Tag: Life

[NYTIMES] The Secret Life of Passwords

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://nyti.ms/1xrDxxa

For some people, these rituals are motivational. Fiona Moriarty, a competitive runner, told me that she often used “16:59” — her target time for the 5,000 meters in track. Mauricio Estrella, a designer who emailed me from Shanghai, described how his passwords function like homemade versions of popular apps like Narrato or 1 Second Everyday, which automatically provide its user with a daily reminder to pause and reflect momentarily on personal ambitions or values. To help quell his anger at his ex-wife soon after their divorce, Estrella had reset his password to “Forgive@h3r.” “It worked,” he said. Because his office computer demanded that he change his password every 30 days, he moved on to other goals: “Quit@smoking4ever” (successful); “Save4trip@thailand” (successful); “Eat2@day” (“it never worked, I’m still fat,” Estrella wrote); “Facetime2mom@sunday” (“it worked,” he said, “I’ve started talking with my mom every week now”).

 

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[Hollywood Ending] LIFE AFTER PI (Official)

Harsh reality. If we can’t start being paid for how we worked, we’ll only be able to work for how it’ll be paid. How much creativity can we get from this? Having almost identical problem in software development, I cried watching this video.

“Life After Pi” is a short documentary about Rhythm & Hues Studios, the L.A. based Visual Effects company that won an Academy Award for its groundbreaking work on “Life of Pi”– just two weeks after declaring bankruptcy. The film explores rapidly changing forces impacting the global VFX community, and the Film Industry as a whole.

This is only the first chapter of an upcoming feature-length documentary “Hollywood Ending,” that delves into the larger, complex challenges facing the US Film Industry and the many professionals working within it, whose fates and livelihood are intertwined.

http://www.hollywoodendingmovie.com/

My father joined 30 year old Mac family

It has been about a month for my father switched his computer from Windows environment to Mac’s. Knowing he would never be encouraged to do it by himself, somehow it’s been forced by me, disguised as presenting him a gift of Macbook Air 13″. Many of us were growing up with computers as joyfully given gifts from our parents, and reciprocating their love with same joy was one of my recent happy memory.

Macbook Air for my father

Like so many of his age group in Korea, my father couldn’t have a right opportunity to get acquainted with modern digital technologies. Also for being a white-collar government official who had to deal more with political or human issues, he couldn’t have enough time to train his hand to type effectively on a keyboard, to learn about how to exercise his ownership over his machine.

After his retirement, occasionally he had to learn more about how to control his computer in a different level. He had to learn how to type a document, save it as a file, send it via email, sync his iPhone, etc. What mostly had been helped by his secretary whom he had when he held his office in the government, should be handled by himself nowadays. It has not been too bad to do normal activities under normal circumstances.

But what could he do when bad things happen? Should he keep purchasing virus cleaners? How could he fix the situations like losing his important files? And unfortunately, it did happen to him. Being forced to take an effort to free his Windows from malware grasp, he had to erase the system, losing his files.

Anyone may encounter bad situation like this from any types of computers. But I can’t still accept that such defeat had to happen like this easily. And why is it always Windows? Being a professional with conviction, being his son, I had to rescue my father from Windows hell.

So far his conversion experienced almost no difficulty. Once realized his web-based activities are not changed at all, he felt enough confidence in using Mac. As expected, system-based activities like finding a file or deleting an application were much easier to learn than Windows. There is one challenge caused by being a user of Korean banking systems, which requires Windows’ Internet Explorer with ActiveX. By helping him to acquainted with virtualization application like Parallels, my father were able to use Windows inside Mac only for a limited time.

Though my goal to free him from Windows had to be compromised, minimizing his exposure to dangerous world could be suffice at least for a while. After all, my father were never more happier to have truly his own computer which makes him proud. My father began to understand why it means to be like owning a BMW, when you own a Mac.

Being a Mac user for five years myself, I couldn’t help but to believe that if anyone has to choose a system for his or her digital livelihood, it should be Mac for safer and less irritating experiences. Maybe I’m a little biased, but I think it’s quite difficult to judge millions of happy users for 30 years to be wrong.

One of the best films of the Alfonso Cuaron, showing his most famous specialty in camera works

Some films have very special attraction. Before actually seeing whole film, you instantly know how you will feel about it, how you will like it.

When I saw the trailer for the first time, I began to think it’s going to be one of my best films in 2013, and once the director’s name was revealed to be Cuarón’s, I instantly had satisfaction as if I’d watched whole movie already. It was so predictable, in a good way.

Finally saw it, and the film did exactly what it promised to do. Since watching Children of Men, knowing and being fascinated by Cuarón’s specialty no matter they are artificial or not, his great works in extreme long sequences were so effectively done in the film. Taking advantage of being in space, where no up or down exists, the camera flew around so freely, becoming the main character of the film.

I believe the positions of cameras in the film are more important than the objects they are taking, and Cuarón’s Gravity gave me the best example for emphasizing such idea, and I’m very thankful for it.

While the narrative itself is great too, I think there will be more interesting story about how film making was done, and I’m sure I will spend some amount of time searching for “Making of…” videos or blogs, speculations from other professionals. Hope our techniques in film making continue to innovate themselves, and the great examples like Gravity will not stop being presented and beloved by many.

P.S. At the end of the film, I’ve notice the name of the actor, who did “Mission Control voice.” Knowing his past involvements in some famous films, I couldn’t help but smirk. I wonder if the producers did know there will be reactions like mine when casting him.

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