New Lenovo Yoga!

I just got a brand-spankin'-new Lenovo Yoga Ultrabook as a present from Intel. It's a clever new Ultrabook with a screen that folds all the way back to become a hybrid tablet. This is the top-of-the-line model with great hardware specs:

• Intel Core i7-3537U (2GHz 1600MHz 4MB) (4-core Ivy Bridge!) with Intel HD graphics
• 8gb RAM
• 13.3" multitouch screen with 1600x900 resolution
• Gigantic MacBook-esque touchpad and chiclet keyboard
• 256gb Samsung SSD
• Bluetooth 4.0 and Realtek 8723 b/g/n wifi
• 1x USB 2 port, 1x USB 3 port, 1x HDMI out, and SD card reader
• Weighs 3.3 lbs
• Windows 8, MS Office Home & Student

Hardware

My first impressions are that the hardware is beautiful and excellent, with a few caveats:

• This is supposed to be a premium mobile product, but the Realtek wifi adapter is flaky under Windows and keeps dropping my home network connection. Why didn't Lenovo include an Intel wireless chipset? We make the best wireless hardware and write excellent drivers for both Windows and Linux. My old, cheap Acer AS1410 notebook with Intel wireless has never dropped a connection or failed to pick up a weak signal.
• What, only one USB 3.0 port, and one USB 2.0 port? Ars Technica's review puts it well:

I must once again profess bafflement: why would any PC OEM include USB 2.0 ports in an Ivy Bridge-based notebook before exhausting the four USB 3.0 ports natively supported by Intel's chipset? (Sigh, moving on.)

• The screen is huge and beautiful and very high-resolution, and the multi-touch works great, but the 16:9 aspect ratio isn't great in portrait mode.
• The function keys default to Windows 8 "Fn" mode, rather than real function keys. This is annoying and many of them duplicate easily available functions anyway, but at least you can switch them back to normal in the BIOS.

There are also a couple of things I wish it had based on having gotten used to using a Lenovo ThinkPad T400 for work:

• The keyboard is nice and has good tactile feedback, and the multi-touch touchpad is similarly excellent. I do wish that there was either a backlight for the keyboard, or a little overhead light that could shine on the keyboard (as on the ThinkPads).
• No docking station. I've gotten really used to just slapping my ThinkPad down on the docking station to connect Ethernet, extra monitors, headset, and USB keyboard all in one fell swoop. I think USB 3 docking stations are dumb and needlessly expensive, because they tend to duplicate hardware that already exists onboard (like multi-monitor support, extra ports, and onboard ethernet) but simply lacks an external port.

Software

The Ultrabooks do away with legacy BIOS in favor of UEFI firmware, which allow them to boot very, very quickly even from a cold start. Woohoo!

As for the preinstalled Windows 8 operating system... woof. I've heard a lot of bad reviews, but it's even worse than I expected. It's lacking in functionality, confusingly split between Metro mode and Desktop mode (which removes my favorite features of the Windows 7 start menu, for good measure), and Microsoft seems to be aiming to outdo Apple in terms of vendor lock-in, developer restrictions, and flogging their own web services (Hotmail, Skydrive, etc.).

While trying to use Windows 8, I've regularly found myself wishing I could just reach for any of the following:

1. My Acer AS1410 mini-notebook, running Ubuntu with Gnome Shell 3
2. My workhorse Lenovo Thinkpad T400 laptop, running Windows 7
3. My Samsung Epic smartphone running CyanogenMod 10 (Android Jellybean)

Yes, even my phone with its 4.3" touchscreen is far more versatile and easy-to-use than the Windows 8 monstrosity.

Linux

I'm planning to install Ubuntu. Looks like lack of device drivers for the wireless chipset were an issue a couple of months ago, but that these have been resolved in more recent kernels.

Details to follow...

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.

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.

Acer AS1410: first impressions

I recently bought an Acer AS1410 netbook/small notebook. Here's a bit more about my thought process while buying, and my initial review.

The Best of the Best

Tonight I went to both sessions of the Best of the 48 Hour Film Project DC 2009. 24 short films were shown in all, out of 94 (?) total on-time submissions. There was some great work shown tonight, with the second session in particular just blowing me away.