Category: Life

I saw the Dark Knight Rises today.

I’d call it the best action movie released thus far this summer, beating out The Avengers. Unlike the aforementioned title, villains in Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Batman take on a third dimension, a much appreciated departure of action movie fare. The script was also comparatively very strong, though plot devices started to become recognizable from Nolan’s previous efforts.

I wasn’t too excited for the film after having seen the original trailer. Bane at the time didn’t appear to be a particularly engaging antagonist, especially as compared to Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker. I was wrong. Not as jaw-dropping as his antecedent, but great nonetheless.

The movie wasn’t without its flaws. The script was well-written, but as I hinted earlier was sometimes formulaic – though not to action movies as a whole, but to Nolan’s take on the genre. Some emotional moments failed to deliver, whether it was because the performances felt forced or their brevity, I’m not entirely sure. The dialog at time was difficult to comprehend as the volume of the speech was too weak as compared to surrounding sources of sound. The music occasionally felt repetitive.

Overall, these are minor trifles in an otherwise solid action flick. I’d say that if you liked the previous Batman movies by Nolan, you’ll enjoy this one. As to whether this was the best of the trilogy, I’d argue that that title belongs to the second film. But don’t let that deter you, as you’d be missing out.

I look forward to Nolan’s future efforts. There’s a level of imagination that has pervaded every single one of his scripts which makes his films more interesting than nearly every other Hollywood release. You’d have to turn to the likes of Terry Gilliam to experience something as unexpected.

Over the years, a series of software products have emerged that have empowered the masses to achieve what was previously only the domain of professionals.

Apple’s iMovie let kids splice and add music to footage captured by a video camera. Microsoft’s Access acquainted office workers with the power of databases while Excel enabled high school students to drum up complex charts. Any individual with a smart phone could conjure a piece emulating Warhol with Instagram in seconds.

These program don’t turn people into experts, but they allow them to perform some of the basic tasks previously only achievable by professionals. For most people, that’s good enough. They don’t care about tweaking gamma levels in a photo, they just want to be able to remove grandma’s red-eye.

While the appeal in something like GarageBand might be easily understood, who could have foreseen the popularity of more esoteric products such as a spreadsheet program? It does lend credence to the idea that if you make a useful process intuitive enough, the general public will be willing adopt it.

To that end, I believe that there’s room for a product that would do to programming what Access did for databases. An application that enables people to create functions as easily as Excel lets them use them.

Such a product would be tremendously useful. It wouldn’t be a substitute for real software development, but would open the door to simplifying the life of casual users – allowing them to automatically backup family photos, download podcasts, etc. The alternative otherwise is to do these tasks manually, which is an incredible drain on time.

This isn’t anything new. The Illumination Software Creator, pictured below, is one such product that attempts to bring programming to the masses. Like many of its competitors, it uses a visual approach involving flow diagrams to represent the program’s logic. No code, no worrying about the countless different ways a computer could store a simple number.

It’s the right approach, but it lacks what all other applications like it haven’t had thus far – adoption. Microsoft’s Excel wasn’t the first spreadsheet program, but it was the one that popularized the genre. Likewise, there just hasn’t been that killer app to champion this concept.

While I don’t believe the proliferation of such applications is inevitable, I do think that the potential is there. There just needs for there to be the right circumstances at the right time, and perhaps a bit of hype.

I got Netflix a while ago. I knew at the time that the content for their Canadian offering was lacking, especially as compared to their American selection. Nevertheless, the subscription cost was reasonable enough to warrant keeping the service. Last week, I registered with a service that lets me get content available to US residents. It was a change for the amazing, one that I should have done long before.

Netflix provides its subscribers with different content based on where it thinks they’re surfing from. If it thinks you’re browsing from the States, it will provide you with their American selection. If it thinks you’re in Canada, the Canadian content will appear.

How it knows where you are is by way of your computer’s Internet or IP address. It uses a geolocation service to tie that address a physical location. It’s imperfect, because these addresses aren’t structured according to physical location, but according to the topology of how computers are interconnected. To show you just how different the two are, here’s what a map of the Internet:

Anyways, this means that if your traffic to Netflix appears to be coming from a different IP address, say one that’s in the United-States, then Netflix will think you’re American. There’s a few ways to change where you appear to be coming from.

One is to use a VPN, whereby all of Internet traffic gets routed through computers located somewhere else – in this case, the United-States. Netflix would see that traffic as originating from an American IP, unaware of the Canadian source. An account with a VPN provider would cost about $10 a month.

Another approach is to change the DNS servers to those of a special service provider. Think of DNS servers as a phone book for the Internet. It translates domain names like “netflix.com” (phone book analogy: people’s names) to IP addresses like “255.255.255.255” where the content is actually found (phone book analogy: phone numbers). So just as mucking around with the phone numbers in a phone book could have someone who intended to call one person call another, DNS servers can likewise misdirect a computer.

This service uses this ability to trick a computer into talking to the wrong servers when it wants to reach Netflix. The servers it gets pointed to are owned by the service provider and based in the US. They act as relays, passing the traffic over to Netflix on behalf of the computer. Netflix meanwhile only sees these proxies with American IP addresses, and so feeds content intended for US residents. This approach has much lighter bandwidth requirements than a VPN provider, and likewise costs less at $5/month. This is what I went for.

The difference between American and Canadian Netflix content is staggering. Below is an image of the latest additions to Netflix. What’s in black is content only available to Americans. The little that’s left isn’t very impressive.

I had a hard time recommending Netflix outright before. Now I’d say yes, it’s absolutely worth it if you don’t have cable, but only if you’re able to get the American selection.