Rowling: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

Like my friend Yisong suggests, I should come back and read this Harvard graduation speech given by Harry Potter author JK Rowling every so often. I need to remind myself to stop being so scared of everything.

HH Spring Wants

I guess all the spring 2010 stuff is coming out now, and even though spring colors usually aren't my thing, I'm really loving all the khaki I've been seeing.

I want this trench coat:

This swimsuit (ignore the ugly grimacing model):

and well I guess that's it. :)

Returning to the Moon?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10347397-23.html

I was mostly in agreement with this article until I got to this line: "And if we needed to, we could put the Saturn V rocket back into production, along with the old Lunar Module. NASA still has all the plans for these vehicles on file."

Drawings mean nothing. Conceptual engineering is fairly cheap compared to manufacturing. I doubt any of the Saturn V tooling is around anymore, and all of the expertise is definitely gone.

And now that I go back and read what he actually said, it just makes me more angry. Yes, we have the Atlas and Delta, but it takes a lot of money and effort to man rate a launch vehicle. SpaceX isn't man rated either, as far as I know. Cutting NASA's budget will not do anything, and it's ridiculous to propose that they could continue to function as they were on half as much money. He wants higher risk? You can't have higher risk in spacecraft. It's unacceptable. Save your judgement until after you've worked in the industry, or at least done more research than looking up the names of launch vehicles. Hmph.

100 Years of Visual Effects

The other day I was talking with one of my friends about how far movies have come in the last ten years in terms of special effects. The CGI improvements are particularly noticable in series such as Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean. LoTR set the bar with their realistic costumes and sets by WETA workshops and with Andy Serkis playing Gollum, but you don't see a change between the films because they were all done at once.

Compare Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince (2009) to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001). The Quidditch scenes alone - in SS they look like a computer game, in HBP they look *real*. They were able to take footage of the actors on brooms and incorporate it into the scenes. Also look at how much better they integrate creatures into the scenes - Dobby (Chamber of Secrets, 2002) and Buckbeak (Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004) to the Inferi in HBP and the entire final scene.

Davy Jones in Pirates 2 and 3 is amazing CGI as well. Bill Nighy (you may remember him from Love Actually as the naked rock star) plays Davy Jones. Like Gollum, they use a lot of his facial expressions, but the really cool thing is that all those tentacles have AI. It seems like facial CGI is going to make huge improvements in the next few years, the aging done in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is just the beginning.

I think it's a pretty exciting time for special effects in movies. :)

Anyways, this post was inspired by this video - Visual Effects: 100 Years of Inspiration. Check it out! And if you like the music, it's Blue Man Group and you *must* see their show.

I'll add some pics and clips to this later tonight :)