Extra88

I should have posted this ages ago. I'm interested in the topic but this domain name was just one that I found when I was trying to pick one that was available and a real word that I found interesting.

BoingBoing: "Technology for 'cognizing'"

Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts

Instead of a standard college e-mail account, next year’s freshmen will be offered an e-mail-forwarding service that will pass along messages to whatever personal e-mail account a student specifies, said Mary C. Corcoran, associate vice president for user and support services at the college. A student named John Smith might be given the address johnsmith@bc.edu, for instance, but the address will simply pass any incoming mail along to Mr. Smith’s Google mailbox, or to his Microsoft Hotmail, or to any other account the student might already have. The college currently runs such a forwarding service for alumni.

This sounds like a bad idea. When the institution provides a mail system, you can reasonably expect students to be responsible for reading what's sent there. Not so when you're just letting it go off to where ever. Most school email systems let you configure your account to forward elsewhere but when you choose to do that you're still responsible for what was sent to your school address.

Maybe BC has a web-based course system that's used for all important class information so school email isn't so important.

This zombie garden sculpture almost makes me wish I had a yard. I don't think it would have the same impact on the deck of my 2nd floor apartment.

This is awesome. It's an epic "trailer" for Ferris Bueller's Day Off using music from Requiem for a Dream. I love well-made genre-switching trailers. And apparently hyphens.

What could bring me out of my blogging hiatus? No, not nagging by certain parties but the fine blending films and characters.

First, it's Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing featuring Sesame Street characters in the form of Fisher-Price Little People figures. Mr. Hooper is Sal, Ernie is Mookie, my man Bert is Radio Raheem. My sick little mind anticipated Prairie Dawn as Tina (Rosie Perez) in the ice cube scene but they didn't go there. NSFW if you work in a an F-bomb free environment.

What do you get when you combine audio from a Boogie Nights trailer with footage from Stars Wars (from all three of the "good ones")? A mashup full of awesome! Luke is Dirk, Ben Kenobi is Jack (Burt Reynolds), Leia is Rollergirl, you get the idea. SFW, unless you work in a church.

What else could bring the blog out of hibernation? LEGO! (Yes, all caps.) I didn't know about their U.S. stores and there's a LEGO Store in Natick.

When I was a kid, one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up was a LEGO Master Builder. I would have passed out at the site of Wall of LEGO found in these stores.

Like many from the LOS (LEGO Old School), I'm not happy with the proliferation of custom pieces in sets these days. However, some of the Star Wars sets are cool. This RotJ Death Star set looks amazing! Sure, it's ~$300.00 but it's 3449 pieces! That's less than 9 cents per piece! The Jawa Sandcrawler looks pretty great and comes with 11 minifigs.

Another cool development is the LEGO Digital Designer software. This is a free program that lets you design, in 3D, your own models using dozens of different virtual bricks. You can then save your design, take screenshots and share them, which is nice, but you can also order a custom set with all the bricks you need to make the model you designed! I'm sure the cost is significant but I think designing a model then being shipped the kit would be great for a kid.

Yes, I qualified that with "for a kid." While I'm still fascinated by LEGO, I don't feel that desire to build and play with them. All my bricks are at my parent's house and even when I had easier access to them, I didn't touch them (not that it would be okay to get rid of them!) I've moved on to other interests, including building things out of ones and zeros. But I don't have a good creative outlet, I need to find something that invokes the joy of creation as LEGO did.

1. It's called "hand lotion"
2. If you're rubbing it on your nose, you don't need medication, you need an anatomy lesson

kottke.org linked to a film critic's list of 102 movies you must see to be considered "movie-literate." I don't think it's necessary to see every single film on the list, I think if there are some you haven't seen you can make up for it by having seen some other greats not on the list. But I agree with his basic premise that if you haven't seen most of them, it's a lot harder for you to have a literate discussion with others about film.

Kottke went through it and made Kottke's list of the 102 "essential" movies he has seen. He's seen 40. I went through the list myself and found I've seen 86 of them. Many I saw in film classes I took as electives in college. A few, like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Singin' in the Rain (how's that for a double-feature?), I was forced to watch by my now-spouse (didn't like Aguirre, liked Singin'). A few I haven't seen I had to look up to make sure I knew what they were. For instance I thought Days of Heaven was "that Terrence Malick film" but I wasn't sure. I had never heard of the W.C. Fields film, It's a Gift before seeing this list. I don't think I've ever seen an entire W.C. Fields movie, I suppose that's a gap in my knowledge but I've never had much appreciation for him.

My list is below the jump. The plus signs (+) are ones I've seen, the asterisks (*) are ones Kottke has seen. Sorry they're not all linkified but the original article has links to Roger Ebert reviews for every one. I can understand not ever watching old french films but how can someone in their 30s (I think that's his age range) have missed seeing Jaws on TV at some point? Nevermind that it's awesome.

Continue reading ""Essential" Films I've Seen" »

The plumber has already been updated to his usual plumber garb but just now when I found Bloglines was down, the page still had him in a pirate outfit left over from December. Don't know what that was about but who am I to argue with a pirate?

Wow, after saying ever since the Intel announcement that Windows might run on an Intel Mac but that Apple wouldn't support it, Apple releases Boot Camp, a tool to aid dual booting OS X and Windows XP. Now, they still don't support Windows but they are providing a nice tool to handle the partitioning, A Startup Disk control panel for Windows and, most importantly, Windows drivers for all the hardware including the little stuff like the eject key on the keyboard. The partition tool actually resizes the existing single partition which is pretty great all by itself.

Even with the Apple provided drivers, not all Mac hardware is supported when running Windows. The biggest disappointment is probably no support for integrated iSight cameras but this may be a temporary situation.

Ultimately this will be included with Leopard, OS X 10.5, but I think this beta release will still stir up the rumors (as well has hopes & dreams) of support for virtualization, allowing you to run OS X and Windows side-by-side. Even if it does, it's possible it won't support true virtualization on the current Intel processors, Intel (and AMD) are coming out later this year with processors that specifically aid the operation of multiple operating systems simultaneously. Mac virtualization would be a nightmare for PC manufacturers because even if they (or Microsoft, perhaps using the now-free Virtual Server) could run OS X on their hardware, Apple's licensing doesn't allow it. Sure, some people would do it anyway but it wouldn't be supported by any major manufacturer or Microsoft.