One Tired Blogger

Two iphones of the house alaph did reside
Over each did problems a many preside
One so sick it’s life hadnt’t long
The other a connection to wi-fi but not strong

So off to the Castle of Apple did I go
But solutions to ANY problems I dare not know
Twas the keeper at the gate who did sayeth
You must come again, no help for you this dayeth

Boiling in anger away in did I stride
From the woes of Apple my face did I hide
These Iphones of which we were sold be not a dream
Too many horid troubles had they seen.

So a warning to you,a warning one and all
Buy only new Iphones with huge warranties
Buy only new Iphones,only new Iphones please!

-alaph and wife

Stupid iphones. My wife’s and my own are the older non-3G ones and both are sick. Mine just won’t connect to the internet through my my home wi-fi, though it will work iTunes through with the remote ap. My wife’s is significantly more sick and may need to be sent in. Unfortunatly when you go to the apple store they make set up an appointment with their so called geniuses (their words not mine) and as there are only two apple stores in Alabama there are no free appointments within my available time slots. sigh

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Thats my youngest son sitting on our Wii Fit. A trip to China-Mart turned up one and only one Wii Fit so we snatched it up and took the thing home. My wife was skeptical about the thing at first and claimed she would never use the thing, she isn’t a big Wii player anywho.

Once home my older son and I set up our Mii’s and got started. My wife got curious and finally set up her on Mii on the thing. To date she has the most time logged on the Wii Fit

So how was it? Was it worth buying? Would it be worth trying to turn it around on e-bay for double what we paid? Hell yeah it worth it and no I don’t want to sell the thing.

You set up your Mii then you do a body test. This lets you know your weight and how your posture is. It also gives you your Wii Fit age (I was over weight, had perfect posture and ended up with a Wii Fit age 5 years below my actual age which is great).

After the body test you go into training. Training has four areas to choose from; Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, and Balance Games. Plus there is a tab for your favorite exercises which are picked based on how often you do a certain exercise. Mixing the exercises around you can get a good work out from this thing. I usually do about 30 minutes to an hour on it. I start with some Yoga and Strength training then do some aerobics to get the old heart rate up. To cool down I return to yoga and then do some of the balance games.

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Any piece of media set in the ‘future’ must make assumptions as to what they think civilization will be like in that ‘future’. I don’t want to confine that statement to Sci-Fi but it does certainly apply to it. An interesting thing about what we view as the ‘future’ is that it is predicated upon our current state of affairs. Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy appeared on the scene in the early ’80s and painted a vision of the future that seemed so very distant and visionary in it’s on day but now seems quaint by comparison. 2001 A Space Odyssey, the Kubrick film as apposed to the book, was made before man had visited the moon. The technology was visionary at the time but once again it was marked by its own temporal limitations and would look much different if made today. Brazil took the approach of anachronistic future with its air tubes, small screen computures, and general post-World War II in the future feel. The movie used technology that was known at the time to be outdated but revamped it with the futurist feel appropriate to an Orwellian dystopia.

All if that is to say that we may evaluate Sci-Fi based on its presentation of technology and may then explore what is visionary and prophetic and what is simply tropic for the ease of the story.

Wall-E makes nods to all of the afore mentioned stories and giving them each a spin of their own. Some of the nods are blatant, the ships auto control computer is a foreboding red-eyed cyclops that actively works against it’s human captain. Advertising masks the reality that lay behind them and preoccupy the target audience from the truth, though in Brazil this was to hide the suck and in Wall-E it was a more accidental mask over the beauty of truth. Still the reference was blatant enough that any Gillian fan would notice it.

The first nod to Brazil came from the presentation of Hello Dolly. Instead of viewing a more modern or yet undreamed up media form WALL-E plays the movie from the currently obsolete medium of magnetic tape (VHS to be more exact). The tape signal is fed into an I-pod and then a magnifying screen like one straight out of Brazil is used to increase the screen size to a viewable level.
Gibson and Brazil meet up in Wall-E when we are taken on a tour of post modern commercialism run rampant and taken to its logical conclusion. Star Trek (the Next Generation especially) looks at one version of the next phase of capitalism with its egalitarian starships which provide for every need of the inhabitants. In Wall-E this ideal is similar but still hangs onto our consumer terminology. At least in the movie provided we saw no hint at a class system that values one type of person over another and yet advertisements still ’sold’ products to a people who neither earned them nor were denied them. While it is true that both Gibson and Brazil retain the limits of class based society in both the masses are tranquilized by our current and most powerful opiate, consumer goods.

The idea that AI advancements lead to machine personalities could be seen merely as a plot device that helps the audience relate to what would surely be more efficient and emotionally cold self aware machines. HAL-9000 might have been evil when viewed from afar but that evil was meted out with a cold, calculated efficiency that one expects from a computer. Thats not to say that Wall-E doesn’t hold a breath of realism to it as projects at MIT currently are working on ways to make computers and machines more ‘human’. Think of the automated voice on the other end of the phone when you call just about anywhere these days; it has a sacrine taste of cordiality and concern for you the poor lost caller. Still the machines in any Disney production can be assumed to have a level of emotion that rivals anything we may be able to cook up for our own AIs.

I thought the choice of using artificial gravity on the big corporate ship was an odd one that really wasn’t necessary.  It seems that what the ship offered was almost a freedom from the gravity which it set up itself. There is a redundancy of effort there that felt tacked on for our benefit. Star Wars failed to ever mention gravity in its ‘discussion’ of life off a planet. Even the Death Star had a top up feel to its gravity that was grossly wrong and yet I have never once heard any mention of gravity concerning the Star Wars universe (though sound in space is mentioned more than a little). Yet Wall-E feels a great compulsion to explain itself superficially while not digging deeper into its own concern of the subject. Very odd.

Lastly I have issue with a centuries old Zippo retaining enough fluid to be lit by EVE. That one just bothered me

-alaph

Ghey jokes aside I thought this was a pretty good offering from Pixar.

They 2001 motifs were fuck all transparent but the allusions to Brazil were subtle enough to make me chuckle in appreciation. They also follow in a Gibson-esque extrapolation of capitalism taken to its natural conclusion, kind of a realistic presentation of what STtNG tried to do.

The movie also gave me ideas for different style post-apocalyptic RPG settings.

This was the first movie I’ve seen since the transition from film to pure DLP and I have to say it was nice. The contrast ratio of the industrial grade DLP is amazing and the resolution left nothing to want for except for the film grain. Its a subtle and often overlooked aspect of the movie experiance but I really do like film grain and will miss it 

Our youngest CAT just let us know that he needed to be let in by ringing the doorbell. Thats one smart cat.

In other news, I was listening to the reading of the Declaration of Independence on NPR for the 4th of July and I had tuned in during the later half of it. It took me a few minutes to realize that this was the declaration of independence and not grievances against G.W. Bush. That guy has seriously fucked up this country.

CHEWERS AND SMOKERS WHO ARE destroying their health and intellect by the use of tobacco, send for a pamphlet describing a substitute and remedy. Address ISAAC G. SWAN, Drawer No. 158, Syracuse, N. Y.

This is an ad from Harpers weekly for April 9th, 1862

‘Destroying health and intellect’ not much different than todays ads huh?

Both my accounts have finally lapsed and the era of EvE has come to an end. So whats next? Well school is in full swing and so far that is going rather well. Family life and work are also occupying alot of time lately. Work is work, meh not much to say about that. Family life has been really good lately though. My 4 year old son is being a bit of a pain but on the whole he is a great kid. Unfortunately it is too hot to take them to the park every day but we still find activities to keep us busy.

Life rolls on.

My wife saved a little birdie this Sunday. She had gone out to run to the store but came back in after only a few minutes with a little chirping bird in her hand. She had saved it right before one of our cats made it lunch.

We thought of taking it to a vet but couldn’t think of one that was open on Sunday. Instead we headed off to Greater Birmingham Humane Society only to find that they didn’t open until noon (it was only 11:30 at the time so not a huge deal). We looked up the Oak Mountain Wildlife Rescue Service while we waited and decided they would be a better fit for our poor little bird.

The rescue service took our bird and should be treating him as we speak. They gave us a card with instructions on how to check on the little guy in about a week.

…. honestly that bird was super lucky as I would have let nature take its course and the cat would have been really happy

Working and taking care of the family takes up alot of time and I have to admit that not much big happens around here from day to day.

Well maybe more than I think, let’s see if I can sum up whats happened in the past month:

I enrolled in school again. This summer I’ll be taking Anatomy and Microbiology in preparation for nursing school.  I also put in my application to the nursing school (well I did that in February but I don’t think I told you that did I?). The deadline for the applications is early May so I guess we won’t know who is in until after that.

My son is having his 4th birthday this coming week and that is pretty exciting.

I just finished reading Gang Leader For a Day which was amazing, I read it in 3 days (that is extremely fast for me btw).

I haven’t really done much with EvE save to set the longest skill to training. Both accounts run out in June and I won’t be resigning them for now.

We are looking for a new place to live, there is a whole long and sorted story behind this.

Our gaming group has been playing World of Darkness with Alex running. I have to admit I miss running and don’t think I make a very good player but it beats not having a group at all and I’m learning alot watching Alex GM.

Well I guess that is it for now, cheers