Mon, 17 Nov 2008
I'm divesting myself of a lot of computer-related things that are taking up too much space in my apartment. Take a look at my stuff and let me know if there's anything you'd like to take off of my hands. Anything left after a couple of weeks will go to the electronics recycling center.
Tue, 14 Oct 2008
On September 27th, 2008, I got married. As a consequence of my marriage, I gave up my last name and took my wife's, going from Phillip Gregory to Phillip Gold. I've been asked about my decision a lot; this is my explanation.
I feel that the prevaling societal standard--the assumption that the woman must go through all the work to change her name and give up the identity she's had since birth--is unfair and an example of gender inequality. Rather than simply make that assumption, Rebecca and I discussed our names a lot before the wedding, starting with what we each wanted out of our married names, and working from there to a mutual decision.
I wanted us to both have the same name, as symbolic of our marriage. I also didn't want a hyphenated last name, because I feel that those are cumbersome and unwieldy. Rebecca also wanted to have a Jewish last name, to honor her cultural heritage. Finally, I was inclined to have a name that started with "G" so my (and her) initials would stay the same.
Our first thought was that we would find a new name that met all of our criteria and both change to that name. Unfortunately, there are only really two common Jewish surnames that start with "G": Gold and Green (plus all the variations thereof), and we couldn't find a variation on Green that we both liked. We started looking at other Jewish surnames, and I realized that I really did want to keep my initials, if only because I have the username "phil_g" on a lot of sites, not least of which is the email address I've had for over a decade now.
So I offered to just take Rebecca's name because that approach accomplished everything we wanted. She was a little hesitant, feeling that doing so would require more of me than her, but we eventually agreed that it seemed the best approach given our requirements.
Postscript: Some people suggested changing my middle name to my old last name, as some married women do. I opted against that approach, because my middle name is the same as my dad's. I would never want to give my child the same first name as myself, but I like the subtle continuity of shared middle names.
Fri, 02 May 2008
In the interests of better site availability and less Comcast AUP-breaking, I've finally gotten around to outsourcing my website hosting. I'm currently at NearlyFreeSpeech.net, a webhost committed to the twin goals of free speech and affordable web hosting.
How free is their speech? Read their Abuse page:
"A NearlyFreeSpeech.NET member site is defaming me or otherwise injuring me civilly."
Please forward a copy of your legal finding from a court of competent jurisdiction to our contact address. If you have not yet obtained such a finding, a preliminary injunction or court order is also sufficient.
If you are not able to obtain the above, you will need to work directly with the site operator to resolve your differences. We will have to fall back on our members' contractual assertion that the content they upload is legitimate and therefore we will not be able to get involved
How affordable is their hosting? You pay only for the bandwidth and storage that you actually use: $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth and $0.01 per megabyte-month of storage. (Plus the bandwidth cost goes down the more you use.)
They support a variety of CGI scripting languages, including C, PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Oh, but also Fortran, Tcl, Lisp, Scheme, OCaml, and Haskell.
We'll see how it goes, but I think I'll like it here.
Mon, 07 Mar 2005
They gave me back my story.
Ever since I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in elementary school, I've loved Middle Earth. Like many people, I waited with anticipation and dread for the movies by Peter Jackson. Would he mangle it as horribly as Bakshi? Would they actually be good movies? The Fellowship of the Ring came out, and I was, by and large, pleased. Jackson had omitted some things and rearranged some others, but the result was good. There was Tolkien's work, on the big screen and amazing faithful to the text.
Then came The Two Towers.
At the time, I wrote up a page about what I thought of the movie. Though that writeup is now lost, it can be summed up pretty succinctly: I didn't like it. Jackson took great liberties with the story, adding bits that were never there and changing bits that were, sometimes for no apparent reason. It was bad in a very annoying way, because the parts that were right were very good. A lot of people had the same reaction as I did, and there was much complaining.
At least one person did a bit more than complain. The Two Towers: The Purist Edit is a reedit of the movie, in a similar spirit to The Phantom Edit. It removes the worst of Jackson's additions--Aragorn's warg battle, the dwarf jokes, the Elves at Helm's Deep, among others--and fixes some of the changes--the Ents now make the right decision, for instance. I can't emphasize how pleased I am with this edit. It's much closer to the books that I've loved for so long.
It's not perfect. It's from a screener copy from one of the big awards ceremonies, so it occasionally has "For your consideration" written across the bottom of the screen. Because it's essentially from the theatrical version, the editors didn't have all the extra footage in the Extended Edition to draw on, which was too bad in several cases. While a lot of the editing is pretty good, some causes feelings of abruptness and draws attention the fact that things were excised. In a couple of instances, people have their lines dubbed over. Since the lips no longer match the words, the dubs are painfully obvious. The editors did a good job of removing the elves from Helms Deep. That means that they cut out a lot of footage, though, and the battle doesn't have the same grandiose feel to it as in the original movie. It still works, but it's not the same. Because of all the various cuts, the Purist Edit runs about 40 minutes shorter than the theatrical release. And not everything was fixed. Fir instance, Helm's Deep is still won by Gandalf riding in with the Rohirrim, not by the Ents and Huorns.
But the Purist Edit is still a vast improvement, story-wise over Jackson's telling. It's a lot closer to the movie I wish he'd made. Thank you, whoever you are, for making this edit.
This is the current name of the movie theater located at the Owings Mills Town Center (also known as simply "Owings Mills Mall").
In December of 2001, I went to see Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring at this theater for a 12:01 am showing on opening day. While things went well for most of the movie, one reel near the end of the film was played with the audio extremely desynced from the video. After several minutes of this, the theater stopped the film, fixed it, and played it to the end. They offered vouchers for a free movie at the theater to everyone at the showing.
In December of 2003, I went to see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at the same theater, also for a 12:01 am showing on opening day. Approximately an hour after it started, the film began displaying images upside down and running backwards; presumably a reel had been threaded in backwards. When the problem persisted for more than a minute, a friend left the theater in search of someone to notify of the problem. He found no one but a security guard. Several minutes after that, the film was stopped. About a minute later, a manager entered and apologized for the problem, stating that we would all receive vouchers for a free movie as we left.
Five or ten minutes later the manager returned and asked everyone to leave so they could hand out the vouchers. Several people objected, desiring to finish seeing the movie. After a minute or so, he returned, saying that they would be about twenty minutes in restoring the film, but they would do so for anyone who wanted to remain. Most people remained and at 2:08, the movie resumed. (I believe it stopped sometime between 1:00 and 1:15, but I'm not sure of that time.)
That alone is enough of a problem, but the women next to me in the line out said that they'd had problems in 2002 when seeing Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at that theater. I didn't get details on what had happened.
I will probably not return to that theater, except to use the voucher. I will certainly not spend any more money there, nor can I recommend that anyone else do so.
So, yeah. Being the giant Tolkien fanboy I am, I went to see the third Lord of the Rings movie at 12:01 am on opening night. Despite some setbacks, I did manage to see the whole movie.
It rocked.
In my eyes, at least, Peter Jackson has redeemed himself for all the changes he made to The Two Towers. (I'd link to my thoughts on that movie, but they got deleted by accident and no one had a cache of them.) The plot details were all right and beautifully executed. Almost all of the stuff I wanted to see was in there: the Balttle of the Pelennor Fields, the Paths of the Dead, Shelob, Mount Doom (duh), and so on.
I'll discuss some details below the spoiler barrier.
Well, Otakon 2003 is over. Lots of good stuff there; I suspect most people had a good time. I managed to see "Otaku no Video" (finally), Mystery Anime Theater 3000, the AMV contest (easily my favorite part of the con), and the T.M. Revolution concert.
Oh, and the dealer's room. I picked up Princess Prince, a plush Nyarlathotep, a plush Kuro Neko-sama (that one was a gift), a small pin with Utena on it, and another pin with Ryo-Ohki.
Had fun at the raves, spinning glowsticks. There were a couple other people there who were quite good. I talked with them a bit over the course of the evenings, not that I remember their names now, of course. One showed me an interesting variant on the weave that he called a hyper loop. Has to be done with shorter strings/chains, as it has a component that's between the arms, in front of the body. Is also quite tricky. Will have to play with it and see if I can duplicate the thing. I think it might work with fire, too, though certainly with much practice beforehand.
I again enjoyed working the con. Security (correction: "Special Operations") was again much work, though the work was generally rewarding. Got to talk to lots of people, and no severe problems occurred that I had to deal with.
And now it's back to the real world. Work today, followed by a trip home (where I haven't been since before work last Thursday). With luck, I'll have time to start grabbing copies of the AMVs I liked before I fall asleep.
