July 2008

Via Slashdot and Filmstalkers. If the video isn’t showing up, as I’m guessing it wont display right for some people, go the Filmstalkers link.

OMGWTFFLIGHTCYCLES.

Reed pointed and asked, “Wtf is that?” It’s nifty. Others wanted a link, here it is.

I need a personal photo project again. I need some rules, some sort of challenge. Should I give 365 self portraits a go again, or try something new? If so, what?

On the second day of CONvergence, I thought it was a good idea to act like a zombie would, by falling down a flight of stairs in a fit of blood and brains. Qarly tells me that I had this grand idea well before I got rip roaring drunk, while I’m pretty sure it was more like midnight.

Any how, some point in time that night my multi-tool slipped out of my pocket. Yes, I lost my Leatherman in Minneapolis. On returning back home, I promptly rode out to REI to grab a new one (my 4th Charge Titanium) only to find that they no longer carried it. Hopping onto Amazon I found what I wanted for a fair cost and ordered it.

Today I got my smiling package, popped it open, and found this huge ass tin box. Guess the model of the Charge I like is now some sort of limited collectors item, too good for a plastic heat shrink display case. Not too sure if I want to keep the flimsy tin box or what.

Suggestions on what I could do with it?

Over 4th of July weekend, Qarly (supetoope) and I jumped ship on any Juplaya plans, got on a plane and headed to Minneapolis for CONvergence. I didn’t really know what to except other then a convention filled with folks that enjoy sci-fi. No one, except for a secret contact, knew about our visit plans, so it was a bit of a surprise.

More photos then you can shake a light saber at…

While riding to Bart tonight from my mom’s house, I noticed that the track I was listening to off of my iPod sounded like it was encoded at something under 64 kbps. Sort of like the sound of music if it was under cartoon water, for those of you who haven’t heard anything encoded that low.

Any how, I noted the song in my head and skipped to the next shuffled track. Same thing, sounded super low quality and horrible. Next track, next track. Everything sounded wrong. Waiting for the train to come I reset my iPod, everything still was playing like shit. While riding to the city I went ahead and restored my iPod.

During the restore I plugged in my Sennheiser ear buds into my laptop to make sure something didn’t happen to my music library. Boy was I spooked when I got a lot of the same garbage audio. I quickly sighed when I pulled the ear buds out and held my laptop to my ear, everything sounded fine.

So some how my ear buds are now translating great sounding audio into trash. I’ve had the pair for over a year and am happy to say I’m done with them. Just wish they kept up another two weeks.

A coworker showed me a pair of Motorola S9s. They fit pretty well on me, except the back sticks out about an inch away from my head. They sound great and put out a lot of sound, Bluetooth static wasn’t noticeable when music was playing. They also double as a standard cell phone headset. I think I’ll be picking one up along with an iPod Bluetooth adapter in the coming weeks. Kind of getting sick of my head not being able to turn because the cord to my ear bugs got stuck somewhere.

The short: Extremely good.

Let me first say that Fandango is fucking garbage. While one movie listings page displays available tickets, clicking on a link directs you to another page saying all that was a load of bull, please pick another time. I wanted to see this with Qarly (

supetoope

) rather badly, since this weekend was time off for her, I planned on getting tickets for said time. I was also recommended to only watch this title in an IMAX theater. The combination of release weekend, IMAX only, and the trash that is Fandango, lead me to purchasing tickets for a 3:30 AM showing at the Metreon. Suck.

None the less, we got up and made it to the theater on time (riding down hill on a bike at 3 in the morning with someone you love is rather nice), sadly we missed the Watchmen trailer, I’ll need to grab that for Q. As it turns out, 3:30 AM is a popular fucking time for folks to see a movie, theater was packed except for the first two rows. We took our seats right as the movie got started.

It’s time for a quick review of the old Batman movies…

Tim Burton:
Batman – Great, realistic for the late 80s. Gave out a good tone of grunge to the whole thing.
Batman Returns – Holy crap awesome dark. True light of why you throw the word “evil” into evil villain.

So, this is the part where a bunch of piss ant parents go and cry to Warner Brothers, demanding that their movie adaptation of an extremely dark and sinister comic book series was too violent and scary for kids. WB tossed Tim Burton out of the director’s chair and opted to go with a more comically entertaining script for the next two movies.

Joel Schumacher:
Batman Forever – Villains start to upstage the super hero. Emphases on the novelty that is a superhero.
Batman & Robin – What the fuck, welcome to Batman the goofy ass cartoon.

As it turns out, families aren’t the main demographic when it comes down to Batman, WB lost big with the last movie. It took them about seven years to turn around and push for a more realistic, harsher, intense script.

Christopher Nolan:
Batman Begins – Batman, the way he should be, in the present. The sort of thing where if you sat down and thought about it, the events that took place (with the except of Ra’s al Ghul) could actually be something happening today.

Any how, pretty sure most of you know all this. Begins really stepped up to the plate, right next to the Tim Burton movies. It wasn’t as dark as the old ones, but really pushed towards a vision of how messed up Bruce Wayne’s predicament is. The Dark Knight drived that point into the ground with an iron fist. The movie isn’t about Batman being a total bad ass, punching dudes in the face then taking names. It’s about how twisted villains can be, and how Bruce Wayne’s life is completely fucked. As far as any past superhero/comic adaptation movie I’ve seen, nothing compares to the Joker’s role in this movie.

The only thing I disliked about the movie was the new helmet, makes him look like a bug. I’m sure others will agree.

Watching it in IMAX was well worth it. Many shots were done in full frame, and the switches between the two formats for the most part was unnoticeable. Audio was grand, I really enjoyed the track with the single cord whenever something bad was afoot.

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend going out of your way to watch it in an IMAX theater. And even if not, this is very much a movie worth more then the admission cost.

For a while last year I wanted to do this project where I documented every time I observed someone sucking at driving. After I had enough photos I would have either posted them some where, or hosted some impromptu bull shit art gallery showing. Ultimately the idea was this would all be ironic and hypocritical in the eyes of many of my friends, due to the gossip meme that I myself am a bad drive, which would have been the point of showing off the photos.

Any how here’s the lot of what I shot with my Hiptop’s shitty camera while I still had a car.

Around 5 or 6 years old now. On its last legs, or flaps. Any suggestions on wallets that aren’t made out of leather?

I’ve been struggling with the social world that is around me for the past few months. It’s been the source of much stress and so on. This weekend and today ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. The ways I interact with my friends and how they interact with me, I’m now finding, to be very unhealthy.

Our lives are all buzzing by faster then we ever could have imagined and only rarely do we want it to slow down. Is there a way around this? What steps can one take to still enjoy the thrill of leading an intense life without regretting later on that they left their friends in the dust?

Saturday eve, (drunkenly) stumbling up my stairs into my flat, I composed an outline of limitation I want to impose on myself that involve my social interactions with others. The goal here is to see if this style of functioning will make me (and my friends) feel better about their relations to each other, possibly make them be more fuller and present.

The simple items…

• Slowly quitting Twitter, going to only read/post from my Hiptop (i.e. when I’m mobile). Taking Twitterific off my machine and possibly blocking twitter.com on my laptop. Why? Because Twitter makes me too connected, I accept this sort of 140 character connection as being a replacement to something more. All and all, knowing about everything my friends do all the time, in very short and non desrcript ways is making me feel like I know them less.
• Start posting in my journal more. Lay out my thoughts, create a log of what I’m doing, using that to reflect on when figuring out what I want to do in the upcoming future. As I’ve told some very very close friends over dinner and through the air waves tonight, “Our lives are boats floating in a vast ocean, and journals are our sails that cary us through.”
• Take more photos. I might start a new 365 project, I don’t know, but it fucking needs to happen.

Rather harder rules…

• Actively push to hang out with my friends. Be weary of those who find it an annoyance when I push for a set time and date. Being friends means making time for those around you.
• Be present for my friends, give them my full attention, try to make a solid connection each time interaction happens. Seek these interactions out, they mean so much more then just simply running into someone.
• Social interactions are 3 friends max at any one point in time. Any more and I politely leave. Why? Parties are a garbage way of interacting with your friends. You cannot be present with them when you’re thrown into a barrel of alcohol, music and random people you may or may not find interesting. It’s getting to a point where some of my friends see these interactions as being a suitable fill in to actually hanging out one on one, eventually seeing parties as an easy way to hang out with others over setting time aside for one on one interactions. I.e. killing two birds with one stone doesn’t work here.
• Limit interaction and dialog over AIM. Simple but very oh so fucking hard.

If I even care about this list tomorrow is a rather big question. As many know, I’m very much a social bug. Regardless, I need to get ahold of my head before I actually do lose it. If you’re still reading this, please take note of the 5th bullet point. If I end up leaving because you show up, do not take is personally. Very much a “it’s me, not you” sort of deal.

Extremely lovely photo by Mooflyfoof.