The night the parking place stood still

I went to the 10PM Saturday showing of the colorized version of The Day the Earth Stood Still at the Senator Theatre, figuring parking would be easy, the crowd would be eccentric and the midnight moonlight after the end would be eerie.

The tiny photomosaic of 4 shots started as 4 different angles, taken from my cell phone camera, at 9:30 PM, e.g.:

bash-3.2$ jhead 1213082136.jpg
Nonfatal Error : '1213082136.jpg' Illegal value pointer for tag 9286
File name : 1213082136.jpg
File size : 344089 bytes
File date : 2008:12:14 06:38:24
Camera make : SAMSUNG Electronics
Camera model : Anycall SCH-i760
Date/Time : 2008:12:14 02:36:03
Resolution : 1280 x 960
Flash used : No
Focal length : 1.0mm
CCD width : 12996.92mm
Aperture : f/3.2
Focus dist. : 2.86m
ISO equiv. : 200
Exposure bias: 0.86
Exposure : shutter priority (semi-auto)
Comment : File written by Adobe Photoshop 5.0

The camera phone knows it was 2:36 AM GMT, but seems to think I'm in California. Ah well. The photomosaic was done with jpegtopnm, pnmscale and:

$ pnmindex -black -across 2 1213*pnm >1213-index.pnm

I then used XPaint with autocrop to save the JPG above. As a result, 4x350KB JPG shots condensed to a 10KB image.

I had enough room to squeeze into a spot between 2 meters, other than the car that was parked between 3 parking meters, in other words, halfway into 2 spots. I circled the block briefly, through a gas station, in order to get this brightly lit spot.

It must be society that is to blame, for planting parking meters at astronomical distances apart.

Oh, and the movie? Here's my 1AM (2008-12-14T05:24:15+00:00) tweet:

You'll enjoy the colorized The Day the Earth Stood Still more if you realize Keanu Reeves is playing Al Gore, not an alien.

Thanks Netflix, for having the 1951 version on Instant Watch.

To project euphoria, or how to make euphoria a project

Last night (13-Nov) I went to a screening of the film Euphoria at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore City. I heard about this via my son's Facebook page, and spread the word to a few friends and co-workers. The crowd didn't fill the theater (it's a big place), but it was a respectable size for a weeknight, non-Hollywood, sort-of-art film.

Dinner plans were amended due to my son's roommate having a 5PM class; with the film start set for 7:30 it was a quick dash down York Road and a bite to eat at Ryan's Daughter Irish Pub and Restaurant. A recommendation for Saigon Remembered didn't pan out.

Before the film started, Senator owner Tom Kiefaber introduced the film, gave background on the state of the building and other film news, and said they were using a digital projector, not needing a distributor to work directly with the film producers.

Tonight (14-Nov) and Saturday, the same high definition video projector will be used to screen a film on the Kelly Bell Band. Kelly Bell is well known around Baltimore, and around music circles, but his appearance in the Euphoria film is not to be missed.

I won't try to describe the film, as this isn't a review, other than to say, "you must see this." I bought a DVD copy after the screening, so give me a call and we'll watch it together.

There was Q&A at the end of the screening, and I was extremely proud that the filmmaker (Lee Boot), prompted by his partner (Stacy Arnold) recognized my son for his film work on the Field Trip project, between high school and college. (See: The King)

Addenda:
A screening on 15-Nov-2008 (Saturday); see:
http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=31631232766#/event.php?eid=31631232766