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Apple TV

As soon as I picked up the box I thought that it seemed really small. But when I got my Apple TV out of the box it seemed almost impossibly small. While the previous model looked like a small Mac Mini, this one is very tiny. Packaged with Apple’s usual style and finish it is efficient and beautiful.

After unboxing it and hooking it up to the tv (you’ll need to use HDMI to connect it) it powers up (no power switch) when you use the remote. After a bit of configuration with your network it works. Log in with your Apple ID and then you have access to your iTunes account and you can rent movies.

You can also connect to your computer if it is on the home network and then it allows you to listen to or view anything that you have in iTunes as well as photos that are in iPhoto. If you have video that isn’t in the right format you can use HandBrake to convert it (there is a preset for Apple TV 2). The connections can continue with your Flickr account and YouTube (to see your favourites), but the best thing for me to connect to is my Netflix account which provides a ton of movies and tv shows to watch. Each of these accounts show up in different places, but the close analogy is that they are like channels. In each of these areas there are gorgeous thumbnails that appear which is a nice touch.

The remote is quite lovely and is aluminum with a simplified set of buttons. It took a little bit of time getting used to, but it feels nice in my hand. If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch you can use Apple’s Remote app to also control the Apple TV. When you do that you can also see information about music that is playing which is a nice touch. You can dj a party and change the music from your iPhone if you want instead of going over to your computer.

One of the very neat things added with the latest updates to iOS is that you can send video or photos to the Apple TV from any iOS device that is on the network. So when you look at a video on your iPhone and want to share it with people you can just click on the AirPlay button and choose the Apple TV and it magically appears on the screen. I love it and now I wish I had this hooked up to the video projectors at work to allow for more people to share stuff on the screen.

The image quality on the tv (a 32-inch LG HDTV) is great and right now the sound just comes out of the tv speakers, but with support for 5.1 Surround Sound at some point it may be hooked up to the stereo.

There are a wide range of video and audio podcasts that you can stream through the box and with my laptop I can play any of the regular podcasts that I listen to and watch. It’s a magical box that provides an easy and affordable way to get video and audio from all of the computers and iPods and iPhones in the house. Ideally it’s the type of thing that would be built in to all television sets.

Most of what I watch on the Apple TV are tv shows and films on Netflix. The image quality of some of the shows is a lot better than on watching them through the Netflix channel on the Wii which is the way that I used to watch Netflix on the TV. Without the surround sound hooked up I’m not sure if the sound quality is a lot better, but I’m assuming that it would be.

It just works and I’m looking forward to seeing how it may expand with updates and new channels (the latest addition is Major League Baseball) and new capabilities. But even if it stays the way it is, I’m going to enjoy using this for a long time.

March 20, 2011 apple, appletv, iphone, ipod touch, technology

Using coffee and oatmeal to build an audience on Twitter

It started with a suggestion from Sandy Walsh in September in a tweet where he said, “#podcamphfx 2011 topic idea: “Effectively building a Twitter following with oatmeal” by @bitdepth” and then it grew. Roger Ebert wrote about all the amazing things you can cook in a rice cooker and I was inspired and bought one. Then I found out that you could make oatmeal in it and that became part of the morning routine. Coffee has been there for a long time and with Twitter it is the logical thing to mention when you start the day. Strangely people would mention the morning tweets which always mentioned coffee and oatmeal and then the weather or something similar. Why did people like these?

Doing a session at Podcamp was a chance to figure that out and to also share some thoughts about Twitter and why I love it and what works. In a broader sense it really can speak to a lot of things that I enjoy and why. One of the great things about doing a talk is that it is a great chance to meet people and share ideas. If you are shy as I tend to be with a crowd it provides a way to meet a lot of people without a lot of effort. But there is the challenge of the speaking, which can be a bit stressful.

I love creating slides for presentations and using technology in interesting ways, but the problem with that is that it locks you in to a certain linear structure and then the technology becomes the focus. The key for me is to have a good and simple structure that gets people involved and with a screen it is easy for the focus to be there, but if you can turn things back to the people attending and not be a person who speaks and asks for questions at the end, it’s the best. I’d rather be a facilitator than a professor. But that can be difficult to do. So in the way that I usually do this, I thought and thought and thought and then finally wrote down the structure on a Post-It note which consisted of the three things that I wanted people to talk about – one thing that they liked to share, one thing they liked to eat, and one thing that they liked to watch or listen to.

Since it was about oatmeal and coffee the other thing to do would be to provide coffee or oatmeal. I love making coffee, but it can be a bit complicated. The beans need to be ground and most of the time my preferred method is using the vacuum extraction method with a Bodum Santos coffeemaker. So that’s a bit too much equipment to bring. The oatmeal is much simpler with only the rice cooker, water and oatmeal required. So the plan was all in place. No technology other than the rice cooker along with some Post-It notes, pens, and cups to hold oatmeal (with a bit of sugar too).

Sunday, January 23rd arrived and on a nice day the event began. The organizers, Ryan Deschamps, Craig Moore, and Bessy Nikolaou did an amazing job. This was the third Podcamp Halifax and the second that I went to. At the inaugural event I did a presentation called, “Small, Specific and Real” which was fun. This year it seemed bigger with a lot more people that I knew.

One of the central rules of Podcamp is the open space concept of “the law of two feet” where you are free to go from one session to another if you want to. While I love the idea, I usually don’t do it that often. The sessions that I attended were good and interesting and, as always, it seemed that there was a lot of good stuff happening everywhere.

When it came to my session the attendance was very good and it was surprising to see so many people there. So I set up the rice cooker and the water and oatmeal as things got underway. The real point (and thanks for reading this far to get to it) is that you should use Twitter to be who you are and to share things that you like to share and enjoy. It’s about being yourself and finding others who enjoy things that you do or at the very least derive some pleasure from your enjoyment.

The fun part of the session was when people wrote things down on Post-It notes for me. They shared an amazing range of things to share, things to eat, and things to watch or listen to. As people came up to put the notes on the board it was like a physical version of Twitter with everyone sharing little bits of themselves. The board filled up quickly and I scanned through and read out what people had shared. Then I asked a few people about what they had shared and then it grew and more people spoke. It was fun and it’s always great to see a group of people who have the courage to share and speak. So thanks to everyone who came out and shared. Podcamp Halifax 2011 was a lot of fun and I’m excited about more events with the wonderful people who are part of the social media community in Nova Scotia.

January 30, 2011 coffee, oatmeal, podcamp, podcamphfx, twitter

Favourite Films of 2010 and More

2010 Films

The past year was a pretty good one in film and it wasn’t really that difficult to come up with a list of the ten films I enjoyed the most. It was an interesting and uneven year with solid films from great filmmakers and some neat new discoveries. I’ve written about the films in separate reviews on the blog, so this is a chance to make some observations about the films.

Most of the films feature strong and compelling characters with riveting performances. Some new discoveries for me with actors young and old with Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, Tahar Rahim in A Prophet, and Kim Hye-ja in Mother. Some great central performances by some of my favourite actors with George Clooney in The American and Tilda Swinton in I Am Love. At the other end of the spectrum are great established ensemble casts with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter in The King’s Speech, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightly in Never Let Me Go. Finally two films with sprawling, complex stories and great ensemble acting with In a Better World and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Two films play with shooting conventions with bold, open framing by Martin Ruhe in The American and off-centre, wide-angle compositions by Danny Cohen in The King’s Speech. The more intimate stories have naturalistic and intimate shooting styles by Stéphane Fontaine in A Prophet, and Robbie Ryan with Fish Tank. Moving into a sensuous and impressionistic style is Yorick Le Saux with I Am Love.

The films are diverse with half of them in languages other than English and most of them have a level of ambiguity to them, which I really like. The stories are constructed and we have to fill in many of the blanks. The most ambiguous and diverse of the films is easily Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives which crammed so many different styles and tones into one film and ultimate had an amazing ending that gave me chills. I Am Love, Winter’s Bone, In A Better World, Mother, The American, and Fish Tank all work slowly at first, but build to resolutions that raise the stakes are are surprising.

One of the nice things with the availability of films more quickly after their theatrical release is that you can see these films as well as other ones by the directors and actors. Some of the directors from my list this year have me looking forward to everything they do such as Andrea Arnold of Fish Tank who previously did Red Road which works in the same working-class British environment, or Anton Corbijn who followed up Control with The American. I love Jacques Audiard‘s compelling character studies with Read My Lips and The Beat That My Heart Skipped leading logically into A Prophet. Susanne Bier works more melodramatically with her large casts with Brothers and After the Wedding exploring similar ground as her In A Better World.

While the list has ten films here are some other films that I really enjoyed that can be honourable mentions for 2010. Ingrid Veninger wrote and directed the coming-of-age drama Modra in a documentary-style with a great cast enhancing the story. Xavier Dolan‘s Heartbeats was one of the most gorgeous films with lovely cinematography by Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron. Banksy’s documentary (mockumentary?) Exit Through the Gift Shop was fun and provocative and made me think a lot about art and how it can be defined. One of the geekiest and funnest film from the past year was Edgar Wright‘s underrated Scott Pilgrim vs. the World which fused film, video game and comic book aesthetics into something that was fun and light.

The films from established directors such as Scorese‘s Shutter Island, Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer, Christopher Nolan‘s Inception, and the Coen’s True Grit were solid genre exercises that were good to watch, but not really extraordinary compared to their other films. David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky both told stylistically interesting, but oddly misogynistic stories with The Social Network and Black Swan. While making splashes with their releases, the Fincher and Aronofsky films were a bit more interesting later to discuss than they were to watch thanks to some heavy-handed writing with both films. An action-filled pleasant surprise was seeing Angelina Jolie in Philip Noyce‘s Salt which was a enjoyable well-constructed thriller with a strong central female character.

So it was a good year for films with lots of solid work, but nothing really standing out too much for me with the exception of Uncle Boonmee which was a pleasure to see in the theatre.

January 3, 2011 2010, film, lists

In a Better World

In Susanne Bier‘s film In a Better World she examines male responsibility through the interlocking stories of two disrupted families and two young boys who become friends. With multiple stories and parallels between what is happening in a refugee camp in Africa and a small Danish town, it’s a complex and moving story that never takes the easy way out. It’s rare to see a film about interesting characters and moral choices that is told in a naturalistic way with an intimate style of shooting.

Bier excels with slightly unusual personal melodramas with her previous films Brothers (remade in an American version), and After the Wedding (one of my favourite films of 2006) she told complex stories about interesting characters in different parts of the world. She made an impressive leap to Hollywood with the underrated and beautiful Things We Lost in the Fire (featuring Halle Barry and Benicio del Toro). After seeing her previous films I was keen to see her latest effort.

With In a Better World, there is no easy way out as all of the characters try to figure out the right thing to do in the face of violence and bullying. The consequences of actions are followed and we see that things aren’t as simple as they are presented in films. While the film has a deliberate pace, it builds as the events escalate and the stakes become higher and higher. It’s a compelling drama with great performances and it will hopefully receive a wider release.

December 31, 2010 2010, film, in a better world, review

Never Let Me Go

While I haven’t read the novel, the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go by Mark Romanek is a melancholy and beautiful science fiction film that doesn’t focus on the technology, but the people.

Set in an alternate history world with an unpleasant secret, it follows three people as they grow up in that world and learn about who they really are. The casting is perfect with younger actors recognizable as the people they will grow into and the standout performances of the three leads, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightly make it a haunting film that has stayed with me. At the core of the film is a naivety as the children are raised in a sheltered and controlled environment that they do not question. They want to know who they are and we are given the same information that they are, so when the revelations come, they were powerful and surprising for me as well. Wrapped up with this is a love triangle that cleverly informs the other parts of the film. It’s gorgeously shot and the film seemed to move by quite quickly but lingered well after the credits rolled.

December 31, 2010 2010, film, never let me go, review

Mother

Mother One of the most interesting and surprising films that I saw in the past year was Bong Joon-ho‘s Mother, which is a unique thriller that constantly confounds expectations. Just like his previous film, The Host, it works within a genre and subverts it by moving outside of the parameters of it. The twists and turns of the film are delightful and it becomes an emotional roller coaster that turns us around so many times that I was surprised how my feelings about the characters changed. But the characters are at the centre of the film and Kim Hye-ja gives a nuanced performance as a mother who will do anything to protect her son and find out the truth.

The basic premise of the film is that a mentally-challenged young man is charged with murdering a young woman by incompetent police who want to quickly close the case. His mother wants to solve the mystery and starts to investigate. Several times I started to settle down for a solid thriller, but the film would shift tones and deliver a critical piece of information that would make you rethink everything you’ve seen before. The film had me from the first sequence which features Kim Hye-ja walking across a field towards the camera and dancing.

December 30, 2010 2010, film, mother, review

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