Jen took me to see the musical “Big River” last night. It was incredible! Totally awesome! First of all Huck Finn is one of my favorite stories anyway.
I didn’t know what to expect since it was acted by both deaf and hearing actors. I had visions of a quiet theater with captions running – boy was I wrong! It was beautiful! The seemlessness of the singing, acting and signing was flawless. The signing added a poetic, ballet-like effect.
The staging and set design was so cool – very simple layout but fully functional. The way the main set morphed into the raft was genius. There were so many neat things they did – a blog entry can’t to it justice.
The singing, signing and acting were great too. The guy who played Jim was outstanding. (Well, since I only know a little ASL, I’m guessing it was great – I enjoyed it!) The band sounded great as well, playing perched up to one side of the stage.
Nothing got in the way of the story at all. I was totally engrossed from beginning to end. It’s run at the Aronoff ends this weekend, but if you can see it!
Since Jen is taking ASL classes, she said it really helped to see how certain words and phrases translated into ASL.
Playbill details and a critique of the musical.
In my previous post, I mentioned that I didn’t really get where Microsoft went with some of the aspects of ASP.NET. Google is making huge waves with all the cool stuff they are doing exploiting the ideas MS had back with IE 4.0 and MSXML’s introduction. IE 5.0 and 6.0 didn’t break new ground, but matured MSXML, yet, as far as I can tell, didn’t use it to it’s full potential.
CNET has posted recently some interesting articles about Google and Microsoft – looks like MS is playing catch up again, just like they did with the Internet some 10 years ago – even to some of Gates’ own ideas. And I won’t mention some of the comparisions to Google and MS’s Hailstorm and the Google toolbar and MS’s Smart Tags . (Another interesting link.) Maybe we trust Google more than Microsoft? (I personally don’t use any browser toolbars – should I start?)
And while I think Java is pretty cool, Sun missed something by not realizing their own slogan – “The Network is the Computer”.
Sorry if this seems jumbled… just wanted to blog it since I usually spend too much time thinking about how to say it right and then I never get around to it!
I guess I’ll have to accept “Ajax” as the official term of the new breed of webapps. In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Lee Gromes posted an article in the Marketplace/Portals section called “Google Pioneers Use Of Old Microsoft Tools In New Web Programs” and the first two word are “Meet Ajax”. So thank you very much Mr. Jesse James… Garrett, that is.
How about JNX, pronounced jinx for Javascript aNd Xml? Ok, not the greatest, but that’s what I came up with of the top of my head…
Anyway, in the WSJ article, Gromes says the losers are Sun and Microsoft. There is no need to compare Javascript and Java on the client – we all know applets are pretty much dead from a mass market standpoint – but Java on the server is still going strong and Ajax apps can push that market. Microsoft missed the boat on Ajax – why didn’t they push it more? Why did they push ASP.NET and server side rendering of GUI controls? I’m not a ASP.NET programmer, but when I first looked that some of that stuff, I was really confused about what Microsoft was doing.
Whatever it’s called, it’s good stuff! I don’t care about trying to support browsers that are ancient. With CSS, Ajax and Firefox or IE, you can do quite amazing things for the user. (I’m not sure about all the accessibility stuff though.) I’m interested in stuff like Dojo and other things to work with client side rendering – versus server side MVC stuff like Struts. I should mention that I don’t usually do “web sites”, but “web apps” – that can make a difference.
I’m working on making my iTunes now playing feature auto update! Not brain surgery, but still cool!
UPDATE: I wonder if a law suit could ensue? Colgate-Palmolive’s Ajax?
I feel Adam’s pain! The TEXTAREA does generally suck. Maybe someone will come up with a great ajax application for this – at least for an “auto save” feature. I’d say I’d do it, but the moment I say I will, it’ll be years before I get around to it!
By the way, I’m not fond of the term “ajax” for these “new” apps, and “webplications” is even worse! But I’m glad to see folks finally catching up to me! 
Maybe I didn’t have the cool ideas like Google, but I knew this stuff was good!