Destino

Destino is a short animated film released by Disney Studios in 2003 that started out as a collaboration between Walt Disney & Salvador Dali in 1946.

John Canemaker notes, in his article titled When Dali Met Disney, that Dali worked at the animation studio for a few months in 1946 before the project was shelved. By that time only a brief animation test of two tortoise shells draped in cloth depicting facial apparitions was made.

When Roy E. Disney (Walt’s nephew) sought to use the test in the feature film, Fantasia 2000, the Disney Legal Department pointed out:

Dali’s contract stipulated that his original artwork for Destino would not become Disney property until after the movie was made.

This revelation was key to resuming production & ultimately the reconstruction of Destino was completed.

The original animation test (starting at the 5:20 mark of the linked video) is the most impressive part—at least to me that is. There is a clear difference with it as compared to the rest of the short which lacks its vibrant feel & appearance.

Notwithstanding, it is an interesting piece of work from Disney Studios.

Minimize scum dots in PDF files

Scum dots are small points of ink (typically cyan) that appear in areas of a print that should be completely white. These imps can manifest themselves during image compression within the creation of a PDF file.

In Adobe Creative Suite (CS through CS3—I can’t speak for CS4 as I have yet to use it) the default image compression, for both color & grayscale images to be included in a PDF, are set to JPEG. This seems to be where the problem lies.

JPEG is a lossy compression scheme. If you compress a raster graphic that contains a large area of white using JPEG, it can introduce small artifacts into those areas that are not visible to the eye. When a PDF containing JPEG images is sent to a printer, the file is translated by a RIP into data that the printing device can output. The humanly imperceptible artifacts are quite obvious to the RIP and, depending on how it is configured, can be sent to ink resulting in scum dots. To be fair, many printers set their RIPs to hold back such artifacts to prevent scum dots, but there may be one day that you have to work with one that hasn’t taken such precaution.

Fortunately, changing the image compression for both the color & grayscale images to be included in the PDF to None will help you from falling prey to this problem. Simply put, None will not compress the images at all; at least not any more than they have been already (You are using uncompressed images to make your print-ready PDFs, right?).

As for compressing monochrome images, the CCITT, Run Length & ZIP options are all safe since monochrome by definition is only one color; although I also set it to None for consistency’s sake.

First ‘anti-stab’ knife to go on sale in Britain

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6501720.ece

More perplexing than the theory behind the knife are the slew of comments about said knife. Such as:

Tell me, please… what will you do when a criminal breaks into your house and points an illegal gun at your child’s head?—Carrie, Virginia, USA

Really? Are there a rash of armed criminals entering people’s homes in Virginia & taking children hostage of which I am unaware? Assuming she has planned for such an event what exactly would Carrie do in that situation?

The real problem is the cost of living is so high that people have to work so much they don’t have time to raise their children, who grow up without values and commit crimes.
Fix the real problem not the symptoms.—Mahhn, Nonevyourbiznes, usa

One could write a sociology thesis based off this comment.

Cycling Enters the Electronic Age With a New Gear-Shifting System

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/sports/cycling/14gears.html

The new Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 7970 gear-shifter sounds great for real racing cyclists. I can’t help but be concerned, though, that it will be the new rage with the roadie posers that litter the roads here in Northern New Jersey.

Hugo Chávez wins referendum allowing indefinite re-election

Yesterday the citizens of Venezuela passed a referendum to remove presidential term limits with a margin of about 8%. President Chávez said of the result:

It is a clear victory for the people.

Although back in 2007, during the broadcast of episode 291 of Chávez weekly television serial, Aló Presidente, Chávez showed his self-serving bias when he pressed Rory Carroll of the Guardian for a question. Carroll, who was in attendance with other members of the international press, did not have one primed; so he asked why the president wanted the right to be elected indefinitely, while not granting the same rights to the 23 state governors.
After bloviating for some hour and a half, Chávez returned to Carroll’s query with two simple statements:

That is how I conceive it. It’s a political conception.

Chávez lost that referendum by less than 2 percent and two days later stated:

There is nothing to celebrate. We have not lost anything. And get ready because a new offensive is on its way for the proposed reform, this one transformed, simplified. But I am sure- For me, it’s not a defeat, it’s another for now.

The revised referendum passed this year also allows Venezuela’s mayors and governors to run indefinitely.

Sketchbook: Our President’s New BlackBerry: Humor: The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/02/23/090223sh_shouts_mccall

President Obama’s new custom Blackberry has some impressive features.

Our world may be a giant hologram

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true

From the New Scientist article regarding the possibility that the GEO600 gravitational wave detector is detecting a holographic projection of grainy space-time:

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.

I immediately think of the closing scene from the film Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain where the narrator states:

September 28, 1997. It is exactly 11 AM. At the fun fair near the ghost train, the marshmallow twister’s twisting, while in Villette Park, Félix Lerbier learns there are more links in his brain than atoms in the universe. At the Sacré Coeur the Cardinals are practicing their backhands. The temperatur is 24 degrees Celcius. Humidity 70%. Atmospheric pressure 999 millibars.

I can’t help but empathize with Monsieur Lerbier.

Quantum Teleportation Between Distant Matter Qubits: First Between Atoms 1 Meter Apart

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141137.htm

What distinguishes this outcome as teleportation, rather than any other form of communication, is that no information pertaining to the original memory actually passes between ion A and ion B. Instead, the information disappears when ion A is measured and reappears when the microwave pulse is applied to ion B.

This is truly awe-inspiring.

[Obama] Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249_pf.html

As you know, you transition with the White House you have-not the White House you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.

Everything 43 has been scrubbed from Whitehouse.gov

The last news post I recieved from the Bush administration via Google Reader was time stamped for today, Jan. 20, at 12:06PM.

Clicking the link to view the full post page resulted in this:

Page Not Found

The page you requested wasn’t found at this location. The Obama Administration has created a brand new White House website, and it’s possible that the page you were looking for has been moved.

Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov & it is like 43 never existed.