Tron Legacy

Tron, the original visionary movie that brought us the future of moviemaking is finally receiving a sequel.

The big idea is one again center stage. In the first Tron it introduced the audience to the then novel concept of virtual worlds and digital animation. This was something that left most of the audience nonplussed but made it an instant classic with a part of Generation X.

This time around the big idea is much more subtle. The virtual world is evolving toward naturalism away from digital simplicity with its own weather patterns and complexity of architecture.

Jeff Bridges plays two versions of himself and the one version has been digitally ‘youthened’.

A computer re-modeled younger Jeff Bridges

The real Jeff Bridges

In Avatar the computer generated imagery was used to create aliens, albeit very realistic and recognizable ones – but as much as you can see Sigourney Weaver it is still a blue skinned, broad nosed, 10 foot alien non the less.

In Tron we have an established actor being in effect ‘animated’; motion captured and then digitally re-modeled.

What does this mean?

After the first movie some people laboured under the misconceived idea that the computer ‘did’ the effects instead of it just being a tool.

In this film a existing tool is used in a different way. In the future, effectively now, you will still have actors, this method can only happen when someone has acted and has been motion captured. However in post-production the actors can then be digitally re-modeled to be younger or even look like someone else.

It is about the acting and not how someone looks. Think of it as digital make-up.

The big implication though is that they can be made to look like someone else.

Ever wanted to see Marilyn Monroe and Steve McQueen headlining again? In effect nothing is stopping that from happening any more.

Go watch the trailer to see all the more realistic pieces than the quick snapshot I got here.

Ubuntu is the Linux distro run by Mark Shuttleworth the South African entrepreneur under the ubuntu philsopy.

My server was in bad need of updating; I’ve been running Fedora 8 for al long time and the current Fedora release is already version 13. The upgrade path, version for version and doing it piecemeal was just to much.

I re-imaged the server to run on the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. The whole process was really quick thanks to the way my hosting company www.bytemark.co.uk has set up their server farm.

A quick admin login, choosing a new OS, re-image, copy of the /var/www and some permission jiggery pokery and we where away.

A few years ago this would have been a major pain to do now it was done in minutes. this is some times a benchmark not really looked at, how common tasks get sped up by the progression of technology as opposed to the cutting edge and new product launches which garner most of the press’s time.

Apple iPod Touch

I’m one of those people that didn’t really have or needed a mobile till I was thirty and then I discovered that well … I didn’t really need one.

Generation Y people will not understand it, but the phone, that supposedly makes life easier and solves organisational problems, has created more demands on me than I had BEFORE they where available.

I’m not a complete Luddite and I do own one, however very much on my terms. I want a communication device – not a leash.

I have many reasons and mainly there is the intrusion. I once had someone call me about a work idea, at the moment of having that idea – 11pm on a Sunday night. When I asked why they didn’t call on my landline the answer was “didn’t want to intrude”.

When you call a mobile you call a person – a landline you call a household.

Then there is the noise. With that I do not only mean the random ringing but also the enforced sharing of conversations. More accurately, seeing as we only hear one part of the conversation, a monologue with bits cut out. In the nineties if you spoke loudly to yourself like that in public you’d have a quick trip to a padded room! Its self absorbed and just plain rude.

When I’m traveling I have my phone with me and charged up . If I want, or need, to call someone it is there. It does not however ring, that what silent mode is for and I never share an inane conversation with half the train coach.

The problem though is that these days mobile phones come with cool stuff.

One such device is the iPhone. As you all know I’m really biased toward Apple. My liking does not however stretch so far as to pay a huge monthly contract cost to a single vendor for the privilege of the device. Specifically when, as discussed, I don’t really use the phone for any thing other than can be described as emergencies.

Enter the iPod Touch (iTouch seems to be common misnomer)

I get all the iPhone Apps etc. and with wi-fi I’m on the go wherever I find myself (I also have a App that finds me free wi-fi) and with the new OS release the vertical keyboard means I’m a speedy flying typing whizz.

My email is there when I want to read etc. Oh and it is a hell of a handheld gaming platform as well, just in case you tire from watching movies on it.

All in all a very underrated device in my opinion.

Highlight the song in your iTunes library, or in a playlist.

Go file->get info.

Select the “artwork” tab.

If the delete button is grayed out, click once on the picture and then click delete.

You can add a picture by selecting “add” and choosing the picture you want.

Good example are weddings. In Western societies a line gets drawn – a date is set. All organisation, preparations etc. gear up to that point.

Traditional Africans had a different approach. The wedding festival was had when the preparations have been completed whenever that may be.

The Mozilla team could have taken a lesson there!

Firefox 3 was hyped up to be launched on a specific day with tie-in marketing and event – like a commercial product. Al this in an attempt to break a Guinness record for downloads.

There lies the problem.

The focus seems to have been on delivering a product at a certain time rather than delivering it when the whole team signed off on their required tasks – including bug fixing.

Firefox is popular because it is a good browser. It was free from bloat and gave people many features and most importantly it did it so with minimum problems.

The team’s rush to get 3 out on this artificial deadline led to a “gamma version” final release. This version still has some half baked flaws which may be indicative of lot more problems under the hood.

Example flaw:

History and Cache clearing or more specifically the fact that how many time you press the button it does not actually work. This is especially a problem when you see an OLDER VERSION saved version of a page rather than the latest live version actual exists.

To change this the user has been advised to do the following.

1)Type “about:config” (without the quotation marks) into the location bar
2) Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button
3) Filter “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults”
4) Double click the row and reset the value to “0″

Sorry fanboys – this is NOT user friendly or intuitive. Also this is just a work around – it just means it doesnt store the history in the first place, not fixing the fact that clear function doesn’t work properly.

If you want to compete with Microsoft then deliver a better product NOT play the marketing game like them – which is why they have exactly these issues.

The Firefox edge has been lost with 3. For me the browser wars are back on.

Personally I’ve downgraded back to version 2.

It seems to be mostly W3C XHMTL compliant as well as CSS compliant (mine in any case NOT the gallery plug-in)