some words to not

i have just re-watched all episodes of the up series, still one of my favorite documentary projects ever made, tracking 14 people's lives from age 7 to today. it was the first time i watched '42 up' and i am eagerly looking forward to the just-released '49 up'.

if you're hooked on the show as i am (and if you're not, i strongly recommend that you start being), you will be interested to know that the '42 up' dvd includes a director's commentary track. this is a wonderfully open, at times regretful, always self-conscious but rarely apologetic, account of the making of this series with its ups and downs, its successes and failures, and most of all - director apted's loving and caring stories of his relationships with the people who star in the series.

if you're not yet familiar with this unique documentary endeavor, i think the best way to watch it is one episode a week or every 2 weeks, perhaps with a steady group of people. because of its strong repetivie nature, it is not so great to watch back-to-back. and also, the anticipation is really part of what makes this project work.

watching this series alone, or with friends, is bound to make you think about life, and isn't that what documentaries are all about? to my big surprise, i found myself mostly saying during 42 up: 'wow, their kids have really grown up since we last saw them'. like some old uncle.

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rarely does an opinion column confuse me as did larry david's piece on 'brokeback mountain'. i'm still not clear what exactly he's trying to say, but i'm pretty sure he's trying to say something. i'll leave it to you to figure it out.

hebrew version on haaretz.

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so my hit counter has reached 100,000. too bad most of those are automated spammer bots. i've tried to exclude these in the past - more successfully so when i still spent a little more time on it.

but still - sometime yesterday, my blog pages were requested by someone or something for the 100,000th time.

[confetti]

the 100,000 visit was actually from a spam bot (most likely), reading an entry from july 8th 2004 (ironcially about comment spammers). the visit occurred at 15:36:43 local time, yesterday, january 25th. the ip address is registered in an unknown location, but with similar ip addresses located in moscow, russia.

this ip address is now blocked.

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after slight delay, here are some of the most interesting excerpts from the february 1996 wired interview with steve jobs. as discussed in a previous post, this now 10-year-old piece has a lot of remarkable prophecies and claims from a technologist who seems to get it right many times over.

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beck's music video for 'hell yes' (incidentally one of my favorite songs from the new album) shows off 4 dancing sony qrios. the combination of japanese dancing robots with mtv choreography, cinematography, and editing creates a product that - to the best of my knowledge - is unprecendented.

thanks to the annoying flash navigation, there is no direct link. you'll have to go to beck.com and navigate to 'Video' and then to 'Hell Yes'.

note: the video i mean is not the one labeled 'One Shot', although that one is also cute.

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the interesting editing together with this strong cast creates a movie that is never dull, but left me with only a very slight post-viewing baggage, while i was expecting to be strongly moved.

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google sightseeing is a very cute website that collects interesting sights and sightings from google's satellite-image based maps service.

it's pretty nice to visit the important buildings and monuments of our little planet without leaving your desk, but i can hardly say that i agree with their motto 'why bother to see the world for real?'.

this link stems from the MIT Advertising Lab, a blog covering the insidious advances in advertisement, which i think i'll follow for a while. (they talked about companies putting their logos on their roofs for some free google-map exposure).

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