sinnick

When I was a boy, perhaps predictably, I enjoyed boys action cartoons. G.I. Joe. Transformers. He-Man. Voltron. I watched them all religiously. And then in the 90s, despite being in my late teens, I still watched the awesome X-Men cartoon.

So imagine my pleasure in discovering that it is available online from Marvel ... for free!

http://marvel.com/animation/X-Men_~op~The_Animated_Series~ep~

Man, does that theme song bring back the memories. I don't know what the standard is for boys action cartoons are these days, but I think these still hold up.

I had to post this somewhere where turtle-head would see it:

Twisted Disney Princess

Not that I'm suggesting she show it to her daughter but...you know.

This was my favourite bit from last night's Daily Show segment on CNBC's shitty financial reporting.

JON STEWART
Perhaps the network's finest hour was it's interview with Sir Allen Stanford, whose
bank and wealth management firm was posting oddly positive results in a down 
market ... because it was a fraudulent ponzi scheme! 

	CNBC: You managed to avoid the sub-prime debaucle almost entirely didn't you?
	Stanford: 100%, we avoided the sub-prime debaucle.
	CNBC: What told you it was not a wise move?
	Stanford: Well, it was very simple...

"...I ran a Ponzi Scheme! Instead of investing the money ... I stole it! 
8 billion dollars of it! *I'm bad*."

Come on, CNBC's Carl Quintanilla! You've got one of the biggest white collar 
criminals in history live on the air. Don't let him off the hook!

	CNBC: Before we let you go ...

*gasp* Here it comes. The million dollar question:

	CNBC: Is it fun being a billionaire?
	Stanford: Well uh...yes. Yes. Yes I have to say it is fun being a billionaire.
	CNBC: Ha ha ha.

Fuck you! 

You know between the two of 'em I can't decide which one of 
those guys I'd rather see in jail.

Meh.

Read the salon piece. It's funny.

My favourite winner, though, was Kunio Kato, who won for best Animated Short. He's Japanese, and barely speaks english, and he was incredibly serious and nervous. This was his acceptance speech. Imagine it in the world's thickest japanese accent:

"Thank you, my supporter.
Thank you all my staff.
Thank you my pencil.
Thank you my producer.
Thank you Academy.
Thank you animation.
Thank you my company.

Domo arigato, Mister Roboto."

Short, sweet, end with a self-deprecating joke. What more can you ask for?

Mozart Piano Concertos: Vol 4 (link)

I bought this on iTunes recently. I have volumes 2 and 3, but for some reason I never bought 4. I'm not sure why. Maybe I didn't have the money at the time. I don't recommend volume 1, as Mozart's early piano concertos aren't too interesting - they are all just variations on other composer's works. He had composed the first four concertos by the time he was ten, so perhaps it's not too surprising that they're nothing special. You can get all four volumes as a box set on Amazon for ~$100 which might be cheaper in the long run, though.

Anyway, this is Alfred Brendel and Neville Marriner playing the 22nd through to the 27th, and though it may seem expensive, it is an amazing recording. I admit I don't have huge experience listening to different pianists - I tend to just find a recording that I like and I don't really bother with listening to other versions - but I've listened to other pianists on YouTube, and Alfred Brendel is always better. He is just so damn good that I seem to always enjoy him. I've read many articles which say that he is still the greatest pianist alive. And I guess because it is The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the quality of the sound is top notch.

Body of Lies

This was the Leonardo Di Caprio and Russell Crowe anti-terrorism vehicle. And I have to say, this is the film that made me think "I am done with Ridley Scott". The man can craft a beautiful mis-en-scene, but when it comes to narrative he sucks. The last film of his I can truly say I enjoyed was Matchstick Men, and before that it was White Squall. And then Blade Runner. Those films were made a looooong time ago. Perhaps it's just the writers he works with, but I don't think so. This could have been a good film, but he bungled the pacing and suspense.

The film is nothing like what the trailers depict. I was expecting some sort of thriller involving two CIA agents going up against each other. It isn't that. Leo plays some sort of undefined counter-terrorism agent stationed in the middle east, and Russell Crowe is his boss back in the states. Leo is trying to catch an Osama Bin Laden type character, and Crowe basically just barks instructions at him on a cellphone.

My big problem with the movie is that the plot has no momentum to it. It seems like a series of disconnected events, with no well-defined goal. Characters are acted and portrayed as though they have hidden motivations, when they never do. The casting makes it difficult to tell many minor characters apart - which wouldn't be important except that Leo's character bases his decisions on what those minor characters do.

Russell Crowe plays a truly obnoxious american - he obviously sank his teeth into overplaying the character as a stereotypical rah-rah warhawk. I think the role was miscast. It should have been a character actor, not a movie star. Putting Crowe in the role directs too much attention to it, and derails your attention from Leo, who plays the protagonist. Leo, on the other hand, is good as usual, but not given much to do. He was better in The Departed, which admittedly was a much juicier role. But I think the problem is that Ridley Scott is just not very good with actors.

Last week I left a note on Laura's desk
It said I love you signed anonymous friend
Turns out she's smarter than I thought she was
She knows I wrote it, now the whole class does too
And I'm alone during couples skate
When she skates by with some guy on her arm
But I know that I'll forget the look of pity in her face
When I'm living in my solar dome on a platform in space

[CHORUS]
Cause it's gonna be the future soon
I won't always be this way
When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away
It's gonna be the future soon
Never seen it quite so clear
And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here

I'll probably be some kind of scientist
Building inventions in my space lab in space
I'll end world hunger, I'll make dolphins speak
Work through the daytime, spend my nights and week-ends
Perfecting my warrior robot race
Building them one laser gun at a time
I will do my best to teach them
About life and what it's worth
I just hope that I can keep them from destroying the Earth

[CHORUS]
Well it's gonna be the future soon
And I won't always be this way
When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away
It's gonna be the future soon
I've never seen it quite so clear
And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already...

[BRIDGE]
Here on Earth they'll wonder
As I piece by piece replace myself
And the steel and circuits will make me whole
But I'll still feel so alone
Until Laura calls me home

I'll see her standing by the monorail
She'll look the same except for bionic eyes
She lost the real ones in the robot wars
I'll say "I'm sorry", she'll say "it's not your fault"
"Or is it?"
And she eyes me suspiciously
Hearing the whir of the servos inside
She'll scream and try to run
But there's nowhere she can hide
When a crazy cyborg wants to make you his robot bride

Well it's gonna be the future soon
And I won't always be this way
When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away
It's gonna be the future soon
I've never seen it quite so clear
And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here

- Jonathan Coulton, "Future Soon"

By the way, you should follow me on Twitter. I'm far more active over there than I am on livejournal these days.

Trust me, before I started using it, I didn't get it either, but that all changes once you have some real-life friends on there.

Or, if you want to just snoop on all my web content, you can follow the "Lifestream" (not my term), which is here. If you subscribe to that feed, then you will automatically get new content from other services as I add them (I'm investigating BackType right now, for example).

I launched my new personal site a few days ago. You can find it here: www.sinnick.com.

The site is three things.

1) Mainly, it's a new blog.

Livejournal is great for many things, but it's not good for engaging with new people. For a while there on Livejournal - like, around 3 years ago - I met several new friends. But that hasn't happened in a long time, and many of those friends have moved off LJ. In addition, especially in the last year-year-and-a-half or so, several blogging services have really taken off, while Livejournal has languished behind. When SixApart bought LJ, I was optimistic that they would be able to really compete with blogger, but they haven't. And the fact that they sold the service to SUP, who then fired all their engineers doesn't give me confidence that they will open up the service.

I've been on Livejournal since 2001, and I never really had a "vision" for what this blog was. It was sort of a personal diary / rant-space. But that kind of content isn't the best way to create an online identity for yourself, as a member of a particular community.

So, the new blog is an attempt to address that, and I expect the site's content to be 90% blog posts. Especially at first, since I will probably re-post some of my old LJ posts there, to try to seed it with some content :).

2) It's a new photo site.

For those of you who followed it, it's probably obvious that I haven't really updated my photoblog in over 2 years. The site is dead. I still take pictures, but far less frequently, and in batches. I have no plans to take it down, but it doesn't make sense for me to update it with a few pictures every 6 months, so I wanted a new place to showcase my photos that organized them more appropriately to that context. The new site has a photo section which will contain photo sets, rather than a "blog" per se. I'm slowly migrating more galleries over, but you can see stuff that's there now. I integrated with the Flickr API to make this happen, which seemed to work well.

2) It's a space for future ideas.

I always have new projects in mind. Usually the problem with me is follow-through :). But one day, I may write some open-source software and make it available on the site, or start some new internet thing. Among the many things I considered when coming up with the new design, expansion at the top level was one of the key goals from the start. Nothing there yet of course.


Speaking of design, I am trying out several ideas with this site, so if you have any little suggestions let me know. To subscribe to the various feeds check out the about page.

And I thought I knew how to rant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOKSkaQoF_I

It's news like this which explains why I still game on the PC.

Had I purchased Left 4 Dead for the XBox, (which I could have done) I would not be getting this content as soon as I will be.

I will never buy a Valve product for a console. As a company, they care so much more about the PC market that it would make no sense to play their games anywhere else. The fact that even their newest games work on my old graphics card is proof enough of that. They believe in quality -- not the ridiculous arms race of look and feel that other games participate in -- and I think they are truly evolved in their thinking about what makes a decent game.

I only wish more companies were the same way.

What is your opinion of this?

Beethoven is well known for his Piano Concertos, but I recently discovered some chamber music of his that I'm really enjoying.

(96.3 continues to impress me with their programming, by the way. Far superior to CBC Radio 2, which doesn't really play classical music anymore as far as I can tell? I guess they still have Jurgen Goth, but I never hear it when I happen to tune in.)

Anyway, this is a trio of piano, cello and clarinet in B-flat major by Beethoven. Op 11. Not the greatest recording, but hey, it's a YouTube video. But listen to how they trade the melody back and forth between the instruments during the opening sequence. And then it gets complex :).



The recording I heard on the radio was YoYo Ma, Manny Ax, and I can't remember the clarinetist, but it was obviously much better than this one. Hang on, I'll find a link.

...

Here. Track 5-7. I'm sure there's some other good stuff on there too.

Yes.

I hope they kept the satire intact.

This is text found on Mashable:

Are you an expert in your field? Do you have a lot to say but lack the ability to reach a mass audience? Do you want to write for Mashable? Then look no further.

Mashable is always on the lookout for experienced writers who are passionate about new media, Web 2.0 and social sites. Wondering who guest writes for Mashable? Jessica Smith, Dr. Mark Drapeau, Sarah Evans and Dan Schawbel are just a few of our talented contributors.

Are those names supposed to mean something to me? Who is this text for?

To truly reach out to a mass audience, social sites need to cut it with the bloody echo chamber crap. Just my opinion.

The internet kills me sometimes.

Forbes released it's list of the top 25 web celebrities.

I consider myself to be very in touch with web trends, and I pay attention to maybe three of these people. I've only heard of 11 of them. I visit none of their websites regularly. Of the ones I haven't heard of, I am familiar with about five of the sites they are responsible for (digg, postsecret, mashable, gawker, gizmodo) but never really knew about the person "in charge". That leaves nine "incredibly famous web celebrities" who are utterly unknown to me in both name and URL.

Perhaps I'm not as in touch as I think I am, but it seems to me that lists like this are basically masturbation for web journalists. It's high-profile blog spam, designed to attract traffic from the very celebrities themselves. No one else much cares.

Fundamentally, the internet is an enemy to "celebrity" - its ease of entry and normalization of content makes it hard to raise a handful of people above the others. It is far more conducive to creating sub-communities which may have their own stars, but are largely ignored by everyone else. The human desire to slot everything into categories and "best of" lists really falls down when it comes to the web, especially when ranking people.

I think social networks get this, but I don't think the mass media gets it yet. Until they do, we'll have to suffer/ignore yet another "webby awards" won't we.

I've been reading a book titled "Downbelow Station" by C.J. Cherryh. It's ... not good. Which is surprising, because it won a Hugo award and was named by Locus Magazine as one of the top 50 science fiction novels of all time. It was that pedigree that made me take a chance on a new author (I did read up on her too, and she is well-respected in SF circles).

But I'm almost 150 pages in, and I feel like I'm missing something because from what I can tell, the book is about a dozen characters doing paperwork in space.

I mean, who doesn't find that thrilling?

Okay, okay. There are intriguing elements - the space station is in a war zone and has been forced to act as a refugee camp for a lot of displaced satellite colonies - but so far not a single character has held my attention. No one has a well defined goal, no one is all that likeable, and there are just too damn many of them! Practically every chapter has been about someone new: yet another space station administrator, trying to figure out how to manage construction of a new lumber mill on the planet below. Come on!

It's not like I need action and adventure on every page, but honestly. It's like reading about Darth Vader's accountant.

So I'm going to quit the book, but I feel guilty. It goes against my completionist tendencies. What if the last three quarters of the book get good?

But life is too short.

Say, I've got an idea. How about this for a roadmap for an IM client for iPhone:


Version 1: Because it's annoying to type things on an iPhone, the app would record your voice, and do voice-to-text processing, which would then be transmitted over the 3G data network to the recipient.

Version 2: Upon receipt of the message on the other end, the app would do text-to-voice processing, and speak the message out loud to the recipient in a Stephen-Hawking-esque voice.

Version 3: The app would allow you to record a sample of your own voice, which would then get transferred as an encrypted MP3 to the recipient along with your text message, so that when the message is played back as audio for them, it plays back in your own voice, using splines and fast-fourier transforms to create the audio playback of words algorithmically.

Version 4: Instead of having to type in a person's proprietary IM username, each person would be assigned a ten-digit number which you can just type in on a simple keypad to initiate a chat session.

Version 5: Integrate this 10-digit identifying number into the iphone's built-in address book, so all you have to do is tap on their name to initiate a chat session.

Version 6: If the person doesn't happen to be paying attention to their iPhone when you initiate a chat with them, the app will helpfully beep to get their attention.


I know it would take a lot of work, and several revisions to create an app like this, but don't you think it would be worth it? Damn, I wish there were something like this already available on the iPhone today!

For turtlehead:

This is my standard response when requested to fill out a webform to access some sort of article online.



I presume companies are asking for this information to track me and then spam me, so obviously I set this up against a spam email address as well.

Just in case you've been reading them over the course of a few weeks, here are the strips from Penny Arcade's recent continuity-fest all in one place. It adds something to read them back to back, I think:








No one has satirized teenaged fantasy better.