Creatio Ex Materia

Sick... Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope

http://www.stellarium.org/

Posted via web from tedmcneil's posterous

Martin Luther King "I have a dream" Full Speech

2010-01-17T13:10:00.002-05:00

Make Video

2010-01-08T18:32:00.001-05:00

Old Media is !@$&ed

2010-01-03T23:33:00.000-05:00

The Chaos Scenario from Greg Stielstra on Vimeo.

What's A Matta You? - Shocking News!

2009-12-26T22:47:00.007-05:00

Antimatter is one of the scariest things known to science - it's what gives pointy headed physicists nightmares, it's what flings starships into hyperspace and allows travel between stars, it is normal matter turned inside out - structure reversed and obscenely ready to cause destruction, because when matter and antimatter, which carries the opposite charge to normal matter, contact each other, total annihilation ensues: staggering amounts of energy are released: in a controlled fashion in the engine room of the Enterprise, in far nastier ways in the Sci Fi of the '40's and 50's in an endless series of stories about "contra-terrene" matter

We can create incredibly small amounts of it - for vanishingly short periods, safely cocooned away in force field magnetic bottles, the by-products of experiments in particle accelerators.

But, for now, humans just don't have that much to do with the stuff - it belongs out there, in the stellar dark, where the Old Gods, the ones who built the place, play... We can only observe and speculate - spin stories to explain the inexplicable.

So imagine the surprise when scientists - looking deep into space for the incredibly energetic event known as a gamma-ray burst, find signs of the influence of antimatter here, on Earth - and occurring in a very impressive, but everyday event.

Antimatter lives in lightning...

Read on here at the Daily Galaxy... and more from Science News here
A quick quote:

Designed to scan the heavens thousands to billions of light-years beyond the solar system for gamma rays, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has also picked up a shocking vibe from Earth. During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial storms — and some of those flashes have contained a surprising signature of antimatter.

This is deeply, deeply weird - things are not as we thought they were - the science books are due for revision yet again. This is like finding out that the Earth is flat, and that beyond the horizon, there are dragons waiting - it's learning that while we thought we had a fairly good grasp of how the universe works, we need to take a critical look at the owners manual - because the one we've been reading is out of date and was written in crayon - a good attempt, perhaps, but wrong.

Of course, that's the fun of science - every once in awhile you get to rip up the instructions and write new ones...

Link: 60 Stunning Satellite Photos of Earth

2009-11-04T23:11:00.002-05:00

Via Web Designer Depot

Forgot to Blog For Halloween...

2009-11-03T20:08:00.000-05:00

Yeah, but the qualifications are kinda stiff...

2009-10-31T21:36:00.004-04:00

Just in time for Halloween and the always seasonable green-eyed monster of envy, here's Forbes Magazines list of Top Earning Dead Celebrities!
Yes, it turns out that even Thanatos himself is not powerful enough to keep some of the life-challenged from shoveling in the cash- and sometimes big ol' shovel fulls too!
We think some names will not surprise you - Elvis, Michael Jackson... but some might -- Albert Einstein, Tolkein?
The top name - fashion related - earned $350 million - number 10 earned $6 million - ok, it was that almost as annoying in death than in life Andy Warhol!
Check out the posthumous potentates here - and you might even envy the dead, but you still can't take it with you...

What's Up with the LHC?

2009-10-28T21:50:00.013-04:00

You remember the LHC, doncha? The multi-billion dollar device planted under the Swiss-France border designed to toss atoms around at nearly light speed, smack 'em together and see what happens...
We talked about it a few times here on Creatio... But you haven't heard much, recently, right?
Well, that's because the lab coated guys with the pocket protectors managed to break it - before it really even got going. Turns out supercooled (-458 degrees F, baby, that's cold!) superconducting magnets need to stay supercooled when asked to accelerate and control the whizzing atoms flashing around the 17 mile long device. When a cable breaks and the magnets heat up - a relative term - bad things happen. Then the helium coolant system fails and all hell erupts. Things melt, sparks fly and careers are on the line.
The repairs have been underway for months and real progress has been made - Popular Science has a concise list of what needs to be finished before they light the sucker up again.
And they also ask the really interesting if unlikely question - what if you were inside the LHC as it was ramped up?
Turns out you'd end up with some excess radiation - like a full body CAT scan. But you should get out of the tunnel pretty quickly. Perhaps a 300 trillion proton 2 millimeter wide beam would pierce out of the contraption and slice through basically everything - as the smoking hole in your chest proves - try not to move - although you are already dead from the radiation flooding the tunnel.

What if you could shrink yourself into the 2 inch wide tunnel containing the proton beam? What would you see? Hey, we never said these questions had to make sense!
Well, for the fraction of a fraction of a second your lilliputian form survived it might look like that scene in Star Wars when they fire up the big planet destroying beam weapon - oops, too bad for Alderaan.

And too bad for you because you have to explain the 50 square mile radioactive crater you have evacuated out of prime European countryside. You know the French, they're gonna be really annoyed, get a big 'tude about it.
In the meantime, the LHC should go online in the next few weeks according to CERN.

[Dial2Do] hi this is Ted I'm trying this

2009-10-20T21:14:00.001-04:00

hi this is Ted I'm trying this dial2do thing I'm actually attempting to blog from my cellphone. I just wanna see if it works.

I sent this email using my voice. Listen to it here: http://dial2do.com/1yjxo9le

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent on behalf of Ted McNeil with http://www.dial2do.com - Send Text Messages, Emails and more - just phone and talk.

The Beautiful Insanity that is Rammstien

2009-10-18T22:15:00.006-04:00

While I was overseas I caught on to this band called Rammstien. You can read their history here. What they are good at is taking classic imagery and turning it into something sinister. Rather than tell, I'll show what I mean.

This first video is a Sonne which has a take on Snow White that you may find a little unnerving.

Next we have - shall we say - ironic take on Santa Claus, America and NASA.

Rammstien is one of the few German metal bands who has a following in America and the main reason is their stage shows. So last here is a taste of their live show. Watch the lead singer Till Lindemann, he is like the Anti-Mick Jagger.

Lyrics? They are really not that important. Just enjoy the Teutonic weirdness.

Number Six: Be Seeing You - Again

2009-09-23T23:59:00.002-04:00

In another example of the sometimes regrettable trend of remaking everything (Land of the Lost - I need say no more...) AMC has remade, re-imagined, rebooted the classic cult series The Prisoner. Some people think it's sacrilege, some people say, why not, it worked for Star Trek, it worked for Battlestar Galactica -- mostly.
So, AMC is making a new version starring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan at his icily gelid best - we'll have to see - the previews look interesting at least.

Patrick McGoohan, the star of the original Prisoner, could beam a charming smile that curdled into an utterly fake, totally threatening twinkle, right before his frigid glacially blue eyes flared up and he pounded someone silly - there was something simmering just underneath his carefully controlled exterior - he had the cold menace of Fleming's Bond, not a nice guy, but a good one to have on your side. His manic laugh in a Disney movie, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh terrified me as a little kid. He played other roles and was one of the coolest spies ever in "Ice Station Zebra."

What's that you say? You never heard of The Prisoner? Oooh, you have an oddly dark and delicious treat in store for you. In the early '60's Patrick McGoohan played a British secret agent named John Drake on the show Secret Agent, it was known in the rest of the world as Danger Man. Black and white, lots of action but not over the top - it featured the great song Secret Agent Man sung by Johnny Rivers - stay tuned for the sacrilege committed below.

You have to remember that in the '60's spies were everywhere - JFK was seen reading Ian Fleming, the Bond movies were blockbusters, on TV, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, I Spy, and lots of lesser works flooded the small screen. The less glamorous world of spies were uncovered in the works of John LeCarre and Len Deighton. Spies were cool - some symptom of our Cold War madness no doubt.

My brother Greg and I would practice our trade craft by sneaking around the Baptist church in Akron, Ohio our beloved grandparents took us to, they thought we were absorbing angelic thoughts in Sunday School; instead we were sneaking around the church's hallways and winding stairs, practicing the spy's cold deadly look, always with our hands poised to slip inside our Sunday School suits, ready to pull out one of the endless spy toys of the period, radios in cigarette cases, (uh huh, cigarette cases for kids!) pistol barrels sliding out of fake radios, attache cases hiding all sorts of lethal goodies, and so on. Yes, they were freakin' cool.

Back to the Prisoner: It was as if John Drake series had been continued, for The Prisoner concerned a nameless spy who quits the business, or at least tries to - the powers that be want to know why he has quit, they cannot believe that he is retiring on moral grounds, fed up with his duplicitous life - and besides - he has too much top secret info in his head - his knowledge is in itself a weapon.
So he must be stored away somewhere - and his stubborn tendency to be an individual must be ground away, or he must perish - he is the man who knows too much...

Our hero wakes up in the Village, played by a pleasant resort town named Portmeirion in Wales. In the show, the Village had its own memorable typeface, golf carts, a Stone Boat, each house had powered doors and a radio in "1984" style that you cold not turn off. Artwork included statues with camera eyes, plazas with giant chess pieces., and umbrellas - lots of umbrellas. The Village even had cordless phones - back in the '60's this meant an element of science fiction. Its happy citizens grew quickly nervous if asked questions: they all feared the Rover - a low budget sentinel weather balloon which growled and made jet engine sounds as it bounced its way through the Village or over the continuously low tide beaches. Did I say low budget, it was but it was oddly effective none the less, the image of faces pressed through the smothering latex of doom is still disturbing.
The purpose of the Rover is similar to that of the smoke monster in Lost, intimidation, control and occasionally, murder.

The show dealt with Number Six's struggle to never give in - his indefatigable strength when everyone around him is lying or has succumbed to the lies - and would be happy if he went along with the flow and stopped being such a trouble maker.

The "mayor" of the Village is Number Two - he, or she, because the role was played by several actors through the 17 episodes, would sit ensconced in a cool mod chair in the circular control room spying on the citizens. They would often chat with our hero, offering tea and biscuits, while dropping none too subtle hints that his cooperation would be advisable and demonstrating that they had been watching him for years. Who watches the watchers? The people behind the scenes of the Village. Who were they? Who ran the place? Was there a way out? - these questions all plagued Number Six.

The most notable of the Number Twos was played by the great Australian actor Leo McKern, whose Falstaffian glee mixed with jovial ominousness contrasted perfectly with McGoohan's polite aloofness.

So what happens? Through the series Number Six tries to escape, asks all the wrong questions and sometimes turns the tables on his jailers. The shows finale takes place over two episodes: Number Six is interrogated amid attempts to wash, dry and neatly fold his brain into something manageable. It doesn't work.
The final episode, written and directed by McGoohan, has been described as an acid trip - or maybe it's just easier to comprehend when LSD is doing the heavy mental lifting.
It gets weird, seriously weird: people in masks, a trial, rockets, the one time I've ever heard Beatles' music that wasn't covered by another group, - and you do get to see Number One - or maybe not. This is a case of the trip being the important thing, not the goal.
At the end, Number Six gets home - or does he? I won't give anything away, but a sound effect and the closing of a door in London tell alert viewers that the battle for individuality is already over.

We mentioned the Secret Agent theme song, which keeps reappearing in movies and commercials - here is a God awful, hideously bad version by - sigh - David Hasselhoff

The AMC website is offering complete versions of the old Prisoner and even "one minute" recaps of each episode - click below for the recap of the very first episode. You just might get hooked.

Be seeing you

windows 7 launch party

2009-09-21T20:22:00.009-04:00

heh.

snicker.

bwahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

sigh...

My ribs hurt.

These are very helpful videos. And Microsoft means well, but man are these training videos cheesy.

We're running out of time

2009-09-14T21:36:00.004-04:00

Time might be running out for us - literally - and by us we mean the entire Universe.

On that somewhat glum note, we point you to this Daily Galaxy story examining a new theory on the time-space continuum superstructure of everything.

The theory posits that time itself, the mechanism that gets us from one point in sequence to the next, is slowing down. Hypothesizing this allows cosmologists to get rid of that nasty dark energy and dark matter - patches, sloppy paint jobs and legerdemain designed by scientists to cover embarrassing holes in current theories of the Universe - there just isn't enough stuff out there to account for the way the universe seems to work - and the really troubling fact that the Universe seems to expanding faster than makes sense - unless the time frame of the observer - us - is slowing down. The time side of the equation might be shrinking - changing everything we thought about - everything.

Time is wedded to space - you have to have one to have the other - unless the rules are changing, the odds shifting, and God playing a sneaky game of dice...

That feeling you had that meetings, traffic and baseball games are slowing down just might be correct.
In the meantime: tick - tock.

image: Cosmic Clock by Joe Clark

My First (and probably last) iMovie Production

2009-09-07T22:28:00.002-04:00

Little to Big -- Big to little

2009-08-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

Where else can one turn but the cool Daily Galaxy website to read stories that extend from the ultra tiny to the ultra large.

To Wit: You are looking at atoms here - to be precise 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms, seen for the first time through the lens of an IBM atomic force microscope - the story is here.

Not impressed, eh?
- one of those size does matter folks?

Then take a gander at a wall of stars - a collection of superclusters of galaxies that span 5% of the known universe. How big? 1.37 billion light years long. Why is it there? It has something to do with the early universe and the way
galaxies form - or else Star Trek classic was right and there is a great galactic barrier.

Just avoid the guest star crew members with the silver contact lenses.

via The Insider

How's your appetite?

2009-08-29T21:49:00.008-04:00

Speaking of food and bad images pertaining thereto - which we were - kinda - in the previous post, wanna see some really bad food art and recipes from days gone by?

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a collection of the worst of the worst from those ad firm created epics of literature plugging food or kitchen utensils. Bad graphics, lame recipes and a glimpse at domestic tranquility from the past: meaning the lil woman stayed home all day dreaming up new and interesting menus to entice her man, home from the scary world of men. The site examines variations of delightful meals using the bulky wonders of Kellog's All-Bran, takes a serious look at nature's favorite punch-line fruit, the banana, and offers some coffee recipes that would make Starbucks turn around and limp back to Seattle - oh, if only...

Quite funny in a snarky, weren't they funny back in the stone ages, way!

Altho we end up with Jamie Lee Curtis gulping down stomach de-bloating yogurt by the gallon - we're any better?

The author - J. Lileks also hosts the Institute of Official Cheer, which has, it says, been "humiliating the past since 1996!" which is also quite funny.

One of the best features is a wander down the hall of Comic Sins - featuring bad comic book covers, bad ads in comics (yes, I wanted X-Ray specs too) and newspaper strip comics. Again, very funny in a sarcastic, but loving way. And one must see the comic Toni Gay to believe it.

Now, back to ignoring that dratted South Beach diet...

D'oh! The Horror

2009-08-22T16:35:00.011-04:00

So, there I was on vacation in Ocean City, MD, our hotel on the Boardwalk, my sister Lisa, bro-in-law George with occasional appearances by my favorite bio nephew Tyler. (Favorite niece Lindsay couldn't make it!) We had a blast. As we made our way up and down the famed Boardwalk we came across the Dough Roller Restaurant: renowned for Pizza and Pancakes - and that's when the first nibbles of fear began...

The logo for the Dough Roller, here's their website, features a smiling human formed - something - wielding a rolling pin - I guess we are to assume it's a living, animated wad of dough, now smooshing its non-living yeasty counterparts into tasty food items.
You can't quite see it on the website, only as you stroll the Boardwalk, you see that the logo on the large signs is not...quite...right. It's vaguely threatening - sinister in some unsettling way. You look at it twice - three times, wondering what is wrong with this picture! It might be the worst logo ever.

It's not just the idea of a bacteria gas filled blob of edible yeast - def: a microscopic fungus consisting of single oval cells that reproduce by budding, and are capable of converting sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide has become animated and please ignore the rolling pin now clutched in her two bulgy hands - it's the eyes - simple dots and arcs, but menacing, scary eyes - I thought of the movie Jaws - God bless the Internet and Quint's description of a shark...

And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'...

Or you could listen to it here

And I thought of the Golem - not Tolkein's immortal tortured sushi fan, but the being, according to Jewish folklore, created from clay, used as a servant, or as a weapon, protecting the ghettos of Prague - there are definite parallels to Frankenstein's monster here - that goes bad and starts whacking gentiles as well as others.
Again, a soulless, silent thing... hulking, menacing.

I thought of the Dough Roller lady that way, kinda cute at first, but look closer and you see the flabby terror bubbling within - the last image you see before getting bludgeoned into raspberry filling.

My bro George and Lisa both say it's a great place, fantastic breakfasts and pizza, beloved by many. George has basically eaten everywhere in the state of Maryland - he would know. There are no reports of customers disappearing, there's no list of unsolved rolling pin murders clogging the files of the OC Police Department - as least none they would admit to.

But still, I don't think I'm gonna risk eating there - I might be too nervous to finish my pancakes.

Bread: the staff of life? Oh, I think not - it's the rolling pin of pain, the kneader of nastiness...

Then again, maybe I really, really needed a vacation.

H.G. Wells gets Steampunk'd

2009-08-20T00:24:00.007-04:00

via Quiet Earth.

Swing för Hyresgästföreningen or The Swedes do it again...

2009-07-30T23:45:00.007-04:00

So anyway Steven Colbert discovered the Swedish band Movits! on Reddit and had them on the show... And we have the latest Swedish music import and social media phenomenon. Why are the Swedes so good at catchy postmodern mash ups? I'm just saying... And don't worry about understanding the lyrics, I don't think that's the point.

Solid Filmmaking Advice Comic Con

2009-07-26T08:38:00.001-04:00

I predict this video will be retweeted by filmmakers for months.

Via Mashable.

10 Words about Sex You Didn't Know

2009-07-24T23:16:00.005-04:00

Hah - you're paying attention now, aren't you? Well, please excuse yet another blatant attempt to increase our hit count, but the 10 words available here about sex are just one of a whole series of 10 words blogs created by Robin Bloor at his always interesting Have Mac Will Blog site.

He is, it says right here, a leading technology analyst, authority and an influencer in the IT industry. He is currently a Partner with Hurwitz and Associates in the US and also maintains contacts with Bloor Research, the analyst company he founded and established in the UK.
Those Brits - so Britty.
So, many of his blogs have to do with a series of words he's found Gods knows where - like...
10 Insults you don't know
10 Dirty words you don't know
and in case you're wondering if there is a trend to the naughty side (of course, that just might be me)
10 Legal words you don't know
10 Medical words you don't know
and to go out with a twist of meta...
10 Words about Words or Literary terms you don't know

This guy is very smart and most probably a Logastellus.
(Yes, you might have to look it up - I did)

He doesn't just stick with 10 Words, he has opinions of IT and poetry and lots of other topics, so for delightful after dinner drink, let's order up - The Incredible Shrinking Microsoft

As for the 10 sexual words or terms - well, I might just be one or two of them - I could tell you which ones - but I just ran out of words...

Final Cut Studio 3

2009-07-23T21:24:00.002-04:00

I want this.

Watch these videos and see why. If you are not into non-linear video editing... Never mind.

Walter Cronkite: the man who brought the news

2009-07-18T00:39:00.010-04:00

It is somehow fitting that, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of humans first setting foot on another world, we note the passing of the man who brought that story to so many Americans - and so many other important stories as well.
Walter Cronkite was the epitome of a newsman for decades. He was the avuncular anchor and not just anchorman of CBS News - back when CBS was the most serious and most respected of the big three TV Networks. We turned to CBS when things got serious, as it so often did in the turbulent 60's, and 70's. He retired from CBS News in 1981 - hanging up his famous "And that's the way it is" catchphrase so loved by lame impersonators.

Why was he important? It's hard to explain today in a world of 24 hour news channels, and the always available Internet, but back then - the news was special - and because he got my parents and us kids through the confusing death of JFK, his deep voice and calm presence reassuring to a bewildered child who wondered why all the adults were so upset. The image above is from when he broke into the soap operas of the day and told the nation that President Kennedy was dead. He would explain why there was a riderless horse in the somber "parade" during the funeral which took over TV for days. And choke back his emotions again when John-John made that famous salute

He did hundreds of shows explaining the space program, using the cheesy animation of the day or grabbing an Aurora model rocket and whipping it through the air like the kid he was inside. He described the horrors of the Apollo 1 fire, the near diasaster of Apollo 13 and the later triumphs that followed, and savored each one - you could see it - he wanted to go to the Moon.

He was known as Ol' Iron Ass to his network colleagues for his ability to sit there for hours and hours of political conventions - back when the Big Three thought they were important. His outrage at the treatment of protesters and others during the 1968 Democratic Convention added a subtle spark to the flame of revolution smoldering in the country. He was a steady presence through the assasinations of King and Kennedy - the ugliness of the riots - the blooming of the counter-culture.
He helped expose the lies of the Viet Nam war and the lies of Watergate - always with journalistic integrity and a passion to get the story.

One of my favorite memories of Cronkite is of him humming and singing away during CBS's coverage of the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration: there he is, perched in his NY studio watching the tall ships glide through New York Harbor. He could not contain himself from singing along.

He lived for years not far from us, in Annapolis, Maryland, where he could share his love of sailing - and everyone said, what a nice guy he was, so normal.

They were wrong, he was no normal guy - he was Walter Cronkite - and he brought us the world, everyday at 6:30.

New Moon

2009-07-16T21:43:00.016-04:00

Forty years ago, give or take, a nasty thunderstorm slammed through suburban Maryland - not unusual, summers seemed hotter and stormier back then. The fact that we didn't have air conditioning might have helped - but this was particularly stressful because the power went out - the power was always failing those days - it would bounce back pretty soon.
But we wanted no such plunges into the dark ages this night, because 230,000 miles away, man was about to land on the Moon. And listening to one of the most important events in human history on WBAL on a crappy, staticky AM radio wasn't about to cut it for this pudgy, bespectacled, science fiction devouring, goofy over Star Trek, barely a teenager, nerdling.

So, we waited and watched the shadows cast by the ever-handy candles gutter and flicker in the uncertain breezes created from the light persistent showers. Our dog, a fairly psychopathic full blooded German Shepherd named Prince, famed in the neighborhood for not allowing any of our friends in the house, was a cruise liner for ticks, so I recall my Mom and brother carefully pulling them off, dropping them in a bucket.

And we waited some more... cursing each rumble of thunder, praying that those grumblings kept moving away...
Finally, the power banged back on. We gathered, my Mom, Dad, sister Lisa for about 10 secs before she conked out (to be fair she was only 4 years old), my brother Greg and the temporarily tick-free dog who made for a great pillow as he panted away through the steamy night in front of the RCA color TV in a beautiful Chinese style wooden cabinet - and Uncle Walter guided us into a new era - Man on the Moon - and beaming back hazy ghostly images to prove it, Walter Cronkite's utter joy and relief making me giddy. He's ailing now, but still beloved.
GRATUITOUS UPDATE: Walter gone now (you may have heard about it, snort), he knew how to be part of a news cycle!

Ahh, perfection for those of us ready - waiting to go out there... Surely moon bases and space stations and asteroid mining and Mars missions were just around the corner...right?

So, what the hell happened?

Dozens of reasons - none good enough for the true believers: Viet Nam, the Russians were losing interest, we were just barely making it there and back - Apollo 13 perhaps leading some credence to that, betrayal by Richard Nixon who tired of the Kennedy/Johnson influence on manned space missions - whatever - it all kinda went on hold... the skills faded, the machines rusted - the dream dimmed, but did not burn out...

We're only planning to go back now - in a revamped series of vehicles that look a lot like the Apollo ships. There are some complaints about that, including strong reservations by the second man to walk on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin. But at least things are moving forward.

Here's Space.com's expanded coverage of the anniversary - and from the NYT and NASA, here's a look at how we are, finally, going back.

Later is better than never - but what have we lost in the meantime? Brother Ted wasn't even born yet, but he feels it... as do many others. We wonder --
What discoveries unmade, what challenges unfaced, what dreams unrealized?

What are we waiting for?
Let's go...

40 Years Ago Today....

2009-07-16T21:30:00.000-04:00

More pictures here...

Canon Hybrid Kool-Aide Test

2009-07-11T12:21:00.010-04:00

Well, I was going to write a really thoughtful piece on the hype around Canon EOS 5D Mark II but unfortunately Mitch Aunger (Planet 5D) has already done so over at Photofocus.

Only thing I would change if I wrote the article is : a) it wouldn't have been as well written and b) I'm not ready to drink the Kool-Aide yet. While it is possible to use this camera on projects, it is not yet totally practical for most videomakers. You can't record for longer than 29 minutes no matter the format and its 1080p is limited to 30 fps with a very unsexy h.264 codec with mono audio. For example, 29 minute limit and audio makes it useless for those like me who have to film live events in their entirety.

While I quibble about the specs, I can't argue with the pictures.

Canon is not a silly company and I know they will learn from their accidental success and build it into a new line. Then I'll drink the Kool-Aide.

7/17/09 UPDATE: As was tweeted and emailed to last night there is a whole website now just dedicated to 5DMII Videos called The EOScars,com

Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus - but snarky lists rule the Universe

2009-07-04T12:58:00.009-04:00

You know those emails you get with funny lists of wisdom on whatever? Ande forwarded one with a list of nine things women say and what they really mean. Pretty witty and accurate. Yes, this is for the hapless men who need the translations in order to avoid glares, stares and outright doom. This would be an insult to men if it weren't so true...
But, to preserve the slightest degree of gender dignity, we also came up with some words and expressions men use and what they mean - just to remind the smarter, better half of the human race that we have depth, we have feelings, we...sniff...sniff - dissolves into sobbing puddle of raw emo.

NINE TERMS WOMEN USE (and what they mean)

(1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome.. (I want to add in a clause here - This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot' - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome' .. That will bring on a 'whatever').

(8) Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying F-- YOU!

(9) Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to # 3.

* Send this to the men you know, to warn them about arguments they can avoid if they remember the terminology.
* Send this to all the women you know to give them a good laugh, cause they know it's true!!!

And that was the obligatory send this on request - cuz, you know, the Internet isn't quite busy enough with inane chatter...
Like this...

This means this in GUY speak!

(1) Grunts: subtle variations indicate different responses
a- uh huh: An affirmative response
b- uh uh: A negative response
c- huh?: Either an honest question or a time filler while the guy tries to come up with an excuse, an explanation, or a sudden reason to be somewhere else.

(2) Sorrys:
a- sorry: generic - the same thing you say when you bump into a stranger.
b- I'm sorry: More personal - some acceptance of personal responsibility.
c- Oh (expletive of choice), I'm sorry: Full out apology with a tinge of "Please don't kill me, I didn't know, remember, didn't think you'd notice..."

(3) yeah, I remember: Possibly he does OR stalling for time while mental files are ransacked for a clue.

(4) yeah, I know: Variation of above or means acceptance of some uncomfortable fact. "We have to go to that party, remember? Yeah, I know - sigh"

(5) yeah, yeah, yeah: Strong positive indicating he already knew this or has already performed whatever action was required OR strong indication that he forgot about whatever it was and will get right on it as soon safely possible. (Or maybe just in a Beatles mood)

(6) that's okay: Inflection indicates either a long suffering acceptance - a act of nobility really. You want to do something else: "I will do this for you" - please note my perfection in allowing this to happen. A debt is incurred.

(7) Nothing - in answer to "What's wrong?" - either nothing is wrong or this is an invitation to inquire further into the depths of his tormented soul that he is manfully keeping hidden from view. If you are worthy you would know this.

(8) I got it: Indicates that he understands, or it indicates he understood it one of the previous 50 times it was mentioned OR means please let a human with the right set of chromosomes handle this.

(9) okay, sure: Indicates that he is aware that something was said that required a response.

(10) you're right: - has moved on - means can we end this conversation now or change the topic to something at least vaguely interesting?

(11) More Yeahs
a- Yeah, I did - triumphant bragging, give me some credit on this one OR time filler while the guy tries to remember what it was he should have done.

b- Yeah, sure - either agreement, or sarcasm, or please go away until I remember what it is you want - Inflection is everything.

c- Yeah, right - inflection indicates either sarcasm or acceptance of your point.

d- Yeah, .....(long pause)... right: No way this is going to happen.

(12) Why don't you then? A challenge. Either he hopes you will go away and do this thing, OR means "please beg me harder, you have not yet reached the threshold of begging required - and you will owe me big time." Basically a risky move.

(13) That's okay, you go: - means please note that I am making a sacrifice for you. I really would like to go to this wedding, chick flick, shoe sale, dress fitting, baby shower, etc - all things to be avoided at the cost of one's manhood. But phrasing it this way makes the guy sound noble. We need every possible opportunity for that.

(14) Gimme a sec: Please leave me alone for however long it takes to watch this movie, commercial, inning, quarter, car crash, space ship battle, naked folks, folks who aren't naked but should be, YouTube clip, big machines doing neat things, cool explosion - whatever...

b - Gimme a sec, I'll be right there: see above except that car keys are in hand, required clothing is in sight, I'm leaning forward ready to leap from the chair and goooooo.

(15) I SAID I WOULD DO IT! Been asked to do something one time too many. Back off. Could develop into #2c

There ya go - the relationships between the sexes boiled down to neat little cliches - who needs Dr. Phil, Oprah and the rest of that ilk?

3.0 - and away we go...

2009-06-18T22:40:00.009-04:00

Ted said, when I told him I was downloading the new iPhone 3.0 software that I should blog about it. What?, me babble incessantly on a topic I know little about - hell yeah!

First - the setting - I have a first gen iPod touch - not an iPhone, so unless the software is really, really freaking impressive, I'm not gonna need the phone-y features - nor the voice command, voice recording stuff - altho I believe if I had earphones with a built-in microphone, I might get some of the goodness.

GETTING IT: The usual Apple simplicity - order from the iTunes Store - but, because I was doing it at 11pm eastern daylight, US time, and the rest of the planet was ordering as well, it took several tries to get through to the Store - but after 5 tries, success and the 231 MBs started downloading - after a few permission requests and a longish period the touch synchs and you are golden - or are you?...

USING IT: First different thing I noticed the next morning was the addition of a search bar in Mail - in fact that seems to be the biggest overall change - search is everywhere, there's a new screen in front of your original Home Screen, the one with all the Apple apps like Safari, Mail, Maps, etc. This new screen has the system wide Search iPod option: type in Ted - 3 contact listings, one Note (Xmas list - must revise, coal surprisingly hard to find) 50 Mail listings, some with blue dots showing unread status, and 1 iCal entry - tap that - Ted just had his birthday, Tuesday in fact, so it shows Wed, June 2010 as the next occurrence.
After I look at iCal, back to Home Page, then sweep left into the Search page which still has the Ted search up - nice!
Type in Ande - fewer hits - why? Because her name in Contacts and email addresses is the full Andrea. Xmas list for Ande: establish religion around her very being - Check, underway.
Katie's Xmas list: take care of her enemies - yeesh, still working on that one - and what did Julie Andrews ever do to her anyway? But this search stuff is pretty cool.

MAPS: click on a location that has an figure in an orange circle and you get the Google Street view of the site, if available - way cool - sadly my touch still thinks I live in California - a lovely residential neighborhood according to Google. I must go there someday.
Anyway, there are several other Maps features - distance and time by car, walking or by air, etc,

IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE: as the old slam at Microsoft goes, but in this case it's true. Driving to work I plug the touch into the FM radio thingie that sends the touch music to the car stereo - there are hundreds of different versions out there. I look at the screen (maintaining full control of the vehicle at all times, mind you) and it seems to me that the gray area with the Play/Pause, back/forwards controls is larger, taller than before - then I figure it out (neatly avoiding a collision with a bus full of orphans driven by sweet, lil ol lady nuns), the volume slider is gone!
I found a bug, I chortle - I'm one of the cool ones who gets to go "nyah, nyah" to one of the most influential forces in technology on the planet!
Well, on a hunch, when I get home I plug in some headphones - sure enough, the volume slider reappears - damn it!

CUT AND PASTE: Works well, I think using it five times will make it instinctive and no one will remember how freaking long it took to get here!

OTHER STUFF: I know there are plenty of other things - some I'll use, I'm guessing many I won't. Cut and paste alone are worth the price - and the search functions are way useful too. The landscape typing and Stocks views are nice too. And lots of integration between the Apple apps, and oh, yeah, shake to shuffle - how many iPods are gonna be flung out car windows with that little feature?

Ted says, in that voice uses when he suspects he is being wise - that Apple doesn't need the cheap-ass crippled laptop known as a netbook - it has a perfectly wonderful device in the iPhone and touch - tho a tablet version would be very sweet...

I'll keep playing around and let you know if there are other major changes - in the mean time - Facebook, Tweetie, Crash Cart and FML await my inspection.

UPDATE: I've noticed that hitting the forward button to move to the next song has definitely slowed down - a 1-2 second lag now occurs before the next screen comes up, tho the song might already be playing.

We've done around 300 posts, btw! We may have slowed down, but we still enjoy doing them - thanks

Lost Time

2009-06-15T14:34:00.005-04:00

Well I haven't been post much lately because 1) I'm lame 2) I've been really #%$ing busy and 3) my old G4 laptop I blogged from blew up.

So to make up for lost time I'm going to quickly blitz through all the things I would have posted.

1) Cannon 5D Mark II got an upgrade where you can now manually control aperture and shutter speed. This is great. But while the great I think this really brings the camera up to a sony fx1 with a massive chip.

Also on the hybrid dslr front was the panasonic GH1. While it is more video centric than the Cannon 5DMkII it's still not without it's flaws.

While I'm glad folks who make a lot more money than I do are buying and supporting this camera it's still gen 1 of this particular technology and let's face it generation one sucks. This stuff all feels like the early days to HDV to me.

Otherwise, I welcome our new full frame overlords.

An Example of 5dmkII footage.

And this video shows what you have to go through to make it shoot like a normal video camera.

2) I predict that we will not see FCS3 at WWDC. (I am 100% sure of this hehe). I think that FCS is tied up with the new Quicktime X and Snow Leopard and we won't see until those are done.

The rumors of no bluray in FCS 3 kind of bum me out a little, but I have to say: who uses BluRay? Middle class videophiles and gamers thats who. Nobody else. I work at government tv station we make between 150 to 200 DVD requests a month. Do you know how many BluRay request we've gotten? ZERO. None. Zippola.

Most people are happy with DVDs. I bought one at ACME supermarket for $28. Why would some switch from something where the player cost next to nothing to something that starts at around $300.

3) Movies: Star Trek was awesome. Terminator Salvation was ordinary.

Okay that's all the big ones. I'm sure I would have made some esoteric post on post-Ceauşescu Romanian photography are but instead I'll spare you.

Does Mankind's Future Change with this Discovery?

2009-05-26T18:24:00.003-04:00

If you pay even the vaguest notice of the Internets you see amazing articles and topics all the time. Due to the "gotta get their attention NOW" nature of new new journalism, there is a lot of exaggeration and sloppy writing, false comparisons, shrill headlines and deliberate falsifications!
(Yes, exactly like the title for this post...)
After all, another million Google hits away is a new topic - who is gonna remember last weeks panic... (swine flu anyone?)

But this one might be important.

Doctors at Oxford University have devised a method to program viruses to attack cancer cells, while leaving healthy cells alone - A targeted, programmed virus that sneaks past the defenses and attacks the errant cells.

Scientists have thought this a great idea for a long time: viruses are very effective at what they do. The Oxford blokes say they have the means to convince the viruses to do what we want them to do - and that could change everything.

Imagine: An organic nano agent, basically - engineered to take out the bad guys... You tell it what to destroy, what to avoid, and then it fades away (The anti-genetic engineering folks are gonna love this!)
The story and other links are here from Science Daily.

Humans have lived with, and been killed by viruses for millions of years.

Using them creatively seems to be a much better option...

Looking for {Life} in all the wrong places!

2009-05-22T23:36:00.010-04:00

Why would scientists go looking for signs of life 2 miles underground? Just what are the chances that anything could exist there in the dark rocky tombs of the Earth?

Apparently, the odds are pretty good - and those odds might indicate why life out there - in space- might just be flourishing.

This story from The Daily Galaxy explains how researchers - those who look for extremophiles: life forms that live in extreme conditions - found bacteria that obtains its nutrients from byproducts of radioactive decay, whilst living surrounded by bleach. Luckily these bacteria grow very slowly - they won't erupt upon a terrified city and proceed to eat our nuclear reactors.

So, why in the world should we look for weird life like this?

Simple, if life can grow underground, in 600 degree water at crushing pressures, in acid and ice and all sorts of unpleasant places - then it makes sense that life should be doing the same thing on other worlds.

It took us a few billion years to develop Google and governments, Tivo's and Twitter, ramen noodles and Rush Limbaugh (ok, it's not all good.)

What's happening out there?

Makes sense to look, doesn't it?

Let's build it out of neutronium

2009-05-22T21:09:00.014-04:00

Recently at a lovely dinner al fresco with the equally lovely Ande and Ted we noticed several of those tiny Smart Cars zipping by on Route 50. Ande pondered, "Those things can't be very safe, what if you got in a crash?" Ted said he'd heard they didn't get great mileage. I used the distractions to sneak another taco and pico de gala from their plates.
Ande settled the question by observing that she would permit them to be built if they made them of something really strong

Fate, synchronicity and a really boring lunch period at work lead me to this article entitled Neutron Star Crust is Stronger than Steel at Space.com.
A neutron star is a star on the brink of fading into a cold dead ember, but not quite yet - it has exploded off its gaseous shell in a supernova - all that remains is a hyper dense core - think of it as a failed black hole - it just wasn't massive enough to pull its spacetime blankets over itself and disappear down the rabbit hole.

The core is left, and it is very, very odd. The average neutron star is about 15 miles wide, spins at impossible speeds - and yet somehow contains the mass of 1.5 stars stuffed inside it.

And it isn't just a cold metal ball - weird things are going on inside the sphere, fantastic energies are at work, out of sight, churning and bubbling, which play havoc with the billiard ball surface - releasing staggering amounts of energy in "starquakes" that build and demolish "mountains" on the surface - mountains mere inches in height.

The material of the crust, that's the neutronium, is unimaginably heavy - here's where the crazy numbers come in - a teaspoon of the stuff would weigh 100 million tons - drop the spoon - it hits the surface at a ridiculous 4 million MPH.
How strong is the crust of a neutron star? - the latest computer projections say the crust could be 10 billion times stronger than steel.

Take that, you dumb ass SUVs hurtling towards our cute lil Smart Car...

Soooo, let's imagine Ande slaps her arms together and does the "I Dream of Jeannie" blinky thing and creates a Smart Car with a neutronium skin in the parking lot of the Americantina on Kent Island. We'd catch a fraction of a second glimpse of teh cuteness before it sank through the asphalt on its way to the earth's core. It would plunge through the 4,000 miles of rock, magna and iron like a bullet fired through a light fog, barely slowing down at the center of the earth before heading back to the surface on the other side of the planet. It would zip up and down like a demented yo-yo on progressively shorter trips to and from the core before finally settling down, leaving the Earth riddled with Smart Car-wide tunnels - this would not be good. Earthquakes and volcanoes and a bad Micheal Bay movie would ensue.

Meanwhile back on the surface - the shockwave and heat created by the Smart Cars initial descent into Hell would vaporize Kent Island, flashing buildings and parking lots into steam, shredding nature, traffic and Ted and myself into really annoyed atoms: the expanding hurricane of destruction would topple the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and erase Annapolis across the Bay. Baltimore would need a new Inner Harbor for the few survivors to enjoy after the old one is destroyed by tsunami waves which at least put out the fires caused by the gamma-ray flash.

Needless to say, Ande would receive a stern talking-to by the Genie's Union.

So, there probably is a better material to build the Smart Car from than neutronium. We'll leave the stellar engineering to the aliens who designed the Monolith - and besides, just what kind of mileage could you get - yeesh.

And for dessert: How about sci-fi novels showing how life on the surface of a neutron star would evolve - Check out Robert Forward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake

This place is a dump!

2009-05-19T22:20:00.006-04:00

Space: the Final Frontier - sounds so pure, so adventurous, so clean.
Well,... not so much!
Low earth orbit is filled with debris: a heavenly landfill crammed with tons of stuff zipping about in orbit since man first dipped a toe into the great ocean of night back in the fifties. Rocket parts, satellite parts, paint chips, urine ice cubes, gloves, tools, trash, , the bodies of frozen Chinese astronauts (ok, that one was a rumor) all orbiting the planet at speeds faster than a bullet - all dangerous to working spacecraft, satellites and the men and women who are up there.
All possibly damaging to the atmosphere when they return to earth in fiery, polluting splendor.
A collision between two old satellites creates a moving wall of shrapnel that will plague the orbits of spacecraft and devices for years - the Shuttle has to change orbit to dodge the hail, the International Space Station is on constant alert for incoming missiles - and those are just the ones we can track by radar - What about the little ones, that are still moving at 15,000 mph? - just say your prayers and have a space suit handy.

Read this Space.com story for more info.

So, what do we do about this mess?
There are ideas on how to collect or destroy the junk - but all are expensive and complicated and no one really wants to get off their collective asses and do something about it.

Until something happens... Someday a Shuttle or the ISS will get holed and there will be a lot of belated moaning about the whole situation.

Maybe the reason we can't find any other intelligent civilizations out there is that their worlds are all shrouded in their own fog of short-sided stupidity. Wall-E was right!
Ah, the brotherhood of the universe is a shared inability to clean up one's mess - you've seen the way we treat our planet, we should fit right in.

Genius II

2009-05-05T19:39:00.002-04:00

This genius little animation was made by Christopher Hendryx.

Genius

2009-05-02T09:47:00.001-04:00

from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Stare at a blank spot in the sky...

2009-04-29T23:01:00.002-04:00

That's what the Hubble Space Telescope did, back in 1995, and again in 2002. Astronomers picked a relatively dark spot in space, focused and took pictures for 10 - 11 days. The resulting images indicate how large the universe is - because if this empty spot contains 3 thousand, or even 10 thousand galaxies as seen in the later Ultra Deep image, well, then space is bigger than we can imagine...but that doesn't mean we stop trying...

This well written and witty video, aided by surprisingly hip music, as long as you ignore a humorous yet awful singer 2 minutes in, explains it all!

The Pillars of Creation

2009-04-23T22:48:00.007-04:00

Some of the most iconic images ever taken in the fabulous history of the Hubble Space Telescope focus on the awe-inspiring structures that have become known as the Pillars of Creation: tall columns of dust and gas sprinkled with the bright eyes of stars aborning, glowing with the furious heat of new life.
They are stellar wombs where the raucous squalling and kicking of the infants upset the neighborhood, triggering further congregations of star stuff that bloom into fiery life of their own.
The images taken by the Hubble in 1995 became instant photographic celebrities, appearing in movies and television shows, space ship view screens and computer monitors. It's arguable that the endless nebulae the various flavors of the Enterprise found itself in were influenced by the look of the Pillars. (Maybe even as a recent hiding place of the perfidious Cylons.)

The images showed that space wasn't just a black and cold void studded with diamond glints, but a vibrant canvas overflowing with color and mass - and mystery. Scientists aren't quite sure how the Pillars, located in the Eagle Nebula 7,000 light years away were formed, but recent theories suggest that pocket densities of matter in the clouds force the slow expansion of the cloud in a single direction, squeezing the toothpaste tube light years wide, resulting in a column of gas charged with the potential, and the raw material, for more stars.
You can read more about the latest theory here from Space.com

Or you could just enjoy the artwork: for even in space, beauty is transient. It is quite possible that a supernova nearby toppled the towers 6,000 years ago. The light of this act of stellar vandalism won't reach us for another thousand years.

The Rumor hits the tubes

2009-04-12T09:27:00.007-04:00

A little while back Jeff mentioned a short film we shot. Well I finally got off my ass and published it to the internet. If you are a member of Vimeo you can download or watch it here.

If you have an iPhone or just prefer YouTube you can find it here.

I will post my post my thoughts on the making-of soon.

Have a good friday

2009-04-10T08:10:00.003-04:00

Sunday Funnies: Alas Poor Qwerty

2009-03-29T21:15:00.005-04:00

Current has this combo clip from their Rotten Tomatoes Show (who knew) showing their choices for the best dramatic typing scenes in movies.
But, please, where is "All The President's Men?" Not a computer, but that IBM Selectric helped end a presidency - and what about Ripley trying to disarm the self destruct on the Nostromo in "Alien"?, and...ok, stopping now

Dang, couldn't resist these - or, Ripley typing into the oddly primitive ships computer and finding out that the crew was oh, so dispensable to the bio-weapons division, or the slow death of "2001's" Hal by command string and removal of those cool clear memory units, or, on the TV side, the Losties typing the magic sequence that prevented magnetic/time traveling disaster on "Lost"...
Ok, now I'm done. Come up with your own
- 30 -

There is a blog for everything: part XVIII

2009-03-28T23:29:00.003-04:00

Question: Where can I find a website with an ongoing experiment in deconstructing and abstracting film posters?

Answer: Here.

Enjoy.

First Image from Red Scarlet

2009-03-09T01:47:00.003-04:00

This the first published image of the Red 2/3 inch Scarlet. Drool. Pics and more info here...

Rumors: A series of webisodes

2009-03-08T15:00:00.007-04:00

Ted said, "Hey, you should do a post about our Rumors project - the blog is all about being creative." Can't argue with that -- so here we go.

The project: Come up with some short YouTube videos that we could create - mostly just for fun's sake, but also for "resume" reasons, and then put online. A five webisode series with a beginning and end with a good story in between - we hope.

The talent: We are very lucky to know and work with Ande and Katie Hearn - twin sisters who succumbed to the acting bug years ago. They've been extras in big name Hollywood movies and TV shows shot in the Baltimore/Washington area as well as unpaid extras in cheap-ass monster movies and the like - all part of the acting game - experience=recognition=other better gigs. They've been beautifully dressed in swanky ballroom scenes and then cast in other movies as flesh-eating zombies - and also played parts in local community theater - most recently Our Town and Lysistrata soon. You can read their blog about acting here - it describes the odd, frustrating, all but inconceivable for us shy folks, life of those who wish to place themselves in front of people and open up their souls - gives some of us the willies

The other side of the camera: Ted McNeil - videographer, writer, film school grad, mac guy, photographer, videocamera junkie and fellow BSG fan: you name a subject: he knows something about it and is a fount of ideas and concepts - he started this whole thing - and by that I mean the webisodes and this blog.

Jeff works with Ted and Ande in making TV shows for our local combined government/school system cable channel. Ande, trained in graphic design, works with Ted at the county government cable channel - she is annoyingly talented at anything she sets her mind on. I'd hate her if she wasn't one of my favorite humans.
Katie works with Jeff for a school system, but whereas he toils away in the lofty ivory towers of the Board of Education Central Office (yes, that was irony!), Katie actually works with students, often one on one with troubled kids - making a difference in their life. She is just as talentedly annoying (and admired) as her sister.

So, after everyone agrees vaguely that the webisodes are a good idea - you sorta need a plot. Ted to the rescue - let's follow a rumor as it grows and mutates - like that old party game of passing a few words around the room: by the time it reaches that last person it has totally changed. We'll see how it affects all it touches - with some of kind of ironic twist or lesson learned - or ignored. Ted suggested we start with the twins (they are cousins in the script at this point - that could change) talking about the rumor and see where it takes us. We are blessed to have access to pretty good video equipment, places we can use as sets, the expertise with which to make the episodes and, most fortunately, the good will generated by people who like to hang out together.

What could go wrong?

Actually getting started was hard - we are all busy people - and to some of us this is sorta a bus man's holiday - 'cept you aren't going anywhere.

Finally Ted said, ok, Jeff, you write the first episode - just slap something down on paper - or pixel - and we can fine tune it later. Now I'm much more of a reader than a writer - I'm one of those guys who carries a book with him everywhere - with another book standing by. So this was kind of daunting. But eventually I sat down and made a set of bullet points and then filled in the space between the bullets. It's only 5 minutes - we knew where Point A and Point B are - it's just showing the steps taken.

Oh yeah, the rumor - we don't learn what it is in the first episodes - we just know that it is powerful and charged with life changing potential!

Writing dialog was scary - fun, but scary. Would the speakers sound real and not actor-y? Would they end up sounding like me? Would I make the actresses sound like themselves - not a good thing maybe. This isn't biographical in any way. I spoke it out loud a lot.

Ted also said - to my astonishment - to go ahead and write the final episode - so we'd know where we were going. I didn't go that far but I sorta know how it all ends. After some script changes - good ones all - we finally could all meet at the same time to tape.

We were aided immensely by Katie's friend Will Haza - another actor and video guy and all too annoying himself. He actually has the staggering nerve to do stand-up comedy - and to be good at it. Did I mention he is hateable too? Here is his Internet Movie Database link - sigh! (Nothing against Will, but this is nothing to write home about. Here is my IMDB link - Ted) I have a library card, does that count?

Taping: It is very, very strange to hear your words coming out of someone else's mouth. A little nervewracking and scary too. But the actors, bless them, took it seriously - would get peeved with themselves if they forgot a line - as if it was deathless prose. It reminded me that the written word is what the actor starts with, and then they make it real somehow. And they did just that: they breathed life into the words - magic!

I tape people all the time and suggest things to say or topics or throw in leading questions - it's different when they depend on your words totally or at least as a leaping off point.

Doing the setups and the practical stuff is surprisingly hard - and detailed. Deciding how one gets from the window to the car and back again - how to put away groceries and talk at the same time, how to make the fraking soup - all tricky. Luckily Ted knows all this stuff and kept us on track - he also, quite patiently and without resorting to physical violence, kept asking me to get out of view of the camera - and to stop giggling like a 5 year old. Hmpf...

Take and re-take - change the angle - hurry up, the light is changing. Ted is a stabilizing presence when we get tired or I start to screw up again.

Two sessions later - weeks apart, episode one is in the virtual can. And it looks good - we recorded it at much higher than Internet standards - just because. We found some continuity errors - we'll have to come up with some clever way to get around them by shooting a minor amount of new stuff.

Now comes another really hard part - editing all the video down to under 10 minutes - this takes time and iron discipline - but the first steps have been taken...

The script for Episode Zero: In Which We Meet Our Heroines is semi-done - I think it started out not as "good" (a relative term, I know) as the first one. I was flip and overwrote (imagine that!) I went for the cheap joke at the expense of the character - all classic rookie mistakes that I'll have to monitor and fix with, as John and Paul said, a little help from my friends.

So that's where we are now - about to tape the second episode - once real life cooperates with reel life and we can all get together again.

For my part it's been fun and very educational. Ted is from a family of teachers - the twins too, oddly enough - they can't help but teach me things - and I love being around them. If nothing comes out of this but fond shared memories, that's enough - but an Oscar or whatever the Internet equivalent is would be nice too. (insert smiley face emoticon thingie of your choice here)

We'll let you know how it's going - and we can guarantee that the World Premiere of "Rumors" will happen right here...

Second floor: the solar system

2009-03-06T23:40:00.000-05:00

Recently the idea of really cool big things in science fiction came up in this blog - forgive the 10-year old's enthusiasm, but that's what it is - the really cool things that make you say wow, that make you put down the book and sit there and try to imagine just what mindbending thing the magician who wrote the book has conjured up. In short: concepts that produce a sense of wonder.

When thinking of Riverworld author, Philip José Farmer's central idea of a world girdling valley along which river banks everyone who has ever lived finds themselves resurrected, you have to stop and say, "wow, what a great concept - let's see where this river leads!" The power of the concept overrides any protest about how implausible it might be - just shut up and hang on.

Other Wow memes, oh, c'mon, let's call them wemes, include the 92 million mile circumference Ringworld - a ribbon of livable surface facing the star about which the thing orbits, giving you millions of times the surface area of any planet

One of my favorites was found in Arthur C. Clarke's "The Fountains of Paradise" which explored the concept of a Space Elevator and how it affected society - here are two reviews. It is one of those books I wish I could read "again for the first time"!

Ted, inveterate surfer that he is, sent me a link on the competition mentioned below, and reminded me of this "weme"not long ago.

And it is a classic one: The Space Elevator - which is exactly what it sounds like - an elevator that carries people: astronauts or tourists, or supplies and travels into space - and the method to make the "conquest" of near space, and eventually the rest of the Solar System possible, if not inevitable.

The problems with the ways we throw stuff into space now are all too painfully obvious - it's horribly inefficient, horribly polluting and oh so horribly expensive. You burn or discard 95% of the vehicle making the trip.

The Space Elevator, there are a multitude of design versions, basically works like this - an elevator car climbs up a cable of some superstrong material into geosynchronous orbit, up to a space station or maybe a series of stations at different heights - in some concepts there is a massive weight - a captured asteroid perhaps - to anchor the top side of the elevator. And we're talking about a ride of more than 20,000 miles or much longer.

We're beginning to see the types of materials that could stand the unthinkable stress of such a contraption - in older fiction, diamond was the usual suspect, more recently, a cousin of diamonds, known as carbon nanotubes have become the material of choice.

How do you power the elevator car - which is in effect a small spaceship? Beam laser light at it, use solar power, use the stored kinetic energy created by a car moving down to power those cars going up - there are plenty of ideas.

You build the base of the elevator as close to the equator as possible for reasons too complicated to explain (I really don't know why, in other words, orbital mechanics are not for the mathematically squeamish) - on land - or at sea - you just have to make sure the base of your 20,000 mile high tower doesn't move around - or only moves when you want it to - hurricanes, earthquakes and terrorists all to be considered in the design.

Is this possible? Yes, many experts feel it is inevitable - it's just too good an idea to ignore.

So, how do you start? What did the "voice" tell Kevin Costner? "Build it and they will come!" These days, you have a contest, and they will build it - or at least take the first steps in the process.

The Spaceward Foundation is sponsoring a $4 million prize Elevator:2010 competition, sort of like the famed X-Prize concept where a private group had to reach orbit twice. They did and won $10M - and a lot of media attention. The Elevator:2010 Challenge, the prize money coming from NASA, is a series of events focused on the hard stuff - creating the superstrong cable, designing and beaming power to the climbing machines. The next level of the competition happens this spring - stay tuned for details - there's even a blog for the inside scoops.

Some of the experts say that the first country - or company to build a useful Space Elevator will own space - a bit of hyperbole possibly, but it does raise the possibility of another Space Race, good for competition, no doubt, but sometimes causing hasty decisions. We'll see - but it's hard to imagine the European Union, Japan, or China sitting back and not getting into the game as well.

Predictions: I think we'll have a working Space Elevator within 100 years, and possibly much sooner than that - the benefits of cheap transportation into orbit, of building factories and power stations and whatever we need to get off planet is just too obvious.

Some cynic (ok, me) said that if pharmaceutical companies could create a cheaper, better version of Viagra or, heaven help us, a real weight loss pill or immortality drug that required zero gravity as part of the process then we'd already be out there.

But we're at the stage where we don't quite know what we could do - we're still on the first step of the ladder - looking up - wondering what's up there, just out of sight.

Here's a link to a NOVA video

and here's a full video

For dessert: Space Elevators are fairly common in science fiction now - here's a Wiki list and another - In some of the fiction, the Elevators fall down - and not skinny little ribbons either, but massive far future versions that lay waste to thousands of miles of the planet as the beanstalk comes tumbling down - spectacular stuff - maybe in particular Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City - cool!

Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GH1

2009-03-03T19:27:00.008-05:00

Well while everybody else got excited about the New Macs, I was scowering the internet for this camera the LUMIX DMC-GH1.

"Technological advantages for 1080/24p full-HD movie recording in the AVCHD format

The LUMIX DMC-GH1 is an advanced photographic tool for recording not only great photos but also beautiful full-HD movies. In addition to Motion JPEG images, the DMC-GH1 can record high-resolution full-HD 1920 x 1080 movies at 24 fps (frames per second) or smooth HD 1280 x 720 movies at 60 fps in AVCHD (MPEG-4/H.264)* format."

It's the 24/25 fps 1080p on a DLSR that was of all the interest. It turns out it records the the 24 fps in a 60i stream, so you would have to reverse telecine to get to to a native 24 fps.

We are waiting for the reviews. I have to reserve judgement except to say that the video that panasonic put up on their global web site is terrible. Let's hope the actual output is better.

Update: It has been confirmed that it does do 24fps. Learn more in this thread...

Philip José Farmer: 1918 - 2009

2009-03-01T00:52:00.011-05:00

Philip Jose Farmer died recently, at age 91. If you've read his works, then you might be picturing a massive steamboat making its way along an nearly endless river, sharing the ride with characters from the past, some from the future, all of whom, incidentally, woke up one day along the banks of the River - the one River that covers most of the unnamed world. Billions of people, totally confused as to why they are there, and who put them there.

There are certain "great" ideas in my science fiction pantheon of cool things - ideas that trigger that "sense of wonder" that makes science fiction so satisfying for some people.

Niven's Ringworld, Clarke's Monoliths and the StarChild, Herbert's sandworms, spice and the awful price of godhood in the ecological "Dune" - all concepts and conceits that stretch the imagination - that make you go "wow". (You think it's a coincidence that the dimension ratio of the iPod touch are the same as the teaching device monoliths - we think not.)

You don't need these concepts for good science fiction, really, but it's oh so much more fun when they are there. And it is often those book that you "live" in for awhile.

Well, Farmer's Riverworld series had all that, but also threw in historical characters, like Sam Clemens, the explorer Richard Burton, Hermann Goring, good guys and bad, all trying to figure out just what is going on, or just trying to survive.

What a concept - adventures around every corner, drama and humor - the bitter Mark Twain of later years struggles with the better nature of his earlier days - and the mystery of the purpose of the beings that have the power to resurrect everyone who ever lived - provide them with the basic needs of life - except the answers...

Farmer wrote other books, won Hugos and Nebula Awards, there was even a lame TV pilot adaptation of Riverworld - but for some readers, he'll always be remembered for being the captain of a wondrous voyage of the imagination.

Here are some obits and more info on Farmer. Ted usually handles the obituaries with his usual style and grace, but I'll grab this one if he doesn't mind. I owe the captain that much.

The Power Plant That Wasn't There

2009-02-28T09:08:00.005-05:00

Some of you may have heard that we just had an election here in United States. One of the issues was Clean Coal. McCain and Palin argued America should open MORE clean coal power plants. It was curious argument to make, because America doesn't have a single clean coal plant. Matter of fact, there is no such thing a clean coal plant.

Post-Election the coal companies have been running ads talking about how more clean coal plant technology is the future of Americas green economy.

With that as context, here one response to clean coal directed by the Coen brothers.

Avid versus Final Cut Pro

2009-02-23T20:34:00.003-05:00

Avid v. Final Cut Pro, the Hollywood editors equivalent of catholic v. protestant. For a erudite and thoughtful of the discussions about of the merits of the two over at That Post Show.

These are the topics discussed:

Is Avid "losing market share?"
Is Avid behind Final Cut in features?
Has Avid's market share actually increased?
Is Avid or Final Cut the "Industry Standard" today?
Can Avid or Final Cut "gain market share" in the industry?
Hollywood vs. Indie Film - who owns each market?
Can you make more money with one NLE or the other?
What about the lagging editor systems, like Adobe Premiere?

Warning: This hard core techie. We're talking servers, nonlinear workflows and fast furious name dropping of production houses you've never heard of.

Oil is cheap: So why is the price of gas @?!{*%! rising?

2009-02-22T00:53:00.008-05:00

Because the gas companies hate us and want to take all of our money? Because the fat cats who run the multinationals are evil megalomaniacal bastards who want us to pay for their new solid gold trashcans?
While any of those reasons might be true, and certainly fulfill the human need to have someone to be pissed at*, the truth has more to do with where the oil is coming from, and how expensive it is to get it where it needs to be.
This story from Yahoo and AP has the latest reasons. Don't worry - there are still plenty of people to be mad at: the oil companies, pipeline companies, the government, the idiots who brought us this economic meltdown, Andrew Dice Clay...
Ok, we just threw him in because he's so annoying - and there are others.

*A quick note to our non-US readers - Americans are used to "cheap" gas, so when it was $4 a gallon buyers were horrified - and sales and travel went down somewhat. Then the price dropped - fast - it was under $1.50 a gallon not that along ago here in the sunny climes of Maryland's Eastern Shore: rural, but close to Baltimore and Washington. Yay! All was right with the world! Then it started creeping back up - now it's around $1.85 per gallon. Does this have anything to do with the present US (and global, we know) financial disaster? Probably, in some way - but the oil companies posted record profits - world record shattering profits - which makes folks a lil bit suspicious!

Go Ahead, Lie To Us...

2009-02-22T00:03:00.005-05:00

Ahh, it's (name a month) and new rumors about Apple's (name a product) are flooding the Internet. The Mac mini revamp being the most current crush object.
Why so vague, you ask?
Because speculations, intelligent projections, searching through trash cans in Cupertino (or any of Apple's suppliers), inspecting the chai tea leaves from the Silicon Valley Starbucks, and outright wild-ass guesses are one of the Internets favorite past times when Apple is the topic. (Not to mention deathwatches and equally macabre hobbies)
Sometimes the guesses are close or even correct - often they are flat out wrong - if not just weird, but that doesn't stop the game from being played.
So, how do you know who or what to believe?
Here's a guide from Technologizer that might help you separate the wheat from the chaff, the goofy from the sublime, the next gotta-have product from the always illusive vaporware.

Using Your HD Camera As A Still Camera

2009-02-21T15:09:00.013-05:00

This a vid cap from the PRS 2008 Open House Tour I shot for local cable TV. This was shot with Sony z1u with the aperture all the way open. Format was HDV 1440 x 1080i @ 60 fps. I exported a 1920 x 1080i jpg from from my NLE's time line. I then de-interlaced it in photoshop and color corrected in Adobe Camera Raw 4.

This is good enough for the web, I wouldn't make a poster out of this. If you click on the picture you'll see how crunchy and noisey the still actually is. But, for a small pick on web site or facebook, it works just fine.

Video Tips for the Stupid

2009-02-16T19:53:00.005-05:00

Via iJustine, this little editing tip was spotted in the new iMovie '09.

Re-Invent the Wheel

2009-02-15T02:09:00.001-05:00

Having trouble coming up with a new idea?

Press play and then read on.

Most people assume this song is a classical Irish tune. It's not.

It was written by Simon Jeffes, a classically-trained guitarist, composer and arranger. Simon didn't like the formulas of rock and classical music. But some reason he found ethnic music more open to innovation. He formed the group Penguin Cafe Orchestra...

In 1982, while touring Japan, he found a harmonium dumped on a Kyoto street. He moved to it to a friend's house and wrote a song on it: "Music For A Found Harmonium."

The Irish group Patrick Street's version of the song was featured in Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack.

Jeffes found something old and created something new with it. Patrick Street took something new and made it something classic.

So what? I'm primarily a video camera man/editor. I shoot raw video, rearrange the video and turn it into a story. Writers take a blank pages add some writing and turn it into a story. Chefs take raw vegetables... You get the idea.

The point is nothing new under the sun. Don't beat yourself up if you can't think of a wholly new idea, because no ever has. We are all building on the work of people who have gone before. You can however put a new theme on classic theme. You can look at a classic idea from a different perspective.

Panasonic's HPX300

2009-02-11T20:18:00.005-05:00

Panasonic announces its new shoulder mount Prosumer Camera the HPX300. The press release is here. Able Tech has a video tour here. You can download the European brochure here. And I got all this information on (imho) the best video production forum DVinfo.

Google Earth Hack

2009-02-10T09:50:00.000-05:00

www.streetwithaview.com

Amazon Kindle II

2009-02-09T22:51:00.005-05:00

Amazon Kindle II is out.

Random thoughts:

Still not interested in getting one. Needs a few more killer features before I see getting one. Needs live news updates or email or twitter access or for @#$%@ sake color.

The new free 3G connectivity thing is good. The cheaper books is good. But the $400 price tag and 16 shades of grey are really hard to get excited about.

This is an emerging technology, I'm sure yuppies and traveling tech consultants will love this thing.

I have a sneaky feeling that Apple is going to make a 9 inch ipod tablet type thing that will blow this out of the water.

The Star Trek Code Cracked

2009-02-09T21:00:00.001-05:00

io9 cracked the Star Trek: The Original Series code. Above is a fool proof chart to help you write an episode of Star Trek.

Echo Chamber

2009-02-09T01:36:00.001-05:00

In The Know: Are Reality Shows Setting Unrealistic Standards For Skanks?

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

Wear Your Inside Jokes

2009-02-08T12:59:00.006-05:00

Via What The Duck

UPDATE: A little birdy told me that most people don't know what chimping is. The reference was a little too inside jokey ...

"Chimping" From the Wiki:

Chimping is a colloquial term used in digital photography (especially when using a digital single-lens reflex camera) to describe the habit of checking every photo on the camera display (LCD) immediately after capture.

Some photographers use the term in a derogatory sense to describe the actions of wannabe or newbie photographers, but the act of reviewing images on-camera is not necessarily frowned upon by professional or experienced photographers.

Note: With the advent of solid state video recording Chimping has moved into the video world. (below pic via DVuser UK)

Oh, the weather out there is frightful...

2009-02-07T22:16:00.009-05:00

You know the bad joke where someone tells the dumb guy how hot it is on the surface of the Sun and no one could survive there - and the dumb guy says, "Well then, why don't they get in the shade?"
Yeah, oy! But recently there have been a bunch of headlines about NASA looking at the "dark side" of the Sun. Here, here and here - I started out with this one from Wired.
What they are talking about is the fact that we have positioned a pair of satellites to monitor the Sun - even on the side we can't see at the present time.
We cannot see the dark side of the Moon - it is tide locked to Earth - the same side always faces us. The Sun, 93 million miles away, spins very quickly for as large as it is, a "day" on the Sun lasts about 25 days: meaning if you were standing on the amorphous surface of the equator of the Sun (Yes, yes, of course, in the shade...) you'd see the blue dot of the Earth swing past once a month or so. And then you'd evaporate into your component atoms.
The twin satellites of the STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories) mission - oh, those NASA wags - are stationed to see both sides of our big central heating and lighting plant.
Why is this important? What do humans discuss endlessly and do nothing about? The weather, of course. In this case the weather on the Sun.
Space weather covers a lot of ...um space, but here we are worried about eruptions from the Sun - hugely energetic events that affect power systems on Earth - and satellites in orbit. If we know what's coming - we can prepare - or at least figure out where we put the candles from the last power failure.
Check out the comments at the bottom of the Wired article for different and wildly opposing views arguing the merits of this project (Why dumb guys are reading Wired, I don't know)
Something else to think about - this is another sign of the taming of the Solar System.
That sounds grandiose and it is, but scientists in the future will look back and notice that, slowly and painstakingly, we were weaving a web of sensors around the neighborhood - we absolutely littered the Low Earth Orbit of Earth with satellites, and then scattered farther out more sensors, patiently scanning away - adding to the database for the home office.
We even have flung our eyes and ears out there - way out there - to the planets out in the deep freeze at the edge of the Solar System - and even beyond.
And someday we'll need that data - to warn of an approaching rock, or solar flare or the Ancient Astronauts coming home after a long vacation.
If we don't listen to the dumb guys - we'll be ready.
Go here for a fairly cool NASA movie on STEREO
(Image from NOAA)

Just found this
The Moon passing in front of the Sun taken from one of the STEREO satellites

Zombie Preparedness: Are you doing your part?

2009-02-07T18:54:00.004-05:00

You know there is only three things you can be certain about in this world: death, taxes and the coming Zombie apocalypse. Not much you can do for the first two, but fortunately the groups working on the the whole Zombie thing.

The New Jersey Green Light Anti-Zombie Squad (NY GLASZ) has begun organizing and has offered rather useful list of useful gear you will need and i09 has also posted GLASZ useful 10 Tips for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.

They are currently doing demonstrations at the premier survivalist event: New York Comic Con...

Youtube Genre #468 - A Photo A Day

2009-02-05T00:57:00.002-05:00

PHOTO A DAY is this genre of video that has pops up more and more on the net. The idea is that you take one photo of yourself (or a thing) every day for a set amount of time. The results are eerie.

Here are some of my favorites...

I think the attraction has something to do with the progression.

What Don't You @#%^ing Understand?

2009-02-03T02:12:00.004-05:00

Remixing a celebrity freak out into a dance song. Genius.

UPDATE: You can download the mp3 (for free) here. No gimmicks, except the link is surrounded by ads for drag queen Rupaul's upcoming album Drag Race. You were warned.

Why Battle Star Galactica 1980 was cancelled...

2009-02-02T06:17:00.002-05:00

can be basically summed up by this video. Respect the disco...

And if that is not enough classic Americana for you, here is a promo video of a Universal Studios tour...

Sunday Funny: Sophie Can Walk

2009-02-01T14:18:00.003-05:00

A man fights the doctors who refuse to believe his newborn daughter would ever walk.... before she was one years old. via @JoeQuesada.

Kodachrome I hardly knew ye, or there goes tortuous Ted

2009-02-01T02:00:00.017-05:00

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Paul Simon - There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973)

Sorry Paul, you may just have your Kodachrome taken away. There is only two places the world you can get Kodachrome film developed. Eastman Kodak is closing it's Lausanne Kodachrome lab, their only remaining dedicated to processing it. There are some doubts whether or not the film will survive to it's 75th anniversary in 2010.

Kodachrome was the first practical color transparent film. IMHO, the most interesting thing about Kodachrome is that it was invented by two professional musicians: Leopold Damrosch Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr. In 1917 the two went and saw the movie Our Navy that was advertised in to be in color using Prizma process. They felt Prizma sucked, so they went home and built a color movie camera. They were still in high school.

(Note: This not exactly true. The camera they ending up building was not commercially viable. It took them almost another two decades to come up with the process and marketing of Kodachrome. But I like the above story better.)

There are many film stocks still in production by K odak and they will contune making for the foreseeable feature. But we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning. When film finally kicks the bucket the thing we need to remember is that digital is not better. It's just more convenient.

Got Bay?

2009-01-31T16:58:00.008-05:00

Back in the day, when I was a film school, me and my film school mates would sit around talking about our favorite directors. One name that absolutely never came up on our lists was that of the filmmaker Michael Bay. He has his own forums where you can discuss his many works. Here is link to all of his posts. He also has a blog.

I personally love to hate everything he does. His movies are like candy bars - they look tasty but after twenty minutes you feel sick and have a headache.

Outside my house at night

2009-01-30T21:05:00.003-05:00

Um....

2009-01-30T11:50:00.001-05:00

If you get to know me, you quickly learn that my four favorite things in the whole world are Russians, Badly Lit Video, Tom Waits and Michael Jackson style dancing. So imagine my joy when I found this video.

This just in... The world prepares for unimaginable: Next Nicholas Cage May Not Suck.

2009-01-29T23:24:00.007-05:00

Article with some details from Alex Proyas the director of the Nicholas Cage movie Knowing.

UPDATE: I saw it and it did not suck. That is all.

Winter's Night Sky From My Back Porch

2009-01-29T01:41:00.003-05:00

John Updike

2009-01-27T21:41:00.004-05:00

Sorry if it seems like only death posts lately, but they keep dropping like flies...

John Updike died today. I know he wrote a lot of books, but the average American college student will probably know him best for his short story A&P.

Below I have embedded the short film version of this short story. What is unusual about this American short is that it actually stars actors you may have heard of. Sean Hayes (From Will & Grace) and Amy Smart (from Jeff's favorite movie Crank.)

A & P Movies & TV SPIKE.com

Off Topic

2009-01-24T23:12:00.006-05:00

Ever had one of those songs that stick in your head and you have no idea who sings the song or what the hell the actual lyrics are?

I have several of those but I had one that posed a particular problem. It wasn't in English. It was this ultra cool jazzy Italian song and with this hypnotic locomotive beat... I'd seen in a movie but I couldn't remember which one.

Well, long story short - I found it by accident when I was looking through iTunes World music section. It was "Called Via Con Me" (Come away with me) by legendary Italian singer/songwriter Paolo Conte.

And wonder of wonders, Youtube has a video with subtitled titled.

I guess the point of this is that everything is out there now. Things still get lost in the ether but now the ether is searchable. So if you are missing something, it's probably on the internet.

Aussie's leak new JVC camera

2009-01-21T17:54:00.008-05:00

Well JVC Australia is probabley getting an earful from Headquarters but here is the JVC GY-HM700E.

JVC's new approach has their cameras recording to XDCAM and recording in a format native editing to Final Cut Pro.

Here are some of the features...

1. Compact shoulder form factor of less than 4 kg (8.9 lbs.) in operation
2. High quality 1/3” progressive 3CCD with unique JVC’s H/V spatial offset
3. Newly developed 14x high-quality interchangeable lens by Canon
4. Newly developed high-quality LCOS viewfinder
5. Newly developed large LCD display
6. Double-memory hybrid recording system using optional KA-MR100G SxS memory card recorder
7. HD SDI output, SD down-convert capability over IEEE 1394 interface, USB 2.0 interface

Shut up and do it

2009-01-20T23:49:00.006-05:00

Now that our American political, economic and social systems have been fixed. The Creatio Ex Materia staff can now turn our attention back to what we do best and that is creating stuff out of eternally pre-existent matter.

Which for means for me getting to writing. And more specifically it means writing the screenplay I never finished and shooting that web series Jeff and I have been talking about offline for literally years now. (More on this in later posts.)

And just as that thought occurred to me this little cup of motivation from vlogger Paul Del Vecchio popped up on tweet space...

Paul DV VLOG - Write Your Damn Screenplay from Paul Del Vecchio on Vimeo.

Inaugurus Centralus est Terminus

2009-01-20T00:24:00.005-05:00

Of course, you came here to watch live streaming coverage of Barack Obama's Inauguration.
Where else?

All done now - with nary a hitch
Thanks to the fine folks at Hulu for the vid

Actually we just want to see if this worked...
And we know it did because Pete watched it all the way from Australia!
We know distance is an illusion these days, but still...

Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán Merino (November 25, 1920 – January 14, 2009)

2009-01-14T19:09:00.010-05:00

Khan Noonien Singh

[to Kirk]

No. No, you can't get away. From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

The actor who played Khan, Ricardo Montalbán, died today. He gets waved to the head of the line at Peter's Gate for his roles in the Wrath of Khan and Naked Gun. And he also did Fantasy Island and Dynasty. And he also starred on Broadway for a number of years. And those where his real muscles in the Wrath of Khan. And he was married to the same woman for 63 years.

While perhaps not one our best actors, he certainly was one of our most iconic.

And incase you aren't getting all the Corinthian leather jokes here is the commercial that made "reech kooreenthian lay-ther" a catch phrase:

Wanna go for a ride?

2009-01-11T23:36:00.003-05:00

How about a little time traveling and plunging thru the heart of an exploded star?
This video created by MIT using info gathered by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope takes viewers thru and around the crime scene of a dead neutron star, torn asunder 330 years ago.

What's unique is that the images aren't just the artist's imagination, altho look at it, it is art in the purest sense, but it's based on the astronomical data.

It's as good as being there - until we do get there...
Volunteers, anyone? We'll drive...

Here's the story from Wired
And here's the video

Apple Day

2009-01-06T20:17:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago when the 15 inch MacBook Pro came out Jeff and I made our pilgrimage to the iStore and check out the new toys. We pish poshed the 13 inch MacBook and went straight to the 15 inch. We put the computer through its paces... we ran Motion, Spore, Color and Aperture. All ran well on the machine...

But, next to us were two girls that couldn't have been 13 years old. They giggled until their dad came over and shushed them. They were taking pictures of the themselves making funny faces and then warping the photos in iPhoto...

I thought of them today when I watched the Apple Keynote speech. While many of us who like the pro apps were ho-humming, Apple just released a bunch of software that will teach kids how to play music instruments, organize their photographs and make movies.

Ho hum that.

Roger Corman & the History of Hollywood

2009-01-05T00:28:00.008-05:00

Roger "King of the Bs" Corman - Last of the second wave of indy filmmakers lays down the history and future of independent filmmaking.

Now the thing to remember about Roger Corman is that he's a great independent filmmaker, but not necessarily a great filmmaker. In the late eighties, early nineties, Independent film came to mean art film. Independent filmmaker in Roger Corman's case is used in the more classical sense of the term meaning someone who isn't working for the big movie studios. (The number of major studios has changed over the years, these days there are "The Big Six.").

By this classical definition porn is independent filmmaking. Check out his current crop of films by Roger Corman's company and you get a better picture of the type of movies he has made and continues to make.

Now you may not want to learn film theory from Roger Corman, but you can definitely learn the business of movie making from him.

Shakespeare Undead

2009-01-04T14:13:00.003-05:00

It was only matter of time really.

Zune's Day - UPDATED - now with Killer Leap Year Feature

2008-12-31T16:34:00.008-05:00

Something weird is happening with many of Microsoft's Zune mp3 players - the 30GB ones: they are dying, all over the world, all roughly in the same time frame - they are freezing up and have turned into paperweights!
Check out stories from Wired, Gizmodo, MSNBC

A virus triggered by the end of the year?

Maybe they were all just depressed?

Even a self-admitted Apple fan-boy does not want to see this happen to folks - it's bad enough they had Zunes in the first place...

Wha? Too snarky?

UPDATE: Microsoft Says Leap Year Bug Caused Zune Failures - PC World

In the Dark - or - Well, where did you last put most of the universe?

2008-12-30T13:05:00.018-05:00

At an informal soirée at Ande and Katie's fabulous mid-town penthouse apartment overlooking a bustling Grasonville, we arrived late for a fascinating discussion that took in all sorts of topics (translation - a bull session buoyed by beer broke out.)

The girls' best friend and cool dude Alex, armed with a wry wit and keen insight (as well as a case of Buds) said excitedly, "Guess what - they found the dark matter!" - and much talking ensued... Alex is one of those guys with a curious mind - ask him about rap, ask him about physics, movies and where to eat on the Eastern Shore - he has good answers, and more importantly, smart questions on all this and more.

Now we can hazard a guess that this was the only conversation involving cosmological physics occurring in Queen Anne's County in the wee hours of the night - unless those rowdy Johns Hopkins post-docs had assembled again at Red Eye's Dock Bar.

But to make sure you don't feel left out should such a discussion spontaneously generate around you - a recap...

Dark matter is the stuff we can't see or sense that has to compose the majority of the universe. Its esoteric relative, dark energy, is the force that is causing the universe to expand faster and faster - a fact we didn't understand until fairly recently.

Ted, who is also well informed on this topic as he is on so many others - most annoying, calls this stuff x-matter - it has to exist to plug in embarrassing holes in the equations cosmologists come up with to explain the way the universe works in any way predicted by the latest theories.
But we couldn't find it - it's dark - no shine, no reflection. It looks bad when you've misplaced 96% of the universe.

But now we think it's been found - or at least you can see how it affects normal matter - and it seems to part of the web and skeleton that galaxies form around.

Check out this story from Space.com
Here's a link to a video 'splaining it too.
Here are other posts we've done on the topic - lector caveo

And for dessert - a NOVA ScienceNow clip featuring our generation's Carl Sagan, host and director of the Hayden Planetarium, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson,

We saw this coming...

2008-12-29T11:44:00.027-05:00

The end of the year is when all those annoying predictions come out - self-serving soothsayers sounding sage or sullen or sarcastic...

So who are we to buck the trend?

Here are a bunch we've found from all the over the 'net.
We surf - so you don't have to (yeah, right!)
We steal - so... well, never mind that!

In no particular order...

The Worst Predictions about 2008 Business Week

Celebrity Predictions for 2009 - An attempt at humor from the Daily News

Psychic Predictions - UK

Do you need a scarf or a snorkel? Weather Predictions from Old Farmers Almanac

Social Media Predictions 2009 - Whatever that means...

Five Apple Predictions for 2009 - from Seeking Alpha

2009 Nikon Predictions - much more still camera than video...

Kreskin's Predictions for 2009 - an example: A performer impersonating a clown on television will revive with greater interest in the art of the clown. This could introduce a new form of television called silent TV.
...But seriously folks

4 Tech Predictions for 2009 - from CNN/Money - apparently people will want to have fun

Top 10 Science Predictions that did not come true

British Science Predictions for 2009

Winter Preview - Television Without Pity: Snarkinesses home on the web

The 10 Most Significant Developments of 2008 - CPU, GPU, Flash, Apple...

Oscar 2009 Predictions - Alternative Film Guide.
And just where is Samuel L. Jackson for The Spirit??

What's in store for 2009? - Hollywood Reporter

4 Predictions for 2009 - Motley Fool

Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of Dec 1900

Check out these predictions from 1900 - some are surprisingly accurate" Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span.

- some, like the this one, not so much"

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

From C|NET TV - Worst Tech Predictions of 2008

C|NET TV 2009 Tech Predictions

Top Tops of 2008

2008-12-28T10:35:00.010-05:00

YAY! It's that time of year when those in the know slap together lists intended to educate those of us not in the know. And we are most certainly the latter*, but we are good Do Bees and happy to share. You'll see some of the basic themes of our site here - except for video/camera stuff which I'll leave to Ted who knows an f-stop from a door stop.
Top tech breakthroughs of 2008
Top Ten Stories you may have missed
Seven best "capers" of the year (not the weird food)
Top 10 Movies - Baltimore Sun - Newsweek - - YouTube
io9: Best & Worst Sci Fi Movies of the Year - i09's 2008 year in review - Holidays get you down? 5 reasons to stick around until 2010
tv.com's Top 100 Everything of 2008
Top TV Shows of 2008 - Chicago Trib
Best Gadget Lists of 2008
Lifehacker's most discussed posts of 2008
The Best Books of 2008 - New York Times - Amazon: Editor & Customer Reviews - Science Fiction & Fantasy -
Ten Books better left on paper - Top Sci Fi movies that should never have been made
Wired Mag's 2008 Foot in Mouth Award Winners
and we'll leave the last word to the always shy and unassuming Time Magazine:
The Top Ten Everything of 2008

UPDATED: Top 5 Amazing Astronomy Discoveries of 2008 - Space.com

These are the ones that caught our eye - Many thanks to all of those gifted writers and listmakers we cavalierly ripped off: there are hundreds more out there, from real experts who actually know of which they speak to the ones written by total posers somewhat like this one - hey, wait a second...

*OK, "we" means me. Not that anyone should care, but I want to make clear that the rest of the talented Creatio Ex Materia staff is embarrassingly chock full of experts in a near endless multitude of things: video production and editing, dystopias, vampiric lore, cat care, mad libs, history, gambling, Good SF, Bad SF, how we could make a better movie than any of the dreck featured on the Sci Fi Channel Saturday Night, how to lose at cards, how to occupy oneself when stuck on a plane, music of all sorts, helping troubled kids, sports, BSG, bad movies, good movies, good acting and oh so bad acting, Pushing Daisies, nightlife in Delmar... to name but a few. Being the most "not in the know" gives me a chance to learn - and to stop learning is to die.

Harold Pinter (1930 -2008)

2008-12-26T13:28:00.005-05:00

"Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century. That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: "Pinteresque."

Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter's drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterized as "comedy of menace", a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the volatility and elusiveness of the past."

That's a quote from the Nobel Prize website. He received the award in 2005 for literature.

One of the last remaining "Angry Young Men." His was part of the generation that took theatre and movies into the modern era.

He died on December 24, 2008.

Eartha Kitt (1927-2008)

2008-12-25T19:01:00.004-05:00

Orson Welles, with whom she had an affair with, called her "the most exciting woman in the world" and cast her as Helen of Troy. She played Catwoman on the TV Series Batman. She was born in a town called North, South Carolina. She was publicly ostracized for criticizing the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon.

She made a come back, of course. And was acting on Broadway and independent movies as late as 2007.

She was an American original in every positive sense of that word. She was Sex in the City and Dorothy Parker all rolled into one.

She will be missed.

Cliche vs. Convention

2008-12-23T15:00:00.006-05:00

Mad genius Ted chided and belittled me the other day when I said, innocently, that something was a cliche. "No, not really," Ted said, eyeing me with a certain disdain, "People say that all the time. It's not a cliche if it's the way it has to happen!" My recollection that he said this to me in a crowded room using a loudspeaker, poured ice water down my pants and promptly booted me out the door into a snowstorm might be an exaggeration. I blame excess egg nog.

Tragically (and as usual, damital) Ted is right - people confuse cliche and convention all the time.

Let's define - According to Apple's Dictionary... Cliche: cliché - noun
1. a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought : the old cliché “one man's meat is another man's poison.”
• a very predictable or unoriginal thing or person : each building is a mishmash of tired clichés.

Convention: noun
1. a way in which something is usually done, esp. within a particular area or activity : the woman who overturned so many conventions of children's literature.
• behavior that is considered acceptable or polite to most members of a society : he was an upholder of convention and correct form | social conventions.

Ted actually thinks about these things - Picture him rubbing his chin, scratching his head, staring off into space, not finishing sentences as another new thought pops into his fecund, multi-tasking mind... (Cliches? Yes, yes, yes, oh, no)

We tried to explain to the ever patient and long suffering Ande (another mad genius and all too annoyingly gifted) what the hell we were yammering about. She graced us with that little half-smile and "uh, huh," which means, "Yeesh, half of the human race is reduced to this!"

It is not a cliche when someone cracks an egg or two and uses a waffle maker to make waffles - it is the damn recipe and the device used to make them. It might be a cliche when the idiot, clueless sitcom Dad, when Mom is out of town, burns the waffles to smoldering hunks o'carbon when cooking for the eye-rolling young'uns.

Visual cliches abound - and it's not to say that they aren't useful. They telescope time and action - a shortcut, an alias you click to zip past the boring stuff. In visual media, someone clever comes up with an iconic image - and thus, Ted says, gives the right for misuse to every hack out there who follows.

Some examples...
Romance - oh, ok, Sex - waves on beach, oil pumps, and the ever popular train plunging into a tunnel. Trees falling, bridges collapsing and soggy spaghetti all signify ...well, never mind - but it might be time for Viagra.

Sickness (and Romance, not always interconnected said the bachelor!): if a pretty woman gets ill, it will take a long, lingering time for her to shuffle off this mortal coil - but she will still look damn good as she does - Terms of Endearment a tissue box example. Males too - Brian's Song - who says men won't cry? Or Death Be Not Proud for the sick child - man, now I'm getting weepy... moving on...
I'm sure there are newer examples - but somehow Saw III is sad for whole other reasons.

Blinking red neon sign outside the hotel room - bad economic news for some fallen SOB.
Car chases have a entire encyclopedia full of cliches: exploding fruit stands, baby carriages, blind guy walking, sudden shocking impacts from cars to the side - you name it - they've clichéd it.

Bad guys have a tendency to slip on marbles or gum balls, bad guys can't shoot worth a damn.
Bad guys often smoke these days, the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files being the raspy poster boy of carcinogenic evil. It's funny how cliches change over time - we happily admire smoke polluting the lungs of cool characters from the '50s - as in Mad Men.

Horror Movies seem to be ripe with cliches - why? Because you ain't there for literature, babe. You want to see some spooky shenanigans go down and get impatient if it takes too long to get there.
Do not be one of the couple making out or lounging in post-coital bliss at the beginning of a horror movie - you will not be making it to the big game or the prom - you will be the first to go, tho you have provided a hormonal headlock ensuring that viewers stick around until the mayhem starts.
If a minor star shows up in a medium closeup with plenty of room behind or to the side for something nasty to appear - rest assured, it will.
And how many times have heard the police say that the those scary calls - from the panting psycho who intends the hero/ine intense harm - are coming from inside the house!!! - cue the running and the screaming and the splattered walls.

More - look for the hook hanging from the car door, beware hands reaching out from gravesites, in fact do not piss off telekinetic teens in general (Carrie stated it all) and make sure that the brilliant, elegant, debonair, wine connoisseur who is expressing great interest in the actor's neck is not Hannibal Lecter or a vampire looking for a quick bite.
And someone is gonna get hit by a bus that zips in from the side - (Final Destination, Fringe) - such an ironic end for some friends of the star or a way for the just captured bad guys to vanish before they start giving away the plot to the good guys.
And is does not bode well if you are a second tier actor and buddy of the main character - either you perish quickly or perish in a burst of irony at the end of the show, when the creature/villain/evil government/evil corporate/undead guy returns to (un)life in a final attempt to ruin the day of the heroes - but either way - you are toast.

And we can stop with the Zombies, please? Plague or mutant gene or vampiric transfer, enough of the shambling brain eaters already!

Movie montages are also a cliche - but they work - again as a shortcut. As examples we give you building the barn from Witness, Rocky training for his first fight (and the 27 that followed) and assembling the shark cage in Jaws.
All opportunities for great music - that will of course become cliche-ish in their own right - the "duuummm - dum dum dum" from Jaws still being used, either in a subtle fashion, or as an outright parody - but once you hear it you know something wicked this way comes* - and it's famished.

Some TV shows break the all cliche's all the time standard. On Battlestar Galactica (hear that?... it's Ande and Creatio staff shrink Katie sighing) you never quite know who's gonna die. They gave the wondrous Mary McDonnell's character, Laura Roslin, cancer - you think she's getting better, next episode, she's bald - a gut punch.
Speaking of verbal cliches, I must admit I wear my heart on my sleeve for McDonnell - but what the hell does that mean? It sounds both uncomfortable and icky, yet we use it all the time.

Perhaps no cliche bugs me so much as hearing beeps and boops as words appear - character by pixelated character - on a computer screen.
I'm fine with spaceships making a racket in space, I'm down with winds that float cows around, but leave the big ol'truck alone, I'm even okay with the couple meeting "cute" as they both reach for the same avocado or book or .37 Magnum (Do you feel lucky, well, do ya, Meg Ryan?) but the idea that you hear a sound every time a letter appears on screen is just dumb - it's an April Fools trick you'd play on a friend's computer - and then guiltily remove once when they were taken away by the men in white coats.

But enough of this - no doubt you have your own, better examples. But I have to admit that this one puzzles me.
Are these words, which do serve a function, but are also used all the time, sometimes laboriously typed out on a screen or an old-fashioned typewriter, a cliché?

The End

*Yes, yes, plagiarism, but I steal from the best - MacBeth and Bradbury

New Mac Mini

2008-12-21T12:47:00.004-05:00

This image is probably a fake... Looks more like an external DVD or BluRay burner for the mac book air. I got from it macenstein.

Now these false "leaks" come out of the wood work whenever MacWorld, NAB WWDC or CES is right around the corner.

The cynical side of me wonders if Apple leaks these fake images to create buzz.

This Just In: Earth's Force Field on the Fritz*

2008-12-18T22:59:00.006-05:00

To add to all of our other troubles - looks like the planet's protective magnetic force field, that safeguarding wonder of nature and physics that allowed us to crawl from the slime to become the paragon of virtue that is Man - doesn't quite work the way we thought it did - and just in time for the 11 year cycle of increased solar storms.

Check out the story from Discovery News. Turns out that the magnetic field that protects Earth from the hellish emissions from the Sun - and occasional blasts of just plain dangerous chunks of plasma - won't work as well as we might need in the next few years - meaning that satellites get fried, country-wide power failures are possible, astronauts are in additional danger and skin cancer rates will surge. A Sci-Fi Channel Saturday Night Triple-Header - except we are the Baldwin brother of the week.

While it would be nice to blame the Bush administration for this, it's just that we now have a better understanding of the structure of the fields (via some of those endangered satellites), and the alignment of Earth towards the Sun will be ...unfortunate.

In the meantime - invest in sunscreen and batteries.

on the fritz - doesn't that just sound anti-German somehow - Not my intention, but just watch your borders anyway