Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Last night we went to see The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at the new AFI Theater in Silver Spring, MD. This was only the second time I’ve been to this place, but I have a feeling (or at least a hope) that I will be coming here a lot more often in the future. It is just to great a resource to have in one’s backyard. The first time we were in one of the smaller theaters, but this time it was what I’m guessing to be their main one and it was quite large. Of course the fact that they brew real espresso for you and have beer on tap doesn’t hurt, but the selection of movies, the print quality and their bringing in people involved in the making of the movie to field questions from the audience makes it a unique resource.

Eli Wallach (no relation, unfortunately) was actually at this screening. He talked and answered questions from the audience before the movie. For a man of 88, he sure was amazing! He could rattle off details about the making of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, in addition to many other movies. A couple of interesting notes – he said one of his favorite movies he was in was his first, Baby Doll. He also mentioned a bunch of movies that he loves which he wasn’t in, but I can’t recall them unfortunately. He is a big fan of French cinema, and used to watch it when he was a young, struggling actor. He is actually writing an autobiography, so hopefully we will see that out next year some time – he has a lot of ground to cover and it sounded like he was only half or a little more through it!

This screening of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, was actually the premier screening of the new extended English language version. As Wallach told us, Sergio Leoni, in addition to many Italian directors at the time, would film the entire movie with a certain time of soundtrack (can’t recall what he called it now) which recorded sounds, but probably not all that well, and would catch all kinds of background noise as well. Then in the editing phase all the actors would come in and lip-synch their parts. This is what Wallach and Clint Eastwood did. He said he spent 7 months doing this after the movie was filmed! Anyway, apparently some of the scenes they shot were tossed aside and never recorded in post-production. I guess eventually these shots were reincorporated into an extended version that was made available in a language or languages other than English – or maybe even these were kept in the original non-English version of the film. But for whatever reason, a longer English version was not made until now. The makers of this version actually got Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood back in the recording studio to dub in their voices again for the new scenes. It was fairly obvious which scenes they were, partly because I’ve seen the movie a few times and so didn’t recognize the new scenes as ones I’d seen before. But also, you could tell a difference in the characters’ voices over the 36 years since it was initially filmed! Eli Wallach’s voice had become a bit higher in tone and Clint Eastwood’s a bit lower. The lip-synching seemed more noticeable in these scenes as well, although some of them were seamless enough that they could have been recorded 36 years ago and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if I was seeing the movie for the first time. Actually, for anyone seeing the film for the first time, I wonder whether they will be able to distinguish these new scenes from the old at all!

According to Sitemeter, I have now just passed the 1000 visitor mark! Woo hoo! Not bad for someone who’s been blogging for just a few months. Ok, it’s not earth-shattering, I know. According to my very unscientific analysis, most of the people coming to my blog are from Google or other search engines and searching for information about Tmobile or the Sidekick. Go figure! I suppose I should post my review of it which I tried to give to Amazon but which they did not deem to post. It is on the older model, though, not the new color one.

I still wonder, despite an average of 25 visitors a day, some of whom spend upwards of 20 minutes reading, why only 2 people are subscribed to my mailing list. Perhaps it isn’t clear that this mailing list is just a notification system that emails a form letter when I post a new blog entry… Similarly only a few people have filled out my guestmap. I know there are some fairly regular readers too, and it would be great if they could post their entries up there - I’m always interested in knowing where in the world people are reading my blog. I’ve also put a link to actually review the blog, but so far I don’t believe anyone has. I suppose no review is better than a bad one, though!

Anyway, thought I’d just say thanks for visiting, and as Apu says, “Come again!”

My caffein-addled brain is on a tear. I often get this way, even when I’m just drinking decaf. Something about coffee sets my mind in motion. Caffeine just adds some speed. I have been out all morning (and part of the afternoon) wondering my neighborhood of Adams Morgan in DC as well as a bit south into the Dupont Circle neighborhood. It is the perfect day to do this. There is no humidity, it is warm, but with a nice breeze. Perfectly blue sky and sunny. It’s also a Sunday morning where lots of other folks like me are out just enjoying a lazy Sunday before the workweek starts again tomorrow. If only life were a perpetual series of Sundays like this. I could get used to it. Then again, experience seems to show that days like this have such value because they are not so ordinary. If every day were like this, perhaps it would just be boring. Or at least we’d take it for granted much more. I remember a year or two ago there were big swaths of time during the spring and/or summer where the weather was just as perfect as today. I would take every opportunity to be outside. I’m sure there were days where I stayed inside despite not having to, but I do remember always thinking, “Take advantage of it!”

Anyway, I’m reading a book on espresso which is quite good, but which I’ll post a review when I’m done (hopefully within a couple of weeks). The ability to sit at a sidewalk cafe, people watch, read, surf the Internet, and even make a little small talk with strangers next to you, is something that is so nice. I’m a fairly shy person and so have spent a lot of my weekends going to public places like these because it feels like although I may not be a part of some social event, I am at least part of the world at large if even as an observer. At least I’m not shut up in some small apartment watching the NOT Real World on TV. Even now that I am getting married, I still enjoy the opportunity to get out on my own (my fiancée is away this weekend) and soak in the sensations of neighborhood life without any time constraints, or need to focus all one’s attention on one thing.

Speaking of caffein, I have the odd site of a giant automated convenience store or vending machine right near where I live in Adams Morgan. Up until today I had only used it once - to rent a dvd just for the heck of it. But they have all kinds of items from eggs and milk to contraceptives and more. Walking by it today I decided to take a quick look since I haven’t really looked at it carefully since they redesigned and restocked it several months ago. I happened upon a product that I’d never seen before which I felt I had to try. It was sugar-free Red Bull. Red Bull is one of these so-called “energy drinks” which mixes caffein, sugar and perhaps other stimulants, and give one a “jolt of energy” - since our lives aren’t already fast-paced enough, huh? But being a low-carber, I don’t beverages with sugar. Actually I swore off even diet sodas a couple of years ago because the carbonation and other chemicals they put in them are not very good for you and besides probably hinder weight loss. But sugar free Red Bull I just had to try. I’ve heard Red Bull is horrible tasting. I doubt I will ever drink this stuff again, but I thought I could at least try it. I’ll wait till tomorrow morning though, as I’m already sufficiently caffeinated for the next 16 hours!

I mentioned surfing the Internet, so I thought I’d elaborate a little on this. I have a phone that lets me browse the web, send and receive email, and send and receive instant messages as long as I can receive a signal (which is often very easy in the middle of DC, but sometimes surprisingly fickle). Although the screen is small, black and white, and won’t let me visit just any page, it will do in a snap. I eagerly await the day when I upgrade to a device that has a slightly larger color screen that has fewer limitations in what pages it can load, has a faster speed, and can even do wifi. Wifi, for those not familiar, is another word for wireless networking. You see this mostly in laptops, but an increasing number of smaller devices like Palmpilots, PocketPC’s, etc. are starting to incorporate the capability with varying degrees of success. Of course you can also put a wireless network card in a full-blown desktop PC and thus avoid having to deal with all the ugly wires.

Anyway, I do have a laptop and will take this out to do some work (I do freelance web development in addition to my fulltime job as a web developer) since it’s often more fun - although usually also more distracting - than sitting at home. There are a bunch of different wifi networks out there that provide services at various locations. I have a subscription with one of the largest of these, the so-called Hotspot service from Tmobile. Since my phone is through them, I pay a discounted rate of $20/month. I haven’t tried to break this down to a per-minute or per-hour cost yet. My guess is that since I’ve had my laptop, I’ve spent an average of maybe 15 hours per month give or take, which would mean this costs about $1.33/hour. This compares favorably to all the other networks out there, except ones that are free of course! There are free access points around, but I’ve heard about more in New York (Bryant Park and Union Square) than I have in DC.

I wonder if eventually we will see public wifi access points in every city (and perhaps even small towns) that are sponsored by taxpayer money? Probably the user base of such services is not quite there yet, although given a few years we may see every phone, laptop, pda, and even desktop computer that is manufactured have a built in wifi card. Also, most wifi networks are still using the older protocol of 802.11b, which has a range of around 150 ft and a speed of 11mbps (really 4mps in the real world). 802.11g, a newer standard introduced last year as a stopgap before a real next-generation standard is agreed to, has not quite taken off, despite being backward compatible with 802.11b. This newer standard offers 55mbps (around 20mbps in the real world) and longer ranges. By the way, MBPS stands for Mega (million) Bits Per Second. Modems currently top out around 56K, or 56 Kilo (thousand) bits per second, so 4mps is still about 70 times faster than a 56K modem! But speed in and of itself, while nice, is not the be all and end all, at least for me right now. When people start using their devices to hold impromptu video teleconferences, or just phone conversations, or to download and watch live HDTV or dvd-quality movies or tv shows, etc., then speed will definitely become a factor. But for now speed FOR ME is secondary to range. With the next generation standards, we could see ranges of 1/4 of a mile or more for a single access point. What this means is that a city could buy 100 or 200 access points (perhaps a little more for really large cities), or smaller towns could buy a half dozen and voilà, instant access for everyone! So, how would this work? It could be done on a federal basis that would ensure access everywhere (even along lonely highways in very sparsely populated areas of Nevada or Wyoming), or it would all be on a local or state basis. States could pay for it via taxes, and perhaps could charge non-residents extra and make some additional money. In addition to tourism dollars, why not make some cybertourism dollars? I don’t know, maybe that type of system would be too complex. But would letting the federal gov’t institute it make for very slow progress as new technologies develop? Or would it simply be an area that people don’t want the feds involved in now that they are already taking away more of our privacy? Private industry will make things happen much faster, we will just have to pay more. Maybe the state/local plan would be a good compromise, but then again more rural/poorer areas would not be served as well..

If you would like to look at what kind of establishments around you offer wifi, here are just a few of the many sites to check out:

• http://www.hotspot-locations.com/
• http://www.hotspotlist.com/
• http://www.makewirelesswork.com/directory.htm (no longer available)
• http://www.wifinder.com/

Here are a few wifi commercial (read not free) networks aside from Tmobile’s mentioned above:

• Wise Technologies
• PassYm
• Wayport
• Surf and Sip Network

Well, quite a gap in blog entries, so I do apologize. This week at work has been incredibly busy and my freelance jobs have been keeping me busy after work so I’ve had very little free time! I’m hoping things will calm down a bit and that I’ll be able to write more during the week next week.

So, I finally took the plunge and bought an iPod. Got a deal through Audible.com. Unfortunately the things are backordered, so instead of getting it a weak or so ago as I should have, I won’t be getting it for yet another week! Argh! Any iPod owners able to offer me some good advice or resources? I’ll be using the thing not just for music but to listen to Audible.com audio books and radio shows that I’ll be downloading like This American Life. Because I was expecting to get the iPod last week, I had deactivated my Otis audio player and so haven’t been listening to books lately. I turned to just listening to the news but eventually gave this up as it was too depressing…

I read a thread just recently about the new color RIM blackberry (7230) on the Sidekick message boards at hiptop.com. It sounds really interesting although it appears that it won’t even be available in Tmobile stores until mid-late September! I’m trying to figure out if it offers similar functionality to the Sidekick. I know that it has great email and you can synch with Outlook. Supposedly the reception is a lot better, but honestly I can’t imagine how you could get worse reception that with a Sidekick! The two limitations seem to be that it only has WAP browsing (whereas the Sidekick has regular web page browsing, albeit without the ability to view any sites with JavaScript), and its IM interfaces is via SMS. But apparently this is not the case if you have a special Blackberry Enterprise Server set up on your corporate network. I don’t have such a beast but there is also the possibility that third parties offer such capability via a subscription fee. This would do away with the limitations. I have yet to find any of these third-party hosting companies however. The other “problem” is that the device has only 16MB of memory, which is the same as my B&W Sidekick, but just seems somehwhat limiting. Sometimes I will get some big attachments and then my entire memory is consumed! It is a tempting solution, though, since it’s now a what, 3rd or 4th generation device, is very rugged, and is built from the ground up as an integrated system (like the Sidekick but more advanced). I am definitely looking for some kind of replacement to my old Sidekick which I’ve had since last November. It is definitely has its plusses, but you don’t want to use it as your phone because the reception is horrible, and some basic features which were promised a year ago (like synching and the ability to download new third party apps), have yet to be provided (although the next upgrade to the OS which is supposed to happen in the next month or so is supposed to get around some of these issues). I also have been wanting to wait as long as possible so that I can take advantage of the new law to go into affect on November 24 that will allow one to transfer one’s number from one carrier to another. Not that I am that attached to my number - I’ve switched numbers (and carriers) 2 times in the last 4 years - but I just think things will get a lot more competative then. Sure carriers will still be locking people into contracts, but once the contract is over, there will then be no barrier for one to switch…

As a self-professed “fan” of science, I snatched this audio book up from Audible.com. It was very promising, as it concentrated its 8.5 hours on six renowned scientists, most of whom I’d read about before, but not all.

On the one hand it did have some advantages over the other two types of audio books about scientists I’ve read. For example, although A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is amazingly entertaining, because it covers so much, it gives just tiny tidbits about a given scientist – perhaps the largest pieces on one would be the equivalent of a page or two. Certainly less than five. Then on the other side of the spectrum are books such as Galileo or The Seashell on the Mountaintop, which give you in-depth knowledge of one scientist with maybe a few others thrown in but with only cursory attention. Although this might be great in some ways, it can sometimes be a bit too much information if the scientist is not interesting enough or the book isn’t written well. Six Great Scientists doesn’t have these problems because it divides it’s attention between six, but gives each enough attention that you do not feel cheated either.

Another thing that I liked about Six Great Scientists was that one of it’s aims was to talk about the personalities and not just focus on the science and scientific discoveries. Although this luxury is often available with the single-scientist biography, I still learned of things which I don’t remember reading about in the single-scientist biographies I’ve read. For example the fact that Galileo was an accomplished cook, or that he had created an instrument that his workshop made which sold like hot-cakes (of course I can’t remember the name of it now – no it wasn’t the telescope!), or a story about how Einstein had to temporarily leave a movie theater in Princeton once but went to the box office to make sure that they would know he had bought a ticket already (he was afraid they wouldn’t recognize him).

On the other hand, there are a few things that annoyed me about this book. For one, it is written in a somewhat bookish style. The author uses $100 words in places where they just are not necessary and some of these words I’d never heard of. I understood them, but it was almost as if I was reading something that was 100+ years old when certain forms of certain words were still in use that you just never see today. And no, the book wasn’t written that long ago. I can’t seem to find when it was written, but it was obviously at some point after Einstein’s death in 1955 at least.

The other main thing I struggled with was the narration. After about two or three hours I finally got used to the narrator enough to where I was able to fully concentrate on the content, but in those first two or three hours I was constantly wondering whether I should simply scrap the idea of listening to it and move onto something else. The narrator for my edition was Patrick Cullen, which is not the same as the narrator for the audiocassette version or CD. Cullen was not so much monotone as he was for the most part just uninteresting, or uninterested in the material. There was no life in his reading except in the rare occasions where he was quoting a letter that was obviously animated. Part of this may have to do with how the book was written in that a lot of it is written in short sentences, listing one fact after another. But still, Cullen seemed at times like we was reading a grocery list or something equally unexciting.

As mentioned, the author, J.G. Crowther, tried to include a lot of personal details and this helped to make the book a lot more enjoyable. I think without this and with the bad narration and the bookish style, it would have been deadly, but the personal accounts saved it. Still, at time these personal touches went a little far. Really, there was no reason to know what a typical shopping list for Newton was or a detailed listing of the furnishings in the Curies apartment. Fortunately there was not too much of this, but when it was included, it was a bit annoying.

All in all, I would recommend this book if you are interested in the scientists it covers – Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Madame Curie, and Einstein. Just consider getting the audio cassette or CD before the Audible.com version, and if you must get the Audible.com version, just note that you may have to struggle through the first quarter of the book before the narrator is no longer a distraction…

One of the many 36-hour trips via train we took when in the USSR was to Tallinn, Estonia. A fellow classmate, Matt, had helped host an Estonian women’s soccer team that had come to his home town in Minnesota, so we had people who could show us around and house us. Actually, my memory of my time in Estonia is very hazy. I don’t even remember if we stayed there overnight. I think we did, although that wasn’t the norm for our trips. The only other thing I remember besides some of the women we met from the soccer team (tall and blond), was that we went to a party of sorts where they had homemade beer that was being dispensed from a plastic container and rubber hose. Perhaps we were shown more of the town, but I don’t have any pictures and can’t remember anything else. The one Baltic country that I did not get to go to on during my stay in the USSR was the one I wanted to visit the most – Lithuania. I wanted to go there because supposedly that is where some of my ancestry is from on one side. Actually, it seems like I have ancestry from all over that area – Byelorussia, Lithuania, Austria-Hungry, and Poland. My mother’s mother’s family even traced one of their relatives to Italy, so maybe I am 1/32nd Italian and that’s where my fascination with Tuscany, Vino Nobile de Montelpulciano, the Italian Language, and espresso all come from!

As you might have detected from the title of my blog, I am a big fan of the movie 12 Monkeys. Well, when I first heard about 28 Days Later I just got the feeling that I needed to see it. It was about a future (or present?) where there was a cataclysmic virus outbreak that involved monkeys. Of course it had a number in the title which was another similarity, but that’s basically where the similarities to 12 Monkeys ends. It also was directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame, another favorite of mine.

Reactions to this movie that I’ve seen have been all over the board. I liked it. I thought it was well done, well-acted, and keeps you entertained throughout. It is essentially a slightly different take on your standard zombie movie, but with more modern twist involving a virus and a morality play about rage and violence. It is that morality play that some people may find a bit preachy and simplistic, but luckily we are not banged over the head by it. Lots of good action and nail-biting suspense pervade the flick but at the same time what appears to be a somewhat hopeless situation really weighs you down. In this way I found myself pretty well immersed into the movie.

One other odd item in the movie is the alternate ending, which is no secret – it’s advertised along with the rest of the film. Although I like alternate endings on DVD’s, somehow seeing one in a movie theater was unsettling. I wanted to see the vision the director had. When the alternate ending was shown, it kind of muddled the whole story. Did X happen or did Y? I’m now of the opinion that one should have a chance to at least have a decent amount of time to reflect on one ending, not get presented with a bunch of different possibilities at the same time. Maybe this was done with an effect in mind – give one the impression that we as viewers and members of the human race have a choice in how we want things to come out. But that may be just silly overreaching on my own part…

When I came back from the USSR, I was faced with having to find a job since I was at that point done with college. As luck would have it, the organization that I went through for my study abroad, CIEE, was losing a program assistant for their Eastern European and Russian Summer programs and I was in the right place at the right time. I started working there in January of 1990 and by the spring on 1991 I was able to convince them to at least in part sponsor a trip to some of the program sites. Basically, I wanted to visit my sister who was at that time studying abroad for a semester in Scotland, and somehow I came up with the brilliant proposal to CIEE that if they paid for my airfare over to Eastern Europe and I paid the rest, I could take over a video camera, shoot some footage of the programs for promotional purposes, and I would also get a more intimate understanding of the programs by being at the sites. Amazingly enough, they went for the idea and were generous enough to pay for all my airfare. The video I took was probably not the best quality and I tried to get a friend to edit it, but it never happened. They never asked for the video, so probably it they were not expecting anything much anyway.

So, my first stop was Hungary – Budapest to be specific. I remember getting to visit the university the students held classes in and riding on some trams, but I was only there a few days, and apparently I did not get to do much that was memorable. I remember seeing some McDonalds and maybe Burger Kings on the way to the train station and was taken aback by how westernized the country seemed just a couple years after the iron curtain had come down. I can’t imagine what it looks like now! I wish I had had a longer stay so that I could have gotten a better look at the place and a better feel for the culture, etc. The resident director for CIEE’s program escorted me and perhaps this was part of the problem. Either she just was not a very good escort or it would have been more helpful if I had tried to explore more on my own.

A friend of mine, Scott Meyer, recently set up a website with a bunch of pictures he’s taken over the last couple of years on a few trips - Belize, US, and Spain and Portugal. Some very nice shots.

I will post some shots of my more recent trips as I get to them. I do have some pictures from older trips to Russian and Mexico, but they are all prints or slides and I have not had the energy to scan them yet. At some point I want to get a slide/negative scanner that will just scan a whole bunch of slides at once. I have a shoebox full of probably 1000-2000 slides from my youth and would love to digitize them, but it is such a mamoth job. I know you can get these done by services, but they are, I’m sure, prohibitive…

Bobos in Paradise, by David Brooks is a fascinating socio-political-economic look at the upper middle-class American. “Bobos,” or Bohemian Bourgeoisie, are, as their name implies, a compromise - or if you prefer, an oxymoron. They are the combination of the radical hippie culture of the 60’s with the practical bean counter of the 80’s. Brooks recounts the centuries old clash between these heretofore clashing subcultures and how they melded into one over the last 30 years or so.

Brooks goes into a lot of detail not only about the histories of these groups, with lots of references to influential books on subjects ranging from urban planning to professional outlook, but also talks a great deal about more “observational” elements. So we get diatribes on the conversations of Bobos, on their travel, even their wedding announcements. Although a great deal of this is funny, at many points brooks gets a little carried away. After a page or two of tongue-in-cheek recounting of Martha-Steward-esque descriptions of interiors, or of fictional pretentious conversations amongst some Bobos, it can sometimes get to be a bit tiresome.

If one can get past this verbosity, one can come away with a pretty good picture of what a lot of America looks like today. Brooks actually includes himself in the Bobo culture and so a lot of his book, as he himself declares in the introduction, is self-deprecating. He makes fun of Bobo culture to no end, but in the end he is positive about the whole idea of a Bobo, if not proposing some vigilance in not letting this moderation and compromise go to extremes.

I did recognize myself in a lot of the presumed ideology, professional, educational, and consumer preferences that Brooks discusses. In this way it was a bit disquieting, like looking at your skeleton on an X-ray plate. I arrogantly thought sometimes that I was a bit different from many of those around me, that my approach to things was unique, or at least extra-ordinary. But Brooks demonstrates that a lot of my mores, assumptions, and preferences are based on a very widespread societal underpinning. Of course I am not a caricature of a Bobo because I simply don’t have the money to travel around the world and buy expensive outdoor gear, etc. I just wonder if I did have more money would I then be even more like some of the extreme types he waxes on about in his book?

The one personalizing idea that the book left me with was this: for many years now I have been disinterested in politics because of how partisan it can get. I don’t view the world in black and white the way those at the extreme ends of the political spectrum often do. I think there are things that make sense that have been co-opted by “conservatives” or Republicans, and I also think there are things that make sense that are mainstays of “liberal” or Democratic platforms. I dislike picking sides based solely on labels and a strict adherence to a rigid set of ideals. Apparently this is very much a Bobo sentiment. And although I still think restricting yourself to a single party where there is a platform you need to agree with down the line, I also am starting to see that being a pure pragmatist technocrat at every level has it’s limitations. In a way it is more conservative than conservatism itself. It is trying to compromise to such an extent that you do not rock the boat too much for anyone. It means never getting really passionate about a cause, because passion can slip into dogmatic adherence to a belief. This is a very tricky thing for me because I am still trying to figure things out when it comes these types of ideas. Since I was 13, I have geared myself very much towards science. I am not a scientist, but more of a fan of science and the scientific method. But I am also aware of the limitations of science and that the scientific method itself could be described as if not a religion, then at least an ethos by which to guide ones beliefs and thoughts. The only difference between it and unscientific ethos is the idea of experiment and observation. But is what we perceive always “true”? These are much loftier questions than Bobos in Paradise approaches, but it does make one think much more about one’s underlying motivations, assumptions, and overall way of thinking.

As usual, I listened to this book via Audible.com and the author narrated it. He narrates well and has a New-York/Jewish tonality to his voice sometimes, although I have no idea if he is indeed Jewish or from New York, but since I am both, it at least seemed somewhat familiar. Having the author read his own work is usually preferable to someone else, unless that person is a great orator or actor. I think of all the books I’ve listened to most of the ones that were read by the authors themselves were outstanding whereas if someone else read them, the narration was usually very good but not always.