Saturday, June 20, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
I Wanted To Be A Ghostbuster When I Grew Up
I showed the kids Ghostbusters last night. Connor is the same age I was when I first saw that movie, and I know I believed Ghostbuster was a viable career path. You just needed a nuclear powered backpack and a franchise license and soon you'd be earning big dollars in the paranormal extermination business, right?
Made sense when I was 12.
Earlier this week Ghostbusters dropped on blu-ray, and the videogame finally saw the light of day. That game is about as close as I'll ever come to a proper Ghostbusting career, and I guess I can settle for that... although I do periodically eye the fan-made movie-quality backpacks that show up on eBay.
The blu-ray disc is pretty, but the movie needs a remastering job like what Blade Runner got a couple years back. Several scenes are fuzzy, while others aren't, and it all looks like it's down to how the original film was shot. I have to think given the history of the flick, and the rumors of a third film in the gestation stages, that such a remastering job would be worth the bucks.
I had a few "okay, now I feel old" moments watching the movie last night. First came the "25th Anniversary" sticker on the box. Then I was thinking "man, Bill Murray looks young," just as my 9 year old son said "this movie looks so fake."
I said "well, the movie is 25 years old and they didn't have the same kind of effects then that you're used to now."
His reply? "25 years?!"
Made sense when I was 12.
Earlier this week Ghostbusters dropped on blu-ray, and the videogame finally saw the light of day. That game is about as close as I'll ever come to a proper Ghostbusting career, and I guess I can settle for that... although I do periodically eye the fan-made movie-quality backpacks that show up on eBay.
The blu-ray disc is pretty, but the movie needs a remastering job like what Blade Runner got a couple years back. Several scenes are fuzzy, while others aren't, and it all looks like it's down to how the original film was shot. I have to think given the history of the flick, and the rumors of a third film in the gestation stages, that such a remastering job would be worth the bucks.
I had a few "okay, now I feel old" moments watching the movie last night. First came the "25th Anniversary" sticker on the box. Then I was thinking "man, Bill Murray looks young," just as my 9 year old son said "this movie looks so fake."
I said "well, the movie is 25 years old and they didn't have the same kind of effects then that you're used to now."
His reply? "25 years?!"
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Boing Boing Is Back
And judging by their lack of comment about being gone, I'll assume it was no big thing.
The Cyberwar Is Here
Reposted here is an article that was on boingboing.net regarding the "cyberwar" in Iran and the Twitter information pipeline. I have no idea why boingboing.net isn't coming up at the moment, but I thought it bore copying and pasting over here.
Cyberwar guide for Iran elections
from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Yishay sez, "The road to hell is paved with the best intentions (including mine). Learn how to actually help the protesters and not the gov't in Iran."
The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.
1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP's over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become 'Iranians' it becomes much harder to find them.
5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind...
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Momentary Rant About Technology
I'm forever amazed/irritated by people who will post to a forum, send an e-mail, or a Twitter message, asking a question -- but they won't do a search on Google.
This isn't even someone asking me something that's got me going. It's coming from watching a friend of mine on Twitter answer the same inane questions every day that has me wondering if people have heard of this Google thing.
Seriously now, asking him what that acronym means is EXACTLY as difficult as typing that acronym into Google. And Google will not only tell you what it means, it will show you places where you can learn more if you are interested.
This is the 21st century, all of human knowledge is but a few keystrokes away, and these people are still sending carrier pigeons.
This isn't even someone asking me something that's got me going. It's coming from watching a friend of mine on Twitter answer the same inane questions every day that has me wondering if people have heard of this Google thing.
Seriously now, asking him what that acronym means is EXACTLY as difficult as typing that acronym into Google. And Google will not only tell you what it means, it will show you places where you can learn more if you are interested.
This is the 21st century, all of human knowledge is but a few keystrokes away, and these people are still sending carrier pigeons.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Exposition - Or - "Show Don't Tell."
The idea of exposition is on my mind a lot of late, because I just went through a rather large bit of it on a project I'm not announcing yet.
For those not in the know, exposition is that bit where the story explains itself, and (hopefully) gives everything in the tale a reason for being. A good story does exposition without you ever noticing it happened. A bad bit of exposition can bring everything to a halt, as characters stand about telling one another everything they need to know to proceed.
The first Jurassic Park film (and the book, which you should read because it is so different and so fun) does a great job with its exposition, taking the audience and the characters on a trip through the park's cloning labs, and the fields full of dinosaurs. All along teaching you the rules of the story, and making it so you understand why everything is happening the way it's happening as the park fails and the dinosaurs get loose.
The second Jurassic Park film (and maybe the book, never read the second one) stops everything and sits in an old man's bedroom as he sets up the rest of the film with a totally uninteresting bit of dialog.
And that right there shows you how damned tricky exposition is. If a storyteller of Steven Spielberg's caliber can stumble over this nonsense, what hope do the rest of us have?
A big lesson I learned early in my comics work was "show don't tell." This is such an easy trap to fall in to, and try as I might I'm sure I still stumble into it every now and again. After all, writing a character explaining everything to everybody else takes almost no effort, but things get so much more interesting for the reader (or viewer) to see the events happen, even if that "seeing" is being done via prose.
This last week has been all about making sure the project I'm working on (which is not about monsters eating little boys, by the way) has the exposition it needs without being reduced entirely to talking heads.
I initially did an end run around the exposition, and wrote most of the rest of the story first. I knew the basics of how the world worked, and I knew how the story ended, so I decided to leave explaining it all to the reader for later.
The great side effect of this was that I stumbled onto a really fun way of telling the back story to the reader that I hadn't thought of when the project began.
I had it all sorted out, knew when and where it would land in the story, but now there are characters where before there were names mentioned in dialog. There is now action on the page where before there was a bit of dialog.
There is now showing instead of telling, and the story is better for it all around.
For those not in the know, exposition is that bit where the story explains itself, and (hopefully) gives everything in the tale a reason for being. A good story does exposition without you ever noticing it happened. A bad bit of exposition can bring everything to a halt, as characters stand about telling one another everything they need to know to proceed.
The first Jurassic Park film (and the book, which you should read because it is so different and so fun) does a great job with its exposition, taking the audience and the characters on a trip through the park's cloning labs, and the fields full of dinosaurs. All along teaching you the rules of the story, and making it so you understand why everything is happening the way it's happening as the park fails and the dinosaurs get loose.
The second Jurassic Park film (and maybe the book, never read the second one) stops everything and sits in an old man's bedroom as he sets up the rest of the film with a totally uninteresting bit of dialog.
And that right there shows you how damned tricky exposition is. If a storyteller of Steven Spielberg's caliber can stumble over this nonsense, what hope do the rest of us have?
A big lesson I learned early in my comics work was "show don't tell." This is such an easy trap to fall in to, and try as I might I'm sure I still stumble into it every now and again. After all, writing a character explaining everything to everybody else takes almost no effort, but things get so much more interesting for the reader (or viewer) to see the events happen, even if that "seeing" is being done via prose.
TELL: "You didn't here?" Bob asked. "The monster ate little Billy."
SHOW: Little Billy ran as fast as he could, but it was too late. The beast's tongue shot out, wrapped around Billy's midsection, and squeezed the air out of him. Billy tried to yell as he was yanked backwards into the monster's mouth, but before he could make a sound, the razor sharp teeth came down and the only noise to come from Billy was a loud crunch.
This last week has been all about making sure the project I'm working on (which is not about monsters eating little boys, by the way) has the exposition it needs without being reduced entirely to talking heads.
I initially did an end run around the exposition, and wrote most of the rest of the story first. I knew the basics of how the world worked, and I knew how the story ended, so I decided to leave explaining it all to the reader for later.
The great side effect of this was that I stumbled onto a really fun way of telling the back story to the reader that I hadn't thought of when the project began.
I had it all sorted out, knew when and where it would land in the story, but now there are characters where before there were names mentioned in dialog. There is now action on the page where before there was a bit of dialog.
There is now showing instead of telling, and the story is better for it all around.
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