It seems like advertisers have gotten it all wrong when it comes to designing banner ads. The fact that banner ads animate and flash bright colors and try and call attention to themselves is what allows people to differentiate a banner ad from content and therefore ignore it. Rather, a banner ad should match the style of the page. If a page is simple and mostly text, then the ad should be simple and mostly text. This makes the ad look like any other content. The trick is making it look like intriguing content (it should stand out a little) so that you look it over. Placement could also be improved. While traditional banner ads lie above the fold, at the top of a web page (easily ignored), maybe they should run alongside the content, much like sidebar magazine ads, which your eyes inevitably fall on when reading or scanning a magazine article.

I bought a Palm m505 (which is the color version) as a graduation present for my sister, but it turns out she has one already. I got it in New York at J&R and they only offer store credit for returns (plus I'm back in L.A.) so I'm selling it on eBay.

Shameless Plug: If you are new to this site, then I might as well mention the High Gear section where my friend theVooner reviews all the latest gadgets.

New York:

Andreas Gursky was being exhibited at the MOMA. I caught the last day of the exhibit. He's a "large-format" photographer, taking pictures using 4x5 inch negatives, optionally computer enhancing/modifying them and then enlarging them to about eight feet across. The pictures aren't that compelling in and of themselves (just check out his book where the photos are normal sized) but blown up to huge proportions they look pretty impressive. The photos capture large wide-angle scenes in great detail giving you a window into a soccer stadium (look at the blades of grass), or a Siemens factory, or Montparnasse (with an almost-Mondrian-like structure), or a crowded concert or the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. There's even a 99 cent store photo that captures the detail in the thousands of candy and sundry items lined up neatly for sale. Hmmm... I wonder when he took that one... My camera couldn't resolve that kind of detail on my 99 cent store field trip...

Bitstreams was at the Whitney Museum. A couple "neat" works, nothing mind-blowing. Well, there was one that seemed mind-enhancing. There's a single room and on each wall is a laser-etched plastic skull. Except these skulls are skewed and distorted. Like looking at a picture obliquely, except it's obvious the skulls are 3D objects. The artist scanned in a human skull and just pulled and deformed the 3D model, then sent the new model to the laser-etching device which created the skewed plastic models. When you walk into the room, you feel like your eyes are broken, or the walls are swimming, or are they pumping something into the air here?

Galapagos is a bar in Brooklyn, that looks like it's been carved out of what used to be a garage. After entering, you cross a metal walkway that skirts over what normally is a water filled shallow pool that the light dances off of. The night we went the Galapagos was in drought.

The Apartment is a bar in the meat packing district that has no exterior sign proclaiming it's existence. It's just an iffy looking door that leads to a non-descript room with three other doors, one of which opens to the hostess -- "Can I help you?" -- who requires a reservation if you want to sit upstairs. They're not listed so the only way to get a reservation is to have gone there before and gotten a card. The card lists cryptically, in plain white text on a black background, the phone number digits followed immediately by the digits in the address. That's it. Great place to hang out but the drinks are watered down massively.

ICFF. I would write about it if I went, but someone told me it was starting on Thursday when it was actually starting on Saturday... Friday night I was already in New Haven.

New Haven:

16,000 fold-up chairs were laid out in the middle of Yale's main quad where Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a commencement speech that emphasized the importance of hair. The one thing she's learned in all her time after Yale is that "Hair Matters." The crowd loved her except for the small minority of Yale protesters. I must admit, her timing is impeccable.

The next day, there's a painful line to get into that same yard, where George W. Bush is receiving an honorary degree in law (plenty of protests since Yale voted 85% for Gore) and giving a speech. Most of the speech was self-deprecating in nature -- "To all the C students... you too can someday be President!" -- a real crowd pleaser. It was entertaining, but this constant riffing on his inadequacies... is this the kind of President that we respect?

We get there late, the yard is at capacity, standing room only in the aisles. We were lucky enough that a group of people vacated their seats right in front of us in chairs with a perfect view of the one big screen that is "televising" the event. Then a bunch of people stand right in front.of all the seats and a fight nearly breaks out between the hundred people in chairs who "camped out since early morning for these seats and this view!" and the people who are standing, blocking this view. I stayed out of it, since 1) I came late 2) I feel lucky to be sitting 3) I can still hear the speech.

My sister graduates Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with distinctions. I botch up the photo of her receiving her diploma. It's all out of focus.

Footnote: Freeway exits are numbered on the East Coast, the music they play on the radio is a little different, and all the streets and towns have these quintessentially New England style names like Milford, or Trumbull. Dress in layers and bring a jacket (I didn't...), even in May.

How is it that Aoyama's Eureka, a movie that weighs in at 3 hours and 40 minutes, doesn't seem that long? This is a movie which is at least twice the length of most Hollywood movies and is two and a half times the length of a Disney animated feature. So how is it even remotely bearable? Separate from the story, which needs to be good, which is very good, there is the physical/psychological limit on our attention span. To cite the long, sometimes unmoving scenes and say that the movie is slow paced is a little off the mark.

Rather, the lengthening of the scenes, of all the scenes, gives the viewer no short scenes to compare to, no other frame of reference. As a result, when we come to rest on a profile view of two people and watch their entire exchange over a course of many minutes (this breaks the "rule" of entering a scene as late as possible and leaving it as early as possible) it feels completely normal. Time is passing as it should, in long continuous phrases. Strangely, stretched taut in this way, things are laid bare. There are no folds to hide behind. Story development in Eureka then, is not slow, but prolonged.

Which is why a poorly executed short fast action film can be both so tiring and seem so long. The fast cuts, the MTV style editing, leaves no room to breathe. 90 minutes passes and it feels like an eternity. Time moves at different rates depending on circumstance. And when you consider that race car drivers experience this time compression/expansion to an extreme -- at 250 MPH seconds are seemingly stretched into minutes -- it makes their efforts Herculean in relation, a couple hundred laps of concentration being a lifetime to them.

I'm off to New York early this morning. My sister's graduation is this coming weekend in Connecticut, so I'm going to spend a couple days in the Big Apple beforehand with Antonio, Ahmer and Jesse. On Thursday, I'm hoping to check out ICFF and AT's chair. I may or may not be able to update until I get back next Monday. And I most probably won't be able to make any changes to we::blog until then either...

In the meantime, check out Naughty Dog's trailer for Jack and Daxter... hmmm... or not. It's 20MB for the 320x240 Quicktime video. That seems like a lot. I've got DSL and it's taking forever.

Update: Finally... that was 20MB for 35 seconds of footage?!?!?

Looking at the references to my site, I found this weblog/rant which linked to my Mount Kinabalu panorama. One of the weblog entries was titled Musical Roulette and listed "songs that do their respective albums justice..." What struck me was not just how eclectic the list was but how a lot of the chosen songs are the ones I would pick. My first thought was, "Am I a schizo who has another weblog for my other personality?" Of course, then I thought, "Wouldn't my other personality listen to different music?" Ha! Maybe that's why Johnny Hartman was in there...

In the spirit of promoting more good music, I'm going to add a couple of my own favorites:

Yo-Yo Ma - Soul of the Tango - Fugata

Radiohead - OK Computer - Let Down

Chris Whitley - Living with the Law - Look What Love Has Done

Lamb - Fear of Fours - Little Things

Ruben Gonzales - Introducing... Ruben Gonzalez - Tres Lindas Cubanas

Joshua Redman Quartet - Spirit Of The Moment: Live At The Village Vanguard - St. Thomas

Rage Against The Machine - Renegades - How I Could Just Kill A Man

Frank Sinatra - A Swingin' Affair! - I Won't Dance

I just got my first bill from DWP today. Finally. All the charges from Feb. 9 until Apr. 27 are on there. And I might be wrong, but $645.27 seems like a lot for a little less than three months of electricity. I've done my part to contribute to the California energy crisis by leaving my two computers on all day (one's the Blinkover server) and I had at least one heater on almost round the clock for a month and a half when it was cold. I've averaged 72KWH/day. Is this the equivalent of 3000W round the clock? How are these things measured? If I add up ALL the wattage of everything in my place, I can get 2000W. Then let's say each of my two heaters are 2500W. So it's easily within the realm of possibility. Then I look at my old bills from the Palisades and I averaged 3KWH/day. I'm using up 24 times more power now?

Maybe I am an energy hog, but I couldn't believe the DWP rep who tried to convince me that an increase like this is normal ("Oh yeah, everyone is shocked when they see their bill after they move to a new place!"), that when you move, you can't compare your energy consumption with your last place since there are too many variables. Yeah, I'm sure this happens to everyone. Get me the supervisor. The supervisor takes one look at the bill, says it's pretty extraordinary, unbelievable really, and orders a re-read of the meter. I'm hoping this bill is for all the apartments in my building.

"Hey everyone, juice on me!"

But if the reading is correct, then I'm in for an expensive summer when I have to start using the air-conditioner...

It's a beautiful, cloudless day and the sun is so bright overhead you have to squint to see and crossing the streets and even walking the sidewalks I'm surveying the road for any rogue buses, cars, or motorcycles, out of control station wagons, brake-deficient Hondas, any swerving, screeching mass, really, over 500 pounds. I'm ready for action, ready to jump, duck, dodge, or stand my ground (if the situation proves hopeless) because yesterday I watched the footage on the 11 o'clock news of the MTA bus commandeered by some psycho, the bus hurtling through the downtown L.A. streets like it had a bomb onboard, weaving, going fast, faster on the straightaways, ignoring street lights and the traffic laws, until it SMASHED into the side of a minivan, then SMASHED into a brown UPS truck, then SMASHED into half a dozen cars parked in a parking lot, all in a billow of smoke. And Oh My God, that didn't happen "over there", that happened right here.

Then there's the bird's eye view from the news helicopter camera, which makes all the vehicles look tiny, little boxes of metal, mechanical machines in some Matchbox Derby. Until you realize there are people in those crushed vehicles. And the horror is stronger than any movie could ever conjure, not just because it's real, but because your imagination fills in the void within those metal boxes.