Zixar

Geek: Thanks, but Rafael's original was much funnier, IMHO.

Lessee... "Martindale Returns, Repents, Sells the Farm, and Decides to Split TWI Treasury Equally Among All PFAL Grads" Nah, too long.

Kay: Just curious. I started playing D&D in 1977, but now I've played just about every RPG there is. I like 3rd Ed D&D, it fixed a lot of problems in the original.

Okay, they did cave and rename Data's latest "brother" to B-4 from B-9 in the script draft I had, since the Robot from Lost In Space was the "B-9" in that show. My mistake.

Hmmmm....I feel a Director's Cut coming on! Deleted Scene: It continues to mouth lame showtunes, mostly from Gilbert and Sullivan and Irving Berlin, fulfilling the contractually-mandated stroking of Brent Spiner's galactic-sized ego to get him to do this picture. Deleted scene: Desperately, Starfleet unleashes its entire Counselor Corps to hold off the enemy by thinking happy thoughts at it. Unfortunately, they all wear those ridiculous lavender pantsuits Troi wore in the second season, giving them tremendous self-esteem problems because it makes their butts look fat. The Counselor Corps gives up and programs the replicators for ice cream and sweat pants. Sorry, Raf. Couldn't resist. Well, could have, just didn't.

Garth: Looks like it. Troi, Riker, and Dr. Crusher are all heading off to other jobs when the story begins. (Not much of a spoiler, happens in the first 5 minutes.)

Kay: Which edition of D&D?

Socks: You might enjoy the recently-released Director's Cut of Amadeus, now on DVD. Lots of extra scenes, but it's now rated R because of a topless shot of Elizabeth Berridge. (Constanze, Mozart's wife)

P-Mosh: Roger Ebert gave "Equilibrium" three stars. Dunno if that's good or bad, but he does say there's more ammo expended in this movie than any movie he can remember, and yes, he remembers "The Transporter". Might be worth seeing, as it explores how freedom of opinion is fatal to religious totalitarianism. With lots of bullets.

Keynote: Hi! I think you've got the wrong symphony. Mozart only wrote two symphonies in minor keys, both in G Minor. Number 25 was used as the opening theme to "Amadeus", and the other one is number 40. Symphony 41 is the "Jupiter" Symphony in C Major.

P-Mosh: Yes, he wrote "Eaters of the Dead", which was turned into the Antonio Banderas pic "The 13th Warrior."

Kay: You do realize that Gillian Anderson wasn't in Memento? (It was Carrie-Anne Moss, "Trinity" from "The Matrix".)

Ex10: Oooh. I don't know if Prey is for you, then. It's still a pretty good suspense thriller even if you don't understand all the science, but I don't know if you'd want to pay 40 bucks for it.

P-Mosh: If you like James Bond pix, Die Another Day is actually one of the better ones. My wife liked it. Two Towers comes out Wednesday the 18th. Nemesis next Friday.

I read the script. You guys are going to be really disappointed with ST:N. Even-numbered Trek movies are supposed to be the good ones, but this one may not even live up to the last one (ick). They basically rehashed a bunch of plot devices from the TV show, threw in some stupidly gratuitous explosions, and tried to put in some PG-rated sex. All this from the same screenwriter who gave us Gladiator, for Pete's sake! Remember when you see it that Logan got the job because he's friends with Brent Spiner, and you'll realize why the incredibly annoying Data/B-9 subplot didn't wind up on the cutting room floor. And, of course, death is only Trek death, after all... I'd say it's a matinee at best, even for Trek geeks. Save the money and go see The Two Towers twice, instead. Every advance review I've read says it beats the first one (which had 13 Oscar noms) hands down. Word is that the battle of Helm's Deep makes the ending of Attack of the Clones look like it was "shot in a barn with hand puppets." To those who are on the fence about seeing it, three little words: Data. Sings. AGAIN. Friends don't let friends watch bad movies. Proceed at your own risk.

Ex10: It depends...do you generally like Crichton's work? If so, this is one of his better ones, closely reminiscent of Andromeda Strain. The plot gets going fairly quickly, but there's some science that's a little hard to get your brain around at first. Let me just say that it's theoretically possible to create these tiny machines, but the intelligence they acquire is waaaaay exaggerated, especially in the time frame covered in the book. Still, I did read it through in one evening, even taking time out to watch West Wing and South Park. The last Crichton book I did that with was Jurassic Park.

Well, it's a mixture of hiragana and kanji, but little katakana. (maybe character 12, "ra")

My wife got this through her book club last night, and I read it through in one sitting. Has anybody else read it yet? I thought it was the closest he has yet come to writing "Andromeda Strain 2" and it was much better than "Timeline" or "Airframe". It still had some real stretches though, especially in the resolution. There needed to be at least one more explanatory scene, in my opinion. Fox has optioned the movie rights for $5 million, so I feel it's a shoo-in for a summer blockbuster around 2004-5. Of course, the movie of "Airframe" has sat in the can for months now, so nothing is certain. "Timeline" just finished shooting, too.

igotout: V.92 is slightly faster because it uses a new compression protocol, V.44, instead of the decade-old V.42bis protocol. The big selling points are faster negotiation/connect times (the modem connect static+ping noise before the connection is established) and MOH, or Modem-on-hold which is basically non-interrupting call waiting while on modem. V.92 also supports upstream PCM now, so uploads can go at the faster speeds that you used to only get on download. The catch is that your phone line has to be in tip-top shape, and your ISP's modem bank must support V.92, which not all do.

Goey: If memory serves, the DirecTV throughput is supposed to be 400kbps. Decent, but with DSL and cable breaking the 1Mbps level, it's only an option for those who can't get hi-speed any other way. That site in Singapore that you ping won't get much faster off the dialup, since ping packets are so tiny, the modem doesn't bottleneck them a lot. So add the 350 to your 600ms overhead, and now we're talking about nearly a full-second lag under ideal conditions. This is why live interviews on the "Today Show" and others seem so odd. Katie asks a question, and it takes a full second for the person to respond due to the satellite link. Ordinarily, that would be tolerable, but you also have to think about the programs that handshake continuously with the host computer, too. If the host gets feedback from the destination to determine when to send the next packet of data, the lag may be a dealbreaker. This is extremely apparent in online games like Quake/Half-Life/Unreal. People with fast connections used to be referred to as LPBs, or low-ping bastards. When the average lag is 200ms, and your connection allows you a ping of 50ms to the server, you can send 4 commands for every single command the other players do, i.e., you can hop out from behind a corner, shoot a guy, then duck back before he ever sees you. If some guy has a 1000ms lag, well...they had a nickname too. Giblets. If you don't do much interactive stuff like games or online audio/video chatting, it probably won't bother you too much.

Hope: D'oh! How could I have forgotten about Christine Lavin? She definitely falls into both the clever-lyrics and good-music groups!

Yanagisawa: Thanks for that background on jazz. It explains a lot! And I know what you mean about elitism. There's some of that in all pursuits.

Kathy: There are instruments that are fairly idiot-proof (not that I've risen much above "idiot" musically, myself) that actually sound quite nice, given some limitations. The ones I've had success with are: Autoharp - It's not just that goofy thing your elementary school teacher tried to teach music with. For a pure harmony instrument, it has all the others beat hands down for ease of use. It doesn't get any easier than one-fingered chords. Plus, if you hold it against your chest when you play it (Appalachian style/"hugging the harp") you can practice at very low sound levels, especially if you rest your head on the upper part of the sound board--bone conduction provides all the volume you need. They're not all that expensive--I've gotten all three of mine off of eBay. The downside is that it has 36(!) strings, all of which must be tuned from time to time. It's not hard to do, but it is tedious. Experts can even pick melodies on them--do a web search for Bryan Bowers MP3s to hear some amazing stuff. Bowed Psaltery - For a melody-only instrument, this one is hard to beat. It sounds sort of like a violin because of the bow, but distinct from it. The idea behind it is instead of chording 4 strings with your left hand like the violin family, you simply put 30 pre-tuned strings in a triangle and bow each one separately between the anchor pins! It's laid out similar to a piano, all the white-key notes on one side, all the black-keys on the other. (Most have a note guide running along the pins so you know which note is which.) You can be up and playing in 5 minutes. The downside is that with a single bow, only one note can be played at a time--no chords. Plus, fast note changes like arpeggios are difficult, although using a bow in each hand can alleviate that in some instances. You also have to tune a lot of strings, so get a good one that will stay in tune! (Mine is a handmade Unicorn Strings model.) My wife and grandson love to play with this one. Mountain Dulcimer and Strumstick - The mountain dulcimer (not to be confused with hammer dulcimer) is sort of a mix of instruments. It's a lap instrument, shaped like an hourglass or a teardrop. It has either a single or double melody string and two drone strings, commonly tuned a fifth and an octave lower. You fret the melody string, either with a small stick/reed (the "noter") or your finger, and strum all the strings at once. It's a diatonic instrument, so it's meant to be played in a single key (the key of D, in this case). The upside to that is that any note you play will harmonize with the drone strings. You can't play a wrong note. The downside is that some songs are therefore unplayable, because there's no way to make some notes. It's like having a piano with only white keys. That's why it looks like some frets are missing--they are. You can play an F#, but not an F, for example. As long as you stick to songs in your dulcimer's key, you're set. It's a very popular instrument in the South because of its ease of play and folk-sound appeal. They're inexpensive, easy to tune (four strings max, usually) and hard to screw up. The Strumstick is the exact same thing, except it's strung upside down and played like a small guitar. Of course, starting with one musical instrument can lead to others if you aren't careful! I don't know what I'm going to try next, but the mandolin springs to mind, since it's supposedly the easiest chromatic (any note playable) stringed instrument, and it's slightly more portable than an autoharp... We'll see. I might even get around to the guitar someday, but I doubt it. God bless! Zix

I used to read every thread, but I just don't have the time I once did. As a result, I missed this wonderful thread until today. Oops. Here's some random thoughts I had while running over it... I've always liked music, but never really understood how it all worked well enough to play it with any skill. I've gotten to where I can play some things by ear, and transpose tunes so they're easier to play on whatever instrument I'm abusing at the time, but if anyone held a gun to my head and said "write a song now!" I guess they'd just have to pull the trigger. Maybe someday... As far as musical genres go, it's hard to pigeonhole my tastes. I've liked a little bit of just about every different kind of music there is, with the notable exception of jazz. Can't stand it, it just seems to be music designed to impress other musicians. ("Whoa, dude, check out those diminished 13th chords he's using!") Talent is really what impresses me, especially when it comes to lyrics. To me, clever lyrics can rescue a musically-mediocre song as well as good music can cover up trite lyrics. I find that the albums I keep listening to over and over excel in one or the other area. Someone mentioned a Barenaked Ladies concert, and I have to agree. They are simply the most entertaining live act I've ever seen. A winning combo of clever lyrics and catchy tunes and they always look like they're having a blast on stage. So what if they're Canadians? Guitar-wise, I think my favorite has to be Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. There may be others more famous or more skilled, but he just plays the way I wish I could. I never got into Clapton or Springsteen that much. Classical music is very much a pick-and-choose genre for me. Mozart is just about the only one I can always count on to be excellent across the board, although there are a few pieces by others I enjoy, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, Mendelssohn, etc. The nice thing about country music is that it's simple, you can sing along with it, and the albums have a high content to filler ratio, unlike nearly all of today's rock albums (one hit, twelve tracks of crap) Plus, there are no ugly women in country music--most rock-group women look like twenty miles of bad road! While John Lennon was certainly a more profound musician than the other Beatles, Paul McCartney was the better entertainer. Screw Michael Jackson, if you want a "King of Pop", Paul's your man. Some criticize him for churning out "bubblegum", but hey, you can't argue with success. I'm hoping someday we'll get another Billy Joel or Elton John--the piano is really underused in popular music nowadays. Rap is sort of like R.E.M.'s first two albums--twenty-two slightly-different versions of the same song. The big difference of course is that I actually liked the R.E.M. song... Although, to be fair, there have been a few rap songs I've liked, mostly saved by the "clever lyrics" bit. If it made me laugh, I gave it another chance. That's all for now.

Plus, there's that pesky speed-of-light lag with satellite networking. You take an unavoidable 300-millisecond hit on every packet because of the travel time to and from the satellite. That's before it even reaches DirecTV's ISP.