Representing Reality

John Dvorak has an article on “Photography and the Truth” today.  This got me thinking.  Before there was photography, no one considered pictures as accurate representations of reality.  Even a painting of a person was accepted as an artist’s interpretation of that person.

Thanks to living in a world of photographs, we presume that pictures somehow represent “reality” now.  Here’s the clincher: we also assume that pictures done before photography also represent reality.  This leads people to think that our ancestors must have been incredibly delusional to think some of what they painted was real.  Frankly, I think those ancestors would be amazed at how easily we accept photographs as “real” today, and using a program like Photoshop to “change” a picture would probably seem perfectly reasonable to them.

9/19/2006 4:06:43 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [1]  general

Premiere Week starts

While the days of a single “premiere week” for network television are long gone, this week comes closest.  After the drought of the summer, we have new shows starting this week right and left, mostly on CBS.  Here’s last night’s recap, based upon what I watched:

CBS Comedies:  CBS has pretty much taken over the first two hours of Monday night with comedies.  This year, we have three returnees and one newbee.

The Class:  This is the only new show on CBS’s Monday schedule.  A bunch of third-grade classmates get re-acquainted.  The show’s been described as a “Friends-style” show, and it has a lot in common with that one, including a really bad start (for those that don’t remember, Friends was pretty solidly panned when it started as a “Sienfeld rip-off”).  The show has some potential.  We’ll see where it goes.

How I Met Your Mother:  It’s pretty obvious by now, that the “mother” isn’t going to be making an entrance into this show anytime soon.  The title of the show should be more like “What my friends and I did before your mother met me and straightened me out”.  It remains an okay show, but nowhere near as funny as the critics would like you to think.

Two and a Half Men:  Here we go, series re-start. Last season ended with Alan (the nebbish brother) getting married to his girlfriend, Kandi.  So, of course, this season Charlie has gone back to his partying ways (the likes of which we never saw before), and (like clockwork) Alan gets dumped by Kandi. Yawn.  As an aside, I’m going to miss Kandi. I thought she was a great character.  However, I’m hoping this season we’ll see more of Rose, the next door neighbor stalker with the psych degree (another great character).  Also, more of Jake, Alan’s son.  You know, the show is definitely best when Charlie and Alan play straight man to the rest of the cast.  Here’s hoping.

The New Adventures of Old Christine:  I continue to have mixed feelings about this show (Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Emmy notwithstanding).  Her character is amazingly funny and way more non-PC than is usually allowed on network television, but the plots of the show are incredibly tedious and boring.  I hear that Wanda Sykes will have a bigger part this season.  That should liven things up a bit.

No shining start in the CBS comedy lineup.  But, on to the big fish on the new Monday lineup:  Studio 60!

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:  This show’s gotten a lot of hype, thanks to the identities of the producers:  Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme.  They’re the creative force behind Sports Night (for those that remember) and West Wing. Likewise, I’ve been looking forward to this show, since I’m a big Aaron Sorkin fan.  The show turned out to be a bit of a surprise, mostly pleasant.  It’s a lot darker than Aaron’s previous two shows.  There’s a definite “sinister” quality to the show; most of the sets are downright dark.  The scenes of the show seemed to say “dramedy”, a la Ally McBeal or Boston Legal.  The reality (at least from the pilot) is that this show is much more serious than even West Wing was.  Yes, there are funny parts (Matthew Perry plays a comedy writer after all), but it comes across as more “comedy relief” than part of the main plot.  I thought that it was also interesting that, while the show has an ensemble cast, it seems to center around Matthew’s and Bradley Whitford’s characters.  I expected this. What I didn’t expect was that Matthew’s character would be the “lead” between the two.  In West Wing, there was originally a similar arrangement with Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman) and Rob Lowe (Sam Seaborn), but it was Bradley that ended up being the main guy there, with Rob playing “straight man”.  Somehow, I expected the same in Studio 60.  Instead, its Matthew who takes the lead.  And, by the way, this is terrific.  I think Matthew Perry will be showing us just how good a dramatic actor he can be. He was probably the best in the pilot, followed closely by Sarah Paulson.  Also, its great to see Amanda Peet back on television.  I was a big Jack and Jill fan, and have loved her various screen parts.  Steven Weber is also terrific as the slimy executive responsible for much of the trouble on the show that Matthew and Bradley have stepped in to save.  All in all, if Aaron and company can keep the quality as high as the pilot, this will be the Emmy winner for best drama next year.

9/19/2006 10:04:48 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

Thoughts on scripting languages vs. compiled languages

Back in my salad days, I used to write programs for the Wang minicomputer.  The majority of what I wrote was in COBOL (yes, I know).  However, the Wang had a built-in scripting language called “Procedure” that served the same purpose as JCL did on the mainframe IBM’s.  Procedure was powerful enough that you could use it as a batch language, and build applications by gluing together utility programs, similar to what we do with BAT files on the PC.

While Procedure was very simple to use, and made getting certain applications up and running quickly, it had a big drawback: it was dog slow.  So, if it looked like my quick and dirty utility written Procedure was going to be used for a while, I rewrote it in COBOL.  The second writing took a lot longer than the first, but since I’d already proved that the application had significant usefulness, it made sense to rewrite it.

It seems to me that this is a good rule of thumb for modern scripting languages vs. their compiled siblings: Use the scripting languages to try stuff out and come up with something that’s useful. If it looks like the app will be used often, take the time to rewrite it in Java or C# (please, oh please don’t even try to write it in C++).  As I discovered 20 years ago, this approach gets the value you need when you need it.

9/18/2006 8:58:53 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

The fog starts to clear: Amazon Unboxed and the "Fast Forward" problem.

I was using my Media Center (where I ran into the Unboxed issue I talked about earlier) and discovered a couple of things:  Amazon does, indeed, use Microsoft technology for their videos:  The Mythbusters video I bought automatically appeared in my Media Center Videos list; the file is actually a WMV file.  The Fast Forward / Seek problem that I had with it also happens with Media Center.

After a quick Google search, it turns out that FF/Seek only works on indexed files. So:
1. This is not an “Amazon Player” problem per se, since all WMV’s exhibit the same behavior
2. The video player in Media Center is different than Windows Media Player: When I ran a video with WMP outside of the Media Center software, it acted like it had never been run before.
3. The Media Center video player can’t FF/Seek indexed videos (that seek fine in Real Player or Divx Player).

My conclusions:
1. Amazon is sitll not off the hook, because:  There were a lot of problems other than the lack of seek support; if they’d just indexed the file, Seek would have been supported with other players.
2. The Media Center video player also needs work.  FF/Seek works fine for recorded TV shows; it should work for pre-recorded shows as well (at least those with the necessary indexing).

Amazon, Microsoft, get with the program! I just might have to try out the new ReplayTV software after all…

9/17/2006 10:17:39 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | technology

Some people are clueless
Yahoo news posted an article about the Survivor Cook Islands premiere, where they said that it was a “a bust”.  Apparently, the show could only be successful if it indeed turned out to be objectionable.  Perhaps this says something about Yahoo’s editorial staff…
9/15/2006 1:57:49 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

One Reality season ends, and another begins

Reality alert:  Those of you who hate these shows, this one’s not for you.

 

This week, we saw the end of Big Brother All-Stars and the start of Survivor Cook Islands.

Big Brother: 
I didn’t watch much of Big Brother this year. The show’s getting long in the tooth, and pretty boring.  That being said, the final episodes were great.  Seeing Will Kirby, the “evil doctor” from BB 2, make it to the final four was amazing.  Some history for those of you who haven’t followed the show since its start:  Will was the winner of BB 2 (the only winner to make the All-Stars show), whose strategy was to tell everyone that he’d betray them, but always be nice to them (until the actual betrayal, which always happened).  He was a legend.  Among other things, that meant that he walked into BB 2 with the biggest target on his back. He plays the same kind of game, this time supported by his partner Mike “Boogie” Malin (They were allied in BB 2, but Will didn’t start his game winning strategy until after Mike was voted out).  At one point, Will announces to the whole household that he hates all of them! So, of course, they don’t vote him out. This turned out the be the most entertaining feature of the show, how “Chill Town” (Will and Boogie called themselves) went from underdogs to dominating the game.  Ultimately, Mike walked away with the victory, in no small part due to the great success of Chill Town’s strategy.

That being said, I really hope this is the last season for BB (probably not  ), because next year it’ll be back to the same old stale contestants.

Survivor Cook Islands:
This show’s been getting a lot of bad press the past few weeks, thanks to their “segregation” twist:  This year, there are 4 “tribes”, divided by “race”.  Of course, these are the American versions of race:  “African American”, “Asian American”, “Hispanic”, and “Caucasian”.  Being an “ethnic” person myself, I’m generally entertained when “white” folks find themselves being confronted by the fact that people are different, and have different backgrounds.  Here’s the “dirty little secret” that no one wanted to talk about before this show:  the “Caucasians” are a minority!  The last time I did my math, 5 out of 20 (or even 1 out of 4) does not constitute a majority.  In fact, this is the first season of Survivor where the white contestants are outnumbered!  Interestingly, the “Caucasian” tribe came in 3rd out of the 4 tribes in the first competition.  Stunt or no stunt, this new Survivor twist has restarted my interest in the show.

9/15/2006 10:31:58 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

Books, Books, Books.

Today, I saw a post from Jennifer that led to her list of favorite (and not so favorite) books.  This sort of boggled my mind, since I wanted to post about two books that I have: one I just finished reading, and one I’m reading now:

Practices of an Agile Developer (Venkat Subramaniam & Andy Hunt, ISBN 097451408X):
I just finished reading this; its probably the best book on agile development that I’ve ever read.  The book is very practical, and not geared to a particular flavor of agile development, like the XP books are.  I’d put this on my “must read” list for any developer.

Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# (Robert C. Martin & Micah Martin, ISBN 0131857258):
This is an interesting book, because its a re-do of a book that “Uncle Bob” wrote a while back focused on Java.  This book makes his points (all language agnostic) more accessible to C# programmers.  There’s an excellent chapter on an example of agile development around scoring bowling.  I saw Bob do this live, and it was remarkable.

I’m thinking of putting up a list like Jennifer’s, but at this point, that seems a daunting task:  I read a lot of books!

9/13/2006 8:53:35 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | books

Amazon's Unboxed should be called "Not Ready"

When I heard about Amazon’s new video downloading product called “Amazon Unboxed”, I figured I’d give it a try.  The only criticism I heard was that it took too long to download a show, but I regularly record and watch shows days after their broadcast, so that wasn’t a big deal to me.

To test out the system, I downloaded an episode of Mythbusters, a 45 minute show (no commercials  ).

First problem:  content availability. There was very little content available. It reminded me of what I see when I use Comcast’s OnDemand service:  Most of what I want to see isn’t available.

Next problem: download speed:  It was pretty obvious from my download session that they were limiting my download speed to some ridiculously slow number, which they didn’t do for downloading the software itself.

Next problem:  Fast Forward didn’t work.  Even though they had a Fast Forward button, and a way to move the play point to anywhere in the video, they didn’t work.  Clicking the button didn’t change the play position, and moving the play point resulted in it immediately snapping back to the beginning when the recording started to play.  I ended up watching the first half of the show multiple times .

Next problem:  Running the diagnostics destroyed my copy of the show.  When Fast Forward refused to work, I ran a built-in diagnostic of the software.  It found no problems, but trashed my copy of Mythbusters!  On the plus side, they allow you to re-download the show (after all, I bought it!), but that meant having to deal with the slow download yet again.

Final problem (the last straw):  The whole recording refused to play!  The first time I watched the program, I got about 30 minutes (2/3, remember no commercials), and then stopped watching.  After that, the program would only run about 20 minutes through (which I had to watch again, see above), and then ended!

That was it, I’d had enough at this point.  I had been skeptical of Amazon’s ability to really deliver here, since I know their attention to their customers is almost nonexistent.  They lived up to my low expectations.  Hopefully, Rhapsody will offer video downloads soon…

9/12/2006 10:17:26 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  technology | TV

Strange Computer Myths

Joel Spolsky posted an interesting entry to his blog today.  He’s using a Mac Pro from home, and is wondering why “people” say that Macs never crash, since his unit is requiring a hard reset about every two hours.

I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who believe that the Mac is un-crashable.  The same thing about Linux systems.  I used to be a system operator for several Unix-based computers, and we were happy if our systems didn’t crash each day.

I’m also entertained by the new Mac commercials, since they do such a good job of ignoring the current state of the art in computer software …

9/11/2006 11:57:47 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  technology

Agile Architect? Oxymoron? Maybe not...
Sam Gentile posted an interesting article on agile architects. For those of you who were never happy with XP’s early “organic” view of architecture (apparently a growing group), you should read this.
9/7/2006 1:29:58 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Fall Season Early Results

The Fall Season’s slowly creeping its way upon us, and since Fox has been good enough to start up early, I’m living up to an earlier promise to post my reactions/impressions of the new season.

Prison Break:  For those living under a rock, or who don’t own a TV (you know who you are), Prison Break is a Fox series about, guess what, a prison break.  This is its second season, and its been much better than its last.  I know a lot of folks enjoyed season 1, but I got tired of all the “prison” stuff.  This season, they’re out and on the lam.  So far, I’ve been enjoying it:  good action, good drama.

Vanished:  Fox’s (and the season’s) first new series.  It’s a pretty ho-hum show.  I watch it because Ming Na is in it, and I’m a big fan.  However, the show has potential (lots of secrets under the covers), and could get better.  I’ll keep watching and hoping for now (at least until the competition starts).

Standoff:  I shudder at the idea of a hostage situation each week.  Seems like a lot of tension.  So far, the show seems okay.  I’m not too hot on the romance between the two main characters. It’s okay as “back story”, but I hope they concentrate on the crises.

House:  I don’t watch it.  I know, I’m a communist. I find it boring.

Bones:  Second season for this show.  Dr. Brennan is still as asocial as last season.  She’s interesting to watch, since she's a “geek’s geek”, and displays all of the anti-social behaviors stereotypically common to the genre.  Yes, I said “all”. There’s no way a real person could function the way she does.  Once you realize that, the behavior goes from “annoying” to “entertaining”.  She has a new boss this season who’s a much better foil for her than last season’s boss.

Justice:  I think of this show as “Just Ice”.  It’s extremely superficial, with no real drama to the cases. If you like to watch naive lawyers fooling themselves and slimy lawyers, you might like this show. Might.  I’ll watch it until something better comes along, which will be any day now; it won’t take much.

Fashion House: My God! The show looks like porn!  I don’t mean the explicitness (though they sure take every advantage to show women running around in their underwear), the production quality is so cheesy that it really does look like (clean) porn! The acting is not as bad as daytime soaps.  It’s not holding my interest, though.

Desire: This is the other My TV Network show (5 days a week, with a sixth recap show).  After my Fashion House experience, I don’t think I’ll even bother with this show.

That’s it so far. 2 weeks to the big premiere week.

 

9/7/2006 11:00:22 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

I've had my Runway ego stroked
Hey, hey, hey!  Michael Rucker, one of the producers of Project Runway and a blogger,  just posted my comment in his blog!  Oh, the head rush!  Still, it was weird seeing my comments in print since the name came last. While reading it, I was thinking, “boy, this sounds familiar”.
9/7/2006 10:17:47 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV