Monday, May 4, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Training downtown at academyx on Adobe Flash (CS4), day 1 of 2. I laughed again at Apple today because the instructor seemed to think that Apple users could not do a right-click on an Apple mouse. (I think that I've mentioned this before.) Essentially, it was stupid for Apple to create a two-button mouse that looks like a one-button mouse because people new to it look at it, see that it doesn't have 2 buttons, and then never think or believe that it has 2 buttons or that you can right-click. A visual design beauty, but also a faux pas in a marketing and/or usability sense depending on your interpretation. Lunch at R&G Lounge: cashew nut chicken with steamed rice. Dinner at home with Patrick: rotelle in marinara sauce with green bell peppers, hot water. Watched Prince - Live At The Aladdin Las Vegas on Netflix DVD with Patrick (Live from the Aladdin Casino, Las Vegas, December 15, 2002). This video was both fantastic and awful—awful because the video and sound production are very poor quality and fantastic because despite that you can still get a pretty good idea of the mastery of Prince's musicianship. Sound volume and clarity both fade in and out regularly (Prince says something like, "they can't hear me!" at least twice), the video is very often pixelated, worse than NTSC quality, many cheesy video filters and effects are used, the camera angles are poor, the camera occasionally zooms in and out or shakes crazily as though a small child is filming it. Some portions of the video are not live performance at all—it cuts to pans of still imagery while—seemingly—the live sound remains, and so you have to wonder if they did that because none of their amateur camera crew had decent coverage of what was happening at the moment. For several minutes in the second half the lighting goes crazy with a strobe light, and we entered epileptic fits, but other than this the lighting is very good. This film would be perfect for a class about how not to film a concert. All the musicians in the New Power Generation as well as special guests Nikki Costa and Sheila E. perform seemingly to perfection (what you can hear clearly). Overall, this film is disappointing because all these musicians deserved so much better a capture than this, but we still enjoyed it. Prince seems to be in a really good mood in at least the first half, and it's infectious. That alone makes it worth it. Prince's rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" is particularly delicious, and the lighting and post-production effects used during this part really makes it feel like the acid is finally kicking in. A fun 80 minutes, but not worth owning. Installed IE8 at home in Vista.