Nima Yousefi's Equinox of Insanity

Scrippets 1.1

Several people asked for the ability to make Scrippet text bold, italic, and underlined. Well, ask and you shall receive.

First, upgrade to Scrippets 1.1, now available for WordPress and bbPress (vBulletin upgrade is still in the works).

I’ve included both Markdown-style mark up and BBCode-style tags. Sooooo…

• To add bold text, wrap your text in double asterisks (**text**) or [b][/b].
• To add italic text, wrap your text in single asterisks (*text*) or [i][/i].
• To add underlined text, wrap your text in underscores (_text_) or [u][/u].

For example,

Is generated by:

[scrippet]
INT. HOUSE - DAY

FRANK and MARY run up the stairs.

MARY
Where *are* my _shoes_?

FRANK
In the **closet**.
[/scrippet]

Just two caveats, styling doesn’t work in Transitions (such as CUT TO:), and is a little screwy in Sluglines. Feel free to let me know if that’s a really big deal. I don’t think it should be, but what do I know.

If you find any bugs please let me know about them here or on the Scrippets Forums.

Have fun!

A Literal Take on ‘Take on Me’

A version of A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’ where the lyrics are changed to literally describe the action in the video. Brilliant.

It’s pretty amazing how great this song can be, even with completely different lyrics. I miss the 80’s.

Via kottke.

AutoCap

My work on Scrippets got me interested in finishing some WordPress plugins I had on the back burner.

The first of these plugins I’d like to share with you is AutoCap.

The Problem

— I like pictures.

Since the inception of this blog I’ve been using pictures with captions. In the beginning I had to input this all by hand. WordPress’s media browser allows you add captions, but to do that it adds special markup to your post. I wanted an easy way to add captions without adding special markup, so I wrote a plugin to automatically add captions to images: AutoCap.

The Plugin

The plugin extracts an IMG’s title attribute and turns that into the caption. So if the image starts out as:

<img src="image1.jpg" alt="image1" title="Awesome caption." width="500" class="alignright" />

the output from the plugin will be:

<div class="autocap alignright" style="width: 500px;">
	<div>
		<img src="image1.jpg" alt="image1" title="Awesome caption." width="500" class="" />
		<p class="autocap-text">Awesome caption.</p>
	</div>
</div>

You’ll notice that the alignment class (alignright or alignleft) that WordPress adds to the IMG tag is transposed to the caption’s DIV, as is the IMG’s width attribute. You can also wrap the IMG in an anchor and it’ll be fine. The goal was to make it as seamless as possible.

If you add an image that you don’t want captioned, just leave the title attribute empty, or delete it completely. This will let you mix and match as you see fit.

Styling

In the plugin folder I’ve included a “autocap.css” file that controls the caption’s styling. Feel free to modify it as you’d like. I wrapped the IMG/P text in another DIV to give you some flexibility in your styling options. Knock yourself out, but just remember to save a copy of your changes for when you update the plugin.

Backwards compatibility

Here’s the big thing: because this plugin acts on all IMG’s with title attributes, this might screw up some of your old posts. To mitigate that issue, I’ve included an options panel that let’s you set the starting date you want the plugin to work from. Anything you’ve posted before that date will be ignored by the plugin, and only posts on that date or later will be converted.

— The starting date option, in the AutoCap admin panel. Click to enlarge.

If you want the plugin to caption all your posts all the way back from the beginning, just leave the date field blank.

Plugin Status

If you download the plugin you’ll notice the version number is presently below 1.0. It’s still a work in progress requiring more testing. I’m also open to any suggestions or feature requests anyone might have. In the future I’d like to add some nice pre-built caption styles, and the option to manipulate where the caption shows up (before the image, to the side of it, in some AJAXy popup graphic thing, etc).

Download

So, if any of this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and download the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory, and have fun!

Introducing the Netflix API

Finally, Netflix has released an API. Huuzah!

What this means for us is that application developers will be able to easily and consistently build connections between their apps and Netflix. For example, I would expect a WordPress plugin that sticks your queue in the sidebar in about a day or so.

Via Michael Tsai.

Typography for Lawyers

Typography for Lawyers is an online guide intended to help educate lawyers about good typography. Written by Matthew Butterick, a type designer-turned-lawyer, the site is full of really great rules and ideas that a non-lawyer could benefit from knowing. He even includes many useful keyboard shortcuts and application specific work-arounds (how to add paragraph marks to text, for example).

If you’re a lawyer and you don’t know what kerning is, or a non-lawyer who also doesn’t know what kerning is, check it out.

Why Do Our Villains Become Heroes?

Based on last night’s episode of Heroes, it’s clear the show’s writers want to turn Sylar into a good guy. This makes sense logistically, as Sylar is now way too powerful to be a villain, and frankly has been from the moment he survived the end of season one. Recall, Sylar has Ted’s nuclear powers, and could therefore wipe out an entire city in the blink of an eye if he really wanted to do so. With Claire’s regeneration, there’s no limit to the havoc he could wreak upon the world. Rather than deal with that, it makes sense to make him nice and cuddly.

I bring this up because this is part of a pattern that we’ve seen over and over again in science fiction and comics: the greatest villains inevitably become heroes.

In the 80’s Magneto went from being a megalomaniac set on destroying the X-men and conquering the world to being the headmaster at Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Venom was created as Spiderman’s greatest adversary, and his sole goal was to kill Spiderman. That was, until Venom teamed up with Spiderman, became a good guy, and got his own comic. Deadpool, Sabretooth, and Thanos are all comic book characters I grew up with that were villains, but eventually saw become heroes devoted to truth, justice, and peace.

This has happened in sci-fi, as well. In Star Trek, the Klingons were introduced as villains: they were warlords, who saw the universe as theirs to conquer, in diametric opposition to the United Federation of Planets. The Klingons were the antagonists in most of the original Star Trek films (with Khan and that giants floating turd that speaks Humpback Whale being the most notable exceptions). However, in the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation the Klingons and the Federation were allies. Even the Borg, the most monstrous of Star Trek villains, became humanized over the years.

Why do some many of the greatest villains in comics and sci-fi become heroes?

I think some would argue that it’s because we have a desire to see people redeemed; we have to believe that people are intrinsically good, and therefore they will inevitably turn away from evil if given the right chance. Darth Vader exemplified the idea of redemption, and his turn at the end of Return of the Jedi worked fantastically. It worked because Luke, our hero, was invested heart and soul in seeing his father redeemed. Vader’s redemption was Luke’s triumph.

But what about Sylar? He spent the last two seasons as not only an unwavering murderer, but as a cruel and sadistic fiend. He tortured Isaac Mendes, manipulated to tear Maya and her brother apart (before ultimately killing him), and attacked Claire’s non-super-powered mother. He only showed hesitation to kill once, and only briefly, when he saw he would murder millions of people in the atomic decimation of New York City. He’s been a villain, in every sense of the word. The relevant question isn’t “Can he be redeemed?” but rather “Should he be?”

Sylar has no Luke. There’s no one who’s emotionally invested in seeing Sylar not be bad. This is in stark contrast to Nathan’s arc during the first season. Towards the end of season one Nathan was a villain, conspiring with Linderman to blow up New York City in a twisted ploy to “save the world.” But in the end Nathan makes the right choice, and offers to sacrifice himself to not only save his brother, but to save the entire city. Nathan’s redemption at the end of season one works because it validates Peter’s faith in him, and restores the respect of his daughter. Nathan being a hero was a triumph for those around him. With Sylar, no one really cares if he’s redeemed or not, therefore we don’t really care.

Villains are, and have always been, greatly appealing. They don’t have the limitations of most heroes, and they frequently are more powerful than the heroes they oppose. Klingons don’t have a Prime Directive standing in their way, and they get to fly around in cloaked ships. Magneto, all by himself, keeps beating the tar out of teams of X-men, and he gets to live on an orbiting space-station/asteroid thing. Sylar can, and will, steal anyone’s power. But, what happens when they become heroes? Most of the time, those rules that limit what heroes can do are passed on to the villains, and they suddenly become less interesting. Inevitably, we want them to be bad again. Magneto decides to quit Xavier’s school, move back to his asteroid, and plot destroying mankind again. Until we want him to be good again.

It’s a vicious cycle.

And how do we break this ridiculous cycle? By making our heroes betters.

That is what is really going on here: the heroes in these stories aren’t interesting enough to keep our interest, and so the villains outshine them. Let’s look again at Heroes, who’s the real hero of the show? Hiro? He’s acting like a childish comic book geek, and nothing he does seems to have and dramatic weight. Peter? Peter’s acting like a fool, teleporting back and forth through time without actually solving any problems. And don’t even get me started on Mohinder.

Magneto became a hero because the X-men were getting tired and predictable. Venom became a hero because Spiderman didn’t really stand for anything. Sylar is becoming a hero because the other heroes on the show are boring. I think when the desire arises to turn a villain into a hero it’s time to take a good, hard look at our heroes. What do they stand for? How great is their inner-turmoil? How much drama do we get from them and their struggle? Strengthening the heroes counter-acts the need for villains to cross over. Rather than have Sylar switch sides, the writers of Heroes need to make the heroes more interesting. They need to give the characters on the show a purpose, a mission that matters.

We don’t want our villains to become heroes — we just want better heroes.

OK, I’m Pretty Sure Tim Kring Is a Sith Lord

You know that scene in Jedi where Luke is watching his friends die and is being taunted by the Emperor, and the Emperor is totally getting off on how pissed Luke is getting? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Tim Kring is feeding off my hate. That’s the only way I can explain what the Hell it was I just watched tonight.

Let me get this straight: Peter jumps back in time to shoot his brother in the chest, then finds out that while this was happening Claire was attacked by Sylar, and he decides not to jump back in time to prevent Sylar from attacking Claire?

WHY IS HE SO STUPID?

I don’t understand. I really, really, really do not understand what the Hell is going on here. I’m assuming someone other than Tim Kring reads this stuff before it gets filmed. No one stopped and asked why Peter is this stupid? Seriously? The actor playing Peter didn’t raise his hand during a read through and say something like, “So, obviously, Peter can control his teleportation well enough to travel back in time to the exact moment he needed to teleport to, and into a broom closet so no one would see him, so, like, couldn’t he have just teleported back to when Claire called him on the phone and teleported her to a Burger King or something?”

Yes, actor who plays Peter, Claire and him could have enjoyed a couple Whooper Jrs and Sylar wouldn’t have become an unstoppable killing machine and let all those bad guys out of Level 5 and Peter’s mom would stop her bitching. Everyone would win!

But no, we’re stuck with Peter Petrelli, the dumbest superhero in the world.

I am so thoroughly filled with hate that I’m sure Tim Kring is spooging his pants as I write this. I’m convinced at that this is all intentional. Storytelling simply cannot be this bad on accident. No, it must be deliberate. It must be calculated. I’m sure it took countless drafts of terrible stories to get to that 2-hour mess.

And what the Hell is going on with Sylar? So he doesn’t eat brains? He sees how people’s brains work and then he just sort of magically makes his brain work that same way? Even though in season one HRG said Sylar had altered his DNA and now in this very episode Mohinder asserts that not only is it all about adrenaline but the powers people will develop are going to be radically different from person to person? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

1. Brain
2. Blood
3. Adrenaline
4. DNA

For the love of Jeebus just pick one of the above and stick to it.

But back to Sylar… huh? So he magically gives himself people’s powers? I think it would have been better if you just kept him eating brains. Which reminds me, why didn’t he go back and finish off Mohinder and takes Maya’s power, like he wanted to for most of last season? Did he think he was going to have trouble finding them? I mean, they live in THAT SAME GODDAMN TENEMENT FROM SEASON ONE.

I understand that casting a TV show is complicated, but if you’re losing one of your child actors please concoct something better than, “I’ve sent her away where she’ll be safe.” I watched season one, and I recall that Molly’s character was introduced to Mohinder as “the only one with that can stop Sylar.” It seems like as soon as you realized Sylar was still around you shouldn’t send her to Bangladesh or where ever it is you think she’ll be safe. Of course, Mohinder is almost as stupid as Peter, so forget it.

And Hiro. Christ, I don’t even want to talk about Hiro. You see, this is all part of Tim Kring’s insidious plan: my hate has exhausted me. I literally am running out of the strength to hate Heroes. I just want to take a nap and try and forget this crap. Tim Kring is more powerful than I ever imagined.

So, in conclusion, I need to take a nap, Peter Petrelli is an idiot, and Tim Kring is the Dark Lord of the Sith. Well played, NBC… well played.

‘Speed Racer’ Review

Speed Racer is the most confusing movie I’ve seen in a long while. I can’t really decide if I love it or hate it, respect it or revile it, or even if it’s supposed to be a kid’s movie. It’s really a baffling thing.

— Speed Racer VS. Rex Racer. Even though Rex died five years before this. So, um, I guess it’s Speed Racer VS. Zombie Rex Racer…?

Once upon a time I read somewhere that when you watch a movie you should take note of how long into the film you decide if you like what you’re watching or you don’t. In most cases, you can tell how it’s going to go during the first 15 minutes of the show. I tried that with Speed Racer, and I got confused. You see, around 13 minutes into the film I decided I hated it. This is still during the opening race that sets up Speed’s backstory and the backstory with his brother, Rex Racer. The hyper cartoon look of the movie was annoying, the race itself was grossly over-stylized, it keeps jumping back and forth between the past and the present in a very disorienting way, and there’s even a really stupid animated sequence involving young Speed.

But then, completely unexpectedly, at the 16 minute mark the opening sequence redeems itself and I fell in love with what the Wachowski Brothers had written. At this point Speed is way ahead, winning the race, and he eases off the gas to keep from beating his the record his brother had set for the track. Speed, played by the kid from The Girl Next Door, pops a teardrop, and his parents cheer as their son’s record is held. It’s a genuinely touching moment that is played beautifully.

I’ve never hated and then immediately loved a movie like this. Weird.

— The villain is King of the Gumdrops. Also, pretty lame.

The problem is, the love doesn’t last. The film is a pain in the ass to watch, thanks to the ridiculous green screen and hypersaturated look of the film. I read somewhere that the Wachowski’s had developed a new camera technology to make this film. No, they just hired some really bad CGI artists. The movie looks fake.

To make matters worse, the actual races aren’t that interesting either. Because the drivers are all in these CGI monstrosities there’s literally no weight to what’s happening. If I had the choice between CGI cars doing insane loops and real cars actually doing some badass racing I will totally go with the real cars. Yes, The Fast and the Furious has better driving than this movie.

— No, Wachowskis, the awesome monkey does not offset the annoying kid.

Now, one might argue that the ridiculous look of the film and the races is do to the cartoon origin of the material. The problem with that argument is that the cartoon was made for kids and this movie was made for… well, actually, I have no idea. You see, the film seems like it was made for kids, and even includes both a kid and a monkey for comic relief, but the film also has swearing in it. At one point the kid even gives the bad guy the finger. Is that kosher for kids movies these days?

The film ends, as you would expect, with Speed winning the race and being awesome. But, again, there’s a character beat played that deals with his brother, and, again, it works remarkably well. The Wachowski’s nailed the relationship between the two brothers perfectly in this film. For that reason, I really want to like this movie. The problem is, I also really don’t.

— Speed Racer craps his pants. Or something like that. Honestly, I don’t really know, because I got bored and went to see what was playing on Shotime. When I got back he was still driving around a CGI track, so I don’t think I miss much.

The Matrix was playing on TV tonight, and I watched a couple minutes of the end before I went to the gym. It makes me sad to think of how much potential the Wachowski brothers had back in 1997, and how it’s just not being reflected in their films since. I think they need another Bound, stat. Actually, I think we could all use another Bound, you know what I mean?

My Heroes Season 3 Wishlist

Next Monday Heroes returns for its third season. Now, I was somewhat critical of Heroes season one, and the second season of the show was absolute garbage, but I have hope that with this new “Villains” theme Heroes can, you know, not suck so hard.

It is from that place of hope and wonder that I present what I wish to see happen in Heroes season three…

1. Hiro Grows a Pair

The nerdy asian thing was cute during the first season, but if Hiro’s going to run around with a samurai sword he needs to stop being such a pussy. I realize this is prime-time television, but if the best Hiro could come up with to avenge his murdered father is to stick the murderer in a coffin in the same cemetery that his father is buried in, then he needs to read some more comic books. I recommend this one, which features Captain America kicking a racist depiction of a Japanese soldier in the neck on its cover.

Word on the street is that Hiro gets an arch-nemesis this season who is 1) a girl, and 2) someone who moves really fast. If Hiro does not kill chick-who-moves-fast during the first seven minutes of their first confrontation I’m officially declaring Hiro the Jar-Jar Binks of Heroes.

2. Peter Petrelli’s Mental Retardation Is Addressed

I think this is ground-breaking storytelling here: how does the Heroes universe come to grips with the fact that the most powerful person on Earth suffers from a mental handicap.

I mean, Peter Petrelli is retarded, right? How else do you explain why a guy dumps some chick he loves in a dystopian future and then spends the rest of his week desperately trying to destroy that future time-line, instead of just time-jumping back to save her. No one is that stupid, are they?

3. Ali Larter Loses the Annoying Kids and Starts Stripping Again

That kid of her’s was kind of OK in season one, but I developed a strong dislike for him in season two (he looks too old to be that whiney), and I absolutely hate that idiot cousin that almost got them all killed over a couple freaking comic books. However, I do like Ali Larter and her boobies. Ideally, I’d like both these areas to be addressed.

4. The Haitian Bites It

Whenever the show needs a deus ex machina, there’s The Haitian. But when the going really gets tough and it would make perfect sense for The Haitian to actually get involved, he’s nowhere to be found. Think about it, how come the guy who has the power to nullify people’s powers on a whim is never around for the season finales? Answer: because if he actually participated in the show like a real character there would be no climax. Weak.

Just get rid of him already.

5. Less Repetition of Powers

I’ll grant you that after thirty years the X-men started getting cheap and gave way too many people telepathy and/or telekinesis as their powers, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for Heroes to come up with original powers for thirty freaking episodes. Two flying guys? Two healy people? My balls.

6. That Someone Shows Tim Kring a Copy of Sky High

In the name of all that is holy, Tim Kring, please, please, please just sit down and watch the Disney movie Sky High. There is more superpower-on-superpower action in that film than there is in both seasons of Heroes. Sky High is awesome. AWESOME!

The closest thing we’ve come to a real superpowered battle was the extremely brief teaser of the fight between Peter and Sylar in the season one episode “Five Years Gone.” That aside, Kring & company have been pussy-footing around the fights. Christ, the most serious fights on Heroes have consisted of people tackling each other off roofs. What?

Please, start kicking some ass.

7. No More of that Stupid Glyph/Symbol Thing

Yeah, it was ominously cool in the first season how that symbol for “godsend” kept showing up everywhere, but now that we all know its just something that idiot Adam Monroe thought was nifty you can stop using it. It is no longer ominous or cool. It is lame.

8. A STORY THAT MAKES SENSE!!!

Let’s try this one more time:

In season one it was revealed that Nathan’s wife was paralyzed in an accident that he caused. This was revealed to the world in a magazine interview that Nathan’s mother set up. Everyone saw Nathan’s wife in a wheelchair at his acceptance speech. But, Linderman healed Nathan’s wife at the end of season one. They kept this a secret.

In season two, Nathan’s wife is walking around the hospital two months after Nathan’s speech (when she was in the wheelchair).

Why isn’t this addressed in the story?

Usually, fans of a show are rewarded for their dedication and attention to detail to that show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had all kinds of winks and nods in later episodes directed to the fans who had kept up with the story. Hell, so did Friends. Heroes, on the other hand, poops on the people who have been paying attention to the story. THEY ARE POOPING ON US! Why? Why are they pooping on us? Damn it.

And worst of all, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of nonsensical horse-crap. Blood that heals people? Wasn’t all the power in people’s brains? Matt Parkman’s wife and kid disappearing from the show, even though we know that kid is going to have powers? Knowing that people are supposed to have powers, but never getting to find out what exactly those powers are because they’re tackled off a roof before we learn what they can do?

DAMN. IT.

All I want is some cohesive storytelling. Seriously, guys, is that too much to ask? I guess we’ll find out on Monday.

Scrippets 1.0

Scrippets is a text-to-HTML converter for screenplays developed by screenwriter John August. It was modeled after John Gruber’s delightful Markdown format, which allows for easy text-to-HTML conversion for blogs and such, only much cooler. Let me explain…

The Problem

The thing you’ll first notice about a screenplay is that it comes in a very specific format. The problem John August discovered is that the format that a screenplay comes in doesn’t translate well to a web page. So, being the omega-level geek that he is, John developed a CSS format to turn an HTML formatted screenplay into a beautiful on-screen facsimile of the printed page, and, in typical John August fashion, he released this CSS to the world to use.

But, John wanted an easier way to do all this. Unfortunately, his method required him to manually type out all the HTML, which is pretty boring. So during the writer’s strike John developed a Ruby script to automatically convert a plain text version of the screenplay format to an HTML one, which could then be styled by his CSS.

Great, but what about the rest of the less-geeky world?

John came up with the fantastic idea of creating a WordPress plugin to automatically do the text-to-HTML conversion, and automatically add the needed CSS to allow a person a super-easy way to start use this plain text format, and end up with perfectly styled screenplay text on screen.

This is the concept behind Scrippets.

What Does This Have to Do with Me?

Long story short, I wrote the WordPress plugin.

How It Works

Just download the plugin from WordPress.org, unzip it, copy it to your wp-content/plugins directory, and activate it from your Admin plugins panel (as you would any other plugin in). That’s it! Now you can start using Scrippets on your blog.

So what is does a Scrippet look like? The following is an example of a Scrippet:

[scrippet]
INT. HOUSE - DAY

MARY yells across the hall to FRANK.

MARY
Anything you want to tell me?

FRANK (O.S.)
I swear, honey, I don't know how mayonnaise got in the piano.

CUT TO:

FRANK

running out of the bathroom.

FRANK
(terrified)
There are bees in the toliet!
[/scrippet]

And the following is how it will look on your Scrippet enabled blog (note, you need to visit this page outside an RSS reader to see it in all its glory):

Awesome? I think so.

Two things to note:

• You MUST include the [scrippet][/scrippet] blocks around the text. That is the only way the plugin knows there’s a Scrippet there.
• You have to use the correct line spacing. That is, you have to have a blank line between a line of action and a character cue, and no blank line between a character cue and a parenthetical or dialogue line.

Basically, just try and make it look like the above example and you’ll be good to go.

BBPRESS

bbPress is a forum software based on WordPress, and suffice it to say that it was relatively easy to port the plugin over to it (even though bbPress is poorly documented). If you’d like BB Scrippets, you can get them here.

What About Non-WordPress Blogs and Other PHP Web Apps?

Note: this is for programmers and other super-geeks.

I can’t speak for John, but I think it would be totally awesome for Scrippets to DOMINATE all the Internets. To assist in this, I designed the plugin to be modular. In the wp-scrippets folder you download you will find a file called scrippetize.php. This file contains the core scrippetize function that does all the work, and is available under one of those really liberal MIT licenses.

To incorporate it into your own PHP project all you have to do is add require('scrippetize.php'); to your PHP script, and use the scrippetize function in the following way:

$formatted_text = scrippetize($text, $wrap_before, $wrap_after);

It’s important to note that the $wrap_before and $wrap_after parameters are optional.

Therefore,

scrippetize($text);

does the same thing as

scrippetize($text, '', '');

From there, just pull the scrippets.css file out of the plugin folder and add that to your HTML page header, and you’re good to go.

Pretty simple, I think.

What About Non-PHP Projects?

Will Carlough, who assisted in the testing and development of the plugin, was able to successfully port the scrippetize function to Javascript, and, seriously, if it works in freakin’ Javascript you should be able to port it to any other programming language known to man. Good luck with that.

CUT TO: Awesome 80’s Training Montage

That’s about it. If you’re interested, there’s more info at scrippets.org, and a forum there where you can communicate with John or myself about Scrippet related issues. This will also be the place to file bug reports, or get some help porting the code to another platform.

Many thanks go to John August for conceiving, designing, testing, and managing the development of this plugin; many thanks to Will Carlough for showing that my program design wasn’t totally insane; and many thanks to me, for being really good looking (it makes programming easier).

Please enjoy Scrippets.

FADE TO BLACK.