The difference between you and someone who got into MIT? You were satisfied with just pushing your shopping trolley around:
That thing can clock 45 miles per hour, or 72km/h! Dude, you frigging kidding me?! (more info here) (via)
A tribute to Michael Jackson, Web mashup style: Oh Internet, how you surprise me daily.
If there was one bit of news I didn’t expect to wake up to yesterday, it was that Michael Jackson had died.
At first, I heard that “reports out of the US” were saying he died, or was in a coma. I didn’t want to believe it, but over the next half hour, the news was confirmed by more reliable sources, and so it was that a special artist’s life ended.
Michael Jackson was many things to many people, but it was his Black or White that was my very first pop song; it was the first one I can recall being a fan of, of racing to the radio to listen to. I had a tape of the album, Dangerous, that is probably one of the world’s most worn tapes around, particularly around the Black or White part. I watched the video clip a hundred times, as it stayed in the charts for weeks on end. Saturday mornings finished with Video Hits showing Black or White, and on Sundays it was up early to see it again on rage, which usually showed the whole clip, not just the music.
In short, I thought he was a genius, and given the outpouring of grief, emotion and the reactions of the last two days, I don’t think I was the only one. Jackson’s active career spanned 4 of his 5 decades, and at his height in the 80s the monkier “The King of Pop”, first said by his friend Elizabeth Taylor, stuck, and there are no heirs to the throne. From his start in the Jackson 5 to his best-selling solo album Thriller, and even to the mixed Invincible which never the less contained the hit You Rock My World, Jackson did what a performing artist should do best: entertain and thrill the public.
The name Jackson lives in the same echelon as Presley and Lennon, a genius in the musical world, as a singer, songwriter and perhaps foremost as a dancer. MJ’s sublime ability to control his body made perhaps his signature move, the moonwalk, somehow magical and special; no-one quite does it like he did.
I guess I was too young to know what was going on during the first accusations of child molestation levelled against him, but I certainly did when the issue reared its ugly head again in the early part of this decade. You got the feeling watching the documentary that raised the issue that Michael Jackson was really just a bit lost outside of the music world, never having grown up or being allowed to do so in a normal manner. It was the ultimate Peter Pan complex – he wanted to be a kid forever.
Whether the accusations were true or not, acquittal not withstanding, the damage to Jackson’s reputation and his continual strange behaviour led to his fall from grace, as seems inevitable for all child stars. For many though, as is abundantly clear today, this did not diminish his achievements as an artist, and so I would represent him – one of the most brilliant performers we had for years. It is a pity that his life should end so early.
I don’t know whether we’ll see the like of Jackson ever again – the celebrities with a genuine reason to be celebrated, the entertainers that achieve so much on a global scale; one would hope that perhaps someone will be inspired enough to produce music that appeals to so many. It would be a pity too if his music were to be overshadowed by his later days, and I would sincerely hope his music is held up as a shining example of popular entertainment.
Vale, Michael Joseph Jackson, 1958 – 2009.
Fallen Princesses is a series of images imagining Disney’s Princesses post-”Happily ever after”. Some great juxtapositions, especially Belle of Beauty and the Beast.
It’s amazing how a sense of an unspoken privacy policy holds you back. You can’t blog about work, because that’s naturally privileged information, but then when you’re unemployed and looking for work, you can’t talk about the interviews you’re taking because that too isn’t something you want to broadcast. Rock and a hard place.
I’ve now gone through about 6 books in the last 3 weeks. I thought this would be a chance to catch up on movie watching, but my attention span is so skittish right now I’ve been only reading books, which I can in theory put down at any time. But usually end up reading for hours on end before realising it’s 3 PM (again) and I’ve forgotten to do X, Y and Z. Again. But then you think, oh, I can just do that tomorrow, right?
Wrong. But you saw that coming.
You won’t do it tomorrow any more than you did it today. Tomorrow adds another four items to your to-do list, but since you haven’t got any structured activity scheduled, you end up skipping that anyway. I’m thankful that I’ve had a few interviews at semi-regular intervals simply for the target that it gives me at some point during the day.
It’s also simply amazing how much stuff there is out there on the net. I think I spent half of yesterday watching TED talks on topics as far ranging as the role of language in framing our thoughts to card tricks. There’s a fascinating universe of things that you never touch in your day to day existence, and if I had the time, talent and money I would attempt to get as broad an education as possible, following threads of interest until the interest dies and I must switch to a new field. (Yay for mixed metaphors, eh?)
In other news, it’s freaking freezing here in Sydney. Sydney’s not supposed to be cold! Even in winter!
If you haven’t yet been seduced by the brilliance of Mad Men, you can now watch the pilot episode, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, online in pretty damn high quality for free. Even better, they haven’t got that stupid geographical restriction so many other streaming sites have.
Geebus, how hard is it to find this somewhere striaghtforward on the net?
Step 1: Open International pref pane in System Preferences
Step 2: On the Languages tab, click on “Edit List”
Your list of languages already in the list might be longer – e.g., it’ll usually have most of the European languages.
Step 3: Select the language(s) you wish to add and click OK.
Here I’ve chosen both Australian English and British English – generally speaking though, these are virtually identical and you only need the one you prefer.
Step 3: The newly selected languages should now be in the list. Order the list to your preference by dragging list items around.
As it says under “Edit List”, the changes will take effect next time you start the application (in the case of Finder, that’s obviously when you restart). Generally speaking, I’d say leave English (i.e., the American one) in there somewhere.
Now you’re done for most of the system stuff. Pages will now create new documents with the top language as the default. However, for existing documents you’ll need to do the following:
Select all text, and then (1) click on Inspector, (2) click on the text tab, (3) select “More” tab, and (4) set the language.
In case you haven’t heard of Google Wave, or haven’t had the time to watch the video and realise how it really will change just about everything to do with the internet, Andy Ihnatko has written his take on it, and it pretty much lines up with mine – this is genuinely new, and if it’s not revolutionary, it’s certainly evolutionary on the same scale that Homo Sapiens is.
Step Seven: When she enters the room pretend to be unconscious. Allow her to turn you over and try to wake you for a few seconds before you open your eyes. The injuries to your body will serve as a distraction to your nakedness. She will be more concerned about your wellbeing instead of fearing the naked man in her room.
…
Step Ten: If your friend is a curious person she will probably ask ‘What worked?’, even if she doesn’t ask this question it is important that you now say the words ‘(Insert Friend’s Name), I’m from the future’ in your most deadpan voice.
Step Eleven: Pause for ten seconds to allow the incrediblness of the situation to sink in. There will be no reason for her to doubt your claim, because your beard will make you appear many years older and your cuts would add weight to the idea that you’ve come from a post-apocalyptic future where a war is currently taking place.
Brilliant!
What Happens in Vegas: Look, I know this is the kind of movie you’re supposed to hate if you’re any sort of movie buff, but I didn’t totally hate this. The plot: Kutcher and Diaz meet in Vegas, get hitched, win $3 million, are forced to wait 6 months for a divorce to split the winnings. They attempt to devise ways to drive each other nuts, only to (spoiler!) fall in love (no wait, that’s no spoiler – that’s a duh). Despite the hackneyed, predictable plot, it maintains a fluffiness that makes it a great popcorn movie. ★★★
Watching the Detectives: It’s little wonder this movie went straight to DVD – I’m not quite sure what I saw in the trailer that made me want to watch it, but I regret it now. It’s ostensibly a rom-com, but it really is neither. Cillian Murphy (of Scarecrow in Batman Begins fame) is a video store owner (shades of High Fidelity here) who falls head-over heels for a girl who wanders into his shop, Lucy Liu. She defines the term “psycho girlfriend”. This movie is trash, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I didn’t pay for it, I’d be asking for my money back. ☆
Duplicity: Clive Owen, Julia Roberts pair up in a movie that’s kinda hard to shoe-horn into a genre. Is it comedy? Not enough laughs and slapstick. It’s not a romance by any means, and nor is it a drama or a spy thriller. Is it a heist movie? Not quite, but that’s fairly close to the mark, I guess. The film also doesn’t know what genre it is, as it tries to cover too many bases and inevitably ends up covering none. For all the plot machinations, it left me somewhat unsatisfied. ★★☆
Easy Virtue: Period piece set in the inter-war period starring Colin Firth and Jessica Biel – mostly Biel – about an American who marries into an upper class English family. Inevitably, the newcomer clashes with the stiff-upper-lip establishment and arguments ensue, as she tries to drag the family into the cold light of reality. Based on a play by Noel Coward, this reimagining does a great job at keeping a good pace and tight focus, albeit all too short. A few laughs, a few touching moments, and Biel in a smokin’ hot dress. ★★★
Star Trek: At risk of indulging in some 20/20 hindsight, Star Trek was a series I always wanted to see from the start, if only to find out what it is about this series that exerts such a hold on its fanatical followers and has had a significant cultural impact. However, there was something about picking up a cheesy sci-fi series from the 60s that embodied the image of “nerd” that was a little… off-putting, shall we say. It was a relief to find then that Star Trek was being re-booted by J. J. Abrams, he of Lost and Cloverfield fame (though the second did give me pause).
Turns out, it’s not all that bad – or at least in this imagining, it’s been given a jolt of credibility, along much the same lines that Batman Begins and Spiderman did. The new Star Trek tells the origin story of the crew of the Enterprise, particularly Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto, of Heroes fame), and really those two are the focus of the movie far more than the bad guy (Eric Bana, under a lot of make-up and flat dialogue). The support characters are mostly one or two dimensional, and some of the plot points are mere McGuffins to keep the story moving (A liquid which creates an instant black hole? The rings of Saturn having a detector-blocking-but-teleport-allowing magnetic field? Yeesh), but then this is a blockbuster, and you didn’t come to think too hard. ★★★★, despite all its flaws.