Seeing Red

Those firmly in RA Universe know by now Peter Jackson screened 10 minutes of ‘The Hobbit’ at CinemaCon, and it was ill received by a significant number of attendees. The plan by Warner Bros. was to highlight the potential sea change in movie making with the advent of cameras like the Red Epic. What I found completely predictable, and I’m going to be shocked if Sir Peter and Warners didn’t as well, were the stunned reactions of a bunch of theater owners and some journalists who needed something interesting to write. This gathering was not conducive to appreciation of something highly creative and inventive in film making. It was mostly about the bottom line, about consumption and give it to me now.

After the lean years of movie going and fear of not being in the black, I can understand theater owners not being eager to embrace something that requires them to invest lots of money and must in part be an acquired taste for the public. As for most of the journalists, they did not do their homework as per usual and must hear the same things over and over. For those who did do their homework, they knew Peter Jackson had already made it plain how 48fps will look and for ‘The Hobbit’ film will require some additional work on his part. Check out 5:00 to about 6:45 and especially the part about “grading down.”

For now I’m assuming Peter Jackson was not thrown a bit by the reaction at CinemaCon:

Peter Jackson responds to complaints about ‘The Hobbit’ footage — BREAKING

by Anthony Breznican
Peter Jackson says the negative reaction this week over new technology he’s using to shoot The Hobbit won’t hold him back, and he hopes moviegoers will give it a try and judge for themselves.

“Nobody is going to stop,” he said. “This technology is going to keep evolving.”

He hopes critics of the format will change their minds when they see the finished film.

“At first it’s unusual because you’ve never seen a movie like this before. It’s literally a new experience, but you know, that doesn’t last the entire experience of the film; not by any stretch, after 10 minutes or so,” Jackson tells EW. “That’s a different experience than if you see a fast-cutting montage at a technical presentation.”

So what does he say to people who just decide they don’t like the glossy new look of the format he’s using?

“I can’t say anything,” Jackson acknowledges. “Just like I can’t say anything to someone who doesn’t like fish. You can’t explain why fish tastes great and why they should enjoy it.”

Right now, every second of a motion picture is made up of 24 images, or “frames,” but Jackson is shooting his two Hobbit films at 48 frames per second, which he says creates a more lifelike picture and will make 3-D less of a strain on the eyes.

Read the rest here

As for me, I found the Ain’t It Cool write up on ‘The Hobbit’ screening about the most fair assessment, and I’m willing to wait for the finished product.

I’m also glad I finally got to highlight this vlog. It has been the most fascinating to me so far, but in the autumn I had a few things going on to keep me from giving the piece its due. Oh well, I got a chance to begin now and will have more to say on the subject.

Obviously something interesting happened. :D See you on Tuesday.

April 28, 2012
Categories: Geek, Interviews, Movies, The Hobbit . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 10 Comments

Google, I love you, but you’re doing me dirty today

I have not been able to access my Gmail account for several hours (Temporary Error 500 with code 93, which means it’s a Google server error). Very frustrating — especially considering I have some information stored there for my next post. Given that I’ve been thwarted, I’m reverting to my back up account, which is the same address as my main account but with a 1 on the end of the name. So yeah, that means it’s RAFrenzy1ATgmailDOTcom. My only real problem is I do not have any contacts and email created in the last few weeks. I usually back up once a month but wasn’t due yet hence the need to come with this post. And yes, this is a bit of a vent. LOL!

That aside, I hope everyone is having a good day. I am in spite of this; I think.

This sort of sums up where I’m at:

Screencap courtesy of RichardArmitageCentral

April 17, 2012
Categories: Geek, George Gently, Spoilers, Tangents . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 8 Comments

A Mother of a Housekeeper

All blogs are subject to what is known as link rot, i.e., a linked page goes away and the reader hits “404 Not Found” when the link is clicked. Site owners HATE THIS, and I’m no exception. I try to stay on top of it by various methods. There are apps that can be run to check, and this helps. But I haven’t found one that is 100% accurate, so I still have to check manually. I usually do this as a result of people accessing old pages. That was the case this evening when I happen to notice a very old post was being read. Of course I went over to read it too and discovered to my dismay that the site I had linked no longer exists. But thankfully, this site was cached (copies of the webpages saved) by the Internet Archive, also commonly known as The WayBack Machine. I actually send these people money because they’re preserving a precious part of the web. They preserve some trash too, but hey, as long as I can find most of the precious stuff among the trash, then I’m cool with however they keep house!

And this evening, I’m so grateful for them as I would not have been able to so easily keep this post current and pleasurable.

Enjoy! and maybe say a word or two of encouragement to the folks at the Internet Archive. A couple of dollars doesn’t hurt either.

One last thing. If you notice any of my links have rotted, would you send me a note! Thanks. :D

Now back to what I was doing, which is trying to finish an interview piece.

April 15, 2012
Categories: Geek, Housekeeping . Tags: , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 6 Comments

And You Just Thought Technology Was Too Much With You

Or The Grid Comes to the the Common Man:

Phew! My mind is running wild with the possibilities for this thing — good and bad. :D

Read more here

April 4, 2012
Categories: Geek, Tangents . Tags: , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 4 Comments

Establishing an Identity on the Web — Part 1

February 29, 2012

Do you comment regularly and/or have a blog, then Gravatar is a good way to give yourself an identity that’s recognized across multiple websites. It is not the only tool that does this. There are some others with MyOpenId being most notable. However, Gravatar is one of the easiest to use. But it’s no good if you don’t put a little something about yourself or your blog or your Twitter id or Facebook, or wherever it is you would like people to go to connect with you.

A vent: I get frustrated when I click on a Gravatar, and there is nothing there but a picture. Please tell about yourself. I know some of you feel funny doing that, as if it’s some sort of flag waving, but it’s not. It helps those of us who would like to connect with you do so more easily.

Thanks for listening! :D

February 29, 2012
Categories: Geek, Tangents . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 4 Comments

Lovely Facilitator

I’ve been talking about the wonders of technology, and specifically what it can do for us. This invention has me thinking all sorts of possibilities for keeping my Richard Armitage obsession well fed but not in plain sight:



Facial Recognition Billboard Only Lets Women See The Full Ad
By Yi Chen on February 21, 2012

A new kind of outdoor advertisement is being trialled on Oxford Street in London’s West End. The interactive advertisement uses a high-definition camera to scan pedestrians and identify their gender before showing a specific ad. The built-in system has a 90 per cent accuracy rate in analyzing a person’s facial features and determining if they’re a male or female.

Read the rest here

I need one of these devices in several rooms of my home, and when I walk near, I see something like this:

But it would have to be sophisticated enough that when SO walks near, he would see this:

which would ensure he asks no questions about the awkward looking contraptions spread throughout the house.

And maybe there’s a workaround for Servetus’ difficulty:

https://twitter.com/#!/ServetusRA/status/174607695729532928

The sensing unit mounted on the lectern with the display on the back wall behind the students? And perhaps with rotating images of Richard Armitage so she would not become dazed by her ogling. But of course if the students happen to look, they would see this:

The only downside I foresee is the students becoming confused by her spontaneous diagramming of Luther’s pants?

RA screencap courtesy of RichardArmitageNet.Com. Other images in the public domain.

February 29, 2012
Categories: Geek, Robin Hood, SO . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 12 Comments

A New Addiction?

This is a follow on to my previous post.

I have been on Twitter for over three years, and it has opened up the world in a way that other social media or forums or any number of other online dynamics has never done for me. Just so you understand the magnitude of that statement from my perspective, I have had an internet id in one form or another since 1986 — several years before the Web was born and certainly before the general public even knew what the Internet was and maybe a couple of years before Al Gore invented it ;-). These were the days when the nice graphical user interface (GUI; pronounced gooey) that allows point and click existed. We could only hand key ping commands (which still run the Net under the covers today) into a command line, and the most sophisticated graphic was made with letters and symbols and viewed on a monochrome display. Eighty byte files we manually appended were used to create community, and those later became forums.

At that time, the only people on the Internet were the U.S. Military, a few other departments of the U.S. government, a few foreign groups, some universities doing R&D, and a handful of IT companies. We had a blast talking to each other about life and love and the future of technology, and I still have some of the bulletin board topics preserved in hard copy. They are precious to me because the interactions with those very thoughtful people literally and very dramatically changed my life. My views were expanded exponentially — in a way that reading thousands of books could probably never do. I was an avid reader at the time and still am, but the immense exchange of not only ideas but also of cultural perspectives had an energy to it that was like tapping into God. I believe in God, so my saying this is in no way making light of that. The Lord already knew all of this was going to happen with technology, and I love that He allows us to explore His creation.

There was also an awareness of God among that early online community. One of the topics often discussed was the pie in the sky of everyone talking to everyone else with immediate communications and how that could be construed as rebuilding the Tower of Babel and what all of that might really mean. Thankfully, I realized very quickly that I have no desire to be God or to play Him with the use of a tool like the Net but rather to enjoy what God has facilitated and let it benefit mankind. For those of you who don’t believe there is a God, obviously, you can disregard, but I would be remiss in not giving tribute where I feel it is deserved.

All of these experiences insured that I would forever have a passion for IT and the Net. So it is my pleasure to try to stay up on what is happening with respect to technical advances and especially with regard to communications. I don’t really have the view that I have to keep up with my kids. They usually have to keep up with me! LOL!

Fast forward 26 years, and Twitter is the realization of decades of dreaming and planning and building of a foundation for communications that is even better than I thought it would be. Does it have some problems? Are people involved? :D Yet it’s fantastic because relationships are integral to it. Isn’t that the point ultimately?

And for the recent moves by Twitter to do some censorship, I don’t sweat that because people have become inured to easy access to each other, and techies are the most rabid about preserving it. There’s no going back. So even if Twitter really starts clamping down, something else will spring up to take its place. But for now, this is the thing.

edit: oooh, lots of typos and bad sentences in this. That’s what I get for posting without editing. Ouch! LOL! I’ve fixed the typos I saw. You’ll have to live with the bad sentences. :D

February 27, 2012
Categories: Geek, Tangents . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 14 Comments

Remembering Steve

Yesterday, I was grumbling about information technology, but really, I love it and have had a passionate love affair with it since my early twenties. That love affair would have started sooner, but IT wasn’t readily available to the masses when I was a teen. Other than the ham radio culture and all the goodies found at Radio Shack or through Heath Kit, there was almost nothing highly technical for kids to indulge their inclinations. Thankfully, that wasn’t going to be the end of it.

When I graduated from college, I went to work for IBM, and this was about a year after they had started selling the PC. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was getting paid to play with this stuff! The only problem was the staid culture. These were the days when any man who wanted to get ahead at Big Blue did not wear anything other than a white shirt and wingtips with his suit, and most of the women were more sedate. I lost track of the number of navy suits I had. Boring as that sounds, it worked well for IBM because the key was to look sharp but not so snazzy that you drew attention to yourself. You only needed to evoke trust from the customer. Sadly, the clothing was indicative of the mindset, and with that much restraint, it’s no wonder they missed out on what’s essential to existence in the tech world — creativity.

Although I’d read about Steve Jobs for years, few inside the company took him really seriously. Everyone knew he would get somewhere, would enjoy watching it, and the company would reap the benefit, but a big threat? No. Of course this was before IBM fully realized it had shot itself in the foot with its understanding of the PC and especially of Microsoft’s role. I’ll spare you that story. Suffice to say, IBM didn’t see that one coming either.

In 1984 Steve Jobs put something in motion with Apple’s first really serious foray into the desktop computer market. The hammer was thrown, and the imagination of my generation was ensnared. It doesn’t matter that Apple had financial woes afterward and Steve stepped away from his baby for a while. Creativity and thinking outside the box were now acceptable, and IBM and all others were forced to get in the game.

None of that would have happened if Steve hadn’t been different and persistent. He really was a visionary on a scale that the reverberations of it will be felt long after IBM, MS and the others have gone away. He was his own person, and most important, he expressed it and never stopped. Even though I was in the enemy camp, I so admired that. He came with his long hair and jeans and I loved him. He said the things I wanted to hear from someone who had some power. I secretly hoped he would level the playing field, and he did! Thank you, Steve.

Steve passed away yesterday, and I never expected to be this moved, but I am and write this with tears in my eyes.

My heartfelt condolences to Steve’s family.

If you would like to share your memories of him, you may email rememberingsteve@Apple.com

edit:

For those who haven’t seen this, I bring it for your edification.

October 6, 2011
Categories: Geek, Tangents . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 7 Comments

Tangent — Life is Weird and Other Facebook Adventures

September 15, 2011

Friends on Facebook

My oldest child is taking third year Spanish in college. Before this class, she had never taken any formal language classes and knew no one associated with the language program at her school. A couple of days ago she finally made a visit to the language lab where she logged into one of the computers and cruised around the school’s language site. Some external links were listed under helps, so she clicked on one of them. It was a YouTube channel designed to teach Spanish, and just for grins, she clicked on one of the videos and then sat open mouthed a minute later:

At about 1:20, there are two girls in black and white, and there is a sink behind them. Those two girls are my oldest and youngest children, and the sink is my kitchen sink, yet my daughter doesn’t know the owner of that YouTube channel nor does anyone she knows personally know the owner of the YouTube channel. She was naturally creeped out and called home to get some input. After SO and I finally realized she wasn’t pulling our legs, we sat stunned as well, and then all of us set about trying to figure out how the channel owner would have come to have this picture and use it to represent sisters. We speculated and ruled out all sorts of scenarios and then came to one that makes such sense.

The photo in the video was posted on my daughter’s Facebook page a couple of years ago, and she had labeled it “hermanita”, which is translated “sister” from Spanish. Although my daughter doesn’t have quite the tight security on her FB account that I would like, her account is fairly private and certainly this photo was private. Doesn’t matter. She posted a picture on her account where friends could see it. This implied a right for them to post it to their FB pages (whether that was a legal right or not), and apparently someone did take it and posted elsewhere. Once this was done, that person then extended a right to all of their friends, and if one of their friends decided to post it, the right was extended to all of their friends. Yes, I’m saying that if you put up a picture on Facebook, you can potentially lose control of it. Isn’t Facebook grand?

This can happen to any of us who are on Facebook or almost anywhere on the web. The protestations from Facebook about privacy and respecting copyright are immaterial. Yep, that’s right — they mean nothing. If it’s out on the web (and Facebook has a way of propagating information on the web the likes of which would make your head spin), the potential to be taken from you is enormous. Most people say to themselves, “Why would some stranger want my photos?” You may never know why.

I bring this post for those of you who are still enamored of Facebook but don’t realize the vulnerability it creates for you. Facebook is everywhere and gives others the ability to lift all sorts of things about you — the least of which are your personal photos — and again, it does not matter about your privacy settings. Well, unless you have no friends on Facebook which would defeat the purpose of the site. And I won’t even get into Facebook wanting to trademark the word “f*ce” and how invasive that may be. You can read about that here.

Obviously, what makes this case bizarre are the great odds of my daughter ever seeing herself this way, but it should beg a question of everyone: are there any photos of me, or anything else about me, somewhere I’m unaware of? Probably.

By the way, this is one of the reasons I will never post pictures of famous people in a family setting that the famous in question has not intentionally made public. I will not participate in the breaching of someone’s privacy. It is certainly not my place to do that with anyone’s photos — be they photos of the famous or not. Sadly, on occasion I have been sent what appear to be stalking pictures, and at one time I had a picture of what I’m pretty sure was a private photo of Richard Armitage’s family. That ran a chill up my back, and I couldn’t help but think of my own family. I’ll admit a wee part of me wanted to keep the photo. Thankfully, the better part of me, who lives by the Golden Rule, got rid of it. May the better part of me always dominate.

I told my daughter I was going to be posting this video and that I wanted to post some other pictures of her. She’s of the generation that expects to have their pictures and videos plastered everywhere without consent, but I’m of the generation that is still compelled to ask permission. And this should probably be a post just about her, but I’m not sure one blog piece would do justice to her. She has a lot of energy and is almost always smiling and laughing. It’s hard to get a picture of her when she’s not:

She is also larger than life but doesn’t realize it. Everyone who knows her can see it, and many of us think this photo captures it perfectly:

Update April 2018: my daughter is a college graduate with honors, speaks several languages, lives in NYC where she owns a business and is doing very well, is engaged to a fine young man, whom we like very much, and she finally made it to Machu Picchu. :D

beautiful young woman at machu picchu

P.S. I didn’t ask for permission to post this photo since it’s already posted on the web.

September 15, 2011
Categories: Geek, SO, Tangents . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 11 Comments

Tangent — Jacking with Meta

June 30, 2011

And for you techies, this may not be what you think. The video below addresses something everyone on the World Wide Web needs to know is happening so is well worth the nine minute’s investment to watch.

I chuckled a bit when Eli Pariser mentioned his political bent. He has been an integral part of Moveon.org, a very politically biased site. I do not agree with everything said there. I’m not sure I agree with everything said anywhere, but this never keeps me from listening to someone’s viewpoint, and I’m almost always wiser for having listened. And how sad if their visibility were diminished in my little world thereby making my world that much smaller. Oh, I’m all for personalization, but when it becomes a stumbling block to my ability to consider a bigger picture, it’s gone too far. And for what? Mostly to take advantage of niche marketing, i.e., the ability to sell me something whether it be a product, a service or an idea by appealing to my seeming interests keyed into a search engine. Oh, I’m not completely opposed to niche marketing, but I HATE when someone seeks to think for me in a way that limits my thinking, and it’s really insulting when it’s a machine. Hopefully, you watched the video, so all of this makes sense and my next words in particular will be in perspective.

Today, the only major information site that doesn’t personalize to the degree of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. is Twitter. I would include Digg and Reddit, but they are being eclipsed by Twitter. So this makes Twitter a really important tool for the little guys — us. The beauty of the web has been this power to connect people who would not otherwise be able to find each other, and gatekeeper media sites have been fairly circumvented in this process, but now Google, et al are seeking to control where we go even more. Frankly, the mere mention of a gatekeeper hacks me off. Thankfully, Twitter is still powerful enough to overcome that kind of control because it’s mostly unfiltered, and therefore wild and unpredictable and beautiful in its ability to give us average people who have little or no professional connection with major media the power to potentially have impact. This is the main reason I like Twitter and would hate to see it go the way of the others. Hopefully, this makes it evident Twitter should not be dismissed as mere fluff.

It’s amazing to me how true is this adage: it’s not what you see or hear but what you don’t. I’ve told my kids this countless times in the hope they will learn to think outside the box by knowing that the box is invisible.

On a personal note, if I told you some of the influential people whom I’ve been able to converse with as a result of Twitter, you wouldn’t believe me. I could care less about name dropping, but I say this here to make the point that your voice can be heard on Twitter in ways you could have only dreamed about before.

edit: I’m putting the Richard Armitage and public service tags on this since this is “important” stuff in the fine art of Richard Armitage watching. :D

June 30, 2011
Categories: Geek, Tangents . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 5 Comments

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