The Evolution of Remix Culture
February 13, 2010 – 10:25 amI love this video. Let’s do a remake of it!
Fearmongering
February 11, 2010 – 8:05 pmNever afraid to scare the shit out of its residents, the city of New York has again managed to present clear and levelheaded information. Next ad: brass knuckles, for that mugging you just know is coming.
Jack Kerouac
February 8, 2010 – 1:52 amthe only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
How’s New York?
February 8, 2010 – 1:36 amThey all ask when I see them. And my answer changes based on what they want to hear, or what I think they do.
I had a kind of nightmare today as I showered, rushing in as I considered it and then damming against my brain when I turned towards other thoughts. I was handed a giant megaphone that broadcasted into every home and mind for five minutes. I could say anything, and the entire world would have listen. And I was speechless. I had a million thoughts and none of them complete, all ringing somehow false, all with preimaginings of a million counterarguments and scoffs. (In retrospect I would have said ‘all you need is love’, and it would ring hollow and without much hope of impact.)
My grandfather buys and sells real estate. He once asked me about the indie film industry and I told him that most people don’t have money to pay anybody, and nobody knows what’s going to happen to it all in a few years. He said “It’s the blind leading the blind” and I said “but Grandpa, aren’t we all blind?” And he said “your father and I aren’t. We have goals and we move towards them.”
What are goals? Does hope count?
Tomorrow I will shadow a friend in Law School. I read the case studies and saw the reasoning of judges, dissecting the meaning of a dozen precedents in the context of a host of laws and coming up with concrete answers using abstract reasoning about imprecise thoughts. And it’s necessary that this happen for society to move forward. I’m reminded of Descartes, who “proved” that god exists by heaving words around a page. I’m reminded of Henrietta Lacks, whose cell line was taken and replicated a million times over without her consent, and whose descendants feel robbed. How can you lay claim to the descendants of your cells? “Possession” is only what you hold on to.
Standing in the shower thinking about the megaphone, I borrowed someone’s shampoo (it’s a friend’s shower–I’m in Boston.) Then I looked for conditioner. There was a bottle next to the shampoo of the same brand but a different shape — shampoo. Another bottle next to it — shampoo. Eight bottles of shampoo, and no conditioner. I thought it was hilarious.
New York is good, work is going well, I’m happy, things are great. I’ve got five meetings this week – three films I might work on and two related to jobs. No I don’t know what I’m doing next year. I’m finding it hard to reconcile these most productive, interesting, and adventuresome years with this pervasive experience of hamsterwheeling. And I’m finding it exceedingly difficult to reconcile purity of intent and my quest to do good, with drive and ambition to succeed and achieve.
No matter what, though, I’ve never been able to escape the feeling that something fantastic and sublime is right around the corner. I haven’t been wrong about that one yet. So I guess that’s how New York is.
Wish me luck for my day at law school!
They observe me using my automobile…
February 8, 2010 – 12:10 am
25 Awesome Joseph Ducreux Memes
Hope For Film
February 5, 2010 – 3:25 am
SO 80's - check out the website I helped design!
In interning at This is that, I’ve had the opportunity to do a number of tech projects with Ted Hope, an incredible accomplished filmmaker. I recently designed his Facebook page and built an iPhone app for his blog. It really was an honor to complete this latest project, a redesign of his six blogs. These blogs provide endless insight and wisdom, not just about the future of film but also about politics, good movies, and life. In fact, they’re how I discovered him and This is that.
His most popular blog, Truly Free Film, along with five (!!) other blogs that he posts to less frequently, resided on blogspot.com. It didn’t give him much control over them or allow him to integrate them into a coherent blogging identity, so we decided to put them all together under a new “Hope For Film” moniker. I Hope their individual traffic will build off itself and cause people to stay at the sites longer.
It was a lot of fun designing six separate color schemes that all somehow integrated, and we were guided by Ted’s existing blogs and favorite album covers. When we finished a draft this morning, he added tons of wacky suggestions, giving us the hot pink and green These Are Those Things and the pseudo-porn-like, ironically uncinematic Let’s Make Better Films, as well as the antics of Krazy Kat and a multiracial nose bowl.
If you want to make the Blogspot jump yourself–and it’s highly recommended–check out this useful guide as a jumping-off point. Officially, we used a meta redirect, but what really got this site pumping was a lot of love and just enough mojo.
I’m looking for organizational software
February 2, 2010 – 9:46 pm
Frazzled
I have a number of projects and clients, all in various stages of production.
For each of them I need to track emails, meetings, and to-do lists. I also have documents, URLs, timesheets, and other financial documents associated with them.
I know about basecamp, but is there a free app or solution that integrates with my email (Gmail/Apple Mail), my calendar (Gcal/Apple Calendar), and even potentially my contact list (Apple Contacts).
There’s got to be something for this other than maintaining separate sets of tags. Anybody know?
Predictions Part 2
January 29, 2010 – 11:16 amWow, I was wrong on almost all accounts–mostly because I was giving Apple a lot of credit for changing the game; it now looks like they were just entering an already-existing market. Still, I thought the stock price going down was a no-brainer due to past antiicipation-effects. But maybe it’s because others thought the same thing, I don’t understand that shit. I’ve got a lot of issues with the closed down platform of the iPhone extending to a full-size offering, the same issues I have with the Kindle and other similar products. But those are for another blog post–for now, time to go on a shoot!
Predictions for the Apple Tablet
January 27, 2010 – 9:57 am
Tablet?
Tablet.
be launched today) has been on everyones’ mind and blog, and im going to join in and predict things on top of what we already think we know. Let’s see how I do:
- newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books (duh). Following the New York Times’ recent announcement, more content sites that have been “forced” into providing free content to compete will bet that on a closed device that makes it easy to pay, people will.
- A transaction system. This is the buzz-idea of the year. The iPhone platform will now include a way to use your iTunes account to pay for anything. Expect an app, and an RFID chip in future iPhones that works with tap-to-pay credit card machines.
- A cloud-based, touch-screen version of iWork. This has been suggested before and makes sense. Google Docs and other services encourage you to not care what kind of computer you are using. Apple has an incentive to change that.
- Cloud music and sync. It’s time has come. Access your library of purchased tracks even if they’re not on your iPod. Do a full sync if you’re on wifi. I’d bet money that Google will be implementing this on the Android platform, and Apple also has a lot to lose in competition with “radio” services like Pandora.
- The “Verizon” iPhone will accomplish this through 4G compatibility. The current Verizon network uses CDMA technology, which is not compatible with the rest of the world. Integrating it would serve little purpose when the 4G “LTE” technology will be compatible. Using thus assumption, this iPhone will not be ready until closer to September. You may not even see it announced.
- iPhone 4.0 software will not come out today. When it does (in the next few months) it will allow anyone with current iProducts to buy these magazines, etc. with those products.
- A matte screen or new screen technology, making it look less backlit and more like a book. Im not as sure about this one
- Apple’s stock price will drop today, because people are bonkers.
Ah, tablet.
Your hypotheses for our scatterplot
January 25, 2010 – 11:29 amAdam Robbins and I are making scatterplots for price v. calories in McDonalds and other restaurants. One of the breakfasts at McD’s costs $4.19 and is 1350cal!!
COMMENT, tweet, im, or facebook AND GIVE US ur predictions on graph shapes, linearity, marginal cost of calories, etc. in healthy vs unhealthy restaurants Well compare your hypotheses with our results in the blog post.
Thanks!
