November 18, 2010

Bloat

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Q: When do you know your application is becoming a bloated mess?
A: When iTunes starts to offer the names of random iPhone/iPad app developers in its autocompletion feature when editing the artist section of completely unrelated audio files.

Please, please Apple, separate the media and offer a great standalone application for syncing an iDevice and transferring iStore purchases to it.1 Syncing PDF files with an audio player to a telephone is not awesome.

Oh, and while we’re on it. Could you remove the awful modal window that appears when adding tracks to an iTunes library? kthanksbye.

  1. What about iSync? It’s still present on every Mac hard drive ↩

November 17, 2010

Fringe

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Fringe is rapidly becoming one of my favourite new TV shows. I caught up with the first two seasons in the last months and have just finished the last episode (“6995 KHz”) of season 3. The reviews of the show by Scott at Polite Dissent were very entertaining to read during my catching up. He is mostly very critical of the science and medicine in the episodes. And while it’s sad to see a science–fiction show taking rather big liberties with a lot of scientific concepts I choose to ignore the scientific mistakes, because I think it would hamper my enjoyment of watching the show.

The show also restored my faith in the creative skills of J.J. Abrahams and I’m confident Fringe will continue to be awesome as long as Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof stay the hell away from the overall plot arc. That particular duo is of course responsible for the absolute cluster fuck that was Lost Season 6. Although the final season of that series, the finale especially, seemed to resonate pretty well with the American viewers, it sure didn’t do anything for me. Season 5 was of course pretty so-so, especially when it dealt with the absurd love… er… rectangle involving Kate, Juliet, Saywer and Jack, but it was still entertaining though. The meandering Season 6, however, turned out to be a self-absorped affair which, among other things, spent episodes just moving characters from one location to another. It was a rather nonsensical conclusion to seasons of questions and mystery, which all of a sudden didn’t matter at all, the series was always all about the characters — or that’s what Cuse and Lindelof kept telling fans.

Anyway, Fringe has the delightful characteristic the first three seasons of Lost also had: a sense of direction and purpose. The show’s concept and mythology might not be the most original, but as a whole it just works. Fringe started out almost like a 21st century X-Files, but soon started to rely more heavily on the background mythology itself, instead of just serving another monster-of-the-week episode. The quality of the first season was a bit shaky, the first few episodes being a bit hysterical and grating at times. But it has wonderful episodes like “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones” and “The Arrival” as well, which fully embrace the pulpiness of Fringe’s premise and run with it.

Most of the key events in the plot seem to have been preplanned, instead of having been made up ad hoc, or at the start of each season. So having a late second season episode tie into concepts introduced in the beginning of the first season, because they were obviously set up to do so in retrospect, is a joy to watch. Foreshadowing is a great narrative technique and sadly only J. Michael Straczynski managed to pull it consistently on television with Babylon 5.1

The show is consistently great towards the season finales, but started very, very strong in the first few episodes of the third season. The main actors — Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson and John Noble2 are consistently great. Jackson’s character took a little time to fully develop, though. In a lot of the first episodes his main contributions amount to just being skeptical of everything and asking Olivia (Anna Torv) if “she’s still ok” after being shot at or attacked by various sentient genetic deformities. Torv’s character, Olivia, has undergone some radical changes in the third season which is a great thing to watch.3

Hopefully the show’s creators get to fulfil their wish of making six seasons of Fringe. Ratings are down in America, which is never a good thing… For now it’s still airing every thursday on the American Fox network.

  1. A shame Londo Mollari’s hairstyle never came into fashion after it was first introduced. ↩
  2. He of the rather absurd “I’m Denethor and I’m just having a quiet meal, here, fuck the war”-scenes in the third Lord of the Rings movie ↩
  3. It also serves a testament against all the people who claim Anna Torv’s portrayal of Olivia is too cold and emotionless and conveniently arrive to the conclusion that she just can’t act at all. ↩

November 15, 2010

Assassin’s Creed is a whole lot of meh

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The last few days I’ve been playing “Assassin’s Creed 2″. Well, I’m actually yelling at the game most of the time and furiously battering my keyboard. It’s a frustrating game, as was the first instalment in the series. Both are incredibly mediocre games which got a lot of praise when first released, but are actually more hype than substance, just like Grand Theft Auto 4, for example. Sure, the graphics are pretty, the story is relatively engaging (albeit a little too heavy on the clichés and Dan Brown mythology) and the roof acrobatics in famous cities is one of the best things in both games. But in the end both games are a disappointment.

The first game was berated for being to repetitive and a lot of the “assassinations” the protagonist Altaïr could execute were basically a bunch of mini-games strung together. Get to point X, pickpocket 5 people related to target, find target, stalk target, eavesdrop, kill target. Repeat. When not watching the unskippable cutscenes or being engaged in the aforementioned routine, Altaïr could climb monumental buildings of various cities, or annoy the general populace of Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus or, and this is utter brilliance, collect meaningless flags…1

The roof climbing is actually the best part of both “Assassin’s Creed” titles. But the problem with the game is that it never makes you feel clever. The game gives you a set of options — blend in, pickpocket, freerun, groups you can hire, etc. — but you’ll never be able to use them creatively.
For example, one assassination requires you to assault a village and assassinate someone who’s been pestering you for quite some time. It’s a multipart mission with the actual assassination taking place in the “finale”. Your victim stands on top of a tower while fighting ensues below. For some reason the target just decides to stay there and remain immobile for the duration of the event, so you can easily sneak up on him.
So I approached my target carefully and climbed the tower to position myself neatly behind him. “It would be so cool if I could yank him over the parapet.”, I thought. But no, “Assassin’s Creed” doesn’t allow me to perform said action. No, I have to climb on top of the tower and confront the target and his guards directly and engage in a moronic sword-fight using the clumsy duelling controls.
I’m a stealthy assassin, going to great lengths to get to my target via rooftops and getting on top of a friggin’ tower, all behind his back and the game ultimately forces me to jump straight into a group of guards and kill them all first before getting to the moment of cheesy revenge. Wahay!

Compare the above to older games like the Hitman or Thief series. In both games the protagonist has but a fraction of the so-called skills Ezio Auditore has in “Assassin’s Creed 2″. Both Agent 47 and Garrett, from Hitman and Thief respectively, aren’t very athletic or acrobatic, but the skills they do have allow me to be more clever than I’ll ever be in “Assassin’s Creed”.
In Hitman for example, there’s a mission where you need to assassinate a German terrorist — Franz Fuchts — in a hotel. The mission is featured in two Hitman games (the original and “Hitman: Contracts”) and allows you to approach and assassinate your target in several different ways.
You can kill or sedate a bellboy and impersonate him by using his clothes, or check in as a regular guest and make your way through the hotel using a stolen master key. Or you can get more creative and follow Fuchs to a sauna and kill him there by turning up the heat. The Rambo Approach is also an option if you wish to massacre everybody in the hotel to get to your target. The only acrobatics you’ll see Agent 47 perform in that mission is his awesome skill to jump from balcony to balcony. Otherwise, he’s as athletic as a wooden stick. And despite all this the game gives the player a real sense of cleverness and actually manages to convey the thrill of assassination. A feat “Assassin’s Creed” doesn’t seem to get right, even after releasing a second game. But I guess it doesn’t matter, because people buy and play the game anyway.2

Anyway, this forum post by user “post-hype” on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun boards explains the above much better. I’m off to “Fallout: New Vegas”.

  1. I vehemently hate those collection side quests which pop up in almost every newly released game, nowadays. One of the blessed innovations from the console world, which features this joyous mechanic since a guy named Mario searched for his princess in every damned castle of the land. ↩
  2. Even with the incredibly ridiculous DRM which crippled the PC version. ↩

October 29, 2010

Listen Dammit! III: Shapeshifting by Bark Psychosis

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The term “post-rock”, or “post-punk”, must be one of the strangest labels in recent musical theory. Music critic Simon Reynolds coined the term in the mid-nineties and it has since been applied to bands like “Godspeed You Black Emperor!“1, “Mogwai”, “Tortoise” and “Explosions in the Sky” Luckily most music created by most “post-rock” bands isn’t as vacuous as, say, the output of some postmodern philosophers…

The “post-rock” label, used in its most popular meaning, is believed to be first applied by Simon Reynolds in a review of the album “Hex” by a British band called “Bark Psychosis” in 1994.
I discovered post-rock when I listened to “F♯A♯∞” by Godspeed You Black Emperor! just before my very first driving lesson. I hated those driving lessons, which might partly explain why I failed the final exam four times, but loved post-rock from then on. It wasn’t until much later though that I discovered “Bark Psychosis” when they released “///Codename: Dustsucker” in 2004.

“Bark Psychosis” is known for a rather small amount of releases they put out from 1986 and onwards. The aforementioned “Hex” was a big release, as well as the “Scum” single in 1992, but after 1994 the band was relatively silent for almost 10 years before reemerging and releasing “///Codename: Dustsucker”. It’s an incredible atmospheric record and it features, as an added bonus, Lee Harris from “Talk Talk“2 on drums.
One of the standout tracks of the albums is “Shapeshifting” near the end of the album. Why is it such a great track? All because of the chilling electric guitar chords which literally rip through the melancholy groundwork of the six minute piece. The track is also exemplary for the rest of the record, because of its heavy use of distortion, tension between acoustic instruments and electronics and gloomy voice work. In short: great stuff.

  1. Just put the exclamation mark where you want it. ↩
  2. Don’t immediately start humming “Dum Dum Girl” or “It’s a Shame”, but go listen to their very last album “Laughing Stock” instead. ↩

October 22, 2010

The New Ubuntu

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Back in 2008 I switched to Linux (Debian Lenny) and abandoning it for Mac OS X again in early 2009, due to the mess that is fglrx.1 Mac OS X is still my main OS on both my work and home machines, but once in a while I’m still tempted to switch. The efforts of the Ubuntu team are one of the main reasons I’m still considering to go back to Linux.

In 2008, I chose Debian as my OS because of its philosophy and I though I still sympathise with Debian’s Ideology of Free, I would choose Ubuntu as my flavour of Linux next time I decide to switch. Earlier, I also stated my preference for KDE in favour of GNOME, but looking at the releases Ubuntu is churning out, I would happily use GNOME over KDE. In part the ethereal transparency fetish that seems to have gotten a hold of the KDE design team is to blame for this. The fact remains that the KDE 4 Plasma theming support is lacking in some areas. Fine-grained control over colours and fonts isn’t possible at the moment.2 Also, the user interfaces of a lot of the core KDE applications don’t appear to be well designed as opposed. It’s nitpicking on the level of widget and button placement, I know, but considered together with the others things I don’t like about KDE (notifications, limited theming, etc.) I would choose GNOME.3

I believe my critique of GNOME versus KDE 4 is still valid. KDE still has a clearer architecture and overall vision of where its heading. Ubuntu makes up for the muddled nature of GNOME though, by having a clear vision and points of focus with each release. I was delighted to read that Mark Shuttleworth wants to focus more on the visual design of Ubuntu, which has drastically approved with the last few releases. The creation of the new Ubuntu font by Dalton Maag in the latest release (“Maverick Meerkat”) is testament to that as well. It’s as nice interface font with proper anti-aliasing and a world apart from the horrible looking default “Sans” of the olden days. Also, it has much better support for light and dark themes than KDE has. Installation was a breeze, as well as configuring drivers (I only had to activate my proprietary wireless driver). The Ars Technica review of Ubuntu 10.10 is a very nice read if you want to know more.

The only thing I didn’t try was fiddling with the display drivers. The testing machine has an ATI graphics card in it, so if I want to use a dual monitor setup or utilise it for my gaming needs I would need to install the beloved fglrx drivers again… Which is a world of pain. Considering the ease with which my wireless was enabled on Ubuntu I have some hope of experiencing the same joy with activating the fglrx drivers. If it’s as painless as the wireless procedure I just might consider switching again.

  1. Maybe things improved in the meantime, but setting up fglrx and fiddling with the compilation of your own kernel mods wasn’t the most fun thing to do on Debian. It broke X a lot of times as well. ↩
  2. One of the bugs filed in relation to this doesn’t seem to have a lot of support or priority. ↩
  3. KDE might have a more concise framework and architecture, but GNOME has those characteristics on a visual level in comparison to KDE at the moment. ↩

October 15, 2010

Listen Dammit! II: Get Whitey by Frank Zappa

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Frank Zappa - The Yellow Shark Sometimes one piece of music is enough to subsequently appreciate the complete oeuvre of an artist. Take “The Yellow Shark”, for example. It was the last album released by Frank Zappa before his untimely death in 1993. It features transcriptions of various pieces for synclavier and original compositions performed by the Ensemble Modern. The album is a mixture of fan well-known favourites, like “Uncle Meat” and “G-Spot Tornado” and some pieces which are a bit “challenging to the ear”; “Times Beach II”, “Pentagon Afternoon” and “Ruth Is Sleeping” to name a few.

I first got the album when I was 12 or 13 years old and rented a lot of CDs at my local library, which was very small and had a dreadful audio collection.1 Strangely though, they had one CD by Zappa: “The Yellow Shark”, which isn’t his most famous release, but was the most recent at that time. The only reason I took the CD home was because of the enigmatic old man on the cover of the album, and maybe because of the fact his name sounded somewhat like that of a wizard. So in short I choose the album because the guy on the cover looked cool.2 I remember liking the first few tracks and skipping the rest of the album until “G-Spot Tornado”.

I didn’t listen much to the album until I discovered Zappa’s whole oeuvre a few years back. For me, one track on the “The Yellow Shark” symbolises Zappa’s musical practice in quite a neat way. It’s called “Get Whitey” and it’s simply beautiful. Like “Outrage at Valdez” the fragile harmonies barely seem to hold together and come in and out of focus. After a while those typical Zappa chords appear, you can hear them in “Outrage at Valdez” as well, as the meander through the subtle melancholy. They’re quite noticeable when you pay attention around the 3.50 minute mark of “Get Whitey”, when most of the ensemble (piano, brass, percussion) joins in to play an array of chords together.

“Get Whitey” is the reason why I still play the complete “Yellow Shark”. Reaching track 18 always makes me want to turn the volume up.3

  1. The collection consisted mostly of the typical favourites by many of the dinosaurs of the rock and pop genre. ↩
  2. I know, I know, a terrible habit… ↩
  3. “Outrage at Valdez” as well, by the way, which is even more overtly sad compared to “Get Whitey”. Not strange, considering the subject matter. ↩