Vanilla Coke

I think that the Coca-Cola wizards have changed the flavor to Vanilla Coke a little bit since last summer. I can’t decide if I like it better this way.

Abbreviate

I just read a CNET announcement of Windows Mobile, a new operating system for handhelds and smartphones. After discussing the new version of CE, the author goes on to discuss some new PDAs coming out. At one point, he mentions that one of them “has 64MB of RAM (random access memory).” Now how useful is that parenthetical? If the reader doens’t know what RAM is, is explaining what RAM is an acronym for really going to help, keeping in mind that most people call their computer tower their “hard drive.”

The Fourth Rail’s review of Hulk gives the film a very fair shake. It doesn’t include any major spoilers and should help anyone who isn’t sure if they want to see it or not. I may write up my own thoughts if I can scare up the inspiration, but my general recommendation would be to catch an afternoon showing or wait for the rental, though I did enjoy it a whole lot.

I didn’t win the lottery. To top it off the winning ticket was bought in Baltimore. I hate that city.

American Summer

Thank you TiVo for allowing me to find out that Wet Hot American Summer is on Encore 6/28 at 10:40pm and again on 6/29 at 1:40am. Matt Thomas and I have been trying to find it in stores for over a week now.

Still Life

I came to a realization just now when I found an article on TechTV about photo-based weblogs¹. The author links to three very cool pages: Slower.net, A Day in the Life, and The Mirror Project. They’re all well-designed pages filled with wonderful images. And that’s when it dawned on me: I don’t really care about still images. I’ve never been interested in museums, and often felt like I was being dragged to them in school. When people show me photos of vacations, I love looking at them, but only to see the subject of the picture. I just don’t care about the art of it all. And this is odd for me, considering my background in film and love of comic books. I think this is because, though both are visual-based, they also convey motion through their frames. I don’t know why, but I’ve just rarely been interested in still visual art beyond my interest in what’s happening in the picture. Maybe I’m too rooted in narration and plot and need to step back and just enjoy them for their beauty. Hmm…

1. Photo Blogs: A photo blog is one where people tend to post pictures that they’ve taken instead of posting prose like I do. ↩

When Things Just Work

Chris Dahl forwarded this along to me. It’s an astounding short film that British Honda made. No tricks, just a lot of preparation. It comes in at about two minutes long. Amazing. Give it a watch.

Also, I found this little bit of fun on Zeldman today. Just have fun, fly around, get punched by big guys and play guitar with an alien.

Summer Movie Season

Weekend recap: Finding Nemo - great, The Matrix Reloaded - still great, Old School - still hilarious, The Boondock Saints - amazing (sequel’s on the way!). I’m getting probably a little too excited about The Hulk due to all of the over-promotion and neat color-changing Slurpee cups filled with yummy Mountain Dew Blue Shock. Then I realize that Ang Lee directed it, and I feel a little more justified in my eager anticipation. And I played a bit of the video game in Best Buy this weekend and you get to smash lots about everything. Nothing has gotten me fired up about T3 yet.

Press "R" for Bullet Time

I’m very much enjoying Enter the Matrix for my new Gamecube. It isn’t all that hard (being that your health replenishes really fast when you’re not getting hit), but I choose to play it at full speed and run straight at the cops while diving through the air in slow motion and blasting shot through the air. Also you can run on walls.

My refurbished TiVo Series 2 came today, but I can’t use it until Saturday when the cable guy comes.

DVR

As Katherine discovered this weekend, Comcast is piloting a TiVo-like Digital Video Recorder (DVR). After digging on their website for a while, she found this page that has lots of info on the service. She called the number and the cable people came the very next day to give them a new box and set up the service. It costs ten dollars a month and seems to be put together pretty well. It isn’t as slick as TiVo, and doens’t offer nearly as many features, but it does seem to let you record two programs at once, or at least record one and watch another, which TiVo won’t do. More importantly, you don’t have to buy the box, which is the one factor that I think may mean that TiVo won’t ever catch on in the wide market. If TiVo would just collude with cable companies and offer their user interface with the company’s cable boxes, coupled with a month’s free service, I don’t think many people would cancel once they got used to the freedom it allows. As is, I’d recommend that people who want to try out the tape-less recording revolution but who don’t want to shell out money for a TiVo should check out the Comcast deal.

Fear and Loathing in Sunnydale

Katherine returns tonight from the Tiger Cruise. Color me excited.

A package from my dad came yesterday containing a copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Dre, being a good pal, mentioned a few weeks ago that she had seen it in the bookstore and almost got it for me, but I told her that my dad had already ordered it so not to bother. (Thanks, anyways, though.) The first essay was about the moral code of Buffy and Angel, saying that it follows “eudaimonism,” a systems of ethics first put forth by Plato. Basically it says that people who do good lead happier lives than people who do bad, and that good people are only happy when doing good. Argue with it as you will, but the author did a pretty good job of juxtoposing Buffy, who even though she isn’t happy all the time knows that she’s doing the right thing, with Faith, who goes to the dark side and realizes how empty her life is. The essay also references The Ring of Gyges from The Republic, which is a very neat moral polemic.

Also in the package was a $50 US savings bond from my grandmother that was given to me when I was 3 months old. Later in the week I’ll figure out how to cash it and put it into my “Dave’s about to spend way too much money on electronics because he’s been so poor for so long and wants to pamper himself” fund.

Over-Analysis

Never let someone tell you that you’re over-analyzing a literary work (films, paintings, video games, etc. included). For one, a good author intends every word and reference he writes (and sometimes even alludes to things he doesn’t outwardly know he knows). Secondly, something like this might just come out of it.

Aparently the makers of BMW Films peppered the short movies with lots of references to things that didn’t relate to the plot. Most people would never notice them, but overly literary types and paranoid conspiracy theorists did. The films evidently developed a cult following, with people theorizing about every little bit of every frame to see if there was some hidden message. One couple figured it out, and followed a trail that eventually led them to a random street corner in New York City. For solving the puzzle they recieved a free Z4. Or so the story goes… A list of the references are here, whether you believe the story or not.