Okay, I’d like to start with some personal outrage: How do you not believe in evolution?! You can’t just decide not to see all the evidence in the world all around you! Selective sight doesn’t give you the right to discredit the theory of evolution, and hope anyone who thinks so will accidentally put both hands into a meat grinder.

So, I just read about this movie called Expelled.  It was originally supposed to be called “Crossroads,” because it was intended to explore the “intersection of science and religion,” and even had the consent of Dr. Dawkins. Apparently, though, the title and production company changed, and the people that were interviewed were not informed of this.

To me, this is kind of like when I walk outside of a bar or restaurant and get a faceful of smoke, I think, People still smoke? This time, it’s just getting an eyeful of things like this:

And I have to wonder, People are still arguing about this stuff?

For God’s sake (pun quite intended), take a damn biology class.

I think the worst thing is the movie.  I haven’t seen it, but I’ve watch both the trailer and extended trailer.  This movie isn’t about the difference between Intelligent Design and Darwinism; no, it’s about how society attacks and discriminates against anyone that believes in Intelligent Design.  Look:

Ben Stein warns you in the extended trailer that by watching this movie you may lose your friends or your job.  I wouldn’t be against it if it was an actual intelligent film that explores two different views, but it isn’t.  It’s fine that the ID people want to have their say, but it isn’t fine that they make everyone else out to be bad guys.  “Oh, you believe in evolution?  You’ll probably discriminate against me because I don’t.”

Maybe it’s true.  Okay, fine.  Then why aren’t you advertising a movie that talks about the hardships of ID believers in society?  Why are you claiming to discuss the similarities and differences of two different theories?

This is what the robots will listen to as they exterminate all hu-mans. Likely on iPods made from our kidneys.

Incidentally, this is from Japan, whence killer robots will likely originate. Ponder the irony as your precious soft tissue is ground into biomass to feed the Overmind.

Don’t run red lights, because horrible, horrible things like this happen:



I’m posting this because I don’t have time to write a full post for today, and because I just can’t stop watching it.

…enjoy?

I noticed that Facebook posted some clarification of their new profile system, so here it is, reposted, verbatim:

1. Will Facebook applications appear in the narrow column?
   Facebook applications won’t appear in the narrow column by default, but users can add them there if they so choose.
2. How many applications will appear in the narrow column?
   By default, three applications will appear in the narrow column. The rest will appear in the extended profile, like they can today.
3. What are the width and height of the profile box in the narrow column?
   Profile boxes in the narrow column will continue to have the same width and padding as today, with a maximum height of 400 pixels.
4. On which tabs will the narrow column appear?
   The narrow column will definitely appear on the “Wall” tab. It will possibly appear on the About tab.
5. Will the narrow column appear on the application tabs?
   At this time, the narrow column will not appear on an application tab. This is to keep user focused on the selected application.
6. Will the About tab have profile boxes?
   Yes, up to five profile boxes can appear on the About tab. We’ll provide two templates for formatting the boxes, one for lists and one for thumbnails with captions.
7. What is the width of About tab box?
   The About tab box is going to be 500 pixels wide. We’re adding an additional 10 pixels of padding on the left side and 20 pixels of padding on the right.
8. Can applications go in the wide column?
   There are no profile boxes in the wide column of the “Wall” tab. However, there will be sections for applications in the wide column on the About tab. See the screen shot of the About tab. Note the section for the “My Best Friends” application (bear in mind that the design might change).
9. Will there be a general tab for all applications?
   While we aren’t providing a tab for all applications, we are considering a tab on the user’s Facebook Home page for application boxes.
10. What do I need to do to create an application tab?
    Application tabs will work like regular canvas pages. We’ll release more information on integrating into application tabs soon.
11. How many application tabs can exist before they appear in the “more” section?
    We are currently deciding between two and four.
12. What is the width for the new application tabs?
    Application tabs will run the width of the page — 903 pixels. We’re adding an additional 20 pixels of padding on each side. The screen shot of the Photos tab should give you an idea of the dimensions of an application tab. (Note that the design of the Photos tab and of application tabs overall might change.)
13. How many application profile action links can appear?
    By default, three application profile action links will appear on the profile, but that can change depending on user behavior. There won’t be a link to display more profile action links.
14. Are there going to be new API calls or FBML tags?
    Yes, we are changing the Platform API and creating new FBML tags. We will release more information about them very soon on this blog.
15. Why are you combining Wall and Mini-Feed on the “Wall” tab?
    The profile is a place where a user might catch up with a friend by reading a new Wall post, or by seeing a Mini-Feed story with pictures from a trip they just took. While the Wall and Mini-Feed may seem like two totally separate things, both can contribute towards telling a more complete story. The idea behind combining the Wall and Mini-Feed is to put all of the most important information in the same place, so users don’t have to constantly search around to keep up with their friends. We’ve posted a screenshot detailing this on the Facebook Profiles Previews Page (become a fan of this Page so you can stay up to date on the improved profile). The new “Wall” now consists of Wall posts as we currently know them, but also stories users once saw in their Mini-Feeds. This allows friends to write on a user’s wall, directly after other content they might find interesting. The goal is to make a cleaner, more relevant Wall that compiles the most relevant information about the people a user cares about. And given the Wall’s popularity with users, we are working out a way to easily filter down to just Wall posts from a friend’s profile.
16. What is the timeframe for us to make these changes?
    We plan to release the updated profile to our users in early April, 2008.

For those who don’t already know, Facebook has decided to revamp the look and feel of their profiles. This is essentially a return to the beginning because at the outset Facebook was about profiles and making connections, and then everything else was slowly built on top of that. Now it’s time to go back and rework the profiles so they’re more up to speed with all the new systems.

Before I throw in my two cents, here’s some images, linked to their larger source image for your reference:

Now I’m personally a fan of the new profile system. What it basically comes down to is reorganizing and prioritizing the form and function of the profiles to make them less cluttered and more useful. The highlights include three main tabs at the top (wall, about, and photos), a wider right side column, and the removal of applications from the right side column. Now, as a developer of a Facebook application, I should hate that they’ve removed my ability to place my application’s profile info in the wide column, but as a developer in general, I am delighted that Facebook is taking a stand against developers, essentially saying, “we are removing you from this priviledged space because you failed to excercise adequate design and functional judgements.” Honestly, few developers have any interest in trying to maintain Facebook’s aesthetic within their applications, instead branching out into their own boisterous styles. While this is certainly an acceptable choice, since it is your application after all, it shows a lack of conceptual understanding, or, an inability to show you understand that your application is just a part of a much larger totality and you’re aware of how it fits into that totality.

Before you developers out there throw a fit, know that if a user treasures your application enough, they can create a whole new custom tab, just for application. So yes, I lied a little when I said you’ll be completely barred from the right side column, but the ability to appear there is completely dependant on a user being so enamored by your application that they bother to create a new tab just for it. This means your application has to either have a lot of value, or appeal to an audience that’ll add just about anything (and honestly, the fact is there’s plenty of those people on Facebook). For me, I’m not in Facebook development for the money; I don’t force ads down the throats of my users, and I don’t at any point even ask them to invite people (I have a tab at the top they click if they so choose of their own free will). So, creating an application that has value to the user is more important to me, and I’m glad that Facebook is taking another little step to maybe forcing other developers to reevaluate their applications’ end value to the user.

Just my two cents.

Laughable, man. Ha HA!

However Bush’s presidency has turned out (that would be ‘tragic’), his choice of campaign font was perfect for what he ran on.

It’s an incredibly rare example of a sans-serif font used in a successful presidential campaign. Strength, staying-the-courseness, unyielding no matter what, etc. It fit. This year, the presidential election has changed the trend and the serif font candidates who played it safe lost it early.

 I’ve left out Rudy and Fred because, well, fuck them.

Typography is a delicate, somewhat subjective thing, especially when it comes to marketing consumer items- which, in many ways, presidential candidates are. Lots of interesting things have been written about the various candidates’  campaign branding, particularly font choice and how their fonts represent them as candidates. Thinking of fonts as people makes Obama’s choice of Gotham, from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, particularly interesting in a field of bold, serif, mostly conservative fonts. He has been successful so far, and being the Anti-Bush, his choice is somewhat appropriate. It’s a defining font, versus generic serif featured in the Hilary Clinton campaign materials (and all the drop outs too). It’s worth noting that although Obama uses a serif for his campaign logo (likely for legibility in smaller print and black and white), Gotham is the backbone of his campaign literature, his “Change” signs, and everything else with his name on it.

All of this importance to a mere font makes this so much more craven and sad.

fig. 1.1 an IMPOSTOR

fig 1.2 A Successful (and Original) Choice.

It’s a subtle thing, but it’s the subtlety that makes this linkage so effective and cheap. Typography is so essential to the Obama brand that to just take their signature font seems downright disrespectful. Almost like… plagiarism!?

As an aside- McCain’s semi-sans is very apt.

For those of you who know Adam and I, you know that we have had this small pet project at our media company, Solvo Media, called ProjectZ, where we envision making some short, maybe 10-15 minute films, that tell the individual stories of people trying to survive a zombie outbreak. The point was to make them poignant and personal, with rich and meaningful stories to make them enjoyable to a wide audience, while at the same time presenting enough of the violence and gore zombie-movie fans have come to relish.

In the pursuit of this goal we realized our resources were fairly limited. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a high quality HD camera on loan for free, and we’ve pooled our friends and relatives for scripts, actors, and extras. Unfortunately, zombie films do require a great deal of makeup, and this has been a much quicker than anticipated learning curve for us, but we’re still far from experts. Nonetheless, getting to the point of this post, I thought I’d explain what we found to be one of two really good methods of making fake blood (for anyone who cares to know).

First and foremost, as a firefighter/EMT, I have a very, very high standard of fake blood, considering how much real blood I see at work. Color, consistency, how it dries, these are all important to me, since I’m addicted to the realism. I spent a lot of time going through car accident photos from my department to make sure I had a good working idea of how our homemade fake blood was going to have to perform. I should probably see a therapist.

One night, Adam, myself, and Catherine, decided we should congregate and figure it all out. We went to our local halloween store to see what materials they had. We bought the standard costume stuff, the cheapest stuff we could, to see how good a job we could do with the cheap stuff. This all needs to be done on a shoe-string budget, so cost is important - hence why we decided to make our own blood. After all, one gallon of professional fake blood costs about $50 in our area.

So here’s what we tried after a quick look at the products available and grocery store run:

Blood is much thicker than water, and once the red cells are removed is more of a yellow than a red. In other words, the plasma that streaks can sometimes appear yellow, or so I’ve found. Unfortunately there’s no real way to get that change in color depending on density, as far as we’ve surmised. In any case, we decided to use cornstarch as our base liquid because it is suragry, edible, and thick. Next, we added the red gel-based food coloring we were able to get from the food store. Unfortunately, despite the strength of the red dye, this only makes a sort of neon-red colored goop. To darken it up we added a small amount of blue dye to the concoction to come up with a pretty decent looking fake blood. The cornstarch appeared a little too thick to me personally, so I added a bit of water to it just to give it a bit more flow.

It turned out to be a lot easier than we expected, and while I wouldn’t say it was the most perfect fake blood ever, as illustrated by the photo of our wound-test above, on film it looks pretty damn convincing. Our only remaining task really is eliminated the beading effect on the fake skin.

Hi, I’m Catherine. I’m a teacher in Metro-West Boston, and an aspiring writer, so likely most of my posts will be in that domain. With that, I’m proud to announce…

The New and Emerging Writers Series, with whom I was privileged to connect in mid-2007, has posted its spring schedule.

NEWS is an organization dedicated to exposing local authors by giving them a chance to read their material in a public setting, and then letting them drink wine and be fabulous together after the reading for some self-promotion. I first heard about NEWS from a fellow writer and English teacher, and since doing a reading, I’ve had several calls and emails about doing other local events, and now have the opportunity to chapbook a children’s story I wrote early last year.

NEWS is not for the faint of pen.

Seriously, I credit this organization with everything good that’s happened in the last six months of my literary existence. There’s no better way to get exposure than to do so with other barely-on-the-radar, shamelessly self-promoting writers. The experience is priceless, and the whole thing is just so prettily packaged: reading with like-minded smartypants in a restored vintage movie theater, in the greatest city on the East coast, and wine in a dusty little bookshop afterward with the same remarkable minds from the reading. Tennessee Williams and Robert Lowell, eat your heart out.

Now, if you’re self-conscious and doubtful like I was at first, just stop by and listen for a few, and join us after the reading to check it out. You’ll have a good time, I promise. You don’t even have to RSVP— just show up and be your magnificent self.

Sunday, March 9 2008: Readings are “mixed bag”, which includes fiction, poetry, personal essays, lyrics—anything you’ve written and want to share with the group.

Sunday, April 6, 2008: Poetry Extravaganza in honor of National Poetry Month.

Where: The Regent Theatre, 7 Medford Street Arlington

When: Events start at 4 pm.

Small gathering for attendees and readers is after the reading at The Book Rack, 13 Medford Street Arlington.

So last night, a friend reminded me that I had made plans to go to a hardcore show - Firestorm Fest 2008 at the Palladium in Worcester - with him. When he told me, I was still at work, trying to pretend I didn’t have a throbbing headache and occasional waves of dizziness. I ended up leaving early, and all I wanted to do was go home and go to sleep. Then again, this was a friend I had neglected to see for quite a while for no good reason, and besides, I wanted to see Shai Hulud live!

So he picked me up, paid for parking, and found a place far from the mosh pit so I wouldn’t get hurt. We showed up about 2 hours after the show had actually started (we missed On Broken Wings, Randomshots, Rick Whispers, Since the Flood, and Unholy), and walked in right as one band finished. We stood through Down to Nothing and Recon, which weren’t bad but I had never heard of them, and instead of watching the performances, I was entranced by the pit. The hardcore dancers weren’t being assholes and beating the shit out of each other as I had expected — they were doing it right and just dancing. As the bands went through their sets, I got antsy. I wanted to be down there.

So I expressed my feelings, but we hesitated, because we had a good vantage point where we were. When Shai Hulud came on, though, things changed. We hurried around the crowd to the edge of the people ringing the pit, then Jarret said he’d be right back and disappeared. I stood, surrounded by bodies and staring at the pit, until I felt someone tap my arm. Looking forward, I was greeted with a vision of my guide, holding out a hand to me from a spot close to the stage, with a bright white stage light shining in my face over his head. It was almost a holy moment. The next thing I knew, we were pressed up against the barricade, center stage, no more than five feet from where Matt Mazzali was standing, thrusting his mic into the crowd. Someone caught a picture — it’s like a Where’s Waldo, can you find us?:

After Shai Hulud came Sworn Enemy, and the crowd got a bit rowdier. I loved it. We were crushed up against the barricade and had to always look around to make sure no fists or feet were coming our way, but I was right in front of an incredibly jacked, 6′5″ bouncer, so I was all set (then again, later in the show, that was the same huge guy who got knocked forward and nearly cracked my skull with his forehead. Unfortunately, no battle scar remains.) If anyone crawled over the crowd, and I didn’t push them over fast enough, the bouncer reached over my head and did it before they could get close enough to cause injury. I decided then that I like being the only chick near the pit at a hardcore show. Anyway, the band was fun, and though Matt had only stood on the barricade to our right, Sal Lococo was more than happy to move to other areas, including right in front of us, where I got a faceful of his crotch as people piled up, trying to get their chance to scream lyrics into the microphone.

Their set was good, but it was nothing compared to the show Terror put on. I swear that Scott Vogel was trying to kill me, because he kept telling everyone to move up and climb over everybody. I bet the bouncers didn’t like it when he urged the crowd to climb right over the baricades; a few guys tried, and got tossed back like rag dolls. I also got a faceful of his crotch (I look thrilled right before my sight was filled with his camo shorts) and ended up at the bottom at yet another pile-up.

Finally, the reason everyone was there (well, I was really there to see Shai Hulud) showed up, after taking a freakin’ half hour to set up. Earth Crisis was, by far, the best recieved band, which is cool, considering their stance on most issues. I find that I don’t really like their music — though live they’re amazing — but I do support their messages. I was pretty excited that I got multiple facefuls of Karl Beuchner’s crotch, but there was a moment that scared the hell out of me — one of the stage divers accidentally caught Karl and knocked him off the barricade. He was fine, but the bouncers kept their hands on his back to hold him up after that. Still, they were awesome, and I loved every song live even if I’m not a fan of the recorded versions.

I’m told that I have some bragging rights over the fact that, at the end of ECs last and biggest song, Firestorm, we were the base of the massive pile-up. You’re jealous, I know you are.

And you should be.