October, 28, 2005 archives

the not a cornfield project near chinatown has been fun to watch grow, but i’ve never actually been down to the site. i’ve just seen it from the gold line.

i think i’ll rectify that on sunday, and head out there for the weekly drum circle and harvesting. i’ve been itching to get out and take some pictures of something.

sam ruby pulled a good quote on building in support for internationalization in web applications, which i agree is really important.

it is very annoying that i can’t use my flickr recent comments feed because the atom feed is broken due to bad utf-8 handling.

i’m thinking of doing another talk at the mysql conference next year about handling this sort of thing. there’s really no excuse for it. which makes it a little hard to do a 45-minute talk on — it’s so easy to get right!

one of my favorite stories about the los angeles central library is how dean cornwell won the competition to do the murals in the rotunda. cornwell was so excited about the possibility of doing the murals, he entered the contest three times — once under his own name and twice under assumed names. when they selected the winners, the submission in his own name took first place, and the submissions under assumed names took second and third place.

doing the murals, which encompass 9000 square feet, took him five years.

here’s a brilliant contemporary review, even if i disagree with it, by thomas craven in american mercury magazine, december 1932: “the most conspicuous example of monumental profanation commissioned are the enlargements of coated paper magazine illustrations with which dean cornwell is swiftly and inexorably ruining the interior of one of the few tolerable buildings in los angeles.”

i decided that since i owned the soundtrack, i should actually get around to seeing stark raving mad. (the soundtrack was done by john digweed and nick muir.) it turns out that it is a heist movie where the bank robbery is being done behind the scenes at a rave. it’s a pretty decent heist movie, with a few interesting twists but not too much that comes as a surprise. one of the funniest scenes involves dave foley playing an undercover fbi agent who ends up having another connection to the rave.

listening to a bit of the commentary, the directors seemed very proud of themselves that they had captured the feel of a rave, and while i guess they did a good job of that (not that i would really know), i think groove is a much better-looking film. stark raving mad has a few too many jump-cuts, and the cinematography isn’t as crisp as what i remember from groove.