Sherlock Holmes

Rating: 5/10

This movie version of the classic Sherlock Holmes tales lacks emotional engagement and has a frenetic, yet soporific, pace. The movie stars Robert Downey Jr, an actor I've thoroughly enjoyed in several movies, most recently Iron Man. Downey's performance in Sherlock Holmes is entertaining, he portrays a quirky and moody Holmes with a striking personality resemblance to TV's House. While overall the movie may have lacked the anticipated magic, it is not without several significant virtues.

The Good:
+ Engaging cinematography

+ Fast action

+ Unique pre-action descriptions

The style of the film is unique among recent big budget movies. The camera work is artistic. They chose to use  a very large aperture for much of the film, which gave the shots a small depth of field. This shallow focus is what's responsible for the extreme blurring of background and foreground objects. The effect is that the director (Guy Ritchie) can choose a small area on which to focus the audience's attention. They also play with the speed of the film, speeding up and slowing down the photography.

Note the background blurring. This shot is only an okay example of
the depth of field, but all I could find online.

The best part of the movie was the action scenes. In particular, the pre-action descriptions were awesome. In these descriptions, Holmes narrates what he will do, and how it will effect his target while the visuals show the punches, slaps, etc in slow motion. This may sound like it would make the actual occurrence of the action less engaging, but it does the opposite. These descriptions create anticipation, and if they weren't provided, we wouldn't be able to follow the action at all. Overall, these pre-action descriptions are the best part of the movie, and something I hope others have opportunity to use in future movies.

RDJ's weight loss reportedly started with food poisoning,

but that kind of muscle doesn't come without some

serious weight lifting too: Sherlock Holmes Workout

The Bad:

- Plot

- Pace

- Characterization

The mystery of the film lacks intrigue. There are a couple of novel, "how did he do that?" puzzles, but overall, I didn't really care what was going to happen. The pace of the film kept changing. This movie is the rare instance where during action scenes I was excited and engaged, while during plot movement scenes I could barely keep my eyes open. This change of pace wouldn't have been a problem if the plot of the film (storyline elements) didn't feel artificial and forced. Rather than genuinely engaging us by creating characters we cared about, then putting those characters at risk, it feels as though we were assumed to care about the characters from the get go. Aside from the relationship between Holmes and Watson, none of the characters made a convincing connection, and so putting their relationships at risk offered no suspense. In particular, the connection between Holmes and Adler (Rachel McAdams) was  tenuous at best. It was obvious that there was a history between them, and the history is alluded to, but never elaborated upon. Yet, a significant portion of the plot depends on their feelings for each other.

Conclusion:

Sherlock Holmes is great for it's cinematography and poor for it's emotional engagement. Overall, I can't recommend this film, unless you would like to sit through a weak plot to get to the interesting visual elements. Did you like the Matrix II and III? You'll love Holmes. Otherwise, skip Holmes and go see Avatar.

Dvorak, Yay or Nay?

Sadly, for me, Nay. I used Dvorak for 4.5 months. The first month was difficult, I even got headaches from practicing. It's particularly difficult to learn Dvorak for someone who already types well with Qwerty. I learned to type very young, so Qwerty is pretty well ingrained in my subconscious. I touch type in Qwerty at 65-80wpm, depending on the content. After 1 month, I was typing in Dvorak at 50wpm, a respectable speed. After 4 months, I was back up to my old speed of 65-80wpm, and I may get faster. So what's the problem?

The main drawback is portability. I work in a lab, with 6 other people working on the same machines, I also use campus labs, as well as work on other people's personal machines. It's relatively easy to switch the keyboard layout in XP and Linux, but those few moments, switching it every time I open a new program, add up to quite an annoyance, particularly for short term use.

I've heard some people can switch from Qwerty to Dvorak and back seamlessly. I don't seem to be one of those people. Though, when I made the choice to switch back to Qwerty it took about 1 working day to regain full speed. Overall, it was a worthwhile experience. But until my home profile follows me around automatically, I think I'll stick with Qwerty.

Vista 64 Review

Summary: Vista64 isn't quite ready for primetime, at least for primetime as a dev environment, but it's getting there.

Programs that don't work:

• Dragon: there's currently no 64 bit version of Dragon and no eta on when there will be... kinda a deal breaker for developing the Virtual Patient much at home.
• TortoiseCVS - Solution: using Eclipse CVS (it's not integrated with the file system, but it has a nice UI)
• Asus ProbeII - Solution: just hope my temperatures are ok
• Daemon tools - only UltraISO works for mounting ISO's so far, and it's commercial
• BlueSoleil - No WiiTools. The dongle actually seems to get recognized by the Vista Bluetooth stack, but the Vista stack doesn't keep a connection with the Wiimote, it'll just make the connection and then drop it.

Drivers that don't work:

• Webcams - there are currently 2 usb webcams in existence that work with vista64, they're both expensive, $100+, and both from Microsoft. Solution: supposedly, Unibrain has vista64 drivers for the Fire-i, will be trying them this week.
• Audio drivers - my microphone works, but it doesn't sound good, can't be sure that's completely the drivers. Also the front panel audio plugs don't work any more either (they were fine on XP).

Other comments:
The only 64 bit programs running on my system came direct from Vista during installation as well as, amazingly, Maya. Everything else is run using WOW64 (Windows-on-Windows 64-bit), basically an emulator. It would have been much more effective to give a 32-bit Vista which emulates 64-bit, as OS X does now. WOW64 works well enough for most programs, but I'm currently seeing a significant frame rate drop on the Virtual Patient (24fps, down from 45fps).

Positives:
Visual Studio loads and closes WAY faster, couple of seconds instead of up to 30 seconds. Maya has some slight performance improvements. Of course, I also happened to put an extra 2GB of ram in just before I installed Vista, so I may just be seeing those improvements. I think the load time improvements are mainly due to Vista pre-caching.
The search/filter features are great. Very easy to use, just start typing in an open folder and it starts filtering, it's not instant, but it's fast.
The gadgets bar is entertaining. Weather, a calculator, funny clocks, can change the desktop on a timer, and a quicklaunch (not really necessary if you remember the name of the program you want).

Wrapping Up:
Vista 64 is almost ready. Give it 6 months and everyone can use it for everything. On the other hand, if we didn't develop specifically for Windows, I'd probably switch to Ubuntu and use Eclipse for all my dev, it just makes me happier.