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“Arguably the most famous costume designer in Hollywood history, Edith Head was also one of the most prolific, having costumed for over 500 films.” [Inspiration for Edith in Incredibles, voiced by Brad Bird. Thanks, Chris.]

Of course, while I was in Boston, it was Homecoming weekend at Rice, and my 5th reunion to boot. As such, a few old friends were in town. As is customary on such occasions, there were board games (pictured), and there was drinking (not pictured). And that was just on Friday, before I went out of town…

I spent Sunday and Monday (and a tiny bit of Saturday!) in Cambridge
for the IRIS student workshop.
On Sunday, I and fifteen other talented, optimistic grad students from
IRIS universities (Rice, MIT, NYU, and UC Berkeley) delivered brief
advertisements for our latest halfbaked (and, occasionally,
fully-baked) ideas. Monday morning included a poster session, during
which we were grilled (if we were lucky) by NSF sponsors. You can
check out the workshop
program, including an early version of my slides: A Plan
to Save RSS. (Yes, I’m serious about building the system I
describe.)

The best part of the weekend, for me, was the opportunity to meet
other students working on this stuff (p2p, DHTs, and unicorns). I came away with fifty great new ideas, and
hopefully I left one or two of my own behind as well.

It was great to meet you,
Sean,
Hakim,
Patrick,
Frank,
Emil,
Athicha,
Chris,
Kevin,
Mike, and a bunch of
other talented folks (who I don’t have URLs for at the moment). Let’s
do this again sometime!

So, uh. Wow.

I didn’t even really think about The Incredibles in terms of
being a gorgeous CG film, because I was so busy being blown away with
how it’s the best superhero movie ever made. It’s Batman,
X-Men, and six or seven Bond films all rolled together into one
seamless, gripping, heartfelt film. Also not little kids’ fare: there
was plenty of gunplay, talk about death, and grappling with purpose.
Sorry, Sulley, but you’re so Saturday morning compared to
Incredibles.

While watching the credits, I asked Erin, “What was the last
movie I said was the best movie I’d ever seen?” She replied, “Sky
Captain.“

So I said, “There’s a tiny little crater, a scar on the ground, where
Sky Captain used to be.”

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority unveiled its new “Charlie Card” today which is designed to slowly phase out the use of subway tokens over the next couple of years.

To mark the debut of the new system, Governor Mitt Romney and The Kingston Trio performed a rendition of the group?s 1959 hit ?Charlie on the MTA,? which inspired the name of the new fare card.

[hat tip: ctate]