October 2002 – Adam Rice

The California Coastline Project

31 Oct 2002 / current events

This is brilliant. A guy who got rich during the dotcom era is photographing every inch of the California coastline from a helicopter

The camera is linked with a cable to the helicopter’s global positioning system, and to an Apple Power Book laptop. Every three seconds, he snaps a picture, and the exact longitude, latitude and altitude are recorded.

Adelman said he will spend about $20,000 to photograph the whole coast, and take about 10,000 pictures in all. He has finished about 60 percent, including nearly everything from Marin County to Los Angeles. He expects to finish the rest of Southern California this week. One area, over Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County, is in restricted air space and Adelman is still working to get permission to photograph

This is what computers and the Internet are for. The fact that this project can be undertaken–and made universally available–for so little money amazes me.

Why is he doing this? I’m sure that once he is done, people will find all kinds of fascinating but unintended uses for it. His motive is environmental preservation. Check it out at californiacoastline.org.

One more thing to worry about: Comment spam

29 Oct 2002 / net stuff

I haven’t seen this yet, but evidently some enterprising scumbags are now inserting spam into people’s blog comments. A detailed discussion of possible techniques to thwart this ensued.

As a side-dish, I discovered a website that will test how well e-mail addresses on web pages have been obscured to foil spambots (this page passed).

Punch-Drunk Love

26 Oct 2002 / movies

Saw Punch-Drunk Love last night. Excellent movie. Very weird, jarring audio throughout. Very studied use of symmetric framing, apparently to reinforce the sense of soul-crushing artificiality. This is perhaps only the second good movie that Adam Sandler has been in (Shakes the Clown would be the first), and he really goes beyond himself in this role, as Jim Carrey did in the Truman Show. But I’ll see just about anything from P.T. Anderson on spec.

Caetano Veloso

24 Oct 2002 / music

Saw Caetano Veloso last night at Bass Concert Hall with Gwen and another friend (who just happened to know the cellist). The local alternative weekly did an interesting piece on him recently.

The show was great. Although he played a number of old standards, there was nothing stale about his show, or about him. Unlike some musical acts that have been around as long, he clearly continues to innovate musically, not resting on his laurels. He’s also just damned talented.

Royale with cheese

24 Oct 2002 / tidbit

I don’t know why, but the Samuel L Jackson Soundboard makes me laugh my ass off (Flash required)

Kung-log

22 Oct 2002 / technology

Just downloaded a specialized OS-X tool for posting to Movable Type blogs: Kung-log. This is a test post using the program. Seems to work OK, although BBEdit is still a better writing environment.

The Internet and the ADA

22 Oct 2002 / current events

In an important decision, a judge has ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act does not apply to the Internet. A blind man sued Southwest Airlines over the fact that their website was difficult to use with his screen reader.

What to make of this? I’m sympathetic to the plaintiff. And it would be sensible, both from business and aesthetic standpoints, for the Southwest website to be more universally accessible, but bringing the Internet within the ADA’s purview could open a huge can of worms.

Hail

22 Oct 2002 / personal

Austin occasionally gets a violent hailstorm. Last night was one–hailstones the size of ping-pong balls. My car now has six small dimples on the hood. Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.

Now to figure out how to smooth out the dimples…

Towering hypocrisy?

21 Oct 2002 / music

Out running errands yesterday, I stopped by the Tower Records near the UT campus, which had marked down a lot of CDs to $8.99.

Although a lot of the marked-down items were best-of collections, there were some good standbys lacking from my collection, so I took the opportunity to fill these gaps–things like Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited, Neil Young’s Harvest, and Thelonious Monk’s Monk’s Dream. While not cheap, $8.99 starts getting into the range of what I’d consider a fair price for CDs (of course, I buy a lot of music at what I consider unfair prices, too).

Right next to the checkout counter, I noticed a big floor display of blank CD-Rs. By all rights, the RIAA should be outraged that a major music outlet is essentially condoning and profiting from piracy, but I haven’t heard any cries of indignation on this subject. I’ve messaged them–if I get any feedback, I’ll post it here.

Orange Mothers & Meat Purveyors at the Cactus

20 Oct 2002 / music

Last night, Gwen and I saw the Orange Mothers and the Meat Purveyors at the Cactus Cafe. Gwen and I had seen the same line-up at the Continental Club when we had been dating for about two weeks. We’ve been dating for just about six months now.

The show was good. There was a bizarre opening act–three white guys doing traditional Indian (err, Native American) chants. Can’t say as it did much for me. But the Orange Mothers are fun, and the Meat Purveyors are fun as well as being really talented, energetic musicians. The Cactus has the advantage (to us) of being cigarette-free–the only bar I know of that is. And it is convenient. As is so often the case, we had several tempting options for Saturday-night activities, but the show at the Cactus won out.