Ze Frank’s “Scribbler” turns your crappy sketches into something beautiful.
An Inconvenient Review
Me: Wanna see a movie tonight?
Her: Sure! Have one in mind?
Me: Yeah.
Her: What’s it about?
Me: It’s a slide-show by Al Gore about global warming.
Her: …
I’ll spare you an actual movie review of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and (appropriately, I think) fire a few bullet points at you instead.
It was an hour-long commercial for Apple.
There were plenty of scenes of “Al working hard on his presentation” with clear shots of the Keynote UI (look how he drags and drops!). The Apple logo on the back of his PowerBook was almost the visual anchor in many scenes. Just think how much energy Al’s gonna save when he upgrades to a Dual Core!
I wonder how many viewers of the film will be aware of Gore’s status on the Apple Computer, Inc. Board of Directors.
Next to video and film, Powerpoint is one of the great medium of our time.
I mean “great” as in “[r]emarkable or outstanding in magnitude”, not as in “[s]uperior in quality or character”.
The presentation Gore gives avoids the typical bullet-point-slide format for the most part. There aren’t even too many distracting slide transitions. Still, it is essentially a PowerPoint presentation (yeah, yeah, I know – he uses Keynote, not PowerPoint – see above). I can’t imagine the movie being a success if it was purely based on an hour-and-a-half speech by Gore. I can’t see people lining up for an Al Gore, David Suzuki, and Stephen Lewis triple-bill.
The visual aspects of the show make the speech palatable. The photography was perhaps the most compelling. Regardless of their real meaning and weight, some of the before/(twenty-years)after photos were extraordinary. The visualizations of data was equally compelling, but also just as questionable. The charts went way beyond the Tufte-style elimination of all but the essential. The scale was removed from most graphs leaving little more than a scary red line that screams, “look at that line, it’s going UP!”
Oh yeah, and here’s my review: interesting, entertaining, too many Apple cameos, not much new here, but a good summary of everything you’ve already heard about climate change.
Sloan’s new album is almost ready – it’s a single 30 track CD, or a double vinyl LP
Inventions, Brilliant or Otherwise
In addition to being an internet baron, I am also a brilliant inventor. I have deemed two of my recent inventions worthy of sharing with you, humble reader.
Invention the First
Low-fat toothpaste. The first reaction I usually get, after the brilliance of the idea washes over my confidant, is a simple question. Does toothpaste even have fat in it? I don’t know, who cares?
If you give me a Gillette-8-blade-shaving-experience sized advertising budget and something to deaden the pangs of my conscience, I could sell this.
Here’s how the TV-spot would go:
[Blond model with doctor-esque white lab coat (low-cut) and scientastic thick-rimmed glasses purses lips and asks:]
“Did you know that over 15 years, you can swallow as much as 200 calories from your toothpaste?”
[Pierce Brosnan look-a-like in similar doctor gear enters, notices how slim blond-doctor-girl is. They embrace.]
Run this tv-spot during the SuperBowl and I could sell enough low-fat toothpaste to wipe the artificially whitened smile off of the faces of any Proctor & Gamble executive.
Invention the Second
It is a line of clothing for pre-teen girls (tweens) from the design house, Hugo Boss. It is called:
Hugo Girl
Say it out loud and put the emphasis on the “go”.
Political correctness meets search and replace
Networking by the Pool
Sitting by the pool-side at a friends’ place while in Toronto last week, there were a load of wireless networks available:
Of course, none of them worked.
Side-note: wireless used to suck on Linux. Not anymore.
Simply Sean
In the summer at CBC Radio One, it seems everyone leaves and they give Sean Cullen, goofy Canadian comic extraordinaire, run the studio on Saturday mornings with his show Simple Seán (note the accent on the ‘a’).
He rambles like an idiot for a few minutes. First you’ll think, How can they let this fool on the air? Next, you’ll be laughing out loud. This will repeat throughout the show.
Then, for some reason quite surprising, Sean plays fantastic music. Today he played Joel Plaskett, The Deers, the Mountain Goats, the New Pornographers, Sloan, Broken Social Scene, the Stills and a few other goodies.
A good listen – Saturday mornings on CBC Radio 1 through out the summer.
Acts of Volition Radio: Session 25
The day after Canada Day, I put together a new session of Acts of Volition Radio.
Songs for Canada Day, 2006. Recorded Sunday, July 2, 2006 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 44min.
Session Twenty Five Playlist:
- Joel Plaskett – Absentminded Melody
- Joel Plaskett – Happen Now
- Pilate – Knife-Grey Sea
- Fountains of Wayne – All Kinds of Time
- Sarah Harmer with the Weakerthans – Gone for Good (The Shins)
- Joel Plaskett – Natural Disaster
- Pearl Jam – Marker in The Sand
- Pilate – Into The West
For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions or subscribe to the Acts of Volition Radio RSS feed.
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Cover of the new Keane album is very cool – has kind of a great wave thing going on.
This is the first non-sarcastic reference to Web 3.0 I’ve seen in the wild