Finally Got Around to Watch a Few Movies

Shaun of the Dead and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Shaun of the Dead is a fantastic film along with a great zombie movie, and also really fucking funny. The best zombie weapon = Shaun's cricket bat. And. um . . . I admit I came close to tears a few times, it has great heart warming moments. Shut up.

Sky Captain, was a movie that came out a while ago, that was completely done in front of a blue screen. A Film Noir . . . remake? (no not a remake, not a spoof) rebirth? (no didn't bring anything back as an art) Really I don't know what to call it, it seems to have been made just so they can say they were able to make a Film Noir in today's world. It was full of clichés, only some on purpose, and started a little slow for my taste. I was actually a little mad for the first ten minutes of the movie. When I hear about a movie set completely made up of computer generated content, I imagine a movie full of amazing, impossible shots, but the beginning is full of shots that would never been in any movie because they were incredibly boring. But then Sky Captain totally redeemed it's self. One word "Gigantic, Metal, Robots."From then on it was a good movie, not a great movie, but . . . well . . . I wouln't buy it.

But it brought up one question for me. The movie is full of 1950's, fake, cool looking, technology from the 21ST CENTURY. My question is: Where the hell is my Hundred Foot Killer Robot? Where's my Ray Gun? Where's my freakin' Personal Jet Pack? We live in the 21'st century now. Why arn't we living on the moon, rapped in cellophane and plastic covering our crotches, with a gold fish bowl on our heads? That's all I want. Come on people lets get it together and get to where we are supposed to be.

Idiots, and Muppets - or My Saturday Night!

Well no, not really. My saturday nights are generally filled with me pretending to get homework done, surfing random websites, and drinking good beer until I fall asleep. At least I drink good beer. But I digress, these are just a few shows I have been really enjoying lately.

I'll go in revers order from the title.

Muppets: "Well it's not quite a mop, not quite a puppet, but man. . . So, to answer your question, I don't know." -Homer Simpson (I don't know if that is completely accurate, so screw you)
Basically dotBoom, is my new favorite podcast. Well technically it is more of a online sitcom you can watch as a podcast for free. . . with muppets.

The story follows a web design firm, and the crap everyone has to deal with. . . with muppets. I really like muppets, I like saying muppets, but I like this show for more then just the muppets. You can tell the people who make this every week have been in the exact situations. It really comes out in the writing, which is hilarious. The charters are varying, and funny, and cute. They have stories you really care about, which really separates it from most sitcoms.

The design is professional. The intro and credits are fun to watch and they, especially the credits, have a style not used much. They make many mistakes in the production. Sometimes you can hear a dog bark for no reason, the green screen goes over the charters a bit, and a few times was just completely missing. These mistakes make the show more human to watch, as opposed to the lifeless comedies on tv. And really you just got to remember, there doing this for free.

This is what I have been looking for as long as I have been downloading podcasts. They have been great for news, and some have been funny, but I haven't found any that replace the half hour situation comedies. Now there is dotBoom. Now there are muppets.


Idiots: Stella was a show on Comedy Central a while ago. I thought it was very funny since seeing the pilot, which I got from in some magazine, but missed most of it when it was on air. It got canceled, like most great shows. But now they have the DVD out. The other day I decided to pick it up and watch it. It was fantastic, my favorite episodes are still the pilot and also "Coffee Shop," and the commentary from the three Stella guys are great. The extras are things like "The History of STELLA" and a blooper reel. I wish there was a little more but there's not much I can do about that. I would recommend it to anyone who liked the show, or anyone who likes un-categorizable comedy.

Writing a review for the show is hard, because I can't really explain what it is actually about. It is incredibly easy to laugh at it, but it is also incredibly complex. It has it's own style, but shows homage to all the great comedians ever since laughter evolved. And you start to care a lot about the three guys, even though they are huge dicks. I guess this is why I like it so much. There is almost no correlation between any of the jokes unless you look at the the show as a whole.

It's a great show that I like a lot, but if you don't think it's funny, you would hate it. Try to watch a few episodes before you buy the DVD, to make sure you don't wast your money on something you don't like.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

I heard about an office-like application from Google, but this is the first time I have seen it. It looks pretty simple for the most part and it seems descent. There is no automatic spell checking with the right click like on most text editors, which is pretty damn important to me. Edit: the spell check is a bit weird to get used to but it's not bad. It would be kind of cool if I could write a blog and then post it directly to blogger, (Edit in Blogger: yeah it works pretty well. I wish it was faster, but most of that is my internet connection and Firefox. It was supposed to take the title of the document and make it the title of the post but I don't think it did. At least I had to edit it in. Also it has a feature where multiple people can edit one article. That would be cool for multiple authored blogs. Just ideas.) and if i can put HTML right into this and it would go right into blogger that would be great. (if this link goes to the Google homepage then it works. Edit: the link works well and lets you do a lot of different things.) It doesn't work in Safari witch sucks kind of because that's what I use. If someone can tell my why Firefox is so slow on my mac then I would use it but right now its Safari for me. There is an insert tab for images and stuff and a revisions tab and an edit HTML tab. All and all it looks pretty cool. A few things could be done better but not bad, Google.

Over-thinking 1337 or Under-thinking Lanugage

My mother, a hippy and teacher at university, has always had a progressive view on the English language. Any correction of improper English would usually be met by "Proper English was invented by rich, white guys trying to keep minorities down." Then she would sprout examples of different dialects that, while not text book proper, still should be considered completely acceptable. That was usually met by me rolling my eyes, because I heard things like this all my life, but her basic thesis was not lost on me. Language should be solely used for communication. If my feelings are understood by you, then it shouldn't matter how I communicate them. This effects me especially, being pretty severely dyslexic (kind of amazed I could get that word spelled right) and tend to make up words and grammar.

A few sundays ago, UserFriendly.org, a nerdy web-comix, made fun of New Zealand schools for allowing "students to use 'Text Speak' in their answers." Since reading this I have been considering how I felt about the rout we, the internet connected, immediacy demanding, ADD evolved youth culture, have been taking the English language. Leet, (Yes I'm attempting a serious discussion about 1337 on our society. I'm as shocked as anyone else . . . I feel a little dirty. Editors note: this will not be very serious) according to Wikipedia and the horde of nerds spending hours and hours debating such definitions, "is a sociolect variety used primarily on the Internet, particularly in online games." (Wikipedia seemed appropriate to use, I would not use if for a serious article or paper, unless it was about something like leet) This seems to cover the whole gambit of the internet language. (i.e. Emotocons, abbreviations, and ASCII) What benefits does this new way of communicating have on the world, or does it further degrade it? Does it segregate from or add to the beauty of our great communicators? Is it the next evolutionary step in our language or just something dreamed up by Ingsoc?

My thoughts: It's so much more complicated that any of that. Leet was dreamed up more out of a necessity for ease and privacy, then a new communication. Newspeak, from George Orwell's 1984, was a way to stifle the power of words, to take there emotional value, but leet and leet-like-speach can arguably show more emotion then it's english counterpart. LOL is more commonly used (weather for real or ironically or double-ironically or how-ever-much-ironically you want) and more emotionally charged then "Laugh Out Loud." What worries me is the title "Leet," derived from elite. This reminds me too much of the rich elite, who created the standard of language, my mother always warned me about. This word comes from geek counter's need to find an area where is is superior, but it creates underlings of everyone outside of the geek sphere. There is only a fine line. Between what, I have no idea, but it sounded like an appropriate way to end.

This is Hard to Watch, But Eveyone Should See It.

Seeing this makes me sick, but it also shows me where we are going in this world. A huge question of any society has always been, Who polices the police? The answer has always been, the citizens, but until now it has basically been a losing battle. As much as people, me included, make fun of the internet and most modern technology, their has been some amazing achievements. Before this huge rush of technological advances, fuck even 10 years ago, an incident like the above would have been impossible to prove. Now I bet 80% of those students had camera phones or blogs or something, and within the hour they were posting this story. This shows the goodness, and true reason for, this technology, and I am happy it is being used.

Hopefully soon these cops are put in jail, where they belong.

This article has more information.

I've been PSPeed on

I have had a PSP for awhile now, yes I fell into the huge hype that was the PSP launch. I saw the beautiful screen, wifi enabling, and movie and music compatibility; combined with the promise of good PlayStation games and flash memory for storage, in a cool looking portable. I flipped the fuck out. But after the initial drooling and epileptic fits, due to too much excitement, and actually using it to play games, I realized it um . . . sucks. The games are terrible (I was hoping Final Fantasy or some other great games would be ported, but nope), the movies cost about the same as a DVD but with no extras, and downloads . . . what downloads.

Now I have heard that there is a reason for the crapyness. Apparently, PlayStation is waiting for the release of the PS3 to give the promised applications. This confuses me, the DS, is supposedly going to have functionality with the Wii, but it survives on its own as a great hand held.

So this rambling is going somewhere, I'm not just a year behind all of the internet. I just wanted to talk about the one game I have seen that has done everything right, so far. I have only been able to play the downloadable Loco Roco demoes, yes the one instance were you can download a demo. They released a demo and a special Halloween level, both great. It has great game play and an interesting and fun story. It has difficult areas, but not so hard as to stop being fun. I can't wait to play the full game, and actually using the PSP with out wanted to throw it.

Share your Music Taste

I have been using a new web application, still in its Alpha stage, called iLife. It is a social networking website used to spread your musical taste. I am really enjoying it. The website has a clean, easy-to-understand layout and so far it hasn't become to big or complex.

While the website helps to keep track of your friends, find new friends, send messages to your friends, and all around wast time, the real music magic happens in the iLike sidebar. This sidebar attaches to iTunes (or most other music players, I think) and displays music "related" to whatever is currently playing. It separates the songs into copyrighted music, which can be bought at the iTunes music store, or my favorite, what they call "free music by new artists." This is a great feature that will be able to give upcoming musicians a larger voice online. In the mean time it gives me quality music for free and I like free music. iLife was created by the designers of GarageBand.com, a website for independent artists to distribute there music online for free. They now use iLife to distribute these artists.

I have only been using it for a few days and the only problems I have seen is the sidebar slows my computer down a tiny bit and there aren't nearly enough people using it to get really good peer recommendations. A few additions I think they should add to the next few updates, is a section showing recently downloaded songs using the webpage and perhaps, because I am a little obsessed with podcasts, a page recommending podcasts based on which ones are playing. But there will definitely be major changes in the leap from Alpha to Beta and on.

This is definitely a website everyone who likes music should check out. The designers can change and fiddle with the website but, it will only get better when more people contribute. You'll find me as Die-Lon, be my friend I only have one.

Seasons

Some say there favorite season is what ever is the next one, and never this. Mine is always the same. I love Fall. Something about the change everything goes through, changes me. The cool, crispness makes me feel more alive. Most importantly the colors, the wind, the longer nights make for great story telling. The cool, outside temperatures combined with warm inturnal temperatures brought on by hot ciders, helps their enjoyment. None of the other seasons have the perfect combination of variables, quite like Fall.

Shooting War

I was looking through the current issue of Wired, when I ran into an article for this serious, online, comic book, Shooting War. I, being a wannabe comic book nerd and too poor to support my wannabe habbit, jumped all ove this. Honestly though, I thought it was going to be the normal overzealous, teenage boy's wet dream that most comic books resemble, and the fact that it was free and avaliable online didn't fare well for the quality. But, happily, I was proven wrong. Writer and creator Anthony Lapp and artist Dan Goldman, have made a spookly realistic look into the future. In the year 2011, the war in Iraq has erupted with no sign of ending, attacks on US soil are happening regularly, and humanity has all but destroyed its self. Jimmy Burns was a video-blogger, until he was swallowed up by a huge news network and spit out into the middle of Iraq as a war correspondent. What is his place, as a "Citizen Journalist," amongst the "real" Journalist? How will he survive Armageddon in this alien environment?

Awesome. I'm hooked and I can't wait for the latest chapter.

Happy Independence Nigeria

October 1st 1960 Nigerians gained there freedom from British Colonialism. Fourty-six years later I try to cross Sheridan, weaving through there parade. I hate doing this. I feel like I'm interrupting there fun. Historically I have never really liked parades, but this has been the second one I have stoped to watch and really enjoyed. I think it has to do with the participants. At the occasional Homecoming or Fourth of July parade, that I have seen, people seemed to be more exited to watch then to be on the floats. But here people are singing, dancing in the streets, really proud to be Nigerian or what ever they are celebrating. I like this. It makes me proud to be human.

Oh My God

What is going to stop them from creating HYPER-allergenic cats. And take over the world in a extremely cute way.

Teddy

I think this is probably one of the coolest 3D programs, I have ever seen. It just seems really easy and intuitve, all you do is draw a 2D picture and it will change it into a 3D looking thing. Unfortunetly it is for Windows so I cant use it. Someone try it and tell me how it is.

I want to play with my overly used internet joke referring to an upcoming console.

I am so exited about the Wii, coming out soon. www.wii.com
I will be saving the $250 for the console +$50 for each game.

There is going to be so many innovative games coming out because of this. Zelda, Warioware, Duck Hunt, I really want to play these games now. I am a little worried that I wont be able to playes these games for hours and hours, on account of my hands becoming tired by the wiimote.

Exited.

Espesso

I had espesso today. I was disappointed by everything. I don't know why I thought Lavazza was going to be anything more then a large chain, but I felt a little ripped off after entering. It was just an Italian Starbucks, with clean, smooth atmosphere and too many "specialized" drinks. The one thing I liked was the ceiling was made of spoons. It looked kind of cool. Anyway, the solid espresso was strange. It was lighter then a moosse, and the milk tasted basically like foamed, evaporated milk. The espesso was insanely sweet and had a sour, almost chemical, taste to it. All in all, I am glad I spent the time and money to try this out, but I am never going to have it again.

I think I might try to figure out how to make this. I could make it better or take the idea and use other liquids. How about beerpesso.

If anyone has any more ideas or for some un-godly reason liked there espesso, leave a comment.

Solid Espresso

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-espresso12.html

This is amazing. Lavazza, an old, old Italian coffee company, debuted Espesso in America. (and only in Chicago, because the only two American stores are in Chicago. Awesome) Thats right Espesso. (Espresso but no "r") This means an espresso shot solidified. It seems like a mousse or pudding, but fancy and scientific. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I think I will go on Thursday.

stupid rain

Bad weather makes it really hard to do things, like go to class. If I go then I'll be all wet, but if I stay, I'll be an idiot.

Edit. I just realized what day it is, and what happend five years ago. I really need to stop complaining about stupid and pointless things. I'm going to class now.

been awhile

It has been to long time blogger. I read news of a new blogger beta and I just had to see you. I just want to know, why not me? Why can't I upgrade yet? I know I haven't been the best blogger lately. I know I have been neglecting you and not listening to your needs, but please just one more chance. I just want you to know myspace means nothing to me. Its design sucks, compared to your beautiful, clean interface. And the posiblity of RSS 2.0, wow. So, I know I don't deserve it, but please just think about it, for old times sake.
Love
Dylan

Continuing the Awesomeness

First of all I just have to point this out
awesome |?ôs?m| adjective extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear : the awesome power of the atomic bomb. • informal extremely good; excellent : the band is truly awesome!

DERIVATIVES
awesomely adverb
awesomeness noun
Awesomeness is a word that is so . . . awesome

Anyway

I think I am going to keep this. It works well. Although I still don't know how to get an RSS feed.

I received the greatest game for the PSP two weeks ago. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X. It is a remake of the Mega Man X game for the Super Nintendo, with very little done wrong. The graphics got a huge upgrade and looks crisp and beautiful on the PSP screen. The sound got a nextgen boost too. Now you can hear Mega Man talk. Oooh fancy. Also featuring some hard-core music that fits gameplay well. Side-scrollers fit the PSP well, because the inabliaty to control of the camera. An this is a fantastic one.

The few problems, were miner, but still problems. Mostly it was just damn hard. I played it for the last two weeks and only got past the first level. I had to send it back just because it was annoying me, maybe I will try it again later. Also I'm a little upset they got rid of the password saving style, for the more common hardware save. I understand why, but I just miss the scraps of paper full of random letters and numbers scaled all over.

This game is great for people who played the original, and want to remeber the fast pased game. For those who didn't enjoy it as a child but love Mega Man, you might like it too. And the people who hate Mega Man. What the Crap. What more do you want he is a boy robot. I have always wanted to be a boy robot.

trying stuff out

so i thought i would try this "good website" thing out. No more crappy myspace for me. well i might not keep it.
mostly im trying to find a free rss thingy. i think (hope is the better word) that maybe blogger has it.