Leopard looks nice, but the Apple website looks great
Just finished watching/reading the announcements made by Steve Jobs at this year’s WWDC keynote and I think I speak for many when I say that I was significantly underwhelmed. (”You can be overwhelmed, you can be underwhelmed… but can you ever just be whelmed?”)
There were a few mildly exciting points, so I’ll start with those:
The new Finder was great news. It is cleverly based off of the iTunes interface, even allowing one to browse through files in CoverFlow mode. This could be extremely useful when browsing through folders filled with photographs, but maybe not so much for browsing document folders.
MacBook on crack
Last night I stupidly fell asleep with my computer open on my bed. My twin-sized bed.
This morning at around six, completely unaware of the presence of my computer, I turned on my side to stretch and reposition, when “CRASH!” I immediately knew what had happened and was almost too scared to peer over the side of my bed to find out what had resulted when my MacBook came face-to-face with the tile floor below.
Bad news: the display cracked and is now completely unreadable. (See: photo above).
Good news: the computer was asleep, and seems to be working fine, so I am assuming nothing terrible happened on the inside. Also, I have an external monitor, which I am using as I type this, therefore I can still use my computer until I figure out what to do.
Bad news: Apple stores everywhere are closed for remodeling, including the two located near me.
Sigh.
Finding color inspiration in men’s spring fashion
I am one of the lucky few that actually has very little trouble finding inspiration. Almost any visual object can get my creative cogs grinding, from a corkboard filled with colorful bulletins to the warm light cast by the sun as it sinks towards the horizon.
One of my favorite hunting grounds for inspiration is the catwalk — that long runway where the art of some of the best designers in the world is put on display, hanging not on walls but on bodies. And, of course, one of my favorite things to do with such a great source of inspiration is to extract beautiful color schemes that can be applied elsewhere, for example in a website design or the tint of a photograph.
I dug through the Spring 2007 menswear collections at men.style.com and found some great color inspiration in the outfits of five well-known fashion designers. Enjoy.
Gucci
I pulled out the sandy colors of the belt and pants, then combined them with the ocean blues of the shirt. The dark color of the sandals brings it all together, allowing the other colors to “pop.”
Former head of MPAA, Jack Valenti, dies at 85
The man who was hired by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1966 to “prepare the public for the news of a new code revision” to the conservative, Catholic Production Code that regulated screen content for more than 30 years, far past its expiration date, and who successfully helped develop the ratings system, G-M-R-X, on which today’s ratings system is still based, passed away today at the age of 85.
Resigning in 2004, Valenti served as head of the MPAA for an unprecedented 40 years. It truly is amazing that anyone could last four decades as head of the association that serves the film industry — the industry that puts out what is perhaps the most controversial mass-mediated product ever to exist. His predecessors, William Hays, Eric Johnston, and Ralph Hetzel, managed 23 years, 18 years, and 3 years respectively, and while these numbers pale in comparison to the 40 years Valenti spent lobbying for the movie industry, one must also take into consideration the fact that Hays, for example, saw the industry through the inception of regional censorship boards in the 1920s, the creation of the Production Code in 1930, the enforcement of the Code in 1934, the Great Depression, World War II, and, through it all, endured the constant pressures of special interest groups threatening the industry with federal regulation of its product.
Still, the 40 years that Jack Valenti spent in the MPAA were no skip in the park either. With his assistance, the film industry embraced the ratings system, marking the most significant change in the regulation of film since the adoption of the Production Code in 1930. By creating the ratings system, Valenti found a way for the industry to maintain what had been most important to it from the start: voluntary self-regulation, rather than regulation at the federal level that was out of its control. In addition, as with his predecessors, Valenti helped to protect the creative expression of filmmakers, even in the face of constant accusations that motion pictures are to blame for all things negative in the world, from the popularity of cigarettes to gun violence and school shootings.
Coincidentally, Valenti passed away on the same day that I took my final exam in a course I took this semester on the censorship of Hollywood films. In fact, just a few hours ago, I completed the essay portion of the exam with a discussion of what led to the demise of the Production Code, as well as how and why the ratings system was embraced as its replacement. Of course, more than once, my pencil scrawled the name “Jack Valenti.”
Here’s to you, Jack.
The fall of the sci-fi genre in film
Kristin Thompson, of the Bordwell-Thompson duo that studies and writes on various topics related to the art of film, recently wrote an interesting article, titled “Swords vs. lightsabers”, regarding the recent fall of the science fiction genre in film and its replacement by that of fantasy. Audiences have apparently become so turned off by science fiction that producers, directors, and Hollywood studio executives persistently avoid labeling their films as sci-fi, either explicitly denying their film’s relation to the genre, or using terms like “post-apocalyptic” instead.
Panic Software releases their one-window web development solution: Coda
I am buying Coda. Without thinking twice. As soon as possible. And I am going to love it. It is honestly so exciting when a piece of software, especially one as refined and styled as this, is released that fills such an obvious and gaping hole in one’s computational workflow.
International trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix finally released!
“This year, tyranny will rise and the rebellion will begin.”
This movie looks amazing! I would pay a very hefty sum of money to be able to see it tomorrow. It appears that the film stays true to the progressively darker tones of the series, capturing the fifth book’s notably more mature themes in both content and style. I am looking particularly forward to Helena Bonham Carter’s portrayal of Bellatrix Lestrange, seen in the trailer at 1:59 (time elapsed, not time remaining). The last 20 seconds of the trailer literally give me chills.
Harry Potter fans rejoice — the trailer is here!
Tori Amos and her posse to arrive May 1
Tori Amos, likely my favorite musician in existence, has reinvented her music and look yet again on her 9th studio album, American Doll Posse. The “posse” actually consists of five female personalities — Santa, Clyde, Isabel, Tori, and Pip — all played by Tori herself, and each has her own few songs on the album. Tori explained the origin of the girls in an interview with WE tv: “Once I began to recognize that there were many different musical styles, structurally, I could hear that the songs were not just coming from the voice of one woman.” In an audio clip on her MySpace page that exemplifies Tori’s somewhat eccentric, and fantastic, sense of humor, Tori informs us that the “they will all be going on tour.” “We’re out shopping right now,” she says, “and I can’t keep ahold of a’one of them.”
You can purchase her first single, “Big Wheel”, from the iTunes Music Store, and listen to “Big Wheel” and, my favorite so far, “Bouncing Off Clouds” on her MySpace page as well. Both songs are fantastic and have me extremely pumped for the album’s release on May 1.
Specific details regarding the girls in the posse have already been revealed, and each girl maintains her own blog. I love how the blogs are maintained across a variety of blogware websites, greatly enhancing the illusion of various and distinct personalities. For example, on Blogger there’s Clyde, an appreciator of art that applies how one might examine a work of art to her relationships: “When I meet a person I try and see not their mask, with its defenses, but what’s underneath.” Isabel’s blog, on the other hand, because she is a photographer, exists on TagWorld. So far, Isabel is my favorite member of the posse, described as the “most outwardly political of the bunch.” She opens the album with a short, yet sharp, political number titled “Yo George” that is, of course, directed towards our Commander-in-Chief (ha), President George Bush. You can listen to it on Tori’s site, but here are the lyrics to give you a sense of where Isabel stands:
I salute to you, Commander, and I sneeze
‘Cause I have now an allergy to your policies, it seems
Where have we gone wrong, America?
Mr. Lincoln, we can’t seem to find you anywhere
Out of the millions, from the deserts to the mountains
Over prairies to the shores
Is this just the madness of King George? Yo George
Is this just the madness of King George? Yo George
Well, you have the whole nation on all fours
As I said, the album is out May 1. Get it.