One has to be a little strange to be a brilliant organist. Much of one’s time will be spent yearning to play the World’s Great Organs. It’s not like you can install a pipe organ in your home. Well, I guess if you did, it would be considered a little strange, and thus something that a brilliant organist would do.

I’d never been to the Melbourne Town Hall before. It was obviously designed before things like acoustics were thought about. The place echoes like someone’s bathroom. Why they don’t just give up, tile the place and install a shower, is beyond me. Thing is, they’ve got a fucking huge pipe organ. At nearly 10,000 pipes, it’s the fuckingist hugeist “Grand Organ” in the southern hemisphere. Or so they say. There are bigger pipe organs (like, ahem, in Sydney), but for this specific kind of organ, it’s the one.

Anyway. Back to the people who play them. I knew brilliant organist, his name was Steve Toth. He was strange, troubled, but brilliant. He didn’t so much play the organ, but play with the organ. He danced. He had a fantastic time. The windows shook and the babies wet themselves. Truly a figure of greatness.

Ernesto Maurice Corpus, a diminutive Italian gentleman with interesting taste in clothes and a bit of a mullet, strikes me as a bit strange as well. He improvised a score to The Man From Kangaroo, entertainingly and with a bit of a wink to both ecclesiastical and pre-talkie film music. He remained essentially motionless on the organ bench, with his fingers working a blur over the keys. Very impressive.

Oh, and there was a movie too. It was okay.

I mumble a curse whenever another crap tech writer gets a basic fact wrong. This particular one has happened far too often: tech writers calling AAC “proprietary”. It’s not.

To create Harmony, Real reverse-engineered Apple’s proprietary AAC format, and created a way for Real’s downloads to appear in AAC format when loaded onto an iPod. Industrious hackers have attempted such a feat but have been spooked by legal threats.

The AAC audio file format is a compression standard that’s part of the MPEG-4 specification. Anyone can make AAC files, and anyone can listen to them. Apple, while they had a hand in the creation of the standard, has nothing to do with licensing the code to AAC files. I like AAC-compressed files. For their size, they sound better than MP3 or OGG. I create AAC files whenever I rip a CD into iTunes.

The chunk that Apple does have something to do with, however, is FairPlay, their own proprietary addition to a standard AAC file. No one is allowed to make FairPlay files except for Apple. No one (except for Motorola) is officially allowed to play FairPlay files except for Apple and Motorola. This is the part that Real figured out, not AAC.

Get it right, people! Okay, lesson over.

The Register has answered my questions about this Apple/Motorola iTunes thing.

Do they mean the iTunes music store is integrated into the iTunes software on the phone?

Nope. Purchased songs need to be USB’d or Bluetoothed over to the phone (I wonder if phone-to-phone transfer is supported?)

does this mean Apple has finally licensed its DRM software to someone else?

Yup! This is the important bit. This is a first.

Does this mean QuickTime for Java is running on these phones?

Dunno. But it kinda makes sense, because the DRM in iTunes is handled by QuickTime�

I still think using iTunes for managing a collection of 12 songs is a bit overkill, but Apple licensing its DRM is a good thing.

Huh?

Still struggling to find relevance, Motorola announces that it’s teaming up with Apple to include some kind of version of iTunes in a new line of mobile phones.

[Steve] Jobs also said that Mac or Windows PC users will be able to transfer songs from the iTunes digital jukebox software or from the iTunes online music store, which is integrated into the iTunes software, to Motorola cell phones.

The Reuters article is a bit confusing and vague here. Do they mean the iTunes music store is integrated into the iTunes software on the phone? If so, will people stand the wait to download a few megs of data over slow-as-plate-tectonics GPRS, or faster-on-paper-but-not-really 1xRTT?

If they mean they’re simply letting people transfer purchased songs from their computers to their phones, does this mean Apple has finally licensed its DRM software to someone else? Does this mean QuickTime for Java is running on these phones?

If they could squeeze a mobile phone plus an iPod into the size of an iPod mini, now that would be something worth considering. But this? What is this? What’s the point, Moto?

Take two parts Japanese horror, one part satire, one part child-abuse drama and 1/2 part reality TV. Garnish with a dollop of Evil Dead 2, sprinkle some Hitchcock and serve chilled. That, gentle reader, was Miike’s so-damn-cool new film One Missed Call. Sponsored by Sony Ericsson.

A group of friends starts getting voicemail from their own mobile phones, dated a few days in the future. The messages contain the sounds (and images) from the moment they die. This, of course, freaks them out, and is a nice little nod to “Ring,”http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0178868/ the current inspiration for much of the Japanese horror movie genre.

You’re never quite sure if Miike is taking his subjects seriously or not. There are sequences that out-gore and out-camp even the campiest of Braindead gorefests, then we cut into a hospital, where the main characters are having a serious conversation about child abuse, and how they theorise that the events in the film are due to childhood violence. Then there’s the reality TV producer who tries to get ratings by putting a future victim on his show. Or does he really want to help?

Then there’s the “boo!” factor. There’s one in particular. I haven’t jumped that high in a movie since that mummy in Se7en coughed. If I hadn’t emptied my bladder into a urinal before the movie, it would have been all over the seat.

There are scenes so shocking that they’re funny – the audience laughs, but nervously. There’s a scene with a bloody, rotten, dripping corpse, and it’s one of the most touching in the entire film. Or is it? I sympathised with a bloody rotten dripping corpse. That’s pretty funny. Or was it touching? Both?

One of the things about Miike’s films that never ceases to amaze me is how he seamlessly blends different genres, different emotions, and different situations into one movie – even into one scene. His films show us the humour in horror, and the pain in satire. It’s as if he has too many ideas for just one film – indeed he makes several each year – and has to fit as many as possible into one film.

Many of us get to experience that special little joy that is called “The New Car Smell”. You or someone you know has just dropped anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 on new wheels, and it comes fresh from the factory, smelling like an odd combination of glue, plastic, motor oil and optional leather seats. For some reason, I find this a very pleasing smell – and others I’ve asked have agreed: nice smell. Ooh.

This evening, I got to experience “new train smell”. Connex (the local train operator) recently dropped several million dollars on a whole whack of new trains. And they’re reeeaaaallll nice. No optional leather seats, but the doors open themselves. Doors that open automatically are a Big Deal in Melbn, where, until now, people have had to open doors manually. This can be a good thing, sorta, except when the driver forgets that he’s in a whizzy new train and doesn’t use the new “open the doors in the fancy new train” button. Like this evening.

The trains are quiet and smooth. This is also something new. There are a fleet of trains that are from the early 90s, and they’re smooth-ish, and quiet-ish, but these new trains are able to sneak up behind people and say “boo” far better than any before them. Do not even think about standing on the wrong side of the yellow line, lest you be tooted at. Of course, this runs you the risk of leaping in fright directly into the path of the oncoming sneaky train. I think perhaps they should record the noises that some of the older trains make, and play them over the loudspeaker at the front of the new ones. Give the people in the stations fair warning.

Unlike most buildings in Melbn, the new trains have central heating and air conditioning. Not to mention double-glazed windows. This makes them more temperate and comfortable than my flat. I’m thinking of moving in. It would make the commute home much easier, but it would be pretty embarrassing to miss one’s own home as it pulls out of the station.

It’s big. Click to make it even bigger.

The sound system, while it’s only used for automated “the next station is…” type announcements is really quite good. I’m not saying it’s THX certified Dolby 5.1 or anything like that, it’s just – wait for it – clear and understandable! One can actually hear the name of the upcoming station without straining one’s ears. I was shocked. I actually found out how to pronounce the name of my station, after all these years. No wonder no one knew where the hell I was going half the time.

I also noticed that the trains were made by the same company that makes my new mobile phone: Siemens. It gives me a little bit of boosterist pride that my new small mobile phone shares the same kind of lineage with a really big train. Hooray for Siemens! The possibilities for inter-species inanimate object communication are really quite dramatic. What if my phone could talk with the train and ask it to wait 15 seconds longer in the station for me? “Excuse me Siemens train, this is Siemens phone. My human needs an extra 15 seconds to reach the train, how about it, mate?”

And the smell. Yummm. Like a new car smell, but add a couple of million dollars. There ain’t no better thing.

Right, okay. So I broke down and only bought 10 tickets to Melbn’s film festival. Running them down from the 30 or so that I’d originally picked was really difficult. A couple of films were sold out, which helped the decision-making process, but I managed to get it down to these ten:

One Missed Call
I’m writing this entry line for this film. It’ll be a good start to the festival for me. I’m a fan of Miike’s films, ever since I saw The Bird People of China at the Vancouver Film Festival a few years ago. This is a man who never makes the same film twice, and is exceptionally good at packing several genres into one film. (The people sitting next to me are currently arguing about what a beret is. The person wearing the beret insists it’s not a beret, but she’s completely wrong. This is the quality of the eavesdropping here).

The Man From Kangaroo
I’m looking forward to this one. Apparently, the Largest Pipe Organ in the Southern Hemisphere is in Melbn’s Town Hall. I hope it’s more impressive than the Largest Ikea in the Southern Hemisphere, which is in Richmond, and frankly, doesn’t have much to say for it. Anyway, The Man From Kangaroo is one of the first films made in Australia, about, well, a Man. He’s from Kangaroo. It’s silent, which is why they need the big honkin’ organ. Its such an old film they lost the music to it, so the person playing the organ’s going to have to make it up as he goes along.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
Clive Owen is in it! I haven’t seen him in anything since the brilliant Croupier. This is by the same director, so I’ve got high hopes here.

Far Side of the Moon
I know nothing about this film except that Robert Lepage wrote and directed it. That’s all I need. Also token Canadian content.

Lagos/Koolhaas
Lagos, Nigeria is really crowded and hectic. No really. Rem Koolhaas, the architect with the coolest name in the world, hung out there a while and made some observations. Eric visited Koolhaas’s Seattle Public Library a few weeks ago.

Adventures of Iron Pussy
This sounds like silly Japanese campy stuff. It’s on right after “Lagos/Koolhaas”, so I think it will be a nice refreshing change.

The Cat Returns
Studio Ghibli! Something about a cat. That’s all I need to know. This same studio gave us Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbour Totoro, and many others.

Old Boy
Some guy gets locked in prison. Why? We don’t know and neither does he. Interesting premise.

Dead End Run
Ishii Sogo directed the best boring film I’ve ever seen. I could barely stay awake through it. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was fantastic. It was the most enjoyable kind of boredom too. The next one I saw was a fiery mess with swords and evil things everywhere. Darn good. This is his film too. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do this time.

Graveyard of Honour
Ending the festival how I started, with another film by Miike. This is a based-on-a-true-story film about a gangster. Hmm.

If you weren’t, men, you certainly will now.

Gentle reader, now is the time to stand up and applaud a fellow human being’s selfless kindness and generosity. A story in the Japan Times is about how the winner of a �200 million lottery prize anonymously sent the ticket to victims of a recent flood. �200,000,000 is about AU$2,600,000.

Whoever that is, he deserves twice that in return. Or at least a beer and a hearty handshake.

[Thanks to Cori for this one!]

It’s not often that a product review makes me laugh out loud. The Ars Technica review of Apple’s new AirPort Express contains this line:

I opened [the box] to find that Apple had discovered an entirely-new shade of blue, which was used rather liberally in the branding and packaging.

Not only do I want an Express for its functionality, I also want to experience that blue! Sounds so nifty.