but if not, here's that:

- Unless I tweet this, you won't see this.

Today is March 5th. This months blog page has been up for 5 days and has 4 unique viewers. Since I check my blog periodically from home and work, I probably account for two of those views. I'm pretty sure Jenn reads this as well. So that leaves 2 people out there who have been to this new blog page this month so far.

Now it's not all doom and gloom. 591 unique people have viewed at least 1 of the 4 or 5 years worth of pages on my blog this month so far. So this blog is definitely helping google answer some queries. But for the latest posts, well there's been two of you so far this month! So to both of you, I say thanks.

Now some of my blog's declining viewership proably rests with the fact that it's probably pretty boring of late. Sure there are occasional cat photos, and you'd think that'd be enough, but content has been sort of slim other than that. I'm willing to wager though that Facebook and Twitter are more the real cause of the decline. I think the tide has turned and people have now shifted their attention away from personal blogs and now get their information exclusively from the social sites, where the information comes to them and they don't have to go to it.

Which brings me back to my original statement: unless I tweet this, you won't see it.

People's time is valuable, and there is alot of social online content they need to keep up with, so in the new world, you've got 140 characters on twitter, or maybe sightly more, plus a tiny picture to make your pitch on Facebook.

There's probably a lesson in their for business too. People are busy, get to your pitch and get to your pitch quick. If its interesting, people will dig deeper, but if it's not, it's just one more thing in the stream.

Penguin books on the iPad

Watch this video below.

Have you watched it? Are you back? Great.

WTF? Isn't the above just that cheesy Interactive CDRom stuff from the early 90s? didn't we get rid of all that when the web came along? Is the above really what the upcoming iPad future is? I really doubt it. Stuff like the above is alot of work to create, and frankly it's just not worth it. You've been able to do all the above on the web via Flash for years, and rarely anyone does anything in this sortof interactive format. Don't get me wrong, some of the chat and social features are interesting, being able to leave comments on a given page, etc. But unless that's going to be policed you're just waiting for trolls to get nasty on something like that. But otherwise... color me unimpressed.

Video, where's the video

I got the WebOS 1.4 video upgrade on my Palm Pre this past weekend. I've posted a few so far. I want to do more, but video is so much more time consuming both for me to film and you to view, isn't? Still it's nice to have a mobile video option back.

Indy comics

My friends Adam and Comfort have launched their The Uniques comic spinoff web series: The Uniques Tales. There are a bunch creators line-up to contribute to the seriesnine issues avaialble the last of which is double sized, for only 99 cents each. There worth a read if you're interested in a smartly written and very nicely drawn superhero yarn.

Blue skies ahead

Second day in a row of blue skies in West Michigan. I'm looking forward to going home and taking another quick walk outside later on this evening after work. it's been cold and gray too long again in Michigan. this is a welcome change.

Have a good Friday! And if you are one of the two people who view this post without seeing it on Twitter, give me a shout out in the comments!

Lets Go Surfing

image - Coby $85 smartbook feels like a hundred bucks (hands-on)
source: Engadget

$85 Netbooks. Even with Win CE that could still be useful.

- Weird Al Sex Tape. SFW sortof.

- Easy Poster Printer
source: MakeUseOf.com

Useful.

- ColorHex: See RGB, HSV & HSL Values For Any Color
source: MakeUseOf.com

Actually has CMYK values which you almost never see on these.

- OpenShot Finally, An Excellent Free Video Editor For Linux
source: MakeUseOf.com

I need to give this a try.

- Suze Orman Advises Mark Zuckerberg Against Buying Twitter [SPOOF VIDEO]
source: Mashable!

Weird Video.

[image] - USmart's MC-1 claims 'world's smallest' title, certainly wins over our hearts
source: Engadget

Tiny but cool $300 overseas.

I was listening to a Pre Central podcast this morning on my way to work. At the end of the Podcast they do reader questions. One of the questions was basically: "After the upcoming update where we get Flash and Video Recording, what do you think we we will need next?"

At that point the Podcasters were essentially silent. As I was listening, so was I.

I think if you look at the Web OS hardware... It's pretty much a fully capable computer after they enable those two functions. iPhone as well (although I'd argue that iPhone still needs to enable multi-tasking) The hardware really doesn't need to change at all (and since the above are software upgrades, I guess technically it doesn't need to change now.)

It's pretty much all software from here on out. You can refine the hardware here and there but it's not going to be terribly dramatic. So the next real leap is going to be how do these devices interact as they become ubiquitous?

Am I off base? Are there still additional hardware functions that need to be in Android, iPhone or Palm Pre? Or do you agree... the hardware except for increasing speed and ram, is basically-- done?

And if it's not done... What do you need added to these platforms?]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1002.php#p996 Lets Go Surfing

- Logitech app turns your iPhone into wireless trackpad or keyboard
source: Engadget

cool

- Amazing, Extraordinary, Tremendous: The 3-Minute iPad Keynote [VIDEO]
source: Mashable!

Boom

- The Phantom Menace's Greatest Critic Takes On Avatar [Avatar]
source: io9

- The presentation of the iPad (as papercraft)
source: Super Punch

- A First Taste Of What The Google Tablets Interface Will Look Like (Pics)
source: TechCrunch

The Tablets cometh

- Turn Your Monitor Into a Touchscreen That Can Detect 16 Fingers, Using a Polymer Film [Touchscreen]
source: Gizmodo

Cool.

- A.D.'s Zombie World Is Pick-Your-Undead-Jaw-Off-The-Floor Gorgeous [A.D.]
source: io9

Brains....

- Captain Picard Laments Twitter, Lauds the iPhone [Star Trek]
source: Gizmodo

jean-Luc! on the internet! Video.

- Magic Mushrooms Make Everything Bigger and Better [Image Cache]
source: Gizmodo

Ha!

- Comic Books Will Look Incredible on the iPad [Ipad]
source: Gizmodo

Would be better if it was a CBZ/CBR reader but still, nice.

- Google Map Buddy awesome freeware lets you grab the maps you need
source: The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia

Neat.

- What iPad Apps Are Going to Feel Like [Ipad]
source: Gizmodo

Interesting.

- ckarath - 31-Jan-10 13:49
source: Cinch Feed For ckarath

This was my first Cinch Audio blogging test. nothing much to it, since it's just a testing testing, one two three sort of thing. Cinch looks like a good audio service repacement for Utterli, and I hope to post more with it soon. Listen to MP3.

Let's Go Surfing

- Unexpectedly low Apple iPad price forces notebook vendors to re-evaluate their tablet PC strategies
source: Asus Eee News, Mods, and Hacks

See this is the best thing about this announcement. Other vendors will need to release cheaper competitors to the iPad. And they'll be likely to use Windows or Android most likely. I would like to say Linux. but Linux isn't doing very well in the retail netbook market right now it seems.

- [UPDATE] Bat To Exe Converter V1.5
source: The Portable Freeware Collection

Cool.

- Even in your company, I feel so alone. (Photo: João Canziani;...
source: Unhappy Hipsters

UnHappy Hipsters. Dwell photos mixed with sarcastic commentary. Fantastic.

- Soon, We'll Have SmallQWERTY Keyboards For All Our Tablets [Peripherals]
source: Gizmodo

Ha... They better do this fast, with a proliferation of of smartphone keypads. T9 type input is going to be a dying skill soon.

- Hivision's Android-based PWS700CA netbook gets video review, may sport sub-$100 price tag
source: Engadget

Hmmm... Would be cool to see a $100 netbook out there.

- Build An Impressive Free Resume Online In 15 Minutes With JobSpice
source: MakeUseOf.com

Cool.

- Green Lantern's New Concept Art Has Blue Aliens We're Actually Scared Of [Green Lantern]
source: io9

The way this art keeps leaking out, you'd think they were actually making a Green Lantern Movie. :P

This morning as I was going out the door, I realized I was out of podcasts for my morning commute. Engadget is a podcast I usually listen to and I remembered I did have the Engadget WebOS app for my Palm Pre, so I thought I'd give that a try. I clicked to the Podcast page and the podcast started right up and it buffered quickly enough even while driving that I never skipped or missed a beat.

Nice App and a nice change to know that I don't have to be quite so mindful with preloading my MP3 player with morning podcasts now that I can also stream them from the internets straight to my phone while driving.

Let's Go Surfing

- Google Voice comes to iPhone and webOS, as a web app
source: Engadget

I tried this. It worked especially well for a web app.

- Your Brain Can't Handle Your Facebook Friends
source: Mashable!

Dunbar's Number. Know it. Learn it. Love it. Live it.

- The Era of Location-as-Platform Has Arrived
source: ReadWriteWeb

Cool news about 4square tying in other services to start to deliver people location relevant news and information.

- Assassin's Creed hits webOS
source: PreCentral.net

Sexy Games are coming now to the Palm Pre.

- Office Pod A little office at the bottom of the garden
source: The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia

I've posted this before, but i always like when it pops up.

- ASUS DR-950 to be released in April for a likely £250
source: Engadget

Too bad this Asus device is going to be so high.

You may have noticed I've been blogging more again. Mostly that has been due to my using the custom sendto feature on Google Reader to send RSS post links directly to my handrolled blog engine. Well this evening, I refined that process a little and I am now using the sendto feature to compile multiple Google Reader posts to comment on, in one post much like I used to. Not as many pictures still, but expect my link posts and commentary to be back in a big way now.

- Google Docs: Now for Storage as much as Collaboration
source: ReadWriteWeb

This is pretty cool, but with USB sticks as cheap as they are, this almost seems not really that needed anymore. Lately I've been carrying around (2) 8 Gig sticks that take care of most of my mobile storage needs.

- Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things: Barcode Scanning
source: ReadWriteWeb

I'm still waiting for a nice barcode camera app on the Palm Pre. This is still something I think will really change shopping once a few retailers start participating in this, being in one store and being able to instantly get the price of the same product on the internet or at a competitor will really push low price retailing as a necessity.

- No, Seriously, a Working Star Trek Phaser With DIY Instructions [DIY]
source: Gizmodo

See the link above for video of a "toy" phazer that actually will pop a balloon. Very Very Cool. Great for birthday parties.

- Marvel To Trade 1 Comic For Every 50 Destroyed DC Comics [Comic Books]
source: io9

You know this is just kindof wasteful, wouldn't it be better to have retailers donate comics to some childrens hospital or library or something. Makes for an interesting headline, but this is a FAIL Marvel.

- Getting PreCentral on your Mobile Device
source: PreCentral.net

Very cool, mobile version of the PreCentral Forum on the Pre. http://m.precentral.net

- Yelp Enables Check-Ins On Its iPhone App; Foursquare, Gowalla Ousted As Mayors
source: TechCrunch

Yelp is getting into the Location check-in game. Cool. There's alot more GR data on Yelp. Hopefully they add this to the Palm Pre version of the App soon, because right now the Foursquare app on Pre is driving me nuts.

- Everything That Was Cut From Avatar: Sex, Drugs And Suicide [Avatar]
source: io9

Interesting scenes that were cut from the movie. I'm not sure I'd really want to see a longer version of Avatar in one sitting though.

- Avatar vs Modern Warfare 2: Billionaire Earnings Fight! [Movies]
source: Gizmodo

Neat chart that shows a comparison of Avatar and Modern Warfare 2 earnings to date. They are closer than you would think.

- This Will Be The Year Adobe’s 2 Million Flash Developers Come To The iPhone
source: TechCrunch

Not native on the iPhone, but Adobe is going to create a Flash to iPhone converter so you can develop in Flash and run the results as an app on iPhone.

- The Ultimate Guide to Ebook Readers We Care About [Readers]
source: Gizmodo

Nice guide to the various eReaders.

- How To Create An RSS Feed For Your Site From Scratch
source: MakeUseOf.com

Nice breakdown on how to create an RSS Feed.

I have my doubts that the "Do No Evil" policy is the prime motivator here though.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p978 Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays.

Office Space will be an eleven year old film next month. I'm guessing you have to be mid 30s for that film to have it's maximum relevance. I'm sure there are plenty of people younger, that like the film, but if you are mid thirties you can remember office life before and after Office Space.

Office Space Quotes here

Has much changed in the last 11 years since this film?]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p977 Alienation at Work
source: Jon Taplin's Blog

Found this quote amusing:

And of course it's socialism. These ignorant motherfuckers. What do they think group insurance is, other than socialism? Just the idea of buying group insurance! If socialism is a taint that you cannot abide by, then, goddamn it, you shouldn't be in any group insurance policy. You should just go out and pay the fucking doctors because when you get 100,000 people together as part of anything, from a union to the AARP, and you say, "Because we have this group actuarially, more of us are going to be healthier than not and therefore we'll be able to carry forward the idea of group insurance and everybody will have an affordable plan..." That's fuckin' socialism. That's nothing but socialism.

Full article at the link above actually has more to do with Job dissatisfaction.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p976 Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over
source: ReadWriteWeb

Actually it probably has more to do with the fact that all this user data is far more valuable to companies and organizations than it is to individual users. ie: Companies will pay more for your data to be public, than the aggregate of individual users will pay to keep it private.

If there was a solid business model around a private Facebook, they'd probably still be going that route.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p975

Man "terrorizes" Time Square with an iPhone Fart App. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p974 Palm CES 2010 presentation video
source: PreCentral.net

What will the new year bring? Neck problems, blisters, impaired vision and general laziness. Did you see the movie WALL-E? We are so rapidly approaching this society it scares me. Yes, they are a few exceptions out there---the fitness buffs, the anal retentives, the workaholics that will embrace technology into their lives and use it as a positive. But for the rest of us, it's just a easier way to make ourselves obsolete. The only thing technology hasn't and should provide for us is transportation. Flying cars, Star Trek transporter beams, Jetson elevator tubes and dare I say it: hoverboards. Hey Apple, Where's the app for that?

I'm inherently more tech driven, so I'm a little more excited about each little advance in tech.But January is a good time for self reflection, so I'll use Jeff's post as a conversation starter: What do you think about the state of Mobile, computers, web and all this social hubbub that's swirling around us now? ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p970 House Bingo

Jennifer and I gave her Dad several seasons of House MD DVDs this year for Christmas. To go along with them, I made up some House Bingo Cards you can use while watching.

I'm not a House fan myself, so I used a House Drinking game that Jenn found elsewheres on the internet as the basis of the cards.

There are 10 different cards in one PDF. Download PDF here. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p969 Two Macs in the House as of this week

So as mentioned in some previous twitters and flickr posts, Jenn and I have two macs in the house now. Mac one is Jenn's netbook running a hackintosh Snow Leopard. Mac 2 is a PowerPC 1.42Ghz mac mini running Leopard that we just got for the living room, primarily as a media center and hobby machine.

I've been out of the Mac scene for many years now, and normally glance right past all those Mac Software app stories in my Google Reader, but now that we have a couple (and maybe soon a third... since Jenn's hackintosh turned out so well I'm thinking of getting the same model and having her show me how to do it.)...

What software apps are a must for us to add to these shiny new (for us anyway) Macs?]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p968 DC Universe Classics – The Class of 2009
source: thefwoosh.com

Really fantastic Overview of all the DCUC figures from the past year. Lots of pics. If you like Action Figures, do give the above link a look.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p967 Apple Tablet What if?

What if the Apple Tablet isn't a computer?

Would an unconnected Apple Tablet be very useful? Would Apple even release a Tablet that didn't have 3G connection given what will be their competition with the Kindle?

Does Apple think people are ready to pay for a second 3G device along with what they pay for their iPhone? Would AT&T even want a larger screen 3G device from Apple given how much they hate the smaller iPhone's data connection usage already?

I don't think so. Yet everyone expects a tablet from Apple at the end of the month.

What if that tablet from Apple was actually a touch screen your iPhone slid into? Not a computer in it's own right, but instead a larger video screen sleeve that made your existing iPhone or iTouch Better?

Done this way, you wouldn't need a second data connection. AT&T would be harder pressed to stop them (as this is an accessory for an approved device on their network) And it's an automatic upsell.

Apple may have a hard time convinciong an army of iPhone and iTouch users that they also need a Tablet, but what iPhone or iTouch user wouldn't think about ADDING a larger touchscreen sleeve to their existing device?

Apple doesn't usually create markets, they refine them. The above might be a way for them to refine their existing product instead of creating a new competeing product.

Those are just my Sunday morning musings, what do you think?

Picture taken from this article.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p966 Thoughts about Foursquare

Left the apartment today to go get a haircut. Decided I would give the WebOS Foursquare App another try out in the field as it were. I figured my odds were pretty good of becoming the "mayor" of Borics. (People who check in at a location more than anyone else are given the title: mayor of that location. I figured if I added a new location, I'd probably autmatically be mayor right?) There was no Borics in the GPS found list of venues when I got there, so I tried to add the location. The app didn't seem to have any automatic discovery of location. I wasn't quite sure which cross street I was at either, so I opened Google Maps and then went to the web version of Foursquare to add the venue. When I added the name and cross streeet, Foursquare found a Borics further up the road than the one I was at. Basically a really poor experience with the WebOS Foursquare app so far. Maybe Foursquare works better on iPhone, but until they get a better WebOS app, I doubt I'll be creating any venues to check in at again.

Hopefully someone becomes the Twitter of this "location/check in/commenting" thing soon. It's a really neat idea, essentially creating comment sections for places and locations.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p964 Hello sexy triple-boot netbook. Snow Leopard, Windows 7, & Ubuntu 9 .10
source: Uploads from shatteredhaven

My girlfriend is has mad hawt skills.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p963 Live-Action Star Blazers Trailer Gives Us Goosebumps [Star Blazers]
source: io9

Very Cool looking. I hope a decent dub hits US shores too.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p962 District 9's Neill Blomkamp Explains Why He Won't Make Big Budget Movies [Neill Blomkamp]
source: io9

Interesting, it seems that the District 9 guy has a Kevin Smith frame of mind: Make small sucessful movies for a genre audience that are small enough to stay out of the studios meddling radar. Here's hoping that there are more movies like this and Moon that are Sci-Fi Quality on the Cheap.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog1001.php#p961 From A Geek’s Geek: Daniel Raffel’s Favorite New Projects, Products and Features of 2009
source: TechCrunch

Really nice round up of products and services from 2009 that will likely come into their own this year. Give the above link a look, and check out any of the services you aren't familiar with.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p960 12 Books to Help You Become a Superhero in the New Year [Superhero Resolutions]
source: io9

Great New Years Resolution!]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p959 We All Live In Public Now. Get Used To It.
source: TechCrunch

Hmmm... is it good that everything is public. Everything is immediate and now? What of developing things in secret and unleashing them onto the world in one big surprise? Would we be as excited by the possibilities of the next great gadget from Apple if there was a public broadcasting web cam in their board rooms and research labs? Do we want to read every script and see every production sketch of a movie before it is released? Do we need to read every bowel movement or itch that needs to be scratched?

There's still a role for privacy and secrecy I think, and most other people think so too, otherwise, why wrap Christmas presents?]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p958 Hapiness:The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.

Wednesday and another short holiday week. This week marks the last of my continual Friday's off. Kindof a bummer, but also a chance to catch up. I'm looking forward to that part, even though I'm not looking forward to returning to 5 days. Interesting thing about my job, the machinery of it continues whether I'm here or not. it's very weekly driven, ie: if there is a meeting on Tuesday and a new project is discussed. People in the meeting tend to want to see it the next Tuesday. Since everything is collaborative, the 5 day schedule is the norm, regardless of how many days off you might take. At the next meeting the consensus will be: "You had a week". even though if you throw a couple days-off into the mix, you really didn't. This is not a complaint, it's just the office culture at my place of employ, and we roll with it.

Jennifer has gone from turning her new netbook from a Hackintosh to a triple boot dynamo (OSX, Win7, and Ubuntu). That's been fun to watch. She's had alot more purposeful nightly effort on those sorts of projects than I of late. I'll blame my low energy on a lack of daylight, yeah that's it.

I think I'm in a holding pattern at the moment. Lots of cool web stuff and design going on at work, but there doesn't seem to be to me the groundbreaking excitement over anything at the moment in the larger tech worldlike there was last year with all the emerging forms of social media. I've got my eye out for the next big thing though (tablets, location aware apps, smartphones, hmm... what am I missing? eReaders? nah, those are really just specialized tablets until they hit sub $50 (at which point they'll be really interesting.)

Looking forward, 2010 looks to be a very interesting year. Overall I'm pretty excited for it, maybe because it really doesn't seem completely layed out yet, although there will probably be several pretty exciting things I think will happen.

So what's on your radar for 2010, what do think might happen? What new things are you looking out for, personal, tech or otherwise? ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p957 Superheroes Meet Dr. Seuss in Mashup Covers [Seussian Superheroes]
source: io9

The Green Lantern/Green Eggs and Ham mashh-up is nice.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p956 webOS 1.3.5 now available for download on Sprint [UPDATED]
source: PreCentral.net

Jennifer and I both upgraded our Pre's last night. I'm very happy with the upgrade. Everything seems much snappier. The calendar especially switches very quickly between days. I only had a few patches from Preware (which had to be removed before the update). I use the camera volume button to take picture patch and the battery meter patch and the onscreen keyboard patch. The first two reinstalled. The third was nowhere to be found once Preware was reinstalled. Bummer but the camera and battery meter patches were my 2 most used, so it worked out in the end.

Really nice to see Palm continually updating this phone. I am still hoping that they announce video recording at CES though.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p955 When to Buy Apple Products [Apple]
source: Gizmodo

Most seem to be WAIT.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p954 Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg
source: TechCrunch

Above, Leki chasing a toy mouse that Jennifer is dragging behind her on a fishing line. He really likes this moues.

Let's go surfing

• Christopher Walken does a dramatic reading of Lady GaGa's Poker Face

• Springfield Still life
source: Super Punch
Neat Simpsons shirt that manages not to show the Simpsons.

• Black Lantern self portraits
source: Super Punch
Cool.

• Sillof’s Steampunk Legion of Doom
source: Super Punch
Neat.

• Picture table lets you hide your kitchen table in plain sight
source: DVICE
Neat... picture frame turns into a table.

• You-Vision glasses record your life in POV
source: DVICE
Camera glasses, these actually look usable and for $149, affordable. Now there's that pesky problem of people being really put off about constantly being recorded, but still the idea of putting together a highlight reel of my day from POV is really intriguing. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0912.php#p951

Hey, look up at the top of the page, it still says October and not November. I need to fix that :) Maybe this weekend.

I've been very busy the last several weeks both at work and moving in with Jennifer, so I've had almost no blogging time and even less surfing time. Not complaining though, just explaining the absence of posts on these pages.

Been getting deeper and deeper into the world of digital and web at work. Also been doing some very fun stuff, excitement not always from the content per se, but often just the problem solving of doing things in my dept that haven't been done in my dept before. Been some cool problem solving and fun design work and interesting processes to figure out.

Now that I'm finally starting to have some time outside of the hustling stuff together for work and massive closet/apartment/moving project, I'm a little disapointed that it's suddenly so dark outside. Dark in the morning, dark in the evening (and today, even sort of dark in the middle of the day.) I haven't seen the forcast for the weekend, but I'm looking forward to finding a way to see a little sun.

What's New?

So, although I've been keeping up with Engadget and Mashable and Make Use Of and a few other leading trend websites, I'm wondering: What's new?

Google Wave was new a couple months ago, and I suppose it still is, great technology, but still waiting for a killer interaction model or ubiquity to make that worthwhile. While Wave is something to keep an eye on, I'm not sure it's evident what we're really going to do in it yet.

Are there any new blogs on the cutting edge I should be tuning into? any new web stuffs that are currently under the radar that you've been using that you want to pass along?

Skype has come into bigger play for me as of late. I use it to keep in touch with my best friend in China and my best friend's, Adam and Comfort, that have recently moved to Flint.

I've been using VLC player to stream TV shows at the same time I skype with them to my friends Adam and Comfort in flint, and that's been working out great. It's nice to have that face to face interaction and still be able to pause the show automatically in both places and talk in between it.

Jennifer got me an iPod Nano with Video camcorder for my birthday a few weeks back. It's been a fairly useful device. I loved and still love my Flip and the flip is probably a little better for taking a structured planned video, but the iPod video camera is just so much more convenient to use and easily fits in my pocket that it's been much more useful for capturing day to day stuff to share. I'm still waiting for video on my Palm Pre (and word is they are closer to getting that) but I think the iPod will be my video camera of choice even after that is available just because it is so small and easy to pull out and use.

Speaking of the Palm Pre. I'm still digging that phone. It's probably my main connection to the internet now. sure I have the desktops and the netbook, etc. but for pure face to screen time on the internet, it's all about the Pre.

Recently I've added the Palm created official Facebook App, and the Pivotal Labs' Google Reader App: Scoop. Both add a tremendous amount of usability to the Pre for these common tasks, and while Facebook was pretty usable even from the browser before and the app is mostly a convenience, scoop actually brings my RSS feeds to my Palm in a truly usable way.

More on the tech front, Jennifer had an HDTV so now that our stuff is all under one roof, I've been enjoying tinkering with that. I know I'm very late to the game with HD, but it's new to me and it's been interesting as a day to day technology experience upgrade. As a designer I'm a little bugged by the the constant format and size switches of the aspect ratio (yeah you can stretch 4:3 to wide but then I'm often bugged by the distorted image) but I will say my computer media box looks really good on it, so overall = win.

On the TV front, Jenn and I have been keeping up with the new TV show V. So far, I'd put it somewhere between Battlestar Galactica and The 4400 (and yeah, that's a wide category lol). I haven't seen the ratings, but I hope it's doing well since it's probably the best thing going at the moment.

On about episode 10 of Defying Gravity. it's a lighter scifi show, but also pretty good.

Did I mention that Jennifer has a cat? So now I have a cat again too? He's only about 1 1/2. Leki's a loveable clumsy bruiser. And has adjusted pretty quickly to his new home.

I'm looking forward to a low key weekend starting tomorrow. Might even go see the disaster porn film: 2012 Currently 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, but that's ok, I'm up for mindless special effects this weekend.

Have a great Thursday... I will blog again soon! ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0910.php#p937
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0910.php#p936
Gallery sized white room. Got here early enough to stake out a seat next to a power cord. Hooray for being able to keep the Pre charged.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0910.php#p935
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0910.php#p934
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p932
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p933 My Pics from Art Prize Yesterday]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p931
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p930
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p929
Back from Jimmy Johns with Adam and Comfort, grabbing drawing gear from their car. TV and drawings!

-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p928
-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p926

A picture of Jennifer and I, Sherry posted on Facebook today that she took a week ago in the park.

Picture above is me, Natalie and Sherry who is due with her second in October.

Beautiful weather and really nice path that starts in the back of an elementary school with some seriously elaborate playground gear. Nice conversation and an all round nice afternoon. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p919 Random Non-Sequiters

A few thoughts on Twitter, feeds, connections and advertising.

Currently all of twitter searchs' trending topics relate to Kanye West on the VMA's.

Geeks. Twitter is not for you anymore. It's mainstream. It's been mainstream for awhile. Not only that but it's going to take the entire country's attention span down a little more.

It was said once upon a generation ago, that MTV, shortened people's attention spans. There was even a couple years where people began to talk about Youtube shrinking attention spans further. Twitter is going to have them beat I think. Or perhaps the feed or wave that twitter will become apart of?

Speaking of shrinking. My tweet count (giving and receiving) has been shrinking as well. A couple years ago I followed 50 people and I couldn't keep up with them, I had to cut back. Now I follow 86 people, and I don't find keeping up with them a problem at all. Twitter stays useful, but frequency and novelty wears off and tweet counts take a hit.

Wish I could say the same about my Google Reader List. That continues to grow and grow and no matter how much I subdivide it, I read only a tiny fraction of it.

We are now connected with anyone in the world that can manage to find a way online. Finding a way online gets easier and easier every year, and if you are living in the US, the price of getting online is now as low as an internet enabled cell phone, or a $199 notebook with access to free wi-fi. Pretty much everyone who wants to be connected to the internet, that you are likely to want to connect with, is connected to the internet.

Billions of people available to you then. Millions? Hundreds of Thousands? of Companies, now just a keyboard click away, yet attention is still finite. There are still only the same 24 hours a day. Technology can now fill your every waking minute with more information than ever dreamed of, yet evolution hasn't changed you, you can still only have contact of any meaningful length with a handful of people a day. But we want more, signal from the noise, the cream off the top.

So people are making software that is going to edit all this for you. Facebook already does this. If you follow alot of people, they don't show you everything, they know you can't keep up, so they weight people you talk to more, give them higher priority, they take into account people you've "liked", if you click on pictures they show you more pictures. Software is being written, not to connect you to a shared experience, but to continually create a highly specialized individual one just for you.

"Did you see the latest [blank]?" No, soon you probably won't be able to answer that question, for anything beyond the biggest, lowest common denominator's of topics or at least you won't be able to answer that question of anyone except someone whose profile is very close to yours. The software providing you your individual experience won't have shown that to you. You click on cats, it was a dog story, it will never even show up in your scroll.

You can forward the link to your friends though, publish it to your feed. But most of them won't click on it, won't read it, at best they'll make a mental note to check it out later in case you bring it up again later. It's not that they don't think it will be interesting, it's not that they don't value your forwards, but the computer is giving them a more personal feed than you. The computer knows what they like and is better at holding their attention than you are (or it will be very soon at least.). Don't worry though, the computer knows your friends too. And when several of your friends click on the same thing and give that thing their attention, the likelyhood will rise that the computer will highlight that very same link to you. Deny those links from your friends enough times though and the computer will slowly stop showing you them. The computer will be the first to know if your friendships start slipping away. Maybe at a certain point it will even ask you "Do you want to remove John Doe from your friends list?"

You might even say yes, because you are so connected. You'll still have the dozen or so friends and family and a dunbar's number worth of connections and acquaintances that evolution has equipped you to deal with, plus a 1,000 or two more people's names who you somewhat recognize. Foremost among all these will be your computer's feed, because it knows what you like. It knows what you've been talking about lately and knows what you are likely to be interested in, and you'll pay attention to it, but it will be so personal that you won't share it with anyone else. You won't share all of it anyway, maybe glimpses of it, but no, not all of it. Not the part based on your private journals, or the part based on your medical records, or the fact that for whatever reason you click on some hollywood starlet's photos just a little more than you'd care to admit too. You won't share the complete GPS mapping of your exact movements for the last 5 years, even though the part of your feed that connects to your phone knows that.

You'll read the most interesting things. Watch the most interesting videos. Listen to the most interesting music. And yes, get the most relevant ads. And a computer feed will have your attention. Will be in your top 5 if not top 3, if not top 1.

I'm in advertising. It's my job to get people's attention, at my best I help find the right people and advertise to those who can use and benefit from the information I'm charged with delivering. But once you start hanging out with the feed, once the feed is your best friend. Once you are a demographic of one and your time and attention is completely gatekeepered for you by this feed, well then, my job is going to be alot lot more difficult isn't it?

P.S. I read thru the above once, I added a few more comments along the way. I didn't read it again though, frankly I'm surprised you did, and in anycase, My Google Reader and Twitter are calling me, I don't have time to read this a third time ;)]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p918
Nice path though the woods. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p917
Seidelman Park - Lots of Giant Ant Hills in this park. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p916
Taken with the Palm Pre...interesting blur. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p915
]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p914
Adam and Comfort moved on 8/29/09 ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p913
Taken back in June... ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p912
Another Photo at Ren Fair. I took this with Jennifer's SLR. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p911
Another Jennifer picture... me playing with her SLR. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p910
Another pic I took with Jennifer's SLR. Caught a really devious glance. Sometimes you just hit the shutter at the right time. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p909
Bridge at Siedleman Park 9/4/09. Taken with Jennifer's SLR ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p908
We took way too many pictures of this Tortise :) ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p901
Another pic of that Smart Car

-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0909.php#p900
On my way in to work today I drove behind a Smart Car. Really cool little car. At $13,450 it seems pricy for something that small, but I bet it would be a blast to drive around in.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0908.php#p890 Michigan Renaissance Festival

Went to my first Renaissance Festival yesterday. Good Times. Video above should give you a little flavor of the day. More comments later perhaps. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0908.php#p889 Random Non-Sequiters

Long time no blog.

I just noticed that alot of my earlier pictures from the month have dropped off the page. specifically my Comiccon photos are gone. I pull/post the pictures directly from the Flickr RSS feed, but the RSS feed only holds 20 entries. With my shiney new Palm Pre, I've been taking at least 1 or 2 images a day... so the earlier stuff is dropping off. Shouldn't be too difficult a fix though, I'll add some code to feed the RSS feed into my local DB and that should take care of the issue.

Still need to transfer alot of the Comic Con photos and Videos from my camcorder and Digital Camera anyway. Totally past the news cycle of the event but it will still make a good retroactive post down the road.

District 9

I saw District 9 a week ago. Good film. Sortof a novelty along the lines of Cloverfield though. Really neat how much special effects they could get into such a low budget movie, but in the end there wasn't much to the story. If you aren't familiar with Alien Nation or Enemy Mine, then there might be a fresh new niche in this film for you to experience, but being as I've seen those films mostly there was just the novelty of having the special effects integrated with the handheld camera work.

It's a movie worth seeing, and it would be good in the theater, but I don't think it would lose much on the small screen either, especially since the film is largely wrapped by a television documentary style formatting. Good. Do See.

Intersection

Went to the Intersection Lounge this past week for a benefit concert thing in support of some co-workers who are "climbing a mountain for charity". Four different groups.

The first on stage was a co-worker of mine. I did not know before this that he performed music. It's always cool to discover the hidden talents of people that you only slightly know. Now though, I think my co-worker should bring his hat and guitar to work :) At the very least we should talk him into opening for our next full department meeting. :)

I didn't catch the names of the female duo that followed my co-worker. They sang, played guitar and keyboards to a wider accompaniment on tape. Kindof a Liz Faire type vibe but also good.

The third act was The Outer Vibe Young group of "kids"-- fun rock with great stage presence. Jennifer had introduced me to a couple of their CDs and they were one of the main draws for me to the evening.

The girl member of the group was particularly impressive as she switched from keyboard to trumpet to "guitar-style-keyboard" to juggling Maracas and what have you. Lead singer has a Mick Jagger rock star kind of prance thing going on, worked well for their music. One guitarist had the long heavy metal hair while the other had a sortof clean cut Devo thing going on. Drummer knew how to hold it all together too. Definitely a band worth seeing on a stage large enough for them to move because they provide a very visually energetic show.

After The Outer Vibe, Brian Vanderark of "Freshman" Verve Pipe fame did a one man acoustic guitar set. First time I had seen him. Tall, very professional guitarist/singer, great set. His father had worked in my office at one point, and the resemblance was evident. Much much more lo key performance after coming off of The Outer Vibe though, I would have liked to have seen him with a slightly less intense opening act as the downshift in energy from the vibe to VanderArk was a bit much for me. We didn't stay through his entire set, which is no commentary on his performance, it's just at the time we were about 3.5 hours in, and it was a Wednesday night and a little bit of a drive across town so rather than be a zombie the next day for work, we cut out out after 4 songs or so. I would want to see him again though.

Game Night

We had our last "regular" game night with Adam and Comfort last night. It's been a sort of sad week of "regular" "lasts" with them this week. We'll have future game nights and evenings for sure, Flint, where they are moving to this weekend, isn't exactly the far side of the moon, but the game nights will be considerably less frequent for sure.

Oh and in case you are wondering, yes Adam did win. again :)

All for now, and I will go back and repost some of the earlier in the month photos of Comic Con and others that have slid off the blog later, hopefully before I close this page for the month.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0908.php#p888 Movies

This past Saturday I saw The Time Traveler's Wife. Enjoyed the movie, it is not a traditional romantic movie structure. I was pleased with that. No real plot to speak of, however, there are several minor conflicts within the movie but overall it is structured as a series of vignettes where we peek in on the two lead characters (Eric Banna and Rachel McAdams) at various parts though out their lives. Time Travel here is a sci-fi proxy to showcase some of the problems and frustrations a couple would have if one of them was often called away on business for indefinite periods of time, etc.

One point of note, it is refreshing to see a movie with two adult well adjusted romantic leads that compliment eachother well without a movie mission statement of one fixing the other. That may take some of the traditional drama out of the film, but at least it's not cliche.

This movie shares alot of the themes of the one season Journeyman series. I liked both, but watching this movie really made me wish that Journeyman had continued. All in all, a good light sci-fi flavored movie that the non-sci-fi initiated may also enjoy. Go see, and at least-- rent.

Last week I saw G.I. Joe and dozed off during it several times briefly. never a good sign for an action movie that you see at 6:30pm. The movie only superficially resembles the 80s G.I. Joe in that it shares some character names, traits and to a lesser extent looks. The film suffers from being over simplified to present itself well to 6 year olds within a 2 hour movie format. If you have young boys that you are looking to take the movies, this is a good pick, under 8 years old or so, they'll probably love it. For anyone who grew up on the comics, toys and tv show, this film will leave you lacking I think. (not everyone I have spoke with feels this way, but for the life of me I can't understand the positive conclusions.)

I recommend skipping this one (unless you have young boys in tow). No theater and no video. Find yourself a copy of the recent Adult targeted Animated G.I.Joe DVD: G.I Joe Resolute instead.

Also currently working through Funny People. Good Film so far. Long film though as it pretty evenly focuses on two main characters and intertwines a full length movie plot for each of them. Possibly a slightly longer review when I finish the last 30 minutes. Be forewarned though, there is humor, but this movie is not a comedy. Again more thoughts when I finish the film. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0908.php#p897 August 16, 2009

Jimmy Johns in the Park with Jennifer

]]>