Frizz

The jacket is on it’s way:

• International Dispatch, November 03, 2006, 10:44 am, LOS ANGELES AMC
• Acceptance, November 02, 2006, 4:30 pm, PLAYA DEL REY, CA 90293

If it left LA on Friday at 11am it means it should have arrived here early Saturday morning. I’m not sure how customs works, is it optimistic to think it might arrive in the next couple of days? Although, rereading it, it’s not clear what dispatch actually means, perhaps it’s just hanging around at the airport.

I am feeling bad about it coming all the way from California, I’m thinking my carbon footprint just got considerably larger.

Anna and I took John and Sarah to the Science Museum today and I can’t believe how disappointing it was. OK we only covered the basement and the ground floor, but there was simply no information that I could explain to John, he asked questions and there were no answers around. The ground floor just seemed a mess, a bit of this and a bit of that, no idea of any kind of chronology in sight. There’s one room on space travel with a hodge-podge of stuff; weapons and travel mixed together, and unless I really missed something no actual straightforward history of space travel, which I’m sure John would have loved. Downstairs there is an area called The Garden for 3 - 6 year olds. On the one hand this is great, he seemed to enjoy it for a while, on the other it was really just a playground, no different from any other. There’s a water thing where the kids can press buttons and pull levers to make bubbles, or pump water, but no room for any explanation as to the whys and how’s. On our way out there were various engines and pumps, what accompanying writing there was, was either too sparse or too complicated. I actually feel quite angry, this is our main science museum in the country, what’s going on? I had been looking forward to explaining some simple science ideas to him, but in the end he went home none the wiser and his frustration was palatable. Perhaps they should go next door to see how it’s done.

Are we there yet? Yes, in a mini-nano-second.

Unfortunately none of my photo’s from the Festival came out very well. This is producer Christine Vachon in conversation with Festival director Sandra Hebron.

Peter Gantzler talking after a screening of Lars von Trier’s new film The Boss of It All, a very funny comedy along the lines of the Office, but not. They used a computer (automatic randomised camera), instead of a director of photography to work out where to put the camera, so there are some pretty odd shots, but it works.

The other Danish film I saw was Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, I was really hoping it was going to be as amazing as Open Hearts, but sadly it’s not.

Another thing that I need to fix and my email server said they couldn’t do anything about is I’m getting obscene spam; it’s horrible and boring.

Just fixed my settings on my phone so I can send email again. I contacted my email service provider and they said it wouldn’t work, even though it used to. So I went to the Orange site and they have a great wizard that sends a push text with all the correct settings straight to your phone.

One of the most depressing things I saw was not a film in itself, but a clip within the film Bobby, of Robert Kennedy sitting in 1968 talking to a group of school children about the environmental problems facing the world, that’s almost 40 years ago and it could easily have been a politician speaking today.

It really seemed to be a good year for documentaries, one of the most powerful films I saw was Thin by photographer Lauren Greenfield. It follows a group of girls and women in an eating disorder programme, it’s beautifully made, very powerful and ought to be compulsory viewing for American insurance companies, who consistently and heartbreakingly cut funding before the women can have any real chance of recovery. Greenfield has also done an accompanying book of her photographs covering further stories with journal entries and artwork by the women and some essays by those working in the field. It’s been bought by Channel Four, so watch out for it next year.

I’m feeling very geeky and quite chuffed. Last night I’m doing overtime on my computer, having been without it for two days and it gets to the point where the noise is so annoying and I’m thinking this really can’t be right. A simple search led me to discover that I wasn’t imagining the noise at all, but that it’s ‘an issue’. The suggestions say that if you take the mains adapter out the noise will go away and lo and behold it does, no wonder the techies in the Apple store looked at me sympathetically; they were running it on the battery. Although the techies behind the scenes supposedly checked it twice over two days, so they must have had it plugged in. I then check the settings, it’s not running on ‘highest performance’, but it’s not on Automatic either, I change it and again even with the mains plugged in the noise goes away, I go backwards and forwards with the setting and the noise comes and goes instantly. So I’m still not exactly sure what’s going on, but extremely grateful that I have a quiet-ish computer again.

I’m out of the loop for a bit and there are software updates everywhere. I’ve just updated Firefox, Eudora, and NetNewsWire Lite. Firefox 2 has a spell checker, great stuff. [Actually, it’s a great idea, but it doesn’t seem to work very well].