Marie Antoinette, the Movie

Don’t waste your time.

Marie AntoinetteOn Saturday, after a long day on my feet as a volunteer for the Land of the Sun Endurance Ride here in Wickenburg, I found myself in front of the television. I flipped to one of the movie channels just as Marie Antoinette was beginning and decided to give it a try.

I like movies with historical value. I feel as if I can learn while being entertained. And I don’t think anyone can argue that the costumes and sets in the movie were magnificent and probably true to life.

Unfortunately, that’s where the movie’s appeal to me ended.

The movie is long and rambling and takes forever to make and complete a point. For example, the movie suggests that Marie and Louis did not consummate their marriage for more than 4 years — until after he became King, in fact. While this might be an interesting point, it dominated the plot for at least 45 minutes of the movie. One soon gets tired of seeing Marie in bed alone as the signal to viewers that she went yet another night without getting any.

Throughout the movie, I kept waiting to see when the political unrest of the people would make itself known to Marie or the ill-fated members of the French nobility. Is it possible that these people really had no clue about what was going on outside their palaces?

A serious problem with the movie was its soundtrack. While the director and composer are true to the time with the classical music played during Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s wedding dance, for example, the rest of the movie is a mix of classical and what I can only describe as European pop. Watching dancers at an 18th century masked ball, wearing period costumes and dancing period dances while modern pop music blared was weird, to say the least. It also took away from the seriousness of the movie, making it seem as if the Director was making light of the whole thing. The soundtrack was inappropriate for the subject matter.

I can’t comment on the acting because although the characters were somewhat believable, I don’t think any of the actors were outstanding. There was very little dialog. One cornball scene shows Marie, fully attired in one of her beautiful dresses, stretched out in happiness in a field of grass and flowers. It’s the scene right after she’s finally had sex with her husband. She’s happy. Oddly enough, it reminded me of the scene in Caddyshack where the girlfriend (Maggie) is dancing on the golf course at night because she knows she’s not pregnant.

While the director, Sofia Coppola, may have wanted to paint a more human picture of Marie, she certainly didn’t do much to create audience sympathy for her character. Coppola’s Marie was a party girl who ate and drank and shopped and played almost non-stop. History tells us that the people of France were being taxed to the point of starvation in many cases, yet the French nobility were living it up in sheltered isolation. Yet no where in the movie — at least not up to the point where I gave up on it after 90 minutes of boredom — is any of that shown. It’s a truly one-sided view of that time in history, a view through the eyes of an immature and spoiled woman.

I admit that I didn’t see the end. Mike joined me about halfway through and he’d already seen it. At one point, I asked him if anything interesting happens. He said no, just more of the same until the screen goes black. I’d seen enough, so I turned it off.

What got me to watch it at all was the rating in the Dish Network info box: three out of four stars. If I’d rated it, it probably would have gotten 1-1/2 stars.

A Look at OmniFocus

A quick overview.

I tried OmniFocus for a few weeks to set up and maintain a Get Things Done (GTD) routine. I’m always interested in easy-to-use productivity tools that I can integrate into my workflow.

What OmniFocus Does

OmniFocusOmniFocus enables you to set up any number of projects, each of which can contain specific actions. For example, I might have a project for Flying M Air to send out a marketing letter to travel agents. Within that project might be the individual actions to get the job done: get a mailing list of travel agents, write the marketing letter, print out the materials, stuff envelopes, mail. You can set up a project so its actions must be completed in order (sequentially) or so that they can be completed in any order or concurrently (parallel). Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any way to set up some actions within a project to be sequential while others in the same event were parallel without creating groups of actions.

Each action can also be related to a context. A context is “where the work happens.” This is a lot less intuitive but, I suppose, it can be useful once you get an idea of how to use it. For example, you might set up contexts for telephone follow-up or errands. Personally, I had a problem distinguishing between context and projects and couldn’t maintain a consistent approach.

OmniFocus offers a number of commands and options that help you “focus” on specific projects or tasks. You can flag things, set priorities, enter start or end dates, and choose from a bunch of different status options. You can then create “perspectives,” which are views of tasks matching criteria. But setting these things up can be time consuming and isn’t very intuitive.

On Intuitiveness

I did not find OmniFocus to be very intuitive. For example, each time I entered a new action, I pressed Return. Return is usually the command programs use to end or accept an entry. In OmniFocus, it starts a new one. That’s likely because of the Omni Group’s experience with OmniOutliner, which this is apparently spun off from. But when I create a list of things to do, I don’t think of an outline. I think of a list of individual items. iCal doesn’t create a new item when you press Return after completing the entry of a new one. It doesn’t make sense to me that OmniFocus does.

The perspectives view looks and works just like the main OmniFocus window. Great. Except that a perspectives view contains a subset of all items and, if the View bar isn’t showing, it’s not clear that you’re looking at a subset. You wonder what happened to an event you’re looking for and maybe, like me, you think it’s been eaten by a quirk in the software. So you re-enter it and wind up with a duplicate when you finally realize you’re just looking at a subset of all actions.

Some items don’t appear at all, depending on how options are set and how the item is coded. That makes you think twice about whether you want to set sequential items as sequential — they might not appear in some views.

And I’m still not sure how OmniFocus applies color coding to tasks. I understand the red, but blue, gray, and purple? What does it mean? Without documentation during the beta process, I couldn’t be sure. (Now I don’t really care.)

Syncing…Sometimes

One of the features that attracted me to OmniFocus was its ability to sync with iCal. I had a heck of a time doing this with the beta versions, until tech support suggested that I turn off the Birthday’s Calendar in iCal. Evidently, there’s a bug in iCal and that was messing things up. When I disabled it, syncing worked okay.

But OmniFocus syncs based on context, not project. So I needed to not only use the context feature, but set up corresponding calendars in iCal to properly sort out the tasks. Then, when I manually synced with iCal — automatic syncing is not an option — each task’s project was appended to the task name in brackets. This made the task names in iCal unnecessarily long.

OmniFocus syncs only iCal tasks, not calendar events. I also had some trouble when I marked off tasks as done in one program, it would not consistently sync to the other. So tasks didn’t “go away” when they were done.

I should mention that I need iCal syncing because I sync between iCal and my Treo to have a complete list of events and tasks when I’m on the road. My memory is bad (and steadily getting worse) and I rely on my Treo to remind me of things I need to do when I’m away from my office.

What OmniFocus Doesn’t Do

OmniFocus is supposed to make it easy to “capture” tasks from other applications. This is extremely limited. For example, although I can capture a task from a mail message, there’s no way within OmniFocus to easily link to that message — even though each message in Leopard has a unique URL. Instead, I found myself copying and pasting message text into OmniFocus.

OmniFocus falls short as an outliner in that it only gives you three levels of outlining: projects, actions, and “sub-actions” (created when you group actions within a project). Four levels, if you also create folders to organize your projects. But I suppose that if you want an outliner, you’d use OmniOutliner.

There’s no easy way to relate one action to other actions because contexts are not like keywords and you can only assign one per action.

Printing is also extremely limited, so if you want to print off a list of actions to take to a meeting or on the road, you’re stuck with standard formatting with large fonts.

When Productivity Software Reduces Productivity

My main gripe with most of these GTD software “solutions” is that they make you do so much work to set them up and implement them.

OmniFocus is a prime example of this. I wasted an entire morning trying to get my iCal events into OmniFocus , sorting them into projects, and applying contexts. And then, when I synced them back to iCal, I wound up with a bunch of duplicate items in both programs that I had to weed out. While this might be due to buggy beta software, I can’t be sure. I could be a problem I’d be dealing with every time I completed a sync.

It’s far easier for me to simply open iCal and look at my task list, which is already sorted by my existing project-related calendars, to see what needs to be done.

I was hoping that OmniFocus would introduce features that were not in iCal. It did, but none of them were features I needed or even wanted. The ones I did want — primarily calendar and task list printing flexibility — were missing.

At the introductory price of $39.95, OmniFocus was a program to consider. I might have sprung for it and made it work. But when the folks at The Omni Group upped the price to its regular price of $79.95, they made the decision for me. I’ve already paid enough money for software I don’t use regularly.

OmniFocus simply isn’t the solution I’m looking for. It isn’t intuitive enough to be a good productivity tool for me.

I only wish I could get back the two to three days I spent trying to make it help me get things done.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training

A surprisingly good training aid.

I just want to take a moment to heap some praise on a computer book I’ve found very helpful with my recent Instrument flight training studies: Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training by Jeff Van West and Kevin Lane-Cummings.

The book is, on the surface, a user’s guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX), a Windows PC program that supposedly simulates flight in different aircraft. (I have issues on the realism of its simulation, as I reported here.) It takes you through the pilot ratings, one at a time: Sport Pilot, Private Pilot, Instrument Rating, Commercial Pilot. But instead of flying a real plane, you’re flying a simulated plane in the software.

What’s amazing about this book is its ability to communicate valuable and real information about flight training and knowledge required by pilots. I’m concentrating on the Instrument Rating chapters in the second half of the book. I read the first two chapters of that part yesterday and learned more about making departures and planning en route flights using real FAA charts than I did in three days trying to decipher the same charts with other study material.

The book’s text is clearly written and easy to understand. Best of all, it doesn’t put me to sleep — which is always a challenge, since I do most of my reading in bed at night.

While I can’t comment specifically on the exercises to be followed with FSX since I’ve been skipping them, if they’re half as good as the background information, the book is an excellent source for anyone interested in learning to fly using FSX as a training aid. I look forward to finishing the Instrument Rating chapters. And, with luck, I’ll be able to try a few of the exercises myself using the FSX software.

From one computer book author to others: Good job, guys!

FARs Explained

The FARs in a way an intelligent person can understand them. Maybe.

I was down at Williams-Gateway Airport (IWA) in Chandler the other day. They’ve got a great pilot shop there with lots of books, charts, and real-life pilot supplies. I’d venture to say that it’s one of the best pilot shops in the Phoenix area.

(Side note here. If you’re a Phoenix area pilot looking for a destination for a quick flight, try Willie. The controllers are friendly, there’s plenty of parking, and there’s both a restaurant with excellent breakfast and a pilot shop to give you an excuse for the flight.)

Jeppesen FAR Books

Among the books on the shelves was a series by Jeppesen titled Federal Aviation Regulations Explained. Ah, I thought to myself. Could this actually be a successful attempt to explain the legalese text of the FARs?

Now I don’t really like Jeppesen as a company because of the restrictions it places on suppliers. For example, when I ran an FBO some years ago, none of my pilot supply providers were able to become Jeppesen dealers, so I could not carry Jeppesen products. (Fortunately, ASA products are just as good and I had no trouble getting them.) But I do admit that Jeppesen has products that no one else carries and that their products, in general, are good. It certainly wasn’t worth turning my nose up at Jeppesen and missing out on a good book.

There were three versions of the book, each tackling a different group of FAR parts. One fat book, mostly for private pilots, covered Part 1, 61, 91, 141 and NTSB 830. A slightly slimmer book, mostly for commercial pilots, covered Part 1, 119 and 135. Another book, mostly for mechanics (I think), covered Part 1, 21, 43, 65, 145 and 147.

imageAlthough I would have purchased the first two books mentioned here, the price tag on the first book ($35.95, I think) was a little rich for my blood — especially since I hadn’t actually read any book in the series. I decided to try the series with the volume that I needed most: the one that included coverage of Parts 119 and 135. (My helicopter charter business operates under Part 135.) The cover of the book I bought is different from the one shown here; I think (hope) I bought the latest edition, dated 2005.

Now I don’t want you to think I don’t understand the FARs I’m supposed be be operating under. I do. Mostly. Every once in a while, I stumble upon a rule that I’m not quite sure of. I usually call other pilot friends or sometimes the FAA to get an interpretation. I know enough about the FARs to operate safely and legally and stay out of trouble, although I fully admit that I make no effort to understand the rules that don’t apply to my operation (i.e., rules covering cockpit recording devices, beverage carts, autopilots, and multi-pilot operations). After all, there’s only so much information that can fit into my brain. I’d rather fill it with the information that matters.

Aviation Law 101

I jumped into the book during breakfast at Willie’s Flight Line Cafe restaurant. I basically opened to a random page, paged around until I found a topic that interested me, and started reading. I was immediately reminded of my Business Law 101/102 text book back in college — a big, black volume that stated laws, interpretations, and cases.

So, for example, Page 42 begins a discussion of FAR Part 135.79, which covers Flight Locating Requirements. This applies to my operation, since I’m required to have procedures to help rescuers find me if I make an unscheduled landing and get stuck somewhere — or crash, which I prefer not to think too much about.

First, the book provides the complete text of the paragraph and all of its sub paragraphs. This is the same information you can get in any FAR book or on the FAA’s Web site.

Next, it provides a plain English Explanation of the rule with a few examples of how it might apply.

Then it lists some Cross References to other FARs, the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM), and Advisory Circulars.

Finally, it lists some Chief Counsel Opinions related to the rule. This is how the rule has been interpreted when challenged in court or other proceedings.

This particular example is pretty straightforward. Other parts are more complex. For those, the book also includes Preamble information and case excerpts associated with the rule. This, when combined with lengthy Chief Counsel Option excerpts, can go on for pages.

I find the case studies and opinion excerpts the most enlightening when dealing with a complex rule. They clearly explain how a pilot did (or did not) get into trouble for doing something (or not doing something) related to the rule and why the situation was (or was not) an issue. At breakfast the other day, I was completely absorbed in the Part 135 applicability regulations, which illustrated how pilots got in trouble for operating Part 135 flights when they weren’t certified for Part 135 operations. It made me very glad I had my Part 135 certificate.

A Good Addition to Any Serious Pilot’s Bookshelf

In all, I highly recommend these books to anyone who is serious about a career in aviation. Written by aviation lawyers, they are equivalent to the business law books I had to read to get my BBA years ago. They tell it like it is and help you understand the rules in a way that a simple reading of the FARs cannot. The next time I’m at Willie, I’ll pick up the first book in the series for my reference library.

You can learn more about the books on Jeppesen’s Web site.

Flim-Flam!

The ultimate book for skeptics.

I just finished Flim-Flam! by James Randi. You may have heard of “The Amazing Randi” — he’s the one offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon under controlled conditions. (You can learn more about Randi’s challenge on the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Web site.)

The book details many attempts to claim the prize — which was only $10,000 when the book was written — as well as the facts behind many of the things commonly believed in popular culture: The Bermuda Triangle, Chariots of the Gods, UFOs, astrology, psychic surgery, etc. Randi is relentless in his quest to expose charlatans, especially those who prey on believers with cash to “donate” to his efforts.

Although this book is now 25 years old, it’s an extremely timely read — especially with fakes like Uri Geller appearing on television to con viewers. (Randi is also the author of The Truth About Uri Geller, which exposes many of Geller’s tricks.)

Nowadays, people are willing to believe almost anything; it’s good to read something that brings reality into the equation.

Are you a skeptic? You need to listen to Skepticality or read Skeptic magazine.