oh, the humanity

September 10th, 2008

Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to listen to the speeches given at the political conventions of the last two weeks. First time in my life that I’ve either A) given enough of a shit, or B) had enough skill to de-focus my eyes and look past the bullshit rhetoric in order to get a clear reading on my gut. I may already know who I’m voting for, but I figure the more I know about both sides, the more adequately I can help inform others. Anyway, as I’ve posted on Facebook, I’ve been really blown away by the difference in tone. Not too big a surprise, but the Dems got me feeling proud of my country, whereas the Reps just make me feel manipulated and insulted.

I’m always most likely to roll my eyes when the current speaker (whether R or D) starts into the “I’ll never forget the waitress from Oklahoma who told me she works seven jobs while raising fifteen children and battling AIDS, malaria and gonorrhea.” Hell, maybe the stories are true, maybe all these politicians really have been touched by people’s stories from the trenches. And I guess there’s no better way to express why you’d be likely to keep campaign promises that’ll work for the working-class.

But the thing that really got me laughing this morning on the way to work was listening to John McCain’s speech. The absolute FIRST sob story he pulled out of his hat was this one:

“I fight for Americans. I fight for you. I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market.”

Oh, SNAP. They lost their real estate investments? Jiminy! That must have really thrust them out of the frying pan and into the fire! They had to have been really struggling, what with having real estate investments and all. And now that their real estate investments have gone sour, they must be positively whoring themselves to put bread on the table.

Apparently I’m not the only one who noticed this. Again: pay attention.

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Mixed Feelings

September 10th, 2008

On the one hand, I’m getting really pumped about the fact that the current presidential campaign is being augmented with communications from each camp on YouTube, Twitter, etc. The main reason it makes me happy is because I’m so completely sick of closed government and secrecy. The Bush administration is scarily closed and secretive.

So, if Obama is elected, I just really get the feeling he’d open up the windows and shutters on the White House to air it out a bit, and be a bit more transparent. And seriously, if the websites and podcasts and twitter updates are any indication…if the State of the Union Address (and other Presidential addresses) were to be made available via Podcast or something like that, I think it’d honestly have an impact. Bring the stuffy-ass institution that is the Presidency into the 21st Century. Who knows, maybe it’s highly unlikely, but hey…it’s an interesting thought.

Of course, I don’t think the same would even be possible if McCain were elected. He’s admitted that he’s computer-illiterate, and I’d imagine he wouldn’t make any effort to update such communication.

I mentioned “on the one hand.” Here’s the other hand: all this openness and internet-driven communication has totally killed a lot of faith I had in the American people. Perhaps I was naïve to have that faith in the first place. But yeah…it’s really killing me to see so much confirmation of the old phrase “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Too many suckers out there, and it’s starting to sadden me. The lies being bandied about by the McCain/Palin camp are so easily proven to be lies, yet there are millions of people out there who are buying it hook, line and sinker.

Add to all this, the fact that all these campaign promises are much more effectively collected and noted than they ever have been before. And when whoever gets elected doesn’t follow through on something, it’ll be interesting to see how big that list is. Data collection has never been as accurate and complete as it is today. Let’s see what we do with it.

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Community Organizers

September 5th, 2008

Please don’t think I’m beating a dead horse: I simply can’t get my brain past how much Sarah Palin not only insulted the good-hearted people in this country, but also took a noble, good-example-of-how-to-live-your-life-right, and turned it into a “bad thing.” What kind of example does that set? It’s hard enough to find good-hearted volunteers in this world, and now we’ve got this pitbull in lipstick (her words, not mine) attaching a stigma to it? If you were gonna vote for her, please keep your eyes and ears open.

On the one hand, they accuse Obama of being nothing but “words,” implying that actions speak louder than words. And on the other hand, they take the actions he’s done to back up his words (beginning many years ago, not just recently, for political gain), and attempt to discredit them. Actions speak louder than words, yet somehow the actions don’t matter either. If anyone listens to these speeches and doesn’t see the hypocrisy, they deserve a wake-up slap.

Enough from me. It’s already been said, in words I can get behind, by better folks than me. Here’s one:

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why I’m posting political shit

September 4th, 2008

You’re likely to see some political stuff popping up in my Facebook and Twitter streams. I usually only post stuff that either makes me laugh, or is at least mildly intellectually stimulating. And, like most people, I really dislike when political commentary comes between friends. But elections are inherently shrouded in lies, and I hope you like a good fact-check like I do.

So, basically, whenever I see important political revelations or fact-checks that come from CREDIBLE news sources (which, of course, is a subjective assessment), I’m gonna post it. The unfortunate fact is, it may not have much impact. For the people who already think like I think, it’ll be like preachin’ to the choir: net change of zero. For the people who disagree wholeheartedly with me, as is often the case, they’re gonna pass a judgment on me and I’ll essentially lose respect. And for the people who couldn’t give a shit about my Facebook posts, or haven’t a friggin’ clue what the hell Twitter is, it’ll be lost on them. But for the small number of people who don’t think along the same lines as me, yet they’re open to learning facts to support their decision-making process for the election, I’m hoping it’ll do some good.

So, yeah. I won’t be posting stuff from sites or news agencies that have rank political slants, and I’ll only be sharing stuff that can be corroborated by public records. I’m interested in learning truths.

Please, if something I post has opened your eyes at all, please take a moment to echo the post in your stream as well. If you’re not sure how, I’d be happy to help. This is all about us, and communication isn’t a bonus: it’s the point.

http://twitter.com/punkassjim
http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=505021102
…or, if you like, it can all be monitored in one place, even via RSS:
http://punkassjim.soup.io

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username: punkassjim

August 11th, 2008

It’s getting pretty late in life to still be calling myself a punkass in mixed company, and I’ll likely want to try to re-name myself in the digital arena before A) I have kids, and B) they learn to read. But, for right now, it’s a name with which I still identify, a name by which I’m widely known.

You can currently contact me, under the name punkassjim, on all these sites:
Last.fm
Twitter
Flickr
del.icio.us
YouTube
LiveJournal

Several months ago, I took a Saturday afternoon to port over all my blog entries from Myspace to LiveJournal. It seemed like the right thing to do, given that I already had the LJ account, and well, that’s kinda what an online journaling site is for. As much as I just wasn’t a fan of MySpace’s interface, user experience and overall design, it was really silly of me to be “blogging” on that platform in the first place.

Now, I’m kinda going through the same thing all over again. For several months, I’ve been uploading all of my “mobile photos” directly to Facebook, basically with the hope that my friends would be notified when I snapped something new. The problem is, Facebook isn’t really the platform for that. I mean, it handled it well, but it doesn’t make my photos/data/whatever portable.

Honestly, I don’t care which social networking site is the current darling…I just want a way to A) re-connect with old friends, B) keep up with new/old friends, and C) show people my thoughts, images, interesting links, and other stuff. And the best way to make it work for everyone is if it all goes modular. Facebook does a great job of this right now, and so does Flock. The key, to me, is to use a damn good photography site for your photos, a damn good blogging site for your blog, and a damn good whatever site for your whatever. The whole point of all this “Web 2.0″ crap is to make communication easier without forcing anyone to adopt proprietary software. That’s why, on my Facebook profile, the only “apps” I actually care about are the ones that aggregate the updates from my LiveJournal, del.icio.us, Twitter, and Flickr feeds. Eventually, I’ll get into shooting quick videos (once the bastards update my iPhone to do so), but until then I’m not likely to care about YouTube too much.

Anyway, the whole thing that got me thinking about this:
http://punkassjim.soup.io/

It’s a pretty sweet site, probably the best user-signup experience I’ve ever had. The whole point of this site is to give you a “river of news” taken from all your social sites. Unlike Facebook, the news feed doesn’t miss anything, and also unlike facebook, it doesn’t subject you to any BS vampire or lil’ green patch invites.

Thank fucking god.

I may end up moving over to Soup for all my blogging needs, but I haven’t decided yet. Plus, it’s still a young site. But I really like how standards-based their coding is, and how clean the whole user experience is. I’ll be playing with it for a bit, but I’m still gonna rely on LJ for my blogging needs.

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Fascinating legs

August 7th, 2008

While riding home last night, I was listening to Studio 360, and they had a bit about Olympic-level athletes who have artificial limbs. The current media darling for this topic is Oscar Pistorius, but I found Aimee Mullins’ contributions to the story to be more poignant, more insightful.

The story goes, that each of these athletes had lost their lower legs as a result of birth defects. And, with the use of their specially-designed prosthetic limbs, they are able to run like the fucking wind. Many of their able-bodied competitors like to cry foul because they think the carbon-fibre legs give the amputees an unfair advantage. When people accused Aimee Mullins of using the appliances to lengthen her stride, she had them shortened. And she got faster. That shut ‘em up.

Fascinated as I was with this story, I got home and started looking up photos and YouTube videos to learn more. I was surprised to learn that Mullins was not only an accomplished athlete, but also a model and an actress. The bits about her being a model were interesting for a lot of reasons, but I was amused by the fact that she looks crazy-tall when she’s wearing her “model legs.” Unfair advantage, indeed…but it’s hard to call it “unfair” when the fact is I’m cheering for her. Last I checked, overcoming a handicap was a good thing.

But it’s when I looked up her acting experience that I started to wander into another territory that’s perplexed me in the past. One of the movies she has starred in is called Cremaster 3, an extremely abstract art film, part of a series by Björk’s partner Matthew Barney. I mean, extremely abstract. Go ahead, click the link, and make sure you watch the trailer.

The thing I can’t quite figure out is how, exactly, funding is procured for such a project. The mind reels. Clearly, Barney had a really detailed vision for the creation of this project, but what’s the audience? Who do you pitch it to, in terms of funding? Who buys this stuff?

My friend Peter, from high school, is an actor, and he has starred in a slew of artfilms like this. I recently re-connected with him through MySpace, and he has links to trailer videos for the projects he’s been in. And dude…it scares me. They’re abstract, like the Cremaster Cycle is, but they’re far-lower-budget. Hand-held cameras, scraped-together wardrobe, lots of gratuitous nudity that crosses the line into the obscene (one man’s opinion—a man with no problem with nudity), and generally the type of stuff that only gets shown in small, deviant circles. Don’t get me wrong: more power to ‘em.

But it still perplexes me, and leads my brain to make up wild theories, bordering on Eyes Wide Shut territory. I’m not implying secret-society-type stuff, so let me explain: My impression is, the people responsible for creating these types of movies are independently wealthy, whether by inheritance or by wild success (or marriage to Björk). And they’ve got artistic aspirations and/or outside-the-mainstream sexual proclivities which they would like to express through a group artistic effort. It’s kinda like…a really scaled-down, much more tame/artistic version of the “themed orgies” we’ve all heard about but never actually seen. Small societies of people who somehow have the time and money to invest in ambitious/large projects that aren’t intended for a wide audience, but more intended to scratch an individual (or small group) itch. It’s freakin’ fascinating.

Clearly, I’ve pigeon-holed myself as a complete prude, misanthrope and art-ignorant snob. But that’s totally not the case. I’m just taking a different tack — after deciding that the art itself isn’t my cup of tea, I’m still fascinated and curious about the scene-behind-the-scenes. That may not be my cup of tea either, but, on the face of it, I just don’t get how it’s being done.

Anyway, even though the sum-of-its-parts vision of the Cremaster Cycle doesn’t tickle my fancy, I must admit I am very impressed by the imagery of Aimee Mullins wearing the lucite lower legs. It’s one of those things you might’ve seen in a Hellraiser movie, and you don’t even need computers to make the image!

Alright, I’ve led you down a meandering path for long enough. Sorry about that.

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Rascal

August 4th, 2008

A few years ago, my brother made a couple of blog posts about his dogs. They were more like eulogies, as each post was made after the dog in question had died. Having known each of these dogs, having welcomed them into our family, and having played my part in raising them, I was deeply touched by my brother’s words. He loved Lotus and Ludwig very much, and it’s clear that our family has a bond with our pets that transcends the usual pet/owner relationship.

click to view largerI’ve been living with Liz for several years now, and we started dating in late 2002. She’s always had Rascal. And she’s another example of someone who looks at her dog and sees her small, furry child. A child she’s helped to nurture, to teach, to heal, to be happy. Rascal is now 13.5 years old, and her age has been weighing heavily on Liz’s mind for several years.

Rascal was about a year and a half old when Liz adopted her from the SPCA, and had already given birth to a litter of puppies. She was in poor health, most of her hair had fallen out, and it turns out she had a serious birth defect in her kidney plumbing. So, pretty much right away, Liz needed to invest a great deal of money, care, and time into surgeries and medications to get Rascal into a better state of health.

That was almost a dozen years ago.

Since then, Rascal has been there for Liz through trying times, through new boyfriends and breakups, through frustrations in school, trials and tribulations in her career path, and through moves all over the place.

Rascal has traveled across this country three times.

While my family has always (for better or worse) taken a laissez-faire approach to our pets’ health, Liz has always been right on top of Rascal’s shots, vet appointments, and other important health tasks. This has rubbed off on me quite a bit, and it makes me even sadder to think back to my family’s hands-off methods. On the one hand, maybe we didn’t have the ability to dump all that money into our pets. But, on the other hand, our little furry kids likely would have been happier and lived longer. If there’s one upshot, it’s becoming clearer to me now: at least we weren’t always thinking about the impending death of our little loved ones.

See, Rascal’s sick. She’s got a small growth on her upper jaw, and we just got confirmation that it’s melanoma. Research suggests that, in long-haired retrievers with dark fur, melanoma (especially when found in the mouth) is a Very Bad Thing. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s highly unlikely she’ll be with us a year from now, and six months might even be a stretch. And, given that serious treatment would likely mean removing a large portion of her jaw, neither of us want to put Rascal through it. We just went to a consultation with a doggie oncologist, but we’re both of the mind that decreasing her quality of life for the sake of longevity is not right.

click to view largerIt’s just really hard to look at someone you love, and know that they are dying. And she has no clue.

But I’ve got to give Liz serious credit for her thoughtfulness. She noticed, even before I did, that I might have a hard time of it, since I basically had to watch my mom decline into cancer. It’s something I’ve long since faced and grown to understand, but it’s still an old wound that gets itchy when our fur-kids get sick, and you’ve got to make the choice of whether or not to treat it.

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The Survey for People who Make Websites

July 29th, 2008

If you make websites, you should take this survey:
A List Apart &mdash The Survey for People who Make Websites, 2008

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Privacy, and why no one cares

July 24th, 2008

If you’re reading this because you want an answer to the “why” in my headline, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed. Today, I am stunned, slowly shaking my head at my computer screen. The “me generation” has struck again. Let’s back up a moment. The big story I’m seeing today is an iPhone-related story. So, if you could care less about iPhone stuff, you know what to do. Anyway, there’s this video game that was released, for free, to the iTunes AppStore for iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s a basic block-matching puzzle game, but it’s got some nifty features and storylines built in, so it’s pretty damn fun to play. I’ve had it on my phone for almost a week. One of the nifty features, apparently, is a “Community” mode of play. So, you can team up with your friends and play the game together. I say “apparently” because I never bothered to opt-in for the Community mode. Thankfully. Y’see, the developers of this game did something terribly sloppy. When a user “opts in” for the Community mode, they’re asked for their phone number and email address. Then (if the reports are correct) the app compiles a list of all the people/info in your phone’s addressbook, and sends that data IN THE CLEAR (without encryption) back to their servers. The game developers are apparently not doing anything with this data yet (if you believe them), and aren’t even storing the data on their servers (again, if you believe them). But the fact that you could be sitting in downtown Mountain View, playing the game at the bus stop, and suddenly all of your contacts’ phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, etc, are all broadcast in-the-clear across a completely un-secured public WiFi network…that’s fuckin’ scary. But here’s the thing: on public forums and bulletin boards across the internet, from what I’m seeing, the prevailing attitude is “so what?” and “who cares?” Seriously, here are two direct quotes from the comment section of the Gizmodo article:

I mean, they released a quality game at an unbeatable price, what’s not to like? I don’t understand why it’s so bad for someone to see your contacts…worst case scenario is someone saying “OMG, user Substance_D has someone named Erika D on his contact list! Should I prank call her up? I can even see the number since these servers are unencrypted!” Wtf, who cares. 

First, stop pretended your contact list is of any desire to anyone; you don’t know anyone we want to talk to anyways. Furthermore, all the big social networking sites let you voluntarily (and I know Aurora Feint left that part out) give up your contact list to them and its stored on THEIR servers even after they find your friends. So to think that your info has never been given up to MySpace, Facebook or Linkedin just cause YOU didn’t agree to a search is pretty naive since with all the members they have statistically speaking one of your friends/family, that has YOUR contact info, has submitted to the search. The exception to that is of course if you don’t have any friends. Searching someone’s contact list is not new and not evil, most social programs do it. Stop demonizing these developers.

I can’t believe how shallow people’s views are. Well, yeah I can, because I know full well that reading comment sections of websites is a really good way to lose faith in humanity. But I just can’t get past the fact that nobody GETS it. I, for one, don’t trust MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn. I don’t use those utilities that crawl your email address book to find your friends. It just feels wrong to me. Too much trust. But I can understand how others would set aside any such fear. OK, fine. But granting the same trust to some independent game development shop who has had absolutely NO presence in the market before, and who has done absolutely nothing to instill trust? FUCK no. Maybe it’s a complete lack of understanding of the technology…I’d imagine a huge percentage of the world just thinks the internet works by “magic.” Actually, I’ve seen plenty of commentary from folks who think “oh, if someone really wants your data, they’ll find a way.” Really? Man, you don’t know anything. And you’re part of the problem. You give up before you even know, and you encourage others to do the same. The last quote up above was a direct response to this guy, who gets it:

OK. I think I understand. So here’s the reasons why it’s apparently OK that they STOLE YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST:
1) They make a fun game, so who cares if they STOLE YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST?
2) they’re cool, so it’s OK they STOLE YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST.
3) it’s nanny Apple’s fault who, in this one single instance, should be more closed not more open, so a rogue developer can’t STEAL YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST. (not that they’re rogue or anything)
4) the developers didn’t want to inconvenience users by making them type or something, so they STOLE THEIR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST.
5) since the developers only had 10 weeks they had no choice but to STEAL YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST.
6) Since your gaming community is going to include every single person you know, why not just STEAL YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST?
7) the developers are new to computers, the internet, privacy, and Earthlings, and had no idea anyone would mind if they STOLE THEIR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST.
Did I miss any reasons why it’s OK they STOLE YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LIST? Oh yeah.
8) Think of all the fun their summer intern is going to have searching their database for the privates on Steve Jobs, Buckethead, Brian Lam, and other known people whose numbers may not be in your iPhone, but may be in the PRIVATE FUCKING CONTACT LISTS THEY STOLE. 

Several people have defended the developers, saying YOU (as a user of the game) had to opt-in. But as far as I can see, the game only asked me for my email address and phone number (which I did not give). I wasn’t asked for my whole contact list. That ain’t exactly transparent. I think we’ll see a handful more fuck-ups like this from iPhone developers, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the apathy monster that’s running around, rampant.

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See WALL•E

June 29th, 2008

You’ve already been told, but I’m gonna tell you too. See it. We went last night, and about 30 seconds into the film I leaned over to Liz and said “yeah, this movie’s gonna make me cry.”

It’s not rare for a Pixar movie to make me cry, but I’ll go ahead and agree with Cabel that this movie has one of the most memorable first acts of all the movies I’ve seen.

Also of note, this movie employed one of my favorite visual effects of the past decade. I first saw it in the TV series Firefly. In that show, they would often show a spacecraft from far away, perhaps in orbit over a planet, and they’d suddenly zoom in on it. But rather than just zoom in, they’d try and re-create reality: the “camera” would be slightly off-center and out-of-focus, so you (the viewer) would watch as the focus and position were re-composed, as if there were a real cameraman between you and the scene. It’s such a subtle thing, but when you’re dealing with 100%-computer-generated visuals, it adds a sense of realism and dynamic range. It adds emotion and grit to an antiseptic visual medium.

Anyway, they did this sort of thing in WALL•E. Apparently, from what I’ve read, it was the director’s goal from the outset to treat the visuals with a good deal more attention to “reality detail.” They employed lens flares, tricky focus, hell, they even used atmospheric effects like the “shimmering” you’d get on a sweltering-hot day.

I remember being in awe of the translucent leaves, genius textures and atmospheric haze that was used in A Bug’s Life. And these people are just getting better and better at what they do. I work in an office that’s about five miles from Pixar’s home base in Emeryville, CA. I’m gonna be sad when I eventually have to move away.

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