Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Batman Theater Massacre Discussion


If you have been watching the news lately you have heard the disturbing news that James E Holmes walked into a movie theater showing of The Dark Knight Rises and gunned down and murdered 12 people and injured 58 people (according to the Huffington Post).

This massacre is an atrocious act against humanity. I thought it would be interesting to discuss a few points around this. My friend and partner in film making Ryan Estabrooks is here to talk about these points with me. We each took a look at the questions and didn't discuss them together but rather separately to give more perspective and less influence on each other.

Why do movies have such power to bring someone to do something like this?

Ryan: I don’t think the movies are the starting point for something like this. The starting point is from within their minds, where something is seriously wrong or completely off. The reason why he dressed up as the Joker at the theater probably had more to do with what the Joker represents (anarchy, chaos) and how that fits with his mind frame, not the other way around. I don’t think movies bring anyone to do anything like this on their own.

Josh: This is a testament to the power of movies. Clearly this is a horrible testament to it. Usually a movie like Battle of Algiers or Schindler's List will motivate people to make humanity better. The underlying power that movies have is clear. Propaganda is hugely motivational in film. It can start a war. Movies can make you cry, feel love, and make you laugh. At the end of the day we all know it's not real but at the same time you allow your mind to make it real depending on how good the movie is of course. The power movies have is a reflection of the human mind. The things you learn in a movie and see in a movie can have more meaning and impact than reading something or being told something or being shown something. Movies are the end all immersion into another world, until we invent The Matrix and cause the destruction of Earth. The line is clear for most humans on Earth that movies aren't real but when you're under stress or depression your views can become distorted and adding drugs to that mixture can clearly cause even worse things to happen.

Is it in our nature to do evil things?

Ryan: No, because ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are merely words people slap on things, of which the meanings differ from person to person. When you think someone does something evil, odds are they have a reason or some elaborate explanation mapped out in their head. This can be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, some severely twisted logic that has been warped over the course of years, or mental illness. But I don’t believe it is caused by nature.

Josh: Yes it is, but it is usually a simple decision not to do them.

Is there something going on in Colorado that we don't know about?

Ryan: No, this is certainly not the only place to have a recent shooting spree. Just a year ago, Norway had a shooting where a gunman killed 69 people, more than 5 times the amount of people killed in Aurora. Hell, just 3 days before the Aurora shooting there was a shooting in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where 12 people were injured. In 2011, there were 3 shootings that happened in California, Nevada and Arizona, one of which happened at an IHOP. So even though Colorado seems to get more attention now and then, they are far from being the only ones with problems.

Josh: I sure won't be visiting Colorado any time soon. It does make me wonder though. Colorado is getting the headlines, Columbine and now this. Are people more driven to extreme measures there? I would like to know why if so. It would be interesting to see some sort of psychological study done on each of the 50 States and the average living conditions.

Does Batman bring out the best or the worst in people?

Ryan: It’s all relative. I would say generally, those who go to see Batman movies aren’t cheering for Batman’s death. If they were, they probably wouldn’t bother. So in general, I’m sure overall Batman is uplifting for folks.

Josh: Obviously this one instance brought out the worst in James E Holmes. I like to think that the new takes on Batman bring now more than ever the questioning nature of good vs evil and directly applying it to real life such as the Police Force, Criminal Organizations, Politicians, The Haves, The Have Nots, The Army. It generally has you asking questions about the Society we live in and is it good and right? Is Batman good and right? It's clear to me that Batman brings out both the best and worst in people. I can't imagine a prisoner watching Batman and gaining more from life than if he had not watched it.

Will this discourage people from going to movie theaters?

Ryan: A small few. I have already heard from some friends about how this will definitely keep them away from theaters; however, those friends haven’t been to the theaters in a long time and do not regularly attend. It is hard to say what the ultimate impact is of this shooting, especially since it has received so much press coverage. Over the past weekend, I was stopped TWICE at grocery stores where the clerks randomly asked me what I thought about the event. Although there have been shooting at restaurants and beaches before, this one seems to be getting much more attention from the media. I think in the long run, it will not deter that many people from the theater more than what Netflix and VOD has already done.

Josh: This massacre didn't prevent me from going to the movie theater. There was one moment I looked down at the front of the theater and fully expected to see someone come out with a gun, but that's the part of the mind you can't fully shut out from the rest of the mind. 10 seconds went by and I got back into enjoying my movie going experience. I think if this happened again soon then I would reconsider going to my Theater. But I like to think I live my life without fear of something like this, after all what control do you really have of when it's your time to go?

Should he get the death penalty for this?

Ryan:  Does he deserve to die? Probably, but that’s not our judgment to make. I hate what he did and I wish we would have been able to prevent it but I wish death upon no man and do not believe in the death penalty.

Josh: It would seem sometimes something that bad would prevent someone from committing acts of murder. Then there are falsely imprisoned people who have been sentenced to death when they didn't actually deserve it. Because of this it seems to me that a perfect system is not possible and we should indeed not allow the death penalty. As far as whether someone deserves death for murdering another person I just can't fall on the side of being executioner.

The man bought his weapons at a Bass Pro Shops. Should we change this sort of access to guns?

Ryan: It’s a weird thing to think about because, according to reports, he bought guns/supplies at a local shop 4 separate times and had a background check each time, which he of course passed. I do believe that we need better restrictions on gun shows, which are much more lax. The other thing I would want to change is access to supplies on the internet. He was able to purchase full body armor and 100 round magazine clips without anyone blinking an eye (in comparison, Marines typically only use 20 round clips. The ban on assault weapons that was lifted in 2004 during George W. Bush’s tenure could benefit from being put back in place. If it was still enforced, this man would not have been able to purchase his semi-automatic assault rifle, nor would he have been able to purchase 100 round clips. This potentially could have lessened the impact of his shooting. At the very least, people need to go through background checks when obtaining these types of supplies online; even if it would not have helped in this scenario, it may help in the future).

Josh: They do background checks whenever you buy a gun. There is no way that changing the access to the guns could ever predict or find something from your history as to when someone would lead up to something like this.

What do you think his motive was?

Ryan: I think there had to have been some sort of anger or disgust against the general population. Based on his collegiate studies, I also wonder if part of his motive was simply to see the reactions, to see how the people would respond to a catastrophe like this. It is highly unlikely he was targeting any one specific person. I think it could also be his ego wanting fame and notoriety, knowing that this would garner him a lot of attention. All of this could have been mixed up in a totally unbalanced brain.

Josh: Something horrible had to have been going on in his life and he saw that moment as the moment to reach out to the most people and say what he had to say. It's unfortunate that he didn't find an outlet to discuss whatever was going on with him and find the help he needed before making the plan he made and executing it.

Will this incident have an effect on the box office grosse for ‘The Dark Knight Rises’?

Ryan:  Although it will be impossible to tell, I’m sure it will have a minor effect. Although the first weekend grosses were huge and bested that of ‘The Dark Knight’, they were nowhere near what ‘The Avengers’ made, and a lot of people pegged ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ as having more audience interest than that. It may put a damper on things and prevent it from smashing major records but it will still be a high flying success regardless.

Josh: This is a rather dark outlook but I did ask myself how could they ever top the Heath Ledger death from The Dark Knight? I think this massacre helped more than hurt for the box office growth. People thought it was just a stunt at first. Then word got around it was real. I said earlier that if this happens again soon meaning like while The Dark Knight Rises is still in theaters I think that would hit home for everyone across the board and it would wake them up from the headlines and make them realize there is real danger here.

Can any preventative measures stop something like this happening in the future?

Ryan: The previously mentioned ban on assault weapons and high ammunition cartridges would be a step in the right direction. The man was able to wound so many people in such a short amount of time due to this access that would not have been possible prior to 2004. Sure, he had a shotgun and a pistol but with a shotgun, he would have had to constantly reload and with his pistol, he would have needed to be a better shot and would not have been able to fire off so many rounds that quickly. I think stronger restrictions for online purchases are a must and I would like to see background checks on anything related to weapons or high-grade protective gear, even if you’re buying a box of bullets. All in all, you cannot completely prevent these shootings because no one is a murderer until they kill someone. People always seem normal until they snap. The only way to prevent it would be to live a life in fear and never venture into the outside world. That’s simply a risk we take when we walk outside and especially when we climb into our cars, unless we invest in some of those future police people from ‘Minority Report’.

Josh: Adding a guard to the Exits of the Theater is indeed a good idea. But regardless of whatever security measures you add there will always be someone that will find a way around them to do what they're going to do. That's not to say they shouldn't add something like a guard to the Exits. But this is life and bad things are going to happen. We should be addressing the root cause as to why James felt compelled enough to do what he did.

Check out www.ryanestabrooks.com to see more from Ryan and myself too.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

The Rock Super Edit

For your enjoyment: The Rock Super Edit. This is for all you action fans out there.


Be sure to check out www.ryanestabrooks.com to see other projects I was involved with.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Vinyl Is King.


I'm writing this blog today because there are still people on this Earth that believe that CD's or DVD-A (DVD Audio) is the best format to get your audio in. I'm here to rank the King and below of Audio Quality for those that don't know better.

Let's first get out of the way the explanation of the difference of Vinyl vs CD's.

The following excerpt is located here:

“Hi,

The key to this question is the difference between a digital and an analog recording. Natural sound is by definition analog. When a CD recording is created, this analog is sound is digitized. To do this, they take a lot of snapshots of the analog sound. For a CD recording they take 44,100 snapshots in a minute. These snapshots are then converted to digital information with a certain precision. For a CD recording this precision is 16 bits which means that every one of
the 44,100 snapshots needs to be converted into one of the 65,536 (2^16) possible values.

You can probably see where I am going: by definition a digital recording doesn't include all the sound information. You could visualize a CD recording as a really large chest with a lot of
drawers. Because the number of snapshots that are taken are not infinite (the maximum is 44,100 per minute), the process of taking snapshots results in the loss of information. Information is further lost because each of these snapshots must be made to fit in one of the
65,536 drawers of the chest.

A record player which plays LP?s is strictly analog. A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. The record player than transforms this groove to an analogue sound signal which can be fed into an amplifier. In this process, no information can be lost. No snapshots need to be taken and the sound doesn't need be converted to one of the possible 65,536 values. There basically is an infinite number of 'snapshots' and 'possible values'. Therefore vinyl recording sound richer than CD recordings (as long as you have a decent vinyl record player).

Be aware that recent DVD Audio players and Super Audio CD players come closer to vinyl recordings as they have a much larger number of possible snapshots in one minute (up to 192,000) and because these snapshots can be converted to a larger number of possible values (up to 16,777,216 possible values, or 24 bit).


Search strategy;
Google: vinyl OR LP "better than" sound CD

I hope you have enough information. If you need any more, please ask
for a clarification!

Thank you,
paul_b_18”

So there we have it. The King is Vinyl, the Queen is DVD-A, and the Jack is CD. Then we get into Lossless digital files that recreate both DVD-A and CD 100% with no loss in quality. The most popular formats include WAV (Waveform Audio File Format), FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). Theoretically those lossless digital formats could recreate any digital file available assuming you have a source better than what DVD-A can give you. This can indeed be the case as you look at Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd. There are so many sources to pull from online that the quality goes from horrible all the way to the original mastering tapes released as a digital mix. The main reason to not use WAV is that it does not support tags. Tags is all of the information your song keeps with the file like Artist, Year, Album, and Artwork. FLAC and ALAC both support tags. FLAC is not supported by Apple Products and ALAC does have some support outside of Apple Products. WAV, FLAC, and ALAC are 100% equal in quality. Then we have the MP3. This is the most widely used format because it's smaller in size by usually around 66% overall. But with this you lose the full range the song was mixed in and don't hear everything the Artist intended you to hear. There is a wonderful article that goes into detail on this here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/457310/comparison-flac-vs-mp3-320kbps. Even "high quality" 320kbps MP3's don't retain the full range of the song. The quality is incredibly close to WAV/FLAC/ALAC for the range that is in the song though.

Google Play only supports MP3 @ 320kbps and iCloud only supports MP3 @ 192kbps. Neither of them support a lossless digital format. Hopefully over time with faster networks and higher bandwidths we'll see them start being supported. This is a great link to hear the difference in 320kbps vs 192kbps MP3: http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/mp3-sound-quality-test-128-320/. The higher the bit rate the better the quality is. If you don't hear a difference on the link provided then you are probably one of the people that say they don't see a difference in their Standard TV and 1080p Hi Def TV.

I hope this information is useful for those of you out there that are unaware of the quality of music you haven't been hearing. I hope you go out and buy your favorite Artists' album on vinyl after reading this.

***UPDATE 8/17/2012***
 I recently discovered that the iPod Classic, iPod Touch, and iPhone 4s only supports 24 Bit at 44,100 kHz. So that luxurious 96,000 kHz, or 192,000 kHz if you're Neil Young, simply won't be supported. You'll have to down sample them to 44,100 kHz for the song to play. Or you can jail break your iPod and put Rock Box on it and it will automatically output the song at 44,100 kHz.

***UPDATE 8/20/2012***
I starting looking into 16 bit @ 44kHz vs 24 bit @ 96 kHz, in particular this article:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html


I ran this article across a friend of mine on FB who is in my FB Group "Emerging Multimedia Professionals" and he gave an excellent reply, as for me to test 16 bit vs 24 bit would require a very nice set of headphones that I don't have the money for and his explanation does make sense and it was the original thinking I had before the article above.


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

XBOX Arcade Wish List

I have decided to make a wish list of games I would like to see on XBOX Arcade as a real possibility. 

Arcade
Capcom VS SNK 2
Darkstalkers 3
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Strider 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bring this back Microsoft!)

SEGA Genesis
Captain America And The Avengers
Ranger X

SEGA Dreamcast
Chaos Field
Grandia 2
Slave zero
Sonic Adventure 2
Spawn In The Demon's Hand

Microsoft Windows
Dethkarz
Megaman X4
Need For Speed 3
Onimusha 3
Starcraft
Starcraft 2

Sony Playstation 1
Chrono Trigger

Nintendo 64
Goldeneye

And these are the games that I would love to see on XBOX Arcade but know will never happen:

Sony Playstation 3
Heavenly Sword
Heavy Rain
KILLZONE 3
Motor Storm
Uncharted 2

Sony Playstation Network
Dead Nation
Journey
Stardust HD
Wipeout HD

Sony Playstation 2
Fantavision
Final Fantasy X
Kinetica
Twisted Metal Black

Nintendo Entertainment System
Bionic Commando
Contra
Megaman 2
Ninja Gaiden
Punch-Out
RBI Baseball
Super Mario Bros. 3
Tecmo Super Bowl
Tetris
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3

Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension
Gundam Wing Endless Dual
Megaman X
Tales Of Phantasia

Nintendo 64
1080
Zelda Ocarina Of Time

Nintendo Gamecube
Metroid Prime
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Zelda The Wind Waker

Monday, July 2, 2012

100% Real Fruit?

So I've noticed something strange with my McDonald's Mango Pineapple Smoothie. I came out to my car one day after leaving my smoothie in my car and found that it was some strange orange ooze that floats in water. Just leave yours out in the sun for 4 hours maybe less and you will see what kind of strange food voodoo McDonald's does to their "100% Real Fruit Smoothies".