After being brought down with an ear ache over the last few days, I felt vaguely human again yesterday and wanted to get out — anywhere but here! — for a while. So I wandered around the city a bit and ended up going to a movie, since Tuesday is cheap day in Sydney. The only movie on was Max Payne, about which I knew nothing beyond having seen the trailer. The movie itself was nothing special. I'm not a good judge of that sort of "game to movie" conversion, but it seemed like a fairly formulaic plot and standard ending. Nothing special, but I had no real expectations to begin with and I don't mind the occasional really bad movie, so I didn't feel entirely ripped off. As a movie on its own, it's something like 4 or 5/10. This isn't a review, though

One aspect stood out, once I realised didn't need to exactly concentrate on the storyline: It was a beautifully filmed and edited movie, outside of the action sequences (which were a bit "blah"). Almost as if a comic book was being filmed. This is really a combined piece of work from the director of photography and the editor (providing the images and then weaving them together), along with possibly/probably some post-production CGI teams.

I can't think of a Hollywood-style movie recently where negative space has been used quite so well, without making everything just seem dark and confusing. That's hard to pull off because there needs to be something going on so that your eye knows what to follow and, yet it has to be slowly paced enough that you can take in the scene and take in the shot. There were a lot of scene-setting shots in Max Payne that were anywhere from one to three or four seconds in length that really worked well like that.

Similarly, snow was used throughout the movie as a pace indicator. In the "nothing going on here; look at how calm it is" shots — usually right before somebody was taken by surprise — the snow would drift down, or across the screen in a calm fashion. As the pace picked up, or Max was going somewhere purposefully, the snow would be more windblown and piled beside the footpaths and roads that were clean from all the activity they were sustaining. Without any big sign being used, it was easy to tell when we were in calm or desolate mode and when things were more edgy and taking place in busy or recently-active areas.

The colour choices were another area that were cleverly handled once I started paying attention. It was all relatively realistic, but dark, looking colours, except when the mythological, hallucinatory aspects were part of the story. Yet, there was still a lot of clever cutting and use of warm lit areas and colder, streetlight-only sections.

None of this was particularly unsubtle. It was just something I noticed fairly early on and then started really paying attention to. Even the worst movies (and this was hardly the worst movie of all time) provide something to watch if you aren't the hooked on the story being shown. So I'll add this to my list of attempts to set the scene and mood in a slightly different way.

Topics: art/design, entertainment/movies

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Justine Larbalestier posted an item on her blog the other day about editors "translating" books from British to American, in effect. The comments are mostly a bunch of people, including me, all in violent agreement that we don't really like the practice, although it's a self-selecting sample of readers enthusiastic enough to follow an author's blog. However, it's interesting to think about the trade-offs being made here.

For those who haven't read the article or grasped the gist of it, a lot of editors, say, in the USA publishing the US version of a book originally written by a British or Australian author will not only drop the "u"s from colour and favourite, but will also convert measurement systems and sometimes change entire words. Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone changing to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone being one example noted in the comments. This isn't just a British to USA passage, either. There are cases of USA to Australian and vice-versa as well (not to mention New Zealand versions, etc).

Like all(!) the commenters on that post, I agree that the words could probably be left alone and any colloquialisms treated via a glossary. Even changing the spelling (dropping the u's) seems a tad unnecessary and costly in terms of time required to edit and book that might have 75,000 words or more. If readers and users of the English language don't already realise there are at least two predominant versions used in the world, the it's time they learnt that in any case.

More interesting to me, though, was when I was trying to work out if I even notice this in books. I read a lot and a fair mixture of both US, British and Australian editions. I think I do notice stuff like spelling variations and I personally prefer the British versions, although in Australia it feels like it's becoming more an more ambiguous which is the more common spelling. But the tone of a book, which includes the narrators voicing style and words as well as any active characters, is even more important. If you switch from metric to imperial measurements (kilometres, metres and centimetres to miles, feet and inches), it completely changes the character of the narrator. Now they're an American, rather than an Australian, or vice-versa. Even when the narration is done in a way such that there's no explicit narrator character, changing the way the words are written changes our mental image of the story-teller.

My main problem, then, is that the inconsistencies rapidly start to show. You can't make James Bond not be British in action, so why would one give him an American vocabulary (fortunately, I don't think this ever happened to Ian Fleming's books, but that was a different era and different audience to Justine's). Romeo and Juliet wouldn't quite be the same play if all the "Shakespeare" was removed from it. It might well still be a good story, but it wouldn't be what Shakespeare wrote. An obvious example here: compare Taming Of The Shrew, the Shakespeare original, to the film 10 Things I Hate About You, which is a modern remake of the story. A good film plot, but not the same play as Shakespeare's.

Justine herself has written an excellent series (I reviewed it last year) based around three teenage characters, two of whom are Australian and one of whom is from the US. Justine was very clever about writing in an Australian style for the chapters set in Sydney and a US style for the chapters set in New York. Spelling, pacing, visuals... they were all adjusted to the locale the characters were in. It's subtle until you notice it — or see where Justine mentions it in her blog — but it would not survive any effort to "localise" the text to be purely American or purely Australian and the story would suffer.

When cultural localisation happens, when spellings are changed and measurement systems are converted and some words are replaced, the result might still be a good story. But it's not the author's story. It's something kind of like the original and if you're lucky or don't concentrate too hard, you might not be too upset. But the inconsistencies will show up — a New Zealand character using US-only words perhaps — and the book will look poorly edited, rather than more locally-appropriate.

I'm only writing this because it took me a disappointingly long time to work out exactly why I didn't like this practice and why changing "just the spelling" is still hurting things. Intuitively, I knew it made things worse, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why I thought that. End of the day, I suspect it comes down to the fact that inconsistencies in the storyline, or the vocabulary, or the plotting, drag the reader out of the story and remind you that you're reading a book, not living the adventure. We read a lot of (fiction) books to escape into the story; damaging the illusion kind of spoils the whole point of the exercise.

Food for thought as a final item: this is also done a lot in movies that are remade, particularly by Hollywood. Now, it could be argued that this is because the consumer doesn't have time to consult a glossary or convert measurements, or that audiences "expect" something else. So is it maybe more permissible and/or necessary there? I would still argue that it significantly changes the story, regardless of how it's justified. You can't get too more wildly different horror movies than the original Japanese Ring trilogy of movies and the US remakes of Ring 1 and Ring 2. They both kind of tell the same story, but the Japanese one uses a lot more technique to do so and is certainly not "formulaic".

Topics: books, writing

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It's been over six months since my last post about politics and the political process, so it might be safe to do another one. I got stuck on a thought experiment last night and wanted to note this down whilst it still fresh in my mind.

Following random links for no particular reason (I think I went from Catie's personal blog to her postgraduate one ) I ended up reading this post. I'm often distinctly undecided about the broader issue of compulsory versus voluntary voting, but I iked the author of that piece's characterisation of voting as including an expectation that people will vote in an informed fashion. That's what got me thinking.

Suppose a society took this to the extreme ends that you had to pass a test before you were permitted to vote (or maybe you had to sit the test and vote and its result would determine whether your vote counted, but you wouldn't know that result). The question is then, what would this test look like? I'm not thinking about a civics exam here or the sort of thing you might get on a citizenship test. Those are checking if you understand the basic ideas behind the system of government in the country at hand. Instead, how would you test to see if the individual had some grasp on the actual issues and, more importantly, on the candidates' opinions on those issues

Practicalities like needing to be able to assess the result quickly and, probably, automatically, mean long-form answers are out and it's likely to be multiple choice (and possibly more-than-one-choice). It seems hard to write questions that don't either give away the answer by putting the ideas in your head in the first place or that actually distinguish between the candidates. For example, "Have you heard Mr. X discuss topic Y?" is probably not a good discriminator. If topic Y is at all significant and Mr. X's opponent mentioned it, it's a safe bet that Mr. X responded to his opponent simply because the media tend to ask questions based on the oppositions' statements from the previous day or hours. So there's often a lot of correlation between what all the candidates are talking about when looked at over the course of an election campaign.

On some issues there are probably sensible questions like "Mr. X's position on education could be best described as: (a) ..., (b) ..., (c)..." I have a hunch, however, that concisely and accurately summarising a position on a major policy issue in a length that could be on a test would be very difficult. Major issues are nuanced and there's not a lot of room for naunce in a two sentence summary.

There also might be a problem with the test influencing your opinion, rather than measuring it. What if a question brought up an issue or statement you had forgotten about? Now it's in the front of your mind and you even attach some significance to it because you realise you had forgotten or not known about this. Maybe it makes you worried about that candidate. Maybe it makes you certain they're the right choice. Probably it'll be less influential than that, but an ideal test measures and doesn't change the subject being tested.

So think about this. How could you test a potential voter's understanding of issues without influencing them? You can't necessarily draw examples from politic polls, since they are often striving for a measurable comparison, rather than testing understanding. It seemed like every question I came up with had some hidden dark side to it.

Maybe the lesson is simply that we shouldn't hope for that particular future.

Topics: politics

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In an effort to show I'm still blogging regularly (as opposed to frequently), a really short Django tip that can act as a light substitute for a number of cases where model-aware validation is really required. Basically, using ModelForms in a non-form environment. This isn't something I discovered — it was pointed out to me a couple of months ago by Jacob Kaplan-Moss and no doubt independently discovered by any number of people sinc ethen. It could do with being a bit more well-known, however.

Model-aware validation has been one of those things that has been on the "we should have that" list in Django since practically forever. It's kind of annoying that it wasn't finished for 1.0, but since the main reason it wasn't finished is we were occupied working on other features and fixes, it's also understandable when viewed in perspective. Every time you think "I wish model validation was present", turn it around to be "I'm glad XYZ is in Django" (for favorite feature XYZ), since that might have been the thing we traded away in another universe. That doesn't stop me feeling annoyed it isn't there, but it stops me blaming anybody else for the omission.

Anyway, onto the tip...

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Topics: software/django/tips

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A couple of months ago I was asked to be on a "frameworks" panel, talking about Django, at the local (Sydney-based) Web Directions South conference. This isn't the sort of conference I would normally attend, since it seems to be primarily targeted at website developers and designers, rather than coders and backend developers. I like speaking, though, and was happy to be invited. But I really was (or, at least, felt like) an outsider at the event, so here are a few thoughts watching from the outside.

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Topics: conferences, life

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DjangoCon was a great weekend. It was also a very tiring weekend, particularly coming so close to the Django 1.0 release, which was very exhausting. Still, getting a 1.0 out the door and somewhat basking in the reflected glory from everybody's efforts provided enough energy for getting through the conference.

From a conference attendee's point of view, something that was around the 250 person mark felt about the right size. I didn't get bored with seeing the same faces all the time and there were enough people to talk to. I also didn't feel like the size made it impossible to find anybody. Talk topics were interesting and varied. Both the length of the conference and the length of each session felt about right. The extra-conference activities, such as the 1.0 release party, were also enjoyable and not too draining. Which was fortunate, really, as I had no energy left to be drained.

From a conference speaker's perspective, the experience was excellent. People kept mentioning that Google were good at that stuff because they did it all the time. That doesn't particularly matter. More important is the fact that they were good at helping speakers. There were enough chairs. Microphones magically appeared when required. Before each of my talks (I did two, plus one panel), a Google expert helped me hook up to the AV system and wired up the microphone — I much prefer a radio mike on the collar to carrying something or speaking into a stand. Then, at just the right moment, the microphone was turned on. Normal conference experiences involve a little futzing around to get the display working and figure out the sound system at just the moment you're trying to be focused on the talk you're about to give. Not so here and I am incredibly thankful to the professionals involved who made that possible. It might seem like a little thing, but the five minutes before a talk is more or less the only time I get a little nervous about what might happen and having that portion go smoothly was great.

Not incidentally, the attendees were great as well. Questions were always intelligent. There was limited amounts of side conversation going on during talks, so you weren't distracted by the person sitting next to you. People were considerate when moving around after a speaker had started. Yes, that's normal politeness. It's also not a given at a lot of conferences. So thank-you to those in the same audience as me, and thank-you to those in the audience when I was the only thing to watch on stage.

I spent most of the conference just generally paying attention. To what people were saying about Django. To how they were using it. To what they mentioned was problematic. You learn a lot by listening and that was true here. There were 250 people all with a common interest and a willingness to talk about it. Somewhat gratifyingly, I didn't learn about anything really big in Django that was both missing and unknown to me. This is genuinely true: most of the big ticket items that people felt were missing from Django are things that most people who've hung around the django-developers mailing list will realise are known items to do at some point. In fact, they're all high priority. Along with the other 137 high priority items. Most of the time, people seemed aware that "not done yet" isn't the same thing as (and is preferable to) "won't ever be done" or "the developers aren't interested." There isn't a universal understanding of that fact, but it happens to be true.

I intend to resume blogging regularly, including some Django-related stuff, and I'll address some of the specific points raised during the conference from my own twisted perspective in the near future (peek into the future: Cal Henderson's specific points in his talk were equal parts "done", "agreed. We're working on that" and "yes, but it's trickier than you mentioned and you know it". Plus one dash of "get a proper database, but we should document that your database of choice is flawed in that way").

Primarily, though, DjangoCon was a chance to talk to a small cross-section of the user base and find out what they're doing and thinking. Getting a guided tour of Matt Waite's recent GIS work with Django when we ended up seated next to each other at the speakers' dinner; having an early look at what Lisa Dusseault has been blogging about over the past few months; hearing a bit more of a description about Guido van Rossum's and the Google App Engine team's efforts (silently cursing that they didn't talk to me/us earlier. I could have fixed one of their problems with the ORM in about an hour, if I knew it was important). These moments and a bunch more like was where I got the most out of the conference. I like that people are using Django. I love seeing what they're doing.

I cannot say enough good things at the moment about the organisation of Rob Lofthouse, plus the help on the Google side from the team of volunteers (all of whom seemed genuinely hooked on using Django), including the inexhaustible Leslie Hawthorne (rolling up on Sunday morning to the GooglePlex, feeling pretty tired, to the sight of Leslie at the font door literally jumping up and down saying "welcome! we have coffee. You should have some" will stay in my memory for a while). The event went very smoothly and was a lot of fun. Thanks, folks. I had a blast.

Topics: software/django, conferences/DjangoCon2008

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Turns out that they've worked the kinks out of the Internet and it's become a fully-fledged useful tool these days. Also the turnaround time from me saying something to somebody getting laughs at my expense is a bit over 2 hours.

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Topics: conferences/DjangoCon2008, funny, media

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[ Updated: I've had an offer, so this has been taken care of. Thanks. ]

I'm trying to make it to Washington, DC, for the Django sprint on August 1. Is there anybody in the area who has a couch or floor I could sleep on for the night before the sprint and the night afterwards? If I can save having to buy a hotel room around the area in the peak of summer, that would be nice.

Any responses to "malcolm at pointy-stick" (or firstname.lastname at gmail). Thanks.

Topics: software/django

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Clint Ecker doesn't seem to have his posts syndicated over at the Django aggregator. (*) Over the recent couple of days, though, Clint's been posting about a few different Django apps he's been using in his professional projects and has released to the wider world. Plus a few "how I work" tips.

• django-chunks (seriously, dude! That was the best name you could come up with??)
• Super-simple Google analytics
• Three Django tips

Go read them. Now.

(*) Probably because we've reached the legal limit of Chicago people on that page and he lucked out. Ironic really.

Topics: software/django

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Congratulations to Luis and Krissa on their engagement. This makes me very happy. Two very good friends.

Topics: life

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