Ursus Pacificus

The FCC has set February 17, 2009 as the End Times for analog television broadcasts.

This is important how?

I mean, unless you’re in the 20% of the US population not currently getting your TV signal via cable or satellite, this is a complete non-issue. If you are in that 20%, TV is obviously not that important to you.

Me? I don’t care. Apart from staying in hotel rooms (like when I was on my Vision Quest, or while traveling for work), I haven’t really “watched TV” since November of 2002. Yes, I have watched programming originally produced for TV (for example, I enjoy The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, but I watch them on-line, commercial-free, and at my convenience, and I have several TV series on DVD), but the “water-cooler” factor doesn’t enter into my thought process. I gave it up, and I’m much happier for it.

I would love for someone to explain to me why the transition is important; that is, why it is important to flip over from analog to digital broadcasting. Is it to force people to buy new TVs? Is it to keep foreigners from intercepting and watching our programs? Is it to make it harder for ordinary people to do interesting things with TV signals? Is it to auction off an enormous and extremely valuable part of the publicly-owned RF spectrum to the highest low-ball bidder, for them to exploit for profit? What? Please tell me!

OK, so… there’s a lady in Hopkinton, RI who set fire to her apartment, nearly killed neighbors and rescue workers with hydrogen cyanide and sent over 30 people to the hospital. How?

She stored her radio in her oven and forgot it was there. Turn the oven on? Hilarity ensues.

Oops.

I’ve had some dealings with old people… some of them in diminished mental states due to stroke, reduced kidney function, et cetera… On first glance, the notion of storing a radio in an oven seems pretty crazy. People store pots, pans, dishes, pizza stones… all kinds of things in their ovens. If you don’t bake frequently, the oven is just a giant cavity in the kitchen going to waste. So… maybe a toaster in the oven isn’t so much of a stretch… and if that, why not a radio… maybe she was cleaning her counters and had to put it somehwere… or maybe she was just bonkers.

More ridiculous to me is the fact that so many firefighters were overcome.

Note to self:

Radio = Electronics + Plastic
Oven = Hot
Electronics + Hot = Dangerous Fumes
Plastic + Hot = Dangerous Fumes + Fire
Radio + Oven = 2(Dangerous Fumes) + Fire

The actor who played Biff is Tom Wilson, and he’s also a stand-up comic.

Here’s a pretty entertaining song he does about the lingering impact of that role on his life.

The iPod Touch is an intriguing gadget.

On the plus side, the WiFi management is fantastic, battery management is pretty spiffy, sound quality is quite good. The multi-touch interface is mostly pretty amazing (although skin moisture, humidity, touch pressure and other factors seem to impact its effectiveness). The accelerometer thing is pretty spiffy. The display is sharp and it handles pretty well for a handheld.

On the minus side, it is an Apple product, so it’s a “closed” device. It’s a very closed device. It’s so closed, it can’t be used at all until it is activated on Windows or Mac machine with iTunes installed. It has no means of playing ogg/vorbis audio files, or installing anything on the Touch that Apple doesn’t approve.

There is a way around this closedness. It’s called “jailbreaking”. I haven’t done it to mine yet, because I’m a little spooked. I’ve bricked a couple other “embedded systems” trying to do something other than what was intended by the manufacturer, and I’ve decided I’m not ready to risk that with the Touch yet.

What’s nice is that the iTunes and App stores have no-cost content, like NPR podcasts and apps like TouchTerm and WiFinder. What’s a drag is that there is very limited configurability and no access to a terminal/console.

I got the iPod Touch, in part because it’s a really handy WiFi handheld… and even more handy gadget than a “netbook”, like an eee-PC or an Acer Aspire one, but it’s also more limited. The on-screen keyboard is kinda slow and clunky. It works a lot better with the Touch flipped over on its side.

All in all, it’s a pretty neat gadget. I’ve been able to catch up on a bunch of NPR shows I’ve been missing out on. It lets me grab mail and Slashdot pretty quickly. Mostly, I see it as a handy ninja web gadget that also plays free podcasts. I’m not going to go and spend a bunch of money on money on music on iTunes. Why not? Because I can’t do anything with the music, other than play it on an iPod. I’m sticking with CDs for now.

Ursuspacificus.net now has an image gallery (finally). It’s Gallery2 (software website here) and can be found athttp://www.ursuspacificus.net/imgal/.

As of right now, I have almost 200 pictures from Chaco Canyon uploaded, and am uploading Meteor Crater photos as I write this.

I don’t have any captions up yet… those will come in time, as will the rest of the LCVQ stills.

Please be patient

OK… I received this beauty as a holiday gift from my girlfriend. I had expressed interest in it, as I am something of a Disaster Flick buff. This movie is 30 years old, and it’s no less awful than any of the other Airport flicks. In fact it’s far, far worse. It’s really, really bad. It’s terrible. It’s painfully, terribly, painfully, awfully, grievously, miserably, badly, horribly, terribly, disgustingly, ridiculously, wildly, marvelously awful.

Wait… what? Marvelously awful?

Yes.

It combines much of the “intrigue” (sabotage, decompression at altitude, plane falling apart in flight, forbidden (or at least ill-advised) romances, and so on) of all three predecessor movies into one “compelling” “story” with unmatched “editing”, “stunning” “special effects”, and an … “involving” score.

The dialog? Absolutely horrid. I’ve seen some bad movies in my day… This has to be the worst dialog, start to finish, of any movie I’ve ever seen. This makes the stilted, wooden exchanges between Charlton Heston and Karen Black in Airport 1975 seem downright passionate.

Casting? Well, William Batliner and Robert J. LaSanka , responsible for casting such blockbusters as “Heartbeeps”, “The Nude Bomb” and “House Calls” really left their mark on this beauty. Jimmie Walker as a philosophical atheist jazz saxophonist?! Charo? Never mind what her character is supposed to be (which I don’t recall it ever being revealed in the film)… Charo? In a supposedly serious disaster flick? Please. David Warner as the Flight Engineer? Uuuuhhhh… Interesting choice… I mean the character is completely flat and meaningless… David Warner would go on to play Jack the Ripper in “Time After Time”, Dillinger/Sark/MCP in “TRON” and Chancellor Gorkon in “Star Trek VI”… Already a fairly established actor in 1978/79… given this worthless role? Martha Rae as the incontinent old woman (that’s all we know about her…. she’s “comic relief”)? Avery Schreiber (a commedian) as Soviet Olympic coach Markov, who appears to have nothing at all to do with being an Olympic (something) coach… he’s only (deeply) involved with his deaf daughter. Makes sense. John Davidson?! Just having him in the movie is kinda stupid, but as a TV journalist having an affair with a 24-year-old Soviet gymnast???!! That’s just flat-out ridiculous. Robert Wagner as a crooked defense contractor?! Lest we forget, the perennial George Kennedy as “Joe Patroni”… not just a mechanic, now… no, he’s an airline pilot. It goes on and on.

The dialog is abominable. Flat, pointless, and vapid. The French stewardess, who’s bonking the French pilot, tells him and Patroni (in bad Frenglish), “You pilots are such… men!”, to which Patroni replies, “They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing!” When did he become such a douchebag? The French (and other European) accents fade in and out. The shoeleather is laid bare. Scenes which seem to require some emotional gravitas from the dialog have none. Some of the actors are clearly trying to service their dialog as best they can, but to no avail. It’s THAT bad! Even more agonizing is the fake fictionalized “news broadcast” in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

The special effects are neither special, nor effective. TV’s “Battlestar Galactica” (1978.. the Lorne Greene version), which re-used battle sequence elements so much as to be utterly laughable, was far more credible. Compositing is positively inexcusably bad for that era. Practical effects are atrocious… The keypad on the lower cargo door.. see that and refrain from laughing hysterically. I dare you!

The score is … unbearable…? It tries to push emotion into scenes which are barren of it.

The editing is just plain awful. The movie advances like a standard soap opera, with little snippets intended to tease the viewer into watching just a few minutes more to see how things shake out, but with the dialog as hackneyed as it is, this technique leaves the viewer wondering why we couldn’t just stick with a scene long enough to resolve something.

Then, there’s the story arc (or lack of it). There are no heroes. There is no tension among the characters (except… the poorly manufactured tension between Robert Wagner’s character and reporter Maggie Whelan.) There is no agnst. There is no hunger. There is no motivation (other than Robert Wagner’s character’s desire to both kill and bed Maggie Whelan). In the end, the Concorde lands in a snow field, and everyone survives, and RJW’s character apparently commits suicide, never bring tried. The film, if it can so be called, ends with a shot of a Concorde flying over the cloud deck at sunset (or sunrise)…. what?!!

“The Concorde… Airport ‘79″ is unmitigated excrement, and yet, it is almost impossible to not watch.