Rough Days for a Gentil Knight gets a makeover.
Increased legibility, decreased business, bigger type, cooler colors.
Looks nice, Allan. Now you need to find a pic of that Kelmscott Chaucer to fade under the upper left there…
Can my granny blog yet?
OK, so I just got off the phone with my buddy Matt in New Orleans. He wanted to pick my brain about personal, semi-pro web hosting, especially for a non-technical, creative user such as he.
His budget is likely to come down to about ten bucks a month – the semi-pro needs come in for him in the context of online storage. 10mb for him isn’t gonna do it for him under any circumstances. He needs a good 50mb, I think, and might well need more.
His hosting needs are actually kind of similar to mine, except that I doubt he’ll need more than one domain. As I see it, his needs are:
- A template-based, but customizable, publishing tool for his primary web presence. I’m almost certain that Movable Type is the way to go for him on this.
- A browser-based file-upload photo publishing engine. Gallery would work perfectly, I think; if he’s a Mac user it’s possible these two needs may be addressable via .Mac.
- A no-brainer mp3 server. Again, I think Andromeda, which I use, fits his needs perfectly.
- The ability to work directly on the files at the system level. I think plain old ftp will work here perfectly.
- Stats. This is the least crucial aspect of the package, and also the easiest to find out on the web for free.
- NO BANNERS. I didn’t discuss this with him, but I’m sure of it.
So, if he’s a Mac user, .Mac pretty much is right up his alley, with the possible exception of his MP3 needs (which I don’t think he’s thought about deeply yet, but he’s a musician and a photographer, so…).
.Mac’s arbitrary bandwidth limits also make me disinclined to point him in that direction.
Finally, as I recall, real storage space (50mb and up) is reasonably standard with paid hosting plans. Some enhanced functionality was also being offered as is the case with Bravenet.
So: here’s the question. Has anyone put one and one and one together yet to provide all of this stuff in a straight-up, zero-user-configuration-time hosting service? Say, one that also provides as check-off options, oh, the option of wiki-ness, or live-journal-style buddypages?
What’s the state of personal webhosting, post napster and in the middle of the blog revolution, blogosphere? Tell me what’s crazappy and where the shizit izzz!
Mauldin dead at 81
Bill Mauldin Dies at 81, notes this AP obit at Yahoo.
I ran a pointer to an OC Register story a ways back in which the original columnist encouraged postcards and letters to be passed along to Mauldin, who was described as demoralized by his Alzheimer’s.
The blog entry turned into an alternative means for Googlers to email Mauldin, or such was the weight of public opinion.
I believe that my server may be challenged by incoming connections to that original entry over the next day or two.
Dent joins the fray
Glacial Erratics is Mr. Chris Dent’s contribution to the blogosphere. Mr. Dent has already brought Warp, a wiki variant, into the world, and generally brings interesting thoughts into his interactions.
I have, sadly, missed the portion of Mr. Dent’s life wherein copious wild oats are sown, which is another way of saying we’ve never exactly gotten drunk together. But someday, I’m sure we will.
I met Chris through the estimable, or perhaps inestimable, Eric Sinclair, and met the ever amusing Sabrina of PouPOU via Chris.
Good company the lad keeps.
[typos edited, as they were bad enough to impede legibility]
DER GOLEM and CALIGARI at Silent Movie Mondays last night
Fantastic double feature at the Paramount’s Silent Movie Mondays (unfortunately for them, they make it impossible to link directly to the schedule, so no link for you! Get out!) last night which featured really clean prints of both Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Both prints were tinted, as originally distributed, and the The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari also featured an astonishing duo-tone solarization effect in the intial framing sequence (the narrator, seated on a bench, begins his tale).
I’ve seen Caligari umpteen times since I was a teenager, and much of the novelty and freshness of the wild staging wore off long ago for me, leaving a slightly boring film that suffers from the tacked-on framing sequence. (The site I’ve linked to includes a breathtaking lobby card for the film at the end of the page).
This print was awesome, however, and reinstated much of the impact of the production. It’s also probably the first time I have seen the film in an optimal viewing enviroment.
The other film, Der Golem, is a film I’ve wanted to see since, what, at least 1976 when I received a book that reproduced a still from the movie in the context of an article about the Golem legend. The film was a huge hit when it was released, and is generally credited with being the first feature length horror film (or is it science fiction? fantasy? alchemical film? hermetic cinema?).
I awaited the inevitable racial crudities with bated breath, and was relieved when they did not show themselves in any exeptionable way. No unfortunate racialist caricatures, with the possible exception of the Golem himself, whose makeup lends him a resemblance, probably accidental, to a player in blackface getup. However, he plays the same role as a slave in early cinema – he’s simple, dangerous, superhuman, has trouble with the lusty feelings, and so forth. In Der Golem he’s played by the director, Paul Wegener, and I thought it was interesting that in this German film, based on Czech legends, the person playing the Golem should have Slavic features.
(This thoughtful review of a DVD edition notes that the depiction of Rabbi Loew in the film as a secretive practioner of the black arts still reinforces the underlying antisemitic attitudes of Northern and Central Europe at the time. Well, maybe. But then there’d be no movie, I think.)
It was somewhat unsettling to watch this legend of a pogrom averted in the Prague ghetto while knowing that the same ghetto had a fate unimaginable to the players in the film lying in wait, about 20 years down the road.
A major, incredibly cool element of the film was its’ fantastic set design – imagine if Antonio Gaudi designed a crude medieval village and you’re right in the neighborhood, so to speak.
The film appeared to me to be a more fluent and carefully designed film, cinematically, than Caligari.
TCM offers their usual thorough and informative writeup on Der Golem. Here’s a site with a bunch of stills (definitely a deifferent version than the print we saw).
Next week is the official end of the cycle this time through. However, last week, Dennis James (the organist for the shows) mentioned that they were trying to put together one extra showing – of the eagerly awaited Wings, the first film to win Best Picture in the Academy Awards and the first airplane spectacular – and by howdy, is it spectacular. If you like old canvas and wood airplanes as much as I do, this film presents a curious spectacle of enthrallment, inaccuracy, and tragedy – the filmmakers crashed countless surplus WW1 biplanes in making the film. The inaccuracy resides in the many creative ways the set dressers were able to rework the U.S.-made and readily available Curtiss JN-1 Jennies to resemble other models. They’d been made in huge numbers here for export to the front when peace broke out, so they were sold for as little as $25 each, so my unreliable grey cells inform me.
(But, uh, if you’re not a plane nut, it’s – like all too many Best Pictures – kinda mediocre.)
When he mentioned that was what they were trying to do, applause broke out. Boeing may be leaving town, but this remains a city of airplane people.
Here’s the whole run this cycle:
JANUARY 6, 2003: the monster, 1925
Starring: Lon Chaney
JANUARY 13, 2003: the lodger, 1926
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
JANUARY 20, 2003: cabinet of dr. caligari, 1919 & der golem, 1920
Directors: Robert Wiene (Cabinet) / Carl Boese & Paul Wegener (Der Golem)
JANUARY 27, 2003: the women in the moon, 1929
Director: Fritz Lang
And just for good measure, some linkylove:
Silent Era, the indispensible resource for this stuff.
Silents Are Golden, a bit more homey in feel.
Michael Moorcock
I just emailed Mr. Moorcock a largish interview which will form the basis of an article for Cinescape soon… and then see the light of day here.
I can’t wait!
Digital Card Models
Digital Card Models is one of many mom-and-pop sites dedicated to providing paper plans for scratch-built models to be constructed from paper.
DCM provides the kits as PDFs, as in the sample kit Bristol Scout and Fairey Swordfish. One of the interesting features of the earlier planes in the kits is that roughly through the end of WWI, plane designs were actually engineered in miniature. Thus the thin-section wings on most WWI planes. Small-wing airfoils are more efficient in thin section; it turns out thick section works better at actual airplane scale. This error means that small models of these designs are frequenty quite flyable as gliders. Of course, it’s important to carefully balance the plane, but it’s quite do-able.
With proper care, these kits can look nearly as convincing as those old plastic Revell kits persons of my age grew up making. Mind you, that’s with proper care. Any impatience whatsover will ruin the build and require starting from scratch.
There are a ton of other interesting resources on cardmodeling, which is by no means restricted to planes, or even machinery – I’ve built kitted birds, such as this hawk (which I’m currently working on).
Here’s the Cardmodeling FAQ. Here’s Fiddler’s Green, another airplane house but one of the oldest and largest of the American companies supporting this hobby. Info about conventions is at the cardfaq.org site (the bird pic is from shots of the ’98 convention), and this scanned catalogue for a British supplier, Marcle. Some of the European models can be obtained via Oregon’s Paper Models International, and the Europeans sell the PMI kits too.
Long-time readers will be pleased to learn that there are a variety of decent models of dirigibles
I would respectfully submit that having designed and built my own flying scale card models of both a Fokker triplane and a Nieuport 17 might possibly make this an even more geeky entry than one previously cited by one of my readers as the geekiest thing he’d ever read. All that remains to be noted then, is that I do hope for a comprehensive, in-depth series of careful, exegetic reviews of the entire ouvre of Dave Sim from that correspondent.
A nice night out
In celebration of Viv’s birthday (her 29th, of course) we’ll be having a nice dinner before seeing the Triumph of Love in preview at the Seattle Rep this evening.
Ta-ta!
(Should I wear my bowler, fer the luvvagod? Too eccentric, huh.)
Artifact
So there I was this afternoon, digging around in a completely-dwindled pile of plastic grocery bags back in the kitchen closet. The pile amounted to two bags, so maybe it was not a pile any longer.
I was fixing to scoop the poop from our exceedingly fecund cats’ necessary box, as clearly instructed to by my lovely wife via the damned telephone. I must learn to be quicker in ending my calls.
The first bag, naturally, had a hole in it, so I placed it in the trash.
The second bag was… Well, it was too good for the use its’ predecessors had been chosen for. I think I’ll stick it in a drawer someplace and haul it out to show my niece and nephew when they hit late puberty and are seeking proof that they really do have it harder than anyone else ever did.
“Yep,” I’ll mumble through gummy chops, spittle coursing through my stubble. “See this bag?”
Zapata murder suspect fingered
I thought that ex-Seattle people might be interested to learn that DNA evidence has led to the arrest of a Florida resident on charges related to the 1993 murder of Mia Zapata.
Mia was the singer of The Gits, who survived her death in various variations, and was a member of the Comet-centered Capitol Hill music scene here in Seattle of the early nineties, which ran parallel to but generally under the radar of the nationally-recognized scene here at the same time.
I had a long, sad conversation with indie filmmaker John Behrens shortly after her murder. We were seated outside at Café Paradiso, catty-corner from the illustrious Comet, the tavern where she’d spent her last few hours among friends. He’d just shot footage for a video that I think never made it out the door. Even though I’ve played in bands here on and off for at least a decade, I never got deeply involved in the ‘scene’ aspects of being a musician here; I’d been there, done that (mostly without being a player) at home in Bloomington, and never saw any real reason to exert myself in that direction here.
Consequently, and also because of Mia’s pronounced resemblance to my sister, her death came as a kind of echo to me, a painful reminder of my own loss (closer in time to Mia’s death than Mia’s death is to now). At the same time it was a parallel moment for many people that I knew here.
Heroin deaths notwithstanding, Mia’s death was the moment when Death’s wings first gently brushed the nape of the social circle of people I had nodding acquaintance with from nights at the Comet. As my sister’s death redirected my life, Mia’s death would redirect those of her peers as well. It was the end of childhood.
In more ways than one, as well – shortly after her murder, the city’s economy began to power up and the great majority of my neighborhood’s genteelly underemployed college graduates found themselves sucked into the go-go tech industry. College dropouts of my acquaintance fared less well, underlining the privileges of class that have grown stronger all my life.
Something about her death directed me away from that scene thereafter. I think it was both too close to my loss and at the same time a reminder of the price of community. People die, and you have loved them, and it will be forever painful. An awareness of the reality and inevitability of these losses led me to invest more energy in work than friends for many years, possibly including the present day.
To an extent, then, perhaps that’s a justifiable decision. I have, it seems, lost count of the numbers of drug deaths among my acquaintances. What, at least three heroin deaths since then, probably more.
Well, that was cheery, wasn’t it?