Mar 20, 2000 Multimedia Musings: Weekend in Review: Mission to Mars doesn't suck too bad. I nearly get assaulted by a bus driver. Fireworks is so cool Today's update is neither news or Ask the Guru stuff. It's just a bunch of ramblings. Sorry. Mission to Mars As a devotee of all things space travel, I was excited about the movie Missions to Mars. A space related movie with a pretty good cast... Then I read the reviews. Roundly panned by just about anyone who saw it, this movie was rated up there with Ishtar and Heavens Gate. So I probably would have skipped it altogether, and maybe rented it when it came to video, if it weren't for a dissenting opinion expressed at Salon: 'In defense of "Mission to Mars"' by Ray Sawhill. In an interesting short article he made a compelling case for the movie. So this weekend I had an afternoon, and the desire. So I went and saw it. And I can report that this was no Pokemon (my vote for worst movie I have ever seen.) Actually, it wasn't that bad at all. Maybe my expectations had been lowered so much that it couldn't help but impress. Yeah, there were some moments I thought could have been cut to make it a little less goofy (the evolution of animals clip for example), but there were only a couple here and there. As a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey (really, that's what it is) it's not too bad. In many ways, it's probably more accessible than that movie. Now I don't know what kind of movie you like, but at least read the piece above and then, if it sounds interesting, check out the movie. I nearly get assaulted by a bus driver I've been working on an "art" project and I needed a photograph of a bus. So I took my Nikon CoolPix 950 and went down to the local bus terminal and waited for a bus to arrive. Then I took a couple of pictures of the bus as it turned in. Well, a minute or so later the bus driver hops out and starts walking towards me purposefully. I think to myself 'He's coming over to talk to me,' then I think 'No, he can't be,' then 'Yeah, he is." "Hey, why were you talking my picture?" he asks in a not very friendly tone. "What?" I say (That's what I usually say when I don't know what to say, it gives me a moment to think about the question.) "Why were you talking my picture?" he asks again. By now he's right up near me, and though he's not overtly threatening, I can see he's not come over to have a chat and ask me about digital cameras. "I wasn't taking your picture," I correct him and then try and be friendly and smile and continue "I was taking a picture of the bus." He's unconvinced. Does he think I'm writing a report on bus drivers? He asks "Why were you doing that?" I'm wondering whether to start walking quickly and hope he doesn't follow, or to try and charm my way through it. I try the latter. "I just wanted a picture of a bus," I smile again, kind of like I'm just there for the fun of it all. He just stands there, so I add "it's for a project I'm working on." Then I add, "I needed a picture of a bus," in case he hadn't figured it out. "Oh, yeah? Well I saw you taking a picture and I thought, 'what's he taking my picture for?'" he seems to be buying it, though I'm not too sure. Should I point out to him that from where I was standing, and with the lens this camera has, there's no way I could 'take his picture?' I decide not to. "Ah, well, I just needed a picture of a bus. It could be any bus." He shrugs and walks away. I take a couple of pictures of random objects just to prove I'm out taking pictures for no good reason, and then I hightail it out of there. So let this be a lesson to all those who dare to take photographs of public transportation. The staff are on the lookout for you; and they're not happy. Fireworks 3 I first took a look at Macromedia's Fireworks back when version 2 was released. As a web graphics development tool it had a lot of interesting features, but I think I got distracted by other things and frankly, none of the projects I had been working on really made use of Fireworks features. I use Photoshop for most graphic tasks. So I never bought the program; just downloaded the trial, tried it and forgot about it. But recently I've been working on some different things and I downloaded the trial version of release 3 and used it to create some complicated web pieces. If you want to create a splash screen containing a collage of different kinds of graphics or maybe even a GIF animation as part of the image, then Fireworks is the tool to use. It's slicing tool is really neat; you can slice up the image into smaller pieces by just clicking and dragging and apply different kinds of compressions to each slice. One thing I really appreciate; it imports Adobe Illustrator files. So check it out; there's a 30-day trial version for both Mac and Windows you can download at: www.macromedia.com   Got a question? Send them to "Ask the Guru"

DEPARTMENTS

Complete Guide to Digital Cameras | ASK the Guru | Multimedia Online Reference
Archive
Multimedia Musings | About Multimedia Workshop

Copyright 2000 by Multimedia Workshop. All rights reserved