0 commentsRelated Links: My American Pie 3 Fan Site-----Original Message-----
From: Shader, Josh
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 6:18 PM
To: Nick Gray
Subject: RE:We just brought in our first project - and have 3 more on deck...
From Variety:
Herz tunes in to pic for Terra Firm Films
Shingle hatches space station thriller
By MICHAEL FLEMINGAfter getting Universal to the altar with an overall deal following "American Wedding," Adam Herz has made his first project purchase. Dave Callaham has been set to write an untitled thriller for Herz, who has named his U-based company Terra Firma Films.
Pic is described only as a thriller that revolves around the international space station, and Terra Firma co-presidents Greg Lessans and Josh Shader will shepherd the pic and produce with Herz. Herz, who is also writing a comedy that he plans to direct for the shingle, said the new project fits with the company philosophy of hatching projects internally and then matching them with hot writers.
"I'm expecting people to wonder what the hell we're doing developing a thriller set in Earth's orbit," he said. "Part of that answer is that thrillers operate much like comedies do. In a comedy, you grab people by their funny bone and keep tickling. In thrillers, you grab them somewhere else and keep squeezing."
Callaham's first spec, "Horesemen," was bought by Focus for Radar and Platinum Dunes to produce. He's scripting "Doom" at Warner Bros. for producers John Wells and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and has a blind script deal at WB to follow. U's Mary Parent and Damien Saccani will supervise the space-station thriller.
Government interaction with the arts in America is tentative, wrought with controversy and half-hearted.
Yesterday (today- it's 1:22AM) was a great day. Here's a scan of the USA Today article on BuddyGopher. Skipped class and ate well to reward.
Here are some server graphs (Ryan MySQL w00t). The first shows the number of screen names on our array (top line) against the number of users currently signed on (bottom line). This graph has about two weeks history. The second graph shows the number of away messages collected since we started. You'll see us reaching new highs today- 276,263 unique away messages per day at last count. (You can check the bottom of our home page for a live number.)
Special thanks to the Wake Forest News Service for all of their help. I'm very pleased with how the article turned out. Now I've just got to pass my classes and graduate.
we're both in cars
roomie is right- She's worth it not to flatline.
'It was not the wrong guy,' said the units commander defensively, shifting blame elsewhere. 'We raided the house we were supposed to and arrested the man we were told to.' Meanwhile Army intelligence was still confounded by the meaning of the intercepted conversations until somebody realized it was not a terrorist intent on obtaining weapons. It was a kid playing video games and talking about them with his friend on the phone.
At 9 AM this morning, I woke up to take a phone interview with a bank in the United Arab Emirates. If nothing else, it was quite a life experience. Aside from the Arabic and the foreign banking terminology, it seemed to go well. I haven't written about any of my other interviews, but this one was just an eye opener in terms of realizing how business inside the US is really nothing like business on the outside. I think leaving here to work abroad, outside of a US multi-national, would undermine everything my parents came to this country for. I should reevaluate what I need to be doing after graduation.
my rides through chernobyl area per slashdot
My name is Elena, I run this site and I don't sell anything in here and to tell the true, I don't have anything to sell. What I do have is my bike and this absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and speed demon take me to.
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with the exception of the first photograph, all of these pictures were taken on my Canon G3 within the past five days | |
PiXiE Belle033: [AWAY] "Be who you are, say what you feel, because the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss
We're not going to abandon CDMA or GSM for mobile POTS, duh! Consider GPRS the heart of nearby value-added services.... (maybe? what is Sprint et al. doing for MMS?)
Today's voicemail experience is frustrating. I'm not going to talk at all....
(BARK!) Play messages. Erase. Erase. Done.
This felt really, really good to make because I haven't done one in a while. I ran out of footage (and patience!) before completing the idea that this vidblog starts with, but that's the beauty here: zero accountability. I hope you enjoy the music and may my images entertain you. For previous vidblogs, see the open directory.
Maybe it will encourage my roommates Chris (his vidblog archive) and Zach (special Streets music vidblog) to post again? What about you, Megan? Windows Movie Maker is all that you need. And finally, don't get me started, Tiffany! her Paris vidblog
"They look like Arabs, I know they're not.... but right after 9/11 I began wondering, and I hate that whole thought process."
"When someone would ask about the diversity on campus, we were supposed to say that 47 states were represented."
It's funny to realize that after all this, I spent over 6 years working for Nullsoft, Inc. (or its acquiror) -- this is nearly a quarter of my life so far, and a much higher percentage of my adult(ish) life -- and here I am, starting over.
browserhelper2.dll is a new piece of malware that modifies the 2nd through 5th results on your Google searches to direct towards their sponsored websites.
Props to HijackThis, a piece of software that was able to help track down the culprit. Hijack This is more like regedit; novice users should stick with Ad-aware to remove your spyware.
"A lot of people want to create a viral service. Friendster goes beyond this viral marketing that people talk about. It's something I call viral nagging. People get peer pressure from their friends to sign up, improve their profile, and change their photo. That's more powerful than anything I could do. Instead of a site like Match.com where you build a site and hope your friends find you, you build your site with them."
I've been waiting for this day! I've been waiting for, like, soooo long. Well, at least since we gushed about it at C.E.S. Blake told me about the big deal and I blushed. Remember when all those other people already had their experience, and I was sooo jealous? I knew it would happen when the time was right. Patience is what I was always taught, and finally, today I had my first DRM experience.
Thomas Chau took Megan and I out to a NYC club (Lotus) and showed me a pizza place on Times Square. Here's a panoramic shot that he stitched from the top of the Empire State Building.
All this talk of a new, spam-free email system gets me excited. While we're planning these fundamental changes, here's a flag I'd like to vote for: auto expiration and/or sender pull-back.
Group projects for class tend to contribute up to half of my day's incoming message count, as emails with active recipients invite team conversations. But when the Reply To All's turn from conversation (many-to-many) to broadcast (one-to-many), reader relevance rates begin to decline. I'll refer to messages from trusted sources whose relevant content is zero as friendly spam.
Friendly spam reaches me in two primary contexts: specific questions seeking a definite answer, and time-sensitive announcements. While the message is anticipated as urgent at the time of execution, once the question is answered or the time has passed, there is a sharp decrease in relevance and a general "I-Don't-Give-a-Fuck"ness prevails.
Soooo..... what?
Housing, for every $200,000 = $40,000 down + $1,000/month per Casey, Financial Advisor
ricksterbot: but how many months???
shimmer303: thats a normal 30 year note in normal interest rates
shimmer303: about 5-6% now
Academia is a feudal society. The undergrads are the serfs, grad students like me are the knights, professors are the barrons, then the deans, provost, etc are kings.
Above, a photo from the first day of gallery touring in Chelsea. More pictures to come, but Casey is being stingy with my Internet time.
- Looking for venture capital is a lot like dating.
- Don't be afraid to hear no.
- In baseball, seven misses out of ten still makes you an all-star.
- "If you want me to speak for 15 minutes, I'll need a month to prepare. Two hours, give me 15 minutes prep time." Abraha Lincoln
- Your 30-page business plan will get thrown in the trash.
- If this were a chain of restaurants or a new resort on the coast, sure, you're going to place an enormous ammt of importance on rigid, history-based planning efforts. Software or viral web services? No.
- Get me excited. Be informal - but show me empirical evidence. Solid numbers that show impressive stats - (1) number of sessions/user per day, (2) repeat use, (3) pageviews.
- One thing that really got a black eye from the dot-com bust was the the idea that revenue could be generated after a community was created.
- Entrepreneur in Residence programs aren't so bad.
-----Original Message-----
From: Zachary Klein
To: Nick Gray
Subject: Re: No excuse for brief updates
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:54:58 -0500
I will never send you another email again, in fear of its exploitation.
Wow. Nick is currently in the process of getting his locks chopped by hair-stylist-to-the-stars, Oscar Blandi. I skimmed through the coffee table promotion book and was amazed at his CV. Apparently Sarah Jessica Parker, Cameron Diaz and J-lo are regulars at the Blandi salon here in the Plaza hotel. Shit--I've gotta give it to Nick. He just called Blandi back after he'd "finished" his masterpiece to argue with him about the quality of his cut. More strands falling to the floor.
Here I am watching, with my long, stringy, box-dyed hair hidden beneath a beanie, praying that Oscar-the-hair-God will take pity on me and give me a freebie. Not likely.
The father of a WFU '03 graduate sponsored this new class at Wake Forest. Today was the last day as a part of our Spring Break New York City trip, so our class visited his gallery's Manhattan location to pay thanks and ask questions. The interior design is sophistafunk extreme, much more than double quadrupling the last prime space we visited.
The three children work here at their father's gallery. The two sons share a huge desk space in the same office as the chief. "We're the only ones with computers - he doesn't use one. Things are starting to happen by e-mail now." Alex went out for dinner with us last night, and the girls from class fawned over him!
Inside, the Family Gallery features quite a few supreme masterpieces. A fantastic blue period Picasso that I was leaning against was sold in the 80s to the Japanese for $50 million. A large company aquired the piece after aquisition of the holding company, and the Gallery now serves as their agent. More of the same on every wall - huge paintings by amazing artists each.
It is a global art market. One dedicated employee represents Japan, and another Asia. I asked about China - Have you seen any interest? "We're all expecting it - but not yet." It seems like a lot of time must be spent looking for buyers. "Actually, the hardest part about art dealing at this level is buying. We spend 85% of our time looking for new paintings, and only the rest of our time goes towards selling."
After some more Q&A, the brothers take us down the street to visit their Central Park apartment. The youngest still lives here, along with a cocker spaniel and a dozen Picassos and half-dozen Matisse's. Their private collection is amazingly full of master works. "Those two paintings in the living room are part of a larger set of 13. The last one up for auction, about five years ago, sold for $6.5 million. Dad bought these back in the 70s, I think." These boys are amazingly humble for such circumstance. Polished and honest, shy and normal.
I met Brandy Alexander a few moments ago and chocolate martinis bit the dust. Light is dim...candles everywhere in this little Soho gem. Nick chats with Gordo to my left. An empty sangria glass is my conversation partner. This week:
- I see art, I am inspired.
- I listen to those who control the trade/sell of art and I am disenchanted, hurt.
- I get closer to Nick...is his consideration and sweetness constructed or unrealized?
- I want to be alone, I walk in the rain to quench the thirst.
At least six hours of our day has been sitting or standing in small company listening to someone busy and important tell us about what they do. These meetings the school has aranged put us in places and before faces otherwise out of reach. But six hours of lecture, one of browsing and two hours of transportation.... It is our third straight day with full schedule.
I'm in the cab with three others from class. It is supposed to be a fun group dinner with professors and alumni. Over whelmed is an under statement. I hope our exhaustion is not interpreted as apathy.
Art is a bad investment. It's a life enhancement - a different kind of commitment. I can track auction results, percentage of return. Example of a great sale: skin of the bear, 1913.... If you want to think about art like the artist did, here's my card.
I can remember the exact moment in which I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life studying art. It was Junior year, and I was visiting the Louvre while studying abroad. Delacroix's Death of Sardinopolis was before me. How could a painting reveal so much? We'd spent three weeks studying that slide.
- Everything should be done seperately - Do not umbrella your consulting services.
- New York has no shortage of extraordinarily wealthy people.
- ie Robert Longo drawings at Metro Pictures.... As an art advisor, I can get discounts (vs individual purchasing to match their couch). A lot of galleries are now limiting this practice, except in the emerging art category. Approx 10% commission on emerging $2500 = $250 cut.
- Commercial success often results from critical success. This is the emerging to contemporary transition.
- Fact: Dealers are proactive about getting their artists into art history.
- Besides acclaim, good buyers look for development.
- "Selling out?" (laughs)
"(the magazine) Art+Auction is the industry Bible... I would also subscribe to The Art Newspaper if only for their annual Year Ahead magazine of shows."
Tomorrow morning, our Arts Management class leaves for a field trip to New York City. We'll be staying at the Paramount Hotel, which is an Ian Schrager propery. Sincere thank you's are in order to the family of a 2003 Wake Forest graduate for sponsoring this class.
On a very related enterprise learning note, I'm taking Production and Operations Management this semester at Wake. We had our first exam today. Here is what I've been reading, among a dozen other PDF PPTs on Blackboard.
CXO Systems offers a good read in this Forrester research reportMaking Dashboards Actionable, December 2003. You'll have to register to download (archive). So far, enterprise dashboards seem to be all about goal-orientated results monitoring.
