Category: Personal

Lord of the Rings Media Kit

New Line Cinema has posted a really nice LotR Media Kit to the films’ website based on the kit distributed during the recent Cannes Film Festival. Some good detail on the graphics and special effects work going into the trilogy.

Meanwhile, The American Prospect has a good article on Tolkien scholarship and the controversies it engenders today.

Where in the world is tolerance?

I look and look and look but it doesn’t ever seem to get better. For example, the ruling Taliban is forcing Hindus to wear tags in Afghanistan, eerily reminiscent to the Nazi policy forcing Jews to wear yellow stars. In the Middle East, Israelis and Palestinians are unable to stop killing each other. In Northern Ireland, the peace accord is close to falling apart. Multiple ethnic conflicts continue in Eastern Europe, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Africa. Even on a smaller level, incidents continue to occur across the U.S.

When will people realize that it’s really a small planet and we have to learn to live together on it before we kill everyone?

Today’s Book: Mystery Train

Greil Marcus wrote Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, one of the earliest books of rock and roll criticism as literature, back in 1973-74 but it still holds up well. Probably that’s due not only to his writing talent, which is important, but also because none of the artists he covers have done significant work since then. Marcus writes about, in order, Harmonica Frank, Robert Johnson, The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman, and Elvis Presley. True, Newman has had some chart success in the last 25 years and The Band’s Robbie Robertson has done interesting solo work but nothing that matches the importance of the early recordings covered in this book.

Although Marcus does spend a reasonable portion of his pages on the actual music and a good few on biographical material, the meat focuses on these musicians and how their work reflects on and motivates American culture. His focus is on the tension between ambition and ease, the two conflicting aspects of the American Dream. I think I understand the choices he made in his artist selections (The Band over Dylan, Sly Stone over Stevie Wonder or Marvin Gaye, Newman over Brian Wilson), given the focus he was looking for, and the book is insightful and interesting.

Marcus is clearly an important writer: he has his own fan websites. Not to mention a platoon of imitators such as Dave Marsh (much as I like his two Springsteen books). Speaking of Springsteen, reading this it occured to me that The Boss must have read this book when it came out; I swear I can hear resonances of it on Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Disney and Pearl Harbor: Incredible Success or a Day That Will Live in Infamy?

On the one hand, the Telegraph (UK newspaper) is reporting that Critics torpedo £100m Pearl Harbor. On the other, Wall Street is looking for a smash, pushing Disney stock up over 5% in today’s trading. The Telegraph article isn’t making me any more eager to see the film, at 165 minutes long, with 100 of those spent leading up to the Japanese attacke, 40 minutes recreating the attack (in admittedly spectacular fashion), and then 25 minutes or so wrapping up the rest of World War II. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Updated 5/22: Online sources are reporting that Disney plans to trim part of the ending that might offend Japanese and German sensibilities for showings in those markets. A source said: “We’ve tried very hard not to portray the Japanese in a very bad light. They are a huge market and accounted for 20 per cent of profits for Titanic.” As usual, money talks. Japanese Americans are already protesting the film. Floyd Mori, president of the Japanese American Citizens League, America’s largest Asian American civil rights organization, said the film “could fuel hatred of Americans of Asian descent and he said Japanese groups around the United States have heightened security measures out of fear of a backlash.”

The ND bosses are at it again

I’m not complaining. NetDynamics was a great place for me to work and the company’s sale to Sun Microsystem has to be rated as a win too. So I can’t wish anything less than the best to Zack Rinat (ND co-founder and CEO), Yarden Malka (ND’s most important engineer), and Olivia Dillon (ND VP of Engineering) in their new venture, ModelN. C|Net and Industry Standard have brief looks at ModelN’s new positioning, an attempt to move beyond first generation B2B software (this was the thrust of their launch PR a year ago) into what they call Private Business Networks.

For a look at their original plans, see this Red Herring article from July, 2000. Where now only ModelN is spoken of, in this article ModelN is described as a set of three companies (with more to come). Model T1 was to be the center, a technology company that owned significant stakes in the rest, which were to be vertical Internet marketplaces. “The first of these marketplaces [Veranto] is for medical supplies. The second is for construction.” Checking out the Veranto website, only Contact page is publicly accessible, and it asks interested parties to email ModelN. I can’t find any references to either marketplace company on the ModelN website although since the site has no search function it’s difficult to be certain.

I’m not sure it’s really anything more than accepting the reality that public B2B markets are not living up to expectations but I believe Zack and Yarden are probably smart and savvy enough to make this a success too.

Yesterday’s Movies: Pay It Forward, Antitrust

For a cornball movie about one kid’s quest to save the world, or at least his mom, Pay It Forward hits a lot of the right notes. It misses a big one but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone; if you’re in the mood for a sweet and moving movie, check out this Kevin Spacey/Helen Hunt/Haley Joel Osment flick.

Antitrust could have been the cup of tea for every techie out there who believes that Microsoft is the evil empire. But writer Howard Franklin and director Peter Howitt have simply taken a pastiche of Bill Gates (played as a friendly, seductive sleeze by Tim Robbins), thrown in an idealistic young superprogrammer (Ryan Phillipe) and a weak plot (since when does software ship on time?) to try and capitalize on our current fascination with connected technology. Too bad; watch it if you really do believe Bill Gates is in league with the devil.

Friday: Slow news day

Nothing much to write about today. Went to lunch with Byron and hung around with some of the gang who still work. Went to the oral surgeon for a consult and will be getting my three wisdom teeth removed early next Thursday. Surfed the web. Watching the Avs beat the Blues (at least halfway through the game [Wait–the Blues just scored to close to 3-2]. Yesterday watched the awesome, excellent New Jersey Devils go up two games to one over the Penguins with a 3-0 shutout. Reading a cool book and will report in a couple of days when I finish it.

Regrets: Everybody’s got some

Barry Cadish has a weblog where people can anonymously post their regrets. Some are touching, some are funny, some are truly sad. He’s previously gathered submissions into a book, Damn! Reflections on Life’s Biggest Regrets and you can read excerpts online. Oddly, unless he’s saving them up for the next book, only a few “current” regrets are posted in this weblog. Since it will probably disappear soon, here is one from the current lot:

Kelly, 39, housewife/mother, says “I regret causing my young daughter so many tears when I scolded her, report card after report card, for the comment[s]: “Daydreams in class” or “Doesn’t pay attention.”

I was sure that if she would only focus, her grades would get better. This went on for her entire 2nd- and 3rd-grade years and into the 4th [grade]. When she was diagnosed with Rolandic Epilepsy (which often causes petite mal seizures that would cause her to go into a daze for periods of time), we realized that she couldn’t help it. I regret all the tears and stress that we caused her. And I regret that I didn’t realize something was physically wrong earlier, so that she would have had a better chance to get a strong foundation in elementary reading and math skills. She’s been playing catch-up for years.”

Star Trek X: Interview with writer John Logan

Although it’s release is at least a year away (and perhaps further if we get an actors strike and scheduling conflicts with the next Star Wars), I was highly gratified to read Star Trek: The Magazine’s interview with John Logan. Logan previously wrote the scripts for Gladiator and the Oliver Stone/Al Pacino flick Any Given Sunday, which is big plus numero uno, and he’s a huge, lifelong Star Tek fan, plus numero dos. Without giving away much in the way of plot, he goes into great detail about what’s important to him, how he’s developing the screenplay, and how excited he is to be doing the writing.

Small world at work: Logan got involved because a friend of his was doing the play ‘1776’ with Brent Spiner and hooked them up for dinner.

Sun: The ‘o’ in ‘old’ economy

Forbes has a good article analyzing Sun’s recent past and how it’s handling the current economic malaise. Overall, fairly positive for Sun, especially comparing it to Cisco and IBM. Writer Eric Nee, a longtime Silicon Valley reporter, points to storage and application servers as big challenges:

“The problem for Sun is that its iPlanet application server ranks a distant third, trailing IBM’s WebSphere and BEA Systems’ WebLogic, which is No. 1. Looming in the background is Microsoft, which is entering the market with its .Net software. Sun can either continue to compete, hoping to take it all, or throw in the towel and partner with BEA against IBM and Microsoft. Bill Coleman, CEO of BEA and a former Sun executive, hopes McNealy will choose the latter. ‘I hope what he’ll do is determine there’s better leverage for BEA and Sun to work together during this shift.'”

Well, sorry Bill Coleman, but us employees of iPlanet have a different opinion!

Forbes asks and answers some wacky and some serious questions

Probably best if you can skim this one–I’ve linked to the printable version of the article since the basic(?) version is 14 pages. One of the best: “Will a cell phone stop a bullet as well as a Bible does?

After months of testing this out in the Forbes ASAP benchmark laboratory, we can safely say that the prize still goes to the Bible. According to Mike Hill, engineering professor at the University of California at Davis, ‘The flexible and fibrous Good Book will stand more of a chance of stopping a bullet. The brittle cell phone, replete with mechanical inhomogeneities, is unlikely to withstand the force.’ On the other hand, the word inhomogeneities might stop a bullet by itself.”

Warning: Scientists find new ways to kill us all

Now you know I’m not a science basher, far from it, but I will say that these guys are finding ways to kill more and more of us faster than ever if the wrong people get their hands on the wrong stuff. The latest: Mutant bacteria biowars threaten apocalypse now. That is, using easily available tech, someone can make subtle genetic alterations to, say, smallpox that makes it thousands of times more resistant to treatment. Would even the most vicious, hardened terrorist want to release this? Probably not since the people they are fighting for would be just as much at risk. However, a nut job with a little money and brains might be willing to.

Jet Li: Getting Real…then unreal

Mr. Showbiz has an update on martial arts star Jet Li from Cannes. Now that even Drew Barrymore can do the acrobat crap, what’s Li’s advantage? Jet Li Knows Kung Fu–and You Don’t. His next flick, Kiss of the Dragon, written and directed by Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Professional) and due out in July, is a back to basics, no invisible wire, street fighting blast.

After that, he has a science fiction thriller due at Thanksgiving called The One, which has lots of computer effects and wire work. This movie, written by X-Files vets James Wong and Glen Morgan, is the first major movie to use the multiverse concept, with Li as a cop who finds a way to travel between universes to kill the alternate versions of himself. Interestingly, wrestler/Scorpion King The Rock was originally going to star in this one.

The multiverse concept, in short, says that the universe we see/exist in is not the only one but is one of many, each of which differs minutely from its immediate neighbors (think of very thin slices of a block) and more are constantly being created each time a decision point/choice is breached. While this is the first major film to exploit the concept, it has been used widely in SF novels and comics. Multiverse is also the name of a popular roleplaying game.

New Patents: Internet Alarm Clock, Cooking pasta without water

Is necessity the mother of invention, as the cliche goes? Jared Diamond, in his huge bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that this assertion is quite false. Still, people keep cooking up new and sometimes useful ideas. Primo Bugane of Alpignano, Italy, has a devised a special pot (for which he received a patent) that cooks pasta al dente in the sauce (or the gravy, as Silvio Dante would call it). Mary Smith Dewey of Dallas patented a system (an internet appliance) that downloads real-time information about weather and traffic to help people get to work or appointments on time by adjusting the time an alarm clock rings.

Why we’re here

No, not a scientific breakthrough that will replace/correct/validate religious assertions on the creation of the Universe/Multiverse but instead the secret of matter discovered. The question: if, when the Universe was born, shouldn’t matter and antimatter been created in equal numbers and then all of it destroyed in collisions between the two? If all particles adhered precisely to the law of conservation, then yes, kaboom and no more particles. But apparently “there is a tiny difference between matter and antimatter that left a bit of matter remaining, out of which galaxies, stars, and you and I formed.” Scientists found a tiny difference in the decay rates between matter and antimatter, though, and that was enough to leave enough left to create what we see around us.

Monday Roundup: Dylan’s Birthday, Startups and Liquid Courage, and The Origins of Madness

Greil Marcus has a Special Absurdity of Worldwide Commemoration of Bob Dylan’s May 24 60th Birthday Edition! of his Real Life Rock Top 10 column.

Esther Dyson has posted a recent column exploring the current funding situation for startups and is also making her Edventure newsletter available free via email. Esther has been one of the premier technology writers/analysts for a long time, well worth reading.

Feed Magazine has an intriguing article on Dr. David Horrobin’s argument that schizophrenia signaled the beginnings of modern man: A genetic mutation changed the biochemistry of fat in our brains. Apparently, his findings are not being well received by other researchers who prefer to see complex pharmaceuticals as necessary to any cure or improvement over dietary changes, which is what Horrobin’s research finds satisfactory.

December’s Movie: Fellowship of the Ring

Ain’t It Cool News has a look at the first screening of footage of the first movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy at Cannes. The verdict: jaw dropping, drooling, and bust a gut good. If there’s any fairness in the world, this movie will blow away the recently-set opening weekend box office record by The Mummy Returns. If this isn’t the most-anticipated movie of all time, I don’t know what is; you might say Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace but I think many of the same people are taking this to the next level.

One representative quote from Harry Knowles (AICN bossman): “The bridge sequence is ungodly cool… the sort of ungodly cool that… well… I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE HOW COOL THIS SEQUENCE WAS!! I’ve never seen anything like it. This scene had all the dramatic intensity of William Friedkin’s SORCERER or the original WAGES OF FEAR, but even more cinematic. This is Cinema, big and showing me things my imagination has never conceived of. I was giggly-happy and dumbstruck all at once.”

An afternoon’s fun

Spent an enjoyable couple of hours at Chuck E. Cheese in San Jose today. Seeing it through the eyes of a three year old makes all the difference, because if I’d gone by myself it would have been boredom city.

Today’s movie: There’s Something About Mary

The grossout lover story comedy that won the heart of a nation, 1998’s There’s Something About Mary is still a great laugher. Cameron Diaz stars as possibly the greatest, most desirable woman ever born; simply put, every man who meets her falls completely in love. I’m looking forward to seeing Diaz in Shrek and Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.. Matt Dillon is also great as a sleazy pseudo-private eye, while Ben Stiller continues to do less and less for me.