BlackBerry PlayBook Gets Panned by Reviewers

Research In Motion's iPad competitor, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, goes on sale April 19, but it's not ready for prime time. Reviewers who got their hands on the PlayBook early posted their thoughts on the tablet -- and it's not good news for RIM.

The 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook packs some impressive specs for its size and slenderness: a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, two high-resolution cameras (3MP front, 5MP back), micro HDMI out and it's pretty zippy.

But the software is what puts the PlayBook down: the new QNX-based OS on the tablet is only half-baked, the reviews show, with plenty of features missing, such as no integrated e-mail, calendar and address book (codependent on a BlackBerry smartphone), no video chatting app (despite a dedicated camera), and overall annoying software glitches.

First off, PCWorld's Melissa J. Perenson writes that the PlayBook "feels very much like a work in progress" because of its "limited app selection, software glitches, and choices in functionality or design." Perenson notes that "the PlayBook is the most impressive tablet I've seen to date" but points out "native apps like the PlayBook's browser have disappointing glitches, and you won't get much help from downloading third-party apps -- only 3,000 will be available at launch."

The New York Times' David Pogue asks whether "it make sense to buy a fledgling tablet with no built-in e-mail or calendar, no cellular connection, no videochat, Skype, no Notes app, no GPS app, no Pandora radio and no Angry Birds?" He mentions several times the buggy software and that "it's missing important features, like the ability to view e-mail file attachments or click a link in an e-mail."

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg believes that the PlayBook could appeal to those who find the iPad too large: "The hardware is sturdy and the back has a nice rubberized feel. While the PlayBook is 14% thicker than the iPad 2, it's about one-third lighter. [...] Still, unless you are constantly glued to a BlackBerry phone, or do all your e-mail, contacts and calendar tasks via a browser, I recommend waiting on the PlayBook until more independently usable versions with the promised additions are available."

Wired's Mike Isaac opines that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet lacks all the right moves: "RIM's WebKit-based browser is about as stable as your bipolar uncle. No native e-mail, calendar or contacts apps. App ecosystem is lacking. You'll need to install a driver before you can connect it to your PC or Mac. Runs Flash, sorta." However, Isaac gives the PlayBook brownie points for "a brilliant display, great sound and an HDMI output" and the two on-board cameras.

TechChruch's MG Siegler also takes a stab at the tablet's limitations: "So why not wait until there's a little more polish to get it out there on the market? [...]But given that it's selling at the same price points as the iPad, I find it hard to imagine they'll be able to compete in the consumer space right now. Maybe if they can nail the Android app support that will change the scene a bit."

Gizmodo's review from Matt Buchanan points out even more missing features in the PlayBook: "No Android apps yet. You can't create custom app categories. There's no universal search to quickly find apps. You can't rearrange your open app cards. Half the time you try to touch a link in the browser, you don't know if you touched it correctly or not -- the feedback isn't fast enough." However, Buchanan liked the PlayBook "for being so small, it's got tons of muscle, like a freaky little dude on 'roids."

Engadget's Tim Stevens wraps up saying that the PlayBook has "hardware that looks and feels great but isn't being fully served by the software. [...]And, ultimately, we have a tablet that's trying really hard to please the enterprise set but, in doing so, seems to be alienating casual users who might just want a really great seven-inch tablet."

Finally, LaptopMag's Mark Spoonauer nails it: "It's not really a matter of too little, too late with the BlackBery PlayBook. If anything, RIM's first tablet feels as if it was rushed to market."

Source http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=4B0BC7F4-1A64-67EA-E4E12FE0F2A4CC58

It's a golden age of gore

The undead appear to be multiplying.

A recent cruise through the all-knowing Internet yielded more zombie-related info and creative projects than one would care to view in one afternoon. Gore-ridden explorations of the the living dead abound, from zombie flicks, TV series and video games to cell phone apps (Zombie Booth is particularly freaky), board games and books ("Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" anyone?), some in living graphic-novel color.

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video somehow is now even more ahead of its time.

And that's not counting all the zombie swag out there, like your standard action figures, T-shirts, calendars and, my favorite, zombie decoys (to distract an invading horde, obviously).

For some bizarre reason, we appear to be super fascinated with all things re-animated, but at the same time, naturally, we're more than a little freaked out by the prospect.

Just Google "zombie plan" - i.e., one's planned escape route and the necessary weaponry required should a zombie apocalypse go down - and many, many pages' worth of options pop up.

No thanks to George Romero, I'm hereby leery of any burial grounds within a few miles of my house (two), especially the one named "Resurrection Cemetery." In this neo-Atomic Age, on particularly dark nights, Max Brooks' "The Zombie Survival Guide" becomes more than just a funny little coffee-table book.

Even a lighter manifestation of zombie lore like Cracked.com's article "Five Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Happen" doesn't seem entirely ready to write off the undead as mere figments of our apparently disturbed imaginations. It tries to laugh off the lunacy of a zombie invasion, but then it tells us about horrible things like toxoplasmosa - a parasite that turns "victims into mindless, zombie-like slaves." Not funny. Especially when it goes on to report that half the world is infected with the stuff (with attribution).

So, we recognize this horror - we've examined it in gruesome detail - and yet we go back in for more. If you ask me, it's because we're all making zombie plans. Struck by the nightmare of society - indeed, our species - quite ended by what's pretty much a plague, we can't help but wonder how we'd perform in a zombie onslaught. Are we the unlikely hero or are we lunch? Could we strike down a loved one who'd been turned?

And now the truly terrible world of the undead will unfold right here in our little region. Hollywood just had to beguile more people with its slew of semi-hysteria-inducing zombie stories, and now we're going to have a film crew here dotting downtown Mystic and Norwich with zombie hordes as they film "Remains" for something called Chiller TV.

Great. Just as we calm down from last fall's TV hit "Walking Dead," we get to revisit the notion of the fall of the human race, right here at home. (Anyone else still haunted by that scuttling little girl in "Walking Dead" minus her bottom half?)

Well, if we must we must. But before I go and do a weapons check in my basement, I'm going to bone up with a rigorous Zombie Movie-Thon and take notes. Just in case.

Source http://www.theday.com/article/20110405/ENT09/304059996/1044

The Last Hardest Working Dinosaur in Show Business

When the music industry finally collapses there will only be Youtube. Entire albums will be released through Twitter, comprised of just one-hundred-forty characters. Justin Bieber wasn’t the first, only the most recent performer to craft his own stardom in the strange internet meta-world and be birthed with such incorrigible appeal that music fans started buying vinyl again to soothe their discomfort with things immaterial.

And yet in this topsy-turvy world, still stranger things are possible. Amid this year’s Canadian Music Week, the week when industry professionals from all corners get together and talk about how freaky and post-modern the world is, a band aptly named Dinosaur Bones is stepping into the spotlight by doing things the old-fashioned way. In the three years since their formation, Dinosaur Bones have cultivated a reputation as one of Toronto’s most impressive and hardest working live bands, and they have done it without the requisite dependence on that thing called the Internet. Dinosaur Bones have just released their first full-length album, My Divider, on Dine Alone Records.

"As a band, our philosophy has always been that there is no substitute for hard work. It is the single best way to get better," says lead singer and guitarist Ben Fox. “Improvement is our primary concern." As for hard work, they accept no substitute: My Divider, a lush and enveloping record, was financed out of the band’s collective pocket and recorded at length before being shopped around to labels. In the mean time, the band has been performing extensively, in Toronto, the East Coast and the northern United States. It is an approach at odds with the more commonly observed “hype machine” model, in which bands use their online presences to tantalize fans and titillate record labels. The new way gets the word out, but it also presupposes the actual music, where no such thing may have formed. It’s why the contemporary music fan has developed the habit of hearing about more bands than she has actually heard.

In a coffee shop down the street from Sonic Boom, the venue for one of Dinosaur Bones’ CMW performances, I try to recount to Fox my first experience googling the band: the search “Dinosaur Bones” turned up the Myspace, the Radio3 coverage and a catalog of links and articles about the bones of dinosaurs, which effectively meant the bones of dinosaurs were getting more hits than the band.

I query whether a greater online presence would make for a quicker break-through, but Fox isn’t worried. “The blogosphere,” he says, “works faster than musicians’ development.” Online hype can make a musician’s career seemingly over night, but also threatens to turn fledgling artists into celebrities before they know how to sustain their success. The Dinosaur Bones methodology is more straight-laced: play great live shows, craft good records, take your time, reap rewards. “A slow build is good. Then the band is ready if something big comes along.”
The methodology is a ringer. Now signed to Dine Alone Records, the D-Bones are now label mates with Hey Rosetta!, Tokyo Police Club and City and Colour, and one can speculate that they will now inevitably find themselves on the rather metaphysical side of the music industry they have so far circumvented. Contemporary music fandom can be fickle: music lovers lately prefer to listen to as many bands as possible, sure, but only very briefly. “The ironic thing,” notes Fox, “is that with mainstream bands or bands with more mainstream appeal, you see that their audiences care more."

Dinosaur Bones aren’t old-fashioned, they are defenders of the old way: they just want to make music, they want the music to be as good as it possibly can be, and they want the music to speak for itself. Longevity is elusive in the music business, but Dinosaur Bones believe that if something is done right, it will stand the test of time.

Source http://thevarsity.ca/blogs/93/entries/42768

Weight loss excluding calories

Forget the simplistic calories-in, calories-out concept of weight loss.

"You see it on The Biggest Loser where people are starving themselves, over-exercising and they don't lose any weight," J.J. Virgin, the nutrition and fitness coach to the stars, explained in a phone interview from her home in Palm Springs, Calif.

"They even gain it because their body's going, 'Stop it!' It goes into a stress response and starts holding on to weight."

Calories only count to an extent; where they come from counts most, notes Virgin.

The 47-year-old former nutrition expert for the Dr. Phil show says she's actually eating more total calories these days and she's leaner than ever.

At six-foot-zero, Virgin weighs 148 pounds, wears a Size 4 and has just 12 per cent body fat (an average woman has 25-29 per cent).

Her mantra is: "Your body is not a bank account. It's a chemistry lab and a history book."

Virgin — whose A-list clients have included Gene Simmons, Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo — prefers to see the body as a complex machine.

"Especially women. We are a little more complicated," she added. "Guys are like the VW bugs and we're the Ferraris. We have cycling hormones, so we add even more to the mix."

Virgin recommends eating nutrient-dense calories from lean protein, healthy fats, non-starchy veggies in a rainbow of colours and low-glycemic, high-fibre starchy carbohydrates and fruit.

She calls sugary and processed foods "crap," and noted that all carbs aren't equal.

"It's the type of carbs and the amount of carbs," she explained. "If you're eating lentils, quinoa, non-starchy vegetables and some berries — great. If you're chowing down on potatoes, white bread, rice and bananas — problem."

Virgin, co-star on TLC's Freaky Eaters reality series and the author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, eats every four to six hours, but doesn't believe in snacking.

"It's a ridiculous concept created by the snack food industry," she said. "And it makes you fat because it keeps your blood sugar elevated, which elevates your insulin, which makes you better at storing fat and worse at burning it off."

Virgin drinks water and green tea between meals.

She recommends managing stress and getting seven to nine hours of high-quality sleep every night, which has been proven to aid in weight loss.

"It's really basic stuff, but society has moved away from it to 'less sleep, more work, rush everything,'" she added. "When you rush your meals, you're not going to get your nutrients, you're not going to digest well and that's going to screw up everything."

Virgin's exercises include interval training involving running hills, climbing stairs, hiking or biking.

She also does her trademarked 4x4 Workout, an intense resistance-training program that splits the body into four areas: upper body pulling, upper body pushing, hips and thighs, and power core. (Her 4x4 Workout is free at jjsfitclub.com.)

Virgin's 20-60 minute workouts don't include her mindlessly churning away on any cardio equipment.

"I'm not a big fan of endurance training," she said. "It just burns up muscle mass, stresses you out and makes you fatter. You need to do cardio in burst-style."

And Virgin is a firm believer in "pumping up the volume" during exercise.

That means keeping the intensity high.

"Intensity rules," she added. "Exercise is only exercise if you're getting hot and sweaty and it hurts."

Source http://www.sherwoodparknews.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3004827

Confessions of an unapologetic insomniac

I’ve never particularly cared for sleeping. It’s a ghastly waste of time, all those hours spent doing nothing, discovering nothing, accomplishing nothing.

When I was in Mrs. Martin’s kindergarten class, we would follow our snack time of Kool-Aid and Nilla Wafers with “rest time,” which was a flawed plan from the start —pump a bunch of five year-olds full of sugar and tell them to go lie on the floor. But each day, we’d all unfold our paper-thin vinyl mats and have our restful moment.

Twenty of us, lying prone on the floor, a tableau of tiny bodies littering the linoleum like the victims of a sniper attack. And I would lay there, wide awake, amazed by the classmates who were able to actually go to sleep in public. In what sort of homes were they being raised that they were allowed to just drop to the floor and lose consciousness? We were not housecats. This was not something to be encouraged.

At home, bedtime was a nightly battle, which I eventually remedied by giving the illusion of acquiescence. I suddenly developed a fear of the dark, and required a nightlight in my bedroom. Once I’d said my prayers and my bedroom door was closed, I’d lie on the floor reading books by the nightlight.

I was usually awake long after my parents had turned in for the evening. It was so frustrating, because there were a good number of things I would have liked to do with that time — baking, roller-skating, singing a selection from one of the musicals I’d written about my life — but I couldn’t, because everyone was sleeping, and I knew I had to keep up this illusion that I was too.

Long before I wanted to kiss boys or dress up as Dixie Carter, my categorical rejection of sleep was my first indication that there were specific rules the world followed that made no sense to me. I could rail against it, or I could just give the impression that I was like everybody else without too much trouble.

In my early twenties, I found myself in a relationship with a man who loved sleeping. It was his favorite part of the day. When we first got together, I found his sweet surrender to sleep mildly baffling, but adorable. He liked to nap. How cute.

But it is scientifically proven that the things you find appealing in the beginning will be the things you hate them for in the end, and five years down the road, his desire for sleep made me want to strangle him. It became his way of avoiding our rapidly deteriorating relationship. You can’t have a proper fight if one of you is unconscious. His willful narcolepsy felt like an elaborate plot to leave me without leaving me.

When Preppy and I started dating a few years later, I paid close attention to his sleep patterns. He liked to stay up late, and had a job which required him to get up early. Most nights he only slept for four or five hours, so I felt confident we were well-matched. But it turned out the early mornings were borne solely from necessity, and on days off he could easily sleep ‘til noon.

I panicked. I’d fallen in love with another Sleeper. I would make breakfast as an excuse to wake him up. I’d try morning sex. I’d play music too loud, or run the vacuum cleaner. I couldn’t just tell him that I resent people who sleep, because I’d known it was my freaky thing since I was five. So I tried to adapt, and go to bed like normal people. But it was Mrs. Martin’s classroom all over again, me lying there wondering why anyone would want this.

When the truth came out, as it is wont to do, Preppy was surprisingly sensible about it. He told me to stop thinking of it as time that I’m abandoned by the world, and instead think of it as the bonus round of my day: The extra lap I get to run when everyone else thinks the race is done.

Now, I schedule for it — we have our family time, and then husband and dog turn in for the night, leaving me with my time. I’ve come to cherish it.

Sometimes happiness doesn’t lie in changing behavior, but in changing perspective. And if you’re really lucky, you find someone who supports letting your freak flag fly any time of day.

Source http://www.thegavoice.com/index.php/opinion/domestically-distrubed/2102-confessions-of-an-unapologetic-insomniac

Notes From A Walkman Junkie: Work And Pants And Sandwiches

Ah, the daily grind–you know how it is–you go into work each day and begin your usual tasks: pricing, counting inventory, filing, typing out labels for art work, entering new items, organizing consignment contracts, phone calls, calmly informing the man yelling in your face about the prevalent window cleaning wars that you no longer require his services and that yes, you are perfectly happy with that new ninja window guy and then explaining to the costumers that witnessed this hostile verbal transaction–who offered the kind words of “We wanted to save you” –that “NO ONE CAN SAVE ME.”

I have grown quite accustom to these typical work day responsibilities and duties, however, last week, I was suddenly faced with an additional and unexpected new element while on the job: Mr. Sandwichpants.

I am going to level with you, readers. I had initially intended to spin an elaborate and hopefully humorous tale about this new odd man who has been visiting me daily for the past week in the gallery where I work. Unfortunately, I have, once again, been struck with some seriously sucky ass/can’t get off the floor/food in my hair/Dudley Moore movie watching/I thought my bunny was dead, but he was only sleeping very still depression.

Due to this recent affliction of morbid sadness and woe, I fear that I will be unable to make the story of the mentally off sandwich-enthusiast pants man (who slowly crept into the gallery with his pants wide open and asked me for a safety pin and then asked me if I would pin his pants together for him because he only has the use of one hand and I politely declined his request and offered him an alternate suggestion that he did not hear because he is hard of hearing so I loudly repeated my response of “NO I WON’T HOLD YOUR PANTS TOGETHER. YOU SHOULD FIND A MAN TO DO IT” so he did and then he returned the next day to tell me that he is “Going to the beauty parlor soon” where they will “Make him a handsome man” which evidently meant giving him a messy side pony tail because that is what he showed up with the following day when he came in to ask me with excited, crazy eyes, “Guess what I did today? I got another hole punched on my sandwich card–only one more hole punch and I get a sandwich free! Do you have a sandwich card?” and I said, “No” and he insisted, “You just don’t know what you are missing” and I assured him, “I think I do.”) funny.

I apologize for my shortcomings this week and hope to be able to pull my head out of my ass very soon. I leave you with “Christiansands” by Tricky. Enjoy his freaky cool voice. Thank you, Jackson for directing me to him.

Source http://frothygirlz.com/2011/02/10/notes-from-a-walkman-junkie-work-and-pants-and-sandwiches/

Francesco Tristano at (Le) Poisson Rouge, NYC (2/3)

At one point during the double piano set by whiz kid Francesco Tristano and veteran Bruce Brubaker– two artists steeped in the 20th-century piano tradition– I jotted down in my notes: “I’m just not sure what the point is supposed to be.” Maybe that was the point. Avant-garde artists frequently set out to mystify their audiences, appealing to an elite and eccentric few, while shock and confusion were stalwart aesthetic values of the Fluxus movement and other happenings going on in this city during the 1960s and 70s. Make no mistake– Tristano and Brubaker are consummate musicians, unarguably at the top of their respective fields, and they know their stuff. They had a novel, wild idea: play two concerts with programs of both contemporary and classical piano music, from Cage to Schumann to Buxtehude, at the same time, at one of the hippest venues for classical music in the country. See what kind of freaky concurrences result, how each pianist will engage in a dialogue with both the music and with each other, and how the introduction of electronics will affect a wonderful synchronism of styles, touching on all the notable giants of piano music over the last 400 years. Unfortunately, their idea simply didn’t translate to practice.

Tristano is an artist who has mastered his instrument across various classical genres, having recorded both the complete keyboard concertos of J.S. Bach and the complete piano music of Luciano Berio. He is also an accomplished electronic artist, creating restrained and intelligent pieces of electronic music that toe the thin line between pop and classical, between Brian Eno and Philip Glass. Brubaker is an equally accomplished artist, especially fond of minimalists John Adams and Philip Glass, and the early works of John Cage, which actually sound out as music. All of these musical ideas are ones that I like– so why didn’t they gel in concert?

One issue was a lack of form in both the overall presentation of the show and the pieces themselves. Played as one continuous hour of music without any breaks for applause or for the audience to get their bearings, the music came off in an onslaught of sound. Many of these are outstanding pieces on their own– Messiaen’s Regard du Père and Cage’s Dream, for example– that weren’t allowed to breathe in their own space; they lacked a certain formal rigor. These are complete works, composed by exceptional musicians who understood that music needs to stand on a strong structure. Chopping up a Buxtehude fugue and interjecting anachronistic 20th-century harmonies seems to defeat the purpose of the genre altogether, leaving the audience unable to hear the delicate interplay of interweaving counterpoint when the rhythm lags and sections are interrupted. More detrimentally, there was very little dynamic range or expressive variety; the entire performance sat comfortably mezzo-piano with a hushed, atmospheric mood.

The pianists seemed to play with an overdeveloped sense of rubato, destroying much of the rhythmic drive that this music has. Even a piece by Philip Glass, a composer known for his notorious musical pulsations, sounded like an impressionistic cascade of chords rather than a rhythmically grounded work. The aforementioned fugue lagged, and moments of Schumann fantasies were a little too fantastical. The night was a pastiche of historical fragments: a Baroque trill here, a rich series of Romantic harmonies there, a chunk of a fugue, a plucked piano string, a Picardy third, and electronic blips.

There were parts that did work, mostly when simultaneous pieces seemed to actually complement each other (a stylistic dissonance was the norm for most of the evening). Tristano’s original piece Mambo (heard below) set up a funky, off-kilter bass line that pushed the music forward in one of the few overtly driving segments of the set, accompanied by the loud consonant chords of Glass’s Wichita Vortex Sutra. Unfortunately, the electronics were too tame in the live performance. Bits of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke intermingled with the lush, impressionistic harmonies of Cage’s Dream.

Yet most of the night came off as sounding like “the classics” played on the grand piano, in a rhapsodic, tempo-free milieu, while dissonant electronic sounds burst out from the electric piano. The indeterminate aspect of the performance (I’m not sure how much of this was actually synchronized) seemed a direct lineage from Cage, while the dissonant pointillism surrounding recognizable consonance was a hallmark of Ives’s style. Both are ideas that I’m quite fond of. It was, to be sure, an admirable experiment, something that has worked for others and, for some listeners, probably lit up their night– as I left the venue, I heard a number of patrons comment on how much they enjoyed the show. For me, it was postmodernism gone wrong.

Source http://consequenceofsound.net/2011/02/07/francesco-tristano-at-le-poisson-rouge-nyc-23/