GIF (Good it's Friday)

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Ivan Basso confessed to "attempted doping," and now Bjarne Riis admits that he used EPO during years that include his 1996 Tour de France win. Eric Zabel and Rolf Aldag, who rode for Telekom during the Riis and Ullrich Tour de France wins in the 90's, also fessed up to EPO use. So did Telekom rider Bert Dietz. And Udo Bölts, and Christian Henn. Cycling is detoxing, and it's necessary, though not pretty.


On this the weekend of the Star Wars convention here in LA, psychiatrists have diagnosed Anakin Skywalker, later Darth Vader, of having a personality disorder. It sounds so obvious as to be an Onion headline, but apparently it's not. If you read me this line, I'd swear it was satire:


The diagnosis came to [psychiatrist Eric] Bui, a Star Wars fan, as he watched the series. "I thought to myself, 'That guy is crazy.' But he's not crazy. He's borderline."


Speaking of Star Wars, there's a rumor going around that George Lucas will announce a new Star Wars movie tomorrow at the convention (Saturday).


New ride at the Kennedy Space Center simulates 17,500 mph liftoff of a Space Shuttle. Now that sounds cool.


90% of handset owners believe iPhone is better than their current phone. That's when you know your marketing and brand are strong, when your product hasn't even reached consumers and yet they're crowning it the champ.


Michel Gondry directs Natalie Portman in the video for Paul McCartney's "Dance Tonight." Maybe not as conceptually brilliant as his other videos, but he still is able to pull off his effects in camera. Here's another Michel Gondry video, for Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water," which is built around a supremely clever conceit.


Someday our kids will laugh at us for ever having been impressed with regular old HD resolution. By then they'll be watching Ultra HD, with a resolution of 7680 x 4320 (16X sharper than HDTV), shot on cameras that can capture 4000 fps.


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Quickies

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Economist Bryan Caplan wonders whether or not he should get LASIK. As an economist, he weighs the pros and cons.


Okay, hybrid vehicles' fuel economy ratings have been downgraded to account for more typical driving conditions. I think most people, all things being equal, would swing for a hybrid because who doesn't want to help the environment. But all things are not equal yet, and people aren't willing to make the needed sacrifices. Once auto manufacturers star producing a wider selection of hybrids, in more shapes and sizes, then the hybrid movement will regain momentum. The article mentions the price premium for paying for a hybrid, but the government could neutralize that by increasing the hybrid car tax breaks to match that price premium.


About this time of year, famous people start delivering commencement speeches. It seems like the only ones people remember are the ones by funny guys (Jon Stewart, Will Ferrell, and Conan O'Brien), the fake one by Kurt Vonnegut, and the inspiring one by Steve Jobs (all linked to here in an older post). I haven't caught wind of any additions to the commencement canon this year, but here are links to two other graduation speeches, both by, yes, funny men: Conan O'Brien at Stuyvesant, and Stephen Colbert at Knox College.


Cyclists agree to more stringent testing in order to save the sport from plunging viewership and sponsorships:


Under cycling’s new testing rules, the blood of the top 600 riders will be profiled to provide a baseline to aid in evaluating future test results. A major increase in random, out-of-competition testing has begun, and riders have signed agreements to provide DNA samples in the event of doping disputes. Testing is also done daily during competition, with blood and urine samples drawn from the stage winner, overall race leader and at least one random riders.


Declining revenue is probably what it would take for players and owners in other leagues, like the NBA, MLB, or the NBA, to meet halfway on drug testing also. For all the hubaloo about fans upset with steroids and HGH and the such in baseball, owners listen to the clickety-clack of turnstiles, and they keep turning over in record numbers.


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Glimpses of the short Peter Jackson shot on the Red prototypes

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Here are some 4K res JPEGs from the short. Here's a short snippet of the short at 1K res (you'll probably have to try one of the mirrors at this point). It's such a short clip that it's hard to draw any sweeping conclusions, but that little bit is pretty sweet. In particular, it has a film-like DOF (Jackson's DP shot using Cooke S4 primes and Angenieux Primo zooms).


Here are some war stories from the shoot itself courtesy of HD For Indies. At this point, I'd sell my car to get one of these Reds, but I don't think that would be enough (literally!).


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Spring break's over

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Auto porn: a part by part look at the new BMW M3 V8 engine. Featuring brake energy regeneration (reminds of of the old Tiger Woods/BMW joke). Hear the sound of the new V-8 during acceleration. Check out these headers, and imagine them glowing bright red. If Paris were an auto-snob, she'd say, "That's hot."




As one article noted, these images of the BMW engine headers recall Edward Weston's photo of a pepper. Compare:




Arnold Kling on the single-payer health care:


  1. People are forced to buy something that they don't seem to want

  2. Provided by a monopoly

  3. Paid for by higher taxes


Three funny Onion sports headlines:


TigerCinema.com seeks to be a Netflix for Asian DVDs. They state that 95% of their titles have English subtitles and that most are Region 1. Sadly, the search and browse functions are somewhat crude. No browse by country? director? actor? The browse tree for Martial Arts is only one level deep! Good luck delving through 23 pages of results. The selection is decent but not as complete as I'd expect for such a niche-focused site. It's probably not entirely their fault as there are so many editions of many Asian movies, and many editions are out of print or hard to find. They probably can't stock enough copies of certain titles. For now, there's still eBay and HKFlix and YesAsia and sites like that for those willing to buy. Many eBay DVDs are simply burned copies and will not last very long; I treat most of those as disposable copies.


One of the best channels for showing off your high definition TV is Discovery HD Theater. Perhaps the best program to air on that channel yet is Planet Earth which debuted last Sunday. Apparently viewers agreed as the show snared 12 million viewers total over 3 hours and had a 3.6 HH rating, Discovery's third highest ever. I've only watched the first episode, "Pole to Pole," and it was spectacular, all of the footage having been shot in high definition. They say porn is the killer application for any new video technology, but IMHO sports and nature shows are the most desirable types of programming for HD.


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Ovens of desire

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Super oven (via Pogue's Posts)! Cooks up to 15x faster than a conventional oven: Roast a 12 lb turkey in 42 minutes, bake a Chicago 12 inch deep dish pizza in 6.5 minutes, and bake a 9 inch apple cranberry pie in 12 minutes. Used by Starbucks and Subway and, for those who want more illustrious names, Charlie Trotter and Gray Kunz, the TurboChef Speedcook oven makes the "time is money" equation as tangible as can be, costing $5,995 for a solo unit and $7,895 if paired with a conventional oven.




For that price, you're within striking distance of a Rational CombiMaster. I saw one during a tour of the kitchen at Per Se, and after hearing about its combination steam and hot air cooking mode, I vowed that someday I'd own one, even if I didn't have the restaurant to house it.




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Common error for new widescreen TV owners

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Something many people forget to do when they first upgrade to a widescreen television is to change the setup of their DVD player and video game consoles so that those components know to output a signal for a widescreen TV instead of a conventional 4x3 aspect ratio TV. It makes a huge difference for screen resolution. Most people assume their DVD player or videogame controller outputs the same type of signal for both widescreen and 4x3 TV's, or that perhaps the two devices will be aware of each other's settings, but unfortunately it's not the case.


Whenever I stay with someone who owns a widescreen TV, I'll try to put in an anamorphic DVD to see what type of picture shows up on screen. To make sure your DVD player is set properly, turn it on without a DVD in the drive and enter the player's settings or setup menu. Different manufacturers have different buttons on the remotes to activate this menu, but usually it's called something like "DVD Setup" or "DVD Player Menu" or "Settings." Enter the menu, then look for a category called video settings, and within that is usually some setting for Screen or Aspect Ratio or TV Type. Go in there and switch from 4:3 to 16:9 or Widescreen. If there is an option for Letterbox and an option for 16:9 or Widescreen, select 16:9 or Widescreen.


The same setting needs to be set properly for most modern video game consoles.


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Apple TV

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Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret review the Apple TV:


We've been testing Apple TV for the past 10 days or so, and our verdict is that it's a beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers. It has some notable limitations, but we really liked it. It is classic Apple: simple and elegant.


Once it becomes commonplace and simple to stream content from the Internet to the TV, the entertainment world changes. You think you have a lot of channels to choose from now!


There are other solutions already, but having a big, trusted name like Apple enter the arena is important.


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The Big Red One

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The Nike+iPod is a fun running accessory, but exercise caution before using it as a serious training tool.


David Pogue offers an overview of Grandcentral, a site that offers to consolidate all your phone numbers under one phone number which will ring all your phones simultaneously when dialed. I signed up during the beta a couple months ago and got a number but never used it. Pogue notes a number of nifty features that have been added since their launch, so perhaps it's time for me to dig that number out.


Neal Gabler recently wrote an op-ed in the LATimes titled "The Movie Magic is Gone." Kristin Thompson finds seven points in Gabler's article and states her case against each.


Another film shot mostly digitally: Zodiac was shot uncompressed with the Viper FilmStream camera in 4:4:4 1920x1080/24p. Here's a thread on cinematography.com discussing the look of the film. Here's the product page for the Viper, and here's an American Cinematographer article in which Paul Cameron discusses his experimentation with the Viper in shooting Collateral.


Right now, the HD video camera receiving the most use at our school is the Panasonic HVX200. The unreleased HD video camera with the most buzz right now is the Red One. Side project of Oakley founder Jim Jannard, the Red One looks more like some powerful weapon from some first person shooter than a video camera. Here's a gallery of video footage shot with the Red One, and here's one massive 4K frame capture down-converted to 8-bit JPG. The big buzz around this camera is its sensor size: 24.4mm x 13.7mm (Super35mm). The camera is intended to offer the same depth of field as 35mm Cine Lenses instead of the higher depth of field that characterizes most video. The Red One will retail for $17,500.




A working editor weighs in on Avid vs. Apple, having recently switched from Avid Media Composer to Apple's Final Cut Pro. I've tinkered with Media Composer but am more familiar with Final Cut Pro. I like some things about Media Composer better, and it is still more the industry standard for big motion pictures, but Final Cut Pro just has more momentum and resources behind it. Most film students can't afford an Avid system and are taught to edit on Final Cut Pro systems. I think Avid needs to make a stronger push to make inroads with the next generation of film editors.


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And exhale

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Finally, a moment to come up for air. Film production is all-consuming and takes over your life like few other things. But this is just a brief respite, as I have my five classmates' shoots occupying my next five long weekends.


120 Hz TVs, the next step in TV quality after 1080p.


Scientific American investigates the hype around online dating.


NBA experimenting with 3D high-definition imaging. The cameras are the same ones James Cameron has used for some of his 3D IMAX pics. Maybe we're not too far off from the day when we can be like Jeremy Piven in that commercial for the All-Star game, where he freezes Vince Carter mid-air as he prepares to dunk and steps into the picture. You, too, can see Vince Carter's crotch as it soars over your head, all in breathtaking 3-D.


Speaking of high def, most people are down on high definition DVDs because of the HD DVD and Blu-ray format war. Unlike Betamax or VHS, though, I think this one is solvable, either through dual-format players like the LG or through dual-format discs. And now that I've seen a couple Blu-ray DVDs, I've got to admit, the pictures from those are superior to the pictures from regular DVDs, and it's clearly visible to the naked eye.


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Clearing the TiVo of life

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This list of cool stuff costing $10 or less is useful if you need a few belated stocking stuffers.


Gosh, I've missed NYC. I'm trying to reserve judgment on LA, but I have no doubts about my adoration for NYC. Being back and strolling the streets, mingling with the people, it's like CPR for the spirit. The weather in LA is fantastic, but it didn't take long for me to realize it's an urban planning disaster with perhaps no solution to come in my lifetime.


I didn't realize how draining my quarter had been until I arrived back in Manhattan the day after my faculty review. The first week, I've had to resort to drinking coffee three times to stay awake (I weened myself off of black gold in 1998), and when I sleep I have the types of vivid, often disturbing dreams I only have when exhausted.


The irony of film school, at least the first year, is that students have little time to actually watch movies. The night after my last final, I wanted to go see a movie, but when I looked up show times I realized it wasn't playing in any theater in the L.A. region anymore. The last time that happened to me was...hmm, I think that's the first time that's ever happened to me.


So among other things, while on break, I will catch up on movies. In fact, this winter break is a chance to catch up on everything that film school forced me to put off until later. I'm clearing out the playlist in my personal life DVR: sleep, good eating, exercise, natural light, movies, music, correspondence with friends and family (but no holiday cards this year, alas), drink, world news, the simple pleasures in life.


I wish the same to all of you. Happy holidays!


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Sundry

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At Broad Nightlight is a small collection of nighttime photos of Berlin, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. What's peculiar about these is how few people are visible.


The upcoming issue of Wholphin will contain Alexander Payne's film school thesis, The Passion of Martin.


10 innovative ad campaigns in Tokyo train stations.


The Amazon plog for the book How Lance Does It contains some interesting points. In one post, author Brad Kearns quotes Dr. Glen Gaesser on how to identify the most talented athletes. Said Glaesser, "Go to a race and stand at the finish line. Then...see who crosses the line first. There is the most talented athlete." Kearns also writes a passionate post defending Lance Armstrong: Why Lance is Clean. But my favorite quote is about Lance's successful approach, and it's on the back cover. "Lance hates losing, but is not afraid of it." That sums up a lot of all-time greats in many sports (remember the Jordan Nike ad "Failure").



A man sold everything he owned, took the cash, and bet it all on one spin of roulette in Las Vegas. This is what happened.


It doesn't appear that this chair is available for purchase yet, but already I want one.


An interview with Eiko Tanaka of Studio4°C, the company in charge of adapting Taiyo Matsumoto's classic manga Tekkon Kinkreet into an animated feature.


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Black Monday

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Dry Shampoo. Spray in, wait two minutes, and brush out. What will they think of next? Useful on a film set, or if your livelihood depends on looking good all the time (comme moi), or if you're confined to a bed because some Kathy Bates-like character has gone Misery on you. Or if you are this guy.


The Dragon is the most revered sign of the Chinese zodiac, so Chinese birth rates in Dragon years escalate, leading to crunches in providing schooling, medical services, etc. Some economists conducted a study which debunks this superstition, but I still look for a healthy increase in sales of lingerie, champagne, and roses in China in mid-2011, leading into the next Dragon year in 2012.


In a game that had clearly become a draw, Vladimir Kramnik made a stunning mistake late in his second game versus the computer program Deep Fritz to allow the software to checkmate on the next move.



James Surowiecki on Nintendo and how it has found profitability with products like the Wii while Sony and Microsoft rack up huge losses in their efforst to win the console war. There are many markets that are not "winner takes all." We're #3! We're #3!


In this week's New Yorker, George Saunders can't resist offering his two cents on Borat, and I read it, and it is probably the most trenchant critique of the movie yet. Borat is, as M refers to Bond in the the latest offering, a "blunt instrument." The irony of it all is that Cohen's burgeoning fame is undermining his ability to find gullible targets, forcing him to pick on easier and easier targets (lawsuits notwithstanding) and transforming him from David to Goliath. I laughed at many moments of the movie but was disappointed at all the material recycled straight from the TV show.


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Q&A

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Thanksgiving stuffing--in the bird or out? Mark Bittman recommends out, in which case it's dressing, not stuffing.


Do you really need a 1080p TV, or will 1080i suffice? You're probably okay with just 1080i, marketing literature notwithstanding.


Does Daisuke Matsuzaka throw the gyroball or not? Will Carroll published a new article (you have to be a subscriber to read it, unfortunately) on Baseball Prospectus today stating that he does believe now that Matsuzaka throw the gyroball, but that he doesn't yet have control over which type he throws. There appear to be two variations that differ based on the tilt of the axis of rotation. If it points up, the ball moves more laterally away from a right-handed batter (all this assumes a right-handed pitcher). If it tilts down, the pitch actually breaks in on a right-handed batter. Carroll pointed to this video of Matsuzaka as having the closest rendition of a pure gyroball:








You know what I enjoy about watching Japanese pitchers? They tend to have long, deliberate motions with high leg kicks, long windups, with hands and feet tracing wide arcs around their bodies (many also have these odd pauses or hitches that mess up the batter's timing). It's old school. Not many pitchers have such motions anymore (as a Cubs fan, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood's super simple deliveries come to mind, in contrast to a guy like Kevin Appier). I love watching old videos of guys like Luis Tiant or Sandy Koufax, with their huge leg kicks. Every pitch looked like a complex series of coordinated motions requiring maximum exertion to pull off correctly.


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Daisuke Matsuzaka

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Baseball Prospectus examines Daisuke Matsuzaka to see if he's really worth spending $20 to $30 million on, just for the right to even negotiate with him. The answer? He probably is. He might just be the second best starting pitcher in baseball after Johan Santana. I want to see the gyroball.

UPDATE: Rumor has it the Boston Red Sox won the bidding war for negotiation rights with an offer of somewhere between $38 million and $45 million. Wow.


For your next vacation, won't you consider a virtual tour of World of Warcraft with Synthravels, the first online virtual travel agency?


The NanoNuno umbrella dries off with a simple shake. The secret? Nanotechnology. That image on their website makes it seem as if the umbrella emits some kinds of forcefield.




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A few geeky links

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The Hannibal is one mean DVR/media center thingamajiggy.


This is a really good summary of Amazon's web services strategy. Having been on the web services team when I left Amazon, I'm surprised more people didn't pick up on this sooner.


DivX for Windows 6.4 enables 1080 HD creation, both 1080i and 1080p.


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Monday

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David Remnick profile of post-presidency Bill Clinton in The New Yorker. Clinton is by far the most fascinating president of my lifetime.


UPDATE: Parts 1, 2, and 3 of Clinton's now legendary interview on Fox.


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Drool. Drool.


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I've always wondered why the sun made me sneeze, and now I know; photic sneeze reflex.


The condition occurs in 17% to 25% of humans with more common occurrence in Caucasians than other human races. The condition is passed along genetically as an autosomal dominant trait.


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The September 2006 Stanford Book Salon selection was Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. It's one of my favorites, and the homepage for the Salon (an online book club) has a transcript of an introduction by Nancy Packer as well as links to a reading group guide to the novel and an interview with Wallace Stegner.


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The Madden cover jinx strikes again. Spooky how consistently it works its evil eye. Fantasy football players were warned not to pick Alexander with their first round pick this year, and the non-superstitious who ignored the advice are now left scrambling to pick up Maurice Morris.


Ray Lewis is perhaps the only player who avoided the curse when he appeared on the 2005 cover, but since he plays on defense he only affected the small portion of fantasy football players who draft individual defensive players.


There is one logical reason why the curse might exist, and that is simply because a player who is featured on the cover is likely coming off a career year, and most players regress after such seasons. Still, many of the regressions were caused by severe injuries...somewhere the ghost of John Madden is screaming, "Boom!" as he sticks a pin in a Shaun Alexander voodoo doll.


A Cingular disappointment

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The last four months, I've experienced a sharp and unpleasant shock every time I open my cell phone bill. $498. $677. $525. $798! For some reason, four months ago, Cingular started categorizing every minute of my call time as roaming even though I've been with them on a nationwide plan for years. Every month, I have to call and wait on hold for up to an hour while I'm transferred up the ladder to someone with enough authority to issue a refund. Every month I'm told the problem is fixed, and every month I call back to remind them that no, it's not.


I bit my tongue and waited until I arrived in Los Angeles to dump Cingular. My cell phone had long since stopped sending and receiving text messages, and the recurring billing problems were the last straw.


Verizon doesn't have the fancy phones that other providers offer, but their tagline of "There's only one reason to choose a wireless company: It's the network" makes sense. Cingular's coverage just can't match Verizon's in the last three cities I've lived in (Seattle, New York, and now LA), their base individual plans are the same price, and frankly, whipping out a sexy cell phone wins admiration for the phone, not the owner. Sure, I'd love to still be on GSM and to be able to pop in a SIM card in a foreign country, but it's always proven cheaper to just purchase a local cell phone and SIM card when traveling abroad than to use any of the U.S. providers' overseas plans.


The best deal I found, by the way, was not at a Verizon store but through Amazon.com, which offered an LG VX8300 phone for free after rebate and only required a 181 day rate plan commitment. At the Verizon store, they wanted to charge me $129.99 for the phone with a 1 year contract or $79.99 for the phone with a 2 year contract.


Their commercials can be aggravating, and Verizon is far from perfect, but for now, they're an upgrade. Yes, I can hear you now.


Links

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New David Sedaris piece in The New Yorker this week. Also an interesting article on neuroeconomics.


Harold McGee answers some common questions about kitchen science on Chow.com, like what's the difference between pressed and chopped garlic and is it safe to heat food in plastic in the microwave.


50 Years of Janus Films - a 50 DVD box set. Pre-order before October 24 for $650, actually a bargain at $13 a disc. Drool.


Zyb - a site to back up your cell phone contact info. The service is free and works with over 200 mobile phones. Useful.


BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2006.


One of my questions to Gothamist was posted to Ask Gothamist, though unfortunately the response didn't go live until I'd already left NYC. Before I left, I did find this useful list of places in NYC to donate goods of all types.


Trailer for Johnny To's next movie, a spaghetti Western transplanted to macau, Fong Juk or Exiled as it's known in English. Oh, I wish I were at the Toronto International Film Festival. Exiled opened there to strong reviews.


Trailer for the next animated feature from Satoshi Kon, Paprika. If I knew how to read Japanese, I could actually tell you something about the movie. Early buzz, though sparse, is good.



I wasn't a huge fan of Tony Jaa's Tom Yum Goong, but it sounds like the condensed version from the Weinsteins, retitled The Protector, is even worse. Oh well, we can shift our hopes onto Ong Bak 2, which Jaa will direct himself.


Nikon D80

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Nikon announced their latest digital SLR, the D80, which will be available in September 2006. 10.2 Megapixel, 3fps, 2.5" LCD, will retail for $999.95 without a lens. Throw in another $300 and you get a very useful kit lens, an AF-S DX 18-135mm F3.5 - F5.6G ED. This SLR looks to be the successor to the D70s. Unlike the D70/D70s, the D80 will be compatible with a vertical grip/battery pack, the MD-80. Just reading the specs, this camera looks pretty sweet, and it may eat into sales of the D200 which costs $700 more. The only bummer from my perspective is that they've shifted to using SD and SDHC cards instead of Compact Flash, so D70, D200, and D2 series Nikon users who grab a D80 will have to purchase yet another set of memory cards.




This review of fans is timely considering the heat wave that has swept across the U.S. this summer. The winner? The Bionaire Metal Tower Fan.