Zac Zellers

OPTICAL ILLUSION!!!

Since the opening of the Disneyland® Park in 1955, Guests have come to know and treasure the elements that set Disney theme parks and resorts apart. One of these key elements is the traditional appearance and image of the Cast, better known as the Disney Look.

The Disney Look started with Walt Disney’s idea that the “Cast Members” at Disneyland Park were to play an important role in bringing Guests into a fantasy world, and that the Cast would be a large part of the show. Walt had the vision that Cast Members would appear friendly, approachable, and knowledgeable. The Disney Look guaranteed that the Cast did not distract from the show or become the show. Rather, these guidelines were put in place to maintain the consistency of the appearance of the Cast that the Guests have come to love and appreciate over the years.

As Cast Members at the Walt Disney World® Resort, our appearance reflects the commitment to excellence and show quality for which the Company is known.

Appearance
The Disney Look is a classic look that is clean, natural, polished and professional and avoids “cutting edge” trends or extreme styles. It is designed with both our costumed and non-costumed Cast Members in mind. Just as an actor or actress would wear a costume themed to the character they are portraying, a Cast Member wears a costume that supports his or her role as well.

The Disney Look – Includes but is not limited to the following requirements:

Male and Female:
Intentional body alteration or modification for the purpose of achieving a visible, physical effect that disfigures, deforms or similarly detracts from a professional image is prohibited. Examples: visible tattoos, brands, body piercing (other than traditional ear piercing for women), earlobe expansion, tongue piercing or splitting, tooth filling and visible, disfiguring skin implants.

Male:
Jewelry - Only one ring on each hand and a watch are permitted.
Hair - Cut above the ears and not touching the collar in the back. Must be one natural color. The style must be blocked and tapered. No bi-level cuts.
Face - Beards are not acceptable and sideburns cannot extend below the ear lobes. Mustaches must be neatly trimmed and cannot extend below the corners of the mouth.

Female:
Jewelry - Only one ring on each hand is permitted, with the exception being a wedding set, and a watch. One earring in each ear is permitted. Earrings may be clip-on or pierced and must be worn on the bottom of the earlobe. Post earrings may not exceed the size of a quarter. Hoop earrings no larger than a dime are also permitted.
Hair - Hair should be neatly combed and arranged in a classic, easy-to-maintain, proportionally balanced style. Extreme styles are not permitted. If the hair color is changed, it must be natural looking, well maintained and appropriate to the skin tone. Subtle highlighting is permitted as long as it creates a uniform look over the whole head. Shaving of the head or any portion of the head or eyebrows is not permitted.
Make-up - Foundation, blush, lipstick, and mascara in natural tones may be worn. Eyeliner and eye shadow are acceptable in neutral colors that are close to the skin tone. Fingernails polish, if worn, should be clear or flesh tone cream enamel. Nail length may not exceed 1/4” from the fingertip.

From the Walt Disney World Cast Member application.

…and my Tumblarity went to zero.

I dread getting onto the internet even after 3 or 4 days of inactiveness.  I know this is a stale subject but the internet really eggs you on to use it 24/7; and it doesn’t encourage you to use it productively either. The mind-set is so fast and everything has to be so new, which is technically great; but web-sites shouldn’t try to encourage an unhealthy/stressful internet community by basing the merit of your internet existence on how frequently or quickly you post things.

Websites are really making me sick. I guess I’ve been conditioned to think this “popularity contest” way since like 7th grade starting with MySpace: Having a lot of picture comments was cool, even if you had to spam everyone’s bulletin board with “HEY NEW PICZ” or “pc4pc”. Now instead of MySpace-picture-comments it’s Twitter followers or Tumblr reblogs.

I just wish sites would stop “ranking” peoples’ things with numbers and points… it shouldn’t be this competition that it often is.  I know it’s useful to have statistics and stuff so that user-based content sites like Flickr and Digg won’t have crappy stuff on the homepage, but I feel like there should be a better way for web-sites to determine content’s merit and viewer-worthiness than by using systematic logarithms that promote spam, false-tagging or miscategorization, and a blithe lack of creativity and/or effort.

I don’t really subscribe to that mindset but it’s still pretty unwelcoming to sign into to Tumblr after a week-long hiatus and read what essentially says “Welcome home, you have a lot of catching up to do” or “Glad you’re back, everyone stopped caring about what you have to say”. I’m exaggerating, but it definitely isn’t a fantastic feeling that makes me want to continue using any particular service that employs such standards.

magicmolly:

It’s a very specific one: the excitement of being at elementary school “after-hours”. This happened several times yearly at my school, for various performances and showcases for student artwork. Both kinds of event were exciting; they provided a setting in which to socialize with all of the people that normally intimidated you (aka boys).

On such nights the art room was transformed into a refreshments area with large bowls of goldfish crackers and pretzels. There was an implied loosening of the dress code on these nights, so that bold 7th graders might put on some mascara or a tank top.

Crush consummations tended to happen on these nights, too: we admitted who we “liked” and possibly made plans to talk on the phone.

At the time I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what it felt like to be at school afterhours. Words like “frisson” and “romantic palpitation” come to mind now, but all I knew at the time was that my armpits became abnormally sweaty.

This is perfectly articulated.

jstn:

lammer:

I agree entirely that its worth the time and effort to keep an orderly and comprehensive library. I think people with Marco’s attitude will end up regretting their deletions - and with the price of HD space I really don’t see the point. When I found a box of CD’s from high school in my parent’s basement I was overjoyed, and that was only 30-40 albums. I think pack-rat instincts translate easily from your living space to your digital space. But while living with a bunch of crap in your apartment is a drag, living with a bunch of files is not.

This is really true. To me, the only real cost of (or argument against) saving all your music is the time you put into wrangling it. The price of storage negligible. Also, it’s not just about the music you listen to during the day, what about stuff you keep around for mixtapes? Or video soundtracks? Or play at parties? I’ve got stuff in my collection I only dust off for certain crowds, and I’m glad to have it at the ready rather than fucking around with downloading it on the spot. The cost is so small, why not?

Your thoughts on compehensive archiving also applies to movies in my book - why not rip DVDs I like onto a HD?

Totally. I do that too, but I’m less likely to save *everything*. Music is so fleeting that it makes sense to get the access time as close to instant as possible. For watching movies I’m more willing to spend a few minutes to get it set up streaming on Netflix (for instance) because I’ll wind up sitting there for two hours. Spending a few minutes finding a song is the length of a song.

I keep everything in iTunes. I know this is crazy - but I haven’t found a better way. What do you do when you want to listen to stuff in your folder system? I’m too impatient for the 3 second import.

My file association for MP3s is set to Quicktime Player; I can doubleclick a song and it snaps open without getting imported into iTunes (which, in addition to being slow, also clutters the library if it’s on an external disk). For albums I just drag the folder onto VLC.

Now my question: Why can’t iTunes (or another music player) work with such large libraries? I’ve quite literally lay awake thinking about this issue. Obviously Apple doesn’t give a shit about the “mega-library” user, but we exist and we deserve great software that archives and plays mp3s. I know that iTunes organizes itself with an XML library - is there anything that one can do to speed up or improve the functioning of that library?

I wonder myself. iTunes is already so bloated for regular-sized libaries, the prospect of optimizing it for large libraries is probably far off in the minds of the developers. There’s certainly a big niche waiting to be filled. What I really wish Apple would do is implement a system like Aperture vaults, or some other way to quickly swap out whole libraries.

I agree that FLAC and OGG are problematic. I do use FLAC occasionally for stuff I can only find in that format - and import it into iTunes using Fluke. What you didn’t mention in your post that I would like to cast a vote for is the [Apple Lossless codec].

Apple Lossless is awesome, it solves the tagging problem and it plays on Apple music players (unlike FLAC or OGG), but it’s a closed format which makes it hard for me to get down with, especially for archiving. I know Apple isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I still hope they open it up. I actually keep the few ultra-high quality things I have in AIFF, which I know is crazy, but at least it’s open (and still plays on my iPhone).

jstn:

Rebuttal to a rebuttal:

I hate when the default attitude of a dissenting rebuttal is “Cut off your hands!” My response is just as reasonable as the request — the author himself thanked me for my perspective — but I’m sorry that you disagree with it.

I still don’t see why the answer to “how do I clean my house” is “burn it down.”

I would have thought the creator of Muxtape would realise how instrumental the web can be in feeding listening habits. Websites and services like Hype Machine and elbo.ws make it trivial to find anything current and listen to it right there and then, and in most cases, even download it. Services like Amazon MP3 and whatever else is in wide use right now (I don’t use these services) make getting anything on a major label trivial. The list goes on: MySpace, Virb, iMeem, and, once upon a time, Muxtape.

Again, that’s fine if you’re only interested in listening to “current” music or music on major labels. For me, that’s only a small subset of what I listen to. I buy music on Amazon (a habit from before iTunes went mostly DRM-free), but even then you can only download it once. If deleted it I’d have to pay again to hear it again. I’ve also got tons and tons of stuff that will probably never show up on Amazon. Live stuff, stuff from vinyl and cassettes, stuff made by myself or friends, etc. The internet will never, ever completely replace a personal collection no matter how awesome it gets.

To restate my previous point (did you miss it?), there’s no way anyone has time to listen to that much music. Four digits of gigabytes must encompass months of continuous listening. That’s a collector’s library, not a listener’s. How much of your four gigabyte library has less than ten plays? Do you really think you’re making valuable use of your disk space by filling it with music on the offchance that you may want to listen to it some day? I don’t. But it’s fine if we disagree, I still don’t think that makes me as stupid as you’re trying to make me sound.

Lots of it probably only has one or two plays. And yeah, I do think it’s valuable use of the disk space, which is phenomenally cheap for the convenience. 1TB drives are $80 and falling, the price of 5 commercial CDs. I wasn’t trying to make you sound stupid, I was trying to point out that the “precious disk space” argument is weak. Also, I think it’s unfair to assume a “collector” and a “listener” are mutually exclusive identities. A lot of people who listen to music also collect it. I am one of them.

Another gem of advice from the same guy: “If you deleted something you ripped from a CD, rip it again next time you want it.” Seriously? Why rip it at all?

Because I was responding to a guy that was asking about organising his iTunes library.

When I wrote this, I was responding to one person publicly, not trying to cater to everyone’s music collections. But since you asked: convenience (what’s easier — a spotlight search or scanning a wall of CDs?), security (what if I drop it, break it, lose it, burn it, etc?), and generosity (what if I lend it to someone?). The list goes on.

Those all seem like reasons to leave it ripped on your hard disk, rather than ever deleting it. That goes for iTunes or any other type of library.

One more: “MP3s are a fantastic way to archive your music (but FLAC and OGG are better)”. No, they’re not. Esoteric formats, even if they’re super OMG high fidelity, are usually a terrible choice for long-term storage of any kind of data. MP3s are about as universal as it gets, and they support ID3 tags, which is an organizational godsend that FLAC and OGG lack.

This is a personal preference. I’m not wrong, and neither are you. I merely mentioned the formats as a popular choice for another crowd of music-listeners.

No, you said those formats were good a choice “to archive your music”, and you’ve made it clear that you put archivists and listeners into different categories. But you’re right, it’s a personal preference. I still think if your primary interest is organization (especially a large collection) FLAC has serious disadvantages. It has serious disadvantages for listeners too, but that’s another discussion.

I was reminded of something Alex Payne wrote a little while ago, albeit in a different context: “If you want to store data of differing types within a lightweight organization system, I encourage you to check out the filesystem.” That’s how I do it. I’ve only got ~50GB in my iTunes library at any given time, but I keep everything else in a simple hierarchy on an external RAID. No fancy groupings or playlists, just a folder for each artist with a folder inside for each album (or loose tracks). That’s it. iTunes starts to choke after a few thousand songs, but the total filesystem limit on a Mac is in the billions. You’ll never hit the ceiling.

I don’t know which version of my post you read, but this was more or less exactly what I suggested as an alternative to deleting everything.

I concede that we both ultimately recommend moving stuff to an external hard drive, but I think that only weakens your argument for deleting.

Sorry for the rant. This is an issue close to my heart :)

I don’t know why a rant was necessary, Tumblr’s pretty good at fostering good old-fashioned discussion, but no problem! Looks like we’re mostly in agreement on the major points!

By ‘rant’ I really meant a long text post of any sort, which seems to go against Tumblr’s usual quick, ephemeral rhythm. In any case, thanks for the gentlemanly spar :)