Thursday, August 21, 2008

Emily Creeps Me Out

I saw this in AdRants. (Yes, I'm trying to pay attention to the industry that supports me!) They point to this video that is currently flying around the web:



I'm not afraid to admit it, Emily creeps me out. She really is so life-like. Apparently, only after 1:30 mark is it actually the actress on screen. Before that her face is completely digital. Will actors and actresses become the next endangered species? Or will we see an overabundance of waiters and waitresses?

And all this in the wake of some other distressing ad-related news. Gawker reports that other ad companies are experimenting with face recognition software a la "Minority Report." Soon, the ads will know who you are, and create a life-like person to talk to you about what they're selling. I'm both amazed and afraid!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

One Year Later

The search for John Galt continues, and now the DA's office wants to press homicide charges.

Meanwhile, there's increased activity inside the building, with crews visible in the windows until midnight six days a week. But it's still just as tall today as it was a year ago.

The long, continuing story here.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

East Side, West Side, All Around the....Country

It's been a summer of quick little trips around the country. I'm always amazed at the little quirks of each little place. Especially in these times of big-box stores and generic chain stores, it's wonderful to see something unique to an area.

A while back I spent a wonderful day down in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ. Point Pleasant is fairly typical Jersey Shore beach town, with a long boardwalk lined with restaurants and shops. Further north along the boardwalk, these give way to houses large and small with cute, beach-appropriate names tacked over their doors. One of these is named "Seascape," but to everyone who's been to Point Pleasant, it's simply known as the "Sinatra House." Here, Ol' Blues Eyes plays from speakers built into the porch every day from 8am to 9pm. I found an archived NYT article with some more details. The house is owned by the Smith family, and although Mr. Smith may have passed on, the residents of Point Pleasant were glad to hear his family is continuing the tradition. This is my kind of place.

The following weekend, I spent a few days in Silicon Valley. Here again, the people who live in this area have an interesting quirk. There are shopping carts everywhere. Everywhere. This string of cities are neither as pedestrian friendly as New York nor as car-centric as Detroit. Most people have cars, and most use them every day to run errands. But many people walk to the grocery store. In New York, where everything, as they say, is bigger, people take little fold-up carts that they own to the little grocers to pack the little foodstuffs into their little refrigerators. But in the Valley, people seem to walk to the grocery stores, buy a shopping cart full of groceries, and then walk home with their groceries in the cart. They don't need a shopping cart, of course, so they leave it on the side of the road. At first I figured all these shopping carts along the roads were an indication of homelessness. But the carts outnumbered the homeless by far. The friend I stayed with told me that people just use them and leave them--and that he hadn't really noticed how many there were because they're simply always around.

The next weekend I went back down to Brevard, NC to see Lynn's opera. I didn't get much time to socialize with locals, as it was a very short trip. Still, in my three weekends in three parts of the country, it was nice to see first-hand that there still is quite a bit of diversity in behavior and ideas, if not in choice of fast-food eats.