Over the weekend, with in laws in town, I decided it was about time to read "Watchmen", the landmark graphic novel from the eighties by Moore and Gibbons. Although I had known of and was familiar with the overall story, I had not gotten around to actually reading it. I really don't have a good excuse for not doing it earlier. Just busy in the eighties, I guess.
While I don't agree with several of the themes presented by Moore and Gibbons, I do admire the sheer audacity of attempting to redefine such an established art form in one fell swoop. And the artwork is marvelously old school, complex with repeating themes and motifs that belie its deceptively simple 3x3 layout. ( A wise choice, as too many dilettantes have tried to "redefine" comics by using inventive artistic techniques tied to pedestrian stories.
You still have two years before Hollywood decimates it with the big screen version (and, no, I don't reflexively label every Hollywood production as lame, but I don't see how the original story can stay intact till the end after having been in development for TWENTY YEARS.) If you've read it, you can see why I don't imagine the ending will remain intact.
So, for most of you, dust it off and give it a read (or dust them off if, like my sister, you have the original issues).
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Uverse redux
Now that I've lived with ATT's Uverse service for a few months, I thought it would be good to do a quick update...
First, the service hasd been remarkably reliable, with only a handful of outages (mostly on the HD channels) lasting a few minutes. After Comcast, having a cable service that's up 24/7 is a nice change of pace.
Second, ATT is obviously serious about updating and expanding service, such as the Big 10 football network, a series of 10 cable channels covering said conference (one of them HD). And you gotta love BBC America if you're a MI5 or Doctor Who fan . More changes are on the way, which leads us to...
Third, ATT seems to have an odd definition of programming "upgrades". One of these improvements is the elmination of all west coast feeds. That's about 20 channels, and its quite convenient when you're channel surfing and catch a glimpse of something you want to watch from the beginning--just see if its on the west coast feed. I'll miss that.
Fourth, ATT has dropped their digital music channels for the MTV/Microsoft "Urge" programming. Needless to say, MTV seems to have no room for Gospel or Contemporary Christian music (no surprise there). I give this "Urge" marketing thing about 18 months before everybody bails.
Fifth, and this is not completely their fault, but Microsofts's CE OS takes an unbearably long time to boot, and the router/access point can't initialize if the set top boxes are trying to download their code. This means that a minor power glitch (common in our neighborhood) can take down the system until you spend the 45 minutes to manually bring it up. So each STB in our house now has a UPS attached to it. This is the kind of system flaw that makes grown engineers weep and wail.
(edit)
In other system flaws, MS CE can't manage the hard drive well at all. I've recorded at least a dozen programs that play back as either a black screen or just 3 frames of a program. Sometimes you can get the program back by rebooting the system (a 10 minute chore) but other times its just taking up drive space for no good reason. More proof that MS CE is no substitute for TIVO.
Sixth, and I'm kinda picky about this, but the channels are over compressed. Most people could live wiht it, but I can spot a compression artifact a mile away, and it makes some sporting events unbearable to watch. The HD channels aer better.
Seventh, and not exactly a flaw, but the room to room DVR functions aren't ready yet.
Bottom line, its still been worth the change from Comcast, and the flaws are either livable or can be worked around (for $50 in UPS hardware). So if you have ATT IPTV in your neighborhood, its worth checking out.
Happy channel suring.
First, the service hasd been remarkably reliable, with only a handful of outages (mostly on the HD channels) lasting a few minutes. After Comcast, having a cable service that's up 24/7 is a nice change of pace.
Second, ATT is obviously serious about updating and expanding service, such as the Big 10 football network, a series of 10 cable channels covering said conference (one of them HD). And you gotta love BBC America if you're a MI5 or Doctor Who fan . More changes are on the way, which leads us to...
Third, ATT seems to have an odd definition of programming "upgrades". One of these improvements is the elmination of all west coast feeds. That's about 20 channels, and its quite convenient when you're channel surfing and catch a glimpse of something you want to watch from the beginning--just see if its on the west coast feed. I'll miss that.
Fourth, ATT has dropped their digital music channels for the MTV/Microsoft "Urge" programming. Needless to say, MTV seems to have no room for Gospel or Contemporary Christian music (no surprise there). I give this "Urge" marketing thing about 18 months before everybody bails.
Fifth, and this is not completely their fault, but Microsofts's CE OS takes an unbearably long time to boot, and the router/access point can't initialize if the set top boxes are trying to download their code. This means that a minor power glitch (common in our neighborhood) can take down the system until you spend the 45 minutes to manually bring it up. So each STB in our house now has a UPS attached to it. This is the kind of system flaw that makes grown engineers weep and wail.
(edit)
In other system flaws, MS CE can't manage the hard drive well at all. I've recorded at least a dozen programs that play back as either a black screen or just 3 frames of a program. Sometimes you can get the program back by rebooting the system (a 10 minute chore) but other times its just taking up drive space for no good reason. More proof that MS CE is no substitute for TIVO.
Sixth, and I'm kinda picky about this, but the channels are over compressed. Most people could live wiht it, but I can spot a compression artifact a mile away, and it makes some sporting events unbearable to watch. The HD channels aer better.
Seventh, and not exactly a flaw, but the room to room DVR functions aren't ready yet.
Bottom line, its still been worth the change from Comcast, and the flaws are either livable or can be worked around (for $50 in UPS hardware). So if you have ATT IPTV in your neighborhood, its worth checking out.
Happy channel suring.
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