Friday Four

1. Tech writer David Pogue replies to a reader who wrote to him objecting to the idea of watching movies on smart phones. I liked everything about his reply, including his conclusion:

The correct analogy: How great it is to visit the Louvre to see the original painting! But how great that, for people who can't go to France routinely, they also have a chance to study those paintings online, in a book or even on a phone.

Why did I like this so much? It was easy to read all kinds of snootiness and even baiting into the letter: Maybe both were there. But Pogue took the high road and corrected a bad premise that made the question and the questionner's attitude understandable on some levels. I found the whole much more informative and satisfying to read than some run-of-the-mill smack down.

2. Baby Humor Update: On the way in to the apartment, I've been letting my fifteen-month-old daughter press the buttons in the elevator. Yesterday, when it was time to call the car, she put her finger up to the button, centered it, and then pulled it away. She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a baby-bark and smiled. I laughed, too.

3. Reader Dismuke passes along a link describing what appears to be the world's first color film:

Collectively, they managed to prove that the Lee and Turner colour process did work. Harvey recalled sitting entranced in an editing suite watching the footage. "The image of the goldfish was stunning," he said. "Its colours were so lifelike and subtle. Then there was a macaw with brilliantly coloured plumage … I realised we had a significant find on our hands."

The film, created by a process that predates Technicolor, is over 100 years old.

4. Being close to our move to larger quarters -- a house again! -- in St. Louis has me really noticing how hard it has been to work, much less write, in our current, cramped abode. I will have room for some semblance of a "man-cave" again -- my old home office has been all but unusable as such for months now. (On days that I use a sitter, I usually still have to leave with my laptop.)

The anticipation caused me to enjoy perusing this list of writer's huts I happened upon recently.

-- CAV