General

The Burly Brawl. Matrix: Reloaded’s awesome CGI. Steve Silberman — far and away my favorite Wired feature-writer these days — wrote a terrific piece on the CG developments made by the production crew on The Matrix: Reloaded.

If the dojo fight in The Matrix was a kung fu sonata, the Burly Brawl is a symphony. Neo tears the sign from the ground and wields it as a kendo sword, vaulting pole, and battering ram. A woman walking by can’t believe what she’s seeing; suddenly her body is hijacked, she drops her grocery bag, and another Smith charges into the fray. Whole battalions of Smiths arrive, mount assaults, attack in waves, scatter, regroup, and head back for more. (At ESC, one massive pile-on was dubbed the “Did someone drop a quarter?” shot.) In the thick of it, Neo is dancing, chucking black-tied bodies skyward, pivoting around the signpost, and using shoulders as stepping-stones over the raging river of whup-ass.

Fans will wear out their remotes replaying the scene on DVD, but what they won’t see, even riding the Pause button, is a transition that happens early on. When Neo and Agent Smith walk into the courtyard, they are the real Reeves and Weaving. But by the time the melee is in full effect, everyone and everything on the screen is computer-generated – including the perspective of the camera itself, steering at 2,000 miles per hour and screaming through arcs that would tear any physical camera apart.

Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Oh man – how do you say: “I can’t wait” in Japanese?  🙂  Another post to our theMatrix TopicExchange channel!

[Marc’s Voice]

Eyewitness: Battle in Baghdad. As US troops broke out from positions in western Baghdad, the BBC’s Paul Wood described the scenes of battle he witnessed. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]

Why we choose the Mac. The secret history of VisiCalc. Bob Frankston, the lead programmer for VisiCalc and co-inventor of the computerized spreadsheet, has posted a long history of the project. It’s fascinating reading, a kind of computer paleontology, describing the origin of commercial software products.

Before discussing keyboards, it’s worth noting that back in 1979 people viewed the keyboard as an impediment to using computers. After all, only secretaries could type and the rest of us need to be able to talk to the computer. Hence the decades spent on trying to get computers to understand speech. It turns out that most people could type (at least those who used spreadsheets) since it was a basic skill necessary for getting through college. In fact, speech is a very problematic way to interact with a spreadsheet. In fact, the spreadsheet itself is used as a communications vehicle rather than speech.

The Apple ][ had a simple keyboard that only had upper case letters and only two arrow keys. There were no interrupts nor a clock. If the user typed a character before the keyboard input buffer was emptied it would be lost.

Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

This reminds me of how we preceved of PCs when we started MacroMind in 1984.  At the time – only the C64 (Commodore 64) had audio as a built into component.  This was crucial to building videogames (which is what we all were doing before 1984) – but it only had 64K of memory.

Then we heard about this computer called the Macintosh – which not only had TWICE the amount of RAM = 128K – but also had built-in audio.  That was enough for us – to get us to develop for the Mac.  We get a call from Guy Kawasaki – who heard we were game guys, and away we went.

Little did we know – about the Mac toolbox, GUIs, the fact that we didn’t have to develop with the Lisa (we bought three of them mistakenly) and how insufficient a measily 128K of RAM was.  But the whole thing started with our requirement of audio.  MusicWorks was our first product – Oct. 1984.

[Marc’s Voice]

My notes for this afternoon’s presentation at JFK. [Scripting News]

11 Journalists Die in 21 Days of War. The current war in Iraq, now just 21 days old, has claimed the lives of 11 journalists. By Timothy L. O’brien. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Lawmakers Want Tribunal to Try Iraqis. Lawmakers called Tuesday for international tribunals to prosecute Iraqis who commit war crimes, including anyone who directed suicide car bombings that have killed U.S. soldiers. [Associated Press war headlines via GoUpstate.com]

Bush’s Message: Strong and Clear. At his news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday, President Bush was self-assured, blunt and aggressive. By R. W. Apple Jr.. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]