SuperSatellite

I am an Idiot Child

// April 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Music

I have to admit it. I cannot hide from it, so why try? I am an idiot child. There is no better analogy.  Well, I guess that depending on how you look at it, it’s not really an analogy.  But we’ll pretend it is, to be kind to my ego.  Wait…what was I talking about?

I was looking for something to watch this evening as my seventh season of Deep Space Nine has not yet finished. I figured maybe Joost had added some new stuff that might be worth watching. Aside: if you haven’t checked out Joost, do. It’s basically a free TV service with a whole mess of different channels, some honestly worthwhile (others not). National Geographic has some of their old documentaries on there, which are cool to watch, and you can totally catch up on the last season of The Hills. If I wasn’t so tired right now (why am I actually writing this now?), I’d make a follow up joke about that. I can’t, so now you’ll just have to sit and wonder if I really watched The Hills or not.

Anyway, turns out Guitar World has started their own channel there, which has a bunch of great guitarists just sitting around talking music theory and playing out riffs based on it. Listening to Joe Satrini talk about modes, and watching John Petrucci run sequences just makes me feel like an amateur. Yes, I am one, but they just really drive the point home. I enjoy playing guitar, and I like to think that some day I’ll be a real boy, but simply put, I don’t know jack about music theory.

There was a day when I used to play violin. For six months or so. When I was about 10. Believe it or not, I haven’t retained much of what I learned about music during that time (the fact that the instruments don’t really have much anything in common notwithstanding. No frets on a violin? Insanity I say!), so I just download tabs, and see what I can copy. I’ve improved a lot the past couple years, but I’m not sure how much better I can get if I can’t find more time to devote to learning some actual theory about notes, scales, modes and other terms that I can say, but not use correctly.

You know, playing guitar is like doing math. With letters. And demon calculus. I’ve mastered 2+2 just fine. These guys are talking and string theory and crap.

So, I feel like an idiot child. Maybe I’ll understand it all after a good night’s sleep. I’ll awaken with perfect clarity. But probably not. I need the Matrix.

I know kung fu.

(whoa. Wild Stallions!)

Johnny #5…EXTREME!

// April 4th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // Entertainment, Movies

Here’s some movie news I didn’t really see coming (courtesy of FirstShowing.net, thanks guys!). Apparently the Weinstein Company has bought the rights to the Short Circuit franchise and is planning a remake of the original movie. As a bonus, S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, the original creators, are back on board. All told, this is not a terrible formula for a remake (especially compared to other remakes that have come out of Hollywood recently). It’s actually kind of a comfort to know that the guys who started it are on board; who better to protect an image than the people who made it?

But. There has to be a “but.” See, Short Circuit is one of my personal, all time, favorite 80s movies. It’s up there with Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Wargames, Gremlins, and some others. While a modern Johnny #5 is a neat idea, I’m not sure that it will work. 80s movies in this genre, at least ones not directed by James Cameron and Steven Spielberg, just have an interesting 1980′s campy patina to them. That’s the best way I can describe it I think. In an effort to make a good, high quality film on a relatively low (by today’s standards) budget, movies like this found their own kind of quality. Think about Innerspace, or Batteries Not Included, for instance. They made by the best they could, and without the ability for heavy CG reinforcement, they got a movie that had an almost “believable” feel to it. This was partly because when it came to things like the robot, they really scrounged up parts and made a damn robot. And as far as robots go, they don’t get much cooler than Johnny 5 was. I’d go so far as to say it was the most “emotional” and best “acting” robot Hollywood has ever seen (sorry Terminator).

The original film is about a military robot called Number 5 that runs away from the government after it’s struck by lightning and develops a conscience and a personality. With the help of a young woman, Number 5 tries to evade capture and convince his creator that he has truly become alive. As Peter at SlashFilm points out, Bob Weinstein probably noticed all of the discussion comparing Wall-E and Johnny 5 and thought that they could capitalize on the renewed interest. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s going to help turn this into anything good.

You know, one of the reasons that this remake is a little scary is that movies of this kind simply aren’t made anymore. This quasi-fantasy family film genre. It’s all about Narnia, or Harry Potter, or other high value, CG saturated, gimmick films. There is no “simple” anymore, which is where movies like Short Circuit would fall. And updating it would more than likely destroy what makes it great. You can’t replicate what made movies of that era good, it was simply a function of the environment, time, and technology. One of the tenets of film remaking is that you don’t just replicate it, you have to improve it. But I’m not convinced you can improve it. Like I said, a modernized Johnny 5 is a cool thought, it’s just that in bringing everything else up to speed you will lose everything that made it classic.

Be careful boys. This may not be some super beloved franchise, or one that tops millions of people’s top 10 lists, but I love it. And in the end, that’s all that matters, right?

Advanced kPlaylist

// April 1st, 2008 // 6 Comments » // Music, Scripts, Web

The following information is accurate as of the latest development build of kPlaylist, which is v1.7 rev479 that was released on the 1st of April, 2008. Get the most current version from kPlaylist’s download page. Revisions are issued pretty regularly, while the 1.7 base came out in 2006. I’m really not sure why he uses that kind of setup for versioning.

UPDATE (08.04.02): I just got word that version 1.8 of kPlaylist will be coming out once the current development code is deemed stable. This will be sometime after revision 480. Following that release, they will probably begin making regular development revisions based on the 1.8 code base, similar to what they are doing now on 1.7.

This was surprisingly well timed, given that a year ago I published my little review in which I endorsed a piece of media streaming software called kPlaylist that I selected over a couple others when I was looking for a way to listen to my music when I wasn’t at home. It is by sheer coincidence that I decided now to go back and touch more on that software, giving a slightly more in depth look, and sharing some tricks and one of my tweaks that aren’t so well documented. Feel free to comment below and add your own advice, or correct any mistakes I might make (not that I ever make mistakes, who are we kidding?).

For those that are unfamiliar, kPlaylist is a PHP based script that allows you to store audio and video files on a web server, and output playlists that allow you to stream said files to the computer you are at. This is very handy if you have encoded a lot of CDs, and prefer to listen to them at work or at a friends house, without lugging the discs all over. You could also use it to share podcasts, or to create a band site where people can listen to and download your garage recordings, and anything along those lines. This does require you have access to a web server with ample storage space of course. I prefer to run my own from home, using No-IP.com to attach a domain name to my box on my internet connection. Just be sure you run a firewall, and that you have permission to share what you are with who you are. I won’t discuss the setup side of this. I assume you can set up your own MySQL database and connect to it and upload files and all that jazz. If you can’t, there’s support forums to help you out with that.

kPlaylist runs off one single file in its simplest form. We can refer to the kPlaylist site for a few of the software’s features:

• Supports multiple music sources (drives, directories, nmb, smbfs, nfs, etc)
• Multiuser based, includes automatic sign-up tool and user editor
• Secure and safe, used daily in hundreds of installations worldwide
• Upload, multiple upload, download and multi download support.
• Inbuilt bulletin board to communicate with users
• Randomizer function to find new and popular music and common music between users
• Balance network load with the inbuilt streaming engine during streams and download.
• Supports LAME to re-encode streams on-the-fly (transcoding)
• History of activity, including detailed track use.
• Mail functionality for attaching and sending a music file instantly.
• Easy to get started; automatic upgrade and install.
• International; supports 29 languages
• Runs on all operating systems that support PHP and MySQL.
• Audio support including, but not limited to mp3, ogg, wma, rma, wav, etc.
• Tested with RealPlayer, XMMS, Windows Media Player, iTunes and Winamp.
• Plus much, much more.

So, let’s assume that you get everything set up and running. If so, you probably see something like what we have at the left (granted, I’ve already dug down into an album). If you are running off of the default install you probably notice that my setup looks a little different from yours. I’ve taken advantage some of the features that allow custom theming of kPlaylist. It also supports custom icon packs, so you can really get into how things display. The theme capabilities aren’t necessarily as robust as other applications, but you can still get in enough to have fun with it. Look at the left bar, and click on the button for Admin Control > Settings. This will get you into the settings console where you can start tweaking some of this stuff. Specifically, we want to look at the Customize tab.

That would be this baby right here. First, if you’d like to embed kPlaylist into another app, like a CMS (Content Management System), you can turn off the Include Headers feature. This is useful if you want to integrate it with a community running on something like Drupal, Joomla, e107, or others. Otherwise, leave it on (which you normally will). The External Images path allows you to tell kPlaylist where to find alternative icons that you want to use. This is relative to the install root of kPlaylist. So, if you installed kPlaylist in a folder called /media, then theme/images/ would translate to http://www.yoursite.com/media/themes/images/. The best thing to do is download the default icon pack, and just start changing the ones you want. I do this, and rename the originals with a .bak extension, just in case I ever need to revert. Likewise, the External CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) File path works the same, allowing you to override default colors and layout settings for kPlaylist. Download the original at the link I just mentioned for images, and start tweaking, then upload it (probably near your custom images), and tell it to find it. You can do the same with Javascript and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) frameworks for other options.

In this case, if you use something like Prototype for AJAX functionality, you can enable additional features like the live Last Streams feed in the system. This can keep you apprised, live, of what people are listening too without the need to refresh the page. Hopefully, we’ll see more AJAX functionality like live-edit playlists soon. My fingers are crossed, and tempted to start coding such functionality myself…we’ll see. There’s a lot of room for growth of AJAX functionality in kPlaylist.

If you are anything like me, you’ve noticed that there are some pitfalls to the fact that kPlaylist is just a single file script. This is handy for simple setups, but can make upgrading tedious if you are using a lot of custom settings. This is because most of the more advanced settings are hardcoded into the script, rather than stored in the database (I’d love to see this change soon…). Actually, there’s a clever tool for simplifying upgrades without a lot of work remembering which variables you changed. You can create your own file, call it kpconfig.php, put it in with you kplaylist install, and store all your custom settings there. Then, each time that you upgrade, all your settings are still right there. The standard kPlaylist install will load this file after all the default settings are loaded, overwriting anything that you want customized. Here’s a sample of my kpconfig.php file:

You might notice two things there. One, I’ve opted to enable a Flash based media player (by turning on xspf_enable and setting xspf_url), so that I can play my music right through a web page (if you can’t figure out how to get it to work after setting it up, go into My > Options > Playlist, and set it as XSPF). You can upload any Flash media player that accepts XSPF playlists (Try out Lacy Morrow’s player, or the JW FLV Media Player for instance). kPlaylist recommends the XSPF Web Music Player, but it’s just awfully lightweight for my tastes. That leads me to the second thing you might notice about my config file. I have two variables that aren’t in the original product. This is for a mod that allows me to control the size of my Flash player in the popup window. The variable window_x and window_y let you control the window’s size, but the players themselves don’t always cooperate with that.

My solution takes two steps. First, create the two additional parameters:

Then, look around line 14,651 for the flashhtml() function. I comment it out, and right after it place this modified version:

That allows the player size to be the full size of the window, minus a few pixels padding. So you can have full flexibility with both the player and its skin size.

There’s this thread in the support forums that you can look at for additional modifications as well, such as DNS (Domain Name Service) lookup on user IP addresses, showing the main directory in a scroll box, and a few others. These require a bit more editing, and will make future upgrades more involved though. You’ll find quite a bit of useful information in the forums that isn’t always available in the normal documentation. If you want to get really crazy, the source code is available too at Get Source page.

kPlaylist is getting increasingly more powerful lately. The enabling of XSPF is older, but still newish in general terms. Video support is being improved, there’s now built in zipping of multiple files (with PHP 5.2), virtual directory support, a network server mode, and more on the way. Still, it’s all around the most lightweight and useful streaming media server software that I’ve used. I do, however, think that there’s room for improvement, and I’m playing with the idea of forking the code and starting a new project based off it. If you’re interested in building a team to do that, contact me and we’ll talk.

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse

// March 25th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Entertainment, Television

Generally speaking, I am a big fan of Joss Whedon. Ever since I was introduced to Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV, I was hooked. He just knows his schtick very well, and he’s good at crafting new world’s and groups of people. Compare Firefly to Buffy. Both ensemble casts, but the similarity stops there. He’s very good and careful about trying to have some originality to his work. He’s also one of the few people that I’d consider a real, staple name of television. Though he only has a few credits there, how many other director/producer/creators can you name in televisiondom that you get excited over when they announce a new project? Heck, how many of the leading names in television do you even really know?

New project you say? Yes, I do. Turns out the chatter from before the writers strike has continued ahead nicely on the new show he’s pitching to Fox (collective groan) called Dollhouse. As of now, production should be starting on April 23rd, or so I am reading, and the internet never lies to me. Though the writer’s strike set things back some (production would have started in February), it doesn’t appear that it pushed things back too far. He’s developed it with the help of his lead, Buffy alum Eliza Dushku (Echo). The first seven episodes have been ordered by Fox, and though not necessarily written, they have been pitched, which means the ideas are already spinning into stories. And here’s where the interest builds:

In Dollhouse, Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls” who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They’re then hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies, and occasional good deeds. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed “The Dollhouse”. The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

I watch very little TV, but what I stick to, I enjoy. Jericho, House… Well, that’s really about it anymore. What is getting more exciting is that new noise on the line indicates some other Buffy alums might be getting involved. Whedon has mentioned that he’d generally like the idea of a whole new cast, to avoid looking like he plays favorites or sticks to a core group. He called it “lazy” casting. Let me be one to join in by saying I have no problem with bringing back people. Grab some of the poor folks from Firefly while you’re at it, they all deserve a second chance too. Now that Joss has established himself, I don’t mind seeing chemistry reused that I am familiar with and know works well.

As it stands, here’s some information on the characters you can expect to see (minus Echo):

• ADELLE DEWITT: The fortyish iceberg who runs the Dollhouse where the human Etch-a-Sketches reside.
• PAUL BALLARD: The thirtysomething G-man who is slated to become an offbeat love interest for Dushku’s “impressionableâ€? Echo.
• BOYD LANGTON: Echo’s handler and father figure.
• TOPHER BRINK: The technogeek who enjoys his job as a Doll programmer maybe a little too much.
• SIERRA: The knockout Doll who is as close to a friend as Echo has.
• VICTOR: The distractingly handsome Doll who is called upon to play everyone from Errol Flynn to Robert DeNiro.
• NOVEMBER: The Tracy Turnblad of the Dolls.
• DR. CLAIRE SANDERS: The beautiful older woman with whom Topher is smitten.

So, are you with me on this? Really, I’m just interested in something new from Joss. I can honestly say that I doubt I’d even care what it was about. Yes, I am that biased. You are too, and you know it.

I Am (A Better) Legend

// March 5th, 2008 // 8 Comments » // Entertainment, Movies

Remember that movie I Am Legend that came out over the holidays? Remember how angry I was at it? Obviously there’s no need for me to rehash the pain and suffering that the ending of that movie caused me. It was a good movie through the first half, acceptable in the third quarter, and viciously worthless in the last quarter.

Really, it was a movie that I think would have benefited greatly the closer it stuck to the original plot, modernization not withstanding. It had a great setting, spectacular acting (why wasn’t Will Smith nominated for Best Actor at the Oscar’s?), and a good feel to it (though I question the quality of the vampires’ CG). The framework Matheson provided was perfect. And they screwed it up. End of story.

Well, it turns out there was an alternate ending. Firstshowing.net mentioned it this morning. Turns out, it actually is better (and blog chatter seems to agree with that across the board). Here, watch, and then continue reading:

Better, no? Better, but not as good as it could have been. It still ignores the key point that (spoiler, highlight to read) Neville was the last man on earth. That was the whole friggin’ point. But at least that alternate ending attempted to give the vampires some additional organized creepy feel. In the book, the vampires were much more humanized, and in the end you almost sympathize with them. The movie had none of that. And this alternate dropped that cheesy as all hell ending where the woman and kid find the town full of people, which was about the most cookie cutter, generic, bad Hollywood ending I have ever seen in a movie. It didn’t even feel remotely natural, more like some random producer just thought it’d be fun to screw up the movie.

Too bad they hadn’t gone with this ending in the first place. I am vaguely reminded of the director’s cut of Independence Day, where the theatrical version was better, because what was in the director’s cut was pretty much trash. It’s like that, only backwards. The stuff they left in I Am Legend is all the stuff that would have been better off out. My question is, what happens next? Should I buy the DVD anyway? It’d be nice if you could watch it with the alternate ending instead, as some DVDs do. That’d be okay I guess. I wonder if Warner Bros. pays attention to any of the blog chatter on matters such as this.