The Underground Man

Grand Prix de Monaco

Much delayed, I just watched the Grand Prix de Monaco. Absolutely fabulous. Very very nice to see Jensen Button race so well after a couple of years of real adversity.

I imagine the Tifosi are crying over their prawn sandwhiches but no great loss. Their season is for all practical purposes over unless Jensen hurts himself.

What an awful site

Occasionally, I just run into a site that warrants some comment. Some positive, some negative. In this case, quite negative.

I bought my Dad a set of Ray-Ban Aviators for Father’s Day. Polarized, UVA/UVB protection.. the classic green lens, gold frame we all know and love from “Top Gun”. Been around since 1937 and still the best sunglasses of which I know.

Well, I noticed that the G-15 lenses can be prescription ground - so I thought that I might consider a set for myself eventually. Much nicer than having to wear contacts to wear them in allergy season.

So I take myself off to the Ray-Ban official site, thinking that it should be fairly easy to determine the requirements for getting them in my prescription.

Not so.

First, I have to select my country of origin. Given our sophistication with IP lookup and headers, why cannot the designer make a leap and set the country value initially. If wrong, then it can be changed by the user. But you’ve saved the user a step if you guess right.

After selecting the USA site, I now have to wait for a big Flash object to load.

After at least a minute for the entry page to load (and this on a fairly fast connection), I’m presented with a “Skip Intro” button in the lower right-hand corner. Typically arrogant design. I would have instructed my designer to have that show up in the first two seconds for the impatient customer who does not want “an experience” but rather wants hard info on a product line or feature.

I shouldn’t have to waste 10 minutes of precious lifetime just trying to find basic info. No alternative, non-Flash site available as far as I can determine either. So every new page I navigate to seems to require a new Flash to be loaded for me simply to determine it’s not what I wanted to see.

The search function is quite poor, the lines defined not by their names but by their product codes (aka 3025 is an Aviator). However, a search for either 3025 or RB3025 yields no results and a search for Aviator yields 3. Clicking on the results seems to have no effect though. I cannot seem to get to the product page and after 10 minutes am ready to leave this site and never go back.

Did I mention the entry page seems to fail to load in Firefox?

The designers seem more in love with their design and less interested in meeting the customer’s needs.

Design a la 2000.

So last century.

Facebook blah

Ok. So I have a Facebook page. My sister convinced me to get one so that I could share my iTunes playlists with her (through an applet). Needless to say, she barely uses the thing right now and I still have the page a couple of years later.

I like some social networking tools (Twitter, LinkedIn) a great deal but I barely tolerate FB. I have found it’s good for staying in touch with distant friends (just reconnected with some French friends) but it’s not something that I’m compelled to use every day.

In any event, I was adding a couple of friends from my gmail address book yesterday when FB just messed up. I had invited a dozen friends or so to join my network, hit the send button, and it comes back with a confirmation that it has added half the entries in my gmail. Considering I have several hundred correspondents - including potential employers - this is beyond mildly embarrassing.

Nothing I could do about it because the UI is so crappy it didn’t provide a confirmation step. I’ll just have to hope my correspondents understand.
The question arises, though, if you’ve emailed someone you don’t really want as a friend (say a business associate) are you obligated to accept them as a “friend” when they respond in the affirmative.

The plus side is that a few friends I haven’t been in touch with in a year or two have responded and we are talking again.

Silver lining I suppose..

B movies

Anyone who has known me long enough knows that I’m a bit of an aficianado of B movies. The sub-genre really doesn’t matter; my tastes span science-fiction to horror to crime/drama.

I discovered a great site for this sort of interest yesterday: Film School Rejects. It seems to have a bit of horror film emphasis - I got there looking at a review of the Norwegian neo-classic “Dod Sno” (“Dead Snow”) - but so far it looks very promising.

Word of the Day

I’m reading a famous old essay on naval tactics today (from the Age of Sail) and I came across a word I’d never seen. Not that unusual I suppose it’s the essay is over 200 years old, but I found that it may still be found in a dictionary:

an·i·mad·vert (ane-mad-vûrt)
intr.v. an·i·mad·vert·ed, an·i·mad·vert·ing, an·i·mad·verts

To remark or comment critically, usually with strong disapproval or censure

How cool is that?

The Masters

Most years, I watch the Masters. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to catch great drama (Tiger Woods coming back to win on a Sunday, Mickelson winning, the Shark’s collapse).

This year, I’m watching a lot of Thursday and Friday action on my iPhone. The Golf Channel is totally lame, even in HD. I believe they are restricted from showing the front 9 (by agreement with Augusta) so their morning coverage is all talking heads while players tee off on the front nine. Total waste of life to watch it.

But my iPhone is giving me live coverage the moment golfers hit Amen Corner (10, 11, 12). The same coverage that will be televised starting at 1pm, except I’m getting it three hours early and live.

I had the bright idea of up the iPhone to the TV with the special cable and watching it on the big screen. No go. I guess the app doesn’t support it. Tested my connection by firing up Danger Diabolik from the iPhone and it played perfectly, so it’s the Masters app that doesn’t support it.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty much a seachange, and I think it’s escaped many. I’m watching live streaming TV on the iPhone. Other networks (think Sprint) have supported this for a couple of years - for a hefty extra fee - but to my knowledge this is the first mainstream app on the iPhone to support this.

The quality is pretty decent, and it supports WiFi, 3G, and Edge.

Changing vendors

About time I updated to a different publishing system. Non-trivial because I’ll need to hack the templates, as I did with MovableType to match the look and feel of the rest of my site. That said, I have a ton of updating work to do on my site anyway - chiefly putting up a revised Flash-based photo gallery and updating my resume.

Likely candidate is WordPress, of course. I just have to check how the tools are for publishing to it and the ease or difficulty of dumping my archive of articles and moving them over.

Danger Diabolik

Just had the absolute pleasure of watching Danger Diabolik. It is a 1967 film, directed by the Italian director Mario Bava, starring the Italian comic antihero Diabolik. John Phillip Law is the lead, and the delectable Marisa Mell is his girlfriend. Enrico Morricone does the tremendously innovative score (using sithars!).

Some might say that it was campy but I prefer to think that it was honest to the comic book. Thoroughly enjoyable popcorn fare.

Manchester United stumble again

I’m a little torn about supporting Porto against Manchester United (English vs. Portugese team) but I confess that I’m pretty happy that they stumbled and gave up two more goals at home to Porto.

Porto looked superb for most of the game. To give Man U their due, they did improve and play much better in the second half than the first. Of course, their first -half performance was woeful.

That said, a single goal at Porto in two weeks time will win it for them. Conversely, a single goal by Porto will mean that they will need two goals in Porto to win the match (because of the away goals rule). So they have a hard row to hoe here.

I have to look at this more from the point of view of a Liverpool supporter than an England partisan. Man U having problems is good for Liverpool in the Premier League title race.

Of course, tomorrow Liverpool still have to face Chelsea.

You'll never walk alone

Saturday AM, Liverpool played Fulham at Fulham in a key match in the Premier League. Of course, one could say that all the remaining matches are key matches, with only 8 left now and Liverpool still in the hunt for the title.

I watched as they simply dominated Fulham for 95% of the game (I don’t believe Fulham registered a shot on goal in the first half). This is the same team that beat Man United a couple of weeks ago 2-0. And they’re 8th in the table and haven’t lost a game to one of the Big Four at home this season.

So they’re pretty good at home.

Liverpool had something like five chances in the first half. Four misses from within the six yard box and a couple hitting the woodwork. Tremendous luck for Fulham. The game got quite nervous as we approached 90 minutes.

So I turned it off.

DVR and all that. Didn’t want to ruin my weekend if they lost, so I thought I would watch it last night. One thing runs to another, and I had a really severe attack of allergies last night and went to bed early.

Got up this morning and watched the last nine minutes.

In the 91st minute, Yossi Benayoun wins the game for us. For the eighth time this season, Liverpool wins a game in the last five minutes.

Huzzah!

finally, a tripod

Just won myself this little beauty.

I’ve been missing having a real tripod for years. I have a nice Bogen monopod and he who will not be named recommended this to me a year or two ago.

It looks pristine, and I may well sell the head if it’s not perfect as I already have aI very nice Bogen that I use with my large format camera.

Simply stunning

SGI goes down. They were a wounded elephant for the last two or three years at least, maybe longer. But it’s a very sad end, to my mind, a brilliant company.

I worked for them for a while in the late 80’s (when they had just very successfully gone public) and they were tremendous innovators and cool folks, too. I cannot say that I really care about many former employers but this was one of the few that I did care about.

Digital KVM switch

I just picked up a digital KVM switch to let me use my now “headless” TiBook with the same monitor as my PC. A single switch changes over keyboard, mouse, and video connection. This is a newer generation digital switch that supports USB 2.0 and it just rocks.

I find myself mystified by the poor product reviews given by some people but in reading them, it appears that they refer to earlier versions. This one (so far) seems pretty bulletproof.

Previously, I had a few of the mechanical KVM switches and they lasted only about 6 months before crapping out.

Now I can finally get back to editing my photography library, tossing out the dross, sorting it properly, and starting to print. I still have to profile my new Vizio 22” monitor but I don’t imagine that will prove too difficult. More difficult will be sorting through 80GB plus of digital negatives (most scanned from film).

That, and I will have to get back to scanning my large format and medium format negatives. Spring is almost here and I want this to be a photographic summer.

The Most Dangerous team in the World?

Wondering if there isn’t an argument for Liverpool being the dangerous team in the world right now.

Follow my reasoning, it’s quite simple. Let’s posit that South Americans have very good players but that their individual club teams don’t compare 1-1 with the best European sides. So we’ll strike South American club teams from the comparison.

That leaves us with European club sides. Of those, most would admit that Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man United are the best.

While Liverpool hasn’t played Barca (yet) this season, they have beaten Real Madrid home and away decisively, have done the same to Man United, have done the same to Chelsea.

Of course, I’m writing this in the middle of the Liverpool v. Aston Villa game but I’ve got to say, based on their recent form I cannot see Liverpool losing this game (dare I tempt fate?) But they are dynamic, playing together very well, committed, and eager for the ball. I sense that they sense that they have an opportunity to pass up Man United for the first time in many years and that they have the bit in their teeth. Barring injuries, the way they are playing they just might win all nine remaining Premier League games. Should they, I don’t see Man United on current form doing the same.

But to beat Man United, actually thrash them and break their 13-game winning streak, and do the same to Real Madrid, leading the second best league in the world, and then to (maybe) beat Aston Villa convincingly in a 10-day span says a lot to me. We hope it says something to their remaining opponents in both the Champions League and the Premier League.

However they play, I doubt that this season will disappoint.

And then it was 4

Man United loses its second game in a week to Fulham today. Very well played game by Fulham, with both Scholes and Rooney seeing red by the end of the game. Along with the lame Vidic, United now have three starters on red cards for the remaining eight games. First-rate.

In truth, it wasn’t a close game, United’s confidence apparently having been severely shaken by their drubbing at Liverpool’s hands.

Now all Liverpool have to do is to climb a mountain to make up the remaining four points. Still, Liverpool seems to be firing on all cylinders and Man United’s defensive frailties are now on display for all to see.

And then it was 4

Man United loses its second game in a week to Fulham today. Very well played game by Fulham, with both Scholes and Rooney seeing red by the end of the game. Along with the lame Vidic, United now have three starters on red cards for the remaining eight games. First-rate.

In truth, it wasn’t a close game, United’s confidence apparently having been severely shaken by their drubbing at Liverpool’s hands.

Now all Liverpool have to do is to climb a mountain to make up the remaining four points. Still, Liverpool seems to be firing on all cylinders and Man United’s defensive frailties are now on display for all to see.

Super, super Liverpool

The scoreline says it all, Liverpool 4, Man Utd 1.

Liverpool crushed Man Utd at Old Trafford this morning. The boys are certainly on a high, having similarly crushed Real Madrid (the best team on the continent) this past Tuesday.

Can they make up the now 7-point deficit to win the Premier League? Highly doubtful I would say. Man Utd aren’t likely to lose too many more game and they would really need to lose two of their last 9 games to make it possible for ‘Pool.

That said, Liverpool did the double over Man Utd this year, for only the third time in their history.

I would say that its now Barca and Liverpool the favorites to win the Champions League this year. Consolation prize.

But it the Man Utd fans out there will finally have to concede that Liverpool is the better team, at least head to head.

Flawless victory

Once again, Liverpool delivers on the biggest stage. They beat Real Madrid 4-0 (5-0 on aggregate) in a brilliant display of attacking football. Their credentials on the international stage are seriously strengthened by their defeat of the Primera League leaders.

I’m very much looking forward to the March 20th draw of the Champions League quarterfinals. Not likely to be an English team (I think national immunity still applies). That means Porto, Barcelona, or Villareal, or Bayern Munich. Interesting all but I think Barcelona are the class of the remaining foreign opponents. Probably Bayern after that.

Should be fascinating.

end of life

The end of life. And I don’t mean a product life cycle. Washington makes assisted suicide legal tomorrow and it’s about time. How can anyone make suicide illegal should be the question we should be asking.

We’re such a damn nanny state that leaving this earth at the time and place of your choosing is “illegal”? Bizarre. I wonder when this concept of making an individual’s choice illegal came about? Probably related to our tort system.

Yeah, there is the potential for abuse. But so there is with giving people the right to drink, or to gamble, or to drive. Only 375 suicides in Oregon (our nearest exemplar) were assisted last year, less than 1/2 of 1% of the total deaths in Oregon. But given the press and advertising leading up to this referendum, you would have thought the end of days had arrived.

More like sanity.

24 a conspiracy..

Ok, so I’ve been suckered again. I’m watching 24 for yet another season. Every season it disappoints but it is an “action” drama so I keep coming back for more.

But it occurred to me tonight that it’s a perfect vehiicle for the “moral minority” to impose their view of the world on Americans. Unrelenting violence, the end justifies the means, a very dark and distopian vision of America under threat. Sort of an end of days view of the world, probably not dissimilar to what is preached in many fundamentalist churches all over America.

I was struck by the show has no obscenity, and no sexuality. The absence of both making it very much more acceptable to the minority.

Just a thought for you conspiracy theorists out there.