Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

So Katherine and I went to see Iron Man at the Post 14 Cinema De Lux near UNH this afternoon. We tried to buy tickets for the 3:40pm show on an automated kiosk, but were surprised to find that the time wasn’t listed. When we went up to the front desk, we were informed that the 3:40pm was a special ‘Director’s Lounge’ showing. Wanting to see the early show, we went for it.

This turned out to be an incredibly awesome idea. For a single dollar extra over the standard matinée, you get the following:

• Seatside food ordering service (we didn’t get anything, but having your snacks brought to via waiter is cool)
• Reserved seats (you pick off of a touchscreen interface and someone comes around to verify that you’re in the seats you selected later on)
• Leather reclining seats (!) with armrests that swivel up and out of the way. Katherine was ecstatic about this (she hates armrests).

I swear, this had to be the most posh movie theater I’ve ever set foot in. In-theater restaurant, Ben & Jerry’s, the Director’s Lounge…why can’t Regal Cinemas get their act together and come up with a great setup like this? This was, hands down, the best movie viewing experience I have ever had. It’s a shame that these guys don’t seem to have a chain presence in Massachusetts, at least not one I’m aware of.

Oh, and the movie? It’s two hours of Marvel awesomeness, definitely Iron Man done right. While it doesn’t quite trump Batman Begins or the first Spider-Man film, it’s pretty close. If you happen to be an action fan, there’s all the more reason to go watch it.

Also, sleepy-sheep, the softest plush animal ever.

Products like the HotCold mug really make my day. How can something so simple be so awesome?

From Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,” this chart by Charles Joseph Minard is a depiction of Napoleon’s forces on their way in and out of Russia in the winter of 1812.

We recently took a look at this chart as a fantastic example of a multivariate display or one that manages to pack multiple variables into a single diagram. This one is particularly awesome because it does the job so well. The narrative below the chart describes it a bit better, but the basic gist is that the large band shows the size of Napoleon’s forces as they marched to (light) and from (dark) Moscow during the 1812 campaign. Minard layers this over a map to better show you where Napoleon’s forces were when changes in size occured. Not only are location and force size mapped, but you can also find time, distance, and temperature information as well. But just look at how thin the returning line is. Hitler made the same mistake as Napoleon over 100 years later!

The lesson here is to never, ever invade Russia during the winter.

Yet another awesome piece of video “art”