Sherlock

Preface the forthcoming mind leak with the fact that I know nothing about Sherlock Holmes except the compulsory: he's a slick detective and he has a friend named Watson. The only real Sherlock Holmes product I've ever consumed are episodes of The Next Generation and the aptly titled RDJ vehicle, Sherlock Holmes. So why was I so incredibly pumped for the modern BBC interpretation?

I could feel the raw wave of awesomeness permeating through the Internet like the creeping intensity of the Inception foghorn. Taken me subconsciously, I actively sought out information on Sherlock and, the horror, watched a trailer for the show. This is an absolute first. In a day where I rarely view commercials and the only time I watch a new show is well after it's been proven - i.e. signed for a second season or reached critical mass - watching a trailer for a television show was a foreign concept for me. And the trailer rocked.

But I was scared that because it was the BBC, I would never be able to see this show. Thank you Internet! I watched the trailer and was pleasantly surprised to see the show starting in just a few days. The reverberation must have been strong, as this show exploded onto scene, and I downed it like a litre of chocolate milk.

The best part of the show is the quality, of course, of everything. Of most note is the length of each episode: an hour and a half. During this time we get more intimate with the characters; we get a more well-paced story; we get hooked, and I don't let go. It's sad to say, but this is a show that I never found myself reaching for the second screen. If you have an iOS device, you know exactly what I mean. And it's sad because this happens so frequently with other shows, and it's great because it did not happen with this show. At a proper length, the show becomes the event Lost used to be. I sit down, excited, with a bowl of snacks and a tall glass of sugar by my side. I get slightly giddy, and saddened (because it's no longer with us) how great Lost would have been had it clocked in at least an hour every episode; not forty four minutes, but a true hour or more.

The modern aspect of this adaptation is played out very nicely: even in today's techno-savvy world, there are still clues to be found and deducted upon (inducted?) without the use of lasers and image enhancement. Watching Holmes hop, skip, and jump to conclusions with only five minutes spent with a dead body is an amazing spectacle. And when it all gets explained you can help but feel that oomph as you ask yourself why everybody misses these obvious clues when they are right under their noses. But, that's the magic of the character.

Text messages and cell phones are used in abundance in the show, and when somebody does receive one, or a phone call, the message spills to life on the screen in an organic way, just as the Panic Room titles showed us it's OK to have on screen text stay in the fourth wall. Holmes uses the Internet on his phone all the time: while he may be incredibly brilliant, he's a master at the Internet search, proving that relevant the web is when you know how to use it.

The series is only three episodes long, but is still quite a bit of show to take in. It is definitely worth your time.

Red Wii Attack

Oh my, what have I done? With no intention of buying this limited edition printing of the Wii, I was overwhelmed with the urge once I saw it in stores. It was easy to dismiss it until you see it in person, which is very similar to how the Xbox 360 was purchased way back when.

The problem, of course was that I have a Wii, have had it for quite some time, and never really used it to the degree that any other gaming system has gotten. The motion control stuff is just lost on me; it's more of an annoyance than anything else. But, there are a growing collection of games that deserve some attention for their more "serious" approach; they at least minimize the motion control.

So this red edition comes out, bundled with New Super Mario Bros and the new Wii remote with the Motion Plus built in. Pretty snazzy, as I estimate this in my head as at least a hundred dollar value. Somehow, I get it in my mind that if I sell my current system for a decent chunk, buying the new will be equivalent to the purchase of the game and controller. Plus, it's red. I always regretted a little bit not getting the red 360. So this kind of makes up for it.

Picked up the new Wii tonight, wiped out my old system (and a real shame they make it so difficult to transfer downloaded games to a new system) and booted up the new. I even played the new Mario game for a few minutes and had fun doing it. So now I have this colourful system in my collection, and can't help but think this is all about gaming. It's fun, it's not hiding; the Wii is what it is. Just like the goofy looking Gamecube didn't fool around with extraneous features, the Wii is at it's core a game playing machine, and now it looks the part.

The National - Boxer

This post could be epic or sad; it may end in failure. I have been in love with this album for a very long time now, ever since I first listened to it. Dave introduced me to The National with the track Secret Meeting off their Alligator album. Something about it stuck with me, clicked instantly, to the point of seeking out all their other music. Boxer was released in 2007 and there is a chance I've listened to it hundreds of times; their sound is epic and sweeping. Matt's vocals are hypnotic; paired with the rest of the band, the intricate songs are addictions that never seem to get old. After all these years I love nothing more than to immerse myself in Boxer.

Fake Empire
This track starts off with a wicked piano; I read once that the referenced fake empire could be referring to the USA and it's citizens. People of the country being half-awake to what's going on around them and their role in the world; being told they live in the greatest empire in history but in reality, it's a delicate, verging on unstable land that they must "tiptoe through cities with glass slippers on." Regardless, the percussion and brass wake you up halfway through, getting you pumped for the rest of the album.

Mistaken for Strangers
This song could be described as brooding, perhaps with a somewhat monotone voice as its being pushed along with heavy drums. I just love the idea of being "mistaken for strangers by your own friends," a testament to people's blindness and self-absorption, perhaps. It becomes even more relevant when you love the movie American Psycho so much.

Brainy
Again, with a strong intro this song is almost stalkerish, or describing the intense feeling of falling in love without being allowed to. At least, it reminds me of something to that effect.The hopeful lyrics "you might need me more than you think you will" resonates with me as some kind of forbidden, unknown desire for a girl: I love her but she does not know, and if she does know my desire, she will not recognize it or any kind of desire back towards me.

Squalor Victoria
Again, it may be my own problem but reminds me of a girl. Specifically this song does as I can remember driving, thinking and being worried. "Out of my league, I have birds in my sleeves and I wanna rush in with the fools." The song ends with definitively, something that I can't attest to.

Green Gloves
A slower, more relaxed but sweeping song that resonates with the verses "get inside their heads, love their loves." This song always turns me introspective; the slow moving instruments attaching onto into my brain, moving it forward. As if, putting on my own green gloves, will give me just the boost I need.

Slow Show
This song comes alive to me with the lyric "you know I dreamed about you, for twenty-nine years before I saw you" and "I missed you for twenty-nine years." Truly epic. The instruments at this part become basic, effective and pronounced, with a beautiful piano and drum line. Twenty-nine years, because I am twenty-nine years old, and want to meet the love of my life; it's clear to me what the song is saying as it slowly descends out. This is definitely one of my favourite tracks as it feels deep, layered and personal.

Apartment Story
Just as the previous song ended slowly, this one hits you with sound and a hopefulness, as well as a story of getting older. This reminds me of approaching adulthood; becoming complacent, becoming tired more quickly but also becoming more aware. We have love to give and we are more capable of providing it now than we were when we were younger.

Start a War
This is the part of the album, where if I'm listening late at night and lying down, I will slowly drift to sleep. This song feels comfortable, with a slow build-up that feels like it's getting stronger but never quite jars you awake again. Nobody wants to start a war; stay and confront your battles.

Guest Room
If the last song put me to sleep this one brings me back to life with strong drums. Another song that reminds me of growing up; just as they throw you into prison, you can't do what you did when you were younger without consequences now. Talking about being in the guest room so often, and acting like deviants reminds me of being out of place with friends; we're not settling down. We'll always be holding on; we know change must be made but really, why would I want to?

Racing Like a Pro
Womanly hands? Shooting up the ladder? More coming of age; this album and the years I've been listening to it matches the themes perfectly as I enter into a career, become overwhelmed and my mind races to keep up. I was once glowing too but it feels too long ago. Dumbstruck is the key word here as this song can move me into a sadness that is both comfortable and scary.

Ada
This one is very catchy and gets my feet or head bopping along. The song sounds happier than it would seem; while I don't necessarily relate to this tune in particular I can feel the emotion running through it. It's very beautiful.

Gospel
The album ends perfectly with vocals being front and centre, with simple, supporting instrumentals. I feel as though everything comes together here.

It's weird to think that I'll be listening to this album thirty years from now, and loving it just as much as I do now. Perhaps that won't happen; I listen to Boxer and am reminded of my dream girl, a love lost and of dealing with growing up, letting go of the past and becoming more aware of who I am. It seems crazy, but this album is very emotional; I am attached to it now. It will remind me of long drives on icy roads, and of recovering from bad days, amongst other things.

Listening to it for the purpose of writing this article has not been the same as how I typically listen: eyes closed, volume slightly increased a total immersion in the melody. I can hear each instrument, focus on different parts every listen and experience this anew forever. Sometimes, when the mood is right I am moved, other times I just want to appreciate the music on a simpler level.

Truly, a terrific piece of art.

MediaSonic 4-Bay JBOD Enclosure

There was a time we all remembered, when hard drives were crazy inexpensive and you did not get a ton of space. Some of us remember more so than others: my father brought home a 10GB drive that was in the five and a quarter inch form factor (typically drives are three and a half). I remember having 200MB to play with; compression and file management were critical duties. Then you've seen the older ads, selling 20MB drives for thousands of dollars. In today's standards, $100 will get you more space than you could possibly use, right?

Well, 2TB is a lot, but is also not, at the same time. When dealing with a lot of large multimedia files, those terabytes can quickly dwindle. For the past couple of years we have been buying 1TB drives, and they have been treating us quite well; in the past few months, however, 2TB drives pricing has bottomed out and become the best value. So it's time to get some more space.

Where do you put all these drives? I have four data drives, plus one system drive in my computer case at the moment, and six externals connected via USB. I could squeeze some more into my case, perhaps slap a SATA controller in there for added ports, and convert some external five and a quarter bays into hard drive cages, but that seems like a lot of work, especially with the advent of inexpensive external devices, such as NAS and USB/eSATA enclosures.

I settled on the four bay MediaSonic HFJ2-SU2 enclosure, which offers me four drive bays with a simple USB interface and JBOD functionality. The JBOD thing is new to me, and am glad that one of it's modes is to allow the computer to recognize each drive as it's own. Perhaps down the road, when drive letters are becoming scarce, I would experiment with the other modes, such as four drives becoming two.

Unpacking the device leads to a structurally sound, not-cheap feeling product. I'm sure more expensive devices could offer a few more luxuries, but this definitely does the trick. You open the front door, and you are met with a metal grate; pinch this out and you can slide the drives in. The drives get plastic handles with foam on the front, so when the metal grill is replaced, the connections are made that much tighter, and I imagine vibration would be reduced.

The fan is located on the back, with some front ventilation ports which I assume will have air pulled through and exhausted out. The fan has various modes - I've left it on 'auto' - but I'm not concerned about heat: I always buy 5400 RPM "green" drives as I don't need blazing speeds to access files (my system drive is a speedier 7200RPM). It's not particularly noisy; in fact I've noticed my PS3 is noisier than my computer and drives, but that could be because it's closer. But if you were looking at a bunch of these, running off a server and in a different room, noise would be a non-issue. Power them off when not in use and you are laughing.

Connect the power, connect to the computer via USB, power everything on and you're rolling like you've just installed drives into your computer and connected them. Initalize them, format them if you want (who does anything more than a quick format on multiple TB's these days anyhow?) and you have yourself some inexpensive storage. Buying OEM internal drives and putting them into these enclosures should save you not only money (as opposed to multiple externals), but power, less cable clutter and less headache. And the way the drives are, if the enclosure dies, the drives are easily salvageable.

My particular model does not support RAID and I'm happy it doesn't. I want to maximize space and worry about backups myself. The types of files I'm storing, and how much space they take up, makes it impractical and expensive to do proper backups anyway: prioritize what you need to backup and be realistic. I'll post more about that later on as I move into cloud-based backups. One last thing: this product scores huge bonus points for including a very sturdy screwdriver with it!

Embedded slideshow below, click on it to be brought to the full size images.

Mediasonic HF2 (November 2, 2012)

Movie Update

• The Golden Compass - I finally get around to seeing this film, and I could see why. There was a saturation of these fantasy movies, but I guess it makes sense when they are based on popular books. Unfortunately I didn't pay much attention to this as it was on, but thought the idea of the other world, where people have their "souls" outside their bodies in the form of animals and call them demons...was pretty neat. 6/10
• Jack Brooks Monster Slayer - Definitely a great movie to watch on Halloween: good old monster fun: humour, gore, and the promise of more. 7.5/10
• Saw 3D - I've never been massively into the Saw series but they are entertaining; this one was a little disappointing; the 3D definitely did not add anything. 5/10

Deadgirl

While perusing my recommendations from Netflix, I stumbled into a category called "mind-bending visual thrillers" or something abstract like that, and saw this movie headlining it. Recommended, I'm sure, because I watched The Human Centipede and this movie is similar because...it's twisted? But really, this is the better movie.

Reading the description I was drawn immediately, as they describe two young fellows who are exploring an abandoned hospital then discover something horrifying in the bowels; obviously the title. I could relate a little because, being a young fellow and having some experience with a friend exploring some abandoned buildings one day...but that's where it ends. We did not find any dead women. But it's always a possibility.

And of course these two kids start out as jerks, trashing the place and generally wreaking havoc. They discover this "dead" girl who does appear to be barely alive, confined to bed/table and also, being totally creepy. There was something in her eyes that really got you, and I guess that was the desired effect. You should be aware of the spoilers that are sure to follow. The film gets interesting as these two abandoned kids diverge almost immediately: one wants to call the police, the other wants to "wait and see." The wheels get churning in his head with possibilities I guess.

So they leave, the half way sensible one churning back and forth with what's just happened, and when he returns, we find out his buddy has been playing with the dead girl, and discovered that she was, in fact, dead. And has come back alive. A confined zombie girl? You got it. Then the rapes start, as they bring another morally devoid guy into the mix, as the two take their turns we get a little back story on these misguided youth. Bullied at work and abandoned by their families: the sensible is calling out for his mother every time he goes home but she's never there, just her boyfriend who offers sage but ignored advice. We get a brief description of the other guy, who is now setting up shop with the dead girl, that he lives practically on his own as both of his parents are out of the picture, leaving only his grandmother.

So we have an abandoned zombie girl and two abandoned kids mixing it up, and you get it. This movie has social commentary all over the place and you appreciate it, despite the disturbing and really, troubling imagery present throughout. The movie gets a decent 6/10; I really thought it would be much more terrible.