A great explanation from Urban Dictionary about the new phrase “nuke the fridge,” which was born from a ridiculous scene early in the Indiana Jones 4 film.
It also helps to explain one of the fundamental reasons for why the film, in its entirety, is an insult to the trade.
Here’s more info on what a Theremin actually is.
via Kaylow Media
From IMDb, though I don’t know how official this is:
The battle for Earth has ended but the battle for the universe has just begun. After returning to Cybertron, Starscream assumes command of the Decepticons, and has decided to return to Earth with force. The Autobots believing that peace was possible finds out that Megatron’s dead body has been stolen from the US Military by Skorpinox and revives him using his own spark. Now Megatron is back seeking revenge and with Starscream and more Decepticon reinforcements on the way, the Autobots with reinforcements of their own, may have more to deal with then meets the eye.
Loss of 10 points for the extra cheese in the last line, but still. This is fantastic.
Jacqui Cheng, one of my editors, on an NBC exec speaking about qualms with iTunes Store distribution:
That’s right: NBC would like to dump its contents back onto iTunes, ask you for at least $2 (or more) per episode, and then have Apple place extremely tight restrictions on if and how it can be played on an iPod or iPhone. Without the ability to take it with you offline—like, say, when you’re riding the train to work, or flying across the country—there isn’t a lot of difference between buying a show on iTunes and watching it for free on Hulu. And perhaps that’s the point.
Considering that we can finally take video content off our computers conveniently (and securely, for better and worse) with great gadgets like the iPhone and Apple TV, part of me thinks Jacqui’s headline could simply have been “NBC exec: ‘I am high as a kite.’”
802.11n is a fairly reliable way to stream content to an Apple TV, especially if you can go 802.11n-only to prevent non-N devices from dragging down the network. WiFi, however, is still susceptible to quirks, and it appears that the iTunes <–> Apple TV wireless handshake is too. We switched to 802.11n-only a few weeks ago in an attempt to improve our 40GB Apple TV’s ability to stay connected to our 250+GB iTunes library (over 210GB of which is video), and it’s worked pretty well. That said, we still run into the occasional-but-frustrating library ejection, sometimes right in the middle of a show. I suspect these dropouts may be the cause of wireless interference due to the materials used to build the townhome we rent, or perhaps our close proximity to other people’s wireless networks and devices. Even if I’m right, though, it doesn’t help our predicament.
I want to be able to store and sync our entire library with the Apple TV so we don’t have to deal with these annoyances. A cheap hard drive would solve this problem perfectly, and it would give us peace of mind to keep purchasing content from the iTunes Store without having to worry as to whether we can watch it in our now cable-less living room.
No, a Mac mini is not an option. The Apple TV, when we got one, cost $300. Now they’re $229 for the base model we have. Mac minis start at $600. For those not paying attention, a Mac mini is more than twice the price of an Apple TV. A price which isn’t worth it to solve what should be a minor problem. Plus, the Apple TV’s new Take 2 UI and features finally pulled ahead of Front Row. Fundamentally, the device is designed for a TV. Front Row and the Mac OS X environment are not.
The kicker is that the Apple TV actually has a USB port that is more or less handicapped to the general consumer. Apple says it’s for doing maintenance and troubleshooting when the time comes. Yea you can hack your Apple TV to do tons of wild stuff, and there’s even a hack for using external hard drives, but that only works on a previous 1.x version of the Apple TV software. Plus, it’s an ugly hack, and the Apple TV Take 2 software is just too darn great.
So what’s a frustrated Apple TV owner with a growing iTunes Store-purchased video and podcast library to do? Why, submit feedback via Apple’s official Apple TV feedback page, of course. If you’re in the same predicament, I urge you to send your own thoughts to Apple as well. For the record, here’s what I sent:
Please allow us to plug in our own USB hard drives to expand the Apple TV’s storage. There’s a USB port on the back of the device that is otherwise unusable. This really is pretty silly, and there isn’t much of a legitimate reason for Apple to keep this functionality locked away. Are you worried we’ll start plugging in hard drives and swapping content? For the users who want to do that (I don’t; check my iTunes Store purchase records), there are far smaller, capacious, and easily accessible devices for doing that called “iPods.”
WiFi—even 802.11n—is not a great solution for streaming content from our increasingly expanding iTunes libraries. Neither is drilling holes through our walls to run ethernet cable. If you want us to keep buying content from the iTunes Store (especially space-hogging video) and enjoying said content on our living room TVs, we need the ability to expand our Apple TV storage by plugging in an extra hard drive.
At least it couldn’t hurt, right? Go submit some feedback, see if it’ll help.
The Seed (iTunes Store link) is a new short film by Linkin Park’s DJ Joesph Hahn. The best description of the film is probably a quote from Hahn himself:
I saw a homeless guy having an argument with someone who clearly wasn’t there. I wondered what it would look like to see the fight through his eyes. What if what he was seeing was real? Who does he think is out to get him?
The film clocks in at just over 12 minutes, and I think it’s the best $2 I’ve spent on something like this in months, maybe years. It’s already won a number of awards from various film festivals, including awards for “Best Short Short” and “Outstanding Cinematography.” Hahn had a great idea, what looks like a decent budget behind him, and it shows. I’m not saying you need a big budget to tell a story well (Exhibit A: the best 5% of YouTube videos), but the filming, editing, and effects are impressive.
Cool story, great film, top-notch execution. Plus, if you’re a fan of Linkin Park or at least some of the band’s ambient music, the soundtrack kicks ass too. Two thumbs way up.
For a bit of an anecdotal recommendation: I’m a heavy multitasker. I never watch video full screen on my computer. I always have a browser window, iChat, Mail, and a few other random apps open, and I watch videos—including TV shows and movies—in a scaled down video in the corner of my display. If it’s a major film that I haven’t seen before, I’ll probably watch it on our living room TV with my wife. But stuff I’m playing for background noise goes in the upper corner.
The Seed is the first video I can remember in a long time that made me stop what I was doing and go full screen.
I’ve been submitting feedback to the iTunes Store complaining about the fact that most new release movies are only available to rent; not to buy. This time around I decided to submit my feedback in the form of a bug report:
I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with the iTunes Store. I know the ability to rent movies is a big new feature and all, but no matter what computer I visit the iTunes Store on (Mac or Windows), I can’t see the “Buy Now” button on most of the movies. The “Rent Now” button sure is there, but I have $9.99-14.99 burning a hole in my pocket for some of these great new movies.Is the store broken? Did the “Buy Now” button get lost somehow? Is it on a lunch break, perhaps? It sure would be great if you could fix whatever the problem is so we have the choice of giving you $3.99 or $10-15 for each movie. I don’t know about you, but I sure love it when someone gives me extra money. It’s always such a wonderful surprise!
My money is on this silly limitation being enforced by the studios. Either way, I just hope more feedback like this will get through the thick skulls it needs to.
Plankton Invasion is a funny new web-only animated series with what appear to be some pretty high production values. Be sure to watch the concept trailer to get a primer for the three episodes currently available. Episode 2 is by far my favorite.
I’m amazed at the quality of both the animation and the audio. Looks like the crew behind it has been doing these types of things for a while, too.
Call me what you have to, but this is one heckuva sight for sore eyes: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Complete Series on DVD. I grew up watching this show (amongst others, of course) and even got to the point of recording individual episodes onto VHS tapes in LP speed. If I was good at pausing/resuming recording to cut out the commercial breaks I could fit 4 episodes on a tape. Damn those were the good ol’ days of fighting with my friends Mark and John over whether Troi or Dr. Beverly Crusher was hotter, or whether Geordi or Data was cooler. Worf was always an embarrassing wuss and never really came up in debates. Oh, and to settle matters once and for all: Kirk could beat the crap out of Picard hands down, but he probably couldn’t debate his way out of a paper bag, let alone talk some awkwardly-named planet out of a civil war the way Picard can.
Bickering aside, that link up there is an Amazon Associates link - click it and buy that box set or anything else at Amazon and you’ll be supporting 1FPS, my lovely wife, two adorable puppies and an unhealthy obsession with technology. While it is true that you will more or less be indirectly enabling an addict, this particular addict is trying to do some good by blogging for The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Download Squad, so any shopping you do is much appreciated.
[tags]Star Trek, Amazon[/tags]
Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight
This is just a quick note, as I’m working on today’s podcast for TUAW, but: Minutes to Midnight rocks. The band is totally maturing both lyrically and musically, and this album has a surprising array of diversity from a really talented group of guys. I honestly haven’t checked in on what the rest of the web or the critics are saying, but I think it’s a safe bet that if you’ve followed the band through the years, you won’t be disappointed.
That link above, by the way, is an Amazon Associate link; buy the album through that and you’ll be supporting my efforts with 1FPS.
Linkblog
2 days ago 
