Archive for November, 2005

2005.11.11

The Call of Cthulu

The Call of CthuluSome time back I heard of a small film coming out called The Call of Cthulu. Its particular selling points were that it was A) a new film done in a retro-style B) black and white C) a silent film and D) had great music.

The film was just shot and released in the past year and is 47 minutes of silent movie era happiness. The camera angles, make up and lighting, many of the effects and the sets all give it a sense of something from the early days of film. They did use some modern green screen compositing, but there’s only one point in the film where I noticed it. The music, which runs almost non-stop throughout the movie, is quite good, though at times I thought I could hear that it was computer created and not played by live musicians. Hard to tell. Hardly matters.

The story starts with a man who wants the research he’s done destroyed, and the story goes into what the research was. Of course it’s about the imminent rise of sleeping Cthulu. A bizarre set of coincidences all point to the Old One’s rise, and the man isn’t sure the mind of man will ever be prepared for the horror and insanity.

Just as entertaining as the movie is the DVD extras, which include a making of and deleted scenes. One of the great things about silent film is that the actual spoken dialogue can be spoken, and a few of the deleted scenes (with the audio and color left in tact) are hilarious.

You can read more about the movie at the official site, and if you’re ready to face the horror and pleasure of this independent film buy it by clicking on the picture.

2005.11.09

Caught in a Police Trap

This morning was going so well, too. I got up, voted, hopped in my car and headed off to work. Driving along, dum dee dum. The road has had no cars in front of me for a few blocks. I see up ahead a guy on the corner watching traffic. I don’t think much of it at the time because if he’d wanted to cross the road he would have crossed already while there were no cars.

Wrong. About half a block before I get there he steps out and starts walking across the road. What an idiot, I think to myself, Why didn’t he do that a few minutes ago? Fortunately for me there is plenty of room; he hasn’t crossed the first lane and I’m in the third. I continue driving.

That’s when the motorcycle cop pulls out with his lights.

So, to shorten the story, I got a ticket. It looks like I’ll have to goto court. I’m actually looking forward to it. That was a deliberate trap, and I don’t care what the law says, it’s wrong. I’ll pay my fine and move on but I’ll be heard.

Don’t police have better things to do than lay down traps for crosswalks? Like, perhaps, chasing murderers, arresting drug dealers, busting up brothels, stopping illegal gambling, or harassing jay walkers?

Apparently not.

Generally I am for the police. I understand them in the old way, where the police helped people, they didn’t harass people. These days too many people are scared or paranoid of the police. They have a bad rap from hippie culture, from various television shows, from they themselves believing that most everyone is out to get them. I’m not, but I do think that they really really need to focus on the important things. This is not important, and not just because I got caught.

2005.11.08

Catholics For Evolution

It seems that the Catholic Church prefers evolution over “Intelligent Design”.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”"A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false,” he said. “(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof.”

Read the rest of this entry…

2005.11.07

Adventures in Hybrid Blosxom

Today, with some help from Fletcher Penney I made an attempt at combining static and dynamic rendering of this site so that certain pages (notable the front page!) would load faster. Much much faster. I’m always complaining that this site is dog slow.

Through the reading of this page Fletcher put together and chatting directly I started in on the project.

Initial results were very favorable. The front page loaded up almost instantly. The problems started when I followed up on the many plugins and interpolation hacks I’d included. An unfortunate reality of many Blosxom plugin writers is they cater to the purely dynamic rendering users, like myself. If you are a static user then in most cases you are SOL.

Then I remembered Barijaona Ramaholimihaso had put together a Blosxom Starter Kit that worked in hybrid mode (with a focus on static rendering). He had rewritten many plugins (or created new ones) that would be static rendering friendly. I downloaded the latest version (a new one just a few days old) and got to work.

Unfortunately it became very clear to me in short order that with all the modifications I’d done to my site it wasn’t going to be an easy transfer. In the end, after hours of hacking away at code, I finally put the site back as it was. It’s obvious that I’m going to have to do a LOT of preparation before it can do this right, and I do want to do this right.

So with the knowledge that this is, indeed, possible I’ll head back to the drawing boards and maybe another attempt later this week or next weekend!

2005.11.06

Some Very Silly Videos

I posted this to OOKEE.com:

Recently Mookee found some footage we shot with a VHS camera in 1997. He digitized it and challenged me to an editing contest. Here is his version, and here is mine. They are both kind of large, so broadband is a must. Unfortunately these are the low quality versions; hopefully in the future we can put better versions online. Let us know what you think!

It is unfortunate that I couldn’t figure out how to better compress the videos with iMovie. The options are there, but I didn’t have time to figure out all the settings. I’ll try that sometime soon and through trial and error figure out the optimal settings for web stuff.

Very silly videos. Possibly only Mookee and I will find them funny, but as I told Some Danish Guy, if only a few people find it funny then that’s something!

2005.11.06

Tenant’s Rights in San Francisco

If you’re like me, a renter in San Francisco, then you know how greedy most landlords out here can be. Not only do they charge you up the wazoo for places that suck, but they dollop on hefty security deposits that they do not enjoy returning to you. In fact they do their best to return nothing of your security deposit.

I have a friend who is facing this problem right now. Fortunately the San Francisco Tenant’s Union has loads of information that can help. This page has good information about security deposits. Good information to have when you move out and the landlord tries to screw you. There’s also good information on evictions, conversions, sales of your residence, and more.

I feel extremely lucky to have a great landlord and reasonable rent. My only wish is that it was in a different part of town, but that’s my problem, not his.

2005.11.03

Diagnosis In: It’s Terminal!

I went to the doctor today. I dislike going at all, but sometimes you just have to. I think it’s in a contract I signed. The nurse saw I was a bit anxious though, thankfully, not peeing my pants. She observed for me how it’s funny that people come to the hospital to get good news like, “You don’t have cancer,” but they also come to get bad news like, “Instead of cancer you have AIDS.”

I pondered the wisdom of this obvious statement; as a distraction I gave it a seven out of ten. I found the logic hard to argue with except in the stupid way that really ignorant people do. I was in a hospital, though, with doctors who were, I hoped, smart. I didn’t want to sound ignorant to them. I also didn’t want them to probe me with needles which I’d heard was a technique they use when they think you’re stupid.

The nurse had me go in a room, take off my shirt and wait for the doctor. I waited in this room for at least an hour. The clock showed just 15 minutes had passed but I think it was deliberately taunting me. Weirdly, the room was air conditioned so I put my shirt back on. This seemed to be the cue for the doctor to arrive.

She asked me some questions, poked me a bit with her sharp finger and listened to me breathe for a bit. After looking me over the diagnosis was made. It’s terminal! I’m going to die and there was nothing she could do to help me! I was startled beyond coherence. What? Really? When? I probably wouldn’t die for another 40-60 years, but symptoms were starting to show and the outlook is very bleak. There is no cure for what I have. Still, I’m not letting it get to me. I’m going to fight this with everything I can. You’ll see.

I’m reluctant to share this tragic news with you, Dear Readers, but I felt it my obligation to fully disclose how long you would have before this blog went silent. Forever. My advice to you is not to count on much beyond 40 years, though hopefully much, much longer.

2005.11.02

NaNoWriMo Kickoff Today!

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, kicks off today. It looks like their server is still being slammed so it might be slow to load for a couple days. Those of you who have read this blog for a bit know that I had been planning on participating this year given that last year was just a bit too busy. Well, now I have to give good news and bad news.

I’ll start with the bad news. I’m not going to be participating this year. The good news, however, is that I’ll be writing a feature length movie script instead. It will be based on an outline NHK and I developed just a few weeks ago when he was out on his surfing expedition.

I’m not sure if this will impinge upon the quantity or quality of blogging for the rest of the month. Likely it will but I won’t pass judgement on that until December 1^st.

If you are up to the challenge, get involved! And if you want some support, drop me a line.