This leads to long days with little to no sleep, and lots of nail biting as you try to turn it in on time and not a second late! But that’s all part of the fun.

In addition to the time constraint, each team must make a film in a particular genre which they draw from a hat at the start of the weekend.  All teams are also given a character, prop, and line of dialogue that must be included in their film. All of the films are screened at a local theater the following weekend where they are judged by both the audience and a panel of judges.

So on July 17th, my teammate Clint and I drove to The Camel, the designating “Kickoff” location for the 48 Hour Film Project in Richmond, where we drew the genre of our soon-to-be film.  Our genre: Holiday Film.  The required elements:

• Character: Michael or Michele Dooley, “Green” Expert
• Prop: Tomato
• Line of Dialogue: “You can ask her yourself.”

Forty-eight hours later our film was complete, and now, for your viewing pleasure, it is online. Enjoy.

Update: Now available on YouTube, as well.

I moved. For the past year Emily and I were living in a townhouse.  It was quite lovely.  The whole townhouse complex was populated by other grad students and young professionals – a nice change from undergrads peeing off the balcony above your front door. And it was quiet.  But in truth it was probably too big for us, with the exception of the tiny, closet-sized kitchen.  We had to move because it was being renovated.  If we had chosen to move back in, the rent would have been much higher.

So, we signed a lease for an apartment, but the lease doesn’t start until August 21st. Ugh. At least the kitchen will be big. We decided to move into family housing for the three month interstitial period.  So here I am.  The place is tiny, and we had a heck of a time squeezing in our accumulated townhouse-sized possessions.  Still, I kinda like it.  It is super-close (like 415 steps-close) to the Law School, and just a little bit further to the gym.  Plus, I can walk to the grocery store.  And it’s a prettier setting, I think, than the over-developed, undergrad-populated area where we were/will be living.

Given all that, I’m tempted to stay here.  The one problem: no pets allowed.  Looks like we will be moving again in two months.

Emily went to Honduras.  Emily left the first week of June with one other girl from her med school class.  They are following up with patients from a clinic that other students held the week before they arrived.  She will be there a total of five weeks, returning the second week of July.  We do miss each other, especially considering this summer is probably the last we will have together free of any serious responsibilities. Also, today is our one year anniversary. We will celebrate when she gets back.

I finished reading Blood Meridian.  I only mention this because it’s been displayed in my sidebar for a while.  I finished a while ago, and, as I suspected, I just don’t like Cormac McCarthy.  Emily makes fun of me for finishing every book I start.  That’s not entirely true.  But I will read books that aren’t that great if I feel like I’m getting something out of it.  I didn’t get much out of this book other than confirming that Cormac McCarthy is overrated.  When we read All The Pretty Horses in high school (or were supposed to have read it), I flat out told my teacher that I couldn’t stand it (one of those books I DID NOT finish – ha!). I think I’ve read a few reviews of Blood Meridian claiming that it was McCarthy’s masterpiece, or something.  Unfortunately, I didn’t remember not liking All The Pretty Horses until I started reading Blood Meridian. But I thought, “I should give him another chance.” Oh, well. I tried.  As in All The Pretty Horses, he tries too hard, me thinks, to be poetic in his descriptions.  It just oozes effort.  Also, I thought the style in Blood Meridian was wildly inconsistent.  Plus, I’m not a believer in the no-punctuation-as-artistic-style style of writing, at least not in this case.  It just seems lazy and artificial.

I’m not sure why I feel so strongly about this, but I do.  I could probably go on, but I will not.

My free-throw shooting ability has inexplicably improved despite years of not playing basketball. This probably will not last, but I’m enjoying it while it’s here.  I bought a summer pass for the UVa fitness facilities and have been going to the North Grounds (that’s the area where the law and graduate business schools are) and shooting around.  Unfortunately, the same can not be said for my quickness nor endurance.  But who needs those things, right?  Actually, I might be playing in a soccer game on Tuesday with my sister’s team, so that should be interesting.  Which brings me to…

I’m flying to Atlanta today. I will be in Atlanta until next Sunday, so maybe I’ll see some of you folks in the area.

But with so many positive reviews, you can rest assured that Star Trek succeeds on more than just not sucking. The characters are full of charm due not only to the inspiration and back stories of the original Star Trek(s), but also due to the talent of the actors, writers, and director. The film was also surprisingly funny, while being full of good action – a potent combination in a summer blockbuster.

Chris Pine did an excellent job as James T. Kirk. And most of the other actors were well cast, I think.

Star Trek is not without its flaws, though. The plot (and certain lines of dialogue) can feel contrived, but its time-travel premise achieves the difficult feat of tying the movie to the previous incarnations of Star Trek, while simultaneously freeing it from them.  Not only that, but director J.J. Abrams did an admirable job making the whole space-time continuum mumbo-jumbo not that hard to follow, probably by building on lessons learned from Abrams’ TV series, Lost, which features a similar time travel storyline.

The thing that really bothered me – and maybe this is just a personal thing – was the inordinate number of lens flares. This clip gives you an idea of what I’m talking about:

I swear there was a least one point in the film where the entire frame was completely bright white for a full second, if not more, and nothing else could be seen. But apparently Abrams has admitted to getting a little carried away, and explains he used them to convey that there was always something happening just out of frame, and that “the future is that bright”. Interestingly, they were all done on the set, and none were added in post – a fact that surprised me, and might (maybe) make it slightly less annoying for me.

In the end, though, seeing Star Trek was a really fun and enjoyable experience. I recommend it.

It was a really sad day. But being the fighter that he was, Little Man stayed relatively healthy for quite a long time compared to most cats with FIP, and, though we were hopeful, we had kind of anticipated this conclusion for a while. I guess that makes it easier. Our last cat with FIP, Jackson, got sick pretty quickly so his death was more of a shock and consequently harder to deal with.

At the same time, we had Little Man with us for a longer time (about a year and a half) and I had gotten used to him being here. He was exceptionally sweet and mild-mannered. Very affectionate, he always loved human contact and never jumped or drew away if you tried to pet him. And, boy, did he purr loudly.

I put up some pictures on my Picasa page. Now, let me just warn you that it’s kind of a scary-ton of cat pictures. I included some pictures of Layla for comic relief. They’re both black and white, but Layla’s the huge one.

You probably realize you can be sued for violating the terms of someone else’s intellectual property (for example, if you use a photo that you don’t have the rights to in your blog post), but what I found interesting about this post from The Blog Herald is that someone could sue you for infringement even though you are the original creator of the work.

The article linked above tells the story of a graphic designer who was billed by a stock art site for $18,000 and threatened with a copyright lawsuit for claiming to be the author of art that was posted to their site by a client. The troubling thing is that this graphic designer claims he was the creator of the artwork, and that someone must have stolen it from him and uploaded it to the site. But he had to be able to prove that he, and not the client of the stock art site, created the work first.

The article goes on to suggest some ways of protect yourself by being able to prove when you created your work. A “timestamp” such as the date underneath the title of this post is not always good enough, since these are often alterable.  On blogs, an author can change the timestamp as a way of updating a post and making it appear on the front page. The same goes for sites like Flickr. In such cases, the timestamps don’t carry much weight.

Registering your work with the U.S. Copyright Office is one option, but it is slow and expensive. The Blog Herald also mentions “non-repudiation services”. I had never heard of these, but as The Blog Herald explains:

The idea is is that, once you create a work, ideally even before you upload it to the Web, you upload it to one these services where it is fingerprinted, timestamped and stored in some capacity. Should someone else wish to dispute the claim, you would have a relatively impartial third party to verify when the work was created.

I don’t know if anyone reading this is particularly interested in protecting thier work, but I thought it was an interesting story, nonetheless.

Image by Bettina Tizzy via Flickr

Having spent the last few years in a graduate engineering & applied science program, I’ve heard no shortage of criticism directed at the Bush administration’s science policies. And for good reason, if you ask me.

But this short article from WIRED suggests that the Bush administration’s stem cell policy, right or wrong, should not be labeled “anti-science”. Before you get all huffy, the author of the article seems to have disagreed, as I did, with the Bush policy. He suggests, however, that it is dangerous to dismiss Bush’s decision as “anti-science” because morality is necessarily a part of responsbile science policy.

If Bush’s stem cell policy was based on a moral decision, then it was legitimate, even if it was the wrong decision. Other Bush decisions, I might add, may not hold up to such scrutiny (such as any number of environmental policies).

I can understand if some people disagree with this assessment. Morality and religion, afterall, are intimately connected, and some would say Bush was injecting religion or politics into science. They may have a point. But if you are willing to except moral objections in science, some of those morals will undoubtedly be grounded in a religious idealology. That doesn’t make them any less valid.

It should go without saying, but moral restraints on science are a good thing. The WIRED article points to the Nuremburg Code, which established principles for human experimentation, as an example.

There is a real danger, then, in labeling this policy as anti-science, because doing so could weaken the perception that moral decisions belong in science.

Read the WIRED article for more.

UPDATE: It would seem that The Simpsons episodes on Hulu have an expiration date, so the clip is no longer available. Guess you’ll have to wait for the DVD to come out!

Also, if you have Windows Media Center you can watch game highlights, analysis, and even “condensed” games (with the commercials and breaks edited out). I haven’t seen a condensed game offered yet, but it may be too early in the tourney.

Related links:

• Microsoft launching “Sports Channel” for Media Center (crunchgear.com)

No Line On The Horizon Review

I read somewhere that No Line On The Horizon may be the most experimental U2 album since Achtung Baby, but that is far from the truth (need I remind you of Original Soundtracks 1?)

Rather, Horizon feels like a quintessential U2 album, if you ask me. As a whole, it rocks a little harder, and is a little grungier than the last two albums, but the album is a natural evolution of the band’s sound at this point in their catalogue. You can hear bits of The Unforgettable Fire and even Achtung Baby, and even more so some of their latest tracks on All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - tracks like “Vertigo” and “Love and Peace or Else” more so than the soaring anthems of “Miracle Drug” or “City of Blinding Lights”.

You can clearly hear the strain in Bono’s voice as he stretches it to the limit. This is intentional, I think, and not the byproduct of age. His voice mirrors the grinding distortion of Edge’s guitar, and the slightly out-of-sync/live-recording-esque multi-track vocals on songs like “Unknown Caller” and “Moment of Surrender”. The whole album sounds raw in a way that U2 has not sounded of late.

Overall, I love the album. I don’t feel the need to skip any of the tracks, and I expect it will age well. It shows off the many aspects of U2 that they have proven to be good at over the years, and though it may have a unique sound, it is clearly built upon those earlier albums, combining and perfecting what came before. In the future, I think I will look back an consider this one of their very best – as I said before, it is quintessential U2 – but I’ll be interested to see how it fairs in the opinions of others over the long term. They certainly have been marketing the heck out of it.

Track-by-Track Breakdown

Below are some of my thoughts on the individual tracks. Nothing revelatory here, just some impressions.

1. No Line On The Horizon
   This title track might be my favorite. Good energy with the guitar and drums, and Bono’s voice switches between the desperate, scratching shout that he does so well and the more refined voice during the chorus. It also introduces the listener to the first of many “Oh Oh Oh” moments in this song, and throughout the album.
2. Magnificent
   This is the most soaring and joyous song on the album. I can see it being the biggest hit, though it is not necessarily my favorite. Very Achtung in it’s blending of human and divine love.
3. Moment of Surrender
   A prominent, looping bass line from Adam, and a nice little guitar solo by Edge in the second half. This is a cool song. Kind of reminds me of Rattle and Hum. Oddly, I remember not liking this song when streaming the album from U2’s myspace page, but I cannot now recall why I felt that way.
4. Unknown Caller
   I can’t help loving this song. The lyrics are kind of ridiculous, sprinkled with little gems like, “Force quit and move to trash”, “Restart and re-boot yourself”, and “Password, you enter here, right now”. But you have to admire them for trying to incorporate such mundane computer-speak into the rock music lexicon. Supposedly, the idea is that the narrator’s phone starts speaking to him. I just like the staccato vocals, and the continued use of “oh’s”.
5. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
   I guess this would be the second most joyous pop song behind “Magnificent”. I actually like this one better. Throughout the album Bono seems aware of how some people think he should stick to music and forget the politics, but he both defends and humbles himself with lines like, “The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear.”
6. Get On Your Boots
   Comparisons with “Vertigo” are appropriate, but this tune is lighter and more fun. 
7. Stand Up Comedy
   Once you get past the title, this song is about humility, love, God, and change, as is much of the album, which isn’t so shocking for U2. It is upbeat and kinda does make you want to stand up. I dig Bono’s nasally “C’mon ye people / Stand up for your love” (reminds me of his Moulin Rouge track, or “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”), and again with the humility: “Stand up to rock stars”, whatever that means.
8. Fez-Being Born
   Starts off sounding like something from Zooropa, but that’s not as bad as people may think. After the instrumental intro, it picks up. Not sure what’s going on, but I like it.
9. White As Snow
   A more deliberately paced song, which benefits the album which is mostly louder and faster paced. Good lyrics.
10. Breath
     Another one of my favorites from this album. The words really roll out of Bono’s mouth. Again, reminded of the blues inspired Rattle and Hum. I really love this one.
11. Cedars of Lebanon
    Another quite track. Sounds like something from the Achtung-Zooropa-Pop era.

U2’s Next Album To Arrive By The End Of The Year?

Yep. At  least that is what they are saying. Rolling Stone quotes Bono as saying the next album is “a sister release to No Line on the Horizon, a Zooropa to its Achtung Baby”, and it just might be here by the end of the year. Titled Songs of Ascent (yes, it already has a title), they have even decided on the first single, “Every Breaking Wave”, which was cut from Horizon at the last minute.

Bono goes on to say, “We’re making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent…It will all have a clear mood, like Kind of Blue. Or A Love Supreme would be a point of reference, for the space it occupies in people’s lives, which is to say, with that album, I almost take my shoes off to listen to it.” Sounds like it may not be a chart topper, though he certainly is making some lofty comparisons.

Still, I’m sure looking forward to hearing this album. They reportedly wrote fifty to sixty tracks during the Horizon recording sessions. But I would be surprised if they actually release it this year, even if it is a “meditative…piece of work”. That would just be a lot of U2 in one year.

U2’s 360° Stage

They are calling it the “U2 360° Tour” because the stage will be moved toward the center of the stadium, allowing 360° seating around the stage. As Bono told Rolling Stone,

“We’re going outdoors to try to meet that audience…We want to play for each other as much as we want to play for the crowd this time,” Bono adds. “You just don’t know how long you will be going to be doing this. I just sat everyone down the other day, because some concerns about the tour had come up, and nobody wants to be away from their families. I just said, ‘This is an unbelievable and rare opportunity to be in this band and to play at this level. You don’t know what is around the corner, you don’t know if you will be up for it or the audience will be up for it. Right now, we are perfectly riding across those two thoughts and every single night should be the best night of your life. If not, then we are just the worst of those Seventies dinosaur bands that felt it was enough to just turn up and play and that people were lucky to be in their presence.’ ”

I’ve got goosebumps.

Here are some screengrabs from U2.com of what the stage will look like. Scroll down further for the announced dates.

U2 360° Tour Dates