Green Glob Gone! (sorta.)

As you may have read, my sony TV has had a big greenish yellow pee stain covering one side of the screen for a while. I learned that this was due to a poorly manufactured "Optical Block" or "OB". and that Sony would replace this part due to a class action lawsuit settlement.

I have been hesitant to take action till I absolutely HAD to because I was not sure a replaced OB will be any better at this time. You see, I know a small bit about how manufacturers deal with “refurbished” parts… and to be honest I was hoping to wait for the supply of bad ones to quit cycling through the system.

Well, In the last few days my set became unwatchable… it had gotten much worse than those pictures and was getting noticeably more discolored day by day. So I called Sony.

I was polite but confident, explained the problem and the testing I had done. They pretty quickly generated a problem ticket and gave me repair centers to call. Pretty easy really. I called all 3 numbers they gave me and picked the one I felt understood the issue best and was most straight forward about it and set up the repair with them.
The tech called this morning saying that they recived the OB and wanting to come out so we set it up…

I now have a second bad OB.

The tech was great, a real nice guy. We talked quite a bit as it takes a while to disassemble the XBR1. I was very confident that things would all be made right. But after he finished and we flipped on the power, I put up my 50% gray test screen and sure enough it was pinkish gray on one side and greenish gray on the other.

It’s subtle, like something a color minded person like me would see but a bench tech refurbishing 50 OBs a day wold blow off. But I know its the start of the “stain”. My tech also saw the issue and offered to order me a new OB… but for the reasons I stated above, I told him I wanted to wait and see if it “goes away”. I of course know it won’t but maybe in a month I may have a better chance of getting an OB that isn’t cursed from the beginning.

Don’t be like me though… replace your OB often! Don’t make your friends and family suffer the green stain! : )

No country for old men waves its privates in the face of people that thought it sucked.

When we saw this great film, we had people in our theater shouting at the end of the movie.

My guess is that they where so offended that brutality would go unpunished or that a hero would fail and surrender against insurmountable odds, that they could not contain the frustration. Their illusion had been shattered and they really did NOT like it!

Me, I know the world can be a brutal and unjust place. Why the hell should every movie made be a lie? I am sick of being patted on the head and told it will be OK.

So the cries of "That Sucked!", "Oh My God!" and "I Want My Money Back!" Were really saying to me "Please don't make me think about the fact that this kinda thing most likely really happens."

Good work shaking it up C-Bros. Those Oscar wins renewed my faith in the film industry a tiny bit.

The internet and its effect on the concept of an original idea

Recently we got a comment on our youtube posting of Coda from a person who seemed pretty upset and claimed that they and another person had essentially made the same film 2 years earlier. By her tone, we felt she was implying that we had seen the film they made and duplicated key elements from it.



Well, for the people involved in Coda we know this to not be the case. Whatever direct influences we had, we were largely unaware of them... well except for rules of the race of course. Old Twilight Zones, Hitchcock, M. Night Shyamalan and other such broad influences, sure, I think were clear about those... but none of us had ever seen a film exactly like what we were quickly writing and we had certainly never seen their film which was never distributed and played once at a film festival in Florida as near as I can tell. We simply would not have had the opportunity.

I still haven't seen their film, but I am taking it on faith that it has some strong similarities. (They seem like nice and honest people after getting to know them a bit) Thats really interesting to me. I have been speaking with the person that made the post and I think I have convinced her that we never saw their film. (they are trying to get it up on youtube, I hope they do I am dying to see it) If it really is as similar as they say, then it will have some interesting social ramifications to me.

Like I told her in a message "I really do understand, I know it must have been shocking to see something that appeared to be a copy of your work. Having done creative work professionally and personally for 20+ years I know that feeling... and Its always disturbing. The internet is only going to make it worse I think. In the past we may have lived the rest of our lives never knowing we did films so similar! But I suspect this is a good thing, It allowed us to meet, have a great story to tell, and perhaps have a few more people seeing our projects because of it."

Will people feel less compeled to create if they feel all the good Ideas are spoken for? what If you have a concept for a film 10 years from now and you search the web wich by that time is overflowing with films and videos from vast millions of people. and you find that in 2011 some person did almost the exact concept withsome friends on handhelds an barebulb 3 point lighting... will you keep going knowing that you will likely get accused of ripping them off?

With so many people making so much media, duplication of ideas is almost guaranteed.

The real answer of course is to not care and ignore the crys of foul... interestingly this is the same answer for both the person that honestly arrived at the concept on their own as it would be for the person that DID steal it. I just don't know if I can "not care" because I really pride myself on supporting the creators of content and just the idea that someone thought I would blatantly steal from someone else would make me ill.

By the way if you haven't seen Coda, and liked it... go give it a good rating. : )

Green glob of doom

Have you ever purchased a TV that was much more expensive than you should have ever paid but you justified it to yourself and bit the bullet... only to have it do this two years later?




*sob*

Two Amazing Short Films

I was thinking of this blog as mostly a place for me to write, but I have to tell people about a couple of extraordinary short films I have seen recently.

First, Terminus


Official Site – Direct link high quality (200mb)

Terminus is a disturbing bit of work. The graphics are impressive, not in a flashy "OMG look at that 14 headed alien" kinda way, but more of a "this is what it looks like when I dream" way. Bringing the fantastic into common settings is highly effective at creating tension and boy did these film makers ever cause tension. Excellent work.

I hope you like it as much as I did.


Next is Space Alone

Full Screen flash

Apparently a solo work from Ilias Sounas, its really beautiful plus he is a gifted story teller. I hope he does more animation.
Here is a link to his blog.

Robot Dreams

I picked a book called Robot Dreams on a whim while I was perusing the graphic novels at a book store last night and I could tell very quickly I held a treasure in my hands. (Good thing I looked between the oversized copies of Batman Eats Lasagna, How To Draw Manga Vol. 44, and Hulk Universe Ultra.)

Every now and then I get ahold of something like Robot Dreams that really effects me.


Find it here

People that know me understand that I don't give endorsements lightly as I find so few things in this world truly special... Robot Dreams has made my list.

Go buy it....

Expensive software + Pirates make me a sucker

As you may have noticed I am on a tear about what is good and bad in the world of P2P file sharing.

As I was poking around the web I found an argument by a person that claimed "Ask any graphics designer, I'll bet my ass that his/her intro to photo editing would have been a pirated version of Photoshop."

Ooooo I suddenly feel out of touch with the general population again... Its sort of a queasy, light-headed feeling.

Why do I feel this way? Because, after only playing around with it on machines at my work and on friends computers, I bought photoshop as soon as I could scrape together the money to do so even though I was very poor. (I did get a good deal on an older version) Was I mad? A lunatic? I must be at least a freak of nature.

I have personal owned Photoshop since the 1.2 version. (I have the floppies to prove it.) I have kept it up to date at a pretty large personal expense. it was often a financial challenge to keep it current, but I saw this as necessary for me to advance in my profession. So…

A. Is it fair that because I respect the work that goes into making something as complex as PS, I have such a higher cost of entry to its use? Is it right that I have to compete with people that didn’t have the same feelings of obligation, didn’t pay to own the software and honed their skills on cracked copies or copies using borrowed serial numbers? Especially now that it is so easy to get?

B. I have heard it implied many times that software companies set the price for applications with piracy in mind. Since they know that a certain number of people will not pay. They adjust the price higher for those of us that will, in order to cover those losses. The insane cost of PS that I have paid over the years may be in part due to this and it could be said that I am paying a tax so that the people not willing to pay can use the software.

These are just some thoughts… I agree that file sharing won’t be going away and that we need to get used to its effects, both positive and negative. Maybe Adobe will create a “Loyal user program” and start giving me every other update for free… heh, I wont hold my breath.

So, what about the people that have always paid for the software? Are we just stupid? Maybe so.