Reviewing TV

Posted on November 13, 2007 by Adam S

So the Writers Guild is on strike, and scripted TV has a definite drop dead point. All of your favorite shows are just burning off their remaining episodes and then: nuttin’. Reality TV, game shows, and good, old fashioned reruns.

So, I’ve started cutting back on some TV. First to go: Las Vegas. Las Vegas had a good run a few years ago, but now it’s just trash. The scripts suck, the interaction is infantile, the characters are flat and pointless and often annoying, and the premise is so fatally flawed it’s laughable. Also, I wish somebody would shoot Delinda already, she’s the most annoying character on TV. So Las Vegas got the boot from our DVR.

Next is Grey’s Anatomy. Admittedly, this one is primarily due to my wife – I would have dropped this show mid-way through season 2 if it wasn’t for her. In the meantime, the show is absolutely horrible. Meredith is the whiniest, second-most annoying character on television, and needs a good slap in the face. George is lame, and Izzie is utterly annoying ever since the “I ate an entire tub of butter” speech from last season. Christina is cold and uninteresting, the Chief is one dimensional, Callie is a mess. In fact, the only characters I don’t absolutely despise are Sloan and Bailey, but they are pretty much relegated to minor side-roles.

By all accounts, everything about Prison Break should disqualify is from my like-list. It’s got plot holes so big you could walk in, dance a jig, have a drink, smoke a cigarette, and walk out with no one noticing. The entire premise is silly and should never have lasted longer than one season, if that. And yet, I’m addicted. Despite the fact that a company who knows no limit on spending, rather than simply buying a man out of a corrupt prison with totally corrupt guards in a foreign country, would rather find a wily fugitive, track him down, put him into said prison, let him devise an escape plan in 4 days and pray he gets your man out. Did they not realize it took Michaels many months, along with what surely was several thousand dollars in tattoos, to break out of Fox River? But alas, I love it. Even though it’s got plot twists for the sole sake of screwing with the viewers, I dig it.

Heroes was losing it until recently and the House staff shakeup is getting a little tiring. In my opinion, the best show I now watch is Criminal Minds on Wednesday nights. It’s not even close to my favorite. I prefer The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Howard Stern weekly sneak peek on Mojo… hmmm…. all shows that are primarily improv!

Heroes’ Sophomore Slump

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Adam S

I’m not the only one wondering where the heck the excitement is with the TV show Heroes. Entertainment Weekly‘s TV Watch has been tearing it up lately. They directed me towards a “Heroes” feature article that was recently posted. Last season, I was vocal about where “Heroes” succeeded and failed. This year, of course, is no different.

Heroes, where it was cool last year, is just dull this year. We have several storylines, but none are advancing with any meaningful devices. Let’s examine:

* Mohinder is working with HRG to infiltrate the company. He gives them Molly, and they… uh… lie her down in a bed.

* Nicki is working with the company because… uh… I have no idea. They want to help her, or something, but I don’t know what they’ve done other than make her a bit of a bodyguard.

* The “twins” are the most hated new characters – the Paulo and Nicky of “Heroes,” I think – but I find the whole power between them kind of interesting. Too bad their “coming to America” plotline has gone on about 4 weeks too long.

* Sylar lost his power for unknown reasons we’ll likely never be told, but is still so ridiculously and obviously evil its comical.

* Micah is still a complete tool who is way too positive for a 12 year old and is still using his powers for… nothing in particular — hacking pay-per-view and stuff.

* Monica has a “photographic muscle memory ,” and one of the first things she does is pick up from supporting her family and go to New York to “train,” no doubt leaving her family hungry.

* Peter is the least convincing of all. I know if I had amnesia and woke up and found my entire life in a box, I’d probably ditch my whole life for a 50% cute chick and not bother Googling my name. That way I would never have to find out that my brother is a New York state senator. Also, I wouldn’t suspect there’s an interesting back story with the FIRE THAT SHOOTS FROM MY HANDS.

* Matt Parkman is professionally annoying and is creepily attached to a little girl he’s known for 36 seconds.

* Nathan Petrelli is a drunkard; apparently, senators don’t do publicity and no one recognizes him.

* Claire is kinda hot and actually has the most convincing storyline, along with her a-hole friend West, who behaves more like a real person than anuone else in the entire show.

* HRG has suddenly decided the best way to hide is to trek around the world and murder his ex-mentor in order to find the paintings that show his demise. When he finds them, he can’t make heads or tails of them.

* Someone sent Veronica Mars after Peter, but she didn’t find him in the first 10 seconds, so they recalled her. Haven’t seen her since.

* Who can forget Hiro, who has the silliest story of all. He goes back in time and finds a nasty drunkard theif, who, despite the fact that he’s known a Japanese girl for about a day, goes to the enemy when Hiro kisses her. Lame, get Hiro back to present day. Anyway, if I could bend time, even though I went back to ancient Japan, wouldn’t you just return to the present when you finally do come back so there is no “gap” when you’re missing??

Heroes had better coalesce quickly, because it’s currently just wandering aimlessly. Once your story is just filling time, which I think this one is, you’ve losing people’s interests. The fact is that this story is creeping along at a snail’s pace in order to fill a season. Viewers don’t appreciate that.

iPhone: 1 Month Later

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Adam S

I’ve now had the iPhone for over a month. Let me just come out and say it: there’s a reason this device has something like a 97% satisfaction rating. The thing is awesome. It’s easy to love it: it feels like Apple, it’s beautiful, it’s easy to use, it’s pretty first and utilitarian second. It really makes its competitors blush, particularly things like the Blackberry Pearl, which looks like an old terminal compared to a 24″ cinema display: it’s just not even comparable.

There are surely missing features: no Flash is one, no current SDK is a big one, no copy/paste is often cited (but not a big deal for me), no way to mass remove images from the camera without first importing them into iPhoto, no iChat, and a big ball buster is the crippled Bluetooth profiles (no send file? No send contact? C’mon apple!) But the two biggest for me are as follows:

* No voice dial.
This is just silly. If you truly store all of your contacts, it’s a REAL pain in the ass to call a random one. And secondly, what good is a headset if you have to fish the phone out of its holster to scroll to the contact first? There is no way to go hands free on this device, period. Lame!

But the biggest one is this:

* No MMS.
This is more and more unacceptable every day. No only can I not send someone a picture via text, as my friends do to each other ALL THE TIME, but should someone send one to me, I get a stupid message that says something like “Yu’ve received a multimedia message! Go to viewmymessage.com and type in code 12345678 and password r4ndDoMPaS5w0rdd and retrieve the worthless picture that was worth a glance on your phone, but is almost certainly not worth the work it will take to check it out online. By the way, even though you have a browser in your phone, we won’t provide you a link, making it virtually impossible to check this unless you happen to be in front of a computer right now, bitch.”

Apple, please make 1.1.2 or 1.2 worthwhile and add some of these features present on like EVERY PHONE MADE IN THE LAST 3 YEARS. Seriously.

A Violation of the Spirit of Free Software

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Adam S

For a long time, I really liked this unattractive, but incredibly useful website called macfreeware.com. I am not linking to the front page because shortly ago, it was sold and the result is really bumming me out.

The new owners decided to make some changes to the site that I personally think are a slap in the face of Mac freeware developers. See, the first thing they did was remove the developers’ credit in the RSS feed. Then, they took the developers’ info out of the individual pages, and finally, in the final insult, they cloaked the download links so that all of the downloads direct through a form hosted locally, so even if you were crafty, you couldn’t find the actual software on the internet without your favorite search engine.

I wrote the guys over at MacFreeWare.com – via their generic contact form, since there is no other method of communication available – and told them about this egregious violation of developers, and they temporarily complied, re-adding the developer info to both the RSS feed and the software pages. And yet, today in my Bloglines feed, and once again, the RSS feeds do not include developer info at all – not even a link to the application’s webpage – and the majority of the featured apps don’t include links on their individual pages. Some examples:

http://www.freemacware.com/inquisitor
http://www.freemacware.com/disk-inventory-x
http://www.freemacware.com/vacuummail

Click the thumbnail for a larger version

I didn’t search these out – they were the first three links I clicked on the homepage.

So what we have is an ad-supported website aimed at cataloging Mac freeware that doesn’t even feature, or allow you to research, the very developers writing that freeware. They are making money of free apps, without any credit, any outlinking, or any way to research the software beyond their two sentence write-ups. Am I wrong or is this a complete violation of the spirit of free software?

Update: Okay, so at least some of the items in the RSS feed have a link to a developer website and most of the newer featured app pages have a link to the developer website listed. But most still don’t, which is pretty bad.

Shame on Apple!!

Posted on September 25, 2007 by Adam S

Shame on Apple. As a huge Apple supporter, I am shocked and dismayed by today’s news that Apple will be “bricking” – or fatally breaking – iPhones that are either unlocked or contain third party applications with their next update.

Even more shocking is the comment section of this article on tuaw, where Apple fans are actually supporting Apple on this matter!

I can understand entirely Apple’s decision to break unlocked iPhones. Apple probably gets a nice cut of at&t iPhone plans, for one, and they cannot be expected to support your iPhone as you move it to another carrier by changing the very nature of the hardware.

However, by voiding the warranty of those who have installed “Installer.app” and third party applications, they are making a very silly move. For one, Apple is biting the hand that has fed them so many users and in all actuality, market viability. OS X is only truly useful because freeware and shareware development has really ramped up and brought us an amazing array of Mac apps, enough to complement OS X and provide that elusive “Google it and you’ll find an app that does that” level of prevalence. In the meantime, they taut the iPhone as running OS X. So when developers – often the most loyal of fans – extend the functionality of the iPhone the same way they’ve done the desktop version of OS X, they have added value to the iPhone.

Steve Jobs, who runs Apple with an iron fist, is understandably mad about third party apps, but it’s fruitless to spend his tears. Developers have rapidly put many things on the iPhone that should have been there to begin with! Where the heck is iChat? Even Verizon includes AIM compatible apps now! How about a dictionary or games or themes or GPS… all now doable in a few finger taps via Installer? An Apple product ought to provide for users, not work against them. Apple – learn from Google – “don’t be evil!”

Apple missed the boat on the iPhone went Jobs decided to exclude an SDK from the plans. When he told us that “AJAX” was the SDK, I threw up a little in my mouth. Notice my comment from back in January… even then we knew that the lack of an SDK was bullshit.

If Apple decides to truly brick iPhones with third party apps, they are doing a tremendous disservice to all iPhone owners. They are removing capabilities from a device that really ought to have extendable capabilities; well, that or admitting that Windows Mobile or Java platforms are superior. I suspect Jobs is locking it down so he can resell it to us in iPhone generation 2, which is so Microsoft-ian is scares me that maybe Apple is becoming just as evil as Redmond.

An unintended side-effect is that Jobs will birth a new hacking community, one that will certainly rival Apple in what they provide. It may be that all 1st gen iPhone owners decide to stick with 1.0.2 firmware and let hackers extend the functionality, which I glibly believe today will offer more than Apple foolishly will ever allow. To their own peril, I guess. I suspect that Apple’s limp effort to contain iPhone hacking is going to backfire as the people who make a difference forsake them in favor of a community firmware, or maybe just community added functionality.

Frankly, I think the solution is to quickly organize a massive “Do Not Buy Apple Products” day before the new firmware comes out. Maybe October 1. Send a message to Apple that they enjoy success at our pleasure, and that a second rate iPhone experience is not acceptable and not what we’ve come to expect from Apple.

So on October 1, do not run Software Update. Do not buy an iPhone. Do not buy Mac apps at all, including shareware or third party OS X stuff. Let’s piss off Apple, let’s piss off small developers who will have no one to complain to but Apple. Let’s make them open up the iPhone, which has the potential to be great, but may perhaps be, at the very wish of Jobs, destined to remain just a fancy phone.

Update: A few things for those who emailed me —
1) I am a very loyal Apple user, all of the computers in our house are Macs. I do not hate Apple, I do not hate Steve Jobs, I’m just pissed that they are condemning my iPhone to death if I want to actually use the “OS X” on it. Their over-eager rules actually prevent me from doing things I can do on a comparably priced Windows Mobile phone.
2) About the “boycott just shifts the spending to another day” argument – no one is trying to hurt Apple financially, just send them a message: that we won’t stand for the half-assed “SDK” they have provided when hackers have already demo’ed better capabilities the phone inherently possesses, but can’t access due solely to …a EULA?!
3) I am still in love with my iPhone, I just will love it much less if Apple decides to make me restore it, and I’ll love it A LOT less if they destroy it. Oh, and I will NOT replace it. They will simply lose me as a customer on the iPhone. There are some awfully nice Nokia sets out there that allow me to download Java applications like Gmail that really extend the phone as a platform rather than cripple it on purpose, which sounds a lot like Vista and its ridiculous “editions.”

Gee, Thanks Google!

Posted on September 18, 2007 by Adam S

Google resolved their storage blunders recently and, in an unannounced act of reconciliation, I assume, extended my paid storage upgrade for a few extra weeks. But imagine my surprise when I got this email today:

Google

At first glance, you might think to yourself – that’s nice of Google, warning you that they are about to charge your card, a service which they do automatically to prevent you from having to take any action or lose your data. Except if you see this:

Google

Apparently, they want me to pay $25 for 6GB of space, but everyone else gets the same thing for $20? My reward for being an early Google adopter is that I get to pay a steeper fee?

Is Google the next “Boston Market,” expanding too fast to keep quality at the same level? Lately, it seems like Google’s apps are quirkier, their service flakier, and their support non-existent. Is it a mistake to continue to entrust all of our data to Google?

Americans and Innovation: You Fail It!

Posted on September 11, 2007 by Adam S

9to5mac is featuring a fantastic article on lack of innovation by big companies. This particular article is about Microsoft, but ultimately, it’s a bigger statement about the United States of America. In fact, it reveals everything that is wrong with American business.

The concept of “distrust the customer” is growing, and it’s forcing people to do the “wrong” thing more often. Who is most inconvenienced by anti-skip technology, FBI warnings, and CSS, the DVD content protection technology? There is no doubt: it’s the legit DVD consumers! Because pirates crack that in seconds, so only the real, paying customers even have to see it. Who is put out by the online activation of Microsoft products? Not the pirates – the real customers!

How do big dinsaur companies like AOL and Verizon and Discover Card, who have lost their ability to innovate and serve, gain customers? They don’t, they just refuse to let their customers leave. And that is what’s missing from life today: no one gives a shit about their customers anymore.

Yes, these are the days of restrictive cell phone contracts, where military men leaving for duty abroad are fined $200 by their carriers for terminating their contracts. These are the days when voting machine manufacturers, those doing the work of the nation, refuse to allow their software to be audited. This is the age where police, who once served at the pleasure of the public, scare law-abiding citizens like we’re in the Commuist Block.

Because in place of customer satisfaction, we have inflexible rules.
And, as a result, in place of protection, we have proactive litigation.
And, as a result, in place of common sense, we have strong government lobbies.
And, as a result, in place of the USA, we have a shell of liberty.

My Faith in Google Is Now In Question

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Adam S

As my readers will know, I’ve detailed my isses with Google, or more specifically, Picasa Web in the past. Well, today, I was surprised when Picasa refused to upload new photos for me. I cannot use my iPhoto exporter anymore, since that broke with one of the last two updates to iPhoto, so I tried the web interface and then the “Picasa Web Albums Uploader” application Google provides. The reason it failed? No storage.

“That’s odd,” I thought. I have extended storage and about 5 GB free. But alas, it expired. In fact, my storage SHOULD have expired in August, but just did recently. So I tried to upgrade again. After all, Google’s been good to me on the whole. But my order was cancelled by Google. The reason: “Another order modified the user’s storage plan before this order was received“

What the heck? So I tried again. And once again: cancelled. So my storage has been cancelled for a few days now, no upgrade has been applied, no warning whatsoever from Google (at my account, which is a Gmail account!), and no way to upgrade!

Gmail has been a fantastic app for me, but I’m just not sure about extended Google services. I’ve heard way too many nightmare stories about people having stuff cancelled and there is just no recourse: Google provides no support, no assistance, no real time communication, nothing other than crappy, slow-to-respond Google groups from very unofficial people.

Google’s storage engine has been modified heavily lately, and this does not bode well. If it can expire without notice – will they delete my stuff? How long will they hold it, being as though I can’t upgrade? If Google deletes even one bit of my stuff, I am through with PicasaWeb and Google’s expanded storage for good.

Boo Google! Boo! It may be time migrate to smugmug, Zoto, or zooomr.com.

Six Movies That Are Supposed To Be Funny… But Aren’t

Posted on August 1, 2007 by Adam S

Scary Movie 3
From (at least part of the) team that brought you Airplane comes a new stinker that still riffs off other movies but instead draws on recycled crap like poking fun of Michael Jackson. This movie couldn’t have been dumber if they tried. There is nothing witty, nothing funny, and nothing original about Scary Movie 3, in which they parody – if it can be called that – Signs, The Ring, 8 Mile, to name a few. Skip this one – see parts 1, 2, and 4.

Talladega Nights
“#1 NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby stays atop the heap thanks to a pact with his best friend and teammate, Cal Naughton, Jr. But when a French Formula One driver, makes his way up the ladder, Ricky Bobby’s talent and devotion are put to the test.” That’s about as much of my brain as I care to devote to Talladega Nights, which is about as dumb as a movie can get. Despite hoardes of devout twenty-somethings spouting off the lines to this film like a classic Family Guy episode, there is no actual comedy here, just ridiculousness trying to pass as comedy. The whole “Dear sweet baby Jesus” thing was never funny and still isn’t. I find Will Ferrell both funny and entertaining, but in this film, he’s neither.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
I’ll probably take some heat for this one, but Ace Ventura was just not very funny to me. The only comedy in the film was watching Jim Carrey’s crazy plastic face contort. I actually find Jim Carrey to be a very entertaining person and I was really blown away by Eternal Sunset of the Spotless Mind, but his earlier comedy like this and its eponymous sequel pandered to the lowest chuckles in its teenage target crowd.

Waterboy
I have to admit I’ve never made it entirely through this film in one sitting. But be fair: it’s only because it sucks so bad. Let me get this straight: we’re supposed to laugh at Adam Sandler acting like a retard for an hour forty straight? Sucked. Let’s not forget about Rob Schneider. This guy is actually funny – or at least, used to be – and is so unfunny he could make a clown cry.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Borat, although the hardcore call it a two hour laughfest, is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I am a huge Ali G fan – I’ve seen pretty much every episode of the HBO show and laughed hysterically through most of them. I have literally fallen out of my chair laughing at Sacha Baron Cohen’s characters. Then why did they release this piece of shit? Borat was, since its inception, about parody – putting people in uncomfortable positions and/or exposing their true, crazy beliefs. Then why have a movie where only about 10% is donated to that success formula and the rest to a stupid subplot, replete with bad acting, a drifting story, and a fat, hairy Russian’s asshole in your face? While some will call this a classic, I will call it what it actually is: shit. I pray – literally pray – that Cohen doesn’t eff up Bruno like he did Borat. Bruno is fantastic.

Epic Movie
This 2007 film played off the success of Scary Movie, Date Movie, and other satire flicks by working off the material Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Chronicles of Narnia, Nacho Libre, X-Men, Superman and a slew of other action flicks provided. Unfortuntely, this movie was so boring I had to resort to slicing my eyes open with the edge of my Twizzler bag to stay awake. This movie doesn’t suck, it’s just so unfunny and boring you may find yourself on the edge of a psychotic break. Fo reals. Epic Movie contains fewer that 5 laughs, and those are:
1. Laughing at yourself for buying a ticket
2. Laughing at the actors for demeaning themselves so
3. Laughing at the writers for thinking this was going to be funny
4. Laughing at the fact that you are still watching the movie

Do yourself a favor, and instead of watching this movie on Friday, kill yourself. It’s easier.