I'm so sorry to have you left you all alone. I know that without my guidance, your world seems dark and dreary. But, I'm back, and I hope that you'll be able to recover from your withdrawal quickly.
Where I've been... mostly on a short, Vicodin related drug trip. Really, since the surgery, I've just been a bit loopy. It doesn't mean that I haven't been able to concentrate, no no no. As a matter of fact, I've managed to plunk down a good 4,000 words between a couple of my writing projects, and I got a chance to see Black Snake Moan as well.
Other than that I've been playing a copy of Star Wars: Empire at War, which is a pretty phenomenal game. I only paid $2.50 for it, and I would probably like it a lot less than I do if I'd paid any more than that, really. But the game is fun.
Next, Mike has completed the rough draft for his second Screenplay, working title: The Ghoul Next Door, and is now ready to go back and start working on re-drafting his first screenplay, Ink. He and I have been spending a lot time talking about the various details, the goal is to try and shoot Ink sometime around Summer 2008. There's a lot that will need to get done between now and then, I've been tasked as "Producer" which basically means: I'm the guy what makes the things happen. You can expect to hear more about it as time goes on... especially when we start dropping things on the great interwebs to create that happy buzz small budget movies need to be successful.
On to links and things....
I was so furious when I read this that I was actually shaking.
Rebecca Riley died on December 13th of last year. She was 4. She died of an overdose of prescribed Clonidine, a blood pressure med, Depakote, an anti-seizure "mood stabilizing drug", a cough suppressant, and anti-histamine medicines.
At the age of 2 and a half she was diagnosed with ADD and BiPolar Disorder (formerly manic depression). In this world, ADD has become the catch all diagnosis, because, children don't behave as calmly as most adults. They are constantly active and in motion, and parents don't seem willing to deal with it.
I, like so many other people, have been frustrated with this trend for years now. They diagnosed me with ADD and ADHD when I was a kid, and I was on ritlin for a while, but, even my mother and I recognized after a while that it didn't make any sense.
Diagnosing kids before the age of 10 is ludicrous. Kids haven't developed enough for these kinds of disorders to manifest. It comes down to the parents, because most often, it seems that it isn't the kids that are the problem, but the parents who are lazy.
I was reading another story not too long ago, about a mother of 3, the oldest being 6 years old, who had her kids on various mood enhancers, as well as a prescribed sleeping pill, which put her kids down for 3 hour naps during the day.
3 hour naps? That isn't medicating, that's just lazy parenting.
I had an argument about 2 months ago, I was out with my kids, and a woman nearby had commented on how well behaved they were, then she actually asked what I had them on. I said nothing. She said, oh, you're lucky. She told me her two boys were so wild that she had them diagnosed with ADD and then she rattled off 2 scrips that they were on, and then she proceeded to tell me of their wild actions. They were just being kids. I just rolled my eyes, and she caught it, and asked once. I couldn't hold back. I said, I highly doubt that the problem is in the chemical balance of your boys. She was taken aback, but I wasn't going to let up. I said, you want to know why my daughters are well behaved? I said, I've spent years raising them, I've invested untold hours of my time teaching them and molding them to be polite and respectful. I said, I don't just plunk them down in front the T.V. nanny and go about my life, and if they act up, and yes, they do sometimes act up, I will discipline them. I said, maybe if you weren't expecting your boys to be mini adults instead of children, you might find they better behaved then you think for, and that a little parenting goes a long way.
The woman blinked at me a few times, and started saying that I didn't know how hard-. But I cut her off, I said, I do know how hard it is. I'm a parent, and you could one too if you just tried. Then I collected my daughters with one command and waked away.
It angers me so much that I just have to move on from this.
Rest in Piece young Rebecca, I hope you're in a better place now.
Forbes Explains Why Next Gen Costs Money
Forbes released an article, which discusses, in semi-in depth manner, why it is that NextGen titles will set you back $60 a piece.
It's pretty straight forward, and to me, quite obvious. But, I suppose there are a lot of people out there who don't understand the process of how the things they buy ends up on the shelf for them. I'm sure most of them suspect magic is involved.
Another PC vs. Mac Spoof.
This time, it's Novell that's released those fun little ads to YouTube. In this version the fake PC and Mac are chilling out, but now, there's a new entry, a mildly attractive woman: Linux.
There are two videos on WIRED Blogs, the second one is funny... the first one is not-so-much.
Daily Monsters
Someone over at deviantArt tipped me off to the Daily Monster site. It's nothing more than some interesting looking monster things. At the bottom of the page, there's a nifty video showing the guy drawing one, only really really fast.The process is pretty nifty, because the guy just splatters some ink in a line across the paper, and then builds from that. The result, however, is quite interesting. It's one of those things that makes you go: Huh, that's neat.
Check it out, he's apparently got a ton of fans who are submitting their own version all the time.
MEMEJET
So, there's a company called Silverbrook. They developed technology that I envisioned many years ago. Basically, it's inkjet technology that borrows from the logic of laser printing by spanning the entire page with nozzles. There's video on their page, as well as the article I read about it. It's amazing to see, though, some are trying to call it a hoax. It doesn't seem anywhere near being implausible.
The printers are capable of printing A4 (Letter Size anywhere but the U.S.) full color with 20% coverage at over 60 pages per minute for around 6¢ a page, and black at around 2¢. It can print on a plotter 51" wide at 6-12" per second. It can churn out 4x6 photos at over 2 seconds each (or 30ppm).
More amazing is there price estimates. For something that's been in development for over 10 years, you'd expect some hefty costs involved, instead, they are claiming that their A4 printer will retail around $200, and I've already alluded to their cost per page estimates, which means they aren't going to try and supplement their pricing with ink.
It's pretty amazing stuff, the only thing that I don't like is that they are God awful looking, ugly as hell hunks of plastic. Clearly they aren't focused on designing something that's aesthetically pleasing. It will be interesting to see if they keep the current design, or if they end up sending it out to someone for tweaking. Because, as hard as it might be for the average engineer to understand, there's a lot more weight on looks of a product in the buying decision sometimes than in functionality.
"Well, I know it will improve my efficiency by over 500%, but it's so ugly. I'll go with the more expensive one that won't improve anything. It looks so much better."
Alright Jim's here... so I'm done.
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