Monthly Archives: May 2002

Here’s some band/album recommendations:

Niacin, Time Crunch
These guys have just become one of my favorite bands. Jazz/rock (not really fusion) featuring Billy Sheehan on bass, John Novello on keyboards, and Dennis Chambers on drums. I remember seeing Billy play with Talas quite a few times when I was a teenager in Buffalo, NY. He really is the world’s best rock bass player, and the Guitar Player magazine reader’s poll has agreed with that statement no less that 5 times (tying him with Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Geddy Lee and Eddie Van Halen). Novello is a session player that co-owns LunaTek studios with Alan Howarth (the great movie soundtrack composer of “Escapefrom New York” fame). Chambers is ex-Parliament, which leads us to…

Parliament, The Best of Parliament
Excellent compilation of Parliament’s music. Truly the funkiest band ever (this coming from the whitest man alive. 😉

Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Broadcasting from Home
Very eclectic Celtic/folk/New Age/whatever music. I find it very hard to categorize their music. Check out their web site for samples.

Tony Levin, Pieces of the Sun
King Crimson and Peter Gabriel’s bass/Chapman Stick player reunites with Larry “Synergy” Fast and Jerry Marotta of Gabriel’s orginal band. Excellent prog and jazzy rock. Features an unreleased Gabriel song, “Dog One” and a remake of the Synergy song “Phobos” (and I’m still not sure how they pulled that one off so well).

Heather and I actually got the chance to slip out of the house today to see Star Wars Episode II with my bro-in-law Bill (thanks to my parents for babysitting). Wow, I was actually very happy with the movie!

I went expecting the worst – Lucas really royally f’d up Episode I, and Return of the Jedi wasn’t much better. This latest film is MUCH better than the last and I’d rank it as the third best of the series behind The Empire Strikes Back and A New Hope.

Good Points:

• The plot: the story was much more in line with the original trilogy and Lucas obviously had a lot of help on the screenplay from Jonathan Hales.
• Visuals: ILM has outdone themselves once again. These are most certainly the most amazing visuals I’ve ever seen. The climactic battle is a sight to behold. The completely CGI Yoda is almost perfect – especially when he has his action scene.
• Production design and costumes:

Once again, a sight to behold.

Bad Points:

• Dialogue: OK, so I said the plot was better, but much of the dialogue was – well – silly, contrived, overly simple, etc. Bill’s favorite line: “I hate sand.” (spoken by Anakin).
• Acting:

Stilted, dry, monotonous, you name it. Lucas has lost his (limited) skill at directing actors and is too involved with directing digital effects. Hayden Christensen, while a definite (infinite) improvement over Jake Lloyd, was not very good as Anakin. Natalie Portman was much better than I thought she would be, but still a bit weak. Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee were all excellent, but the best actor in the movie (IMHO) was Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett. He was just plain cool…

The post BD-X unemployment period has thankfully come to an end. Yours truly is now the Managing Director of Technology for The Debt Exchange.

DebtX is a “business-to-business marketplace for the auction of commercial real estate and business loans. It is an open, market-driven exchange that reduces transaction costs, compresses transaction cycles, and enables buyer and seller participation in the secondary commercial debt market.”

Notice any patterns here?

• Time0 focused on B2B, as does DebtX.
• Business Data eXchange to Debt Exchange.

Coincidence? Synchronicity? Government plot? All of the above?

I used to love my Intellivision. Now you can love it too.

CPU: 16-bit GI 1600 running at 10-bit data transfer
MEMORY: 7K internal ROM, RAM, and I/O, 64K for programs
RESOLUTION: 160 x 92 pixels
COLOR OUTPUT: 16
SPRITES: 8, each at 16×16 pixels in size
SOUND: 3 channel mono provided by an AY-3-8914 chip

16 colors. That’s enough for anyone, eh?