Brian Stokes: The Intermittent Super-genius

What's New

2011-10-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have not written much here for a long time. My apologies. Here are some whiz-bang high production-value elaborations as to why:
Meeting my Lovely Wife, Tricia (and Subsequent Adventures, Wedding planning, Wedding, Honeymoon, Married life, etc.)
Love and I rammed into each other head-first back in late 2008. Since then, most of my writing has ended up on our own blog, Silly Red Robot, and as such my usual thoughts and research about puppetry, corporations, creativity, technology, music had been replaced with "What fun things am I going to do with my wife today?", "How are we going to organize our living room?" and "I need to fire our wedding planner today."

Facebook
Yes, that vacuum-cleaner of attention span, that social etiquette centrifuge has sucked away my travel photos and flung most of my random thoughts and status updates to far-flung acquaintances, in-laws and distant cousins in India.

A Lack of Focus
When I started the blog, I basically used it as a diary, a place to record thoughts and ideas, a repository for random stuff I found online, an excuse to write, and a way to be funny.

Friends who have started blogs around the same time as me have generally converged onto a niche focus. One writes about his splendid toy collection and keeps his focus around character design and movies. Another is entirely devoted to puppetry and covers a lot more than I've been doing. Meanwhile, strangers have started blogs that have morphed into online magazines covering electronic music, the Muppets, Pixar, and other cool stuff.

So I may keep this blog up for the random and difficult to classify stuff, but ultimately it may be time to start up a specific one.

Trouble is, I like too many things. *sigh*

OC Fair Skyride

2011-08-19T11:31:00.001-07:00

Tricia has acrophobia and so it surprised / impressed me greatly when she asked to ride the Orange County Fair Skyride with me. To be honest with you, I was equally nervous, clinging to my hat, glasses, and her very tightly for fear of dropping something out of the minimal metal structure we were sitting on with legs dangling off precariously.

Two Video Puppetry Training Classes

2011-03-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

So you want to be a Muppeteer? Or you want to be a cast member of Avenue Q on tour, perform on stage for shows like Pee Wee's Playhouse, maybe even do a puppet greeting card for Jib Jab or Puppet Greetings? Or perhaps you want to do your own YouTube puppet series? Maybe you're an actor with mad improvisational skills, but the moment you put on a puppet, your character looks like a wet noodle?

If so, you gotta learn your video puppetry chops.

Resources for learning this specialized skill have increased dramatically recently. Not long ago, your best bet was joining your local Puppeteers of America Guild, gaining techniques and advice from others, watching old episodes of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show over and over again, practicing lip-sync with your hands to songs in front of a camcorder. Another approach (which I used) was working at a Cable Public Access Television station. These are still great ways, but now you have more options!

Why not sign up for a hands-on video puppetry class? Two of note are:

Michael Earl's Puppet School
and
John Tartaglia's Puppetry Classes

I can highly recommend Michael's class, as I was lucky to try it years ago. Michael worked on the original Muppet Movie and played Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street. His teaching approach is similar to a dance instructor -- build up dexterity with specific moves set to music first, repeating them until mastered. Then learn fancier choreography and improvisational techniques. Now he has extended the class into an entire school that features workshops in Seattle, NYC, and Los Angeles.

John Tartaglia was one of the original stars of Avenue Q on Broadway. Now he's offering a class in Los Angeles, with more to follow in NYC presumably. If you happen to take his class, please let me know how it is!

Getting Married!

2011-03-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

Whoosh. Sorry for the long absence from writing here. I've been focusing my attention on my fianceé's and my other blog, Silly Red Robot, as well as spending a lot of time on planning our wedding (ever since we had to fire our wedding planner).

Jam with Faraway Musicians Via Your Laptop: Ohm Studio

2010-04-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Music has always been a collaborative art form. The first popular records were made by bringing all musicians into a studio full of microphones, recording them live all at once. With the advent of multitrack audiotape, each instrument could be recorded a track at a time, and thus, you could get a drummer or a pianist in there one day, then bring in a vocalist on another.

This multitrack metaphor still remains today in digital audio workstation software (or DAW). But there's still the problem of finding good musicians to meet up with you and jam. With the Internet and email and file-sharing, that's much easier. Assuming you find people through any number of sites, you can fling the tracks back and forth to each other wherever you might be -- in your garage in Seattle, or on a Wi-Fi accessible beach in Fiji. But that's still annoying.

Now there's Ohm Studio, a DAW with a social network back-end plus an optimized file-sharing engine within the app. Sounds good, but there are already quite a few DAWs out there. Pro Tools, Sonar, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Acid, Cubase, Record, Reaper to name a few. Would be great if the social media back-end were an open API so that each DAW developer could tap into it. A standard, like the virtual instrument plugin standard "VST". Ah well.

Someday very soon you can be sitting on the beach, acting like you're the hot shot producer in the control room as you type to your artist "More cowbell."

Moby Video Contest

2010-04-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

My friends Holly and Dylan created this excellent entry for Moby's "Wait For Me" music video competition. Please have a look and vote for it if you like it.

Piano Improvisor Merton + Random Webcam Chatroom = Viral Hit!

2010-03-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

People go onto anonymous webcam chatrooms for a variety of reasons. Loneliness. Boredom. Sexual exploration. But to be serenaded by a hooded improvising piano-player was not one of them, until now.

Merton (not his real name) is now an Internet phenom. His video was seen over 4 million times in less than a week! On his Youtube channel, Merton wrote a note saying he was not Ben Folds, a semi-famous male piano player from Atlanta (of the band Ben Folds Five). As Merton's video became more popular though, some media insisted Merton and Ben Folds were the same guy. Playing up the joke, Ben Folds recorded his own "Ode to Merton" video in front of a 2000 member live audience, complete with hoodie and glasses.

Here is the very first interview with Merton on Mashable.

I love the combination of improvisational music performance and the randomness of the participants, with all of us watching. It's a bit like those old "You're on Candid Camera" TV shows, where a set of actors and a camera crew do things in front of unsuspecting people. Only now, none of the parties has to go anywhere in particular. Both sides of the chat could be anywhere, and the audience could also be anywhere. Imagine if two improv pianists in front of live audiences from random places in the world encountered each other on Chatroullette?

DIY Dumplings? Desire Dim Sum? Get Andrea Nguyen's book "Asian Dumplings"

2010-02-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

Tricia and I are passionate Dim Sum-o wrestlers. Living in Los Angeles, we are fortunate to have many good Dim Sum restaurants near us in Chinatown, Alhambra, and Gardenia. However, we had been wondering lately -- how difficult would it be to make our own char shiu bao (steamed pork buns)? Or har gow (steamed shrimp dumplings)? After doing some research, all we knew was that it supposedly took years (nay, a lifetime) of professional training in the kitchens and/or culinary schools of Hong Kong to be good enough to be worthy of making these morsels. Our dreams of DIY Dim Sum seemed hopelessly farfetched.

Then one day, while driving and listening to KCRW's Good Food podcast, I found out about Andrea Nguyen's new book entitled Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas and More. It was as if a steamed dough crescent rainbow had formed over the 405! Our soy sauce, chili and mustard prayers were answered!

The book goes into a lot of detail and offers short cuts for making your own doughs. If illustrations aren't enough for you, she's got instructional videos on the book's companion site asiandumplingtips.com. Indian, Thai, Japanese, South American, Vietnamese and Fillipino dumpling lovers are not left out -- they too get recipes and techniques. Seriously, if you want to make any sort of dumpling-esque food item, this book is for you.

So now we are building up our equipment list, taking the advice of Mrs. Nguyen and getting a tortilla press (!), and a wooden dowel to make into small, cheap rolling pins. We're still tracking down some of the more exotic ingredients, like Shaoxing rice wine. But hopefully soon I'll have photos up of our creations.

MIT scientists developing giant, hovering 3-D Animations

2010-02-19T16:45:00.000-08:00

Remember the amazing human pixel performances at the Chinese Olympics? I was stunned at the beauty of thousands of people acting as one giant moving picture. Now, scientists at MIT are working on floating displays made up of individual controllable flying robots, each with adjustable colored lights.

I do hope these don't catch on as advertising, however. Can you imagine being accosted by a hovering, glowing face made up of artificial gnats nagging you to shop at Wal Mart or get your oil changed at Jiffy Lube? Greaaat.

Discovering Peter Serafinowicz

2010-02-16T12:58:00.000-08:00

Peter Serfinowicz is a British voice actor, comedian and actor whom I've been exposed over the last decade, but never put a face to. Tricia and I were watching Couples Retreat and the paradise island host Sctanley caught our attention because of his relaxing, authoritative, and strangely familiar voice.

Today I found a Boing Boing interview with him and started connecting the dots.

Turns out he was in Star Wars: Episode I (Darth Maul's voice), Sean of the Dead (roommate of Simon Pegg), Look Around You (narrator), and Black Books (which featured Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran, another favorite comedian).

I can see why he was chosen to play Paul McCartney in the upcoming Zemeckis motion capture freakfest remake of Yellow Submarine:

New Rare Condition to Add to My Collection: Pellucid Marginal Degeneration

2010-02-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

Went to a new eye doctor today. Turns out I do not have Keratoconus after all. My left eye has Pellucid Marginal Degeneration, which is often confused with it and is much more rare. The good news is that it does not lead to blindness and does not get worse with age.

I had been wearing soft contacts for almost twelve years until one day in 1998, my new optometrist gave me the usual eye tests. Right eye was fine. Left eye though, not so much. "Which of these look better, one or two?" "Neither" This went on for too long as I sat nervously, wearing those steam-punk goggles. The doctor seemed very puzzled, then told me "Well it looks like you have Keratoconus, or a curved cornea. There's not much we can do. We could give you glasses, but the left lens would be about 5 inches thick. Sorry." Wha?!

Luckily, we have an optometrist in the distant family. Called him, and he said the doc was crazy and recommended another one. He too declared "Keratoconus" but claimed "your last doc was wrong -- you can do something about it. Hard contact lenses." Rigid gas-permeable, to be exact. They are like tiny translucent blue versions of those saucer sleds kids play with in the snow. In fact, they are so similar to those that it's very easy to lose them in the sink drain.

David Crane: Videogame Pioneer

2010-01-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

David Crane, creator of the first so-called "platform" videogame Pitfall! is to be honored with a Pioneer Award soon. He worked at Atari back in the days when its Atari 2600 ruled the world. Atari's games were each designed and programmed -- game, graphics, sound and all -- by one person. But that person had no bonus, no recognition. Not even in the game itself*, out of fear that he might get stolen away by a competitor.

Also at that time, videogame console manufacturers produced games for their own systems. David and other Atari programmers left and formed the world's first third party game company, Activision. They changed the rules -- programmers could now get recognition, and a percentage of royalties. Activision spawned all other Third Party game companies and, I would argue, invented Rock Star programmers.

Somewhere there is a photo of my really high score on Pitfall!

via WIRED

* Although there are programmers who hid "Easter Eggs" signatures, like Will Robinette in his game Adventure.

Supreme Court to Corporations: Take all the Megaphones You Want, It's Your Right

2010-01-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

This week, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to lift spending restrictions on corporations and unions, claiming that such restrictions are a violation of Free Speech, a right given to all "citizens" by our Constitution.

Given that corporations are allegedly "Persons"*, and given that there is legal precedent dating back to the 1970s for equating money spent on lobbying and advertising with Free Speech, the winning side here believes that the Constitutional Rights of these poor helpless fictional entities have been justifiably restored

To me this means we've just cleared the way for America to be a Corporate Fascist nation, not a Democracy.

Sure, there are Constitutional Purists, like Glenn Greenwald, who drank the Kool-Aid and think this ruling was about an abstract fight against the notion of limiting free speech to some category of entities. He and others think having any such regulation in any context is paramount to censorship and must be stopped.

I don't buy it.

We're dealing here not with stopping ideas we may or may not agree with. Glenn is right when he points out that government banning and censoring human communication in one context, but not in others, is unacceptable in a true Democracy. Either you have Free Speech or you don't. If you don't, you live in China and mere mentioning of certain topics will get you imprisoned or killed.

But, even if we don't restrict its content, the intent of Free Speech was never to allow one group of entities to have more of it than anyone else. The problem is how to mix all the communications channels in a fair, informative way. Prior regulation kept the Corporate voice lower in the mix. Now that regulation will be off.

Thanks to these Supreme Court idiots, Corporations will able to seize the control room, crank up the volume and mix everyone else out of the dialogue.

The Megaphones vs. The Unmiked.

It is not that Corporations have not been able to speak. (They already have).

It's not that they cannot speak the particular messages they would like to (even if those might be misleading or false).

No. The problem now is that Corporations do not speak. With billions of dollars, they can YELL.

They can now yell louder, and across more loudspeakers and channels than any other entity on the planet. These entities can now buy up all the megaphones and boomboxes.

Speech? Or Corruptive Influence

Then there is the matter of corruption. Corruption can trump even the fairest of dialogues and messaging between elected officials and the citizens voting for them.

When a human being donates money to a politician in the hopes of getting him or her elected, there is the hope (or expectation) he or she will vote in a way pleasing to the donor.

But with a corporation, we're talking HUGE sums of money that no mere mortal human being can simply walk away from. In effect, the politician will think twice before enacting any laws against such a "generous" donor. In effect, the Corporate Donor has just bought the Law, custom-made for its own self-interest.

Theodore Roosevelt and our preceding governments recognized the danger of granting unlimited power to Corporations. We had protections in place to separate government and commerce. They gave corporations a voice, but muted so that the rest of us could be heard too.

But now our members of Congress are former members of Corporations and vice versa. They have debts to repay, Laws to create on their donor's behalf. This ruling will make he voice of the Corporations so overwhelmingly loud that we human beings might as well call it a day and do what Douglas Rushkoff suggests -- forget about government and do stuff ourselves.

* Albeit fictional, and only made so in the 1800s by a clerk writing notes on a court case about granting rights to slaves.

Golden Globe Award Snafus

2010-01-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

Hollywood must be severely broken if a Golden Globe for Best Picture for a non-drama goes to The Hangover?!! Unbelievable.

Ooh! Me want! Moldover's new custom controller, the Mojo now for sale

2010-01-13T14:55:00.000-08:00

Electronic music performer Moldover has long been a pioneer in unusual ways to DJ and perform music. His modus operandi has been to hack apart off-the-shelf MIDI USB controllers (like those from M-Audio and Novation), add his own bits, remove the ones in the way, and hook up the Frankensteinian result to a laptop running music software such as Ableton Live and Reaktor.

Moldover calls this increasingly common practice of making and using new DJ interfaces "controllerism." Like many DIY and Open Source creators, he has been very open about his techniques, offering many youtube demonstration videos and giving regular talks at music technology user groups.

Well now Moldover has a new toy to play with, and you can play it too! (For a mere $1800) This one he had custom-built with rugged, ergonomically-aligned arcade buttons, and an industrial-grade metal and wood case.

French music video tribute to The Muppet Show

2010-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

This is the second French CG animation homage to Jim Henson's Muppets I've seen so far. Many elements of the Muppet Show are here -- the red curtain, musician Muppets, audience Muppets, a human performer singing a classic song. No heckling Statler and Waldorf-like characters though, sadly. Since these are all key-framed CG characters, these puppets do things no ordinary foam hand-and-rod puppet can do! Dance with legs showing! Throw things!

Unfortunately, the animators focused so much on exaggerating the "puppety-ness" that puppetry basics like lip-synch and eye-focus are less than stellar. Still, it's great to see a large-scale Muppet Musical Number again.

The Futility of Censoring Online Chat

2009-12-03T15:53:00.000-08:00

Online Virtual Worlds are semi-mainstream now, with World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, IMVU, Sony's Home, and Second Life all relatively well-known by a large chunk of the population. But they all have their roots in MUDs (Multi-User Domain), MOOs (MUD, Object-Oriented) and BBS (Bulletin Board System) chat rooms that originated more than 20 years ago. These text-based virtual worlds were run on university networks, accessible almost entirely by college students who happened to have computer access, a rarity at that time. The basic features of today's Instant Message clients (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, and Yahoo!), and every chat feature inside online games and website assistant windows are descendants of these proto-Chat systems.

Somewhere back in the mid-1990s, Chat met the World-Wide Web. Companies like iChat (not the Apple webcam software) were selling chatting plugins for the fledgling web site industry. Yahoo's own chat system used iChat's plugin originally before it developed Yahoo! Instant Messenger. I recall going to iChat's booth at a Linux Conference where a representative from some large corporate site was asking a product specialist a question along these lines:

Corporate Representative: "How do we make certain that users don't curse and only talk about our products?"
Product Specialist: "Ummm... You can't."

Non-technical people in boardrooms have always come up with the same seemingly obvious solution: "Can't we just make a big list of bad words and filter them out?" The answer, it turns out, and always will be NO^*.

In the mid-1980's, a pair of programmers Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer developed a 2-D graphical virtual world called Habitat, that ran on the Commodore 64 home computer. Since then they've been behind many online worlds. Whenever there's a corporate backer for one of their projects (such as Disney, for their ToonTown virtual world for kids), they encounter (just like the one I encountered) the fundamental assumption that censorship is possible.

On their website, Habitat Chronicles, Randy Farmer blogged about how even their best laid censorship filter plans can be bested by a clever (and naughty) teenager:

"We spent several weeks building a UI that used pop-downs to construct sentences, and only had completely harmless words – the standard parts of grammar and safe nouns like cars, animals, and objects in the world."
"We thought it was the perfect solution, until we set our first 14-year old boy down in front of it. Within minutes he’d created the following sentence:

I want to stick my long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny.

Alas, for better or for worse, communication finds a way. It's built from finite materials combined in infinite ways. So long as there are clever people, someone will find some way to say something you (or other players) don't like through your corporate playground.

You hear that, China? (AT & T?)

^* That is, without having an impossibly expensive (and potentially corruptible) army of workers monitoring every conversation.

Playing a DVD movie on a Blu-Ray Player = Weird

2009-11-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

We watched Four Christmases on DVD played via a Blu=Ray player on an HD flatscreen TV. The result was very strange -- it was like being there on the set as the actors were making the movie. All cinematic distance was squashed and flattened into something too close to regular every day eye-sight for there to be any magic. (The fact that it wasn't a particularly funny or interesting movie did not help matters)

Not entirely sure how this happened. Had we watched the Blu-Ray version would we have seen this, or was this an artifact of the playback enhancement?

Day One of Boston Trip 2009, part III

2009-11-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

We took a cab to Colin and Jessica's house.
Mom and Dad arrived later.

Mom watches over Theo.

Here I am with Theo and Dad (who will turn 70 in a couple of days!)

Tricia rubs Theo's head. So soft!

Day One of Boston 2009, part II

2009-11-10T14:14:00.000-08:00

Completely exhausted from our Red-Eye overnight flight, we strolled around the city of Boston.

We went into Fanuel Hall and found some "Chowda".

There was an open-faced building...

and nice old architecture.

Day One of Boston Trip 2009, part I

2009-11-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

Tricia and I went to the New England Aquarium...

..where we saw a lovely green sea turtle...

... who had a funny way of swimming (only with his feet).

Nephew Theo is 1 Year Old

2009-11-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

Happy First Birthday, Theo!

FYI: The term "infovore" was coined by me, circa 1996. Hmmph.

2009-11-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

Don't you hate it when you hit upon an idea and don't do much with it, let it sit around for years and years -- then suddenly, you find articles about someone else being credited for doing something significant with your idea? This happened to me today while reading BoingBoing, and an Urban Dictionary entry, and a blurb about some neuro-scientists who claim to have coined the term (2006) for that craving humans have for novel things.

But as far as I know, I was first. Came up with the word sometime in the mid-90s and used it to describe myself at an Oracle interview in 1996. Had anyone used it before me? Maybe. Please comment below if you have evidence.

Since everyone was purchasing domains back then, I bought infovore.com in 2000 or so, but let it slide. (Now it's owned by somebody in France).

At least I still have mediavore.com. And anyway, as Douglas Rushkoff has since written, we are more consumers of meaning than information.

What I need now is a word to describe this situation: discovering an idea, sitting on it, then later finding that others have since done something with it.

To blog, or not to blog...

2009-09-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

The question running through my head lately is, now that most people seem to be reading my Facebook updates, should I maintain this particular blog (which has been up and running since 2002!!), or start a new, improved (more focused?) one? You can see I don't update it as frequently as I should. It's partly due to lack of motivation, lack of time, and a small amount of blogger envy (or "Wow, those blogs are getting all the attention. Why isn't mine?")

Seems like when I do write, I write mainly about puppetology, music and music technologies, videogames, the evils of corporations and politics, and myself.

Dear reader, which of these do you enjoy most? Should I break this site out into specific blogs about each subject? Or do you like the haphazard mix as it is? How can I improve it?

Save the Poor Health Insurance Companies!

2009-09-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Awwww... There, there monstrous corporate entities -- it'll be all right in the end. Don't worry.

Robot Vs. Barbed Wire Fence: 1, Zip

2009-09-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

Comic Con '09: Highlights

2009-07-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Tricia, her friend Erica and I got back from Comic Con yesterday. We had a blast!

This year was the first for me to stay at the Marriott Marina Hotel, and boy, that sure made it a lot less tiring. The problem with the San Diego convention center is that it separated by a light-rail train and only a couple of walkable crossings over to most of the nearby hotels and restaurants. These passages are overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of sweaty nerds and geeks baking in the hot sun as they head back to hotels to drop their loot or head out to the Gas Lamp district for some food. It is already taxing enough to move through the hordes and stand in mile-long lines within the Con itself, so this extra pain can really add up.

The Marriott, on the other hand, is right next door to the convention center. A quick walk and you're in its comfortable air-conditioned lobby. It seems to be where a lot of the more famous attendees stay. David Fury (producer on Buffy, Angel, Lost, 24, etc.) and his kids, and a writer from Family Guy were in front of me in the Starbucks line Saturday morning. Legendary Marvel writer Stan Lee sat a table down from us in the pub. Adam from Mythbusters was in the elevator with us. Erica's Marriott Rewards card got us a free upgrade to a room on the 19th floor, which was quite nice.

Some highlights of the weekend:

Participating in the standing ovation for Hirao Miyazaki

Seeing our friends at booths and walking around (Jeff, Anita, Michele, Eric & Jodi, Tim, Dave & Jenn, Joji, Edwin...)

Tricia & Erica getting photo ops with Tyrese Gibson

Me getting an autograph from Leonard Nimoy

Chatting over drinks with my brother-in-law, Hayden

Getting some great art prints and a steam punk raygun for our apartment

Unexpected harbor fireworks right next to our table at Roy's

The insanely good chocolate dessert at Roy's

Photos coming soon!

First-Person Shooter Disease

2009-07-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hard-core gamers, this could happen to you!

via Jeff Pidgeon

"War Horse": Intricate horse puppets on stage in London

2009-07-14T17:27:00.001-07:00

Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa created amazing horse puppets for a play called War Horse, now playing in London.

(Click the link above to read about it in the New York Times)

Back in 1998 at the Henson Puppetry Festival in New York, I saw this troupe perform a sublimely great piece about apartheid, featuring an incredibly compelling alligator puppet. I'm excited to hear they are still around and getting into larger projects.

Here's a slideshow with more images.

from BoingBoing and animator friend Barry Purves

X-Files: My Face Is Out There

2009-06-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

As you may have read here last year, I wound up on the set of Chris Carter's movie X-Files: I Want To Believe. While Chris and another friend of his were both somewhat certain I made it into the final cut of the film, neither I nor my friends were able to find me when we went to the theater to see it. Aaaargh! Unfortunately, seeing the movie once is enough and I gave up after the first viewing.

Months later, the DVD came out and I figured I would try the deleted scenes to see if I hiding in there somewhere. Nope. I tried combing the two main emergency room sequences. Sure enough, while running scene 12 (where Skully is doing the stem cell operation on the terminally ill boy) in slow motion, I found a few spots with me! Whohoo!

Me staring at Skully and the incoming big-ass needle, second one over from the left (the only nurse with chest hair).

I am in the background on the upper left, pointing at the X-ray panel for no reason.

Closer view of me pointing at the X-ray panel, left side.

I'm dead center, facing away from camera standing at the foot of the stretcher.

TED: Portable "Minority Report" interface!

2009-06-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

For those of you haven't seen Minority Report, the movie showcases some seemingly futuristic gestural interfaces that Tom Cruise uses to control a complex computer system. Yet only a few years after it came out, we're already seeing just how possible this is. In this TED video, Pattie Maes from MIT demonstrates a low-cost ($350) system that lets the user use any available surface (a wall, a free hand (!)) as a multi-touch interface. Granted, it's a bit slower to use than Jeff Han's table or Microsoft's Surface, but hey, it's cheap and you can bring it with you.

Kutiman + Youtube Amateur Music clips = The Future of Media?

2009-06-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

Man, we are almost at Beatles-level in the world of mashup artists. DJ Earworm continues to weave top 40 hits together. Now, Israeli artist Kutiman has taken unrelated bits of amateur music performance clips on Youtube, blending them together magically to make new creations, like this one:

My advice to the RIAA and media conglomerate executives? It's time to learn to love the world without excessive copyright, because this IS the future, like it or not. No amount of litigation, government crack-downs, or lobbying will end these "violations." Not even a doomsday lock-down on electronic communications itself, China-style. Time to evolve new business models, not cryogenically preserve archaic ones.

Microsoft's Project Natal: Motion Capture, Mime, Puppetry For your Xbox 360?

2009-06-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

The computer vision wizards of Microsoft (including the Internet sensation Jonny Lee, the guy who hacked a Wiimote into a virtual whiteboard) have been busy working on a controller-less technology that, apparently, can sense shapes and forms and track their motions.

Imagine the uses for puppetry or mime! In the video above, the boy gets to perform the rampages of a giant Japanese monster. The girl drives a car by miming the hands on a steering wheel. I can see this being used for virtual Muppets, where a simple two-handed rod puppet could drive a virtual puppet decorated to look like whatever you want.

Some questions to ponder. Can Project Natal track depth accurately? What's the latency? How many things can it track? If a tracked object gets occluded and then reappears, is there a delay before it gets picked up again?

Low-cost motion capture / digital puppetry inches closer and closer. I hope Microsoft opens this up to XNA so that indie developers can play with it.

Reactable: Multi-touch Tabletop Synthesizer Now Available

2009-05-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

Oooh boy, me want!

This is the final product version of the Reactable, previously a thesis project by grad students at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.

What is it? It's a tangible multi-touch projection surface hooked up to an interactive modular synthesizer. In other words, take the Evil Supreme Being's water surveillance screen from Time Bandits:

and combine it with a virtual version of Robert Moog's modular synthesizers:

What I like about this multi-touch screen is that it can "see" special barcode-like glyph patterns on the sides of objects. These glyphs can generate specific controls on the screen, or represent modes (like say "octave" or "turn on delay"). The screen detects their position and rotation. In contrast, something like the iPhone tracks fingers, but once you remove the finger, the tracking and control (as well as the visual representation of the control) are gone unless something tells the software to make that control "stick". This is not as intuitive as a tangible control. (After all, we know what to do with blocks as soon as we're old enough to grasp things.) The blocks on this surface are the signal to the screen to make a control. Removing them makes the control disappear. No extra interface to learn. It's also a nice way to partition the work of many users. Each player can control something (or many things) with his/her own block and participate with the overall result of everyone else's control blocks.

Looks like this incarnation of the Reactable is meant for museum and art installations, rather than personal use. And of course, it's running a specific application, namely a synthesizer. Wonder how much it costs!

As mentioned before on this blog, the last couple of years have been great for multi-touch interfaces. Jeff Hahn's interface, Jonny Lee's Nintendo Wiimote hack for a multi-touch whiteboard, the Reactable, Microsoft's Surface and the iPhone. Keep 'em coming!

Douglas Rushkoff's "Life, Inc" book and short film preview

2009-05-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

Media ecology professor, author, and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff has been writing a book called Life, Inc: How The World Became a Corporation and How To Take It Back. While Joel Bakun's book (and documentary film), The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power, describes how public corporations are basically psychopathic neighbors that are bound by Law to make choices detrimental to humanity and the environment (in the pursuit of infinite profit growth), Rushkoff's book will discuss how Kings fabricated an economic environment designed to control the merchant class, bringing rise to chartered corporations and a mindset of self-interest, consumerism and profit above all other virtues that people, particularly Americans have adopted as the default nature of being.

Above is a short video preview.

Sam Pottle and David Axlerod's song "Wonder Child"

2009-05-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

I remember being in my grandfather's high-rise apartment in Philadelphia sometime in the mid-to-late 70s. I was sitting on the bed in his bedroom. An off-white Zenith TV with a thick, noisy spring-loaded button metal brick remote sat on a stand in front of a large window overlooking the 30th Street Train Station. On the screen, a fuzzy PBS station was airing Sesame Street, and Helen Reddy was singing a song that has been stuck in my mind's infinite shuffle playlist ever since.

Of course, where else do I find it but YouTube, the ever-present fountain of nostalgia?

Lovely song. But then I discovered the Ritchie Havens version, also on Sesame Street and possibly the original version of it:

Tricia and I love this version even more!

The song was written by the late Joe Raposo, the primary musical force behind the early Sesame Street and The Electric Company years. Probably best known for his "Bein' Green" song sun by Kermit The Frog. Musically, he's got a trademark sound built upon flutes, piccolos, glockenspiels, chimes, harpsichords, player pianos, 70s funk bass and guitar, random sound FX and banjo. He believed very strongly that children should hear music from everywhere else, and that it wasn't over their heads.
UPDATE: My bad. This song was NOT written by Joe Raposo! It was written by Sam Pottle and David Axlerod, who took over for Mr. Raposo after he left Sesame Street.

Obama Giving In?: The U.S. May Spy On You; You Can't Sue

2009-04-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Well I for one am disturbed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T and the Bush administrations's illegal surveillance hit a humongous snag -- Obama's Department of Justice filed a brief saying they not only endorse the Bush administration's reasoning that the suit cannot be pursued because of national security, but that retroactively, from now on, NO ONE may sue the government or its contractors for warantless wiretapping unless that information is made public by said government.

But more importantly, it undermines Obama's entire campaign.
This is a complete about face, folks. He vowed to hold our government accountable for illegal activity, to preserve the Constitution which expressly forbids surveillance without warrants. To sneak around having to do this to prevent rocking the boat this early in his term is a horrible sign that perhaps, we were all duped. I really hope this isn't the case -- Obama is a nice friendly figurehead but, despite election promises, unwilling or unable to fix the corruption his predecessors engineered.

He better do something. That we are in a manufactured "War on Terror" (a term the Obama team no longer uses) is NO EXCUSE for tramping the civil rights of its citizens. Unless of course you want a fascist nation. (Some do -- better for business.)

Is Obama's DOJ full of lingering Bush administrative people seizing the opportunity? Is Obama oblivious? How could he support such a thing?

More editorial about this here.

If you're angry with all this, please sign the CREDO petition.

Will Wright: Software Will Write Itself

2009-04-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Found this quote from Will Wright -- game designer extraordinaire and creator of SPORE, The Sims and Sim City -- about Software:

Most of the software that we’ve used thus far has been designed software—procedurally designed software. We’re just getting to the point where we’re getting a lot of automatically generated software—you know, CASE tools or adaptive programming, where I’m pretty convinced that in a few years a lot of the software is going to be evolved, as opposed to written by humans. So over time, we’re going to be able to understand the way the software works less and less. It’s going to become a soft biological system. But at the same time, it’ll be very robust, very fault-tolerant compared to the very brittle software we have today. Once we lose control of software design, once software can design itself, write itself, improve itself, I think we’re going to have a different relationship to it. You can take a very complex piece of software, like an airline reservation system, and there’s no one person who understands the way the whole thing works.

Maybe soon we'll be able to breed software the way we do apples, roses, or cattle.

via Dr Dobbs

Hovering Hotel In the Sky?

2009-04-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

Now this is how I want my Future! I love this French dirigible flying hotel by designer Jean-Marie Massaud.

I've always thought the world was better off with blimps. (Infamous inferno-causing Hindenberg excluded, of course.)

Today's Musical Inspiration: Nick Drake

2009-04-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

Tricia and I watched Seven Pounds on DVD last night and while we did not like it all that much, one redeeming part was that there's a song in it I recalled hearing before on another movie soundtrack (Garden State), a jazzy guitary piano tune with a vaguely Cat Stevens vocal and lyrics like "Could've been a sign post...could have been a crook." I thought perhaps it was a modern artist returning to an earlier production style, something KCRW might play.

Turns out this is "One of these things first" by British folk singer Nick Drake, recorded in 1970 on the album Bryter Lyter. Sadly, as seems typical of many Romantic poets and painters, Nick suffered from depression and died way before his time (age 26). His work is only now starting to get some attention in movie soundtracks.

TED for Underprivileged Kids, and other Brainstorms

2009-03-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Tricia and I have both been enjoying the TED videos for a while. It's great that the otherwise expensive and exclusive TED Conference can be viewed by anyone with broadband Internet access, but this week was TED's first foray into bringing the live experience to a university setting, where students and some of the more general public can attend.

Still, something feels amiss. We had a conversation this morning -- what about the kids in bad neighborhoods, in bad schools? Who is bringing great ideas and inspiration to them? What TED-like experience could be brought to them and would it have an impact on their literacy, their motivation, and future success in life?

TEDx USC: The Bavard Hall Reception

2009-03-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

After all that inspiration, motivation, and thought-provoking it was time to partayy! (Or at least, get something more substantial to eat than cookies and coffee.)

TEDx attendees (and staff) hob-knob and eat hors d'oeuvres, drink free wine and beer, and do some triadic networking...

Others look at the dazzling exhibits, like the eight-player tabletop retro arcade game unit, or ...

... Moldover's Synchomasher!

After scarfing down some egg rolls, mini-pizza things and a glass of wine, I explored a bit and mingled. Thanked various people who had made the event possible, shook hands with Junoon, and thanked Moldover himself for getting me in.

Looking forward to next year!

TEDx USC: Elizabeth Gilbert and Having Your Own Personal Genius

2009-03-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

Moving talk shown at TEDx (which I had seen online before) from the author of the best-selling book Eat, Pray, Love. After the unexpected success of her book, the maddening pressure of coming up with a second success made her realize that perhaps the ancient Roman belief of "genius" being a voice in your wall that gives you great ideas wasn't such a bad idea after all. Keeps a creative person from going insane!

TEDx USC: Juan Enriquez

2009-03-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

The folks in the TEDx booth fixed the audio glitch and played this TED 2009 video again. Ahh, much better.

It's a rare public speaker who can take an otherwise depressing topic (the collapse of Wall Street and the U.S. economy) and make it both humorous and hopeful.

I had no idea how far advanced organ regrowth technology has come, nor that Boston Dynamics (whom I've been following since the early 90s since hearing about them via Alan Alda on Scientific American Frontiers) now has a free-standing quadraped robot that walks freakishly close to a real animal. Wow!

Now if we can all get affordable health care and free robotic assistants, the future looks brighter indeed!

TEDx USC: Aimee Mullins on being "Superabled"

2009-03-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

Reframing your situation can lead to opportunities and powers you never imagined. No legs? Build them. But why build them to be ordinary? They can jump higher, run faster, be beautiful sculpture, make you taller, shorter...

Great speech shown at TEDx by Aimee Mullin about not letting society's biases stop you.

TEDx USC: Kellee Santiago and Videogames as a Potentially Sophisticated Artform

2009-03-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Kellee Santiago is the co-founder of thatgamecompany and former Interactive Media graduate student at USC. Her excellent talk centered on the old debate of whether videogames are Art, or at least, can be Art. She showcased a few examples, including a game where the player gets to be the cult leader Dave Coresh, as well as her company's new downloadable PS3 game, Flower, where the player is the wind blowing flower petals over grassy hills. (Nice!)

I'm not sure she entirely made her point though I agree with it. Yes, videogames CAN be Art. Yes, we could be at the early stages of the Art form like we were with cave paintings or early live action shots of film. But I believe Truely artful games are a rarity still not because the medium is primitive. It's because most Game Designers are not truly great. In fact, most get their jobs by starting out as game testers who play the particular games being produced over and over again. This would be like Chefs becoming chefs by eating a particular food over and over. Granted, well acclaimed animation directors at Pixar DO watch old classics over and over, but a large breadth of them, not just the ones they worked on previously. And granted, there are IMHO some truly great Game Designers out there or now part of History. Will Wright, Peter Molyneaux, Shigeru Miyamoto, Keita Takahashi, Richard Garriott, Dani Bunten Berry, Sid Meier many more I don't know about, and perhaps the folks at thatgamecompany will be among them too.

One thought I had while watching: Is an edited screen capture of a game still a game? Or is it a form of cinema? (Indeed, there exists a spin-off artform based on videogame engines called Machinima, with its props, sets and actors based on game art but its grammar based on film conventions.)

TEDx USC: Dave Logan and Tribal Leadership

2009-03-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

Dave Logan, Associate Dean and Executive Director of Executive Development at University of Southern California's (USC) Marshall Business School, gave an excellent talk about tribes, based on his recent book, Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization.

According to Logan, tribes are small groups (10-100 people) of people that form naturally. They tend not to be the same from each other and that difference is called "culture." A crowd or a business will likely contain many tribes. Tribes can be classified by one of 5 stages and each tribe can only hear one level below and above its own level. The stages are:

"Life sucks" (ex. gangs)
"My Life sucks" or "How can people so dumb live?" (ex. the DMV)
"I am great (and you're not)"
(ex. lawyers or doctors meeting in an elevator, conferences)

"We're great!"

"Life is great!"

According to research, only 2% of tribes are stage 5, with most hovering in stage 2, 3 and 4. Mr. Logan encouraged us to "nudge our tribes" towards the next level, and to start doing triadic networking, that is, introduce two people you don't know to each other (in effect, bridging tribes together).

Ultimately the point of the book is to dispel the myth and mindset that only Dog eat Dog cutthroat companies survive and grow big. In fact, cultures based on back-stabbing and fear and "cover your ass" (as so prominent in FX and game companies in my experience) are doomed to stagnate or die. Not surprisingly, Mr. Logan encountered hostility when speaking about his book on FOX News:

A lot of TEDxers enjoyed this talk a lot, citing it as one of the highlights.

TEDx USC: Junoon (Salman Ahmed) and Melissa Etheridge LIVE

2009-03-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

Junoon and its lead guitarist/singer Dr. Salman Ahmad (part rock star, part U.N. Ambassador and humanitarian) performed twice at TEDx. Its music is a nice mix of South Asian and Western influences with a Sufi touch (think George Harrison). Later in the program though we were surprised by a special guest -- Melissa Etheridge! She and Dr. Ahmad met at Al Gore's Nobel Prize ceremony and became fast friends (meeting later for a "mind meld", according to Melissa). Both performed a special song together (accompanied by the audience ringing little white bells provided beforehand). Later in the day, he sang John Lennon's "Imagine" with some volunteers from the audience.

TEDx USC: Natasha Tsakos

2009-03-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Very cool TED Video shown here at TEDx about Natasha Tsakos, a corporeal mime actress who combines nonverbal communication, Foley sound FX, and projected CG animations in her work, in particular her show called Upwake.

Reminds me of the work of Robert LePage, with more of a Charlie Chaplin / Buster Keaton performance style.

TEDx USC: Donal Manahan and the "Blue Revolution"

2009-03-23T13:56:00.002-07:00

Donal Manahan (biology USC professor) demonstrates how the fishing industry is literally sucking the fish from the sea like a vacuum cleaner. The United States aquatic protein capacity is small (about the size of Greenland's), not the "bread basket" of the world. A solution? Hybrid organisms made to grow fast (i.e. slower metabolisms)

Arthur C Clarke:
"How innappropriate to call this planet Earth when it clearly should be named Ocean."

Sounds good, I love oysters! But all those giant half shells will make us much more attractive target to alien space otter invasion!

TEDx USC: Chris Anderson, C.L. Max Nikias, broken TED video, Jayne Poynter

2009-03-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

Krisztina Holly, USC's MC for the program introduces herself and the first group of many guests, including Chris Anderson of TED.com himself:

C. L. Max Nikias (from USC) reads his speech about interdisciplinary communities and the importance of intellectual friction (that is, surrounding yourself with people with ideas not your own).

They try to show a TED video but it has audio problems... now we're hearing from Jayne Poynter, who has lived in an artificial BioSphere, or a simulated closed environment. Problems she dealt with: eating herself (i.e. exhaled CO2 feeds sweet potato, which she eats...), losing oxygen (7 tons) to compost and into the concrete, realizing how smelly we are on the outside, and losing touch with her impact on the Environment once she left the BioSphere.

TEDx USC: Qi Zhang opening

2009-03-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

Qi Zhang opens sitting at an unusual organ-like instrument with foot pedals. However, the music being played sounds nothing like an organ, it's a symphonic tune reminiscent of a Walt Disney World fireworks show. But all being played by her! Whoa! Drums, percussion, horns, strings... Incredible.

UPDATE: The piece played is Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges. (Ménage à troi l'orange?)

TEDx USC: Parking, Registration, Seating

2009-03-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Arrived at 11:30 AM at the USC parking lot. Really warm today, left leather jacket in the car. Followed the signs to Bovard Hall, where a set of tables were set up for registration. Asked somebody where comp tickets were picked up -- around the corner, where a few folks were setting things up still. Registered without a hitch, other than they needed to get more plastic lanyards.

Looked in vain for something to eat. No luck. Back to the front of Bavard Hall to read the program. Paul Debevec (Benjamin Button FX), Moldover... Met a radiologist who has attended many TED conferences, and other gatherings.

Found a seat, 2nd row. Hope laptop battery holds out! Guy next to me and woman next to him are Twittering on their iPhones. They showed me how to sign up and use it, although it's a little cumbersome on the website itself. We'll see how it goes. (How interesting is it to read 1200 "I am at the TED conference" messages?)

Attending TEDx tomorrow...

2009-03-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

Whohoo! I have always wanted to attend the TED conference (the videos of which are often blogged about here).

There's a talented electronica mash-up performer (and self-proclaimed controllerist) named Moldover whom I've seen perform at a NAMM after party and at an Ableton Live user's group. Anyway, he sent out a mailing list announcement that he'll be showcasing his multiple user musical instrument (the Octamasher) at TEDx, a smaller version of TED over at USC tomorrow, and mentioned that he might be able to invite people to the otherwise invite-only event. I emailed him back and luckily they had space for one.

So you'll be getting full coverage tomorrow on this blog. The guest list and range of topics look intriguing:

This year's TEDx USC speakers and performers include the street artist who created the Obama "HOPE" poster, a worldwide rock star who has sold more than 30 million albums, one of the creators of the most complex scientific instrument in history, and an inventor who is restoring sight to the blind. Also on hand will be several USC innovators who are changing the world in gaming, immersive environments, bioengineering, animation and music.

Stay tuned!

Video: Saturday Night Live's prophetic sketch about the Credit Crisis

2009-03-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

Only problem is... our entire world economy is now built on buying bets on people buying things they cannot afford. No wonder so many religions were against usury.

What Pixar Looks For...

2009-02-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

Randy Nelson, head of Pixar University, talks about the traits and characteristics of people they hire at Pixar Animation Studio. Interestingly (and in contrast to some production companies I've worked for), they look for the ability to collaborate -- specifically, the ability to amplify the expression of others on your team through your unique talents and experiences. They want people are are interested, not necessarily interesting. And of course, they want folks who have mastered some particular discipline (be it animation, photography, design, story-telling, mathematics) but are well-versed in others.

via Cartoon Brew

Very poignant vintage Sesame Street film

2009-01-26T19:56:00.000-08:00

A particularly good performance of Vivaldi's Guitar Concerto in D Minor, 2nd movement is combined with footage of a little flower that manages to bloom atop a busy Manhattan cityscape.

This piece offered hope for my father, who saw it in the hospital while I was very sick as a toddler. He felt very moved by it. Whoever you are that made this film -- thank you! I wish more children's TV today had sublime moments like this.

If You're Reading This, Go Watch the Inauguration!

2009-01-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

Hey! Scram! You ought to be watching President Obama and company on this historic day. Go watch it here.

Animated Short "Love on the Line"

2009-01-14T09:35:00.000-08:00

My friend Melissa, graduate animation student at UCLA, has completed her animated short called "Love on the Line," a story about, er... well, cyber-sex -- Victorian style! Melissa made large cut-out articulated puppets and animated them using stop-motion. On top of that she added 2-D computer animation for the ticker effect.

Incidentally, such telegraph romances actually happened according to the book The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the 19th Century's Online Pioneers, by Tom Standage.

"Love on the Line" has already won awards and been shown at festivals.

Choose Your Own Adventure books are back!

2009-01-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

This is old news but the first time I've heard about it. The classic Choose Your Own Adventure series of books where you, the reader, control the plot by turning to appropriate pages based on decisions you make, is being republished.

In addition, one of the books is available as an iTunes app, Return to Atlantis.

"Hungry" bunraku puppet on Weight Watchers Ad

2009-01-06T18:07:00.000-08:00

Andrew over on the PuppetVision blog wrote about this cool advertisement series featuring a hair monster named "Hungry" performed in a CG-enhanced bunraku puppetry style. He's sort of a cross between Gossamer from the Warner Bros Bugs Bunny cartoons and a Muppet, but able to roam about live-action scenes and use props quite impressively.

End Corporate "Personhood"

2009-01-05T16:16:00.000-08:00

Now here's an idea I have to support -- eliminate the legal "personhood" that all American public corporations have. Because corporations have the rights of people without the responsibilities and considerably more money than regular people, they have become exploitive monsters above Law and Government. Commerce worked quite well, arguably, before when corporations were not people under the Law. They should be made lesser beings, and while we're at it, programmed to seek profit responsibly rather than exclusively.

Of course I can just hear the corporate lawyers saying it's unconstitutional to take rights away from people and therefore this can't be done.

Iphone and Nintendo DS making music together

2009-01-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

Nifty video of electronic music made with a pair of Nintendo DS portable game systems, a pair of iPhones, and a Korg FX box.

TED: The Price of Happiness

2008-12-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

Author Benjamin Wallace talks about his quest to sample 10 outrageously priced objects of pleasure to see if they lived up to their cost.

Support Mentors!

2008-12-23T16:58:00.001-08:00

Please help support Citizen School's mentoring campaign by clicking on the link above and voting. ~~Only 140 60 22 more votes needed to get their cause to the next level!~~ Now in 2nd place and off to the second round, but please vote if you haven't yet!

UPDATE:Thanks for voting! Citizen School made it to the next round and needs about 200 more votes to be in the top 10 of all ideas in the running. Please vote on the widget to the right.

The Braun Series 7 Pulsonic Razor: Destroyer of Facial Hair

2008-12-23T15:52:00.000-08:00

My lovely girlfriend Tricia got me for Christmas what any bearded man dreams about but doesn't believe exists -- an electric razor that is 99% as close as a barber shop straight-razor cut. Indeed it does exist! The Braun Series 7 Pulsonic Razor.

Prior to this miraculous electric foil razor, I have used good old fashion Gilette disposable razors (Mach 2 & 3), a Norelco electric 3-headed rotary razor, and every now and then, a visit to L.A's award-winning straight-razor master Felix over at the Mark Matthew's Fine Gentleman's Grooming Club. But none of these solutions is perfect, whether prone to cuts and bleeding, ineffective, or time consuming and expensive. It was time for a change, and after much research, Tricia came upon this heralded device.

The box itself is intimidatingly chic and futuristic, looking like it will contain some sort of handheld ray gun banned by a future Galactic Federation yet somehow here in the present, ready for your use. Just to open it, you have to find the tiny instructions that tell you to press on 5 little black pegs that release the inner clear packaging. Finally, the Series 7 razor and its accompanying cleaning and charging dock reveal themselves, lacking only the appropriate sound effects.

Once you install the liquid canister into the bottom of the dock and plug it in, you slide the razor itself into it at a slight angle. The base lights up satisfyingly and charges.

Within a second of sliding the charged razor across my cheek, I felt an intense tingling (10,000 micro-vibrations to be exact) and realized that hundreds of hairs were quietly screaming out in terror. For when I then touched my face, the area affected was completely smooth, free of unwanted facial hair! Amazing! Contrast this to my rotary razor, where minutes would go by and hairs would shrink but never quite disappear, laughing at me and my useless weaponry. Even worse, my skin would start to get dry and sore after dozens of unsuccessful laps around my face. Not so with the Series 7 Hair Destroyer. Once it had eradicated all but my goatee, I placed it back into the dock to be cleaned and it did so without any annoying dead hair lying around.

Granted this device is not cheap. However, it's about the price of four visits to Mark Matthew's and far faster. (Although it won't serve you a beer, offer you a hot towel and chat with you as Felix will.) But isn't it worth not having to despair over unwanted facial hair?

This Is Where We Live Animation

2008-12-19T16:11:00.000-08:00

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.
How lovely this piece! Completed in three weeks (!?!)

Archon Returns!

2008-12-15T16:54:00.000-08:00

Archon was an 8-bit computer game published by Electronic Arts in the mid-1980s, loosely based on the Star Wars holographic creature chess game that Chewbacca and R2D2 play each other on the Millenium Falcon.

Looks like it is coming back!

Video Editor from the Future!

2008-12-01T14:18:00.000-08:00

Interactive Video Object Manipulation from Dan Goldman on Vimeo.

Comic: Federal Government Bailing Out The Federal Government

2008-11-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

Bailing out the "American" Auto Industry is a Misnomer

2008-11-18T16:58:00.001-08:00

So there are three remaining American corporate entities that are pleading with our Government to bail them out with taxpayer money. These entitities have over the last ten years failed to produce energy efficient cars, despite both government regulation requiring them to (which they lobbied against) and increasing consumer demand. Now struggling in every sense of the word against foreign auto companies, they insist they need $25 billion to get them through this crisis, or "millions of jobs are at stake" and American industry will be in jeopardy.

Too late for that, points out Huntington Post blogger Chris Kelly. Chrysler, for example is no longer really an American company, it's owned by an international holding firm Cerberus who couldn't care less about keeping jobs in America if it didn't suit them. It's simply eager to get money from the new corporate socialist trough.

As Mr. Kelly points out, nostalgia is not a good reason to keep a dying company going with taxpayer money. These companies should go bankrupt, restructure themselves, rehire folks, and get ready to start over, or close up shop. Feeding them money to stay how they are, how how they have been and reward more executives is ridiculous.

Theo Hayden Stokes

2008-11-07T14:02:00.000-08:00

I got a new nephew! His name is Theo.

Obama Wins

2008-11-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

Thank God.

Marriage Cannot Have Its Feelings Hurt, Nor Is It Taught In Schools

2008-11-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

I'm quite shocked how many times I've seen a certain google advertisement supporting a "Eliminate Marriage Between Same Sex Couples" Proposition that California voters will be voting on tomorrow. It's all over the Internet on completely random websites, like youtube's front page, tech reviews, a Muppet site, a forum I visited about routers, even one in the UK!! Complete blitz.

While google can't censor it (free speech and all), it just seems very uneven to see it without the corresponding "Vote No on 8" ad next to it. Whoever is running their ad campaign is quite savvy -- buying up Google ads and keywords to bombard the Internet. Their advert is appearing on pages by folks writing AGAINST their cause.

I'm really quite bewildered that people are spending so much energy fighting to eliminate rights from people, ones that harm no one, spewing lies about how the rest of us are somehow harmed by same sex unions. Not merely protesting but lying and using extortion. This is not a whole lot different than Laws declaring that Voting is an option for Men Only, and that Blacks are Not People, which people fought hard to REMOVE in this country. Whether you approve of homosexual activities or not, Marriage, so-called traditional families, and heterosexuals are not under attack. This proposition is 100% discriminatory in its intentions.

Here's an op-ed against Proposition 8 from a Rabbi not in California.

We have serious issues with the Economy, with a corporately-governed War, with a corrupt but seemingly justice-immune government that bulldozes over our Constitution and regulations when it serves corporate interests, and a starving, environmentally decaying planet to deal with right now.

UPDATE: As expected, I merely write AGAINST this proposition and the pro ad shows up on my page. The only way to remove it is for me to use google's content ad blocker, but this takes a few hours to kick in.

Literal Video: Tears For Fears "Head Over Heels"

2008-11-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

I'm really digging these literal videos popping on YouTube, which are faithfully dubbed music videos where the lyrics are just about what's going on in the video itself.

New Toy, New Project

2008-10-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden I'm finding myself working on a project that involves writing code for the iPhone / iPod Touch, thanks to meeting some experienced game artist friends of my girlfriend Tricia. On Friday I'm attending the Apple Iphone Tech Talk in Los Angeles. It's all a bit daunting -- not only have I not built a standalone GUI application before, I've not used Objective C, which is a highly peculiar variant of C. Haven't touched C in over a decade. Whoosh! Luckily there are two other coders involved who can (I hope) digest this stuff faster than I can.

In order to try out apps first hand, I just got an iPod Touch, which is quite a step beyond my venerable 3rd gen iPod. For one thing it has a beautiful color multi-touch screen. It can play back video. It has Wi-Fi. It has an App Store for getting new apps and games. And you can build your own apps if you own (or borrow) a Mac.

So far I'm impressed. There are some glitches, like album artwork not showing, but this is one sexy futuristic device. Makes my 3 year-old Sony PSP feel old, even though it too has a big colorful screen, and many of the same features just not so elegantly executed.

Lovely Student Animated Short

2008-10-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

Hacking Human Cells

2008-10-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

From National Geographic News:

A newly developed bio-computer allows scientists to "program" molecules to carry out "commands" inside cells.

Such devices could one day allow humans to manipulate biological systems directly, said the California Institute of Technology's Christina Smolke, who co-authored the study, which will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Bio-computers might eventually serve as brains for producing biofuels from cells, for example, or to control "smart drugs" that medicate only under certain conditions.

Lovely. Soon we'll have both viruses AND computer viruses in our cels. Let's just hope this bio computer doesn't run Vista.

Testing my new webhost

2008-10-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

This is a test of my new webhost...

Making Fiends Debuts on Nicktoons Channel Oct 4th!

2008-10-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Very exciting! Amy Winfrey's web cartoon-turned-TV-animated-series Making Fiends finally debuts this weekend, 11:30 AM Eastern (8:30 Pacific).

Alternative to the Bailout: Why Paulson Is Wrong

2008-09-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

The assumption that both McCain and Obama and everyone who wants to save the economy from apparent ruin is that the Bailout is the only responsible way to stop it. But it's not. Even you don't believe it's reprehensible for taxpayers to subsidize corporations, there's no guarantee it will even work! University of Chicago Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance Luigi Zingales has written a critique of Paulson's bailout plan which provides an alternative solution.

It's sad that the White House has not brought in economic experts (many of whom think the Bailout is absurd) or anyone else with other solutions -- they'd rather meet in secret and ram things through quickly, without explaining anything to the general public. I've not seen any rational discussion on major networks about alternatives. It's either Taxpayer Bailout or Doom.

We all want the situation to end but accepting a solution proposed by one of the people who caused it at face value is just ridiculous.

UPDATE: Even chief economist at Business Week magazine Michael Mandel, and 200 other economists think the Bail-out is an awful idea. They've petitioned Congress to vote No. Why aren't we hearing their opinions on the TV news? (Oh right, the Media and the Government are buddies.)

Meanwhile, instead of rethinking the solution members of the Senate are trying throw in unrelated frosting (like tax cuts) on top of the original plan to entice Republicans to vote Yes. AND, they've deliberately shut down their email servers to prevent the public from petitioning via Internet (the strategy which had a huge effect on the rejection of the Bailout proposal). Unbelievable.

In Case You Thought Saturday Night Live Was Exaggerating Palin's Scariness...

2008-09-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

This would have been a good opportunity for Palin to dispel the negative press, to quell those that question her experience, to prove she's a competent, knowledgeable, strong woman ready to rule the country.

Ooops. And this is just one example.

And so predictable is her speaking style that someone made a random Sara Palin interview generator.

Though I disliked Clinton, she was 10,000 times smarter and more qualified than this lady. Even infamous and often mocked Vice President Quayle seems a better candidate.

Saturday Night Live: Sarah Palin

2008-09-30T01:24:00.000-07:00

At last, something about this election that made me laugh.

How Our Government is Abusing Democracy: The Bailout Bill

2008-09-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald wrote on his blog about why the proposed $700 Billion taxpayer dollar payment -- demanded by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (to be paid to him with very little accountability, and which would likely be paid to his buddies in the banking business who made the poor decisions that caused the collapse) -- is not unlike the other examples of how the recent Administration has undermined the democratic process. These are his 10 principles, which all recent crises our country has faced have in common:

Incredibly complex and consequential new laws are negotiated in secret and then enacted immediately, with no hearings, no real debate, no transparency.

Those who created the crisis, were wrong about everything, drive the process. Experts who dissent from the prevailing Washington orthodoxy, particularly ones who were presciently warning about what was happening, are simply ignored -- systematically excluded from the process.

Public opinion is largely ignored, as always, and public anger is placated through illusory, symbolic and largely meaningless concessions.

The Government begins with demands for absolute power so brazen and absurd that anything, by comparison, seems reasonable ... [P]eople thus end up grateful for what is, by any measure, an extreme outcome, all because it's not quite as extreme as what the Bush administration began by demanding.

Wall Street, large corporations and their lobbyists own the Federal Government and both parties, and (therefore) they always win.

The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest.

For all the anger over what Wall St. has done, the Government -- as it bails them out -- isn't doing anything to rein in their practices.

When the Government wants greater and greater power and wants to engage in pure corruption, it need only put the population in extreme fear and it gets its way in every case.

On the most consequential and fundamental questions that define the country, the establishment/leadership of both political parties are in full agreement, and insulate themselves from any political ramifications by acting jointly.

Whenever you think that the Government has done things so extreme that it can't top itself -- torture, theories of presidential lawbreaking, a six-year war justified by blatantly false pretenses -- it always tops itself.

I believe these behaviors are what emerges when self-interest is allowed to run rampant; when key rules of democracy designed to reduce corruption are eliminated, business and government become indistinguishable. Democrats and Republicans become indistinguishable. All that's left are rich people (and their friends) doing what's best for themselves and fooling everyone else into believing all is well. Unfortunately, THIS is what needs to be changed.

Cartoon: Save the Economy by Paying the Bankers $700 Billion for $#@&ing up our Economy? Awesome.

2008-09-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

There is something fundamentally wrong with companies -- which caused the financial crisis in our country (affecting the entire world) -- urging Congress to reward them with taxpayer's money for making extremely bad decisions. Those on the Right and the administration argue that the market should have no regulations, should not have any government constricting them in pursuit of infinite wealth, and yet when they fail, by all means, the government should pay them our money, because otherwise they'll take everybody down with them. If they truly believed in the Free Market, companies that fail should die and new ones should step in.

How about we throw every CEO banker involved with this mess in jail (instead of giving them millions in golden parachute money)? If this were China, the folks committing what amounts to massive corporate fraud would be sentenced to death. Oh wait, that won't happen, these people also are in government. Oops.

The last time we had a collapse like this the government refused to give away the people's taxes. A rich person fixed the problem, bailed out the system. Instead, the rich involved are rushing to save themselves and scare everyone with doom and gloom unless "something is done now!"

Pro High Fructose Corn Syrup Propaganda, Anyone?

2008-09-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

One of the side effects of traveling is that you may find common foods still made with sugar and not High Fructose Corn Syrup, an unnatural suspicious industrial concoction which is in a huge proportion of processed foods available at American stores (and fast food restaurants) and eaten by the public at large. Some time in the 80s, American food manufacturers switched from cane sugar to this substance without telling us. Remember the New Coke vs. Old Coke fiasco in the early 80s? Prior to that, American Coke was made with sugar. After they brought back Coke Classic, it was made with High Fructose Corn Syrup. But in many places in the world, you can taste how much better sugar tastes by drinking a Coke.

Now it seems, the Corn Refiners group is on the offensive. Not happy with all the negative press against HFCS (including documentaries), it is launching commercials like this (which I saw this weekend) on Food Network and elsewhere.

The ludicrous conclusion of this ad: "Well, you can't explain why HFCS is bad for you, therefore everyone can eat it in moderation." Apart from the many reasons why it is unhealthy, there's almost no way to eat it in moderation because it's in almost EVERYTHING. Over time, your body won't care if you ate it in moderation or in excess.

SPORE (or Great, Like I Need Another Universe To Suck All My Time Away)

2008-09-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

SPORE is out, and I have it. This is the Massively Single-Player Universe-in-a-box game I wrote about earlier, in particular for its amazing Creature Creator. The idea is that you start out as a cellular creature, eat and reproduce until you're advanced enough to go on land, survive predators, add more and more features to your body, making friends and enemies with other creatures, building civilizations, then finally heading out into space. There are now 13 million+ creatures in the system, most of which are created by folks like you and me. It's nice to know that my two species (so far) are either playing nice with, or beating the crap out of those from players in Toledo and Shanghai, Brownsville, Morocco and New York.

Suffice it to say, I'm no game player -- while coworkers (Level 70 WoW masters) have already gotten to space level, I'm still figuring out how to play in Tribal mode. However, I see it as my duty to experience the result of Will Wright and his team's ridiculously ambitious project. So far, it's very impressive and addicting.

A Cartoon In Honor of 9/11

2008-09-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

New Book & CD: Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story?

2008-09-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

The vinyl record LPs of Jim Copp and Ed Brown were HUGE influences on me growing up. From the late 50s to the early 70s, These guys made imaginative songs and stories using only 3 Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders, a couple of microphones, random instruments, and props all in Jim's Los Angeles house (including his bathroom, for its reverb). Then, the two of them would sell the records at upscale department stores directly.

Now there's an illustrated book called Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story? featuring three of his stories, so now you can follow along with the included CD of their original recordings! I also recommend the full CDs (East of Flumdiddle, Thimble Corner, Jim Copp Tales et al.)

NPR (National Public Radio) did a segment about the book over the weekend. Listening to them now I really appreciate the imagination, creativity, tone and sophistication of their work. The music and words are all grown-up. These children's records are not shrill, high caffeine and corn syrup, or attitude-y. Indeed, my three my 3-year-old niece adores them.

Incidentally, one of the pieces in the book is one of my favorites, "Martha Matilda O'Toole", which I, Anita, and Sam performed as a puppet show a few years back for the SF Bay Area Puppeteers Guild and the Puppet Love! Festival:

Republican Media Bias In Action: MSNBC Demotes Its Highest-Rated Anchors

2008-09-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

Media analyst Glenn Greenwald wrote on his blog today about the recent demotion of MSNBC's highest rated anchor-people and how the only rationale for it is political pressures from the White House, McCain, and Republicans.

The single dumbest claim in our political culture is that the huge corporations which own our establishment media outlets promote a "liberal" ideology. Why would General Electric ever use NBC and its other media assets to promote political liberalism? They lavishly benefit from the whole panoply of right-wing policies -- from endlessly expanding defense spending to deregulation. Their multiple businesses depend upon maintaining good relations with the right-wing ideologues who run our Government. Even ignoring all of the above-documented empirical facts, the very idea that a corporation like GE -- or Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC) and Time Warner (CNN) -- would actively promote a left-wing agenda in its news divisions and undermine the very Government power centers on which they rely has been the most self-evidently moronic premise one can imagine. As Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone confessed in 2004:
Senator Kerry is a good man. I've known him for many years. But it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican Administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.
And yet the myth of the large-corporation-owned "Liberal Media" persists, and even intensifies.

This decision by MSNBC is as alarming as it is illustrative. They just implicitly chided and overtly demoted their most popular and valuable news personality because the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right demanded that they do so. It's fine for Brit Hume to host a "news program" and for hard-core right-wing ideologues to dominate cable news. The fact that Dick Cheney (understandably) viewed Tim Russert's Meet the Press as the ideal forum to allow the White House to "control the message" bothered nobody outside of a few online critics, and didn't remotely impede the perception of Russert as the Beacon of Tough and Objective Journalism. But MSNBC's ratings-based decision to feature Keith Olbermann is a grave threat to modern journalism and must be stopped. So decrees the White House and the McCain campaign, and so the GE-owned MSNBC complies.

Basically, the Right is cheating. Rather than let we the people decide who to vote for, what better way to win than to cry foul: "The Liberals have too much coverage!" Grab the media corporations by the balls, tell them "Remove your Liberal content or there will be consequences." Corruption at its finest and most blatant. Bye bye Journalism, informed Electorate. Hello government-controlled media.

Stand Up 2 Cancer

2008-09-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting waiting at the Burbank Airport and on TV, all three American Networks are showing a live fundraiser right now called "Stand Up 2 Cancer." Celebrities of all sorts are answering phones. It's really great that these corporations are focused on a cause, if just for a few hours. Their website will be up for a while, so please donate.

(And the cause I'm focused on this weekend is the Totoro Forest Project, an art auction / fundraiser over at PIXAR to help protect Japan's endangered forests, the ones that inspired the legendary animation master Miyazaki, creator of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.)

Korg DS-10: Nintendo DS can now be an Analog Synth!

2008-09-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Despite all the attention the Apple iPhone is getting for making downloadable applications available in their store, there are still other interesting portable devices to consider, like the Nintendo DS. Though it's mostly a game system, this little pen-based dual screen computer is starting to get a few non-game programs, such as this really cool patchable analog synthesizer from a real music company, Korg.

Seems like Sony's Portable Playstation (PSP) is getting further and further behind when it comes to cool non-game apps, which is a pity.

Our Potential VP Sarah Palin is a Book Banner?

2008-09-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

I can't think of many things more unpatriotic than banning books in a country that prizes free speech. Libraries are not in the business of catering to preference; they are there to allow access to that very free speech we protect.

And yet, Republican John McCain has picked a doosy of a V.P. Apart from her obvious political abuses (like having a brother-in-law fired using her political power), her religious beliefs include censorship:

[...] as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Whether you're Republican or pro-McCain, I hope you realize what a dangerous person this would be as President (should McCain die). If you really want to put our "country first" as the battle-cry goes, elect someone who does not abuse power, who protects the First Amendment.

via TIME magazine.

Continuing Quest for PBS (and decent reception)

2008-08-31T02:46:00.000-07:00

Cable & Satellite TV is something I refuse to pay more than say, $20 a month for. Less now that the number of actual, distinct channels offering different programming is shrinking. That's what has happened ever since the FCC cowered and allowed the old networks to buy up cable channels. Did this mean better programming? More channels? No. What happened is that now cable channels have homogenized. Bravo no longer shows arts. It shows more reality TV shows. Discovery Channel shows designing make-over shows. The Cartoon Network is showing live action shows. MTV doesn't play music anymore. Whatever was a hit on one station is replicated on all the others (since they're owned by the same companies). Yet the price keeps going up and up and the remaining good programming is always on the higher pricing tiers. No way... If I could just get the Daily Show and Food Network, I'd be fine. But it's not worth it. Netflix is.

However, the problem is, the over-the-air reception for my apartment is horrible. I can barely watch NBC, CBS and FOX, but no PBS. Since in 2009, we all must use over-the-air digital TV (analog goes bye-bye), I figured that perhaps a converter box would give me better reception and access to PBS (finally!)

The government is offering $40 coupon cards to folks needing to by converter boxes (which are about $60) Unfortunately, it's all a bit shady. You have only 3 months to use the card, and you can't return the box and get your card back if you want to return it and try another box. There are virtually no reviews or information available for which one to get, but the Insignia one available at Best Buy looked okay. I bought it and what I hoped would be a stronger antenna.

Hooked everything up. It scanned and found quite a few channels! Yay! Even PBS. Yay! But unfortunately, the signal was still not strong enough and for digital this means very choppy pixelated output and dropouts in sound -- much like a DVD that has been scratched. In some ways this is WORSE than analog, because at least there you can watch with some snow. I managed to get through most of a PBS show but it was a little painful. The picture was quite nice though, almost as clear as DVD.

Not sure if one can get a better indoor antenna or not... This apartment does not have a rooftop antenna as far as I know. Since I plan to move I guess I'm stuck with no PBS for now. Lovely.

Word of the Day

2008-08-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

unobtanium

An incredibly desired substance, so much so that even money can't acquire it. (Usage: "The Nintendo Wii is made of pure unobtanium.")

Reading "The World Is Flat" is Not Off To a Good Start

2008-08-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

A very popular book was recommended to me that sounded intriguing, The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. I very much want to like it -- globalization and how technology has changed our world are both interesting topics. But page one, we're off to a very bad start, where it states Columbus proved to the Europeans once and for all that the world was round, not flat, as they allegedly believed.

WRONG. That is a myth. Pretty much any Christian in Europe after, oh, 1 AD or so knew the world was a globe. The Greeks certainly did. People were estimating the circumference of it as far back as 240 BC. From the Wikipedia:

The modern belief that especially medieval Christianity believed in a flat earth has been referred to as The Myth of the Flat Earth.[1] In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.[2] Recent scholarship[3] has argued that "with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat" and that the prevailing view was of a spherical earth.

Jeffrey Russell states that the modern view that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat is said to have entered the popular imagination in the 19th century, thanks largely to the publication of Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828. Although these writers reject the idea of a flat earth, others such as the Flat Earth Society accept or promote the hypothesis.

Unfortunately, as late as 1983 textbooks have perpetuated this myth. I remember reading a children's book about Columbus in 5th grade in Texas and finding myself telling the teacher "This book is wrong." (She shook her head and went back to ignoring us.)

So how could a book written by a New York Times columnist no less be published with this glaring error? I'm hoping to get past the first chapter, but I'm not convinced I can. There's another problem in that Mr. Friedman seems to be mixing metaphors a lot, using "flat" when he means "fair" or "level"... or does he really mean "interconnected?" "Converging"? Perhaps "small" as in "It's a small world"? All of the above?

Now this myth will be read as truth by millions more people; it just won't die, ahousehold pest in the woodwork of historical accuracy. Thanks Mr. Friedman. Your head is flat, sir.

Random Life Updates

2008-08-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

A few things I haven't had time to write about:

Had a fun time with my team at the London Shopzilla UK office.
Recovered from a week long bought with bronchitis right after my return. Ugh.
Saw legendary salsa jazz fusion band Azymuth and Brazilian-inspired DJs perform at the echoplex.
Got Serato Scratch Live finally. DJing using my laptop now possible!
Been in JAVA training all week at work.
My old friend, PENN roommate, and successful business financier Raj Das was in town for a business trip. Last night we had dinner at Crustacean and drinks at the Hollywood Hills house of the creator of a new music site called BoomBacker (which might just reinvigorate the ailing music industry) and his wife, who runs an upscale wedding planning company, Eventful Designing.

"Atari" The Movie?

2008-08-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Paramount is developing a movie about the life of Nolan Bushnell, founder of the grand-daddy of all videogame companies, Atari, and creator of Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater. Leonardo DiCaprio is on board as star.

I'm guessing the movie focuses on Nolan Bushnell, who sold Atari before it rose to even bigger success under Warner Brothers for a time. The story of Atari the company is perhaps even more tumultuous, and probably deserves its own documentary.

Atari was not just a videogame manufacturer to me -- it was the ultimate brand of everything I liked until their demise in the early 90s. Through their arcade games, console units, and computers, Atari exemplified to me what an innovative company ought to be like. It's Atari that made me become interested in computers and writing software, ever since the teacher in charge of my elementary school's computer club brought in an Atari 800 for us to look at. It's the court case of Atari vs. Activision that legitimized the business model of 3rd party games. My understanding of a "rock star programmer" first came from reading about arcade developers from Atari, like Ed Logg (Asteroids, Centipede, Gauntlet) and Dave Theurer (Tempest, Missile Command).

Over the years I've owned a 2600 VCS, a 600XL Home Computer, an Atari Mega 4 ST Computer (with Atari laser printer!), and an Atari Lynx (which I still have).

And yes, I did go to a birthday party or two at Chuck E. Cheese's way back when. "Where a kid can be a kid!" ... and adults go insane.

Animated Short "Oktapodi"

2008-08-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Two cephalopods in love. A kidnapper. Greece. Enjoy!

Jim Henson's "Time Piece" Now on iTunes!

2008-08-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Fantastic! Jim Henson's groovy 1965 Oscar-nominated short film Time Piece is now available on iTunes (for $2). Looks fantastic too, remastered and cleaned up.

Buy it here.