March 31st, 2005, 1 Comment »
Yes, you read that correctly. There’s little more that I can say, except that this isn’t for ophidiophobiacs or macropodidaephiles.
Today’s lesson from the animal kingdom: let your reach exceed your grasp.
March 31st, 2005, 2 Comments »
When I first saw the Sin City trailer, I was really impressed by its unusual look. In particular, I admired the way it didn’t look like every other rubber suit, comic book adaptation.
Now we see just how loyal the movie has been to the visual style of the comic book. This page has a series of side-by-side comparisons of frames from the comic and stills from the film. The similarities are astonishing. In some cases, they’re basically identical.
March 31st, 2005, No Comments »
Just a quick reminder that the fifth semi-millenial blogger meetup thingy is on tonight at The Whip:
Blogger Meetup Doo-Hickey
Thursday, March 31, 7:30pm onwards
Upstairs at The Whip
209 East 6th Avenue (just east of Main, here’s
a map)
It’s fun for the whole fam damily.
March 31st, 2005, 4 Comments »
The recent explosion of Japanese horror films (and their English language remakes) has exposed a striking truth: the Japanese know how to scare you better than Americans do. I’ve observed, in films like The Ring, The Grudge and the forthcoming Dark Water, that Japanese horror rests on two tactics: scary, white children and dirty, dirty water.
Via the Movie blog, this article in the New Zealand Herald has a slightly more sophisticated explanation:
“There is a whole other aesthetic to Japanese horror that is different than anything you see in the world,” he said.
“It just naturally creates suspense. It’s a feeling of isolation. For a non-Japanese audience, there is something about that, that is incredibly new and fresh.”
The article also discusses the Japanese usage of modern technology–video cameras, cell phones, etc–in terrifying ways.
March 30th, 2005, 50 Comments »
Nearly a year ago, I was at Gnomedex, the annual alpha geek fest. During one of the sessions, Steve Gillmor remarked that everyone at the conference “was smoking the RSS dope”. When I go to Gnomedex this year, I suspect that every third person will have a portable recording device, and be podcasting the hell out of the conference.
I’m skeptical about podcasting. I’m skeptical about who’s doing it, who’s going to do it, and who’s going to listen to it. In short, I don’t think podcasting is going to get very far into the mainstream. Here are my thoughts, in a kind of rhetorical discussion.
March 30th, 2005, 6 Comments »
I just returned from Massive, a technology trade show put on by the folks at Techvibes. It was held at Science World (recently and despicably renamed to TelusSphere) in downtown Vancouver, and featured a ton of booths and a few conference sessions. When I say ‘at’, I mean ‘throughout’–they really took over the place.
Science World, for the unfamiliar, is a great, interactive museum dedicated to science. My fellow geeks and I have many fond memories of attending as kids, and I still enjoy going every once in a while. Additionally, as it turns out, spring break bumped up against Easter this year. Apparently, as a result, lots of kids aren’t in school today. You can see where this is going.
Scores of parents and children were showing up, only to be informed that the place is full of geeks. There was plenty of tantrums and open weeping.
TechVibes folks: next year, pick a more appropriate venue. At least choose one that doesn’t make the kids cry.
Kris of Event Blogging has many, many photos of the day’s activities (that’s his photo of Roland and Mark). Here, Boris is chatting me up.
I had mixed feelings about the event as a whole. I didn’t attend any sessions, which apparently were good if introductory. If you’re just learning about email marketing in 2005, you’re a little late to the table. They did very well in getting lots of exhibitors, but I had a hard time gauging who the average attendee was. Still, aside from the venue issues, the TechVibes people should be pretty happy with their results.
March 30th, 2005, 3 Comments »
I’m going to be on the CBC at about 4:50pm this afternoon, talking about something tech-related (I imagine they’d prefer I didn’t mention what–though it’s punditry, not a scoop or anything). If you want to listen online, try this page.
Here’s me talking utter shite about the local technology scene and a rash of acquisitions that have recently occurred:
March 30th, 2005, 1 Comment »
Because I haven’t typed the word ‘Flickr’ for the past day or two, here’s a fun way to browse Flickr tags from Boing Boing. Type in “Boris” and note that one of the related tags is “beer”. My feature request: unique URLs so that I can link to particular browse results.
Also from Flickr, and a cousin of the Hall of Tech Doc Weirdness, is the Stick Figures in Peril photo pool. Thanks to Todd for this one.
