Best mouse ever!

I'm not usually one to sing the praises of particular electronics products, but I will make an exception for the Logitech V550 mouse.

At work, I'm constantly taking my laptop in and out of its docking station and traveling around the building to various conference rooms and other offices. It's a pain to use the touchpad when away from my desk, and it's also a pain to carry a wired mouse and have it dangling all over the place and accidentally activating buttons when I'm carrying it around. One of my coworkers showed me this model and I immediately decided to get one myself.

The killer feature (for me) of the Logitech V550 is that it comes with three little adhesive clips. You attach one to the lid of your laptop, and then you can snap the mouse onto and off of the laptop in a flash. The buttons cannot be accidentally activated when it's clipped in. The mouse itself is fairly small but feels solid and comfortable in my large-ish hands. It also has Logitech's "Hyper-Fast Scrolling" wheel which I thought was kind of a gimmick, but turns out to be quite nice: you can use the scrolling wheel click-by-click as with most other mice, or press it to switch to a smooth-scrolling mode which is good for scrolling down long pages. You can also wiggle the scroll wheel side-to-side, and I have configured this to go forward and backward on web pages.

I haven't had it long enough to find out how good the battery life is, but it's supposed to be many, many months, which is far better than other optical mice I have used.

So, if you need a mouse to use with a laptop that you're carrying around all the time, I highly recommend this one.  I paid about $30 and I think it's well worth it.

Humbling is...

humbling /ˈhəm-b(ə-)liŋ/

1. adjective
1. The realization that my $20 MP3 player can beat me at Chess.

If, for some reason, you want to install Windows 7... here's how to make an installation USB drive, from Linux

Hey, do you remember CD-ROMs or DVDs?  They were these round things that you put in your computer... made a lot of noise.  Stored files, but not very many.  Not very fast.  A pain to deal with.  Nobody uses them anymore, now that we just download music and movies off the Internet and exchange files online or via flash drives.  Nobody, that is, except for my mom, who was upset when her DVD drive broke a few months ago...

Anyway, I digress: my mom is evidently not the only one who still uses DVDs.  Microsoft still distributes DVDs for installing and upgrading Windows 7.

My Acer 1410 notebook is awesome, but one of the least-awesome things about it is that it came with Windows Vista.  Not just Vista, but Vista loaded up with a whole lot of crapware courtesy of Acer, including about 500 flash games that have to be uninstalled individually.  Basically the first thing I did with the computer was to install Ubuntu instead of Vista.

But then Acer sent me free DVDs to upgrade to Windows 7... which I heard sucked less than Vista.  So I decided to give it a shot.  But here's the thing: the Acer 1410 doesn't have a DVD drive, since no one except my mom and Microsoft uses them anymore.  So how to install Windows 7?

Windows 7 can be installed from USB drives

Although Windows 7 is still distributed on DVD, it's smarter than Windows XP or Vista (but still only as smart as, say, Linux circa 2000).  Windows 7 can install itself from a USB drive, or pretty much anything... I actually used a 4 GB SD card since I have a bunch of those lying around.

There are a bunch of guides on the Internet that explain how to copy your Windows 7 DVD onto a USB drive and make it bootable.  There's even an official tool from Microsoft to do it.  Unfortunately, these tools and procedures require that

1. You have a computer with Windows running on it and a DVD drive
2. You actually have to use Windows to prepare the USB drive... and, frankly, the idea of actually using Windows to prepare bootable media sounds excruciating to me

Are you getting the feeling that I don't really know why I wanted to install Windows 7 in the first place?  Basically, I just wanted to find out if it sucks less than I imagined it would...

Anyway, if you are okay with the above requirements, you can use Windows to transfer your Windows 7 installation DVDs to USB, and be on your merry way.  But, for me...

Making a Windows 7 USB stick from within Linux

You need a flash drive or memory card with at least 4 GB capacity to hold the entire contents of the Windows 7 installation DVD.  Be aware that everything on the USB drive will be erased!!!  Oh, and you need a DVD drive on your Linux computer too.

Plug in the USB drive on your Linux computer, and figure out the device node assigned to it (perhaps /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc).  If you don't know how to do this... ask.  If the flash drive is automatically mounted, then unmount it after you've checked to make sure that you've copied any important data off of it.

Now we need to blank the USB drive and format it with NTFS.  This detail is extremely important!  If you format the USB drive with FAT32, then the Windows 7 installation will start to work, but fail cryptically with messages about unavailable CD-ROM drivers... the Internets are littered with confused forum postings by others who have stumbled on this weird bug.

So, let's use GNU Parted (which should be installed on most modern Linux systems).  First, blank the partition table (replace /dev/sdX with the appropriate device node for your USB drive):

$ sudo parted /dev/sdX
(parted) mklabel msdos
Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sdb will be destroyed and all data on
this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue?
Yes/No? yes

Next, create a new partition filling the USB drive, make it bootable, and then check that it worked by displaying the partition table:

(parted) mkpart primary ntfs 1c 100%
(parted) set 1 boot on

(parted) print
Model: Multiple Card Reader (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdX: 4094MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  4094MB  4093MB  primary  ntfs

(parted) quit

Sweet.  Now you have to format the newly-created NTFS partition:

$ sudo mkntfs --fast /dev/sdX1 
Cluster size has been automatically set to 4096 bytes.
Creating NTFS volume structures.
mkntfs completed successfully. Have a nice day.

Here's a slightly tricky part: you have to give the USB drive an appropriate Windows 7 boot sector.  There's a great program called ms-sys for this sort of thing, and I have made pre-built ms-sys packages for Ubuntu.  So install it.  Use ms-sys to make an appropriate boot sector for the USB drive:

$ sudo ms-sys --mbr7 /dev/sdX
Windows 7 master boot record successfully written to /dev/sdX

Finally you have to copy the installation files onto the USB drive.  Mount the newly-created NTFS partition, however you usually mount removable media.  Also, take the Windows 7 installation DVD and mount it.  You may wish to pause for a moment to think about how quaint the DVD is, and to remind yourself which way is "up" on the DVD drive.


Copy allllll the files and directories from the DVD to the USB drive.  You can use a graphical file manager like Nautilus, or do it from the command line with rsync, using something like this:

$ rsync -av /mnt/dvd /mnt/usbdrive 

Slow...
Progress...
While...
We...
Copy...
A...
Bajillion...
Files
done!

And finally, you're done!  Unmount the USB drive and boot off of it on the computer you're trying to install Windows 7 onto.  Windows 7 actually installs fairly quickly, but I must warn you that it will overwrite other operating systems' bootloaders without asking.  So if you plan to dual-boot Windows and Linux/*BSD/etc., be sure that you have something like SystemRescueCD or a bootable Linux flash drive so that you can recover the bootloader.

Epilogue: Windows is still lame

So after all this rigamarole, I have Windows 7 installed on my Acer 1410 notebook alongside Ubuntu.  Whoopty-do.  Windows 7 seems to run a little faster than Vista, and without the crazy screen flickering problems when you suspend and restart.


If you like Ubuntu and are sick of XP and Vista, you still won't like Windows 7.  It's the same old same-old as far as I can tell.


Back to Ubuntu for me. :-)

Wow, Pandora on the Motorola Q

The Motorola Q smartphone is getting pretty old and crufty these days, and can't do a lot of the cool stuff that newer Android and iPhones can do but... apparently it still has a few tricks up its sleeve, including the ability to play streaming Internet radio using the free Pandora service.

High-capacity hard drives

I've been shopping for a big, reliable, fast, cheap hard drive and have been frustrated by the lack of useful reviews and comparisons between different 2TB models.  Finally I found this useful 2TB HD Roundup from HotHardware which compares Seagate, WD, and Samsung models.

Unfortunately, Hitachi's surprisingly cheap 7200 rpm drive was not reviewed there, but here's a review of it from Tom's Hardware.

Based on this, I think I'm gonna spring for the cheap, low-power, and pretty well-performing Seagate LP 2tb drive.

The Best of DC's 2010 48 Hour Film Project

As I did last year, I attended both sessions of the DC 48 Hour Film Project's Best Of screenings.  All together, 24 short films were shown (out of 104 total submissions) including 4 from our screening group.  This year, my group Jungle Rules had our movie Koma in the Best Of bunch... very exciting for us!

The winner this year was Shovel Ready.  No runners-up were announced, but Under My Skin, My Friends in Sudan, and Saving Face won numerous awards.

Again, I've gone around trying to find high-quality online versions of these top movies, and here's what I've come up with.  This year I was pretty careful and took notes during the screenings:

Staple Remover Melodrama: a hilarious Romance, with a twist ending.  Very original and minimalistic, and started off the night with tons of laughs.

High as a Kite: Comedy done as an SNL-style short.  Goofy, great cinematography, and an extremely impressive original song.

Ordinarily Extraordinary: Drama.  Kind of a tough genre to do straight, but an interesting take on it.  This is a story about loss and death and things that can change in an instant.  (Can anyone find it online?)

Shadow Tale: Dark comedy that was in our screening group.  Features lesbian park rangers and a dead talking squirrel.  Very funny, very weird, and very fun to watch again.

Koma: Our submission in the film de femme genre!!!  It's about a woman who wakes up from a coma to find a changed world, and I'm happy to say that it looked even better in the theater with tough competition.  It got a lot of laughs from the audience tonight!

Dash: Thriller/suspense, but it came out as a comedy, and a very good one at that.  Imagine the movie Speed, but with people running rather than on a bus.  Shot with a Canon 7D DSLR.

Rent in Peace: Horror, starring Jeanne Brooks who made Paradigm Smash with us last year.  Very funny, especially the clever names of the prospective tenants.

FDA: Adventure serial, with a hilarious premise and intro scene.  Impressive fight scenes and agents running around with guns (how did they shoot this without scaring the neighbors??).  This one featured a really great child actress, who won the award for Best Portrayal of the Required Character (Muffin or Marco Gabbowitz).

Jackalope: Thriller/suspense about a scene of torture that winds up on a VHS tape at a video store, and the mystery behind it.  Also shot on a Canon 7D.

The Continuing Saga of Bud Chestrock: Adventure serial, with over-the-top and very funny intro and final scenes, about a hero who doesn't seem very heroic at all.

Quelques Instants: Drama about a day in the life of a serial killer, combining aspects of the Foreign Film and Silent Movie genre.  Very dark, but not gratuitously so, and very contemplative.  Brilliant cinematography.  It was narrated in French from the perspective of the serial killer.  The French narration was well-done, but I'm not sure about its overall effect on the movie, since it was clearly set in DC and since the only speaking part was in English.

tHERAPY: A brilliant, clever, and really funny Travel/Doppelganger movie about half-brothers Jesus and Satan in counseling.  This was shot on a Canon 7D as well, and was the runner-up for acting.

Kill The Monsters: A Dark Comedy about an aviator-sunglasses-clad hero who gets the girl.  Sort of like Lost meets Army of Darkness.  Silly low-budget special effects that remind me of 100 Million BC... except that this movie is actually a ton of fun to watch.  Probably my favorite dialogue of all: "Oh, so you're just going to go around rescuing every damsel in distress?" "Till I find one I like."

Mainframe: SciFi movie about a computer that takes over the office in which it's running and kills all the humans.  Nice sets and cinematography, but the story and acting were... meh.  (Can anyone find it online?)

The Puppy Wrangler: Buddy film.  Funny, and I really like the earnest style of the actors.  An unexpected twist ending.  (Can anyone find it online?)

Chloe: Another film de femme.  This one's a very straight, dramatic take on the aftermath of a crime.  Serious props for getting an actual cop and an actual cop car, which really made the movie.

Breathe, Focus, Octopus: A Silent Film with very clever and artful use of text captions.  This is about a group of people (and one dog) sitting in a park doing yoga silently, and all the conflicting and overlapping thoughts running through their heads.  A runner-up for Best Music.

My Own Worst Enemy: Another Time Travel/Doppelganger film.  Great scenery, great interactions between the doppelgangers, great cinematography, and great acting.  I thought this one should've won some awards!  Also shot on a Canon 7D.    (Can anyone find it online?)

Hörn: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet: Historical fiction by the always-clever Betamacks, and shot in anaglyphic red-green 3D to boot.  This one was in our original screening session.  Funny and well-acted, with a great variety of scenery, costumes, and props.  As a linguistics nerd, I loved the line, "You remember my love but you forget my umlaut?"  I thought this should've won cinematography awards, and maybe acting as well.

Under My Skin: Another brilliant Silent Film. Great acting, amazing locations, great writing, funny, mysterious, perfectly paced, heartwarming, and surprisingly... deep.  This was a runner-up for Best Music, and won Best Cinematography and Best Editing.

 Tiebreaker: A funny Buddy film from our session, about two roommates who can't agree on anything and hire a tiebreaker to resolve their differences.  Hilarious and shot with a Canon 5D.

My Friends in Sudan: Amazing film de femme.  Last year there was this movie called The Imperial which was technically amaaaazing, but lacked a good story; this one has similarly high production values (they used $20-30k worth of equipment and software and shot on the NIH campus).  But it's also a pretty good story of intrigue among intelligence agents.  The female lead characters won the Best Acting award, and it was a runner-up for Best Music.  (Can anyone find it online?)

Shovel Ready: A pitch-perfect Dark Comedy.  Such a clever and original concept that I don't even want to hint and spoil it.  Great acting, great shooting with a Canon 7D, great twist ending (but it was great even before I figured out the twist), and a great concept by a first-time team of only 6 people.  They won the Best Writing and Best Film awards... and I think they deserve it.  My hat's off.

Saving Face: Uproariously funny Fantasy by WIT films, who made last year's genius "foreign film" Rakirovka.  Rakirovka is what I show friends to convince them of the amazing stuff people can do in 48 hours.  This one probably elicited the most continuous laughter from the audience, but it's not just funny, it's a pretty good love story too.  I was impressed with the versatility of the actors, several of whom took on completely different roles from Rakirovka.  They won Best Direction and I wouldn't have argued against them winning Best Film too.

48 Hour Film Project 2010

Once again, I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project's DC competition this past weekend.  I've been super busy and stressin' about finishing my PhD, and it was awesome to just spend an entire weekend doing something compleeeetely different... even if it involved severe sleep deprivation.

This year, the required elements were...

• Character: Marco or Muffin Gabbowitz, someone who works with animals
• Line of dialogue: Do you think you can do that again?
• Prop: a horn

Our assigned genre was film de femme, a movie featuring strong female characters.  In addition to Rob, Jon, Decker, and I (who've participated in all 3 of our 48 Hour Film projects under the illustrious banner of Jungle Rules Productions) we expanded our core team to include several of Rob's law school friends.

Things turned out awesome.  Decker, as always, was amazing as our director and video editor, staying up all night Saturday once again while Rob, Jon, and I got a few hours sleep.  Decker and Rob did a bunch of projects in the fall with the GWU Law Revue, and produced a few hilarious videos, including the YouTube sensation Shit In My Pants.  Decker got a Panasonic AG-DVX100B semipro camera out of it.  It's just incredible how much better its battery life, manual zoom and focus, exposure controls, ergonomics, and resultant video quality are, compared to the small MiniDV camcorders we were using previously.

We had a fairly wild brainstorming session on Friday night, with a lot of amusing stories bandied about, but settled on a fun and feasible one by about midnight.  Rob's friends turned out have a lot of theater and acting experience among them, and did an amazing job as actors and writers.  I did a lot of filming and most of the audio cleanup, as usual, and also helped write some of the scenes.

Our movie was shown in screening Session D on Wednesday May 5 at the AFI Silver theater in Spring Spring.  Again, it was a ton of fun to see our film and those of 11 other teams on the big screen.  We've really improved since last year... especially in our technical prowess and cinematography, where we were very much at the bottom of the heap last spring.

The Betamacks, who made last year's brilliant stop-motion silent movie, Janice and Jonas, shot a hilarious "historical fiction" movie in red-green 3D this year, entitled Hörn: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet.  Citra Productions was another highlight of the night... their Tiebreaker was hilarious and beautifully shot in HD with a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR.  There was another great, funny mockumentary about a haunted house, sort of Paranormal Activity meets Best in Show; I wish I could remember the team's name or the movie title.  (Can anyone find it online?)  Also, a very weird and dark funny movie involving a talking squirrel and lesbian park rangers, Shadow Tale.

UPDATE: Our short film, Koma, is now online for your viewing pleasure!