The NitPicker's Guide to the Lord of the Rings. Eighty-one points whereby the Jackson film differs from holy writ.

Star Trek: New Voyages is an amateur Star Trek series not dissimilar from Starship Exeter. New Voyages' primary refinement is that the shows are set on board the Enterprise of the original series as opposed to a contemporary ship of the same class, as is the case with Exeter. New Voyages also employs the same characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and so forth have simply been recast, and as the script makes clear, the events seen in New Voyages are intended to take place 'in canon,' if you will.

New Voyages looks like it has a larger operating budget than Exeter, and I thought the first episode, "What May Come," (described as a pilot on the website) seems to employ some more experienced actors than those in the Johnsons' labor of love.

It was a bit tough to download the episode, also. I ended up getting it from here. The site doesn't explain the format, but the zip files are crisp-looking 240x320 (I think) .wmvs, playable on the Mac with the excellent MPlayer OS X. Alas, there's no easy way to got from .wmv to DVD on the Mac, so you may be stuck watching the show on your monitor rather than on the tube.

I have written before about how this emerging genre fascinates me. New Voyages is particularly intriguing because of the close ties to the original show - two actors that appeared on the original series do guest shots, and a Trek fan muckety-muck who sold a story to Voyager also appears.

Overall good points include persuasive costuming, a variety of room sets including what appear to be complete bridge and transporter room sets, and some really good looking effects shots, all scrupulously employing designs drawn from the mid-seventies Starfleet Technical Manual.

New Voyages FAQ notes that producer James Cawley is a Trekanalia collector, and that the production shot in New York, facts that lead me to conclude that Cawley is the collector who purchased the DS9-built recreation of the TOS bridge set built for use on the DS9 time travel episode that placed Sisko and crew aboard the Enterprise during the events seen in TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Jimm and Josh Johnson of Exeter have told me they met with this collector in upstate New York to explore continuing their series on his sets but did not pursue the opportunity because it was geographically inconvenient for their cast and crew.

New Voyages FAQ also notes that Sulu doen not appear in the recast crew, 'for good reason,' which leads me to speculate that George Takei may appear in an upcoming episde, given his awareness of and involvement with the fan push to get Paramount to make Excelsior the next Trek to follow Voyager.

Naturally, there are some quibbles. The effects shots mix the textural look of the series' movie effects with the cleaner surfaces of the original television series, which looks odd. The audio of all the interior shots is roomy; that is, there's a clear acoustic reverb which comes from iimproper miking. The editing and pacing are - with the exception of the effects sequences - overly loose, leaving the whole production with a disctinct amateur feel; this is also a problem in the careless, busy use of soundtrack music as well. This overall slightly undisciplined sense is most obvious when the director violates TOS editing conventions in several places. This disrupts the desired effect of creating the illusion that one is watching a forgotten production from the time and place of the original series.

I am driven to comment on the visual failure of "Kirk's" hair. It's not even close to Shatner's Kirk 'do. Instead it looks like Elvis' hair, long, square sideburns and all. Since the odd 'Vanilla Ice' image of the actor on the main page for the production clearly shows pointy sideburns, I assume that the square burns must be a reference to the square burns worn by Bill in the original series pilot "Whom Gods Destroy."

In conclusion, I didn't get the same giddy charge from seeing this as I did from seeing Exeter, but by the same token I saw nothing to indicate that the production couldn't be tightened up. Given that both series are continuing production, I can imagine a very interesting set of scenarios between the two groups, from competition to cross-over. I also have a hard time imagining that Paramount is going to ignore or encourage this, as much as I believe it's what they should do. On the other hand, the Paramount logo appears on the website, so maybe I'm mistaken.

Imagine if they took the budget for one episode of the current series, and distributed it to ten amateur efforts in the form of grants as a kind of farm system. In one fell swoop they'd get distribution rights to the fan material, reconnect with the fan base, and establish a modern, post-digital era production and distribution cycle to learn from and draw on. I'm not holding my breath.

Of course, this sort of thing always leads me to wonder where the fan series production of Space: 1999 might be.

Last night Spence and I went to the Tractor Tavern to see old acquaintances of Spence's, the entirely brilliant (in the American sense of 'genuinely original and deep') The Handsome Family. The band is a husband-and-wife songwriting team; they perform original music that is deeply grounded in American traditions and which benefits from the rich baritone of the singer's voice. Viv had originally planned to attend a different show at the Croc, Visqueen, but decided to stay home instead.

Scott McCaughey and a Vancouver band, 'The Buttless Chaps,' opened, but I was there for the headliners. A couple friends met us there. I ran into an old friend there as well. Some grumpy gus was pissed that Katie and I (and then Spencer and I) were gabbing during the set, and although I was irritated by him, I couldn't be mad at the guy - the music demands reverence.

After the show I started talking to Brett Sparks, the lead singer, about the old-skool clamshell iBook they used to provide accompaniment for the entire performance. The iBook was running iTunes with a list of backing tracks and one-minute silent tracks between the backing tracks. I floated a possibility about a piece looking at the couple's use of Macs in their creative and performance process, and he was quite open to the idea. He told me that the backing tracks had all been developed in ProTools. We started talking about the roots of their music (they opened the set with a song about a bottomless pit, which reminded me of the myth of Orpheus).

Brett's wife Rennie is the lyricist; he mentioned that she is working on a novel, which sound interesting to me because I find their music so interesting and rewarding. We talked about the great age of much of the material that they work from. Their work reflective and literary in the sense that the work has a great deal of possibility for personal reflection and the discovery of tangential meanings built into it.

Then Spence and I ate at IHOP in the University District (bottomless coffee, endless pancakes) and had a long conversation about, like, you know, life and stuff, as traditionally appropriate to late-night dining.

Alas, the buses don't run between the U and the Hill after about 3:00 am, so I walked home. It took about an hour and a half. I arrived a bit after 5, having taken a pit stop at the wonderful neighborhood bookstore Twice Sold Tales and wandered around looking for a nice hardback copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which I'm reading on my Palm
Pilot. They had one, but it was overpriced at $18. I've been struck by the perfection of Stevenson's prose, which begs to be read aloud.

While I was there, they were playing old Kinks, and so at 5 am, as the sky pinked up a tiny bit, I had the pleasure of hearing 'Waterloo Sunset' just before I walked back in to the chilly chilly morning breeze.

victor is dead slash luna presents:

The Terror Alert Banana

Source here. That is all.

Eric descibes how he's been ripping John Peel to disc for later listening on iPod using the interesting multi-format capable MusicSafari.

In the past, I've used Ambrosia's WireTap, which is free.

iChat Knows Where I Am, blogs EIC Jason Snell at Macworld. He's whipped up a mildly kludgy AppleScript to set iChat's broadcast indicator status to recognize his current location, either 'at the office' or 'at home.'

Hm. This doesn't directly apply to my needs right now, but it's an interesting idea... I like the idea of status indicators available to good friends and family. In my case, something like 'vacuuming,' 'washing dishes,' 'doing laundry,' 'jobhunting,' and the like might be cool. Not that I have any idea how to automate that.

Tangentially: look! blogs at Macworld! Looks like Jason has been at it since January 20, and Mac 911 dude Chris Breen has been going since December.

Pixar Sees End to Its Disney Partnership [NYT]. Well. Someone's clearly lost their marbles. I recall seeing joking speculation that Apple would buy Disney if something like this came to pass... I'm sure the next few weeks will have some entertaining developments. I wonder, does this imply that Jobs has been spending a great deal of time paying attention to Pixar at the expense of Apple, thus the less-than-compelling product intros at Macworld earlier this month?

The Mac lovers of Microsoft: these ones haven't been fired.

Kidding, Mac BU! This P-I story looks at the people that make software for Macs up Redmond way. It's by Todd Bishop, who I've linked to far too much this week.

I recently sprang for an iSight, sold on it by a demo conducted by Eric. The product itself is a classic Apple widget; the very experience of opening the packaging is satisfying.

Alas, a bit more time spent with the product reveals some shortcomings.

• The default video chat application, iChat AV, is not cross-platform, limiting the user base. I do wish to note that the ease of use and quality of signal for iChat AV is astonishing.
• The iSight's default video settings are not well suited for low-light situations (such as my desk area).
• The iSight's video settings are not adjustable from within a stock install of iChat AV. Frustratingly, they are readily available in a range of other software applications, including Apple's own Quicktime Broadcaster. You can brighten the image and fix the color balance, but the settings will not be saved when you switch over to iChat AV.
• The three clear acrylic mounts that come with the camera are of limited utility, being very specifically designed to meet mounting requirements for current Apple products.
• iChat AV does not ship with the camera, but rather is available either as a bundle with OS X 10.3 or as a standalone application available via $30 purchase only.
• The lack of a large installed user base makes searching for reliable solutions to these irritations quite time consuming.

Fortunately, all of these shortcomings are addressable, with the exception of the unbundled iChat AV. Formerly, Apple offered a demo version that operated on older systems. That demo expired on January 15, and there's a storm of controversy on Apple's support boards about the already-premium priced camera coming without the basic software required to use it. Judging by Apple's previous solutions to this sort of thing, I would be unsurprised if Apple decided to make iChat AV available online to registered iSight owners for free, sometime soon.

There are a few third-party mounts available (the SightFlex looks particularly cool) for the camera, and of course many hacks to improve the flexibility of the stands as shipped.

Personally, I built a little box-like shelf out of cardboard and velcro to attach to the front lower bezel of my monitor. Eventually I'll refine it a bit and publish plans and instructions here.

A third-party program called iChatUSBCam ($9 online only) enables fine-tuning of the video image in iChat - and, more importantly, I think, enables USB-based web-cams and video-inputs to operate with iChat AV, which otherwise only accepts firewire video input. Considering that the iSight - and other firewire-enabled video solutions - generally go for well over $100, while USB web-cams can be picked up for a song, interested parties might wish to pursue this route as an alternative to obtaining the iSight proper.

So that brings us to the toughest problem, the lack of cross-platform opportunities for iChat AV. A well-informed friend notes that given Apple and AIM's partnership, now that AOL is not embargoed from producing a video-chat application, we should expect to see an interoperable video-conferencing application in the next release of AIM for Windows, and possibly in AIM for the Mac, if such a product is being maintained.

But what about right now?

There appear to be three options. Two are dual-platform video chat applications, iVisit and iSpQ. I noted messages from users of both applications noting that they functioned, and messages from users of both applications discussing the difficulty of setting the applications up.

A third option explicitly supports not only cross-platform video-conferencing but video-conferencing with users of NetMeeting, Microsoft's video-conferencing application. What prodigy is this?

It's the in-development open source project XMeeting. The application looks like it might be even harder to configure and set up for non-technical people than the two mentioned above, but the Holy Grail - interoperability with the de facto business standard - might make it worth swimming upstream for.

I woke up this morning after an epic dream all about a very detailed experience of insomnia.

B²'s Dear God Damn Diary brings it with the nimbly titled "Kerry Wins High Score in New Hampshire, Advances to Challenging Stage."

Oh, this this the best primary season ever!

Non-otaku observers had been wondering: "What is the secret name and power of the current Prez?"

Otaku76 comes through: "George W. Bush and the Twilight Idol Republican Administration" are the collective target of the Supa-Dems this year. As a bonus, there's some "hastily conceived and constructed wallpaper."

You know, if I actually spent eight hours scouring the net, I bet I could find enough primary satire sites that I could reconstruct actual news from them. Hmm. Interesting experiment.

The Illuminated Donkey contues continues the standard-setting coverage of the hot and heavy Democratic primary season with a hard-hitting memoir and backgrounder on Vermin Supreme, whose web server looks to be down, alas.

I anxiously await the next bulletin from fellow correspondent B².

With news resources such as these, democracy sleeps safely tonight.

Seattle-area readers may already know about the P-I's relatively new blog offerings: seattlepi.com Microsoft Blog is written by Todd Bishop (who appeared on KUOW's new biz show, Wi-fi Networking News writer Glenn Fleishmann.

Sometimes I find Bishops' blog a bit dry and newsy, but he seems to be finding his blog-legs as in this post providing some context for a recent story about Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham coming aboard the mothership, or when he posts background and links for today's examination of recently-published Microsoft marketing touting a lower total cost of ownership for Windows than Linux.

the P-I's senior online producer, Brian Chin, also blogs in Buzzworthy, a wider-net variety of blog. Today he's linked to a story about the Creativity Machine, a study about the problem of obesity in an affluent society, and a P-I feature by traveling correspondent Winda Benedetti (I believe Chin's ex-colleague, now taking a trip around the world with her husband, as I recall) on the mystery of international toilets.

There is also a blog on the Mariners and consumer news, neither of which I'm currently familiar enough with to talk about.

Both of the blogs I cite in detail have open comments on entries, only infrequently garnering input, and neither posts trackbacks. I'm pretty sure they are using Movable Type. I'd like it if they would expose trackbacks but I can imagine there might be some infighting about outbound links at the paper.

One of the interesting things about the comments that do appear (troll-fests aside) is that they reflect the demographics of the P-I's online readership, and therefore tend to reflect a distinct sensibility from comment threads seen in the rest of the blogosphere. I hesitate to characterize that sensibility (I haven't seen enough of the comments to really be able to pin it down). I do look forward to watching that sensibility evolve to reflect the immediacy and bidirectional nature of the medium.

Damn, if platters gave off cyano fumes I'd be a dead man.

Within the last week I completed the authoring process on some archival DVDs for an early-80's band, for distro only to a tiny group, and found myself with a list of people that collectively have been promised delivery of about fifty discs, variously DVD and CD.

This is a totally noncommercial project, so at best I expect a couple comp CDs later on from some of the folks. It's wildly time consuming. I'm glad I've done this; but I think next time I'll be a bit more disciplined in what I promise to whom.

I *should* be done with the DVD portion of the burning run by bedtime.

I noticed I was getting an uncharacteristically large number of site visitors from MeFi yesterday - not server-buckling numbers, but more than I'd expect from a random trackback.

As may be seen in the link above, my favorite information magpie chez Mefi, none other than the musically-knowledgeable and my apparent neighbor, the redoubtable (if war-cranky of late) y2karl cites this blog in a response to the original post.

Look ma! I'm an information resource! Of course, it's a throwaway post that just links to a single TV-news story about wild parrots in Seattle (inspired by TFG).

So here's some better data.

Since that time (nearly a year ago), Viv and I have become friends with a couple who lives near Seward Park, in Columbia City, and they confirm that yes, there is a loud band of parrots that will occasionally swagger around the neighborhood knocking down little old ladies, frightening children, and chucking rocks through the windows of abandoned buildings.

NBC affiliate KING 5 has done a story about the birds (auto-redirects to registration page). Dated February 2003, this may be the origin of the national ABC News story linked by Scott. Friends of Seward Park mention the parrots on their 'Birds' page.

In December 2002, the Lake Forest Park Enterprise covered a householder's experiences with some of the birds, and here are some photos of the apparently burgeoning Maple Leaf colony that y2karl refers to in his post.

That's better.

Vickers Transoceanic Airship from Currell's Card Models. The models are free as downloads.

The Airship page also links to some interesting historical docs on the background of the model. On the free models list page he also offers an H. G. Wells Land Ironclad, the historical R-101 airship (also a mooring mast, and (be still my beating heart) the rocket from the amazing silent Fritz Lang SF flick Der Frau im Mond.

Hollyism notes that an ice storm is inbound to my hometown of Bloomington, and as I've been looking for an opportunity to elevate the level of discourse here by running a neglected citation by Mr. Twain, here it is. I was pretty much killed by this when I read it - it's a bit over the top by modern standards, but it's clearly intended as a sort of virtuoso set-piece. I hope those shortly to be discommoded may take the opportunity to stand among the glittering trees and read this aloud as a voice from the past.

From Following the Equator, a late travelogue concerning a world-spanning lecture tour. He's writing about the Taj Mahal and uses this anecdote and rather flashy bit of descriptive writing to convey by analogy his impressions of the tomb.

Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English friends, and I mentioned the ice-storm, using it as a figure -- a figure which failed, for none of them had heard of the ice-storm. One gentleman, who was very familiar with American literature, said he had never seen it mentioned in any book. That is strange. And I, myself, was not able to say that I had seen it mentioned in a book; and yet the autumn foliage, with all other American scenery, has received full and competent attention.

The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm is an event. And it is not an event which one is careless about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the doors, and shoutings, "The ice-storm! the ice-storm!" and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush for the windows. The ice-storm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are wrought in the silence and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs and branches of the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In time the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in hard pure ice; so that the tree looks like a skeleton tree made all of glass -- glass that is crystal-clear. All along the underside of every branch and twig is a comb of little icicles -- the frozen drip. Sometimes these pendants do not quite amount to icicles, but are round beads -- frozen tears.

The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a sky without a shred of cloud in it -- and everything is still, there is not a breath of wind. The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock to the window and press together there, and gaze intently out upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word, nobody stirs. All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting waiting for the miracle. The minutes drift on and on and on, with not a sound but the ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and feels a swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows what is coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still higher, flooding the tree from its loftiest spread of branches to its lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then in a moment, without warning, comes the great miracle, the supreme miracle, the miracle without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and twig to swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a spouting and spraying explosion of flashing gems of every conceivable color; and there it stands and sways this way and that, flash! flash! flash! a dancing and glancing world of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, the most radiant spectacle, the most blinding spectacle, the divinest, the most exquisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and color and intolerable and unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has rested upon in this world, or will ever rest upon outside of the gates of heaven.

By, all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the icestorm is Nature's supremest achievement in the domain of the superb and the beautiful; and by my reason, at least, I know that the Taj is man's ice-storm.

In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads pendant from twig and branch is an individual gem, and changes color with every motion caused by the wind; each tree carries a million, and a forest-front exhibits the splendors of the single tree multiplied by a thousand.

It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm put upon canvas, and have not heard that any painter has tried to do it. I wonder why that is. Is it that paint cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a sun- flooded jewel? There should be, and must be, a reason, and a good one, why the most enchanting sight that Nature has created has been neglected by the brush.

From World66. Clever promo for this interestingly open travel info site.

I find it particularly intriguing that the European team behind the site should adopt a logo based on the American icon for the freedom of the road, the old Route 66 sign.

In an unrelated tangent, I recently walked on the slab of 66 that's now on permanent display at the Smithsonian.

The unvisited area on my map must be the former Czechoslovakia and Hungary; I suppose we might have gone through them on the train to Austria from Switzerland, but I'm not gonna count that. The only other country I'm uncertain about is Peru - we might have visited briefly on our way out of Chile in 1970.

OK/Cancel: I, Robot, You Jane, via Blackbelt Jones.

Roomba Review, community site for Roomba. Looks just launched. Astroturf? Those are some good prices.

Genius art-guy Gary Panter on Roomba.

A bar.

Takeapart walkthrough at Jake's World (which has some other cool stuff, looks like). Macly!

Roomba Community: Zoomba. Hacks. Uh-oh. Yeah, this looks like the place.

Roomba Diagnostic Mode.

Has anyine crossbred a Furby with a Roomba yet? Also, did I hear tell now would be the time to pick up your MindStorms kits? Uh... Yes, but never mind.

Ralph the Roomba at Bunk.

Popular Science: Hijacking Your Cute Little Vacuum Bot.

Business Week: How the Roomba was Realized.

Unbound Spiral: Roomba Robot. 'Early adopter' enthuses.

Viv and I spent to day wandering around and seeing movies. We hit RoTK again, and then after munching we saw Big Fish. Despite Mr. Goldstein's transparent slanders, I concur with his judgement of the film as one of the best of 2003. My pop's getting a phone call tomorrow for no reason at all, between lawyer time.

Confidential to Y. S.: Okay, okay, so I'm running a bit behind on the book, okay? And, yeah, yeah, we're springing for the booze in Vegas, I heard all about it from, believe me, everyone. I'm not picking up his and Frankie's bill at the worst bar in New York, though. Sorry for any mizundastoods. Hey, if you get phone time with L'il Kay-Gee, can you stall him on the ink for Ken's Misbegotten or whatever that dog is? I am this close to patching things up - I even gave him an invite to join orkut today - he's warming up! I just know it!

The Morning News - The Non-Expert: IKEA.

TMN brings in Mr. Baldwin for some words of wisdom on the lurking menace that is IKEA.

P-I MSBlog: Mike Rowe settlement.

Mike gets some toys, a conference visit, and some free training, this time in technology rather than negotiating tactics. Looks like a nice recovery by Redmond, if dirt cheap.

- begin messtrans -

1:48PM

NASA: come in Spirit
NASA: Spirit come in
Interplanetary Cellular has joined this chat.
NASA: Spirit come in
Interplanetary Cellular: Sorry, Spirit is away from its planet right now. Would you like to speak to somebody else?
NASA: is, um, is Pathfinder there?
NASA: hello?
Interplanetary Cellular: beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
beepbeep
NASA: I'm sorry the reception on this phone is fucking terrible
Interplanetary Cellular: Please try your call again later.

1:50PM

NASA: oh christ
NASA: (redials)
NASA: (rings for a long time)
NASA: pick up!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Hello!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Sorry, I was in the shower!
NASA: Yes, hi! I'm trying to reach Spirit, you know, on Mars?
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Oh...one second...
NASA: Thanks!
NASA: (twiddles thumbs)
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: [muffled] Some guy named NASA is asking for you..
NASA: (doodles, hears quiet voices on phone)
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: I don't know, something about pretty pictures of rocks...
okay.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: [clear] Spirit stepped out for a minute; can I take a message?
NASA: (sighs)
NASA: Uh, yeah, can you tell her that everybody back on Earth is, like, really worried about her?
NASA: We have been trying to get through to her for several days now, and when someone does talk to her, all we get is static!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: I can put you through to her voicemail, or I can take a message?
NASA: If by some chance you see her, or her friends Beagle or Pathfinder or that nice older probe Viking, will you pass a message?
NASA: Please?
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Sure thing!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Lemme get my pen...
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Go ahead!
NASA: Her Uncle Hubble just got some very bad news. Spirit's sister will be there in a few days, and she can fill Spirit in on the details.
NASA: After that, we're sending someone to get you, Spirit. It may take a while but someone will be there. Hang on - please just hang on!
NASA: (deep breath, pauses)
NASA: That's it.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Whew. Perhaps you'd prefer voicemail?
NASA: no, no, this is fine.
NASA: Now, I think her sister should be the one to tell her, but I can let you know -
NASA: Uncle Hubble's not long for the soloar system.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Um...okay then.
NASA: Brush the dust and mud off her sundial for me - for all of us.
NASA: Okay?
NASA: By the way, you've been very helpful and kind.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: That's my job, sir.
NASA: Who is this again?
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Scott Carpenter.

- end messtrans -

Credits:

The part of NASA was written and played by Mike Whybark.

The parts of Interplanetary Cellular and Scott Carpenter were written and played by Ken Goldstein.

Integrating Gallery into MovableType - a tutorial. Another project pointer.

The discussion in the forum is about getting recent or random images from Gallery and displaying them inline on MT, a pretty cool idea but not quite what I'm looking for.

The thread originator has his tutorial here and in the body of the piece says, "The basic idea here is that we're using the MT template system to dynamically create the header and footer wrappers that Gallery will insert around it's content."

To which I say, that is an approach that holds some promise. It's still a blanket solution though; and additionally it appears to simply replace MT functionality with Gallery photo albums.

The ideal would be to have Gallery-ness apply only to specified posts or categories. hmmm.

I should note that the recent updates to Gallery include the very welcome additions of an 'offline mode,' which enables cold-HTML duplication of a given Gallery's content, useful for burning CDs from Gallery (a Good Thing) and a reasonably robust skinning capability, unfortunately not directly accessible in the admin or guest UI and possibly not assignable on an album-by-album basis.

David Raynes: SubCategories is an MT plugin to enable nested categories. I don't have time to implement this today but clearly my categories have gotten out of hand; hopefully this will help. I hope not to have to re-categorize everything.

EmptyBottle.org: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower sums up, in brevity, wot the hell the ol' canuck was yammering aboot the other day.

If you didn't take the time to read the whole thing (and you should, it was a doozy, and I was not alone in noticing it) you might check out his boil-down. The boil-down leaves much less room for interpretation. I think I agree with these ideas all the way. Especially #7.

Although, now that I think of it: could we get a powerpoint presentation, please?

Spaceflight Now: Spirit rover suffers 'serious anomaly'

After a day of troubleshooting, engineers have not yet been able to restore communications with the Spirit rover, which stopped beaming back science and engineering data Wednesday. Project manager Pete Theisinger at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., described the situation as "a very serious anomaly," but said it was too soon to say what might be causing the problem, whether it might be potentially fatal or whether the spacecraft can be restored to normal operation.

Gahhhh.

Maybe they pulled funding already, this being an unmanned mission? That's a joke,sort of.

seattlepi.com Microsoft Blog: Mike Rowe, future CEO? muses Todd Bishop at the PI MSBlog.

Google News picks it up (hey, the URL is a legit P-I link, right?) and the fun begins. Dozens of trolling Mike Rowes, a Steve Jobs, a Bill Gates, a Linus Torvalds, and many other puns are made.

Hey Todd! Please don't delete the comments! There's something vaguely historical happening here. I suppose, however, some of them might get bounced for direct threats.

Disneyland Resort Tower of Terror: (seen in a different context at BoingBoing) yipes, such an unfortunate name.

I feel like the doofi that got bent outta shape over The Two Towers, having never heard of this before.

National Book Critics Circle chooses awards nominees, sayeth the press release. At the risk of repeating myself, what are you waiting for? Step it up, biblomanes - it's gonna sell out.

Other Vollmann entries here.

I just flipped into the last half-hour Spike Lee's Malcolm X on iFC.

That is some moviemaking. Damn. Good to see again.

The Illuminated Donkey runs Nancy Goldstein's Monkeys, Donkeys, and Junkies today, as it has on and off for a few months. So far, each time it runs, I write some doggerel. Why stop now?

When the monkey of the east
precedes the sheep about the quarter
with the biggest bang upon, not gong, but street

showing value for your money -
not monkey - that is, also:
the biggest bang for your buck,
Hell Money dollars blow beneath the truck

And then the sheep, not you but ewe,
are all a-snooze beneath
the soothing eye of ass,
that is, the donk -

Whose mighty jawbone set
us upon the path
to Marduk and Ur -

always in the company
of donk and monk of course

(Please note
the mule, the ass, the donkey,
is not by any means a horse;
it's thought, you see,
that as it sees the ewes
it keeps the monkey off the back)

And so we hairless apes
went stumbling down the dusty path
into our urban hives;
and in our fitful stumble
do we not weave and nod and droop?

We lean upon the donkey
and find the monkey on our back:
Like Rip Torn, if not on junk
we might imbibe and drive.

If on the road he rode
the donkey with the monkey
he'd not be seen as drunk
and we'd be less one episode
of monkey, donkey, junk.

EmptyBottle.org: Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Wonderchicken, says Stavros at great length. Word is, blogs are like parties. Mmmm. I folla. Not sure I agree. He, of all people, will understand my reference in the title here.

I get the whole blogs=punk rock thing. Part of what made punk valuable was moving beyond punk per se. Here's a total tangent: punk rock is for old people, I think. I keep waiting for the next thing, the thing that will make me shake my head and wonder what the hell those kids are thinking, and it ain't here yet. Blogs ain't it. GWB ain't it. Halo ain't it.

Cell phones come pretty damn close, though.

Grey-haired indivizzles who once stood amazed as they listened to Joey Shithead rage and roar and now find themselves bloggizzle may enjoy Stavros' thoughts. I did.

The Register: Airships to deliver broadband to rural areas, anti-blog news and humor site reports.

ADSL: Airship Digital Subscriber Line. No word yet on snappy uniforms.

Intrepid correspondent B² covers the upset in Iowa, as millions fled the smoking rubble of Dubuque in the wake of the mighty battle.

He's updated the scoreboard, as well.

I just discovered that iTunes can burn to CD from a remote volume if that volume is mounted.

My connection to the remote volume is via a 10/100 hub, and both the burning machine and the host machine have 10/100 ethernet ports, so presumably the data was running at 100 - but still, that's pretty cool. I was burning on both machines simultaneously from the same directory.

The Illuminated Donkey flips on the teevee, Johnny Walker in hand, and blogs the Iowa caucuses. Among other learned observations, he notes that "less than 1% of Iowans are under 50 years old; seriously, it's like that Soviet town they used to show in the yogurt commercials," and that Joe Lieberman has a big future as a Chinese-food deliveryman.

And stop to admire the election-season graphics, why don'tcha. You'll have to hum the puffed-up brassy pseudo-march soundtrack by yourself - just take Tom Waits' "Jersey Girl", imagine it all in majors and up-tempo with snares and no vocals and you'll be on the right track.

Today it was sunny and 60, the white moutains bright in the distance as the cedar-scented breezes ruffled my hair.

Tintin & Switzerland excites me with information on the real Marlinspike and other locales near Lac Leman, including a cameo appearance in The Calculus Affair of a place I have been. In fact, I was there rather frequently for a part of my life around 1982. The interior of the station at Lausanne stands in for one at Cornavin, presumably in Geneva.

via The Cartoonist, via, uh, things mag.

Jeez, the things citations are outta hand.

Making of America: at Cornell.

...A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. The project represents a major collaborative endeavor in preservation and electronic access to historical texts.

Via this typically thoughtful Paul Ford post.

Design inspiration, certainly. When, oh when, will I see my long-desired handbills archive out there in the aether?

My pal David is moving to the city. He's looking for places via craigslist, and I vouch for his personal hygiene and excellent education.

City people, can I get the hookups rolling?

He'll be there to get housing on Tuesday and will move there in two weeks.

David Pogue, Bob LeVitus, and John Fortt are out the gate ahead of the pack with reviews of GarageBand.

[via Atat]

My money's on TidBITS for a very thorough writeup on Monday or Tuesday, though - Adam's got two working musicians writing for TidBITS regularly and I expect them to answer my questions about what the limitations of the product are.

endquote: naked sushi, then church!

Record-tying cold has us under wraps , notes the Staten Island Advance, beating out other Big Apple-based publications in Googlejuice for coverage of today's chilly weather in the vicinity of the Big Apple.

Buck up, City people! The Nets might move to Brooklyn, after all, and Jersey's looking at recognizing same-sex commitment ceremonies, and just to top things off, a) Ken's eating soup and b) while your temperatures are in the single-digits, here in Seattle it's a balmy 47, and will likely climb to 50 or so!

Good thing, too, 'cause I have some errands to run.

Project Horizon at astronautixcom [via things].

HORIZON is the project whose objective is the establishment of a lunar outpost by the United States. This study was directed by letter dated 20 March 1959, from the Chief of R&D, Department of the Army, to the Chief of Ordnance. Responsibility for the preparation of the study was subsequently assigned to the Commanding General, Army Ordnance Missile Command. Elements of all Technical Services of the Army participated in the investigation. This report is a limited feasibility study which investigates the methods and means of accomplishing this objective and the purposes it will serve. It also considers the substantial political, scientific and security implications which the prompt establishment of a lunar outpost will have for the United States.

Includes numerous black and white illustrations. Part of Encyclopedia Astronautica. Don't miss the Phantom Cosmonauts, where I learned that the Russian space program actually flew a full-size sculpture of Yuri Gagarin around the moon. Who says that art under socialism lacks imagination?

Latro, Cerebrus, Suns New, Long and Short - Gene Wolfe | Metafilter, from the reliable hand of y2karl. Gene Wolfe roundup, thorough as ever from the redoubtable.

Wolfe also is interviewed of late by Neil Gaiman on the occasion of his current book, The Knight, just out.

I must be out and about for some portion of my day. Will I pass by a bookstore? It's possible, I think.

The Illuminated Donkey takes a fare-thee-well glance at every power-crazed political criminal's favorite bevvy, Johnny Walker!

I'll drink to that!

(Full disclosure: as part of an endorsement deal with The Illuminated Donkey, the author of this website once received a half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Red, or some substantial drinks, or something, from noted wanna-be Broadway impresario Ken Goldstein. I can't remember. There was a lot of alcohol involved. There may have been women.)

(confidential to Yassir Shizmebehbe: It's been a busy damn week over here, and I am NOT sending you the goddamn scotch. If I did, Goldie would see it in your bar, and then he'd get wise, see? That's the last thing we want at this stage.

But we will reimburse for up to 50 percent of business related bartabs for Mr. Goldstein on your card on receipt of the initial score and lyrics for legal review. There's some nibbles from Taymor regarding a sort of revisionist thing, especially if we can work the whole alcoholic seeks redemption angle into the plot - separate, of course, from the score and the tunes. It's ironic, see?

Looking forward to meeting your new PA and 'secretary' on the links Friday. Best to the little lady.)

it ain't the quote but it's what I heard.

And I so love this film. It feels like my mind.

Do you have tobacco?

O fer krissakes.

AMC is running Jarmusch's masterwork this secont, Dead Man, and OF COURSE I'm gonna stay up and watch it.

For which I owe thanks, as I learned that my %^&*#$!@ stereo amp has a channel out, godammit. God-dammit.

Ixaybichay: I am Nobody.

(That's Gary Farmer, and he's in the very excellent Smoke Signals, too.)

I had my interview in Redmond (no, not with a certain software behemoth) this afternoon and it went very well. Over pho the CTO showed and discussed the company's product and I'm still very excited about it. I also found the CTO likeable and enjoyed our conversation.

On the way home, I couldn't find the stop for the 545, which is the fast bus back to Seattle, so I took a 249 (a magic short bus!) to the Bellevue transit center. I killed time on the bus by firing up KisMAC, a stumbler that works with third-party wireless cards and drivers.

In the thirty minutes we drove though the suburban Eastside, skirting the shore of Lake Samammish, not once was I without wireless access for over a minute; sadly, I was unable to connect, but that may be a configuration problem with the app (it takes over from the default driver when you launch it).

KisMAC prompts you to save the results, and I did so - I'll crunch the numbers and get back to you. Have your people call my people, and they'll do lunch.

One Suicide Too Many: by Philip Dawdy

CYNTHIA DOYON meant business the morning of Aug. 5. She was cleaning out her desk at KUOW-FM and moving on after 24 years at the NPR station. The 48-year-old with a smooth, husky voice had been working part time on weekends as the host of The Swing Years and Beyond. For photographs, she dressed like a 1940s throwback—checked jackets and skirts, permed blond hair carefully parted to the side. Around the University of Washington campus, however, she was most commonly seen walking to the library wearing khakis and a windbreaker, Schlitz beer cap on her head, books in her arms.

Watching the persistent traffic to and heartfelt messages left on my two posts about Doyon's death tells me that this article will certainly be of interest to many people. I have yet to read the piece, but I hope it helps to answer the many sad questions I've seen in my email inbox these past few months.

(After reading the piece: It's good, and impassioned, and worth reading.)

Rest in peace, Cynthia: you are truly remembered with deep fondness.

Mr. Paine's spirit is apparently distributing handbills on the streets of Seattle.

As a designer who has gleefully cribbed from the type design of other eras, I applaud this somewhat unrefined effort to employ eighteenth-century modes of type design. The lovely marbling is nothing more than street mud, which I believe truly finshes the piece.

front

reverse

handbill found at the intersection of Pine and 9th,
Tuesday evening, January 13, 2004

macosxhints - AvantGo is back on Mac OS X for USB Palm devices (via a third party project), plus a longish troubleshooting discussion. File under 'next week, for sure.'

thingsmagazine.net is currently holding down the 'best summary' slot in my digital peregrinations, recently encoutered-ness not withstanding.

What better way to cement your audience's love an appreciation than a straightforward namecheck? In the same graf as such august wonders as ask mefi and the mighty mighty b², yet.

Thanks, things! What a nice way to turn in from the pub! (yes, pub - I revisited the site of the grey-haired barfly incident this night, an' its' gots a snug, an' Watleys, an' so forth. And the occasional tussle.)

Without going into detail, as I'm pressed for time, may I say I've finally investigated the local workgroup sharing features of OS X, and I couldn't be happier. All the boxen now have printing. All the boxen now have access to the music library. Everything works smoothly over wireless. Very nice indeed.

I am truly the king of the late adopters.

argh - an external harddrive apparently slept last night, eventually snoozing the whole box. sorry for the apparent down time.

TidBITS#712/12-Jan-04 offers detailed analysis of the MacWorld announcements from last week. While Adam's lead editorial struck me as less sharp than he's capable of (it felt more like justification than analysis, something that may be borne out by his noting that he's not a music-oriented Mac user), the detailed discussion of iLife 04, in particular, is worthwhile.

Non-Mac iPod users: what do you think of Adam's thesis?

My portfolio occupied much of my time today, apologies for the dead air.

Go take a look! I still need to wrangle the assets for a number of old-skool multimedia CD-ROMs, but there's a passel of material there that was not previously available.

Gallery, for all its' not-immediately apparent limitations and frustrations, remains a deeply flexible tool, and I am ever-thankful for it. Adding the fifty-or-so graphic files I threw up today would have been a much more frustrating experience without it. Here's to ya, Bharat and company!

thingsmagazine.net: daily links, photos and new writing about objects. Why, exactly, do I find this so dense?

via oldtimey's referrer site. And may I say, hippo birdie two ewes, by the way.

Translators are welcome to clarify my cryptic musings.

My So-Called Blog examines the folkways of the blog, or, more precisely, of some teenagers who use LJ.

It's long, appears accurate enough if highly focused, and, regrettably, will surely lead to some interesting questions for those of us not in adolescence. OMG! Now I can devote the rest my life to explaining that blogs AND comics are not really something exclusively for kids.

defective yeti: The Lord of the Ring of Fire

And then, out of nowhere, a creepy-looking bald-headed creature comes onto the scene.

Father-to-be Matthew Baldwin points out that the whole alllegorical meaning of LOTR has been wildly misinterpreted.

Moorcock´s Weekly Miscellany is a nuke-clone based update to the former multiverse.org, long hosted by the capable Berry Sizemore for Mr. Moorcock.

I interviewed Mike early last year about his current Elric series and the impending movie, and he discusses it quite freely in the PHPBB forums on the new site, mentioning at one point a budget of - $100m!!!

He also mentions that they are aiming at a trilogy; 100 mil is less than half the budget for Jackson's LOTR but definitely respectable. Fellow ur-geeks will in all likelyhood find a stroll through the site rewarding.

Sans specifics, the telephone chat is for a company that looks like it's doing some really cool stuff. Homework, hooo!

A few years ago, my mom gave me a CD for Christmas, because the musician behind the record lives here in Seattle and his mother is my mom's neighbor.

The record is Blues Dream and the musician is local hero Bill Frisell.

Nothing long winded here; just that it's an amazing amalgam of languid blues-based jazz that builds more on non-jazz American popular music of the past seventy years than jazz per se. Listening to it over and over I long fantasized that Frisell would make a record with Austin transplant and banjo nutcase Danny Barnes (nutcase is here used in a technical sense, meaning genius), after a while, so it came to pass.

Tracks three and four are "Pretty Flowers Were Made for Blooming" and "Pretty Stars Were Made to Shine." The titles are taken from the lyrics to Little Maggie, and listening to these two tracks is one of the coolest aural experiences someone who listens to music written before the steam engine was invented might have an opportunity to experience.

Frisell plays out with well-spaced, even stately regularity. Consider him.

Man Killed by Mountain Lion Identified [LA Times]: A cougar attacked two cyclists yesterday in Orange County, California, at different times. One of the victims is dead and the other is hospitalized.

Floods, fires, killer flu, wild animal attacks: keep an eye out for plague and quake, California. Arnold is the antichrist, clearly. If you'd only elected me.

I applied for another seventy-odd jobs today. I did get one response from a h00man - someone at an agency noticed that I was systematically applying to each listed postition on their intake board that matched my skillset (which is unusually broad, driving the large number of positions I'm submitting for) and dropped a polite little note asking me to cool it.

When I first moved here, I would scour the want ads in the paper and enter the contact information into a database for each position, as well as the title, a note, and the date I saw the ad. Then I'd do a mail merge and print off a cover letter and resume for each job listing, using dbase II and WordStar on my old Kaypro. I had a nightmarishly loud teletype-style printer (a Juki) that took about two minutes to print each sheet of paper. I believe I averaged about forty jobs a week, so each print run went on for about two-and-two-thirds hours.

Eventually I upgraded to a little dot-matrix printer.

As I recall, I got one interview, which led to a job as an art historian, of all the crazy things - actually using my degree! - with a startup that was attempting to develop an automated insurance-and-collatteral vaulation system for art collections based on scanning and databasing the art-auction results for everything, everywhere, since the beginning of time.

Extrapolating from that experience, I'll keep my seventy-a-week average - maybe even expanding on it - going for about four months, and I expect one inteview to result. Bear in mind that Viv has actually laid down the law: I have to get a job. Just lookin' doesn't produce revenue.

UPDATE: Crazy, I already have a phone chat request. Cross your fingers!

FOKG Patrick Murphy weighs in with some photgraphic updates on the Denny Way Sled Resort. I'm sure you'll concur that they are worth sharing.

Bush to Announce Ventures to Mars and the Moon, Officials Say: NYT.

Well, here's hopin.' I'm not holdin' my breath - my skepticism of the family is quite boundless.

Dirkon - The Paper Camera [pinhole.cz] [via BoingBoing]: Let's see. I take pics. I do paper engineering and modeling. I play music with a Czech man.

How can I NOT link to this?

B²'s Dear God Damn Diary offers a helpful guide to the Democratic contenders, much needed and of unquestionable worth. It's things like this that help to demonstrate the meaningful contribution that blogging can offer to the mediasphere.

In November, I recieved a peculiar postcard, which I noted and shared here, thinking it somehow foreshadowed an event involving Ken, an ex-coworker of both of ours, and a story involving fecal matter.

At that time I did not share the message on the back of the card, as I found it obtuse, possibly a feeble 'jest.'

Now it's all coming clear. If Goldstein thinks I'm letting him take Kensapoppin', tweak the book and add some dance frippery and then call it an original work that he's free to peddle under the quite-probably infringing title Ken's Misbehavin' to those heartless shmucks in Hollywood (HA! an option on UPN! HE has NO IDEA what he's walking away from!) he's going to have ANOTHER THINK COMING.

I'll be wrapped up with the contract law team for the rest of the day but rest assured... This game ain't over.

To: Britney Alexander, Acquisitions, BTVP
From: Mike Whybark
RE: Kensapoppin'

Dear Britney:

Thank you for your recent missive concerning your forthcoming effort, "Kenny, Big & Tall." While we understand your disappointment at the MOW status for the project (quite a step down from the two-part, twelve-hour HBO MS we were discussing in Vegas), the projected demography for the piece makes it a nice fit with UPN, and heartily wish you the success that all of us in the entertainment industry associate with the top-quality products associated with everyone's favorite netlet.

Furthermore, we extend our congratulations and condolences on your recent marriage and annulment. What with the deal memos coming so thick and fast this New Year in Las Vegas, we can easily understand that you anticipated casting your ex-husband in the role of Mr. Goldstein, an idea which, we must note, was expressed to you in an informal casting guidance note prior to the temporary alteration in your relationship to Mr. Alexander.

What a shock and disappointment it must have been to you when it became apparent that the Mr. Alexander of your childhood acquaintance, while Tall and we can only presume, commensurate with his status as a gridiron expert, Big, is neither the former star of Seinfeld and The Producers nor a Tony Award winning Broadway performer. We extend our deepest, most heartfelt sympathies, which only intensified when we learned of the contractual obligation between Bigshot Television and Mr. Alexander regarding "Kenny, Big & Tall."

In spite of our sympathies, however, we have grave concerns about the employment of the Ken Goldstein brand in conjunction with Mr. Alexander, especially in the context of the scripts we've seen for "Kenny, Big & Tall." While, as noted, we have only the best wishes for your production, we must insist that any attempt to represent "Kenny, Big & Tall" as an endorsed endeavor, or to incorporate the name or likeness of Ken Goldstein or The Illuminated Donkey or The Ken Goldstein Project into the shooting script, marketing materials, story line, resultant publicity, ancillary promotional products, keychains, tee-shirts, coffee mugs, children's plush sculpted backpacks, bobbleheads, chewing gum, potato chips or other fast-food ad snack packaging, museum exhibitions, commemorative magazine releases, DVD packaging or on-disc trailers, automotive limited editions, commemorative ceramic plates, wristwatches, production prospectus materials or any other materials unspecified in this informal letter will be met by immediate and forceful legal action. We will demonstrate our exclusive rights to the aforementioned brands and materials and our dependent interest in assuring that we maintain creative and approval control over any media appearances or derivational properties.

To that end, please relay an updated shooting script that effaces the infringing materials as soon as is convenient and please include a cover letter that enumerates any promotional communications or production materials embargoed by our request. It is not our intent to impede your production in any way, and trust that in order to meet your deadlines you will comply with all due promptness.

Best,
Mike Whybark
The Ken Goldstein Project
cc: KG, JD, ES, VP, MG, JA, GD

I strolled about in the snow on the Hill, camera in hand, from about 11:30 until 1:30.

I noticed that they had a couple el cheapo mandolins at Capitol Hill Loans, and taught the guy who worked there how to tune 'em. One sounded good, one sounded bad.

Then, my fingers burning with cold, I thought a nice Guinness at Kincora's in front of their fire would hit the spot. On my way I peeped in the window of Aurafice to see if Joe or Odin was working - alas, no. It was Paige the first time and then Ally, a few minutes later. I stuck my nose in Bill's to see if Tod was there, but apparently he was still at work.

When I made it down to Kincora's I looked in the window, saw the fire, and looked in the window for a second to see if I knew anyone. I didn't, so I paused to think about it for a minute.

A middle-aged woman with full, graying long hair and no makeup wearing a jean-jacket and a girls' long-underwear top came hurrying out and addressed me with familiarity. "Why there's a good lookin' guy standin' out here in the snow!"

In puzzlement I looked around, and then at her; I hadn't ever seen her before in my life. She was addressing me. I made polite noises. "Sure is snowing," I said, though it had pretty well tapered off.

"Well, it ain't snowing as hard as it had been," she observed.

I turned to go.

She rapidly took a step up to me and said with a nudge, "So, buy me a drink?"

I blinked in surprise and didn't know what to say. I'd pretty much made up my mind not to go in before she came out. Into my pause she said, coquettishly, "I got something for you..."

I laughed nervously and said, "Uh, well, that's very kind of you, but not today," using my standard panhandler dodge. I beat a hasty retreat back up the hill, leaving her muttering by the door to the bar.

I still wanted a Guinness, so I doubled back over to see if Clever Dunne's was open. As I descended Denny Way toward the overpass, I heard and saw a small crowd of people cheering and shouting at the intersection of Denny and Olive.

The steep slope of Denny was closed to traffic and had been transformed into a sled and snowboard hill. A young man with a shovel was helpfully moving snow into t he center of the run. Another man at the base of the hill directed traffic as cars nosed up the overpass. Snowball snipers appeared on the roof of an adjacent apartment building and pelted the sliders. A yellow dog chased a couple in a garbage bag, barking. Black-denim-clad Crass punks rode a shiny tin snowshovel.

A slender, well-dressed man with close-cropped grey hair rode someone's skateboard deck without wheels, laughing. A black-haired hipster, his pea coat caked with snow, ducked my camera; his pal, in absurd and hairy poncho, took a pratfall. As I left, a young man appeared with the upper half of a hardshell Fender Tolex guitar case; running, he bellyflopped down the street.

My toes grew cold, and I retired from the field.

Man, it's just coming down!

Five-part iLife (iLife 04), $49, release Jan. 16. Not sure what the parts are. Steve refers to Garageband, the rumored music-prooduction tool.

Addons include a $99 music keyboard - Apple branded? Uncertain from listening.

Shit! I wanna go out in the snow, but I want to know what the 'one more thing'; is gonna be! Mini-Pods? Good marketing theme add-on to Garageband.

Hm, what else - the rumor about Safari update release doesn't appear to be confirmed in my Software Update window.

No update yet to http://www.apple.com/ilife; no URL at http://www.apple.com/garageband yet (10:50 am).

Cheryl Crow, Elijah Wood in iLife video.

Back to Steve; reviewing iPod success. First in unit sales, first in revenue in portable player category. 10 gb -> 15 gb same price ($299). In-ear headphones, $39. Last thing on the iPod (oh yeah, Steve?) is: a new ad.

Steve continuing iPod theme, looking at non-Apple share of the market: dominated by flash-based players. The rest is other HD-based players 'that we are in the process of eliminating with the iPod' (audience laughs).

Announcement: the iPod Mini, 4gb. 100 song storage. 1/2" inch think. $249. OUCH. Good product comparison to category, though; $169-200 for under a gig in the category. "Size of a business card." iPod UI. Solid state scroll wheel. FW and USB 2, both chargeable. Cables, belt-clip included. Accessories available: a dock and an armband. Looks like a backlit LCD screen.

Does iPod UI mean the contact and scheduling stuff is included?

"Just one more thing about the iPod Mini, it comes in colors." Whoop-de-doo.

Ships February in the US and April worldwide.

Still talking!

OSX transition is officially over. Reviewing points in presentation.

The REAL One Last Thing:

Give Apple people a hand. Audience does. And that's it.

Hmmmmm.

$49 for iLife with updated versions PLUS GarageBand? Is that it? If so, I'm sold and I will be picking that up, as I've been in the market for a multitrack recording solution; OTOH if GarageBand is to SoundTrack as iDVD is to DVD Studio Pro, mmm, maybe not: I need the app to support 8-in realtime feeds, just like an 8-track digital recording device.

Hate the price point on the MiniPod. Love everything else. 4gb is perfectly acceptable. Is it a bootable device?

I'm headed snow-ward!

It's dumping!

Made it down to the courthouse to find that the courts were closed! I walked home through the low-visibility snowstorm - windless, thankfully. It's an hour later and the snow is still coming down.

I'm going to go back out and shoot for a bit. The silence of the city is interesting, no-one honking, the sidewalks featuring a good number of trudgers.

I spoke with a hardy bicyclist who reported watching an 18-wheeler slide down Yesler sideways. Yesler is a very steep street downtown near the Courthouse.

Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency: William Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down, an oral history.

After reading this, I am antsy for the book to get here.

Ken mentioned that he'd heard Eggers mention a) they were publishing the book and b) it was going to be reasonably priced. It was on the phone or something, instant messaging, I don't recall.

He wasn't 100% what the book was, but he knows that I love Vollmann's work (I haven't yet read every word, but will eventually), and I filled in some of the details. This was in late November - I figured that meant the book was years away, given the intricacies of getting a project of this scope out the door.

Now, reading the McSweeney's Oral History I am consumed with jealousy and overtaken with fantasies of moving to SF to camp out on the Valencia project floor: I would LOVE to edit Bill's work, and to edit the personal obsession that he may think is his most important work - and which I believe stems from a very personal part of him - well, my God, Eli - that's Eli Horowitz, on the assumption my Googlejuice will draw you, you lucky man - I'm green with envy and giddy with joy for you, for me, for Bill, for us.

Rising Up and Rising Down, by Bill Vollmann. Published by McSweeney's, seven volumes, one C-note, 3500 copies.

What are you waiting for?

Sorry! I unplugged my DSL router as I left for jury duty today.

The King County Courthouse heating system was out, and the outdoor temperature is in the twenties. I'm still cold.

I was impaneled and dismissed on a burglary case. One down, one to go, unless they keep me.

There's some interesting news afoot I haven't been able to tackle today, having spent it finishing the DVD authoring on a project I initiated in September (my test burn is being prepped right this second - cross your fingers for me). I expect to develop it tomorrow, however, although I will be embarking, in theory, on a new experience tomorrow at 8 am - jury duty!

As I examined my papers I realized I hadn't read them closely and that I was actually required to send a part of them back promptly upon receipt, which I did not do. This makes me uneasy, as not carefully reading missives from the court system can easily result in an unwanted familiarity with the inside of a jail cell.

I can't imagine that a responsible prosecutor would ever let me sit on a jury, though, so I don't expect to be there long. Mind you, I think it would be interesting and I certainly don't regard the opportunity as a hassle or interruption of other, more important things - I simply doubt that my beliefs make me welcome in a courtroom.

I thought about going out of my way to become even more unwelcome, but have deferred the research. Maybe later. My goal is not to be dismissed, it's to be honest and participate responsibly. I'm quite sure my definition of responsibility is idiosyncratic, however.

I think the nub of the matter for me is my skepticism concerning how seriously I should take the idea of testimony under oath - I just can't imagine that it matters, at all, and it seems likely to me that every person one might observe giving testimony is whole heartedly lying in order to meet their own personal or professional goals. The idea applies equally to evidence, frankly; and so I'm left with an enjoyable pickle of epistemology: how can we find the truth? Is there such a thing?

If I'm not dismissed I look forward to thinking about these things seriously again, and since statistically it's most likely that I'll get assigned to some minor and relatively fast-moving event, I don't expect to resolve the challenges. But I welcome the opportunity to consider these questions.

Mars Exploration Rover: The Mission.

Starting, uh, NOW, Some West Coast NASA folks will be busy for a while. Check back with them around 9:30p and again at 11:30p for more info.

Late word is that Ken Goldstein is hard at work on his detailed recounting of The Illuminated Donkey Holiday Extravaganza 2003 Live From Los Angeles and Las Vegas - and as I noted here a few days ago, Dr. Goldstein and myself had the pleasure of a brunch with a noted LA-area television producer, who has worked with America's most trusted sources of news and photojournalism, and a public relations professional who has a great deal of experience in developing products targeted to the enhancement of animal rights and quality of life issues.

Keep an eye on the Donk for updates and information about the trip, and make no mistake - there's news afoot.

Dan viddys a link on the Prof and his religion. Of interest to those following certain topics here of late.

On simply starting to read this I emphasize the potential interest. Good stuff.

And on conclusion, I reiterate. Worth reading, but definitely concerned with a) the books and b) a catholic viewpoint of them.

The parent site, Decent Films, specializes in the like, and from a casual sampling, appears to be both thoughtful and, erm, catholic in many of the films it reviews. I found the site an interesting browse.

A few days ago, I posted a long review of The Return of the King, after noting that I had reservations about the critical judgments I formed while watching the movie for review. In essence, I did not find myself as emotionally involved in the film on first seeing as I had expected to be; and therefore the specific critical complaints I noted as I viewed the film were both unbalanced in the overall viewing experience and, I suspected, invalid in that they reflected a specific variety of aesthetic experience that differed radically from seeing film either as a straight recreational experience or from approaching the work as a serious, independent, original work of art.

When I see a film for review I generally try not to learn anything about it in advance - something that's harder than you'd think - because I think that engaging with the film based on expectations - for the stars, writer, director, or effects budget - will make it more difficult to observe myself in the process of absorbing the work, and therefore more likely to reflect not my perceptions in the review but rather those expected of me in the social context, not necessarily the perceptions hoped for by the marketing team for the film but probably not honestly my own vision and experience.

I believe that this phenomenon, of writing to meet social expectations in a review, is the single most widespread and execrable problem in contemporary critical writing, both academic and journalistic. In popular film criticism generally it's clearest in two manifestations, first, the unduly adulatory review (and attendant flack quotes), and second, the contextually dismissive review (formerly most commonly associated with genre flicks). In either case the critic's motivation to praise or condemn a film is conditioned not so much by the actual quality or personal viewing experience of the film as by the feedback the critic expects or hopes to receive or avoid.

While I don't think I was afflicted with either of these problems as I sat down to see the film, I certainly was not ignorant of the film's context - indeed, of the films I've seen over the past few years, it was probably the film I knew the most about heading into the theater, and I believe that this trap sprung on me as I started to watch the film. I've never pretended to apply the purist approach to Jackson's films, as Tolkien's books are quite literally the first thing I ever read, and it's clear that while the Jackson team exercised filmmakers' privilege in re-tailoring the plots and characters they were working with, they were also following Tolkien's lead and - repeated disavowals on their part aside - both expected and intended that the films would be measured by obsessive nit-pickers against the source material. Therefore I was consciously intending to compare the film, in a general way, to the book from which it was drawn.

However, the experience of The Two Towers' quite major plot and character divergence from the book led me to approach the comparison with skepticism, as I firmly believe that the redefinition of Faramir's character and the nonsensical addition of the scenes set in Osgiliath call into question the benefit of the doubt extended to the filmmakers in the wake of the first film. Thus, when I sat down, I was prepared to note more problems and anticipated them (although I'd resigned myself to the excision, however regretful, of the Wild Men and the Scouring of the Shire). What I had not expected or prepared for was the effect that skeptical note-taking had on me emotionally - I was far from immersed in the film and simply never caught it's emotional rhythms, something that in itself disappointed me.

The tremendous response I experienced to seeing the first film - far and away the most amazing emotional reaction to a film in the theater I've ever had - went a very long way toward setting expectations for Jackson to meet on the next two films. While The Two Towers disappointed, somewhat, my disappointment didn't interfere with my emotional involvement in the film. When The Return of the King ended, I had a smaller, less pointed list of nit-pickery - the main beef I had was with the over-determined depiction of Denethor, something both required by and telegraphed in The Two Towers' redefinition of Faramir - yet I felt uninvolved and disappointed.

My awareness of this distancing became acute when listening to Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate, as I noted in the longer review posted here earlier. Instead of reacting to the speech within the context of the drama, of the film, I heard it with my own ears, and applied it to the context of my own values and to the political realities of the present day, and it made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. It's possible that Jackson's decision to include a bit of straight-up anti-war propaganda in the scene where Pippin sings was as counterbalance to the stem-winding call to duty that Aragorn's speech is intended to provide. If that was a part of the justification, it was a poor one. It invites the viewer to analyze the political values presented in the film and Tolkien's work as well.

I think it's safe to say that most viewers of the film and readers of the book are not monarchists and question the advisability of genocide. Yet, Tolkien adopts mythic approaches and Manichean definitions where entire races are in fact literally evil. These values are presented as belonging to the individuals, characters, and societies that he so carefully detailed in the tiniest particular. It's hard to argue that the obsessive and realistic detailing of the one thing can possibly mean anything other than that the Manichean idea is meant to be taken at face value. Others more knowledgeable than I, however, don't subscribe to that idea, and I guess neither do I. But it is an incoherence, in a way, just as the problem of evil is in our own, real, world.

It was a mistake to invite my political values to the table. I regret it, as it undermined the experience of the film. As noted, Jackson helped invite them in; but I'm confident that if I had not been taking notes and generally diligently attempting to fulfill my role as a film critic the film would have been better for it. I suppose that is a sort of newbie thing that all critics have to learn, and so I'm glad to know it now. The second time I saw the film, I did catch the emotional rhythm, thankfully; I look forward to a future viewing, and, of course, to the extended DVD of the final film (which, word has it, will be 4 hours and 50 minutes long, a full hour added to the theatrical version).

free Wifi hotspots locations directory Washington: Nice long list. Could have used this in DC. Doesn't apparently show ad-hoc hotspots, such as my neighbors.