There's no escape from the laws of quantum mechanics. The practical consequences of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle even make themselves felt on the bike trails: the slower an object is moving, the greater its effective wavelength.

For that matter, the less energy it has, the worse off you are trying to guess when an event is going to occur, like said object turning a random direction or abruptly deciding to come to a complete stop sideways across the trail.

...slowly-moving obstacles, say, five or six feet tall...

Why, exactly, stopping without warning and then turning so one's bike blocks the entire path seems like such a good idea to so many people, however, may well lie beyond the explanatory power of even quantum mechanics. The answer may lurk in the depths of that fundamental burning desire of us all to study particle physics--and, in their particular case--it would appear that this expresses itself as an irresistable urge to cause high-energy collisions.

It's been a lot of years since I've worked on a particle accelerator--and I understand this basic desire as well as anybody--but whether at the linac or on a trail, I'd rather any high-energy collisions not involve me personally.

So, on the weekends, unless the weather is so cold or so hot that the rest of the world won't be out on the trails, if I want to get any riding in, it's better to get started as close to sunrise as possible.

This morning, it looked like I wasn't the only one with this idea, since I couldn't help but notice the scene above out my window.

It's certainly one of the most crowded skies I've seen out here lately, but one distinct advantage I can see about their chosen sport is that, even in the crush of the weekend crowds, everybody still can navigate a pretty clear path.

I haven't figured out how to get my bike to take to the skies--at least not for any prolonged and non-injurious stretch--but I'm motivated. Even being able to jump over slowly-moving obstacles, say, five or six feet tall would be a good start.

One of the things you need when you're selling your films is a complete (and accurate) script for your movie. That's not the one you had before you got started shooting your film, or even any of the innumerable revisions that you did during the shoot, you need one that matches what's actually in the film in its complete and edited form.

...in case there's any doubt in your mind, hitting yourself in the face with a big stick does *not* look really cool...

One of my exciting adventures for this weekend is going through and checking scripts and preparing promotional materials for the packages that'll be shipping out next week. Fortunately, I have all the footage already digitized from building master tapes and/or creating the DVD screeners that we've been sending out to distributors. I'll just have the movie on one monitor, the script on another, and I'm sure I'll think of something to put on the third.

Most entertainment companies have a whole staff of people to do this kind of thing. I've been working with a different kind of staff lately and, though my staff isn't really pulling its weight when it comes to editing and authoring, I'm sure I'll come up with some suitable use for it sooner or later.

Better staff-fighting skills will carry over to pretty much anything. After all, what's more basic and fundamental when it comes to weapons than a stick? It's probably better that I'm practicing some of the more elaborate and complex maneuvers with a stick first, anyway, because I've managed to send it flying when it should have been reversing more than a few times. I've also managed to hit myself in the face with it a few times when I was supposed to be doing something that would look really cool...and, in case there's any lingering doubt in your mind, hitting yourself in the face with a big stick does not look really cool.

The one drawback of practicing staff moves is that I can't do them in my house. Not, at least, if I'd like to keep my furniture intact. I try never to smash anything important when the camera's not rolling.

But I've checked the zoning rules out here very carefully and I've seen nothing that would prevent me from doing strange things with a big stick in my own yard, so that's just what I figure I'll do.

I don't think anybody's going to complain. And, even if they do, it'll be from at least ten feet away.

Filmmaking and interior decorating have a lot in common. When you're trying to pinch pennies, two important rules are: 1) make use of what you already have and don't have to spend money for, and 2) whatever you do end up using, make it look like it's supposed to be that way.

That was a challenge for me when decorating my house, since it's architecturally unusual with a lot of odd spaces and traffic flows. It took some doing, but after some experimentation, I got the spaces changed from looking awkward to looking like they're the way they are for a reason.

Either that, or I just got used to it all after a while.

On low-budget projects, I've often been known to supply much of my own wardrobe; that's got its advantages, not only in cost savings, but also inasmuch as it means my wardrobe will actually fit. That means I don't have to answer difficult questions afterwards like, "why did you do that whole scene with your arms like that?" ("Because that was the only way to hide the fact that the sleeves on the suit coat ended a few inches below my elbows.") I did once have an enthusiastic member of the wardrobe department sew six-inch extensions onto the ends of a sportcoat's sleeves. This is a bad idea; just trust me on this one.

So I have a small project coming up where the director wants me to be wearing one of my chainmail pieces, the full-length ceremonial piece shown at left. The challenge is that this time it's going to be used in a pretty vigorous fight sequence with me facing three opponents and this particular piece of metal apparel was not designed with combat--or, for that matter, flexibility and mobility--in mind.

I don't have a problem doing action sequences with half my weight in costume and accessories added on, but it's an interesting challenge to choreograph a fight sequence that looks effective and makes it look like this particular piece of armor really was designed for combat.

I just have to cheat and design the combat for the armor, instead. I'm sure nobody will notice.

...He says his hands hurt pretty badly after a bunch of takes, but nobody's ever killed him for real yet...

Though coming up with a combat style and suitable techniques is a challenge (though a fun one, it should be noted), one definite plus is that this armor will quite effectively stop slashes with swords (though I'm less trusting of thrusting) and, because it is so heavy, even a real hard hit or kick ends up feeling like nothing more than a moderate shove.

Now I just have to work on my arrow-catching skills. That's not a skill I've mastered, even without armor. (Mark can do it, though; he's done scenes which called for catching or deflecting thrown weapons like shuriken through the straightforward technique of having someone throw them at him while the camera's rolling. He says his hands hurt pretty badly after a bunch of takes, but nobody's ever killed him for real yet.)

Don't think he can double me for the arrow-catching sequence, though. He's the guy on the right who's dressed in black in the scene above. I am very tempted to get a shot of him wearing this particular piece of armor anyway, just for the entertainment value.

Like most people, I've got my list of patent ideas--mostly electronics, optics, and solar energy related, in my case--that I've never gotten around to patenting. The furthest I've ever gotten has been to do some basic patent searches to see if anyone else has done it. I suppose I might be better at motivating myself to getting through the whole patenting process if 1) I was more certain that these would really be practical in actual application and 2) I had a good idea of what to do with a patent for something that's interesting, but not so interesting that the world really can't live without it.

The trend nowadays seems to be towards avoiding that last bit of uncertainty by patenting something that's completely obvious and, ideally, something that people are already doing and making money with. Then you already have a list of companies out there which you can try suing the pants off of.

Me...I think.

Well, it's not a big victory, really, but as a result of yesterday's elections, I've come a long way towards winning my phone back.

It doesn't matter who (or what) won yesterday's primaries, but with any luck this means I won't have would-be politicians using automated dialing systems to call my telephone number on an hourly basis every single evening like they've been doing for weeks. Pete Coors has been absolutely the worst of all, with his campaign calling me with a recorded message at least every other day.

Personally, I'd thought that the use of automatic dialers and recorded messages was illegal. I guess it is...unless you're a politician. I'm on both the Colorado and national Do-Not-Call lists, which would make it illegal, too, except, of course, for charities and politicians.

...hey...wait...I'm running a 501(c)(3) here myself. And I've got 25 dialup lines. Maybe I should configure a few of those lines to start calling Pete Coors' home phone number continuously from 5-9 PM. Obviously, he thinks that this is reasonable behavior.

I just need to come up with the right recorded message.

I have way too much junk, but I'm still beset by that fundamental tendency towards maximum perversity in the universe that dictates that anytime you get rid of something--even if you hadn't used it for years--you'll promptly need it.