Think "Avatar" looks "real"? You have no idea...

I present to you The Third & The Seventh, a completely computer-generated 12-minute film by Alex Roman.

Honestly. Even if you rarely watch embedded videos, you should see this one for the sheer verisimilitude. Yes, the image you see below in the thumbnail -- Louis Kahn's parliament building in Dhaka, Bangladesh -- is not a photograph.

For those who absolutely cannot watch video online, stills are available at the website for the film.

EDITED TO ADD: Now that I've seen the thing all the way through (I felt it was good enough to jump the gun, earlier):

* The cubical space with the circular concrete cutouts? That's Kahn's library for Phillips Exeter Academy. So having books flying around in it is sly.

* Lifting Nyman's score for Gattaca is a nice touch.

* One can't help thinking of Ron Fricke's IMAX film Chronos with some of the time lapse effects being used.

*^*^*^*

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

All due props

After giving me a window of 3-5 days to get Minimax back, the Southcenter Apple Store called last night and said it was ready. I've picked it up, and everything appears to be doing well. 1 day turnaround is pretty good.

In an interesting way of setting what the marketing jargon calls a "reference price," they printed up a receipt to let me know this Main Logic Board replacement would have cost $617.81 had the machine not been under warranty. That's about as much as it cost new. No, nobody's trying to sell an Applecare extension, why do you ask?

Now comes the most difficult part of trying to fix an intermittent problem like this: Waiting to see if it goes wrong again, while realizing early success may only be a Black Swan.

Oddest side effect found so far: My serial number isn't in System Profiler any more. It only says,

"Serial Number (system): System Serial#"

Having kept all my receipts, though, I think that'll be OK.