The Movie Night

The Old Cover

The movie night itself was an impromptu dinner and flick session. I think the hilarious part of the entire situation was our concepts of what we were about to watch. David didn’t realize that my version was a musical. I didn’t realize that his version was a regular movie. No musical need apply.

We were both coming from very different perspectives. We had a movie we loved and wanted to share it with the other, but didn’t bother to check expectations or differences in the movies before hand.

The Old Film Style

Scheme... What Scheme?

Films older than the early 80s show their age in peculiar ways. The actual film technology doesn’t seem to be that different, at least not to the eye. It’s the techniques that really show through.

For starters, the camera doesn’t move as much. In many cases, it’s stationary. You certainly don’t get the dramatic zooms when there’s tension. If the camera does move, it seems obvious. People talk only to the camera in most cases. Their lips aren’t obscured or faces masked. They’re quite clearly facing the camera. I can’t tell whether this is a throwback to stage plays or simply the style at the time.

The pacing is also much slower. There’s generally less action, more sets, more minor characters who you know odd details about, and more smoking. Smoking and drinking are prolific in anything pre-80s, it seems. It’s less common, depending on the rating of the film, but it’s less common in general.

The acting itself is very different, too. Things are understated quite frequently, though I’m not sure the best side-by-side comparison is a film and a musical. The interactions are what really get me. Beyond the slow pacing, beyond the dated sets, you’re dealing with an odd dynamic between the actors. They don’t seem to quite get into it in the same way actors nowadays do. Lines that interrupt another actor are the most obvious example of this. The lines don’t seem to be true interruptions. The actor who is interrupted politely stops at the appropriate point. It’s strange.

The New Musical

Your Scheme!

Musicals seem to have changed over the years. If you look at Singing in the Rain and compare it with the Moulin Rouge, you’re going to get very, very different experiences. It’s not so stark a contrast as old horror films to new horror films, but the disparity is there.

The musical numbers themselves are huge. The characters are overacted, which leads to some wonderful scenes. The choreography is painstakingly planned. The sets are frequently ridiculous. All of these things boil down to what we seem to have dubbed the ‘new musical’. Films in this category include the already mentioned Moulin Rogue, Across the Universe, and naturally The Producers.

The character interaction between Leo and Max really just does it for me in this movie. The whole thing was well cast (if you ask me). David mentioned some issue with Matthew Broderick’s acting. He said that he appeared to flip back and forth between super neurotic and just himself. I don’t see it, but I can see how he would see it.

Beyond that, the songs are wonderful. I think it managed to keep a Broadway feel to the whole movie, though I’m not exactly the best judge of what constitutes a Broadway play.

The Verdict

The Girl is New(ish)

David walked away still loving the old one but enjoying the new. I walked away still loving the new one but having enjoyed the old. Neither of our minds were changed as far as which was ‘best’, but we did find something interesting in the one the other presented.

Old films will be forever loved by those who saw them growing up. Newer films will find themselves in that selfsame category if given a few decades. The best part is being able to enjoy them both.

My Platform of Choice

Hardware and Disk

I don’t think I’ve ever purchased a DVD player. These days, it’s an incidental purchase coupled with a gaming platform. I own a PS3 and a Wii. The Wii cannot play DVDs, so the PS3 is my player. Hell, it even plays Blu-Ray! Rock on.

I’d already tried the version for the X-Box 360, but my access to that was drying up. I hated the fact that a Gold Membership was required to access your Netflix account. Felt like a fee on a fee on a fee. Nothing quite like requiring your hardware, the service, another service, and your ISP just to get what you’ve paid for.

When Netflix for the PS3 was announced, I was excited. The day it was released, I fired up my PS3 and went to download the application. Wait… you require a disk? Why, pray tell, do you require a disk? Perhaps there’s a legitimate reason! Regardless, I’m not going to get it to work until I get my disk. So, I wait.

Problems Already?

The Main Interface

When it does arrive, I realize that the interface makes me motion sick. There’s something about the way that the images change focus that makes me sick to my stomach. Getting past that and browsing around, I notice a few other stickler points.

The controls are not as intuitive as I would have hoped. For example, holding down the left analog stick provides no additional scrolling. After the initial tick sideways in the direction you pushed, nothing happens. You must flick your stick for every movement you’d like to make. The triggers can be used to accelerate the scrolling, but this only jumps you a set number of titles, rather than scrolling faster.

Another little oddity popped up as I was attempting to select the next episode in a series. When you complete an episode, the interface automatically updates to the next episode. Just click play.

If you exit the episode before the credits have finished, you’re at less than 100% completion. That means you have to select the option to select another episode, select your episode, and then hit play. This seems a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

The Need for Communication

If there’s a single thing in the world I think is necessary, it’s communication. Without the desire for communication, your house would not look like your house does now. Your car would be different. Books, movies, and telephones would not exist (not to mention a whole host of other things). So, when a program forgoes communication, it perplexes me. You should tell your users every bit of useful information you can.

Now, this leads me to my biggest problem with the PS3…

How Netflix.com Deals with the Issue

I have gone along happily watching the first few episodes in a series when you discover something terrible. A single episode requires a disk. Naturally, this is the second or fourth episode. You get absorbed in a series and then the ability to watch it is whisked away.

While I don’t have a problem with ordering disks, I do dislike seeing a requirement I wasn’t informed of. Netflix may not have the power to put the films up for viewing, but they do have the ability to communicate.

On the web, if you look at the film’s details, you’ll see a list of episodes that tell you which are available and which you require the disk for. The PS3′s interface is not so forgiving. You have to delve down into the choosing of the episodes. There, you will find the culprit. It’s there, when I’m switching episodes, that I discover I require a disk. Blah. Just tell me before hand.

What could be a beautiful is a warning. I’m not worried about getting the disk. Just warn me.

That’s not exactly a phrase a woman would take well. If she’s irritated with you for telling her she can’t have what she wants, that’s doubly so. She definitely won’t think that you’re talking about a real book written by 37Signals.

When Jared gave me that exact phrase, I had to remove myself from the situation we were in, calm down, and deal with it later. I laughed when he brought me a book with the actual title of Getting Real. And here I thought he was just giving me shit.

First Impressions

Getting Real

The wisdom dispensed therein is simple. The presentation of their book fits nicely with the message that they’re trying to convey. No individual section is larger than three or four pages. The chunks are well spaced and each individual chunk has a clearly defined lesson to impart.

A Deeper Look

The one bad thing I have to say about the book is that the sections are too short. I’m the sort of individual who adores exhaustive detail. I want to not only know the how, but the why in as many ways as possible. There’s something reassuring about having all of the facts and descriptions metered out like a roadmap to the best software plan. If you’re looking for a roadmap, this is not the book for you.

If what you are seeking is a peak into 37Signal’s rabbit hole, you have your wish. This book, if lacking the detail I normally prefer, contains a host of valuable information. Keep it clean. Keep it simple. Keep it iterative. Figure out what you need to accomplish and get it done quickly. A great software no one can use because it’s still in the sketch process does no one any good. Your great idea, if left unfulfilled, is just that… an idea.

But Will I Buy It?

I may buy my own copy of this book, just to keep myself on course when the time comes for real programming. It’s important to keep your enthusiasm and drive. Thankfully, Getting Real provides not only the information, but the inspiration. Many of the concepts are ones I’ve had and have had to fight for.

It’s always good to hear someone (a largely successful someone) thinks the way that you do. Surrounded as I am with competent, intelligent people, this book may rest on the shelf for long years before I pick it up again. If you’re living it, you often don’t need reminding.

Ultimately, they wrote their book like they write their software. You’ll not only get the information in the book, but you’ll see it in play by the text on the page. These are the gents who brought us Ruby on Rails.

Should we expect anything else?

The game is pretty simple… You start off by controlling what appears to be a gust of wind.

This gust of wind is far from ordinary, however. Your main objective is to brush various flowers that litter the scenic landscape. When you touch a flower, you receive a petal from it and get to watch it burst into full bloom. The more flowers you come into contact with, the longer your petal train becomes.

Pastoral Beauty

Simple, no?

Despite the lack of dialogue, it’s not difficult to figure out what is happening in the storyline. For one, you’re no mere gust of wind. Touching the blooms coaxes spring itself to enter the little valleys you call your stomping grounds. What was once brown is now green with life… and tinkle noises. Did I mention that every flower you bloom makes a noise?

They even give you an antagonist halfway through the game. Evil electricity monster…

Each level has three secrets that you reveal by exploring the level, touching certain flowers, or playing with your environment. The flowers in the pots in the level selection area get healthier as you collect these secrets. Apparently they’re like fertilizer for your levels.

I’d seriously suggest getting this game for those of you who are thinking about it. It’s a wonderful little adventure that offers more replay time than I would have originally thought.

Gowalla's Mascot

The Skinny

When you sign up for the service, you receive a passport. As you go about town and check in at various user-created locations, you gain stamps in your passport.

Every stamp is a theme centric icon of the category of place you’re at. At a theater? Well, you’ll get a set of curtains. Coffee shop? You get not one cup but two! The icons seem to be where the root of my love for this app is.

Trips seem to be an integral part of the app. They’re essentially a list of locations put together to form an interesting little walk-about in your area. Currently, these include campus tours, pub and club crawls, and guided tours (or scavenger hunts) of places like zoos and parks.

It even integrates with Facebook and Twitter, which ensures my mom feels included. She gets to think she knows what I’m doing and where I’m going.

Opinions and Such

Look! We're on Gowalla!

The app seems neither competitive nor cooperative. The ideas they present are enjoyable and fun, but a lot of the features could be expanded to give the game more of a draw. Neither items nor trips pull in the users to participate in any particular way.

Trips could be expanded to include not just the largest of the US cities, but all US cities. These, just like spots, could be user-generated. Perhaps they would only show up online after a certain amount of people voted for the trip or checked into the locations on the trip.

Appropriate finds ftw.

The items are a wonderful idea and have great implications. When you look at an item, the item detail shows you the number of unique owners and where they picked the item up. Users should be encouraged to drop an item everywhere they go, trading items out for others. Having an item where the first user was halfway across the United States (or better yet from another country entirely) just seems like an awesome idea to me. It would help illustrate how the ease of travel and connections in the internet age have changed the way we do things.

Where to Give Feedback?

What they need is a FAQ for the intended use of the different aspects of the game. Thankfully, their support via Get Satisfaction is monitored. It can be difficult to find their account from their main Gowalla site. They’ve neglected to put a proper link there, and instead have opted to put one on the main marketing site for the development company. I don’t think their intention was to hide it, but they could have been a bit better about the linkage.

I’m looking forward to when users will be able to easily find one another based on where they frequently go. All in all, this is a beautiful and greatly interactive program. It’s based on a growing community of users that input their own data. We just need a way to truly customize our cities.

The moleskins I’m used to getting are beautiful, minimalistic affairs. Their pages are soft to the touch and nice to the pen. They’re a color that invokes soft and mellow feelings. The binding is a soft leather, usually black. Any variety you chose gives you a blank canvas to write your thoughts, stories, or observations in.

Reading Carefully

I am sure that some little sod back at that corporate office thought their description was accurate. I knew the booklets were going to come in 12 largely bright and cheery colors. I knew that there was going to be a bit of a size difference between what I’d normally handled. The booklets were going to be very small at 9cm by 14cm. That’s fine. The specs of the item include that, so I can consider myself an educated consumer.

But wait… let’s go over that written description, shall we?

An individual Volant daily planner for each month of the year. Light and practical to carry, easy to collect. The 12 months are packed in a gift box that protects, organizes, and preserves.

What I should have read from that is that these tiny books will come with a page a day that are broken apart with hourly labeled lines. What I am actually looking for is less of a planner and more of a diary. I should move on and find another product. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep moving. I hit buy.

My Mistake

When I received the product, my first impression was how small the box was. This was okay, I was expecting it. The very first thing I did was write my name in the book labeled 1 for January. Then, I flipped through the rest of the book. Oops.

Imagine my horror when I discovered that the first fifteen pages of every book was filled with fluff. Calendars for 2010 and 2011 were shoved into the front. Conversion tables, world-wide holidays, travel logs, and time zones. While the ability to see international sizes for men’s and women’s clothing (shirts, pants, shoes) is really pretty cool, I’m not sure if I need it in a glorified diary.

While this may not seem that bad, it sure distracted me from the purpose of my book. I felt ripped off. I’d had almost been better buying one of the tiny little books and writing the dates on it myself. Sure, it may have cost a bit more, but I’d have gotten a product closer to what I wanted.

I have been using the little books, as I can’t return them because I wrote in them. The paper is wonderful. The binding is great. The size is perfect to pop in a pocket so I never leave the house without it. The first fifteen pages? Lost to me.

Look below to see my pain:

The Run Down

As our resident game master said, there are many ways to lose, but only one way to win. You win by exposing all of the Old God shadows before the victory counter at the edge of the board reaches the corner and by closing all of the portals before that same counter gets to the end of its walk as you hold off the sixth shadow.

At the beginning of each full circuit, an event and two monster cards are drawn. When you draw a monster, if there’s a space for it it goes on the board. There are two of each regular monsters in the deck. If you pull a monster that’s already on the board, the effect on the bottom of the card gets activated. Some force every player to loose two sanity, some eat a vast amount of items, and others slide the victory counter up closer to your doom. Sometimes, you can fend off the slide by sacrificing items.

I hope you didn't need this item to kill that monster.

The turns go like this:

1. You play a location card and travel there.
2. You get to trade with players at the location.
3. You get attacked if there’s a monster at the location and then destroy the monster if you have the appropriate items.
4. You get to use an item.
5. You get to pick up an item and pay for it.

The game seats up to four. Each character receives a stack of cards with all of the seven locations on them plus the Secret Passage which allows you to go fight the sixth Old God. You’ve also got a sanity counter (which starts as six and steadily goes to zero as you run into the terrible things the portals are spitting out).

The character card has spots for three items and an artifact. There are four different types of items in the game. Glasses allow you to peak at the portals which reside face down at the locations. The Necronomicon allows you to expose the Old Gods one at a time. The dagger allows you to slaughter one of the monsters if the Witch of Salem (who the game is named for) is on the same location. The potions allow you to regain some of your sanity back, which is always a good thing.

The whole thing seems to take about an hour and a half.

My Experience

This game was completely brutal to us. Out of the six times we played, we only won once. The funny thing is, our death was never a slow decline into the deep. With a final flourish and a neat stab, we’re all dead and the Old Gods have slipped into this reality. That never makes for a good day, I assure you.

The first few games we played with one of the most frustrating rules I’ve run across: you cannot communicate with your fellow plays on which portal tiles are actually portals. You can’t return a location card you’ve already used to your hand until you’ve traveled to the University. This created an interesting play style that seemed contrary to the cooperative nature of the game.

The board has some great detail.

If you had glasses or an artifact to start the dance was easier. Otherwise, you had to find glasses, look at a portal, find the appropriate artifact, and then seal the portal. This required at least one trip back to the University. We decided early on that the best way around this was to allow communication. But, there was one trick. You could trade information only with people at the same location you were at (much like trading items).

The Witch of Salem, by virtue of the event cards we pulled, managed to be useless more often than not. In theory, he (yes, he) allows you to avoid damage from monsters, slaughter monsters with a single dagger, and to regain sanity points via potion at twice the going rate.

The only time we won we aggressively picked up items, attacked monsters, and revealed Gods. The portals were almost secondary. Every turn was planned out meticulously, and no monsters came out that truly decided to give us what for.

All in all, the game is more than willing to give you a delicious beating. When we beat it, we were shocked, and I wasn’t entirely sure we’d won. I look forward to finding other strategies to winning.

Just Real Quick, The Rules:

Each player has four attributes: Industry, Culture, Finance, and Politics. Each of these effect a different part of the game. Industry dictates what type of buildings you can create. The higher your score, the better the buildings. Raising your culture alters the amount of people you get in phase two of any turn. Finance changes the amount of people you buy back from the buildings as you use abilities. Your politics score indicates how many cards you can hold in your hand.

The turns go clockwise around the board, but happen in phases:

1. Choose a building to create.
2. Get your new influx of people.
3. Buy back your people that were in use.
4. Use your actions.

There are several common actions that you can use in Phase 4: attacking, occupying, drawing a card, and sailing. You must have a way to make every action you partake. You get actions in one of two ways. You either have a building that allows you to use the action, or you have a blue token captured from the board that allows you to use one of the abilities without having the corresponding building.

The game and all its bits.

Every action utilizes some of your population. Drawing a card only takes one person, but you have to have the appropriate amount of people inside of any given territory. Occupying and shipping take two each. One of them is required to activate the ability. The other poor sap is sent to either take the city or is shipped off to one of the new territories.

Attacking is the only way to occupy a city that’s already been taken. This takes three men. One is used to take the city. One is lost in the ensuing battle. The last man is used to occupy the newly liberated city.

The fourth phase happens repeatedly in any individual turn and continues until everyone passes.

What Happened…

What is most interesting to me is how the game ramps up. The first few turns are quick, with little more than a few seconds thought put into any one action. The entire game is played in seven full turns, so the last four are taken very seriously.

I won in such a way that made me the European based USA. I was the might of the area, slaughtering those that got in my way of taking over Europe but caring little for the other areas. I’d send a single ship out, perhaps take over a city or two if it was connected via an obvious trade route. Otherwise, foreign territories were ignored.

It was an awesome game. I look forward to playing it again and discovering other viable strategies. Maybe England is a good way to go.

A visual inventory.

After some search on the internet, I found SwitchEasy. The cases looked awesome. I decided that I wanted it, and Geiger inspired goodness showed up at my house a few days later.

The package you get comes with quite a few things ready to go. I managed to ruin one of the screen protectors off the bat. The bloody thing simply wouldn’t go on properly and I ruined the sticky with my grubby fingers. The one I did manage to get on was askew. The texture was interesting, though.

And I broke it.

I managed to break the case not ten minutes after having it. I successfully snapped off one of the little spines of the harder outer shell. And all I wanted to do was keep adjusting the screen protectors. Great. $30 for a broken case.

Contacting SwitchEasy was pretty simple. They wanted to make sure I hadn’t simply lost pieces, thrown pieces away, or it wasn’t a scratch issue. All cases get scratches. Other than those few caveats, they had a two year warranty on all of their products. All they wanted was the information:

1. Item & Color.
2. A clear photo of what the problem is.
3. A statement explaining what I thought had happened or was wrong.
4. Receipt or Proof of Purchase.
5. My name and shipping address.

An easy five things was all it took to get my new, undamaged case. I’m not usually one to rave about a product or company, but these guys were awesome to work with. They sent me a new shipping label to send back the old device.

I even managed to get the case off without breaking it when I put it on upside down. Nothing quite like paying attention.

A rock on case. A rock on company. I recommend them wholeheartedly.