Dev/Null42

Extreme and Murderous Absence

2011-07-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

Space is a vast and frightening thing; it is an extreme and murderous absence; it's the closest physical metaphor for the disturbing unknowns that follow death; space is a villain from a children's book -- it's the Nothing from The NeverEnding Story.

- Robert Brockway, writing the Cracked.com article "7 Awesome Images That Will Make You Mourn The Space Shuttle".

Last weekend Christine and I went on a very-much-needed brief vacation to Toronto. As has become our habit, we took the Megabus there and back. During the trip up last friday, I took some time as we passed through Buffalo to fire up Ustream on my iPhone and make good use of my unlimited 3G data...

On one hand, it was certainly impressive to realize I was watching the launch of a rocketship.... from over a thousand miles away (and orders of magnitude farther once it flew higher), in pristine quality, on a device pulled from my pocket, on a bus -- a true "This is the 21st century" experience.

On the other hand however, it was very bittersweet to see the end of this era.

Supreme Court Rules Video Games Covered By First Amendment

2011-06-27T14:46:00.001-04:00

Full NY Times Link

“Like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world),” Justice Scalia wrote. “That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.”

Thank you! (And take that, Jack Thompson!)

PlayStation Network Data Compromised

2011-04-27T17:01:00.002-04:00

This morning I received an e-mail from Sony, including the following:

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

Fun. Time to change some passwords...

"The Formats Won"

2011-02-23T22:03:00.002-05:00

Adam Wilt, writing for ProVideo Coalition about the current state of the film/video post-production world:

A few years back, we were talking about seeing the end of the formats wars. Remember when we shot interlaced 4x3 SDTV with a specified colorimetry and gamma to a handful of tape formats, and delivered interlaced 4x3 SDTV to an audience using interlaced 4x3 CRTs? Ah, those were the days… we didn’t know how simple we had it.

Now, let’s see, for acquisition, we have AVC-Intra, AVCHD, HDCAM, HDCAM-SR (in three different bitrates), ProRes (in more than three different bitrates, depths, and color resolutions), XDCAM HD and EX variants, DVCPROHD (still out there), ArriRAW, R3D, Codex Digital, Cineform, uncompressed (S.two; DPXes on SR 2.0), and whatever your HDSLR du jour shoots, just to name a few. And that’s just HD. There’s still SD being produced, and 2K and 4K, in gamma-corrected “linear” or log (LogC, S-Log, REDlog); 4x3, 16x9, 2:1, 2.4:1; 8-bit, 10-bit, or 12-bit; 4:2:0 to 4:4:4; full-res, subsampled, or oversampled (both well and poorly).

If you add in the number of deliverables the various presenters were talking about, and consider all the permutations of inputs and outputs, it just boggles the mind.

The format wars are over. The formats won, all of them. May their tribes increase.

Deal with it.

Truer words, never spoken - even in my low-end, behind-the-curve corner of the industry. I just moved into a new apartment, and glancing over at my newly-reorganized shelf of archival media for video projects from the last couple years, I see:

MiniDV tapes
Digital8 Tapes (basically the same as MiniDV, but require a different camera/deck.)
Video DVD's with some Quicktime masters as a bonus
Mini-DVD's from a Sony DVD-camcorder (not my choice)
A couple SDHC cards from my HDSLR, that I still haven't decided on an ideal archival plan for.

But hey - at least we're leaving tape behind! (I say, having just spent over an hour tonight fighting to get Final Cut to stop complaining of timecode problems while recapturing some interview footage from barely a year and a half ago. But I digress...)

It's The Little Things...

2011-01-29T18:21:00.000-05:00

How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

This is what I love about many Apple products - not big, impressive features that "revolutionize" a product, but the little, well-thought-out details that, once your realize them, make you frustrated that everything doesn't work that way.

Other favorite examples, from Mac OS, include spring-loaded folders, and proxy icons.

Soundtrack Preview for Tron: Legacy

2010-12-02T23:23:00.002-05:00

So, so very excited for this movie!

Flynn Lives!

Post-Gazette Video on iD Tech Camps

2010-07-25T23:56:00.001-04:00

As some of you might already know, I spent the last month and a half working at the CMU location for iD Tech Camps. This past week was my last week working there, and during the week a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stopped by, doing a story on "non-traditional" summer camps in western Pennsylvania (the story appears in today's paper, starting in a sidebar on the front page).

The reporter also shot some video of the camp!

Unfortunately, the class I was teaching that week was in a different lab, so you won't see any of me there. But the camp director gets plenty of face-time!

And yes, I was (more or less) dressed as a pirate that day too...

Hacked!

2010-06-15T23:09:00.004-04:00

Oh well isn't that cute... someone hacked my webcomic!

Of course, I'm not exactly clueless when it comes to these things, so after verifying the extent of the damage, I did some digging through the logs.

Ready for a laugh?

"K4Rel," the Iranian "L337 H4x0r!" who defaced my site is a complete poseur!

The actual break-in was done on Monday by someone in Jakarta, Indonesia. They found a way in, uploaded a backdoor for themselves (the quite useful "b374k" php script), and changed the (hashed) passwords for the admin section. Once finished, it appears this individual passed off (or let's be honest, probably sold) the admin passwords to a second person.

The second guy actually was from Iran. But he was only able to add a new "comic" to the database, as you can see above, and wasn't able to touch anything else on the site. Heck, he barely even did that - the internal page id had incremented by two, which means he effed it up the first time and had to try again! Laaame.

For the technically curious: the original Indonesian hacker used classic SQL injection. SomeryC, the extremely lightweight comic-oriented CMS I use for Directionless, was doing nothing to sanitize the page number in the URLs. This allowed him to edit the hashed passwords for the admin section. From there, he used the comic uploader to install the backdoor script, and after that appears to have left the server alone, after passing it off to the Iranian "hacker" (and for him, I use the term very loosely indeed...)

Over the last few hours, I've restored Directionless to normal. Will helped me with some of the PHP, so the site should no longer respond to bogus input. Additionally, I have put the entire admin section between an additional level of security with htaccess, and of course, changed all the passwords. DirectionlessComic.com should be secure now, at least from this type of attack.

Inside Facebook "Like" Spam

2010-05-31T00:48:00.004-04:00

Update 6-1-10: Looks like Download Squad caught the story now too. They're calling it "likejacking." Cute. According to them, security experts have confirmed that this is simply an annoyance, and there appears to be no real security threat at this time.
----------

Be careful what you "Like" on Facebook - there's a new exploit someone out there has discovered, and it seems like people are falling for it in droves!

A couple hours ago, I was taking a look at my Facebook news feed, when I noticed some of the usual silliness:

[So-and-so] likes "LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE."

Eh, seemed like it could be funny, and I was bored. So I clicked on it. This brought me to an external website, with an empty white page with black text reading "Click here to continue".

Hovering over the text didn't show any destination URL in the address bar. Naturally, I was suspicious, but since Macs are immune to most viruses, I clicked to see what would happen.

Nothing happened. Or so it seemed, until my brother informed me that I now liked this page...

At this point, I felt a little silly, but also curious as to what was going on here... how had the site made me Like something without clicking on a Facebook "Like" button? And who was running these things anyway?

Well, I did some digging...

From the HTML of the "Continue" pages, it was fairly clear how the trick was working. The words were just plain text - not even a link. However, the pages also contained an HTML "IFRAME" which was used to embed the on-Facebook page that is used to confirm a "Like". This page element was rendered invisible, and positioned underneath the page's text. Any clicks on the words would pass though them, and into the actual "yes, I want to like this" button on Facebook. Clever.

The particular bit of spam I fell for was hosted on a Blogspot blog, but there were quite a few other popular ones, such as The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School! That one was hosted on thedatesafe.com/promdress. When I went to the top-level, I found folders for several other similarly-set-up scams... as well as a running tally page, at thedatesafe.com/stats.htm

Whoever runs this server has since locked it down, so you can't see these pages anymore. But I was sure to take screenshots...

Cute. This particular shot was taken around 11:50 pm on Sunday May 30th. The one with over 130,000 "likers" is the prom dress one. Six minutes later, the number had grown by another 6,000. Facebook admins finally got wise and started blocking the page shortly after midnight.

I found similar scams spread across a number of domains:

Several Blogspot blogs, including girlownedbypolicelike.blogspot.com
thedatesafe.com - probably the main site, since that's where the stats page was located. WHOIS information (a public registry of who owns what websites) was anonymized on this one.
mprosperstats.info - this one did have valid WHOIS info, but I won't post it here, since it's unclear whether the owner of this site is involved, or just an innocent victim who had their website taken over by spammers. It would hardly be the first time.

I suppose it's possible that these are separate spammers, unrelated except in the method they use. But I think they're all connected. Facebook recently gained a feature that lets you "hover" the mouse over a link on the site to get some brief info on it - for example, if you hover over someone's name, you get their picture, and a list of some friends you have in common.

Hovering over these spam links also gives some info, including a picture... the same picture, across pretty much every one I have seen...

So uh.... anyone know this face?

ConFICK!

2010-05-16T03:33:00.001-04:00

The Enemy Within - Magazine - The Atlantic

Utterly fascinating (albeit long...) article on the history of the infamous "Conficker" worm. I had never realized just how sophisticated - and let's be honest, clever - it was/is.

Spoiler: The worm is still out there, lying dormant in a massive botnet estimated at over 6.5 million computers in size. And security researchers aren't entirely sure they can ever truly eradicate or contain it...

Portal for Free! (Until May 24)

2010-05-13T09:49:00.000-04:00

Steam is now finally available on Mac OS X, and clearly I'll post my impressions on it here in due time. However, Valve did something else pretty exciting, coinciding with the Mac release...

Portal is an amazing game, and this is the perfect time to check it out if you haven't gotten a chance to yet. This also serves as a great bit of advertising for the upcoming Portal 2, due out late this year.

As a side note - love the trailer too. Like the earlier teaser for Portal itself, the stylized, graphic animation perfectly captures the game's wicked sense of humor.

My iPhone Goes For a Swim

2010-05-12T01:30:00.003-04:00

Ok, so this happened several weeks ago, but I wanted to see how things actually played out before writing this post.

I was getting ready to do some laundry while carrying on a conversation with my mother. Start the water, soap goes in, shirts, pants - pretty automatic. I finished the conversation, finished loading, and went upstairs. I made it as far as my second-floor bedroom.

"Oh FUCK!"

I think you can see where this is going... I essentially flew down the stairs, continuing the stream of expletives, whipped open the cover of the washing machine, and fished the expensive trinket out of the pocket of my jeans.

Now, for those of you without extensive experience with the havoc created by computerized electronics and moisture, I'll recap: There's something of a "standard procedure" for giving your prized device a fighting chance in this situation:

DO NOT TURN IT ON! No, seriously. Don't check if it works. Turn it off if it's already on. Electricity can't short circuit if it isn't flowing.
Take out the battery! Again, can't have a short circuit if you don't have any power.
Open the thing up as much as you can. If possible, and you are skilled enough, partially take it apart. Dry it out thoroughly before doing anything else. The common suggestion for cell phones is a bed of dry rice, left in the sun for a day or two.
Clean the insides if you can. Once the moisture is gone, corrosion from minerals left behind is your biggest worry. Be meticulous, but gentle. A cotton swab with rubbing alcohol works well.
Pray.

Back to my situation, I had a soaked-through iPhone 3GS in my hands. It had only been underwater for maybe 60 seconds, but that's more than enough time for the water to work its way through. It wasn't fully "off" - just in its usual "suspend" mode, but I didn't want to risk waking it up to properly turn it off. And with a sealed-in battery, (grrrr...) I couldn't remove power quickly.

As my fellow geeks would probably expect, my immediate instinct was to rush to my computer, fumble around for my set of Very Small Screwdrivers (what, you don't have one?) and head straight to iFixit.com's tear-down instructions for the iPhone 3G/3Gs. (I eventually had to look at several of their other guides for more detailed instructions on certain parts, but seriously, I can't plug iFixit enough!) Thankfully, I happened to have the required suction cup sitting around, so I was able to frantically open the phone. One the major pieces were disassembled, I put them in their rice-y rehab center.

To help with the drying process, I augmented the powers of Uncle Ben with one of the 150-watt lamps I use for my video work...

I also put some saran-wrap over the dish that held the rice and iPhone parts. This would create a bit of a "greenhouse effect," increasing the drying heat inside. I also hoped it would let me see the progress of the drying, as the evaporating water condensed on the inside of the plastic. And condense it did...

I let it sit there for about 12 hours, changing the plastic whenever it got noticeably wet. Ideally, you should give a phone as much time as you possibly can, since you really want it to be bone dry. Of course, like anyone, I was impatient. Luckily, I was comfortable enough with tiny devices like phones, PDA's and laptops, that I was o.k. with taking the iPhone apart almost completely. That really helps the drying process, but your mileage may vary if you're less experienced with this sort of thing.

In any case, once I finally sat down that night to clean and re-assemble the thing, I didn't know what to expect. Most everything inside looked ok, except for one slightly scorched-looking area on the main logic board (See picture to the right). I still haven't found solid confirmation on what this is online, but at this point my assumption is that it's a surface-mounted Wi-Fi antenna.

Well, the water sensors were also all tripped, but well... y'know.

After a good cleaning, I nervously reassembled the phone, not sure of what was going to happen. After popping the case back together and twirling home the final two screws, I held the power button, and waited...

Not too bad, all things considered. There was a very noticeable light blotchiness across the screen (as well as some faint diagonal lines that don't come out well in photos), but I had read reports of that elsewhere online. Consensus was that it's trapped residual moisture between the LCD and the glass, and that it dissipates over time. The real annoying bit was the Wi-Fi - it wasn't unreliable, it didn't have trouble locating networks - it simply wasn't there. Wouldn't even read as a function the phone had. AT&T's 3G network is pretty fast, but it's still not Wi-Fi fast, and the cellular connection also puts a much higher drain on the battery.

The next day, the Wi-Fi was still M.I.A., but the blotchiness had definitely improved.

It continued to get better as the week wore on. By two weeks, both the blotches and the diagonal streaks were gone. The phone looked almost good-as-new, except it couldn't do Wi-Fi. My dad called it my "iPod un-Touch". I resigned myself to this being my situation for the foreseeable future. Liquid damage instantly voids the iPhone warranty (standard practice for cell phones) and Apple would charge me $200 to replace it out-of-warranty. Not a bad deal, all things considered, but I don't have a whole lot of discretionary income at the moment, so not something I can take advantage of. Besides, other than the Wi-Fi, the phone works. Quite well. So that's that.

But hold on just a second...

Fast-forward to last week. I had periodically been doing a full shutoff-reboot of the phone, just to see if that would do anything. Some websites had reported seeing lost wireless functionality return after doing this, but it never did anything for me.

Except, this time, it did!

So now my formerly-aquatic iPhone even has WiFi back. Well... kind of. The range is really limited, and kind of unpredictable (making me more confidant the "scorched" part was, in fact, the antenna). But hey, if I'm sitting 5 feet from the router, it stays pretty reliable! ;-)

So there you have it. A testament to Apple's engineering team... or my ineptitude. Take your pick.

F-Bombs

2010-03-23T23:00:00.000-04:00

Let's compare:

Dick Cheney: "Go fuck yourself."

Joe Biden: "This is a big fucking deal."

Hmm...

Valve Announces Steam For Mac OS X

2010-03-08T21:41:00.003-05:00

(Image blatantly taken from the WIRED story)

Awesome. Some reading material:

WIRED story: "Valve Brings Hit Games, Steam Service to Mac"

Valve Press Release

Valve Software has announced that next month they will be releasing a Mac client for their popular online video game store and community portal, Steam. With this, comes the news that they have also ported their substantial catalog of games, as well as the Source engine running most of them (as well as a fair number of other 3rd-party games)

There's plenty of info in the two links above, but here's a few takeaways:

All Source-powered Valve games you've already bought will carry over to either platform - no need to re-buy anything! (Valve is also encouraging other developers who sell their games on Steam to do the same)
Games that use the relatively-new "Steam Cloud" services will be able to sync game settings, save files an the like across platforms.
Full multiplayer compatibility.
All future Valve games (starting with Portal 2, which looks great) will be simultaneous releases on Windows, OS X, and Xbox 360. (still no love for the PS3)

This ought to make things rather interesting. Back in early 2005, I got a Mac as an early high school graduation gift. It made a lot of sense - I was going to film school in the fall, and I needed a laptop for college. Obviously, that machine needed to be something that I could run Final Cut Pro on. I had been a gamer all through high school, even attending QuakeCon the previous year. But if I wanted to keep playing Counter-Strike at Syracuse, I would need to lug up my old self-built PC tower.

However, the specs of my new PowerBook were tantalizing. Admittedly, the 1.67Ghz PowerPC G4 wasn't anything to write home about. The weaknesses of the PPC had become so severe that Apple would announce their big Intel switch later that very year. But the hard drive and (upgraded) RAM were respectable, the screen was gorgeous, and the ATI Radeon 9700M graphics card really caught my eye.

It was a generation behind the current cutting edge... but this was a laptop. And it had as much video memory as my desktop GPU! I tested a couple games that did have Mac versions (Quake 3 and the demo for Unreal Tournament 4) and they ran pretty well, for a laptop. Keep in mind, back then very few laptops actually had decent GPU's, unless you were talking about Alienware. But even lower-end Macs always had dedicated graphics cards, simply because they needed the graphical horsepower to run the Aqua GUI smoothly, especially on anemic G4 chips. It was a real shame I couldn't just fire up some Half-Life on this shiny new machine...

Of course, a few years later a fortuitous run-in with Applecare would net me an even shiner new Intel-based MacBook Pro. It had even better hardware than my now-ancient PC tower, so I wasted little time in installing XP on a Boot Camp partition, and being only a reboot away from gaming bliss. Of course, the rebooting does get to be annoying... I'm looking forward to April!

This is also pretty fascinating from a game-industry standpoint. There are now two major long-time PC developers (Blizzard and Valve) dedicated to simultaneous PC/Mac releases. (id Software fell off that wagon with Doom 3 and Quake 4, but looks to be coming back with Rage? We'll see.) And the Source engine - quite popular among both developers and mod teams - can now, presumably, seamlessly target either DirectX or OpenGL.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Canada's Olympic Win... and Pittsburgh

2010-02-28T22:36:00.000-05:00

I'll be honest, I've never really followed hockey. But even I was drawn to the drama of this showdown between the U.S.A. and our "neighbors to the north." This wasn't just about a game, or a medal. This was flat out national pride on the line!

However, I found the fallout in my digital circle of friends rather amusing. I live in Pittsburgh, and while Americans are mighty proud... Sidney Crosby is a Penguin. In a town famous (infamous?) for fanatical devotion to its sports teams, this made for some interesting facebook-reading post-game:

(click the image to view large enough to actually read!)

Video Games Live!

2010-02-13T03:16:00.005-05:00

Today (the 12th) was my birthday! Yay!

As part of the celebrations, my brother (with some help from my girlfriend) brought me to Video Games Live: Bonus Round, here in Pittsburgh. This is their second show here with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

This show has been touring since 2005, and plenty has already been said about it. Suffice to say: it's a really fun evening, and I'm really happy to see video game music, and game music composers, getting this kind of wider recognition. I wasn't able to make it the first time they had a show here, so I can only comment on this performance. A few highlights...

The performances were generally excellent. The orchestra was great, the conductor was really into it, and the host really knew how to engage the crowd. (The only real letdown was the violin soloist for the Bioshock segment. The introduction to Rapture is a pretty unforgiving theme, and it didn't really seem to be his night)
It being Valentine's Day on sunday, they opened with a poem: "Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF. All of my base are belong to you." Not the most original spin on that old meme, but it still got a nice laugh from the crowd.
They had two audience members come up and play Frogger. (I'm pretty sure it was the Atari 2600 version.) Time limit was 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Neither one got past the first level. Come oooon... haha
Flute Link! I had somehow missed it when she first appeared at Otakon a couple years ago, but Laura Intravia is a very talented flutist, and also a cosplayer. Combining the two, she became Internet-famous, and is now touring with VGL! Score! (The video below is from the Sãu Paulo show last October)
Anthony Daniels (better known as the guy who plays C-3PO) was there! He's an adjunct professor at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, and came to the show. When the host learned of this, he wasted no time in directing everyone's attention to it. Cue thunderous applause and spontaneous standing O. That alone made the night.
The host made a sideways jab at the Tony Hawk series for making too many sequels. "But it's ok. I can say it - I wrote the music for the first one. But I stopped after that..."
They had a Guitar Hero contest before the show, where whoever did the best would be invited up on-stage to play it live later in the show. The same guy won who did it at last year's show! And he doesn't even live in Pittsburgh! To be fair, he was damn good at Guitar Hero...

All in all, it was definitely a great experience, and I hope to go again!

The Latest Electronic Privacy Risk: Copy Machines???

2010-02-10T20:25:00.003-05:00

Something you'd never really think about, but apparently traded-in or sold office copiers actually represent a pretty huge privacy / identity theft risk:
http://cbs5.com/video/?id=61266@kpix.dayport.com

Some of the information here is just crazy. I mean, yes, clearly the machine needs to store cached digital versions of documents in order to fax them, email them, or even just offer a "print 20 more of that last thing I did" button. But why in the world would the copier ever need to store 25,000 cached documents???

Easy fix? The drives should be wiped before the machine is resold or returned. (and if there isn't already a way to do that from the menus, there should be.) That's the same standard operating procedure a company should be using for computers. And let's face it, everything is a computer these days.

Beautiful Google Ad

2010-02-07T02:18:00.007-05:00

I actually spotted a Flash ad for this video on my webcomic several days ago, and word is that Google is going to be playing it during the Superbowl.

Simple, honest, emotional... now that is how you do advertising.

Books!

2010-01-17T22:54:00.001-05:00

I like reading. Always have.

During college I found I didn't spend as much time reading for pleasure as I used to. I read plenty for my classes, but I definitely "fell behind on my reading." With a newfound surplus of free time, I started picking up a couple books I'd been meaning to read last summer, like William Gibson's Neuromancer, and the fascinating (at least to me) Masters of Doom, as well as having Christine steer me towards Microserfs, and the english translation of the original Battle Royale. But this was still only a handful of books over the last six months or so.

Now, between Christmas presents, and one fateful trip to the Half Price Books in Robinson, I've amassed the following mini-mountain in the last few weeks...

In case you're keeping score:

XKCD Volume 0
The first four Dark Tower books (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard and Glass)
William Gibson's two sequels to Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive
Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
and two Arthur C. Clarke books, Rendezvous with Rama and The Nine Billion Names of God

Methinks I have some reading to do... :-)

Christmas List 2009

2009-11-27T00:53:00.006-05:00

I know several people want to see this, so for the first time I thought I'd just put it here, so I can simply send around a link. As usual, I do not expect to get all the things on this list, I just try to give people a lot of options if they want ideas. Also, since I'm a recent college graduate getting by on what freelance jobs I can get for the time being, cash is clearly greatly appreciated as well!

Computer-y Things...

Rain Design M-Stand

Stylish and functional stand for more easily using my laptop on a desk. (Solid aluminum - the whole thing acts quite nicely as an enormous heat-sink!) More information here: http://www.raindesigninc.com/mstand.html

$44.90 here: http://raindesigninc.com/store/index.php

USB 2.5" SATA Drive Enclosure.

Needs to work with SATA (not IDE or ATA) drives, and needs to be bus-powered.

For example, something like this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ES2.5BPU2S/

iTunes Gift Cards

Not only music, but I can also buy apps for my iPhone using these. Small ones are really all that's necessary - I wouldn't know what to do with $50 in iTunes credit!

Movies...
Star Trek on Blu-Ray (the new movie, just came out in stores)
Yes, there is a Blu-Ray player in the house now. Blu-Ray is pretty. :-)

Watchmen (5-disc deluxe set. DVD is probably fine for this.)

Books...
XKCD Volume 0
Geeky web-comic thing. I couldn't explain if I tried.
Can be purchased here: http://store.xkcd.com/ ($18)

A few from Steven King's "Dark Tower" series
Haven't read any of them, but heard great things. Been around for a while - can probably even find them in used bookstores. Probably best if I read them in order, so the first few are the best bets.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982)
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987)
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991)
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) - Locus Award nominee, 1998^[1]
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) - Locus Award nominee, 2004^[2]
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) - Locus Award nominee, 2005^[3]
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004) - British Fantasy Award winner, 2005^[3]

And of course, last but not least...

The Pie-In-The-Sky-Impossible -Wishlist!
(wherein I dream of things I most definitely shall not receive.)

New Video Camera!
"Low-end" option: Canon HV-30 or HV-40 ($600-$800 probably)
"High-end" option: Canon EOS 7D ($1900... plus the accessories to turn it into a viable video solution. aka - audio adapters, shoulder mounts and the like)

A post-production job!
'nuff said.

An apartment!
ditto.

RIP GeoCities

2009-10-26T02:30:00.002-04:00

I'm probably going to bed soon, but I just had to note this.

Randall Munroe has created what is undoubtedly the best possible tribute to GeoCities on the date of its final shutdown, in the form of today's redesigned xkcd.com.

That is all.

What Was I Saying About Twitter?

2009-09-22T11:31:00.000-04:00

A little bit ago. And now, from a friend of mine from Syracuse...

My count...

Responses from people who want to follow him: 2.

Responses that are sarcastic or dismissive about Twitter itself: 4.

And one of the people who wants to follow him is slightly snarky about it as well.

The Unsung New Feature in iTunes 9: Video Tutorials!

2009-09-10T01:40:00.003-04:00

Along with some modestly (though interestingly) updated iPods, on wednesday Apple introduced a new version of iTunes. They've done a pretty good job of hyping the headline new features of this release - iTunes LP, Home Sharing, a redesigned iTunes Store, and so on. However, there seems to be one new small feature I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else: video tutorials!

This new window pops up the first time you launch the program after upgrading, but can also be called upon any time by choosing Help -> Welcome to iTunes from the menu bar.

This is genius, especially for people like my mother, who haven't been using the program since (virtually) the beginning, and can barely put together a playlist without some help. My only question is - why did no one think of this, oh... 8 versions ago?

Another interesting note for other geeks like me: The video playback controls in this new version seem to bear a strong resemblance to the ones in QuickTime X - even on my poor, not-yet-snowy 10.5 system. Huh.

Re: Social Media Revolution

2009-09-08T16:14:00.014-04:00

My father is the General Manager of WDUQ-FM, the NPR-affiliate public radio station at Duquesne University. Over the last few years, he's been bombarded by people in his business worried about "what's happening" with social media, and where traditional media fits in. A few minutes ago, he e-mailed me a link to this video, noting that he'd "love your reaction to this."

Here's my reaction (posted on my blog, for that extra kick of "meta"-ness!):

Personal computers have been used to improve communication almost from the beginning. Even a lowly, non-networked IBM PC with a word processor and a spreadsheet improves the efficiency of crafting office memos and accounting reports drastically over that of a typewriter and a ledger. Networks made computerized communication faster, and spread it farther. The internet kicked things into high gear.

The biggest mistake people make when talking about digital communications, is in calling things "revolutionary." Technology as a whole is the poster-child for evolutionary thinking. Unfortunately, to the uninitiated, there appears to be more going on than that, because the rate of evolutionary advancements taking place also increases.

Perhaps the biggest advantage held by people my age, who grew up with all of this well into full swing, is our ability to take it in stride. Sure, we use facebook on a many-times-a-day basis, but we don't fawn over it. Already, we usually give it little more thought than previous generations did to how many times a day they used the telephone. (Though, like them, we do still retain the ability to, once and a while, marvel at how ridiculous it is that you can actually do this. Tech is cool.) We don't analyze how each new innovation is going to change the entire world and the nature of humanity - we just use it. If it works for us, we keep using it. If we get bored, or it doesn't seem interesting to begin with, we move on. Are there downsides to this approach? Certainly. But I do think we have a more level-headed appraisal of things.

I think growing up in the nineties has tended to create a perspective that is difficult to impress anymore, when it comes to the internet. "Things are suddenly happening twice as fast and in twice as many ways as before? Ok... this is supposed to shock me? It's been that way for most of my life."

The internet, like people of my generation, is a product of the nineties, and in many ways still operates like it. On a recommendation from my girlfriend, I recently read Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. It was lauded as a portrait of a cultural microcosm specific to its time and place, but honestly, I didn't find the world all that different from the one we live in today. "Dot-Com" start-ups have been replaced by "Web 2.0" start-ups, but the tale is largely the same.

One more thing about my generation - having lived through the "Dot-Com Era," we have grown to truly loathe transparent buzzwords. Seriously. "Socialnomics (tm)" actually made me cringe.

I'm not sure where exactly I'm going with this, (commentary on the stream-of-consciousness web I find so little unnerving about?) but I've already ranted for much longer than I intended to, so I'll leave it at that.

Also: I've always liked that Fatboy Slim track. (also a product of the 90's...)

Twitter Isn't Cool (at least not traditionally)

2009-08-08T01:44:00.006-04:00

It's something of a truism in technology: teens and other "Young People" discover a new technology, embrace it, weave it into their lives... and then the over-35 crowd eventually comes late to the party, desperately trying to "monetize" a phenomenon they don't even understand. This basic fact is so well known, so undisputed, that many companies now actively seek out the next big thing, not just to cash in, but because they're desperately afraid of becoming "irrelevant" if they don't get hip with all that jazz the kids are talkin' about these days. Nobody wants to be a square!

But there's a problem with this new mentality - the "real world" is now so hell-bent on calling out the next internet fad, that they keep jumping the shark before it even learns to swim! Tortured metaphors aside, the bandying about of the term "Web 2.0" to describe anything and everything is endemic of this trend, and it's latest casualty is Twitter.

To hear some tell it, Twitter is the communications medium that's going to change the world. Everyone needs to get on it right now, or they will lose all connection to the younger generation and, as naturally follows, the world.

Funny thing about that; As Ars Technica reports, there are more Twitter users over the age of 55 than under 25. If you're shocked right now, then you've bought into the hype.

It really shouldn't come as much of a surprise that my generation hasn't really latched on to Twitter. I mean let's face it; I just graduated from college. I've been using Facebook for 4 years now, and AOL Instant Messenger for the better part of a decade. Most of my friends are in the same boat. Do we really need another status message to update?

Now, I'm not knocking Twitter. It's intended purpose is pretty limited in scope, but it does it well, and simplicity is often a good reason to use a tool. And I know I'm going to end up getting an account myself at some point, if only to keep in touch with a far-flung friend who's embraced it wholeheartedly. (Of note: There is only one such friend. Most of them use Facebook.) But I'm not excited about Twitter, the way I initially was about, say, Facebook. And I know very few people my age who are. In fact, I know many more who are openly disdainful about it, including my girlfriend, as well as a few friends from college jokingly threatening to disown each other for getting accounts. (Naturally, these threats were made on Facebook...)

I guess my point is... stop trying to make grandiose statements about technology that "Is The Future". The evolution of internet culture has plainly taught us two things: It makes little sense, and it does what it wants.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen = Biggest Second-Weekend Drop in Michael Bay's Career

2009-07-06T19:36:00.003-04:00

I saw an opening-day midnight showing of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Like many I was, shall we say, less than impressed. Other similarly disappointed friend noted ruefully that it would still probably make boatloads of money. This is true. For a film like this, the audience is more or less built in. It can't not make money.

However, that night I also claimed that if Team America: World Police came out next year, they wouldn't be singing about how much Pearl Harbor sucked anymore. I predicted that once the build-in audience had done their duty, and word spread about how bad it was, we would see the largest second-week slump in Michael Bay's career.

Called it.

Transformers 2 had an opening weekend gross slightly shy of $109 million. The second weekend saw that figure drop to a bit over $42 million, for a week-to-week change of 61.2%, placing it currently ranked #252 on Box Office Mojo's list of the Biggest Second Weekend Drops - the highest of any Bay-helmed movie.

(Also worth noting: Those figures only count the actual weekend part of the first weekend. They do not include the more than $91 million made on that previous Wednesday and Thursday. If those were included, the drop would be even more severe)

Non-Specific Thoughts and Worries

2009-07-01T11:13:00.000-04:00

Lately I've found myself feeling kinda antsy. Like there's something sneaking up behind me, and I'm not ready for it. I can't quite pin it down.

I could certainly point to a lot of factors. Money is definitely one. Today I went through the required online "exit counseling" for my student loans. While mine are relatively modest compared to many others, seeing the number I owed staring me in the face was still a little intimidating. Last month my dad took me down to the Blue Cross/Blue Shield office on McKnight to get me on my first in-my-name medical insurance policy. The monthly fee for that is pretty low, all things considered (the statistical benefit of being young, male, and more or less healthy), but it's still another recurring expense to consider (albeit one that my dad has generously covered the first couple months for).

There are other expenses looming in the future as well. It's highly likely that I'll be purchasing a much-needed used car from my grandparents in the near future. They're willing to let me pay it off in installments, but that's still an additional expense, not even considering state-required auto insurance, maintenance, gas, etc.

Naturally, all of these money woes tie into my job search. I've made a few bucks doing the odd freelance video job on Craigslist, but that is anything but sustainable over the long-term. I need a job. And as time goes on, my "stockpile" of money from graduation and my available credit line will only continue to diminish. (And starting in September, that credit card will start accruing interest - further incentive to pay it off sooner rather than later) My chosen industry is an interesting one. Checking for job openings is highly unlikely to actually find anything. While there are a number of post-production shops in Pittsburgh, they don't exactly plaster openings all over the internet and wait for resumes to roll in. The name of the game is networking - and as of yet I don't have too many "ins" to that game. However, I have recently thought of some ways I might leverage my existing contacts to put me in touch with the right people. We'll see how that goes.

Additionally, as I alluded to a couple posts back, Christine and I are both looking at our futures, hoping they will coincide in Pittsburgh - and hoping that will be soon. We're both tasked with finding jobs here. (And of course, moving out of my parents' house also carries the obvious cost of finding a place to live, something I'm currently trying to "feel out.")

I'm also definitely feeling the universal, powerful urge shared by nearly all college graduates, to "escape" my childhood home and live more or less on my own. (The half-sheltered experience of independence at college, of course, being the "tease" that cannot be forgotten). But I won't go too in-depth with this on a public blog.

All of these are legitimate concerns, but none completely describe my anxiety. Anyone who knows me remotely well knows I can be a pathological worrywart. I'm never wanting for things to fret about. (Not all too long ago it was finals, a professional certification test, and a housemate who seemed to be doing everything possible to get the landlord to evict us. But that's another story altogether...) Something is making what I feel now "different" from my usual worries.

Last night I was thinking about this, and I think I've put my finger on it: It's the slow, subconscious, terrible realization that this is my life. Up till now, I've essentially been traveling on a train. At some stations, I could choose which of several tracks to guide the train down. While I'm onboard, I could choose to get up and go to the dining car, look out the window and enjoy the scenery, or even just sit back and take a nap. But regardless of what track I was on, or what I did within the train... my life was still on rails.

Now it's the end of that line. There isn't another train. From here on out, I'm in charge of where I go, how I get there, who I go with, and what I do when I get there. There's no printed up timecard of upcoming stops. There's no track to follow to the horizon. There's just me, and the world I live in.

Yeah. I think that might have something to do with my anxiety. Just a little.

Re: Post-Election Iran

2009-06-20T22:42:00.004-04:00

Reposted from a friend of mine from the middle east:

If anyone is on Twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on.

I don't have Twitter, but I do have a blog. Done and done. (and yes, this means my time-stamps will be horribly wrong for the near future.)

UPDATE September 2009: I have since reverted to the proper timezone. After this much time has passed, the likelihood of this sort of tactic still helping is minimal at best.

Farewell, Analog TV

2009-06-13T16:55:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was the final (oft-delayed...) cut-off date for the end of analog NTSC television broadcasts in the United States. From here on out, the only free over-the-air TV that will be available is digital.

The original date for this had been back on February 17, but Congress got worried that too many people were still unprepared, so they fast-tracked a bill to delay it until now. Stations were still allowed to shut down on the earlier date if they wished, and many across the country did. (it's rather expensive to keep an extra transmitter running...) When they did, many stations did something special on their analog feed right before shutting it off, to mark the occasion. I wondered whether any of the Pittsburgh stations would do this last night, and KDKA didn't disappoint:

According to YouTube commenters, KDKA were the only ones to do anything like this around here. WTAE and WPXI just unceremoniously cut to snow at midnight. Come on, you guys. This is a moderately significant moment in geeky television technology history!

Steam Still Bugs Me Sometimes

2009-06-06T16:43:00.003-04:00

When Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, I had a healthy level of teenage nerd-rage going over the fact that it required Steam, Valve's online content-delivery platform. Over the years, Steam has matured into something I can live with, and even like. (Using Steam Chat to launch into a game of Left 4 Dead is delightfully seamless.) I bought HL2 at retail because I insisted on having a pretty box and physical CD's if something went wrong, but every Valve game I've bought since (and a few others) has been an online purchase through Steam.

However, sometimes it still bothers me, like with the problem I ran into a couple days ago. I think I've narrowed it down to a freak network issue, but nonetheless: No matter what has gone wrong technically, I see no justification, none whatsoever, for ever showing a user this message:

...regarding a locally-installed game!

Thrust Head-First into Reality

2009-05-23T02:11:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago, I graduated from Syracuse University. I am no longer a college student.

The transition was a bit delayed since I didn't actually move out of my apartment until last Friday, and then zipped off to Albany with Christine for the weekend. I returned to Pittsburgh monday night, and am only now starting to get settled back into the house it no longer feels appropriate to call "home."

So now I'm on my own. A college-educated, presently unemployed, adult living in his parents' house. It's a perfectly expected and nigh-inevitable situation, but a sobering one nonetheless.

I have no idea why I'm writing this so formally. I guess I just have some need to make it sound as important/scary as it feels right now.

In any case, here I am, trying to figure out how to make the transition and find some sort of job in my desired field, nebulously-defined as that is right now. I have a few possibilities:

Leverage my old contacts from my internship last summer to try getting more PA / low-level production work.
Try to get into a post-production / visual effects house in Pittsburgh. I've found a handful online, and this is definitely more what I'd like to do. But I have no idea if I'm qualified enough, and I definitely don't have any "ins" anywhere.
Start my own shop or do freelance videography. I've thus far been unsuccessful in using my past unpaid and not-for-profit work with WDUQ and the LWV to springboard into additional work, and all conventional wisdom suggests that trying to start up a post house without first having experience working in one is a bad, bad idea. (Not to mention, I obviously don't really have the capital to do it properly right now.)
Throw my hands up in the air and just try to get any kind of job. Best Buy, GameStop, Arbys... something, anything with a paycheck.

Of course, the other option I haven't mentioned yet is looking outside of this city for work. Particularly, the standard-operating-procedure for my peers in my major to make a pilgrimage to New York, or especially Los Angeles. For one thing, I'm not really enamored with the popular idea of moving to a very expensive city with the one-in-a-million hope of landing a fortune once you get there. I'm also unsure I'm comfortable with the amped-up professional politics that seems to go hand-in-hand with working in either city.

But there's no denying the other reason. It's true that my short-term life goals are now no longer just about finding a good job. I want to find a job that not only allows me to enjoy myself, make a living, and start my own life... I also do not want to go on living about 500 miles (or more) from Christine. She has a job in Massachusetts lined up for the summer, but come September her future is as uncertain as my own. Pittsburgh is a city we both like, and has a relatively strong showing now in both film production (for me) and theater (for her). It seems to be our "best bet" at the moment.

So that's where I stand. I still haven't decided which of those bullet points is the best option at the moment, so right now, I'm going to try working on things that I need to do for any of them. For now, that includes doing the necessary "phone interviews" with the Newhouse career center to complete their job search program and gain access to the alumni database, taking advantage of as many non-paying production stuff as falls my way so I can build my "professional" experience, continuing to do post work on my own to gain more familiarity with the tools (before graduating I picked up Lightwave 3D with my academic discount, so I can get back into that), and probably most importantly: finish my demo reel(s) and my website, as they are liable to be my calling cards for most anything I might do.

I don't know where I'm going, but I need to get there soon...

Twitter!

2009-04-01T16:34:00.006-04:00

I finally did it. I know some of you have made fun of the Twitter service in the past, but come on, it really is the future. Plus, ever since I saw how Jeph Jaques uses a flash embed to show his tweets, I realized how easily I could tie Twitter in to my existing website.

Thus, behold!

Once I figure out how, I'll probably be incorporating this box into the sidebars of both this blog, and Directionless. Heck, given my poor history in actually updating the blog itself, this can probably stand in for times when I'm not otherwise posting!

Are you as excited about all this as I am? Then Follow Me on Twitter!

When "Targeted" Ads Fail

2009-03-14T00:17:00.003-04:00

I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about Google's decision to start using AdSense to deliver ads that are targeted not only based on a web page's content, but also on each user's history and interests. The tactic isn't new, only the pervasive, widespread reach of Google is.

The privacy concerns of this have been talked about endlessly, and I'm not writing to add to that discussion. My question is: privacy aside, how many companies actually have the intelligence to even use such a system effectively? Theoretically, the more information you have on someone, the better your targeting should be. Given this logic, a service like Facebook, which knows a lot about me, should have very-well-targeted ads.

Theoretically.

I mean, come on. This isn't rocket science, people.

Now I Can Track My... Pizza?

2009-02-01T14:56:00.004-05:00

Earlier this afternoon I decided to pre-order some pizza for the Superbowl later (Go Steelers!). I wanted to make sure my order was in early so I'd get my pizza despite the inevitable madness that will ensue around 5-7ish tonight.

I placed my order through the Dominos web site, and after it was submitted, I saw this:

Wha- I can even get tracking info on my pizza now? I did some Googling, and it seems like most of the reporting on this new feature is relatively negative. The verdict in a nutshell: Their pizza sucks anyway, and the only people who will use this are antisocial web-addicts with no life and nothing better to do for 30 minutes.

Obviously, I can't speak to the taste issue - to each their own. But to throw my two cents in, I'd say this is a nice reassuring feature to have in a case like mine, where you place your order several hours before you want to see your food.

Media and Technology: An Interests Showdown for Obama

2009-01-25T23:32:00.004-05:00

Last tuesday, like most people at Syracuse, I watched elatedly as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. It was a historic moment any way you slice it, and all eyes are on Obama now as he attempts to live up to the hope over 66 million of us placed in him last November.

There's been no shortage of news speculation as to how he will handle one pressing issue or another. However, being me, I've been wondering about another angle. Perhaps not the most important or pressing, but one which greatly interests me.

Aside from the pomp of the ceremony itself, two things about President Obama's inauguration day struck me. First: the new website at WhiteHouse.gov, which went live before he had even finished taking the Oath of Office. Second: The star-studded "Neighborhood Ball," hosted by ABC, which kicked off the string of events he and Michelle danced at. These two events stood out to me because they highlight two "interest groups" among which Obama has strong support; the wired world of the internet, and the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

Barack Obama ran what is widely hailed as the most technology-savvy campaign in history. With the small but passionate exception of Ron Paul supporters, the "internets" as a whole loved him for it, and looked forward to a presidency that understands and embraces new technology. So far, signs that Change has come to the members of the executive branch are good. The new White House website is every bit as fancy as the Obama team's previous online works, and having a weekly video podcast of sorts sounds like a great way to engage the populace. Later in the week, we heard about the complaints staffers have been voicing over the archaic I.T. infrastructure in the White House - a lament all to familiar to any geek who has found themselves thrust into the bureaucratic technology morass that typifies most established institutions (50 meg mailbox quota for Syracuse students' e-mail, anyone?). Heck, even the fact that the president fought to keep his Blackberry shows that he's a new breed of president - one who "gets" technology. Let the Tubes rejoice!

However, the "Neighborhood Ball" I saw tuesday night on ABC demonstrates Obama's clout with another group: the entertainment industry. During the campaign, one of the first widely-talked-about attack ads from McCain was directed at Obamas "celebrity" appeal. His life up to this point reads like an Oscar-winning screenplay, and like most Democratic candidates, he had his fair share of supporters among the Hollywood elite. That ABC would get together with chart-topping recording artists to throw the first of his presidential balls further proves Obama's appeal among the entertainment industry,

Clearly, both groups are looking forward to a plethora of wonderful changes our new President will bring.

One problem though: These two groups are currently at war.

Media piracy is one of, if not the biggest issue facing the content creators in the film, television, and music businesses. It is also at the forefront of the freedom-loving culture of the Internet. Media companies view tech-savvy consumers as criminal scum, and brilliant programmers worldwide take pride in cracking every new protection scheme the entertainment industry can come up with, either out of belief, necessity, or (I suspect most of the time now) out of sheer spite.

In the last decade, this issue has become the defining conflict for both sides, and both no doubt would like to look to Obama as their savior. I'm very curious as to how he will navigate these waters, not least of which because I often find myself straddling the same fence.

Christmas 2008 and New Year's 2009

2009-01-07T02:09:00.008-05:00

Monday night I got back at Syracuse for my last semester of my undergraduate career. After that, it'll be time to face the Real World.

Side note: Aaaaaaaaaah!!!

Classes don't start until next week, so for now I have some time to sit around in my apartment, get work done, and... oh yeah! Update this blog!

Winter break went pretty well for me. I sat in on a meeting with Fitting Group, the design firm for the WDUQ.org revamp, and that appears to be moving forward rather well. The design looks great, and I think the Joomla developer they hired understood the issues I raised that need to be addressed before we go live. By the end of this month or next, I should be helping the DUQ staff with porting over content.

I played with my new N64 a fair bit, and picked up The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for it, which seems pretty great so far.

Christmas was good as always. As always, my family cut our own tree at a tree farm in Butler County and, also as always, it was rather large.

My presents were nice, including a very nice TERABYTE external hard drive from OtherWorld Computing, and a new 250 GB internal drive for my laptop as well, both of which should be very useful. Although tearing my current laptop down and replacing the non-user-replaceable hard drive does seem to be turning into an odd holiday tradition for me...

However, as should be expected, the highlight of the break for me was Christine coming to visit again. This time around, I deliberately left the schedule of "things to do" a little more open so we could spend more time just hanging out together, but there were a few fun excursions, not least of which being New Year's Eve.

Yes, for the first time I decided to go "out" with my girlfriend for New Years' eve. Not for a fancy black-tie dinner and play, but to a club on East Carson Street. Specifically, the "Bliss" New Year's Eve party at Diesel Club Lounge. I've been to a couple small clubs in Syracuse, and more than a couple bars, but this was the first time either of us had gone to an all-out Club with the focus on a big dance floor and whatnot. Needless to say, we had a great time. The DJ was pretty good, the alcohol wasn't too expensive (with one exception noted below...), and the lighting system was very well put together. (even Christine thought so, and she's the expert!) Naturally, Christine looked beautiful, and I think I pulled off a respectable outfit as well, given my usual inability to properly dress myself. (We both wisely decided against trying to keep track of our cameras in the crowded club, so I unfortunately have no pictures from the night.)

As I said before, the drinks weren't too expensive considering it was a New Year's Eve party at a popular nightclub, except for Christine's ten dollar appletini. (Which, she points out, wasn't even the best appletini she'd had. That honor belongs to the eight dollar appletini she got at Ohm in Syracuse last semester. The only other nasty surprise that night came when we realized that, as this was the only club or bar we'd been to outside of New York State, smoking was permitted! It didn't bother me too much, although our clothes definitely needed a good washing the next day!

Getting to and from Diesel went pretty well, all things considered. I knew from the start that I didn't want to drink and drive (just say no, kids!) so transportation came down to busses or taxis. The busses in Pittsburgh don't seem to run much past midnight, so I knew we'd have to get a cab home, but we tried to save a little money by taking the bus system downtown. This was a success in that we only ended up paying $2.50 a piece (actually, my mom payed. Thanks for passing us the bus passes on the way out the door, mom!) but we did have a little trouble find the right stop downtown for the transfer to our second bus. Aside from some very cold feet, no harm done there.

Getting home was more interesting. We left diesel at around 1:30 AM, and I tried to call a cab. When I finally got through to a dispatcher, we were told that the estimated wait to have a cab sent to us was over 3 hours... but that "we're sending a bunch of taxis through that area tonight, so you're best bet is to hail one." Sounded good, but there were a few hundered other people trying the same thing within a few blocks of us, so our odds didn't seem so great. Fortunately, there was a great pizza place across the street where we could eat and pass the time while the crowds thinned out.

After that we tried again for a cab to no avail. Christine randomly contracted a case of the hiccups, so we stopped in another small restaurant to get some water. This happened to be the "Cambod-ican Kitchen," a decidedly strange little place. They served up oriental food of some description, but had a running joke throughout the establishment about serving cat. I doubt this was the case in reality, but there it was nonetheless. Over the ordering counter there was a Garfield stuffed toy with "Eat Me!" cleverly scrawled across it's belly in permanant marker.

The owner of Cambod-ican kitchen (or at least we assume he was) was a sight. Orange camo-pants with a Leatherman strapped to his belt, and a cowboy/Crocodile-Dundee hat started off an image that finished with a witty t-shirt touting "The Best Pussy You'll Ever Eat!" After getting two bottled waters, Christine asked where the restroom was. She was then handed the ladies' bathroom key... which was chained to a huge black rod, vaguely reminiscent of The Club. He instructed her on how to most usefully hold said ludicrous object while unlocking the door (Answer: like a shotgun). The key to the men's room, it should be noted, was tied to a simple wood block, easily held in one hand. Don't ask me.

We eventually returned outside around 3 AM, and teamed up with a guy in an ugly red and white striped shirt to hail a cab. He and a girl from the group he had gone out with went back to their hotel, and gave me more than enough cash to cover their part of the fare. (thanks, Red Shirt Guy!) We then continued back to my parent's house, where we collapsed into bed and pretty much didn't get up until the following afternoon.

In the end, it was an incredible night in my opinion. For the rest of Christine's visit we went out to eat, spend a fun day at the Carnegie Science Center acting like 7-year-olds, saw another couple laser shows (not as good as the ones over the summer, but still fun), and spent some much wanted time just sitting around the house spending time together. I've alluded to it before, but I don't think I've ever come right out on this blog and mentioned how much I love this girl. (Hai bb!) Next week we'll have been dating for a year, and I couldn't be happier.

However, one thing I'm not incredibly happy with is how long this post has become, and especially how late I have been up writing it! Time to sign off for tonight. Have a great 2009, everybody!

Whoops...

2008-12-23T02:53:00.000-05:00

I seem to have inadvertently deleted the customized theme information for this blog... Have picked one of the stock themes for now. I think I have a backup... If not, I may be redesigning my blog sooner than anticipated!

Home for the Holidays

2008-12-15T23:24:00.006-05:00

I got home late wednesday night. Well technically thursday morning. In any case, the lights were still on when I got home, which is more than Christine can say. After the big storm that blew through New England on Thursday, there's still several thousand homes in upstate(ish) New York without electricity. Four days later. Kind of outdoes the should-be-more-of-a-surprise Comcast outage that greeted me when I got home.

She'll be coming to visit for New Year's, but since we're at our respective homes for Christmas, we exchanged gifts before we left. I think she liked the necklace I got her:

Emerald, because it's her birthstone, and because it goes well with her eyes. I suppose jewelry is kind of a typical boyfriend-present, but I think she liked it. :-)

And I know I liked my present!

Yup - a legit Nintendo 64! Just like the one on which I wasted so many hours playing Mario Kart 64 with Tony, Eddie and Kevin sophomore year! My girlfriend is awesome. Speaking of which, Christine also got me Star Fox, a rumble pack, and... Mario Kart 64. Goodbye, productivity!

And yes... I've already unlocked the "Extra" reversed versions of all the tracks in Mario Kart, and beaten Star Fox once. Crazy freaking floating monkey head... (Yes, I got the lame noob-Andross because I suck. Don't judge me!!)

Now that I'm home, I've got lots of time to play video games and the like (already ordered Ocarina of Time on eBay...). Although there are of course plenty of other things I should do. Things like updating my resume, putting together a legit demo reel or two, and trying to do at least some networking before college cuts me loose in May... (Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!) I also think I'm going to revamp HanleyFilms.com yet again. Present glitchy navigation aside, its hard to keep it really up to date when it's all hand-edited HTML, and Directionless has really shown me how much easier it is to maintain a site built on some sort of Content Management System. Since I'm already helping transition DUQ FM's website over to a new, Joomla-backed design, now might be a good time to use Joomla to build a new professional website for myself as well. If I'm trying to make contacts in the Film/TV/Media/Computer/Gaming/etc market in Pittsburgh, having a well-polished web presence would kind of seem important.

Oh, and speaking of Directionless. Damn. I really need to get on that...

Back at SU... For a Week and a Half.

2008-12-01T13:31:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving coming so late this year has created a rather weird schedule for those of us going to college (relatively) far from home. I just got back to Syracuse last night, and I'm leaving for ~~Christmas~~ Totally-Not-Organized-Around-One-Religion's-Holiday Break next week on Wednesday or Thursday. In between, I have to do one final exam, two 2-page "memos," one 8-page creative history writing assignment, a presentation on the play "Art," and a 10-second-long 3D animation in Blender. And a few late-night shifts at the Newhouse edit suites. Fun!

Over thanksgiving, in addition to eating a large amount of turkey and stuffing, I also participated in the Black Friday shopping "experience." Didn't actually get going until "late" - after 6am. The parking lots were pretty crazy though. At the mall one guy almost backed right into us at a fairly decent clip, while we were distracted by the children trying to get run over on the other side. Needless to say the stores were swamped, though oddly Best Buy still had some 2 gig SD cards for $7 apiece left. So now I can take over a thousand pictures on my digital camera at a time. Or an hour of MPEG4 video. Wow.

I did get some of my Christmas shopping done, with presents for my dad and brother, as well as something special for someone special... :-)

But now I am back to school, and back to work. Boo.

Halloween 2008

2008-11-21T02:16:00.006-05:00

This post will probably get pushed down by newer, more up-to-date stuff in the near future, but since it's over half a month overdue, I wanted to get it up.

Halloween this year was pretty fun. I actually knew what my costume was going to be way ahead of time this year, as opposed to my usual habit of having to come up with something days (or hours...) beforehand. And honestly, it's been pretty much inevitable since high school that I'd eventually do this one.

Yup. I finally did Smith.

In addition to being the one night in the year when my hairline was actually an asset, my costume also went together very nicely with Christine's:

And apparently, we weren't the only ones in a Matrix-y mood that night. On our way down the massive Clarendon hill to get to our intended party, we got a number of hoots and hollers of approval, until we saw one of the Twins in a very convincing costume. (Sadly, there was only one. Even sadder - I didn't think at the time to yell for him to stop and pose for a picture!) Once at the party, we also ran into a Neo upstairs. Surprisingly, there seemed to be very few Jokers and Sarah Palins out that night.

Overall it was a really fun night!

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL

2008-09-16T23:50:00.005-04:00

Pretty spot on, if you ask me.

I know this is all over YouTube, but hey: you can watch it here without worrying about NBC taking it down! Score!

MSNBC's Countdown - For Free on iTunes

2008-08-04T03:15:00.005-04:00

These days, I get most of my actual news from the front page of NYTimes.com, or sometimes Reuters (mostly for Oddly Enough). For television news and political commentary, I generally fall to the Stewart-Colbert dream team, or Countdown, Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC. (Hey, if republicans can sit while their eyes glaze over from Fox News, I think I'm entitled to a little of my own preaching-to-the-choir punditry! Besides... Keith's wittier than Bill O'Reilly.)

Of course, I don't exactly mark my calendar to make sure I catch Countdown on TV. To be honest, I don't even know its timeslot off the top of my head. Which I was pleasantly astonished to find it in the podcast section of the iTunes Store.

Not just clips, or sound bites. Video. Of the whole show.

It's not perfect of course. Mainly because each episode eats up about 220 meg on my hard drive. My laptop hard drive with 20 gig free. So, uh... don't think I'll exactly be archiving these things. But it is impressive that they did this, if not entirely surprising. Olbermann has long tried to stay on top of the "internets."

Of course, as always with these things, while I'm impressed and grateful to get this so conveniently (and so free!) I'm still a little confused as to the long-term business model of giving non-ad-laden stuff away on the internet for free. Nice publicity stunt, but how far can you go with it? Hmm.

As a side note: MSNBC didn't exactly pick the most flattering picture of Keith there, did they?

The Wisdom of Calvin and Hobbes

2008-08-03T03:53:00.001-04:00

“If life is just a stage, then we are all running around ad-libbing, with absolutely no clue what the plot is. Maybe that’s why we don’t know whether it’s a comedy or tragedy.”

- Bill Watterson

Google Experimenting With Customizable Search Results?

2008-07-15T12:13:00.005-04:00

Today I noticed some new icons next to my Google search results...

Seems they're part of a trial "Edit Results" program Google is testing on a random selection of people with Google Accounts over a few weeks. They set up an informational page to explain it more. This feature only applies to people who are logged in to their account when searching, and it only affects the result list of that particular user.

You can click on the Up arrow to promote good results to the top, delete bad ones altogether, and add notes about different results.

This seems like an interesting way to approach user-feedback-driven search, without actually making Google search results user-feedback-driven. However, if they could figure out a more configurable way to do this (split into different "Search Sessions," perhaps?) I think it could actually be very useful when trying to do research online, especially with the note-taking feature.

My Room is a Digital Graveyard

2008-05-19T03:35:00.002-04:00

It's really pretty sad. The truly depressing part is - this isn't even half the stuff. It's just the junk I'm currently trying desperately to get rid of!

Click the image for a larger view. Any or all of this stuff can be yours if you want it, just make me an offer. ("Free" counts as an offer. Ok, maybe not for the 350W power supply. That's still almost useful.) I'd just throw most of it in the trash, but I've got too much Liberal Guilt for that. (I mean, come on now.)

A list of this stuff as near as I can figure...

External 56K modem. Supposedly works with Macs or Windows 3.1/NT/95. Serial connection. Copyright date says 1998.
Stereo multimedia speakers. They sound pretty tinny, as I recall. Standard minijack plug.
Seagate IDE hard drive. About 150% as thick as most 3.5" drives. Doesn't list capacity, but I expect a few hundered megabytes...
Seagate IDE hard drive. 261.3 megabytes.
2x Sun SparcStation IPC's. You can Google them. 25 MHz Unix workstations that should outperform most 50MHz Intel 486 PCs! They power on, but use an obscure monitor type that I can't find, and so I have no idea how well they work.
Sun keyboard, mouse, and monitor cable to go with one of the SparcStations. Also, a few little adapters that supposedly let you connect the boxes to a VGA monitor, but they only work with "sync-on-green" VGA monitors, which apparently none of mine are.
An ancient NEC 5.25" hard drive. Weighs a ton, and uses some sort of pre-IDE proprietary connection that hooks up to the attached 8-bit ISA card... The date on it is 1984...
Bog-standard 5.25" floppy disk drive. Nothing exciting or exotic here.
90-watt AT Power Supply (came before ATX)
350-watt ATX Power Supply (this is probably the only one I'd expect any decent price for, as it's still somewhat decent, and works fine)
Creative CD-ROM drive. Doesn't use IDE - I think it has to hook up to some sort of Sound Blaster card it was bundled with. No idea where said card is though...
Logitech "Scanman Plus Controller Board." ISA card. Copyright date is 1989.
Some sort of ISA sound card. Pulled from an old IBM Aptiva.
Lucent 56K modem. ISA card. (and the telephone cable to go with it! Awesome!!!!1)
Random old floppy cables, the kind that go to a 5.25" drive.
Actually, these two adapters are kind of neat, in an old-tech sort of way. They're used to hook up a 3.5" floppy drive in machines that were only designed to support 5.25" drives.
A Pentium I heatsink.
VEGA graphics adapter from 1986. 8-bit ISA card. Uses an older, pre-VGA graphics plug (looks like a serial port)
"ATI Mach 32" 2D video card. ISA card, normal VGA connector. I think its big selling point was it had an amazing 2 megabytes of VRAM... or something.
SMC network card from 1993. ISA card, does 10-baseT ethernet, or two different, obsolete networking connections (including one that appears to use coaxial cable...) This was actually the NIC that was in my machine when I first started playing CounterStrike and going to LAN parties...
Assorted F-ing RAM. All pre-DDR, mostly SIMM's (pre-DIMM)
A couple of standard CD-ROM drives. One of them is 52x! I don't remember if they work...

Most of this stuff should be functional. Or at least, it was functional the last time it was in a machine.

And like I said, that isn't even close to all of my older computer junk... It's just the really ancient crap I'm trying to get rid of, hopefully without it ending up in a landfill. I still have (including my normal everyday machines) 5 computers that will boot and run, a couple spare AMD motherboards and AGP video cards, 2 Palm PDA's... and a few assorted knick knacks:

New Comic Up at Directionless!

2008-03-31T23:20:00.003-04:00

Bet you thought I wasn't going to get a blog post in for March, huh? Now that the pigs are already airborne, I'm going to turn down the thermostat in hell by announcing there's a new comic over at DirectionlessComic.com!

For those of you keeping score, yes, this is the first new webcomic out of me in over two years. (though why anyone would be keeping score is beyond me...)

Newsflash: Computers Crash

2008-02-19T00:56:00.004-05:00

It's pretty common knowledge that some people get as worked up over their computer's operating system as others do about, say, religion. (I mean, I really like Macs, but just listen to the caller at the beginning of this web-show where the woman on-screen is installing Vista on her MacBook Air. You want to cry...? My goodness...)

Sometimes, a little perspective is fun:

And I know some have tried to compare me to the caller in that first link. But, come on. As strongly as Final Cut Pro pulled me into the Mac universe, Portal still keeps me pretty rooted in Windows XP... :)

Update: Ok, this one's funny too!

21st Birthday!

2008-02-12T13:42:00.000-05:00

Wooooooooo! 21!!!! Partaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!

Ahem.

Actually, with the big 2-1 falling on a tuesday for me, the traditional barhopping drunkeness may have to wait. (Though never fear! I fully plan on making up for it this weekend) Although I did have one drink (admittedly, one rather strong drink...) last night a bit after midnight. I had to. You know how it is.

And Christine made a cake! THANK YOU CHRISTINE!

Why Does Apple Have Such a Good Rep? This Might Be Part Of It...

2008-02-06T21:41:00.002-05:00

It's no secret that Apple usually gets some of the highest marks for customer satisfaction among computer makers in places like Consumer Reports. But why is that? The value proposition is about the same these days, objectively anyway. And Macs certainly are just as capable of having major hardware mishaps as other manufacturer's machines - especially now that the Intel transition is complete and everybody basically uses the same guts.

So why do people love on Apple so much? A pretty GUI and elegant OS architecture don't make Customer Service any better. So what gives?

I offer this anecdote:

A couple weeks ago, my trusty, almost 3-year-old PowerBook G4 started having a few issues. Namely, Kernel Panics, the UNIX-y equivalent of the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Now, if your PC bluescreens, you just cuss Bill Gates (or Steve Ballmer, your pick) and reboot. On a Mac, if things manage to go this wrong... it means there's something wrong!

Long story short, some troubleshooting of my own narrowed it down to the RAM, and specifically, the actual RAM slots in the logicboard (Mac-parlance for laptop motherboard) as opposed to the sticks themselves. Bummer. Fortunately, this problem cropped up two weeks before my extended AppleCare warranty was set to expire. So I made an appointment and brought the machine in to the local Apple Retail Store, where the guy there confirmed the problem, checked with me to make sure I had everything backed up (I did) and shipped the machine off to the nearest Apple repair center. Zero cost to me, because it was all covered under AppleCare.

It was away for about a week, mainly because they don't keep a ton of spare parts for machines as old as mine on hand. The next week, I get a call.

"We have the machine back here... but it's failing our standard diagnostic test. It says here there's a problem with the VRAM. Now, it does boot, so if there's an immediate need for the machine you can come and pick it up, but I'd just as soon send it back and have them re-replace the logic board."

Ok, so that's kind of crazy... but hell, my AppleCare is expiring soon so yeah, by all means send it back until it gets a clean bill of health.

Another week passes, and I get a call.

"Ok, so the machine is still failing the diagnostic. So... there's two options I'm authorized to give you, but I think I know which one you're gonna take..."

I'm listening.

"First, we can order yet another new logic board, have it delivered here to the store, and install it ourselves to make sure it's done right, and hope that fixes whatever the issue is."

Or...?

"Or... we offer you what's called a CRU Exchange, which would be the closest replacement machine that is not lower spec'ed than your current one."

...meaning?

"You'd get a MacBook Pro."

Needless to say, I went with option 2! So in a nutshell, my computer started acting up, and now - at no cost to me whatsoever, - I'm going from this:

PowerBook G4 15.2-inch
1.67 GHz PowerPC G4
2 GB PC2700 DDR RAM (upgraded from 512 Meg originally)
120 GB ATA hard drive (upgraded from 80 GB originally)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 - 128 Meg VRAM
2x DVD Burner

To this:

MacBook Pro 15.4-inch
2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM
120 GB SATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT - 128 Meg VRAM
8x DVD Burner

... Sweet. For comparison purposes, this is my current "gaming rig" PC tower:

AMD AthlonXP 3200+ @ 2.2 GHz
1 GB PC3200 DDR RAM
160 GB ATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 non-ultra - 128 Meg VRAM
DVD... reader.

In short, once I get this new machine (in a week or so.... whatever, I can wait) I'm going to be very interested in seeing how 3D Mark scores match up once I make a WinXP partition (ah, the convenience of Intel chips!).

In conclusion, if you ever wonder why Apple's customer loyalty is so high - stuff like this is a big part of it. Oh, and if you ever get a Mac, particularly a laptop.... get AppleCare!
Update: Corrected the spelling of "CRU." Apparently it stands for "Customer Replacement Unit." Pretty straightforward.

Webcomics!

2008-02-01T19:20:00.001-05:00

I'll probably put something on Facebook once this stuff gets closer to reality, but I figure'd I'll mention it here first.

Longtime followers of my online activities will be familiar with the two webcomics I've worked on in the past: Medieval Mayhem, the borderline-8-Bit-Theater-ripoff sprite comic I made in junior high, and Directionless, the semi-autobiographical borderline-MacHall-ripoff I briefly made during my freshman year of college. After my life got a little too busy spring of freshman year, I abandoned that comic and haven't really done anything since. That's about to change...

One of the classes I'm taking right now is TRF414: Writing and Designing for Interactive Media. Turns out this class is mostly a "how to make web pages with Dreamweaver and HTML" class. Clearly, well below my ability level, and the professor knows this. So instead of sitting bored in class as we do things I've known about for years (this is a "tag") he's allowed me to basically turn the credits into an individual guided study sort of thing.

Directionless
For this class (and really, I think getting a grade on this will be pretty good motivation!) I will be bringing back Directionless. Instead of the clunky free hosting I had on Comic Genesis last time, I'll be getting the comic it's own domain, and piggy-backing on the server space for Hanley Films. I know some of my friends from high school (Halapy in particular... thanks for nagging!) liked to read the comic the last time I did it, and since then I've had several people here ask "why don't you do more of those - you should put us in it!" so there's plenty of reason outside of the TRF class to do this as well.

Plus, I don't have any film/video production classes this semester, and if all I do creatively is write, I'll go crazy!

The resurrected comic will follow the same format as before: semi-autobiographical, but probably about as loyal to the facts as the father in Big Fish... However, I will likely be the only returning character, since I don't really see much of the guys from my floor freshman year anymore. Instead, the new comic will focus around the group of friends I tend to hang out with now (don't worry - we're all plenty crazy too!)

The website will take a while to put together, since I plan on making it much nicer than my previous ones: probably a dynamic PHP site with a MySQL backend to make uploading new comics really easy once it's all running. Now, my previous experience with MySQL is approximately... none. So while that's all coming together, I can hopefully get a buffer of comics going so I won't miss as many updates as I've been known to in the past!

So, expect to see more on Directionless v.2 in a few weeks!

Medieval Mayhem
What? You thought I'd forget this classic? Though Medieval Mayhem only ran for 32 actual strips, and I don't really want to revisit making sprite comics, it was fairly humorous, and had a halfway decent following for what it was. (hell, the guy behind Elftor make a guest comic!)

Because of this, I'm looking into options for something my mother has been asking for for a long time - a printed book. I'm still looking into it, but it looks like if it happens, I can get a 34 or 36 page comic-book-style (saddle-stitch) full color printing without too much trouble. Unfortunately, unlike Directionless, Medieval Mayhem was put together at web resolution, so the DPI isn't as high as I'd like for printing, but there's not too much I can do about that.

I was thinking of pricing them at $5 a piece, and I'm very interested in how many people would be interested in one at that price. (Yes, obviously people who express interest to me early could get signed copies.... for whatever that's worth... which is probably nothing. Meh.)

So that's where things stand with me and webcomics. There's a lot coming up, so stay tuned!

Do's And Don'ts With Babies

2008-01-25T00:55:00.000-05:00

Oh my... wow.... This is just hilarious...

See all of them here. And if you don't find it funny - wow, stop taking everything so seriously!

Found via Applegeeks.

(EDIT: Link fixed)

"The Internet Party" - Funny Video

2008-01-18T02:40:00.002-05:00

What would happen if Google's parents left home for the weekend?

Pretty spot-on parody of a lot of the major forces on the internet today. (Unnecessary warning: It occasionally gets a tad off-color. But then, so does the internet.)

Update: Yes! Looks like this video (and the sequel) are up on a different site (I assume the comedy group's?). This one does allow embedding!

~~On another note, what's up with Cracked.com not allowing this video to be embedded on other sites, and getting it taken down from YouTube when it goes up? Seems kind of counter-productive.~~

This Strikes Me As Funny

2008-01-14T01:20:00.000-05:00

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's how being in a relationship is a simple blue button. Maybe it's that they capitalize Girlfriend, then as Your Girlfriend. Whatever it is, I thought the set-up of this page was funny.

In other news, I'm kind of in a good mood right now...

New "Exclusive" Clip from Cloverfield (01-18-08)

2007-12-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

I saw this posted on Facebook, and it's probably cropping up in other places as well.

They also seem to be running a contest of sorts, so if you "grab" the embedded copy here in my blog (or on my Facebook... or anywhere else I post it) then you increase the chances of them doing a pre-screening in Pittsburgh!

"I'm Not Bruce" - FCP Tip Blog

2007-11-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

Found an interesting blog recently. "I'm Not Bruce" is simply a place used by some editor (who is not, apparently, "Bruce") to record little tips, links, and reminders to himself about various aspects of editing with Final Cut Pro. I've found a few useful as well.

WGA Strike: Delicious Daily Show and Colbert Report Snarkiness

2007-11-16T00:37:00.000-05:00

Classic biting sarcasm, used here to illustrate the inanity of some of the studios' positions in the ongoing Writer's Guild of America strike. (You know, that whole "We can't pay you residuals on digitally-distributed content, cause we don't know if there's any money in it!" line.)

If you're not up-to-date on the WGA strike, here's a helpful introduction. (Wow, lots of YouTube links tonight... Clearly, there's no future in online media.)

First, the Daily Show writers explaining things from the picket lines:

And now, the writers of the Colbert Report helpfully provide the other side of the story...

Moral of the story: Come on. Pay yer freakin' writers!

Funny Song - "That Calls for a Wilhelm Scream"

2007-11-14T23:12:00.001-05:00

Ah, movie geek in-jokes, how I love thee so.

If you don't know what the Wilhelm Scream is... go educate yourself. ;) It's pretty much one of the longest-running cinematic in-jokes out there, particularly among sound designers who like to sneak it in wherever they can.

Certainly a clever idea, and it's nice that within the lyrics of the song, they pretty much tell the whole story of how the Wilhelm Scream came to be the acoustic cliché it is today.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T01:53:00.000-04:00

It's after midnight, it's October 31st... It's now Halloween!

I love this holiday! Probably won't get much opportunity to celebrate it today, since Wednesdays are my busiest day of the week this semester, but who knows. I do know that I went to a couple great parties last weekend, and costume, while still kind of last-minute-ish, (put it together over about 2 days) is much better than last year's poor stab at Indiana Jones.

The Scrubs fans in the audience will likely recognize this clip:

May I present... myself!
...as Zach Braff.
...as J.D.
...as Dr. Acula!

The costume went over really well. I was surprised by how many people liked my attempt at J.D.'s hair - I really didn't think I had the hair to pull it off, but it seemed to come across. The fangs were nice too. Something possessed me to get the nice ones when I was at Spencer's, and they basically consist of this low-melt plastic that you use to literally custom mold them to your teeth. They stay in as well as, and are no more uncomfortable than, a retainer, which made it not too much of a hardship to have them in all night.

I love Halloween...

I Have... Another Blog?

2007-10-23T01:52:00.000-04:00

This semester I'm taking a class - IST 195. It's an "introduction to information technology" class. Yes, as anyone who knows me can tell you, the vast majority of information in this class is way below my level. But hey, it fulfills a requirement for Newhouse, one that would otherwise require me to take another math class, or a third semester's worth of a foreign language. Not exactly my idea of a grand old time. Besides, in a 19-credit semester, it's good to have one easy class.

Well, just because a class is easy doesn't mean you don't have to do anything, and for the second of 3 large projects in IST195, I have to create a blog and maintain it for three weeks. And that's exactly what I've done over at the un-creatively named "IST 195 Project 2" Blog. I could have tried to just put all my required posts in my existing blog, but separating them will probably help me keep focused on the 195 one. If the posts over there are interesting at all, I'll likely merge them back into this blog once the assignment is all said and done.

As a sidenote, the default theme I picked for the IST195 blog is pretty nice-looking. Perhaps another facelift is in the future for Dev/Null42?

V for Vendetta - Simplified

2007-10-15T22:45:00.000-04:00

Just in case you could never quite figure out what the heck V was talking about in that movie... or if you just wanted a laugh!

Such a good movie. :)

My Wallet Sucks.

2007-09-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

Now, you just know this isn't a good sign for us:

What the hell, man? And other countries are wisely considering cutting their losses and pulling out their investments.

Well, wisely for them anyway, It kinda sucks for us.

(Note: I posted this a couple of days ago when the US dollar was just dangerously close to the Canadian dollar. Now that it's actually dipped below, I've updated this post with the newer, scarier image.)

The New Dorm is... Pretty Nice Actually

2007-08-30T20:58:00.000-04:00

As so many times before, I'm not even sure if anyone reads this anymore, but hey, what the heck?

As anyone who was nearby me during the online housing selection process knows, I wasn't overjoyed last spring when I got a 2-person suite in Booth. I was in a 4-person Watson suite last year, and for the most part it rocked! Some roommate re-shuffling had left another year of 4-person suiteness (see what I did there?) out of the question, so I had been gunning for a Watson 2-person suite.

Needless to say, it didn't work out that way. Despite a decently respectable number in the housing lottery, by the time I logged on there was nothing left in my selection phase but Booth, Dellplain, and South Campus apartments. I love the South apartments, but I'm not a huge fan of South Campus. Especially those bits regarding the bus to main campus, and the carrying of laundry to another building in the middle of a Syracuse Winter. Dellplain is huge and primarily filled with freshmen, so I begrudgingly went with Booth - Dellplain's smaller (but equally ugly) sibling.

Turns out, a Booth 2-person suite is pretty nice! And only $200 more than a plain old split double. And I actually think I have more space than I did in the Watson suite (when you consider there were 4 people in that one)

Of course, we all know the whole reason of this post is to show off the stitched panoramic mode on the digital camera I got last Christmas...

Yeah, you know it's awesome. ;)

HanleyFilms.com - Slowly Coming Together

2007-08-21T16:19:00.000-04:00

Summer's winding to an end (I head back to SU on saturday) and the Hanley Films website is finally seeing some life. I still haven't gotten around to putting all the old video online yet, since I'm re-encoding it all after reprocessing it with better deinterlacing.... But! I do have a few other things on there now.

I've set up a home base of sorts for my freelance production work. This is stuff like the LWV segments I put together last year (and am doing again this year). For now the work is still coming slowly, but with a website to point people to now, perhaps that will change. It's all just "learning by doing" and building up a resume.

Speaking of which, I actually have a resume now, in the still-a-work-in-progress About section of the site. I also put up a description of my "Studio," just in case you wanted to know the gear I use. (needless to say, the stuff I used in VPA Film, and now use in Newhouse TRF, is quite a bit better than what I have in my personal aresenal.)

So that's the state of HanleyFilms.com right now. Hopefully I'll get the rest done soon enough. If you want to see my old stuff in the meantime, most of the High School movies are on my old site, HanleyFilms.net. My entry for the Modest Mouse "Missed the Boat" video contest is on YouTube. Unfortunately, Remember the Chase is still not online, as I'm really dragging my heels on the post-production with that one (I'm being really OCD about getting rid of the telecine judder at the edit points), so there's no way to see it at the moment.

As I said earlier, I'm heading back to Syracuse on Saturday, so the next 4 days promise to be very busy. I'm producing to presentation videos for the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh's Good Government awards again this year. (that's a lot of words...) I have two more interviews to tape before I leave, one of them with Senator Jane Orie! So that should add to the frantic-ness of my week.

Lesson of the Day: Speech Recognition is Not For Writing Code

2007-07-19T02:27:00.000-04:00

Windows Vista's speech recognition actually does an admirable job of trying to keep up with this, so most of the blame lands on operator error. But it is pretty ironically funny when the computer interprets a sarcastic "Thank you. Thank you Windows..." as "like you like your Windows". (about halfway in)

Blade Runner: The Final Cut Commercial

2007-06-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

I just found it now, but this apparently played June 20 during AFI's "100 Years... 100 Movies" on CBS. (They rated BR #97, beating out Toy Story and Ben Hur, and only 3 spots behind Pulp Fiction) As should now be common knowledge, I love this movie, and have been looking forward to the Final Cut since I first heard about it.

It's up several times on YouTube, but Warner Brothers keeps taking it down. Hopefully the DailyMotion version I've embedded will stick around for a while. It has better quality than YouTube, in any case.

Blade Runner The Final Cut - Trailer
Uploaded by toma-uno

I can't say I'm terribly impressed by the herky-jerky, "look what we can do in After Effects" style of the commercial, and the audio cutting is downright sloppy. I guess it's a side effect of foolishly trying to make a film that came out in 1982 look "new."

(Listening closer, it sounds like the audio actually drops out for a split second at somewhat regular intervals. Very sloppy, and it makes the whole commercial feel "rough" and "harsh".)

Nonetheless, I'm still hyped for this definitive release, which has been a long time coming. (If you don't know, the studio politics surrounding Blade Runner were beyond messy, and it's taken most of the last 25 years to sort them out so that the film as Ridley Scott shot it can actually be seen fully)

The titles at the end indicate the Final Cut will be released on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray, but make no mention of the rumored limited theatrical run. I'm still hoping though...

My Dad at "Jazz In The Meadow" 2005

2007-06-30T16:19:00.000-04:00

My dad singing (yes, he can sing) at an event a couple years back. He was sitting in the audience, and he got "asked" to come up and do something. When I embedded the video on this page, I set it to skip all the other stuff before then.

This video was posted to my blog so that my mom could have a link to send people to where you don't have to "fast-forward" through all the other stuff first.

HanleyFilms.com... It's coming

2007-06-26T18:22:00.000-04:00

www.HanleyFilms.com

Yes, I have a "Coming Soon" website for all my film/video work again. But this time, it's different. (promise!) I've given up on the rolls-off-the-tongue-slightly-better .net extension, and joined the rest of the world in .com-land. (Once the site truly goes live, the old hanleyfilms.net will redirect to the new hanleyfilms.com) Before, I'd relied on donated, friend-of-a-friend, or otherwise "free" hosting space, but now I've got all-out paid-for shared hosting from Dreamhost, with effectively unlimited storage and bandwidth. (The only thing they really get ticked off about is CPU time, and I have no intention of running overly convoluted PHP-driven content management systems. HTML, CSS, and a spattering of PHP for menus and such is fine for me)

Now that I've geeked out about my new hosting (it really is rather cool) - what exactly will the new site offer? Before, the "Hanley Films Website" has usually just been a single page with a bunch of links to QuickTime files (see the current HanleyFilms.net)

The new site will be... just a little bit more than that. I'm planning, at the moment:

All my movies, from the North Hills stuff, to the 16mm short I made in VPA Film last fall, to my entry for the recent Modest Mouse music video contest. (If you really must see that, it's on YouTube). All in higher quality, and more formats than before.
Information on my freelance production work. Seriously. I've already paid for my camera doing this, and I just ordered a $150 microphone to step up my game for a job later this summer. Need a low-budget commercial/music video/help on a student film/etc? Call me.
Tips, tutorials, and other resources for up-and-coming (or so we wish) wannabes like myself.
At least one sweet picture of the editing suite setup I've got going in my room. ;)

The video and film stuff is obviously the important part. Before, as I've said, I've put a bunch of QuickTimes on a page - sometimes in various sizes, sometimes not - and left it at that. With the extra space Dreamhost gives me, I can offer more formats than previously - for now, I'm thinking QuickTime 7, Windows Media 9, and DivX should cover most bases.

In addition to more formats, the videos will also be much higher quality. Not just higher bitrate either: Back when I first encoded most of the "masters" for the North Hills Pictures, I didn't know half what I do now about digital video. They were deinterlaced poorly, and went through a lot of unnecessary scaling up and down. This time, wherever possible, I'm going back to the "source" and redoing a lot of that, to preserve as much detail as possible.

How much of a difference can this make? Well... (click image to see full size)

I'd say that's a difference! (Of course, this shot is the most drastic example I could find, but it's still an all-around improvement to one degree or another.)

So that's where the "one, true" Hanley Films website is for now. It should turn out pretty cool, I think.

Now if I could just do something about that day job... :-/

Apple Previews Leopard & Safari 3 - O RLY?

2007-06-11T16:40:00.002-04:00

I am writing this bog entry on Windows XP. I also happen to be writing it in Safari.

Wha...?

Seems Apple has seen fit to release a public beta of Safari 3.0 not just for Mac OS X Tiger, but for Windows as well. Not only that, the new version of the browser has resolved the two nagging issues that I had with it on OS X: The rich-text editing boxes on GMail and Blogger now work, and it now asks "Are You Sure?" when you close a window with multiple tabs open. Nice - Safari's been my browser of choice on the Mac for a while now (it's just much more responsive than Firefox) and those were really the only two annoyances I had with it. (Well, along with the fact that ver. 2 kinda chokes up when you start having 4 windows open, with 8 or so tabs each, and keep the program running for a week solid. Am I asking too much?)

I should stress that Safari 3 for Mac & Windows is still very much in beta. Blogger's rich text form works, but I had to go into Firefox to add the picture to this post because that button seems to do nothing in Safari 3 beta. So don't go dumping Firefox 2 or IE 7 just yet, (Although you might do well to dump IE 6 if you're still using it...) but this is definitely something to watch over the next few months.

It's really interesting to see Apple's strategy here. Since the awesome software (OS X and iLife being the biggies) are one of the big draws go getting a Mac these days, making Windows software doesn't seem to make much sense on the surface. However, the plan becomes clear when you realize Apple is trying to get people used to using Apple software first, so that the thought of switching to a Mac doesn't sound so foreign. it started with Quicktime, especially once Apple got something of a monopoly on movie trailers. Then iTunes for Windows came bundled with everyone's favorite music player. (iTunes is even more important to "switchers" now, since Apple's taken a lot of cues from it in the design of the file browser in OS X 10.5 - "Leopard"). Now they want Windows users to see what an Apple web browser is like, aguably the most-used application on a personal computer today. It's all quite clever really. Although, to be honest, if they're really serious about this Trojan horse idea, they really ought to do something about the performance of Quicktime 7 on Windows. QT-haters do have something of a point on the Windows platform - it's nowhere near as elegant, fast, and seamless as it is on OS X (where it's my default media player for just about everything - even DivX).

There's a lot of other interesting things happening with Leopard too - and they aren't all making front-page news like Time Machine and the just-maybe-do-you-think-inspired-by-Vista new look to the familiar Mac desktop. I'm more excited by the changes to Boot Camp. Today, if you have an Intel Mac, you can dual-boot Windows on it - something I'm very interested in, as it could mean putting all my Windows games on the same Mac I use for Final Cut Pro, and I could finally give up lugging my giant PC Tower to college. In Leopard, you don't have to totally restart to switch OS's: Instead you can go to a menu item in OS X to put MacOS into "safe sleep" mode before switching over to Windows. Likewise, you can make Windows hibernate. That way, you never lose what you were doing in either OS, and you can jump between them in 20-30 seconds - each running totally native (I could use something like Parallels to make it wholly seamless, but Boot Camp gives better performance for gaming).

Update: Boot Camp's hibernating feature was mentioned on Apple's site at the time I wrote this entry, but the feature was later dropped. Pity - seemed like a good idea.

The Mac platform just keeps getting more interesting.

New Diet Pepsi Can

2007-04-26T19:16:00.000-04:00

Is it me, or do the people at PepsiCo enjoy introducing new can designs on, oh, a bi-annual basis or something? (Yes, I'm aware how mind-bogglingly not important this is, but I've been trying to describe it to people, and couldn't quickly find examples with Google.) I bought more of my only habitual drug today, and noticed they did it again. Old on the left, new on the right.

If you ask me, the new one looks like a prop from the set of Back to the Future II.

We don't need tighter gun control laws. We just need to ENFORCE the ones we have...

2007-04-21T00:24:00.000-04:00

I've seen talk around the 'net saying the Viginia Tech shootings clearly demonstrate the need for tighter gun control laws in this country, since Cho was able to walk into a store and purchase the gun he used to kill 32 people. Now, I am by no means an NRA "More guns = less crime because we can shoot the bastards!" sort of guy, but I've never been for banning the ownership of firearms by private citizens either.

I found this article in the NY Times: U.S. Rules Made Killer Ineligible to Purchase Gun

Yeah, he bought the gun. But that shouldn't have happened. If the proper checks were made at the federal level, that purchase would have been denied. Sure, he could try to get one on the black market, but that's possible even if a ban is put in place. (Banning guns will get them off the streets? Sure! It's worked so well for drugs, underage alcohol, not-yet-released Hollywood films...)

We don't need tighter gun control laws. We just need to properly enforce the ones we have!

Bush + Blair Love Song

2007-04-18T03:08:00.000-04:00

It's so true...

The really funny part? I first saw this on Al Jazeera... Yes Timmy, they have "viral video of the week" in Qatar too.

Wait- I'm up at this ungodly hour watching the (horrible quality) online stream of Al Jazeera English, and laughing at satire about how the leaders of the U.S. and U.K. are attached at the hip? Yeah... must be nearing the due date for my Communications & Society paper on global coverage of the "British sailors held in Iran" incident!

100th Post. Nothing Special, but My iPod is Filling Up

2007-04-02T01:29:00.000-04:00

I seem to have lapsed in my blogging for awhile (not that anyone cares). I hate big catch-up posts explaining every little thing that happened while I was "gone," so I'm just going to post something trivial and pointless, as if something ever happened. What else is a blog for? (All hail New Media!)

Food For Thought

My iPod is almost full. When I got my Nano about a year and a half ago, I figured 4 Gig would be plenty for my meager library. Well, owning an iPod tends to make one listen to music a bit more, and I've been steadily expanding since then, so that I'm now 90% full (Tha't's after I set all the Christmas songs and Monty Python sketches to not sync over...)

While noticing this, I took the time to notice a couple statistics in my iTunes Library, just to add some fuel (and hard numbers) to the RIAA vs. the World fight. 5% of my music was purchased through the iTunes Store. (The rest being primarily MP3's of... varying origin.) However, purchased tracks make up 40% of my Top 25 Most Played songs. The number 1 spot is an MP3, though. I'm sure that says something about the iTunes business model, DRM, etc., but damned if I know what...

Birthday Time Again!

2007-02-12T12:01:00.000-05:00

Past Midnight, means it's my birthday. Twenty - I'm not a teenager anymore.

Meh, for some reason I'm really non-excited at the moment. I'm more posting this out of tradition than anything else, especially since I'm fairly certain no one reads this blog anymore.

Truth is, it doesn't even feel like a birthday.

Must be because it's monday.

Music, DRM, and Mr. Jobs' Good Idea

2007-02-06T14:59:00.000-05:00

Today an interesting item appeared from within the annals of Apple's website: post by non other than everyone's favorite CEO/Mogul/Salesman, Steve Jobs, entitled "Thoughts on Music". The page addresses recent calls for Apple to open the FairPlay DRM used in the iTunes Store, and points out how the current content-protection systems of the industry came to be in the first place.

However, the real interesting bit comes a little further down, where Steve outlines the three possible directions the online music industry can take from here. First, they could "stay the course" and keep up the fragmented, proprietary DRM systems that consumers love to hate today. Second, Apple could license FairPlay to other companies, but that would make meeting the music industry's security requirements monumentally more difficult. Finally, we could probably take the best course possible, and just do away with DRM entirely.

...What?

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none.

It's not a new request to hear, but it's certainly new to hear it from the guy in charge of the world's largest source of DRM'ed music! Unlikely though it may sound, if the music industry would ever do this, Steve Jobs is the man who could convice them.

Honestly, I think the reluctance to sell DRM-free music is mostly due to corporate nervousness, not any justifiable business position. Here's an example - take Fred, a fictional college student living with 3 other undergraduates in an on-campus 4-person suite. He's a mostly honest kid, but he's pirated his fair share of music in the past. Fred wants to get a new song he heard on the radio. He could use his university's Ruckus subscription, but that wouldn't play on his iPod because of incompatible DRM. He could buy it from the iTunes store - that would make sense, but he'd like to be able to share the song with his roommates, and FairPlay would only let the music play on Fred's iPod. So he resorts to Limewire, or BitTorrent, or any of a million other illegal sources that you, dear reader, are likely intimately familiar with.

Now, here's where the RIAA throws a fit. Fred resorted to stealing because he wanted to do something illegal! You can't just get a song and share it with your friends! That's wrong and we won't allow it!

Ah, but see, it's happening anyway. Thousands of times every day. Even people who still buy CD's are likely to let friends and family rip them. You can't stop that with anything short of Big Brother. I feel for the content creators, I really do. Heck, I'm going to school to become one of their ilk. But, illegal or not, this is simply the way the world works, and it will still happen no matter how much the RIAA screams about it. Fred is going to share his music. He has some morals of his own (independent of the law, I might add), so he won't post it on the internet, but he still wants to share it with his roommates, and that pulled him away from legitimate online music sources. From my own experience, I'd say "Fred" accounts for a very large portion of my generation. (Most of the rest won't settle for any price but "free," so there's little you can do about winning them over)

Now, let's pretend iTunes sold DRM-free music. What changes here? Well, Fred might decide that the song is worth a buck to him, and buy it. He's a nice enough guy after all, and the DRM was the only thing stopping him before. (He'd probably be even more likely to go legit it he could get it for free from Ruckus) He buys the song, then throws it over AIM to his roommates. They all listen, and a grand time is had by all. How did the record companies fare in these two scenarios?

Profit made from DRM'ed store: $0
Profit made from DRM-free store: $1

Now of course, in this situation the record companies would argue they're really entitled to $4, not $1, and probably that Fred has "stolen" $3 from them (if the lawyers got involved). But that's their fantasy world. In the real world, the choice isn't between $1 and $4, it's between $0 and $1.

So the real question is, who wants a dollar?

Superbowl Ads

2007-02-04T22:57:00.000-05:00

Seeing as A) The Steelers weren't playing, and B) I'm in a communications school, watching the superbowl this year was mostly an exercise in watching the ads for me. (Although, after that first amazing touchdown, it was pretty sad to see the Bears lose it.)

Since I already have to pick my favorite Superbowl ads to discuss in my TRF class tomorrow, and since iFilm has pretty much all of them available online, I figured I might as well post my favorites here. CBS also posted all of the ads, and in somewhat better quality, but I'm having trouble getting many of them to load. Probably just swamped with traffic. So without further ado, and in no particular order, my favorite ads from Superbowl XLI...

Bud Light: Language Course with Carlos Mencia
Come on, it's funny. Even if you hate Carlos, it's still funny.

GM: Robot
I felt so sorry for the little guy!

Coca-Cola: Happiness Factory
Very imaginative, to say the least. Apparently there's also an extended version of this that was shown in movie theaters.

Bud Light: Rock Paper Scissors
The first commercial that grabbed the attention of the people I was in the room with, and said "The Superbowl Ads have started!" Clever.

I also liked the "Grand Theft Auto" Coca-Cola ad, but I've seen that one in theaters (and also on TV I think), so it wasn't new to me. The Bud Light crabs stealing and worshipping the beer was funny, and the Dalmation was cute, but I think my list had enough Bud Light ones already!

Honestly, no blow-you-away amazing ones this year, but I thought it was pretty good overall for Superbowl ads. (The "sexed-up GoDaddy" bit is starting to get a little old though...)

Got My Transferred Film Back!

2007-01-28T03:19:00.000-05:00

Before the break, I posted some shots of my final film. The screen shots were achieved using the old trick of pointing my video camera at the Moviola screen. Since then, I have paid to have a real transfer of the film done by the Debenham Media Group in Pittsburgh. I finally got the results back, and they're a pretty impressive improvement! The following shots do my best to mirror the same shots I put up last time.

Unfortunately, there's some issues that keep this transfer from being pristine: Some of my splices were apparently not up to snuff, so on about half the cuts, the picture "jerks" a little right before the cut. Also, there's a few scratches, and quite a bit of dirt. All of this could, of course, be called my fault, not Debenham's. Judging purely on the clarity and sharpness of the images, I'd say they did a fine job. (And it only cost me about $40... it's kinda sad that working in film has made me regard that as cheap, isn't it?)

Hopefully I'll have the video available online somewhere sooner rather than later. I still want to tweak it a bit first.

The Future of Computers - Or At Least I Hope So!

2007-01-23T23:43:00.000-05:00

A while back, I mentioned a video about some really cool multi-touch interaction research being done by Jeff Han and others at NYU. Like most of the rest of the internet, I was fairly impressed by it.

Well, the little research board has matured a bit. It can now be set up as a truly massive video wall, going even further in a "Minority Report" direction. To top it off, the experiment has become product, as one of these monsters has been sold to the military for a reported 6-figure sum.

Of course, there's a new, even more amazing video...

(Larger video here, but with ads)

Yes. Yes, yes, yes! That is the computer I want to be using in 10-20 years. In fact, I might go so far as to say if I can't get a computer like that for my own home in 20 years time, if not sooner, I may feel personally offended!

Ahem. All drooling aside, I wonder how all of this relates to the in-some-ways-similar (if smaller in scale) iPhone multi-touch interface, especially with regard to Steve Job's comment that "And boy have we patented it!" (Not sure if that's the exact quote)

Full Article: "Can Touch This"

As an aside, that video is being hosted by Brightcove, one of the many would-be YouTube challengers that has sprung up recently. It's one of the one's I've been considering for hosting my own movies - what do you think? (quality, interface, the actual Brightcove site?)

Switching Majors

2007-01-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

Alright, this is the "big thing" coming up that I hinted at on this blog about a month ago. Some people I have already told, but I didn't want to shout it from on high until it was approved and "for sure." Well, I just got the confirmation e-mail (finally!) so here it is:

I'm switching majors from Film (in the School of Visual and Performing Arts) to Television-Radio-Film (in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications).

This is effective, well, now basically. I have an informational meeting monday afternoon, then I'll be frantically rearranging my schedule. (Why didn't they have the meeting earlier than the day before classes start? I have no idea...)

I spent a lot of time thinking over this decision last semester, and while some people (family & high school friends) might not see much difference between the two majors, anyone in VPA or Newhouse definitely does (and probably has some misconceptions about the other, as I did).

Oddly enough, this didn't have as much to do with the Film program's "Sparticus" letter incident as one might think. Rather, it was primarily about me doing some soul-searching about where I wanted to be going, and the ridiculously broad range of my interest in "media". Suffice to say, while both programs obviously have their faults, I'm fairly confident in my decision. (Not 100% confident of course - I'm way too big a worrywart for that to be possible...)

I apologize if this caught you by surprise - I know I didn't tell a whole lot of people at the end of last semester, but as I said, I didn't want to make a huge deal about it until it was definite. (I didn't know it would take this long for it to become definite...)

To my friends in VPA: I'm not dropping off the face of the earth! I'm still at S.U., I'm still friends with you guys. Heck, I'm still in the directing class this semester! (probably going to turn all that time with Deb et. al. into a Theater minor) And if I'm not swamped with my own stuff, I'm still up for helping out on people's shoots. (Heck, since TRF is all video, I might relish a chance to keep working with 16 mm from time to time!)

To my friends in Newhouse: Well, looks like you'll be seeing a bit more of me! (And probably hearing a lot of questions regarding scheduling and whatnot...)

It's Snowing!

2006-12-04T16:07:00.000-05:00

Hooray!

Now I have to do more work. :(

Peeking Out From The Madness

2006-11-30T02:24:00.000-05:00

"Busy" is an entirely inadequate word. Between my monster of a final film, two upcoming finals (and a non-final test), trying to bang out "Fur Elise" on the piano, co-writing a script about a priest giving a eulogy at the wrong funeral, and making a final decision on a possible switch of majors (more on that later... hint in the tags), I've got something of a full plate at the moment. Oh, and in less than two weeks the semester will be over and I'll be home for Christmas.

Aaaaah!

Yet, I'm poking my head above the waves for just a second to give a few teaser pics of said monstrous final film. Aren't I nice? Taking time out to give info to the (non-existent) readers of this blog? That's why I'm doing this. For (the non-existent) you. Not because I'm procrastinating at 2:30 in the morning or anything. That would be silly.

The samples, specially chosen to look cool, of course:

I'm Home!

2006-11-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

Sitting here in the Pittsburgh International Airport, home of the opening scenes of Dogma, mooching off the free wireless internet access for a bit since my dad somehow thought my flight wasn't coming in for another 20 minutes...

But I'm back! Let the relaxing (aka all too short and work-filled) Thanksgiving break begin!

Moved to the New Blogger

2006-11-22T02:39:00.000-05:00

I've just transferred my account to the new system Google is rolling out for Blogger. I think I've mostly transitioned the old cutomized page template over... mostly. (The dotted lines in the sidebar have got to go, and the POTM, while having slightly better placement, is still as ugly a hack behind the scenes as it always was.)

A few new features to look out for:

A better archive system (I think?)
Tagging (called "labels" by the geniuses here. I've started re-tagging old posts, but that'll take awhile) Example: This post is tagged "geekery," since my makinga moderately-sized post about a low-level system upgrade shows what an unabashed geek I am.
Trackbacks (I still don't know exactly how this works, but most blogs seem to have them, so why not?)

But again, this new system is still in Google's trademark "Beta" stage. So in other words, if anything seems borken in the near future, it's Blogger's fault!

Oh, and yes, I do intend to get back to updating this regularly, unlike most of my friends. It's just been really busy for me lately - I'll cover some of that in the next couple posts, probably.

Still Alive... Just Busy

2006-10-16T17:12:00.000-04:00

I'm not even entirely sure why I felt a need to update this blog now, since most of my friends have abandoned theirs, and I'm fairly certain no one reads it anymore. Not to mention that my experience with webcomics has taught me that a multi-month lapse is a very good way to kill off whatever readers one may have had left.

Whatever. Someday, when I've gotten famous, had my run, and fallen out of fame again, maybe I can just turn this into a book. ;)

In any case, it's been incredibly busy since I got back to SU. Most of this is owing to two things: First, the Crime in U.S. Society class I took because it looked interesting turned out to be a huge pain in the neck... and second, we've started production classes!

I won't deny the coolness of finally being able to say "I've shot film!" Even though it's only 16 mm... and I've only shot about 2.5 minutes of it personally... and most of it was half a stop underexposed... and I left the shutter closed for the entirety of one cool shot... and the movie wasn't that great anyway... it's still cool!

But it's also very time consuming, and the lack of immediate feedback is quite annoying. So far I've made one straight, in-camera, black&white, silent dream project (where have I done that before...), and I'm going into production soon on my final project for this semester. It's a bit of a doozy - my teacher still doesn't understand exactly what I'm talking about when I pitch it. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this one. But that's fun, too, right? Right?

As previously stated, things are a wee bit hectic right now, so I'm going to have to cut this haphazard post short here for the time being. I leave you with a horribly transferred frame of the coolest shot in my dream project:

Yes, that's a forced perspective shot. I feel special.

And I'm afraid that's all you're going to see until I get a proper video transfer done (probably in November/December). This shot was captured by pointing my video camera at the screen of a Moviola, then tweaking the resultant image in Photoshop. A lot.

End of Summer = Hectic

2006-08-23T20:26:00.000-04:00

48 hours from now I should be fairly settled in back at Syracuse. As usual, I am nowhere near ready to go. Much packing still to be done, my second-to-last paycheck to pick up at work, and far too many other assorted odds and ends to take care of before I leave.

Yuck.

The "catch up on everything that happened this summer" post deserves to be much longer than this, but since I'm perpetually short on time at the moment, this short list of the highlights will have to do:

Got a job at Arby's, worked 30-40 hours a week.
Underestimated how drained working in fast food would leave me.
Played Splinter Cell and God of War on PS2. (The latter being a very good game!)
Saw a bunch of movies, though not quite as many as I would have liked.
Got an old 16mm projector. (It works, but I haven't really had time to properly play with it)
Drooled over the Mac Pro's specs, then sobbed at it's price.
Got a new widescreen monitor and some sweet new speakers (The widescreen fits better under the low shelves on the S.U. desks. Yup. That's my rationalization and I'm sticking to it!)
Hung out with friends - less than I would have liked, courtesy Arby's.
Wondered where 3 months of my life went and how I could get them back...

Aaaaaaand that about sums it up.

Bleh, back to packing.

Not Dead

2006-08-20T19:13:00.000-04:00

Despite a 3-month lapse in posts, I am in fact not dead.

Just in case you were wondering.

More posts to come. And one more thing...

Snakes on a mothafuckin' Plane!

The Overdue Post, Continued

2006-05-21T19:13:00.000-04:00

If you haven't already, scroll down and read the first part of this lengthy catch-up. This entry will just tie up the loose ends of what's left over from that one.

Movies

I've seen several movies recently. My short takes:

Thank You For Smoking -- Funny. A very enjoyable movie, but if I hadn't been using a free ticket pass that I had to use up at the theater in Syracuse before it expired this summer, I would probably have regretted seeing it in theaters. It's not that funny. Save the $8-$10 and see it on DVD.

Mission: Impossible III -- Aside from being the most overzealous use of Steadicam this year, I was pleasantly surprised with this one. The plot is deeper and more "important" than previous installments, and J.J. Abrams did a fine job telling the story. If you can ignore memories of couch-hopping and Scientology, this is a pretty good movie, and a good opener for the string of "blockbuster" summer movies we have coming up this year.

Da Vinci Code -- As expected, the book was better. But this is still an engaging movie, and Ian McKellan, as always, steals the show. Probably worth seeing, especially if you put stock in numbers. The second-biggest global opening behind Episode III is pretty impressive. Most of all, don't listen to the protesters. A movie can't tell an intelligent person how to think, and you shouldn't let them try either.

"I Need a Jorb"

Yeeeeeah... As mentioned in my last post, film and developing for next year is going to run along the lines of a couple thousand dollars. Ouch. More than ever, I require summer employment! Unfortunately, I still have yet to have a "real," over-the-table job, what with the W-2's and the taxes and whatnot. Sure, I mowed a few lawns, I've done computer help for the neighbors, and I've helped my dad with some major renovations (cough-roofing-cough) that he was more than happy to give me some decent cash for, as contractors would ask about 10x as much, but I still haven't been "officially" employed, so that pretty much rules out places that require prior experience.

So far I'm filling out applications for places like Arby's, Boston Market and the like. (I will work pretty much anywhere but McDonald's. I don't care how "not bad" Andy says it is...) Haley mentioned a couple other places he's applying last night that I may try as well. I'd like a well-paying, tech-y job like Will and Andy landed, but that's borderline impossible considering my (lack of) employment history. In any case, I need to re-email all the references I used last year so they won't be surprised if their phone rings. (I really did apply at a few places last year, but Blockbuster screwed me over. Long story, for another time...)

*Sigh* We shall see how this goes...

The Overdue Post

2006-05-20T18:32:00.000-04:00

For no apparent reason, most of my friends (save one) have gotten back into updating their blogs with surprising regularity since summer started, leaving me in the dust a bit, as I kinda dropped off the online planet for the last couple weeks. Time to play catch-up. This one will be long, so I'll break it into sections.

Where The Hell I Was the Last 2 Weeks

Nowhere really. I just kinda did nothing for most of it. There were a couple points of interest though. Last weekend I tagged along with my old Scout Troop to visit the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station. Obviously, we couldn't tour the plant itself, but we did get to watch a presentation on how it works that was simultaneously dumbed-down, yet still over the head of anyone who hadn't taken AP Physics. We also got to see the "simulator" rooms where they train people to operate the plant. It was all very interesting.

Other Diversions (Games)

I also seem to have inexplicably gotten back into the PS2 my brother and I share. While getting him something for his birthday at EB, I spotted a used copy of the PS2 port of Splinter Cell for $3.99, which I immediately snagged for myself. Pretty fun game, even if the parking garage level is driving me nuts. (the lightning gets rid of my wonderful shadows! Nowhere to hiiiiiide!) I also have a strange desire to finally play Final Fantasy VII, but used copies seem to have become collector's items lately (at least on eBay). Plus I need to find my PS1 memory card. I also would like to try out God of War (which I saw at college, and it looked great), Ico (which gets so many "unknown masterpiece" reviews it's silly), and possibly Kingdom Hearts (I just need to know why my future roommate was sooooo obsessed with the sequel). Why the sudden console interest? No idea.

My Final Lightwave Project

I came home on the 6th, but the last project for my 3D class wasn't technically due until Thursday the next week, via e-mail. The assignment was to make 3 images that "show the passage of time." My plan for that project was to do a "Star Wars"-ish scene, as sort of a proof-of-concept for my upcoming fan film (more on that in a future post). The 3 images would be like storyboard frames (or, optimistically, DVD frame-captures) of a sequence where a ship lands. When I left SU, things were looking good, as the ship itself was pretty much modeled (though not textured).

However, once home, procrastination reared its ugly head. Due to multiple entirely-avoidable distractions, I ended up doing the rest of my work on the project the day it was due (at 6pm). For this reason I am, shall we say, less than happy with the final results. The ship still isn't textured, and the surrounding world was made in a few hours. The lighting sucks, and the torrential rainstorm (which would have obscured some other flaws) was abandoned when I couldn't get rain to not look terrible in the time I had.

Meh, here's the results anyway. My brother thinks the first shot looks like a cutscene from Jedi Knight.

Yeah... overly dark, simple, bleh. I didn't even have time to use a good quality level of anti-aliasing like I did on the test render. Maybe someday I'll revisit these, but they were apparently good enough for the class, as seen in the next section...

Grades

Everyone else is posting them, so here we go...

Filmmaking: Cinematic Modes -- A
Introduction to 3D -- A
Intro to the Theatre -- A
Adv Acting (Drama Minors) -- A
Writing Studio 2: Critical Research -- A

So yeah. There you have it.

Next Year's Schedule

SU doesn't have a nifty calendar view like some of you (at least, not a publicly-viewable one), but here are my classes for Fall 2006, with the obligatory commentary:

Acting For Directing, T/Th 3:30-5:20 pm
We basically get credit for being the actors in the same directing class that we will be taking a semester or two down the road. Word on the street is that this helps with building a good rapport with the professor. Whatever.

Survey of Theatre History, Mon 6:30-8:40 pm
Another required drama course. At least this one has the same cool teacher we had for our last 2 theater classes.

Basic Social Ballroom Dance, Wed 7:15-8;45 pm (1 credit)
Hey, it's different! Funny story - some guys thought this is a good way to "meet girls". However, it looks increasingly like I already know like 50-75% of the girls in this class. Not that that's a bad thing.

Cinematic Modes of Production, T/Th 6-8 pm
I finally get a production class!!! Yes, the film majors finally get to make movies. Only bad news - although working with actually film is a very good thing to learn, it's expensive as hell. I mean, they charge by the foot for this stuff. Some sophomores I talked to quoted a couple grand for film/developing. Not friendly. I really need a job.

Film Scriptwriting, Wed 2:15-5:05 pm
Again, hooray for more hands-on classes related to my major. And this one isn't even expensive!

U.S. Crime and Society, M/W 12:45-2:05 pm
It's a history class. I needed an elective, and a couple friends and I decided this might be fun.

Piano/Non Music Majors, T/Th 11:55-12:50 pm (2 credits)
I've always wanted to try this. Thanks to some clever talking by a friend of mine, we get to combine these 2 credits with the 1 credit from Ballroom to count as a normal 3-credit elective.

More to Come...

~~It's currently time for dinner, so I'll finish this post later tonight.~~ Finishing this was interrupted by a last-minute-ish Firefly/Serenity marathon at a friend's house. I'll cover what's left over in another post.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggidy-Jig!

2006-05-08T01:30:00.000-04:00

First person to name that movie quote gets... well, nothing actually.

About this time last night I rolled, semi-conscious, into Pittsburgh. I finally got my computer hooked up again tonight, and am already feeling the speed hit of moving from the Internet2-enabled connection of a major university back to plain old Comcast cable internet.

So, my freshman year of college is now "over." (Well, not totally. My last 3D project is due by 6 pm Thursday via e-mail, but whatever.) Now my priorities are to get a job, and move back into my own house (which feels somewhat strange...) But first, I must sleep. It's past 2, and I should work on getting back from a "college"/"quasi-nocturnal" sleep cycle, and into something more "normal" (ha!).

Hell. Yes.

2006-05-06T02:14:00.000-04:00

You keep on shootin' first, Han 'ol buddy!

Original, Unaltered Star Wars Release Slated for September.

'Tis a good day for Star Wars fans, and really, all film geeks. Heck, all geeks period. Scratch that: good day for everyone!

On a totally unrelated note, I have a sinking fear I may not be sleeping tonight, as I'm going home tomorrow, and the majority of my packing is still to be done. Crap.

Update: As of 7:00 am, this dire prediction of mine seems to be true. Fooey.

Film Final SUCKED!

2006-05-04T16:51:00.000-04:00

Title pretty much sums it up. Test was on just about the opposite of what he said we should study.

Arrrg...

The Graffiti Wall

2006-04-30T04:09:00.000-04:00

This started a while ago, but it's gotten silly recently so I felt I should mention it.

In the covered stairs leading up to Flint and Day, there are a couple of large bulletin boards. A while back, I noticed that one of them had been covered in some unique graffiti: (horrible quality, courtesy my horrible camera phone)

Sure, it's a nice message, although I found it odd (and a bit amusing) that the best way someone could find to express their patriotism was through (admittedly minor) vandalism. As I had just seen V for Vendetta at the time, I briefly thought how funny (albeit somewhat disprespectful) it would be if someone spray painted a giant red "V" symbol over it. However, troop-supporting, law-abiding coward that I am, I didn't seriously consider it.

Fast-forward to the present, and it seems others do not share my hesitation at defacing this defacement, although their reactions aren't nearly as clever as my thoughts were. First it was just someone adding a couple words to make the message "Support our troops OR DIE". Since then, the poor bulletin board has evolved into the unoffical Political Graffiti Board. (better picture, courtesy my real camera)

Am I the only one who thinks this whole thing is funny?

I'll post any new developments if they happen before I leave.

I Feel Special

2006-04-26T23:30:00.000-04:00

"CAR 232 - Introduction to 3D Computer Art," the computer art class I've learning Lightwave in, is being offered during the summer session here at S.U. this year. To make people aware of this, the people in charge have been putting flyers all over the Shaffer art building.

One of my renders is on that flyer.

I didn't even know they were doing this, so it kinda took me by surprise when I first saw it. I'm not even in that major, yet they put my work on the flyer advertising the class. That make me feel mildly special.

...and wonder if I was in the right major. :-/

Even More Lightwave

2006-04-22T01:43:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week I finished the landscape image I posted a work-in-progress of in my last Lightwave post. Here's how it turned out:It didn't turn out exactly how I'd originally intended, but overall I like the results. The SasLite grass with the sunset lighting hitting it came out particularly well.

Randomish

2006-04-18T19:04:00.000-04:00

Just some random things of note today. May be updated as new stuff comes to mind.

I'm sure everyone has seen those "double entendre" shirts. Tonight in the dining hall I saw one that said "Rogues do it from behind." I don't know if it was a D&D/RPG reference, but I still laughed.

So now Facebook has an "I am..." feature. Great, so now I have two sets of away messages (Facebook and AIM) to keep me distracted from my work? I think Sue currently says it best though: "Susanna is happy to see there is one more way for me to stalk people via facebook :)."

"Leon" (AKA "The Professional") is a good movie, but I don't know how Natalie Portman's parents let her do it.

There were pro-life demonstrators showing off banners of bloody fetuses outside Bird Library today. A news team interviewed us about what we thought, and we said something about how sure the images are kinda disturbing, but they have a right to express their views. The reporter didn't seem happy with us - guess we didn't give her the extremist "sound bites" she was looking for. ;)

I'm sure more stuff will occur to me tonight. Update: Nah, it really didn't.

Deleted Scene from "The Vase"

2006-04-15T01:06:00.000-04:00

Stumbled across John August's CSS styles for screenplays, and figured I'd add them to my blog's template. (Yes, that John August, the one who wrote Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc. Looks like he's got a geeky side.) Actually, his entire blog should be of interest to anyone interested in movie script writing.

Anyway, in the interest of testing new features, I present the never-before-seen original opening to "The Vase"! I never filmed this because it would have been too hard, logistically, in the time I had. That's why the existing movie starts a little more abruptly than my others.

FADE IN:
EXT. STREET - DAY
A car comes over a hill and drives towards the camera.
INT. JACK'S CAR - DAY
JACK is driving. He looks a bit nervous. Not scared, just a little uneasy.
JACK
Why is this guy following me?
Out the rear window we see another car. It's black, plain, and inconspicuously official-looking. Jack glances down, flicking the lever for the turn signal.
EXT. JACK'S DRIVEWAY - DAY
Stopping the car, Jack turns around to look out the back. The strange car slows as it passes the house, but continues on down the street.
JACK
(sighing)
That was weird...
INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY
Jack enters through the front door carrying a backpack over one shoulder. Worn-out, he moves over to the couch, dropping the backpack carelessly onto the floor.
JACK
Man, I'm exhausted.
He collapses onto the couch and falls asleep as we:
FADE OUT

After that, the movie continues as normal. So there you have it - the mighty "Lost Scene" of The Vase. What? Not impressed? That's OK: This post was really jsut about me playing with the screenplay formatting styles for this blog. They should come in handy next year, when I take my Screenwriting course.

Lengthy Lightwave Update

2006-04-13T23:00:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted about what I've been doing in my 3D Computer Art class, and with the end of the semester fast approaching, I think it's time for a little catch-up. After my last post, we did a few more fairly simple modeling assignments that I really don't find worth uploading pics of. After that, we moved into rendered images, and things got a little more interesting.

Assignment 3-4 (don't ask)
This had a really weird prompt - we had to create a "self-representation" that combined items that had some importance to us, creating a bizzare creature/character/person that represented our interests. Uh... riiiiiight. We then had to create a simple setting out of additional objects, place the character into that setting, and produce a final rendered output.

After a few false starts (I really hate out-there "artsy" prompts like this), I eventually created this image:

In case you can't tell, the objects included are: video camera, book (on back), keyboard, laptop, LEGOs, pencil (art), light bulb (creativity)... and the hand I made earlier in the semester because I didn't know what to put for the guy's left hand. The hardest part of this project was getting the skelton to work. This was the first character I'd made from a solid mesh, with controlling "bones" inside that would deform the mesh in a "natural" way. Problem was: bones are stupid, and don't know what parts of the body they should affect. I would move the right arm, and half of the right side of the torso would come with it! This project also took waaaay to long to render, as I foolishly modeled the actual raised "LEGO" text on the blocks. I only did it once, then copy/pasted the rest, but the final result added up to a lot of polygons.

Assignment 5
This was a lot of fun. We were supposed to create a scene in which every object was the default "light gray" color. Everything interesting had to be done with geometry, bump maps, and lighting. Since the 3 final renders were to be in black and white, we were told to create 3 distinct, interesting lighting setups. I made a castle/mansion-y interior with a fireplace and whatnot. My first render was a somewhat boring overview of the room lit from various places:

My second render got a bit more interesting, and I played with the volumetric effects Lightwave has (about 1000x more flexible and better-looking than TrueSpace's):

Finally, I decided to try a fairly radical angle with dramatic lighting from the fireplace (turn your head to the left if you don't see it immediatly):

I really enjoyed this assignment, although in retrospect theyre are a lot of things I would have done a little differently, and I never had time to do some of the cool things I planned (chandeliers and such).

Assignment 6 (current project)
We pretty much jsut started this one, so I'm nowhere near finished yet. We're supposed to "...recreate a past environment, room, or space that you associate with." This environment doesn't have to depict a real place, but the final image should "tell a story." The depiction can be abstract, surreal, impressionistic, emotional, or realistic. (Obviously, I chose realism - I want to do CG for my movies, not "explore the human condition" or somesuch) Yeah, this is another wacky "artsy" assignment, but it's vague enough that I can do just about anything and justify it. I chose to depict a landcape scene, with the story being someone who is camping. (for Halapy: I'm basically re-arranging parts of the land around the lake at Heritage, with a few "artistic liscence" additions of my own).

I still have a long way to go, but as of tonight I've made a lot of progress on the grassy hill where the campsite will be (using Lightwave's SasLite hair plugin to make the grass), a pretty decent tree, and a broken-down stone wall. (Why is there a stone wall on this hill? - Because it looks cool there.) Anyway, here's my W.I.P. shot:

Obviously, everything beyond the hill in the foreground is still at a very rough stage. At one point, I tried covering the entire terrain with the simulated grass, but I ran into an internal limit with the SasLite plugin (they have to give you some incentive to pay money for the full version of "Sasquatch"). In light of this, I'm now using the SasLite grass just for the hill, and will find a simple grassy texture map for the rest of the land, since it's too far away to tell the difference anyway.

I also still need to do the water properly, clone that tree about a million times, and add the campfire. All of this while trying to finish my final Writing 205 project, and catching up on play reviews for my two drama classes. This next week should prove interesting...

An Interesting Day/Night

2006-04-01T01:38:00.000-05:00

This is totally random, so I'll just write everything that happened today. Skip to the end for a humorously short summary if you don't want to read. (actually, it might be funnier to read the short version first, then find out WTF I was talking about!)

First of all, I had to get up at 8am (Nooooooo!!) to meet a go to a sophomore's film shoot I'm helping out with. We then spent the next 7 hours or so moving heavy film equiptment all over campus in impossibly warm weather (think high 70s...), sitting on a dolly to provide ballast, telling passers-by not to look at the camera, and sometimes just sitting around waiting for the guys in charge to figure out what they were doing. Tiring, but it was kinda fun, and I got to get a sample of what I'll be doing in my film classes next year. (Their advice? Learn to use a light meter. Doesn't matter how artsy your shot is if the film isn't exposed properly)

Around 8pm I went to see "Horatio Sanz and the Kings of Improv" at Goldstein Auditorium with Mike and Maisha (both from film) and their friend Diana, who happens to be a witch. The improv show was alright, but not quite as great as I expected. Afterwards, I ended up getting autographs from Horatio and the other people he was performing with. (Hey, the opportunity was there, and the line wasn't too long.)

(I was too lazy to get the scanner, so I took a picture with my digital camera)

When the show was over, Mike wanted to do something, so Diana suggested we check out this "Unique Tea House" on Marshall Street. None of us had heard of such a place, but we went to see what she was so exited about.

You can't really blame us for not knowing about this place. It's on the second floor above an Indian restaurant, hidden away behind a doorway labeled for a hair stylist. The only sign advertising it is a smal lighted one about 20 feet in the air, where no one ever looks. Once inside, you find this nice little... tea house, guess. I'll take a picture the next time I'm there, but the whole place has a subdued, calm, eastern feel to it. In addition to various teas, they have these colorful fruit drinks with all kinds of odd things in them, that actually taste quite good. I had something with apple, honey, and a hint of lemon. Unusual ("Unique," even!), but good. The Unique Tea House is definitely one of those little undiscovered gems one finds around college campuses.

We talked about a ton of things, from filmmaking to coffee, to funny "drunk roommate" stories, to Diana's paganism (She's a "good witch" - no spells on other people, but she'll give a free Tarot reading if you like). All in all, just hanging around in a cool place wasting a couple hours in random conversation.

Aftward we met Diana's boyfriend, who seems to share Tony's enthusiam for Kingdom Hearts 2 (although I don't know if Tony can be surpassed in fanaticism... After helping with the film shoot he bugged out in a hurry because he had to "save the Pridelands." "Simba needs me!") The (now) 5 of us talked a while longer while wandering around campus. We actually ended up at an overlook by the College of Law with a nice view of part of the city, and a nearby parking garage that looks really cool at night. After that I came back here to my dorm.

The humorously short version:

Carried heavy equiptment, acted as ballast. Got Horatio Sanz's autograph, and then was treated to some tasty colorful drinks by a witch. Ended up in a parking garage. All in all, a fun day. ;)

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November...

2006-03-25T01:38:00.000-05:00

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

Yeah, I guess you could count that as an endorsement! Go see V for Vendetta!

...Now I can't get the 1812 Overture out of my head...

Why I Hate US Airways

2006-03-21T23:04:00.000-05:00

You know, I used to like flying.

I'm back at S.U. this week after a typically uneventful spring break, but I had a bit of adventure getting here. It's story time...

I was supposed to fly back sunday night on a flight that left at 8:40, and got me here around 10. That was the plan. After my typical last minute rush of packing (made worse by the obsessive need to watch the "Serenity" DVD my dad had purchased before I left) I got to the Pittsburgh airport, made it through security, and sat down at my gate with enough time left to play with the free WiFi.

Close to the time we were supposed to board, there's an announcement saying there's an "overbooking situation" on this flight, and they're looking for 3 or 4 (!) volunteers with flexible travel plans to switch to a later flight. I'd heard this before, and it didn't concern me much since the airline usually finds a few volunteers to keep their compassionless business model running (They'd rather overbook and kick people off a flight than risk having a few empty seats that aren't being paid for).

Unfortunatly, this went differently this time. A little while later, they called four names to come to the counter, and mine was one of them. We were informed that we might get bumped, and that we needed to wait here until everyone else got on the plane. We waited. And waited. While I was talking to another passenger who had been affected (a girl who also went to SU, and had an 8am class the next day), we overheard an interesting discussion. It seemed the plane was supposed to be ready to take off now, but they were waiting on some checked luggage that was late. The supervisor on duty wasn't happy with this, as apparently its against airline policy to delay takeoff for late luggage.

U.S. Airways overbooks its flights, and likes to leave suitcases behind when they don't make it to the plane on time. And they wonder why they're always on the verge of bankruptcy...

Anyway, eventually they mumbled something about being sorry for the inconvenience, and told us we could in fact get on the plane. Awesome! I gathered my things, and headed out to the plane. Since this was a small "Express" flight, standard carry-ons won't fit in the overhead bins. Instead, you put a yellow "Gate-Check" tag on them, and on your way to the plane, hand them to guy who puts them in the back of the plane. At your destination, you pick them up at the gate, rather than at baggage claim. I handed my roller-bag to the guy, and got on the plane with just my backpack containing my laptop and a few other small, expensive things I don't trust out of my sight. I sat down, and breathed a sigh of relief that this trip was finally getting underway.

Then the late luggage showed up.

Apparently, the luggage they had delayed the plane for was quite numerous. In fact, it wouldn't all fit in the back of the plane. The stewardess (attendant? What't the PC term?) started asking people very nicely if they could fit extra bags under the seats and whatnot. She was actually being quite thoughtful, doing everything possible to avoid leaving anything behind.

Then the supervisor showed up. He said that while the plane wasn't overbooked, it was overweight, so the four of us had to get off again. The thoughtful stewardess tried to offer us the choice of having our bags taken off and put on a later flight while staying on ourselves, but the supervisor said she couldn't do that. Dumbfounded, we exited the plane again.

The supervisor merits special mention. Now, most people still seem like people when they are working. Either they are pleasant and trying to help you (like the stewardess), or they hate their job and it shows, or whatever, but you can still tell they are human. Then there are people who come across as company policy books come to life. They aren't compassionate, they don't even offer a sad "I wish I could help" smile to calm you down. No emotion, no empathy. From all appearances, they have no souls.

The supervisor was of the latter type. Think Dick Cheney. Seriously, this guy looked (and sorta sounded) like Dick Cheney. (No joke!) His nametag said "Sean L." because apparently he doesn't have the guts to put his last name behind the work he does.

Once off the plane, I asked whether my gate-checked luggage would be taken off the plane. The supervisor assured me that it would, but that they couldn't just give it to me there on the tarmac (you guessed it: against policy), but that we could get our bags later at baggage claim F. Then one of the workers nearby got the brilliant idea to take our names down so that they could get our bags off the plane. Keep in mind, this only occured to him after the supervisor had assured us that all would be taken care of. Before we could ask any more pesky questions, the supervisor shooed us back into the airport.

At this point, we obviously weren't too happy. I was already planning this blog post. The girl I talked to earlier was nearly in tears after a phone call with her boss in Syracuse who wasn't very understanding that she wouldn't be able to work her 11pm shift that night. A middle-aged woman in our group looked like she wanted to shoot someone. The supervisor gave us a very unconvincing apology for our troubles (again, think Cheney), and then it was time for the paperwork.

If you get bumped from a flight at US Airways, they are "generous" enough to put you on the next flight out, (in this case, at 7:15 the next morning) put you up in a hotel for the night, and give you a $10 meal voucher to use at the airport restaurants. The only real nice thing they give you is a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the continental US, usable anytime within the next year (except for black-out dates like, oh, any significant holiday). Of course, you have to sign this ticket to accept it - right under some rather fine print that promises you won't sue the airline. Mmmm... extortion!

I took the free ticket and meal, but passed on the hotel; This is my hometown, I'll sleep in my own bed tonight, thank you very much! I called my dad, and told him he had to turn around and pick me up again. The supervisor reminded us that our luggage was at baggage claim F. (How could he be so sure? He hadn't checked or anything.) He also gave us the assurance that you cannot get bumped twice, so we were guaranteed our flight in the morning. (Gee, how nice...) Broken and defeated, we all headed to baggage claim F.

I'll bet you can see where this is going. Yup, my gate-checked roller-bag wasn't there. The other passengers' luggage was sitting on the corousel, but mine was MIA. After a fruitless search, I shuffled over to the baggage claim/customer service desk. I explained the situation to the nice guy behind the counter (at least this one seemed human!), and he went into a back room to check. After a phone call, he told me there had been some sort of "miscommunication," and my bag had stayed on the plane and gone to Syracuse without me.

Damn you, Dick Cheney-alike!!

The man told me that my luggage would be locked up in Syracuse overnight, and I could pick it up when I arrived the next day. I walked to the passenger pick-up area, my mind stuck on the image of an equally-pleasant guy in Syracuse telling my my bag had accidently been sent back to Pittsburgh...

On monday I got up much earlier than I generally prefer, brushed my teeth using my finger as a toothbrush (my real toothbrush was in Syracuse...), and went back to the airport.

My own trip would go smothly this time, but I did get one last glimpse of US Airways incompetence. While wating for my flight, the announcement came that this flight was in an "overbooking situation," and they were looking for seven volunteers to give up their seats. Seven! It seems the flight we had been bumped to was overbooked to begin with, and the four of us were making it even worse! So now, the events of the previous night had affected the travel plans of a total of 11 people. Fortunatly, they got the volunteers, so no one had to go through quite what we had, but still.

I count it as a minor miracle that when I arrived in Syracuse my roller-bag was, in fact, waiting for me at the baggage claim desk. I got a cab, rode back to my dorm, thanked God I had no morning classes on mondays, and collapsed in my bed.

So yeah, not liking US Airways too much at the moment. And Sean L, wherever you are.... YOU SUCK!

Huge X-Men 3 Spoiler Cover-up

2006-03-10T00:32:00.000-05:00

As a movie studio, what do you do when the trailer for your highly-anticipated upcoming film reveals something it shouldn't? Modify the trailer, of course! Nevermind the fact that removing the evidence only serves to confirm that yes, that shot did mean exactly what you thought it did.

Bottom line: the trailer that is online now is not the one that was originally posted a couple days ago.

WARNING! REALLY MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Seriously, this is a big spoiler. Maybe not "I am your father" big, but possibly close. I couldn't even ethically make myself put the images on the front page of this blog, so you'll have to click your way to having part of the movie ruined. If you click any of the links below, I cannot be held responsible for the consequences. You have been warned

In the currently available trailers, the shot around time index 2:16 is Wolverine scratching his way down a wall.

However, when the trailer was first released, that same shot was something altogether different - SPOILER WARNING! Don't click this!!!!.

If you just clicked that second link, I'm so sorry. I won't describe what it is here, but it should be obvious if you look at what's in the picture, what's going on, and what's missing. I can't believe 20th Century Fox let that out, even if only for a short time. My guess - some editor's job is not as secure as it once was after this incident.

Rottentomatoes.com also shows the original image (SPOILER!) in their flipbook.

There. With as many SPOILER tags as I put in this post, you have no one to blame but yourself. And that dumb editor at 20th Century Fox.