In the years since, I’ve been privileged to watch Impro rehearse and I’ve seen the company perform UnScripted takes on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Stephen Sondheim and John Ford. (They also do Tennessee Williams, Charles Dickens and L.A. noir, among others.) The beloved authors and genres they enrich are both refreshed and irrevocably altered by their touch. It is the most impressive sort of homage—the kind that tells you these improvisers are essentially slumming in some literary neighborhoods (sorry, but Rod Serling never wrote anything as good as Impro’s riffs on his themes).
First off, this isn’t the “39 Steps” you’re thinking of – not quite. Yes, Invisible Frisbee Productions’ inventive comedy riffs on the Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Yes, it’s still four actors playing the roles of the hapless everyman Richard Hannay and the multiple spies he becomes entangled with. But this time, Hannay may be escaping peril in Will’s Pub instead of London. The settings, professions and event the actors’ roles depend on the cues the audience gives to the cast, by way of a “survey” taken before the show.
First off, this isn’t the “39 Steps” you’re thinking of – not quite. Yes, Invisible Frisbee Productions’ inventive comedy riffs on the Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Yes, it’s still four actors playing the roles of the hapless everyman Richard Hannay and the multiple spies he becomes entangled with. But this time, Hannay may be escaping peril in Will’s Pub instead of London. The settings, professions and event the actors’ roles depend on the cues the audience gives to the cast, by way of a “survey” taken before the show.
Occupying a tiny corner inside Urban ReThink, the self-proclaimed "Happy Food Café" is the culmination of the hard work and effort of sisters Tisse and Joyce Mallon.
Tisse's work as a "happiness coach" has clearly affected the dishes coming out of this diminutive kitchen. The always fresh, made-to-order, organic-when-possible, unprocessed fare not only supplies the alimentary essentials, but really does leave you with a sense of cheer and well-being, and not out of some act of cultish or coercive persuasion, either.
Kits drive innovation. When a kit sells well, suddenly there are people in every town building newfangled TV sets (remember Heathkit? They’re back!) or aerial Arduino robots (check out DIY Drones).
After all the testing and analysis, one system stood head and shoulders above the others: the ZoneFlex system from Ruckus Wireless. I remember in particular one of the graphs comparing the performance of the various systems under heavy load. The other systems showed a jumble of jagged lines representing drop-outs, while Ruckus sailed smoothly through with none.
With the release of the Kindle Fire this week, I thought I would see what the competition was like. If I'm going to spend $200 on a tablet, what about spending a little more, to get something more geek-friendly?
I know that as of Android 3.1, there is now support for Android devices to act as a USB host, for connecting to devices or hacking on the Arduino. In my search, I came across the Toshiba Thrive, which has full-sized USB ports, and more.
Back in 2006 I was getting hard-core about making videos and podcasts. There have been times when I was more active in this arena than others, but I have decided that I truly miss getting to share these stories with others, so I am going through some superficial updating of my hardware.
At the beginning of the year, I bought an ebook in PDF format, and wrote a post about my adventures trying to get the layout to STAY THE SAME on my Mac. Today I bought a book in ePUB, by the subject of my most recent post, Jeremy Keith. The book is published by one of my favorite websites, A List Apart, and it's their first venture into publishing.
I have tried reading books on my computer screen before, and I have been disappointed. Mostly, I have realized that scrolling sucks. Given that I have already paid to download a few technical books as PDF, I needed a reader that could make the PDF experience easier than Preview or Adobe.