I saw this movie twice in a week, believe it or not. Once on opening night and then again to see it on IMAX, the following weekend. After the second viewing, Logan asked me to join him on a podcast that he does regularly, reviewing movies for the I Read Comics blog. Here it is, two comic geeks in front of a microphone, waxing pretentious on the nature of heroes, the awesomeness of Heath Ledger, and Frank Miller’s essential early-80’s reinvention of the superhero.

Fair warning: the review is packed with spoilers, so if you don’t want to have the plot ruined for you, definitely don’t listen past the first couple minutes.

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(direct link)

My enthusiasm for Obama has been curbed substantially over the past few months (campaign financing, FISA, etc.) but I’m still excited to support and vote for him in the general election. I just had my hopes too high.

In any case, my father recently made a contribution to the Obama campaign, and sent this letter along with it (after the jump.)

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Two more months of training, since the last time I recorded myself. I seem a little faster and a little more responsive. It’s depressing to watch myself, though. The bit of extra range I’m developing seems like to be at the expense of crispness. Patience…

UPDATE: Mark (my trainer) commented below. I figured I’d put in a video of him working out with Neungsiam (his trainer, a pro fighter and former Lumpini champion) so people have some idea of how this is supposed to go. I should find one of Neungsiam training, for a view of the next level up.

My friends and I have spent an embarrassing number of hours reliving our adolescent days, coming up with these groan-worthy puns. Occasionally, a few will touch upon the absurd and, very rarely, the sublime. After the jump I present to you the current, canonical list of Er-jokes. Add more in the comments or in emails and I’ll keep the list updated.

Update: The best ones from the comments have been added to the canon as of 12/18/2009.

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Go with low expectations and be pleasantly surprised. I actually had a ton of fun watching this one.

Devon likes to send me old emails when she’s travelling. After the jump, I’ve pasted a dream I wrote her about, five years ago. Please hold your comments about how insane I must be to dream such a dream:

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One of Amos’ new efforts at DiscoverMagazine.com is a new “journalistic mashup” blog call 80beats, which reports on scientific topics of popular interest. Here’s a screen snip of the text from an entry about new solar panels that use internal reflection to collect sunlight:

As you can see, the body of the post is made up of quotes from other news sources, colored in blue. This is a format that I really like; mashed up news from many sources. Some blogs like this are even explicit about reporting on biases; the sources themselves are sometimes a part of the story.

What 80beats is doing well is to start developing a UI around the mashup text, allowing a very natural flow of the prose. Using blue text and the occasional editorial brackets means the reader can easily ignore the sources completely and read the post as an uninterrupted piece of content. The references are there, though, for anyone who desires more context.

I just came across a long-winded blog post from a friend I haven’t seen since high school. He’s now in Shanghai, being annoyed by the coarse manners of the locals. Something about his description of the place really resonated with me. It fully explains why I was so much more comfortable in Hanoi than Saigon, for example. Here’s an excerpt:

And i think that’s what drives me to keep looking for cool places to hang out or live. That’s why I love reading about Austin, Portland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and other meccas for creatives, indies, and dropouts. The act of reading the articles about these places, followed by the act of imagining myself traipsing around these places, is purely fantasy–but that’s what some people are driven by. Maybe “fantasy” is the wrong word: you are driven by the sense that life is still big, and possibilities abound, and that you are free enough to craft, shape, mold that life into something that fits you. You know that you can’t change people (in Shanghai, everywhere) but you dream that there is some kind of place where you can just “fit in.” A place that resonates with you, that somehow possesses the kind of people and culture you need to thrive, to do your work, to relax and enjoy life properly, to lead a good life.

As i just explained, this too is the source of my discontent with China–it’s just too far from my fantasy city-state world where everyone is cosmopolitan and educated, stylish and cultured. Of course, I have never been anywhere that really comes close to that ideal. And even places like Paris and Athens that do come close only do so because I’m viewing them through the rose-colored glasses of the stranger, the one-time tourist. Delve deeper and you’ll no doubt hit a strata of complete asswipes too.

Here’s the full post.

Facebook has long lost its luster, so it’s just sad to be reminded that Friendster still exists at all. Recently, I’ve even been getting spam messages from my friends’ hacked accounts. Here’s an example:

Date: 07/7/2008 3:08 pm
Subject: Hey
Message:
Hi,
it’s been a while since we talked,
I hope you are doing good.
I got a new page for the cam app, take a look!
[link to spam site]

Smart, those spammers. They know I’ll open a message from a friend. That is, of course, until I start ignoring all Friendster messages altogether. Which begins now.

So, this is some serious Web 2.0 action: Instructables user zachninme (and ex-intern) wanted to have a rating system for comments on the site (so far, we only allow users to rate the instructables themselves.) He built a Greasemonkey script that any Firefox user can install; this injects a rating interface into all the comments whenever that user visits Instructables. Then, he wrote a backend using the new Google App Engine that collects all of the ratings, aggregates them, and pushes the show/hide logic back to the user’s Firefox client.

Voila: instant community/social feature, completely disintermediated from our site. The web being what it is, nowadays, he doesn’t have to run a server or get permission from us. Innovation accelerates…

Here’s a link to his announcement.