Rocketmonkeys Posts

The Tourist

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:56:58 -0500

There are spoilers here, but I don't think they matter. A mysterious lady needs to lead police away from her criminal husband, so she picks a man at random. She leads him on, which in turn leads the police to believe he is her husband, and this innocent tourist gets in the middle of gangsters, police, interpol, etc.

Sounds very intriguing, and it probably should have been. But it wasn't. for some reason even with decent actors (Angelina Jolie & Johnny Depp), and with some action sequences, the whole thing feels... flat. There's not much excitement or investment.

And in the end, the big question is whether or not Johnny Depp (as the mild mannered innocent tourist) is actually the criminal husband or not. He's not until the last 2 minutes of the film. And then... surprise! He *is* the husband! Except that it's not really a twist if everyone's expecting it all along. So no real surprise there.

So in the end, I feel like the premise could have turned into a much better movie than this.

I fear the impending zombie apocalypse

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:07 -0500

Lauren and I were discussing whether the impending apocalypse would be zombie- or robot- based. I vote robots, because they're already here, they're everywhere, and I may possibly be unknowingly helping them bring about their eventual rule. She votes zombies, because they're very popular in movies right now.

I'm not a very worrisome person anymore, but it actually does give me a bit of anxiety to think about a zombie apocalypse. It feels like despair. Where would we go? What weapons would I have access to? How can I physically carry my entire family if there were no vehicles?

I guess it comes down to faith. Do I have more faith in my hacking skills to bring down a robot tyranny, or my crowbar-wielding talents to bludgeon any attacking zombies? I'm not sure yet. I feel like I really need to answer this question so I'm ready. I may be watching too many (or not enough) movies.

Sucker Punch

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 03:07:11 -0500

I was excited to see this one when I saw the preview. Girls fighting dragons & demon samurais with ninja swords & machine guns. What's not to like. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, and it is. But with great special effects, I thought this might be a neat crazy fantasy movie.

Warning signs went off when I found out that the movie was based around a girl trapped in a mental institute, and she used her imagination to fight for her freedom (which explains the dragons & guns). Those type of surreal movies can work when they artsy or deep (The Machinist), but this did *not* look like a deep movie. It looked like someone took a piece of paper, wrote "What do boys think are cool?"... and then took way too many of them and put them in one movie. I really wasn't looking for a deeper meaning to this one.

Good thing too. On the plus side, it's very stylistic, the special effects are amazing, and there's a lot of cool stuff to admire here. If they had chosen one fantasy setting and made a movie out of it, they could have had a pretty neat dragon fighting / zombie / world-war one steam punk / or girl SWAT team type of movie. I liked the hand-to-hand and gun maneuvering when they weren't obscured by way-over-the-top matrix 2/3 style camera motion. Makes sense - I found out the Bourne Identity fight choreographer worked on this one. Good stuff.

But the bad - the entire thing is a mess. The overall plot is confusing and strange. The text (you really can't call it subtext in a movie this shallow & obvious) is something about freedom, but it doesn't really stick. There's a lot of fantasy / surreal / layered reality here, and while cohesive it still doesn't make much sense. Why do this? What's the point? What ties this all together? Last, this movie makes you feel dirty. It starts with a step father sexually assault his young daughters, then with a mental institute where the male orderlies are sexually abusing the patients (which I suppose explains their escapes from reality), and to retreat from this they live in a fantasy world where they're prostitutes in a harem. Wow. This is like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (original title of that film in the original Swedish: "Men Who Hate Women"), but without the substance that makes it more than just watching women get abused. Note: special effects & zombies, while cool, are not a substitute for substance.

In the end, I think this is exactly what it looks like. A boy wrote down all the things he thought was cool, and crammed them into one movie. Eliminating half of them and filling the rest with substance would've made this a pretty cool movie. Also, more clothes for the women - they must've gotten cold only wearing half their costumes all the time.

Upcoming program: Gmail Imap Sync

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:08:57 -0500

I've seen this problem come up a few times before - multiple people need to receive & respond to incoming email, but need to coordinate so there's no overlap. In my case, I need to be able to do email support where multiple people (including myself) can respond to support emails, but also I can immediately see if someone else has emailed already.

I use & really like gmail, so I want it to be there. If I have to log into a separate site/service/page to receive the other email then that's already a disadvantage. I really like the convenience of having all my email (personal, business, business #2, etc) in one place.

Receiving email is easy - just setup a filter on gmail to forward all incoming email to the other people.

But outgoing email is harder. I could just BCC the others on every outgoing email, but I'll forget. A solution that works some of the time (or even most of the time) is not enough here.

The solution - a simple script that takes 2 IMAP accounts, does a simple filter to select the important emails (such as all FROM / TO email for @companyname.com), and sync them to the other account. The useful part - this works on both incoming & *outgoing* email. So every email I send from my work account is automatically copied to the other staff's email. It's pre-labelled, so it shows up in the "companyname" label in gmail. They can then mark as read, label, archive those emails separately from me.

It's very simple, but incredibly helpful. I think this would be a really useful thing for a lot of people in similar situations - need to respond to email as a unified group, but not wanting (or able) to switch to a full customer relations management type software. I've been using this for a while now, and it's been working great - completely transparent, which is awesome.

Now the problem - how do I release this? Open source? Free-for-personal, fee-for-commercial? Web-based service? If I can get around the need to store IMAP (ie. Google Account) passwords at all, then I'd probably opt for a web-based service. We'll see.

X-Men: First Class

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 01:27:44 -0500

I was really looking forward to this, even after the worthless junk that was the Wolverine prequel. Overall, it was decently good, and it was fun to see the whole "discovering your powers" aspect of things.

However, some really confusing castings here. January Jones - I'm not sure Emma Frost was supposed to be that... blank. Emotionless. Not cold, just vacant. Sadly it reminded me of her SNL performance.

And Kevin Bacon as the evil German Nazi mad scientist/doctor? He is creepy and all, but really? For some reason I feel like Nicolas Cage was the first choice for this role, and that's not a good thing. And what's up with Bacon's complete lack of German accent?

The most important part, the story behind Xavier and Magneto, was probably the best part. Both actors did well, and setup perfectly the rise & fall of that duo.

Even though overall the movie was good, there was this constant feeling of cheapness; it was a bit distracting. Like the cinematography (which at points seemed made-for-tv quality), the campiness (a decent amount of cliche one liners), and some confusing bits (like the end when Magneto & Xavier "split" - just seemed to be lacking a few scenes to make it more believable.).

I was most interested in Jennifer Lawrence. She's cast as Mystique here, but she's also in the upcoming Hunger Games movie which I'm really looking forward to. She's not bad, but I felt like Mystique here was really lacking any presence/power. It makes me less hopeful for the Hunger Games, but maybe she'll rally.

Next up: hopefully Paul or Hanna. I'm *really* excited to see Hanna.

Neat Little Project - GMail IMAP syncer

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:42:58 -0500

Problem: there are multiple people that handle incoming emails. They need to coordinate responses, so that any one person can receive & respond to any of the incoming email. They need to be able to see each other's responses to make sure they don't duplicate responses. Also, they should be able to use their existing email (gmail) accounts, and not have to log into a separate specific account.

So in this example, we have our own business with 2 employees. Both need to be able to see the incoming emails and respond to them.

1) They could use a generic email address to send/receive, like some businesses do. The emails are forwarded to both of them. Then they can both receive incoming email.

2) They could BCC the other on *every* outgoing email. This would allow the other to see all outgoing messages, but is very inconvenient and really easy to forget (even just one).

3) They could use a separate email account solely for this, but that's also very inconvenient.

Solution - a program that logs into both accounts, searches for specific messages, and ensures they exist on both accounts. We can use IMAP for this. The benefit is that this takes care of not only incoming emails, but outgoing as well. Also, both employees can have their own email addresses (which is always a plus, since recipients know who they're talking to). And the employees can just read & respond to emails as they normally do, without needing to remember to BCC anything. Also, with separate email accounts they can mark items as read when *they* read it, whereas on a shared account it would be marked read when either of them read it.

The program itself is relatively simple in theory:
-Log into both accounts via IMAP
-Search for messages matching a certain criteria: "from @domain.com or to: @domain.com since [some date in the past]"
-Find list of messages on each server that are not on the other
-Copy the messages from one server to the other

The most complicated part of this is working around the limitations of the IMAP protocol. Namely, that there are ID's, UID's, Message ID's, etc.

ID - this is a folder (mailbox) -specific number that changes as messages are deleted/added. Very transient & unreliable. It is part of the IMAP protocol.

UID - this is a folder-specific number that does not change. It is part of the IMAP protocol.

Message ID - this is a message-specific ID that identifies the message, no matter where it lives. It is not account specific. We can treat this as a global UID, since it works across accounts as well. This is part of the email message headers, and is not part of IMAP.

The biggest problem is that most IMAP functions return IDs or UIDs, but not MessageIds. That makes sense, since MessageIds are not IMAP. However, that means the process is more like this:

-Search for messages matching the criteria (returns a list of UIDs)
-Convert that list of UIDs into MessageIds
-Search for MessageIds on the other server (returns a list of UIDs)
-Convert *those* UIDs into MessageIds
-That list to the original server's list to give a list of MessageIds that need to be copied
-Convert this list of MessageIds back into UIDs on server1 so we have a list of messages to copy
-Finally, copy the actual content of the messages from server1 to server2

Really, it's an inefficient bunch of converting UIDs <-> MessageIds, but it works. It'd be nice if all IMAP was based off MessageIds, but those are two separate protocols so it makes sense that they'd be incompatible. And the decoupling of IMAP and email headers means we don't have to update every email server on the planet in order to add another header. So it's annoying, but at least we're not in lowest-common-denominator land.

Keyboard Roundup: Filco Brown, Filco Red, and Realforce Topre

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:00:03 -0500

I got my first mechanical keyboard years ago on a whim. I had been on the hunt for a better keyboard for years, and prior to this my favorite had been a non-mechanical Dell Quietkey. I ended up getting a Filco FKB104/EB direct from Japan (thanks my abroad friends) and loved it. It has cherry MX brown switches - non-clicky (ie. no noise), tactile (has a slight bump when pressing down). It's relatively quiet, very nice to use, and is a great all around keyboard.

Recently I've been wanting to try more, so I started looking. Then I ended up buying 3 new keyboards, one after the other, and here I sit now with 4 mechanical keyboards on my desk. First off - I used to be a very heavy typer. My typing on the Filco brown board was very loud since I would bottom out quite often. This created a lot of noise and is not ideal, but when I'm typing fast and not relaxing this is what happens. I've since become a lighter typer, but still not great.

Here's a roundup of what I've experienced.

Filco FKB104/EB (Cherry MX Brown)
This is my original mechanical keyboard. It's great - not too loud, has a slight tactile bump, and is very well built. This has been my main keyboard for years. The keys are very satin texture, barely noticeable, but after a few years the keys have worn down quite a bit. The print is rubbing off some keys, and they're all shiny and my fingers get stuck on them (I tend to glide my fingers across keys).

Das Keyboard Ultimate S (Cherry MX Blue, blank keys)
I thought I wanted MX blue switches. They're clicky (make noise), which gives great physical and audible feedback. However, they take quite a bit of force to press compared to the browns, and are way too loud. I used to think that bottoming-out on my browns board made noise. That is *nothing* compared to the noise from the blue switches. My wife vetoed this one - our baby needs to nap during the day, and this keyboard is not nap-friendly. Other than the feel, the keys were good (average texture), the build was decent, the shiny/glossy keyboard body is awful (*why* do they do this? Such an awful idea for something that you'll be touching all day long). The shape is annoyingly, but that's minor. The USB hub is nice.

Realforce 103UB variable-weight (Topre capacitive switches, black-on-black keys)
This was the most expensive keyboard on my list (at around $270 new). I got a good deal, so decided to try it out. The switches are so strange - they're rubber dome with a small spring inside. So basically they're rubber dome. The variable weight is noticeable - the pinky keys are much lighter than the center keys. They take a bit of force to start, then the resistance just drops out and your finger hits the board hard. There is almost no noise, but it ended up hurting my fingers. I had to adjust quite a bit to try to hit the keys reliably while not jamming my fingers into the board all the time. Not a very comfortable board at first. It's gotten better as time goes on, but it still seems to slow me down. However, this keyboard has the most amazing key texture (very rough, like formica/laminate), the best looks (black printing on black keys... just barely noticeable), and the feel of the keys is addictive. When I first sit down to type, they're very neat feeling and inviting. Then after a while it gets annoying.

Filco FKBN104MR/EB2 (Cherry MX red w/ PBT black engraved keys)
This is the opposite direction of the rest - instead of more feedback (like the MX blues) or firm feel (like the Topre's), this one is linear. There is no click, no bump, just a straight smooth push. No feedback whatsoever. During my search I thought linears were such an awful idea - who didn't want feedback? But after trying the others, I realized that I prioritized light switches over feedback, and that the feedback really didn't help as much as I thought. This one is almost too light - noticeably lighter than the browns board (maybe due to the lack of tactile bump). The stock keys I'm sure are the same as all Filco's stock keys. But the PBT black engraved keys that I also got - amazing! Almost the same feel as the Realforce's keys, which is amazing. They're very slippery, which for me is good. The engraving is very visible (which could be good or bad), but I can't feel them while typing (which is good). And being PBT hopefully they'll hold up much longer than ABS does (all other keys mentioned are ABS).

Winner - TBD. Will have to test these out a bit more.

Battle: LA

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:00:03 -0500

I've wanted to see this one since I first saw the preview. I'm a real sucker for alien-takeover movies. And for a kick, I watched this one through Amazon Video-on-Demand. I wanted to rent through redbox for $1, but it's never really $1 - I always forget or am not able to return the movie the next day, so it ends up being a $2 or $3 rental. Factor in the time it takes to drive in town & return the DVD, and it becomes hard to justify a cheap rental vs. just renting instantly from Amazon. I think I'm a convert - I'd rather rent online for more than drive for a cheap deal.

Onto the movie. I'd seen just above-average reviews, so I tempered my expectations a bit. I was expecting big budget special effects, perhaps some new/neat filming & perspective on alien invasions, and some bad characters & campy acting. I was not disappointed.

First off, the perspective is fun. Usually these films try to show 3+ characters' points of view - the military second in command, the scientist-type that ends up being useful in the end, and the know-nothing everyman. This time the film mainly followed the military guy and eschewed the others. That helps. It also skipped the massive buildup of "no it cant be aliens" and then "oh my god it's aliens" and then "let's save the world". Those segments are all there, but the buildup and disbelief part is thankfully shortened. We know how people react when aliens come. We don't need to see the hippy welcoming them with doves and then getting blown away. Just skip to the fighting.

Aaron Eckhart is an interesting choice for the reluctant commander with a dark past. He's not really dark. He may be too much of a boy scout for this one. There's also a bit too much batman-voice in this one (has he been smoking the past 3 years to get ready for this role?). But in all, he does alright and doesn't get in the way too much. And wait... is that Michelle Rodriguez in the tough-girl pilot/soldier role? How novel!

The first part of the movie picks up quickly and reminds me a lot of Black Hawk Down - lots of close-quarters fighting, crazy overwhelming action, and just frantic all over. The middle is lame - lots of pep talk, transparent and lacking conflict resolution, and lame inspirational speeches. They should have tightened it down to a few cliche sentences and moved on (ie. complete fluff), or gone for something more real & meaningful (ie. skip the inspiration altogether, go for real human drama). Unfortunately we end up with too much fluff that slows down the film and adds nothing. They could have just skipped this part altogether. Then again, that may have ruined the director's plan to use every alien-invasion cliche known to man.

The latter half is mostly satisfying. Overall, this film goes by the book. You know almost exactly what to expect every step along the way. This film is all about the formula. There are a few notable omissions (no romantic connection, no multiple point-of-views, no comic relief) that make this movie better. But there's nothing really new or unique here. Just solid big-budget slightly better-than-average alient invasion film. Good enough to watch and enjoy. Good enough even for a sequel, assuming everyone expects and the director delivers the exact same formula (more guns, more ships, same plot line).

Finally, a todo list I can live with...

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 01:00:03 -0500

Todo lists are incredibly important for me. At any time I have a huge amount of stuff waiting to get done, and not having it on the list means I'll never remember to do it. I've tried tons of programs, websites, services, etc, and have been on the verge of purchasing programs or subscriptions to help. At this point, it's easy to justify the cost of a program or service (even a yearly-subscription one) assuming it does what I need. Which until this point, I've never found.

My requirements:
-Must be really easy & fast to use (ie. keyboard friendly)
-Accessible on my desktop, laptop, and phone (and not just a mobile-friendly website here)
-And I absolutely *must* be able to manually order the items on the list

There are a lot of other nice-to-haves (like setting due dates, automatic email reminders, etc). But if they don't hit those top 3, it's really not worth it. Here are some things I've tried:

Todoist.com
Great website-based list. Very keyboard friendly, and allows manual ordering (!!!). Has an android app available. This is probably the closest I've come to a pre-made list that I'd like.

RememberTheMilk.com
Website, has a ton of options (setting priority, dates, email reminders, integrated with calendars). Has mobile apps available. No manual ordering. I realized I kept throwing everything in priority 1, since I wanted them on top of the others, and then had to struggle with fake-date sorting or living with out of order items. So annoying.

Google Tasks
Website, built into gmail. Awful UI, incredibly limited. A "toy" app, not worth using unless your needs are very limited. No manual ordering (last I tried), no mobile-specific app (that I know of).

Of all these, RememberTheMilk had the nicest UI & mobile apps, and if it allowed manual ordering I may have stayed with it. I did have to struggle quite a lot with it always taking my dates and # numbers and turning them into dates & tags unexpectedly. No thanks, I'll do that myself.

Todoist seemed on paper to fit the bill, but I really wasn't a fan of the UI for reordering. It worked, but was completely mouse based & annoying.

So what did I end up with? A text-based list on my SimpleNote account. I initially shunned this, thinking it was too low-level. But it has the benefits of:
-being inherently keyboard friendly, since it's just a text-based list
-having incredibly easy sync, since that's the whole nature of a SimpleNote account (online & offline access)
-support manual ordering - just copy & paste lines at will
-has an awesomely simple & usable PC app (ResophNotes)

And the best part - the Flick Note app for Android syncs with simplenotes, and has a "todo list" style view. I just select my todo list note, tell Flick Note to treat it as a list, and I can now check off items, add more line by line, and drag them to reorder. The UI needs some work, but it's still very helpful. And best of all - it has a widget available (in the paid version) to show my todo list on my Android home screen. Now I can always see the top few items on my todo list, and that's amazingly helpful.

So after all this time, I'm using a simple text file that's synced across my devices, and it's working great so far. There's even some neat things you can do like indent items to show dependence (which Todoist also does). But overall, at least I now have something I can live with.

Arthur

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:56:51 -0500

Lauren wanted to see this, I didn't really. I think Russell Brand is really amusing in talk shows that I've seen, but the previews made this look like just another marrying-the-wrong-woman comedy. Which it was, plot-wise, but there's so much more to this one.

The movie was really funny for almost the entire first 2/3 solid, quirky jokes from Russell's witty and strange mutterings. He's a bit easier to understand, and I'm guessing he was coached not to speak at a normal lightning British-pace for us Americans. It helps a lot, since there's gold throughout that would otherwise be lost.

And Hellen Mirren... wow. She was good in Red, but amazing here. Now that I think about it, while Russell's craziness and humor sold the funny movie part, Mirren sold the heart. Almost all of this genre's movies try to have a tear-jerking meaningful interlude to elevate the movie and give it a bit of weight. But this time it actually worked.

I didn't think I would enjoy a couple hours of Brand, as funny as he is, but this movie was solid. Even though you've seen this all before, and you know what's happening every step along the way, this one was well-worth recycling the story.