General

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There are 416 posts filed in General (this is page 36 of 42).

5 Star Laundromat

I was doing my laundry this morning down the street at the laundromat, appropriately enough.

Walked in around 10:30, and there was a guy asleep on one of the folding counters. Strange, I thought, perhaps a homeless man looking for shelter from the cold. He wasn’t in my way, so I went about my business. Shortly before 11, he woke up.

This was not a homeless man; this was a hopelessly lost drunk frat boy. Yes, he was still drunk at 11 a.m., and had no idea what time it was or where he was.

He stumbled around, asking incoherent questions of the ladies emptying the change from the washers, who happened to be near him. He fumbled with his CD player, gave up trying to plug in the headphones or push buttons, and wandered out the door. There, the sunlight almost knocked him down. I looked where he’d been sleeping later, and it seems he was using a plastic bag containing other plastic bags as a pillow. I also noticed as he left that he inexplicably was carrying a spindle of blank CDs.

The change ladies and I looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to what we were doing.

Oh, my wacky neighborhood.

Charlie Jade

Robert J. Sawyer is one of my top three favorite authors (with Neil Gaiman and Larry Niven – no particular order). Meeting him in a small setting a couple Decembers ago was a wonderful experience. When I reviewed one of his books for the school paper in college, he was even nice enough to tell me thanks. How many Hugo award winners would take the time for that? He’s a Real Class Act.

In his most recent journal entry (dated 1/31/05), Sawyer mentions an upcoming sci-fi TV show that he’s gotten to see in advance. Charlie Jade sounds really interesting.

Details are scarce, but after poking around the web I’ve figured out that it involves a detective from a parallel universe solving a mystery while traveling between 3 such universes. One of these universes is our own, though that’s not where the show starts.

A couple of quotes about the show from Sawyer:

“Just as the new Battlestar Galactica is establishing a new standard in outer-space SF, Charlie Jade is a breakthrough in Earth-based SF.
Everything that comes after it will be judged against it.”

“This is the closest we’ve ever had to a Blade Runner for the small screen.”

Anything that can be compared to BSG and Blade Runner, and still hold its own, is worth checking out. Sawyer isn’t prone to hyperbole either, he’s not one to paste his recommendation on just anything.

Currently the show looks like it’ll debut in March. Unfortunately the show is jointly produced by Canada and South Africa, and as far as I can tell it hasn’t been picked up in the U.S. But I’m resourceful, I’ll find a way…

edit: I just noticed in his discussion group that Sawyer actually did some consulting in the early stages of Charlie Jade’s development. No way I can’t watch it now.

Halo 2 Shenanigans

I’ve posted before about the problem of cheaters on Xbox Live, particularly in Halo 2 since that’s the only game I play online.

Now, a lighter story to balance things out.

Some of the guys I game with occasionally decide to mess with people online. Thankfully, they do it in a hilarious (instead of annoying/cheating) fashion. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Get 7 people in a party.
2. Everyone change their armor color to pink, and their icon to the bright red lips.
3. Join a matchmade 8 player game, ensuring that one random poor sap will get stuck with the 7 of you.
4. Play the Benny Hill theme song over the headset so everyone can hear it.
5. Run around crazily in the game making 3 Stooges-esque noises, or in rare cases pulling off coordinated dance numbers.
6. At some point actually play the game.
7. Sit back and enjoy the stunned comments from player #8.

Priceless.

(Un)Popular Standard

Been thinking a lot about RSS recently. I love it, using an aggregator has really changed how I receive and process information. But why isn’t use of it more widespread?

The only people I know of who use RSS at all are bloggers. None of my ‘real life’ friends who I interact with daily use it (to my knowledge, speak up if you do!).

(Well I take that back. Some I know use it in a rather innovative way to download new TV shows. Get a bittorrent client that can parse RSS feeds, point it to frequently updated site with torrent files to download, and voila. Instant pseudo-Tivo. But I digress, that use is but a small portion of RSS’ potential.)

Firefox even has some basic RSS functionality built in!

Maybe just putting a feed out there isn’t enough. Maybe the format itself needs some good promotion. Get it out there beyond the early adopter level.

More cool VFX

I love stumbling across sites with amazing video clips. Some of these I found a while ago, others just tonight.

http://www.theembassyvfx.com/qt/Citroen_480.mov
-Great because you will never see a transformer do that. But the clip does prove that CG technology is probably capable of doing a Transformers movie now. The U.S. never gets the good commercials…

http://home.comcast.net/~themichaelsmith/VWHiRes.mpg
Another Transformers-esque clip. Particularly impressive given that its entirely amateur, not by a production house.

http://analogik.com/mm_rev_tetra.asp
(linked to page instead of video by their request)
-Again some of the better FX work I’ve seen. My current working theory is that if you combine CG with a handheld camera approach, it looks more realistic. Firefly did it, Battlestar Galactica does it currently, and so does this clip.

http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/581/
And lastly, this might look like FX but none were involved. It’s a commercial for the Honda Accord, and once again never aired in the U.S. But I read an interview with the director once and it is indeed all one shot, it took something like 25 tries to get right.

To Google or not to Google

Slashdot is reporting on Google’s new policy of rewarding ‘genius’ in their employees with millions of dollars in stock. The article in question lists part of the rationale behind this move:

“…to give people incentives to apply for jobs at Google even after the promise of getting rich from the company’s initial public offering in August had passed.”

Maybe its just me, but I didn’t think Google had any problem attracting new hires. My understanding was that the big G was inundated with far more applications than they could ever hope to process. Google still has just enough of a counterculture vibe going to attract brilliant programmers, who tend to be a little bit “outside the box”. Plus its one of the biggest names in tech right now.

Not that this isn’t a great program for employees, but I’m just surprised at their rationale. Perhaps they’ve burned through the top 1% of hires and are looking to flush more out of the woodwork?

oot and aboot

Feeling much better today, thanks. Must be one of those 24-48 hour stomach flu things. Not pleasant by any means, but could have been worse. Unfortunately ended up missing both classes yesterday and work today, but nothing I really could have done about that.

Nick pointed me to abandonia.com, a warehouse of free old DOS games. They have Chip’s Challenge! I used to play that all the time. Ah, memories…

Off to make up for everything I didn’t get done yesterday. More real content coming soon, I promise.

Blade Runner

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

-Roy as he dies in Blade Runner

Something about that quote never fails to amaze me. There’s a certain lyrical quality to it, a pure sense of both wonder and regret. I’ve heard that Rutger Hauer ad-libbed the line, which if true would make it even more amazing.

Hear it yourself here.