Certainly that was quite an experience

Raises the bar in terms of CGI & model believability, there experience was near seamless though they sensibly kept the interaction between live action and the CG world to a minimum.

For me their were only a few areas when it stood out, like when Grace is in the command center trying to get rid of Jack near the beginning. The lighting around her hair seemed wrong. The faces at times in the Oxygen masks or in the battle mechs and the movement of the humans (at times) when in the mechs and the humans in the gang way of the bomber plane towards the end.

On the whole the CGI managed to do something, for me, that many movies with CG elements don’t; capture me and envelop me into the story and the world. To often the effects stand out too much to me (problem of growing up interested in effects, CG, models, Blue/Green screen and reading things like Cinefex) and distract me and spoil the enjoyment. (Spiderman particularly so) Here I believed that it existed, that those mountains really floated in the sky and that those many colourful and wonderful creatures existed. My hat is off to Cameron for that.

I’d love to know how the work was broken up between the companies (Weta, ILM and the many others involved), I guess I’m going to have to get a copy of issue 120 of Cinefex. Certainly all involved should be very proud of what they have achieved, it was an amazing experience and a world I would love to visit.

Yes the plot was ultimately predictable but it was still touching and I found myself welling up a little when they Jack & Grace where “captured”, when everyone banded together to fight back (though very Braveheart / something else) and at the passing of a couple of the characters.

Hopefully one day I will get to see the movie in 3D, I can’t imagine what it must add to the enjoyment of the movie but I can guess a few places where its really used.

The one area where I was disappointed in the movie was the score. Parts of James Horner’s music was lovely and I will likely buy the score CD to enjoy them (though I might wait a bit to see if an expanded set comes out) but on the whole it didn’t complement the majesty we often encountered in the visuals. Noteably for me when we go with Jack into the floating mountains as an Avatar to get his ride and that first flight

The context here is that Data Robotics (makers of Drobo) has taken over handling of the forum. Previously it was handled Capable Networks but was suddenly stopped. The first a number of us knew about this was this email from the 17th of August

Dear DroboSpace Member,

Earlier this month, the DroboSpace Community and Forum went offline as Data Robotics, the primary sponsor of the site, ended its long-time community partnership with Capable Networks (our company). DRI has since launched a closed, company-managed support forum on its own corporate site under the DroboSpace name.

We here at Capable are exploring our options for continuing to support an open, independently-owned and operated Drobo online community like those we run at SlingCommunity.com, TiVoCommunity.com, and MyOpenRouter.com.

That’s where you come in. Over the past two years, you helped us create a thriving Drobo community built around valuable content that became the most popular destination for lively discussions around Drobo-related products. It would be a shame to see all the information and conversations vanish, but that depends on your involvement and support.

If you would or would not like to see an independent and open community return, please send us an e-mail with your thoughts or feedback to drobospace@capablenet.com. We look forward to hearing from you and will certainly respond to the community when we have finalized our decision.

Thank you for all your help and support.

So something happened and apparently they fell out, thats fair enough, it happens in business all the time (*cough* Apple / Microsoft … well Microsoft / the world).

Going to the url, I found the new forums and in the General discussion forum there was a discussion by a few Drobo users who were a little upset at the handling of the transition (myself included) and questions regarding the old forum data that was apparently lost in the transition. The next day that 8 post thread was deleted.

In its place was a post by a rep for Data Robotics rep stating the new goals of the forum

About the New and Improved DroboSpace
Hello all,

Thank you all for participating in the new and improved DroboSpace! Now that we’ve got the site re-launched, we thought this might be a good time to share with you some of the thinking behind the decision to make the changes to the site.

Considering the myriad of social media conversations occurring online daily and the numerous sources of peer-based feedback available on the web, we found ourselves in need of a way to quickly and directly share information with our customers — and to let them share their thoughts and concerns with us (and each other). The prior incarnation of DroboSpace was run by a 3rd party, and this made it difficult to provide direct information in a timely fashion. DroboSpace is now operated by the Drobo experts in the Data Robotics Support organization, with the new goal of responding to questions, providing useful feedback, and otherwise supporting the Drobo user base.

Some of the advantages of the new and improved DroboSpace include:
• Quickly respond to hot topics with our in-house response team
• Provide direct information to our community without third-party lag time
• Create and customize as many membership groups as needed
• Provide an ad-free zone dedicated to Drobo user support and developer discussions
• Cross-link information from our social media network of followers at Twitter and the Drobo blog

These new and more useful self-help and support-based forums will eventually be expanded internationally, providing all of our customers foreign and domestic the ability to exchange information with each other.

We’re looking forward to connecting with you on the new DroboSpace, and will be working diligently to maintain, update, and improve the site in the days, months, and years to come.

Best regards,

The Data Robotics Support Team

That was great (though slightly late), but a few of us took issue with a few of the points in that post. Particularly the mention “Provide direct information to our community without third-party lag time” which as it was an open forum (well you had to have a Drobo serial number to signup but thats a separate issue) and had no moderation queue was a little strange. So we questioned that and found this morning that our posts have been removed and the topic closed. (yes I suggested closing the topic but only after they post a followup, didn’t suggest they closedelete it)

So now there is a new post titled Censorship, questioning what is allowed on the forum. Time will tell if that too will be removed, sadly I think the answer is probably.

This last little bit is my addition to that thread. I hope they listen, I really do.

Indeed particularly as this is supposed to be a general discussion forum.

Please Data Robotics, building a community by removing posts you don’t like is not the way to go. You will always get praise & complaints and, as I said on Twitter, our complaints here are about how this transition was handled. They are not technical issues, hence not posted in the more Technical forums, but they are still valid issues.

Some complaints can be silly (I’d want my HD lights to be Indigo for instance) and some will be real. Good customer service & relations is to take it all, ignore those that you feel are invalid (or post to them & lock them BUT don’t delete them) and respond and encourage those that are valid (like complaints about connectivity options, like lack of Firewire connection on the DroboShare) with discussion.

We like / love our Drobo’s, thats why we are here. Personally I hope that Data Robotics continues to do well, yes I’ve had a few problems with my Drobo & slowness of support at times but in the end the issues where sorted out satisfactorily. I simply have issues with how this transition was handled and what seems like apparent misrepresentation of the facts (3rd party lag time)

I honestly hope you will take the time to read this and not simply delete it. I see from email Jennifer that you did reply yesterday to the other thread but all the messages are now gone

I appear to be having bad luck with the 24″ LED Cinema Displays, I am on my 4th new one and debating getting a 5th or giving up and getting a refund.

This has been ongoing since late May, I ordered an ACD to go with a new 17″ MBP and kept it even though I returned the MBP.

Number 1) Bad Back light bleed

After hooking it upto my Mac Mini in the interm, I was watching Star Trek 6 and noticed it was a bit “light” along the top and bottom borders. Later in the evening, I darkened everything off and ran LcdTest and found that there was quite bad bleed from the backlights. Some [URL="http://gallery.me.com/tarasis#100065"]photos[/URL] here if your interested.

(Technically there was also a settling creaking sound from it when it was initially warming up each time I first started using it. I haven’t noticed this with the other 3 and it didn’t really bother me that much)

So sent it back and got

Number 2) Had 3 dead pixels

So promptly arranged an exchange and got

Number 3) Speck of dust between screen & LCD

Its not bad, but to me quite noticeable, particularly as its about 4 inches in from the left and about 4 / 5 inches down from the top. If you move a light window around its easy to spot. If it had been within an inch of the edges of the screen I might have said keep it (and my wife would have preferred me too). So onto Apple again and we now have

Number 4) 3 black marks (poss 2 black pixels and one dust) and one stuck Green Pixel

So kind of excited to get this one today, had high hopes. Quickly unpacked it, hooked up the 13″ MBP, ran LCDTest and low & behold in the bottom left there was a faint black speck that wouldn’t disappear and then 3 larger (2 black & 1 green) spots towards the top middle right which where particularly noticeable on the red screen of LCDTest and actually also on the default background. As you can imagine, highly disappointed.

So, at the moment I have both number 3 & 4, though 3 is due to be picked up by TNT tomorrow and 4 only arrived today but I’ve already emailed the support person I have been dealing with about the problem.

I am not sure what to do, as I said my wife wants me to just keep number 3, I am inclined to try one last time as I really like the screen & its handiness regarding cables, webcam and so on (speakers are a bit meh to be honest) but I also at a point of just jacking it in and getting a refund.

I could keep the 3rd one but I struggle with the idea of spending that much money to have a speck of dust under the glass thats always visible on light backgrounds. Its a lot of money to not be “perfect”.

To be fair to Apple, the sales / support people I have been dealing with have been wonderful, very helpful, generally courteous if a little slow to respond (there was a week between the last replacements, despite them being emailed with a few hours of receiving the new one). Each time, so far, its been do I want to try another one or just get a refund and they’ve sent the replacement out before getting the old one back.

Its been quite frustrating to have not had a screen to work with all this time as I have boxed them up immediately after finding the problems. With 4 cats & 2 children around I didn’t want to tempt fate and introduce a new problem

PS There was a “minor” hiccup on their part, for the 3rd ACD they booboo’d and initially put the order through as a replacement 17″ MBP. The only reason anyone noticed was that I phoned up wondering with the RMA email & the order email mentioned a MBP & not an ACD. They managed to finally put a hold on it a couple of hours before it was due to be delivered to me.

[Addendum]

I should note as well that up till now I haven’t had a problem with Apple’s other Hardware (Airport Extreme, Airport Express, iPhone 2G, iPhone 3GS, iPod 5G, 2 Apple Alum keyboards one wired & one wireless, Late 2006 MacBook & 13″ MBP) . Its only this 24″ display and it worries me a little as we where considering the possibility of an iMac instead. I don’t want to go through the same shenanigans again.

First I have a few photos on Flickr and I’ll be adding more when I have some time to finish tagging them.

A number of other people have posted some as well StuFF mc’s, ax25, alexrepty, aallan and marius.pacha

Marius managed to get this photo of me in my absolute favourite shirt that I bought in Tesco a few years ago. Kicking myself that I never got a second one

We should be getting the keys to the new house on Thursday this week (Friday is a public holiday) which means we can get in and have a look over to see if there is anything that needs to get urgently done before the move. The only thing we are thinking off atm is adding some lower handrails for the kiddies to use as the stairs are a little steep.

The move itself is happening 2 weeks tomorrow, May 12th, which seems so strange. Particularly when your used to the fact in the UK that you exchange and generally move on the same day; which often leads to the whole chain effect where one link going wrong screws the whole thing up.

It still seems so far away atm, as if its still a dream but as we get closer and finish up with the packing I’m sure it will start to feel more real.

BTW For those that want to look at some (albeit not great) photos of the new house that we took ages ago then here ya go. Hopefully some updated photo’s will appear once we get the keys and go over at the weekend.

Anyway, a little moan (I will probably do loads of them, thats just me). The other week I discovered that Boom! Studios was releasing a bunch of movie related comics, Finding Nemo, Cars, The Incredibles, Toy Story and the Muppets.

I tried to order them via my comic shop her in Germany but they are only available in the US only. Not a huge problem apparently you can order them directly from Boom! Studios.

Well … lets see each issue is $2.99 each which is fine however a subscription for 4 issues of Cars is $20.99 (um my maths suggests that should be 11.96). Postage to Germany is a whopping $27.50 via the USPS.

WTF, $27.50? What are they shipping the damn things in? A special comic tube?

It improves slightly, if you add a 3 issue subscription of The Incredibles ($14.99 … again 3 * $2.99 < $14.99) and a single issue (issue 1 which isn’t part of the subscription because you can order one of 4 different covers) raises the postage to only $30.75

I want to support the publisher, I really do (parituclarly as I am enjoying their Farscape comics and I’m kinda curious about their Blood Bowl comic) but that is too rich for my blood.

*splutters* Just put a single issue of a comic in and they want $27.50 to post that!!?!?!!?!

I’ll save moaning about the fact they have to make these comics US only, I am guessing that is out of their hands and very much down to the licensor.

Which boiled down to me then not doing a lot and not particularly feeling like blogging, though I did continue to on and off tweet on Twitter.

The plus side of all this illness is that I have dropped a lot of weight, basically I’m down to a lovely 73kg (a little up & a little down on that) — 11st 7 pounds in old money. Hopefully I can keep it off

Hopefully some new posts should be forthcoming, once I figure where to fit them into my time.

Its open to anyone but aimed for UK & European developers that can’t really make the yearly (and rather expensive) WWDC trip. It’s a 2 day conference (3 if you want to attend a workshop) aimed at intermediate to advanced developers, with a number of “names” in the Mac development world doing presentations. For instance:

Bill Dudney (author of Core Animation and co-author of the upcoming iPhone SDK Development book) is do a workshop on “iPhone Development” and a talk on “Building Applications with Core Animation”

Marcus Zarra (author of the coming Core Data book from Pragmatic Programmers & also co-author of a coming Core Animation book), is doing a workshop on “Core Data” and a talked on “Spotlight and QuickLook vs. Core Data”

Mike Lee (founder of United Lemur, co-founder Tapulous, former intern of Wil Shipley at Delicious Monster) is doing a workshop on “User Interfaces” and a talk called “Pimp My App”.

Other speakers are Matt Gemmell, Graham Lee, Drew McCormack, Philippe Mougin, Andre Pang, Fraser Speirs and ???? (1 talk has yet to be announced).

To learn more about the conference, click on the banner below. If your into Mac development and in Europe / UK then come along and I hope to see you there.

Its a waste of a blog post really but just wanted to record somewhere for posterity that I am going to miss living in Klecken and this house.

When we first came to Klecken I expected to hate it, I am really a townie, so somewhere as small as Klecken was incredibly off putting but its been great. Sadly we are now only here till middle / end of May.

I am going to miss this house mostly because of its size & feeling of openness in the living / dining area. Basically its huge & once you get used to it, its hard to give up. I need to see if we still have the square meterage for this house as I can’t remember it off the top of my head. Its great for the kids to be able to tear about, (used too) drive a Bobby car inside & build huge Brio train tracks. Admittedly the downside of a large house is there is a damn sight more to vacuum / clean.

I don’t want to leave now, but with having to move because the landlord wants to come and live in his house again, and given that we don’t have a car (nor want a car) then living in somewhere like Buchholz is our best option.

More on this later, plus some photo’s from in and around Klecken once they’ve been sorted (Partly holding off on iPhoto 09)

Update, found these two old pics on Flickr of the house in Klecken from when we moved in.

This is the “front” of the house, coming up from the carport. The front door is actually on the side of the building towards the back.

This pic is after our stuff had arrived, and we had started to unpack. Thats Toby BTW, who would have been 14 months old at the time. This pic should give you some sense of the size of the living area. (Hard to call it a room)

So this has left us looking for the last few months for somewhere to live and trying to work out what we want from a house. Things are a little more complicated here because you are commited for much longer than in the UK regarding early repayment penalties. Basically typically it tends to be 10 years, opposed to the UK which is often 2 or 3 (well it was). One quirk is that when buying in the UK, the seller pays the estate agent fees, here we would have to and the % for it varies (though a number seem to hover around 6.25% of the price).

These are the 4 that are really top of the list of those that we have seen so far, 3 of them are only really contenders in my mind but two of those have yet to be seen by Roberta & they suffer from being far out from the center of Buchholz.

So the order in my mind, based on criteria rather than heart, are:

http://www.immonet.de/expose.do?object_id=9309081

This first one is the best fit BUT not my fav. I can’t put my finger on way but while I can understand and agree with all the pluses of this house it just doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t love it. Some of the pluses for us are that its basically in the centre of town (well 5-10 minute walk away), short walk to the train for Bob, has a spacious guest room and bathroom in the cellar and a fair price. Including cellar its 170 square meters for €175000

http://www.immonet.de/expose.do?object_id=9898104

This one is my favourite, when I was driving up to it with my parent in laws a few days ago I initially liked the feel of the area. Very green & the roads where quiet and basically all the houses around seemed to have children that lived there; a great thing for Toby & Mareike. Going in this place felt right, I love it and can picture us living there. It does have its problems though (nothing cosmetic though, no work needed): the plot of land its on is tiny and your garden is overlooked by the house right next door (really close), there is no guest room at present though we could add one of the really rather large cellar. Great if you have a car, otherwise its 20 minutes walk (fine), or bus BUT bear in mind that buses stop at 2pm on Saturday in Buchholz and there is no service on Sunday (unless its the rare Sundays where shops open). Normally it would go for about €239000, its currently €189000 because the owners are getting divorced and need to sell the place. Minor aside, we managed to work out where this house was using Google Maps before we knew where it was.

http://www.immonet.de/expose.do?object_id=10568097

Not a lot to say on this one, we (parent in laws, kids & me) saw this one after the one above. Its nice, smaller plot of land but has a real garden which isn’t overlooked. House is quirky and cool because of it, especially the top floor studio. Cellar is naff, its only a half cellar but would suit some of our needs. Guests could go into the first floor with kids Kitchen is great, lots of space, work surface & storage. The downside of this house is that its even further than the above house from town, talking 3.6km I believe. Again yes there is a fairly frequent bus but come Sat afternoon / Sunday we’d be stuck with walking / cycling. One thing is that it would be very close to the new supermarket in the industrial estate which is about 1.5km away. This is up for €169000

http://www.immonet.de/expose.do?object_id=11267626 

This is the final one I will do for the moment, on paper it looks great. The house is big, the garden has tons of space and its detached. It has some issues though, the bathroom would need to be ripped out before we could move in so that is extra work / money / organisation and we might have to redo the kitchen as well. The decretive order isn’t ideal either, really we (that is parent in laws & me, Bob disagrees a bit) would need to redo most of the papering & ceiling tiling and some other things. There are some decent sized rooms and the price is good €169500 but not good enough in my mind.

NOTE: Regarding the links, to see bigger version of the pics click on the Bilder tab and if there are floor plans click on the Grundrisse tab. Some word translations:

 

For the living space, that generally does not include the size of the cellar, though for the top house they have added it.