Despite my initial disappointment with Netflix in Canada, it is more appealing than I originally thought. I’m still frustrated by the lack of “big name” movies – even those that are quite a bit older e.g. 2001 or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. On the positive side, I have found a few good films that I’ve really enjoyed.

The trick seems to be to “sneak up on them”. In other words, I never find movies by searching for movies I think I want to see – those are never available. Instead, I explore what movies are available, as linked to other movie suggestions. I haven’t found very many of the initial suggestions to be good enough to watch, but I believe that is a feature that gets better with time, so I’m willing to keep trying.

I think we’ve decided to keep our subscription going. At $8 per month, the cost of getting this decision wrong for a few months is not very high. Maybe that is why it works – it only takes one or two movies a month to make it feasible. We’ve run out of episodes of Top Gear to watch though, so now we need to find that next unexpected gem to watch. More than ever before, I’m confident we’ll find it.

Uh what? Netflix, please explain to me why Resident Evil and a later movie in the franchise is available, but not this one (second in the series)?

Background: so we purchased one of the new Apple TV boxes for ourselves for Christmas. The new Apple TV is excellent, and I find it even better than the original (which I also own). It is streaming only, which is unlike the original, but it works flawlessly. We’ve purchased about five different movies from the iTunes store and each has played without fault.

Then we signed up for a Netflix account. They have a free month trial program, and at $8 each month it seemed like a good deal. So far, I’m not very impressed. The selection is less than stellar, there are some surprising gaps and the Apple TV interface really stinks for finding titles. We’ve ended up using their website to find titles then “Search” for them. Sigh. I’ve watched about a dozen episodes of Top Gear without trouble, but the first (The Great Train Robbery) of the two movies I’ve watched had severe download issues – every few minutes the stream would stop and the film would pause for a minute or two. The second movie (Resident Evil) worked without issues, so I was ready to accept the problems might have been temporary.

Then we decided to watch the sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Finding it via the Netflix interface didn’t work so I went to the website. Imagine my surprise that this film, made in 2004, is not available. What? It makes no sense to me, although I’m pretty sure Netflix isn’t choosing to do this. So it probably means that one of the many production or distribution companies involved doesn’t like Netflix.

I had higher expectations for the Netflix catalog, especially when compared to the availability in the US market. Sort of sucks actually. I don’t mind paying for the latest movie releases (that is why I’m using the iTunes store with the Apple TV) but when it comes to a deep back catalog, that is something I expected Netflix should be able to provide at a flat rate per month. Apparently I was mistaken, at least for today. I’ll give Netflix more time to see what changes, especially since it it still part of my free month, but I can’t see paying $8/month until the current situation improves.

Recently Eileen needed some help with creating a video to promote the Canadian Booksellers Association “Independents’ Day” back on October 16th. She wanted to promote her favorite local independent bookstore in North Vancouver.

We are not professional film makers, but I figured that we could pull something together. My equipment was limited to iMovie and Quicktime, my iPhone 4, a tripod, and a couple of dogs as “extras”. After bouncing around a few ideas we came up with the idea of silent film style clip, as it wouldn’t require audio, and some simple Quicktime effects would mask the low-end video recording. In all, I’m really happy with the results especially since we made the whole thing in one evening.

You can see the full version here, or a version tailored for mobile devices here. The silent film concept worked but we needed a twist to make it timeless (you’ll have to watch the video to see what we did).

The iPhone 4 arrived today in Canada. There has been amazing demand, with lots of long lineups and many, many disappointed people. I was convinced I wanted one but wasn’t sure I would actually get one today, given the expectation of limited supply and high demand. I wasn’t really prepared to line up at 3am either.

I did get up and go stand in line at the local Fido store at 8am (they open at 10). The first guy in line was there at 2am, the next fellow arrived at 5:30. The two other people in front of me arrived between 6:30 and 7am. I was fifth in line, and more people started arriving rapidly. By 8:30 there was ten people waiting. The “rumors” said this particular store would have as many as fifteen phones for sale but only three 32gb models. A quick poll revealed that of the four people in front of me only two were buying the 32gb model so I was likely to get one if I wanted one (I did, I was replacing a 32gb 3GS and didn’t want to downgrade).

Nothing like hanging around with a bunch of other fanboys for a few hours debating the positives and negatives of Apple, OS X, MacBooks, and of course the different iPhone models! It was pretty easy to pass the time.

By 9:30 the staff arrived and started to prep the store. Nice people, but you could tell they had a long day in front of them. Fortunately they had a great attitude about it and we had lots of fun chatting them up. Those of us standing in line started getting antsy though, and at least another ten people had arrived looking to buy the iPhone. Other people in the mall gawked at us a bit wondering why were were silly enough to be at the mall well before it opened. Precisely at 10 the first sale began, but of course it takes FOREVER to process these purchases. I didn’t get mine until after 11am then had to wait for activation later this afternoon.

I bet there were at least 10 people turned away while I was there and I bet even more were turned down today. The local news said every place was sold out almost immediately this morning. Once again, Apple will get to publish stats about completely selling out in a matter of hours.

I’ve been playing with it for a few hours now and really love it. Well worth the money and time spent.

Last weekend I travelled to Seattle for Robothon 2009. Eileen went with me although she spent Friday and Saturday at the Emerald City Writers Conference. Why she would prefer to hang out with a bunch of authors instead of a bunch of geeks is a question you can probably answer for yourself.

Unlike 2007, this year’s event was a bit more subdued. The Seattle Robotics Society didn’t hold the event in 2008 due to a lack of enough volunteers to run the event. I’d expected this year to see a big resurgence in interest but it didn’t happen. I hope the people that did get out to the event had fun though, I certainly did.

The only event I participated in this year was Minisumo, with The Thin Man. I’ve been too busy at work to have time to build new robots, and since we were cleaning our house up (to sell it, after buying another house) I had to pack away my workshop. If you recall, The Thin Man placed first in the 2007 event but this year was a different story: two straight losses and I was out. The Thin Man is no longer the “state of the art” in terms of building that it used to be, and its showing its age. The victors this year in Minisumo were students from Mexico with extremely nice robots.

I was busy at the event even though I wasn’t competing. I volunteered to organize this year’s Robo-Magellan contest, an outdoor navigation event where robots have to drive around the park at Seattle Center to locate orange traffic cones. Fastest robot to go from the starting position to the ending position wins. It is really a nifty event, requiring robots of more sophistication than some of the more “classic” games like Minisumo or Line Maze. I’m really intrigued with this event and have started to get organized to build a robot with a hope to enter the event next year. More on this project in an upcoming post.

One of the more noticeable things about this year’s Robothon was the lack of participation. There were probably just as many people watching as in past years, but the number of competitors, particularly from the Seattle Robotics Society membership, was down. There have been a number of discussions online about this phenomenon, its not just something in Seattle but happening in many places and its been happening for a while. The number of explanations offered in these discussions outnumbers the participants and I don’t think there is any agreement about the root cause. I’m convinced its not temporary, but instead signals a need for a radical change in the structure of events like Robothon and maybe even how the hobby robotics “industry” (clubs, groups, etc.) is organized. This includes the Vancouver Robotics Club which I’m one of the organizers for.

I did manage to take about fifty pictures while I was at Robothon, mostly the Robo-Magellan event and a handful of random other things.