/dev/null/kevin

Since today is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars I am required, by law, to tell my Star Wars story.  That's me on the left there, cut and pasted into the Special Edition of Star Wars that came out in 1997.  I wrote a web page about it in 1998 and it's still there, looking like I wrote it in 1998.  Can you say "looks best when viewed with Mosaic?"

Something that I didn't mention is that I didn't know if I would make the final cut of the movie until I actually saw it in the theater.  We had filmed quite a few sequences so I didn't know what to look for, or even where to look, other than somewhere in Mos Eisley.  I ended up being quite easy to spot and everyone who came with me saw me right away.  I was lucky that you can see my face as most people's faces were covered.  The guy on my right was wearing glasses when we filmed that scene and was told to remove them, because glasses don't belong in the Star Wars universe.  I guess they worked around his glasses by covering his face with a building.  Tough luck, dude.

This was the first scene we filmed and I remember trying to stand as close to the camera as they would let me.  We were told to have a conversation so what I'm actually saying to the two other guys was, "If this shot gets into the movie, we'll be right up front!"  And I was right! 

Tags: star wars

I seem to be turning into a Friday-only blogger.  Times, they are a-busy.

Perhaps you read, in many places, the story about Japanese people getting scammed by people sending them sheep when they ordered poodles?  Well, it's fake.  Some news sites have pulled the story, but their links remain.

This is what happens when one lazy reporter posts an urban legend as news and all of the other news agencies pick it up.  No one does any verification.

Oh, and 3rd Happy Birthday, Blogs.Sun.Com.  You don't look a day over two.

Tags: news | reporting | errors | sheep | poodles

Here are my predictions for who will win (not who should win) the Oscar.  Predictions are in bold type.

 Update: Winners are in green, my incorrect predictions are in red.

• Best Picture:
• "Babel"
• "The Departed"
• "Letters From Iwo Jima"
• "Little Miss Sunshine"
• "The Queen"

• Actor:
• Leonardo DiCaprio, "Blood Diamond"
• Ryan Gosling, "Half Nelson"
• Peter O'Toole, "Venus"
• Will Smith, "The Pursuit of Happyness"
• Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland"

• Actress:
• Penelope Cruz, "Volver"
• Judi Dench, "Notes on a Scandal"
• Helen Mirren, "The Queen"
• Meryl Streep, "The Devil Wears Prada"
• Kate Winslet, "Little Children"

• Supporting Actor:
• Alan Arkin, "Little Miss Sunshine"
• Jackie Earle Haley, "Little Children"
• Djimon Hounsou, "Blood Diamond"
• Eddie Murphy, "Dreamgirls"
• Mark Wahlberg, "The Departed"

• Supporting Actress:
• Adriana Barraza, "Babel"
• Cate Blanchett, "Notes on a Scandal"
• Abigail Breslin, "Little Miss Sunshine"
• Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"
• Rinko Kikuchi, "Babel"

• Directing:
• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Babel"
• Martin Scorsese, "The Departed"
• Clint Eastwood, "Letters From Iwo Jima"
• Stephen Frears, "The Queen"
• Paul Greengrass, "United 93"

• Foreign Language Film:
• "After the Wedding" Denmark
• "Days of Glory (Indigenes)" Algeria
• "The Lives of Others" Germany
• "Pan's Labyrinth" Mexico
• "Water" Canada

• Adapted Screenplay:
• Sacha Baron Cohen and Anthony Hines and Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips, "Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"
• Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, "Children of Men"
• William Monahan, "The Departed"
• Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, "Little Children"
• Patrick Marber, "Notes on a Scandal"

• Original Screenplay:
• Guillermo Arriaga, "Babel"
• Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, "Letters From Iwo Jima"
• Michael Arndt, "Little Miss Sunshine"
• Guillermo del Toro, "Pan's Labyrinth"
• Peter Morgan, "The Queen"

• Animated Feature Film:
• "Cars"
• "Happy Feet"
• "Monster House"

• Art Direction:
• "Dreamgirls"
• "The Good Shepherd"
• "Pan's Labyrinth"
• "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
• "The Prestige"

• Cinematography:
• "The Black Dahlia"
• "Children of Men"
• "The Illusionist"
• "Pan's Labyrinth"
• "The Prestige"

• Sound Mixing:
• "Apocalypto"
• "Blood Diamond"
• "Dreamgirls"
• "Flags of Our Fathers"
• "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"

• Sound Editing:
• "Apocalypto"
• "Blood Diamond"
• "Flags of Our Fathers"
• "Letters From Iwo Jima"
• "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"

• Original Score:
• "Babel" Gustavo Santaolalla
• "The Good German" Thomas Newman
• "Notes on a Scandal" Philip Glass
• "Pan's Labyrinth" Javier Navarrete
• "The Queen" Alexandre Desplat

• Original Song:
• "I Need to Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth" Melissa Etheridge
• "Listen" from "Dreamgirls" Henry Krieger, Scott Cutler and Anne Preven
• "Love You I Do" from "Dreamgirls" Henry Krieger and Siedah Garrett
• "Our Town" from "Cars" Randy Newman
• "Patience" from "Dreamgirls" Henry Krieger and Willie Reale

• Costume:
• "Curse of the Golden Flower"
• "The Devil Wears Prada"
• "Dreamgirls"
• "Marie Antoinette"
• "The Queen"

• Documentary Feature:
• "Deliver Us From Evil"
• "An Inconvenient Truth"
• "Iraq in Fragments"
• "Jesus Camp"
• "My Country, My Country"

• Documentary (short subject):
• "The Blood of Yingzhou District"
• "Recycled Life"
• "Rehearsing a Dream"
• "Two Hands"

• Film Editing:
• "Babel"
• "Blood Diamond"
• "Children of Men"
• "The Departed"
• "United 93"

• Makeup:
• "Apocalypto"
• "Click"
• "Pan's Labyrinth"

• Animated Short Film:
• "The Danish Poet"
• "Lifted"
• "The Little Matchgirl"
• "Maestro"
• "No Time for Nuts"

• Live Action Short Film:
• "Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea)"
• "Eramos Pocos (One Too Many)"
  
• "Helmer & Son"
• "The Saviour"
• "West Bank Story"

• Visual Effects:
• "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
• "Poseidon"
• "Superman Returns"

Tags: academy awards | oscars | predictions

IMDb's new look is nice, I guess, but the muscle-memory in my mouse hand doesn't know where to click anymore.

Help!

Tags: imdb
 

Here are some cool pictures of an artist who cleaned the soot from the inside of a tunnel to create art.

 Tags: skulls | soot | art

My local newspaper, The San Jose Mercury News, recently removed Parade Magazine from the Sunday line up and replaced it with USA Weekend.  Never has the expression "you don't appreciate something until it's gone" been more true.  Parade was never the greatest newspaper insert, but USA Weekend was pure fish-wrapper.

Both are mostly full of ads, but at least Parade had a few features that I liked to read.  USA Weekend had nothing.  Apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way.  After writing a letter to the "feedback" email, I received this reply a few days later:

Since it doesn't look like the Merc is going to change anything, I am not going to hold my breath for USA Weekend to steal away "smarted person in the world," I'm going to have to go online to read her column. That's fine, but the answers to her puzzles are always there like they are in the printed version. Oh well.

Tags: parade magazine newspaper usa weekend

Let's all predict which will be the bigger news story tonight:  The US elections, or Britney Spears divorcing Kevin Federline.  I think the odds makers are putting this at even money right now.

Update [08 Nov 2006]:  To the TV news' credit, I didn't see a single story about Britney, but this morning's radio shows were all about Britney and had little to say about the election results.

Tags: election, britney spears 

Elevator too slow?  Escalator too crowded?  Take the slide from the 5th floor to the bottom at speeds up to 30 MPH.

Well-named Turbine Hall in London contains several of these stainless steel slides for public use so now you can know what it feels like to travel in one of those vacuum tube systems.  This is just a few steps away from the cheesy 1950's view of the future where people travel in tubes.

More pictures here.

And, yes, I know the subway in London is called the "tube."  Coincidence?  Yes! 

Tags: topic[slides], transportation

There was an announcement today that the original Star Trek is getting a CGI makeover.  While this will be interesting to see, especially since it will be high definition (and I'm sure there will be a whole new DVD set), I can only hope no one makes any "George Lucas" type changes.  Maybe they can add a CGI Chekov into the episodes that he wasn't in, or add a whole new character, Mr. Wiggles, who adds inappropriate comic relief.

In all honesty, while CGI has produced some amazing effects, when it comes to cool looking spaceships, the model makers of the 70s and 80s win that battle.  Sure there were a lot of "ships on fishing line" that looked fake, but best models look better than the best CGI.  The X-Wing and TIE fighters are still cooler than anything from all three of the prequels.  The same goes for the original Alien and Predator costumes compared to any CGI created characters (yes, you, Jar Jar Binks).

Take a look at Martin Bowers Model World for an example of the best models.
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August 31, 2006 09:58 PM PDT Permalink | |

Someone in China (Hawkpeng79) created a pretty cool puzzle game.  Arrange the mirrors and prisms to redirect colored lasers to colored targets.  To quote the Google-translated page, "How strong is your logic?"

Oh yeah, there is also a sequel.

Stuck?  Here are my answers, but it's much more satisfying to get them yourself.

I've started the sequel (25 - 50).  I will post the answers as I get them.  Thanks to Dave Tong for some hints and some alternate solutions.  It took both of us to solve #32.

Have you ever given up on a TV show? I don't mean watching a show once or twice and then stoping.   I mean you've watched the show for years, but then it really jumps the shark and you just can't watch anymore.  I usually stick with a show until its bitter end (or cancelation), but a couple of shows just put me over the edge and got purged from my TiVo season pass list.

I've given up on the following shows:

• The X-Files - The Truth was out there and the truth was that Chris Carter was just making it up as he went along.  This show was the hardest to stop watching because it used to be one of my favorite shows.  Sadly, it became apparent that no one invovled with the show gave a damn about the story, or the characters, and only wanted to collect a paycheck.  The "jump the shark" moment was the movie, and I bailed out a few seasons after that.  I never saw it, but they even named one episode of the last season "Jump The Shark" so they all knew it, too.

• Joey - My wife and I wanted to like this show.  We tried, and tried, and even stuck through the whole first season.  Secretly, I hoped it would be canceled, but it wasn't (at first).  For the second season, TiVo recorded episode after episode and we let them languish until they started dropping off.  Oh well.

• Andromeda - I probably never should have even started watching this dumb show in the first place, but it managed to overcome the "Hercules" factor, for a while.  But then Robert Hewitt Wolfe left and things went downhill fast.  Kevin Sorbo took more control and dumbed things down.  Way down.  Not even Lexa Doig was enough to watch this show.

• CSI: Miami - This CSI spinoff started off okay, but soon Miami's flashiness and action plots left realism and science in the dust.  As a fan of the CSI format, I put up with David Caruso's earnestness for several seasons.  Unfortunatley, Caruso's character of Horatio Caine is really a cartoon character.  While CSI's Gil Grissom always follows the evidence, Caine follows hunches and declares people guilty (or innocent) without any real evidence at all. My "favorite" thing he does is say things like "Don't worry Timmy, I'll get the guy who did this to your father.  I'll also pay for your entire college education."  The entire CSI:Miami team also uses their guns more than their microscopes and make huge, plot-driven, leaps in logic.  Strangely, this show is huge in Europe (more so than the original CSI).  It must be the same people who love David Hasslehoff's singing.

• Star Trek: Voyager - This show started weak and stayed that way.  I can watch any Star Trek series in reruns except this one.  I'll even watch Enterprise again sometimes, but not Voyager.  Never has so much good potential been squandered as with this show and in doing so Rick Berman and Brannon Braga destroyed the Star Trek franchise.
  

Who do you think is the most worthless celebrity? Who just doesn't deserve to be a celebrity and is getting way too much press lately?

Take the poll: Most Worthless Celebrity

Don't see your "favorite" listed? Put their name in the comments.
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July 16, 2006 11:33 PM PDT Permalink | |

I've been using my TiVo to record a bunch of sporting events lately. Between the hockey playoffs and basketball playoffs I had to get into the habit of adding *at least* 30 minutes to the recording time. I've been adding an hour.

Now, I realize that sporting events run long and games can go into overtime, but whoever is estimating the length of these games is severely underestimating their end times. I would have lost the ends of many games had I not added the extra time. It seems like they are short changing themselves by underestimating the game lengths so why not err on the side of caution?

At least the World Cup games seem to end on time (due to the nature of how football/soccer time is kept). However, I have noticed that the network TV coverage is now starting up to 30 minutes early. I guess they need to put their commercials somewhere.
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June 21, 2006 10:44 AM PDT Permalink | |

Here is what American network TV will look like this next TV season. I'm not seeing too many must see shows. Centainly not any new ones.

Note: The networks have a split season. In the fall, Fox has baseball and NBC has Sunday night football. So, some slots have two shows listed for the split. Also, I'm on the west coast, so the football doesn't actually air during primetime. Adjust for your timezone.

Some shows (24, Prison Break, Lost) will either start late (24) or have a large break in the middle (Lost, Prison Break) so there won't be any repeats. Yeah!

The folks at http://hoth2014.com are petitioning for the 2014 Winter Olympics to be on Hoth. They are currently looking for new events to spice up interest. I made the following suggestion: Partner with Reality Shows!

• Admiral Survivor!
• Fear Factor Tauntaun guts eating challenge
• The Amazing Base Evacuation Race
• Bounty Hunter Idol
• The Real Asteroid
• Extreme Makeover: Corellian Freighter Edition
• The Sith Apprentice
• Mynock Hunter
• Who Wants to be a Jedi Knight?
• Do or Do Not

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March 09, 2006 02:53 PM PST Permalink | |