And on the morning of the 27th day

I do believe I pissed off some suprnatural entity, hopefully not the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because I'm having just the most annoying experience getting the Rails book in my grubby chubby hands. First it was an eBay bookseller pulling a fast one--which eBay, to their discredit, seems uninterested in correcting--and now the good ol' Post Office forwarded the Amazon shipment containing my second attempt (and a book for the Sweet One too!) to the San Francisco facility.

At least that's the semi-coherent explanation given by the Mountain View carrier annex supervisor this morning. Neither he, the carrier he said sent the package to SF nor their database can tell me why or offer a solution other than patience and hope for the best. Being in the customer service game myself I don't have sympathy for them though I have learned to skip the screaming, threatening, and/or cursing as useless.

Everyone's dealt with the USPS at one time and we all know that no one there ever takes responsibility in a meaningful way. They have little in the way of resources despite the numerous recent increases in price and with email and UPS/FedEx eating away at the volume that's not going to change. Wish Amazon had been upfront that shipment was with a DHL/USPS joint venture, something not at all conveyed in the phrase "via Airborne Home."

Doesn't change the fact that I'll have missed another weekend for getting elbow-deep in Rails.

1999 again? No

A bunch of people are starting to debate whether the recent string of acquisitions are harbingers of a new bubble in tech. Despite the whole conversation on what is Web 2.0 being little more than a red herring, most of the comments I'm seeing appear to be missing a key difference from the last go round: IPOs. Other than Google, which is an outlier if not a special case, very few tech companies (outside of China) are able to go public and those which do are seeing minimal first day price jumps.

What's happening lately, which I guess dates to Yahoo acquiring Ludicorp (Flickr), is that enough of the companies formed in the last decade have survived and prospered. They've grown large enough to find that to continue growth at sufficient levels, and to overcome a certain level of bureaucratic inertia, products must sometimes be acquired rather than built internally.

Why this would be a surprise to anyone is puzzling to me because it's happened over and over again in technology and elsewhere. If Yahoo had paid $250 million for Ludicorp or Winer got $25 million for weblogs.com I'd be worried, deals at those bloated valuations would give real evidence that no one learned the lessons from the ridiculous paper deals of 2000.

But the price tags weren't pie in the sky--okay, Skype, not sure about that one but they do have real revenue and seemingly committed user base plus provided a life-changing event for eBay--and as such are more reminiscent of Microsoft's deals to buy the companies which created FoxPro and PowerPoint, back in the day. All the deals fit well with the acquirer's business strategy.

Perhaps the reason some people are looking at the activity as a negative indicator because of the success of our tools, they give a sense of interconnection and immediacy that was never possible before. We all "know" Dave Winer, Jason Calcanis and Stewart Butterfield and with RSS feeds, tech.memeorandum and the like it's like we're all in the same neighborhood, trading gossip the way our grandparents did about the family two doors down.

In fact, Web 2.0 reminds me of the old saw about Microsoft's release pattern: 1.0 just to get in the market, 2.0 to get the feature set and 3.0 to fix the bugs and make it usable for the mass market. So no, it's not 1999 again. Call me when Zimbra does their IPO and the stock triple on opening day.

Letter: Google's Moffett Deal

The major problem I have with the Google/NASA deal (Is Google's NASA campus a search for a tax break?, 10/2/5) is that Google is not just building office space on federal land but also housing (up to 2,000 units) and retail space. That local taxes won't be paid on the office space is not great but within the realm of reasonable.

But guess what? There won't be any taxes paid on the homes and stores either. Most Google employees are younger, many in the age range when having kids is common, and those children will be going to local schools while this deal will avoid paying into the school district to fund the increased enrollment. Google does pay local taxes now--the Googleplex is in Mountain View--and one can assume that some revenue currently going to city coffers from housing and stores, which would otherwise be located on ratable land, would evaporate with this deal as well. Altogether a significant loss to the city not easily made up by having more jobs in the region--I don't see the restaurants and clubs on Castro St. doing quite that well.

Even given these negatives I believe that Google and NASA should make the deal. However, if the company executives want to live up to "Do No Evil" then they should alter the terms to account for the cost the development will incur. Otherwise this will be just one more in the recent skein showing Google's corporate morality is now second banana to a misguided self-interest.

LOL::WCBO

World Chess Boxing Organization Yes, your eyes are working properly! This is the governing body for the new sport that blends chess and boxing, alternating between them for 11 rounds. The same two guys, not a brain for the chess portion and another for the fisticuffs. I remain convinced that boxing is a throwback which does little good in our culture and is the type of entertainment that makes me cringe. But at least I got a big laugh from finding out about this.

Last night's movie: No Direction Home

PBS series American Masters broadcast the Bob Dylan documentary last week but I finally got to watch the second part last night. Zimmy is a musician who's always been in the background for most people my age and younger, making new music occasionally, sending out some strange messages at times, but this film goes back to his origins and the days when he was very much in the spotlight's glare.

Covering his life only until a horrific motorcycle accident in 1966, No Direction Home is a deeply flawed production though it offers a view of Dylan that's informative and enlightening. PBS included after the second half a brief interview with Martin Scorsese (by the nearly useless Charlie Rose) during which the acclaimed director explained that all the interview segments we'd seen of Dylan were conducted not by Scorsese or a journalist but by one of Dylan's associates. This explained the complete lack of any really probing questions.

In fact, if I understood correctly, all of the material in the movie was assembled prior to Scorsese's involvement and his major contribution was to "find the narrative" and oversee an editor piecing together the footage. For just this part, I'd say he did a good job and overall I feel, other than a few slow spots in the second hour, the documentary is worth watching for any fan of American culture. I know that the man has never been interested in answering those questions, not seeing them as interesting or perhaps even possible, but I feel the lack of real insight from Dylan himself was a missed opportunity.

One of the strong points is that though interviews with contemporaries (Liam Clancy and Pete Seeger particularly), performance footage and some surviving radio interviews and press conferences we get a very good understanding of Dylan's early development and his effect on the folk music scene. Most of the film, after all, takes place before he became a pop star; that really didn't happen until about 1965, after his "shocking" electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival. 40 years on, there's still controversy about the crowd's reaction but the footage used shows that they did boo. In fact footage from the subsequent tour of Britain shows that audiences there were also quite upset with the change.

To some extent, after watching, I can understand it. Up until these concerts the show was Bob Dylan onstage with his guitar, harmoica and voice. Period. Hearing, for example, his original versions of "Blowing in the Wind" and "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" are revelations. No band behind him, I can see the simple power of his poetry; a lot of things about Bruce Springsteen are more understandable now.

No Direction Home is a very good film. I don't think you need to be a big fan of his music to enjoy it. Scorsese could've used his scalpel a little better and reduced the run time by 20-30 minutes, and certainly the circumstances of the Dylan interviews should have been made clear. Nonetheless, worth watching.

recommended

Today's movie: Serenity

Fox (the TV network) has a habit of putting on very cool shows and cancelling them just as I get hooked; Firefly, John Doe, Greg the Bunny are three examples that come to mind. Just who the heck was John Doe going to turn out to be anyway?! I try and resist but it's like any other addiction. So when I first read that Universal had picked up the rights to Firefly and was giving Joss Whedon pretty free reign to make a big screen version, well, you know what happened.

Fortunately for me, Serenity delivers. With one significant exception, which I prefer not to detail so as to not spoil things for you, the movie is packed with the smarts and humor of the television show and adds the visual impact only possible on the much larger canvas. Box Office Mojo and IMDB list the production budget at a mere $40 million and if that's accurate then the crew stretched every penny of it. The imagery is stylish, taking cues from the series but not being limited by it, though there's much less of the Old West flavor.

One of the challenges Whedon had was to make a movie that didn't expect familiarity with the series but still rewarded it. One of the trickier aspects of this was conveying the basics of the 'Verse, the fictional future's backstory, and the problem with River Tamme (that forms the core of the movie) without getting bogged down in them and the device used was brilliant because the opening scene took care of both while opening the plot at the same time.

I was also glad to find out that Whedon didn't feel trapped by the need to keep absolute continuity with the series, something that absolutely became a heavy stone for the Star Trek franchise. Two quick examples where Serenity breaks it: Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) is not a crewmember but rather a good friend and provider of refuge for the ship after deals are done and, well, the movie starts with River and Simon's rescue of her with help (presumably) from the Serenity crew while in the series the two come aboard as passengers, already escaped from and wanted by the Alliance.

Nathan Fillion really does well playing the leader of our little band, definitely a post-modern future Robin Hood. His Captain Reynolds is good with a gun but not much more than a club boxer with his fists and he's kept in character by not doing any wire-assisted martial arts. Adam Baldwin's Jayne gets a smattering more smarts but remains most concerned with himself and his pocketbook. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who I've enjoyed in quite a few movies and one or two British import TV shows, rides his accent and an unwordly serene temperament (which I wonder if Whedon had him do intentionally) to provide an antagonist, a front for The Man since no time's wasted on showing him getting instructions. Summer Glaus is called on as River for a much wider range than any other character, from the disconnected, nearly mad gibberish to world-class, wire-heavy ninja sword and battle ballet and does stuning work.

As mentioned, there's one event right before the final confrontation that I truly question. When you see the movie you'll recognize it and I hope you'll agree that it does nothing for plot development--included to provide a final motivational push (I suppose), it just seem unnecessary and pointlessly deprives Whedon of tools for the sequels that are sure to come. Not a huge big bad, just the least good aspect of the movie.

definitely recommended

Correction: I received an email a few hours after posting this review from Stephanie (the only name she left) explaining that I misunderstood a few parts of Serenity. To set the record straight I'll quote her mail in its entirety:

"A little off there. You must have missed the three comics that were recently released as official continuity for the series. Shepherd Book left the boat, so in the film it isn't that he was never crew, but that he no longer was at that point. This isn't a break or adjustment for the movie. Same with Inara, she'd also left. The Operative is also introduced in the comics. Simon's River retrieval didn't happen with help from the Serenity crew in the movie either. Nothing changed from the series. I'm not sure why you perceived that it was otherwise? Could you clarify that for me? That retrieval at the beginning was a flashback, that was not in time with the film. While we as the audience were able to watch parts of their escape for our own benefit, it's clear that is but a flashback. In fact, a record of it, shown clearly when the Operative pauses the sequence. We were just watching what he was watching. -S"

Fair enough. As I pointed out to her, though, we watched every episode as SciFi recently rebroadcast the Firefly episodes and I can't recall a single mention of the comic books. That the opening was a flashback was apparently understood by my wife and does make sense in retrospective. Doesn't change my opinion about the movie, I don't give all that many definitely recommendeds.