January 31, 2008 by rfhicks.

During my previous visit to the local movie theater to see Alien vs. Predator 2 I had been curious about the previews for Cloverfield. The previews had shown a spectacular explosion set against the nighttime New York cityscape. The head of a decapitated Statue of Liberty was shown striking a high rise building and crashing on the street. I was lead to believe this would be an awesome science fiction thriller. I was wrong.

Before gambling $10 on a movie fare I visited the Cloverfield website seeking some sort of synopsis of the movie. I was disappointed only to find the two teasers or trailers I had seen at the theater during earlier visits. Perhaps they couldn’t afford to pay the webmaster with the $25 million budget that was spent on the production of the movie.

The first person point of view used in the movie could have possibly been an effective vehicle for laying the groundwork and developing the setting of the movie, even possibly introducing us to some of the characters. Instead we are left to sit and anticipate a change in cinematography where the movie will begin to flesh out and we will be given a story to assimilate. This simply doesn’t happen. We end up looking at people’s feet running across the ground and characters risking their lives running down dark empty subway tunnels when a nasty monster and it’s offspring are running loose.

In addition the director’s choice of using suggestive and foreboding 9-11 cinematography does nothing to fill the thrill vacuum that is persistent throughout the movie.

Moreover, I have heard in casual conversation that some theater goers complained of disorientation due to the movie being filmed entirely in ‘handycam style.’ Personally the disorientation due to the movie’s amateurish cinematography did not bother me. I was more disappointed than disoriented by this film.

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January 24, 2008 by rfhicks.

Moving into a new computer with new hardware, operating system, and new software can present the same challenges as moving into a new home. You have to line up all the people that provide the services that you use i.e. plumbing, electrical vs. software glitches. This all gets around to my point about griping in general when things don’t work.

A recent example of griping: When I built my custom desktop with Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit I had installed a fancy sound-card manufactured by Creative Labs. The sound card had set me back $200. It had a fancy front interface where I could plug in my electric acoustic guitar and the sound card included a lot of software. Unfortunately Creative Labs had failed to inform the the card’s drivers would not work with Windows Vista Ultimate 64.

Now the real drama begins as I enter the world of being a professional whiner seeking the latest drivers, bug fixes, and software updates that will make this shiny hunk of integrated transistors play music to my ears through the new Bose desktop speakers. The Creative Labs site was pretty well laid out considering the plethora of devices that Creative manufactures other than their sound cards. I finally navigated to drivers update page and downloaded the ‘latest’ available drivers for my particular card which were dated sometime in May 2007. At this time it was around September 2007. There were some detailed instructions for downloading the driver patch which I dutifully followed. I download and followed the instructions, the firewall squawked. I watched and waited as I was bombarded with multiple windows, buttons, progress bars, and a lethargic Microsoft hourglass. After about 45 minutes of this digital psychiatric slide-show I was instructed to reboot. I drew a breath and then Microsoft had one more alert and a button to press. The hard drive purred, the screen went blank, and then the computer powered down.

Microsoft Windows then came back to life. I eagerly awaited for my speakers to play the dramatic default Microsoft sound indicating that everything was okay and I was successful with my update. The speakers momentarily screeched and then there was silence. I tried all of this once again. Before I knew it was 2 o’clock in the morning. Oh well another day and another try, but I was incensed that $200 sound card did nothing but screech and then whimper. I went to bed fuming wanting to perform some excruciating torture the CEO of Creative Labs.
The next day I did some research and found out that there were many other people like myself that wanted to choke the @*## out of Creative Labs CEO and demand a refund. Then I found about the forums on Creative Labs web site. I immediately signed up and entered a world of like minded professional whiners intent on getting there money’s worth. I posted in this forum for the next 3 to 4 months. I read other posts where people had found there beta releases posted on other sites that were not endorsed by Creative Labs and even found cases where people with a more technical bent had even written their own drivers. There were people posting petitions to be signed to never do business again with Creative Labs. This forum was a wild place with people outraged with the high priced hardware they had been stuck with due Creative Labs failing to create drivers for all the devices that wouldn’t jive with Windows Vista.

After posting several times to the forum and literally shaking my fist with the rest of the forum participants Creative Labs finally posted the up-to-date drivers for my sound card that would work with Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit. I was relieved to say the least and felt I had gotten my due process and justice.

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January 18, 2008 by rfhicks.

Well I made the trip to the SonyStyle store in Fashion Valley today to see Sony’s little 11” OLED television. I kindly struck up a conversation with the young man at the store’s concierge asking permission to take pictures of the television with my Olympus digital camera. He told me that he couldn’t let me take pictures in the store. I then asked him if it would be okay to take a few pictures with my cell phone camera. He said that he thought that would be okay. I snapped about 6 or 8 pictures of the television and then he changed his mind and said that was enough. I then touched the television and commented on how rich the picture was and said that the television was anoxeric compared to most of the LCD televisions on the market. I walked around the store afterwards looking at all the other highly priced merchandise that Sony had to offer. Just before I left the store to go to the food court and grab some pizza I was approached by an older man that appeared to be a senior sales clerk sporting a blue tooth dongle and an earring in his ear. He gruffly announced to me that it was Sony’s policy that no pictures were allowed in the store. I hated to break his heart and tell him that I had already snagged 6 or 8 with my Motorola Razr.

When I had returned from the food court gorging on Sbarro’s pizza and feeding some grateful red wing blackbirds I was walking past the SonyStyle store once again where I brazenly snapped a picture of two sales clerks that were standing at the concierge. I guess I can say that the mission was accomplished.

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January 8, 2008 by rfhicks.

I recently enrolled in Goggle’s Adsense program to earn a few dollars from my domain name.
I was using a custom desktop computer that I had recently built with Window’s Vista Ultimate and Kaspersky’s Internet Security Suite 2006.

After placing some Goggle’s ads on my site I was unable to see them on my computer when viewing my site. I was using the latest version of Mozilla’s FireFox along with a plug-in called Fire Bug, which is used as code validation tool for HTML when viewing web pages.

The Fire Bug kept giving me ‘illegal character’ in the javascript, more specifically an error due to GIF89a. I looked through the web page code scratching my head seeking some clues. I then wrote down the exact wording on the error and searched for it using Google. I ran across several references and came up empty-handed. I then was directed to one of the Google Adsense forums where I found mention of the Kaspersky’s Internet Security Suite 2006.

I went back to Google and kept searching through the links. I then ran across a site that was written in Turkish that mentioned the GIF89a error. Well first off I realized that I was not literate in reading Turkish. I then noticed a screenshot of some windows from the Kaspersky’s Internet Security Suite 2006 where I noticed the author had circled and number the steps to taking the http reference in the Google ad and putting into a ‘White List’ of URLs within one of the software menus. I immediately exclaimed, “Eureka”, although I couldn’t read the Turkish in the blog post I couldn’t definitely interpret a screen shot in English. I immediately saved the image I had found on the blog and went and made the adjustments in the software. Bingo! My ads showed up on my site.

Posted in Technology, Windows Vista, Computers | 1 Comment »

January 4, 2008 by rfhicks.

The last couple of years I have been helping an aspiring writer put a cookbook together. The cookbook parodies Martha Stewart’s time in prison. The cookbook is filled with delicious real world recipes. Between the recipe pages are amusing photographs composed and shot by Martin Merianos, the author. This cookbook is a delightful addition to any aspiring chef’s library and will grace your coffee table for light hearted conversation and recipes that you can prepare when entertaining company. The cookbook can be purchased at Authorhouse.

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January 3, 2008 by rfhicks.

Once again I have spent my weekend away from my day job to watch the latest mutation of the Alien vs. Predator sequels of movies. This one is entitled Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem.

The movie begins with a Predator cruising the outskirts of the universe when he is suddenly assaulted by a face hugging juvenile Alien, his sworn enemy. This causes the

Predator to lose control of his spacecraft causing him to crash on earth.

From this point on we are introduced to a rather flimsy cast of earthlings that are caught in the midst of a battle between a Predator and an Alien. A father and his son on a hunting trip run across the stricken spaceship. They quickly become victims of the alien face huggers.

Meanwhile back in town several hours later the locals begin to wonder what happen to the father and son. The sheriff quickly rounds up a posse and and the townsfolk march into the woods late at night armed with flashlights. We are then introduced to another facet of this drawn out yawner of alien vs. earthlings melodrama when we find out the sheriff has a young friend that has just been released from jail and his looking to re-establish himself as a responsible citizen. We are then introduced to this recently released convict’s younger brother that his having romantic problems while working as a pizza delivery driver.

Ah, but wait don’t fall asleep midway in the movie or step out to have a smoke and perhaps a shot of booze to steer you through this mumbling mire of an alien vs. earthling melodrama or you will miss the all the action. We have the convict’s younger brother getting slapped around by the local homeboys during a routine pizza run. The homeboys pummel the poor pizza runner and chunk his keys into the sewer.

Later the two brothers return to the sewer to retrieve the keys only to encounter ol’ slimy breath having babies in the sewer muck or was it the homeless people living in the sewer and getting face hugged by the alien.
Well I am all confused now. Shucks did I tell you about the big fight at the power substation or was that before the convict’s younger pizza delivering brother went skinny dipping with his ex sweetheart at the local pool.

Then the power goes out and someone else gets killed. Oh well I have pretty much lost track at this point and then there some blood and another earthling skinned and hanged from a tree. Meanwhile the Predator is pouring blue glowing goop over the dead alien bodies.

Then the convict’s younger brother finds his keys and female soldier(Reiko Aylesworth) home from Iraq tells us not to trust the government or the National Guard.

And now for some famous words from this flimsy cast of characters: Ex-con Dallas(Steven Pasquale) speaking to the sheriff Eddie(John Ortiz), “People are dying. We need guns.” Eddie(John Ortiz), “The National Guard will be here soon.”

Don’t wait for this flick to come out on DVD, wait till you see it at a yard sale.

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