No. It doesn't exist, but it's certainly something I'd like to see. Not just Tarantino, of course, but other directors, critics. del Toro, Ebert, the Cohens, The Good Doctor Kermode etc.
This idea starts, with my wife. On a spare evening with nothing on TV, not even a Come Dine With Me. we turned to Netflix. We don't watch that many films together, having quite different taste, which, sadly, are pretty much gender stereotypical.
I was agonising over which film to watch in much the same way as I used as a customer to in a video rental shop. Scanning all the titles on all the files. Picking some boxes, comparing, returning some, picking others. For ages. It was pretty annoying for my wife, who eventually said, "Oh, just pick one, if it's rubbish, we'll just watch something else". So we watched Bottle Shock. It was both a perfectly acceptable film, and one that I wouldn't have picked from a shelf.
The same thing happened last weekend. We watched Salmon Fishing in the Yemen on the basis that "It's got Euan McGregor in it. Again, it was perfectly acceptable entertainment for a lazy Sunday evening and there was no pressure to invest much time in it if it didn't look watchable.
If I'm not choosing a movie like a customer, maybe this new just play it and see method is more like choosing a movie like a video store clerk. Probably the most famous example is Tarantino, so it seems like a few recommendations from him would be pretty cool.
Thursday 28 February 2013
Wednesday 27 February 2013
Requests revisited.
Further to not so stupid after all, the pain of oauth just keeps giving. I basically got a bunch of stuff working with Requests that was previously working with the old libraries, but in a simpler way. On that foundation, I tried to once again upload a file to Project Place.
No joy. The request was badly signed. Same problem as before.
I Googled. I searched the Requests issues log etc, but there wasn't much information.
So I contacted the developer at Project Place to explain my problem. The initial response was the same as before, that I only need to sign the headers, not the body of the HTTP request. The problem remained that I wasn't in control of that stuff. I was using a library to do it all for me. I could get an Oauth object by supplying some parameters to something I didn't fully understand and I could send a (GET) request by a url and supplying a nice dictionary of parameters to something else I didn't fully understand.
Jon at Project Place then very kindly sent me some client code that used the Request library to upload a file successfully to Project Place. Now that I had some working code in front of me, I could try to figure it out and then try to figure out where Requests was going wrong. I could see how Jon's code signed the request headers before adding the body - there's no way to specify this in Requests. I found the Requests code that does the signing. Now one of the issues made a bit more sense. I took a local copy and did a little tweaking, and things seemed to be much better.
While it works, it's not really the correct fix. The problem is (apparently) in requests-oauthlib, but I don't have the knowledge required to fix it.
I didn't think a local copy of Requests was really a long term solution, so today I started to refactor in order to use Jon's code. It took a while to get anything working at all due Jon's code's handling of parameters: it doesn't (at least not for GET or PUT). Fortunately he'd commented really well, and once I'd RTFMed, I could see I needed to first add them to the URL - the kind of inconvenience I was hoping to avoid by using Requests.
WAY too much effort went into this line:
It appears to be working now, with a standard Requests library, plus Jon's code. It's a just a lot more untidy than I'd hoped for :(
No joy. The request was badly signed. Same problem as before.
I Googled. I searched the Requests issues log etc, but there wasn't much information.
So I contacted the developer at Project Place to explain my problem. The initial response was the same as before, that I only need to sign the headers, not the body of the HTTP request. The problem remained that I wasn't in control of that stuff. I was using a library to do it all for me. I could get an Oauth object by supplying some parameters to something I didn't fully understand and I could send a (GET) request by a url and supplying a nice dictionary of parameters to something else I didn't fully understand.
Jon at Project Place then very kindly sent me some client code that used the Request library to upload a file successfully to Project Place. Now that I had some working code in front of me, I could try to figure it out and then try to figure out where Requests was going wrong. I could see how Jon's code signed the request headers before adding the body - there's no way to specify this in Requests. I found the Requests code that does the signing. Now one of the issues made a bit more sense. I took a local copy and did a little tweaking, and things seemed to be much better.
While it works, it's not really the correct fix. The problem is (apparently) in requests-oauthlib, but I don't have the knowledge required to fix it.
I didn't think a local copy of Requests was really a long term solution, so today I started to refactor in order to use Jon's code. It took a while to get anything working at all due Jon's code's handling of parameters: it doesn't (at least not for GET or PUT). Fortunately he'd commented really well, and once I'd RTFMed, I could see I needed to first add them to the URL - the kind of inconvenience I was hoping to avoid by using Requests.
WAY too much effort went into this line:
url = unicode('%s?%s'%(request,urlencode(params)))
It appears to be working now, with a standard Requests library, plus Jon's code. It's a just a lot more untidy than I'd hoped for :(
Tuesday 26 February 2013
An Impression of Hanson
A friend, Paola, has been sharing quite few pictures of Hanson on Facebook. Like this:
I wasn't sure if it was real enthusiasm or Facebook doing automated sharing after a single share in a similar way to likes of products show up repeatedly and long after the initial like. Facebook can be creepy like that.
Turns out it wasn't Facebook at all. It was Paola actively sharing her love of this band. As a recovering cynic, this kind of enthusiasm is starting to appeal to me.
You may have no knowledge of Hanson, or just one reference, like me:
I never had any interest in the band back then and probably dismissed it as a good but irrelevant pop song with "at least they pay their own instruments" thrown in. My wife goes a bit nuts singing along to Mmmbop if it's ever on the radio or played at a wedding. It makes her happy, and so it's grown on me over the years.
Paola played a selection of songs for me. These are just my initial impressions, which could be different on another day:
All This Love Crap - Heavy Led Zeppelin influence. No complaints from me. I'd happily sing along with this in the car.
Zombie - Feels like a homage to Thriller, but I couldn't get beyond the fake synth horns, which are unfortunately a pet hate of mine. Fingernails meet blackboard. This isn't necessarily a criticism of the song.
No Sleep For Banditos - I'm getting a hint of Chilli Peppers on a good day, but also lots of other aromas that I can't quite place. This is definitely my favourite track. Inscrutable. The drums are oddly simple and I find myself listening to them at the expense of the rest of the song. I'm certainly not against simplicity. I smile if I see a kit that's just a kickdrum, snare, and hi-hat (like here). Somehow they feel like a beginner playing rather than an accomplished musician. I think it must the mix/live recording, or in some other way, they're wrong for the track.
A Sunny Day / Cecelia - Cecelia is always going to win with me.
Sonny Get Your Gun - reminiscent me of Bon Jovi circa Wanted:Dead or Alive. It's the kind of track that. if I wasn't paying attention, I might listen to most of the way through until I realised it was annoying me. I don't particularly like it, but it's just preference.
Fire on the Mountain - Reminds me of Extreme or Mr Big doing acoustic stuff. I don't mind this kind of thing in small amounts. It fortunately doesn't stray over the line into shitty Aerosmithery.
It seems unlikely that I'll ever be a Hanson fan, but there are 2 out of 5 songs here that I'd happily listen to. If there was a convenient and not too expensive gig, I could see myself buying tickets and taking my wife. She doesn't really like the same music as me, but I think there would be some common ground here. It'd be half a joke, a bit of a novelty maybe. Without Paola enthusiasm, they'd be completely off the radar. Novel isn't enough though. Without listening to a few songs and liking enough of them, going to see them would be incomprehensible. Some bands I like live, but almost never listen to their records. I suspect that Hanson could fall into that category.
It's important to remember that opinions of music are mostly subjective. People like what they like. There's almost no bad music. This exchange pretty much sums it up:
I have to remember this when I can't get my head around anyone listening to Coldplay when they could be immersed in Radiohead instead. And to avoid knee-jerk reactions to Girls Aloud or Wand Erection.
I wasn't sure if it was real enthusiasm or Facebook doing automated sharing after a single share in a similar way to likes of products show up repeatedly and long after the initial like. Facebook can be creepy like that.
Turns out it wasn't Facebook at all. It was Paola actively sharing her love of this band. As a recovering cynic, this kind of enthusiasm is starting to appeal to me.
You may have no knowledge of Hanson, or just one reference, like me:
I never had any interest in the band back then and probably dismissed it as a good but irrelevant pop song with "at least they pay their own instruments" thrown in. My wife goes a bit nuts singing along to Mmmbop if it's ever on the radio or played at a wedding. It makes her happy, and so it's grown on me over the years.
Paola played a selection of songs for me. These are just my initial impressions, which could be different on another day:
All This Love Crap - Heavy Led Zeppelin influence. No complaints from me. I'd happily sing along with this in the car.
Zombie - Feels like a homage to Thriller, but I couldn't get beyond the fake synth horns, which are unfortunately a pet hate of mine. Fingernails meet blackboard. This isn't necessarily a criticism of the song.
No Sleep For Banditos - I'm getting a hint of Chilli Peppers on a good day, but also lots of other aromas that I can't quite place. This is definitely my favourite track. Inscrutable. The drums are oddly simple and I find myself listening to them at the expense of the rest of the song. I'm certainly not against simplicity. I smile if I see a kit that's just a kickdrum, snare, and hi-hat (like here). Somehow they feel like a beginner playing rather than an accomplished musician. I think it must the mix/live recording, or in some other way, they're wrong for the track.
A Sunny Day / Cecelia - Cecelia is always going to win with me.
Sonny Get Your Gun - reminiscent me of Bon Jovi circa Wanted:Dead or Alive. It's the kind of track that. if I wasn't paying attention, I might listen to most of the way through until I realised it was annoying me. I don't particularly like it, but it's just preference.
Fire on the Mountain - Reminds me of Extreme or Mr Big doing acoustic stuff. I don't mind this kind of thing in small amounts. It fortunately doesn't stray over the line into shitty Aerosmithery.
It seems unlikely that I'll ever be a Hanson fan, but there are 2 out of 5 songs here that I'd happily listen to. If there was a convenient and not too expensive gig, I could see myself buying tickets and taking my wife. She doesn't really like the same music as me, but I think there would be some common ground here. It'd be half a joke, a bit of a novelty maybe. Without Paola enthusiasm, they'd be completely off the radar. Novel isn't enough though. Without listening to a few songs and liking enough of them, going to see them would be incomprehensible. Some bands I like live, but almost never listen to their records. I suspect that Hanson could fall into that category.
It's important to remember that opinions of music are mostly subjective. People like what they like. There's almost no bad music. This exchange pretty much sums it up:
I have to remember this when I can't get my head around anyone listening to Coldplay when they could be immersed in Radiohead instead. And to avoid knee-jerk reactions to Girls Aloud or Wand Erection.
Thursday 21 February 2013
Please sort it out, Sony (by which I mean Sony Consumer Electronics)
First of all, there's lots of Sony gear in my house. About as much Sony gear as Apple gear. Roughly: 5 TVs; PS2; PS3; 3xDVD players; DSLR. It's fair to say that I like Sony gear.
Today, I happened to see the box for a Sony Blu-Ray player. I didn't go browsing for it on Amazon or Play. I didn't see the model on display in a shop. It didn't see it in an email circular. I saw the physical box.
This is not something that normally happens. The other stuff does, but usually the box is about the last thing you see, briefly, before it's thrown away and long after a buying decision is made.
The significance of this is that the box was a better advertisment for the product than anything else I've seen, which means all the other advertising is rubbish. I'm not really in the market for a blu-ray player. My son's PS3 will play them, but I've never bought a blu-ray disc. I couldn't be bothered to pay more when I bought DVDs, and now that I've subscribed to Netflix, physical media for movies just seems plain odd to me. A Blu-Ray player is perfectly fine for playing all those old DVDs, but it'd need some additional features to make it interesting…
Back to the box. In nice big clear icons and logos is a list of key features of device. Other than the usual, what catches my eye is a Netflix logo and a Lovefilm logo. Interesting.
Currently my daughter can access Netflix via her Wii. She doesn't have a connected TV. My son can access via his PS3. His TV is connected, but he has a PS3, so it may as well not be. The TV in the master bedroom is the same as my son's. We have a DVD player hooked up with SCART and can watch iPlayer via the TV and WiFi. We don't have access to Netflix from that TV. The living room TV is smart, but doesn't have WiFi (which is another story). We have a V+ box for iPlayer, 4OD etc, and an AppleTV for music and Netflix (but not Lovefilm).
The fifth TV, and AppleTV, live at my mid-week digs (I commute weekly to work).
We can disconnect the Apple TV and move it to the bedroom, but almost never do.
The ideal, pie-in-the-sky solution would be a firmware upgrade from Sony to add Netflix to the TV. I suspect that there's no incentive for Sony to do that though other than making people think that Sony products and customer support are the freakin' awesomes.
An actual solution would be to replace the DVD player with the WiFi version of the one I saw (link). It's £30 extra, which is a bit steep, but possibly worth it for the symbolic removal of one more hated SCART cable from the house.
When I was looking for the WiFi enabled version, given the lack of Netflix support on many Sony devices, I wanted to check this feature. From the Sony website, it's impossible to find out. The product page simply does not mention Netflix or Lovefilm. Search the site for Netflix, and these players simple don't show up in the results.
Amazon pages weren't much better. Either finding the devices in results for netflix players or the using the specific device product codes. If searching the pages for Netflix, even with additional information open, it's not until you hit the user reviews that there's any clue.
Honestly, if I hadn't seen the box - and most people won't see the box - I'd be utterly clueless that this product existed.
I can approach this from another angle. From the 'Ways to Watch' page at Netflix https://signup.netflix.com/Watch. This tells me that I can watch via PS3, Sony Blue-Ray players and smart TVs. For BR Player and TV, it's just a link to the Sony site, which is pretty much a dead end. If you manage to navigate to http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/internet-tv/entertainment-on-demand, there's no mention of Netflix (the LoveFilm logo is shown). Note that there's no link to Sony streaming players because neither of them currently support Netflix (according to reviews).
Note: Can't currently add screenshots from Sony Site because, and I shit ye not:
If I click on the Western Digital link from Netflix, I immediately see a product shot and a Netflix logo: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330, there's a link to a logo grid of actual services I can get on the device. Lovefilm isn't there, but I'm confident that this isn't ano oversight, it's not available on the WDTV yet. Netflix and iPlayer have a 'new for UK' banner, which also suggests that the device is getting active updates. I wouldn't be surprised to see Lovefilm listed in the near future.
Roku gets it right too:
Phillips isn't great, but much better than Sony. The landing page from Netflix is to the streaming players, but only one of them appears to be Netflix capable. On the plus side, this is mentioned in a bullet point on that page, and when opening the device page, there are a couple of Netflix logos to make it clear that it's supported. (Also no Lovefilm here).
Then there's Apple. The landing page is http://www.apple.com/uk/, but should probably be http://www.apple.com/uk/appletv/. There's no obvious way to find the Apple TV device from the front page. You can get to it through the iPod link, but that makes little sense. If you search for 'Netflix' or 'TV' or 'Movies', however, you'll find a link.
Once on the right page, there's immediately a Netflix logo on the picture of the TV and Netflix is mentioned in the HD Content box. Further, if you click on 'What's on Apple TV', again the Netflix logo is prominent in a grid (not unlike the Sony BR Player's box). Clicking on the logo jumps the a dedicated Netflix portion of the page, though there's no link back to Netflix to sign up for some reason.
I've no idea what the boxes for Phillips, Roku and WD are like, but I do know what the Apple TV box looks like. It's just some pictures of the product and the minimum amount of legalese required. It's not advertising what it can do, because if you're buying it, you've already figured that out.
Sony needs to change its website. The approach should prioritise actual features that people give a shit about, like Netflix, over marketing bullshit such as "See shows in every shade of colour - With Triluminos Colour you’ll enjoy brilliant images and a wide range of colours which add depth to any scene".
'Triluminous' doesn't even seem to be a feature of the device, it's something* to do with LCD TVs that you don't care about. It may be that you need a triluminous aware player to get your triluminous enabled TV to do triluminous things, but if you're buying a Netflix player because your current TV or slightly dumb smart TV doesn't do Netflix, you'll be trilouminless .
If the website's difficult to manage for some reason, that may point to a larger problem. If it would be impossible to simplify the website with the current range of products, that probably points to a deeper issue.
I really, really want Sony to survive, reinvent and then thrive. I think they can do it, but not without a fundamental re-think. Firstly, make considered, truly designed, great products rather than just making everything and seeing what sticks. Then market the hell out of them without resorting to bullshit.
Tuesday 19 February 2013
easy_install or pip through proxy
I was having trouble using easy_install and pip on the company netork. Turns out that I needed to configure an HTTP_PROXY environment variable.
HTTP_PROXY=username:password@host:port
Source: http://kaamka.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/httpproxy-environment-variable.html
I was trying to get around this initially by downloading the source packages, but the setup.py for one of them itself seems to use pip to get another dependency.
HTTP_PROXY=username:password@host:port
Source: http://kaamka.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/httpproxy-environment-variable.html
I was trying to get around this initially by downloading the source packages, but the setup.py for one of them itself seems to use pip to get another dependency.
Monday 18 February 2013
Cynicism Fail
Yesterday, my daughter and I watched a slightly bizarre documentary call 'We Are Wizards'. It's a poorly made film that documents a small number of creative Harry Potter fans. There are a couple of bands featured - 'Harry and the Potters' and 'Draco and the Malfoys'. The former are a couple of nerdy teen brothers who reminded me a little of Napoleon Dynamite or Jedward. The latter seem a bit more self aware and are having fun being a bit silly.
It's tempting to laugh at 'Harry and the Potters'. It's also a bit too easy to do that. I checked the movie on IMDB. Finding that it was about 5 years old, I wanted to find out if they were still a band and whether they'd improved.
This is what I found:
Musically it's pretty mediocre, which is a considerable improvement, but that's not important. Don't listen to this critically, watch and understand what's going on here.
These are Harry Potter fans singing a song at Leakycon, a Harry Potter convention. The song, Luna Luna, is basically Louie Louie. It's about the character Luna Lovegood. Now get this… on stage with them is Evanna Lynch, the young actress who plays Luna in the movies. She's buzzing. The band is buzzing. The audience, which must number at least several hundred, is buzzing.
These kids must've endured a fair bit of ridicule from their cooler peers for doing what they do. By simply ignoring that and just getting on with what they love doing, they've experienced something wonderful and will always have the memory of that.
While I could easily laugh at them, in truth I'm a little envious of just how much fun they're having at this gig. It's something I've experienced in an audience, but never as a musician. I probably worry far too much about how other people are going to react.
It's tempting to laugh at 'Harry and the Potters'. It's also a bit too easy to do that. I checked the movie on IMDB. Finding that it was about 5 years old, I wanted to find out if they were still a band and whether they'd improved.
This is what I found:
Musically it's pretty mediocre, which is a considerable improvement, but that's not important. Don't listen to this critically, watch and understand what's going on here.
These are Harry Potter fans singing a song at Leakycon, a Harry Potter convention. The song, Luna Luna, is basically Louie Louie. It's about the character Luna Lovegood. Now get this… on stage with them is Evanna Lynch, the young actress who plays Luna in the movies. She's buzzing. The band is buzzing. The audience, which must number at least several hundred, is buzzing.
These kids must've endured a fair bit of ridicule from their cooler peers for doing what they do. By simply ignoring that and just getting on with what they love doing, they've experienced something wonderful and will always have the memory of that.
While I could easily laugh at them, in truth I'm a little envious of just how much fun they're having at this gig. It's something I've experienced in an audience, but never as a musician. I probably worry far too much about how other people are going to react.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
