MarkKawakami.com

Great big WTF

Categories: Media

Can you spot the difference?

• Photo and caption #1
• Photo and caption #2

[UPDATE: The first photo has been taken off line due to controversy. But here's a link to both photos on Flickr. Also, here is Yahoo's statement on the issue (for the record, Yahoo is blameless).]

I'm back

Yeah, yeah, month and a half. Sorry about that. I thought summer would be all blogging all the time, what with reruns and all, but as it turns out, it's an easy habit to fall out of. The upside is pretty much everyone I know has commented on the fact that I've seriously slacked off blog-wise, which is good at staving off that screaming-into-the-wind feeling small-time bloggers often feel.

Aloha Oe, John Tsukano

A few weeks ago, I went to Hawaii for a couple of days. It wasn't your standard Hawaiian vacation, I went for a funeral for my Great-Uncle, John Tsukano. It was a sad but also very celebratory occasion, Uncle John lived a long life and his sendoff had as much laughter as tears.

I only met Uncle John a couple of times, really only once that I can remember, however he made a huge impression on me that time. I've greatly admired him ever since then, and even more so since I've learned more about him. When I met him, he had just written and self-published his book "Bridge of Love", about the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team, the World War II unit composed entirely of Japanese Americans, of which he was a member. You really can't talk about Uncle John without talking about the 100th/442nd, and theirs is a critically under-told story.

In the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were treated with suspicion and outright hatred. Prior to the attack, hundreds of second generation Japanese-Americans in Hawaii — nisei — were already serving in the military. Following the attack, they were summarily dismissed. Months later, the army formed a combat team of Hawaiian nisei, the 100th infantry battalion. After performing extremely well in training and combat, the 442nd RCT, composed of nisei from Hawaii and the mainland, was formed. The 442nd was to absorb the 100th, but because of the Hundredth's outstanding performance, they were allowed to retain their original designation. Thus the 100th/442nd was created. Most of the mainland nisei in the 442nd volunteered from behind the barbed wire of internment camps.

During the course of the war, the 100th/442nd became the most highly decorated unit of their size. They were also the most wounded: They were known as "The Purple Heart Battalion" and for good reason, 9,486 Purple Hearts were awarded to the unit that never numbered much more than 3,000 men.

The 100th/442nd is most well known for their rescue of the "Lost Battalion", 211 men of the Texas First Battalion trapped on a hill in the dense forests of the Vosges mountains in France. To rescue the 211 men, the 442nd suffered over 800 casualties. But that's not there only achievements. There were costly victories in Italy, France and Germany, and a detachment from the 442nd liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

But the victories, and the defeats, of the 442nd extended beyond the war. The bravery and service of the 442nd influenced such decisions as ending the internment of Japanese-Americans, the desegregation of the military and granting Hawaii statehood. On a more personal note, I believe that were it not for men like Uncle John, it would have been much more difficult for my dad to go to college at Purdue University in Indiana.

Following the war, Uncle John spent a great deal of time and money helping to preserve the memory of the 100th/442nd, including researching and eventually publishing the aforementioned "Bridge of Love". It was important work, the men of the 100th/442nd were often notoriously silent about their experiences in the war. But more importantly, he helped to tell their story in human terms. It's simple to talk about their record and their bravery, but they were soldiers, not warriors, and the distinction is easy to lose in the passage of time. Uncle John told the story of often frightened men, not fearless robots.

There is much, much more to John Tsukano than just his experiences with the 442nd, but there's one aspect of his life I really should mention: He was the first in the family to marry a haole — the Hawaiian slang for "caucasian". It seems that this man who faced down the Nazi army found telling the family about his marriage something to be afraid of: my grandmother (his sister) only found out about it by reading a notice in the newspaper. Whatever his fears, they were unfounded: she welcomed John's new wife Delores into the family. Both my dad and his brother ended up marrying haoles, and though I believe my parents marriage was an inevitable destiny, I really do owe Uncle John some thanks for starting the trend that eventually led to me being born.

The funeral itself was moving. The requested dress was Aloha attire. His ashes were interred at the National Memorial Cemetary of the Pacific, more commonly known as "the punchbowl", a military cemetary in the crater on Honolulu. During the funeral and later during the memorial service, the remaining members of the musical group Hilo Hawaiians, a group Uncle John managed for a long period of time, sang "Oh Danny Boy" and "Aloha Oe". Aloha, of course, means both hello and goodbye in Hawaiian, but in the context of the song, it means goodbye. Translated, the chorus reads:

Farewell to you, farewell to you
The charming one who dwells in the shaded bowers
One fond embrace,
'Ere I depart
Until we meet again

The song, and the singers, couldn't have been more appropriate. When Uncle John passed away, peacefully, the music playing was Aloha Oe as sung by the Hilo Hawaiians.

WSOP update

Categories: Poker

The $10,000 No-Limit main event at the World Series of Poker is underway. It's really exciting, the field this year is about 5,600 strong, over twice last years impossibly huge field.

In fact, the field is so large that they had to have the first day spread out over three days. Yeah, you read that right. They divided up the field into three groups, and had each group play one day each.

There's a lot happening. Many of the pros are out already, including the man who literally wrote the book on poker Doyle Brunson, and Dan Harrington, my new favorite player. Harrington going out is especially disappointing since he made the final table in both of the previous years, which is a nearly impossibly achievement. Brunson and Harrington both got standing ovations when they were busted out. Other pros out include Daniel Negreanu (the WSOP player of the year last year), Annie Duke, Antonio Esfarandi, and a whole bunch more that I can't remember. Jennifer Harman, one of the best female players in the world, busted out on a horrible beat when her full house was caught by someone who caught a straight flush on the river. Ouch!

Phil Ivey, another of my favorite players, is sitting comfortably towards the front of the pack, and that's big news, but not the biggest or the most surprising.

But the real big news is how well last year's winner, Greg "Fossilman" Raymer is doing. Nearing the end of the third day, he was the second player to cross the million chip count, and he's currently the chip-leader. That's absolutely astounding, no one, not even Raymer himself, predicted it. It pretty much proves that Raymer's win last year wasn't an extremely lucky street, the man has some world-class skills.

Still a long way to go for him, though. He's got over a million, but he needs about 56 million to win. Whoever does win will be taking home $7.5 million in cash.

Box Office Mojo

Categories: Movies

It's not news that this year, box office numbers have been down. It's a record slump, Hollywood hasn't had a slump this bad ever, 19 weeks straight of numbers down from last year.

One of the reasons that a lot of people have been suggesting is that people are increasingly staying home and watching DVDs. I don't think that's quite it, though. Yeah, all things being equal, people might rather stay home, avoid the crowds, but the big problem there is that DVDs have a built in disadvantage: They're not new. DVDs don't have the draw of a summer event movie. Granted, rising ticket prices make not going to the movies a much more attractive option, but I don't think it accounts for everything.

The other popular theory, which I think plays a huge part in this, is the general lack of quality of the summer movies. Let's face it, even if you get into the big tentpole movies, the formula — lots of noise, lots of action, lots of CG — is getting a little tired.

I have another theory: The industry has painted itself into a corner. There's a couple of components to this, but to understand it, you need to look at the actual mechanics of how box office numbers are down. Typically in the past, when a big movie opens, it created a "halo" effect that raised the box office numbers for other movies. People would go to the theater expecting to see the weekend's big new release and either show up too late or find it sold out. Those people already were at the theater, so they settled on another movie, thus creating spill-over that drove overall box-office numbers. If you look at the numbers this year, that halo effect isn't happening. I don't remember which weekend it was, but a few weekends ago, there was a huge opening film, yet the film in tenth place didn't even break a million dollars for the weekend. That's very unusual for a summer movie.

So, why isn't the halo effect there? Well, I think a big part of the problem is online ticket sales. I buy nearly all of my movie tickets online, it's more convenient and I don't have to stand in line like a chump. And I'm willing to bet that increasing numbers of people are purchasing their tickets online for the same reasons, it just makes sense. However there's a downside for the industry. For each person who purchases tickets online, the opportunity for them to become a halo customer has gone away. They'll either be able to purchase their tickets or they won't.

This is compounded by the fact that as people buy more tickets online, they sell out at the box office sooner. So people that don't buy their tickets online have an increased chance of not catching the movie they want to see. Now, logically this should result in more of a halo effect, but it doesn't because people catch on pretty quick. If you can't get to the theater really early, just stay the hell home 'cause you ain't gonna get to see it. Online ticket sales ends up costing the theaters both potential online customers and potential walk-up customers.

Another component is that there's more theaters and more screens. Again, this goes against intuition, more theaters should mean more movie watchers, and it does for the weekend's big opener. But by increasing the ability for people to catch their preferred movie, the less they're going to be a halo customer. This technically shouldn't be a problem, because the total number of people buying tickets hasn't changed. But what happens when people don't get to see the movie they want is that a certain percentage of them will return the next day or the next weekend to catch that movie. So for those people, you get two tickets for every one failed attempt to catch that movie. The key however is failed attempts at seeing a movie. This also explains why the week after week drop off of a given event's movies is also increasingly severe.

I'd imagine that it only takes a little bit of these changes to bring box office numbers down, especially if the movies themselves aren't something to write home about. The funny thing is, the core of the problem here is the increased focus on opening weekend numbers, which creates the consumer impression that if they aren't seeing a movie opening weekend, they're second-class movie-goers. Ultimately, Hollywood's efforts to generate bigger and bigger weekend numbers are the main cause of shrinking numbers.

It would be ironic if it wasn't the same pattern that happens in every other industry time and time again. Hollywood was due for a correction, and that correction is happening now.

319 People Wish They Were Me

Categories: Poker

Last night I played in an online poker tournament. 326 players, which is a pretty big field, as far as that goes. The whole thing lasted like three hours. It was crazy.

I came in seventh. Out of 326. Seventh. Think I'm making this up? See for yourself (I'm Skippy_K). That's nearly a $50 prize right there.

Let me gloat some more here: The tournament paid the top 40 players. That means of players "in the money", I still beat out 33 of them. I won't go into how I should have come in higher because my opponent in the final hand managed to catch his seven on the river, a 3-in-46 (or 1-in-15.3) miracle card. No, that wouldn't be fair because I did catch a couple of miracle cards myself when I was on the bubble, so complaining about how royally I got screwed on that hand (which potentially cost me hundreds in additional winnings, dammnit!) would be disingenuous, and I'm nothing if not... uh... ingenuous.

I think a lot of the reason is that I just finished reading this book, and it's a really good book. So, I must be ready for the World Series of Poker, right?

Nope.

Maybe next year.

AFI's top 100 Movie Quotes

Categories: Movies

I always hate these AFI lists, because it's always at least a little different than what I would have chosen, and that makes it wrong.

Obviously that's a joke, but the subjective nature of these sorts of things does make it a problem. Tonight CBS aired "AFI's Top 100 Movie Quotes", and actually, it's a pretty good list. If you want to see the full list, it's available online.

The actual show was a little silly. I mean, seriously, are Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze really the go-to-guys for American cinematic history? Because they kept getting their commentary. Oh well, at least it didn't have Michael Ian Black. But seriously, it's not like Dirty Dancing would get an entry in the top 100 movie quotes right?

Oh, wait, there it is, number 98, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner". Ugh! Look, Dirty Dancing sucks, folks, I hate to break it to you. I know everyone liked it back in junior high but, you know, it really is crap.

Somehow the first two Terminator movies made it on the list. "I'll be back", which I agree deserves a place on the list, and "Hasta la vista, baby.", which really does not.

And as for omissions, well, there's only one I can think of that really is missing. I mean, I'd have liked to have seen "Trust me" from Raiders of the Lost Ark and "I know it was you, Fredo... You broke my heart" from The Godfather, Part II, but both Godfather movies (oh wait, I mean the first two) are pretty well represented. Also, surely something from Pulp Fiction could have found a place.

But the only really big omission was "No, Luke, I am your father!". I mean, my feelings for this line are already well known, but really, this was a bombshell of a line, and if painfully overacted Charlton Heston lines like "Soylent Green is people!" and "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape" make it onto the list, then you gotta get the daddy line in there as well.

Incidentally it turns out that Casablanca has the most quotes on the list with seven lines, and I gotta say, every single one of those lines absolutely belongs on the list. Damn, that's some muscular writing.

Stella!

Categories: Television

You all probably know how much I adore Comedy Central, the network that brought us "The Daily Show", "South Park", great stand-up, "Kids in the Hall" reruns and other great shows I've enjoyed. I'm pretty much willing to give any new Comedy Central show a fair shake.

But they've got a new comedy show coming up that I really can't abide. "Stella", troupe comedy. Normally this would be right up my alley, but I'm not even going to bother watching this (well, don't hold me to that).

Not because the premise, what I've seen of it anyways, is anything that should bother anyone. It's that it has Michael Ian Black in it.

For the record, I hate, and I'm using the work "hate" here, Michael Ian Black. Can't stand the no-talent hack. He ruined "Ed", a show I enjoyed except every week there would be his goddamn Steve character ready to do some retarded, unfunny crap. Then he kept popping up on those god-awful "I Love the 80's" and "I Love the 90's" shows on VH1. Even worse, he keeps showing up on "Celebrity Poker Showdown", a show I actually enjoy. I think he's on that show because he knows how much I enjoy it, and he knows how much I truly, truly hate the asshole, and he does it just to fuck with me.

That's right, I think he takes my disdain for his boring, retarded lifeless comedy personally and is personally trying to get back at me. Some would argue that he probably doesn't even know who I am, to which I say: If that were true, why would he intentionally try to ruin two different shows I like? Obviously this grudge is a two-way street. But mine is justified, based on years of having to sit through his non-schtick-schtick. What'd I ever do to him?

I mean, yeah, so I ordered a hundred and fifty-three pizzas to his hotel room once, and sure, once I stole his cat just to piss him off, but that's no reason to intentionally target my shows, right?

Anyways, to sum up: I HATE MICHAEL IAN BLACK, that smug, unfunny waste of carbon.

Jaws 30th Anniversary DVD

Categories: Movies, Sharks

I bought "Jaws" on VHS. It's one of the first movies I bought when I started collecting them. I already had most of it from a television broadcast from years earlier.

Later, somewhere in the mid nineties, they released a letterboxed version on VHS. So, I swooped that one up, gave my old copy to a friend, and continued to enjoy the sharky-goodness.

Five years ago, they released "Jaws" on DVD to coincide with the 25^th anniversary of the movie. Well, of course I had to pick that up. As a bonus, it had a nice little documentary or something.

Now, for the 30^th anniversary, they're releasing it again in a special-"Special Edition".

So, I'm pretty torn. On the one hand, you know, it's pretty inexpensive and does have a few bits of new stuff. But on the other hand... Even for a movie I love, buying it four times is a little ridiculous. Plus in a few years, I'm just gonna have to buy it again on Hi-Def, right?

Mactel: Is it getting cold in here?

Categories: Technical

Man, I never thought this was going to happen. Today, at Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference, Steve Jobs made a huge announcement. After spending the last decade on the PowerPC platform, Apple will be switching to Intel chips, starting in about a year.

Now, there's good reasons for this, the number one is speed. When the G5 was introduced two years ago, Jobs said they'd be at 3Ghz in a year. Well, a year after that, and Apple (technically IBM since they're providing the chips) still isn't there yet. Worse, the G5 is an incredibly hot chip. And I mean hot as in actual temperature, not Paris Hilton's misuse of the term. Heat means power consumption, and there's two things you can't have in a laptop: A chip that generates too much heat and a chip that uses too much power. That means the G5 laptop isn't here yet. Powerbooks are incredibly popular (I'm typing this entry on one right now), so not being able to put their top-of-the-line chips into a portable machine is hurting Apple.

Plus, Intel chips should generally come in cheaper as well. That's a definite plus, although Steve Jobs didn't mention that during his keynote. So the question there is will the cheaper chips represent a reduction in price or an increase in Apple's margins? Probably the former, reducing price is always a competitve advantage, although Macs are still going to be the BMW of computers.

So what's the downside? Well, the biggest is that transitioning to a new chipset (and a radically different one at that) is an incredibly complicated process. Apple did it once when they switched from the 68k link of processors to the PowerPC, and it went as smoothly as was possible at the time (and generally pretty smoothly at that). But it always comes at a cost. Since it's impossible to get all the software ported by the time the new machines come out, and since no one will buy a machine that requires them to buy all new software on day one, you have to have some sort of backwards compatibility, and that means emulation. Emulation is the process of translating instructions meant for one chip into the instruction set of another, and it always comes with some sort of performance penalty. Added to that, recoding for a new chipset can be an incredibly painful process.

But Apple has a few things going for it in both of these regards. The first is the operatins system, OS X. The roots of OS X is the NextStep operating system developed by Jobs' former company. This was designed to run on multiple chipsets, including Intel. Apparently it's been a mandate at Apple that all operating systems they develop, as well as any other OS X software, be secretly compiled onto both platforms. In other words, they've been creating Intel-compatible versions of all their software for the past five years, just not releasing it. Were this not the case, the transition probably wouldn't even be possible.

In addition. OS X is an incredibly well-organized operating system. The classic Mac OS was a mishmash of hacks and patches developed over years. This meant that recoding for the PowerPC was a rather difficult task because a lot of the software "spoke" directly to the hardware or to the processor. With a modern operating system like OS X, the operating system sits in between, and very little communication with the hardware happens directly. This makes converting applications significantly easier, except in a few, very extreme cases.

The other thing going for Apple is the fact that their emulation software, which was demoed today, looks to be pretty fast. They didn't give any specifics of performance except that it's fast enough that "most people" won't notice a difference in speed. Now, honestly, this sounds a bit like bullshit to me, you always notice a difference. But let's say they get emulation speed up to 80% the speed of native code. If the processor speed increase of the new processors is, say, 30%, then overall system performance should increase, even on emulated software.

However, there begins the first of my worries. The two previous major transitions to the Macintosh was the transition from the 68k processor to the PowerPC processor, and the transition from OS 9 to OS X. In both of those instances, the change could be justified by either a massive increase in performance or a massive increase in stability and modernity. These transitions had serious benefits that made the inconvenience of them worth it. The primary justification here is business-related. Going to Intel chips should hopefully increase performance a little bit, but it's not going to be the big jump that you got with the previous transitions. It provides greater flexibility, a better future, and they get to stop having to defend their chipset against Intel's powerhouse marketing. Although, hopefully Apple won't have to stick one of those tacky "Intel Inside" stickers on their machines.

In fact, I noticed a conspicuous absence of performance-related talk during Job's presentation. Are we going to see a big speed increase? Hopefully, but I'm worried. Although, let's face it, Apple still has to sell G4 machines for at least the next year. You can't sell a machine that you admit will have its ass handed to it in 12 months, especially not at the high-end where Apple makes so much of its money.

I'm also worried about the whole 64-bit thing. When the G5 was introduced, it was the first 64-bit processor for home machines (the standard before that was 32-bits). This generally allows the machine to access more memory and perform larger calculations. Well, that's the very rough version. I'd give you the more technical explanation, but, uh, I don't totally understand it. At any rate, Apple has been pushing 64-bit as the next big thing, and encouraging developers to code for a 64-bit processor. But most x86 processors are 32-bit, including the ones Apple is very likely to be using. So what does that mean, do developers have to undo all the work they did moving to 64-bit?

Probably not, most apps that took advantage of the 64-bit processing were capable of running on 32-bit processors as well, that was sort of a marketplace imperative. However, a lot of the system software has been optimized for 64-bits, so moving to 32-bits might mean a decrease in performance despite a massive increase in raw Ghz speed.

Overall, I'm guardedly optimistic about the whole thing. Apple is good at transitions. And to be totally honest, I don't think Apple would be doing this if they didn't really have to, because the complexity involved is a headache no one wants if they don't need it. I just really, really hope Apple can get out of having to have those tacky stickers.