Below are the most recent 2 friends' journal entries.

Monday, December 21st, 2009
glarehead	2:06p	----- Good weekend. Michelle, Brian, and I saw "Sweeney Todd" by the City Theater Company on Friday night. Tiny theater (I mean, "intimate venue") with minimal props, but WHAT a CAST. Not a single bad voice in the lot. The ten-piece orchestra was TIGHT. They had a couple volume minor issues between the orchestra and singers -- but they weren't miked. The singer who played Johanna was fantastic, a dead ringer for the broadway singer in the 1983 version with Cariou and Landsbury. They did the broken-fourth-wall stuff, which I'm not a big fan of, but in this venue was a necessity. There were small stages to the sides of the audience, and at several points the cast was in the small center aisle. The entire asylum scene was played out in the center aisle, which meant the cast had to sing the opening of "City on Fire" while sitting there -- I was amazed at how GOOD it sounded. This cast could SING. The guy who played Beetle Bamford is a bar friend that Brian and I see out once in a while -- during his scenes he stole the show. I don't know if it was his or the director's choice, but there was an added "chemistry" between him and the Judge that I thought was clever and should have been part of the original. For example -- when the judge says that he's going to marry Johanna -- his daughter -- Beetle had a revulsed, then controlled reaction. That reaction never took place in the original -- I mean, come on, he's marrying his own biological daughter! I'll have to ask him (Brian, the actor) about that -- was that his or the director's idea? Regardless, it was subtle, but brilliant. The guy playing Pirelli was also very good -- a very strong singer -- since it was a small cast, everyone had to be in "ensemble" roles, and as a result he had to get killed in Sweeney's chair three times. His third time in, he made it clear with facial expression that he knew what was coming, and here we go again... it was absolutely hysterical, and the whole audience got it. Another brilliant choice. During "A Little Priest," Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett ended the song by lovingly smearing blood all over each other's faces. Again, brilliant. I went to the bathroom during intermission -- and there was Sweeney, washing his hands and face in the sink. Come ON, no separate bathroom for the actors? Do we have to break the fourth wall down THAT far? Regardless, it was a great show, and I plan to see other shows there. ----- Last night we saw "The Nutcracker," our second "oh-look-who-we-know-on-stage" experience of the weekend. The sets were wonderful! It was a production that was a collaboration of two local dance schools. The Land of Winter scene was wonderful -- constant snow fell during their dancing, it was just beautiful. At one point a giant clump of the stuff fell and covered the dancers, who didn't break but smiled at each other -- the audience cracked up, it was wonderful considering the snow dumping we all got this weekend. The principal dancer was absolutely fantastic. She had complete control of her body from core to fingertips, and was a joy to watch. She was powerful, yet lithe and graceful. ----- While the snow was still falling Saturday night, Brian and I took a walk in the stuff to fetch more tonic. We'd already done our grocery shopping, but had somehow missed that vital item, and some things are worth putting on your snowshoes. The weather was great, it reminded me so much of practically every year in Cresson... but I hadn't seen snow like this in Kennett in a long while. There were very few people driving in the mess, so we walked in the streets. I was surprised by how many businesses downtown were open. I'm looking forward to the drive to Western Pennsylvania on Wednesday evening -- the temperatures out that way are staying below 32, so we'll have a white Christmas. ----- (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
glarehead	8:34a	Just a random thought. I walked into the gym this morning and swiped my membership card. There's a data cluster with my name, a picture of my face, all the information I submitted with my gym membership, and I just added my location on that date and time. Later on, I use my credit card at a shopping center, where again the date, time, and location are recorded along with my purchase. It's the third time this month I've purchased hummus, so that preference is added to my data. Since my gym routine has been recorded as habitual, that point of data is scored on a certainty scale of 1-100 as a 94, easily scored even higher when the facial-recognition algorithm of the gym's security camera matches the one on my gym ID card. However, the store's camera wasn't tied into the database, but since it was a grocery store and I hadn't been to a grocery store in ten days, that point of data was scored with a certainty of 72. Now there's two points of location data for me, one with near absolute certainty and another with somewhat certainty. Given that, a certain radius of travel can be drawn for me, with its own certainty score. My name and data are also associated with my car's VPN and license plate. While driving to the store, I stopped at a red light, where a camera recorded my license plate, along with my location, the date, and time. Now another point of location data has been recorded, with a certainty score of about 83. (Was his partner driving the car? Was it stolen? Did he loan it to someone?) Using three points of location data with three different times, my locations between those times is narrowed even further, with assumed points along the route given certainty scores. Brian has a cell phone conversation with a mutual friend of ours, during which he says the sentence, "Adam went to the store to pick up some celery, and guess who he ran into? Yes, it was Bob, so they had lunch." The conversation is digitized, analyzed. I am a known associate of Brian's so the data relationship has a high certainty score. "Went" and "store" are noted but have no time or date associated with them except for the date they were said. "Celery" is picked up, and so is "Bob" and "lunch." That data is clustered together into its own cluster, each piece of which with its own certainty score. Bob and Adam have lunch. Bob picked up the check, and the number of diners is noted. The date, time, location, and food ordered are all noted. This data, combined with the data from Brian's phone call, combined with Adam's travel radius for the day, all has its own certainty scores and adds another point to Adam's travel radius, narrowing his path down even further. Like a giant jigsaw puzzle -- more a fluid mosaic, the model used for evolution paths -- our data could easily be centralized and ever-populated with facts about us, facts with a wide range of certainty scores -- scores that are constantly changing based on the new data collected, scores that increase or decrease based on their relationship with other data and the certainty scores of that other data. Just a random thought. (8 Comments |Comment on this)