General

Why can’t I rent Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Back in the olden days if I wanted to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind I would go down to the video store and rent the DVD. In the real olden days I’d rent the VHS tape. In the really olden days I’d rent the VHS tape and top-loading VCR because who could afford one of those exotic machines, anyway?

But I’d be able to get the movie.

Today, with everyone who tried competing with Blockbuster starting up some on-demand video rental service you’d think it would be easy to rent the movie online. Apparently not, though, as my best result so far is to buy the SD version off iTunes for $17.99 and it doesn’t even say which version it is.

Look, it may be the crazy future world of 2014 but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I don’t expect flying cars or baby machines. I just want to rent an older movie I enjoyed. Is that too much to ask?

(This was prompted by the DVD player hooked up to the TV not working properly. Curse technology and how it breaks down.)

A transit rant from 2007

I posted this on the Martian Cartel forum back in 2007 and for some reason never included it here. Either that or I am inept at searching my own blog. If it is actually here, think of this as a summer rerun rather than an accidental repeat.

As context , in 2007 I took the bus daily to work and in fact have had to do so for nearly every job I’ve had in the last 20+  years. I have been on Vancouver area buses thousands of times.

I do not generally like the experience, as you shall see below.

A Salute to my Fellow Passengers

A salute to my fellow passengers! I bid you a warm and hearty hello, one and all. Especially…

Mr. “I’m wearing a backpack the size of Kansas and I am not taking it off.” Thank you for slapping me in the face with your backpack while grooving out obliviously to your iPod. Hey, that reminds me…

Thanks to Mr. “I like to share my music with everyone, even when I’m wearing earphones.”  Yes, your iPod really does go to 11, just like the speakers in Spinal Tap. The Europeans don’t like it much but what do they know? They gave us Wham! The important thing isn’t that you’re going deaf but that I can clearly hear the words that accompany your horrible taste in music.

Ms “I like the exit but not for leaving!” Hey, look, the rear doors don’t have anyone standing there, so why not head over and block the exit? When people try to leave the bus, act surprised — every time it happens. Bonus points if you’re grossly obese and think that standing sideways makes a difference in letting people by. Hint: every side of you is fat.

Read more

Nerd rage: Razer Synapse 2.0 software

I originally posted this on Broken Forum but the process bugged me so much that I feel obligated to repost it here.

I hooked up my Deathadder 2013 edition mouse to my MacBook because I switched over to a Logitech 700s on my PC and was no longer using the Deathadder there. Using the built-in drivers the Deathadder seemed a bit twitchy on the Mac, with the cursor often leaping from the external monitor back to the laptop’s display. I decided to install the much-maligned Razer Synapse 2.0 driver configuration thingie, which requires you to be online (initially, at least).

First I had to create an account. The system kept telling me that my chosen username and/or password were bad without providing any details as to why. I finally figured out it didn’t like special characters in passwords. What is this, the 1890s? Anyway, I got to where the account was created and apparently missed a verification email with a link I had to click on (because the page made no mention of it). I tried my username/password combo, knowing it was correctly entered but again the system kept saying it wasn’t (due to the aforementioned unmentioned verification requirement).

Here’s the best part, though: after several “unsuccessful” attempts I was locked out.

Of a driver.

I could not configure my mouse unless I waited at least five minutes first. At that point the system would generously grant me the privilege of entering my username and password again.

Instead I uninstalled the software and made a promise to myself to never buy another Razer product. (The uninstall naturally did not allow me to just drag the icon off the menu bar, I had to hunt down a separate uninstall app in the Applications/Library folder. But it is gone now. Hopefully.)

Welcome to Hat Francisco, April 1906

Via a link on digg I was shown this 11-minute film shot on April 14, 1906 in San Francisco, four days before the major earthquake that devastated the city.

While there is a certain tragic quality in seeing these people going about their ordinary lives not knowing the great destruction that was imminent, I was struck by several things. First, the roadway seen in the video–Market Street– is remarkably wide given that much of the traffic was still horse-drawn. Second, I love the utter casualness of the people dashing across and in-between the automobiles, streetcars, bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. Even as they come within inches of being run down, they maintain an air of perfect nonchalance.

Mostly, though, I notice the hats. I watched the entire 11 minutes and did not see a single person, whether man, woman or child, who was not wearing some kind of hat or cap. People loved hats back then. They probably slept while wearing them. Judging from the size of some, I have no doubt that they may have even protected certain people from debris raining down on them during the quake. Seriously, a few women in the film are wearing hats that are about two feet high. By the time a brick got through that it’d probably only muss the hair.

I was also surprised by how many cars there were. Looking it up, the Model T didn’t come out until 1908, so this appears to be the transition period where cars were still too expensive for most but affordable enough for many to no longer be rare. It must have sucked to be a horse back then, having to share the road with a bunch of noisy tin buckets full of yahoos. Fancy yahoos wearing hats.

My long personal nightmare is finally over

I think I’ve gotten over my Bejeweled addiction.

I’ve unfortunately replaced it with a Mahjong addiction but at least I get semi-profound chunks of wisdom at the end of each game. You know, stuff like “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” or  “Man, I hope you invested in some good shoes if you’re walking a thousand miles”.

In fact, I think I’ll head off to enrich my life with more ancient wisdom right now.

Random unanswerable questions

Here’s something to keep you up late at night: think about all the questions you can ask but never get answers for. I don’t mean profound, thought-provoking questions like “How many stars are there in the universe?” or “What’s the highest number you can count to?”

No, I mean simple stuff like “How many people on this train with me have never been on it before?” or “What would it be like to be a bird afraid of heights?” Okay, the second one could probably be answered with “It would suck” but for the first one, how would you ever know? Sure, it’s theoretically possible you could find out the answer by simply asking everyone, but you have to make a lot of assumptions for this to work:

  • everyone you ask is willing to answer
  • everyone speaks the same language as you
  • everyone who answers is being truthful or understands the question
  • you can meet the above conditions before the next stop where some will get off and others get on, polluting the sample

The reality is you’re very unlikely to ever know and there are an infinite number of these seemingly banal yet unanswerable questions if you stop and think about it for a minute.

I recommend watching YouTube videos of cats instead.

When infotainment gets carried away with itself

During the pre-awards ceremony for the recent 2014 Golden Globe Awards show a series of “fun facts” were displayed occasionally onscreen, including this one:

Fun indeed.

Also, Adam Sandler leads the nominations for the annual Razzie Awards. His movie Grown Ups 2 earned eight Golden Raspberry nominations. This will probably be as close as he gets to an Oscar. He’s still way richer than I’ll ever be so I’m just being petty here. Mostly.

Beavers: 1, 152 car coal train: 0

On Saturday morning a train derailed near the entrance to Burnaby Lake, my preferred jogging area. The track runs along the northern side of the lake and on this particular morning nine of the cars came off the track, with three of them tipping and spilling their coal onto the ground and into the nearby stream. It could have been worse since it was coal and not, say, nuclear waste, which would have led to five generations of three-headed fish or just killed everything in the water for the next 500 years.

The torrential rains (we just went through a mini-Pineapple Express) are believed to have undermined the track but the main culprit for the derailment were beavers. They didn’t chew the track to bits, though one can imagine the havoc if they developed a taste for creosote. Instead, the rain washed out one of their mega-dams in a nearby creek and that helped wreck the track. As the CBC news story said:

“We’ve confirmed that the cause of the derailment yesterday in Burnaby was due to heavy rainfall that led to a beaver dam washout,” she told CBC News Sunday.

You have to admire that a few beavers can cause thousands of tons of machinery to topple over like that. And you know they’ll rebuild the dam, possibly with a not-quite-evil glint in their eyes.

Ghost running

Some racing games let you race against a ‘ghost’ opponent. This is usually depicted as a translucent figure/car because it’s not solid and you can move through it. The ghost is either another player’s recorded effort or one of your own earlier ones. The purpose is to give you a competitor that you can see and race against without actually needing the opponent to be there live. Plus to race against yourself would require cloning and that’s probably a good three or four years off yet.

I thought it would be neat if I could race against a ghost of myself when I’m out jogging. I can only imagine the psychological boost to be had by zipping ahead of myself, instantly knowing I was running better and faster. Sadly I can’t think of an easy way for this to be implemented without some crazy new tech that could be decades off.

On the plus side they’re also bound to have a decent smart watch by then, too.

British Columbians: Now with more rudeness, addiction and less thinking

Steve Mossop of public research firm Insights West has an article on The Tyee that highlights 13 B.C.-related topics for 2013.

A Pollster’s Top 13 Insights From 2013

Here are my insights (it’s insights all the way down!) on a few from the list:

12. We have become less polite as a society.

Three-in-five British Columbians believe that we have lost our sense of civility, and practically nine-in-ten saw someone swear in public. Most residents blame apathetic parents and cold technology for the rise in unruly behavior.

I don’t know how much apathetic parents are to blame (maybe a little) but technology–in the form of the smartphone–is certainly a culprit. I see many people on transit, on the sidewalk, at school, everywhere, who are more interested in staring into that 4-5 inch screen in front of their face than in anything around them. I like smartphones. They’re useful tools and they’ve opened up the world to things that weren’t possible before. But you do not need to check your Facebook page on an ongoing basis.

Also, I’m pretty sure four-in-five British Columbians would say we’ve lost our sense of civility if they had exclusively polled transit riders. Having used transit since arriving in Vancouver in 1986, I can say unreservedly that people are for more impatient and rude on transit than ever before. From people standing in front of the doors on the SkyTrain platform (blocking the exit for people trying to leave the train) to the mad dash (an actual dash!) to get a seat, people have largely abandoned any attempt to be polite. boo to them, I say.

5. As a society, we believe in some pretty outrageous things.

April Fool’s Day and Halloween provided two opportunities to assess the beliefs of British Columbians. Most claim they believe that UFOs exist, almost half think ghosts and haunted places are real, but just one-in-20 believe Elvis Presley is alive.

I don’t consider believing in UFOs to be outrageous. A UFO is an unidentified flying object and plenty are seen every year. Pedantic? Perhaps, but this framing feels like more of the media’s attempt to marginalize anything it doesn’t deem serious or worthy of study. It is reassuring that only 5% believe Elvis is still alive, however. Actually, no, it’s not. You 5% are dumb. Cut it out!

1. Christy Clark won because voters changed their minds at the last minute.

Since the B.C. provincial election in May, there has been a lot of speculation and introspection about the state of public opinion polling. Our survey conducted immediately after the election found that one-in-five voters settled on a candidate on the last 72 hours of the campaign, and that 17 per cent of actual BC Liberal voters had window-shopped as NDP supporters.

Making up your mind on who to vote for at the last minute is not a good way to vote. It is, in fact, dumb. Stop being dumb, British Columbians. Think logically, rationally and carefully before casting your vote. Don’t be swayed by soundbites or clever ads because that is all BS where politicians (of every affiliation) say anything and promise everything. Do you pride yourself on being persuaded by BS? I suspect not. So think before voting and do so before the election, throughout the election and not just at the last minute because one side or other ran a slick ad. Thanks!

Naughty would-be admins (all 125 of them)

One of the plugins I use on this blog is Better WP Security. Among its features it records any bad login entries. These are people and/or bots trying to enter the admin area of the blog by trying out various username/password combos, hoping to get lucky so they can do all manner of nefarious deeds once allowed in.

As you might guess, the most common username used in these attempts is “admin” and it’s why basic security has you change it from “admin” to anything else (I’ve done this, in case any bots are reading).

Sometimes the username entered is more curious than “admin”. For example:

Bernardo1133

Did Bernardo get misdirected or confused? Did he think he was signing into his own blog? What are the other 1132 Bernardos up to, anyway?

BroderickCrook

Oh, I just bet you are a crook, Broderick! Nice try, buddy.

creolened

Clever bot. But not clever enough.

DebWordenrfai

This one may have been trying to login to World of Warcraft.

What’s sad is the number of legitimate visits to the site is usually in the range of less than 10 per day, meaning the blog on average is more than ten times as popular as a potential hacking target than as something to read. On the plus side that less-than-ten number is still more people than ever read my paper journal.