This is Zach's personal blog. If you're looking for his movies, please click here. Otherwise, have fun!

Tuesday, June 04, 2002

Media, films, and eyes.

Some random musings for a late blog.


  • Apple has announced the Quicktime 6 Public Preview, which features MPEG4 support, widely hailed as the Next Coming of Christ as far as streaming media goes. After playing with it a bit, I'm not unduly impressed, though I will admit it does a decent job when the bit rate is cranked up. Watch this space for more info; I may put up a MP4 version of Episode One and a Half.
  • More Fan Film Crap: Continued my task of checkin' out the competition on TFN Fan Films, and am pleased to note that 90% of the stuff there... is dreck. Mind you, I'm not sure I could do better--oh, hell, sure I could. I have! A notable exception, however, is The Formula, a fan film about making a fan film. Though it sometimes gets too "meta" for its own good, on the whole the acting is decent, the script is funny (it skewers not only Star Wars but The Matrix and even Jaws), and, while the lighting and sound is fairly ugly, it's as good as your average fan film. Check it out. (It's LONG--fifty minutes--so let it download overnight.)
  • D's worn his eye patch the prescribed amount (four hours a day) for four days straight now. He's pretty well-adjusted about it. When we first tried to introduce him to it (before his glasses) he screamed and cried, tried to rip it off, etc. I couldn't blame him, since he probably was close to being functionally blind in his left eye (the open eye) at that point. (When the two eyes can't resolve into a single image, and one eye is not seeing as well as the other, oftentimes the brain will simply switch off the weaker eye. That's why D's eyes were crossing, and that's why we had to put the patch over his less-bad eye.) Once he got his glasses, he didn't cross as much in general, and was much more amenable to the patch... though he wasn't exactly jumping through hoops for it.

More about D's eyes: he occasionally, like any kid would, refuses to wear his glasses. Okay, I can deal with that. But today, with his glasses off, I noticed his left eye drifting inward again. I was frightened.

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