Blessed by the Potato

Well, we went to see the Twilight movie today, and I just recently finished the books, so I thought I’d do a small review of both at the same time. Consider this whole post to be full of spoilers.

The Movie: The movie was quite faithful to the books. They added some parts to make the plot a little more logical (basically, the other vampires don’t suddenly show up out of nowhere, they have about 40 seconds of screen time before they meet Bella). However, because so much of the book took place inside Bella’s head, there’s a lot of narration, which is a little uncomfortable at times. Narration aside though, the movie is pretty light on exposition. There were a few points where I had to wonder if someone who hadn’t read the books could follow what was going on (for example, they cut right into the middle of a conversation between Bella and Edward, with Bella saying “so do you have to be dying to become a vampire?”). It’s not a hugely complicated plot, so I’m sure they could, and moreover, the books have sold so many copies that I don’t think that’s a particularly large audience anyway.

They did a really good job of casting the main players, and moreover, the director got some really good performances out of these young actors. They were believable as kids without being terribly annoying to watch or bratty. Bella was almost exactly as I pictured her, and Charlie, Edward & Alice were also great (I loved her pitching style). Emmet, Rosalie, and Jasper weren’t as I pictured them though: Emmet is supposed to be supernaturally huge, and he’s not even American football player big; Rosalie is supposed to be this drop-dead gorgeous bombshell, but she just blended into the scenery next to Bella and Alice. Jasper though wasn’t even close to how I pictured him: he was a soldier before being changed, so I expected him to be older, with neater hair, and above all else, to be battle scarred. About the only thing he had right was the pained half-wild look in his eye. Esme could be cast by a robot (or equivalently, Keanu Reeves) for all the screen time she gets in the books and movie, so I suppose she was fine.

While the performances of the actors were enjoyable to watch, some other aspects of the movie kept distracting me. The cinematography was very music-video-ish. They kept cutting to slightly different angles, or extreme closeups, or randomly throwing in shots of the grass or the trees or rapidly sped up cloud movements. There were a few spots where they played games with the focal depth that were quite neat — like when Mike is asking Bella out and he’s just a blur while we’re focused on Edward in the background — but other times I found the camera work to just be distracting. Some of the effects also seemed quite low-budget at times. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the vampire-in-the-sunlight sparkle, and Wayfare actually laughed out loud in the theatre when Carlisle first showed up: his white skin make-up looked borrowed from my Halloween supplies, it was just cheap and cheesy looking. Those quick cuts also made me think the movie was done on a low budget, as did Edward climbing the trees straight up without touching them. He’s strong and fast, so I of course expected him to either swing or jump from branch to branch, or to really dig his hands into the bark to claw his way up. I didn’t expect him to just float up while waving his hands in the general direction of the tree: it seemed like they just didn’t have the budget to do the branch-to-branch wire work, or to do the FX on the tree bark…

All that aside, there was really only one part from the book that I missed, and that was the time Bella got to spend in the hotel with Alice and Jasper. In the movie it’s just: arrive at hotel. Make call. Go to trap. In the book they spend tense days in the hotel while Bella agonizes over Alice’s predictions and whether to call her mom or not. It seemed to work in terms of moving the plot along, but left out a big part of James’ tracking suspense. I noticed the absence of Carlisle’s backstory, and about how Edward fears for Bella’s soul — it weakened slightly the part where Edward decided to suck the venom out rather than let the change take her, but not by much. In fact, there’s no mention of religion at all in the movie, nor of the vampires’ pasts (save a three-second mention of Edward being turned in 1918 after nearly dying of Spanish flu).

The books: The books are pure girl porn. They are heavy on Bella’s thoughts, and have a lot of great day-to-day inane chitchat in them. Stephanie Meyer is good at writing the dialog, so it works, but you definitely need to be warned about that before going in. It’s primarily a love story, with the whole suspenseful vampire thriller thing just sort of tacked on to the end and a few bits in the middle. I quite liked the first book, which suckered me into reading the rest.

The rest… meh. The second and third ones practically held a little powerpoint presentation in the first chapter outlining the plot and the twists we could expect, and we just had to wait for Bella to catch up to the rest of the world. It was extremely painful to read, because from about the halfway point on I was basically screaming in my head at her to just figure it out already and move on to the second half of the plot because there’s a lot of book left! Of course, I kept expecting a second plot line to develop just based on the thickness of the books, but one never does. So it’s safe to say that they’re slow. Again, the day-to-day dialogue along the way is pretty good, but I found it harder to identify with the characters and their choices in the later books since I was yelling at them so much. This is compounded by the dark depression Bella throws herself into for most of the second book, which makes it less enjoyable to read. It was a pretty good portrayal of a depressed teen, but that’s something I can do without reading too much on, especially since it’s all over this guy that left her that she only knew for like 6 months (yeah, they went through a lot, and he’s Edward and perfect… but she’s a kid, she should heal faster than that).

The fourth book redeems itself a bit in the plot depth department, but just gets kind of weird, so I’d have to say read the first one, and just leave it there.

Well, as you’ve all read by now, my desktop computer mysteriously died while I was away, and I’ve decided to replace it by building my own from parts again. This not only saves me a bit compared to a new computer (e.g.: from Dell), but also lets me keep my old hard drive (which I hope is still working), so aside from a few driver headaches, I don’t have to spend hours installing and updating a new system, then finding all my old settings and files, etc. It makes the change fairly invisible to me.

I ended up going with an AMD Phenom 9750 quad-core processor — I was kind of excited to see that they had made it up to quad cores now. The AMD option seemed to offer more bang for the buck, though I’ve always gone with Intel in the past (and that’s also what Netbug recommended in the previous post). To run it, I went with a fairly basic motherboard from MSI, with the AMD770 chipset (the most basic chipset that supports the quad-core Phenom and the DDR2-1066 memory). I was fairly ambivalent about video cards, and RAM (4GB, no fancy memory fans or anything).

I did a fair bit of comparison shopping and review-hunting, as I’m wont to do, and ended up on NCIX’s site looking for this stuff. At first glance, their site was pretty amateurish and hard to search. I almost didn’t buy from them because of it, but then I discovered a few crucial details that put them over the top: they have some pretty kick-ass sales (including one on a video card in my range that not only knocked $30 off the price, but also got free shipping for the whole order), and they also don’t charge sales tax for Ontario orders (they’re BC-based), so that kind of cinched it for me.

However, the motherboard I wanted was out of stock there. I started to surf around, looking for other options, looking for reviews of the other options, etc., when I realized I was falling into a dark obsessive-compulsive hole that would swallow my whole afternoon. So instead, I found a $20-off coupon for Newegg.ca which covered the shipping, and ordered the MSI motherboard from them. Newegg.ca is a much more professional site: it’s cleaner, easier to search, and has more information, including customer reviews. However, their prices were not wowing me: they were competitive with local stores, but only before you considered shipping (which, at $16, was no bargain — good thing for that $20 off coupon!). I nearly lost my shit when I got the shipping confirmation by email: it was being shipped by UPS.

With a US starting location.

I was immediately thinking of cancelling the order, afraid that I would get stuck with some ridiculous brokerage charge, and was already composing the letter full of righteous anger that NewEgg Canada should pull this kind of thing on me. Fortunately, a quick web search turned up that NewEgg has cut a deal with the United Pirate Service, and will be paying the customs bounty for us; if they do show up and try to extort it from us, then we can pass the bill on to NewEgg. This is, apparently, spelled out in the fine print of the purchase details that I accepted, but who ever reads that stuff?

More to the point, why can’t anyone else cut a deal with UPS (or DHL) to have those bogus brokerage charges covered? Why isn’t that sort of thing illegal under NAFTA or something? Why don’t more US merchants offer the bestest and cheapest shipping option: USPS-Canada Post?

To conclude: NCIX: looks a little sketchy on their web design, but they rock. Newegg: smooth, but add in the shipping charges before you compare prices.

As for the computer itself? Well, I’ve got it all together now… but am still using my laptop. Unfortunately, my plan to use my old hard drive and avoid going through all the hassle of a fresh install doesn’t seem to have worked so well — Windows blue screens halfway through startup, apparently a common problem with motherboard upgrades. I tried the fix of uninstalling my hard drive controllers (and virtually all my other drivers), but that didn’t fix the issue, so I tried a “repair install” — but that requires getting my hard drive drivers onto a floppy… and not only do I not have the hard drive drivers (or I would have installed them while I could still boot to safe mode), but I don’t even have a floppy drive in the computer any more! So it’s looking like I’m going to have to do a fresh install of Windows after all, and I’ll probably have to use another computer (Wayfare’s?) to get the data off my drive…

A big thanks to the Vampire Librarian for pointing me to this unique crime/mystery/steampunk/vampire movie “Perfect Creature“. It’s not a perfect movie; as with many vampire movies there are some strange plot holes, mythologies, and love triangles, but it’s certainly a fair bit better than many other vampire movies, and certainly the best steampunk vampire movie I’ve ever seen. Though there are “vampires”, and the “brothers” refer to themselves as such at one or two points in the film, it’s not really true to the theme of most vampire movies since there is no spreading plague of the undead — vampires are born that way, freaks of nature, and don’t turn anyone.

All that aside, it does explore some really neat ideas. First up, we’re presented with a brother gone bad, off feeding on humans like a real vampire, and the cover-up that ensues. In the film, vampires are the clergy of this alternate world, the immortal overseers of humanity, and it would be a devastating thing to have it be known that one of them went totally batshit fucking loco. So they handle the cover-up and the shaken confidence fairly well alongside the main story of hunting the bugger down.

It starts to get a little muddled towards the end when the action picks up and the sense goes down, but it’s still worth a watch, IMHO.

Well, my ScanGauge arrived today. That was incredibly quick since I only ordered it on Tuesday, and all the good things I’ve heard about the service from Tom Gifford (who resells the ScanGauges in Canada through Gifford automotive) is certainly true — he was quick and friendly to respond to emails, and had shipped my ScanGauge the same day I ordered it. The ScanGauge II was incredibly easy to hook up and pull the codes from my car — just plug in, turn the car on, wait ten seconds, press “scan” and voila! The hardest part was finding my ODBII connector in the first place. Turns out it was hiding behind the ashtray. Unfortunately that means that if I’m going to use the ScanGauge on a daily basis (as a fuel consumption gauge), I’m going to have to do without my ashtray/coin collector. I’ll put up another post in a few weeks after I get some more experience with the ScanGauge as a fuel consumption/extended gauge.

For now, I can just say that it was such a piece of cake to pull the codes out of the computer that it’s downright criminal of the dealership to have charged me $90 just to do that at one point — two codes cleared and the ScanGauge will pay for itself. The code is, once again, P0133 — O2 sensor/air flow sensor “slow response”. So from what the mechanic told me last time, this will eventually need to get fixed, but “slow” is not yet “none” — and indeed, it took 8 months for the code to be set again after it was cleared in January. The repair estimate was $365, so I’ll just take my chances at the Drive Clean test, and if it doesn’t pass, I’ll just have to pay up then.

Of course, I knew about the ScanGauge long before I had to deal with trouble codes because of it’s reputation as a fantastic fuel consumption meter. I think all cars should come with a fuel consumption meter, but unfortunately they don’t. I’ve been tracking my fuel consumption by the tank every time I fill up with the help of the database at GreenHybrid.com, which certainly helps with giving me an idea of how I’m doing and factors (speed, cold) that can affect fuel consumption. However, it’s still a pretty rough guide, and a tool like the ScanGauge can hopefully offer some feedback to improve my driving even more (if only to remind me those rare times when I am in a hurry how much it’s costing me). It can also display other information contained within the car that the stock gauges don’t show me, such as battery voltage and fuel range remaining.

Picking where to place the ScanGauge is a bit tricky, since I want somewhere that’s not in my way, but also immediately visible, and I have to manage the cord. It needs a decent contact with some surface in my car for the velcro, and also has to point somewhat towards me so I can read the screen. On top of that, I have to try to angle the pictures so that everyone doesn’t see just quite what a disaster my car is these days. Right now I’m thinking either on the steering wheel column in front of the dash display (and despite the angle I took the picture at, I can see over the ScanGauge to see all my instruments when sitting in the driver’s seat), or just above the radio, fastening the velcro to the dummy switch beside the clock. On the steering wheel is of course the best visibility, but it’s a little harder to hit the buttons (I have to reach through or behind the wheel). Beside the clock it’s kind of low and out of sight, and it’s also just a bit too wide for that space so it looks a little goofy. It does fit really snugly into the space left behind by the ashtray, which also makes the cable a non-issue since it’s all just coiled in behind there, but it’s barely visible there — in park, I can’t see half the display, and it’s low enough that it’s a head movement when driving, not just an eye-movement glance. Other options are between the clock and air controls, but that space is not very flat.

I figured what the heck, glue-backed velcro is not all that expensive, and put it beside the clock/above the radio for now. It’s not the most professional looking installation, but I also didn’t drill any holes in my dash to run the cord. I then took it on a short spin to see how it would do. It’s a pretty decent spot: I can glance down at it quickly while driving, but it’s out of the way enough that the light doesn’t really bother me while I’m driving (though if it does, I can always just turn it off). I got about 10.5 L/100 km according to the ScanGauge in a 10 km drive around London in light traffic, which is about what I expect in those conditions. Next up will be seeing how I can use it to improve my driving (e.g.: finding how much of a fuel hit driving 100-110 km/h on the highway takes).

Oh, did I mention it changes colours?

I picked up a new chinup bar a few weeks ago from the fitness source (? — can’t remember the exact name of the store, but it was on Doncaster across the street from Cayne’s). I had gone in there planning to buy one similar to what Netbug has: something that screwed into the doorframe, since 6 screw holes is a lot less damaging and secure than those compression-fit bars can do. The guy ended up selling me on this one though, a Forza Door Gym, $50 with a $10 off sale. It’s kind of neat: it has handholds sticking out so you can position your hands in different ways in the pull-up, and supports itself partly on the top and partly across the door frame. Chin-ups, I’m finding, are a lot harder than they used to be. I think that’s got a lot to do with the fact that I used to be 120 lbs.

I’ve put it up in the doorway through to the kitchen, which is a good place for it because it means I do a chin-up or two every time I go in for a snack (I’ve heard it said that abs are made in the kitchen, so hopefully that placement will help). It’s very picky on how thick the door frame can be though, so this is also the only doorway in the whole house that this will work on! The other doors in the house are either too wide so it’s at too much of an angle for the part that goes over the top of the door frame to be at a good angle, or the top trim pieces are too tall: notice in the pictures that on this particular doorway, the wood piece over top of the door is smaller and plainer on the kitchen side (where the chinup bar is going over the top) than on the living room side, where the bar is. The bar only fits on this one doorway and only in the one direction: that fancier wood trim piece on the living room side is too tall for the supporting piece to hook over. I think I would recommend it as a neat, very easily removable chin-up bar (though I don’t remove it since it’s high enough that I don’t fear hitting my head, and will actually use it if it’s out all the time), but you should definitely check your doorways to see if it will fit. My parents’ house, however, seemed to have a lot more doors that fit. For reference, that doorway where it does work is 7″ thick, and the top trim piece is 2.5″ tall. A doorway 9.5″ thick is too much for it to fit, and likewise a top trim piece of 6″ was too big.

Note that it is not completely damage-free: after just about a week of use, there is some damage where the ends have dug into the trim (partly due to the trim coming out at that point so it takes a lot of weight on one small spot). I don’t think that our landlord will get too pissed off about that minor damage though, and it’s still less than I’ve seen compression-fit bars do.