Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

The Last Ride

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I honestly can’t remember the last “great” film I’ve watched. Sure there have been a couple standouts this year – Zombieland was entertaining (if a bit shallow), The Hangover was mildly funny (if that sort of thing is your bag), etc. District 9 was, and I seem to be in the minority here, by far the most overrated film of the year. I understand the novel visuals and plot, but honestly it made little sense and the characters were forgettable. Just read any of the thoughtful reviews out there to get the gist of what I’m saying.

Anyway the point here is not to deride the garbage that Hollywood so reliably produces, but to remind you that there are some great movies out there that you may not have heard of. Case in point is “The Last Ride” an Australian made film by director Glendyn Ivin. My wife and I watched this at the Whistler Film Festival this weekend, and we both came away impressed.

More than any movie I remember, The Last Ride has that elusive quality that draws you in and makes you forget you’re watching a movie. The cinematography is maybe the best I’ve ever seen – it’s a gorgeous film. The characters are real, complex and brilliantly developed. This movie makes you feel a wide range of emotions, and even though you might think you know where it’s headed, the tension is masterfully crafted.

We did overhear some comments after the show that it was too dark, too depressing. And to be fair, it is definitely not a “happy ending” kind of movie. That fact will probably relegate it to the film festival section of local video stores - and I’d doubt it will see a wide release. Which is a shame really, because it’s the first really “great” movie I’ve seen in a long time and the first movie that made me feel something more than just regret at wasting the last hour and a half of my life. You should see this movie if you get a chance.

Watch the trailer: http://www.lastridemovie.com/

Posted in Commentary, Movies | No Comments »

Why Google is still #1

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Funny story on TechCrunch today. Seems like Bing’s popularity is on the decline now, just a few days after its launch and short lived run at #2 search engine. Looking at the StatCounter chart, it’s interesting to see how Bing’s big influx of users seemed to have come from (and now apparently returned to) Google.

I say its funny because that’s pretty much what I did… When Bing launched I changed my default search engine from Google because, at first glance, Bing seemed kind of cool. A lot of searches were producing good quality results, sometimes besting Google in what I considrered most relevant. And hey look, it even ranked my Zune on Windows 2003 post #1, versus #4 on Google – so it must be a great search engine, right?! Well it is pretty good…

But here’s the thing… When you’re not using Google, you start to feel like you’re missing out on the “full” internet. It’s almost, in fact, like Google is the internet. It’s nothing new really, I mean the name is synonymous with the web; but truly the scope of what Google knows does seem (even if it is mostly psychological) to be the “definitive guide” to what’s out there. On every search I’d do Bing first and then use Google just to make sure I wasn’t missing out on anything. And since in most cases the Bing results would appear somewhere in the list of Google results, I just usually ended up going from there. So in the end searching Google first and bypassing Bing altogether would be the most efficient workflow.

The difference became especially apparent during the course of my work day where I’d be looking for a lot of more obscure IT/programming topics. The more unpopular the topic, the more Google proved it’s worth. For example I’m doing some PDF work with Ghostscript and encoutering some errors. If I search Google for “ghostscript error codes” I get the official ghostscript documentation page as the first result. That doesn’t even appear on the first page of Bing results – which contain a lot of irrelevant forum topics.

In the end, Bing is still a good tool and no doubt it’ll occupy the second slot on my search list. But if this little experience proves anything, it’s that any new search engine is going to have serious challenges matching Google’s usefulness and grabbing their market share in the long term. It will be interesting to see what happens when the “real” semantic web takes hold, but I have little doubt that Google’s already well ahead of the competition there, too.

Posted in Commentary, Web | 1 Comment »

What’s going on with Starbucks soy lattes?

Friday, February 6th, 2009

A quick Google search turned up nothing – yet something foul is afoot with soy lattes at Starbucks in Canada. The soy milk has changed. And if my hunch is correct, they’re now using the same garbage soy milk that they use in the US in Canadian stores (I was told this by the manager, but I’ve yet to confirm it).

What’s wrong with the US soy milk? It actually contains more than twice the amount of sugar as the “So Good” stuff that Canada was previous getting.  For a grande soy latte, that’s 17g vs only 8g of sugar before. That’s wayyy to much by my standards. If this is in fact what’s going on then Starbucks has definitely lost this customer (I always chose other cafes when I can anyway, but it just so happens that Starbucks is the only thing close to my work).

I suppose it was inevitable, especially now amidst the financial meltdown, that Starbucks would try everything to maximize margins. So, lucky us Canadians, we now get the “made for Starbucks” soy that’s been making Americans fatter for years. Fantastic.

Posted in Commentary | 3 Comments »

Is Vancouver an unfriendly city?

Friday, June 6th, 2008

On the bus on my way to work this morning there was a piece in the “24 Hours” daily in which the reporter asked both men and women how easy it was to meet other people in the city. (I forget the exact wording, but you get the idea.)

Among the small group sampled, the consensus goes something like this: People you meet on the street (and I’m casting a broad, poorly sewn net here) are just generally not that outwardly friendly. In Montreal, according to one woman from the article, strangers you pass on the sidewalk are much more likely to make eye contact and smile. In Vancouver, chances are they’ll look the other way.

Now I don’t know if this is a recent thing or if I’ve only recently noticed it, but I think she’s right. Not only downtown, but in the suburbs too, the more I look for the friendly smile from passer-bys, the harder it is to find. Upon returning from a recent trip to a Midwest US state, the effect was more pronounced. People down there seemed “friendlier” and strangers on the street were at least more likely to acknowledge that you actually existed. (more…)

Posted in Commentary, Lower mainland | 2 Comments »

Shoot first, ask questions later

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Or so seems to be the mentality of the officers who tasered Robert Dziekanski to death at YVR. It’s hard to watch the video (linked from this CBC story) and not be at least a little outraged at the officers who responded that night – unless you’re the police, that is. RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr urges those watching the video to “put what they’ve seen aside for the time being” and to “wait to hear the totality of the evidence at the time of the inquest.” Wait, what? (more…)

Posted in Commentary, Lower mainland | 1 Comment »

TransLink: priorities?

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

In case you haven’t heard, TransLink trip planning is now a part of the Google Transit beta app. It’s the only Canadian transit system partipating so far, no less. Well forgive me for not giving TransLink a big pat on the back. I don’t know how much effort has gone into making their scheduling data available to Google, but as long as we still don’t have a proper tool for accessing transit schedules and other information from mobile devices it’s too much.

Is it unreasonable to want to be able to bring up a page on my web-enabled device – likely a cellphone – and enter a route number and stop number to find out when the next bus will be? Let me answer that as both a developer and a paying customer: no. And yet, customers have been left standing at the curb (literally) when it comes to planning their transit use via mobile device. Some ingenious (and presumably fed-up) users have hacked together their own solutions, but they’re not exactly the most effective ones.

With any kind of luck, the Google Transit system will soon be available to use with the Google Maps for Mobile application. Until then, we’re stuck with the frustrating voice system if we need to look up schedules anywhere but on a PC.

Posted in Commentary, Lower mainland, Mobile technology | 2 Comments »

Just for a change

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

I’ve been building web sites for a long time… Long enough to remember, for example, creating pages for IE 3 with Microsoft’s ActiveX Control Pad. Unless you were a real geek back then, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. If you do, however, you might remember what it felt like to be on the leading edge of (pseudo-)web development, creating some really cool pages that behaved like traditional apps but existed within the confines of IE’s borders. For me, the realization that I could develop powerful apps that could be deployed as easily as uploading a file to a web server was a big revelation and what really drove my interest in web development. Times change, of course, and these days we have more than just two browsers to worry about – not to mention a much larger audience. (more…)

Posted in Commentary, Web development | No Comments »