Diary of a Network Geek

Pandorum

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Pandorum Sunday morning.

It was okay, but nothing fantastic, frankly, or overly surprising.
The premise is simple enough; a flight crew wakes up from an extended hypersleep on an enormous spacecraft that seems to be either abandoned or damaged, but they don’t know what or why and no one is there to tell them what’s going on.

But, of course, it’s more complicated than just firing up the computer and reading the ship’s log.  The power is out, mostly, except for power surges that are almost more trouble than the lack of power that seems to be the rule.  The flight crew is missing one person and suffering from a kind of temporary amnesia caused by the extended hypersleep, but things start to come back to them quickly.  The officer of the team, a Leutenant played by Dennis Quaid, gets enough emergency power routed to the local workstation to discover that the ship’s reactor is going to overload, or rather, it’s going into emergency shutdown before it does actually overload.  The Corporal, played by Ben Foster, just happens to have remembered that he knows how to restart the reactor and save the ship and everyone on it.  All he needs to do is get to it, which means getting past a whole lot of bulkhead doors effectively locked due to the power fluctuations.  Naturally, that means he’s going to have to crawl through a whole lot of very strange, ooky ducts that lead to a lot of eerie, drippy, abandoned corridors.

The thing is, as huge as the ship is, most of the crew and passengers aren’t there or awake.  And, while wandering the corridors, looking for a way to the reactor, the Corporal remembers that they’re a colony ship, sent to create a new Earth on a very distant planet.  A one-way trip meant to off-load a significant portion of the population of an over-stressed, worn-out, abused Earth and give humanity a new start.  Which makes it even more confusing that they seem to be all alone.
Only, it turns out, they’re not alone.  Something else is there.  Something human-like, but more animal.  Something that hunts in packs and seems to know the ship quite well.  Something that’s hunted the other flight crews down for food.  And, at least some of the colonists, too, as it turns out.
The Corporal runs into two colonists, each involved in life-sciences of one kind or another, who have learned to live in the dark, corroded ship, hiding from the alien things who have made it their hunting ground.

Well, that’s the basics of the movie.
It’s not a bad premise for a story, actually.  In fact, in one form or another, it’s been used in science-fiction for many years.  It was even the basis of at least one sci-fi role-playing game.  This movie handles the topic quite well, I think.  It produces a fairly realistic set of circumstances, if it’s possible to create a “realistic” setting in a science-fiction setting.  Then, it puts reasonable people in that setting and applies pressure.  I think that is the essence of a good story, whether in a movie or a book.  People are at their most interesting when they’re under significant pressure, when they’re given a chance to show their true character.
The sets are very much like the sets we saw in Alien, and many, many times since.  It’s nothing particularly new anymore, but I think Pandorum does it better than I’ve seen since the Alien movies, so it was fine and not over-done at all.  It is a dark movie, in both the cinematography and the theme are dark.  The sets are mostly in shadow and odd emergency lighting, reinforcing the idea that no one knows what’s going on and what dangers might be lurking just off screen.  And, of course, the idea that an entire ship of people, an entire colony, might be lost at any moment and the possibility that something sinister already has happened to them are themes that are ever-present and weigh heavily on both the characters and the audience.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a good science-fiction horror movie, but I have to say, Pandorum was that.  It wasn’t great, but it was good.  It’s hard not to compare it to Alien, since that was the first true sci-fi horror movie I ever saw.  But, it’s no where near as good as Alien.  Still, Pandorum is worth seeing on the big screen if you like scary, tense science-fiction films.  And, I did enjoy it.

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Yeah, so now I’m reviewing iPhone apps.

One aspect of my personal life that probably doesn’t come through that much on this blog is how concerned I am about health and, specifically, my weight. Now, some of this may come from having been married to a self-diagnosed anorexic, but, mostly, it goes further back than that.  In any case, weight and general health have always been a concern for me, but even more so since surviving cancer.  So, I know from all the health magazines I read that one of the greatest tools for weight loss is tracking caloric intake.  I had been doing this via a Moleskine, but I always had to look up the calories in a book or on a website or something.  It was just challenging enough to make me want to quit.  So, naturally, when I got an iPhone, I went looking for an app that let me do record my intake that way.  Enter FoodScanner.

Not only does this fantastic app have seemingly endless lists of food, including many popular restaurant menus, but you can scan the barcode on the package and it will automagically find the food and all the nutrition information for it.  But, wait!  If that’s not in the database yet, you can add it in manually and link the barcode yourself!  How cool is that!  Seriously, I love this thing.  It’s made it so much easier to track my calories I can’t believe I ever lived without it.  And, at $0.99 it’s a real bargain, especially if you want to work on consuming less to lose weight.  Fantastic!

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Now, as cool as FoodScanner is, what’s even cooler is the free app that goes with it called DailyBurn.  To get the full functionality, it does require that you setup a free account with their service, but, trust me, it’s totally worth it.  Once you’ve setup your free account, DailyBurn will get the calorie and nutrition information you put in with FoodScanner and use that, so you don’t have to enter it twice.

Now, as you’ll notice from the screen shot to the right, the default screen on DailyBurn shows you your caloric intake, what you’ve burned via work outs, and your current and goal weight.  There’s also a tracker to show if you’ve met your workout and nutritional goals, which I’ll mention later.  This page, as you might have guessed from the title “Today’s Stats”, is updated daily, which they define as 12:00AM to 12:00AM.

Notice, though, that the Nutrition indicator only shows when you’ve met all your “goals”, which, frankly, aren’t quite my actual goals.  For one thing, I want to keep my calorie consumption below what they have as a goal, so as to lose weight.  Also, notice the “Upgrade to Pro” link.  That takes you to a sign-up screen for a monthly membership, which I didn’t want to get roped into paying.  Not sure what the upgrades are, actually, but one presumes additional control over goals and additional exercises and other options.

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

On the screenshot to the left, of this paragraph, you can see the “Body Tracker” page.  Here you can track any number of physical characteristics including weight, waist size, body fat, resting heart rate, arm size and many more.  Frankly, it’s got all the recording features of any big program that you could want.  Also, if you upgrade your free account, which I have not done, to a “Pro” account, there are even more things you can track, like sleep levels.

I like having the chart to see how well, or poorly, I’ve been doing over time.  Sure, maybe it’s a little bit over-kill, but, I’ll be honest, I love charts and graphs and stats.  My favorite page on my Flickr account is the stats page.  It’s true; I’m a stat whore.  So, yes, this feature appeals to me.  Your mileage may vary.

Also, like I mentioned, I didn’t want to get started paying a monthly fee for something I may not continue to use in the long-term, so there may be additional features here that are worth having.  Not sure.   Right now, I’m just a rookie fitness nut, so my health isn’t worth a monthly fee for those kind of intangibles.  Heck, I don’t even pay for a gym membership yet!  So, that may be something worth checking out for you super-hyper fitness nuts.

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

The next page I seem to hit a lot is the “Workouts” page. Granted, I’ve probably worked out more since I got this app than I have in the past month, but, still, if it’s working, then that’s all that matters.

Now, one of the things I don’t like is that the exercises it DailyBurn measures are somewhat limited.  And, you can’t enter anything new.  So, if, for instance, you were to get exercises out of Men’s Health and knew the caloric expenditure, there’s no way to enter that in.  Now, I assume that buying the “pro” version of this, which is actually a membership and not a one-time payment, you might be able to add more exercises or have a larger selection, but, frankly, I get close enough that it’s not worth it to me to pay a monthly fee for that kind of “upgrade”.

I should also note, however, that I haven’t looked into the “My Workouts” section too much, but it looked like it had promise.  It gave you workouts to achieve certain goals, like Fat Loss and Strength Building and so on.  Under each section, there are several workouts designed to help you with that particular goal.  Kind of like a personal trainer in an iPhone app.  (Though, I prefer the Men’s Health app for those kind of things to the ones I saw in DailyBurn.)  The last section is essentially a workout log that shows all the sets you’ve done and how much weight you lifted on each set.  The only problem is, it only shows today’s workout, not any previous day.  It like this to show a chart of progress, not unlike the body goals charts shown above.  But, again, I’m sort of a stat whore, so take that for what you will.

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Now, what I think is the best thing about DailyBurn, next to showing me how little I burn off with my wimpy home workout, is the “Nutrition” screen.  I specifically chose the screen at the left because it showed several things I want to highlight.  This is not what I hope a “typical” day is for me.  Or, at least, not what I hope a typical day will be for me going forward.

In any case, you can see that it shows you your consumption levels and whether or not you’ve met your “goals” for the day.  Goals not met are shown in blue.  Goals that are in the “good” range, or met, but not exceeded are in green.  And, finally, goals that have been exceeded are in red.  You can see that I was a bad, bad boy on the day used as an example.  Also, since I’m trying to lose weight, I’m doing my best to keep my caloric intake between 1500 and 1900 calories.  My goal here is to burn more calories than I actually need so as to shed some poundage.

Now, again, I’m a total stat geek when it comes to this stuff, so I love see all this.  Also, in just the few weeks that I’ve been using these two programs, I’ve learned some very valuable lessons.  For one thing, I need to work out more.  My little, tiny workout in the morning doesn’t even burn off breakfast most days!  Not acceptable!  So, I need to adjust that.  Also, I noticed that I’m not getting anywhere near enough protein while consuming way too many carbs and, obviously, more than enough fat, too.  So, I need to adjust my diet as well as step up my exercise program.  But, it took getting good information to do it.

For the couple of bucks it cost me to get FoodScanner and the free version of DailyBurn, I’ve gotten a lot of valuable information and awareness of what I need to change and improve in my personal health and nutrition plan.  Well worth the small change I paid.

I know I’m not the only one who loves those stop-motion shots.

I’m a pretty fresh begginer when it comes to photography, but I’m willing to branch out into new areas.  One of the areas that interest me is high-speed or stop-motion photography.  Capturing an image at the moment of action, when something bursts or splashes or explodes is fascinating to me.
Well, it may still be a bit beyond me, but thanks to DIYPhotography.net, if you’re up to the challenge, you can setup a High-Speed Photography rig at home.