onfocus

The Fast Runner is one of the most powerful films I've seen in a long time. It's easily the best film I've seen this year. The photography is beautiful and the story engaging. If it's playing near you, see it while you can because it's worth experiencing the cinematography on a big screen. The film was shot with digital cameras, so I was a little distracted by the quality at points. But it was filmed in such a harsh environment, that I don't think this movie would have been possible with standard film cameras. Beyond making sci-fi DVDs look crisp, this film shows that digital technology has opened up filmmaking to a wider group of people in more environments. They also showed a few behind-the-scenes clips during the credits, and I can't wait to find out more about how they filmed it. Hopefully the DVD release will include a making-of feature.

more >>

I have a scanner again! I'm going to start sorting through some of my 35mm pictures from Alaska and see if there are any to post. I spotted this one right away and used it to test the scanner. It was early morning and everything was serene when I took this picture—it felt like we were inside a Japanese woodblock print.

More spiraling. Jason sent links to information about Fibonacci's Spiral (scroll down) and the Golden Mean. Very interesting reading—especially as the golden ratio relates to art. Also, there's this book: The Curves of Life: Being an Account of Spiral Formations and Their Application to Growth in Nature, to Science, and to Art: With Special Reference. The special reference sounds especially special.

Also, meg's mom spotted a spiraly shirt and clipped it before reading my post.

The Language of Ornament by James Trilling

I'm reading this now and it's fascinating because it brings the background into the foreground. It's the background of backgrounds. It focuses on the evolution of those patterns and styles that are primarily meant to enhance something else rather than be itself. It mentions that 12,000 years ago, people began using spirals to decorate objects. Before that, people made figures (paintings/carvings that were supposed to represent things they saw in the world) but spirals were an early and widespread purely decorative design. (Apparently across cultures.) Since I read this fact, I've been looking for spirals everywhere without finding them. There's something completely asymmetrical about a 2-D spiral, and I'm guessing it doesn't fit into the modern design palette. But I'm determined to find them. With the discovery that DNA is sort of a double-spiral, you'd think it would have an ornamental comeback. Have you seen any spirals out there?

Update: logos, symbols.com entry, archimedes' spiral.

I uninstalled something somewhere along the line and lost my Define browser extension. I wrote a new one to take its place and figured I'd share it. I use it most often as a simple spell-checker.

It works like the other IE extensions I've posted before. (Google It, DayPop Links, and Add Link Titles.) After installing, a new entry will appear in the right-click context menu of Internet Explorer called Define. Then you can highlight any word on a web page, right-click, choose Define and a new window will open with that word's definition at m-w.com. When I lost it, I kept using Google It instead, but it isn't quite the same when you're looking for the definition.

Define Setup
(right-click, Save Target As..., click to install. Windows only.)

If you work with SQL Server, you're familiar with its pathetic date formatting options. Check out this great user-defined date formatting function. It works well and it made me realize I need to write something similar for VBScript. The dream is to never have to string together a bunch of DatePart()s again.

The book arrival is interesting timing. It was three years ago today that Pyra (then just Ev, Meg, and I) launched Blogger.

My copy of We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs arrived today. skp ordered it for me from Wiley.com, the publisher. (Even authors have to order the book if we want to see it right away.) It's satisfying to see the book in its final form after passing around Word documents for so long. When you're writing and editing you get so mired with details, problems, and deadlines that it's easy to loose site of what you're actually making. Now, after seeing the book it hit me—so that's what I was doing.

There's a patch available for Internet Explorer that fixes some security problems.

I added support for Barnes & Noble and Powells links to the Weblog Bookwatch. So if you link to individual books at these stores (the ISBN must be in the URL) and notify weblogs.com when you update, they'll be included in the mix. It's books only, so the MediaWatch won't be affected by this.