Wha-huh?

I was already considering cancelling my Netflix service (after the original price increase was announced a few months ago) when my gift subscription expired, but this latest change sealed the deal: I’m dropping Netflix. I enjoyed my gift subscription and really loved using the service. Over the past year I’ve gotten to watch five seasons of Dexter, the first three seasons of Mad Men, and a bunch of other movies and TV shows on DVD and over streaming.

Time will tell if I’ll miss the streaming service but to “replace” the DVD rentals, I’ll be giving Redbox a try. It won’t be as convenient as DVDs direct to my home but in the long run it will be cheaper than keeping Netflix/Qwikster and there will be less pressure to watch more stuff just because I’m paying a monthly fee for it (I already have plenty to watch on my TiVos, especially with the new fall TV season starting up again).

Thus ends my second stint as a Netflix customer (I first subscribed to the service from 1999 until 2002). I’ll watch the new companies’ progress with interest to see if this is the end of the DVDs-by-mail model, and if there’s any more subscriber fallout/backlash from these changes. And who knows … maybe at some point I’ll come back to Netflix a third time.

Twenty-five years ago (Aug. 17, 1986), “Luxo, Jr.,” a short depicting the misadventures of a rambunctious little desk lamp and his weary father, premiered in Dallas and did something no computer-animated film had done before: It made audiences laugh. The first film from Steve Jobs’ newly formed company Pixar and the second from director John Lasseter, “Luxo” launched the most successful and innovative animation studio since Walt Disney’s heyday in the 1930s.

I’ve enjoyed all of Pixar‘s films but it all started 25 years ago today with “Luxo.”

If you never knew why Pixar had that little hopping lamp in its logo, now you know. Happy birthday, little guy!

(Thanks for the link, Jaime!)

This was the first Potter film we actually saw in the theater. My daughter was too young when the films were first released (she read the whole series start to finish in 2007 when she was just 6) and we felt that it was “safer” to watch the films at home (the last few are obviously pretty dark). Just the other week we got “Deathly Hallows: Part 1″ from Netflix and she seemed to do okay with the more intense stuff. Since “Harry Potter” is the “Star Wars” of her generation (with wands instead of lightsabers), I wanted her to have that theater experience to remember so this was her last chance (until they re-release them in 20 years with newly enhanced digital effects … oh, wait, that’s just Lucas’ gig).

Part 2 picks up right where Part 1 left-off (after 20 minutes of trailers!), so I was glad we had just watched the first one. It also helped that I was sitting next to our family expert, who’s read the books multiple times. I was able to to whisper questions to my daughter about who was who, or what was going on (it’s been years since I read the books), to get the scoop. Overall, it was a great movie, although all of those actors spent a lot of time being wet, dirty, and bloody.

My random thoughts (as usual, no spoilers):

• there were some great “cameos” like Sig Hansen and the Northwestern from “Deadliest Catch” as Crabby, and Bruce Campbell as American spy-car Rod “Torque” Redline (an obvious nod to Campbell’s character Sam Axe on “Burn Notice“).
• in Radiator Springs, the movie playing at the drive-in is “The Incrediblemobiles”
• I noticed one of the advertisements along the racetrack was for “Lassityre” (presumably a reference to Pixar’s Chief Creative Office, John Lasseter)
• in Paris, I though I saw the restaurant from Ratatouille

Of course, there are a ton of easter eggs that I missed … those are just the ones I noticed and remembered.

As for the movie itself? Well … it was okay. It hasn’t been getting great reviews and I can kinda understand why. Unlike the Toy Story sequels, “Cars 2″ doesn’t feel, well … original, and lacks the emotional power of Pixar’s previous films (think about the incinerator scene in “Toy Story 3″ or the first 10 minutes of “Up” for example). It’s just a James Bond/Jason Bourne spy-thriller story with the Cars characters. There’s also way too much of Mater and probably more guns and explosions than “The Incredibles.”

Don’t get me wrong … I enjoyed it. The car references and jokes were funny, and there was certainly a lot of action. It was a good movie, but I expect great movies from Pixar. Even the new Toy Story short before the film didn’t seem to have that Pixar magic that the shorts usually posses. I guess it just seems like it’s now too easy for them to just crank out “new” stuff by re-using their “old” stuff.

I saw a poster for “Brave” (the next film) in the theater … hopefully that one re-captures the spirit of Pixar’s previous works when it comes out next year.

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.

Moving on to the second book of Steig Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, I’ve finished “The Girl Who Played with Fire.”

“Fire” picks up about a year after the events in “Dragon Tattoo” and we learn that hacker Lisbeth Salander has been traveling the world (anonymously of course) using her recently acquired wealth. Back in Sweden, Millenium editor/journalist Mikael Blomkvist has spent the past year dealing with the aftermath of the Wennerström affair and also searching for Salander who, for all practical purposes, has completely disappeared without explanation.

Lisbeth eventually returns to Sweden and learns that  Mikael is working on an exposé issue of the magazine that is going to blow the lid off of the underground sex trade, implicating several high-ranking police and state officials (she still keeps tabs on him via his hacked laptop). The evening before the issue is to be published, Blomkvist’s two collaborators and Lisbeth’s guardian are murdered. When Lisbeth’s fingerprints are found on the murder weapon and at both crime scenes, a massive manhunt is launched to bring the fugitive hacker to justice.

Blomkvist can’t believe Salander was involved in the murders and begins his own inquiry. Soon the story is following Mikael, the police investigation, and the criminal underground as the search for Salander continues. Why did she kill three people (if she was indeed the killer). What is the link between Bjurman (Salander’s guardian) and the dead journalists? And who is the mysterious Zala?

Where “Tattoo” was mostly about Mikael Blomkvist, “Fire” is really about Lisbeth Salander and her troubled past. We learn more about what happened during Lisbeth’s childhood and how she ended up a ward of the social protection system. There’s an unexpected twist in the last quarter of the book but the end is a bit abrupt (I hope it picks up again in the third book).

I plan on starting the last book of the series while on our family vacation road trip to New England next week. Like with “Tattoo” I’ll also watch the Swedish movie version of “Fire” on Netflix when I get the chance.

Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch – and there’s always a catch – is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues.

Today I finished reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson, the first book of his Millennium series.

Recently disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is approached by industrialist Henrik Vanger to write a book about the Vanger Family history in return for information that can clear his name. The book is just a cover story (pardon the pun) for Henrik’s ulterior motive for Blomkvist: solve the mystery of his niece’s disappearance over 40 years ago.

Blomkvist ends up diving into decades of Vanger family history, genealogical details, police records, photos, etc. In the course of his investigation under the guise of research for the book, he makes a few friends (and enemies!) of the various Vanger family members. Eventually his path crosses with Lisbeth Salander, an eccentric, tattooed hacker in her twenties with a photographic memory and a troubled past. With Lisbeth’s research and hacking skills, the duo is able to dig deeper into the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance and discover that not everyone wants the mystery solved.

As Swedish murder/mystery/tech thrillers go, this one is pretty good. It obviously takes place in Sweden, so there were a lot of strange (to me) names and places, but they just added to the mystique of the novel. There are a lot of characters, especially with the generations of Vangers involved, but luckily Larsson includes a family tree at the front of the book for easy reference.

Larsson originally intended the Millennium series to be 10 books but he died before completing the fourth so it’s now known as the Millennium Trilogy. The books were made into movies in Sweden (I plan on checking them out on Netflix streaming) and there will apparently be an American remake released later this year.

I wasn’t sure how the original 1982 movie would play for her. She likes playing video games and enjoyed the “Star Wars” movies so I figured TRON was worth a shot (I will admit I had the ulterior motive of hoping she would like it so I wouldn’t have to go to the new movie alone). It took some explaining that this was taking place inside a computer but she took to it pretty quickly. It had been a long time since I had watched it myself (probably around 2002 when the 20th anniversary DVD was released). I spotted a Pac Man easter egg I had never seen before and my daughter spotted a Hidden Mickey!

Watching the original the night before was a good idea as it really had us tuned into the sequel in terms of the backstory and characters.

I spotted a lot of nods to the original in “Legacy”:

• “Now that’s a big door.”
• Sam’s home had a shipping container with “Dumont” written on it
• Flynn’s old handheld electronic game was still on his sofa at the arcade
• Dillinger’s old touchscreen desktop was in the basement of the arcade
• “Greetings, programs!”
• the computer voice explaining the identity disc reads the same instructions as Sark’s speech in the original
• the Bit tchotchkes on Flynn’s mantle
• Clu’s warship closely resembled Sark’s carrier
• the trip to the portal on the “train” looked like the Solar Sailer sequence
• “I fight for the users!”
• I’m sure there were plenty more I missed …

I loved the action sequences and the effects … really fantastic stuff! The new light cycle battle was probably my favorite part of the movie not only because of the visual FX but also thanks to Daft Punk’s amazing soundtrack (they had a cameo in the End of Line Club, by the way). There were tons of great vehicles in the movie too: the classic Recognizers and light cycles (but not enough tanks!) and then the new stuff like Quorra’s “all-terrain car” and the light jets (another cool sequence).

But in between all of that action were a lot of slow scenes. I didn’t really care for the story much (but I won’t get into that here). There were also too many similarities to other movies that took me out of the whole thing (beware, possible spoilers below!):

• Flynn’s control of the Grid and “Creator” status reminded me of Neo in “The Matrix”
• lots of Matrix-like “bullet time” sequences
• Clu’s army of programs looked like a scene from “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones”
• another Star Wars reference: as the Flynn’s and Quorra escape in the light jet and are pursued by Clu’s light jets, Quorra says “here they come!” and Sam goes to a gun turret for the ensuing battle. This is just like the Millennium Falcon’s escape from the Death Star in “Star Wars” when Leia warns of the incoming TIE fighters and Luke and Han man the turrets.
• Rinzler‘s/Tron’s overcoming Clu’s brainwashing to save the Flynns at the end reminded me of Darth Vader’s change of heart at the end of “Return of the Jedi” when he kills the emperor to save his son
• Kevin Flynn acted a lot like one of Jeff Bridges’ other characters, The Dude from “The Big Lebowski” (“bio-digital jazz, man!”)

I dunno … I wanted to love it (I’ve been waiting for so long) but ended up just liking it. There were enough loose ends to suggest a possible TRON 3. Knowing Disney, if “Legacy” does well enough I’m sure they’ll take another dip in the well and not wait 28 years this time.

My daughter enjoyed it, though, and that’s more important to me (she was the only girl in the theater!). Maybe she’ll have some of the same fond memories of seeing it in the theater with me as I do of seeing “TRON” in the theater with my dad back in ’82. Her favorite character? Quorra, of course.

End of line.

This can particularly be helpful when setting up a new TiVo (letting you quickly copy the SPs from your old box to the new one) or for easier mass-reorganization (say, during the new Fall TV season) without having to endure multiple “please wait” screens doing it on the TiVo directly.

In my brief testing, when I copied a Season Pass from my old original Series2(which has no HD channels) to one of my HD boxes, the SPM automatically selected the corresponding HD channel, which is neat. If I copied a show that aired on multiple channels, the SPM prompted me to select which channel I wanted to use:

Unfortunately, WishLists, manual recordings, and Guru Guides aren’t supported in the SPM so if you use any of those they won’t appear online. Thus the order shown in the browser might not exactly match what’s on your TiVo. For example, I have “dummy” auto-record WishLists (ARWLs) on my TiVo Premiere that I use to order shows by day in the Season Pass Manager (a tip I got from astrohip on the TiVo Community Forums) and those don’t show up in the SPM. So while the online SPM is cool, I’ll still be keeping all of my stuff documented in Excel.

Despite a few minor quirks (one time I couldn’t copy a Season Pass since the show wasn’t currently airing, and I had a few weird things happen while re-ordering), being able to manage my Season Passes online is a welcome addition to the TiVo service. It’ll be interesting to see if the development community comes up with any cool apps using this new feature.

Since I’m writing about TiVo, I might as well mention that Pandora internet radio was rolled out to the TiVo Premiere platform last month. You can now play your Pandora stations directly through your TiVo. I’m relatively new to Pandora but have been messing around with it on my iPhone and it’s impressive how well it matches my musical tastes just by creating a few artist-based stations. I still use Galleon to play my iTunes library and custom playlists through the home theater system (i.e., during a party or when I’m grilling in the backyard) but having another source of semi-random music (with minimal commercial interruption) isn’t a bad thing. Hopefully Pandora will be added to the TiVo HD and Series3 platforms as well.

Netflix on TiVo has been around for years but I only just recently became a Netflix subscriber and now have the chance to use their instant streaming on my HD TiVos, Wii, and iPhone/iPad. I guess this means I won’t be using Amazon’s Video On Demand service as much!

And finally, @tivodesign tweeted that the new 14.6 software rollout has begun for the TiVo Premiere. Hopefully we’ll see some more performance improvements in the HD menus!

That’s enough TiVo stuff for now!

Slick.

I’m not going to bother with the specs, or a general overview of the iPad here. It’s been out for about 8 months and you can certainly read/find all the technical details you want fairly easily (just typing ‘ipad’ into Google yields “about 123,000,000 results”). Instead, I’ll talk about how I’ve been using it, the apps I’ve installed, and my overall impressions.

We (the IT department) got iPads at work since we’re evaluating it as a business tool and we’ll also need to support it once we start rolling it out to our end users. We’ve been using the iPhone for access to corporate e-mail, calendar, and contacts, since late last year so the form factor of the iPad seems like the next logical step for our travelling users, eliminating the need for them to carry a laptop, power brick, etc.

The battery life is pretty amazing … I guess the lack of a power-hogging 3G radio really helps. Unfortunately the iPad requires more power to charge, so you can’t really charge it via a USB connection. Well, it will charge (very slowly) over USB, but only when the screen is off. That being said, I don’t have to charge this thing daily like I do with my iPhone … it can go a few days without plugging in, which is good news for the traveller trying to find a power outlet in a crowded airport because their laptop is dead or dying.

Of course, these Wi-Fi only models also mean you can’t access the internet everywhere like you can with the iPhone. But with Wi-Fi as ubiquitous as it is now-a-days (airports, coffee shops, malls, restaurants, etc.) this really hasn’t been a big issue for me. If I’m in the car and need a data connection for some reason, I still have my iPhone.

The larger screen means a larger keyboard which is much easier to type on than the iPhone, especially in landscape mode. I’m not talking touch-typing here, but I’m definitely faster (and more accurate) on the iPad keyboard.

The iPad is still running the older iOS 3.2.2 which lacks some of the features I have grown used to on my iPhone (like multi-tasking and folders), but iOS 4.2 is supposed to be released next month and will bring those features to the iPad for the first time.

So … after one month with the iPad, which apps am I (still) using?

Work

Citrix Receiver (free) – using Citrix I can connect to our published corporate apps (like Microsoft Office). Using Windows apps on an iOS device takes some getting used to since you don’t have a mouse to work with (how do you click and drag?). I wouldn’t want to have to do any serious work in these apps for a long period of time, but in a pinch, they work. This is one place where a Windows laptop still holds the advantage.

Wyse PocketCloud ($14.99) – there are a lot of free remote desktop apps out there, but most of them have the same problem as I described above: poor (or confusing) mouse support. Wyse’s solution has a really slick virtual mouse interface that makes it easy to click on what you meant to click on, right-click, scroll, etc. It’s on the high-end of the pricing scale for an iPad app at $15 but so far well worth it for being able to manage my servers without having to worry I’m accidentally going to tap on something I didn’t mean to.

iSSH ($9.99) – I had already purchased this app when I first got my iPhone and luckily it’s a universal one designed for both devices so I didn’t have to purchase a separate ”HD” version. I use iSSH to connect to my Linux server at home. PocketCloud supports VNC connections, but not tunneled over SSH so I still need iSSH. It doesn’t have the cool virtual mouse of PocketCloud either, but normally when I’m working with my Ubuntu box I’m using the command-line anyway.

Note Taker HD ($4.99) – I wanted to try going paperless at work, using my iPad instead of my traditional composition notebooks for notes, so I purchased a capacative stylus and started looking at note-taking apps. After trying a few free ones and reading about others like Penultimate and smartNote, I tried the lite iPhone version of  Note Taker. I really liked what I saw so I purchased the iPad version, Note Taker HD. Using your finger (or stylus) you can easily write notes and draw diagrams with multiple pen sizes, and colors, including highlighters. The “zoom edit” feature allows you to write in a larger window and have your handwriting shrunk down to look better. It’s remarkably easy to use and I’ve already used it to take notes in a few meetings. You can export your notes as an image or PDF and then e-mail them if you want. You can tag your notes for categorization, but I wish there was a better search function and I wish you could organize the individual pages into virtual notebooks.

Evernote (free) – I’ve been using Evernote since I switched to the iPhone from my Treo and needed a place to store the random stuff I used to keep in ListPro on my old Treo. With clients for just about every platform, Evernote is a great way to be able to access various documents from my iPhone, iPad, or PC. One cool feature that I’ve started trying to use more is the automatic text recognition for images you add to Evernote: it will scan images and index any text it finds so you can search on it later. Take a photo of a document with your phone, for example, and Evernote will index it. I’ve tried exporting my handwritten notes from Note Taker HD into Evernote with limited success, but that’s mostly due to my poor handwriting (exacerbated by trying to write with a stylus on the iPad).

Goodreader ($1.99) – I picked this app up during a sale for 99 cents. Goodreader is basically a souped up file viewer mainly for large PDF and text files, although it can also view MS Office documents, photos and videos, HTML docs, etc. In addition to viewing locally stored documents on the iPad (through iTunes file sharing or a WiFi connection), Goodreader also supports Dropbox, MobileMe, Google Docs, and other online file storage services. I was unable to get it to connect to my Jungledisk share, however (probably because it’s encrypted).

Play

Ok, so I don’t use my iPad exclusively for work!

Yes, almost all iPhone games will work on the iPad in zoomed (2x) mode but they just don’t look as good. Thus, I had to repurchase the HD versions of my favorite iPhone games, Angry Birds HD ($4.99) and Azkend HD ($4.99). I also put a few of my other favorite iPhone games on my iPad, like Words with Friends (free or $2.99), Chess with Friends (free or $2.99), Sword & Poker 2 ($3.99), and Frotz (free).

“TRON Legacy” is only two months away, so why not indulge in some multi-player light cycle action with Lightbike 2? There’s also Disney’s official TRON Legacy app, but it’s really a big advertisement for the movie (although with a decent multi-player tank game in it) and is not HD.

Last month as I was taking fuzzy photos of Jupiter through my telescope, I purchased Star Walk ($2.99), as seen on the iPad TV commercials. This amazing and beautiful app lets you literally point your iPad at the sky to identify heavenly bodies. Or, use the search feature to look up a star, constellation, etc. and it will guide you which way to look. I particularly like the all-red mode so it doesn’t ruin your night-vision.

Reading

I do a lot of reading on my iPhone, so I immediately put Stanza (free) on my iPad along with my e-book library. I definitely don’t need a Kindle now! Yes, the screen is a bit reflective and hard to see in bright sunlight but reading e-books in Stanza is great (I haven’t even bothered with iBooks). I just wish there was a way to synchronize my place in the book between my iPhone and iPad (similar to what the Kindle app (free) does).

Occasionally I will also like to catch up on my RSS feeds or the latest news. For those purposes I am using Feeddler (free) which synchronizes with my Google Reader account, and USA Today (free), complete with the crossword puzzle! There is clearly no shortage of news-gathering apps in the App Store but these two are all I need for now.

Media

Since my iPad only has 16gb of storage I don’t even bother synchronizing my iTunes music library with it (I still have my 32gb iPhone for that) but I did install Pandora Radio (free) in case I do have a need for music (although I haven’t used it yet). But why bother with audio at all? The iPad has a gorgeous 9.7″ screen … it’s the perfect portable video device!

You can obviously sync all the same iTunes video content (video podcasts, purchases/rentals, etc.) to the iPad that you can with the iPhone, but what if you want to play those other formats like AVI, DivX, or MKV? Enter the iPad version of VLC (free). Just use iTunes file sharing to copy your video files to your iPad for playback. The app can’t take advantage (yet) of the iPad’s hardware acceleration, so some playback could be choppy, but it’s a good first effort at playing non-iTunes video content on your device.

I use my Netflix subscription primarily for the Watch Instantly feature on my TiVos, but you can also use the Netflix app (free) to watch shows in your Instant Queue on your iPad. Of course, this is streaming so you need an active internet connection for it to work … no watching Netflix on the plane (unless your flight has WiFi).

In Conclusion

Wow, the iPad is a really cool device and after using it for a month I can see why it’s the fastest selling electronics device ever. That being said, can it really replace my work laptop? I think I can do almost everything I would need to do remotely on the iPad but I haven’t had one of those “emergency” situations yet to really put that to the test. Time will tell for me but not everyone thinks the iPad can replace the notebook in corporate situations.

I will say, though, that the iPad has me wondering if I still want/need my EeePC 900A netbook. Other than using the Eee to try out the latest netbook Linux distros and the fact that it has a physical keyboard (which I’m not great typing on anyway), the iPad has a larger screen (9.7″ vs. 8.9″), more storage (16gb vs 4gb), is thinner (but weighs about the same) and pretty much does everything I use the Eee for. I have a feeling I might not own the Eee for much longer.

So that’s my initial iPad wrap-up. Got any other must-have/must-try apps for me, or other iPad advice, tips, or tricks? Leave me a comment!

I really enjoyed it! It was like the mind/memory games of “Total Recall” combined with a heist film like “The Usual Suspects” with a healthy dose of special effects from “The Matrix.” The result is Christopher Nolan’s well-paced, action-packed, brain-bending thriller played out by a pretty good cast (although I still think of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the little kid from “Third Rock from the Sun” ).

The way they explained the physics and design (with paradoxes!) and flow of time in the dream world was pretty cool, all without really getting into any heavy details of how the dream-sharing technology worked (which would have been unnecessary anyway). Without spoiling anything, the final sequence, which involves four dream layers (a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream) with different time flows was amazing.

Unrelated side note: I did see the “Tron: Legacy” trailer on the big screen before the film, which wasn’t as exciting as it could have been since I had already seen it on the internet.