The Prestidigitator

Inception was everything I hoped it’d be.  It was sufficiently complex (though nowhere near as complicated as Primer or even, Memento) and despite the 148 minute running time, very very engaging.

(Spoilers)

Then again, like all great films, Inception has its flaws and it’s not just the false narrative or the plot holes. Christopher Nolan has a set of rules for his world – rules that are essential in moving the plot forward; call it cinematic license, but it does feel like Nolan gets away with a little too much. I might be nitpicking but that’s what happens when you go in with great expectations.

Critics who’ve compared it to 2001: ASO or Blade Runner are only kidding themselves. Inception is more than just another great science fiction film – it’s about mathematics and engineering. The narrative is so tightly constructed that when scenes flit across the three (or four) ‘dream levels’, you cannot help but marvel at the genius behind it especially since time is supposed to be relative in all levels. A couple of years ago, the brother suggested I read Douglas R. Hofstadter’s wonderful book, Godel, Escher, Bach and after Inception, I find myself comparing the two. The film’s production design is certainly inspired by M.C. Escher’s art and some of the themes have been explored in other films. In fact, for a much more accurate interpretation of lucid dreams and more specifically, the concept of limbo, I’d recommend Richard Linklater’s underrated Waking Life.

Despite my reservations, I loved Inception. I find it oddly comforting that amidst all the crap that finds its way into cinemas, we can still count on someone to deliver a truly original blockbuster that you don’t have to switch your brain off for. And yes, I’ll be watching it again.

9/10

Design obsolescence has always puzzled me. How does something that’s aesthetically appealing one day become an eyesore the next? Remember back in 1998, when the translucent candy-like iMac came out and everyone and their grandmother soiled their pants over it? It really hasn’t stood the test of time. Now compare that with the set-design for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; 41 years and it still gives off that futuristic vibe.

Gary Hustwit’s Objectified tries to tackle this dissonance but never quite succeeds. Despite that, Objectified is a very engaging documentary on industrial design. There are some very insightful interviews with leading designers including the reclusive Jonathan Ive and the brilliant Mark Newson. Contrary to what you might expect from a documentary on design, Objectified is never boring.

If there’s one thing you learn from the film, it’s that most designers share a singular albeit abstract design philosophy – “I want things I can’t have yet”.

Highly recommended.

I spend over an hour on the tram every day and when not dozing off, I’m listening to one of the many podcasts I can never find time for otherwise. I’ve put up a list of the ones I listen to religiously because, well, we all know there hasn’t been much writing going on around here.

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe: If you’re looking for a weekly debunking of irrationality, go no further. I’ve admired Dr Steven Novella ever since I came across his brilliant blog, NeuroLogica. You have to hand it to the man for making it his life’s work promoting critical thinking and skepticism while actually making a fun podcast with plenty of  gastrointestinal humour. Also, Rebecca Watson is awesome.

Nerdist: Chris Hardwick is not that funny but I love how he tries. And if you need just one reason to tune into this podcast, it’ll have to be because they had The Muppets on. Yes, Kermit and Gonzo and everyone.

This American Life: I’ve been told that TAL is one of the best podcasts out there and I cannot disagree. The show consists of several acts with interesting essays, field reports and short fiction.

Reasonable Doubts: I’m a little tired of all the atheist blogs and podcasts out there but Reasonable Doubts manages to offer interesting analyses of religions and religion related news without being overly condescending. They also won a People’s Choice Podcast Award and the people are seldom wrong.

The Ricky Gervais Show: Ricky Gervais is genius. Fact. But what makes this podcast really stand out is the amazing Karl Pilkington. I’m still uncertain as to whether he’s pulling off an elaborate prank or if he really is as daft as he comes across. But face it, to pull of that kind of stream of consciousness stupidity, you’ll have to be a prodigy. Doesn’t make sense otherwise.

The Bugle: I’ve invited a million stares in public because of The Bugle. I dare you to not snicker if not laugh out loud. John Oliver and Andy Zaltsman have created a satirical news show that puts The Onion to shame. Oh and they ‘re responsible for my extremely unhealthy Florence Nightingale fixation.

Yeah, that’s about it.

While I don’t agree with Cory Doctorow on comic books (I rarely, if ever lend mine out), this is exactly why I won’t be getting an iPad.

Then there’s the device itself: clearly there’s a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there’s also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe — really believe — in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple’s model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of “that’s too complicated for my mom” (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn’t too complicated for their poor old mothers).

(…)

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn’t for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn’t for you.

If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you’re going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn’t for you.

So, I’ve been using the Apple Magic Mouse for over a week now. And yes, like everything else that Apple comes out with, the design is pure genius. Very minimalist. At first glance, it looks like it’s carved out of a slab of marble.

I love the iPod Touch’s capacitive screen and I like that the trackpad for the MacBook Pro is very configurable. The touch interface for the Magic Mouse is as good if not better but the mouse tends to move when you do the two-finger side swipe. It’s slightly irritating but not something that can’t be gotten used to. Also, no pinch zoom. It tethers quite easily too and remained connected even when I took the mouse to the toilet. Yeah, don’t ask.

The one huge caveat is the price- I had to pay AUD 99 for it. Not cool.

Not that The Daily Show isn’t hilarious, but it gets a lot funnier when Aasif Mandvi shows up.  Here he is gloating about how India got tech support from NASA and the USGS on the Chandrayaan mission.

For every Bobby Jindal, there’s one Aasif Mandvi.

Where would we be without self-deprecation?

After an extraordinarily disappointing series finale, Ronald Moore, creator of Battlestar Galactica has set in motion another nefarious plan to let down legions of science fiction nerds. The events in the spin-off series, Caprica precede the destruction of the colonies by 58 years. Once again, we get to see Moore’s ideas on racism, religious fanaticism, relationships and technology.

If you haven’t already guessed, my respect for the man has gone down a couple of notches after finding out that the big reveal he had in store for fans of Battlestar Galactica was, “God did it”. Never mind the unresolved story threads, what about the asteroid sized holes in logic? How could a science fiction show be so scientifically and logically challenged?

Now that’s out of the way, the feature length pilot for Caprica was pretty solid. It answers a few questions that were never tackled in the original series; the most important being  how the Cylons, a breed of intelligent machines, developed a belief system rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions. BSG itself stretched the limits of portrayal of sex and violence on television. Caprica takes it further. To make up for the lack of cool explosions in space, there’s plenty of rather smart expositions on the nature of being and consciousness.

I’m fairly certain Ronald Moore will eventually let us down again but rest assured, he’ll disappoint us in style.

After months of staring wistfully from outside camera stores, I finally went ahead and bought the Canon Vixia HF10 (uhuh, High Def).  Shooting has been a somewhat humbling experience but I’ll get there. Sooner or later.

Moving files around has been a tad tricky so I thought I’d document (sort of) what I did.

Linux:

If the device doesn’t mount, try ‘dmesg‘

# mkdir /camera
#mount /dev/sdb1 /camera
#cd /camera

MPlayer supports AVCHD (.mts) files, but you’ll need to compile MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html) from source.

Windows:

Couldn’t  install the proprietary software that comes with the camera because my netbook doesn’t support the minimumm resolution. So I had to convert the .mts files to .avi.

First, install the AVISynth base and then this (mts_2_xvid.rar) . Unpack the .rar file and copy the .mts files from the camera into the folder and run the batch file _multi_demux_mts_Xvid.bat. That nifty little piece of code compresses the video to .avi and saves it in the same folder.

Trust me, it’s way simpler than it sounds.

Update: We live to die another day.

The LHC gets switched on in a few hours and contrary to what lunatics may want you to believe, the world will not be swallowed by a black hole. What interests me more is as to what *will* actually come out of this 6 billion dollar science experiment. Will they find the Higgs boson? Or will Hawking win that wager?

In Carl Sagan’s Contact, governments cooperate to build this giant dodecahedron (after receiving step by step instructions from a very ambiguous extra-terrestrial intelligence). After spending trillions of dollars on a project that many believed would shape humanity’s future, remember what happened?

Nothing.

Configuring Hardy Heron has been a bitch; finally got around to fixing two nagging issues.

1. Sound: Ubuntu 8.04 has been infamous for having serious issues with sound. The fairly easy thing to do would be to build the ALSA modules all over again using the module-assistant package.

sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo m-a update
sudo m-a prepare
sudo m-a a-i alsa

Reboot.

This seemed to have resolved most of my sound problems.

2. Login Screen resolution: I’ve had this problem with all distributions thus far; the text size on the login screen is so large that it’s, well, invisible. Go figure. The fix:

sudo gedit /etc/gdm/gdm.conf

(Find)

[server-Standard]
name=Standard server
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0

(Change to)

[server-Standard]
name=Standard server
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0 -dpi 96

Reboot.

In related news, beating Nina Williams on the Sergie Dragunov story arc is turning out to be much harder than anticipated.

(It’s 3 am. Obvious?)