Adam & Amber’s Blog

So there I was on Monday night, watching a little Golden Globes on the TV (don’t judge me), things were going good. Then I saw something so amazingly disturbing I had to rewind it and show Amber. What could have possibly been so amazing to jar me from my obviously entranced TV watching state? This…

(I didn’t goto the site that marked this video so I can’t vouch for it)

I will give you a moment to soak that in…

First off bringing someone digitally back to life is a little iffy even if done well, but this looks horrible. His digital head is not the right size for his “actor” body and does not move naturally with it. Going by what I read in this USA Today article I can understand from their procedure why it looks so awkward. They used one actor for the base of the face and a different actor for the body, that seems like an odd choice and one that did not do them well. There was another interesting quote from the article:

Advertising psychologist Carol Moog says there’s “a certain creepiness” to reviving Redenbacher but expects it’ll sell popcorn. “There’s going to be a macabre fascination.”

It is true that it has “a certain creepiness” but it really doesn’t make me want popcorn and I will probably never look at poor Orville the same way again. However, I am posting the commercial on my blog (which means tens of people will watch it) so maybe the commercial is doing its job. I still say as a general rule, don’t let dead people sell your products on TV (keep them on the radio where they belong).

Looking for a Christmas/Birthday present idea for me? Probably not, at least not at $1800, but in case you are I would like to make a case for the Craftsman Compucarve. I saw an ad on TV for this the other night (who knew TV ads still worked). Here is the description from Sears.com:

Compact, computer-controlled, 3-dimensional woodworking machine with an easy-to-use interface. It allows a novice to make a complete project without a shop full of tools.The unique configuration allows it to perform many other woodworking functions, including ripping, cross cutting, mitering, contouring, jointing and routing. The CompuCarve can work in most soft materials, including wood, plastics (polycarbonate or cast acrylic) and certain types of high density foam. Set includes CompuCarve machine, (1) 1/16 in. carbide carving bit, (1) 1/8 in. carbide cutting bit, CarveWright Memory Card, starter software package, (2) 1/4 in. bit adaptors, vacuum bag adaptor, bit removal tool, hex wrench, owner’s manual and Quick Start Guide

Now you can’t tell me that isn’t cool. From doing a little reading, it sounds like you can even import images and the software will work out how to carve them. Can you imagine the possibilities?

Check out the product here.

I should start by saying that I never miss a Steve Jobs Keynote. I don’t just watch the announcement live on all the blogs that are lucky enough to be in attendance, I go back and watch the video of the event after I know what he is going to say. One thing Apple is great at is building hype and I love buying into it hook, line, and sinker. I also must say that I don’t own ANY Apple products. I am writing this post from my Dell laptop, I use my Dell Axim for GPS and work scheduling, and I have a Cingular 2125 Windows Smartphone that doubles as my mp3 player. I am not sure where that puts me in the Apple vs. Microsoft battle and honestly I don’t care.

Yesterday marked another Steve Jobs keynote and another day of me watching the blogs and waiting for the video to get posted online. If you haven’t yet watched the video, I suggest you do. For one it shows off the products really well, but it also is a marketing dream, just watching the crowd reactions tells you alot about this company and its place in our culture.

For those of you who are too busy to watch the video (it is long) or browse the website, I will try to summarize the iPhone as best I can. It is an Apple smartphone (although it is more fairly in my opinion a PDA phone), it has iPod functionality (basically it can sync with iTunes and play all the iPod media), and has WiFi/Edge connectivity for internet (and internet enabled programs). There are plenty of cool features to go along with this, like a MultiTouch touch screen, improved voicemail (treats voicemail like email), SMS (treats texting like Instant Messaging), and all the Apple eye-candy you can handle.

So, as a Windows Mobile device user what are my impressions of what I have seen.

I think there is real innovation here, the MultiTouch technology allows you a great amount of flexibility in an on-screen keyboard and other UI (like using the “pinch” motion to zoom in and zoom out). I have seen this technology used before for demonstrations, but this is the first application I have seen that really takes advantage of it. Another innovation here is that someone finally realized that voicemail doesn’t have to be an answering machine, it can be an inbox. The Cingular site says this is a first in the US, so I am guessing that other countries have already seen this. Jobs really hyped up the web browsing aspect of being able to load full html web pages as a great innovation. I have used 3rd party browsers on my PDA that work in much the same way and I have to say that for me the novelty wore off quickly. Maybe Apple is going to do it better (I know the multi session aspect of web browsing looked much better then anything I have seen before).

There are some other things from the presentation that I found interesting. Jobs compared the iPhone to the current most popular smartphones (Blackjack, Q, Pearl, etc), all with keyboards, smaller screens, etc. I don’t deny these are the most popular smartphone devices, but there are a few devices out there that are much more similar to the iPhone (like the Cingular 8525), these devices are really PDA’s with the phone functionality added. I am not saying that the UI of the iPhone doesn’t appear better (at least it appears much more flashy), but the difference is not so staggering.

Finally there are a couple of questions I have after watching the keynote:

1. How will the touch screen work? I have a PDA and I have programs that are meant to be used with your fingers, and while this interface works it can be frustrating. Jobs claims that Apple solved this, I want to see it for myself.
2. How is dialing a phone number? I am concerned about this, in the keynote Jobs glazes over the fact that from the home screen you are two menu’s away from being able to dial your phone. (It appears this is both true for using the “keypad” to dial, or getting to your contacts). This is a problem that the Windows PDA phones have too and is one of the reasons I don’t own one.
3. How much can this phone be customized? Ok, from the keynote I know you can set the background picture. How about setting a mp3 song as a ringtone? Can I (or any one for that matter) write a widget and load it on? These are both things that I can do on my smartphone that weren’t addressed in the keynote.
4. Where are the bluetooth headphones? Come on, if you support A2DP (the bluetooth headphone profile) you should be shouting it from the rafters, the fact that you aren’t makes me think that you won’t support bluetooth headphones. So few devices in the US support this and you would have to think that an iPod phone (that has bluetooth support) would jump all over this. I was able to hack my phone with the profile and I have to say it is the coolest thing to just throw on headphone and push a button to listen to music (while the phone stays in my pocket).
5. What about voice controls? This is a great way to get around the 2-menu deep dialing. If I am wearing my headphones can I push a button and tell the phone to call someone? Again this was not covered in the keynote.
6. What is up with EDGE? This is something that I have already seen covered at length in other blogs. It is insane to think that Apple would partner with Cingular and use their last generation technology. Especially because this is being touted as an internet device that is intended to browse full html pages (not the quickest over EDGE). This one is tough because some of my other concerns could be fixed with a firmware/software upgrade later, this one means you would have to buy another phone later.
7. Which brings me to my last question….$600 for 8gigs? Really? In the keynote Jobs defends the price of the 4gig model ($499) by saying that a 4gig Nano costs $199 and you will spend $299 on a smartphone. I will give him that (although, as he admits in the keynote, $199 is a better figure for a smartphone), but even doing that the math doesn’t work out for the 8gig. The 8gig Nano is $249, add the overpriced smartphone and you come up $50 cheaper then the 8gig iPhone. Using Jobs pricing argument we are almost to the price of a 30gig iPhone. (Hey a 30gig iPhone, that would be nice). Will people pay it? sure they will (I am sure Andy is already saving up).

My conclusion is that there are way to many questions (go figure, it was just announced yesterday). As an iPod Nano with phone functionality it is awesome and a huge upgrade. As a smartphone with iPod functionality it raises the bar in some places and lowers it in others. My guess is that if all goes well, 2008-2009 will bring a new iPhone that handles many of the questions I have here and will be a much more tempting first Apple product for me. That being said, having Apple in this market can only be good, it will force the competition to copy all of their cool features and add more of their own on top.

I should start by saying that like most American’s I love TV, probably to an unhealthy level. You can find something to watch at any moment of any day, and the best part is that until you start watching it you didn’t even know you wanted to.

I do at times think about what my love of TV does to my life, I have had many nights where I get home from work sit down in front of the TV and then all of the sudden it is time to goto bed. Almost all of my best memories happened when the TV was off, and when I am unable to watch TV I am much more productive, creative, and happy. That being said, I want to reiterate that I love TV.

My love of TV and wonder on what it does to me is what led me to this New York Times Article. The author of the article has not owned a TV since 1974, this is not to say that he has been living in the dark ages, he apparently uses a computer and enjoys other facets of modern life, just without TV. The article is written about him purchasing and experiencing TV for the first time in over 30 years and provides an interesting perspective on modern TV programming and culture.

I am involved with a project at work where we go out to area schools with projects that are meant to show that engineering can be fun. This year I am on the team charged with developing a project to bring to Middle Schools. One idea we had was to attempt to do a Rube Goldberg Machine. For those of you not familiar with Rube Goldberg, he was a cartoonist who did most of his work in the early 1900’s. His most remembered cartoons involve very complicated machines that were built to do very simple tasks. A collection of his works can be seen at www.rube-goldberg.com.

I built this demo machine last night. The objective was to “park” a toy car, which I was able to do in five steps. The machine worked very well, however the toy cars Amber and I purchased at the dollar store last night, did not perform admirably.

On a side note, this is the first video I have posted to YouTube, when waiting for my video to pop-up on the “Recently Added” list (you know you would have done the same), I was amazed at the volume of video that gets posted (about 20-30 videos per minute by my count).

Speaking of Rube Goldberg, I also found one of my favorite Rube Goldberg Machines posted on YouTube (while I was using the “search” to find my video, again you know you would have done the same!). This machine was professionally made for a Honda commercial. It is all real, they only used parts from the car itself, and if I remember correctly they did it in one continuous shot.

P.S. A big thanks to Ernie for letting us borrow his video camera.

When I think of the Muppets, I think about good quality children’s TV. However, in the 1960’s when people saw the Muppets they thought about Wilkins Coffee and cartoon violence. Watching the commercials I clicked to on YouTube today it is hard to believe you would get away with many of them on TV today, expecially if it was the Muppets. Keep in mind these are the the early Muppets (so don’t expect to see Kermit, but one character is strangely familiar), they are however Jim Henson creations.

There are many more of these videos up at YouTube here.

As I am sure you have all heard Saddam has been convicted and executed. I am sure there are a ton of posts out there where people are giving their opinion on this news, I am not going to do that. What I found interesting was how the 3 internet news outlets I read chose to report the news.

The first is from MSNBC.com

Next, FoxNews.com

Finally CNN.com

I don’t really feel the need to comment on the headlines, I just thought it was interesting how with just a web banner from three “news” sites can give three distinct impressions on the news they are reporting.

Every year the United States National Film Preservation Board places 25 films onto the National Film Registry. These films are meant to represent “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films”. The films on this list are preserved by the Library of Congress and are meant to be a history of film for future generations.

The 2006 inductees are:
1. “Applause” (1929)
2. “The Big Trail” (1930)
3. “Blazing Saddles” (1974)
4. “The Curse of Quon Gwon” (1916-17)
5. “Daughter of Shanghai” (1937)
6. “Drums of Winter” (1988)
7. “Early Abstractions #1-5,7,10″ (1939-56)
8. “Fargo” (1996)
9. “Flesh and the Devil” (1927)
10. “Groundhog Day” (1993)
11. “Halloween” (1978)
12. “In the Street” (1948/52)
13. “The Last Command” (1928)
14. “Notorious” (1946)
15. “Red Dust” (1932)
16. “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1971-72)
17. “Rocky” (1976)
18. “sex, lies and videotape” (1989)
19. “Siege” (1940)
20. “St. Louis Blues” (1929)
21. “The T.A.M.I. Show” (1964)
22. “Tess of the Storm Country” (1914)
23. “Think of Me First as a Person” (1960-75)
24. “A Time Out of War” (1954)
25. “Traffic in Souls” (1913)

If you are like me you notice two things about this list. First, there are many films that I have never heard of (in my defense IMDB hasn’t heard of some of them either). Second, 10. “Groundhog Day” (1993). I have to say it is very comforting to know that in 3006 our great great great great grandchildren will be able to watch a fully preserved copy of “Groundhog Day” and in doing so get a better understanding of how we lived and what we were entertained by. It is a little confusing why we need to preserve a film that you can’t seem to escape in February on Cable, but I guess that is the point.

I just can’t wait until the next time I get into an argument about the greatest films ever made and can actually make a legitimate case for one of my favorite movies.

Link to the Variety story
Link to the complete list of movies on the National Film Registry

I remember when I was growing up my mom would make paper cuttings. I think the art form had some fancy name, but she would spend hours with very sharp scissors cutting very intricate designs into a piece of paper. My mom hasn’t done a cutting in a very long time, but it is cool to see that the art form has continued to evolve. Check out more pics here.

Oh Wikipedia, what don’t you know. This is a collection of paradoxes, some of them seem kinda stupid, but some are kinda cool. I kind of like the Unexpected hanging paradox because I could see myself using the same logic if I were in the same situation. The full list is here.