Alien

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I just got back from seeing the Director’s Cut of Alien — one of my all-time favorite Sci-Fi/Horror films — at the Seattle Cinerama.

The movie, of course, was excellent. The Director’s Cut isn’t that much of a change (I immediately noticed three differences between it and the original version, one of which was footage that’s been known of and previously seen as a “deleted scene” on the original Alien DVD), for me most of the fun was just being able to see Alien on the big screen, as I was far too young to do so when it was first released.

While I enjoyed the movie a lot, this was my first experience with digital projection — and I have to say, I’m somewhat less than impressed. I’m not really sure if this might be a side effect of the size of the Cinerama screen, and whether it might be less visible on smaller theater screens, but I could very easily see a vertical “banding”/pixillation/scan line effect. In shots with a lot of movement it wasn’t very noticeable, but in still shots with strong vertical lines (walls, fixtures, table legs, etc.) it was definitely apparent, and made the image much less crisp than I had expected it to be.

I also don’t know what medium the movies are read from, but I’m guessing it must be some form of optical disc, similar to a DVD (though I’m assuming with much higher resolution for theater projection). AT one point early in the film, there was a slight glitch, and it produced the same “blocking” artifact that can be seen on DVDs if they have fingerprints on them. It was only there for a brief moment, less than a second, but on a screen the size of the Cinerama, it’s extremely distracting.

Even with the slight technical oddities, though, it was a lot of fun.

The rest of this post discusses the various additions and changes in the Director’s Cut from the original theatrical release version. If you want to stay spoiler-free, stop here — otherwise, press on!

The additions I noticed:

  1. After Kane is brought back onto the Nostromo and is in the infirmary, there is a little more business among Ripley, Lambert, Parker, and Brett. Where in the original version we cut to the four of them in the observation area, the new version cuts to just Lambert, Parker, and Brett. Ripley descends from a ladder and enters the shot, and Lambert slaps her and they have a quick scuffle before Parker and Brett pull them apart. Lambert slumps against the back wall, and Ripley crosses in front of her, at which point we pick up where the original version cut in.
  2. When Brett walks into the machine room with the chains hanging from the ceiling, there is a quick shot of Brett from above. It’s subtle, but towards the left of the shot, you can see the silhouette of the alien as it hangs from the chains above Brett. Interestingly, this shot is not included in the original DVD’s special features.
  3. The last addition is the infamous “Dallas cocooned” scene that was present in the extra features of the previously released Alien DVD. To be honest, I’m torn on this addition. The accepted life cycle of the alien has been egg > facehugger > host > chestburster > adult alien, with most adult aliens being soldiers, while one will become a queen and lay more eggs. In Aliens, we saw cocoons being used as a way to store captured prey, either as food or as convenient hosts for future facehuggers, and it could be argued that that is what has happened here — Dallas and Parker have been cocooned for future use. However, when we see Parker, he appears to be becoming an egg — as if he were somehow transforming into a facehugger. I’ve never been totally happy with this (in addition to breaking previous canon, it’s less scientifically plausible), so while it’s definitely cool to see the sequence in the film, I’m torn as to whether or not I really like the addition.

I’m double-checking against the Deleted Scenes section on the Alien DVD I have, and it appears that more of the Deleted Scenes have been added in — I just didn’t realize it as I was watching the film, probably because I’d seen them before on the DVD. These include:

  1. Added: The crew listening to the alien transmission on the bridge of the Nostromo. Interestingly, the audio effects for the transmission are different in the new cut of the film than in the deleted scene.
  2. Partially added: The deleted scene version of the confrontation between Ripley and Lambert is longer than what was added to the Director’s Cut — Lambert’s dialogue describing them pulling Kane up from the egg chamber has been removed.
  3. Left out: A scene I was hoping would be put back in — a conversation in the infirmary after the facehugger’s blood eats through a few levels of the deck plating where Ripley notices a stain on Kane’s lung (the gestating chestburster) — was not added back in. Probably a good idea, as it could hurt the pacing of the film, but it’s still a nice bit of foreshadowing that I’ve always felt was a pity to lose from the finished film.
  4. Left out: An intercom conversation between Ripley and Parker as they harass each other.
  5. Left out: A raucous argument among the crew in the mess hall after Kane’s death, brainstorming on how to capture and kill the chestburster.
  6. Left out: The bloodier version of Brett’s death, where we watch the alien crush his skull as he screams for Parker before it pulls him up into the air shaft.
  7. Left out: Lambert and Ripley’s uneasy reconciliation, where Ripley apparently starts to explore her suspicions about Ash when she asks whether Lambert had ever slept with him.
  8. Left out (for obvious reasons): The only partially-shot action sequence where the crew almost traps the alien in the airlock, only to have it escape, wounding it and spilling more acid blood in the process. As only the bridge “reaction” shots were filmed, I didn’t expect this sequence to be put back in.
  9. Mostly added: There have been a few slight edits to the cocoon sequence. In the deleted scene version, Ripley has a few lines saying that she’ll get Dallas out and onto the shuttle before he pleads with her to kill him. Aside from losing those, the rest of the sequence has been added in its entirety.

This just hasn't been my best week

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Earlier this week, I discovered that my site design had been appropriated without acknowledgment or credit by a third party. Upset about this, I posted about it. Some of my readers were able to provide me with an e-mail for the likely party, and I e-mailed them. I also cc:’d an administrator at the school.

While this action resulted in the site being first removed and then redesigned, it has been pointed out to me in the comment thread to that post that I managed to do this person essentially just what had just been done to me — a mistake that could have easily been taken care of quickly and quietly became more public than had ever been expected or desired.

What can I say — they’re right. I shouldn’t have been so quick to take the actions that I did. Already overstressed and overwhelmed from the attention my site has been getting of late, I reacted too quickly and without enough thought.

The following is the latest in a series of e-mail messages I have been trading with the person in question, expressing my apologies to him.

Thank you very much for accepting my mistake, please notify me of the appropriate amount of money I should paypal to you in order to repay you for bandwidth my site took by using an image served from your server.

Don’t worry about that — chances are it wasn’t terribly much, and as I’ve been getting an insane amount of traffic lately due to my recent experiences with Microsoft, my bandwidth limits are so ridiculously shot at this point that any traffic you might have added would be just a drop in the bucket.

It has been pointed out in the comment thread for my post that I may have jumped the gun in cc:’ing your academy superiors in my initial e-mail without first seeing if you would remove the site on your own. In retrospect, I should have given you the chance to remove it on your own — the only defense that I can give is that as there was no current e-mail address listed when I found your site, I was not certain I was contacting the right person, and at the time I found your site, I was somewhat overwhelmed from the attention my site had been getting and was somewhat touchier than I usually strive to be.

In my experiences with Microsoft (detailed earlier on my website, though it’s entirely possible that that is how you found my site in the first place), I made a mistake, and was immediately given the most extreme punishment possible. I then turned around and essentially did the same to you. For that, I most certainly owe you an apology as well.

I do hope that this hasn’t caused any major problems for you at the Academy (and as such, will also be cc:’ing this apology to the same contact person at the Academy that I did my initial e-mail). We’ve each recently made mistakes that have become more public than we expected or would have wanted them to. Hopefully each of us can learn from this in the future.

Again, good luck to you, and best wishes.

Everybody makes mistakes. Of late, I’ve been making my mistakes loudly and publicly — not something I’d really recommend to anyone. ;) Hopefully I can stop this trend before it gets any worse!

Congratulations, Bishop Robinson

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After far too much controversy — which is, unfortunately, far from finished — Gene Robinson was consecrated as Bishop on Sunday. It sounds like, while there were objections raised and protests held near the site of the consecration, overall it went pleasantly and without any undue problems.

After the objections were raised, [Presiding Bishop Frank T.] Griswold thanked attendees “for bringing their concerns before us.” But he also seemed to make a case for unity when he related a story of a primate who told him that “the Holy Spirit can do different things in different places,” adding, “That is precisely what we are doing here.”

Robinson received a more effusive endorsement from the Rev. Douglas Theuner, who he is replacing. Concluding a humorous and wide-ranging address that lightened the mood in the arena, Theuner told Robinson that his consecration is not the defining battle in the history of the church that some have made it out to be.

“When a young man unsure of his sexual orientation reads ‘The Episcopal Church Welcomes You’ on a sign outside the church and enters that church, that’s a defining moment in Christian life,” he said.

Many congratulations and best wishes go out to Bishop Robinson.

Jason Webley Deathday 2003

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Last night was Jason Webley‘s Deathday concert. Incredible, beautiful, fun, funny, and moving — everything I’ve come to expect from Webley’s shows.

The show was held at the Town Hall, which is just kitty-corner across the street from my apartment building. Just a little after 6pm, Prairie glanced out my kitchen window and noticed that something was glowing outside of Town Hall. Curious, I opened the window and poked my head out. The glow was easy to identify as a Jack O’ Lantern. What I hadn’t expected to see (though perhaps I should have) was the line that was already starting to form. Hoping to get good seats for the show, we decided that we’d go join the line, bundled up, and headed downstairs and across the street.

We found a spot in line right at the corner, and spent the next hour or so watching people play, identifying costumes, and chatting with the people in front of us — a cute girl with red dreadlocks and her boyfriend. We never did catch their names (even after mentioning at one point that we didn’t know each other), but they made for a fun way to pass the time as we waited, talking about everything from lemmings being thrown over cliffs to whether or not I liked artichokes (I don’t).

Eventually we made it inside, stood in line for a while longer waiting for the doors to the auditorium to open, and finally getting in and finding seats. We ended up getting great seats — the auditorium has a staircase in the center of the hall leading down and out, and we were just one row back behind the stairs, with a perfect view of the stage. Town Hall was perfect for the show, too. Huge (around 900 seats), and I’d guess the audience was between 700 and 800 people, primarily “alternative”/punk/goth kids in their late teens and early twenties, but a sizeable number of adults, also. One of the things I’ve always liked about Jason Webley is how well he attracts a wide range of fans, and that’s always obvious at shows such as these.

Not long after we all filed in, the musicians took the stage, and the show began…

The empty stage

The lights went down, and the auditorium went silent. A door opened on the side of the stage, and Jason entered — in puppet form. As a gorgeously done Jason Webley puppet, controlled by two puppeteers wearing all black, he walked to the front of the stage, guitar case in hand. He sat down, pulled out the guitar, and played the first song (recorded…as good as the puppet was, its fingers weren’t quite that dextrous).

Once the song was done, he walked back offstage, and the black clad assistants came back onstage. There had been a large box covered by a sheet at center stage, and they proceeded to remove the sheet to reveal a large trunk. They unlocked the trunk, opened the lid — and helped Jason (the real flesh-and-blood Jason this time) out of the box, clad only in loose yellow pants. As he came to life, he was given his trenchcoat and hat, and finally, his accordion, and the main part of the show began.

Emerging from the box

The show was incredible. The accompanying musicians were expanded this year to include a string quartet of two cello and two violin, in addition to the brass band, drums, and Jason switching among accordion, guitar, and piano (and occasional shovel). The addition of the fuller, more orchestral background was wonderful, filling out his songs and allowing for some beautiful background music for some of the more performance-art sets of the show.

Because Town Hall presented a more formal setting for the show than some other venues, like last year’s Deathday show at the Paradox, after the first few songs Jason took a moment to break the ice and loosen things up again by leading us all in a rousing sing-along of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” with everyone either standing up or sitting down again at every word that started with a “B”. This was fun, and got a good deal of giggles going through the audience, but apparently that wasn’t enough for Jason, as he decided to teach us another dance — the Gnomie.

Now, the Gnomie is quite easy to do. Inspired by those little lawn gnomes seen in the front yards of homes, all you have to do is get a sheepish grin on your face, pull your shirt over the back of your head, and then wiggle your arms (now pulled up a bit by the shirt) as you bounce around a bit. Have you ever seen a crowd of 700-some people doing the Gnomie? We almost didn’t, as there’s always some people a bit too shy to do something quite this silly. But Jason implored us to get everyone involved. After all, one doesn’t get too many chances to do the Gnomie, and so he asked us all to turn to anyone we could see who wasn’t joining in, look deep into their eyes, and sing to them, “If you don’t Gnomie by now….” The general mood loosened up a lot after that!

Do the Gnomie

This year, love, the heart, and flight were the running themes of the show, and the thematic elements of the performance were nicely woven between the more upbeat, sillier moments. Three stories were told during the course of the show: The Boy With Wings on His Heart, The Boy With A Ball of String for a Heart, and The Boy With A Balloon For A Heart. Each story was about our relationships with love — for each other, for home, for what we see in this world. I’m really hoping that someone who was taping the performance was able to catch these stories on tape, they were wonderfully written and performed.

During the last half of the show, red balloons were occasionally tossed into the crowd. Small heart-shaped balloons, larger round balloons, and a couple really large round balloons (easily two feet in diameter). These would fly around the audience, bouncing from one person to the next. They’d disappear for the quieter songs, then as the energy ramped up again, they’d reemerge from underneath seats or more would be brought out, and the air would soon fill with red balloons again.

Big red balloons

For each of Jason’s stories, he used a small doll (the child’s doll with a soft body and plastic head, arms, and legs) to illustrate the story as he told it. For The Boy With A Balloon for a Heart, the story told of a boy who’s heart would expand each time he saw something he liked, each time he saw something that made him sad — anything that made him love. This doll had had its body replaced with stocking fabric around a balloon, and each time the boy’s heart grew, Jason blew the balloon up a bit. Eventually, as the story ended, he had a (truth to tell) somewhat disturbing looking swollen baby doll, which he handed to the audience. Seeing as how we were already batting large red balloons around…well, the baby just got added into the mix. I’m not entirely sure if that was Jason’s intent or not, but for the rest of the evening, you’d see three or four balloons fly in front of your face, followed by a balloon baby careening through the audience.

Eventually, after a good collection of old Webley standards and some new songs (perhaps there’s a new album in the works?), a mass audience tickle fight, and everyone “getting wasted” for the Drinking Song by pointing at the roof, looking at their fingers, and spinning in circles twenty times or so, the show started to wind down.

Jason took off his coat and hat, and one of the assistance appeared in the audience with a doll version of Jason hanging from a pole with wings strapped to his arms, flying around the room, and eventually onto the stage. After a few flights around the stage, the doll Jason descended into Jason’s arms. Gently cradling the doll in his arms, Jason stood there, the auditorium dead silent — when the crack of snapping wood filled the hall, and the wings, shattered, fell to the ground. Anguish washing over his face, Jason gently reached into the doll and removed its heart.

Removing Jason's heart

Two white-clad pallbearers came on stage, bearing a small coffin between them. Setting it down on the stage and removing its lid, they reached up and coaxed the doll from Jason’s arms, laying it to rest within the coffin. One then turned and took the heart from Jason, placing it back in the body of the doll. They then stood back up and slowly left the stage, bearing the doll away and out of the auditorium down the central staircase, leaving Jason collapsed in grief on the stage. The two black-clad assistants then came back, gently picked Jason up, put him back into the trunk, closed and locked it, and covered it with the sheet again. The band played gently as we all got up and quietly left the auditorium, filed outside, and gathered in the rain outside of Town Hall, waiting to see what would happen next.

Eventually, someone caught wind of the next part of the night’s activities (for Jason’s big shows are never entirely done just because we’re no longer watching him onstage), and everyone started walking a block down the street to the closest entrance to Freeway Park. As we all entered the park we passed people with large bunches of balloons, handing everyone a single balloon. We got ours and continued on into the park, following the paths until we got to one of the large plaza areas next to the Convention Center. Here, the two pallbearers were standing next to a small stone cairn, still bearing the coffin with Jason’s (doll) body in it.

We gathered in a circle around them, each of us holding the balloon we had been given, talking quietly, reliving the show we had just seen, talking about prior Deathdays, and waiting to see what would happen next.

Waiting with our balloons

Eventually, people came back through the crowd, gathering all the balloons together again. We each tied our balloon onto one of the bunches, then all the bunches were gathered together in the center of the circle. Not long after that, the balloons started to rise, with Jason (in doll form) tied to the bottom of the bunch, to let him fly away into the night. Unfortunately, here the night hit a slight snag, to the amusement of the gathered fans. As there was a light rain that evening, the balloons were becoming slightly weighted down with water, and couldn’t get enough lift to fly away!

Jason floated gently above our heads, but wasn’t able to get much lift beyond that, and our cheers of encouragement as he floated above us quickly turned into laughs as he drifted first into one of the park lamps, then into one tree, and then into another. Each time, someone would extricate Jason from his predicament, knock some of the water off of the balloons they could reach, let him go again, we’d all cheer — and then watch him find another tree. After the third time, someone pulled the bunch of balloons down and those of us closest to the bunch, laughing and cheering, jumped up into the balloons, doing what we could to knock as much rain off as possible.

One last launch. Cheers and cries of encouragement. “Go, Jason!” “Fly away!” And fly away he did, finally rising above us, floating away over downtown Seattle, to wherever Jason goes during these long winter months.

And so Jason Webley has died. Until next spring and his rebirth…we’ll all miss you.

“Goodbye forever, once again…”

Goodbye forever, once again...

Update: More Webley links…

One last interview

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I think that this should be the last of my posts regarding my recent notoriety. Tech news site BetaNews interviewed me about the entire affair yesterday, and the interview has just been posted on their site.

On October 23, Michael “Woody” Hanscom posted a picture to his Web blog, intended to garner a chuckle or two from a few close friends and colleagues.

>

The reaction the picture drew from his employer can only be compared to a kind of Orwellian nightmare where anything an individual does online can come back to haunt them. That nightmare is the reality faced by an increasingly vulnerable corporate world where the Web can be used as a tool to disclose potentially sensitive and damaging trade secrets to the masses.

Thanks to David Worthington for conducting the interview.

Hey Mr. DJ!

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Yes, yes, I know. Online quizzes are so passé. But every so often they can be fun — and for the first time in about twenty years, I can describe something as “totally tubular.” Totally.

Only 69.75% — how depressing! Of course, I was kicking myself as I read the answers for the ones I didn’t get. I’m just ashamed I missed as many as I did. And I used to call myself a DJ!?

(via Nate)

And I thought the politicians were scary

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Here’s a fun little Halloween story that I’d not heard before. Apparently, the U.S. Capitol Building is haunted!

Halloween or not, the 200-year-old Capitol is said to be one of the most haunted buildings in Washington, says Jim Berard, Democratic communications director for the House Transportation Committee. Berard compiled some of the more famous ghost stories in his recently published “The Capitol Inside & Out,” a history of the nation’s legislative center.

[…]

Berard says the most famous Capitol apparition is the “Demon Cat,” thought to date back to the early days when cats roamed the building to keep the rat population down. The cat, said to appear at times of national crisis, grows to enormous size before suddenly vanishing. Legend has it that one guard fired his gun at it, and another was so frightened he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Okay…so who’s up for an overnight field trip?

(via D)

Look out! Pornography! Duck!

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I’m so disappointed that I didn’t find out about this earlier. I can’t tell you how much safer and more secure I feel about the world around me to know that our dearly beloved President declared the week of October 26th to November 1st, 2003, to be Protection From Pornography Week.

Why, just the other day as I was in the corner store by my apartment, I was suddenly assaulted by Pornography. Racks and racks of catalogs, cardboard squares just barely covering the bountiful breasts of the ladies on the covers. “BARELY LEGAL!”, they screamed at me. “JUST TURNED EIGHTEEN!” called out another magazine. I couldn’t get away — I tried to leave, but suddenly I was accosted by “THE GIRLS OF STARBUCKS!” It was horrendous!

And if that weren’t bad enough — though I shudder to recall it, dear reader, and I do hope that those of you of a delicate constitution will turn away — right next to these was an even more hideous display of Pornography. Videos! I didn’t want to look at them, but the gaudy colors, the huge type on the boxes, and the titles — my God, the titles! “HOT CHOCOLATE LOVE!” cried out one, and I tried to turn away, lest it tempt me further. But it did me no good — right next to it sat another, coyly taunting me with promises of “HOT ASIAN ACTION!”

I turned and fled — it was more than any sane person should have to bear. How can we continue to allow this filth, this putrescence, this utter degradation to invade our lives? Sure, some may try to claim that it was in a small corner of the store, that I didn’t have to look. But truly, brothers and sisters, they called to me! I was a slave to their wanton desires! This must be STOPPED!

Ahem.

Or we could just go on with our lives and spend our tax dollars on something that might actually do some good for once. Cripes.

And now, in honor of this precious and noble week, I give you…BOOBIES!

Blue Footed Boobie

Another thing that D and I noticed while we were looking at the proclamation.

We have committed significant resources to the Department of Justice to intensify investigative and prosecutorial efforts to combat obscenity, child pornography, and child sexual exploi-ta-tion on the Internet.

“Exploi-ta-tion.”

The only explanation we could come up with is that breaking the word down like that is the only way President Bush would be able to make it through that many syllables without stumbling, and someone forgot to correct that before uploading the speech to the site. But even so — couldn’t they at least break it down into the correct number of syllables?

(via Paul)

People must like my design

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One of the many things that I’ve enjoyed about the numerous comments I’ve received over the past few days is that I’ve gotten quite a few compliments on my site design. As I’m generally not much of a designer (trust me on this one — my previous attempts were not horrid, but certainly not great), that’s always a nice compliment to get.

However, there is a potential downside to this that I hadn’t foreseen — that being people ripping off your site design.

The top of the page

The bottom of the page

Even better (or worse, depending on how you look at it) is how I found out. Normally, things like this aren’t always easy to spot. I found out simply because as I was looking through my referrer logs, I noticed a link that I hadn’t seen before — not uncommon over the past couple days — only it didn’t seem to be pointing to one of my pages. Instead, it appeared to be pointing to itself. Odd.

So I bounced over to take a look. Imagine my surprise when I found my very own site design staring me in the face! I was not at all happy. Then I pulled up the source code for the site — and started laughing. Just to give you an idea:

  1. The title of the page is still ‘eclecticism’.
  2. The meta tags still hold all of my information: this site’s tagline, RSS feed, and FOAF file.
  3. The code has been mangled by Microsoft FrontPage 5.0 — always the hallmark of a top-notch site designer. ;)
  4. The trackback RDF data for my posts is still in the page.
  5. While the images in the “ad banner” at the bottom of the page have been replaced, the title arguments are still the same.
  6. It still has the TypePad statistics tracking code at the bottom of the page (which is why it showed up in my referrer logs).

The best part of all of those, though, was that he’d not altered the CSS stylesheet at all — so he was hotlinking the banner image of the Seattle skyline that I use (while it was displaying on his site, he was still pulling it off of my images directory here on TypePad)!

So, in an effort to be polite, I searched around the site for an e-mail contact link so that I could ask him to take my design down. Unfortunately, he hasn’t provided one. So I’ve been forced to resort to slightly more drastic means.

A quick recode of my stylesheet to replace my banner image here on this site with an identical one, so that it won’t be disturbed, and a little bit of quick and dirty Photoshop work on the image that he’s linking to, and instead of my skyline graphic, he now has a banner proudly displaying to the world that ~~his site design was stolen from me~~.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery. But this — this was just clumsy, stupid, and poorly executed. I hope he finds another design soon. Just watch your referrer logs — his next design just might be yours!

(In addition to my screenshots, Phil has provided .pdf screencaptures on his site — thanks!)

'Big Mac' details

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Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, the head of Virginia Tech‘s recent construction of a 1,100-node Power Mac G5-based supercomputer (currently tentatively ranked as the 3rd fastest supercomputer in the word) gave a presentation at the O’Reilly Mac OS X conference this week. Lots of interesting little technical tidbits in the article, detailing just how they were able to get the project up and running.

If you’ve ever sat with a TiBook in your lap, you understand that there is a further significant issue. As hot as a G4 runs, a G5 runs hotter. With a traditional air-conditioning setup, the calculations showed that instead of emptying out the air three times an hour as would be typical, they would need to empty the air three times per minute. Computers tend to each cool front to back. So the plan was to arrange the computers in rows back to back and pull the hot air out of the hot aisle. This would have required wind velocity under the floor of more than 60 miles per hour and still would have resulted in some hot spots. They decided instead to use a refrigerator-like system. Chillers cool water to 40 degrees to 50 degrees, which is then used to chill refrigerant, which is piped into a matrix of copper pipes. Effectively, you have a distributed refrigerator.