Everything will be OK!

iPad check-in

pegibson — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:03:32 +0000

It’s been nearly a month since I got the iPad, so this seems a good time to check-in on my use of it. I have, I’m certain, used it for some amount of time every day that I have had it. It has certainly become the device of choice as regards Twitter and catching up on news. For casual surfing it is really, pretty great. The weight and size are perfectly acceptable. Battery life is just terrific, though I use it from virtually the moment I get up (after walking the dog or exercising) and until I go to sleep (I’m currently reading William Gibson’s “Idoru” on the iPad), so I wear it down pretty low every day.
I have been pretty diligent about taking it with me to meetings and pretty much everywhere. I’ve been working with TaskPaper, primarily as a note-taking app, since it synchs automatically. Unfortunately, the TaskPaper iPad app isn’t ready yet, so I have been using the iPhone app “pixel-doubled” and it looks exactly like ass. Also, I still need to work out some way of taking items marked as tasks in TaskPaper and converting them automatically to ToDos in Reqall. I have Evernote, of course, but I’m interested into automatic stuff based on text entry on the iPad/iPhone and you can’t do that with Evernote. So mostly I copy stuff, like Word docs and PDFs into Evernote and use it as a way of easily accessing that stuff, usually from my Work computer, on the mobile devices.
I still get the “ooh, is that an iPad” response when I take the iPad around, but it often, in its black case, goes unnoticed. Over time people will get used to seeing them and they won’t be intrusive at meetings.
Of course, having a device as compelling as the iPad can be a distraction. I spent way too much time on “We Rule” and “Godfinger” over the past month. I think I have shaken those habits. I had also relapsed into playing way too much “Strategery.” I’ll have to get past that.
I’ve spent a fair amount of money on apps. I haven’t tallied it recently, but I would bet that I have spent $85 on them. My favorite apps (I’m going to leave games off this list) include Twitteriffic and NewsRack. The Evernote and Reqall apps are fine. After looking at many really cool apps ready when the iPad launched, many of them I never go back to. I haven’t given up on reading comic books on the iPad, but the Marvel app, while nice, features nothing but Marvel comics (no surprise), and therefore doesn’t do much for me. I use Safari as much as I use any other app. I’ve just got SimpleNote installed and configured, since there is no iPad-optimized WriteRoom app, maybe I’ll end up using SimpleNote a lot. The WordPress app that I am writing this on is pretty good, though the pop-up text entry window could fill the screen (why such a small window?). Dealing with comments in WordPress is great via this app.
The Apple iPad case is decent. It does a good job of protecting the iPad, and serves as a decent iPad stand. Though it is pretty unstable standing in landscape mode. But damn, this case is a smudge vortex: you think the iPad screen gets smudgy? You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen how the black Apple iPad case get covered with spooge over the course of day. It’s faintly disgusting and is the single greatest reason that I want a different case.
I bought an app to help with printing, the cleverly named “Print.” It can print to CUPS printers it finds on the WLAN or to Macs running a special helper app. Meh. Apple, fix printing already! Let me browse to Macs on my WLAN and print to them. You don’t want to crap up the iPad with a bunch of print drivers, I get it. So let the Mac worry about the drivers.
Other annoyances:
Calendar: why can’t I scroll laterally (to next week and beyond) with a swipe like I can scroll up and down for time? It just feels like I should be able to.
The crappy process of moving back and forth between the App Store, iTunes, iPod and Video apps is lame. I can play a podcast from the iPod app, but if I want to see if there is a new episode, I have to exit iPod and go to iTunes. Ditto for Video, if I am watching a video podcast, I have to go back to iTunes to get a new one. These should be two apps: Apple Store (including ITMS and App Store purchasing), and iPod, including the ability to play and manage music, podcasts, etc.
The Apple Blutooth keyboard works pretty well (I’m using it right now) with the iPad, though sometimes the iPad gets confused.
But, all in all, at this point I would have to say that the iPad has mostly exceeded my expectations.
Ask me again in a month or two.

Google “Atmosphere” event

pegibson — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 05:11:25 +0000

I was invited to Google’s “Atmosphere” event which focused on cloud computing technologies. Naturally, I used my Android phone to navigate to the location, which worked pretty much flawlessly, though with traffic, partially related to bad weather, I was almost an hour late for the kickoff.

I hadn’t been to the Google campus before. It is a nice place. I didn’t find it over-the-top gorgeous, but I do love the proximity of it to San Francisco, while it is settled in the tall trees of Mountain View. My wife divides people into “mountain” people and “ocean” people. Google employees don’t have to choose.
Here are the three things that I took away from this event:

1) Google is serious about Gmail/Google Docs in the enterprise. They acknowledge that most organizations are most interested in Gmail, but sense that once they get their foot in the door, tools like Docs and Sites, particularly as the continue to improve them, will compete with Office. They can’t do that feature-by-feature, but what we heard from some of their guests — CIOs who had introduced Gmail + Docs into their operations — is that for the average user, the ability to create and edit basic documents and spreadsheets and share them and collaborate with their co-workers on them, that simplicity and speed are more important than all of the fancy features. There will be exceptions: by all means give MS Office to your lawyers and bean counters, but your functional staff who actually keep the lights on, they are better served by Google Docs.

2) Google remains committed to Chrome OS. They spent more time talking about it than Android, much to my surprise. Although they handed out Nexus One’s to attendees, not netbooks with Chrome. ;)

3) Even Salesforce.com, a company that I thought really gets it, can show themselves to be lame. I was really interested to hear from Marc Benioff of Salesforce. I was pretty impressed with them in talking to some of their managers at a government technology event last year. What we got, rather than the cogent elucidation of web strategy and direction, of how organizations can leverage platforms like force.com to solve their development needs, was a product demo. Version X.X of Salesforce.com! Coming soon! For your sales people! Yay! Just because they sell a product designed for salesmen doesn’t mean they should act like salesmen.

Generally, this was a solid event. The lunch was first class. There were some issues with refreshments (surely Google understands the importance of keeping coffee available), and a shortage of bathrooms. Guest wifi was good. Seating was at a premium. Having arrived late, I stood through the whole event (except lunch), which is kind of unreasonable. I had RSVPed, you would hope that they could match the number of seats to the number of RSVP’ed attendees.

But, those issues notwithstanding, the event filled the niche that I wanted: it helped me understand the practicality of Gmail/Google Apps in the Enterprise, and gave me a feel for just where all of this is going. If the event is held again next year, I hope to attend.

The iPad’s Greatest Need

pegibson — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:13:26 +0000

I’ve had my iPad now for one week, more or less. I purchased the low-end model, the 16GB wifi model for $499. I also bought the Apple case for it. Since I brought it back from the Del Monte Apple Store in Monterey while on our Spring getaway, I’ve purchased $55.00 worth of apps for it. I’ll enumerate my apps later, probably on my Tumblog.
As I have written about previously, I have been looking for some time (years, really) for an ideal field note-taking device. I’ve tried everything from the original Palm Pilot to other PDAs to HP’s tablet (the TC1100 from, what, 2005?) to Moleskine to the iPhones to net books. Some have worked better than others. But they have all had failings, and I’ve hoped that the iPad could be — well, not the perfect device, but the best device built so far for this purpose. This entry is not an evaluation of whether the iPad fills that niche or not, it’s definitely too early to tell.
But that drive, along with a general love of gadgets and Apple gadgets in particular, led to the pre-order and purchase of the device.
There has been much written about the iPad, it’s potential and its limitations. Some of the limitations that people espouse are really design decisions — the device doesn’t have a USB port because Apple didn’t want to build a device that still relied on USB. Some of its limitations are based on Apple not having yet determine how they want to implement them. The lack of multi-tasking is, now that we have seen the iPhone 4.0 announcement, going to be addressed in Apple’s iconic way.
The lack of support for Adobe’s Flash has been the most repeated criticism of the iPad. I won’t go into whether I think the decision not to support Flash was wise. It was widely reported and I doubt many buyers of the iPad were surprised to learn that Flash was not going to work. If Flash support is important to you, don’t buy an iPad.
The thing that the iPad needs, in my opinion, more than any other feature, is support for Blutooth tethering to a device with a cellular data connection.
I know, I know. In a couple of weeks Apple will begin selling iPads with 3G support from AT&T built-in. Perhaps I should have waited to purchase one of those. But here’s the deal: I already have an iPhone (and a Verizon Droid) with a data plan, for which I pay $30/month and I never get close to my monthly cap. I do not want another monthly service charge for anything in my life. It is the accumulation of all of these recurring charges (cable, phone, cell phone, Internet, NetFlix, Xbox Live, etc etc) that is killing us. We buy these devices that are not inexpensive themselves, and each of them has some associated monthly expense on top of it.
I can tether my net book to my Droid using the PDANet app and get a 3G connection anywhere that I can’t get to wifi. That experience over the past few months has really colored my reception of the iPad in a way that I did not expect.
I could buy a MiFi and connect the iPad in that way. I haven’t ruled that out, but there is, of course, a recurring service fee for the MiFi, which is twice what my iPhone data plan costs. That scenario is only palatable if I can turn off my iPhone data and voice plan. That only works if I switch to Skype or Google Voice. These are all possible, and maybe where I head with this.
But if the iPad could tether to the iPhone, Apple could sell more of both! When you look at how, for instance, the Kindle app syncs between the iPad and iPhone, so that I can do some light reading on my iPhone and when I open the same book on the iPad, it knows exactly where I left off… well there is (to use some hated marketing-speak) a synergy there that makes both devices more useful. I can see using Dragon Dictation on my iPhone to capture a thought or note, then opening it on the iPad to expand it to a more concrete thought. I can see using Bento on the iPad to capture data for later access on the iPhone. Ditto with Reqall and Evernote and Write Room. These devices are great alone but even better together. Why can’t my iPhone share it’s data connection with the iPad? Even for AT&T this creates more lock-in for iPhone sells.
I can guess that there might be some concern if Apple only allowed tethering to the iPhone and not to other phones. Anti-competitive. But, since devices such as the MiFi (presumably, haven’t tried it) work with the iPhone, there seems to be a reasonable counter-argument.
But for Apple fans who are already carrying their iPhone and are now carrying an iPad, you’d think Apple would find a way to reward them.
Sigh.
And don’t get me started on MobileMe and the boat that Apple is missing with that one.

Book: The Difference Engine

pegibson — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:44:24 +0000

“Zero History completed. 644 ms. pages, which is longer, for me.” William Gibson, 3/25/2010, via Twitter

Last summer I decided to re-read Gibson’s seminal “Neuromancer.” It may well be my favorite SF novel of all time, certainly my favorite non-Heinlein SF. I read it on the Stanza app on my iPhone, largely while at 6th Grade Science camp with my son. Reading that again led to “Burning Chrome,” Gibson’s short story collection. If there is a finer short SF piece than “Dogfight,” written with Michael Swanwick, please point it out. Which led to a drive to re-read the rest of Gibson’s first three novels, sometimes called the “Sprawl Trilogy,” including “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive.” “Count” seemed very much a middle book, but “Mona Lisa” had one of my all-time favorite characters, Slick Henry, an ex-con who suffers from induced Korsakov’s and is compelled to create art in the form of giant, functioning robotic sculptures.
Onward with the Gibson oeuvre, I decided to re-read “The Difference Engine,” co-written with Bruce Sterling.

“Every woman needs a man to hold her reins,” Fraser said. It’s God’s plan for the relations of men and women.”
Mallory scowled.
Fraser saw his look, and thought the matter over again. ”It’s Evolution’s adaptation for the human species,” he amended.
Mallory nodded slowly.

Babbage’s Difference Engine, completed by his son.

“The Difference Engine” represents the birthplace of “steampunk,” an odd movement that refuses to die, its engines stoked almost daily by the likes of BoingBoing. The book posits an alternate history where Charles Babbage is successful in perfecting his Difference Engine and mid-19th Century England develops computing technology. That is the backdrop to a fairly typical Gibson-style adventure involving a macguffin drawing multiple protagonists into a complex intersection. The bulk of the book is taken up by the tale of Edward Mallory, a paleontologist recently returned from America where he uncovered a Brontosaurus. Mallory is a “savant,” a scientist of such high stature in Prime Minister Byron’s England that it results in the award of a “Merit Lordship.” Mallory early on takes possession of the macguffin, having really no idea what it is, and then falls afoul of the dark forces that want it back.
They typical Gibsonian troika of characters is rounded out by Sybil Gerard, the daughter of a slain Luddite leader and Laurence Oliphant, a shadowy component of the England intelligence apparatus.
There is a lot going on in this book. The real centerpiece is the transformative effect technology has had on 1850’s England. Gibson and Stirling create a world where computing technology is at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. So we have computers helping design the earliest cars. Programming is done via punch-card, so programs are collections of cards, and hackers are “clackers.” That’s just fucking great.
Ned Mallory is a compelling character and it devolves upon him to save London from Luddites seeking to over-throw Babbage and Byron.
This is a very fine book, even if it sort of collapses as it approaches the finish line. There are thirty or forty pages at the end of the book that try to wrap things up, different snippets of letters and speeches from various parties having (mostly) tangential relations to the story at hand. It kind of feels like Stirling and Gibson had written a bunch of stuff around the novel and had nothing better to do with it than glue it on at the end. The kind of thing that today might be a “web extra” or something. It’s not bad, it just feels bolted on and kind of unnecessary.
The work — the London of “The Difference Engine” is so dense and vibrant that it stands as a grand achievement without requiring a powerful narrative. It is an achievement equal to “Ring World” or Bradbury’s Mars or maybe even Tolkein’s Middle Earth. Well, maybe not Middle Earth. But astounding, nonetheless.

So Gibson’s new novel “Zero History” is due September 7th. I now have a deadline for my Gibson-walk. I’ll have to get through the “Bridge Trilogy” (Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties) plus the first two books of the trilogy that ZH is apparently a part of (Pattern Recognition and Spook Country) in the next six months. I’ve read all of those books, of course, but I don’t know that I’ve read any of them more than once, as compared to his first four (five if you include “Burning Chrome”) which I have read several times apiece. I’ll do a write-up of each building up to the new book.
I don’t think it is a stretch to call Gibson SF’s greatest living writer. May he live long.

Movie: William Gibson: No Maps for These Territories

pegibson — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:30:54 +0000

The most formative writers for me as a kid were Spider Robinson, Robert Heinlein, and in 1984 (I probably read it in 1985) William Gibson. “Neuromancer” was such an awesome book, it so shaped what Science Fiction was about, I didn’t want to read anything else. I read a fair amount of the other cyberpunks, Rudy Rucker, in particular. But none of them were William Gibson, and none of their works had the same effect on me as “Neuromancer.”
I was a young computer geek (which was a fairly rare thing in the early ’80s), and the thought that Case, a hacker, essentially, could be the hero of a great SF novel… well that was a drug greater than anything I had experienced.
And I loved Gibson’s style. I loved how he rarely explained things; that he assumed that you were hip enough to get it, and if not you should be reading something else. Never mind that he possibly lacked the technical expertise to actually explain technology — he was writing the damn thing on a typewriter, after all. But his quick-cut, dense, but always human narratives were the best things going. I think I had read his short story “Dogfight” before Neuromancer, written with Michael Swanwick. I still think of that story as just about the perfect short story. Maybe I’ll write more about that some day.
I caught some bits of the documentary “No Maps for these Territories,” on Bravo or somewhere and wondered where in the hell that had come from, but couldn’t find it to Tivo. Recently, I was reminded of it again and purchased it from the iTunes store. It cost $5.
Never mind the theoretical artiness of the movie. I gather that the producers watched “My Dinner with Andre” and decided that watching two guys just talk at length is too boring, and watching just one guy would be lethal, so they put poor Gibson in a limo and drove him around so that they could play with the scene outside his window, sometimes playing the view outside the car backwards, or more quickly or more slowly, or bringing up text in some weird “electric window” effect. It feels like that guy at the office that just figured out how to use animations in Power Point and is determined to put every single Fly In and Shutter Out into his presentation.
But mostly it is just Gibson talking. There are a few comments from other SF writers, including a brief sit down with Bruce Sterling, who I think is one of the smartest guys, maybe with Clay Shirky, writing today. For some reason they have the Edge talking about “Neuromancer” and Bono reading it. But that’s OK. Over-exposed or not, they are still pretty cool.
Gibson talks about the stuff you would hope he would talk about. He talks about his early works, and coining the term “cyberspace”, and developing the whole “consensual hallucination” concept that the term refers to. I found it especially interesting hearing him talk about how painfully he struggled to write his first novel and how he really was just groping for a way to pull it off. He talks about how the whole “simstim” business (at least I think that’s what he is referring to) was essentially developed to help him move characters from Point A to Point B in his stories. He says he didn’t know, otherwise, how to get his characters up the stairs or out of the car. But if they could just slap in a cartridge and be virtually elsewhere… well, that worked for him.
He talks about the transformative power of technology and what he thinks it will inevitably lead to. Gibson comments on the irony that the DARPANet was developed (forget about whether this is true, or not, for the moment) to help the U.S. government survive a nuclear war, but that the continued growth of the Internet will lead inexorably to the destruction of the nation-state.
He talks about religion in a surprising ambiguous way. He says that this life isn’t a rehearsal for anything, this is all we have, but then he talks very vaguely about whether “it is happening” in church or not. What “it” is, I didn’t really follow.
He talks about drugs. He talks about whether he fled to Canada to escape the Draft. He talks about making peace with the death of William Burroughs, who obviously meant a lot to him.
One of the most human moments is when he talks about Detroit, and what a wasteland downtown Detroit is, but how the “burghurs” of Detroit opposed simply letting the buildings fall down, even though they “can’t get anyone to live there.” He sort of mocks the citizens of Detroit in a way that makes him feel more like a regular guy, talking about the kind of things that regular guys talk about. He is so smart, and — I mean this in the best possible way — unusual and thoughtful, that his rare descent into mean-spiritness pulls him out of the clouds.
If you enjoy Gibson’s works, I think watching this movie is a must. I totally enjoyed watching it. It felt right, rather than burning it to DVD and watching it on the TV (though I’ll probably do that, too), to play it in QuickTime on the external monitor hooked up to my MacBook. So I could surf and be plugged in, while listening to and watching William Gibson talk. Listening to him talk about writing was as compelling as anything this side of Stephen King’s “On Writing.”
I’d love to see a feature like this on Spider Robinson.

What’s a Beer Worth?

pegibson — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:28:40 +0000

I’ve been trying to lose some weight recently and generally take better care of myself. To eat better, get regular exercise and just get off my ass more.
So, part of that is watching my caloric intake. As a net result, my beer consumption has decreased pretty significantly. I stopped drinking during the week long ago, with the exception of the one night a week (usually Thursdays) that we have guests over. But I typically have a few beers Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I have a friend who thinks nothing of putting away a case or more in a single evening. That is not me. I like what I think of as quality beer: microbrews and imports, and I rarely (at least in the past few years) drink more than three beers in an evening. But I tend to have two-three beers every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
More recently, though, I have been skipping any alcohol on Friday, having a beer or two on Saturday, and maybe one on Sunday.
As a result, I kind of miss beer. I think about it more. And I do enjoy it more when I have one.

I ran across this site recently, trying to get a handle on how many calories beers that I like (say Sam Adams Boston Lager or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) have. I think I was a little surprised that they didn’t have more calories.
Faced with the information on that site, I began to try to calculate how many Bud Lights (as a generic measure of crappy, but lower calorie, beer) one would have to drink to have the same buzz as a “good” beer. Assuming that lower calorie beers have less alcohol. Which, as it turns out is not necessarily a safe assumption. And Bud Light is not substantially lower in alcohol than the beers that I like.
Take the Sam Adams, for example. Bud Light has 110 calories and is 4.2% alcohol. Boston Lager has 160 calories and 4.75% alcohol. But as you talk about 2 Sam Adams versus 2-3 Bud Lights, what is the equivalency. Therefore I have created the beer equivalency scale (bes). The average twelve ounce beer has approximately 1/2 ounce of alcohol in it: Bud Light is 4.2% alcohol, 12 ounces *.042 = .502 ounces. That’s a “unit” of beer, for this measurement. To get that 1/2 ounce of beer, it takes 110 calories. So 110/.502 = 219. That’s the bes, a measure of how many calories it takes to produce a “unit” of beer. The lower the number, the better. It’s a measure of buzz efficiency, how to get alcohol in your system at the lowest “price”.
Now, I don’t like Bud Light. And there are plenty of beers with a great bes that are absolutely horrible: Anheuser Busch Natural Light is 222, Keystone Ice is an even 200. I wouldn’t drink those beers, whatever their bes.
But, if you are counting your calories, it may be useful to select beers, _that you like already_, that maximize the bes. If part of the reason you are drinking beer is to get a buzz, you should find one that you like that gets there efficiently.

So, some sample bes numbers for your consideration:

Sam Adams Boston Lager: 281
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: 260
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot: 286
Red Hook IPA: 241
New Belgium Abbey: 238
Anchor Steam: 260
Arrogant Bastard Ale: 220! (I found ABA’s info http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-ales-beers-arrogant-bastard-ale-7-2_f-Y2lkPTM5NTgwJmJpZD0xMjk4JmZpZD04ODM4Mw.html”>here.)

Sure, you can just look at the calorie totals and alcohol percentages and eyeball it, but if you are going to have more than one, you might be tempted to ask: how many Anchor Steams do I have to drink to get the same buzz as a Bigfoot, and which way would I be better off, from a calorie perspective?
The bottom line is that I should drink less Sam Adams and more Red Hook or ABA.
Who knew?

Media Check-In, March 12, 2010

pegibson — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:26:45 +0000

“The Difference Engine” Sterling and Gibson
Slate Political Gabfest
Fear the Boot
Macbreak Weekly
Radio Lab
“Tangram” Tangerine Dream
“Tour de France” Kraftwerk
“The Crane Wife” Decemberists
“Pro Evolution Soccer ‘10″ for the Wii

Recently Finished:
“The Dante Club” audiobook
“Variable Star” (again) by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson
“B is for Burglar” Sue Grafton

Movie: Alice in Wonderland

pegibson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:24:22 +0000

I have a confession. I never read the book “Alice in Wonderland,” nor, to my knowledge, ever seen the Disney eponymous movie. It is such a touchstone in our culture, that I know quite a bit about it. But there is probably a lot that I don’t know.
Watching Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” it literally took me a bit before I realized that this wasn’t really “Alice,” but a sort of sequel. I suppose it gives a fresh angle to the original, and probably pisses off literalist “Alice” fans, and maybe delights some similar number of fans who were in it for the fantasy in the first place.
In any case, I’m more interested in whether the movie stands on its own as a good movie than whether it is a valid homage to the original.
I have not seen the movie in 3D. Our most local theater, Brenden, was sold out for the showing that we went to in 3D, so we had to come back for the boring old bi-dimensional version.
Even so, it is a beautiful movie. There are a few cringe-inducing CG elements: the Bandersnatch in particular and Crispin Glover. Only a computer could produce something so over-the-top hideous as Crispin Glover.
The story is a nice tale of reality versus fantasy, destiny versus free will, and whether it is better to be loved or to be feared.
Helena Bonham Carter as the mega-meloned “Red Queen” is fierce in representing the primary force moving the movie along. She is a wonderful, evil, petty beast. Her courtiers wear disforming disguises so as, presumably, not to upstage her.
Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter, gap-toothed, with creepy Gollum eyes and flame-red cotton candy hair. He is meant to be the good side of the equation. Madness is to be celebrated. Or at least non-conformity.
Alice, played by Mia Wasikowska is subtle and beautiful. When she smiles she lights up the screen, but she doesn’t have much occasion to smile in this movie.
This being a Tim Burton movie, it is de riguer to call it “dark.” But it doesn’t really seem very dark. The worst thing that happens in this movie is the intended beheading of the Mad Hatter, and I don’t think anyone really is meant to think that he is going to be killed. Right?
Some of the CG is just terrific. The rabbit, the dormouse, Anne Hathaway’s lips (little joke there).
The movie left me a little unfulfilled. The buildup of the primary conflict between Alice and the Jabberwocky seemed too predictable. Of course Alice is going to win. And because the Jabberwocky is mostly off-stage, it’s hard to get too worked up in hating him, in wanting him to fail. Don’t get me wrong, the Jabberwocky looks great. I hope that Smaug looks this good in the “Hobbit” movie. But he is so obviously doomed, there wasn’t any dread in the confrontation. It was simply the next scene that needed to happen.
“Alice in Wonderland” is a well-made film. It is fine even for quite young kids. It is entertaining and worth your time. It is not an all-time classic, but it is a film that I enjoyed. More than, say, “Avatar.”

Kiva — Batsaihan Sharav

pegibson — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:24:07 +0000

Batsaihan is 46 years old and lives with his wife and their four children in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia.
He and his family live together in a house on their own plot of land. His wife is unemployed, but she sells spare parts from their yard.

See Kiva Page

Batsaihan Sharav

Protected: Every Day is like Sunday

pegibson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:31:26 +0000