Last night’s premiere of High School Musical 2 appears to have broken all kinds of ratings records. The most interesting of which is that it was watched by 17.2 million folks nationwide according to overnights. That would make it the highest rated basic cable showing ever. That still doesn’t even begin to compare to the series finale of Cheers or M*A*S*H and such on broadcast networks but still pretty darn impressive considering the number of options viewers have these days.
As to the content, I was rather disappointed. The setting doesn’t work at all. The songs, while fantastic, seemed overly optimized for radio play/soundtrack sales and worked into the story. The original was much more charming. You’ll no doubt get plenty of chances to see an encore over the coming months if you really do want to see it, but in hindsight I would have rather picked up the soundtrack and come up with my own setting/plot in my head.
(This is a rather technical post so feel free to skip this if the title means nothing to you)
I had a dilemma last night. I was linked to this great article by someone in ArsTechnica’s #linux on setting up SeamlessRDP to my VMWare Windows XP installation to achieve an effect similar to VMware Fusion’s Unity on Mac OS X. The problem is that I soon found out that Remote Desktop is disabled in XP Home Edition, only to be enabled in XP Professional.
It took a lot of digging around but I was eventually able to figure out how to get this enabled. So here is my guide on how to enable Remote Desktop in Windows XP Home Edition. Just a heads up that this was important to me because of RDP’s ability to launch specific applications for seamless integration into my Linux desktop, if you don’t need this and just want a full desktop window, one of the free VNC solutions might be better for you (TightVNC seems popular).
The first thing is to trick the installation into thinking that it’s actually XP Pro. I found this information here. Before doing this it might be best to make sure your install is already set up with Service Pack 2, etc.
- Navigate the Windows registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions (where ControlSet00X is the one with the highest number) and delete the “ProductSuite” key.
- Create a new DWORD key in this same folder called “Brand” and set it’s value to 0.
- Reboot Windows. At startup mash F8 to bring up the boot options and choose “Last Known Good Configuration”.
After some hard disk churning you will be back to your welcome screen or desktop. You can then go to the System control panel and see that you now have a Professional Edition setup. This is great so far but unfortunately doesn’t actually install all those professional features.
Now I needed to get Remote Desktop to accept incoming connections.
I found this batch file on a forum post. It’s easy to follow; it basically creates a .reg file with the required keys, merges it, and does a reinstall of terminal services. After a reboot you should now see Terminal Services alive and well in the Services Administrative Tool. A “netstat -a” in the Command Prompt should show port 3389 as listening. At this point I was able to connect to my server but was getting disconnected immediately. After some more digging I found a replacement termsrv.dll that was actually from a Service Pack 2 beta but did the trick for me. Follow the instructions there or here (it must be replaced in safe mode). You might be interested in the registry edits mentioned in those posts as well for concurrent users.
I don’t know how much of this was necessary but after all this tinkering last night I am now able to Remote Desktop with success to my XP Home installation. Yay! One more thing… make sure you have a password associated with your Windows user!
In the almost two months I have been driving Dakota it’s like I’ve become inducted into a secret society. 4/5ths of the time when I spot another New Beetle on the road warm greetings result. If it’s opposing traffic it’s usually flashing fog lights or high beams and a wave. Meeting up with one in the same direction is almost always a smile and a wave, sometimes a peace sign. Last month on a trip to St. Petersburg I came up to a girl in a Techno Blue New Beetle on the interstate and we ended up carabugging most of the way down I-275. Midway across the Howard Franklin Bridge we came up to a Cyber Green NB who joined in. We went our separate ways at the Hwy 682 split but it made my day.
It’s also a game to try and park next to another Beetle in a parking lot. My record so far is 3 side-by-side. It’s especially fun when I can park nose to nose with one so it looks like they are smooching! I like to think the owner of the other Beetle gets as much joy out of seeing mine as I do theirs.
Oh, and watching kids in the back seat of a car next to me punch the crap out of each other when they see me gives me fuzzies, too.
The film list for the 2007 16th Annual Florida Film Festival finally went up this week, and there are some real gems I’m looking forward to seeing. I was hoping Hounddog would make a presence, but the top of the must see list for me is the anime film Paprika. If you haven’t heard about it, the film is directed by Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress) with an awesome music score by Susumu Hirasawa (they actually used Susumu’s music in the trailer! amazing!). The plot looks rather thin–based around a machine that can enter ones dreams–and certainly just an vehicle for Satoshi Kon’s typically amazing dream sequences. It’s the animation that shines here, as well as an all-star vocal cast.
Another must see for me is Snow Cake, a Marc Evans film starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver.
Alex Hughes, recently freed from prison, begrudgingly picks up a vivacious 19-year-old hitchhiker, Vivienne, while driving through Ontario. When the car is hit by a truck on the outskirts of her home town, Vivienne dies instantly. Shocked and stranded in snowbound Wawa, Alex is drawn to seek out Vivienne’s mother, to talk to her in person about the fate of her daughter
Finally, I really want to see In the Shadow of the Moon. A documentary by David Signton that won the Audience Award at Sundance this year. It brings together the surviving crew members of the Apollo missions to tell their stories interweaved with some awesome archive footage.
Hopefully I have good luck getting in on some single tickets when they go on sale next Friday.
An excellent interview with Barack Obama from November 2002, before the preemptive invasion of Iraq. I wonder how many of the senators who voted on the resolution had this level of understanding on the different factions at play and the impact going in would have.
It’s been too long since my last post! Let’s see if I can make this an interesting recap…
- Shawn and I have become tenants in common on a 3 bedroom/2 bath/2 car garage condominium here in Orlando. Just 2.8 miles from Spaceship Earth. Still unpacking but pictures will follow.
- I finally have a “new” car. A silver 2001 Volkswagen New Beetle 1.8 Turbo. Her name is Dakota. I got her with just 28,000 miles and in beautiful shape. She was owned by some snowbirds and kept garaged. I forgot how fun driving can be! No pictures yet…
Ok so maybe not that exciting of a post. How about some cheerleading?
Check out the brand new Disney.com! Also, go see Walt Disney Pictures’ Bridge to Terabithia this Friday, starring the totally awesome AnnaSophia Robb.
While we have been enjoying our egg nog the STS-117 teams have been getting Atlantis ready for her 28th flight in March. The external tank arrived at Kennedy Space Center from the Michoud Assembly Facility on Friday and was quickly lifted and secured in the Vehicle Assembly Building to be stacked with the Solid Rocket Boosters. Atlantis is currently in the Orbiter Processing Facility and will make it’s way to the VAB soon to be mated with the ET/SRB.
The highlights of the STS-117 mission are delivering and installing the S3/S4 starboard truss segment and a third set of solar arrays to the International Space Station.
I hope everyone had a great holiday!
I noticed Landry’s finally put up the Downtown Disney Marketplace concept art for their new T-REX restuarant coming in 2008.
Disney has gotten a lot of buzz as a result of some financial journals picking up the story of a revamped Disney.com being announced next week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s peppered with buzz-words like MySpace and YouTube, and I am interested to see if it gets any share volume reaction when the market opens tommorow. I’ve been especially dying to figure out how to get to CES this year since I heard Bob Iger was delivering a Day 1 keynote. Alas the finances didn’t work out and I’ll have to settle for CNET’s usually excellent reporting here at home. Here’s hoping for some nice digital distribution news… Iger’s keynote coincides with Steve Jobs’ keynote up in San Francisco on Tuesday, though I doubt Jobs will let Iger pre-announce anything on Monday. However, with The Walt Disney Company approaching 1 million movie downloads on the iTunes store in less than 4 months, I’m sure Iger wants an “iTV” device in every home as much as we do.
Seriously, guys. James Worley was not banned from the Magic Kingdom or told to “hit the road”. A guest complained that Worley, wearing a shirt and jeans, was being playful with children and telling them he was Santa. People were lining up to take pictures like they would Mickey Mouse. Park managers took Mr Worley aside and explained the situation and asked him to stop telling kids he was Santa. He complied and left the park on his own later in the day.
There are one of two things you should be annoyed about if you really must. The first would be the guest who complained in the first place. Maybe the guest was just concerned about Worley being playful with the children, I don’t know. But what really bakes my noodle is how this became worldwide news in the first place. The stories over the past 3 days have just become more and more obtuse, and they can all be traced back to WTVT-13, the FOX affiliate in Tampa, FL (Worley lives in Spring Hill, FL). They interviewed Worley and ran a fairly innocent story on Friday about the incident. It’s titled Santa lookalike gets grief on Disney visit and covers the same facts in my first paragraph. How Worley and WTVT came together I won’t speculate here; I like to think it was a friend-of-a-friend and not Worley grabbing for attention. The next day, Fox News picked up the affiliate’s story and ran a national story.
Here is where it got interesting. Hannah Sentenac has some real talent, as she managed to turn an interesting chuckle piece into a ominous evil corporation piece. Out of nowhere we have juicy bits intended to entice like “Lookalike Told to Hit the Road” and “They told us that Santa was considered a Disney character”. I’ll grant that perhaps this was from the filmed interview that didn’t make it to the WTVT aired piece, though it was certainly Worley poorly paraphrasing being told that the park has a meet & greet Santa already. I could even expand that to say we are very strict about having the same character in two places at once (there is a very cool software program Entertainment uses that coordinates this, but I digress). The WTVT piece ended with “He still loves Disney” and the Fox News piece ended with “I’m still angry with Disney, I’m still hurt.”
Of course, once that national story hit the feeds, local news agencies everywhere were latching onto the tale. CNN even ran the original WTVT piece with the title Disney kicks out Santa?!. Something that wasn’t implied in the piece at all. Most people seem to be linking the BBC story linked above, which actually borrows some info from the original piece, but mostly goes for the ominous angle of the Fox News piece.
Sigh. It just really makes me sad to see irrational knee-jerk reactions like this when people don’t realize what’s actually happened. Some have even attributed this to the “War on Christmas”, marking it ironic. Seriously? It should be noted that Disney Parks have been telling the nativity story as part of the Candlelight Processional since 1958.
The other day when I was entering my CDs into Lala.com I pondered whatever happened to M2M. I was very fond of them back in 1999 and 2000. I knew their second album wasn’t as well received in 2002 and I remember their label web site shutting down the following year or so. Now I find out that both Marion and Marit both have done solo albums. I immediately rushed over to Virgin Megastore and bought the import CDs.
Marion Raven’s Here I Am is a pretty good rock affair of an album, sort of Avril Lavinge-ish. She also did a duet with Meat Loaf of It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (YouTube). I recall seeing the Meat Loaf music video in passing but never realized it was Marion! Here is the music video (YouTube) for the title track on Here I Am.
The real gem though is Marit Larsen’s new album Under the Surface. You can tell she is the one with real songwriting talent out of the two. I only need to link the music video (WMV) for the title track to convince you. The whole album is very creative. Her voice has matured immensely in the last six years and I’d compare her to Leigh Nash. Leigh also happens to have a new solo album out post-Sixpence None The Richer, but I haven’t picked it up yet.