theMediaman.com

Continuing with the sci-fi movie theme, the Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones teaser trailer will be hitting theatres this Friday. The concept of a “Teaser Trailer” is usually to get the masses psyched up for the event. While the teaser for Phantom Menace didn’t give out much of the plot, it definately gave a lot of eye candy to keep us interested until the full-blown trailer appeared. Odds are good that they’ll show a lot of the scenery from Episode II to prepare us for the inevitable hype.

Good Thing: The trailer is set to debut with Disney/Pixar’s “Monsters, Inc.” on November 2nd and start to spread to other films over time. The teaser for Phantom Menace debuted ahead of the lame and really long “Meet Joe Black“. They were hardly aiming at their target audience that week.

Bad Thing: The second episode’s teaser is set to debut the night of Hwan’s Halloween Party. The problem isn’t even able to be solved by going to an early showing and then heading over to the party afterwards - I have to stick around my apartment “between the hours of five and nine P.M.” for someone to come from Bell and make sure that I have a connection.

Hopefully, Lucasfilm will quickly post the Teaser to the Internet - as movie production companies have been doing a lot of lately. From that I’ll get to watch it over and over and over again. (Is this a sickness?)

Some really cool things I found about on the new Star Trek X: Nemesis movie thanks to IMDB. There’s a plot summary, what I think is Data’s “son”s name - B-9 (Benign - *ugh*), a lunch with Patrick Stewart on the set was auctioned off for over 2000 UK pounds, and Kate Mulgrew will make an appearance as Capt. Katherine Janeway.

There are also some preliminary (and rather horrible) taglines.

Windows XP comes out tomorrow. Let’s read up on some of the wonderful features - shall we?

• New is the extreme anti-piracy protection that adds your name to a Big Brother database in Redmond, and asks you to contact Microsoft (either by phone or automatically through the Internet) if you upgrade, add, or change too many pieces of hardware.
  
• Out of the box, Windows XP will not support MP3 playback. The “Multimedia Enhanced” Operating System will only offer playback through $9.95 downloadable packs from InterVideo, Cyberlink or a host of other third-party developers. The reason has nothing to do with the fact that MP3 is a direct competitor with Microsoft’s own compressed audio format nor the cost of licencing a decent encoder for inclusion. The problem lies in a host of bugs reported during the beta-testing process. This certainly proves that Microsoft is nothing if not creative. First they sabotaged other Operating Systems, then a programming language, then they squashed various competing companies in the applications market. Now they’re setting their sights on eliminating an entire file format. Impressive.
  
• While an MP3 player is not included, a poorly designed DVD player is - as well as a “very rudimentary” firewall for Internet protection. Inadequate, but it mirrors the anti-trust situation when Microsoft added Internet Explorer for free, contributing to the efffective death of Netscape.
  
• Microsoft Spokesman Jim Cullinan said, “If people don’t find those features compelling enough to upgrade, they can keep whatever the heck they want. They’re not forced to upgrade.” — However, new technology like ATA-133 that will allow hard drives over 137 gigabytes will only be supported in Windows XP, not in Windows 2000 or earlier versions. Yeah, 137 GB sounds like a lot, but remember that it was only 1995 when 800 megabytes was “huge” and most computers now are sold with 40 to 60 Gigs under the hood.
  

The Summary: Windows XP seems to continue on Microsofts bold traditions: Fix the bugs we introduced in the previous Operating System, “support new technologies” which serves to add all new bugs, reduce support for products (and file types) that compete directly with Microsoft, and package those competing products at a loss in order to widen the grasp.

Sit back, install, register (or else) and enjoy. It won’t be a scenic trip, but it will be a long one.

The best thing about Hollywood’s current love affair with Kung-Fu is that we get to see some of the most wicked action sequences on the planet on the big screen. Paul and I went to Iron Monkey tonight (awesome US promotional website) after enjoying the “All you can eat $2.99 Pancake Tuesdays” at Golden Griddle.

Thanks to the Wachowski Brothers and the 1999 “The Matrix” series, we have at least another two years before the fad wears out and the final movie of the trilogy is released. (Great quote - “Not even Keanu Reeves could have screwed The Matrix up”) Until then, there is a relatively untapped hoard of films to subtitle and release with very little production cost and high returns…

…I like it!

Looking in the mirror for the twentieth time in the last few days, it’s still strange to see that blonde guy looking back at me. By the time i get used to it I’ll probably be Purple. Then I’ll have a whole new stranger invading my privacy in the bathroom!

I’m an uncle again! Robert Ryo Clark was born in Japan at 4:37 AM local time on October 23. That means that here, in Canada, he was born……. something like…… ummm…. 6:58 PM April 5?!? I’m really bad at figuring out time zones.

Anyway, my middle-namesake (”Robert”, not “Ryo”) was born on the 23rd and we’re just hearing about it now on the 22nd. Can you understand my confusion? He’s only a few hours old now, but I can’t wait to see him. Photos of the newest Clark will be posted here as soon as I get them.

Congratulations, Seiko and John.

My more local sister-in-law, Alison, and “baby Tito” are next…. due mid-December.