January 31, 2004
Worked on getting things in order for taxes most of the day. Then we all went to the Food Festival at St. Bridget’s in Pacific Beach with JoAnn and Michael. They had food there from twenty or so countries, so we grazed for dinner. Several tables had a bit of ethnic booze as well, so my tapas and baklava and ravioli and Nigerian goat rice and pirogi were washed down with some Scottish scotch, Swedish glog, and Trinidadian rum punch. Then the circle dancing began.
We continued the home Russian film festival with Stachka, a silent Eisenstein film from 1925. Cruel piglike capitalist factory owners drive workers to strike. Chaos, intrique and pain follow.
January 30, 2004
Alex has an essay to write about the Russian revolution and it’s not exactly flowing. To help build the mood, we went to Kensington Video, a San Diego treasure, and picked up an armload of tapes and a DVD to roll our own film festival. Tonight we watched Russian Ark.
What an amazing work! It’s a tour of 300 years of Russian history told as a dreamlike walk through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The style is like a combination of Fellini and Kubrick, and the jawdroppingly astounding thing about it is that it was filmed all in a single continuous take. They had only one day to shoot the film as the Museum was going to be closed for them only that long. They decided that if something went wrong in the first 20 minutes they would start over, and something did go wrong three times. The fourth time was their last chance as the light was fading… and they did it. Ninety minutes of walking the camera along a 1.5 km path with 2000 actors representing everything from Peter the Great to the present.
I toured the Hermitage in the last year the city was called Leningrad, and there’s no place like it in the world. This film brought that experience back to me and much more. Go rent it!
More info here, and here.
June has been secretly blogging since December and only a few days ago revealed the URL of Kicking My Feet Up. She’s becoming quite the foodie, you’ll see. We’re eating well these days and hardly ever dining out. June’s extracting herself from her former job was a good move for the whole family.
January 29, 2004
Recent issues of ResourceShelf have pointed to some interesting new tools worth bookmarking.
purportal.com is like Dogpile for hoaxes and scams. From one page you can search Snopes, About.com’s urban legends page, the CIAC Hoax Database and two virus engines. This is a handy link to have the next time some well-intentioned friend includes you on a massive list of people to be warned about the dangers of aspertame, a dying child wishing for postcards or a new proposed bill to tax email.
Another cool new tool for searching the news: Topix.net. The database includes content from 3100 sources organized into over 150,000 topics. Over 30,000 of these topics allow you to browse news by geographical location. So you can type in a zip code and find out what’s in the news near that location. For example, here’s what’s going on in the places I’ve lived in my life:
Topix is still in beta and the coverage seems a little idiosyncratic, but it might become a useful way to tune in to a place.
January 28, 2004
No doubt you’ve seen that commercial where the guy mortifies his wife in St. Mark’s Square in Venice by shouting out “I… LOVE… THIS… WOMAN!”
Well that’s how I feel at the end of the day these days, only it’s “I… LOVE… THIS… JOB!” that I want to shout. I love my wife, too, and that damn commercial reminds me that it’s high time I replaced her lost wedding ring. But I’m going through a stretch where everything about teaching feels right and good and well worth doing.
I haven’t actually shouted that out loud yet, but in my mind’s eye I see the startled pigeons scatter in panic into the skies over College Avenue.
January 27, 2004
I’m so tired I can barely sit up straight. Must…. blog…. before…. sleep.
OK: remember that rear-end collision last month? Well, the end result was that the insurance paid for a whole new rear bumper and I haven’t gotten around to replacing the Dean sticker. I’m driving an apolitical car again, but soon that will change. Will I stick on one of these? Or these? Time will tell.
Meanwhile, if you know any Nader sympathizers, please show them this. And now, having fulfilled my holy obligation to blog, I’m off to bed.
January 26, 2004
It’s been hyped for several years, but it looks as though it’s finally arriving for real. Philips Electronics says that they’ll have 5 inch flexible displays actually for sale next year. Black and white at first, but you can bet that larger color versions will follow.
So picture this: you’re sitting in Starbucks and pull an 8 inch tube out of your pocket. Out of it unfurls an 11 inch flexible sheet that proceeds to show you all the latest news, a streaming movie, or Harry Potter Volume VIII as you sip your venti chai latte. That sound you hear is 500 million trees exhaling an oxygen-rich sigh of relief.
More on the technology here, here, and here.
January 25, 2004
Have you ever felt trapped in IKEA? The brilliant Matt Baldwin of Defective Yeti has turned the experience into a first-person shooter game.
January 24, 2004
That’s according to the latest Newsweek Poll. The game is far from over, of course, but it’s getting a lot more interesting. This seems like a good time to remind my readers (both of you) that
THERE IS ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT TO ENTER THE CYBERPONY PRESIDENTIAL PREDICTION POLL
On January 31, the poll closes. We’ll revisit it next November to see who came closest soonest.
You can look at earlier entries here, and then cast your vote here. You can enter a second time if you’ve changed your mind (as I have).
Pass the link on to your crazy aunt in the attic and anyone else you know who has a knack for seeing into the future.
The winner, to be proclaimed next November, will receive worldwide 
fame here as well as a certificate suitable for framing but not actually framed. Presidential candidates themselves, astrologers and members of the Trilateral Commission or Illuminati may not enter. Void where prohibited by law.
Good luck!
January 23, 2004
Just received a BloggerBuzz newsletter via email which talks about how much Blogger has grown since being acquired by Google. Apparently they have an Ambient Orb in their offices tapped into the Blogger back end.
Since being acquired by Google, Inc., Blogger’s user base has nearly doubled. We hooked up this ambient orb at the office that somehow knows how many new blogs have been created in the last hour and changes color accordingly. Right now it’s red, which means three hundred new Blogger blogs have been created in the last hour. Crazy.
With 53 new blogs created this week for two of my courses, it tickles me to know I helped redden that orb.
The whole idea of ambient displays is interesting. The idea is to create unobtrusive ways to monitor data that changes dynamically and embed them into living and working spaces as decorations. You mostly don’t notice them, but when something changes that should get your attention, they change in ways that grab your eyes. Googling around, I find Weathermobile, Google employee Kevin Fox’s musings, Craig Wisneski’s thesis at the MIT Media Lab, and Smart Artefacts and the Disappearing Computer. Interesting stuff.
I wonder if future classrooms will have some kind of panel on the wall showing the degree of interest, understanding, boredom and frustration in the room. Good teachers, of course, do this with their own wetware, but is there a way to do it better?