Who Says I Can't?

in
The newest Lance Armstrong Nike commercial Who Says I Can't?, starring Jerry Seinfeld, M.C. Hammer, Lyle Lovett, Mariano Rivera, and Andre Agassi, among others, is online at NikeCycling. It's a bit difficult to navigate to.
Disable your pop-up stopper or killer and then surf to NikeCycling.com. Wait about 10 seconds for the initial flash pop-up screen to go away, and then at the bottom there's a line that reads SEE WHAT I CAN DO > HERE. Click on the HERE and it will play the Quicktime Video.

Footage from Mel Gibson's Passion

in
Some clips from the controversial upcoming here in RealVideo and Windows Media formats. It doesn't open until next March or April, but already it has incited a heated debate (I wanted to say "a passionate debate" but decided to avoid the potentially insensitive pun).
After having read an early draft script, some claim the movie is anti-Semitic and have sent Gibson a list of requested changes. Gibson has screened the movie for some of his friends but has not and will not allow the protesters to see the movie until it opens wide and they cough up $9 a piece.
There are some topics on which, if you have an artistic vision, no matter what it is, you will turn yourself into a human lightning rod. I'm speaking, of course, of Gigli.
Another random movie note--a news clip from IMDB:
"Final 'Lord of the Rings' Film Sets Record for Advance Sales in Japan
It doesn't open in Japan until the spring of next year, but Japanese distributor Nippon Herald Films said Tuesday that it sold a record 13,645 advanced tickets to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Saturday. The sale broke the previous record for one-day advance sales in Japan set by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with 11,220 tickets sold."
Some people already have tickets to LOTR: ROTK? Grrrrr.

Destructible DVDs

in
Netflix sent me an e-mail survey today, asking about how likely I'd be to purchase a destructible DVD. Disney (Buena Vista Home Entertainment) home video earlier announced their plans to issue destructible/disposable DVDs based on Flexplay technology. Open the DVD and 48 hours later the surface oxidizes enough to render the DVD unplayable.
The idea for Netflix or other "rentailers" would be to ship those to customers instead of the normal DVDs, saving Netflix the return postage costs and returns processing infrastructure burden.
Unfortunately, while the idea sounds economically clever, I would never commit even the measly sum of $3 for such a DVD because I rarely have the time to finish a movie in 48 hours. It usually takes me a few days to finish a movie when I'm working.
Of course, in other avenues of life I routinely spend on goods that depreciate in value rapidly. Take bananas. Out of a bunch of six bananas, usually two end up as black corpses.

Recommended

in
A highly enjoyable several hours was had this weekend reading The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time by Mark Haddon while listening to the score to The Hours by Philip Glass on repeat. I had only planned to start this short novel, and then the next thing I knew I had finished it. It's been a long time since that happened to me with a work of fiction. If my favorite novel of all time, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, is a tale told by an idio, then The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time is a tale told by an idiot savant (actually an autistic boy).

Weekend of celebrations

in
Weblog posts are chronologically oriented from newest to oldest, top to bottom. So I want to review this weekend of celebrations in reverse order so the latest news is up top. This post pays tribute to the syndicated sports weekly television show George Michael Sports Machine (no, you non-sports fans, not that George Michael). Back before cable TV and Sportscenter made cross-country sports highlights an hourly affair, my favorite wrap-up of the weekend in sports was the half hour of highlights hosted by George Michael on Sunday nights. His gimmick was that he stood next to this gigantic machine which looked like a prop from a 1960's science fiction movie UFO, with reels and gargantuan plastic nobs and buttons. Whenever he introduced a highlight, he'd press a button on the machine as if launching the video clip. Cheesy and yet so alluring to the male mind when paired with sports clips and Michael's melodramatic monologue.
If you used to watch the George Michael Sports Machine, you'll now want to imagine his commanding voice...
"Our first stop, a dock along the the coast of Puget Sound. A group of friends gathered to celebrate a birthday, but then, an unexpected bonus! On the scene arrived...

But something was different. Look at the highlighted area in this replay [sorry, you'll have to imagine a slow-motion video clip]; yes, that's right, on Lynn's left hand, it's difficult to miss...a huge ass rock, glittering in the late afternoon sun. That's right, People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year is now off the market as he popped the question to his pop star girlfriend L.Mill in the San Juans this weekend during a kayaking trip. Fans expecting a wonderful sailing trip to celebrate a birthday (more on that in a second) were stunned and delighted by this bonus surprise. Like putting a few quarters into the vending machine and having two bags of chips leap from the fifth story instead of just one.
[My first gift to them will be to find a better photo than this quick shot of them munching on fries (they did not have the munchies, to head off the suspicions of some of you cynics), snapped during a trip I took with them to...

...The Gorge. Great people, happy times! Okay, now back to the George Michael Sports Machine.]
Now, we fast forward just a few minutes later. Let's go there thanks to the Sports Machine [George hits a fake button]. Kate organized a sailing trip and dinner for a group of her friends because today, Sunday the third of August, was Laura's birthday. Laura and her friends took a relaxing two hour sailing trip around Puget Sound on a 70 foot sailboat, then dined afterwards at The Islander which took over the facilities formerly owned by Leo Melina's. Onlookers reported that the birthday girl was in high spirits, even taking command of the sailboat at times and stopping to sign some autographs before whisking away in a darkened limo after dinner.
[Laura is commemorating her 30th birthday with a vacation titled 30 days of fun, and it includes a biking trip through Italy, mostly Sardinia. I have negative vacation time and I'm immensely jealous. Someday I'd like to ride the Dolomites. Maybe I need a 30 days of fun trip myself; after all, the next decade is just around the year's end for me.]
Crank the Sports Machine back yet further, to Friday evening [George flips a fake switch and the dummy reels start turning]. The scene? The deck of Jason's mansion in Queen Anne. Juli, fresh having retired from Amazon to pursue a freelance illustration career, was expecting a nice dinner out with her husband Todd at a Spanish restaurant. Funny, she thought, I don't recall a Spanish restaurant here on this residential street in Queen Anne.
The first sign that things were not what they appeared was when she spotted friend and noted billionaire playboy Eugene [that's me] getting out of his car. And then, after walking up a few steps, she realized they were headed to Jason's house. The final clue? A giant cooking tray set up on the sidewalk by Jason's deck. Yes, this was no Spanish restaurant but a surprise party to celebrate Juli's new freelance career. And who had Todd invited but the Paella King of Seattle himself! Not only that, but Jason had invited Kevin (a fellow Amazonian) and his St. Louis folk rock band Oat Soda to play on his deck in rehearsal for their gig at Seafair the next day. It was the hottest ticket in town. Celebs ranging from Tom Skerritt to Ian Ziering to Penelope Cruz were spotted downing paella and some of Todd's special homemade white wine sangria.
Something must have been in that sangria, too, because the party soon spun madly out of control. As soon as Oat Soda started playing...


...host Hugh Hefner, errr, Jason, began leading the crowd in chants of, "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!"

Meanwhile, retired billionaire playboy (there are a lot of those in this story) Dan and his fiancee Lori suddenly burst out in an Irish jig...

Dan later tore away his shorts to reveal a kilt on underneath, emblazoned with the Confederate flag. When he tried to tear even that away, security guards dragged him away.
Meanwhile, inside, leggy European model Margo shocked onlookers by throwing off her Blahniks and dropping to the ground to do the retro dance move "the caterpillar" across Jason's living room floor.

It was a crazy party that ended only after the police were called in to break things up after a few revelers who had formed a mosh pit leaped off the deck and landed in the neighbor's hot tub.
[The paella was delicious, and Oat Soda was a lot of fun, BTW. Both should definitely be on the list of party planners in Seattle.]
That's it for the George Michael Sports Machine. Hello to affiliates WXBQ in Los Angeles, KRZQ in Omaha, and WBBC in Shreveport. See you next weekend.
[An unexpectedly eventful and busy weekend. I'm so so happy for Juli, Laura, and Bill and Lynn. Good karma all around. Somehow, in between I managed to fit in a round of golf at Port Ludlow where I promptly shot 114, the only real bummer of the weekend. I don't know how, but on the front nine I got the shanks and lost something like 8 golf balls. It's really frustrating because I finally started putting well and averaged two putts a hole. I'm going to blame the sangria.]

Authentication can be fun

in
Kottke.org remaindered a link to this article from Microsoft Research proposing to use inkblots for authentication (identifying users online). It reminds me a bit of another authentication scheme called Passface, now called Real User, which identified users by having them pick out a series of faces from a larger set of faces. Both capitalize on quirks of human perception to create more secure authentication schemes.
They're fun and potentially more effective than using simple text and numeric string passwords, but I find they take too long and end up being too much trouble to gain widespread adoption. I don't want to have to step through a series of pages, identifying ten inkblots or a series of faces, just to log in to a website. Sure, that's lazy, but entire empires have been built on human laziness.

Who's Jonathan Frazen?

in
I got my invoice for my renewal to The New Yorker, and it included a form letter from Peter Webb of their circulation department. An excerpt:
"The New Yorker, the fabled magazine of James Thurber, E.B. White, Robert Benchley...now the magazine of John Updike, Jonathan Frazen, Alice Munro, Ken Auletta..."
Frazen? It's somewhat humorous to see any typos in correspondence from The New Yorker.
The New Yorker, like every other magazine, is like an insecure girlfriend always angling for signs of commitment. From about a year before my sub was due to expire, I've been receiving letters urging me to renew. Don't they know men do poorly with commitment? Sheesh. Cool your jets and save yourself some postage. I'll renew when I'm good and ready.

Grrrrr

in
DVD distributors don't distinguish between inventory they ship to online retailers and those they ship to physical stores. So even DVDs I order online and which are shipped directly to my doorstep come with not only shrinkwrap but stickers that seal all three sides of the keep or snap case. Those stickers are designed to slow down in-store thieves and simply serve to frustrate online customers.
In the early days of Amazon, toy manufacturers shipped us toys in fragile cases intended to showcase the toy in a physical store. These packages were terribly difficult to pick and pack and ship without damaging them. Same with outdoor living tools. Eventually some of them wisened up and shipped us inventory in more warehouse-friendly packaging. Let's hope someday the movie studios will learn, too.
CDs often come with the annoying adhesive bones on them as well, but they're easier to remove. Simply remove the cover of the plastic CD case from the hinge at the unsealed end and peel off the bone with the cover on the other end. Then simply snap the cover back on.

Cleaner browsing for cleaner living

in
If you use Internet Explorer, you may be accustomed to browsing with several rows of toolbars at the top of the page. Address bar, buttons, bookmarks, Google Toolbar, Yahoo toolbar, etc. But sometimes, I like to hit the F11 key on IE for cleaner browsing. It maximizes screen real estate and is strangely soothing. Inspired by this question on Tufte's site.
Lots of other great content at Tufte's Ask E.T. page, well worth several hours of browsing. For example, a recent discussion of the difficulties in generating useful project management charts for managing large scale projects. Or a link to this graphical display of Puget Sound traffic, which is quite useful for highway commuters.
Or this discussion of interfaces in sci-fi movies. Minority Report appeared on HBO this morning, catching me during breakfast. In it, Tom Cruise's pre-cog cop manipulates images displayed on a translucent glass monitor using the hand gestures of a maestro while wearing input device gloves. Futuristic movies always concoct highly convoluted, visually impressive but impractical interfaces for doing everyday tasks. They make for great visuals but low usability. The translucent monitor allows for impressive mise-en-scene. Instead of cutting between two shots, one of the visual on the monitor and one of Cruise's expression, Spielberg could frame both in one shot: the video clip of Cruise shooting Leo Crow and Cruise's stunned expression behind it. It's as if we could visualize his character's thoughts.
That's wonderful until you consider how impractical a translucent display would be since everything behind it would be distracting you from the image on the screen. Now a glass display that could switch back and forth between opaque and translucent? That would be nifty. Seems like something Apple would jump on in a heartbeat.

BuyCustomers.com, StealIdeas.com

in
Scott Blum, founder and CEO of Buy.com, is at it again. Now he's launched BuyMusic.com, an Apple Music clone. He's the king of taking other people's original business ideas and duplicating them but cheapening them and then going after those innovators with obnoxious marketing campaigns. Think of Blum as a guy who makes knock-off Ray-Bans and peddles them on NY city streets with a megaphone.
But that's not what rubs me the wrong way. After all, people are like that are part of what make the market efficient. It's the cheap (but expensive) publicity stunts masquerading as advertising campaigns which give me the same reactions that coolhunter Cayce Pollard has to the Michelin Man logo in William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition: nausea, dizziness, difficulty breathing.
His latest is the knockoff of the Apple Music Store commercials. A bunch of random folks dance around singing to songs playing on their MP3 players. Those Apple commercials weren't my favorite, but they were novel. The BuyMusic.com commercials are just, well, embarrassing.
I actually thought about trying out BuyMusic.com, but I can't in good conscience, such is my revulsion. It's the same reason I cringe in the face of pushy salespeople.
Footnote: You also have to use Internet Explorer to access BuyMusic.com; make that a salesperson who spits in your face when he talks.

A night at the races

in
Saw Seabiscuit yesterday night, out at Regal Bellevue Galleria on the East side. I can't remember the last time I watched a movie over on the other side of Lake Washington. It's a haul, but there are advantages. The theaters are much less crowded, and the facilities are generally superior to those on the West side. We didn't have to fight for seats on what was opening night, the views were great because of the stadium seating arrangement, and the theater had digital sound, turned on.
Perhaps it's one of the quirks of the Regal movie theater chain, but the 20 minutes leading up to the scheduled movie start time were filled with random programming. Finally the lights went down, though in this day and age that's just a cue to give your undivided attention to an additional fifteen to twenty minutes of advertising.

  • They aired a new Dolby Digital trailer based on the Broadway hit Stomp. One of my favorite portions of every movie is the Dolby Digital or DTS or SDDS trailer, though the THX trailers are perhaps the best of all, being both an audio and video quality standard. I have a DVD containing the other popular Dolby Digital trailers: Canyon, Train, City, and Temple.

  • Why so many different green splash pages announcing that the following trailers is G-Rated and has been approved for all audiences? Every trailer seemed to begin with a different variant of this page. It's disconcerting.

  • Nicolas Cage, potentially such an joyous actor, looks to be back to his mannerized, epileptic crazy-man schtick in Matchstick Men. And he was so subtle in Adaptation, allowing the humor to emerge at its own pace. I thought he was coming around again. One would never credit Ridley Scott for evoking the most improvisational performances from his actors.

  • The Coldplay single Clocks is used in the trailer for Peter Pan, which is starting to ruin that song for me.

  • I saw my first of the MPAA commercials urging us to fight piracy, featuring the average joes of the movie industry, like technicians and grips and the like, pleading with the audience not to put them out on the street by pirating movies. I felt insulted, as if accused of a crime I hadn't even thought of committing yet. Perhaps they're hoping to get ahead of the problem, unlike the music industry, but such obvious propaganda is counter-productive. A mis-step by the MPAA, leaving little hope they'll be more forward-thinking than their hand-wringing, litigious counterparts in the music industry.

  • Saw, for the first time, the trailer for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe. Looks good. It's even better to have Peter Weir back directing.

  • The problem with Regal Bellevue Galleria is that the sound leaks between theaters. During quiet moments in Seabiscuit, we could here the low frequency rumble from the adjacent theater (Bad Boys II? Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life?) seeping through our screen. Very distracting.

  • Speaking of horses, there was a couple sitting to my left, and the woman laughed like a horse. It was unbelievable. She'd repeat every line she thought was funny (I can't stand when people do that, as if they think the joke may have slipped past the rest of us) and then burst out in hysterical laughter--"Lazarus, hah hah hah hah!" Her boyfriend? Husband? His laugh wasn't far behind. A match made in heaven.


The movie itself was an enjoyable diversion, but the book was far superior. It was inevitable, perhaps, that Hollywood would take a story deserving of a 5 hour miniseries and condense it into a Happy Meal of dramatic highlights. The book gives the story more space in which to breathe, and reading the book will reward those wishing to discover uplifting miracles in the annals of human history. Even the author herself, Laura Hillenbrand, had to overcome a battle with chronic fatigue syndrome before the success of Seabiscuit propelled her to fame. She writes about that battle in an interview published in the back of the paperback, and she goes into more detail in an article in the July 7, 2003 issue of The New Yorker.

Pauline Kael liked The Matrix

in
I'm always searching for interviews with Pauline Kael from the years before she passed away because she often reveals her opinion of recent movies, ones she never reviewed for The New Yorker. She was a great critic; certainly the greatest movie critic ever, and arguably one of the most important critics in any field.
So it was with great joy that I found a transcript of an interview with her from 2001, posted at The New Yorker online. I had read it in hard copy form but long ago tossed that issue.
Kael on Chaplin and Spielberg: I never liked Chaplin, because he made me cry, and I didn't want maudlin feelings at the movies. I was very skeptical of Chaplin, because I thought he pushed too hard. In some ways, he did what Spielberg has been doing: he pushes buttons. And because people like that button pushing, they think Spielberg is a great director. But he's become, I think, a very bad director. Even his best work in "Schindler's List" is very heavy-handed. And I'm a little ashamed for him, because I loved his early work. I loved "The Sugarland Express." And "1941" was a wonderful comedy. It didn't make it with the public, but he should have had enough brains to know it was a terrific piece of work and to not be so apologetic about it. Instead, he turned to virtuous movies. And he's become so uninteresting now. I think of the work he did in "E.T." and "Close Encounters," and I think that he had it in him to become more of a fluid, far-out director. But, instead, he's become a melodramatist.
Kael on independent film and The New Yorker: They thought I was awful for panning the kind of movies I panned, the earnest movies, what's now called the independent film

Ghosts in the machine

in
Every now and then, on my Powerbook, I'll suddenly be unable to connect to a website I browse regularly. Right now it's ESPN.com. I just get timeouts. No such problem if I use my Windows computer, hooked up to the same cable modem. A while back I couldn't access my own website.
Very strange--a DNS server gnome of some sort?
The other problem with Powerbooks--they heat up like a frying pan when you're working. I had to buy a one of those lap-tables because I was close to getting third-degree burns on my legs. It wouldn't be a sexy improvement, but laptop manufacturers need to spend some time developing laptops that can be used on, well, laptops.

The race of truth

in
The moment we've been waiting for (well, at least I have): the final time trial of the 2003 Tour de France. Lance vs. Jan, Armstrong vs. Ullrich. Lance has a 65 second lead, and Ullrich has 49km or 30.5 miles to seize it.
A time trial is referred to as "the race of truth" because each rider rides alone, with no teammates or other riders to draft off of. It's just you against the clock. Every rider rides the same exact course.
Riders are launched in reverse order of the GC standings, so Jan will launch second to last, and five minutes later, Lance will be the last man out. They will likely be the last two cyclists on the road that day.
Lance will roll up into the starter box a bit before he's set to go. He'll have already done a warm-up ride in the morning and have spent that time before the time trial on a stationary trainer, keeping his legs warm. He'll sign in at the starter box, viewing the world through the plastic lens of his Giro time trial helmet, custom made just for him. Someone will hold his bike seat so he can clip in with both feet and be ready to sprint out of the box which is elevated a few feet above the ground. He'll be descending a short ramp onto the road.
The road ahead will be barricaded on both sides by metallic or plastic barriers, manned by gendarmes every 10 to 20 meters. Behind those barriers, thousands of fans will be screaming, and their cries will reverberate off of the plastic shell of his helmet, and they will sound to him like the ocean, a muffled roaring through a seashell.
In one ear, Lance will have an earpiece through which he can communicate with his director sportif, Johan Brunyeel. Johan will utter a few words of encouragement, and during the ride he'll be giving Lance updates on Ullrich's times through each time check. Lance will receive constant updates on just where he stands relative to the man ahead of him on the road.
Perhaps it will be raining; it's in the current forecast. If so, the roads will be slick, adding an element of danger in the turns, slowing the riders down.
Ullrich has nothing to lose. He'll be leaving his legs on the road, which is what every rider does in a time trial. Jan and Lance will be averaging approximately 30mph for about an hour of riding. They'll be trying to ride just under their lactate threshold (the point of exertion at which your muscles beging creating lactic acid) for nearly the entire ride, which means their heart rates will be in the 170's. Imagine getting on a stationary bike at the gym and riding a huge gear so hard that your eyes are crossed and sustaining that pace for an hour. Imagine doing it in an aerodynamic tuck position that puts huge strains on your lower back and neck. It's the spinning class from hell.
What will Lance be thinking in the last moments before he's launched? About his loss of 1' 36" to Jan in the previous time trial? About the expectations of his team, who've ridden their hearts out in support of him, sacrificing any opportunity at individual honors? About his sponsor, U.S. Postal, which measures the success of its season almost entirely on Lance's result in the Tour de France? About his numerous other sponsors, like Nike and Oakley and Trek and Subaru, who invest millions of dollars in him? About the millions of cancer survivors around the world who look to him as a hero? About that time of his life when he was lying in a hospital bed, his body eaten away by cancer and chemotherapy, when he thought he would die? About the father who abandoned him? Most people claim that part of Lance's success is the chip on his shoulder, but does he have time to even contemplate such things when out on the road?
I don't know. Perhaps he will think of nothing. Sometimes, when I'm riding, I find my consciousness narrows, and after a ride of several hours I can't remember what I was thinking about. Perhaps his body will be hurting too much to think of anything.
The French starter, the man in a business suit, standing next to Lance, gives him the heads up. It's about time to go. Lance leans forward on his bars, rises up to put weight on his front right pedal, positioned just slightly forward from 12 o'clock.
The starter raises his hand, five fingers open. And then he curls his thumb into his palm, and then his index finger, and...he is saying something.
"Cinq. Quatre. Trois. Deux. Un..."

Roboform

in
If you're a Windows user, you should really download Roboform. If you're like me, you regularly have to remember dozens of online passwords and usernames and to fill in all sorts of forms. Because of the varying requirements of all these sites or perhaps because certain usernames are taken, I have a whole bunch of different usernames and passwords. Sometimes I can't remember them and have to get them e-mailed to me.
That is, until I began using Roboform. It saves all that information in one spot, encrypts it, and brings it up on demand. Much more fully featured than any other form filler I've used, including the ones included with web browsers or the new Google toolbar. Did I mention that Roboform is free?

How do cyclists pee?

in
Many folks are following the Tour de France for the first time this year. The number one question I get about cycling is: how to cyclists pee during a race stage which lasts five to six hours long? I answered this one a long time ago but I thought it was worth repeating.
There are two options. One: jump off your bike and run over to the side of the road like your average club cyclist and do your business. If you're lucky, one of your teammates will stick around and help to ride you back to the peloton. If you do it early in a stage the peloton will probably take it easy and not attack while you're answering the call. Sometimes you may have to answer a higher calling, in which case you may have to stop and knock on a door of a house somewhere along the road. Luckily, your average French family will likely consider it an honor to have a Tour rider's derriere gracing their toilet seat.
The other option, if the race is tight, is to just pee from your bike. Maybe a teammate will keep a hand on your back seat and keep you rolling so you can just turn the opposite way and pull your bib down and keep that outside leg down. After all, you don't want that any corrosive liquids touching your precious Campagnolo or Shimano components.
I've never actually tried to fire while on the move. In the intense heat of the French countryside during the Tour, one usually doesn't have to worry about over-hydrating; it's dehydration that's the constant enemy. But the second you get off the bike, that huge surplus of liquid you've built up keeps you running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes for a few hours.