Monday, February 28, 2005
Monkey Steals the Peach
In Kill Bill Vol. 2 there's a description of a deadly (but fictitious) martial arts technique:Deadly clean. The victim dies with no apparent injuries. A perfect movie death.THE BRIDE: What praytell, is a five-point palm - exploding heart technique?
BILL: Quite simply, the deadliest blow in all of the martial arts. He hits you with his fingertips, at ten different pressure points on your body. And then, he lets you walk away. But once you've taken five steps, your heart explodes inside your body, and you fall to the floor dead.
Monkey Steals the Peach, on the other hand is just plain nasty. Is this real or a joke? I found a number of references to the method (here's one example) but none of them were quite this graphic. (Via ...over anything)
Sunday, February 27, 2005
The Crackers
Another parody of "The Gates" — The Crackers.
Calvin and Hobbes archive
This complete Calvin and Hobbes archive is unlikely to stay up for too long. This is what wget was written for.
Update: I updated the link here. According to the web site, the page will be removed at the end of March. (Or until the copyright holders find it and fire off a "cease and desist" order).
Update: I updated the link here. According to the web site, the page will be removed at the end of March. (Or until the copyright holders find it and fire off a "cease and desist" order).
Dun Dun Noodles
My wife attended a workshop in Cambridge yesterday near MIT. She returned home with Dun Dun Noodles from Mary Chung's Restaurant. I hadn't had them in years. Still spicy! Yum. Mary Chung's has been an MIT hangout for many years. You could always count on hearing some interesting (geeky) conversations there.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
The sound of iPod
Nils Schneider wanted to study the firmware of the Apple iPod to figure out how to write software to access the device's screen, clickwheel and hard disk. In order to do this, he needed to reverse engineer the bootloader in Flash ROM. His clever solution was to use some code that caused the piezo in the iPod to make a squeaking sound. Using this code, he was able to write a program that output the iPod's 64K of firmware as a series of sounds that could be recorded and decoded externally.
Fifteen
Fifteen years ago today I started at Lotus. I wasn't looking for a job; my tenure at Lotus was entirely due to the persistence of a headhunter. Eric left several messages on my answering machine but I didn't call him back. I didn't know him and didn't know how he'd gotten my phone number. At some point while expecting another call; I picked up the phone. It was Eric. He was calling about a job at Lotus on a team that was building a database product. I wasn't interested but we talked for a while. He called back a couple more times with other opportunities at Lotus. The position that got me into Lotus was on a "secret" project building a NeXT product — what became Lotus Improv.
Starting at Lotus was a pleasant surprise. People were genuinely happy to be working there. During my first week I ran into someone I had worked with at Applicon. He told me that he was working on this cool product that had recently been released called Notes. I didn't follow the PC Industry back then so I didn't know anything about Notes. My first question was whether it was similar to VAX NOTES which I'd used a few years earlier. In retrospect, I wasn't that far off the mark since Len Kawell had been involved in creating both products. (VAX NOTES was primitive by comparison).
I got my first exposure to Notes several months later. The first thing I saw in Notes was an internal Restaurant Review database called "DBSD Eats" with a smiling pig icon.
Notes seemed like an interesting product but I couldn't imagine at the time how big an impact it would have on my career.
The software business has changed radically since those days. Lotus has been a division of IBM for nearly ten years now. Many of the software vendors of the 80s and early 90s are gone. I believe that Lotus would have met the same fate if it hadn't been for Notes and if, as a result, IBM hadn't bought the company.
Starting at Lotus was a pleasant surprise. People were genuinely happy to be working there. During my first week I ran into someone I had worked with at Applicon. He told me that he was working on this cool product that had recently been released called Notes. I didn't follow the PC Industry back then so I didn't know anything about Notes. My first question was whether it was similar to VAX NOTES which I'd used a few years earlier. In retrospect, I wasn't that far off the mark since Len Kawell had been involved in creating both products. (VAX NOTES was primitive by comparison).
I got my first exposure to Notes several months later. The first thing I saw in Notes was an internal Restaurant Review database called "DBSD Eats" with a smiling pig icon.Notes seemed like an interesting product but I couldn't imagine at the time how big an impact it would have on my career.
The software business has changed radically since those days. Lotus has been a division of IBM for nearly ten years now. Many of the software vendors of the 80s and early 90s are gone. I believe that Lotus would have met the same fate if it hadn't been for Notes and if, as a result, IBM hadn't bought the company.
Friday, February 25, 2005
NameVoyager
The NameVoyager provides an "interactive portrait of America's name choices". It's a Java applet that shows how the 5000 most popular names have ranked over the past century. You start typing a name and it narrows down the list. It's interesting to see how usage has changed over the years. For example, Robert was the most common boy's name in the 1930s — it now ranks 35th. Jason and Jennifer went from relative obscurity to become very popular in the 1970s and then down again. Current favorites are Jacob and Emily. Old testament names such as Noah, Abraham, Hannah, Caleb, etc. have also become quite popular.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Back in the cold
Why no posts for the last week? We were in Florida visiting my parents. We're back. It was nice to be away from the cold for a while but that first blast of 20° air after we landed wasn't too bad.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The Somerville Gates
Christo's The Gates in Central Park has been a huge hit. I haven't seen them yet but I've got a sense of what the installation is like from photos. These QuicktimeVR images are especially nice. The Gates are even visible from outer space.
Anything New York City can do, Somerville can do too. Presenting the Somerville Gates. Funny.
Update: According to the Boston Globe, the mayor of Somerville declared February 24, 2005 as "Hargo Day" in honor of Geoff Hargadon, the creator of the Somerville Gates. Now this is both funny and a little bizarre.
Anything New York City can do, Somerville can do too. Presenting the Somerville Gates. Funny.
Update: According to the Boston Globe, the mayor of Somerville declared February 24, 2005 as "Hargo Day" in honor of Geoff Hargadon, the creator of the Somerville Gates. Now this is both funny and a little bizarre.
Curried JavaScript functions
Currying is the technique of transforming a function taking multiple arguments into a function that takes a single argument (the first of the arguments to the original function) and returns a new function which takes the remainder of the arguments and returns the result.
If you not familiar with Lisp or lambda calculus this may sound a bit strange but it's cool stuff. Any programming language that treats functions as first-class objects is capable of currying. Here's a good article on how to write Curried JavaScript functions.
Note: the name of this technique has nothing to do with curry in cooking. It was named after mathematician Haskell Curry.
If you not familiar with Lisp or lambda calculus this may sound a bit strange but it's cool stuff. Any programming language that treats functions as first-class objects is capable of currying. Here's a good article on how to write Curried JavaScript functions.
Note: the name of this technique has nothing to do with curry in cooking. It was named after mathematician Haskell Curry.
Update: Treo 650 sync performance
This is a followup to yesterday's post on infrared sync. Tony Estrada ran some tests to compare the different types of Hotsync with the Treo 650 and a T30 laptop. He posted his results here. Bluetooth sync performance is pretty good; only 2x slower than USB. Infrared sync, on the other hand, is a lot slower; over 8 times slower than USB. The difference in speed for a T41 may be more dramatic since it supports USB 2.0 whereas the T30 only supported USB 1.1.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Infrared sync
I only have one Hotsync cable for my Treo 650 — I've got a second one on order. Yesterday I wanted to sync my Treo with my T41 laptop but I'd left my cable at home. So I decided to use the Infrared port. My first few attempts were unsuccessful. Hotsync kept getting intercepted by the laptop's IR Wireless Link. This feature can be used to beam files to other devices. When this happened the Treo would report that the IR port was already in use by another application. What to do?
I found this article in the PalmOne forums that solved the problem. You initiate Hotsync from the Treo while the phone is pointed away from the laptop's IR port. Then you point the phone at the IR port. Using this approach, Hotsync works fine. It's slower than USB but not too bad as long as you don't have lots of data to move. I've ordered a second Hotsync cable but I may give Bluetooth a try next. Anyone know whether Bluetooth sync is faster than IR?
I found this article in the PalmOne forums that solved the problem. You initiate Hotsync from the Treo while the phone is pointed away from the laptop's IR port. Then you point the phone at the IR port. Using this approach, Hotsync works fine. It's slower than USB but not too bad as long as you don't have lots of data to move. I've ordered a second Hotsync cable but I may give Bluetooth a try next. Anyone know whether Bluetooth sync is faster than IR?
Don't panic!
A new trailer for the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is available on Amazon.com today. Lots of details as compared to the content-free trailer on the film's website.It's taken a long, long time for HHGTTG to appear on film — it was first optioned in 1982. The casting choices are interesting and the trailer looks pretty good. Let's hope it was worth the wait.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens April 29th.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
A Day Late
The latest video from Ze Frank on Valentine's Day. Here's a quote:Pretty funny. Ze Frank's delivery is good but sometimes he comes off as looking a little crazed.In Christianity the heart symbol means Charity. In ancient Greece it was a sign for Eros which was the God of sexual love. And in Sweden actually the heart symbol is a generic sign for a toilet. So I guess it's probably hard to sell little chocolates in a heart-shaped box over there.
All Things Dunkin' Donuts
Proving once again that any topic can be blog fodder, Scott Lewis maintains a blog about Dunkin' Donuts. And he's been at it since 1999. No big surprise that all of the Google ads on his pages are for Dunkin' Donuts, coffee bean wholesalers and franchise opportunities.
Wallace & Gromit : The Movie
A feature-length Wallace & Gromit movie? Cool. It's scheduled to open on October 7, 2005. According to IMDB, the full title is/was The Wallace & Gromit Movie: Curse of the Wererabbit.
In the film, Wallace & Gromit run a humane pest-control outfit called "Anti-Pesto". Their town is holding its annual Giant Vegetable Competition. A huge mysterious veggie-ravaging beast starts attacking the town's vegetable plots at night. Anti-Pesto is commissioned to catch it and save the day.
I know that this type of animation is very time-consuming but it's been a while. The last Wallace & Gromit I remember seeing was the Soccamatic short in 2002. A DVD with a series of other Cracking Contraptions was supposedly released in 2002 as well but I can't find anything but a few short reviews online. Was this ever released?
Monday, February 14, 2005
How to Extract DNA from Anything Living
Do-it-yourself DNA extraction. Only requires three simple ingredients: detergent, meat tenderizer and alcohol. I was a little disappointed that once they had extracted the DNA strands from the cup of peas that there was no next step. I wanted to create Green Giant mutants or something. 
(Via jkottke)
(Via jkottke)
Spam-o-Matic
I guess I'm easily amused because I thought that the Spam-o-Matic was pretty funny. But in order to look like genuine spam, it needs a lot more typos. (Via Google Blogoscoped)
Okay Then
One of my favorite comedies is Raising Arizona. It's filled with oddball characters, interesting camera work and lots of great dialog. One phrase that caught on with us for a while was "Okay Then". It's a sort of countrified shrug or acquiescence. I don't know if it's a regionalism or just something the Coen Brothers decided to throw in — it appears several times in the film. Here are two favorites: the parole board scene and the bank robbery scene.
The Birds
Remember Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds? Very clever idea to turn the passive gathering of harmless birds into a sign of lethal menace.
Workers in an office building in Middleburg Park, South Carolina who saw dozens of birds slam into the glass walls probably thought they had somehow stumbled into Hitchcock's film. But these birds weren't bent on destroying humanity. They were drunk. A flock of Cedar Waxwings had flown in to feast on holly berries in the courtyard of the office building. The birds got drunk on the berries and were confused by the glass walls of the enclosed three-story courtyard.
Drunk or not, birds slam into glass windows all of the time but not usually enmasse. According to this article collisions with glass kill up to 1 billion birds a year in the United States alone. Amazing.
Workers in an office building in Middleburg Park, South Carolina who saw dozens of birds slam into the glass walls probably thought they had somehow stumbled into Hitchcock's film. But these birds weren't bent on destroying humanity. They were drunk. A flock of Cedar Waxwings had flown in to feast on holly berries in the courtyard of the office building. The birds got drunk on the berries and were confused by the glass walls of the enclosed three-story courtyard.
Drunk or not, birds slam into glass windows all of the time but not usually enmasse. According to this article collisions with glass kill up to 1 billion birds a year in the United States alone. Amazing.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Midnight in the Garden of Google & Evil
Mark Jen comments on his blog-related firing from Google. Here's what he has to say about the Google code of conduct "Don't be evil" in light of the circumstances of his termination:
It's too bad that Mark lost his job but as far, as I can tell, he was "terminated for cause": a public disclosure in a blog entry about Google's future financial picture. He didn't help matters by writing a fair amount negative commentary about Google's benefits, relocation process, etc. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of his new employer.finally, for all those in the evil/not evil argument, realize that google is a public, for-profit company. i do not believe google is either evil or good. companies take what they feel are logical steps in doing business, and business isn't always fair.
Pump you up
We have two older house cats; they're both 16 years-old. They look healthy but hadn't been seen by a vet in a while. My wife took them in for a checkup today. No trip to the vet with an older pet is without unpleasant surprises. Both cats are suffering from kidney disease which, as we found out, is very common in older cats. As a result, it's likely that we'll need to start administering subcutaneous fluids to help flush waste products through the kidneys. I hadn't heard of this procedure before. The vet administered fluids during the visit. The fluid is injected just below the skin and is slowly absorbed into the body. It looks pretty odd; they both had temporary Arnold Schwarzenegger physiques.
I hope that they can see the humor in all of this if we have to start doing this procedure a few times a week. What am I saying? they're cats: they don't have a sense of humor. Get ready for lots of hissing and yowling.
I hope that they can see the humor in all of this if we have to start doing this procedure a few times a week. What am I saying? they're cats: they don't have a sense of humor. Get ready for lots of hissing and yowling.
Treo 650
I bought a Treo 650. I got an offer through palmOne that was too hard to resist. I've had it for four days now.The transition from my Treo 600 was painless. Sprint did the "ESN swap" in less than 10 minutes. Moving my applications and data across took a few hours. In a couple cases I had to download software updates for applications that needed to be changed to handle the new NVFS file system. NVFS has a little more usage overhead than the earlier memory but that hasn't been a problem for me. All my existing data fit just fine — including several years of Calendar entries.
The new 320x320 16-bit screen is beautiful. It's the most noticeable change. Much crisper than 160x160 12-bit screen in the 600. The keyboard is a little different with a nicer layout. Bluetooth support is a nice — but I haven't bought a Bluetooth headset yet. The camera takes much better pictures; especially in low-light. Battery life seems about the same. Voice quality, signal strength, etc. are about the same as well.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Broken-heart syndrome
According to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine, a sudden shock can trigger a condition called Broken-heart syndrome (technically known as stress cardiomyopathy). The condition mimics a heart attack but the heart is just "temporarily stunned". A surge of stress hormones released after an emotional trauma apparently overwhelms the heart leaving it unable to pump effectively. Geez.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Taste for the web
Zach Beane critiques Google Maps in a parody of a Paul Graham essay. If you've read any of Graham's essays you'll recognize the style. Funny.
The Aviator
I saw The Aviator last night. It's a very good but not great Martin Scorsese film. The film focuses on Howard Hughes early years: from the late 1920s during the production of Hell's Angels to the 1947 test flight of the Spruce Goose. Good to great acting all around. I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was terrific as Hughes; Cate Blanchett was amazing as a young Katharine Hepburn. The film is best during the first half. The second half drags a bit — it focuses on the progression of Hughes obsessive compulsive behavior and germphobia and his public battles with PanAm and Washington.
I was reminded of Francis Ford Coppola's film, Tucker: The Man and His Dream which has a short scene where Preston Tucker meets a somewhat paranoid Howard Hughes.
I was reminded of Francis Ford Coppola's film, Tucker: The Man and His Dream which has a short scene where Preston Tucker meets a somewhat paranoid Howard Hughes.
Google blogger gone
Mark Jen started working at Google a few weeks ago and decided to blog about his experience there. He got into some trouble with one of his posts and removed some of the content. Now it turns out that he's been fired. His termination was related to something he posted on his blog; probably the post he edited that contained Google financial information.
Replacements
HP has reported on promising research on a nanoscale electronic device called a crossbar latch. The claim is that these devices could eventually replace transistors.
Speaking of replacements — here's a lame segue: HP Chairman and CEO, Carly Fiorina, is being replaced. Apparently she was fired by the board. Carly was the main architect of the merger with Compaq. Compaq was itself in transition at the time, having purchased DEC back in 1998. So what's next? Stick with the current strategy of combining businesses or split the company up?
Speaking of replacements — here's a lame segue: HP Chairman and CEO, Carly Fiorina, is being replaced. Apparently she was fired by the board. Carly was the main architect of the merger with Compaq. Compaq was itself in transition at the time, having purchased DEC back in 1998. So what's next? Stick with the current strategy of combining businesses or split the company up?
The Point
The Point was an animated TV special from the early 1970s written by Harry Nillson. It tells the story of Oblio, a round-headed boy born into a world of pointy-headed people.
I remember watching this on television as a kid. I don't remember too many details except the basic plot. The thing that stuck with me was the song "Me and my Arrow" which plays when Oblio runs away with his dog, Arrow. The song was used in TV commercials for the short-lived Plymouth Arrow.
The Evolution of Language
What if you recast Lisp as XML? What would that look like?. Actually this example is probably too lax; to be truly evolved it should use XML schemas. (Via Planet Lisp)
(Via Planet Lisp)
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Google Maps
I've been playing around with Google Maps for the last 15 minutes. Very slick interactive UI. This making Mapquest look pretty clunky.
Monday, February 07, 2005
iPod shuffle RAID
What would you do with four iPod shuffles? How about an iPod shuffle RAID array?
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Pinewood Derby
My son is in his first year of Cub Scouts. His pack had their Pinewood Derby race on Saturday. He did well; his car got second place in his den, probably 5th or 6th overall in the entire pack. Quite surprising since we're complete neophytes at this.
If you don't know the details: each scout starts with a kit that includes a small block of pine with two grooves cut in the bottom, 4 nails for axles and 4 plastic wheels. The finished car needs to weigh 5 oz. or less and be within certain size limits. I remember participating in the Pinewood Derby as a kid. The kit was a little different. There were wooden cross pieces for the axles and the wheels were made from a different sort of hard plastic. The new kit is a simpler design.
The race is on a wooden track with three lanes. Gravity does all of the work. In his pack there were track sensors hooked up to a laptop that displayed race results on an overhead projector. The whole thing was very well organized.
We followed online advice for sanding the axles and wheels, lubricating the wheels with graphite and putting weight over the rear wheels. But so did nearly everyone else. So I'm not sure why the car did as well as it did. One thing that was clear was that aerodynamics have little, if anything, to do with winning. Some of the least aerodynamic cars bested sleek-shaped ones.
If you don't know the details: each scout starts with a kit that includes a small block of pine with two grooves cut in the bottom, 4 nails for axles and 4 plastic wheels. The finished car needs to weigh 5 oz. or less and be within certain size limits. I remember participating in the Pinewood Derby as a kid. The kit was a little different. There were wooden cross pieces for the axles and the wheels were made from a different sort of hard plastic. The new kit is a simpler design.
The race is on a wooden track with three lanes. Gravity does all of the work. In his pack there were track sensors hooked up to a laptop that displayed race results on an overhead projector. The whole thing was very well organized.
We followed online advice for sanding the axles and wheels, lubricating the wheels with graphite and putting weight over the rear wheels. But so did nearly everyone else. So I'm not sure why the car did as well as it did. One thing that was clear was that aerodynamics have little, if anything, to do with winning. Some of the least aerodynamic cars bested sleek-shaped ones.
The sound of corduroy
My son and I were out walking this morning. Above the traffic noise I heard a familiar whoosh-whoosh sound. Looking down I found the source — my son's new corduroy pants. I haven't worn corduroys regularly since college but I still remember that sound.
According to this article the material that makes the whoosh-whoosh sound has been around for a long time; since the 18th century. The word corduroy derives from "Corde du roi", the king's cord.
According to this article the material that makes the whoosh-whoosh sound has been around for a long time; since the 18th century. The word corduroy derives from "Corde du roi", the king's cord.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Colorado Teens Fined for Giving Cookies to Neighbor
There are lots of stories about frivolous lawsuits and ridiculous legal settlements. Clearly there have been bad settlements but sometimes popular perception is wrong. For example, if I say "McDonalds Coffee Lawsuit", you'll probably think: "Oh yeah, that woman who got millions for spilling McDonalds coffee on herself". But the facts of that case are more complicated and there really was a problem with the way McDonalds was serving coffee.
And then there's this case. Two teenage girls left cookies on a neighbor's doorstep, knocked on the door and left. The neighbor claimed that this triggered an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital the next day. A Colorado judge ordered the girls to pay about $900 in medical and court costs. Maybe there's more to the story than appears in the article but it's hard to accept this as a fair settlement.
And then there's this case. Two teenage girls left cookies on a neighbor's doorstep, knocked on the door and left. The neighbor claimed that this triggered an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital the next day. A Colorado judge ordered the girls to pay about $900 in medical and court costs. Maybe there's more to the story than appears in the article but it's hard to accept this as a fair settlement.
Four or five basis tastes?
Taste drives appetite and protects us from things that might poison or harm us. We can taste sweet, sour, bitter, salty and ... umami?
Umami is a "savory" flavor typically found in foods that are rich in amino acids. As cravings for sweet and salty foods satisfy our need for carbohydrates and salt in our diet, craving foods with an umami flavor may be driven by our need for protein.
The Wikipedia article debunks the notion that the tongue is divided into areas which are sensitive to different tastes. Apparently there's no scientific foundation for this.
Microsofties
I love the title of this photo. It's Paul Haverstock, Gary Devendorf and Charlie Kaufman at Lotusphere 2005. They all work for Microsoft now but Paul and Charlie are ex-Iris; Gary is ex-Lotus. Note that Paul and Charlie are wearing their green Iris shirts.
Paul: my blog entry is the first thing that comes up in Google when I type your name. Gotta do something about that. Create a blog or something.
Paul: my blog entry is the first thing that comes up in Google when I type your name. Gotta do something about that. Create a blog or something.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Saying just enough
Phil Ringnalda really nails the art of saying just enough in a blog post. His example is the recent Bunny Suicides link. Many bloggers just linked to the site and said a few words (e.g. "kinda morbid, but funny"). Sometimes that's not enough. If you want me to click the link, you need to sell it, not just assume that I'll buy it no matter what.
I try to do this when I post a link. For example, when I blogged about the Bunny Suicides link I tried to explain what it was about. I also mentioned how the cartoons were from a published book. I'm not saying that I don't get lazy sometimes too but I often find that a link can be an interesting starting point for a post.
Note: the text in my entry on the bunnies page is crossed out because the link was taken down. I've done that a few times when a link goes bad or turns out to be a hoax. I prefer doing strikeout rather than removing the post completely.
I try to do this when I post a link. For example, when I blogged about the Bunny Suicides link I tried to explain what it was about. I also mentioned how the cartoons were from a published book. I'm not saying that I don't get lazy sometimes too but I often find that a link can be an interesting starting point for a post.
Note: the text in my entry on the bunnies page is crossed out because the link was taken down. I've done that a few times when a link goes bad or turns out to be a hoax. I prefer doing strikeout rather than removing the post completely.
Steve Jobs NeXTSTEP 3.0 demo
Back in 1992, Steve Jobs decided to do a demo video, about 30 minutes long, where he demonstrates the applications, networking abilities and development tools in NeXTSTEP 3.0. Here's a link to the video in various formats. Since this a transfer from tape, the quality is okay but not great. It's best to watch the large format video. The QuickTime version is about 34 MB. If you've never seen NeXTSTEP, take a look. The NeXT version of Lotus Improv makes a brief appearance early on.
A lot of what was cool and innovative in NeXTSTEP may be considered commonplace now but remember that this video was taped thirteen years ago! The computer used for the demo is a 33Mhz 68040 — probably 50-100 slower than the computer you're using now.
In the same year this tape was made, Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1 — big news in the PC world but primitive stuff compared to NeXTSTEP. That difference was a major struggle when we ported Improv from NeXTSTEP to Windows. We had to take a huge step backwards and rethink how to fit Improv in less capable environment with a smaller screen. But the results were valuable; it brought Improv to a much wider audience. It's just a shame that it's took so many years to bring the power of NeXTSTEP to a wider audience.
Update: the original site is down. See here for a mirror of the Quicktime videos.
Home of Alfred E. Neuman
Hornell, NY is proud of its native son Bill Pullman. So proud, in fact, that the welcome signs at the town line proclaim that Hornell is the "Home of Bill Pullman". But not recently. According to this article someone replaced Pullman's name with Alfred E. Neuman. Why the MAD Magazine mascot? Probably because of illustrator Frank Kelly Freas who died recently. Freas was also born in Hornell and was MAD's cover artist for several years in the '50s and '60s, helping to shape Neuman's image.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Alone in the Dark
Last August I blogged about the worst trailer ever for Uwe Boll's film Alone in the Dark. The bad news is that the film came out last Friday and may be playing in a theater near you. The good news is that the original trailer seems to have disappeared. If you didn't get a chance to see it, a portion can be found here. This shorter version only hints at how bad the original was.
The new trailer for the film must have been done by someone else. It's a competent effort to try to turn lemons into lemonade. But even a decent trailer can't hide the fact that this is a bad film. The trailer starts to go wrong halfway through. Bad acting and oddly edited scenes start to appear.
One great thing about a bad movie is that it gives film critics free reign. Matthew Baldwin has collected funny and nasty review quotes for Alone in the Dark. Here are some of my favorites:
The new trailer for the film must have been done by someone else. It's a competent effort to try to turn lemons into lemonade. But even a decent trailer can't hide the fact that this is a bad film. The trailer starts to go wrong halfway through. Bad acting and oddly edited scenes start to appear.
One great thing about a bad movie is that it gives film critics free reign. Matthew Baldwin has collected funny and nasty review quotes for Alone in the Dark. Here are some of my favorites:
The domain uweboll.com was registered the other day to send a message to Alone in the Dark's director. If you click on the link, you'll see what I mean.As video game adaptations go, even Pong: The Movie would have a lot more personality.
Alone in the Dark will be the worst movie of 2005. The idea that anything could be worse is the only genuine scare the movie has to offer.
Saying Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark is better than his 2003 American debut House of the Dead is akin to praising syphilis for not being HIV.
Want fries with outsourcing?
Even some fast food jobs are not immune to outsourcing. According to this article, some McDonalds franchises are using a call center in Colorado Springs to take orders for the drive-through lane. One of the franchises using the call center is here in Massachusetts, in Norwood. I wonder if there are issues with accents and regionalisms? For example, some Bostonians say "tonic" rather than soda or pop. And then there's the Boston accent. I suppose the Coloradans would get used to it over time.
Aside: it's funny that tonic isn't mentioned in this soft drink names by county map — although it doesn't put the Boston area solidly in the soda camp either.
Aside: it's funny that tonic isn't mentioned in this soft drink names by county map — although it doesn't put the Boston area solidly in the soda camp either.