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Sour grapes of wrath

Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:47 Admin
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I just watched "The Grapes of Wrath" for the first time. I really wanted to like it. I like a lot of other old movies so I don't think I'm just biased against old movies. It's a Wonderful Life is one of my favorites. I also loved Casablanca, Rope, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Those were all made in the 40s just like Grapes of Wrath. I even remember liking East of Eden - one of Steinbeck's other novels turned into a movie. But you've probably guessed by now that The Grapes of Wrath just didn't do it for me. Some of the filming was awful. In one scene toward the beginning of the movie, Tom and Casy are walking in front of an obviously fake background. But the worst part is the sound. They sound like they are filming in a bathroom. It's all tinny and echoing. But I could forgive the technical problems since it was only 1940 after all. But the acting was just completely out of control in places. Some of Ma's speeches are just dripping with melodrama. And Tom's speech at the end of the movie a...
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Operation Prohibited by Disc

Monday, 03 October 2005 10:45 Admin
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Is there anybody out there who hasn't seen this message or something like it? It's what your DVD player tells you if you try to fast forward through the previews at the beginning of a DVD or if you try to do anything that the creators of the DVD decided is a "prohibited user operation." Apparently none of the folks at the MPAA are parents - otherwise they would have seen the error of this scheme right away. As soon as you tell a kid not do something that is guaranteed to be the first thing they'll want to do. Maybe they've heard of the term "reverse psychology." Guess not.

For those that just tuned in, let me outline the history of DVDs for you and see if this is how you'd do things. Say you want to sell your movies so people can watch them at home. Right off the bat your not sure if this is a good idea because maybe it will take away from your sales of movie theater tickets. Still, you decide to give it a go and sell your movies on CD-sized discs. Yo...
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Ich bin Auslander

Monday, 19 September 2005 07:31 Admin
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Look everybody, I'm in Vienna! Yes, the one in Austria. I was even in London for a couple hours to visit the Queen. OK, I was just in the airport. What a world traveler I am. Vienna's not much different than the US really. Especially since it seems like there is a lot of traffic everywhere I've been so far in Vienna. Anywho, I'm at the ECDL conference. That would be the European Conference on Digital Libraries. Is that a good time or what. Unfortunately, I can't post any pictures till I get home since I forgot the little dongle for the camera.
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So do Aliens like water now?

Monday, 12 September 2005 10:34 Admin
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For those who haven't seen the fairly bad movie Signs, one of the lessons we learned is that aliens don't like water. Sorry for the spoiler. Anyway, the new crop of aliens apparently love water. And somehow all the major networks found out about these aliens at the same time. This fall CBS is starting Threshold, ABC is running Invasion, and NBC is airing Surface. They're all mixing water and aliens in heavy helpings. Apparently Fox wasn't invited to the party where this new form of aliens was discovered.
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More on universal randomness

Sunday, 04 September 2005 15:44 Admin
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If you read my previous blog entry on Universal Randomness then you heard about some weird experiences with my daughter. I also mentioned that I would look through her books to see if balls with stars was a recurring pattern. I haven't done a thorough search yet. I'll get to it though. In any event, I wanted to clarify one point in my previous post. There is a big difference between what I was describing and what a lot of people refer to as "psychic." What I am talking about is basically a kind of non-verbal communication. This merely suggests a mechanism by which one person can transfer information to another other than through traditional language means like speech or writing. In contrast, things that are often lumped in with "psychic" abilities often involve talking to dead people or predicting the future. These require much larger deviations from accepted scientific principles.
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