Tgr::Box

Disclaimer: I can’t take credit for coming up with this.  I saw this information in a comment thread on a news aggregation site and thought it would be useful to capture and rebroadcast it.

The new Facebook personalization feature extends some of the FB like/etc functionality to third-party websites.  A side effect of this “feature” is that FB gets information about one’s browsing habits on said websites whether or not one avails oneself of said feature.  If this doesn’t sound like a good deal, there is a way that this can be prevented.  Adblock Plus is a free ad and content filtering addon for the Firefox web browser.  Normally one subscribes to a service that maintains a list of common filtering rules, but it is also possible to add your own rules as well.

This is a set of rules that will thwart this cross-site snooping on the part of Facebook.  Install Adblock Plus if you do not already have it, open up the Preferences dialog box and use the Add Filters button to add the following 4 filter rules (copy these exactly, each line is one filter):

||facebook.com/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||facebook.net/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.com/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.net/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

These rules will not interfere with using Facebook itself.  What they will do is prevent other websites from talking to FB while you are using them.  If you happen to think (as I do) that Facebook should concern itself with what you do on FB, but not other websites, these filtering rules will fill the bill.

Bonus tool: The software company Untangle has cooked up a little tool you run in your browser called SaveFace.  You run it in your browser while you are logged into FB and it will lock all of your settings down to Friends Only in one easy step.  Installation and use instructions on the aforementioned page.

I never really used the Genius feature in iTunes much since I pretty much have all of my shuffling goodness taken care of by a bunch of Smart Playlists.  But I was pretty intrigued by the new Genius Mixes – 12 auto-generated radio station-like mixes derived from your library and Genius information.  So I decided to give it a spin because it does sound pretty fun if it works.

The one that first jumped out as me was a mix based on Electric Light Orchestra, Steely Dan and Suga Shikao – a Japanese singer-songwriter that I like.  I thought that this was an intriguing and eclectic starting spot for a mix.  I also had them filed in different genres, so Genius was clearly not doing simple genre-matching.  And hey, it seemed like it would work.  So while I was working, I fired that one up to see what it came up with.  Turns out that it would have been a good mix had I wanted to listen to an ELO song, followed by a Steely Dan song, followed by a Suga Shikao song, followed by an ELO song, lather, rinse, and repeat.  Not so awesome.

Went back to the selection screen to seek a different mix.  Perhaps the first one was a little too eclectic for the Genius algorithm.  Ah-ha – one based on Queen, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Tom Petty.  Certainly they can manage to toss together a serviceable classic rock mix.  That one got off to a decent start with Honky Tonk Women, but in a couple moves I was getting Roxy Music ballads and some crappy NeoProg I didn’t know I even had.  Now, while I realize having the crappy NeoProg was indeed my fault, in my defense I had forgotten about it, and either way, it really had no business being in that mix.

So I punted and went back to classic Genius configuration – select a specific tune and then hit the Genius button.  At least that way you can see what is in the generated mix.  I started off with Tempted by Squeeze – expecting a peppering of 80’s New Wave, assorted Power Pop and perhaps some other British singer-songwriters like Graham Parker or Richard Thompson.  Instead it coughed up some Rush and pulled tracks from the single Grateful Dead album I have.  Strike three.

Another flaw of note: it seems to completely ignore user ratings.  I know not everyone rates all their stuff since it can be a pain.  However, I would expect that it would prioritize on higher-rated stuff if someone had rated everything as I have.  Apparently not.

I really like the Genius/Genius Mix idea, but sadly it still seems to be pretty half-baked.  Time to go back to the good old Smart Playlists.

Sanctuary?

I’ve been seeing this sidewalk spray-paint stencil graffito appearing with increasingly regularity in various parts of my (and perhaps your) fair city.  It seems that as the economic news/reality gets worse, I encounter more of these public statements of discontent.

I know that things are bad everywhere, but it seems that San Francisco in particular is particularly volatile whenever the economy swings too far to either of the boom/bust extremes.  The rumblings of class war back in the go-go 90’s was an example of how things get when it swings the other way.

And if you’re not familiar with the lingo, Sanctuary City is a term for a city (like SF) that by way of policy does not aid enforcement of Federal immigration laws.  A somewhat controversial status.  I think that this is an interesting re-purposing of the term.

We’ll see how things go with this.  I really hope that this is not a return of that rage from a decade ago.

Headed up to the Sundance Kabuki theatre (which is, incidentally, the most enjoyable, fun and civilized place to see a movie in San Francisco) to catch an matinee of Watchmen before the entire Internet spoiled it for me. And overall, I really have to give it a thumbs up. With a story of that scope, things simply need to get cut and I think they did a good job deciding what needed to stay and what had to go. And while some have expressed their disapproval of decisions like substituting the faux Dr. Manhattan attack for the Giant Squid, in the end, it still retained the “point” of the story. And while it enraged the purists to rename the group The Watchmen, I will assert without hesitation that it’s better than a sophomoric name like Crimebusters.

Moreover, at the risk of committing blasphemy against a bit of geek canon, I can’t say that the source material was without chaff in the first place. The Silk Spectre I and II backstory got way too much page time as far as I was concerned, and the point that Dr. Manhattan experiences time in a quantum fashion was nailed home a bit too much as well. I’ll probably commit the biggest heresy by saying that I thought that the whole Black Freighter story was pretty redundant as well. I didn’t require an analogy to the story I was already reading while I was reading it. So I was glad that all of those got pared down. And while I thought the Black Freighter bit was overdone, I think that the way they are releasing it as a separate direct-to-video release is a smart and intriguing move.

Random observations…

Stuff that was categorically good:

• The opening credits. Not only were they visually interesting, but that was a really smart way to touch on the backstories of the first generation of masked adventurers. They obviously could not spend too much screen time on that and I thought that handing it that way was smart and very interesting from a narrative point of view.
• Casting and performances for Rorschach and The Comedian. Jeffrey Dean Morgan really brought the character of The Comedian alive for me, and I enjoyed the cinematic performance much more than the portrayal in the source material. In the novel he was just a pig, but in the movie he was pure psychotic misanthropy. And holy crap, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach was dead on (masked and otherwise).
• New looks for Nite Owl II and Ozymandias. I think that the “darker” looks of both of their costumes worked really well, especially in the case of Nite Owl. Additionally, I really liked the “more Bowie and less Prince Valiant” look that actor Matthew Goode brought to Ozymandias too. Made him a touch more sinister.
• It was amazingly well-paced. Two and three-quarters of an hour is a pretty long movie. But unlike other recent longish movies (like The Dark Knight), I never had a sense of “sitting through a long movie”. Takes a good touch to pull that off.
• Violence. Watchmen is a dark and violent story and that was going to be reflected in the movie. While some of the violent scenes were pretty cringe-worthy (and I’m not really a shrinking violet on that mark), I don’t think that it ever strayed into the realm of “gratuitous”.
• Fight scenes. The murder of The Comedian, Nite Owl/Silk Spectre vs. The Street Punks and the Ozymandias/Nite Owl/Rorschach three-way were all really well choreographed.  Rorschach continuing to put his hat back on while getting his ass handed to him during that last fight scene tickled me.  I love that crazy guy.

Criticisms and questions:

• Nixon overdose. Don’t you just briefly glimpse him on a single page of the novel? I really can’t quite figure out why that change was made. I think that the more subtle handling of the political climate in the source material was much better. And while I think that Nixon was a total rat bastard, his nose was never that goofy looking.
• Bungling Rorschach’s backstory. In a general sense, I don’t think they spent enough time on the brutality of Rorschach’s early life. It’s a big key to why he is the way he is. Additionally the change to the “Birth Of Rorschach” flashback was stupid. Pouring kerosine all over the place, offering the child murderer a “difficult choice” and then watching the place burn was more interesting and metaphorically rich than just cleavering the guy in the head a couple of times.
• Nite Owl I and II plot hole. I recall the vigilante murder of Nite Owl I being a pretty salient part of the Nite Owl II story. Excluding that left a pretty big loose end in the narrative. Since they chose to omit that part, they may as well have left all out the content with Nite Owl I since it sort of goes nowhere without the bitter end.
• Surprised they omitted the party scene where Silk Spectre II confronts The Comedian about the attempted rape of her mother. Wouldn’t have required much screen time and I thought that part really ratcheted up the tension between those characters. I would have included that and was surprised that it got cut. Same deal with skipping over the pressure Laurie was under to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Sort of a salient point.
• Something was missing in the final scenes at Karnak II. I can’t totally put my finger on it, and the events follow the source material for the most part. But it was just missing a certain je ne sais quoi. It was not a deal breaker but it still felt lacking. Perhaps because it didn’t want to go all the way with the “this is not exactly a happy ending” vibe.

So that’s an additional two cents in the ever-filling “Internet Watchmen change jar”. Looking forward to a second watch sometime in the next week or so with someone who has not read the source yet. Screw the purists. This was a really good movie.  Looking forward to the inevitable extended dance remix DVD.