Big day tomorrow! I waited 8 months for it, to find a band that I both like, and they would like me to shoot a music video clip for them. So tomorrow, I will be shooting my first music video clip. I can’t wait!

The indie band is a Bay Area native one, they are called HIJK, and they rock! Download some of their songs for free here or buy their album on iTunes. The band already has a video for their first single out of their “The Pen and letter” album, called “Paper boat” (also a free download). They filmed it themselves, and edited it very nicely together. Very creative! Tomorrow, we will be shooting a video for the song “Alibi”. My idea for the video is a more conservative “alt.rock music clip”, which will hopefully pan out ok as I don’t have a 35mm adapter yet (I expect one in a few weeks) and I have not even seen the shooting place yet. I will have to improvise immediately tomorrow after I arrive at the set.

These are the tools that I will have with me tomorrow to materialize the shoot: an audio CD that has the song “Alibi” recorded spent up 125%, a CD player, a camera bag, the Canon HV20 camera, 2 camera batteries fully charged, our new lights, our deflector, my shoulder bracket, my tripod, my steadycam, my WD-H43 wide-angle lens, my 43-to-52mm step-up ring, polarizer/ND/contrast filters, my HDTV-fx Tiffen film-look filter, lens cleanser and brush, 3-4 tapes, our white balance gray card, a Kodak digicam for tests, and a hat (as we will also be shooting outdoors).

Wish me luck! I will need it as I will be shooting “blind”.

Stormrider challenges me with the following survey:

* How many years do you use a computer for?
About 16.

* Are you a newbie, casual user, power user, master, umber, jedi?
Power.

* What’s your main computer?
A Dell Hyperthreaded 3.06 Ghz P4.

* Do you put together your own PCs?
I used to, but I don’t bother anymore. I buy them ready.

* Have you ever broken a computer because of your anger?
Naah.

* What browser are you using?
Firefox on the PC, Safari on the Mac.

* What media player are you using?
WinAMP and iTunes.

* What mail client are you using?
The shit called Windows Live Mail.

* What IM client are you using?
Trillian and Adium.

* Do you run add-ons?
No.

* What anti-virus do you run?
AVG Free Edition.

* Favorite software
Outlook Express is not the most secure software, but it’s solid as a rock.

* Favorite software house:
Google

* Most hated software house:
Electronic Arts

* Favorite hardware company:
Apple

* Most hated hardware company:
Anything cheapo Asian, including HTC.

* Favorite geek PC usage:
None anymore.

* Dream-machine?
The fastest PC you can find to edit AVCHD in real time.

* Was your first video you saw on a PC porn?
Nope.

* Do you modify other people’s PCs when you use them?
Ah yeah, I need to “fix” things.

* Anything embarrassing in your Trash Bin?
Not much.

* Do you spend useless time opening/closing windows in your OS?
Naah…

One feature that I am missing from iTunes (in addition to this one, of course) is “music collections”. We have 5 iPods in our household, and I am using 3 of them (16 GB iPod Touch, 8 GB iPhone, and 4 GB iPod Mini). I would like to use different iPods for each kind of music. For example, one iPod for commercially bought pop/rock music, one for freeware indie rock music, and one for electronic/dance. As I am a bit of a control freak, I just don’t like them mixed up because they don’t sound the same. Plus, not all my music+videos fit on my iPod Touch or the iPhone, so I am using all 3 devices.

Each time that I purchase, or rip, or add a new song in my iTunes library, I would like to be able to have the option to drop them into a specific collection of music. I know that there are smart playlists that you can possibly sort via “genre”, but thing is, each ripped CD or download features a different name for a genre. For example, for what I perceive overall as “indie rock”, it might be tagged as alternative, grudge, garage, alt.rock, rock, hard rock etc etc. So I can’t possibly go and change the tags of 5,000+ songs one by one. Instead, I need an easier drag-n-drop solution (while I am building the library) that keeps things separately: music collections. And each iPod would sync to one of these.

I understand that when iTunes first came out this feature didn’t make much sense, but 7 years into the iPod times, some people tend to have a whole collection of them. So I am pretty sure I am not alone in this request.

Stormrider posted a very interesting and as always, right-in-the-mark blog post.

If you want to see what’s wrong with many Greek people today, you simply have to look at one person, who happens to be a good representative of the bunch: Mikis Theodorakis. He is an internationally known composer, and a politician. Even if you might never heard his name, you probably have heard his music somewhere.

And you don’t have to know him to judge him. You just need to read his — pretty objectively written — Wikipedia page (towards the bottom).

Let me vomit now.

I just read this over at Slashdot, and was funny, as I was thinking just yesterday that the future of computing won’t be a free utopia but a fully controlled environment.

There is no doubt in my mind that NSA/CIA/FBI already have “super” credentials (supplied by Microsoft) that can login to any Windows machine in the world. While this might sound like a conspiracy theory to you, it sounds like normal business to me. If I was working for them, that’s the first thing I would push towards. Apple is as vulnerable as Microsoft in my opinion.

Regarding Linux, they can always offer “patches” or whole frameworks that look strong at first sight (e.g. SELinux), even uploaded by a Joe Hacker, only that the guy might be working for them instead. Look at the recent Debian blunder. For many years now, no one knew that the SSH keys were weak. I don’t give enough credit to the OSS community to fix bugs or even ruthlessly test random patches that make it in. It’s so easy to slip in rootkits on OSS that’s not even funny.

And besides, there is always the chicken and the egg problem. Instead of trying to put rootkits on pieces of software, you do it once, in the compiler. Good luck trying to keep clean the compiler itself, because you always need a compiler to compile your compiler (and very old compilers don’t have all the features you need to compile a newer compiler).

In other words, these agencies use computers to do their job, the same way some do to hack them. So if you ever see a global rootkit unveiled, don’t get surprised. I expect nothing less from them. I would do the same thing if I was in their position.

Post 9/11, there is no such thing as “privacy”. Forget it. Or fight for it.

1.5 years ago I went on record saying that OLPC rewriting the whole UI of the OLPC from scratch was stupid (1, 2). By saying the obvious truth, somehow I became the “bitch” again for all the Linux weenies who happened to read my blog at the time.

Now, the team realizes their mistake and they regret it, as instead of creating education applications, they were spending time and money re-inventing the wheel.

I told you so.

I have this theory about how the episode format will be for Lost’s next season, Season 5 (S5).

I believe that there will be two distinct narrative timelines, one in the island with the remainder of people, and one off island with the Oceanic 6, Ben and possibly Desmond/Penny. There will be very few flashbacks, possibly no more than 4-5 for the whole season.

The off-island story will stop being out of order, but it will pick up from the S4 finale’s flash forward (which will take place after the S3 finale with Jack trying to suicide). From that point on, the story off island will be as narrative and in-order as the story so far in the island has been. So it won’t be a flash-forward anymore, but what viewers will perceive as “current”. The on-island story will continue to also be narrative and current, but with a catch.

Remember that on the latest episode Locke said that they need to “move the island”. I believe that the “movement” won’t be necessarily in space, but definitely in time. As you might know, at least 3 years have passed by the time the Oceanic Six were rescued and Jack tried to suicide. Even when taking the island’s time displacement into account, you can’t hurry up the storyline by 3 years in a single season on-island in order to match the off-island storyline. That won’t fly with the viewers because the on-island story is the default story.

You see, at the end of S5, we will see the two stories/groups merge again, as the off-islanders will have made it back to the island for the final act in S6. This leaves no alternative to the writers but to have two in-order narratives that their timeframes will match at the end of S5. And this can only mean one thing: time travel for the whole island in order to match the off-island timeline.

As for S6, I don’t expect many flashbacks either, except maybe a few Dharma-based ones. Flashforwards won’t be relevant anymore and flashbacks won’t fly either as the story is not about a few survivors as it used to be in S1, but a whole lot more.

Oh boy, oh boy… True story.

Last night I was reading on wikipedia about Madonna’s “Hard Candy” and I noticed that minus one song, all the songs I didn’t like on the album were all co-written by Pharrell. All the rest of the songs, which I did like, were all co-written by Timbaland. I found this interesting, and I thought to myself “ok, now I know who ruined that album”.

An hour later I went to bed, and had this uneasy dream about losing my mom in the crowd and not having my iPhone with me to reach her. Eventually, while walking around I end up in an open arena where Madonna was giving a concert. I didn’t have a ticket, but I found a cousin of mine (Panos) and we sat down to listen from afar (somehow I forgot about my mom, heh). Lo and behold, Pharrell approaches us, friendly and all:

Pharrell: Lots of problems tonight with this concert, I was told. The computer started playing the background music out of order.
Eugenia: Gawd, I hate software.
Pharrell: How do you like “Hard Candy”?
Eugenia: Except “Give it to me”, I dislike all your songs in it. I found them lifeless and they ruined the album.
Pharrell: I see…
Panos: Eugenia reviews stuff all the time…
Pharrell: Oh, I see. So you are a music critic now?
Eugenia: No, I am a technologist. I wrote my opinion on the album on my personal blog, not any official medium.
Pharrell: Then what makes you think that you can criticize my work?
Eugenia: Well, everyone has an opinion about music. Is this a difficult concept?
Pharrell: No, but I am pretty sure you are a third rate journalist. Bye.
Eugenia: Wait…

At that point I wake up, and I felt terrible. I had hurt his feelings and the dream felt so real that for an hour after waking up I felt really bad. I guess my brain accomplished its target by sending me such a dream: “learn to shut up once in a while”.

USA is involved in wars since 2002. Art, especially popular art, is always influenced by current events. So why the heck are there no military TV series on TV? And take that from a person who doesn’t like anything but sci-fi.

Someone could argue that the war is so far away that the average American who has no children serving, doesn’t “feel” that his/her country is in the midst of a war. However, even if the “we are at war feeling” is not that strong, it’s possibly stronger than a ghost or paranormal TV series. I mean, come on. What’s more likely to happen? Hear that someone saw a ghost, or that someone you know just flew over to Iraq or Afghanistan to serve? In US, it’s the latter.

So why are there no TV series about the US military in times of war? An action/drama TV series that could depict, for a change, a bunch of females, following their story from training all the way to ground zero in Iraq and Afghanistan. Real stuff, not made up little incoherent stories as in CBS’ “The Unit” action/drama.

Money ain’t the problem to recreate such an environment. Fear could be though. Are studios afraid how controversial matters are going to be taken wrongly by some people (e.g. the rape of a woman during service, or the over-zealotry of both sides)? If that’s so, it’s stupid to halt such a production for that reason, because the more controversy there is, the more advertising comes for free.

The conspiracy theorist in me could go as far as saying that the US military itself would not like such a TV series (or even extensive war coverage by the media) and so the studios keep mum (even the legendary “M*A*S*H” TV series aired years after the Korean war was over).

Personally, if I was a TV exec, that’s the kind of TV series I would pitch to the networks right now. And if the networks don’t like it because they are chickens, there is always cable TV, where the rules are much more relaxed. I strongly believe that the clever thing to do right now in terms of TV business is to have the guts to create a controversial war action/drama around females.

It’s gonna get you hated by some weirdos around USA’s bible belt, but also is gonna get you rich. It has nothing to do with “exploitation of the war and our children who serve there” (so spare me the preaching). It has to do with business, and art. Art, and topics of interest in general, should never be halted because some people “might feel hurt”. Get over it people! It’s interesting, it’s current, it’s art, and that should be enough to be a done deal.

Update: Mike emailed me about the “Over there” war drama that lasted 13 episodes in 2005 in the cable FX channel. Apparently, it never picked up an audience, but reading about the plot, this is not the kind of drama I envisioned. This had a too traditional format.

We did a few big purchases yesterday. JBQ bought the new Canon XSi 450D DSLR camera and a 135/2L portrait lens for his Canon 5D DSLR camera. He also got an extender for his big telephoto lens. He looked badass with his long telephoto (*cough*), so I snapped a pic of him today while he was trying out his new equipment. My baby worked hard for these.

If you look hard enough you will see the extender behind the telephoto lens.

Remember the five ducklings I saw a few weeks ago with their mother? Apparently their mother has disappeared and only two ducklings are left. At least they are looking healthy: