After a half-week long work trip down to beautiful and sunny Avon Park, Florida (read: a pit in the middle of nowhere), we spent the last night in a hotel in Orlando, across the street from the airport.

We finally got up and checked in to the hotel around 7pm. My coworkers decided to hit the hotel bar and go to sleep early; our flight left early in the morning. We were about 20 minutes from Walt Disney World, so I figured this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

Unlike my trip to Disneyland in October, I knew that I only had a few hours. $85 entry into the park was not worth it, as I'd get there about 8, with the parks closing at 9. Instead, I woul hang out at the resort hotels, and do other things around the park.

Primarilly, I wanted to hit the Polynesian Resort, Perhaps the Contemporary, and ride the monorails, perhaps down to and around Epcot. All free things to do. Past that, I knew that the fireworks were starting at 8, with the water parade at 9, and that I wanted to hit Kona Cafe in the 'Poly for dinner.

I got lost driving around the roads, missing my turn off to the poly the first time around, and ended up driving near the main parking lot and back around. Oops.

I then headed up World Drive, with intentions on going to Seven Seas Drive, to try to park in the Polynesian's (tiny) parking lot, since I knew that if i said I was going to have dinner there, I could park for free. I got to the interseaction, saw that World Drive continued up to the Contemporary, and decided to continue on, for the hell of it. I know that when i visit in a few years with the family, I can't do this kind of aimless driving, so.. opportunity!

Drove up under the waterway/tunnel, which was neat, then past the Contemporary.. I never really liked the thing as a kid, but it sure is pretty at night! I was about to turn around, but decided to continue on. I drove right past Space Mountain which was awesome, and ended up at the utility/engineering areas north of the park. I found a small parking lot and turned around, and headed back.

I then tried to park at the Poly, sharking back and forth in the tiny, cramped lot, not finding anything. I eventually gave up and drove to the main parking lot. Turns out, there was no parking fee; i'm guessing because it was so late at night. After a few lanes of driving the wrong way on a few lanes, I parked the rental car under the monorail track, just south of the TTC.

Pics are online of this.

A quick walk under Seven Seas Dr, and I was boarding Monorail Coral! I took this one (the express monorail) to the main gate and back, sitting in a car by myself. Did I mention that it was exactly 8pm, and I was watching fireworks from the monorail? Because I did, and yes, it was AWESOME. It doesn't get more "Disney World" than that.

I deboarded the monorail back at the TTC, and walked to the Polynesian. Man, I love the ambience of the lands, the buildings, everything about this place. All of the gas tiki torches were lit around the property. Lots of crickets chirping, although to be honest, I'm not sure if they were real crickets or a recording... not that it mattered. Once inside the Great Ceremonial House, I headed up to Kona Cafe to get a seat for dinner. With only 20 minutes to wait, I hit some of the stores there, and did a recreation of a photo of me as a kid sitting in a wicker chair in that lobby.

The Tuna Oscar from Kona was delicious. The water parade was going on while i was eating, at 9pm, so I missed that.

Next, I hopped on the non-express monorail, made it back over to the TTC, with hopes of zipping down to Epcot. But arriving back at the TTC at 9:50ish, I missed the last train by a few minutes. I tried to hit the ferry as well, but missed that also. Oh well. heh.

I spent a lot of time walking around the grounds of the Poly, exploring and spending money in the stores. Eventually, I realized that I could get a DOLE WHIP at Capt. Cook's! So i got one, and ate it outside. Nice.

Soon, 11pm creeped up, and the stores in the Poly were closing, so I walked back to the car. At this point, the parking lot was EMPTY. It was crazy to see such a huge parking lot so totally empty.

In retrospect, I should have then headed up to the Contemporary and taken some pics in the lobby there.

Instead I was heading back to the hotel, and saw signs for Epcot. The parking lot for the MK/TTC had no one at the gates, so, would Epcot also be unmanned? Yep! I parked the car right up near the entrance at 11:30pm, 2.5 hours after the park closed. I walked up to the monorail station, not trying to be sneaky. I figured that if someone didn't want me there, they would let me know.

I made it up to the north side of the station, took some pictures. Continued up to the south side of the station, took some pictures. The gates were all open, I continued, took some pictures. Next, I saw the turnstiles; the actual entrance to the park, some of which were open. I could have just walked right in, but I saw a security guard, and waved him down. I walked over to him and chatted for a minute or two. I asked him if it was okay to have him escort me right inside the turnstiles to take some pictures of Spaceship Earth. He, surprisingly, let me. We both commented about how beautiful the thing is at night. I asked if i could go up to the little monument to take pics, he was cool with that. He really was very nice and awesome. Actually, all of the cast members I spoke with were nice and awesome... then again, I guess that's kinda their thing, right?

It was a very fun little mini trip. Only a few hours, but I feel like I packed in quite a bit. I would have loved to have spent more time exploring the resorts, or perhaps hitting Downtown Disney, but I was happy with what I did. :D

The week of October 20, 2011, I was in LA on a work trip, and I had Friday as an extra day in LA to do whatever. I ended up getting a free "parkhopper" pass from an awesome person in the Subsonic Radio community. I was going to possibly be meeting Adam, the founder of Subsonic Radio, as well as Dave, another Tron and film geek. Both of these fell through, so I ended up spending the entire day by myself in the park.

This was kinda odd. I'm not usually one for even going to the movies by myself, but I figured I couldn't pass up this opportunity. I don't really like LA all that much, and Disneyland, although fun, isn't enough to get me to visit LA on its own. I was in LA, Disneyland was there, It made sense to go.

I headed out of the hotel super early, being up in Santa Clarita, it was a good hour drive down to Anaheim. No problems at all with the LA freeways. Perhaps it was the early hour, or perhaps just luck, but no traffic jams. My practice driving on Long Island in August helped refresh me for driving on roads like this.

I got to the park at about 8:15, shortly after they opened. I figured that I'd hit popular rides first... well, popular rides that I wanted to go on. In retrospect, I should have hit Star Tours in the morning, since it was an hour wait later in the day... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I think I'll just do this as a list of all of the rides I went on, in the order that I went on them, with a little bit of thoughts and comments about each one.

In general, it was pretty interesting how there was a line between old-style rides and designs compared to newer ones. Generally the older dark rides had more "flappy panels", whereas the newer ones were much more three dimensional and animated. Older rides had very narrow queues, newer ones had very wide queue lines. And Disney LOVES for the dark rides to be VERY dark, and lots of blacklights.

For a lot of these, I probably rode the Walt Disney World counterparts in the mid 80s, but I don't really have memory of them, so I can't really compare the two, unfortunately. It was very nice to hear all of the bits of music and chatter that I know very well from Subsonic Radio, as I walked around the park, giving them proper context. It made me smile. Then again, who am I kidding, I was smiling the whole day. It's very hard to walk around that place and NOT smile.

I seriously have no idea how they fit so much into such a tiny space. The park is really quite small.. which you know if you walk from one end of Tomorroland, all the way over to Critter Country... but the layout and design of the park is spectacular in that it feels substantially larger.

I have about 310 pics up online from the trip as well.

Space Mountain

Ah. Space Mountain. What an amazing way to start the day. A very enjoyable, immersive, very DARK ride. Nice and smooth, amazing depth to the "stars" all around you. I loved hearing all of the bits of background audio and chatter that I know so well from "Star Tunnel", in context.

The theming of the queue area as well as the ride vehcicle path is spectacular. I love this ride. :D

The Enchanted Tiki Room

I love those little robotic birds. One thing you don't get from just listening to the audio track of this from a CD is that it is all around you. The voices all come from the expected places in the room, and the animatronics are rediculously fun. I need one of those McCaws... for Jasper. Really.

Jungle Cruise

A fun ride. Our tour guide, Randy, wasn't very enthusiastic. He was okay. Gave some different jokes than what I've heard on YouTube videos recently. Again, the immersive nature of the ride made you feel like you were nowhere near California.

Indiana Jones Adventure

It was suggested to me at one point that I ride this one. As I was walking around, near the Jungle Cruise, I saw the entrance... It had a short wait, so I figured I'd hop on. (the "oh, that's right here and only 10 minute wait" rule pretty much was that this was reason enough for me to go on a ride.) As a big indy fan, this ride was... awesome. The story told, and ride were both very fun and exciting. They even trick you at one point, showing you a mist wall, with stuff projected onto it, which you proceed to drive right through, then show you a rolling boulder, which you think may be the same thing, but it wasn't at all. Really excellent ride.

Dole Whip Stand

Yes, I need to put this in as its own attraction. After munching down a pineapple spear from the store outside of the Jungle Cruise, I noticed that the Dole Whip stand in front of the Tiki Room was open. I ended up getting just a regular Dole Whip soft serve. (not the float) I headed to the main circle of Disneyland, sat down on a bench and ate it. Yum!

Peter Pan

This is one of the old-style dark rides. You fly around through the entire Peter Pan story. Quite a lot of fun. Very well done. My first introduction to the "floppy panel and blacklight" rides of the day. Not many floppy panels, and not many flat artwork... there was quite a bit of animation to the three dimensional characters and such. Oh, and a lot of the wood in the queue area is obviously original, as it was worn down and smooth from 50 years of guests handling it. The ship person cars were cute.

Pinocchio

It's obvious, once you ride this, why the line had a MUCH shorter wait than Peter Pan. It is loaded with floppy panels, and a lack of a lot of three dimensional figures. Definitely not an E-Ticket ride. The end of the story told was pretty abrupt too. It felt like there was one room of the story that was missing or something.

It's A Small World

I really thought that riding this would get the song stuck in my head but oddly, it didn't. I think the song was stuck in my head more before I rode, than afterwards. Quite a long ride. The fact that it was a boat ride rather than a "car on track" ride was nice too. It was a pleasant change. I gotta say, I love the Sherman brothers. I got a little choked up in the last room of the ride.

Disneyland Railroad

I did a full round trip in the Railroad, just to sightsee. A nice ride. When you go through the tunnels, it really felt like the park was overflowing to outside of the main area, and they had to punch a hole through which the Railroad runs. It was a nice way to see the park.

Disneyland Monorail

Did a full round trip in this one too. It's the Monrail. Ya gotta ride it! I wish we had more public transport like this.

Innoventions

This felt like a little bit of EPCOT in Disneyland. I was right by it, so I figured I'd hop in. I didn't know what to expect. I ended up just walking around one trip through, and then getting lost in the House Of Tomorrow portion downstairs, and couldn't figure out how to get out. For all I know, I'm still stuck there.

Snow White's Scary Adventures

Another dark ride, a good one. I could see how this would be scary for small kids. I'd say that it's "spooky" or "creepy" for adults though. Lots of three dimensional stuff, a very dark ride, and of course, lots of blacklights.

Lunch at the French restaurant

I ended up walking over to the New Orleans area to get some lunch. I got the roast beef with mashed potatoes and veggies. Apparently this is French food? okay. Had a Mint Julep to drink with it. Expensive, but quite good. I was happy with it.

After that, I got a fastpass for the Haunted Mansion. If I were smart, I would have gotten the fastpass FIRST. Oh well. Live and learn.

The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh

While waiting the 2.5 hours for my fastpass entry time on the Haunted Mansion, I walked around that area and the critter country area for things to do or ride. I saw the Pooh ride, and hopped onto the line. They really should have called this "Pooh's Psychadelic Dreams" or something. It really didn't have much as far as the original Pooh stories, but instead followed him into a dream world with... surprise.. blacklight lit artwork. It was fun, but a little nonsequitor, and pretty weird. Not really at all what I was expecting from a Pooh ride. The honey pot cars were cute.

I had more time, so I browsed some shops in the New Orleans area for a while. I had enough time to browse, but not really enough time to head anywhere and go on any other rides. I spent some time watching a jazz band play by the waterfront, at which time I discovered the mess in my backpack caused by a banana that decided to explode. Silly banana.

Haunted Mansion

A nice ride. I'm glad I didn't spend an hour waiting for it though. It was a very nice dark ride. It felt like it was about half as long as it should have been though. They apparently themed oit to be completely "Nightmare Before Christmas" themed. Snow in the cemetary, Jack Skellington, the whole thing. The ride stopped twice while we were on it. I assume because people were having trouble deboarding on the moving platform at the end or something.

Tarzan's Treehouse

Another one of those "what's that? no wait? okay!" attractions. Not really much to this one, just walk around and see some things themed like the Tarzan movie. Cute, but don't go out of your way to see it, if you're not a Tarzan fan, or there's a line.

Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters

Headed back over to Tomorrowland, saw the insane line lenght at Star Tours and Space Mountain, and decided to do the 10 minute wait Buzz ride instead. Fun. Obviously a much newer ride than the others. The interactivity with it was pretty fun too. This one stopped twice while we were on it too. heh.

Star Tours

60 minute wait, while my cellphone died. I did find a couple of power outlets in the outer walls of the queue area though, so that was nice. Once you get inside, the inner queue area is nicely themed with droids doing all sorts of work, as well as a C3-P0 and Artoo making an appearance in one room.

C3P0 is your pilot for the Dolby 3D Movie ride. A very nice experience. The film was too short, and not enough story, in my opinion. For such a long wait (which is common for this ride) I'd hope that there was more to it. Very well done though.

Matterhorn Bobsleds

Earlier in the day, the Bobsleds had a 45-55 minute wait, and later, it had broken down, and was completely closed. I apparently caught it when it had just a 15-20 minute wait, so I hopped on. A bumpy ride, but very fun and very fast. A nice little rollercoaster!

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

It was starting to get dark, and the park was going to be closing in about an hour, so I figured I'd try to fit in more rides if I could. I saw Mr. Toad, over by the carousel, and hopped on the 15 minute queue. Another floppy panel dark ride, but one of the nicer ones. I liked that it was its own complete story, and that it was fast and exciting. I know that no one is actually reading this, but I'm writing it all anyway.

Jungle Cruise

It was dark, and I know that the Jungle Cruise skippers get a bit punchy towards the end of the day, so going on this again seemed like it might be a fun thing to do.

It was a better ride than the morning one, but I was sitting right on the entrance area, which means that when he turned on the lights, I was blinded by it. Still a fun ride, regardless, and I did enjoy the differnent jokes.

The Enchanted Tiki Room

It was now a few minutes before 7, as I left Jungle Cruise, and the cast member at the entrance to the Tiki Room waiting area was switching the sign to "Closed", but the doors to the room were open, and about to close. I asked her if I could hop in, and she let me. Yay!

This is a great way to start the day, and a great way to end the day in the park. I love those tiki birds!

Shops

The park was closing early due to a Mickey Halloween Party or somesuch, so I figured I'd hit a few stores on my way out. I noticed my cell phone's battery was dying, and after asking a few cast members, I found an active power outlet next to the photo store, and camped out there while I phoned home, and got more of a charge on it. After that, i hit a few stores on my way out of the park, and headed to Downtown Disney, just to check it out.

Downtown Disney

Essentially an open-air shopping mall with live performers. A way to give Disney your money without paying for a ticket too. I walked around, found a Jamba Juice and checked out the Lego store.

I should note that I didn't buy any merchandise at all. I think I was just too overwhelmed with all of the selection, that I just didn't know what to get. Also, for Jasper, there's not much selection for a 3T boy. There's infant stuff, and older-boy stuff, and LOTS of "Cars" stuff, but you try finding a Tigger 3T shirt... You won't. It doesn't exist there. Bigger boys and lots of girls stuff... that's about it.

I snagged a Razzmatazz at the Jamba Juice and headed to DCA.

Soarin' Over California

I exercized my "Single Rider" ability on Soarin, and skipped ahead of the 55 minute long line, and got led down some empty queue lines and essentially got on the next showing of the film. Wow. That's some ride. The wraparound aspect of the screen, with the platform moving, and wind effects really pulls you in. Worth the 50 minute wait, if you need to do so.

elecTRONica

The elecTRONica street party was pretty neat. It felt a bit disjointed and forced, but not bad. The recognizer deterimines your fate as you walk in to the area. I got "Rectify". So, there's that. I didn't get a drink, since I knew i was on an empty stomach, and didn't really want to get one anyway.

Tron Legacy 3D Film Exclusive in the Muppet Theatre

This was actually a pretty neat, unexpected surprise. It was in the muppet theatre, which was kinda neat to see. It was essentially the beginning of the first trailer, up until the point when Flynn enters the computer world, when it is expanded out a bit more. Probably about 10-15 minutes total. Here's the thing though. The theatre had huge blowers and lights in the ceiling that did extra effects while the film was playing. When flying in the Recognizer, there was a gust of wind to help pull you in to the film. Also, when orange or white-blue lights filled the screen, the lights in the theatre added to it. Likewise with lightning; flashes of white light in the theatre. I'd love to see the entire fiim like this. It really added to the immersion.

Flynn's Arcade

I walked around and found Flynn's Arcade, and played a few games of "Space Paranoids". After a few moments, I got the hang of playing it with the joystick and trackball. Odd feel to the game. It definitely feels like what it is... created for the TRON ARG a couple years back, not really meant to be a full arcade game experience. The gameplay isn't really balanced well for what it claims to be. ;)

I didn't get to play TRON itself, since there was a line, and someone at the front who really knew how to play was playing a 2P game with his kid. I played a few other games, and actually got pretty good at Space Duel.

I still do enjoy Tron Legacy, but like many fans, there are a few aspects of it that I feel are missed opportunities.

The "Young Flynn" CGI looks good, but there's something off about it. It's not quite as deep in the uncanny valley, but it's approaching it. Perhaps it's that some of the face looks a bit numb, or is missing some muscle nuance or something, I don't know. The opportunity missed here is that this is 100% fine for CLU, but not for Kevin. That could have been one way to help differentiate the two, and to add an even deeper feeling of dread about CLU. In fact, the thing to do is to make de-aged Kevin Flynn look better, and to make CLU look worse; deeper into the uncanny valley.

This one, I admit is a stylistic difference, but since no frames of this film didn't get processed through a computer, why not take it a step further, and apply a closer look to the original film to this one. It wouldn't have taken too much extra work, especially with current computers and software. Make the circuit glows a bit more saturated, and let them bleed/overglow a bit more. On top of that, take cues from the original film/production techniques, and for all skin and hair tones, desaturate the camera negative, add in realistic film grain, then colorize/tint these areas similarly to the original film.

I think that these two could have visually pulled the viewer in a little more, and linked back to the first film a little better.

Tags: tron

The worst part of "Romancing The Stone" - Eddie Grant's song "Romancing The Stone"

The best part of "Jewel Of The Nile" - Billy Ocean's song "Get In To My Car"

I'm now running Lion on my MacBook Pro (Late 2008 15" Unibody, Core 2 Duo).

Previous upgrades I've done:

• replaced 250 gig disk with a 500 gig disk
• upgraded from 2 gig RAM to 4 gig
• removed the optical drive, replaced it with an OptiBay clone from ebay
• Moved the 500 gig disk into that SATA bay
• Switched to an 80 gig OCZ Vertex 2 SSD

I had installed 10.6 Snow Leopard onto the SSD, and eventually linked to some stuff over on the spinny disk. Doing that gave me a good idea of what worked and what didn't, so that I could "get it right" this time. I also had a huge list of stuff I installed at that point, which I pretty much ignored this time around.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the SSD to an extra 80 gig USB disk I had lying around. I then copied things I felt were important to immediately have (source tree, dotfiles, some pdf books and docs) to the 500 gig disk

I did the common hack to make a bootable USB drive that has the Lion install disk on it, rebooted the Mac, booted from the installer, wiped the SSD, and installed clean! It was the fastest OS X install I've ever done. Very snappy.

Unlike other OS X installs I've done, I'm doing a very minimal amount of extra app installs and hacks and tweaks and such. I'm going to try to run with it as much "out of the box" as possible... including the new scrolling.

Rather than the huge list of stuff i've installed to other OS X installs in the past, this time, I've so far installed the following:

• Dotfiles from the previous system (.bash, .ssh, etc)
• ~/sw (some compiled binaries and libraries, nothing major)
• iLife apps: iMovie, iPhoto
• Pixelmator (non-app store)
• OmniGraffle Pro (non-app store)
• Xcode 4.1 (app store)
• iTunes Beta (developer download)
• iPhoto and iTunes set to use their libraries on the hard disk
• Handbrake, and Handbrake CLI
• VLC player (to support Handbrake)
• Image Magick (binary installer from their site)
• ~/src source tree

That's about it so far. I don't think I really need anything further to get work done here. (Java and flash installed also)

For example, I'm not bothering with MacPorts this time, nor wget, links, etc, which i can either use curl (already installed) or over on our home server. In the past I've also used it for installing Subversion and Git, but those are included through developer tools now.

I don't want to give a review of Lion yet, since I haven't used it enough to get past any muscle memory from previous systems.

I'm a neophyte with Lua, so I need a little guidance on this one.

I have essentially some ASM code. It's the scripting language used on DVDs. It has a few registers that you can use (numbered GPRM0-GPRM7) and a few for read-only reference to determine capabilities of the DVD player. (SPRM0-SPRMx)

To interact with these, there's a scripting language, well, really it's an ASM variant. It looks like this:

1 ran GPRM0, 5  -- load a random number from 1..5 into GPRM0
2 goto 1 if ( GPRM0 = GPRM1 ) -- if it's the same as GPRM1, get another
3 mov GPRM1, GPRM0  -- copy GPRM0 into GPRM1
4 jump OtherTitle1 if ( GPRM0 = 1 )
5 jump OtherTitle2 if ( GPRM0 = 2 )
6 jump OtherTitle3 if ( GPRM0 = 3 )
7 jump OtherTitle4 if ( GPRM0 = 4 )
8 jump OtherTitle5

This is a simple script to pick a random title, and play it. "jump" leaves this script title, and plays the selected title. The GPRM register values persist from title to title, until the disc is ejected from the player.

(Any opcode can have an if() associated with it, which is kinda neat.)

At the end of those titles (as well as the "first run" -- the thing that gets called when you insert the dvd into the player), it does a jump to this script.

At that time, the script gets run, and it picks a different title to play randomly, and this continues forever.

So, I'm trying to convert this to Lua code, preferrably without any human intervention, automaticaly, but I'm hitting a snag here. In order to get the "jump" to work, I need to figure out a way to do it without using 'goto's, since Lua (thankfully?) doesn't have them.

The above code, in Lua, as far as I can tell would be something like this:

function newRandomTitle()
-- lines 1,2 above
while GPRM0 = GPRM1 do
    GPRM0 = dd_Ran( 5 )   -- dd_ran is custom code to simulate dvd functionality
end

-- line 3 above
GPRM1 = GPRM0   

-- lines 4-8
-- this doesn't work
if GPRM0 = 1 then
    dd_jump( "otherTitle1" )
    return
end

-- this probably would?
if GPRM0 = 2 then return dd_jump( "OtherTitle2" )
-- ...
end

The issue is that it's difficult to convert a goto to that loop without intervention, I would think. And I also can't figure out how to do a return without a value, to exit the function. dd_jump() sets the next title to be run. (there is c code that wraps around this that calls these scripts when needed.)

Any of you Lua experts (or other people ;) ) have suggestions or thoughts?

I know Inception came out about 5 months ago, but I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently.

First off, I need to say that I really enjoy the film greatly. I seem to enjoy many films about dreams... Dreamscape, Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer, Waking Life, Vanilla Sky, Total Recall (heh.) And to be honest, the "creating reality while you're in it" aspect totally fascinates me. Probably one of the reasons I enjoy Minecraft so much, but I digress.

I am sad to say that there are a few aspects to the rules in the film that I don't quite understand or agree with.

1 - Time Compression

Okay, so people go to sleep and join up in the dream world. And since the unconscious brain works faster, there's a 20x time compression. Five minutes in reality end up being 1 hour in the dream world. I understand this, and we're all good here. My problem is that when they do the dream-within-a-dream that things fall apart for me. If they're all already in a dream world then they're all already working at this 20x speedup provided by their real brain's speedup. If they go another level deeper, their dream world is still limited by their physical brains, so there can't be another 20x speedup. So, 1 hour in the dream world will be 1 hour in the "next level", as I see it. But it does make for a great mechanism for the film.

2 - Nested Dreaming

There's no reason why within a dream, you would need the equipment to go another level deeper. they're already in a dream world... all you need is for the architect to send everyone into the next level. Technology has no meaning inside the dream world. Perhaps they use the machine as a kind of familair mechanism to get another level in... Even though they don't actually need it, they use it as a kind of ladder to help them get where they need to go. Okay. nevermind this one. I figured it out. heh.

3 - Zero g in subsequent levels

When the van is shooting off the bridge, everyone inside is in freefall. (I'll overlook the fact that this is actually within a dream, so body physiology shouldn't even be a factor here) This means that within their dream, they are floating in space, and in the hotel, they certainly are. My problem from here is that the dreamer in this level is in zero-g, just like their bodies are one level up in the van... which means that all of them should be floating above the ground in their dream one level down as well. This means that their snowy trip to the hospital should also be in zero-g. Sound follows down the dream levels, so gravity should as well, especially considering that the inner ear functions were not inhibited...

I think the sign of a great film is one where you see flaws, or have problems with aspects of it, but still enjoy watching it. This is certainly one of these kinds of films.

Some thoughts about "TRON: Legacy" -- not the details of the film itself, but about the story and the universe.

I think that one of the most intriguing things to me about the TRON universe is that each computer develops and evolves on its own.

TRON: Legacy spoilers ahead.

First of all, the computer world of T:L seems to follow a few rules.

Programs (CLU specifically) can reprogram/repurpose exisiting programs Programms cannot create new programs from scratch. Only users can do this.

This means, that once Flynn was captured, the computer world essentially finished evoloving, and simply went on doing everything the way it could. Many programs were appropriated by CLU, as seen as his army, and Rinzler, but he theoretically didn't do anything as far as changing the "landscape" since he doesn't seem to have control of that. Flynn's note to Sam about "you should have seen this place" when they're on the Solar Sailer implies that the place used to be different. Presumably, CLU helped tweak it to be darker, or grittier, or something. He seems to only be able to mildly affect his environment, or perhaps he just didn't want to.

ISOs seem to follow different rules, since they came into being presumably as a side effect of his work in the system, presumably since he was working on the system from the inside, at such an accelerated rate compared to programming it from the "real world".

Anyway, what really intrigues me is that the entire movie takes place within one minicomputer. Possibly in a universe "ported" from the mainframe system in the first film, but probably an all-new system that Flynn had more control over. This entire universe evolved at Flynn's hands over the course of a year or so.

This really means that there are unlimited possibilities for future excursions into the computer world. Sam could develop his own world, or let one develop on its own. Perhaps Quorra's involvement in future computer excursions could help recreate the necessary conditions for the formation of new ISOs, or perhaps they'll just re-evolve on their own the next time around. It's unknown what caused the ISOs to form, and if they'll re-form again.

Being that computers are substantially faster and more capacious than they were in 1989 (although we can probably assume that the system Flynn was trapped in was created in 1988, perhaps earlier -- some timelines I've seen imply that it could have started around 1983-1985) time inside the computer will be substantially faster than in the real world, with possibility for larger spaces to explore within. "minutes in the real world are hours in here" could turn into "seconds in the real world are days in here". Imagine the possibilities with that!

And for all we know, Kevin could have been backed up in the fingerprint of the system backup that Sam performs at the end of the film. Perhaps it is possible to restore him in the future from that backup.

There is one thing I haven't wrapped my head around yet though -- the identity disks. How do they translate into the real world? (Quorra's clothing as well, hrm!) Quorra's disk is still in there, since she traded with Flynn for his disc. When she and Sam returned at the end of the film, did the disks stay inside? they couldn't have brought them out with them, and even if they did; there'd be no way to 'read' them.

It feels to me that the content of Quorra's disk or Flynn's disk is the key to the formation of the ISOs, or Flynn's actions in the computer that is the key. I guess we'll find out with Tron 3, and/or future stories.

"People translated as data."

We recently switched to HD in our house, and wanted to keep our Dish Network service. This meant that we had to drop our two TiVos, and switch to the Dish Network DVR instead.

The recevier is kind of neat. It's one box, but it has two Dish tuners in it, and hooks up to two displays. Locally, it uses HDMI for audio and video of an HDTV signal at 1080i. The remote is a coax (using the same coax cable that comes in, clever) SDTV signal that goes off to the second TV. It's pretty clever how they worked it. To transition from two Dish receivers in one house to this new method, they put a small distribution box in the basement, inline wherethe old grounding block was, remove the second tuner box from the second tv, and plug the cable directly in, and plug the primary box in, as expected. The second tv uses a UHF remote, while the primary uses IR. And it all just works. Both TVs can watch recorded programs, both can control the menu system etc.

Anyway... about the DVR itself...

While most of our complaints with it are based on muscle memory (the fast forward working differently, etc). There are a few minor complaints, and one really, really poor interface design decision.

The minor complaints are things like when fast forwarding on the tivo, and you hit 'play', it takes into account your reaction time, and instead of starting to play exactly where you pressed it, it scootches back about 10 seconds. So when you feel like you pressed the button, or wanted to press the button, that's where it starts playing back from. It's pretty smart.

Also, the lack of suggestions is disappointing. I'm also still trying to figure out things like "record everything with Jackie Chan".
It might be in there, but i haven't looked too deeply into it.

But the major issue...

It's a really annoying design decision... Each display is directly connected to one of the two identical tuners... logically anyway. When you tell it to record something, you pick which tv to record it on. You also cannot change the channel on a TV when you're recording something on the tuner associated with that TV... even if the other TV is "off".

This is stupid. Let me explain the way it should work, and is capable of operating... Think of the tuners as a pool of two sources. Each TV should be capable of viewing something from either tuner. Each TV should be capable of playing back video. You turn on a TV, select "live tv". If a tuner is available, switch to it, and use it. If a tuner is not available, tell the user that there are two programs recording currently, and that's not possible. That's pretty much it. Either display can play back recorded content (or content currently being recorded) as it can now.

This will simplify use for the users. You don't have to specify which tuner you're recording something on, you just tell it to record a program. You don't have to worry about not being able to watch live TV when it's recording something just because of where you're sitting. It takes out complexity, and makes it easier to use.

As a quick sidenote, I should say that its notion of turning one of the two displays "off" is rediculous as well. It's the equivalent of turning off your cable box, which is all fine, except that of course, the DVR must remain on so that it can record your programs... and that it still displays stuff (hints and tips for using the Tuner/DVR/interface) when it's "off" anyway. The "power off" option is a joke.

I just got back from seeing Tron Legacy for my third viewing. Like the first time I saw it, it was again in the IMAX 3D theatre. This time, I tried to pay attention to a few things outside of the film, as it were.

As an aside; I read earlier today that there was a highly modified "Wilhelm Scream" in the film. Damned if I could find it though. I guess that's a good testament to the sound design in the film; they were so cautious with making everything fit its proper place, that even a Wilhelm is appropriately mangled.

The previous viewing was at Pittsford Plaza 9, where it was a standard Real-D 3D digital projection. As far as I could tell, it was one projector, with circular polarization. That means that you could tilt your head, and you didn't get any ghosting.

The IMAX 3D had two projectors going, which is probably why it seemed a bit brighter, and you could see the polarizers in front of the projection lens (I believe. I'm not positive on that.) It uses linear polarization, so if your head was slightly askew, you saw ghosts. It looked good, but there were a few times where I was pulled out of the film because I was seeing double... oddly only in my right eye.

The IMAX version of the film also was multiple aspect ratios. The Real-D version we saw was 2.35:1, AKA "really wide screen". ;) The IMAX version seemed to bounce back and forth between a few ratios. IMDB claims it to be 1.44:1, which is the full-screen ratio. I saw a little bit of letterboxing at the top and bottom. The film also, for non-immersive shots, seemed to be around 16:9 or 1.85:1. I only noticed it because I was looking for it.

It makes for an interesting experience. You get into the narrative of the film, at the 16:9 ratio, then you hit an establishing shot, or a more visual or emotional shot, and it bounces out to the 1.44:1.
It's not visually obvious, since you're sucked into the film, but you just feel as though you're pulled in to the film deeper. It's a nice effect.

The film didn't do this next one, but a preview for an IMAX 3D film about monkeys, "Born To Be Wild" did something interesting with its 3D... Most of the time, you have the virtual 3D volume to be set up such that the front of it is either at the screen, or a little bit in front of the screen. The main subject is usually "at the screen". You can see this if you remove your 3D glasses, and look. If you see something in the shot that has no ghosting to the left or right of it, it will appear to the viewer to be right at the screen. As the two images diverge or converge past this point, you get depth in front of or behind the screen.

Most of the 3D films I've seen keep the action at the screen, or behind it. This is the easiest to deal with, in my experience, because if things appear to be too close, you can have some pretty bad headache/eyeache issues.

This preview however, had shots composed where there was quite a bit between the screen and the viewer. It was surprising to see, since it's something that's quite easy to get wrong, but it worked. really well. I think that preview, singlehandedly proves that the technicians and stereo cinematographers that are used for these kinds of films are simply amazing, and probably highly underappreciated. Cheers!