Middle Earth, The Map

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Really cool interactive map of Middle Earth.

My wife and I saw The Hobbit this past weekend. It wasn’t horrible; it wasn’t great. Many people had a problem with the video frame rates but that didn’t bother me at all. I thought it looked okay, although a little blurry at times and my wife could see pancake make-up on one of the actors.

By my count, we got through three scenes in the book in 2.5 hours. It was stretched too far for my tastes. A three-part movie for a 200 page children’s book? I thought two-parts would have been fine.

But again, I was mostly entertained until they get trapped with the goblins. The Goblin King reminded me too much of Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars episodes that must not be named. A bizarre, silly caricature. Goblins in the Lord of The Rings trilogy were fierce creators, albeit ones who died quickly and easily. In Moria, they didn’t have conversations with the Fellowship. They just tried to kill them. In The Hobbit, it was a slow, involved discussion scene, which kind of ruined the movie for me.

I’ll see the next two installments, probably even at the theater. But it won’t have the same meaning to me as Lord of the Rings and may, very well, go to the mental trash heap with those Star Wars episodes I mentioned before.

For Amusement Only: The Life and Death of the American Arcade

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Great article on the history of the arcade and its demise. I didn’t realize how far it had fallen. There is an arcade here in Portland — actually a chain of them — called Wunderland Games that has been around forever. And there is a thriving arcade on the coast in Seaside, which is a little tourist town. I did drive by the house I grew up in and noticed the one we used to go to when I was a kid was gone.

Honestly, I wasn’t much of a gamer. I never liked losing money — didn’t have much to begin with. Dumping coins into the slot never really appealed to me. Given that, history does appeal to me and I learned a lot from this The Verge feature article. Enjoy!

Fly To The Moon!

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I’m done being serious for the week so thought I’d share some additional posts. In this week’s What If?, Randall Munroe discusses the possibility of flying a Cessna airplane above various Solar System bodies. These articles are usually pretty funny as they tackle some of extremely off-the-wall questions. My favorite line, though, is near the bottom, in response to flying a plane on Titan:

If humans put on artificial wings to fly, we might become Titan versions of the Icarus story—our wings could freeze, fall apart, and send us tumbling to our deaths. But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.

Such an engineering response! I love it!

Lotus 1-2-3 Turns 30

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This past week Lotus 1-2-3 turned 30 years old. 1-2-3, if you are unaware, was the PC spreadsheet to Visicalc’s Apple version. Visicalc was the original electronic spreadsheet, invented in the late ’70s. Given that, it was Lotus 1-2-3 that made PCs a must-have for business people all those years ago. It was also the forerunner to Excel.

As a numbers lover, spreadsheets and their history is fascinating to me. It is amazing to me that the tools we use for calculation — spreadsheets and calculators — are both as old (or almost) as I am. Even though technology has changed drastically in that time, the same tools still persist.

A few links for those of you interested in the spreadsheet in general and Lotus 1-2-3 in particular:

Enjoy!

Apple v. Samsung: Real World Example Of Our Horrible Patent System

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Matt Drance writes in Apple Outsider that the judge has sent the Apple v. Samsung case to the jury. This seems to have been dropped by the tech press a bit but wanted to point out one line from Matt’s article:

In closing arguments, Apple attorney Harold McElhinny told the jury: If you find for Apple in this case, you will have re-affirmed the American patent system.

As Matt said afterward, not certain this is an argument in Apple’s favor. Our patent system is a mess. Companies, mostly big ones that can spend the thousands of dollars on patents and the millions more defending them, seem to patent everything, whether it makes sense or not. These companies argue that this is a good thing for innovation. But as many have pointed out before me there is no connection at all, at least in the software world, between patents and innovation. Almost all software is derivative. Real innovation in software comes from taking someone else’s ideas, melding multiple ideas together, and coming out with something new.

I’d love to see the patent system change but there is too much money wrapped up in the current system and too many other large problems facing the country. A patent fight will have to wait for another day.