Blather and Nonsense

Too much free time

Apparently the Dolby CP500 cinema sound processor has several games built into it, including Chess, Tetris, Marble Madness (!), and Castlevania. Other than the unfortunate flaw that Marble Madness plays its sound effects through the center channel of your installation (thus limiting your ability to play the game while presenting a movie), they seem to be decent ports. So if you've gotten tired of showing your 35mm prints to your friends, feel free to repurpose that projection booth for more important things.

Unfortunately the site describing this easter egg doesn't allow outside linking, so you'll have to go to film-tech.com and search for "Games for the Dolby CP500" to find the screen shots.

Very, very

My new PC at work has 3 gigahertz. Which is a lot, especially when compared to my two Macs, neither of which has more than a single gigahert. As I was explaining to Soren, though, PC manufacturers still haven't quite gotten their collective act together when it comes to such niceties as convenience and consistency. Point the former: why is it that the crappy keyboard that came with said PC doesn't have a USB hub built in? The flip answer is that it's a PS/2 keyboard, but modern ports are extremely useful, especially to human beings who want nothing better than to, say, plug a mouse into their brand new PC of immense speed without having to crawl around on my hands and knees. Er, their hands and knees. And point the latter: even though the aforementioned crappy keyboard came with an HP PC and has the HP logo on it, XP's device manager claims it is a Compaq keyboard. Lame.

But did I mention the 3 gigahertz?

Make it stop

The fifth book in the preadaptation of the popular movie septet, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, weighs in at a prodigious 896 pages and 2 inches thick, according to Amazon (I'm surprised they didn't list its weight, but I suppose that would be rude). Not that I'm complaining, really, since it will undoubtedly be a fine way to pass the time until the next compulsory, unfun Harry Potter movie comes along, but I'm already in the middle of at least two huge books with countless more waiting in the wings. Ugh.

Chain of fools

I was having a fabulous time laughing at this transcript of a magazine interview from the mid-'90s with Jack Tramiel, and it was with an acute sensation of schadenfreude that I read about Atari's plans for a VR add-on for the Jaguar, an add-on that was to be Atari's link in the long, long chain of failed attempts to bring 3D "realism" to video games.

My earliest recollection of a 3D console is that of the Sega Master System and its 3D Glasses. Together, this crime-fighting duo formed the most successful 3D gaming system the world has ever seen. The mechanics of the system were sound, enough so that the present-day IMAX 3D works in essentially the same fashion, but their relatively high price ($50) and incompatibiliy with the cost-reduced Sega Master System II relegated them to the curiosity file (and this entry, natch). Numerous bone-headed attempts at 3D were to follow, most notably in the form of Nintendo's Famicom 3D and the well-known Virtual Boy, a semi-anaglyphic, semi-portable, and semi-fun gaming system that attempted to capitalize on the fantastic popularity of Nintendo's own Game Boy and failed, miserably.

Is it greed that created this cottage industry of deception and hubris that will fabricate its demise? Or is it simply a Japanese love of gadgetry that has repeatedly failed to traverse the Atlantic's cerulean waves to these, our humble shores? The world may never know.

You're a real jerk to me

As a short follow-up to yesterday's post wherein I detailed the intricate and fantastical web of interdependencies between Rushmore and Talk to Her, I would like to bring to your attention two web sites. Site the first: Yankee Racers, a discussion board for all things Wes Anderson. Site the second: Sara Tanaka's Fan Club, which I'm hoping is self-explanatory.

Fans of my ramblings will presently be reminded of an earlier entry in which I mentioned Tanaka, but one thing I did not mention at that time was that I have a Sara Tanaka number of 2.5. The 2 comes from Sara having attended Brown with my roommate Soren, and the half comes from Soren not having actually met Tanaka. Complaints about the accuracy of my calculations may be taken up with my solicitor. And yes, I am stalking Sara Tanaka, but only a tiny bit.

Flattery

I know this is going to sound like a strange question, but did anyone else who saw (Pedro) Almodóvar's Talk to Her notice the visual links to Rushmore? It could just be coincidence, but consider these loci of my imagination and reality: 1) a curtain is drawn to open each movie; 2) titles are set in Futura Bold; 3) there is no 3.

I will additionally note that, unlike Rushmore's actual curtains, those of Talk to Her are obviously matted. What's more, the initial final credits of Talk to Her are atrocious, which is especially galling because the scrolling final credits are beautifully set in a gently cascading pastel Futura Bold. I would have much rather seen the interstitials' zooming effect reused than the overlapped stretching montage. As for the movie itself, meh. I know it won an Academy Award, but since when has that been a selling point?

Girl, gone

I'm generally a pessimist when it comes to the future of the human race, but this article made my day. Erin Carter is a 17-year-old girl who makes the claim "I don't know how to do anything with computers" yet knows enough about her rights under the Patriot Act to take charge of an interview with a pair of fraudulent FBI agents about a computer problem at her high school. Young adults like Carter and my brother Nate make me think there may be hope for an intelligent, well-informed populace after all.