May, 30, 2004 archives

vsda’s home entertainment 2004 is the trade show that encompasses the video retail market. it’s july 14-16 at the venetian in las vegas, and an all-access pass is $395 for non-members (before june 18 — after that it is $475).

time’s eye (a time odyssey, book 1) by arthur c. clarke and stephen baxter, in addition to having a clumsy title, also ends up being a choppy ride. the basic premise is that the world gets remixed, time-wise, by mysterious aliens, and there ends up being little pockets of different bits of history that collide with each other, eventually boiling down to the army of genghis khan facing off against the army of alexander the great, with a few 21st century soldiers and cosmonauts and late-19th century british troops thrown into the mix.

one of the biggest flaws of the book is the actions of one of the cosmonauts, which plays out in a frightfully predictable way. (sadly, i was thinking at one point that it was refreshing to see the authors had not leaned on the sort of character/plot device that a more mediocre talent like michael crichton would, but then just a little bit later they went and did exactly as i feared.)

what is most interesting about the book is really the larger-scale problems brought about by the mix-and-match of different parts of earth from different times, and some of the interplay between the characters about what it means. in that sense, the book feels like a little bit of a mix-and-match: a michael crichton book plopped into the middle of an arthur c. clarke framework.

but my real disappointment is that i finished reading it just a short while ago, after the library was closed. if i had been thinking, i would have hit the library earlier to get some more books, since it will be closed tomorrow.

i now have only four items in my personal inbox: three mails mentioning various books to read (two were comments here), and one about getting blogdrive.com to do an authenticated ping of blo.gs so it doesn’t need to fetch the page to verify it was updated. (something i suggested but haven’t gotten around to implementing and documenting how to do.)

the minimum financial requirements for a blockbuster franchise are a net worth of $400,000 with a liquidity of $100,000. a useful number to know as a benchmark.

i’ve mentioned the ralphs that will be opening downtown before (drawing a comment from one of the folks who spearheaded the deal — gotta love people who google their own name). of course, where there’s a big grocery store, other retailers will follow. according to this december 2002 press release, blockbuster will also be opening a location in the same complex.

i picked up the latest issue of los angeles magazine last week, because it features several articles about downtown. one of the things that was particularly interesting is a map of the downtown area with all of the loft developments either already open, under construction, or planned. one thing that is noticable is that the gas company lofts (where the ralphs and blockbuster will be) are in the southwest corner of all of the development, and the number of developments is actually weighted towards the northeast corner of the map. it may look different if you plotted the number of lofts — the developments near the gas company lofts are generally larger than those on this side of downtown. (and southwest/northeast is just using the top of the map as north. it’s actually closer to being the west and east sides of downtown, which is on a diagonal grid.)

according to yahoo! maps, the location of the ralphs and blockbuster is 1.1 miles from the old bank district. i haven’t been to that end of town for a while. i wonder how close they are to opening. i guess i should make the trek out there some day.