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December 30, 2004

Lost is Losing

Lost is one of my favorite TV shows in a long time. It’s like a movie, only it comes on every week!

At least it did… The show has been in re-runs for several weeks, which has all but killed the momentum of the show for me. Wednesday night used to be “Lost Night” that my wife and I looked forward to, but because the show has been in re-runs so long, we have already gotten out of the habit of watching the show. Why do networks do this? I’m going to forget the first half of the show by the time they start playing new episodes again, and stop caring about the characters and monsters in the jungle. The only thing left for them to do to completely kill the show is to move it to another night and time slot, which seems like something stupid enough for them to do unfortunately.

Bring new episodes back on before we all lose interest and stop watching the show entirely! At least at the end of a season it’ll wrap up the show to tide you over until the next season starts, but this taking a month-long break in the middle of the season is just silly.

December 27, 2004

Gotta Get My Stuff Done

Here is a great cartoon about procrastination, which I suffer from. In fact I’m posting this link on this blog instead of working. Dammit.

Zoom… Enhance… Magnify

I enjoy the CSI TV shows. My wife and I regularly watch all three versions of it; Las Vegas, Miami, and New York. I think each spin-off has ended up being less interesting than the last, but one thing is really starting to bug me about all of them… The computers.

I don’t know much about forensic science other than what I see on the shows, so I don’t know how accurate the DNA analysis and fingerprinting and other things are, but the computers have gotten ridiculous lately. In an episode of CSI: NY we watched last night, the CSI people were watching a crummy surveillance video of a guy in a pawn shop. He had his head down so you couldn’t see him on camera. So what did the CSIs do? Just zoom in on the shop owner’s glasses of course! Of course it was pixelated, but no matter, just press the enhance button to get a crystal clear, high resolution image of the shop owner’s face, as well as a nice shot of the guy in the reflection of the glasses. Nevermind that they were dealing with a grainy, low resolution surveillance video, this software can create image information out of thin air!

Then we have all of the other ridiculously specialized software that I just don’t see existing. In the same episode last night, a guy was bitten on the ear by another man in a fight. So, to identify who bit the man, all they had to do was take impressions of everyone’s teeth, then fire up their “teeth - bitemark matching software” which was able to quickly scan each set of teeth and match them exactly to the bitemarks on the ear of the victim. Now how many times are you going to use a piece of software like that? Enough to warrant spending thousands or millions of dollars developing it? I think not.

Finally, we have the databases of seemingly limitless information available to CSI at any given time. Again, in an episode last night they needed to find out which companies in the New York area had two different kinds of duct tape so they could compare the two types of adhesives. No problem! We’ll just cross-reference the duct tape distributor database with the heat-retardant duct tape database to see which shops in the area carry both types. Now I’m sure the CSI have lots of information available to them, and some of it is stored in a database, but come on… Duct tape distributors? That just doesn’t seem like something that would be cataloged with any kind of precision or consistency.

I know they create these programs just to make it look more interesting than it really is, since it’s a TV show and all. But recently it seems like a crutch to their story. If you’re running out of time in an episode, just have an incredible piece of software create information out of nothing so we can arrest the guy and move on to next week’s show.

That being said, I still watch these shows every week because they are awesome. :)

December 21, 2004

Productivity Breakthrough #2

I’ve found that if you turn off your instant messengers like AIM and MSN during “work time”, you get a lot more done! Or at least you have less distractions interrupting you every few minutes.

My next idea is to stop checking RSS feeds on Bloglines every 20 minutes.

Rave Motion Pictures - Chattanooga

My wife and I went to the new Rave Motion Pictures in Chattanooga the other night to see Ocean’s 12. It’s a relatively new cinema company, I think they have 18 locations across the southeast now. The company says they aren’t trying to be an art-house type theater that plays foreign films or independent flicks, they just play blockbusters on really big screens with really loud sound. Which is fine with me.

The screens really are quite huge, bigger than any I’ve seen except for an IMAX and the feature theaters at the Cleveland movie theater. Unfortunately we got to the movie a little late, so the stadium seats up top were already filled, so we had to sit on the second row from the front, which put the screen right in our face and so close that you had to move your whole head around just to see the entire screen.

But at least we didn’t didn’t have to move our head around just to see past other people’s heads, because each row of seating is risen 18” above the one in front of it, giving just about anyone a clear view. The radio ads being played on the station’s around town mention a 7’ man with a 2’ tall stovepipe hat going to the movie and people still being able to see over him, which is a big of an exaggeration, but maybe if he didn’t have the hat on it still wouldn’t be a problem.

There is also ample space in between rows, so you don’t have to stand up for people or have your toes smashed when people come and go.

The best part however was the self-ticketing system in the lobby. Most of the theaters around this area don’t take credit cards, and if they do they charge you a crazy fee like $1 - $2 extra just to use your card. The Rave theater doesn’t take cards at the tellers in the window, but there are two kiosks in the lobby that allow you to choose your movie and showtime and pay with a credit card quickly and easily without having to stand in line or yell through one of those little holes at the ticket window. Then the machine spits out your tickets and you can proceed to your movie.

The prices are more than any other theater in town that I’ve been to, $7.75 for a feature showing, and I’m not sure what the matinee price is. Most other theaters are $7.50, and the one in Cleveland is $7.00. However I don’t mind paying the extra quarter for the convenience of the self ticketing system and the huge screens and great quality sound.