I got in a heated conversation with a fella at work (whose opinions I generally respect) about the Ilana detonation scene. I loved it; Juice and I reacted viscerally, and then laughed. My co-worker hated it – thought it was cheap, saw it coming, they had done it before, etc. etc. I took more of an issue with some clunky dialogue – “I guess that explains The Whispers” or whatever – and how rushed Hugo’s acceptance of the alternaverse seemed toward the end. But I loved other moments, including pretty much everything with fake Locke and Desmond, in both worlds.
The episode moved the plot ahead nicely. The remaining candidates are now in Locke’s camp, ready to be tempted. There wasn’t a whole lot of food for thought, though; there were only two things worth marinatin’ on for a minute. One, the kid appeared again, the one that cropped up in The Substitute, when he appeared to Locke and Sawyer, telling Locke “you know the rules, you can’t kill him.” This time he appears to have dark hair. Why does the boy have a different colour of hair now? Who is he? Smart money’s on Jacob or the MIB, though as reincarnation or ghost, I don’t know.
The other thing that seemed to merit some reflection was the final scene, in which alterna-Des alterna-runs over alterna-Locke. It does indeed seem that Widmore had more detailed instructions for him than we got to see last week. But is he trying to kill Locke (as I thought) or trying to give him a near-death experience (as Noel Murray at the AV Club thought )? Or is he trying to force an encounter between Jack and Locke, when Locke goes in to the hospital? One thing’s for sure: heavy alternaverse shit is going to go down at what we must assume is alternaverse LA’s only hospital, as Claire, Sun and Jin, Jack and now Locke (with Ben accompaniment?) are all going to be there. Will Aaron be born? Will Jack save Locke’s life? etc. etc.
Speaking of Aaron, here’s some speculation I was working on before this episode: why is the Man in Black as yet nameless? It’s starting to get awkward. Things are often left out in Lost because the writers are saving them for a big reveal. So, perhaps there is something dramatic about his name. Two theories: 1. he and Jacob are the same person, 2. his name is Aaron (or someone else we have already met).
The Aaron theory holds up well when you consider the conversation MIB has with Kate about his mother earlier in the season – he could be talking about Claire, or Kate, or someone else (we don’t know yet who raises Aaron). I’m not sure however that a) all the details really make sense and b) the writers want to go back to time travel paradox loop territory. I personally hope they do, I loved season 5.
When you are meditating1 you begin to see yourself as another model. At first, you are attempting to calm your mind by concentrating on breathing, mantras, etc., depending on the school of thought. You want to retreat from the stream of thoughts that your mind produces. You let it go by, but you do not jump in.
As it goes by you get to know yourself better. If there are things on your mind, they cannot hide now. You’d be surprised at how obvious this can make some of your problems that somehow elude you if your mind stays in the flow of thoughts, without the vantage point of being on the shore, seeing things from a distance.
I tried to sit recently when a dispute with a neighbour had made me fuming mad. The exercise I use to get started and which I normally breeze through – counting breaths – was well-nigh impossible as my mind kept on drafting furious rejoinders to all these perceived slights.
The solution was to see myself as a character, as a model, so I could notice, “boy this thing really has him ticked off.” As long as your problems are not imminently life-threatening, this should be possible. It’s curious, observing yourself in that way. From the shore, the problems that seemed to engulf you become small and almost sad. Not sea monsters, giant whales, maelstroms, but frogs, goldfish, and eddies.
The epistemological questions come pouring down, now, like who is this waterlogged stream-creature that we normally inhabit, this model; and more importantly, who is this being on the shore?
1 I have been doing this for over a year but have not found a way to write about it. The world does not need another introductory guide to meditation written by someone who barely understands it; the books by masters exist and are surely enough. The word itself is one of those problem-words, like art, whose bad associations threaten to overwhelm the good ones (so I may just call it “sitting” from now on). And finally, it’s questionable whether writing about meditation is of any use at all, especially in the Zen context (another problem-word, Zen) where getting beyond the traps of language is one of the goals. Those are the hurdles, but the practise has become so important to me that it seems completely askew and rather cowardly that this site has more about gadgets than it does about sitting and thinking (not that I’m gonna go all Cat Stevens on you). So I’ll try and approach it like I did today, when a thought has come up that seems useful, I will record / share it. Sharecord.
This was touted as, and as far as I can tell received as, a turning point in the season, something that would “change the conversation”. I’m not entirely sure the conversation has changed, but it certainly has been nudged in a certain direction. What we learned:
Desmond is able to carry his consciousness between the sideways and normal worlds, as he has been able to when time traveling within his own consciousness
Widmore wants to use Desmond’s unique ability (can withstand a “catastrophic electromagnetic event”) to save the world
sideways characters can see the real(?) world in moments of trauma, including near-death experiences
sideways Desmond, now aware of the real(?) world, wants to show fellow Oceanic passengers something (what is he going to show them?)
I’m not sure it’s much more than that. Not saying that’s a bad thing. We can certainly get a feel for where things are going, and have more of a sense of the relationship of these two worlds, and most crucially have more of a reason to give a shit about what we’re seeing in the sideways stories.
One thing my local nerd squad discussed after this season’s premiere was the idea that the sideways world is not necessarily the result of the bomb going off in 1977. That it was displayed right after that event does not prove anything, and indeed seems likely to be classic Lost misdirection. I postulated that it was in fact the result of Jacob’s murder, which also happened around the same point in the story. I believe it was P. who first suggested it might be the result of something that hadn’t happened yet.
This theory started seeming more likely as the Man in Black went around making deals with people. The things he promised (Sayid would see Nadia again, Sawyer would get off the island) were things that were true in the sideways world. So perhaps when he said he would leave the island and bring people with him, he meant they would all enter the sideways world, or make it reality. (Then again, perhaps he was just tellin’ sweet little lies.)
The above theory still holds water after last night’s episode, which is more than we can say about a lot of theories, isn’t it. So in the event that Smokey gets “off the island”, Widmore needs Desmond to make shit happen in the sideways world, which has become the only world. Indeed, the sideways scene where Desmond says he wants the flight manifest probably occurs after an unseen scene in which he discusses his mission with Widmore.
Something I absolutely loved about the episode was the number of references to past episodes, echoes of past plots, lines with double meanings. Desmond’s carrying of consciousness between different states recall his ability to do so through time in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” and “The Constant”. The sailboat and the painting of the scale in Widmore’s office. The shitty Australian bar called “Jax.” That Desmond actually saves Charlie from drowning, probably at the marina where Ben shot him (and “Penny’s boat” was lodged), the stadium in which he meets Penny, and Eloise Widmore’s near-extrafictional direction of what Des is “supposed” to do.
The Eloise thing has really stuck with me. Obviously she and Widmore know a lot more than you, me and Desmond. In “Flashes Before Your Eyes” (an episode I heartily recommend reviewing), she knows a sequence of future events, Des’ life, and she dissuades him from pursuing Penny, pushing him on the path toward the island. In the sideways world, she again tries to scare him away from Penny, but more as a means of keeping him from knowledge of the island. The whole thing has the feel of a Faustian bargain, where Des gets money, power and respect but loses his soul / the love of his life / knowledge of the real world. But how is it that sideways Eloise has this knowledge, but not sideways Widmore? Or is that really the case?
Shit that sounds pretty confusing. Such is Lost, I guess.
One last thing, from the previous episode, “The Package” and the one before it, “Eternal Abs” (or something like that). I was reminded of how Lost’s attention to linguistic detail is refreshing in US film & TV: the Korean scenes play out in Korean, and Richard’s origin story is in Spanish. In fact he does a great Spanish accent for his English-speaking flashback parts. So the question is, why do Jacob and the Man in Black speak American English? In most shows you’d say well of course Jesus speaks American English, this is an American film. But in this case it makes you wonder, especially when time travel is a fact of Lost life. Do they come from the present day US, and got whisked back in time somehow? Somewhen?
Who the fuck knows. Again, such is Lost, god bless it.
Essentially, this is what happened: ever since I bought that netbook I never took my MacBook Pro off the desk. I was using it as a desktop, but a shitty one. All the video I shoot on my GH1 has to be transcoded, which is a processor-intensive task, and the MBP was crashing a lot. Presumably it was overheating. Also, it wasn’t very fast (it’s three years old now).
This new bastard has four cores and a 27” screen. The screen is irresistible. It’s amazing for editing, but pretty much any task benefits as you can have all the windows you need open and on screen at once instead of flipping around between them like Flippy McFlips. This screen makes 1080p look like bullshit kid stuff. And the extra power is certainly welcome. I thought something was wrong with Compressor, but apparently it was just my slow ass computer. This thing eats AVCHD transcoding for breakfast, sighing with boredom. It’s apparently faster than the low end Mac Pro right now, which is $800 more and doesn’t include a display. Let alone a monster 27 incher, the sort that will never ever appear on a laptop.
I used to buy as fast a laptop as I could afford. I was buying computers that promised both power and portability. In truth, they delivered neither. The landscape has changed, and now you can get both – in separate devices, without having to be one of Europe’s wealthiest princes or anything. With netbooks, smartphones, and now tablets like the iPad, we have much greater portability than ever before, at much lower prices. These are not powerful machines, of course, compared to proper computers. However, when you need real power, you can turn to your desktop monster.
Excellent post here at The Legion of Decency with analysis of and commentary on the latest round of CRTC rulings. The key points:
1. Private Broadcasters have the right to charge fees for formerly free-to-air broadcasts on cable and satellite.
2. Private broadcasters have the right to Blackout signals for which they own Canadian rights.
3. “Programs of National Interest” replaces Priority programming and is redefined to comprise only drama and comedy, feature documentaries and Award shows.
4. 30% of network gross income must be spent on Canadian programming (5% on Programs of National Interest).
5. Total Canadian Content on Canadian networks reduced from 60% to 55%.
7. Reduced restrictions on where a network’s Canadian Production spend is exhibited. With as much as 25% movable anywhere within the conglomerate holdings.
8. CMF investment no longer counted as part of broadcaster programming spend.
The rest gets a bit inside baseball unless you’re in the industry or follow it closely, but there’s plenty good there too. Point number two is the one that may cause waves, as Dennis points out, since it favours the broadcasters but requires action by the cable companies:
Canada’s top two cablers aren’t going to make it that easy. They’re set to announce by end of business that they’re pulling all U.S. network feeds from the cable packages in sixty days. This will predictably cause outrage and hate from customers, which the companies will blame entirely on the networks…
This is happening at a time when it is arguably easier for me to bootleg TV shows than watch them in the sanctioned ways. It is laughable. Ha! Well, except for the enormous wasted opportunities and the dire condition of our national culture industry. That is more like cryable. Cry!
The problem with the Canadian TV industry in a nutshell is that all these guys, broadcast networks and cable & satellite companies alike, make their money showing American TV to Canadians. That’s not exactly a valuable service these days. Years ago, the US channels that were reliant on non-exclusive content like movies or syndicated shows realized they had to have some actual exclusive shows to attract viewers and to gain leverage in the New World of post-internet entertainment, where content is suddenly available through a million different avenues. That’s why we got The Sopranos (HBO), Mad Men (AMC), Breaking Bad, etc. etc. The Canadian industry could have learned this lesson long ago and actually started investing in Canadian shows. It would have hurt them financially for a few years, but eventually paid off as they could sell the shows to the US and elsewhere (did you know The Listener is a big hit in Italy?). But no, they do the bare minimum required by their pal CRTC and then defend their relic of a business model by imposing false scarcity in an age of information abundance.
Development of my media center app of choice, Plex, has seemed stagnant of late, with their blog only updated with new plugins for Danish sports channels and the like. But all was not as it seemed. Deep in the dark, there were rumblings. And lo!
At the end, we decided, just like with our plug-in framework, to throw out the existing code and rewrite it from scratch… The ground up rewrite not only results in an extremely powerful library for personal content, but also sets the stage for providing many benefits beyond just the library itself.
Plex’s new Library, Alexandria, is thus teased. Hopefully it won’t be burned down by the Christians and blamed on the Romans, like the real one.
Shutter Island has many delights. Even a sub-par picture by Marty Scorsleazy is sure to be full of masterful craft moments, as his crew is top notch. This one is no exception: shot by Rob Richardson, edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, designed by Dante Ferretti, the names are as predictable as they are excellent. One surprise is old Scorcese pal Robbie Robertson as music supervisor. In the Kubrick style, there is no original score, so this job is more important than simply finding pop songs to play in the background of bar scenes. Even more Kubrickian is the inclusion of Ligeti and Penderecki (you might remember us from such modernist horror scores as: The Shining), but there’s also some Eno, some Cage. One powerful piece is “On the Nature of Daylight” by Max Richter, a beautiful, languid, melancholy, near-minimalist string piece. The soundtrack is great. (So is the film, by the way.)
Shutter Island’s last act is full of surprises. Perhaps the greatest – not a spoiler! – is the song that plays over the credits. It’s surprising because it’s a mashup, of the aforementioned Richter track with Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth”. It’s also surprising because it’s a beautiful mashup, perhaps the greatest I’ve heard. The only credit for the composite work is “mixed by Robbie Robertson”. Quite a set of ears on that dude, to say nothing of the brain that thought of blending these two sources that are so dissimilar but also simply made to be together. Have a listen, but also chase down the originals to see what I’m talking about.
A friend and I applied last summer for an NFB short film calling card grant – the subject was artists in Windsor, and we would have followed three different artists for a spell, artists whose work dealt directly with the economic crisis in their home town. In a nutshell, Windsor has been in economic decline for some time, but the recession and especially the problems in the US auto industry have wreaked havoc on the city. It now has the highest unemployment in the country, and the highest vacancy rate – the vacancy rate is plainly visible in most areas of the city, especially downtown and in the industrial areas, many of which would more accurately be described as post-industrial areas.
So we applied, were shortlisted, but ultimately didn’t get the grant. However, that was a good thing and the experience was definitely a positive one that improved the project. A very helpful NFB producer met with us and suggested many things, but one of them was to pursue the project as a feature. I thought that was good advice, but I couldn’t see how to do it, what with the full time job in a different city, a job that I actually like.
A couple months later, one of the artists we were to follow (Justin from Broken City Lab) announced a new project. Called Save the City, it was an ambitious series of five events designed to provoke creative thinking amongst Windsorites on how to, you know, save the city. As the events were once a month, on weekends, I saw that this could be actually doable for me. Moreover, their project cut right to the heart of what interested me: was it possible for regular people to rescue a collapsing city? What could be done about these suffering post-industrial centres, Windsor but also Detroit, Buffalo, Hamilton, Baltimore… the list runs long.
So I decided to do it – go and shoot the events now, and at the same time raise the money to complete the film as I went. I’ve shot two events already and am heading up again next weekend.
I will post more about this, but the time window has now already closed, so it will have to wait.
The robot fist logo was an idea by Toku (remember him?). It may have been from 2008. He didn’t have a chance to actually execute it and for the past year I’ve been trying to get a designer friend to do it, but as it often goes with busy talented people and freebie jobs, it wasn’t happening. Finally I tried myself, for about the third time. I think it worked out pretty well despite my sub-craptacular vector design skillset.
I just love the idea of it. Despite loving both robots in general and the previous robot logo in the particular (designed by my friend Claire), I had come to dislike the obviousness of the image. The new logo is more indirect, visually striking (ha), and brings a number of new associations. The raised fist is of course commonly used by left-wing groups, and when combined with robots brings up SkyNet, the singularity, the idea of robot empowerment. In my mind, this is better and more on-topic than the association of kitschy 50s ray gun robots – not that there’s anything wrong with that.
As for the execution, I experimented with many things. I ultimately found that the closer I stayed to the traditional clenched fist logo, the better. What do you think, can you make it out okay?
The design
I wasn’t intending to go all-white like this. I had a design mostly finished that used propaganda imagery and textures and reds and browns, quite inspired by this poster:
Which I goddamn love. So I’m not sure why I decided to try stripping pretty much every aesthetic design element away other than the logo. I think it’s from using a lot of minimal interfaces lately, like Instapaper, Taskpaper and of course the Kindle. And of course I consider myself a producer of stuff, not a designer of things that display stuff, so I like it when designs step back and let you get right to said stuff.
The result is what you see. I’m not sure I’ll keep it like this, but I like it right now.
While I’m on the site news tip, there are still a few problems – biggest for me is that the links (brief posts) aren’t displaying correctly in the RSS feed. I’m afraid I’m a little undermatched for that battle, but I’m still trying. The workaround is to subscribe to the articles feed and the pinboard feed separately – pinboard is what I use for the links. You’ll miss the odd picture and embedded video, but hey, life goes on.
That said, “just a big iPod Touch” is obviously not true. They are building up new things on top of the iPhone OS. As Andy Ihnatko points out, there is a filesystem after a fashion, and many new interface tricks. To say nothing of the apps that aren’t feasible on a little phone screen but could kill on a 10 incher – think of the live music apps, like mixers, that multitouch and big screens would make awesome.
Finally, the latest trend in iPad commentary is basically, “this gadget isn’t for you, nerd, it’s for your grandma.” While it may be true that the silverhaired set may want it as their only computer, are you nerds really so sure you won’t start drooling when you see Instapaper on the iPad? Tweetie? Aperture? An RSS reader? Don’t we all love our iPhones despite their popularity amongst people who don’t know what the hell an RSS reader is? This thing (and to be perfectly honest my still-awesome $300 netbook) are making me rethink my computer purchases. I might get an iMac next, despite being a strictly laptop kinda guy for the past ten years. I could never afford to have a full desktop and a portable as well, but now I can because the portables are $300-$500, not $2500.
A lot of that is that it will do most of the things you want a second computer for quite well. But a lot of it is the apps. I’ve always loved the Mac’s indie developer community and the great work they produce. Seeing them do their thing on the iPhone has been a great thrill. And despite all the bullshit that Apple dumps on them with the approval process, I’m really excited to see what they do with this whole new device.
How about some nerd gossip? Penny Arcade are in the midst of a book tour, and they appeared on Jordan Jesse Go, the lesser known podcast of the folks behind The Sound of Young America. Things do not go well, and Tycho posts this scather. I love love love Penny Arcade, and I’ve never gotten into any of the Jesse Thorn stuff; however, as a fan of You Look Nice Today, I know those guys are pals with Mr. Thorn and he’s unlikely to be as horrible as PA makes it out. You can read his own description here, and read the follow-up post from a commenter who mentions PA’s well-known anxiety problems. Who knows though. They haven’t posted the podcast evidence yet.
Here’s an article by Shawn Blanc about iPhone feed readers. I find him pretty forgiving. I’ve tried NetNewsWire, Byline, and Fever, and am now using GReader’s mobile interface because none of the others did it for me. All of them are slow, Byline has interface problems, NNW is (was?) buggy, Fever… Just not a good iPhone solution is how I’d put it. I quite like GReader mobile. It’s fast, and as you’re probably going to be bouncing things to the browser I don’t mind the web-app-ness as much as I often do. Also, it’s fast.
I would like to try Reeder, though. Maybe when I haven’t blown my iPhone app budget on plants, zombies and waaaay too many to-do apps.
Between seasons two and three there was an ARG called The Lost Experience. ARGs tend to be produced by outside teams, but this had a couple show writers and featured a great deal of input from the show runners (Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, aka Darlton). Key parts of the Lost Experience are considered canon by Darlton.
One of those key parts is something called The Valenzetti Equation. Let me quote the Lostpedia:
Its creation was the result of efforts made following the Cuban Missile Crisis by the United States and the Soviet Union to find a solution to the hostility and danger of imminent global disaster created by the Cold War. The equation was secretly commissioned through the UN Security Council and is used to predict the time of human extinction.
…The Valenzetti Equation “predicts the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself.” … The numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, are … the numerical values to the core environmental and human factors of the Valenzetti Equation.
These are of course the famous Lost numbers, the ones that Hurley won the lottery with, that are inscribed on the hatch, that appear in pretty much every license plate, etc. etc. If you’ve been watching the sixth season, you’ll know that the numbers have reappeared on the show in a big way. The numbers correspond to the main protagonists including Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid, etc. They are potential “candidates”, and magical island steward Jacob has been subtly manipulating them in order to get them to show up on the island.
In the scenes we’ve seen of this (mostly in the season five finale), we see Jacob visiting our heroes at different times in their lives, including when they are children. Jacob, like Richard Alpert, appears to be ageless, and able to travel off-island with relative ease. While his appearances don’t necessarily mean he can time travel, he has to be able to see the future at the very least. As the show has already established that time travel is one of the magic powers enabled by the island’s “unique properties”, we could presume that Jacob, the head honcho of the island, can McFly around at will.
Take that far enough, and Jacob would be able to travel forward in time to see when the world ends.
One of the big themes of the show is that of free will vs. predestination. It is a duality, of course, that intersects nicely with issues surrounding time travel. If Jacob knows that the world will end at a set time and believes in free will, he will attempt to change events. Clearly he is doing so by manipulating these key players.
In opposition to Free Will Jacob, we have Mr. Predestination, the Man in Black aka the Smoke Monster aka Fake Locke. He was revealed in the finale of season five, when he and Jacob have the following conversation:
MIB: Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you.
Jacob: You are wrong. MIB: Am I? They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
It’s what you might call cryptic, but it certainly implies that there is an ending, a bad ending, that both of these men are aware of. The Man in Black is resigned to this bad ending and its correlative judgment of mankind as inherently negative, whereas Jacob is hopeful, committed to a good solution.
In brief, then: the world is going to end, and Jacob and his rival know how and when. Jacob is devoted to changing this course of events by bringing people to the island and guiding them, and the Man in Black is opposed to this.
PixelJunk Monsters kills it. I bought it on the PS3 a few months ago and while I loved the first few levels, there’s a steep cliff where the difficulty curve should be, and I failed to climb it. For some reason during a hard month I revisited this game and I fucking LOVE it. It got me through some tough times. You have to embrace the cold hard truth that you will be playing the same levels over and over, you have to LOVE this. This is something old school, it is out of place with the low amounts of challenge we face in modern, casual-friendly games. However, the environment of the game is so pleasant:
You are moving back and forth, dancing, collecting gold and gems, building a system, and the replaying of levels is what is required to make the system PERFECT. Incidentally, this is surely by design; the game requires you to unlock harder areas by collecting rainbows, which you only get with a perfect score on a level, aka you didn’t let one monster through (you have 20 in your village, each monster you let through kills one, and normally you can win with only one villager remaining, BUT AT WHATCOST I ASKYOU? Save them all).
The environment is pleasant, the gameplay is well calibrated, with a few elements that perfectly compliment each other, and the levels and tower progression give you a great variety of play and strategy.
Incidentally, I balked for a while at buying the PSP version, which costs $20 compared to the $10 of the PS3 original. It is absolutely worth the money, however. The PSP version includes two add-on islands which represent a great deal of play time. The game is well-suited to the portable device and that’s where I’ve played the most of it.
Just assuming I won’t get around to writing up PixelJunk Shooter, the most recent release in the series, let me just add that it is awesome as well.
It must be tough with all these strangers in your house. Bad things happen; you say the children are at risk. Of course you would fight to defend them. You fought for me.
I know the Judge is out to get you, and you worry.
Don’t worry, your keys are here too.
We rebuilt the house exactly as it was. (You’re right, that would be amazing.) This is your house, don’t worry – you thought it was gone when you were in that other place. The one you kept on trying to leave. This is it, not an exact replica.
Are you going out? If you go I’ll go with you. This is your coat, you may want it. It’s getting cold.
That’s your wife. Yes, the second one. She looks out for you – please don’t yell at her. Don’t fight. There is nothing to fight. Don’t worry. You were always a gentle man, a calm one. Please don’t change now.
You are playing roles. You are starring in movies. The trucks are lined up outside. You’re to play the role of a much older man. One whose hands shake, who shuffles, who gets confused.
No, I don’t have a brother. Seriously.
The words slip. They shuffle like a deck of cards. I understand you but I don’t. Sometimes you give up, and who can blame you. I would too.
I wish I could see what you see, the show playing out in the fireplace, the dropped jewels on the floor, the people who wait silently in the living room. I wish I could get inside, see the film you’re in, star in it with you.
Don’t worry. Please don’t worry.
You say you are radiantly sorry. It’s just that if you keep fighting, they won’t let you stay here.
We all play roles. Then when the role is done we move on, wait in the green room, talk about how great it was. They clean up the hall, the lights go out, we move on. Think of all the roles you’ve played. For me, you’ve played many. Like the teacher who taught me everything I fucking know.
Please stay.
If you want to go out I will go with you, but take your coat, it’s cold. I can help. I am a trained ninja, and I will help you keep the demons away.
But consider that we don’t have to do anything. We can stay in tonight. If you need help, just tell me. You taught me how to piss, I owe you one.
You don’t have to say anything. The words can fall on the floor like dropped cards. I can make you laugh without them, you can do the same.
Just don’t move on just yet. I’m here with you. Please stay.
What did you think? I’m moderately impressed. During the keynote I felt underwhelmed, but once we learned the price was $500, I changed my tune. Apple was clever to leak the $1000 price point ahead of time.
Perhaps the disappointment is that this is a glorified iPhone with some extra eye candy and none of the revolutionary new interface hype we had been inhaling over the past little while.
The price reinforces my feeling that this is primarily Apple’s response to the growth of the netbook market. However, the netbook and the iPad both menace laptops in general. Since I got the netbook, my 15” MBP remains on my desk, and for the first time I am considering buying a desktop to replace it. Netbooks make two-computer life possible to those of us who aren’t among the richest princes in Europe. My dream portable remains something like the MacBook Air, but that thing seems dead in the water now, especially at three times the price of the iPad. I expect they may eliminate the Air altogether and perhaps introduce a new model that is essentially the iPad with a keyboard, with a laptop form factor. Or maybe that’s just me dreaming.
The clunky peripherals are a surprise, especially the keyboard dock. It seems very un-Apple. I also hear from Gizmodo that it can be used with Bluetooth keyboards. That’s awesome, and makes me think I could stand to have it instead of a netbook.
As an ebook reader? I imagine hardcore readers will stick with proper e-ink readers and/or actual books, but casual readers may well like the eye candy of Apple’s presentation and not worry too much about eye strain and the higher prices of books. But the Kindle and friends are going to have to come down in price, stat.
My biggest problems with it: the encroachment of the closed iPhone app ecosystem into general computing. Also, still no multitasking? Granted, if the apps launch super-fast and save their states, perhaps we don’t need it as much. But still.
Anyway, that was a fun day. I have a million little questions about specific implementations that I guess are going to have to wait a couple months. I think I can deal with that.
There is this attitude in film and television, completely antithetical to the general position of the blogosphere, that you do not talk about your ideas. A great deal of this is the fear of others stealing them. It’s easy to say that the important thing – and the hard part – is execution, but unfortunately in film and other industries with more money than ideas this is not the case. Someone can take your idea, pay people to execute it, and even if the end result is shoddy, prevent you from executing YOUR vision of it. “Oh, the film about the leper fashion show?” the financier will say as he thumbs his blackberry, “we already did that. It bombed.”
This partially explains how projects that are important to me, and take some substantial portion of my time, find no representation on this blog.
I signed up for “social bookmarking for introverts” site pinboard back when it cost only $3- it’s now $6, and it goes up by a tenth of a penny with every user signup – make of that what you will, math fans!
I suppose at the time I did not see much of a difference compared to delicious, the service that invented the genre, so I put the account aside. I revisited it recently, and I can certainly see its advantages. Amongst others:
you can post via email, making it a lot easier to use on mobile browsers
pinboard can slurp down links you post to Twitter, solving a minor epistemological problem of mine
it can autopost things you favourite on Twitter
it can distinguish betweeen links you have and haven’t read yet (i.e. has a “toread” category)
you can sync it with Instapaper – it adds instapaper entries to your “toread” list
it has a truly breathtaking paid archiving feature that will make a private copy of every single page you add. This is to guard against the inevitable dead links, but it’s like your own private wayback machine. Pretty damn cool.
That’s a pretty impressive array of features, and it’s under active development. I’m not sure if the same can really be said of delicious.
To those following the site via RSS – I’ve temporarily botched the AngryRobotAll feed, that normally would give you a list of both blog entries and links posted to the site. Right now it’s only showing blog entries. I’m definitely going to fix it, but I don’t know how quickly – might be a couple days. In the meantime, you could subscribe to the new links feed on pinboard, which is where I’m posting my links now, or manually check the site, or (more reasonably) enjoy a refreshing break from notifications of internet trivialities.
This is one of the facets of the ongoing Apple tablet megarumour that really intrigues me – an Apple 3D interface patent.
In “Systems and Methods for Adjusting a Display Based on the User’s Position,” Apple proposes a display that can automatically adjust the point of view and angle of 3D objects, or even 2D objects arranged in 3D space, based on the changing position of the viewer in relation to the display. Example: imagine you are viewing some 3D object on your monitor. A sensor could let the computer know when you move your head to the left, and the object would subtly change position and/or rotation so you could see the left side of the object. Alternatively, you could move your head up so you could see the top better.
Head tracking. Fuck yeah. There was another 3D-related patent filed in January, and while it didn’t have any head tracking, it does lend credence to the notion that, come Jan 27, shit be poppin’ – in 3D. (Well, hopefully without the glasses.)
For interest’s sake, here are a couple of old posts of mine in which I drool over 3D interfaces: onetwo.
Man, there have been things I’ve wanted to do on this site for quite some time. Ever since turning it back into a personal blog, I’ve wanted to blend photos and links into the main content area like I used to do with d.sankey.ca. Philosophically, I never saw the links I post here as any less important than the articles I write, so it bothered me to have them shunted away to the side – and the same goes for the photos.
Thing is, I didn’t know how to do it in the manner I wanted to, which was to use delicious (actually, soon pinboard) for links and flickr for photos, yet have them show up on this site. I tried out Tumblr and was sorely tempted as it can do what I want, but I was unable to pull the trigger, perhaps because I love textpattern so much, perhaps out of laziness.
In steps this TXP plugin asv_tumblelog. Or rather, I stumble into it – it’s been around for ages, I just never noticed it. It can basically replicate a tumblr-like tumblelog within textpattern. It takes a lot of setting up and troubleshooting, but it can indeed work, as you can see if you’re reading this from the site proper. There’s an aspect of risk here, since it doesn’t seem to be actively developed right now, but I’m so happy with what it does that I’m willing to go along with that.
I’m still not sure about other categories of content. Quotes I don’t think I’d use much, or just post them as links. I can see grabbing my YouTube favourites feed would be pretty cool, and probably my uploads from youtube and vimeo. On flickr, I’m only pulling photos that I specifically tag for posting here, as I don’t want to drown the other content. And while I think I sometimes post interesting stuff to twitter, I haven’t yet figured out a way to only import select tweets, and ignore all the @replies that probably won’t mean anything to anyone. So, they stay shunted off into the side column still.
If you don’t like the new changes, there are options. Going to the article page will give you a list of only blog posts. The feeds (blog posts only, posts and links) will stay the same for now, but I will eventually change the latter to include photos. I may make the everything feed the default feed for the page.
While I’m on the site news tip, there’s still a long-overdue redesign coming. Probably nothing structural, but a new logo / colour scheme.
I’m too lazy to be too fussy about it, so that’s not necessarily in any order, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something great, or failed to see something mindblowing. I haven’t put films from this past year which is probably a mistake, but it feels too hard to make an accurate judgment of anything so recent.
My conception of an ideal film is something that makes you think and feel. Preferably both, but films that provoke only thought are better than those that provoke only feeling (Forrest Gump can make you sniffle, but that doesn’t make it a wonderful film). I measure the greatest films by how much I reflect on them afterwards, and that is often a combination of thoughts and feelings. As a consequence I love open-ended, somewhat mysterious films whose meanings are elusive, rather than films that tie everything up into a neat little bow.
I know, the last two entries on that list don’t quite match those criteria. I just added them because I’ve probably watched them the most, so they would be more in the ‘guilty pleasure’ category.
