Tour, NASTI, Mars, Computers, Math, Energy, Movie Milestones, TV, .5 Head,
NOTE: The text on this page may look centered if you are viewing with IE. This appears to be a bug, since I'm not using any centering or center-align commands on the entire page. Please view with Firefox or possibly Chrome. Thanks, -- E.J.
Tour Business
My new promo poster →
I have this in the left rear window of my car and it is getting attention. The sales manager from a local hotel approached and wanted some fliers to put at the check-in desk, and it has already garnered some business for me. Also, we have it hanging at the biggest and best UFO bookstore in town, Roswell Landing. ↓
The large green alien in the background was just monochrome grey when I found it on Wikimedia Commons. I had to enlarge it, tint it green (the hard way, with hand-lassoing), then lighten and reducing contrast to push it into the background, then add text.
If you are too close, you might not even see the alien. I used subtle psychology in the poster. For example, making some of the text blood red to enhance eeriness, and using the word "witness" instead of just "see".
Federal Internet ID Program -- Your tax dollars at work hopefully working used against you.
Also known as a National Internet Ecosystem. It's a seductive idea: Register with the U.S. Department of Commerce and you will use only ONE password instead of the many you use now, AND we'll protect you from fraud! I assert there are problems with this program.
What is it?
NAtional Strategy for Trusted Identities (NASTI)Obama wants a national internet ID for all Americans. He's calling it the National Strategy for Trusted Identities. Instead of making it a LAW, he's put the Commerce Department in charge of it, and says it is voluntary. It will START as voluntary, and then become a STANDARD, and -- MARK MY WORDS, FOLKS, -- you'll find you need it to do anything on line, like banking, buying or selling goods, surfing the web, or even chatting. Some analysts predict eventually you won't even be able to GET on line without one of these IDs.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Rev. 13:17-18
Do we want the government in charge of this?
The taxpayer shouldn't have to pay for the government to handle this in the least efficient and most expensive way possible. There are private companies that provide trusted IDs. If you have to have one, get one of those. For example, Verisign is one of several companies offering a trustworthy ID for internet commerce.
Can the feds be trusted...
... to keep our information private? With one of these federal IDs, you'll need only one password. Indeed, with your identity tied to one password, all other passwords will be obsolete.
Is that in my best interest? I LIKE having multiple passwords, in case one is compromised. With just one state-controlled ID, everything you do, see, or purchase on line will be reviewable by the Commerce Department. They'll claim they would never do that, but that's what they said about Income Tax. Then they said Income Tax would be temporary. THEN they said it wouldn't go up. Which leads back to Can the feds be trusted?
Never let a good crisis go to wasteI've read a dozen articles on this. They range from all-trusting to super-paranoid. In this case, you can't be too careful. Once their foot is in your door, they're in. The federal government willl use WikiLeaks as an excuse to shut down anyone saying bad things about them. It'll be like the Soviet Union was and China is.
Click the headline link for for the CNET news article, which is the best-informed and most level-headed piece I have seen on this issue.
Note: If you are not interested in politics, privacy or protected speech, too late, you've already read it. But I'm sure you will enjoy the next section, where we talk about some really cool objects I found on the planet Mars!
My Recent Mars Discoveries Warning: This may shake your belief that Mars is cold, dry, and dead.
I discovered two curious objects in Spirit Panorama PIA10214, which was photographed by Mars Spirit rover in November of 2007. The only thing I did for enhancement was to enlarge by 200% and take out some of the artificial red color.
You can download PIA10214 from the NASA catalog to check these items yourself. The TIF is huge (133.4MB), so get that one if you have the time and space, but I can't tell a difference in quality between the TIF and the JPG.
"Notebook binder" →
Click the picture to see it full-scale. While examining the big panorama, this one stuck out like a sore thumb. Note the straight edges and regular geometry.
If you click the notebook picture to the right, You will get, in a separate window, the full-scale version cropped from the original panorama.
That version includes the actual rover at the bottom of the picture, so when you go looking at the panorama, you will know where it is relative to a specific part of the rover.
SEE ALSO, my video below, which details how to find it in the full panorama.
"Rodent" Could it be a rabbit?
Its head,right eye, mouth, nose, ears, body, and back feet are visible. If it has front arms, and is like our rabbits, then the forelimbs are either in shadow, or not contrasted enough to see. I originally thought this might be a gerbil or hamster, but a friend who raised rodents advises it looks like a rabbit to her. My Annie agrees.
My thoughts: If this is a rabbit, or something similar, my guess is that it was alive when the photo was taken. Notice it is sitting up with its head raised. Unless Martian rodents are very different from ours, I would have expected the creature to lie down before dying.
The Videos
How to find the notebook binder (2:40)
How to find the rodent (1:35)
Computers
My Windows 7 dying sound problem is fixed
Ever since installing Win7, I would lose my sound every few days and have to reboot to get it back. Around the beginning of this month (Jan. 2011), when the problem occurred, I went looking for my sound icon (looks like a speaker) in my system tray. It was one of the hidden icons.
When I found the icon, I noticed it had a red X over it. Right-clicking the icon led me through a troubleshooting process whereby the OS analyzed the problem, discovered the sound driver was hosed and re-loaded it for me. I haven't had the problem since. Yay team! I have always maintained Win7 is a good OS, it just has a crappy GUI.
AMD brings hexacore CPUs to the huddled masses
Dual core is a nice improvement over the Intel Pentia and AMD Athlon that came before. Then quadcore, awesome stuff. I was looking forward to upgrading to quad before the hexes came out.
Intel introduced their 6-core i7-980X in March of 2010, which is great, but the price was ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. For the chip! I'm no thousandaire, so... no no. Too much for a single chip. no no. "Hey, you." "What?", "No no."
The following month, April, 2010, Along comes AMD and launches their hexacore AMD Phenom™ II X6 1065T at $300. Now, some of the X6 chips are under $200. Astounding! AND, it goes in my AM2+ socket on my existing motherboard, so I could plug one in, flash my BIOS and rock on.
At a third the price, how does the AMD stack up to the Intel? This graph shows the results of the Wprime benchmark. Wprime uses MATH to test only the CPU. Click the graph to go to the article.
How to make videos of your computer screen
To show you how to find the mars objects (above), I needed a utility that would simply make a movie out of whatever happened on my computer monitor. There are a handful of utilities that will do it, but CNET Download.com recommended Jing very highly. Jing is so easy to use, I'll just tell you right here:
This is the nifty converter I referred to above. As you can tell from the top-left corner of my videos, the free version puts a watermark on the video. It was HARD finding a free swf-to-video converter that works, so I don't mind the watermark. Just be aware the watermark will be there, so when you make your video, allow room in the top-left corner so it doesn't cover anything up.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Demo/Benchmark
This is video demo and benchmark program based on an awesome , immersive First-Person Shooter. If you want to see what the game will look like on your system, or check your video performance, download and run this.
Math Don't go! This is neat.
If you think you don't like math, stay with me for three minutes.
Archie's method takes out all the complicated algebra, and reduces the problem to a simple cross-multiply, cancel, and vertical add.
My colleague, Archie Sartin invented this new method for solving a type of problem called a simultaneous linear equation. Also known as a system of equations. Don't go!
This is very easy to explain, and with Archie's new method, super easy to do.
What is a simultaneous equation? In the real world, it's like this:
Alice and Bob eat at a fast fish restaurant.
Alice orders two pieces of fish and two hushpuppies. Her order comes to $1.80.
Bob orders three pieces of fish and four hushpuppies. His order is $2.85.
How much does it cost for each piece of fish and each hushpuppy?
Now, personally, I think the fact there IS a method to solve this is terrific. I learned the hard way. Trust me, there are two hard ways to do this, and I learned them both. Now that Archie came out with his new method, the hard ways are history.
Archie's method takes out all the complicated algebra, and reduces the problem to a VERY simple cross-multiply, cancel, and vertical addition. Don't Go! It's just five easy steps, and I'm not going to show them to you on this page anyway.
I told Archie he should publish, but he said well, it's just his simplified version of a dual-cancellation method that was already known, so it's no big deal. It IS cool, though, so I made a presentation out of it, which he has given his blessing, so here it is.
My short slide show (it's just 5 steps in 7 slides).
You may have noticed the background I used for the presentation was a blown-up portion of the equation we're working on.
Energy
Would you like electrons with that?
Some McDonalds restaurants have electric charging stations. Charge for free while you eat.
New LED light bulbs to replace CFLs (but not quite yet)
Stores like Wal Mart, Lowes, and Home Depot are starting to carry normal screw-in replacement bulbs that are even easier on your electric bill than the compact flourescents. Don't replace the CFLs, but when they burn out.
Advantages of the LEDs are that they last twice as long as the CFLs, are virtually unbreakable, and consume about half the electricity for the equivalent amount of light. Until now, LEDs haven't been cheap enough to use as ordinary bulbs, but they are getting there.
This is the Phillips 12-watt LED bulb, standard screw base. It is as bright as a 60W incandescent and costs $40 retail. That makes it about twice as expensive as the equivalent CFL right now, over its lifetime. When they get around $20, that will be your time to buy.
Click the headline link for an excellent article about real world use of light bulbs.
Movie Milestones
1889 - Earliest Talkie (moving picture with speech)
Early experimental talkie from 1889 in Edison's lab using the Kinetophone (Kinetoscope + Phonograph). It was a one-person viewer that used a loop of celluloid film and a phonograph record linked to the projector.
Later it was improved for multiple viewers in a theater audience, with the projector in the back linked to the phonograph in the front by a long pulley system.
This here may be the earliest surviving example of such a film. If you crank it loud enough, you can hear what he's saying, which, to my ear is:
"Good morning Mr. Edison, glad to have you back. I hope you are satisfied with this Kinetophonograph".
Although Edison got the patent for the device, most of the experiments were performed by William K.L. Dickson, a photographer Edison had hired for the project. They wound up making 19 films before abandoning the idea in 1914.
1906 - First Feature Film -- The Story of the Kelly Gang (70 minutes)
Recognized by UNESCO as the first feature-length film (over 40 minutes). It was an Australian black and white silent movie about the notorious outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. Only 17 minutes have survived.
At right is a picture of Frank Mills playing Ned Kelly in the movie.
1918 - First All-Color Feature Film -- Cupid Angling
Details on this movie are SPARSE. Even IMDB can't tell you much about the cast and nothing about the characters. I can't even find a length for this film, and Wikipedia says it is unknown whether any prints of this movie survive today.
What we know is that it was a feature-length film (over 40 minutes) and that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford made walk-on appearances in the movie.
This is a handbill, apparently locally printed by some movie theater at the time of release. Their use of the word "photoplay" is interesting, also that they call us "Mr. and Mrs. Public". Does that mean we're married?
1927 - First Feature with Syncrhonized Sound -- The Jazz Singer (89 minutes)
Starring the incomparable Al Jolson, who was perfect for the role because he came from a family of Jewish cantors himself.
Although this feature is the first ever with synchronized dialog, it is not an "all-talkie". Much of the film is silent, complete with intercut dialog cards.
Here's a great photo of the premier of the movie at NYC's Warner Theatre, October 6, 1927. Click it to enlarge.
YO! No longer copyrighted, so this movie is available for free download at the Internet Archive. A MUST SEE!
1928 - First All-Talkie -- The Lights of New York (57 minutes).
This one has synchronized speech and sound from start to finish, and even a few musical numbers. It has survived, but has never been released on home video. It occasionally is shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). This movie was the origin of the famous line, "Take him for a ride."
If anyone knows where this is available for purchase, I would love to hear about it.
Below is the only clip I could find from the movie, an odd little tune called "At Dawning", performed by Harry Downing. Sometimes confused with another song from the same time called "Dawning". It might seem strange they have song and dance numbers in a mobster movie, but it was actually a good use for this new synchronized sound technology.
1929 - First All-Color All-Talkie →
On With The Show (103 minutes).
The film has survived, but only in black and white. Still, it's worth watching for historic value, if you can get it. In 2005, twenty seconds of technicolor film was found, and here I present you a still from that section.
TV
There are a couple of new Science Fiction shows I like, now available on Hulu.
Starhunter 2300
Think of this as a low-rent Firefly/Serenity. Same kind of look and feel. If you miss Firefly, you'll probably like this one. Does it blow my skirt up like Firefly? Of course not, because it wasn't done by Joss Whedon, but at least it is worth a shot at the first few shows. See how you like it.
No Ordinary Family
This is Heroes-meets-Fantastic Four meets-The Incredibles Even has Michael Chiklis in the same role as F-4. He's a good, natural actor, very likeable. The show has an attractive cast, competent acting, excellent production values and good-enough writing.
The Incredibles was an awesome animated film. No Ordinary Family is as close as you will get to that with live action, and the special effects are top knotch.
Half-a-Head Man
Carlos Rodriguez is a viral sensation since his November, 2010 arrest for soliciting prostitution in Miami. Not so much for the arrest as for his mug shot. From the front, without perspective, he looks fairly normal. The side view, however, reminds me of a 1957 Ford Thunderbird convertible with the top down. Don't get me wrong, that was a great car.
The deformity is from an accident, which is confirmed in one news report I read, but they didn't specify the nature of the accident. Suffice to say it was a bad accident.
Until next time,
Tour Business
My new promo poster →
I have this in the left rear window of my car and it is getting attention. The sales manager from a local hotel approached and wanted some fliers to put at the check-in desk, and it has already garnered some business for me. Also, we have it hanging at the biggest and best UFO bookstore in town, Roswell Landing. ↓
The large green alien in the background was just monochrome grey when I found it on Wikimedia Commons. I had to enlarge it, tint it green (the hard way, with hand-lassoing), then lighten and reducing contrast to push it into the background, then add text.
If you are too close, you might not even see the alien. I used subtle psychology in the poster. For example, making some of the text blood red to enhance eeriness, and using the word "witness" instead of just "see".
Federal Internet ID Program -- Your tax dollars at work hopefully working used against you.
Also known as a National Internet Ecosystem. It's a seductive idea: Register with the U.S. Department of Commerce and you will use only ONE password instead of the many you use now, AND we'll protect you from fraud! I assert there are problems with this program.
What is it?
NAtional Strategy for Trusted Identities (NASTI)Obama wants a national internet ID for all Americans. He's calling it the National Strategy for Trusted Identities. Instead of making it a LAW, he's put the Commerce Department in charge of it, and says it is voluntary. It will START as voluntary, and then become a STANDARD, and -- MARK MY WORDS, FOLKS, -- you'll find you need it to do anything on line, like banking, buying or selling goods, surfing the web, or even chatting. Some analysts predict eventually you won't even be able to GET on line without one of these IDs.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Rev. 13:17-18
Do we want the government in charge of this?
The taxpayer shouldn't have to pay for the government to handle this in the least efficient and most expensive way possible. There are private companies that provide trusted IDs. If you have to have one, get one of those. For example, Verisign is one of several companies offering a trustworthy ID for internet commerce.
Can the feds be trusted...
... to keep our information private? With one of these federal IDs, you'll need only one password. Indeed, with your identity tied to one password, all other passwords will be obsolete.
Is that in my best interest? I LIKE having multiple passwords, in case one is compromised. With just one state-controlled ID, everything you do, see, or purchase on line will be reviewable by the Commerce Department. They'll claim they would never do that, but that's what they said about Income Tax. Then they said Income Tax would be temporary. THEN they said it wouldn't go up. Which leads back to Can the feds be trusted?
Never let a good crisis go to wasteI've read a dozen articles on this. They range from all-trusting to super-paranoid. In this case, you can't be too careful. Once their foot is in your door, they're in. The federal government willl use WikiLeaks as an excuse to shut down anyone saying bad things about them. It'll be like the Soviet Union was and China is.
Click the headline link for for the CNET news article, which is the best-informed and most level-headed piece I have seen on this issue.
Note: If you are not interested in politics, privacy or protected speech, too late, you've already read it. But I'm sure you will enjoy the next section, where we talk about some really cool objects I found on the planet Mars!
My Recent Mars Discoveries Warning: This may shake your belief that Mars is cold, dry, and dead.
I discovered two curious objects in Spirit Panorama PIA10214, which was photographed by Mars Spirit rover in November of 2007. The only thing I did for enhancement was to enlarge by 200% and take out some of the artificial red color.
You can download PIA10214 from the NASA catalog to check these items yourself. The TIF is huge (133.4MB), so get that one if you have the time and space, but I can't tell a difference in quality between the TIF and the JPG.
"Notebook binder" →
Click the picture to see it full-scale. While examining the big panorama, this one stuck out like a sore thumb. Note the straight edges and regular geometry.
If you click the notebook picture to the right, You will get, in a separate window, the full-scale version cropped from the original panorama.
That version includes the actual rover at the bottom of the picture, so when you go looking at the panorama, you will know where it is relative to a specific part of the rover.
SEE ALSO, my video below, which details how to find it in the full panorama.
"Rodent" Could it be a rabbit?
Its head,right eye, mouth, nose, ears, body, and back feet are visible. If it has front arms, and is like our rabbits, then the forelimbs are either in shadow, or not contrasted enough to see. I originally thought this might be a gerbil or hamster, but a friend who raised rodents advises it looks like a rabbit to her. My Annie agrees.
My thoughts: If this is a rabbit, or something similar, my guess is that it was alive when the photo was taken. Notice it is sitting up with its head raised. Unless Martian rodents are very different from ours, I would have expected the creature to lie down before dying.
The Videos
How to find the notebook binder (2:40)
Click to viewHow to find the rodent (1:35)
Computers
My Windows 7 dying sound problem is fixed
Ever since installing Win7, I would lose my sound every few days and have to reboot to get it back. Around the beginning of this month (Jan. 2011), when the problem occurred, I went looking for my sound icon (looks like a speaker) in my system tray. It was one of the hidden icons.
When I found the icon, I noticed it had a red X over it. Right-clicking the icon led me through a troubleshooting process whereby the OS analyzed the problem, discovered the sound driver was hosed and re-loaded it for me. I haven't had the problem since. Yay team! I have always maintained Win7 is a good OS, it just has a crappy GUI.
AMD brings hexacore CPUs to the huddled masses
Dual core is a nice improvement over the Intel Pentia and AMD Athlon that came before. Then quadcore, awesome stuff. I was looking forward to upgrading to quad before the hexes came out.
Intel introduced their 6-core i7-980X in March of 2010, which is great, but the price was ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. For the chip! I'm no thousandaire, so... no no. Too much for a single chip. no no. "Hey, you." "What?", "No no."
The following month, April, 2010, Along comes AMD and launches their hexacore AMD Phenom™ II X6 1065T at $300. Now, some of the X6 chips are under $200. Astounding! AND, it goes in my AM2+ socket on my existing motherboard, so I could plug one in, flash my BIOS and rock on.
At a third the price, how does the AMD stack up to the Intel? This graph shows the results of the Wprime benchmark. Wprime uses MATH to test only the CPU. Click the graph to go to the article.
How to make videos of your computer screen
To show you how to find the mars objects (above), I needed a utility that would simply make a movie out of whatever happened on my computer monitor. There are a handful of utilities that will do it, but CNET Download.com recommended Jing very highly. Jing is so easy to use, I'll just tell you right here:
- When you install Jing, it puts a hovering "sunburst" icon on your desktop at the top center, which you can move, if you like. To record your screen activity, you hover over it, and select "Capture".
- You'll get some cross-hairs on your screen, which you move to make a rectangle, describing the section of your screen you want to record.
- Once the rectangle is set, you get options for taking a screen-shot, recording a video, recording from your webcam, or cancelling. (The webcam function requires the paid version. Everything else works great. You might never need the webcam recording anyway, since there are other free programs that provide that).
- Click the "film" icon to start recording, then do your thing on the screen. Jing shows controls below the active frame for stop, record, pause, mute, restart, and cancel.
- Once you click the stop button, you'll have options to share via screencast.com, save to disk, edit in Camtasia studio, or cancel.
- I always save. The free version saves the file in .swf (Shockwave Flash) format, which is not suitable for uploading to Youtube, so I got a nifty converter to convert it to an .avi and that's how I posted it for you all. Note: SWF (Shockwave Flash Movie) is not to be confused with FLV (Flash Video). They are both Adobe Flash formats, but are different.
This is the nifty converter I referred to above. As you can tell from the top-left corner of my videos, the free version puts a watermark on the video. It was HARD finding a free swf-to-video converter that works, so I don't mind the watermark. Just be aware the watermark will be there, so when you make your video, allow room in the top-left corner so it doesn't cover anything up.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Demo/Benchmark
This is video demo and benchmark program based on an awesome , immersive First-Person Shooter. If you want to see what the game will look like on your system, or check your video performance, download and run this.
Math Don't go! This is neat.
If you think you don't like math, stay with me for three minutes.
Archie's method takes out all the complicated algebra, and reduces the problem to a simple cross-multiply, cancel, and vertical add.
My colleague, Archie Sartin invented this new method for solving a type of problem called a simultaneous linear equation. Also known as a system of equations. Don't go!
This is very easy to explain, and with Archie's new method, super easy to do.
What is a simultaneous equation? In the real world, it's like this:
Alice and Bob eat at a fast fish restaurant.
Alice orders two pieces of fish and two hushpuppies. Her order comes to $1.80.
Bob orders three pieces of fish and four hushpuppies. His order is $2.85.
How much does it cost for each piece of fish and each hushpuppy?
Now, personally, I think the fact there IS a method to solve this is terrific. I learned the hard way. Trust me, there are two hard ways to do this, and I learned them both. Now that Archie came out with his new method, the hard ways are history.
Archie's method takes out all the complicated algebra, and reduces the problem to a VERY simple cross-multiply, cancel, and vertical addition. Don't Go! It's just five easy steps, and I'm not going to show them to you on this page anyway.
I told Archie he should publish, but he said well, it's just his simplified version of a dual-cancellation method that was already known, so it's no big deal. It IS cool, though, so I made a presentation out of it, which he has given his blessing, so here it is.
My short slide show (it's just 5 steps in 7 slides).
You may have noticed the background I used for the presentation was a blown-up portion of the equation we're working on.
Energy
Would you like electrons with that?
Some McDonalds restaurants have electric charging stations. Charge for free while you eat.
New LED light bulbs to replace CFLs (but not quite yet)
Stores like Wal Mart, Lowes, and Home Depot are starting to carry normal screw-in replacement bulbs that are even easier on your electric bill than the compact flourescents. Don't replace the CFLs, but when they burn out.
Advantages of the LEDs are that they last twice as long as the CFLs, are virtually unbreakable, and consume about half the electricity for the equivalent amount of light. Until now, LEDs haven't been cheap enough to use as ordinary bulbs, but they are getting there.
This is the Phillips 12-watt LED bulb, standard screw base. It is as bright as a 60W incandescent and costs $40 retail. That makes it about twice as expensive as the equivalent CFL right now, over its lifetime. When they get around $20, that will be your time to buy.
Click the headline link for an excellent article about real world use of light bulbs.
Movie Milestones
1889 - Earliest Talkie (moving picture with speech)
Early experimental talkie from 1889 in Edison's lab using the Kinetophone (Kinetoscope + Phonograph). It was a one-person viewer that used a loop of celluloid film and a phonograph record linked to the projector.
Later it was improved for multiple viewers in a theater audience, with the projector in the back linked to the phonograph in the front by a long pulley system.
This here may be the earliest surviving example of such a film. If you crank it loud enough, you can hear what he's saying, which, to my ear is:
"Good morning Mr. Edison, glad to have you back. I hope you are satisfied with this Kinetophonograph".
Although Edison got the patent for the device, most of the experiments were performed by William K.L. Dickson, a photographer Edison had hired for the project. They wound up making 19 films before abandoning the idea in 1914.
1906 - First Feature Film -- The Story of the Kelly Gang (70 minutes)
Recognized by UNESCO as the first feature-length film (over 40 minutes). It was an Australian black and white silent movie about the notorious outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. Only 17 minutes have survived.
At right is a picture of Frank Mills playing Ned Kelly in the movie.
1918 - First All-Color Feature Film -- Cupid Angling
Details on this movie are SPARSE. Even IMDB can't tell you much about the cast and nothing about the characters. I can't even find a length for this film, and Wikipedia says it is unknown whether any prints of this movie survive today.
What we know is that it was a feature-length film (over 40 minutes) and that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford made walk-on appearances in the movie.
This is a handbill, apparently locally printed by some movie theater at the time of release. Their use of the word "photoplay" is interesting, also that they call us "Mr. and Mrs. Public". Does that mean we're married?
1927 - First Feature with Syncrhonized Sound -- The Jazz Singer (89 minutes)
Starring the incomparable Al Jolson, who was perfect for the role because he came from a family of Jewish cantors himself.
Although this feature is the first ever with synchronized dialog, it is not an "all-talkie". Much of the film is silent, complete with intercut dialog cards.
Here's a great photo of the premier of the movie at NYC's Warner Theatre, October 6, 1927. Click it to enlarge.
YO! No longer copyrighted, so this movie is available for free download at the Internet Archive. A MUST SEE!
1928 - First All-Talkie -- The Lights of New York (57 minutes).
This one has synchronized speech and sound from start to finish, and even a few musical numbers. It has survived, but has never been released on home video. It occasionally is shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). This movie was the origin of the famous line, "Take him for a ride."
If anyone knows where this is available for purchase, I would love to hear about it.
Below is the only clip I could find from the movie, an odd little tune called "At Dawning", performed by Harry Downing. Sometimes confused with another song from the same time called "Dawning". It might seem strange they have song and dance numbers in a mobster movie, but it was actually a good use for this new synchronized sound technology.
1929 - First All-Color All-Talkie →
On With The Show (103 minutes).
The film has survived, but only in black and white. Still, it's worth watching for historic value, if you can get it. In 2005, twenty seconds of technicolor film was found, and here I present you a still from that section.
TV
There are a couple of new Science Fiction shows I like, now available on Hulu.
Starhunter 2300
Think of this as a low-rent Firefly/Serenity. Same kind of look and feel. If you miss Firefly, you'll probably like this one. Does it blow my skirt up like Firefly? Of course not, because it wasn't done by Joss Whedon, but at least it is worth a shot at the first few shows. See how you like it.
No Ordinary Family
This is Heroes-meets-Fantastic Four meets-The Incredibles Even has Michael Chiklis in the same role as F-4. He's a good, natural actor, very likeable. The show has an attractive cast, competent acting, excellent production values and good-enough writing.
The Incredibles was an awesome animated film. No Ordinary Family is as close as you will get to that with live action, and the special effects are top knotch.
Half-a-Head Man
Carlos Rodriguez is a viral sensation since his November, 2010 arrest for soliciting prostitution in Miami. Not so much for the arrest as for his mug shot. From the front, without perspective, he looks fairly normal. The side view, however, reminds me of a 1957 Ford Thunderbird convertible with the top down. Don't get me wrong, that was a great car.
The deformity is from an accident, which is confirmed in one news report I read, but they didn't specify the nature of the accident. Suffice to say it was a bad accident.
Until next time,