Bicentennial Man

Back in 1999 I watched a movie called Bicentennial Man. I remember enjoying it quite a bit, but I was also surprised to find out it was based on a novel by Isaac Asimov called The Positronic Man.

Before this movie, I'd read some of Isaac Asimov's short stories. I still retain a good memory of them, they were fun to read and there were so many, but at the time I was big on Star Trek, so my whole Sci:Fi world was dominated by that singular continuing story.

Well, by the time 1999 came around I'd grown up a bit. I turned 18, got ready to head out into the working world (For about half a year), endured the buildup to Star Wars Episode I and the ensuing disappointment, and had been ready to expand my horizons. So I looked it up and found it was part of the "Robots" series of books by Isaac Asimov.

I had previously read the entire "Foundation" series of books, while my friend Greg read the "Robots" series, but I never dedicated the time to reading it. But this movie surprised the hell out of me, in a good way.

I mention it now because I rented it via Netflix and watched it for the first time with Nikki. She loved it, and I remembered how much this movie really moved me, now and back then. It also reminded me of a Re:sound episode I listened to via podcast just a few weeks ago, Resound #44: The Fake Docs Show.

I believe the second story in starts talking about the near future, where robots begin to replace parents in Australia as caretakers due to a negative backlash against parents and parenting's negative affects on business and productivity. "Robbies" were beginning to raise children. The whole story was very freaky, it sounded just professional enough to be believable (which was the point of the whole Re:sound episode) and just scary enough to really set off my internal shudder mechanisms.

Listen to this Re:sound podcast, then watch Bicentennial Man. There are quite a few parallel questions regarding the role of robots and technology in today's society. Will we all end up like this?

Reality 1440x900 by ~pyxelated on deviantART

Anyway, the whole point was to relay that I was blown away (again) by Bicentennial Man, and that it's aged well and is still apropos to today, and our near future.

That is all. :)

Casper Van Dien: You Are My Hero!

Oh... Wow...

Via Ain't it Cool News;

Childhelp.org (for the prevention and treatment of child abuse) decided to launch a new anti child abuse campaign using Casper Van Dien of "Starship Troopers" fame.

They announce it with the following press release:

Actor Casper Van Dien suits up as “Johnny Rico”
to tackle child abuse in series of PSAs for Childhelp

Starship Troopers star urges people to join him in fighting back against child abuse

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (January 28, 2009) – Johnny Rico, lead character in the hit movie Starship Troopers, is suiting up once again to fight back against the evils of the galaxy. Hollywood actor Casper Van Dien has reprised the combat savvy character for Childhelp to talk about fighting a different war – the war against child abuse. Two new public service announcements (PSAs) were filmed for Childhelp, one of the leading organizations dedicated to the prevention and treatment of child abuse, and recently made their debut online.

The PSAs were put together by an all star team including Academy Award winning visual effects directors Robert Skotak and Dennis Skotak, with the assistance of their brother Jeffrey Skotak who is now also working in visual effects. Robert and Dennis Skotak won Oscars for their visual effects work in the movies Terminator 2, Aliens and The Abyss. The filming was done by John Murlowski, who filmed Starship Troopers 3, and the editing by Kevin VanHook, who has worked on many blockbusters including I, Robot and Daredevil.

“Everyone jumped at the chance to come together and support such a great cause,” said Casper Van Dien. “Four children die every day in this country because of child abuse and neglect, and we all need to do whatever we can to help children in need.”

The PSAs can be viewed on the Childhelp website at http://www.childhelp.org/troopers/video

About Childhelp

In 2009, Childhelp commemorates 50 years of bringing the light of hope and healing into the lives of countless children. CEO and Co-Founder Sara O’Meara and President and Co-Founder Yvonne Fedderson started Childhelp in 1959 , establishing it as a leading national non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of child abuse and neglect and at-risk children. Childhelp’s approach focuses on advocacy, prevention, treatment and community outreach.

The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, 1-800-4-A-CHILD®, operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. Childhelp’s programs and services also include residential treatment services; children’s advocacy centers; therapeutic foster care; group homes and child abuse prevention, education and training. Childhelp also created the Childhelp National Day of Hope®, held each April during National Child Abuse Prevention Month, that mobilizes people across America to join the fight against child abuse.

There's nothing funny about child abuse, which makes me wonder why they'd choose Casper Van Dien and the really bad (but popular!) Starship Troopers series to encourage us all to join the fight against child abuse. But hey, it's a laudable goal, and we're all really onboard anyway. So lets just sit back and enjoy the PSA series they're putting out.

Roll the film.

... and

... and now onto more vulgar topics:

*** UPDATE ***

The person in question regrets taking these pictures and requested I make them a little less public.

"Meh." I've done my job, but all in good fun. As much as this was -more than fair- retaliation for the "tool" comment, I'm happy to remove all references to names here, even fake ones. I even removed references to it in Facebook. So it shall live and die here, on this page.

Also, I WIN!

So a friend of mine, lets call them...

<charlie brown's mother talks here> decided to take my vaunted "pimp gorilla karaoke singer" picture (look left) and turn it into something so vile, so offensive that I couldn't let it go unanswered.































It's not like I haven't been called a tool before, ... or felt like a tool before... or was a tool before... Still, it's not an opening salvo I can let go unanswered. Therefore, I have lovingly crafted my response...

BEHOLD!

Help! Need help naming a track! (Scratch Perverts)

*** UPDATE ***

It's Chemical Brothers - Rize Up

Thanks to Facebook / Jon Lehuta for that one!





















I started listening to a mix that I'd downloaded from The Mixing Bowl a while ago by the Scratch Perverts. Specifically: Scratch Perverts Live @ Club Vie, Rotterdam (Republic of MTV) from 07/10/2006. However I can't seem to track down a track list and there's this absolutely dynamite tune in the middle.

So, I need help! Listen to this and please let me know if you've heard it before, or if you can name it? Thanks!

Nathan Quote #3:

We were trying to get Nathan to brush his teeth. He accompanied Nikki to the dentist's office today and received a new toothbrush so now he's all about that one. When we tried to get him to brush with his old Wall-E toothbrush, here's what he said:

That's the most ridiculous toothbrush in the world and I'm NOT using it!

(sigh)

Fark.com, my favorite site of all time (so far) was featured on Jeopardy!

Nathan singing with his preschool class

The camera work is my dad's. I couldn't be there so to my dad, thank you!

Web 2.0 v2: Flickr & Youtube

So now I have a Facebook Page, a Blogger Blog, Flickr Photostream and a Youtube Channel.

(lol)

Why?

Facebook's a great social networking and microblogging site, but content posted there isn't available to the outside world (family and luddites that don't want or care about Facebook) unless you sign up for an account.
Blogger is available to everyone and has passable photo and movie storage support, but doesn't allow deep-linking of those resources, and requires people sign up for a Google account to comment.
Flickr is fantastic for photos and allows for deep linking of resources, ok for short movie clips, has impressive group membership and relation features but doesn't act as a blog so it requires you use something else to link to it, unless you have people... sign up for a Yahoo account and subscribe to your photo stream.
Youtube is movies only, and while I cringe at its quality (even the "hd" streams are crappy), it's #1, fast, has a huge audience, allows embedding of resources, but has only rudimentary support for commenting and ... requires a Google account.
It all seems insane to have to manage three different sets of account credentials and manage four different, slightly overlapping, but extremely useful memberships to post everything online. It means lots of crossposting.

For example... This article is on Blogger (where anyone with a Google account can comment), but I'm going to post this article on Facebook (where people will undoubtetly comment). The previous article linked to my Flickr page. The next article I post will link to my Youtube page for Nathan related enjoyment.

... really?

Who has created alternatives...

There is the Apple solution through iWeb and MobileMe that has very tight integration with iLife and iWork apps, but this really only works seamlessly for Mac owners and doesn't include a good social networking resource.
There's OpenID which has support for LiveJournal, Wordpress, Typepad, or AOL accounts, letting you use one ID but still requires maintaining separate memberships for different resources.
Google's trying -really hard- right now (Youtube/Picasa Web Albums/Blogger), but doesn't have that social networking component. Picasa also happens to be a little expensive, but not unreasonably so.

Who else, what else is out there? Everything's still walled off in its own proprietary feifdom, and until someone either comes up with a better solution (which would require massive amounts of programming and design work, community feedback, and PEOPLE to sign up / subscribe), it's going to continue like this.

I'm encountering similar issues between the XBOX360 and Wii camps right now. I have both, but some people have either / or.

Further immersing myself in Web 2.0: Flickr!

I finally decided to join Flickr!


(Here's the photostream)
There are some absolutely priceless pictures here... including this video:

Yeah... I need to work on that a bit.

But check it out! (I need to put about 15,000 pictures up there)

Tethering Blackberries on Mac via Bluetooth: AT&T

In the same vein as tethering to a Windows XP system, here are brief instructions for doing it on a Mac OS X 10.5 system!
(Thanks to amkls704 at howardforums.com and Eugene Dong for instructions)

Extract this file (blackberry-3g-cid1.zip) to:

/Macintosh HD/Library/Modem Scripts

(Secondary Download Source, requires registration

You have your Blackberry and Mac paired, we actually need to remove that pairing and begin from scratch. Remove the phone from your paired devices list on your Mac, and on your Blackberry, remove your laptop as a paired device.

Re-pair your Blackberry and laptop. (Run the “Setup Bluetooth Device” wizard)

Choose:

- Mobile Phone
- Blackberry 9000
- Hit Continue Again
- Check the box next to “Access the internet with your phone’s data connection”
- For the Phone Vendor: Choose Other and for the Phone Model: Choose Blackberry 3G CID1 (the script you put into the modem scripts folder)
- Launch Network Preferences, and click "Bluetooth" in the list.
- Select "Add Configuration" from the Configuration drop list. Name the configuration AT&T via Blackberry Bold (or something like that)

o Username: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
o Password: CINGULAR1
o Telephone Number: wap.cingular

- Check "Show modem status in menu bar"

That should do it! Click on “Connect Bluetooth” on the modem icon on the Mac, a connection timer should come up and let your mac in on the 3G goodness!

Tethering Blackberries via Bluetooth: AT&T

I figured I should start writing down some of the more obscure information I come across every day. I'm an aggregation machine that just happens to lose data every so often, so this is my backup strategy.I have a couple co-workers with the new Blackberry Bold (9000). Yes it works well, it's light, thin, flashy, etc... but what really makes this killer is that it supports 3G data, and a concurrent voice call. Verizon and Sprint have Blackberries that support 3G data, but not at the same time as a voice call. T-Mobile should "eventually", but they're still developing their 3G network. (I stick with them for the excellent customer service)

All instructions here are listed for Windows XP, but if you're using Vista, they still work... the places you have to look are just slightly different.

There are quite a few forum posts on how to tether Blackberries via bluetooth but none that get it right, and for the ones that get it right, none that refer directly to the Blackberry bold. So, let me state a couple items:

When attempting to tether the Blackberry Bold via bluetooth, do not:

• Use the AT&T Communication Manager software
• Add the tethering plan to your AT&T account (yet)
• Expect to be able to sync your Blackberry to your laptop via Bluetooth reliably
  

Please do:

• Find and install the latest Blackberry Desktop Manager software (v4.7 as of this post).
• Pair your phone with your computer via bluetooth after installing the desktop manager software
• Expect to sync your Blackberry via USB (or use an enterprise server).

After all that (install Blackberry Desktop Manager, pair phone and laptop via bluetooth), here's what to do:

You should have a new modem in your modem list called "Standard Modem over Bluetooth" or "Standard Bluetooth Modem". You also may have one that just says "Standard Modem" but when your phone is paired it will list the com port your phone is on for the com port of the standard modem. Identify this device.

Go into the device properties of that modem (Phone and Modem Options / Modems Tab) and click on the "Advanced" tab. Under extra initialization commands, enter this:

AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","wap.cingular"

Click OK a few times to save / close everything, then go to your Network Connections list and run the New Network Connection wizard.

Set it up as a dial-up connectoin, and when it asks for an ISP name tell it whatever you want, but when it asks for a phone number give it the following:

*99#

Save the new connection, create a shortcut on your desktop, and that's it, you should be able to dial-up!

Now if you want to do the "right thing" (tm), you'll call AT&T and have them add the tethering plan to your account. You can then use "isp.cingular" instead of "wap.cingular" which might be a little faster... or at least better if you ever need to call AT&T for help.

Otherwise that's it!