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… waking slowly, late in the morning, with the sun shining a leafy stipple on my face. Bump, bump, bump. Opening an eye. A cat that was sleeping beside me, fastidiously washing her face with her paw. Bump, bump, bump. As she washes, she leans into me as any child would lean into a parent.

She notices the shift in my breathing and stops washing. She sits up, and looks me in the eye. Several seconds pass as we review each other in the leafy light of this new day.

I love my cat, and she loves me.

She nuzzles, then goes back to washing her face.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4224763.html?series=37

I can’t wait to see how this new technology develops. I just wonder how noisy it will be. However, I picture having a row of these on the roof ridge generating enough power to just run a high efficiency lighting system.

What do you think?

I’m now working at Vector IRB. This is good for me, because it means I get to recover from the horrors of my previous employer. Working for a company that has rational procedures, and where everyone co-operates, instead of back-biting and burying each other.

The funny thing - my previous employer announced their sale this week. This after management would, in meetings, tell the staff “the company is not for sale”… However, the parent company’s SEC filings would refer to efforts to sell the division. Well, now it’s gone and half the staff have a much longer drive, since they moved many miles to north Austin now.

…amuse me.

I was eating some broken pretzels from a ziploc, at my desk. I dumped a handful on the desk to nibble on, and ate a couple. Then I looked down and saw that the pretzel bits spelled out the word “Jade” - I have taken a photo and will update later when I figure out how to get it somewhere visible from behind this hellacious firewall.

It’s just too perfect.

My dear friend Lisa has insisted I blog more, so this post is for her.

Last night I installed Windows XP Pro on Parallels on my MacBook. I felt kind of dirty, especially after the whole upgrading to Service Pack 2. However, anyone who wants to have a business machine and who doesn’t want to use OpenOffice, or have MS Office for Mac laying around, XP in Parallels is the easy way out

So, now I have XP on there, what ELSE can I do with it?

In the beginning was telnet, and it was simple. A way to connect to remote machines, it ‘did the job’ and developed over many years. In the 60s, it was VT terminals. In the 70s VT displays became more complex. In the 80s, they became a software tool for remote administration instead of just a way to access applications and Unix command lines.

In the 90s, VT100 gained ANSI standard status, and color!

In 1993, a British college student wrote a telnet-based multi-user chat program, or talker. In 1994 the code leaked, and spawned a plethora of compatible code bases for internet chat. In 1996, the definitive code-base was released: Playground Plus.

Development on PG+ stopped in 2000 or so. Until…

Taking the PG+ 1.0.11 distribution as a base, this is the start of development of the next generation of talker code: 0.0.1

I’ll keep you posted!

I haven’t named the code-base yet, but I’d like something that moves on from ‘Playground’ but has a logical link. Suggestions welcome!

I’ve been working on a project to port some modern-day software to some elderly web servers. My project is going quite nicely, but I’m having the problem that I am working on three machines: one for development, one for testing and one for production - the one that hosts this site!

Where I am stuck is memory. These machines take PC100 CL2 168-pin SDRAM. If you have any 512MB or 256MB DIMMS laying around, I would be delighted to buy them.

Similarly, if you have any 500 or 550 MHz AMD K6-2 processors with a 2.2V core voltage laying around, I have a good use for them.

Payment could be in cash, or I could buy you lunch, coffee, or host a website for you…

I am UPM on a motion picture which looks set to go into production sometime during the winter/spring ‘08 timeframe. I’ve been making camera and digital workflow decisions for this production, and it’s been unusually difficult.

If I were filming sooner, I’d go with 35mm or one of the 2K cameras that has filmic qualities. If I were filming later, I’d just say Red One and know I made the best choice…

But the timing is all wrong.

The Red camera is on an engineering delay that may or may not see units start to ship in meaningful numbers in August. There are 2,000 reservations. If Red can build 100 cameras a month, that will take almost two years to fulfill existing orders. If they can make 500 a month, it will still take four months to clear the backlog. Allowing for other buyers when the camera is a success, if you haven’t already made a reservation, you’ll be lucky to receive one in 2008.

The Red Camera Company knows this and probably has facilities in place to make 1,000 or 2,000 per month to meet initial demand. Even then, a buyer who gets his feature funded in October or November will still be in for a painful wait for his package to ship. This being a new and untested product, it’s prudent to order when you’ve seen two or three months of real world usage.

This puts the UPM in a tough spot right now. Trying to schedule a feature production with name talent is awkwards at the best of times. Add in an unknown like ‘not knowing when the camera system you’ve chosen will be available’ to the mix…

A friend said, ‘why don’t you reserve one?’ Because that’s a cost of the film budget, and the film budget doesn’t arrive until the very last moment. I can’t afford to tie up money like that. I can’t wait to be reimbursed several months later, if at all. What if the funding falls through?

So, like many indie filmmakers, I’m in a bind. What to do. What to do.

Last night, my friend Teresa asked with great urgency about a line of dialog in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells where a friend of hers was trying to find the etymology of the word tallo which appeared to be spoken by a Cockney heavy. Turns out he was saying ta-ta - which is what I heard and what the subtitles confirmed.

Which started me thinking abut the fact there’s even a need to subtitle an English film into English. Usually, it’ll be to help the hearing impaired, but with this film being in cockney English and most viewers being American, the titles have been heavily used, I’m sure.

Incidentally, tonight I’ll be revisiting The Commitments, a film about an Irish band that comes together to sing covers of classic hits. With infighting and the inevitable jealousies that spring up, the band tears itself apart in the most entertaining way.

These are hardly new films, but I’d like to recommend two Korean exports that I enjoyed watching recently. Both by director Chan-wook Park, and both exceptionally violent, I recommend them for reasons other than their overt viciousness.

Oldboy is the story of a businessman, imprisoned for 15 years in an unofficial prison. Unexpectedly released, he strives to discover who imprisoned him, and why. This film’s got twists and turns like nothing else I’ve seen recently. Although sometimes the scenes take on a Matrixesque quality, these are not simply ‘advanced CG shots’ - instead, you are so with the emotional state of the character that you personally want t fight your way down that hallway through those 25 goons, with just a hammer. That said, violence is not the marque of this film. The character motivation and the wry observations somehow manage to wash over that.

If you don’t have an objection to choosing between subtitles and less-than-perfect dubbing, Oldboy comes strongly recommended.

The second film, by the same director, is Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. With similar graphic violence, and similar twists and depth, we go on a different journey. Throughout this film, where a deaf-mute man aids his dying sister by kidnapping a child to raise the money needed, there is a revenge-spiral of the type that prompted Ghandi to pronounce “an eye for an eye will have the whole world blind!” This film’s got more curves than Jennifer Tilly. Towards the end, you squirm for discomfort as you try to weigh who you’re supposed to have sympathy with. Everyone deserves it, yet, for their violence, none get it.

To quote Mr. Park directly; “I don’t feel enjoyment watching films that evoke passivity. If you need that kind of comfort, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t go to a spa.” These films took hold of something deep inside me, and they demanded something of me as a viewer.

I’ve discovered there’s a third film in this informal ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ - Lady Vengeance has been added to my netflix queue.