onward, upward, edward

rundown: superbowl ads

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 19:31:31 -0500

$2.6 million for a 30-second spot.

My favorites:

Kia revels in the pure joy of filmmaking. An unreserved delight to watch.

Google shows simple done right. The context provided by the unselected searches surreptitiously adds several layers of texture.

Audi with a spirited romp through a world where Green is the law. Can you spot the anteater?

What these three ads have in common: impeccable use of music and sound.

What was weak this year? Mary Elizabeth Williams has a great article at Salon about the prevalence of ads with groundhog type critters and male anxiety symbolized by missing pants, love of beer, and tackling old women.

godard

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:57:21 -0400

I’m not buying it.

I’ve had enough of this baloney.

Stop lounging around in bed reading aloud from books. I can do that on my own. Why not stop talking altogether, rather than lingering upon the pointless, then resorting to breezy montage once there is actually work to be done.

Show don’t tell. Give me something to care about, preferably by someone who cares about something.

I insist not upon an actual story, if that is your inclination, but please don’t pretend otherwise.

kombali

Fri, 2 Nov 2007 16:33:20 -0400

I turned my compost in earnest today. I found a spoon.

I did my laundry. I found a green gtr pick. I use red. I wonder where this came from.

How long would it take a spoon to compost?

How long does it take red to become green?

I almost left it there amongst the leaves, corn cobs, and avocado seeds. I felt as if I had interrupted something. A loamy privacy.

Beneath the streets, the earth is ready - just waiting for us to leave the room.

not much fun

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:02:57 -0400

To my regular readers - my apologies.

This is here for a reason.

I promise.

Still, one might try to read it for fun.

It is a small bit of a gps simulator. My part is to randomly send an invalid checksum.

Tcl is kind of embarrassingly easy.

So far.

Tk to come. How often can that be said. Am I the only person in the world that gets this?*

proc makeChksum {line} {
set xor 0
foreach char [split $line ""] {
binary scan $char "c" dec
set xor [expr {$xor ^ $dec}]
}
# ---- edward mucks about here ----
# want a bogus checksum?
# next few variables will be controlled by gui checkboxes and the like
# freq is setup to be 0.0 - 100.0 %
set chksumbogus 2
set chksumbogus_freq 50
# -- always bogus --
# also, check to be sure xor isn't already FF
# if it already is FF, make it 0
if { $chksumbogus == 1 && $xor != 255 } {
set xor 255
}
if { $chksumbogus == 1 && $xor == 255 } {
set xor 0
}
# -- sometimes bogus --
if { $chksumbogus == 2 } {
if { [expr floor( rand() * 999 )] >= ( 1000 - ( $chksumbogus_freq * 10 ) ) } {
set boguhit 1
} else {
set boguhit 0
}
}
if { $chksumbogus == 2 && $boguhit == 1 } {
if { $xor != 255 } {
set xor 255
} else {
set xor 0
}
}
# -- never bogus --
# checksumbogus 0 will make it through without changing
# end of bogus checksum
# ---- edward stops ----
return [format %X $xor]

*Tk is a scripting language used to build GUIs for Tcl (tool command language). However the construct, “TK” is used by writers to represent “To Come.” Don’t feel like writing this section, waiting for an interview or some other information, just put TK. Why TK instead of TC? The string TK doesn’t appear in the english language (as far as I know) so a find/replace search for TK finds only things that are “to come” and nothing else.

So Tk to come... I have written the code in Tcl and soon I was to learn Tk to implement the GUI. Tk TK.

Probably a programmer that works at a newspaper would get this.

oddities

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:08:41 -0400

Today a blue poker chip is found in my laundry.

In the dryer.

Before it melts.

I have no idea where it came from.

The day before yesterday I watched a baby possum cross the road — round, fuzzy and toddling. I walk up to him. He looks at me with some concern, opens his mouth, turns, and hop-plods away into tall grass, struggling for balance.

This approaches the upper limit of cute for a possum.

Also.

In the past 11 days something remarkable has occurred.

It has become impossible for me to drop anything.

Everything that falls is caught. This happens without will or decision or even the benefit of vision. A bean from the colander — captured at my waist. A sock at the laundry falls off my shoulder and I catch it behind my back. This goes on and on: a potato at the market. I catch it with my left hand, something I was never good at. I’m eating the potato right now. I flip a single radish slice in a sauté pan without a spatula...

Miracle after miracle.

Nothing ever drops.

How is this possible?