Image from IMDb
6.29.2006
10:31pm
I rented two movies this week that turned out to be very good choices from the local Hollywood Video. The first was Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room and the second was The Producers. The Enron flick was really a documentary about the corrupt business practices that occurred at what became the most notorious company in America. I don't remember much from the news reports back in 2001 except that Enron was a large energy company and that they had gone bankrupt... at the time I wasn't interested in any of the other details. Turns out the full story is quite interesting and worth making a movie about. I for one didn't realize the connection between Enron and the energy crisis that the state of California was having at the time; turns out Enron caused most of those blackouts. As is mentioned several times during the film, the fall of Enron is similar to the wreck of The Titanic where ambition and lack of forsight combined with irresponsible management caused the "ship" to sink. Some of the things that people did at that company would shock you.
The second movie, The Producers, is one that I have wanted to see for quite a while but never got around to doing so. After watching it I have to say that Nathan Lane is simply amazing at Broadway-style acting (something that I have read about online but never saw examples of). Matthew Broderick has a much better singing voice than I originally thought, and Will Ferrell... well you have to see the movie to understand. Uma Thurman has one of her most lucious roles as "Ulla" from Sweden. Mel Brooks of course gets credit for coming up with the original screenplay which was used for the 1968 incarnation; he has a sort of comedic style that you won't find anywhere else. Definitely the best comedy I have seen in a long time.
Image from IMDb
6.24.2006
7:00pm
Tim, Michaeel, and I watched a very gruesome movie last night called Running Scared. I mentioned it a few days ago in regard to the impressive bass effects and decided to pick it up. Turns out it was a decent movie, although pretty unusual. Crooked cops, mobsters, pimps, hookers, child pornographers... it had just about every evil character you can think of. Oh and enough nudity to definitely earn the R rating. It also had Paul Walker cast as the main character which I initially thought was going to make the movie awful but he actually did a respectable job. Although not directed by Quentin Tarantino, several of the scenes were definitely reminescent of him (think Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill).
Hell must have frozen over because I am listening to country music right now. *Oh the horror*
I decided to get a couple of the Rascal Flatts albums after listening to the 30-second clips on iTMS. I didn't actually buy the album from Apple but the quality of their previews far surpasses amazon.com. At Best Buy the girl that rang up the CDs said I was awesome for buying Rascal Flatts and went on to explain how she was a huge fan and had been following the band since they started. Not the first time I've heard that kind of enthusiam for them before (cough Dave and Brittany cough). This is all Pixar's fault *grin*. If I hadn't heard their song on the Cars soundtrack I would not be interested. At least it's mostly rock/country mix.
6.21.2006
10:49pm
What does a frequency waterfall chart for an extremely bass-intense scene look like? Like this (from Running Scared):
You don't see pink for most movies, and almost never any purple (highest except for white). I haven't seen this movie yet but it might be worth a rental just to experience this scene.
6.19.2006
11:55pm
Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft in 2008 for the Gates Foundation (good for him). Steve Ballmer isn't leaving (boooo).
I saw a story on digg today about a new CCD image sensor designed for the US Navy with an effective resolution of 111 Megapixels. Wow! That's about 3 times the resolution of the very best analog film out there (36MP). Even the high-rez scanners used for film -> digital frame conversion are only around 54 Megapixels.
I brought home 5 zebra danios from Petsmart today after work and coincidentally found that my oldest platy died today while I was away. Creepy. I also got some more ghost shrimp since my betta fish decided to have one as a snack when I was away in Virginia. After all, for larger fish ghost shrimp are often used as feeders. I guess you could say he died of natural causes.
6.16.2006
8:35pm
I saw an interesting license plate today that said "ICU GOD", the gap between the two filled by the Florida orange that adorns all of the new-style FL tags. Now to me this phrase could mean one of two things... either (1) "I see you God", likely a testament to the driver's religious belief in God, or (2) "I.C.U. God", the self-promoting claim of a medical doctor who works in the Intensive Care Unit and things he/she is the end-all, be-all of the profession. Either one makes a bold statement.
If I had a custom license plate, it would probably say something geeky. It would be entertaining to have something like "CAR=TRUE" or "MILE++" but I don't think Florida allows special symbols on the tag. Maybe something tentative like "OOPS" or "UH OH" or the old math favorite "314159". In any case, I don't want to get a special plate because it would take me a month to decide on something. And after that I would keep saying to myself "ah it would have been better if I had chosen ______".
10:19am
CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts: regular, premium and unleaded.
- Jay Leno
6.15.2006
7:38pm
Cars. Wow, I mean holy $#@!. Pixar outdid themselves in almost every way possible. Many of the scenes in the movie looked like they were yanked from real-life footage and thrown into the digital realm (well, ignoring the unusual characteristics of the cars). Their new motto out to be: "Pixar, rendering reality." I tried to pay close attention to little graphical details since I had read about the various easter-egg type appearances of prior Pixar characters. That proved to be impossible during the first 15 minutes or so during the NASCAR-type racing scenes where imagery is flying by so fast your eyes don't have enough time to focus on everything.
On the music side of things, Rascal Flatts had a good remake of "Life is a Highway" that is on the soundtrack. There were a couple other pop music songs featured (unlike Finding Nemo) along with the regular background music. Surround effects were done well in the scenes that utilized them.
As far as the characters go, Owen Wilson is immediately recognizable as Lightning McQueen which I think was a small detraction. It's weird when you associate a human face with an anthropomorphized automobile. I was also able to pick out Cheech Marin as Ramone and of course Larry the Cable Guy as Mater. Larry was a great choice and he adds the most humor out of any of the characters (both regular and toilet humor). This is yet another animated film where I think teens/adults will get more enjoyment than little kids simply because they get some of the more grown-up jokes and references.
Just like the other Pixar films, make sure you stay all the way through the credits. You will be treated to some Cars-style renditions of Toy Story, Monster's Inc, and a Bug's Life.
6.11.2006
9:56pm
I'm back from my trip to Virginia. The drive back was a little longer because I stopped a couple extra times, but no problems along the way. Most expensive car that passed me on the trip: Aston-Martin Vantage: $120,000. I also saw a convoy of muscle cars traveling down I-77 in Virginia... PowerTour 2006 or something like that.
It turns out the problem with my car was a bad wheel bearing on the passenger-side rear. Dad got the replacement parts for it and took it to a garage Saturday so it was working fine for the trip back home. I was probably very fortunate to have made it from Florida to Virginia without the bearings seizing up completely. At the least, it was definitely more pleasant traveling without that noisy hum from the bearing.
6.8.2006
1:42pm
Some great stuff from Douglas Adams.
6.7.2006
8:12pm
In Virginia after a long day of traveling. I left Palm Bay at 5am and arrived in Christiansburg at a quarter after 4pm. My grandparents (on my Dad's side) are here for Brittany's graduation as well until Saturday.
My car has been making some odd vibration sounds and I'm not sure where it is coming from. It may just be the car getting older and noisier or it might be a loose seal, etc someplace.
6.5.2006
10:41pm
Have you ever tried to find an old friend on the Internet, like their web site, phone number, or even just an email address, and weren't able to uncover anything? It's very frustrating. Especially when said person used to have a presence online but now no longer does. It makes you wonder what happened to them; did they give up the web entirely, did they change their name, did they die, or maybe did they move to an exotic tropical island where there is no Internet access? In any event, I hope life has been good to them wherever they may happen to be.
I've only got one more day of work before I take a mini-vacation and go home for my sister's HS graduation. It will be nice to get away for a little while but I hope my car doesn't have any problems along the way. I'll be leaving my fish unattended for 5 days but I doubt they will throw any parties or burn down the house while I'm gone.
Oh, Scott is coming back to Harris next week to do some catching-up and to help me install 9 new rackmount servers we just got. He'll only be around for a few days before heading back to Tennessee but it will be nice to see him again (as opposed to just the Skype conversions we usually have). Nate is still on vacation for another month so I won't be seeing him for a while.
6.1.2006
6:30pm
There is some drama unfolding over at The Pirate Bay. They are the most notorious and publicly visible BitTorrent p2p tracker database which hosts links to thousands (probably millions) of shared files. The big question is whether the Swedish police will find them guilty of copyright infringement, because the nature of BitTorrent means that no illegal files were actually hosted on TPB servers.
I'm also wondering how much longer Mininova will be around. Most of the traffic that used to flow through TPB will probably find its way over to their site. If they are shut down it will be a huge defeat for the p2p community.
Making news in the gaming community today is the release of Half-Life 2: Episode One. It is a continuation of the game and there will be several episodes produced. Only $20 which is very tempting.