I enjoyed it. It wasn’t nearly as good as the cartoon (more detail later), but taken on its own, for what it was, I thought it was OK. Not great, but certainly not deserving (IMHO) of the bashing it has received, especially relative to that other recent “Avatar” movie, which I thought was pretty bad (way worse than this).

It hit the main points of Season (Book) 1 of the cartoon. They obviously trimmed out a lot of detail, but that’s too be expected when condensing 20-something episodes down to a movie-length tale.

Keeping in mind the fact that I liked it – here are two of my nitpicks, followed by a general rant that isn’t specifically about this movie.

“Race-bending”

I’m not sure how prevalent this complaint is outside geek circles, but there is quite the controversy surrounding this movie in regards to the racial makeup of the cast. [Here's a brief overview of the main problem]

I think the problem as it relates to the main characters is definitely a bigger (perceived) deal to people more familiar with eastern or Asian cultures who were very aware of the ties that were present in the original cartoon (not as much in the movie), whereas it may not even occur to most other people, probably largely due to the manga-esque eye styling in the toon.

That being said, the voices for the main characters were spot-on, so that helped quite a lot. To be honest, I took much more of an exception (in regards to “racebending”) with the fire nation casting, but let’s not get off on that tangent.

Humor / Darkness

This was by far the biggest departure from the source material. The cartoon contained healthy doses of humor, usually coming from Sokka and sometimes uncle Iroh (my fave in the toon). In stark contrast, I can’t remember a single joke or humorous scene in this movie.

Even Aang is much more light-hearted (at times) in the toon. Sure, there were serious moments when he reflected on the reality of the things that had happened with the appropriate level of somberness, but in the movie they may has well just have changed his name to “Angst“. And this goes across the board for the whole story; I think when it came to chopping stuff out they just decided to eliminate all sense of happiness, which I don’t think was entirely necessary and definitely makes it a significantly different experience.

General Rant

The biggest problem that has been bothering me about this started well before this film was released (or even made). It’s the general concept of re-doing stories that have previously been told (well, in many cases) in animated form, as if animation is somehow not quite good enough, and that something can only be really big or significant as a live action feature. I call BS.

Taking this as an example, while it was OK, I’d strongly recommend to anyone that they get the DVDs of the cartoon series and watch those instead, and maybe only follow up with the live action version if they’re interested. I have the feeling that for a lot of people who see this version first, it might turn them off from the cartoon, which would be a shame, since it’s so much better.

Just in case you don’t believe me on that yet, here’s exhibit B: Transformers. I don’t know about you, but personally I think the recent live action versions have been steaming piles. Yes, I know the original cartoons were essentially just long toy commercials… and yes, I realize that they want to show off their cool, ever-evolving special effects powers by putting stuff on the screen that’s more “believable”. The problem is that they often end up going overboard at the expense of story-telling. In TF, the millions of interlocking and spinning gears on each character may have been “impressive”, but for me, it just wasn’t as good as plain old boxy robots; sorry.

Now I also know that the reason they do it is because the dollars prove that most people do not share my position on this (with rare exceptions like Pixar), but I guess that’s really the primary target of my rant: people who for some reason can’t grasp the idea that great stories might be available in animated form, so they won’t even pay attention to any of them until someone “live-action”’s them up. The problem is that conversion is almost always for the worse. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but at the moment I can’t think of a single case in which the live action was better (IMHO) than the original cartoon.

The iOS/AppStore model is essentially making the same appeal as AOL (vs. open internet) in the early 90’s – safer, polished, easier to use.

Unfortunately, the constraints of Twitter just make it too difficult to really explain or discuss that kind of thing, so I thought I’d flush out what I meant by it here instead.

What prompted this initially was I was thinking back to the early 90’s when I had a NetCom (“real” internet) dial-up account. Almost everyone else I knew personally who was “online” was using either AOL or some similar competitor (CompuServe, etc.). More specifically, I was thinking about how I used to try to explain to people why the “real” internet was so much better than the AOL walled garden, and mostly I was remembering (having flashbacks to) how utterly unsuccessful those attempts were.

People still weren’t sure whether WWW stood for wild, wild west or world wide web; all they “knew” was that there were dangerous hackers waiting to infest their computers with all manner of virii and use them to launch nukes at Russia after draining their bank accounts. Not to mention the porn. And, perhaps the most frightening of all, the people talking to each other unmoderated, uncensored, and anonymous. But most importantly of all they “knew” that AOL was “keeping them safe” from all of this. (of course all these things they “knew” weren’t accurate, but the important part was that they believed them).

But even those who weren’t put off that way (intimidated away from the open net and towards AOL) still had little interest in the open internet. Another common reason was the usability. AOL was insanely easy to get up and running relative to a true internet account. AOL’s content was polished and clean; the internet was extremely messy and for the most part ugly (relatively speaking). AOL was the gatekeeper, because you don’t want “just anyone” putting stuff out there with no “quality control” – that would be a disaster.

Truly the only real, substantial and present (at the time) appeal of the “true” internet over AOL in those days was one thing: freedom. The problem is that for most people, that isn’t a benefit they can see, feel, or imagine in the moment. Its biggest payoff really comes in the long run, but that’s not a trade-off most people are willing to make for ease of use and beauty today.

However, the primary encouraging thought that occurred to me was this: it didn’t actually matter that I wasn’t able to sway many people over to what I saw / foresaw as the ultimate better solution, because all of the advantages that a free platform offered DID eventually cause it to surpass the walled garden approach, and looking back now, I think it’s easy to see that it was the inevitable conclusion.

Yes, it took a long time. Yes, most web sites still sucked. Most (going by raw numbers / percentages) still do. Yes, there were/are dangers out there to be dealt with. And (perhaps most importantly), all along the way the “average user” never really cared much at all about the conflict, or was even aware that it existed. In spite of all those things, enough people, motivated by both creative opportunity and commercial gain, embraced the open platform and eventually made the walled garden model it was competing with obsolete.

Basically, the point of all of this was that it is both futile and unnecessary for me to try to convince people to see things from my point of view in regards to issues like the Apple App Store. It doesn’t really negatively impact me much personally, and most people just don’t care, and they don’t need to. I think there is too much to be gained by the success of the open alternative for it not too eventually overtake the ultra-closed / restrictive model. So I’m not really going to worry about it too much anymore, and I don’t think anyone else really needs to either. Awareness is still important, but for the people who aren’t, it’s no big deal. They’ll eventually get off of AOL once the plug has been pulled and/or the rest of the world has moved on / passed them by.

*Quick note: with one huge exception (the ending – which I will cover last so that you can skip it), this post will contain no specific plot point references, for the purposes of preserving a spoiler-free experience for anyone who wants to read this but hasn’t yet watched the show. I personally feel this is essential to the full enjoyment of the show, as is watching every episode in order from beginning to end, in the same way you wouldn’t turn to the last page / chapter of a book and read it before or instead of the whole story. However, I will gladly discuss particular details in the comments for this post, so consider that a spoiler warning / invitation.

Introduction

Anyone who knows me probably knows that I have been a huge fan of the show for quite a while. While ranking TV programs is obviously a hugely subjective task (especially across genres, etc.), I’m pretty comfortable in saying that IMHO this is up there in my top 5 – possibly only topped by the Twilight Zone. I think it was ground-breaking in its story-telling approach, ranging from the creative exploitation of the concept of mystery (more on that later) to the minute details that make the show great in ways you might not even notice unless you’re paying attention. For example, the musical score was such a subtly important part, carefully crafted to guide the viewer on an emotional level through the twists and turns of the unfolding drama.

What about the unanswered questions?

There is a lot of ground to cover here, and I won’t address most of the specific points in the post, but will happily do so in the comments, for the reasons mentioned above. I think in some cases (many actually, and I have as many theories as anyone else) there are clear enough answers present; it’s just that they weren’t all spoon-fed and spelled out, in order to leave room for personal interpretation and also just to avoid dumbing things down. However, at the same time it’s undeniable that some things just flat out weren’t explained. And I’m so glad for that.

It’s the element of mystery that I would give the most credit for what made this show so great. If you haven’t already watched / read / listened to J.J. Abrams’ TED talk on the Mystery Box go do it now. The process of wondering is so much more important and enjoyable than even finally finding the “answer” ever could be. I believe that in some cases even the most creative answer can never possibly be as satisfying as the question and all that exploring the question may lead to.

A well done mystery invites the observer (reader, viewer, etc.) into the actual creative process of the work. Much in the same way that a reader of a good book collaborates with the original authors as their mind constructs the visual and aural representation of the world they are being guided through by mere text on a page, a well crafted mystery draws the observer into an investment in the story that goes beyond what any writers would be capable of delivering on their own. The theories of what could be captivate the imagination and compel one to explore all the possibilities that the narrative itself exposes in a way that is unique to (and thus uniquely enjoyable by) each observer.

As the story progressed, some mysteries were inevitably answered, but thankfully (although some would say frustratingly) they often led to yet more questions. I submit that it’s the questions, not the answers that those of us who loved the show enjoyed so much. Think about it: looking back, would you say “the others” (as a concept) were a more interesting / compelling part of the story before or after you found out more about them?

The End

*This part will contain spoilers, so I’d urge you to not read it if you haven’t already watched the whole show.

The ending of the show is understandably at the forefront of everyone’s minds. I suspect that most people watching didn’t really have any solid idea of how it would end (which is exactly as it should be), but I also suspect that even after seeing it, some people may feel a bit unsure about how the ending connects to the rest of the show in a meaningful way, and therefore are unsure about how they feel about it.

Here’s my take on it: the whole “afterlife” angle did not come out of the blue, but rather was an integral part of the foundation of the story all along. There are probably hundreds of ways to explore this aspect, most of which I’m sure I haven’t thought of. I would offer for consideration that fact that since episode one of season one, theories about purgatory / the afterlife / atonement, etc. abounded. Of course, now we know that the exact details of the story have unfolded and connected to this concept in a way that (I suspect) no one fully saw coming, but at the same time I think it’s undeniable that the groundwork was always there in some form.

Specifically, (as an example) I always felt that the “flashbacks” weren’t only a creative story-telling technique, although they certainly were that. I think they were also showing the island (through forces that thankfully remain largely a mystery) actually bringing aspects of each character’s character (history, etc.) to the surface and “dealing” with it by presenting them with situations on the island that related to their past experiences. Through this process / journey, often involving extremely unlikely events or even supernatural “coincidences”, many of the characters were directed down a path that eventually led to closure or “redemption” in their lives. In several cases, once that had occurred (their time was done), they died. This is only one illustration of how the island was closely bound to the afterlife all along, preparing the people on it and helping them wrap up their lives in the time they had left, before passing on.

I think some of the people who may have felt left hanging a bit perhaps may have been those who were more invested in the sci-fi side of the various theories behind some aspects of the show. While I certainly count myself among those sci-fi fans, I also recognize that first and foremost, this was always a story about the characters on the show, not necessarily (primarily) the intriguing backdrop that their stories play out on. The whole show constantly referenced the intricate connections that bind people together in life. These connections are so fundamental that life itself cannot be extracted or separated from those bonds, because they are actually part of what composes life (and whatever lies beyond). I think in light of that, the ending of the show couldn’t have been more fitting.

Loosely based on some inspiration around the topic of resolutions for the new year, in conjunction with wanting to figure out a way to commit to releasing a lot of the side projects that pop up in my mind and occasionally make it to the point where I do some development work on, I decided that this year I will be working towards a goal of releasing one app / product / service / project every month.

That’s how Agile Story was born. At this stage it’s simply an experiment in making something useful out of some things I do in my spare time. I do think that some of these may have the potential to become something more in the future, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The first release (and yes, it was released in January, even though I’m just getting around to writing about it now – you can ask Martha!) is 30/40/30 meals. You can read a bit more about it on the release announcement on the Agile Story site.

I haven’t decided how much technical detail I want to go into in terms of the description posts on that site yet, so for now I’ll just mention here that it’s a Rails app that makes a lot of use of AJAX for the meal editing. Anyway, feel free to check it out and ask any questions or provide any feedback (positive and negative both welcomed) here. I never claimed to have a great eye for design, so I’d appreciate any suggestions in that regard. I’d also be interested in hearing from anyone who gives the application a try, especially people who are familiar with the Zone diet and/or may be interested in using it for their meal planning.

PS – I recommend using a browser like Firefox or Chrome; it will still work fine in IE, but those other browsers are a bit faster with the javascript and it will look a tad nicer too.

There are always tons of posts about whatever FB change has just occurred, even from people who rarely post. I don’t want to call it whining, but a decent percentage of them are usually stating that the change has negatively impacted them in some significant way. If measured by these attributes (posting frequency / percentage and degree of emotion or conviction) their “relative” degree of interest in the FB UI would seem to be high.

Thankfully (hopefully), we can be sure that for most people it can’t really be that important to them relative to all the other stuff in their lives; it’s just that they just choose not to post much about those other things for various reasons.

Food for thought…

They’ve both recently released reader applications for the PC (meaning – for them – Windows only, and soon for Mac), but no equivalent versions have been announced for Linux. I can only assume that this is because they are afraid that the Linux OS will allow for easier hacking / working around the DRM features of the app. While this is probably true, it’s a frustrating reminder that these guys haven’t learned the lessons that the music industry already spent a lot of time and effort trying (unsuccessfully) to ignore / avoid.

This case in particular is doubly frustrating, because the original devices themselves (Kindle and the B&N Nook) are both actually based on Linux themselves, so their software certainly would work in Linux, if they chose to allow it.

This leads one to believe that the hardware almost certainly employs a tactic that has become known as “Tivoization“, a practice that exploits a loophole in earlier versions of licenses like the GPL, which has been addressed in v3 of that license. The term was coined because of the Tivo hardware, which used Linux as a base and therefore was required to be released under the GPL, but the hardware itself imposed constraints designed to prevent the running of any modified software, even though the modifications had to be allowed under the license.

The same probably applies to the Roku Netflix player, which supports instant watch streaming and is also built on Linux, while at the same time Netflix does not support a player for general purpose Linux use.

While the Kindle reader app will work on Linux under WINE (just verified it now on my system), I’m really hoping these guys will eventually “see the light” and stop doing this kind of thing. I think the best hope on this front is currently Android. As it continues to gain ground, I hope that the pressure to release a reader app on that platform will allow them to overcome these hesitations.

A quick lesson in the importance of consistency of meaning in terms you use on your site. Doing things like this skews the meaning of those gestures by the user and therefore makes them (and to some degree, the site itself) less valuable.

Details

I heard an announcement on the gdgt podcast today (an old podcast, but I just heard it now, so no grief about “old news” please) about a promo they are running where users can try to win a blackberry phone from a pool of phones (two models) they are giving away.

It’s a fine enough idea for a contest, but the problem is that the way you enter the contest is to log on to the site (gdgt) and add one (or both) of the devices to your “want” list. I see this as a mistake, since (as a user) your lists of devices on that site (“Have”, “Want”, etc.) form the core part of what the site is about.

Having people indicate that they “want” one or both of these phones (in order to enter the contest to win them) seems like a major mistake, because lots of people will indicate that they “want” the phones even though it isn’t actually a true measure of whether they really “want” it, relative to the criteria they’re using for marking other things on the site as “wanted”. By doing this, it is (IMHO) polluting the meaning of a term that seems like it should be very important within their system.

The counter argument is that if you don’t really want it then don’t enter the contest, but that is a bit silly as well. There are wide variations of what want could mean; the important thing is to keep that meaning consistent (for a given user) for their use of the site. As an illustration, I don’t “want” either of those phones. I definitely wouldn’t plan to buy them now or in the future (one possible interpretation of “want”), and I don’t even think I’d pick them up if I had enough cash to make the cost irrelevant (another possible definition), although I would gladly accept one for free (the only definition that applies in the case of the contest).

What do you think?

This is an example of how to use the “externals” feature of Subversion in order to simplify the maintenance of your software project when it contains references to other libraries or projects that are hosted on their own repositories, and you want to keep them all updated from their respective sources without having to do any tedious copying / exporting, etc.

This particular long, rambling example will use a somewhat typical WordPress installation, with a couple minor organizational tweaks to keep things simple and clean.

Working Backwards

I’ll start by laying out what the end result will look like, and then walk through the steps of how to get there.

The goal in this case is to have a single SVN repo (under your control) which you can use to manage your complete package (in this case a WP install), but internally have it contain your own stuff but also pull from several different “external” SVN repositories (WP core + various separate plugin and theme repos) that you don’t need to manage or copy things from.

The obvious benefit here is that you end up with a single SVN source that you can put on your server(s) with a single svn co http://your.repo.url and keep updated with a simple svn up or svn switch http://your.repo.url/tags/1.2.3 if you use tags to manage your releases (which I recommend, but that’s a topic for another post).

Basic Directory Structure

This is the part that may be a bit different than you’re used to, but I find this structure to be much easier to work with when doing stuff like this, and recent versions of WordPress have supported this (moving wp-content and wp-config.php somewhere other than their standard locations) for quite a while.

So assuming we’re starting with a blank directory that is a local checked out copy of your trunk/ directory, here is what the end result will look like once we’re done (just so you’re ready). Assuming we’re under something like /var/www/yoursite/, you’d have three items in that directory:
*NOTE: See this comment below about making sure you start with an empty dir, and that the local target dirs you reference in externals do not exist before SVN creates them by loading the external.

core/
wp-content/
wp-config.php
Where

• core will be a copy of the WordPress core files, linked via an svn:externals reference to the latest tagged release of WordPress, and fetched automatically from their servers. This is the dir that your apache vhost should map to as its root.
• wp-content is where all your themes and plugins (among other things) will go. This will contain a mix of plugins and themes from other sources (via svn:externals) plus whatever themes and plugins we add to this repo itself.
• wp-config.php This will be a copy of your WordPress config file. I usually keep it on it’s own out here, and exclude it from the subversion repository by adding it to svn:ignore. That’s perhaps another post for another time, but I just don’t add it to the repo since my local and server passwords are different, and I don’t want either sitting out in a repo that I may or may not want to make public at some point. Also it helps to stick to the rule that you don’t need to modify any files (other than .htaccess) under the core directory.

OK, so far so good. If you are not cool with that project layout, it’s possible to use other structures, but I wouldn’t recommend it, and won’t answer any questions supporting it.

Step by Step – How To Get There

So, starting in a blank directory (checked out copy of your trunk, which should be empty at this point), first you want to set your SVN_EDITOR if you haven’t already.
export SVN_EDITOR=vi, substituting vi for your text editor of choice.

Step 1 – Core WP files

Within this directory, type the following command to add the first external reference to WordPress itself:
svn propedit svn:externals .and add the following (single) line of text:
core http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.8.2then save and close the file.

To get a preview of the magic now at work, go ahead and check in your changes and then update:
svn ci
svn upYou should notice that when your local copy goes to update from your SVN repo it now also knows to go pull down the contents from the Automattic WP repo you linked to and put them in a directory called “core”.

Step 2 – wp-content

Now that we have the core dir handled, we want to make a wp-content dir, under which we’ll put all of our custom content, in addtion to other external plugins and themes.

Again assuming you are in the same directory as above (which should now only contain the “core” directory, issue the following command to get a clean copy of the wp-content that was retrieved from WP:svn export core/wp-content wp-content* Do not just do a normal copy here, because that will copy the SVN info from the dir as well, which will screw you up.

Now we’ll add a couple themes from other external repos. svn propedit svn:externals .and append the following two lines of text (after the existing core line):
wp-content/themes/redoable-lite http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/redoable-lite

wp-content/themes/sandbox http://sandbox-theme.googlecode.com/svn/trunkthen save and close the file.

svn ci
svn up and we will see that those two themes right where they belong inside of our wp-content directory.

I could make this post even longer by illustrating linking to additional external plugins, etc., but it would work the same way as what I just did for themes. I’m sure you’ve got the hang of that by now.

All your other changes within this wp-content directory (your own themes and plugins, etc.) will be handled just like you’re used to with SVN; it’s just that now you’ll also have other content in there that you don’t need to manage yourself.

Step 3 – wp-config

This step isn’t strictly related to the svn:externals thing, but you’ll need it in order to follow the structure I laid out above.

cp core/wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php This is now your official config file, and you’ll need to edit it as normal to point it at your database, etc.

WP is smart enough to find this file here (assuming you don’t have one under the core dir), but you’ll also just want to add an entry in that wp-config file to tell it to use the alternate wp-content directory we were working with in step 2, instead of the one under the core directory. In wp-config, add the line:
define( 'WP_CONTENT_DIR', '/var/www/yoursite/wp-content' );
Depending on your configuration, you may or may not also need to add an entry for ‘WP_CONTENT_URL’, but I wouldn’t bother with that unless you find you need it. You may also want to add Alias /wp-content /var/www/yoursite/wp-content to your Apache vhost config as well.

Upgrading – AKA The Payoff

I should start by clarifying that I do not use the built in WP updating mechanisms for core WP or plugins, because I prefer to manage everything from SVN this way.

I find it easier to work with anyway, and it also has the added benefits of supporting more restrictive file permissions on the server, as well as allowing you to work with and test a local copy that you know is exactly the same combination of core files, plugins, etc. as what you will eventually put on your server, because you are pulling it all from the same place: your SVN repo.

Let’s say WP releases 2.8.3. You will simply svn propedit svn:externals .and change the URL reference for the core dir to point to the 2.8.3 release:
core http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.8.3then save and close the file. You can also change any other externals refs (plugins & themes) to their latest versions.
svn up will then update your local copy with all the latest references from your external sources. Test everything out locally, and then once you are happy svn ci and your latest config is checked in, ready to be updated on your server, via svn up or svn switch.

Closing Remarks

If you’re more of a hands on learner and want to follow along but also explore a reference, here is the trac view of the trunk of the repo I was using as a demo for this article, and the corresponding SVN repo itself as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read this (assuming anyone got this far). Any questions?

While working on my theme a bit last night, I accidentally posted an unfinished draft post that I had been working on (and put on hold) about using svn:exnternals. Sorry for any confusion; I’ll finish that one up shortly.

I’m going with “block”.

Twitter recently went through a round of cleaning up spam accounts, and a lot of people have noticed their follower counts dropping because of it. That inspired me to take another list at the “people” following me, and weed out several more that Twitter hadn’t deemed as “spam”, although I think they may have understandably been trying to be conservative for fear of trashing a “real” account.

No harm, no foul?

In the beginning, I was of the opinion that it didn’t matter too much to me if these other people (or bots, etc.) wanted to follow me, because I still wouldn’t see stuff from them unless I followed them in return. That position is still pretty much true, in that their actions don’t ever really impact my day to day use.

The one issue that changed my mind and made me think that it might be a negative thing to “allow” these kinds of followers is that search engines may index those links, and give their Twitter account “link juice” by following it from my page. It’s not clear whether this happens or not, but I’d prefer to avoid being a part of it just in case.

So, how to decide?

I basically just went through and cleaned up (blocked) any followers who appeared “spammy”. I give a free pass to anyone I actually know, and in a few cases some local businesses that I’m OK with giving whatever benefit they may get from following me.

Other than those, I just try to decide whether it’s a “real” person with a genuine interest in following me, and if not, I axe them. Some of the indicators I use for “blocking” criteria are:

• Following tons of people without reciprocation (“following” count is way higher than “followers”)
• Primarily “marketing” related content (usually web / social network “experts”, etc.)
• Majority of their tweets are just links promoting their own web site / blog

There are probably others, but that covers a good deal of them. In rare cases, I’ll see a person I don’t know who seems “normal” enough, so I give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re honestly interested in following my posts, so I’ll usually leave them.

What Do You Think?

I’m curious to hear how other people go about making this decision, or whether you’re in the “who cares” camp and let anyone follow you.

Now that I’ve gotten my list paired down, I think I’m going to be more careful about weeding out every new follower, blocking them immediately if they seem suspicious according to my standards.