2012 Films: "The Iron Lady"

Technically released in 2011, this is the first film I’ve seen in 2012.

Who’s In It: Meryl Streep and Alexandra Roach as Margaret Thatcher; Jim Broadbent and Harry Lloyd as Denis Thatcher; Olivia Colman as Carol Thatcher.

Who Made It: Phyllida Lloyd directs from a script by Abi Morgan. Produced by Damian Jones and distributed by The Weinstein Company.

What It’s About: As her mental state deteriorates with age, Margaret Thatcher reminisces about her rise to power and tenure as Prime Minister. 

My Take: This is not the story about Margaret Thatcher that I would have wanted to have seen made. The frame story, set in present day as Thatcher attempts to come to grips with the death of her husband while beginning to suffer the effects of dementia, takes up far too much screen time. What I would have wanted to be the meat of the story, Thatcher’s rise to power in a male-dominated Tory Party and leadership in the waning years of the Cold War, is reduced to a series of flashbacks. However, Meryl Streep rises above the films flaws in a mesmerizing performance. We all expected Streep to carry the film; I simply would have liked her to have had more help.

For More Information: The Iron Lady on Wikipedia.

2012 Reading: "A Storm of Swords"

A Storm of Swords is the third book in G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Weighing in at nearly 1,200 pages, it is almost as long as the first two books combined. Following the continued fighting in the War of the Five Kings, ASOS dramatically expands the scope of the story and introduces new point of view characters. I’d highly recommend all of the first three books of the series to anyone who enjoys the fantasy genre. 

Click to purchase: for Amazon Kindle; for Apple iBooks; for Barnes & Noble Nook.

Tech Predictions for 2012

So, a lot of folks have been posting on the Internet regarding what they expect to see happen in technology this year. Following in that trend, a few predictions of my own: 

Apple Predictions 

• In October, Apple will release an iPhone 4G, perhaps with new styling, using LTE for highspeed networking. The new iPhone will not have a significantly larger display than the current model.
• Coincident with the iPhone 4G, Apple will release iOS 6.0, which will use a new mapping service owned and operated by Apple to provide turn-by-turn GPS directions.
• In the Spring, Apple will unveil a new line of MacBooks Air with 11”, 13” and 15” screens, updated Intel processors, and solid state storage drives ranging from 128 GB to 512 GB.
• Also in the Spring, Apple will unveil a new line of MacBooks Pro featuring 15” and 17” screens.
• Apple will update the Apple TV settop box to support 1080p video. Users will be able to purchase and play Apple TV games using an iPod or iPhone as a controller.
• In the Spring, Apple will unveil the iPad 3, featuring a Retina Display and a quad-core Apple A6 SOC processor.
• Apple will release an updated software suite, iWork ’12, which will include updated, sandboxed versions of Keynote, Pages and Numbers with direct integration with iCloud document storage.

Google Predictions

• Google will continue to integrate Google+ into everything they release, including much deeper links between the service and the Android operating system.
• Motorola will become the flagship Android phone provider as Google stops outsourcing production of its Nexus models to Samsung.
• Google will begin to diverge the Android UI from the iOS UI in an attempt to escape Apple’s growing wave of lawsuits against the copycat operating system.
• Despite user annoyance at the Google+ integration, and legal saber-rattling by governments, Google will not lose significant market share in search.
• Google Chrome will pass Mozilla Firefox to become the second most commonly used browser worldwide.

Microsoft Predictions

• Windows 8 will not ship this year.
• Windows Phone 7 will continue to recieve great reviews but find few buyers. The Nokia Lumia 900 will be one of the best phones released this year, but will struggle.
• Internet Explorer will dip into the low to mid 40s in market share.
• Steve Ballmer will begin the process of annointing an heir apparent, in anticipation of a departure in 2013 or 2014.
• Microsoft Office 365 will grow into a large financial success.
• Microsoft will release Office for iPad, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. 

Other Tech Predictions

• Facebook will surpass the one billion member mark.
• RIM will begin a public effort to sell itself off as the BlackBerry line continues to fade. Few credible suitors will emerge.
• Amazon will release a revised Kindle Fire in early Fall, addressing the major issues present in the current device.
• E-Book sales will continue to grow dramatically, and traditional publishers will find themselves increasingly disintermediated as authors begin publishing directly to the Kindle, Nook and iBooks stores. 
• Barnes & Noble will spin its Nook family off into a separate company, and will also begin reducing the size of its physical stores.
• Nintendo’s Wii U will be the first eighth-generation console to be released. It will not share the same sort of success as its predecessor.

A New Home on the Web

So, after years of hosting my Web presence through Apple's iDisk and iWeb system, I am now forced to find a new home for my sporadically-updated site. Figuring that doing something properly is always a good idea, I've settled on hosting a new site on Squarespace, with domain management provided by Hover.

As a nod to my previous efforts, I've transferred some of my MobileMe-hosted content, specifically the Rewatching Voyager posts, to this new site. I will try to find time to bring other elements from previous editions of KirkMcPike.com to this new foundation, as well.

Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully there will be more here to see than there was at the last incarnation of my website!

At the very least, expect some interesting new material to be posted in early 2012....

Rewatching Voyager: 006 "The Cloud"

This episode bristles with the excitement of watching people play holographic pool and talk to animals.

Synopsis

After poking their noses into a nebula where they don’t belong, the crew proceeds to show how little sense of urgency they possess about returning home. Paris and Kim play pool. Chakotay demeans Native Americans everywhere by leading Janeway through the most insulting rendition of Indian culture this side of Tonto. When it turns out that the nebula was a living creature, Janeway goes all Jane Goodall and insists the crew risk their lives again to repair the damage they caused. Surprising no one, everything works out fine.

Nitpicks

• Neelix is fairly sensible at the beginning of this episode when he bemoans Captain Janeway’s insistence on playing explorer instead of focusing on the mission of returning her crew home. He still needs to die, however.

• Hopefully someone on board noticed that Janeway almost got them all killed in this episode in order to slake her thirst for replicated coffee. One wonders if the Kazon could have convinced her to give them the Caretaker Array’s secrets had they just thrown in a case of Taster’s Choice as part of the deal. 

• Technobabble reigns supreme in this episode. It’s used to describe the effects of the nebula on the Voyager, the structure of the nebula creature, and the crew’s solution to the “how do we heal it?” problem. This technobabble tumor will metastasize in later seasons.

• There are some excellent effects in this episode when the ship is traveling through the nebula being.

• I enjoyed the mutual snark between Tuvok and Kim after the Vulcan provides the ensign with some unwelcome criticism of his job performance.

• Because of this excursion, the ship will have to travel 14 light years out of their way to replenish the energy supplies lost in the nebula. At the roughly 935 times the speed of light the ship is traveling, that’s a 5-day sidetrack from their journey home.

Journey Statistics

Stardate: 48546.2 (~July 18, 2371).

Distance From Home: 69,795 light years.

Surviving Crew: ~141 and the Maquis.