Maybe Starbucks isn’t Evil

I used to hate on Starbucks like everyone else, but lately I’ve really grown to like them. Why? Recently they made a lot of corporate changes and one of them was that they now have the same coffee every day for regular drip coffee. It is called Pike’s Roast and it is really good. Does that mean that I’ve shredded my Peet’s Coffee and Tea card? No, I still prefer going to Peet’s mainly because all the employees know my wife and I. Although recently it’s become clear they only know me when I’m with my wife, but I digress.

The Starbucks across the street from where I work is a great place. The employees are incredibly friendly, they all recognize me, and one (Amanda) even knows me by my name. The added benefit that every time I order a coffee from them it will taste like the last time I ordered a coffee from them makes me wish the Starbucks closer to home were as friendly as this one.

I’m sure nobody from the Starbucks will ever read this blog, but if anyone out there wants an excellent cup of coffee and some truly great and honestly friendly service I cannot recommend the Starbucks at 701 Battery St in San Francisco enough.

Thank you all for consistently providing excellent coffee and great service.

IE6 Is Now Dead to Me

Hello out there in Internet-land. There is a shocking number of you coming to my web sites using Internet Explorer 6. I don’t think that you realize that a lot has happened in browser technology since August 27, 2001. You see, that date almost 7 years ago is the day that Internet Explorer 6 was released. At the time it was a fine browser, but that time has passed. It is time to move on.

Please note that on this blog, the navigation on the side does not appear in IE6. You may be wondering when I’m going to fix that. The answer is simple, I’m not planning on fixing it. There are 3 other released browsers out there that run perfectly well on the Internet today. I would suggest you download one of them. There are 2 browsers coming in the very near future that will hopefully make massive changes to the way the web works, but most developers still have to account for the lowest common denominator, and that would be you IE6. You are the lowest common denominator.

I drink the Microsoft Kool-aid every single day and even in my sleep, but just like I don’t run Windows 2000 anymore (and only use XP begrudgingly at work) I also don’t use IE6. From this day forward I’m going to take the Apple approach to IE6. If it doesn’t work, oh well. (notice all the transparent PNG’s that don’t work in IE6)

So what browser do I recommend you upgrade to? Well of course I’m going to suggest Internet Explorer 7. You already use IE6, you may as well stay in the family. If you are falling into that trap of the haters out there that say all IE’s are evil (they aren’t) and you don’t trust me on IE7 (although you should) then I suggest Safari 3. “Like OMG! Todd just suggested an Apple product, and now has more links to Apple on this blog than to Microsoft.” Yes, I use Safari. I use it a lot. It’s a really good browser, and I like the way it renders fonts. However, Silverlight is not officially supported on it (the Windows version anyway, the Mac version is supported). Finally, I’ll give you the obligatory link to Firefox. I don’t like Firefox. I used to use it exclusively before they released version 1, but now there are too many fanboys out there that think this is the greatest thing since Tim Berners-Lee invented HTMLD.

So, now you have no excuse. I’ve given you the links, and I’m thinking that sometime between now and August 27 I will just redirect all IE6 users to this blog entry.

Next up, I’ll try and find out why some people are still on Firefox 1.5. There is no reason for that mess either. Upgrade! This is the Internet, anything older than 3 years is ancient.

Zune Software V2.5

A lot has already been written on the web about the 2.x version of the Zune software. Most of it is negative, mostly I haven't had a negative experience with the software, but I didn't use the 1.x software for very long before v2 came out.

Recently an update was released bringing some changes that a lot of people should be happy with. For me though the change that I was pleasantly surprised to find is that when you subscribe to a podcast and play an episode, as soon as that episode finishes the Zune will start the next episode in the series. The previous functionality is that it would just keep playing the same episode over and over again. This is a great little feature and has rekindled my practice of listening to podcasts on the train and during my walk to work.

Nathan Bozeman and Holomove Corp

It seems there is some sort of alternate reality game that started recently. Last year there was one that Microsoft was sponsoring where you had to find the identity of Loki. She turned out to be three separate people and the winner gets to go into space.

Anyway, there's another one that seems fairly interesting. This guy Nathan got a job at a company called Holomove and he inherited an office that used to belong to a now dead scientist. He finds lots of strange things and is determined that something is going on.

If you are interested here's some information to get you started on it. I found this on the Wired blog, and Nathan has his own blog.

Check it out, and who knows... maybe this is sponsored by Google and the winner will go to the moon. ;-) Then again, maybe I am only interested in it because I went to Bozeman, MT for college.

Ubik is Coming Soon

Philip K. Dick is undeniably my favorite Sci-Fi author. His stories have been turned into such great movies as Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Paycheck among others.

One of my least favorite books of his is about to be made into a movie. This book is called Ubik. Ubik is one of those stories that I consider to be daydream Sci-Fi. It begins in a really cool setting and then just starts going out of control. The story is set in 1992 where parapsychology is an accepted practice but it isn't legal so there's a company that goes around and blocks telepaths. This company goes to the moon and that's where all hell breaks loose, and time begins to go the other way.

As with all of Dick's stories, there are some really interesting aspects. For instance the main character has to pay to get out of his apartment, but he's so broke he doesn't have enough change for the door. Also, every chapter begins with an ad for a product called Ubik. Telling you what Ubik is would spoil the ending, but the products are everyday things that you'd recognize only the product name is Ubik. As time continues to roll backwards the products get more classic. This could be an interesting advertising mechanism for the movie, or even a nice diversion within the movie much in the way that Starship Troopers used the "Would you like to know more?" ads within the movie.

We'll see what happens when it comes out. My bet is that it will make me appreciate the book more. In fact just writing this blog entry has made me think about going back to re-read the book.

More info about the movie can be found here:
Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' Is Heading to the Big Screen

The *Duh* Story of the Day

Great tits cope well with warming

Yeah! I already knew that one... oh.. wait... that tit? Well you know. All tits cope well with warming.

Donnie Darko

Out of nowhere a movie started popping up. There was a director's cut and a lot of people I know were telling me how great it was. That movie was Donnie Darko. I had it on my Netflix queue for a while, but I never bumped it to the top. As a result I deleted it one day when I was cleaning up my queue.

This morning I was in bed trying to get my daughter to sleep when I noticed that it was playing on the Sundance channel. I put it on and now I understand why so many people liked it.

First, any movie that has a clip of "Evil Dead" in it must be good.

Second, the case is amazing. From Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who many would argue would make for a bad movie but I disagree, to Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore (also an Executive Producer on the movie) and Noah Wyle. They all did a super job.

Donnie is a fairly dark boy with a horrifying past. He's seeing a shrink and is on medication. One day he starts to see this deranged bunny who tells him that the world will end in 28 days. The next 28 days are a whirlwind of tragedy and horror. I won't spoil the ending but it is a good one.

This movie isn't a horror movie although it has some elements of horror. This movie isn't Sci-Fi, but you could argue any movie with time travel as a theme is Sci-Fi. This is a thriller and a really good one. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Creative 50 - I work with two of them.

It's been a long time since I've posted. A lot has happened in the past year. My wife and I had a beautiful baby girl. We named her Inara Iris Spatafore. She was born 2 months early, but she is doing incredibly well.

In other news, I quit my job tried to start my own interactive agency, but then I got a call to come work for McCann Worldgroup. Answering that call has been the best career move I've made since I moved out of Montana. Anyway, enough about me. Two of the people that I work with were named to Creativity Online's annual Creative 50. This list of 50 people represent the biggest innovators of the year. Although the list includes the Google founders (I'm not sure what innovations they came up with last year), but it also includes the Coen Brothers.

Here's a link to the profile of the two guys I work with:

http://creativity-online.com/?action=news:article&newsId=125181&sectionId=creativity_50

Peet's vs. Starbucks

I prefer Peet's Coffee to Starbucks. I usually end up buying at least one cup of coffee a day at Starbucks because of how close it is to where I work. Peet's would be too much of a drive.

Starbucks raised the price of coffee today. For a small cup of coffee it is now $1.55. This was particularly embarrassing for me today because I walked in to Starbucks with only 6 quarters in my pocket. They had a cup of dimes sitting next to the register and used that to pay the missing 5¢. Although that was nice of them it was fairly embarrassing to me.

Let's compare that experience to the way that Peet's raised their prices a few months ago to $1.60. For the 2 weeks leading up to the price change they had a note sitting next to the register alerting customers that the prices would increase. The few days immediately before the increase the employees would gently remind the customers that the drink they just purchased would cost an extra 10¢ on the specified date. Then the day of the change, if you forgot/didn't know about the price increase they just discounted the price of your drink.

I personally think that Peet's had the right idea on their price change. The letter explained why they were raising the price and apologized for any inconvenience this would cause. Starbucks just put up a new sign one night and surprised everyone. At lease they had the courtesy to pay the difference when I went in there with only $1.50.

High Definition and Director's Intent

DJ and I just had a brief discussion about the visual quality of movies that have been transferred to HD-DVD. Specifically he was asking about movies that were filmed in 16mm that have a lot of film grain. He said he read some reviews that pointed out how poor these movies looked when re-mastered for HD-DVD.

My opinion on the matter is that many of the reviewers that I've read online do not take into account what was the director's intent (or cinematographer's intent, or director or photography, but I'm just going to jumble them all into the director category because it's one word). Please do not get me wrong. online reviewers like the ones at High-Def Digest does a phenomenal job of reviewing all HD-DVD's that are released. They even admit that they "make pains to not detract" based on film makers stylistic choices, but they are reviewing the quality of HD-DVD and that means that they don't want to see film grain or over exposed film.

I think that the director's intent is the most important thing in the movie. If you look at the movie Serenity on HD-DVD you can clearly see the film grain in the live action shots, but the space CG shots are clean and pristine. I believe that if I were to ask Joss Whedon (writer/director of Serenity) he would agree that this was a style choice to contrast between the (forgive the expression) spaghetti-western-ness of the live action portions and the hard-core Sci-Fi of the computer graphics section. Granted I don't personally know Mr. Whedon, but this is the way I interpret what I see on the screen. It invoked a feeling and set a mood that I think enhanced the movie.

This "invoking of feelings" and "setting of moods" is something that I find hard to get across when I am reviewing a movie. However, because I think that film grain is a conscious choice that the director makes when building a story, I will never detract someone from the HD-DVD version of a movie because of it. I may comment on it, but that is because I find it fascinating that with a high definition medium we can now forgo the movie going experience and have that experience in our own living rooms.