Mac: iTunes Movie Rentals

I wanted to try Apple's new movie rental service, so Caitie and I watched Dodgeball yesterday. A couple of things are probably worth noting:

The first rental is confusing. I tried to rent Blades of Glory, which had a Rent Movie link, but gave an error message, something like "This title is no longer available, try again later." So I tried Dodgeball, and then had to go through the new licensing agreement, which was something I hadn't anticipated. Once I got through that, it was pretty straightforward.

The movie began downloading, and about five or six minutes later iTunes indicated it could begin playing the movie. It was about a 1GB download, and we were probably 150MB into it or so, I didn't literally "take notes." (A sorry excuse for a "citizen journalist" I am.)

The description at the iTunes Music Store indicated "Full Screen," which usually means a 4:3 aspect ratio, pan-and-scan transfer, which I really, really don't like. Especially with a 16:9 TV. But the movie actually played in 16:9, so I'm not sure what "Full Screen" actually refers to in the iTMS.

Playback wasn't flawless. At one point the video portion stopped, while the audio kept playing. The video restarted, and remained in sync with the audio and I didn't see the same thing happen again. It paused for maybe three seconds. I was playing the movie through a 1.83GHz CoreDuo mini with 1GB of RAM.

Video quality was generally excellent, and I noticed no compression artifacts. That's not to say there weren't any, I just didn't notice them if there were. I'd say it was generally equal to DVD quality, played through the mini. I have an Oppo upscaling DVD player connected to a my Panasonic 50" plasma, which is only a 720p set anyway. DVDs played in the Oppo generally look "better" than the ones that play back through the mini, but it's a subtle difference, and perhaps little more than a trick of mind.

To see which movies were available for rental, I was able to bring up a "list view" of the store, and then sorted on the price column - I think, again, I wasn't taking notes. But all the rentals can be grouped together in one of those columns.

Not being able to rent HD movies through the mini isn't a deal-breaker for me, though it is kind of lame. The quality isn't so much better that it's really worth the premium, at least in my opinion.

Something that was kind of intrusive and unnecessary was an alert that flashed up 24 hours later while I was watching a TV episode of a series I had downloaded, indicating that the rental had expired. It took the video out of full screen mode, and pasted that alert front and center. I think there was a "Don't tell me this again" checkbox, but I didn't pay that much attention.

All in all, I'd say it's a competitive alternative to On Demand movie rentals from Comcast. The iTMS user interface is better than On Demand's interface, and you can see a trailer of the movie. In addition, you can use your computer for screen captures and audio captures of movies you've rented, which you can't do (at least easily) through On Demand. I'm not enamored with the "social networking" aspect of iTMS. Who cares what anybody else rented? It's nice, but really, I think far, far too much is made of all this social networking crap. The only people whose opinions matter to me I actually see, you know, "socially," or I read their blogs. (Or they e-mail me. Yes, I'm looking at you, Jonathon.) I'm not a big fan of "the wisdom of the crowd" or "smart mobs."

Social Hygiene: It's Okay to Be Unhappy

Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste? What are we to make of this American obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?

From In Praise of Melancholy. (Read it while you can. Link likely to expire. Feel free to be unhappy about that.)

Cheese Sandwich: That's Entertainment

I was disappointed to see the Jags' season end on Saturday night, but it was a pretty exciting season nonetheless. I was kind of pleased to see Indianapolis lose to San Diego, the Colts having beaten the Jags twice this season, while we beat the Chargers. But I was really pleased to see the smirk get wiped from Tony Romo's face by the Giants yesterday afternoon. I'd love to see the Packers in the Superbowl, with Favre up against Tom Brady. At least Brady doesn't smirk.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was okay last night. The highlight was seeing Summer Glau kicking ass again. For the most part, it looks pretty formulaic, and I think it's likely to mostly suck as the season progresses. If the series' scripts kind of explore humanity's relationships with its tools, it might be interesting; but if it's just week after week of running away and blowing stuff up... well, who cares?

I've been enjoying some of my favorite movies again. I watched Scent of a Woman a couple of weeks ago, perhaps my favorite Pacino movie. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor and see it soon. I watched The Upside of Anger twice in recent weeks, and it's one of my favorites. The second time was with some friends who'd never seen it before, and they loved it. I was talking with a friend of mine about Costner in Anger, and she ended up loaning me Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. She liked it a great deal, and we seem to have similar taste in movies, so I was kind of looking forward to it. I'm sorry to say I found it disappointing. I thought it was going to be something of a fairly serious treatment of the Robin Hood folk tale, but it was more of a campy send-up, with some discordant bits of brutality thrown in.

I'm loaning her Secondhand Lions, and so I watched it again too, and I'm really glad I did. I hadn't watched it since I'd first seen it a couple of times back in October '06. I'd forgotten how good it really is, and it was well worth watching it again.

My Robin Hood friend also loaned me The Girl in the Café, which was utterly charming.

Relatively new releases I've seen lately include Shoot 'Em Up, which was very funny and very violent. Not a "great" movie, but kind of a treat if you can appreciate that sort of thing. 3:10 to Yuma is not "the best western since Unforgiven," but it's pretty good. I've never seen the original, so I can't offer any comparisons to it, but I enjoyed it. Very violent, but perhaps not gratuitously so. And finally, Children of Men, which was pretty depressing. I liked Clive Owen's part, but the best part of the movie was Michael Caine's appearance.

Anyway, that's probably enough about all that.

Competing Messages: Elections and Governance

Doc Searls:

You can divide what happens in a market — including the political one — into three categories: transaction, conversation and relationship. In too many markets — including the one for candidates — the mix of the three is warped and strained. Too many big-money contributors own the most meaningful relationships with the candidate. Too much of the conversation is insincere, preachy, hollow or otherwise bullshit. And the need for money pollutes both conversation and relationship.

...

In a conversation around this stage in the last presidential election, Phil Windley pointed out that democracies are about two things: elections and governance. We care disproportionately about the former, because elections make great stories, and are eay to explain with sports and war metaphors. But elections are how we hire those who run our governments. We need to care about what they’ll do in reality. Or what we’ll do in reality. The idea isn’t just to change how elections happen, but how governance works as well.

Why is politics a "market?" Perhaps it is a market today, but should it be? Even as a metaphor? Markets are made of people engaged in commercial activity, buying and selling. Politics are supposedly the activities of people engaged in governance. Are these the same things? Perhaps we no longer have governance, merely commerce. Perhaps commerce is the hammer that makes governance look like a nail.

"Democracies are about two things: elections and governance. We care disproportionately about the former, because elections make great stories, and are easy to explain with sports and war metaphors." As perhaps AKMA might note, "Asserted, not argued."

How does one measure how much we "care" about either elections or governance? Is it by the attention they receive in the various media? If so, then is that a reliable measure of "caring?" Aren't the media engaged in commerce, competing with one another for the attention of the same electorate with whom the political candidates are hoping to have a "conversation?" And if the media are competing with one another, then each is seeking a competitive advantage in seizing attention, therefore they rely on "stories" that can seize and hold attention. Who is going to see the advertising of the media outlet that offers an in-depth analysis of the various health care proposals of the different candidates when the other outlets are covering Hillary Clinton's tears, or Huckabee's musical talent? How are complex ideas going to be summed up and distilled into a 30 second on-air report or YouTube post for easy consumption in our highly evolved continuous-partial-attention "workflows?"

If we don't "care," is it because of the narratives media outlets serve to us, or because commerce trumps politics, indeed commerce has become politics? Is it that we don't "care," or that we don't see clearly how we've allowed various successful ideas or technologies to alter the way we think about things that have little to do with those ideas or technologies? Do we really want to "hire" our public servants? Is that the most appropriate metaphor? Or are we using a hammer we really, really like to try and fix things that don't rely on nails at all, smashing and breaking them in the process?

Is the problem with government that it's really not commercial enough? Well, why not simply outsource the whole thing to India, or China then? Focus on our core competency, buying and selling stuff. Reducing every human activity and interaction to a commodity to be bought, sold or exploited in a competitive marketplace, preferably in an online auction in the vast social network that is the internet.

Does having the instantaneous power to publish relieve anyone of the responsibility to think past the end of their nose?

Competing Messages: Intermediated

Events have conspired to keep me somewhat distracted from writing as much as I'd like, but I have a moment now and I thought I'd try to quickly jot down a couple of thoughts.

Nick Carr was interviewed in Wired recently, and offered something I thought was interesting. He said, "The scariest thing about Stanley Kubrick's vision wasn't that computers started to act like people but that people had started to act like computers. We're beginning to process information as if we're nodes; it's all about the speed of locating and reading data. We're transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us."

This is an example of the notion that we shape our tools, and our tools shape us. I'm not sure I think things are exactly the way Nick Carr describes them, that we're "thinking" more like computers, but I do believe that the old adage that says, "to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail," is true. And to a culture with a pervasive computer network, everything looks like something related to a network, including our social relationships.

I think this is troubling, but I don't have time to go into that right now. What I wanted to note was something that occurred to me reading Carr's interview, and Neil Postman's Technopoly. All successful technologies impose some characteristic of their nature or utility on our conception or perception of reality. They, along with our senses, intermediate between reality and perception, shaping the latter, bringing it into being.

One kind of personal example of this in my case is the camera and the internet. I happened to realize this the other day as I was walking Bodhi. It was foggy out, and the fog, in the first dim light of the morning, along with a willow and a crane, created a beautiful scene; and after that first instant of recognition or appreciation, my first thoughts were that I wished I had my camera so I could capture it and share it on the web. But Postman and Carr intruded, and I wondered about what I was missing in those passing moments, with my attention going to my tools and my toys? And I kind of forced myself to stop thinking about the camera, or my failure to bring it along, and instead to simply be in that moment and enjoy what nature had to offer for me.

In any event, that's not really what I wanted to note this morning. Instead, a similar thought occurred to me in another context. I've been frustrated for a long time with the underlying conceit behind the notion that "markets are conversations." This metaphorical "framing," has, to me, been one of the most hideous and socially corrosive notions to come along in a very long time. Yet it has been embraced as somehow something that is informed, enlightened, indeed, even liberating and I have consistently failed to understand how anyone could believe that. But now I think I understand.

Economic systems are a form of technology, and as such, they intermediate our perception of reality. Capitalism, or perhaps more accurately, consumerism or commercialism, has been a fantastically "successful" technology, creating vast quantities of financial "wealth." (Along with a significant downside cost we simply dismiss.) It therefore shapes our view of "reality," to include our social interactions, which preceded all our economic theories. So indeed, our social interactions, our "being" as "social beings" is interpreted in an economic "framework," and "being" is ultimately subordinated to the framework of "commerce," hence "markets are conversations." This is not a good thing, but I don't know of a successful competing technological or even metaphorical framework I can impose which might alter the current state of affairs.

Something to think about anyway.

Time to go. Commerce must be served.

Social Hygiene: Webster on the Tao

I've been enjoying reading Loren Webster's reflections on Taoist thought and literature. In the first few days of a new year, this post is particularly apt; especially as it may inform, or not, some political thought.

Bear in mind, though, most who sleep are not easily awakened.

Cheese Sandwich: Happy New Year

[Insert obligatory tempus fugit reference here.]

As others have noted, we've been at this gig for over eight years now. You'd think maybe we'd have learned something by now! I did take about six weeks off in early '04, but came back under a new name after carrying the Time's Shadow appellation for four years. Not that longevity is indicative of anything meritorious, it may simply mean that I don't know when to quit! Which is something I've recently had occasion to reflect upon.

In any event, we're still here and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, barring misfortune.

2007 was a wonderful year for me. I fell in love (which, in truth, started in late 2006, but didn't really reach its full expression until early 2007), something I hadn't felt for a very, very long time, and indeed had concluded that it was something I was unlikely ever to feel again. I also had my heart broken, though in hindsight even that was worthwhile as a reminder that life at fifty retains the full range of rich experiences for me.

I can't say turning 50 was "wonderful," but it probably beat the alternative!

2007 ended with more close friends than I had when it began, and there's no overstating the value of that. We also had a great deal of fun together, and it seems 2008 will likely be just as enjoyable.

There was less of me at the end of 2007 than there was at the end of 2006! I lost forty pounds in the first six months of 2007, and so far they largely remain missing. (I've managed to find three of them in the weeks since Thanksgiving, though I'm pleased they were so few and I'm confident I'll be rid of them again fairly soon.)

I became much more involved in my local community, and that has been very much a mixed emotions sort of thing. I've just resigned a position on the board of directors of my homeowners association, because it's just too hard to deal with others' anger, anxiety and antics. It was a source of a great deal of stress, and I was beginning to exhibit some behaviors I've worked rather hard to try and extinguish in my life. The "don't drive angry" Dave was reverting to the "throbbing vein in the temple" Dave, and I've had enough of him in my life. So perhaps this was a good example of "knowing when to quit." It would be better if I could cultivate the ability to not allow the actions or behaviors of others to affect me so much, but I'm not there yet, and this probably wasn't the right environment to try and to develop that. The good news is that I'll have much more of my time back.

Taekwondo has suffered since September, I basically haven't been back in the dojong since then. My instructors have also moved to a new school. I hope to reintegrate regular training into my schedule, though I haven't taken a hard look at how I'm going to do that yet. On a more positive note, I earned my Third Degree Black Belt in June.

Travel wasn't a big part of 2007, but I did make it home to New York twice, and made it out to Massachusetts to see one of my oldest and best friends. Work took me to Virginia Beach and Los Angeles, and that was probably about as much travel as I can handle these days.

So 2007 was a very good year, mostly without a plan or design for it to be so. Sometimes you get lucky.

For 2008, I think I'd like to build on the progress I made in 2007. I'm planning on running a 15K in March, The Gate River Run. I'd like to try to get to about 175, which is 13 pounds from where I am now. When I get back in the dojong, I want to continue to work on my instructor certification.

I also want to try and get back into a habit of being still, or meditation, as it's better known. It's been more than a year since I last practiced it with any discipline, and I think I can see where things have begun to kind of go awry. It's like any other capacity, be it physical fitness or cognitive fitness, if you don't practice, or use it, you lose the benefits.

Finally, I hope to spend less and save more this year, and that includes energy and resources. We'll see how that goes! I am a fully-conditioned consumer, so whatever new toy Steve Jobs introduces on the 14th of this month is likely to induce serious desire, which we know is the source of all suffering! So there you go...

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed ringing in the new year and had a joyful celebration of the season. The lights are still on here, and hopefully will remain so for a long time. We'll resume beating our familiar dead horses shortly.