Bleh

Nothing today. See y'all Monday.

French

Well good heavens, I haven't even been blogging for two weeks and I find myself agreeing with the French. Not so much on the Apple and iPod thing - I mean, you know the rules when you sign in at the door. (Or you should at any rate - it's not like anybodies been quiet about it.) But I'm saving my "Apple Sucks" rant for the day when I really need it. My iPod is still My Precious on the 9 days out of 10 that it runs right. And we know that Jobs doesn't want it to be 1985 again, certainly never 1987, so I still have hope that Apple will pull its collective head out of its firewire port before I have to go buy a Creative or some other less Trendy player. And how about that Disney / Pixar merger? Does that look like it's gonna be cool, or what?

Erm, I seem to be wandering off point here...

*cough*

I'm not particularly in favor of wholesale music / movie / smurf piracy. I think there's a big difference between burning a disc for Dad (back in the day I'd have made a cassette) and making your 500 CD collection available on the internet.

I'm sure that by the letter of the law (is that phrase copyrighted somewhere? Do I owe somebody $0.95?) my HD has some gotchas. (For the record my name is Patrick Sereno and I live at 11834 N. - never mind...) I feel (and the Man tends to disagree with me, even though legally and with precedent he doesn't) that when I buy a movie or a CD that I should be able to take it apart and play with it. We live in an amazing age. I can add actual endings to all of those Jerry Goldsmith tracks that have killer themes but just kind of wander off into an action cue. (Not only do I have no idea where the paragraph break should be, I have no idea if that's how I spell "cue".) I can take the wonderfully clear remasters of the Star Wars soundtracks from 1997 and remix them into the original album order from 1977. Because I can! (Did you forget this was the Land of the Geeks?)

But The Man says - NO! You shouldn't be able to even copy that CD onto your computer! It should be as is! What? Sell you the same kind of CD you're trying to make and you'll buy it? Who the heck would want that? What, three nerds in a basement? Phhhht! But if you do this, you're costing us millions! Yeah, we know it's 2006, but we don't want you to be able to be as creative with our stuff as you were in 1982! ("Moooooommmmmmmmm! Stop the DOG barking! I'm trying to RECORD something off of the TV! I am NOT being WHINY! Awwwwwwww!!!" - happy days.)

It will be interesting to watch when the Next Big Thing goes public. DVVD-q or whatever. The entire MGM library on a sugar cube. And how desperately The Man will try to lock it down. Interesting times (not a Chinese curse, btw).

I'm about to start ranting about FBI warnings and interminable video introductions that you can't skip on DVDs (I'M TALKING TO YOU PARAMOUNT!) so I'll cut this short. (Shorter?) (Heh, Tallguy Productions is cutting it short. I crack me up.)

Have a good weekend everybody.

EDIT: Aw, frak. It's Thursday, isn't it. Isn't that just about the worst feeling in the world? Grrr. Arrrgh.

p.s. The spell check on Blogger doesn't know the word "blogging" Ahhh, what an age.

3D Sandbox

How's this for a time sucker?

It may not look like much, but it's like a sandbox with gravity and FIRE!

You use the list at the bottom to change what you ‘paint’ with. You can draw walls, or you can add plants, spouts, or sprinkle any of the elements (sand, water, oil, or FIRE!) Water touching Plant makes it grow. Or you can draw a pockets, fill it with oil, then use FIRE! (FIRE! FIRE! FIIIIIIRE! Hehehehehehehehe....)

It's much fun.

My opinion

Hey, look what I got back from this.

"Thanks for your message and expressing your opinion.
Tim Dorsey
President
KTRS Radio
638 West Port Plaza Dr.
St. Louis, MO 63146
314.453.5501
timd@ktrs.com"

Ooooooooo!

I read the news today, oh boy

Well I suppose this was a matter of time. I seem to recall Apple Computers thinking this would just go away a few years ago. Sorry, Steve. I guess Pixar won't be using "Drive My Car" for any Cars ads anytime soon. (Oooh! New Cars trailer! Have to go watch later!)

Trivia (and my target audience of "a few friends" probably knows this): When Apple Computer introduced the Mac, the start up sound was "Dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn" (only shorter) - This is Apple's wink and nod to the last note of "A Day in the Life" off of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Kind of thier "Take THAT Beatles!"

Gotta admit, it'd be nice to get Beatles music on iTunes. I guess when you're a musical institution you can be stubborn.

Oh, and don't you love the articles refference "the widow of John Lennon"? Gee, I wonder what her name is? Why do reporters seem to be such hacks. Did they used to not be hacks? (I don't have to be clear and concise, I'm a blogger. By rights I should be wearing pajamas right now.)

And I think it's gonna be a long long time...

Good morning, America (and places elsewhere). Another Monday, and I still haven't missed a weekday! Maybe this blog thing will catch on!

I would say that this stuff is slow, but more to the point, I'm slow. But here are BUTTONS! (And the picture on the viewer changed. By itself. Odd that.)

And a door. All together now: Shhhhhhkt! (The litte red alert lamps can light up. They just don't.)







"Burning out his fuse out here alone." - It's a line from Elton John's "Rocket Man". I never knew that. Never understood a word of it when Elton sang it. How did I finally figure it out? William Shatner. Thanks Mr. Lileks. I'd managed for thirty some years to both be a Trekkie (Trekker, Trekist, Treknonomicon, whatever) and not have heard Shantner's Rocket Man (Great Bird of the Galaxy, there's video!). I guess it's the will of Landru.

(I wasn't so lucky with Nimoy's Bilbo Baggins, that was forced on me years ago.)

Yard work

Here's the latest on the briefing room. Added the little intercoms and got the room turned around right.
Ok, my physical 3D skills might not quite match my computerized ones, but here is our new conversation / fire pit. Almost ready to crank up the bbq and jump in the pool. (Nothing like listening to "The Balad of John Henry" while you're shoveling to make a pale skinny white guy feel almost cool.)

Matt Maher - New Track

Oh look! More free music! Matt Maher's new track (our Lenten song at St. Timothy's):

http://sdm3.com/viewmsg.cfm?n35037s612c4174271t662e7976562

It works best if you go to the site and then do a "Save As" on the link for iTunes (yay!) or Windows Media (booo!).

How long 'till Easter?

Doctor Who Friday!

It's FRIDAY! Alas, now is the winter of our discontent, or at least the spring and summer of our not having Battlestar Galactica.

How many different ways can you play the same song? Hundreds, apparently. Doctor Who nerds, meet synthesizer nerds. Synth nerds, the Who nerds. It's a match made... Somewhere.

And for those of you that this gives a hankering to hear the originals, here you go.

(Needless to say, these are all on my iPod now.)

Now I just have to find the James Bond Theme Remix site!

Briefing room

Here's my progress on the Enterprise briefing room.

Yep, I'm a nerd.

Room lighting is hard.

Political Correctness gone mad - again

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/22/rice.slur.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Ok, this is nuts. Just nuts. How can this be interpreted as hate speech? Or even dislike speech? It's not even cranky speech! It was obviously an accident in the middle of heaping praise on a very succesful woman that Lenihan has great respect for. He didn't even say "black" he said "African American"! And yet "NAACP chapter president Harold Crumpton commended Dorsey for his swift action."

"KTRS president and general manager Tim Dorsey agreed the remark was accidental but said it was nonetheless "unacceptable, reprehensible and unforgivable."" How can it be "accidental " and "reprehensible"?

That's good. Thanks. This will be one more incident where people will shake thier heads and say "See? This whole hate speech thing is overblown." And the next time somebody says something seriously and actually wrong (I don't know, maybe "Bush doesn't give a damn about black people"?) then people will equate this pretend hate with that actual hate and come to the conclusion that "Well, the radio thing was silly and frivolous, so maybe this latest 'outrage' is too."

http://www.ktrs.com/ is the web address of the radio station if you're interested. General Manager, Tim Dorsey: timd@ktrs.com

(Heh, I'm writing like people are reading this.)

Hello World

Good heavens, I have a blog.

Welcome to Tallguy Productions. Making the world safe for really geeky 3D since 2003 (or 1989 as Billfilms, if'n you want to be picky).

Right now I'm hip deep in making the Big Damn Animation, coming soon to a Quicktime player near you. "Set Sail, September 8th, 2006" and all that. The first "trailer" will be published on Easter Sunday.

Here I will rant, gripe, and point you to stuff that you most likely read anyway, but you can now be comfortable knowing that I read it too.