The Electric

As an early Father’s Day gift, Jean arranged for a babysitter for John so that we could go to see Batman Begins at the Arena Grand downtown.

This might be the best flick I have seen in a long, long time. The last time I enjoyed a movie this much was when I saw The Matrix with Jean on our first date.

As a Batman fan, this was the movie I wanted to see back in 1989 when Tim Burton released his take on Batman in 1989.

Let’s start with the casting. Bale is Bruce Wayne. While his Batman voice was a bit too raspy the guy makes you believe and feel for his character every step of the way. Cain is the Man as Alfred as is Freeman as Lucius Fox. Major props from Liam Nelison for his fatherly task master Ducard. Only downside to this crew is Kate Holmes and Cillian Murphy. Holmes was just window dressing and didn’t do much. Murphy looked like he was trying to be Jack Nicholson’s Joker from Burton’s Batman and just came off as annoying. Hard to believe he was 2nd pick to be Batman.

The design, Batmobile and the action shots reinforced that this was a real city and this was what real fighting was about. Music from Newman and Zimmer pulled you in without having to dust out some power rock soundtrack drivel. And Nolan should be given major love for this flick.

Next time out, I want to see them reintroduce Catwoman as Ed Brubaker restarted her. A former street walker turned diamond thief/social climber who has Bruce questioning his views on crime.

This might be one of the few times that a Windows guy like me can look at a Mac and just thank goodness I didn’t buy one

Long the secret envy of Windows folks like myself for their ease in producing professional quality multimedia as well as ‘just working’, I’ve always looked at the Mac with bitterness.

First there is the smugness of Apple and then there are their business practices that are worse than those at Microsoft.

So on the eve of Apple shanking of yet another business partner, in this case IBM, as they move to Intel chips, Mac users now must face the fact the Apple took their eye off the ball and you as their customers are about to pay.

Because while they were busy selling iPods and ripping off shareware ideas for Tiger, Intel along with AMD and Microsoft cracked the 64bit dual processor nut.

These chips are basically two very fast (by about twice the speed) computers in one. Already Industrial Light and Magic switched to these chips running a beta version of Windows XP64 to crunch effects for War of the Worlds and Episode 3. Now that power is available to Windows folks at the end of this month in a new computer with all the bells and whistles for about $2000.

Now here’s the rub for Apple folks:

Apple has 0 experience with 64 bit OS development and the current OS is based on 32 bit open source. So unless Apple does what Microsoft did and sell both 32 and 64 bit versions of the OS, you’re going to see a new Mac OS that won’t work for your Mac. BTW Microsoft has had 3 years of 64 bit development

Here’s the other kicker. The intel chips stink, bad, their just a notch above their current high end 32 bit chips. Their so bad that their major competitor, AMD (who’s chips ILM used) doubled the price on their 64bit dual core.

So when Steve gives you a peak into the Mac future, remember to start saving now.

The outside of the house is looking spiffy. Jean and I spent the weekend getting the garden in plus doing some general yard work as we get ready to take the photos of the yard for the planning commission.

Meanwhile inside the house, we’re getting rid of the excess stuff that we’ve piled up over the years. This part is hard for me since I’m a pack rat by nature but without any good archival skills. Its easy for me to blow the brain buffer with even the simplist of organizational tasks.

So, needless to say, I’m swamped trying to sort what I really want to keep and sore from the yard work.