theMediaman.com

BMW films has started releasing three new films to promote the release of the new Z4. Clive Owen is back as “The Driver”, and John Woo directs the first installment named “Hostage”.

This short film is very John Woo (if that means anything to you). Of course there was the obligitory car-chase scene - which didn’t last nearly long enough in my opinion, but was still thrilling.

Some big differences this time around include a switch from exclusively QuickTime movies to 56k, 100k and 300k streaming versions in RealMedia, Windows Media and QuickTime. The downloadable version is only available in Windows Media, and is about 68 MB large. There’s also a 6 MB downloadable version compressed with PocketPC’s in mind.

While the streaming versions offer DVD-like Director’s Commentary Track, the downloadable version doesn’t. That’s kind of a pisser, since my connection can’t quite maintain a 300kbps stream. As good as Windows Media does at compressing high-quality video, the downloadable version should take advantage of Windows Media’s ability to handle multiple audio tracks - the 100 kbps just ain’t good enough for someone who watches a lot of harddrive-and-CD-based video. *glances at 150 CD collection of downloaded movies and anime series*

Also, there is no subtle hints to an unannounced contest. In the first five films, there were five accompanying films with a phone number and hints to a mystery. Nothing was really said about it unless you actually phoned the numbers. The whole “contest” culminated with people travelling to New York (I think) to meet up with a representative of BMW handing out exclusive DVDs with all five films on it.

This series of films is inferior in a few ways, but still looks like it’ll be fun. At least Bruckheimer isn’t doing one.

The trailer for Wes Craven’s new movie, “They”, is on the Apple Trailers web site.

The premise is a suspence movie where there’s some monster that comes in the dreams of children…

…so much for original ideas from one of the Masters of Horror.

Whoa. I’m a week older and don’t really have anything to show for it.

Last week was a total waste - whether it was at work or at home, I didn’t really accomplish much of anything. Work had very little for me to do, no serious running projects. Much of the week was me bugging people (in and out of my department) and asking if they had any work that could use a couple extra hands. At home, I’ve got to arrange my finances for the month and I never really got around to it. I didn’t even get around to watching the Japanese Ring movies.

Friday, returned a bunch of burned CDs to Hwan’s place and lent him my plentiful collection. I have somewhere between 150-200 discs of downloaded Hollywood movies and Anime series on CD-ROM. I love peer-to-peer, especially since one of the best animes to come out of Japan in the last few years costs about $40-45 per DVD. What a rip-off. Luckily, there’s a solid fan-subbing service out there.

After I returned the discs, Hwan, Simone, Paul and I all braved the horrible rain and drove out to Club Abstract. More details in Hwan’s entry, including our discussion on cannibalism. Well, I didn’t say that we were closer to pigs ‘evolutionarily’(is that a word?). But genetically, we’re similar enough that the medical world keeps using pig parts to test how drugs will work in humans, and as a breeding ground for transplants.

Since pork is “The Other White Meat“, my belief is that we could be yet another. Doing a quick surf on the ‘Net hasn’t yielded any concrete answer - only off-handed comments by non-experts.

Anyway, back at work, my duty this week is to solve the problem of our labeling system. All the information for all media (beta, VHS, DV Cam, CD-ROM, etc.) are all stored in an Excel document. It’s really kind of messy, so I’m seeing if I can fix it by writing an application to open the comma-delimited version text file, and write out a new file properly cleaned. If I get it done, it’ll be the first full-fledged application I’ve written professionally since my days of VBA and Fortran on co-op at Environment Canada in 1996 (gawd, that was a long time ago).

Well, here’s an update just for update’s sake.

Last week, I was abnormally content, given that my computer wasn’t working. I rebooted the machine, but it wouldn’t come back up. Short-version of the story is that I drove all the way down to Lake Shore Ave. Saturday morning to drop it off at the shop where I bought it. I hate that drive, but it’s kind of worth it since they’re one of the only computer shops I trust. Anyway, it turned out to be that the reset button was stuck in.

Apparently, with all the fancy-schmancy computer cases out there now, it’s not uncommon for the reset button to get stuck on the ‘in’ position. As a result, when I try to turn on the computer, it doesn’t do jack… it just keeps resetting faster than the motherboard can recover. I wasn’t even getting that little “beep” or “beep! beep! beep! beep!” that usually accompanies a successful or failed POST.

Frankly, whenever there’s something wrong with a computer for me, it’s either really serious or really simple and easy to miss. All the common stuff can usually be quickly diagnosed and fixed. Even some of the more serious problems can be solved, and I’ve had my share of forehead-slapping, obvious solutions to catch most problems that pop up on anyone’s computer (except my parents’…. but that’s mostly user-related *sigh*)

This was one of those forehead-slapping answers… however, I don’t feel too bad since it would simply never have occured to me. If it was something that I missed (like a loose cable, or I had the mouse and keyboard plugged into each other’s ports instead of the right ones (why does this make a difference?!?) then I would have picked it up. Now that I know not to trust cases, that’s a good lesson learned.

…anyway, I’m going to email PC Canada and ask if they might think about opening a branch in North GTA. They’re probably doing pretty good in Etobicoke, and there’s a lot of competition in the personal computer market in Thornhill and Markham, but I’ve already referred $10,000 of business to them and despite a few problems, I’d recommend them again. The fact is that anywhere you buy a computer, there’s GOING to be a problem. You can’t avoid it. Computer suck, and the place you buy from has to be easy to deal with when that happens.

…oh, and how did I find PC Canada? Syl sent me their online quote form. Sort of like Dell.ca, but with more options and better pricing.

Yay! Geek poetry!

How bad did Netscape have to fsck up to lose the geek crowd? Netscape 4 was so buggy and had no proper support for standardized HTML, they actually managed turn geeks and other anti-MS’ers to Internet Explorer.

In other news, after setting up Toby’s computer last night… and drooling over her 22″ and 19″ monitors… I ran 3Dmark2001:SE to test out her Ti 4200… not the fastest 3D card on the market, but in the same league. I figured that the ultra-fast processor and Mega-Ultra fast RAM would compensate for that. I was right. With no tweaking - she won’t let me overclock it (:< her system topped 10,000 3D Marks... for anyone who doesn't know what that means, imagine your brand new car does 0-60 in 6.2 seconds.... Toby's does 0-60 in 3.1.

fast.