Last May, I ordered some stuff from Kuroten for a friend’s birthday in July. After a relatively smooth transaction with them last January, I assumed this would give me more than sufficient time to receive everything in time for my friend’s birthday. After almost monthly follow-ups, I finally received it. Today. (Okay, Canada Post left me a parcel pickup slip on Thursday, but I wasn’t able to go to the post office until today).
It’s been a very frustrating transaction, and I’m not quite sure whether I’d do business with them again. I certainly won’t if I need anything quickly, but I’m not sure they sell anything I could afford to wait on for 8 months. They did send me a “token of apology” for the delay in shipping:
It’s very cute (and, thankfully, not pink), and I’m trying to focus on the fact that they did eventually send me the order and a nice little gift, rather than the fact that I don’t really need more flash memory:
It’s probably nothing much compared to what other people have, but I really only make active use of two of those, plus the SD card in my camera.
So, what do you think? Do they get a second chance? They do source some very cool stuff.
I’m already waiting for Synecdoche, New York to be released on DVD, because I suspect it will take another two or three viewings for me to get the full impact.
I was right in my suspicion that there was significance to the clocks/time in the movie. The first ten or twenty minutes of the movie was an absolute delight to decipher, and I was relieved that Kaufman kept the same cinematic grammar consistent throughout the movie. The film demands your complete attention, and Kaufman’s use of props is comparable only to the Coen brothers‘ attention to detail.
As much as I’m glad I saw the movie again, I’m also glad I saw it two weeks ago for the first time. That experience was, and probably shall always be, unrivalled to any other I’ve had. The audience I “had” today was mediocre, at best. Two people crunching popcorn on either side of the theatre, three guys infront of me who only got the most obvious of the girlfriend jokes which aren’t even Kafumanesque, and about four other people who barely reacted audibly to the movie.
Oh, and about 10 minutes of the movie was interrupted by someone triggering the fire alarm in the building, the manager coming on the loudspeaker to announce that everything was okay, the alarms being triggered while they were being reset, a pre-recorded announcement informing us that we had to leave, and the manager coming back onto the loudspeaker to announce that everything was still okay.
The 20-minute pre-show from the first viewing seems to be unique to Cineplex Odeon. I saw the movie at AMC theatres today, and merely two or three previews were shown before the movie. The print, however, was of a lower quality than the one Cineplex Odeon had.
I’m still twitching from the painful nauseating lesson I learned today from what shall be my third and last attendance at a Cinematheque Waterloo screening. Although I’m still happy to have supported them with the purchase of an annual membership, they are now well-known enough to be attracting just the type of person I don’t want to have in a cinema with me.
Compared with my near-religious experience while watching Synecdoche, New York, this brought back all my misanthropic feelings and contempt for the inconsiderateness of others. Tonight’s audience had everything but a ringing cell phone—people talking through the live introduction, people arriving late, people [loudly] discussing the film during the film, someone wrestling with a shopping bag for a full minute, someone dropping their keys, and, of course, me hushing whoever was within a 3-seat radius.
The film, Jules et Jim, was passable, but overly long at a mere 105 minutes. After the war sequence, François Truffaut flexed his directoral muscles, then was simply trying too hard to be impressive. I quickly found myself uninterested in the story and unenchanted (sic) by the barrage of perspective shots which had no connection to the narrative. Oh, but wait! French New Wave is not supposed to be about narrative, non? Like with Hitchcock, I’m wholly unimpressed by experimentation for the sake of experimentation (especially when it was laughable or too little, too late).
I saw Syndecoche, New York today, and I don’t even know where to start with the review. To avoid this being a mess of randomness, I’ll attempt to write this chronologically.
Firstly, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the cinema. Before seeing The Dark Knight and the Cinematheque Waterloo screenings in the past few months, I had been boycotting the movie-going experience for over four years—a boycott I only broke to see the X-Men and Pirates of the Caribbean movies. After sitting through movies at The Princess Cinema in Waterloo and the Kingston Canadian Film Festival where the movie-goers insisted on discussing the movie while watching the movie, and seeing more mainstream movies like Mystic River, Master and Commander and Tears of the Sun (all of which were horrible, by the way) where people insisted on answering cell phones and slurping their drinks, I badly needed a break from seeing movies with the public.
So, the 20 minute “pre-show” of commercials was a tiresome surprise. With the amount of money they must be making from the sale of ads, I’m upset that ticket prices are still as high as they are. I did, however, get to enjoy a hearty laugh at Stella Artois‘ attempt at making their “beer” seem like something worth drinking.
The movie was absolutely amazing. I do wonder whether people who aren’t familiar with Kaufman’s work would get the full effect of it. His world is unique, but entirely consistent, and Synecdoche, New York was an extremely fine presentation of it. I’m both relived that his direction lived up to my expectations (hopes?) and that he has finally been able to direct one of his own screenplays so I can see exactly what he had intended.
Synecdoche, New York had the fuller version of the world we started to see in Being John Malkovich but, more surprisingly, seems to be a refined version of the themes in Michel Gondry‘s video of Bjork‘s Bachellorette. The absurd humour in the movie was in keeping with what Kaufman did in Adaptation, and the actors did a fantastic job with maintaining the understated delivery required for it to be “Kaufmanesque”.
I will be trying to see the movie again before it disapears from the cinema. Although it was worth the four-year wait, I missed the significance of the clocks/time in the movie (please, don’t tell me what it is—I want to find it for myself) and want to capture the artist’s name. The thought of waiting at least another year for the DVD release is maddening. And although the circumstances are entirely different, a part of me is terrified I’ll relive what happened when I missed the Cremaster Cycle when it was at the Guggenheim.
One of my contacts pointed me to Getting To First Base, which is an introductory book to online marketing via social networking. It has a less evangelical feel than The Cluetrain Manifesto where rethinking business is concerned, and provides a good overview of the social sphere and guidelines for how to start wading in that pool. It’s also an extremely easy read—I was able to get through it in less than an hour, despite Acrobat Reader’s refusal to scroll through the pages smoothly.
Just before hitting the half-way mark in the book, I started to really wonder how many companies are well-managed enough to know how to properly use the advice given. With all sizes of companies and not-for-profits, there seems to me that the separation between those who know how to engage and those who don’t is vast. It doesn’t feel like the basic concepts of brand management and public relations has really changed. What has changed isn’t even who is talking about you, but how much more the “public” and “consumers” are able to be heard by each other.
Perhaps most people haven’t realized it, or maybe they just don’t want to talk about it, but the strength of the consumers’ voice means that PR can no longer be a simple whitewashing of a company. Although mistakes happen and the public can be forgiving, a company now really needs to be well-managed, self-aware, honest and transparent to not become a company people love to hate.
The problem? The perception is that many companies were not built on principles of good management, self-awareness, honesty and transparency. In most cases, that’s true. And changing the culture of a company is extremely difficult, and increasingly so with the age of the company. Smaller companies fall victim to being managed by people who may not necessarily have an innate skillset for things in and around the world of marketing.
More than ever, it really does matter whether you’re providing quality products and quality customer service. People feel empowered by being able to speak honestly about a product or service, and they like it. If your printer sucks, word will get around. Boasting about its great features won’t do much, because people know your job is to make your printer look good. But offering to fix the problem, or engaging the consumer on possible improvements, works. The problem again is that most companies don’t have an organizational structure or mandate which allows this to happen.
The section Should You Build Your Own Social Network? cover what I think is the biggest symptom of a company’s disconnect with what to do with social networking. In an attempt to maintain some sort of control and not wanting to play with others, some companies try to start their own social network. And waste a ton of time and money.
Overall, the book provides good advice to its target audience, but I’m still skeptical about whether it can be used by its target audience.
And I’m glad they follow their own advice. The Friends reference had me sold.
Today, after some bizarre yet unsurprising shipping oddities, I received my exchanged XO laptop. Somehow, Brightstar (or whoever was in charge of shipping XOs as a result of RMA requests) thought it was okay to ship my XO with a street name without a house number. Or maybe they thought I lived on the entire street? In any event, I called FedEx, got the address fixed, and they came back today. Of course, because no signature was required, they left the box on my doorstep. I was luckily planning to intercept the package around the time they delivered it, so I was already on my way homewards and was able to rescue it before a curious passer-by claimed it.
My first impressions of the XO had been near scathing, due mostly to a defective keyboard. The keyboard on this second unit is noticeably better, but also still noticeably more sticky than the one on my Eee or Toshiba. It does force me to type with my wrists up, both because it is the only way I can get close to my standard typing speed and because it doesn’t cause my wrists to accidentally trigger the touch-pad. The space-bar is still unusually difficult to register.
This XO seems to have shipped with an updated version of Sugar. I have not yet browsed the forums and wikis to learn how I can confirm that, but I do notice that the interface is a bit different from the first time. One major improvement is that clicking a “Browse’ button on a website will actually trigger a browse window (which I couldn’t get it to do last time).
Some other noteworthy items:
the default system time does not match my actual time zone, and seems to be about 16hrs ahead (I will need to figure out how to fix that)
still no right-click functionality, even with a USB mouse
the SD slot seems to have more resistance on this machine than my first one
image browsing is clunky, at best (must go to the journal, view the list of items, then launch each image in a browser)
The keyboard is still the most difficult thing for me to deal with. At Yaacov Iland’s talk yesterday I met Jason Shim, a fellow G1G1 donor who had already received his laptop. I brought my Eee with me, and upon using it, Jason remarked on how much better the Eee’s keyboard is compared to the XO. I’m glad it’s not just me! A summary of the presentation will come in a few days (probably after Jason uploads the video he took).
Like the XO, I needed to have my Eee exchanged for another due to a keyboard problem. But unlike the XO, the problem was mostly cosmetic (the left side of the space bar was slightly warped) and I was able to take the Eee to the retailer to be exchanged. Not being a consumer product, the XO naturally has a disadvantage because it has no retail store. That was to be expected. But the fact that I needed to pay a total of $32CAD in shipping and $48USD in brokerage and surety bond fees was a total surprise. That added another $80 to the price of the laptop, with no guarantee that the one I would get in exchange would be fully functional.
That’s not to say that the keyboard of the Eee is perfect. Like any keyboard, it requires a bit of time to become accustomed to it. Because of how cramped the keys are, I really notice any extra length on my fingernails because I’m typing with the very tips of my fingers on the main A to L row of keys. The placement of some keys is quite awkward, particularly the “1”, which is more easily accessible with my ring finger than my pinkie. The “e”, “i”, “c” and “m” keys are often missed due to how I need to curve my fingers and apply pressure to the keys. Surprisingly, this is more noticeable for single words than when typing entire sentences.
The touchpad, like any other, is a painful alternative to a mouse. Luckily, the Eee’s operating system (Xandros, a flavour of Linux) auto-recognizes the two Logitech mice I have. Linux does not have great support for more than just the scroll-wheel and left- and right-click buttons, but this is not something unique to Xandros and is something I don’t really need.
I did have some permissions issues when trying to install new dictionaries for OpenOffice.org…it seems that I could only get to the “super user” access through the terminal. This may be a strange glitch in the way I have customized my Eee, because I have not seen this problem reported by other users. Once I was able to install the Canadian dictionary, the spellcheck was an invaluable feature of OpenOffice.org. Because of the idiosyncrasies of the keyboard, it is invaluable to be able to correct many typos quickly.
Adding more software to the Eee is not always an easy task. From what I’ve seen, “Easy Mode” only allows for updates to the software, and any adding or removing of software needs to be done in “Advanced Mode” (i.e. full KDE desktop for Xandros). Because Xandros does not have the same market penetration as SUSE, Fedora or Debian, it doesn’t have quite as many pre-compiled applications available. Many users have reported that most Debian packages are compatible with Xandros, but those packages do not seem to be supported for Xandros by either the Xandros folks or the Debian folks.
When showing off the Eee to friends, they’re always struck firstly by how tiny and light it is, and then by what a familiar feeling they get from the “Advanced Mode” interface. When using the Eee in public with little fanfare on my part, I found that many onlookers were extremely curious, but stopped short of actually asking about it. The Eee received many glances which I assumed were intended to be discreet attempts at determining what the heck it is (and possibly who makes it).
The power adaptor is both a blessing and a source of frustration. Because of its size, I was able to toss it into my purse along with the Eee itself. But the placement of the prongs relative to the bulk of the adaptor resulted in two instances where I thought I could use the adaptor…but couldn’t. In the first instance, there were two free ports on a powerbar, and the length of the adaptor was greater than the space available for two more compact plugs. In the second instance, the outlet was on a hub attached to a table at a lecture hall and the prongs were too far down on the adaptor for it to nestle into the L-shaped space allowed for the adaptor. In both instances, I was dearly missing the compactness of the actual connective parts of a standard laptop adaptor.
Because of the size of the screen I would not recommend the Eee as the only computer you own. It’s great as a portable second computer, but is less than ideal for extended use and extensive work (particularly anything involving graphics work). The operating temperature of the Eee is also a persistent concern. Although it seems to level out at a “hot-but-not-too-hot” temperature, I often worry about it overheating.
Overall, I love my Eee. I just need to find a way to make the adaptor …more adaptable.
I received my new camera today yesterday and am both glad and sorry I waited so long to buy a new one. Although the price of a good digital camera has finally dropped into my price range, the difference between my new and old camera is astounding.
My old camera is the Pentax Optio LF33. Although it’s quite sufficient for snapshots, I have needed to do all sorts of extra things in the setup of my photos to get decent pictures of my sculptures. I can’t believe how much time I wasted to make up for the camera’s shortcomings.
The A720 passes my intuitive-use test, which basically involves me snubbing the manual (at least until I need to learn the more advanced features, and figure out what that button under the lens does). I did, however, need to pull it out of the box to figure out which way the batteries should be inserted. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the battery icons which were inside the casing, and further down than I expected. The icons were not visible from all angles when looking into the battery compartment.
Opening the cover for the batteries and SD card was quite easy…the first time. The second time, I couldn’t remember how I did it and had that squinty, furrowed eyebrow face while I wondered what I did the first time.
This is much better than the “candid” photos using the Pentax Optio (no flash on left; with flash on right) with equivalent manual settings:
The video feature was a bit frustrating because I initially thought the audio was…well, crap. It turns out that you get static in the background of videos shot with the A720 in some players. It seems Kaffeine (the default player for my installation of OpenSUSE) is one of those players. The video was fine in other players, and I need to figure out how to add a watermark to my videos.
The only thing I miss is having a swivel-display. The Pentax Optio had a display which would fold and twist in many ways.
The A720 has an exposed display, so I’m a bit paranoid about using it before my magical screen skin arrives in the mail. I need to learn to order those at the same time I order new gadgets, because I’m one of those crazy people who are terrified of scratching displays/screens.
After a bit of browsing through different options for video hosting, I decided to use DivShare, which is the host I use for the Facebook Privacy Primer I wrote (which will be updated when the finally release the friend list privacy options).
I chose against most other YouTube wannabes because I wanted a host, and not a social network. And, of course, I chose against YouTube because trying to get help was like chasing down a lion before pulling its teeth. DivShare actually lets you contact a real, live person through email or a contact form on their website! I wanted to clarify that I still retain copyrights to anything I upload (provided I was the original copyright owner), and got a response the next day confirming that is the case (their TOU does not speak to that directly).
They have the option of converting almost anything uploaded into Flash, which is nice.
I uploaded two files today, both just over 30MB, which took around 9 minutes each. I’m not sure how that compares to YouTube, but it seems reasonable to me. According to the calculations/numbers in this review, it would have taken a half hour on YouTube…but I’m not sure if the upload times have improved since those numbers were provided (and can’t find a time stamp on the article).
After each video was uploaded, I received the following message:
We’re converting your video!
The file you uploaded has been recognized as a video, and we’re now converting it to a DivShare Flash Video so you can watch it on the download page and embed it on your site. The process will take a few minutes, and we’ll e-mail you when it’s done. You can also download the original file at any time.
I’m not sure what “a few minutes” is, but am not holding my breath, considering the size of the video. I’ll have to adjust my camera settings so the videos aren’t so big in the future. I’ll post conversion times later. I love that they had the foresight to build the email notification for the conversion completion!
Update Jan 10, 2008: Flash conversion took approx. 4 hours for those videos, and I received an email with the notification, a link to the Flash-converted file, and their support email address so I can contact them for questions.
I finally found some time to read Russell McOrmond’s review of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide. He has spoken highly of the book, and it is now on my reading list (two or three books from Wired Shut, which is the one I’m very slowly working through…not because of readability but the limited reading time I have).
Some of Russell’s comments are a bit concerning, with the misunderstanding of Creative Commons being the most concerning for me. I know many people who kind of know that there’s this thing called Creative Commons and that it has something to do with alternative copyright licensing, but few have a good understanding of how it works. I’ve been distressed by people who present it as something which makes that type of license possible rather than the fact that Creative Commons licences make using that type of license much more accessible. I’ve also been distressed by a lawyer explaining that it has a code which allows the license to follow the work, in terms of something similar to a digital rights management technique rather than a licensing provision. I’m sure it’s all a result of a broken-telephone transmission of information, but it doesn’t excuse people from not going to the source to check their facts.
Although I have used the term “copyleft” in the past, after some discussions with Russell I am better understanding the complications which can arise from using the term. Russell’s comments on the term in his review of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide are quite concise, and our discussions leave me puzzling over a more suitable term.
In reading the comments on “harmonization”, it became clear to me that the problem is creators want to be (and should be) treated equally in the Copyright Act. Unfortunately, it seems that well-meaning but ill-informed persons end up using harmonization to achieve equality. I have been guilty of that breakdown in logic in the past, but have been slowly moving away from that perspective. In my continual thoughts on the fact that not all creative works are the same, it is becoming more apparent that equal treatment needs specialized attention rather than harmonization (which could potentially do more harm than it was intended to).
