The Be Legacy Lives On Through Me

alternateorg on December 22, 2001

Okay, um, so I downloaded the BeOS 5 for Intel installer yesterday because I read that it can serve PHP with a port of Apache. And it sounded like fun so I installed it on my 200mhz machine that otherwise just plods through Windows 98. I installed BeOS 5 and it ran fine but the internet settings wouldn’t work so I rebooted into 98.

And now it appears that I was the last person to do so, ever. They’re closed as of today. So yeah. And given the BeOS’s somewhat slim user-base, I don’t think it’s beyond reason to say that I was the last person to download it.

How funny.

ComboBook

alternateorg on December 18, 2001

Powerbooks got updated with new combo drive as standard. Owners of new (Oct 2001) PowerBooks can upgrade for $299. Kinda cool but not that cool. Makes you hope they pushed that up from MacWorld SF in order to make more time for the really hella cool new iMac they’re going to introduce. Or not.

We waited in line for Steve Jobs all day today

alternateorg on November 11, 2001

10:00 AM: Wait in line for Littleton Apple Store to open
11:00 AM: Actually enter Littleton Apple Store and wander around with all the other totally helpless geeks, wait in line to see/use new hella cool iPod
7:50 PM: Skip waiting in airport-like lines and buy tickets at a terribly interfaced ABO (Automatic Box Office), attend ‘Monsters, Inc.’ at Littleton/Highlands Ranch supermegahyperglobalplex amongst all the teenagers for whom Ben Folds’ ‘Rockin’ The Suburbs’ song was written explicitly for

All in all, a good day. The Apple store was every bit as interesting as I expected, especially with a someone special close to Alternate working at the Genius bar. 5 free t-shirts, I might add. Although they are dorky and do say ‘Aspen Grove’ on them (the name of the mall where said store is located). Some of those people in line with me were just… man. Geeks to the fullest extent. But at least they were Mac geeks. Balding men wearing multicolored Apple logos emblazoned on black tees abounded. And there was a guy on stilts.

Because that's what my desktop has on it

alternateorg on November 1, 2001

Apparently, Microsoft has discovered something revolutionary: the traditional Windows Desktop sucks. I’m not talking about the Windows metaphor or any other such nonsense; I’m talking about the actual ‘desktop’ for Windows 2000 and below. What they’ve found is that the bulk of their users (beginners) don’t understand that desktop and are afraid of it, but only use 3-4 applications in a single session, making for frustration and ‘failure’ because theoretically the desktop should be the place they use to hold links to those applications. And I can only think that this has come about because they totally copied the Mac desktop metaphor, only wrong. Instead of actual icons representing actual things that actual actions can be taken upon, they instead decided to use the desktop as a space for shortcuts to documents, applications and ‘My Computer.’ Have you ever tried to make an alias to a directory and put THAT on the Windows desktop? You can’t do it, at least not in Windows 98. It was Microsoft’s choice to ignore Apple’s desktop ideas and come up with their own… like the idea of using a seperate application from the ‘desktop’ to access your hard drive and filesystem. So they’ve now found that their idea didn’t work. Duh.

Turn on a lightswitch…

alternateorg on October 29, 2001

I saw “Waking Life” the other night. Bear in mind that I fucking hate “Slacker” (though I realize its importance to indie film) and thought that “Dazed and Confused” was one of the more boring films around. That said, I recognize that I am not the desired definitive Gen-X demographic for those films. So he had a lot going against him. But I am a huge fan of animation, and found this whole rotoscoping technique to be very interesting.

But this will probably be the movie this year that I disliked the most.

Two main reasons: 1) Animation rotoscoping. Fantastic idea. Carried out very poorly. The sole reason I can find for having 8+ different objects in any given scene moving completely independently of each other is because it looks cool on drugs. And thats a stupid reason. I don’t get car sick, and I’ve always had a strong motion sickness immunity. But for the past two years, “Star Tours” at Disneyland has been messing with me. And it bugs. So anyways the film lurched my stomach forward instantly, but it stayed at a steadily upset, and never got out of hand. But it honestly seemed that he used this technique SOLELY to get peoples attention so that he could preach to them about reality for an hour and a half.

Which brings us to 2nd reason: the “story.” Did Mr. Linklater get help from Spaulding Gray on this one? What was the concept conversation like? “Hey, we *could* have people talk to each other, try to make it interesting and worthwhile, or we could have these ‘characters’ speak almost directly to the camera. About things that only that angry, bootwearing, hipster goth kid thinks is worthwhile!” I mean, I guess this film bugged because it touched directly on my general problems with most philosophy. While its great to contemplate whether or not life is real or not, whether we’re ants, or really just dead always, or any of that, it seems like most philosophy is a poor excuse for fucked up people to justify their socially irresponsible actions. “Hey, you can’t fuck me and just run out on me!” “But baby, you know that none of this happened, it ain’t real. Hey, lets do some crank!”

Basically, I don’t care whether or not you think you’re going to heaven, hell, be reincarnated, have nothing happen, or wake up from a dream, if you’re an ass *right now* in *this* life, then you should head to the next.

But most people should check out this pic, just to see what they think. While I barely enjoyed it (loved the dream stuff), and more people left the theatre than I have ever seen, I think it is a very ambitious film.

Can’t believe you said you “hate those people” who left the theatre, Kev. Harsh. Anyways, has anyone else seen this film? Flame on!

Black Screen of Death

alternateorg on October 24, 2001

I know how you all like to laugh at Microsoft, so I thought you all might enjoy this.

I played a bit of the XBox today when I went to pick up the suprisingly awesome Grand Theft Auto 3. As before, I wasn’t impressed. That said, some of the launch games are getting some good reviews. Of course, Halo was meant to be on a Mac, so I apologize for opening old wounds. Personally, I’ll just wait a few months and then possibly contemplate getting it. We’ll see. These next coming months will be very interesting for games.

iPod and iTunes 2.0

alternateorg on October 23, 2001

Despite that fact that this whole ‘everything prefixed with a lower-case i’ thing is pretty 1999 (hey, at least the computers don’t come in colors any more), Apple introduced today the iPod and iTunes 2. The iPod is a digital music player with a 5Gb hard drive that weights in at 6.4 ounces and is about the size of a pack of cards. What is quite amazing about it is that it’s got 10 hours of batter life, and can be charged via the FireWire cable that’s used to drag n drop music files to it like a hard drive. An interesting user interface provides the listener with quite a lot of control when away from your digital hub (ie, Macintosh computer), including playlist selection and native language selection. iTunes 2 is simply a newer version of the popular iTunes software, which will be required to connect to the new device. At $399, it ain’t cheap especially for you PC users out there, as you’d have to buy a Mac to use it. Nyah. I also noticed that the new device looks exactly like the MP3 player that was included with Developer Preview releases of MacOS X, prior to the Public Beta which included iTunes instead.

Go Waking Mulholland

alternateorg on October 22, 2001

So apparently, I’ve found out what happens when my wife and kids leave town: I drink a lot and see independant films. It also happens that 2 much-anticipated films debuted this week along with the arrival of the Denver International Film Festival, which I didn’t even know existed. What movies did I see, you ask? David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive,’ a documentary about midwestern high-school football fanaticism, ‘Go Tigers!,’ and the movie on everyone’s mind of late, ‘Waking Life.’

Some quick reviews because I’m not that good at reviewing film:

+ Mulholland Drive
What can you say about David Lynch besides thanking him that you’ve gotten to see Laura Dern’s breasts and that Eraserhead was fucking weird? Well, you might say that ‘Mulholland Drive’ is one of the best films to be released this year and one of the best of this fledgling new century. Typical Lynch-ian editing and subplot mania with backwards and confusing flow. Also, the midget’s back. And lesbians. Go see it.

+ Go Tigers!
Not a movie I would have seen of my own accord, this one was screened at a theater I didn’t even know existed during a film festival I didn’t even know existed. You should see it if it comes to your town, but I’m not sure how far/where it’s playing. More about human reaction to opposition and obstacles than sports. But damn, that tiger-woman is crazy. Also, there’s bulldogs fucking and a kid that I really hope you don’t immediately assume I was like in high-school, because that kid sucks and I was much more eloquent and directed than he is/was.

+ Waking Life
By far the film I’ve been anticpating the most, ‘Waking Life’ is a philosophical ride through a perfectly rendered and executed technical masterpiece. People did leave while it was still playing however, I’m assuming due to the completely philosophical content or maybe they got seasick. Either way, I hate those people and I hope you’re not one of them. A film that will change your view on things a little. I really enjoyed the scene with Speed Levitch from ‘The Cruise.’ I just watched the video about rotoscoping on the website and was very happy to see that such a great masterpeice was… you guessed. Made on a Mac. 🙂

Because Photoshop hasn't been around for 10 years…

alternateorg on October 22, 2001

Macromedia, inexplicably, thinks that they own Adobe’s technology being used for Photoshop and GoLive due to a patent they were issued in 1998. Yeah.. because GoLive wasn’t the name of a company that created the original ‘GoLive’ product named CyberStudio like 5 or 6 years ago, and Photoshop hasn’t been around since like 1989.

Macromedia’s becoming the nasty little bitch company I always thought they were. Flash is their ONLY true product and they are only currently in business because of it. If Adobe’s LiveMotion was a better product, Macromedia wouldn’t even be around today. Let alone the fact that Adobe and Apple created the empire that Quark and Macromedia so happily reside within. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly and ruthlessly Adobe slashes through Macromedia.

I mean, seriously. Who uses Fireworks or Freehand? Nobody. Link via Jen.