2011 was a total shite year for frogbats everywhere. But besides that, let’s see what events shaped the flying amphibian landscape of nerdom.

Good news came with the firing of Benitez. Inter actually had a chance to play football once “Fat Man Benitez” as puppet Mourinho referred to him was gotten rid of!

Best shows on TV -

QI – funny, witty and well quite interesting! Stephen Fry acts as ringmaster and Alan Davies as his punching bag in this hilarious panel show featuring a interesting general knowledge factoids .

Game of Thrones – It’s Lord of the Rings with sex and violence. Plus it was filmed here in parts. The show proved to be better than anything I anticipated. The royal buttfur approves.

The Killing – I have resisted the temptation of seeking the original Danish version. The americans did good enough a job though it proved infuriating at the end. They should’ve ended it with a solution and started a new investigation the following year. Buttfur slightly ruffled but(t) pleased!

Transformers Prime – Yay a new TF cartoon but one which is dark and moody and well written and voiced. The toys are also far better than anything the movie has offered!

Modern Family and Community strengthened as best sitcoms on the box this year with their third seasons whilst Big Bang remained watchable but is so far lacking the spark of previous seasons. Surburgatory is growing in my esteem. Ringer and Revenge both were entertaining newcomers to the drama lite. Castle and The Good Wife continue to be watchable fluff whilst Person of Interest and Terra Nova disappointed, Dexter was perhaps the best of the better returning shows. Franklin and Bash was cute, and Downton Abbey was strangely addictive for an upstairs downstairs period soap opera. Boss was excellent and they did well to keep it to just 8 episodes. Mrs Brown’s Boys was idiotic but funny in parts – and played an interesting take on the post post modern self awareness that Community so artfully employs. Mad Men was soporific whilst Spartacus 0.5 proved that amped up sex and gore can almost hide the lack of a story. Mad Men in skirts aka Pan Am was a fail and I couldn’t even bring myself to watch American Horror Story (i’m a chicken). Boardwalk Empire was a bit boring but picked up towards its season’s epilogue.

The BBC kept up its greatest contribution to mankind (Sir David Attenborough) busy with a great new series Frozen Planet and Brian Cox sent me to bed completely baffled with Wonders of the Universe. If anyone claims to fully understand more than half of what’s on that show, don’t believe them.

Movies

I was so desperate for something decent to watch I downloaded movies from the forties! Otherwise, the Clooney / Gossling Ides of March was my favourite – when Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman are your supporting cast you know you have a great movie.

Drive – Beautifully shot and well acted, criminally short screentime for Christina Hendricks and her talents.

Puss in Boots – flawed but funny as hell! I love cats and they did a great job in keeping puss grounded in his kittyness. The golden egg jumpsuit… well that’s all I’m saying.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes – great retelling of the Ape’s origins almost instantly cancelling out Tim Burton’s shite fest. Andy Serkis should be nominated at the very least!

In the comic book genre, Captain America, Thor and X-Men first class were watchable, relatively enjoyable but not amazing. The genre flipping Dale and Tucker vs Evil was pretty good and Paul was fun too. Kung Fu Panda 2… well didn’t finish even half the film so there… The Guard was fun whereas the Inbetweeners was a solid British retelling of American Pie – and it reminded me of tourists’ perspective when they visit a place like here. The Devil’s Double was well acted – but it was easy for Malta to act as 90′s Baghdad!

TBC

Terra Nova for the uninitiated was one of the most widely anticipated genres shows to hit the network in 2011. Its premise was readily summed up by anyone who read the show synopsis as being part Avatar, part Jurassic Park with a little bit of Lost thrown in. Basically, in the future the earth is completely screwed up. A time fissure is discovered and people start migrating to prehistoric earth to start a new colony.

Terra Nova started out quite mediocre thanks mainly to the bad dialogue (more about that later). The obvious getting to know the place / monster of the week sort of stories that plagued the first half of the season did not help either and it lead me to stop watching the show.  After the first 6 episodes I’d have rated the show C-.

Since the other shows I started watching were either on hiatus or had ended their season, I picked up the show again from episode 6 or 7 and watched through till the last episode – the quality did improve as the story shifted. The story arc hinted in the first part of the show began to come into its own and took over the show. The first bunch of antagonists… we find out that the human antagonists – “The Sixers” had a more devious overlord behind them. This new evil mastermind helped the show greatly, as it became more focused and thus more entertaining.

The show ended well enough – in that it was a satisfactory conclusion to the protagonists’ saga but it also hinted at something interesting to discover if the show gets renewed for a second season. If it weren’t for the first half of the season I’d have rated the show higher but it manages a solid B for its second half. The strengths of the show were its ambitious b-movie concept and ultimately, its story arc was quite satisfying and provided some couple of hours of light entertainment. Fun is something that is hard to come by these days from network fiction, and cable shows tend to be a bit too serious and forget the fun component all too quickly. The production values on Terra Nova have come under scrutiny due to its high budgets and set back. The show’s location filming is great and its high point. Some of the SFX are passable to good but there are moments where a jaded audience used to better will chuckle at the bad quality of the effects (the fishing trip for example).

The characters were a good mix, though again you feel that there are too many white people lording it over the others. The acting improves especially as the show becomes more action oriented, the actors become more familiar with their roles and most importantly there’s less of the super cheesy dialogue that plagued the opening shows. Let’s put it this way, Spielberg was attached as a producer but the dialogue seemed to come from a George Lucas screenplay!

So were the reviews slagging Terra Nova off correct in their assessment? Absolutely. However, the problem is that on network tv, shows rarely have a chance to find their feet. It took ST:TNG two whole years before coming into its own. And the opposite is true.. shows that start off well like Heroes fail after their first season due to the pressure placed on the shows to be a constant hit. Unfortunately genre shows that cross into the mainstream appear to happen once a decade – TNG in the 80s, the X-files in the 90s and Lost in the 00s.  The show have two trek alumni on board – Brannon Braga and René Echevarria serve as showrunners – there’s also a Maltese connection to the show with Jon Cassar covering production and directorial duties.

Links: Official Terra Nova Site | IMDB Entry | Wikipedia entry

Here’s a quick rundown of what the flying amphibian watches or rather receives on Mondays.

Boardwalk Empire S.2 – Very much a slow boil this season – not as enjoyable as the first but still a very solid show. Beautifully shot and great acting – however it’s gone mad men slow this season but the story seems to have picked up steam as we head towards the end. Worth sticking through till the end though I think this season was flawed with being too slow in the beginning and too much going on towards the end. Some might see it as a crescendo, I thought it was bad pacing.

The Walking Dead S.2 – Definitely a gripping tale. You don’t like to enjoy zombies to enjoy this show about human struggle in adverse conditions (it’s the main reason lost was so successful too). Fears about Frank Darabont’s departure from the show impacting the quality seem to have been laid to rest for now (but you know what happens to dead things in the walking dead…). I’m looking forward to the second part of Season 2 and am thankful there’s more than 6 episodes in this season.

Dexter S.6 – Perhaps the most enjoyable of my early week dramas. Seems a bit lighter than previous years in tone and the side characters stories are a bit more compelling. Though the new arch villains don’t appear to be as scary as Trinity, the apocalypse is always an interesting theme as Dexter tries to get to grips with religiosity around him. The ending is something that I thought might have happened earlier in the show but at this point I thought it would never happen. Gald I was proved wrong for a truly great cliffhanger

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110907/local/Maltese-love-to-shop-online-from-overseas.383608

Apparently Maltese love purchasing online especially from foreign retailers. Ever since I was a kid Maltese have flocked to London and Sicily to buy better quality goods and lower prices.

The reason? simples – we’ve been the victims of economies of scale and also of outright greed by the local businessmen.
The ability to scour online retailers for better deals and to get what I want is a huge boon. I buy nearly everything I can from sites such as play, amazon and also ebay.

In the past this was mainly due to price differences where we’d be fucked up the arse. Examples in electronics based on my obsessions with all things apple – you’d be able to go to NYC, buy mac book pro and have a nice holiday for the price they were selling a macbook pro here. I saved almost Lm100 on my ipod touch when it first came out.

Fortunately things have greatly improved – one great example being Klikk – their prices on Macs and PC components is fairly competitive with those abroad and their recent price match policy allowed me to get a game for the same price as what was available on play.

One massive problem consumers face here is that most items retain their original RRP throughout most of their shelf life rather than being aggressively discounted like they are abroad.

Also convenience wise – if I want to buy a pari of particular trainers I have to go Marsa or visit 10 different stores – instead I can check online and have items delivered at my door.

I would not want to be a Maltese retailer facing competition from abroad, the local ignorant customer (cos let’s face it, if you remove those who shop online from the local customer base you end up with a less erudite profile), the government taxes etc. However they still have to shape up and improve.

Though I am bewildered at the number of PS3 games that go missing in the post mmm…

I’m shopping around for a new phone. I obviously lust after an iPhone 4 being the apple fanboy that I am. Having said that I am in no position to afford a phone even half the price and have no need whatsoever for a contract.

So out of curiosity I went to see what the networks are offering. The iphone is priced on the following sites: scanmalta.com, klikk.com.mt, vodafone.com.m and go.com.mt at between 649 and 699

Melita in their wisdom claim that the phone is priced at €900. And even on their contracts it’s more expensive than the prepaid or contract versions.

I managed to install the damn thing on my macbook (2gb dual core 2ghz). It’s getting on a bit and only has an old intel integrated gfx card. Pretty long process as I installed it from a dvd. A pen drive would’ve been much quicker. I forgot to install the server options so I had to go back and install those.

First impressions are a mixed back. You expect to be wowed by apple but with this kitty, your first feeling is annoyance. Starting with the inverted scrolling. That’s going to throw lots of people off and fidgeting for the option to revert it back to normal. The scrolling paradigm used in touch devices doesn’t apply too well on desktops or laptops i think. I want the page to go down I tell the scrollbar to go down not up.

Another annoyance is the lack of display markers for open apps. It’s a bit confusing especially for someone who wants constant knowledge of what’s going on. I find it off-putting but once you get used to the way the OS treats apps you begin to see the reasoning behind this.

The icons in the sidebar – they are colourless and larger and they’ve changed the order. Why change things for change sake? That’s a MicroSoft way of doing things. The sidebar icons were fine as were other widgets.The new ios slider widgets are a hit and miss.

The scrollbars disappearing are a good idea – increases space. Good be slightly larger. The windows can now be resized better as you can resize them from all sides. Some window position snapping functions would be nice. Also, some better real time icons readjustment. In Snow leopard I have to keep readjusting window settings… cleanign up the icons and adjusting the thumbnail size. There should be an auto size function that better displays icons in a contact sheet format within the finder – a kinda built in photo viewer, integrating features you’d expect in iphoto, aperture or preview.

The dashboard has changed as well. Why? I don’t like the dull lego like grey background. there is a function to return it to the original transparent effect which is more pleasing.

The new dashboard is cool. I like it as an app launcher – does its job better than the previous stacks based solution from the dock. Still will be using keyboard based launch tools such as quicksilver though.

Mission control is cool – very intuitive but a bit buggy still (to be expected).

Full screen apps – hit an miss again – I like some of them but when i’m in full screen mode I’d still like to have my dock and the menu available permanently rather than it autohiding.

Screens – first introduced in leopard are now a bigger part of the os X paradigm. The full screen feature for apps basically gives the app its own screen. Switching between screens and desktops is very quick and intuitive. Lots of these features are great productivity increasing tools for portable computers. I am not sure how well these will translate on large screen desktops or multiple monitor setups.

Mail – not a fan of the side viewer – I’m too used to the top view fortunately there’s an option for that. Still no back and forth history browsing. Many times I jump between many unrelated emails without opening them – would love to be able to not having to hunt and peck for the same email three times in the space of 10 minutes (I know opening them will solve the issue).

Now for the good – Apple have created a new paradigm for working with apps in their new OS (paradigm is officially the word of the day here in frogbatia). Whereas before apps were opened, left open worked in then closed and the biggest and most important development in desktop OSes in the past 25 years was the ability to multitask and have multiple apps open at the same time, there was something artificial in this method. Apple are now moving towards a more intuitive app management system. With the big kitty you can almost consider every app at your disposal to be perpetually open. You run the program for the first time, it’s there, you quit it will save its state and when you reopen it it will resume that state with any documents you had open.

This extends to crash handling which will let you try and salvage your work before the app crashes all this will be interesting to see work with major and bloated apps such as those from MS, Adobe and even apple’s own very crash prone video software.

Performance is quite decent and though it was a clean install, the hardware is old – Safari felt a bit more sluggish but that was mainly on flash related pages and heck it’s a developer preview so there… Once you get passed the quiblles and the unnecessary changes you get the feeling that there is a lot of stuff going on that is there to make your experience better. However this will have to be testes in a demanding work environment to see how these new systems will behave when dealing with 1.5gb photoshop files, fucked up fonts etc

I managed to somehow obtain a copy of the new kitty. This one’s meant to have quite a loud roar. Unfortunately as i’m all hdded out, and didn’t feel like spendin more moneuy on my puter at the mo… I went for plan c. I burnt the os dmg onto a dvd.. it fits – yay. Now, I couldn’t install it on my laptop cos my laptop drive isn’t the original hdd.. it was a recycled external drive and doesn’t have a guid partition table. That’s something the os requires to install apparently. Wonder how come the previous smaller, mountain cat managed. So what i’ve done is remove the hdd, plugged it into my desktop and am using some partitioning sw to create another partition which will then be reformatted using guid tables (hopefully) and then place back into the latop in order to install the big kitty.

Rawr.