Mandaris Moore

So, I've been really digging Westworld and I created this diagram to just contain some of the high level thoughts that I've been having regarding the plot.

I'm just going to write a couple things and I'm not even going to take the time to spell check or get the right names for characters.

Children in Westworld

Don’t see many

I feel that this is more than just the logistics of having a show that takes month to produce with a significant amount of time between seasons. Coupled with the fact that the show itself has some very mature subject matter. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but...

All of the ones we’ve seen have been creepy

In the first season, Lawrence's daughter was the first that I recall saying that the Maze was not for the Man in Black. In this season, we have a creepy Young Ford. There are no coincidences.

India World

Seriously? I feel that the writers just wanted to show an elephant.

How is it spreading?

Whatever it is that is making the hosts turn on humanity is spreading fast. I don't know if it's Ford's last command or the trigger word that is setting them off.

Who is that lady?

I don't even remember her name. How is it that all the people sent to infiltrate the park are women? Don't get me wrong, I find it a welcome change from what I normally watch.

Why does she look so much like Teresa?

Maybe all smokers look a like to me, but a lot of her mannerisms remind me of Teresa. It might be why she's willing to shoot someone just to make sure. :)

Is she dead?

I don't think so. She's too compelling to just throw away.

Dolores

Yes, I went and looked up the right way to spell it.

How much of her is Wyatt

It seems like she goes back and forth. I would think that Wyatt wouldn't be as much of her personality because a lot of her experience has been as Dolores.

Teddy Trouble

Teddy, Teddy, Teddy... He's just as confused as we are.

Is the Ghost Nation her army or are we just seeing Wyatt’s minions

I don't know. I feel that a lot of them are just following the narrative that was given to them before the end of season 1.

Bernard

I like him thus far. I don't know where we're going with this character but it's going to be interesting to see.

Not Arnold

I'm pretty confident in this. Seeing as he was made after Arnold passed away. I would think that Ford would have a lot of influence on what I would think be his most sentimental creation.

Maeve

For me, I'm seeing Maeve as more of a vehicle to see more of the park at this point. I know it is important for her to get her daughter, but we don't know if it will pay off. Please see my small section on creepy kids.

Hector vs Sizemore

I think that this might actually come to a head soon. I'm currently re-watching the first season and I remember how Sizemore was very excited about the speeches and characterization of Hector. It would be nice to see what happens next.

Fear the ghost nation

The ghost nation is really haunting. I don't know what is going on with them either.

What happened in her previous incarnations? How many times?

Those reveries are really popping up. I think one podcaster was saying it echoes PTSD.

What do they owe to each other now? Bernard and Dolores

I feel that of the three major host characters, these two have the strongest connection. Although one sided, they have a history. Does Doloris share some of her memories? Does Bernard attempt to emulate Arnold going forward? I don't know but I'm interest in finding out.

I recently saw two tv shows, "AP Bio" and "The Mick", and reliezed that they both attempt to make that the now classic Anti-Hero. The Bad Boy who pretends that he doesn't care but secretly has a heart of gold.

But, the thing about this is that the character needs to have some kind of charisma or redeeming quality. As a viewer with lots of options and little time, I'm not going to wait half a season for that kind of pay off.

When I saw this in the app store, I thought this was an alright game. It had a fairly high rating, but I think that the developers must have gamed the rating system because anyone who has gotten passed the initial tutorial would be quickly bored by the tedious amount of grinding and the amount of in-app purchases that you get hammered with every time you want to do something.

The game has two different kinds of currency: One that proves pointless after 20 minutes and a true currency that you can only get by paying with real money.

Listen, if you're looking for a game that you only play once a day without paying $2-3, then this is it.

A friend an I usually talk about manga every week via chat or email, mostly about Naruto which we've been reading and watching for almost a decade. Recently, it seems like the series is coming to an end as the author has really cranked up the stakes, action and WTF factors in the story. At this point, I'm reading because I care about the characters and I really want to find some closure.

Even if the story goes a little crazy sometimes, it's still a lot better than bleach.

Honestly, I had almost forgotten that I had read this week's issue.

Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke. I haven't read a good story line with that guy in it since he fought Gaara. Him and his brother are like poo and every time they touch the plot....

As for the 5 [Kages][], although they are supposed to be the embodiment of their respective villages will and stuff they all have some kind of weird weekness.

• Hokage (Tsunade): Medical ninja with a gambling and drinking problem
• Kazekage (Gaara): Recently resolved daddy issues
• Mizukage (Mei Terumi): A woman¹ ;P... but seriously, single note character
• Raikage (A... stupid name for killer bee's brother): One arm...
• Tsuchigake (Onoki): Old

Plus they've been fighting all day and this is an undead opponent.

Sorry about the long email. Just had a roll.

[kages]: http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Kage

Recently, my wife has been listening to the Stephanie Plum audiobook series¹ and we've both been delighted to have something more to talk about other than typical parent stuff.

Then I heard that they were going to make a movie out of the first book and that the trailer was already online. We even set aside some time to sit down and watch it together.

And...

We're already disappointed.

I don't understand why people continue to give this lady movie rolls. Katherine Heigl plays the same uptight woman who "just needs to find the right one so she can relax and enjoy life (AKA get some)". For some reason she reminds me of Lisa Kudrow because I don't see her in anything else but the same role. Listen, I get it there are a lot of people who are uptight and need to relax, but I'm sure a lot of those people still have a fully working personality. Personally, I think the best thing about the trailer is that she only says a total of 4 lines in the whole thing so I'm hoping that this will be like her other movies and she'll be helped by the other actors (queue "Knocked Up").

I recently loaned a friend of mine my copy of Phantom of the Paradise with a note stating that it used to be one of my all time favorite movies. This got me questioning myself on if this was removed from being one of my favorite movies what replaced it?

So here is a list of my favorite movies in no particular order.

• The Big Hit (1998)

This was my first taste of comedy/action. It introduced me to a bunch of actors that I'd be happy to see in years to come. Honestly, I knew about Marc Walberg before I ever heard of Marky Mark and I have a little bit of a man crush on Lou Diamond Phillips.

• Army of Darkness (1992)

Hail to the king, baby! The lines are legendary and watching it again just makes me laugh at how I thought the special effects were the greatest. It's almost like watching "The clash of the Titans" with boomsticks.

• Batman Begins (2005)

Restarted a francise and cursed the world with a march of new superhero movies. I thought it was cool that even though it was a Batman movie, you don't see him in costume for half the movie.

• Death to Smoochy (2002)

Great film that introduced me to Edward Norton and Jon Stewart. I look at this movie and wonder why Robin Williams isn't in more movies and how come this didn't do better.

• Aladdin (1992)

A whole new world! One of Disney's most popular male animated characters and I think the best disney soundtrack. Sure the other movies, have great songs but this one has three iconic songs that everyone in my generation can identify.

I recently loaned a friend of mine my copy of Phantom of the Paradise with a note stating that it used to be one of my all time favorite movies. This got me questioning myself on if this was removed from being one of my favorite movies what replaced it?

So here is a list of my favorite movies in no particular order.

• The Big Hit
  This was my first taste of comedy/action. It introduced me to a bunch of actors that I'd be happy to see in years to come.

• Army of Darkness
  Hail to the king, baby!

• Batman Begins
  Restarted a francise and curse the world with a march of new superhero movies.

• Death to Smoochy
  This movie is great

• Aladin
  A whole new world! One of Disney's most popular male animated characters.

After Intuit’s announcement that they would only be supporting Quicken Essentials in Lion, other mac developers were happy to ease the troubled mind of users with various options that were designed to take advantage of some of the features of the new OS. Since the last review of iFinance, Synium Software, the maker of Chronories and MacFamilyTree, have been working hard to make version 3.3 a release that can standup in comparison with the other options.

The first improved feature that you will notice is the stock tracker graph which shows the value of a stock over time and allows you mouse over to see the value of a specific day. Unfortunately, the interface is still rather simple as adding your own personal investments is a multi part process of first adding the stock, clicking on the transactions button, pressing the "+" button, putting in your information (purchase date, quantity, cost) and finally clicking around the different textfields hoping your information was saved.

One feature that the release boast is the ability to add more media to a particular transaction. This is great if you want to add a two part receipt, warranty, picture of you standing next to your new purchase or whatever. The problem is that when you click on the media button for that particular transaction, the one window interface becomes even more crowded as it splits the transaction panel in two.

Ultimately, I have to say that this release maintains the 2 1/2 mouse rating it was given originally based off of the continued frustration with getting information into the application and overall user experience.

I consider myself a reasonable person who loves mac products. I've been using mac since the summer of 2004, when I had an internship at Apple Computer Inc. It was one of the greatest work experience of my life and I wish I had done more to pursue a career working there (but that's a whole 'nother topic). The thing is that I've used all the OS's since then and every time a new one comes out I go through a series of steps.

1. Initial excitement that my favorite OS is getting an update that should make it even better!
2. A splash of cold water as I notice that a lot of the updates are under the hood (Core) and all the big ticket items are basically eye candy that I don't see myself or anyone else using day to day (dashboard).
3. Last minute concern that I haven't backed my computer up in… um… a while..
4. Excitement that I'm installing the latest and greatest!
5. Admiration that by and large the performance of the OS is better on the same hardware¹.
6. Nit pick at little changes to the user interface (what's with the ugly font and background with the notes in Mail? You can choose to colors blue or grey. What color and shape do you want your folders? That last one is a trick question.) and what not.
7. Fall in love all over again. With all the software that developers are able to make with the new OS, why would you want to go back? Learn to live with it or learn to tweak it (How? It's a secret²).
8. Go to work every day wishing that I could work on a mac.

So what's the deal with lion

I actually really liked lion when I first got it. Although at first glance it looks like someone has been sucking more and more color out of it, you can tell that a lot detail went into how things looked. Mail.app has really gotten a good shining and I was pleasantly surprised/creeped out to see how safari was smart enough to see that I was logging into my old yahoo account and then set it up in mail with only a couple button clicks. The key thing about the whole process is that it's really smooth and -for the most part- you wouldn't know that a whole lot of things have changed and if you ask me a couple months from now I probably wouldn't want to go back.

But...

As with most changes, there are somethings that I don't like about lion.

1. Where are the scrollbars?
   I know I'm not the only one out there who misses them. I was concerned about this since they demoed it during the WWDC keynote. I understand that they are supposed to flash when you first load the page or some kind of change happens, but I think that disappearing scrollbars are pointless when I'm using it at home on my iMac. In fact, I feel that they work against the user in some circumstances. For example, when I'm in Mail.app and I'm looking at the list of messages, I shouldn't have to look at the number of message at the top to figure out that I should scroll down to get more. When you do enable the scrollbars, they have a tendency to look kinda bland. I like to imagine them as grey tear drops that are sad that they have to be there.

2. As natural as a gesture
   I understand that this point and the last could probably be a non-issue if I only had a magic trackpad or used the new OS with a laptop like they did with WWDC keynote demo. But, I don't have one. I have a 4+ button mouse that I use instead of the magic mouse that used to hurt my hand after an hour or so (great reason to enjoy more family time). I know I could probably get used to it if I wanted to, but this is my family's home computer. My wife and I have to work all day and use our windows boxes. This is not a strong argument, "Hey baby, I know that you've had a long day at work typing and whatnot and you want to use the machine that helped pay for to relax and check on that book of faces and electronic mail thing the kids are all into, but do you mind re-wiring your brain to make up down and down up because I don't want to go into preferences to change it back to what you are accustomed to".

3. Rum-rum-resume
   It is at this point that I feel a lot of people might disagree with me. I wish the resume feature of the OS was a little better fined tuned. As in, I wish I could turn it off. What? You love the fact that you can start exactly where you left off in a program? You know what? So do I! Does my wife like seeing all the safari windows that I had up when I was on there last³? Do I like waiting an extra couple minutes while all the applications that I had open before I restarted the machine start back up and restore themselves to their previous state all at once? No. Some would argue that I could simply hold down the option button when I close a program to stop this behavior and that it does help in a lot of ways. I don't dispute this, but I do feel that there should be more control over this. If you have a faster machine (like something with a solid state drive), then you wouldn't have a problem with this. But it is a reminder to me that OS didn't have this feature before because of the overhead associated with it. I know that a year or so from now it will be a non-issue.

4. The witches brew
   This last part is purely a geek pet peeve for me, because this doesn't affect anyone other than developers. I use a couple of software packages to create this site and play with my pipe dream of being a cocoa programmer. One of the tools that I use is homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager that downloads the source code of other software (ex. MySQL, Node.js), compiles them and install them in a way that doesn't cause your system to fall to pieces. The problem is that the new OS uses a different default compiler and has changed the permissions on some of the folders. I could change the compiler back, but I didn't want to mess around with it too much. The machine that I have lion installed on is my family computer and I don't want my wife to kill me when I need to re-install for the third time to fix something that I didn't understand fully. It probably already fixed...

The conclusion

Overall, I really like lion and I look forward to seeing what developers can do with the new technology going forward. Does it have some faults? Yes, but with any healthy relationship you have to understand that OS change over time.