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Like every other damn blogger, I’m going to review the Matrix: Reloaded, just because I can. The full review will contain spoilers, so only read the extended entry if you don’t mind them or if you’ve already seen it. If you haven’t seen it, here is my mini-review and commentary just for you.

Don’t listen to all those people saying it doesn’t have the magic of the original. If you take a book, and open it up one third of the way in, and read it until you are two thirds of the way through, it won’t seem very magical. In a story, there is an introduction, where the story is set up, the characters are introduced, etc. Its called the exposition, I believe. Then there is the continuation of the story, then a climax and a denouement. The Matrix trilogy is not a series like the Naked Gun series, or Diehard or anything. Those are essentially movies that are just different films with different stories, they just happen to have the same characters and occasional transparent references to the previous films. The three movies of The Matrix are linked so closely that you can’t watch one without seeing the ones before it. It would make no sense at all (even less than when you actually watch them together). They are actually parts of one huge six hour film, broken into three pieces so that short attention span consumers can take it. Keep that in mind, because it is a critical distinction from many of the ‘sequels’ American cinema often produces. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would be another recent example of the same idea, and the Star Wars movies as well (though their success as creating the interwoven stories is debatable at this point).

But I digress. The second movie is the continuation of the whole story. There is a lot of meat here, and a lot of great movie, but the ‘magic’ isn’t the same, because exposition ended in the first movie. The exposition is where all the great discoveries and revelations come, now we get to the heart of the matter. If each movie was just mystery after mystery, then there wouldn’t be any deep story. It would be easy to just throw curve ball after curve ball and keep everyone in the dark, but it wouldn’t be a good story. Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing ideas, discoveries and mysteries in Reloaded, but they aren’t of the same character as the mysteries from the first movie. This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, its a good thing.

So don’t worry, and go enjoy the movie! My strong recommendation to you is to go watch the first Matrix shortly before seeing the new one. Madalene and I saw The Matrix eight days ago in a theater by our house that was showing it as a midnight movie. Seeing it so recently made me think of the sequel as just a continuation, jumping in right where the last left off, rather than a different movie that was somehow supposed to stand on its own in competition with the first. The Matrix is a movie in three two hour acts, not three separate movies. Remember that, and many of the artistic decisions will make more sense to you.

Also, stick around for the entire credit roll. At the very end, after the credits are done, is a trailer for the final movie in the series, Revolutions. Its a neat thing to see, and a good way to psych up for the next one.

So, if you dare, read on for a more detailed review and thoughts that will contain spoilers. Continue Reading »

This evening’s excitement involves the ripping and burning of DVDs into SVCDs, making some backups, and producing very nice quality films on CD-R. An SVCD is a format very similar to DVD, except on a standard CD. A movie can fit on a single CD at a quality level similar to a rental VHS. Span a movie over 3 or 4 CDs, and it is practically DVD quality. The internet can be a rich source of disk images for these types of videos, and they are easy to make on your home computer as well, using software like forty-two for the Mac, and DVD2SVCD for the PC. Both programs work well, and serve as a controller for many other smaller programs. There are a large number of steps required to go from DVD to SVCD, and those programs do a good job of wrapping all the programs needed for each step into a single interface. Keep in mind though that neither program is fully one-clickable. Depending on what you want to do, you still have to expect to do some learning in order to get things to come out right. I recommend checking out VCDHelp and Doom9, both of which are treasure troves of info. They also have support forums, which, properly utilized, can yield mountains of info.

My most interesting project of the evening is a copy of Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi which I received. This film was imported to the US from Japan by Disney, who did a reasonably good job dubbing and editing it. They then released it as “Spirited Away” which you may remember coming out last year. The film is by Hayao Miyazaki, who also did Mononoke Hime which was another Disney import to the US, released here as “Princess Mononoke”. The copy of “Spirited Away” I got is the original version from Japan.

Unfortunately, this means that the copy of the film I have is entirely in Japanese, which I don’t speak. However, thanks to the wide and wonderful internet, someone took the time to translate the film, and create a subtitle file for the film. The subtitle file includes the subtitles, along with corresponding time codes. Some trickery in the SVCD software, and the disembodied subtitles are attached to their rightful locations on the video.

Why all the trouble, when an English version exists? The simple reason is that dubbed versions of foreign films are almost always inferior to subbed versions. Hired voice actors usually aren’t very good, and make the film sound cheesy. The long answer is that I prefer to view films in the way that the director had originally intended. This means widescreen, not pan ‘n’ scan, original soundtracks, director’s cuts when available, etc. When someone is creating a movie, they have a very intense vision of what they are trying to convey. Each shot, each scene, is carefully laid out like an individual little painting. When some half-rate editor goes and decides how the film should pan back and forth in order to fit a standard 4:3 television so that people can feel like their TV is bigger than it is, that negates all the careful planning that went into each shot. Likewise with the voice actors. When a director chooses his actors, they aren’t just randomly picking yokels off the street, they are picking people they know are right for the character. Having to read some subtitles is a small price to pay to get the vocal impressions that the director originally intended for me to hear. I can’t understand the words, but the emotions and tensions in the voice go across language barriers.

So anyway, I’ll go to great lengths to get an original version with subtitles, as opposed to a dubbed version. However, don’t feel too bad if you watch “Spirited Away” or “Princess Mononoke” and enjoyed the dubbing. Disney, for all their meddling, have access to some pretty skilled voice actors, and produce high quality dubs.

A service everyone needs to check out is the new MusicBrainz. It is a service that identifies music, with a searchable database. In that respect it is very similar to services like FreeDB and Gracenote’s CDDB. However, a fundamental difference is that instead of just generating CD identification numbers, MusicBrainz analyzes the audio of the track and generates a TRM id. This ID number will be the same for a track on a CD, an mp3, an ogg file, a wav file, etc, because it is generated based on acoustic data, not just sector data from a CD track.

The organization is a non-profit, and all their software, server and client side, is GPL. Their entire database is free data as well. This helps alleviate concerns that they will turn evil, like CDDB did when it was acquired by Gracenote.

Currently, MusicBrainz software is rudimentary, but effective. It only exists for Windows at the moment, though the library that handles the actual generation of the TRM is available for unix, and development is in progress for other operating systems. I may attempt to port the library to OS X (I already tried compiling it, and it almost got there, so porting shouldn’t be too hard), and then write some software to go with it, but I’m afraid that I’m not a good enough programmer yet. We’ll see. However, even if I don’t do it, someone surely will. This service could revolutionize media identification, and they are even planning on expanding to video file identification, and more.

The software currently loads up a list of your MP3s, generates TRM ID’s for each song, and checks with the database to see if the song is already there. If so, then the tag information is downloaded, and your file is updated. If not, you are given a method to search the database for songs that have been inputted, but don’t have a TRM yet, and you can link them up. Finally, you can specify the artist, album and track name yourself, and MusicBrainz will create new artist and album entries in its database. You can also import albums from FreeDB. When you are done, you hit the submit button, and all the TRM ids you generated get sent to the server where they are added to the database to help other people identify their music. Then you hit the save button, and all your files get their ID3 tags updated, and optionally renamed.

Another benefit MusicBrainz has over other services of its type, is that the content is user-moderated. Say I go in and find that the track Lunar Cycle by Man With No Name is in the database, but some jerkoff couldn’t spell, and put it in as Luner Cicle. With other services, I just have to live with what it finds, but here, I can submit a change. The change gets added to a list of changes that people vote on. If my change is voted in, the title gets updated. Every user can make moderations, and vote on other moderations. There is a rudimentary karma system in place that rewards people who fix a lot of mistakes.

If you create new albums and songs in the database, they urge you to pay attention to the style rules, which include information on how to capitalize names, how to indicate multiple disc sets, how to indicate collaboration songs, etc. This is to keep the database searchable and consistent.

Right now I’m going through my files, which is quite a mighty undertaking, and updating tags and generating TRM IDs. My taste in music is quite eclectic, so I’ve already had to create about 15 different albums and artists on the database. I’ve taken the time to make sure all the data is accurate and that my entries follow the style rules. Its that kind of quality participation that will help the database for everyone.

Oh, and just so you know, AudioScrobbler and iScrobbler support for TRM IDs and the MusicBrainz server are planned for the future!

I’ve been trying to get these Sony PVM-2530 video monitors working properly, and I’m being met with much resistance. The two I’ve tried (out of four total) have a problem where they intermittently shut themselves off. The control circuitry and sound circuitry stay on, but the tube clicks off. Reviving it only takes shutting it off, and turning it back on. Its very annoying however.

I took one of the monitors over to Billy’s house, and it displayed the same symptoms. So then I brought a different one back to my house, and Billy is letting me borrow a UPS to run it on. So far it hasn’t had the problem, but I’ve only run it for a few hours. Hopefully it doesn’t develop the problem. I’ve already tried numerous things, to no avail. And my nice multimeter just broke, which makes me even less happy. But hey, this third monitor is finally showing some progress, so maybe all will be right with the world. I’d really love to know how to fix the other two though.. Broken monitors pisses me off, especially when they have such a nice picture.

In other news, Madalene is buying 15 VCDs of Spaceghost Coast to Coast episodes! Totally sweet! I also found a few people wanting to trade VCDs, meaning I might be able to get my hands on more Adult Swim cartoons, which are the bomb, as far as cartoons go.

I’m currently sitting up in the projection booth in one of our larger auditoriums. Just a few minutes ago, a presentation started. The presentation is part of a series of high-profile seminars featuring important people in the medical world. 2 minutes before the lecture began, the presenter waltzed in with her Ti-Book. Good taste, I thought. But it became quickly apparent that there was a problem. She didn’t bring her DVI to VGA adapter! The new Ti-Books don’t have a VGA plug on them, only a DVI jack. DVI is superior for its digital as well as analog signals, working great with large, high quality monitors. Unfortunately, there are serious limits set to the length of digital video cables. More than 15 feet, and reflections make the system unworkable. Hence, you rarely see lecture halls set up to accept DVI connections. There are repeaters that can extend the signal, but they are expensive, and difficult to configure properly, hence, analog video is usually used. She didn’t realize this, and began to panic as she realized her Ti-Book wouldn’t work with the system, 2 minutes before the lecture.

I stayed cool as a cucumber. I pulled out my USB zip drive and a 250mb zip disk. I plugged it into the Ti-Book. She began making calls on her cellphone, desperately trying to find someone with an adapter cable. I transfered her file, and moved the zip drive to the laptop I had brought. By the time she was done with her first call, which had turned up nothing, I had her presentation running on a secondary laptop. The seminar started right on time.

I am a file Ninja. Totally Sweet.