God dammit.

Medieval Manor has suddenly changed their schedule. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday shows are ONLY private shows now. They're $32.50 including full tip and parking which is a good deal- But there's no way we can book 75 people. We worked our butts off 2 years ago and only got 53. SO, guess what, change of plans. Unless an overwhelming number of people can give me a better idea in the next 24 hours, the new date is THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17th at 7:45. Why Thursday? Because Friday and Saturdays are $40. Thursday is $30.

If you already Payed- Gary, Alison, Amy, Adam, Warren, Alex Savitzky, Jonathan- let me know if this date is okay or Ill send you your money back. Or if you could get someone else to pay you cash for your slot that would be great, it would save me the PayPal fees. (I knew I'd end up getting screwed SOMEhow again this year :) )

The rest of you- if you want in, same as usual- paypal me $30 (yes the price went up. poo.) no later than FRIDAY NOVEMBER 20th. Let me know if you need a veggie meal or youre under 21. Guests are welcome and encouraged. Come one, come all, huzzah, whatever.

Happy new year!

I am not a Windows hater.

Microsoft has a HUGE job, getting Windows to run on the plethora of platforms out there, and support for legacy apps and hardware. Its a monumental task and I think they perform ably. Win7 is looking pretty good and I'm looking forward to trying it. its just the little things that aggravate me- little things that I've taken for granted for ages on the Mac, that can't be done on Windows. I'm sure there are plenty of things like this going the other way, too- for example, SMB used to be a joke, setting up a printer required three different windows in 3 different places, and it wasn't until 10.5 that you could partition a Mac without erasing the whole drive. Yeah, really.

I expect a lot of it is the nightmare that is patent law, but some other stuff just seems lazy. For example, do you still need to know these cryptic codes or open up a palette (if your app supports it) to type special characters? On the Mac, you just use the option key:  option-8 for •, option-; for …, option-r for ®. Accented characters are easy too- for an accent, type option-e, then the letter you want accented. Like option-e e for é, option-e a for á.

ā é ʼi ø ü ç ñ … I can do this all day people!

Another thing, and this one is paraphrased from ArsTechnica, on searching for files: For example, if you want to search by last-modified date, you have to know that the search tag is "datemodified:". Type that in, and you get a nice little calendar to pick a date, as well as special terms like "a long time ago". Similarly, if you know that the magic tag is "size:" you can pick a range of sizes from "empty" to "gigantic". That's great if you know the magic tags, but there's a hell of a lot of magic tags that I don't know. What I want is something discoverable and explorable, so I can find the different criteria, rather than just leaving me on my own to guess at them. A few example tags are provided (and these are context-sensitive, so if I search my music folders, it suggests tags like artist and album), but there's no intuitive way of figuring out what tags there are.

On the Mac, you just open the search box, and click a + to add as many criteria as you want, and use "all" or "any" to filter the criteria. Like this:
Is that not enough criteria for you?Than just choose "Other…" and you get:

I don't have nearly enough room to show you them all, but this short list should give you a good idea of how meticulous metadate searching on MAC OS X is. Its nuts. AND, with smart folders, you can save your granular search and come back to it any time.

Why can't the most powerful software company in the world add better searching?

One more thing that has ALWAYS bugged me about Windows is the inconsistency in the GUI. The Mac gets criticized, and I can see why some people would not like this, for being to controlled and closed off. You cant customize it yourself, you can't (easily) skin it and developers must adhere to very strict UI guidelines. But at the end of the day, that makes the OS more consistent, and consistency leads to productivity. App developers can do anything they want with Windows apps and the result is a mess- its like a Turkish bazaar of mismatched interfaces. And no one is guiltier of this than Microsoft themselves! That's what drives me nuts. Pick an interface and stick with it, guys. Apple had this same problem for awhile but they're getting their act together. The Mac OS is clean, silver, sleek- it reminds me of a clean industrial kitchen, with everything in it's place. Its light and airy and just pleasant. Windows with all its bold primary colors reminds me of a kindergarten playroom. Yeah, Im just this is mostly just me, and what I'm familiar with. But even if you like Aero, or whatever they're calling it now, you can't disagree that there is too much inconsistency in the window GUI.

A  paragraph in Ars Technica's Russian-Novel-Length review of Win7 sheds some light, at last:

Windows adds UI capabilities and then Microsoft software fails to use it properly, resulting in an inconsistent experience and leading one to question why Microsoft even bothers adding new features and guidelines if they're not going to be used. He told us at the time that the reason for this is that within Microsoft, the software that sets the UI standard isn't Windows, but rather Office; if the Office team's UI rules don't match up with Windows' UI rules, then the Office team prevails. He did tell us that the Office team was involved in the new UI features of Windows 7, and so I hope that in the future there will be closer alignment between what Microsoft says you should do, and what it actually does. I'm not going to hold my breath, though, because interface consistency is not something the company has ever been good at.

I've talked enough, and I gotta go. ciao.

If you listen to the media, it might seem that Fox News is becoming/has become a media juggernaut that rules all other forms of media and can benp public opinion and politics to its will. You may feel that though they are the minority party, the Republicans wield a disproportionate amount of power, partly due to Fox News. But that's just because people don't go beyond the numbers and use their common sense. We tend to be amazed and blinded by large numbers. For example, Fox News' #1 show by far is the O'reiley factor. An average of 3.4 million people watch O'Reiley daily. At first, this seems like a lot. oh my god, 3.4 million people are rabid, mindless GOP-loonies! Were doomed! But let's look at some OTHER numbers, gathered off the web at random:

7,000,000 people bought Yanni Live At The Acropolis. That right there should be enough. But let's go on...

13,000,000 people play World of Warcraft.

13,800,000 watched Big Bang Theory last week. (which makes me wonder what that extra 800,000 plays. Lord of the rings online? Guild Wars?)

50,000,000 Americans have herpes.

Approximately 53,000,000 are allergic to cats

60,000,000 of you assholes play farmville.

See, when you put it in perspective, Bill O is right where he belongs- the fringe. Don't let big numbers skew your perspective and assign undue importance to people who don't deserve it.

I like Monopoly, but it really isn't anything like an actual Monopoly. It can be more like the real world, however, with one small change in the rules:

When you land on a colored property, you get to pick which property of that color you actually want to stop on. In other words, if you land on Vermont Ave, you actually get to stop on Vermont, Oriental or Connecticut.

For starters, it makes the game start faster, because eople will be able to shift to empty properties and buy them up more quickly. But once most of the squares are bought, this is where it gets interesting. Because if one person owns Oriental, another person owns Vermont, and a third person owns Connecticut, they can bargain with you on the rent, and compete for your business. You're going to move to the square with the lowest rent. But if someone has a monopoly and owns all three, they can gouge you and charge you anything you want.

I want to do something for dinner. I dont know what.

I want a really good hot dog.
Or a corned beef hash omlette
Or oysters.
or clam chowder.

Hmm.

Crystal wont join Facebook so Im posting this here. wow.

http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/sleep-no-more

Lets say your mother, or father, or sister or brother or son or daughter contracted a horrible illness, and there was a cute but it was expensive, and your immediate family had to all share the cost. Would you chip in $1000 to save their life? Sure, its a lot but you could work it off eventually, and its your mother/father/etc, cost is no object, right?

What if it was your cousin, or aunt or uncle? Would you chip in $100 to save your cousin's life?

What if a friend of yours, or a co-worker got sick and the office had a pledge drive? Would you chip in $10 to save a co-workers life?

What if someone from back at your hometown, or your college was sick? Someone you didnt really know but yous aw them around at the same Dunkin Donuts on some mornings, or he was your favorite bus driver or she was the prom queen in your graduating class. Would you chip in $1 so save their life?

What if it was someone youd never met? Someone from a few states away, no connection, but you stumble on their myspace page and theyre dying of some horrible disease but if everyone chips in one penny they can be cured? Would you chip in a penny?

Then why don't you want a single-payer health care system?

The Actors’ Shakespeare Project believes Shakespeare’s words are urgently relevant to our times. Working as an ensemble of resident company members, we bring these words into the voices, bodies, and imaginations of our actors, audiences and neighborhoods. We do this through creative projects, including intimate productions and outreach programs that are informed by the spaces in which they happen. These projects inspire civic dialogue, build relationships between people, strengthen communities, and reveal something about what it means to be human here and now.

The ASP are some of the best actors I've ever seen perform Shakespeare. And they do it in the round, the way it was intended. They don't just take up residence in some fancy theater in a rich neighborhood and charge a hundred bucks a seat- they look for historic buildings and under-appreciated public spaces, and they move into not just the building but the neighborhood, bringing acting and literature workshops to the people and students in the town, and even putting some local kids into their productions. Its a community effort and a damn fine thing they do. They also have free post-show discussions with historians, playrights and actors.

This coming year, they're putting on Taming of the Shrew Oct-Nov, A Midsummer Night's Dream in Jan, Othello Mar-April, and Timon of Athens May-June. Come on, when are you ever going to get to see Timon of Athens performed live?

Crystal and I are subscribing to the next season, because we want to see all four plays, and this way we save a few bucks, get priority seating and the ability to change a date if things come up. Also its a big help to them to have the money in advance of the season. You should join us.

TIckets are usually $38-$47 dollars each, the year membership is $148, or $100 for students 22 and under. More info on their site, of course:

http://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/

Another thought... the first place winner each week should be responsible for posting the final results, and location of the next weeks game, because they are sure to have been there right to the end.

speaking of which, wheres the game next week?

There's a meme going around on Facebook where Im supposed to name 15 favorite movies off the top of my head. Well theres no WAY thats going to happen in my case. but I do feel I want to write something, especially since people keep tagging me.

If I had to name some of my favorites, off the top of my head, no thinking at all, here's what we get:

The Third Man, an amazing, haunting, funny, suspenseful noir from 1939, featuring the immortal Orson Welles

Jurassic Park, The movie that made me want to make movies. Literally. When I saw that first scene of the dinosaurs, and the music swelled, a switch flipped inside me. I still get emotional every time I watch it.

The Matrix, Just plan awesome. Awesome.

But after that, it gets a LOT harder. What constitutes a favorite movie? Does a movie have to be GOOD to be a favorite? It is something I watch over and over, or something I respect even though I never want to see it again? I'm going to try to break it down.

Here is a list of movies I can think of that come closest to being my "favorites". Meaning, Movies I respect, and loved, and would easily watch again and again. I consider most of these to be good, not just personally enjoyable. movies I'd easily recommend to anyone. In No particular order:
But I cant stop there. Here are some movies that deeply affected me emotionally, or viscerally, or just scared the crap out of me. Movies that still stick with me though I dont have a need to see them again, and in some cases, actually harbor an aversion to seeing them again:

here are some movies that, for some reason or another, I can watch over and over again, any time, anywhere. Some of them are good, but not all- in fact, some of them are downright terrible.Honorable mention: These are some movies that aren't necessarily among my all-time favorites, yet, i do think they need to be mentioned. Movies that might have a bad reputation, or are misunderstood, or are grossly underrated. You should ignore what you think you know, and see these as soon as you can.

Its been 2 or 3 weeks now, and I can honestly say I LOVE this new laptop. I got the new 13" MacBook Pro and its everything I could have wanted and then some. Its not perfect, but nearly.

Ive had my laptop for 3 years, and while it still works well I was kind of ready for a new one. Since I've been teaching most IT classes than anything else, I haven't really been doing much editing, and since I've been studying for even more IT classes, I haven't been taking on much freelance work. I took a careful look at how I've been using my laptop, and I almost never fire up Final Cut any more- its all done on my tower. SO I didnt need Real Ultimate Power™. But I've been spending a lot of time in cafes, and on planes, and sitting in terminals and on hotel beds, and I wanted something smaller. Every time I tried Crystals laptop I thought to myself hm.. this is only a little smaller, but it makes a difference.

So I was already pretty set on buying a 13" aluminum laptop. Just a few things stood in my way- I wanted to make sure it could at least run Final Cut Pro and Motion, and after some testing, found it could- pretty well, in fact! And since it didn't have FireWire I wanted to make sure I could power my USB drives without a power brick, and it could. I also wanted the lightup keyboard but I didnt want to pay extra for the bigger model. And I'd miss the CardBus slot for reading SD cards from my camera but I could always just plug it in with a USB cable. Minor compromises.

Then, Apple goes and blindsides me, and releases a NEW 13" latop... WITH firewire, WITH the lightup keyboard, and... for the first time... WITH an SD card slot! Annnnd its faster... and they DROP the price, to boot. After that, I really couldn't argue any more. Snapped one up. Put my 500GB drive in, and uppded the RAM to 4GB and now its perfect.

It plays Warcraft. It handles final cut. Its got a 500GB drive so It can triple-boot XP, Leopard and Snow Leopard, and its small enough to whip out just about anywhere. It's damn pretty. Oh, and the battery is as good as advertised- I can get 5-6 hours of work done on it, easy. Actual work- with wifi on and everything. Thank you, steve jobs!

Anyone wanna buy a 15" MacBook Pro?

I love when people call Obama a communist. I get this little... tickle inside and the only thing tjat makes it better is punching babies. I especially love when blowhards like Rush and O'Reilly tell the public to call Obama a communist and a fascist at the same time even though they dont have any clue what they're talking about.

Heres a recent snippet from The Economist:

Without a drastic restructuring neither Chrysler nor GM would have a chance for long-term success. Not only would thousands of workers lose their jobs, but the government would lose tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars. So rather than simply writing a check to the auto industry -- the policy of the previous administration -- the Obama team is focused on fundamentally restructuring these two businesses.

So far, the auto task force has done an admirable job of refusing to rubber stamp the industry's proposals. It's used rigorous analysis to make tough decisions. These decisions include "right sizing" industry capacity by cutting many union and white-collar jobs and closing numerous manufacturing plants and dealerships; making the unions accept lower wages and benefits so that these companies can compete; and cutting the debt crushing these companies by forcing many of the stakeholders -- workers, retirees and creditors (including the government) -- to take equity rather than cash for their obligations.

And here's what the news WOULD be reporting, if Obama was a communist.

Our Great and Wise Leader For Life Obama directed Chrysler today to cancel manufacture of all SUV models, trucks and sports cars and only continue to manufacture the Dodge Caliber and Chrysler 300M. So as to not make common workers feel jealousy to their fellow men, the public will only be allowed to purchase the Caliber. The 300M model will be reserved for government officers. In further cost-cutting, all models will be black.

Also, auto workers' salaries are being cut from $2.40 an hour to $1.80 an hour and breaks are shortened to 20 minutes a day including lunch. Of course, health care benefits will not be cut.

Union organizers tried to protest the changes, but quickly saw their error, and have not been heard from since.

We at the New York Peoples' News Reporting Agency applaud this brave and wise move and so do the international markets: the dollar is up to an all-time high against all foreign currencies, as far as you know, and of course, there is no stock market.

Now, I'll admit, theyre awfully similar; but I think you wise readers can see the differences, no?

I stayed up an hour thinking that Nico was on Conan, but it's Niko Case. How... very mildly disappointing.

Someday I'd like to go to a Yankees Red Sox game at Fenway.
Someday Id like to sit in the green monster. Not necessarily on the same day.
See a Jimmy Buffet concert
Eat in a Mario Batali restaurant
I'd like to learn how to solder
And weld
And ride a motorcycle though I probably wont ever own one. At least till I have a midlife crisis but then Ill probably still just get a Ford GT instead.

what's goin on Friday night?

This review will be spoiler free. But I strongly recommend you dont read any other reviews. Discovery and wonder are a gift- dont spoil them.

Anyone can make a movie with a plucky kid who always gets underfoot and falls into wacky adventures. But it takes an especially talented team to break that kid out of his two-dimensional stereotype with just a few lines of dialogue, and turn him into someone you really feel for.

Anyone can make a movie with a talking dog. But it takes a special team to make that dog a hero, and more of a person than most of the life actors in most of the movies out right now.

Anyone can make an adventure movie with kids, or superheros. But it takes courage to make an adventure movie about a grumpy 70 year old man. And it takes a special kind of team to imbue that grumpy old man with a heart and a soul, and to make children not only like him, but change the way those kids- all of us- look at every grumpy old man; to maybe even teach us the difference between grumpiness and sadness; and that that the old man down the street we always passed by without a second thought is really a person. A person with feelings, and stories richer than anything we would imagine.

Anyone can write a movie about an adventure in the jungle, with beasts and villains and flying ships, but it takes a special kind of team to make the characters more than characters, and the story more than a story- to take their time, and unfold a story about dreams, and disappointment, and the pain and beauty of life. To craft a 5 minute prologue, sans dialogue, that could win an Oscar in its own right.

Anyone can make a movie abouta  house, even a flying one. But after that first 5 minute progloue, you will never again be able to look at that house without an acute pain in your heart and a smile on your face.

It takes a special kind of team to accomplish any one of these things. It takes Pixar to do them all. Simply put, Up is a perfect film.

The people of MA voted overwhelmingly on bill to step down the MA state income tax from 5.95% to 5.0%... the legislature has gotten it down to 5.3% but they're freezing it there and they're in a bit of a bind... the state's budget is awful but if they raise taxes again it's in direct opposition to the will of the people.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the majority of the people who voted on the tax cut are the same people who whine about more money for after school programs, arts programs, more police, better roads, more teachers, more more more etc etc etc. Any modicum of economic sense people have goes right out the window when they step into a voting booth.

I voted for the bill, but not because I wanted lower taxes; because I knew an economic disaster was coming and we would have to raise money somehow. If we didnt get it through income tax, wed have to make it through sales tax, and that's fine by me. Well guess what? Now they're raising the sales tax.

Why am I not pissed? Well, we need to spend less. And maybe this will help. A sales tax is more fair than an income tax- tax the people who can afford it. There's no loophole for sales tax like there is for income tax, so in some ways this is MORE fair.

I think we should take it further, though- We already have made groceries and other living necessities exempt from sales tax, something I used to assume was true in all states till I learned its not. People say its confusing but it makes perfect sense to me- Everyone has to eat. Groceries are tax free. But going to a restaurant is a luxury, so prepared meals are taxed. This is really only confusing in one case I can think of- pour your own slurpee at 7-11 and its not taxed; but if someone pours it for you, it is.

Clothes are not taxed, either- up to a point. but there is a luxury tax on clothes. I think I had to pay tax for my leather jacket on the difference above $200 or so. so if it was a $300 jacket I payed tax on $100 of it. Why not institute a sliding tax for meals, too? McDonalds is taxed at 5%; Ruth's Chris is taxed at 10% and the Four Seasons is taxed at 15%. Obviously we wouldn't break it down like this but by a per capita dollar amount. Also, why do we charge an alcohol tax on a bottle of wine in a store but only a meal tax on a bottle of wine in a restaurant?

I'm not anti-tax, at all. But am pro-common sense. Id really like to see ALL gas taxes go to fixing roads, and nothing else. Registration fees go to funding the registry. Restaurant ermit fees go to health inspectors. T fares go to funding the T. And so on, and so on. It makes it a lot harder for politicians to hide where the money is going, and those who use X should pay for X, not X, Y and Z.

The only thing that ticks me off about all of this is that the meals tax and sales tax wont be a nice round 5% any more.

I am growing more and more disappointed with the acceptable level of quality on the internet. It seems that just because we take in our news and entertainment on a screen rather than printed media, it's okay to get by with minimal editing and atrocious quality.

Sure, I am hardly a model of linguistic integrity when it comes to blog posts, but I'm not getting paid to write for Gizmodo, Engadget, Jalopnik, WoW Insider, Lifehacker, or any one of the multitude of ad-supported blogs I read daily. If you are paid to write an article for a crporate site, this should be no different than a writing assignment for a magazine or newspaper. And even worse, if you ARE a commercial site, and my eyeballs rack up your ad impression dollars, you owe it to me to spend even a small modicum of effort editing your own work!

It has been getting particularly bad in the last year or so; this month has been simply atrocious. One of th aforementioned blogs made a post a couple weeks ago, with tips for being a good commenter. one of the tips amounted to, "Enough with the snarky spelling mistake comments! Yeah, sure, we know you want to be the first to point out a mistake, but were only human beings, and were under a huge crunch to write 100 posts every day for you, so lay off!"

NO. No, I'm sorry, but that is NOT a defense. 100 posts? Oh my, you poor people, your whole staff has to labor tirelessly to cut-and-paste press releases and regurgited posts from OTHER blogs, and add one or two lines of witty and unoriginal spin. That must be so exhausting! How about writing 90, or 80, or hell, 50 posts a day, and editing them first? The Boston Globe doesn't seem to have a problem, and that fucker is like 400 pages an issue these days.

Show your readers respect. Hire an editor. This is not negotiable.

Comics have been pretty bad, too. Now don't get me wrong, I am so thrilled that the web gives a cheap, easy way for comic artists with, let us say, off the beaten path ideologies to distribute their stuff to like-minded fans. I grew up loving the Boston Globe comics, but Ive tried reading them again lately and I realized just how derivative, unfunny and lacking in any sort of original thought they really are. Seriously, has Marmaduke, Garfield or Cathy done ANYthing original since Regan was president? Aside from Dilbert and Zippy, I couldnt find anything remotely amusing. And I'll be the first to admit that those are hardly appealing to a broad demographics.

Which is why the internet is so fucking great- I can read comics about D&D, Tech jobs, video gaming, Python programming and otaku; comics that would never, EVER find an audience in a mainstream media outlet.

But theres a downside as well: it seems to me that just because anyone CAN publish a comic on the internet, doesnt mean they should. I would use the word artist reluctantly for over half the comics I read- I'm not expecting everything to look like MegaTokyo, but far too many people think that all they need is a geeky punchline and stick figures to get by. I'm looking at you, XKCD... Abstruse Goose... Cheer Up Emo Kid... Cyanide & Happiness... Order of the Stick.. and the list goes on...

How about some of you funny guys with no drawing talent hook up with some artists who have no sense of humor and you BOTH get famous? That's how comics have workd for 100 years... you think Jai Lee or Alex Ross can write a story to save his life?

In conclusion, internet: shape up. I deserve better.

In case you were wondering, here's how you use the command line to manually bind a Mac client to a 3rd party LDAP server and Kerberos realm...

$ sudo dscl /Search create / SearchPolicy CSPSearchpath
$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/DirectoryService LDAPv3 Active
$ sudo killall DirectoryService
$ sudo dsconfigldap -v -a servername.domain.com -n servername -u directoryadmin -p adminpassword -l clientadmin -q clientpassword
$ sudo dscl /Search append / CSPSearchPath /LDAPv3/servername.domain.com
$ sudo /usr/sbin/sso_util configure -r servername.domain.com -a diradmin -p adminpassword -f /LDAPv3/servername.domain.com -v 1 all