Now's a good time to give a shout out to my friend Adri now that she's started to blog at blogs.adri.net. Adri is a local electronica musician and good friend. I love the colours on her blog! Okay, her blog lacks weaponry and reviews of social sciences books but otherwise, it's awesome.

An AP story about how close the U.S. military's energy weapons are to making it to the battlefield. As usual in these affairs, the biggest roadblock to deployment isn't politics or ethics, but power output. The most amusing (or scary) one is the tower that sends down a lightning strike to up to 28 feet away one developer is hocking. The developer says that it would be good use in iraq now because "people there are especially afraid of lightning. " Really? I thought that was everywhere. Also amusing is the AP graphic which Kelvin pointed out it resembles the iconic Tienanmen Square photo of the man who tried to stop the tank column. The article is written to point out anti-terrorism uses, of course, but most of the application is in crowd control. Will we expect to see it at the next G8?

A good LA Times story of the ongoing efforts by the Justice Department to root out any suspected Nazis who had come to live in the U.S. An interesting, multilayered account beginning with a 80 year old German who had lived almost four decades in the U.S. but who is suspected of having been an SS Death's Head guard at a camp called Trawniki in Poland. He admits to having been present in one day when 10,000 Jews were shot and buried but claims not to have actively participated.

If you are a bit mystified by the trailers for Steven Spielberg's newest because it doesn't show the aliens or their machines, then take this as a recommendation: they're great, it's just Spielberg letting you know his focus is on the little people running away screaming from the big things killing, crunching, stabbing and grabbing people. While that may be disappointing for those expecting another Independence Day, Spielberg proves here that he can do both large scale epic destruction while injecting exploring the psychology of terror.

This second major film version of the H.G. Wells story focuses entirely on the survival story of a dockworker played by Tom Cruise as he tries to reunite his estranged children (Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin) with his divorced wife's family, crossing a landscape that has been claimed by gigantic stomping, killing machines that have been buried in the Earth for a millenia waiting for their masters from space to descend and conquer. Along the way Cruise has to dodge being captured by the aliens, contend with panicked, crazed survivors and conduct a bit of family therapy besides.

War of the Worlds takes the framework of the Wells story, keeps what was good about the George Pal 1953 version, and adds a lot of what Spielberg is good for: getting a lot of screams and emotion from his youngest actors, making the experience seem real even as the digital effects rain down mayhem from above. It's been quite a while since I went wow in Jurrasic Park seeing the interplay between a CG dinosaur and kitchen appliances. Now, all of that is all hat but Spielberg goes one further with set pieces involving whole buildings falling apart and ferries being overturned.

Although the focus is all on one dockworker and his estranged children fleeing through the aftermath of the invasion, the scale is awesome, probably because we are always looking at it from the point of view of the people fleeing. When the tripods begin vapourizing people left and right, the camera is always on character, dodging as only random chance (and presumably their star billing) prevents them from being blasted to dust. Meanwhile an immense machine the size of Godzilla stalks them from above. I've never quite seen it done that well.

Through the eyes of dockworker's family we get a look at the different reactions to terror. First, shock, then panic, then disbelief followed by grief, anger, defiance. No, none of these people are going to hop into a jet fighter to fight the good fight or square off mano-o-mano against an alien invader. Indeed the hero's big confrontation in the movie is between he and a crazed survivalist intent on martyring his family (Tim Robbins).

Cruise, Chatwin and especially Dakota Fanning are good. You may squirm during the overt family rebuilding scenes, but it isn't overwhelming or overly smarmy. More importantly, it touches upon the reason why this film may resound to audiences who now witness more and more the signs of human-caused terror. It's a bit strange seeing scenes of actors running from destruction and death only two days after London was bombed by the monsters who are among us already.

This Washington Post story is about an obese man who is trying to rebuild his health, image and spirit by walking from San Diego to New York. Fifteen years ago he killed an elderly couple who were crossing the road in front of his speeding car. That lead to depression, debt and gaining 400 pounds. Now Steve Vaught is 13 weeks into his odyssey and has lost 50 pounds walking on route 66.

al-Qaeda struck again today in the heart of London, killing dozens in four coordinated bomb attacks. Each time this happens, George W. Bush says the same things. But each time it happens it belies the fact that his war on terror is woefully misguided. Terrorism is an ongoing security and intelligence matter. By the time his term of office is over, he won't have won anything, either in Iraq, Afghanistan or on the world stage. As for London, that city has survived being burned to the ground many times, survived the Blitz, the IRA and will survive this attack.

Speaking of Iraq, there is an excellent PBS: Frontline documentary on the ensconced private military and contracting regimes that established themselves in the occupied zones. See Private Warriors >>

The Internet world is still marvelling at the wonderfully ugly image of the official world's ugliest dog, a Chinese breed named Sam that has won a contest in San Diego three years running. Read the story here >>

One of two casualties of Hornby was my cellphone. It got wet, stopped working right, and so I had a phone that could only be used when plugged into the wall. How retro! So I got a new LG 3200 phone which, in the feature-world, is way behind what is now available. Unlike a lot of people now, it seems, I just want a good phone that is small and works. No frigging camera, no video, no MP3 player. That's what I got. A phone.

I'm running out of non-nude photos that I can show on the website from our trip to Hornby. On other camera news, my friend Mike Heller got a new Nikon D50, the mid-range DSLR that has almost all of the features of the pro D70. Check his photos out here. The ones below are from my Fuji S7000.

This programmer has been experimenting with fractal tree generation. His formulas have generated some startlingly lovely art - through mathematics. Having been in nature a large part of this month, I can say the fractal generation is approaching what is inherently beautiful about naturally occuring growth. You can create your own using his program (UNIX / Windows / Mac). This is my favourite one from his gallery.

Since NASA has had good success in crashing vehicles into planetary bodies recently someone thought it was good practice for hitting a comet. The NASA Deep Impact vehicle successfully lined up in the comet Tempel's path and is not broadcasting images taken of its surface. One part of the vehicle mashed into the surface of the comet to test the composition of its interior and another ivehicle flies by the comet to continue recording information. Here is a series of early images >>

CeltX is a Mozilla-based screenwriting program and preproduction collaborative planner made by Eastern Canadians. I've written three screenplays using a Word template of my own design and now it's slowing me down so I've been looking at the expensive commercial products like Final Draft and Movie Magic as a dedicated program. CeltX is free. Users download the editor and then 'share' their scripts to the public or to a password protected group for online collaboration. CeltX also tries to integrate other preproduction planning - all sourced from the script. For example, you can identify an element in the script as a potential prop. By the end of the script you will have a list of all of the props in a breakdown. The same goes for any actor, costume, sound effect, etc. However, it needs to have some bugs shaken out in the usual open source system. In the next version I expect to see one that is more interoperable with more common formats like .doc or .rtf. Check it out >>

Keith let me know from Japan (where Fidgital is touring now) that there are some pics up from their gig at the Commodore Ballroom as part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival). You can see a gallery here and some are blogged on fidgital.com here. You can see how big the crowd was. By the end of their set they had lots of people on the floor. I took in a bit more of the jazz fest last night, listening and watching a wild keyboardist, Dr. Lonnie Smith playing to an outdoor crowd in a park at False Creek. At that time I couldn't think of a better representation of how great Vancouver can be in the summer. People of all ages and ethnicities out enjoying music against the water.