varunnangia.com

Halo 3 comes out the same day as the first episode of House‘s fourth season. What a conflict! Let’s hope I’m mostly done with the campaign by 8pm, then.

Lifehacker has an interesting post (and poll) up on whether you have a desktop or a laptop, and what you’re likely to get next.

Me?

I have both. But if I were going to get a machine at this stage I would definitely get a desktop – and not just any desktop! There is a huge appeal about laptops and all-in-one computers, like the Sony Vaio LS/LT series and the Apple iMac, but at the end of the day, what I think I lack most is graphics power and I want that to be upgradeable. Were there every to be some sort of agreed standard that allowed for a decent upgrade path for laptop graphics cards, I’d be all over that – not least because of the convenience of “just one cord”. But there isn’t – and it’s frustrating. For example, thanks to the beauty and simplicity of wireless internet, I’m sitting typing this from my balcony. I could as easily be sitting at a table doing this, but it’s cooler outside than in and there is a certain charm about sitting on your balcony, typing up stuff. But if I had to play a game, I’d have to go sit at my desk, because the pathetic video card in this can’t run a three year old RTS properly at full resolution and with the settings turned up.

If you didn’t already know it – data restricting mandates suck. And standards that implement DRM as a mandatory “feature” suck even more. Let’s take Super Audio CDs for example. These so-called SACDs are basically a hybrid CD-DVD disc that have a standard CD audio portion and a “high-quality” DVD audio track. Now because there is this institutional fear that Sony has that “its” precious music is going to be stolen in digital form, the whole thing is locked down so that SACDs will never play the high-quality DVD audio track back except if the whole thing is encrypted from playback to speakers, where it is converted back into analog form for human ears (much, I’m sure, the chagrin of the people who write up DRM schemes). Thing is, they standardized on allowing SACD audio over HDMI – so theoretically, everything _should_ play back using HDMI 1.3. Every device in the chain here is HDMI 1.3-compliant.

But nothing plays.

Why?

Not the faintest clue. But the fact that HDMI is such a strictly locked down standard and SACD is an equally locked down (and not compatible!) standard probably has a lot to do with it.

Of course, most people who were that annoyed and motivated by this development sufficiently would go and now Bittorrent the disc from people who have already ripped the SACD. Thus, DRM has no legitimate purpose: it annoys end-consumers like myself who want to just listen to my Mozart SACD, and adds a day’s challenge to those who are going to break into the system anyway.

So, should I return the disc to the store or download it from Bittorrent? Seems to me that I already have my license (i.e.: the SACD) and I personally am not breaking the encryption on it, thus the Draconian Measures Compelling Act does not apply to me, especially if Bittorrent is blocked from uploading. Or perhaps I should vote with my money and return the thing so that the asinine bastards who implemented the SACD standard don’t get their money from it. I’m beginning to lean towards depriving them of their money…

(Written, of course, from a computer that’s running Windows – I should add, so I guess that makes me at least somewhat of a hypocrite compared to say Richard Stallman… what can you do?)

This is kind of like Widsets! It’s a little hard to use on my N80 because the N80 lacks the RAM to do it, but I can see these sorts of “mini-apps” becoming useful background things on something with more RAM. It’s like TSRs all over again!

This is outdated. Go over here for the new one!

Let me be the first to say that I’m new to opera. New as in, La Bohème (“World’s Most Popular”) was my fifth opera in a theatre. Ever. But in that time, and with the help of certain friends, I’ve become a little more… sure of what I like and don’t like. So let this serve as my review of it.

I was tempted to review this opera in the style of Zero Punctuation‘s review of video games, but since (a) I cannot draw – no not even little stick figures; and, (b) I cannot speak fast, I must rely entirely on my quick wit and sarcasm to get me through the day.

I got to see La Bohème at Washington National Opera‘s opening night on 15 September. So the first thing I learnt was that (a) “Hail to the Chief” is not the tune of the American National Anthem; and (b) “The Anacreon in Heaven” is. This fact has eluded me in the past five years that I have been in the U.S. because I assumed the national anthem is played whenever the president walks in. (That Is How It Works In The Rest Of The World.) Thus I was more confused than anything else when everyone stood up for the national anthem and started singing the American national anthem to a tune I recognized more from Betelgeusean death song than for any other reason. Well. A useful discovery.

Right, so let’s get the good things out of the way. Vittorio Grigolo was an inspired choice for Rodolfo. Beautifully lucid, clear and well enunciated, he could be heard over the orchestra in every moment of the opera, and projected clearly and sharply. Possibly for the first time since I have ever heard an operatic piece, I was able to actually make out the words most of the time. Adriana Damato did well as Mimi, particularly after the intermission. Prior to the intermission, it was nearly impossible to hear her over the orchestra, a frustrating experience all around, since she was by far and away the best actor on stage. The rest of the cast was generally undistinguished – but Trevor Scheunemann truly had a large voice as Schaunard (albeit without the fine enunciation of Vittorio Grigolo). A round of applause too for the sofa, since it may have been the most beloved of inanimate objects on stage.

Incredible, too, was the lighting, which did truly captured onstage emotion. In particular, the lighting at the beginning of the Act 3, where Mimi is sitting on cartons truly captured the despair she was in and contrasted it with the light humour and general indifference of the rest of the world. Fantastic.

Right. That’s it. Unfortunately, my companion for the evening took one of the best lines one could use to describe La Bohème – to paraphrase Amadeus, “What can one say but… Puccini?” La Bohème is not my favourite opera (that would be Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, I’m sure to the annoyance of aforementioned friend), but it is a great story. The problem with La Bohème for me is that it’s like they let George Lucas write – where an “I know” would have sufficed, we got “But I love you more!” Whether it’s Autumn in New York, or Kal Ho Na Ho, this story has been told thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of time in some form or another. Thus, we know it has staying power and that is my thesis for why such sappy music continues to be the world’s most popular opera. Ack!!

Now, about this staging. I know what they say about La Bohème usually turning into a parking and barking lot for tenors and sopranos and I must appreciate that there was movement and overacting on stage. But there was the stage. Fortunately it was not as bad as WNO’s production of Jenůfa with a raked stage – but in other regards the stage did look quite recycled from that production. Must every “modern” opera staging look like it was (a) designed after a through examination of West Side Story‘s stage; and (b) made primarily of from roofs of decommissioned Wal-Mart stores? I understand the appeal of industrial washboard in terms of money saved, time reduced and environmental efficiency – but does it have to look quite that bad all the time?

I similarly must pan the bad mid-1990s music video-like camera effects. Quite aside from being difficult to see at an angle (more on that shortly), it became a source of secondary action that distracted from (and not reinforced) the primary action around the onstage singers. It was also distracting to have the screen moving up and down, making the entire camera portions feel more like a gimmick than an integral part of the performance. Finally, a word about the asymmetric staging. Brilliant. Truly brilliant. Unless of course, you’re charging people $300+ to sit at the furthermost end from where the onstage action is. Also even worse if the people who are sitting more than 15 degrees away from the center of the stage can’t see a thing, because the action is too far back stage. Fortunately, the director seems to have learnt a lesson from watching Jenůfa last season and discovering that putting 50% of the action in the back 33% of the stage lends to most of the action being missed by 90% of the audience (don’t you love statistics?)

I could go on. I think, however, I am done. Verdict: 6/10 – mainly because it wasn’t a park and bark show and because Vittorio Grigolo is the best Rodolfo I’ve seen (either in person or on DVD). But it’s still La Bohème, and the staging left me almost wanting a traditional performance (which should never, ever happen).

PS – Did anyone see Fred Flintstone moping around the “club” scene during Act 2?
PPS – Some more reviews here and here.

EDIT: De-companionized.

But it’s a start. So let’s start right here.

PS – Imported all the entries in from the mobile blog, hence why there are entries before this “welcome” entry.

This just in from VRN, from the Manila outpost.
A most beauteaus Godly truck you can imagine..
Picture taken with his Nokia N80. Duh.