Every time I get a peek into the world of Pixar I find myself dying to work there. In the immortal words of Mrs. Chanandler Bong, "Could there be a cooler place to work?"
I'm still working on putting together a rough version of the film, which over the last couple weeks has meant building a new set that I had been putting off and trying to establish where the cameras should go. I suppose if I could draw this would be a lot easier, but instead I have to actually build the things. Anyway, this shot shows what we'll see when the boss character realizes that something has gone horribly wrong out on the factory floor.
Sounds like folks have been jamming phone, fax, and email all weekend trying to pressure their senators to filibuster Alito. Of course, living in Georgia there's really no point, so we're sitting this one out aside from a little cheerleading, and maybe with a little luck someone will see this who lives in a state with a Senator who's on the fence. In the meantime, here's a reminder of what this is all about:
Filibustering Alito For Reasons Other Than Alito: ...: "Samuel Alito rapes hobo corpses after beating them to death with beagle puppies"
Huh. Wonder why that didn't come up in the hearing?
Word on the street is that media companies are going to be revising that FBI Warning you get before watching the movie to provide a bit more detail. Definitely worth a look
Like a lot of people (including the unnamed guy quoted below), I have my fingers crossed that this whole Pixar/Disney things works out like the NEXT/Apple buyout did a few years back. If ever there was a company making beige movies, it's Disney.
Cartoon Brew: January 2006 Archives: "I LOVE the idea of Lasseter taking over Disney Feature! The only thing that would be better is if David Stainton is tazered, maced, and peppersprayed, and then frogmarched out of the building, stuffed into a burlap bag and thrown into the LA river. Oh, and a video of the above in an easily downloadable format for my iPod."
Future American lawyers protest Attorney General's speech.
Hullabaloo: "The day I no longer have to listen to one more word from this immoral, dishonest, incompetent, delusional prick will be the best day of my life."
Sitting on the loveseat working with TCM providing background noise-- "Sailor Beware." Now I understand why Dean Martin drank.
Al Gore's speechifying again, and as usual he makes good points. The whole speech is pretty long, but one significant passage reads as follows:
Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.
But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.
There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.
This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.
Personally, I think there's a more succinct way to describe what this theory means:
There's a rule in our house that when certain articles of clothing are found to have holes in them, they have to go in the garbage. This sometimes leads to exchanges like this:
InT. dining room, day
CHANDRA is picking newspapers up off the floor. JASON is sitting at the table looking at his computer. As she's picking up the papers, Chandra sees a hole in Jason's sock.
Chandra
Hey, your sock has a hole in it!
Jason
No, it doesn't.
CHANDRA
Yes, it does!
JASON
No, it doesn't.
CHANDRA
It does too! Do you want me to show you?
Chandra moves to grab the offending footwear.
JASON
Oh, that. That's not a hole. That's a ventilation device.
CHANDRA
A ventilation device?
JASON
Yeah, haven't you heard? Ventilation devices are the new black.
Found these while I was uploading "Speed Lounger." It's amazing what you can find lurking in your web site sometimes. These are so old they pre-date MP3 files (yes kids, there was a time when MP3s didn't exist). The audio quality's not so great, because these were originally recorded on tape and then digitized using consumer-grade hookups. The original timestamps are long gone, but I think I would have originally made them in 1994. They're QuickTime movies and I suppose I should convert them to something more portable, but I think after you hear them you'll agree it's probably not worth the trouble.
One Organ Solo to Go
Mapping Cassandra
This is stupid. Some nine year old kid draws a picture of a PSP, it gets to BoingBoing and voila, the masses pitch in to buy it for him? So if I draw a picture of a million dollars, will everyone pitch in to get that for me?
I haven't seen footage of missus bursting into tears, but from descriptions I would agree the episode smells fishy.
I'm not even sure how long I've had GarageBand, but it dawned on me today over lunch (hi, David) that if I'm going to go to the trouble of making music, I might as well share it with the world. This is no "Bohemian Rhapsody," but so far it's the favorite around here from my opus.
I'm not even sure how long I've had GarageBand, but it dawned on me today over lunch (hi, David) that if I'm going to go to the trouble of making music, I might as well share it with the world. This is no "Bohemian Rhapsody," but so far it's the favorite around here from my opus.
INT. bedroom, early morning
JASON and CHANDRA are lying in bed. The clock radio hits 6:20 and the radio kicks on. Jason reaches out and turns it off. The room is silent for a moment.
Jason
Wait-- what day is it?
Chandra
It's Monday.
JASON
(Reaches out to turn the radio back on)
Ah, jeez.
Got a new toy yesterday to help in movie production, a Fostex FR-2 field recorder, along with the usual handful of candy (or, "CANDY!" according to my schnookums, who sometimes acts much younger than she looks). Haven't managed to find an eight-battery charger yet, so for now I'm limited to what's within reach of the power cord, but I hope to rectify that shortly. I could probably have made do with purchased sounds and whatever I could haul into the basement to record, but this should enable me to work with a much wider array of audio. It will also prevent the feeling that I'm pissing away money on sound library fees, which can quickly add up. So if you see me wandering around town pointing a mic at stuff, just be quiet and wave hello.
The news about the copy-protection scheme on the new Coldplay CD has been making the rounds lately. I think my favorite part is at the top:
The recordings in this CD have an anti-copying function. They cannot be copied into a PC. In order for you to enjoy high quality music, we have added this special technology.
Then just above the long list of devices on which the CD may or may not play, there's this gem:
This CD cannot be burnt onto a CD-R or hard disk, nor can it be converted into MP3 for file sharing.
I'm not likely to buy a Coldplay CD, but between the FBI Warnings on (apparently) all discs now, the Sony fiasco, and this news I'm leery of buying any CD from anyone. The last thing I want to do is pay 15 bucks for something, and then take it home to find out that I can't listen to it on my computer, in my car, or with my iPod. You have to wonder at what point the industry will realize that they can either lose sales through file-sharing, or they can lose sales by alienating their customer base, and likely still lose sales to file-sharing. In the meantime, I'll save my cash for books.
I've been making some progress on the new short, although most of what I've been doing lately doesn't lend itself to screenshots. Yesterday afternoon was devoted to hooking up the texture controls to the morphing hat so that I can have just one control to deal with both the hat's shape and texture. You can see the result here. It goes by quickly, so you may need to play it more than once. The circle you see moving at the end is the control for the fedora hat.
I'm also experimenting with the new enclosure feature of MarsEdit, so hopefully that won't cause any weird behavior here...
