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I recently went to go see 30 Days of Night. 30 Days of Night is based off a Steve Niles comic of the same name. My exposure to Steve Niles has been minimal at best. I recently picked up his Simon Dark #1 and enjoyed it but that’s about as much as I’ve read. I picked up the 30 Days of Night TPB a few months ago but never got around to reading it. With the movie coming out, I decided to sit down and read it beforehand.

30 Days of Night’s concept is genius. Vampires invade a town in Alaska that is in darkness for 30 days straight. Simple but brilliant. Unfortunately, the graphic novel fails to execute the idea with success. The store is plagued with pacing and other issues. The art is beautiful but at times its so abstract, its hard to follow what’s actually going on. There is also this odd subplot of a guy from New Orleans going to the town to get proof that Vampires exist. He gets there and dies in one panel. It did nothing to further the plot and I still have no idea why this was in there. The biggest problem with the book is its pacing. When I finished the book, the first words out of my mouth was “That’s it?â€?. The book left more like 30 Hours of Night. There is no sense of time and everything that happens feels like it happens in a very short amount of time. I didn’t hate the book but with everything you hear about it, I expected it to be at least good.

The movie adaption is based on the book’s plot for the most part. As with any book to movie adaption, parts are changed to fit the movie medium. I went to see the movie opening night with my girlfriend who’s into horror movies and she loved it. Me, not so much. I thought the movie was boring. I couldn’t wait for the movie to just get to the end. Like the graphic novel, I didn’t hate it but I didn’t like it. Plagued by the same pacing issues of the book and the lack of suspense, the movie was just a gory snoozefest. There were also a few plot changes from the book that made no sense. The first is they broke up Eben and Stella. Ok, that in itself doesn’t bother me but they never mention why they are broken up. If they had been together still, the movie would not have changed a single bit. Thankful they removed the New Orleans vampire hunter storyline as it was useless in the graphic novel and would have certainly been even more useless here. My biggest problem was again the pacing. They made it seem like the vampires sat on the roofs for 29 days in the freezing cold just waiting while the survivors moved from place to place every week or so. I didn’t care about the survivors, they were mostly nameless extras waiting to get mauled by a vampire and that’s what happened most of the time. There was one guy, Vampire Hunter Hadgid, that you actually felt a connection to but his anti-climatic death was just a kick in the balls.

Not everything in the movie was bad though. I loved the art direction of the movie. There were some great scene in the movie and it really felt cold and dark the whole time. They movie was actually gory enough to make be cringe at a few scenes too. It’s too bad the story and pacing made it fall short. There were just too many WTF moments in the movie for me. Um, little girl shows up after 29 days like its time for Dora the Explorer and lunch? What?! or how about Eben basically committing suicide for no reason. He went to save Stella from a fiery death and the truck never blows up. All he needed to do was wait 10 more minutes for the sun to come up. Huh?

Tags: 30daysofnight, comics, movies

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Leopard is a milestone, not just for Apple, but for me too. Leopard is my first operating system I’ve ever purchased. I’ve played with a few beta’s, both fresh installs and upgrade and it was something I was excited to see. When it was delayed, I let out a collective “sigh” as it was one of the things I’ve been looking forward to this year. Well the time has come and Leopard is my new operating system.

The biggest decision with any new operating system is to update your current setup or do a fresh install. While the beta’s updated without an issues, I decided to go a fresh install. I always welcome fresh starts and it would give me a chance to streamline my application needs. The couple days before Leopard was released I spend time cleaning up my hard drive so it would fit onto a 120GB external drive. After making the room, I used SuperDuper! to clone my Tiger install. When installing Leopard I did a Erase and Install and planned on using the Migration Assistant to copy my information back.

After Leopard installed, I decided I wasn’t going use the Migration Assistant because I didn’t want all my old settings back. I still needed some data thought and I just copied stuff like my iTunes and iPhoto libraries back. My goal is to try and streamline my computing needs so I’m only installing programs as I need them. I hope to move to online services like Google Documents for some of my needs instead of keeping 2 or 3 different word processors on my hard drive like before.

After getting some essentials installed, it was time to play around with the new features. To be honest, there wasn’t too much right off the bat for me. I haven’t tried Time Machine yet as my external HDD still is housing a image of my Tiger install. I moved back to iChat but I don’t do any video chats and I still prefer Firefox over Safari. Obviously some of these might be useful in time but for now, I just don;t use them. That being said, the things I do use have made this upgrade well worth it in gold. First off is Spotlight. I used spot light as an application launcher and Apple has tweaked it so it now shows Applications before searching. This makes it on par with Quicksilver in application launching and with no software to install. But my favorite thing is the new Finder. I love this thing. Quicklook is by far the best feature in Leopard. The new iTunes like source list in Finder is much better than its predecessor. The fact you can see network shares in the source list is epic, very 1990’s, but still epic to see in Finder finally. I’m loving the new iCal thought RememberTheMilk’s feed does not seem to be updating now.

I’ve not been without my problems. Mostly minor like applications such as Popcorn not running. One thing that got me worried was last night. I shut my laptop lid and my laptop went into sleep. About 10 minutes later I keep hearing the sound the DVD drive makes when it checks for a disc. After about the 4th time I got up and looked. After a few minutes, the DVD drive would check for a DVD like it was waking up and I’d see the Apple light up. For some reason, the laptop was trying to wake up then go right back to sleep every few minutes. I opened the lip and shutdown the computer and left it. I’ll see what happens tonight.

Overall I’m very impressed with the update. Stuff like Time Machine I know I’ll love when I start using it and as more applications are released to support it, the application compatibility issue should go away. As soon as Google enabled IMAP on my account, I’m going to start using Mail and kick the tires on that for awhile. There is some stuff that still doesn’t make since to me like iChat not being about to handle AIM and Jabber lists in one window and Safari not being about to open links in tabs. Stuff like that was fixed with 3rd party apps in Tiger and I’m sure those apps will be updated for Leopard soon.

Tags: apple, leopard, software, tech

Friday night I headed down to the Danbury, CT Apple Store for the Leopard release event. The store was closed from 4:00pm to 6:00pm so they could prepare for the release. I ended up going down for 3:00pm because I made a Genius Bar appointment so they could take a look at my iPhone which was suffering from the negative black screen issue.

I plopped down in line right after the Apple Store closed, I was 4th in line of about 100 people. The 2 kids in front of my weren’t even there to buy Leopard. One had received it earlier that day in the mail and the other just wanted a free t-shirt. The guy behind me had just recently returned a Vitsa machine he had nothing but problems with and was there to purchase his first Mac, so I was giving him some advise and telling him about the difference’s between Mac and PC’s. During the whole time, Apple employees were handing out waters to everyone in line and taking pictures.

6:00pm rolled around and they opened their door. I made a beeline right for the Leopard DVDs and think I was the first to purchase it. As much as I would have loved to stay and check out everything, I wanted to head home and install Leopard right away. So right after I got my DVD and Tshirt, I left for home.

Tags: apple, leopard

I never posted here when I got my iPhone for some reason. But now I’m on my 2nd iPhone and guess I should take the opportunity to talk about it.

After Apple’s last major announcement, I was sold on the iPod Touch. I’ve written here before about my decision to not go with the iPhone but the Touch was perfect for me. Everything I wanted in the iPhone without changing cell phone providers. A few weeks later, the iPod Touch’s were released and I was one of the first ones out of my local Apple store with one. The iPod Touch was the sexiest piece of hardware I have ever owned. After a few days of using it, I wanted more. WiFi access wasn’t enough, I need always on access. All of a sudden the newly price dropped $399 iPhone was attractive. After a day of getting up the courage to switch carriers, I went to the Apple Store and returned my 16GB iPod Touch for a new 8GB iPhone.

Within a few hours, I had hacked the iPhone and enjoying 3rd party software along with my now always on access, Mail and other goodies like hacked ringtones that the iPod Touch didn’t support. A week later, Apple release iPhone firmware version 1.1.1 and knowing it would kill my 3rd party apps, I installed it ASAP. For me, the 3rd party apps were a work in progress at best. There were a few apps I liked but none I couldn’t live without. Even today I don’t feel I’m missing out especially with Apple announcing official 3rd party support in February. Hopefully native apps for IM and Twitter will finally be a reality.

Enter my 2nd iPhone. A friend of mine who bought an iPhone at the same time I did, was having issues with “negative blacks”. He pointed me to a website that tested for this and sure enough, I was affected too. Most stuff was OK, but movies like 300 really showed the problem. I wasn’t in too much of a rush to get my iPhone replaced so I waited a few weeks until I was going to be at the Apple Store again, for the release of Leopard.

Before the Apple store closed to prepare for Leopard, I made a Genius Bar appointment and had them look at my iPhone. I showed him appleservedup.com on my phone, he checked his and I had a new phone within a few minutes. I checked the site for blacks and dead pixels before I left and everything was perfect. Now I can finally apply my Invisible Shield thats been waiting patiently for me.

Tags: apple, iphone, ipod

So Google gobbled up Finish microblogger Jaiku today. I’m a user of Twitter but I do have a Jaiku account and actually like what Jaiku is doing. They offer more of a Twitter+LIfestream experience that Im interested in but just like Pownce, all my friends are on Twitter so thats where I am. One of the more interesting features that Jaiku does is Jaiku Mobile, which offer integration into your cell phone. Only Nokia phones are supported at this time but here is an excert right from Jaiku about what Jaiku Mobile is:

Jaiku Mobile works like the phone’s regular phone book, and enhances the standard contact list with presence information. It displays the buddy icon, availability, latest Jaiku message, and location for you and your Jaiku contacts in your contact list. It enables you to

* Browse and post Jaikus
* Add comments
* Share your availability based on your ring profile (green light = ringing, yellow light = vibrate, red light = silent)
* Share your location (neighborhood, city, country) based on cellular network towers
* Share your calendar events (if you don’t want to share your calendar, Jaiku only displays your status as “busy” when an event is active)
* Share who you’re with based on nearby Bluetooth devices

Imagine that you pull up a contact on your iPhone and it shows the person is at work based on the cell tower they are on. But it also shows that their last update says “Lunch” so you know you can call. Or it reads their calendar and marks them as busy because they’re in a meeting. That’s epic. There has been a lot of take about a gPhone from Google and I can only wish something like this makes it into there. Even better would be Google and Apple getting together to make this work on the iPhone.

I’m going to wait and see what Google has in-store for Jaiku just like everyone else but if you are on Jaiku and would like to add me, my username is the8thsign. If you a Mac user, check out the Twitterific-esque client Juhu.

Tags: google, jaiku, twitter

Using iPhone and your Gmail account? Then you have certainly noticed the annoying phenomenon of your send messages showing up in your iPhone Inbox. Luckily, I have seen this problem before with my Blackberry and was able to fix it. Unlucky for you, there is no fix for this on the iPhone. I repeat, THERE IS NO FIX.

Apple has a support document which outlines this problem and how to fix it here. This only fixes part of a bigger problem. First we need to understand what Recent mode is. This is right from Google’s Help page:

If you’re accessing your Gmail using POP from multiple clients, Gmail’s recent mode makes sure that all messages are made available to each client, rather than only to the first client to access new mail.

Recent mode fetches the last 30 days of mail, regardless of whether it’s been sent to another POP client already.

If you use multiple Email clients, then Recent Mode is a must and you will want to keep it on. For argument sake, lets say you only access Gmail POP from your iPhone. Turning off Recent Mode will fix one problem, and only one. Sent Email from your iPhone ONLY will not show up. Emails sent from other POP clients and the Web interface still show up in your iPhone’s Inbox.

This happens due to the way threaded conversations work in Gmail. With a Blackberry, you can set up a BIS Filter for all emails with your address in the from field to not forward to the Blackberry. We have no such luxury with the iPhone since it doesn’t support filters. And don’t listen to the people who say to create a filter in Gmail to delete your send messages. It will prevent the emails from showing up but the messages will get emptied from the Trash after 30 days and threaded conversations will no longer be useful.

As of now we have a few half-assed workarounds that degrade Gmail functionality. So unless Apple updates the iPhone with an internal filter when using Gmail or Google releases full IMAP support, us Gmail/iPhone users are stuck with this.

Tags: gmail, google, iphone

Friday night I headed down to Jim Hanley’s Universe in NYC for the 100th episode of the iFanboy Pick of the Week podcast. The show itself was awesome and was nice to see one of my favorite podcasts live. I didn’t actually talk to anyone there like an ass but it was still good times. The podcast is now up if you would like to listen to it. There is also a good chance it will make the video show where you’ll probably see me standing off to the side. After the show everyone went to Stout down the street but unfortunately I had my underage niece’s with me so we had some sushi in the city then headed home. I did end up picking up New Frontier Vol 1 and 2 and Kingdom Come trades to help feed my current DC fixation with the handy dandy 20% off coupon iFanboy was offering.

Tags: ifanboy, nyc, podcast