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Archive for November 9th, 2004

Edith Head

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

“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.]

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Homecoming

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

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…

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IRIS Student Workshop ‘04

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

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!

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Incredible

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

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.”

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His fate, finally learned

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

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]

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