nloof

About Recent Entries

Hello, LiveJournal friends. Oct. 26th, 2006 @ 03:48 pm
I'll admit I've never made much of my LJ -- I've only come by to kibitz on yours.

But this is not my point.

My point is to direct you here instead:

I Don't Have Time For Your Blog.

Thank you.

Over Time by Oury and Thomas Jan. 22nd, 2005 @ 09:18 pm
This gorgeous and emotional short animated film has been all the buzz on the Internet, but it's been difficult to find. It seems to get chased off of every site it's hosted on, and with no clear notice -- copyright/ownership issues, perhaps?

I voted. (Twice.) Nov. 2nd, 2004 @ 01:53 pm
So in my precinct in Los Angeles, I voted using a "butterfly ballot" -- printed only on one side, to avoid Florida-style confusion -- and an "ink punch" that prints a circle of ink onto the card. This new system "avoids hanging chads".

By what means did YOU vote?

[Posted with hblogger 1.0 http://www.hexlet.com/]

Weather Woman calls Oct. 31st, 2004 @ 11:36 am
Julia Louis-Dreyfus just called me about Proposition O. It's apparently about the sewers backing up, or something.

Okay, it wasn't really Live Julia, it was just Recorded Julia.

John Kerry Sep. 9th, 2004 @ 07:25 am
So if any of you are still undecided this year, there are two pieces of information I think you need to evaluate John Kerry's record.

First, you need the record itself, made in 1961 with his high school bandmates.

Then you also need to evaluate his Vietnam record and postwar protests, as accurately and completely portrayed in the comic strip "Doonesbury".

(Speaking of Doonesbury, I still remember the day I realized that Mike's wife Kim was the Vietnam refugee baby that we'd met in the mid seventies. That has to be one of the longest-running continuous storylines I had ever read in any medium, least of all a daily one. But I digress.)
Other entries
» Spin
So my friend David Marmor has a short film. It's his thesis film from USC, titled "Spin."

I saw it at its premiere in January and now it's screening at a bunch of festivals.

In particular, for Los Angeles folks, it will play at the Arclight on the evening of September 12 as part of the LA International Short Film Festival. (It's part of Program #75.) You can purchase tickets from the Arclight a week in advance (reserved seating). Email or comment if you want to get seats together.

If you live elsewhere, look up your local film festival screening.

Anyway, it's a good film and a great calling card for a young director. He gives amazing value to a film with a small budget. I feel very privileged to know people like David and [info]madbard who have the talent and tenacity it takes to be independent, creative players in the film industry.
Aug. 29th, 2004 @ 11:35 am
» Phone posts
As near as I can tell, the purpose of phone posts is twofold:

1. To annoy me that I can't get any of the Ogg Vorbis plugins for OS X to work.

2. To permit a forum for people to post 'creative transcriptions'.
Aug. 21st, 2004 @ 07:55 pm
» Viral Video of the Day
Excellent.

The question is... is it the same guys who did the previous amazing viral? Or just an imitation?

Makes me wish I had arranged to see a bunraku performance when I was in Japan.
Aug. 20th, 2004 @ 12:18 am
» F1r5t P05t!!!1!!
f1r5t p05t fr0m th3 0p3n m1k3 n1t3!!!!1!! 0wn3d!!1!!!!!

[Posted with hblogger 1.0 http://www.hexlet.com/]
Jul. 28th, 2004 @ 10:45 pm
» Women of Suck
suck.

I miss Suck. Suck was the cynical voice of the new media generation. Uh, or something.

While I was puttering away on old media stuff -- you know, things people used to watch, like movies -- those cool kids in San Francisco were working in some sort of converted loft and documenting how the world was changing so fast, nobody could keep up, let alone become profitable.

( And they were documenting *themselves*, too. )
Jul. 24th, 2004 @ 12:09 pm
» (No Subject)
So ever since I moved into my new apartment in January, I've been getting calls for a guy I've never heard of named Chris.

Mostly those people seemed to want Chris to call them back. I think Chris owed them money. One sounded like a bank or credit card. The other was just a guy who called every night for a week.

When I finally got sick of the every-night-for-a-week guy, I returned his call -- thank you, Caller ID -- and told him I had been assigned Chris' old number. He didn't call back after that.

So today I got a message from someone named Scott. He called because he "got some notes" from Kathy (Cathy? Kathee?) and was hoping for a "quick rewrite" to address the notes before he "goes out to shoot" tomorrow.

This sounded great, except that since this would be my first rewriting job, and I've never seen the original script, and never heard Kathy's notes, and I've never even taken a screenwriting class, I suspect it wouldn't be very good. Plus, I'm pretty sure Scott asked for Chris by name (damn!)

So I called Scott back and left a message explaining that I get a lot of Chris' calls, but I don't actually know anything about Chris or how to reach him.

Scott actually called me back to confirm and to thank me for letting him know. He asked me about this other number for Chris, which I didn't recognize; if I'd been quick-witted enough, I would have written it down to give out to the credit card companies.

It all makes sense, of course: Chris is a writer, and he's hounded by credit card debt. No surprise there.

So the bummer is that Chris, Scott and Kathy all have very generic last names, so my attempt to IMDb any of them failed utterly. So I have no idea whether this was a brush with film-student fame or with big-budget movie fame. Maybe in a year or two I'll search for a film directed by a Scott, written by a Chris and produced by a Kathy. Why IMDb doesn't support searches like that is beyond me.

I expect at least to get a "Special Thanks To" in the credits. Since they don't know my name, maybe they'll just list my phone number.

If at all possible, I'd like to be listed just under "God" or "My parents".
Jun. 19th, 2004 @ 08:39 pm
» (No Subject)
Thanks to the highly Googleable words "Zen clock" in [info]troyworks' journal, I picked up one of these.



Clearly he and I are different people -- in a good way. His response to the Zen clock idea was "Aw, heck, I can write a program to do that." Mine was "I wonder which color would go best with my bedroom set."

Ah well.

Turns out it's the clear maple on the far right. Note that the thing is much huger than the image implies. Its size is of course determined by the length the pipe needs to be to produce a pleasing mid-range tone (an "E"). It dwarfs the little round Ikea clock I'd been using to date.

I'm surprised by how well it works. It usually only has to strike the chime 2 or 3 times in totem -- about 6 minutes -- before I am ready to shut it off. It's definitely more pleasant than my usual adrenalized lunge for the snooze button, followed by 9 minutes of recovery, followed by another adrenalized lunge.

Maybe the threat of faster, more persistent chiming is enough to wake me up. I have actually never let the thing play through the whole cycle. Perhaps sometime when I have to get up at 3 AM to make a 6 AM flight out of LAX, I'll get to experience it.
Jun. 18th, 2004 @ 08:27 am
» (No Subject)
Hey, I heard this weird rumor that Ronald Reagan was dead. Can anyone confirm this?
Jun. 9th, 2004 @ 08:16 am
» (No Subject)
I'm so glad I live in Los Feliz.

So I went to the triplex on Vermont this evening. Oh, I know -- I should have been supporting my peeps at work by seeing Shrek 2 -- but instead I went to a packed showing of Super Size Me. A packed documentary. On a Thursday.

Oh, wait. Maybe this isn't some great intellectual symbol. Maybe this is just the reality TV trend spilling over into the cinema.
May. 20th, 2004 @ 11:40 pm
» At a Barnes&Noble in Brooklyn. ...
At a Barnes&Noble in Brooklyn. The fire alarm is going off. The crowd of jaded New Yorkers doesn't even seem to NOTICE.
Apr. 30th, 2004 @ 02:13 pm
» It's April, and it's 98 ...
It's April, and it's 98 degrees out. Either I have fallen asleep and woken up in Hell, or I'm in Southern California.
Apr. 26th, 2004 @ 01:56 pm
» (No Subject)
From Ditherati:


"Lawsuits are an important part of the larger strategy to educate file sharers about the law."

RIAA president Cary Sherman, on the music industry's insidious new plan to bore fans to death, News.com, 23 March 2004

http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5177933.html


As far as I'm concerned, the greatest rhetorical achievement in this debate is the fact that peer-to-peer folks have managed to get themselves called "file sharers". So the industry has to come out and say in front of millions of people, "Sharing is wrong" or "Sharing is bad", or "For gosh sakes, don't share."

There's a lesson to take home to the kids.
Mar. 24th, 2004 @ 10:45 am
» (No Subject)
Mom Finds Out About Blog

Nov. 12th, 2003 @ 03:29 am
» (No Subject)
This space intentionally left blank.
Nov. 6th, 2003 @ 07:53 am
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