Lee.org

I’m registered at Clucas-moe.

I saw The Matrix Reloaded tonight on HBO. The last time I saw it, in the theater, I was sorely disappointed. I think I blogged that a long while ago but I’m too lazy to look it up.

“Hype” is such a strange animal. You see, this time around, I really liked the movie. The action was eye poppingly realistic (except for the multiple-Agent-Smith parts where it was terribly noticeably computer animated), the storyline worked for me. And the thing I most suprised myself with was that I actually was kind of digging “The Explainer”.

The first time through this movie… wooo-eeee, was I disappointed. But there were so many fairly subtle things I cought this time through. For one, after Neo gained is “The One” powers, I was initially really disappointed that the only super-power he had was flying. An ability he used very well to run away on a number of occasions. I even talked about this with others and they gruffly agreed. But now I noticed that he had supa-fly X-Ray vision, could pass his hands though solid objects (like Trinity), could reanimate someone (Trinity again), could stop a sword being swung at him full-force with the pinky edge of his open hand taking the full force and only bleeding a few drops, fly at about 4,000 miles per hour, fight 100 Agent Smiths at a time without bleeding, fend off an Agent Smith “copy” attack, destroy squids with the power of his mind (and I now kinda understand how that would be possible).

I did slow-motion through a couple fight scenes and they were total poetry. When fighting multiple opponents, each opponent was generally fighting full speed. Neo just fought faster. I say this because in many kung-fu movies, when the hero fights multiple opponents, the opponents are usually fighting poorly and taking a long time between strikes. Not so in The Matrix Reloaded. I’ve got to say that this is a great testament to Keanu Reeves, who was at the center of most of these tightly choreographed scenes.

Trinity riding her bike in the wrong direction on the highway… I did slow-mo through it and couldn’t tell how they did it. I mean, I know there is CGI in there, but it was totally seemless.

So forget your expectations, watch it again and enjoy it!

WBZ News
Century-old New York City subway gets a computerized facelift

“They’re going to be sending signals via radio waves,” said Councilman Lewis Fidler, a Democrat from Brooklyn. “I don’t want to find out that someone hacks into the system and makes a train disappear and another train rams into it.”

Such a scenario is unlikely, said Tom Sullivan, an independent transit consultant with Transportation Systems Design in Oakland, Calif., who helped design the L-line upgrade.

The data carried on radio waves are encrypted, so only an internal leak could compromise its security, he said. Though it’s possible to jam the radio signal, he said, that would only make the train stop.

So a bad person with a couple (or a couple hundred) $50 jamming radios in the right locations could completely paralyze the NYC subways system. Cool… err.. that’s awful! err… kew1.

I went I went to the East Coast Hobby Show in Fort Washington, PA looking to speak with manufacturers and remote control know-it-alls for a project. What a total frigging waste of time. The website and the advertising material blatantly lies about what kind of a show it is. It is billed as a “full line hobby show” but it is, in fact a train show.

Take a look at the photo of the poster I took (the odd vertical line in the photo is me merging two photos to get a good shot of the whole poster) Now don’t get me wrong, trains are well and good. But I came looking for… well, looking for what they said they had. Their sign says, “Over 200 of the largest manufacturers, distributors and publishers will be exhibiting.” Well, after I walked the entire show, I went to the info booth at the front and asked, “I was wondering if there are any manufacturer reps here like the sign says.”
The response, “There was one guy here yesterday.”
“Yeah, but yesterday was a dealers-only day.”
“Yeah, sorry.”

And it was a fine train show. There were hundreds of model train exhibitors, miles of track laid and thousands of 2″ tall trees and people and ity bity locomotives with fake smoke gleefully billowing out of them. There was a huge setup, taking up 100′ x 100′ with this amazing 9″ tall set (9″… is that HO scale? N? PG-13? I forget) with amazingly realistic Maersk and Sealand and double-decker containers just like I’ve seen rolling across the NJ Meadowlands. It was pretty cool…. except that it had NOTHING to do with what I was looking for. I drove a friggin hour and fourty-five minutes each way for nothin.

“R/C planes will be landing at the show” Ummm. where? The show is indoors. There was no space for indoor flight, no calendar of such events (no calendar at all, actually) and none of the 4 airplane exhibitors had anything that could fly.

Phoey.

Through all of this, a few good things still came to pass. While I was driving down there, a Computer Guy client of mine called me in need of help. I was happy to help, it let the time pass quicker. After a while, I told her where I was going and why. She came back with, “Oh really! My sister-in-law works with kids with C.P. They use all kinds of stuff like that. I’ll get you in touch with her!” Cool beans. There might have been a little kismet going on there..

After I realized the hobby show was a bust, I called PPG. She was in an art show called The Big Art Show in Asbury Park. Since I was “in the neighborhood” (a mere 1 1/4 hrs away) I decided to make a run for the coast! Also, my client was encouraging me to enjoy life a bit more :-). Well, the evening was quite a bit more fun than I thought it might be. I got to see PPG and Taco and Joe (who is also moving to the bay area soon) and meet some new nice folks. So there.

I am looking for a way to allow a cousin of mine to operate a toy remote controlled car. She is 14 years old, just about a straight ‘A’ student in a regular classroom, has cerebral palsy, is confined to a wheelchair, and has quite limited movement in her arms and fingers. Her name is Samantha.

Mostly what I’m looking for is a good interface for her to control a vehicle. So far, she has had only moderate success with the joystick for her electric wheelchair.

I’m hoping that using a remote controlled car will be enjoyable, let her be more mobile vicariously, help her master using her electric chair, and promote independence.

This doesn’t have to be an out-of-the-box solution. We’re willing to work on it and spend some money on it.

Many input devices could work. Possibilities I’ve thought of include:
– large, fairly hard to move joystick. (current RC joysticks require very fine motor control that she has trouble with)
– paddles on the upper arm
– something to squeeze as a potentiometer.

I don’t have the expertise to do this on my own. Do you know of anyone or any company that might be of assistance? I’ve been looking for help through RC car and airplane groups and haven’t come up with anything yet.

I just got back from the East Coast Hobby Show looking for controllers and remote systems. It was a total bust. Hurumph

Thanks

This is a nice discovery.

My first use for it is:
Make a bookmark of “http://www.google.com/search?q=%s”
Go into the bookmark properties and give it a keyword of “?”
Now you can go a google search for happiness by typing the following into the address bar: ? happiness

You can do this for IMDB, Dictionary.com… anything. Slick.

Here’s what I’ve keyworded so far:
? http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
w http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
imdb http://imdb.com/find?q=%s

The new green color theme is an attempt to harness the powers of springtime. I dunno. Maybe I should go back to the drawing board.

I saw the Iron Chef America miniseries a couple months ago and was totally psyched about it. I even wrote a gushing post here on my blog… but then I deleted the gush because… well… something didn’t feel right. I had to watch a few more episodes before I was sure what was up.

I know what’s up now. Iron Chef America isn’t a good program. It wasn’t transposed to the U.S. well. Actually, the only elements that they really brought over were that it’s a cooking competition with a secret ingredient with running commentary. Any other similarity to any show, current or canned is purely coincidental.

I’ll get it out the way and say that I enjoy Alton Brown’s commentary quite a bit.

Here’s what they’re missing:

A host with charisma… cult of personality style. Everyone knows that nearly a decade ago, a man’s fantasy became reality in a form never seen before, Kitchen Stadium, a giant cooking arena. The motivation for spending his fortune to create kitchen stadium was to encounter new, original cuisine, which could be called true, artistic creations. On the flip side, the backstory behind Kaga’s nephew is that “he came to America”. Feh. (BTW, just to break everyone’s heart: Kaga’s backstory isn’t real and his nephew… isn’t)

The Challenger doesn’t get to pick who he’ll fight. Why not? Everyone is standing there… why did the other Iron Chefs show up if they already knew who was fighting?

The American Kitchen Stadium isn’t as well supplied. I’ve noticed a couple times how chefs were having trouble finding ingredients or appropriate utensils.

5 dishes in 1 hour? Come on! I know that Americans appreciate busyness, but this is crazy. It changes the show from a culinary competition to a track and field meet, literally. I suppose that it forces the chefs to make better use of their sous chefs, making their management style important. Also, it is a different (and not necessarily bad) thing to see chefs barking orders and discussing things. But it seems a bit impersonal that some components of each dish aren’t even touched by the chef.

It’s obvious that the chefs know what the secret ingredient is before it’s revealed. That breaks my heart.

Alton has to do the final countdown himself instead of the cool voiced, Star Trek computer-like timer lady. That, and a lack of, say a big clock on the wall gives me the subtle impression that the timer might not actually be exactly 60 minutes.

The Iron Chefs specialities aren’t named. I realize that specialities are more of a moving target with the American chefs, but you’ve got to say SOMETHING else besides their name!

The Challenger’s introduction is too short. You could conceivably shorten it from what the original Iron Chef did… a full Olympic-hopeful style 3 minute biography, but to say, “And here is our challenger, Chef Blahblah. He owns a really nice restaurant!” Is…. distasteful.

The interstitial graphics look way too much like Robot Wars.

Why, oh why, oh WHY does our NC (Nephew Chairman) keep saying, “This is your first appearance in Kitchen Stadium.” They’ve put like 5 episodes in the can. Of COURSE this is their first appearance!

There’s a lot more I could say about this… a lot more. I thought about doing a careful analysis of what was wrong with the show and how it might be fixed, but that wouldn’t be seen as a QA effort but a crazy fandom streak in me. I’ll settle with this nice little rant.

It’s just all manner of junk I’m selling before my big move. But it’s good junk.

Buy my stuff on eBay

I’ve only got some of the stuff up so far. More to come in the next few days. I’ve also got some stuff up on Amazon.

If you are a friend of mine and live near me, email me and we’ll work something out.

I’ve been going through all my older things, getting ready to move. Here’s a little tidbit I clipped from… I don’t even remember where.

After all these years, it still makes me laugh in that “Oh my god! Don’t tell anyone I laughed this hard at something so cruel! Ow, my sides hurt!”
(click to enlarge)