I can only pray that the damned BitTorrent seed I’m using doesn’t die [85% after 32 hours!] before I have successfully downloaded the pilot of Heat Vision and Jack, a show purportedly featuring Jack Black as a renegade astronaut with super mind powers caused by exposure to solar radiation, and his partner Doug, a talking motorcycle who was once a man [voiced by Owen Wilson]

Read the synopsis for more information and screen shots…

Currently reading Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. I first heard about this book on Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 2 DVD commentary, wherein he paraphrased a wise little story about the perils of seeking perfection. Here is the original, from the book:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

This is such a valuable lesson, so well described, that there’s nothing I can really add. Instead I will go and do some work, and maybe some of it will be good.