I've restarted blogging and moved to Typepad...see you at Yellowhandman 4.0!

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(SPOILER WARNING : IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE WRESTLING IS FAKE, STOP READING NOW)

I doubt I'm the first person to figure this out, but...

I was watching the ending of the 22 Jan edition of WWE Raw, when Shawn Michaels plays Sweet Chin Music on Kenny Dykstra, Carlito and Randy Orton in quick succession, and I was amazed by how loud the 'slap' sound of his trademark superkick was.

Now obviously he doesn't really kick them that hard in the chin, so there has to be another way they generate that sound, like the way wrestlers turn a 'chop' to the chest into an open-handed slap at the last moment, to make it sound louder.

So, being the obsessive that I am, I replayed the three superkicks several times, and I figured out how they do it.

Sweet 'Chin' Music?

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Incidentally, my lack of posting recently has been due to a pretty busy period at work, which looks like continuing for the new few weeks. But since it's the weekend, I'm making up for lost time. :)

Anyways, I came across these two Apple-related links and [these are good].

The first is a blog entry on why the AppleTV is going to be successful, from ZDNet's Alan Graham. I think Graham pretty much hits the nail on the head, and certainly expresses why "I WANT MY APPLETV!". Basically, instead of trying to force a computer into people's living rooms, like M$'s MediaCenter or whatever it's called, Apple have again gone the simple route and designed a device that does what people want : give them a way to watch TV that they've downloaded on their TVs, with the simplicity of a DVD player or Tivo.

It's not surprising to me at all that one of the usual rumor sites reported that Apple has already sold out their initial order of 100,000 AppleTVs, totally surpassing their own expectations. 100,000 x US$299 is a cool US$30 million of brand new revenue. I have no idea what kind of margins Apple might be getting on AppleTVs, I'm sure that they are going to end up making a lot from them, since they are basically 40GB harddrives with A/V out, a wireless 802.11n chipset and a cheap Intel processor to handle decoding.

Moving to the second link, it's a Flickr gallery of someone's basement Mac museum (Thanks again to the ever-interesting Daring Fireball for the link).

And I thought my collection of Macs was bad...

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Following up my earlier post complaining about the pricing of ST:TOS on the iTunes store, I first ought to admit that I got my pricing info for the DVD sets wrong. I may have looked at the prices when there was a special offer going on, but the price per season at Amazon is now about US$68 - about US$10 more expensive than the iTunes price.

However, what is more eye-opening is that some of the episodes being sold on iTunes are the newly-remastered 40th anniversary versions.

Yes, some. And while the iTS can claim some vindication on their pricing, they've really botched it again by not indicating which of the episodes on sale are the remastered versions. Fortunately, numerous fans have posted info the iTS reviews regarding which episodes are, in fact, the remastered versions.

It isn't entirely iTunes' fault, because the remastering is a work in progress and Paramount isn't doing the episodes in order, so they simply can't sell the entire first season in remastered form because most of the episodes haven't been done yet.

But you would think they would have done one of two things : either clearly label the remastered episodes or - and this would probably be the preferred solution - only sell remastered episodes as they become available, regardless of season. Of course, that would mean they can't sell season sets, but they could instead sell a 'series pass' for the entire set of 80 episodes.

Still, it appears from the customer reviews that people are buying these episodes. Including me, because I just downloaded the remastered versions of 'Balance of Terror' (my all-time favorite Trek episode of any of the series) and 'Space Seed'. And, for all my gripes, they were worth the US$1.99.

When I first heard about the remastering project and saw clips of the first few episodes, it struck me as fairly minimal tweaking. Nice to have, and certainly a good idea with HD on the horizon, but nothing earth-shattering.

However, having compared the remastered versions to my old DVD copies(1), the difference really is pretty impressive. It's not so much the redone special effects as the general cleaning up of the image quality - rich colours, finer detail (even at iTS resolution). Can't wait to see these on my plasma over an AppleTV connection.

Also, judging from the excellent sub-site on the remastering at StarTrek.Com, it looks like they are gaining in confidence and doing more to the episodes. Check out the gallery to see some of the changes they are now making to backgrounds, in particular - including one ridiculous example where, in 'Arena', the sky in one scene is inexplicably filled by an image of crumpled metal, which has now been replaced with normal sky.

The new version of the hollow asteroid world Yonada from 'For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky' (clunkiest episode title in the history of television) is also really nice.

Remastered Yonada

Original Yonada

(1) Not the current season sets, but the ridiculously expensive two-episodes-per-disc version from several years ago, although I understand that the season sets are no better in picture quality. When they released these in the early days of DVD, I bought all forty volumes as they were released, at a total cost of over US$700...and these don't have any extras whatsoever, unlike the newer season sets. Sigh, the price of fandom...

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United 3 Villa 1

Not much to say about this game. It was basically over within 12 minutes, after Park and Carrick had put us 2-0 up. It was good to see both of them get off the mark for the season, especially Carrick finally scoring his first in a red shirt. Ronaldo got back into the scoring groove with the third goal just before halftime.

In fact, compared to the cup game last weekend, Villa were really poor. I made a point of keeping track, and I don't think a Villa player even touched the ball in our penalty box until around the half-hour mark!

Carrick has really won me over. His cross for Ronaldo's goal was simply perfect - as Kannan said, haven't really seen that sort of ball since Becks left. The great thing about Carrick is that he never seems to need more than one touch. Even with a bouncing ball in midfield, he always seems to pick out a United player immediately. He hasn't exactly chalked up the assists, but his ability to keep the ball moving in midfield is a great platform for Scholesy, in particular, to make the killer passes.

Rooney continued to struggle. He's still able to go on those bulldozing runs and is working hard, but his shooting boots have completely gone. That little bit of luck also seems to have deserted him - he hit the crossbar with a great effort, not the first time it's happened in recent matches, and other shots just trickle wide instead of trickling in.

Anyway, still six points clear. Chelski, Arse and the Scousers all won convincingly. Worryingly, Chelski dropped Sheva and promptly won 4-0 - hopefully Maureen is pressured to reinstate him!

Arsenal next weekend, at the Emirates...

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Got this off Tim's blog. Apparently it's real (dating back to 2002 or so), which means the designer and other people who approved this either weren't thinking or taking the piss (or some combination of the two).

Watchful_eyes

I'm definitely not against surveillance by CCTV cameras in public places, for the right purposes. Indeed, it's proven its worth in the course of my work. But it's worrying that someone actually thought that this poster would be reassuring.

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This ad was on the LA Times website. Things are getting out of hand. Ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure that the people who designed this ad are completely oblivious to the tragic irony of this image, given that Becks is no longer an England player, let alone England captain. Indeed, dropping Beckham has probably been the only praiseworthy act of Steve McLaren's England reign.

BeckhamAd

I was rather sympathetic towards Beckham to begin with, because he did give his best to United (considering his lack of success at Real) and his decline and exit from the England team was fairly sad and ignominious (and not helped by being a pillar/symbol of the Erickson error era). But if this is the sort of publicity that he's going to get, then he doesn't really need any sympathy, does he?

It seems to me that the marketing of American sports is almost always centred around individuals. However, while fans can be similarly obsessed with their favourite players, the nature of football (the one the rest of the world plays) is such that it is much more difficult for one player to truly dominate or take over a game, unlike a star quarterback, running back or high-scoring basketball player.

Good luck, David. I'm not sure what exactly the Galaxy's publicity people are expecting you to do when you get there, but unless you play every game the way you did in the match against Greece before World Cup 2002, the fans are going to be disappointed.

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Sure, most sequels stink, but what movie really needs a sequel?"

Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World (Widescreen Collector's Edition)

Master & Commander. It was a fantastic film that perfectly captured the feel of the classic O'Brian novels. Even then, it barely scratches the surface of the Aubrey/Maturin saga, most of all by completely omitting the fact that Maturin is himself a British secret agent, so there is ample material for a whole series of films. Classic performances from a great cast, led by Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany.

My wife has actually asked me how many times I'm going to watch this film, because it's almost the default choice when I can't think of anything else to put on the DVD player. If it's possible to wear out a DVD, mine would probably be finished by now, along with the CD of the soundtrack.

In fact, the excellence of the film was what led me to discover O'Brian's novels, on which I became completely hooked - unusual for a person who rarely reads fiction.

And that in turn opened up an interest in a whole period of military history: the Nelsonian Age of Sail. If it weren't for my various physical ailments and general laziness, I'd probably have taken up sailing as well!

Unfortunately, filming at sea (or faking it) on the grand scale that Peter Weir managed for this film is horribly expensive, and the film itself didn't do that well. So a sequel is highly unlikely, to say the least.

Oh well...I recently placed an order for the complete set of British TV adaptations of the Hornblower series, starring Ioan Gruffudd. It's supposed to be a lot more swashbuckling and a lot less realistic than M&C, but hopefully it'll do for a fix of naval adventure.

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OK, so a few days have passed since my initial reaction to the iPhone, and I must admit that - given time to recover from the effects of Jobs' famous Reality Distortion Field - I've started to see some of the weaknesses in the product.

IPhone

I don't agree with those who say that the lack of 3G is huge omission. It has wi-fi which is faster, so who needs 3G? I can understand that some people may not have access to free (or paid) wi-fi hotspots and just want to surf off their 3G telephone service, but I still don't think it's that big a deal.

However, I do have misgivings about the virtual keyboard - although what else do you do if you have a touchscreen device? - and the fairly poor battery life that Jobs mentioned. The harddisk space - either 4GB or 8GB - is also pretty pathetic given that this is supposed to be a multimedia (i.e video) player, but I suppose that's also an inevitable trade-off between size, price and battery life.

I still think that the iPhone is going to be a huge hit. It isn't perfect, but neither is any other competing product in the market. And Apple still has five months to get it right(er). Plus, the beauty and ease of use of the interface and design probably overcomes any of the shortcomings.

As for the Cisco trademark issue, that's an unfortunate PR screwup that took some of the shine off the initial euphoria; not helped, of course, by the 'revelation' in the WSJ that the Feds were investigating Jobs' long-since-cancelled options grant - didn't we know this already?

As these things usually go, Cisco and Apple will probably end up settling, although Apple seems ready for a fight. At first blush, the advantage appears to be Cisco's, but some interesting possible arguments on Apple's side have already surfaced, including the possibility that Cisco itself might have failed to 'renew' their trademark.

-  -  -  -  -

AppleTV

In the meantime, the product I'm really looking forward to is the AppleTV. It's a typically elegant Apple solution to connecting the multimedia on your Mac to your home theater. I'm definitely getting one as soon as it comes out in February, along with the new draft-N Airport Extreme.

Sure, it would be great if AppleTV also supported DivX, but I've been using VisualHub to convert my DivX content into MPEG-4 anyway, so that it plays nicely with similarly non-DivX iTunes. If you want stuff to 'just work', there are bound to be some limitations.

In fact, in preparation for the AppleTV, I also bought a Miglia EvolutionTV external DVR box yesterday. While Elgato's EyeTV line is far more visible and popular, the advantage of the EvolutionTV is that it can do hardware conversion to MPEG-4 (and also DivX) when recording. In contrast, the EyeTV 250's hardware conversion is only to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, neither of which would play nicely with the AppleTV. So with the EvolutionTV, I can record stuff (like United matches) directly to MPEG-4, and send that directly to iTunes or the AppleTV.

New toys to look forward to. I'm a happy camper.

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Sorry, couldn't resist the headline...

So Posh Spice Beckham decided that LA was the place to be, and David goes from being just one of Madrid's galacticos to the undisputed centre of the Galaxy.

I'm not surprised that he chose the US. Having played for United and Real, there was really nowhere in Europe that he could've gone without it being an obvious letdown. As it is, the tone of the British press has been merciless - the worst was FU's Russell Brand describing Beckham as "an old dog looking for a quiet place to die". But US$125m over five years probably makes all that easy to ignore. Frankly, I think the British press is being unfair, not to mention typically xenophobic and arrogant in their dismissal of 'soccer' in the US.

What has been surprising is the reaction of the US press, who have been giving Beckham fantastic, positive coverage. His decision even made the Wall Street Journal and was the main picture story on the NY Times website. I even heard a passing reference to Beckham on CNBC's Morning Bell!

Who knows? Perhaps Beckham's arrival will have the same effect that Pele's arrival at the New York Cosmos had in the 1970s. Certainly, that appears to be the plan, and I can see other aging superstars moving over to the US if Beckham is successful.

In footballing terms, I just have one question : apart from his freekicks, Beckham's game is built on assists - but who is he going to be creating goals for? Beckham's crosses are great, but you still need a striker with sufficient skill to make use of them, especially when they come in at pace.

Once in a Lifetime - The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

We'll see. In the meantime, if you want to see how all this has actually happened before, I highly recommend the documentary Once In A Lifetime. Released last year, it tells the fascinating story of the New York Cosmos era that I mentioned earlier, when soccer-fever suddenly swept the US and stars like Pele, Beckenbauer and Cruyff all ended up in the NASL.

Of course, it all fizzled out in the end, and it's hilarious to watch everyone in the documentary laying the blame at Tony Soprano lookalike Giorgio Chinaglia's feet.

In fact, if I were Beckham, I'd sit down with the missus and watch this. History might be about to repeat itself.

Oh yeah, and given all the hoopla about the Beckham-Cruise friendship, does anybody want to bet that Beckham and Posh are going end up as Scientologists?

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