You know, I've never really considered LotR strict fantasy. Personally, I think it has more in common with mythology than it does run of the mill, escapist fantsy. That's a big part of it's appeal. It has the huge, archetypal appeal of a true myth. That's why Tolkien is the king hot shit daddy of the "genre".
true, it's got elves and dwarves and orcs and wizards, but their development ant treatment is more than just mere fantasy.
Ah, Shrek and Monsters Inc! Fabuslous movies both. I'm definitely skewed more toward the Pixar flicks. I think they're just better storytellers, not just kick ass animators. With Pixar movies, you forget about the animation and focus on the story. With Dreamworks animated pieces, you're always engrossed with the animation which detracts from the story IMO.
As a film student, I love IMDB. I don't read it for user ratings of movies because of all the reasons mentioned in this thread. However, as a source of information it's fabulous. I have IMDB open whenever I'm watching a movie at home.
"Hey! That guy looks familiar! His character is great! Where have I seen him before?" tap tap tap "Oh, he was THAT guy in that awful piece of crap! Interesting! Oooo! Terry Gilliam had something to do with that?" tap tap tap "Oh crap! Back to chapter selection. Missed something!"
There are movies and then there is "film". Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Amelie, Brazil, The Godfather, American Beauty, etc. Those are fine works of film. Very deep storytelling, with very deep social meaning and commentary. These are movies with very specific purposes and executed marvelously.
Now, Star Wars, LotR:FotR, The Matrix, Harry Potter, etc. These movies have a different purpose. They serve to affect us on more of an unconscious level. Tapping into the primordial Jungian archetypes in us all. They don't hit you as much intellectually as they do on some intuitive, emotional, gut level. They tend to have over the top special effects, lots of action, sometimes really spotty acting and simplistic dialog, but we watch them, enraptured, anyway. When we look at them intellectually, we can find gaping holes, but something about the movies was inherently satisfying.
I still get a huge amount of satisfaction reading Greek and Norse mythology. At times the stories just don't make much sense. Come on! Zeus coming down as a "golden shower" and impregnating mortal women! You can intellectually rip these stories to pieces, but on another level, they still speak to us, make sense in some subtle way. They tap into the collective unconsiousness. They resonate.
I've seen LotR:FotR twice now and will probably go see it another few times. (I'm in film school right now so I'm really looking at it on too many levels right now) I'm more than satisfied with the movie. The intellectual Tolkien freak in me has quibbles with the movie. The 10 year old kid in me was just enthralled. The geek in me loved the fx (not the best but still great). The film student in me loved the cinematography. The screenwriter in me was amazed that the movie was 3 hours and the plot still worked pretty well. The 30 year old libidinous male in me drooled uncontrollably at Cate Blanchet!
To the geek crowd, turn your left brain off for three hours and just absorb the movie. Marvel at the sweeping pans across the mountains and Isengard. Take note of the shift in color that happens in the elven lands. The Shire! The Shire! It was beautiful. The Nazgûl were sufficiently creepy. The Ring! It's so small! It causes so much damn trouble and sorrow and grief! It's unadorned, unassuming. It affects all who are near it.
This was such an ambitious project. No one can truly do it justice. On it's own merits, I think it works. It affected me.
I just spent my last moderator point before reading this! Damn! Very insightful... especially the steak and vegetable analogy.
Citizen Kane was a fabulous movie. Long, but well paced. It was also groundbreaking in terms of the way in which the camera was used. It really helped further the idea of a visual language. The way in which the camera was positioned or moved actually helped to develop the story. Plot advancement was not just dependent upon the actors or the dialog. The camera really became part of the storytelling process. This was a real first!
I wasn't terrified of the Nazgul, but damn if they weren't creepy as hell. There weird, almost synchronous movements. The sounds they made. Made my flesh crawl at points.
The elven princess wasn't a new character. That was Arwen. Granted, it was Glorfindel who brought Frodo across the River, but Arwen is hardly a new character.
Dude, you need to pop a pill and mellow the hell out.
What are you talking about? Pippin clearly had a Scottish accent and the rest had modified British accents. I thought it was really interesting that Gimli had an Irish accent.
besides the people who buy macs want something that looks cool. they don't care about functionality and software.
I have purchased 4 macs in the last 7 years. I CARE about functionailty. I CARE about software that works. I'm a graphic designer and film student. Yes, Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, Premiere, AfterEffects and the rest all exist for WIndows, but I get far more general protection fault errors and blue screens and crash inducing errors in Windows than I ever do on a Mac while using these apps. These apps working at peak efficiency is how I make my living and they just work more reliably and faster on the Mac.
Sure, I don't have the gazillions of games, unintuitive ftp clients or Barbie virtual makeover software, but then again I don't have the time to fuss around with what I consider trivial nonsense. I need to be able to get my work done with minimal fuss, check my email, surf the web, etc. My Mac's work... period.
Actually Steve Vai has been playing Ibanez 7-strings since the late 80's.
The guy to really watch out for is Charlie Hunter who plays custom made 8-string guitars and has no need for a bassist! He does all the bass parts himself with his left hand.... AND HE'S GOOD AT IT! Scary! Every time I see him play I keep looking for a bassist up on stage somewhere and I never find one!
Amen! Rick Rubin would be out of work and I really do think he is one of the best producers living today and his approach is so low tech and raw. I've come to love the sound of different amps. Marshall, GK, Ampeg, Roland, Fender, etc. And then what about those crazy bastards that slash their speakers to get their sound "just so"?
And what about acoustic drums? I can see a benefit to having a digital signal going to a mixer, but does it really have to be straight out of the instrument? There really is something to be said for the roar that comes out of a mic'd Marshall Stack cranked all the way up. Master of Puppets comes to mind
I'm a bass player and I love the sound I get out of my huge ass 300 watt analog Fender combo amp with ADA MP-1 preamp. Somehow, just pumping digital signals into a mixer straight from my bass doesn't seem like it would get the tone I want. I also have a MIDI controller for my preamp and some pedals to get just the sound I want. Can a digital signal straight to a mixer really create the sound I want? Somehow I don't think so.
Plus, I'd be really bummed to go to a big show and not see walls of Marshall Stacks.
Wow! And there's supposed to be a lot of sysadmins on/. ?!
I'm just a graphic designer who used to have to set up networks at Kinko's and even I know that you can prevent people from installing AIM and other applications onto a Mac. It's pretty damn simple actually.
I was SO disappointed with their last stab at Dune. It was like watching really bad theater. I was half expecting Paul and Chani to burst into song at certain points.
Granted, the Sci-fi cahnnel's version was better than David Lynch, but that's hardly high praise.
Web Navigation: Designing the user experience
on
Homepage Usability
·
· Score: 1
This is also a great book on web usability and navigation. I actually like it a bit more than Nielsen's books because it's, well, written O'Reilly style. Very concise and concrete whereas Nielsen will break down into pretty abstract theoretical stuff and talk about his days at Sun. Nielsen is pretty good, but I end usually end up a little peeved at how much of a throwback the guy is at times.
Case and point. Sometimes he breaks his own rules on his own front page, so I take his word with a grain of salt. He also seems to abhor graphics. I wish I could find the article, but there was a time when he came out and said that you should never use graphics as navigational elements. Rather, you should use "native" widgets like form buttons if you wanted to make a graphical link. Come on! Talk about code bloat. It takes significantly more code to generate a simple form than it does to link from a graphic. Code bloat affects the user experience and therefore usability.
Personally, I think studying information design á la Edward Tufte is a better approach than studying Nielsen.
When it comes to charity, it's not about who or what is the better organization, but that someone cares enough to donate to the cause at all. In the current political climate, my personal charity would be donating to wither the NYFD or to an organization benefiting those starving and freezing in Afhanistan. Wil chose the EFF, a worthy organization. Not my choice presently but I respect his choice. Will you made it to the final three! Way to go!
NetBSD, SuSe, Mandrake, FreeBSD, Redhat via Virtual PC and Windows via same. Mac's can run so much software on different OS's it's unbelievable. The children would benefit immensely.
$1 billion = 1,251,564 entry level iMacs with OS 9 AND OS X on them. UNIX and Classic and the ability to put Windows AND Linux on them. Throw in some OS X servers and netboot the suckers. The kids can learn pretty much everything about computers from one platform. UNIX and linux for how the computer really works, Mac OS for the educational and multimedia software and Windows for learning about the blue screen of death.
My take is that a lot of artistic talent goes into the design and creation of video games, bus as a medium I don't know if the games themselves can be considered art. Is the game Monopoly a work of art? Is Scrabble? What makes video games fundamentally different from these games that would qualify them as art?
There are still people who swear that photography is not an art form because it merely captures what is already in the world as opposed to creating an image from the imaganiation.
My gut reaction is that video games per se are not art, but some of the games definitely are. Myst! Definitely! Quake? I'll say no, good game though it is.
As a graphic designer, I wouldn't even consider most of the design work I see to be art and most design is based upon basic artistic principles and techniques. Heck, most of my own design work is merely corporate branding meant to hawk wares.
So, no, video games aren't art by default, but some games definitely qualify.
Um, Apple has never claimed to have invented the GUI, the CD burner, portable MP3 players or UNIX. In the case of the GUI, they matured and popularized it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Man and his symbols" CG Jung
"Myths to live by" Joseph Campbell
"He", "She", "We" Robert Johnson (not the blues legend)
You know, I've never really considered LotR strict fantasy. Personally, I think it has more in common with mythology than it does run of the mill, escapist fantsy. That's a big part of it's appeal. It has the huge, archetypal appeal of a true myth. That's why Tolkien is the king hot shit daddy of the "genre".
true, it's got elves and dwarves and orcs and wizards, but their development ant treatment is more than just mere fantasy.
Ah, Shrek and Monsters Inc! Fabuslous movies both. I'm definitely skewed more toward the Pixar flicks. I think they're just better storytellers, not just kick ass animators. With Pixar movies, you forget about the animation and focus on the story. With Dreamworks animated pieces, you're always engrossed with the animation which detracts from the story IMO.
As a film student, I love IMDB. I don't read it for user ratings of movies because of all the reasons mentioned in this thread. However, as a source of information it's fabulous. I have IMDB open whenever I'm watching a movie at home.
"Hey! That guy looks familiar! His character is great! Where have I seen him before?" tap tap tap "Oh, he was THAT guy in that awful piece of crap! Interesting! Oooo! Terry Gilliam had something to do with that?" tap tap tap "Oh crap! Back to chapter selection. Missed something!"
Great for information, lousy for movie reviews.
There are movies and then there is "film". Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Amelie, Brazil, The Godfather, American Beauty, etc. Those are fine works of film. Very deep storytelling, with very deep social meaning and commentary. These are movies with very specific purposes and executed marvelously.
Now, Star Wars, LotR:FotR, The Matrix, Harry Potter, etc. These movies have a different purpose. They serve to affect us on more of an unconscious level. Tapping into the primordial Jungian archetypes in us all. They don't hit you as much intellectually as they do on some intuitive, emotional, gut level. They tend to have over the top special effects, lots of action, sometimes really spotty acting and simplistic dialog, but we watch them, enraptured, anyway. When we look at them intellectually, we can find gaping holes, but something about the movies was inherently satisfying.
I still get a huge amount of satisfaction reading Greek and Norse mythology. At times the stories just don't make much sense. Come on! Zeus coming down as a "golden shower" and impregnating mortal women! You can intellectually rip these stories to pieces, but on another level, they still speak to us, make sense in some subtle way. They tap into the collective unconsiousness. They resonate.
I've seen LotR:FotR twice now and will probably go see it another few times. (I'm in film school right now so I'm really looking at it on too many levels right now) I'm more than satisfied with the movie. The intellectual Tolkien freak in me has quibbles with the movie. The 10 year old kid in me was just enthralled. The geek in me loved the fx (not the best but still great). The film student in me loved the cinematography. The screenwriter in me was amazed that the movie was 3 hours and the plot still worked pretty well. The 30 year old libidinous male in me drooled uncontrollably at Cate Blanchet!
To the geek crowd, turn your left brain off for three hours and just absorb the movie. Marvel at the sweeping pans across the mountains and Isengard. Take note of the shift in color that happens in the elven lands. The Shire! The Shire! It was beautiful. The Nazgûl were sufficiently creepy. The Ring! It's so small! It causes so much damn trouble and sorrow and grief! It's unadorned, unassuming. It affects all who are near it.
This was such an ambitious project. No one can truly do it justice. On it's own merits, I think it works. It affected me.
I just spent my last moderator point before reading this! Damn! Very insightful... especially the steak and vegetable analogy.
Citizen Kane was a fabulous movie. Long, but well paced. It was also groundbreaking in terms of the way in which the camera was used. It really helped further the idea of a visual language. The way in which the camera was positioned or moved actually helped to develop the story. Plot advancement was not just dependent upon the actors or the dialog. The camera really became part of the storytelling process. This was a real first!
I wasn't terrified of the Nazgul, but damn if they weren't creepy as hell. There weird, almost synchronous movements. The sounds they made. Made my flesh crawl at points.
The elven princess wasn't a new character. That was Arwen. Granted, it was Glorfindel who brought Frodo across the River, but Arwen is hardly a new character.
Dude, you need to pop a pill and mellow the hell out.
What are you talking about? Pippin clearly had a Scottish accent and the rest had modified British accents. I thought it was really interesting that Gimli had an Irish accent.
Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark XPress would be awfully hard to use in CLI mode.
besides the people who buy macs want something that looks cool. they don't care about functionality and software.
I have purchased 4 macs in the last 7 years. I CARE about functionailty. I CARE about software that works. I'm a graphic designer and film student. Yes, Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, Premiere, AfterEffects and the rest all exist for WIndows, but I get far more general protection fault errors and blue screens and crash inducing errors in Windows than I ever do on a Mac while using these apps. These apps working at peak efficiency is how I make my living and they just work more reliably and faster on the Mac.
Sure, I don't have the gazillions of games, unintuitive ftp clients or Barbie virtual makeover software, but then again I don't have the time to fuss around with what I consider trivial nonsense. I need to be able to get my work done with minimal fuss, check my email, surf the web, etc. My Mac's work... period.
Actually Steve Vai has been playing Ibanez 7-strings since the late 80's.
The guy to really watch out for is Charlie Hunter who plays custom made 8-string guitars and has no need for a bassist! He does all the bass parts himself with his left hand.... AND HE'S GOOD AT IT! Scary! Every time I see him play I keep looking for a bassist up on stage somewhere and I never find one!
Amen! Rick Rubin would be out of work and I really do think he is one of the best producers living today and his approach is so low tech and raw. I've come to love the sound of different amps. Marshall, GK, Ampeg, Roland, Fender, etc. And then what about those crazy bastards that slash their speakers to get their sound "just so"?
And what about acoustic drums? I can see a benefit to having a digital signal going to a mixer, but does it really have to be straight out of the instrument? There really is something to be said for the roar that comes out of a mic'd Marshall Stack cranked all the way up. Master of Puppets comes to mind
I'm a bass player and I love the sound I get out of my huge ass 300 watt analog Fender combo amp with ADA MP-1 preamp. Somehow, just pumping digital signals into a mixer straight from my bass doesn't seem like it would get the tone I want. I also have a MIDI controller for my preamp and some pedals to get just the sound I want. Can a digital signal straight to a mixer really create the sound I want? Somehow I don't think so.
Plus, I'd be really bummed to go to a big show and not see walls of Marshall Stacks.
Wow! And there's supposed to be a lot of sysadmins on /. ?!
I'm just a graphic designer who used to have to set up networks at Kinko's and even I know that you can prevent people from installing AIM and other applications onto a Mac. It's pretty damn simple actually.
I was SO disappointed with their last stab at Dune. It was like watching really bad theater. I was half expecting Paul and Chani to burst into song at certain points.
Granted, the Sci-fi cahnnel's version was better than David Lynch, but that's hardly high praise.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/navigation/
This is also a great book on web usability and navigation. I actually like it a bit more than Nielsen's books because it's, well, written O'Reilly style. Very concise and concrete whereas Nielsen will break down into pretty abstract theoretical stuff and talk about his days at Sun. Nielsen is pretty good, but I end usually end up a little peeved at how much of a throwback the guy is at times.
http://www.useit.com/
Case and point. Sometimes he breaks his own rules on his own front page, so I take his word with a grain of salt. He also seems to abhor graphics. I wish I could find the article, but there was a time when he came out and said that you should never use graphics as navigational elements. Rather, you should use "native" widgets like form buttons if you wanted to make a graphical link. Come on! Talk about code bloat. It takes significantly more code to generate a simple form than it does to link from a graphic. Code bloat affects the user experience and therefore usability.
Personally, I think studying information design á la Edward Tufte is a better approach than studying Nielsen.
When it comes to charity, it's not about who or what is the better organization, but that someone cares enough to donate to the cause at all. In the current political climate, my personal charity would be donating to wither the NYFD or to an organization benefiting those starving and freezing in Afhanistan. Wil chose the EFF, a worthy organization. Not my choice presently but I respect his choice. Will you made it to the final three! Way to go!
NetBSD, SuSe, Mandrake, FreeBSD, Redhat via Virtual PC and Windows via same. Mac's can run so much software on different OS's it's unbelievable. The children would benefit immensely.
$1 billion = 1,251,564 entry level iMacs with OS 9 AND OS X on them. UNIX and Classic and the ability to put Windows AND Linux on them. Throw in some OS X servers and netboot the suckers. The kids can learn pretty much everything about computers from one platform. UNIX and linux for how the computer really works, Mac OS for the educational and multimedia software and Windows for learning about the blue screen of death.
those $799 iMacs are just prohibitively expensive aren't they? What decade are you living in? This isn't the late 80's any more! Get with it, dude.
Oh, man! I laughed my ass off upon reading this because that's exactly what I wanted to say!
I named my cat Ash. Can anyone guess where I got that name?
My take is that a lot of artistic talent goes into the design and creation of video games, bus as a medium I don't know if the games themselves can be considered art. Is the game Monopoly a work of art? Is Scrabble? What makes video games fundamentally different from these games that would qualify them as art?
There are still people who swear that photography is not an art form because it merely captures what is already in the world as opposed to creating an image from the imaganiation.
My gut reaction is that video games per se are not art, but some of the games definitely are. Myst! Definitely! Quake? I'll say no, good game though it is.
As a graphic designer, I wouldn't even consider most of the design work I see to be art and most design is based upon basic artistic principles and techniques. Heck, most of my own design work is merely corporate branding meant to hawk wares.
So, no, video games aren't art by default, but some games definitely qualify.
Um, Apple has never claimed to have invented the GUI, the CD burner, portable MP3 players or UNIX. In the case of the GUI, they matured and popularized it.