Fiction written by the fans of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has been around for decades (for example, see the Henneth Annûn Story Archive), but since the Peter Jackson movies, a new development is Tolkien fan films. I don’t know how many of these there are, but two I’m aware of are The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope.
The Hunt for Gollum covers Aragorn’s search for Gollum, which, in the book, Aragorn recounts in brief at the Council of Elrond. This movie is a slavish imitation of the Jackson movies, with similar graphics, music, costumes, special effects, and scenery. Unfortunately, the actors are less convincing in their roles, and in my opinion, there is nothing new or original in this movie.
Born of Hope, the better of the two movies, is also imitative of the Jackson movies, but it captured my interest because it covers a gap in history between the main stories in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It tells the early story of Aragorn, beginning with how his parents, Arathorn and Gilraen, meet. (This is based on material presented in the Appendices to the Lord of the Rings.)
Peter Jackson is producing two movies based on The Hobbit. Early rumors suggested that the movies will cover the story line of The Hobbit as well as additional background story, such as the history of Aragorn before he encountered Frodo Baggins and friends in Bree. (The germ of this background story is also contained in the Appendices.)
So we might have been in the curious position of being able to watch a Tolkien fan film, Born of Hope, that has a plot line that anticipates the plot line of the movies yet to be made by the producer/director being imitated. If the imitation is too good, Jackson’s new movies might not seem original because “they’re like that fan film, Born of Hope.”
More recent rumors available at derhobbit-film.de suggest that Jackson has now abandoned this approach, and the films will now be expanded (or padded, depending on your point of view) to include the expulsion of Sauron from Dol Guldur, Sauron’s stronghold in Southern Mirkwood, by Gandalf the Grey and the other members of the White Council.
January 01 2010 | Movies | No Comments »
I put off upgrading the operating system on my MacBook Pro from Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) until I had free time over the holidays. These are my brief notes about how I performed the upgrade.
I needed to clean up the cruft that had accumulated in my system, and I needed to repartition my internal hard drive to remove a Windows partition and expand the partition devoted to OS X to the entire drive. Because repartitioning my internal drive was going to wipe out all data, I wanted to be very careful in having a complete copy of my old system before performing the upgrade.
I followed the upgrade instructions provided in Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard, written by Joe Kissell. This e-book is well worth the $10 because it provides detailed advice on every step of upgrading to Snow Leopard.
In brief, I performed the following steps:
- I cleaned up my directories and files.
- I removed software that I no longer use.
- I made a record on my backup computer of all license keys in case something went wrong and I needed to completely reinstall my applications.
- I made a complete bootable backup of my entire internal drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, and I tested the backup by booting from it.
- I booted my MacBook Pro from the install DVD and used Disk Utility from the DVD to remove the old partitions and create a partition spanning the entire internal drive.
- I installed Snow Leopard.
- I used the installer’s Migration Assistant to transfer my old applications and files from the backup drive.
- I ran Software Update to update the system to OS X 10.6.2.
- I created a fresh backup from Snow Leopard using Time Machine, preserving my Leopard backup for the time being on a separate partition of my external drive.
The result was an upgrade to Snow Leopard that is, so far, working with zero problems.
My biggest difficulty was in getting a complete backup of my internal drive onto my external drive. I have a Western Digital My Passport Studio 320 GB external drive, and during the weeks I have owned the drive, I have experienced many failures in the backup process where the computer loses its connection with the external drive. Yesterday, I experienced this problem using either the FireWire 800 or the FireWire 400 cable that came with the drive. I decided to try the USB 2.0 cable, and that has worked well so far, with no noticeable loss in speed writing to the disk. In case the problem was caused by bad sectors on the external drive, I erased the 120-GB partition I had created on the drive by writing zeros once using Disk Utility. If I remember correctly, this step will identify bad sectors on the drive and cause the drive to mark them not to be used.
Carbon Copy Cloner was so useful that I made a $25 contribution.
December 28 2009 | Computing | No Comments »
I own a Western Digital My Passport Studio 320 GB external hard drive, which I purchased a few weeks ago as a backup drive for my MacBook Pro. The drive came with three cables, a FireWire 800 cable, a FireWire 400 cable, and a USB cable. The drive obtains its power through the cable from the FireWire or USB bus. CNET has a review of an older model of this drive.
I used Carbon Copy Cloner to create a complete backup of my MacBook Pro to the external drive. Unlike Apple’s Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner creates a bootable backup. I checked that I could boot my Mac from the external drive by restarting while holding down the option key. However, my external drive did not appear in the list of bootable drives. Perplexed, I performed a google search to see if other people had experienced this problem, and I found this solution at macosxhints.com.
The solution is to shut down my MacBook Pro and unplug the external drive, then boot while holding down the option key. Once the Mac presents the list of available boot drives, I plug in my external drive, whereupon the Mac adds the external drive to the list of boot drives. I use the arrow keys to select the drive and press the return key to boot from that drive.
After booting, I verified that my external drive had been used as the boot drive by checking that special icons were used for my System, Applications, and other folders. (Generic folder icons are used for these folders when they are present on a drive that was not the boot drive.)
December 27 2009 | Computing | No Comments »
After a long hiatus spent posting tweets on my Twitter account and diving into Facebook, I have decided to get back to posting to my blog.
One way to make blogging easier for me is to begin writing posts from my iPod touch. During a recent trip to Oregon, I found it necessary to set up email and Facebook access via my iPod touch so I could stay in touch conveniently with a friend I was hoping to meet for breakfast. Unfortunately, we couldn’t schedule the meeting, but I reached a new level for me in making use of social media.
While setting up my other social media accounts, I discovered the WordPress app for the iPhone and iPod touch. This is my first trial post, composed entirely on my iPod touch.
I have been contemplating purchasing a smart phone. The iPhone seems like the logical choice for me since I’m an Apple fanboy who has been using Macs since 1987 and iPods since 2004. But I have no interest in doing business again with AT&T, a company with whom I’ve had problems in the past. So if I were to buy a smart phone, I would get the Droid phone with Verizon, my current wireless carrier.
However, I can’t justify the additional expense of a data plan when I have a cell phone plan for a base rate of $40 per month on which I use at most 100 minutes per month. I have excellent Internet connectivity at both work and at home, so it’s only when I travel that I need a wireless connection. But these days it’s almost always possible to find a coffee shop that provides wireless for free or for a nominal price (e.g., Starbucks).
In fact, on my last trip to Oregon, my mother and I attended a Christmas concert at my brother Laird’s church. We arrived 45 minutes early to get good seats. To entertain ourselves, I used the church’s excellent wifi signal to show Mom what I could do with my iPod touch. We ended up on Facebook, where I found my brother’s wife’s photo album, and suddenly I was showing several people photos of my brother’s son. No wallet photos needed, just a connection to the Internet!
So I’m continuing to experiment with seeing how far I can go using just an iPod touch for email, Twitter, Facebook, and Wordpress. As a consequence, I’ll probably be spending a little more time in coffee shops, and maybe I’ll be able to make a few recommendations soon.
December 20 2009 | Computing | No Comments »
These are my annotated tweets for the week of 16 November 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
Dictionary Evangelist
2008-11-16: I just watched a TED presentation on the dictionary by Erin McKean — http://dictionaryevangelist.com/ — I love reading the dictionary.
I have the American Heritage Dictionary With Thesaurus, Fourth Edition, installed on my laptop, along with the New Oxford American Dictionary, which comes with Mac OS X. I spend a lot of time browing these dictionaries.
Resuscitating a PowerBook G4 (2)
2008-11-16: I removed Debian 4.0r5 from my PowerBook G4 and installed Mac OS X 10.5. I’m very pleased with how fast the computer still is.
Yesterday, I installed Debian 4.0r5 for PowerPC on my 1.5-GHz PowerBook G4. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t connect to my Airport Extreme base station, and I didn’t have the patience to twiddle with the configuration files. I read the documentation for Mac OS X 10.5 and discovered I could install it on the PowerBook, so that’s what I did, and it runs great.
Working on the Weekend
2008-11-17: @pyyhkala My observation is that working four hours on the weekend is equivalent to eight hours on a weekday. There’s a problem here.
I usually work several hours every weekend in order to keep up with the demands of my job. I often put off until the weekend those tasks where I need several hours to concentrate.
Pandemonium Bookstore
2008-11-17: I went to Pandemonium in Central Square (Cambridge) tonight to buy a book for vacation. I bought A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge.
Pandemonium is a book store in Cambridge that specializes in gaming, science fiction, and fantasy. Their selection of science fiction is very good because they have a lot of used books.
Not a Smartphone
2008-11-18: My new cell phone will be delivered today. It’s so not a smartphone that it doesn’t even have a camera. It’s just a phone, nothing more.
I thought about buying a smartphone, and I looked into it carefully. But I’m on the Internet all day long at work, and then I’m on the Internet when I’m at home, so I don’t really need a smartphone. So I ordered a Samsung Knack (see the CNET review), which is a no-frills cell phone and nothing more.
If Verizon had the iPhone, I would buy one. But after billing problems I had with AT&T several years ago, I vowed never to do business with them again.
Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge
2008-11-18: @agbiotec Stross is on my list of authors to read. Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky is the best science fiction book I’ve read this year.
@agbiotec is the second person to recommend books by Charles Stross. I’ll get to Stross soon.
Testing PowerBook Batteries
2008-11-18: I’m testing three old batteries in my PowerBook G4 to see how long they last after charging. One battery has a cycle count of 753!
These batteries have seen hard use. None of the batteries lasts longer than one hour forty minutes. I need to buy a new battery.
Missouri No Longer a Bellwether State
2008-11-19: McCain is finally declared the winner in Missouri. We lived in Missouri for seven years; we’re much happier in Massachusetts.
Missouri is blue in St. Louis and Kansas City, red otherwise. My wife and I are very liberal, and we sometimes felt uncomfortable in the conservative Missouri culture. Obama did a great job challenging McCain in Missouri, and he almost pulled it off. This breaks Missouri’s string of casting its electoral votes for the winner of the presidential election.
Vacation Reading
2008-11-19: I’m on vacation, so I’ve been reading today: Hallelujah Junction, by John Adams; Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual, by David Pogue.
I’m reading David Pogue’s book using my Safari Books subscription, which has saved me a lot of money so far. I bought John Adams’s autobiography at Porter Square Books, one of my favorite local bookstores.
Trading in an iPod mini for an iPod touch
2008-11-20: I erased my three-and-a-half year old iPod mini this morning. I’m going to trade it in today for the 10% discount on a new iPod nano.
2008-11-20: I went to the Apple store on Boylston today to buy an iPod nano, but I came home with an iPod touch. I got 10% off for my old iPod mini.
Oh, did I mention that you can trade in an old iPod at the Apple store and get 10% off on a new iPod? I wasn’t sure I believed it, but it’s true. I had to fill in a form with my name, address, email address, and the serial number of the old iPod.
My initial plan was to buy an iPod nano, but the 8-GB iPod touch is only $80 more, and I wanted the larger screen to watch TED videos on, so I splurged.
The Long Now and Anathem
2008-11-21: The Long Now, a project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years, provided inspiration for Stephenson’s Anathem.
I learned about the Long Now project from a TED presentation by Steward Brand. Neal Stephenson’s connection to the Long Now project is described in this post. Anathem is a book that has remained in my head after I finished it; I will probably reread it in December.
iPod Touch 2.2
2008-11-21: iPod touch 2.2 update is 277.7 MB in size. I updated iTunes to 8.0.2 first, but I don’t know if that is a requirement. Downloading now….
2008-11-21: iPod touch 2.2 update was problem-free. I’m still in novelty mode in the App Store. Complete works of Shakespeare for free is awesome.
The 2.2 update for the iPhone provided Street View for Google Maps, but not on the iPod touch; no one really knows why.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on the App Store seeing what’s available. My choices so far:
- Google Earth
- Shakespeare
- Stanza
Unfortunately, there’s a real paucity of scientific applications.
Boston Drum Center
2008-11-22: I took my brother, who is visiting from Oregon, out to the Boston Drum Center in Acton, where he tried all the cymbals. Great store!
Harvard Square Book Shopping
2008-11-22: @02138now My brother and I bought presents for his kids at Curious George and the Coop. Both stores were packed with people who love books.
@02138now retweets Harvard Square activities; 02138 is the zip code that contains Harvard Square.
Touch Screens
2008-11-22: This afternoon, the touch screen of my cell phone wouldn’t respond. Then I remembered, it doesn’t have a touch screen.
This is iPod touch disease. I use my iPod touch so much more than my cell phone that I forget that I have to use the buttons on my cell phone.
November 23 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
These are my annotated tweets for the week of 9 November 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
Learning Microsoft Access
2008-11-09: My colleagues use Microsoft Access heavily, so I’ve spent the entire day using Vista + Access 2007 on my MacBook Pro.
2008-11-09: I highly recommend Access Data Analysis Cookbook, by Ken Bluttman and Wayne S. Freeze (O’Reilly). Good examples and code samples.
Vista and Office 2007 run very nicely on my 2.2-GHz MacBook Pro. I’m not very enthusiastic about most Microsoft products, but I think Access is a really great tool for managing data.
Michael Crichton
2008-11-09: This is Audible devoted a show to the recently deceased Michael Crichton, who didn’t think global warming is real. It is real.
I am not a fan of Michael Crichton.
Verizon Store Incompetence
2008-11-10: We went to the Verizon store to combine our accounts and buy new phones. Somehow, Verizon couldn’t get it together to help us out. No go.
We were told that we couldn’t combine our accounts to a family plan until we received and activated our new phones. We spent an hour looking at phones and picking out a model. Then we were told that the store was out of stock on that phone, so we would have to order it. And then it turned out that the phone wasn’t available at the warehouse, either, so we’d have to choose a different phone. These scenarios weren’t helpful, so we left. We plan to order our new phones online.
Paul Krugman: The Conscience of a Liberal
2008-11-10: I just finished listening to the audiobook The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman, winner of the Noble Memorial Prize for Economics.
2008-11-10: Paul Krugman got interested in economics after reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. He writes for the New York Times.
Paul Krugman asserts that conservative Republicans want to destroy the protections created by the New Deal and later enhanced in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when Democrats and Republicans did a better job of working together to promote welfare. Fortunately, people have finally figured this out after the eight disastrous years of the Bush/Cheney administration, but there’s a lot of damage to repair.
Resuscitating a PowerBook G4
2008-11-15: Tonight I installed Debian 4.0r5 on my old PowerBook G4, but I can’t get a wireless connection to my Airport Extreme base station.
My wife is a proud owner of a shiny, new MacBook Pro. I took her to the Apple store on Boylston Street in Boston to look at the new models, but she did not want a model with the glossy screen. We ordered the previous model with a matte screen from MacConnection, which has them for $400 off.
I got my old PowerBook G4 back when the new MacBook Pro arrived. It has been a solid machine with no problems, although the case has a lot of dents and dings. I thought I would install Linux on it for experimentation, since my only Linux computer is an old Toshiba laptop with only 1 GB of RAM.
@agbiotec had good luck with installing Debian on his PowerBook, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a connection to my Airport base station using WPA. Another drawback to Debian was that Firefox 2.0.x was the latest version available, and I didn’t really want to have to compile Firefox 3.0.x.
November 16 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
These are my annotated tweets for the week of 2 November 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
The Election
2008-11-02: @feministchemist Bill Clinton was Arkansas attorney general for 2 yrs and Arkansas governor for 2 and 10 years, way more exp. than Palin.
2008-11-03: I’m sick to damn death of political ads that lie. Politicians will do anything to get into office. It’s no wonder no one respects them.
2008-11-04: @feministchemist I, too, was disappointed that Obama didn’t pick a woman for VP. Granholm, McCaskill, or Gregoire would have been good.
2008-11-04: I’m off to vote. We expect a record turnout in Massachusetts, which was ignored by presidential candidates because we’re solid blue.
2008-11-04: I waited in line for 20 minutes to vote this morning. For once, I have voted for the winner in every race and initiative.
2008-11-04: John McCain’s good side came out during his concession speech. Too little, too late, after his despicable behavior during the campaign.
2008-11-04: Congratulations, Barack Obama! I wish I were in Chicago to help celebrate. I’m feeling hopeful for the future of the United States.
2008-11-05 12:14 AM: What a great speech Obama is giving. This is such a wonderful change from the horrible Bush years. Counting the days to January 20th….
2008-11-08: “Yes we did!” crows moveon.org (of which I’m a member). But I think moveon is premature; the real work starts now.
That was a good election, even though the counting is dragging on and on. The Bush/Cheney administration caused real, lasting damage to the United States that will take years to heal.
Recreation
2008-11-02: We enjoyed a beautiful autumn day by taking the dogs to Revere Beach. That is the end of vacation; it’s back to work tomorrow morning.
Dogs are allowed on the beach after summer is over. The beach is so empty that we let our dogs off their leashes, and they have a good time sniffing seaweed and chasing their tennis ball.
SQL
2008-11-02: I feel like an idiot. I just learned that you can GROUP BY more than one field in an SQL statement, a solution I couldn’t figure out myself.
2008-11-03: @gotgenes In my opinion, SQL was not well designed. A language should be consistent in its syntax, and it should help, not hinder the user.
2008-11-04: I spent my afternoon taking doses of DayQuil and writing SQL queries. I will probably have to rewrite the drug-addled queries tomorrow.
2008-11-05: I wrote a lot of SQL commands again today. I feel like I’m becoming an SQL master.
I’m getting better at SQL by having to use it daily.
Phishing Example
2008-11-03: I posted a link to a phishing page as an example of what one looks like, but then deleted it because I might be violating the twitter TOS.
2008-11-03: The story about the phishing page is at http://tinyurl.com/6g5sgs. Firefox 3.0 blocks access to the page, but Safari does not.
I thought this was interesting, having never seen a phishing page before. It’s a pretty big giveaway when the page asks for your social security number. What I found interesting was that the phishing site got most of its content directly from the akamai.net servers that support Apple’s site. I made the following comments on the MacInTouch web site:
I examined the HTML source code for the phishing page. It is full of links to authentic apple.com material (style sheets, JavaScript code, and image files) hosted at https://a248.e.akamai.net/. If akamai.net checked the referring host for these requests, it could easily detect that the requesting page is not hosted by apple.com, and it could block the request. This would disable most of what makes the phishing page look authentic. I think akamai.net is making it too easy for the phishers.
For entertainment, without having filled in the form, click the Continue button. A very ugly graphic appears that pretends to process the submission, followed by forwarding to a real apple.com page. Firefox 3.0 blocks access to the phishing page, but Safari does not.
New MacBook Pro
2008-11-05: This morning I ordered a new MacBook Pro, the older matte screen model, which is still available for $400 off from macconnection.com.
This will be my wife’s new laptop, which she uses for her business. We went to the Apple store and looked at the new models, and she doesn’t like the glossy screen on the new model.
TED
2008-11-06: I just learned about TEDTalks. It’s like going to a conference but in the comfort of your own home at no expense.
The only drawback is that I have a backlog of about 70 talks I want to watch; this will take about 35 hours.
What Is That Song?
2008-11-06: I heard a song at Flat Top Johnny’s in Kendall Square this evening that is familiar, but I can’t remember the artist. I need music search!
@neilfws recommended that I try http://www.melodyhound.com/. Unfortunately, by the time I received his tweet, the tune had gone out of my head.
November 09 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
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