Everyone has a few movies that they love but are scared to admit to. Whether it’s a love of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals beloved by an iron-pumping bodybuilder or a nun with a secret love of the Rambo trilogy, we are all equal in the fact we harbour fondness for movies that are seen as too immature, too stupid, too badly made or too inappropriate for us to enjoy without being mocked.
I have a real love of old 1950s SciFi films (Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, etc.), but I think that Mystery Science Theater 3000 has bludgeoned the irony out of them. Actually, I really enjoy MST3K, having done similar commentary and voice-overs with friends long before I found the show. I think that such films make too easy a target (often bad acting, poor scripting and low budget effects combine to create something far greater than the sum of its parts), so I’ve had a think and come up with a new list of Ten Top Guilty Pleasures – I hope you like them as much as I do!
Hackers:
I work in the digital realm and this film should be a total anathema to me – poorly thought-out techno-tripe written by someone who obviously has difficulty checking their email, let alone describe the intricacies of Denial Of Service attacks, Spoofing, Phishing, Worms (don’t get me started on the movie Swordfish – “let’s use a Hydra, it’s a multi-headed Worm!”) and other such technical jiggery-pokery.
The fact is, though, that it stands out as a pretty good attempt to capture the Cyberpunk counter-culture of the 1990s. Matthew Lillard, in particular, gives a great performance as an obviously intelligent, moral teenager who is trying to create an identity as a slacker disaffected with society (his character, “Serial_Killer”, is really called Emmanuel Goldstein – the name of a real-life prominent figure in the hacker/phreak culture, who published a magazine for hackers and has so-far avoided prosecution).
Ok, Johnny Lee Miller looks about 35, not 17, and Angelina Jolie’s character doesn’t bring anything to the party other than to act as a romantic interest, but the close-knit group of schoolkids who happen to identify their clique by their computer skills is actually pretty well-observed – hackers are defined by their need to boast of their exploits in order to gain kudos amongst their peers, whilst simultaneously being socially awkward – generally speaking, hackers, geeks, phreaks (or whatever else you may call them) can only relate to others of their kind – be it via Star Trek conventions, role-playing games or, as per this case, a common love of technology and shared distrust of the “straight” society which ostracises them and fails to recognise their obviously superior computer skills.
Speaking as one who was a teen in the early 1990s that was into computers (I lusted after Silicon Graphics workstations when most kids lusted after Ferraris), I can say that my friends and I were probably out of step with society as we thought in digital terms, our heroes being the demo crews, hackers and literary icons like William Gibson – his novel “Neuromancer” and the sequels, “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”, pretty much defined our world view – vaguely nihilistic, sarcastic, obsessed with technology and information. We spent lunch breaks coding or hacking the school network for fun (yet jealously guarded “our” computer lab against unwanted abuse by non-technical types), our conversations centred on the latest demo, the best piece of new kit we couldn’t afford or even dismantling old machines to see how they had been put together.
Actually, in hindsight, it’s hardly surprising most of us ended up working as programmers, as IT support or in the digital creative realm, as most of us were hoping for the millennium to usher in the days of flying around the ‘Net/Matrix using our Ono Sendai decks and were a little disappointed by the reality, especially as the internet is now basically brochure-ware and porn. I tend to feel that Tim Berners-Lee was correct in saying that the Web as it stands is not fulfilling it’s potential (he said of the Web 2.0 hype frenzy, “Nobody really knows what it means...If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.") – his original proposal to CERN in 1990 showed much more collaborative community-based architecture than the content-server model we ended up with on the World Wide Web. In fact, a lot of experts critics the term Web 2.0 as nothing more than marketing jargon, whilst I certainly feel that the flat page model of the internet is both user-unfriendly and the wrong paradigm for navigating what is essentially a 4-dimensional realm of information, but I digress.
So, cheesy CGI aside, this film is essentially a teenage-gang prevents heist affair, but it does explain the ethics of true hacking (it’s about data liberation, not financial or criminal gain – true hackers believe that governments should be open and so should big business. It’s when the doors close that the corruption begins, so keep the doors open) and shows that Matthew Lillard is sorely wasted doing (admittedly good) Shaggy impressions for the rest of his life.
It’s a bit of a no-brainer, but it is the first film I ever saw that tried to approach this culture in anything other than a “petulant kid hacks computer, gets into trouble and learns his lesson” kind of way (see Wargames for a prime example) – in fact, it actually goes so far as praising the ethos of keeping data transparent to all, which is a refreshing change!
Johnny Mnemonic:
If ever a film defined the term “failing to meet expectations”, this is it. A film, made at the height of the Cyberpunk era (Hackers, Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, The Net – all were made around the same time, give or take), based on a short story by William Gibson – the Godfather of Cyberpunk – and the initial screenplay was even penned by him. The tale of woe that followed (arguments with the studio and dissatisfaction with the film eventually ended up with Gibson walking away, the director was, if I recall, fired and the film re-cut by a panel of studio producers creating a shorter film with a happy ending) led to an end product that wasn’t by any means going to challenge Bladerunner in the all-time classic stakes. However, this is a much maligned film and I think it’s unfair.
Sure, the vision of the internet is cheesily quaint today, but back in the 1990s it’s exactly what things like Apple’s HotSauce, VRML and the Silicon Graphics 3D file system (FSN) were promising and, in some ways, it makes sense from a navigation point of view. Without getting into a lecture on web semantics, the current model pushes flat data at a user and has led to very low interactivity and an even lower fulfilment of the internet’s promise of being a true digital nation. The nearest we have come are things like Second Life and those, like the depiction of the internet in this film, is in 3d – it’s how we navigate in real life and how we make sense of our environment – having a 3d web interface, even if the end result of your journey is a flat document, makes sense. So, let’s not scoff quite so much at this concept, eh?
So the technology is a bit dated now, but at the time it was using cutting-edge concepts (virtual reality, etc) and the idea that media saturation could control society is something scarily prophetic – look at the way Fox News and other pro-Bush outlets were so vitriolic towards those who questioned the Iraq war, or the lack of consistency in the story being told about 9/11 – even now, the US populace lives under government control with restricted civil liberties due to a terror “threat” that is only known about via the media. Think of the LoTeks as a cyberpunk version of Michael Moore and the Daily Show – punching through the fog of crap to get people to open their eyes and things make some more sense.
The film is, undeniably, stunningly produced – the sets are well dressed, well thought out and small details are right. Ok, the casting is a bit hit and miss, although I do think Keanu does a good job, I think Ice T looked uncomfortable and wonder if Henry Rollins wouldn’t have been better in his role. Or, given the fact that in Gibson’s universe, the Cowboys (hackers) and hustlers are always quite young due to short life expectancy, maybe a younger actor with more nervous energy (like Lillard in Hackers) would have been more appropriate. And, yes, I understand the reasoning behind the Dolphin, but Gibson’s universe is post-Nuclear and animals are all but extinct – I think that it’s possibly things like this that caused the rifts at the studio…
All in all, though, it’s actually not a bad film. If it had a £100Million budget, it would have been the Matrix, but then again it stands up far better than the sequels in that trilogy. The script is a bit patchy, but it’s trying to communicate an awful lot and even Bladerunner has its flaws, and I speak as a dedicated fan of that film – I actually feel that the studio-added voiceover added a lot of depth to the film, but who am I to argue with Ridley Scott? In fact, if you like Gibson’s books and the Matrix, then forget the reviews and your preconceptions, forgive the fact that time makes some of the “future concepts” look quaint and you’ll find yourself enjoying this a lot.
Tremors:
What can I say, I think it’s just a good, funny, tongue-in-cheek homage to the B-Movie creature flicks of the 1950s. It’s not trying too hard to be anything other than a fun couple of hours and Fred West and Kevin Bacon are a great pairing, too – not much else to say, really.
Judge Dredd:
As a kid I loved 2000AD. I was a British kid, in the 1980s, who liked technology and dystopian sci-fi, so of course, Dredd and Hershey’s antics were of interest to me. I always liked ABC Warriors, had liked some of the Rogue Trooper stories and always really enjoyed Slaine. So when I heard that Dredd was going to be a movie, I was psyched. Then I heard Stallone was going to play him. Given that this was before films like Demolition Man, where he’d show pretty good comic instincts and things like Daylight, where he’d actually shown he could act and I was understandably nervous: Rambo as Dredd? We’d lose all of the dark humour as it was Americanised beyond belief and it would just become a crappy vehicle for a steroid freak with a half-paralysed face!
Thankfully, whilst the film is inevitably more US-centric in tone, it is actually pretty good. Rob Schneider is good as the light relief and the overall feel of the Megacity is good, although it has to be said some of the effects shots are a bit Picard-era Star Trek in feel (too clean and pristine) – the Megacity is supposed to be a huge hive barely able to sustain its populace, yet some of the shots look like a rainy shopping centre (or Mall, to our colonial cousins). That said, it’s a good, if a little hokey, action film that is worth an afternoon’s viewing. A popcorn movie, if you will.
The Ringer:
Ok, I’m supposed to be mature and I’m supposed to be politically correct, but the fact is that this Johnny Knoxville vehicle makes me laugh very hard indeed. What’s nice is that, while it makes fun of the special kids involved, it makes fun of them in the same way as it’s making fun of everyone – in fact, they often come out of things looking smarter or more compassionate than the “normal” folks. This film has possibly the best training montage I have ever seen, although I wouldn’t let these guys make my protein shake…
The 13th Warrior:
Let’s start off by heading off the obvious arguments – no, this is not as good as “Lord of the Rings” and, no, it’s not a brilliant adaptation of “Beowulf”. However, as a standalone film it’s very enjoyable. I know that the original cut had a much longer, slower, darker storyline and that it had a different soundtrack, but unlike a lot of film geeks, I wouldn’t rush to see that original version – it was screen-tested and universally hated, which is why they cut out 45 minutes or so and made it zip along.
It’s not perfect – there’s an unexpectedly Celtic Norseman and, at times, Antonio Banderas looks alternately lost and wooden, but the fact is that it’s a pretty good story (based roughly on Michael Crichton’s book “The Eaters of the Dead”, which itself was based loosely on “Beowulf”) – there’s a grim humour amongst the Norsemen and a strong sense of honour and Brotherhood-in-Arms, which leaves you feeling rather buoyed up and very emotional when Bulliwyf meets his fate.
It’s not all plodding script, though – there is some good old Saturday-morning-matinee action and some very nice set design, especially the besieged settlement that forms the location for the dramatic climax. I also like the clever way the director gets around the language barrier – slowly words you understand start to creep into the Norwegian (or possibly Finnish) that the Vikings are talking, until in one scene, Antonio Banderas’ character (nicknamed “Eben” due to a misunderstanding over his real name: Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan Ibn Al Abbas Ibn Rashid Ibn Hamad) suddenly answers the Norsemen’s jibes in their own language (which is now all spoken as English) – it’s a very clever way of doing this and I really think it adds a lot to the understanding of Eben’s journey to get to know the wild men of the North and to also grow himself from petulant court lackey to true Hero.
It’s one of the go-to films I have for rainy days or when I want to get in the mood to paint a battalion of wargame miniatures, or even if I just need a good dose of stirring action. No, it won’t be likely to win an Oscar, but it’s good fun and I love it to bits.
Dodgeball:
It’s really a toss-up between this and Zoolander, but I think that Dodgeball edges it because it just feels more fun. The premise (run-down owner of a run-down gym decides to enter a dodgeball tournament to pay off his mortgage and save his slacker lifestyle along with the bunch of social outcasts that form his clientele) is pretty thin, some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy (especially some of Ben Stiller’s lines), but I can’t help but laugh at this film. From the stupid “learn the 5 D’s of dodgeball – dodge, duck, dip, dive and…er..dodge”, to the ridiculous (“if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball”), to the unexplained presence of a pirate, I cannot help but chuckle like an idiot.
This film is even better for the cameo by Lance Armstrong when the hero (Vince Vaughan) is thinking of bailing out on his team-mates when things get tough (“when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer, I thought about quitting, but I got back on the bike and won the Tour De France five times…what life-threatening illness are you dying from?” “Right about now, it feels like shame…”), which adds an odd endorsement to an idiotic parody of the usual triumph-over-adversity sports movie.
National Treasure:
Ok, it’s not Indiana Jones (but let’s be honest, the last Indy film wasn’t perfect), but it’s not as bad as people make out. Yes, it borrows a lot from the aforementioned fedora-wearing archaeologist, takes a dash of The Da Vinci Code’s conspiracy theories, adds in a smattering of The Goonies and turns the blender on. The fact is that, whilst not breaking new ground, this is a perfectly acceptable afternoon’s viewing. Hell, people watched Sahara and, whilst it was based on a successful series of books, that film was truly diabolical.
National Treasure sits somewhere above Relic Hunter, but below Indy or even Romancing The Stone’s comic adventure. I think the nearest analogy I can find is a film called The Librarian, which appears to be a made-for-TV/straight-to-DVD effort starring Noah Wyle (and also seems to be part of a series) – it’s an enjoyable hour and a half, with a reasonable, if hokey, script, some good set pieces and it makes a good run-up to Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade or Raiders Of The Lost Ark in a B-Movie sort of way. Don’t give it headline status, but it’s worth adding to the DVD collection as rainy-day filler, I think.
Hudson Hawk:
Where to begin? Ego-trip for the Bruno that fell flat on its face, dated badly and which Mr Willis now hates to even hear mentioned. Or, as others would have it, cult hit that has a huge dedicated fan base and to which a sequel, if done right, would probably make a bundle of money. This film is rather like The Princess Bride, which bombed on release and was slated in reviews, only to become one of the biggest hits in the VHS rental market, subsequently becoming a huge seller on DVD and a cult icon.
Hudson Hawk is stupid, chaotic, an over-long setup for one-liners and shots of Bruce Willis smirking knowingly, whilst wearing shades, but Moonlighting was huge and that series basically revolved around exactly the same thing – script was always secondary to the charisma of Bruce (and to a lesser extent, Cybil Shephard). It’s hard not to enjoy the scenes where Bruce and Danny Aiello sing “Singin’ On a Star”, or the crazily over-the-top performance by Richard E Grant. Hell, I can even forgive Sandra Bernhardt for being, well, Sandra Bernhardt. It’s like Marmite – you’ll either love it or hate it, but I am one of those who love it. It’s a truly guilty pleasure.
Chain Reaction:
So dumb it slaps you in the face. Keanu Reeves, still sporting his Bill and Ted “bogus” hair-do and “bodacious” wearing of hooded top under plaid shirt, is a physics PHD working on Nuclear Fusion. Except he’s not a student, from what I can tell – he’s more like an idiot savant. It’s never really explained, but basically he’s the rebellious dude who does physics his way and doesn’t follow the rules…of physics. Well, you get the idea.
Having taken part of what would be a multi-million dollar top-secret experiment home with him one evening, he stumbles across a solution to the projects’ problems and essentially creates a cold fusion reactor where dozens of the top minds have failed. Cue shady government project sponsor killing everyone and framing Keanu and the up-tight by-the-rules student, played by Rachael Weisz.
What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse with Keanu trying to avenge his dead mentor, clear his name and, obviously, get Ms Weisz into bed. I’ll be honest, it’s crazily dumb in places – out-running a nuclear blast on a 1965 Norton motorcycle is one example; being able to survive falling into icy water by wandering around a bit whilst wearing nothing warmer than a woolly shirt is another. Basically, don’t try to follow the logic – leave your brain at the door and it’s not a bad film. Of course, as a qualified scientist, the lab scenes make me want to scream, but I long ago accepted the fact that Hollywood can’t use real science as it’s rarely exciting enough to make for a good movie.
So, there you have it – my top ten guilty pleasures, or crappy films I enjoy watching but feel pressured to slate when in public. I’m sure that you have your own list – just admit it!
I'm back, at last! Well, it's been a hectic couple of months and, without going in to all the details of when and how, I am now the proud father of a little girl who has, it has to be said, settled in amazingly well, but has taken my attention away from my blog here and other things that I would usually do i my spare time. In fact, it's simple to say that I have had no free time. I wouldn't change a thing, however - she's perfect and mother and baby are doing astoundingly well.
So what's new in the world of tech and gaming that I have been tinkering with? Well, first up would be iPhone OS 3.0 - it's funny how a few minor tweaks can turn something cool but not so practical into an indispensable tool, but that's just what OS 3.0 has done. The ability to sync Mail and Calendar to my Google account without requiring extra steps or interconversion on my part, the ability to search the entire phone, the ability to Copy/Paste and, best of all, tethering (where you use your phone as a wireless modem for your laptop) have made my life so much easier - I can copy text from web pages into emails, I don't have to send all my work appointments to my Gmail account, then import to iCal on my laptop, then sync them by connecting my phone and, joy of joys, I can now surf the net on my laptop whilst on the train without requiring a pre-paid dongle for £100+ and pay an arm and a leg for data usage (or pay yet another monthly contract fee). Ok, if you are stupid, your network provider will figure it out and block your phone, but for checking emails and browsing eBay on the move, it totally transparent as its the same level of data trafic you'd get surfing on your iPhone.
To be honest, the latest Apple Keynote didn't wow me so much - the iTunes news was cool (DRM free songs, etc), but the rest left me a bit cold. With the iPhone 3GS, which has video (big whoop) and is marginally quicker than the standard 3G iphone, I don't really feel the need to rush out and upgrade, unlike the jump from iPhone to iPhone 3G, and the cost of upgrade is potentially huge (O2 and AT&T are not letting consumers upgrade part-way through a contract, depsite the fact the handset will cost £300ish). I also think that, because there was no true "Killer" product (no new Mac Tablet, or iNewton, etc) that Apple probably missed Steve Jobs' presentation style more keenly. Steve is cool in a way that Bill Gates could only dream of and the slightly portly fellow who did this keynote (whos name escapes me temporarily) is obviously a committed board member, who follows the Church of Jobs - I believe he has assisted in a few keynotes before - just didn't have the same charisma. He spoke the same sort of words, but they sounded like a school teacher trying to be "down with the kids" - I truly believe that a lot of Apple's ability to weather the global financial crisis is going to hinge on Steve Jobs' health as without him, Apple struggles to maintain its ice-cool image and begins to look like a bunch of middle-aged men trying to hang on to the image they had in their College days. There is also the danger that, without Jobs, Apple could slip back into the Gil Amelio-era style of iterative design and focus-groups - Apple is only competitive when it stays ahead of the game in terms of design - anyone could build a Xeon-based PC for the cost of the MacPro, but it's the qualit of the design and build and the superlative OS X that gives Apple that edge - lose that hip feel, need to innovate and design culture and Apple would sink faster than SGI, who went from top dog in the Supercomputer and 3D workstation market to bankrupt in a very short space of time and their arena of competition was far smaller. Get well soon, Steve, for Apple's sake not just your own!
Sticking with Apple, the other news is that I have had to scale back plans to buy a new MacBook Pro 17" and an iMac (babies cost a lot ) and have just purchased a replacement for my old G4 Powermac (which now lives with my Mother who is in love with her "new" Mac) and also for the Dual Xeon PC that has been the staple of my home office for about eight years. This machine (Dual 1.7GHz Xeons, 4GB RAMBUS memory, RAID SCSI 10k drives, DVDRW and NVidia AGP 6800 card) has been more than quick enough until recently, when I just started to feel that it was becoming a bit long in the tooth - as PCs go, it's been great - reliable and fast, but then again, you do get what oyu pay for and, with the huge cost of RAMBUS memory when new, this beast weighed in at £10,000, including a (then) huge 18.1" LCD screen, DVDRAM backup drive and SoundBlaster Audigy with LiveDrive (connection breakout box in a drive bay, basically). Oh, and the Wildcat 5110 workstation class graphics card cost £1500 but was obsolete within 18 Months...still, such is the way with PCs.If you're ever in the market for a PC-based workstation, I can really recommend Boxx - their customer service was amazing over the life of this machine, but I never really enjoyed owning this computer in the same way I have a soft spot for my Macs (and my SGIs). So, rather than put it on eBay and get a pittance for it, I'm turning it over to the network for use as a video and music server and I'm also sacrificing the beloved Blue Dalamatian iMac G3, which is going to live with my parents in their guest room so that visitors can surf the net and check emails, etc. I've already got a G3 Pismo laptop serving that purpose here...
So, what did I buy? Well, after much hunting, I've just taken delivery of a Dual 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 with 6GB of RAM and the 256MB X800T ATI graphics card. The silver hot rod also has 500GB of drive storage, which means I should need to upgrade for a while. I was after a Quad 2.5GHz machine, but my budget wouldn't quite stretch (although, in true sod's law fashion, minutes after I'd paid for mine, I had someone offer a Quad for not much more - ah well) and whilst I could have gotten a dual 2.7GHz, I picked this one as it had a good solid spec with a lot of RAM (one thing the Boxx did teach me is that 4GB or more of memory can really be worth a good 500MHz of CPU speed, as you'll lose more time writing to disk than you would waiting for a slower CPU to read out of RAM). I'm just awaiting the 22" widescreen TFT that was sent separately and I'll see if I can't get some photos or video of it all when I'm up and running.
Given that I have a PS3, I'm not too fussed about not having a Gaming PC - I'd like to play Empire Total War, but, frankly, it's more important that the machine I use is stable and lets me do my work on it; I will work from home on it more than I will get to play on it - if I have leisure time it will most likely be spent with my family and games will be played in the lounge, socially, on the PS3.
The other big reason I am happy with the G5 is that I'm not interested in running OSX 10.5 (Leopard), as it has no support for the old Classic applications and games that I have many of - I'm more likely to want to run the apps I spent money on than games I won't have time to play or be forced to pay out a fortune to update apps that still do the work I require just so they will work on OSX 10.5.
I know that there is a good business case for dropping the legacy code now that Apple are aligned with Intel, but how many people bought a G5 at a cost of £4000+ that is still useful (and fast) as a work machine only to find it basically being phased out after two years or so - Leopard doesn't support anything less than an 800MHz G4 (according to Apple, anyway, although it might run if you hack the install), but Snow Leopard is due to drop all support for PowerPC systems, which means that machines that are still not end-of-life in studios and small businesses are effectively being made obsolete.
Not since System 7 dropped support for the original Macintosh machines (68000 CPU series), forcing users to buy LCs or Macintosh Classics, has there been such a cull - by the time OSX rolled around, anything pre-PowerPC chip was basically landfill and most of the Beige G3 machies could run it, so it was a gradual process. A small business (and I know because I am, and have been, one) does not pay out £6k for a top-spec Mac and large screen only to replace it three or four years later - that machine will stay in service until it is literally of no practical use or it breaks down. It might not be the go-to machine after two eyars, but it will be used by junior staff, or as a back up, or for temps...then it might be used as a server or as a render-node, or even just to surf the net and write letters, but it will still be in use. Hell, last year I even saw a Blue and White G3 tower being put to use by an art department who needed all hands to help get a project out the door - sure, it wasn't quick and it ran an older version of Photoshop, but it still actually did the work and that's what businesses care about. The gamer culture of must-have-latest-and-greatest which is vaunted by the PC fanboys in their breating of Apple products is actually not sensible for business users, as those uber-quick gaming rigs tend to be unstable and unproven - agencies and the like need machines that are quick enough but, more importantly, are rock-solid and dependable - hence the proliferation of Apple machines.
I guess that there is an incentive for Apple to force people to buy the new Intel machines, but there are a lot of XServe or G5 PowerMacs in academic use (Virginia Tech built a supercomputer for $5.2Million using them) and the custom apps on them either may not recompie on Intel x86 or it might be cost-prohibitive, so what about those users? I know for a fact that the media editing department of a multinational oil company still has a whole bunch of G5 towers under their desks, with only those which die beyond repair being replaced with Mac Pros - the investment is huge and corporate finance dictates that as long as the machines are useful, they won't be replaced and, unfortunately for those trying to sell you a new Intel Mac, Apple machines stay useful for far longer - Snow Leopard feels to me like an artificial attempt to force corporate buyers to replace machines in order for OS support contracts to stay in place, etc. In short, it feels a little cynical - what happened to Apple only phasing out sstem support when it was no longer a viable OS for the platform?
Given that my old G4 which, although fitted with a Radeon card, larger hard drives and a lot more memory, was only a 400MHz CPU and still felt snappy enough for most work (ok, it chopped a bit when rendering out video and also could take a while to resize HUGE images) - especially Flash and web design work, where the files tend to be smaller, and the Dual 1.7GHz Xeon box was always quick because of the RAM and the drives, I can honestly say that my G5 will be the core of my studio for some time to come - especially as I want to be able to run my Classic apps. I dare say that in a year or so when I have some decent spare cash, I would like to get a Mac Pro 8 Core with all the bells and whistles, but actually....I think I'd much rather buy 5 G5 Quads for the same money and get more work done on a distributed workflow.
I know it sounds stupid, but I have always preferred the RISC CPUs of MIPS on Silicon Graphics and Motorola/IBM's PowerPC on Macintosh to anything Intel have come up with. The Intel machines tended to run at faster cycles, but their instruction set and bad architecture tended to make them hot and not actually that quick in real-world terms (same goes for AMD). Basically, the G5 I have was proven to be 40% faster in real-world terms than a Dual 3.06GHz Xeon PC (which given I am only now running down a dual Xeon 1.7GHz machine gives an idea of how much more competent the Xeon workstation-class boxes are compared to a normal PC). I know for a fact that my Core Duo machine running at 1.6GHz (a £2000 Sony Vaio) was nowhere near as quick and, whilst I can get a quad core 3.0GHz Xeon for £LOTS, I really cannot justify the expense on a new machine when £500 on eBay has just upgraded my studio to be at least 50% more efficient for when I am working and made an infinite upgrade for my leisure time as I've got more power in less space and have freed up room for miniatures that need painting, the coffee maker that has been languishing in a cupboard and things are way more organised now I haven't got the extra machines taking up space.
Life is never simple and now the money which was going to buy my new Mac G5, a new mic for podcasting (the Blue Snowball...mmm, yum!), a new set of paints and brushes for my miniatures, some clothes, some PS3 games and Bluray movies and a few days out and meals for myself and my lovely wife (and baby) has now been ear-marked for two single beds for the guest bedroom (not that we have that many guests), more baby clothes (our house looks like a branch of Mothercare collided with a Baby Gap already), a sewing machine (why?) and shopping spree around Babies'R'Us. Still, at least I have my PowerMac, the paints and the prospect of a few nice dinners....can't be all bad!
Now, as a web professional, I should be jumping on the Twitter bandwagon faster than a tabloid doing a U-turn over Jade Goody. Every pitch I attend has at least one person practically frothing at the mouth at the thought of getting a Twitter feed into the mix and everyone I know insists on posting every minutiae of their lives on it, yet it leaves me cold - why?
Supporters of Twitter will probably wheel out Stephen Fry as their poster-boy, pointing out the fact that thousands follow his posts (or "tweets" to those who buy into the hype), so anything that makes it easier for him to reach his audience must be good. They miss the fundamental point that, although he is known as an early adopted of technology, Stephen Fry is intelligent, witty, erudite and famous - people want to hear what he says. Dave from accounts is dull, his life is singularly uninteresting to the general public, so why does he need a tool to share every waking second of his life and every banal thought that enters his head with the global populace?
Twitter? The sooner the hype dies and the cool crowd move on, the better, I think. The simple fact is that, like pen and paper, or wax tablets, it doesn't matter what the medium used is, what matters is the content. Twitter may well have some great quotes, or some genuine insights amongst all the dross, but I am afraid that whereas blogs or even Facebook pages offer some level of interaction for the reader, Twitter does not. The whole basis of the system encourages narcissism on an epic scale - I can tweet away to my hearts' content, yet no-one can post back to say I am talking rubbish, or even take an interest and grow the dialogue. The lack of feedback means that the author retains a sense of ego and also a sense of detachment from the reader - this means that there is a false elevation of the importance of the writer's output, purely through lack of negative feedback.
As a marketing tool, Twitter might make some sense - you can leak word of a new product and build "buzz" without the negative aspect of a blog (depending on the product, you can get a militant aspect posting derogatory comments - I've worked on accounts for Fuel companies, so I should know!), the short amount of copy available means that your copywriters offer more "tweets per pound" than they might offer per blog post - so it might be economic good sense, but the truth is that any marketing company should really steer clear of Twitter, as the kind of people who read the output it gives do not take kindly to corporate prescences on what they perceive as their territory - it is viewed with the same level of animosity as unsolicited emails from companies using mailing lists. Also, the lack of feedback functionality means that it is very hard to a) enter a two-way conversation with your prospective customers and, b) very hard to measure the ROI. Basically, it's the latest fad and, like MySpace and Facebook, the digital agencies are just trying to prove that they are ahead of the curve and impress clients by jumping on to the newest bandwagon. I can genuinely say that it makes very good sense to avoid this pitfall at all costs, as the best you can hope for is zero engagement - the worst is that you tarnish the image of the brand you are trying to generate hype for by getting a reputation for encroaching into territory they shouldn't be seen in.
Twitter - leave it to Stephen Fry, as he'll write something funny and interesting. Don't try to advertise mouthwash on it...
As you are probably aware, I have been looking in to getting a top-spec PC to run my various OSes on under Vrtualisation and use of partitioned hard drives. Also, as I am starting to do some more creative and development work it will be nice to get a more future-proof system and something to play Crysis on...
I am veering towards a Core i7 system, purely because I've had issues with AMD systems in the past and, basically, if I'm going to pay £2000+ for a system I want to have something that is top of the line, so that it will be less likely to be obsolete within a year when the next crop of games comes around and Adobe brings out the latest Creative Suite. Having worked with SGI and Apple systems in the past, I want something that looks good on the desk and which screams "creative" to clients, so a beige box is out of the question. I know it sounds stupid, but my studio is all white and I like a system that will stand out on the desk and look good - partly out of vanity (I like my workspace to look good), but also because things like that make a difference in giving confidence to clients. After all, a beowulf cluster of home-built PCs is just as good as a dedicated rack server, but which would you trust your mission-critical data to?
However, whilst I was quite comfortable to build a custom system, the impatient part of me can't wait to collect all the components before I can use the system. So, could I find a pre-built system to suit that I can reasonably afford - that's a big question, as pre-built "gamer" systems tend to fall into two camps: those that are built by small companies to order, but which reflect the off-the-shelf nature of such outfits - they'll work brilliantly, but look like a dog's dinner - or those from the "big name" brands which are usually over-priced, under-perform but at least look like a complete system, rather than a collection of parts. I have memories of a Dell I once used that, once it had a top-flight NVidia card from their configuration list, it ran so hot that the case smelled permanently of burning plastic. So, there is a need to be wary, but in the intervening time there have been a few high points - Alienware, being the notable example.
Ignoring the recent acquisition by Dell, Alienware was a reasonably small fish, making high-end gaming and creative machines that had a real boutique feel to them - the brand is strong and the system design is usually first-class. However, they aren't cheap. Recently, too, I have noticed a lot of messages on the net about Alienware suffering a drop in quality (presumably as they become more commodity-focussed under Dell's ownership), whilst their cost is still equivalent to a maxed-out Mac Pro, although the raw performance in gaming terms may well be higher.
In my trawling of the internet, however, I came across a system that might well tick my boxes - I had been looking at a Core i7 system, with 12GB or DDR3, dual ATI 4870X2s, 6TB of storage and a Lian Li Ati branded red Armoursuit case - and it is made, of all people, by Acer.
The predator G7700 runs a Core2Duo, 4GB of RAM, has 1.28GB of Storage and a pair of Geforce 9800GT cards, so why does it appeal? Well, the price, basically. I can pick one up for £1700, then buy RAM, drives, Motherboard, Core i7 920 and Dual ATI 4870X2s and still end up paying out less than I would have for my custom sytsem. The drives are hot-swappable, which is a bonus, as I wanted the huge storage to enable me to strip the system drive, then mirror it, whilst having a separate mirrored storage drive. The out-of-the-box reviews are all surprisingly favourable and, well....just look at it.
This is a truly eye-catching system that, when paired with the matching monitor and a Razer Lachesis keyboard it will certainly turn heads. It's a bit love-it-or-hate-it, but you certainly can't miss it. I personally love it and I will be hopefully picking one up soon!
Well, it's the end of an era at my place. An Englishman's home may well be his castle, but when an Englishman's wife is having a baby, very soon his habit of hoarding old computers comes into view and he needs to clear out the spare room and the heap of machines in his lounge before he is catapulted over his castle's wall via trebuchet (or angry wife). Thus, I'm selling off my old SGI and other hardware to make room for the forthcoming addition to the clan. Fortunately, because my wife is wonderful (and because we have a fairly roomy house), I am still allowed my studio as a retreat, so I can get my fix for wargames, modelling and computer-based tinkering there, as long as I have room for the odds and ends I need for the times I work from home and, more importantly, have space to move.
I'll be sad to see the old workhorses head off to new owners, but I hope that the new owners appreciate them as much as I do and treat them nicely. I have no doubt that this will be the case, though - SGI fans are pretty fanatical about these boxes. On the upside, given that VMWare and Virtualisation are the buzzwords of the minute, I thought what I'd do was build myself a super-high tech PC workstation and then run things like NeXTStep in VMWare so that I can be as nerdy as I like, yet not have to have 15 machines on my desk. The real benefit is that I get to play that most enjoyable of games - Micro Mart shopping!
This is a variant on the age-old Auto Trader fantasy shopping - give yourself an imagined budget and then see what four-wheeled gems you can get for the money whilst passing time in the bathroom with the latest issue of the weekly car sales magazine. The subtle twist here, as you may have guessed, is that you use a copy of Micro Mart (or some other advert-stuffed PC magazine) to build up the ultimate system.
Given that I want to run Vista Ultimate (at least until Windows 7 comes out - the techboards are alive with positive rumblings about this upcoming OS, so I am looking forward to a decent OS), Linux (possibly Ubuntu, or maybe I'll stick with Lycoris as I already have it, or go back to SuSE, which is what I started out with many moons ago), and then maybe Solaris, NeXTStep, etc, under VMWare, I need storage - preferably multiple drives (one Windows, one "other OS", one for Video editing and one for work. Ideally, I'd like the lot to be mirrored, but I might go for four 1TB drives, one partiioned with the various OSes, the other for data, then mirror the pair. Western Digital Caviar with 32mb cache? That'll do nicely...
I'd go for a Core i7 CPU (The 940 mid-range one, not the 960 Extreme, as that's a £1000 near enough, and to be honest, the performance boost won't justify it). I have my eye on an ASRock motherboard designed for creating a Quad SLi system (4 PCIe 16x slots) and a butt-load of DDR3 RAM. So, that'll lead me to a 1796mb Nvidia GTX295 and three GTX260s with 800mb-ish each running in SLi format to allow the use of CUDA technology to create a beast of a GPGPU computer (basically, Nvidia technology allows you to run some OS functions and some things, such as SETI@home, etc, on the GPUs, taking laod off of the CPU) - the aim is to ensure that all my little apps are tailored to use CUDA or Open CL so that the system absolutely screams for rendering, etc. To give an idea, the Nvidia are selling systems based on this tech (but using only 512mb Quadra cards) as deskside supercomputers and the performance is mind-bending. Yes, it costs, £7k-ish, but you'll blow away an SGI that cost £30k+ a year ago or, put it another way, it's capable of the sort of data throughput that makes a Core Duo machine without SLi look like a pocket calculator. Add in 12GB of RAM (Corsair Dominator DDR3 running at 1600MHz, of course).
Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Well, now you can have a drive that burns Bluray and reads both formats - two of those, please (one for read, one for write - better to save the wear on hardware) and a nice LG 30" flatpanel in black with 4000:1 contrast and 3ms response time. Better add an XiFi Fatality Pro soundcard to get the best out of those movies, too...
Finish off with wireless 300MBit network adapter, modular PSU, Razer Keyboard and mouse...got to love the thin black slab with blue lighting - very Sci-Fi...then a water-colling kit, as this lot will be HOT. Then I just need the case to pack it all in to - I'd love this to be the white or laser-cut alloy version of Isotopes iX case, but I don't think that'd work, so I'll be looking for something in aluminium that looks like a Cray or HAL9000 - I want it to intimidate, yet look refined. Unless I scale back the number of GPUs and go for the Isotope...hmm, interesting.
As the Euromillions peaked at over £85Million this week, I thought I'd take a punt and bought a ticket (of course playing when there's a mere £15Million in the jackpot would just be a waste of money...). Of course, I didn't in, but I did spend an interesting half an hour contemplating what I'd buy if I did. Of course, I'd build my wife and I the house of our dreams - traditional oak framed manor house with Art Deco interior, using reclaimed tiles and bricks, etc, to make the house look well-aged. I'm not saying we've thought about much, but I can even tell you where the door handles come from. So, we have somewhere to live, but what to put in it?
Well, there is the question of cars - we'd need a couple to cover all eventualities. We're good for a saloon as we already have a well-loved and cherished Jaguar that my wife calls Honoria, after the forceful girl in the Wodehouse books - I don't know why, but somehow it makes sense. So, what other four-wheeled delights would there be? A Veyron, perhaps? Perhaps - but what is it for? It's too flabby and large to be a back-road scorcher, but it's got zero luggage room for continent-crushing touring. A DB9 or even a Merc SLR is far better suited to whisking myself and the wife off for a weekend. It's too refined to give that seat-of-the-pants driving experience you'd wat from a sports car...ultimately, it's just about two things - the top speed and the price tag and, much as I think it's a lovely piece of engineering, I think it's just basically a £3Million game of Top Trumps. With this in mind, I think I'd pick up a DB9 or a Bently GT for the touring side of things, a Ferrari 430 Spider for the backroads and a Jag SS100 replica from Suffolk Sportscars for sunny weekends and picnics. Oh, and I'd still have only spend about 1/3 of the cost of a Veyron at most. Add a Jaguar XJ220 to the collection and maybe a green or orange Lambo (Murcielago) or an orange Zonda for my wife (god bless her, she does love the lairy Italian hypercars). Finally, my wife would need a Range Rover for snow/horsebox-pulling/trolling around the farmland. So, we have the cars and the house...and we've still only spent maybe £5Million. £10Million including building stables, buying a horse and associated ephemera for my wife, kitting out a nice gym and building the indoor heated pool...
Ok, let's just say we got a quarter share of the jackpot - a mere £21,250,000. We've spent under half of it and we're already living like royalty, albeit without the claims of racism and detachment from reality...
So, let's up the ante and be generous. Let's buy houses for our families - £1Million to each set of parents and, say £500,000 to my brother-in-law. We've still got £8.75Million to account for...ok, put £2Million in a high interest account and live off the interest (10% flat rate gives an annual income of £200,000 tax-free for life, over an above any earnings). What next? £1Million to charity, I think - £250,000 to Great Ormond Street, £250,000 Macmillan Nurses and £500,000 to Comic Relief should help a few people, at least. Well, with the remaining £5.75 Million, what is there to do?
Well as with all computer geeks, there's the techno-porn list - the ultimate haven of computer hardware. That list, for me, would look a little like this:
NeXTs:
NeXTStation, NeXTStation Color, NeXTStation Turbo, NeXTStation Turbo Color, Next Cube (with accellerator, maximum RAM, 4 GB hdd, CDROM, Two NeXTDimension boards and a second motherboard), all with monitors (3 in the case of the Cube). Add a NeXT color and a NeXT laser printer, too. Hell, the Internet as we know it now was basically created on this hardware. Punches well above its weight as far as being useful with a really slow CPU.
SGIs:
Crimson Reality Engine, Tezro - quad CPU, Onyx 2 Infinite Reality deskside, O2 with 1600sw monitor (or should I say, another O2). I like Irix and part of me really wants to run some 3D work on the Infinite Reality hardware...the Crimson would just be there for the love of it and the Tezro and O2 would be used for Maya and Video work, etc.
Apple:
PowerMac Quad G5 - max out the RAM and storage, add a top-flight GFX card and a 24" display. It's fast enough for Flash, Photoshop and the like, more than quick enough for Final Cut and Combustion and still runs my old Classic games and apps, so I wouldn't want a maximum spec MacPro. Oh, what the hell, throw in a IIfx and a Classic for giggles, too - they can keep my iMac company.
PC:
The temptation here is to go for a single all-in-one wonder PC, but we're not exactly stretched for budget, so I think I'd go for a Tesla-based GPU machine (the Nvidia Personal Supercomputer, for example), dual booting both XP Pro64 and Linux 64 (running OpenStep/GnuStep on Ubuntu seems the best bet) - this would probably default to linux, running as a cluster/render box for the SGI machines and as a really fast server and SETI@Home, etc, box on the Unix side of things. When booted to Windows, it'd be used for transcoding DVDs, etc, at about a million miles per hour.
On the leisure side of computing (not that video editing, coding and writing tech docs is not my idea of fun), I think I'd like something truly funky - something I could game on, watch movies on and do some creative tinkering on and which is relatively future-proof. Ideally, it should be easy on the eye, as this would be in my office/den for home-working, not in the "tech bunker" with all the other stuff. Enter Alienware and their ALX series of "luxury" gaming PCs. I'd probably go for one of their green cases, as it's different and suits the case design (although the black looks good), I'd also be tempted by one of Panoram's lovely multiscreen displays, as I'd have the graphics output to power this bad-boy. In fact, I might also be tempted to use one on the Tesla machine, because this screen is so nice.
I've become very weary of laptops lately - I have a lovely old Pismo but I need a new battery for it and that will cost probably more than I paid for the machine. i have a white MacBook for work and I really don't get on with it - the sharp edge to the wrist-rest area, the awful keyboard, the constant dropping of wireless signal and the crashing of Safari and Firefox on a regular basis under OS X 10.5 - it's also got less 3d capable graphics than my 10 year old Pismo. The Vaio is nice enough, but is now my wife's machine, despite my upgrading her desktop PC, as she likes it to shop online, browse Youtube, etc, whilst on the sofa. The Dualcore CPU and 256mb GeForce card are rather wasted now she's stopped playing Medieval Total War, but I'm not one to complain. I don't like the new MacBook, I'm not exactly bowled over by the specs/price of the new MacBook Pro (let's face it, they are basically high-end PC notebooks nowadays), so I could see myself coming round to Alienware again, but the machines aren't as funky as they used to be, as they dropped the rounded "alien face" case in green in favour of a more "tech" orientated all-black system that looks like a Toshiba with lights...it's smart, but not cool, I guess. Still, anything that allows me to use SLi graphics in my lap is fine with me...
So, whilst it staggers me to even think it, I'd not be buying an Apple for either of my three highest-spec machines. Which, as an Apple/NeXT die-hard, is rather worrying to me - how is it that the MacPro is under-powered, or the new MacBook so uninspiring?
I think the reason is basically that, in standard trim, these machines are great - they are great for designers, or for the office/studio, where they offer more than enough grunt, combined with ease of use and stability. The problem comes in that the hardware is not cutting-edge - there's no 2GB NVidia 295GTX your MacPro, despite it running 8 Cores and 16GB of RAM, so you end up with weak graphics ability for the cost. Even if you stuff the Mac full of cards, you'd still only get 4 512mb 180GTX cards, which is less than impressive when you consider the machine would be settnig you back £7k or more...
So once we've wired the house up for high speed wireless and internet and have installed a UPS array in the basement to ensure we don't lose power, what's the point of all this? Well, the Alienware is unashamedly for play-time - it's an ultimate gaming rig to allow games like Crysis or Empire Total War to run at huge detail and with zero frame-rate drop. It's the toy I've always promised myself and never bought...oh, and I love the idea of being able to watch a DVD on one screen, surf the net on another and be messing around in photoshop on a third with no slowdown. Basically, anything that makes me feel like Cypher from the Matrix is fine with me!
With the advent of Linux and OpenOffice, there has been a lot of chatter about whether there is now a viable alternative to Windows in the workplace. It seems that every week there is a new distribution of Linux released (I really should get around to trying out Lycoris on my Vaio at somepoint - I got in on DVDROM when it was released and it's been gathering dust since). With each claiming to be user friendly and to be, most definitely, the distribution of Linux that will, undoubtedly, kill off Windows, what’s the truth of the matter?
Well, and I am willing to risk the inevitable backlash from the Slashdot fraternity, I don’t really think Linux is the answer to a non-Windows working environment. It’s too unstable and anything that can have its kernel fundamentally altered by any coder who happens to join the fray worries me. Oddly enough, having worked as a software developer, I know that you get enough problems when you have total control of the source code, let alone when every part of it is being constantly tinkered with. Yes, I can install it on a tired old PC and use it as a server, but why would I want my mission-critical server to be a clapped-out PC? No, Linux is a hobbyist OS through and through - people spend ages tinkering with their system to make it work, then uninstall it all and start again with the latest new distribution. I’ll admit that there are a lot of places running Linux webservers, but they are using them in redundant arrays and in huge quantities - you might as well buy an SGI Origin rack system, or a Sun Blade rack - either way you’re still looking at £Lots. By all means run a linux-fuelled cheap PC as your home firewall box, but you could just as easily buy a Macintosh and avoid 90% of all malware and virii anyway - they are mostly designed on Windows boxes to attack Windows boxes.
Starting way back in 1998, I have tried out a fair few distributions of Linux and none have blown me away - I’ve never experienced the “huge performance benefits” you’re supposed to get in comparison to a bloated Windows install - either I have to strip the system bare in order to get it running fast, or it can bloat out as much as Windows, but at least have all the features of Windows…well, Windows 98, at least. I’ve yet to find one that is intuitive (or successful) at installing on any available hardware and I don’t think that asking a secretary to “run the Sudo command in Bash” is likely to meet with much success. No, it’s not a desktop OS, regardless of what people think - it’s a competent cheap server OS with a lot of issues, but hey, it’s free.
So what can we use as a desktop OS? Well, how about Irix or NeXTStep running on native hardware? Think about this - the hardware once cost thousands of pounds, but can be bought in good condition for trivial sums (hell, for the price of a decent Alienware PC, I can get a full-on rack supercomputer), is built to last and is tied directly to the Unix variant they are running.
Speaking from experience, you can edit video in real-time, do everything you might wish to do in 3d and even record sound at high quality using older SGI software - in fact, you don’t need anything above an Octane/Octane2 to have surprisingly good performance.
I use an O2 daily and I love it. I even use a 1992 Indigo Elan once in a while and it’s a joy to work on, provided I’m realistic in what I ask it to do.
So, assuming that you have a creative workflow running GIMP (there’s no Photoshop on Linux, either, by the way, but there are older versions of Photoshop, Ilustrator and Pagemaker running on Irix) and things like old copies of Flint for video work, with Maya running for your 3d, then what are you going to use for your Office apps?
Well, you could use AbiWord on Irix for your word-processing needs, but it’s a bit buggy at times (well, it is on my Indigo - it’s rock-solid on my O2) and, besides, you don’t want the secretary using a graphics workstation to type a letter and send an email around the company, so what could you use? Well, why not NeXT?
I know, it sounds crazy, but think about it - it’s Unix, so it networks well with the Silicon Graphics workstations and any large servers you might be running, thus negating the need to have a super-duper hotrod on the desk of the accountant or the office admin. All large databases will be stored centrally on the server anyway, along with any large video files, etc - those would be edited/modelled on the workstations, but rendered and held on the server/render-farm. With that in mind, what you want is something that is network-savvy, easy to use and productive. Good display quality and the ability to read/write .xls, .doc. and .pdf files are about all that is required. I prefer all outgoing documents (contracts, estimates, etc) to be sent as a PDF as it’s not as editable as a Word file, so it’s actually more important that our solution can read MS Office files and create PDFs, but let’s not split hairs. NeXT had the precursors to the iWork suite as native software back in 1992 or so, so there is definitely some good “office” software out there.
If we have a large customer base, or at least a large pool of people we need to keep data on, we can create a database in something like Sybase and then your NeXT can create custom queries and a front end that could be used for call-data tracking, etc, in minutes, not weeks. You could equip a bespoke solution for your business with less work needed than it would take to create a web-based query/data-entry system to an SQL database. NeXT systems can natively allow more functionality with email than most (if not all) current email clients can manage - you can use fully styled postscript text, embed graphics, attach files wherever you wish and you can also add a voice annotation to your file (or email, or, indeed, any other document created in NeXT’s OS) - something that Outlook can’t manage in 2009. So, we have effective intra-office communication and can move to a central repository of data (NeXT documents can be linked so that changing the master on the server changes the copy that was sent to any recipient on the network as well - an offline CMS, almost), where we can share data, create documents and collaborate seamlessly. Because Unix (and NeXTStep in particular) is designed from the ground up to be a network OS, it means that each machine is only ever a part of the whole, leading to much better collaboration ability than something like Windows which was designed for a PC to operate, which is then cobbled up to speak to another PC, but which sees itself as a separate entity to every other PC. Yes, I can create a shared drive under Windows, but Irix or NeXT would happily let me share processor resources or login remotely without the need for expensive Citrix or VMS solutions. The best analogy I can think of is to think of the much-mooted “cloud computing” but the cloud is your local network and server, instead of the internet. NeXT called it Interpersonal Computing and I think they had it right.
It’s certainly an experiment I’d like to try out someday.
How an ideal system would work:
Video Editing desk:
O2 (1GB RAM, R12k CPU, 18gb Hard drive) for edit
Origin 200 - dual R12k CPUs, 1-2GB RAM, multiple 72GB HDDs to run the render.
3D work desk:
O2 (R10k/R12k CPU, 1GB RAM) or Octane 2 V8 (R12k or above, 1-2GB RAM) for modelling/animation.
Origin 200 - Dual R12k or above CPUs, 2GB RAM, multiple 72 GB HDDs to render.
Ideally, each two or three of these “desks” would be backed up by an Origin 2000 or Onyx 2 IR deskside with at least 4 CPUs and 2GB of RAM - the resources for the Origins/Onyxes would then be served as a cluster, dramatically altering the response times and speeding up the renders. Also, having an Onyx as a deskside workstation means that there can be a huge amount of visual modelling or editing done in real time.
At current second-hand prices, I believe I could equip each of the above desks for £500-£1000 at most. A mid-range Dell would top that once you added in a decent graphics card, etc. A deskside Onyx 2 IR might go for £2000, with an Origin 2000 being significantly cheaper (i.e. half the price) - not bad for something that is still a very fast supercomputer and which makes for a bulletproof server. Hell, if you shop around, you could get a full Origin rack (i.e 32 CPUs, etc) for the cost of a decent Alienware gaming PC. I’ve seen them go for peanuts and, in some cases, older systems (Onyx, or R10k Origin) are literally given away by institutions, etc, as they are too expensive to ship for disposal.
Given the availability of high-end apps at reasonable prices (no more £12,000 licences for Maya!), if I were to start my business over, I’d equip with SGI hardware and scale up as the business progressed. I’d also look at getting the odd NeXTStation (or an old SGI Indy) as email boxes for the admin staff to use. I’d chuck in the odd Powerbook G4 for presentations and Flash development (they are dirt cheap, too) as they run OSX and are thus, transparent to Unix. I am gradually following this ethos at home and I have to say that I find the lack of bluescreens and crashes rather satisfying.
Ok, I have an admission to make - I’m not the guy who was cool at school. In fact, I’m happy to say that I would have fitted the geek label quite well. I was into wargames, Heavy Metal and computers, even though I did play sport and get out of the house once in a while.
I used to avidly read Personal Computer World, instead of caring about football and I used to dream of owning some of the more exotic hardware in order to pursue my ambitions of being the next Steve Jobs or, more likely, Woz. So, it should come as no surprise that as soon as I started to earn some decent money, I started to indulge myself in my favourite dream machines - those made by Silicon Graphics.
I grew up in an age of DOS, when Windows was no further along than 3.0 (if you were lucky) and when having to know your EMS from your XMS and what to do if your himem.sys didn’t work. I like a good command line, but most of all, I like a good OS. I didn’t get to have much exposure to Unix as a kid, but when I did, I loved it.
Here was a multi-tasking OS that was network-savvy and (usually) stable. In Irix, it also had a user-friendly GUI (hell, if my father can watch a tutorial and be editing videos within five minutes, anyone can use it!). More importantly, it was streamlined to be usable by creative-types. It was PERFECT (ok, not perfect, but near as dammit!). There was, however, a slight downside - the cost. In an age when a 386 PC (with 2mb of RAM, VGA graphics, Adlib-clone sound and 50mb hard drive) cost around £1400, the stunning Silicon Graphics Iris Indigo (even in basic spec 33MHz R3000 form), cost roughly £13000. If you wanted the ultimate workstation (an Iris Crimson), the cost would be measured in the £50,000-£100,000 region.
However, even magazines felt that the Indigo was good value, as it far outclassed contemporary PCs (and, to a lesser extent, Macintosh machines) - it offered 3d, video, multimedia, easy networking and great sound and display quality, not to mention outstripping the desktop PC for number-crunching tasks. It would be the ideal computer for me….aside from the fact that I was a broke teenager and there was no way on God’s Green Earth that my dad was going to stump up the cash for me…so I ended up with a PC that was fine for what it was, but never really floated my boat…then eventually, I migrated to Macintosh (which is no bad thing).
Speaking of Macintosh, my other object of desire when I was a teenager was another Steve Jobs product - the NeXTStation. I know that a lot of people go insane over the NeXTCube (and, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t turn down a Dimension-board-equipped Turbo Cube), but I always liked the elegance of the NeXTStation - in fact, I rather liked the Pizza-box format for a workstation (later on in life, my love of SGI would be rekindled by a reliable little Indy I used whilst working as a software developer). I liked the Color version (although it had less colours than the Color NeXTCube), as it had a crisp display, was responsive enough to be useful and was truly multi-tasking. Oh, and NeXTStep is like Irix but even simpler to use. If you go to YouTube, take a look at this video and then try to think what PCs were like in 1990. In fact, NeXT was so far ahead of the curve that people are only starting to come to grips with the concept of interpersonal computing now, some eighteen years later. No wonder that OS X is basically NeXTStep with a fancy dress on - all of the tools required to be an internet-savvy, collaborative operating system were there waiting.
Think about it - in 1990, most of us were drooling over Atari STs and Amiga 500s. If you had a PC, it was likely to be a 286, or maybe a 386. Only the über-rich had a 486 to play with. Even by the time NeXT released version 3.0 of its OS, in around 1994, you were still unlikely to have access to a PC with a CPU over 33MHz, or with more than 2MB of RAM. Modems were rare and if you had one for your home computer, you might dial in to a bulletin board to swap some ASCII art, or maybe a demo program (which was going to be less than 720k in size - one floppy disk). But here was NeXT (remember that Tim Berners-Lee basically created the modern internet on one of these boxes), talking about sending a “mail” over the “internet” that contained postscript fonts, embedded images, embedded documents (that could be linked so that they updated on every recipients computer automatically if you changed it), as well as the ability to add voice annotation to the email natively (a feature that is both highly useful and yet to be implemented on any “modern” email client that I am aware of). This sort of thing was not far off of science fiction at that point in time.
In fact, aside from the processor speed, I cannot think of a better system for actually setting up an office/business user group - document sharing is easy, single documents can be updated and change on every machine on the network that downloaded it automatically (like an offline CMS, almost), the graphic quality was high and the display crisp, the bundled OS applications were actually useful for getting work done and it offered raw computing ability/versatility with the most complete user interface ever made. Oh, and you could literally create a custom database application in ten minutes using the built-in tools. In fact, even today, I’d be tempted to say that, for most work tasks, a NeXT network (possibly with a quick Sun or SGI server for storage and Web Serving) would be an ideal setup from a workflow point of view - after all, with Windows 7 and Google pushing for “cloud computing”, we are merely revisiting the dumb terminal idea with a Web 2.0 veneer. Or catching up with Interpersonal Computing some 18 years after NeXT created it.
NeXT was a glorious failure - it’s elegant hardware was lovingly made, yet outrageously priced. Or that’s the myth anyway - I think when you look at its competitors - SGI, Sun, etc - it was highly competitive in its pricing ($13995 for a maxed-out NextCube Color Turbo with NextDimension board, etc, was the same area as the lowest-spec SGI Indigo, after all). I think the problem was that all the hype in the press was introducing NeXT as the “new Apple”, which meant people, including the same Press, viewed NeXT through consumer-level glasses, thus vilifying the systems as over-priced when compared to a PC (or even a Macintosh). If you take that with a pinch of salt and look at the usability, the value to business (Unix machines tend to be more reliable and stay in use for longer periods than a PC - Macintosh do similar, but to a lesser extent), etc, they worked out rather favourably. Of course, once the hype tarred NeXT as expensive folly, it meant that there was a lack of popular support for the hardware and it quickly withdrew to software-only, before being bought out by Apple as part of Steve Jobs’ return to the company fold. Having said that, even the latest version of OS X is just an evolution of NeXTStep - in fact it’s quite good fun to watch the old videos and then go and see what features have been updated for OS X and, thus, to guess what’s been left out and what might pop up at a later date (voice annotation in email, anyone?).
As a life-long computer geek (hey, I’m not afraid to admit it), I’ve spent a lot of time and some considerable money collecting the systems I lusted after as a teenager, with a few exceptions (I’m still trying to find/beg an SGI Crimson, an SGI Onyx2 or Origin 2000 and a Macintosh Color Classic, for example), but the one I most look forward to sitting down in front of is the NeXTStation Color Turbo, once I can find one (or if some kind soul gives me one!). It’s a machine that was truly ahead of its time and which I am truly fond of. I just wish it had more exposure that wasn’t biased towards the “Steve Jobs blew a billion dollars on making this and it cost four times what a Macintosh did” side of the story - the truth is that NeXT created an OS that was literally ten years or more ahead of the competition, matched it to elegant hardware that worked well. Ok, the CPUs weren’t so fast, but they were quick enough for a workstation - you’d let your server cluster do any rendering, etc.
The problem NeXT had with their machines was that people viewed them like Macs or PCs, not as high-end workstation for a Unix cluster. Viewed as part of a collaborative workflow with a central render-farm/server, I think that a 15 year-old NeXTStation would still be a viable machine for DTP, software development or scientific work, for example.
I would love to get a NeXTStation for office use, not to mention for the hell of it, but now I haven’t the spare cash (what with a baby due in the next month) to pay the exorbitant rates asked by some people and I’ve yet to find a kindly soul who wishes to donate one to me. I guess that’s one computer nerd dream that will have to remain unfulfilled for the time being…
