Books I Read in 2010

Riding the Metro to work typically affords me 20-30 minutes each way for reading. It’s something I really like about commuting via public transportation. This year was not typical, though, as I spent most of it working from home part-time and looking after the baby. With no commute and no lunch breaks it felt like I didn’t have much time for reading, yet I managed to get through sixteen books.

I think World War Z was probably my favorite of the year, though the Stieg Larssons were a lot of fun. I read the two James Bond books on a short holiday in Florida over the summer and like them quite a lot. Outliers was filled with interesting tidbits but I found Blink to be overrated. Our Sentence is Up required a complete reread of The Invisibles, which took some time but I think I finally have a handle on that series now.

In order by author:

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F/X Porn

What’s the difference between a Hollywood special-effects blockbuster like “Terminator 2” and a hard-core porn film? Very little, claims novelist, essayist and footnote fetishist David Foster Wallace.

—F/X Porn

[As a rule I dislike the use of “(blank) Porn” (e.g. “Torture Porn”) but I’ll let it slide here because this was written over a decade ago and by DFW.]

Home 3-D Is DOA: Majority of U.S. Won’t Buy a 3DTV

[O]nly 3 percent of [American] consumers surveyed said they would definitely buy a 3DTV over the next year, with an additional 3 percent saying they probably will buy one.

—GigaOM

Count me among the 90+% who isn’t interested in 3D TV.

Absolutely Epic 1974 Letter From Cleveland Browns to a Fan | '64 and Counting: Scene's Sports Blog

Predictions for 2020: Comics

In the next decade, younger comics writers and artists will come of age and break into the mainstream publishers. They’ll have grown up reading 90s stories and the Gambit, X-Force, Venom/Carnage era of Marvel will see a resurgence.

Digital will continue to get more popular, but maybe not from DC and Marvel. As big companies they’re naturally more skittish, while Dark Horse and smaller companies will be more creative. The iPad’s screen size and dimensions lends itself more easily to manga-sized comics, so expect to see that slightly smaller form factor catch on with direct-to-digital offerings. In general I don’t see print dying out until digital offers an equally-compelling product, which won’t happen as long as they’re merely shrinking existing art down by 25%.

IBM and the Jeopardy Challenge

IBM and the Jeopardy Challenge (via)

Running iTunes Media on an External Drive

Since cancelling my cable account, I’ve been watching the vast majority of my television over-the-air (recorded on a TiVo), but there are some cable shows I can’t miss (e.g. Mad Men, Futurama, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Doctor Who), so I’ve been buying those from iTunes and watching them on an Apple TV. As a result, I quickly filled up my laptop’s hard drive. I bought a large external drive and moved my iTunes Media folder to it, but there were a few problems. iTunes doesn’t like being launched if the external drive isn’t attached, and if you try to sync an iPhone while the drive isn’t mounted, it’ll think that you have no music in your library and wipe the phone clean. Annoying. Here are the two changes I made to fix this:

1. I connected my iPhone to the computer (with the external drive mounted) and unchecked the box on the summary page in iTunes that makes iTunes automatically launch when that phone is connected. Now it won’t try to sync when it won’t be able to find the media it needs, but I do have to remember to manually press the “sync” button after I plug it in.

2. To keep myself from trying to open iTunes when the drive isn’t attached, I made a simple AppleScript application:

   tell application "iTunes"
       activate
   end tell
   

I saved the script as an application on the external drive, gave it iTunes’s icon and dragged it to my Dock in place of iTunes. If the drive is attached, it’ll speed up and then launch iTunes. If it’s not attached, the Dock won’t be able to find to app, so iTunes won’t load. The result is that I can’t ever accidentally launch iTunes without having the drive with all my files on it mounted.

This problem is likely to get worse as Apple transitions to using only flash memory in its laptops, which is much more expensive in larger storage sizes. Traditional hard drives are just getting to the point where one can fit a terabyte or two into a laptop, which is what you need if you’re going to store video. There’s continuing speculation that Apple will start an iTunes streaming service so that one doesn’t have to store one’s videos locally, but until then, this is the approach I have to use.

The Suits of James Bond

The Suits of James Bond

Classic Doctor Who on Netflix Instant Queue

Here is a great list of all of the classic Doctor Who DVDs that Netflix has in their proper chronological order. Below I’ll list just the ones that you can watch instantly as of today. No guarantee they won’t add more or remove these in the future, of course.

1. The Aztecs
2. The Mind Robber
3. Spearhead from Space
4. The Three Doctors
5. Carnival of Monsters
6. The Green Death
7. The Ark in Space
8. Pyramids of Mars
9. Horror of Fang Rock
10. The Ribos Operation
11. The Pirate Planet
12. The Androids of Tara
13. The Power of Kroll
14. The City of Death
15. The Leisure Hive
16. The Visitation
17. The Caves of Androzani
18. The Curse of Fenric

I don’t know why the DVDs that are available to stream were chosen and not others. Many of the ones I understand to be the essential stories are DVD-only. Of those that can be streamed, all but the Sixth and Eighth Doctors are represented (though Eight only appeared once, anyway).

It should be said that Doctor Who is not a terribly continuity-driven show. There’s no need at all to start at the beginning. The series since 2005 stands alone very nicely, and I certainly recommend starting with the newer series first before going back to watch the older episodes. Season five (the most recent) is a great jumping-on point if you don’t want to go back to season one (though you should!). Here are the newer seasons on Netflix:

1. Season One
2. Season Two
3. Season Three
4. Season Four
5. The Next Doctor
6. Planet of the Dead
7. Waters of Mars
8. The End of Time
9. Season Five

Season five isn’t streaming yet, but it just came out on DVD so there might be a waiting period. There was an almost two-year break between seasons four and five, so the four special episodes (The Next Doctor through The End of Time) fill that gap and are crucial to the development of the Tenth Doctor’s character.

Apple Asked to Pay Up for Network Improvement as Operators Face Data Flood

Apple Asked to Pay Up for Network Improvement as Operators Face Data Flood

I’ve read similar things about cable companies asking Netflix for money. It seems like they want the money to come from the wrong direction. If I’m using too much bandwidth watching movies on Netflix, shouldn’t they charge me, not Netflix?

The Triumph of Intellect and Romance Over Brute Force and Cynicism

Craig Ferguson did a Doctor Who episode a few weeks ago. It started with him looking glum saying that he’d choreographed a dance routine set to the Doctor Who theme music but wasn’t allowed to show it because of right issues. At the time I thought it was a joke, that is, he was saying he’d choreographed this great dance number but really hadn’t. Yesterday the actual footage made its way onto YouTube. You can also watch the whole episode here, or just the opening on CBS’s site. I’m curious to see if CBS rotates the video off its site before it asks YouTube to take its copy down. (via)

This YouTube video of every Doctor Who title sequence is fairly interesting to watch as well. The theme, written in 1963, is one of the first examples of electronic music used on television. I love how each incarnation of the show puts its own spin on the music, and how you can clearly see the era each comes from just by the style of its titles.

Close the Washington Monument

Bruce Schneier:

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there’s no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options, but I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

The whole piece, which he published in New York Daily News, is great. It’s a fact of life that doing practically anything, from eating buttered toast to getting into a car is dangerous, but you gotta leave the house.