November, 15, 2002 archives

thanks to the magic of itunes, i've been listening to a lot of kcrw music lately. i wish they could/did stream the titles of songs as they were played. they publish playlists the following day (or later), so you have to remember to go to the site, and approximately what time the song was played.

but do that i did, and now look forward to the us release of redemption's son by joseph arthur.

baraka is an amazing movie. if you're in los angeles, you should go see it at the egyptian theatre this weekend. it's being shown in 70mm by american cinematheque. they'll also be previewing adaptation (written by charlie kaufman, directed by spike jonze) next weekend, which looks pretty mind-bending, much like being john malkovich from the same crew.

unless you've been living under some sort of rock, you've probably heard of the the hire, the series of short films that bmw has been making with both established and up-and-coming directors. now that i'm using a more multimedia-friendly computer, i've finally caught up, and i have to say that they're all quite excellent. i'd have to say my favorite so far is probably ang lee's chosen.

unfortunately, there's one film no longer available, reportedly due to a contract dispute with forrest whitaker, who had an uncredited role in that film whose contract wouldn't allow them to release the films on dvd.

and for films sponsored by the car company, the cars take quite a beating and actually show the damage. quite a contrast to video games like gran turismo that don't show damage because of fussy car companies.

slate, owned by microsoft, has a column that speculates why the xbox is an also-ran (since it is getting thoroughly clobbered by the ps2 worldwide, and barely edges out the gamecube in the us). while he cites the lack of some games, and a lack of cultural cachet, i think you can probably place the blame at the feet of seamus blackley, self-aggrandizing twit. it's funny how his bio doesn't mention trespasser and how it sank dreamworks interactive, and is amazingly vague about his role on ultima underworld (not listed in the credits), system shock (programming), and flight unlimited (programming and director). (and the bio for one of the partners in his new venture, j. mark hood, doesn't include his involvement with sierra's middle earth, a failure on a scale corresponding to the epic on which it was based.)

while some much-deserved love from aaron has been extended to gill sans, i have to say that cochin is an amazing serifed font that comes with mac os x 10.2 (aka jaguar). the italic version is übersexy. dig that d (and the s).

i wasn't a big fan of antialiased fonts when i'd played with them before, but they are absolutely awesome on my new computer.

with my travelling around the end of october, i slacked off in my monthly charitable giving. because we're coming up on thanksgiving, this will be my first theme month: food. (and my first repeat: the los angeles regional food bank.)

• international: oxfam international (via oxfam america)
• national: america's second harvest
• local: los angeles regional food bank

and a bonus (off-theme) contribution, owing to the cashing in on some stock market gains and my speaking fee from phpcon: the electronic frontier foundation (a membership renewal, actually).

getting true layout and content seperation with (x)html and css is not possible. too much still depends on what order things occur in the html file. (at least, it's not possible while still maintaining compatibility with many browsers.)

and even some of the most modest graphic flourishes require stuffing things that aren't really content into your content.

i think you'd have to throw xslt into the mix to really get proper seperation all the way through. (or something like some php code pulling the real content out of a database, and feeding it into an html+css layout.)

what is it with presidents and lens caps?

i actually contacted contact press images (based on the credit at the bottom of the photo), and got confirmation that the picture is legit. but as snopes points out, it's a pretty easy mistake to make. goes with the territory of being constantly photographed.

so i'd jump and down and gloat about how much of an fool the current president is based on this photo, but that's the sort of thing only a big fat idiot would indulge in. i'll let his policies speak for his intelligence.

(i've passed the information about the confirmation to snopes. hopefully they'll follow up and get the same confirmation.)

update: jd lasica points at this article from wired about the rise of doctored photographs. it suggests the clinton lens cap photo is faked.

(oh, and i don't rule out that i've been duped by someone at contact press images just carrying on the joke. i just attempted to get confirmation since i had enough information at hand to at least make that first step.)