So I really liked the idea of the TV show The Mentalist. A guy who used to do a mind reading act and talk to the dead (and all that malarky) decides to consult full-time with the CBI (California Bureau of Investigation). He’s a smart-ass with a great sense of humor. Looked to be be a show I’d really like.

But here’s the catch: in the first episode you learn that he’s really into this because his family was murdered by a killer named Red John, who did it just to taunt him (that’s the short version). So I really thought that part was going to ruin the series, I figured they’d waste ten minutes an episode on the Red John story-line and it’d just be annoying. Surprisingly, I’ve barely noticed it. There has been a few references and a few parts of the story-line tied to it (like his old psychiatrist was in an episode), but it really hasn’t consumed the season. I think there might have been some episodes where they didn’t mention it. I just watched a very Red John motivated episode and I’d say they did it right and I enjoyed it (although the hacking into the secure data-base was a little over the edge, IMHO). My thoughts of this ruining the story-line were unfounded and I’m happy it hasn’t bothered me like I thought it would.

If you’re not watching this show yet you might want to check it out.

You can watch the full pilot episode of the new Showtime series The United States of Tara for free with promo code tara (pretty tricky, eh?). Toni Collette plays the multiple personality mother and John Corbett (Chris in the Morning from Northern Exposure) plays the (very accepting) dad. The semi-wild daughter is played by Brie Larson and I’m confident before the end of the series she’ll show some similar traits to her mother and Keir Gilchrist plays the smart/good son.

As you can see by the images below, Toni Collette plays a wide range of characters.

I enjoyed the episode, but it starts a little slow as they have to introduce everyone and all their issues. It definitely picked up towards the end and I was laughing out loud at the few scenes at the end. If iTunes picks it up, I’ll certainly try it for another episode or two.

The proper name of the hotel is Occidental Torremolinos (Occidental owns a bunch of hotels, but I’m not certain if it’s a “chain” or what) it’s a two floor hotel built in a square (hollow in the center) with an outside pool/hot tub and some tables outside in the middle. It is a nice standard “American” hotel and it’s located just off the edge of a busy area but it’s not too busy by the hotel. The room is standard “Holiday Inn” but with nicer finishing touches it was about $80 for the night.

I walked around last night and my only real complaint is there were too many American chain restaurants (there were a lot of Chinese restaurants but not in one particular area, they were scattered all over) the neighborhood seemed fine. Lots of Internet cafe’s all over the place.

This is a boring review but I always have a hard time deciding where to stay when in big cities and San Jose is pretty big so I thought I’d offer the basics.

Breakfast is free, in a nice dining room, it had juices, fruits, some Kellogg’s cereals, scrambled eggs and some kind of sausages but a bit below a full blown buffet but as included breakfasts go, it was great. Air conditioner, ceiling fan, TV, hair dryer and coffee pot in the room. There was a phone in the room which definitely not standard in the costa areas but I guess I’ve had them downtown and near the airport. The have a few old Windows machines with free Internet off the lobby, but WiFi is $8 a day (I think it’s accessible from the rooms too). Free semi-guarded parking too.

It’s very near the big Parque Metropolitano La Sabana, if you’ve ever seen a map of San Jose it’s the huge park in the middle of town. I haven’t had a chance to go in it yet this trip, I did go in about nine years ago so we’ll see how it changed. I mistakenly stayed in San Jose my first trip, I only say mistakenly in that I just needed to spend the night until friends showed up the next day, but the San Jose airport is not in San Jose (just like the Detroit airport is not in Detroit) I should have stayed neared the airport in that case.

If I had to stay in town I wouldn’t hesitate to stay there again (and I decided to stay Friday and leisurely leave on Saturday).Hotel Occidental Torremolinos
Calle 40 y Avenida 5 bis
San Jose, Costa Rica

Phone: 011 (506) 2 222-5266
Fax: 011 (506) 2 255-3167
San Jose West, San Jose, Costa Rica

As I mentioned last week I was going to watch Stealing Beauty with Liv Tyler. I’m pretty sure that was the first thing I ever saw her in and she was so enchanting in it. She’s plays this sweet 19 year-old name Lucy (and Liv was 19 at the time) who goes to visit close family friends in an isolated mini-artians community in Italy. Most everyone there is older and they’re all interested in every little thing about her.

Jeremy Irons plays another friend of the community who is ill and just staying there to live out his last days. Lucy and Alex get to be close friends and being with her just adds new energy to his life. It’s almost as if these older characters are psychic vampires and are just absorbing whatever than can from her (it’s a strange analogy but I thought it more than once), it’s kind of funny in their limited gossipy community that she just brings a new energy to their little community.

I was disappointed in the quality of the DVD, I really expected more from the wonderful scenery in the movie. It was something that I originally at the “arts theatre” and it had some great scenery and it just didn’t transfer very well.

It’s a strange movie with some odd little sub-plots that I had forgotten about (it was 16 years ago) but like I said it was at the arts theatre and I don’t remember it getting released in the major markets (at least in Michigan).

So I watched the 1951 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still last night and as I said last week it is still an amazing science fiction movie. I made Kelly sit through it so I was hoping it was as good as I remembered, it was (and she seemed to think so too).

The line this movie is the most famous for is

“Klaatu barada nikto”

It’s certainly not as mainstream as “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”, but…

This was one of the first movie DVDs I ever purchased (maybe the first), it hit a good price on-line so I picked it up (I never bought movies for VHS but that’s about the time when I started for DVDs). I never watched it until now. THe sound was THX remastered and was very clear but the voices just weren’t as loud as the sound effects so if you turned it up to hear the next time the sound effects came on it was blaring. The good part was there wasn’t a lot where people were talking and there were effects.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie was

“I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.”

It was definitely a thinking sci-fi movie…

Instant gratification: You can rent it from Amazon for your TiVo or from iTunes (but it’s only $7.50 to buy it from Amazon).

Woo Hoo! More guest stars!!! And now on to the good stuff…

WARNING!!! BIG SPOILERS BELOW!So it turns out I was right on target with one of my guesses and what I hoped would happen did, they just showed David Tennant’s hand-in-a-bottle way too many times this season for me to think it was a coincidence. They used that hand (hi hand) to keep David Tennant as this version of the Doctor after he regenerated. And used it for a few other things…

And amazingly my guess about Donna becoming the Doctor came out to be mostly-true. It was a wild guess and since I hadn’t seen anyone else talking about it, but it sure felt that way to me. I wanted to get it in writing so I could get credit for it later!

Now while the above two Doctor items were mutually exclusive, it wasn’t likely I’d be right on both but I think I should get at least one-and-a-half points out of two; she was “a” Doctor just not “The” Doctor. But with a title like “Journey’s End”, I wasn’t too hopeful about Donna but it did turn out to be a strange ending for her.

(I have to put these things down somewhere ever since I’ve never truly gotten over that I had completely worked out how X-Men’s Jean Grey was going to come back to life and I never wrote in about it…)

No preview for the Christmas special, I’m under the impression they are filming it already. So that’s a little surprising we didn’t get a peek like the last few years. Not even a reference to it. The Christmas special preview was after the credits, more Cybermen, didn’t notice for sure if there was a companion.

I’m not a big Dalek fan, when there’s a bunch of villains (1,000s) they generally get rid of them with some non-reproduable miracle cure, so I didn’t like that part of the story-line. That part was a little bit slow for me, but they had a lot to wrap up too.

All in all, it was a bit of The Doctor dumping everyone off somewhere and him being alone (again). It’s not like he didn’t have some choices of a new (return) companion.

But, still, I can’t wait until the Christmas special! Unless we get a Torchwood (mini)series before then. Although, I’m thinking Torchwood is getting Martha and Mickey and that’ll make a completely different kind of team…

So I just saw Hancock and I really enjoyed it. A lot of laugh out loud moments. An excellent part for Will Smith. If you think this is yor type of movie than I bet you’ll enjoy it.

But the movie was different than I expected, I’m not sure if “twist” is the right word but it was something completely not expected. So go see it quickly, before you hear about it or before they change the TV trailers to reveal it.

The more interesting stuff is in the twist, so that’s all I’ve got to say…

So I’ve seen these Aiptek HD 720p Video Cameras around and they’ve had it at my local Target for $149 (it’s only $135 at Amazon), I figured if it was awful I could return it for their 15% restocking fee. Actually, I’m now thinking it’s my new camera to keep in my bag at all times.

It’s a

• 720p HD video camera (which records to an SD chip) which is 1280×720.
• 5 MP still camera.
• Audio recorder.
• and also records from a video source (haven’t tried this yet, but have read it looks great).

Quality is great but if you move the camera too quick it could compress a little better. But for the price it’s awesome and it’s better than I would have expected.

It’s got a record button on the front (where your trigger finger goes) and a record button on the LCD screen. On the back is a button for taking a snapshot at any time (other than when actually recording).

Other features: It’s got a standard tripod mount and comes with a charger (but also charges off the included USB cable), lens cap, carry strap, standard video cables and component cables. It’s smart enough when you flip the LCD screen to flip the video image for self recording.

Complaints: it sure could use image stabilization and audio-in for a microphone would be nice but I wouldn’t expect anything like that in a lower end product like this.

Other things: I’ve only played with it a little bit but the imaging looks a little better when moving the camera quickly in the lower quality modes (720×480 and 352×240). It looks like it has an IR receiver in the front (where your hand would be) but I don’t know if that’s what it is.

So it’s Episode 10 (Season/Series 4) of Doctor Who, it’s pretty much a Doctor Who only episode, Donna Noble hangs back at the spa so we see her about a total of 60 seconds. The episode “Midnight” is written by Russell T. Davies, the man who revived the Doctor Who series four years ago and is still executive producer for Doctor Who and does the same for spinoffs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures (occasional writes episodes for both).

The conversation is cRaZy and and has a bunch of people talking and no one listening and when they are, they aren’t paying attention. It made me think of a David Mamet story multiple times, the conversations seemed so much like that of Oleana and other things he’s written, if you don’t know what I mean I’m not sure how to explain it. It was an interesting episode, if you watch the show you’ll see what I mean, if you know agree with me please let me know. Actually, it was a great episode, but it certainly wasn’t a “regular” episode.

Oh, and Rose shows up on the monitors again. No big surprise there…

I’ve got some spoilers (labeled with “SPOILERS”) but I’m going to talk about the next 3 episodes: previews, rumors and conjecture (some might consider the next few paragraphs spoilers too, so stop at any time). Generally Doctor Who seasons have 13 episodes and several times that last story has spanned the last three episodes (even if you didn’t realize there was more to come after episode 11) and generally the final episodes aren’t too much of a cliff-hanger since the Christmas Special (actually broadcast on Christmas between seasons of the show) has generally been meant to sort of stand on it’s own.Obviously at some time in the next few episodes Rose Tyler will return, we’ve seen her trying to contact The Doctor since the beginning of the season. Since I’ve heard that next episode is the opposite of this episode (not much of the Doctor) maybe it’ll be sooner than later. I’ve heard nothing about who’s going to be his companion next season (is Bilie Piper too busy with Secret Diary of a Call Girl?). But many months ago (I try not to listen much) I’ve heard that Rose, Donna, Martha, Capt. Jack Harkness and Sarah Jane Smith (maybe K-9 and Mickey too) will reunite to save The Doctor but that could just be a big rumor; I’ve seen nothing in the previews (they tend to give things away at the end of the Christmas previews) nor heard anything lately. But I’m pretty sure that John Barrowman (Capt. Jack) mentions that he’s in season 4 in his book Anything Goes so I’m assuming at least his part is true.

Also, we’ve never gotten much from the multiple times that they’ve mentioned the bees have disappeared from Earth (early 20th century), I’ve no clue what they are going to do with that.

SPOILERS – In this episode, Midnight, it really illustrates a really disappointing thing about the human race is we’re so stupid. No one wants to say “I don’t know” and no one wants to be the person that disagrees with the whole group, especially when it’s easier to agree with the whole group (especially if someone shouting you down). As the viewer you’ll see it, depending on how clever you are depends on how soon, but you’ll see it. The sad thing is because of peer pressure they almost sacrifice the wrong person and instead even more die.

Eh, I probably had more semi-spoilers in the speculation paragraphs than I actually did in the one with this episode spoilers.

So I’ve really been liking the BBC’s SciFi shows the last few years and this weekend was a Doctor Who related weekend. I’ve never liked Doctor Who until the last few years (I’ll lean more towards I disliked it).

Here’s my Doctor Who related activities this weekend:

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Glittering Storm audio book – Read by Elisabeth Sladen, who plays Sarah Jane Smith on the new series, as his companion in the 1970’s Doctor Who and did a cameo a few seasons ago (which then spun off the new children’s series). The book was good, started a little slow, I felt like she didn’t like the way her character was written but the book was unabridged so she couldn’t change it, but it got much much better as the book went on. Sometimes I got the boys confused but you could always tell the who the kids were. Good story too.

Doctor Who S4E5 The Poison Sky (part 2 to The Sontaran Stratagem) – I was excited that it was on this weekend, but I forgot that it was part two of a two-parter! And it’s got Martha Jones in it. Great second part, can’t say much without giving anything away, but another very (very) short appearance of Rose. I think we’ll see a bit of her (and hear about the Bees until those episodes come up). I was surprised at the mention of Torchwood, but I think Capt. Jack’s due for another appearance too (and maybe Sarah Jane).

Torchwood: Hidden – Read by Naoko Mori, who plays Toshiko. This is a good story, but it’s really hard to tell the character’s apart. It probably reads okay, but when there’s more than a few of them, it’s hard to tell who’s who. I’m not done with this one, but it’s good so far.

Doctor Who Confidential – It’s not strange to have a “making of” for movies of TV series, but Dr. Who has one every week and this week it was another 45 minutes of show (right after the series on a different channel). It’s just really bizarre to see another show just about the previous show just on, I don’t normally watch it but it was pretty good. Torchwood has a “confidential” too, but I’m not sure they’re as long. Just think of it as the DVD Extras, but right after the show.

So it was a good weekend of entertainment. And I got lot’s of non-Doctor Who stuff done too…As other shows go, the BBC has had Jekyll as a short series, is testing out Being Human and I hoe they keep trying out more!

Just got back from a preview of Iron Man, it was excellent. It was a long movie but it did not feel like it at all, had to be close to two hours. Wonderful visual effects!! I couldn’t tell where Tony Stark ended and the CGI began. I was highly entertained and not disappointed at all! I had really high hopes and saw a million different previews and I thought it might spoil it, but that wasn’t the case at all.

If you’ve got kids who want to see it: it’s got lots of violence but less than the average violent show (or video game) and the sexual references/scenes are way less than the average soap opera (which is probably too much).

Jon Favreau (who you might remember as the Ultimate Fighting Champion wannabe from Friends) was the director/producer and also played Happy Hogan. The movie adaption book was written by Peter David who always writes good stuff (IMHO) so I’ll be checking that out. And of course, a humorous scene with Stan Lee….

Where did our preview tickets come from? We have no idea, they showed up in a Mark’s mailbox with no indication of how the were won or distributed. We asked a few people in the theatre where they got their’s but it turned out they all “knew someone” or got them from “an aunt/grandmother” and didn’t know the original source.

Possible Minor Spoiler below:I swear in one early scene (at the end of one of the scenes that take place in a club) I heard a few bars from the original Iron Man TV theme song. Did anyone else, or was this my imagination?

Later: I’m certain it was the old theme. It’s the casino scene (right after the awards ceremony) as they walk towards the car, it’s gets louder and more pronounced (horns?) and then abruptly gets cut off. The last few bars are the clearest…

Even Later: If you’re a comic fan, stay after the credits (I didn’t) I hear there’s an additional scene with a cameo you want want to miss..

So I’m using some Costa Rica photos to test the new free on-line edition of PhotoShop. It’s very cool, does more than what most desktop packages do, but while limited, I don’t need much more. They give you 2 GB of free storage. It’s got cool slideshows (full-scren if you like) but I’m sure it breaks some browsers…

Looks like you can even download your photos in their original size. They’re still in beta so who knows what they’ll charge for more storage (or features?).

They do give you a way to put thumbnails and links to photos with having to use their viewer. Although it seems to be a 2 step process (thumbnail then link) for each photo. But it’s cheap, high-res and the flash interface is great.

If you love PhotoShop, I’m sure you’ll hate it. It’s pretty as spplications, but since I don’t use any features past version 1, it’s very nice and easy to use. Here’s a link to the palette with all the main options on it. It’s even easier to use than I need it to be (and it has more features to use too). It e-mails a really nice graphical html link to your friends too.

Alison Sudol was excellent last night. A very small venue at The Shelter, the cancert was sold out but I’d guess there were only about 300 people there, lots of room. No one was back farther than about the equivalent of about 10 rows (no seats, general admission standing only with just a few tables). I’ve seen A Fine Frenzy before and it was a smaller venue so it was great having the small crowd and as a bonus it was a non-smoking show.

She’s has such a lovely voice and writes her own songs. She’s got this voice that’s kind of a Sarah McLachlan / Tori Amos voice and she’s just incredible. She so beautiful and has this sunning red head, and while it might not be naturally that red, she’s got that anemic porcelain look that so many red heads do, I’m assuming she’s actually a redhead. My camera in my phone takes pretty crappy pictures, but I tried to take a few.

She’s so into when she plays, and every so often she looks at the audience, I feel likes she’s forgotten us and that her manager told her she has to make eye contact every so often and that’s why she looks up. I always think of ‘gracious’ when thinking about her personality, that’s just how I feel when she’s talking to us and that’s how I feel when she talks to you personally. I did get to get to say ‘hi” and get her autograph on a promo poster after the concert. She’s just so nice, even with just a 30-second conversation…

It was a busy night as we had a fund raiser at work at six and the concert doors opened at 6 too (they’re about 25 minutes apart). So we planned to skip the opening act and just see her and depending on the time possibly go back to the auction. When I finally called the concert hall. They said she was going on in 15 minutes!!!!! So I had to find Kelly and Mark get out of there. We made good time, even with having to go a longer route, found free parking right around the corner and when we walked in the music was playing but she hadn’t uttered a word yet!! So it was a great night.

We never got back to the auction, even though it was only 9:30 when we left, it was just a little too late to head back. So I have no idea what or if I won anything. I probably had my name on about $400 worth of things, but I’m assuming I got over bid on more than a few of them (there was still 30 minutes left of bidding when we took off). I had some train tickets to Chicago, baskets of games, chocolate, theatre tickets, plus I bid on one of my donated items and a few more things. One of the items I donated was for my Cat in the Hat basorket which had books/stuff and included a visit from me as the Cat in the Hat (for birthday parties, classroom visits and bachelorette parties), I drove the bidding up to $75 before I left, but if no one bought it I’ve purchased myself. While I love doing it, it’s not worth it to spend a hot summer day outside in the outfit if it’s only giving the school that much money so we’ll see how that went. I also donated a basket of coffee and chocolate covered coffee beans that I picked up the stuff the last time I was in Costa Rica; I’m wondering what that sold for, it’s was only at $17 the last time I looked…

If this isn’t the cutest review of episode 4 that you’ve ever seen…

I’m sure a few parts were re-shot, but it’s adorable…

Here’s another cute kid video…

So this week’s episode of Torchwood is called “Meat”. It’s written by Catherine Tregenna, I bring that up right away because it’s a great episode. Low action but lots of story. Rhys is at the scene of an accident and who shows up? Gwen, with the Mystery Machine and the rest of the gang. So this becomes a big part the story-line (this all happens in the first few seconds and in last week’s preview, don’t worry I won’t give anything else away) and I really enjoyed the episode. Lots of great scenes of Cardiff too!

The first thing I did after watching it was to look up Catherine Tregenna and what did I find? A few other great episodes: “Captain Jack Harkness” (when Tosh and Jack get trapped in the 1940’s) and “Out of Time” when a plane from the 1950’s comes through the rift. As a bonus, she writes “Adam”, next week’s episode! It looks like she’s written two other upcoming Torchwood episodes: Day In The Death Of (episode and “From Out of the Rain” (episode 10) but I only saw that info mentioned at one place on-line (geos) and it didn’t mention the “Adam” episode (so maybe an episode title changed?). All the other shows she’s written for are other BBC(?) shows that I’ve never seen (I’ve only heard of East Enders). She’s written some plays and been an actress too.Then after “Adam”, Martha Jones joins up for the next three episodes! I believe she’s doing some work for UNIT, but I had assumed she was back finishing up becoming a Doctor…

I waited so long for WordPress For Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and it was well worth the wait. I had been wanting to learn Wordpress and had been a fan of Lisa’s blog so it was just what I needed as a motivator.

It’s a “Dummies” book so it’s got that easy to use format. And it’s a reference book so most of it is not meant to be read linearly. If you’ve always wanted to set up a blog or switch to WordPress this is the way to go. It explains it from the basics up to the advanced. It’s step by step and it’ll get you running on your own host or at WordPress.com with ease.

It covers Migrating to WP, 10 Great Free Themes, Ten Great Plugins, Using WP as a Content Management System, Understanding Templates and Plug-ins. It covers pretty much everything you need to know but those are the chapters I’ve read the most and use for reference. If you don’t know anything about PHP you’ll painlessly learn the bits that you do need to know for modifying templates (this is optional) and you’ll have picked up enough for when you want to use PHP for other “web stuff”.

As I’m writing this post, I’m flipping through the book seeing if there is anything I’ve missed mentioning. There are so many areas of WP that I haven’t explored yet, I’ve read about them in the book and I can’t wait to try out some of the other features!Just about everything I’ve needed to know was in there, the only thing that I couldn’t find was detailed info on custom-fields which was (probably correctly) considered too advanced for a Dummies book.

There are 3 different flavors of WordPress (they host, you host, and multi-user) and they all share multiple features so just pay attention to which flavor she’s talking about and you’ll be fine.

It’s an awesome book! If you want to set up your own blog, self-hosted or not, WordPress is easy to use and WordPress For Dummies is the book to use.

So the second season of Torchwood has started up. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s a semi-secret organization with the job of finding (and removing) aliens and acquiring their technology to better protect Earth.

“Torchwood: outside the government, beyond the police. Tracking down alien life on Earth, arming the human race against the future. The twenty-first century is when everything changes. And you gotta be ready. ”

It’s actually a spin-off of the new Doctor Who series (2005), but it generally doesn’t have much to do with the Doctor, although the title does, here’s your anagram trivia for the day: Torchwood is actually Doctor Who rearranged.

Back to Torchwood, the first season was not your normal Sci-Fi show, lots of sexual innuendo, lots of sex implied. I think all of the main characters hooked up with one of the other team members, an alien, someone of the same sex (or all three) at some point in season one (the show was created by Russell T. Davies who created Queer As Folk). Wait, I did say it was SciFi didn’t I? There are generally aliens, generally doing bad “take over the world” kinds of things and they usually stop them generally (but not always) saving lives in the process. When I first watched the show I didn’t realize it was a Doctor Who spin-off, I actually thought it was some kind of supernatural British cop show, but this was better…This season season I’ve read they’ve pushed it even more and I must say from the first two episodes it seems like it so far. Episode one of the second season there was more kissing than I’ve ever seen on a SciFi show in my life (maybe all sci-fi shows combined). Episode two is definitely a little edgier and a bit more intense (and violent) than last season, I really had no idea where this episode was going the first fifteen minutes of the show (had I paid attention to the episode title). I can’t wait to see where the rest of the season goes…

It’s on BBC America on Saturdays at 9 PM and on BBC Two on Wednesdays at 9 PM (GMT).

So I’ve mentioned this movie a few times before, mostly back in the summer of 2007 when I saw the unnamed 1-18-08 preview. I think I was pretty accurate in my original description when I originally referred to it as “Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project“, that’s exactly what it was (except the creature wasn’t Godzilla). Lots of action, really awesome special effects. The jiggly camera action bothered some people, I was okay with it but I certainly understand why it’d be annoying…

The plot needed a faster start at the beginning, they spent forever setting everything up. I thought the slow start was really odd since I thought the preview did a great job of setting everything up in about 30 seconds (rob,. party, going away, friends, explosion, monster, run) so I’m not sure why it took so long to set up in the film. I’ve got comments on the end too, but don’t worry I wont talk about those. I really enjoyed it, it’s pretty much what I expected (but with better effects) so I was happy.

What I didn’t like was a few technical details: I thought at the beginning they specifically mentioned the video was specifically found on an SD chip, but throughout the movie it’s a “tape” and treated that way too, so I’m not sure why they bothered to set that up. And they didn’t seem to bother worrying about the camera battery as a plot problem, which I would have been okay with, except they did worry about they cell phone battery as a plot problem (and they way they handled it could have let them fix it as a camera problem too).Watch for this: At the beginning of the end credits, it looks like it’s overlaid on some (government?) documents / graphics with a 1969 date, I’m not sure what the significance of this was unless I really wasn’t paying attention to something significant during the movie (my one bathroom break wasn’t that long).

They also showed a teaser of the new J. J. Abrams Star Trek movie, but it just showed the 1701 being built in the shipyards, not much else…

So on Thursday the 4 track A Fine Frenzy – Live Session EP came out exclusively at the iTunes store. Of course I purchased it, can’t pass something like that up from A Fine Frenzy. It’s a great EP with 4 tracks – Almost Lover, Borrowed Time, Last of Days, and The Minnow & the Trout. They don’t sound very “live” to me but that’s okay with me, they’re more like different versions of the songs. And for $3.49 you can hardly go wrong…

Tori Amos was awesome! I really haven’t listened to her newer stuff very much but I really enjoyed the latest album when she played those songs. She played a lot of older songs, which is what I like.

I’ve seen Tori a few times, I’m guessing about a dozen times now, spaced out over the last 15 years. So by this time, not only do I know where to sit, my mother knows, she specifically asked me on the phone, “did you get a seat on the right-hand side?”, I’m surprised she remembered something like that. I did sit slightly to the right and before I went and I thought I needed to be a bit more to the right, but my seat was perfect! Plus, all the people sitting in my line of sight were short!

She’s always a little quirky, but she didn’t talk much so it was hard to tell. But after her first outfit change, she was halfway through the third song and she stopped, and asked the guys to continue to play, “I’ve gotta go take this corset off, it’s killing me”. They finished up the song as she came back out and she just went on to the next song

Yoav opened for her and her was great! Not sure how to describe him, but he was a good act, could have listened to him more. He had a short EP for $5, they really needed to have a seperate line for his CD at intermission (maybe a ca$h only line). Everyone ran out to get it and it was a disaster.

You can see more of my Tori Photos at flickr (they didn’t come out very well, but you can see the different stage setups). If you saw my photo of the ceiling of the theater, go back and look at it because I added some more info (and sort of link to some older photos).

So I just got a bite to eat at the new Dearborn Kerby’s Coney Island at Ford and Mercury (next to the Best Buy). I gotta tell you this is the most boring Chile-Cheese Omelet I’ve every had in my life. The eggs are boring, the chili sauce is boring and the toast seemed boring. I even tried the hash browns, which I generally find boring, to also be boring. Fortunately, the strawberry jam tastes normal so I know it’s not me; and the water actually tastes pretty good!

There is another (non-chain?) restaurant, Parthenon II (Coney Island), where I usually get a Chile-Cheese Omelet, a little farther into this strip mall area that I’ve been to a million times and I’ll be sure to go back there next time. Unfortunately, they’ll probably lose business since Kerby’s does have a much better location.

I’ve also got to try the new Seahorse Grill which just opened at the same mall.

UPDATE – I just drove by the Parthenon II and it looks like they are out of business

This past Sunday Brandi, as usual, was excellent. She just belts out some of those tunes and other times she’s just kind of mellow, she did a great concert. She covered a Queen song on the piano and it was awesome; it might not have been “a” queen song, it might have been a multiple medley song since I know part of Bohemian Rhapsody (’momma, just killed a man’) was in it but I think there were parts of that song not sung (’Gallileo Figaro – magnifico’); does anyone know for sure? She did the Queen song so perfect, I’ve got to think some of the younger crowd assumed it was a song of hers…

She talked about people traveling from Ann Arbor to see her (and vice-versa) and was excited by the response. I’ve driven to Chicago to see her and it was worth it! This was my third time seeing Brandi and I’ll go again next chance!

Back to her music. Some of her more passionate songs just totally get inside me. It wasn’t just me, you could see some were affecting other people too, I don’t know exactly what it is. But a couple really got to me, especially Hallelujah at the end.

Little did I know that while I had an excellent time at the concert that it’s emotional high was just that start of a roller coster ride of emotions this week…

So A Fine Frenzy opened for Brandi Carlile on Sunday and they were so awesome they should be on their own tour. It was a small venue at St. Andrews and I’ve never seen it that packed, they were sold out and they were was a great crowd for AFF. Alison Sudol is the singer and she’s wonderful the songs she did were just beautiful, I wish she had played more. She was so polite and so gracious when everyone kept clapping after a few of her perfectly done songs. I so wish they would have played longer, I thought I saw an extra song on the set list but they didn’t do an encore; I couldn’t read the title so it might have been a song earlier played…

Alison did show up at the sales table to sign autographs. So of course, I purchased another copy of the CD. I got her to autograph it, a booklet and I got my picture taken with her (I sure wish I had a better camera than my phone with me, the lighting was pretty poor were we stood). Once again, she was so polite and pleasant with everyone, almost shy like. I hadn’t realized how very beautiful she was until I got that close to her, it made me feel kind of shy at that point.

The booklet was interesting about ten 5 inch by 7 inch pages with great photos and an interview. I think they were giving them away (at least I didn’t pay for the ones I grabbed for my friends and I) but they were really nice. They looked like they were from an earlier tour (maybe from some kind of press or info packet).I’ve been so happy with all the ‘opening acts’ that I’ve seen lately I’ve been very happy with most of them and become a fan of many recently. Heck, Brandi opened for Indigo Girls when I saw them a few months ago. I would travel a ways to see AFF again! I was really surprised that Alison didn’t sing a sone with Brandi (or vice-versa).

A few odd things – The manager(?) wouldn’t let me take a picture when she was signing photographs, “please wait until she poses” (or something like that). I would have put it with the spot where I was talking about her signing, so that it totally was in context; but it didn’t seem worth it to try an explain it.

Someone posts Twitter updates for A Fine Frenzy but they didn’t do any in Detroit, which I was keeping my eyes open for (and since they didn’t have a concert the next day they might have still been around).

So I’ve been excited since I originally saw the preview for Stardust a few months ago and I got to see a preview of the movie a few weeks ago (the movie is out now). I really enjoyed the movie and the cast was great (Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Charlie Cox). They didn’t follow the book exactly and I have no problem with that, I’m re-reading the book and I’m finding that I really enjoy it after just seeing the movie.

I really like Neil Gaiman but I really haven’t seen them promoting him much in relation to the book and the movie; the book came out about 10 years ago as both a regular book and as a graphic novel (illustrated by Charles Vess). And I’ve seen this book in so many variations of the cover not even including the movie editions or the graphic novels…

Claire Danes as the falling star was wonderful, technically she was a fallen star but that sounds like it has a negative connotations and she didn’t have any. From the previews I wasn’t sure how Claire would be in the part (I eel they edited the preview oddly) but I thought she was perfect. DeNiro played a different part than I expected from the previews; I guess it was a different role than I’ve ever seen him in before. Charlie Cox was great, I’m not sure where I’ve seen him before.

My AppleTV is awesome! An “iPod for your TV” is a accurate description. I ran the software update (painless!) and it gave me YouTube videos and fixed “enhanced podcasts”.

It mirrors one of your computer’s iTunes just like an iPod does (and allows you exceptions) and will stream from any other computers running iTunes (platform independent) and I don’t think there is a limit. I can’t believe how fast it pulls hi-res movie previews from Apple down to the unit, it’s very very fast. It’s actually much faster than pulling down YouTube videos (many which are low-res).

It really streams full-scren video from other computers really efficiently. Very rarely does it need a moment to catch up. It has no problem with steaming audio. It almost makes no sense to download podcasts, I bet you could stream them live if you had a way to just get the RSS feeds onto the AppleTV.

With “enhanced podcasts” it now properly advances the embedded images to follow along with the audio. The problem is that it just shows them to the side like the album artwork, some images are much larger so it really cheats you by scaling them down. Since you don’t use the up/down keys on the remote during this process “up” would be a great way to enlarge the images.

I have the same image size concern when viewing slideshows with the “Ken Burns effect”, sometimes I want to view the whole image. Once again this would be another great use for the up button. The down button could be used for viewing filenames, date, time and other info about the images. Actually, this would be a good use for the down button while viewing videos or audio.

A few more features (like on the TiVo) like weather, movie listings and maybe Flickr photo viewing and it’d be even better…What I don’t like is that it only lets you sync with one computer. I’d like to sync music with one, videos with another and podcasts with another (not so sure if I care about the latter).

What I need:
1) A way to automatically convert videos and stick them into iTunes for me (so when I drop/download a file to a folder, it starts processing for me). I could probably do this via Mac or Windows….

2) A way to play other file formats on the AppleTV, such as AVI and DiVX files. I think I can hack it to do that but I’m not sure if I want to take it apart yet.

I saw The Police in concert tonight at the Palace in Auburn Hills. They were excellent!!!! You’d never know these guys hadn’t toured in years, any other reunion (or county fair concert) I’ve ever seen you could tell everyone was out of practice, but not these guys.

I had a great seat, I wasn’t real close but I was a few rows off the main floor, I had a way better seat than the people who were 15 feet from me on the main floor that (I think) paid a lot more. They had an incredible stage setup, huge video displays and great camera angles.

Here’s the run down on the guys:

Sting – Awesome singer. He probably looks less old than the rest of the gang. (I don’t think he did any of his own songs, but his son’s band did open).

Stewart Copland – Excellent on the instruments, probably better than the other guys. Not sure what he’s done lately on his own (remember when he did the theme for The Equalizer TV series?).

Andy Summers – Looked a little ragged (sorry Andy). I’ve seen him in concert (he opened for Tangerine Dream), I thought he was a lot more mellow.

I took a few photos, but I don’t know how to get them off the (stupid) Verizon RAZR v3 phone I have from work (my Treo is in the shop). I can’t seem to bluetooth them or e-mail them to a regular e-mail account, anyone?

And what was up with the really old guitar of Sting? It looked in pretty sad shape, there must be a story (and someone must know it).

So I’m a little behind on the Ravinia concert updates, so here we go.

As all Indigo Girl concerts go, all the fans know all the lyrics and sing along to all the songs. Okay, so not every song, but pretty much every song. By the end of the concert my ears were ringing a little bit and it’s not because of the speakers, it was because of the fans singing.

The concert was excellent, one of the better ones I’ve seen of theirs (I’d guess I’ve seen them about 10 times). Philadelphia was one of the best, maybe the farther I go the better they get? And I’d have to say the time I saw them in Lilith Fair (Auburn Hills, MI) was probably the worst. But I digress…

So it was great and they had everyone going from the beginning, I was a little worried since Brandi Carlile tried to get us to sing along to something and it bombed. We all cheered and sang and applauded over and over. Brandi sang backing on a song. They played some more and Amy Ray sang Romeo and Juliet and it was incredible, it’s one of my favorite songs of hers and she totally nailed it. And Brandi came out and sang Kid Fears, she did the Michael Stipe (REM) part and it gave me chills (I’m getting them even as I type this weeks later), it was amazing. Then IG just continued (and didn’t stop) with an awesome concert, it was well worth the trip. I’ll finish up my review in part 3 (that I promise to post soon).

I’ve got the word “dancing” here in my notes, but I’m not sure exactly why I wrote that. I must have had an anecdote related to that and I assumed I’d remember…

So about 18 months ago I mentioned that Post removed all the sugar from Alpha-Bits cereal. Not only that, they removed all the flavor! They were awful!!!

So someone e-mailed me last week about the new “Special Edition” dark blue box that was out. Here’s the thing, the box says “special edition” but not what’s “special” about it. THe box does say it’s sweetened but that’s it. Very strange.

It’s like the old Alpha-Bits are back. Very yummy! The last box I bought was the un-sweetened kind and I didn’t even finish the first bowl. I hope these last a while. I which there was a place to vote or something they should never return to the awful bits they’ve been trying to peddle for the last year…

So I’m not the largest Harry Potter fan, I’ve read the books, but I think I missed the last movie. I got dragged to the latest one but I did enjoy it. Except for the flying in the opening sequence the effects were awesome. They cut so much out of the books (and the books keep getting bigger), it’d probably be better if they’d make the movies twice as long and just release them in two parts (but twice as often) and make them ‘to be continued’…

The parts when the magistrate (government) were nosing around the school with what should be taught and how it should be taught were hysterical, especially the parts about the standardized testing.

Harry is starting to look pretty old, I’m not sure how him and the gang are going to make it to the 7th movie without looking like 5th year college students.

After the pilot, the next few episodes of Traveler were a little slow (and complicated) and I didn’t really think I’d get into it. But after that I was hooked! It had the chase scenes and the conspiracy and the action but they didn’t waste time repeating themselves all the time like so many other shows do. It’s like they’re Jack Bauer and they’ve been falsely accused of bombing a museum. On paper the guy who did it doesn’t seem to exist so they’ve got to evade the law and prove that Will exists and that they didn’t do it.

This weeks show was packed with twists and turns and ended with a great twist. Unfortunately next week is the season finale, this has got to be the shortest season I’ve seen, it was only eight episodes. As sad as I am that it’s only eight, I prefer that over them stretching the same story out over 15 or 20 episodes. I’m not familiar with the directors/producers but I’ll watch more if they make it.

FYI, on a non-related note, the new season of Psych starts Friday on USA.

So I was never a huge Transformers fan. I never understood the reasoning/idea of the robots Transforming into cars (please don’t try to explain it to me) as a great story-line even for the comics. But the effects and the Michael Bay action couldn’t keep me away.

THe effects were awesome, lots of action, lots of destruction and a bit of campy humor. I was totally into the movie and the chase scenes and the explosions. It did take more than a few minutes to set the movie up, but since the movie was two hours and twenty minutes I really won’t complain about that. My biggest complaint is to ditch the little robot that transforms into the tape deck, but they probably needed something that wouldn’t totally slaughter the humans…

If it interests you, go see it, you’ll love it. My piece of trivia for this movie: the voice of Optimus Prime is the same guy who did the voice for the cartoons.

I still don’t get the idea of the robot/car transformations, but I certainly want my car to be able to do it!

So back to the concert in Ravina that I’ve mentioned sever times already. Brandi Carlile was the first act, she’s big enough these days that I’m surprised she didn’t get mentioned in the listings for the concert. She was incredible, I really like the songs on her current album and she played quite a few songs in the forty minutes that she was up there. Man, she can belt out a tune. Any & Emily came out and did a song with her which I never realized that they sang with her on the album.

So Brandi has changed a bit in the last year since I saw here in Ann Arbor. When she was there she was excellent but she was kind of casual about her look (in a good way). When I saw the video for The Story I noticed how much makeup and hair-do work she had done, I didn’t even realize it was her at first (and who else would it have been). She still had her jeans and cowgirl boots on, but she definitely was still a bit more made up than I’ve seen her before (in person and album covers, etc.) and the jeans seemed a bit more low-cut than how I picture her normally. Speaking of last year’s concert, I do recall her being very grateful and chatty about Grey’s Anatomy but it didn’t get a mention at all this concert.

She mentioned she was a huge Indigo Girls fan and tried to get us to sing along to a song (she knows everyone sings along to every Indigo Girls song) but it was a hard one, we didn’t didn’t do so good, we did better singing with some songs that she didn’t encourage us to sing on.

After her concert she cam back out and sang “Kid Fears” with IG, she did the Michael Stipe (from REM) part. She was incredible, it actually gave me chills when I heard it.

She sang more with IG, but that’s another post (or two).

So I went to see Waitress, starring Keri Russell, at the Main Art Theater (in Royal Oak, MI). I like Keri, unfortunately there is something about the parts she plays that I generally don’t like. But the reviews have been giving her great acclaim for this movie. Rightly so, she did an excellent job and I really liked her and her character in this film.

She plays a small-town waitress in a rotten marriage who makes pies. These aren’t ordinary pies, they’re extra-ordinary pies. She thinks these pies out according to her mood, they might be called:

Falling in Love Chocolate Mousse pie.

Bubble-gum Mermaid Pie.

Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie – Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in. Flambé of course!

I Hate My Husband Pie – You take bittersweet chocolate and don’t sweeten it. You make it into a pudding and drown it in caramel.

And everyone just thinks they are the best thing ever. She’s trying to save money and wants to win a $25,000 pie contest so that she can finally leave her husband.

The interactions with the other waitresses and with Joe, the old coot in one of the booths, (played by Andy Griffith) are excellent and I laughed aloud in the theatre many times. Her Ob-Gyn is played by Nathan Fillion and they have some hysterical interactions and strange conversations, so strange it makes me wonder if they had a script, or if they didn’t if they re-edited it to make it so goofy. I loved it!

For the effects I give it a big WOW! THe effects were amazing. Where were these movies when we were kids? We would have gone nuts over them. Now most comic story-lines are so complicated, you could never make a movie out of them.

The story-line was great but they had this constant sub-story line of stupid jokes and their powers bouncing back and forth which was just a waste in my humble opinion. Reed working around the wedding plans trying to save the world was interesting. And it was a lot faster moving than the first movie, IMHO. There was something odd about Jessica Alba, was it just that she was a blonde or was there too much make-up or what?

We lost power just before the end of the movie so a few of us were debating if it was going to end in a few minutes or if it was ‘to be continued’, I was for the latter, I felt that way before going to see the movie.

They had a bit of product placement, mostly by joking about sponsors for the team, which I enjoyed. And over at Population Statistic, Costa noticed that the name of the catering company was Edible Planet.

Being a comic fan when I was a kid I really enjoyed this movie movie even with the above comments. Just remember it’s a movie, not a comic and they take some liberties.Did the girl named Frankie have the last name of Ray? Doesn’t she eventually become a herald of Galactus?

This was the best concert!! It wasn’t just Brandi Carlile opening for Indigo Girls, a good part of it was Indigo Girls AND Brandi Carlile together!!! Not only that, it was like the concert that wouldn’t end! They just kept singing!

I went way early and upgraded my lawn seat to row H (the 7th row actually) since Ravinia lets you do that (which is great). I originally purchased a lawn seat because I just didn’t know if I actually was going to go. But due to some empty seats, I really spent most of the concert in rows 2 or 3!!!

At the beginning they did a song with Brandi and later she did one with them. Then Brandi did Michael Stipes part for Kid Fears and it actually gave me chills! Then she did who knows how many with them at the end (at least 4, maybe 6), some just backing but many performing with them. And they just kept playing, the fans kept cheering every time they played an additional song. They went way past when Ravinia says they normally stop playing (at least according to the brochure).

I will be posting more on this later: Brandi, IG and Ravinia will probably get some more entries…

So I’m at McDonald’s and I want my regular order, a number 3 combo (Quarter Ponder, Fries, Soda); so I order a “number 3, no pickle, no mustard” slow and articulated but as usual they have to ask me again what it is that I want. I don’t understand how they don’t get it the first time, it’s a limited selection of items that I can order even if I slur my voice someone should be able to figure it out, it’s not like I ordered an iPod with a side of onion rings. But that’s actually not my complaint today, she did get it correct and processed that part of the order quickly and accurately.

So they hand me my order, while the QP box has the “no pickle, No mustard” tag on it there is an excessive amount of mustard on the box which lets me know to check before I bite. Sure enough there’s mustard on it (maybe pickle too). So I sent it back. Minutes later I get another one, with pickle and mustard. So I send it back, it’s easily 5 minutes more until I get a correct sandwich. They did give me fresh fries (the first order was better than delicious) and offer me a pie (but they didn’t have apple so I passed). They handed the final order to me in a togo bag, was that a hint?

How much money (food and staff time) did they waste trying to make this sandwich correctly? We’re not even factoring in my time wasted and the fact that this is the most expensive McDonald’s around here.

So I did a quick photo blog from the concert the other day but I’ve been so busy I never said anything else (actually I’ve barely said anything lately). Laura Veirs was excellent! The Magic Stick is such a great small venue, $12 at the door and you can get closer than if you had front row seats at a larger venue. The group talked to us and even asked for some requests. Then they explained their goofy outfits which I’m not even going to try to explain, I’ll look and see if anyone has any good photos somewhere on-line.

I’m always so happy with the smaller venues, I’ve got to pay more attention to people coming to town to see some people I would haven’t normally gone to see. And it’s really nice when they hang around and autograph their CDs! I bought two and got them both signed…

“Lake” opened for them and they were pretty good but it just wasn’t the sound that draws me in too much. Kelly Jean Caldwell was a local opener (I’m pretty sure she’s local) for them that I heard was excellent but I showed up late (my niece, Courtney Robb, was playing at a club down the street so I went to see her first) so I’ll have to keep my eye open for her to come back.

Laura Veirs at an excellent intimate show in Detroit at the Majic Stick. If you’re a fan and you didn’t come, you really missed out…

So I had day off and it was raining so I finally took the time to go see Spider-Man 3. I really enjoyed it! Lots of differences between the movie and comics but these days with alternate universes and different story-lines (such as Spidey having a secret identity in one series and not in another) there are lots of differences from comic to comic too.

Lots of action and effects; all the sand and the black suit moved around really cool. Unfortunately, sometimes the action was moving so fast it was hard to see what was happening. Gwen Stacy was in this story which was interesting since the ‘falling off the bridge’ sequence from the first movie was originally taken from the comics with Gwen being the fallen. Toby (Peter) just played such a nerd, I don’t remember him being such a dork in the earlier movies.

What I don’t like about super-hero movies is they make the plots too busy; why have one villain when you can have three? They spend too much time setting things up and then the other half of the movie breaking them down. Not enough time spent with Gwen, Venom and Sandman. And who’s the dorky cute girl across the hall? Does she eventually become a hero or villian?

While I haven’t read it (yet) the novelization is by Peter David. Peter has written everything (books and comics) from The Hulk to Star Trek to the Little Mermaid so it’s certainly worth checking out.

So I was in Chicago the other week and while I was there I went to see Wicked. If you don’t know what that is, it’s the story of the Wicked Witch of the West (from The Wizard of Oz) and how her story went before she met Dorothy and company. You find out why she’s green, why the monkeys have wings, why the wizard really decided to go back to kansas with the gang and lots more. The music is good (some songs are really great) the story is excellent, it’s neat how they make the different pieces fall into place. It was kind of like watching a time travel movie and you could see what was going on the past that made the future turn out to be the way that you know it to be. I started the book but couldn’t get through it, the musical was much much better.

Got really good seats for the matinee on a Sunday, ninth row in the center so you could really see everything. They put a lot of work and details into everything so that really made it enjoyable. I never new the munchkins could dance so well (or they were so sexy cute).

Like I said, it was really enjoyable so if you think you’d like something like that you probably will. I wish I had watched the Wizard of Oz again to fill in the blanks, I know I was wondering about a few things in the movie while watching the musical so you might to watch the movie again before you see it just to refresh your memory a little bit. Lots of fun!

I’m not a Will Ferrell fan but I really really enjoyed Stranger Than Fiction. I’ve heard several people (Kelly and Srah) say the same thing and since I thought the movie looked interesting I gave it a try. Before I tell you about it I’ll mention that it’s the slapstick / stupid / immature stuff that makes me not like Will Farrell but since I now know he can act I’ll pay a little more attention to his stuff; I feel the same way about Jim Carey and Adam Sandler, when they aren’t pretending to be one of The Three Stooges they’re pretty entertaining (hmm, the three of them as The 3 Stooges…).

So all of a sudden boring Harold Crick realizes he can hear the narration of his life in his head as his day goes along. It makes him think he’s a little crazy but the narration is hysterical (IMHO) in that it captures his idiosyncrasies perfectly. Eventually with lots of confusion as he occasionally speaks out to the voice he he seeks out a shrink and eventually ends up with a Literature Professor (Dustin Hoffman) who helps him to figure out what type of novel he is “in”. All of it really makes for some hysterical dialog and really has some “meaning of life” stuff in it if you think about the story you are participating in as you live out your life…

On a side note: I have a crush on Emma Thompson, but her semi-depressed chain-smoking character in this movie made that fade away; but they made up for it (with me) by having the lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal…

So I’m really liking the 2007 season of Doctor Who, the second episode of “The Shakespeare Code” was excellent. They’re still introducing the new character, Martha Jones, and it’s working out well, IMHO. I’m trying to figure out how many of the jokes are inside jokes since I’ve watched for two seasons and how many people will get it on the first time around. As I’ve said before they do ignore the technical details about how things work which they illustrated with this episode by having Martha ask all sorts of questions about the time machine and paradoxes by pretty much ignoring them or saying don’t worry…

So they went back in time and had an adventure with William Shakespeare, I’ve never been a huge fan but I do appreciate that all the right people say he’s a genius and I accept that, especially since a lot of writers I really enjoy think he’s a genius. So it’s great that they had a character like The Doctor actually thinks he’s a genius and treated him as such. Lots of Shakespeare jokes, makes me wonder if I missed any…1

Plus, there were a few Harry Potter jokes/references that I thought were great. But I’m getting tired of the Rose references already three episodes now (the first two of the season and the Christmas special which kinda took place between seasons) and while I loved Rose, if we’re going to ignore much of the science (and concentrate on the story) then maybe they should ignore the fact that he’s lost Rose.

I wasn’t ever a Doctor Who fan (not even a bit), a friend mentioned it to me more than a few times but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. But then they started running a new series a few years ago and it seemed okay, but then I started watching it from the beginning of the 2005 season and it was really good. I really enjoy the humor, just a little British with a lot of wit; some of with wit is just barely acknowledged and then they move along (so sometimes you miss it).

This is a perfect episode to start watching the series, it’s the first episode of season three (2007), it’s called ‘Smith and Jones’. She’s Dr. Martha Jones and he checked into the hospital under the name ‘Smith’. The Doctor is a bit out of sorts having lost his last traveling companion (Rose) but the show always has sidekick so we get to be introduced to the new companion. She’s a medical doctor in training who doesn’t get too freaked out about with the strange things that happen and she’ll probably be a great asset to the show. So it kind of re-introduces you to the main characters.

Since the series was restarted they’ve changed both the doctor and his companion/assistant; it’s the start of year two for the doctor and the first episode with the new assistant. The 2005 Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, has been playing the invisible man on Heroes season one. I haven’t seen Rose on anything else yet. Some people will refer to this (2007) as the third season but some die hards will refer to it as the 29th season. I think the BCC is who restarted the numbering but I’m not sure why (but it’s probably due to a 15 year gap in the series).The Doctor is a quirky guy, smart (but seems flaky), a bit egotistical but he usually knows what he’s doing; he’s played by David Tennant and is the tenth Doctor in the series. He’s also the last of The Time Lords, his time ship which used to camouflage itself to fit in the environment got stuck looking like a 1960’s police call-box and liked it so he’s never fixed that (besides humans never noticed out o place things like that). The assistant is usually pretty helpful, not apt to panic and in some episodes is the one that saves the day. The thing to keep in mind is there isn’t always a lot of continuity between the episodes and some of the “science stuff” isn’t explained completely and won’t be; it’s a show for fun not to be over analyzed like the physics of Star Trek (or insert your geeky series here). And FYI his “sonic screwdriver” is the Dr. Who trademark tool to fix things, open doors and other oddities; it’s really the only thing he carries around everywhere.

I don’t think anyone in the US has picked up season 3 yet so if you don’t get the BBC I think the only direction to send you is to a torrent site. (I’ve checked iTunes, Amazon unBoxed, SciFi channel, PBS and it just doesn’t seem like any stations are carrying season three yet.)

So I enjoyed The Holiday but some parts were really really slow. There were parts that really appealed to my sense of humor, but I’d have a hard time recommending it. It’s got Kate Winslet (and Cameron Diaz) and I’ve always had a thing for Kate…

It’s the story of two women who need to get away due to recent men problems and end up doing a home swap. Cameron leaves her huge home in LA to stay in Kate’s tiny place in the little town in England (and vice-versa); Kate really made out on this deal. Of course they meet men and the story goes on from there. One of the parts I really really liked is when Kate was exhausted from the trip and the jet lag and wants to sleep but it’s bright since it’s the middle of the day. Then she find the magical switch that activates the room blinds which slide down and seal the room up likes it’s a bomb shelter it was awesome; that’s how I like to sleep, when it’s pitch black so I could really handle having something like that.

What else? Cameron makes movie previews for a living and that was cool, especially her daydreams about her life as a movie preview. I liked Jack Black’s part, when he’s not too goofy I like him, and the he was pretty good (a little less goofy would have been better, IMHO). The little girls were hysterical(!) but I won’t say anything else about them. That’s it, I wish it had been more exciting but that’s all I got, like I said, I enjoyed it…FYI, I read in the IMDB that “This film was written specifically with actors Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Jack Black in mind”

Forget that it lets you create awful looking pages and that it’s ultra slow (partially due to the large quantities of photos and slideshows). We’re just talking about normal software problems that would probably save them bandwidth if they fixed/tweaked things (and make our MySpace lives easier and faster). Let’s get everyone to stop wasting clicks and using it better (which will stop wasting bandwidth!). I might even spend more time there if it wasn’t for all the wasted time…
So here we go (I hope Tom is listening):

If I’m looking at an event it should tell me if I’ve added it to my calendar already when I’m looking at it. It should not make me click it and then add it twice. It should know this already.

I need a way to get the calendar out of MySpace. I’ve already got a calendar on my computer, it’s on my phone, it’s every where I go (and it’s all the same calendar). I need a way to get those events from MySpace to my other synchronized calendars. There are standardized protocols for this, if they really want me to see these performers (they really don’t care, IMHO) they need to make sure I know about them.

If I add a calendar item from someone’s page it should remember when I got the event from with a link back to the original page.

If someone is my friend already say that on the page don’t say “I’m in their extended network”, it says that for everyone. You go to add a band (or someone) and you can’t remember if they’re in your list already and it’s got to go to another page. It should know this already.

Artists can set their page to let you download some of their songs (or none) but the filenames are awful (like 89SAD09G89SD0FSDF089SDFS8D00S.mp3) and the songs have none of the tags so you can see who it is when you play it later (on the computer or your mp3 player). Once again, they aren’t helping the artists, it’s whatever they can do to get you to come back to the site for unnecessary things. If you’re hooked your coming back, just let me download something useful.

MySpace will send me e-mail reminders and alerts but you can’t choose which ones and it’s hard to get them past your spam filter since they change their e-mail address with every message. If you use some form of disposable address now your friends can’t search for you since they don’t know that address (I only send friends to MySpace to find the links to my bands, I have no real content there).

If I go to someone’s page for the first time, I’ll click play if I want to hear their favorite song, don’t start streaming me music I don’t want to hear. I almost want to say the same about a musician’s page too but I can understand that they want it to play (how about a 10 second delay so the page will stop loading first?).

They don’t let you subscribe via RSS/Atom to a persons blog, once again, no info unless you go to theirSpace. They could at least let you view an excerpt so then you’d want to come back…

If someone has no pics (or videos) it shouldn’t give me an option to view them. There aren’t any there!!

There should be a limit of 15 slideshows or 1500 photos per page. That’s sarcasm, have you seen how many photos and slideshows people put on their page? It takes 5 minutes to download them all on a high speed connection!

Why can’t I rotate my favorite song? Or my Avatar? Oops, wait those aren’t aesthetic complaints, they’re user wishes. I’ve been spending too much time in theirSpace….

I really hope I’m not missing an easy calendar solution, I’ll feel kinda silly if I did. If I’m complaining, I suppose it begs the question why am I using MySpace? Because they’ve got my local bands convinced it’s the only place to list their calendars. And occasionally I follow a few other clicks while I’m there…

So a long time ago Dave Goodman recommended The Victorian Internet to me (that’s 3 links in this sentence). After a while I finally ordered it and then after a while I finally read it and then I finally remember to post about it.

A very interesting book on the how long distance communications took place centuries ago. Eventually the story focuses mostly on the 1800’s and how the telegraph was build, used, subsidized and grew all over the world. It’s a great book with all sorts of obvious parallels to the last 30 years and computer communications that just jump out at you. At least they jumped out at me, the last chapter kinda spoon fed the similarities to you in case you didn’t get them but I think if you made it through the book you don’t really need that wrap up.I’m not going to say any more about the book itself, if it sounds even mildly interesting I really think you’ll enjoy it.

I’m looking for some similar books for two reasons:
1) I like stuff like this.
2) I’m thinking they’re going to ask me to teach the Tech Leadership 900 level course again at a local university. And I think an understanding of “stuff like this” is helpful for people working in technology. Plus it’s a short book and less than $12 new so what college student isn’t going to like that?!? Last summer we used The World is Flat (revised), which was cheap and interesting but it’s long and gets repetitive and if it’s not interesting to you it just more uninteresting as you read. It’s a great book, don’t get me wrong but if it’s not your cup of tea it’s really long, while if this book isn’t at least it’s over soon.

It’s the Linksys CIT200 iPhone and works with Skype and you’d might not even realize it was a real phone. It looks more like a generic Nokia cell phone than a home phone and it works great. Actually, the one thing that makes it “not normal” (which doesn’t bother me as much as others on-line) is if you are manually dialing you need to dial the “+1” before all calls, to me it’s slightly silly, you should be able to configure it to have a default country (and area) code.

So I really like my iPhone.You can see all the people you have on your Skype list on the display of the phone so you just scroll down and pick who you want to call. I’ve wandered all over the condo and it’s clear everywhere (I’m on the 3rd/4th floor and it’s clear on the first level too!). It’s got a headset jack on it, a great speaker phone and supports call waiting. From the USB base the plugs into the computer it even has a button to press so you can page the phone so you can’t misplace it. You do need to route the audio on the computer so it properly goes to the phone (Skype has audio settings but it seems like the computer overrides them).I initially set up Skype when I dropped my land-line phone. I wanted a way to make phone calls in case I forgot my phone somewhere (or it broke) and wanted an easy backup. Plus when I’m out of the country if I have interent access, I can make phone-calls to the US very inexpensively (2.1 cents a minute).

If you use Skype it’s a must have, if you don’t have Skype and you need an extra phone line in the house get Skype and pay for unlimited outgoing calls to land-lines in the US and Canada for $30 a year. If you don’t get a phone like this you just use a headset on the computer.

What don’t I like about my iPhone? It’s got a crappy wallpaper background and while they have several to choose from, none are a plain background so it’s always hard to read the screen. The “+1” is a minor annoyance, but since I really don’t use it that much, it’s okay. The audio configuration is mildly annoying, I’m hoping an update fixes that (update: I did just install the Jan 22, 2007 update and the audio confusion seems better, we’ll see how it feels after a few days).

So I stopped by the Midnight Espresso Cafe in Dearborn. I really like it there but it’s generally pretty smokey (lots of smokers hang out and smoke cigarettes or a hooka) but they didn’t look too busy so I stopped by. WOW! They just renovated and made it much bigger and it seems brighter too!

They’ve got a wide variety on the menu, I’m guessing much of it is Arabic in origin. Whenever I bring people here they generally find something interesting that they like. I generally get the BBQ Chicken Quesadillas and that’s what I’m getting today.

Bonus, I pulled out the laptop hook up my phone as a modem and realized I connected to a network! So they’ve got WiFi now too (or else the business next door does), with their new larger non-smoking section and WiFi I think I’ll be here a bit more often now.

So we really liked Montezuma, I’ve never been in that peninsula in Costa Rica and I’ve always wanted to go there (I think it’s called the Nicoloyia Nicoya Peninsula). We just kept extending our stay a day here and there and ended up staying four nights. We’re really glad we stayed an extra day or we would have missed the island of Tortuga (more on this later). It’s a very small town, just a few streets but it’s very laid back and I’ll definitely go back!

Seems like a bit of a surfer town, but we saw very little surfing, even though there were lots of places to rent/buy surfing supplies. The water seemed very clear but part of that may have just been because the sand is so dark in Jaco. Speaking of Jaco, it seems like it’s a bit mini-Jaco before it grew, maybe if you could roll it back 30-40 years.

Here is a street map of Montezuma. You can see all the busineeses on this map. If there is nothing listed it’s probably just trees or sand. Size-wise most of the hotels only have 10-15 rooms so they don’t take up much room. Most of it is concentrated in the top have of the map with Chico’s Bar (#14) at the center o the town, we stayed at El Sano Banano (#9) which is really close to the center.Things did seem less expensive in this town, but don’t assume and be sure to check the menu’s prices before you sit down. Generally (but not always) if a place lists the cost in US Dollars they are more expensive. FYI, no ATMs in this town so make sure you have cash, especially since many places will give you a better deal for cash than charge (mostly noticed this with tours, transportation and hotels).

It’s way more laid back and it’s a bit of a hippie/rastafarian/bohemian crowd that seems to have settled in there. Some just seem to be traveling for a while and stop for a few months or years and others just seem to have moved there. There seems to be a few Ticos (Costa Rican people) who have relocated up that way as well, they just think it’s more relaxed than some of the other places they’ve been.

So we’re staying at the The El Sano Banano and we keep adding days to our stay. It’s a great hotel in that it’s located right in the center of Montezuma and it’s got all the necessary requirements for a hotel. It’s got air conditioning which to me is a must and not that many hotels have it (and it’s brand new, so it works very well), private bathrooms/showers, the showers have heat and it’s only about $65 US a night. There’s no internet but I just found out that the Ylang Ylang (the sister hotel) has free WiFi but I just found that out so I haven’t tried it yet.

It’s cute but plain vanilla, just beds and a TV in the room, no chairs and no desk. It’s tiny, only 12 rooms, but many of the places are like that. Free breakfast in the morning, it’s delicious(!), I get Huevos Rancheos, which is eggs and salsa on a tortilla but no frijoles (beans). The dinning rooms shows free movies with dinner; I assume the legality of this is questionable, but I haven’t bothered to quiz them on the legalities of international copyright and are they paying the proper fees (my spanish stinks and no one’s English is that good). But pretty much you’re wandering the streets or beech or at a restaurant or people-watching or on the beach.

I’d definitely recommend this place for the price, location, A/C and the rest of what I’ve mentioned above. The A/C really helps the enjoyability of it, the water pressure could be better (sometimes it’s awesome, but sometimes it’s not working). No one we’ve talked to has air conditioning, but they’re staying at places for half the price but we really like the A/C…

The photo is the view out my window.