Category: Personal

Scoble is an excellent organizer. All he does is pop in from his new base of operations with a brief mention on his blog and a dozen people just show up. If I had only known he was expensing the dinner, I would have ordered the large salad. Macromedia founder Marc Canter, he’s currently getting another startup called Broadband Mechanics off the ground, was there, bringing his friendly but incapacitated wife and really cute little daughter Mimi, and Dave Winer too. Unfortunately Dave was extremely domineering for the first while, only interested in getting sympathy for his position in the more than annoying ongoing fuss over blog APIs.

A bunch of other interesting people were there too. Don Park, who I worked with briefly at NetDynamics, Raines Cohen, longtime tech journalist Scott Mace, new Californian and eBay staffer Micah Alpern, uber-techie Phil Wolff, Steve Zellers, who develops big chunks of the Cocoa framework at Apple, Niall Kennedy, who was showing off the Tablet PC he won recently, and one or two others whose names I sadly can’t remember. Plus of course Robert and his great, but bored, son Patrick.

I had an interesting time talking (separately or in groups, over the course of the evening) with Lisa, Phil, Robert, Micah, Niall, and Marc. I got a recommendation for the next C# book, since I’m almost finished with the Schildt beginners’ book, for Chris Sells’s Mastering Visual Studio.Net but when we went to Barnes & Noble today they didn’t have it, so I picked up Visual C#.NET 2003 by Steven Holzner instead.

A couple of photos–Scoble Senior, Scoble Junior, and Phil Wolff:

 

Other bloggers’ accounts: Marc, Micah, Don, Dave, Steve, and Phil’s writeup of an idea I broached.

Jerry Bruckenheimer knows how to make big budget action movies (though he’s as fallible as the rest of us humans, demonstrated by this weekend’s Bad Boys II) and he tackled the what the heck is this supposed to be about challenge of a Disney ride in fine fashio when he put together Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Sure Bruckenheimer had help from director Gore Verbinski (though this was certainly Verbinski’s first action film) and writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio (whose experience in animated films probably came in very handy), all three did very nice jobs, but I can’t imagine this being the same film with someone else as producer.

What a fun film this is! Orlando Bloom (Legolas from Lord of the Rings) and Keira Knightley (yes, the hottie from Bend It Like Beckham, who is starting to blaze in the career department) do a fine job as the couple that ought to be together. Johnny Depp is truly an excellent actor and brings out surprising depths in what could have been a sleepwalking role. Geoffrey Rush leads the bad men, though I don’t always find him as attentive to the emotions of the part. Jack Davenport (who’s delightful in the British sitcom Coupling) plays Bloom’s rival for Knightley’s affections, as commander of the local detachment of the British Navy, while Jonathon Pryce was another ‘in it for the money’ players as her father and governor of the colony.

For an action movie, there’s a refreshing avoidance of blood for the most part and even depth. Verbinski and his SFX department created some really nice sequences with the ships and kudos to the costumers! Elliot and Rossio came up with a smart story, an actual plot, that even incorporates some small touches of the actual Dsiney park ride. Not that there’s been much competition but I’d have to say this is one of the best old time pirate movies in the modern (post-1970) era.

Definitely recommended

Out for three weeks now, Terminator 3 just does not seem to be getting the job done. For all the hoopla, SFX and politics (will Schwarzenegger run for governor of California?), the box office take after three weeks is a piddly $127 million, falling to under $10M this weekend. With a production budget of $200 million plus another $40M or so for marketing, this is one expensive dud. In the end, after foriegn box office take, DVD, PPV, and TV rights, the whole thing will probably break even (not that anyone will really know given Hollywood’s byzantine accounting systems) but this is just another in a Summer of movie disappointments. Arnie’s first big role in three years, for sure it has to be chalked up as yet another failure by an actor whose time has passed.

Every Summer about this time, the television networks and producing studios put on a tour for television columnists (the folks who write the TV columns and reviews in your local paper). This year, at the encouragement of paper-mate Dan Gillmor, the Mercury News’ TV writer has posted his thoughts on Blog*Spot: Charlie McCollum in Hollywood. Not bad, a little bit more on the parties, operational details, and behind the scenes stuff than on the show news but worth a read. Hasn’t been updated since Thursday, so the Tour may be over though that isn’t explicitly stated. Interesting tidbits about 24 at the top.

I wanted to write a little something about the whole State of the Union/faked intelligence controversy. Or maybe all the American soldiers dying in Iraq while Bush is here pushing inanities like “Bring it on.” Or the way his leadership on budget issues is decimating state and local governments and their ability to deliver vital services.

Seriously, though, it’s all too much for me and I’m overloaded, and the big shiznit here, the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, hasn’t even started in earnest yet. We need a break–how about if everyone everywhere in the world just takes the next week off and goes camping or swimming or playing with family? I’m out of here to go to Scoble’s meetup. With any luck, the people there will just be talking about tech. Or movies. Or movie tech.

John Gilmore, like many other Americans, is dismayed by the Bushinations of the GWB posse over the last couple of years but unlike many of us, he’s actually trying to do something about their farcical-if-it-wasn’t-serious crap. Yesterday, Gillmore and his “sweetheart” Annie were attempting to fly from SFO to London on British Airways but were prevented from doing so because of a button John wore on his lapel which said “Suspected Terrorist.”

He was let all the way on to the plane before this became an issue. The ticket counter where he checked in, the security checkpoint he passed through, the gate where he turned in his boarding pass, not a single person at any of those points objected to his button. Note: Not having been there, I cannot say for certain that this assumption is actually true, but it does make sense.

Finally, all seated, belted in, and taxiing for takeoff, with no complaints from any of the 300 other passengers on the plane with him, a flight steward came up and insisted he remove the pin. Gillmore refused, asserting his free speech rights. The steward called the captain. The captain insisted and Gillmore once again refused. The captain went back to the flight cabin and turned the plane around, returning to the terminal where Gillmore was escorted off the plane. BA refused to allow him to fly on their other London flight of the day unless he put the button in his checked luggage and allowed them to search his carry-on, which had already cleared security, for other egregious materials.

There was a discussion of this letter on MeFi and I was amazed at some of the foolish responses. Yes, a few people were inconvenienced, the flight having been delayed when it returned to the gate. One quote was so seriously bad that I saw it in my head with Old South keywords in certain places. I personally would have been truly inconvenienced by the extended takeoff due to my stomach issues–in fact I probably would have been going out of my mind wanting to go to the toilet–but if people don’t stand up to stupidity like this, we deserve to live in the craptocracy GWB and co-conspirators are creating!

[via MetaFilter]

Apparently, at least for Rob. So Rob, pack the wife and kids in the car and drive on up, we can BBQ and hang at the pool! Next Sunday (the 27th) I’m having a couple of of SpoFites and family over to watch the afternoon Champions World match up on FSW, so the grill will be getting lit anway. Not that I’m not sitting here sweating and about to head out to the pool for a cool off myself.

This week’s entry is a two-parter:

See the whole megillah.

Steven goes a bit off the reserve with today’s brief post: “You know, it’s odd that no one is accusing Bush of lying about how brutal and vicious Saddam was.” Of course, no one (at least in the US) disputed that Saddam was brutal and vicious, but then again that was not the given reason for the war. There are plenty of governments, indeed some of which the US supports, which are brutal and vicious but we’re not pre-emptively invading them either. Steve, please, I know you’ve been sick lately but keep on track.

I feel so loved. Of course, I know that this is true because I even married her.

Tim Huggins writes an interesting essay called The Costs of Costco in which he describes the follow-on effects, mainly negative, of tentpole bestsellers such as the Harry Potter and Tom Clancy novels being flogged by big box, non-bookstore retailers such as Costco and Wal*Mart. In the essay, Huggins states that book publishers are hurt as much or more than booksellers because the opportunity to connect buyers with other potentially interesting purchases, books not carried at Costco et al, is lost. But is this not simply giving the mugger a gun with which to rob yourself? I mean hey, there’s no law that say publishers have to sell to Costco, is there? Since IANAL, maybe there is a law, as I recall certain controversies in the past over MSRP and minimum selling prices. Still, one expects that the industry could find a way to manage this if their was sufficient motivation, as opposed to a group of lemmings nearly all marching to the cliffs.

Scientists find depression gene. [via garret]

Happy as I was to see him and the gang at the San Jose Arena last August, I am in no way happy that the 2003 portion of his tour has not arrived, and apparently will not arrive, in the Bay Area. I mean, if he can play Fenway, Comisky, Comerica, and Miller (all baseball parks), how can he skip what I’m told is the most beautiful of them all, Pac Bell Park?

This bit of crankiness was inspired by reports of last night’s kickoff concert at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. An awesome concert, of course, but also: “No human being has sold more tickets to more concerts in a series, making it one of the biggest stories in open-air entertainment since the Christians and the lions.” 10 concerts in the stand, all sold out, 55,000 tickets per show (at a more than reasonable for these days $55 and $75 per), total gross of over $38 million.

And I wasn’t there! You might question the quality of sound at a huge open air stadium but I’ve seen him there before, on the Born in the USA tour and it was just fine by me. After all, sonic quality in your average sports arena is somewhere in the range of tepid lemonade and a dogs playing poker signed lithograph. I do have anice consolation prize though: my friend Annie from Budapest traveled up to Vienna for the band’s concert there last month and she sent me a t-shirt. Which I now treasure. If you can hear me, Bruce, please make Northern California one of the rumoured five dates still to be named on the tour!

A football match raged onscreen,

the home team’s supporters chanting loudly

as their midfielders passed the ball from side to side,

probing the half line for an opening into space.

You could hear 44,000 voices lifted together:

“When you walk through a storm

Hold your head up high”

As the patched ball rolled on.

On the field of Kenny, Bill, Ian, and Rowdy

Now run Michael, Sammi, Danny, and Stephen

The glory of the past holds but a candle

To the brilliant future coming to Anfield

So watch proudly as the ball arcs high,

Straight into the box and our man runs

Straight onto it, one touch, one defender to beat

Straight off and through the keeper’s legs.

For the Reds always stand proud

Gunning for more silverware

Devils stand back in awe

All the other teams blue with envy.

The NY Times reported today (Why We Die, Why We Live) on a new theory from Dr. Ronald Lee, a demographer at the University of California at Berkeley, which was published in today’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Note up front that this is more of a theorectical framework, not an analysis of genetic data, and there are no immediate practical uses of his work.

Still this seems very interesting. In the classic theory that has prevailed up to now, age (lifespan, that is) was seen as very dependent on the reproductive cycle of a species but this had several wholes big enough to drive a truck through. Key among them was why childhood mortality tends to occur significantly more in the first couple of years of life and is not spread evenly throughout. Lee’s insight depends on economics to show that mutations that cause later in childhood death waste the huge investment made in raising the child and therefore are quickly selected against via evolutionary pressures.

I was invited to a taste test this afternoon at a market research firm’s office in Redwood City (Tragon Research, if you want to sign up as a tester). I wasn’t invited because I’m an Atkins blogger, but because I signed up to participate in their testing and I qualified for this research by answering four questions on the phone. The idea was to earn some extra cash for a bit of my time while still job hunting.

The test was not bad, took less than 30 minutes from walking to walking out. Very simple, too: I had to rate either two or four different flavors of sugar-free vanilla ice cream, first on about half dozen factors such as vanilla taste, color, sweetness, aftertaste, would I purchase it, and overall. I’m not sure how many flavors altogether because first I was given a small scoop of ice cream, filled the form out, and then repeated this. Then I was given, at one time, two separate bowls each with a scoop of vanilla, asked to taste each and then simply select which I preferred.

So the second set could have been the same flavors as the first but the flavors all tasted very similar. The ice cream was very good, no aftertaste, not too sweet, which is a problem with a number of low carb foods I’ve tried (such as the CarbLite chocolate bars). I wonder if someone else is planning to enter the low carb ice cream market. I hope it was low carb, otherwise I will be unhappy tomorrow when I weigh in! LOL, got paid though, got my $25 check!

Last year I saw a pre-movie slide ad at Century 16 here in Mountain View placed by an individual on behalf of his consulting business. I contacted him to see what the results where but apparently mine was the only communication he got for his $300. Driving up 101 to San Mateo yesterday (where we saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen at the very nice new Century 12 Downtown), I saw a billboard for a service that promised to help increase one’s skill with photography.

PhotoTrainer.com was the site and it turns out to be a personal or small group instructional service offered by one man, Tom Upton, “a veteran professional Photographer and Photoillustrator located in Menlo Park.” Mr. Upton charges $100 per hour, bascially, for his tutorial services. I wish him only the best but wonder how much that billboard cost him and how he can possibly get enough business from it to justify the expenditure. Or is there some fact I’m missing, some connection perhaps, that means he’s not paying what you or I would for this advertising. Interesting either way.

On my personal efforts, there is nothing to report–not a single contact regarding the purchase of my guitar and amp nor my fliers advertising blogging classes. So much for my credentials for asking this question…

From the Wayback Machine (Turner Classic Movies, actually) we had 1942’s This Gun for Hire queued up on TiVo. This film noir thriller is most notable for giving Alan Ladd his big break after a decade of bit parts and hanging around. He matched with Veronica Lake and their chemistry was easily noticed, leading to several further teamings though the ’40s in such hits as The Blue Dahlia.

The other memorable character in Gun was main bad guy Willard Gates (though no one called him Bill), played by Laird Cregar. Cregar was a large man (I was strongly reminded of David Schramm who played Roy on the TV show Wings) and this film was more or less than midpoint of his short career as he died three years later when his body couldn’t take an intensive diet; here he gives a performance that’s a sinister combination of creepy and enticing, nearly trapping both Ladd and Lake in his web.

In the end, of course, all the bad guys die and the good guys kiss. Okay, the good guys are Lake and her fiancee/police detective who’s investigating the case (a very young Robert Preston) but this was 1942 Hollywood and moral ambiguity was considered very bad for the box office. Preston wasn’t really there during the filming, if you know what I mean, looked like he was getting fed his lines from someone standing just offstage. Tully Marshall had a nice supporting role as an ultra-cranky war criminal corporate chietain, which resonated nicely with recent real life events.

While I enjoyed the movie, I didn’t care much for whatever director Frank Tuttle contributed–give credit to Graham Greene, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based–but to be fair Tuttle’s bread and butter were apparently musical comedies and the producers must have thought that he was a good choice since Lake had to sing two or three numbers to be convincing as a nightclub singer/magician.

Moderately recommended

Upfront I’ll admit that I like the branch of science fiction known as alternative history. So even though I haven’t read Alan Moore’s graphic novels, I was still looking forward to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And I wasn’t disappointed–this movie was a blast.

The alternative here is that quite a few fictional heroes are real people. Except for the ones who are vampires, although there’s only one in the movie and she’s a longtime hottie, Peta Wilson. There’s Sean Connery leading the way as a very old yet still spry Alan Quartermain, Jason Flemyng as Dorian Gray (his famous portrait not only prevent shim from aging, it prevents him from being damaged or killed as well, except…), Captain Nemo, Jeckyll/Hyde, and the Invisible Man. Plus the bad guy is from one of the all time great detective series–there seems to be some effort to keep his identity underwraps as even IMDB does not properly credit him, so I won’t spoil that revelation here.

Connery is essentially the same age as my Dad (who, have no doubt, I love very much) and even though I realize that judicious editing, stunt doubles and other bits of movie magic were employed, he still kicks butt! LOL. I mean, Connery is the League member who in the end must face off with the prime villain in manual combat at the end and he gets the job done. We saw the movie with Lord B (who did not enjoy it, silly man) and he pointed out that Jeckyll/Hyde essentially serves as a primordial Hulk without the green (or the ability to leap three miles in a single bound, though that wouldn’t have been useful here anyway).

I like the work director Stephen Norrington has done, good pacing, good framing, just dark enough (though at times the action moved so quickly that the darkness got a bit in the way). James Robinson wrote a nice adaptation and compared too many bloated action films (why is The Hulk well over two hours long?), this one ends well before your ass is in pain. Watch out for a sequel, if the box office take is strong enough, as the ending certainly left that as the clear expectation.

Recommended

Daniel Dennett lays out the 411. ‘Nuff said.