sorry... i'm watching the office right now...
from the iPhone department...
alright, so, previously i went on and on about how wonderful the iphone is, or will be...
my stance is solid. this thing is pretty amazing.
however, i have enjoyed some of the great articles that have popped up already. the one from gizmodo is pretty good, the guy says that he used it to call his mommy. i lol'd a bit.
the best write up that i've seen so far, however, is from the new york times. i enjoyed it because it doesn't seem to pull any punches, and while you can tell that the guy has some issues about this new device of glory, it seems pretty well rounded and fair. from his time with the new iphone, he wrote an interesting FAQ (frequently asked questions), or as i like to call it... NO! it mostly focuses on the fact that this phone cannot be used on any network other than cingular... but it's funny as fuck. (the new york times article is written by david pogue, he has quite a few other articles, many of which are actually pretty good reads. of course, he's writing for a pretty hardcore paper, so i imagine he'd have to be pretty good to get there, lol).
also... in news of sheer hilarity, apple didn't QUITE finalize the 'iphone' name thing before they announced it, now cisco is pissed. read this article or this article... or don't, just trust that they are all sorts of suing apple. of course, iphone is really a bit misleading anyway, this thing is truly less a phone and an all encompassing multimedia device.
good times.
blu-ray vs. hd-dvd... pr0n is teh tiebreaker!
although many of the net slackers these days do not remember (or weren't yet alive for) the great VHS vs. BetaMax battles of yore (and even fewer even know about the u-matic catastrophe much earlier on, DAT is was not...), i will tell you that the battle was vicious, as i understand it. i don't remember it either, however, i've heard plenty. the truth was that betamax was a 'superior' format, and in all truth, it survived for nearly 30 years in japan, where you could still purchase NEW edbeta tapes providing much better resolution than vhs and even dvd... one of things that interested me the most was that sony's (betamax) defeat at the hands of vhs was, while due to many things, partially caused by the porn industries selection of using vhs as their standard of choice. it's not a 'well known' fact, mostly because people don't like to talk about porn if they can help it.
the reasoning was that vhs was a less selective, less expensive and over all 'looser' standard. sony, as you may know, is one of my least favorite companies, and i will not launch into another tirade, but i will leave it at that. they have a lot of things that they do well, but mostly, they are a money mongering, overly closed ended and proprietary company.
now, with the NEW format battle raging, bluray vs. hd-dvd, we have a whole new set of issues.
sony's bluray is, again, a 'better' quality standard. bluray allows for a much higher capacity disc (testing has it up to 33GB per layer, roughly 7 times as much as the current dvd standard, about about twice that of hd-dvd), and has a 'tighter' standard of codecs and laser construction. this means that conent is 'automatically' better... although i don't feel like explaining that, trust me on it. sony's proprietary nature is what keeps this one down, it's more expensive on the manufacturing front, more restrictive and much more closed format.
hd-dvd, however, is much more open. the main proponent of hd-dvd is microsoft (i say this because, 1. it's true, and 2. sony's ps3 vs. xbox360... c'mon! but, yes, it's a toshiba thing). now, i'm not a huge fan of microsoft either, and terms of open operability, they aren't known for 'playing friendly' with everyone else, but with hd-dvd, it's true, which i believe is due to toshiba being at the forefront of the technology. anyway... to the point!
now, it seems that the porn industry has thrown their hat in the ring! and they are siding with... hd-dvd! again, it seems they are shying away from sony! they cite a few reasons, such as it being cheaper and easier to produce. it also seems to have a lot to do with the fact that sony announced they will not ALLOW porn to sully their precious bluray discs! wow.
given the fact that adult movies comprise a ridiculous amount of annual dvd sales... i can't imagine that this is the best financial decision sony could make. i mean, morality is one thing, but you have to know that those execs are just as likely to stick a copy of 'teen age sluts from jupiter' in their dvd player every once in a while like the rest of the world.
and, sony is LOSING the sales race. first, their first players are TWICE the price, ringing in around $1000 for bluray, while the first line of toshiba hd-dvd players broke at $500. also, it seems their $600 PS3 gaming behemoth is not getting bluray players into as many households as they thought, ESPECIALLY in their homeland of japan. although, it's the wii that winning out there... which doesn't use ANY movie standard... hmm. either way, while this isn't the final chapter in the story, i am still voting that hd-dvd is the more likely standard to win. of course, being so close on the heels of the dvd revolution, it's all early adopters now anyway. in terms of sheer percentages very few people actually own hdtvs now, and of those, even fewer have the current hdmi standard meaning they can't watch either now anyway.
i could go on and on. but... i won't. yer probably all glossy eyed anyway...
i'm almost done on this subject.
but, in related news... 2160p!
well, ces is a great time of year for announcements in technology. it seems westinghouse (you know, the brand that best buy blows out the door... they make fridges too...) has developed what they call 'quad hdtv'. damn is all i've got to say.
some background.
long long ago, in a galaxy far far away... they invented tv. it was originally broadcast from one room to another. similar to edison's first telephone conversation. originally, they decided to send 480 lines of information. why 480 lines? just cause, they knew what could be 'transmitted' at the time (ok, it was actually something like 500 some lines.. which is still the case, but that's getting REALLY technical, the bottom line is what you SEE, right?). this was long before wifi you know, 802.11n draft standard ftw. anyway, they did it.. but only half the picture went through. much head scratching occurred and they knew something had to be changed.
well now, someone thought, "Hey, interlace it!". bam. 480i was born... the i standing for interlaced. that means that you have 480 lines, but you remove HALF of them, and intersperse at equal intervals, blank lines. that means you have 240 lines of picture and 240 lines of blank. this is what people watched, in black and white.
many many years later someone said... umm... color?
thus it became, and it was good, and for many more decades, this was the only innovation we saw. 640x480 interlaced color moving pictures.
now, it came to be that people wanted more. you see, film is much higher 'resolution', and people wanted that, as much of that as possible. someone said, well, there's 480 lines here, lets open that up. ta-da, 480p! progressive. progressive means NO LINES! it means, there are 480 lines, starting at the bottom and being displaying PROGRESSIVELY up until there's a full picture. this happens 30 times a second and it makes moving pictures to our eyes.
oh the neat!
but that wasn't enough, no sir. you see, people wanted things EVEN CLEARER!
so, it happened that they invented the HD standard, and oh how good it is!
it was split two ways. 720p and 1080i. i'll remind you that p = progressive and i = interlaced. both look great and both appear similarly. i prefer the 720p, myself, wich you will find on FIXED PIXEL displays, using matrices to make pictures. this is anything but a tube type tv, i.e. LCD / Plasma / DLP and most other acronyms. rear project and standard tubes are generally 1080i, and it all has to do with the 'grill' that is used and the way they fire phosphors... blah, whatever.
now, a few years goes by and people say, screw it, we want 1080p! yes. the p is gooder!
they are trickling out, and while you can't find much in the way of true content that is 1080p outside of video games, it will come, all in due time.
now, going back to that first transmission where they found out they could send enough content at first. the same is true now, there's no way to STORE enough content to make 1080p worthwhile. it just takes up too much damn space, even on bluray / hd-dvd discs... there's some economics and such involved too... but it takes a lot of compression and a lot of storage and we're just not there yet.
so, these high pixel displays are reserved for 'real time' content like video games and live satellite feeds and things of that nature.
enter westinghouse and their display. it's a show of what CAN be done, and likely is meant to show what's coming around the bend. time. time will tell all, but i expect that within the next ten years we will have 2160p capable ps5's and xbox720s.
wow... that was a rambling discourse of pointlessness. enjoy the knowledge and use it well.
as a sidenote, in terms of sheer resolution... 720p displays are typically 1366x768 (WXGA+)... we love it as consumers, but we're going the other way as well. the ipod videos, zunes, and iriver / archos etc. personal video players are running 320x240. wrap your head around that one... ;)
from the ricockulousness files...
paypal won't release the funds from a memorial fund of a dead soldier to the people that set it up because paypal chose to mark it as belonging to a 'non-profit' when it was set up. they are a for profit organization. now the money is being held in limbo for 180 days, for some reason i don't quite understand. read the story here... maybe give paypal a call and ask them why they are retarded.
real heroes!
an unsigned band, koopa, is poised to hit the top 40 charts without ever pressing a cd, according to this bbc article. there's new rules being placed to make it so that downloadable songs are counted toward the uk's top 40 charts even if they don't have a cd, and are unsigned! wow.
that's just great.
it's called black sheep
it will be the greatest movie ever. cult following seen waiting in the wings. watch the trailer here.
bahahhahahahahha
mpaa = teh dumb
as promised...
i finally got some birthday pics posted, so, check them out... moira at chuck e. cheese's.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
these things i must say...
which isn't much... yet you'll find content a plenty today...
apple is evil!
damn them for making me want a thing so bad!
it was today, this day, that the words of steve jobs, at macworld 2007, were delivered, in the form of a keynote, had me truly longing for an apple product like i've not done before.
what follows is pure editorial on the new product and my opinions of apple, inc. (they changed the name officially, dropping computer from the title). if you would like to skip all that, click this link and prepare to drool... this link will be repeated at the end if you'd actually like to read what i have to say...)
don't get me wrong. i'm not a true apple hater. i have an ipod, which is ancient but well loved (though replaced by my newer, prettier zune). for a brief period i owned a powerbook g4, and even now wouldn't mind a new g5 or intel based macbook pro. i would gladly accept the fact that apple, in stark contrast of the rest of the desktop computing world, have INTENTIONALLY designed their rediculously powerful towers to weigh something in excees of 3,000 lbs. it's fine, because they're neat. i would accept the higher latency refresh rates on one of their cinema displays, because, who doesn't want 30"+ of lcd beauty that matches or 1 1/2 ton tower? who wouldn't want two like i do... who i ask?
of course, my relationship with apple is love/hate. because, i, like many others, can see well beyond the beauty of their products. they make things that look good and are marketed well. this by itself is acceptable, but they do so while making us, the consumer, pay a premium for the pretty boxes. the minimalist matte black finish and unassuming white apple logo on the the cardboard enclosures their product comes in alone means i'm paying 10% more.
they do this without a lot of extra capability. i've said it, and been criticized for it, but i stand by it. it's all the more true now that their computers are running intel processers of the same class you can find in a pc. the truth is that they aren't more stable or less succesptabel to virii, they just deal with it differently. in terms of stability, for example, if a windows machine becomes unstable, it tells you, in near panicky tones, that it's all over ctrl-alt-del, we're done. sorry, you probably lost what you were working on. but, on mac, a beautiful dialogue box is presented informing you that macos is in need of restarting, and you click the button, for the good of humanity. it doesn't happen less often, as a matter of fact, i have many friends that will tell you without the slightest hint of sarcasm that it happens more frequently. in terms of virii... well, let's be honest. no one is going to drop a bomb in a cornfield in the hopes of taking out 1/120th of a countries population, are they?
however, this day, TODAY, it was announced that apple has 'redefined' the world of cell phones. in most cases i would skoff at a statement like this. but they show you HOW they've done it. i can truly say... WOW!
while they announced the long awaited 'iTV' (and are simply calling it apple tv, which is a simple video conversion box meant to help integrate all of your home a/v equipment into the apple collective...), it was far less interesting than the announcement of the long rumored iPhone.
yep, it's called iPhone. and it's amazing. forget the krazr and the rockr, forget chocolate and the mda, forget the blackberry and treo's... forget the word smartphone, cellphone, and forget everything you knew about integrated multimedia devices.
here's what it is. it's a device. it comes with onboard memory to the tune of 4GB or 8GB. it is compatible with GSM and the EDGE network. it's a cellphone with no primary buttons or keyboard. it's entirely touchcreen, using multi-touch recognition to perform everytask, and softkeys for all of it's input.
ok, you say, so?
it plays music. it allows you to flip, via touch, through your library. it allows you to send sms txts while performing multiple tasks. it plays videos, which it can do while downloading email in the background and updating a weather widget.
widget? oh yes, it uses those beloved macos apps that do amazing things for you. but how, you might ask. simple. it has macos onboard.
yes, macos in built in. so is safari. and you might think, so what, i've seen smartphones and their browsers, they suck. not so for the iPhone. it has breathtaking imagry, and can be zoomed in and out using 2 figners. you see, when you open a page, the entire contents and navigate about the page like you might a large digital image, which it supports very nicely as well because of it's built in iphoto interface and 2MP camera. and you can look at them and webpages with portrait or landscape without touching a button, a built in sensor will reorientate the image based on how the phone is held... and there are other magic-like sensors for light and the weather you are ON the phone to help conserve battery life... smart.
well, you say, the web sucks on cell service. not trure, though, the EDGE is near broadband speed, and expected to get faster very soon, but that's ok, because you can use the built in 802.11 b/g wifi to connect as well.
while you're connected, you might as well send a text message while downloading a song from itunes and talking via your bluetooth headset.
omg! you might say. you might, if you knew what i was talking about. if you don't... just take a look at it. instantly you'll see while it's the tenchophile's wet dream come true. it's just amazing.
alright, you'll probably think, damn, i bet it's pricy as hell...
to a degree, it is. they said to themselves, "hey, selves, how much is the ipod?" "$199," was their reply. "ok self," they said, "how much for a decent smartphone?" "well, $299," they replied again. "and what we've got here should be how much then?"
they hemmed and hawed. they knew they could get a grand a piece off these things easily. they knew they could go sony on it and push the $1500 mark. instead they landed on a simple math problem. ipod + smartphone = iPhone...
for those of you of limited math skills, that's "$499" for the 4GB model, and "$599" for the 8GB version. for everything that you get here... that seems almost laughably priced. but, i will gladly accept their insanity, as if they were 'krazy martin of krazy martin's auto sales' because, well, i'm just that way.
no word yet how much the service will run that i've seen, but i'm guessing it will be premium, being that there's a lot of innovation. not least of which is the new 'visual voicemail box'. hate having to listen through each message in your vm box to get to the one you want, which is usually the most recent and therefore at the end of the queue? me too... try just opening your voicemail screen on the iPhone and tapping the name of the person who's message you want to hear. simple, right? yep. why didn't anyone else think of that?
200+ patents have gone into the thing and i am pretty much blown away by it.
wow. it's the only thing i can say.
now, if only i had the money to buy one when (if, actually) they get their fcc rights.
again, if you didn't click the link above, please do so now and be amazed! apple's iPhone
truly astounding. apple isn't one for doing things on a small scale or whit baby steps, they are going for the gusto with this one.
bastards.
zune news that will pale in comparison...
alright, here comes some telephone like series of quoting. according to a gamasutra.com article, bloomberg is reporting that it was announced at CES is L.V., NV, that the zune will we be getting some games! i'd say soon... but it's anticipated in mid 2008.
it's not a huge surprise, but it's pleasant news to me. it's assumed that this is in response to the ipod's game library, or perhaps the ipod's games are in response to the rumors about the coming games for the zune. eitherway, it'll be interesting at least.
the con game!
i don't know why, but i always love reading and watching and generally hearing about con artistry. and it is that: artistry.
this recent story was picked up on fark.com, but i read the article in utter disbelief. a woman has gone to cold war espionage-esque lengths to steal the identities of several people, the most recent of which is a long missing woman, all in the effort of attending some high level colleges.
not for the money. of course the money seems to be coming as if by magic for her, but no, it seems she's doing this for motives unseen. she's doing it... just to go to harvard and columbia?
truly astounding, read the new york post article to find out more. it's nearly unbelievable.... but, if nothing else, is a good read!
the new mike section...
mike, a great contributor to this blog, whether he likes it or not, sent me some more good links.
first, we have....
amazing screw on head @ amazon.com. per his recommendation i read the first customer review, i encourage you to do the same. as i told him... it had me at david hyde pierce. ;)
from the product description:
"In this hilarious send-up of Lovecraftian horror and steampunk adventure, President Abraham Lincoln's top spy is a bodyless head known only as Screw-On Head (Paul Giamatti). When arch-fiend Emperor Zombie (David Hyde Pierce) steals an artifact that will enable him to threaten all life on Earth, the task of stopping him is assigned to Screw-on Head. Fortunately, Screw-On Head is not alone on this perilous quest. He is aided by his multitalented manservant, Mr. Groin, and by his talking canine cohort, Mr. Dog. Can this unorthodox trio stop Emperor Zombie in time? Does Screw-On Head have a body awesome enough to stop the horrors that have been unleashed? Where can we get a talking dog? All these questions (O.K., maybe not that last one) are answered by the thrilling tale of The AMAZING SCREW ON HEAD! Based on the award-winning comic book by Mike Mignola, creator of HELLBOY."
yay i say!
in news of the great 'frank millers's 300'!
joblo.com visits the set of 300! this stands on it's own, check it out!
some news on grindhouse...
specifically the 'faux' trailers in the middle... i'd happily see rob zombie's the werewolf women of the s.s. in feature length!
and finally:
mike's open letter to the creators of the new fantastic four sequel, a trailer can be seen here... (this is copied verbatum from an email to me, this is done without permission and simply to make myself look good... suck it mike!)
soylent green is... people!?!?
not really.. but cloned meat? i don't know, i guess if it's tasty and it doesn't kill me.... i'll eat it... read all about it! (no... not people... just rtfa)
something to occupy your time...
i've been playing with this in my free time for quite awhile... well, this and others like it...
it's a sign generator... in this case... a church sign generator. go ahead... try it out!
there are other 'generators' there too... pointless entertainment.
these are merely links without editorial...
re: cancer and smoking...
miracle cure and supporting article
another miracle cure
smoking does not cause lung cancer and failure to cause lung cancer
that's it...
hopefully, sometime in the next couple days i'll get the pics of my daughter's birthday up... but, i'll need to comb through them to find some good'ns.
i would like to mention that i hate womens and their evils. just putting it out there.
thanks.
have a good one internets!
apple is evil!
damn them for making me want a thing so bad!
it was today, this day, that the words of steve jobs, at macworld 2007, were delivered, in the form of a keynote, had me truly longing for an apple product like i've not done before.
what follows is pure editorial on the new product and my opinions of apple, inc. (they changed the name officially, dropping computer from the title). if you would like to skip all that, click this link and prepare to drool... this link will be repeated at the end if you'd actually like to read what i have to say...)
don't get me wrong. i'm not a true apple hater. i have an ipod, which is ancient but well loved (though replaced by my newer, prettier zune). for a brief period i owned a powerbook g4, and even now wouldn't mind a new g5 or intel based macbook pro. i would gladly accept the fact that apple, in stark contrast of the rest of the desktop computing world, have INTENTIONALLY designed their rediculously powerful towers to weigh something in excees of 3,000 lbs. it's fine, because they're neat. i would accept the higher latency refresh rates on one of their cinema displays, because, who doesn't want 30"+ of lcd beauty that matches or 1 1/2 ton tower? who wouldn't want two like i do... who i ask?
of course, my relationship with apple is love/hate. because, i, like many others, can see well beyond the beauty of their products. they make things that look good and are marketed well. this by itself is acceptable, but they do so while making us, the consumer, pay a premium for the pretty boxes. the minimalist matte black finish and unassuming white apple logo on the the cardboard enclosures their product comes in alone means i'm paying 10% more.
they do this without a lot of extra capability. i've said it, and been criticized for it, but i stand by it. it's all the more true now that their computers are running intel processers of the same class you can find in a pc. the truth is that they aren't more stable or less succesptabel to virii, they just deal with it differently. in terms of stability, for example, if a windows machine becomes unstable, it tells you, in near panicky tones, that it's all over ctrl-alt-del, we're done. sorry, you probably lost what you were working on. but, on mac, a beautiful dialogue box is presented informing you that macos is in need of restarting, and you click the button, for the good of humanity. it doesn't happen less often, as a matter of fact, i have many friends that will tell you without the slightest hint of sarcasm that it happens more frequently. in terms of virii... well, let's be honest. no one is going to drop a bomb in a cornfield in the hopes of taking out 1/120th of a countries population, are they?
however, this day, TODAY, it was announced that apple has 'redefined' the world of cell phones. in most cases i would skoff at a statement like this. but they show you HOW they've done it. i can truly say... WOW!
while they announced the long awaited 'iTV' (and are simply calling it apple tv, which is a simple video conversion box meant to help integrate all of your home a/v equipment into the apple collective...), it was far less interesting than the announcement of the long rumored iPhone.
yep, it's called iPhone. and it's amazing. forget the krazr and the rockr, forget chocolate and the mda, forget the blackberry and treo's... forget the word smartphone, cellphone, and forget everything you knew about integrated multimedia devices.here's what it is. it's a device. it comes with onboard memory to the tune of 4GB or 8GB. it is compatible with GSM and the EDGE network. it's a cellphone with no primary buttons or keyboard. it's entirely touchcreen, using multi-touch recognition to perform everytask, and softkeys for all of it's input.
ok, you say, so?
it plays music. it allows you to flip, via touch, through your library. it allows you to send sms txts while performing multiple tasks. it plays videos, which it can do while downloading email in the background and updating a weather widget.
widget? oh yes, it uses those beloved macos apps that do amazing things for you. but how, you might ask. simple. it has macos onboard.
yes, macos in built in. so is safari. and you might think, so what, i've seen smartphones and their browsers, they suck. not so for the iPhone. it has breathtaking imagry, and can be zoomed in and out using 2 figners. you see, when you open a page, the entire contents and navigate about the page like you might a large digital image, which it supports very nicely as well because of it's built in iphoto interface and 2MP camera. and you can look at them and webpages with portrait or landscape without touching a button, a built in sensor will reorientate the image based on how the phone is held... and there are other magic-like sensors for light and the weather you are ON the phone to help conserve battery life... smart.
well, you say, the web sucks on cell service. not trure, though, the EDGE is near broadband speed, and expected to get faster very soon, but that's ok, because you can use the built in 802.11 b/g wifi to connect as well.while you're connected, you might as well send a text message while downloading a song from itunes and talking via your bluetooth headset.
omg! you might say. you might, if you knew what i was talking about. if you don't... just take a look at it. instantly you'll see while it's the tenchophile's wet dream come true. it's just amazing.
alright, you'll probably think, damn, i bet it's pricy as hell...
to a degree, it is. they said to themselves, "hey, selves, how much is the ipod?" "$199," was their reply. "ok self," they said, "how much for a decent smartphone?" "well, $299," they replied again. "and what we've got here should be how much then?"
they hemmed and hawed. they knew they could get a grand a piece off these things easily. they knew they could go sony on it and push the $1500 mark. instead they landed on a simple math problem. ipod + smartphone = iPhone...
for those of you of limited math skills, that's "$499" for the 4GB model, and "$599" for the 8GB version. for everything that you get here... that seems almost laughably priced. but, i will gladly accept their insanity, as if they were 'krazy martin of krazy martin's auto sales' because, well, i'm just that way.
no word yet how much the service will run that i've seen, but i'm guessing it will be premium, being that there's a lot of innovation. not least of which is the new 'visual voicemail box'. hate having to listen through each message in your vm box to get to the one you want, which is usually the most recent and therefore at the end of the queue? me too... try just opening your voicemail screen on the iPhone and tapping the name of the person who's message you want to hear. simple, right? yep. why didn't anyone else think of that?
200+ patents have gone into the thing and i am pretty much blown away by it.wow. it's the only thing i can say.
now, if only i had the money to buy one when (if, actually) they get their fcc rights.
again, if you didn't click the link above, please do so now and be amazed! apple's iPhone
truly astounding. apple isn't one for doing things on a small scale or whit baby steps, they are going for the gusto with this one.
bastards.
zune news that will pale in comparison...
alright, here comes some telephone like series of quoting. according to a gamasutra.com article, bloomberg is reporting that it was announced at CES is L.V., NV, that the zune will we be getting some games! i'd say soon... but it's anticipated in mid 2008.
it's not a huge surprise, but it's pleasant news to me. it's assumed that this is in response to the ipod's game library, or perhaps the ipod's games are in response to the rumors about the coming games for the zune. eitherway, it'll be interesting at least.
the con game!
i don't know why, but i always love reading and watching and generally hearing about con artistry. and it is that: artistry.
this recent story was picked up on fark.com, but i read the article in utter disbelief. a woman has gone to cold war espionage-esque lengths to steal the identities of several people, the most recent of which is a long missing woman, all in the effort of attending some high level colleges.
not for the money. of course the money seems to be coming as if by magic for her, but no, it seems she's doing this for motives unseen. she's doing it... just to go to harvard and columbia?
truly astounding, read the new york post article to find out more. it's nearly unbelievable.... but, if nothing else, is a good read!
the new mike section...
mike, a great contributor to this blog, whether he likes it or not, sent me some more good links.
first, we have....
amazing screw on head @ amazon.com. per his recommendation i read the first customer review, i encourage you to do the same. as i told him... it had me at david hyde pierce. ;)
from the product description:
"In this hilarious send-up of Lovecraftian horror and steampunk adventure, President Abraham Lincoln's top spy is a bodyless head known only as Screw-On Head (Paul Giamatti). When arch-fiend Emperor Zombie (David Hyde Pierce) steals an artifact that will enable him to threaten all life on Earth, the task of stopping him is assigned to Screw-on Head. Fortunately, Screw-On Head is not alone on this perilous quest. He is aided by his multitalented manservant, Mr. Groin, and by his talking canine cohort, Mr. Dog. Can this unorthodox trio stop Emperor Zombie in time? Does Screw-On Head have a body awesome enough to stop the horrors that have been unleashed? Where can we get a talking dog? All these questions (O.K., maybe not that last one) are answered by the thrilling tale of The AMAZING SCREW ON HEAD! Based on the award-winning comic book by Mike Mignola, creator of HELLBOY."
yay i say!
in news of the great 'frank millers's 300'!
joblo.com visits the set of 300! this stands on it's own, check it out!
some news on grindhouse...
specifically the 'faux' trailers in the middle... i'd happily see rob zombie's the werewolf women of the s.s. in feature length!
and finally:
mike's open letter to the creators of the new fantastic four sequel, a trailer can be seen here... (this is copied verbatum from an email to me, this is done without permission and simply to make myself look good... suck it mike!)
Query 1: Have you seen the trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of thehaving now watched the trailer he speaks of... i couldn't agree more. i assume that silver surfer is acting as galctus' herald at this point... but... it's so hard to tell from this blurb... i will be forced to do more research. i will say this. while i didn't hate the first one, i so much HATED the casting that it made it hard to enjoy... jessica alba, while definitely high on the list of women i'd love to practice baby making with, cannot and will not EVER be a good fit for mrs. richards... i don't care how hot she is... i will inevitibly see this one, and i assume i will gripe about it. but oh well... marvel can have my money. they've given me enough, i don't mind donating to the cause...
Silver Surfer?
Comment 1: At the end of the trailer, Johnny Storm has been
"extinguished" and is "dropped" in to the Earth's orbit, in space, by
the Silver Surfer.
Query 2: How the hell does that work? A) He would explode due to the
severe lack of air pressure in space. B) He would freeze to death
(though I'm sure that they'll say that his warm internal temperature
kept him alive, though that doesn't explain why his skin wasn't frozen
off because his skin, probably, is not much warmer than ours seeing as
how he can still fornicate with human women.) C) He would be torn apart
by the friction created by traveling through the Earth's atmosphere at
terminal velocity (being on fire would not be of much assistance
there). D) He would suffocate due to the aforementioned lack of air.
Comment 2: I call bullshit on this movie. Don't try to fool me with
all that crap. I know my shit. Physics don't cease to exist just
because you were caught in a gamma storm in space and developed
super-human powers. The Invisible Woman could, theoretically, create a
force-field strong enough to resist the friction and lack of air
pressure in space as well as contain a decent supply of air, but that
still wouldn't solve the temperature problem. I could see Johnny and
Sue Storm surviving in space by combining their powers, but
individually, they would be dead before you can say, "it's clobbering time".
soylent green is... people!?!?
not really.. but cloned meat? i don't know, i guess if it's tasty and it doesn't kill me.... i'll eat it... read all about it! (no... not people... just rtfa)
something to occupy your time...
i've been playing with this in my free time for quite awhile... well, this and others like it...
it's a sign generator... in this case... a church sign generator. go ahead... try it out!
there are other 'generators' there too... pointless entertainment.
these are merely links without editorial...
re: cancer and smoking...
miracle cure and supporting article
another miracle cure
smoking does not cause lung cancer and failure to cause lung cancer
that's it...
hopefully, sometime in the next couple days i'll get the pics of my daughter's birthday up... but, i'll need to comb through them to find some good'ns.
i would like to mention that i hate womens and their evils. just putting it out there.
thanks.
have a good one internets!
Monday, January 8, 2007
oh yeah...
this is a reminder to myself... i have over 4000 tracks on my zune... and my 'zune software' keeps track of play counts. since i've been rather unambitous, i've really just listened on shuffle almost exclusively, skipping a few tracks here and there that just didn't make sense at the time... why then, do i have have over 70% of the tracks in my list NOT PLAYED and many songs that have been played 3 or 4 times?
not random....
read about something like this in the old itunes...
probably bill gates' fault...
not random....
read about something like this in the old itunes...
probably bill gates' fault...
just a quick note...
i'm fairly exhausted after a long day at work and an even longer night at chuck e. cheese's.
my younger daughter, moira, turned 5 yesterday, and, ever the little angel, she recalled the promise i made her last year at her sister's birthday party, where i told her that she could go to chuck e. cheese's this year for her birthday.
you can't welch on that sort of thing...
so, tonight we went for a few hours. it was fun, at least, my girls had fun. i got a lot of pics that i'll hopefully get up into picassa sooner or later... you can see the joy of it. we left with around $45 worth of pizza in our bellies and cheap plastic trinkets in tow.
luckily, being a monday night, it was not very busy. also, i think the new dave and busters just up the street might be stealin' away some of their business.
mar. 2nd is my older daughter's (tristan rose) 7th birthday. i've got to come up with something for that, now that she's old enough to have her little friends come with her somewhere, i'm sure that it will have to be something novel and different.
now accepting ideas that won't bankrupt me.
have a good night internets.
my younger daughter, moira, turned 5 yesterday, and, ever the little angel, she recalled the promise i made her last year at her sister's birthday party, where i told her that she could go to chuck e. cheese's this year for her birthday.
you can't welch on that sort of thing...
so, tonight we went for a few hours. it was fun, at least, my girls had fun. i got a lot of pics that i'll hopefully get up into picassa sooner or later... you can see the joy of it. we left with around $45 worth of pizza in our bellies and cheap plastic trinkets in tow.
luckily, being a monday night, it was not very busy. also, i think the new dave and busters just up the street might be stealin' away some of their business.
mar. 2nd is my older daughter's (tristan rose) 7th birthday. i've got to come up with something for that, now that she's old enough to have her little friends come with her somewhere, i'm sure that it will have to be something novel and different.
now accepting ideas that won't bankrupt me.
have a good night internets.
a story of my childhood...
i thought that perhaps a story of my younger life would help people to understand me better. i've often heard people tell me that they don't remember much from before they were 4 or 5, i have thought that the reason for this is that they had good lives. happiness, while usually it can have a big impact in your life, usually is only impactful if it's contrasted in some way. i remember a surprising amount of my life at the age of 2...
this story, however, takes place when i was 4 years old. as a matter of fact, i'd just turned 4. at that time my family and i lived in norwalk, california. my father was the cheif engineer at the state hospital there, which was a large primarily mental health facility. we lived on site, there were quite a few houses as well as several apartment complexes for the lower level employees. my dad's position afforded him a house off on the far north side of the campus, my back yard had several palm trees and butted up against a massive iron fence, which was painted white. i can't tell you the number of times i'd watch the patients tear across the lawn, security guards trailing close behind, where they'd hit the fence and begin to climb, only to be torn down right away and dragged back to where they'd come from. it was an interesting life.
while i've mentioned that my father was not exactly the greatest person on the planet, this story takes place before things had gotten to where he was beating me. this was during the knock down drag out fights between him and my mother while i would hide under my mickey mouse comforter and pretend to sleep.
this story is not about my father, but someone near as awful. it's about one of his bothers, mike. i have two paternal uncles, mike and jim. jim i never really knew because he lived a very cocaine filled life, if i'm not mistaken, after his wife died of cancer he over dosed on something shortly thereafter.
but, michael... uncle mike i saw more of, especially after moving back to minnesota, where both of my parent's families are originally from. he lives in st. paul, but i haven't seen him since his wedding in the late 80's... or was it my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary? i'm not quite sure, but it's been a while. before that, i saw him when he was trying to convince my mother that she was a horrible person and that i should live with him until my father could come to collect me...
this story, i had been four for about a month, perhaps. and he had flown out to visit the family. i remember him asking me what i'd wanted for the birthday, and i replied instantly that i wanted a transformer. i responded with gusto. i went into detail about how cool optimus prime was, and the that i wanted an optimus prime or a megatron, but that i would be happy with bumblebee or hotrod. i told him about the cartoon, from which i drew my passion, and told him how cool the toys were because you could change them from robots to cars and planes and things! wow! this would have been 1985.
his visit was uneventful for the most part, but i remember him taking me aside to give me my gift. i believe i was in a rental car, because i remember driving, though, a lot of my memories of that place were wending our way through the various streets that ran around like snake tracks in the sand. i tore paper from the gift, as he told me he'd gotten me exactly what i'd asked for, a transformer!
when i got the paper open, it was just that. a transformer. it was a radio shack branded, small tordial core autotransformer. i don't remember exactly what the voltage rating was for it, but i beleive it was designed for use in ham radio building. not a stranger to sarcasm and dry wit, i was keenly aware of this being some sort of joke, and held my disappointment. until i asked him where the real present was. he replied that this was it. then i cried.
i cried a lot.
my mother yelled at him, but my father shared the chuckle. it was so funny to crush a four year old in such a way. he coolly played it off to ignorance, even after the tirade i'd launched into when telling him exactly what i wanted.
he never replaced the gift.
i cried a lot when i was a kid.
this story, however, takes place when i was 4 years old. as a matter of fact, i'd just turned 4. at that time my family and i lived in norwalk, california. my father was the cheif engineer at the state hospital there, which was a large primarily mental health facility. we lived on site, there were quite a few houses as well as several apartment complexes for the lower level employees. my dad's position afforded him a house off on the far north side of the campus, my back yard had several palm trees and butted up against a massive iron fence, which was painted white. i can't tell you the number of times i'd watch the patients tear across the lawn, security guards trailing close behind, where they'd hit the fence and begin to climb, only to be torn down right away and dragged back to where they'd come from. it was an interesting life.
while i've mentioned that my father was not exactly the greatest person on the planet, this story takes place before things had gotten to where he was beating me. this was during the knock down drag out fights between him and my mother while i would hide under my mickey mouse comforter and pretend to sleep.
this story is not about my father, but someone near as awful. it's about one of his bothers, mike. i have two paternal uncles, mike and jim. jim i never really knew because he lived a very cocaine filled life, if i'm not mistaken, after his wife died of cancer he over dosed on something shortly thereafter.
but, michael... uncle mike i saw more of, especially after moving back to minnesota, where both of my parent's families are originally from. he lives in st. paul, but i haven't seen him since his wedding in the late 80's... or was it my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary? i'm not quite sure, but it's been a while. before that, i saw him when he was trying to convince my mother that she was a horrible person and that i should live with him until my father could come to collect me...
this story, i had been four for about a month, perhaps. and he had flown out to visit the family. i remember him asking me what i'd wanted for the birthday, and i replied instantly that i wanted a transformer. i responded with gusto. i went into detail about how cool optimus prime was, and the that i wanted an optimus prime or a megatron, but that i would be happy with bumblebee or hotrod. i told him about the cartoon, from which i drew my passion, and told him how cool the toys were because you could change them from robots to cars and planes and things! wow! this would have been 1985.
his visit was uneventful for the most part, but i remember him taking me aside to give me my gift. i believe i was in a rental car, because i remember driving, though, a lot of my memories of that place were wending our way through the various streets that ran around like snake tracks in the sand. i tore paper from the gift, as he told me he'd gotten me exactly what i'd asked for, a transformer!
when i got the paper open, it was just that. a transformer. it was a radio shack branded, small tordial core autotransformer. i don't remember exactly what the voltage rating was for it, but i beleive it was designed for use in ham radio building. not a stranger to sarcasm and dry wit, i was keenly aware of this being some sort of joke, and held my disappointment. until i asked him where the real present was. he replied that this was it. then i cried.
i cried a lot.
my mother yelled at him, but my father shared the chuckle. it was so funny to crush a four year old in such a way. he coolly played it off to ignorance, even after the tirade i'd launched into when telling him exactly what i wanted.
he never replaced the gift.
i cried a lot when i was a kid.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
good morning starshine...
it's me... horatio!
humberto ramos!
as you may or may not know, i'm a big comic book nerd.. having enough long boxes of comics to build a small fort... something akin to the alamo. one of my favorite pencilers of all time is humberto ramos, not because of his work on the spectacular spider-man, nor any of his other work in the marvel fair, but for his creator owned book crimson, which caused me to literally fall in love with his style. that isn't to say i don't like his work on various marvel titles, mind you, just that i fell out of love with marvel quite a while ago, and have instead been more interested in independant and creator owned stuff instead.
he's not got a blog-a-majigger which is fun to look at. it feels closer to knowing him than it does from seeing him across the floor at wizard world chicago '98 or later at the minnesota comicon in maplewood. he's a mexican artist, which, i don't know, makes me feel dirty to say. why does 'mexican' hold such a horrible place in our vocabulary, how can ones nationality be flung about as an insult?
anyway, perusing his blog, where he denounces the new spider-man 3 movie's rendition of venom as being too bubbleheaded, like macfarlane's take... (i lol'd), he has a post which mentions a new creator owned story... with a nifty sketch. all i can say is... yay!
it's been a long time since i've actually bought a comic book, being that most of my spare $3 bills have been going to pack after pack of cigarettes. cigarettes may not have the best art, or a good story, but they sure make me look cool. anyway, if this project goes forward, i may have to pick it up, for sure i will be keeping an eye on his little corner of the internet.
on a related note, mike wieringo finally joined the ranks of deviants at deviantArt.com. he's one of my favorite pencilers with a 'traditional style', a farcry from works of people like ramos, cheeks, humphreys, or keith... all of whom break from the diatribe of 'traditional' work. wieringo, instead, is always a safe bet that his work will be clean and very much inline with comic book art has always been... only, better.
welcome to 1996!
a farker on fark.com found a list of star wars quotes, made funny by changing a word within said quote to pants. hilarity ensues. i remember this being one of the first things i found on the internets back in the day... oh the 90's, how i love thee!
another great list inolves various lines from 'harry potter' where the word wand is changed to wang... oh the humanity!
it's soooo easy!
ever get a stitch in your side when running? i always thought it was one of those great mysteries, like, what the hell is your appendix for anyway?
according to healthbolt.net, all you have to do to get rid of a stitch in your side when running is to change the way you exhale, so that it you're doing it when your left foot strikes the ground instead of your right.... huh... alright. i'll give that a try i guess...
a sad day for poor folks...
or anyone that's been poor at some point.
the japantimes.com reports that momofuku ando died of heart failure last friday. he was 96.
why is this important? ando was the inventor of instant ramen noodles and the founder of nissen foods. the man is responsible for a food that gets most everyone through financially rough spots in their lives. notably college kids. as i write this, i am boiling water for two packs of chicken flavor ramen, a meal with a total cost of 27 cents.
his spirit will live on in those nearly tasteless noodles and those little packs of whatever seasoning it is that comes with me.
always remember!
about me...
i have a great story about my night last night, but i really don't feel like writing about it... more over, i don't have a lot of time, i need to finish eating my noodles and get off to take care of a few things...
i will point out, though, that today is my younger daughter's birthday, she's 5 years old now!!! wow...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOIRA!!!
humberto ramos!
as you may or may not know, i'm a big comic book nerd.. having enough long boxes of comics to build a small fort... something akin to the alamo. one of my favorite pencilers of all time is humberto ramos, not because of his work on the spectacular spider-man, nor any of his other work in the marvel fair, but for his creator owned book crimson, which caused me to literally fall in love with his style. that isn't to say i don't like his work on various marvel titles, mind you, just that i fell out of love with marvel quite a while ago, and have instead been more interested in independant and creator owned stuff instead.
he's not got a blog-a-majigger which is fun to look at. it feels closer to knowing him than it does from seeing him across the floor at wizard world chicago '98 or later at the minnesota comicon in maplewood. he's a mexican artist, which, i don't know, makes me feel dirty to say. why does 'mexican' hold such a horrible place in our vocabulary, how can ones nationality be flung about as an insult?
anyway, perusing his blog, where he denounces the new spider-man 3 movie's rendition of venom as being too bubbleheaded, like macfarlane's take... (i lol'd), he has a post which mentions a new creator owned story... with a nifty sketch. all i can say is... yay!
it's been a long time since i've actually bought a comic book, being that most of my spare $3 bills have been going to pack after pack of cigarettes. cigarettes may not have the best art, or a good story, but they sure make me look cool. anyway, if this project goes forward, i may have to pick it up, for sure i will be keeping an eye on his little corner of the internet.
on a related note, mike wieringo finally joined the ranks of deviants at deviantArt.com. he's one of my favorite pencilers with a 'traditional style', a farcry from works of people like ramos, cheeks, humphreys, or keith... all of whom break from the diatribe of 'traditional' work. wieringo, instead, is always a safe bet that his work will be clean and very much inline with comic book art has always been... only, better.
welcome to 1996!
a farker on fark.com found a list of star wars quotes, made funny by changing a word within said quote to pants. hilarity ensues. i remember this being one of the first things i found on the internets back in the day... oh the 90's, how i love thee!
another great list inolves various lines from 'harry potter' where the word wand is changed to wang... oh the humanity!
it's soooo easy!
ever get a stitch in your side when running? i always thought it was one of those great mysteries, like, what the hell is your appendix for anyway?
according to healthbolt.net, all you have to do to get rid of a stitch in your side when running is to change the way you exhale, so that it you're doing it when your left foot strikes the ground instead of your right.... huh... alright. i'll give that a try i guess...
a sad day for poor folks...
or anyone that's been poor at some point.
the japantimes.com reports that momofuku ando died of heart failure last friday. he was 96.
why is this important? ando was the inventor of instant ramen noodles and the founder of nissen foods. the man is responsible for a food that gets most everyone through financially rough spots in their lives. notably college kids. as i write this, i am boiling water for two packs of chicken flavor ramen, a meal with a total cost of 27 cents.
his spirit will live on in those nearly tasteless noodles and those little packs of whatever seasoning it is that comes with me.
always remember!
about me...
i have a great story about my night last night, but i really don't feel like writing about it... more over, i don't have a lot of time, i need to finish eating my noodles and get off to take care of a few things...
i will point out, though, that today is my younger daughter's birthday, she's 5 years old now!!! wow...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOIRA!!!
Saturday, January 6, 2007
there's a lot to cover...
and already i'm pretty tired... set aside some time, 'cause i got pictures and movies... and well... all sorts of shit... the internet is serious business you know!
the milgram experiment
as is the ritual, while driving home from dropping the kids off on a friday, i will usually call someone i know to entertain me for a while. it's a 45 minute drive, and seems the perfect opportunity to do some networking...
anyway, tonight's victim was mike. mike and i discussed quite a few things, our topics spanning his work on the script he's writing to the stupidity of 'jackass'. in the course of our conversation he mentioned an experiment that was done involving a woman shouting at and hitting a supposed boyfriend on a street corner. people were recorded as they passed, and for the most part, they ignored it, although some women actually cheered the angry female on. after these people had passed, they were asked why they hadn't intervened... i guess the experiment, in the end, concluded that men had a history of aggressive and oppressive behavior, and thus, the actions of the woman was perceived as acceptable.
mike disagreed, and i'm with him. it seems more likely that people viewed the man as being historically the 'stronger' of the two sexes and was thus more likely to take care of himself. i suggested that if the roles were different, for example, the woman was larger, the male perhaps behaving as he was being hurt, then the people passing by might have a different attitude.
either way, this conversation reminded me of the 'milgram experiment' which i'd read about recently. i believe there was an article on slashdot about it, because it's been reproduced in a 'game environment'. i don't know that it could be as effective this way... but i didn't read THAT article.
i heard about it ages ago, and the concept intrigued me. you have a study of people. basically, you have the test administrator, an actor being the student, and a volunteer as the teacher. the test is rigged so that the volunteer, who doesn't know the student is an actor, is always chosen as the teacher.
the concept is simple. the administer lays out the rules, the teacher is the 'teach' something to the student, who will demonstrate it. if the student fails this, the teacher is to 'shock' him with a device in front of him. the student and teacher are separated by a wall or curtain.
the experiment begins, inevitably the student will begin to fail and shocks are administered. each failure means a higher shock. a surprising number of people continue with the experiment, up to the highest level (they believe is 400 volts or so).
in reality, no one is shocked, and the study is simply to see how many people will do as their told.
this wiki article explains the details much better than i do... but the premise is there.
this is astounding, but only to a degree. it's not that hard to believe that people will do things blindly in a situation where they feel it's 'acceptable'. much like you would expect someone in a grocery store will shop, someone in a doctors office will breath deeply when the stethoscope is on their backs, this is a situation where people are in what they know is an experiment, and are under the impression that this behavior is acceptable. in almost every situation, the person acting as the teacher becomes very uncomfortable, but will generally continue on well beyond what someone reading about it believes they, themselves, would.
human nature is an interesting thing to say the least.
godly kitten!
i lol'd... i have no idea where i found it... but it's great!
are you serious?
cnn.com reports that the army is asking for their dead and wounded officers to re-enlist. they're doing their part, are you? join the mobile infantry. service guarantees citizenship!
wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
i don't think i got to this before, mostly because i didn't have this blog when i first found it, and if i did... screw it, you probably didn't read it anyway...
this is phenomenal. only the japanese could be this thorough, and wonderful...
gizmodo shows you all the silliness that is the wii manual! a great flickr layout of 'the missing pages'...
this only strengthens my resolve that, regardless of tubgirl, and tentacle porn... the japanese are the greatest people on earth.
and... i must own a wii!
christmas rare exports
dec. 25th may be gone, but these guys are working hard on next years holiday!
i strongly encourage you to watch these... no matter what. however, they're about ten minutes long each, so, set aside a little time...
they are rare exports parts one and two. short films from jalmari helander, who's finnish, i think. the first, i believe, was nominated or won an award for the best european short fantasy film méliès d'... or something... i don't know... they're fucking breathtaking, and amusing.
just watch...
steve ballamer... microsoft ceo?
how much money does this guy make? he should have some dignity... don't watch this.
kansasonitantianites is dumbed
read this, it's retarded.
OHNOESRUNsANDHIDEs!!!elelve!11!!n!!12
makes me laugh so hard i could actually pee... i know... it's not that funny, but shut-up, alright?
fusion power!?!?
it sounds freakin' star trekky... but, i guess not... read this, which is about this, and then look at this... in that order, probably. wow. klene nuklier powar!
did you get all that? me neither... but it sounds neat!
feel free to scratch your head in confusion... you might want to get yourself some snacks too...
last week i talked about the DREAD...
this week we're taking a look at what samsung's been up to... it's a robot! with guns! halt! present hall pass!
sure, it's not on a 3G network, nor does it have a camera option or play mp3s... but damn, it's slick. heat / motion tracking with a machine gun all in tidy sentry package. now, if these guys and the dread guys got together, they might just be on to something...
but that robot is nothing....
compared to honda's asimo... or... is it? maybe theirs won't fall down the stairs like this one does...
oooooh xbox 360 rumors!!!
so... these guys think they have some news for us... a new xbox 360 codenamed: 'zephyr'. it will have a better 65nm processor, hdmi capable of 1080p (p means progressive, that means WOOWOWOOWOW!!!) and a 120GB hard drive (StOReZ j00 SUM pr0nZ!!!)... of course, they're talking about their 'insider'... but you can't argue with that dark picture.... can you?
i'll try and believe, cause i'm just that way.
i guess the truth is that it makes sense for microsoft to do it. hopefully it will tighten their stranglehold on the market and present a reasonably priced option to the ps3... time shall tell. (still want a wii dammit!).
this shouldn't be funny...
the new e3 (aka, pink is the new pink?)
as you might have heard, the e3 (electronics entertainment expo) as we know it is dead. enter the new e3, e4all, as in electronics for all... pfft... whatever, i just like video games and junk.
the new dance dance caliber soul funk remix part deux X?
i lol'd here too... there's a voldo 2 and presumably a voldo 1, but i didn't look for it and the link wasn't right in front of me, so fuck it.
bahahahah the 80's sucked...
pole position! it'll bust your crank, and leave skidmarks on your soul!
not how i want to die...
damn...
actual title of the article tells (some of) the story...
Minnesota boy, 8, sues parents over car seat - startribune.com
the real iraq...
alright, this one is admittedly nearly an hour long, and i understand that few people spend more than 8 minutes on any one web page... which means you aren't reading this... matter of fact, most people didn't get past the first paragraph of this post, but i would encourage you to hear this one out.
things the media aren't showing on the sterilized reports....
and in closing...
afro samurai did NOT disappoint... however... it wasn't exactly the pinnacle of animated joygasms... it was good, but not great. i'll keep trying though...
/end transmission
the milgram experiment
as is the ritual, while driving home from dropping the kids off on a friday, i will usually call someone i know to entertain me for a while. it's a 45 minute drive, and seems the perfect opportunity to do some networking...
anyway, tonight's victim was mike. mike and i discussed quite a few things, our topics spanning his work on the script he's writing to the stupidity of 'jackass'. in the course of our conversation he mentioned an experiment that was done involving a woman shouting at and hitting a supposed boyfriend on a street corner. people were recorded as they passed, and for the most part, they ignored it, although some women actually cheered the angry female on. after these people had passed, they were asked why they hadn't intervened... i guess the experiment, in the end, concluded that men had a history of aggressive and oppressive behavior, and thus, the actions of the woman was perceived as acceptable.
mike disagreed, and i'm with him. it seems more likely that people viewed the man as being historically the 'stronger' of the two sexes and was thus more likely to take care of himself. i suggested that if the roles were different, for example, the woman was larger, the male perhaps behaving as he was being hurt, then the people passing by might have a different attitude.
either way, this conversation reminded me of the 'milgram experiment' which i'd read about recently. i believe there was an article on slashdot about it, because it's been reproduced in a 'game environment'. i don't know that it could be as effective this way... but i didn't read THAT article.
i heard about it ages ago, and the concept intrigued me. you have a study of people. basically, you have the test administrator, an actor being the student, and a volunteer as the teacher. the test is rigged so that the volunteer, who doesn't know the student is an actor, is always chosen as the teacher.
the concept is simple. the administer lays out the rules, the teacher is the 'teach' something to the student, who will demonstrate it. if the student fails this, the teacher is to 'shock' him with a device in front of him. the student and teacher are separated by a wall or curtain.
the experiment begins, inevitably the student will begin to fail and shocks are administered. each failure means a higher shock. a surprising number of people continue with the experiment, up to the highest level (they believe is 400 volts or so).
in reality, no one is shocked, and the study is simply to see how many people will do as their told.
this wiki article explains the details much better than i do... but the premise is there.
this is astounding, but only to a degree. it's not that hard to believe that people will do things blindly in a situation where they feel it's 'acceptable'. much like you would expect someone in a grocery store will shop, someone in a doctors office will breath deeply when the stethoscope is on their backs, this is a situation where people are in what they know is an experiment, and are under the impression that this behavior is acceptable. in almost every situation, the person acting as the teacher becomes very uncomfortable, but will generally continue on well beyond what someone reading about it believes they, themselves, would.
human nature is an interesting thing to say the least.
godly kitten!
i lol'd... i have no idea where i found it... but it's great!
are you serious?
cnn.com reports that the army is asking for their dead and wounded officers to re-enlist. they're doing their part, are you? join the mobile infantry. service guarantees citizenship!
wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
i don't think i got to this before, mostly because i didn't have this blog when i first found it, and if i did... screw it, you probably didn't read it anyway...
this is phenomenal. only the japanese could be this thorough, and wonderful...
gizmodo shows you all the silliness that is the wii manual! a great flickr layout of 'the missing pages'...
this only strengthens my resolve that, regardless of tubgirl, and tentacle porn... the japanese are the greatest people on earth.
and... i must own a wii!
christmas rare exports
dec. 25th may be gone, but these guys are working hard on next years holiday!
i strongly encourage you to watch these... no matter what. however, they're about ten minutes long each, so, set aside a little time...
they are rare exports parts one and two. short films from jalmari helander, who's finnish, i think. the first, i believe, was nominated or won an award for the best european short fantasy film méliès d'... or something... i don't know... they're fucking breathtaking, and amusing.
just watch...
steve ballamer... microsoft ceo?
how much money does this guy make? he should have some dignity... don't watch this.
kansasonitantianites is dumbed
read this, it's retarded.
OHNOESRUNsANDHIDEs!!!elelve!11!!n!!12
makes me laugh so hard i could actually pee... i know... it's not that funny, but shut-up, alright?
fusion power!?!?
it sounds freakin' star trekky... but, i guess not... read this, which is about this, and then look at this... in that order, probably. wow. klene nuklier powar!
did you get all that? me neither... but it sounds neat!
feel free to scratch your head in confusion... you might want to get yourself some snacks too...
last week i talked about the DREAD...
this week we're taking a look at what samsung's been up to... it's a robot! with guns! halt! present hall pass!
sure, it's not on a 3G network, nor does it have a camera option or play mp3s... but damn, it's slick. heat / motion tracking with a machine gun all in tidy sentry package. now, if these guys and the dread guys got together, they might just be on to something...
but that robot is nothing....
compared to honda's asimo... or... is it? maybe theirs won't fall down the stairs like this one does...
oooooh xbox 360 rumors!!!
so... these guys think they have some news for us... a new xbox 360 codenamed: 'zephyr'. it will have a better 65nm processor, hdmi capable of 1080p (p means progressive, that means WOOWOWOOWOW!!!) and a 120GB hard drive (StOReZ j00 SUM pr0nZ!!!)... of course, they're talking about their 'insider'... but you can't argue with that dark picture.... can you?
i'll try and believe, cause i'm just that way.
i guess the truth is that it makes sense for microsoft to do it. hopefully it will tighten their stranglehold on the market and present a reasonably priced option to the ps3... time shall tell. (still want a wii dammit!).
this shouldn't be funny...
the new e3 (aka, pink is the new pink?)
as you might have heard, the e3 (electronics entertainment expo) as we know it is dead. enter the new e3, e4all, as in electronics for all... pfft... whatever, i just like video games and junk.
the new dance dance caliber soul funk remix part deux X?
i lol'd here too... there's a voldo 2 and presumably a voldo 1, but i didn't look for it and the link wasn't right in front of me, so fuck it.
bahahahah the 80's sucked...
pole position! it'll bust your crank, and leave skidmarks on your soul!
not how i want to die...
damn...
actual title of the article tells (some of) the story...
Minnesota boy, 8, sues parents over car seat - startribune.com
the real iraq...
alright, this one is admittedly nearly an hour long, and i understand that few people spend more than 8 minutes on any one web page... which means you aren't reading this... matter of fact, most people didn't get past the first paragraph of this post, but i would encourage you to hear this one out.
things the media aren't showing on the sterilized reports....
and in closing...
afro samurai did NOT disappoint... however... it wasn't exactly the pinnacle of animated joygasms... it was good, but not great. i'll keep trying though...
/end transmission
Thursday, January 4, 2007
just pay the man...
just links for now...
episodic gaming... the good, the bad.. and the...
gamasutra.com just posted an article about episodic gaming. it's pretty interesting to read their take on things. there's not much there i can't whole heartedly agree with...
yes it's new. yes it's unproven... but it makes a lot of sense. it seems like so many things these days are 'episodic'. television shows, comic books, magazines, viral videos... etc. etc. the point is, episodes work. with gaming, the concept seems solid. instead of the long development cycle, they can shorten it up, and get feedback faster so that the next release, which we get far sooner, can be so much better.
anyway, i believe in the concept, even if you don't...
drug spiders!
how does google do it...
well... now they have algorithms to hire people. it won't be long before there won't be any need for the actual people. i expect there will soon be an algorithm to write new algorithms.
bow down to the great google, you new technological overlord!
thrasher's first 12 months...
thrasher. a magazine from my youth apparently still exists. i'm as surprised as you... i guess as time went on i just stopped believing in it... like santa clause. well, as it turns out, they're celebrating 25 years of being the greatest skateboarding magazine ever, so you can see the first 12 issues for free on their website.
N
this was posted on a forum i frequent... it's an incredibly fun piece of flash work... it's hard not to love it... try it out. the physics are amazing, the game play is fantastic. try and not play it for hours at a time.
Click!
i watched this tonight... wow... i didn't expect it, but i actually enjoyed it quite a bit... it tugged at me...
afro samurai
tonight's the premiere... samuel l. jackson can't disappoint... right?
episodic gaming... the good, the bad.. and the...
gamasutra.com just posted an article about episodic gaming. it's pretty interesting to read their take on things. there's not much there i can't whole heartedly agree with...
yes it's new. yes it's unproven... but it makes a lot of sense. it seems like so many things these days are 'episodic'. television shows, comic books, magazines, viral videos... etc. etc. the point is, episodes work. with gaming, the concept seems solid. instead of the long development cycle, they can shorten it up, and get feedback faster so that the next release, which we get far sooner, can be so much better.
anyway, i believe in the concept, even if you don't...
drug spiders!
how does google do it...
well... now they have algorithms to hire people. it won't be long before there won't be any need for the actual people. i expect there will soon be an algorithm to write new algorithms.
bow down to the great google, you new technological overlord!
thrasher's first 12 months...
thrasher. a magazine from my youth apparently still exists. i'm as surprised as you... i guess as time went on i just stopped believing in it... like santa clause. well, as it turns out, they're celebrating 25 years of being the greatest skateboarding magazine ever, so you can see the first 12 issues for free on their website.
N
this was posted on a forum i frequent... it's an incredibly fun piece of flash work... it's hard not to love it... try it out. the physics are amazing, the game play is fantastic. try and not play it for hours at a time.
Click!
i watched this tonight... wow... i didn't expect it, but i actually enjoyed it quite a bit... it tugged at me...
afro samurai
tonight's the premiere... samuel l. jackson can't disappoint... right?
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
some movie stuff...
casino royale
i watched this film last night, finally. i've always been a big fan of the james bond series, which is likely because i'm a male, and it's what we're supposed to do. much like the three stooges.
everything that peirce brosnan did, with the exception of golden eye, was less than steller. golden eye is far and away my favorite bond film of all time...
casino royale goes back to the beginning and tells the story of how james bond got his 'double 0' status. daniel craig is a great bond, far better than i'd expected, but i fear that part of it is the fact that he's written as such a 'novice'. they are in the works for bond 22, which he'll star in as well, and we shall see how he does with that role. they haven't released which title they'll do, but it's been said that it will not be a remake, which leaves us with looking at lesser known titles.
watching casinio royal has left me with a renewed interest in reading the original ian fleming novels.
30 days of night
mike sent me a production still for the new 30 days of night. i'm excited about this one. yet again, hollywood has decided to take note of the beautiful storytelling that's been accomplished through comic books and adapt it to screen.
in this case, 30 days of night is based on an idw graphic novel, which i happily own. it tells the story of vampires, which, as we all know, can only come out at night. but, in this case, they are in a place where night lasts for 30 days, in small town in alaska. a husband and wife sheriff team are all that stand between them and the remaining townsfolk.
it will feature josh hartnett, a somewhat underrated actor, and minnesota boy, and who i haven't seen in a film for a while.
i'm pretty hopeful for this one.
grindhouse
mike also told me about this one a while ago, and was able to send me a link on joblo.com for more info.
all i can say is ... *drool*.
my instatiable thirst for horror / slasher / action flicks might just be sated by this upcoming tarantino / rodriguez split.
the concept is simple and elegant. quentin tarantino and robert rodriguez have come together to make two films, which they will show back to back, broken in the middle by a short series of fake trailers. rodriguez gives us terror planet, a zombie film that is apparently about a woman with a machine gun for a leg, meanwhile, tarantino gives us death proof, which seems a slasher flick to be about a kurt russel... or soemthing... i dunno... i don't really care, i just know i'm off to see it on april 6.
watch the trailer here at yahoo! movies.
for more info and links to great stuff likely to make your eyes bleed from sheer joy, check out the wiki article. it talks about the fake trailers and the plots of the respective films.
i watched this film last night, finally. i've always been a big fan of the james bond series, which is likely because i'm a male, and it's what we're supposed to do. much like the three stooges.
everything that peirce brosnan did, with the exception of golden eye, was less than steller. golden eye is far and away my favorite bond film of all time...
casino royale goes back to the beginning and tells the story of how james bond got his 'double 0' status. daniel craig is a great bond, far better than i'd expected, but i fear that part of it is the fact that he's written as such a 'novice'. they are in the works for bond 22, which he'll star in as well, and we shall see how he does with that role. they haven't released which title they'll do, but it's been said that it will not be a remake, which leaves us with looking at lesser known titles.
watching casinio royal has left me with a renewed interest in reading the original ian fleming novels.
30 days of night
mike sent me a production still for the new 30 days of night. i'm excited about this one. yet again, hollywood has decided to take note of the beautiful storytelling that's been accomplished through comic books and adapt it to screen.
in this case, 30 days of night is based on an idw graphic novel, which i happily own. it tells the story of vampires, which, as we all know, can only come out at night. but, in this case, they are in a place where night lasts for 30 days, in small town in alaska. a husband and wife sheriff team are all that stand between them and the remaining townsfolk.
it will feature josh hartnett, a somewhat underrated actor, and minnesota boy, and who i haven't seen in a film for a while.
i'm pretty hopeful for this one.
grindhouse
mike also told me about this one a while ago, and was able to send me a link on joblo.com for more info.
all i can say is ... *drool*.
my instatiable thirst for horror / slasher / action flicks might just be sated by this upcoming tarantino / rodriguez split.
the concept is simple and elegant. quentin tarantino and robert rodriguez have come together to make two films, which they will show back to back, broken in the middle by a short series of fake trailers. rodriguez gives us terror planet, a zombie film that is apparently about a woman with a machine gun for a leg, meanwhile, tarantino gives us death proof, which seems a slasher flick to be about a kurt russel... or soemthing... i dunno... i don't really care, i just know i'm off to see it on april 6.
watch the trailer here at yahoo! movies.
for more info and links to great stuff likely to make your eyes bleed from sheer joy, check out the wiki article. it talks about the fake trailers and the plots of the respective films.
Monday, January 1, 2007
happy 2007...
new year, same shit... right?
i thought i would start out the first 'blog' of the new year with a little bit about the last year. i don't remember much. this seems to be the case for me quite a bit lately... maybe it's not that i don't remember, but rather that it just didn't make a big impact, again. it seems like not a lot happened, even if there were some milestones for me.
i feel like i am more or less exactly where i was a year ago, only slightly older, and somewhat more panciky about my imminent death. nothing i wanted to get done this year seemed to happen, and maybe things that i was trying not to do, i did.
certainly, there are a lot of things that i enjoyed about this year. i met some new people, gained friends, lost friends, grew closer to people, grew apart from others. i've realized some things about myself, and still find me to be one of the biggest enigmas ever.
i guess i'm amazed, as always, at how quickly times has flown by. it's amazing how much i wanted time to move faster when i was younger, and now that i'm older i just wish i could stop the clock for a while. there's never enough time in the day to do all the things i want to do. i know i'm not alone in this, but sometimes it sure as hell feels like it.
i'm holding out hope that this year will be better. time can only tell.
i thought i would post a listing of the music that i've been listening to. i exported a list of music that is currently on my harddrive, weeding out many of the single tracks and 'compilation' stuff. keep in mind, this isn't a full list of all the music i've loved, or have owned (or... *gasp* stole). as a matter of fact, there is a lot of older stuff missing. the first reason for this is that i lost a lot of stuff that i'd been trying to keep backed up on one drive, it failed, and i didn't get everything backed up before the main drive failed as well. the main reason, though, is that on feb. 14th, 2005 (yes, valentines day) some kids broke into my car, leaving a ton of damage in their wake, because, i left the trunk unlocked so that no one would damage the car, thinking it would be cheaper to replace the cheap cd deck than get work done in a shop. unfortunately, i'd left the cd's in my car, as someone had wanted some copies of some of what i had. i lost a $100 aiwa deck, a 500 cd case, which was very nearly full, and quite a bit of it i had not yet archived. there was a lot of stuff i just can't find anymore, and even more that i just haven't bothered to replace. which is very sad, to say the least. (in addition, i lost a molskine that was filled and one i'd just started, a good sheaf of other writing notes, one of my daughter's car seats, a half a pack of stale cigarettes because i'd nearly completely quite smoking, but not quite, and a really nice pool cue i'd gotten as a gift, a grip load of tools and a few other various things). anyway, the listing is here. i've done my best to get it to be as readable as possible. we'll see what gets added in 2007.
now, on to the links... (i know that's the only reason you came here... :P)
first... a geostationary banana...
over texas?
i've read some pretty stupid things, but this one is just mind boggling. it's another case of 'things that cost a lot of money that would have been better suited in my pocket', that is, if it's true at all. it's hard not to read about the geostationary banana over texas project and not get that tinge one feels when their leg is being pulled, albeit ever so slightly.
the idea is simple in its construction. they want to build a giant banana, fill it with gas, and put it into the upper atmosphere so that it will float there in 'geostationary' orbit over texas. why? well, i assume its because they can. how much? well, apparently it will run around $1 million dollars. when reading that number, i can't help but to stop and think about what i could do with that much money. certainly, i wouldn't need all of it, just a chunk to take care of my debts, and maybe by myself a go-kart made of solid gold. i wonder, also, when looking at their website, why they feel the need to translate everything from english to not only spanish, but french as well....
anyway, check it out, if for no other reason that because it has some of the greatest photoshopped 'banana in the sky' photos ever. you have my word on that. greatest ever. hands down.
moving on...
does this hdtv make me look fat?
i'm not embellishing, that is the actual title of this cnn.com article. at first, i really didn't think much when i perused over the story, having only clicked the link because, well, it had hdtv in the title, and i like technology things. but, as i read it, i was struck by how amazingly petty the world really is. i mean, they discuss airbrushing make-up onto people so that they look better in high definition. that's just unbelievable.
how sad was 2006?
about this sad. here we have an article on reuters.com, which recaps stories of the last year, most of them so trivial that it makes your head hurt. it occurs to me, though, looking at this, and other lists, some trying really hard at it, that there really wasn't much that happened this year. it was a blur of crap that just sorta rolled foward like a freight train of mediocraty. i'm quite concerned that 2007 will suffer more of the same.
allofmp3.com
you might think that the only reason i'm mentioning this is because it gives me an oppurtunity to present an extremely humorous image from (oddly enough...) the humorist.com, but really, it's also because it involes a lawsuit for $1.65 TRILLION... that's dollars, and trillion. trillion, it's more than a similar word to the name adopted by arthur dent's almost girlfriend, it's a really REALLY big number.
if you aren't familiar, allofmp3.com is one of the most popular music download sites on the internet right now. why, you might ask? not because it's free. it's not like the great file sharing collective, no, you pay for the music. the reason it's so popular is that you only pay about 10¢ per track (2¢ per 1MB downloaded), without any digital rights management. wow, you might say, and how is that possible you'll likely ask, as soon as you get back here from setting up your account there and downloading a few gigs of music...
the answer is fairly simple, but i'm going to make it a complicated explanation. you see, in the united states, and many other well advanced countries around the world, music is in something of an odd state. you see, when an artist makes a cd, and sells it, the money for that cd is split up between more than the artist, his label, and even their manager. no sir, there are many greedy little hands in that pot. most of the money goes to the collection of royalties, which in the u.s. is an almost borglike entity called the riaa. you see, they are the people who get so mad about 'file sharing', 'napster', and anything that prevents them getting a direct cut. they administer the royalties and licensing of music. it's a fairly complex system, but as i understand it, in the end, they make more per album sold than the actual artist that recorded it.
now, that's in the united states. in other countries the laws are quite different. for example: in sweden, copyright laws are such that bittorrent sites like thepiratebay.org can exist without any concern whatsoever.
this brings me back to the issue with allofmp3.com. allofmp3.com is located in the great motherland of russia. in russia, royalties and copyrights are primarily administered by ROMS, who, merely asks for 15% of all sales, which, in this case, they are given gladly. it does not seem to mater how much a song is sold for, as long as they get a 15% cut, which they then, presumably, divy out to the holders of the rights to the songs. ta-da. legality.
or is it.
no. not really... you see, ROMS, the russian royalty collecting firm, does not have the authority, according to russian law, to administer the rights, even though they contend that with their own reading of the law. however, allofmp3.com does not care, because, as long as they pay them, and ROMS says it's ok, everything on their end is copacetic. BUT, this is not the case either. they have been operating under russian law that had decided originally that copyright law did not extend to works on the interwebs, however, that provision expired in sept. of 2005, and recently moscow has decided to go after them. in addition, visa and mastercard stop processing credit transactions for them as well, due to the 'illegality' of the matter.
now, the riaa is sueing media services, the new york based company which owns the russian allofmp3.com. they are asking for $150,000 per download for 11 million downloads, which is where we get that massive dollar figure i mentioned early. it's amazing. i'm really curious to see how it all pans out, because, as much as the riaa seems happy at throwing money at even the most ludicrous of cases for the joy of attacking anyone and everything that stands in its way... it seems like this is a battle that isn't likely to come to much in the end, at least, not near as much as they are asking. as is pointed out in one of the articles, that number is actually slightly, and only slightly, less than the gross domestic product of the u.k. for 2005. huh.
the primary article i read on this was here at zeropaid.com the second one is here and there's actually a decent wikipedia article on allofmp3.com here.
fight on soldiers of cheap music for the masses! :P
and that's it for now...
i thought i would start out the first 'blog' of the new year with a little bit about the last year. i don't remember much. this seems to be the case for me quite a bit lately... maybe it's not that i don't remember, but rather that it just didn't make a big impact, again. it seems like not a lot happened, even if there were some milestones for me.
i feel like i am more or less exactly where i was a year ago, only slightly older, and somewhat more panciky about my imminent death. nothing i wanted to get done this year seemed to happen, and maybe things that i was trying not to do, i did.
certainly, there are a lot of things that i enjoyed about this year. i met some new people, gained friends, lost friends, grew closer to people, grew apart from others. i've realized some things about myself, and still find me to be one of the biggest enigmas ever.
i guess i'm amazed, as always, at how quickly times has flown by. it's amazing how much i wanted time to move faster when i was younger, and now that i'm older i just wish i could stop the clock for a while. there's never enough time in the day to do all the things i want to do. i know i'm not alone in this, but sometimes it sure as hell feels like it.
i'm holding out hope that this year will be better. time can only tell.
i thought i would post a listing of the music that i've been listening to. i exported a list of music that is currently on my harddrive, weeding out many of the single tracks and 'compilation' stuff. keep in mind, this isn't a full list of all the music i've loved, or have owned (or... *gasp* stole). as a matter of fact, there is a lot of older stuff missing. the first reason for this is that i lost a lot of stuff that i'd been trying to keep backed up on one drive, it failed, and i didn't get everything backed up before the main drive failed as well. the main reason, though, is that on feb. 14th, 2005 (yes, valentines day) some kids broke into my car, leaving a ton of damage in their wake, because, i left the trunk unlocked so that no one would damage the car, thinking it would be cheaper to replace the cheap cd deck than get work done in a shop. unfortunately, i'd left the cd's in my car, as someone had wanted some copies of some of what i had. i lost a $100 aiwa deck, a 500 cd case, which was very nearly full, and quite a bit of it i had not yet archived. there was a lot of stuff i just can't find anymore, and even more that i just haven't bothered to replace. which is very sad, to say the least. (in addition, i lost a molskine that was filled and one i'd just started, a good sheaf of other writing notes, one of my daughter's car seats, a half a pack of stale cigarettes because i'd nearly completely quite smoking, but not quite, and a really nice pool cue i'd gotten as a gift, a grip load of tools and a few other various things). anyway, the listing is here. i've done my best to get it to be as readable as possible. we'll see what gets added in 2007.
now, on to the links... (i know that's the only reason you came here... :P)
first... a geostationary banana...
over texas?
i've read some pretty stupid things, but this one is just mind boggling. it's another case of 'things that cost a lot of money that would have been better suited in my pocket', that is, if it's true at all. it's hard not to read about the geostationary banana over texas project and not get that tinge one feels when their leg is being pulled, albeit ever so slightly.
the idea is simple in its construction. they want to build a giant banana, fill it with gas, and put it into the upper atmosphere so that it will float there in 'geostationary' orbit over texas. why? well, i assume its because they can. how much? well, apparently it will run around $1 million dollars. when reading that number, i can't help but to stop and think about what i could do with that much money. certainly, i wouldn't need all of it, just a chunk to take care of my debts, and maybe by myself a go-kart made of solid gold. i wonder, also, when looking at their website, why they feel the need to translate everything from english to not only spanish, but french as well....
anyway, check it out, if for no other reason that because it has some of the greatest photoshopped 'banana in the sky' photos ever. you have my word on that. greatest ever. hands down.
moving on...
does this hdtv make me look fat?
i'm not embellishing, that is the actual title of this cnn.com article. at first, i really didn't think much when i perused over the story, having only clicked the link because, well, it had hdtv in the title, and i like technology things. but, as i read it, i was struck by how amazingly petty the world really is. i mean, they discuss airbrushing make-up onto people so that they look better in high definition. that's just unbelievable.
how sad was 2006?
about this sad. here we have an article on reuters.com, which recaps stories of the last year, most of them so trivial that it makes your head hurt. it occurs to me, though, looking at this, and other lists, some trying really hard at it, that there really wasn't much that happened this year. it was a blur of crap that just sorta rolled foward like a freight train of mediocraty. i'm quite concerned that 2007 will suffer more of the same.
allofmp3.com
you might think that the only reason i'm mentioning this is because it gives me an oppurtunity to present an extremely humorous image from (oddly enough...) the humorist.com, but really, it's also because it involes a lawsuit for $1.65 TRILLION... that's dollars, and trillion. trillion, it's more than a similar word to the name adopted by arthur dent's almost girlfriend, it's a really REALLY big number.
if you aren't familiar, allofmp3.com is one of the most popular music download sites on the internet right now. why, you might ask? not because it's free. it's not like the great file sharing collective, no, you pay for the music. the reason it's so popular is that you only pay about 10¢ per track (2¢ per 1MB downloaded), without any digital rights management. wow, you might say, and how is that possible you'll likely ask, as soon as you get back here from setting up your account there and downloading a few gigs of music...
the answer is fairly simple, but i'm going to make it a complicated explanation. you see, in the united states, and many other well advanced countries around the world, music is in something of an odd state. you see, when an artist makes a cd, and sells it, the money for that cd is split up between more than the artist, his label, and even their manager. no sir, there are many greedy little hands in that pot. most of the money goes to the collection of royalties, which in the u.s. is an almost borglike entity called the riaa. you see, they are the people who get so mad about 'file sharing', 'napster', and anything that prevents them getting a direct cut. they administer the royalties and licensing of music. it's a fairly complex system, but as i understand it, in the end, they make more per album sold than the actual artist that recorded it.
now, that's in the united states. in other countries the laws are quite different. for example: in sweden, copyright laws are such that bittorrent sites like thepiratebay.org can exist without any concern whatsoever.
this brings me back to the issue with allofmp3.com. allofmp3.com is located in the great motherland of russia. in russia, royalties and copyrights are primarily administered by ROMS, who, merely asks for 15% of all sales, which, in this case, they are given gladly. it does not seem to mater how much a song is sold for, as long as they get a 15% cut, which they then, presumably, divy out to the holders of the rights to the songs. ta-da. legality.
or is it.
no. not really... you see, ROMS, the russian royalty collecting firm, does not have the authority, according to russian law, to administer the rights, even though they contend that with their own reading of the law. however, allofmp3.com does not care, because, as long as they pay them, and ROMS says it's ok, everything on their end is copacetic. BUT, this is not the case either. they have been operating under russian law that had decided originally that copyright law did not extend to works on the interwebs, however, that provision expired in sept. of 2005, and recently moscow has decided to go after them. in addition, visa and mastercard stop processing credit transactions for them as well, due to the 'illegality' of the matter.
now, the riaa is sueing media services, the new york based company which owns the russian allofmp3.com. they are asking for $150,000 per download for 11 million downloads, which is where we get that massive dollar figure i mentioned early. it's amazing. i'm really curious to see how it all pans out, because, as much as the riaa seems happy at throwing money at even the most ludicrous of cases for the joy of attacking anyone and everything that stands in its way... it seems like this is a battle that isn't likely to come to much in the end, at least, not near as much as they are asking. as is pointed out in one of the articles, that number is actually slightly, and only slightly, less than the gross domestic product of the u.k. for 2005. huh.
the primary article i read on this was here at zeropaid.com the second one is here and there's actually a decent wikipedia article on allofmp3.com here.
fight on soldiers of cheap music for the masses! :P
and that's it for now...
Saturday, December 30, 2006
just a few links....
the dread...
here's a gun...
and here's an article about the gun.
there's a video, which makes me laugh because it's so poorly produced. the whole thing feels like a 'spoof' to be honest, but, it looks like a bloody amazing weapon. it's 'futuristic', as if the future is now... it's worth taking a look at.
grand canyon is... how old?
read this article... it's short, but very funny.
man attempts to steal a hotel...
doesn't quite fit down the pants...
this article is just funny, at least from a headline perspective.
ps3's are not as profitable as people hoped...
there's been a substantial decline in the grey market of ps3's, according to this article. his thought is that video game systems are NOT something for investment purposes.
saddam's execution
this wiki article tells the ongoing story of saddam's execution and the worldwide reaction. it's mildly interesting to read the reaction of various nations.
and that's that...
i haven't much to say about me at this point... so, i'll instead go to bed. good night internet.
here's a gun...
and here's an article about the gun.
"Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee (HMMWV), any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable?
That would really be something, wouldn't it? Some of you might be wondering, "how big would it be", or "how much would it weigh"? Others might want to know what it's ammunition capacity would be. These are all good questions, assuming of course that a weapon like this were actually possible.
According to its inventor, not only is it possible, it’s already happened. An updated version of the weapon will be available soon. It will arrive in the form of a...
there's a video, which makes me laugh because it's so poorly produced. the whole thing feels like a 'spoof' to be honest, but, it looks like a bloody amazing weapon. it's 'futuristic', as if the future is now... it's worth taking a look at.
grand canyon is... how old?
read this article... it's short, but very funny.
man attempts to steal a hotel...
doesn't quite fit down the pants...
this article is just funny, at least from a headline perspective.
ps3's are not as profitable as people hoped...
there's been a substantial decline in the grey market of ps3's, according to this article. his thought is that video game systems are NOT something for investment purposes.
saddam's execution
this wiki article tells the ongoing story of saddam's execution and the worldwide reaction. it's mildly interesting to read the reaction of various nations.
and that's that...
i haven't much to say about me at this point... so, i'll instead go to bed. good night internet.
Friday, December 29, 2006
so much, and so little...
saddam hussein was executed...
it's over, he's dead. he was never tried for all of his crimes, he'll go down in the history books as 'accused of...' for most of his crimes. obviously he can't be executed more than once, but it still seems like justice is not served by acting with such haste.... but i digress, i don't mourn his departure, or really care so much that he's dead even, which almost makes me feel callous, but then i realize that he's a terrible person who's commited a lot of evils and really only got what was deserved.
pan's labyrinth
my good friend mike sent me a link to this site today. on it you can find trailers to this new and gorgeous looking film. after reviewing the site, and doing some 'research', i've decided that this looks great. i've now got two films in 2007 that i am very much looking forward to seeing. frank miller's 300 and pan's labyrinth. sure, there are a few other films coming that look good, but these looks, quite frankly, phenominal!
the plot of the film from imdb's pan's labyrinth page (listed as "el laberinto del fauno" under it's orignal spanish name) reads thusly:
the film is written and directed by the great guillermo del toro, who is responsible for such films as mimic, hellboy, and one of my personal favorites, the devil's backbone. the plot listed above does not do justice to the sheer beauty that this film seems to possess, where it has the feel of a darker alice in wonderland and labyrinth, it seems to follow the story of a young girl not trapped in another world, but actually creating it. it's artisticly invigorating, and i just enjoy looking at it.
according to the wiki article, pan's labyrinth is salted as an informal sequel to the film the devil's backbone (el espinazo del diablo), which, after thinking for a moment, i recalled very clearly as a film i enjoyed very much. it tells the story of a young boy left orphaned in 1939 in a run down mission in mexico near the end of the spanish civil war. it's a great film, if for no other reason than it's got a ghost in it. it's one you should definitely watch as well.
of course, i say that a lot.
either way, i'll see this, hopefully you will too, and when i write my review, we'll all be on the same page. ;)
watch out for the fish...
the sign makes them look so unassuming, all under the water, but clearly, they felt there was a danger worth noting. i'm curious as to what exactly they'll be doing that i should be watching for... jumping, walking, flying, firing large caliber rifles from high in the trees...? the mind boggles....
BEES!!!
somethingawful.com has long filled me enjoyment, whether there's a man claiming to be an insider at the whitehouse and spilling secrets about rumsfield and his flatulence, or the goons just happened to find a photo of something normally mundane and transform it into something so much more than the sum of it's parts.
this thread, however, is about a man in florida who goes mano e. beeos... er.. well, frankly, all you can do is click the link and check out the photos. there's a lot of photos. all of them make you want to laugh, in that sad laugh that's normally reserved for watching those with mental handicaps do things that shouldn't be funny, but is.
12/23. never forget.
it's over, he's dead. he was never tried for all of his crimes, he'll go down in the history books as 'accused of...' for most of his crimes. obviously he can't be executed more than once, but it still seems like justice is not served by acting with such haste.... but i digress, i don't mourn his departure, or really care so much that he's dead even, which almost makes me feel callous, but then i realize that he's a terrible person who's commited a lot of evils and really only got what was deserved.
pan's labyrinth
my good friend mike sent me a link to this site today. on it you can find trailers to this new and gorgeous looking film. after reviewing the site, and doing some 'research', i've decided that this looks great. i've now got two films in 2007 that i am very much looking forward to seeing. frank miller's 300 and pan's labyrinth. sure, there are a few other films coming that look good, but these looks, quite frankly, phenominal!
the plot of the film from imdb's pan's labyrinth page (listed as "el laberinto del fauno" under it's orignal spanish name) reads thusly:
"Pan's Labyrinth" is the story of a young girl that travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband in a rural area up North in Spain, 1944. After Franco´s victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.
the film is written and directed by the great guillermo del toro, who is responsible for such films as mimic, hellboy, and one of my personal favorites, the devil's backbone. the plot listed above does not do justice to the sheer beauty that this film seems to possess, where it has the feel of a darker alice in wonderland and labyrinth, it seems to follow the story of a young girl not trapped in another world, but actually creating it. it's artisticly invigorating, and i just enjoy looking at it.
according to the wiki article, pan's labyrinth is salted as an informal sequel to the film the devil's backbone (el espinazo del diablo), which, after thinking for a moment, i recalled very clearly as a film i enjoyed very much. it tells the story of a young boy left orphaned in 1939 in a run down mission in mexico near the end of the spanish civil war. it's a great film, if for no other reason than it's got a ghost in it. it's one you should definitely watch as well.
of course, i say that a lot.
either way, i'll see this, hopefully you will too, and when i write my review, we'll all be on the same page. ;)
watch out for the fish...
the sign makes them look so unassuming, all under the water, but clearly, they felt there was a danger worth noting. i'm curious as to what exactly they'll be doing that i should be watching for... jumping, walking, flying, firing large caliber rifles from high in the trees...? the mind boggles....
BEES!!!
somethingawful.com has long filled me enjoyment, whether there's a man claiming to be an insider at the whitehouse and spilling secrets about rumsfield and his flatulence, or the goons just happened to find a photo of something normally mundane and transform it into something so much more than the sum of it's parts.
this thread, however, is about a man in florida who goes mano e. beeos... er.. well, frankly, all you can do is click the link and check out the photos. there's a lot of photos. all of them make you want to laugh, in that sad laugh that's normally reserved for watching those with mental handicaps do things that shouldn't be funny, but is.
12/23. never forget.
something about a book...
damn... now it's all over...
i believe that i mentioned in a previous installment that i had gotten, and was reading anansi boys by neil gaimann (there are links in the previous, i just don't feel like jumping through those hoops again right now, it's nearly 5 am for christ's sake).
that was, i am certain, 6 days ago, and tonight i finished, in what i would call the 'push for the final third'.
all i can say is that it didn't disappoint. there is a reason the gaimann is such a revered author. when you read his work you get a sense of reading something that is written by a real person, rather than some sort of book generating automoton. it was, as usual, paced well, filled with words that make you think from time to time, sprinkled with just enough british phrasery and topped with a plot line that, while visible from about two and third miles away, still makes you feel good reading it.
that would, actually, be my only real complaint about the book. that last bit i mentioned there, the story didn't really have any solid 'twists'. perhaps it was just me that felt that way, but by about 1/3 of the way through i was already predicting with good accuracy what was going to happen. luckily, it's written very well and you feel good when you reach the end anyway.
for me, it struck a nice chord, because there's an interesting realtionship between father and son, and by the end, it feels so much better. the best part of the entire book was the way he managed to wrap the whole thing up into a neat little package you wouldn't mind giving to a poor sick child, not unlike those of the make a wish foundation, tiny tim, or poor violet (a rediculous pop culture reference that, if not given your ability to use the internet, i would gladly pay money to you for giving me it's source...).
anyway, after that last paragraph, i'm quite certain you are ready to be done reading. as stated, the linked article has links, or else, you might find yourself using the great google search engine, or just hitting up amazon.com to find out more. i'd recommend it as a book, because it's just enough different to make you special for reading it, and it's good enough that you can relish the feeling.
now, i just need to figure out what i'm reading next. i have a couple of books that i've borrowed here, but for some reason i can't seem to get myself to read them. gaiman did just release that collection of short stories...
i believe that i mentioned in a previous installment that i had gotten, and was reading anansi boys by neil gaimann (there are links in the previous, i just don't feel like jumping through those hoops again right now, it's nearly 5 am for christ's sake).
that was, i am certain, 6 days ago, and tonight i finished, in what i would call the 'push for the final third'.
all i can say is that it didn't disappoint. there is a reason the gaimann is such a revered author. when you read his work you get a sense of reading something that is written by a real person, rather than some sort of book generating automoton. it was, as usual, paced well, filled with words that make you think from time to time, sprinkled with just enough british phrasery and topped with a plot line that, while visible from about two and third miles away, still makes you feel good reading it.
that would, actually, be my only real complaint about the book. that last bit i mentioned there, the story didn't really have any solid 'twists'. perhaps it was just me that felt that way, but by about 1/3 of the way through i was already predicting with good accuracy what was going to happen. luckily, it's written very well and you feel good when you reach the end anyway.
for me, it struck a nice chord, because there's an interesting realtionship between father and son, and by the end, it feels so much better. the best part of the entire book was the way he managed to wrap the whole thing up into a neat little package you wouldn't mind giving to a poor sick child, not unlike those of the make a wish foundation, tiny tim, or poor violet (a rediculous pop culture reference that, if not given your ability to use the internet, i would gladly pay money to you for giving me it's source...).
anyway, after that last paragraph, i'm quite certain you are ready to be done reading. as stated, the linked article has links, or else, you might find yourself using the great google search engine, or just hitting up amazon.com to find out more. i'd recommend it as a book, because it's just enough different to make you special for reading it, and it's good enough that you can relish the feeling.
now, i just need to figure out what i'm reading next. i have a couple of books that i've borrowed here, but for some reason i can't seem to get myself to read them. gaiman did just release that collection of short stories...
for those with an interest...
not a lot tonight...
i've been busy, as inpiration has been my friend of late, i've been working on some of my writing. if you have any interest, i've set up a seperate blog, ad pedem litterae, for these works.
i have it set to list a single post, which will be a table of contents, which i will update as i update the writing. for now, there are only three of the several pieces i am noodling away on at the moment, but i hope to get more up soon.
i'd appreciate any constructive criticisms you might have.
a video worth note...
a friend found this fantastic video, it's a freefall from space of a pair of boosters off a recent shuttle launch. it's about five minutes long, the sound is incredible, and the view is also quite astounding. it's worth a watch.
i've been busy, as inpiration has been my friend of late, i've been working on some of my writing. if you have any interest, i've set up a seperate blog, ad pedem litterae, for these works.
i have it set to list a single post, which will be a table of contents, which i will update as i update the writing. for now, there are only three of the several pieces i am noodling away on at the moment, but i hope to get more up soon.
i'd appreciate any constructive criticisms you might have.
a video worth note...
a friend found this fantastic video, it's a freefall from space of a pair of boosters off a recent shuttle launch. it's about five minutes long, the sound is incredible, and the view is also quite astounding. it's worth a watch.
some poetry...
in a place where words have no meaning,
and thoughts get lost in a tangle of questions
that have no answers.
you will find me,
alone.
in a time before the beginning,
long after the end.
where sleep is lost to the turn of the earth.
there i will be,
timeless.
when the tragedy is complete
and words cannot express,
feelings come in waves, pain at the crest,
there will i be,
expressionless.
in a way that's so clear and perfect,
with logic unfailing so that
the truth cannot be denied.
i will be there,
unknown.
forever i will be; lost, alone, unkown.
in a place where words have no meaning,
and thoughts get lost in a tangle of questions
that have no answers.
you will find me,
alone.
in a time before the beginning,
long after the end.
where sleep is lost to the turn of the earth.
there i will be,
timeless.
when the tragedy is complete
and words cannot express,
feelings come in waves, pain at the crest,
there will i be,
expressionless.
in a way that's so clear and perfect,
with logic unfailing so that
the truth cannot be denied.
i will be there,
unknown.
forever i will be; lost, alone, unkown.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
it's that time again...
we'll start with some ctrl-alt-del news...
because i'm a nerd.... get over it.
winter-een-mas is fast approaching, are you ready for it? that lovely winter holiday based entirely around video games... how can you deny it?
really though, i want people to watch these (it's about 20 minutes in total, but it's ok to skip ahead here and there...):
tim was kind enough to show some video of him creating the recent christmas comic, and it's just fun to watch. the big thing for me, though, is that he's using a wacom cintiq, a 22" lcd monitor / pressure sensitive tablet at 1600x1200 that i would kill to have. well, perhaps i wouldn't kill for it, but i would love to get my hands on one, because they are sooooo much amazingness filled with happiness and wrapped in a bow of joy. of course, the price tag weighs in at just over what i still owe on my car, so, i don't see myself making such an investment at this juncture, instead i will stick with my little wacom graphire for now... but someday, right? hell... i'd take a damn intuous even.
absolut
ly great site...
although i'm not an absolut kinda guy, i don't mind it, but if it's going to be cheap, i'd rather suffer the smirnoff, and if it's not going to be cheap, i'd rather enjoy the stolichnaya....
what was i talking about? oh, yeah. abolut has built a great website for their current marketing scheme, 100 absoluts. it's pretty damn well done. there's a great mixture of media and music and interface. being a web geek, i had to poke around it for a while.
it's one of those things that you can't help but be amazing by. it's done entirely in flash, and i can't imagine the hours of actionscript (read: the devil's language) coding involved in just their main site, let alone the 100 aboluts subsite. put on top of that all of the relatively smooth animation, the great music system, which segues nicely into video to show you various 'commercials'. it's just really well done.
don't get me wrong, i'm all for clean design and interface, and i have known and loved a great many other sites, this one just struck me today.
please note, for some reason you have to be 21 just to look at their website. i'm not sure if somehow you are going to end up a little inebriated just from looking at it, i certianly (unfortunatly) did not. but, you've been warned little ones. (lol interwebs!)
thanks for the 4 course meal... here's Mex$1000.
time.com featured this article. apparently there's a push for a new restaraunt format, whereas you pay what you can and feel is fair for your meal.
as someone who doesn't automatically tip, and will flat out NOT TIP if the service doesn't meet my opinion of at least being on level with mediocraty, this seems like a very 'what could go wrong?' kind of situation. but hey, it seems to be working for them... i guess.
honestly, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. those who can't afford anything are encouraged to put in an hours work around the place, sweeping, weeding an organic garden, washing dishes. meanwhile, those who are more affluent are encouraged to help offset those who are in need by chipping in a little extra here and there.
sounds great on paper, but i personally wouldn't want to try and make a profit off of it.
ps3 kiosks freeze up...
on purpose?
this article from destructoid.com made me laugh... not really out loud, but in my head, a sort of mild chuckle that comes from reading about sheer sillyness.
the story goes: playstation 3 kiosks across the country are freezing up, more than just a little bit, it happens a lot. at first thought, you might think that the massive behemoth of a machine is working hard, heating up, and not very well ventilated. we shall forgive them, perhaps. but then, a rep says, "no, it's on purpose, so that people don't play them all day."
oh.
does anyone remember the old ps2 demo machines, perhaps the gamecube, the n64, or even the original NES? they used an interesting trick, they would have their software (whether onboard, or in the 'demo game') set up so that after a set period of time, perhaps 5, 10, or even 15 minutes, the machine would either just flat out reset, or drop to a message thanking the person for playing, and asking them to get the fuck out from in front of it so that someone else might play.
here we are, the 21st century, and sony cannot manage such high end software coding? i can imagine why quite easily, their software guys are all probably quite literally on hiatus, not to be seen until the much anticipated playsation 4, which will be released sometime in early 2012...
i'm going to step right up and call shenanigans on the whole thing.
could it be true???
dateline december 1?
ign.com posted this article a little while ago that i only now became aware of. it states in no uncertain terms (meaning, a source they don't cite, whith no comment from universal and a denial from joss whedon's camp) that there is to be a serenity seguel designed for air as a made for tv movie on the sci-fi channel. could it be that the massive firefly following might actually have pulled heads from their respective asses?
one can only hope.
because i'm a nerd.... get over it.
winter-een-mas is fast approaching, are you ready for it? that lovely winter holiday based entirely around video games... how can you deny it?
really though, i want people to watch these (it's about 20 minutes in total, but it's ok to skip ahead here and there...):
tim was kind enough to show some video of him creating the recent christmas comic, and it's just fun to watch. the big thing for me, though, is that he's using a wacom cintiq, a 22" lcd monitor / pressure sensitive tablet at 1600x1200 that i would kill to have. well, perhaps i wouldn't kill for it, but i would love to get my hands on one, because they are sooooo much amazingness filled with happiness and wrapped in a bow of joy. of course, the price tag weighs in at just over what i still owe on my car, so, i don't see myself making such an investment at this juncture, instead i will stick with my little wacom graphire for now... but someday, right? hell... i'd take a damn intuous even.
absolut
ly great site...
although i'm not an absolut kinda guy, i don't mind it, but if it's going to be cheap, i'd rather suffer the smirnoff, and if it's not going to be cheap, i'd rather enjoy the stolichnaya....
what was i talking about? oh, yeah. abolut has built a great website for their current marketing scheme, 100 absoluts. it's pretty damn well done. there's a great mixture of media and music and interface. being a web geek, i had to poke around it for a while.
it's one of those things that you can't help but be amazing by. it's done entirely in flash, and i can't imagine the hours of actionscript (read: the devil's language) coding involved in just their main site, let alone the 100 aboluts subsite. put on top of that all of the relatively smooth animation, the great music system, which segues nicely into video to show you various 'commercials'. it's just really well done.
don't get me wrong, i'm all for clean design and interface, and i have known and loved a great many other sites, this one just struck me today.
please note, for some reason you have to be 21 just to look at their website. i'm not sure if somehow you are going to end up a little inebriated just from looking at it, i certianly (unfortunatly) did not. but, you've been warned little ones. (lol interwebs!)
thanks for the 4 course meal... here's Mex$1000.
time.com featured this article. apparently there's a push for a new restaraunt format, whereas you pay what you can and feel is fair for your meal.
as someone who doesn't automatically tip, and will flat out NOT TIP if the service doesn't meet my opinion of at least being on level with mediocraty, this seems like a very 'what could go wrong?' kind of situation. but hey, it seems to be working for them... i guess.
honestly, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. those who can't afford anything are encouraged to put in an hours work around the place, sweeping, weeding an organic garden, washing dishes. meanwhile, those who are more affluent are encouraged to help offset those who are in need by chipping in a little extra here and there.
sounds great on paper, but i personally wouldn't want to try and make a profit off of it.
ps3 kiosks freeze up...
on purpose?
this article from destructoid.com made me laugh... not really out loud, but in my head, a sort of mild chuckle that comes from reading about sheer sillyness.
the story goes: playstation 3 kiosks across the country are freezing up, more than just a little bit, it happens a lot. at first thought, you might think that the massive behemoth of a machine is working hard, heating up, and not very well ventilated. we shall forgive them, perhaps. but then, a rep says, "no, it's on purpose, so that people don't play them all day."
oh.
does anyone remember the old ps2 demo machines, perhaps the gamecube, the n64, or even the original NES? they used an interesting trick, they would have their software (whether onboard, or in the 'demo game') set up so that after a set period of time, perhaps 5, 10, or even 15 minutes, the machine would either just flat out reset, or drop to a message thanking the person for playing, and asking them to get the fuck out from in front of it so that someone else might play.
here we are, the 21st century, and sony cannot manage such high end software coding? i can imagine why quite easily, their software guys are all probably quite literally on hiatus, not to be seen until the much anticipated playsation 4, which will be released sometime in early 2012...
i'm going to step right up and call shenanigans on the whole thing.
could it be true???
dateline december 1?
ign.com posted this article a little while ago that i only now became aware of. it states in no uncertain terms (meaning, a source they don't cite, whith no comment from universal and a denial from joss whedon's camp) that there is to be a serenity seguel designed for air as a made for tv movie on the sci-fi channel. could it be that the massive firefly following might actually have pulled heads from their respective asses?
one can only hope.
maybe i should split these up...
they seem to be all over the place...
blood diamond
another movie review, this time of blood diamond, which i've just seen. blood diamond is a very powerful film about the world of blood diamonds, and the problems in sierra leone during the latter years of the last century. blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, literally refer to diamonds mined in places under conflict. the problem with conflict diamonds is how they are mined and produced, and they have been banned internationally for a long time.
the film stars leonardo dicaprio as danny archer, who gives a very solid performance, despite being leonardo dicaprio. for me, i think the issue i have with leo isn't that he's a truly poor actor, as a matter of fact, he's done quite a few films i've really enjoyed, it's the fact that he's got a teen beat sort of fame that just sort of bothers me.
leo plays a man who's lived the hard life in africa, and after being in the army for many years, only to discover it's futility, he decided to get his, and became smuggler.
in one failed attempt to smuggle diamonds out of the sierra leone, he fails to bribe a soldier and ends up in a jail cell, where he overhears a conversation between an ruf soldier and solomon vandy, played by djimon hounsou, where an extremely large diamond is being sought after. when released, dicaprio goes after vandy in the hopes to getting his diamond. he offers to help the man get his family back after hearing the story vandy tells of being captured by the ruf, seperated from his family, and forced to pan for diamonds as a slave. he also tells of what is likely one of the largest uncut diamonds in existence.
the story follows these two, and a young reporter (jennifer connolley) who's taken a fancy to leo, and also wants to break a big diamond story, a win-win. they travel across the country, and you can see a fairly accurate representation of the world a african civil war.
the tale draws you in very well, and, throughout the entire thing, you begin to feel very close to the characters. most notably, you can't help but to be moved by vandy's repsonses to certain stimuli, such as finding his family, only to discover that his son is still missing.
one of the biggest things i've heard against this film are in regards to dicaprio's accent, but in all honestly, throughout the entire film, i was actualy very convinced that he was, in fact, of africa, white or otherwise.
i definitely recommend it. it's powerful, it's moving, it's shot well, and acted well (even leo).
chad vader - episode 5 (holiday special)
they finally released the next episode.
epa to change the way it's rates mileage...
i found an article about vehicle mileage esitmation. it seems that some of the amazing numbers we've been seeing are about to start coming down to a more realistic value. it appears that most hard hit by these new values, however, will be the hybrids:
the new tests will be more real world, closer to the ways that cars are actually driven:
and amazingly, testing will be required for the larger medium duty pick-ups, vans, and suvs.
some music to check out...
someone i know from the interwebs is in a band called theripoffs. they just played glasgow's notorious king tut's wah wah hut, which is akin to new yorks cbgb's in terms of famousness, a place where bands like oasis got their start, and like radiohead have graced the stage. you can check out a video of white wine and angels being perfromed there on youtube, it's actually not bad. ;)
the secret world of comic book artists
sean galloway (aka cheeks-74) is a solid (gold) comic book artist, a younger guy who's most recently worked on the book teen titans go #37, his full issue in the world of comicdom, was plugging a new flick by a guy named howard shum. his blog has a number of links, and it's in your interest to follow them. ;)
the secret world of comic book artists looks to be humerous in the vein of kevin smith. the acting doesn't look exactly stellar, but it seems like the screenplay is written fairly well, and filled with humorous, although dated, pop culture references. it looks like it's worth a watch, whenever it gets around to being show someplace someone might be able to see it.
here's what's been posted on youtube, check 'em out.
in news of me...
there really isn't any... i've been reading anansi boys, listening to tons of music on my zune, and now that there's a little more room, i've been adding music to my collection left and right (i finally got around to checking out fort minor, good shit... and there's a new the shins album coming out, and it's not bad).
made a new wallpaper for the first time in a while... it's different than all the photography i've been doing...
lost in the agenda by ~fyrephlie on deviantART
blood diamond
another movie review, this time of blood diamond, which i've just seen. blood diamond is a very powerful film about the world of blood diamonds, and the problems in sierra leone during the latter years of the last century. blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, literally refer to diamonds mined in places under conflict. the problem with conflict diamonds is how they are mined and produced, and they have been banned internationally for a long time.
the film stars leonardo dicaprio as danny archer, who gives a very solid performance, despite being leonardo dicaprio. for me, i think the issue i have with leo isn't that he's a truly poor actor, as a matter of fact, he's done quite a few films i've really enjoyed, it's the fact that he's got a teen beat sort of fame that just sort of bothers me.
leo plays a man who's lived the hard life in africa, and after being in the army for many years, only to discover it's futility, he decided to get his, and became smuggler.
in one failed attempt to smuggle diamonds out of the sierra leone, he fails to bribe a soldier and ends up in a jail cell, where he overhears a conversation between an ruf soldier and solomon vandy, played by djimon hounsou, where an extremely large diamond is being sought after. when released, dicaprio goes after vandy in the hopes to getting his diamond. he offers to help the man get his family back after hearing the story vandy tells of being captured by the ruf, seperated from his family, and forced to pan for diamonds as a slave. he also tells of what is likely one of the largest uncut diamonds in existence.
the story follows these two, and a young reporter (jennifer connolley) who's taken a fancy to leo, and also wants to break a big diamond story, a win-win. they travel across the country, and you can see a fairly accurate representation of the world a african civil war.
the tale draws you in very well, and, throughout the entire thing, you begin to feel very close to the characters. most notably, you can't help but to be moved by vandy's repsonses to certain stimuli, such as finding his family, only to discover that his son is still missing.
one of the biggest things i've heard against this film are in regards to dicaprio's accent, but in all honestly, throughout the entire film, i was actualy very convinced that he was, in fact, of africa, white or otherwise.
i definitely recommend it. it's powerful, it's moving, it's shot well, and acted well (even leo).
chad vader - episode 5 (holiday special)
they finally released the next episode.
epa to change the way it's rates mileage...
i found an article about vehicle mileage esitmation. it seems that some of the amazing numbers we've been seeing are about to start coming down to a more realistic value. it appears that most hard hit by these new values, however, will be the hybrids:
Hybrids will be hit harder because the new test eliminates some of the all-electric driving that helped them produce impressive results under the present system, Wehrum said.
the new tests will be more real world, closer to the ways that cars are actually driven:
In part that's because the agency's current test doesn't include much stop-and-go traffic or lead-footed acceleration. Air conditioners — notorious for lowering mileage by sucking up engine power — aren't turned on, and all testing is done under conditions that simulate a 70-degree environment.
The new system will use more high-speed driving, partly in 20-degree cold. Air conditioning will be on some portion of each driving cycle, and there will be more stop-and-go and rapid-acceleration driving.
The mileage for gas-electric hybrids probably will be 20% to 30% lower than present estimates for city driving and 10% to 20% lower on the highway. These vehicles quickly lose their all-electric advantage when operated in cold weather or quickly accelerated, Wehrum said.
and amazingly, testing will be required for the larger medium duty pick-ups, vans, and suvs.
some music to check out...
someone i know from the interwebs is in a band called theripoffs. they just played glasgow's notorious king tut's wah wah hut, which is akin to new yorks cbgb's in terms of famousness, a place where bands like oasis got their start, and like radiohead have graced the stage. you can check out a video of white wine and angels being perfromed there on youtube, it's actually not bad. ;)
the secret world of comic book artists
sean galloway (aka cheeks-74) is a solid (gold) comic book artist, a younger guy who's most recently worked on the book teen titans go #37, his full issue in the world of comicdom, was plugging a new flick by a guy named howard shum. his blog has a number of links, and it's in your interest to follow them. ;)the secret world of comic book artists looks to be humerous in the vein of kevin smith. the acting doesn't look exactly stellar, but it seems like the screenplay is written fairly well, and filled with humorous, although dated, pop culture references. it looks like it's worth a watch, whenever it gets around to being show someplace someone might be able to see it.
here's what's been posted on youtube, check 'em out.
in news of me...
there really isn't any... i've been reading anansi boys, listening to tons of music on my zune, and now that there's a little more room, i've been adding music to my collection left and right (i finally got around to checking out fort minor, good shit... and there's a new the shins album coming out, and it's not bad).
made a new wallpaper for the first time in a while... it's different than all the photography i've been doing...
lost in the agenda by ~fyrephlie on deviantART
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