29 June 2004

Scott Kelby on Quark v. InDesign, February 2003

Follow this link to a very engaging and witty editorial that Scott Kelby of MacDesign magazine wrote in February 2003. Then, a year and a half ago, Quark was still at version 5 and InDesign had just come out with version 2.0, or Round 2 as i had it in my blog entry about this titanic struggle.

Kelby is a very entertaining and witty writer. His latest, "Macintosh:The Naked Truth", is a book I suggest very highly...but maybe not to PC fans. It's unapologetic.

Anyway, I've prattled on enough...Now, to the main event:

Read Big Trouble in Page Layout Land by Scott Kelby, copyright MacDesign magazine, February 2003

Sidling Back Up To Catholicism

Check out this blog post over at Pariah's about comfort in Catholicism. I am, in fact, a confirmed Catholic who has gone apostate, having not attended Mass for years and years. Also, though I have a perfectly legal union with a perfectly lovely The Wife[tm] and we carry out our marriage as though it were a gift from God, it was done under a Unitarian minister - who believes in God just as much as I, my wife, and any Catholic does, but since it was done outside the Church, the Church does not necessarily acknowledge it.

This is important personally because of late I have felt a gentle call back to the Church of my birth and baptism. I'm sure the reason is a mix of several factors: the craving for spirituality, the need to feel greater than what I am, the nagging feeling that I may very well have a soul, the ongoing awareness that I am a very self-centered and selfish person and I feel that, at least indirectly, harms others.

There is also a bit of reaction; the Church has endured travail, care and criticism lately, much of it deserved. The priests' treatment of children in the past (and the Church's sheltering of men who should have been punished) is a spot on the collective soul of the Church that must be addressed. The Catholic Church must own up to its responsiblity in the matter and must change. But, inasmuch as the mission of the Church isn't to abuse children, it deserves defense. I remain convinced that the Catholic Church is, by and large, composed of people who wish to make the world better and believe in God and Jesus Christ, just as sincerely and devoutly as members of any other Christian sect.

Perhaps the call I now feel is the desire to defend the faith of my baptism and add my own energy to the rebuilding that must happen.

I take a certain approach to religion that others may find baffling. I do not require proofs of Christ's exisentence, I do not require that the Bible be a literal account of creation and natural history. I do not expect religion to recapitulate science. I feel that religion is about cosmic purpose whilst science is about cosmic order. Science has no remit to verify or prove the Bible, the existence of Adam and Eve, that there was a Christ and that he died on the cross. And Christian faiths who have those tenets confound me greatly.

I believe the proper word for what I am is fideist. It was introduced to me by Martin Gardner in one of his fantastic books about science and frauds but never defined, but the root, the Latin word fide, I believe means "faith". I take the meaning of the word to denote an individual who holds that there are really some things that are really only reasonably accepted as faith.

I therefore do not need to travel to Glen Rose, Texas, anytiime soon. I do not feel that evolution is a dirty word, nor do I feel that it contravenes or blasphemes God in any way, shape or form. The picture of the Christian faith is itself evolving; as epochs pass God reveals more of his truth to us, as we earnestly seek to understand it and to mature as a species. In the same way, Science reveals more of the truth of natural history to us, as we mature as seeking beings striving to understand the Cosmos.

We neither know the whole story, either spiritually or scientifically. Some of us are courageous enough to be atheists, I, however, still crave the Creator. We, as a species, may grow beyond that. I don't know if it will ever happen. It certainly won't happen in my lifetime.

Columnists on the Sidebar

Allow me to introduce my list of must-read columnists, the heading Columnists You Should Be Reading on the left there. No matter what else you do read, read these guys.

Ted Rall...there's an obvious one.

Steve Duin (last name pronounced "Dean") is a regular columnist for my hometown paper, The Oregonian. The O has had vast swings of quality over the last several years (remember, the Packwood story was broken in the pages of the Washington Post), but Steve keeps the paper worth the price of subscription. If you want a look into real Oregon heart and soul, his gentle yet strong observations on what goes on in My Hometown and about the area are a must.

Face it, people, he's just smarter than a lot of us are.

28 June 2004

Quark. InDesign. Fight!

Chances are, you read print media (it hasn't entirely gone out of style. Succinctly, the way things get on those pages in the way that they get there is, in these digital days, handled by something called a page layout program. For the unitiated, think of a word processor, add a bunch of things that allow you to place and format graphics, organize your text into boxes for the purpose of arranging, and subtract the wp functions.

What you have won't be a country mile from a page layout program, but it'll get you going in that direction.

Remember when the Macintosh was new and people were all up into making thier own flyers and newsletters with it. Page layout programs were how many of them got it done (word processors were used, too, but thier output was...and still is...a lot less sophisticated). It was the difference between nicely formatting a typed sheet and cutting up pictures, colored shapes, and forcing that text into columns. That, and that intangible called design. But more on that later. Or maybe in another post.

Anyway, back during the early days of the Mac there happened a program called PageMaker. Created by Aldus Corporation, PageMaker, the Mac, and Apple's new printer line ushered in the phenom we call Desk Top Publishing...mostly abbreveated DTP. PageMaker was the first big layout program, and it is still considered the pioneer.

But, coming up to the present day, we find that PageMaker being urged off into the sunset. Aldus got distracted and, during the 1990's, a comer from Denver called Quark, Inc. issued a program called XPress. Usually referred to by users as "QuarkXPress" or merely "Quark", it introduced fine, sophisticated typeography, much better than PageMaker offered. While Aldus navel gazed, Quark stole thier thunder. Evenutally, unable to survive while thier flagship fell off, Aldus went extinct, selling PageMaker to Adobe whilst Quark essentially took over the print world.

Adobe has long been renowned for its image manipulation software: Illustrator and the Godzilla of image editing, Photoshop. It never had a page layout prog. PageMaker filled a niche but had been developed to the hilt and wasn't up to being pushed any further. In the publishing world, Quark become the professional tool, whilst PageMaker became the tool for amateur DTP'ers and offices. Moreover, Quark garnered the rep as the designers tool.

If we can stand another digression, I think the distinction between what is designer and what is not may be apropos. I may merely be a student at this time, but what an education I've had....anyway, think about what is meant by design. Design, to try to be succint about it, cares a lot about not only the whole but the where and the why and the how of the pieces. In something that is designed, everything you can see has had some thought to it. Very little-or nothing, if it's done right-in something that's designed is, in the end, the result of an accident. Not only does information have power, so does the way it's presented...from the font chosen to the spacing between lines and characters to the spacing between paragraphs. It's information as form and function. Different things have different powers to get the eye's attention, and design uses it all to communicate.

The most basic distinction is that a typical user of a DTP application may be aware of certain formatting features, but if they want a big space between paragraphs, they'll double-space, letting the computer dictate the space. A designer will tweak the space-before and space-after attributes with a fine sense of discrimination.

Quark handled such things with aplomb, so well, that PageMaker got relegated.

Move up to the present. Quark is ensconced and complacent. Macs, which have made thier may into most designer's hearts, have gone to the next generation OS...Mac OS X, but it's been three years since debut and Quark still hasn't made XPress OS X native, forcing users to run it in what's called the "Classic" mode...essentially a Mac OS 9 virtual machine. It has problems relating to hardware. Indeed, Quark seems to have gotten so unresponsive to users cares and concerns that most users are still using release 4 under OS 9, whilst QXP5 and OS X are available. Also, Quark has by this time gained a rep for downright disdain for its users, and it's technical support becomes renowned for simple badness.

But Quark is everywhere. And that word of art, workflow has generated a whole network of support that is geared to handling Quark output. The only game in town for the pro.

Into this mien, Adobe introduces it's new child. Christened InDesign, it arrives with hopes that it is the legendary "Quark killer". Because familiarity breeds not only comfort but contempt, and spurred by it's disdain for its users, Quark, despite being everywhere, is a certain sort of vulnerable.

InDesign, said to be spawned from Aldus's-then Adobe's-project to supercede PageMaker, in version 1, turned heads. But it came off as weak. However, its interface had a family resemblance to the other Adobe design apps and the Adobe quality was apparently in. Round 1 to Quark (still sitting fat and happy with release 4.11). Eyes were, however, on the newcomer. Greatness was expected.

Round 2. InDesign 2 released, Quark still on version 4. InDesign much improved; tighter integration with Illustrator and Photoshop; native OS X operation. Quark was still Quark. Price was turning heads, too: A combination of Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, and Acrobat...the Design Collection...sold for about $1K on the street. So did Quark...with no image geeking apps at all. InDesign understood Adobe output and could output PDFs. Not so in Quark. But...with a massive installed base and no obvious compelling feature set (and some things, like mixing spot colors with mixed inks that Quark users came to rely on, still not implemented), Quark bests InDesign at the bell. However, given Quark's rep for slow change and its apparent distraction with publishing to the Web instead of solving existing problems and not coming up with an OS X native version, a big question mark emerges next to Quark's publishing throne. Round 2 to Quark, but the champeen is bruised, just a bit. Heads are turned Adobe's way, watching for what's up next.

Round 3. Quark finally out of the gate with version 6, which is finally OS X native. But is it too little too late? Also added is the ability to produce PDFs (with the 'Jaws' engine), synchronized text (change text in one spot in your app, change it in all other places it appears that way), and the new project paradigm displacing the document paradigm. Looks good in OS X too. And multiple undos...what took 'em so long. But...the improvement seems weak. PDFs can be flawed. Synchronized text has limits. Multiple undos...don't always. And the project paradigm is kinda cool and innovative, but is that really enough? Some reviews disappointed, hoping Quark was going to have a quantum leap and instead getting just Quark. Largely, the program hasn't changed appreciably. But...Adobe comes out with...the Creative Suite. AdobeCS. Now, you don't just buy one program (though you can if you want), you buy InDesign CS, Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, and thier webdesigner GoLive as one unit, all together at the price that you buy one copy of Quark for. Acrobat is included. Now not only are the programs so tightly integrated you sometimes have to look at the icon at the top of the toolbox to remember where you are, but output from one of the image geekers will drag and drop into InDesign without having to save out of the image geekers. InDesign respects Photoshop transparency, meaning no irritating clipping paths (designers know why this is a Godlike thing...nondesigners, take my word for it, this rocks. Handles PDFs with ease...after all, it was Adobe who invented the format and set the standard. And an interface that speaks too Quark users, with a contextual palette that can behave like Quark's measurements control palette.

Round 3? The judges are out on Round 3. They're still deciding. What now seems clear is that Quark may now have to start playing catchup to Adobe. InDesign hasn't killed Quark...not yet...but it has inflicted some wounds, and if the old champeen isn't down for the count yet, it's probably because of the Installed User Base of Doom.

But Adobe has more than turned heads this time. Publishers are jumping ship. And Quark is in the position that, as Pariah Burke has said, "if [Quark] 7 doesn't achieve feature parity with InDesign, Quark is sunk." Even with my small bit of exposure, I can't help but agree.

The change is coming. The Portland Community College Graphic Design department has shifted to training InDesign from teaching Quark for many years. We watch for Quark's answer with bated breath.

The next round will tell the tale.

26 June 2004

Your Liberal Refill

Last Week's Ted Rall:

Read it!

Ask yourself why, again, we invaded Iraq? Why we still aren't there for the WMDs? Why the President is allowed to get away with not being resolute and consistent?

All Clinton did was sully his own marriage. Nobody died for that. Everybody in most states have now have heard of a local who has died in pursuit of...something over there.

Demand vision on the part of the Government. Moreover, demand - of an Administration that wraps themselves in "support the troops" rhetoric whenever questioned about its own motives - why our Government won't properly equip the men and women they expect to die in support of the mission, and why they let big corps (like Halliburton, of course) get away with overcharging you and me (that's our taxes, folks) for services they didn't even render to our troops.

Supporting the troops means seeing to it that they come home alive and they have the lives they were supposed to get along with.

Also, listen to the truth on Air America. Don't cry if you get offended, as the Truth isn't pretty. You can always go back and listen to Rush. They have tuning knobs on the radio these days. 15 stations nationwide and grown, and it's on satellite radio.

Truth to Power and all that.

25 June 2004

Ah, Oregon weather

They say that if you don't like the weather around here, just wait 5 minutes and it'll change. Here's what they mean.

Last week we had temps in the 90's(F). Severely hot. Unseasonably hot.

Over the weekend, a marine layer asserted itself and bitch-slapped the heatwave. Thus, the warm weather stays east of the Cascades, where it belongs.It's been 65-70F all week, and there's the lovely spectre of possible rain hanging about. Now, this is what Oregon weather is supposed to be like!

Really, you have one cloudy day, and the weatherpeople over at KATU "Rate the Day" 5 or less. For Oregonians, they just don't get it.

If you want hothothot that's what God gave us Arizona and Nevada for. Go, you.

23 June 2004

Goldschmidt, Goldschmidt, Goldschmidt

Aye, Neil, we knew you so well, or so we thought.

By now, we have been treated to a livid feast of the opinion and storm about Neil Goldschmidt's thirty-years-ago adult association with a 14-year old girl. It's gotten absurd. The end product I'm talking about is Governor Kulongoski's having to deny knowing about (who knew Oregon Democrats were that clubby? I never got that impression) and the ridiculous move to have his portrait removed from the Capitol building in Salem.

I have problems with that last one (the first one is just another dark joke in the danse macabre that Oregon politics has become over the last decade). I have a problem with deleting personages that were an actual part of history in America, even if they were unsavory sons-a-bitches. Take Richard Nixon, for example. No one high politician has done more damage in the last century of public service in this country, or has made collateral damage to public institutions possible...or, in some cases, necessary. But we don't delete him from the listings of American presidents, nor do we devalue the victories he did have...opening China, ending the Vietnam war.

Neil did good things while mayor of Portland, I'd say that Portland wouldn't look like it does today or even have the reputation it does had he not served. Niel's governorship yielded nothing memorable, unfortunately, and when he decided not to run for a second term, I remember feeling angry; he hadn't stayed long enough to do anything of substance and left far too soon.

But, for all that, he was still a governor of Oregon, good, bad, or indifferent. He will still have been governor, regardless of what he got away with since thirty years. "Unpersoning" people just seems wrong somehow.

The Gardening Blues

Well, not blues actually. But yesterday was the first time I cut the grass on a plot of land we bot for ouselfes. It was a good experience; I need the excercise, the yard needed clipping badly, and it's been a blessed respite from the heat wave we here in Portland Oregon were experiencing.

The prior owners certainly loved thier roses. There are several of them in the flower beds surrounding the back yard, some very beautiful, some just decorative and not very moving. Most of them are going. A couple that we actually like are staying, but we have friends who are way too into gardening and they will like them.

There are also calla lillies, rhododendron, daphnea (the prior owners called it old growth, and indeed it's the biggest daphnea The Wife[tm] has ever seen.

She's talking about major revisions to the yard, such as getting rid of some evergreen shrubs out front. I'm down with that. Though I usually ador evergreens, these are just in the way.

19 June 2004

Die zehn Katzen

After looking at other kitty pictures, I decided to list the ten of the fuzzballs we have.

But I just realized I'm not in the mood to type out all that direction, 'cause I'm lazy. So,
here is a link to The Wife's {tm} home page where there's a list and long descriptions of all
of them (the ten plus a few others that have walked with us) complete with adoooorable
pictchas.

Clicky here!

Saturday Slant:That Annoying Celebrity

Pariah invites us to Play....

Well, it's not so much that annoying celebrity, as it is those. Damn, the Q is so hard to respond to. Call it cliche'd proletarian class-anger if you will, but the idea that Pauly Shore, for example, makes more even being unsuccessful at being Pauly Shore than I do on my best day in my current day-job employ really cheeses me.

Yes, I said cheeses. Deal

Anyway, I guess the annoyance for me comes in a series. Some time ago, it was Maury Povich/Connie Chung. After that it was Jerry Springer. Along the way it has been Pauly Shore (as menched), Elizabeth Hurley (tho' she redeemed herself somewhat in Austin Powers), Rush Limbaugh (for more than obvious reasons).

Right now my most annoying celebrity has got to be Bill O'Reilly. Lies repeatedly, pretends to be better than he is, "The No Spin Zone" with loads of spin, faux (Fox?) intellectualism that gets enraged when it has to walk the talk.
This will change; watch this space.

I guess I'd say that it's not any certain celebrity that's annoying, but celebrity that's annoying. Are you just some average schmo? Well, with INSTANT CELEBRITY you, too, will be esteemed by those who used to be your peers; your every utterance and cause will seem profound and just; people will take poison just because you said it's good...no matter what you really are like!!!!

Celebrity! Score some today!

Refer the inspiring question at the button below. Play along if you've the courage!

The Saturday Slant - New Every Saturday Morning

17 June 2004

New Ted Rall

Why Democrats can't yet count on defeating Bush in November...

read it.

What the hell were they thinking? Party discipline anyone? I like McCain, too, but he's not a Democrat, he's not even liberal. He brought a needed breath of honesty to the Republican party, but where the rubber hits the road he's on the wrong side of everything important and, worse, when it gets tough he still supports King George.

I'd like to see someone like Edwards or (yes, even) Dean as Veep, for what that's worth.

16 June 2004

Getting AppleCared

With the 1-year hardware warranty on my PowerMac G4 up tomorrow I decided, at pretty much the last minute, to plump $249 on the AppleCare Protection Plan.

Why? Normally I'd laugh at extended warranties. But this time it makes sense. Considering that replacing the gorgeous 17" Apple Studio Display would cost $600-$700 if I bought it new (who knows what used availiblity would be? I wouldn't cross the street on those odds) and, while availible, hardware service may be quite expensive, the $249 (which is around eight per cent of what I had to spend to acquire the system and software I started out with) seems quite reasonable, covering phone support and hardware repair/replacement on a system I hope to use to help make my future living. And, I'm covered into 2006.

So, long story short, it seemed worth it. Guess what? "Peace of Mind" really is a marketing point.

All Over But The Shouting

Well, it's done. We are now our own landlord. After a marathon apartment-cleaning session and a marathon move-everything-that's-supposed't'be-in-the-basement session, I have a day off for the first time in about ten months (splitting time between school and work leaves no free time. Thank God school is interesting!).

We are now real property owners in the most tax-conflicted state in the USA. Yips! However, owning a home in Portland Oregon has been a lifelong dream. That dream is now realized, at least for the interim. Now, to begin to make it unassailable.

They say economic times are tough, and indeed that's true. But I have always believed that once you've decided that you want something, eventually, that something will be yours.

13 June 2004

Despite All the Sturm und Drang

...I pulled A's in all three of the courses I took this term: Intro to Marketing, History of Graphic Design, and Electronic Layout-InDesign.

Yay, me. Not too bad for a 40something with a full time jorb.

12 June 2004

It ain't Rose Festival for everyone

Tonight, when your dear parade is blocking traffic, and you are out in the world acting like everybody's off for the day, try to remember the people who have to work so you can act blithely like the world suspended its daily turning just for you and your three day weekend.

Those people have to work. Chances don't always work out. There but for the grace of God go you, Mr and Mrs and Ms Portland, and if things had worked out just so it would've been you going to work every holiday weekend.

Think about that the next time you abuse some mini-wage slave who didn't just jump fast enough for you.

Maybe you don't get good service because you really don't deserve it.

If Reagan wouldn't have had me at his funeral...

...why did I have to be at his all last week?

Last public display of mourning yesterday, praises.

09 June 2004

Goodbye, Mr. Reagan

Well, well. The Gipper is finally pushing up the daisies.

I'm a bit mego'd but not at all surprised that he's getting the big pass. I came of voting age with Reagan's administration and watched him fire the ATCs, get big points for delegating everything, dance all over the Constitution with Iran-Contra, pretend not to know what was going on, and really finish my opinion of the modern Republican party as something that was, in total, not to be trusted or ever voted for, and impression that began with watching the Nixon presidency.

Really, I just can't understand why anyone who believes they have a heart and soul votes R. I just don't get it. They've always chosen doctrine over serving the electorate, and always pretended nothing's the matter and walked away when it all went south on them.

I was unaffiliated up until this year, but went ahead and rereistered as a Democrat for two reasons: 1) I like John Kerry and 2) I hope it pisses off Karl Rove.

Want more reasons why you shouldn't participate in the Gipper's memorial public celebration? Read the following while it's still legal to do so

Also, read the latest Ted Rall. Actually, follow Ted. He's going to be one of the first thrown into prison (if not up against the wall) when the Republicans complete thier goal of one-party rule, so read him while it's still legal.

And Ted regularly posts opinion on the Yahoo Op-Ed page.

He speaks truth, which is frequently rude to power. You don't get a free pass in your life, why do you let those in power get away with stuff that affects your life right now as an American?

Read Cursor and Atrios every day. I have links over there on...well, on the left.

The Moving and the Grooving

As I said in a previous post, we are indeed moving. From one part of southease Portland OR to another part of southeast Portland OR. For the moment and for the purposes of the fact that this is personal-to-the-world (noting that at the moment this blog is completely unread by anybody and is more of an experimental enterprise) I think it better to talk in terms general, therefore, we are going from the area of SE 52nd and Flavel to SE 112th and Market.

We are coming up on the end of our 30-day moving out period and there is still a little too much here in the old apt for my tastes although The Wife[tm] is optimistic. Despite going on about all the 'moving karma' we were supposed to collect on she's been doing it all herself. Finally I have days that I don't have to worry about schoolwork to get this thing done or to do it to my utmost in the time I do have before i go off to the Salt Mine nightly at 22:00.

It's a bit of sturm und drang, true, but in the end when we are ensconced in the new Sonnenuhrhaus and I'm set up in my basement office (which is a really sweet thing) and the moving and the grooving is finally over, that all will be well.

We are buying this place. We plan on staying there for an awful long time.

Skoolzout

Yep, that's right. School has ended for the year. I am, as a matter of fact a student myself; I am attempting to remake myself into a Graphic Designer. I've finished two years of a three year program - length necessitated by being chained to my current job for 40 hours per week. And there is frustration in the endless attempts to put my career change in the front seat only to have other things force it to the back seat but that's for another post.

Oh, yes, I know about the tech and the software now. I know about Adobe CS versus QuarkXPress. I know about living with a PowerMac G4 (I highly recommend this btw). I know about upgrading to Panther from Jaguar. I know the smugness of knowing that Microsoft ain't got its act together w.r.t Longhorn and the irritation of Steve Jobs making the mispredicition of 3Ghz by June but my 2-brain 1.25 GHz G4 works better than any Wintel I've ever used and seems to work just as fast.

Now I've been designing things for classes long enough that I ache just a little that I have these apps laying dormant on my HD doing nothing for now. I want something to design! I'd almost do it for free.

There is the moving and the grooving that is taking up all the rest of my time. That's also for another post.

I love designing things. Time to take up my own projects if I can't find others I suppose.

03 June 2004

The Day After Tomorrow

There are things here that could be considered spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.

It pretty much was everything the reviewers said it was. Not the world-beater that Independence Day was, but worth the money, I thought.

I want to put in a word for the good old-fashioned disaster movie. I think Roland Emmerich is a current master. He knows how to wow you, and how to connect the wows with enough story that you stay interested. Not necessarily high quality story, mind...it's got a bunch of cliches and the characters are kind of predictable. But he knows how to tug heart strings, you bet. The touching and tender moments and The Wife{tm} and myself holding hands and choking back a tear. Really.

The money shots were the thing. They were, (1) early on, the destruction of Los Angeles buy a swarm of tornadoes. A triumph of special effects. And, in a clever play, one character watches his boss buy the farm on (what else but) FOX-TV, just before getting killed himself. We don't directly see the deaths but thier immediacy is convincingly communicated by the sequence of events. The one character just menched dies when the biggest tornado tears off the face of the downtown LA skyscraper that he's in. The only apparent survivor is a Hispanic janitor, who just happens to be behind just that next wall. The look on his face as we pull back to see him, insectlike amidst the wasteland of downtown LA is priceless.

Then, (2), the ongoing destruction of New York by wave and then ice. An apparent storm surge nearly submerges the Statue of Liberty on its way into New York Harbor. Waves swamping the boardwalks and urban blocks, quickly covering the traffic choked streets.

The FX quality of DAT is way above that of ID4 which, while memorable, looks fakey in places; I've never been to NY but even I know that there is no street that goes right up to the front door of the Empire State Building.

More pluses:

Dennis Quaid. I've always liked Dennis Quaid. And, with his role in this movie that means Emmerich has had both the Quaid brothers employed at one time or another.

Jake Gyllenhaal. I can see why he's an up and comer. I believed his act.

Emmy Rossum. She's a cutie. Love those eyes. Really evocative.

Ian Holm. What's not to like? He brings class to whatever he touches. And his final scene with his two colleagues at the doomed weather station in Scotland was eloquent of final defiance against the odds.

Dash Mihok. Sam Hall's (Jake Gyllenhaal) nerdy brainiac friend and Decathlon teammate. Best line in the movie: whilst attempting to make a radio work during being holed up in the New York Public Library, a policeman suggests that maybe he should get some help. After listing the genius clubs he's president of, including the electronics club, he suggests that "If there's a bigger nerd in the place, please point him out." The officer wisely leaves him to his devices.

I liked the movie. I'd watch it again, and I'll be looking forward to place it on my DVD shelf next to great F/X epics like ID4, The War of the Worlds and such like that.

Got some more mulling in the vein of distaster flicks, but that's for another entry. This one's gone on long enough.

02 June 2004

Why?

Zehn katzen is German for ten cats. Which is how many we have. But it's not one of those crazy-hermit-cat-collecting things you see on the evening news, so don't go thinking that.