\title{Thatcher's rants and musings 2005}
\include{header.txt}
Thatcher's rants and musings 2005
=================================
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\include{rants_index.txt}
\atom_author{Thatcher Ulrich}
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1 Dec 2005
*The Power of Cheese*
I have a simple recipe for killing mice:
1. Start with lots of mice. Our household is currently weathering a
flurry of mouse activity, so we've got that covered.
2. Buy some ordinary mousetraps. The kind made of a piece of wood and
some wire,
[[http://www.retrothing.com/2005/10/mousetrap_trivi.html][invented
like 100 years ago]].
3. Bait with a little cheddar. I started with peanut butter, but the
mice around here seem to greatly prefer cheese.
4. Place them somewhere the mice frequent, but the dog can't get to.
5. Wait a couple hours. Results:
Speaking of the dog, you might think Pokey would clear out the mice on
her own. After all, she's OBSESSED with slightly larger rodents like
squirrels, rats and bunnies. She sits at home bored most of the day.
She'll eat practically anything that's gross, and dead mice certainly
qualify. In the house though, it seems she is afraid of mice!
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6 Nov 2005
*Textweb does Atom*
Textweb can now generate Atom XML feeds of blog-like content. For example, [[http://tulrich.com/index.xml][here's this blog rendered as Atom]].
------------------------------------------------------------------------
29 Oct 2005
*TV*
Hazel has reached an important developmental milestone: TV obsesssion.
Up til now she's been curiously resistant to heavy TV watching -- she
would pay rapt attention to five or ten minutes of Teletubbies, but
then wander off to do something else. This has been an extra burden
on our babysitting duties, but on the other hand she's always been an
exceptionally good sleeper.
I was beginning to worry about the TV thing. But the tide shifted
this week, culminating in today's bonanza -- she somehow managed to
squeeze in at least four fully attentive viewings of the Baby Einstein
"Shapes" video, and one or two Dora episodes, in addition to
tolerating the miscellaneous news and E! True Hollywood Story her
parents are addicted to.
*Go Revs*
The dreaded sports blog, I'll try to keep it short. The New England
Revolution made a rousing comeback to win their first-round playoff
series against NY/NJ. The Revs dropped the first game 1-0, so they
had to win today by two goals to take the series. They went down 1-0
again, early in the second half, but Jose Cancela came off the bench
and rescued the team with a goal and an assist. The Revs ended up
winning the game 3-1, and the series 3-2.
I wonder if Cancela will start the next game. He ought to; since
Daniel Hernandez displaced him, the team hasn't been as good, IMHO.
Hernandez is a good player, but I think his strengths are too
redundant with Shalrie Joseph's.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
16 Sep 2005
*LuaJIT*
[[http://luajit.luaforge.net/][LuaJIT]] is very interesting -- it's a
just-in-time compiler for Lua, courtesy Mike Pall. It's very small,
like Lua. Based on feedback from the Lua mailing list, it's very
robust and fast as well. If you're planning to embed a scripting
language in a PC game, this tips the balance heavily in favor of Lua,
IMO. It's only for x86 so far though. But Mike claims it's not hard
to add new backends.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
25 Aug 2005
*The Psychology Of Computer Programming*
I just read this book, by Gerald Weinberg, originally published in
1971 or so. It's considered a classic, but I'm not sure I recommend
it. *Peopleware* by DeMarco and Lister is denser, more entertaining,
and more up-to-date, so read that instead. I found this one very slow
going at the beginning, and kind of windy throughout.
I learned a few interesting things though.
For example, he talks a lot about the dynamics of batch processing,
from back in the day when programmers would submit a punchcard deck to
a machine operator, and come back hours or days later for a printout.
Apparently, intensive code reviews were typical for corporate coding
teams in the batch days -- it was just something you logically did if
you wanted to be productive, since the smallest syntax error would
sabotage a whole batch run. So coders learned to read programs, and
code got reviewed.
It seems that interactive timesharing and the PC era more or less
killed off that tradition of code reviews, and so the younger
generation has had to rediscover its benefits.
There are some miscellaneous factoids and principles from psychology,
some of which are pop psychology by now:
* The
[[http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/hawthorne.html][Hawthorne
Effect]].
* The theory of "cognitive dissonance" -- people tend to irrationally
reject evidence that threatens self esteem or contradicts deeply
held beliefs.
* Theory of learning -- different people have different learning
styles, etc.
* "Driving force" vs. productivity: increased driving force increases
productivity to some maximum level, beyond which performance quickly
dwindles to zero (especially for complex tasks). He makes the
interesting distinction between "inner driving force" and "outer
driving force" -- and that many programmers are overmotivated to
begin with, so that applying much external pressure often causes
projects to fall apart.
* "Egoless programming" -- I think Weinberg coined this phrase, and
makes a good case for it here.
There's some reasonable stuff about scheduling and tradeoffs and
communicating with management. There are a few corny jokes and dated
stories about miniskirts I found amusing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 Aug 2005
*Today's Ups And Downs*
* Up: we arrived in the Vineyard yesterday for a week's vacation.
* Down: New England is experiencing a record heat wave, with the usual
zillion percent humidity. We have no air conditioning in our creaky
old house here, so everybody is hot, sticky and cranky.
* Down: We left the rental car on the mainland and took the ferry on foot,
since we leave a car over here. But our sweet 16 year old Volvo
doesn't start, and it's Saturday so we can't get it fixed.
* Up: Things could be worse; we can walk to the beach (we did) and to
downtown Oak Bluffs for lunch (we did).
* Down: I volunteered to bike to the farmer's market and get some good
fruits & vegetables. I got about two miles away from home before I
discovered that both bike tires were rapidly losing air, so I had to
walk back in the midday sun on a narrow road, empty handed.
* Down: I remembered to bring a laptop, but managed to forget to bring
the AC power supply. I spent a couple hours today, first on the
phone to the two local computer stores (neither of which carry
Thinkpad power supplies). I called my employer's helpdesk, who
didn't think my situation was worth any extraordinary measures
(well, they're right about that, it's not like I'm going to do any
work this week if I can help it). Then, on waning battery power, I
tried finding some online vendors of Thinkpad power supplies who
might answer their phone and overnight me one -- but apparently in
this day of e-commerce, nobody answers their phone on Saturday
anymore. Except this one guy, Bill Morrow who runs
http://thinkpads.com -- he picked the phone right up and offered to
help me out if I could get FedEx to make a late Saturday afternoon
pickup at his place in Florida. No dice.
* Up: The thinkpads.com guy did point out that the Thinkpads almost
all take the same simple 16 volt supply so maybe I could scrounge
something. I figured Radio Shack might be the ticket. With both
car and bicycle out of commision, my only viable option to get there
was my electric motorbike, whose batteries have been unused and
untested for the past year. I took the chance, the Voloci worked
great, I got a bunch of produce at the farm stand, and I stopped at
Radio Shack while I was out. I figured I might get to cannibalize
the power supply to some toy or something and solder on the right
connector for my laptop. Instead I found the "iGo wallpower" for
around 70 bucks, which is a universal laptop power supply. Moral: I
love Radio Shack, I hate all you loser online laptop stores (except
for thinkpads.com!).
* Down: At the fancy fruit stand, I spent around $3 on a single
nectarine for Julie, but purportedly a very special one, by the
brand name "Honey Drop". It turned out to be dry and mealy!
* Up: As we were grilling burgers, a neighbor dropped by and gave us a
big bowl of freshly harvested clams! So we had burgers and steamers
for dinner.
*Shoddy Embedded Software*
The sloppy reliability of PC software is invading the embedded world.
Things in my life that spontaneously stop working, but can be fixed by
a power-cycle (i.e. physically pulling the plug), include:
* Our home wireless router thingy, a Netgear WGT624 I think. Don't
buy this one.
* Our DSL modem, though it hasn't fritzed out for months; somehow it
has become more reliable over time.
* Our Pioneer/Time Warner cable box.
* Apple Studio Display (a really old one, but it's been flaky this way
since the first week I owned it)
* Julie's Apple-brand bluetooth keyboard and mouse peripherals (brand
new).
Embedded developers, here is my advice:
* First, as a simple failsafe measure, you need to learn about
watchdog timers, e.g. see this article:
http://www.embedded.com/2000/0011/0011feat4.htm
* Second, stop writing brittle software in the first place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
30 July 2005
*Jury Duty*
I just finished two weeks of jury duty, on an actual trial. I'd never
been selected for a trial before. I found it partly interesting, but
mostly excruciatingly boring. The thing is, the case was just not
dramatic -- a civil matter involving an accidental warehouse fire on
the Brooklyn waterfront, that consumed about a million bucks worth of
cocoa beans imported from Cote d'Ivoire. The insurance company for
the cocoa trader accused the warehouse managers and the warehouse
landlord of negligence. The fact that the cargo was destined for
chocolate bars was the most appealing part of the whole affair, but
that wore off after a day or two of mind-numbing testimony.
The legal process was interesting to see though. We got to see the
rules of evidence in action, and a parade of characters giving
differently-skewed versions of the same events. In the end, I think
we gave the right verdict: the negligence of the defendants
substantially contributed to the fire. Welders repairing the
warehouse at the time probably caused the fire by a carelessly
discarded cigarette. The landlord's supervision and oversight of the
work was shoddy at best, and the warehouse management wasn't paying
much attention either.
Some notes:
* We were a very young jury; at 36 I was the oldest by a decade or so.
* Everybody called me Walter throughout the whole thing, since that's
what's on my jury card and it was too much trouble to explain that I
go by my middle name.
* They put you in an impossible situation: you listen to the case for
hours, and then for a break, they put you in a room with the other
jurors, and tell you "do not discuss the case". For two weeks I had
the worst jones for talking about the case, and no way to release
it. But as soon as we delivered the verdict and could talk about
it, I just didn't care very much anymore.
* During the trial, especially at the beginning, I was worried about
some aspects of deciding the case, like that it would be hard to
remember relevant testimony, separate my personal feelings about the
parties and their lawyers from the merits of the case, filter out
spurious arguments, and ignore interesting tidbits that had been
testified, objected to and then "stricken from the record". But, in
the end I feel that none of those things were real problems. It
takes so long to get through everything, that you have more than
enough time to chew things over and decide what you believe and what
matters. Having six independent jurors hash things out at the end
seemed to work pretty well.
* A strange factoid: "cigarette filters will survive a fire that
consumes an entire couch". That was roughly the testimony of the
defense's expert witness, though it seems wildly improbable. True
or false? (Fortunately this issue was not actually relevant to the
case.) I've been searching the web for confirmation or
contradiction, and haven't found anything good yet. I have learned
that most cig filters are made of cellulose acetate, which is
essentially rayon. I'm sure cellulose acetate will melt and
presumably burn if you get it hot enough, but I imagine cigarette
filters are treated with flame retardants or something. I need more
input on this. If I can't find a good answer, I might need to do
some experiments!
The main defense attorney's opening and closing arguments were
classic examples of asserting the opposite of the truth. He said
the plaintiff's case was smoke and mirrors and we should be
skeptical; unfortunately that was a bad strategy for him: when we
applied the same skepticism to both sides, the defense was far
shakier.
The defense attorney may have believed what he was saying, and he
certainly wanted us to believe it, so he wasn't being intentionally
ironic. But I notice the pattern more and more -- when somebody is
trying to convince you of something, the *opposite* of what they're
saying is often a pretty good hypothesis. Is there a word for this
pattern? Maybe "doublespeak". Examples:
* when you see a sign in a restaurant window that says "Best Burger
in town!" you can be pretty sure that their burger sucks.
* "We think you will find jury duty an enjoyable and fascinating
experience!"
* "My dog is friendly."
* "In order to serve you better, we require the following
information..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 July 2005
*The Terrorists Are Winning*
In last week's _New Yorker_, Jane Mayer writes about our prison camp
in Guantanamo Bay. Link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/07/11/the-experiment-3
Reportedly, the US Government has been torturing and abusing prisoners
there for the past several years, with explicit approval from the
Secretary of Defense and the White House legal department. We have
used techniques such as:
* physical beatings
* withholding of medical treatment (e.g. for broken fingers suffered
during beatings, among other things)
* threats of violence
* long term sleep deprivation
* long term isolation
* numerous tactics of psychological abuse -- desecrating religious
symbols, humiliation, sexual taunting, continuous loud noises
(e.g. a loud tape loop of a crying baby playing 24/7)
These could be straight out of Solzhenitsyn's book _The Gulag
Archipelago_, that chronicles the atrocities committed by the Soviets
in prison camps following WWII. See this excerpt, for example:
http://207.44.245.159/article9236.htm
(In another parallel to the Soviet Gulags, many of those imprisoned
are innocent of any crimes against us. E.g. see this
[[http://www.latimes.com/la-na-gitmo22dec22,0,2294365.story][LA Times
article from 2002]].)
To the above forms of torture, we have added our own particular
innovation: "scientific" reverse-engineering, by medical and
psychiatric personnel in our military, of anti-torture training
conducted by our military. In other words, our military has a program
to train our own soldiers and pilots to resist interrogation in case
of capture, essentially by conducting some of the above types of
torture under controlled conditions, and measuring the results. The
twist is, some of the scientists involved with this program have been
using their data and experience in this program to help devise
interrogation techniques to use against prisoners at Guantanamo.
Because we've been torturing these prisoners at Guantanamo, they can
never be prosecuted through our real legal system, no matter what
their crimes might have been and what evidence we have against them.
As far as I know there are only two possible outcomes for such a
prisoner:
* death while imprisoned -- their lives taken without trial or due
process
* release to their home countries, where they will not lack reasons
for wanting to kill us
I'm not sure what else to say about this, hyperbole does not do it
justice. We, as Americans, cannot claim that we don't know that this
is wrong. The various legalistic arguments used so far by our
government to justify it don't stand up to reality. All I can think
is, our system is cracking -- we are helping the terrorists beat us.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
23 June 2005
*The Pragmatic Programmer*
Lots of people love this book. I just finished reading it. Actually
I skimmed it -- I didn't find much to disagree with, but on the other
hand I didn't find much that surprised or excited me. Notes:
* They love automatic code generation. Granted, it's a very powerful
technique, but there's a big caveat they left out, if we're trying
to be pragmatic. Which is, code generation can be a major problem
to code reuse, especially open source. The reason is kind of
stupid, but true: most coders are stuck with bad/inflexible build
systems that they don't understand, and those people will have a
hard time hooking up your generator.
* The one piece of useful insight that surprised me was tip 69:
"Gently Exceed Your User's Expectations". As opposed to greatly
exceeding their expectations. I had always thought more exceeding
is better. But, they point out that if you wildly exceed
expectations, you probably did work that wasn't necessary, or spent
effort that might have better gone elsewhere. And, you didn't
properly communicate what you were going to deliver, as you were
developing.
*WebTweaker*
A good gamedev practice is to have an easy-to-use system for tweaking
live parameters in the running system. People do it with
heads-up-displays, command-line consoles, GUI widgets, both local and
remote. For a long time I've been meaning to code up a reusable one
for tu-testbed, using a custom GUI treeview talking to the game via a
socket. I realized today what I really want to do is make the game a
webserver, and use a browser as the remote tweaker app. It should be
possible to make a good web interface for tweaking, and it nicely
eliminates the problems of client platform dependence, building a good
communication protocol, and coding the client. Props to _The
Pragmatic Programmer_ for reminding me that this is handy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
15 June 2005
*FYI*
What I've been up to lately:
* Working at Google, so far so good. I have to admit, I miss graphics
programming a little; it would be nice to not feel like a dumbass
all the time.
* Flying cross-country with a toddler. My advice is, don't do it. If
you do, bring plenty of jellybeans and Swedish Fish. Hazel behaved
amazingly well under the circumstances, but even so I ended the
"vacation" far more exhausted than when I started.
* Trying to unstuff my ear after said plane flight. After touching
down in NY with severe sinus congestion, my ear remained
underpressurized and unpoppable for nearly a week! It felt kind of
like my head was wrapped in a towel, let me tell you that's a very
nice feeling in an NYC heat wave.
* Pondering Robert Glass's "Rules of Three in reuse", from his book
_Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering_.
"Fact 18: There are two 'rules of three' in reuse: (a) it is three
times as difficult to build reusable components as single use
components, and (b) a reusable component should be tried out in
three different applications before it will be sufficiently general
to accept into a reuse library."
[[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000084.html][Some other
guy has already blogged about this very topic.]]
In my experience, the Rules of Three sound right. Glass gives some
other interesting reuse facts, here are a couple highlights:
"Fact 15: Reuse-in-the-small (libraries of subroutines) began nearly
50 years ago and is a well-solved problem."
"Fact 19: Modification of reused code is particularly error-prone.
If more than 20 to 25 percent of a component is to be revised, it is
more efficient and effective to rewrite it from scratch."
* I think I can render SWF's filled quadratic bezier shapes directly,
without doing /any/ tesselation or curve subdivision. The idea is
to use stencil along with a quarter-circle alpha-tested texture (or
shader function), to handle the curved parts. I haven't coded it
yet, but the details are in
[[http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/tu-testbed/tu-testbed/gameswf/TODO?view=markup][these
notes]] if you're interested.
* Thinking random thoughts like: if the morons spreading phishing
attacks could spell, they'd be much more dangerous!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 May 2005
*Suggested License Plate Caption*
California: It's Still Shiny.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
25 April 2005
*Zipcar: The Big Lie*
So the thing they didn't tell me before I signed up for
[[http://zipcar.com][Zipcar]] is that I cannot get a car in NYC on the
weekend. The nearest unreserved Zipcar this Saturday is 60 miles
away, in Princeton, NJ! Same story for the next EIGHT Saturdays!
Well OK then, I guess it's back to AVIS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 April 2005
*NYC Rants*
I guess there's no spring this year. One day it's freezing rain,
then we have one perfect day, and the next day its that old familiar
sticky/muggy feeling.
I'm developing sidewalk rage. Why do so many people walk so slowly???
------------------------------------------------------------------------
31 Mar 2005
*Oddworld*
[[http://cbloom.com][Charles]] reports that
[[http://cbloom.com/rants.html][Oddworld has ceased game production
operations]] (See entry for 3/30/05). I haven't announced it here
before, but I left Oddworld (and the game industry) last month for
unrelated reasons, so this doesn't directly affect me. Still, this is
a big disappointment. The Stranger engine is good, and would have
been a great base for more games. It's obviously going to be a big
disruption for current Oddworld employees. I don't really know
anything more than what's in Charles' note and the gamespy article, so
it's hard to draw any firm conclusions about why this happened.
Oddworld was a great job for me; I learned a ton and it was a really
good team. I think it was one of the better-run game companies
around.
I'm becoming ever more cynical about commercial game development of
any scale though. I think innovation is games is more likely to come
from amateurs than from anyone else.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
17 Mar 2005
*IGJ3*
I participated in *IGJ3* a couple weeks ago (official site at
http://indiegamejam.com but stuff from this year hasn't been added
yet). This year the theme was, "People Interacting" (or something
like that), and we had access to The Sims (version 1) character
models, textures and animations, which was amazing. We also had some
great voice acting & extra sound support this year. (The sound in
previous years has been great too, but this year we had more personal
and it got more elaborate.) The theme proved to be a challenge. The
crew and space were larger this year, but it seemed like there were
fewer playable games at the end of it. Personally I got badly bogged
down in tweaking animation/pathfinding, and didn't have a nominally
playable demo until mid-day on Sunday, which means my game isn't a
game, more of a very rough sketch.
A bunch of people finished and did cool stuff.
[[http://www.moonmilk.com][Ranjit]] stole the show with a "Waiting For
Godot" game, with inspired (non-)gameplay.
[[http://www.cbloom.com][cbloom]] did a hilarious "The Office"/"Office
Space" kind of Software Manager game. Chris Butcher did a
slick/creepy High School social status sim. Etc.
I have lots more to say about IGJ3. I'll probably post again when the
official site gets updated.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
21 Feb 2005
*Sunja's Radish Kimchee*
This stuff is insanely delicious! Made in Vermont. I get it at Whole
Foods. Although, as Julie will attest, the smell it leaves behind is
a cross between sewer leak and dead rodent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
17 Feb 2005
*Nighttime is the Right Time for The Gates*
A couple of good developments:
* This week's downpours have washed out the pleats. Where the fabric
clamps into the crossbar they're still there obviously, but they
disappear within a few inches. If you don't look for them, the
pleats can be forgotten.
* I took a walk through the park at night. Human color perception is
drastically reduced in low light conditions, so at nighttime the
color is fine. It makes me wish I had never seen The Gates in
daylight.
Last night for a few minutes, in the streetlights and moonlight, a few
stars out, no helicopters, no pleats, a good breeze going and nobody
around, the gates finally looked beautiful.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
14 Feb 2005
*Gates Thoughts*
The Gates are disappointing. The scale is more redundant than
impressive or transcendent. The color is ugly, except in certain
wind/light conditions. People say it looks like a construction site,
and people are right. The regular, mechanical looking pleats are
ugly. When the fabric is billowing in the wind, the color improves
and the pleats disappear, so that's good. Unfortunately the fabric
seems to be too heavy; mostly it just hangs there. The other problem
with the billowing is that it becomes apparent how short the drapes
are, relative to the gates themselves, and it looks kind of pathetic.
If I were Christo or Jeanne-Claude, I would be deeply depressed right
about now.
The concept is exciting, the logistics are flawless, and I really want
to be moved, but it's just not happening on the level I was hoping
for. So far I've gotten the most enjoyment under these conditions:
* a sequence of exposed gates with moderate wind; the fluttering
drapes catch the light and look kind of neat.
* looking at something above and behind a nearby sequence of gates
(i.e. focus on some buildings or trees in the background; don't
foveate on the orange color or the pleats). The color drops out a
bit and the drapes start to look more serene.
The Gates might look good at night, with less color perception, maybe
I'll try that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
12 Feb 2005
*Unfurling The Gates*
They're dropping the drapes right now... I took a few
[[/photos/index.pl?dir=2005-2-12][photos]] while walking Pokey. I
have a couple initial thoughts:
* Pleats?
* The din from helicopters is a little bit distracting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 Feb 2005
*The Gates*
Today (hm, or yesterday I guess) workers started putting up Christo &
Jeanne-Claude's [[http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html]["The
Gates"]] project in Central Park. Like many other Christo projects
past, the concept seems kind of goofy. The dark gray bases and cheesy
orange markers have been in the park for weeks now, with no apparent
progress. But now that the gates are going up, walking around and
seeing the massive scale of it, I think that when they unfurl the
fabric, it will be AMAZING!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Feb 2005
*Game Developer Union*
A Game Developer's Union is a concept that comes up now and then.
It'll never fly as long as it's called a "union"; most developers are
too young, libertarian and macho for that. But call it a "guild"
instead, make up some members-only shwag like logo-stamped pewter mead
flagons and chainmail T-shirts, and it would have a chance...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
31 Jan 2005
*Tuffy Family*
[[/fonts/index.html#20050130][Tuffy updates]] on my fonts page.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
31 Jan 2005
*More Transit Links*
"Automated Highway System" seems to be the official buzzword in the
transit field, for schemes along the lines of driverless taxis.
Unfortunately Congress killed the promising US program in 1998, but
academia, California and/or France may be filling the gap.
[[http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/dualparn.htm][Michel
Parent on Automated Public Vehicles]] INRIA seems to be onto
something, as usual.
[[http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/ahspath.htm][Steven
Shladover, "What If Cars Could Drive Themselves?"]] This is about
automation of highway driving, a step in the right direction.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
25 Jan 2005
*The Work Of Director Spike Jonze*
A friend gave us the
[[http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?EAN=660200306823][The
Work Of Director Spike Jonze]] DVD, which we have been enjoying. It's
mostly music videos, Weezer and the Beastie Boys and Fatboy Slim and
such. Most of these videos are new to me -- at the time they were
being produced I didn't have cable, nor much interest in MTV.
There is incredible stuff in here. I love Jonze's intuition in
interpreting the meaning of the songs. The flaming man running down
Sunset Blvd is a perfect emotional translation of
[[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000008ORM/qid=1106702781/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-5500957-9101537][Wax's]]
"California". The Torrance Community Dance Troupe performing their
hearts out to cheesy Fatboy Slim pop. The dog-faced boy out on a
Saturday night, with boombox playing French house music. Weezer
performing in Arnold's Drive In.
In my dreams, I am the kind of game designer that Spike Jonze is as a
movie director. Unfortunately, *nobody* (least of all, me) is that
kind of game designer yet, because of the damn technology, and the way
the market and the industry operate. We don't have the
game-development equivalent of the camcorder yet.