(In The Happiest Geek on Earth):
More reports from the O’Reilly Emerging Technology con.
Read them here.
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Author: Joey deVilla
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Yoda’s kung-fu is very good
Helvetica…in…space! Taken with my digital cam last night at the Attack of the Clones premiere.
A number of us attending the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference couldn’t pass up the opportunity to catch the premiere of Attack of the Clones. We gathered a geek army of the Republic of Blogistan (that’s Cory’s catchphrase for the community of people who maintain weblogs) and descended on the AMC theatre right by the conference hotel.
All twenty screens were showing Attack of the Clones at midnight, and the lineups curled completely around the building. The die-hard fans started the line early in the morning and established camps complete with deck chairs, beach blankets, ghetto blasters and some even brought tents and other portable shelters.
We bought our tickets inline and had already picked them up earlier. We decided that we’d lost any shot at the best seats to the hardcore fans who’d waited in line all day, so we spent the evening partying at Danny’s and Quinn’s place until 11:00 p.m., at which time we drove to the theatre. We spent about 45 minutes waiting in line, during which tiome I played the accordion to a captive audience hungry for entertainment. I wasn’t really hitting them up for money, but made twenty bucks nonetheless — enough to cover my ticket and lots of Junior Mints.
Once inside the theatre, we waited almost an hour for the movie to begin. I got some cheers simply by playing the Star Wars Main Theme and the Imperial March. A handful of people at the back yelled “Play it again, Accordion Guy!” (people who don’t know me have an automatic tendency to call me that). One really bored guy did a jig in front of the screen while I played Louie, Louie. We were being made to wait, but we were making the best of it.
There’s a fair bit oif story to tell in the movie’s allotted time, so it hit the ground running with the threat on Padme’s life and soon afterwards, we were treated to a chase scene through the speeder traffic corridors of Coruscant. This movie marks a return to the feel of the old-school Star Wars films, from the sense of grand adventure and stunning visuals to the bad actor hired to play the apprentice Jedi Knight and the sloppily written love story. It’s kind of odd seeing the Imperial symbol on the good guys’ ship, Obi-Wan playing the part of hard-boiled detective (right down to the bit where he meets up with an old friend and underworld contact at a greasy spoon), the stormtroopers as they guys who save the day and Yoda switching from arthritic old Muppet to a guy who’d have kicked the asses of both Li Mubai (Chow Yun-Fat’s character from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Neo from The Matrix. Jar Jar’s appearances are mercifully short.
This film is almost on par with Empire; Empire still has a slight edge because it didn’t have as much mythos to stand on as this movie. It’s considerably better than Phantom Menace, but that was to be expected: this movie’s strength, as with Empire, is the dark-ish ending, and from Phantom Menace, there wasn’t anywhere to go but up. I’m going to enjoy watching it again next week with my friends in Toronto.
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Another report from the O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference. Aren’t you glad I’m there, taking notes for you?
Keep checking The Happiest Geek on Earth for regular updates.
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(In The Happiest Geek on Earth):
O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference report number 1.
Read it here.
Yesterday was an exercise in patience and perseverance.
It all started with an airline ticket that never made it to my house. I got the ticket using points I’d accumulated on my VISA card and the travel agency associated with the card insisted on sending me a paper ticket. I can’t even recall the last time I used a paper ticket. They were supposed to send it to me in the mail, but it never arrived. I tried calling the agency, but got stuck on hold each time.
Not knowing the difference between a paper ticket and an e-ticket, I went to the airport anyway. I’d paid for the ticket, so I assumed it would be on the airline’s computer.
Apparently not. The folks at the ticket counter explained to me that while an e-ticket represented an actual booking of an airline seat, a paper ticket was simply a cash equivalent that could be redeemed for a booked seat. No paper ticket, no seat.
I spent the next hour navigating the voice mail system of my credit card’s travel agency. About eight levels deep, I found an option that might help.
“To contact the emergency travel arrangements desk,” the voice said, “press five.”
I pressed five and twelve rings later, got connected with an agent. He suggested that I buy a ticket to San Jose and fill out a lost ticket indemnity form that would allow me to get the money back once my ticket had been confirmed as lost. The round trip ticket was a little more than I could afford — even with the guaranteed refund — so the people at the airline counter suggested that I buy a one-way ticket to San Jose and have the travel agency courier me a one-way ticket back home.
I followed their advice and proceeded to customs.
I handed customs my passport and boarding passes. They took one look at my ticket and decided I fit the profile:
- A one way ticket,
- bought at the last minute at the counter
- (which they mistakenly thought was bought with cash)
- by a solo-travelling non-caucasian male
- born in a country with active Al-Qaeda-funded groups (the Philippines has to contend with Osama-funded jerkoffs Abu Sayyaf).
I was escorted into a customs interview room, a small place with a desk equipped with a microphone, a chair on either side of the desk and a surveillance camera pointed at the interviewee’s chair. As I waited for my interviewer, I imagined someone in one of the adjoining offices snapping on a pair of latex gloves and slathering them with lube.
After about fifteen minutes, a man in a U.S. customs uniform approached the room, but was interrupted by a coworker. “Hey, Phil just brought in four boxes of Krispy Kremes!”
Both of them made a beeline in some other direction, and I waited another ten minutes for my interviewer to return. By then, I’d missed my flight.
The customs guy was pretty nice, asking me the same questions I’d been asked earlier — where was I headed, how long was I staying, whom I was visiting — as well as some out-of-the-ordinary questions:
- “Have you been to the middle east lately?”
- “Have you been to the Philippines recently?”
- “Are any of your clients from the currently ‘hot’ countries?”
He then asked if he could search my luggage; I said “yes,” partly because I had nothing to hide and partly because I didn’t want to face the consequences of saying “no”.
When he opened my accordion bag, he asked me to play it in order to prove it was a real musical instrument.
It was then that I decided that there is only one song you play when trying to establish your bona fides with a U.S. customs official: The Star Spangled Banner.
About four bars in, he declared me free to go.
He explained that my circumstances looked a little suspicious, hence the interrogation and search. I told him that I understood he was just doing his job and hustled out of there.
I was thankful that the searching was restricted to my luggage. I’m pretty sure that playing the U.S. national anthem played a part in convincing him that I was not a terrorist and that he should recognize my right to anal sovereignty.
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A couple of bits of interesting news, if you live in Accordion City…
Canada is experiencing the biggest surge in employment in the past five years. Both The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have articles on it.
The city of Toronto is planning for growth, what with 1 million more people expected to move in and the city being second only to Los Angeles in terms of growth. The city is planning for it, and it looks — from this article anyway — that they might be on the right track:
Can the drab, car-dependent, strip-mall neighbourhoods along Kingston Rd. become pedestrian-friendly promenades like Bloor West Village and the Beach, lined with restaurants and flower shops?
The people planning the future of Toronto think so, and they believe they’ve come up with a way to do it.
Here’s a preview of their plan, which will be unveiled in two weeks.
It calls for stacked townhouses and low-rise apartments along commercial strips, and high-rise towers along subway routes. Public transit would be expanded until it becomes a viable option for people in every corner of the city.
The rest of the article is here.
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Flight plan
Sunday, May 11
- Continental flight 1994, Toronto to Newark (depart 2:10 p.m., arrive 3:45 p.m.)
- Continental flight 464, Newark to San Jose (depart 5:10 p.m., arrive 8:35 p.m.)
(Yes, I know it’s Mother’s Day. I’m having breakfast with her before the flight. Since my sister’s a mom now, I also got her a present.)
Friday, May 17
- Continental flight 279, San Jose to Houston George Bush (depart 6:30 a.m. — ack, arrive 12:28 p.m.)
- Continental flight 472, Houston to Toronto (depart 3:50 p.m., arrive 8:03 p.m.)
For those of you who want to reach me, I’m staying at the same hotel as the conference, the Westin Santa Clara. I’ve have my cell phone with me, and I expect to be able to be easily reachable by e-mail. I’ll have my laptop and wireless card; it’s always a good bet that an event where Cory Doctorow is one of the organizers will have wireless Internet access.
It’s also a good bet that an event that I am attending will have an accordion involved.