Virtuality premiered to an apparent lack of viewers as Tor.com pointed out.
Basically, you have a crew aboard a spaceship headed for Epsilon Eridani and the journey will apparently take 10 years. According to wikipedia, it is 10.5 light years away, so apparently they are traveling at relativistic speeds. In addition to this sojourn, a reality TV show is being based upon the occupants (a pretty damned smart idea actually and a wonderful way to offset some of the costs associated with a mission like this) with the producer and host also being crew members (as well as a psychologist and computer scientist, respectively). Oh yeah, they also all have advanced personal VR units, presumably so that they don't go batshit nuts and kill each other.
The reality show within the show presents a couple of problems:
1. Theoretically, the crew would experience time dilation effects, as traveling at relativistic speeds would make the journey seem much longer to those on Earth, than it would on the occupants.
2. Beaming the show back would also be problematic, due to the aforementioned relativistic effects. When they are passing Neptune, they mention it will take 2 hours for their transmission to get back to Earth and then another 2 hours for a response.
3. Earth appears to be undergoing severe climate issues, which provides additional stimulus for the crew to get to their destination.
4. Say they get to the planet, then what? Phone home and say it's a great planet, come on down! We'll stay here and seed the planet, etc, etc. Or, hey, planet is a bust, hope y'all got a better idea, see you when we get back! And then another 10 year trip?
5. Storage media - they have cameras everywhere (see also: it's a reality TV show aboard a space ship), inside and out. They must either have a ton of hard drives or end up recycling them along the way, but they have be selling at least some of the data back to scientists back home.
6. Jon's main complaint: "G forces". Since they are detonating nukes or something to push themselves forward. His recollection was 147, which should accelerate them from "a few thousand KPH (maybe 20,000) to just shy of 300,000 KPS? That kinda acceleration, I'm fairly sure... would liquefy you." While I general presume Jon's mathing skills are lacking, he makes a fair point; there would need to be fairly substantial inertial dampener to help with that.
The 90 minute pilot was amusing, but given the low numbers, I would be surprised if it got much more than a dozen episode first season, if it gets that far.
Friday, July 3. 2009
Review: Virtuality
Wednesday, July 1. 2009
Optimizing Firefox for Netbooks
Most commercial applications in this day and age have fairly decent user interfaces. A lot of money is put forth into making them as user friendly as possible. The problem is that sometimes these "friendly" ways aren't necessarily the best users of screen real estate. Nowhere is this better exemplified than Office 2007's "ribbons". Now if you're on a screen that is 20"+ and running at 1680x1050 - who cares? I certainly don't mind. On the other hand if you are on a netbook that is running 1024x600 on a screen that is 10" or less, you want every pixel you can easily get. I went over some of this (albeit, indirectly) in Optimizing Windows 7 for Netbooks, but since it is a netbook after all, you're probably going to be making good use of our favorite web browser - Firefox.
Continue reading "Optimizing Firefox for Netbooks" »
Continue reading "Optimizing Firefox for Netbooks" »
Monday, June 29. 2009
Netbook Friendly Software
For those that haven't been following along at home, we've been doing an entire series of netbook related posts. Today's posting is about what software we enjoy using on our Netbooks, specifically Windows compatible software (after all we did just talk about installing Windows 7). Most of the software here is probably going to come across as "run of the mill" to tech-heads, but I'm also taking a small bit to explain WHY I think it is good to have on a Netbook.
- Firefox - I'm a big fan of open source software, but more to the point I really loathe Internet Explorer and love my Firefoxy. On top of my love for it as a browser, Firefox has a lot of extensions and communicability. This is really important because you can make Firefox better fit the Netbook screen size. In other words, you can make the UI tiny and have as much space as possible for browsing (critical when you screen is only 5" tall). The next blog post in the series will be about Optimizing Firefox for Netbooks.
- The Combined Community Codec Pack - CCCP is the best all around media playing package I know of. I'm a big fan of Media Player Classic, which they package as one of the two players in the CCCP. MPC has one feature that I find critical for Netbooks, the ability to boost the volume (In MPC - View > Options > Audio Switcher > Check "Normalize" and "Regain volume" then drag the "Boost" slider up as needed > Ok). I find that with some environments (say a car) and some video files - even with the volume all the way up (in Windows too) it just isn't enough - this is where the Boost comes in. At the current version, if you use MPC on Windows 7 to watch anything with Subtitles, it wont work unless you follow this fix.
- Skype - Since we use Skype at the office, it is a requirement for me to have it. That being said, Skype is useful for even the part time users, because of its excellent VoIP to POTS services. Translation: You can make damn cheap calls to and from anywhere in the world. If you make a lot of calls, Skype has many subscription plans. Even if you don't, it is only $0.021 per minute to call the US, which is cheaper than most people pay for long distance inside the US. Now keep in mind if you are in San Francisco or Sydney, it makes no difference to Skype - as long as you can get on the internet. Also for those really long trips Skype has Video Chat, which works well since most Netbooks have webcams.
Friday, June 26. 2009
Optimizing Windows 7 for Netbooks
A while back I got an Eee PC 1000, which I've talked about a number of times. At first I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on it, but after a while I got bored and decided to give Windows 7 a try. While I prefer Linux servers, my desktop machines tend to run Windows, mainly because it can run the software I need for desktop machines - like Photoshop & games. Granted a Netbook isn't going to be a machine for Photoshopping, but you get the point. After a while of playing with my netbook, John got jealous and decided he had to have one for himself. He got his Eee PC 900A and installed Windows 7, which he just covered in the previous blog entry (something I probably should have done, but never got around to doing). If you're playing along at home, you've got Windows 7 installed on your netbook, but it isn't necessarily running as well as it could be. There are a few easy things you can do to "optimize" Windows 7 for the netbook experience.
Continue reading "Optimizing Windows 7 for Netbooks" »
Continue reading "Optimizing Windows 7 for Netbooks" »
Wednesday, June 24. 2009
Eee: Installing Windows 7
Since Microsoft has been generous enough to share the Windows 7 RC with everyone, and because Jon has enjoyed it so much, I decided my Eee should be running Win7. Getting Windows 7 is fairly easy, download site and key available from Microsoft and Microsoft TechNet. Both have the same information, the former looks prettier, while the latter offers a more utilitarian experience. Either one will get you what you need. Oh yeah, the ISO is about 2.5 GB, so make sure you have a bit more than that available on the machine that is downloading it.
Next up is getting the image somewhere useful. You have two choices:
1. Burn a DVD and then hook up an external DVD drive to your Eee...
2. Bootable Thumb Drive
Not wanting to deal with #1, I chose option #2, as I believed it would be much faster (no DVD to burn) and less hassle (no external DVD drive to acquire). Now, how do you make a Thumb Drive bootable? An excellent question, for which I turned to google.
Continue reading "Eee: Installing Windows 7" »
Next up is getting the image somewhere useful. You have two choices:
1. Burn a DVD and then hook up an external DVD drive to your Eee...
2. Bootable Thumb Drive
Not wanting to deal with #1, I chose option #2, as I believed it would be much faster (no DVD to burn) and less hassle (no external DVD drive to acquire). Now, how do you make a Thumb Drive bootable? An excellent question, for which I turned to google.
Continue reading "Eee: Installing Windows 7" »
Monday, June 22. 2009
Eee: Hardware Upgrades
This is the first of a series that Jon and I will be doing on netbooks, specifically the Asus line of Eee Netbooks. Jon got a 1000 a while back, and I recently acquired a 900A. Both of us are running Windows 7 RC on the machines (the installation of which will be covered later).
Today, I want to discuss the two hardware upgrades I made to my machine.
First, let's discuss what it came with:
4 GB SSD - Swappable
1 GB RAM - Swappable
1.6 GHz Atom Proc - Soldered, so not much upgrade potential here.
Had to remove both the SSD and the RAM and replace it with my upgrades, a 32 GB SSD and 2 GB RAM stick.
The upgrade process was quick and easy. Just flip the Eee over
and there are two little screws to unscrew, once they are unscrewed you will see the existing SSD and RAM.
You will need to unscrew two screws to detach the existing SSD, at which point it will pop up, just like the RAM does.
Once both pieces are reaching for the sky, you can easily remove and swap them out with your upgrades.
Something to keep in mind, though, is that you are removing the hard drive of the unit, so you better have a bootable something or other (specifically a thumb drive, since there isn't a CD/DVD drive) if you want to get the machine usable again. I promptly installed Win7 on mine, but that is a topic for another day (like Wednesday) and another post (which by coincidence, will show up on Wednesday).
Today, I want to discuss the two hardware upgrades I made to my machine.
First, let's discuss what it came with:
4 GB SSD - Swappable
1 GB RAM - Swappable
1.6 GHz Atom Proc - Soldered, so not much upgrade potential here.
Had to remove both the SSD and the RAM and replace it with my upgrades, a 32 GB SSD and 2 GB RAM stick.
The upgrade process was quick and easy. Just flip the Eee over
Aforementioned Eee, flipped
You will need to unscrew two screws to detach the existing SSD, at which point it will pop up, just like the RAM does.
SSD unscrewed and RAM popped up
Something to keep in mind, though, is that you are removing the hard drive of the unit, so you better have a bootable something or other (specifically a thumb drive, since there isn't a CD/DVD drive) if you want to get the machine usable again. I promptly installed Win7 on mine, but that is a topic for another day (like Wednesday) and another post (which by coincidence, will show up on Wednesday).
