Thank God for Labor Day weekend.

This evening I've been messing around with Minecraft. It's hard to describe succinctly, but it seems to be the ultimate sandbox-style game. Here are some videos of what some people have done with it:

You can get the game here. It's $13 and worth way more than that if you have even a little bit of imagination or curiosity. There are helpful information sites here and here.

If you're (like me) too crappy to make it past the fourth Zerg mission of the original, read this synopsis instead to get all caught up.

Someone please get one of these for me.

"Well, if we haven't gotten past venerating people who don't know anything, we've certainly reduced, I'd argue, the degree to which we stigmatize people for knowing a lot."

from Why The Next Big Pop-Culture Wave After Cupcakes Might Be Libraries

Andy owns two Flips (I dunno why. because he's Andy.) so he let me borrow one, and we're doing this video-making competition sort of thing. It's not really that much of a competition, more like a call-and-response project. Anyway, it's over here and I think we're gonna have some cool stuff up there by the time we decide to call it quits.

http://flipfaceoff.posterous.com

Yesterday I was on a movie set for the first time! My acting teacher is involved with Using and asked a bunch of her students to participate. It was an interesting experience. There was a lot of waiting around. It felt like there was always something important happening, but it only ever involved a few people at a time.

I checked in at around 1:00, got some preliminary instruction from the extras coordinator, and then sat down until they needed me. At about 3:30, they got to the scene with extras and herded us over to the set. Once there, it was more waiting mixed with short bursts of intense focus. We got instructions from the director, did a couple of rehearsal runs, and then did (I think) 11 takes.

In between takes, the crew made tons of minor adjustments to the lights, camera positioning, actor direction, etc. All told, it took about an hour to get this one shot that I think will account for maybe 7 seconds of movie time. Even taking into account that this company (while still professional, don't get me wrong) isn't quite Hollywood-efficient, I can see why the shooting for a 2-hour movie takes so long.

What I learned yesterday is that I don't really have any desire to do any more extra-ing. Being on set was cool, but the long periods of waiting around with nothing to do reminded me too much of my old office job. Although...hm, now that I think about it, that feeling may have come from the fact that the shoot was in an office building and I was playing an office worker. So maybe I shouldn't rule it out.

I also got pretty interested in the other jobs on a movie set. The stuff everybody else was doing (especially the camera people) looked really cool, and I'd like to learn more about the tech side of movie-making.

I'm signed up for one more day of shooting today. This time I'm bringing my Kindle!

The band I Fight Dragons is pretty awesome.

I transcribed the vocal parts for that song:

I just wanted to let you know, real quick here: question marks pretty much just go at the end of questions. Or, I mean, like if you're doing some kind of Spanish thing they can go at the beginning of questions too. But the point is that it's always a question. Not like a statement or something. I guess we could do some examples. Would that help? OK, examples!

Good: Are you excited for the weekend?

Not Right: OMG like I am so excited for this weekend!?!

In the second example, you're using syntax to create some kind of verbal inflection that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I'm sure you know what you meant it to sound like -- well, actually, no I'm not.

Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Next week: How to Use the Ellipsis Every Four or Five Words.