Remains of the Day

RIP Ingmar Bergman and Laszlo Kovacs...and now Antonioni

UPDATE: And now we can add Michelangelo Antonioni to the list. The pantheon is summoning some legends. Revered by film students everywhere, Antonioni had a huge influence on directors perhaps more popular among modern arthouse crowds, e.g. Wong Kar Wai or Sofia Coppola. Blow Up and L'Avventura are his most famous movies and well worth seeing, though I lean at this moment towards La Notte as my favorite of his scripts. The Passenger has one of the most brilliant and famous ending shots in cinema.

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The film world lost two all-timers in the past week in Ingmar Bergman (NYTimes obit) and Laszlo Kovacs (LATimes obit).*

I met Laszlo Kovacs a few weeks ago at Cinegear. He and Vilmos Zsigmond were honored for their distinguished cinematography careers. He signed a poster for me and chatted for a few moments. He wasn't content just to hear abotu who I was but wanted to pass on advice about being a cinematographer. Friendly to the end. In hindsight, the timing of the tribute for Kovacs seemed scripted. His work as a DP (Director of Photography) is vast and wide-ranging, everything from Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces to Ghostbusters and Say Anything. When I think of Kovacs, I don't think of a particular look but of shooting out in the open air.

For a film student I still have a great deal of Bergman's oeuvre to cover (though he likely occupies more positions in my Netflix queue than any other director). But the movies of his that I have seen have all gotten under my skin. How many modern movies have you leaving the theater thinking you know who made it? You wouldn't ever ask that of a Bergman film. If you're looking for one movie as an introduction, Scenes From a Marriage is where I'd start. Years from now you'll be able to walk on set and say you want a Bergman-Nykvist-like aesthetic and a knowledgeable film crew will know what you mean.

Many people say that they like to just shut off their minds when they go to the movies, and a Bergman movie is not for that person. But I question the idea that you go to the movies to sit there as a brain-dead receptacle. I suspect that people actually want more mental stimulation but have been fed so much empty formula that they've started to lower their expectations prior to walking into the theater so that the actual experience is less disappointing. The idea that you want your brain to work less only makes sense if there is some limit to the amount of mental processing power in a given day, and I've yet to see any biological proof for that idea. I suspect physical fatigue is the limiting factor and is confused by most for mental fatigue.

I always seek more, rather than less, for my brain to chew on. Far from tiring me out, intellectual stimulation wakes my brain up, brings it to life! I add the caveat that I'm the type of person who ends up bored after a minute of sitting on the beach on the first day of a vacation and has to get a book in hand or frisbee to toss. Still, the idea that a movie can't be intellectually bracing and entertaining is a false dichotomy. Avoid that trap and demand more for your $10.50.

*Look at the number of Google News obits for Bergman and Kovacs and you'll get a useful proxy for the popularity of directors versus that of cinematographers to the public at large. Don't feel sorry for the DP's. They're happy to stay in the shadows. Also, the DP is less likely to be a egomaniac than the director.

Technorati Tags: cinematography, film, filmmaking, movies

Aagh

As long as the web's been around, it's frustrating how many goofy website issues I still encounter. A catalog of a few that have vexed me recently...

For lack of a compelling alternative, I still use Citysearch to look up restaurant locations from time to time. Their map links are terrible. From a restaurant page, when I click on the map link, I expect the resulting map to show me a close-up of the restaurant's location. For a long time, all I'd get was a giant map showing the United States. That really narrowed it down. Thanks a lot.

Now that bug has been solved, but the map view they send you to now is zoomed out so far that you have to click a few times just to be able to see the cross streets around the restaurant. Furthermore, instead of just showing you a red star for that business/restaurant you want to locate, you get a map showing all sorts of local businesses near that address. On that previous link I was searching for Urth Caffe. Can't see the red star showing you the location of the restaurant? That's right, it's hidden behind the huge flag indicating some place called The Galley. Who designs these sites? Citysearch was never going to set the world on fire, but it used to be mildly useful. Now it's the equivalent of an aging movie star who underwent a botched plastic surgery.

On that topic, I decided to try Yelp since I've heard a lot of buzz about them. I tried putting in Urth Caffe in the search box and it brought back two locations, but not the one I was searching for in Santa Monica. Apparently Yelp Los Angeles uses Los Angeles, CA as its default search location, but that doesn't include Santa Monica. Yelp! Oops. I meant Help!

The top search result, by the way, was a huge sponsored search results for some yogurt place. I hate how sites like these make the top search result a massive ad banner for something totally unrelated. What are the odds if I'm searching for a specific restaurant name that Yelp is going to pick out another restaurant that happens to be more interesting to me than the one I just typed into the search box?! Put that damn ad banner off to the side. On a positive note, at least the map on the page for each restaurant location was useful, zoomed in at a level where cross streets are visible.

Yelp's tagline is Real People, Real Reviews. That's a pretty thin proposition on which to differentiate that site from dozens of others city guides.

I placed an order for a book through Amazon.com. Subsequently, I was told the ship date had to be pushed back over a month. So I decided to see if it was available sooner elsewhere on the web. I found a copy at CafePress and was about to add it to my cart when I read the availability message more carefully: "Books will ship in a minimum of 5 business days." What does that mean? It will take at least five days to ship, but it's the maximum I'm interested in. The book could ship in ten years and still live up to that vague message. Needless to say they didn't get my order.

It's finally getting hot enough in LA that shorts are a necessity. I ordered a pair from Cordarounds about two weeks ago. I'd nearly forgotten about the order, but a nagging feeling that a some package hadn't arrived yet led me to follow up in my e-mail. Since Cordarounds has no online order tracking you'd better keep your order confirm e-mail or you'll be forced to call them to even get your tracking # or order status. Fortunately I had kept the e-mail, and through it I checked the UPS shipping status online and got the cryptic message: Billing Information Received. Just another customer-friendly message from UPS that means absolutely nothing to me.

Today I checked UPS again and received another informative status message: Manifest Pickup. If it read Manifest Destiny at least I would have felt hopeful about annexing some territory. Maybe "Manifest Pickup" would mean more to me if I were wearing a trucker hat. It reminds me of some of the error messages I used to get in Microsoft Windows. I don't mind if they include the technical terms for those who understand it, but a plain English explanation for the rest of us (who make up most of us) should've been up on the site ages ago. Anyhow, it's been two weeks, I don't have my shorts, and I don't know who to blame, but everyone involved elicits little black cartoon clouds over my head.

(UPDATE: Chris Lindland, the founder of Cordarounds himself, looked into my order and resolved the situation and knocked $20 off my order for the inconvenience. It's surreal to have the founder of a company answering your customer service e-mail, but suffice to say I'm happy for the personal touch and resolution. It's the old business adage that you can get a customer even more loyal than the one you might have had with a smooth order if you resolve an order gone awry with a quick apology and resolution and some compensation for the customer's trouble. It's well worth the customer goodwill in the long run. I'm still not happy about the UPS status messaging, however.)

It just reminds me that Amazon does with its online retailing experience appears simple but is in fact quite rare. I worked there for so many years that much of that I just took for granted, but being reliable and not doing goofy things with your website messaging and functionality are still enough to differentiate you on the web.

Most days I can't imagine how I used to live without the web, but somedays, like today, I just glare at my screen and shake my head in disapproval.

Technorati Tags: web

Field Notes

I covet one of these Field Notes brand notebooks. No idea when they come out, though they appear to have distributed some to a small number of folks because they show up in lots of photos. I have a weakness for notebooks and fine writing instruments. Writing with a plain ballpoint pen pains me.

Technorati Tags: book, stuff

A photo of mine in Travel + Leisure

A picture I snapped while in Dubrovnik, Croatia last summer appears on page 158 of the Aug. 2007 issue of Travel + Leisure, on newsstands near you. It's a cropped version of the pic below of the Buza bar which hangs on the side of the cliffs outside the city walls. I've had a few pics in magazines before, but they were mostly cycling pictures in odd European magazines I'd never heard of. This one comes with a paycheck which counts at some sort of mini-milestone.

I don't get anything if you buy the magazine, but I picked up a copy for posterity's sake and it looks to be a useful issue for travelers as it features their annual World's Best Awards.

I highly recommend Dubrovnik. I meant to write about it after the trip but I was having too much fun just traveling, and then I got back and school started, and now it resides in my brain as a happy memory, one that triggers a smile whenever I jab it. Dubrovnik is the choice for Europeans when they want to get away for a vacation and hide from the hordes or summer tourists descending on their hometowns.

Derek and I had just finished our Eastern European travels when I left for Dubrovnik where I was to meet up with Jason and family. On arriving at my hotel, I took a bus into town. Jason and I'd loosely agreed over e-mail to meet at an Internet bar outside city walls. Even so, there's something special when it works out in a foreign country, when you can't just call each other up over a cell phone (is this how we had to meet up in the days before mobile phones?).

I was walking up to the cafe when a newly shorn Jason called out to me on the sidewalk. He'd already been there a night or two, and the first stop he took me was Buza bar. We sat down on the balcony (if you look at my photo below, we were sitting at the open table that's just above the guy in the blue shirt on the steps) to catch up over a beer. The Buza is rumored to be a favorite of folks like Bill Gates when they're in town. Looking out on the ocean with the crisp air brushing past my face, an ancient castle city above my head, and an ice cold Eastern European lager in my hand, I couldn't help but think it was one of the truly epic bars in the world.

Technorati Tags: photo, photography, travel

Tyler Cowen

The one-two punch of Freakonomics and the weblog has turned economics into a sexy profession. Few have gained more than Tyler Cowen, one of the economists who write at one of the most consistently fascinating blogs on the web, Marginal Revolution. New York Magazine did a profile of Cowen on the eve of the release of his book Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.

Many readers have just finished or are currently engrossed in the new Harry Potter book, but I'm much more excited for Cowen's book to arrive from Amazon.com.

Technorati Tags: book, economics

What the?

James sent me a link to this poker video featuring Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, and...well, I don't want to embarrass the other pros in it. Because when I saw video, I don't mean a video of them playing poker. This is a music video, and it is stunningly awful. I tried to watch it all the way through and ended up clawing my eyes out.

I suspect that the same gift that allows them to read their opponents' behavior renders them shockingly blind to their own vibe. I'm going to go watch it again now.

Technorati Tags: music, poker, video

Coupon capital of the world

How to opt out of various forms of junk mail (the kind still delivered by a human being). Especially useful for LA-ngelites especially because I've never lived anywhere that subjected me to more grocery store mailers and envelopes stuffed with coupons. I barely have enough time to get my mail each day, let alone sift through it to clip coupons.

Technorati Tags: howto, LA, marketing

And a side of angioplasty, please

Some insane doughnuts offered at the Portland eatery Voodoo Doughnut. A maple bacon doughnut?

How about the Triple Chocolate Penetration (chocolate doughnut, chocolate glaze, and Cocoa Puffs):

You can find other interesting ones on the menu, some not safe for a child's eyes (though anyone with an imagination can probably connect the dots using some common donut shapes).

Technorati Tags: dining, eating, food, restaurants

Two for Tuesday

Trailer for Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (written by Anderson, Roman Coppola, and Jason Schwartzman).

I saw a demo of Microsoft Labs' Photosynth a long time ago. It looked amazing, and now it's in beta. Unfortunately for me it only works for Windows Vista or XP users running IE or Firefox, but if I qualified I'd be putting it through its paces.

Technorati Tags: film, movies, photography, software, trailer

Con(ta)dor versus Chicken

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tour leader Rasmussen fired from team and the Tour de France for lying about his whereabouts in June. I don't know what to say anymore.

UPDATE: Vinokourov tests positive for blood doping, and Astana withdraws from the Tour. Just when you think the worst of it is over, it isn't. I'm really surprised that riders still try blood doping considering how easy it is to be caught with modern testing. Especially if you're Vino and know you have a good chance of winning a stage which triggers an automatic test. It makes no sense to me. None. Obviously this takes Kloden out of the race and will lengthen the period in which detox is the lead story in cycling.

I know Tour de France viewership is down because of all the doping scandals and allegations (not to mention the lack of one famous Texan). I wondered if I'd have any interest in watching the Tour this year in light of everything. Was I just a Lance Armstrong fan or did I enjoy the sport?

Observing my own behavior this past week it's the latter. The mountain stages, in particular, glue me to the TV for hours at a time (time trials are called the "race of truth" because each man rides alone, but I prefer the character-revealing powers of gravity and the confrontational nature of riders slowed to a mortal pace).

In the most recent two stages, rising star Alberto Contador, just 24 years old, has announced himself to the cycling world in a big way by coming at yellow jersey holder Michael Rasmussen with a relentless wave of vicious accelerations. After almost having died in 2005 from surgery for a blood clot in his brain, Contador has proven himself to be Discovery Channel's best GC contender this year, able to explode away from a group on the climbs the way putative team leader Levi Leipheimer cannot (but in a way that is reminiscent of a retired Discovery Channel rider by the name of Lance Armstrong). In the overall classification, Rasmussen sits in first place, Contador in 2nd.

Those who would like to latch on to the Tour are just in time to see Wednesday morning's stage, one that will likely prove decisive. That morning the riders will face their last day in the mountains, concluding with a leg-wilting climb up the Col D'Aubisque. Though Contador seemed fresher in attacking Rasmussen the past two days, he probably can't make up a 2' 23" deficit to Rasmussen in the time trial on Saturday, so Wednesday morning is his final opportunity to close that gap down to a manageable size. Contador has already announced that he's riding for the top floor of the podium and is willing to die on the side of the Aubisque to get there. Said Contador:

On Wednesday, I am going to play for it all. Second place doesn't matter. I am going to risk all to win. If I end up in sixth, it doesn't matter.

Cadel Evans, in third place, is down 4' 00" in the overall and likely has to shrink that gap so he has a shot to overtake the lead in Saturday's time trial, a discipline in which he is far superior to Rasmussen. Leipheimer in fourth at 5' 25" back and Kloden in fifth at 5' 34" are the two others with any chance of catching Rasmussen, but like Evans they both need to close the gap down Wednesday morning so their superior time trialing can reel in the rider they call "The Chicken" (I think Rasmussen looks more like an albino praying mantis).

Realistically, though, Contador is the only man with a fighting chance to overtake the top spot. Rasmussen knows it's coming, and the only question for him is whether he will yield.

All this is to say Wednesday morning is likely to be the most exciting stage left in the Tour. Set your DVR's as the stage will start at 4:30am PST on Versus (formerly OLN, or the Outdoor Life Network).

For unique insight into each day's stage, visit former Lance coach Chris Carmichael's Tour de France coverage page at his endurance sport coaching company's website. You can sign up to receive the report as a daily e-mail if you're willing to sign up to create an account.

Technorati Tags: cycling, tdf, tourdefrance

Joy

When I hear my sister and brother-in-law talk about their new boy Connor, I believe that they are experiencing a type of happiness I've yet to feel in my life.

I've had other friends who've had kids and talked about the joy of being a new parent, but because I've known my sister her whole life and because she's always been so emotionally open in a way that's quite different from me, her joy is particularly pure and potent.

I'm high off of secondhand bliss.

Technorati Tags: personal

Wealth of Nations

A few interesting articles...

Why are some nations wealthier than others? In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond pointed to differences in geography.

In his new book A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, economics professor Greg Clark identifies the main culprit as differences in quality of labor.

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Bruce Schneier discusses correspondent inference theory and why that evolutionary brain glitch undermines terrorism. Schneier based his article on a paper by Max Abrams in International Security titled "Why Terrorism Does Not Work" (PDF). All very fascinating and insightful.

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Joel on Software rants against the scourge of anonymous comments on the web. He's not saying anything new, but it's good to see the backlash continue. Reading long comment threads on most posts is a depressing thing.

Technorati Tags: book, economics, terrorism, security, web

Customer service

I agree with Pogue; my first AT&T iPhone bill is one of the most customer-unfriendly documents ever. Why is it that telephone and cable companies are so awful at customer service? Random ideas that occur to me:

1. They don't make high enough margins to spend a lot on really great customer service or on great product design.
2. In the old days, phone service was so simple and reliable and telephone design was so simple that these companies never built up any customer service or product interface skills. Since then, their oligopoly of the mobile airwaves has prevented companies who are strong in those areas from getting their foot in the door (but Apple is in now, so the product side will improve, I hope).
3. Related to the previous point, perhaps the phone and cable companies are still trying to shake off the complacency brought on during the days before deregulation.
4. The companies were built up through tons of mergers, and the integration of back end systems was so awful that even customer service reps have no idea what is up with your account.

Some of you with more knowledge of phone and cable companies and their origins and/or workings might be able to educate me.

I used to think that any company would obsess over its customers, but after working in a number of industries over the years I've come to realize how naive that notion was. Though it can be an effective strategy, customer obsession or empathy is not a pre-condition to business success. For example, some companies focus intently on product (many luxury brands come to mind) and customers come flocking even if treated badly because the products inspire consumer lust. The desire for profit can result in companies that offer fantastic customer service, but it's not a given.

But much more common is the ease with which customer concerns slip off a company's priority list during day-to-day operations. For any number of reasons, political, personal, and otherwise, the needs of the customer become an afterthought. In some instances, even those who start off focusing on the customer can easily lose their way. I almost believe that part of this is the result of some cognitive bias. For the same reason we act selfishly for the majority of our lives, we struggle to keep the customers' needs at the forefront of our minds.

Technorati Tags: business, iPhone

The Road

I devoured Cormac McCarthy's The Road in about two nights. It is by far the most readable of his novels. The long, meandering, poetic prose of All the Pretty Horses is replaced here with short, muscular sentences. It's the right choice for this post-apocalyptic subject matter.

The friend who sent me the book described it as haunting. She was right.

Technorati Tags: book

Secret Spoon Show

I lucked out and managed to snag two tickets to the Spoon "secret" show (if it was really a secret I wouldn't have gotten tix for it) on Monday night at Little Radio. Spoon was out in support of their new album. The venue is a cool little warehouse near downtown LA. It's an intimate space, and apparently they broadcast concerts live over the web. The place looked to hold about 300 people tops, standing. If I'd wanted, I could easily have been five feet from Britt Daniel and his mates on stage. In addition, there was an open bar (at least if you wanted the drink of the day, Dewars and Ginger Soda),.

There was just one problem. In this long, rectangular space with a giant bar jutting out in the middle, there was no air conditioning and only one opening to the outside world, the entrance. Within a few minutes of being inside, I felt like I had worn a snowsuit into a sauna. Under such conditions, the space might have been able to put up with about 100 people and still feel comfortable, but instead I sweated off about a pound during the show.

We managed to find a semi-tolerable temperature zone around us against a wall near the end of the show, when the heat had dissipated the crowd. It didn't do much to dissipate the cigarette smoke, though. If they had a way to open up the back then at least the air could move over us from one end of the place to the other. Even Daniel commented on the oppressive heat at one point during the show. The one standing fan in the entire place was pointed on stage, but I still have to imagine that Daniel had to wring himself out after performing in a long-sleeve black shirt and pants all night.

Spoon was great. Their new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is excellent. And Little Radio, if they ever install some A/C, would be the perfect intimate venue at which to see your favorite bands perform.

Technorati Tags: concert, LA, music

All your bands are belong to me

I like this t-shirt. =)

Apparently so did many other people as the guys sizes are all sold out.

Technorati Tags: music, clothing, tshirt

Connor Richard

Technorati Tags: photo, connor

Talk of the Town

Two interesting pieces from this week's New Yorker Talk of the Town are online.

Atul Gawande gives a solid overview of our nation's healthcare problems in light of SiCKO.

The documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has more than a few insufferable traits. He is manipulative, smug, and self-righteous. He has no interest in complexity. And he mocks the weak as well as the powerful. For all that, his movie about the American health-care system, “Sicko,” is a revelation. And what makes this especially odd to say is that the movie brings to light nothing that the media haven’t covered extensively for years.

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The finger of blame points to an obstacle different from the one the movie suggests: us.

Our health-care morass is like the problems of global warming and the national debt—the kind of vast policy failure that is far easier to get into than to get out of. Americans say that they want leaders who will take on these problems. Large majorities profess support for fundamental change. Yet when it comes to specific solutions we balk. A big reason is the cost. Even though universal health coverage can reduce the system’s over-all expense—for instance, by granting everyone access to preventive care and to prompt, consistent treatment for chronic illnesses—any plausible approach will shift substantial costs from the private sector to taxpayers. The cheapest proposals circulating would still require more than a hundred billion dollars a year in public funds—around a thousand dollars per American household.

On a somewhat related note, James Surowiecki proffers an explanation for the apparent conflict between American consumers' desire for higher fuel efficiency standards and for SUV's.

What’s happening here? Back in the nineteen-seventies, an economist named Thomas Schelling, who later won the Nobel Prize, noticed something peculiar about the N.H.L. At the time, players were allowed, but not required, to wear helmets, and most players chose to go helmet-less, despite the risk of severe head trauma. But when they were asked in secret ballots most players also said that the league should require them to wear helmets. The reason for this conflict, Schelling explained, was that not wearing a helmet conferred a slight advantage on the ice; crucially, it gave the player better peripheral vision, and it also made him look fearless. The players wanted to have their heads protected, but as individuals they couldn’t afford to jeopardize their effectiveness on the ice. Making helmets compulsory eliminated the dilemma: the players could protect their heads without suffering a competitive disadvantage. Without the rule, the players’ individually rational decisions added up to a collectively irrational result. With the rule, the outcome was closer to what players really wanted.

The same phenomenon is, to some extent, at work in the fuel-economy debate.

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The results of this size-and-power arms race are easy to see: between 1984 and 2002, the average vehicle got twenty per cent heavier and its zero-to-sixty acceleration improved by twenty-five per cent, while fuel efficiency stagnated. This is not because of technological difficulties or a conspiracy on the part of the auto industry. It’s because automakers have listened to car buyers, and put their energy into making vehicles bigger and faster, rather than more efficient. In calling for a law requiring better gas mileage in our cars, then, voters are really saying that they’re unhappy with the collective result of the choices they make as buyers. Sometimes, they know, we need to save ourselves from ourselves.

Perhaps something similar works against healthcare reform. Many people desire universal healthcare but don't want to foot the bill. As Bryan Caplan notes in The Myth of the Rational Voter, citizens often ask shake one first for more government programs while punching a ballot for lower taxes on the other.

Maybe you can't have it all.

Technorati Tags: cars, economics, healthcare, medicine, newyorker

Big day!

As of 10:30am EST today, I'm an uncle to Joannie and Mike's newborn boy who shall be named later (I think I know the name but will wait to get official confirmation from the commissioner's office)!

I'm the wrong person to ask about the medical play-by-play (a significant chunk of my knowledge of the delivery room proceedings having come from Knocked Up), but my sister's water broke yesterday at 4 in the morning, two weeks ahead of schedule (I'm told it's normal for the first to be fashionably early), so the little guy had to join us out here on the other side of the belly whether he wanted to or not.

On any other occasion, the biggest news this day would have been my first day on my summer job (I actually had to find a wrinkle-free button-down shirt), and that is also exciting for many reasons, but my nephew is like the sun, and for a good amount of time our family will revolve around him. We're all anxiously awaiting photos, and you'll all probably see one or two here soon.

Technorati Tags: personal

In Our Bedroom After the War

I'm a fan of the Canadian band Stars and their indie pop, with its hints of Morrissey*. Their new album, In Our Bedroom After the War, comes out September 25 (as of today Amazon doesn't even have it listed). However, as Stars noted on their website:

Traditional music business practice says we are to begin sending out copies of this album now. We give advance copies to print publications in hopes of securing features that coincide with our September date. We meet with radio stations in hopes of securing airplay. etc, etc.

Inevitably someone will leak the album.

Throughout this process, the most important people in this value chain, the fans, are given only two options - wait until September 25th to legally purchase the new album or choose from a variety of sources and download the album for free, at any time.

We hope you'll choose to support the band, and choose to pay for their album. However we don't think it's fair you should have to wait until September 25th to do so.

We believe that the line between the media and the public is now completely grey. What is the difference between a writer for a big glossy music magazine and a student writing about their favourite bands on their blog? What differentiates a commercial radio station from someone adding a song to their lastfm channel? or their myspace page?

As such, we are making the new Stars album available for legal download today, four days after it's completion. The CD and double vinyl versions of the album will still be released on our official release date, September 25th. We hope you will continue to support music retailers should a physical album in all it's packaged glory be your choice of format.

It's our hope that given a clear, legal alternative to downloading music for free, you will choose to support the creators.

Here's a link button to purchase the new album through iTunes. It's a good one.

*Their new album is mixed by Joe Chiccarelli who has worked for Morrissey, the Shins, and the White STripes.

Technorati Tags: music

Once

Yesterday I thought I had a pass for a preview screening of Danny Boyle's Sunshine. What's even better is that it would be held at the lovely new Landmark theater in LA, one of the few with a handful of 4K projectors and swanky stadium seating. But after cursing my way through a standstill of traffic, I found no line at the theater. I looked down at my pass.

July 19.

Oops. I blame the steady diet of decongestants which have left me with crazy dreams for several days now. I haven't had such a disorienting stretch since the last time I was on malaria medicine.

With half an hour to spare, my buddy and I rushed across town, me at the wheel, cursing and driving like a maniac, in the hopes of catching a 7:40pm showing of Rescue Dawn at the Arclight instead. We arrived exactly 10 minutes after the movie had started.

The lady behind the counter shook her head at me. Apparently the Arclight does not sell tickets to a movie beyond 10 minutes past the start time. Thwarted again. I was more demoralized than upset.

We scanned the board. Between the two of us, we'd seen most everything on the board. Except for Once. I'd missed it at Sundance in January, but while there I ran into a friend who'd seen and loved it.

So this story has a happy ending because Once is one of the better movies I've seen this year. Most fans of The Frames have already seen the movie and know the back story, but for those who don't, the director John Carney once played bass for them, and he directed Frames lead singer Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, Hansard's collaborator in his solo effort The Swell Season, in this indie film about the joys of artistic collaboration.

I don't really like musicals, and this movie technically is not a musical, but if this was a musical, then I would like musicals. The music in the movie is actually the music the two of the leads wrote together, and the way it's woven into the movie feels organic. You can hear some of the lovely tunes at the movie's official website or on the charming soundtrack.

The movie put me in enough of a musical mood that meeting up with some classmates for a farewell karaoke session (a couple of them are headed overseas on a travel video internship) was more enjoyable than I remember karaoke could be. If you are going to sing karaoke, by all means, take it seriously.

Technorati Tags: film, movies, music

Thanks to the linear forward motion of time it's Friday

Jim Jannard reports that the Red team has been able to shoot useable footage with the Red One rated at ISO 4000. Pretty amazing.

David Lynch to direct a commercial for Gucci's next perfume.

MIT neuroscientists identified the neuronal mechanics of déjà vu. Much to my disappointment, they have nothing to do with a glitch in the Matrix.

A few sites that I've just started playing with: Swaptree is a site that allows you to swap media products with other people. You pay for postage. I may start listing all my stuff on here since I've since resigned myself to the fact that most of my old DVDs an CDs and books are just about worthless used. Geni is a free website that allows you to build and maintain a family tree. Everyone you add to your tree can then build on it, and in just a week or two my tree has sprouted into something resembling a small shrub.

Technorati Tags: camcorder, camera, cinematography, filmmaking, gadgets, medicine, commercial, Red, science

Two trailers

Here's the HD version of the 1-18-08 trailer.

And a really low-quality version of the trailer for Lust, Caution. I would never allow the only copy of my trailer on the web to be a low-fi Flash video. UPDATE: This copy of the trailer is a little better.

Ironically, the 1-18-08 trailer would probably not suffer as much being on Flash given its intentional man-on-the-ground shaky camcorder aesthetic, but that's the one gilded in glorious HD.

Technorati Tags: movies, trailer

Spiderman the musical?!

Marvel is in pre-production on Spider-Man the musical, to be directed by Tony-winner Julie Taymor with music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge.

Nice Flickr collection of the evocative name placards on apartment complexes here in Santa Monica. I agree with the photographer - these are the sole redeeming feature of the otherwise fugly apartment architecture ubiquitous in Santa Monica (and Los Angeles in general). You've never seen so much stucco and old shag carpet.

Kaoru Kubo is the famous voice heard on Airport Limousine buses ferrying passengers from Narita Airport to Tokyo. Very soothing.

A montage of beautiful title sequences by Kuntzel+Deygas who did the titles for Catch Me If You Can, among others.

Classified government report says Al-Qaeda is the strongest it's been since 9/11. How did this country ever elect Dubya? Perhaps Bryan Caplan is right.

Technorati Tags: LA, musical, photography, politics, travel

Decongestant high

I feel like something radioactive is bubbling in my sinuses. I'm not sure if it's the result of taking decongestants for two days straight now. For some reason all my decongestants seem to all be dosed at two pills every four hours. So sometime in the middle of every night I have to wake up coughing to death like a seventy year old smoker attached to an oxygen tank. Then I rush to take two more pills and lie there coughing until the medicine takes effect. Longer lasting doses please.

I apologize in advance for all the people I may have infected during my stay in Seattle. Tough to balance being sick with wanting to catch up with people.

***

As a tribute to Radiohead's OK Computer, Stereogum asked some of its favorite musicians for covers of tracks from that much beloved album.

Clever commercial for...well, just wait for the punch line (Quicktime).

Watched a bit of the home run derby the other day and had to wonder who thought it was a good idea to have a crowd of eight year old boys who don't know how to catch a baseball waddling around the outfield running into each other while people like Vladimir Guerrero swing as hard as they can trying to hit the ball out of the stadium, and when they miss they hit searing laser line drives into the outfield. One of these years one of those kids will get hit flush in the face and go down like a criminal hit with a taser, and won't that be an awkward moment for Bud Selig.

Orlando Bloom's dirtstache.

Technorati Tags: baseball, commercial, marketing, sports, video

Live from the Emerald City

This post broadcast from the Emerald City, where yours truly attended Audrey and Matt's lovely wedding this weekend (some pics here). Seattle's gorgeous summer weather arrived early (for the Pacific Northwest) this year; it's actually warmer here than in Los Angeles. The only problem is that I have one of the worst summer colds I've ever experienced and have been hacking myself awake every night for a few hours. I'm popping decongestants like they're SweeTarts. If this is my last post ever, know that I probably choked to death on my own phlegm in the middle of the night.

***

Telekinesis is an iPhone Remote application that allows you to access files on your computer via your iPhone.

Red is a popular brand name for high end products. Besides the camera, we now have SRAM working on a sub 2000g component group called Red (for those of you who are non-cyclists, a component group is all the stuff that goes on your bike frame (outside of your wheels and pedals and handlebars; components include your cranks and derailleurs and brake levers, stuff like that). Always good to have a bit of competition for the two market leaders, Shimano and Campagnolo.

The rumors are confirmed: Dan Patrick is leaving ESPN. The peak of ESPN's quality was when Patrick and Keith Olbermann hosted The Big Show. He faded from view for me in recent years as he moved over to the radio. I didn't even own a radio in NYC.

Dress like Roger Federer at Wimbledon. You're sure to impress in your all-white blazer and warm-up trousers when you show up for local club match, at least until you pull your hamstring in the third game. That was some final between Federer and Nadal, by the way. Those two epitomize the peak of the modern tennis game now; compare that to, say, footage of an Edberg-Becker final from back in the day and it's a totally different game.

You think you're always waiting a long time for the woman in your life to get ready? Lián Amaris Sifuentes took it to another level. She went through the usual preparations for a date but slowed them down to fill 72 hours, and she performed it in Union Square this weekend (so close to my old apartment!). NYU professor R. Luke Dubois shot the performance on three high-def camcorders and will compress it into a 72 minute video. Dubois has used this technique before, compressing previous Academy Award Best Picture winners into one minute. Some examples are posted here (Amadeus or Titanic, e.g.). That's what it must be like to have one's life flash before one's eyes. Trippy.

Technorati Tags: apple, art, cycling, ESPN, gadgets, iPhone, tennis, software, sports, tech

Revisiting Intrade odds for the 2008 election

Last bid on GOP nominee:

36.0 Rudy Giuliani
34.7 Fred Thompson
17.7 Mitt Romney
 3.8 John McCain

Fred Thomspon at 34.7 and John McCain at 3.8? Wow, I'm out of touch. My last impression of Fred Thompson was his struggles to deal with terrorists in Die Hard 2. Sure, the good guys won, but I'd give most of the credit to John McClane.

And the last bids on the Democratic Presidential Nominee side:

40.9 Hillary Clinton
37.5 Barack Obama
 8.9 Al Gore
 5.1 John Edwards

Poor John Edwards is losing to someone who isn't even running.

Intrade also now has shares for the winner of the 2008 Presidential election:

24.5 Hillary
20.9 Barack
18.5 Rudy
18.5 Fred

The Democrats are also predicted to have control of both the Senate and the House.

Technorati Tags: politics

iNotes

Very little evidence supporting theory that poverty breeds terrorism. I find that reassuring.

In a Q&A about some device called the iPhone, Walt Mossberg says Apple will add Flash support to the iPhone browser through an early software update.

Alessandro Petacchi out of the Tour de France after doping charge. His urine sample after the third of his five stage wins at this year's Giro d'Italia showed an unusually high level of albutamol, an asthma treatment. He holds a therapeutic use exemption for its use, but he exceeded the permitted level of 1,000 nanograms/millileter. Well, there goes the top sprinter in the Tour. I'll still watch, though. I just got back on my bike the other day for the first time in ages, and on the 4th I went with Tory for a climb up Malibu Canyon Road. That climb kicked my butt all over the road but I survived to summit.

Crazy battle at Kruger National Park in Africa, caught on video. Some unlikely twists and turns. I think I caught Jeff Van Gundy in there, hanging onto the leg of a Cape Buffalo. I've seen enough specials to know that Cape Buffalo never leave a man behind (thx to Mark for the referral).

Verizon COO Jack Plating sends internal memo titled iWhatever, throws out some brave talk in the face of the iPhone. He is true in that the network is Verizon's first and most powerful advantage. But Verizon handsets are not impressive at all.

I had lunch with Robert today, and the cafe was broadcasting highlights from Wimbledon. We were talking about Federer's loss in the French Open final to Nadal, and Robert thought that a big problem is that Federer was not extending on his first serve. He was keeping his first serve motion in too close, resulting in his ghastly first serve percentage. You wouldn't be able to tell from the final score, but based on the % of points Federer won on his first serve, he would have won that much had his first serve gone in more. One of these years, Federer will break through against Nadal at the French. He's played well enough to do so in the past, but it just hasn't happened there at Philippe Chatrier.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cycling, economics, gadgets, iPhone, nature, politics, sociology, tech, tennis, terrorism, video, web, youtube

Cloverfield

Before The Transformers opening night showing, a trailer played for a J.J. Abrams movie coming out Jan 18, 2008. There's a teaser website for the movie that consists, right now, of just a single photo. The movie is known right now just by the internal name Cloverfield. The trailer made a brief appearance on YouTube before Paramount launched a lightning bolt of a lawyer and smote it into the ether. It looks to be some monster attack on NYC movie, but shot with handheld camcorders from the perspective of people on the ground. Creative trailer.

So to see the trailer, you have to go sit through The Transformers. I can't in good conscience recommend that, but I do suspect that if the Transformers played a big role in your childhood, you will get some pleasure from watching in the company of fellow Transformer-philes. Otherwise, it will probably strike you as the silliest use of someone else's $150 million.

***

People are being deceived by SPF ratings and false labels on sunscreens and getting burned. Sunscreens are tested by applying 2 milligrams per square centimeter of body, so you should apply about two ounces to cover your body. But most people put on much less. A shortcut offered in this article is "Apply about a teaspoon of sunscreen to your face and a shot glass of it to your body."

Here's a list of the best sunscreens. Darn, I guess my Neutrogena Sunblock isn't that hot at UVA protection after all. This stuff is important to me now that I live in the land of perfect weather. It has been about 75 degrees and sunny for nine thousand days straight now.

***

T-Mobile is launching a cellphone service in which you can make calls for free when your phone can connect to a T-Mobile wi-fi hot spot. It's a good thing for consumers when data streams start to merge. With this and Apple's entry into the handset market, perhaps the mobile phone industry will get a kick start. It's about time competition improved cell phone devices, services, and prices.

***

Whoa! David Pogue, branching out into musical comedy.

Technorati Tags: film, gadgets, health, humor, iPhone, mobile, movies, nytimes, phone, pogue, trailer, video, youtube

Soderbergh endoses the Red

Steven Soderbergh loves the Red One camera:

"This is the camera I've been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand. I don't know how Jim and the RED team did it--and they won't tell me--but I know this: RED is going to change everything." Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh uses the pseudonym Peter Andrews when he's a DP. Shooting the movie you're directing is not something the ASC is a fan of. I went to an ASC even earlier this year, and there was some grumbling about Soderbergh and his ilk, though I can't think of any other prominent directors who shoot their own movies.

There are a whole slew of crazy rules set forth by all the guilds, the DGA, the Writer's Guild, the ASC, and the ACE about what names can appear where. You'd think that the person who does the work should get the credit, but that would be too logical.

Technorati Tags: camcorder, camera, cinematography, filmmaking, movies, Red

A "reversal"

Joey Chestnut unseated six-time winner and reigning champion of the Nathan's hot dog champion Takeru Kobayashi by eating 66 hot dogs to Kobayashi's 63 in 12 minutes. Judges deducted from Kobayashi's final count because he suffered a "reversal"--a euphemism for vomiting--after the 12 minutes were up. 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes works out to 1 hot dog consumed every 10.9 seconds, a rate which has me contemplating a reversal just thinking about it.

No one, even Chestnut or Kobayashi, had cracked 60 hot dogs in 12 minutes before, so clearly they're pushing each other, and the grand sport of competitive eating, to new heights.

Joey Chestnut is a great name. If he weren't a competitive eater he could be an adult film star.

Technorati Tags: food, eating

Le foot

Freddy Adu's first of his three goals against Poland is pretty damn sweet.

Technorati Tags: soccer, sports, video, youtube

Really useful iPhone tip: shortcut to type a period

Very useful.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, tip

Master Classes

Two Sundays ago I took a few master classes in cinematography. The morning session was taught by Ron Dexter whose website includes some of the information he shared in the class.

The first half of the afternoon session was taught by Daniel Pearl who shot both the original and remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He has shot a lot of recognizable commercials, including many for Gatorade and the award winning Motorola commercial "Wings" (check out his sports reel and general reel). Pearl favors high contrast cinematography, and one of the interesting things he said was that modern film stocks are so good that they almost work against DP's striving for high contrast. First thing most DPs say when they are sitting in telecine is to crush the blacks.

Pearl's class consisted of watching clips from his reel followed by Q&A after each clip. The second half of the afternoon class, in constrast, consisted of an actual lighting workshop taught by Rodrigo Prieto, the DP most famous for his work with Alejandro González Iñárritu on Babel, 21 Grams, and Amores Perros but who has also shot films like Brokeback Mountain, Alexander, 8 Mile, and Frida.

Prieto chose to recreate the lighting from the final scene of Lust, Caution which he just finished shooting for Ang Lee. Without giving away the story, Prieto told us that the last scene consists of Tony Leung entering a dark room from the hallway, walking over to sit on a bed, and then standing and walking back out the door. On a small stage at the Mole Richardson building he set about recreating the lighting from his memory and then shooting two shots on a Viper camera brought in for the class.

I hadn't heard much about Lust, Caution, but any movie directed by Ang Lee and starring Tony Leung is going to hook me (it's adapted from this book by Eileen Chang). Prieto discussed the challenges of trying to control soft light, and he walked us through how he dealt with several tricky lighting issues he ran into for these last two shots. Several LCD monitors were set up around the room so we could get a sense of what the camera was seeing.

The camaraderie among cinematographers never fails to impress me. You'd think people who have to compete for work would be guarded and jealous, but DP's always seem willing to share their techniques and knowledge with others. Prieto was as personable a guy as you'll meet in the film world.

Technorati Tags: cinematography, filmmaking

Google buys Grandcentral

Google buys GrandCentral. I signed up with GrandCentral when it was in beta but never really used it. It sounds good in theory, one number and voicemail box to unite them all, but I never felt compelled to switch over. Google's purchase is validation, of sorts, so perhaps I'll revisit the service.

Technorati Tags: business, google, phone, tech

An iPhone report

You don't really know someone until you travel with them, right? I've hung out with my iPhone for a weekend now, and we've really hit it off. I'm only the eight thousandth person to throw my thoughts out, but here are some random thoughts on my new baby.

Let's start with the negatives, many of which are missing features:

• The device is a slave, in part, to AT&T. You don't have to search far for the horror stories spawned this weekend as the iPhone forced hundreds of thousands of customers to interact with AT&T.
• Recessed headphone port--noted earlier.
• No GPS which would've made the Maps feature even more killer than it already is. I'm hoping that when GPS is available I can send mine in for a GPS receiver insertion, but I've already set aside a fund for iPhone 2.0. Maybe when GPS is incorporated it can be used for anti-theft tracking so I don't have to stress so much about losing her.
• Mediocre 2MP cell phone camera with no flash--better than the one I have on my Verizon LG phone, but it's not going to replace my Canon SD800 for pics of friends when out and about.
• Volume is a bit soft--maybe I'm going deaf from listening to my iPod at such high volumes the past several years, but my iPhone at max volume is softer than other phones I've owned.
• Speaker is not that loud or clear. Not surprising to me that they can't fit a great speaker with a huge amp in such a tiny device, but if you're wondering about the speaker quality, there you go.
• Can't go to landscape mode in Mail. You really can't screw up typing in the larger keyboard of landscape mode, but that view only appears for the web browser right now.
• Need SpamSieve for the iPhone, or I need to start using my GMail account a lot more to filter out the spam. It's been a long time since I've had to deal with spam one by one, and it's not pretty. So far I haven't found a method to delete a group of e-mails so I've been zapping spams one by one which, as anyone knows, is painful in this day and age of spam overload.
• No copy and paste. I haven't tried that function on devices that don't have physical keyboards, but perhaps there's an elegant way to implement it. I almost think the iPhone could do with an extra button that does different things in various contexts, but I know previous efforts with such all-purpose triggers, like the one they put in BMW cars at one point, have been unsuccessful.
• No Flash or Java for the iPhone implementation of Safari. It's easy to take Flash and Java for granted now, until you lose them and realize that so many Web 2.0 sites rely on them for basic interface functionality.
• Web page rendering is just a hair slow for pages that have loaded already. Even once a web page finished loading, if you scroll down a page quickly, the browser will stop to render the next section of the page, presenting you with a grey and white checkerboard pattern while you're on hold. I've encountered this even if it's just a page of pure text. It's not that bothersome to me, but I'm surprised it occurs even with lightweight web pages.
• No video capability for the camera. I had visions of using the speaker phone with an onboard video camera to do futuristic video phone chats with other iPhone or video iChat-enabled people, and they remain just that, visions.
• No RSS reader.
• No to-do items in the Calendar, something that would help it as a PDA replacement.
• The calendar from your Mac is flattened upon entering the iPhone so all appointments are listed together. When you create items in the iPhone Calendar they can only be sent to one iCal calendar on your Mac.
• One time my iPhone got stuck in this odd state where Maps and iPod kept bouncing me back to the home screen. I finally solved it by turning the device completely off.
• Need to allow more third-party app development for the iPhone. I don't mind Apple's closed loop system in many cases because the solutions are so good, but in general, open systems speed the pace of development. For now, I've created a Bookmarks folder in Safari called iPhone and have been tossing interesting iPhone web apps in there, but I'd prefer to be able to select your own icons for the home screen.
• Can't load your own ringtones. I'm not a huge ringtone person, and I'm proud to say I've never paid money for a ringtone, but I would like to load my own. I guess I'll have to wait a while to use the THX deep bass note as my ringtone.
• No voice dialing or recording.
• Can't use it as an iPod disk drive.
• I haven't found an optimal grip for two-thumb typing.
• No manual management option for the iPod's music, video, and photo content. You have to choose playlists or albums in iTunes and iPhoto for the iPod to sync to automatically. You can be creative in iTunes with smart playlists to manage your music at a finer-grained level, but I don't understand why you can't manually drag songs and videos and and off the iPhone like you can with any other iPod.

A lot of these issues can be addressed by a software update. I'm already giddy at the thought of finding that first iPhone software update available. I've always preferred electronic devices that are software upgradeable; even my home theater pre-amp can be upgraded via software. It's exciting when my PS3 grabs a software update and suddenly can up-res regular DVDs. It's a shame the iPhone doesn't have room for hardware add-ons, like additional memory, but I've never owned a cell phone long enough to make too much use of hardware add-ons anyway.

On to the good:

• AT&T reception in my apartment has improved a lot since the first day I moved in. I don't know how a single person like myself can judge the antenna quality of the iPhone and the network quality of AT&T, so we'll have to wait for more stringent testing to judge this aspect of the phone.
• On the first sync, all my Address Book contacts, e-mail account settings in Mail, and iCal appointments moved right over to the iPhone. I'd never had a phone that could sync its contacts with my computer, so I still have to move phone numbers over from my old phone, but hopefully this will be the last time I ever have to do that.
• Maps is awesome. I don't have one of those GPS screens in my car, but now I won't feel so uninformed when stuck in traffic in my car in LA which is all the time.
• The iPhone feels like a device from the future. I love just flicking my fingers across the screen to scroll the display. Pinching, twirling, tossing--I feel like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
• Speaking of the display, it's gorgeous. Bright colors, solid resolution.
• The glass screen is sturdy and elegant. It does smudge, but you don't see the smudges when the screen is lit up. The device feels like a luxury device with its high quality build and heft.
• Visual voicemail is fantastic. Setting up my voicemail box with screen prompts was so much more enjoyable than setting up past voicemail boxes using audio prompts. Now I just need the feature to automatically encode all voicemails from voice-to-text and I may be able to delete some voicemails without ever having to listen to them.
• When trying to move the cursor to a specific spot in a block of text, you place your finger done roughly where you want it to go and a magnifying glass view pops up to allow for fine-grained control. Some interface specialist can put that on their resume and has a claim to fame for life.
• The YouTube videos encoded via H.264 look better than the YouTube Flash videos on my desktop computer. That's ironic. You know how I hate the Flash video quality of YouTube. It's odd that the onset of the iPhone that's driving YouTube to recode the rest of its videos to H.264. Now when can we choose to view those on YouTube.com as well?
• There's a switch on the side to flip the phone to silent. Why didn't any of my previous phones have this? So convenient.
• Surfing the web via Safari is surprisingly pleasant for a device this small. Double-tap to zoom is intuitive. For many trips, I no longer need to bring along my laptop. For simple tasks--checking e-mail, web-surfing, listening to music--the iPhone works just fine.

Most important of all, the experience of using the iPhone is an enjoyable one. I've owned phones that have had better cameras, the ability to shoot video, and other features the iPhone lacks. But a customer experience does not comprise a list of features. If so, the iPod wouldn't be the runaway market leader. I really enjoy the experience of using the iPhone as it is now, and I can't wait to see how it transforms with its first software update.

At a minimum, the entry of a player like Apple into the market should raise the game for other mobile manufacturers which is something they really needed. Every one will benefit, even those who don't like Apple and its products.

The most annoying thing about the iPhone is the caustic debate between iPhone lovers and haters (a subset of the general Mac and non-Mac religious war). You can't avoid it if you're curious to read evaluations of the device; it spills out and overflows out of every comment thread. Many people who don't want an iPhone feel intent on calling it an overpriced piece of garbage, and iPhone fans are labeled zealots. Reasonable, centrist dialogue has a hard-time seizing the high ground on the web, and the iPhone launch has put a megaphone to the shouting match. No drama, please.

Technorati Tags: Apple, gadgets, iPhone, ipod, phone

Pepper

Lots of good stuff in this week's New Yorker:

• James Surowiecki gives an overview of prediction markets which he is qualified to do since he wrote The Wisdom of Crowds
• Alex Ross on Sibelius
• A short piece by David Sedaris
• A short story by Stuart Dybek
• Louis Menand reviews Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
• Anthony Lane reviews The Transformers and Rescue Dawn

MacArthur Grant winner Luis von Ahn is using online games to allow humans to help solve computing problems. For example, he's using human evaluations of photos to give computers an aesthetic judgment sensibility. The games, when they're show ready, will be online here.

Taiwanese director Edward Yang died yesterday of complications from colon cancer. He was 59. His film Yi Yi is humane and moving, not to mention a fascinating specimen of Asian long-shot cinema.

AllofMP3 now officially dead, shut down by the Russian government. It seems, however, to have arisen from the dead under a new URL.

Technorati Tags: film, movies, music, newyorker, tech

Colossal squid caught in Antarctica

As a huge giant squid fan, you'd think I knew of the even larger species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni or colossal squid. Well, now I do because fishermen captured a male in Antarctica. Is the colossal squid really a different species, or did some overzealous scientists just catch one and decide to one up their predecessors?

This specimen weighed about 990 pounds, and, added a New Zealand professor, "would yield calamari rings the size of tractor tires." That sounds like a Chili's appetizer.

Technorati Tags: giant, nature, science, squid

The fabled f1.2 58mm

Every now and then, though not often, a Nikon 58mm f1.2 AI-S lens comes up for bid. Oh baby do I lust after one of these.

Technorati Tags: camera, gadgets, lens, photography, nikon

Recessed headphone port - curses!

The biggest downer about the iPhone so far is that most third-party headphones don't work with the recessed headphone port. Some folks have found creative solutions to avoid buying the $10 headphone adapter. I'm not sure why the headphone port is recessed. I really hope it wasn't to drive sales of headphone adapters, but I doubt it since Apple doesn't even manufacture the adapter. Many earphone manufacturers are likely scrambling to include an iPhone adapter with their headphones in the near future.

That said, that's one of the few iPhone problems that doesn't seem solvable by a software update. The iPhone is not perfect, but it's such a leap beyond my plain Jane Verizon LG phone that I feel like I'm cheating on my wife with a twenty-something model (just a hypothetical; no I'm not married). I keep finding excuses to fiddle around with my iPhone; the display is just that gorgeous and fun to play with.

There are hundreds of iPhone first impressions on the web. I'll try and add a few of my thoughts later today, when I'm back home for the evening, but it's safe to say that the iPhone is the most addictive new Apple product since the original iPod.

Technorati Tags: Apple, gadgets, phone, iPhone