Why the comparison between Matrix and Inception.

Minor spoilers:
The new movie by Christopher Nolan isn't a summer blockbuster in the sense that you can leave the theatre and know everything there is to know about it. It has a depth that can only be appreciated with a second viewing or a trained first viewing - like that of the critics, who understand the craft.

Many people, with their limited gamut movies with which to compare Inception compared it to the Matrix. I personally compared it to Total Recall and Solaris. All three of these have similar aspects with those of Inception. One notable difference between Inception and Matrix, however, is what the filmmakers wanted the audience to understand. Using the first installment of the Matrix as reference, we see a green-blue colour-hue to distinguish with reality as it is seen inside the matrix and outside of the matrix. Inception, however, is a film which strives very hard to assure the viewer that it is not clear whether or not the film-world of Inception is real or not. This is the point of the movie - once you think it is possible that something can be a dream, everything can seem that way. Once an idea is planted, it takes on its own life and can grow into anything. The viewer, then, is left in the dark as to the nature of reality in the film world.

On the other hand, my personal comparisons of Total Recall are much more sutable.

In the case of Solaris, thematic elements are practically the exact same: reality, marraige, loss, guilt, clones based on memories. Total Recall brought into question many of the same doubts about reality through many of the same mechanisms as those use in Inception. Forged identities, falsified journies through the memories or constructs of others and even the same doubts: in Total Recall, Dennis Quaid is a secret agent chased by elements of secret police forces. In Inception the character Cobb is chased at least by the United States and at least a few other governments (though these are implied). In the end, it's not completely clear if the reality of the film that the audience is left with is the "real" reality.

I might be off my mark as well, but what I hope I've shown is how Matrix is a much less apt movie to be put in the same sentence as Inception.

Vinyl sounds better.

An argument I thought was dead to logical people is the argument that "Vinyls sound better than cds". This argument is flawed for more reasons than you can imagine. The first time I heard it was in "The Rock" when I Stanley Goodspeed, an eccentric biochemist recieves a $600 LP in the mail. When asked why he didn't just buy the cd, he reponded with the above argument.

People today do not usually listen to LPs. Today they buy CD or more commonly download their music. The quality of the sound is usually based on a number of factors, which are usually all the same. These are bits per sample (8 or 16), sample rate (11, 22 or 44) and bit rate. The first two are almost always the same. The last one changes according to the media. 128 is a pretty good bit rate, and up until about 2003 people usually used this size for encoding mp3s. Later, you got codecs (a compression method of which mp3 is one example) like OGG and FLAC and AAC. AAC and high quality mp3 are 320kbps and are the files you would pay for from iTunes or Amazon. The bit rate supported by CDA - CD Audio Red Book standard is 1411 kbps. As you can see, there is no essential loss in quality from 1411 of CD Audio to the 320 of the mp3 stores out there today. All of these bit rates can be thought of as a conveyer belt of boxes with information. The higher the number, the more boxes which flow by in a second. In real time, you can't even tell what they are.

Vinyl doesn't work like that, it's analog. A stream of sound which is turned into sound by the same stream of information, like a river instead of quickly flowing set of boxes. In our vision, we see 24.93 frames per second as motion, operating on the flicker fusion threshold. To hear digital audio - the "bits" like frames in a movie, are fused at a much lower rate. In other words, although the mediums are instrinsically different, they both operate on the idea that the brain will fuse samples and create seamless sound.

I once heard someone say something to the effect of "What makes art beautiful is that it dies." So an opera, a one night performance will never be the same again. A photograph will fade and decay. A painting will grow old and lose its original properties: in art restoration, only the interlaced lines are restored, allowing art historians to reexamine the original canvas just as it was when the artist left it (a trick of the eye makes it seem whole). Ask yourself "why go through so much trouble to for movies to try to produce a unique experience at the cinema before releasing it at the home?". The movie won't change but the experience will. In that same way, a concert which varies and changes the songs for live performance will also never be the same again. The allure of the live, the seduction of the big screen. In this vein of reasoning, a CD will not decay and will quickly lose it's beaty, while a vinyl, so-named for it's material, will change with every listen as the needle which delicately dances over the tracks and grooves gradually wearing out the needle and the record.

People often say of Bose, the speaker company: It's got the BEST sound. Owners of a Bose speaker system are not so quick to agree. The magic is in the difference. It gives you a different sound. People like different. So, when after you hear the same Pink Floyd song on the radio, on your ipod and on your computer -- each an exact replica of the other - and then you hear a record, played 17 times and say that it sounds better, ask your self, does it sound better or different?

My point is not that CD's are the best possible medium for reproduction of sound of any kind, but that vinyl, although it can sound better, does not always sound better, as it is constantly changing.

iPhone backgrounds

There are four default art backgrounds with the iPhone. These aren't named on the iPhone. Two of these are well-known masterworks from household-name artists. The other two, not so much:

Mona Lisa - Da Vinci
Starry Night - Van Gogh
Still life with apples and oranges - Cezanne
Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte - Seurat

Best and easiest suggestion for iPhone

Apple,
After about 15 minutes, I gave up on finding a link to submit this directly to you.

The problem:
In the philosophy of the iphone touchscreen, my finger controls what is happening on the screen, a tap opens something, a flip advances the screen very quickly and a double finger motion zooms in and out. So why is it that when I press the screen and turn the iphone sideways, that the iphone - not my finger - does the controlling?

The solution:
When your finger is pressed to the screen, ASR (automatic screen rotation) is temporarly disabled. This would be great for reading in safari when you are in bed and lying to the side.

You're welcome.

Re: Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and me

For some reason, you can't respond to certain Nytimes articles. I recently read this this article in the New York Times. While the underlying message is spot on, I couldn't help but disagree with two things the author mentioned. First, that Google created the Android-based G1 Phone to compete with Microsoft, as if Microsoft were the only competition (Symbian doesn't exist?). Second, this paragraph:

And don’t forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature. Microsoft and Google have yet to do something like that.

Are we to assume that Google's gmail did not revolutionize the web-mail based market? Or maybe we should assume that it wasn't mature when gmail entered, even though now, even years after Gnail's launch, Yahoo's Y!Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail are no where even close to the comfort level produced by Google's Gmail: I have lots of space, free pop/IMAP access, a working (not broken or unusable) interface, the ability to freely and easily check my email on my phone. That sounds like a revolution of a previously "mature" market to me.

Caps Lock

These are the rules:
You should always shout the first letter of your sentences, you should shout the pronoun "I" whereever it is in the sentence. Proper names should also begin with a shout. You should shout every letter of acronyms.

Spider Man 583 (26 MX)

On the cover the the English version, spiderman says "Sheesh, guy gets elected and suddenly he's everywhere".

On the Mexican verion it says "Hey, if you get to be on my cover, can I be on the dollar bill?"

Download (from) - Upload (to)

I don't usually like to talk about deterioration in language, but this one seems unexcusable. Up and down still have very very vibrant binary meanings. So why is it that the words upload and download are being used interchangeably? Download means someone else has something and you want it, you load the file from a member of a network who is hierarchically above you (you need it, they have it), you take it down. Upload means they don't have it and you want them to have it.

I uploaded my videos which I made to Youtube.
I downloaded the Windows Updates from Microsoft.

Upload and download are for internet, because it deals with the hierarchy of the internet.
Computer components such as scanners, usb drives and ipod have no hierarchical relationship: they are merely extensions of the computer itself. Here the words are "transfer" and "copy". Interestingly, transfer is a word which can be used in every situation. I can transfer files from Yahoo and to Yahoo. I can transfer my photos from my camera to my computer or from my computer to my camera. iTunes transfers files from my computer to my iPod, and data from my iPod to my computer. I don't understand the difference between trigonometry and calculus, so I just say "maths". I know that you might not understand the difference between upload and download, so why not say "transfer"?

Help me! Poison Ivy.

I'm a little dense. The medical field is always using terms which go way over my head and with the rapid pace that things are changing, who can keep up?

For example, I was using Google Trends to check out a theory I had. I thought that the lines for Zanfel and Poison Ivy would show where summer was. I was, of course, right. This was when I noticed the article in the latter entry that caught my attention: Dermatologist Debunks Poison Ivy Myths. Dermatologist? That's the skin guys, right?

Here's a bit I found intriguing, which is why I need help:
"[Dr. Jeffery] Dover said that soap and water is best. Wash your body and your clothes immediately."

Which is what reminded me of something I once read:

What not to do

Of course, I'm not dense. The above book was published by the American Medical Association in 1987. I get it - things change and the American Academy of Dermatology happens to agree with Dr. Dover. The idea is that when you hear the folk wisdom that everyone is too willing to offer, be sure to check on it yourself from reliable sources.

In a related note, Zanfel and it's generic equivalents actually do work if you shell out the $25-40 it costs and follow the odd instructions on the package. I've used it the past few times I've gotten a case of Poison Ivy and it clears up the rash in a few hours.

Fringe - The sad turn.

I love Fringe. But lately, I've been loving it less and less. This past episode almost had me give up on it. I don't want to sound picky: when I searched for Fringe and the floating letters, I was expecting to see other people just as unhappy at their decline as I was, but what I saw was just the opposite. People actually want the letters to stop!

In the first two episodes of Fringe, I thought the floating words of orientation were amazing. Particularly when the words were no longer the focus of attention but still appeared in the background. This, for me, showed that the words were actually part of the diegesis. The show is all about things you and I do not fully comprehend, so the words stood as a way of saying making you ask "Are they really there? or Why couldn't they be?"

Just as you are asked to believe that a computer program can liquefy your brains, you are being asked to believe that large gray letters might be able to exist in the actual environment of the scene. After the second episode the floating letters never appeared in the background, but you still got them. In this past episode, I had to wait about 30 minutes before the first letters appeared and even then, they only appeared twice. So if any of the producers read my blog, I beg of you, please don't remove this unique element of the show from it!

Update 05/13
The letters are back and better than ever. I love this great aspect of this exciting show!

The myth of the iPhone Killer

Right now, there are many phones on the market which proclaim or are proclaimed to be "iphone-killers" by their most loyal fans. These phones include the HTC Diamond and the Nokia 5800 Music Express. The idea of an iphone killer is that there is a phone which is so stable, fast and sexy that it will effectively kill the idea that the iphone is the best phone on the market. These phones are great - they have all the hardware, they've got the sound, the battery life, the gps, the huge amount of memory, the accelerometer (the thing which detects movement). They even have some great apps - the nokia has a touch screen app for browsing photos which mimics the iphone's app. So why then are these phones still not in the same market? Why is it that with all these capabilities, that the iphone is still the best phone out there?

Go to facebook. Go to yahoo. Go to amazon. Go to any site and try to find an application made for your phone. They don't exist. That's not 100% true. Many of these sites are actually supported by Blackberry, but Blackberry lacks the hardware support that these other great phones have, except for the notable exception of the Storm, which has it's own problems (like slow web browsing).

The point is this: no other phone even comes close to the iphone's large application catalog. On top of that, no other phone offers an usable alternative to the iphone's ipod function. Nokia has supposed music management software which is at best a bad attempt. RIM's Storm has no music management software and the HTC Diamond also uses very rudimentary software. But if you want something that downloads podcasts and records ratings and records the number of times that you listen to a song and then makes playlists with that information, the iPhone is your only bet.

The iphone is not perfect. It costs a ton of money. If you opt for the 16 GB model, it's $300 upfront, and then $15 a month just to have the iphone and another $15 a month for the mandatory data plan. The second flaw is that it has a fixed camera lense. The 5800 and the Diamond both have variable focus lenses, which can possibly allow you to focus on objects near the phone, like QR Codes. The next big flaw is that the iPhone has no IR transmitter, so no universal remotes for iphone users. Despite all this, no other device mixes so well all of the good features you could want in a phone as the iPhone does. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Amely - The movie.

Emelie.
I saw a movie the other day. It was called Amely or some such. It was one of those "feel good" French flicks. I guess it had a few good things about it, but I couldn't name any off the top of my head. I'd like to give a few words of advice to the director Jean-Pâul Gautier. It's time to take a hint. Movies these days aren't successful or good if they aren't in English. It's about time these Frenchys pulled their head out of their ass and learned English like everyone else. It's no wonder that movies like [Record] and Abry las hojas and the vanishing didn't have any success in their original languages. I might point out that the foreign section of my local video store is always stocked and it has cob-webs on it. Take a hint foreigners: nobody wants to see a movie in any language other than in English. On top of that, I didn't spend 2000 dollars on a tv with blue-ray so that I could have some words blocking the picture. I think the movie studios should get together and block all of the foreign films. So listen Gualtier. Don't waste your time with the crappy gibber-jabber movies. We want English movies. If you don't make them that way, we'll just fix them sooner or later. So I for one will be the first in line at the movies when Emelie comes out in English.

(This is a joke, as you can tell.)

PennyTalk

So you have a friend or some friends and family in the rest of the world? You want to keep in touch, but you don't want to turn your phone into a drain that dials your wallet away? I get it. You saw the Pennytalk ad in the in-flight magazine and it looks to good to be true! What could be the catch? Penny is a services which is a service which supposedly offers international calling for only a few pennies a minutes. This is only slightly true. I think it is highly misleading as you will see, for the majority of the phone calls you make (under about 8 minutes). While the rate is low, there is an enormous base rate. The base rate is 49¢ for every call, whether you can understand the other person or not. So if you have to call two times before you get a good connection.... you can see where this is going. Also, don't worry about saving time with pennytalk. The customer service people regularly take upwards of 10 minutes of getting around to your phone call. Then there's that other issue - Pennytalk makes no intention of making phone calling easy for you, there is no speed dial or quicklist: you must remember that 10 - 17 digit number in its entirety, because you will have to dial it everytime you call. I use AT&T World Connect. This service recently switched from being country specific to worldwide. You use to have to pay 3.99 a month for every country you want a discounted rate to. This is now 3.99, for discounts to the whole world. (That's the equivalent of about 8 calls with penny talk). I've made up some charts comparing AT&T's World Connect and PennyTalk.

In summary, Pennytalk:
- has an expensive connection fee.
- will require more than one call to have an intelligible conversation.
- takes a long time to place a call (no speed dial)
- has bad voice quality.

Go fight about it.

The argument is this: Abortion ends a life, which left to carry out its own course, would have existed. This is a rupture in the natural order of things, and therefore wrong. What I haven't heard about, and am just dying to hear about is the contribution which is just another form of cloning. You are creating life in people who would, through the natural order of things, not have had kids, and not possibly had 8 kids, as is evermore frequent. The church recognizes that it is possible that two people might not be physically able to have children together. The church's answer to people who find themselves in this predicament? An annulment - the marriage never happened. What I'm trying to say by all this is that, just as an abortion is an abnormal, and not by the will of a high power, termination of a life, fertility clinics, which are abnormal ways of starting life, must be seen on equal terms - it's wasn't god's doing. And if you're one of the unfortunate people who find themselves in this position, the churches response to you is "tough luck", you aren't someone who is meant to have children.

A conversation I had with my iPod today.

Me: Hey, how's it going?

ipod: Pretty good.

Me: Yeah? You look pretty full.

ipod: you know...

Me: you still letting that computer boss you around?

ipod: ...

Me: You know, you really outta stick up for yourself, everytime I see you you're changed a bit, you just let him take your shit and then give you new shit, why don't you tell him what to do?

ipod: I know, I know... I don't know what it is. I just feel like I need him so much. Whenever I'm with him I just feel so energized. I feel so much better. Later, I just feel used.

Me: you can't go on like this. One of these days he's just gonna upgrade. You gotta be your own person, you gotta do your own thing, you can't let him control you.
--
I forget how it went after that.

The List

What do these people have in common? (More to come later)

Hugh Everett III
Douglas Adams
Dorothy Parker
Rod Serling
Barack Obama
Ayn Rand
Cristina Peri Rossi
WH Auden

Idiot movie reviewers from Amazon.

These guys are the worst - they review all the movies with 10 - 12 paragraphs of slop. If someone cared enough to read a 12 paragraph movie review, it wouldn't be from their mouths. The customers are also to blame - who automatically gives good feedback to long reviews? I know you're not reading them.
Also, Amazon has a 5 point rating system why do you think you're so good that you get to make up a 10-point system?
Do something with your life, no one gives a damn about some dude who spends all his or her time on amazon typing stupid reviews.

I think I should retract everything I've just said, I think I remember reading a crappy review on amazon as a blur on the front of Batman's 2-disc set.

Compare 1

Over the years I've come to notice some songs that have very similar melodies, in these "compare" entries, I will mention them.

Enya - Deora ar mo Choi
Lange - Follow me (Original mix)

If you listen to them, let me know what you think as far as any similarities.

Kat Arney

One of best podcasts out there is "Naked Scientist" podcast a program where they intend to expose science. Kat Arney is one of the group.

Well it turns out she's something of a musician, too. Check out her stuff here, on her myspace page. "Untitled for harp" is good stuff.

Benh Zeitlin

If you've seen the obama video "We have a lot of work to do".
You will note that complementing his amazing speed, is a great song by Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin called "Memorial" "Elysian Fields" and "U.S.S. Jimmy Lee".



Upon finding this song, I realized that the movie, Glory at Sea, is almost entirely unavaible. It has a reference on iMDB (25 minute runtime) and a web page and a trailer, but no way to get it. You can't order it on amazon, you can't download it on itunes and the movie's website doesn't give any hints as to a general progression in that direction.

Here's my prediction: Benh Zeitlin, currently on the periphery of the public spot light, isn't going anywhere. He's definitely going to rise to fame, and I imagine that it will be through amazing soundtracks.