Vacation on Hawaii

I've uploaded some shots from our May 2006 vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii.

Spam-o-nomicon

I get a lot of spam. I'm on a lot of mailing lists. My email address is very public. I can't change it because its my primary way of getting work.

Over time, you get to see the spammers try new tricks. More and less text. Misspellings. Ads that look like text but are a big image.

The latest trick of the spammers is to put much extra text into the mail message. The goal is that the message payload (you know, "penis enlargement", "viagara" or "business proposition") are invisible to spam filters, since there's so much more distracting text to get in the way of the bayesian analysis. It's a kind of weak steganography.

For a while, the spammers were using just random free association, but today I've started receiving a whole lot of spam that contains excerpts from Cryptonomicon. How did this choose that particular book?

A few movie reviews

While Suzy was in Florida, I decided to catch up on a few movies. In addition to a few decent Samurai flicks, I finally checked out Jet Li's Unleashed. If you are a Jet Li or martial arts fan, check this one out. The action sequences were brutal and energetic, and the editting allowed you to actually see what was going on ... nice long takes that rely on Jet Li's incredible abilities. Jet Li's character, Danny, fights completely differently than Jet Li in other films ... less aristry, more craziness, and startling speed. It also had the biggest fight in the tightest space I've ever seen. Sure the movie had weak points ... the plot was outrageous, it had the ultimate action movie cliche (the fight-to-the-death gladiator gambling club) and was really two movies shoehorned together (the middle half of the movie, where Danny is "adopted" by a family and comes out of his shell). Still a fun watch.

Another top flight martial arts movie is Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior. This movie's star, Tony Jaa,combines Jackie Chan's acrobatics with the speed and power of Jet Li, and is a credible enough actor for the non-fighting scenes. Definately up and coming. This was a low budget film shot and editted with a lot of nerve.

A follow up for Tony Jaa, Tom yum goong, has a small number of great action sequences, but misses the mark. It is tricky pushing the level of excitement without passing that point that undermines the suspension of disbelief. Long, long, long takes are great, but it is nice to have story to link them together.

Meanwhile, at the local martial arts film revival, I was able to catch The New One Armed Swordsman and Legendary Weapons of China, two films featured in the documentary Chop Socky. Alas, they looked much better as highlights than as full movies; tedious, silly, poorly scripted, badly editted. Especially in Legendary Weapons, the skills of the performers were completely undermined by every other aspect of the movie.

Finally, I rented Requiem for a Dream, which was very well shot, well acted, well scripted, well editted. Just plain powerful. It's a big cautionary tale about drugs destroying several people's lives, but was put together with a real nervey edge to it.

Christmas Stormtroopers

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Originally uploaded by Tapestry Dude.

I've finally gotten around to uploading a huge backlog of photos over the last four to five months. I'm only part of the way in. I'm using flickr, and only uploading medium resolution shots (though I may upgrade to "pro" and start uploading the full size images).

Flickr organizes photos into "sets" and uses a very nifty Flash movie to display each set as a slideshow. Click on a photo to interrupt the show and see some details.

Long time ... no blog

Been a while since I've posted on this blog; things have been oh so very busy in Howard-land. First, some quick movie reviews:

V for Vendetta: Well, of course it falls apart in the last reel, and of course they weren't true to the book, and parts are just silly, and V isn't crazy enough, and ... it was still good. Natalie Portman is honest to god good in this movie (in fact, she's been good in the few non-Star Warts things I've seen her in).

Inside Man: Spike Lee manages to make a straight forward bank heist movie into something quite unexpected. Yes, there's the expected resentment of Powerful White (Wo)Men but Spike keeps it tense and interesting. Strangely, "flash forwards" to the aftermath of the heist manage to not unravel the tension. Also, the movie's title turns out to be dead accurate, and not in the way you'd think.

Other news ... I'm speaking at this year's JavaOne conference again, but from there Suzie and I will be travelling on to Hawaii's Big Island for two weeks. It's actually our first non-work, non-family vacation since our honeymoon (outside of a week in Portland a year ago that kicked off our move).

We'll be in Boston for my cousin's Bat Mitzvah; arriving on April 27th and returning to Portland on the 1st. Catch everyone then!

Calvin and Hobbes vs. Robotman

Many years ago, I was staying at a friends house and had insomnia. I picked up a thick Calvin and Hobbes book and read the introduction, and it mentioned how Bill Watterson's syndicate tried to get him to use Robotman as a recurring character in Calvin and Hobbes.

This has nagged me for years! Did I really read it, or was it some kind of jumbled psuedo-memory caused by the insomnia? I mean, really, Robotman as part of C&H? I've skimmed the introduction of every C&H book I own or stumble across in a store, and have never found that quote again.

For some reason, this popped into my head yesterday and I did a bit of searching around the web; look what I found at http://bob.bigw.org/ch/interview.html:

Watterson: I think United really looks for the marketing more than some of the other syndicates, and they saw Hobbes as having marketing potential, so I don't think that was it. I was later offered the chance to incorporate Robotman into my strip. There they had envisioned a character as a product--toy lines, television show, everything--and they wanted a strip written around the character. They thought that maybe I could stick it in my strip, working with Calvin's imagination or something. They didn't really care too how much I did it, just so long as the character remained intact and would be a very major character...And I turned them down. It really went against my idea of what a comic strip should be. I'm not interested in slamming United Features here. Keep in mind that at the time, it was the only syndicate that had expressed any interest in my work. I remain grateful for their early attention. But there's a professional issue here. They told me that if I was to insert Robotman into my strip, they would reconsider it, and because the licensing was already in production, my strip would stand a better chance of being accepted. Not knowing if Calvin and Hobbes would ever go anywhere, it was difficult to turn down another chance at syndication. But I really recoiled at the idea of drawing somebody else's character. It's cartooning by committee, and I have a moral problem with that. It's not art then.

What's Your Most Dangerous Idea?

The Edge World Question Center asks "What's your most dangerous idea?" to dozens of top minds. The answers are fascinating. Go read.

Getting set up in Portland

So ... today's my birthday and (news flash), we're living in Portland. Thing are coming together here; we picked up our car last night from the car transporter. We just bought a very nice console (a kind of wide, low, bookcase) from 10,000 villages. It's made of a variety of woods, all very eco-friendly. The wood was reclaimed from buildings and from other furniture ... that's the reuse in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Not that we got it to be super-PC-green ... it was available locally, it was the right price, and it's a stunning piece.

With that in place, I was able to get the wood tapestry up on the wall, and all the electronics are now hooked up. Let's see: cable modem, cable box, CD player, DVD player, XBox, TV, Receiver and wireless access point. Outside of a mass of cables stuffed under the furniture, it came together awesome. If we can just get the other 95% of the apartment as well put together, we'll be on to something.

Outside of that one, key corner, the apartment as a whole is still "decorated in early american cardboard" as Suzy keeps quoting me. The building is very nice, and there's a manageable amount of street noise. Most of the people we've met in the elevator have been in a situation much like ours ... relocating from other parts of the state or country to start fresh in Portland.

The neighborhood continues to rock; an excellent video store, more and more galleries. We haven't even checked out the many record stores or otherwise even scratched the surface of what's going on within spitting distance.

OK ... so back to my birthday. After all the craziness and confusion over the last month (or months), including two business trips since moving into the apartment less than two weeks ago ... well, it was pleasant to just take it a bit easy last night and catch up on unseen re-runs of Battlestar Galactica. Today has been pretty mellow, just more unpacking, a nice lunch, and a bunch of last minute chores. It sounds boring but for me its all good.

Starting next week is work, work, work. I need to send invoices to my current clients and start working on acquiring new ones. I have to really start producing for my Tucson client. And the unpacking must continue.

We think Suzy will have surgery to fix her finger next month, probably early in the month. We're looking forward to her healing up so that we can go skiing together (as together as we ever ski, but still). It's wierd being in Portland and knowing just about nobody, but people are friendly, and there's so much going on. There's even a lot of Java people using Tapestry here. I think a lot of good things are going to happen here.

Portland Week One

So we've been in Portland about a week now and it keeps getting better ... strangely, the weather has not been cooperating; it's been sunny, if a bit cold, every day. Where's the Portland rain? In fact, I've spent a total now of one month in Portland over the last five years, and I've seen only one or two days of rain.

Tomorrow the movers arrive with our stuff, and we can finally get into our apartment. We decided to stay in a hotel, rather than buy an air mattress or anything like that. Partly due to comfort issues, and partly so I could continue to do some work.

Of course, I have trips almost immediately. I fly down to San Francisco on the 13th and get back on the 17th, then fly down to Tucson on the 18th and back on the 21st.

We keep finding more stuff to like about our location; we're really hoping to use the car very minimally. Sure, there's a decent mall about 10 minutes away (we swung by last night to pick up a new set of cookware), but for a lot of ordinary items, including food, we can just walk.

Yesterday, we took the streetcar to the saturday market; it's clear to see that if we keep to that plan, we'll get a lot more exercise, just by walking more. This, too, was part of the plan in moving here. Boston makes it difficult to do anything without a car ... it's faster, easier and cheaper to drive into Boston than to take the T. Portland's excellent public transportation makes it just as easy, and much cheaper, to get around without a car.

And the funkiness of Portland is still wonderful. Yesterday, we stumbled across an all-tuba concert in courthouse squuare (dead center of downtown). Across the street, the salvation army was using volunteers dressed as Darth Vader and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers (pictures to follow).

Meanwhile, the only fly in the ointment is Suzanne's finger. It turns out to not be just an unlucky fracture; she has a kind of bone cyst or tumour (benign, not cancerous) that has been weakening that bone. It would have broken eventually, and would have been worse later. In any case, she's seeing a surgeon, and will probably require surgery to clean it up and repair it using either artifical bone or a bone graft.

Happy birthday everybody, it's Nerd Birthday Week!

Yow! We're in Portland!

Yes, Boston did try to get its last licks in yesterday. We woke to a couple of inches of snow and treacherous driving on the way to the airport. Near the old Quincy shipyards, a car slid directly into our lane, prompting some severe and adrenaline-filled steering to avoid. The snow also delayed us in Boston, so that we nearly missed our connection in Newark (and Newark requires you to go through security screening when you switch concourses!) Then Suzy was stuck in the middle seat next to a really fat crying woman. You just have to love travel.

The biggest problem we've had so far is something unfortunate for Suzy: When checking in at Logan, Suzy managed to catch her finger on some luggage and ended up breaking here ring finger. We confirmed today that she does have a slight fracture, and will probably be in a splint for a week or two.

Today, at The Louisa, the apartment building we're to start living in, we did a quick check over the other units in the building. There were a couple that were a little nicer, but much, much pricier. I think we're going to do well in the townhouse we chose. We're already thrilled with the location ... a Whole Foods just across the street (or accessible underground by a shared parking garage), and just lots of everything: book stores, art galleries, restaurants; everything great about living in the city.

We're staying at The Inn at Northrup Station, a trendy hotel in northwest Portland, until our stuff arrives in the next week or so. Even since I was last here in August, more stores and restaurants have opened here. In fact, I'm sitting in a Starbucks right now typing this (need that internet access).

Meanwhile, I have two different trips coming up, almost back-to-back. A quick one down to San Francisco for shopping.com, and another one just after that for Vaisala (in Tucson). The timing could be better, but its nice to be bringing in some cash right now.

Moving Sale on Sat. Nov 5th

We're having a moving sale on Saturday, Nov. 5th, from 8am to 2pm.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was a lot of fun. It was the definition of a guilty, guilty pleasure. What I especially liked was that the Harold and Kumar are not stupid (stoned, yes, stupid, no). Sure, they're a bit geeky (Harold, especially, is struck dumb in the presense of an attractive neighbor he has a crush on), but in the end they managed to triumph over crazed rednecks, X-Treme assholes, lazy bosses, corrupt, racists cops and, it seems, the hand of fate keeping them from White Castle.

Some Movie Reviews

Suzy and I have caught a few flicks at the theaters and on video lately. MirrorMask was quite the visual spectacle ... Alice in Wonderland by way of Beetlejuice care of Neil Gaiman. Literally a teenage girls fantasy drawings come to life in a dream. Occasionally it slowed and stumbled, but made up for those short-comings with eye popping imagery.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is an early high point in the career of Miyazaki (later of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away). Lots of action, above average design and animation, a relatively meaningful plot, and best of all, a central character who is not passive in the least.

Primer is the ultimate, low budget science fiction thriller. It mixed some very real world cinema verite conversation with a plot something like Dilbert-meets-La Jetee. Because it embraces the pecular mechanics of time travel so thoroughly, it becomes effectively impossible to follow (the commentary reveals that certain strange events towards the end have no explanation because any explanation would rely on information that the protagonists simply don't have). Maybe not up to the level of indy flick hype it received, but not bad either.

And then, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit which restored my faith in animation. Quick paced, well told, delightful to watch, and simply full of delight. I hope I don't have to wait another five years for the next story.

Illuminati: New World Order - Uncut Press Sheets

I've put up for auction my collection of signed, framed, uncut press sheets for Illuminati: New World Order ... they are big and somewhat fragile (for a cross-country move, anyway) and perhaps will make the right person happy. In which case, they better be prepared to pay.

We're also running an moving sale, 8am - noon on Saturday, Nov 5th.

Wheels grind into motion

Well, our backup buyers have become our primary buyers (the couple from Colorado have decided to move elsewhere) and we've agreed on price and terms. If all goes well (and when does that ever happen?) we'll be closing on December 1st and hopping onto a plane to Portland! Lots and lots of details to work out, as you might guess and, as my Mom can attest, nothing is final until the closing.

Movie Review: The Corpse Bride

Despite our recent pounding by another Tim Burton movie, we were hoping for another Nightmare before Christmas. What we got was even more of a trifle. The animation was excellent, but the story was amazingly thin. You have no back story for any of the characters, which makes the sudden love between Vincent and Victoria (the main characters, whose wedding is complicated by the titular Corpse Bride) hard to swallow. We can only speculate that Tim Burton started with the emergence of the Corpse Bride and worked out from there ... then lost interest in the story itself (which is one of his unfortunate trademarks).

The end result felt like highlights from a longer, better movie. And like many "musicals" these days, the musical portions could easily have been ommitted without affecting the movie. Worse, several of the musical numbers were so crowded and noisy that you couldn't make out what any of the characters were singing.

What's with all these passive protagonists? This is all too common in animation it seems ... characters who are along for the ride, too timid to affect anything until, perhaps, they show some backbone in the final reel.

This movie is most notable for technical achievements; it was shot onto digital SLRs and editted using Final Cut Pro. In addition, several scenes show animated characters playing piano (one piano is branded as a "Harryhausen") which was incredibly ambitous. But that doesn't make it a great movie, just a rental.

For Sale: Star Trek: The Next Generation Pinball

Goodbye, pinball machine. We'll miss you.

Animation woes

Suzy and I have seen several animated films lately, with very limited results. First, we rented Millennium Actress, which had some very good buzz. This had some interesting ideas and visuals, but like so much anime, just ran out of steam early on, and become rambling and chaotic.

So, next up was Howl's Moving Castle. Again, a good start that went nowhere. This film was dissapointing on many levels; the story line had nothing to do with the book upon which the film was based (by Dianna Wynne Jones, a favorite of Suzy's). In fact, it liberated a couple of names and a few strands of plot from the book, then immediately undercut them. The animation was decidely sub-par for Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The characters were quite bland, the villains, politics, and entire world were arbitrary. But mostly, the plot made no sense. Why was Howl so scared of the Witch of the Waste (the movie recasts him from the book's shifty layabout into sometihng more like Neo in the Matrix); and once the Witch's power is broken, why do they take her in as a guest? Why does Sofi destroy the castle, just to rebuild a smaller version with Calcifer? Why does Suliman let them go at the end? Isn't having the scarecrow turn into a prince, and then announce "I'll go stop the war" in the last two minutes a bit arbitrary? Did we really need a translation of the lyrics of the syrupy J-Pop song over the credits?

But our animation misery was not quite over; last saturday night, we ventured out to the Coolige Corner theater to see their animation festival. This was a competition event ... but not the way I thought. You see, this was not like the animation festivals of the past; it did not contain Acadamy Award winners and hopefuls. It was a local competition, and an open one. These weren't finalists, they were ugly, pointless films by talentless, depressed, pretentious, angst-ridden, teenage artist-wannabees. There were one or two minor gems ("Crazy Eyes Dolphin vs. Mad Cow" was a charming visualization of a twisted story as told by three six year olds), but the majority of the short films were to be endured, not watched (and certainly not enjoyed).

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Avoid at all costs

No, really, this movie was excruciatingly bad. It was Tim Burton at his worst; imagery without story. Johnny Depp got Willie Wonka so completely wrong (and of course, Gene Wilder got him so right), but even that wasn't what sunk the movie. The music was terrible and unintelligible, plot lines from the original movie were dropped (and whether Slugworth was an invention of Mel Stuart or Roald Dahl, I don't know or care) taking with them all motivation for the characters, and all warmth and charm was surgically extracted from this film.

Don't be fooled by the first few minutes, which are playful and fun. Once we get to the factory itself, there's no movie, just a tedious wait for the end credits. Don't even rent this film.

Moving to Portland, OR

Well the cat is finally out of the bag: Suzy and I are officially moving to Portland, OR. We went through the very painful step of telling my parents, who were accepting that we just won't be satisified unless we try. This is an upsetting development for our friends as well, but I think ultimately much good will come of the move.

Our house is up for sale, and I suspect things will move quickly. We've spent the last many days cleaning up, organizing, and pulling out as much clutter as possible to a storage locker. The house looks great, as does the new lawn We had a broker show on tuesday, which was well received ... especially by brokers who had seen the house two years ago, before we purchased it. We'll see what happens on sunday, our first open house (1pm - 3pm).

In the meantime, we're pairing down our possesions before the move; including the Star Trek: The Next Generation Pinball Machine.

Wish us luck!