Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED

Video glasses never quite took off. The handful of good head-mounted displays have been clunky and expensive (like the Sony HMZ-T1), and most displays that claim to give you a movie theater experience in front of your eyes for less than $500 turn out to be, well, too good to be true. The Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED is still pretty pricey at $799 list, but it's light and comfortable enough to wear for long periods of viewing while offering a good-looking, crisp picture. It's far from perfect, and its short battery life and heavy light bloom keep it from being more than a novelty. That it's one of the best pairs of video glasses we've tested shows that the category has plenty of room for improvement.

Design
The Cinemizer is much, much smaller and lighter than the HMZ-T1, weighing just 4.3 ounces (8.6 including the control box and HDMI adapter) and looking more like a bulky, white pair of sunglasses than a head-mounted display. With its padded rubber nosepiece, the Cinemizer is surprisingly comfortable on the face. Two adjustable ear hooks clip on to the arms of the Cinemizer, and can be moved up to fit snugly against your ears to keep it from falling off your face. Two small 2.5mm audio ports, one on each arm, connect the included Sennheiser earbuds, and plastic cups under the ports hold the buds in place when they're not in use. The Cinemizer doesn't have a rubber eye shield to block out outside light, but you can get one as an optional $30 accessory.

A cable runs from the right arm of the Cinemizer down to its control box, a small battery the size of a pack of cigarettes. The box itself has a power button a 3.5mm port for a composite video connection with the included adapter, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a mini-USB port for charging, and power and volume controls. To use it with HDMI, you need to plug the box into the included HDMI casing, which has a mini-HDMI port for hooking up a video source. If you don't have an HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable, the Cinemizer comes with a short mini-HDMI-to-HDMI adapter with a female HDMI end so you can plug in a standard HDMI cable.

The battery lasts about two and a half hours. However, if you're using a Blu-ray player, game system, or computer, you can plug a USB-to-mini-USB cable to keep the Cinemizer running indefinitely. This makes it more useful for home use, but you'll have to watch your battery life when traveling. The glasses and control box all fit in an included zip-up case for safe storage.

The OLED displays offer an 870-by-500-resolution picture for each eye, which is a far sight short of 1080p television. However, the lower resolution still looks satisfyingly sharp based on the distance of the displays from the eyes and the size screen they try to replicate. The Cinemizer can display any video over HDMI from 480p to 1080p, including 3D video.

Each eyepiece has a diopter adjustment from -5 to +2, so even if you wear normally wear glasses you can use the Cinemizer without them. The diopter adjusters are large and easily found by touch, and I had no problem setting them so the picture looked clear to my nearsighted eyes.

Performance
Since the Cinemizer is too small to fit our colorimeter to perform our standard display tests, I had to eyeball the eyepieces to evaluate their performance. The good news is that the OLED displays look good and sharp despite their relatively low resolution, and they can get very bright, very colorful, and fairly dark. The bad news is the eyepieces tend to suffer from extreme light bloom, and most contrasting edges suffered from a heavy halo effect.

I watched a standard-definition broadcast of Regular Show and the high-definition opening scene to Blade: Trinity. They were both crisp and watchable, thought the bloom made watching the very bright and very dark shots in Blade: Trinity a little frustrating. I wore the Cinemizer for about 20 minutes before removing them, and I felt little eyestrain or uncomfortable weight on my head. After using the eye shield for a while, however, I got a headache after removing the Cinemizer because of the brightness and expanded field of vision.

You can connect the Cinemizer to a game system or a PC for gaming. An optional $229 headtracker clips onto the glasses to add mouse input to your head motion, so you can control PC games with your head. This doesn't necessarily mean you should play games on the Cinemizer, especially non-first-person-shooter games. I tried to play Grand Theft Auto V, and the lower resolution made looking at information on the corners of the screen and reading the map difficult. Wonderful 101 was a little easier, but it still wasn't ideal with display elements not looking as sharp as they would be on a full-size 1080p screen. First-person shooters are a little easier to tolerate, but you should watch out for smaller display elements like maps and ammo numbers. They'll likely be hard to read.

The Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED is the best pair of video glasses we've tested so far, but that's because there's a lot of room for improvement in this niche category. The Cinemizer OLED is light and comfortable enough for flights and other travel, and its picture looks great when the bloom isn't distracting. But its short battery life, less-than-stellar resolution, and issues with contrasting edges keep it from being a must-have. It might be the top choice among its few competitors, but think long and hard before you spend the $800.

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Three Simple Steps to Keep Hackers Out of Your Baby Monitor

Using an IP camera in lieu of a dedicated Internet-connected baby monitor can have its advantages. But it also comes with some profound security risks. Here's how to secure your baby cam and keep hackers at bay.

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Soccer-AFC president pledges to help Iraq host matches

Oct 12 (Reuters) - The Asian Football Confederation have pledged full support to Iraq in their bid to overturn a ban on playing home internationals after the 2007 Asian champions were left furious at being stripped of hosting the Gulf Cup.

FIFA banned Iraq from hosting matches in July in a move criticised this week by Jordan's Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, a member of the world governing body's all powerful executive committee..

AFC President Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, also a FIFA member and the head of the Bahraini FA, said checks would be carried out to see if war-torn Iraq was safe enough to host matches.

"Both FIFA and AFC have agreed that the continental governing body will send a working team to assess the situation," AFC President Sheikh Salman told members at a FIFA-AFC regional development seminar in Manama on Friday.

"The team will present a full report to FIFA which will help them in this issue."

The ban was cited as one of the reasons for the Iraqi city of Basra being replaced by Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2014/15 Gulf Cup this week.

That decision came after a meeting of the heads of the eight Football Associations who take part in the Middle East event for national teams and was met with a furious reaction by the Iraqi government.

Iraq's Ministry of Youth and Sport said the decision was politically motivated amid worsening relations with Saudi Arabia and the team were withdrawn from the tournament.

That incurred a warning from the AFC, who told the government to stay out of football matters or risk another ban following their 2009 suspension by FIFA for interference.

Sheikh Salman said sending the assessment team had conditions.

"We are with you and will support whatever decisions you take for the benefit of Iraqi football but we will not tolerate interference from outsiders," the Bahraini said. (Writing by Patrick Johnston, editing by Nick Mulvenney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/soccer-afc-president-pledges-help-iraq-host-matches-083802547--sow.html
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MLB Umpire Wally Bell Dead At 48

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball umpire Wally Bell, who worked the NL playoff series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals that ended last week, has died. He was 48.

The commissioner's office confirmed Bell's death Monday. He died of an apparent heart attack in his home state of Ohio.

"All of us at Major League Baseball are in mourning tonight regarding the sudden passing of Wally Bell," Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement. "I always enjoyed seeing Wally, who was a terrific umpire and such an impressive young man. On behalf of our 30 clubs, I extend my deepest condolences to Wally's family, fellow umpires and his many friends throughout the game."

Bell became the first active MLB umpire to die since John McSherry passed away of a heart attack on the field in Cincinnati on opening day in 1996.

Bell worked the 2006 World Series and three All-Star games, including this year's event at Citi Field, where he was stationed at first base. A veteran of 21 big league seasons, he had also worked four league championship series and seven division series since joining the major league staff in 1993.

According to Bell's biography on MLB.com, his proudest moment as a big league umpire was returning to the field after having open heart surgery in 1999.

"I am deeply saddened and shocked at the loss of umpire Wally Bell," said Joe Torre, MLB executive vice president for baseball operations. "Umpiring was his life, and he touched so many people within the game of baseball. Aside from being an accomplished, All-Star-caliber umpire, Wally was a loving dad to his two teenage children. I extend my deepest condolences to them, his girlfriend Renee, the rest of his family and his admirers across Major League Baseball."

Bell was 34 and 2½ weeks from leaving for spring training in 1999 when his heart problem was detected.

He had quintuple bypass surgery on Feb. 18, 1999, that left him with an 8-inch scar down the middle of his chest. Two of his arteries had been 100 percent blocked. Two more had been 80 percent blocked, another 70 percent.

But he returned to work 11 weeks later in San Diego for a game between the Padres and Atlanta Braves.

That night, plate umpire Mark Hirschbeck took the first ball out of play, and planned to have all the umps sign it before presenting the souvenir to Bell.

Seven years later, Bell was behind the plate for Game 3 of the World Series between Detroit and St. Louis at Busch Stadium.

During the 2013 regular season, Bell was a member of Tim McClelland's crew.

"Wally was a great umpire, a great partner and a great friend. The umpiring community is deeply saddened by this tragic loss. He will be sorely missed by many," said major league ump Joe West, President of the World Umpires Association.

Bell is survived by his son, Jason, and daughter, Lindsey.

___

AP Baseball Writer Ben Walker contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=234428719&ft=1&f=
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Obama meeting with congressional leaders postponed

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says a meeting between Obama and congressional leaders has been postponed to give Senate leaders more time to resolve a standoff over the nation's debt and the partial government shutdown.

Obama was scheduled to meet Monday afternoon at the White House with the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. A new day or time for the meeting wasn't announced.

The delay comes as all sides are expressing optimism that they are getting closer to an agreement to end the two-week partial shutdown and avert a potential default on the U.S. debt.

The last meeting between Obama and the congressional leaders was Oct. 2.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-meeting-congressional-leaders-postponed-184941546--finance.html
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Captain Phillips

Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdirahman in Captain Phillips.

Photo by Jasin Boland/Columbia Pictures Industries Inc.

After you've seen Captain Phillips, come back and listen to Slate's Spoiler Special with Dana Stevens and David Weigel. You can download the podcast here.

 The defining scene of Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips occurs in the last few minutes, after the cargo-ship captain of the title, played by Tom Hanks, has survived his ordeal of being taken hostage on a lifeboat by four Somali pirates off the coast of Africa. It isn’t spoiling anything to note that the captain makes it off the lifeboat alive—after all, the real-life Richard Phillips went on to write a book about the harrowing 2009 hijacking of his ship, upon which this movie (written by Billy Ray of Shattered Glass and The Hunger Games) is based. But the way Greengrass treats the moment is something I won’t spoil, except to say that this last scene exemplifies the compassion and truthfulness that sets this movie apart from your run-of-the-mill maritime action thriller (and that it very well may be the reason Tom Hanks wins an Oscar).

That powerful last scene had its work cut out for it in my case, because by the time it rolled around, I was starting to lose patience with Captain Phillips, the second half of which takes place almost entirely in a claustrophobic enclosed lifeboat. Greengrass has an impressive gift for creating tension with his trademark documentary-style shaky camera (here wielded by frequent Greengrass collaborator Barry Ackroyd), but he’s not always so great at diffusing that tension, or modulating its rhythms over the course of a film (which is part of why I sat through his 9/11 re-creation, United 93, with an uneasy combination of anguish and boredom). That second hour in the lifeboat, suspenseful as it is, makes for a long stretch of uninterrupted intensity, especially when filmed in Greengrass’ jolting quick-cut style. It’s effective on a visceral level, but so unvaryingly clamorous and chaotic that I, for one, found myself at times as eager to get out of the movie as Captain Phillips was to get off the boat.

Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic.

The first hour is much more effectively paced, even if there’s something off about the opening scene, in which Phillips and his wife (Catherine Keener) have a curiously programmatic chat about the economically unstable world their children are growing up into. The thematic import of that conversation becomes clear in the next scene, as a group of desperate young Somali fishermen haggle with a warlord for a place on the crew of the next pirate expedition he’s sending out. In addition to being an action-adventure about captors and hostages, Captain Phillips is a tragedy about the ruinous consequences of global capitalism. The would-be pirates may have it unimaginably worse than the middle-class Phillipses, but everyone we see onscreen is just a working man doing what he feels he has to do to get by. (And given that Keener’s character disappears after that first scene, never to be replaced by another female face, I do mean “he.”)

The rescue operation is staged with great skill and tension (and even, rare for Paul Greengrass, the occasional stationary establishing shot).

Once the pirates have boarded the Alabama, though—in a staggering David-and-Goliath raid in which four scrawny Somalis in a broken-down skiff manage to breach the defenses of a massive American cargo ship on full alert—you’ll be too busy trying to catch a breath to pick up much political subtext. The head of the pirate crew is the hotheaded, acutely status-conscious Muse (unforgettably embodied by Barkhad Abdi, who was recruited from the Somali community of Minneapolis for his first film role). Captain Phillips, on the other hand, is a seasoned leader under pressure, a fact Greengrass establishes with an admirably light touch—no sentimental heroics here, just brisk pragmatism. He manages to warn most of his crew in time for them to hide in the engine room, where he communicates with them by walkie-talkie from the bridge as he negotiates with the hijackers. In an agonizingly intense scene, the frightened, squabbling pirates force Phillips to take them on a tour of the ship, slowly zeroing in on the place we know the entire crew is hiding.

Eventually Phillips persuades the pirates to leave on a lifeboat with the $30,000 from the ship’s safe. But the Somalis take him hostage, resulting in an international incident that will eventually entail the parachuting in of Navy SEALs. Although the pace flags as described above while we’re waiting for the SEALS to arrive, the eventual rescue operation is staged with great skill and tension (and even, rare for Greengrass, the occasional stationary establishing shot). The scenes in which the hijackers meet their various fates—I won’t spoil them if you don’t remember the story, but none are pleasant—have something of the feel of the raid on the Bin Laden compound in Zero Dark Thirty, a taste of bitter, ambivalent victory. And then comes that transcendent last scene, in which the man whose side we’ve barely left during this incredible ordeal is suddenly revealed as the best kind of hero, not super at all but ordinary and vulnerable and human.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2013/10/captain_phillips_starring_tom_hanks_reviewed.html
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Jimmy Kimmel And Kanye West Are Friends Again (VIDEO)

By Travis October 10, 2013 @ 9:00 AM

After their little Twitter feud last week, Jimmy Kimmel welcomed Kanye West on his show last night so they could clear the air about the rapper’s grievances with the talk show host’s decision to parody his recent interview with BBC One. For the most part, the interview went pretty well, but it basically came down to Kimmel apologizing for a harmless joke and then Kanye busting out several rants about the lack of privacy for celebrities, all in the name of them proving that this wasn’t a publicity stunt. All I know is that if this happened 20 years ago, Tupac would have shot Kimmel’s stammering ass. Get your shit together, Kanye.

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