OPS DUDE: I can’t go on Saturday, we’re going clothes shopping
ENGINEER 1: oh yeah, what are you getting?
OPS DUDE: oh, nothing for me. She shops and I have to go watch her.
ENGINEER 1: …seriously? Why don’t you just… not go…?
OPS DUDE: I have to go. Otherwise we have a fight
ENGINEER 1: Why don’t you say “I’m not going… now we can either have a huge fight… or you can go shopping”
OPS DUDE: She’s not logical like that
ENGINEER 2: She might say “get in the car, we’re doing both!”
The Templetons
I’ve just finished casting for The Templetons, which is a short based on a comic by Matt Voss.
Matt’s comic is like a sort of twisted edition of Leave It To Beaver, where the family are all sunny and innocent to each other, but during the day they lead secret lives. Tim Templeton, the father, is actually a con artist pretending to be homeless and spare-changing on the street. His wife Tia runs a gambling ring out of her kitchen. And their daughter Trina sneaks out of school during the day to be one of those girls you see on Girls Gone Wild. Wooo!
The way they talk is like sitcom families as seen in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and that is how I’m trying to cast it. We begin principal photography this weekend, the end of March.
MovableType to WordPress without a server
My blog was very unhappy.
I had a pretty cool blog a couple years ago. I made a bunch of entries; actually I was one of the earlier bloggers, pre-livejournal even!
I had modified the blog to last forever- it was blog-software agnostic. Every URL would last forever and ever, because there were no hints in the permalink about the implementation. Theoretically I could use any blog software and the links would be the same. What this meant was every post was on a page called “index.html” in its own directory.
At some point Brazillian hackers got into our machine with what I think was a PHP exploit. They replaced every index.html file with their calling card. What would normally be a small hassle turned into a devastating loss of every page on my site.
All was not lost. We had all the entries in the database. But the server was taken down for security reasons. Then, life got in the way, and we never rehabilitated the server.
History became legend, legend became myth, and for two hundred years my blog postings lay inaccessible in their MovableType database. SixApart changed schema, and eventually didn’t even support the old version. All the migration scripts would no longer work. Enough has changed that I couldn’t even get the old version of Movable Type to work.
The time: the present. I now have a one-click install of WordPress. I start blogging again. How to get that stuff back? The answer: write a custom script in perl.
Issues/saga:
- Movable Type has a export format. Unfortunately that format has changed over the years.
- WordPress also has an export format. Unfortunately they never define it anywhere.
- WordPress claims they can import MovableType. This turns out to be a total lie. I used the perl in the MT installation, which didn’t work out… I wrote a script that directly reads the legacy MT database, and outputs a mt-import.txt. WP didn’t like it
- Eventually, I wrote a script that directly reads the legacy MT database, and outputs a fake WordPress export file. A few of the fields don’t map directly; for example WordPress has no notion of “Extended Entries.” Also I think my faceted category system in MT screwed up my category data. Oh well.
The upshot: here’s the script, if anyone wants it.
customMTExport.perl
- If you don’t know perl, if you aren’t a UNIX person, just forget it. You won’t be able to use it.
- Unsupported. I’m not your momma. I can be bribed, however. For $50 I can rehabilitate your blog and put the entries into your WordPress.
- Hopefully the script is short enough and there are enough comments so the average perl hacker can figure out what I’m doing and modify it to their liking.
Drunken Wizard
Gary Gygax died. I played a fair amount of role-playing games in my day. AD&D and Paranoia were my favorites. I’m too young to be a 1st generation gamer; I inherited most of my books (1st edition AD&D) from my cousin, who is almost 10 years older than me.
Sure, Gary Gygax invented roleplaying games. But most of all, Gygax is the man who brought us the genius that is the Owlbear.
What is the Owlbear you ask? It’s a monster in Dungeons and Dragons. Three guesses what it looks like.
Read the following in a wasted, slurry voice, like you are trying to tell a ghost story to five year olds but you’ve had about eight drinks too many:
See, one night, a DRUNKEN WIZARD crossed an OWL… with a BEAR. Creating… the… OWLBEAR. It was as big as a BEAR. With a beak.
Brilliant!
What Telly Savalas Should Have Said
Yo, Chatty Cathy, check this shit out. It’s a large bucket and about two hundred pounds of cement. I bought it at the home supply store.
See, one thing that you should know about me, Chatty Cathy, is I’m totally fucking crazy. The very fact I am unabashedly talking to a demonically-possessed doll should be proof of this.
Actually, people are pretty used to me doing things for no easily discernible reason, so yelling at a doll won’t even register. Although they might wonder about say… if I cast a talking doll into a two hundred pound brick of cement… then took the ferry and dropped it in the center of the bay. Doll or no, I’m thinking that spending the next few hundred years cast in cement won’t be so great for you.
So let’s “Chat”, Chatty Cathy.
Handpresso: False Idol!
BRAIN: dammit shac
BRAIN: why are you not chris crocker
SHAC: i dont believe you got me to start watching another chris crocker video
BRAIN: LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE
SHAC: you owe me now
SHAC: you can make up for it by buying me a handpresso
BRAIN: whoa handpresso
BRAIN (watching video): do they have sex in this
BRAIN: wow
BRAIN: aspo, bow down to the might that is Handpresso!
ASPO: bah
ASPO: it uses a fucking pod
BRAIN: what!
BRAIN: disqualify!
ASPO: way
ASPO: all the taste of paper and stale grinds
BRAIN: all the taste of paper and stale grounds… outdoors!
ASPO: not to mention tepid water
BRAIN: they could at least have sex in this commercial!
ASPO: if it wasn’t ~160dollars
ASPO: I might be tempted to try it if it could use ground coffee
BRAIN: ¡ay caramba!
BRAIN: hey you, aspo says it uses a pod!
SHAC: it does
BRAIN: wtf
SHAC: it uses ESE pods
BRAIN: disqualify!
SHAC: thats why podmerchant is selling it
BRAIN: “all the taste of paper and stale grounds… outdoors!”
SHAC: thats the beauty of it. you can make espresso while camping
BRAIN: and then have sex?
SHAC: yes and then have sex
BRAIN: ok then
SHAC: the pods are sealed like jerky pouches
BRAIN: beef coffee?
Why Horror Needs Boobs
Even without the basic Puritain-influenced morality of Slasher Horror, you actually need the nudity early in the film. But why? Here’s my analysis.
In general, the audience gets uncomfortable if certain aspects of a film are ambiguous. For example, if the audience is shown a politically-charged theme (for example a teenaged girl about to get an abortion), the moral framing must be defined: is this an acceptable thing or not?
Even if the audience disagrees with the political stance of the director, they will be much more comfortable knowing they disagree than not knowing whether they agree or not.
Genre is a kind of contract between the audience and the director. The audience, adverse to a certain kind of uncertainty, needs a bit of definition of the type of thing that is possible in the universe they are observing. If the narrative changes genre in the middle, this can make the audience cranky. Even if the change is clearly intentional, critics get upset; audiences feel misled.
Two great examples: “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “Death Proof,” both joint Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez productions. In both movies, the story starts very firmly in one genre, then abruptly changes genre. You can read reviews online to see what people thought of that… I liked them, anyway.
So that said, the basic issue with Horror and nudity is one of genre. As above, you as the director need to define the movie as a horror movie very early in the piece. But, Horror is a genre, like Action, that requires a bit of crazy action right at the beginning.
What makes Horror fragile is its dependency on “suspense,” which is in turn contingent on the audience’s anticipation of an outcome adverse to the characters. The problem here is, in order for the audience to feel suspense, they must be emotionally engaged in the welfare of the character who is about to be a victim. And this must happen at the very beginning of the movie.
So: how do you make an audience member care, on some level, about what happens to the character they’ve just met? What will be the agent that “involves” the audience on some emotional level? You only have a few seconds; the movie can’t get old while we wait for the first killing.
For men, the “agent of involvement” turns out to be… hot girls. With bare boobs. “Oh no, don’t kill the girl with the killer rack!”
For women, it’s a little more complicated. Just as in advertising, when you show a sexy woman, the men want to sleep with her, and the women want to BE her. The female viewer identifies with the beautiful woman.
But not too beautiful! If the woman on the screen is too out of her league, the female viewer cannot identify with her and gets annoyed. The woman on the screen must be in some way “at the same level” as the female viewer.
So, more slutty, and you get the attention of the male audience. But too slutty, and you risk blowing off the female audience. Also the woman is marginally less desirable to the male audience if she is TOO “gettable.”
Stradivarius
I was just reading about Stradivarius violins. Almost every one of them ever made has been accounted for, which is pretty amazing by itself.
Dr. Joseph Nagyvary has been trying to study these violins (there are also violas and cellos) to replicate the exact process Antonio Stradivari used.
The most interesting part so far: the wood may have been especially dense due to the source trees having been grown during the “little ice age” lasting from the 16th century to the late 19th century. And that made me reevaluate all the books I’ve read set in those periods, or written in those periods. Example: Dickens’ characters seem on the verge of freezing to death all the time. What is the big deal? Turns out it was actually colder back then, and this is even without global warming.
Another unmined idea: although Stradivarius instruments have been the McGuffin in a number of movies and books, I don’t think any supervillain has ever tried to acquire ALL of them. And yet now, due to our connected world, the whereabouts of all of them can be easily obtained by anyone with an internet connection. It is now possible to find every single “Strad” and acquire it, either through sale or by murder. Or death rays. Whatever.
BLOFELD: You’re too late Mr Bond!
AIDS IS OUR PRESIDENT
The Economist has an entertaining Freudian slip today– I use “My Yahoo” as my portal, and I have the Economist headlines on there.
The E’ist’s feed pops up when you mouse over the headline, but the popup concatenates the title of the article with the first words of the article. Also, either AP or the E’ist prints the first few words in the article in all caps, so the passage:
George Bush’s travels to Africa—marking America’s help in the fight against AIDS
AS GEORGE BUSH contemplates the remainder of his last year in office, he is well aware that American is unpopular in much of the world.
Becomes
George Bush’s travels to Africa—marking America’s help in the fight against AIDS AS GEORGE BUSH
This looks like a Dr Who episode, or a kaiju movie or something. WHO WILL WIN???! WILL IT BE THE US PRESIDENT, OR HIS INCARNATION AS AIDS?!
Either that or the E’ist is asserting that AIDS is just as bad as the Bush administration, which I could see an argument for.
Made my own granola
I made my own granola last night. Why?
- cheaper – all the ingredients are bought in bulk
- creates less waste (no boxes)
- you can tune your recipe
The end results were yummy. The current issues with my version:
- the almonds, at $5, accounted for half the price all the ingredients. Part of this was because I bought crushed almonds, which may have been more expensive. Next time I will either just get a hammer or get peanuts instead, which are more cost-effective.
- I misread the recipe and added the dried fruit before putting the mix in the oven. It needs to be added after the toasting; now all the fruit tastes slightly caramelized
- although there is less waste created, I still got plastic bags for the bulk purchase. Although Berkeley Bowl lets you reuse plastic bags, so that might be okay
- I used the basic “default” recipe this time. I need to add my own stuff for the next batch
- I may have been too zealous about breaking up clusters; there are none in my batch. Sometimes clusters are a good thing
Something to watch is, when hot, the granola still feels “wet” and thus it is tricky to figure out if it’s done yet. As it cools, the granola gets crunchier.
The recipe I used is off of Slashfood and is apparently from Marisa McClellan’s mom’s friend. But there are a ton of them online to get you started.