Day: September 23, 2004

Star Wars DVD notes

After two prequels and several years away from the original movies, it’s interesting to come back to the original (albeit in a twice-revised form; see these notes on changes to key scenes). It’s interesting that there are some things that I remembered in radically different form, to wit:

C-3PO’s dialog. The femme half of science fiction’s first gay robot duo was pretty damn bitchy in the first film. He was also inaudible a lot of the time, at least to my ears—though that may be an artifact of listening to the DVD in stereo rather than 5.1 surround. But I think there was a whole lot of snotto voce goin’ on.

The first Millennium Falcon vs. TIE Fighter battle. You know, after waiting 27 years since this movie came out, and going through two digital revisions, you’d think that they’d fix the big rectangles around the TIE fighters where they were superimposed for this sequence. Look at this picture and tell me I’m not seeing things:

But it’s a lot of fun anyway. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some documentary features to watch.

Aaron Swartz, College Student

Aaron Swartz has been such a key part of the blogging (and web services, and XML syndication) world(s) for so long that it’s always a shock to remember that he’s so young. To wit: he’s starting undergrad at Stanford this month. Today’s update finds him making some of the discoveries many of us made ten years ago, like how professors don’t always understand your insights; parties are sadly funny when you look at them as anthropological rituals (and don’t participate); and how phony patriotism is used to build group identities.

(I will note, however, that it’s grimly funny to find a leading proponent of RDF, the leading (and still mystifying) XML-based semantic taxonomy, and of Atom, which proposes an alternate notation and representation for the syndication data presented by RSS, totally baffled by the transition from the Dewey Decimal System to the Library of Congress system.)

But the series is still highly readable. The alienation of a smart autodidact confronting his peers in the brew of the most intense period of peer interaction—well, it’s awfully familiar to me, and I suspect to many of my readers as well.

Local update

I’ve been struggling to take a good picture with my digital SLR of the view we get from our park; fortunately, the good folks at the Friends of Robbins Farm Park website got a good shot for me. I think we need to join that organization, given how much joy we’re getting out of the park.

In other local news, looks like I have a Googlegänger in Sudbury: “The offensive highlight for the game came in the first half on a 70-yard drive, featuring two clutch, long third-down passes from quarterback Tim Jarrett to end John Kelley and running back Derek Lowe.” Just for the record, folks, if you ever see the word “quarterback” next to “Tim Jarrett,” it ain’t about me.