I have got nothing original to say, I just noticed a couple different articles in the last few days that provide some interesting new ways to get a lot of processing done fast.  Specifically, the keyword “Mathematica” caught my eye in both articles.  I used mathematica in college some, but not nearly as much as I could have – I really should have used it to implement the neural networks in that CIS class instead of Perl.  

The long and short of it is that Wolfram Research has been making an insanely useful tool for a long time and now anybody with a PC can start using it to do processing previously limited to supercomputers.  Well, the processing power is still confined to supercomputers, but now they are supercomputers you can own, or at least borrow.

Option One: Own A Personal Supercomputer

There’s no video out and it basically just provides local utility processing power when you want it.  It reminds me of One Crazy Summer, when Bobcat and Cusack stick the Corvette into their sailboat and win the race.  Maybe it’s nothing like that, but remember when Bobcat was in that Godzilla constume?  Awesome.

Powerful engines in crappy packages still go zooooooom!

Option Two: Rent Supercomputer Time On The Cloud

This idea presents you with two options inside the application: run locally, or send the data to be processed on The Cloud and return the results to your terminal.  It’s the computer equivalent of saying “Here, you do it!” and dumping your work on someone else – which is precisely why I like it.  It’s no different from the RenderFarm concept or the Microsoft Team Server code compilation idea, but this will scale up towards infinity, which is a nice place to scale to.

This past week, Microsoft released the “New XBox Experience“, which provided a wide range of enhancements to the system.  One of these was streaming video via Netflix for XBox Live ‘Gold’ subscribers with an unlimited Netflix subscription.  I’ve been a Netflix subscriber off and on for a few years now, and already had the Gold subscription to XBL, so I gave it a shot.  The results were so-so.

To get it setup, you need to download a small update for the XBox, and then type the code it gives you into a form on the Netflix webpage.  This was a painless process, the update was only a few MB to download, and the account linking went off without a hitch.  After that, any movies in your ‘Instant Queue’ will show up within the Netflix player on the console, with a UI similiar to the ‘Cover View‘ of iTunes.

After you choose an item to watch, the player attempts to determine your connection speed, buffers for about 15 seconds, and your video starts playing.  You’ve got basic controls during playback – pause, fast forward, rewind, skip back/ahead.  All in all, it is a very simple, painless process.

At first, things seemed to be great.  I queued up one of their HD movie selections, and it played through fine.  After the initial success, I queued up a handful of movies and TV shows.  The selection was fairly limited in my opinion – of the 30 or so movies in my regular queue, only 5 of them were available for instant streaming.  Of those five, two were not able to be streamed to the XBox because of licensing issues with Columbia Tristar, a studio owned by Sony.

My ultimate test of the service came over the weekend, with a marathon of the short lived TV series “Jericho“.  I ran into pretty much the same issue as earlier in the week – watching episodes early in the day was fairly painless, but as day turned into night, my connection suffered and soon I was watching episodes barely above YouTube quality.

Now, this isn’t really the fault of Netflix – it is a problem with the internet connection from the cable company, that they don’t have the infrastructure to support the connection they sell you when the entire neighborhood gets online at night.  The problem with this is that they don’t seem to be that great at figuring out your connection speed from the start.

Early in the evening, each episode would start out at 4 bars (out of 4), and about a minute or two in, the video would freeze, and the Netflix screen would popup saying that the connection speed had changed, it would redo its speed test, then buffer a lower quality video.  As the hours got later this would sometimes happen again partway through an episode, and the quality was downgraded to the YouTube quality version. Eventually it got to the point where it was starting at 3 bars, and partway through would drop down.

The 4 bar quality is pretty good, and the 3 bar quality is acceptable.  Any lower than that and it’s not worth it in my opinion.  I only hung in there because I was already pretty far into the series and wanted to see how things ended, but if I were watching a movie, I would have just cancelled it and waited for the actual DVD to come.

Another HUGE drawback is that there is no way to browse the Netflix library on the XBox – you can only watch the titles that you have already added to your instant queue via your PC.  This isn’t a huge deal if you have a computer close by, but it does add another layer to the service that just seems unecessary.

All in all, if you are already an XBL Gold and Netflix subscriber, this costs you nothing extra and is a nice bonus.  If not then, I don’t feel it is really worth it, given the current title selection, potential bandwidth issues, and the inability to browse titles on the console.  Overall, I think Netflix is a good deal, but if you are really only interested in the streaming video, its probably not worth the $8.99 a month for the cheapest plan that offers unlimited streaming.

Two unrelated and virtually unlinkable stories about female astronauts have been linked, virtually, by yours truly.  Together, they form a grim view of the future.

First there was the diaper astronaut lady.  We don’t need to talk about her, because there’s nothing left to be said.

But now, oh boy, now we’ve got an active duty female astronaut making headlines with her extra-terrestrial faux-pas. 

The conclusion I have come to is that, I’m sorry to say, 2001: A Space Oddysey will not become a reality any time soon.  Sure, it’s already 7-going-on-8 years overdue, but I’m starting to worry that we’ll never see it come to fruition.  You see, you just can’t have floating space monoliths without incredibly creepy space babies.  

It’s a PB&J situation.  Basically a peas-and-carrots arrangement.  

If our Earth Women don’t start playing their A-game in orbit there will be serious consequences.  Such as no space babies, no space colonization, and no interstellar colony ship runs that turn over 3 or 40 generations en route.  

I don’t mean to sound like a chauvinist, but our Space Men can handle their tools, so maybe they should be having our Space Babies.  So, thanks for the effort, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, but next time maybe you should tether your space tools to your space belt and spend a little less time applying your space makeup in the space rear view mirror, am I right fellas?

Ladies, you’ve got a collective reputation to create, and then protect.  If you drop your tools the next little astro-gal is gonna have to pick up twice as many moon rocks to get some “space cred”.  Cosmochicks are hawt, so let’s avoid a space-based analog to the old shipping superstitions.

If the salty ol’ space swabs ban women from our shuttles then we’ll never be able to sustain an interstellar war across the width and breath of a hundred galaxies!

But maybe there’s hope after all.

Has it really been that long?  It boggles the mind.  I feel it only proper to commemorate it on TG.

The election is finally over and now we can move on to… the next election!

Everybody and his baby’s mama is reporting that Sarah Palin will be anointed the GOP Chosen One, and of course President Obama will be the incumbent.  But you can’t vote for them. (more…)

So I am going to try my hand at some sort of review of Fallout 3.  I am going to break it down into two parts, the first being more of an overview of the game mechanics, like skills, stats, perks, and a little bit of background info.  I’ll try to avoid anything about the actual story or game play, leaving that for part two.

(more…)

My cat Celia catches a lot of flack for being “prickly” or “mean” or “a bitch”, but really she’s a sweetie pie.  She’s only sweet to me, and everybody else just picks on her until she totally wigs out and releases her inner Tasmanian devil.  To be clear, she only likes me.  To be fair, she only likes me because I’m awesomer than everyone else.  You’ve read what I write, you know I’m awesome and it’s a quick QED to decree that my cat is an excellent judge of character. (more…)

Chances are good you don’t know much about RocknRolla.  There’s not much to know.  I went to see it because it was written and directed by Guy Ritchie, who directed Lock Stock, Snatch, and just divorced Madonna.  Three thumbs up.  If you liked those 2 movies then you’ll be glad to know that RocknRolla is pretty much more of the same.  

I say “pretty much” more of the same because of one feature: this is a prequel.  I’m not spoiling the movie for you, I’m trying to help you enjoy it.  At the end of the film there’s a plug for a sequel titled The Real RocknRolla.  You need to know this so you don’t expect this flick to be self contained.  It’s got all the witty dialog, violence, and terrific characters seen in Ritchie’s other movies, but half the plot and none of the climax.  

Is it enjoyable?  Hell yes.

It is funny, exciting and cool?  Definitely.

Is it worth $9.00 for a ticket? No.

Should you go see it and pay $9.00?  Please do.

I don’t think it’s worth the price but I’m hoping all Ritchie fans will go see the damned movie so it gets good box office and he can make the sequel.  If he doesn’t make the sequel then this one flat out sucks.  If this one is a prequel to something much more interesting (and it really looks to be) then I need you to pay him so he can make it so I can see it.

Think of it like Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2 and go see the bloody thing.