Terry Pratchett
Monday, June 16th, 2008one of my favorite authors, and the funniest writer alive, is dying.
damn.
Posted in media, people | 1 Comment »>been there. done that. wrote the HOWTO.
Thursday, August 30th, 2007what was it i said about imitation and flattery?
forget it. i feel ripped off now.
Posted in media, random stuff | 2 Comments »>remember VH1’s PopUp Video?
Friday, October 6th, 2006with my newfound freedom, the result of working for myself, i’ve found i have a good deal more creative energy than i have paying clients. as a result, i’ve started working more on my own pet projects, like the sudoku solver. i’m working on a new project these days, another one of those ideas that came to me in the shower.
for some reason, i was thinking about music videos, probably along the lines of “video killed the radio star, but then MTV killed the video, so all we’re left with is crap”
anyhoo, it got me thinking of VH1’s PopUp Video. somehow, that led me to the idea of a PopUp-Video-like overlay for YouTube.
so, that’s what i’m working on. a means of annotating any video on YouTube, Google Video, or other similar services. the interface and implementation are fairly clunky at this point, but when it’s a little more polished, i’ll post it either here or on ClickHereDammit.com.
Posted in media, random stuff | No Comments »>Steve Jobs looks unhealthy
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
Note the before and after shots above.
Steve Jobs isn’t looking so hot these days, even compared to just seven months ago, at MacWorld San Francisco, 2006. The above “after” shot is a screen capture from the WWDC 2006 keynote stream. See it for yourself.
His appearance, as well as the fact that he left the majority of the keynote presentation up to several other presenters, leads me to believe that his Steveness isn’t in the best of health. And I’m not the only one. Considering that he underwent surgery two years ago for pancreatic cancer, and has been healthy since his recovery, it’s odd to me that his appearance has gotten so much worse so quickly.
Steve, I know you’re a vegan and have probably never weighed more than 180 in your life, but man, you look thin. Have a sandwich. Or a ribeye. We’re worried about you.
Posted in media, random stuff | 7 Comments »>new york state of mind
Sunday, March 19th, 2006we (myself and two other people i work with) have been invited to new york by worldwide pants, david letterman’s production company, to perform a live install of a post-it mosaic on the Late Show.
it should air either monday night or wednesday night, depending on how scheduling goes.
watch this space. i’ll be documenting the experience :)
Posted in fun stuff, media | 2 Comments »>the evil genius strikes again
Monday, March 13th, 2006my latest creation is online now:
http://www.capstrat.com/el2al/
after some extensive research on google and wikipedia, i managed to find a number of connections between Elvis and Einstein. the flash doohicky linked above documents this social network of sorts, and links to the video we made when dismantling the Elvis post-it mosaic, and put up a new one of Einstein.
that video is here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6897798324374195195
how did i not see this before?
Thursday, January 12th, 20061. systemic shortage of arab translators in the US intelligence agencies.
2. more than 500 mostly arab-speaking detainees in guantanamo and secret US prisons elsewhere in the world.
3. potentially millions of conversations (something on the order of 500 simultaneously) subject to illegal warantless wiretaps of US citizens’ overseas phone calls by the NSA, many of those in arabic.
4. “we do not torture.”
so, what are we to do with all those arab prisoners sitting around (in black hoods and ball gags) not getting tortured, with nothing better to do than read the Koran they fished out of the toilet (again!)?
it’s pretty clear to me now: all those “ghost detainees” are being put to work translating the backlog of NSA wiretap fodder. it’s like a sweatshop, only instead of getting paid four cents an hour to make Nikes, they have to patiently explain the difference between the pronunciation of “milk” and “yogurt” (again!) while a technician wires up the electrodes to the nipple clamps.
Posted in media, random stuff | 1 Comment »>…and even more
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006some more goodness came in via RSS today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonhirata/sets/1378299/
http://photohirata.blogspot.com/2005/11/mosaic-1.html
much better photography than i ever manage of my own projects.
and apparently, post-its figure somehow into the future of advertising:
http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-create-post-it-art.html
this thing just won’t die
Sunday, September 11th, 2005i went looking again today to see what people have been commenting on the flickr set of the post-it Elvis and found even more great post-it art on flickr:
some kind of “monkey mural” in asheville - i don’t see it, but it’s interesting in its own way. a different approach to the pixels.
keeping with the theme: Pac Man takes on modern office decor.
Bergdorf Goodman in New York. clowns, high fashion, and post-its. three great tastes that taste great together? it works, i suppose, according to the three second rule.
and finally, the slightly mysterious scouting photos for a future post-it portrait?
i’ll have to keep an eye on that last one…
Posted in fun stuff, media | 3 Comments »>the one-word hitchhiker’s guide review
Sunday, May 8th, 2005a phrase i honestly never thought i’d have the opportunity to utter in my lifetime:
“one ticket for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, please”
what follows is my review of the movie, made from the book based on the radio plays which were later made into a TV series. you’ve heard about it by now, or else you’ve been dead. in which case, my condolences.
sorry. from this point in, i’ll try not to be funny. everyone tries to be funny, to match the wit of the late Douglas Adams, when reviewing or even discussing his work. it’s as if, when discussing Shakespeare, one must adopt olde English spellyng. i find myself falling into the same trap, though, but i’m trying hard to be as unfunny and non-Adamsesque as i can muster.
because, frankly, the movie did the same.
so, my one-word review of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the movie:
meh.
that’s right, “meh.”
i really really wanted to love this movie when i heard it was finally being put into production. then i read the early reviews, this one with special interest, and i started really really wanting to hate it.
but, after seeing the movie, all i can say, equivocally and definitively is that it was a movie.
in many places, however too few, it was brilliant. in many places, unfortunately many, it was flawed. there were times when i laughed, even though i knew all the lines before they were spoken. there were times i didn’t laugh, though i should have, again because i knew the lines that weren’t spoken.
the film looked magnificent - the henson creature shop earned its keep with Marvin and the vogons, and i can see now what they’ve been up to since Farscape went off the air. in particular, the entire sequence with Slartibartfast almost, but not quite, made up for the loss of many of the earlier sequences from the book and radio series.
this review is getting longer than the one word i promised in the title, but i’ll sum up here:
i was disappointed in the movie version of a book which i loved. it’s an unavoidable fate for any such film, regardless of the book, the author, or the genre to which it belongs. my sentiments in that regard are, i’m certain, shared by many of the book’s fans.
i was, however, not as disappointed as i had hoped.
Posted in media | 1 Comment »>