Ron Paul

I’ve been a fan of Ron Paul for a long time. I first found out about him when I was searching for a tfile called Not Yours To Give by David Crocket, and I found it on his website. Fast forward a year or so and he’s running for president. So far he proved that he is the only honest candidate out there, and he advocates responsible policies. I don’t agree with him 100%, but he’s a small government, low taxes, freedom loving kind of guy. If you’re interested in finding more about Dr. Paul you can see him at: Ron Paul YouTube and his myspace:

Ron Paul MySpace

Mashup Camp 3 & OLPC

So, yesterday I was at mashup camp 3 — I learned a lot of cool things and met a lot of interesting people. There was some good discussion on some semantic web issues. After the conference, i wandered down to the mit museum and I got to see a talk about the one laptop per child (olpc) — it turned on, the keyboard worked. I believe it it looks really cool.

Inland Empire

So I was able to get down to the Brattle to see Inland Empire (I linked to the trailer in my last post: Onion Cellar) . It was excellent, though it’s definitely going to require some repeat viewings. While watching it, I was trying my best to figure out the mystery — then I came to the realization that until I’ve seen every last second there is no way I’ll know whats going on. For example, the end of Mulholland Drive is essential to understanding the story.

It had quite a few humorous parts, and I really like the dancing. This film also seemed to have more suspense/thriller aspects to it. The creepy hallway shots. There was a conspicuous lack of blue lighting — it seems a white strobe took its place. Another thing I like Mr. Lynch’s films is that he draws from the same pool of actors/actresses again and again, much like Christopher Guest.

So, I liked the movie a lot– Another viewing is required before I can even begin to understand the story; most like more than one.

Update: 2 Good stories about the empire:

The Trippy Dream Factory of David Lynch

From Salon

Onion Cellar

I was planning on checking out the new David Lynch film: Inland Empire, but then I went and saw the dress rehearsal of the new Dresden Dolls play/concert/art-thingamajig called the Onion Cellar. It’s showing at the Zero Arrow Theater, and as usual the dolls put on an magnificent show. I don’t want to say too much, and ruin the show… I didn’t get a chance to Lynch’s blue lighting (if his new movie has it), but the dolls brought the thunder and some bizarre characters. Their use of the theater was exceptional, with various parts happening on all four sides of the theater.

The seats we had were touching the stage, a little to right of the forward extension:

One of my favorite parts is when they have an old man stand in the center of stage holding a glass of whiskey, motionless, while the dolls rock out behind him. Anyway, as they say what happens in the onion cellar stays in the cellar.

Update: The Phoenix has an interesting article about the play: http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid28733.aspx. After reading that I realize how much better the play could’ve been (using my imagination of course). I still think it’s good, but if they touched some more difficult topics I would have found it much more appealing. I remember saying afterwards I thought that it could have used more diversity in the issues displayed…. and after this article the issues would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

Update: Another good article: http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/12/03/creative_risks_are_at_heart_of_onion_cellar/

Amazing Car Scene

In Hitchcock’s Family Plot there exists the most amazing “car with no brakes scene” that I’ve ever seen. I must qualify that, by saying the “car being pushed by another car” scene from Lost Highway doesn’t count a “car with no brakes scene.”

Drawing Restraint 9

So i was lucky to see a pre-release screaning of Drawing Restraint 9 at the Boston MFA. I enjoyed it and found it very interesting. If your a fan of the Cremaster Cycle you’ll probably like DR9.

Overload

As usual I haven’t posted anything here for awhile. This has been by far the most difficult semester of school that I’ve had – I’m taking 5 four-credit classes, working 16 hours a week, and running the weekly speaker series for our ACM Chapter (I’m president of the organization). So, I’m running around just trying to not let anything slip through the cracks. I hope to never have as many time sensitive commitments as I do now.

Oh, and also I had to look for a job for when I graduate. I interviewed at two places the MITRE Corporation, where I did my last two co-ops, and Google. At Google I made it through the phone screenings, but I had to withdraw my application before my onsite because the interview process was taking too long (I sympathize with the people in HR at Google, they must be totally swamped); I decided to accept the MITRE offer. I’m going to be starting work on June 19th, which will give me sometime to catch up on a lot of stuff that I’ve been putting off.

2002 Strikes Back

A few years ago, 2002 to be exact, I was rocking a 2.1 megapixel Sony CyberShot DSC-P50 digital camera. I wandered around Boston taking a lot of pictures, and decided that I should join IStockPhoto.com to share my pictures. I only uploaded one; at the time I thought it was the only one worth posting.

Fast forward to 2006.

I log into my bank account as usual, and up comes a new option to help prevent fraud, called: “Site Key.” A piece of its protection scheme is that the user selects a picture for the site to display so that he knows it isn’t a fraudulent site. Lo and behold, it’s the picture I took back in 2002, and no — I didn’t use it as my site key

Here is a link to the photo: A picture of a seagull

Here is a picture of it on the bank site: