Movie & Web Site Production

Today's Albuquerque Journal has a story about the disruptions movie production is laying on downtown Albuquerque. The reports started coming out a couple of months ago. In a sense it comes down to the old systems rule about never being able to do just one thing. We have noticed large trucks blocking our favorite park spots and have grumbled, though willing to go with the flow. Our mother, age 88 and slow of foot, is less charitable. The movie trucks and such made it difficult for her to find a downtown cup of tea last week.

The state's movie subsidy—25% cash rebate off the top—may have become the third rail of New Mexico politics, sort of like the subsidizing of ethanol production in Iowa. This is the conclusion from a casual lunch conversation Saturday at the Annual New Mexico Industries Conference at the University of New Mexico. Any change won't happen during the Richardson administration, one man said. Angry thought and comments were tossed at those wondering about the size of the subsidy spending. Also on Saturday, we read, a proposal to cap the subsidy bit the dust. 

At the conference there also came an answer to why Web sites are so big on using colors of type the people can't read. As an example, check the light grey and blue at dukecityfix.com. In the smallest sizes it disappears. The answer came because we asked at the Web and software development panel, which included Chantal Foster, founder and design of DCF. Elaine Montoya, a co-founder of Zocoloco Studios and a designated ace with Adobe products, gave the best answer. She said there are Web site design templates that specify colors. Ms. Foster was less specific but seemed to say the same thing. A guy in the audience commented that products existed allowing one to override the protocols specifying unreadable type. Such products represent a classic subsystem, created to fix a flaw in a system. In other words, people using these design templates don't think.

Ms Foster said DCF gets 500,000 page views each month. Those views come from 50,000 people. Good for her.