macCompanion June 2006 reviews

• EyeTV EZ
  When Apple released its Front Row software solution, the most notable omission was the ability to watch and record television. If they do add that capability (which I predict they won't) they will have a long ways to go to catch up with Elgato, who has combined Terratec's USB 2.0 TV receiver hardware with their award-winning software to create the EyeTV EZ, a low-cost, simple, and fun way to watch and record TV on your Mac.
  
  
• BT500 Rechargeable Bluetooth Mouse
  RadTech's original BT500 Bluetooth mouse was the best wireless mouse for mobile Mac users and the newest model improves on that excellence by adding battery recharging capability.

Unfortunately, I had to send both of these review units back to the manufacturer.

Urinetown The Musical photos

I've posted a gallery page of photos from Urinetown The Musical. These were taken on multiple days during the week of dress rehearsals (you'll probably notice varying degrees of set completion throughout). As with last time I sized the images to 640x480 pixels instead of the default 800x600 to decrease download time. There are 136 in total, so you'll kind of get to watch the whole show if you click the 'View Slideshow' image. And if you think that's a lot of photos, consider that I pared it down from a field of more than 470 797.

http://homepage.mac.com/ehargreaves/PhotoAlbum47.html

Delta College stages funny, fast-paced trip to 'Urinetown'

Far from reinventing the genre, "Urinetown" depicts the death of the musical as a progressive and relevant art form. Along the way, though, San Joaquin Delta College's current production invites audiences to a clever, funny and wickedly virtuosic funeral.

Neutrality of the Net

When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone's permission. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.

The creator of the World Wide Web speaks out regarding Net Neutrality. If you don't know what it is, try this Google News search. One notable link from that search is McCurry Sells Out to AT&T.

'Nightmare' awakens for 3-D release

Sally will drop nightshade into Dr. Finkelstein's tea in 3-D come Halloween, when Walt Disney Pictures releases a digitally remastered version of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

'Urine' for something

At first glance, the show appears all silliness and satire. Set in a world where people must pay to use the bathroom, the musical features arch characters, star-crossed lovers right out of "Romeo and Juliet" and a score that goes out of its way to spoof such landmark musicals as "Sweeney Todd," "Chicago" and "Fiddler on the Roof." Even the title carries a pun.

As with his preview article for Over the River and Through the Woods, I disagree with most of what Brian McCoy presents as fact (the excerpted paragraph above is one of the few parts written I consider accurate). And I'm not completely sure why all the photos on the Record's web site are so washed out. But if you click on the image to enlarge it and squint real hard, you can see me in the upper left corner (some of my fellow actors are actually behind the sign).

Delta College Press Release

Inflation gets the best of us. The cost of everything from postage stamps, electricity and gas continues to rise. We gripe, groan and moan as we lament how much cheaper everything was “in the good old days.” Now, contemplate how you would feel if you had to pay to use the toilet and the costs kept going up? What if you were a low-income citizen who scratched out a living day by day? Would you continue to gripe and groan or take a stand? This is the premise of URINETOWN.

Transcript of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner
via Daily Kos

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

This also includes a transcript of his "audition tape" when he applied to be the new press secretary.

Fake or Foto?

Take a look at the ten images. Some of them are photographs of real objects or scenes, others are created by computer graphics artists. Test your ability to tell which among the array of images are real, and which are CG.

I got 7 out of 10 correct, which is an improvement over my score on the original Fake or Foto.

macCompanion May 2006 reviews

• Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual
  The titles in the Missing Manuals series from Pogue Press are each billed as 'the book that should have been in the box.' But if that were the case with Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual, the box would weigh an additional three pounds. At more than 900 pages long, it is not a quick read.

Lego® Star Wars™ The Videogame review

Head on over to Raybob Industries Inc. to read my review of Lego® Star Wars™ The Videogame. The review is based on the Nintendo GameCube edition of the game, which was released last October. I'm pretty certain it is all applicable for the XBox, PlayStation 2, PC, and Mac(!) versions. It does not apply to the Game Boy Advance edition, however.

A PC demo and Mac demo are available for download but I don't think having two players on a computer keyboard is particularly fun.

And now you know what I did during Spring Break.

Who is Malthus?

I am going to pre-emptively answer this question which will inevitably be asked by anyone who reads or sees Urinetown, The Musical.

Thomas Robert Malthus, England's first academic economist, is most famous for his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798, expanded in 1803), which the bio linked above summarizes as follows:

In this famous work, Malthus posited his hypothesis that (unchecked) population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence.  Actual (checked) population growth is kept in line with food supply growth by "positive checks" (starvation, disease and the like, elevating the death rate) and "preventive checks" (i.e. postponement of marriage, etc. that keep down the birthrate), both of which are characterized by "misery and vice".  Malthus's hypothesis implied that actual population always has a tendency to push above the food supply.  Because of this tendency, any attempt to ameliorate the condition of the lower classes by increasing their incomes or improving agricultural productivity would be fruitless, as the extra means of subsistence would be completely absorbed by an induced boost in population.  As long as this tendency remains, Malthus argued, the "perfectibility" of society will always be out of reach.  

Monterey Bay photos

I've uploaded photos from our weekend trip to Monterey Bay. They include photos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the 17-Mile Drive Scenic Tour in Pebble Beach. Most were taken by Megan, so they're quite good.

This photo gallery is a little different from past ones in two respects:

1. I was able to fit all the thumbnails on a single index page instead of being limited to only 48 on a page.
2. I set the full-sized images to be 640x480 pixels instead of 800x600. Hopefully this reduction will result in faster download times for those of you using dial-up Internet connections.

If you have any praise or complaints regarding this gallery, please leave a comment or e-mail me.

http://homepage.mac.com/ehargreaves/PhotoAlbum46.html

Congress readies new digital copyright bill
CNET News.com

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite.

If this legislation passes, the person who is currently hosting that clip of Conspiracy School Rock could possibly be sent to jail for 10 years. And if the record labels copy-protect all the CDs, the iPod will essentially be an illegal device.

Geek Squad In Strife

Retail chain Best Buy is in trouble after aggressively promoted, 24-hour computer support task force the Geek Squad has been served with a temporary restraining order barring it from using a popular brand of system restore software, which Best Buy is accused of pirating.

But don't true geeks use pirated software?

Terrorist, or Truth Seeker?
Wired News

To the United States, he is a seriously dangerous man who put the nation's security at risk by committing "the biggest military computer hack of all time."

But Briton Gary McKinnon says he is just an ordinary computer nerd who wanted to find out whether aliens and UFOs exist.

Air vents are for air

Thanks to continuous bombardment in television and movies, the idea of characters shimmying through air ducts has become not just a cliché, but almost a given. The moment a hero finds himself stuck someplace, we expect his eyes to drift north to that spot just below the ceiling, where an oversized grate is beckoning.

I thought the same thing when I saw the episode of Lost referred to. But screenwriter John August, whose credits include Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and some others I'd rather not mention, makes the point even better in this funny, well-written post.

Edward Scissorhands Ballet

Matthew Bourne and New Adventures are back with their latest creation: a magical new adaptation of the classic Tim Burton motion picture Edward Scissorhands.

Although this production is currently only touring the UK right now, I overheard from the director of Urinetown, The Musical that it will be coming to San Francisco. Photos and video clips can be seen by following the link above, but if you have Flash Player 8 and a high-speed connection, you can visit the official site.

Conspiracy Theory Rock
via Cartoon Brew

This weekend, Saturday Night Live is airing an episode comprised entirely of Robert Smigel's animated Saturday TV Funhouse shorts. But there's one short that's guaranteed not to be on the line-up: Conspiracy Theory Rock. The 1998 Schoolhouse Rock parody, animated by J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, criticizes corporate ownership of the media and takes some sharp jabs at NBC owner General Electric.

I saw this short when it originally aired on March 14, 1998. Because I was doing a senior project on media ownership at the time, I was a little disappointed that I didn't tape it. And even more disappointed when I discovered they were never going to show it again (though not entirely surprised).

Seven years later, I had the opportunity to ask J.J. Sedelmaier about the short (at the San Diego Comic-Con last summer). He said I was lucky to have seen it at all, since it had only aired on the New York feed once (which doesn't seem to jibe with my having watched in Forest Grove, OR). Thanks to the Internet, everyone can see it here. In addition, there's a good New York Times story about Saturday TV Funhouse here.

DC Bridges Films with Superman Returns Specials

DC Comics bridges the classic 1980 movie Superman II and one of the most highly anticipated films of the summer with its Superman Returns Specials, four books that each deal with a character from the new motion picture!

I would typically remove the exclamation mark, but it is pretty exciting. It's going to be a big year for Superman, if Warner Bros. has anything to say about it: Year of Superman