One of my old Apple contacts, Steve Borsch, had his website listed as the Minnesota Blog of the Day on City Pages this week. Looks like he’s having a good time in my favorite city in the world, London…DK

Along we most of the free world, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest last night. I liked it a lot, although I thought it dragged a little in the middle (two and a half hours in total). My wife loves Johnny and I love Keira, so we were both happy (although this is definitely a Jack Sparrow movie). I think my favorite character, though, was Ragetti, played by actor Mackenzie Crook (Gareth in the original BBC series The Office). The visual effects and stunts are incredible and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many names listed during the credits to a movie (I can’t imagine what the break-even amount must be). Great ending, too.

I practically grew up with the original Pirates attraction at Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. The version in Disneyland Paris is really good too. When I read they were going to add Jack Sparrow Audio-Animatronics figures to the rides, I was a little disappointed. After seeing some videos online of the additions and watching the new movie, I’ve changed my mind. Disney has taken a great ride and created a great movie series worthy of the name…DK

The past two days at HSRA were spent kicking off our summer staff development. While I abhor meetings as a general principle, I think we achieved a lot during the sessions.

Thanks to the coordination of a semi-outsider as facilitator, the sessions were kept on pace and on target. We started with a review of the mission statement of High School for Recording Arts:

The mission of HSRA is to provide youth the opportunity to achieve a high school diploma through the exploration and operation of the music business and other creative endeavors.

From there, we formed four summer committees: technology, studio, education and administration. I was assigned the lead on the technology committee and we set about identifying what we are good at and where we need to improve. (more…)