Author: Carl Page 105 of 153

The Grand Budapest Hotel

On March 27, 2014

I went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel last night. After Moonrise Kingdom, which may be a perfect movie, I was excited. I purposefully didn’t read anything about the movie beforehand. I didn’t want to spoil the experience with other’s opinions.

I really enjoyed the visuals in the movie. I loved set pieces and design of the hotel. There’s some bits of humor that aren’t overt I really enjoyed. The bits of animation and models were fun and flowed nicely in the story.

But the story…

It was OK. Very predictable. Didn’t really have a good ending. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Edward Norton was a throw away character that could have been played by anyone.

I really liked Willem DaFoe’s character. He reminded me a lot of his performance in Boondock Saints. I like how Tilda Swinton was used. I enjoyed Jeff Goldblum being less… Jeff Goldblumy.

But in the end, any of the characters could have died, or been forgotten about and I wouldn’t have missed them. The story didn’t evoke any emotion in me. It was an interesting story. But not exciting and told very rigidly. The actors gave rigid performances. But that seemed to be the point.

The story was built around the visuals of the movie. But visuals alone do not make a good movie.

Read it now before it’s gone

By Carl

On March 25, 2014

In Announcements

Information on the web is fleeting. Nothing lives forever. Servers go offline. Hard drives crash. Bills don’t get paid. Accidental deletions occur. The web is not forever.

So are the links we pass back and forth. Links may be relevant when they’re shared. But not a week later. What about a month from now? Is the thing even still true or relevant? What about next year? That post may be gone. The site could be history.

Why keep all of this digital cruft around? What I write is important to me because it’s mine. I made it. I wrote it. I shared it. It’s a part of me. But my comments on what others have said are not the same thing. They’re interesting. They might inspire me to post. But most of what I’ve considered sharing in the past aren’t going to last.

And I don’t want my site to be a statue of things I once thought were interesting. I don’t want it to be littered with dead links to things that no longer matter.

So I’m going to experiment with sharing some links that expire after a time. Maybe a week. Maybe a day. Maybe a few days. I haven’t picked the right amount of time. Some might even live on eternally.

It’s an experiment. This is my trench and I’m the tech who lives here.

The web is made of people

By Carl

On March 21, 2014

In Observations

The best thing you can do for your customers is to stop thinking of them as customers.

Think of us as people.

You are helping people. You are serving people. You are a people yourself. A specific people. A person. You are a person. I am a person.

We’re all persons. Each of us have feelings. We can hurt. We get angry. We are sad. We take things out on strange people because we don’t know them.

We are all people. Think about that when you see the tweet mention you or your company. Think about that when an email comes in. It was sent from a person.

It’s easy to forget that we’re all people sitting at our keyboards or smartphones. The words and pictures aren’t generated by computers or monkeys. It all comes from people.

People who can hurt. People who are irrational. People who have bad days.

We’re not replying to eyeballs. We’re not talking to clicks. A page view has never dissed you on Twitter. Every interaction you have is with a real live person. Treat them like people!

We are not users.
We are not customers.
We are not clicks, page views or eyeballs.
We are people.
And deserve to be treated that way.

How far we haven’t come

By Carl

On March 20, 2014

In Observations

Recently, my wife and I visited the Newseum. I revisited the Berlin Wall exhibit. Going through it, I also watched the video about the reporters responding to the 9/11 attacks. Seeing the antenna from the top of the World Trade Center and parts of the debris brought it home.

Our history is not that old. The Civil Rights movement is only 50 years old. And still ongoing. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The September 11th Attacks were in 2001. Our country’s pain is not old.

There was an extensive photo exhibit from John F. Kennedy’s photographer and a great video montage of his brief presidency. He was before my time. But he was not in the distant past.

Our history is real and living. It affects us today. We do not live in a bubble. We are influenced by our past. We get to build our future into what we’d like it to be. It’s a future that will have many amazing events and people. It will be filled with terrible times and people. It will mirror our past.

History doesn’t feel real from the pages of history books or television programs. History feels real when I can reach out and touch the Berlin Wall. I can imagine myself living beneath the watchful, murderous eye of the tower guards. To live apart from family and friends. To not see loved ones for decades. What would that feel like?

The Civil Rights Movement. It’s not a done deal. It’s the start to a long, hard road. A road being walked by those who want to love who they want. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Everyone wants to be loved and to love. Everyone wants to live inside their own house and their own lives.

There are lessons the past has to teach us. But instead, we insist on re-learning the same
painful lessons. We’ve done a pretty terrible job of allowing everyone to share the rights of straight, white men. I don’t remember anyone voting for my right to marry. Rights are not a finite resource.

Women have to fight for equal rights.
African-Americans have to fight for equal rights.
Gays have to fight for equal rights.

Our history is not a collection of old, dead stories from books. Our history is now. Our history is yesterday. And tomorrow is a new chance to write it.

Why I’m not renewing my Washington Post Sunday-Only Subscription

By Carl

On March 19, 2014

In Observations

I was really enjoying the paper for a while. It had a lot of good coupons and the paper itself helped when making paper logs and camp fires.

I saved money. I started fires. I covered the floor when working on painting or projects that would get messy. It was a perfect typeset drop cloth. The newspaper served its purpose and served it well. I even read it periodically to see what the Internet hadn’t talked about days earlier.

But eventually, I realized no one reads the newspaper anymore. It’s not hip. My friends aren’t posting shout-outs in the classifieds section. It’s all news and events in DC. I can get that elsewhere, including the online version of the same paper. I don’t need it in print.

After Jeff Bezos bought the paper last year, I don’t know if I know where the paper’s priorities are anymore. I don’t know if it’s the same thing I bought into when I originally subscribed.

I don’t use the paper for anything anymore. And I have plenty of access to the archives in a pile in a closet so I’m more than ready for camping season.

I hope it continues to do well. I’ll check in on it from time to time. They still have an old Linotype machine in front of the building.