Shadow Voice

Sulu is Family

2005-10-28T10:57:00.000-04:00

Of all the people in the world who I thought were homosexual I have to admit that the name George Takei never, ever, ever ever ever came to mind. Yes my friends, the venerable Hikaru Sulu, or at least the actor who plays Sulu, is gay.

Now I've thought for a while that Justin Timberlake might be. I've surmised that Orlando Bloom could be. The thought had crossed my mind that Brad Pitt may or may not have had an experience in his past. I never thought of George Takei. All I have to say is congratulations George.

You see Mr. Takei comes from a very different time. He lived in an interment camp (the US Japanese internment camps) from when he was four to when he was eight. He lived in shame of both his heritage and his sexuality. Things that I hope no one has to go through. That made it very hard for him to accept who he was. It made it even harder for him to tell other people. To have done it at all is commendable.

Now I know what your thinking. What will the Trekkies say? What words will they have for Sulu? How will the women who one day hoped to be Mrs. Hikaru Sulu cope with the reality that such a dream will never come to be? I think ambivalence best describes it. You see Trekkies, or Trekkers as they prefer to be called, are a pretty understanding bunch. They have been ridiculed since the 1960's. They are used to being called names, put down upon, and ridiculed. Much like the gays. I think there is a commonality there that will make George's coming out a non-issue with them.

And how about those blushing Mrs. Sulu's. They may take a few years to get over the news. Mending a broken heart is not easy.

How will the rest of the world react? In the usual way. Hatemongers will suddenly refuse to watch Star Trek. I don't see how they watched it in the first place. If Star Trek teaches anything it's tolerance and understanding. Those are concepts that are completely foreign to them. Include in this group your super religious types who swear that being gay is a choice.

Back from the Edge

2005-10-25T16:02:00.000-04:00

Hello faithful reader. If you've been watching this blog for updates and wondering where the hell I've been, wonder no longer. I'm back. For now anyway.

The past few weeks and months have been really hectic for me. New relationship, new projects at work and most notably an entirely new job. Let's talk about that.

For starters it's for a major consulting firm in the area. So there will be that "Oh, I know that company" factor whenever I talk about my job. It's still doing development work. I'll be reworking a Java application and bring it into the new millenium. The benefits are about the same but the pay is a good deal more.

More interesting work (I hope) better pay and no compromise in benefits. Sounds like a winner to me.

My relationship is in it's second month officially. Which makes it the first longest relationship I've had since the start of my rennaisance (no I'm not really sure what I mean by that). It's been great. The biggest fight we've had so far has been what to make for dinner. He says it's because of my concilliatory nature but I don't really feel like I'm conceding all that much. I'm sure that the eventual fight will happen. I don't know what it'll be about but I'm sure that we will be able to work through it.

Just last Sunday I introduced him to my mother and her fiancee. My mother had invited both of us to dinner that night and I happily obliged. Grilled salmon was on the menu and so was good conversation. Seth was a little quiet at first but that didn't last very long. We ended up talking long after dinner was finished. I think mom likes him. I know I do.

It's been a while

2005-10-02T12:27:00.000-04:00

Been a long time since I upated this site. I've been busy with work and other pet projects. I've been so busy in fact that I had to stop participating in the local rugby team here in DC. If any of my fellow ruggers aer reading this I'm sorry that you had to find out this way. I'm just way too busy with everything in my life right now to be playing rugby. Heck, I barely have time for the stuff that's left. I wish the Renegades all the best.

Right now I'm getting ready to attend my grandmother's funeral. It's in Union, Missouri. Union is a little town about 50 miles west of St. Louis. It's in what is affectionally known as the bible belt. Last night driving up, I saw the biggest cross I'd ever seen. It was like the washington monument with two arms. It's that big. We spent all day yesterday driving up and got into Union late last night. Today we are meeing my aunt and uncle for lunch and tomorrow we are going to the funeral.

It's a bit wierd for me because I don't remember alot about my grandmother. We were in another country for most of my early years and half a country away for the rest of those years. I never got to know my grandmother. I'm doing this as much to pay my respects as I'm doing it to support my mother. I know she needs my support even if it's not always apparent. Plus the time off doesn't hurt either.

I hope to make another post about the trip in a couple of days. This room has free wifi so I shouldn't have a problem. All the best. Cheers.

nano update or "nano, nano"

2005-09-21T17:59:00.000-04:00

I know this is going to sound stupid but I'm going to come out and say it. Pardon if there are a few tears. I bought TWO.

Why, dare you ask? Did he find the thought of not having one in each color unfathomable? Did he suddenly decide to part with his money in strange ways, ala Brewster's Millions? Is he completely fricking insane.

Not really. I broke down and bought the 2 giger on Sunday because I couldn't find the 4 gig nano anywhere. A day later I decided that 2 gigs really wasn't enough for what I wanted to do with it and I didn't really like the black as much as I thought I would have (it's grown on me a little). I'm going to return the 2 gig nano as soon as my 4 gig nano arrives in the mail from apple. Sorry best buy. Your buy wasn't the best this time.

Do you want to know what I've discovered about the nano. It's almost too small, if that's possible. It's easy to see the thing getting lost in a purse or other medium size bag. It really doesn't skip. I ran with the thing on my arm for about an hour and nothing, nada, zip.

I realize that since the nano has no moving parts to speak of it's really impossible to make skip. I still had to try it for myself to be sure I wasn't being fooled. I wasn't. I'll bet the think skips great across the pond though. Just have to work on the wrist action, that's all.

Banner Ads and Lowered Expectations

2005-09-21T17:20:00.000-04:00

I just saw the greatest banner ad for the Army National Guard. Three, count em, three song downloads from iTunes. Now the banner ad isn't terribly specific on what conditions you have to meet in order to get the three free songs. Do you have to listen to a pitch, sign up for selective service, enlist?

If you have to enlist then I don't see this as a great deal. Extra-value meals cost more than three iTunes songs. I remember a time when you could get school paid for on the Mongomery GI Bill. What do you mean that you can still get the bill? Oh, okay, that's cool I guess.

But that still means that I still have to listen to someone pitch to me about the military and how great it is to fight the Global Struggle against Extremism, or whatever it is they're calling it this week. I'm not sure that 3 songs is good enough recompense for my time. Ten songs certainly, seven maybe, you're pushing it with five but I'll bite, certainly not 3.

They also come at you with intangibles like" duty, honor, and commitment. Which sound really great when they say it, not so great during basic pushup drills. I don't think I can withstand that kind of salesmanship. I tend to cave under pressure. Cave like a balloon at the bottom of the ocean.

But you may have more of a will than I. If you readers feel that you can take the challenge and find three songs worth your time, could you get the recruiters to answer the following questions.

1. Can you promise me I won't go to Iraq?
2. Really?
3. What do you mean "you need me." We just met.
4. Can wear a dress like Clinger on MASH?
5. What if it's a dress uniform?
6. What do you mean it's not a dress? That's stupid.
7. What if I got the sex change?
8. What do you mean "don't ask, don't tell?" I already told.
9. Can I have that pen?
10. Would you like to go out sometime? (works better with people of the same sex) You can usually follow this by repeating question 7.

These questions may or may not prevent your conscription. Tread wisely, young grasshopper. You have been forwarned/

No nano for Rob

2005-09-14T12:49:00.000-04:00

I haven't been able to update the blog in a while so excuse me if this post seems a little bit behind the times. I would like to chat for a second about the iPod nano.

Isn't it freaking cool.

I didn't think apple would be able to make something that was cooler and smaller than the iPod mini. They are definitely flirting with the extremes of usefulness here. How long will it be before the iPod comes in pill or supository form?

They seem to have another winner on their hands with the nano. Besting the mini in every category except for song count and battery life. Both of which were shaved to make the device as small as possible.

But is Rob going to get a nano? Of course. But I thought it would be fun to come up with reasons why I shouldn't. Here's the list so far.

1. Fat fingers can't control the clickwheel.
2. Old iPod 3G might get jealous. Don't worry 3G, I still love you. Even if you are scratched up and last no longer than 30 minutes without being plugged in. Hmm, how much room do I have on my credit card.
3. Annoying people with my pictures, bloodbath ensues.
4. Worried that I might try an swallow the nano, even more worried that I'll succeed this time.
5. Afraid that people might snicker at little Rob's (the nano has a name already) diminutive size.
6. Forgetting the lockout code
7. Spend all day telling people what time it is in Tokyo. Spend day after that telling people why they should care.
8. Might fall asleep with repeat on. Never be able to get "I wanna know what love is" by Forgeiner out of my head.
9. Nano might come with subilminal advertising telling me to buy everything that apple makes. Ha, that jokes on them, I already do that.
10. nano might start declare itself a state unto it's own and start a war of attrition that ends with the brutal extermination of mp3 players at the local Best Buy

I'm not saying that any of this would or even that it could happen. What I'm trying to say is that I need to think of as many crazy reasons not to buy one so that I don't buy one. At least not until Apple releases a video ipod.

A Note to the Federal Disaster Planners

2005-09-02T11:51:00.000-04:00

When you have a Category 5 hurricane barreling down the Gulf of Mexico heading directly for a major coastal city you mobilize the troops before, not almost a week after the catastrophe. We live in the age of digital doppler radar, so take your eyes of the farmers alminac for once and live in the right now.

The federal response to this disaster has been atroucious. Not enough people in not enough time. There are looters on the streets, people are starving, there is no clean water. There isn't even anywhere to go to the bathroom. You can throw all the facts and figures that you want. We know that people aren't getting the things that they need at the time that they need them most. We have the news. Not Fox News, the real kind. It tells us that things are really bad down there. It tells us that you are failing us.

Here's my forcast for what's going to happen in the next few days. Feel free to ignore it just like you did the weather channel. Your spinmeisters are going to go into overdrive to minimize the negative press.

Fox News is going to do everything it can to avoid pinning this on the administration. Even if that means eating a certian Republican governor of Louisiana for dinner.

Conservative pundits are going to say things like "Why don't we hear about the good news from New Orleans." They may even try to organize a "truth rally".

Our glorious leader will go on national television and proclaim that everything is fine and that we are doing everything in our power. Even though everything in our power would include the manpower currently unavailable to us because it's in Iraq.

You are going to continue failing the people in New Orleans. Disaster. Anarchy. Etc. will reign.

My prayers go out to the people who suffer on your watch.

Sincerely,

ME

The Week of Moving

2005-09-01T11:27:00.000-04:00

This has been an exausting time for Rob this week. I'm getting ready for a move. Most of you, if not all of you, should know what this entails. Lots and lots of sorting and cleaning. It's fantastic.

I used to not be this way. I would put off packing til the night before. Then I would expect the stuff to magically move to the new apartment while I cleaned the old one. Suffice it to say that it doesn't work this way.

I really pissed off my friends a couple of years ago when I put off moving until the very last second. I spent two whole days packing things into boxes while my friends did the bulk of the moving. Needless to say they weren't pleased with me. They vowed never to help me move again. I vowed never to let that happen again.

All it really required me to do was put some forthought into the move. Get some boxes beforehand and prepare. These are not things that come naturally to me. Chaos and disorder yes, but not planning and preparedness.

However, my desire to make moving as painless a process as possible overrides my tendency to put things off until the last minute. I just know that the last minute is about a week too late. I'm glad that I do it this way. My friends are glad that I do it this way. Everyone is glad. Glad, glad, glad, glad, glad.

I can't wait until the move is over.

Ultra Short Stories

2005-08-30T16:53:00.000-04:00

In case all five of you have wondered where I've been I finally have the answer for you. I've been on vacation. I spent last weekend in Rehoboth Beach where I ignored my email, phone, and anything that tied me to the outside world. It was a good vacation even if it was a bit short. Since my brain decided to stay at the beach I leave you with a creepy story.

There once was a man who lived on my street. No one really knew who he was. No one really cared. All we knew was that he was alone and had been that way for quite some time.

One day many years ago I was walking by the old man's house when I noticed that he was walking out to his mailbox. I was scared to run into him but it was too late to cross the street. I had to walk by. He said "Hello."

I replied "Hello" in order to maintain politeness. He introduced himself as Mr. Hollingstead and asked me if I wanted to come inside and that he needed help with some dusting. I hesitated for a second and then reluctantly agreed.

We walked inside. At first glance the place looked pretty normal. There was this intricate wood paneling on the walls. It gave the place a regal quality. I stayed in the foyer for a while until Mr. Hollingstead invited me into his den.

In the den there were several bottles of single malt scotch in various states of use, a rifle on the wall that looked like it hadn't been used in years, and a rather large selection of books which looked like they'd never been opened. He showed me the rifle.

"Took this one to the Serengeti. Hunting Expedition in 1929." He said. "Still can't beleive how many lions I bagged."

"Wow" I replied as I couldn't think of anything better to say.

"Shall we press on?" he asked.

I nodded and the tour continued into the dining room. That's where I saw them. Mr. Hollings family, sitting at the table.

They looked like theyd been there for years. Dried skin stretched over bone, exposed in places. They were still in their eveningwear, which would have been fasionable had it been the 1970's.

"I didn't know the difference." He told me as he picked up a bottle of stricnine. "I didn't know it wasn't vanilla extract. Ain't my fault I can't read."

Mr. Hollingstead began to cry and I took the bottle of Stricnine. I thought to myself that he must be very unhappy. He lived with the grief of killing his family all these years. I looked at the bottle knew what I had to do. I had to make Mr. Hollingstead a large glass of Scotch...

True Story*

*not really. really.

OMG

2005-08-23T10:06:00.000-04:00

I couldn't get to sleep last night. As soon as I got home I plunked down and started modelling in Blender. It took me three hours but I finally created a helmet for my robot, then I decided that I didn't like the robot anymore and started over from scratch.

I spent the next two hours coming up with a new body for the robot. What I came up with looks like a cross between the robots in the old superman cartoons and the Iron Giant. It's got some sense of style to it. I like it much better than the old one.

I also redrafted the short screenplay that I'm working on. I took out some of the characters and the bits I thought were contrived. Then I added some new bits.

This is all great and good. However, I found that when I was done I was too wound up to go to sleep. So I stayed up till 3 last night doing nothing.

Sweet.

We made it.

2005-08-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

My Alma Mater is number 20.

Top 20 Party Schools

Here's to school pride. Even nerd can find a party at this school.

A new dawn brings

2005-08-22T11:23:00.000-04:00

The madness is over for now. A new project and the new possiblities that project brings. It's been touch and go for the last two months and now it looks like the worst is over for now. Thank god. Sorry if that's a little vague, it's all I can talk about.

The weekend was fun. Friday I stayed in and watched Battlestar Galactica. OMG it's sooo good. I don't remember too much though because I was animating a 3d robot at the time. But I remember the pastor or whoever that woman was getting shot and I remember Lee telling Kara that he loved her. It was cute. I like how Apollo and Starbuck (Lee and Kara's callsigns) play with eachother, forever orbiting around flirtatious disaster.

Saturday I splurged a little and bought Kung Fu Hustle. Which I just finished last night. It's got some of the best fight scenes. Which is amazing considering that tht movie was billed as Loony Tunes meets the Matrix. I think that's a little off. The fight scenes reminded me more of the Rurouni Kenshin (I appologize if the spelling is off) Japanese TV series. In that show, a travelling swordsman fights evil in a post feudal Japan. Outragious swordfights with superhuman opponents are the norm. Although I don't expect most american movie critics to have seen that series.

Saturday night was spent at Nation with Corey and Justin, two friends of mine who came in from Baltimore for the weekend. I don't usually go to Nation as a rule. It's a little too wild for me. But last weekend it wasn't that bad. Could have something to do with the fact that no one was there. Well almost no one ;-). I managed to find my fun and get a number to boot.

Muffin, or Justin rather, (we call him that becuase he hates it) didn't really like the music in the main hall. It was too "thumpa thumpa" for him. But he still managed to bust it up a little on the dance floor. For a few minutes at least until he drug us to the blue room.

The next morning we all woke up to fund that even though none of us took anyone home we all woke up with Mr. Hangover. And as you know Mr. Hangover is like the house guest who refused to leave. Corey eased our sins with a communion that consisted of Advil and Diet Pepsi. It was Sunday after all. After that we took our hangovers out to brunch, then to the movies, then shopping.

That's pretty much it.

Blender Rocks

2005-08-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

Can you name a program or several that allow you to do 3D modeling, compositing, and animation? Good. Now can you name a free program that allows you to do all three? Hard, isn't it. Finally, can you name a program that does all of this, costs nothing, and runs on almost every platform in the known universe.

If you can you've probably heard about Blender and you can stop reading the post now. If you haven't then prepare to be amazed. This is a program that duplicates the power of programs that are infinitely more expensive. Yet does so in an intelligent and relatively easy to use manner. It's also open-source so you can bend it to your will however you may please. Power indeed.

I've been playing with the application on and off for several months now. I'm only now starting to get to the point where my models are starting to look like the stuff that I envision. It's like owning every set of Lego's out there and then some. With this program you get to build your own Legos.

What have I done with it. I've build a teddy bear, a submarine, and a robot. The robot is by far the most intricate. It's taken me about a week to get the modeling and proportions to where I would like them. But it's been fun.

It's not perfect. I've had the program quit on me a few times (less so in the recent version) and the control scheme takes forever to learn. But once you do you understand why they designers did it this way. It's incredibly fast to draw something out.

Blender's build for speed, ease of learning is secondary. But once you figure things out it's all good.

There is also a thriving community of Blender fanatics. Artists with the talent but not the money to own one of the big ticket modeling programs. Check out www.blenderwars.com for Star Wars related works. It's pretty cool. Also, the main page has a gallery where you can see the work that people have done with it. Everything from cartoony, to photoreal, to just plain wired exists on that site. Even if you don't do 3d design you can at least check out the pics.

That's what I've done this week.

Rob

...and the world IS flat.

2005-08-18T09:50:00.000-04:00

It's not been a good week for yours truly. My dog ran away, my girlfriend dumped me, the doctor says it might be malignant. Now, if I didn't have enough troubles, some scientist with more money and brains than I'll ever have just announces that the galaxy is not a spiral. It is in fact a barred spiral. WTF.

This is a big deal. This means that all of my maps of the Milky Way are wrong. And what about the people on Star Trek? You would expect that if anyone had accurate maps of the galaxy it would be them. But all of their maps show a very spiral Milky Way. Who does this 20th century scientist think he is going up against the likes of that? I don't see you gallivanting around the universe at Warp 9. No sir.

What impact is this going to have on daily life? Will this change your horoscope? Will civilization crumble over the fallacy that is the "Spiral Home Galaxy Theory." I would get some water and canned meat just to be sure.

So how's everyone else's day going in the barred spiral that we call home?

Focus on the Focus

2005-08-11T16:40:00.000-04:00

Right wing group Focus on the Family has just put up a website that proposes to help "Boys become Men" and "Girls become Women." Basically, they just want show you the warning signs that you're son or daughter (but mostly your son) may be on the road to homosezuality.

It doesn't say that he is or isn't, but that he's on the road. This is an important point that shows that Focus on the Family still believes that homosexuality is learned beavior, like eating, or breathing.

Some of the finer points read that early wanring signs inclue:

1. Reluctance to play with other boys (I thought the idea was to prevent them from playing with other boys).

2. Unwillingness to play sports. (So all you sciency types are definitely on the road to homosezuality.)

3. Being teased for being "gay" or "lesbian." Because if it comes from a bully it must be fact.

4. A tendency to be effeminate in speech, gesures, etc.

5. Likes to play with girls. (this is only okay if you intend to wed them or bed them ).

For those of you who don't know, this is pure crap. All of my gay friends, and I have quite a few, don't fall into these categories. They're men's men. Masculine, athletic, didn't like to do "girlie" stuff. In fact, no one realizes they are gay until they tell someone.

Yes there are gays that act like girls. Those that have feminine tendincies. But that's just one group. One of many.

I knew this one guy. He was the captain of the football team. He played lots of sports, was well liked by his classmates, and dated the school cheerleader. He's gay. He says that he was always like that. Just covering it up so his teammates wouldn't kill him. Who's the one with the problem there?

He's in the Gay Rodeo in case you were wondering. Yes there is such a thing. Remarkably butch no?

What is really remarkable about the site is it's ommission of lesbianic tendencies. Not one of those points of logic even mentions women. Except to say that boys shouldn't be like them. It seems to revolve soley around boys. What's the word for someone who has an obession about the sexuality of underage males? I forget, but I imagine it's not well looked upon. The person how wrote that website should start looking at shrinks.

Another thing, If you take all of the "qualifications" on that site and try to apply that to every one in the gay community you'd probably find that 80 percent of it just doesn't fit. You'd find that just as many straight people fall into those categories as gay. And what about all the straight people who liked to play with barbie's and straight girls who liked to play baseball. Just anomalies, to be sure. Right.

Sciency people have a word for theories that don't correlate to experimental or observed data. How much do you want to bet that Focus on the Family based all of those facts on a bunch of stereotypes? Could I do a study to find out? Sure. But I'd be wasting my time.

So here's to Focus on the Family. May your intolerance and bogtry be the end of your organization. Those of you who just want to laugh at this remarkably stupid site. Check out the link below.

Focus on Your Child

I belong in the ADD Hall of Fame

2005-08-04T15:22:00.000-04:00

I took one of those ADD tests while I was eating lunch. Becuase you KNOW I can't do one thing at a time. It's soo limiting.

I took the ADD test and the one after it that tells you what type of ADD you supposedly have. They are very carful to tell you that it's merely a suggestion that you might be crazy and not a flat out comdemnation of your mental inadequacy. I always loved taking tests, that was until today. Would you like to know how I did?

Well the test says that I probably have ADD. The one that's supposed to narrow the type of ADD down didn't work out too well. It told me that there is a high probability that I have no fewer than four subtypes of ADD. In other words, the people that told me "Son, you're not quite right" were actually right on the money. I'm really not quite right.

In my defense I've managed to get pretty far with the scrambled egg that I have up in my head. I made it through college, managed to work with it, manage to break out of some of the stereotypes people with ADD are subject to.

But I wonder if it's limiting my potential. I wonder if I could actually finish a long term project for once.

Christians in the Workplace

2005-08-04T12:41:00.000-04:00

So I just learned a little bit about Sandia National Labratories. You know, those are the people that like playing with enriched uranium isotopes and plutonium and other elements high on the periodic table.

Did you know that they had a paper called the Sandia Daily News? Did you know that there was a group on site called "Christians in the Workplace?" Did you know that they just had a lecture on Intellegent Design?

Yes folks, Intelligent Design, the throry that life is soo complex that we could never hope to figure it out and that could not occur unless someone or something were to create it. Creationism is back baby, now with 5% more science*. Not only is it back, it's being presented to our nations best scientists as if it were an honest to god (pun not intended) theory.

I have a few problems with this. One, assuming that life is so complex that we'll never be able to understand it is just asking to be proven wrong. Especially when scientists keep filling in Evolution's "holes" all the time.

Two, does anyone see anything troubling about developing a theory just to support what a book says, no matter how revered that book is? People tried to do this with the writings of L. Ron Hubbard and all we got out of it was Scientology and Battlefield Earth. And you see where that got us.

Three, life ain't always perfect. For as grand a thing as life is there are some pretty spectacular failures. Why would an intelligent designer allow for such things as, oh I don't know, the blind spot of the human eye. There are species out there without that nasty limitation. Why would an intelligent designer give some animals pentachromatic vision and leave us with only trichromatic vision? I really wish our "intelligent" designer would have spent a few million more years working out the kinks. (I forgot the earth is only 4000 years old, oops).

Four, why do we need a group called Christians in the Workplace? You're in the majority, deal with it.

I'm going to come up with my own theory. I'm going around the country to argue against the thought that people cannot travel faster than the speed of light using conventional means. I mean, relativity is only a THEORY. And if the police can't tell me how fast I should go I'll be dammed if I'm going to let some geeky physicist tell me how fast I can go. Infinite mass at light speed be damned. And I'm going to do it using fossil fuels, the fuel of the future**.

Faith tread not where it does not belong.

*(or science like substitute)
**(future does not include armageddon, currently slated for January 7th 2042).

Bi-annual status report

2005-08-03T12:21:00.000-04:00

Currently I'm...
Listening to: New Deep by John Mayer.
Reading: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Writing: The Great American love Screenplay.
Watching: Queer As Folk, Battlestar Galactica (don't even try figuring that out. My interests are broad to say the least).
Playing: The dating game.
Working on: I can't tell you and you wouldn't want to know if I could :-).
Dreaming of: going to film school.
Looking for: a soulmate, an apartment, a raison d'etre.
Drinking: coffee, and lots of it.
Eating: wouldn't you like to know.
...and not all at the same time. In case you were wondering, I'm not good like that.

That's my status in 500 words or less.

Ah, the sweet taste of democracy.

2005-08-02T10:49:00.000-04:00

So I did this Taste of DC thing last night. The restaurant was "Seasons" at the Four Seasons in Georgetown. I showed up in grey slacks and a burgundy shirt with a kind of two tone sheen to it. Thank god I dressed up becuase it was a very posh establishment.

I arrived 20 minutes early to find Joe, one of the group, sucking down a dirty martini. So I joined him at the bar and ordered a martini of my own. Okay, okay, so it was an apple martini. Sue me. The rest of the group showed up not long after my martini arrived. So we settled at the bar and made way for the table. It was then I realized my first mistake of the night. Never order top shelf at a hotel bar, especially when that hotel is called The Four Seasons. I paid sixteen dollars for that martini. It may have been the best I'd ever had but it was still sixteen dollars. I can get alcohol poisoning from the bar in my home town for less money.

I and the group of friends that I make movies with on occasion sat down at our table in the back and chatted up as we normally do. I noticed an old man reading the paper at the table next to us. I remember thinking "what a nice old man." A thought I promptly forgot about as we started discussing the most recent movies we had seen.

About five minutes later a very nicely dressed woman sat down next to the old man who then put away his paper to make conversation. Something looked familiar about the person. The hair, the dark freckles, the characteristic pattern of her front teeth.

We'd just been sat right next to Condeleeza Rice.

This realization sent shockwaves through our table as we tried not to let on who we were sitting next to, out of respect. But I squeaked out "Oh my god, do you know who that is?" To which my friend replied "Yeah, I can't believe they sat us next to a Republican't."

A statement he was soon forced to retract as the whole restarant turned to him. He had just realized that we were sitting in the Den of Not Democrats. He ate his words with a side of duck sauce and rice pilaf. Okay so that didn't happen but it did change the conversations a bit. Just a bit.

The dinner was great, if a little small. I've figured out why fewer rich people are fat. They don't eat as much. Shocker. The food that was prepared for us was in honest to god dietary proportions. No huge servings, no side of fries, no gallon cup of Coke. This three course meal could be considered an appetizer at some other establishments. It's amazing how out of control portion sizes have gotten, when healthy portions look small to us.

That was it pretty much, we talked, had wine, tried not to annoy Condi. Because there were Secret Service agents not ten feet from her. They don't really make any effort to look conspicuous do they? But I suppose they aren't really there to hide themselves. I wonder if those are the same guys that follow the Bush twins? Hmmmm.

BTW, I wouldn't recommend Seasons for anything other than a VERY special occasion, say a wedding, anniversary, or the second coming. It's quite expensive. Our party of seven rang up a 330 dollar bill. They were gracious enough to include gratuity for us.

Thanks guys, the 20 percent you gave yourselves really made us feel like you did your jobs well. Well you did do a good job and the tip was warranted. But we would have given it anyway. SO there.

I just wish I didn't have to stop at McDonald's on the way home.

Cheers and happy eating.

Stealth Bomber

2005-08-01T12:45:00.000-04:00

Just saw that Steath raked in a massive 13.5 million dollars last weekend. Considering the movie opened to thousands of screens this does not bode well for the future of the franchise.

This is a movie that cost millions and millions to write, produce and ship out the door. Who would greenlight such an atrocity? "Oh, monster plane goes haywire, huh? THAT'S the MOST ORIGINAL idea I've ever HEARD." Did anyone read the script? Does anyone care?

I'm beginning to belive that a large section of Hollywood is populated by hacks and delusional minds that are quite assured of their superiority. How else would half this crap get pumped out the door? Don't they know that the American public doesn't take well to being shat on?

Thankfully this summer has also been blessed with a number of good movies. Batman, War of the Worlds, and a whole host of independent releases. All of these movies have the undeniable fragrance of goodness. These are movies that are worth your time.

Another thought. Could the rise of independent film in America have something to do with the junk that seems to pour out of Hollywood year after year? Don't they notice that there is a realignment happening before their eyes. People are beginning to ignore the "Blockbusters."

This is evidenced by drops in both DVD and Box Office ticket sales. It's not that people don't love stories. They still do. They just hate hearing the same ones year after year after year. When is hollywood going to wake up and start thinking about some fresh blockbusters?

How to Find the Perfect Roomate

2005-07-29T15:25:00.000-04:00

Ever find yourself in the position of having to find a new roomate, year after year. The interviews, the uncertainty, the terror of wondering if the next one will actually be crazy. It can be troublesome at best, crazy making at worst.

How should I know? Because I go through this process every year. Like clockwork I find myself looking at the classefieds, perusing Craigslist, and peeking down every dark alley in the search for the perfect roomate. I'm an old saw at this kind of thing.

In that time I've come up with a few simple rules for being a discerning roomate finder. I hope you find them useful.

Tip the first: If you think you can live with it, you can't. Picture your roomate right now. Is there something about him or her that just ticks you the hell off? Now think back a few months, do you remember noticing that very same thing and saying to yourself "I can live with that." Drives you crazy now doesn't it? This is what I affectionatly call "playing down the shit that pisses you off."

When you first meet a person, pick out the thing about them that annoys you the most. Then multiply that by 365, because you'll be dealing with that shit everyday. If you can handle it, congrats, you're one step closer.

Tip the second: If you think you can live without it, you can't. I know this sounds contradictory to the first rule but it's totally different trust me. Think about all the things if your life that your apartment has. Cable, seperate bathroom, adequate space, quiet, not having to drive everywhere, access to the subway, etc. These are called amenities. They're named after the Frenchman, George Amenitie, who coined the term when he invented indoor plumbing in the 1680's.

The thing about amenities is that once you get used to them, their pretty hard to give up. Like indoor plumbing. Never tell yourself what you can live with out. Never settle for less than you already have.

Tip the third: If you require convincing, you're not going to be happy. Sonny convinced Cher that he could be the perfect husband and look where that got her. Donnie told Marie that everything was going to be cool afterwards, and it wasn't.

The point is that people lie, people lie alot, and when you're looking at a place that doesn't quite fit your needs people will lie out of their teeth to get you to buy. "Sure that king bed will fit in the den", "We share the bathroom between the five of us, but we're never in there." and my personal favorite "Who needs closets". It's pretty easy to tell if someone is trying to be convincing, just look for the smile.

Tip the Fourth: Never rent from a friend. It never seems to work out and someone always ends up with there feelings hurt. It's just like sleeping with them. You should take the same care here not to do it.

And remember, be on your guard about everything. If you look like a block of wood, someone's going to try and nail you. Oh, and happy renting.

My Impression of Stealth

2005-07-27T12:51:00.000-04:00

Stealth, the latest vehicle vehicle from Director Rob Cohen (Biker Boyz, The Fast and the Furious) comes out on Friday. The hype has already started to build. It's got your usual hot actor bouquet. You have the expecially hot Jessica Biel and the expecially hot guy from Sweet Home Alabama (I don't remember names). You even have the guy that played in that movie Ray. What's he doing in this movie?

What you don't have is a plausible storyline of any kind. You have "Monster Plane." A terrible mash up of 2001's HAL and Frankenstein. It's absurd. Are we to believe that a few years in the future the Air Force has upgraded it's entire fleet but the Navy has done squat with theirs. These hyper-futuristic planes can be seen in the movie taking off from carriers created during the Regan Administration. What's up with that?

I want to be sure that people I know don't start talking about this movie like it's the greatest thing since Top Gun. I don't want to hear any of you saying "Hey Rob, want to go see that movie Stealth?" Just don't do it. No. Don't be a bad friend.

Why's it called Stealth anyway? I'm sure these new planes have stealth capability but we have that now. How is it central to the story? How is it new and exiting. Seems played up purely to be sensational.

We really shouldn't have expected anything more from Rob Cohen. He does a mean action scene but little else. You can't tell me that Fast and the Furious had character development. You can't tell me that Biker Boyz had a plot. You can't tell me that Stealth is going to be better than Top Gun. And now I'll tell you why...

Because Top Gun wasn't about the planes. It was about Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis getting it on. It was about Anthony Edwards perishing in a training accident. It was about Tom overcoming the loss of his boyfriend (I mean co-pilot) and being the Top Gun. It was about people. Stealth is about machines. Until we perfect AI, build an race of androids, or turn ourselves into robots then movies like this are going to flop. And I mean hard.

5 Year Plan

2005-07-26T12:37:00.000-04:00

Those of you who know me (and some of you who don't) know that I have alot of interests. Damn near anything can hold my attention. In the past that list has included:

Computers,
Science (in general)
Physics
Theater
Acting
Photography

Lately that list has been modified to include writing, cinematography, and politics, just to name a few. I have lots of hobbies. it's great.

But, while I have many interests, I've had few long term goals. Nothing beyond getting past the current week and some obscure notion that I had to "create something" That's because I really wansn't sure about what I wanted to do.

I did know I wanted to go to graduate school of some kind. For a while I'd been torn between extending my degree in Computer Science, getting a business degree or going to film school. They all have their draws and drawbacks. I won't go into them here.

Over the last few years I've been making short movies in my spare time. I think I'm up to five or six in the past two years, with several in the pipeline. With each one I become a more competent storyteller. With each one I become more obsessed about the medium. With each one I become less entranced with the other degrees I've considered persuing.

So it's settled...I'm going to get a film degree.

Where? My dream is USC or something similar. We'll have to see what my portfilio looks like in a few years. Portfolio? Yeah, I'm going to have to start working on that. Work? Yeah, some people won't be seeing alot of me anymore :-).

I the next three years I would like to make three movies. Alternating between writer, producer, and director in each film. I have tons of ideas. Now I just need to find the time. When complete, I can pick the best ones and submit them to the film schools with samples and what not. What's top on my list for filming.

1. First Date - a short about a man who encounters a vampire on his first date. With super secret suprise ending.
2. Super Death Toy Robot Spectacular - a 3D animated short starring two robots in a fight to the death over the last 9 volt battery. Working Title.
3. Something abstract - I'm just throwing this in here. What better way to prove to people you know art than by producing something that no one can comprehend? Examples of this include "Life Out of Balance", "Chronos" and "Ernest: Scared Stupid"

Now I don't know if I'm going to be able to do all of these. The second one is the most tentative. Tentative on me learning how to model and animate in 3-D. The others I can do now.

Now of course there are other things I have to do. I have to narrow down to the 5 schools I want to get in to. I have to take the GRE (yay). I have to apply for scholarships and what not. But since I have three or four years before I apply, I can afford to put that off a little longer and concentrate on the butta. And that is making movies.

That's my plan.

Not so merry go round

2005-07-25T10:49:00.000-04:00

Ever just wish that Sunday would never end? My friends and I all reached this revelation last night during dinner. It started off pretty inocuously. One of them said "I don't want to go into work tomorrow." Then another said the same thing. Then another. And another. Then I said it.

There was not a single dissenter, not one person who said: "Not me, I love my job, I can't wait to get into work tomorrow. In fact, I love it so much I think I'm going to go to bed right now. Later jerks." It just wasn't said.

So, my question is to you, faithful reader: Do we all hate our jobs? Is there one of us out there who loves his or her work. Loves it so much that the thought of taking a personal day never enters their head. Even porn stars take personal days. Although what they do to relax is beyond me.

Maybe we don't all hate our jobs, maybe it's just the meaning of work. It's hard, tiring and at times can drain the very life energy out of you. During certain seasons it can be hard to focus (i.e. the summer). I mean who wouldn't rather be at the beach right now. (If you don't live in DC it's pretty good beach weather outside right now).

So what do you think? Do you hate your job or do you just find it tiring at times. I think I'm in the latter category. I wouldn't call what I do my "dream" job. But it's a sight better than what I could be doing and it pays the bills.

Who reads this thing?

2005-07-22T16:48:00.000-04:00

For the past half a year I've maintained this Blog rather diligently. Sure it only makes sense some of the time but I maintain it none the less. That entire time I just figured that no one read it and that it didn't really matter what I said. That all changed today.

If you check the comments for my post on Dashboard Widgets you'll find a rather lengthy post by the Customer Service Rep from WeatherBug. Let me reiterate. I got read by the Customer Service Rep from WeatherBug. What did he say. You are welcome to read the comment but let me paraphrase. He didn't like that I referred to the WeatherBug as spyware.

Why did I do it? You ask. Maybe the word "bug" in the title made me think it was bugging my system. Maybe one of my friends told me it was. Maybe I just felt like blaming something for my computer crashing and weather bug was a convenient patsy. Or maybe it was just plain deep rooted mistrust on my part.

In any event I was wrong. It's not spyware. It won't steal passwords, credit card numbers, or pr0n. It's not from Claria, it doesn't install the Gator so you don't have to worry about that. The technical definition of it is ad-ware. A free application that shows ads in order to generate revenue. Totally not shady even if a little annoying.

My question is, How did they find my site? Did they just Google it? Even if the GoogleBot had been here (Hello GoogleBot if you're reading this) you'd still have to search to see my website . Am I to believe that there is someone at WeatherBug (or the parent company that makes WeatherBug) who does searches for "WeatherBug" and "Spyware" in conjunction. And even if there is someone at WeatherBug with this enviable task that still doesn't answer how they found it. You have to go pretty far down the rabbit hole to get to my backwater site. This seems a might over-protective if it's true. (Note: I just tried googling "Spyware" "WeatherBug" "Shadow" and "Voice" all together and got nothing close to my site. So welcome wayward traveller and enjoy your stay. Glad to know that's not how they found my site.)

The only other explanation is that someone came here by choice. I refuse to believe that. No one comes here by choice. Sure the occasional weary web-surfer falls in for a second (they never stay long). But the only people that read this regularly are those who I threaten, bribe, or otherwise torture into reading it :-D.

Well if you did fall in, Jay from WeatherBug, then welcome. I hope all the fluff lying around broke your fall. I'll be out back watching the TeeVee.

It's been a while

2005-07-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

Oh my god, why can't I have any time to myself for once. It feels like this summer has been one long blur, with one week going into the next. Two Pride festivals, three vacations, and a number of short films. Not to mention my regular 9 to 5. I thought I would take a few minutes and cover what's been going on.

Last weekend I was the shooter for a video that some friends wanted to do. No it's not a porn and shooter means cameraman in this vernacular and not something else. So get your mind out of the gutter. I mean seriously.

George and Michael asked me to do their entry for the amazing race. More accurately it was my friend Joe that asked me for them. Joe came up with the idea and I did all the hands on stuff. What he came up with was a sort of Willy Wonka meets the Amazing Race. And unlike the updated movie, we kept ALL of the singing and dancing.

So I did that on Saturday and Sunday. Monday through today I've been working on getting the video edited. We had 50 minutes of video for three days of shooting and I had the enviable task of getting that down under three minutes. Needless to say some of the stuff didn't make it in. But we still have people covered in chocolate and a blueberry man.

We did the voiceovers last night. I have to fix the audio and do a movie title tonight. Shouldn't take too long. But i'm not going to be able to go out. Sigh.

This weekend is totally going to be reserved for the fun stuff. I'm trying to get friends together for Irish Car Bombs on Friday. And i'll proabably be drinking whenever I'm not at work.

Cheers.

Sound of Thunder

2005-07-15T16:31:00.000-04:00

As you look outside your window to gaze at the storm taking place outside remember why it's raining to terribly. It's the flood of course. God is pissed. He's trying to wash all the sins of the city away. Possibly the city with it. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

All I know is that I saw a man on Columbia Pike building a large wooden boat the other day. He was muttering something about "animals" and "two of each" and "fiddle faddle". After all, if you're preparing for the flood you have to remember everything. You can't just go back if you forget say, your wife.

Why is god so pissed? I'll leave you to judge. You can start with the paper if you're looking for ready examples.

The flood is coming I tell you. And don't burden me with your talk af weather systems, rainfall amounts, and digital doppler radar. Faith is all I need. Science is for the non-believer.

Ah I'm just kidding, there is no god. Just a race of god-like hyper-demensional energy beings who came to earth 5000 years ago bearing the gift of peace. Unfortunately, they can only talk to us through backwards playing Doobie Brothers records. And when's the last time you knew someone with one of those? We're doomed, doomed I tell you, DOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEDDDDDDDD.

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD....

DDDDDDDDDDDDD....

DDDDDMMMMMMMEEEEEEEDDDDDD.

(Satirical Post #1)
God, if you're listening, I hope you have a REALLY good sense of humor.

On Tolerance

2005-07-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

Think of all the people in the world who were truly tolerant. Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Jesus. Now consider this, they all lived very hard lives up until the times of their eventual deaths. This is not an essay on religion, more a commentary on the terrible things that humans can do to one another.

Humans are, by nature, intolerant beings. It's a defense mechanism and a basic human emotion. Humans we're successful because we were so paranoid about anything that was different than we were. We either ran from it, or killed it. Tolerance wasn't even in the vocabulary.

Then something started to happen several thousand years ago. The world started to get smaller. Civilization was created, people learned that living together offered many benefits over living spread out. They could pool their resources and keep eachother safe. Generally people in these areas tended to look alike and speak the same language, so their lack of tolerance wasn't an issue.

These early civilizations also began to specialize beyond farmer and worker types. Armies were created. Explorers began to travel to distant lands. Kings rose to power. Kings are weird. They don't really DO anything, but people follow them anyway. Why? Because bad things happen if you don't.

Anyway, that's not my point. Point is that these Kings were interested in finding and exploiting new lands. So they went out. Journeying tens, hundreds, or even millions of miles. They recorded their findings to ensure an acurate report. Those explorers who did manage to return (exploring is dangerous work) told of bizarre lands where people look, spoke, and lived differently than they did at home.

So the intolerance continued. New lands played nice for a little while but eventually went to war with eachother. The greeks warred with the egyptians, the mesopotamians warred with the romans, the romans warred with everybody, and no one seemed to get along.

Then about two-thousand years ago, someone said it would be totally awsome to be nice to eachother. And the word "tolerance" was added to the dictonary. This person went around trying to teach people not to hate. For thirty years he did this. Then the Romans got wind and added a few more words to the dictionary. I won't go into them here as they are a bit greusome.

Why? Becuase the Romans were rather intolerant of what this person was saying. Anywhere someone tries to convince the world to cooperate there are several thousand who've convinced themselves that they would rather not.

The funny thing is that the world is becoming more tolerant, not less. As the world becomes smaller, we find ourselves forced to interact with people who we would consider different. We find ourselves forced to accept people for their differences as well as their commonalities.

I beleive that there is merit in the yin and yang properties of the human experience. Great good and great evil that both balance and define eachother.

My Review of Fantastic Four

2005-07-10T12:19:00.000-04:00

I think that this movie will go down in history as the best movie no one admitted liking. The critics hated it giving it low low reviews and thinking up such memorable headlines as "Not so Fantastic Four." How many seconds did they spend coming up with that.

I think that it has something to do with the fact that the Fanatastic Four seem a little unhip in this day and age. An age where it's more fashionable to go it alone than to have teammates and the ability to stretch to enourmous lengths is better suiting the porn industry rather than the superhero industry.

I'm not going to go as far as to say that F4 was a great movie. The effects were a mish mash. Invisible Woman and the Thing were beleivable. Mr Fantastic looked kind fake in some of the close ups. The Human Torch's face was terrible in CG. Hollywood seems to have a problem with that "people on fire" thing. Rightfully so, it's a completely unreal concept. How do you make it beleivable? Props to the effects guys anyway for at least trying and succeeding for the most part.

The story was passable but heartfelt. The team has to learn to work together in order to defeat doctor doom.

The acting wasn't as bad as I was led to beleive. I didn't for one second believe that Alba was a scientist, but I did believe that she cared for Mr. Fantastic. Chris Evans was there to give girlfriends everywhere a reason to see the film while still connecting with the guys on an X-Games level. I think it worked, Evans, is very convincing as the cocky SOB type charachter with redeeming qualities.

Above all the movie had heart. It was a fun little walk through another world that had a happy ending for all parties. It was the ray of sunshine to Batman Begins' never-ending rainstorm. It was a superficial popcorn flick that everyone walked away a little happier from. It's the same thing with Blade Trinity.

For real examples of bad superhero movies include, but are not limited to. Catwoman, MeteorMan, Jingle All the Way, BOTH Punishers, Elektra, DareDevil (mmm S+M Affleck = vomit enducing), Captain America, Batman and Robin (mmm, bat nipples), Batman (1960's version). Fantastic Four doesn't fit into this category.

Admit it critics, you enjoyed yourself during this film until you made yourself stop.

Seven Month Blogaversary

2005-07-08T00:41:00.000-04:00

I've been blogging, with little interruption for, exactly seven months. I've never stuck with anything, or anyone, this long. A pat on the back to me. The little writer that could*.

*The little writer that could is over six feet in real life and weighs more than 200 pounds. So he'd be "the little writer" if you were a basketball or football player or a bodybuilder, or a bear of some fashion.

Widget Crazy

2005-07-08T00:21:00.000-04:00

If you own a mac, and who doesn't by now, then you obviously know about Tiger. One of the sleeper hits of the new OS has to be the Dashboard. The Dashboard is a separate space on your desktop that holds in it wonderful little applications called widgets.

In fact I'm blogging though one of these widgets right now. Isn't that cool.

What can a widget do you ask? Well by definition a widget is designed to do relatively simple tasks that would be overkill in a seperate application. There are widgets for checking stocks, getting song lyrics, accessing maps, keeping track of tricks (I mean boyfriends/girlfriends) and much much more. In the few short months since Tiger has been released there have been over 700 widgets released for the Dashboard. Many of these are copycats (how many lyric widgets does a boy need?) but there are quite a few gems too. Let me cover a few.

1. Google Maps

This is by far my favorite new widget. Take the spy-satellite like Google Maps and then wrap it in a cute blue widget. All of the controls are there. I have it zoomed in on my apartment. Or what would be my apartment. The pic is a littlle old and my apartment is just a hole in the ground. But it's ultra-cool seeing my busted ass neighborhood in 1 meter resolution.

2. Asteroids

This aint the crappy Atari 2600 port that we all grew up with. This is a full-fledged arcade emulation of the classic. Complete with vector graphics and alien space craft. Having never played the arcade version, I have to say this conversion is the closest that I'll ever come to it. Controls well and is still as hard as I remember.

3. DashBlog

Allows me to post without dragging open a browser, finding the site, entering my password, etc. Great for those quick posts you would otherwise not even bother with, like telling people you just went to the bathroom (hey maybe this isn't such a good thing). Uses xml-rpc to do the post. I didn't think anyone actually used it for anything. I used it one time at work and here it is popping up in my widgets. Horray for the power of open source. The only downers are that the window isn't that big and there's now spell check. Appologies now :-)

4. WeatherBug

Everyone's favorite cooky spyware application is now a widget. I don't mind people getting my personal information as long as I can see that crazy little ladybug. I don't mind the garish graphics while people steal my passwords, and credit card numbers, and dirty black secrets. Wait, yes I do.

Okay, WeatherBug isn't available on the Mac (thankfully) but there is a widget provided that does the same thing and looks much nicer doing it. I'm talking about Apple's Weather Widget. It's got these great translucent graphics that tells me what it's doing now and going to do over the next five days. Right now the widget's telling me it's raining. If I dare look outside, sure enough, it IS raining. IT WORKS. The widget also tells me I wish it was Saturday. As if I needed a reason to wish that. Thank's Apple Weather Widget (AWW for short, so cute).

5. Stock Ticker

Okay, I'll admit I don't use this, but just look at that crazy little line going up and down. It's like watching the course of the Exxon Valdez. Watchout for that coastline. They really creep up on ya.

6. Sing that iTune

The best looking lyrics widget I could find. Even does the artwork if I have it. My karaoke tendencies can not be satiated. I can't sing and I'm terrible figuring out lyrics. Just ask my family. With this thing I may still be out of key but at least i'll be out of key in the right words.

7. Clock

Who doesn't need a clock? Who doesn't need a digital clock? Who doesn't need an alarm? Well then this thing is perfect for you. The second hand even waggles a little bit with each tick, just like a real one. Why not just get a real clock? Shut up, that's why. You try bringing your real clock to the desktop with the press of the F12 key.

8. Dictionary

Ever need to look up "disenfranchised" at 4am in less than 3 seconds? Well now you can. You can even do this at times other than four in the morning, provided you still have the requisite three seconds with which to complete the task.

You can be even more anal retentive than you were before and spend less time doing it. Just think of all the friends you'll lose proving you're never wrong. Well at least never when it comes to spelling and grammar. There's no widget for arguing other issues...yet.

By now you must realize how much better your life would be with Widgets. If you own a Mac you have an easy way into this brave, and better, new world. Buy Tiger, simple as can be. There are a few more steps, but nothing trained chimp with an engineering degree couldn't handle.

If you own a PeeCee you're so out of luck. It's not funny how out of luck you are. I mean imagine you're the unlucky center of unlucky town and you're about halfway there. Yeah, I'm gloating. What do you mean you know about Konfabulator? Why are you TRYING to ruin my buzz?

Alright I appologize. I'm obviously a little widget crazy. If you have a PC you can download the Shareware version of Konfabulator. A program that does essentially the exact same thing as Dashboard. It's widgets can even exist with your regular windows. No need for the F12 key. It's also been out forever and has a bit of a cult following.

But Apple got some serious things right with Dashboard. it's part of the OS which means it's got a built in user base. It's insanely easy to program for. Even the previously mentioned chimp could write a widget (what can't he do?). That means lots and lots of widgets to play with. Granted 99 percent of them will be crap. that still means that there are at least seven widgets out there worth my time. Possibly even eight.

I'd better get downloading.

The Other Obesity Epidemic

2005-07-07T11:55:00.000-04:00

As America's waistline expands so too does the American desire to line one's expanding pocket. With so much more room what's one to fill it with? The answer comes to us in a word: lawsuits.

Yes, lawsuits. An american tradition ever since George Washington was sued by Thomas Jefferson for calling him "fancy."* A serious accusation in the newly founded, and still very rugged, United States.

The great american lawsuit: Anytime, anyplace, for any reason imaginable.

The reason imaginable that I'm talking about is that someone is sueing McDonald's for making them fat. They want damages for being force fed double-quarter pounders and gallons of sugar-pop. They want recompense for being asked to "super-size" it...at gunpoint. They want blood gosh darnit.

I have a problem with this for many reasons but first I want to let you know what I think of McDonalds. It's a profit driven mega-corporation with little regard for the health and well-being of the public. One only needs to look at the fried chicken salad with a pint of ranch dressing to see this. It's billed as a healthy selection for heaven's sake. Actually it's deceptively marketed as a "fresh alternative" or some crap like that. The bottom line is that it makes people think it's healthy when it's not.

The problem I have with the lawsuit is that the American public should know that McDonald's is a profit driven mega-corporation with little regard for the health and well-being of the public. We should know that when we walk into a McDonald's for a meal we are all going to walk out a little bit fatter. We should also know that this food is not meant to replace the regular meals we eat. We should know that it's a once in a while thing to go to McDonald's, even though Ronald would love to see us in there each and every day.

You can't go suing someone for your own lack of self-control. That would be like suing a casino because you bet your house at the blackjack tables. We all know the stakes when we go in. We all weigh the consequences to their potential rewards. Sometimes we make mistakes. But we should be prepared to live with our mistakes, and not pin the blame on some other party.

I do have some sympathy for the person doing the suing. In some neighborhoods there are no grocery stores for miles. The closest place is probably the McDonalds. Given equal access to the right foods as well as the wrong would allow people to make better choices, without having side with that which is in walking distance. But that doesn't mean that you have the right to sue.

I also think that this is different from the Tobacco lawsuits. Nicotine is a powerfully addictive substance. The tobacco industry tried to push cigarettes as inoccuous for decades, lying to the public and raking in all the profit. The government profited from the taxation of those same cigarettes so they had no incentive to do any of their own research. Once people realized how bad those things were it was difficult to stop, even for those who wanted to. Which leads to the lawsuit, justified in my opinion, by the suffering of the people who were misled.

McDonald's is not the same. We know this food is bad for us. We've known it for some time. No one is being misled. It's loaded with fat, oil, and tons of calories. Bodybuilders and other fitness experts don't go near the stuff. How hard would it be to follow their example? What were we expecting?

Do I think that McDonald's is in the right pushing their food the way they do? Of course not. But as a recovering fast-food addict I can say that I have little sympathy for someone raising a lawsuit because they're fat. This lawsuit has more to do about this woman's lack of self-control and less to do about the practices of McDonald's and other's in the fast food industry.

*(Not actually true. No one was allowed to sue Washington for any reason. Didn't you read the Constitution's fine print? ;-))

What a Bush

2005-07-06T11:26:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to start a new phrase. Everytime one of your friends says one thing and does another call him a Bush. Our brain-dead leader is constantly doing this, and no one EVER calls him on it. Well, no one in the media or in Congress anyway.

For example:

1. Bush says that he won't support the Kyoto Protocol because it would destroy the economy in America. Yet he denies that he's putting economic prosperity of the US over the prosperity of the planet. It's the same excuse that manufacturers were using in the 20's and 30's. Safety standards? bah. That would kill the manufacturing economy. Now move aside we have poor people to exploit. He should clarify is speech in that supporting Kyoto would hurt is interests in the Coal and Oil industries, so he's not going to do that. It's so nice to know that Bush sticks to his buds.

2. He made up a bunch of lies to get us into Iraq and then admitted that they were pretty much baseless.

3. He's cutting taxes on everyone, especially the rich, and increasing government spending.

4. He's got an all volunteer army with an enrollment problem yet he's encouraging people to "go on with their lives as they normally would" and insisting that everything is fine.

5. He's telling people that we have the best healthcare in the world while he's cutting medicare.

6. He tells people that he's supporting the troops while not giving them weapons or armor and cutting funding to the VA.

7. He says "Leave No Child Behind" while cutting programs that work like Head Start.

8. He says we should go to the Moon and Mars while he cuts funding to NASA.

When is anyone going to call bullshit on him and the administration he rode in on. It's no wonder he's loosing the people's support. They are beginning to see that the only people he cares about are the people who supported his campaign to the tune of more than 5 million.

The only people he cares about supporting are the only people who don't need his support. People who's only goal in life is to line their pockets with as much coin as possible so their offspring don't have to work or think for themselves.

Paris Hilton is a notable example. A total waste of space that is only popular because she's rich and who's only rich because her daddy is. Ironically I don't think Paris is a Republican. Clue to Paris, do something constructive with your life and money, help those in need. No, the Simple Life doesn't count.

Why doesn't anyone call Bush on his BS. It's simple. They do it all the time. But they never get heard. Or they are drowned out by a cacaphony of stupidity and/or misinformation from the Mainstream Media. A bunch of tarts who were hired for their looks as opposed to their journalistic skills. I'd be happy if someone in the MSM would prove me wrong. All they'd have to do was their jobs. But I understand how hard it can be to actually dig for a story, ask the hard questions, etc. America would much rather know what the Prez had for dinner than know why he lied to us.

Flight of Dragons

2005-06-30T11:43:00.000-04:00

So I was on the elevator going up to my office. I was humming, as I normally do. Suddenly one of the riffs I was humming reminded me of a movie I haven't seen in years. A movie that will remain indelible in the very recesses of my mind until the day I die.

That movie is Flight of Dragons. What's that you say? Cheesy Dungeons and Dragons ripoff from the late 1970's. Maybe, but I like Cheese. Just ask my friends what my favorite movies are.

The movie starts, as I recall, with a meeting of the four great wizards of the land. Each represented the elements of earth, wind, water, and fire. They meet to discuss the failing of their magic. The world is losing it's faith in magic, and in doing so is robbing the wiards of their power. The earth wizard recommends that they build a sheild using their last remaining magic in order to maintain what is left of their power.

The fire wizard has his own plans for how to save magic. He wants to go to war. So he leaves the meeting and the other wizards on their collective asses.

The other wiards can't do anything to prevent the war and need the red wizards power to form the barrier. So the earth wizard consults with a magic tree (I told you it was weird). The tree tells him that he must pull a man from the future in order to save the land.

It gets fuzzy from there. But I do remember a fair maiden, a fearless knight and of course a flight of dragons. I also remember that the man from the future has to recite all of this sciency stuff in order to defeat the red wizard. I always thought that was cool. I don't remember what happens to the wizard at the end but I do remember this girl from the story who falls in love with the man from the future and they live happily ever after.

Don't you just love happy endings. If you can fill in any of the gaps I have from Flight of Dragons, please do so. Thanks.

The Internets?

2005-06-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

Could someone please tell me when geekdom started using the term "the Internets?" I've been around for some time and have noticed the transition from the singular "Internet" to the plural "Internets." At first I thought it was a mistake

My question to you, gentile readers, is: Isn't that a bit of a contradiction?

The Internet was was designed to be a heterogenous, self healing, system of systems. Every system is supposedly interconnected thereby creating a singular body, the Internet. Pluralizing indicates that there are divisions where there are none. Besides "Internet" just sounds cooler.

If someone wouldn't mind chiming in and explaining it to me I would appreciate it. Don't be a hater and flame :-).

Where the eff does the time go

2005-06-26T20:52:00.000-04:00

So I've been on vacation for the past four days. It's been a good time away from responsibility. I've been drinking, stinking, and generally making a mess of the place. Thank god the place isn't mine :-).

Thursday night started out with a bang. I probably shouldn't have gone out the night before my flight but did anyway. Friday morning was a mad dash to the airport after throwing clothes into a suitcase and calling a cab. More on the trip in another post.

Atlanta has been great. Corey and I went to this great club last night. The people were hot, the drinks were cheap and music was fantastic. Maybe got a little too drunk last night. The weirdest thing is that I'm not suffering any hangovers.

As far as a comparison between this place and DC. Things seem a little more spread out. At the same time the city is more vertical, with skyscrapers that DC just doesn't have. The people here have a little bit more of an accent but it's not all that noticable.

I just don't see that many differences between DC and ATL. The people look pretty much the same. Nither city is "hotter" than the other. There is a much larger subculture of club kids here in Hotlanta. Such a casual attitude to things that I take very seriously. Maybe I'm too straightlaced. Maybe I'm too boring. Whatever. I manage to keep myself entertained.

I'm heading back to DC tomorrow and I'm sure I'll have more to write down when I get back. It's drinking time.

...and so it begins

2005-06-22T13:16:00.000-04:00

My vacation that is. I'm off work for the next 6 days. I don't have to think about anything technical for the next week. Is that going to stop me? Probably not.

I've got a ton of wonderful stuff lined up for tomorrow. Like laundry. I can't go to Atlanta looking like a slob now can I? No. That would be so unlike me.

Uh that last statment was a lot funnier and a lot less bitchy if you actually know me. Hehe. Assume sarcasm.

Things that I'm going to attempt doing over the next 6 days:

1. Finish the Teddy Bear model that I was working on.
2. Finish the Lamp model that I was working on. Shade and light it.
3. Start drawing storyboards for my short idea.
4. Think of some ideas for shorts/music videos/whatever
5. Have fun in Atlanta.
6. Try to get in as much trouble as I possibly can. It is another city after all.
7. Vege out.
8. Read more.
9. Think less.
10. Spend time with my friends.

I know I'm not going to be able to do all of this and that some of the things I want to do will conflict with the others. I'll write about it if anything interesting happens over the next six. It has better :-).

Spelling Bee

2005-06-20T13:30:00.000-04:00

I usually don't spell check my posts in the interests of time. I didn't realize what a horribly bad speller I am. Just looking over the last few posts is laughable.

I would just like to go on record that I am of moderate intelligence. I just can't spell worth a damn.

And no I didn't spell check this post either :-).

Darkness

2005-06-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

The darkness here was very strange
and danger lurked at every stage
Every turn betrayed a sense
of terminally perilous recompense

-Me

4parents.gov: Spreading Fear Uncertanty and Doubt since 2004

2005-06-16T11:55:00.000-04:00

I just took a gander over at 4parents.gov. Now I know I'm not a parent and the website isn't for me. But I doubt there will be a 4mos.gov website anytime soon. Anyway, I can't get over the way that site was written. It seems that the best way to keep your kids safe is to never let them out of the house.

For example, when discussing forms of body art, the website includes cutting in the list. Why? I don't know. Cutting is a nervous disorder, like OCD. Someone compulsively cuts on themselves to releive stress. But in this website it's right below tatoos.

It also says that diseases and infection can occur as a result of getting a tattoo. While this is true, it's right up there with anything that breaks the surface of the skin. Be it a fall off your bike, cutting yourself with a razor, or open heart surgery. It doesn't mention how minimal the risk of infection is with today's near surgical cleaning practices. Today's tattoo parlors look more like operating rooms. If you end up in a place that dosen't look like this you didn't do your research.

Then it talks about sex. It lists the failure rate of various types of contraception in preventing pregnancy. Did you know that a condom is only effective 70 percent of the time? Yes it's true, true if you include all the times you forgot to wear one. Yes 4parents.gov includes people who didn't use contraception in their failure rate statistics. Efficacy goes up to 97 percent if you eleminate those people, and that's really what you want to test anyway right. The condom and not someone's reluctance to put it on.

Oh and who knew that a necklace, bracelet or pocket stone could prevent pregnancy. I'm sorry, but a gentle reminder won't prevent most hormone crazed teenagers from engaging in the deed.

Then it goes on to say that all forms of intimate touching can transmit disease. I won't go into it here, but it's safe to say that all bases are pretty much unsafe. By there qualifying standards the folloing practices are unsafe: open-mouth kissing, sweating on a stranger and giving someone "the look". Because after all if you are outside while giving "the look" there is the small possibility that you will be run over by a bus.

There is an inherent risk in every action you take every day. There is also an inherent risk in not taking that same action. You have to weigh the potential risk with the possible reward and play safe. 4parents.gov wants you to believe that the world is a very unsafe place that you shouldn't experience. I would rather you make up your own mind and give you the best advice possible. 4parents.gov would rather treat you like an idiot than give you all the information.

I recommend you look elsewhere when asking for information. It's quite obvious that this administration is only trying to frighten you.

Happy Hump Day

2005-06-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

Here's a summary of what I've been doing this past week. In no particular order.

1. Attended DC Pride Celebration

Here's a chance for all the finest and freakiest to come together under one banner and declare themselve united in their differences. Or something close to that. It was fun.

Saturday I spent with my friends from out of town: Corey, Jason, and Justin. We spent all day drinking and generally carrying on. Looking at people, then judging them, then laughing. Great fun.

Jason even came up with a zany alternate universe staring a young girl named Lori (Corey) who drives around with her girlfriend Muffin (Justin) in their Marshmellow Peep (Corey drives a Jeep). It's funnier if you know who these people are but I think the point comes across.

Drinking all day has his advantages and disadvantages. Advantage: not being able to tell how dehydrated you are until it's too late. Disadvantage: not being able to stay out all night. Yes folks, after the parade was over I went out for a couple of drinks and then went home. The bars were overpriced and over crowded anyway.

As I was walking to my car from the bar I could tell that I had a follower. They walked very closely behind me and eventually chatted me up. I talked casually for a few seconds then got in my car and drove off. I think the point was clear. I'm sure this person found someone else to celebrate with.

Sunday was a bit of a blast too. But I'll have to talk about that later.

2. Got back into the groove this week.

How do you work out everyday for two weeks and then GAIN three pounds. Must be all the something that I ate, cause I'm not sure what I did. My diet didn't chance appreciably and my cardio went through the roof. I'm going to attribute it to water retention, empty calories from drinking, and added muscle mass. Good and bad but I'll take what I can get.

3. Played writer.

Finished the Short I'd been working on, "Dark Jedi." Yeah, I don't want to hear what you think about me writing a fan film script. I thought it would be fun and it was. Plus it allowed me to write the most stilted dialogue imaginable and still come off credible, because it's "Star Wars."

I also worked on "Lights Out" a little bit longer. I think I'm getting close on the beginning and end narration. The dialogue is also tightening up nicely.

I should also be able to start putting together some storyboards using a 3D program called Blender. I'm getting to the point where I can make shapes that actually look like stuff, which is great. I made a desk lamp last night. Since the storyboards can look kinda crappy it'll suffice as I become more proficient in the program.

That's about it.

Take a look at Powerline if you like throwing up.

2005-06-09T10:59:00.000-04:00

I just had one of the most disturbing looks at what the sister websites look like. Well a more appropriate term would be stepsister websites. Stepsisters like the ones that used to rail on Cinderella because she was, you know, poor.

And poor is the first word I would use to discribe this website. It's poor quality, poor taste, and poorly fact checked. Right wing, is this your flagship blog? It looks like it was put together by a 7th grade special ed class (but you probably just call it cheap labor). The writing doesn't fare much better.

When they aren't trying to put down liberals for trying to hold government accountable they try and twist every newsbite and political action in their favor. Take for instance that Nancy Pelosi stated that Gitmo should be shut down. Powerline took her to task for having the audacity to say that we should obey or own laws. But then the people at powerline were never big fans of "Due Process" I'm sure they would come back with "Terrorists don't deserve due process." Maybe, but not a single person detained at Gitmo has been charged with anything whatsoever.

Then they do their little dance because Janice Rodgers Brown has been confirmed in a party line vote. Now I see what all this hubub was about an "up or down" vote. What they really wanted was carte-blanche in sticking it to the american public. I'm glad that america will now have fewer civil liberties and protections. God Bless the poor innocent mega-corporations that can do no wrong.

Okay enough politicizing. Let's take a superficial look at the website. There are quite a few quotes from famous people praising the site. That's fine except for the fact that every one on there is from the far right. This is biased even by Fox News standards.

And what do we have hear. Clothing for conservatives. I'm sure that these t-shirts were made in the finest sweatshops in Thailand. Athough you left out the "white power" t-shirt guys.

Take the clever quip "hippies smell" worn in mid riff fashion by a beautiful woman. She's undoubtedly a member of the "Cocnerned spouses of overbearing husbands for a more unequal america" crowd.

Then we have a gentleman sporting a "right-wing" tee. Emblasoned with a fashionable (and sexy) R with a wing attached to it. The irony is that depending on your point of view it could be the right or the left wing of the "R." But you have to be able to see multiple points of view to understand that. Something that powerline is incapable of.

The words "sore winner" come to mind when I look at this website. How can people who control every branch of government and the media bitch about the state of things in the nation? "Three of the hundereds of conservative judges we picked didn't get sent to the bench, let's make a holy war about it." Give me a break. You're batting average is better than any presidency in history regarding judicial nominees. The GOP he quickly becoming the party of cry-babies and spoiled brats.

The truth is that the people at powerline hate anything and anyone that isn't steadfastly american. Or at least what thier narrow view of what american should be. The America they picture, the one from the 50's TV shows, never really existed. America is built of many races, religions, and cultures. They don't see that. But that's not going to stop them from trying to take us back to a time that never existed.

Logistical Challenges of Noah and the Ark

2005-06-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

So the story goes that Noah rounded up 2 of every land animal into his ark and lasted forty days and nights on the open seas. Let's think about this in an a priori roundtable. The roundtable being me, of course.

1. The ark required two of every land animal from everywhere on the globe. Even if you generalize into basic categories (monkey, snake, bear, etc) you still have to cope with thousands of animals. Animals, even babies, require space. The largest wooden vessel available to Noah at the time wouldn't be big enough to harbor ALL the animals, plus food, for forty days. Even the QE2 couldn't hold all the species. The only ark big enough to hold all the species is the one that already exists. We call it the Earth.

2. Even if Noah had the capability of building such a craft with todays materials and methods he wouldn't have the manpower to build it. His family could slave for their entire lives and not get finished. It would take an army to build the ark.

3. We know that all animals pass on their traits in DNA. We also know that when you try to interbreed within the same family there is a high risk of genetic and birth defects in the offspring. You need look no further than purebreds for evidence of this. After the flood, there wouldn't be enough genetic diversity in the world to sustain it. At the very best we'd all be retards. At the very worst we'd all be dead.

4. So how exactly did Noah go all about the world collecting species? How did the species from the New World come across the oceans in order to board the ark? If God did all that. If god went through all the trouble of rounding up the animals then why didn't he go that last mile and create the ark?

5. How do we account for civilizations, like oh I don't know the Chinese, that have history going back that far. Histories that make no mention of a great flood. Ruh roh Raggy. It must be that the Chinese are hethens and covering up the truth. They are so obviously against God.

This post is not to prove that God doesn't exist or that the Bible is wrong. It is merely to prove that the Ark story, like so many others in the bible, is just a fable. It is probably based on some fact (Noah did exist and was a boat builder) with a great deal of essageration.

Exaggeration is a trait that people use in all of their stories. They want them to be greater than they were. More inspiring, heroic or simply more moral. We hate to be remided that we are all human.

The problem comes when the truth is stretched to the point where it defies all logic. A secondary problem arises when we accept the stories without proof. We become so convinced that our stories are true that we will accept any evedence, no matter the tangibility, to support it. This is because our acceptance was based on blind faith and we hate being told we're wrong. Simple human pride.

Take for instance the people who think the dinosaurs lived 6000 years ago alongside humans. They accept creation and will distort any evidence to hold firm to the strictest interpretation of that story. Any deviation is heresy in their eyes. They will not accept (excuse the pun) the mountains of evidence that lies against them. Instead they pick and choose from the wildest theories to bolster their side of the argument. Science without reason it pointless.

Ohhhhh, take that IBM

2005-06-06T14:18:00.000-04:00

Looks like Apple is pulling out of the PowerPC market in favor of Intel Pentium chips. I really can't say that I blame them. Here are my reasons:

1. 3Ghz G5 by last summer. Never happened. Some people blame Steve Jobs. I blame IBM's over zealous marketing.

2. G5 in the mobile arena. Never happened. The G5 was never designed to be an energy efficient chip. As a result Apple was saddled with an aging proc in their premere notebook line. Anyone notice how mundane the last Powerbook refresh was? That was the reason.

The G4 can't power the Powerbook forever. Despite continual updates it is starting to show it's age. Where else is apple supposed to go for notebook chips? It's obvious that Freescale is never going to come out with a successor to the G4. Try as they might, they are still just as lethargic with proc updates as when they were called Motorola.

Maybe now we'll see an ultra-light mac laptop with widescreen and 6 hour battery life.

3. G5 in games. There are several technical reasons why the G5 sucks for gaming. Like, say, the fact that a cast to int from float clears the pipline (let me know if I'm wrong on this). Games do this alot. There's another reason DOOM 3 sucked on the Mac. It wasn't designed for the G5. Having Intel chips will make Mac games that much easier to port. Imagine all that low level assembly that won't have to be rewritten.

I also have a few qualms about the migration.

1. Dispite it's flaws the PowerPC was a great architecture. anyone who's ever looked at the x86 ISA knows there's alot of legacy there. A legacy that can make the chips hard to program for. Most developers won't need to worry about this. But don't be supprised if the Cocoa and Carbon frameworks seem a little wonky and unstable at first.

2. What about the iApps? It would be great if everything worked and worked better on the Intel platform. It's my hope that the abundance of low-level PC programers out there can do great things for the Mac platform. But expect that things will take a while to settle back down.

3. What about the Pro Apps? When will Final Cut be available on the Pentium 4? I doubt that a simple recompile will be all that it takes. But it might be just the excuse apple needs to rework the program from the ground up. In the near term expect incompatibilities and problems.

4. What about games? Does that mean were going to see more games on the Mac? I hope so.

For anyone out their who is looking to buy a Mac right now, go ahead. Apple will maintain the PowerPC versions of their products for some time. On top of that they should be more stable than their Intel counterparts (again, in the near term). Anyone looking to upgrade may want to consider waiting for the transition to solidify and wait out the initial (and definite) bugs that will come of the transitions.

I'm going to have my G5 for at least three or four more years, so I'll be upgrading long after the transition is final. My next notebook however may be the PowerBook HD with a Pentium M processor. That or an iBook ;-).

I'm sorry but Intel beat IBM and Freescale in the mobile arena soundly. I must concede the win.

Next up, Apple announces that the next release of OS X will, in fact, be Windows Longhorn.

I didn't vote for him

2005-06-06T11:33:00.000-04:00

Would you vote for a president who couldn't put a sentence together with two hands, a flashlight, and an army of speech writers. His handlers must shake their heads every time he tries to say something that hasn't been written down. Heck they must shake their heads every time he looks up from the page.

I refuse to believe that someone can be intellegent but so monumentally bad at public speaking. After four years of it you think he'd start to get a handle on it. But no. We still get great lines about OG/GYN's that should be able to "practice their love" and how "our medical records belong in the I.T." Does anyone know what that means. Sure I can translate what he's supposed to be saying, but why should I have to.

Check out some of his gems for yourself. Some people have a good hold of the english language. Our president is not one of them. It's really depressing to watch foreign dignitaries have better command of Engligh as a second languange than our president has.

Those of you who vote republican on principle, I can respect that. But aren't you feeling a bit duped? Having to point at W and say "that's our guy." Sure he lied in the run up to the war. Sure his opinion of Iraq is hardly what we would call "based in reality." So what if he drools on camera and can't say anything coherent. He can't even spell coherent. He never ever admits he's wrong and that's all that matters, right? right?

As Daffy Duck said once back in the 50's: "Your choith of prethidenthial candidate is thuthpect."

That's all folks.

Tell Me A Story

2005-06-01T14:08:00.000-04:00

The Magical Kitten Eater

This is the story of the Magical Kitten Eater. What is a Magical Kitten Eater? Well it's a robot that eats kittens. The cuter the better. Why? Because our Kitten Eater has taste.

The Magical Kitten Eater is a machine that looks like a man. He has nuts and bolts and switches and dials and is shaped just like a man. He behaves and talks just like a normal man, with the exception that he eats kittens.

Who would conceive of such a machine you ask? I don't know. But he's a very disturbed individual.

The Eater lived in a fertile river valley where the kittens were in great abundance. There seemed to be an endless supply. The Eater rarely bothered to think about how many there actually were or how they were replenished.

He surmised that God put the kittens there for him and gave him dominion over their lives. "Surely I am the greatest and smartest in the valley. God wrought these kittens for me." This explanation suited the Eater because it required no thought or explanation. The supply of kittens was unending, and that was that.

One day the Eater was going about it's usual daily routine, eating kittens. He noticed that his food supply was getting short. "I only found five kittens today" the Eater grumbled. The Magical Kitten eater needs far more than that to stay healthy. At least 50 kittens a day, preferably more.

For dinner the Kitten Eater got less than that. He couldn't find any kittens, not even an ugly one, for which to sustain himself. But, it was getting late. So he went to bed hungry. "I'll find some tomorrow," said the Eater.

That night the Kitten Eater had dreamed a terrible dream. Lost in a desert, starving, he could find nothing to eat. Then a giant kitten, 50 feet tall, picked up and ate the kitten eater. He awoke with a gasp.

The Kitten Eater couldn't sleep the rest of the night. So he decided to get an early start on the day. He found tabby cat within the hour and blessed his good fortune. He ate it quickly, leaving a mess down the front of his mechanical suit. His fortune would prove to be short lived.

After hours of searching he could find no more kittens. "Why has God done this to me? What could I have done to anger my once benevolent God? Surely I am being punished."

With no food in sight the Kitten Eater made his way out of the valley and into the deserts beyond.

There is a single road on the desert which leads to the sea. The Eater traveled this road for many days. On the fourth day the Kitten Eater encountered an old man. "What are you doing here?" the man asked.

The Eater explained his plight and how he was being punished by God for something he did not know.

"Is that what you think?" The man replied in a raspy tenor. "Could it be that you simply ate all the kittens? That you could have prevented their extinction through simple conservation."

"No" The eater replied. It had never occurred to him. His simple metaphysical explanation had sufficed until it was too late.

The eater then asked if there were any other kittens anywhere else? The man had not seen or heard of any that existed outside of the River Valley.

"It would seem that your time is up." The man proclaimed.
"It would seem so." replied the Eater.

"Before you go, would you tell me how to reach your River Valley? I hear tale that the food and water are sweet and in great abundance."
"Sure, it's right down the road there. Four days walk."
"Thank you."

The old man set off at his rickety pace. The robot stood there and watched the man leave.

He thought to himself "No more kittens, how could this be." The Eater noticed he was getting tired. "I'm just going to lie down for a second." His kitten reserves were beginning to wane.

He thought all the delicious meals that he would never again have. All the Calicos, the Shorthairs, the Burmese and the Blue. The Tabby cat the Siamese. All gone. What would he do now.

It was starting to get dark. The mechanical Eater looked at his mechanical watch. It was only midday. The Eater closed his eyes. The blinking lights on his mechanical suit went dark. The Magical Kitten Eater was no more.

...

The old man enters the fertile River Valley. The leafy trees are in full summer bloom. The river flows with the clearest blue water. "To think that mechanical man had to leave all of this. Simply because he ran out of food."

The man then heard a sound from a nearby rock. Sort of a quiet yawn. He walked over to investigate.

In the center of a rock outcropping, two Shorthairs were waking from their nap.

"Huh, how'd he miss those two," the man said to himself.

The man picked up the kittens and smiled as he held them in his arms. The River Valley was definitely a wonder.

The End

Weekend Update: Memorial Day Edition

2005-06-01T13:48:00.000-04:00

Had an extended weekend. Getting back to the work grind. Which is a little like stepping into a hot bath. So long as said bath is filled with hungry pihranas.

The weekend was fun. I was supposed to help a friend move but didn't end up getting into town until about 9 at night. Work held me up and traffic held me up longer. Sorry about that Steve. So instead of moving people I just sat around with my friends and drank to my hearts content.

Which wasn't that great of an idea. Because I ended up getting really drunk and showing everyone I know my home movies. Which is really embarrasing if you've ever seen my movies.

Saturday was a cookout and watching movies at my friends house. Nothing much to report there except that I suck at videogames and Harold and Kumar rock the hizzy. Yes I promise never to say "hizzy" again.

Sunday day was spent chilling with my brother, playing video games and watching The Wizard of Speed and Time. My brother and I have this bad habit of watching really cooky movies. Check it out if you get the chance. Which you won't because this movie is only available on really REALLY old VHS tapes. A DVD release is not expected. Which is unfortunate because the movie has heart.

Sunday night was supposed to be a night of debauchery followed by a day of hangover. It turned into me watching movies with more of my friends. Are you starting to see a trend here? This time it was Team America, the Unrated Version. All that means is that you get an extended puppet f***ing scene. It's worth the rent just for that. I can safely say there were things seen there that I've NEVER seen before.

Monday was another BBQ. We had a pretty good turnout. Clay invited all kinds of random people from all these different social groups. It was interesting, and fun. I got to see people I hadn't seen in a while. Which was nice. I got to talk, and I got to eat. Boy did I eat. The night ended pretty uneventfully. I went home later that night and watched some more movies.

Tuesday was an introspective day. I worked out. Then went and took care of errands. But I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say I now have now money for things like, bills.

Which brings us to Wednesday. Back at work. Things are quieter now. I hope they will stay that way for a while. I don't like the feeling of being behind on work and it's a good thing we aren't anymore. Looking forward to the next phase being more prepared for what we have to do. Understanding the software from the beginning really helps matters.

What a Big Baby You are.

2005-05-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

I've been called many things in my life. Suckup, dingbat, "lacking in moral perpetude", "functional illiterate" I've been called many things and more. But I've never been called a crybaby. Not until last night when I saw Finding Neverland for the first time.

Finding Neverland is the touching story of how the writer of Peter Pan got his ideas for the story. It takes us through his rather unconventional relationship with a widow and her four young boys. It straddles the border between innocence and creepy pedophilia. It's not because the main character, played by Johnny Depp, does anything with these boys. He doesn't. But because a grown man playing with children is well, kinda wierd.

Maybe it's because he takes interest in dancing with his dog or dressing up like a pirate. Maybe it's because he takes more interest in the kids than with their mother. Maybe it's just because our society is constrained into thinking that playing with kids is something only fathers should do. The whole thing has a creepy Neverland vibe to it. Not Peter Pan's, but Michael Jackson's. Are we that cynical and jaded that a grown man can't play with kids who are not his own without being branded? I consider myself to have a very open mind and even I find it a little wierd.

Anyway it's understood that there has to be that undercurrent to give the movie some tension. It does so very well. And the ending is a tearjerker. I don't want to give it away but I must have cried for the last 20 minutes of the film.

I lied at the beginning of this post. I actually have been called a crybaby on many occasions. Usually during the following films (not inclusive):

Lord of the Rings: RoTK
Big Fish (A son forgives his dying dad for lying about leading an incredible life and finds out he actually did lead an incredible life).
Finding Neverland
Beaches (shut up)
West Side Story (I thought I told you to shut up :-)
A League of Their Own (only for the last 30 seconds).
Star Trek II (when kirk did Spocks eulogy).
Star Trek V (because I paid money to see it).
A Little Princess (how anyone could write something that can be so heart wrenchingly sad one second and then uplifting the next is beyond me)
Steel Magnolias (You'd have to be a robot not to cry)
Magnolia (I think, I can't remember)

Microsoft: My Hobby, My Passion, My god I was dumb.

2005-05-25T10:03:00.000-04:00

Up until my Junior year in College I loved Microsoft Windows. I thought Windows 98 was the bomb and that Windows XP was a gift from god. I'd grown up on PC's from the days of DOS 6.0 (hey I'm not that old, okay). Every so often I would be introduced to the Macintosh.

"A childs plaything" and "It looks like a toy" were my usual retorts at the ripe old age of 12. Where was the command line? Where were the config.sys and autoexec.bat files? What if I need to change the number of buffers or remap some IRQ's to get the latest game to work? What do you mean "no games"? Okay so maybe there were SOME games for the Mac. Like Marathon. Who's ever heard of Marathon, Bungie, cmon. I'm off topic.

So I went through the tumultuous period in which Windows 3.1 became Windows for Workgroups (3.1) and DOS 6.0 became 6.11. It was hard to get anything to work in those days. But we were rewared for our efforts. I'm not sure exactly how we were rewarded but I'm told it's quite substantial.

Then there was Windows 95 and all our problems were solved. Mabye the slogan would have been better "Where would you like to crash today?" and not "Where do you want to go today?" Cause Windows 95 didn't like to go anywhere. The BSOD was rampant but still, it crashed less than Windows 3.11 and that was fine for us.

I would occasionally see a person walking down the street in a t-shirt that read "Windows 95 Mac 88". Writing them off, as I usually did in my youth, I would give them the finger for being a Windows hater. How could Apple, this tiny little podunk company, best Mighty Morphin Microsoft.

For many years I behaved this way. I thought that Windows was the best thing that the computer world had to offer. I didn't really like the Mac OS (too simple). I'm really not sure what I was thinking. But think that I did. I kept giving Mac users crap for being Mac users.

It continued in college, but my horizons had broadened. I learned about Unix. Good god did I learn about Unix. They took everything I loved about DOS and wrapped it in everything I hated about Windows. It was wierd, it was hard to use, but it had alot of open source software that was freely available on the net. Academia loved it. Despite being dog ugly it never crashed, or it crashed so gracefully none of your other running programs ever noticed. I saw the potential, and the power, but I didn't see it replacing my Windows machine any time soon.

Then my brother got a Mac from our father for Christmas. A dual PowerMac G4 450. Technically it was for the family. But I was moved out and my brother was the only one who used it. So it was quickly requisitioned and put into his room. Can't blame him. I would have done the same thing. He pawned it five years later (I still haven't forgiven him).

He did some pretty great things with it. We had a Sony Digital8 camcorder as well and I was amazed how easy it was to get video off of the camera and into the Mac. It was even easier to work with it once it was in the computer. It was at that time that I changed the way I looked at computers. I finally saw them as an outlet for creativity. A quality I would discover in myself later. For now it was the Windows world and Computer Science.

College was great for me. It taught me how to learn and how to focus my energy (at least to some degree). I was learning about Unix and was learning how to program. There were whispers of a new Mac Operating system. They whispered, like whispers do, down the halls of academia. They whispered in the dorms of the Comp Sci students, and in the TA lounges and in offices of those teachers sympathetic to the cause.

The whispers got louder. A full page ad here, an ACM meeting there. Somone from Apple came by to talk about this new Macintosh OS that was based off of Unix. OS X they were calling it. I made the mistake of saying "ex" and was instantly corrected.

"Based off Unix?" I thought. That was great. Finally a real operating system. What shocked me, however, was the front end. Apple had gone and taken what was dog ugly on the Solaris and made a masterpiece of User Interface Design. I fell in love instantly. Darwin, Aqua, Quartz, it was magical. No Unix variant comes close, even today. Then the presentation was over and I was sad. Sad that I didn't have a Mac.

Then as if to rub it in the Mac OS landed in my classroom. A kid with a shiny new titanium G4 running Mac OS X. I looked in wonder. I wanted to try it out but he wasn't letting anyone touch. Just look. So look I did. Look and drool.

I was a convert. The subsequent years with my PC were murder. I spent 3000 dollars over the course of three long years trying to keep my ailing computer together. The fact that the powerbook I was drooling over at the time cost as much mad maintaining that PC all the more painful.

I tried to convince myself that I would play games again one day. That PC's where where it was at. That I couldn't own a Mac because I wasn't creative enough or that they were too expensive. I didn't know about Total Cost of Ownership at the time :-).

Six months after my last upgrade, my computer was failing again. I don't know what was wrong with it. It just didn't like to get up in the morning. Or anytime for that matter. It was like having an Alchoholic friend for a computer. It doesn't understand that it's hurting you but you hurt just the same.

I was finished with it. After flirting with the Mac for years I was ready to finally ask him out. I bought a new 12 inch powerbook that was a speedy 867 Mhz at the time. It's a little dented now, but after two and a half years it runs great. I've since added a PowerMac G5 and Cinema Display to the family. The powerbook doesn't get as much use anymore but I still love to use it for writing and trips.

In short, I'm alot happier now that I've switched to the Mac. Thank you Microsoft for supporting my creativity and passion by making a platform that is such junk that it drove me into the waiting arms of Apple. Thank you.

Do you think Bill Gates would approve of this message?

So another case of "Dubious Sources"

2005-05-23T12:28:00.000-04:00

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I'm beginning to think that the Administration puts out false evidence on purpose so they can discredit the organization with sloppy reporiting and bury a story.

It happened with CBS and Bush's Air National Guard documents. An entire story was buried under an avalance of bitching about the "liberal media" from the right. Who cares if the story was true or not? One false document and the whole argument is suddently invalid.

Fast forward nine or so months later when the venerable Newsweek prints a story about the desecration of the Koran at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib as a form of torture. Turns out the source used in that story was a less than credible government official. Let's forget that we had a liar in the government. Let's forget about the other documented cases of abuse and torture at these camps. Let's forget about all of the innocents that died in the last two years. Let's forget about all of this because the "liberal media" is out to get the US Government.

It seems awfuly peculuar that, just when things start to get bad for the administration, certain false statements and documents make it out to the main stream media. They use it and are immediately discredited by the administration. Creating a gap that the administration can slither out of, and into their next scandal.

Regardless if the administration is playing tricky or not, the media has to relearn it's old ways. It actaully has to INVESTIGATE. No more google search reporting from the main stream media. You're supposed to be on the forefront. Investigate your soruces for possible corruption and credibility gaps. If the administration can take you to task that quickly after the fact, you're obviously doing something wrong.

Again, I have no proof that the administration is doing this on purpose. It could just be that their really lucky and know how to kick someone hard when they stumble. It's only a theory which seems to fit the facts. Considering how the administration plays fast and loose on their own sources for WMD's and the like, I wouldn't put anything past them. I don't see how they can be so hypocritical. But then again hypocrisy seems to be the cornerstone of this administration.

Wow, it's beautiful outside.

2005-05-21T11:14:00.000-04:00

Went out last night. Didn't stay out too late, but late enough. Didn't get into tooo much trouble. Actually didn't get into any trouble whatsoever. Or you could say that trouble just wasn't going to have any from the likes of me.

Got a BBQ tonight and a party later. Tomorrow I have to go to work. It's going to suck. If I don't then people I like get alot of work shit on them instead.

Go see Episode III until I think about a more thought inspiring post ;-).

Later

Behold...

2005-05-20T13:25:00.000-04:00

Do you remember what I said about America getting it's medical advances from other countries. Behold this link. You can expect more reports just like this with no advances from the american front.

While the rest of the world cures spinal cord injuries, parkinsons, alzheimers, and creates replacement parts for humans, we'll still be arguing about the rights of a couple of dozen cells in some petrie dish in a lab. If it doesn't have a brain it isn't human life. If we take the so called "right to life" down to the level of genetic material and the potential to create a human being, then we have to save evey single sperm and egg that gets wasted by our civilization.

Jill have her monthly friend, that's murder. Little Jhonnie have a little too much fun with daddies magzines, that's genocide. You want to save human life. Try not going to war over oil, pay attention to what's going on in Darfur, fund the efforts to stop the AIDS epidemic. Worry about the humans that are here today first. Then worry about the ones that will be here tomorrow.

Revenge is Sweet

2005-05-20T11:56:00.000-04:00

Just saw Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Hoo boy, it was good. You could feel that everything was just clicking. It was wrapped in a slick little package and ready for human consumption. It was far better than Episodes 1 and 2, which, unfortunately, you have to watch to get the most out of this one.

The effects were amazing. You really felt like the actors and the effects guys were finally getting the technology under control and using it to it's best effect. The actors learned how to interact with nothing and work with Lucas' dialog, which I imagine can be a challenge. I commend them, at no time did I think "Oh, these are just guys on a blue screen" no, I thought "This is Anakin and Obi Wan in their climactic confrontation"

A few things still didn't work this time around. First the love story. Lucas realized that it wasn't panning out the way he'd hoped and downplayed it. There is still an "I love you more", "No, I love you more" moment at the beginning of the film that made people chukle. There are also some cornball lines at the end, but nothing of consequence.

In spite of those minor falterings the movie still worked. It was nostalgic. The ships and the clones were looking more and more like their Imperial counterparts. There are some great "Why didn't I see that coming moments." As well as some "Whoo that was dark" moments.

It was a movie for the fans. It finally told the story of the man that would become Darth Vader. It was a great ride.

Have a Holly Jolie Wednesday

2005-05-19T11:49:00.000-04:00

So, I played shut in last night. By the looks of my bank statement, I'll be playing shut in for a good long time. It's not very good when you look at the numbers and realize that eating Ramen Noodles is pushing your budget. Anyway, I was playing shut in and decided to watch some movies. My selections were "Hackers" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow."

Now before you get down on me for my poor taste think for a second. Is there a connection between those two films? Some force that binds them, ties them, so that energy flows freely between them. Some inexplicable heavenly connection that unites them in the framework of the cosmos. Sure there is. I'm talking about none other than the incomperable Angelina Jolie. She's in both these commercial failures and she does a pretty good job in both of them.

In Hackers, she plays the intoxicating Kate Libby (aka Acid Burn). She's a hacker who attends high school by day and takes over small public access television stations by night. Can you think of anything else you'd like to do with Angelina Jolie at four in the morning? I'll BET you can.

There's even a little bit of Jolie boobage for all of you interested. It's all of 3 frames worth so you have to be a really big into Angelina to even care. If all you want is Angelina in provacative clothing, then you're better off with Tomb Raider.

In Sky Captain Jolie plays Frank (Frankie) Cook or some shit like that. She makes a few thinly veiled passes at Jude Law and shoots glances of superiority at Gwenyth Paltrow. Other than that she just stands around and looks menacing, or she pilots her submersible airplane and looks menacing. Either way she looks bad ass. Just don't let the accent fool you. She's the same all american girl who let nipple fly in Hackers.

I have to say that I enjoy both movies. Hackers is a slick commentary on Hacker culture that replaces techno jargon and code with visual metaphor. The only problem here is that they didn't remove themselves far enough from the present day. "Oh my god, it's got a 28.8 bps modem" and "Three times as powerful as the Pentium" are lines in the movie. Hearing them speak like these are impressive terms is jarring at times. But you can't stop the march of progress and movies based on a period in time can't correct themselves. I do dig the fact that they even put tech speak like that in there. Only a geek at the time would know what any of that meant.

As for Sky Captain, I'm liking it more with every viewing. I've realized that for all of it's wiz bang special effects, it's a very subtle movie. It's fun to watch Jude and Gweneth play off eachother, bicker and argue, then fall for eachother in the end. It's fun to catch excactly how one scene flows into another.

The big problem with the movie is that it's not always clear about what's going on. Keeping track of those doctors names and who exactly was being crossed off the list was a bit of a chore. It's kind of like The Matrix: Reloaded. You have no idea what anyone's talking about unless you watch it ten or eleven times.

At first I thought this movie was just popcorn. There is alot there, and it's not all apparent with a first, a second, or even a third viewing. I emplore you, if you like movies, to give Sky Captain a second chance. As far as Scifi goes, it kicks the pants off of Episodes One and Two. Now those are movies you can forget after the first viewing. The neuances just aren't there. Sky Captain is full of them.

We Deserve...

2005-05-17T12:50:00.000-04:00

...a country that's falling behind the rest of the world because we trumpet religious dogma over the best science we have. What do you think is going to happen to our children when they can't compete with other countries in the field of biology. Evolutionary Theory is the keystone of that field. I sure hope you like buying your medical advances from China. Cause they ain't comin from America (God's second home) anymore.

Religious conservatives like to harp on Evolution because it's only a Theory. Here are some other theories you might like to take down while your at it.

1. General and Special Relativity
2. Gravity
3. Celestial Motion
4. Electromagnetism

Without these theories we wouldn't have: rockets, men on the moon, nuclear power, eletricity, any of the electronics you use in your daily life, streetlights, smoke detectors, robots etc.

And what are we doing? Aurguing about evolution while the rest of the world looks and laughs as it's passing us by. Put on your blinders, be afraid of change, welcome to the 1950's that never existed.

Episode III: The Revenge of Lucas

2005-05-10T00:44:00.000-04:00

Looks like Lucas is going to have a winner on his hand for the first time in a few decades. That is if you can call his last two films failures. Eps. I and II, while being critically pandered, still managed to make almost a billion dollars (not including merchandise).

I don't think you should be able to watch a movie in the theaters five or six times and still go around telling people how much it sucked. After the second viewing you lose that right. "Fool me once" still applies.

I look at the overall story arc and I'm pretty impressed at what Lucas has done with the series. He's created an epic story from innocence to fall and ultimately to retribution. It's just that the telling that has fallen off kilter from time to time. Here are a few things that Lucas can't seem to get quite right.

1. Love stories - Was there anyone that could believe that Anikin and Padme would just madly fall in love with eachother. It seemed fake and taked on to the movie. If anything Anikin would have fallen in love with Padme's strength of character and ability. Having him notice her during the final battle of episode two (or something like how han and leia fell in love) would have been alot more believeable. "Because it's fate" just doesn't work.

2. Kids - I don't think he can direct them. Anakins "Yahoo" at the end of Ep. I still gives me goosebumps, and not the good kind. I liked the idea of a young boy of incredible ability. But there are some things a young boy can't do. Like piloting a starship. How does he reach the conotrols? His speeder was made for his size, it made sense. Making him a little older may have helped sell the believeability somewhat.

3. Write dialog - Some of those lines just stick in your craw and refuse to be digested. Although in the right hands any dialog can sound good. Samuel Jackson could make just about anything sound cool. He just makes it work.

But Lucas also does some things very well.

1. Like kick-ass lightsaber battles. The Duel with Darth Sideous, Yoda and Count Dooku. These were the high points of Eps. I and II respecively. They almost made up for Young Anikin and the Middle School love affair of Anikin and Padme. Seeing someone sliced in two by a glowing blade of some 2000 degrees just seems to make it all worthwhile.

2. Epic story arc. The establishment of the empire. The Journey of Anakin. The destruction of the Jedi. All of these have a feeling of being a part of soemthing greater. Something awe inspiring.

3. Making movies. Lucas does in fact know how to make a movie. If you've ever tried to make one yourself, or if you've seen the results of a friends attempt, then you know how very hard this is. Getting good performances, lighting, cinematography, editing, music and sound. All must be top notch for the movie to succeed. This requires very talented people and Lucas has them. He knows who can bring his vision to life and he keeps them close.

I think that this year Lucas is going to redeem himself of the three marks that I have against him. Not that he really has anything to redeem. I'm a nobody with three or four short films under my belt. He's got significantly more.

Still he will redeem himself this year, I am sure of it. Hell, even if he doesn't he's still guarenteed to get at least three viewings from me in the theaters.

Cheers

Oh bla dee, oh bla daa, oh blah blah blah

2005-05-08T00:45:00.000-04:00

...life goes on or some crap like that. The month of hell is still in full swing. I did manage to make more progress today than I thought I would. That leaves me with a full head of steam for tomorrow. Only problem is that it's Sunday.

I'm going to have to make up for my extreme sense of dedication next weekend. :-).

I did have time to pick up a paper and notice that Kansas and thus the United States is now debating evolution, AGAIN. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this? Why are we even givnig these creationists the time of day? It's cognative dissonance at it's very worst.

Here's the problem that I have with creationists and creationism. They constantly point at "holes" and evolutionary "gaps" and say "It's only a theory." As if that disproves anything. Meanwhile, evolutionists can't defend themseves because creationism can't be disproven. Because it's not a valid theory to begin with.

Evolutionary theory has led to some of the most profound medical and scientific advances of the last 1000 years. How many problems has creationism and intelligent design solved? How many advances have been made in it's name? Exactly. Now, how many problems has it created like the one in Kansas?

They are currently debating the issue in a trial like format. You can thank the conservative controlled school board for this one. Who care's that the public schools are crumbling? Who cares that our kids aren't learning? God needs to be put back in the classrooms. Give me a break. If a kid wants to pray before class or a test, let him. But don't force a bunch of unsubtantiated hogwash on the youth of america. They have enough problems as it is.

What's that. There's proof for creationism/IDesign. Scientists have come forward. You show me one of these "scientists" and I'll show you a man who got a very large grant from a religious organization.

Most of the time these people just say we haven't discovered this or haven't figured that out, so therefore evolutionary theory is invalid. Abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscense. We'll figure it out. We have a couple of leads :-). Meanwhile you can go back to reading that one true work and attempt to divine the secrets of intelligent design.

What's it all for? Are we trying to advance the human race by expanding knowledge? Or are we merely trying to come up with excuses so that we can hold on to our primitive and barbaric past. Are we actually trying to merge religion and science? I for one hope not.

Science, pure science, relies on facts, logic, and the careful gathering of information in an attempt to explain the world and the universe around us.

Religion on the other hand lays it all out with one simple answer: God did it. He did it all. It doesn't require any proof and still, it demands that you believe. All contradictions are the devil's work and questioning it makes you a heretic. It's pretty convenient stuff. There's no way to argue an oppposing view point without being burned as a witch, or stoned to death.

It's also thinking like this that leads to Crusades, Inquisitions, Iraq and Abu Ghraib.

Which do you think is more probable? One, that an invisible man created everything and told us about it though a handful of people who today we would call crazy. Or two, that these influential people made it up in order to provide explanation and comfort to a frightened people. A people that couldn't understand what was going on around them. A people that sought explanation, right, wrong, or somewhere in between.

Can I prove it? No. Of course not. I'm merely asking the question: What would we think of a person who today claimed they could talk to god? Would we listen to them? No, we'd be running for the jackets with the extra long sleeves. So either the Bible is the true word of god written by people who we'd think are crazy today or it's just a book, written by people. Like all the others, with all the potential flaws and errors.

Bottom line, a theory that only exists (Intelligent Design) to mantain a postulate we can't prove (that God exists and created the earth) is baseless. If we keep going on like this we'll be teaching how the earth is flat and that everything revolves around it. "Why I didn't know that every picture to come out of NASA was FAKE? Praise the lord."

One final thought for you before I go to sleep. Can you think of one good song from the 70s or 80s that some car company hasn't raped for the sake of commercial profit? Didn't think so. So the next time you see a Ford 15 second spot and they're playing "Boys of Summer" by Don Henley, make sure to give the TV a one fingered salute for the Rob.

Month of Hell

2005-05-07T00:02:00.000-04:00

My friends, if you read this, and I can't imagine why sometimes, you will know that I like to name the periods in my life. Why do I do this? I don't know. Perhaps I like to be a little dramatic. For whatever reason it's what I do.

In accordance with my own personal tradition I have decided to name this the month of HELL. This is the month where the shit just won't stop coming.

First off it's been quite a month at work. I've worked over fifty hours this week and it's not over yet. Next week is probably not going to be any different. The week before certainly wasn't.

The software we are trying to work with is proving to be a little unwieldy. By that I mean it turns most five minute tasks into hurculean, day long wrestling sessions. It's put me behind in all my estimates, something I'm usually pretty good at judging. I'm now two weeks behind where I thought I would be by now. I'm letting people down (I think). I want it to be done but at the same time I want it to be done right.

I haven't been to a single rugby practice in over three weeks. I hope that next week I'll have some time to put it back in. I'm not optimistic. On the plus side all of my cuts and bruises have healed. On the minus side, I'm letting my team down. I'll let you decide which one matters more to me.

I haven't seen most of my friends in ages. I'd hung out with my friend Alex the other night but it felt wierd. Like I didn't know him anymore. Distant somehow. I keep in touch with a few others but it feels like they are slipping away. I miss them. I miss hanging out. I miss my life.

Haven't had any chances to write either. What time I do have I'm either sleeping, getting ready for another long workday, or working out. There is little time for other things.

Things aren't all bad though. I've become better friends with some of the people at work. Perhaps this is natural with the amount of time I'm spending there. One person I have become very close with, like a best friend. Feels a little wierd because they are a coworker. I'm used to keeping distant.

It's nice to be friends with the people you work with. Especially when your spending so much time with them.

I desperately want the crunch to be over.

Time for sleep for it's not over yet. Good night.

More Tiger Goodness

2005-05-05T09:25:00.001-04:00

It's really changing the way I'm working. For instance. I'm writing this post in a Dashboard widget. I also just ran a test of spotlight. I wrote a story a while back about a bouncer who gives a woman a ride home. I entered the words "stripper", "ride", and "home." Before I'd finished typing, the results of the search were in the results tab, my story bbeing among them.

Spotlight worked :-)

It's not all good though. I've noticed that my quicktime windows get stuck in the dock, which is pretty annoying. Please fix this soon, Apple. But thanks otherwise for a great OS.

More Tiger Goodness

2005-05-05T09:25:00.000-04:00

Making of The Rise and Fall of Dick Moellering

2005-05-04T13:09:00.000-04:00

Most people think to themselves when they want to make a movie. Oh, that costs too much, I would never be able to do that. Ten years ago I would have agreed. But a revolution has been taking place and if you see yourself as a filmmaker you have no excuse not to pick up a camera and start shooting.

Home video cameras today rival the big shoulder mounted jobs that were common place in the 80's. There are rental houses that specialize in renting high end video cameras to people jjust like you and me. With a few hundered dollars and a few friends you can put together small, professional home movies in a day or two. Creating short films with a little saving is also a possibility.

The movie I just put together was done on Final Cut Pro, but I didn't use anything that can't be found in the latest version of Final Cut Express HD. That's a product that only costs 299 as opposed to 999. It's basically the same thing as final cut pro although it can only be used to import DV and cannot batch capture. All of the major filters are there. All of the effects.

So I ask you. If you want to make a movie. Why aren't you already?

Our Big Screen Debut

2005-05-04T01:25:00.000-04:00

Well actually our second big screen debut. I think that this was the year that it all came together. We had the right people in the right places and the end result was EXACTLY what we were going for.

We had our first screening of "The Rise and Fall of Dick Mollering" at the AFI Silver tonight. This was a short movie done for the 48 Hour Film Project.

For those of you who don't know, the 48 Hour Film Project is a competition where groups race to create a short movie in 48 hours. Those who finish on time are shown and compete for awards and prizes. I'm really hoping we get some kind of award.

The other showings were good. Some of the stories were really inventive, some fell flat and others made you go "huh"? All had their moments, really cool moments that showed the inventiveness and the resourcefulness of the people behind them.

But I feel like ours was the only one that had that elusive "look." It played like a coherent piece. Everything down to the font of the dialog plates was scrutinized, and it shows. I thought the story made sense, that the main character liked larger women. I hope it came across.

Anyone who can make a movie in two days deserves praise. It's not easy staying up for two days straight. It's challenging to bring people together in a team environment. It's challenging to make sure everything goes off with as few hitches as possible.

I am very fortunate to have the people I worked with. Everyone belongs on the team. Together we are whoretoculture.

I would like to thank my brother and his friends for doing a fantastic job with the camera and lighting. The thing looked great and gave me alot of cool shots to play with.

Joe, our director was always great and always had a sense of humor about him. Which is something I tend to loose after no sleep.

The writers, production people and the actors all deserve praise. Mark, Anne, Sharon, Sarah, Jess, Jessica, Thaisa, Shawn, Henry and all the rest. If I missed your name, it's only because I don't remember it off the top of my head and I'm really tired ;-). You were all great.

Let's work on something again soon.

Man on Tiger Love

2005-05-03T18:06:00.000-04:00

Okay, maybe that title was a little nasty and little too vague of a reference to Rick Santorum. A man who thinks that allowing two men to marry will lead to man on dog marriages. Let's forgo the obvious linking of gay men and women to lower forms of animal. Let's forgo the facts that allowing subsets of humans to marry doesn't open the floodgates of marriage so to speak. I personally don't want to marry my dog. He's too old and can't keep a job to save his life :-).

Talk about off topic.

I'm writing to gush about Apple's new release of OS X, Tiger. It's fantastic. Sure I had a few problems with the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) over the weekend, but we beat that one into submission.

After that it was all smooth sailing. Let me talk about a few of the finer points.

Spotlight - Didn't get to try this out all too much. But what I saw I liked. Now I can finally index my porn by actor and favorite position. I've been waiting YEARS to be able to do this.

Safari RSS - Pretty cool little news reader. Might get some use out of this.

Automator - Can't wait to try this.

Dashboard - Create a quick blog without starting a web browser. See stocks, weather, time. Look up really obscure synonyms for "disenfranchised" and "gloomy." All in a really slick interface.

Quartz Composer - This was a rare treat. Located in the developer tools, but not just for developers. It allows you to take image, video, and music sources and composite them. The new RSS screensaver was created using this application. Which brings me to.

The RSS Screen Saver - OMG it's soo beautiful. May change my entire outlook on the news. The RSS feed could tell me my whole family died in a plane crash and I'd be okay with it as long as the text spun around and danced on a blue background like it does here.

Performance - If this Tiger were real, it wouldn't be an endangered species. This OS is markedly faster than Panther. Firewire performance has also been increased I think. I was able to capture video to my external drive, something I wasn't able to do in Panther.

Look - Hit . I like most things better than Panther some things less. Mail is kind of ugly. But I don't use it and consequently don't care. Overall it's gorgeous and far nicer than looking at Windows all day.

All in all. I would marry tiger if it were legal. Rick Santorum could be my Best Man and James Dobson could minister.

"Mac OS X - Why stare at the windows when you can see the world?"

Hell Week: DC Style

2005-05-03T18:03:00.000-04:00

Might as well call it hell month. Work has really been a dog. Don't want to talk about it except for the fact that I feel like I'm letting down the team with all the late nights at work. I literally can't get out of here before 730 most nights. Last night I was here till 11 trying to avoid this. Oh well. I hope we can just deliver so i can get back to playing rugby and working normal hours. It'll be nice.

We're Just About Done.

2005-05-01T16:16:00.000-04:00

Couple of last minute details to button up then we're printing to tape. I'm currently waiting for the computer to turn all of my bits into bits that can be read by my camera. Then we're going to take the movie to the place where it can be dropped off.

Lessons learned? Don't do this project if you like to sleep in any way shape or form.

Waiting...

2005-04-30T21:27:00.000-04:00

...for the last two tapes to arrive. Have the rough cut done from what I have. The composer has arrived and the Chinese food is on it's way.

There isn't going to be much in the way of titles on this project. Just what I did earlier.

The dick jokes have stopped being funny :-)

48 Hour Film Project Update

2005-04-30T20:33:00.000-04:00

No it's not a porno but it's got lot's of Dick in it.

You won't believe you're eyes when you see it, and you WILL see it.

Man I'm Tired.

Anyways, principal photography should be wrapping up about now. With any luck I should have another 20 minutes worth of footage to put together. If the last batch was any indicator I'm going to have more than enough to get through the project.

We still need to think about music but have a pretty good idea what direction we are headed. Compare this to last year when I was still putting my first roll into the computer and hadn't even begun to think about a "look."

Did you take a look at the Serenity trailer yet?

Laters

Random Question of the Hour

2005-04-30T17:41:00.000-04:00

It's 5:39 PM, do you know where you're children are? Are they doing the 48 Hour Film project? If so, then pray.

Yeah I'm tired. So?

So Damn Tired

2005-04-30T16:11:00.000-04:00

We're not even half way through this project and I am in serious need of a nap. You wouldn't like me when I'm cranky.

GIMP started working with Tiger, thank god. I got the workflow finalized. I'm going to do capture, color, and assembly in Final Cut and then export to DV for iMovie. I only hope it takes dv clips.

The rain stopped and it looks like it's getting darker out there.

GIMP Doesn't work

2005-04-30T12:09:00.000-04:00

If I can't get GIMP to work. It looks like the old time titles are out. This is really starting to suck hardcore.

No go on Magic Bullet

2005-04-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

Just tried magic bullet demo. It crashed Final Cut 4.0. It requires 4.1. I really don't feel like messing with an upgrade. Looks like iMovie it is for all the preprocessing. Maybe I can make an automator workflow or something. That would be really nice.

I HAVE to start working on the titles.

Goddamn iMovie

2005-04-30T11:44:00.000-04:00

Why does it have to be so useful. I'm getting a perfectly good look from a program I bought for 50 bucks. A look I can't get from Final Cut Unless I spend 300. I may end up putting this thing together with iMovie.

For those of you who aren't interested in reading about how I use a I'm going to snub a professional application for a newbie app then head on over to www.apple.com/quicktime and download the Serenity Trailer. It's kick-ass.

Back at Home

2005-04-30T11:15:00.000-04:00

Getting set up for the first roll. I have to figure out how to create the look that the director wants. Let me take a few steps back.

The genre we got for the 48 Hr Film Project was Silent Movie. So the director wants to make the video look like old footage. I'm going to looks a plugins and such. looks like the pugins for final cut run between 50 and 300 dollars to get a film look. The one I really want is the more expensive one. But I'm not about to shell out for that.

I have to create the marquee for the titles that explain the movie, the main title, and figure out how to get the right look. Go me.

On to it.

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere

2005-04-30T05:29:00.000-04:00

Ugh.

Up for the 48 Hour Film Project. Going to update throughout the day. But right now my brother's giving me ugly looks right now.

Peace

Tonight's festivities

2005-04-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

Going to go out tonight. It's been a week and it's about time. But I'm not going to oget sloshed like I did last saturday. Noooo, sir. That was scary enough thank you.

I'll be at remmington's, just look for the tall drink in the big black cowboy hat, most likely doing karaoke.

-R

What habit do you think it's going to pick up next?

2005-04-22T21:21:00.000-04:00

Now here's a chimp I can relate to, and not in just the genetic sense. Take a look at this chimp.

Chimp News Article

He's picked up one of the worlds greatest and most satisfying habits, next to mass genocide. Can you tell I really want a cigarette?

If you want to learn more about chimps. please visit the following website:

All About Chimps

Single's Night at Wally World

2005-04-19T08:35:00.000-04:00

Just when I thought a huge, and corrupt, mega-corporation couldn't be more insidious, they go and pull a stunt like this.

It seems that Wal-Mart, the home of everyday low prices, is now home of everyday low dating standards. Introducing Singles night on Saturdays. What do you have to do? It's simple really.

Being the cynical man that I am I wonder if it's not some attempt by the higher ups to keep us in their stores longer. Let's face it, if you need to go to Wal-Mart for singles night, you probably don't have the social skills to make a quick connection. While your there you can pick up the frozen dinner you will eat later this evening, ALONE.

And I'm assuming that this dating night is strictly for the hetros. Being that there is only one color of ribbon and Wal-Marts being predominately in "red" states. It seems a little unfair to the little homo that we all know (wether we know it or not). But in Wal-Mart's defense, gay people prefer Target. Are you listening Target?

You know what would be an AWSOME place to have a singles night: Home Depot. Nothing says "I Love You" like the gift of pressure-treated lumber. I hear the pine scent is an aphrodesiac. You could have first-date projets like "Building a deck", "Installing a parquet floor" or his favorite "installing pipe."

Blogger is kinda sorta working again.

2005-04-14T12:15:00.000-04:00

I can now take back my favorite lunch break past-time. Convincing the rest of the world that I'm a first rate loony bird. Jimbo had a pic of me and referenced my blog. Which let me to remember "Hey, I have a blog, an obligation to my readers (ie myself)."

A few weeks ago Blogger was acting really funny and not allowing me to post. I thought it would be best to stop for a little while and focus on other intrests.

What have I learned:

1. I'm getting better at Final Cut Pro. The rough cut for the 48 Hour Film project test run was better than I could have hoped. The director generally liked what I did, gave me some leeway with my own "vision", and had lots of constructive comments. Not once did I fee like my opinion was threatened. It felt like a genuine collaberation. I also happen to like the way he thinks.

2. I still like programming. I 9-5 stint in the IT field all but sapped what enthusiasm I had for computer science. But it also helped build my skills. I return to the fold with much stronger Kung Fu and I welcome the challenge. It's fun again.

3. I have too many hobbies. Rugby, Writing, Filmmaking, Friends, Programming (AGAIN). I don't have enough time for it all. On the up-side I don't have any time to be lazy either.

4. People are crazy. Liberals, conservatives, religious nuts, anti-religion nuts, and now...commuters. It seems that land developers are taking out sizable ad buys in the Washington Post, selling their houses to the highest bidder. "Why that's not wierd" you say. Did I mention that these houses are being built in Martinsburg, West Virginia?!?!?!

Yes Martinsburg. When I was a high schooler in Hagerstown one of my close friends moved out to Martinsburg. I remember thinking how far that was and how I was never going to see him. Then I realized that I had a car and the means to visit. No problem I said. That was the first experience I'd ever had with commuting.

I hated it.

It was an hour round trip to get from Hagerstown to Martinsburg and back. God forbid we all wanted to do something in H-town. Poor anthony didn't have a car at the time. You know what that means. Two trips. One too pick his carless ass up, the other to make sure his mother didn't get too worried about it. Thank god his mother bought him a car eventually.

Now take that commute and multiply it by four. Hhat's how long it takes to get to Martinsbug from DC. Why id god's name would you want to live that far from work? It's not the schools. They suck out there. I went to one for four years. The only good schools are the ones you pay for. It's not the people, they're rednecks mostly. The good ones are few and far between. It's not the culture. Unless you consider a tractor pull haute couture. It's the cheap housing, pure and simple. I want to live in a big house and I don't care how.

I have yet to find someone tell me it's worth it. My parents did it for 20 years. My dad still does it. I don't get it.

Weekend Review

2005-04-07T13:35:00.000-04:00

I know this week is almost over and that a review of the previous weekend is a little belated. Bet here goes anyway.

Big movie making event last weekend. My team for the 48 Hour Film Project finished our dry run. It's probably one of the most coherent works we've produced. Considering it was done in 12 hours from writing to rough cut it's pretty incredible.

I was the main actor Robert Stack-type character. Consequently I also had the most lines in a single take (save one actor, maybe). Just to let you all know right now, there is a reason I prefer being BEHIND the camera. I don't like the way I look. I don't like the way I sound. I have trouble memorizing and flub lines like no other when people are looking at me.

But I'm getting used to it.

After all the filming was done I kicked back a couple of burrs, captured the video, and put that bitch together. It wasn't that hard really. We did almost no dialog and the dialog that we did was all one camera, one POV. I highly recommend it for small scenes as it doesn't really detract and saves a hell of alot of time in the editing bay. But you already knew that, didn't you? :-) So bonus, it was really easy to put together and allowed me to concentrate on titles and music and such.

Sunday I spent playing around with the computer and recovering from Saturdays events.

This weekend is Rugby and Mom's b-day. She's coming to watch me play, with my brother. I hope I do well, and don't get hurt. She'd never let me play again, :-). Got to love the over-protection sometimes. It's how you know you're loved.

Laters.

Rob

Thought of the Day

2005-03-30T15:03:00.000-05:00

Linux is designed to make the user feel like they've lost it.
Windows is designed to make the user feel like the computer's lost it.
OS X is designed to make the user feel like people who don't use it have lost it.

And who am I to argue.

Week of Ideas

2005-03-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

This week is going to be really exiting for me. For onlookers it could look like any other week. That's just not the case.

I've reached past page 60 in my filmic masterpiece. Last night I was able to write this really fun set of scenes for all the characters involved. Intertwining scenes visually to show connections between all parties involved. Since it's a movie I like to think about ways to use the medium and not rely on the words. Which I could see as a problem for most beginning screen writers.

I also wrote some great dialogue for the antagonist and his boy toy. It's fun writing for the bad guys. You get so much more flexibility in what they do. Heroes are are a little more constrained. Although if they run the straight and narrow too much they're kinda boring.

This week I'm getting back to Rugby practice after taking a sabattical last week for another case of Impetigo. It seems to be under control now.

This weekend we have the 48 hour film project dry run. Where our group tries to work out or process and see how we work with one another. I can't beleive I just used the word "process". I've been in business too long. I don't like overuse of the word but I feel here that it's poiniant.

I'm really excited to be working with my brother. I think he's a really creative person and a nice guy to boot. He just never seems to want to do anything. With the rare exception.

I know he's busy but so am I. Whenever I try to tell him an idea the first response I get is "I don't know where I'm going to find the time." It's really disheartening and feels like he has no faith in my ideas. It makes me reluctant to share my ideas with anyone else. After all, if your own family won't listen to your ideas then what are the chances that a total stranger will. It could just be that my ideas are unoriginal and no one has the heart to tell me.

In his defense he does help criticise the work which is what I want. And he is doing the 48 Hour Film project, which is something too. But is that it? Doesn't he want to do more? We all have time constraints. Between work, rugby and friends I have precious little time to devote to writing. But I still do it.

I don't want to continue asking him to work on stuff with me. It's fine if he really doesn't want to. He's entitled to that. And he's more than welcome to come to me with ideas. The feeling that I'm dragging someone along against their will really sucks.

Maybe I'm just not communicating my ideas very well to him. We seem to have that problem with eachother. I think it has to do with being brothers. We don't usually need to communiacate all that much to convey meaning. But there's a disconnect when it comes to these larger projects.

If my brother reads this. D, I'm just writing to get this off my chest. If this embarrases you, I'll remove it. Luv ya.

What's the DeLay

2005-03-25T11:50:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I just wanted to put up a pun about my favorite Right Wing nutjob. Someone who epouses what moral character should be while having no moral character whatsoever.

What are a couple of paid trips to Asia between friends. It's only money, right, right? Conflicts of intrest be damned, I wanna see the Great Wall.

Besure to look for DeLay's new books coming soon from Regenry Publishing:

District (Re)Drawing for Kids

Gerrymander isn't just the name of your 2nd grade teacher anymore. It's also a useful political tool that allows the majority to gain more political power by changing the rules of the game. Includes new tips on how to illigally break a fillibuster. Think outside the box, or in this case, the lines.

The Five People you Meet in Prison

Prison can be scary. That's why it's good to know the people you meet when your political corruption finally bites you in the ass. Familarize your self with all the regular players:

your dealer
your bitch
the guy you makes you his bitch
your cell mate
and the stoolie

Candy Land this is not. Recommended reading for those who think Laws are for "Ordinary People" or "Poor People"

Huh, I didn't know you could still get the Plague?

2005-03-25T10:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I don't have the Plague. Rats do not live in my apartment and their fleas have not tranmitted anything to me. I have no buboes or exploding lymph nodes or anything like that. Although sometimes it seems preferable to this.

Ever since my senior year in college I've had a problem with bacterial infections. Once a year I come down with Strep Throat that's usually bad enough that I need to take medication for. Recently the bacteria have decided to get creative with the illnesses they cause. Now I have something that's totally new.

Impetigo.

What's that? I'm glad you asked. Apparently bacteria can cause all kinds of wierd and wonderful things to happen all over your body. From helping you digest your food, to making your throat constrict to dime size, to making parts of you fall off. Yes bacteria can do it all.

On me it's decided to take up residence on my right cheek. Entering though an open sore (pimple), the S.S. Areus washed ashore in what was surely the land of plenty. They found food, they found shelter, they found out someone was already living there. Skin cells, benign bacteria, and the like. "This fuckers ours." The evil European bacteria said.

And so the Western Expansion of my face began. And like the settlers of yore they expanded without mercy. Raping and pillaging the landscape. Passing out smallpox blankets to the natives. Taking squaws for their own. Using one cultural metaphor after another, oh wait...Hehe :-)

Point is what I have sucks. It's not really responding to antibiotics, which only slowed down the invasion. My immune system has apparently said "Fuck it," and booked a plane to Fiji where the weather is nicer and it can do more good helping tsunami victims or some crap like that. I've been reduced to resurfacing my face every morning and night and hoping that it doesn't spread any further.

But it really could be worse. On the specrum of things to have wrong with you this is up there with diaper rash, or maybe kidney stones. A painful nuisannce that in all likelyhood will not kill you.

FM Journal: 3-24-05

2005-03-24T11:58:00.000-05:00

Filmmakers journal entry. Came up with another idea for a short that I'm really interested in fleshing out. Pretty simple idea. Direct plot. Slight fantasy in the context of the real world. Kids overcoming bullies. Good Stuff.

Work progresses on the feature. Finished a few more pages the other day. But I'm stuck working out the sub-plot and integrating it with the main plot. Right now we have the following plot.

1. Man steals protagonists boyfriend.
2. Meets hetero man and falls in love
3. Fairy Godmother gives man pill.
4. Man becomes woman.
5. Woman gets hetero man.
6. Woman gets back at antagonist for stealing his boyfriend.
7. Antagonist finds pills.
8. Antagonis turns into woman.
9. Antagonist tries to steal Hetero man from protagonist.
10. Antagonist stages a three way.
11. Protagonist submits at the last minute.
12. Hetero man and protagonist talk. They agree that things wouldn't work out. Reamin friends.
13. Resolve subplot.
14. Epilogue.

I'm having trouble figuring out what to do with the story after the antagonist becomes a woman. I need to get her to find out about the antagonist being a woman and finding out about the hetero boyfriend. I suppose I could do that through one of the antagonists gay friends. I have one that knows the pro (daniele) is a woman. Then I would have Sara (the female antagonist) spy on Daniele and find out about Brad , the hetero guy. Then the rest of the story could work itself out.

Well at least I could write the rest of the damn thing :-).

I also need to work in a kind of subplot. I would like Daniel's (antagonist) friend Joel (mentioned in the paragraph above) to find someone. I think I know how to work that out but it feels kind of wonky adding his plot later. Like it's fake. I guess that all has to do with how well I integrate it into the main plot. I could also do more with Daniel's boyfriend Billy (the one that left him at the beginning of the story). I could turn him into a total hooker, which could be fun.

I appologize if this post seems a little sporadic. It's more for me to try and work through my ideas. If someone reading this finds it useful. So much the better. Story copyright Robert McHugh Jr. ;-) Like anyone would want it.

Columbine: Reloaded

2005-03-22T10:29:00.000-05:00

Another disturbed teenager opened fire in his school this week. Killing a dozen people or more, including his grandfather, best friend, the school security guard and several unnamed students. This is a terrible day for the United States, yet another, and it won't be last.

That's because certain elements in this country believe we have a god given right to put holes in things. They think that the constitutional right to bare arms covers things like assault rifles, UZI's and hand grenades. Things that didn't even exist back then. Then, you were lucky if you even hit something with a gun. And you were more likely to die from the infection rather than the bullet. Guns today are much more lethal. I say give them a 1790's musket if they really want to bear arms.

The right to bear arms is hand in hand with the right to form militia. It's another check and balance. But does it keep us safe? Does it really allow us to protect our families?

When kids can buy handguns at Wal-mart and most shootings in the home involve a member of the family how can we say that guns make us safer? How can we say that we are protecting anything?

The reason is fear. We as americans are afraid of everything. And we're willing to shoot first and ask qustions later. And we're willing to let suspected terrorists and mental patients buy guns because it's written in the constitution. There is a reason we have amendments. It's time we put that one up for a review.

I'm not saying ban all guns. But I'm defnintely saying restrict their use. There are non lethal ways to protect your family in the home. Ways to incapacitate an intruder without jepordizing yourself. Ever heard of a tazer gun? It leads to alot less paperwork when you realize your brother-in-law isn't breaking into your house. Little timmy will still have a brother if he happens to find it and decides to play cops and robbers.

Besides do you think that owning a gun will protect you from someone else with one? They could better shot. Did you remember to get those complimentary marksmanship classes? Uh oh. Looks like we have a Texas standoff and I just redid the cabinets.

But if you'd rather play cowboy that's up to you. Just don't come bitching when you read stuff like this in the news. We live in a dangerous society made all the more dangerous by our love of the gun.

Guns kill people. There are alot of guns out there. The fewer the guns, the less the chance that one will go off. Pretty simple equation really. That boy was probably acting on an impluse. If he didn't have a ready access to a weapon would he have shot up his school? If people actually cared about the stress in his life (I'm assuming something made him snap) would he have reached that breaking point?

I guess we'll never know. We don't care about fixing the problem. Only covering up our own ineptitude and shortsightedness. Someone in a few weeks is going to claim that it was video games, or rock music, or movies that killed those people. I'm pretty sure it was the gun.

*Disclaimer: Rob actually likes guns. He knows that there is no inherent evil in a weapon. He doesn't own one but sees the appeal. He likes John Woo movies but doesn't feel the need to reinact them. He's a realist and knows a problem when he sees it.

Week of the Worker

2005-03-21T14:29:00.000-05:00

Last week was the week of the worker. The week before was the week of the dreamer. Dreaming is great. It propels us forward. But if we never put our dreams to work or bring them into reality for all to see then it's pointless to even have dreams. That's why last week was the week of the worker.

I wrote alot, I worked hard at my job, I worked hard at practice (the one I did attend). I worked hard at getting over being sick. I even worked at being happy. Something you shouldn't really have to do but some of us more colerful types have to work at occasionally.

Here's to the week of the worker.

Weekend Update: Personal Edition

2005-03-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

A lot happened this weekend. Friday was a bust. But that's because I was hungover from the night before. I also wanted to be rested for Saturday's game. I'm glad I did.

Got up at 830 packed my gear and headed out to the Rugby carpool. There was some major construction on 14th Street that almost made me miss my ride. Despite all that crap I did make it to the church on time. We left at ten for Wild and Wonderful Winchester.

Actually it wasn't all that wonderful, but it was plenty wild. Wild as in crazy. Crazy as in the Winchester rugby club. I've never seen a team dive into a ruck, I thought that was dangerous, but whatever. They were well organized and knew how to retain control of the ball. They beat us 38-3. They did play dirty but that can't account for all of the 35 point spread. It was a sound beating.

Despite some of their players being, let's say, "A little too into the game" They were all amenable afterwards. Even the people who I pegged as unsportsmanlike (I used much more colorful words after the game, but I was hurt :-D). We went to their home bar, drank lot's of green beer, ate plenty of nachos, and had a pretty good time.

On the way back we hit traffic on 66 and the return trip ended up taking twice as long as the trip up. I arrived at home a little after seven. Just enough time to clean the dirt from my wounds and get ready for the night. It's amazing how long it takes to clothe yourself when you can't move your arms.

Anyway, the first stop of the night was a birthday party and I arrived there fashionably late around nine. There were many people I didn't know, a few people I did, and one person who I hadn't talked to in months.

I know what your thinking. "Oh my god Rob, how terrible. Whatever did you do?" Relax, it was totally cool. We talked, caught up, smoked cigarettes and had a good time. I even ended up meeting a few of his newer friends and going out to Apex on a Saturday (for those who don't know that's lesbian night).

It was a total blast. The dancing made my hurt all over but I was too drunk and/or into the music to care. The lesbian, Emily, that we brought with us was a total trip. No details because I wouldn't do them justice.

Sunday I did film stuff, covering an audition for our 48 film project group and installing Final Cut Pro on my computer. Soundtrack and LiveType are a blast to use and I can't wait to use them in practice. I also tried to think through some of the problems in my script. Made some headway and can't wait to start typing again.

Laters

The Right To...

2005-03-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

I'm currently watching a Fox News (I know right) report about the Terri Schiavo case. Congress is desperately working to keep a woman in a vegitative state alive. Now if you read my blog you might think that I'm all for removing the tube. Well I'm not.

It's a terrible way to end someone's life. I think it falls under cruel and unusual. Let me explain.

When the body starves it slowly wastes away. Individual cells starve and the body system slowly withers away. Even in a vegitative state this is a horrible way to die. It's a basic human experience to be hungry and to starve. I would be hard pressed to believe that this woman feels nothing.

Republicans agree with me on this one. Very rare indeed. But I think that if she should be forced to live than the husband and the family should not be forced to pay for her care. They have already moved on. She is already dead to them. The fact that her body lives is irrelevant. She is no longer the responsibility of the family that may or may not be able to support her care. It is the government that wants to enforce her right to life that should be forced to provide for her care and for the care of everyone they feel should have that right to life.

Now let me chime in on the conservatives that brought this to a special sesson of congress. Shame on you for politicizing a family's struggle. They have experienced hardship. They have done much soul searching to reach their decision. Now they are in the national spotlight. All they wanted was to move on. And you all put the right of a vegitable to be force fed above the family's right to move on.

If I were the vegitable I would wish to be let go. Not starved but euthanized, humanely. I've seen people who have come out of coma's and are no longer vegitables. They can barely speak and are mere shadows of their former selves. I would rather die than to have people's memories tarnished. I would still be a person but I would no longer be the person I once was. I would be a shadow. I would be a living reminder that the Rob that everyone knew is dead. But that's me. You may wish to live in that state. That's your choice and you should be allowed to have it. That's the point of this post. Choice.

I love conservatives. "right to life, right to life" is their mantra. But the extreme right is bankrupt when it comes to respecting life. They support wars that kill thousands of innocents under the guise of promoting peace. They are all about keeping the guns that kill tens of thousands of people every year. They look the other way when a four year old shoots and kills their brother with their parent's gun. But as soon as someone tries to use the morning after pill they're all over it.

Peace out.

Why aren't you drinking?

2005-03-17T10:23:00.000-05:00

Happy hour started about 3 hours ago in Ireland. Why aren't you drinking? If you can't keep up with the irish then you are a loser. And don't give me any crap about not having any irish in you. Those people bop like there's no tomorrow. Everyone has SOME irish in them.

Other excuses that I won't except.

1. The last guy to captain the Exxon Valdez got in trouble that way.
2. The kids get restless everytime the bus swerves over the median line.
3. The cop that pulled you over refuses to do a shot with you.
4. You're a recovering alcoholic.
5. You're a mormon. Religion. Pish Posh.
6. You don't like the taste of beer. Just drink it already.
7. You dispise the irish. Okay this one I'll accept.
8. You're French. Just kidding.

On that last note. I think that french is a very sexy language. Republicans may disagree with me. They can go eat their freedom fries for all I care. Although, my opinion may be based on the hot French people that I saw last night. There was this couple, man and woman. They we're like a pair of french models. Good god.

OR maybe I had just started my St. Patty's day celebrations early.

Thought of the Day

2005-03-16T12:45:00.000-05:00

Credit Card companies should not be able to extend credit to people who they know can't pay. They shouldn't be able to pre approve people with nothing more than a Oujia board and a pair of dice.

Very intelligent people can still fall prey to false advertising, hidden fees, and confusing legal wording. This is especially true now that new legislation has turned the lower-middle class into a 21st century debtor's prison. Lesson to the masses, if you can help it, don't get a credit card. In fact don't get one period.

Thank you Republican Congress for enforcing the "Will of the People." Thank you credit card companies for your never ending persuit of profit.

An Incredibles Night

2005-03-16T12:11:00.000-05:00

I, like the rest of North America, picked up my copy of The Incredibles last night. The good thing about the Best Buy is that they put the new releases in about 500 different places to maximize exposure. I think it actually costs them sales. I mean who would think to look for DVD's next to a Washer/Dryer combo. Point is that most people think their sold out. Intrepid people such as myself can reap the benefits of their advertising scheme in unexpected ways. I found my copy in the "Disney" rack after trying, in vain, in "New Releases" and the "Incredibles" standup display.

So after standing in line with all the other ten year olds I make it home. The movie comes in your standard "special" two disc set. As the movie says "If everyone were special then no one would be." This is also true of DVD's. You can't call a 2-disc set a "Special Edition" anymore. Not when a 2-disc set is the norm for a big release. That or when it's the only edition of the movie you release.

The special features are contained on the second disc as you would expect. Included is the making of featurette, 2 shorts, propaganda (ad) reel, and trailers. I loved the featurette because it makes Pixar look like a fun yet challenging place to work. I dare you to find the same kind of material put out at a place like EA or Microsoft. Granted it's done to make the place look fun and in reality it's more hard work than frivolity but you can't fake what's going on there. When people love their jobs they work harder at them. When people work harder better products are the result. Good products are the result of love and experience not focus meetings. That love is evident in the featurette.

I'm now ready to bask in the glow that only Pixar animation products can provide. Popcorn...check. Diet Cherry Coke....check. Play button...check. The movie is phenominal. It's much darker than the usual Pixar stuff, more violent, but gratuitous gore is practically non-existent. There is also more sexual inuendo. Alot for adults. In fact, I think this is more a movie for adults than it is for children. The styling, the story, the action, the romance. It's all very sophisticated.

Pixar has also outdone themselves in the graphics department. Their characters looked almost like marionettes infused with human souls. Calling them marionetts doesn't give the animators enough credit. I'm only referring to the styling of the models. They are incredibly life like. Everything in the world looks like it's made out of plastic. Which only adds to the 60's feel of the movie and I'm sure is intentional. The more realistic (after a point) you make a computer model the less beleiveable it is. The audience is no longer suspending disbelief. Human perception of the real is a fickle mistress.

Do yourself a favor and buy this disc while it's still 15.99. You might as well save a few bucks on a movie you will definitly want to own.

Google: Now with the power of X

2005-03-16T12:06:00.000-05:00

Check out this new link at google:

Google X

It's sort of a homage to OSX. Mac users should get a kick out of it. It's also a prettier version of google in my opinion. Check it out.

Filmmakers Journal 3-15-05

2005-03-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

Two journal entries two days in a row. Wow, I don't know if I'm going to keep it up like that.

I made a lot of progress on The Pill. Adding 12 more pages to bring it to a grand total of 42. I'm at the half-way point of the script. The main character is starting to realize that his grand transformation isn't going to help him in the long run. Now I just need to write the escalating tension, climax and resolution. I have two out of three already worked out in my head. I also feel that the climax is going to have to be kitschy and tacky. Some kind of catfight or campy dance off. Very tongue in cheek.

I'm also starting to get a feel for the characters, their situation and the way they react to things. Zach is also turning into a much more interesting character than I thought he would be. Initially envisioned as a foil at the beginning of the story, he's evolved into the story's main antagonist. Which solved all sorts of problems I was having with the story up till then.

The lesson I learned from this is one that I already knew. In programming, there is a theory that any problem can be made easier to solve by adding a layer of abstraction. In that same token, any story problem can be easier to solve with the addition of another character. It's hard to explain why this is. It just gives you more "room" to solve the problem.

I can see a problem where if you add too many characters the story becomes unmanageable and that it's something to do only when necessary.

I can see all the real writers out there are shaking their heads at my naivete.

And on the 48 Hour Film Project front...

My group is still slated to meet to talk about cast, crew and equipment tomorrow. I'm getting the same buzz from the project that I got last year. Except now I know what to expect and have more experience.

Things are coming together but we still have a lot of ground to cover between now and May. We have casting decisions, the dry-run in April, location scouting, equipment rentals, etc. I know we'll get it done. The only real unknown is whether or not we will be one of the teams picked to be in the project. The odds are good, but we need a definitive answer.

Filmmakers Journal 3-14-05

2005-03-14T12:38:00.000-05:00

Beware the Ides of March. Better put out another filmmakers journal just in case something happens :-).

I worked on "The Pill" yesterday, getting another 10 pages on the disk. I have another 10 in my head at least. I just need the time to put it all together. I'm working really hard to complete this script as it's the first writing of mine that actually goes to feature length. I'm really excited about finishing something of that magnitude. I put it up there with finishing a novel. Never thought I would be enough of a writer to do that. Shows what I know.

I also gave a film conspirator of mine a tutorial on how to output a project in final cut 4 to iDVD so she could show her sister what she'd put together for her. As a trade I got to borrow Final Cut Pro. I'm looking through all the documentation and am really jazzed about finally being able to use a professional editing suite. Note to Apple: I fully intend on buying Final Cut 5 when it comes out later this year. I'm just saving my money, you will get paid.

The 48 Hour Film project date is rapidly approaching. We are slated to be in the drawing but do not yet know if we're in the project. I hope that the group is cohesive enough to do this regardless of wether or not we get in. I think the love of making movies should transcend any kind of contest. I hope they feel the same way.

We have a production team meeting this Weds. and then an audition this Sunday. We need to start wrangling together some equipment as well as actors. Nice to feel like we're really on the ball this time around, have a plan and the confidence to know that we can produce.

Week of the Dreamer

2005-03-12T00:25:00.000-05:00

Thoughtful
Originally uploaded by robmcq79.

I was just thinking, can't you tell, that every week has a theme. In light of this theory I'm going to try to find a name for every week from now on. This week has to be the week of the dreamer. Let me tell you why.

I already talked about my conversation with Jason yesterday. Well the theme of the dreamer has just repeated itself in a movie I just saw, Robots.

Now I know what your saying. "Ew, how could you go and watch that kids movie? You don't even like kids." To which I can only reply "Yeah, maybe so but it's not a kids movie." I challenge you to find a kid who gets the reference to "Daisy", the song that HAL 9000 sang at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Choosing me as a child doesn't count. I'm wierd.

Anyway, it was a really cute movie with a simple plot, really great one liners, and things that make you wonder "Where is that from?"

Our hero is a young young man, er robot. He's a dreamer and wants to go off to the big city to be an inventor. With his parents backing, he sets of on his adventure. Along the way he meets an interesting group of robots, including Robin Williams, who has not aged well since his role in Bicentennial Man.

With the help of his new found friends, er I mean robot friends, our hero meets his hero, Bigweld. He turns out to be not what our herobot expected. Far from it, Bigweld has gien up on his own dream and company. In fact his hero, the big city, and pretty much everything turns out to be a big letdown. Hmmm, ripped from the surly tapestry that is reality no less.

It's up to our hero to get Bigweld on the right track.
Apparently in this movie all you have to do it talk sense to a robot and the'll just come around. No muss, no fuss. So our hero, talks to his hero, and turns him back to the path of the dreamer. They then oust the money grubbing CEO of Bigweld's company and pretty much save the day. Isn't that special.

Now I'll admit that the story isn't anything special. But the thought and more importantly, the heart is there. It was a real treat of a movie. Something that revels in the sheer joy of being itself. Which is the point of the movie in the first place.

Be yourself. Be a dreamer. Don't give up. Etc. Here's to the week of the Dreamer. Salut.

The Dreamers

2005-03-11T12:53:00.000-05:00

I had a rather good conversation with Jason, one of my fellow ruggers, after practice last night. We both thought very highly of people who have a dream and maintain the pursuit of that dream throughout their lives.

It's an incredibly powerful and scary thing to have a dream. On one hand, you have the inspiration that dream provides on a daily basis. It empowers you, it drives you forward, it keeps you going. On the other, you have the doubt, the doubt in your abilities to achieve your dream.

The only thing that differentiates the exceptional from the ordinary is the ability to overcome self doubt and work toward your goal.

How do you do that? Baby steps and the occasional leap of faith.

I know it sounds corny but consider it for a second. You have a goal (be a painter, writer, photographer, businessman), but you have other obligations that take up large blocks of your time (a real job, kids, etc.). How do you achieve your dreams?

Think of one small thing you can do today that would help you bring yourself one step closer to your goal. It could be as simple as taking a picture, writing a letter to a long forgotten friend, or chairing a meeting at work. The point is to take yourself out of your routine and at the same time develop the skills that help further your dream.

Do you have a dream?

Then make a list of five small things, that would take anywhere from 15 minutes to half a day to do, pick one and do that thing. When the day is done you can look back and think "I'm one step closer today than I was yesterday." No longer will you have to make excuses. You will only have achievements.

Now about those leaps of faith. Eventually all these small steps your taking will lead you to develop your abilities. You will reach a point of transition. How do you recognize it? It could be a compliment from a friend, a job offer, or the realization that your better at your hobby than at your actual job. Leaps of faith usually involve putting yourself on the line. Allowing people to criticize your work. It's scary.

It's up to you how you choose to do this. If your a writer you could start a blog :-). If you take photographs you could get a gallery to review your work. The point is to put yourself out into the public eye. Then you can see what people think and reevaulate the work that you do. Accepting the constructive criticism of others allows you to improve your work in ways that you may not have considered.

Chasing a dream is one of the most challenging things you will every try to accomplish. You may find along the way that your dreams change. This is normal. Constantly evaluate your progress and keep moving forward.

You'll sleep more soundly, trust me.

Left vs. Right: Fight Night

2005-03-09T15:39:00.000-05:00

I love how Fox News (Sean Hannity specifically) is up in arms about the new Dems TV ads. For those of you who don't know these are ads that parody Hannity himself and An Coulter.

I don't think they have a right to argue. Windbags (Hannity) and know-nothings (Coulter) shouldn't be able to bitch and whine on national TV when someone calls them out for being windbags and know-nothings.

I may not be as politically savvy as those two but I can see when people get what they deserve. If I were them maybe I would have gotten my facts straight about Canada before trying to correct a Canadian official. Maybe I wouldn't have tried defend a hooker that posed as a journalist for a fake news organization who was granted access to the president so he could throw softballs at the president.

But that doesn't matter to them. Looking good, ratings and sticking to the party line are all that matter to them.

A chimp and a log cabin with a HUGE closet.

2005-03-08T13:08:00.000-05:00

That didn't take long. A little over four months have passed since the Log Cabin Repubilcans feigned moral outrage at the gay-baiting tactics that were used to help win the 2004 Elections. They are back in bed with the administration. Good little automatons. It was a little too scary to try and think for yourself wasn't it. There there now, you'll be much cozier towing the party line.

They did nothing to help further thier cause. They withdrew their support for the president (at least publicly) and shut up for four months. Now it seems that everyhting is all happy again.

Things seem to be all better now that it seems that the right has agreed to put Gay Marriage under the table for the next four years. The LCR can breathe a sigh of collective relief. First up on the adgenda, convincing all the wayward gays and lesbians out there that social security reform is a good thing. Their reasoning is that personal accounts allow you to will that money to a partner in the event of your death.

What the LCR fails to do in appealing to our sensibilities is address the main issue. That being that the Social Security reforms that the president is proposing mean less money for the american people in the long term. They also fail to address the issue that this plan will cost 2 trillion dollars to impliment while doing nothing to increase solvency in the system. When was the last time you spent two trillion dollars to do nothing?

What the LCR should be doing is fighting for equal rights for their relationships under the law. That way their spouses could take advandage of their Social Security benefits. It would cost less in the long run and ensure a larger retirement check.

The problem with that plan is that it goes against the Log Cabins long held beliefs of bowing to Special Intrests (i.e. Wall Street) and self loathing. In their eyes Social Security should be dismantled to make way for the Pennyless Society, er I mean the OWNership Society. They also believe that they do not deserve the right to marry or have the same rights under the law. Why else would they kiss and make up with the first chimp so soon after the election?

Why would a gay political group ally themselves with an organization that uses them as a political wedge? The Right fundamentaly hates what the LCR stands for. At least, that's what they tell their constituents on the campaign trail. The reality is that in washington, no one cares if you're gay or not. They only care if their home districts know. It's hypocritical, two-faced, and dirty. If a Democrat used the same device they would be burned at the stake. Though they wouldn't be a Democrat if they did.

What the LCR did was exactly what Republicans stand for: Towing the party line for corporate intrests and the wealthy at the expense of their own morals and beliefs. While at the same time screaming about how down to earth, pro-people, and moral they are.

Happy Monday

2005-03-07T10:51:00.000-05:00

Currently listening to: We Don't Need Another Hero, Tina Turner, from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

Currently working on: I can't say ;-).

Mood Barometer: Content and rising.

I got a chance to use my digital camera for some semi-artistic purposes. Went out on the waterfront with my friends yesterday and took some great shots of the waterfront. It was a beautiful day. One of those days that just makes you ache to experience it. Pure blue skies, shimmering water, picturesque buildings.

If you like digital photography and don't want to pay for a program like photoshop, then take a look at the GIMP http://www.gimp.com. It's pretty easy to learn and allows you to do some pretty cool stuff with digital photos. One of the only problems with it is that it has no support for CMYK color spaces. If you have know idea what that is, don't worry about it, you won't miss it (assuming you don't work in the print media). I'm currently using it to isolate regions of pure color in my photos.

Saturday I spent some time with my friend Nick who also plays rugby with me. We went to Target, the Apple Store, Whole foods, and we're generally bad influences on eachother. "Sure Nick you abosolutly NEED and IPod shuffle." "Sure Rob, you could totally find a million uses for a HD Video Camera." Right ;-).

Speaking of which, they had a Sony FX1 HD Video Camera on display at the Apple Store. At first I was in disbelief, shock, and awe. It's alot bigger than I thought It would be. Makes my GL2 look like a toy. The coolest thing about it was the zoom and focus rings. If I ever had one of those I would never be able to go back to a rocker switch zoom, ever.

I'll post some more pics from sunday after I get finished doctoring them up.

Russ

2005-03-05T19:56:00.000-05:00

Russ
Originally uploaded by robmcq79.

This is crazy Russ.

Russ is one of those amazing people that astonishes the more you think about what the've been through. I won't go into details but he's been through quite alot. But he's come out on top. He's got a great body and a personality to match. He's in a good relationship with someone who really cares about him.

Having friends like this is what makes me strive to become a better person and overcome the little hiccups in my life. All I have to do is think about what he's been through and all of my problems feel downright trivial. He's a light in dark places. Did I mention he's also a great dancer?

Why am I not jealous? I have no idea. I think Russ has something to do with that too ;-).