Just got back from seeing The Hulk. I was quite pleasantly surprised. The multi-screen effects (and all the cinematography/editing) worked for me (and worked both as a reflection of comic book aesthetics [some of those wipes went waaaaay beyond that – in a good way] and representing the Jekyll/Hyde nature of the character), and the movie kept me wrapped up from beginning to end; color me impressed. The theatre was pretty sparse though at a 10:15 showing @ The Bridge. I haven’t been paying attention to the box office, but now I sorta hope it does well so that Ang Lee can do a sequel.
Ang Lee on Comic Books and Hulk as Hidden Dragon:
In one of those Chinese movies, “Crouching Tiger,” one of the characters wielded a sword called the Green Destiny. There’s a different kind of green destiny in the Hulk: “Americans are hidden dragons to me,” Mr. Lee says. “They hide in self-effacing, prohibited, guilt-pleasure behavior, and to me that says something about truth . something that I’m interesting in pursuing. The Hulk is a loner, misunderstood . he’s everything you find in a Western hero. But there are also those American tensions that work against him, like anger and guilt . that’s the irony that makes him an anti-hero. I think those Marvel characters, like the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, are the first superheroes that had a weakness.”
MacSurfer has links to all kinds of really interesting Apple news/commentary (WWDC fallout) on the web right now.
In other news, I just remembered I have a 2500 word final paper due for class on Tuesday. Hoo-ray.
Savant for a Day – a fascinating article on how savant-like mental skills can be induced via a ‘transcranial magnetic stimulator’.
- Reboot6 videos – so far I’ve just watched Cory’s, which is great
- FreeCache – a cooperative caching system to distribute files. Pretty cool, but it would be nice if it had more efficient/effective way to measure bandwidth, find better mirrors. ie, even though I got the best bandwidth from the i2 site, I was still served files from a dk mirror. Also, it looks like you can’t choose exactly which files you want to cache. It’d be nice if there was more granularity/smarts built in the system somehow (while still not requiring a client [this might require a ‘cache speed tester’ page and setting preferences via a cookie]
- Business Week: Coming Soon: A Horror Show for TV Ads – on Tivo ad stats
BBOYSUMMIT 2003 starts tonight… (schedule). $20/day? Not that expensive… I could probably shoot some great photos, just need to fit this in the schedule.
Wonderful: US Army Signs $471,000,000 Deal for Microsoft Software
The great things about this deal: the Army is going through a reseller, when clearly they have the purchasing power to buy direct; and most of the computers they purchase are normal consumer machines which will be purchased with Windows and Office already installed, so the Army will be paying twice for each machine.
Hmm, interesting…
You guys have to remember that there is a HUGE digital divide out there and getting soldiers with out much education comfortable with computers tends to be quicker and easier with Windows.
Therefore you want to simplify the training by standardizing on a system which not only holds the record for security vulnerabilities, but whose source has been delivered to the electronic warfare departments of most of our potential enemies but NOT to our own academic-community security specialists?
What do you do the next time there’s a conflict and some new crop of blended-threat self-propagating worms (locusts?) suddenly takes out the US Army’s entire office infrastructure?
Flipping the Switch – wow, multiple analysts are saying that Linux should surpass Apple market share on the desktop next year. Must be all those units being moved at Walmart.
Gijs Van Tulder wrote a recent article on Storing Hierarchical Data in a Database. (see my older database tree links.
I actually use a different method than either the simple adjacency list or the modified preordered tree traversal algorithms – basically I used thread id’s in my query, reading in batches of nodes by thread and then used a simple depth-first traversal (recursive) function to put each thread together. I need to try out some different algorithms and test out the performance differences and flexibility.
Wow, pretty harsh Liz Phair review on Pitchfork. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 0.0 score since I started reading Pitchfork regularly.
Ten years after Exile, Liz has finally managed to accomplish what seems to have been her goal ever since the possibility of commercial success first presented itself: to release an album that could have just as easily been made by anybody else.
For interest, here are the other 0.0’s I could find:
- Bachman-Turner Overdrive – Remastered Hits: The Best of…
- The Flaming Lips – Zaireeka
- Francisco López – Untitled #104
- John Frusciante – Smile From The Streets You Hold
- Kiss – Peter Criss
- Sonic Youth – NYC Ghosts & Flowers
And on the other end, the 10.0’s (interestingly, The Flaming Lips has one in each):
I put up a page (and wrote a threaded comment board) for my CTCS 505 group seminar yesterday. Since it looks like some people are putting in the wrong url, here it is just in case.
Non-class people, feel free to drop by and leave your 2 cents.