TV Worth Watching: Caprica

caprica-dvdAmazon.ca delivered this DVD to me yesterday, so I eagerly watched it last night with Ashley. If you haven’t heard yet, it’s the premiere episode of the new TV series Caprica, released in DVD format prior to the launch of the TV show (which happens in early 2010).  I didn’t really have much expectation going into it – it’s a completely different set of actors, a completely different storyline, and while the Executive Producers of Battlestar Galactica are involved, all in all it’s a different beast than BSG is. The DVD paints a rich back-story to BSG – we get to see some of what the civilization was like before the events that start off BSG. Looks like it was still shot in and around Vancouver though.

There’s a lot to like with Caprica – the acting is solid, the storyline is compelling, and the special effects are top-notch. The CG robotics in particular are extremely well-done – I haven’t seen realism like that to date. Being straight to DVD, they get to add things that a cable TV show can’t have – namely, nudity. It was almost comical how they used it as a part of the intro to a certain location every time, but it’s not so gratuitous as to be distracting.

It will be interesting to watch Caprica as it goes to television – will it be able to maintain itself? BSG kicked off with such a huge bang – the annihilation of the human race – that it was able to coast on the shock of that for many an episode. Not in a lazy way mind you; they built on it very effectively. Caprica has no such event, so they have to rely on their own plot elements to move the story forward. With this 90 minute direct-to-DVD movie, Caprica is off to a good start.

Microsoft Outlook, I Want You To Be Smarter

outlook-2007-smart-accountsI have six email accounts I use regularly – four for my Web sites, one for my corporate email (my hosted Exchange account), and one for my personal email. All are IMAP accounts, other than the Exchange account. There are certain people, such as my wife and friends, that I tend to email strictly from my personal (jasondunn.com) email account. And when it comes to sending emails to business contacts, I use one of my business accounts. I imagine I’m quite typical in that regard, and that anyone using Outlook with both a personal and a business acount probably works the same way. So why then do I have to manually select the account I want to send the email from every time I send a new message?

I want Outlook to be smarter. I want it to recognize that if I’m sending an email to my wife, it should be sent from the personal email account. If I’m emailing a contact at Microsoft, it should come from my Exchange account. I could override this behavious if I wanted to, but once it learned which email accounts were used to email each person, I doubt I’d never need to…

YouTube’s Dysfunctional Commenting System

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What’s that above? A screen shot of three of the comments I posted on one of my YouTube videos this afternoon. I was responding to the comments and questions that other people have left, and I spent about 60 minutes today posting replies…only to have a tiny fraction of them actually make it live. YouTube happily lets me click the POST COMMENT button, but it never posted most of my comments. There’s nothing worse than spending time doing something, only to have all your work vanish. YouTube’s commenting system has been buggy for years, and they never seem to fix the problems with it. Worse yet, even as a YouTube partner, I can’t even talk to anyone about this issue – their partner email address now goes into a non-monitored email account with an auto-responder telling me to use a contact form that doesn’t seem to exist. Everything that Google buys turns to crap from a customer service perspective, YouTube included.

Billy Bob Thornton Interview: Like Watching a Train Wreck…

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an interview filled with more awkward pauses – I really have to hand it to the host, he tried his best to keep it together. Billy Bob Thornton was clearly on some heavy narcotics – he was unable to answer even the simplest questions such as “How long has your band being playing together?”. Then to watch Thornton get angry with the host for mentioning that he’s an actor…wow. I watched the YouTube HD version, and I noticed the image below on one of the shots:

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If you can’t quite make it out, it says “If this really goes sideways – I have [someone] Keil, new Metric standing by”. This is a message from the producer to the host, telling him that if the interview tanks even worse, they can cut to another guest. That’s disaster planing at its finest right there.

I can’t claim to know much about the style of music that Billy Bob Thornton claims to make, but after listening to it on Amazon.com, I can firmly say that I don’t like it very much. I used to be quite anti-country music, largely because I didn’t like the old-school twangy stuff. I like some country music now, mostly the rock-country or pop-country crossover stuff.

At any rate, listening to The Boxmasters, what I hear is pretty straight-ahead boom-chick country music, with a perfectly average vocal lead. There’s nothing interesting or noteworthy about this music from what I can tell – and I sure as hell don’t hear any ’60s British influences…what am I missing here? My guess is the only reason they’ve been able to put out three albums in less than two years is because it’s all self-produced and no one has the guts to tell ol’ Billy Bob that not every song the band comes up with is good enough to be on a record. Most bands will generate 2-3 times more music than can fit on an album, and what goes on the album is the best of those songs.

The only reason The Boxmasters are getting any media attention at all is because Thornton is in the band. Take his personal fame out of the equation, and you have an average-sounding weekend country bar band worthy of exactly zero attention.  For him to get angry about the radio host mentioning his acting experience makes him a complete prick – it’s the only reason his band was invited onto the show. I might like him as an actor, but as a human being, he needs to grow up.

TV Worth Watching: Spike’s “Deadliest Warrior”

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Now this is some entertaining TV! Deadliest Warrior is a new show on Spike that’s a great combination of science and history – they pluck warriors out of history and pit them against each other. They bring together practitioners of each style of fighting, using historically accurate weapons, and measure the force, speed, accuracy, and damage of those weapons. I used to be really into ancient weaponry when I was younger – and in fact still have about half a dozen bladed weapons in my house – so this is endlessly entertaining to me to watch these recreations. Fun stuff. Sometimes there are some head-scratching moments on the show, like why they wouldn’t test the Samurai’s katana thrusting through the viking chain mail when a slashing strike had no effect (bit of a spoiler there for you), but all in all they’re pretty fair with their assessments. Next week it’s Spartan vs. Ninja – which should be cool to watch!

Installing SqueezeCenter on an HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server

I’d been fighting with getting my Logitech Squeezebox Duet set up after migrating to a new Windows Home Server – an HP MediaSmart EX485 to be precise – for the past few hours. I finally got it working, and here’s the solution: the SqueezeCenter software assumes that it can function on port 9000, but because the HP MediaSmart server has the Twonky Media server software installed, it can’t – because the Twonky software uses port 9001. So you have to change the SqueezeCenter software to use port 9001 (or whatever port you wish). The problem? You can’t change the port number using the software without first getting the software to load. Yeah, exactly.

So the first thing you need to do is remote desktop into the HP MediaSmart server and browse to the following folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SqueezeCenter\prefs

Inside that folder, you’ll find the Server.prefs file. Do a find and look for port 9000 and change it to port 9001. Save the file. [thanks to Anoop at Logitech for help with this part]

Then exit and re-start the SqueezeCenter software. It still won’t work though – that was the last piece of the puzzle I had to work though – you need to go into the Firewall on the HP MediaSmart (Control Panel > Windows Firewall) and add port 9001. Once that’s been added, you should be able to use the SqueezeCenter software via another PC – the browser that ships on Windows Home Server (which is really Windows Server 2003) sucks and doesn’t allow the SqueezeCenter software to work. On a desktop or laptop PC point your browser to the IP address of your server, and port 9001. It might look something like this: http://192.168.1.125:9001.

Once the firewall is opened to port 9001, you should be able to connect the remote to the music source – your HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server.

Whew. It’s been a while since I’ve had to hack at something this hard to get it to work – I was wondering if I still had my geek chops. Looks like I do. 😉

An Original Star Wars Toy They Never Released

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I know this shouldn’t make me laugh (poor Owen and Beru!) but I had a laughing fit when saw this on someone’s Flickr account…so awful, but so funny when you consider the marketing machine of Star Wars in the ’70s where they released action figures for every guy in a costume who had even a split second of on-screen time. Remember all those robots from the Jawa sandcrawler? My cousin had all of them – and there were a lot to be had! But they never made Uncle Lars and Aunt Beru action figures in this particular incarnation…

Interviewed About Netbooks on CTV National News

On Friday afternoon I was interviewed by Janet Dirks, the Alberta Bureau Chief for CTV National News. The topic? Netbooks! One of my favourite things to talk about lately, netbooks have been raging through the tech world for about a year, and they’ve finally gotten so big that the mainstream press has taken notice. Unlike the previous TV interview, this wasn’t a story about me, so I’m the tech expert weighing in with a few quotes. It’s hard to convey accurate information in a few short quotes though – netbooks are fast enough for what they’re designed for (Internet tasks) but slower at things like photo editing, video editing, etc.

It was a fun experience all in all – I love talking about technology – but I was sure nervous leading up to it, so maybe it was good that I only had a couple of hours notice. Less time to stress out! I wonder how many times I’ll have to be on TV before I’m not a bundle of frazzled nerves beforehand…

Oh yeah – check out the sweet computer hardware from the ’90s shown at the 2:04 mark. CTV needs some updated B-roll footage I think! 😉

I’m Having a Son!

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On Thursday Ashley went for her second ultrasound, and we were told some very exciting news we’ve been anxious to hear: we’re having a baby boy! Ashley, and pretty much everyone else, was sure it was going to be a girl, but I had a hunch it was going to be a boy. We’re very excited about this news, and I’m already thinking about which superhero I’ll dress the little guy up in first. 😉

Eric Lafforgue Photography

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Eric Lafforgue is a very talented photographer who has travelled the world and taken some amazing photos – his site is worth checking out! His portrait work is especially impressive – I wish I had the type of “photographic courage” required to walk up to strangers and ask to take their picture.