Movie Review: Ponyo

Crossposted at http://blog.finite-eternity.com/?p=225

The latest offering from Studio Ghibli and legendary film animator Hayao Miyazaki is a G-Rated tale of a fish who wants to become a human. The fish, Ponyo (Noah Cyrus), is the daughter of underwater spirit Fujimoto (Liam Neeson) and Gran Mamare (Cate Blanchett) who encounters a young human boy named Sosuke (Frankie Jonas) who takes her in and takes care of her, despite her extremely odd appearance. The story that follows is a straight-forward affair that is equal parts Little Mermaid and Pinocchio as Ponyo tries to stay human while her father tries to bring her home.

Ponyo is without a doubt one of the purest expressions of the core concepts that Miyazaki has been utilizing for years. There's lots of alusions to the damage humans have done to the environment without quite becoming heavy handed or preachy (though it is close at times), there's a 'villain' who isn't evil, but rather misguided, and there are characters who accept absolutely fantastic concepts like water gods and goldfish becoming humans without the slightest bat of an eye. It's not the best Miyazaki story out there, but it is one of the more charming ones. Just like Kiki's Delivery Service there's no particularly major conflict to the story, it's just a journey of discovery. Even the disaster of a tidal wave absorbing all the city does little to dispel everyone's good mood, and the structures and roadworks now beneath the waves are entirely unscathed by the encounter. It's one of those idealistic and absurd events that only a select few could possibly pull off, and Miyazaki is one of the best of them.

Which isn't to say that the story is absolutely perfect, this is very clearly a kid's movie through and through. We're not talking Dora the Explorer levels of simplicity here, but at the same time this is not an overly complex story. The only shades of gray in the story come from Fujimoto, who is the nominal villain of the story although he's not evil, just overbearing. He's ultimately motivated to (over)protect his daughter from what he perceives as the corrupted human world, but aside from his tidal wave never does anything outwardly aggressive (yes, in real life a tidal wave would be an extremely aggressive act, but here it's just one of those things and no one really cares beyond the fact that it's an inconvenience). Even when he could do evil and nasty things he doesn't, he simply wants to protect Ponyo and he steps aside with no protest when it becomes clear that she wants to continue to walk the path of humanity. Cackling, ranting villain he is not.

At the end of the day if you've never seen a Miyazaki film before there are worse places to start, but there are also better (Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky come to mind). If you are caring for a youngish child that you need to distract for a while Ponyo should more than get the job done, and you won't be bored in the process. All told it's cute, it's enjoyable, it's richly animated and it's largely cynic free (which is a refreshing change every once in a while, even for a Cranky Kitty like me).

Monday, February 1, 2010

Irish Controllers Strike

(Cross posted with new blog location at Finite-Eternity.com)

In an interesting bit of ATC revolt, Irish air traffic controllers threatened to strike recently after 14 of their fellow controllers were suspended for refusing to work with new technology. This is not a particularly new thing for controllers to refuse to do -- many of the so-called NextGen systems the FAA is working on are reportedly rather crap, and can even be significantly less safe than the systems they're replacing. I don't know how ICAO (the international analogue of the FAA, although unrelated) and the IAA (Irish Aviation Authority) are handling the upgrading and reinvention of the ATC backbone, but from the sounds in Ireland they're developing along similar tracks. If the equipment they're boycotting is unsafe (and I do not know that it is... controllers can be just as fearful of new tech as anyone else, whether warranted or not) then I agree with their stand.

The meat of the story, however, is that news leaked out that the Irish controllers, through their union called IMPACT, is also demanding a pay raise. Now, as an ATC hopeful I should probably raise my fists and demand better job pay, but the fact is once you get past a certain annual pay (which I arbitrarily set at around $70k) your right to bitch about not being paid enough plummets rather rapidly. Irish Controllers average about €115,000 per year (roughly $160,000 on the current exchange rate), so I don't think I can hold much sympathy for them on this particular claim.

After grounding more than 20,000 fliers the IAA and IMPACT went to the bargaining table and the 14 controllers who started this whole thing are back at work. A ruling was filed by the labor court, however, which said that (paraphrased) the controllers should shut up about the new equipment since it's a regular part of evolving the air traffic control system. The same court, a few days later, recommended that the IAA buck up and increase ATC pay by 6%, in two phases. The first phase, with a 3.5% pay increase, would go into use by January next year and the second phase, with 2.5%, would start in July 2011. Both would have back-pay included back to the 2009.

What a big mess. The question still remains, though, of what equipment the controllers didn't want to use.

The iPad, and Alternatives

So... the iPad... atrocious name. Yeah... moving on.

I'm not going to bother going over the specs and all that rot, I'm simply going to go over my own thought process on it. I've been in the market for a portable note-taking / media device for a long, long time. Pretty much for as long as I can remember, really. My iPhone suffices fairly well on the media side of things, but the ability to take easy notes on an easy to transfer medium (i.e. digital) is really what I've always wanted. The iPad doesn't offer that, though there is a degree of potential within the app community. The lack of a stylus input is huge in this regard.

The other major factor of the iPad for me is the eReader functionality. In theory sticking it on the iPad is very good for me, but in practice it's not all that great. I already own a substantial collection of ebooks, but they're primarily in the LRF/LRX system (Sony's proprietary format). There are no app store apps that read LRF/LRX that I'm aware of, and I doubt that Sony is going to want to release their eReader software on a competing format (it took them more than a year to release the book purchasing software for the Mac). I'm sure there are plenty of third-party converters out there, but I don't know that the hassle is worth it. On the other hand, Sony has done away with DRM on most of their books so batch converting might not actually be that hard.

What balances most of that out is the not inconsiderable weight of the App Store. Without the App Store the iPhone is just a snazzy phone with a few cool features, but with the app store it's a wunderkind that's able to handle just about anything. Now, in fairness, most of the games on it simply blow, but with a good sized display the potential is there. Traditional RPGs and SRPGs could thrive on the iPad, though there hasn't been much support yet (Square has announced planned releases for Final Fantasies 1 & 2, which could really get the ball rolling). Most of the major companies have scorned the iPhone (with a few notable exceptions, like EA porting a few solid titles like Need for Speed: Shift), but the independent market has been screaming for YEARS for someone to give them their fair shot at the big time, and the iStore offers just that. Low development costs could also entice companies to put out more experimental games on the system as a test-bed, or low cost continuations of existing series (EA tried this with Mass Effect: Galaxy... unfortunately the game blew, but it was a noble effort). Where episodic or dlc content has thus far really failed to take the world by storm, it could very well succeed on the iStore. And that's not even going into all the extremely useful utilitarian apps the store already has.

For my money the MSI Tegra-2 or the Cydle M7 seem like they might work out as better bets ($500 and $200, respecitvely). Although, in truth, what I really need is a Boogie Board Paperless Tablet, just with options for saving whatever I write rather than being a high-tech etch-a-sketch.

Unfortunately none of these options really cover what I'm looking for, but a few days after the Apple announcement the 8.9 inch ExoPC Tablet was announced with a 1.6ghz processor and 2GB ram. It also runs on Windows 7 and it's 32gb harddrive is expandable with a standard SD slot (a huge advantage). The fact that it runs Win7 and not Android, or the iPhone OS, is a big advantage since that means I can (in theory) download the Sony eReader software and read using that on the tablet, plus I might even be able to get it to run PC games that I have through Steam (no CD-Rom drive means I couldn't load up, say FFXI, but that's not that big a deal since the GPU probably can't handle all that much beyond Tinker or Peggle anyway (there's no word on what the GPU is, so no way of knowing it's capability... it would be really sweet if I could load FFXI on it though). No other details are really out about it just now, but if it has stylus support than this sounds like it'll be the one for me. It's also out in March and retails at the same price for the equivalent iPad 32gb hd (without 3G). I will be watching this one very closely.

The PiperSport Announced

Piper announced that they would be re-entering the market they helped invent, the Light Sport Aircraft (LSA). Rather than design a new plane from the ground up – or just modify their venerable Cherokee – they purchased the rights to Czech-based CZAW SportCruiser. It’s an interesting move for Piper since, on one hand, it’s not really their aircraft so they lose a bit of the credibility if it takes off big. The PiperSport will initially ship with only minor modifications, mostly in terms of changes required for FAA regulations as opposed to ICAO regulations (which are minimal), and an upgraded avionics package including optional autopilot. On the other hand it saves them years of research and design to put them on almost equal footing with Cessna and their C-162 Skycatcher, which should begin production later this year.

The SportCruiser hasn’t sold particularly well, but flight tests made by Piper and independent pilots suggest that it is actually a good plane with no known flaws. The design is already roughly similar to Piper’s Cherokee, so Piper is certainly planning to market this as a gateway to bigger Piper aircraft, or as a hobby plane for pilots of bigger craft who want a plane they can take into the air with less prep time. Based on videos and pictures it’s actually a pretty sleek little plane they’ve acquired, too, and that can’t hurt their prospects.

Currently the biggest mainstream competition on the LSA market is the aforementioned Skycatcher, and it should be interesting to see how the two compete. A fair bit of the competition will come down strictly to brand loyalty, both Piper and Cessna have been in the game so long that they each have their fanboys who will swear by nothing but their personal favorite… and their kids and grandkids will, too. It’s true that companies like Diamond have been eating into the market lately with some truly impressive aircraft (like the DA20 and DA40), but at the end of the day the Big Two still lead the way. There’s plenty of room in the LSA market for all the children to have their fun.

Of course the LSA market isn’t quite like the regular aircraft market. Companies like Cessna and Piper have made their way by offering entry level planes for decades, and then offering bigger and better planes – like the Citations and Seminoles – to more avid flight enthusiasts. There will always be a market for the bigger planes, for the people who can afford them, but the fact is that the vast majority of pilots will never fly anything more powerful than a Cessna 172. Thus we’re looking at the biggest market segment out there, but the LSA competes directly with that market.

If your customers want a twin-engine turboprop plane there aren’t that many options on the field, so you won’t have to do an incredible amount of marketing if you happen to want to sell one. If you are trying to sell a single prop LSA, though, then you have to compete directly with not just other LSAs, but also every other single-prop plane on the market… and some of the older ones are really cheap (relatively speaking). A brand new LSA will cost around $125,000 all in, whereas you can get a used Piper Cherokee for around $35,000-$40,000 easy. Of course, you might not want to… there’s a lot to be said for vintage, but I personally want to know that I’m not going to have to overhaul my entire plane to make sure it can fly safely.

The LSA market is also much more open to smaller developers, including ones who previously only dabbled in Ultra-lite aircraft (a whole different market entirely, but still similar). Sadler, for instance, made a name for itself in the early 80s with its SV-1 Vampire ultralite, and now they’re taking the basic frame of the SV-1 and turning it into a full on LSA (and, might I add, it looks really sexy). It’s a huge market, and growing bigger. The PiperSport has its work cut out for it, but the brand name should help significantly. I’ll be watching the LSA market wars with significant interest.

NASA Presents... The Puffin

NASA has come up with bat**** crazy ideas in their time, but their newest product, the Puffin, is certainly rating pretty high on that list. It's simply a rendering at this point, but the very idea of a personal VTOL aircraft for every house pretty much fills me with terror. I don't trust most people to ride a bike correctly (and I'm talking about the manual kind), let alone an aircraft. Hell, if it were up to me about 3/4ths of the car licenses in America would get revoked today.

Let's put that aside for a moment and look at the actual tech, though. NASA is promising a battery driven, propeller operated personal aircraft. The projected aircraft is about 12 feet tall with a 13 foot wingspan, but with a very slender fuselage design. The electric power is important since traditional airplane engines, whether they be jet or propeller, rely on air intake to work properly (the oxygen in the air acts an enriching agent allowing combustion within the engine) and an electric engine does not need that. We don't use batteries to fully power planes, though, because the technology for batteries that can put out the kind of power to keep an airplane in flight just doesn't exist... yet. There are a lot of prototype and proof-of-concept models out there for small, electrical aircraft, but nothing feasible has yet been produced.

The other major advantage to NASA's design is that it is ultra quiet, thanks to the lack of combustion. That combined with its projected 150 mph cruising speed (with a top speed said to be around 300 mph) actually makes this a really nice aircraft for travel. It is hindered by it's mere 50 mile range, but this is supposed to be a commuter aircraft that you would theoretically use to get to work or to run errands.

The viability of this comes down, ultimately, to the threshold of competence required to operate the Puffin. NASA will, of course, want to have a low threshold so it can push more units, but in the interest of public safety I really think it should be set somewhere around the level of sport pilot (the lowest pilot rating you can get, it still takes a good 20-25 hours to earn at the absolute least). But, given that you can fly an Ultra-Lite without any license, even a driver's license, I suspect it'll be on the low end. And that, quite honestly, scares me.

I am, however, amused that they would name it after a bird very closely related to penguins, a bird which cannot fly.

Boeing Restores a Lockheed Clipper

Boeing recently announced that it has acquired an old Lockheed Constellation (a "Connie") that they are restoring and moving to their Seattle based Museum of Flight. This particular plane flew for Trans-Canada Airlines -- the company that would become Air Canada in 1965 -- before being converted into, of all things, a restaurant in Toronto. It has spent the last twenty years or so gathering rust before Boeing stepped in to save it. The Canadian government wanted to keep the plane in Canada, but no companies stepped forward to pay for the restoration work and it eventually was granted to Boeing. The plane should be on display in Seattle before the end of the year.

The Constellations served for a short time in the US military just before the end of World War 2, but saw the majority of its use as an elegant airliner from 1945 to 1967. It was a distinctive aircraft with its triple tail-fin design and sleek, often customized, cabin. That cabin was also the first to be pressurized which gave the plane a longer range and was more comfortable for the passengers. Another side effect was that it was cheaper to fly -- flying higher eats less fuel and often results in faster flights -- and the savings were passed on to the customers. It primarily saw use as a trans-oceanic plane that only needed to stop once or twice when crossing the Atlantic. Despite continual modifications by Lockheed over the years the Constellation was eventually replaced by the new jetliners like the Boeing 707 and DC-8.

I personally think it's a great gesture by Boeing to restore such a noteworthy aircraft built by one of their greatest rivals (the two companies were most recently going head-to-head to earn the contract that would eventually lead to the F-35 Lightning II). The Constellation is an important part of aviation history, and a huge contributor to making air travel, as we know it today, viable. Boeing says that their next major restoration project will be a Boeing 314 "Clipper" (the flying boat) that they plan to recover from the waters near Hawaii. No restored B-314's currently exist anywhere in the world (only 12 were ever made, and all have been destroyed or scuttled).