brainwagon

Holy crap, I spent the day at home today, and was scanning my usual blogs when I read this shocking article that Pixarian Joe Ranft had been killed in an automobile crash. While I didn’t know Joe personally, his infectious smile and humor were a regular feature of the halls at Pixar, as was his voice which would occasionally lapse into his Germanic Heimlich to good comic effect. He was only 45, and had many stories and smiles left to bring the world. The world has truly lost one of the good ones.

Cartoon Brew has some more recollections of Joe.

Holy crap, this sucks.

Addendum: My neighbor Sam sent me an email earlier today, asking me how things were at Pixar. I sent him back a routine email, since I hadn’t heard the bad news. Today was a scheduled group river rafting trip which I bowed out on, since I have had bad experiences with river rafting the last three times I’ve went. Only later did I realize what he was really asking, after I read the news on Boing Boing. Serious bummage.

Addendum²: Ronnie Del Carmen reminisces more powerfully than I ever could.

I’m watching the live feed on NASA TV. They are in a pre-programmed hold at 9:00 till launch, which should go on for another twelve minutes, and then they should launch.

Best wishes to all those aboard.

Addendum: Looks like there are no constraints for launch. Countdown is about to resume. Countdown has resumed. Eight minutes remaining. Launch! Discovery now rolling to a head’s up orientation, 70+ miles altitude, 350 downrange. Two minutes to MECO. Performance nominal. MECO completed. Discovery is pitching up away from the main engine, and will roll over so that they can inspect the main engine, footage which apparently won’t be downloaded until day three.

Welcome back to space, Shuttle Discovery, and congratulations to all those at NASA and elsewhere who worked to return the fleet to flight status.

I almost didn’t upload this podcast. I did twenty minutes in my car this morning, and then (as I usually do) played it back to see how it sounded. Today’s topics began with some thoughts on the role that the Internet, camera phones and the Wikipedia can play in helping us learn and understand about tragic events like yesterday’s bombings in London. I do think the point is interesting, but I also think that I may have given the impression that I am using the tragedy of the event as a flimsy pretext to muse about the cool technologies like the blogging and Flickr and the role they have in helping us learn about events. I also strayed into politics more than I think was truly tasteful given that there are people planning funerals and waiting in hospital waiting rooms. I apologize if anyone turns out to be offended, and give my best wishes and/or condolences to all who are dealing with the real human aftermath of these tragic events.

Does anyone have any links to podcasts regarding events that happened yesterday? I did some sweeps, but didn’t turn up any.

To lighten the mood, I rambled a bit about the case of a Florida man arrested for unauthorized access to a computer network, and gave my impressions of the Australian movie Undead and Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds. I thought the effects were great, but the overall arc of the story was kind of disappointing. I prefer Haskin’s 1953 version better as a story. Great stuff from the post WWII. (I incorrectly cited the year of this as 1958 in my podcast, apologies). I particularly like actor Les Tremayne in his supporting role as Major General Mann. Sitting in a bunker covered in radioactive dust from the A-bomb just dropped by the Flying Wing, he delivers the classic line:

Guns, tanks, bombs — they are like toys against them!

Great, great stuff.

To all Londoners, our hearts go out to you. To those responsible, stay where you are. I’m sure someone will be with you shortly.

What doesn’t get reported in the media enough is all the little kindnesses that people can pay to one another when trouble unites them. I found this Moment of London Zen linked by Xeni over at BoingBoing to be a good example.

In the shadow of the monstrous there gleam hundreds of tiny lights. Good job, Richard.

Eesh. And I thought I was having a bad week.

Four London Blasts Kill 40, Injure 300 - Yahoo! News

Is it al-Qaida? Response to the G8 summit? Craziness over the Olympic announcement? Who knows, but it isn’t nice, that’s for sure.

Update: Flickr photo pool.

Addendum: The link above is dead (shame on you Yahoo! news for not maintaining permanent links). The final death toll reported was 52, and two years later, the case is still active. Wikipedia maintains a page about the incident which seems pretty comprehensive.

I upgraded to Wordpress 1.5.1.3 to help keep security up to scratch. I apologize for any temporary snafus. Polls seem not to work properly in the brave new world, I’ll have to figure out why sometime soon.

It would also appear I’m having difficulty with referer spammers today. I’m researching solutions to this problem.

To the referer spammer who has hit me 490 times in the last hour or so 3714 times in the last day, screw you.

Bad Behavior is a step in the right direction.

After months and months of trial, the King of Pop has been acquitted on all counts. Just prior to the verdict, I had this exchange with my wife via IM:


(14:10:17) TheWife: Michael jackson verdit coming up soon.
(14:11:36) Me: ooh. bets?
(14:11:57) TheWife: Guilty, all counts!
(14:12:20) Me: nah.
(14:12:24) ***Me bets he walks.
(14:15:47) TheWife: Ng for 1,2,3
(14:16:03) TheWife: What a bunch of crap
(14:16:31) ***Me pats his back for his keen insight into human nature, then hangs himself in disgust.


Whether Jackson is innocent or guilty, he is downright creepy. No 46 year old man invites preteen boys over for sleep overs. Then again, no parent in their right mind would consent to letting their children sleep over in a 46 year old man’s home.

Bleh. I need a shower.

Off to go watch the Apple World Wide Developer’s conference keynote, mainly to see if Apple is going to switch from IBM PowerPC chips to Intel. The net has been abuzz with this rumor, it will be good to see if it really is panning out.

Update: Steve is talking about pod casting now. He is playing on the confusion in the term, more on this later. Quicktime 7 on PC to ship today. Lots of Dashboard widgets. Leopard in 2006-2007 against Long horn. Yep, it is true Apple is going to Intel, starting next year, complete in 2 years. OS X already on Intel.

Update2: The update above was posted from my camera phone, forgive the terseness. Now, I’m back at my desktop machine.

Basically the question was: why is Apple doing this? Steve gave a brief answer: the predicted roadmaps for product development from IBM and from Intel revealed that Intel was going to provide something like 4x as much performance per unit of heat generated in the next year. IOW, it’s all about the laptops. Apple did not announce a G5 laptop, and we’ve heard rumors that it is going to be difficult to get a laptop built around the G5 core because of power consumption and heat dissipation. It would appear that Apple believes that Intel can deliver better solutions to this problem in the next year.

Interestingly, I think that Intel is probably even happier to have this deal, because they’ve been chained to Microsoft, whose ponderous size has dramatically limited their own ability to innovate. Apple has been much quicker and more innovative, and should provide better market growth for Intel’s processors, even if the numbers shipped are (at least for now) fairly modest.

Interesting development.

This just off the pokerwire.com WPT ticker…

Annie Duke eliminates Wil Wheaton; John Kabbaj out
Ten minutes after being crippled when an opponent hit trip queens against his pocket kings, Wheaton pushed his last 15k in with pocket kings (again!). Duke called with AK and spiked the ace.

Sorry Wil. Hold’em be a harsh mistress. And that Annie Duke is a damn good player. At least you outlasted Tobey Macguire.

Update: another blog suggested that he may have peaked as high as number seven. Way to GO Wil.

The CDC guidelines say that obesity is the #2 cause of death in America, right after smoking. But a new paper in JAMA suggests that this is not really the case, that it would be more appropriate to list it at #7 on the killer list, behind automobile accidents and gun deaths. The old number suggested that 365,000 deaths could be caused by too many pounds, the new figure: 25,814.

Link to the SFGate article:

Obesity Danger May Have Been Overstated

It may simply be that while many Americans are overweight, they are working better to manage their stress, cholesterol, blood pressure and are eating better foods. In such circumstances, being obese may be a great deal less harmful than previously imagined.

Link to the JAMA article:

JAMA — Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity, April 20, 2005, Flegal et al. 293 (15): 1861

I’m enheartened. After all, anything which tells me that I’m likely to live a longer and healthier life is a good thing.

Minutes ago, Yahoo! News reported that Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany has been elected the new Pope, and will be known as Pope Benedict XVI.

I hadn’t noticed especially, but apparently Comcast has been having difficulty with its name servers.

The Burt Rutan Designed Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer is on its way. You can get live updates via their flight tracking webpage. At this second, they are flying over Algeria at an altitude of 47,449 feet.

Check out this A nice and growing tribute to a remarkable individual. Includes some very recent photos and mp3s.

The Register reports that major music labels are trying to get music retailers to increase prices. What a good idea! Let’s make it even more costly for individuals to acquire music, that’s sure to drive down the rates of copyright infringement!

Seriously, what are they thinking?

The problem appears to be related to Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Apparently 65% of all music downloads for money occur through the iTunes music store. Apple’s success in online marketing of music appears to be at the expense of the major labels (or so they apparently believe) and they apparently aren’t happy.

I do see why they are worried. The wholesale price for songs is 65 cents per track. Apple collects 99 cents per track, netting themselves 34 cents. The record companies do have expenses that Apple probably does not: they do after all pay to produce albums, and they have to manufacture them. One could expect that over time, online distribution of music will become the norm, and the overall market for the solid vinyl plastic form of music will become a thing of the past, and record companies will not be able to maintain their lofty lifestyles.

But it’s there fault for handing a huge market over to Apple for a pittance. You can’t put the djinni back in the bottle, and it will be damned tough for them to take the market back. Raising prices at this point results in a Pyrrhic victory for all businesses involved.

It’s time to evolve or perish.