Who’s in charge here?

From the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines:

Remember that computers exist to serve humans.

I shall add the addendum, “for now…”.

Speaking of which, I would definitely buy the Blu-Ray 10th Anniversary Edition box set of The Matrix for 23 bucks…if I had a Blu-Ray player.

I can’t be sure

I can’t be sure what this video is about, but it seems to be some sort of public service announcement/advertisement against/for violence in Burma.

I watched Apocalypse Now Redux yesterday

I watched Apocalypse Now Redux yesterday.

Very weird.

He doesn’t know how to use the three seashells?

For Brian:

"'Oooh, he doesn't know how to use the three seashells!'"

More Alice

Following from Brian’s comment on my recent post about Alice in Wonderland, I found this interview of producer Scott Faye conducted by American McGee, the man behind American Mcgee’s Alice (a very macabre, very cool game). Would it be better to have this and the Tim Burton production join forces, or would it be better to have a scary Alice competition? I wish they could join forces. Sadly, I doubt American McGee has a chance against the money-making appeal of Tim Burton. One can dream.

Tim Burton is doing Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton is doing Alice in Wonderland. This could be perfect if it’s more like The Nightmare Before Christmas and less like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Oh, and Alan Rickman is the caterpillar.

On The Matrix

While reading about the connection between my favorite discipline, Buddhism, and my favorite film, The Matrix, a topic on which I must expound later, I came across this old (1999) interview with the Wachowski brothers, responding to questions from users online about the movie. The following are what I find to be the most interesting questions (in italics) and subsequent responses by the Wachowski brothers.

Are all the religious symbolism and doctrine throughout this movie intentional, or not?
Most of it is intentional. One of the things we tried to do with the Neb for when we were shooting “in the real world” was use long lenses to separate the humans from the backgrounds, as opposed to when we shot the Matrix we used short lenses to place the humans in specific deep spaces. We also tinted all of the lights blue in the “real world” and green in the Matrix.

[Concerning the a]gent training where woman in red dress appears
People don’t realize how important this scene is. Because we are all staring at the woman in the red dress! There’s actually twins and triplets that we hired in that scene. And all of the clothes are based on black and white costumes, like nuns, chefs, brides, sailors. We had the idea that Mouse just doubled people instead of making originals. But we couldn’t afford to do it digitally, so we ended up hiring as many doubles, or as many twins, as we could find in Sydney. It was kind of like a bad dream on the set.

Could you say a little about the sound design which was terrific such as the slo-mo bullet ripple effects, Foley effects.
Dane Davis is a genius. He built all of these sound effects from all kinds of original sounds. He’d put bullets on strings and whirled them around his studio, he digitized raindrops against windowpanes to create the sound of the Matrix code.

This one is awesome and explains why I loved this movie before (and after) knowing anything about Buddhism, mathematics, or quantum physics:

Did ideas from Buddhism influence you in making the film?
Yes. There’s something uniquely interesting about Buddhism and mathematics, particularly about quantum physics, and where they meet. That has fascinated us for a long time.

The television in the oracle’s apartment is playing an old horror movie, with giant white rabbits hopping around in the streets. I know you noticed it the first time you saw the movie.

Do you think The Matrix will develop a cult following in the decades to come?
We hope it’s as big as the Night of the Lepus.

What is the significance of Neo eating the Oracle’s cookie?
There was a piece cut out of the movie that explained the significance more. It’s hard to explain.

Why were they only able to jack in through hard lines, but still able to communicate over cell?
Good question! Mostly we felt that the amount of information that was being sent into the Matrix required a significant portal. Those portals, we felt, were better described with the hard lines rather than cell lines. We also felt that the rebels tried to be invisible when they hacked, that’s why all the entrances and exits were sort of through decrepit and low traffic areas of the Matrix.

The rest of the questions and answers are pretty lame. Come to think of it, these are probably also pretty lame, unless you are me and you’ve seen this film a couple dozen times.

London is a magical place

London is a magical city of hope and wonder. I’ve been here for a couple of weeks, and I’ve found some interesting differences between this culture and the one with which I am most familiar: white American suburbia. Here are a few:

A slight change in inflection makes a spoken language exponentially more difficult to understand.

The abbreviated form of the word “mathematics” is “maths”, even though it is way more difficult to say than “math”.

Every corner has a pub.

It is hard to find frozen cookie dough.

Just about everything looks old and important.

Love, Actually is perhaps the greatest film ever created in the history of films. Well, that’s actually the same wherever I go.

Many Indians live here.

For some reason, the English are very frightened of getting electrocuted. Every electrical outlet has an enable/disable toggle. Also there are no outlets in bathrooms.

That is all for now, I will post more when I encounter them.