Living Digitally

Review of 21

See it: Yes (and read the book)

I'm no book snob. I liked the book Jurassic Park, but I think I liked the movie better. And Fight Club was a much better movie than book (which is a tribute to how amazing the movie is because the book is pretty good). I could go on and on, but my point is this: I give every book and movie an equal opportunity to impress me.

I was impressed by both the movie 21, and the book that inspired it, Bringing Down the House. Which is better? The book is a better book, and the movie is a better movie. In other words, both are well done and appropriate for their genres.

I do actually prefer the story of the book (the true story) over the screen adaptation, however it probably wouldn't have made a very popular movie. The book is much more real. It's messy and chaotic, and since it's a true story, it defies formulas and nice tidy endings. It would have been hard to squeeze into two hours, and it would have played out more like a documentary. And finally, I doubt it would have gotten the applause that the movie received from the audience in the theater.

The movie is clearly a Hollywood version of the book: good looking actors (MIT math geniuses probably don't clean up quite this well), retribution, the good guys winning in the end. It was essentially a heist movie inspired by true events which made it more fun than amazing or inspirational.

The movie was entertaining. The book was amazing. Both of these things are good.

Oh, and if you were confused by the "game show host problem" discussed in the variable equations math class, it is more commonly known as the Monty Hall problem, and is fascinating and fun (insofar as probability can be).

Two new sites on climate change

Climate change is something I'm very concerned about, and I think just about everyone else would be, too, if they knew how serious it was. That's why I created New World Climate. New World Climate is a blog where I chronicle actual instances of climate change. It's designed to show that climate change isn't something that we're going to have to worry about in the future — it's something that's already happening, and that we have to deal with right now.

The second site, TipBin, is about accumulating tips for how to reduce our carbon footprints, and ultimately combat climate change. New World Climate is designed to demonstrate the problem, and TipBin is about trying to solve it.

I hope you can take the time to look at and contribute to both these sites. Right now, helping to prevent climate change is still voluntary, but the day will come when it will be mandatory. The more we do now, the easier that transition will be.

What we mean by "change"

I'm going to do something I've never even considered doing in all the years I've been blogging: I'm going to make a political statement. I've never once been inspired to write anything even remotely political which, in retrospect, is obviously the result of almost never being even remotely politically inspired. But after so many years of near apathy, things are changing.

First of all, regardless of your political views, I think we can all agree that we're ready for something new. That's not really the question. The real question is what kind of change we want, and who can bring it about.

Clinton's position is that 35 solid years of being a lawyer, a governor's wife, the first lady, and a senator, qualifies her to make the kinds of changes disillusioned American citizens so badly want. 35 years of operating in and around Washington, fund raising, and building one of the most powerful political machines I've ever seen is, according to Clinton, the best way to rebuild, redefine, and fundamentally recast American politics. Think about that for a second. Clinton's entire platform is essentially an oxymoron. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and indeed I believe that electing Hillary Clinton, and expecting fundamental changes in American politics, is nothing short of insane.

Recently, while trying to figure out why I've been so disillusioned with politics for most of my life (with only a few small glimmers of hope which where violently stamped out), something extraordinary occurred to me. The first George Bush was elected president in 1989 followed by Bill Clinton for eight straight years. After Bill Clinton, George W. Bush was elected the next two terms. If Hillary Clinton were to be elected for the next two terms for a total of eight years, that would mean that for 28 years straight, only two families will have occupied the White House, and for 16 of those years, it will have been the same two people (Bill and Hillary). I don't know about you, but this doesn't exactly scream fundamental change to me. In fact, it barely even sounds constitutional.

Something else that occurred to me recently is the fact that Al Gore hasn't endorsed anyone yet. I've been waiting for another chance to vote for Gore for almost eight years now, but as it became more and more evident that Gore is probably as disillusioned with politics as the rest of us, I started wondering who he would endorse. Then I suddenly realized that by not endorsing Clinton, he has clearly endorsed Barack Obama. The Clintons and Gore obviously have very strong ties -- strong enough, I imagine, that it would be a little too brazen for Gore to publicly endorse Obama. However, the fact that he has not endorsed Clinton is, in my mind, as good as endorsing her opponent.

The final point I want to make is that the Democrats need to think ahead when they decide who will go up against John McCain. Rather than looking at a snapshot of data at the moment they need to make their decision, they would do far better to project and trace the effectiveness of both Clinton's and Obama's campaigns all the way out to November. Think about where Obama's campaign was a month ago, think about where it is today, and use that data to calculate where it will be in November. Now plot Clinton's and McCain's campaigns on the same chart. That steady, positive, exponential curve of Obama's line is what we mean when we talk about change.

Review of "I Am Legend"

See it? Yes (especially if you like dogs).

My instincts told me not to go see I Am Legend. I'm skeptical of movies where big beautiful Hollywood actors play scientists (Elisabeth Shue in The Saint, Bridget Moynahan in I, Robot, etc.). But I had a free evening, and I'm a total sucker for zombie flicks, so I decided to take a chance.

I'm glad I did. I Am Legend turned out to be a very good movie. I especially appreciated the pace. I was worried during the very first scene when Robert Neville (Will Smith) was hunting caribou from a red Mustang Shelby GT in New York City at insanely high speeds, however the movie then really slowed down, really took its time, and really did a great job of exploring what it might be like being the last person in the world. That's primarily what I wanted out of I Am Legend. Sure, zombies, weapons, and gore are all cool, but what's far more interesting is seeing how Neville learns to adapt to isolation, and maintain as much normalcy, routine, and civility as possible.

There are several scenes where I Am Legend tries to explore the madness of isolation which I felt were a little forced, and several times when Neville is compelled to utter to himself or dictate to his computer things that he probably wouldn't have if not for the fact that he was trying to clue the audience in on something. But the flashback scenes were very well integrated (something difficult to pull off), and overall the movie was good enough that it was very easy to overlook the few questionable scenes. I also have to mention that post-apocalyptic New York was extremely well portrayed.

Will Smith was good in I Am Legend, but his German shepherd, Sam (played by canine actors Abby and Kona), absolutely stole the show. These dogs can act circles around most of the Hollywood A-list, and certainly drew far more of a reaction from the audience than any human actors I've seen recently. In fact, this movie may be to German shepherd breeders what Top Gun was to Air Force recruiters. Funny how you can kill people onscreen by the dozens, hundreds, or in this case, even by the billions, but put a single dog in harm's way, and the audience gasps with horror.

I Am Legend was a great balance between action, gore, special effects, and deliberate exploration of solitude with an ending that I thought was both tidy and unexpected.

Review of "JPod" by Douglas Coupland

Read it? If you're a self-proclaimed geek, by all means.

If you're looking for a book that celebrates geekdom and video games like Death in the Afternoon celebrates virility, then read Douglas Coupland's JPod.

JPod is about five cube mates — each with their own manias, neuroses, and complexes — who work for an overly corporate and bureaucratic gaming company in Vancouver. I use the term "work" loosely, however. The majority of their time is spent managing their dysfunctional families, soothing their angst, indulging their fetishes, placating their idiotic managers, and either issuing or participating in bizarre challenges like taking the first hundred thousand digits of pi, inserting a single incorrect digit, and seeing who can find it first. If you're a software developer, or if you've ever worked with software developers, you're probably following right along.

I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that I'm recommending this book. I actually started out actively disliking it. In fact, I disliked it until exactly page 184 (once I start reading a fiction book, I finish it come hell or high water — imagine my dismay after casually picking up Moby Dick one day). It was page 184, and in particular the passage below, that taught me how to read JPod:

"Ethan, watching you play Manhunt is like watching a steak being carved at Benihana."
"It's only pretend gore."
"With characters customized to resemble people here at work?"

Can't you just hear the laugh track? This was this passage that made me realize I was reading a 448 page sitcom — a story where everyone either knows exactly what to say, or says precisely the wrong thing; where every exchange is witty and quick enough to keep you from losing interesting and changing the channel; where characters are either impossibly intelligent and successful, or fantastically stupid.

Once I figured all this out, I found that I really liked the book.

JPod is a book for and about the video game generation: a group of people who paradoxically have superhuman powers of concentration, yet can't seem to focus on anything. Similarly, JPod briefly touches on dozens of different topics like autism, gore sites, human trafficking, marijuana cultivation, Chinese industrialization, and ballroom dancing, yet still manages to explore in painstaking detail such critical and stimulating topics as the history of Zima, and the best way to convince Roland McDonald to go on a date with you. The book is as ADD as its characters (and probably most of its readers).

Aside from confusion over the genre of the book, I had one other issue with JPod that I had to come to terms with: Coupland actually wrote himself in as a character. Not just any character, but a bona fide asshole. In fact, the very first passage of the book goes like this:

"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."
"That asshole."
"Who does he think he is?"

If I'd read that passage while still in the bookstore, I guarantee I wouldn't be writing about JPod right now. I would have gone with the David Foster Wallace novel I was holding in my other hand. For some reason, Coupland's technique seems a little narcissistic to me, like a really obvious and sort of sad attempt to turn yourself into a cultural icon. But refusing to admit defeat so soon (and having just paid $14.95), I kept reading. Coupland appeared in the book a few other times, and by the time he became a full-blown character, I had come to understand and like the book enough that I was ready to roll with it.

One thing I never doubted about JPod was that I really enjoyed the writing. Coupland has a way of expressing things in very human and immediately familiar terms. There were dozens of great lines like "Everyone suddenly remembered they were supposed to look interested," "I hoped to God that would shake my Etch-a-Sketch clean," and "Dad went over to the TV and touched one of those little black knobs beneath the screen that nobody ever touches." JPod has a way of talking to you like a good friend.

Reading JPod for me was like visiting my in-laws: a bit awkward at first, but in the end, I had a blast. If you're a neurotic, pod servant gamer yourself, JPod is a great way to get a little reading in without straying too far from your comfort zone.

Review of "No Country For Old Men"

See it? Yes, but first understand what you're getting into (keep reading).

I don't know how movie trailers are made, but I envision a bunch of marketing types in suits sitting in a boardroom brainstorming on how a movie should be pitched to audiences. After a bunch of whiteboarding and a few lattes, guys half their age wearing tee shirts and headphones go off to their Macs to make the vision a reality. There are a few iterations until the suits are happy at which point the trailer gets shipped off. The end result is often a work of art in and of itself, even though it most likely has very little to do with the movie it's supposed to be advertising. Trailers, after all, are marketing material designed to sell a movie. They are not designed to help viewers pick movies that are right for them. The purpose of trailer is to convince as many people as possible to see a movie as quickly as possible before word can spread about how crappy the movie actually is.

(If you have any doubts about the ability of a trailer to misrepresent a movie, just watch the preview for this wonderfully inspirational family film called Shining.)

My point is that No Country For Old Men is an excellent movie that, as its hart, is almost nothing like its trailer suggests. So misleading are the previews, in fact, that at least two people in the theater actually booed the ending. I admit to being somewhat confused by how the story ended myself (think Sopranos), however by the time I got to my car, it had sunk in enough that I thought I understood it. By the time I got home, I really liked it. And by the time I finished explaining the movie to my wife, I loved it and already wanted to watch it again.

I'll start with the easy points. The writing is great. The dialog is simultaneously fun, colorful, and eerie. The monologue at the beginning masterfully written and delivered by Tommy Lee Jones. And the acting and characters are, without exception, nearly flawless.

Now for the plot (don't worry -- no spoilers yet). No Country For Old Men is essentially about a drug deal that somehow goes south, a man who mistakenly comes across the money (Llewelyn Moss), and the attempt of a psychopathic killer (Anton Chigurh) to hunt him down. On the periphery, you have an old Texas Sheriff (Tom Bell) who is more trying to make sense of the violence than actually solve the case, and a combination hit man and bounty hunter (Carson Wells) who is hired to intervene. But don't confuse the plot with the meaning. As far as I can tell, there are no real heroes in No Country. There is no crescendo which builds up to a climax from which the good guys triumphantly walk away. In fact, I'm not entirely sure there are really any good guys. There is only misdirection and unpredictability, which I believe are the primary themes of the movie.

Hey, Google: It's time to launch Gmail already!

Did you realize that Gmail is still in beta? Have you noticed that you still have a limited number Gmail invites? Huh?

You can call an application "beta" all you want, but when thousands of people (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands?) depend on it on a daily basis, it's no longer beta. Gmail has been launched by consensus which means it's time for Google to tighten it up.

Rather than continuing to add features, I would much rather see Google bulletproof the features they already have and officially launch it so I can stop dealing with issues like these:

• A surprising number of errors. Yesterday, the attachment scanner wasn't working. Today, clicking emails in my inbox is sometimes a NO-OP. I often have to click send several times to actually get an email to send. These are basic operations, no?
• Since the recent update, only my Gmail contacts auto-complete in the "to" field. I don't know if this is a bug, or if this is designed to make me try to convince all my non-Gmail contacts to switch to Gmail, but it's extremely annoying, and it's not how it used to work.
• If you have Gmail configured for multiple accounts, and your reply to a message that wasn't sent to your Gmail account, the new message always defaults to being from your Gmail account rather than the account the email was sent to.

None of this is to say that I don't like Gmail. Quite the contrary, in fact. I switched to Gmail after years of using Yahoo! Mail, and I've never looked back. And their new IMAP support was just what I needed to make getting mail on my iPhone bearable. However, whether Google likes it or not, Gmail is no longer in beta. So as we say in the software industry, lock it down, bake it, and ship it!

Update: Thanks, Soheil, for pointing out that Google has addressed the third point about the from address. That just made my day!

Review of "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" by Cory Doctorow

Read it: Yes

I wanted to read a book by Cory Doctorow for two reasons:

1. I like Boing Boing, and since Cory is a Boing Boing editor, I figured I'd like a book written by someone who writes for Boing Boing.
2. Cory releases all his books under a Creative Commons license and makes them available for free in a variety of formats which I think is very cool. Ironically, I actually bought the book in order to support the idea of giving books away for free. Hmm.

Anyway, I picked Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (which I will refer to from here on out as Someone) from his canon of five books for no other reason than I thought it had the most intriguing name, and the most compelling cover art.

I'll warn you right from the beginning that if you're not an open-minded reader, don't bother with this review, or this book. Save yourself the time. Someone is so unique that I'm not even sure what genre it fits in to other than fiction. Science Fiction? Fantasy? Cyberpunk? Yes.

I'm not into spoiling plots, but just to give you some idea of what you're getting into by reading this book, Someone is about a man who will answer to any name which begins with the letter "A". He seems to be most commonly called Alan, so we'll go with that. Alan's father is a mountain, and his mother is a washing machine. Literally. And his brothers are Russian nesting dolls, a clairvoyant, and a psychopath. Alan's neighbor has wings which she's so committed to hiding from the world that she has her sadistic boyfriend saw them off on a regular basis.

The book follows two paths:

1. Alan's unconventional childhood growing up in a cave.
2. Alan's present day struggle to restore an old house, deal with the return of his psychopathic brother who is supposed to be dead, blanket a bohemian neighborhood in Toronto with free WiFi, and come to terms with his depressed winged neighbor.

I want to say that Someone is an unconventional book, but it's not so much the book or the writing style that is unconventional as it is the plot and the characters. In fact, that's what struck me most about this novel (and what I liked best about it): the plot and the characters are completely bizarre, however Doctorow treats it all with a great deal of literary care and respect. I've read strange books before where the author seemed to revel in the oddity of his work, adopting a writing style as unconventional as his subject matter. Doctorow, on the other hand, takes this world he's created extremely seriously and writes about it passionately, almost as though he's unaware of how strange it is.

Someone is certainly not for everyone, but I found myself entirely immersed in Doctorow's world, and able to take it every bit as seriously as Doctorow himself.

Review of the Apple aluminum keyboard

Apple's newest keyboards are very sexy. They are almost impossibly thin with Chiclet-like keys and an anodized aluminum housing. I bought the full-sized USB version (actually, I bought two -- one for the office and one for home), but there's also a smaller Bluetooth version available.

After several months of use, I've determined that Apple's emphasis was definitely on aesthetics when designing this keyboard rather than function. It's certainly the most beautiful keyboard I've ever used, but it's also one of the least comfortable and "accurate". By accurate, I don't mean that it literally makes mistakes, but there's something about its design that encourages me to make more mistakes than I typically make with other keyboards. In particular, I have problems with capitalization.

My other complaint is ergonomics. Even though Steve Jobs bragged about its good ergonomics during its world debut, I find it relatively uncomfortable to use. It probably isn't any less ergonomic than its predecessor, however it's much flatter which forces me to bend my wrists slightly further forward in order to meet it. According to Steve, this is a good thing, but occasionally, he and I don't see eye to eye.

The new aluminum Apple keyboard looks and sounds better than any keyboard Apple has ever created, but when it comes to comfort and pure WPM, I much prefer my big ugly Goldtouch.

Update: I appreciate all the feedback I've gotten on this article. In fact, I've decided to give the keyboard another chance. I'm really going to work on ergonomics and see if that makes a difference. I'll let you guys know what happens.

Review of "28 Weeks Later"

See it: Yes

I loved the movie 28 Days Later. I don't remember how I coaxed my wife into seeing it with me, but I somehow managed to, and we were really surprised by how good of a movie it was. I don't just mean how good of a horror movie it was, or how scary it was, or how gruesome it was — I mean it was genuinely a great movie with a great story, great actors, and amazing cinematography.

Plain and simple, 28 Weeks Later does it again. The story overlaps 28 Days Later slightly, then jumps 28 weeks ahead to a time when all the infected were thought to be gone, and the British government (with the help of the US military) was just beginning to repopulate London. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say it was obvious that the repopulation wasn't going to go as planned, and somehow the virus was going to find its way back into the population. This I already knew. This everyone knew. What we didn't know was how clever, intriguing, and unbelievably tense the ride was going to be.

See 28 Weeks Later. If you haven't seen 28 Days Later, see it first. They will probably be the best (and most disturbing) horror movies you have ever seen. Be prepared for the fact that they will haunt you, but not in the way you might expect. You will remember them for the characters, plots, cinematography, and even the music as much as for the gore and terror they instill.

Who knew the zombie genre could reach these heights?