Game: December 2007

Monday, December 31, 2007

2007 Pop Cultural Regrets

I bought the awful Just Cause instead of the much more interesting Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, and now I can't find the latter title.

I lost an MP3 that I absolutely love, and a Broadcast CD collection that got me through some lonely nights.

I didn't see Hot Fuzz, Grind House or The Simpsons Movie at the theatre

On almost every list of the top 10/25/50/100 movies of the year, I haven't seen 90% of them

I didn't publish a damn thing

Most popular posts of 2007

Turns out that in 2007 that most of this blog's most popular posts were mostly written in 2006. However, here are the top ones actually written in 2007:

The most popular posts regardless of year written also include:

How my 2007 Resolutions panned out

At the start of the year, I made a list of 10 Blogging resolutions, and I thought since it was the final day of the year, I thought I would look back at them and see to what degree I was successful in keeping them.

And it seems the perfect transition for tonight's post on my 2007 regrets and tommorrow's new list of resolutions.

Here we go:

1. I will at some point pick up the first season of Veronica Mars on DVD or catch it on the Women's Television Network (for the non-Canadians, yes, it is actually called that).

Um, yeah, that didn't happen. I mean, it really didn't happen. Strike one.

2. Appreciate more art... both commercial and non-commercial.

This actually did happen. I went to a few more exhibitions, bought some books on commercial art and read some theory as well. I think I nailed this one.

3. I will try not to mention Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears for months at a time.

I had some bad times this year with this one, especially with the latter two celebs, but I have been pretty clean as of late so I think that again, I would call this one a success. And I think I can give myself a little bit of leeway on this with the prison sentence, the car theft, the meltdowns... it was sort of hard to ignore them entirely in this line of work.

4. Make fun of entertainment/new programming more.

Yeah, I did this too. I made fun of a lot of programming and movies this year.

5. Talk more about books... hell, I'll try to READ more books.

I read more books this year, but I didn't necessarily talk about them, so I am giving myself half credit for this.

6. I am probably going to be an uncle on Thursday, so perhaps I should be a little more kid-friendly(and resolution #3 should cover that).

Well, according to the readability tests, Culture Kills reads at an elementary school level, and most weeks, my blog is rated PG. Success.

7. Find Religion (I am on track to do this one first... more tomorrow ;) )

I am a Dudeist. What can I say.

8. Go Kitsch... Go Kitsch in a massive, massive way

For a blog with a green tartan background, I could have done so much more in this department so I am giving myself another fail on this.

9. Introduce new recurring features(I got three so far... let's try for five)...

I introduced a few new features, so I think I get to give myself a thumbs up for the year. And expect a new celebrity mashup challenge this week.

10. More podcasts... so many more audio posts.

Now this was the resolution that ended up as an abject failure. I did no podcasts this year. Not a one. So I am full of Fail on this one.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Navigating alternative realities

They say The Golden Compass is better movie viewing if you read the book by some other name. I didn't get a chance to find out when we saw that today but what I saw was not too bad and, I guess this is the acid test, will probably have myself and the 9 year old seeing the next one when it appears.

The movie is about an alternative reality where more efficient use of environmentally friendly technology has led to a cold Northern haven for polar bears who are sentient with their own monarchical, but warring, civilisation. I guess the main focus is not so much on that but on the humans who literally carry around their own demons with them for all to see and the difficulties that apparently creates for their own authoritarian regime to maintain order, etc. Suffice it to say their conspiracy of continuing evil is revealed in this movie with the main child heroine having enough trouble working out who her parents are and fulfilling some prophecy a la Harry Potter style. I guess this is where a reading of the book may have assisted in character and societal development.

Anyhow, there are worse things to do in 40 degree heat than see this one.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Week 33: Pageant of the Transmundane

This week's winner sort of puts a cap on the whole Christmas season for me. I think at this point, this post also represents the closest two awards ceremonies have been in terms of posts between them. But the break has done me well, and I hope the holidays have been at least bearable for most of you.

But with that digression aside, it is time to get on with the show.

I was truly messed up by this week's Christmas themed winner, but that's what made it so compelling. You see, there is this guy named Rob Sheridan who runs Rob's SketchBlog, which is a really cool portfolio blog. Anyway, he decided to show what his Christmas Card looked like this year, and well, it is something you truly have to see. It is both so awesome and so shocking, it is a think of macabre beauty.

And since it is a Christmas related winner, well, Homer Simpson stuck in a Chimney in a red suit seemed the most fitting symbol for this particular Transmundanity Award. I hope you agree.

So congratulations Rob. That is some really disturbing work, and I love it.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Enchanted Stuck in the Middle

We saw Enchanted yesterday (our only family Christmas Day tradition). This is the new movie from Disney that pokes fun at Disney. It starts out in a comically stereotypical Disney fairytale cartoon and then moves into the real world, New York city, where the characters remain in character but interact with other people. All this makes for some very funny scenes and one deep moment whereupon the lack of emotional range of cartoon characters are explored but beyond that is nothing special.

This movie is 'stuck in the middle' in that it tries to appeal to two audiences and falls short. For children, the irony is lost on them and the movie becomes boring. To placate them, Disney adds a gratuitous dragon at the end that is pretty much completely pointless. For adults, the irony is there but it is muted because the writers cannot steer too far away from kid friendly issues. And so while the girl ends up with a different guy, everyone still lives very happily ever after; in the barf worthy sense.

That said, you could do worse for a school holiday movie.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Conversation O' the Morning

Santa doesn't visit our house but that didn't stop the following conversation this morning ...

"Look at this website. It says Santa is currently over Niger."

"Dad, Santa isn't real."

"Yeah, he isn't real. It is just a man dressed up as Santa."

"What does he do?"

"Well, he goes around the world giving presents to Christian children."

"But he is not really Santa?"

"No, he is just dressed up as Santa. Get real Dad."

"Well, how does he get around?"

"By plane of course. In the books it is by slate but that is just made up, like Santa."

"So let me get this straight. Santa isn't real but every year some guy gets dressed up in a Santa suit and brings presents to Christian children using a plane. Where does the plane land?"

"At the airport silly and then Santa drives around to all the houses. What did you expect him to do, walk?"

Xmas Greetings from the Year 3000

He knows when your are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
You better not breathe, you better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!

Have a Fantastic Futurama Holiday season from Culture Kills!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Soundish advice

Some interesting advice on danger and kids [HT: Bayesian Heresy]

See also, restraining parents and a dangerous book.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Yes Virginia, there is an incentive system

The biggest open question surrounding the economics of Christmas is this: is the creation of Santa Clause an effective incentive system?

So my understanding of the deal is this: if a child is good throughout the year, Santa Clause comes on Christmas Eve and leaves presents for them in the form of toys and candy. If not, Santa still visits and brings coal, sticks or clothes. To determine this, Santa keeps a list throughout the year to see who is 'watching out' or 'crying.'

If a child buys into this, this would seem to be a potentially powerful incentive system for keeping them well-behaved. What is more, it removes the critical 'subjective performance evaluation' issue from the hands of the parents to the hands of a Northern dwelling, large, usually jolly manager of elves dressed in warm red clothes. Unlike parents, Santa has an incentive to keep the system going whereas a parent's claim that some behaviour would ruin Christmas would not be nearly as credible (see Donald Cox's case study #3).

But what is the evidence that this works as an incentive system? For starters, children around the age of 8 discover the truth and so it must break down at that point even if they keep their parents wondering about what they really believe. But what about before then, does it work to keep children well-behaved?

Now an obvious path to compare this to would be to compare Santa cultures with Santa-free ones. But that is imperfect because they will substitute their own incentive systems into the mix. Although, when it comes down to it, the Jewish elevation of stature of Chanukah is surely a testament to the incentive power of Santa. Sadly, for Jews, the only holiday that occurred around December involved a minor miracle whereby an oil lamp a couple of thousand years ago lasted a little longer than expected. That said, by elevating the status of Chanukah one can safely say that the communication of its true meaning has only been enhanced beyond some ritual and rather unmiraculous candle burning.

What we really need is a random experiment? Some group of families needs to be assigned to miss out on Santa visiting and this has to be communicated at the beginning of the year. Then the behaviour of their children can be assessed and compared with those operating under the status quo.

My guess is that we may find out that the whole deal doesn't do much for incentives. For starters, you can just ask my children who are forced to stick with the true meaning of Chanukah and, if they are lucky, each get one little present each (worth less than $1) for the 8 nights. Total budget for us: $24 (not including the candles). They seem to do pretty well throughout the year. Then again, we are probably substituting other incentives into the mix.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Week 32: Pageant of the Transmundane

I discovered The J-Walk Blog this week, and after browsing the site for a while, I found something that both creeped me out and really got my attention at the same time. You see, I was not expecting to see a particular piece of stop motion animation. It was sort of like seeing the secret life of bacon, which seems to be alive. It is horrifying really, but I can't look away. I mean, even as I type this, I want to click over to see it again.

And of course, Homer Simpson and bacon's relationship goes a long, long way back, so there is a lot of photo evidence for this delicious combination. So, I thought I would go all the way back to Homer as Adam in the Garden of Eden supping on the freshest bacon around.

Somehow it seems like Culture Kills, Homer Simpson and Bacon are somehow all drawn together into a rather disturbing smoothie of fatty goodness. Anyway, congrats should go out to John Walkenbach for bring this creepy masterpiece to my attention through his blogging work. Huzzah! And to celebrate his win, here is a badge honoring his contribution to transmundanity.

Brian McCallister on Ning, OpenSocial, and Apache Shindig

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

When I read an email sent to an Apache Software Foundation mailing list suggesting an open source project for OpenSocial, I wasn't surprised to see it come from Brian McCallister, a prolific open source developer that I met years ago in a former life.

Brian McCallister now works at Ning, the social network outsourcer, and sat down to talk to me about topics revolving around Ning, OpenSocial, and Apache Shindig.

What will you learn from this chat?

What Ning is all about
Why Ning and Brian think about OpenSocial, and why developers should be interested
The parts and pieces of OpenSocial from the standpoint of a developer, and a third party container
How Brian thinks that we will get more than just "Write one, learn everywhere"
What Apache Shindig is all about
How Shindig allows you to do simple local development, which changes the game with respect to your development lifecycle

Thursday, December 20, 2007

You say it's your birthday...

...well, it is my birthday too yeah.

Yep, I am 31 today.

Of course, I can't just announce my own birthday on my blog. That would be self-indulgent and less than entertaining. So in addition to being a little selfish, I thought I would extend some additional badass birthday wishes today.

Yes, it is Samuel L. Jackson's motherfucking birthday.

And it is someone else's birthday too.

Yep, it is Jack Bauer's birthday by proxy.

I guess the fact that I talk about Samuel L. Jackson and Kiefer Sutherland's most famous character makes a little bit more sense now. We are just birthday pals.

Clone High: Available on DVD in America

I heard earlier this week that Clone High has finally been released on DVD down in the States, and I was ecstatic. The 2003 series was long overdue for a wider release, and I am glad that my friends down south have a chance to watch the show whenever they please too.

Now I could try to summarize the you what this show was all about but I believe the Clone High Title sequence explains it more succinctly than I ever could.

The show was created by the folks behind Scrubs, and shares much of the same kind of humor(as well as actors Christa Miller and Donald Faison), and I just dig the art style too.

But aside from the cloned historical figures as teens angle, Clone High is also a great parody of all those teenage dramas and movies as every episode is a "very special" one. There is always a prom or some other huge social event going on in the background. And while the main characters(Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Cleopatra and JFK) dominate the show, there are laughs to be found from even the most minor characters. From the gigantic radioactively mutated Marie Curie to the vice-principal of the school, Lynn Butlertron, a robot who wears sweater vests and calls everyone Wesley to an older teacher who looks like Teller and a sheep mated played by Andy Dick... and I still like the character.

And for 13 episodes of bizarre, angular greatness Clone High kept the laughs coming... and left us fans with a cliffhanger that in all likelihood will never been resolved. However, I can hope that like Futurama, perhaps DVD sales will be good enough to make a direct to DVD movie finishing the saga a reality, or in my wildest dreams, with Scrubs going off the air this year, perhaps there may be a place for Clone High to return from the ashes, phoenix-like and take on another semester of goofy goodness.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Can Leatherheads succeed?

Today I finally saw the Leatherheads trailer, and for the most part I liked what I saw, but I still have some reservations.

Now, I've wanted to see a modern take on old-timey football in film form for a while now... after all, think about how many movies have been made about baseball in the 1920's and 1930's. And there are a lot of stories to tell from that era, including the rise of Notre Dame from a little obscure Catholic institution to a powerhouse, the story of Fordham's Seven Blocks of Granite and a whole lot of individual athletic stories as well.

But I don't know if taking a page out of Slapshot was the way to go this time around. Yes, it may very well be funny, and George Clooney is an accomplished comedic actor who took a lot of cues from the screwball comedies of the era, but there is just something that makes me feel uneasy about this movie for some reason.

Maybe it is the fact that John Krasinski is playing a college football stud who also fought in World War I, when the movie takes place in 1925, meaning he certainly is no rookie playing on the same team as a 46 year old Clooney. Now, I know that people were tougher back then, but come on, there are very few George Blandas out there. (I should also note that quite a few people died playing football in those days as well).

And the fact that the third part of the purported love triangle is a female sports reporter played by Renee Zellweger. In 1925. Yeah, I am sure that was going to fly. And since Zellweger and Clooney dated in the past, well, I am sure they will have a little more chemistry on screen.

However I must admit that 1925 is a pivotal year in football history, as it is the year Red Grange was signed by the Chicago Bears, but in actuality, I somehow think that the basis of the basic plot points of this movie are going to be centered around the 1926 Duluth Eskimos who signed a fullback from Stanford to rival Grange, and many of the elements of that real life story seem to be mirrored in the trailer, so aside from a female sports reporter and a few other relative anachronisms, perhaps there will be some good period football yet. I just hope those involved keep in mind that while the forward pass was legal in 1925, it wasn't the most popular way of winning a game at the time.

I guess my only consolation if this movie ends up being terrible and horribly inaccurate is that it will still be better than The Comebacks. Though really, there are better Ed Wood movies than The Comebacks.

Monday, December 17, 2007

A Writer's Strike video

With news of WGA member David Letterman trying to negotiate a separate deal with striking writers to get them back to work on the shows he produces, I thought that there would be limited opportunities to post this video from The Daily Show writers on the picket line.

Well, I thought it was funny.

The Roundup: An offline Shindig that is off the Charts!

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

I just got back from a trip to Belgium that had me speaking at JavaPolis, a conference full of Java and Web folk from Europe and beyond. Google engineers were all over, and we gave talks on Gears, GWT, Google data APIs, Guice, Google Java Collections, and Java language issues. It was capped off with an informal pub meetup where Google and Atlassian took the bill. Remember, they take pride in that Belgian beer.

GWT was in full force at the event. Many people came up to me to discuss their GWT implementations, and a lot of cool APIs and applications have been announced recently. For example, JSTM, the Java Shared Transacted Memory for GWT is a promising new library that gives you a transactional cache that can keep clients in sync. Map this onto Google Gears, and you can get offline caching. The author of the library is taking a lot at that feature right now. We also saw GWT Voices, which gives GWT developers with a cross browser sound API. Finally, Chronoscope showed us that you could take a GWT application, and with a small amount of work get it running on Android. A huge benefit of using the Java programming language across the board.

Speaking of Android, we got to have a nice long chat with Dianne Hackborn and Jason Parks of the Android team about many facets of the platform.

We also got to speak to developers from Zoho, on the release of Zoho Writer that uses Google Gears for full read/write access.

OpenSocial has been chugging away too, and it was exciting to see Apache Shindig, the open source set of components around OpenSocial, get released. This release includes a core gadget container foundation and an open source version of the gmodules.com renderer.

A fun new API was released recently too, which got a lot of buzz in the community. Out of the Zurich office, we saw the Google Charts API, which allows you to create dynamic charts in very short order. You can even integrate the new API with KML for quick data visualization.

The open source side of Google Code has had a busy time too. We released the Google Mac Developer Playground, which is a home for useful open source code produced by the Google Mac team, and any engineers at Google. With this release, Dave MacLachlan announced Statz which has already seen a major upgrade, allowing you to talk to a large swath of services.

On the back of the Google Summer of Code project, the team wanted to keep spreading open source goodness, and announced the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, and have already updated us of its performance. It is outstanding to see so many people coming together to help the myriad of open source communities out there.

To finish up, how about taking a peak at the new Knol effort, or looking at the new developer community calendar, or firing off a video download in the background to watch:

Google Gadgets: Experiences of a Top Developer
Making the most of maps
Zoho Writer: Read Write
Upcoming Changes to the JavaScript Language
Poker Teaches (for something a little different)

As always, check out the latest tech talks, subscribe to the Google Developer Podcast and visit the Google Code YouTube channel.

Our new Developer Community Calendar: View it, Map it, Add to it!

By Pamela Fox, Google Developer Programs

I was scheduling a trip to New York City last month to visit some friends and thought, "Well, it'd be nice to take in a conference or two." I proceeded to search online for hours -- including queries like "new york city ajax," "conferences new york," "user group new york" -- and came up basically empty handed. Frustrated, I cornered my co-worker Austin Chau, and we did what us geeks tend to do when we want something: we hacked it up ourselves!

Google's 'Developer Events Calendar' has always listed Google-sponsored and/or Google-attended events, but today we're launching a second calendar for the developer community at large. You can view both calendars side-by-side in either calendar view or map view, and with a Google Calendar account, you can add your own meetup to the list. (If you're keen on the project's technical specs, we'll be writing about the code itself shortly, so check back soon for an article and source links.)

We hope you find the calendars useful, and we look forward to your feedback. Try it out now: add your upcoming conference, user group, or party. (Yes, we developers know how to party. If you don't know how, I'll graciously volunteer to show you).

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Life's Big To Do List

No one really thinks it will last. But try telling that to two kids who have decided they will be spending their life together and the parents who also approve of the coupling. They are just too young and inexperienced to really have such high expectations. Maybe they should see whether the relationship survives some key events; for instance, birthdays.

Apparently, birthdays can make or break any relationship not anointed by destiny. And so it is with that in mind that my son and his fiance celebrated their 7th birthday this weekend. And I can happily say that their future plans appear to have survived that event without a hitch.

Now, I know what you are thinking, back up a minute, their 7th birthday? Yes, THEIR 7th birthday. Turns out that these two were both born on exactly the same day. How totally cool is that? What is more they both have a younger sister with exactly the same name (well, it sounds the same but turns out it is spelt differently). Then add to that they are in the same class, and so when, about a year ago, she suggested that they get married when they are older, my son decided that is a good criteria. After all, what other criteria would you use?

Not surprisingly, for this years' birthdays, the first of their long engagement, they decided to have a joint birthday party -- something that I am definitely in favour of. I also saw it as an opportunity to see how it would be to deal with the potential in-laws prior to the more stressful wedding arrangements.

For reasons that I can't quite understand, they decided on a bowling party. The reason I can't understand it is that they are both bad at it but for some reason decided it was a good compromise. When it comes down to it, however, bowling parties are themselves not on the low end of stress free kids parties. They are chaotic with the added element of children hurling lethal objects around. Indeed, we had our first blood injury (my future daughter in-law's brother) just five minutes into the party. That said, the kids had fun which is apparently all that counts.

Turns out also that dealing with the in-laws was very easy. The tasks were divided, got done and the finances split. I did have a conversation with them that perhaps we should not have the wedding in a bowling alley but that the price point was excellent. There were agreements all around.

You may ask: when is the wedding likely to take place? Here is where some conflict arises -- not between families but within my own. My view is that if these crazy kids still want to get married at age 16 then I will happily sign the release. My son's mother thinks otherwise and is of the view that while she has some legal say, he will never let go. This is a source of tension between us. She argues that 16 is still too young. I point out that usually those wanting to get married at that age are being impulsive but let's face it, 10 years of engagement is hardly that! I can see many more years of this argument.

My son is quite serious about all this. On a recent holiday, he spent considerable energy shopping for jewelry. I was worried about him spending too much money. Marriage I can deal with but wasting money on precious metals is another thing. Anyhow, he did eventually settle on a friendship bracelet, that I believe both of them have lost. But it is the thought that counts.

When I look back over this, I think I am happy about this for precisely the same reason as my son is. He views selecting a future partner as something he had to do and has now done; thereby crossing a potentially annoying task off his to do list.

I feel the same way. Getting this out of the way early avoids years of frustration and uncertainty. There is so much less to worry about if this works out. I am willing to buy into that. I can see the attraction of arranged marriages for parents. They cut through annoying details. It can work well for the children too. It did so for me, but that is a story for another day.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

The right tax

In economics, taxing bad behaviour (so called sin taxes) can be set equal to the costs of that activity on others. The end result is sometimes the bad behaviour occurs, the price is paid but everyone is at least as well off as before.

In parenting that is rarely the logic of punishment. It is often set to deter the said activity. Here is a story of a situation where that didn't work out; although the child was stunningly economically rational.

Renny: Momma I haffa sit in time out.

DaMomma: Huh? Why, Love?

Renny: I ate a candle.

(DaMomma, looking over to table where a candle has distinctive mouse-like gnaw marks on it.)

DaMomma (sigh): Okay, time to sit in time out then.

Renny: (Shrugging, trotting over to kitchen Naughty Corner.) O’tay.

Later, while making brownies:

Renny: Momma, I take the butter to show Daddy.

DaMomma: Okay, but don’t take it out of the wrapper, okay? I mean it.

Renny: O’tay!

(Later)

Renny: Momma … can Sissy sit in time out with me?

DaMomma: Baby, you already did your … why do you need a time out?

Renny: I opened da butter.

(There, on the living room floor, nowhere near Daddy, an opened, mushed stick o’butter.)

Renny (hopeful): Sissy do time out wid me? Momma? (Getting carried up the stairs to her room.) MOMMA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! (Down on the bedroom floor, knowing the door is about to shut, hands on hips looking at Momma.) I. DON’T. LIKE YOU MOMMA.

DaMomma (Long, thoughtful pause. Then, leaning over) I LIKE YOUUUUUUU!!!!!

Later…

Renny: And den I opened da butter and she took me to mah room and made me cry!

Daddy: That IS sad, Renny.

DaMomma: Ren, are you sorry you ate the candle?

Renny (very serious blue eyes): Yes, Momma.

DaMomma: Are you ever going to do it again?

Renny: Oh, yes, Momma! And den I sit in time out!

Friday, December 14, 2007

Week 31: Pageant of the Transmundane

This week's ceremony is going to be the very model of brevity because my computer is acting a little funky, and I am not digging this new Greasemonkey/Technorati plugin. I may edit this tomorrow to add a little more color.

So without further ado, this week's winner is Tuffy of Fandumb who put up a picture of the most awesome food related toy. I really want to pick up a pair.

And since one of the toys is cheese, well, I thought an image of Homer in the midst of eating 64 slices of American cheese while Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers hang out on the Simpsons ceiling in all black outfits was the most appropriate thing for this week.

Congratulations Tuffy on your win.

Bee Property Rights

Jerry Seinfeld's long awaited Bee Movie doesn't disappoint. It is a kids' movie so the true Seinfeld magic was never going to be repeated but it is written with the comedian's flair and is peppered with truly amusing lines and Seinfeldesque moments and observations. You know, "what's the deal with all this honey?" This is one movie you want to be taking the kids too rather than foisting the task off on other adults.

But what interested me was the subtle message underlying the whole movie. If we believed that Jerry Seinfeld was the sort of person capable of sending a message to the whole Hollywood system (much as we believed was the case with, say, Shrek or Ratatoullie) it was this: the whole obsession with intellectual property rights and their enforcement (rightful or not) has repercussions that can destroy the economic system and social fabric. Of course, we don't really believe Seinfeld is capable of that but that doesn't mean the message didn't get there anyway.

The main issue in the movie comes when our resident 'bucking the system' bee, Barry, finds that humans are enslaving bees, consuming honey and no value is going back to the bees. Barry takes it on himself to use the humanic legal system to enforce what he sees as bees legitimate property rights and secure the honey back for bees. He succeeds and with more honey than they will ever need, bees stop working, pollinating and so the whole environmental system breaks down.

Now the Coasian solution would have been to pay the bees to work but there doesn't see to have been a gain from trade; that is, they didn't seem to want to despite having done so for 27 million years. Indeed, rescue comes later in a wholly uneconomic way; but I won't give away that one.

The message for the kiddies is you might have property rights but that enforcing them may cause others harm, so think about that one. Now think about that people who might be downloading Bee Movie rather than dragging everyone to the cinema.

A Headline That Answers itself

David Blaine Fears New Stunt Will Leave Him Brain Damaged

A self evident statement if I ever saw one. I mean, it isn't like he is a real magician anyway.

Basically, the new stunt is going to be David Blaine trying to stay awake for 12 straight days. Wow... what a piece of magic.

If I may paraphrase Alexander Pope:

While David Blaine painful vigil keeps
Sleepless himself, to give his viewers sleep.

I think Blogger broke my Technorati/Greasemonkey functionality today. Man....

EDIT: I did a reinstall of that userscript, and now it should be working. Whew!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

My Sermon About the College Football Bowl System

Ever March, I don't catch the madness of the playoffs of College Basketball, I don't get World Series fever in September and October, and quite frankly, the less said about the NBA Finals, the better.

But I am a vocal believer in the College Football Bowl system. One might even say I qualify as an evangelical devotee of this form of postseason. Logically, I know that those pushing for a 16-32 team playoff system to cap the college football season have some valid points, but I just can't let go of the traditions and pageantry that the bowl system provides me and for the rest of the college faithful.

I know there are problems with the bowl system and with the selection process, that there are certain inconsistencies which call my belief in a higher authority, mainly the BCS selection committee into question, but then I look at some of the wonderful matchups bowl games provide and my doubts wash away and I have faith that in the end, this is indeed the best system, and those that don't see it that way, well, they are misguided. They don't understand the traditions, they don't love college football in the same way that us bowlers do. All this talk about having a playoff system is blasphemy to all those teams that fought and bled for us for almost a century of football at holy sites all around the country, each with its storied legends, its parables of snatching victory from the darkened heart of defeat and tales of grit and determination, of playing through the pain. And those abowlitionists and abowliests want to destroy these traditions, and wage a war on Christmas and New Year's Bowls. For shame, for shame.

I believe in the principle that the regular season IS the playoffs in college football, and that it is a reward for those teams that have lead a decent life in the regular season. It is the postseason after all, and those who are faithful to a team are rewarded as well, and those that don't get that, well, I guess they can't be convinced otherwise, and that is a shame.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Now this looks like Campy Fun

I have to see this movie when it comes out. I just have to.

Maybe, just maybe, The Machine Girl will be the movie I was hoping Planet Terror was. Well, with the zombies replaced by ninjas, yakuzas and a woman with a drill bra.

You heard me... a fuckin' DRILL BRA!!!! That is campy goodness the whole family can enjoy. And the fact that the lead is a Japanese porn actress, well, I think that makes this one a winner.

Hooray for supergore and sexiness!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Keeping OpenSSL up-to-date

By Steve Marquess, Open Source Software Institute

OpenSSL is perhaps the most widely used of all cryptographic libraries, both in the open source world and by commercial enterprises. The OpenSSL team is often approached by such enterprises seeking assistance with specific problems or features of particular interest to that enterprise. Less often they are approached by a sponsor with a technical need and the vision to address that need in a way that benefits the open source community as a whole.

OSSI has had a long association with OpenSSL, beginning with work over a five year period on the groundbreaking FIPS 140-2 validation of an OpenSSL derived crypto library (implemented largely by Googler Ben Laurie) and continuing with additional validations currently underway with extensive improvements by Dr. Stephen Henson and others. We were pleased to help facilitate Google's sponsorship of RFC4507 support to OpenSSL.

RFC 4507, also known as “stateless session resumption,” is a relatively new draft standard for a mechanism that enables a secure web (TLS) server to resume sessions without explicitly preserving per-client session state. The TLS server encapsulates the session state into a ticket that is preserved in encrypted form and subsequently provided to a client. That client can then resume the previous session using the information in that ticket, avoiding the need for the full TLS negotiation.

This mechanism may be used with any TLS ciphersuite. It makes use of TLS extensions defined in RFC4366 and defines a new TLS message type.

Stateless session resumption is of particular value in the following situations:

For servers that handle a large volume of transactions from many users

For servers that must cache sessions for a long time

For load balancing requests across servers

For embedded servers with little memory

As an added bonus, RFC4366 support includes the Server Name Indication extension, which allows browsers to specify a server name when connecting to an SSL host. This means that SSL hosts can finally use name-based virtual hosting instead of burning an IP address per host.

The implementation in OpenSSL and the interoperability testing were performed by Steve Henson. This support is available in both the current 0.9.8 product branch and in the development trunk (0.9.9).

Guess the Celebrities, Round 1

With all the fun we had last week with that TV Show Meme(still 7 characters to guess), I thought another game would be fun for everyone involved. And this weekend, I just happened to discover a place where I could combine celebrity photos, and one thing led to another and thus, we have something new to play in Culture Kills land.

The basic premise is that I've chosen two celebrities and the system put them together and you have to figure out who is in the mix. Some of them are really easy, and one of them... I was really mean.

And again, correct guesses will receive some link love. Shall we begin?

1. An easy one to start with. (Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston - Samuraifrog)

2. A little tougher. (Tom Cruise and John Travolta - Jen)

3. The Devil's in the details, isn't it? (Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway - Samuraifrog)

4. It's like music to your ears? (Beyonce and Alicia Keys - Samuraifrog)

5. Oscar Caliber (Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet - Samuraifrog)

6. A lot of action in a short time (Kiefer Sutherland and Clive "The Driver" Owen - Samuraifrog)

7. Not too tough. (Alec Baldwin and Hugh Laurie - Samuraifrog)

8. The once and almost action star. (Tobey Macguire and Jake Gyllenhall - Samuraifrog )

9. Now this is a toughie.(Many got Mandy Moore, but none could get the second part, Gwen Stefani)

10. And now I am just being a prick really. (Amy Adams and Isla Fisher - J.D.)

Friday, December 7, 2007

Week 30: Pageant of the Transmundane

Well, Transmundanity moves forward once again.

I've always been someone who marvels at strange products and packaging, and I just happened upon a post over at TheMishMash.com which featured 12 somewhat strange products.

I have to admit that some of the products don't really shock or even make me laugh (like a medication called 666), but the inclusion of something called "Vinnie's Tampon Case" was enough to push this entry over the top, though I have a feeling it would be up a particular readers alley.

This week's Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award image is a slight departure, as it doesn't feature Homer's face, but instead a product that he had input in creating. And the image does have Homer's hand in it, and that is good enough for me.

Congratulations Dookie McBride.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Physics for children

Stephen Hawking and his daughter have written a children's book: George's Secret Key to the Universe. Let's face it, there was no chance that my children would not be subjected to it. And of the past few weeks, subject them to it, I did.

It didn't disappoint. It purported to have the latest thinking on black holes. Hang on a second, didn't I already read that 20 or so years ago with Hawking's A Brief History of Time? Well, I am pleased to tell you that the latest thinking on black holes is new. For starters, apparently, theoretically you can survive an encounter with one -- so it turns out the Disney movie of 25 years ago was actually more accurate than Hawking's pop science book of a few years later. Of course, I won't be giving much away when I tell you that theory becomes practice here.

Anyhow on to the book -- which is fiction -- and despite having the latest thinking is not hard science fiction. Basically, it is set in the present day an involves a piece of technology, a laptop computer named Cosmos, who can open up portals to anywhere in the universe. This seemed a stretch on the credibility front but what can you do.

The book is about George who is a bright young kid with an interest in science and technology stuck in a family of Luddites/Hippies with practices that would have been extreme for that group in the 60s. One suspects young Stephen had some issues in college back then. There is no technology in George's house, no preservatives in his food (something my kids can identify with) and weekends spent going to environmental protest rallies.

George's only joy is his pet pig that doesn't get much of a role other than allowing George to encounter his next door neighbours, a polar opposite, academic, science family who spend their weekend traveling to comets and the like.

Anyhow this sets the stage for several adventures that allows us to cover the material of physics in a moderately interesting way -- apparently, it is not enough to just have the story, there are inserts, pop outs and pictures explaining the real science. We skipped those on the first read. But the subtext is some debate against Luddites and scientist that George eventually helps reconcile. The debate didn't seem particularly relevant in today's world but the idea of an intellectual debate underpinning a children's book was pretty interesting nonetheless.

This is no major work of literary magic but it has offsetting benefits that make it a great read for children 6 years and above.

Open Source in Zurich with vigor and Vim

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Looking for a cool place to hack with like-minded colleagues? Going to be in or around Zurich on December 13th? If so, please join us for our inaugural Open Source Jam held at Google Switzerland. We'll provide the hacking lounge, Wi-Fi, pizza, beer and the creator of the Vim text editor, Bram Moolenaar. You supply your laptop, good ideas and community spirit.

You can find full details and information on how to register in our Open Source Jam Zurich Google Group. If you haven't already done so, please join the group and let us know your thoughts. And if you happen to attend the event, post a comment and let us know how it went.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

My Sick Movie Idea

I was watching a special on midnight movies of the 1970's (which I may talk about at greater length at some point in the future), and I had an idea for a little piece of film making that might actually be profitable for the studio that goes approached the idea. It is sort of sick, I admit it, but I think audiences would respond to it,

Forget narrative, forget character development and forget extravagant settings. (Without that last one, I would have been describing every Michael Bay movie I know).

Here is what a studio should do.

30 famous actors/actresses that people have a love/hate relationship with.
30 brutal death scenes between 2-5 minutes long.
Each scene is references another famous cinematic death scene.
Each cast member receives a check for between 250K-1 million dollars for their work.
The studio doesn't reveal who is in the scenes, just the premise.
The Audience is sort of asked to keep the the pairings a secret so people who go to see the movie are surprised.

I mean, people cheered when Paris Hilton got killed in House of Wax. And I would certainly go see a movie where Rosie O'Donnell's head exploded Scanners-style or Nathan Lane got the Hans Gruber treatment. Or Tom Cruise meeting his end like the end of Day of the Dead. I mean, the skies the limit with something like this.

It is just sick enough to work. Which to me begs the question, what combination would you love to see in this scenario?

In just seven days

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

We announced the Google Highly Open Participation Contest a little over a week ago, and the response has been phenomenal. We already have over 350 student contributors, and the participating organizations have let us know that they're overwhelmed by all the great contributions they've received from their contestants. We're delighted to bring you this video status update, with an extra treat: Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, stopped in to tell us a little bit more about the Python Software Foundation's participation in the contest.

We always love to hear from you, so feel free to contribute some task ideas and join the contest discussion list.

Embed charts in webpages with one of our simplest APIs yet

By Steve Crossan, Chart API Team

Today we're launching the Google Chart API, a really simple tool for creating charts and graphs that are perfect for websites.

Let's get straight in with an example. This URL:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World

Creates this image:

That's it - no state, no calls, just send your data in an http request and get a png image graph back. Embed the request in an img tag and you're done. We currently support line charts, bar charts, pie charts, scatter plots, and sparklines.

We actually built this originally to use internally - we use it on Google Video and Google Finance for example. It seemed like it would be a good thing to open up to other users too. You can find out all about it at on the Google Chart API homepage and there's a Google Chart API group for questions and support.

The Google Chart API started out as a 20% time project here in Zurich, and we're really happy to be launching it to the world today. Let the charting begin!

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

My Favorite TV Characters Meme (tag-free)

Becca posted this tag free meme, and it was right up my alley.

Here were the rules:

a. Post a list of 10-20 TV shows you love (current or cancelled)
b. Have your friends guess your favorite character from each show
c. When guessed bold the line and write a little bit about why you like that character
d. Post in your own blog

And here are my 16 shows:

1. The Simpsons (minor character) Unanswered: HA HA! Nelson Muntz!
2. Alias Marshall Flinkman (Jeremy of Popped Culture) Small. Geekish. Friendly and overly chatty Q to Sydney Bristow's Super Spy. I'd certainly want his expertise on my side.
3. Futurama Dr. Zoidberg (Jen of Casual Slack) A humanoid shellfish with a mildly ironic personality and no shame... I say woop, woop, woop, woop.
4. 24 Unanswered David Palmer: I am really disappointed by this as a few days before this post, I had put up an entry discussing a Barack Obama T-Shirt I really liked.
5. Drawn Together Unanswered: Foxxy Brown.
6. WKRP in Cincinnati Les Nessman (Jen of Casual Slack):Les Nessman... little, naive, earnest and incompetent. It is a deadly combination in drama but gut-busting in a comedy.
7. Ugly Betty Betty Suarez (Paul of Gor[b]) Yes, as Paul noted, sweet nerdish Betty Suarez enchanted my heart.
8. Soap Benson Dubois (Becca of No Smoking in the Skullcave) Yes, he had his own series and everything, but Robert Guillaume made the role of the persnickety butler of the Tate household.
9. King of the Hill Bobby Hill (Mr. Fab of Pointless Drivel) I was the fat friendly kid... all I am saying.
10. The Larry Sanders Show Artie (Mr Fab of Pointless Drivel) Artie is such a wonderful prick... I believe a lot of older television executive producers are like him.
11. Prison Break Unanswered: Fernando Sucre
12. Dead Like Me Unanswered: Rube
13. 30 Rock: Liz Lemon (Jen of Casual Slack): Yes, it had to be Tina Fey and her semi-autobiographical take on a geekish head writer of a sketch comedy series. I am however surprised no one was giving Kenneth love in their guesses.
14. Spaced Tim Bisley (Becca of No Smoking in the Skullcave): Simon Pegg as a comic book artist, video game playing, pop cultural obsessed geek. That sound like a lot of people I know, doesn't it?
15. Daria: Jane Lane (AG of Techspace) When your title character is sarcastic, it is rare when their equal isn't also their nemesis. Daria and Jane perfectly complement each other as outsiders.
16. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law Unanswered: The Bear

Can you guess my favorites? Every successful guess gets you some link love (If I can give it of course)

Google Developer Podcast Episode Twelve: Android with Dianne Hackborn and Jason Parks

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

As soon as Android and the Open Handset Alliance was out in the wild, we were chomping at the bit to talk with some of the people behind the platform to discuss the developer-related information.

Using iTunes?

We were lucky enough to get some time from Dianne Hackborn and Jason Parks, who have been doing this work for a long time. They used to be at Be, and PalmSource, and you will hear how that experience has come through to Android. In fact, you will see how the Android team has engineers from many other platforms (Linux, Danger, and Windows Mobile).

Dick Wall himself is an advocate on Android, and you can hear how excited he is to talk about this!

What will you learn on this podcast?

Some history behind the project
The high level architecture of Android. For example, how Linux processes handle the VM and manage security (the VM doesn't handle it)
Details on the Dalvik VM and how it is optimized for small devices
The architecture: From Intents to Views to Permissions and more
How XML is slow, but the tools convert the XML to a nicer format for you
The tooling and steps for building an application on Android
How so many objects have a URL, and how the environment is like a mini-SOA (Services across processes instead of across the network)
Thoughts on how you program for small devices, and things to watch out for if you move from the desktop
The control, or lack of control that you have over the application lifecycle
"Everything you do drains the battery"
The thread story: they exist, you don't have to deal with them if you don't want too, and the UI
Using XMPP for messaging

You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

Want to learn more about Android? Read the book or watch the movie depending on how you are feeling!