Monsters from the Id 怪獣大悪脳

Well, I'm already in California.

My buddy and I booked the plane tickets and hotel rooms today. We're off to Vegas on April 18 for the NAB show. This will be fun! I have never been to NAB. (National Association of Broadcasters, for those of you who don't know.) It's a huge convention for media production and post-production. Lots and lots of software and gear. Heaven for tech geeks like myself.

I've never been to NAB. I always seem to be working on a movie when it comes around. In fact when you do film sound, like me, you always hope that you don't have to wind up on a dub stage for a mix while NAB is going on because you can never get any tech support from engineers or people at the companies who make the products we use since they're all hanging out in the Las Vegas Convention center.

I am also going to use this opportunity to check out Star Trek: The Experience at the Hilton. I've never seen that either and now that there's the new Borg 4D adventure to go along with the original one, it should be extra-super-cool.

I talked to another friend on the phone today who's spent the last 2 months hanging out in Chicago. (He's from there but lives here in LA now.) He's coming back into town on Friday for 5 days before he takes off for Australia and South-East Asia for another 2 months. We going to go see "Hellboy" the movie before he leaves. Oh yeah!

Posted by Jon at 9:44 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I was shown a demo of a great sound library program called Soundminer. It's very exciting: 58 metadata fields, SQL search functions, Rewire support for multichannel monitoring, Quicktime support for auditioning against picture, all kinds of fun stuff. But I get ahead of myself...

A sound company's or sound supervisor's bread and butter is the sound effects library. Attitude, communication, and all those customer service things are very important, but without a sound effect library there can be no post-production sound. A critical factor in the sound effects library is how easy is it to get to the necessary sounds?

When I started working in this industry eight years ago, most Supervising Sound Editors would use a process similar to this: Take the continuity list that shows the division of the film into reels and scenes. For each scene create a list of spots. Search the sound effects library for appropriate sounds for each spot. Listen to the CDs and DATs and make lists of the chosen sounds for each spot. Print the lists. Have the assistant load the sounds into the computer from the source CDs or DATs. Have the assistant copy the sounds to the editors' drives and make copies of the lists for the editors.

For example, scene 20 is a car chase through New York with gunfire between the two cars. So spots might be Good Guy Car, Bad Guy Car, Good Guy Guns, Bad Guy Guns, NYC Traffic Day. It might get even more specific since the most dynamic sounds for the scene would probably be the cars. So there might be spots for Engine Revs, Tire Squeals, and Brake Slams.

Supervisors would use a database program like Filemaker Pro, Leonardo, or even something on a ancient Alpha Micro computer to search for sounds. Type in "Engine Rev" and see what goodies pop up. Or maybe there was that one recording of a really beefy police car who's engine sounds might be perfect, so the supervisor types in "Crown Vic Engine". The list of the matching sounds would be displayed, and then the process of pulling the DATs or CDs from the shelf, finding the right track number and listening to the sounds would begin. Between all this searching, finding, listening, and the all the loading, copying, and photocopying that the assistants would do, the process could take weeks.

Thankfully now we have large quantities of cheap disk space, high speed networks, and some really great sound library software. Now most supervisors have made a point to get their entire sound effects library loaded onto hard drives and ready for instant access. These might be Firewire drives that sit in their office or they might be network storage hanging off a server. With the new sound library software, supervisors can type in keywords to search for in the database and then click a button next to the description to immediately start auditioning the sounds. Choices can be made and put into a "pull list" or "bin" depending on the terminology used. And then with another click of the button, the chosen sound effects can be downloaded on to a cutting hard drive from or server or set of master drives, and imported into an open Pro Tools session.

As you can probably imagine, this saves HUGE amounts of time.

Three years ago this May, Cameron, the Supervisor I work with, and I set up a system like this for ourselves. We used a program called MTools from Gallery and it changed everything. Suddenly the process that used to take weeks could be done in several days. And we loved it for a long time. MTools is basically a series a utilities applications that interfaced with a Filemaker Pro database. The database would list all of the information about the sounds, and by clicking a button, the path to the sound would be handed off to a program called Dcode which would audition the sound from the server. Dcode is the same program that would copy of the files from the server when the pull list was sent to Pro Tools.

Unfortunately MTools has also been a bit buggy. It's a problem with a lot of sound software. We're definitely a niche market and it doesn't attract the top developers. The Filemaker part of the equation was pretty rock solid. Some people have complained about the speed of Filemaker search hundreds of thousands of sounds but I never found it to be too bad. The problem typically stemmed from the strange behavior of Dcode.

Sometimes it would refuse to run. As soon as it started, it would immediately quit. The solution was to throw out the preferences file and copy "fresh" Dcode from the install disk or the server. Then if you auditioned your first sound, Dcode wouldn't quit if you hit Command-Q. There is this button with a down arrow that is supposed to rebuild waveform overviews, but by clicking this button, Dcode will quit after you've auditioned your first sound. It also has a problem remember the path to the save directory. You run the program, select the directory you want all your sounds transfer into, spend an hour selecting the best sounds, click the transfer button, and it throws up a bunch of error messages. You realize that there's no longer a path listed in the destination field. There was literally I time two weeks ago when I sat on the phone with Cameron for two hours while we tried to get Dcode to copy the selected sounds to a local hard drive.

We have decided that we need to find a better solution. That is where the demo of Soundminer comes in. It does all the basic functions I've talked about flawlessly. And there's a lot of extra functionality that we never had with MTools. You can customize the layout, font size, color, etc. as easily as you can with a program like iTunes. (You can make customizations in Filemaker Pro and in general it's a pretty easy database program to learn, but doing something simple like change the font from 12 point to 18 point because the editor has bad eyes is a bit involved.) You can set in and out points on the sounds your auditioning and it will only transfer those portions to your editing session. It has a function where it will find matching sounds based on the characteristics of the sound itself, not just the keywords you typed in. And about a half-billion other things that are great.

I suspect that I will spend most of next week in the office switching us over to a new Soundminer-based library.

Posted by Jon at 8:32 AM | Permalink

Com_Bat_Rac_Coon mentioned that there is a "Business Week" European cover story about how it's getting tougher to get at the oil in Saudi Arabia.

If you've read my little introduction to Peak Oil or any number of other websites about it, you know that after we reach the peak it gets increasingly harder to extract the oil from the ground. As it says on the cover, "There's plenty in the ground. But it won't be easy to get. The kingdom may need major new foreign investors. Will it dare open up?"

According to the article the Saudis claim that they could easily "ramp up to 10 million bbl. a day from its current 8.5 million and comfortably sustain that level through 2042." The concern of some of outside analysts is that we really don't know how much oil they actually have since they are a bit secretive about that. Another concern is that maybe the Saudis can sustain this level of production for the next 40 years, but if oil starts getting scarce in other parts of the world, they might need to double that amount by 2020.

These various oil supply and demand models are all fine, but the real question is what will we do after 2042?

Posted by Jon at 7:39 AM | Permalink

A recent study by professors at Harvard and the University of California shows that illegal MP3 filesharing has not hurt the record industry. They said that "downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero...." Of course the RIAA thinks this is completely untrue.

I suspect that filesharing probably does effect sales a bit, but I refuse to believe that it is the sole cause. I would love to see album sale statistics for last 15 years or so. When did the downward trend start? Was it the day that Napster was introduced to the world or did it start a few years before? How about looking at the number of bands that been created in the last ten years by a marketing team and not by musicianship? Now how many of those same bands get in the heavy rotation on radio stations? How about looking at the actual number of major record labels. I can drive down the street, just past NBC studios and see the building that is home to WEA (Warner / Elektra / Atlantic). Three different names, one actual label. Or how about we look at the number of �ber-corporations that own the majority of radio stations in this nation? Four companies? Five? Six? And how much of the market? Seventy percent? Eighty?

If the RIAA wants to get to the bottom of declining record sales, they should take a look at the record labels themselves and at the radio stations that play those albums. Steve Albini wrote an insiders look into just how much money a band makes on a major label.

The article is hosted on Negativland's website, the poster child of the anti-establishment, anti-corporation movement. Who can forget their classic U2 album?

Oh yeah, it was pulled from the shelves after a lawsuit. Thankfully you can download some of the tracks from their site. You'll never look at Casey Kasem the same way again.

Posted by Jon at 11:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

There's another website of fan-created Star Trek episodes. These are done in the style of the original series and take place aboard the starship Exeter. I think it's very cool that fans are taking the time to make these great shows.

In other Trek news, startrek.com has a write-up of the Grand Slam convention that took place in Pasadena over the weekend. They talk very favorably about Wil Wheaton who has written about the experience on his own website.

You might wonder why I write about Wil a lot. I don't know the guy. Even though I probably live only about 10 miles from him and I'm a Star Trek fan, I've never met him. He's kind of my hero. Wil's a year or two older than I am. He went through his teenage years on screen at the same time I was going through mine in the real world.

In the summer of 1986, I had just moved to Boston from Detroit. I was going into junior high and had more than my share of teenage geekiness. I had recently grown about a thousand feet over night and I no longer seemed to have control over my voice. The neighborhood I moved into had a lot kids in my age and I was trying to make new friends. One night my mom let me go see my first R-rated film in a movie theater with some of the other kids from the neighborhood. It was "Stand By Me."

I read a lot of Steven King books and it was exciting to go see one in a theater. With NO adults. And it was rated R! I felt so "grown-up." I immediately identified with Wil's character and by extension with him. Or at least I wished I could be like him. He was smart and confident and seemed to be so cool. Of course as we all know, there is nothing more important than for a junior high student to be "cool."

More recently watching those first few seasons of TNG again, I again saw myself at his age in the character of Wesley. Too smart for his own good and socially a little bit on the awkward side.

It was his website more than anything that was the inspiration for my site. I've mentioned before that I have had or worked on various websites for ten years, but I've never done one that was so personal. The first website I made in college was a Mighty Mighty Bosstones fansite. Years later I did another band fansite for The Donnas. There was my writing for the RTC zine that had a bit of my personality in there, but mostly it was a fictional persona I hid behind. This is the first time I've come out and said, "This is me. This is who I am and what I'm thinking." It's a little frightening if I think about it too much.

Posted by Jon at 9:55 AM | Permalink

Stupid IE6.

Ok, so here I was thinking I was done with my website redesign. Unfortunately I didn't preview it in a bunch of browsers. Safari in OS X is my browser of choice. I guess I'm at fault for using an extremely standards-based browser. My website looked great in Safari.

There were a couple little glitches in black areas of the header and footer under Firefox and IE5 for Mac but they were easily fixed by adjusting the border setting in those areas. I think Firefox looks almost as good as Safari--though their forms display needs a little help. I'll have to look into tweaking that.

Internet Explorer 5 for Mac looked worse of all but hey, what do you want from a browser that hasn't been updated in years?

Imagine my shock when I fired up Windows 98 in Virtual PC "just to be sure" and my website looked like a disaster.

It seems that wonderful Internet Explorer 6 has a wonderful "feature" that floating elements like my nav bar don't behave as expected.

After a lot of research and "trial and error", I was able to fix the problem. My XHTML code is pretty simple: There's a container <div> which is everything that is not the grey background. Inside of that there's a header <div>, a navigation <div>, a content <div>, and a footer <div>. Obviously there's more going on than just that but those are the basic elements. In my CSS, I floated the #navigation to the right, set the #content exactly next to it (to the pixel), and told the #footer to clear both.

Ultimately I discovered that IE6 can't handle the #content touching the floating #navigation. I had to leave 8 pixels between the two. I'm sure it could be a little less but 3 pixels had the same problem and I got sick of playing with it so I left it at 8.

I am SO glad that the web browser that something like 70% of the world is using doesn't actually properly support standards. Ugh!

Anyway it's now working. I would however appreciate it if anyone who happens to actually read this site who is using some other operating system / browser combination, would be kind enough to send me a screen capture from their system. Or at least drop me a note in my email or in the comments letting me know how it's working. Thanks.

Stupid IE6.

Posted by Jon at 6:00 PM | Permalink

It is done. After a little bit of wondering where my title graphic when off to and then trying to figure out why there was an orange stripe above the graphic, the Monsters from the Id revised website is done. Please let me introduce you to a style I call:

Halloween

It is inspired by a style called "Zen Pool" from the excellent CSS Zen Garden website. This weekend while I was bringing my site up to date, I created another style I call "Frankenstein" which was basically the same as "Zen Pool" with a different color scheme. The author of "Zen Pool" had a fixed amount of text to deal with for that design. After many hours of messing around, I found that his method does not work at all with my weblog of various page lengths. So I scrapped it, read up a bunch more on CSS, started taking baby steps and wound up with "Halloween." At some point I'll probably rework "Halloween" to get a new version of "Frankenstein", but that will be when I set up the site with user-selectable style sheets.

Of course I did end up putting the obligatory weblog stickers down in the corner of my navigation bar. I swear the blog police knocked on my door and said, "Sir, we need you to add a zillion of these little 80x15 images to your site or we're going to have to take away your computer." It was either that or a post by Wil the other day where he gave a link to a sticker generator. One thing lead to another and suddenly I found myself at a sticker archive. I couldn't help myself.

I'm going to go play with my Colorforms and Shrinky Dinks.

Posted by Jon at 1:57 PM | Permalink

I've spent the last two days learning XHTML and CSS. Actually I didn't spend ALL day both days working on this. I had a very enjoyable several hours on Saturday in a park in the mountains here in Burbank--I'm still a little red from the experience. I read a lot more in the Robert Jordan book I've been working on, "The Eye Of The World." Watched a little TV last night.

It's been interesting to get back into web design. I have been away from it for several years and things have definitely changed for the better. When I was designing the mostly monthly Right Turn Clyde in 1999, I was using Dreamweaver to put together the site in HTML4, and boy was it messy. I shudder to think of what the code looks like on those pages. Lots and lots of tables to attempt to position things correctly

There was this mysterious thing called Cascading Style Sheets but it had different versions based on your Document Object Model (DOM) and because of the non-standard nature of Internet Explorer and Netscape at the time. Even now I'm getting a little nervous just writing this. So I ignored that and stuck with trusty HTML and tables.

The cool thing I've discovered is that XHTML is even easier that HTML4. It reminds me of when I first started writing web pages by hand back in college in 1994. Back then I had to compile and install my own server just so I could have a website. I worked in the computer labs on the Norwestern campus so I had accounts on every computer. So a little Sun workstation in a lab was my web home for several years (http://crow.acns.nwu.edu:8080/). Don't bother looking for it. It's been gone for a long time.

The thing that made me so excited about the web was this program that had just come out on the Mac (my trusty Quadra 840 AV at the time), NCSA Mosaic. It was a web browser and YOU COULD PUT PICTURES IN THE PAGES! The year before I saw a web program called MacWWW but it was just pages and pages of unformatted text. You could click on something that was underlined and it would take you somewhere else. I couldn't see that it was any better than our Gopher server. But then the pictures came and everything was different. In fact I got my first internship in Hollywood because of my web site, but that's a story for another day.

I used to use BBEdit Lite to write my webpages. It was all by hand but there weren't that many tags to learn. And it wasn't all that different from using a word processor like WordStar for DOS--which I used to write all my papers in high school. Instead of putting a ^U on either side of text that I wanted to underline. I would just use the <u> and the </u>. Nothing too scary.

Now I find 10 years later that we've come around to those days of simple tags again. Simple tags. Focus on meaningful content. Let the CSS handle the layout of the page. The idea is to separate the content from the layout so that the content can easily be displayed on lots of different output devices. The computer screen is the obvious one, but more increasingly: web-enabled TVs, PDAs, and cell phones. Not to mention allowing visually handicapped people access to this wonderful internet with programs like screen readers. Imagine a screen reader program trying to make it through the mess of tables of HTML4? Yuck.

The wonderful thing about XHTML is that it has standardized some of the non-standard tags, and there are a whole list of tags that should no longer be used. It's great. Simple. The thing that takes all the time now is messing around with CSS trying to get your layout right. But even that's not too difficult one you've learned how it works.

I'm back to coding web pages (mostly) by hand with BBEdit. The full version has a great set of markup tools to handle all your HTML needs. It'll handle the CSS for you too, but I've been using a program called CSSEdit to do that. Mostly because it has a bunch of categorized fields to fill in. It's easier while I'm still learning CSS to say, "Ok, now I need to work on the font. Go to the font tab, fill out the appropriate fields. Now let's change the background. Go to the background tab. Change the color." Instead of trying to remember all the selectors, just type in the fields.

I use iBlog to make my weblog entries and deal with generating all the various archive pages and whatnot. It makes a series of static webpages and uses a bit of javascript trickery to generate a few things on the fly. It means I can have a weblog on my $3/month server that doesn't allow server-side scripting at that price. Not the most flexible program, but it works well and it's easy. One of these days I'll setup PHP on one of my computers and figure out that whole thing. (That's one of the nice things for us geeks about OS X, it's a Unix operating system.) And then maybe I'll move up to a $5/month or -shudder- $7/month server and MoveableType or something like that. But not today.

For now I'll just keep messing around with my CSS. And someday soon, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you'll see a new Monsters from the Id website in all its XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS glory.

Posted by Jon at 8:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

This is a test post of the TV & Movies section. This is just a test. If this had been a real post, the title would be followed by instructions on which visual entertainment you would be required to enjoy. This is only a test.

Posted by Jon at 12:54 PM | Permalink

In my last post I talked a little bit about some of my thoughts on zombie movies. It brought back a lot of memories of the year that my friends and I spent putting the few issues of Right Turn Clyde that ever saw the light of day (or the glow of a monitor). Those were fun times figuring out what would be the next snarky comment about Hollywood. I might have put together the website but MNKE was the driving force behind that effort. And without the four of us who wrote most of the articles and tracked down the photos and got the interviews, I don't think it can exist again. At least not like it did.

But it doesn't mean that I can't write my reviews of TV and movies. It's just not as easy to be satirical without hiding behind the persona of Shorty LaBrea. So I'm starting up this Movies & TV section so that I can post my thoughts and reviews. And since I first started with that post about running zombies and I resolved to watch some more recent movies, why don't a start with the movie I watched last night:

28 Days Later. Directed by Danny Boyle.

This is the zombie movie with a twist. Animal rights activists unwittingly unleash infected chimps on the population at large spreading a disease called Rage. This genetically engineered virus is transmitted by blood and saliva and is so contagious that a single drop in the mouth, eye, or an open cut will turn a person in about 30 seconds into a blood-thirsty insane maniac who will run around tearing any living thing it finds to shreds. Our protagonist, Jim, wakes up 28 days after the start of the outbreak from a coma to a nearly deserted London, and tries to figure out how to survive.

This movie was damn scary. Thankfully Danny Boyle didn't fill it with the "gotcha" surprises that you often find in cheap horror films. You know when things suddenly jump out at you complete with a huge music sting. The first time it's just the cat that was startled in the dark room but the next time it's the killer. Those moments are cheap thrills that always make me jump out of my skin but then it's over. Danny did a great job of sustaining the "what's going to happen next" tension for long periods of time and I often found myself with a stranglehold on the remote.

The difference with this movie is that these are not traditional zombies. These are not the reanimated corpses of dead single-minded bent on eating the flesh of the living. These are people driven mad by a disease. They still want to eat people but since they are not already dead, they can die of "natural" causes. The proper way to dispatch a zombie according to the mythology that has built up in films is to either burn them up, dissolve them in acid, or destroy their head. Anything less and they'll keep coming after you. Danny's Rage-zombies are still people. There's nothing supernatural about them. They are not the undead. If you fill them with enough bullets, they'll die. Since the disease seems to effect them to the point that they are unable to comprehend that they can walk into the nearest 7-11 for six pack and a bag of chips, they eventually starve to death.

Over the years zombie movies have been used as a method of social commentary. Dan O'Bannon looked at disenfranchised youth railing against the "let's just nuke the commies" attitude of the Reagen era in Return of the Living Dead. Probably most famously, George Romero used zombies wandering around in a mall in Dawn of the Dead to comment on America's mindless consumerism. Danny Boyle uses 28 Days Later to answer the question, What makes us human? When watching this movie it is important to think about who has truly lost their soul: the infected people who no longer have the free will to do anything but feast the rest of man, or the soldiers who exploit their strength with guns and a fortified base to get whatever they want.

Mr. Boyle's apocalyptic tale brought to mind a few of of other great science fiction movies: The excellent Australian film, The Quiet Earth, where a man wakes up one day to find that he is the only human alive and he must deal with the loneliness. And the Charlton Heston's 1971 classic, The Omega Man. Instead of informing the world of the contents of Soylent Green or leading the humans in an uprising against their ape masters, this time Chuck as the sole survivor of humanity has to fight off an army of plague-created vampires. (The original novel is I Am Legend, and has spawned a few movie versions including a great Italian one from 1964 starring Vincent Price called The Last Man On Earth.) And who could forget the valley girls and Commander Chakotay menaced by comet-produced zombies in Night of the Comet.

All in all, 28 Days Later is a exciting, thought-provoking movie to watch. The DVD has three alternate endings which are interesting, if only to find out, what if...

Posted by Jon at 12:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I seem to be having a little trouble with my program. Grrr.

Posted by Jon at 12:42 PM | Permalink

I was over at Wil Wheaton's site reading about his twisted views on life. He recently went to see Dawn of the Dead and posed the question, "When did zombies start to run?"

Well that just so happens to be something I know a little bit about. Now I definitely haven't seen every movie on the planet and especially in the last year, there are quite a few films I haven't yet watched, but I do like my B horror films. (I know what you're thinking, "How can I make movies and not watch them?" I can't explain it. I eventually do. It just sometimes takes a while.)

I have yet to go see this new version of Dawn of the Dead. It looks pretty fun. Unfortunately it's going to have a hard time competing with the original--at least in my book. I still remember the first time I saw George Romero's second zombie movie. I was in junior high spending the night at my friend Josh Marcus' house. It scared the crap out of me but I loved it. I thought the idea of living in a mall with a small group of friends was so cool. Crawling around the ventilation ducts. Making false walls. Playing with anything you wanted. It seemed like a great adventure.

Several people posted in Wil's Comments that 28 Days Later had running zombies. Here's where I'm going to have to step up and admit that I haven't watched that one yet either. I know, I know. Well now I'm resolved to do it--I'm going to pick up the DVD today, watch it tonight, and I might catch a matinee of DotD tomorrow.

Apart from all that, I do know that the punk rock classic Return of the Living Dead has a few "rushing" zombies. They can pick up the pace a bit over a short distance. But overall they're still mostly the mindless, shambling, brain-eating undead.

The first true "running" zombies appear in the sequel, Return of the Living Dead Part 2. Now this isn't a strict sequel like "the continuing adventures of the poor saps that made all through the night of horror and were finally able to see the sunrise of a new day." And it isn't a sequel like Evil Dead II--"Here's the movie I would have made the first time if I had the money." It's more of a "remember how funny those two guys who got sick and slowly turned into zombies were in the first one? Let's get those actors back and have them do the same thing only as different characters. And oh yeah, more zombies."

RotLD2 has lots and lots of zombies running through a Levittown-like suburbia. And I do mean running. It struck me the first time I saw it. It was definitely unusual because the typical zombie moans a lot and looks like it's just as likely to fall on its face as take another step--but it doesn't stop, it'll crawl after you if it has to, and that's what's so scary. The more I thought about the running zombies in Part 2, the more I realized they were even scarier. You still have the mindless persistence. They're still going to do everything they can to get you. But now you can't outpace them with a light jog. You better be ready to sprint because they sure are.

Return of the Living Dead is one my all-time favorite movies. Several years ago, before I bought a DVD player, I always said I was holding out for The Warriors and RotLD to get released. Of course I didn't end up waiting THAT long. But if I was going to recommend one zombie movie to watch it would be that one. You've got the punk rock kids hanging out in the cemetery, the split dogs coming back to life in the medical supply company, "More brains" from gooey guy with no skin, "Send more paramedics" from the midget zombie, all kinds of great stuff. It's a classic.

Part 2 is worth seeing just to see where the running started, but other then that it's not all that good. Part 3 however, is pretty awesome. It's kind of a Romeo and Juliet where he's alive and she's dead. "Honey, I love you so much- DEAR GOD! Are you eating that man's brain! That is DISGUSTING! Oh, but I do so love you." She loves him too, and she hates the fact that she wants to eat brains, but the temptation is so strong that it can be hard to resist. So of course she resorts to doing what any sane, still-in-love-with-your-boyfriend zombie would do: stick lots of pointy things into her flesh. The pain temporarily relieves the brain lust. We've all seen punks with the safety pins and metal studs sticking out of their jackets. (Some of us might have even had own jackets like that.) She looks the same only all the bits of metal are directly in her skin. Frankly it's cool... and maybe a little hot... ok, I must stop.

Posted by Jon at 3:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I am.

For those of you who aren't in Southern California and haven't been watching the weather on this coast, it has been gorgeous. The terrible 90� heat of a couple weeks ago has been replaced by wonderful breezy days in the low 70s. So today I decided to grab a little lunch, drive over to Griffith Park and enjoy the sunshine with a good book. (Actually this isn't that wacky of a decision for me. I do it quite a bit when I'm not working.)

I found a nice spot to park near the Mineral Wells picnic area, rolled down all the windows in my car, opened up the sun roof and decided to listen to a little quiet music with my lunch and book. I shut off my car but clicked the key forward to leave the stereo on. After listening to a couple of Black Keys singles I picked up at Amoeba several weeks ago, and finishing off my lunch, I decided to hunt for the perfect soundtrack to a wonderful day on my iPod. I have my iPod hooked into my car stereo with one of those cassette tape adapters. Hardly the latest example of high fidelity, but it works. (Though I do keep meaning to stop by Al & Ed's Autosound to talk to them about how we can set this thing up properly.)

I decided on The Beatles' White Album, and with the gentle sounds of "Dear Prudence" gliding from my car's speakers, I sat back to enjoy my book.

I must have really gotten into it because time slipped by and suddenly I realized that the music was long over. I wasn't quite sure how long I had been sitting there in my car enjoying the sun and breeze and the book but I knew it was probably time to head home. And that's when I discovered that my car wouldn't start.

Brilliant.

In my car from the "off" position on the ignition, one click forward with the key turns on the radio. Two clicks forward adds the air and power to the windows. Going beyond the second click will start the car. I realized that I must have shut off the car FIRST and THEN decided to put the windows down. So I put the key in the second position to do that and must not have moved it from there. So I sat in my car for two hours or so with not only the radio pulling power from the battery, but also the A/C. (I had the fan on so low that I didn't even notice it was running with all the breezes blowing through my car.)

Did I mention that I'm a genius?

Now of course this was hardly the end of the world. I was in a beautiful location with the sun shining, a cool breeze blowing and a good book to read. And since I'm currently unemployed, it's not like there was some place I absolutely had to be. So I calmly pulled out my AAA card and called them from my cell phone. Then I picked up my book and continued reading until the tow truck arrived.

The driver took one look at my car with all its windows open and the book in my hands and said, "Lost track of time, huh?" It was a little embarrassing. But the situation was quickly remedied and we were both on our way.

Next time I should just use the ear buds.

Posted by Jon at 4:42 PM | Permalink

A new officially unofficial expansion has been released for Neverwinter Nights. It's called the Community Expansion Pack (CEP). Several brave souls have gone through the new NWN content created by fans and posted to the Neverwinter Vault. They've categorized, standardized, and compiled the best of the best into one large pack. It includes everything like 440 new monsters, 1400 new placeable objects, 17 new weapons, 121 new NPC portraits, and a whole lot more.

The idea behind this expansion is that instead of players having to download the thousands of different hakpacks and overrides available from the Vault--where some modules use one combination of files and other modules use another, but everything has overlaps and some things cause conflicts--players can download this one expansion and get everything they need. The key to this though is that module builders need to change their modules to support this new expansion and new modules need to be built that use it. Unfortunately simply downloading the CEP really won't get you anything initially. And extra unfortunate is that Macintosh and Linux players of NWN won't even be able to see what's included in the CEP until modules are built that support it. (Or until OpenKnights gets their tools a little more advanced.)

Even with these drawbacks the Community Expansion Pack offers a bright future with new content for a great game.

The Windows EXE installer can be downloaded here.
The manual install RAR file can be downloaded here.
The manual install ZIP file can be downloaded here.

Posted by Jon at 11:33 AM | Permalink

According to this article, the average price of a gallon of gas nationwide has reached a record high. Experts are predicting it to go higher in the next two months during the "run-up to the summer driving season". Still no mention of peak oil though.

Posted by Jon at 9:45 AM | Permalink

Did you know that these cool new LCD and Plasma TVs add a delay into the video signal? Well, they do. I'm no expert but I would imagine it has something to do with converting the analog video signal to a pixel-based digital display.

If you take the cable out of your wall or a feed from your satellite dish and plug it straight into the plasma TV, and also hook up the sound to play through the TV speakers, you won't have any problem. The flat panel TV will delay the audio and video signal the same amount and everything will stay in sync.

The problem occurs when you feed the video to your plasma or LCD TV and the audio to a separate receiver and speaker system. Because of this analog to digital conversion delay that happens in the video (which by the way does not happen on standard CRT televisions), the sound will appear to happen just slightly before the visual event. Try watching a live concert and you'll really notice it.

Another way to see it is to send the same video signal--cable, satellite, DVD, or VHS--to a flat panel TV and to a CRT TV at the same time. Look for hard cuts from one shot to the next. The cut will happen a fraction of a second earlier on the CRT than on the panel.

I spent some time today at my friend's house tweaking his new home theater that I've previously mentioned. His new 50" Sony LCD Projection TV delays the video signal just like all flat panels do. Luckily his Denon receiver has a function where it will delay the audio signal on all channels to compensate for this. After a lot of testing with a Stevie Ray Vaughn concert DVD, we found that a 5 ms delay in the audio put everything in perfect sync.

Hopefully this information will help you make your home theater experience even better.

Posted by Jon at 12:46 AM | Permalink

Tony K has developed a great add-on to Neverwinter Nights which improves the AI of the game. In its default setting, the new AI will make your henchmen (the computer-controlled people who fight with you) much smarter. There are many additional options in this add-on including making the monsters you encounter smarter.

Here's what Tony K himself says about the Henchman Inventory and Battle AI:

This highly configurable modification of NWN improves the intelligence of friends and foes, both inside and outside battle. Since its original release in July 2002, it has been tested by hundreds of people in the BioWare community. The mod works with or without the expansions. You can use it to play the Official, SoU, and HotU campaigns, as well as compatible fan-made modules. Prominent features are: 1) Improved battle tactics for all NPCs, especially with regard to weapon switching and spell casting; 2) Random roaming capability for monsters in the module; 3) Access to the inventory of familiars and animal companions; 4) Improved yet still legal feats and spell selection for the six standard OC henchmen; 5) More useful behavior (buffing, item-gathering) for henchmen outside battle. Most features can be turned on or off during installation.

New for v1.02: Use improved compression in Inno Setup to decrease exe install size under 1 MB. Associate challege rating adjust better to high levels. Fix out of ammo problem with henchmen. Improved omnivore and herbivore code for fleeing. Add support for Sea Hag. Cowardly flag is better supported for NPCs. New option allows for associates not to go into stealth when the PC does. Search mode options removed since associates already go into stealth when PC does. Most spell script overrides have been removed. Check readme for details.

I help out the effort by putting together the Macintosh installer. The new v1.02 can be downloaded from here. For you Windows people, you should get your version here.

Posted by Jon at 6:00 PM | Permalink

Neverwinter Nights is an amazing fantasy computer game that comes as close to reproducing traditional pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons as is probably possible. The original game has a large single-player adventure and there are two official expansions available (Shadows of Undrentide, and Hordes of the Underdark) which add new content and options, and each also has a new adventure. For those of you who like to play RPG computer games by yourself this is pretty great.

There are several features however which make this game even better.

First, you can make your own adventures. Just like the original D&D. There are literally thousands available for download from Neverwinter Vault.

Second, it supports multiplayer. So not only can you play a cool version of say "Slave Pits of the Undercity" or "Keep on the Borderlands" but you can also get a bunch of friends together and go through these modules together. And just like Dungeons & Dragons, someone can be the Dungeon Master (DM). There's a client program that allows you to control things behind the scenes so that you can make the adventure even better for your friends.

Finally, it is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. So anyone on almost any platform can play together. The only downside for Linux and Mac people is that the toolset that allows you to make your own adventures was not ported to those platforms. However there are many intrepid individuals in an organization called OpenKnights who are busy writing software to address this problem. You might check out NeverEdit.

Posted by Jon at 5:48 PM | Permalink

This isn't strictly an "Audio" entry. In fact it's more of a "Video" entry, but I since those two things are often tied together I thought I would include it here as opposed to "Musings" or "Star Trek" or something.

I spent several hours last night and most of this morning helping my friend set up a new home theater in his house. It is awesome. He bought a 50" Sony LCD Projection TV and a new Denon Receiver and they're both fantastic pieces of equipment.

The Denon Receiver is so new that many stores don't carry it yet. It's 120W per channel. Something around 3 audio inputs and 5 video inputs. It has 3 component video inputs which is perfect for a situation with a DVD player, an HD decoder, and an Xbox or other game system. Plus is has video conversion so you can still attach composite or S-Video signals to the receiver and it'll convert them up to component and send that signal to your TV. It does a ton of other great things. I suggest you stop by your local home theater store and check one out.

When we were looking at all the different gear options for his home, we looked a various speakers too. Eventually he decided not to get anything just yet. He's just relying on a pair of full size speakers that he's used on his previous stereo for many years. They sound nice and there's no rush. You might think it strange that a couple of guys who do sound for a living didn't immediately buy speakers but there are so many factors to consider. He and I can both easily listen to many different speakers and find a nice sounding set, but now that the largest surround setup supports 8 speakers (7.1), you can easily triple the cost of a home theater system by buying those speakers at the same time. Plus my friend is in this new house. He's very concerned about getting the exact right set of speakers. Size and color are a big consideration in this. Anyway, the point is, he was very happy to get a huge TV and an amazing receiver and spend a little more time researching the speaker situation.

The TV is phenomenal too. That 50" screen is enormous. Prior to this my friend was watching TV on a 27" set. I measured the picture on his new TV. Even when the image is set to Normal 4:3 mode, it's still 41". And then of course when you're looking at a DVD in 16:9 it's just so big.

The key to a great looking TV though (and I can't stress this enough) is properly calibrating the TV. I am completely serious. I know that not everyone can afford to go plop down three grand on a new widescreen television. But even with a modest one you might have in your home right now, you can make it look pretty great. You need to have a DVD player attached to the TV set. And you need to buy a copy of the Avia Guide to Home Theater on DVD. This is the critical part. I've been calibrating monitors for several years now using this DVD. It's fantastic. Normally I keep it at work to make sure our video monitors are up to spec, (and remember I work on Hollywood movies for a living) but I went and got it to set up my friend's new TV.

There's a whole presentation on the DVD where a couple of dorky guys talk you through every single nuance of a home theater. Skip it. Unless you're interested. Maybe you don't know anything about a home theater and want to create one. Then it's worthwhile. But if you're looking to calibrate your TV, just hit the "Menu" button on you DVD remote. Selected the Advanced menu, and from there go to basic video calibration. They will talk you through all the steps necessary to get good looking pictures on your television. It's really easy and it only takes about 10 minutes the first time you do it.

Once you've calibrated the video input that your DVD player is attached to on your TV, you'll need to figure out what's going on with the other inputs. Some older TVs only have one setup. You configure the Picture, Brightness, Color, Tint and Sharpness settings once and they hold for every single input (RF antenna or cable, Video 1, Video 2, etc.) You can check this by hitting the "Input" or "TV/Video" button on your remote to change to another input. Now go back into your TV setup menu and see if the new settings you made for the DVD still hold. If they don't (and this will probably be the case on most new TVs) you'll have to calibrate the video for every single input that you use on the TV. If you have multiple video inputs, you can hook the DVD player up to each one in turn and rerun the calibration DVD. You won't be able to do this for the antenna or cable input. Your best bet is to make a note of the settings from the original DVD calibration and use the same settings for the cable. It'll be pretty darn close to what it needs to be.

So there you go. Enjoy your "new" television.

Posted by Jon at 10:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

I had a conversation with my mother today about buying my own house. (Or more probably my own condo.) This isn't exactly a new conversation, in fact we've been having it more or less regularly for the last year now. It's a bit of a scary proposition, especially here in Los Angeles. Property values are very high--that's why I say it's more likely that my first purchase would be a condo. I can still live in the Los Angeles area are actually buy a condo for something around the $200,000 to $300,000 range. And by "the Los Angeles area" I mean LA proper, Hollywood, near Valley areas like Burbank, Glendale, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks. Something on the westside might be nice. Closer to the beach means cooler weather. Of course if often means higher prices too. I have no desire to go live out in the high desert, Palmdale or some such place, just so that I can own a cheap home. And an actual house in the areas I'm talking about is going to start at half-a-million for a piece of junk.

So it probably would be a condo or a town house. Still scary though.

It's all a moot point right now since I'm not working. That's the other scary part about home ownership. There's something about the notion that you can just walk away from a rental property that's a little more comforting when you don't have a steady income.

I love my career choice and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but it doesn't guarantee me a regular paycheck 50 weeks out of the year. Doing post-production sound for films is a very fun and a pretty geeky technical job. You get the satisfaction of knowing that you had a direct hand in presenting that final product that people shell out their $10 to see in a movie theater. You're also completely anonymous. When I walk down the street nobody comes up to me says "Oh my god it's YOU!"

I get paid pretty decently but if I don't have a movie to work on, I don't collect a check. Typically I'll have a nice run of a year or two with next to no time off. And then I might not have another job for 3 to 5 months. That just the way it goes, and those of us who do this for a living (at least the smart ones) plan for the fact that we'll have time off. If you take home $3000 a month after taxes when you're working, you can't turn around and spend $3000 a month. You just can't. You have to plan on only spending $1500 or $2000. Otherwise you'll never make it through the downtime.

Anyway it's just the way my life works and it's a little different from someone who puts on a suit and tie and sits in a cubicle all day.

So let's review: fun job, not a guaranteed income, houses very expensive.

I'm not sure where I was going with this whole thing. I guess I am just saying that I've been thinking about the future a lot. It would be nice to have a place to call my own. Not call it my own because I'm throwing money at someone to let me be there, but actually mine. Maybe it's just one of those things that happens when you enter into your third decade.

Posted by Jon at 3:42 PM | Permalink

Com_Bat_Rac_Coon posted a link to the Citizens Committee On Oil Peak And Decline statement that is "designed to be published in national and local newspapers, news magazines, the United Nations, NGO newsletters, and any other organ of public discussion". It would be good for everyone to read the statement and sign it. Peak Oil is going to be the single most important political, social and economic factor in the nation's and world's development in the next 50 years.

Posted by Jon at 4:14 PM | Permalink

I was driving around looking for lunch--as I often do in the 12pm - 1pm timeframe--listening to Steve Jones' radio show on Clear Channel's take on indie radio here in Los Angeles, 103.1 FM, when Jonesy said that J.J. Jackson had died of a heart attack last night. It was like someone hit me with a hammer.

J.J. for those you of who don't know was one of the original MTV VJs. He, Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and Nina Blackwood started it all off in 1981.

I still remember that day in 1983 when we first had cable television installed in our house in Farmington Hills, MI. Tom Mitchell, my neighbor and sometimes babysitter, came in when the installers finished and said, "You have to check this out." He turned on MTV and changed my life. I was only in 3rd grade. Tom was in high school. I looked up to him.

I proceeded to watch MTV non-stop for years. Back then they only showed videos. No gameshows. No spring break beach parties. Just lots and lots of videos. Now at the tender age of 9, I was more interested in catching the latest Weird Al Yankovic video than Duran Duran's next big hit. But since there wasn't a heavy rotation playlist in place at the time, I got to see a lot of different videos by a lot of different artists while waiting for the next showing of "Eat It" or "I Lost On Jeopardy".

I spent a lot of time with J.J. and Martha and Nina and all the rest. They were my friends who showed me what was cool and fun. They told me about bands that I'd never heard of like J. Geils, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Joan Jett, David Bowie, Eurythmics, Toto and Queen. It was because of J.J. and the others that I went down to Perry's Drug Store with my allowance that I'd saved up and bought my first cassette tape, the Ghostbusters soundtrack. Hey, I was 9! Ray Parker, Jr. was awesome.

The point is that J.J. Jackson introduced me to this amazing world of music. He exposed me to all kinds songs and artists that my parents didn't listen to at home. (Though it's hard to go wrong with The Beatles and Motown.) He helped me learn to appreciate a much wider range of music than was played on the local Top 40 radio station.

Flash forward nearly 20 years and I'm living in Los Angeles. Imagine my surprise when I turn on the radio one Sunday evening and there's Triple-J hosting "The 7th Day" on KLOS. It's a show that plays albums in their entirety. J.J. would introduce each album with an amazingly insightful look at the band, the impact of the album, and society at the time. He would always take a break at the point when you would have to flip over the original vinyl and talk some more about album. His presentation of The Who's Tommy was one of the best pieces of radio I've ever heard.

So long J.J. You will be missed.

NOTE: I was looking for some web links to throw into this piece and I was glad to see that KLOS had a little piece on remembering J.J. Jackson. But I was sorely disappointed to see that MTV didn't have a single thing to say about the loss.

UPDATE: It seems MTV just had to get the latest Courtney Love hijinks out before talking about J.J.

Posted by Jon at 2:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I've mentioned before my trip to Saginaw for my cousin's wedding. It was great to see a lot my relatives from my dad's side of the family. I hadn't seen some of them in 10 years or more. A big problem with the wedding is that my cousin is 21 and I'm 30. So of course it was open field day on Jon time.

"Haven't you met a nice girl yet?"

"When are we going to see you up there?"

"I think it's about time you settled down and gave your grandmother some grandkids."

And now I just got an email with some of the details of my uncle's wedding. (My dad's brother) So it looks as though I get to go through it all again in a little over two months.

Oh joy.

Other news I received this morning is that my friends are having a baby! (Actually I already knew they were having a baby, I just got an email update with a link to the ultrasound picture. Of course this too makes me think. Do I want to be that guy? You know, that guy who sends out ultrasound pictures? It wasn't all that long ago that I was going to Vegas for three day drinking and gambling benders. Of course I haven't had a drink in over three years. So these days trips to Las Vegas are slightly more sedate. But still... do I want to be that guy? Well I think it's about time I break out of this parenthetical aside.)

Actually, it's probably time for me to wrap up this entry. But still...

Posted by Jon at 9:05 AM | Permalink

Posted by Jon at 8:35 AM | Permalink

Wil has a new show, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! Reminds me of some of the things talked about in an old zine I worked on. Of course the new show sounds like it's going to feature robot monkeys. As we all know monkeys and robots don't usually get along, sometimes they just bicker, but often it results in all-out fighting.

Posted by Jon at 8:59 PM | Permalink

Posted by Jon at 6:56 PM | Permalink

There have been many ships called Enterprise over the years. The opening credit sequence to "Star Trek: Enterprise" shows a few of them including the 19th century British warship H.M.S. Enterprize and the Space Shuttle test vehicle Enterprise.

In the Star Trek universe, we've been introduced to seven different starships.

Enterprise NX-01

The first Warp 5 ship is introduced in the TV show, "Star Trek: Enterprise." In 2151, Captain Jonathan Archer, played by Scott Bakula, takes command of this ship.

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701

This is the classic ship of the original TV series. It is commanded by Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, during his original 5 year mission from 2263 to 2269. Its previous captain, Christopher Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter, was introduced in the episode "The Menagerie".

After an extensive refit completed in 2271, the Enterprise takes on the entity known as V'ger in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

In 2285, during a battle with the Klingons, the Enterprise is destroyed. ("Star Trek III: The Search for Spock")

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-A

The new ship commanded by Captain James T. Kirk is introduced in 2287 in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier."

It is decommissioned after the Khitomer Conference of 2293. ("Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country")

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-B

The Enterprise-B is commisioned in 2295 by Captain John Harriman, played by Alan Ruck. James Kirk is present during the ceremony but is lost in a space anomoly, as seen in the "Star Trek Generations."

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-C

Commanded by Captain Rachel Garrett, played by Tricia O'Neil, this ship is tragically destroyed in 2344 while trying to save a Klingon outpost from an attack by Romulan Warbirds. The fate of the Enterprise-C is shown in the excellent episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" from the third season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D

The Enterprise-D is the ship seen in the TV series, "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, is in command of the Enterprise-D from 2363 to 2371.

In 2371 the ship is destroyed by Klingons in "Star Trek Generations."

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-E

This is the ship first seen in 2373 in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact." Jean-Luc Picard is still her captain. He continues to command the ship in the "Star Trek Insurrection" and "Star Trek Nemesis."

Posted by Jon at 11:55 AM | Permalink

A lot of sound recording for film and television is moving to the Deva II hard disk recorder. They've been around for several years but if the recent conversations I've had with production mixers are any indication, we fear change.

Actually I think post-production sound tends to embrace new technologies, but lets face it when you're on the set or on location with a production, you've got one chance to get that recording right. So I don't blame mixers for being a bit hesitant to jump on the non-linear digital bandwagon.

Here's the problem:

The Deva II mirrors to a DVD-RAM disk as it records to a hard drive. Those DVD-RAM disks become the sound rolls for the production. There are two sizes of DVD-RAM disks--2.6 GB per side and 4.7 GB per side. The older 2.6 GB drives are not compatible with 4.7 GB disks.

The Deva II formats in MS-DOS FAT16 format, but if you set it to record Sound Designer II (SD2) files, these are Macintosh files with resource forks. In post-production, if you use a SCSI DVD-RAM drive, there is software that can be installed in OS 9 to give you proper access to the SD2 files. No problem.

Unfortunately SCSI DVD-RAM drives are no longer made and have not been made for about a year or so. There is a very limited supply of rental SCSI DVD-RAM drives in Los Angeles. Only Firewire DVD-RAM drives are available for purchase now. Plus according to Apple, OS 9 has been dead for about a year and half. All new Macintoshes only boot into OS X.

Thankfully OS X comes with drivers for DVD-RAM drives built-in. Plus it supports the MSDOS FAT16 format. So if you buy a Firewire DVD-RAM drive, plug it into your OS X-based Macintosh, and insert a DVD-RAM disk from a Deva II, it will pop up on your desktop. No additional software needed.

There is a problem with this. Apple's implementation of the MSDOS FAT16 filesystem under OS X does not properly deal with resource forks. They get stripped out of the file and appear under another directory as separate files. For something like SD2 files, this means that you lose your source timecode information which is critical for doing an auto-assembly of you production dialogue track.

The easiest solution is to record all the production sound on the Deva II in the Broadcast Wave (BWF) format. This is a flat file with no resource fork so there is no problem with losing timecode. Plus Digidesign Pro Tools, the digital audio workstation that most of us in the post-production sound industry use, fully supports the BWF format.

This solution is not always available. Often you get sound rolls from the production after shooting has wrapped and there was no conversation with the production mixer. It might be in SD2 format and there's nothing you can do to change it at that point.

I've developed an AppleScript that makes use of two other programs--ToggleFork and Resploder--to fix this problem. Take your DVD-RAM disk. Insert it into your Firewire DVD-RAM drive under OS X. Copy the entire disk (including all folders) over to your working hard drive (it can be SCSI, Firewire, internal, it doesn't matter). Run my "Deva SD2 Fix" AppleScript and point to the folder that contains the Deva sound files when you are prompted. That's it. It's pretty simple and only take a minute or so to fix an entire sound roll.

Let me know if you have any problems with this.

Download Deva SD2 Fix.
Download ToggleFork from me.
Download Resploder from me.

NOTE: I didn't write ToggleFork or Resploder. Other people did. Also, Apple released OS X 10.3.3 yesterday. It's possible that MSDOS FAT16 resource fork bug was fixed in this release. I've been in touch with Apple trying to get this fixed for many months now. I haven't had a chance to try out the new OS software and see if it now works.

Posted by Jon at 1:29 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

I've recently seen several ads of TV supporting G.W. for prez. In fact G.W. himself says something like "Approved by George W. Bush" at the end of all of them.

One in particular caught my attention because he talked about how Kerry wanted to raise taxes by some huge amount, that he wanted to reduce the effectiveness of the Patriot Act against terrorists, and he wanted to wait for U.N. approval before going into Iraq.

I found that I was saying to myself, "Exactly. Kerry should be president." Do I like paying lots of taxes? Not particularly, but I don't believe in governing on a deficit either. The Patriot Act is scary. And oh gee, do you really think we should have waited for the entire world's support before we invaded another country?

It brought to mind a recent post about George Orwell that I read.

Posted by Jon at 12:21 PM | Permalink

This is a simple timeline for the Star Trek TV shows and movies to help new fans keep the events straight.

Star Trek: Enterprise -- 2151-2154
TV (2001-Present)

Star Trek: The Original Series -- 2263-2269
TV (1966-1969)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture -- 2271
Movie (1979)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan -- 2285
Movie (1982)

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock -- 2285
Movie (1984)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home -- 2286 (1986)
Movie (1986)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier -- 2287
Movie (1989)

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country -- 2293
Movie (1991)

Star Trek: The Next Generation -- 2363-2370
TV (1987-1994)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- 2369-2375
TV (1993-1999)

Star Trek VII: Generations -- 2371 (2295)
Movie (1994)

Star Trek: Voyager -- 2371-2378
TV (1995-2001)

Star Trek VIII: First Contact -- 2373 (2063)
Movie (1996)

Star Trek IX: Insurrection -- 2375
Movie (1998)

Star Trek X: Nemesis -- 2380
Movie (2002)

There are many different timelines available on the web, including this extremely detailed one that includes the animated series, the books, and the comics.

Posted by Jon at 10:31 PM | Permalink

About a month ago I came across a website that changed my outlook on life. Frankly it scared me. I haven't as yet completely figured out how this will change things for me in the long run, nor have I entirely come to grips with what this will mean for the future. However, I think it is critical that everyone out there is aware of this, because we as a society, as a nation, and as a species need to decide our fate.

"Peak Oil" is a term to describe the point at which the planet's oil reserves in relation to the cost of extraction hits the high point