The Beast -- Media Mixtape

More dog stories today. As I mentioned previously, at only 7 months of age, our dog Chopper is getting to be quite a hefty size. He’s currently weighs about 55 lbs, which doesn’t seem all that big to me, but upon further reflection, he may already be bulkier than my last dog, which was a German Shepherd/Husky mix. On Monday we had a couple harsh reminders that he’s certainly not a puppy anymore.

Alicia and I went to a local park for a spur of the moment picnic and decided to take him along. After walking him around for a bit, we found a nice tree with some decent shade and sat down to eat. We tied Chopper up to the tree with a 20 foot lead that was made for big dogs (it’s called “The Beast”), and he seemed content to lie down and chew on one of his toys. An old guy walking a little yappy dog came by and asked if Chopper was friendly, to which we replied yes, and so he let his dog come over to meet him. Chopper seemed more interested in his toy, but the guy proceeded to tell us the sad story of how he had bought this dog to help with his wife’s Alzheimer’s therapy. Not too long after that, we saw another old guy walking another yappy dog. We didn’t think Chopper would notice or care… but he did. He took off, barrelling towards the smaller dog and approaching the end of his leash. We winced just as he was about to hit the end of his line, but instead of snapping him back, his collar just broke off and he kept right on running. It certainly scared the crap out of the old guy, who picked up his little dog and shielded him from Chopper’s playful advances. So that was pretty much the end of the picnic.

Later in the day, we were back home and Chopper was lying, defeated, on the tile floor in our foyer. He seemed dead to the world, when suddenly the dog who lives one house over started barking outside. Chopper bolted upright and darted towards the back door. Out of the corner of my eye, I was just able to catch a dog-shaped blur as he burst right through the middle of the sliding screen door, leaving it flapping in the breeze. So much for the intelligence of German Shepherds and Collies.

We recorded our first podcast using the new Mac on Monday night, and it didn’t go so smoothly. While the recording itself worked up until we reached the max time limit (whatever that is), I have to say I was pretty disappointed with GarageBand overall. I had heard so many good things about this program, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a pretty far cry from Adobe Audition. I realize it was originally created for music production, and maybe that’s why it was so awkward to use, but on top of that it seems really limited for the sake of being “easy to use”. You can’t even export in .wav format. What gives? I ended up trying to edit the show in the free program Audacity before giving up and booting to Windows and retreating back to Audition instead. Am I missing something, or is GarageBand really this unintuitive? On the positive side, I have read that you can create enhanced podcasts with chapter stops and pictures using GarageBand, so I want to try and learn how to use it properly.

I’m not the biggest Heroes fan in the world, but I thought the season finale was pretty weak. For all the epic build up they were trying to generate, the best they could manage for a climactic fight is someone getting hit with a parking meter and stabbed with a sword? What a sad, ragtag bunch of superheroes they all ended up being. I read a review somewhere that said the problem with Heroes is that all the writers come up with snappy one-liners that work in comic book form, but they seem goofy when inserted into a live-action drama. I tend to agree. The cliffhanger for next season was straight out of any number of bad movies. The Black Knight, Just Visiting or TMNT III for example. (Okay, Army of Darkness is an exception.) The Lost season finale on the other hand was both riveting and mind-blowing. I may or may not be a little bit biased at this point.

Speaking of Lost, Apple just released a Lost video game for your iPod. It seems like a lo-fi adventure game of some sort, and I’m somewhat curious, but I have a hard time believing it will be worth even a $5 download.

Mark Burnett’s newest reality show On The Lot premiered this week, and so far it’s got me hooked. It’s basically the Hollywood version of Project Greenlight, with a panel of judges that includes Carrie Fisher and Brett Ratner deciding what young filmmakers have all the right stuff to make it in Tinseltown. So far it has the same feel as Survivor or The Apprentice, but with a little bit of Rock Star mixed in. As expected, most of the people competing have huge egos, which makes for some pretty spectacular fights when the teams are put under pressure. Their original works are pretty typical and underwhelming so far though. You can see 20 minutes from the first episode here, or you can watch full episodes here but of course it’s not available outside the U.S.

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow recently wrote an interesting article in Locus Magazine called “In Praise of Fanfic”. He makes a strong case for why fan fiction should be encouraged and supported instead of ridiculed. I, myself, still fall somewhere in the middle on this debate. I suppose that for someone who wouldn’t otherwise be doing anything creative, fan films and fan fiction are a worthwhile activity and could serve as a gateway to doing something more serious and original. On the other hand, it’s still hard for me to fathom all the effort that some people put into recreating someone else’s intellectual property though.

The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago is launching a special one year master’s program made for computer science graduates. I guess the idea is that they will turn out some forward-thinking people who can use their technical background to re-invent the idea of journalism for the future. This seems like a really cool program that I would seriously consider applying for… if I didn’t already, you know, have a decent job that I really enjoy.