777 Means Nothing to Me

If only if the dow had dropped 666 points yesterday, I could be blogging about this being yet another harbinger of the apocalypse. But alas, there was a last minute speech from House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and over 100 Republicans helped to put an end to bailout package 1.0. So in turn, the fiduciary gods decided to punish the markets for congress' unwillingness to prop up the now failed money markets.

Personally, and this is really only from the standpoint of greed, I have absolutely no interest in this bailout coming to fruition. Now, thats not to say that I don't understand why it may be necessary, but the realities of my personal financial situation make this impossible to agree to. Isn't personal fiscal freedom the most important aspect of a free market economy?

The markets are volatile, yes. Perhaps this is a sign that we may need to rethink some of our most basic tenets of modern banking. Maybe all of this fictional borrowing and trading has finally gotten the better of itself. But on the same note, the last major (by that I mean on the scale of only this and the great depression) government interference with banking institutions came with the New Deal, which helped to lay the foundation of sixty years of almost uninterrupted American prosperity and wealth.

I think that the urgency that all this has been carried out with is tantamount to its failure. Our lame duck president has only brokered another deal to bail out those to whom he has already helped so much through his blindfolded economics policy. I think that this can wait until a more nuanced, rational president is in office.

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More reasons to love Roku

Especially now that I've forced it to always stream at 2.2mbps! During my struggle to keep up with my google reader today, I found this gem, a mortal combat-esque button combo that opens a debugging menu! The only options that are available relate to streaming and a debugging mode, but you can set your default streaming speed. This is great because my internet connection can usually always deliver the full 2.2mbps (thats 4 netflix quality dots / 480p 4:3 and 16:9), which is consistently better than my comcast cable, and having this as a default option is great.

I can't say enough how satisfied I've been with the netflix roku player. Now that they've announced that a SDK and plans to open the player up to other streaming services, there's lots of hope for not only HD quality streaming, but also potential for making it a front end for a home streaming-media server (sort of like the one living in my home office).

Opening this device up would really be a big move for Roku, and I hope they stick to the language in their press release, that "everyone" could develop streaming for this thing. I knew that there was good reason to invest in this, because its more and more becoming the center of my television consumption.

On the note of streaming media servers, my linux box is coming along quite nicely. Now I've got all my interface tweaks up, a reliable smb.conf file and firefly streaming my backup'ed itunes library. The only real drag is making my macbook act as the frontend when I want to connect my tv to the sever.

My ugly, ugly setup for watching everything:


Also, the time has come to properly wall mount my tv and condense my tangled mess of cables and components into a proper shelving unit. Although it doesn't really bother me that my setup is messy, which it is, because it all works beautifully. The next addition is a ps3 or xbox 360, obviously.

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Production Stills

At the wrap party for Breathless, the movie I worked on a few weeks ago, I got a dvd with all the production still on it, and there are some really great photos. It was a lot of fun despite the long hours and night shoots. We got some really good looking footage, and Mr. Koester is going to have a pretty hott little movie at the end of this.

Here are the stills:

Pedestrian bridge we lit:


Some pretty big guns:


There are innumerable pictures of me texting during downtime on set:


Ride that dolly:


Yeah for genny-powered sets:

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Presidential Debates Tonight

Gonna watch? Its been a really interesting week, with the federal bailout and the sitting lame duck looking silly. To top that off John McCain "suspending his campaign" to deal with the financial crisis, which didn't really do much other than paint him as a politicking distraction.

Go Obama!

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Permanent Record is straight from Big Brother

Last night my friend James pointed me to this site, permanentrecord.com, and its actually really scary. Culling bank records, magazine subscriptions and other public information, this thing is literally a directory of almost everyone in America, with detailed demographic information and "guesses" about certain personality traits, even religion. The site is simple enough that anyone could use it. Even though its captcha protected, I don't feel any more comfortable about it.

I searched for the obvious: my name, my family's names, my friends--it had nearly all of them in its database. Not all of the info is correct, but it could potentially be enough to steal someone's identity. Here's part of the site's official statement:

Your bank. Your cell phone provider. Your water company. Your government. Your gas station. Where you buy your music. Where you buy your frozen dinners. That timeshare pitch you suffered through a while back. Pretty much every organization you can name. And a few you probably can't.

Amazingly, everything you see here is stuff that other people make public about you, right or wrong. A lot of it can be found with just a few minutes with Google. We bring it all together for you to see. We're going to shake things up a bit.

See, they've been selling your information to each other for years. It's a big industry. So fine, at least now *you* can see what they think they know about you. Of course, invariably some portion of it is wrong, so don't take this too seriously. But like it or not (and who would?) this stuff is part of your Permanent Record because this is what thousands of people and companies use to classify you. Shame, isn't it?

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We are so proud of him...

So my older brother, Max, was mentioned in the New York Times today. Its pretty exciting stuff, here's the blurb:

Maxwell Breed, a lawyer for Ms. Escano’s landlord, Mon-Rose Realty Corporation, said: “Our policy is not to comment on pending litigation.”

Way to get our family name out there bud! Despite being generally construed as being on the side of evil, my brother's foray into the tabloids was largely successful. Little else relating to my kinfolk was mentioned. Here's the link to the article:

Despite New Law, Subsidized Tenants Find Doors Closed

via Nytimes

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Day Off

Spent most of today being punished for going out last night, but was interesting productive as well. I worked on my bitchin linux server for most of the day and am pretty satisfied with what I was able to accomplish. Not only did I get my BOINC client up and running, but I got awm and conky to work finally. And I increased my screen resolution for increased productivity (even if it means ctrl-+'ing every time I open a new tab in firefox).



All suitably nerdy, esp. with the screenshot.

I bought a few more used books today from bookworm, as per usual. Find of the day would have to be Joyce Images by Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello--dozens of great pictures of James Joyce and neat forward by Anthony Burgess.

I attempted to make some nice hi-res scans, but my scanner software was refusing to behave, so I had to settle for slightly lower quality than I wanted. I plan on posting some more of these, but only when I can get a bit better quality out of my scanner, because it can definitely do it.

Also I got a Norton Critical (my favorite edition of pretty much anything) of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and Voltaire's hilarious Candide, a nice paperback Great Gatsby from the 70s and a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which has lots of juicy crit in it. Nothing new, per se, except the Conrad, but all great editions of books that I tend to read ad nauseum.

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