because ... well ... why the hell not ...?

it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Thursday, October 28th

_15:26PM

Moonshadow:

I read that George Bush was voted "Movie Villain of the Year" by the readers of Total Film magazine, leaving contenders like Doctor Octopus from "Spider-Man 2" and Leatherface from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in the dust.

I wasn't even in the running this time, but maybe someday I'll be on the list. With luck it won't be with competition from anyone in the White House--somehow I suspect that would be hard to top. Being President is a great role to land. It's demanding and quite the challenge, but I bet it's rewarding and looks great on your list of credits. I'm sure it's not easy getting cast in that role; you have to do a lot of readings for it and I suspect it depends more on knowing the right people than on your acting talents.

But I'd do it all the same. I hear the residuals are really good.

This month, what with getting ready for another American Film Market, the only shoot I've been involved in was setting up a still camera last night to record the lunar eclipse. It wasn't the greatest weather for it--a little bit hazy and overcast, but not too bad. The images above were caught every two minutes--and, as you can see, the moon moved almost exactly its own diameter in that much time.

Whereas these were taken every three minutes, but I had to spread them out a bit because of the glare of the moonlight at the end.

For late October, it's been almost balmy out here: highs in the 70's and lows in the mid- to upper-30's. I've even been opening the house up again at night. It'd be great biking weather except for the minor detail that I haven't had time for that most of the month...and there's no guarantee that the warm weather will hold out through mid-November when I might have time again. We'll see. The trees are certainly all ready for the cold--they've been bare for some time, despite the lack of chill.

Wednesday, October 20th

_3:44AM

Dawn of the Deadline:

It's just as well that I haven't been in much of a sleeping mood lately, since today is the deadline to get the graphics in for another full-page ad in Independent Film Quarterly (on page 1 again, as well; not too shabby).

...which is what I really should be finishing up right now, but first I think I'll subject you to a few amazing products that I've run into so far this month which really deserve a special mention.

The amazing TV B-Gone universal remote control gets the top honors. This universal keychain remote features only one button ("off"), but they claim it works with all TVs. There are a few department stores I can think of which would be particularly well-suited for testing this device. (Even when I've been in the mood to buy a product, I've sometimes been chased away to another store by the prospect of looking for it while surrounded by dozens of TVs, all playing various movies and TV channels with the volume much higher than necessary.

Maybe they could come out with a "kinder, gentler" version that features a universal "mute" button which worked on TVs, stereos, and annoying salespeople who ask if you need help every twenty-two seconds until they've bothered you enough that you'll leave without buying anything.

I think the world is divided up into TV-people (who have to have the TV set on all the time) and non-TV-people (who find this practice to be maddening). I'm one of the latter and I'm not sure either side can really appreciate or understand the other.

There was a time when I'd had surgery to reassemble my leg and wound up sharing a room for a while with a basketball player who had jumped up to make a basket and broke his leg on landing. Ooops. At least he made the basket; missing it that time would have hurt even more, I'm sure.

He had a bunch of family members come spend quite some time with him. They'd show up near the start of visiting hours, sit on the bed, and the first thing they'd say after "hello" was, "would you like the TV on?" He'd say, "no" and they'd sit on the bed for a few minutes longer before someone else would ask, "are you sure you don't want the TV on?" He'd say, "I'm sure." After a few more minutes, someone else would ask, "can I turn the TV on for you?" and he'd reply, "no." There'd be a pause, and finally one of them would get up and turn on the TV and they'd all sit there on the bed with him, watching TV and ignoring him.

Eventually, visiting hours would be over, they'd leave, and we could turn of the TV. At least we could get a TV-free night after that before the next day when they'd show up again and the whole ritual would repeat. Unfortunately, even a TV-B-Gone remote wouldn't have saved us back then because I bet his family would have wrestled it away from him and stomped on it after the first time he tried to use it. Even if he seemed a lot more athletic than the rest of his family, the whole broken-leg-thing probably would have slowed him down a lot, and they did outnumber him.

---

The next fabulous product is the incredible Galactica Intelligent LED-illuminated toilet seat from KiSS Textil. According to the manufacturer: The transparent toilet seat GALACTIKA is equipped with tiny ultra bright Chip-LED in 5 cols.: pole-white, sundance-yellow, scarlet-red, amparo-blue and emerald-green. The energy is supplied by 4 pcs. AA 1,5V batteries, that you find in an inconspicuous batterycase taped with a velcro at the backside of the closet or at the wall under the cistern. The real clou of the luminous toilet seat is the very tricky elektronic processor. When opening the cover the LED light will be dimmed on slowly and kindle their full power after 5 seconds. When closing the cover the LED light will be dimmed off gently. If you leave the cover open the integrated processor interrupts the powersupply after half an hour. One battery filling is good enough for one month run (depending on frequency (c:).

Haven't you always wanted to find a tricky elektronic processor in your toilet? I know I haven't.

But I think KiSS is really onto something (no, not *on* something) here. This kind of lighting is very popular these days in modded computer cases and liquid cooling is really catching on--the two main workstations in my own office, for example, use this approach. Without doing the actual calculations, my guess is that even an average toilet can move enough water to cool Intel's new dual-core CPUs. A more environmentally-friendly low-flow toilet would probably still be sufficient for most of their current Prescott-core P4 CPUs.

So, by combining the functions of a toilet and a computer case, you get the best of both worlds. Well, sort of, anyway. But that's only the beginning; think of all the advantages for the truly hard-core gamer: no longer would you have to step away from your computer to answer the call of nature. Add some type of food source, and all your gaming needs would be covered!

Who knows? Maybe the light-up modded computer potty will be available in time for Christmas.

...by the way, when visiting KiSS's website, don't forget that they have actual streamable (so to speak) movies of their toilets in action!

---

But speaking of using technology to enhance one's bodily functions, Healthquest Technologies, Inc., has produced (and patented) WizMark, the interactive urinal communicator:

Discover Wizmark, the interactive urinal communicator, its advertising you can't help but look at. An idea so original, it has everyone talking. Wizmark is based on one unwritten rule of men's room etiquette; when using a urinal, never stare at the person next to you. Every male knows that when he is using a urinal, he can look anyway he wants, except left or right. Realizing this unwritten code, the appeal of this marketing concept to you as an advertiser is that it effectively assures your ad will attract the attention of, and be read by, the ever elusive targeted male audience you are constantly aiming for. Wizmark's interactive capabilities will get results, providing the perfect guerilla marketing medium for men of all ages.

As a one-of-a-kind, fully functional interactive device, Wizmark can talk, sing, or flash a string of lights around a promotional message when greeting a "visitor". The large anti-glare, water-proof viewing screen is strategically located just above the drain to ensure guaranteed viewing without interruptions. Using the elements of surprise and humor in a truly unique location will allow Wizmark, in combination with your ad, to make a lasting impression on every male that sees it.

If you've got a product that deserves this kind of attention, this might just be the advertising solution for you. Let me know how it goes.

---

But for now, I should get back to my own, more conventional, advertising projects. A full-page ad in Independent Film Quarterly might not be nearly as high-tech as having interactive singing urinal cakes complete with flashing lights, but at least it's a start.

Tuesday, October 19th

_21:16PM

Upgrade the Down Staircase:

Busy month, but not a terribly exciting one so far. After the adventures of September, including the filming of "The Surfer King" and "My Fallen Angel," October's been more a month of knuckling down and getting some necessary--but not exciting to write about--work done.

The main focus has been getting ready for another episode of the American Film Market which, just to make things that much more chaotic, has moved from February to November. Besides pushing everybody's schedules around, it also makes for two American Film Markets in one year. That's probably a lot easier on those who are only concerned with the markets or who have a whole staff devoted to getting ready for them.

what better way to relax when you're feeling stressed out than to upgrade one of your servers...or three?

It didn't help that my main computer's "emergency sensor" was operating in top form and, once it detected that I'd reached the deadline for getting in the design for the elevator banner (there are four elevators at the Lowes Hotel where the AFM is held; once again, I've reserved the interior of one of them for my own advertising materials) and decided to start crashing every five to ten minutes. Since it takes two minutes and forty seconds to reboot, get back into Photoshop, and load the project I'd been working on (all 433 megabytes of it), getting in only five to ten minutes of work before the next crash was pretty frustrating, and I was pressed enough for time that I didn't feel I could spend the time to track down the problem beyond trying a few simple things that didn't work anyway.

Eventually, though, I broke down and tracked down the problem...turned out that the power supply fan had failed. For the short-term, I ended up attaching an extra fan to the air outlet of the power supply outside the case and then it worked fine and the proofs and CDs of the final version went off to the printing company. Whew!

But that's been what this month has been like so far, dealing with a bunch of rush projects and deadlines interspersed with hardware repairs and upgrades, either inadvertent or, occasionally, quite vertant. After all, what better way to relax when you're feeling stressed out than to upgrade one of your servers...or three?

Yes, I am serious, by the way.

One of the planned upgrades was replacing "Eeyore," the firewall/gateway/router between the internal and exteral networks here at the treehouse. Not that the old Eeyore was behaving badly or anything like that, but I felt it was time to get set one up with current software versions and security techniques, so why not update the hardware at the same time? Besides, this way I could get the new system set up without the risk of messing up the old one and I could always switch back if I ran into problems down the line.

The old Eeyore was a Pentium-100 running in a Gateway (which seemed appropriate) full-tower case. Still adequate for the job, even after five years, and I'd been lucky enough that none of the drives had failed during its tenure. For the new system, I started out with a Secureworks iSensor system that had been gutted (no hard drive, memory, etc.) and left for dead in a pile of surplus hardware. Not the easiest system to revive without any of the original proprietary software or documentation, considering that it lacks video output, a keyboard or mouse connector, floppy disk or CD-Rom drives.

But it did have two important features in its favor as a potential router/firewall:

1. A Phobos four-port 10/100tx ethernet card
2. Cuteness

"Phobos" seems an appropriate brand of network card to use in a firewall, but the "cuteness" part was really the most important. So, in went some memory, a hard drive, and a Cyrix C3-600 CPU; not the fastest on the block, to be sure, but it typically consumes only 8.5 watts of power, so I thought it was a good choice for this application. It's still got the disadvantage that there's no console--unless you count the little serial-driven alphanumeric display and front-panel switches--but I have it set up so I can manage it over the network, so it's workable.

So then it's on to organizing the video equipment in the editing room. I got tired of having the various decks and other gear in random piles on the desks and on the floor, so I built these half-sized racks out of parts I had in the garage and figured I'd mount everything so I could get to it a lot more easily. I still have to do a fair bit of rewiring depending on what I want to do, but at least now it's easier to reach the backs of the equipment and they're all pretty close to one another.

There's actually a whole lot more upgrades and changes I have the urge to make, but I think I'd better wait until after the market to worry about those. I don't need to relax *too* much.

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