Posted by David Carter-Tod on April 27th, 2010 — Posted in Uncategorized
I’ve been re-watching The Lord of the Rings with S recently. So many things about it are wonderful, but there are definitely some bits that drive me a little crazy…of course, I’m not the first to notice these things, but after the initial joy of the movies, it’s a bit of a disappointment. Some particularly grating elements:
- Frodo is a complete wimp. In the books, Frodo is funny, strong, and brave. In the movies he spends most of his time fainting, shrinking in fear and being wistful. To take just one example, in Moria he’s the first to draw blood from the orcs when they’re trapped in the room. In the movie, he runs away and hides. More generally, in the books, he’s much more his own agent and in the movies, he’s much more portrayed as the victim. I was trying to decide if this was the actor’s fault, but I really think it’s a directorial decision, since there are moments where he’s explicitly rolling his eyes and going into “zombie” mode. There’s no struggle for the character. By the way, in contrast, Sam is almost perfectly in line with the character in the book.
- Putting on the ring is not a big “wooo” world-goes-fuzzy moment in the book. Bilbo pretty much seems to indicate that it’s a blast, and it’s just not that big a deal most of the time. It’s certainly the case that in the book whoever is wearing it can see more or less normally, and hear normally, if not more clearly (Sam in the Two Towers).
- The threat grows much more gradually in the book. A variety of regular people and hobbits talk to and in some cases collaborate with the Black Riders. The threat grows as the hobbits get further away from the Shire, but it’s much more like general unease earlier on.
- Elves are light-hearted and funny. They don’t talk ponderously and wander slowly around in gray-looking habitats. Rivendell is famous for being the “last homely house” and a place of rest and respite.
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Posted by David Carter-Tod on June 13th, 2008 — Posted in Uncategorized
Guess I’m not alone in finding Tommy Smyth’s commentary on ESPN completely infuriating. I cannot bear to hear him talk about “bulging the old onion bag.” Meanwhile Andy Gray is showing the depth and sophistication of his experience. I can’t help thinking that ESPN thought they were hiring the different Tommy Smith, since on the face of it, the one they have is completely unqualified to comment.
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Posted by David Carter-Tod on January 30th, 2006 — Posted in Uncategorized
“In general, learners are engaged primarily in structure or semistructured learning experiences, whereas end users are engaged in tool use.” (this really should not be online, but here’s the source).
I was reading this today in the course of some research and the thought that sprung to mind was that this might be a false distinction or at least not a very useful one. If it ever had some truth to it, isn’t the kind of “learning” that most people do these days done as an “end user”? Our “tools” vary, but a certain philosophical perspective would say that all human activity is some kind of tool use (including working with ideas). Isn’t it that kind of learning that we are working to shape and provide tools for?
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Posted by David Carter-Tod on January 22nd, 2006 — Posted in Uncategorized
The whole verizonsucks thing is a bit old hat, but I came across a deeply frustrating ‘feature” on my service today.
An upfront disclaimer: I’ve generally been very happy with my service and coverage. A vast improvement over my previous provider which was SunCom.
We’ll put aside the incomprehensibly bad web site design…well, maybe I shouldn’t….here’s what happened:
I do not have a particularly fancy phone, no bluetooth, usb, or whatever. I do have a camera though. I tried to take a picture with my phone the other day and got a warning about not having enough space. So I figure I’ll download some pictures and delete them to save space. That should be easy enough, right?
How to get the pictures off the phone? To send a picture message requires an incomprehensible number of button presses, but I noticed a feature “Online Album” and chose that. Hey, cool, it uploads in two clicks. Excellent.
Wait a minute…where is the online album? Hmm…let’s head to verizon.com. Nope. Sign in. Nope, not there. Hmmm…verizonwireless.com? Nope, not there. No sign of it either. Support section (which is not linked from the home page by the way)? Nope, no mention of it. Hmmm…data technical support FAQ. Nothing. Try a search for “Online Album” (and don’t click any of the first 10 links). Aha, I need Verizon Wireless PIX Place (although I have to google for the url - it’s not actually linked from the Verizon site). Cool.
Alright, let’s head over there. The sign up process isn’t bad. I can handle that. Let’s log in and see my picture. There it is. That’s great.
…wait a minute…that looks a bit fuzzy and small. Click it and it opens in a bigger window. Great, but wait…the file size is one third of the file size on my phone.
Grrrr…….
Now what? Well, maybe I don’t really care too much about picture quality. Maybe I can upload and then send them all somewhere else?
I test it. When you send a picture to someone else, you use a flash interface, and … wait for it…yes, the recipient gets a link back to the Verizon web site.
So, let’s summarize:
- Phone has feature with great usability, which trumps a feature with atrocious usability
- Linked to a site that’s nigh impossible to find
- Which has terrible usability
- And you can’t get your pictures out of at the quality level you took them at
Sigh…yes, verizon does indeed suck.
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Posted by David Carter-Tod on December 9th, 2005 — Posted in Uncategorized
So now Gmail supports RSS
View your favorite RSS feeds right in Gmail as “Clips” along the top of your Gmail screen. Display clips from blogs, news sites and other online sources. Pick from the latest headlines, random popular feeds, or add any RSS/Atom feed you want.
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