2003

I added a miniblog to my site, which will be a list of interesting links as I find them. Subscribe to the RSS feed, if you like. If you like this blogging style, Cameron posted many other great examples.

As if Valve Software wasn’t already suffering enough from the leaked Half-Life 2 source code and today’s announcement of an expected April 2004 release date, Neowin broke the news that a fully-playable beta release was leaked today. It was apparently spread via IRC channels, and will likely soon hit Usenet and the rest of the Net. There are several screenshots of in-game play available.

October 8, 2003: The leaked release is functional, but barely. You have to load maps manually from the console (e.g. ‘map e3_bugbait’), and most maps don’t load at all. The E3 tech demo maps appear entirely scripted, with enemies moving into predefined positions and otherwise ignoring you completely. This indicates that either the AI code is incomplete or overridden for purposes of the E3 demo. A 15-minute movie of in-game play shows that several other maps can be played, but it’s not immediately obvious how they were able to load them. I expect that a guide to tweaking the alpha release will be published soon.

October 9, 2003: Here’s a very brief guide to getting the game to run. (Basically, just double-click each map in the /hl2/maps directory.)

My new site has launched! Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, where anyone can add the music/sports/arts/film/drama events they’re going to, find out who’s going to the same events, and browse the event listings of other people with similar tastes. After adding events to your list, you can use the generated RSS feeds to list them on your own weblog. By adding people to your friends list, you can track your friend’s events as they add them (also available via RSS).

Along with a group of about 20 friends, I’ve been using the site to manage my concerts and find new concerts for the last couple weeks. The feedback has been very positive… Sign up, add an event or two, and let me know what you think!

And if you’re in the Los Angeles area, come out tonight for drinks to celebrate.

Update: Matt posted a glowing review, and Andre talks about why Upcoming is not Friendster. Also: Many to Many.

As Hurricane Isabel slams the North Carolina coast, you can keep an eye on the storm via several webcams online. Here are all the active webcams in North Carolina I’ve found. Add more in the comments! (Inspired by Mat’s entry.)

In the 1980s, I lived in a butt rock household. With my step-dad in a hair band and my mom managing several bands, my adolescence was spent in rehearsal studios and Sunset Strip nightclubs. I think this family photo sums it up nicely (that’s me on the right). The full story and many more photos are on my mom’s site, if you’re curious.

Hairspray, guitar solos, and spandex may be poised to make a comeback in the form of The Darkness, a new British band that’s #1 on the UK album charts for the past two weeks and the leading contender for the Mercury Prize. They remind me of equal parts Scorpions, Queen, and Spinal Tap, but you’ll have to decide for yourself whether they’re serious or not. I can’t tell.

Watch the video now: Windows Media or RealVideo.

In 1983, Tommy Boy Records held a remix contest to promote G.L.O.B.E. & Whiz Kid’s “Play That Beat (Mr. DJ).” The unanimous winner was Steve “Steinski” Stein & Douglas “Double Dee” DiFranco’s “Lesson One: The Payoff Mix.” Two more Lessons soon followed: “Lesson Two: The James Brown Mix” and “Lesson Three: The History of Hip-Hop.”

“Lesson One” became an urban radio hit within days, but was never commercially released because of its extensive and eclectic samples. Clearing the sound clips — a diverse collection ranging from Mae West and Humphrey Bogart to Ed McMahon and Herbie Hancock — would have been a legal nightmare under copyright law.

Made in a cutting-edge studio with Steinski’s extensive vinyl collection, these three tracks paved the way for current cut-and-paste turntablist experimentation. Countless basement DJs were influenced by The Lessons, including DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, who both released unofficial tributes called “Lesson Four.” It was way ahead of its time, and deserves to be heard beyond vinyl bootlegs traded by DJs.

Download the MP3s. (Thanks for hosting, Andre and Cameron!)

Lesson 1: The Payoff Mix (mirror)

Lesson 2: The James Brown Mix (mirror)

Lesson 3: History of Hip-Hop (mirror).

Update: If you want to know more about the origins of these songs, read this fantastic Village Voice article from 1986. “[Steinski]’s just a perpetually disillusioned optimist who still assumes that the sounds and images rippling through the American consciousness are, forget copyright, every American’s birthright — that we’re all free to interpret and manipulate them as we choose.”

Lately, I’ve been playing classic arcade games over the Internet using the MAME emulator and Kaillera. There’s nothing quite like crushing your friends or co-workers at a game of Joust, Bust A Move, or Gauntlet.

First, download the MAME32/Kaillera client for Windows. Install it, download some game ROMs into the appropriate directory, and you’re all set. If you want to set up a server, you’ll also need the Kaillera server.

The public servers are dominated by fighting games like the Street Fighter and King of Fighters series, but we’ve found that Kaillera is much more fun with classic games.

My list of recommended titles is below, and you can find all of these ROMs on Vega’s MAME site. If you can’t find a particular ROM, try looking up the ROM filename in Mame.dk (e.g. “pbobble.zip”) and searching for it in Google. If you have any other multiplayer arcade recommendations, please post them.

George W. Bush’s “grassroots action site” launched today, though it’s about as grassroots as the Avril Lavigne street team. No RSS feeds or campaign weblog yet, but they offer news feeds for your “personal Web site or blog.” (And dig those crazy backwards breadcrumbs.)

Unsurprisingly, the website runs on Windows 2000/IIS. I noticed that Microsoft Exchange’s Webmail seems to be running on the box, too. Guess the password and win a first class ticket to federal prison!

Google’s new calculator is a fun diversion, with several undocumented new features. Here’s a few. (Kottke has some more impractical uses. Please post more as you find them.)

– How long can you play a 30GB iPod without repeating a song? Answer: 18.2 days

– How much hard drive space does one hour of 128kbps MP3s consume? Answer: 56.25 megabytes

– How many seconds in a decade? Answer: 315,569,260

– 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius? Answer: 37 degrees

– How many feet in a smoot? Answer: 5.58 (via Ryan)

– What’s the answer to life, the universe and everything? Answer: 42

– What’s the answer to life, the universe and everything multiplied by the speed of light divided by three teaspoons? Answer: 8.51523871 × 10¹⁴ m^-2 s^-1

– What’s the speed of a Delorean going back in time? Answer: 47,600,819,200 m³ kg/s⁴ (via Cam)

Apparently, the RIAA wasn’t impressed with the friendly “do it for the little guy” approach taken by the MPAA’s anti-piracy campaign. Their new Public Service Announcement takes a much more aggressive approach… Download the 9MB MPEG (direct link) or 5MB Quicktime (direct link).

I wish I could claim credit for this, but it was created by an anonymous and very talented friend.

Curious about what synonyms Google is using for its new synonym operator? Try searching for your synonym keyword and then exclude the same keyword from results, like so:

~help -help = guide, manual, faq, support, tutorial, helping, tips, problems

~search -search = finder, listings, searcher, database

~blog -blog = log, weblog, blogger

~rss -rss = xml, rdf

~tivo -tivo = directv, replaytv, replay, pvr, video recorder

~idiot -idiot = stupid

~happy -happy = fun, happiness, lucky

~loser -loser = Beck

Find any other interesting ones? Post a comment.

In January of 1975, John Walker discovered a new way of distributing his Univac game files and inadvertently wrote the world’s first computer virus.

The game was called ANIMAL, a self-learning variation of 20 questions which asked you to “think of an animal.” Tired of mailing several copies of the game on magnetic disks out to curious geeks, he started work on a clever way to distribute the ANIMAL executable to every Univac system in the world. He coded a subroutine called PERVADE, which could be called by any program and quietly copied itself into every directory that the current user had access to. It eventually made its way into software distribution tapes from Univac themselves. The entire story, with assembly source code for ANIMAL and PERVADE, is available from Walker’s homepage.

Written in 1982 for the Apple II, the first microcomputer virus was also (mostly) benign. In 9th grade, Richard Skrenta, Jr. wrote a program called Elk Cloner that stayed resident in system memory after its disk was removed, but would later copy itself to any new disk inserted into the drive. Elk Cloner counted the number of times the infected disk was booted from, and on the fiftieth boot, the screen would display a little poem. The source code for Elk Cloner is available from Rich’s website.

You might know Rich from his later work; he went on to co-found NewHoo, later renamed to DMOZ (aka the Open Directory Project).

Best tombstone ever.

It’s that time again. This Saturday and Sunday, at the San Jose Convention Center. More than 350 classic arcade and pinball games, all set on free play. Panels by the original employees of Atari, Williams Pinball, Amiga and 3DO. I’ve driven to San Jose for the past five years, for one simple reason: California Extreme is the Best Thing Ever.

If you’re going, let me know.

Brad Brace has been uploading a photo to the Internet every 12 hours since December 30, 1994. The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG project is a continuous posting of “sequenced hypermodern imagery,” usually black and white photos of city life, which are simultaneously posted to FTP sites, mailing lists, and Usenet’s alt.12hr newsgroup.

So, does that make the 12hr Project the first photolog?

July 31, 2003: I e-mailed Brad, and he said that a complete archive doesn’t exist; even he doesn’t have copies of all his photos. I’ve compiled a partial archive of all the photos I have, about 780 so far. If you have any more, or know where to get them, please let me know.

Right outside my work, a burgundy Buick Le Sabre just drove through the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market at top speeds, hurtling through barricades and injuring at least 40 25 people and killing at least eight ten. Ambulances and helicopters; it’s a huge mess. Ten minutes later, it started to pour rain.

Map of the site. The car ran down Arizona from east to west, through the barricade at Fourth Street, and stopped three blocks later in the middle of the block between Ocean and Second Street, right in front of my work.

I don’t have a digital camera, but here are the first two news stories from MSNBC and a local NBC affilate. Live video from MSNBC. CNN, LA Times, AP, CBS News, ABC News, KTLA, New York Times. Photos: Yahoo, KTLA, LA Times, CNN. More from Google News (updated often).

My co-worker confirmed the driver was an older man with a cane, who appeared to be fine after the accident. Some people speculate the car was moving at upwards of 60mph.

I was walking through the Farmer’s Market on my way back from lunch, right down the middle of the street, only 20 minutes before the accident. My friend Phil was buying produce only 10 minutes before. Fortunately everyone here is fine, but so many others aren’t. Seeing the dead and dying, one unconscious on the hood of the car and waiting for medical attention… It’s very difficult to take.

4:05pm: There’s a group of Highway Patrol officers huddling around the front of the car now. There’s still a pair of shoes on the roof of the car. The rain stopped, but it’s overcast and the wind’s kicking up. It’s been warm and sunny all day; very strange weather for this area.

4:50pm: Several vendors and the Farmer’s Market organizers are waiting at the yellow police tape at Arizona and 2nd, waiting to get back to their abandoned (and sometimes destroyed) booths. Film crews and small groups of spectators lurk at the sidelines. Arizona Ave. is still cluttered with produce and flowers, but the area is otherwise clear now. Local police, highway patrol and crisis management workers are the only people near the car and the crime scene. All the injured have long since moved to local hospitals.

6:05pm: Helicopters are still circling overhead. The man was identified as 86-year-old George Russell Weller, a regular at the Farmer’s Market. Our local TV news said he told police that he confused the accelerator with the brake.

11:10pm: NBC reports that the coroner’s office has declared a ninth dead tonight. Five men, three women, and a three-year-old girl. At least six remain in critical condition.

10:15am: Russ Weller’s car was towed last night, and the half-block stretch of Arizona between Ocean and 2nd in front of our building is open now, but Arizona is still taped off from the intersection of Arizona and 2nd clear up to 4th. The flowers from the florist stand are still there, but the other stands and vendor vehicles seem to be gone. Some produce and other debris is still on the streets. The Red Cross has a blood donation truck on Santa Monica and 3rd, if you’re in the neighborhood.

The LA Times has good coverage of yesterday’s events, including a good PDF diagram of the car’s path. CNN, NBC, and other local news stations were still out there with live coverage. My co-worker Joe Chrisman was interviewed by CNN this morning. Joe was on the street when the accident happened, and was among the ten people who lifted the Buick off of a woman trapped under the car. Thank you, Joe.

2:15pm: Officials released the names of the deceased. The police removed the tape a couple hours ago, and Arizona is now open again. On our way to lunch, we passed a memorial of flowers left by mourners.

6:30pm: Jonah keeps updating LA Blogs with the latest information about this tragedy. I just learned that a seven-month-old boy is the 10th victim.

July 18, 2003: Three good articles from the Los Angeles Times are putting perspective on the depth of the event. Suddenly, They Were Gone offers upsetting profiles and anecdotes about each victim. Also: Coroner’s Unit Sobered by Extent of Devastation and Crash Adds Urgency, Emotion to Debate Over Elderly Drivers.

Well, my role in the Star Wars Kid saga is finally over. FedEx reports that Ghyslain’s iPod was delivered and signed for. (Here’s a photo of the iPod and a letter I wrote. Also included was a printout of everyone who donated.) The Canadian taxes have been billed to my newly-formed FedEx account, and the Futureshop gift certificates have been ordered.

Here’s the final breakdown. (All amounts are in U.S. dollars.) There was $3,254.09 donated, after refunds and Paypal fees (more info). After tax, the Apple 30GB iPod was $534.76. FedEx International shipping for the iPod was $83.37, and Canadian sales tax was $35.67. In all, $653.80 for the iPod, leaving $2600.29 in leftover donations. Using today’s exchange rate, this amounts to $3,610.50 in Canadian dollars. I bought eighteen $200 gift cards from Futureshop’s online store, and they’ll be shipped tomorrow via UPS. That leaves $7.56 in U.S. dollars, which I’ll likely spend on a couple pints of cold, delicious beer.

A huge thanks to everyone who donated. With luck, we’ll hear back from Ghyslain once the dust has settled.

In other Star Wars Kid news, there seems to be a growing movement to get Star Wars Kid into Episode III. There’s a popular petition started by Fred Quimby of Jedimaster.net, the best place to find SWK-related videos. Even the Lucasfilm crew supports the idea… TheForce.net reported that the official Lucasfilm webcam showed the Episode III makeup crew watching the Star Wars Kid video and holding up a sign saying, “Ghyslain 4 Episode 3.? C’est possible, non?”

July 17, 2003: Just when you thought it was over… Journalist Bruno Guglielminetti has learned that Ghyslain’s family has filed a lawsuit against four students and their parents. They’re seeking CN$225,000 in damages. Bruno will be interviewing the lawyer again tomorrow, which will be posted on the Radio Canada weblog. Here’s a new article from the Globe and Mail with tons of new information about the lawsuit and the kids who put the video online.

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Half-Life 2, Valve Software has made Half-Life (one of the finest games of all time) available for free, via their new Steam client, a “broadband delivery platform” for simply distributing games and their updates. Also included is Counter-Strike, the most popular multiplayer game online, and Opposing Force, the Half-Life expansion pack with an alternate but parallel storyline to Half-Life.

You can download the Steam client from their site, which will soon be distributing exclusive media and updates for Half-Life 2. (Did I mention that Half-Life 2 may very well revolutionize the videogame industry, and I’m nearly peeing my pants in anticipation?)

Inspired by the recent wave of Disney attractions adapted into full-length films, here’s an exclusive look at the next three movies in the series.

Someone should make a moblogging site where users can post celebrity sighting photos from their phone or PDA, along with a brief description of where they’re posting from.

The closest I could find was this NYC-specific SMS group, which seems to be focused on text messages instead of photoblogging.

July 9, 2003: Joe pointed me to TextAmerica, a site that allows anyone to create a mobile photoblog (“mophos” or “moblogs”), so I created a new one for Celeb Sightings. Anyone can post to it by e-mailing their photos to [email protected] from their mobile phone. Get to it, people!

August 12, 2003: Buzznet.com has a celebrity moblogging page that people are actively using. Lyle Lovett, Janet Jackson, Jay Leno, and Randy Newman are some of the current highlights.

From Alan Murray’s Capitol Reports column:

“The highlight of last night’s party was a spoof video by Rep. Mary Bono, wife of the late Sonny Bono, and Billy Tauzin, House Commerce Committee chairman, who said they were ‘auditioning’ for Hilary’s job. They sang an Eminem-style song called ‘Piracy, Bad.’ Tauzin said he liked to download Sonny and Cher songs; Bono said, ‘I like the royalties.'”

If anyone knows where to find a copy of this duet, please send it along. I have to hear it. I added the lyrics below.

July 30, 2003: The transcript of the entire video is online at the video production studio’s website.

We left the hospital at 2am, and got the call at 6am. She’s gone, and I’m heartbroken.

She was born Evelyn, but everyone called her Peggy. I called her Grandma. (1924-2003.)

Update: This is the eulogy that I wrote for her funeral yesterday.

Idea of the day: a Thumbs-Up button in the browser, which you click whenever you find a webpage that interests you. Click it up to three times depending on how much you like it, a la TiVo ratings. Clicking the button either posts to your own weblog, or maybe to a central website that aggregates ratings for browsing and allows you to syndicate your own ratings to your weblog, if you have one.

This would be an ideal way to manage my upcoming links sidebar and, if centralized, a great way to browse new links by people I trust. No personal weblog or technical skill required. Get to work, LazyWeb!

Update: Brad points to StumbleUpon, which handles ratings but no weblog integration or syndication. And Graham points to Erik Benson’s Morale-O-Meter, which is a bookmarklet that posts website votes to a links sidebar. Very nice, thank you both.

I’m guest-blogging over on Jason Kottke’s Remaindered links sidebar for the next couple weeks. The links come fast and furious, so check frequently. This is a dry run for my own links sidebar, which will have to wait until the next redesign.

Also, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much here lately. My family’s been dealing with the rapid decline of my grandmother, so I’ve been spending almost all available free time at the hospital. While I’m not comfortable getting into personal details on my own site, my mom is baring her soul on her own site. It’s an intensely personal, difficult read.

Finally, a worthy parody. Everyone, meet Space Ghost Kid.

The following is my contribution to Newly Digital, a distributed writing project about early computing experiences started by Adam Kalsey. Read the other entries, and then write your own: Brad Choate, Steven Garrity, Anders Jacobsen, Dan James, Adam Kalsey, Cameron Marlow, Jeff Nichols, Chris Pirillo, Andre Torrez, and Bill Zeller.

Some unfortunate news, everybody. Ghyslain, aka the “Star Wars Kid,” and his family may be pursuing legal action against the individual(s) who originally posted his video on the Internet. Their legal counsel, Mr. François Vigeant, conducted an interview with Radio Canada which was just posted to their website. (French transcript, or the fundraiser excerpt translated to English. I’ve added an unofficial translation of the entire interview below, courtesy of Dana Tierney.)

During the 12-minute interview, Mr. Vigeant states that he heard about the fundraiser, but that his client has not received any gifts yet. Be aware that we’ve attempted to contact Ghyslain and his parents numerous times since the fundraiser was closed, to find out how Ghyslain wanted the money spent. After many unsuccessful e-mails and phone calls, we finally spoke to Ghyslain last night. He informed us that he was advised by his lawyer not to discuss the case, but mentioned that he was not pursuing legal action against the two of us.

The fundraiser money sits untouched in a Paypal account. If this matter is not resolved by June 10, or if Ghyslain and his family decide to refuse the fundraiser gifts entirely, we’ll refund all of donations through Paypal immediately. A sincere apology to all the kind-hearted people who tried to help. We’ll post more news as we’re able to.

Update: We spoke to Ghyslain’s lawyer this morning, and he assured us that any gifts we could send from our fundraising efforts are appreciated and welcomed. As a result, we’ll buy the 30GB iPod (shipped direct from apple.ca) this weekend and spend the remainder of the funds on a FutureShop.ca (a Canadian electronics store) gift certificate in Ghyslain’s name. These two gifts will be shipped to the lawyer’s office in Ghyslain’s name. For the items in the “Gift Bin“, we will contact the contributors and ask that they ship the items directly.

Update #2: In light of the recent events, several people have inquired about refunds. We will be e-mailing everyone that donated shortly to inform them about the recent events and give them the opportunity to request a refund. Any refund request made by midnight PST on Monday, June 2, 2003 will be honored. The remainder of the funds will be used as detailed in the update above.

Update #3: Out of 421 donations, 44 people requested refunds, including our anonymous $500 contributor. The new total is $3,475.44, which totals to $3,254.09 after Paypal fees. View the updated spreadsheet (in CSV format). We’ll buy the iPod and gift certificate this week.

Radio Canada Interview with Maitre Vigeant
Transcribed and translated by Dana Tierney

Radio Canada: First of all, Counselor Vigeant, how is your client doing?

Maitre Vigeant: He is recovering with difficulty from these events of the last few days.

Can you clarify for me, because there have been several versions on this subject, the videotape for a start, it was produced in what context?

I do not know exactly the circumstances in which it was produced, but what we do know at this moment is that it wasn’t, it had not been prepared to be used, to be used by the public or persons other than my client himself.

But it was a presentation done in the context of a school assignment?

That detail is not to my knowledge.

Okay. Am I mistaken, or has the media excitement stopped a bit in this story?

It stopped after we sent… We have contacted the media, as you know, through the means of a letter to the various bureau chiefs, and we have had as a result of this, different conversations with almost all or in any case with a large part of the media, to let them know that the media coverage given to this event was of a nature that would increase the harm done to our client, which was unorthodox.

Exactly, now it was May 22nd when you sent this letter. What did you have in mind exactly?

It was to free the family and their son from the attention of the media and, if possible, turn it towards ourselves so that we could manage it in the family’s stead. In other words, the family has lived with great difficulty through these events. There is not to my knowledge — and I have been a lawyer for seventeen years — to have seen an event which personally seems to me at its foundation relatively trivial, which has taken so gigantic a turn. Now, the media coverage, and I don’t claim it was unjustified or that it was done in a way that was deliberately mean, but it was a weight, it consituted a considerable weight on the shoulders of this family. You know, when it is people who have a public life, I believe that public personalities must by the nature of their activities have an extremely high tolerance, let’s say, for the presence of the media or for the attention of the media. But when it is citizens who lead perfectly normal lives outside of the public spotlight, and especially for a story which had nothing to do with the public interest, our preoccupation as lawyers is to handle things in such a way that the media gets away as fast as possible, physically speaking, from the members of this family. You have to understand that members of the media have come to the residence, and some have been more insistent. This is not… I don’t say this to brag about you, but this is not how Radio Canada does things, but some media have been, shall we say, more persistent, in looking for a follow-up to the story.

Counselor Vigeant, it is always a delicate matter in the media when one talks about a matter where a minor is involved, but here it was the central thread of the story, for one thing because one must not necessarily identify the minor, hasn’t there been carelessness in this story on the part of some media?

Yes, first of all, there was carelessness in the following fact, in that we have the unauthorized use of the picture of a person, for a start, which as a general rule — I am not going to give a lecture on law, that’s not the goal of the interview — but this is something something which is generally illegal. The Supreme Court in a case known as Aubry v. Editions Vice Versa, Inc. (?), you have perhaps heard of it, in that case it was a matter of a young girl whose photo was taken on the steps of a school or a university, a photo which by the way did not show her in a bad light at all, we should mention in passing [laughs] but who had pleaded, you know, this is my picture and you cannot use it in a commercial manner or other manner without my permission. And if you do this with a minor, obviously there is a question of consent as well, this is something even more upsetting. And a third aspect that makes this even worse is that this was done with a goal to harm. In other words, in the case of Aubry v. Editions Vice Versa (?), the Supreme Court said you can’t take a picture of a member of the public and use it for personal ends. It was not even mean, it was just a student, if I recall correctly, who was sitting on the steps of her school and who was reading a book. Okay.

So imagine, if this is illegal, imagine at what stratospheric distance we are at if we use a person’s picture without his consent with the goal of harming him. Because these pictures, you no doubt know, obviously these pictures were not used in a manner that would ultimately serve to the advantage of our client. And that goal, added to the fact that he is a minor, added to the fact that this was without authorization and added to the fact that this was definitely with the intent of harming him, adds up in the end to a substantial accumulation of illegalities.

What was more harmful, the fact that this file was downloaded more than two million times on the Internet, or the fact that this televised and was picked up in the newpapers here?

I would say to you that the use by the Quebec media probably had more consequences than if the file was just downloaded. Because it was difficult to judge of the importance of the matter by the downloads alone, in this sense. If someone does harm to your name, your image, your reputation, for example in Indonesia, that probably wouldn’t bother you that much. But if he does it in your neighborhood or in your street where you live, it will probably affect you a lot more. To take an example, I think it was the New York Times that had a story on the matter. That, you know… I think you know that not many people read the New York Times here, eh. But that the newspapers with higher circulation picked up the story, that there, let’s say, it’s a little harder to accept.

The factor of proximity makes all the difference in this story, is what you are saying.

Yes, because he is not a public personality, If he was a public personality then the the fact that it was in the outside media would matter more. Here, it is less so. Because Trois-Rivieres is not very well-known in New York, or at least it wasn’t before this. [both laugh]

Yes.

But from the moment where it is picked up here, it’s because it creates a snowball effect. To come back to a question you asked me earlier, you asked me earlier about the press release we put out, I think it was on the night of the 23rd to the 24th of May. Our preoccupation was to limit the harm done to this family, to try to take away all of the media attention that had been turned on them, to relieve them of this and to act as rapidly as possible in the short term to manage this for them and free them of this burden. Because, you know, people tend to underestimate the teasing and the jeering and say, yeah, well, it’s kids. You know, when it’s your kid you don’t have quite the same opinion.

What happened, Mister Vigeant, to his classmate who took this video and put it online? Have you identified him and has he apologized to your client?

I am… I don’t know. The measures that have been taken by the persons involved have not been conveyed to me with certainty at this moment, in that to my knowledge there are several kids involved. The contacts we have had with the prosecutor or the social workers do not refer to this type of gesture. There have been no such gestures yet, to my knowlege. In other words, there are persons that we believe are involved who have not expressed any remorse in the communications transmitted to us. Whether anyone has expressed any, I can’t be positive one way or the other. What I can say is that the prosecutor has heard some comments from the representatives of these two young people, and we seem to be very far from apologies.

But are there discussions now, or these have stopped and this will happen later?

At the moment, I would say that at the moment there are no discussions, there are only monologues.

On each side or on their side?

In other words, I am counting on the judgement of the parents of the young people who are implicated to take the necessary measures so that what has been done does not continue. As far as I know, appropriate apologies have not been made to my client, but if they have, this is not to my knowledge at the moment.

Counselor Vigeant, I want to turn your focus to a subject, or an aspect of the problem, which is a lot more optimistic than that one… Has your clent had any news or even any gifts from American web surfers who wanted to give him a hand with this?

[laughs] I have heard a lot of stories about these funds and these gifts and so on, but I have never… Nobody has been able to substantiate… no one can prove this help or these funds. I hear talk of them, but I am not familiar with their real existence or other than virtual existence.

There has been a parallel story about a financial campaign of four thousand dollars, this was never given to your client?

Well, what I am saying is that to my knowledge….

Well, you are in touch with your client, you talk to him?

Yes, uh, in effect we talk to him. Now all I can tell you is that no one has seen, to my personal knowledge, no one has seen this money.

What is your reaction to this generosity, if it does come through?

We and our client react with a lot of suspicion to the various transactions, well-intentioned as they may be, given what has been done over the last few weeks, and although we are sure that some of these people are well-intentioned, eh, we are being careful in the interactions that are going back and forth.

You were sayng that there was a conversation, or some monologues that were taking place with the parties who were responsible the problem, for distributing this videotape, but apart from these monologues what is happening in the case, is recourse being sought against the media?

No recourse is currently being contemplated against any media whatsoever as we are speaking here right now.

Long-term, is some recourse being considered?

We are preparing opinions for our clients on the array of judicial options which are available to them, the judicial means which are open to them to seek damages for what was done to them, and our clients, in a few days or in a few weeks, will reach a decision the means by which they will come before the court, if in fact they do, to seek damages.

Thank you very much for the interview. Francois Vigeant represents the family of the young Quebecois who played a Jedi in a videotape which has circulated worldwide and is still circulating worldwide, more or less everywhere on the Internet.

The Transfiguration of Harold Maines is a documentary about a man with a dream: to become a horse. Not sure what to think about this, except that there must be a market for films catering to the human-equine transformation fetishists. At any rate, the trailer is very odd. (Hat tip to the sorely-missed Mister Pants.)

Last year, I wrote about the film adaptation of Po Bronson’s The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, a pre-crash novel about dot-com entrepreneurs trying to build and market a sub-$300 PC. If you missed the release of the movie, you weren’t alone. Greg Knauss informed me that it was released last year, but IMDB says it only opened on two screens, grossing a whopping $2,535 in its opening weekend.

Rather than keep it as a period piece, they apparently tried to write in the dot-com crash into the storyline and changed the invention to a sub-$99 device (because of the availability of sub-$300 PCs?). According to the reviews, this was the least of their transgressions. The movie is supposed to be terrible, but I’ll likely still rent it (if I can find it) because of this Onion review: “A sloppy, strangely fascinating footnote to the dot-com explosion, it would make for a terrific ‘Remember The Bubble’ double feature with the similarly misbegotten AntiTrust.”

Originally developed for Gameboy Advance developers, commercial “linker” devices (like these) allow anyone to copy downloaded game ROMs from your PC to high-capacity blank cartridges, which can then be played on an actual Gameboy Advance.

Most Gameboy Advance ROMs are 32MB or 64MB, which means you can store and play multiple games on a single 256MB cartridge by formatting the cartridge in multiboot mode and using a boot menu provided by one of several software packages.

And since the Gameboy Advance is powerful enough to emulate older systems, you can now play NES, Sega Master System, arcade, and original Gameboy games on your GBA. The thriving Gameboy Advance emulation scene is close to releasing a functional Atari 2600 emulator (another attempt). Hand-held Pitfall or Contra, anyone?

After debuting at E3 last week, Valve Software’s Half Life 2 is now the best-looking, most realistic, most highly anticipated game in the world. The lines were five hours long at E3, so I wasn’t able to witness the demonstration until yesterday. And after watching it, I’m in awe. I’ve never seen anything that comes close, and I’m giddy. I haven’t felt like this about a game since the first Quake was released. Needless to say, I’ll be in line to buy it on September 30.

If you have a high-bandwidth connection and have even a passing interest in games, you must download the 600MB Quicktime movie from Fileplanet, or possibly much faster by using BitTorrent. You’ll have to wait in an hour-long line, but it’s well worth it. If you’re on a dialup connection, you can read the play-by-play description of the movie on IGN. Go now.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to the Star Wars Kid fund! In only seven days, 421 people donated an unbelievable $4,334.44. After Paypal’s transaction fees, that leaves $4,074.80. Here’s a spreadsheet with all the donations that I downloaded from Paypal, in case you’re curious. (At their request, the names of anonymous donors were deleted.)

In the next couple days, we’ll talk to Ghyslain and his parents to determine the best way to spend this money. As soon as we make the purchase, I’ll post the receipts. Hopefully, we can get Ghyslain to send a few pictures of himself with his brand new toys.

We’ll also mail out the non-cash gifts that people donated, including an Industrial Light + Magic t-shirt and a Darth Maul lightsaber replica signed by Ray Park (aka Darth Maul)!

The outpouring of support has been staggering, far beyond what I ever expected. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to raise enough for a 15GB iPod, but here we are. Thanks again to all who donated, and thanks to the Star Wars Kid himself for making all this possible. Geeks like us need to stick together.

The New York Times just posted an article about the Star Wars Kid and our fundraising efforts, with quotes from me and Ghyslain. Also: Wired News, The Globe and Mail, National Post story & interview, Cinescape, Chicago Tribune, the Lycos 50, and Yahoo’s Buzz Index. Listen to the radio interview from PRI’s The World. GeekCulture.com posted a great comic.

If you’re here for the first time, view the original video and the lightsaber and Matrix remixes. Then, read more about Jish’s interviews with Ghyslain and the fundraiser effort.

The Star Wars Kid has been found!

The two videos were downloaded 1.1 million times from my site alone, a staggering 2.3 terabytes of traffic, placing a geeky little kid at the center of the web’s attention practically overnight. So who was he and what was he thinking?

My research revealed few details, until the culprits finally contacted me. His name is Ghyslain, a 15-year-old tenth grader living in Quebec. Originally recorded onto an 8mm tape on November 4, 2002 in the school’s studio, the video was never meant to be seen by anyone. After Ghyslain returned the borrowed videotape to his friend, the video sat in a basement for months. On April 19, 2003, Ghyslain’s friend stumbled on the tape’s secret contents and immediately shared it with friends. They thought it would be a funny prank to encode the video and upload it to Kazaa.

It only took two weeks for the video to spread around the world. Raven Software’s Bryan Dube added the Star Wars effects on April 24, a mere five days after it originally appeared to the Internet. A week later, both videos were linked on every major gaming- and technology-related website, forum, and chat room online.

What does Ghyslain think about all this? My French-speaking friend Jish interviewed him today to find out what he thought about his newfound popularity. Read the interview now. Overall, he seems like a damn cool kid. I don’t care what anyone else thinks; Ghyslain is my new hero.

Update: In return for all the trouble he’s gone through to entertain us, I think we should buy a new iPod for Ghyslain. We’re up to 421 donations, totalling $4,334.44! We can buy him a 30GB iPod and much more! The fundraiser is now closed; thank you to everyone who donated.

July 16, 2003: The Star Wars Kid received his presents.

Between the opening of Matrix Reloaded and the E3 Electronic Gaming Expo, it’s a very good week to be a geek. I’ll be attending a private screening of the Matrix on Thursday afternoon and E3 all day on Friday.

I’m not the live-blogging type, but I compiled a list of other webloggers who will be attending. (Those blogging the event daily are marked with an asterisk.) A list of other E3 news websites follows.

I whipped up a quick PHP script that allows anyone (even PC users like myself) to search the iTunes Music Store. Sound clips are in Apple’s proprietary M4P format, so don’t expect to be able to listen to them unless you have iTunes installed.

You can try out the search for a limited time here (until it gets too popular), or download the script for your own site. Feel free to modify it however you like.

Update: Apple seems to be encrypting (or compressing?) their XML now, which breaks the script entirely. It doesn’t seem to be gzip-encoding, either. Any guesses on what they’re up to?

February 10, 2004: Someone sent me the e-mail below, discussing how they figured out the encryption. This is a bit above my head, but other people may find it useful.

April 17, 2004: Someone finally wrote a script to work around iTunes encryption. Go play with iTMS-4-All.

If you’re going to videotape your Star Wars fighting skills on a school camera, remember to remove the cassette when you’re done. Watch this embarrassingly good video.

It didn’t take long for the online community to remix it with full Star Wars special effects and lightsaber noises. I have no idea where this video originated from; if you know this kid, let me know. The kid has been identified… The full story here!

Update: I’ve turned off new comments in this thread because of the mean-spirited tone, and deleted the most vicious comments. Yes, he’s fat and awkward. We get it. Since 90% of the traffic to these videos is coming from gaming, technology, and Star Wars news websites, I’m guessing that most of you weren’t any cooler in junior high school than this poor kid. All you geeks, nerds, and dorks out there need to think twice before trashing one of your own.

Fox Television has collaborated with alumni directory Classmates.com to form a new reality series, where long-lost friends reunite through the website.

If you haven’t tried it, Classmates.com is extremely sneaky about how they acquired their massive alumni database. Originally a free service, Classmates.com now requires you to “complete your free registration to view your classmates.” After entering in your name, e-mail address and graduating class information, they let you browse lists of your old friends and classmates without any identifying information. To contact your friends, you’re forced to pay a $36 subscription fee.

Of course, they don’t disclose any of these caveats before you choose to add yourself to their database. Of Classmates.com’s reported 35 million members, only a mere fraction are paying subscribers. Everyone else was exploited for their personal information. Can anyone recommend a popular and free alternative to Classmates.com?

Donna D’Errico, former Baywatch alum and wife to Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx, opened a day spa in Los Angeles that offers Classical Rock Massage, massage services set to the sounds of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and the Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Passed.” Sounds great, but do they offer munchies and a laser light show?