Top Chef Season 1 Still My Favorite

Now that Top Chef S3 is over, I've been thinking a lot about the differences between the seasons. Season 1 remains my favorite, and I've been trying to figure out why I feel Season 3 came up short against it. (S2 was another story.)

I don't think it's just the chefs. I did like Lee Anne quite a bit; she was really the one person I was rooting for 'til the end. Season 3, by comparison, had Tre and CJ, both of whom I was rooting for until they got knifed, but neither of whom I liked quite as much as Lee Anne. On the dislike side, S1 had Stephen and Tiffani (and Ken, but he was off right away); S3 had Joey, Howie, and Hung -- though in fairness all three got better. Still, overall I'd call it slightly to S3's favor, but not far off.

In terms of skill... well, since I can't taste the food, it can be hard to be sure, but I think they were overall on par with one another. Possibly S3 had a slight edge there, judging from how much better judges' table went in the finale, but anyhow, both seasons were very interesting to watch cook and create.

That leaves editing, and I think that's really where S3 suffered. I'm not sure precisely what it was, but it felt like S1 had far more emphasis on the food and cooking, and S3 tended to skip more of the tasting and showing us the dishes in favor of extended other scenes.

See, when I watch a cooking show, what I want to see is the cooking. Since the judges emphasize time and again that personality isn't important and cooking is, I think that should be the focus. This season it seems like the editing tended to emphasize the people over the cooking at times, and it bugged me.

Hopefully they'll strike a slightly better balance in S4, while still giving us a rounded bunch of interesting people with interesting food ideas.

I could blather on about comparisons more here, but I'm going to split that off into a separate post. (Continue reading...)

Copy Protection Really Doesn't

So... many companies use copy-protection programs on their released software. Whether it's the entry of a serial number, requiring the user to have the CD in the drive, encoding methods to make copies difficult to make, or active programs that try to validate the authenticity of the CD (or any combination of the above), they've all been tried, and they've all been defeated. So it doesn't really deter people who weren't inclined to pay for the program in the first place. What does it accomplish?

Well, according to some gamers who have used products using StarForce or SecuROM, it accomplishes opening up security holes, aggravations from not authenticating original disks, disabling CD and DVD burners or burning programs, conflicting with antivirus and spyware programs (refusing to load or authenticate while they are running), and forcing users to manually hunt down and clean up hidden files if they choose to uninstall the product "protected" with it.

So... it doesn't stop the people inclined to pirate, and it causes problems for people who purchase the games.

And the companies using the products think this is a good idea, why? (Continue reading...)

i can has readers?

Actually, I'm curious how long it'll take before someone finds this blog and starts commenting on it. We'll see. The post isn't about that, though. Instead, I'm hitting the other twin idiot box today: computers.

Right now, I'm noticing a very interesting contradiction in my life: I hate chatspeak and l33tsp34k, but I love lolcats -- which use something much like chatspeak in their captioning.

I have I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER bookmarked for two reasons. The first is I'm a sucker for cute cat photos. I admit it, I own it, let's move on. The second, of course, is that it's one of the better lolcats sites. It's not the best web layout (crowded side bars do nothing for me), and I don't "lol" at every post, but the ones submitted generally are fairly good.

The curious pidgin that's evolved for lolcats really is a distinct entity from chatspeak (thankfully), even though you can draw parallels. Overall, possibly because the captioning is shorter, I find the pidgin far easier to understand. There are also certain repeated memes that are often used well: I'm in ur $foo, $verbing your $nouns; FAIL, DO NOT WANT, and, of course, I can has $object?. The repetition means some people get sick of the concept quickly, and I know some people who never want to hear that first one again, but the key words in that sentence were "used well". No doubt at some point I'll hit the point where I never want to hear that joke again, but please note that I still find occasional uses of 'all your $foo are belong to us' funny, so I may be a lost cause.

People have taken the idea and branched out, using other animals, people, and characters from games. As with the original cat macros, some of these are done better than others. Game-based picture macros suffer a bit if you don't play the game, though I've seen some for games I do play executed very well.

On the other side of the divide falls true chatspeak, which I loathe in any setting except for actual length-limited messages (I'll give a little leeway for time-sensitive situations like battles in games, too, though). Its use in forum posts, I find completely unforgiveable. Personally I feel that if someone can't be bothered to type the other two letters in 'you', I can't be bothered to decipher the mess that they've spewed on the screen.

Game forums are where I see the worst offenders. I spent some time playing World of Warcraft, which I rather like, and naturally I checked in with their message boards when I started playing it. With any game, the percentage of players who post regularly is pretty small, but when you have 8 million users, a small percentage still leads to a pretty large pool of posters. As far as I can tell, at least half of those are people incapable of constructing a basic sentence in English.

I'm not talking about people for whom English is clearly their second language. Odd syntax doesn't bug me, and odd workarounds for words the writer doesn't know are frequently far more understandable than the alleged English-speakers' forays into chtspk. People who supposedly are at least in high school (or possibly even in college or out of school entirely) should, however, be capable of putting together a basic sentence.

Instead, what you often get is a string of letters and spaces, more or less indicating words, with seemingly-random punctuation and a lot of ellipses.

Here's a hint for these people: "every1 typs lik ths" is not an excuse for this. Obviously not only is that not true, but when people are telling you you're hard to understand, what they're saying is "write better or we're just going to pay no attention to you".

Luckily, there seems to be a growing trend lately to encouraging people -- nicely or otherwise -- to use clearer language and try harder to put together grammatical sentences. This means that possibly in a few years, I will find the average game forum far more appealing.

Next time: I possibly post about Top Chef, since the reunion show is on tonight, or I begin my collection of "secret messages in commercials", or something else entirely, depending as usual on my whims. (Continue reading...)

Tim Gunn, Speaker to Designers

I will be the first to admit that one of the reasons I enjoy Project Runway so much is because of Tim Gunn. I think that I would probably watch it anyhow, but the segments involving him are generally my favorite.

I think I may have a little bit of a crush on him. He's one of the few people, in this day and age, that merits the description "dapper". He's neat, well-turned-out, well-spoken (with a lovely, precise vocabulary), and perceptive. I may not always agree 100% with his aesthetic, but even when I don't, I generally understand why he makes the comments he does. And, unlike commentators in many "reality TV" shows, he's a genuine mentor and does a fine job at it, which just makes him more interesting; people who are good at teaching are hot.

I also love Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, of course -- the show, not the book, which I do not yet have (though I plan to get a copy when budget allows).

Sometimes, when I see a designer failing to heed Tim Gunn's advice, I want to smack them. "Listen to the man! At least take what he said seriously and consider it!" I wonder, sometimes, if the fact that he tends to couch things in non-aggressive terms leads people to not feel what he's saying is important—though you'd think anyone who watched prior seasons' shows would realize he's usually got some very good points. I also wonder if a "Tim Gunn to Blunt" dictionary might be helpful.

For instance, when he starts his critique with "I'm a little concerned", it seems like what people hear is "but not really". *red strike a la Family Feud* Based on the way he uses it, however, what he means is: "You have a good idea, but your execution could use some help.", or: "You have a good idea, save for this thing I am now about to bring up." It's definitely one of the gentlest negative critiques he will use, yes, and possibly if after considering it you think your way is better, you could be right, but the important bit? Think about it!

If he says "I'm not sure how I feel about...", he isn't just making conversation, okay? He's saying "This bit here? Not so great... convince me it'll work, or change it."

Beware if he starts a sentence "I really don't think...", for now you are entering into harsher Tim Gunn-speak. It still sounds like a fairly mild negative, but if it were someone else, they'd likely say "This is just a bad idea."

Once in a while, he actually will either be speechless and furrow-browed (shh, it's a word now), or actually say something definitively negative. ("Not good.", while still gently said, is definitively negative, in case anyone was unclear on that.) At this point, the designer should take a step back, try to re-assess the project as objectively as possible (yes, I know, this is hard, but try), and listen to the specific critique... and start redesigning in their head. When the negative words are blunt, he's essentially approaching other people's pointing and laughing stage.

I rather wish I had the DVDs for the earlier seasons of PR so I could catalogue more of these. I seriously quite enjoy how he goes about critiquing. Only on rare occasions does he devolve to significantly blunt, whether because the designer is being a doofus or the design really is that bad in his eyes. One could wish the average teacher had half his poise and gentleness. I realize he's not the only good mentor in the history of mentoring, but he is a decidely rare thing these days: a true gentleman.

Project Runway's fourth season starts November 14th. Only 5 weeks to go! I can hardly wait. (Continue reading...)

Armchair Gawker (Reality TV and Me)

I first heard the term "reality TV" associated with Survivor, I think. It's a strange term, since it's not like there haven't been non-fiction shows pretty much since the beginning of television broadcasts. "Unscripted television" might be better -- though I question whether it's always accurate -- but I suppose by now the term has sunk in enough that it's here to stay.

I think Wikipedia's article on reality television actually does a fairly good job of separating the various types of shows that get this label, but in particular, it's elimination shows that I generally think of when someone uses this term (with what they call "special living environment" shows like The Real World sometimes coming to mind as well). Shows like Survivor, of course -- the big mama of current reality shows -- as well as American Idol, Top Chef, Project Runway, etc.

For a long time I avoided those shows. I'd hear people talk about Survivor and I'd think "that sounds kinda stupid". (Okay, I admit to having watched Star Search back in the day, and if you want to count The Gong Show, there's that, too, but I mean the newer ones.) I totally didn't get why people were so invested in their outcomes, why discussing what happened on Survivor or who got eliminated on American Idol was so popular.

Then, one day, I was channel-surfing out of sheer boredom and happened to catch the opening credits of Survivor... and said to myself, "Self, why not see what the fuss is all about?"

20 minutes later, I was boggling that these people were real. I'm still not convinced that some of it isn't scripted, but... I couldn't... look... away. So much stupid in so little space. The horrible challenges. The sheer bizarrity of people subjecting themselves to this. The people who thought they were Machiavelli instead of Elmer Fudd ("Hehh-hehh-heeh. Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm hunting AWWIANCES!"). Honestly, it was just astoundingly bad, yet somehow...

And the next time it was on, I watched it deliberately. In fact, I watched through the end of the season -- 7 or 8 shows in total, I believe. I wasn't emotionally invested in it -- I didn't like any of the contestants. I didn't think it was exciting. I just... gawked, as if it were some horrible accident. I couldn't look away.

When the season ended, I stopped watching. For a few years, I didn't care any more. Some of that's just that I'm not really a hardcore television watcher, but most of it was that, once it was over, I stopped feeling any need to watch.

Fast forward to the premiere of Top Chef. Now, I used to watch the original, Japanese Iron Chef, and I love cooking shows in general, so it fell well within my usual interests. Top Chef became the first elimination show to attract me sheerly for its concept and to see how they executed it, and kept me as a viewer because I thought they did a good job of it. For the first time, I started to understand why people get so involved in these shows -- I loved Lee Anne, found Dave alternately amusing and annoying, wanted to slap Tiffani, and was dying to see how the chefs would handle making a gourmet meal out of vendor food or whatever the challenge was that week.

"It's just this show being a cooking show", I would think. "It's not that I really care about the reality TV thing in general," I would add to myself, even as I was vilifying chef's attitudes and rooting for my favorites. Hah.

Then one day I turned on the TV to see if I could find something to put on for background noise (I do this a lot when I'm home alone) and it was, of course, tuned into Bravo... and what should be on but Project Runway. Well, I do like me some fashion, even if I don't really understand the things high-end fashion designers choose to make, so I figured, eh, why not.

They were showing a marathon. I watched all of it. I was hooked.

"Okay, maybe there's something to this format," I admitted to myself. But, hey, it'd have to be a subject matter I cared about, right?

This weekend I turned on the TV for something to stare at while I ate. I'm out of books to read and we owe the library money so I can't get anything new from them until we pay off the fines. I figured I might find a weekend movie or something.

I paused for a moment when I saw models, wondering if it was a fashion show. But, no, it wasn't... exactly. It was a bunch of girls finishing up some sort of photo shoot and then going back to the house they lived in. (If you pay attention to TV culture at all, you probably know of this show -- America's Next Top Model.) My sweetie and I watched the show until the end, and when they announced they were showing a marathon, did we just turn it off and go back to playing silly console games?

Of course we didn't. It was the trainwreck/accident/whatever syndrome all over again. We watched two more shows, and then finally turned it off out of sheer desire to move on to the things we'd actually planned for the weekend.

Now, watching a bunch of wannabe models live together and perform bizarre challenges is firmly outside my usual interests. (Project Runway isn't exactly interesting to me for the models.) I doubt I'll be watching it again. But while it was on? Couldn't look away.

So is there a point to this? Not really, except to note that no matter how much you might think the format is silly when you think about it, somehow when you're watching it, it's hard to stop. At least for me, and given the popularity of the various reality TV shows, I expect it's the same for a lot of people. Maybe my comments can serve as a warning: Turn it off. Don't get hooked. Or maybe I just want someone to say "Yes, that happens to me, too; you're not that weird." Or maybe I'm an insomniac and wanted to post something besides an introductory post. (Okay, it's all of those.)

Next time: I talk about how much I love Tim Gunn, or possibly I comment on stupid commercials, or maybe something else entirely depending on my whims. (Continue reading...)