Arbitrary Carbohydrates in 3D

I have a Reddit Arbitrary Day 2012 giftee and I can't find a simple wooden Chinese box in Chinatown. I thought it would be more fun to put my gifts in one. But I can't find one.
As it turns out, Atkins works. But it's dangerous. And all of the "avoid hyper-processed carbs" is the way to go.

I've been experimenting with NutriSystem. It's cheap. The food is OK. I just wish there were a way for me to tick a "no green peppers" box so that I could get stuff w/o green (or red) peppers. Plus I'm not a fan of shakes. But it's easy to order without shakes.
Jim Tierney on movies looking like videogames.

Stuff I needs

I'm here to complain.
So, after doing a lot of research on the sub-$1000 computers I've concluded that the best deal for us is a Mac Mini. Realize that at this point I'm prejudiced against Apples because of FCPX and thoughts that we're going to have to move over to Premiere.

But the Mini is the one computer in Apple's line which is actually fairly cheap for what you get. And, if we do move over to Premiere and move everything over to Windows (or not) we can load Windows onto the Mini.
So why am I complaining? I'm complaining because you can't buy the mid-line Mini with the upgraded processor from Amazon. You can only order the base models.

Apple charges a ridiculous amount for RAM. They want $100 for the 8GB upgrade when you can buy 8GB for less than $50.
 
So, OK. I'll upgrade the RAM myself. And another thing — I'm not going to spend a thousand dollars on one of the Apple fancy-pants displays. That's just silliness.
The Apple keyboard is about the same price from Apple or Amazon (or J&R). Honestly, I'd like to get a similar keyboard for my PC.
I gotta figure out what monitor to get. These Dell 24" monitors I've been getting are nice, but you'd figure there's something newer and cheaper out there, no? Maybe not, my dad had a terrible experience with a recent ViewSonic. Then again, some of the best gaming monitors out there are ViewSonic.

I can't say I'm a fan of "dynamic contrast ratio". But it's cheap. And it's not the same one my dad had.
 

Freefall I

Here's a page that lets you calculate time and distance in freefall. Which, as you can imagine, is awesome. Here's a question: if I want an acceleration of (say) 4.2G's, do I just multiply 32'/s/s by 4.2? Anybody know?
OK, I've read or listened to all the Solar Clipper books.
Crowdspring. I think we need a new logo for Pandora Machine. The one we have now is not all that print-friendly and we need something for DVD covers.

And Then Also

This is just why Steven Stills' squeezebox should not be in any science fiction film.

Greek Buff

So, wait, were the ancient Greeks just super buff like this?

I mean, those are some serious pecs and low-body-fat. Plus, how did they get such rockin' beards with smooth chests? That hair is totally presidential.

Two Thingies

Oh man, Watt White is awesome.

"Two Things" is a song which can only be expressed in heavy metal.

Screening

Today was our screening of Android Insurrection.
That might seem odd because the movie has already been released in some territories (although not North America yet). But today was the first day we could actually hold the screening for cast and crew and family.
We had it at the Gibson, in Williamsburg. It's always interesting to watch a screening. Usually at a screening I've had a few drinks — but I also have the wherewithal to watch the movie with a more disinterested eye than all the times I've watched the movie before. I have no idea why that is.

Although the screening is a bit washed-out at the Gibson, because we can't exactly blackout the whole room, it seemed fairly clear to me that this was the best movie we've made so far. This makes me happy to think. I mean I'm glad our movies are getting better and that, it seems, they are.
Plus it amuses me how high the headcount is at the end of our pictures. If it's not 100% then we're doing something wrong! ;-)

We Are What We Are

Dig it.

Jim Mickle is making a new movie, We Are What We Are. The movie is based on the Spanish language Somos lo que hay.
That Jim sure is a good director. I'm totally envious of his directing skills.

Baring Arms

So this is funny.

I saw this book cover for Alien Lockdown by Vijaya Schartz. The arm and the gun looked very familiar.

Oh yeah! Millennium Crisis.

The joke here is that Claire's arms are actually much more cut than the model used for the arm and torso.

Imaginary Opera Parts

I'm making a list of characters (who are doubled in some cases) in The Imaginary Opera.

1. Plissken
2. Chorus/Rachel/Priss/Zhora
3. Gaff/Batty
4. Day Tripper/Holden
5. Leon/Bunny
6. Bryant

You'll notice there's only one part for a woman. You'll also notice that "Bryant" is the odd-man out (as it were). His character is only in one scene and yet we can't even double him up. Maybe he'll just appear on a TV screen. There's some logic to that actually. 

The part of the Chorus/Rachel/Priss/Zhora is amusingly difficult. She has to sing, dance, and act. And she's a world of quick changes. Right now I dig the idea that instead of her (as the Chorus) supporting the other characters, the other characters support her. They bring her props and they help with her changes. That might be fun.

One thing we haven't established as well as we should is the notion of the palm-flower. I realize that might be "one too many things" but as a ticking clock in the palm of your hand it pleases Us greatly. 

I also do a crap job of killing both Batty and Zhora. I have to go re-work those parts of the script.

Then there's the issue of the music. There are actually fairly few songs in the piece. I think we have most of the themes or at least the rhythm guitar parts worked out. Or at least notionalized. I'll know more in a week. 

Lastly, wiring for guitar amps.

Your Things For Thursday

Lookitme! I'm Internet famous. Or at least I'm mentioned on the Project London blog. Who exactly buys television shows? We're low on paranormal crime dramas, aren't we? We need a Law & Order with vampires. That being said, there's advice on the Web with how to pitch shows. And with that, meh, I do not want to make a web series. Did I mention I need a golden owl? Probably a bigger one than what's linked there. I'm experimenting with a couple time-management programs. I'm using Manic Time on my PC.

The Prometheus runs on Windows. Just another prediction (like bubble space helmets) made by Chance Shirley's Interplanetary.

Polone on shooting sex scenes. Most of what his nameless actors say jibes with my experience. The difference to me though is that sex scenes have to be mapped out in detail or they don't work dramatically. They're sort of like fight scenes that way.

NS at JP

Saw Nova Social at Joe's Pub.
I've never seen a show at Joe's Pub before. It's one of New York City's nicer venues. The tables are set such that almost all the seats are unobstructed, and the sound is adequate. You can never get up to real rock volumes in rooms that small (maybe with line arrays?) but they do a very nice job of keeping the reflections from dinging around.
Nova Social has a great live lineup with a string trio.

Headgear Recording is a Brooklyn-based studio with a Trident 80.
Clubhouse is a Rhinebeck-based studio with a Neve 8058.
Ooh La La Records is a Brooklyn-based record label.

No THIS is the party video

Here is the Android Insurrection party video (Henry Steady approved version).


Android Insurrection Party Video from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo.
Click through for the high-def pure-love embiggenizer.

Android Insurrection Party Video

Our brilliant Mr. Steady edited a "party video" for Android Insurrection. He'd realized he hadn't made one for the party for Android Insurrection back in the day.

Android Insurrection party video from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo. Click through to embiggen.

Three Things for Monday

You like stuff that's deeply wack, right? How about Panda Cheese commercials? The tone of these is simply... Let's just say David Lynch is frightened by these commercials. Sheesh. Vertical videos are a menace. Of course, since people's bodies are typically vertical, it would make it much easier to shoot them if we went to vertical video altogether. Not so good for shooting landscapes but great for portraits. Hmm... I want a one-minute painting. Honestly, I think Tyrannosaurus Mouse needs a one-minute painting for an album cover.

Bigger but gamma

My dad wanted a bigger and clearer picture of the Venom approaching the Prometheus. One thing about these kinds of pictures on computers is that the gamma is a bit sunk so they come out a bit on the dark side. But this is basically the look.

Partay

We had our wrap party for The Prometheus Trap last night. Sangria. I drank some.
Also, Maduka Steady's wrap party video for Prometheus Trap! (Click through to embiggen the video.)


Prometheus Trap wrap party from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo.

Ghost Ship

I'm short. So of course Mission sends me point on a fire team to take a tanker in hyperspace. Two weeks and I'm out but even if I live and the ship doesn't crash I'll be out here for at least 10 more weeks just to turn the sails around to head home.
We load up the "one way" rockets. The target will never see us coming. We'll follow their radiation signature at 2.5g's right out of the dock off of L2 station. Even if we wanted to we couldn't turn our assault boat around -- there's no fuel or supplies for that.
One week out and we're within a hundred meters. They still don't see us because we're riding the wave behind their main thrusters — why would they even look there? Now that I see this ship we're overtaking I figure we'll open her up at the two main locks. The guess there is that we can blow open the locks and then figure a way to re-seal them and little harm will come to the ship structurally.
I give the signal to blue team. I watch them as they mirror our movements. The flechette rounds will be high - power to get in, but we immediately ratchet down to BBgun strength once we get inside. We take precautions -- the gravity may kick out, it may oscillate on and off -- nobody knows 'till we get in there.

Ship like that ought to have 30 or maybe 40 souls on board. It's about to get a lot less. But I don't want us to be responsible for actually flying the damned thing so we better save at least two pilots and a navigator.
3... 2... the outer hatches on the airlocks blow. Now Red and Blue teams are out of sight of one another and out of radio contact. We know that we're each furiously busting our way through the inner seals. Those will be the last of the regular explosives we'll use.
Blue 5 (likes to be called "Billy" even though his given name is "Jon") -- he's a big guy, meaty hands, but I know that he can seal us up with some plastic and get us a half-atmosphere pressure hull after we just destroyed the two massive pressure doors that were built for anything other than a commando attack.
Simi... Sami? What's her name? Anyway, she's in first and she lobs some flash bangs left and right and we're in. Ship is dark so we kick on our lights (making us perfect targets). But nobody is here.
Red team is waiting for us on the bridge (we pre-arranged that so we didn't get into a firefight with our own guys.) They haven't seen anybody either.
Welp. We'll do a slow sweep bow-to-keel. Still... nobody.

I Felt Ya

Nova Social is a groovy band with a very Depeche Mode/late 80's Romantic vibe.


The Delicate Cutters have a new homepage.

I need a spacer to put between my amp heads because the handles on top make them impossible to stack. I haven't found them yet but I did find custom wooden guitar-amp knobs.
Right now I'm thinking about getting a wooden picture frame and putting felt on it.

Testin' ovah here!

The Venom docks with the Prometheus.

Juanita Gillette

Our own Juanita Arias in a commercial for Gillette!

A Guitar That Speaks to You

What is the best electric guitar?
I've been complaining to anyone who will listen to me about how hard it is to play the blues. The blues can be deceivingly simple-sounding. For instance, this B.B. King song is simple. There's nothing about the song which is technically that difficult.

But "technical" is not what this music is about. Any 2nd-year student of the guitar could learn to hit all the notes B.B. King plays — and hit them in time — but getting even close to the mastery of his feel is another matter entirely.
Listen to those pianissimo phrases he slips at the end. Those are stunningly beautiful. He gets this sound inside the notes which are just jaw-droppingly sublime.
I read this article on Eric Clapton's going from Les Pauls to Stratocasters. Now the notion, to me, that one type is guitar is "better" than another is absurd. Plenty of awesome guitar players play one or the other. But the thing that Eric Clapton talks about in the article is how the Strat feels to him. It's not even the way it sounds necessarily, but the way the guitar feels in his hands.
Which is basically the direction I've been going in. I feel like I've finally found the instruments and the amplifiers that feel right to me. It took me 30 years, but I finally figured it out.
I still can't play the blues though. I can do Celtic rock — that's something I have a feel for. But the blues just don't work for me. Sigh. OK. Celtic rock. I got that...

Docking

The Venom docks with the Prometheus. I don't know if there's too much glare in this or not. We'll probably just track a lens flare on top and party with it.

We have the model finals and we're busy animating and rendering. This weekend I'm planning on shooting some footage of flashlights through haze at the shop to add on top.
I think we're going to want a POV of the Venom's airlock looking at the Prometheus airlock. I might animate some lights or something on the Prometheus to flicker as the Venom gets closer.
My critical distance is completely gone. I can't tell what's photoreal and what isn't. I have no idea what I'm seeing. One thing that seems to be true though is that the outside of the ship(s) look like the inside.

FADE

So now that I've actually seen Prometheus I think we should add a scene here and there to our mockbuster The Prometheus Trap.

INT. PROMETHEUS BRIDGE 


Haskin walks in, irritated. She clicks on a map display. 


WHOCK! 


Captain Cornell sits in his command chair. A COWBELL in his hand. He strikes it again. 


WHOCK WHOCK! 


Haskin glares at him. 


CORNELL 
This was the cowbell used on Mississippi Queen. 


WHOCK WHOCK! 


CORNELL 
You probably don't know who Corky Lang even is. 


HASKIN 
As it turns out, I am a robot. Get away from me.


CORNELL
While the rest of them dudes was a-gettin' their kicks, brother beg your pardon I was gettin' mine.


Haskin beats Cornell to death with a pornographic magazine.


FADE OUT

The YouTubes on Android Insurrection

Oh man, the funniest thing to me today is the YouTube comments on a version of the Android Insurrection trailer that's up. ClintIron from the UK (age "111") makes the following brilliant comment which I quote in its entirety:

calculators vs retards 

This made me laugh. Not just out loud. But wheezing, bouncing, I-don't-think-I-can-finish-dinner cackling-on-the-couch hysterical. I so wish I could have written that on the call sheets.

Although Mr54M comes in a close second with:

So basically this is a cheap, gay and stupid version of Terminator?

Yes, it's the cheap, gay, and stupid version of Terminator.

Nothing says "I'm really smart" like calling things gay and retarded.

Crossbows

Here's one: And another: And another:

Molly

There's something nice about riding on the really long voyages in the deep dark. One you pass through light speed between jump gates the boat smooths her ride and becomes quiet except for the CO2 scrubbers (which are the sound of life itself so you get used to it the way to get used to crickets at night).
It's true you can't go out in the sunlight. The outside is cold. There's no air.

But with a good crew, what we used to call "a good bunch of fellows", you can pass the time like a family on vacation in a cabin in the woods. We eat meals together. We play games, watch TV, listen to music.
There's a piano in the crew's "den". Along with the completely expected foosball table and "L"-shaped couch. When you're off of watch and a couple months in it can be relaxing to sit in a deep comfy chair and read while your 3rd mate studies for her engine exam at the desk in the corner.
"It's not boredom, it's relaxation" as my old Captain used to tell me. He would suck on a dry pipe, just to get the taste in his mouth. Any smoke on a interstellar boat like this and the alarms would go completely insane calling the entire crew out to either suppress the fire or abandon ship entirely. Sometimes both.
So the smokers would use little vaporizers instead.
The ship's cat, Molly, would stare out the window as though the comets were fluttering moths. Counting them as she licked her lips. Nobody closed their cabin doors all the way because Molly liked to patrol the ship, checking on each person at his watch, and to curl up at the feet of a radioman on break.

What are we doing?

I was discussing my business plan with my dad the other day and I said "I'm just going to do what my father does and no matter how impossible things might seem at any given time I'll just keep pounding away at it and hope things work out."
Which he found amusing.
So what are we doing right now?
+++++
We're in post-production on Prometheus Trap.
We're doing a bit of audio re-do post on Solar Vengeance (remember that movie? Never got North American distribution. We're trying to rectify that.)
We're in a sloppy pre-production on Dragon Girl. I hate being in pre-pro when we haven't locked a script. But we are. And we've done it before. We'll probably do it again. I'm sure we'll do it again.
We're in long pre-production on another alien-planet picture. We sorta have a script.

++++
Right now I am a "director" on 11 titles on IMDB. I'm a sound guy on 17 titles. That means that my sound department titles come up before my directing titles and I don't want that. I want my directing titles first. Just because. So that's my personal goal. Get 18 directing credits.
+++
A while back I got into a competition with Ato Essandoh with who had more IMDB credits. At the time I won handily with the sheer number of credits, but he'd been on some very high-profile movies so he won with the "star ranking". Now he wins both with credits and box-office gross. So I gotta do something about that. Ha!

OK I'll Bite

So nobody thinks the story in Prometheus is very good. But I keep hearing "It's visually spectacular" or some such nonsense. 

It just isn't. No.

Seriously. Can you name a single frame in that movie which stands out? 

The Engineers looked plastic. The inside of the Prometheus was meh. The outside of the Prometheus was a Firefly-class ship that escaped from Joss Whedon's universe but with a bland filter on it. The most visually interesting thing in the picture was the Engineer's ship which was from the original Alien.

You know what's visually interesting?

Yeah. I went there. This scene still blows my mind. Ironically, they had to re-create this set for Prometheus. And yet somehow the thing was completely uninspiring in Prometheus. 

There. Rant = off

Ooh. I took the weekend off. Almost.

I'm only going to go to work for a couple hours today. That's like taking the whole weekend off. Right now I'm waiting on a CG model and then I'm going to render and animate and render some more for about a month. 

You think Reddit is good for nothing but pictures of cats? A brilliant basic explanation of monetary theory is what you got here. Otherwiseyep gets you there.

Steve Burg did a bunch of concept art for Prometheus. Fun fact: the ship used to be called The Magellan.

Ha! In my family I'm one of the dumb ones. Actually, I think my IQ is low enough that it doesn't actively try to hurt my thinking, as it seems to do with higher-IQ people. This IQ of 117 was derived from my SAT's which I took in 1982. 

I signed up for Reddit Arbitrary Day. Because I thought it would make me feel good to give somebody a gift.
Here are the notes I have in my note sidebar.

212.461.4887 (the office phone number for Pandora Machine)
Red Priest (I thought this would be a cool name of a movie)
seconds - frankenheimer (Maduka suggested I see this movie, I can't believe I haven't)
pc2-5300 (333 MHz) (This is the RAM I have in my notebook)
&fmt=18 (this is for forcing YouTube videos to play)
sg classic p90 <$650 (my analysis of Craigslist prices says you should be able to get a Classic P90 SG for less than six hundred fifty bucks.)

Sorry for your Inconvenience Beer

In space no one can hear you snore. Yes, it's a review of Prometheus.

From the Internet.

A story from my eldest brother's youth: Life-Line by Heinlein.
Sci-fi projects on Kickstarter. OK. I'll bite. Why? How much does a stop-motion animated movie actually cost nowadays? Can you really spend more than a few thousand dollars on materials? Nowadays the once-difficult process of shooting and editing is transparently simple so... what are you spending your money on? Rather than starting a Kickstarter campaign, why don't you just make the movie? I mean it's a short subject for crying out loud.

Trouble with a Capital "T"

As a sign of how old I am, I'm reduced to Facebooking the children of my friends just to talk to my friends.
+++++
So I met my two closest childhood friends, Todd and Billy when we were 4 years old and our mothers decided to carpool us to nursery school together at the Presbyterian church in Metuchen.
That's just background.
++++
Anyway, at some point when we were c. 19 years old, Billy had a cassette tape of a band that was a progressive/Celtic/something band. And starting about 10 or 15 years ago I started asking Billy what the name of that band was.
He didn't remember.
I thought the band was called something like Horseheads or something and I started conflating the fact that Billy lived Upstate New York with maybe the band being from Upstate or maybe Billy just heard of them there or something (saw them there?)

+++
Well this has been haunting me for a very long time. And irritating me. And then back to haunting me. I mean, seriously, what is this band?
++
While looking up versions of "Locomotive Breath" on Spotify I found a band... and I realized that the band was this band I've been trying to find all this time.
+
The band is "Horslips" and the actual album (which I never knew 'cause it was on a cassette) is called "The Book of Invasions."

Love the One You're With

After having seen Prometheus I now have some spoiler-free advice for filmmaking.

1. No movie should start more than three times.
2. Do not make references to Stephen Stills or Stephen Stills' squeezebox ever.
3. If you find that any of your terrifying alien creatures look like Jar-Jar Binks, rethink your design.
4. When you have characters standing open-jawed and looking at some visual effects in wonder, you've lost the dramatic tension in the scene.
5. Do not keep replaying part of the Star Trek theme over and over. Please. For the love of all that's holy.

Langue Espanol

Did we even sell a Spanish Language version of this movie? I... I don't remember. This image was found here.

Oh So Close

Here is Ben Dansie's modification of the Dolf Veenvliet's Venom. 

The Venom, for Pandora Machine's Prometheus Trap.

What are We Doing?

We're noticing that there are a lot of download sites with Android Insurrection on them.
+++++
Here's a nice-looking shuttle on Turbosquid. There are free textured and untextured versions on Blendswap.
I do not understand Blender's "Cycles" renderer. But one cool think about it is that you can use a mirror-ball as your environment. So that means that ostensibly you just shoot a silver Christmas ball on your set and then import the image into Blender and Blender uses that image as your environment. Which is kind of cool.
Blender 2.6 has motion tracking. We can't do motion tracking until we get back to using a camera which has no rolling shutter though. But it's cool that it exists.
And there's camera stabilization.
Cogfilms has a bunch of Blender tutorials.

The still plate (which will be live action in the actual movie) for the Prometheus cockpit.

++++
$50/month is $600 a year for the Adobe CS suite. I do wish it were more like $30/month. I don't pretend that prices are a rational thing, so I just feel like it should be $30/month.
+++
I want a bit of particulate matter in space. Just a bit of foggy gunk swimming around. So that searchlights have some volume to them. So say I. So way we all. Time to look up volumetric lighting in Blender.

Prometheus Trap Teaser Trailer

Here's the teaser trailer for The Prometheus Trap. Click through to embiggen.

Prometheus Trap Teaser from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo.

New Cabinet

I needed a new cabinet for a 12" speaker.
I got this exceptionally groovy new cabinet from Carl Johnson. $275 for these pretty cabinets? The price is more than reasonable. The quality of the workmanship is very sweet. They smell nice. And the head is an almost perfect fit for the Lil' Dawg Mutt amplifier. If you remove the plexiglass bottom plate the amp will slide in with just enough clearance for the tubes (the Mutt isn't as wide as the Johnson head cab but you'll see that I offset it so that the cab is balanced.)

New Carl Johnson cabinets. Yes, I've already put Tyrannosaurus Mouse amp badges on them.

Ironically the speaker inside costs more than the cabinets.

Celestion Alnico Blue -- eight ohms of pure love.

All you need are some 10-32 bolts (I used 7/8") to screw the speaker in and the 1/4" to spade lugs to connect the amp.

Another sexy thing about these cabinets is that you can make them open or closed back. I'm going to experiment with them closed back for a while.

New Monitor

My dad needs a new monitor.

Welcome to Tuesday

Frogfoot's 5 Off-Off Broadway Companies and Theaters to Avoid.

This cat from the Internet haunts my dreams.

Here's a Prometheus

We're fighting with the renderer in Blender to get the Prometheus (and the smaller Venom) to work. I stripped out all the nodes and made a new render layer. So we're getting closer.

Yeah yeah yeah. The alpha channel is white. So sue me.

Internet Talk

There's all this Internet talk about working long hours on movies. After 8 hours my brain is mush so that's when we quit.

When they made Snow White and the Huntsman I think this conversation happened many times:
Wait, what's this movie about?
Uh. Snow White?
So it's got this kid she grew up with?
Yeah, he's the son of the Duke.
And he kisses her and wakes her up?
No. Really what happens is she stabs the brother of the wicked queen.
Oh, then who's this huntsman character?
Hey -- don't we need dwarfs? We need dwarfs.
OK but then don't we need a poisoned apple?
Oh crap! There has to be a mirror too.
Now, how does this whole thing with the childhood friend and the huntsman play out?
Uh. We don't need the childhood friend. Wait, they should go into the enchanted forest!
With the childhood friend? Or the huntsman?
And there should be elves. And a white stag? Maybe?
Well, if you insist, but really we should figure out these relationships -- is this a love triangle?
No, she's like a warrior princess, come back to reclaim her throne!
I hope we can fix all this once we get to editing.
Me too.

So what happens?

First of all, did I tell you about this? We're a "Staff Pick" on Blendswap -- this is Ian Hubert's model of the Earthkiller.

I think that's very cool.

Also, you may want to know what has happened each time I challenged "Content Lizenz Agentur" on their claims on our videos. This:

Yeah. They're all "Oops, my bad."
I'll tell ya, it's getting very irritating. So far we haven't gotten any of that kind of bull noise on Vimeo so we may just stick with uploading clips to Vimeo and ignore YouTube altogether.

Tyrannosaurus Thrones

So I have this idea which is unquestionably brilliant. Tyrannosaurus Mouse should play the theme from Game of Thrones.
Now, I suggested this idea to my band-mates and they haven't gotten back to me. Of course, it's been a year since we mixed our album, and two since we recorded it. So we're not really known for doing things right away.

I'm sort of wondering if the melody should be played on bass. 

So if the bass plays the melody (at least in the first half) and the guitar plays the ostinato, with drums playing on the toms, what do the keyboards do? I imagine a Hammond would kick in during the major section.

My Three Things Today

I want to go to Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania to look at the Milky Way. This is what I wanna do.
We're taking my stepmom out for dinner for her birthday to Buenos Aires.
This Mad Libs: Startup Pitch cracks me up. I read it in Bloomberg Week in the bathroom of my gym. Wow. That sounds just as pretentious as I'd intended.