A Day in the Life

A hundred drops in 90 days. I rolled to the bottom of Hill 623 only to find my Sergeant kicking the alien equivalent of a jeep over and over again. There were a half-dozen aliens lined up on their knees with their long hands clasped around their heads.
I ask the sarge what's wrong and he just keeps kicking the jeep over and over again while the aliens look at one another. Sarge just starts yelling in Spanish, which I can't understand.
One of the aliens looks at me and I look back. The alien says "Do you say 'he says' or 'he said'?"
I tell him that the sergeant is still yelling at the jeep, so probably "he says" is correct.
"He says he does not like the matriarch of..." The alien breaks off in confusion. "I'm not sure if he's talking about the vehicle, me, or you."
"All three of us, I'd guess."
The sergeant starts to smash the windows on the side of the jeep with the butt of his flechette rifle. The metal-laced safety glass splinters but doesn't really do anything that satisfying, which only makes him angrier with it.

I ignore him as his rant breaks into shouts "Madre madre madre!" or something like that (like I said, I don't know Spanish and he was wearing his helmet with comm off). So anyway I break out the rings we use to throw around the necks of the prisoners -- they have little transmitters on them which supposedly keep any of us from shooting at them for about 15 hours until we're off-planet. Which would be a real good trick except that even at this range the xmits aren't showing up on my grid and I'm right on freakin' top of them.
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The pale green sun of this planet (X01556 — I had to look it up) made everything look like it was in a hospital. But you know, with a dirt floor and a sky instead of ceiling. I just started to wonder where my own squad was when two blue blips showed up on the HUD and it's Johnson and Russell.
"You see Ozawa or Martins?" I say to them.
Johnson, who used to be in my squad but ended up in Sarge's because they kept losing heavy weapons guys, looked at me like I was the insane one. "What the hell is Sarge...?" He just stops and doesn't know what to say.
"He's angry with the bug Jeep." I say, like it's obvious.
Russell walks over to the Sarge. I can tell he's going to open his big mouth and say something stupid.
"Sarge -- you want us to blow up this Jeep?"
The Sergeant stops yelling for a moment and stares at Russell, slack-jawed. Russell, like a buffoon, actually reaches around and grabs one of the big thermal grenades he likes to carry — like he's going to show it to the Sergeant and Sarge will say "Yeah, that's a great idea, let's do that!" Instead Sarge predictably turns back to the vehicle and starts to kick it again, and again, making big dents in the side of its ceramic armor.

Pleasure for the Empire

I figure the soundtrack-arm of the Pandora Machine should be a band called "Pleasure for the Empire". So far it is me and my cousin Jaime-Jin Lewis (who was drafted, she didn't volunteer.) And this is the remix of "Sucre"
This is music for our upcoming movie Prometheus Trap. File under "difficult listening hour."

Kitteh Post

Here's my brother Dave's cat "Sugar". She just went blind a few days ago. She's fairly old, doesn't seem to be hurtin'. Just can't see anymore.

The Most Terrible Thing Ever

Can we start talking about my first world problems?
My favorite bubble tea place is closing.
Now that doesn't mean that there's another store from the same chain that's equidistant from my office. Because there is.
But my favorite Ten Ren Tea shop on Lafayette Street is closing.
I expect frequent and sincere missives of condolences for this great tragedy which is happening to me.

Here is a picture of a bunny.

Recording Soundtracks

Jaime-Jin Lewis on violin.

Today was "bow the tailpiece day" in the Pandora Machine. We got some great tailpiece sounds, some great col legno sounds. It was a non-stop rock-out party with my lovely and talented cousin Jaime-Jin. She knocked this out of the park.
Groove to the sexy guitar amplifier behind her. Mmm.... Tyrannosaurus Mouse.

Education

So, I have a political blog which mostly exists because of one political observation that I have about the radical departure of US foreign policy toward Central and South America since President Clinton's election.
And when I became interested in the science of pedagogy I ended up posting stuff about it on my politics blog because for whatever reason "education" is a topic for a freakin' political firestorm here in the United States.
So I was going to put my pedagogical theory on my political blog but then I thought no, that's dumb. So it'll go here. Under this picture of a rabbit.

This rabbit is very interested in listening to your pedagogical theory.

This is a theory. I'm using made-up numbers.

You can teach 20% of the students pretty well with the system we have now, using about the same costs and personnel.
To get similar results from the next 20% of the students, you're going to need to double your resources.
The next 20% will take another doubling of resources. (4x)
And to get the next 20% of your students in the "general population" you're going to have to double again. And those students will not do quite as well as your top 20%. (8x).
If you go for 16 times the resources we have now we can substantially alter the academic performance of the bottom 20%.

And so sayith my theory for which I have no statistical evidence. Yet.

Moar Cats

Here's moar pictures of Five.

A closeup of Five with Ed.

V gets pettings from Todd

Moar pettings by Todd for Feivel.

Hanging With Childhood Friends

This week was about hanging with childhood friends Todd and Ed. No pictures of Todd really because, well, mostly because it was his camera.

Todd's picture of me. We're south of the Irish Hunger Memorial. It's like a chess temple. My only instruction to Todd: make me look thin.

Ed's cat "Five" (which could be "Cat 5" or "V" or "Feivel", which is what I called him.) He's sleeping in a bowl on the kitchen table. 

Five hangin' with his main bud Ed. He calls this "chillaxin". 

That Which Then Therefore

Tarantino Smith stars in Snow White Zombie (featuring live performance by Nat Cassidy and the Nines) as part of this year's Fringe Festival.
In Final Cut Pro when the sequence loops and it irritates you the "looping" checkbox is under the "View" tab. You're welcome, past self.
Clearly I need a Belstaff waxed jacket.

The S Icon Racing Jacket is probably my favorite but the Roadmaster is probably the way to go.
I usually don't like cake. But the ChocoBolo cakes are pretty good. I want one. Now.

Against Sarcasm

Or: unfinished thoughts.
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So apparently I have a reputation for being sarcastic. I have what, if I were an 11-year-old, would be called "a mouth on me." This is troubling.

The thing is that sarcasm renders a fellow unable to communicate. Well, certainly unable to communicate sincerely. "That's a nice dress" gets retorted with "Bug off, jerkface." Which, you know, if you really do go around being sarcastic about the way people dress you probably should be told to bug off.

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I've been looking for a real analysis of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel since I read it at the behest of my older brother a few years back. And boy it's hard to come by. Here's a survey of thoughts on the book. 

I gather that the political agendas of some academic departments are not served by GG&S. But the book is clearly (at least to me) written from a geographical viewpoint which discounts things like climate change and the possibility that different cultures might evolve differently even given the same resources. 

For me the big question has always been China. WTF China? Why were you guys all up on gunpowder, printing, and inventing pizza* a thousand years ago and then you came to a halt. Diamond spends very little time on this issue but the short version of his argument is that China became a single nation where Europe did not. So hierarchical decisions could be made by the Chinese government which would eradicate diversity of (say) exploration. The example he used was the... oh just read it.

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You know, if I didn't enjoy eating so much I'd lose weight.

*The "pizza" thing is, I believe, an urban myth.

ASCII Cat Day

Today is ASCII cat day.

    (\__/)
    (='.'=)

    Zzzzz  |\      _,,,--,,_        +-----------------------------+
           /,`.-'`'   ._  \-;;,_    | Why is there always a cat   |
          |,4-  ) )_   .;.(  `'-'   | on whatever you're editing? |
         '---''(_/._)-'(_\_) 

Here's my niece on Machu Picchu:

This needs to be an ASCII avatar but I can't find the ASCII version of it:

Painted Skin

OK. I'm digging this:
 
Painted Skin 2. It's actually coming out in US theaters on August 17. And if you live in New York, LA, or San Francisco you'll be allowed to see it.

I mean leastwise before it comes out on video.

Poof

So a thing I like about Pamplamoose is how the kick drum sounds like a real kick. Or at least on this song it does. I kind of appreciate that orchestral/band bass drum sound. The trick is of course to get that sort of sound to work without the entire mix sounding like mud.

To Be or Otherwise

Friends of mine moved to Portland Oregon recently. And I'll tell you the truth, it looks like heaven.
I've done quite a bit of thinking about why I'm in New York City. It's expensive. It's noisy. It's expensive. It's dirty. It's expensive.
And many of the people we work with are from all over the world: Birmingham UK, Birmingham AL, The Netherlands, Seattle, Los Angeles, Melbourne. As far as those people are concerned it just doesn't matter where we are. We could move to some pleasure palace outside of Sedona, AZ or Ashville, NC, or even Portland OR.
The biggest problem is finding actors in those places. And yes, I'm including Los Angeles. And other than LA, all those places are easier to shoot in -- people are actually happy to have you come and shoot in their bar or drug store, etc. -- but you have to import your actors.

Also we really do need to have people come into our office and do ADR and edit and suchlike. That is really helpful.
So every once in a while I do a long hard think about what we're doing and where we should be. And each time I come to the conclusion that we should be where we are doing what we do. There's a lot of things which would be easier to do in (say) Bedford Pennsylvania, but for us right now this is the place to be.
Via.