Waiting for the Gift of Sound and Vision

Well, I haven't felt like writing a thing lately. But I have been busy. I learned a little more about my program called Sqirlz Morph (I got version 1.3 a while back ). I wanted to tackle the "simpler" subroutines of warping, as opposed to "morphing", which is the full Monty of the program. I really got balled up over the subtle details, though. I had to think it all through and perform some experiments with red circles and blue squares before I could get it. Of course I went online but got no help. Still, Sqirlz Morph is a great little program and it's free. I see there is a new version 1.5 release at Download.com

There are some older versions still around on the Web.

The first shot is an older one I re-ran with warp settings as opposed to morph, and the second is a previous failure I tweaked a bit today and then cleaned up with Adobe Photoshop Elements. Whom I am not too happy with today, because of their over-kill organizing window, which I had wisely ignored since I bought the program. If you don't save your projects as JPGs, Windows can't view them, and its organizer is written to satisfy the most obsessive minds in existence. Anyway, one whole sqirlz session got lost today and I suspect Adobe, open in a different window, was such a resource hog it caused the project to bail without warning, and I had not saved... you would think we would learn.

Having said that, I gave up the ghost on my old PhotoDeluxe software last year. I forsaw a 10 hour learning-curve, with no guarantees, to force my new machine using XP to keep using it, and the cost-benefit analysis looked grim. So I forked over about $100 for Adobe's Elements, and actually it's great. Except for the dreaded Organizer...

Sound and Vision?

Here's a Brian Eno video about his visual art, 77 Milion Paintings

Jumper

Well, the cat's out of the bag now. I may as well admit it. They have made a movie out of the 1992 book that inspired my name.

http://www.jumperthemovie.com/ will provide some info on this. The usual search of Google Wikipedia and YouTube will provide more.

Author Steven Gould (middle name Charles) is of course not to be confused with the late Stephen Jay Gould whose books I love and found very valuable as well.

This science fiction writer wowed me. Teleportation is an old science fiction theme, but Gould brought it alive with such a fresh enthusiasm that not only did I simply enjoy the book, he inspired me as a writer. Cast out all old baggage, begin the journey anew!

At first, viewing the movie trailers, with slavering anticipation, I was put off by some elements I detected that were not true to the original book. "Oh, lord, another typical Hollywood mash-up," I thought. But it looks like the talent is there in the movie, (screenwriters include Jim Uhls of Fight Club, and apparently Gould has written a couple of sequels I'm also slavering for. One (the third) was written for the release of the movie, okay. It's obvious he didn't stomp off in a funk about this. We will see.

I also loved Gould's 1996 Wildside

Update: The movie was not well received by critics. And I ordered and read Jumper: Griffin's Story which was pretty good. Being such a fan of the books, I was of course rapt throughout. The special effects were all one could ask for. I thought it was paced a little tiny bit too fast - I suppose that's better than too slow, but I didn't think that was likely. The acting didn't do much for me. And there was a huge plot hole.

But I am still Jumper, and I still Jump.
Further update: I indicated to author Steven Gould my appropriation of this name for online purposes. He gave me an okay up on its continued use by me. I think I first used it on an old Sudoku forum, where I have used it Or was it first used on the New Kind of Science (Wolfram) forum? Not sure. My old posts have vanished.