Archive for the 'Time Travel' Category

The Art of Embarrassing My Dad on His Birthday

Published
by
s000z
 on February 19, 2010
. 2 Comments

Happy Birthday Dad

Dad does not share his daughter’s enthusiasm for social media. In fact, if anything, its something he goes out of his way to avoid…
hero20100127
…this kinda stuff.

Imagine my surprise when my brother reported my Stepmother –in response to his new found obsession with the iPad– had come up with an idea gift for a gift for one of the most difficult people out there to get gifts for.

He’d been watching Steve Jobs video demonstration religiously.  Apparently, the name didn’t put him off. Nor did the fact that it wasn’t paper.

Analog History

It’s not as though Dad isn’t a computer person.  In 1984, thanks to my Mom, the Speier family was an inaugural Mac adapter. In the 90s, during my college years, Dad provided my first Powerbook and even pushed a modem on me when I had to clue as to…you know, back in the day…

As far as “pads” go (and, yes, its also difficult for me to resist the urge to insert the “maxi” prefix, punctuated by girlie giggles) for as long as I’ve known him, Dad’s been very particular about using those standard spiral bound reporter notepads he routinely purchases in bulk along with the NASA developed Fisher bullet shaped space pens he’s always used.  In other words, Palm Pilots, Crackberrys, iPhones — never held any appeal for my dad.

Yet, there was Stepmom, Mathilde, insisting that this is what Dad keeps talking about. So Mathilde and Bro and Sis-in-law (with little bean on the way) and me all chipped in and presumably, when these monolithic ten commandments becomes available in March or April or whenever it reaches D.C., Dad’s gonna be among the first.

Can you guess who that cute little baby in the photos is?

DadBackInTheDay

Can You Believe My Dad Doesn’t Trust Me With Digital Photos?

Far as Dad’s squeamishness about social media is concerned, I’d no idea why.

From time to time he is loathe to send digital pictures to me and says things along the lines of, “you’re not going to put that on Facebook, are you?” Its almost as though he harbors this fear that I might deliberately post an emberassing picture of him on my blog and it would end up all over the internet.

And why would I do a thing like that?  Especially on his birthday..give me SOME credit, okay?

Ohhhhh, whadda cute pudgie little baby…and whadda big head…ohhh, so, soooo cute…HI Dad!

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Why Googletrends Hates Screensavers and What the Declining Numbers Indicate You Might be Missing Out on

Published
by
s000z
 on November 9, 2009
. 1 Comment

I asked my friend, Cathy, to tell me why Googletrends reports a steady drop in screensaver searches.  The decline dates from 2004 to the present.  Cathy,  a friend I’ve known since Hampshire College days,  is a Screensaver Auteur.

Idle Time Software

In 2008, Cathy’s company produced “Holding Pattern” a screensaver that simulates the experience of intermittently  gazing out of an airplane window and snoozing.  Apple praised  the work for its creativity and lauded Idle Time Software for its programming integrity.  Eventually David Byrne bought a copy from Cathy’s website and invited her collaborate with him on a photography project using the original software she developed to create Holding Pattern.

Cathy1
Cathy Creating Idletime’s Sunset 23
Photo by, Susanna Speier

Deluge of the Anti-gadget

The reason people hate screensavers, Cathy explained, is because skanky software scumbags load them with spyware, adware and viruses.  Screensavers –especially those free screensaver downloads people get online — are often the epitome of skank.

The Great Google Has Spoken

I went to GoogleAdWords to figure out what screensaver keywords have surged over the internet  last month.

1,220,000 users  trawled the internet using the word “screensaver” and the same number searched for the plural form.   “Free screensavers,” came in third, and “Halloween screensavers” was right after at 135,000.

There was no data available for look-ups of “search engine scam,” and fewer than 1,000 were savvy enough to specifically search  for “screensaver spyware.”  Legit as the fear of bogus downloads may be, the search patterns indicate that the fear is based more on conjecture than research and analyses.

Figuring Out Whether or Not Screensaver = Oxymoron

Cathy takes pride in Idle Time’s technical integrity.  She does not sell ad space or generate income through site referral, and she even posts a personal disclaimer officiating the fact she does that she does not add spyware.

And in case you’ve been wondering, the reason Cathy  could spend a year developing a technically, creatively and conceptually sophisticated screensaver  is revenue generated from the deluxe versions of her free software enables her to do so.  Cubicle Flood was therefore made possible by Holding Pattern’s success.

Despite Cathy’s disclaimers, getting people to trust a free screensaver  download  is increasingly challenging.  Could the Googletrends be winning?

Cubicle Flood - The Waters are Rising

The generic grey cubicle office where Cathy used to work inspired the brand new screensaver, “Cubicle Flood.” “It was an emotional response to the deadening work environment,” she says.  “You see a workspace that’s been generated for you by a Human Resources Department.”

Cathy’s Katrina survivor friends do not like the feeling that the  new screensaver evokes.  “Water is incredibly strong and it creeps in,” Cathy says.  The office depicted in Cubicle Flood, however, “isn’t affected the way a real space would be. Cubicle Flood is a dream of a flood and not a real flood.”

Daniel Alcheh’s Soundtrack

Daniel Alcheh, masterfully composed the original soundtrack of Cubicle Flood.  His music complements the flood’s progression over time without overpowering the visual elements.

One wouldn’t think that a disasterscape like a hurricane, tsunami or flood– with rising waters and rising music– would have a tranquil and meditative effect, but in Cubicle Flood, that peacefulness prevails as water and music gradually fills an otherwise sterile and impersonal office environment.

IMG_0942_2

Composer, Daniel Alcheh in His Studio
Photo by, Susanna Speier

The music and the water move through time together.  The collaborative success is evident in the  fact that sound and image inform one another without imposing narrative and context.

Transcendance

“Its a really transcendent environment, but I see it as a beautiful state, a transcendence over what the office looked like previously,” Cathy says.

The soon to be released deluxe version of this production will fill your screen at different speeds and in different office environments.  You can flood an office several times a day or spend an entire day, flooding one.

Talk to Me - Fodder for Your Commentary

What sort of screensaver do you use?
Where did it come from?
How do you know whether or not a screensaver is safe?

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Mad Men Season 3 - Episode 12 “The Grown Ups” - chronologizing other people’s memories of the Kennedy assassination

Published
by
s000z
 on November 3, 2009
. 2 Comments
From Blog Archive

The Fog of Chronology

What year was Kennedy assassinated? After tossing and turning over the fog of chronology half the night, I needed to know.

Lay awake thinking after finding out. 1963.  That was 20 years after the end of World War II — the same distance between now and the first Gulf War.

Will distances between historical events preceding my existence always seem greater than distances between historical events I can recollect?

The Demographics of AMC’s Character Driven Mad Men

I’m actually not sure what the Mad Men demographics are but going by the disproportionate percentage of air time devoted to Lipitor, Viagra and Clorox, I’ll guess that the majority of Mad Men watchers remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated.

“The Grown Ups,”  Mad Men’s Kennedy assassination episode

Sunday, November 1st, Mad Med episode, The Grown Ups, was the penultimate finale of Season Three and I can’t help wonder how next Sunday’s season finale will get anywhere close.

We have the satisfaction of knowing the historic outcome and significance of Mad Men’s chronological collisions in advance of the characters knowing.  This gives us access to their losses and their misunderstandings.  Their discoveries and their disconnects.

I just can’t get enough David Carbonara’s music, by the way.  Those melliflous counterpoint that begin a pause and a heartbeat after a clipped stream of dialog ends.  Why isn’t more television like this?

The Mad Men show I watch is different from the Mad Men show that Mom watches

Mom insisted on replaying the two Mad Men Season 2 episodes that I was featured and uncredited in –Three Sundays and Six Month Leave– over and over in a way that only a mom can.

Mad Men is the black and white television screen I never had

Mad Men is the corridor to those custom framed, soft toned hand painted photographs on the wall of the guest room that my Bubby once had.  Mad Men is a photo album full of square shaped black and white snapshots of my newlywed collegiate parents holding a simese cat.

From

From Susannaspeier.com
Mad Men is the font of the copper colored “flour,” “tea” and “sugar” canisters that once lined my Buby’s kitchen countertop and now lines the countertop of my mom’s kitchen.

Mom insists television receptions were not all that bad.  In fact, all her friends seem to agree they were actually quite sharp.  Does the distortion came from Mad Men creator and writer, Michael Weiner’s own fog of chronology, then?

Click here if you’d like to submit a Mad Men Politiku to my Huffington Post column

Click here for reviews of other blogs following Mad Men Season Three

Click here for a babbley but well intended (was new to blogging and didn’t get how spacing for the web and headers worked) and comprehensive description of my experience working as a featured background performer on the Mad Men, Season 2 episodes Three Sundays and Six Month Leave.

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Original 1984 Apple Macintosh M0001 Computer Revisiting

Published
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s000z
 on September 20, 2009
. 0 Comments

Crazy but true, Mom actually hung on to the very same 128K M0001 Macintosh that Dad purchased shortly after the-most-expensive-commercial-to-date launched said iconic prototype in the midst of the 1984 Superbowl. Directed by Ridley Scott and perhaps the most prophetic commercial in television history, it only aired once and once was enough. Enter: the dawn of the digital happy face.

And so here it is, 25 years later and here I am, Marsha Collier’s “eBay for Dummies” by my side, running this eBay auction. This German guy, Lars who I met through Retromaccast has been with me every step of the way, even going so far as to create customized diagrams, to help me on my way towards a working computer again.  While it may not be the Gene Roddenberry’s Mac (which, coincidentally, just went up for auction this week as well) it’s got an archival integrity that is hard to match, thanks to my mom, a retired librarian, who kept almost all of the fliers, documentation and even a couple of the original boxes.

From Vintage Macs

Simply Shameless Ebay Shop Shill: So, as my goal is to get it to a worthy new owner, if you’re a collector and wanna check it out and perhaps even place a bid, here’s the link.

The names of the original creators are etched into the inside shell of the original M0001 models. Folklore.org has the entire story of the signing party and an image of the original signature sheet created February 1982. According to Andy Hertzfeld who wrote the post, this was a very conscious effort on Steve Jobs’ part.
From The Macintosh M0001 Turned Inside Out

He thought of himself as an artist and encouraged his team to think of themselves that way, too. Of course that’s all obvious now, in retrospect. When I think about the promethean spirit driving those signatures in a world still dominated by “Basic” and “Pilot” and “IBM” is has to have been one of the fiercest humanistic moments in the history of personal computing. It also makes Ridley Scott’s stream fusing and metaphoric layering all the most dazzling and the experience of uncovering it, last week when picking the computer up after an internal hard drive repair, that much more satisfying.

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Robert Frank’s America

Published
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s000z
 on September 17, 2009
. 0 Comments
From Blog Archive

I discovered Robert Frank’s book “The Americans” when I was in high school; it had a seminal impact on my way of perceiving/creating.  Dunno whether or not I’ll make it to the East Coast in time to see the 50th anniversary of The Americans at the Met.  Hopefully someone who does get a chance to will tell me about it, tho. Hmm, that’s not really the same as seeing it myself. Okay, well after NY it goes to DC and will be shown at the National Gallery of Art through the spring and so maybe I’ll be able to go and see it then.

From Blog Archive

Here’s the link to the exhibit at the Met
This is the National Gallery of Art show link
Here’s Philip Gefter’s NY Times review of the Exhibit:
What the New Yorker wrote about it. Includes a slide show.

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Henry Hudson did this 400 years ago…

Published
by
s000z
 on September 8, 2009
. 0 Comments

And here’s what it looked like, according to National Geo:

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Best reviews of Mad Men Season 3 and why I don’t “Mad Men” myself on Facebook

Published
by
s000z
 on August 21, 2009
. 4 Comments

MadmenBlueStumbled across a Mad Men Season 3 Newsweek review that I found particularly lively, in that it gently interweaves the obvious and un-obvious allegorical nuances of the epic.  Decided to further investigate.  Blogger Dan O’Brien, understandably, prob gets a zillion times as much traffic as I do and his “Why You are an Idiot for Not Watching Mad Men” shows why. I’m cheating a bit by adding my friend Hollie’s blog entry about MM, since it’s actually about Season 1 and not 3 but truth to be told, Hollie’s blog is well worth reading in its entirety. Not only has she gone from being an actor to being a staffed writer on Cold Case in a period of a little over a year due to sheer determination, dedication and talent, but her insights about on-screen chemistry (which come from her acting talent and training) are actually applicable to all seasons, not just 1 or 3. In fact, while we’re backpedaling, I’d have to say that New York Magazine’s patented Don Draper Likability Index covering seasons 1 and 2 is still pretty fresh. Finally, please forgive my laziness (I’m not really lazy but I do really have to get started on my job hunt now, being that its a Friday and everything) if you really want to read Mad Men reviews, this metacritic link’ll be you there is no time flat. If I had more time, I’d try and dig up commentary on the music and on the cinematography and set design but that’d be another entry, I guess. Okay, so one more thing before signing off. For those of you wondering, why –despite the fact I can’t remember being this far gone over a show since Commander-in-Chief (which is actually what got me to start watching television for the first time since I was a teenager) there is a very specific reason that I don’t “Mad Men” myself on Facebook, The Costume was uncomfortable. I adapted.here goes: while I loved working with this creative powerhouse during Season 2 and am not at all surprised to see Janie’s vision going viral in the form of the Mad Men Yourself phenom, I am apprehensive about embracing avatar altering fan rituals because, I dunno.  It’s not really where or who I’m at, I guess.  Then there are also those articles my dad forwarded me about virused Flash downloads and finally, because I’ve already got pics of my Mad Men’d self from the two Season 2 episodes I was in and I got em w/out downloading problematic software!

Click here to read my post about the Mad Men Season 3, episode 12 Kennedy Assassination episode titled “The Grown Ups.”

Click here for a bit of a babbley thought well intended (was new to blogging and didn’t get how spacing for the web and headers worked) and comprehensive description of my experience working as a featured background performer on the Mad Men, Season 2 episodes Three Sundays and Six Month Leave.

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Mom’s Carousel Menagerie

Published
by
s000z
 on August 16, 2009
. 2 Comments

Mom can tell you everything about these. When and how they were made. Sometimes even by who. She had acquired all the horses before I was born. As a result, some of my earliest memories are of these horses. I remember spending long stretches of time studying one isolated pattern until I had completely familiarized before moving on to the next.

At different times in those early years of pattern recognition the shapes and colors came to mean different things. Characters wandering, lost searching for a fairy tale or buttons on a television set. Of course, my height changed as the context did. The saddle edge eagle and the mane, once so elusive were eventually at eye level, yet the mouth and ears remained out of reach. Growing taller meant gaining eye-level access to additional details. Returning to the horses now, as an adult to photograph all these familiar details made me sad beyond belief. Mom can’t keep them, as she had always planned on doing because she’s moving into a smaller house. Thus, they need to be sold. The horses —made by Hershel and Parker— are the real deal. Mom went to great lengths to get them restored properly. The bunny and the frog are smaller recreations of the real deal. Now I’m sad all over again. A Velveteen bunny type sadness. Well, okay, so long as they end up at a loving home or a place where they are appreciated as deeply as they have been thus far, I’m okay w/ it. Not like the wooden carousel horses are gonna know. Okay, look, its just plain weird being a human being, sometimes.

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Jerome Bixby’s Man from Earth

Published
by
s000z
 on August 4, 2009
. 2 Comments

When I was told I was about to watch a movie about a college professor from the late Paleolithic Era I rolled my eyes, anticipating some new Geico commercial spin-off.  The opening had me chucking at it as opposed to with it. The script was way hokie.  Plot points seemed planted and contrived and dialog silly.  Then somewhere along the way, whoosh—sucked through the wormhole—there I was loving it.  Was like the ultimate ‘what if’ fantasy for History Channel (without the annoying flashbacks), National Geographic and Scientific American junkies all swirled.  Brought me back to those exhilarating brainstorming session I’d have with Brian Greene while writing Calabi-Yau.  Anything was possible.  Was using Aristotleian clues and formulas to speculate on how it’d end and got the rug pulled out from under, anyway.  Thinking back through the craftsmanship, nothing was arbitraty, though I couldn’t have possible anticipated the outcome.  Senses greater forces at play, I researched the writer, Jerome Bixby after watching it and discovered he’d work on numerous Twilight Zone and Star Trek Episodes during his lifetime.  A TV show Bixby created in the 60s even inspired an Asimov story…whoa!

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Now, through open windows, breathing in the August night

Published
by
s000z
 on August 2, 2009
. 2 Comments

Saw Anne Waldman read Manatee/Humanity. Brunch on the patio with my friend, Jill and discussed what sort of work environments we should look for, according to the Myers Briggs.  Finished watching season 2 of Mad Men, watched a one-year old discover birthday cake, realized that the camera that I thought was broken wasn’t.  Night walk with boyfriend to look at flowers and swans and ducks and lake in moonlight.  Some wealthy company is throwing all of their money at trying to get advertising on the moon, he said.  We swiftly concluded that the likelihood of that occurring during our lifetimes is…not very. Cleaned and organized stuff a little bit but not too much.  Didn’t solve and didn’t break anything.  Took a bubble bath. Learned that my super supportive, inspiring and hyperprolific friend Hollie Overton just officiated her WGA membership and interpreted it to mean that, despite what it can sometimes seem, Hollywood does reward talent and hard work.  Watched 15 minutes of that new King Arthur show on TV only to realize that the only ones who ever succeeded in adapting anything Arthurian were Monty Python/Terry Gilliam and Eric Rohmer Managed to actually get a little bit of work done.  Live broadcast of Leonard Cohen’s London concert. Time isn’t moving too quickly or too slowly.  Now, through open windows, breathing in the August night.  Still thinking about the moon.  Remembering the Smashing Pumpkin’s Tonight, Tonight video. What was that old silent movie they were referencing in the video? Loved how they created a video to rise to the level of the music’s fantasticalness.  Wanted to see it; figure out more about the history  Went foraging.  Didn’t find it but found something else instead.  A treasure in its own right.  History of Moon movies presented as an Apollo 40th retrospective, no less.  Windows are still open.  Check out:

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