I promised on my Twitter feed that I would do a review of a few of the free or inexpensive Twitter apps for the iPhone. I was originally going to use them on the train down to NYC, but I ended up driving down. So, instead, I used the three apps while I was at the CT Forum Sponsor Dinner and during intermission and before the CT Forum event.

I didn’t try to thoroughly test each feature of all the apps but instead tried to just use them to tweet, tweet with pictures, and keep up with the feed from everyone else. So, I’m focused on a smaller list of features than the apps support, but the ones I use most often.

Second, I didn’t try the premium versions of apps if the app had a free version. I paid for Tweetie because it was relatively inexpensive ($2.99). Twittelator has a pro version for $4.99, and Twitterific may have one eventually has one for $9.99 (!).

Some general observations before I get into specifics. I’ve been using Twitterific for a while now, both on the desktop and on my iPhone. The iPhone app has a few things I don’t like. It loads all the tweets since you last opened the app. It is a little sluggish and has ads. It also doesn’t have the easy filters for just replies, direct messages (DMs), and everyone. So, I wanted to try some other apps to see if they would be better.

My general preferences are space efficiency (no whitespace, limited animations, etc.) and speed. I want to be sure I don’t miss replies and direct messages, so a filter or distinct colors are critical. I want to be able to post pictures easily from the app, without having to dump out to the Photo app. All the apps considered fit these basic requirements. If this is all you want, you should be good with any of them.

Of all of these, Twitterfon was the app that best matched my preferred usage. The only thing I didn’t like is that it doesn’t have DMs mixed into the main feed. It does have notifications for DMs in the bottom status bar, so this wasn’t a huge deal. It’s fast, covers the range of features I use, and makes it very easy to use just my iPhone to keep up with Twitter. Tweetie was a very, very close second, even though I really don’t like the iChat bubble display (see screenshots below).

I paid for Tweetie, so I’ll probably end up using that the most, but I’m keeping Twitterific and Twitterfon installed. Twittelator Pro, the $4.99 version of Twittelator, might actually be a pretty damn good app based on the feature list, but I’m not shelling out $4.99 for it when comparable apps are much less or free.

Here’s the criteria I paid attention to:

Let me know if I missed anything you’re interested in.

I broke the table into two so it wouldn’t stretch forever to the right. Here’s the rest:

Here are some screenshots to give you a better idea of the apps display setup. You can always find more screenshots in the App Store itself. As you can see, Twitterific and Twitterfon have the best display by my criteria above.

Twitterific:

Tweetie:

Twittelator:

Twitterfon:

Let me know if you have any questions or if I missed anything.

Update: Oops, I missed Twitterific Premium when I searched for the pay version of Twitterific. Not sure what I did to miss it, but thanks to @rvr for pointing it out.

If I had two things I wish I could be, the first would be a musician, the second a graphic designer. The wannabe designer in me really wanted to see Helvetica when I saw it in the iTunes store. Helvetica is a documentary about typography, specifically the emergence of Helvetica 50 years ago and it’s origins in modernist design to the rebellion against it to it’s reemergence as a core design element today. The movie touches on the power of type and typeface to communicate through conversations with some big name designers, including the people behind some of the fonts and album covers and posters we all might recognize.

To me, type is the hardest thing I grapple with when working on FatMixx. It and color give me the most trouble. These ideas that are stuck in my head need the right typeface and the right spacing to work, and I’ll spend hours playing with fonts and colors before even starting on a new FM layout. (then I’ll usually give up and do something “boring” or random, but hey, I tried)

To that end, listening to these talented designers talk about how they approach type and how they interpret Helvetica was a neat hour plus of entertainment for me. If you’re a font geek, or if you have wondered how that ubiquitous font came to be, this is worth seeing. The history lesson alone is interesting enough.

It’s available on iTunes now:

(and, yes, it’s been a movie extravaganza this weekend)

Heidi and I rented 27 Dresses last night via iTunes and our Apple TV. This is going to be the shortest review ever. It’s basically what you’d expect, a romantic comedy that’s neither memorable nor particularly good or bad. If you have an hour and a half where you want to watch something funny-ish that helps you relax, this is the movie for you.

This is a movie that lives up to the hype, even without the full IMAX Experience treatment. Right now, it’s a 9.6/10 at IMDB, a 94% at Rotten Tomatoes, and a (surprisingly low) 82/100 at Metacritic. Scores like that tend to make me cautious because it raises expectations to an unreasonable level.

To be sure, you shouldn’t go into this movie expecting it to be perfect. It isn’t. It’s still the best action movie this summer, and arguably the best Batman movie ever. Thanks to Heath Ledger’s amazing performance as the Joker, solid performances by the rest of the cast, and a story that’s deeper than most of the Marvel movies, this movie delivers action and characters so well that I want to see the movie again.

It’s hard to describe what makes Heath Ledger’s performance so good. His character is disturbed but brilliant, a smart but crazy villain. While Jack Nicholson’s Joker was a bit whimsical, this Joker is pathological. Simply put, you don’t figure him out even until the very end. He is written as an anarchist, interested in the battle against Batman, not the winning. Chaos is his goal, nothing more, but he introduces it in a systemic, organized way. Some of the movie’s most interesting themes is how the Joker introduces chaos by using society’s rules against itself. I can’t go into more without giving away chunks of the plot and I really don’t want to do that. Simply put, Ledger is brilliant and runs with the script and makes it fly.

I really do mean to compare this DC Comic story against the Marvel movies that have come out this summer. Iron Man was a fun movie, and the first Spider Man movie with Tobey Maguire had a solid story, but this movie explores the Batman character better than any movie before it. There’s a central portion of the movie that’s quite dense, mostly dialogue and examination of whether Batman is truly helping Gotham. This question of Batman’s purpose is central to the movie, and it doesn’t distract, because it’s woven so well into the overall story.

This is still an action movie, however, and there’s where most of the minor flaws show up. The Bat Pod is stupid. Seriously. And there’s a big sequence, parts of which have been in the trailers, that doesn’t live up to the standard set by the acting and the story. Decent stuff, not great.

Beyond that, the Illinois-like Gotham plates on some of the cars was annoying, especially since the film was clearly shot in Chicago (is it bad that I can recognize a city from the bridges shown over rivers?). Every time a plate came into view, I kept trying to read whether it said Illinois at the top. Maggie Gyllenhal was a less ideal Rachel Dawes than Katie Holmes, but Aaron Eckhart is perfect as Harvey Dent.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got. Go see this movie! It’s awesome. (even Heidi liked it!)

I was looking forward to seeing Cloverfield for a while now. So, of course we went to see it opening night.

My summary for this movie is that the concept was great, the effects were awesome, but the movie stumbled at points because of bursts of horrible writing. Basically, we get to see a Godzilla movie but from the perspective of a video camera carried by a 20-something and his friends trying to rescue someone trapped in the city. The movie starts of slowly, almost lulling you into boredom when, Wham!, the action starts with only a few pauses. The perspective is awesome, and the film really captures the chaos and terror of being on the ground if something like that were to happen. The details are awesome, too. Of course folks, early on during something like this, would probably stand around trying to capture pics on their cell phone cameras. I loved the perspective and the taste of what it would be like if you were there for a monster attack.

The film had two recurring writing problems. First, the characters weren’t very sympathetic. You weren’t rooting for them in any way. The film works simply by making you a witness of the event, but it would’ve been better if I wasn’t impartial to the main characters. This was a relatively minor problem.

My bigger problem with the writing was some laziness in the details. Characters, when they need to be, are gravely injured (for example, impaled on rebar), but then can run carrying someone else 20 minutes later. There were a few of these moments in the movie that jarred me out of suspending disbelief. Again, not what you want in a monster movie.

I still loved the concept, though, and recommend seeing it. This is one to see in the theater if you love monster movies or pulp science fiction. It’s definitely a rental otherwise. The concept is unique (Heidi mildly disagrees) and that alone makes it worth seeing.

I finally, after many years, cancelled my Netflix membership today. While I love the company and enjoyed their service, it wasn’t something that fit into my life right now. The easiest way to say why is that I still have a movie that we received in December, 2006. Yes, in 12 months I never got around to watching the third DVD. No, I’m not kidding and yes, I’m not proud.

On a related note, primarily because the elimination of the monthly Netflix fee pays for it, I’m going to pick up the smaller Apple TV tomorrow. There are two reasons for this. First, the movie rental service that Apple announced is closer to my dream of on demand all the time video and makes it more likely that we’ll actually rent movies. When I had a more regular schedule, Netflix made a ton of sense… now, finding two hours to spend with Heidi on the couch is often a surprise occurrence. Comcast’s OnDemand service was perfect for that, but since we switched to DirecTV, no more OnDemand.

The second reason we’re going Apple TV is that my XBox 360 setup I described a month ago isn’t quite as good as I hoped. The main problem is weak playback controls and library navigation in the XBox 360 media player. Basically, I can’t make playlists with the video, nor can I view any descriptions of the video shared to the XBox. Not sure if this is a Connect 360 issue or an XBox 360 issue, honestly, but it’s an annoying problem. It showed up most dramatically after I put Season 3 of Lost on my computer from my DVDs. The episode titles don’t have numbers in them and showed up in alphabetical order on the screen. Want to watch the season in order? Good luck.

Audio playback suffers from similar goofiness. I can’t remember exactly what I ran into, but some basic playback issues are there. I think I couldn’t fast forward a song, just skip forward or back between tracks. It’s a weird issue, and it’s just dumb.

We have an Apple TV at work which I’ve used a LOT late at night by myself. The device has its own limitations (720p, lame remote, runs hot as a toaster), but it does a great job exposing the playlists and functionality of iTunes on the TV. I can deal with the 720p thing, for now, and the remote should be a non-issue because of my awesome Harmony remote. It supposedly works with the Apple TV, so I should be able to continue using the single remote for everything.

Anyway, quick update on the whole home theater experiment. The new TV was mounted on the wall today. Love it up there, but it did confirm all the evils of having 100-year-old plaster walls.

I’ve been remiss in my blogging responsibilities and, for that, I apologize. It’s already January 5th and I haven’t mentioned the most unusual of my Christmas gifts this year. It’s the Back to Basics Egg and Muffin 2 slice Toaster and Egg Poacher. No, really!

What is this thing? Well, if you’ve ever had or seen an McDonald’s Egg McMuffin, you know exactly what this machine makes. It’s a combination toaster and egg maker that has a special cycle that poaches the egg and pops the toasted bread at exactly the same moment. Take your warm bread and your poached egg, add some cheese and/or meat of your choice and, voila!, home made breakfast sandwich. It also can hard boil eggs, so if you’re an egg fan, you can just use the egg part.

Heidi and I have been using egg substitute rather than real eggs or scrambling the egg before putting it in the machine since I’m not a fan of the runny yolk in a poached egg. Aside from that, I can add veggie sausage, different kinds of cheese, and better muffins than what McDonald’s might use. Choosing my own ingredients and making a warm breakfast sandwich so easily is worth it.

I found out about this machine from Fahrad Manjoo’s enthusiastic review on Salon. For $29.99, I was willing to give it a try. It works as well as he said, and the sandwiches are much tastier than anything I remember from McD’s. If you like Egg McMuffins, this is the machine for you.

Update: Forgot to mention another egg-related device. A buddy at work who stays fit eats eggs pretty much every day. I had him in our office Secret Santa so I got him the Krups Egg Express Egg Cooker as his gift. He loves it and says it does a great job making hard boiled eggs. So, in case you’re just into eggs without the bread (say, you’re an Atkins person), this is a pretty decent machine. Amazon shows it at $22.32, but I bought it from Amazon for $19.99. Not sure why the price went up.

That’s pretty much the review right there in the headline, but as I continue to stall actually finishing my work for, uh, work (I’m suffering from the coder equivalent of writers block on one problem at the moment), here’s a quick endorsement for the Logitech Harmony line of universal remotes. While a bit expensive for most casual TV viewers, it’s a great device for those of us with more than 3 things attached to the TV. I had an XBox 360, PS2, DVR, Receiver, and cable box when I bought this remote. I have the XBox 360 version which works great for the combination of devices I have. The rest of this review assumes the features of that version, though it should apply to most of them.

The best thing about this remote is that it comes with software for your home Mac or PC to configure the remote. The one thing that drives me insane about most universal remotes, including some high end ones, is trying to program the remote on the remote itself. Too often you have to point the remotes at each other and go through a manual, button-by-button programming for each remote. Ugh.

The Harmony does away with that (for the most part). It leverages a web-based service that allows your remote to pull updated definitions from Logitech. This way, they’re not limited to what devices they can fit on the remote’s memory. New TV in 3 years? Odds are that Logitech will have the device added into their DB. Occasionally, you have to verify which version of a particular model you have and that requires pointing its remote at the Logitech remote, but that’s OK because it’s easier than trying to find a revision number or firmware revision from the TV or device.

The remote also uses an “activity” based approach rather than a device based approach. So, for example, I have an activity called “Watch TV” that turns on the TV, sets it to the right input, and turns on the DirecTV DVR. I chose a couple of shortcuts I want featured by selecting them in a menu, and I have one touch access to common functions like the Guide or the List of programs on the DVR.

The great thing about this approach is that I can create a lot of activities quickly and easily. For example, I have a “Watch DVD” activity along with a “Watch DVD (no receiver)” activity. You can use either to watch DVDs, but the first turns on the surround sound and uses the receiver to control the volume while the second activity uses the TV for audio instead.

Also, because it understands typical viewing patterns, replacing devices is pretty easy. When I swapped TVs recently, I walked through a few menus and the software replaced the old TV with the new one in all the activities where it made sense.

My only complaint is really a minor issue. The remote needs to “know” whether your devices are on or off, so it’s really important that you use the remote only to turn things on and off. Takes some getting used to if you’re in the habit of hitting the power switch on the TV.

Trust me, it’s worth the money if you have a several devices attached to your home theater. I love it and can’t imagine going to another remote.

Just a quick review for now. As you may remember, our TV developed a weird display issue some time ago. The issue was covered under our Best Buy extended warranty, so they offered to replace the TV for a TV of the same or lower price as the first one. After a little bit of waiting, mostly because we were away for the holidays, our replacement TV was delivered early yesterday morning. We ended up replacing our old Samsung LN-S4095D with the Samsung LNT4071F 40″ 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV. The Amazon page goes through most of the features, so I won’t rehash them here. Let’s just say that the TV has everything I’d want and then some. I still go back and forth on whether a slightly larger set would be better in our living room, but the 40″ TV does look great.

So far, after a weekend spent on or around the couch cleaning and coding, I can say that the TV looks awesome. Better than awesome, actually. We watched Planet Earth on HD-DVD which I gave to Heidi for Christmas on this set and it looked phenomenal. There’s a certain clarity to the picture that makes it seem like you’re either actually there or looking at an unprocessed copy of the video (almost like a soap opera or camcorder picture).

I’m now a believer in contrast ratios, by the way. Samsung claims a 25,000:1 ratio for this set, and it really makes a BIG difference compared to our old TV (6000:1). We’ve got great, rich colors with beautiful depth, great blacks, and smooth gradients. Everything I’m reading says that those areas are where the contrast ratio really makes a difference.

If you’re looking for a new TV you won’t be able to beat this one by much. The latest Sony’s are supposed to be roughly the same or slightly better, and the new LED lit Samsungs offer some tradeoffs worth considering. In the end, since I liked my old LCD TV, I decided to stick with that technology for now.

One minor complaint, which is that I don’t like the sound of the new TV. They’ve done some stuff to boost the bass, but it ends up making things sound unnaturally deep. I think in part I’m picky about this because I listen to my music on better than average headphones that have an even frequency response. You can modify the EQ settings, though, so a little time in the menus and I got the sound back where I like it.

Bottom line: Love it, happily recommend it.

On a random topic, this is the first Sunday where I’ve watched football at home in a while. Sunday Ticket is pretty nice, especially since we get many of the games in HD. DirecTV has done a good job with the package, including the enhanced menus and scoreboards in the package. Didn’t know the set top box had the ability to do enhanced menus and on-screen widgets.

Update: Forgot to post this little tidbit: The biggest complaint about the TV is something people are calling the “triple ball effect” where the Auto Motion Plus function creates ghost images for small, fast moving objects (e.g. balls when watching sports). Samsung has a new firmware update out for the TV that helps mitigate the problem when Motion Plus is set to low (the default) or medium.

If you’re a Daft Punk fan, I strongly recommend you pick up their new live concert recording, Alive 2007. I’m bouncing in my chair as I listen to it, there’s so much energy in their live performance. Nearly every song has been remixed, some a little, others a LOT, so this won’t be one of those live albums that you go, “Gosh, didn’t I already own that?”

Good stuff, and DRM Free and high quality at Amazon. Cheaper, too!

If you love Wes Anderson (I Heart Huckabees, The Royal Tennenbaums, Rushmore), you’ll like this. It’s not as good as my favorites, The Royal Tennenbaums and Rushmore but that’s because it feels too similar to his other movies. In other words, it doesn’t feel that fresh and you’re left wondering if you saw this movie already.

It’s well acted, the story is interesting enough, and there are some great moments. Recommended, but a rental unless you really like Wes Anderson. Before you see it, be sure to catch Hotel Chevalier, the prequel to Darjeeling. It’s a short film available for free on iTunes. If nothing else, you get to see a naked Natalie Portman (she’s truly all bones… still cute, though).

Update: One other thought: I was a bit worried about the fact that it took place in India. Films can sometimes be insensitive without meaning to be, and I was just waiting for something. It never came. With the exception of one goofy scene, the movie managed to just “be” in India rather than making a spectacle (positive or negative) about it. Well done, actually. So, if you’re the type that thinks about that, don’t worry about this issue.

Update 2: Heidi points out that he didn’t do I Heart Huckabees… She’s right. Corrected above.

Go See It Now! Right now. If you hurry, you can still make the 10:something showing. This is easily one of the best Pixar movies in recent history. Though they haven’t really made one I don’t like, Cars and The Incredibles weren’t up to the same level as Monsters Inc or the Toy Story films. Ratatouille is one of the best Pixar films, period.

The impressive thing about this one is that unlike the last few films, this movie requires a heavy suspension of disbelief. Compared to say, Monster’s Inc, which exists in a complete fantasy world, Ratatouille is based in a more realistic world where some completely unbelievable things happen. High up on that list are that Remy, our protagonist rat, can understand English (French?) and can control his human friend by tugging on particular clumps of his hair. When we’re first introduced to the concept in the film, I couldn’t help but think of it as absurd. Normally, that’s where a film would lose me, when suspension of disbelief is broken. That didn’t happen this time because the story immediately became about the characters.

Ultimately, that’s why this movie is so awesome. The story is funny and entertaining and rich. Everything else is forgivable when you have that. There were entire stretches of the film where Heidi and I couldn’t stop snickering, giggling, and laughing along with the film. Most importantly, the movie ends on a really strong note with an awesome little twist that just makes the film.

As with all the movies I really love, I’ll leave you with a few other reviews. As always, my favorite comes from Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek, who calls the film “pure joy, a grand achievement — one of the most beautiful animated pictures ever made.” Rotten Tomatoes has this film at an almost unbelievable 95%. (Cars was a 76%, though The Incredibles hit 97%(!)).

Go see this, you’ll enjoy it!

A quick review because I promised Josh I would write one. If you liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin, you’ll probably enjoy Knocked Up. It’s pretty much the same cast with the same style of writing with the same uneven pace throughout. There are great laughs in the film but the film relied too much on a couple of jokes. Too many pot jokes for my taste. I didn’t like it as much as Virgin, to be honest. The biggest problem is that Seth Rogen’s character’s transformation took too long. They make it to week 24 before he realizes she doesn’t like the fact that he’s broke, smokes a ton of pot, and is a bit, uh, vulgar in public. And then, in the last 12 weeks, he suddenly realizes what’s wrong and changes everything about his life. It’s forgivable, because his being normal kind of ruins the foundation of most of the humor.

So, go see it if you liked Virgin. You could wait until it comes out on DVD, though, because it didn’t seem to benefit from the crowd much at all.

I just finished watching V for Vendetta on HD-DVD. I read the graphic novel a while ago, right around when the movie came out and enjoyed it. The political overtones and the almost surreal storyline make for a great graphic novel. Clearly influenced by 1980’s British (and American) politics, the book sets up an interesting world in a post-nuclear holocaust Britain that succumbs to fascism. That world was set in the near future then, which I guess would be right now. The story and the society in the novel have some eerie parallels in our modern world. It’s not hard to pull some symbolism out of the novel to our modern world shaped by terrorism.

Unfortunately, the movie takes this idea and kicks it way, way over the top. In general, I’m sympathetic to the idea that societies must be vigilant against those that would offer safety in conformity. The government’s motto in the novel/movie is “Strength through Unity, Unity through Faith”), and I definitely bristle at that. Unfortunately, the film takes the novel, introduces the vocabulary of our modern battle with terrorism, and bludgeons the viewer over the head several times during the movie. It’s almost as if they took a smart novel and tried to dumb it down so that everyone would get the point. It’s especially bad as the style of V for Vendetta is over the top. V, the protagonist, is over-the-top, a theatrical person who speaks in monologues to explain his purpose to a populace that has forgotten it’s own purpose in society. He isn’t written subtly.

Thankfully these moments are relatively few and, assuming you like stylized novels/films like Sin City, the movie ends up being pretty good. A lot of things are different in the film, so if you’ve read the novel, be prepared to reacquaint yourself with a number of the minor characters. The “Fate” computer is gone, as is the entire development of the Chancellor’s character.

The soundtrack to the film is solid, by the way. The closing credits feature a song by Ethan Stoller called BKAB. The version used in the movie had clips of Malcolm X and Gloria Steinem speeches playing over BKAB’s Bollywood influenced beats and samples. Cool piece, especially since I’m a fan of artists that fuse Indian and Western beats/music. Karsh Kale, Cornershop, Nitin Sawhney, etc. are all interesting artists if you’re into that. BKAB is only available from the artist directly, FYI. I also can’t find a version with the speeches overlay. It’s not on the soundtrack and the artist’s web site says that he’s still working on getting rights to those recordings so he can remix the track with them in there. Interestingly enough, the name of the song comes from a Malcolm X speech. Check out the artist’s site for an explanation.

This weekend I finally decided to pick up the SlingBox after struggling with the lack of a TV in my home office. I’ve been in there a lot lately, working late and have been going nuts without the background noise of TV. I’ve ended up buying silly movies from iTunes. I’ve also gone through my DVD collection several times over. I think I just need background noise after growing up in a house that was never quiet.

So, why the Slingbox? I have a house that’s just about 90 years old. That means no cable in most rooms and no phone jacks. As it is, we have an Ethernet cable running across the floor upstairs to connect my office into the router in the other room. The idea of running a coax cable across the floor isn’t appealing. And yes, we’ve thought about having the house wired. That’s coming, but not for now.

To deal with this, and also to get ESPN and live sports into my office, I started looking into IPTV solutions. There was the open source route with MythTV, but that would require another box with a computer’s power supply. There’s enough power getting drawn by devices in the TV room already. Then there’s Sony’s LocationFree. Their devices don’t have a tuner and need a set-top box to control. I don’t really want to interfere with whatever Heidi might want to watch in the other room, so that was a non-starter. On the other hand, Sony has a PSP player and I own a PSP. On the other hand, the Slingbox has a version that has a coax in and has an analog tuner built in, so that’s the one I ended up going with, especially after reading reviews.

So far, it’s been great. The viewer is a bit of a CPU hog (probably because the stream is encrypted) and the box runs very hot, but those are my biggest complaints. Setup was a breeze, installation was painless, and I had TV on my computer within 15 minutes of opening the box. That includes wiring it all up (granted, I’m pretty good around my AV gear).

I wondered a while back whether it would run on a G4 Mac. While it takes up 50% CPU on my dual core Intel-based Mac, Heidi’s 1.25Ghz eMac kept skipping and pausing trying to play the video. Again, the encryption was probably to blame. On my iMac, I can program, run Eclipse, do whatever with minimal impact on the video.

If you look closely at the screenshot of the player, you’ll see what it looks like in it’s smallest mode. It’s tight. Click one button and a remote control pops up where you can punch in any channel. Quick channel buttons are included right at the bottom, and clicking the little inverted triangle to the right exposes more presets. The most important feature, though, is the “Always on Top” option, something that too many players forget (I’m looking at you, iTunes!).

You also may notice the bit rate on the bottom right of the picture. Yes, that’s 6 Megabits, really. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much sustained bandwidth flowing across my home network. Good thing I’m upgrading to Gigabit at home right now. (OK, Gigabit won’t improve anything, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? Don’t tell my wife…).

The one feature I haven’t had a chance to test is the remote viewing. Slingbox apparently allows me to watch TV across the Internet, even on some mobile devices. I had some trouble with getting this set up with my router (some UPnP issues for the geeks) so no joy yet. Seems like these network apps are still problematic, and it’s not just limited to the Slingbox. The key feature, not obvious unless you’re a techy, is that the player and the box are adjusting the bit rate dynamically based on connection quality. That feature alone enables Internet viewing of this video. It’s pretty much a must have for a consumer device.

Overall, after the first few days of actual use I’m really happy with the purchase. I recommend the device if you’re looking for TV over your home network.

A small side note: I’m out of network ports in my living room. Basically, I have 4 ports on the router. One goes to my office (where there’s another 5 port switch), one goes to Heidi’s office, and the Tivo and XBox360 take up the other ports. I’ve had to disconnect the PS2 (no major loss). So, right now the Slingbox is plugged into the switch in my office with another cable running across the floor. Needless to say, the 8-port GigE switch is on the way from Amazon.

After seeing Avenue Q, we hung out with my sister then headed off to dinner. Just by coincidence our car was up on 56th, so we ended up walking around there for dinner. We ended up at Topaz, a Thai restaurant on W. 56th St. I don’t have much to say, except that both entrees we tried were excellent. It’s been a while since I’ve had great Thai food, probably since I left Boston. This was great. The decor was alright, the service was very good, and they had a good selection of entrees. Heidi had the Massaman curry, which she loved, and I had the Tofu Pad Basil, which I devoured. If you’re in the neighborhood, it’s worth swinging by.

There’s almost no chance I would’ve seen Avenue Q if it weren’t for the Scrubs episode My Musical. We loved the episode and, most importantly, thought the songs were incredibly funny and on target with the characters. That’s pretty hard to do, and we wanted to know who was behind the music. Turns out that the folks who wrote Avenue Q worked on the episode. In fact, the female lead in the original cast, Stephanie D’Abruzzo, was in the episode as the patient. After doing a bit of reading on Avenue Q, seeing a number of positive reviews online, and combined with Heidi’s mandate that we go away this weekend, we decided to drive down to NYC and see Avenue Q at the Golden on Broadway. We were happy we did.

It would be fair to describe this as the most unusual musical I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a decent number both as a theatergoer or working on student productions in high school and college. The musical centers around a cast of muppet-like characters who live out on Avenue Q, a street far outside of Manhattan “where the rents are actually affordable.” While most of the main characters are muppets, the actors who manipulate and voice them are visible and as much a part of the cast and action as the muppets. It takes a few minutes to get used to looking at both faces at the same time, but after that, the setup actually just works. It works really well, actually. The actors are exceptionally good at manipulating the puppets. There’s a lot to appreciate just in the skill with which they animate the puppets while singing and dancing. On top of that, almost all of the puppeteering cast voice multiple muppets. This is often accomplished by one actor manipulating the puppet in rhythm to the primary actor singing the part. It sounds confusing but again, it’s pulled off brilliantly.

The story is a fairly typical coming of age story. In fact, it was fairly predictable. The music wasn’t all that original either. Neither of these things matter, though, as the book (the lyrics) was incredibly funny and smart. It’s also raunchy and crass in ways that easily bring back Team America memories (though this is much better). Heck, two muppets even have sex on stage. Unlike Team America, the raunch and the sex, well, everything are actually are funny.

The guys behind the musical and even some of the original cast spent time working on Sesame Street. This “inspiration” is evident throughout the musical. Two characters are obviously reminiscent of Bert and Ernie and two large monitors provide Sesame Street-like transitions between scenes, albeit in a more adult way. You’ll recognize a few of the sketches from Sesame Street, the Electric Company and other children’s shows of our childhood.

The show is a bit pricey (orchestra and front mezzanine run $101.25), but it’s worth it. Odds are you’ve heard one of the songs before, because I’ve (unknowingly) linked up a video in the past. If you’ve watched the Internet is for Porn video, you’ve heard one of the songs. The song is entirely from Avenue Q (though the video is unrelated to the musical). Enjoy!

If you think that song is any good, you really should see this musical.

(P.S. It should be no surprise that the writers of this musical are potentially collaborating with the folks behind South Park on a new musical. Hopefully, it’s as clever as Avenue Q and South Park and not as stupid as Team America.)

I’ve been reading too much non-fiction lately, so in an effort to add some fiction to my list, I picked up a couple of new books this week. One twist, all of them are graphic novels. First up is the first volume of Y: The Last Man, a series by Brian K. Vaughan. Vaughan worked for a while for DC and Marvel, but most recently he joined the writing staff for Lost. Yes, another Shah/Hojnicki obsession, but I promise you, a healthy one. Honestly, I didn’t know this when I picked up the book. I was intrigued by another Vaughan title, Pride of Baghdad, which follows four lions who escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It’s based on a real episode, but the idea of using the lions to explore the concept of liberation sounded pretty interesting. More on that book later.

Y is set in a world where an unknown pathogen or agent wipes out all the male mammals in the world. All the males except for two, actually: our protagonist and his pet monkey. Somehow, he becomes the last human Y chromosome in the world.

The first volume runs through the opening of the story. We meet what look to be the major characters in the series, all women except for Yorick, the last man on earth. The men all die at once, suddenly leaving chaos and turmoil behind. Imagine what it might be like if suddenly every man in the world disappeared. Imagine the knowledge lost, even at a practical level. So many professions are still dominated by men. How many women know how to run the garbage collection system? Heck, my office would be down to maybe 10% or less of the staff remaining, especially among the technical staff. In the U.S., women account for about 45% of the workforce, which isn’t that bad. I suspect you might get a different breakdown by industry.

Vaughan’s imagination creates an interesting world. The Secretary of Agriculture becomes President (Nancy Pelosi would be the first female president if this happened today), gangs of women band together as Amazons, and the Washington Monument becomes an impromptu shrine to the dead men of the country. Don’t know what it is about dystopian futures, but between this and Transmetropolitan, clearly something is getting my attention. This one seems to be a bit more optimistic than Transmet (well, except for the whole all-the-men-are-dead thing). Both series are also published by Vertigo.

So far, I’m curious about what happens next. Best thing a first volume can do, I guess, so I’ll be picking up the next few.

Last week, I heard an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation talking about a new graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Commission Report. At first, I thought that this was an odd idea. Why would anyone want the 9/11 Report as a graphic novel? Are you ready for the words BLAMM! to be shown next to an image of a burning Pentagon? As I listened to the authors explain their motivation, I was convinced that this might be a unique way of communicating the 585 page 9/11 Commission Final Report.

It didn’t hurt that these authors were excellent comic writers and artists in their own right. Sid Jacobson created Richie Rich and was the editor-in-chief at Harvey Comics. Ernie Colón worked at Harvey, Marvel and DC Comics and oversaw “production of the Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, … and The Flash.” Both sounded very serious about why they were doing this and what this project meant to them.

I also began to see this as a piece of art that, while completely based on fact and striving to be true to the Final Report, offered a new way to view the tragic events of that day. Even before the authors brought it up, I remembered the power of reading Maus for the first time. I wrote then that a graphic novel about the Holocaust seemed “wrong” at first blush, but after reading it, I really appreciated having and reading Maus.

This graphic adaption also rises to the occasion. There are fold out timelines of all four planes. There are actually two timelines, one focusing on the events on board the aircraft and the other focusing on when each agency knew about the various events. While you can read much of this in the Executive Summary, this representation makes it easy to understand how the events fit together.

It’s these thousand word pictures that allow a reader to choose whether they want to skim the text or to dive into the details and the touches in the panels. The artwork is beautiful and rich in detail. The writing is clear, simple, and expertly crafted to capture the essential points of each section of the Final Report. Ultimately, it is a serious testament to both the quality and potential of this medium as well as the convictions and vision of the authors. I’m sure they got some incredulous looks when they proposed this