Today I had a good panel discussion about The Passion, with Rabbi Deborah Newman Kamin of Am Yisrael Synagogue and Pastor Robert Atkins of Trinity United Methodist Church at Trinity UMC in Wilmette; a good conversation about the Lukan Passion Narrative over at Christ Church, Winnetka.
So Duke lost; from everything I heart, it was a good game, and if Duke couldn’t put Maryland away with a five-point lead an under two minutes to play, then three cheers to Maryland for hanging tough and winning the hard way. Duke still got a #1 seed in the South Regional.
I had a good iSight-enabled iChat with Dave “Formerly ‘Time’s Shadow,’ now ‘Groundhog Day’ ” Rogers; he’s great fun to talk with (I wouldn’t mention to him, though, that occasionally his head goes a little blurry and his face turns all pixellated; he might be sensitive about that).
The best good thing of all, though, was seeing Josiah play Rev. Parris in The Crucible last night. I’m not a kind enough soul to cut amateur theater a lot of slack; I derive no great pleasure from seeing haphazard, awkward, sloppy theatrical productions, and “cuteness” or youth or being-related-to-one-of-the-actors does not alchemically change mediocre theater to wonderful, worthwhile theater. I’m a grouch on this subject, and I’m willing to admit it.
But last night’s production of The Crucible blew me away. Si and his colleagues did a terrific job on some complex and improbable material. It’s a shame they couldn’t extend the run, because more people ought to have had the opportunity to see them (and they ought to have had an even fuller benefit for all their hard work). I’m awfully proud of Si, and glad that he was surrounded by a tremendous ensemble.
Posted by AKMA at March 14, 2004 10:50 PM | TrackBackWRT being blurry and pixellated, a case of technology imitating life, no doubt.
Anyway, may I suggest you review your preferences in iChat AV under the Video icon and select a bandwidth limit of 200kbps or less. Most DSL and Cable connections (that I'm aware of) have limited upstream bandwidth (I'm at 256kbps here). If iChat thinks it has more bandwidth than it really does, it tries to make a prettier picture with insufficient data and ends up with a less-pretty picture.
It's kind of like teaching it to manage its expectations.
If you've already set your bandwidth limit to the aforementioned recommended figure, then it may be due to some other network activity at one of our ends, plus the fact that I tend to move around a lot when I talk.
Posted by: dave rogers at March 15, 2004 05:39 AMThanks for the tip, Dave; I had left it at the factory setting of “no limits” (sounds lke an ESPN2 event: “Extreme iSight — no limits”), but I changed it to 200 kbps on your advice. We’ll see how that works out.
Posted by: AKMA at March 15, 2004 07:13 AMNot that I have time now, but when will pop culture come up with something juicy and controversial about the OT so that I can have interesting discussions with rabbis?
Posted by: Frank at March 16, 2004 10:08 AM