Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Wedding

At present I am in White Plains, New York about to go to a wedding in New Rochelle. Right about now I need to go put on some of the quasi-fancy clothes that I only wear about twice a year. A couple of days ago I went to my closet to check that my suit was in good shape and didn’t need a dry cleaning. I discovered instead that the pants of said suit were full of little holes from moths or beetles or worms or time-traveling miniature raccoons. Oops.

I also don’t have any nice shoes in decent shape, so I decided to go Doctor Who style and wear sneakers. Friends intervened and told me that sneakers Simply Will Not Do, so the lovely Meghan is accompanying me to the mall in an hour for a last-minute shoe shopping excursion.

Right here I would insert some pictures, if I hadn’t forgotten my camera’s USB cable. Ooh look, pretty imaginary pictures! There is Dave on a roller coaster at Six Flags! There is everyone eating strange chocolately decadence at Max Brenner! Here is Amy surrounded by cute little children!

Okay, guess I’d better get dressed.

Dreams & Nightmares of the Digital Age

In 1997, author Neal Stephenson in Time discussed how the use of emerging cryptography technologies by terrorists could scare citizens into tolerating a much stronger Big Brother. It is interesting to ponder why these technologies never took off like many techies imagined they would. Not surprising, though, is that terrorism (and Big Brother) has thrived regardless.

Whither Twitter?

“Walked to work today for the first time in months. Had forgotten how nice it is to listen to podcasts in solitude.”

That 116 character statement doesn’t really deserve a blog entry of its own. But ever since I got the hang of Twitter, I’ve been posting things like that all the time. Not just posting, but responding to other people’s little snippets, and even having whole conversations. Twitter is a broadcast messaging tool that limits posts to 140 characters. Some people call it a “microblog.” It is different than blogging in that it is easy to update via IM or SMS from your phone, and messages that other people post can be broadcast back out by those same media.

It took me a while to figure out how to use Twitter, to understand what sort of conversations it is good for, but now the constantly popping up messages throughout the day generally serve to amuse, occasionally enlighten, and frequently keep me informed about random minutia in other people’s lives — minutia that I could just as well do without, but its sort of fun to see what people are up to.

Twitter is also assisting my quest to write more cogently: with only 140 characters at your disposal, it is important to be brief. Twitter isn’t for everyone, and I sympathize with many who don’t see the point of it. But I’m having fun with it. For now.

Triplog: Barcelona

On the second leg of our European tour, Jess and I left the UK and set out for Barcelona, in the Catalonia region of Spain. Nearly all of the 7 million people in Catalonia speak Catalan as their primary language, as well as Spanish. In Barcelona, the majority of people speak and understand some English, which was very helpful to us, since our Spanish was minimal and our Catalan non-existent. Most restaurants offered English menus. None of them offered tap water.

Continue reading “Triplog: Barcelona”

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

— "How Obama Became Acting President" by Frank Rich

When you think about it, Hellboy II actually doesn’t make any sense, what with the twins thing and the ending. Or to put it another way, why didn’t the ending just happen in the beginning?

There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics. An independent mind is independent of all allegiances, and elite schools, which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving, are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty. […] The college career office has little to say to students not interested in law, medicine, or business, and elite universities are not going to do anything to discourage the large percentage of their graduates who take their degrees to Wall Street.

— "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" by William Deresiewicz

★★★★★
Review

Dr. Horrible

Back in March on the heels of the Hollywood writer’s strike, I suggested that the time was ripe for a major player like Joss Whedon to make a push into the realm of internet-distributed television. Whedon would be a good experiment because he already understands the idea of cult appeal, and because he knows how to be massively creative on a budget. Well, last week while I was off traveling, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was released, a Whedon production starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day.

Verdict? Perfect. The series was made on the cheap, but with high production values. The story was meaningful and poignant. The songs were awesome. And the show, which was available for free for a week on Hulu before switching to iTunes, is tearing up the online charts. Now there are plans for a DVD, a comic book, maybe a soundtrack, and bigger players have started calling to talk about other projects and adaptations.

Long by internet standards (at 12-15 minutes an episode), the three episodes received a combined 2.2 million views during the time they were available for free. The story is of the intrepid Dr. Horrible (Harris), who is attempting to join the “Evil League of Evil” by proving his super-villain mettle. His arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer (Fillion) manages to both hinder Horrible’s progress and steal his girl, do-gooder Penny (Day). All of the characters frequently break into song (and occasional dance) along the way.

In 2003 I wrote a paper looking at how digital production and international cost-sharing were contributing to the creation of truly multi-national programming with fewer home-country content constraints (i.e. being forced to “dumb down” programs to fit an audience). My paper was focused on Farscape, and the idea that cost-sharing arrangements and wider audience reach would allow smaller production houses more opportunities to reach new markets. Since that time, rather than seeing many international shows, we’ve seen instead shows in one country being re-imagined and re-created in another. The independents never got a foot hold.

Yet, at the same time, online distribution has become more feasible, and YouTube and myriad video blogs have shows that good programming without major studio backing can succeed. The question is, can these things become more than cheap labors of love? Can professional actors, writers, producers, directors, and crew make a living doing an online-only show? If anyone could embark on that sort of grand experiment, it would be Joss Whedon. And he did, and every indication is that he will make back his “low six-figures” investment and be able to pay his cast and crew. And that is a very, very good sign for the future.

You can watch the trailer and purchase Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on iTunes for the low price of $3.99.