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ARoB

Some of you have been curious…

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…about just where it is that I’m living. Well, gentleman and lady-folks, here you are: a 20 photo Flickr set just for you. Do have fun.

Other than taking photos like a big, goober-y tourist, I’ve been having a pretty great weekend. Mostly, it’s just been spending time with Kate though I did mix it up a bit last night by bringing Caryn and Trevor into the mix. We had mimosas and board games at mine. Nothing too radical but still fun. Clyde had plenty of attention, too which he adored. Now he’s sitting listlessly in his room while I hammer away at the keyboard. Don’t tell him, but I’m leaving soon. *shh*

Lucky Charms…

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The other night, while riding back from Lancaster, I looked up at the moon and realized something for the first time: what I’ve always thought about the moon is entirely wrong. Its shape and its luminance are not decorative elements in the sky, inked and gilded by some celestial illustrator. The moon’s shape is dictated by the Earth’s shadow as we obscure the light from the sun. I’ve never really thought of it that way at all, but for some reason – only then – I saw things the way they really are.

The Editors…

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Disclaimer: This is an essay. You have been warned that it’s going to be an essay. I can’t really help but write it, though, because it’s been constructing itself while my brain has watched all morning.

The world today is at the mercy of the editors. I know this because I am one, but I suspect you are all well aware, too. We are drowning in a flood of images, narratives, and soundbites. Nearly all of the media that we consume has been transformed by the hand and mind of an editor, though we may not always (or ever) recognize that they’ve manipulated our reality. This molding of content and message is not necessarily negative, of course: editing often does – and should always – help to synthesize information, to make it easier to process, understand and act upon.

What intrigues me most about editing is where it is heading with the advent of Web 2.0 (the terrible moniker given to the amalgamation of Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, etc.) Raw information is now being processed by a larger swath of people. The anointed few that once controlled “the signal,” if I can borrow from Joss Whedon for just a moment, are now being augmented by participatory amateurs. It’s a truly exciting time and it makes me wonder what’s going to happen as the next cohort comes into their own as adult consumers of media.

You see, I feel that I bridge a gap between ways of thinking. I was born in January 1984, which coincides nicely with the birth of the Macintosh and home publishing. Really, accessible rich computing as a whole was born then, too. The internet existed in my childhood but I didn’t have a connection until I was 14. Even then, the web was really in its infancy, as was much of the software and hardware that people used to populate it with content. But, I’m certainly a wired, connected person and I feel that I have a very inherent understanding of the way raw information can be formed by anyone with a desire to “speak.”

Where the bridging comes in is between work and home…though it’s certainly more broad than this. Many of my coworkers were trained in creative computing tools or found them in their adult life. They are extremely competent and enormously talented people, but my personal feeling is that the overall environment is not exactly a natural habitat. On the other end of this divide I span is my sister. She’s 14 now and has never known a world without the web. Her formative years are happening post-bubble. She’s entirely 2.0 in her thinking about media – posting her photos on MySpace after editing them in iPhoto, uploading videos of her friends dancing from iMovie to YouTube, and the like. I knew that she was a new sort of creature when she asked me to give her a copy of DangerMouse’s The Grey Album mashup at 13. I’m incredibly jealous of her and immensely proud.

And this is what’s so intriguing to me, watching on both sides of the gap: will my sister’s people even need the editors? They are all being primed to create their own entertainment, their own media and their own signal. I’ve heard a lot lately about the death of newspapers, the death of books, the death of cinemas but I think we should be pondering the death of pre-processed information. What I truly believe is that the day is coming, very soon…by the time Hannah reaches her 20s…when raw data will be distributed directly from the source to the public. News video feeds, live concert recordings, off the cuff reporting and more will flow from the author to the masses and be edited in a million different ways, each suited entirely to individual sensibilities. And then re-edited and commented upon and emailed and included in 1000 Facebook profiles and…

It’s dizzying, but I’m ready for it. I just hope Hannah and her friends are patient teachers…

Week #2 draws to a close…

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…and my baby jeebus, what a week it has been. I’ve installed more software than I ever thought possible. 25 installs of CS2 not counting on my own computer. 7 installs of Final Cut Studio (which takes roughly 3 hours, mind you.) It was truly tedious but the end result is a computer cart full of machines ready to rock in the Beck Lab. And, they all have quirky, gossipy George Washington backgrounds that I made and a great unified layout across the entire “fleet.”

Personally, life has been going very well, too. I’ve made a lot of excellent friends here in Chestertown so far and have played host on a few occasions. The apartment has been deemed an absolute hit by all visitors…and Clyde has been putting on quite a show for the newcomers. Oh, yeah…I have a girlfriend. What the hell is that all about? I dunno, but her name is Kate and she’s beyond fantastic. Beautiful, intimidatingly smart, well dressed, funny, great taste in music, etc, etc. Basically, everything that one could want if one were me. 🙂

I’m heading up to Philly for a 24 hour visit, it seems. Lindsie pretty much has to leave a full day earlier than expected for Boston now, but I’m still going because a) I want to see her and b) I have to go to IKEA and I’d rather see Lindsie in the process than just drive across the Bay Bridge alone. Plus, it’ll be fun to drive this weekend and give me some perspective that is much needed after three weeks of being in the same town. (That’s highly unusual for me.)

Well, Philadelphia-ho!

Avocados…

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I was making dinner this evening and realized that this avocado was one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in a long time. 🙂

Free ride is ov-ah…

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So, the free interwebs that I was ‘borrowing’ from my neighbours stopped working last night. I can still mostly see the creatively-named linksys network that I had been connecting to, but my MacBook Pro cannot seem to talk to it properly. *ugh* There were/are electrical storms going on here, so perhaps it was disconnected and no one has fixed it yet? I hope so, because April 5th† (otherwise known as tomorrow) is looking very far away indeed.

† My Verizon DSL is being fully enabled on the 5th. Yes, I’m pathetic.

My new office…

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This is where I work, everyone. Thril at the site of a phone! and a bookcase! My desk is really old, and people apologized for this fact…but I secretly love it. It has those cool slide out things that teachers had in elementary school. Plus, I dunno, it feels more like a desk is supposed to feel. My window is nice, though it’s no Studio 204 office view. Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the way it’s looking and can’t wait to get a few extra things to make it even more “my own.”

Well, that took friggin’ forever…

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But I finally updated all of the linked images and items in the blog archives here. All the way back to September 2005, if you must know. Let me know if anything is missing/not working as you encounter things. I had to move all of my things from the PSU server space to ARoB’s own since my files and account will be deleted in a few months.

I also moved over my professional and personal {edit: combined] porfolios and set up redirects from the old addresses. Again, if you find any glitches, comment here. Thanks!

*accomplished*

Dining Room Table

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My table has finally arrived! In one piece, even! I’m really glad to have it because I’m tired of eating on the porch (yes, woe is me.) That’s all I’ve got.

Review: Babel

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Okay, so I have seriously done nothing but watch movies recently. How do the unemployed do it? Filling all of this time is really, really hard and probably more “work” than having a job! I guess I’m going to have to get the knitting bag out again. That’s neither here nor there so on to the review…

I’m not really sure where to begin with Babel because there is so much to cover. But a film set on three continents will kinda make it difficult for even the best reviewer to pin down. There are three stories happening with this movie: one in Morocco with American tourists, Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett,) one in the U.S. and Mexico with a Mexican nanny, Amelia (Adrianna Barrazza) and the couple’s two kids, and one in Japan with Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi.) Alejandro González Iñárritu has a name with enough accents to tackle such a complex, international film and delivers relatively well.

The lives of Richard, Susan and Amelia are all very clearly intertwined from the beginning. Susan is shot while on holiday with Richard in Morocco and Amelia is in charge of the children stateside while all of this goes down. Fair enough. However, things get more complicated when we throw in Chieko, a deaf-mute Japanese school girl with a self-destructive streak. Why is she in this plot at all, you’ll ask? I mean, I’m okay with watching Rinko Kikuchi flitting about on screen and being a nympho, but it is a little confusing. It takes Iñárritu until 3/4 of the way through his work to get to an explanation, but it fits in very, very nicely (and you can figure it out with a detail revealed in Morocco at 1/2 way through, if you are paying attention.

Since I watch movies for the imagery before all else, I really enjoyed Babel‘s look. Things were very detailed and great attention was paid to the sets and consistency between shots. Additionally, the visual language made it immediately evident where we were in all scenes. Best of all, when Amelia’s nephew, Santiago (Gael García Bernal…yes, again. No, I didn’t know. He’s pretty, but I swear I didn’t pick it because he’s in it!) breaks through the U.S. border and leaves her in the desert, the existing connection between Morocco and the U.S. reaches a beautiful new level with only a change of scenery. Bravo, Iñárritu!

The part where I say negative things: okay, the twists that tie everyone together are really not all that astounding. In fact, they kinda feel fudged. I think that perhaps someone just wanted a reason to shoot on location in Tokyo. But that’s okay, because it was well worth it, since the scenes there were my favourites by far. Cate Blanchett was not on screen anywhere near enough and I really wanted to know more about her character. A lot of the dialogue between Susan and Richard could have used some explaining. And, by the end of 2 and a half hours, I was feeling as jet-lagged as if I had traveled from location to location in reality.

Definitely worth watching, especially if you don’t mind feeling a little bleak about the world when your movie viewing has ceased. Not really something you should watch if you want to be amazed by a really clever web of events (it’s no The Constant Gardener) but it definitely deserves points for being so ambitious. And for landing Cate Blanchett, because she’s a goddess.

I would rate it 3 stars. Maybe three and a half, but it was really too long (and I don’t know if Dusty made half stars or not for sure. I think he did. Help?)

3 stars