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I just tried to send an email. When I hit “send” Gmail asked if I’d forgotten to attach something — because the words “I’ve attached” were in the message — and I had. This is a great feature, but for a moment I was like “How did it know?”
HTML5 Canvas
Web games. No plugins. How cool is that?
All you need to know is javascript, so it’s not surprising that there’s already a lot of stuff out there, even though canvas has yet to be fully implemented across the major browsers. Along with the video element and svg, it would seem Flash’s days are numbered. Anyway, it’s worth checking this stuff out.
This is the kind of thing I find amusing, which says a lot about how much of a nerd I am. Primarily, it says that even other nerds have a hard time putting up with how much of a nerd I am.
Haters Gonna Hate
I find myself surprised daily by the continuing opposition to Cordoba House. There’s no real argument here. Americans are free to practice their religion unmolested. If you disagree, then you can take it up with the Constitution.
I could at least console myself by enjoying the more humorous aspects of this sorry episode, if it weren’t for the very real possibility of violence. This scene from a protest at the planned site of Cordoba House is an excellent example:
At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.
“Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.
“Get out,” others shouted.
In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.
“I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.
But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.
“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.
Posted in Politics
Tagged 9/11, Cordoba House, foolishness, haters gonna hate, Islam, New York, Tea Party
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“I’m in Lesbians with You.”
On the first day of Comicon we went to see the Scott Pilgrim panel. Before it began bags of buttons were passed around, some red with the poster photo nad some white with a little Scott Pilgrim 1-UP icon. Me and my friends got the 1-UP ones. The giant screens told us not to trade them with anyone, so I figured they’d hand out some stuff at the end to those with the right buttons.
Instead, Edgar Wright concluded the panel1 by announcing that those with the 1-UP buttons should all follow him to the Balboa theater to see the movie that very moment. A map showing the way was displayed on the giant screens, and Wright jumped off the stage and started walking. But then, as everyone got up and starting fighting their way to the doors, the screens went dark. We had no idea where to go.
My friends and I managed to make our way outside, and just followed the people with the 1-UP buttons. After wandering back and forth for a while, we discovered that people with the 1-UP buttons were walking in pretty much every direction. No one seemed to know where the Balboa theater was. So, we just picked a direction we thought looked right and marched off into the Gaslamp District, along with a few other hopefuls just as lost as we were.
This wasn’t an effective strategy. We were still wandering, just on a larger scale. I tried asking for directions, but none of the locals I asked had heard of the Balboa Theater. One of my friends looked up maps on his smartphone, which turned out to be somewhat unclear.2 Finally, a girl in a cupcake costume gave me directions I could use, along with a coupon by which I could attain — after the purchase of a cupcake at the regular price — another cupcake of equal or lesser value.3
A few minutes later we found the Balboa, where we were forced to turn in our cameras for the sake of the lawyers. Up to that point, I had been too busy wandering to think of documenting our adventure, so the only photos I have are a couple blurry shots of the outside of the theater.
So, we got to watch the movie with the director, the cast, and Bryan Lee O’Mally. After the movie was over the screen lifted to reveal Metric, who played a set, though we had to leave early to catch the tram back to our hotel.
Stuff like this is what living is for.
- During the entire panel Micheal Cera was wearing a Captain America costume with tremendous muscles, which I stupidly did not get a picture of. [↩]
- Not that it mattered. Our group was constantly threatening to disperse every step of the way, so it was a challenge just keeping everyone moving in the same direction. [↩]
- No I didn’t get a picture of the cupcake girl. Yes, I would make a terrible photojournalist. [↩]
Posted in Comic Con International, Movies
Tagged Balboa Theater, Bryan Lee O'Mally, cupcakes, Edgar Wright, Gaslamp District, Metric, San Diego, Scott Pilgrim
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The Cameras are Not to Be Trusted
So I was looking for information on how long Twitpic hosts photos, and I came across this rather disturbing article about how much EXIF data is stored in images online. These people culled 15,291 images from Twitpic and got all kinds of information from them, especially photos taken by iPhones.
The iPhone is including the most EXIF information among the images we found…. It not only includes the phone’s location, but also accelerometer data showing if the phone was moved at the time the picture was taken and the readout from the build[sic] in compass showing in which direction the phone was pointed at the time.
In his secret lair under 1 Infinite Loop Steve Jobs broods before his minions, contemplating world domination.1
- Yes of course he’s an evil genius. He’s a bald man who wears black turtlenecks, so he’s that or a celebrated artist of the avant-garde. [↩]
Posted in Tech
Tagged all your base are belong to us, cameras, iphone, smartphones, twitpic, twitter
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“That’s never been who I am. But now, it’s who I am.”
I was reading this article from the Atlantic, “How a New Jobless Era
Will Transform America.” It’s fascinating, if kind of hard to read because of it’s somber, sometimes grim tone. The stories about how individuals are dealing with unemployment or underemployment are especially tough.
Over lunch I spoke with … Gus Poulos, a Vietnam-era veteran who had begun his career as a refrigeration mechanic before going to night school and becoming an accountant. He is trim and powerfully built, and looks much younger than his 59 years. For seven years, until he was laid off in December 2008, he was a senior financial analyst for a local hospital.
Poulos said that his frustration had built and built over the past year. “You apply for so many jobs and just never hear anything,” he told me. “You’re one of my few interviews. I’m just glad to have an interview with anybody, even a magazine.” Poulos said he was an optimist by nature, and had always believed that with preparation and hard work, he could overcome whatever life threw at him. But sometime in the past year, he’d lost that sense, and at times he felt aimless and adrift. “That’s never been who I am,” he said. “But now, it’s who I am.”
Recently he’d gotten a part-time job as a cashier at Walmart, for $8.50 an hour. “They say, ‘Do you want it?’ And in my head, I thought, ‘No.’ And I raised my hand and said, ‘Yes.’” Poulos and his wife met when they were both working as supermarket cashiers, four decades earlier—it had been one of his first jobs. “Now, here I am again.”
Poulos’s wife is still working—she’s a quality-control analyst at a food company—and that’s been a blessing. But both are feeling the strain, financial and emotional, of his situation. She commutes about 100 miles every weekday, which makes for long days. His hours at Walmart are on weekends, so he doesn’t see her much anymore and doesn’t have much of a social life.
Some neighbors were at the Walmart a couple of weeks ago, he said, and he rang up their purchase. “Maybe they were used to seeing me in a different setting,” he said—in a suit as he left for work in the morning, or walking the dog in the neighborhood. Or “maybe they were daydreaming.” But they didn’t greet him, and he didn’t say anything. He looked down at his soup, pushing it around the bowl with his spoon for a few seconds before looking back up at me. “I know they knew me,” he said. “I’ve been in their home.”
The writer makes Mr. Poulos’ last words count, with that brief and affecting image of him sitting there with his soup. It’s certainly stuck in my mind, which is why I felt compelled to put it here.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged joblessness, recession, the Atlantic, underemployment, unemployment, Wal-mart
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I’ve seen a couple videos here and there, but I finally decided to check out the site itself. It’s cool, although I was thrown by the prescence of Giovanni Ribisi.
Somewhat Less Carelessly Structured Thoughts on Inception
Inception reminded me a lot of a couple other movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kill Bill. Like 2001, Inception is an intensely cerebral movie that, while centered on profoundly human concerns, considers those concerns from an objective distance. The audience sees Cobb’s struggles, but never fully identifies with him. Like Kill Bill, Inception is the sin qua non of its director’s aesthetic. Kill Bill is the most Tarantinesque movie Quentin Tarantino has made. He stuffed it with every movie reference he could, and offered an homage in some form to every genre he loves — exploitation, wushu, chambara, western, anime — and then told exactly the kind of story he likes to see. Inception is certainly the most Nolanesque movie Nolan has made. All the themes that have defined his ouvre — dead wives, obsession with those dead wives, grand but morally dubious projects, self-delusion, sharp action, architecture, head games — are fully exploited. With Inception Nolan has indulged himself in the same way Tarantino did with Kill Bill.