That. Was. Awesome.
Very Clark/Kubric-esque, a real 2001-type vibe, right down to the incomprehensible ending although this one tried not to be incomprehensible. Gorgeous in IMAX. Sound was muddy in places, and although I wrote that off to the usual IMAX-sound-is-always-muddy-to-me problem, apparently this was a "creative choice" made by the film maker.
People complained about the relationship with the daughter although I think that you couldn't really do it any other way. Story is always about people, and people means relationships. No matter what else is going on around them, it is the relationships that matter.
But: Awesome.
2014-11-27
2014-11-08
Review: Big Hero 6
Good fun, even if it is a children's movie. Rough pacing in the beginning and the transition between acts 1 and 2 was a bit messy. The resident 7 year old really liked it.
I liked it more than this brief review implies.
I liked it more than this brief review implies.
2014-10-21
Review: Dracula Untold
Tight at 90 minutes or so, no excessive fights or gore scenes; a reasonable story type story. The movie knows what it is and delivers capably. I was surprised.
2014-10-02
Public Transit
Watching the Reddit slapfight on r/ottawa about Uber, I find reinforced my perception that
A) everyone thinks the local public transit they have to use is crap, and
B) everyone thinks everyone else's is nicer.
Personally I think that no matter how nice or efficient or modern or affordable a mass transit system is, the perception of how good or not it is is overwhelmingly driven by your interactions with other users -- and thus you will always have a generally negative opinion of it, if not a specifically overwhelmingly negative opinion of it.
A) everyone thinks the local public transit they have to use is crap, and
B) everyone thinks everyone else's is nicer.
Personally I think that no matter how nice or efficient or modern or affordable a mass transit system is, the perception of how good or not it is is overwhelmingly driven by your interactions with other users -- and thus you will always have a generally negative opinion of it, if not a specifically overwhelmingly negative opinion of it.
AKG K545
Thus far my exposure to headsets has been limited to two pairs.
The Sennheiser HD 500A pair is a set that came with an active listening program that we got for Alex when he was small. He didn't do well with the product so we stopped using it. A few years later I found the headset in the basement and decided that I could use them at the office for general listening. My initial review of them could be summed up as "they are better than the MP3s I listen to with them".
These are over-ear, open headphones. They are superbly comfortable, even over extended sessions of use. The sound is the best I have personally heard. They leak sound both in and out -- I can comfortably hear what is going on around me, and those I am talking to can hear soft, tinny music coming out.
I decided to look for an alternative because I am spending more time on the phone these days and it is annoying to flip the headphones on and off, and using a handset (office phone or cell phone) is itself an irritation.
On the advice of Marco's headset roundup, I picked a set of AKG K545 headphones. I found them at a reasonable price at Costco.ca. I did so hoping to get more isolation from my environment as well as an integrated microphone for phone use. The initial plan was to use my PC as a speakerphone and playing music from iTunes on the PC, but at some point iPhones lost the ability to peer with Windows computers. So I decided to skip the middle device and plug the headphones into the iPhone directly. The 545 fits this usage model perfectly.
After a couple weeks of using them, I think that the passive isolation is pretty good. Not perfect, but still very good. The sound is OK, and I can wear them for long periods of time. The cord is long enough that my phone can sit on the desk and be charged by the laptop, while at the same time short enough that with my phone in my pocket I can still walk around with the headphones on. From a phone perspective nobody's complained that I am inaudiable or sound funny since I started using these headphones. And they are small enough to fit into my work bag, although things are a bit tight in there right now.
Unfortunately the iPhone does not feed your voice back to you when you are using it for phone calls rough a headset, so I have started the habit of flipping one ear cushion off its ear when on the phone so that I can hear myself. The sound quality is noticeably not as good as the Sennheiser, but better than the iPhone earbuds. They are also not as comfortable -- I find the clamping force on my head to be firmer than I like and the ear cushions get sweaty.
So bottom line they are pretty good and I plan to continue using them. But it seems to me like the Sennheisers have spoiled me for both comfort and sound quality.
The Sennheiser HD 500A pair is a set that came with an active listening program that we got for Alex when he was small. He didn't do well with the product so we stopped using it. A few years later I found the headset in the basement and decided that I could use them at the office for general listening. My initial review of them could be summed up as "they are better than the MP3s I listen to with them".
These are over-ear, open headphones. They are superbly comfortable, even over extended sessions of use. The sound is the best I have personally heard. They leak sound both in and out -- I can comfortably hear what is going on around me, and those I am talking to can hear soft, tinny music coming out.
I decided to look for an alternative because I am spending more time on the phone these days and it is annoying to flip the headphones on and off, and using a handset (office phone or cell phone) is itself an irritation.
On the advice of Marco's headset roundup, I picked a set of AKG K545 headphones. I found them at a reasonable price at Costco.ca. I did so hoping to get more isolation from my environment as well as an integrated microphone for phone use. The initial plan was to use my PC as a speakerphone and playing music from iTunes on the PC, but at some point iPhones lost the ability to peer with Windows computers. So I decided to skip the middle device and plug the headphones into the iPhone directly. The 545 fits this usage model perfectly.
After a couple weeks of using them, I think that the passive isolation is pretty good. Not perfect, but still very good. The sound is OK, and I can wear them for long periods of time. The cord is long enough that my phone can sit on the desk and be charged by the laptop, while at the same time short enough that with my phone in my pocket I can still walk around with the headphones on. From a phone perspective nobody's complained that I am inaudiable or sound funny since I started using these headphones. And they are small enough to fit into my work bag, although things are a bit tight in there right now.
Unfortunately the iPhone does not feed your voice back to you when you are using it for phone calls rough a headset, so I have started the habit of flipping one ear cushion off its ear when on the phone so that I can hear myself. The sound quality is noticeably not as good as the Sennheiser, but better than the iPhone earbuds. They are also not as comfortable -- I find the clamping force on my head to be firmer than I like and the ear cushions get sweaty.
So bottom line they are pretty good and I plan to continue using them. But it seems to me like the Sennheisers have spoiled me for both comfort and sound quality.
2014-08-26
Stay Classy, National Home Services
So one day a couple weeks ago, we got a aggressive door knocker -- someone who rings the bell and knocks loudly on the front door. Most of the time when a door to door comes around, I just say "we are not interested in participating, thank you for coming" and close the door, but aggressive door knockers irritate me.
So I open the door and the guy says "Hi, I'm $NAME" -- and I cut him off and say, "Hi $NAME, I guess you can't read?" and I point to the sign on the window next to the door:
Yeah, a pretty jerky thing to do, I admit it. But this guy quickly recovers and says that he's not actually a solicitor because we're actually paying for his service, and he starts to talk about hot water heaters. Before he finishes saying "hot water heaters" I'm laughing and going through my "we're not interested in participating" routine and closing the door.
The next morning I'm leaving to go to work and I find this love note stuck in my door:
Classy. So what do you think the odds of me seeking out this company to business with them are? Did he really think that insulting me is going to somehow change my mind?
And that's not even addressing the fact that most of the flyer pictured above was about telling me how Direct Energy was evil for trying to squash door-to-door water heater sales, and didn't tell me at all how it might be better for me to do business with National Home Services instead.
I've heard anecdotal stories about others who have had... lets say "issues" with door to door hot water heater people. One person reported that when she declined to participate, the person on her step cussed her out. Not that this person was necessarily associated with National Home Services, mind you, it just seems the mentality of the people doing the sales, which is driven by those hiring those people who do the sales...
Most of the time I don't have a problem with door to door salespeople or telemarketers. They are just trying to make their way in the world and there's nothing to be gained by being mean to them. And most of the time I don't give them a window to be mean to me. But sometimes... sometimes they just ask for it.
So I open the door and the guy says "Hi, I'm $NAME" -- and I cut him off and say, "Hi $NAME, I guess you can't read?" and I point to the sign on the window next to the door:
Yeah, a pretty jerky thing to do, I admit it. But this guy quickly recovers and says that he's not actually a solicitor because we're actually paying for his service, and he starts to talk about hot water heaters. Before he finishes saying "hot water heaters" I'm laughing and going through my "we're not interested in participating" routine and closing the door.
The next morning I'm leaving to go to work and I find this love note stuck in my door:
Classy. So what do you think the odds of me seeking out this company to business with them are? Did he really think that insulting me is going to somehow change my mind?
And that's not even addressing the fact that most of the flyer pictured above was about telling me how Direct Energy was evil for trying to squash door-to-door water heater sales, and didn't tell me at all how it might be better for me to do business with National Home Services instead.
I've heard anecdotal stories about others who have had... lets say "issues" with door to door hot water heater people. One person reported that when she declined to participate, the person on her step cussed her out. Not that this person was necessarily associated with National Home Services, mind you, it just seems the mentality of the people doing the sales, which is driven by those hiring those people who do the sales...
Most of the time I don't have a problem with door to door salespeople or telemarketers. They are just trying to make their way in the world and there's nothing to be gained by being mean to them. And most of the time I don't give them a window to be mean to me. But sometimes... sometimes they just ask for it.
2014-08-14
Review: Into The Storm
I don't like watching "movies" shot by teenagers running around with steadicam cellphone cams. But it wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Jenn thinks all the "good" disaster porn shots were in the trailer -- and I think that yes, most of them were. So if you've seen the trailer, you've seen most of the movie already.
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