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Published On: May 10, 2004 06:50 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: May 10, 2004 06:50 PM
Sun - September 28, 2003
A New Way To Blather
Yes, it's been far too long since I've updated
the Blatherings on my website. And yet, can you believe that this entire summer,
Finding
Nemo was, in fact, the last film I actually
got to see in a theater?
Anyway, a few
days ago I learned that as part of Apple's .mac membership, they've given out a
small third-party program called iBlog that has
been tuned to upload and update a weblog directly to your iDisk. I decided, as
long as it's part of the service I'm paying for already, I may as well try to
use it ... and, given that it will allow me to post new entries without having
to actually go in and update my website, maybe it will encourage me to post new
Blatherings more frequently.
So I've
just transferred all my old Blatherings over to this page, and tried to keep the
original post dates intact; soon I'll be going in and tweaking my actual website
to lead here instead of the old Blathering pages built into the
site.
So, keep an eye out here. In the
sidebar to the left, you'll see that entries can now be dropped into categories
... I've made one for Movie
Reviews and one for
Miscellaneous;
more will be added as I need them. And I don't know much about XML/RSS feeds,
but if they mean something to you, go ahead and use them.
Posted at 09:43 PM Read More
Sun - February 2, 2003
Pizza Stone
It's not always easy, living on freelance, trying
to balance definite and sizable monthly bills against an indefinite and unsteady
income. But when once I'd returned home from California this week, I deposited
some checks for some animation and some web design work I'd done last month,
paid off my rent and my bills and my credit card payment, and lo and behold, I
had a bit of money left over. So I decided to
splurge.
I've wanted a pizza stone for
ages now; it just seems like such a cool concept. If you don't know how it
works, it's simply a flat stone that lies in your oven, absorbing heat as you
preheat the oven. When you put a pizza or calzone or bread on it to bake, it
absorbs moisture from the dough, making a nice, crisp crust, not a slightly
soggy one like you'd normally get at home. Basically it duplicates the
environment of a stone hearth oven.
So
one afternoon I zipped off to the Florida Mall, stopped for a liesurely lunch at
my favorite restaurant, Buca de Beppo (I had spaghetti with a meatball,
garlic bread, and a salad, and had plenty left over for lunch the next day ... I
was in heaven), then proceeded on to Williams &
Sonoma.
I wonder, sometimes, if I
didn't miss my calling in life. Walking into a Williams & Sonoma feels to me
probably something like what walking into video game stores or sporting goods
stores feel to a lot of my friends and peers. Just a casual walkthrough and I
could pluck out hundreds of dollars worth of cooking gear that I never realized
before I needed; and that's not even counting the elegant pots and pans that are
worth hundreds of dollars apiece on their
own.
But I was good. I browsed a bit,
but didn't pick up anything else. I was surprised to find the pizza stone I
wanted was only $30; I was expecting something closer to $50. So I did splurge a
little more and bought a pizza peel (one of those wooden paddles you build a
pizza on before slipping it into the oven) for another
$24.
My God, what an investment! As
soon as I got home, I started on a big batch of dough, enough to split into six
small pizzas. All weekend long I've been pulling them out one at a time, rolling
and tossing (still getting the hang of that again ... haven't made a pizza since
I worked at Little Caesar's in high school almost fifteen years ago), topping
with different sauces and cheeses and toppings ... it's like heaven all over
again.
Of course as a result of this,
I've been perusing online websites for recipes, and slipped into not only
pizzas, but lots of other things too ... Italian foods, Chinese foods, eastern
European foods (part of my heritage), Cajun foods, Mexican foods ... all my
favorites. It makes me just want to cook for a week and try
everything.
And I'm supposed to be on a
diet.
Posted at 08:55 PM Read More
Fri - September 6, 2002
Electronic Nostalgia
I just had a minor, somewhat nostalgic,
experience.
Now first of all, this is a
week where I am intensively upgrading my computer at home, trying to stave off
having to buy a new computer for another year or so. I replaced the internal 4GB
harddrive in the G3 with an 80GB harddrive -- which makes for about four times
the space I had on all three of my computers combined -- and I have a
Firewire/USB 2.0 card on the way. I'm also taking the iBook and the G3 up to OS
X Jaguar -- which I must say, after five years of using OS 8 and 9, rocks, even
on these older machines -- and am upgrading all my software as well, to take
advantage of the new OS. I also moved my Palm Desktop onto my desktop computer,
finally, which makes more sense than the iBook did, to keep my Visor nice and
up-to-date, and with the now huge tracts of disk space at my disposal, I'm
finally beginning to MP3 all my CDs, with my eye on getting an iPod in the near
future. They look so cool.
Now keep in
mind also, I am a packrat. I hate to throw anything which might have any
intrinsic value away. I have drawers full of little S-shaped Ikea tools I'll
never need to use again. Sitting in various boxes I have a failing old Zip drive
that's long since been replaced by a newer model; a uselessly redundant 4-port
Ethernet switchbox; a few dozen old SCSI cables and ADB cords and an ancient
black and white QuickCam and an old ADB GamePad that never really worked, and a
hulking huge external 2GB drive that seems pathetic placed next to the
streamlined new 80GB internal ... All stuff that at best I have no use for and
at worst is horribly obsolete, yet I can't throw them
away.
So this morning, as I was writing
a birthday card to Mom, I reached in my desk drawer to pull out an inkpad and
rubberstamp, when I noticed tucked at the back of the drawer a small,
credit-card sized leather case. I pulled it out and discovered it contained a
small electronic device entitled 'The Calling Card," something my father gave me
probably fifteen or twenty years ago. It was given away as a marketing gift: the
name 'Temco' is stamped on its face, a company that may not even exist anymore.
(A web search reveals an midwest company that distributes level, flow, and
pressure products. That may or may not be
them.)
The device itself is maybe an
eighth of an inch thick, with a membrane keyboard with keys for the letters 'A
thru 'Z,' digits '0' thru '9', and a few operational buttons. It has a small LCD
readout with two lines of that old-fashioned LCD text: The top line shows
alphanumerics, the bottom line only shows digits. It can store up to 2024
characters of information, usually names and phone numbers, tho the small Hong
Kong-printed pamphlet advises you can also store social security and bank
account numbers. If desired, it featurs a 3-digit lockout security code. All
data must be laboriously entered thru the tiny keypad, and there is physically
no way to back up or export the data. It can also be used as a simple
calculator. The two 3V batteries amazingly still carry a
charge.
In its day, I remember this was
a small technological marvel -- stores up to a
hundred
names, give or take a few! And to be just
given
away by a salesman at Temco, they must be
rich! Nowadays, of course, it's utterly laughably useless next to my trusty
little Visor Platinum. Even my nifty-but-dated StarTac phone has exponentially
more functional power than this thing. My iBook would cheerfully insult its
lineage, kick it in the groin and send it crying home to its
mother.
And yet ... I can't throw it
away! For gosh sake, it has a circuitboard in there! It would be a sin to just
toss it on the junk pile! It never did me no harm! Stop -- I'll throw myself in
harm's way before I let you crush its LCD screen under your boot
heel!
I'm eternally torn. On the one
hand I have a very strong underlying current of almost Ludite anti-technology
mistrust running through my veins. At the same time there are certain gadgets I
just love and can't live with
out.
Well. Perhaps The Calling Card has
a third-party FireWire adapter. I'll have to check on eBay ...
Posted at 08:41 PM Read More
Wed - July 24, 2002
The Dream
I had a pretty odd dream last night. I don't
actually remember too many specifics from it (or at least, I can't really
explain them concisely), but the format of the dream, I think, is interesting in
itself.
To start with a bit of
explanation, last night while at a friend's house we had watched two movies that
were just released to DVD this week:
Kung
Pao, a silly parody of kung fu movies (using
technology to incorporate an old kung fu movie with new footage) by the guy who
did Thumb
Wars and its sequels; and the new remake of
The Time
Machine, starring Guy Pearce from
Memento.
(The remake has terrific special effects and visuals, and a great score. The
story seemed to suffer a few gaps ... it almost seemed like an editing problem
more than anything else.)
Anyway. I got
home after midnight, checked a few messages online, then went straight to bed,
where the two movies I'd just watched sort of got combined into one dream. Well,
not exactly: It wasn't a kung fu movie with time travel, but
elements
of each story seemed to show up ... and to make it weirder, the whole thing
became an epic, multi-generational animated feature film produced by DreamWorks.
Very specifically.
The story involved a
far-flung future, millenia after our society had fallen apart and been pretty
much completely erased, and existing people lived at a cultural level close to
the Middle Ages or earlier. (Like the year 802000 in
The Time
Machine.) Introduce a baby, a young girl,
found orphaned on the seashore (echoing the 'chosen one' idea parodied in
Kung
Pao). The girl grows to young adulthood,
nurtured by her foster parents. The middle of the story, muddled of course by
dream-logic and dream-imagery, basically had a lot to do with the girl having
grand ambitions to help her society advance and regain some of its former
grandeur; and also her romance with a young man, who happens to be a king in
another land across the
sea.
Ultimately, she determines it's in
the best interest of both her goals and her romance to leave her family and take
a one-way trip across the ocean to marry him. When she gets there, though, she
finds her king has gone somewhat mad (as kings often seemed to do) and is busily
executing people he perceives as traitors. The girl realizes, sadly, that her
grand ambition to help society is not to be; but even as she's realizing this,
her ladies-in-waiting bring her a baby, a young boy they found orphaned on the
seashore.
From here the dream goes into
this odd montage, showing not only the boy as a young adult, but an entire
string of such characters, generations of them, each of them feeling that they
have failed to accomplish their goals, and yet all of them gradually progressing
through stages of culture, through Renaissance and Victorian and modern-day
society ... indicating, somehow, that as every one of them takes a tiny step,
collectively everyone progresses in great leaps and bounds. Hans Zimmer-directed
orchestra and choir swells; roll
credits.
Anyway. It was only a dream,
and rife with dream-logic, and didn't always make sense. But it was an ambitious
dream; if most run-of-the-mill dreams have a budget of somewhere around
$20million, I'd suspect this one ran in excess of $100million. And it seemed to
carry a strong message in its finale: However frustrated or depressed you may
feel, even a small step is still a step
forward.
I'll be expecting an email
from DreamWorks any day now.
Posted at 08:39 PM Read More
Wed - October 17, 2001
MacRonald's of the Future
I had an odd experience the other day. In a
MacRonald's restaurant, of all places ... usually a bastion of
normalcy.
I hadn't been to a
MacRonald's in, oh, months and months ... I think the last few times I'd gone
I'd just had breakfast, an Egg MacMuffin and a hashbrown. I had a sudden craving
for their golden French Fries, so I decided to head out to a local franchise and
grab a quick dinner.
I'd never been to
this particular MacRonald's, and when I walked in I found I was faced with three
or four electronic kiosks blocking the way between myself and the cash register.
You know, those hi-tech-looking touch-screen terminals you'd expect to see at
Epcot or in an international airport. Only each of these touch-screens had a
button for 'Eat Here' and a button for 'To Go,' and touching either brought you
to a display of MacRonald's most popular food items. Touching any of them added
that item to your order, or you could select other menus to find more obscure
foods or make specialty orders. When your order was done, you could select
payment by cash or credit card, then it printed a ticket you carried to the
counter (and paid your cash, if that was your option) and waited for your food
to be served.
I dunno, this just struck
me as odd on a couple levels. First of all, this MacRonald's is practically out
in the middle of nowhere. I know the company often chooses remote areas to
test-market some of its more eclectic new menu items, but this display seemed
more like something you'd find in an elite MacRonald's in New York City or Las
Vegas or near a technology park in the Bay Area. It was interesting seeing some
of the local yokels alternately marveling over this breakthrough of technology,
and being confounded by it.
And second,
it seemed like a bit of technological excess. I mean, they still need to hire a
bunch of near-minimum-wage counter clerks to collect people's money and bring
their orders out to them. When you consider the cost of the kiosks, the
development of the software, general upkeep and maintenance, and problems like
the risk of vandalism or of confused customers wandering over to the more
traditional Windy's next door ... I guess it surprises me the money and effort
that sometimes goes into these things for what seems like modest returns. I
mean, it's not like they're MicroSoft and they're demoing their new system at a
major electronics convention.
Well, I
don't know. It's their money, not mine; they probably know better than I
do.
The sad thing is, after so many
months, their golden French Fries ... just didn't taste as good as I remembered.
When I was a kid, there was no treat in the world better than a MacRonald's
burger and fries, and perhaps a Shamrock Shake to go with it. I felt like part
of my childhood was gone, somehow.
Oh
well. Last night I had dinner at Windy's instead. ;-)
Posted at 08:27 PM Read More
Thu - October 11, 2001
The WTC and "The Watchmen"
Wow, it's one month since the attack on the World
Trade Center. Cleanup continues in New York and Washington, American and British
forces are in the middle of attacking areas of Afghanistan, and I'm finally
getting around to starting my Blatherings here on my
website.
I was hoping to start under
happier circumstances.
Actually, I'm
not going to dwell for too long here on such world events. Plenty of better
writers have been discussing the issues much more eloquently than I can; and
besides, I firmly believe we should be trying to move on. Not to say we should
forget these events; heavens, no, there is still a lot to think about and a lot
to take care of. But we also can't spend all of our time brooding over it,
hiding out in our homes waiting in terror for what's going to happen yet. See,
that's just what the terrorists want, to spread a little more terror. I think
the best thing we can do, psychologically and economically, is to work on
resuming our normal lives as much as is
possible.
Anyway. I said I wouldn't
dwell, but I did discover -- or rather, rediscover -- something interesting the
other day.
For some reason, I grabbed
my copy of
Watchmen
(DC Comics, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and started flipping through a few
of the pages. Shortly afterwards I just ended up rereading it cover-to-cover. I
always remember it was good, but I'd forgotten the depth of subtlety and
complexity wrapped up in there.
But one
of the things that struck me as I was reading it, was that the story takes place
in 1985 ... America is still involved in the Cold War ... and Russia is intent
on invading Afghanistan. It's the central focus of the impending war boiling in
the background throughout the story, as the Doomsday Clock ticks ever closer to
midnight. Reading it again seemed to have eerie connections to the real-world
events of today. Not completely parallel of course. The villains have changed,
the stakes are different. But much of the story ... the strained politics, the
growing sense of helplessness and uncertainty, the increasing difficulty of
decisions needing to be made ... even the ghastly death of millions of people in
New York City, all suddenly seemed strangely less fictional than they used
to.
And from another angle ... One of
the themes of the story, particularly dealing with Dr. Manhattan's revelations,
is how the smallest, most minute actions can have lasting repercussions in the
future. I wonder if the writer could have had any idea, as he wrote about a
military skirmish in Afghanistan in 1985, how the ripples of that event would
lead to the formation of the Taliban and, over fifteen years later, help create
the situation the world is in now.
But
enough of this blathering for now.
Posted at 08:24 PM Read More
A New Way To Blather
Yes, it's been far too long since I've updated
the Blatherings on my website. And yet, can you believe that this entire summer,
Finding
Nemo was, in fact, the last film I actually
got to see in a theater?
Anyway, a few days ago I learned that as part of Apple's .mac membership, they've given out a small third-party program called iBlog that has been tuned to upload and update a weblog directly to your iDisk. I decided, as long as it's part of the service I'm paying for already, I may as well try to use it ... and, given that it will allow me to post new entries without having to actually go in and update my website, maybe it will encourage me to post new Blatherings more frequently.
So I've just transferred all my old Blatherings over to this page, and tried to keep the original post dates intact; soon I'll be going in and tweaking my actual website to lead here instead of the old Blathering pages built into the site.
So, keep an eye out here. In the sidebar to the left, you'll see that entries can now be dropped into categories ... I've made one for Movie Reviews and one for Miscellaneous; more will be added as I need them. And I don't know much about XML/RSS feeds, but if they mean something to you, go ahead and use them.
Anyway, a few days ago I learned that as part of Apple's .mac membership, they've given out a small third-party program called iBlog that has been tuned to upload and update a weblog directly to your iDisk. I decided, as long as it's part of the service I'm paying for already, I may as well try to use it ... and, given that it will allow me to post new entries without having to actually go in and update my website, maybe it will encourage me to post new Blatherings more frequently.
So I've just transferred all my old Blatherings over to this page, and tried to keep the original post dates intact; soon I'll be going in and tweaking my actual website to lead here instead of the old Blathering pages built into the site.
So, keep an eye out here. In the sidebar to the left, you'll see that entries can now be dropped into categories ... I've made one for Movie Reviews and one for Miscellaneous; more will be added as I need them. And I don't know much about XML/RSS feeds, but if they mean something to you, go ahead and use them.
Posted at 09:43 PM Read More
Sun - February 2, 2003
Pizza Stone
It's not always easy, living on freelance, trying
to balance definite and sizable monthly bills against an indefinite and unsteady
income. But when once I'd returned home from California this week, I deposited
some checks for some animation and some web design work I'd done last month,
paid off my rent and my bills and my credit card payment, and lo and behold, I
had a bit of money left over. So I decided to
splurge.
I've wanted a pizza stone for
ages now; it just seems like such a cool concept. If you don't know how it
works, it's simply a flat stone that lies in your oven, absorbing heat as you
preheat the oven. When you put a pizza or calzone or bread on it to bake, it
absorbs moisture from the dough, making a nice, crisp crust, not a slightly
soggy one like you'd normally get at home. Basically it duplicates the
environment of a stone hearth oven.
So
one afternoon I zipped off to the Florida Mall, stopped for a liesurely lunch at
my favorite restaurant, Buca de Beppo (I had spaghetti with a meatball,
garlic bread, and a salad, and had plenty left over for lunch the next day ... I
was in heaven), then proceeded on to Williams &
Sonoma.
I wonder, sometimes, if I
didn't miss my calling in life. Walking into a Williams & Sonoma feels to me
probably something like what walking into video game stores or sporting goods
stores feel to a lot of my friends and peers. Just a casual walkthrough and I
could pluck out hundreds of dollars worth of cooking gear that I never realized
before I needed; and that's not even counting the elegant pots and pans that are
worth hundreds of dollars apiece on their
own.
But I was good. I browsed a bit,
but didn't pick up anything else. I was surprised to find the pizza stone I
wanted was only $30; I was expecting something closer to $50. So I did splurge a
little more and bought a pizza peel (one of those wooden paddles you build a
pizza on before slipping it into the oven) for another
$24.
My God, what an investment! As
soon as I got home, I started on a big batch of dough, enough to split into six
small pizzas. All weekend long I've been pulling them out one at a time, rolling
and tossing (still getting the hang of that again ... haven't made a pizza since
I worked at Little Caesar's in high school almost fifteen years ago), topping
with different sauces and cheeses and toppings ... it's like heaven all over
again.
Of course as a result of this,
I've been perusing online websites for recipes, and slipped into not only
pizzas, but lots of other things too ... Italian foods, Chinese foods, eastern
European foods (part of my heritage), Cajun foods, Mexican foods ... all my
favorites. It makes me just want to cook for a week and try
everything.
And I'm supposed to be on a
diet.
Posted at 08:55 PM Read More
Fri - September 6, 2002
Electronic Nostalgia
I just had a minor, somewhat nostalgic,
experience.
Now first of all, this is a
week where I am intensively upgrading my computer at home, trying to stave off
having to buy a new computer for another year or so. I replaced the internal 4GB
harddrive in the G3 with an 80GB harddrive -- which makes for about four times
the space I had on all three of my computers combined -- and I have a
Firewire/USB 2.0 card on the way. I'm also taking the iBook and the G3 up to OS
X Jaguar -- which I must say, after five years of using OS 8 and 9, rocks, even
on these older machines -- and am upgrading all my software as well, to take
advantage of the new OS. I also moved my Palm Desktop onto my desktop computer,
finally, which makes more sense than the iBook did, to keep my Visor nice and
up-to-date, and with the now huge tracts of disk space at my disposal, I'm
finally beginning to MP3 all my CDs, with my eye on getting an iPod in the near
future. They look so cool.
Now keep in
mind also, I am a packrat. I hate to throw anything which might have any
intrinsic value away. I have drawers full of little S-shaped Ikea tools I'll
never need to use again. Sitting in various boxes I have a failing old Zip drive
that's long since been replaced by a newer model; a uselessly redundant 4-port
Ethernet switchbox; a few dozen old SCSI cables and ADB cords and an ancient
black and white QuickCam and an old ADB GamePad that never really worked, and a
hulking huge external 2GB drive that seems pathetic placed next to the
streamlined new 80GB internal ... All stuff that at best I have no use for and
at worst is horribly obsolete, yet I can't throw them
away.
So this morning, as I was writing
a birthday card to Mom, I reached in my desk drawer to pull out an inkpad and
rubberstamp, when I noticed tucked at the back of the drawer a small,
credit-card sized leather case. I pulled it out and discovered it contained a
small electronic device entitled 'The Calling Card," something my father gave me
probably fifteen or twenty years ago. It was given away as a marketing gift: the
name 'Temco' is stamped on its face, a company that may not even exist anymore.
(A web search reveals an midwest company that distributes level, flow, and
pressure products. That may or may not be
them.)
The device itself is maybe an
eighth of an inch thick, with a membrane keyboard with keys for the letters 'A
thru 'Z,' digits '0' thru '9', and a few operational buttons. It has a small LCD
readout with two lines of that old-fashioned LCD text: The top line shows
alphanumerics, the bottom line only shows digits. It can store up to 2024
characters of information, usually names and phone numbers, tho the small Hong
Kong-printed pamphlet advises you can also store social security and bank
account numbers. If desired, it featurs a 3-digit lockout security code. All
data must be laboriously entered thru the tiny keypad, and there is physically
no way to back up or export the data. It can also be used as a simple
calculator. The two 3V batteries amazingly still carry a
charge.
In its day, I remember this was
a small technological marvel -- stores up to a
hundred
names, give or take a few! And to be just
given
away by a salesman at Temco, they must be
rich! Nowadays, of course, it's utterly laughably useless next to my trusty
little Visor Platinum. Even my nifty-but-dated StarTac phone has exponentially
more functional power than this thing. My iBook would cheerfully insult its
lineage, kick it in the groin and send it crying home to its
mother.
And yet ... I can't throw it
away! For gosh sake, it has a circuitboard in there! It would be a sin to just
toss it on the junk pile! It never did me no harm! Stop -- I'll throw myself in
harm's way before I let you crush its LCD screen under your boot
heel!
I'm eternally torn. On the one
hand I have a very strong underlying current of almost Ludite anti-technology
mistrust running through my veins. At the same time there are certain gadgets I
just love and can't live with
out.
Well. Perhaps The Calling Card has
a third-party FireWire adapter. I'll have to check on eBay ...
Posted at 08:41 PM Read More
Wed - July 24, 2002
The Dream
I had a pretty odd dream last night. I don't
actually remember too many specifics from it (or at least, I can't really
explain them concisely), but the format of the dream, I think, is interesting in
itself.
To start with a bit of
explanation, last night while at a friend's house we had watched two movies that
were just released to DVD this week:
Kung
Pao, a silly parody of kung fu movies (using
technology to incorporate an old kung fu movie with new footage) by the guy who
did Thumb
Wars and its sequels; and the new remake of
The Time
Machine, starring Guy Pearce from
Memento.
(The remake has terrific special effects and visuals, and a great score. The
story seemed to suffer a few gaps ... it almost seemed like an editing problem
more than anything else.)
Anyway. I got
home after midnight, checked a few messages online, then went straight to bed,
where the two movies I'd just watched sort of got combined into one dream. Well,
not exactly: It wasn't a kung fu movie with time travel, but
elements
of each story seemed to show up ... and to make it weirder, the whole thing
became an epic, multi-generational animated feature film produced by DreamWorks.
Very specifically.
The story involved a
far-flung future, millenia after our society had fallen apart and been pretty
much completely erased, and existing people lived at a cultural level close to
the Middle Ages or earlier. (Like the year 802000 in
The Time
Machine.) Introduce a baby, a young girl,
found orphaned on the seashore (echoing the 'chosen one' idea parodied in
Kung
Pao). The girl grows to young adulthood,
nurtured by her foster parents. The middle of the story, muddled of course by
dream-logic and dream-imagery, basically had a lot to do with the girl having
grand ambitions to help her society advance and regain some of its former
grandeur; and also her romance with a young man, who happens to be a king in
another land across the
sea.
Ultimately, she determines it's in
the best interest of both her goals and her romance to leave her family and take
a one-way trip across the ocean to marry him. When she gets there, though, she
finds her king has gone somewhat mad (as kings often seemed to do) and is busily
executing people he perceives as traitors. The girl realizes, sadly, that her
grand ambition to help society is not to be; but even as she's realizing this,
her ladies-in-waiting bring her a baby, a young boy they found orphaned on the
seashore.
From here the dream goes into
this odd montage, showing not only the boy as a young adult, but an entire
string of such characters, generations of them, each of them feeling that they
have failed to accomplish their goals, and yet all of them gradually progressing
through stages of culture, through Renaissance and Victorian and modern-day
society ... indicating, somehow, that as every one of them takes a tiny step,
collectively everyone progresses in great leaps and bounds. Hans Zimmer-directed
orchestra and choir swells; roll
credits.
Anyway. It was only a dream,
and rife with dream-logic, and didn't always make sense. But it was an ambitious
dream; if most run-of-the-mill dreams have a budget of somewhere around
$20million, I'd suspect this one ran in excess of $100million. And it seemed to
carry a strong message in its finale: However frustrated or depressed you may
feel, even a small step is still a step
forward.
I'll be expecting an email
from DreamWorks any day now.
Posted at 08:39 PM Read More
Wed - October 17, 2001
MacRonald's of the Future
I had an odd experience the other day. In a
MacRonald's restaurant, of all places ... usually a bastion of
normalcy.
I hadn't been to a
MacRonald's in, oh, months and months ... I think the last few times I'd gone
I'd just had breakfast, an Egg MacMuffin and a hashbrown. I had a sudden craving
for their golden French Fries, so I decided to head out to a local franchise and
grab a quick dinner.
I'd never been to
this particular MacRonald's, and when I walked in I found I was faced with three
or four electronic kiosks blocking the way between myself and the cash register.
You know, those hi-tech-looking touch-screen terminals you'd expect to see at
Epcot or in an international airport. Only each of these touch-screens had a
button for 'Eat Here' and a button for 'To Go,' and touching either brought you
to a display of MacRonald's most popular food items. Touching any of them added
that item to your order, or you could select other menus to find more obscure
foods or make specialty orders. When your order was done, you could select
payment by cash or credit card, then it printed a ticket you carried to the
counter (and paid your cash, if that was your option) and waited for your food
to be served.
I dunno, this just struck
me as odd on a couple levels. First of all, this MacRonald's is practically out
in the middle of nowhere. I know the company often chooses remote areas to
test-market some of its more eclectic new menu items, but this display seemed
more like something you'd find in an elite MacRonald's in New York City or Las
Vegas or near a technology park in the Bay Area. It was interesting seeing some
of the local yokels alternately marveling over this breakthrough of technology,
and being confounded by it.
And second,
it seemed like a bit of technological excess. I mean, they still need to hire a
bunch of near-minimum-wage counter clerks to collect people's money and bring
their orders out to them. When you consider the cost of the kiosks, the
development of the software, general upkeep and maintenance, and problems like
the risk of vandalism or of confused customers wandering over to the more
traditional Windy's next door ... I guess it surprises me the money and effort
that sometimes goes into these things for what seems like modest returns. I
mean, it's not like they're MicroSoft and they're demoing their new system at a
major electronics convention.
Well, I
don't know. It's their money, not mine; they probably know better than I
do.
The sad thing is, after so many
months, their golden French Fries ... just didn't taste as good as I remembered.
When I was a kid, there was no treat in the world better than a MacRonald's
burger and fries, and perhaps a Shamrock Shake to go with it. I felt like part
of my childhood was gone, somehow.
Oh
well. Last night I had dinner at Windy's instead. ;-)
Posted at 08:27 PM Read More
Thu - October 11, 2001
The WTC and "The Watchmen"
Wow, it's one month since the attack on the World
Trade Center. Cleanup continues in New York and Washington, American and British
forces are in the middle of attacking areas of Afghanistan, and I'm finally
getting around to starting my Blatherings here on my
website.
I was hoping to start under
happier circumstances.
Actually, I'm
not going to dwell for too long here on such world events. Plenty of better
writers have been discussing the issues much more eloquently than I can; and
besides, I firmly believe we should be trying to move on. Not to say we should
forget these events; heavens, no, there is still a lot to think about and a lot
to take care of. But we also can't spend all of our time brooding over it,
hiding out in our homes waiting in terror for what's going to happen yet. See,
that's just what the terrorists want, to spread a little more terror. I think
the best thing we can do, psychologically and economically, is to work on
resuming our normal lives as much as is
possible.
Anyway. I said I wouldn't
dwell, but I did discover -- or rather, rediscover -- something interesting the
other day.
For some reason, I grabbed
my copy of
Watchmen
(DC Comics, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and started flipping through a few
of the pages. Shortly afterwards I just ended up rereading it cover-to-cover. I
always remember it was good, but I'd forgotten the depth of subtlety and
complexity wrapped up in there.
But one
of the things that struck me as I was reading it, was that the story takes place
in 1985 ... America is still involved in the Cold War ... and Russia is intent
on invading Afghanistan. It's the central focus of the impending war boiling in
the background throughout the story, as the Doomsday Clock ticks ever closer to
midnight. Reading it again seemed to have eerie connections to the real-world
events of today. Not completely parallel of course. The villains have changed,
the stakes are different. But much of the story ... the strained politics, the
growing sense of helplessness and uncertainty, the increasing difficulty of
decisions needing to be made ... even the ghastly death of millions of people in
New York City, all suddenly seemed strangely less fictional than they used
to.
And from another angle ... One of
the themes of the story, particularly dealing with Dr. Manhattan's revelations,
is how the smallest, most minute actions can have lasting repercussions in the
future. I wonder if the writer could have had any idea, as he wrote about a
military skirmish in Afghanistan in 1985, how the ripples of that event would
lead to the formation of the Taliban and, over fifteen years later, help create
the situation the world is in now.
But
enough of this blathering for now.
Posted at 08:24 PM Read More
Pizza Stone
It's not always easy, living on freelance, trying
to balance definite and sizable monthly bills against an indefinite and unsteady
income. But when once I'd returned home from California this week, I deposited
some checks for some animation and some web design work I'd done last month,
paid off my rent and my bills and my credit card payment, and lo and behold, I
had a bit of money left over. So I decided to
splurge.
I've wanted a pizza stone for ages now; it just seems like such a cool concept. If you don't know how it works, it's simply a flat stone that lies in your oven, absorbing heat as you preheat the oven. When you put a pizza or calzone or bread on it to bake, it absorbs moisture from the dough, making a nice, crisp crust, not a slightly soggy one like you'd normally get at home. Basically it duplicates the environment of a stone hearth oven.
So one afternoon I zipped off to the Florida Mall, stopped for a liesurely lunch at my favorite restaurant, Buca de Beppo (I had spaghetti with a meatball, garlic bread, and a salad, and had plenty left over for lunch the next day ... I was in heaven), then proceeded on to Williams & Sonoma.
I wonder, sometimes, if I didn't miss my calling in life. Walking into a Williams & Sonoma feels to me probably something like what walking into video game stores or sporting goods stores feel to a lot of my friends and peers. Just a casual walkthrough and I could pluck out hundreds of dollars worth of cooking gear that I never realized before I needed; and that's not even counting the elegant pots and pans that are worth hundreds of dollars apiece on their own.
But I was good. I browsed a bit, but didn't pick up anything else. I was surprised to find the pizza stone I wanted was only $30; I was expecting something closer to $50. So I did splurge a little more and bought a pizza peel (one of those wooden paddles you build a pizza on before slipping it into the oven) for another $24.
My God, what an investment! As soon as I got home, I started on a big batch of dough, enough to split into six small pizzas. All weekend long I've been pulling them out one at a time, rolling and tossing (still getting the hang of that again ... haven't made a pizza since I worked at Little Caesar's in high school almost fifteen years ago), topping with different sauces and cheeses and toppings ... it's like heaven all over again.
Of course as a result of this, I've been perusing online websites for recipes, and slipped into not only pizzas, but lots of other things too ... Italian foods, Chinese foods, eastern European foods (part of my heritage), Cajun foods, Mexican foods ... all my favorites. It makes me just want to cook for a week and try everything.
And I'm supposed to be on a diet.
I've wanted a pizza stone for ages now; it just seems like such a cool concept. If you don't know how it works, it's simply a flat stone that lies in your oven, absorbing heat as you preheat the oven. When you put a pizza or calzone or bread on it to bake, it absorbs moisture from the dough, making a nice, crisp crust, not a slightly soggy one like you'd normally get at home. Basically it duplicates the environment of a stone hearth oven.
So one afternoon I zipped off to the Florida Mall, stopped for a liesurely lunch at my favorite restaurant, Buca de Beppo (I had spaghetti with a meatball, garlic bread, and a salad, and had plenty left over for lunch the next day ... I was in heaven), then proceeded on to Williams & Sonoma.
I wonder, sometimes, if I didn't miss my calling in life. Walking into a Williams & Sonoma feels to me probably something like what walking into video game stores or sporting goods stores feel to a lot of my friends and peers. Just a casual walkthrough and I could pluck out hundreds of dollars worth of cooking gear that I never realized before I needed; and that's not even counting the elegant pots and pans that are worth hundreds of dollars apiece on their own.
But I was good. I browsed a bit, but didn't pick up anything else. I was surprised to find the pizza stone I wanted was only $30; I was expecting something closer to $50. So I did splurge a little more and bought a pizza peel (one of those wooden paddles you build a pizza on before slipping it into the oven) for another $24.
My God, what an investment! As soon as I got home, I started on a big batch of dough, enough to split into six small pizzas. All weekend long I've been pulling them out one at a time, rolling and tossing (still getting the hang of that again ... haven't made a pizza since I worked at Little Caesar's in high school almost fifteen years ago), topping with different sauces and cheeses and toppings ... it's like heaven all over again.
Of course as a result of this, I've been perusing online websites for recipes, and slipped into not only pizzas, but lots of other things too ... Italian foods, Chinese foods, eastern European foods (part of my heritage), Cajun foods, Mexican foods ... all my favorites. It makes me just want to cook for a week and try everything.
And I'm supposed to be on a diet.
Posted at 08:55 PM Read More
Fri - September 6, 2002
Electronic Nostalgia
I just had a minor, somewhat nostalgic,
experience.
Now first of all, this is a week where I am intensively upgrading my computer at home, trying to stave off having to buy a new computer for another year or so. I replaced the internal 4GB harddrive in the G3 with an 80GB harddrive -- which makes for about four times the space I had on all three of my computers combined -- and I have a Firewire/USB 2.0 card on the way. I'm also taking the iBook and the G3 up to OS X Jaguar -- which I must say, after five years of using OS 8 and 9, rocks, even on these older machines -- and am upgrading all my software as well, to take advantage of the new OS. I also moved my Palm Desktop onto my desktop computer, finally, which makes more sense than the iBook did, to keep my Visor nice and up-to-date, and with the now huge tracts of disk space at my disposal, I'm finally beginning to MP3 all my CDs, with my eye on getting an iPod in the near future. They look so cool.
Now keep in mind also, I am a packrat. I hate to throw anything which might have any intrinsic value away. I have drawers full of little S-shaped Ikea tools I'll never need to use again. Sitting in various boxes I have a failing old Zip drive that's long since been replaced by a newer model; a uselessly redundant 4-port Ethernet switchbox; a few dozen old SCSI cables and ADB cords and an ancient black and white QuickCam and an old ADB GamePad that never really worked, and a hulking huge external 2GB drive that seems pathetic placed next to the streamlined new 80GB internal ... All stuff that at best I have no use for and at worst is horribly obsolete, yet I can't throw them away.
So this morning, as I was writing a birthday card to Mom, I reached in my desk drawer to pull out an inkpad and rubberstamp, when I noticed tucked at the back of the drawer a small, credit-card sized leather case. I pulled it out and discovered it contained a small electronic device entitled 'The Calling Card," something my father gave me probably fifteen or twenty years ago. It was given away as a marketing gift: the name 'Temco' is stamped on its face, a company that may not even exist anymore. (A web search reveals an midwest company that distributes level, flow, and pressure products. That may or may not be them.)
The device itself is maybe an eighth of an inch thick, with a membrane keyboard with keys for the letters 'A thru 'Z,' digits '0' thru '9', and a few operational buttons. It has a small LCD readout with two lines of that old-fashioned LCD text: The top line shows alphanumerics, the bottom line only shows digits. It can store up to 2024 characters of information, usually names and phone numbers, tho the small Hong Kong-printed pamphlet advises you can also store social security and bank account numbers. If desired, it featurs a 3-digit lockout security code. All data must be laboriously entered thru the tiny keypad, and there is physically no way to back up or export the data. It can also be used as a simple calculator. The two 3V batteries amazingly still carry a charge.
In its day, I remember this was a small technological marvel -- stores up to a hundred names, give or take a few! And to be just given away by a salesman at Temco, they must be rich! Nowadays, of course, it's utterly laughably useless next to my trusty little Visor Platinum. Even my nifty-but-dated StarTac phone has exponentially more functional power than this thing. My iBook would cheerfully insult its lineage, kick it in the groin and send it crying home to its mother.
And yet ... I can't throw it away! For gosh sake, it has a circuitboard in there! It would be a sin to just toss it on the junk pile! It never did me no harm! Stop -- I'll throw myself in harm's way before I let you crush its LCD screen under your boot heel!
I'm eternally torn. On the one hand I have a very strong underlying current of almost Ludite anti-technology mistrust running through my veins. At the same time there are certain gadgets I just love and can't live with out.
Well. Perhaps The Calling Card has a third-party FireWire adapter. I'll have to check on eBay ...
Now first of all, this is a week where I am intensively upgrading my computer at home, trying to stave off having to buy a new computer for another year or so. I replaced the internal 4GB harddrive in the G3 with an 80GB harddrive -- which makes for about four times the space I had on all three of my computers combined -- and I have a Firewire/USB 2.0 card on the way. I'm also taking the iBook and the G3 up to OS X Jaguar -- which I must say, after five years of using OS 8 and 9, rocks, even on these older machines -- and am upgrading all my software as well, to take advantage of the new OS. I also moved my Palm Desktop onto my desktop computer, finally, which makes more sense than the iBook did, to keep my Visor nice and up-to-date, and with the now huge tracts of disk space at my disposal, I'm finally beginning to MP3 all my CDs, with my eye on getting an iPod in the near future. They look so cool.
Now keep in mind also, I am a packrat. I hate to throw anything which might have any intrinsic value away. I have drawers full of little S-shaped Ikea tools I'll never need to use again. Sitting in various boxes I have a failing old Zip drive that's long since been replaced by a newer model; a uselessly redundant 4-port Ethernet switchbox; a few dozen old SCSI cables and ADB cords and an ancient black and white QuickCam and an old ADB GamePad that never really worked, and a hulking huge external 2GB drive that seems pathetic placed next to the streamlined new 80GB internal ... All stuff that at best I have no use for and at worst is horribly obsolete, yet I can't throw them away.
So this morning, as I was writing a birthday card to Mom, I reached in my desk drawer to pull out an inkpad and rubberstamp, when I noticed tucked at the back of the drawer a small, credit-card sized leather case. I pulled it out and discovered it contained a small electronic device entitled 'The Calling Card," something my father gave me probably fifteen or twenty years ago. It was given away as a marketing gift: the name 'Temco' is stamped on its face, a company that may not even exist anymore. (A web search reveals an midwest company that distributes level, flow, and pressure products. That may or may not be them.)
The device itself is maybe an eighth of an inch thick, with a membrane keyboard with keys for the letters 'A thru 'Z,' digits '0' thru '9', and a few operational buttons. It has a small LCD readout with two lines of that old-fashioned LCD text: The top line shows alphanumerics, the bottom line only shows digits. It can store up to 2024 characters of information, usually names and phone numbers, tho the small Hong Kong-printed pamphlet advises you can also store social security and bank account numbers. If desired, it featurs a 3-digit lockout security code. All data must be laboriously entered thru the tiny keypad, and there is physically no way to back up or export the data. It can also be used as a simple calculator. The two 3V batteries amazingly still carry a charge.
In its day, I remember this was a small technological marvel -- stores up to a hundred names, give or take a few! And to be just given away by a salesman at Temco, they must be rich! Nowadays, of course, it's utterly laughably useless next to my trusty little Visor Platinum. Even my nifty-but-dated StarTac phone has exponentially more functional power than this thing. My iBook would cheerfully insult its lineage, kick it in the groin and send it crying home to its mother.
And yet ... I can't throw it away! For gosh sake, it has a circuitboard in there! It would be a sin to just toss it on the junk pile! It never did me no harm! Stop -- I'll throw myself in harm's way before I let you crush its LCD screen under your boot heel!
I'm eternally torn. On the one hand I have a very strong underlying current of almost Ludite anti-technology mistrust running through my veins. At the same time there are certain gadgets I just love and can't live with out.
Well. Perhaps The Calling Card has a third-party FireWire adapter. I'll have to check on eBay ...
Posted at 08:41 PM Read More
Wed - July 24, 2002
The Dream
I had a pretty odd dream last night. I don't
actually remember too many specifics from it (or at least, I can't really
explain them concisely), but the format of the dream, I think, is interesting in
itself.
To start with a bit of explanation, last night while at a friend's house we had watched two movies that were just released to DVD this week: Kung Pao, a silly parody of kung fu movies (using technology to incorporate an old kung fu movie with new footage) by the guy who did Thumb Wars and its sequels; and the new remake of The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce from Memento. (The remake has terrific special effects and visuals, and a great score. The story seemed to suffer a few gaps ... it almost seemed like an editing problem more than anything else.)
Anyway. I got home after midnight, checked a few messages online, then went straight to bed, where the two movies I'd just watched sort of got combined into one dream. Well, not exactly: It wasn't a kung fu movie with time travel, but elements of each story seemed to show up ... and to make it weirder, the whole thing became an epic, multi-generational animated feature film produced by DreamWorks. Very specifically.
The story involved a far-flung future, millenia after our society had fallen apart and been pretty much completely erased, and existing people lived at a cultural level close to the Middle Ages or earlier. (Like the year 802000 in The Time Machine.) Introduce a baby, a young girl, found orphaned on the seashore (echoing the 'chosen one' idea parodied in Kung Pao). The girl grows to young adulthood, nurtured by her foster parents. The middle of the story, muddled of course by dream-logic and dream-imagery, basically had a lot to do with the girl having grand ambitions to help her society advance and regain some of its former grandeur; and also her romance with a young man, who happens to be a king in another land across the sea.
Ultimately, she determines it's in the best interest of both her goals and her romance to leave her family and take a one-way trip across the ocean to marry him. When she gets there, though, she finds her king has gone somewhat mad (as kings often seemed to do) and is busily executing people he perceives as traitors. The girl realizes, sadly, that her grand ambition to help society is not to be; but even as she's realizing this, her ladies-in-waiting bring her a baby, a young boy they found orphaned on the seashore.
From here the dream goes into this odd montage, showing not only the boy as a young adult, but an entire string of such characters, generations of them, each of them feeling that they have failed to accomplish their goals, and yet all of them gradually progressing through stages of culture, through Renaissance and Victorian and modern-day society ... indicating, somehow, that as every one of them takes a tiny step, collectively everyone progresses in great leaps and bounds. Hans Zimmer-directed orchestra and choir swells; roll credits.
Anyway. It was only a dream, and rife with dream-logic, and didn't always make sense. But it was an ambitious dream; if most run-of-the-mill dreams have a budget of somewhere around $20million, I'd suspect this one ran in excess of $100million. And it seemed to carry a strong message in its finale: However frustrated or depressed you may feel, even a small step is still a step forward.
I'll be expecting an email from DreamWorks any day now.
To start with a bit of explanation, last night while at a friend's house we had watched two movies that were just released to DVD this week: Kung Pao, a silly parody of kung fu movies (using technology to incorporate an old kung fu movie with new footage) by the guy who did Thumb Wars and its sequels; and the new remake of The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce from Memento. (The remake has terrific special effects and visuals, and a great score. The story seemed to suffer a few gaps ... it almost seemed like an editing problem more than anything else.)
Anyway. I got home after midnight, checked a few messages online, then went straight to bed, where the two movies I'd just watched sort of got combined into one dream. Well, not exactly: It wasn't a kung fu movie with time travel, but elements of each story seemed to show up ... and to make it weirder, the whole thing became an epic, multi-generational animated feature film produced by DreamWorks. Very specifically.
The story involved a far-flung future, millenia after our society had fallen apart and been pretty much completely erased, and existing people lived at a cultural level close to the Middle Ages or earlier. (Like the year 802000 in The Time Machine.) Introduce a baby, a young girl, found orphaned on the seashore (echoing the 'chosen one' idea parodied in Kung Pao). The girl grows to young adulthood, nurtured by her foster parents. The middle of the story, muddled of course by dream-logic and dream-imagery, basically had a lot to do with the girl having grand ambitions to help her society advance and regain some of its former grandeur; and also her romance with a young man, who happens to be a king in another land across the sea.
Ultimately, she determines it's in the best interest of both her goals and her romance to leave her family and take a one-way trip across the ocean to marry him. When she gets there, though, she finds her king has gone somewhat mad (as kings often seemed to do) and is busily executing people he perceives as traitors. The girl realizes, sadly, that her grand ambition to help society is not to be; but even as she's realizing this, her ladies-in-waiting bring her a baby, a young boy they found orphaned on the seashore.
From here the dream goes into this odd montage, showing not only the boy as a young adult, but an entire string of such characters, generations of them, each of them feeling that they have failed to accomplish their goals, and yet all of them gradually progressing through stages of culture, through Renaissance and Victorian and modern-day society ... indicating, somehow, that as every one of them takes a tiny step, collectively everyone progresses in great leaps and bounds. Hans Zimmer-directed orchestra and choir swells; roll credits.
Anyway. It was only a dream, and rife with dream-logic, and didn't always make sense. But it was an ambitious dream; if most run-of-the-mill dreams have a budget of somewhere around $20million, I'd suspect this one ran in excess of $100million. And it seemed to carry a strong message in its finale: However frustrated or depressed you may feel, even a small step is still a step forward.
I'll be expecting an email from DreamWorks any day now.
Posted at 08:39 PM Read More
Wed - October 17, 2001
MacRonald's of the Future
I had an odd experience the other day. In a
MacRonald's restaurant, of all places ... usually a bastion of
normalcy.
I hadn't been to a MacRonald's in, oh, months and months ... I think the last few times I'd gone I'd just had breakfast, an Egg MacMuffin and a hashbrown. I had a sudden craving for their golden French Fries, so I decided to head out to a local franchise and grab a quick dinner.
I'd never been to this particular MacRonald's, and when I walked in I found I was faced with three or four electronic kiosks blocking the way between myself and the cash register. You know, those hi-tech-looking touch-screen terminals you'd expect to see at Epcot or in an international airport. Only each of these touch-screens had a button for 'Eat Here' and a button for 'To Go,' and touching either brought you to a display of MacRonald's most popular food items. Touching any of them added that item to your order, or you could select other menus to find more obscure foods or make specialty orders. When your order was done, you could select payment by cash or credit card, then it printed a ticket you carried to the counter (and paid your cash, if that was your option) and waited for your food to be served.
I dunno, this just struck me as odd on a couple levels. First of all, this MacRonald's is practically out in the middle of nowhere. I know the company often chooses remote areas to test-market some of its more eclectic new menu items, but this display seemed more like something you'd find in an elite MacRonald's in New York City or Las Vegas or near a technology park in the Bay Area. It was interesting seeing some of the local yokels alternately marveling over this breakthrough of technology, and being confounded by it.
And second, it seemed like a bit of technological excess. I mean, they still need to hire a bunch of near-minimum-wage counter clerks to collect people's money and bring their orders out to them. When you consider the cost of the kiosks, the development of the software, general upkeep and maintenance, and problems like the risk of vandalism or of confused customers wandering over to the more traditional Windy's next door ... I guess it surprises me the money and effort that sometimes goes into these things for what seems like modest returns. I mean, it's not like they're MicroSoft and they're demoing their new system at a major electronics convention.
Well, I don't know. It's their money, not mine; they probably know better than I do.
The sad thing is, after so many months, their golden French Fries ... just didn't taste as good as I remembered. When I was a kid, there was no treat in the world better than a MacRonald's burger and fries, and perhaps a Shamrock Shake to go with it. I felt like part of my childhood was gone, somehow.
Oh well. Last night I had dinner at Windy's instead. ;-)
I hadn't been to a MacRonald's in, oh, months and months ... I think the last few times I'd gone I'd just had breakfast, an Egg MacMuffin and a hashbrown. I had a sudden craving for their golden French Fries, so I decided to head out to a local franchise and grab a quick dinner.
I'd never been to this particular MacRonald's, and when I walked in I found I was faced with three or four electronic kiosks blocking the way between myself and the cash register. You know, those hi-tech-looking touch-screen terminals you'd expect to see at Epcot or in an international airport. Only each of these touch-screens had a button for 'Eat Here' and a button for 'To Go,' and touching either brought you to a display of MacRonald's most popular food items. Touching any of them added that item to your order, or you could select other menus to find more obscure foods or make specialty orders. When your order was done, you could select payment by cash or credit card, then it printed a ticket you carried to the counter (and paid your cash, if that was your option) and waited for your food to be served.
I dunno, this just struck me as odd on a couple levels. First of all, this MacRonald's is practically out in the middle of nowhere. I know the company often chooses remote areas to test-market some of its more eclectic new menu items, but this display seemed more like something you'd find in an elite MacRonald's in New York City or Las Vegas or near a technology park in the Bay Area. It was interesting seeing some of the local yokels alternately marveling over this breakthrough of technology, and being confounded by it.
And second, it seemed like a bit of technological excess. I mean, they still need to hire a bunch of near-minimum-wage counter clerks to collect people's money and bring their orders out to them. When you consider the cost of the kiosks, the development of the software, general upkeep and maintenance, and problems like the risk of vandalism or of confused customers wandering over to the more traditional Windy's next door ... I guess it surprises me the money and effort that sometimes goes into these things for what seems like modest returns. I mean, it's not like they're MicroSoft and they're demoing their new system at a major electronics convention.
Well, I don't know. It's their money, not mine; they probably know better than I do.
The sad thing is, after so many months, their golden French Fries ... just didn't taste as good as I remembered. When I was a kid, there was no treat in the world better than a MacRonald's burger and fries, and perhaps a Shamrock Shake to go with it. I felt like part of my childhood was gone, somehow.
Oh well. Last night I had dinner at Windy's instead. ;-)
Posted at 08:27 PM Read More
Thu - October 11, 2001
The WTC and "The Watchmen"
Wow, it's one month since the attack on the World
Trade Center. Cleanup continues in New York and Washington, American and British
forces are in the middle of attacking areas of Afghanistan, and I'm finally
getting around to starting my Blatherings here on my
website.
I was hoping to start under happier circumstances.
Actually, I'm not going to dwell for too long here on such world events. Plenty of better writers have been discussing the issues much more eloquently than I can; and besides, I firmly believe we should be trying to move on. Not to say we should forget these events; heavens, no, there is still a lot to think about and a lot to take care of. But we also can't spend all of our time brooding over it, hiding out in our homes waiting in terror for what's going to happen yet. See, that's just what the terrorists want, to spread a little more terror. I think the best thing we can do, psychologically and economically, is to work on resuming our normal lives as much as is possible.
Anyway. I said I wouldn't dwell, but I did discover -- or rather, rediscover -- something interesting the other day.
For some reason, I grabbed my copy of Watchmen (DC Comics, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and started flipping through a few of the pages. Shortly afterwards I just ended up rereading it cover-to-cover. I always remember it was good, but I'd forgotten the depth of subtlety and complexity wrapped up in there.
But one of the things that struck me as I was reading it, was that the story takes place in 1985 ... America is still involved in the Cold War ... and Russia is intent on invading Afghanistan. It's the central focus of the impending war boiling in the background throughout the story, as the Doomsday Clock ticks ever closer to midnight. Reading it again seemed to have eerie connections to the real-world events of today. Not completely parallel of course. The villains have changed, the stakes are different. But much of the story ... the strained politics, the growing sense of helplessness and uncertainty, the increasing difficulty of decisions needing to be made ... even the ghastly death of millions of people in New York City, all suddenly seemed strangely less fictional than they used to.
And from another angle ... One of the themes of the story, particularly dealing with Dr. Manhattan's revelations, is how the smallest, most minute actions can have lasting repercussions in the future. I wonder if the writer could have had any idea, as he wrote about a military skirmish in Afghanistan in 1985, how the ripples of that event would lead to the formation of the Taliban and, over fifteen years later, help create the situation the world is in now.
But enough of this blathering for now.
I was hoping to start under happier circumstances.
Actually, I'm not going to dwell for too long here on such world events. Plenty of better writers have been discussing the issues much more eloquently than I can; and besides, I firmly believe we should be trying to move on. Not to say we should forget these events; heavens, no, there is still a lot to think about and a lot to take care of. But we also can't spend all of our time brooding over it, hiding out in our homes waiting in terror for what's going to happen yet. See, that's just what the terrorists want, to spread a little more terror. I think the best thing we can do, psychologically and economically, is to work on resuming our normal lives as much as is possible.
Anyway. I said I wouldn't dwell, but I did discover -- or rather, rediscover -- something interesting the other day.
For some reason, I grabbed my copy of Watchmen (DC Comics, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and started flipping through a few of the pages. Shortly afterwards I just ended up rereading it cover-to-cover. I always remember it was good, but I'd forgotten the depth of subtlety and complexity wrapped up in there.
But one of the things that struck me as I was reading it, was that the story takes place in 1985 ... America is still involved in the Cold War ... and Russia is intent on invading Afghanistan. It's the central focus of the impending war boiling in the background throughout the story, as the Doomsday Clock ticks ever closer to midnight. Reading it again seemed to have eerie connections to the real-world events of today. Not completely parallel of course. The villains have changed, the stakes are different. But much of the story ... the strained politics, the growing sense of helplessness and uncertainty, the increasing difficulty of decisions needing to be made ... even the ghastly death of millions of people in New York City, all suddenly seemed strangely less fictional than they used to.
And from another angle ... One of the themes of the story, particularly dealing with Dr. Manhattan's revelations, is how the smallest, most minute actions can have lasting repercussions in the future. I wonder if the writer could have had any idea, as he wrote about a military skirmish in Afghanistan in 1985, how the ripples of that event would lead to the formation of the Taliban and, over fifteen years later, help create the situation the world is in now.
But enough of this blathering for now.
Posted at 08:24 PM Read More