Screen view: the latest Star Trek

With my afternoon free yesterday, I decided to attend the early matinee showing of Star Trek: Into Darkness, the second installment of J.J. Abrams re-boot of the science fiction classic. The last film I saw at the theater was Prometheus about a year ago. I guess I like to see big-budget science fiction films on the big screen.

These two films share some similar flaws. Both play fast and loose with the laws of physics, and both rely way too heavily on characters behaving in irrational ways only to serve the convenience of the plot. Where these are fatal flaws in Prometheus, Into Darkness survives them due to the raw power of the characters.

In his first Star Trek film, Abrams wisely gave himself permission to wander outside the lines of the traditional Trek storyline through a time-traveling incident that changes the course of history. This gives him latitude to add and subtract — as he did by having the Vulcan home world destroyed and introducing young Mr. Spock to old Mr. Spock. I applaud this decision, but it should not let the filmmaker off the hook for at least attempting to make his physics look plausible.

To me, two things distinguish Gene Roddenberry‘s vision of the original Star Trek: Intriguing, interesting characters and a fascination with the wonder and beauty of the universe. For the most part, the TV series that have followed in Roddenberry’s footsteps have maintained both these attributes if not always to the same standard. J. J. Abrams, however, has eschewed the latter attribute in favor of dynamic, pulse-racing action. Whether this is his own preference or just the nature of Hollywood today, I don’t know. But one of the side effects is a complete disregard for the physics of the universe we live in and the nature of his characters’ motivations.

Let’s start with the opening scene, where we find the Enterprise lurking on the bottom of an alien ocean. The Enterprise is a  craft built to travel in the vacuum of space. It would not be able to bear flying through an atmosphere let alone handling the pressures from thousands of tons of water! But even if it could withstand such forces, the Enterprise is certainly not built to be able to “take off” from under the water. This is merely preposterous. The Enterprise does not have a means of upward propulsion against the forces of gravity. For that matter, the entire opening action set makes no sense, but I won’t go into all that.

Alice Eve as new character Carol Marcus is not one of the physics problems that plague the film.

Then there is the question of just how fast these ships travel. It appears that aboard the Enterprise you can make it from our solar system to the home planet of the Klingons faster than I can commute to my office 12 miles from my home. Yes, they have warp drive, but so do the Klingons. If we’re that nearby, why didn’t the Klingons conquer Earth centuries ago? In all the other Star Trek versions, the immensity of the galaxy is one of the key elements, but apparently the galaxy has shrunk in the new universe J. J. Abrams has created.

There are temporal problems, too, where the action taking place off camera should require days to occur, but happens during what seems just a few hours of the time in the main scene. The biggest of these issues is when Kirk calls from nearby the Klingon home world to Scotty who is in a bar back on Earth. Somehow, Scotty has the time to commandeer a space craft, fly it out to Jupiter, stow away on the super space ship he finds in dry dock there and is on board when that ship shows up in Kirk’s neighborhood within what seems like just a few hours from when Kirk makes the original call.

Another of my peeves with the movie is the tiring gimmick of the transporter being only effective enough at various times to be able to solve the next crisis with the maximum amount of suspense and tension. It would be much too easy to overcome obstacles if the damn thing worked properly all the time!

Oh, and did I mention the endless maze that engineering on the Enterprise has become. They would have to be able to warp space inside the ship in order to fit that goliath mish mash of phony technology onboard.

And finally, the motivation of the evildoers remains sketchy, at best. I simply could not believe that these characters would make the choices they do. They are not sociopaths, though they behave as if they are. Those who are capable of loving their families generally do not make random decisions to slaughter hundreds or thousands of innocent people. Yet, they do just that in this movie, because it is necessary to have characters who would. (While Kirk is trying desperately to save lives, thousands must be killed near the end of the movie when a space ship smashes into San Francisco, yet no one seems too perturbed by that.)

So, yes, there are lots of problems with this film. But what redeems the entire movie are the great characters and their relationships with one another. The creation of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty et. al. was the true act of genius by Gene Roddenberry. To his credit, J. J. Abrams honors this legacy, even building on it. And the cast pulls it off almost flawlessly. As in the first film of this reboot, I totally bought into these actors as those familiar and iconic figures created for TV almost 50 years ago.

Into Darkness is really just a vehicle for these characters to live and interact with one another, for their relationships to grow and develop. It helps that we know them so well, a factor Abrams uses to good effect. He doesn’t need to provide much back story, as we are already familiar with it. So when Kirk gives a look at one of Spock’s emotionless comments, we laugh, knowing all about the tension between Kirk’s fiery personality and Spock’s logical approach to every situation. Abrams leans heavily on this familiarity. He also takes things further, providing a sexual relationship between Spock and Uhura, who is a much more important and interesting character in these films. She joins the boys in a lot of the action sequences.

Benedict Cumberbatch: Imagine Sherlock Holmes crossed with Jason Bourne.

Benedict Cumberbatch turns in a good performance as the villain — or is he? — a kind of hybrid of his hyper-brilliant Sherlock Holmes character and a fighting machine like Jason Bourne. A new character, Carol Marcus, is introduced into the franchise, played by the lovely British actress Alice Eve. Marcus is a science officer and weapons specialist, and possible love interest for one of the other characters.

By the end of the film, order has been restored as the bad guys have been vanquished and we learn that these first two J.J. Abrams movies are just the prologue to where the TV series began, and the Enterprise and her crew are now ready to start a five-year voyage to seek out new life and new civilizations. I just hope that Abrams boldly chooses to obey the physical laws of the universe a little more closely in the future.

Gee, I wonder how those ads get on Web Mail?

If I ever needed any evidence that Earthlink is selling me out to their advertisers, I got it this morning when my friend sent me an e-mail about an old TV series called “Hawkeye.” A few clicks later and what’s the ad at the top of the Web Mail page? See for yourself:

Could it be possible Earthlink sells out my private e-mail messages to their advertisers?

Some thoughts about the marathon bombings

It was just one week ago that the Tsarnaev brothers savaged the Boston Marathon with that most cowardly of dastardly acts: an anonymous bombing. Much has happened in the intervening seven days, a lot of which is actually good (that being the way the country came together to support Boston, the way Bostonians rejected the notion that they were victims, the capture of one Tsarnaev and the killing of the other). I’ve had a few thoughts rolling around in my head about this whole affair and I just need to get them out. So if you’re looking for some coherent discussion of this topic, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Anyway, here goes:

1. There are lots of things wrong with the United States, and I’m not shy about pointing them out. But we do welcome immigrants and we do give them a new opportunity… which is exactly what the two bombers had. That’s the sad irony of the whole thing. Both brothers, but especially the younger, had real opportunities to have good lives here.  Heck they DID have good lives here. They, as much as anyone, should have appreciated America. Reading and hearing the paranoid assertions from their parents in Russia (or whichever former republic they are now living in) and their aunt in Canada, it makes me wonder what their upbringing was like. How sad and pathetic to have your greatest aspiration to be to kill people indiscriminately from the shadows of an anonymous bombing.

2. I am not usually moved by mass displays of patriotism, but the scene at Fenway Park on Saturday was remarkable. I think what made it get to me was how genuine and sincere it appeared. The “Boston Strong” thing started almost immediately (and it seemed to me to start with Will Middlebrooks of the Red Sox, though that may have just been an illusion of Twitter). And it didn’t feel like just empty sloganeering. There was a true sense of community strength from all corners, and I found that very touching and encouraging.

3. I should not be surprised by this, but nevertheless it still amazes me that the Republican party can almost unilaterally block background checks on firearms purchases based on Constitutionality, but they are the first ones to criticize the FBI for not doing a deeper background check on the older Tsarnaev brother:

Representative Peter King of New York, a Republican member of the House homeland security committee, asked whether the FBI could have done more. “Did they move too quickly by letting this guy off the hook?” said King, quoted in Newsday. “Should they have looked more carefully?”

As bad as the bombings are — and I am in no way arguing that they are not horrible — the bombs killed three people, whereas Adam Lanza killed 27 people in Newtown with firearms. You can not seriously pretend to actually care about the welfare of Americans and block every effort to control who has access to guns. That’s hyper hypocrisy at its Republican best.

4. This is not criticism of the authorities involved, but I find it a curious circumstance that they locked down the community of Watertown all day Friday while they did a pretty intensive search. But it wasn’t until they lifted their “stay indoors at home” order, that the fugitive Tsarnaev brother was finally located — because a man came out of his home and noticed blood on his boat. They probably would have captured that kid much sooner and with a lot less fuss if they hadn’t ordered everyone in doors in the first place. But who knew?

 

We’ll see you at the movies! Rest in peace Roger Ebert.

Just yesterday I read the most recent posting by Roger Ebert on his web site. He titled this post “A leave of presence.” In it he listed all the things that he was planning to do in the coming months. Oh, and by the way, he disclosed that his cancer had returned, so he was going to have to write fewer movie reviews. Roger Ebert died today.

Siskel and Ebert in whatever incarnation of that show, was a major influence on my life. I began watching the thumbs up critics over three decades ago, when my movie watching tastes were simple and very unrefined.Their show was just fun to watch, never more than when the two disagreed about a film. They would each defend their view, thumb up or down, with such passion, you just knew these guys truly cared about what was up on the screen.

I certainly haven’t become Frank Rich or anything, but Gene and Roger helped me to appreciate movies in ways I could never have imagined. Mostly, they made me realize that filmmakers had a responsibility to make good movies. That as fans we didn’t have to settle for crap. For that I will always be grateful.

I will imagine Gene and Roger reunited in the balcony in the sky. Still arguing about the latest films of course.

Lincoln. Great film. Small goof to correct.

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln.

We watched Lincoln on DVD last night. What a terrific film, and Daniel Day-Lewis does an amazing job of bringing that almost mythical man to life. Had he not won the Academy honor as the best actor, it would have made the Oscars completely irrelevant, instead of just mostly so.

I had one minor quibble with the film, an error of fact made when Lincoln is telling a joke (a pretty good one) about Ethan Allen. He says that Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1776, when in fact Allen and Benedict Arnold led the capture in May of 1775. It is not surprising to find an error like this in a film, but what was surprising to me is that of all the little details that people pointed out as errors on IMDB, no one appears to have caught this one. The smart folks pointing out the errors know stuff like this:

In 1863, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton “commissioned” Tad Lincoln an artillery 2nd lieutenant. In the film, Tad wears the uniform of an infantry lieutenant colonel, outranking his brother, Captain Robert Lincoln, by two grades.

But they don’t know when Ticonderoga was taken. I guess that says a lot about how much we still need to educate people about the history of our Lake Champlain region. Learn more about Fort Ticonderoga here.

iPad app update

ThinkBook for the iPad with the Slider activated.

I’ve had my iPad Mini now for about five months. It’s a terrific device and I’m glad I bought it. That doesn’t mean, however, that I haven’t had my frustrations with it. More specifically, my frustrations revolve around the apps I’ve been experimenting with trying to find just the right combination to make the Mini a useful device for actually doing things that matter to me.

Part of the learning curve for me has been figuring out just what it is I do WANT to do with the Mini. I think I originally had an inflated idea of what could be done EFFICIENTLY with the unit. The key word (as I not so subtly hinted at) is efficiently. There are so many apps that do so many things that it seems that almost anything you can think of, you can do with the iPad. It’s just the question of asking oneself, “Do I want to do that?” For me, the answer has as often as not been no. And that has been due to three reasons:

The form factor of the iPad Mini just isn’t conducive to the doing, primarily for two reasons: A.) the screen is too small, or B.) the on-screen keyboard just isn’t the best way to add a lot of text. This could very well be a generational thing, as I’ve spent the past forty years writing words using a full-sized keyboard of some kind or another. Not to mention my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.

Reason two is the apps themselves are wanting. This, in truth, is more often the reason. There are a lot of crappy, useless apps out there and I think I’ve tried all the ones related to information management. Even the ones that are relatively ingenious in one way, often have a glaring failing that just makes me not want to use it. Often this has to do with the failure of the developer to extend the keyboard with useful keys. It has almost become a litmus test for me: if the developer can’t be bothered to extend the keyboard, then the app is no good. Another significant cause of failure is a lack of useful export options for sharing with other apps. Sometimes it’s that the app is too simple and other times it’s that the app is too complicated. Regardless, this has narrowed down the field of possible solutions by 90% or more.

The final reason is simply, “Why do on the iPad Mini what is so much easier and efficient to do on my grown-up MacBook or office Windows PC?” This is possibly related to or redundant with reason number 1, but I feel like it needs to be said. Full-sized laptops or desktop computers with roomy keyboards, big screens and lots of processing power are just better at most computing jobs than the Mini. The software is more mature and more powerful in many cases. So why force the issue? Two out of three times I can wait until I get to my “real” computer to do the job, so why have a less than pleasant and effective computing experience when I don’t have to? Obviously there are times when I can’t or don’t want to wait to do something. Or when I have empty time on my hands, but do not have access to my MacBook or am not at the office. Otherwise the Mini would have been a waste of money. But that doesn’t mean I need to do everything on it just to make myself feel it was a good investment.

So back to what it is I want t use the Mini for (relating to information management, not the myriad other things to do with it). I’ve narrowed this down to these tasks:

• Calendar/date book
• Tasks check lists
• Quick journal
• Quick note taking
• Brainstorming when I need it and can’t get to a computer
• Mobile access to useful information

Essentially, then, the Mini is an electronic notebook/datebook and portable database. And I’m glad to report that I think I’ve distilled my essential apps for these tasks down to the following:

Awesome Calendar. This is a nice application that combines a day planner with simple task management. You create three types of items: events, todos and notes. Tasks and events can have dates assigned so they show up in the calendar. You can also view each type in a filtered lis. Simple and easy.  I was using PocketInformant Pro, which I like overall, but which is really way more than I need, and its many parts overwhelm the small iPad Mini screen.

Day One. This is my journal application. I’ve written about it before, so no need to go into detail. Works great.

ThinkBook. I lik this notebook application very much. It just seems to make it easier to enter information than other apps. One way is with the ingenious gizmo they call the Slider. You create notebooks and pages much as you would in OneNote for Windows. Each page can contain various types of data: notes, todos, pictures, questions, links to other pages and more. Creating outlines is a snap with ThinkBook, and the Slider allows you to easier navigate to the section of the page you want to add to and select the type of information you want to enter. ThinkBook still needs some work on sharing content created within itself with other apps, but the export text to Dropbox function works well. (My only other complaint is that its icon looks to me like a skull an crossbones!) I think I’ll write a longer post about ThinkBook in the near future.

Evernote. This is my freeform database and my notetaker when I want to be able to share the notes across devices. I’m not a big fan of Evernote, but it works. Enough said.

Bento. This is a great little database app I use for structured data, like my reading list. It syncs through wifi with the OS version on my MacBook.

Of course, I also use many other apps on the Mini. This is a post about information management, in case that wasn’t clear at the top. And even for info management, I use other apps, like the terrific iThoughts for diagramming. In fact, I love iThoughts, but I don’t use it as much as I would like, mainly due, I think, to the Mini’s small screen. If I had the regular sized iPad, I suspect iThoughts would get a lot more use.

If you read my earlier posting about the apps I was considering, you’ll find this new list very different. But these are the apps that have bubbled to the top of my iPad workflow. I hope to write more about some of them, especially ThinkBook. Stay tuned.

Why Amazon will never beat a real bookstore

A couple of days ago, I spent the morning at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, one of my favorite places to shop. I was hoping to find a good, easy read; a mystery or a science fiction novel. Something escapist. I am also researching information about the American Revolution, so I thought I might find a book in the history section. I did, indeed, pick up David Brin’s latest science fiction novel, Existence. I’d been waiting for this title to be available in paperback, and could just have easily bought it online.

But I love browsing bookstores and usually stick my nose in all corners. Which is how I ended up purchasing a book I had never heard of before: How the Hippies Saved Physics, by David Kaiser. This is a delightful account about a group of far-out physicists in the 1970s who revived the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, and how that has led to a technology revolution today.

This was a completely serendipitous purchase. I was close to being ready to check out, when I took my stroll through the Science section, and there it was, staring at me from the shelf. I never would have found this wonderful book if I limited my shopping to Amazon or any online bookseller, because I had no idea it existed, that I would want to read it, so I had no thought of looking for it.

You can only make these discoveries in a good bookstore, run by book lovers.

P.S. By the title of this post, I don’t mean that Amazon will not end up putting all bricks and mortar bookstores out of business (sadly, I think that’s a possibility). I just mean, this is why a real bookstore is a far better place to buy books… even if you have to pay a few dollars more.

Some notes on Evernote

I have reluctantly come to believe that Evernote is the best note-taking app for people who want to keep their notes synchronized among various devices. I use a Windows PC at work, a MacBook Pro for home and personal computing, an iPad Mini and an iPad Touch for mobile computing.

The Evernote note editor window on my Windows PC.

There are other options than Evernote that would work to join these four devices in a note network — a notework? Two that come to mind are:

Simple Note

I could use Simple Note on my mobile devices, which can sync through the Simple Note server with apps on my PC (Resophnote or Cinta Note), and MacBook (Tinderbox or Notational Velocity).

Dropbox

I could use one of various writing apps on my mobile devices (Drafts, iaWriter) that sync to Dropbox, then use whatever text editors I want on the two computers.

These are just two examples. There are numerous others. But I’m finding that Evernote works best for me because there’s an Evernote app for everyone of the devices I own, although this advantage is dulled some by one of my reservations about Evernote (see below), and the synchronization among them has proven to be quick and reliable. In addition, I generally like the note editor in Evernote, which is among the more powerful I’ve found in apps that work on iOS devices.

Reservations

You probably noticed I used the term “reluctantly” earlier to describe my adoption of Evernote. I have a few fairly serious reservations about the app, including:

• I’m not comfortable trusting one app, one company with my notes. I could live with it just being the software on my devices; that survives a bankrupt company (look at all the people who still use ECCOPro 18 years after the application was abandoned by its company). But Evernote users also rely on the Evernote company for the synchronization of notes. Also, you need to have a premium account to have access to your notes locally on your mobile devices. And it is notoriously difficult to export notes from Evernote in formats usable on other applications.
• The user interface for Evernote is different on all my devices, so it is like using four different apps. Not a horrible problem, but not ideal either.
• While the basic service is free, to make Evernote your primary notes app, you really should purchase a subscription to the premium service (in part for the reason mentioned above). I’m not a fan of subscriptions for software. I don’t mind paying annually for upgrades, but I don’t like a system where if I stop paying the subscription, my service is cut.
• Reliance on tagging for organization. Tagging is very useful, but it is not an instinctive means of categorization to me, yet Evernote relies heavily on tagging for keeping information in order.

There’s also this: Evernote is very popular and I’m a contrary cuss. I don’t like using the same application that everyone else is using.

But the simple truth is that I’ve tried many, many apps on my iPad mini, and I’ve be disappointed with them to the extent that they make sharing notes across devices easy and reliable. Evernote works. It’s effective. So that will have to do for now. (Until Tinderbox for iOS comes out…)

Super Duds

I don’t watch many television commercials these days. My wife and I don’t actually get television. No satellite or cable, and certainly no broadcast here in the sticks. My parents next door have satellite, and we watch a few shows with them, but mom and dad hate the commercials and liberally employ the mute button. As a marketing communications professional, I should probably stay abreast of the latest TV commercials, but they are usually so bad and annoying, I don’t lose any sleep over missing them.

But for last night’s Super Bowl, I insisted dad put the remote down and keep the sound up. I shouldn’t have bothered.

The Super Bowl is supposed to be the showcase for advertising’s greatest creativity. If it is, what a sorry, sorry state the industry is in.

First of all, I can hardly even recall any of the spots, which is likely the worst thing you can say about advertising. I’m going over to NFL.com, which has a listing of the commercials quarter by quarter just to remind myself what I saw.

I’d like to teach the world to fight over Oreo cookies.

Oh, yes. There was the Oreo commercial that was just a stupid re-calibration of the old Miller Light campaign, “Tastes great. Less filling.” In this one a bunch of morons destroy a library arguing over whether it is the cookie or the creme filling that is the best part of the Oreo. We had the requisite competing Pepsi and Coke ads, of course. I think the Coke ad was trying to modernize the “I’d like to teach the world to sing” spot from the 1960s; while not exactly brilliant at least it is promoting harmony and not mayhem. And I have no idea what Pepsi was trying to say, but then I never do. I’m not cool enough to drink Pepsi.

There was that movie trailer with Vin Diesel and the Rock. Lots of things exploding. My mom commented, “I have no interest in seeing that.” To which I tried to explain that the studio would be horrified if she did; if an 81-year old woman wanted to see this flammable garbage, either the filmmaker fucked up or the promo people did, because, sadly, the last audience marketers not selling dentures or Depends care about is old people.

That Calvin Klein commercial simply looked like it had gotten lost on its way to HereTV.

And we can’t forget the beer commercials. These seem to come in two varieties, both of which promise that you’ll get laid if you drink their product. In the first variety, they want to convince us that the best way to improve our sex lives is by associating with their label. These ads feature people so fashion-conscious they orgasm just by seeing themselves in a mirror. The second and more common variety of beer commercial wallows in the frat boy mentality — just get everyone drunk, you’re bound to get fucked. The people in these spots are so stupid that even the brothers from Delta House would not want to be seen in their company.

Overall, what I’ve never understood about television commercials is how often the advertisers make the people who use their products look like idiots. Why do they do that? To make the commercials memorable? All this says to me is, “We think our customers are morons. Isn’t that funny?”

The advertisers pay $4,000,000 for each 30 seconds during the Super Bowl to display this dreck. So who are the morons, really?

Typing versus handwriting

Manfred Kuhn has a wonderful blog for note-takers called, sensibly enough, Taking Note. He makes posts about the theory and practice of note-taking, often ferreting out very interesting articles from all over the web. I’ve referenced his writing before.

In a recent post, Manfred commented on a post by another blogger writing about memory, and specifically about her assertion that typing doesn’t help memory. The original post contains several interesting nuggets about memory worth reading, and read Manfred’s comments too. But I have an issue with the same assertion Manfred does. The author writes:

You are much better off writing notes in a notebook than you are highlighting. Notice that I state “writing” rather than “typing” too. I chose that word deliberately. The reason I suggest writing, is that writing with a pen or pencil requires deliberate thought, and though it is a motor skill regulated by Procedural memory, when you are paraphrasing and shaping the words, you are actively using your semantic memory too, thus writing serves as a dual-coding exercise. Typing, on the other hand (ha, ha, no pun intended), is a skill that for most college students anyways, is automatic. It’s something you can do without deliberate thought, thus it is regulated primarily by Procedural memory.  You can type and think of other things. So if you are reading and typing your “notes” you are not processing the material as deeply as you would be if you were hand-writing them. In short, highlighting and typing are time-savers, but not memory-improvers. If your aim is recall, then stick with an old-fashioned pen or pencil.

I don’t know if her point is true that when writing by hand you are “actively using your semantic memory too, thus writing serves as a dual-coding exercise.” Perhaps it is, but there are several advantages to typing your notes into a good information management software (let’s call these “digital notes”), which, to me, can make the computer environment a better way to learn:

1. More important than merely transcribing notes is paraphrasing them. You have to understand the meaning in order to properly re-state the information. Writing can be a process for developing that understanding. Creating digital notes makes this much easier, because you have the editing tools available in the computer to facilitate that job. Where hand-writing notes is laborious, typing digital notes is actually enjoyable.
2. I am much more likely to take notes in the first place with computer software, because it is easier and I have confidence that I can find my digital notes later on.
3. Good note-taking software allows you to create relationships among your digital notes, thus increasing understanding and insight. (For example, see my comments on TheBrain.)
4. With digital notes, I can carry literally hundreds of notebooks-worth of notes with me on my laptop or even my iPad Mini, which means that I can reference exactly which notes I need whenever I need them.

I am not saying there is no place for hand-written notes. Of course there is. Because you can jot things down quickly, add diagrams or other visual cues, hand-written notes can be very useful. If I were in college today, I might even take classroom notes in a paper notebook. But I would transcribe them as soon as possible to computer, where I could expand on them at will.

Sadly, I never had that chance, as my college days preceded personal computers. I have often wondered how much more I would have enjoyed learning had I had a laptop computer. I suspect a great deal!