I started using Zip.ca last month, a Canadian by-mail DVD rental service. I did my homework, it was recommended by a trusty co-worker, and am really happy with the service so far.

What I like

• They have a huge selection of foreign films, festival films, documentaries, obscure films, animé/manga, and TV shows.
• You queue up what you want to watch, and the discs arrive a few at a time.
• You can tell them when you’ve returned a disc, and they’ll send you another one while it’s in transit.

What could be better

• Movies arrive in pretty much any order, in a fairly random distribution of genres. I have some ideas on how to improve this, and I’m told they respond well to user recommendations.
• The site is far from web2.0 and is a bit slow at times. Once I got used to the site, I found it worked well enough for me … it just wasn’t inspiring.
• The recommendation system is pretty tame, and the per-movie content a bit thin. I realize that a Canadian service has a pretty small customer base compared to an Amazon or a Netflix, but there’s room for improvement.

Stats so far …

• I’m receiving 4 DVDs per week¹
• Average delivery time (to or from) is 1.25 days
• Cost per DVD: $1.17²
• Great movies so far: 8
• So-so movies so far: 3
• Crappy movies so far: 1

Survey says …

I’ll stick with Zip until the summer, then will pause or reduce it until the fall. Zip has great value if you don’t have to see the newest thing the moment it’s released³, so it fits my personality well. I’m excited about the large selection of hard-to-find stuff, though I haven’t received much of it yet.

The best part? Not having to wander around the video store like an idiot: I can research directors, writers and actors, queue up movies at my leisure, and the movies magically appear on my desk a few days later.

1. I watch them while coding in the evenings ↩
2. 3/Unlimited plan, 3 months with 1-free month promo ↩
3. They have an option for getting a movie “now”, but it costs more ↩

I’ve been planning on writing more reviews for a while now, but have been slowed by scale of the traditional format. I’ve decided to smash it down to its bare essence: the micro review. The concept is based on a mashup of Wired’s 6 word stories, and the many mini review sites out there. Long reviews tend to bore, and my usual ~500 word reviews are really difficult to write well (too large to be just a summary and too short to add much background or musing).

Mini review rules

It’s all about pressure differentials. Things either suck goodness or blow it, so I’ll stick to measuring that. Bombs measure suck and stars measure goodness. I don’t really like the traditional one-star-sucks measure: I don’t give stars to things that suck.

Using my scale of suck, for example, The Apprentice rates 3 bombs (it sucks, only entertaining in tiny doses) and America’s Next Top Model rates 5 bombs (absolute suckage).

Stars are good, so a 1 star thing has at least some redeeming feature. So a movie like Wayne’s World (the original) rates 3 stars in my books, and Wayne’s World 2 rates a solid 1 (so what if they were beating a dead horse, it was still funny).

And the reviews will be short. Usually the most useful words I say about something are the first few, like “wow, that sucked,” or “boy did that rule.” So I’ll keep it brief, adding only a smattering of other noise (mostly comparisons and such).

Shut up and review things already

I’ve moved the micro reviews to their own topic, which also appear in the link log.

If you’re a Vim user, then you’ll want to check out version 7. This latest release includes built-in spell checking, extended auto-completion, undo branches, buffer tabs (and more), replacing most of the plugins used by long-time VIers.

A few tips …

Want to load a set of files into tabs?

$ gvim -p *php *txt &

Want to revert the current file to an earlier or later version?

:earlier 25m
:later 20m

Want to see the list of undo points?

:undolist

Want to turn on omni-completion (and all file type detection)? Omni completion defaults to ctrl-X, ctrl-O to list completion possibilities (tip to make it behave more like Visual Studio).

:filetype plugin on

Other handy, new features:

:sort
:vimgrep (instead of using your shell's grep)

Never heard of Vim? Try reading Vim, explained in 6k. Also check out The best-of Vim tips for many handy bits of Vim learning.

And why do I still use Vim? I can use it anywhere, with or without a UI. I use other editors, of course, but VI is my default.

A friend of mine was stranded in an airport over the holidays, where he found this very odd book. Written by Mark Haddon, it’s a first-person mystery written from the perspective of a young autistic boy. It’s a simple, revealing story, compelling in a way that’s difficult to describe (except that I couldn’t put it down).

I like different stories like this. It’s not the type of fiction I normally read, but it made me think and identify deeply with the main character (most geeks are at least a bit autistic). The story felt honest too, not the normal sort of light airport bookstore fare.

My main file server died yesterday, an old FC1 install from over a year ago. At first I suspected bad RAM (or maybe a failed disk) as the failures were fairly random. I ran some diagnostic tools, and fsck-ed the drives, but no problems were detected. As a last resort I stripped the machine bare, cleaned, and rebuilt it.

The rebuild didn’t improve stability, but I noticed that booting a previous kernel moved the problem around. Somehow an OS update hosed the kernel, drivers, or system libraries, so it was time to repair or reinstall the OS.

I’ve been trying to avoid reinstalling as it eats up at least half a day. A reinstall is good on one hand, as it’s a way to learn more about new distributions, but the churn of tweaking configuration is unproductive. Yesterday, though, I had little choice, as finding a broken update takes hours, and FC1 is already close to end-of-life.

So I decided to install Ubuntu, one of the newer distros on the scene. It’s Debian-based, so I was already familiar with the basic layout, tools, and installation process. As my server has an old SCSI CDROM, I had the choice of floppy or network install. I hate floppies, and couldn’t be bothered to find 5 of them, so I chose a network install.

I hacked the network install a bit so that I could bootstrap the install from my main hard drive. The hack required putting the net-install kernel and memory image (from the Ubuntu distro CD) on the /boot mount, and configuring grub to boot to it. It worked like a charm, and after a few hours of package downloads I had a basic running system.

Ubuntu’s installation process is a simplified form of the Debian installer. It’s a text-mode tool, but is really quite painless — the simplest of all the distros I’ve installed to date. It’s not as pretty as the Fedora or Mandriva installers, which may turn some people off, but it does work well. It also lacks an xorg configuration step, which left my server in 640x400 VGA mode, which is close to useless these days. I’d be happy with better auto-detection, as the xorg configuration shouldn’t require a user’s helping hand.

The boot process, for anyone new to Debian-based installs, is quite a bit different than any of the Redhat-based distros. As the kernel messages are supressed by default (and there’s no progress indicator) it’s easy to wonder if the boot process has hung. For the first few boots, I suggest that you either leave it for several minutes, or edit the boot parameters so you can see the kernel messages. For normal users, though, both of these approaches suck: they shouldn’t need to see that stuff. A simple progress indicator would really improve this part of the process.

I also noticed that Ubuntu was lacking something like the Redhat system-config-display tool, which allows basic configuration of the xorg.conf file. As my server defaulted to 640x400, I had to edit the xorg.conf file by hand. I had to correct the refresh lines to in the monitor spec (which had been otherwise detected correctly), and correct the default display mode. Editing xorg.conf by hand is fine for administrators, but normal people need something better.

Once I got the basic configuration set, Ubuntu was easily the nicest distribution I’ve used. It provides a recent, stable Gnome desktop, organized in a really intelligent way. The choice of the Synaptic package manager, and Debian apt for package management is smart, as it provides a useful UI for normal people, and a powerful command-line for admins. The default packages are well-organized in the menus, and cover what most people will need. The package repositories are well-stocked too, and it’s easy to add new ones for regular people (unlike FC4, which requires users to hand-edit configuration files).

Overall Ubuntu is a smart next-generation Debian. It’s fairly easy to install, and the resulting desktop is at least as nice as Fedora’s or Mandrake’s. It’s a perfect fit for developers who want a recent Gnome-based desktop (and development environment), and a good fit for normal people who have a geek handy for a few of the more complicated tasks. I expect that Ubuntu will be improving the more tedious parts of the configuration in future releases, and expect that it could take over where Fedora is lagging.

I’ll be keeping at least a few Ubuntu installs around for the next year to follow its progress, as I’m guessing that it will soon displace Fedora as the leading Gnome-based distibution.

Writeboard is yet another nifty 37 Signals web tool. It’s a web-page/whiteboard app that lets any number of people edit a page at the same time, or in other words: a wiki without the suck.

It seems that the killer traits of good web applications are:

• Simple as pie
• Do one thing well
• Smaller is better
• Connect to other things easily
• Bring people (or ideas) together
• Free or free, either will work

I upgraded to a Pro flickr account on the weekend, and am testing its blog-a-shot feature. If you’re reading this, then it’s working.

The feature is a cool concept too: you upload pictures (or email them), annotate them, and show them off to your friends. To make a blog post, you click on the blog-this button on any picture page, and pick the weblog to post to (and it does the rest). You can select a template for the post too, which is cool in itself.

The reason I decided to upgrade was to up my bandwidth for this month, as I decided to make a book of photos for a gift later this year. There’s a funky service that will print a full-colour, bound book for a reasonable price — all from a flickr account.

For my first book, I picked 80 photos and turned them into contrasty black and white shots, leaving a few (carefully selected) spots of colour. I’m curious to see how it turns out, as a few of the shots were less than 300 DPI.

I installed Redhat’s Fedora Core 4 on a few machines this week. Overall I’m impressed by the progress made by the various teams involved (Gnome, Kernel, DBus/HAL, Fedora packaging, and so on), and the resulting platform is superb.

A few screenshots

Left to right: base desktop (task-list panel removed), Open Office 2 (beta), a few sticky notes, Nautilus in browser mode, advanced configuration tool, and the fonts preferences dialog. The default background was replaced with a cooler one from www.gnome-look.org.

The installation was painless, which is significant progress from a few years ago. The process is now far better Windows XP even, as the various teams have been able to include more drivers by default and optimize the overall install time (reducing reboots and including all of the useful software on the distribution media). The installation was even seamless on my laptop (HP Pavilion ze5400), with one small exception.

It took about half an hour to install FC4 on both systems from DVD. The initial wizard screens took less than 5 minutes to complete, while the remaining time was required to copy the system off of the media. While the install process hasn’t visibly changed from previous releases, hardware support (detection and configuration) has vastly improved.

I found one bug while installing on my laptop, the wireless NIC (eth1) was incorrectly identified as an Ethernet connection (instead of Wireless), which caused the network configuration tools to hide the Wireless Settings tab. The fix was a simple text change, and was reported as already fixed in Redhat’s Bugzilla bug database.

The Bluecurve theme has been tweaked in this release, with several noticeable improvements. Active tabs, in tab controls, are now highlighted in a more obvious way, as are menu highlights. Control containers are a now bit bolder, making most dialog work flow more obvious. The window decoration controls are a bit tighter too, making it easier to hit the intended buttons.

The Gnome team has fixed several usability problems in 2.10. The most obvious improvement is in the menu navigation logic, which now allows for sloppy mousing (without closing menus). All of the base Gnome applications have seen a lot of usability love as well, including the desktop games, which have all been upgraded to use SVG (vector) artwork, as well as now sharing a great deal of common code.

The Fedora packaging team has taken the time to clean up the system menus too, making them much easier to work with. Unlike Microsoft in their NT4 to 2000 and 2000 to XP upgrades, FC4’s menu clean-up didn’t result in the same level of confusion — even though the changes are significant.

Both preferences and system settings have been moved to the Desktop menu, leaving the Applications menu filled with only applications. The Places menu was also added, which provides central access to common local folders, network connections, and the search tool.

FC4 now includes a beta Open Office 2.0, which is at least as stable as Word 2000. I previously used Crossover Office to run the Microsoft Office 2000 suite, but this time around I’m going to give the updated OpenOffice.org applications another chance. Of the improvements that I’ve noticed so far: startup time is improved (first startup is under 10s, subsequent startups are under 3s), integration Gnome is more complete (theme, icons, dialogs, mime-types), and all of the applications feel ‘tighter’.

Day-to-day use of FC4 is as stable as Fc3, and somewhat more productive. The infrastructure improvements (like HAL and DBus) are really starting to pay off, especially for removable storage, scanners, and motherboard monitoring. With progress like this under the hood, I expect that the next few releases of Gnome (in any distribution) will only get better.

Overall Fc4 is a strong upgrade over previous Fedora releases. Based on the sensible direction of the Redhat, Gnome, Kernel, and individual application teams, it’s a great system for software development and office administration tasks. I’m not sure what criteria people are using to say that Gnu/Linux isn’t ready for the desktop, but for my uses it’s far better than Windows XP already.

[asin: 0596009224] Make: technology on your own time (5/5)
From: O’Reilly Press
What: Magazine, Book, DIY, Geek, Review
Stats: 181 pages, served up 4 times a year

I’m supposed to be working right now, but I’m not. Maybe it’s the pot of coffee I had this morning, or maybe it’s my sagging blood sugar. Maybe it’s the last few 14 hour days, pulled to finish a gamma release of a cool new product (and the restlessness that follows such cranial grinds). Or maybe it’s that I can’t tear myself away from the new issue of Make.

Okay, it’s the magazine. I love to build stuff and I don’t do enough of it. Make is inspirational. A few pages into it and my mind is racing: I want to build something. I want to write about building it. I want take pictures to remember building it. In fact, I’m already planning a few purchases: a soldering iron, a new workbench, assorted electronic bits, and other hacking harware. Inspiration is wonderful.

Make isn’t really your run-of-the-mill rag either. It’s about the size of an O’Rielly text, less the standard, monotone blandness. The magazine is laid out as if it was an issue of Wired, with sharp, colourful layouts, clever artwork, and beautiful fonts. The result is a powerful, attractive, enjoyable read. Not only is it DIY and inspirational, it’s downright easy on the eyes.

Already, the magazine has inspired me to do something concrete, to write sofware to make weblogs more like print media, improving the ways in which blogs can communicate. I want warpedvisions.org to be more like Make (or Wired) and less like the standard, cookie-cutter blog. Thanks O’Rielly, Make is damned good stuff.

[asin: B0007VZBCY] Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (3/5) Director: Brad Silberling
Writers: Robert Gordon (screenplay)
Key cast: Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Meryl Streep

Lemony Snicket’s is a faux-dark comedy based on the corporate-sponsered series of children’s books by Daniel Handler. It’s filled with intricately detailed backdrops, amazing art direction, and mediocre acting, which are unfortunately no match for the unsuspensful series of plot elements.

Okay, so the story was a bit lame, and the acting entirely hollywood. It is still a great movie, worth seeing for the animations in the closing credits (if nothing else). The visual style, sets, and backdrops are reminiscent of Tim Burton - detailed, strange, and compelling. With a bit more focus on the plot and acting, Lemony Snicket’s could have been a classic.