George Lucas in Carbonite

I'm afraid George Lucas has recently been frozen in carbonite . . .

Content and creativity

In my Blather blog, I recently mentioned that Pixar is one of the only animation studios that seems to deliver a solid story time and time again, while other studios don't seem to have such success.

In this article Russell smith says:

I have heard people who work in entertainment industries - record labels, cable-TV chains - plan new entertainment products. I have been privy to conversations about platforms and demographics and advertising opportunities that mention "content" as a necessary afterthought. "Of course," I have heard people say, "we'll have to have some really top-level content as well. We have someone who can handle that."

Most of these discussions are about new websites or Web magazines. They are conceived as platforms for advertising. You think up a target market first, then you think up a look or style you think they will appreciate. There is a lot of describing the ideal consumer for this advertising: He or she lives in this part of town, drives this kind of car and has these products in his bathroom. Printed proposals for new magazines or TV shows often have pictures of these fictitious people - usually, amusingly, cut and pasted from advertising in other magazines.

What he says does not seem far-fetched at all, does it? Is it any wonder not many other studios can match Pixar's goodness?

"Content" should not be the afterthought, should it? Shouldn't it be the starting point for everything else?

USB Popcorn Machine

USB Popcorn Maker - Watch more free videos

Mmmmm... delicious... I could use one of these.

"What We Say Without Words"

I thought this was cool... a little slide-show illustrating of how the motions of our feet, arms, and hands can reveal our inner feelings.

"Man sues church over God injury"

According to the article:

A man said he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while at a Knoxville church.

Now he wants Lakewind Church to pay $2.5 million for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering he said he's endured from his injuries.

I'm not sure it was the spirit of God that consumed ya there...

Wordle.net

This web thing is pretty cool... it allows you to put in a bunch of text, or an rss feed, and it creates the word map thingies... here's a wordle from the rss feed of my Blather blog:



Cool, no?

New hand-eye relationship?

According to this article:

humans more thoroughly inspect objects when their hands are near the object rather than farther away from it. They posit that this processing exists because humans need to be able to analyze objects near their hands, to figure out how to handle them or to provide protection against them.

...

Not only do we see items differently when our hands are near them, we also process the meaning of language differently, Abrams said. Other experiments showed that when reading nonsensible sentences, subjects were less likely to realize that the sentences were illogical when their hands were near the display. This means that humans are less likely to recognize errors when we are holding the something we are reading.