12.21.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:50 am by stickupkid
I saw the brilliant and recently awarded Pan’s Labyrinth at an early preview on Monday this week. While it was nothing like I had expected, it was brilliant, surprisingly touching and visually arresting in a way that seems rarer and rarer these days.
There are some simalarities in tone and setting to Director Guillermo del Toro’s previous film The Devil’s Backbone, which is almost a recommendation in itself, however it takes a different tack in exploring post Civil-war Spain through the concept of fairies and fauns, rather than the ghost-centric Devil’s Backbone. What was particularly impressive to me was what felt like an effortless mastery of the cinematic adage “show, don’t tell” - there were many points from early on that entire characterisations were achieved with little more than a look, a gesture or a word from the characters, which draws the viewer in rapidly and completely. This grounding in storytelling craft is probably what allows the film to then strike off onto wild fantastic tangents without losing momentum or making the audience lose interest in the “real world” story. Truly brilliant stuff, seek it out if it plays in a cinema near you.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:05 am by stickupkid
… interviewing K-Fed.
My favorite quote: “…after 9-11 and Katrina, hasn’t this country suffered enough?”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:01 am by stickupkid
It looks like we have a definitive answer on what it takes to get good customer service out of Apple - digg them. After Apple _lost_ his Macbook Pro, this guy got his story on the Digg frontpage - and shortly afterwards, they’re falling over backwards helping him out.
Contrast this with my experience with no digging, where I haven’t had the use of my Macbook since July, and I’m starting to get very cranky… I bought pretty much as soon as they hit the country (big mistake) and ended up with a service job number and no physical laptop for the next 5-6 months. They’ve even managed to supersede the model (with the Core 2 Duo, natch) in the time it’s taken me to get it fixed.
And notch up another one for awesome customer service and support in Australia - my Nintendo DS Lite just broke last night - stopped charging completely. Nintendo Australia requires me to mail it away to them, at my expense, charges me $25 “appraisal fee” and wants 10 working days to turn around a repair. So at this time of year, I’m looking at February for a fixed unit. Joy to the world, indeed.
So here’s my Christmas wish: a consumer electronics brand that doesn’t take such glee in sodomising it’s customers in Australia.
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12.19.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:59 pm by stickupkid
The experiment that was using Typo as a blogging platform is dead, long live the king.
Finally, the lack of stability coupled with inability to block spam (hooray for zombie botnets) made the switch necessary. Pleased to say it wasn’t too painful (touch wood) and I’ll see how it goes.
(This should explain any interruption in service or otherwise wierdness)
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12.06.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:27 am by stickupkid
Well, many Apple happenings today. The service centre replacing the dead HDD in my Macbook decided to go out of business without warning anyone, so now I’m looking at the new year before getting a functioning unit back.
This being pretty much a final straw, I investigated my consumer rights and kicked off the proceedings to get a refund from Apple - fun part is this will take some months also probably. Hooray for consumer protection.
As an additional kick while down, my backup laptop (a 12″ Powerbook) decided to eat my new Arrested Development season 3 DVD - made a munching noise, then decided that there was no DVD drive connected to the PC anymore. This is of course the Powerbook that has a battery in the famous recall, which I haven’t been able to send back while the other laptop is in the shop! Much woe is me…
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12.04.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:37 pm by stickupkid
Over at the normally good reading at Download Squad, they’ve posted seven rules for web 2.0 startups. Which seems like a good idea, until you get to this cute juxtaposition:
“3. Tell me what it is, not what’s inside: I don’t care whether your service is powered by Ruby on Rails, .NET, AJAX, REST, or Vegemite, so don’t waste another breath on it. Tell me what it does and why I want to use it, and keep the nerdy chest-thumping on your Developers page.”
followed shortly by:
“6. APIs!: Speaking of playing with others: the technical details shouldn’t be on the front page, but they should be there. The gold standard of Web 2.0 is a well-documented interface that lets geeky users and other Web 2.0 developers get at all of your site’s data and roll it into their own desktops, web sites, and services in a variety of ways. Bonus points for nailing the trifecta: XML, JSON, and YAML.”
… so to paraphrase, avoid at all costs talking about the technology, you nerds! On the other hand, I demand APIs based on a random collection of buzzcronyms! (for those wondering, apparently the trifecta requires the use of two (count em) markup languages, XML and YAML. For the life of me, I’m struggling to understand why you would need both)
I think as far as rules for startups go, I would tend to agree with the Kevin Rose argument: paraphrasing, the first step is to build a cool website.
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10.26.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:53 am by stickupkid
37 Signals, creators of Basecamp, Campfire and many other great products (including spinning off the awesome Ruby on Rails) have released their book/method/rant “Getting Real” for free to read online. Totally recommend checking this one out, they have a really good attitude.
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10.15.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:43 am by stickupkid
Google Video has the full documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” up for a limited time - download it here. Definitely worth a look in this age of oil dependence and underpowered hybrid cars…
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10.12.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:02 pm by stickupkid
AppleInsider is reporting that users at the http://macbookrandomshutdown.com site are trying to arrange a class action law suit against Apple over the dreaded Random Shutdown Syndrome. Anyone in the US should definitely contribute to this one, and in the interim I’m going to find out the details of how to arrange a class action in Australia (which of course is harder).
By the way, the Victorian Fair Trade Commission wimped out, dang em.
And further, I’ve now had the blackbook back in service with Apple for about 3 days with no repair forthcoming… not exactly holding my breath.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:40 am by stickupkid
Joystiq is reporting Capcom have closed down Clover Studio, the brilliant authors of the Viewtiful Joe series, Okami (which I hope to get an import copy of soon) and the not-so-brilliant God Hand. Given how much I enjoyed VJ, and how great the reviews for Okami have been, it’s truly a shame that another great studio failed to connect with a commercial audience.
It very much reminds me of the relatively disappointing sales for Shadow of the Colossus, (which is truly brilliant) despite overwhelmingly positive critical reaction. Seems people really don’t buy some of the good games, yet Halo continues to be a huge seller. And don’t forget Madden. Guns and football, people… the end times, they are a’near.
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