Simplicity is the best policy

After a long gap, I am trying something new.  Blog posts ripping on blog posts that try to explain a lack of blog posts is sooo 2005, (and really too meta.) 

(...Also the term meta is pretty stale, come to think of it.  I need some new writers.)

Anyway, clearly my grand design of a information hub with multiple topical blogs was a pretty mad Fitzcarraldo kind of idea.  Especially since it was a complete snub of tagging/lable systems.  But the upshot was that all of that was moot, since Facebook came along and offered a simple and easy way to scratch the blogging itch.  Now Twitter has come along and like crack is to cocaine, offers an even purer buzz.  (but is 140 characters enough for the ego?)

In anycase, I am going to try to get refocused on what this site is, (discovering that is sort of the site's mission statement.) and not let the structure distract me.  Squarespace seems like a pretty liquid attitude toward a site, so we'll see how this works.

No Comments

Just an update- I removed the commenting tool on the blog, since it was only being used by spammers anyway.

Summer's Over!

Yay, this means its time to blog again.

Actually, Summer heat in NYC is so oppressive, I tend to spend 3 months the year just being a slug, and waiting for September to get here. Guess that means we should be living somewhere not so hot, since then i would get 1/4th of the year back.

Anyway, I think I have a bunch of things to post about, scribbled down on deli napkins, so I will get to those, as soon as I get them all sorted out.

The new apartment is working out well. The eternal construction is pretty noisy, and there is no end in sight. But the location is great, and the layout of the apartment is a little better. After almost 10 years, I am living in a flat that has a space for a kitchen table. So 2 weekends ago we trucked on out to Ikea and picked one up. Terribly useful things.

Dr Who

So I have been watching the series 3 episodes of Doctor Who (the new one) and its getting down to the last few episodes before the finale, and things have been getting good. (Spoiler below the jump)

So the big revelation last week was on the episode Utopia where the Master returned. Woot! I have been waiting for the master to return since the series rebooted. And he is played by John Simm who I really enjoyed in Life on Mars. So I should be happy as a clam, right?

After watching last nights episode "The Sound of Drums" I am a little disappointed. The episode was a little glib, and seemed a bit off kilter, and I marked that down to me not being totally up on the Tony Blair gags that seemed to be going over my head, but whatever. I went ahead and watched the doctor Who Confidential show for the episode, because I had seen that it was to have a over view of the Master in past series, and the actors who played him. And I did enjoye that, but there was some comments by the writers about their take on the character that bothered me.

Specifically they kept repeating over and over again that the master is a lunatic. totally psychotic and was driven mad as a child when he looking into the Eye of Harmony. So while in the older series, he was this personification of Dr. Moriarty type menace always bent on world domination, the writers felt they had to convert him into a man with a psychotic break to explain his actions.

There is something very modern about redefining evil as a mental illness to make it understandable and less threatening. now when we are talking about reality, I cringe when someone calls another person or people 'evil'. But when it comes to fiction, the rules are different. I am always a fan of intelligent evil villains. And the Master was text book example in the old series cut from the cloth of classic stage melodrama.

The heart of the problem (for me) is that the shows creators seem to have approached the question of how the Master fits into the new series, as him being defined as a foil for the doctor. They repeatedly said that he was the dark version of the doctor. Identical in as many ways as possible, except a psychotic. It probably gives balance to the show, and theoretically it means that the Master will be around for a long time, since it seems like the doctor can't kill him anymore then he can kill his own shadow.

And that is the crux of my problem with it. The Master is now defined as just a doppleganger of the doctor. the doctor is the original, and the master is his 'evil' copycat. Thus rather then being an wicked genius who crossed paths with the doctor his nefarious schemes came to the doctor's attention- now he just exists to torment the doctor, and never quite kill him. So I find him somewhat lessened.

The other interesting thing the writers mentioned was that the Master had to have a sense of humor- and be able to deliver the one line zinger with the same flair as the doctor. the old Master was a very serious man, whom the doctor would outfox with his puns and word play as they verbally sparred. But as they stated, the Master was to be the doctor's equal in every way possible, and they decided that that extends to the doctor's humor as well. Now in the reality of the show, a sense of humor is inconsequential. but in terms of fictional characters, a sense of humor is hugely important. Having the power of joking for the audience's benefit is better then a super forcefield. No one who is gaily tossing out witticisms can ever be beaten. he is a trickster character, and that means that he always gets away.

MOCCA

This weekend was the annual MoCCA event here in NYC. It was mondo crowded, but very interesting. Alec Longstreth was there selling the prints I did for him, so here's hoping the sold well. I also updated the old albatross website, with some additions I have been meaning to add for like a year. oy.

Also I added shots of the t-shirts- I still have some small and mediums in the girls & guys. I will wait to see if there is any demand for more before planning another printing. I think they came out pretty nifty.

Otherwise we went to the park today, and did some pic-a-nik-ing and some fris-a-bee-ing with some ducks & a couple of beavers. Either you know what I mean or you don't.

Good Weekend

Well this weekend was quiet, possibly the last quiet one for a while. On Saturday L and I went to Chinatown to meet up with MC and we went to Shanghai Cuisine. The food was pretty good, esp. the soupy dumplings- although a bit more expensive then I am used to, but then again its closer to the touristy area then we usually go. Then we wandered around in the heat and had a gelato, before getting caught in a pretty monstrous thunderstorm, and fairly well soaked.

Sunday was press day, and pretty much spent it printing down at the studio. Good relaxing activity- was printing up some promotional materials for MoCCA.

Back on the horse

I could start this post off about how I have been bad and have not posted in a while, but it has been observed that 90% of all blog posts start with a variation of that line. So I am assuming that that is inherent in the nature of a blog, and can be assumed from now on.

Summer has hit Brooklyn, and it looks amazing. Our building faced north, so it is always has the sun behind it, except for this time of the year when the days are really long, and the sun hits it from the side in the mornings. I ran out today to pick up a couple of things, and on my way back I did not recognize it. (to be fair it is in the middle of a block of identical brownstones.) will try to get a picture the morning of the solstice.

New job is going great, but pretty stressful. got some new projects cooking finally with the press, that I'll try to detail shortly.

cheers!

McClure's Pickles


I am acutely aware of the irony of the fact that Bob McClure plays a character named "Jed" who lives in Brooklyn. But the fact that he also has an indy Pickle company makes up for that considerable. I'll have to send some to my dad for father's day...

pan's labyrinth

We saw Pan's Labyrinth last weekend, and I thought it was good, but not as good as I hoped.

It is by Guillermo Del Toro, director of Hellboy, Mimic, and the classic Chronos. It is a sort of sequel to his earlier film The Devils Backbone, and has a similar mood. He described Pan's Labyrinth as a 'feminine' movie to balance Devil's backbone which was more of a 'masculine' movie. I can see this very well- they are both set during the Spanish Civil war, in brooding environments where death comes quick and often. the protagonists are both children who are in a sense orphaned and uprooted from their happier homes.

The Devils Backbone has a strong element of fire and metal to it, and seems to revolve around the themes of war and regret. Pans Labyrinth focuses on the elements of blood and milk- as it is revolving around the themes of treachery and sacrifice. They both deal with a supernatural mystery hidden down below the earth that only the heroes can see, but at the same time there is parallel drama taking place among the adults related to the civil war. in the end the supernatural horrors end up being much less frightening then what the adults are capible of by the end of the stories.

It is nice to see that Pan's Labyrinth was nominated for so many Oscars, but I think the supernatural storyline was a little weaker then it could have been, and the Human story line ended up dominating the movie. Which might be why it was nominated- alot of what happens in that storyline is classic Oscar friendly stuff. On the other hand the Devils Backbone has a much more balanced and integrated feel between the two storylines, but the final 'message' is less Oscar-ish, and so it pretty much passed with much less recognition when it was released. But the popularity of Pan should give this earlier movie some added recognition now.

And of course Del Toro has said that he is making a trilogy of pictures, so I am curious to see what the third film holds in store. After doing masculine and feminine, what will the third film's over arching motif be? It looks like it will be an announced film called 3993 which will connect the Ghosts of the Spanish Civil war ('39) with modern era Spaniards. ('93) So I will be looking forward to that.

Second life / Beta life

I have been in SL for about a week, and it kind of reminds me of the old Palace site. Better graphics and crafting tools, an economy and ownable land, but essentially the same kind of chatting activities. So in a way it is a more tactile version of the web, sitting somewhere between the pure documents format of the web and the real world. There is something kind of interesting of how you can do a risk free 'test' of something in SL while still deciding whether or not to go with it in real life. (whether it is trying out that T-Shirt or haircut to see if you like it, all the way over to playing around with cross dressing.)

So from a retail marketing angle that is interesting, in that on the one hand it lets people try before they buy and see what they think of goods that impact their projected persona... "Those boots look cool, but when I wear them around, I realize they make me look like a tramp. I just saved myself 300$" But for retailers the hope is that they try something risky in SL, get comfortable with it, and then go on and spend the money in the First Life.

The Risk for retailers is the idea that SL satisfies a low level desire on the cheap. Say I lust for the new iPhone. Normally I would wait until it comes out, and then run out there and drop $700 for it, and carry it around until the next cool gadget comes along, and I drop it in a drawer. This is a principle of idle lust that fuels a lot of the impulse purchase type products. But if you get one for your SL character, and get to carry it around in game, this might actually sufficiently scratch the tech lust itch enough that you don't see any purpose in spending the cash in real life. If you want something just 'for show' then to you it may be almost interchangeable to impress people in SL as it is to impress people in real life, and the former is much cheaper.

So for retailers who make function oriented goods, (like say Dell computer) they could leverage SL with confidence. But for image oriented goods, (Like Nike) they would have to worry about demand being sapped through this virtual desire satisfaction.

But the ones who should embrace SL and have the most to gain would be the retailers of goods that have an image that is considered risky or daunting, or requires a big commitment. (a prefect example is getting a tattoo) They are the ones have have a hard time getting customers to try it out in real life, but in SL where the risk threshold is so much lower they have a middle step that lets people get comfortable with it before having to commit. "How do I feel about having that skull tattoo on my arm? let me put it on my SL character for a few weeks, and see how I feel about it then...."

Same old same old

January was a busy month- a lot of new budget has come open, and a lot of projects that were back burner have become front burner. And at the same time the firm is being headhunted like one of those beached whales with the flock of seagulls going to town.

I took a trip to Dallas for a presentation, but I can't say I was impressed. It was my first trip to TX, and it was less then ideal, so I am going to reserve judgment anyway. But due to a massive Air Conditioning Convention in town, the only rooms we could get were in a gritty motel down behind the Wal-mart near the DFW airport.

I hear Austin is nice- I think we need to do a road trip down through the South West sometime soon.

Lonelyville


This weekend while enjoying the great weather by taking a walk in Prospect Park, we accidentally exited the park in a different direction the usual. (my fault.) so while walking back along the side of the park in Windsor Terrace, we came across another nifty coffee shop: Lonelyville. Very cool retro shop with a nice feel, and according to Lilia, excellent bathrooms. We got a couple of coffees, (tasty, not over roasted) and a brownie, which the barista assured us was so good we would be back. (It was, and we probably will...)

So glad to see there is a good coffee option near the Lake in Prospect Park.

Reboot!

So as you can tell, I am starting off the year with a new design for the site. This is an effort to a) get away from the green that has dominated this site for the last 3+ years, and b) restructure the site to be more in alignment with the funky ways I seem to be using my webspace. (form follows funkiness) and c) to upgrade to Movable Type, and get some enthusiasm for blogging back. We will see how the 3rd part works out.

I am still futzing around with the templates, so try to ignore the fact that the blog archive pages still have the default template. (its very... blue.) And don't get to worked up about how the left nav is obtuse. it will make sense after a while, or it won't. And finally some of the links to older content that have now been bubbled up may not have built in back navigation, so remember you do have a back button on your browser, and you will probably need it. ^_^

Cheers, and feel free to comment with what you think about this revision.

Also, have a fantastic 2007!

Vox

I have been playing around with Vox, the new social/blogging tool from Six Degrees, and it is very cool. I think if it had been around 5 years ago, it would have seriously altered my relationship with the internet. Right now, it is not such a good fit, since I seem to have become settled in how I use the internet, and as this ungainly site design shows, I am a peculiar use case.

But back to Vox, the way it is integrated with Amazon, Flickr, and a host of other online tools is really clever, and it has lots of quite nice implementations of Web 2.0 that have not yet begun to appear on other sites.

http://www.vox.com/

Tillie's Coffee Shop in Fort Greene

Yesterday I was wandering around Fort Greene, and came across a coffee shop that has a bit of soul. (always important to make a not of these, as an alternative to soul-less cafes that infest the city.)

Tillie's of Brooklyn has that broken-in feel of a coffee shop that has been around longer then the internet. (an important distinction.)

Registry revision

So finally the wedding announcements have started going out. (Printing them on the albatross has slowed things down, and necessitated doing two batches.) Anyway in the midst of all this we discovered that a china pattern we had picked out was being discontinued. bleh.

So in the process of rectifying it, we created a new registry at Macy's to simplify matters. Here is the link:

Our registry at Macy's:
http://macys.weddingchannel.com/gvr/guestregistrydetail.action?retailer_registry_uid=303900191&listby=dept
And we still have our list over at Crate & Barrel:
http://www.crateandbarrel.com/gr/guest/viewRegistry.aspx?grid=861952

Sorry for any confusion.