TRON Geek Gathering

Did the creators of the Gregorian Calendar have the wisdom to set things in motion so that the June 2007 Geek Gathering would come as early in the month as possible? That's some foresight, considering that its champion, Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, got the nod from Pope Gregory XIII to put it in motion on February 24th in 1582.

Another forecast for tonight? Say around 9:00 PM? 78 F and clear skies.

Which works out well for us, as we will be screening TRON at this month's Geek Gathering on the big back wall of the Petrol Station (985 Wakefield) at 9:00 tonight. The preliminaries will kick off a little after 7:00 with Jay Lee and the crew of 90.1's Technology Bytes. St. Arnold will be on hand, though this is definitely an all ages venue.

Yes, that is Jay Maynard, aka the Tron Guy. He said that he would join us if he hadn't already made a promise to be in Sioux Falls, SD. Next time...

I'll leave you with the following TRON facts to tide you over until the Day Star goes down on the Big Blue Room.

*Peter O'Toole was originally signed to play Dillenger/Sark, but backed out of it when he didn't see any of the scenery, light cycles or tanks that were mentioned in the film's script.

*Because of a glitch in the production and emulsion ordering, flashes appear randomly throughout the film. The film crew covered this up by adding sound effects to coincide with these unexpected flashes, making them part of the computer world. This technique was later borrowed by Bill Gates to turn "bugs" into "features" in the world of windows. WoW!

*Jeff Bridges was fitted with a dance belt for the filming of TRON because of a certain bulge is his costume.

*While many people mistakenly believe that TRON's name was derived from elecTRONic, it is actually a reference to the BASIC debugging tool, which stands for Trace On. TROFF, Trace Off, disables the tool.

*TRON was passed over for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects because the Academy felt that the film makers *cheated* by using computers. In fact, a number of Disney animators refused to work on the project because they feared that CG animation would mean the death of hand-drawn animation. They we correct, though Disney didn't close the doors on its hand-drawn animation studios for another 22 years.

*E.T. the Extra Terrestrial claimed the award for Best Visual Effects that year (1982) with Cocoon taking it in 1985, Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988 (due to it's blending of traditional animation and live action) and The Abyss in 1989 for its use of that same cheaty *CG Animation*.

*The cast of Cocoon was made entirely of teenage actors, shedding some light on it's award for Best Visual Effects.

*The Petrol Station is the downtown expat sibling of the old Kaveh Kanes, ground zero for Houston's wireless movement.

*See you all tonight!!1!1

DRM doomed?

If you've ever occupied space (IRL or in the digital realm) near me when the issue of Digital Rights Management has come up, you know my stance on it. Jeremy Allison, a rather well-known Google employee, shares my beliefs, though, unlike me, has found time to write a great piece outlining a simple case for why DRM is doomed from the beginning. I especially like the references to Scotty and the Underpants Gnomes. Check out what he has to say here.

Obama's space

Techpresident.com is running a piece that outlines the battle between the Obama Presidential Campaign and the creator of the Obama MySpace page, Joseph Anthony, who had built up Obama's MySpace presence to include over 160,000 unsolicited friends. Today, the site has just over 18,000 friends and has been placed back in the hands of the Obama campaign.
What this really boils down to is a stand off between voter-generated media and campaign controlled content. Micah L. Sifry states, "The most intriguing thing about this whole mess is this is the first time I can think of where the grass-roots activist at the bottom of the pile has a megaphone as big as the folks who tried to boss him around."