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fernando.dubtribe.com
Most amazing web page search I’ve seen!
Having followed a link from kottke.org to a converstaion between Errol Morris and Adam Curtis, I stumbled across a wonderful short film made by Errol for the opening of the Oscars in 2002 (I think…..)
In a brief exchange, Jerry Brown (Mayor of Oakland, CA) says:
Jerry: Movies are an escape.
Interviewer: Just an escape?
Jerry: Well what’s wrong with that? That’s quite a lot.
Movies are exactly that. An escape.
The difference between great moves and other movies is that a great movie gives you something to take back to reality.
A personal example:
From Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog
There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When
meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run
quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under
the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved
from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still
get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.
This is actually from the Hagakure (the book of the Samurai, available to download here).
This single paragraph of text (and its significance and importance within the film) not only changed my understanding of the film, but my understanding of life (made it a better film second time around too).
Just a small example of the power of movies.
Technorati Tags: hagakure, movies, undulattice
From Blogorrhea Junior
Constantly bombarded as we are by the media with uncited cultural references, stuff creeps in. And sticks. How often have you spouted some clever signature line from a show you love? It works the same way with voracious readers. Ask any author how easy it is to escape one’s influences. I guarantee they’ll hiss at you and reach for the whiskey.
Applies to all things in life.
Blogorrhea also has a link to a site containing before and after 9/11 photos.
Very surreal. I think I prefer the landscape without them (from an aesthetic viewpoint, not in a cold and unfeeling way).
This time, from film critic Jim Emerson. His list of 102 films you must see is copied below with an asterisk next to the ones I’ve seen (a la Jason Kottke)
* 2001: A Space Odyssey
* The 400 Blows
* 8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
* All About Eve
* Annie Hall
* Apocalypse Now
* Bambi
* The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
* The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
Blowup
* Blue Velvet
* Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
* Carrie
* Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown
* Citizen Kane
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Crying Game
* The Day the Earth Stood Still
* Days of Heaven
* Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
* Double Indemnity
* Dr. Strangelove
* Duck Soup
* E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial
* Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
* The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
* Frankenstein
* The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
* Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
* Halloween
* A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
* It’s a Wonderful Life
* Jaws
The Lady Eve
* Lawrence of Arabia
* M (This is one of my favourite films of all time…..)
* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
* The Maltese Falcon
* The Manchurian Candidate
* Metropolis
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
* The Night of the Hunter
* Night of the Living Dead
* North by Northwest
* Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront
* Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
*Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
* Rashomon (or indeed anything directed by Akira Kurosawa)
* Rear Window
* Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface
* The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler’s List
* The Searchers
* The Seven Samurai
* Singin’ in the Rain
* Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
* A Streetcar Named Desire
* Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
* The Third Man
* Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
* Vertigo
West Side Story
* The Wild Bunch
* The Wizard of Oz
So that’s 75 out of 102. There are a few films on there I’d not heard of so i reckon I’m going to have to find some DVDs to watch!
It’s nice to see two Kurosawa films on the list. I’ve yet to see a film he’s made that I haven’t liked, and I’ve seen about 19 so far. My personal favourite is Red Beard which should have made the list, but hey, can’t have everything!
Technorati Tags: movies, undulattice
From NY Daily News.
Denise Richards fears her estranged husband, Charlie Sheen, may have had a hand in the death of a porn star and alleged hooker who ratted him out to a tabloid last year, court papers reveal.
In a bombshell sworn declaration, ex-Bond Girl Richards says she flat-out asked Sheen, 40, if he had anything to do with sex star Chloe Jones’ death — and he didn’t deny it.
Technorati Tags: movies, undulattice
It is widely known that the Airport card that ships with a MacBook Pro supports 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks. It also has support 802.11a networks, though this feature is undocumented and is not supported by Apple or Applecare.
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, network, undulattice
Apple have announced the addition of the 17″ MacBook Pro to their Intel based range.
Specs include Firewire 800 and a Double Layer 8x Superdrive, which were both missing in the 15″ MacBook Pro. It also has an additional USB 2.0 port.
You also get the option of up(down)grading from a 120gb 5400rpm hard drive to a 100gb 7200rpm hard drive. Personally I’d go for speed over space!
It’s expensive though, about £200 more expensive than a 17″ Powerbook (which have been discontinued and are no longer available from the Apple Store)
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, undulattice
From the Smashing Pumpkins website.
It’s official, The Smashing Pumpkins are currently writing songs for their upcoming album, their first since 2000. No release date has yet been set, but the band plans to begin recording this summer.
Let’s hope it marks a return to form.
Technorati Tags: music, smahing pumpkins, undulattice
Posted on MacSerendipity
Well I will start off by saying that my work Colleague Mr undulattice will be the first to jump to the fore and say hey this guy knows nothing, nothing I say about music. He will then pull out his 76 string guitar and prove his point
I am a very fond of my strings (currently owning three 12 string acoustics, two 6 string acoustics, one 6 string electric, and two hammered dulcimers - approx 225 strings in total!) but a 76 string guitar might be pushing it a little.
42 strings is the most I’ve seen on a guitar, which is the Manzer Pikasso
In 1984 Pat Metheny asked me to design and build a guitar with ” as many strings as possible” The resulting collaboration was the Pikasso guitar.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Four necks. Two sound holes. Two access doors; one on the upper player’s side and one atthe tail block. ( based on a panel door design by the brilliant -Abraham Wechter)
The “WEDGE” TM1984 is a special feature I designed specifically for this instrument. The body is tapered so that the side closest to the player is thinner than the side that rests on the players knee, thus leaning the top back towards the player for a more aerial view. This is also more comfortable under the player’s arm.
Now THAT is too many strings!
Technorati Tags: guitar, music, undulattice
According to The Guardian.
I thought I’d join Michale Hanscom and Jason Kottke in marking which ones I’ve read and which ones I’ve seen.
B=book
M=movie
Here goes…..
1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. [BM] American Psycho (not a great movie if you ask me)
4. [M]Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. [M]Brighton Rock
6. [BM]Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (both versions, second one sucks)
8. [BM] A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. [M]The Day of the Triffids
11. [M]Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [BM] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. [M] Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [M] Goldfinger
22. [M] Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [BM] The Hound of the Baskervilles (about 4 different versions!)
25. [M]Jaws
26. [BM]The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. [M] Lolita
31. [M] Lord of the Flies
32. [M]The Maltese Falcon
33. [BM]Oliver Twist
34. [M]One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. The Outsiders
37. [BM] Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. [M]The Railway Children
40. [M]Rebecca
41. [M] The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. [M] Sin City (sucked)
44. [M] The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. [BM]To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. [M]Watership Down
A couple of films I would have liked to have seen on there (apart from the obvious Lord of the Rings)
Misery
The Shining
Ghost in the Shell
The Day of the Jackal
High Fidelity
I could go on……
Technorati Tags: movies
Having just read a recent post on Daring Fireball regarding how Boot Camp will start an exodus to Windows, I have to go one step further than John Gruber’s “Jackass of the Week” description and label USA Today’s Andrew Kantor a complete idiot!
Firstly we have this……
Boot Camp isn’t going to propel the Mac into the mainstream. If anything, it will get Mac users to switch to Windows. Sure, it’ll be terrific for Mac fans not wanting to give up their machine of choice but find more and more they need to use Windows. But Boot Camp doesn’t offer any kind of compelling argument for PC users to buy Mac hardware.
From experience, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Since switching to Mac a few years ago, I have found it LESS AND LESS that I need to use Windows, to the degree that I no longer own a machine that is even capable of running Windows. Boot Camp offers PC users the chance to try OS X and still revert to Windows if they don’t like it. So why wouldn’t you?!
Followed by……
The Macs that can currently run Boot Camp are the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro notebook. Price-wise, they can’t compete with PCs.
The Mini will set you back about $1100 for a machine with 512 MB of RAM and a 60-GB hard drive — that’s when you add in a keyboard, mouse, midrange monitor ($150), and a full copy of Windows XP.
The iMac is about $1600 (with 512 MB RAM, a 160-GB hard drive, and Windows). The MacBook Pro, with an 80-GB hard drive, is about $2000 with Windows.(All these prices come from the Apple Store. I mention the hard drive sizes in particular because you’d need the space to load two operating systems and two sets of software.)
I don’t know which “Apple Store” he’s been looking at, but iMacs currently start at $1299 and MacBook Pros at $1999. Prices exclude a copy of Windows which we can safely assume most “switchers” already own.
And “two sets of software”? Surely the idea is to only use the other operating system when it’s absolutely necessary, so the second “set of software” is most likely going to be fairly minimal.
In contrast, a 3 GHz Gateway DX210 PC with 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and the same monitor I suggested for the Mac Mini — that’ll be only $900.
In contrast, a 3GHz Gateway DX210 PC has a single core, single processor Pentium 4, no Superdrive, crap video card, and ships with Windows Media Center Edition. GREAT! Way to compare like with like!
Oh, and the whole “no viruses on the Mac” business? Besides the fact that it’s no longer true, you can get this neat stuff called anti-virus software.
Now I want to punch him. If we’re gonna be pedantic about it, let’s rephrase.
“No viruses on OS X”. Better?
And given that Windows can’t read the Mac filesystem, I think the “spreading” argument is effectively null and void.
The folks at Parallels.com, however, released “virtualization software” that they say allows OS X to run any operating system, including Windows, within OS X — no rebooting required. So that’s a step above Boot Camp right off, even if it costs $50.
Rumour has it that Leopard will have this feature built in. Certainly wouldn’t surprise me. Though it would be funny if Apple treats Windows the same way they treated Classic environment.
It may not be so bad — they might even enjoy the convenience of sharing a common platform with the other 97% of the world, brought to them courtesy of Boot Camp.
A million people are not smarter than one.
Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, OS X, PC, technology, windows
Once I made the swap to Mac a few years ago, any Windows machine I’ve used has had its taskbar moved to the top a la OS X, a trick Peter Cohen from Macworld should learn.
One confession: I did catch myself for a short time the other day wondering why the Start menu wouldn’t appear when I kept pushing the mouse cursor to the lower left—in Mac OS X.
At first I thought it was just familiarity, but when you think about it, there is no reason to use the bottom corners of the screen for anything (though I do have hot corners set up for screensaver etc.). All the menus in all the apps are at the top of the screen, so it only seems sensible that you should place the taskbar at the top too. Proximity is everything.
Good Religion from the album “Spirit Of The Century” by Blind Boys Of Alabama
Technorati Tags: mac, OS X, PC, windows
From the BBC News Website
The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply.
The OLEDs do not heat up like today’s light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.
They also produce a light that is more akin to natural daylight than traditional bulbs.
Technorati Tags: technology
From the BBC News Website
Home network hardware supplier D-Link has been accused of harming the net’s ability to tell the time accurately.
Detective work has found that many D-Link routers, switches and wireless access points are bombarding some net time servers with huge amounts of data
So it’s D-Link’s fault I lost that Ebay auction!
Technorati Tags: internet, technology
Now that the dust has settled on Apple’s landmark release (albeit public beta - strange how that bit gets left out……), time to reflect on what this means for Apple, Macs, and the computing community in general.
Firstly, the chasm that once existed between Macs and PCs has all but vanished. In fact, Macs have emerged in the aftermath as being undeniably more versatile machines. As John Gruber said in his Daring Fireball commentary
Instead of occupying a separate universe from that of PC hardware, it’s now a superset of PC hardware. Instead of choosing between a Windows PC or a Mac, you now get to choose between a computer that can only run Windows or a computer that can run both Windows and Mac OS X.
While this is true on initial inspection, there is still the obstacle of Apple reluctance to allow “non-apple” hardware to run on their machines. The situation has definitely improved over the last few years, but they still insist on having Apple specific firmware on devices like Superdrives and CD burners etc. Absence of this firmware does not mean that your drive will not work, just that it will not be “supported” by OS X. Obviously there are ways to make it work, but the point is that these are obstacles are unnecessary and only serve to annoy people.
Another issue that I think Apple need to address in the post-apocalyptic Intel world is support and warranty. Apple’s default warranty sucks. Plain and simple.
For example, a MacBook Pro costing £1429 comes with a standard 1 year warranty with the option of purchasing Applecare for an additional £279, bringing the total to £1708.
A comparable Dell laptop (not as nice as a Mac before you start flaming me) will come in as standard at £1549 including a 3 year warranty.
OK. So that’s about £160 so far. However, Apple’s standard warranty is return to base and usually takes 7-10 days minimum. Dell’s is next day AND on site! For some people, THAT is a deal clincher. Some people don’t mind paying extra for some peace of mind, but to pay less?! I’m convinced this is one of the main reasons that Apple’s share in the server market is so small. The hardware is great, the operating system is rock solid, but 1 YEAR RTB warranty just does not cut it when the equipment is mission critical.
Apple need to address this situation. They have traditionally always gone after the higher end of the market, which is fine when the market you’re talking about is Mac based. But as soon as the Mac and PC markets become one, these little problems could become the deal breaker for a lot of people.
Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, PC, technology, windows
From the BBC Website
Crazy by Gnarls Barkley has made pop history as the UK’s first number one song based on download sales alone.
‘Bout time me thinks.
Technorati Tags: chart, music, downloads
