No Country For Old Men

I’m a huge Coen Brothers fan. Off the charts. I’ve seen all their movies, many many times each. Crazy-talented guys.

I saw No Country For Old Men yesterday. I knew nothing at all about it a priori except that it was a Coen’s film, Tommy Lee Jones was in it and there were cowboy hats involved. That’s it. I have never read a Cormac McCarthy book. Not sure I’ll start.

This movie is somewhere between ‘great’ and ‘amazing’. The acting is off the scale good. The cinematography is riveting. The silence, emptiness, and air in the movie is a character itself. You can’t take your eyes off it. But I often wanted to. Not so much because of the blood and gore – of which there’s a ton – in truly impressive manners, no less, but because of something else I just can’t quite put my finger on (and also ‘cuz I don’t want to push spoilers here).

See it. If I had to characterize it, I think “insane character study” is probably the closest I could get to a generalization. My guess is I will watch it again. And again. And I’ll come away feeling as oddly about it each time. See it.

UPDATE: I’m astonished that it’s done $41M at the box office. It deserves every penny, but this is not your standard US moviegoer fare, by any stretch, IMO. The film is apparently the 8th highest-grossing film for 2007. Amazing. Somebody please help me pick my jaw up off the floor.

The Perfect Briefcase?

For whatever reason, I’ve never been totally gleeful with my briefcase choices. I try new ones out from time to time, but seem to inevitably end up back using an inexpensive, generic black nylon jobbie from Eddie Bauer or the like. I’m thinking I may have broken the pattern.

While considering a prettily-customized Timbuk2, and while reading the glowing reviews of TOM BIHN bags, I triangulated on the Briggs & Riley Speedy Mini Brief and have been thoroughly enjoying it for about a month now.

I wanted to try something very small to (a) restrict the weight of my briefcase, (b) force me to be efficient about packing for travel, and (c) be, well, small! The case measures 13.5″ wide by only 10″ high by only 3.5″ deep. It weighs a measly 1.7 pounds and has very neat orange highlights and interior. This is a great bag for us ultra-portable notebook types (X60s here), but it’s not a solution for the 17″ PowerBook folks, for sure. It’s so darn small that I seem to use the (quite comfortable) handles far more often than the shoulder strap, which I may start keeping at home.

Audio-Technica AT-HA25D

I picked up a new audio toy a few weeks back that I’m enjoying quite a bit. A few years ago, my friend Ray got me paying more attention to the world of headphones. Although I’ve got a fine stereo system at home, most of the time I have available to listen to music is while working, via a pair of headphones. After years of listening to the cruddy analog output of my laptops, I had had enough and decided it was time to pick up a headphone amplifier.

I decided I wanted something with a built-in DAC so I could run digital audio out of my computer to avoid the analog audio interference that laptops can be afflicted with. It turns out that I was ahead of the curve. As best I could tell, only two products under $500 fit the bill. The first was the Presonus Central Station, which is a very neat unit, but as it’s a pro audio piece, it’s a big 19″ 1U rack-mount unit. I couldn’t find any alternatives until I stumbled (literally) across the Audio-Technica AT-HA25D.

If you clicked through the links above, you presumably noticed that they aren’t in English. It turns out the AT-HA25D isn’t available in the US. I found it and purchased it through AudioCubes, which drop-ships such Asian-market coolios to us Americans from Japan. They also have a brand new retail store in NYC on 8th near Broadway – not too far from Washington Park.

The unit works as advertised, and I’ve been quite happy with every aspect of it! The blue glow is way cool . Now if only someone could get Vista to do digital audio out properly…

Quote of the Day

This stupendously wonderful quote by Carl Gustav Jung is courtesy of a weekend blog post by Jothy Rosenberg.

To be normal is the aim of the unsuccessful.

all ur physikz nginz are belong 2 us.

Wow. Created in Crysis.

Thumping

Truth is, I thought it mattered.
I thought that music mattered.
But does it? Bollocks!
Not compared to how people matter.

Beautiful!

For all the pain and suffering most of us endured yesterday during the storm, this morning was just stupendously amazing. It (almost) made it all worth it. Gorgeous sunshine on freshly-fallen snow. I was in a rush to get a to a meeting when I left the house this AM, but I stood outside for a while soaking it all in. I ended up in Cambridge for a meeting in the late morning, and it was just so damn pretty wherever you looked!

MLB Players’ Union

The MLB Players’ Union is a fucking joke.

Why I Don’t Own A Wood Chipper

This evening, my darling children decided that it would be entertaining to take about ten of my laundered, boxed shirts and ‘unpack’ them and lay them all out on the bedroom floor. Oh dear…

Symposium on Reputation Economies

The Information Society Project at Yale Law hosted the Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace this weekend. I had a blast!

The panels were thought-provoking, and I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with some super folks.

Danielle Citron of the University of Maryland School of Law gave a somewhat chilling, but extremely important, talk about the challenges women are facing expressing themselves online. I’m very much looking forward to her research getting out there soon.

Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation is working to push the P2P meme beyond technology, and has a fantastic perspective on the whole situation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed digging through P2P’s wiki.

Mari Kuraishi of GlobalGiving is tackling some challenging reputational problems that span distance, geography, and time – all for stupendous causes.

Auren Hoffman of Rapleaf discussed online data privacy and how we all need to think broadly and carefully about whether we want an opt-in or an opt-out Internet.

Last but not least, the inimitable Beth Noveck of New York Law School triggered a number of interesting ideas for me during (and after) her talk – John Clippinger, sitting next to me, was visibly amused as I scribbled furiously in my notebook trying to get it all dumped out of my head!

I wish the shindig was longer- there were a ton of folks I never got to meet properly. Hopefully ISP will turn this into an annual event – I think it could be exceptionally valuable to the community. Kudos and thanks ISP!