adrian is rad

I quite enjoyed Invictus, though it was a bit sentimental and sappy. I found the book better in the end.

The list of goofs in the movie is quite entertaining, though, particularly the level of detail of the errors noted.

• Factual errors: The rugby balls used in the Springboks matches are the current generic Gilbert Barbarian match balls with dark blue and green oval trims. The actual match balls used in 1995 World Cup were in fact grass green and sky blue and they all had a Rugby World Cup logo and the year 1995 printed on them. Also the kicking tee used by the All Blacks goal kicker in the film was a Gilbert Blue Tee; the actual kicking tee used by the player Andrew Mehrtens in the 1995 final was a yellow Simpkin Kicking Tee.

I’m sure many people were appalled by the latter inaccuracy.

It doesn’t seem so, at least. A low budget airline in South Africa advertized themselves as “the Unofficial Airline of You Know What” and FIFA contacted them to tell them they may not use a combination of images of stadiums, vuvuzelas and national flags and the words “South Africa”.

They then ran a very similar follow-up ad with all the symbols and offending words taken out.

I have a problem. Well, technically it’s my plants’ problems. They’re dying. Dropping leaves rapidly; they’re dying.

How am I going to care for children if I can’t care for plants? Am I going to call my family friend who knows about such things and ask her, “Diana, my children are dropping leaves rapidly! What do I do?” And will she say “Maybe you’re overwatering them.” And will l say, “But aren’t these the ones you said could take as much water as I could give them?” And what if she says “That’s true. Maybe you need to give them more water. Or maybe they need more sunlight, but not too much. Are you feeding them?”

“You have to feed children?!”

I’m enjoying this piece debunking the air around pro photographers. A quick sample:

I often leave my ISO dangerously high. I get more email about why I shot something at ISO 800 than anything else and that tells me (a) I should get my act together and (b) y’all need to lighten up on the whole ISO issue.
…
People ask me about how to use their flash in two groups balanced with ambient and I stare awkwardly at them and give them Joe McNally’s email address or home phone number and beg them to (a) never tell Joe I sent them and (b) never to speak of this ever again.

I have long forgotten everything I knew about the zone system and now expose purely in reverse. Shoot first, look at the histogram, then get it right, instead of the way I learn which was the more sensible “meter twice, shoot once.”

Yay, I’m not alone in some of those.

A friend just forwarded me this email I sent from the day before my 23rd birthday, just as I’m about to leave Boston. It displays my sadness about my favorite MIT dialup[1] server being retired.

(All of the MIT servers were named after hacks. I’ve linked the hacks below.)

From: bischoff@MIT
Subject: sad
Date: August 26, 2003 3:27:31 PM PDT
To: tepd@xyz.org

nerd-xing and cathedral-seven are no more. nerd-xing was my favorite dialup for a long time

18.7.16.67       25  TEST        contents-vnder-pressvre           3000
18.7.16.73       25  ATHENA-NORMAL  buzzword-bingo                25731
18.7.16.69       25  ATHENA-NORMAL  department-of-alchemy          25902
18.7.16.80       25  ATHENA-NORMAL  magic-pi-ball                  26066
18.7.16.75       25  ATHENA-NORMAL  biohazard-cafe                 26092
18.7.16.71       25  ATHENA-FTP  mass-toolpike                    26227
18.7.16.64       25  X           no-knife                          41390

(and mass-toolpike isn’t an express server anymore. it’s ftp!)

Cheers,
Adrian

[1] Of course we didn’t actually dial-up to them, we just used our T1 and sshed in.

I have a new blog. It’s called Secret Cape Town. Check it out if you’d like. I’m hoping it’ll help me learn even more cool places to go in the city.

I also have a twitter channel if you’re into such things.

I’ve been really enjoying going through and reading a number of the pieces on this list of best of journalism 2009. Possibly my favorite is the Michael Lewis piece on the financial collapse of Iceland.

It’s been hot here. Hot like I remember from Boston, from Pittsburgh. Drenched with sweat and skin melting off your skeleton hot. But the heat wave broke the last couple days, particularly with the rain today.

Not really. But the place I lived was torn down and the new house that was built there was sold for that much.