Laptop Reviews

I will be having nightmares about faulty laptop hardware for years to come

So for all of June and half of July this year I was in Canada for a really big contract. It was a very intense and taxing (though rewarding!) project that basically tied me up 24/7 for the whole duration, minus the little sleep I could afford, and acquiring food. Unfortunately, during this time, during a very hectic and somewhat dangerous part of the job, my Dell XPS M1730 laptop took a grand fall and cracked open. To its credit, it lasted for 10 more days, which completely saved my butt. During that time it only had minor touchpad problems which required a reboot when they started happening, but then it completely bit the dust on the final day of the project (I coped) due to, I believe, an electrical short somewhere on the motherboard.

The previous laptop I had the pleasure of using for 3 years was a Dell XPS M1710, which I absolutely loved in every way, besides the constant hardware failures and having to get replacement parts sent out each time they occurred. It conveniently bit the dust just before its warranty was up, so I was sent the previously mentioned M1730 by Dell as a replacement, which was unfortunately a refurb[ished], and never worked very well. Because of this it had no warranty, and coupled with the sub-par performance, I decided it was time to consider it totaled when it stopped working, retire it, and get a new laptop.

The new laptop process however ended up taking about 6 weeks to complete due to horrible hardware failures and service. My requirements for a laptop were very specific and there were only about 5 laptops on the market I could find that even fit my specs, which was very disappointing. Within those 6 weeks, I have had the chance to use and review 3 separate laptops, each from different companies, and will be including my positive and negative points about them below (in regard to the many other laptops I’ve used over the years). It can be assumed that anything that is not mentioned is as expected.

• Supplier: Bought from Amazon for ~$1,600. A full refund was issued upon confirmed hardware failure by Amazon (otherwise a restocking fee is applied). It was sent out immediately and received within 1 day.
• Pros:
  • Huge 18.4” monitor
• Cons:
  • The reason I was forced to return it was the monitor went bad in less than a week. The monitor would sometimes turn on after boot or a resolution change, but would always turn back off within 5 seconds. During the short spurts it was on, the colors were way off on half the screen. I did a lot of tests using an external monitor to try and fix the problem, but determined it was an unfixable hardware issue.
  • Media/control buttons were located on the left side of the keyboard. They were touch sensitive buttons that were way too easy to trigger accidentally. Simply relaxing my left hand usually caused it to brush and trigger one of the pseudo-buttons. I had been planning on writing a little utility that required either a double tap, or a prolonged hold, to trigger the keys, but ended up not needing to due to having to return the laptop.
  • The power cord disconnected way too easily. It probably averaged coming out of the power slot about 3 times an hour with little movement of the laptop.
  • It had very bad overheating problems consistently, but especially when playing games. I believe this might have caused the failure of the monitor.
  • The speakers would cause the volume to fluctuate very randomly so music was always distorted as it increased and decreased in volume every few second or so.

• Supplier: Bought from Dell for ~$1,800 including extended 3 year mid-tier warranty and a few hardware upgrades. A full refund was issued upon return. Dell originally lied to me about the amount of time it would take to arrive and I almost canceled the order before it was sent out because of this.
• Pros:
  • The media buttons were in a very unobtrusive place (the best of any laptop I’ve ever had).
  • The laptop was probably half the weight of any other laptop I’ve had of its size, and the power supply was probably about a sixteenth the size of any power supply for same said previous laptops.
• Cons:
  • It’s Dell...
    • Dell has absolutely ABYSMAL phone support. It’s outsourced to India and the “representatives” are completely unknowledgeable and virtually unintelligible. The representatives and managers have absolutely no power to get anything done, and even the managers are now Indian so you can’t even escalate to a comprehensible conversation. The representatives do virtually nothing but read prompts from screens, and for knowledgeable computer users, it’s painful to explain to them you don’t need them to try and diagnose the problem as you already have, but they want to guide you through their script via the phone anyways. During the calls for this laptop I was even told at one point I would have a 2 hour wait time to talk to a manager, and I experienced so many dropped calls I stopped counting. Dell support was the worst in the industry 2 years ago. Since then, it’s gotten twice as bad. I will never use or recommend Dell again to anyone for this reason.
    • Before I gave Dell my credit card number and committed my order, I had been told by the website the laptop would ship immediately and I would have it within 2 days. Immediately after I committed to buying it, the website suddenly told me it would instead take OVER 3 WEEKS for me to receive it. I was flabbergasted, and this was the reason I spent hours with phone support over many days trying to get this fixed. I finally decided to cancel the order and get another laptop on the 6th day, but I guess due to my demands, they actually shipped it right before I was about to call, aborting my attempt. It arrived 8 days after I made the order, which still caused me major problems.
  • The hard drive had major freezing problems, which is what eventually made me return the laptop, as I did not want to have them send me a completely new Chinese assembled one, as it would take forever and most definitely be a refurb. The freezing even occurred during BIOS, and it often took up to 4 minutes to resume from hibernation.
  • The ATI video card was less than optimal compared to the nVidia cards on my other recent laptops. It just wasn’t performing in games.
  • The power cord was ridiculously short, was prone to falling out (not nearly as much as the Toshiba), and had a power led on it that was much too bright (it actually kept me up at night if left on).
  • The speakers were in a horrible spot on the palm rests. Having my wrists in the proper and comfortable position for the keyboard covered them up causing bad distortion and dampening.
  • The touchpad was far too big and had no dead zones in the touchpad driver properties. Because of this and the horrible over sensitivity of the pad, it was very hard to use as it often stopped working when it detected “multiple touches”. Even an apple charger cord barely touching it made it stop working.
  • There was no property key or pause break key (Even via a “Fn” key combo).
  • There was no indicator light for the caps and num locks.
  • Many of the keys started squeaking after a few days.

• Tired of horrible hardware from other companies, I decided to give in and get a MacBook Pro against my better judgment. It has turned out to be the keeper simply because I’m tired of dealing with finding a laptop and I hear they have spectacular technical support including (supposedly) often receiving your laptop back within 3 days of sending it in for hardware replacement!
• Supplier: Bought from Apple for ~$3,100 including extended warranty and a few hardware upgrades whole sale (RIDICULOUSLY expensive). However, I had a 15% friends and family discount through a friend who is an employee of Apple bringing the total down to ~$2,600. There is no way I would have gotten it without the discount, but even with, it was still hideously expensive for what you actually get. I received it within 7 days as I was told.
• Pros:
  • It actually has a 1920x1200 (WUXGA) resolution! Both of my previous Dell’s had this, but the only 2 computers I could find on the market currently with this that fit my specs were the MacBook Pro and an Alienware (which is Dell and also ludicrously expensive). The next step down I was forced to accept on other computers was 1920x1080 (Full HD/FHD/1080p).
  • The magnetic power connector is WONDERFUL. It never falls out!
  • The visible battery meter on the side of the computer is kind of nice, but I doubt I’ll ever use it.
  • I was able to get a matte screen for an extra $50. I HATE (but have always had to deal with) glossy screens because you often can’t see them if the sun is shining on your screen, and they are fingerprint magnets.
  • The time the computer can run off of battery seems pretty amazing. Windows is reporting almost double the amount of battery time as normal laptops, which seems to be accurate, though I have not fully tested this.
• Cons:
  (Most all regarding running in Windows on the MacBook Pro, which is what I pretty much only use it for)
  • The touchpad has virtually no settings and works absolutely horribly in Windows.
    • Some example settings most all other touchpads have, some of which are available for this touchpad in OSX include: sensitivity, dead zones, and scroll zones.
    • The available settings in Windows are: Tap to click, dragging, drag lock, which bottom corner is considered a secondary click, two fingers resemble a secondary tap.
    • The multi-touch nature mixed with the absolute farce that is the Windows drivers for the device is what causes the main problem. There are no separate mouse buttons, and it’s basically unusable to utilize the bottom left and right sides as buttons with all the glitches. I think I might end up trying to write my own drivers for it for Windows soon, and if that doesn’t work, I will attempt finding a mouse buttons peripheral I can plug into via USB.
    • The touchpad will not allow a right (secondary) click while another finger is also touching it, and the secondary click via 2 tapped fingers is very unstable. It also seems right clicking sends a left mouse down event (but not a left mouse up event), which often cancels context menus.
    • For the touchpad to be usable I have to make sure to keep only one finger on it at a time or it gets buggy.
    • I did research on the Apple multitouch touchpad a few nights ago and apparently Apple didn’t really support using the touchpad at all in windows until like 2009, and that was only a token gesture as they just don’t give a shit about the drivers, only making them barely usable to allow advertising Windows compatibility.
  • The keyboard key set is only a subset of a normal keyboard and missing a ton of keys:
    • No number pad (though many laptops do not have one)
    • A few of the missing keys are: Page up, page down, home, end, print screen, insert, delete (only has a backspace labeled as delete). Missing keys are mostly all replaced by “FN” key combos via Boot Camp, though not all of them are listed in the Boot Camp help file.
    • Due to the missing keys and the non standard layout of the Mac keyboard, I used KeyTweak to remap a good number of keys for my purposes. There is also a program available in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools that accomplishes the same task, though with a worse GUI, called Remapkey.exe. Both of these programs just modify a registry value that has windows natively remap the keys. I also had to use a modification of my HalfKey Project for some other key remappings.
    • The “Fn” and “Eject CD” keys are hard wired and can’t be remapped through the above method. This has caused me a lot of annoyance so far as “Fn” and the left “Control” keys are swapped from standard layouts.
  • There is no way in Windows to disable/mute the startup sound when the laptop is turned on (which I find incredibly annoying and embarrassing in public venues). Fortunately, this can be fixed by running the 3rd party StartupSound.prefPane configuration dialog in OSX just once.
  • EFI adds another layer that can be used as a security weak point, invalidating my last security scheme. It didn’t work off the bat anyways as the EFI wouldn’t boot to the USB running GRUB, as I believe GRUB for EFI is required.
  • The keyboard backlight doesn’t work until the OS has loaded making the keyboard unviewable in dark situations. The monitor brightness is also unadjustable until Windows loads, and uses the last brightness set by OSX.
  • There are no drivers for the light sensor in Windows (though I personally don’t care about that).

Droid Impressions and Custom Ringtones

Yay, new Google phone

I finally gave in and got myself a Motorola Droid phone, as I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time, but was reluctant to do so due to some known problems with it. I have been incredibly happy with it, and find it leaps and bounds better than the iPhone platform (and many other smart phones).

Pros (when compared to other phones/platforms on the market):

• It’s on the Verizon network, which, from my experience, has by far the best coverage and quality
• The Android platform keeps things running in the background so you can go in and out of applications freely, as opposed to only being able to run 1 application at a time on the iPhone. This multitasking approach is much better because...
  • This means that applications can continue to run/process in the background for necessary tasks, like periodically talking and receiving data from servers (without push notifications, which aren’t as powerful)
  • Applications, since they remain open, take no extra time to start back up every time you want to go to them
  • Keeping applications open has (as I understand it) next to zero, if not zero, drain on system resources if they are not doing anything in the background
  • If the phone is running out of memory, it will kill an application that is not in use
• I find the touchscreen much more responsive and accurate than the iPhone
• The voice recognition is spectacular (especially useful when combined with GPS/mapping programs)
• It’s not Apple :-) (and it’s Google!)
• It has a physical qwerty keyboard (see Cons)
• The lock screen protection is pretty neat and quick (gesture-like unlocking)
• The platform is open source, which has many powerful advantages for programmers
• Music/books/etc are directly loaded from an SD Card with no need to go through something like iTunes. This can, however, be slow when indexing from the SD card after changes
• Music sorts first by folder and then by album. While this would have been great for me a year or so ago when I got my iTouch, it no longer is as useful as I have already gone through my whole music folder and properly re-tagged everything (and it has actually caused a few bugs in my music organization)
• Free tethering to a computer through PDANet (1 month trial that blocks HTTPS sites afterwards, but I SSL tunnel my connections anyways :-) ). [Edit on 5/25/2010]: Google has just announced Android 2.2 has a new added feature “a portable Wi-Fi hotspot that can be shared with up to 8 devices.”
• Great [5.0 megapixel] camera/video recorder
• Applications can use self signed certificates for distribution. Signed applications prevent tampering (which has both advantages and disadvantages :-) ), and self signing means you can develop for the platform for free

Cons:

• It cannot be on the Internet and a phone call at the same time (Verizon [CDMA] problem). This is especially problematic when tethering
• Even though the system is Linux based, working with the terminal emulator leaves a lot to be desired
  • Most of my standard bash commands [coreutils] are not there
  • Permissions are so tight you can barely do anything without rooting
  • The shell itself is missing a lot of functionality (problems with finding files even though they are in the “path”, bash-type arrow shortcuts [autofill, history], etc)
  • Motorola has seemingly [possibly?] even removed some of the utilities that should have come with the Android platform (they are on the Android emulator at least) like the command line SQLite program
• The physical keyboard is a lot harder to use than my last phone (VX9800, I’ve been using one since 2004), and also leaves a lot to be desired. It’s better than having no keyboard though!
  • Since there is no spacing between the keys, it is very easy to make a mistake
  • The number of keys is very small and not always in typical qwerty layout (for numbers and symbols), so it’s hard to find some characters
  • Some characters (like the pipe | ) are not even listed, and you just have to know how to get to them (alt+shift+comma for the pipe)
• The phone does not let you record call conversations. This seems to be a hardware issue specific to the Droid (and possibly the Nexus One) and not necessarily because of the Android platform. I cannot find any official or confirmable information on the reason. [Edited this bullet on 3/1/2010]
• It’s made to interface with Java when programming, and you don’t have much of a choice with this :-( . However, C/C++ modules can be made that directly interface easily with the Java base.

Anywho, the original intent of this post was not to talk about the Droid itself, but I figured I might as well get that out of the way while I was on the topic :-). The real point was to talk about a problem I ran into and the solution.

I had a lot of trouble finding a way to quickly set a ringtone to many people. As I have many hundreds of contacts in my phone, and I need groups of people set to different ringtones (and sometimes just one individual), it would have taken many hours to accomplish the task of assigning ringtones to these contacts. I found the perfect solution though in an application, not on the market, called JUSTones (also called “Just Tones”). Not only does it allow you to set ringtones for many people at once, but it also lets you set SMS tones for contacts (Yay!), which is not native to the platform.

Unfortunately, it was made for a depreciated version of the Android platform, and did not work on my phone. I have been in communication with the author, and after sending him the solution to my main problem, he has sent me a new working version (with many more fixes for bugs I mentioned too) ^_^. He even refunded my original purchase and told me to not worry about paying for it, which was pretty cool of him. It’s nice to find other software authors as nice and willing to work with you as this :-).

The problem was that the ringtones being set through the program were not actually being set to the contacts. The reason was that ringtone values are now set in 2 separate places in the OS, and only 1 of them was actually being used. I presume the old location of the value was still being set so legacy applications could still read the ringtone for the contact, but not necessarily set it.

The following is the code I sent to him that copies over the values from the old value location to the new one.

//Prepare to read from the old contacts database
Cursor cur=managedQuery(People.CONTENT_URI, new String[] { People.NAME, People.CUSTOM_RINGTONE }, null, null, People.NAME + " ASC"); //Query the old contacts database
cur.moveToFirst(); //Move to the first record of the old contacts database

//Prepare queries to run on new contacts database
ArrayList<ContentProviderOperation> ops = new ArrayList(); //This holds the queries to run
do //Loop over each [old] record of the database
{
	String TheName=String.valueOf(cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(People.NAME))); //Get the name from the old record
	String TheRingtone=cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(People.CUSTOM_RINGTONE)); //Get the ringtone from the old record
	ops.add(ContentProviderOperation.newUpdate(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI) //Prepare a query on the new contacts database
		.withSelection(ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + "=?", new String[]{TheName}) //On any record where the Name = OLD_NAME
		.withValue(ContactsContract.Contacts.CUSTOM_RINGTONE, TheRingtone) //Set Ringtone = OLD_RINGTONE
		.build());
} while (cur.moveToNext());

//Execute the queries on the new contacts database
try
{
	getContentResolver().applyBatch(ContactsContract.AUTHORITY, ops);
} catch(Exception e) { }

Switching To Pidgin

When upgrading takes way too much time (which is always)

I recently (like a week ago) decided to finally upgrade my ancient Trillian install because it had many problems that needed addressing (OTR problems, no plugins for some networks, etc).

I decided to test out the new Trillian (Astra), which I had been waiting to be released for over 3 years. While I was very impressed with it as it is much cleaner, better designed, has a better assortment of options, and seems much more stable than either the previous Trillian or the current version of Pidgin, I still decided not to go with it. I was very unhappy with the fact that it forced you to create an account with them and sign in to it on startup, connecting to their servers for the full time you are using their product. This makes me not want to trust their product, as doing stuff like this can show a trend that generally leads to worse things. They even openly admit to bouncing your IM messages off their servers for different [legitimate] reasons.

So I went with Pidgin instead, and am generally pleased with it. It does most everything I want, and well enough. I was able to configure it and find plugins to do most everything I needed, but there was one major thing missing. Trillian had a script host plugin that allowed executing actions triggered from events. I was very surprised that Pidgin did not have a similar plugin. I contemplated making my own fully fledged one, as it would be a great and useful project to many, but I just don’t think I have the time right now :-\.

This is why I went ahead and made my Status Hot Keys plugin; as it isn’t quite as full fledged and useful as a full scripting host for the community, but it does what I want well enough to fill in my remaining requirements from Pidgin.

Python Pros and Cons

Just another language

I am a bit disappointed in Python after this project for many reasons:

• Windows support is lacking. The PyWin32 helps fill this gap, but it itself is missing many API calls, doesn’t support Unicode (from what I can find), and has next to no documentation (besides samples).
• Starting with Python 2.6, executables are compiled differently and include manifests, which cause some major annoying (and quite undocumented) problems with DLLs that are very unintuitive to fix. I ended up including a manifest and DLL from the “windows/system32” directory in the distribution to fix this.
• Interfacing with (C style) shared objects (Windows DLLs and probably Unix Shared Objects) is clunky, especially when structures are involved.
• Documentation on many of the standard Python modules is very lacking. After having recently learned Perl, and dealing with its wonderful documentation, this is a bit disappointing. I might be missing something through, because Python is supposed to be able to naturally document itself through comments after function headers...
• While inheritance and classes themselves are implemented well, I find the way JavaScript does classes (objects) much easier to work with and more robust. It’s great being able to access any object/class element as both a member “Object.MemberName” or an index “Object['MemberName']”. This also, I think, has a lot to do with the fact that Python is [dynamically] typed, which is wonderful. But from the way the language seems to work (I would need to do more testing), this kind of thing seems like it could easily be implemented. I really just don’t like how lists, dictionaries, and classes are so separated. It’s much more useful how both PHP and JavaScript combine them into one concept.
• Even if the language is dynamically typed to help catch errors more naturally, there are other things in the language that can make errors harder to catch, like how variable lookup is done through the whole function stack instead of just at a global and local level.
• I find the separation of tuples and lists unneeded. Perl does it more naturally, and in one concept, through dereferencing arrays into lists.

There are many great ideas and implementations in the language though that are wonderful to work with including:

• Parameters can be passed, at the same time, through both named parameters and a list of parameters, and can then be retrieved as parameters, lists, and dictionaries.
• Unicode support for [probably] all encodings is natively supported. Strings are very easy to work with, even as ASCII. The best part is Python3 (which I have not tinkered with yet) reportedly improved the implementations even more by separating strings into always-Unicode, and binary data (instead of thinking of it as ASCII).
• As mentioned above, it is a [dynamically] typed language, which is great for larger projects.
• Different number types (floats, ints, unsigned ints, large numbers, etc) work naturally together and extend as they need to. While this gives the language a hit on speed, it does make it very usable.

Sony eBook Readers

Why can you never find a product that has all the features you want!

To start off, Merry XMas ya’ll! (And Happy Holidays, of course! [I’m actually Jewish by heritage for those who don’t know me personally ^_^; ] )

I decided to get an eBook reader as a present for someone for the holidays, so I tried out both the Sony PRS-505 and Sony PRS-700. I decided on the Sony readers for now as they can handle most, if not all, of the main eBook formats. Here are the important things I discovered out about both.

Sony PRS-505

This is a minor upgrade to the first eBook reader that Sony released in September of 2006 (the PRS-500), and costs $300. It works as it should and is advertised, and does everything I’d really want from a basic eBook reader.

Sony PRS-700

This is a major update to Sony’s eBook line, released in September of 2008, and costs $400. The most important new feature to this is the touch screen, which has some major pros and cons.

The main comparison points that I found between the 505 and 700 are as follows.

• I immediately noticed upon comparing the two how much lighter and more reflective the screen is on the 700, making it much harder to read. After some quick research, I found the following here:

  Sony added a touch layer on top of the e-ink display and embedded LED side-lights into the frame that surrounds the display. Clever. But this comes at the expense of contrast and glare, and the Sony Reader PRS-700 looks more like a grayscale notebook screen than an eBook reader. The glare isn’t nearly as bad as the average PDA or gloss notebook display-- it’s on par with matte finish notebook displays.

  As far as I’m concerned, very unfortunately, this makes the product completely worthless as far as an eBook reader. You might as well just use an LCD display instead of an eInk display for the quality and price!
• The touch screen (that comes with a pointer pen too) itself is a spectacular design, and would make the device far better than the 505 if it didn’t ruin the readability of the device. The ability to navigate the device is much easier, quicker, and more intuitive due to the touch screen interface, which also allows for a lot of additional functionality including a virtual keyboard and selecting text.
• The 700 “turns pages” about twice as fast, due to the processor being about twice as powerful.
• The 700 also has many more zoom levels by default, which is a big plus for people who need the eBook devices specifically for bad eyesight. The “Large” zoom level on the 500 just doesn’t always satisfy what is needed in some eBooks, but the XL and XXL on the 700 definitely go that extra step. I was told by a rep at the Sony Style store that there is a way to download larger fonts to the system (possibly through the eBook files themselves), but I have not fully researched into this yet.
• The 700 allows for searching for text now because of the virtual keyboard. I find this to be an incredibly useful feature for a book reader.
• The 700 also allows you to takes notes and make annotations on pages due to the virtual keyboard.
• The 700 has side lights that can be turned on, which is kind of neat, but this is really just an extra luxury.

One unfortunate annoyance of both devices is that you cannot use them while they are plugged into the computer (for charging via the USB interface or uploading new books).

After playing with both, I’d definitely recommend the 505 for now. If they could fix the contrast problem with the 700, it would be perfect and well worth the price.

I’d like to try the Amazon Kindle too, but their stock of it is so far backordered, I don’t feel like dealing with it for the time being. When I checked around the 23^rd of this month, they had a 13 week wait to have the product shipped to you! The Kindle is also, unfortunately, more DRM laden with proprietary formats. This can be bypassed though.

The IPod Touch

And IPhones

So I decided to go over to the evil side recently and get an IPod Touch. I originally wanted to just try it out in The Apple Store, but I just couldn’t find out all I wanted to about it there, and was getting highly annoyed by the completely ignorant sale reps, who couldn’t answer any of my questions anyways, hovering over my shoulder. And, yes, I asked them a few questions and neither they nor their managers had a clue. >:-(

However, all the sales reps I’ve been talking to lately at different stores about the IPod Touch and other electronic products I’ve been interested in buying have been pushing me to just buy them, and return them if I’m not satisfied. This sales tactic is a bit new to me, and I don’t like buying something and returning it needlessly, but they suggest it, so I decided what the heck! I guess it’s assumed most people will buy it and either decide they like it, forget to return it, or are too lazy to return it! So I decided to go to Fry’s to grab one (IPod Touch 2G v2.2) for testing and possibly keeping if I liked it because The Apple Store were really uncool about a lot of things, and also charged a hefty restocking fee on return... jerks. The jury is still out on if I’ll be keeping it or not, but I decided to share some of my findings.

When I talk about the IPod Touch here, I am also talking about the IPhone, because they are basically the exact same product. The IPhone just has the camera and the phone features, but the rest of the software is all the same (they run on the same OS). I also have a few IPhone specific comments below, as a good friend of mine got one for XMas and I helped him out with setting it up and found out a few things about it at the same time. Whenever I refer to the IPod Touch from here on out, I am referring to both IPod Touches and IPhones.

First of all, as is advertised and highly touted, The IPod Touch has style. The design is wonderful, it has a lot of nifty features, and has lots of useful applications in the App Store, many of them free. The product itself is by far better than anything else I’ve tried on the market for music playing and general PDA (personal digital assistant) purposes.

The Blackberrys I’ve tried out at a Verizon store (the Storm and Curve IIRC) weren’t even in the same league as the IPod Touch. I also tried out a G1 (Google phone) at a TMobile store, and initial impressions were not spectacular. However, I can’t make a solid judgment on the G1 because I didn’t spend as much time with it as I could have, as I knew I couldn’t use it anyways. This is because I refuse to switch from the Verizon network because the signal quality and customer support I have received from them are worlds better than what I had ever received from Cingular (now AT&T), AT&T, and Sprint.

Now that I’ve gotten the initial information out of the way including why the IPod Touch is nice; on to all of the problems I’ve found with it.

• Apple has horrible draconian policies regarding what can be put on an IPod Touch. Applications can only (legally) be put on the IPod Touch from the App Store, and Apple specifically regulates what is in the store, only allowing in it what is “best for their interests”. This, of course, includes denying any application in the App Store that “duplicates functionality” of an Apple product. This is bad for many reasons.
  • First and foremost, it’s not Apple’s place (though they argue that it is) to say who can develop and what can be developed for the IPod Touch, as long as it is not malicious in any way.
  • Apply very specifically blocks, quite often, products that would be excellent with great functionality because it “competes” with their generally inferior applications. Of course, one can unlock older IPod Touches, and I’m sure newer ones will be unlockable soon enough, so this problem can be bypassed. When a phone is unlocked, it can be theoretically used on a compatible network (not AT&T), and you can install any application you want to on it for free (as long as you can find it). The legality of this is questionable, but it’s not really risky.
  • This can force developers who have spent their time and effort to build a good product to not be accessible to the market, thereby completely screwing them after the fact. Apple is not specific on what can be put on the store, and is very subjective about the whole matter. Unfortunately, many developers have found themselves in this position after submitting their application to Apple for inclusion in the store.
  • Apple can decide to block a product after it has been released and people have bought it, deleting it from their phones without refund. I believe (but have no proof) that this has already happened when a product “duplicated the functionality” of a new application or feature in an application of theirs that was added after the fact.
• The SMS (texting) interface on the IPhone is horrible. It only allows you to see part of the message that you are typing at any time (40 characters as a hazy guess). This could easily be fixed through a third party application, but Apple blocks any application that has SMS as it is “duplicating” the functionality of something they built. See the above bullet for more information.
• The keyboard correction on the IPod touches leaves much to be desired, and there is no text prediction (suggesting words you are typing).
• The virtual keyboard itself, while far ahead of any other virtual keyboard on a cell phone I have tried as far as usability goes, also leaves a lot to be desired, and can be quite annoying. I did get used to it pretty fast, but mistakes were very often and easily made, and I do not believe one could ever type as fast on a virtual keyboard, like the IPod Touch’s, as a physical keyboard, though I haven’t spent near enough time practicing on it to confirm this. The Google phones (at least the G1) solves this problem with its flip-out keyboard interface.
• No multitasking. Period. The IPod Touch can do a few things at the same time (mainly play music), but 2 applications cannot run at the same time, and trying is against their developer agreement. Apple did this to control the user experience, so that a user doesn’t try running too many things at once, creating a bad user experience on the product from lag, which they would blame on Apple. Granted, the IPod Touch isn’t that powerful and it would be easy to bog down the system if too many things were running, but some things need to continue running in the background, with minimal processor time, to create a good experience.
  One of many examples of this is AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). When you start the application, it signs you on, and it keeps you online AIM until you specifically sign off (or perhaps if you turn off the phone, but I doubt it). This means that if you exit the AIM application after signing on, it shows other people that you are still online and receiving messages, even if you aren’t getting them. When you open the application back up, it retrieves all of the queued messages that were sent to you while the application was not opened. How hard and taxing would it be on the system to pop up a message informing the user a new message has come in while they are in other applications? Apparently too much, as Apple has to be black and white about the multitasking issue instead of allowing developers to petition for the right. Further, this queued AIM message system also tips one off to the fact that ALL AIM messages are sent through their servers to get to your IPod Touch, instead of your system directly connecting to the AIM servers, which is essentially an invasion on your private conversations.
• Crashing. The IPod Touch itself has crashed on me twice within the first 2 hours I used it. When this occurred, I could not even start most all of the applications, even after turning the IPod Touch on and off (all the way, not standby mode). The only way I found to fix this was installing a new application from the App Store, or updating an application that had a new version ready. Go figure.
• The IPhone can only take pictures, and not video. While there are products that allow taking video on the IPhone, they can only be installed by unlocking the phone, as Apple will not allow them on the App Store (see the top bullet for more information).
• No searching for text on the current page in the web browser (Safari). This really bugs me as it is an essential feature I need in my web browser :-(.
• I don’t trust installing Apple applications on my computers. I actually ended up using VMWare to use ITunes for this reason >:-(. ITunes likes embedding itself in your system in lots of places it shouldn’t, much like AOL since version 5.0. I do not believe it uninstalls itself completely either if you try. Also, when I tried uninstalling bonjour (an Apple communication protocol, which the program that runs it is also named, It used to be called Rendezvous) it didn’t even TRY to uninstall itself from my system. It just took the program off of a few lists and left all the files there. Even worse, I noticed that Bonjour was hooking a bunch of other processes it shouldn’t have been *sighs*.
• I’ve saved my biggest complaint for last. All music on the IPod Touches (all IPods actually, and Zunes and Zens too) organize music by the MP3’s ID3 tags into genre/album/artist/etc, and do not allow organizing the music in folder based structures. While for most people this is not a problem, it is a big one for me. This is not a problem for people “new” to the MP3 player scene that buy their music straight from the ITunes Store, as that music is already organized for them with proper tags how they want it. My, and many other peoples collections, that have been being built for well over a decade (from CDs myself or friends have ripped ourselves for the most part), are not all tagged very well, as it never mattered. While I could go through my whole directory and tag everything properly, this would take upwards of hundreds of hours to do, and would be a waste of my time. Even so, I feel being able to organize by directory can be easier to navigate and organize then straight up genre/album/artist listings. This is a very basic functionality of all MP3 players I have had up until this point.
• The above problem is actually solvable by playlist folder structures. Unfortunately, these are only available on some of the IPod types (for example, the Classic and Nano, IIRC) but not on IPod Touches or IPhones :-(. Further, building these nested folder playlist structures is also a minor pain. I started writing a script to do it for my music collection until I realized it didn’t work on my IPod Touch. ITunes transfers each folder to the IPod Touch as a flat playlist of all the songs in the playlists under it, but again, this is not a problem on some of the other IPod Systems. Unfortunately, if I was to spend the money on an IPod, I would like it to be a PDA too with much more functionality, which the IPod Touch satisfies, and the others do not.

As previously mentioned, I might not be keeping the IPod Touch, as I cannot justify the cost of it mainly as an MP3 player while I’ve already had other solutions that are almost as good for a number of years. I was one of the first adopters of MP3 players (of the MP3s on CD variety) back in 1998, I believe, and they still work great. However, I would probably get an IPhone were I able to use it on the Verizon network because it combines all the features I like on the IPod Touch with a phone. I would love to be able to use its excellent web browser (as far as cell phone browsers go) anywhere, not just when an accessible WiFi network was handy. The cost of an IPhone is more proportionate to what I’d like to spend since I’d be getting a phone and a music player out of it. Unfortunately, when unlocked, IPhones (and G1s) cannot work on Verizon, like it can the other networks, because Verizon uses a different kind of technology for its carrier signals (CDMA instead of GSM). Alas :-\.

Oh, yes, one more thing I wanted to mention. Apple was originally turning a blind eye to the unlocking IPhone market because most of them were going oversees to markets untapped by Apple, which is good for business for them. However, when Apple started expanding into other countries and this practice no longer served their needs, they added on a section to the AT&T contract you are forced to sign up for when buying the phone. It basically stipulates that if you cancel the AT&T contract (which incurs a fee after the first 30 days anyways) that you have to return the IPhone too. This way Apple is guaranteeing people can’t use the phone outside of AT&T.

Truecrypt 6.0 fixes

I was too quick to judge

TrueCrypt 6.0 [latest version] came out today, and I was looking at the version history. I mention this because I wrote a post about TrueCrypt 5.0 (3 days after it was released, on February the 5th of this year) and the problems I was having with it. I was not aware that after I submitted the bugs to them, they fixed the 2 important ones I reported (See 5.0a history) 4 days after I wrote the post, which were:

• On computers equipped with certain brands of audio cards, when performing the system encryption pretest or when the system partition/drive is encrypted, the sound card drivers failed to load. This will no longer occur. (Windows Vista/XP/2003)
• It is possible to access mounted TrueCrypt volumes over a network. (Windows)

I am quite impressed that they did this so quickly, and am sad I did not find out until now. They also fixed the other missing feature I reported to them within a month of that [version 5.1]

• Support for hibernation on computers where the system partition is encrypted (previous versions of TrueCrypt prevented the system from hibernating when the system partition was encrypted). (Windows Vista/XP/2008/2003)

Also in the version history [5.1a], this little paragraph made me smile

• [Update 2008-04-02: Although we have not filed any complaint with Microsoft yet, we were contacted (on March 27) by Scott Field, a lead Architect in the Windows Client Operating System Division at Microsoft, who stated that he would like to investigate our requirements and look at possible solutions. We responded on March 31 providing details of the issues and suggested solutions.]

Other very important features they have added for version 6.0 that I am super happy about:

• Hidden operating systems, which is done in a really well way.
• Embedded backup header (located at the end of the volume)
• Up to 20% faster resuming from hibernation when the system partition/drive is encrypted. (As I have always been super frustrated by super slow hibernation resume support on my now abandoned partition encryption software suite, BestCrypt.)
• Multithreading support (Faster parallel processing, yay)

I did some speed tests of hibernation support in XP and got the following numbers: (Results are averages of at least 5 tests, in seconds)

Test Setup	Hibernation	Wakeup
VMWare* w/ no encryption	~5.0	~6.1
VMWare* w/ TrueCrypt 6.0 full drive encryption	~7.5	~11
VMWare* w/ TrueCrypt 6.0 decoy & dummy encryption	~7.3	~13.2
Laptop** w/ no encryption	~12.8	4.8
Laptop** w/ BestCrypt Volume Encryption	~92.1	~16.6
Laptop** w/ TrueCrypt 6.0 full drive encryption	~12.5	~13.9
Laptop** w/ TrueCrypt 6.0 decoy & dummy encryption	-	-

*VMWare was running with 256MB of RAM and 1 virtual CPU on Laptop**. VMWare results were not always stable due to other processes on the host machine, so I terminated the worst offenders
**Laptop is a 2.4ghz Pentium Core Duo with 2GB RAM and 60GB hard drive running at 7200RPM

ANYWAYS... The hidden operating system feature really excited me. Unfortunately, the documentation on it is quite cryptic itself, so I thought I’d try explaining it myself.
TrueCrypt hidden OS diagram taken from http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/hidden-operating-system.php on 7/5/2008 and belongs to TrueCrypt

The decoy (first) partition holds a decoy OS and is accessible from the password prompt (password #3) at bootup. You should not have any sensitive data in it, and can give out the password if need be. TrueCrypt recommends using this decoy OS at least as much as the hidden OS so if someone checks out the decoy they are not suspicious of it. If the perpetrator is suspicious of the decoy due to non use, the size of the partition, or just the fact that you have TrueCrypt installed, you may need to fall back onto the second stage of the security in the below paragraph.

The outer (second) partition holds some decoy files and a hidden volume inside of it. It is accessible by either the decoy or hidden OS by opening the partition through a normal TrueCrypt device mounting (password #1). It is recommended to give out its password only if you have already been forced to mount your decoy OS and the perpetrator suspects a secure partition as is explained in the above paragraph. If any data is written to it after creation, it can destroy information at random within the Hidden OS (see “Partition Sizes” at the bottom).

The hidden partition holds its own OS and is hidden within the outer (second) partition. It is accessible from the password prompt (password #2) at bootup or by mounting the partition from TrueCrypt as a device when the decoy OS is open. The decoy partition/OS is NOT accessible while the hidden OS is open.

Basic installation procedure:

• Create a computer with 2 partitions. The second (outer) partition must be 5% larger than the first (decoy) for a FAT file system, or 110% (2.1x) larger for a NTFS file system (see “Partition Sizes” at the bottom). You might as well make the outer partition FAT since it won’t be used much, if at all, and this won’t affect the hidden partition.
• Install your operating system on the first (decoy) partition with all of your applications and data that are not sensitive.
• Run the TrueCrypt hidden install, this does the following:
  • Asks for outer volume password (Password #1). Creates and formats the second (outer) partition/volume.
  • Lets you copy some “sensitive looking” files to the outer partition. Nothing should ever be changed or added to the outer partition after this, see “Partition Sizes” at the bottom.
  • Asks for hidden volume password (Password #2). The hidden partition is created within the outer partition.
  • Asks for decoy volume password (Password #3).
  • Rescue disk is created
  • All data from the first (decoy) partition is copied to the hidden partition, and then all data from the first (decoy) partition is encrypted.

And finally, things that bugged me, because I like to vent :-) :

• Forced creation of rescue disk on full volume encryption. Having the file is more than enough since it can be copied to other hard drives, but it wanted proof of the rescue disc creation, so I just mounted the ISO to a virtual drive.
• No customized pre-boot screens. This isn’t important really, but I loved my hokie ASCII art ^_^;.
• Partition sizes: The hidden OS partition will be the exact same size as the decoy and the outer partition must be at least 5% larger for FAT and 110% larger for NTFS than the decoy.

Partition sizes:

The hidden OS partition will be the exact size as the decoy partition because they are originally duplicates of each other, including their original partition tables, which include the size of the partition.

The outer (second) partition that holds the hidden partition must be at least 5% larger for FAT and 110% larger for NTFS than the decoy. The reason for this is the file contents tables. NTFS, unfortunately in this case, stores its file table in the middle of the partition. The outer partition’s file table does not, however, affect the hidden partition in any way.

So, for example (these numbers are theoretical, I am not entirely sure if these are correct), if we have a 2GB decoy partition, the outer NTFS partition must be at least 4.2GB and the hidden partition will be 2GB. If we made the outer partition 6GB, then 0-3GB would be writable, 3.0GB-3.6GB would be used for the file table, 3.6GB-4.0GB would be writable, and 4.0GB-6.0GB would be used by the hidden operating system. So, theoretically, you could write 3.4GB to the outer volume before problems started occurring, but I wouldn’t trust NTFS to only write to the beginning of the drive.

Truecrypt 5.0 tribulations

Adopting programs at release is often a bad idea

Just as is the case with windows, where you never install before at least the first service pack is released, so is the case with TrueCrypt, it seems.

TrueCrypt is open source, which is a major plus, and in my opinion, the best solution for encrypting data.  In a nutshell, TrueCrypt allows the creation of encrypted “container files” that when mounted act as a hard drive partition, accessible through a password and/or a key file.  The encryption, security, and speed are all top notch and the program runs completely transparent to the user after volume mounting, so I would highly recommend the program to anyone that has anything at all to hide :-).

It also has some other useful options like the ability to encrypt USB flash cards for opening at other locations without having TrueCrypt installed, and “hidden container files” in which a second hidden volume is contained within the same container, unlockable by a separate password/key file, which is great for plausible deniability.  I have been always been a fan of TrueCrypt since I first found and adopted it years ago, and would highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, TrueCrypt 5.0, which was just released a few days ago, does not yet meet quality standards.  It does all the old stuff it used to of course, and adds some great new features, but the multiple bugs I have found are forcing me to revert to an older version of it, and back to other 3rd party applications I have been using for other types of encryption.

The new feature, which I’ve been looking forward too for ages is pre-boot authentication volume encryption, which basically means encrypting 100% of your hard drive (partition) that contains Windows (or another OS) on it so you only have to put in your password during boot, and EVERYTHING is encrypted and safe, and impossible (by today’s standards) to access before the password is put in.  This is especially important for laptops due to the increased likelihood of it falling into others’ hands through loss or theft.  Unfortunately, full volume encryption has broken 2 things; the ability to put my laptop into hibernation (which was also a problem with other volume encryption programs I’ve tried in the past), and oddly enough, it broke my audio drivers so I have no sound XD.  So, I’m reverting back to BestCrypt Volume Encryption [v1.95.1], which I’ve also been using for quite a while, that does the same thing, but allows hibernation.  My only beefs with it are that it’s closed source, something that isn’t usually a problem in my book, but is for this case [security], and that hibernation is SLOW, probably due to the fact that it can no longer use DMA, due to needing to pass data through the CPU for encryption.  Another, technically not so important, feature TrueCrypt doesn’t include yet that most other volume encryption pre-boot authentication packages include is customized boot password prompt screens.  I’ve included my incredibly dorky screens (for BestCrypt Volume Encryption) below :-D.

The other thing that is broken, oddly enough, forcing me to revert to TrueCrypt 4.3a, is I can’t mount containers over a network anymore through Windows File and Print Sharing :-\.  Ah well, hopefully they’ll get these things fixed soon enough.

My boot password prompt, and no, I will not explain it, except that DarkSide was my previous computer handle a very good number of years ago.


A boot prompt I made for a female friend, weeee, ASCII art ^_^;.


And for reference, the ASCII chart.

Note that when creating a screen for BestCrypt Volume Encryption, the characters 0x08 0x09 0x0A 0x0D are all invalid. The “&” is used to place the password prompt.

One other Volume Encryption I tried, which was just about as good, though I do not recall if it allowed hibernation, was DriveCrypt Plus Pack [v3.90G]. It also allowed bitmaps [pictures] for the boot password prompt screen.

GTO (and other TV series)

When too much of a good thing is a bad thing

I have been a very long time fan of the anime series GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka), though I have only ever owned and seen the first 4 of 10 DVDs.  The series is heavily geared towards adolescent males (shonen) and has its immaturity insecurities, but it’s still a great romantic comedy, with the romantic part paling to the comedy.

So I very recently acquired the rest of the series, and really wish I had just left it off on the forth DVD (19th episode), where the series planning obviously ended. Up to that point, it was very strongly plot driven with character development as the primary outlet.  It then turned into entirely filler content with very loose and unrealistic plot. The series was actually following the manga (comic) plot line through episode 14 when it bypassed it in timeline.  But really, I couldn’t believe how everything past that point was just so much a waste of time.  How people can turn such things of beauty (not necessarily the series visually, but the storyline...) into utter rubbish so quickly always catches me off guard, though I know I should be used to it by now.

Extending series past their originally planned plotline and churning out utter crap is a very common problem among television shows, and especially in anime, as the Japanese have a way of carrying things on for way too long.  Think Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and Power Rangers, but those are just a few examples of Japanese long standing IPs that actually made it to America.  American’s may have a way for milking things for all they are worth for profit, but the Japanese not only have extra profit as a driving force, but also incredibly obsessive fan bases (Otaku) demanding more content.

Some other examples of this I have to mention off the top of my head are:

• Nadia - See previous post for more information
• Kodomo no Omocha (Kodocha), a SUPER girly (Shojo) anime, another of my favorite series, is 100% plot drive excellence.  Up through episode 19, which I believe to be the true ending of Season 1, the multitudes of brilliantly interweaving story arcs are breath taking and moving. From this point, it continued on for another 83 episodes (102 total) of which I have only seen through episode 44. While the general series worthiness seriously degrades at this turning point, it is still a lot of super-hyper-spastic-fun.
• Full Metal Alchemist, yet another of my favorite series, is an actual example of this problem NOT happening, though it has it happen in a different form.  The series has a strong plot driven and well organized vibe that makes me believe the original 51 episodes were all mostly planned out from the start, but a few inconsistencies between beginning and late episodes makes me not entirely sure. The problem comes in the form of the movie, which I felt to be a complete waste of time to watch. I will expand upon this in the future.
• The Simpsons, which really should have ended in season 3, which I like to call “Classic Simpsons”, turned into utter retard-like-babbling rubbish somewhere in seasons 7-10. It was initially a very intriguing show, with witty characters (yes, homer was in a manner quite witty) and plot, but unfortunately, the series degraded by pushing the characters stereotypes way too far and making them boring, repetitive, and predictable, repeating the same basic plots and jokes time and time again.
• And finally, Stargate SG1, which needed to end in Season 7 when the Goa’uld were pretty much defeated, and is still harboring a bastard child known as Stargate Atlantis. While the shows may still have some basic entertainment value, they are still mere husks of their former glory.

Nadia - Secret of the Blue Water

Gainax rules

OK, so I lied last time and am not doing the second half of my medical stuff post like planned, and will save that for later.  I should be posting happy stuff on a supposed-to-be-happy day like today anyways ^_^;.  Most of you out there who have heard of Gainax know of it due to Neon Genesis Evangelion (better known, and hereby referred to, as Eva), their “ground breaking” series released in ‘95-‘96.  I’d have to say this was, and may still be, the most well known good anime series, meaning not including such tripe as Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Digimon, Sailor Moon (which isn’t THAT bad actually...), etc.  It always gave me a bad tremble whenever I mentioned anime to general people and they replied with “oh, you mean (like) Sailor Moon?” But anyways... I should let you know beforehand, most of this post is a history of anime and some interesting info on the anime Nadia.

The TV series Gainax did immediately before Eva, Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, released in ‘89-‘91, is one of, if not my favorite anime series.  You can definitely see the influence it had on Eva too.  Before I talk about Nadia though, a little history about Gainax first.  If anyone is really interested, check out their OVA (Original Video Animation) “Otaku no Video” release in ’91, which is KIND OF an autobiographical parody.  I just picked up a copy for myself with some of the Chanukah/Xmas I received this year ^_^.  Basically, Gainax is made up of a bunch of otaku.  So these anime otaku in the mid ‘80s were of the mindset of “man, we can do better than all the shit that’s coming out”, so they started their own “amateur” company of fervent obsessed fans, and revolutionized the industry with their brilliance.  A good chunk of what they do is worth a watch, though I am not quite a fan of all their stuff, it all has its own fun nuances and radiance to it that can only be found by people that truly love what they are doing.

So, back to Nadia.  I’d rather not really go into the story because I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone that may choose to watch it, but it is heavily based around Jules Verne’s works, most specifically around Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the exploits of Captain Nemo, though with the usual crazy Japanese anime twist.  It takes place in 1889-1890 and has a very steam punk feel to it.  Disney’s 2001 Atlantis: The Lost Empire is actually quite a blatant rip of Nadia too, and not even an iota as worth it, IMO.  I have also heard The Lion King was a pretty blatant rip of Kimba the White Lion, an anime from the mid 1960s.  I cannot personally confirm this however, and can’t complain much as The Lion King is one of my two favorite Disney movies, along with Aladdin.  But um... back to the topic on hand... darn tangents!!  Nadia weaves many different genres very excellently into its story including science fiction, adventure, mystery, comedy, and a hint of romance, but maintains its silly mood throughout, even when dealing with clichéd “difficult” topics like killing, death, and general genocide :-).  The main characters are Nadia and Jean, an engineering genius Frenchman, who are excellent foils for each other.  One example is how Nadia is one of those “dear god how can you possibly even think about eating a dead animal” vegetarians, which Jean just can’t comprehend “what are you talking about, it’s meat”.  And then you bring in the well-mannered 4 year old Marie who is always complaining about how immature/ill mannered the adults are... it’s just a very fun series with a lot of memorable and lovable characters.

So after finishing the ~40 episodes over a week, I went and checked the Wikipedia article on it and found some very fascinating facts, namely tying in Miyazaki with the series, which was a shocker too me.  Hayao Miyazaki is by far my most respected (anime?) director, I believe.  Most people would know of his works under the anime studio Studio Ghibli, though he doesn’t only do stuff for them, and they have other directors too, but Ghibli and Miyazaki are generally pretty synonymous.  I have multiple other topics written down on Miyazaki that I will talk about later, and will post a good list of Miyazaki/Ghibli titles I made a while ago as soon as I can find it.  Anyways, some of the more interesting trivia notes I stole from Wikipedia are as follows:

• This show’s origins date back to the mid-1970s when Hayao Miyazaki was hired by Japanese movie giant Toho to develop ideas for television series. One of these concepts was "Around the World Under the Sea", (adapted from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), in which two orphan children pursued by villains team up with Captain Nemo and the Nautilus. It was never produced, but Toho retained the rights for the story outline. This explains why Anime fans often liken Nadia to a Miyazaki production; the animator reused elements from his original concept in later projects of his, notably the Sci-Fi series Future Boy Conan and his action-adventure film Castle in the Sky.
• Approximately ten years later, Gainax was appointed by Toho in 1989 to produce a TV series which would be broadcast on the Japanese educational network NHK. Miyazaki’s outline for "Around the World Under the Sea" was the one which captivated Gainax the most. Under the direction of Hideaki Anno, the animation studio took the central story and setup Miyazaki had developed and touched it up with their own creativity. (incidentally, Anno had previously worked for Miyazaki as an animator on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.)
• Nadia showed up on the Japanese Animage polls as favorite Anime heroine, dethroning the then top champion, Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa.
• Nadia was originally intended to have an estimated 30 episodes. Since the show was so popular in Japan, however, NHK requested Gainax to produce more episodes, extending the episode count to 39. These episodes, dubbed as the "infamous island episodes" (which begin on Episode 23 and conclude on Episode 34), took hits for poor animation (since, as mentioned, other animation studios in Japan and Korea produced these episodes), ill-conceived plotting, and character stupidities; consequently, they drove many fans away. Only by Episodes 35-39 does the show return to its initial roots wherein lies its appeal. The setting of these episodes was suggested by Jules Verne’s other novel featuring Captain Nemo, Mysterious Island.
• According to the notes found in the DVD sleeve of the Italian edition, the true reason behind the difference between the "infamous island episodes" and the rest of the series, would be that production was late on schedule. Starting with episode 11, Anno was working up to 18 hours a day on the series, and yet he was unable to cope with the screenplay, which was then handed to the storyboard team. After episode 20 (aired September 21, 1990), NHK put Nadia on hold to make space for news coverage on the Gulf War: the series returned about a month later with episode 21 (aired on October 26th). Nonetheless production was still late, and Anno asked friend and Gainax co-founder Shinji Higuchi to take over the direction of the series, while he was going to focus on the ending. According to the same source, Anno would have stated that episodes 30 and 31 were the only he would have saved among the Island Chapter ones, while episode 34 was entirely scrapped and replaced by edited sequences of previous episodes.
• At the start of each episode, a Japanese inscription appears on screen (written in the Latin alphabet) and is read by a man’s voice challenging the viewer to follow him for an adventure. "Are you adventurers? Do you seek the truth behind the mythical being that lies beneath the blue waterfalls named The Perilous. If you are, then you must first find me." This derives from the perplexing challenge of Arne Saknussemm in Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
• The series contains numerous nods to other Japanese television series, as is to be expected in a series by Gainax, which is famously comprised of "otaku" (fervent anime fans). Ostensibly, the Grandis Gang are modeled after the villains from Tatsunoko’s Time Bokan series, and M78, the home system of the Atlanteans, is also the home of Tsuburaya’s Ultraman.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, authors Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach state that the superconducting crystals used in Starfleet phasers are called fushigi no umi. Sternbach is a noted fan of anime.

One of the most important notes here is the forth and fifth bullets talking about the “infamous island episodes”.  While they are still in the general Nadia style, and are fun, they have their downsides.  I would personally even recommend skipping at least one and a half of these episodes, due to them being so worthless. They are:

• A large chunk of #26 “King’s on his Own” - After Jean gets knocked out after a terribly silly Wile E. Coyote falling gag homage and he dreams of inventing 21st century technologies.
• Most, if not all, of #34 “Love to Nadia”, which is a “singing recap” episode.  What I remember of the songs are especially atrocious.

On that note, the movie really isn’t worth watching at all either.  Especially the first 1/3 (30 minutes) of the movie, as it is nothing but a recap of the series.

Oh, also, the original title was translated as “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”.

Eragon

How to destroy movie from novel adaptations

I read through Eragon and Eldest, the first two books of the Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini, a while back, and was very happy with the novels, mainly for the relationship between the two protagonists, Eragon and his dragon Saphira.  The fantasy novels brought in a bunch of new possibilities of fun with dragon lore and their abilities, a topic which has, to my knowledge, never really been elaborated or expanded on in the past to this kind of extent, though I have heard the lores in these books bears a large resemblance to a novel called Dragonriders of Pern.  I would recommend the Inheritance Cycle to anyone looking for a fun, though not necessarily quick, fantasy read.  The series was originally supposed to be three novels, but as of a few months ago it was announced that it would be four.  The third book should be coming out in September of next year, which I am waiting in anticipation for, though nowhere near the level of excitement as any of the Harry Potter books brought me.

The reason for this post though is to actually rant about the movie adaptation.  One pet peeve of mine is people that say movies or TV shows are horrible without ever having given them a viewing, let alone a chance.  I am the kind of person that will usually sit through anything, no matter how bad I feel it is, just so I can talk to people about it afterwards and be able to validly say why I did or did not enjoy it.  This, however, did not apply to the Eragon movie.  I was retching after about three minutes and think I got through five to ten minutes before I was so thoroughly disgusted I had to stop and just fast forward through the rest to see different parts I was curious about.  Which was a mistake as the rest was even worse than the beginning.  It was that bad.  The movie was very obviously a ploy by the studios to milk in some money by throwing out a half baked fantasy movie trying to parallel Lord of the Rings in style.  I honestly don’t know how it got as far as it did.

I went to do some research and found out the director, Stefen Fangmeier, who had mainly been a visual effects guy in the industry, had no prior experience as a primary director, and only one as a secondary director, and was about as suited to the job as Bush Jr. would be to playing Jeopardy.  What’s even worse is who wrote the screenplay, Peter Buchman, who’s only previous screenplay work had been... get this... Jurassic Park 3.  I’m not even going to go there.

I really have to wonder how the hell those 2 got ahold of the license to make the movie.  The book was, after all, a New York Times #1 seller.  The publishers must have really dropped the ball on this one, or maybe Paolini, being pretty much still a kid by the time he finished the first novel (19), somehow got taken advantage of.  I just find the situation to be horribly sad.

It probably didn’t help that I didn’t expect much at all from the movie as I had heard about its huge flop after opening, with many dedicated fans of the novels walking out of the theater in tears of disappointment.

On another slightly-related note, it has been rumored as of today that it is now official that Peter Jackson will be producing 2 Hobbit movies.  We shall see, but I would be very happy if it was true.  I thought Jackson did the best possible job that could have been done on the movies.  I only had one major complaint, in that Gimli was really given a short end of the stick throughout them, though at least they picked John-Rhys who was perfect for the part.  Gimli was one of my favorite characters in the novels, and they substituted any of his glory to his pretty-boy counterpart elf, Legolas.  I also had a few minor quibbles with it, including some scenes I had wished to have seen (ie Bombadil), but were left out for obvious reasons, and that they changed around bits of the story so some actors would get more screen time and they wouldn’t have to introduce others, like Arwen stealing roles of multiple other elves.  Alas.  The thing I liked most about them was how well the CG was integrated with the live action shooting.  I still consider it the best job done integrating CG into a movie I’ve seen; so well that you can no longer tell that it’s clearly computer generated.