The Fountain -- First Official Trailer

From Digg:

An odyssey about one mans thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. As a 16th century Conquistador, a modern-day scientist, and a 26th century astronaut, he searches for the secret to eternal life. Amazing looking, time travel including and Darren Aronofsky directed. Includes Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Sean Patrick Thomas. Amazing!!

I was a big fan of Aronofsky's first hit, pi. I can't wait for this one, it looks incredible!

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Mike Nelson's RiffTrax

From Digg:

Mike Nelson from MST3K has started recording downloadable commentaries for movies that you wished had been tackled on MST3K. First up is the legendary Road House (starring Patrick Swayze of "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas" fame). You play the commentaries in synch with the DVDs, and there's a poll to pick the next movie to riff on.

Omigod!!! I miss MST3K so much! This is an excellent idea! I got to get this!

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Perl of a Podcast

I don't know if you listen to podcasts, but being a programmer who learned how great the perl language is, I have to reccommend the latest episode of FLOSS Weekly (or Free/Libre/Open Source Software). They interview Randal L. Schwartz, the author of "Learning Perl" (the one with the llama on the front!). You can find it at http://www.twit.tv/floss. You can even listen to it right on the website if you want. All the previous episodes are there, too. If you like that, try out the other TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcasts.

Speaking of podcasts, they aren't just for audio only. One great video podcast is Channel Frederator, which features great cartoons and animations every week. The latest episode has a great short called "Fetch" where a guy and his dog play fetch and play with "perspective" at the same time. I laughed the whole time! Be sure to watch the old episodes for great gems like "Bendito Machine" and "Rockfish".

Embarrassing questions for the entertainment industry

From Digg:

EFF has put together a list of "Frequently Awkward Questions" for the entertainment industry, "tough questions for times when you hear entertainment industry representatives speaking and want to challenge their positions."

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Wikipedia failed?

In an article on the Washington Post, the author seems to be saying that Wikipedia does not work and often has wrong information. His example was the myriad of changes that happened in Kenneth Lay's article after his death. I think that Wikipedia showed that it did work, it didn't fail. By then end of the same day of his death, the story was set straight with links to the actual press releases. Even though there was a lot of changes in the meantime, the final article was truthful, and you can easily go through the history to see how it got to that state.

Mac Tetris Game Killed by The Tetris Company

Over on Boing Boing, I found an article from Cory Doctorow that tells about a Mac Tetris clone that has been threatened out of existence, even though there are hundreds of tetris clones out there. So why pick on this guy?

Since I am a recent mac owner, I'm kind of sad that such a ubiquitous game running on a platform that is not the most popular in the world should still be the subject of threatened legal action.

ABC Says People Wouldn't Mind If TiVos Can No Longer Fast Forward

From the article: "We're just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I'm not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don't fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can't skip commercials." -ABC Exec

The reason I bought my ReplayTV was because it has the commercial skip feature. "From my cold, dead hands!" :-)

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Colleges Offer Music Downloads, But Their Students Just Say No

From digg:

"College students don't turn down much that's free. But when it comes to online music, even free hasn't been enough to persuade many students to use such digital download services as Napster, Rhapsody, Ruckus and Cdigix. As a result, some schools have dropped their services, and others are considering doing so or have switched to other providers."

It seems that student's didn't like the idea of just renting music until graduation. Also, when half your students use Apple computers, these services don't work with them, not to mention possibly another 50% of students that own iPods. Check out the techdirt article too.

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Paramount and The Transformers Piss Off The Wrong Fan

From digg: "The Movie Blog has been going crazy over The Transformers for almost a year giving tons of positive hype. Then, without even a request to take an image down, Paramount had them shut down for 8 hours. This pissed off the Editor of The Movie Blog a LOT. This is his open letter back to Paramount. You've got to read this."

I'm not particularly a Transformers fan, but I wanted to make a note of this example of how copyright holders are wielding way too much power. Copyright is broken. It has become like Soviet Russia where anything you do is against the law. When you put a peice of art out into the world, you are going to have to realize that you don't have full control over it anymore. If you want total control, then keep it in your basement and only show it to your friends. We need Copyright reform to give users of content fair use.

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Great "LOST" map

From digg:

"HUGE "Lost" map and timeline with everything that's known to date. Pretty cool, dial-up beware"

I am such a big fan of Lost. This jpg is HUGE! I'll be studying it for sure. Unfortunately, I got behind in the "Lost Experience", the on-line story that is being told through several different web sites and podcasts, and even TV commercials and appearances. Good thing that the Lostpedia keeps a running record of what is happening!

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Why the "loudness wars" are killing today's music

From Digg: "Pull out a vinyl record from the 70s or early 80s, and listen to it. Odds are it'll have a big dynamic range -- it'll be whisper-quiet in some parts and booming lound in others. You'll pick up new nuances every time you listen to it. Now listen to any music track recorded in the last ten years, and it'll be radically different."

I'm seeing more of this type of posting on the net. Usually it is accompanied with graphs that show the same song from LP and then CD, and the CD always looks worse. I'll have to do this myself, because there are level differences between LP and CD, and of course CDs will end up being louder if you don't compensate. The real problem is the dynamic range, that is, the range of loudness from the loudest parts to the softest parts. I think further investigation is needed.

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