Month: January 2010

The world’s largest and probably most prestigious short film festival, Tropfest is on Sunday 21st February.

As the end of summer approaches The Domain in Sydney is overtaken by thousands and thousands of short film makers, their friends, family and fans for this amazing annual event.

I was lucky enough to be asked to shoot stills for one of this years entries which has already been accepted into the Top 60. The director and producer are now waiting to hear if they made the Top 16 – these are the ones screened on the night.

It’s a spectacular event and typically very, very funny. If you haven’t been before, or haven’t been for a while, this is the year to go!

You may be surprised to learn I’m not a fan a pedophiles. Honestly, I hope you aren’t surprised. But an interesting benefit has emerged from the saga that is; where do pedophiles who have done their time live when released from the big house?

To date, Dennis Ferguson has been relocated no less than three times since being released from prison for doing the evil that he does. (As he was convicted by a court I have no hesitation reporting Mr Ferguson as guilty).

In his most recent digs the local community, as with the situation at his other addresses, discovered a convicted pedophile was living in their area and alerted the press who of course made it impossible for him to remain living their by shinning their spot lights upon him which fanned the flames of the tinder box mentality within the mob which quickly forming and gained momentum.

All mobs have a leader. This person is not elected or really even decided upon by the rank and file of the mob in any formal manner. S/he is usually the loudest and most opinionated, ie, the biggest dick head.

So this turn of events as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald is fascinating as it would seem that the pathetic little excuse for a human known as Dennis Ferguson won an AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) against the mob leader – some Aryan style  media man-whore who would have joined the Hitler youth as soon as the recruiting officers visited his school and probably turned his mother and father into his Nazi superiors.

This means that the mob leader can’t approach (legally) the pedophile. Although one may well ask; why would you want to?

It could be that the in some strange reversal of fortune that the law while protecting the lowest of low human forms may be protecting us all from the dimwitted mentality of the mob.

If you ever watched an episode of Two and Half Men (and thanks to Channel 9, who hasn’t) or The Big Bang Theory or CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or Dharma & Greg or Cybill or a bunch of other Emmy Award Winning TV shows you’ve seen the work of Chuck Lorre Productions.

But thanks to the deplorable way in which stations cut from the final scene of a TV show or movie and play promos for other programs, rarely do we see the credits as produced and originally aired. For example, over the credits of 30 Rock (produced by Lorne Michaels, not by Chuck Lorre) there is usually another gag or two – that we never get to see. Actually I do see them because I download 30 Rock because I hate watching FTA so much.

You also won’t see what is becoming one of the funniest ‘in jokes’ in TV; Chuck Lorre’s Laws. Firstly a ‘Vanity Card’ are the quick slides that flash past after the credits. Usually there is a single slide (a vanity card) for the production company or companies and the distribution company. Some times these are short animations with a sting (short music bit).

But Chuck Lorre Productions create a new vanity card for almost every episode of every series they make. Below is a sample which you won’t. And most of them are pretty funny.

Take a good look at the picture news.com.au used to illustrate their story about a United Airlines flight having to make a landing because it was low on fuel. That plane landed without difficulty, refuelled and took off. Why UA flights are running out of fuel is another matter. The image that has been used clearly depicts a UA flight that landed a couple of weeks back with a landing gear issue and made an emergency landing, with the starboard undercarriage failing to lock in position.

That didn’t happen in the story being reported. That some sub-editor or picture editor has picked a misleading image is sadly tyical of this publication. It is a rag in paper and equally so online.

Just spent an hour doing what any real coder would have done in 30 seconds. My first iPhone app may be in beta by the time we’re embedding chips in our heads. But there is great satisfaction in figuring these things out for oneself.

The dirty little secret about the internet is that if not for the porn industry it probably wouldn’t exist today. Or if indeed there was a version of the internet that started without the massive investment of the porn industry it would be vastly different than what we enjoy today.

The whole concept of displaying images via the internet was thanks to the porn industry. There’s only so much you can do with letters to the editor that start off something like; “Dear Penthouse, I read your letters every month and never thought anything like this would ever happen to me…(insert details of threesome, the good kind, here).

Then consumers demanded video. The porn industry delivered. Then instant messaging. Helllllo, porn industry. And of course the porn industry is like any other enterprise and wants to be be paid for the services offered. So they developed the technology for high security payment platforms years before the banks had heard of internet banking.

There’s a famous story about a research group at HP testing the technology of a scanner they had just invented. They wanted to email the scanned image to colleagues in the UK over the internet and determine if the result was acceptable by comparing it the original image. How do you get the original image to them for comparison? Their solution was to scan an image from a publication that is printed identically around the world. They chose Penthouse. As it turns out Miss November in the US is the same Miss November in the UK

The latest advance that the porn industry is leading us towards is 3D TV. smh.com.au has a story about it here.