9TimeZones.com
is: Anikó J. Bartos
and: Alan C. Baird
Scripts: Vlad\
BackslasherBlog\
Fall In Budapest\
Merlinsky\Feelix\
Eleven Thousand
Virgins\Azért is..!now \ then:
'10:jfmamjjasond
'09:jfmamjjasond
'08:jfmamjjasond
'07:jfmamjjasond
'06:jfmamjjasond
'05:jfmamjjasond
'04: fmamjjasond
1996apr 2001sep
»» moblog:
is: Anikó J. Bartos
and: Alan C. Baird
Scripts: Vlad\
BackslasherBlog\
Fall In Budapest\
Merlinsky\Feelix\
Eleven Thousand
Virgins\Azért is..!now \ then:
'10:jfmamjjasond
'09:jfmamjjasond
'08:jfmamjjasond
'07:jfmamjjasond
'06:jfmamjjasond
'05:jfmamjjasond
'04: fmamjjasond
1996apr
»» moblog:
Aaron Sorkin & The Facebook Movie: group is kaput.
When Aaron Sorkin was hired to write The Social Network in August 2008, he asked his researcher, Ian Reichbach, to create a Facebook group, so that Aaron could actually use Facebook to interact with Facebookers. Since Aaron is one of my heroes, I took full advantage of this unprecedented access to a talented, Emmy-winning writer.
During the last 18 months, he has told a lot of behind-the-scenes anecdotes about The West Wing, A Few Good Men, Sports Night, etc. In return, I told a few stories that he liked. Wow, I actually made Aaron Sorkin laugh...
Lately, he's been sending dispatches from The Social Network locations. But the movie is now wrapped, and Aaron recently posted his final message:
Guys,
We wrap photography in a few hours and while it was my intention to keep this page up until the premiere in October, I think the better part of wisdom says I should take it down now. As some of you who have been here from the beginning know, this page gets covered by both the entertainment press and the Silicon Valley press and because of the recent events I'd be exposing the movie, the 200 people who've been working on it and the studio (and Ray Liotta) to an unnecessary hassle.
I've asked Ian to take the page down at 6pm Pacific time to hopefully give people a chance to exchange personal contact information.
With all the words available to me in the dictionary, I still can't find the right ones to express how grateful I am for your support, intelligence, generosity of spirit and good humor. I'll be thinking about you and wishing you the best of luck and good health in all your endeavors. For the writers who've come here, I'll be expecting great things from you.
And speaking of writers I expect great things from, I want to publicly thank Ian--both for setting up this page and for all the great and hard work on The Social Network. It'll be in the can in a few hours, brother. A job incredibly well done.
Thank you all.
Aaron
[tweet]
Jack Hamilton Bailey (1923-2010).
I never met Jack in person, but he was an inspiration to me and many other writers at Zoetrope.com. I can't stop thinking about him.From the Los Angeles Times - February 5, 2010:
Jack Hamilton Bailey
May 7, 1923 - January 28, 2010
Jack Bailey, 86, died at home in Studio City after a battle with cancer. Happily married for 56 years to his devoted wife, Wanda, he also leaves son, Matt, and daughter, Madeline.
An Oregon native, Jack joined the Navy at 17, and served in WW II aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington, until she was sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea. He graduated from USC with a BA in English and then spent 16 years in aerospace during which time he wrote two novels loosely based on the industry. Critically praised, they unfortunately cost him his career.
A lifelong car enthusiast, Jack later went into the automotive repair business and continued writing, earning distinctions in... [more]
Google dumps "Don't be evil."
[Re: Google's motto.]
I just received an email from Google (which owns Blogger, the service that publishes this blog), and it contains a nasty bit of news: Google intends to shut down FTP (file transfer protocol) service sometime before the end of March.
To the casual reader, this probably doesn't seem very earth-shaking. But for me, and millions of other FTP bloggers, this decision will cause major disruptions and precipitate a lot of unnecessary work on architecture, links, etc.
And after all that effort, our blogs still won't work right.
For example, if you've installed a link to a particular posting in this blog, it will probably generate an error message after March 26, 2010.
I've published all of my blogs with FTP for the last six years, and the system has worked reasonably well. Google justifies this drastic FTP move by saying that "only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP." Hm, .5% sounds like an insignificant number... but it actually represents millions of blogs.
Google also complains that maintaining the FTP service "would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing." Aw, those poor overworked Googlers. Maybe they need to take a few days to: leave their dogs at home, step away from the foosball tables, and stop guzzling so many free sodas... then they might be able to actually do a little work for a change.
I design free add-ons for Open Office Writer, an open-source word processor. I don't get paid for creating these Screenwright(R) extensions; I do it because I want to help other writers. There have been only 85,927 downloads to date, so my formatters don't serve nearly as many people as Google's Blogger does. But if I announced to my users that the next release versions of Screenwright(R) would not be backwards compatible, they would start calling for my head. And if I whined that my reason for flouting this basic tenet of good software design was because I would need to "completely rewrite the code," there would be a lynching party on my doorstep in ten minutes flat.
It sounds to me like Google needs to work a little harder at that "not being evil" thing.
[tweet]
Doppelgänger Week on Facebook.
Should I: (1) be offended that MyHeritage thinks three of my doppelgängers are chicks, or (2) be flattered that they're HOT chicks? [Shh. I'm trying to imagine Portia de Rossi with a mustache.]
STATS: Nicholas Brendon (72%), Patrick Swayze (64%), Joey Fatone (62%), Robert Patrick (61%), Jodie Sweetin (60%), Maura Tierney (56%), Portia de Rossi (55%), Aidan Quinn (55%).
iPad learns to fly.
Balliol Brothers Pharmacy--boys, I think you might be interested in this--they're celebrating their annual Fire Insurance Sale. Bill and Dill invites everyone in the Pittsfield, Doomstown and Tri-Color area to come on in and share some of their outstanding artificial values that the Balliol Twins are putting up for ya. Pico, you'll be interested in this: for your wife and your mistress, in Cosmetics, cases of Revolutionary Venus Envy Hair Spray, Legett Hair Fastener Heat Bags, Lady O' Spain Self-Blinding Eye Shadow with Magic Puncture Pencil, Sanitary Napkin Rings in Little Miss, Moon Maid and Stuck Pig strengths, Deported Italian Napa Gel Balls for soaking or eating. And they're all slashed price with the lady in mind.--Firesign Theatre, Dear Friends: I Was A Cock-Teaser For Roosterama!
Re³tweeting in the Twittersphere.
I decided to tweet about the iPad yesterday. Today, I discovered that four people had re-tweeted my tweet. So, thanks: ACanseco, masanaminori, mscarron and ysbee.
And one person even re-re-tweeted. So I re-re-re-tweeted her re-re-tweet.
Twittersphere fame is like... totally rad.
[Update: it turns out that Mad TV already satirized the iPad... over two years ago.]
In other S&M/B&D news... we all know that Devo whipped it.
Now it seems that Pope John Paul II whipped it, too.
Egyesült Államok... is the Hungarian phrase for "United States." I'm guessing this is their revenge, since we renamed their country from Magyarország to Hungary.
California tornadoes?
I guess it's true. How come they never happened when we lived there? We would have thrown caution to the winds by staging a dinner party and serving Tornado Tournedos. On a Lazy Susan. With Whirling Dervish music. While watching the Twister DVD. Followed by a postprandial game of Twister. Spin, baby, spin.
Evening Update: did my stupidity call down the wrath of the Tornado God upon us?
Sremska. Can't wait. I'll be enjoying some yummy Hungarian sausage in a few hours. The wurst is yet to come.
NYC/PHX. Decades after leaving the NBC-NY Page staff, I find myself in the quiet outskirts of Phoenix. My God, what have I done? How did I get here? What kind of person would trade the City That Never Sleeps for a Suburb That Often Naps?
Főnix Magyarország (Phoenix Arizona Hungarians).
For every person living in and around Phoenix who has a Hungarian heart:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=250192031929
Keywords: Budapest Hungary Magyars
Avatar or Pocahontas?
Evidently, DGA nominee James Cameron himself has said that his "Avatar" film was based on Disney's "Pocahontas."
That became evident, when Dan Oles did a mashup of the Avatar trailer, overlaid with the Pocahontas trailer's soundtrack.
It became even clearer last week, when some guy named Matt Bateman uploaded this crudely-revised Pocahontas synopsis.
But you can judge for yourself, by reading Cameron's original script.
[Anything to avoid watching the movie.]
December 2009 Northern Lights Gallery... here, from SpaceWeather.com.
Below: A Geminid meteor streaks through the Northern Lights, by Bjørnar G. Hansen, taken on December 13, 2009, on Kvaløya, an island near Tromsø, in northern Norway. Do yourself a HUGE favor, and click the image to enlarge it...
Jason flies to within 10 feet of an erupting volcano!
Oceanographers using the remotely-operated vehicle "Jason" have filmed the deepest erupting volcano yet discovered. The West Mata volcano erupts nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in an area bounded by Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.Imagery includes large molten lava bubbles approximately three feet across bursting into cold seawater and glowing red vents explosively ejecting lava into the sea.
Since the water pressure at that depth suppresses the violence of the volcano’s explosions, Jason could maneuver to within 10 feet of the active eruption. On land, or even in shallow water, such a close view would never be possible.
Water from the volcano is very acidic, with some samples collected directly above the eruption measuring between battery acid and stomach acid.
Clip 1 is a sequence of explosive degassing events as bubbles of gas-rich magma burst, spewing lava fragments into the water. At the same time, lava is being extruded out of the vent and down the slope. In both clips, the area in view is about 6-10 feet across in an eruptive area approximately 100 yards that runs along the summit.
Clip 2 is a closer view of the eruption with violent magma degassing events producing bright flashes of hot magma. Lava is blown up into the water before settling back to the seafloor, and large plugs of lava flow rapidly down the slope. In the foreground is the front of Jason, with sampling hoses.
Ref: National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Web toys.
Testers: Java, Shockwave, Flash (2, settings).
Other toys: W3C, iWeb and... (click images for more info):
Yule miss me when I'm gone.
(Just kidding.) It's the solstice! Exactly three hours from NOW.
"A wreath a day keeps the Franklin away."
Solution of the Month: Screenwright(R).
My Screenwright(R) screenplay formatting template
was just honored by OpenOffice.org;
they named it "Solution of the Month".
And here's a pic of me, using the ol' iPod to write screenplays:
Facebook movie on The Black List 2009.
From deadline.com:
2. The Social Network By Aaron Sorkin
What it's about: Chronicles Mark Zuckerberg's complicated journey towards creating Facebook. Sorkin depicts both the founder's motivations for starting the largest social network in the world and the human casualties that came with his profound success.
What it's like: The fascinating biographical elements of Shattered Glass meets the courtroom drama of Kramer vs. Kramer, without the tears. Sorkin cuts between Zuckerberg's heated depositions with his former Harvard colleagues who claimed he stole Facebook from them and the chronological retelling of the company's trip to becoming a billion-dollar enterprise.
AGENT William Morris Endeavor – Ari Emanuel, Jason Spitz
Status: In production for Sony Pictures. Scott Rudin Productions, Michael De Luca Productions, Cean Chaffin, and Dana Brunetti producing. Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg while Justin Timberlake portrays Sean Parker, one of the founders of Napster and Zuckerberg's idol. David Fincher is directing.
Additional info from The Black List site:
42 mentions (#1=47, #3=40, #4=35, #5=27)
"The story of the founders of the social networking website Facebook and how overnight success and wealth changed their lives."
Additional info from Aaron Sorkin:
Currently shooting in and around L.A., wraps February 8, 2010.
Movie opens - October 15, 2010.
Other links: HSX, IMDb, Wikipedia.
Alessio Carraro's ziggurat.
Yesterday, I did some volunteer work at the castle, including changing the outside balcony lights to red and green for the holiday season (sorry for the crappy resolution, my phonecam lens was dirty):
Facebook group: Rename Tovrea Castle to "Carraro Castle"
The International.
"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."
-- Jean de La Fontaine (French poet, 1621-1695)
-- paraphrased in The International (screenplay by Eric Warren Singer)
Google Wave Robot Translator Rankings.
My \/\/ave invitation arrived recently.
It's a kewl app, combining the best of Email, Instant Messaging and Collaboration tools.
With its translation bots, Wave seems especially suited to facilitating IM conversations among people who don't speak a common language. So Anikó and I decided to test drive these robots, since one of them is mentioned in this Overview video (@6:55).
At the moment, there are three bots: Rosy Etta (or Aunt Rosie), Translatey and Multilingual (or Multi Lingual).
Multi seems to lack Chinese (traditional), but has Chinese (simplified). The other two bots have both versions of Chinese. Translatey claims to know Esperanto, but he's lying.
Since all three seem to use the Google Translation engine, they provide the same translations. So the only real differences are in their interfaces.
We found Rosie's interface to be very clunky, almost unusable. And although Translatey's interface can show two foreign languages at the same time, when you just want one, the duplicate line is annoying.
So Multi has become our translation bot of choice.
HELPFUL HINTS. If you're Waving with foreigners: [1] use extremely short sentences, [2] don't try any fancy grammar - anything above second-grade level will confuse the bot, and [3] don't lose your sense of humor (see the Hungarian Phrasebook sketch and Lost in Translation).
PDFs for Screenwriters.
From the Writers Guild of America, West: 2/13/2008 Schedule of Minimums (175K).
The Black List PDF files: 2005 (55K), 2006 (34K), 2007 (1529K), 2008 (210K), 2009 due on December 11 (see below).
The Black List is not a "best of" list. It is, at best, a "most liked" list. From blcklst.com:
THE BLACK LIST is a snapshot of the collective taste of the people who develop, produce, and release theatrical feature films in the Hollywood studio system and the mainstream independent system.
An annual list of Hollywood's most liked unproduced screenplays published on the second Friday of December each year, THE BLACK LIST began in 2004 as a survey with contributions from 75 film studio and production company executives. In 2008, over 250 executives contributed their opinions.
Since its inception, dozens of screenplays that appeared on the list have been optioned, produced, and released, many to great commercial success. Two of the top three screenplays on the inaugural 2005 list - JUNO by Diablo Cody and LARS AND THE REAL GIRL by Nancy Oliver - went on to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 2008 Academy Awards, with JUNO winning the Oscar.
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