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Ponderings For 2009-02-04

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 2:59am
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  • I post this entry from down in comfortable Phoenix, AZ (technically speaking, I'm in Laveen, which is just outside of Phoenix). It was roughly the same temp inside and out tonight. A bit wamer than the 17 degrees of Chicago, from whence I came.
  • Great to have Medium back with a new season this week. It's one of those shows where I don't realize how much I missed it until it's back. It's also a show I don't mention enough, because it really does deserve it. It's one of the most consistently great shows on the air. It's extremely rare for there to be a less-than-solid episode of the series, and it's always striving to be creative and try something risky and interesting. And it's one of those TV shows that really understands how to visually tell a story. The show's not just about visual style (which it certainly does have), but about using the visuals to help convey the plot and characters. Hopefully, the show will survive a good while longer.
  • Here's a fun new official promo from FOX for their upcoming Friday pairing of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse, done Grindhouse style. It's a fun and cool promo (particularly for being an official promo from the network), and I really do hope these two shows can help each other survive in their crazy Friday "death slot" schedule. It all kicks off on 2/13, and I can't wait. The Whedon geek in me loves seeing Summer Glau and Eliza Dushku joining forces in different shows together.
  • Speaking of sci-fi on Friday nights, did y'all enjoy last Friday's Battlestar episode, "The Oath?" After two fantastic and gritty character episodes, this one launched things forward at a breakneck speed. Awesome episode. I cheered out loud when Starbuck, uh, made an appearance in the landing bay...
  • Speaking of Battlestar, Universal is doing an interesting move releasing the pilot for Caprica on DVD this April, LONG before it airs on Sci-Fi in 2010 along with the episodes that will follow it.
  • And just to prove that after praising the above shows so much there's the other side to the coin, here's another low for reality TV.
  • The Obama administration has made their first move that annoys me.
  • Doctor Who will be making the big jump to being fully produced for HD starting with the upcoming 2009 Specials.
  • And you thought you've stayed at some strange hotels...
  • Here's an amusing bit of subterfuge pulled off by Anna Torv and Mark Valley, stars of the series Fringe, having gotten married over the holidays without the press noticing.
  • Speaking of subterfuge, looks like you'll wanna pay close attention to those M&M's you are buying.
  • And if you wanna see something equally strange and cool, check out these hit songs reworked through Microsoft's rather interesting and impressive Songsmith platform. There's numerous other ones you can find on Youtube if you go looking, a number of which are quite interesting.

Ponderings For 2008-08-25

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 1:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-07-07

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 1:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-06-29

Submitted by GuyGG on Mon, 06/30/2008 - 1:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-05-01

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 05/02/2008 - 1:59am
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  • What the......? How could you, Mr. Guillermo del Toro??? You make a sequel to Hellboy and DON'T get Marco Beltrami back for the music score? That's downright criminal. His score to the first film was a masterpiece. Danny Elfman's no slouch of a composer, but I find it impossible to believe that he'll match Beltrami's work from the first.
  • As you will have noticed, I got my Iron Man review posted after seeing it this evening. I've still got a handful of other partially completed reviews, both recent and from earlier this year, to get posted, as well as the number of other pending reviews I haven't started yet. I swear I'll finally get caught up. I refuse to let a number of them slip by permanently like I did last year. They may be late, but they'll show up (hopefully before they've at least hit their video release).
  • The Descent 2 has been picked up. I consider the first to be a contender for my all-time favorite horror film. I have to admit that the setup for this sequel sound very lame, but I'll be happy to give it a chance.
  • Microsoft has release a new overhauled version of their Photo Info tool, named Pro Photo Tools.
  • Here's a column by John C. Dvorak about the failures of Vista. It's a column I definitely agree with. I'd have other things to add, most of which are nit-picks. I'm one of those people who tells of personal dislikes for Vista and having fallen back to using XP (I type this on my machine that had Vista on it for about a month or two last year, and has been happily back on XP ever since).
  • Time Warner continues to struggle, thanks to AOL, as usual. When is Time Warner finally gonna manage to shake that AOL monkey off their back?
  • Seriously, how stupid can some people be?
  • 4 kittens and a box. What more does one need?
  • Paramount has details of their rejoining to the Blu-Ray market.
  • Hebrew Press 1932: Hitler Makes A Good Impression. Good grief.
  • And here's the rarest of postings coming from me. This one is sports related. And it's awesome.

Ponderings For 2008-02-09

Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 2:59am
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  • YIPPIE! Looks like the WGA strike is at an end. The final ducks have to put in the row, but looks like that light at the end of the tunnel is about to be within reach. Here's hoping it goes smoothly to get them all back in play on Wednesday. Now, to see what the results of all this fallout with finally be. The Oscar ceremony will be cutting it darn close. Let's hope they can get things in order quick enough to get the ceremony under control.
  • This presenter's "Immigration Gumballs" speech is spot-on.
  • The Microsoft takeover of Yahoo may end up being rejected. It'll be interesting to watch this play out.
  • Check out this awesome Vanity Fair piece, recreating Hitchcock with modern actors.
  • A hilarious tally of kills (and other facts) about the Rambo films. I've got my review of the new film pending. I liked it, despite the simplicity. But yeah, it's a VIOLENT film (I'm actually surprised the total kill count is only as high as 236). It's interesting that the first and last film are the two that are more grounded in realism, and they are on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the amounts of violence.
  • Speaking of hilarious, here's a 1985 Cherry Coke commercial. It's, like, totally awesome.
  • A great write-up on the historical computer failure known as Coleco's ADAM. I own a couple ADAM computers, and used them as a kid to do reports and such during elementary school. I have a nostalgic fondness for the system, but the design flaws it had were anything but subtle. The printer was flaw number one. It was also flaws number two through ten. The fact that it was the only possible power supply for the system meant that even if you were never going to use it, you had to keep it in the mix. And it was unwieldy and big. It was also INSANELY noisy, even for a daisy wheel printer. Let's just say that the printer was a joke of an excuse for every single function it served - and it sadly server more functions that it should have. The tape drives were also the other primary weakness, as the article pointed out. Still, I remember that system with fondness. The ColecoVision game system is a different story. I completely loved that system, and not just for nostalgia reasons. It's still one of my all-time favorite game systems. The ColecoVision rocked.
  • I'm your KITT... Cool news that Val Kilmer is now going to be the voice of KITT. The reason for the recast may be stupid, but I'm all in favor of it.
  • I finally got around to picking up the CD for James Newton Howard's score to I Am Legend. I remember liking it when I saw the film, but clearly I wasn't paying too close attention. I'm really loving this score on CD. What a gorgeous main theme he laid in to the score. Reminds me a bit of his beautiful theme work from King Kong, with an almost hymn-like texture to it. Howard's scoring over the years has been widely varied, and I very often under appreciate him as a composer.
  • I've also been catching up on the last couple episodes of House. Not counting cable shows like Battlestar Galactica, which work on a different season schedule and such, House has been the best this season of the returning shows. This has been the best season of the show to date, which is quite an accomplishment for being the fourth season of a medical procedural. Granted, this isn't the most typical medical procedural. House made some marks in the record books with the episode that aired following the Super Bowl (which was a fantastic episode, btw). Pushing Daisies, of course, easily qualifies as the best new show of the season. But unfortunately, it ran out of new episodes thanks to the WGA strike.
  • Cool, Amanda Seyfried (Lilly Kane from Veronica Mars) has joined on to Jennifer's Body. I already wanna see the movie since the team of Diablo Cody & Jason Reitman are writing and producing.
  • Here's a cool compilation of jets making high speed fly-bye runs.
  • Another volume of Greg The Bunny is coming on DVD.
  • Holland is prepared to float
  • Hey, I just noticed that the list of quotes I've added to bit-by-bit over the years has hit the 300 entries mark (it's where the random quotes on the top of this site are pulled from). Neato.
  • Ah, just Smurf it all...

Ponderings For 2008-02-04

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 02/05/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Windows Vista SP1 & Windows Server 2008 RTM'd today.
  • A retro arcade gaming fan heaven. This is *SO* very cool. Man, I wanna go check that place out. Check out the official site, too.
  • Speaking of retro, check out this set of pictures, of one lucky dude unpacking a new, previously unopened Apple IIc. Ah, for the days where I actually liked Apple. I loved my IIc.
  • As somebody with interest in WWII history, this discovery of 3 scuttled German U-Boats is a cool bit of news.
  • The Buffy cast/crew reunion is starting to shape up for this year's Paley Festival (of the formerly Museum Of Television & Radio). Good to see the cast lining up, but I wanna know how many of the writers will attend (please, at least get Jane Espenson). It'll be cool to see the video of this event. Here's hoping that more will continue to sign on to appear on stage at the event. The Paley Center always does nice Q&A sessions for their festivals.
  • Here's the first teaser for M. Night Shyamalan's new movie, The Happening. While I don't think Lady In The Water was particularly great, I'm a bigger fan of Shyamalan than most people these days (I quite liked The Village). Anyway, this teaser looks great. I also like the one sheet pictured in the post. Nice, subtle references in the tag lines.
  • Good grief. That Toshiba HD-DVD ad from the Super Bowl didn't actually run in HD?
  • Speaking of Super Bowl ads, I haven't watched any of them from this weekend, but I did watch a few of them that were pointed out on somebody else's blog recently and found this E*Trade ad that I didn't remember seeing previously quite funny.
  • So, looks like the state of HD downloads is about what I'd figure.
  • Check out this awesome performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit by the Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain. Check out the related videos while you're there to see some of their other great/hilarious performances.
  • Here's a great commercial for Absolut.
  • I mentioned the fun of massive rails guns in a recent posting. Check out this mind-blowingly-insane video clip of a 32-megajoule shot. The description of the incindiaries you are seeing in the video is truly insane.
  • I'll close out today's post with a cool political survey web site. This'll list out a bunch of the current hot issues and you answer if you are for or against, and your level of interest, and it'll calculate your ideal (and less-than-ideal) candidates to vote for. Here's my results (including the top pick, then 2 next-best, then 2 middle-of-the-pack, then the 2 bottom-of-the-barrell). The 0% for Obama is amusing, to say the least. I do feel dirty that there was actually 35% to match with Hillary. Try it out and see what you get. Their scoring methodology actually seems pretty fair to me.
    • 87.04 Huckabee
    • 70.37 McCain
    • 64.81 Romney
    • 63.89 Ron Paul
    • 41.67 Gravel
    • 35.19 Hillary
    • 00.00 Obama

Ponderings For 2008-01-27

Submitted by GuyGG on Mon, 01/28/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Go, Amazon, Go...
  • Huge congratulations go out to Juno for passing the $100 million mark (well, worldwide, but so little of that is foreign that it'll roll past the domestic $100 million mark any day now). That's a big achievement for a low-budget, indie-style movie to pull off. On top of their 4 major Oscar nominations, the folks involved in that film (my favorite of 2007) are surely giddy. The tenacity that it's shown at the box office is impressive.
  • An amusing approach to the insanity of cellular hardware manufacturers and their immediate disinterest in any hardware they've already produced, in immediate favor of whatever their next model is. I've got an AT&T 8525 (a re-branded HTC Hermes) which has served me well, but the lukewarm support for the device is a surprisingly altruistic situation for an industry that I've seen abandon models before most consumers have even got their grubby little paws on 'em.
  • I'm sure I've mentioned the site before, but InterfaceLIFT.com is my most highly recommended source for fantastic photographic (primarily) wallpapers. Particularly high-res, widescreen ones. It's intended as a MAC-centric site, but their archive of material is great for any of us high-res, widescreen monitor fans. Such is the case with this most recent example of a cool photo.
  • For those interested in Microsoft certification, they have extended their free "second shot" promotion until the end of June.
  • This is old news by now, but the title to the new Bond film is one of their truly stranger choices: Quantum Of Solace.
  • Also slightly old news by this point, but very, very cool, is the fact that Disney/PIXAR is releasing the Toy Story films in new 3D transfers.
  • Another great Dilbert Blog entry. This time, resulting in a surprisingly good song.
  • Speaking of Dilbert, you may have noticed (unless you view my posts via RSS) that I added the flash-based, official Dilbert strip digest widget to the side of the site. Not sure if I'll keep it. Thought it was cool and figured I'd give it a run. Cool that the archive is to feature the strips in color, no less.
  • Geek lust: Canon Rebel XSi

Ponderings For 2007-12-05

Submitted by GuyGG on Thu, 12/06/2007 - 2:59am
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  • Some great uses for computer equipment
  • Ray Park cast as Snake Eyes, huh? Should be cool. Yo Joe.
  • Ever wanted to speak mech droid? Here's your chance to learn how.
  • Microsoft has dropped the price of the XBox 360's HD-DVD drive to a normal retail price of $129. For those that don't know, these drives work great on a PC using XP or Vista (It's what I use for HD-DVD, using XP).
  • Firefox to add online services, providing for browser sync and such? Neato. I currently use Google's Browser Sync, which works OK, but they seem to have all but abandoned.
  • Spent a few hours playing with the new HD-DVD set for Battlestar Galactica: Season 1. Overall, a very nice set. Couple gripes, though. First, and less consequential, I hate the packaging. Yeah, the geek in me loves the cut corners style, but the gatefold crap is far more annoying than the previous slim cased in a box approach of the non HD Battlestar releases. And the gelatinous circles to hold the discs on are a real pain. Second, I need to take a moment to gripe about a favorite kind of feature that HD-DVD seems to love, and Universal in particular: U-Control. It sucks. It really sucks. I loathe it. I hate it with every fiber of my home video enthusiast existence. If you're gonna do extras and interviews and stuff, just put them in documentaries and featurettes and let us watch them on their own, collectively. STOP spreading them all over the actual film/episode in varying degrees. And for the love of the lords of Kobol, *STOP* making us activate ever last frakkin' one of 'em. Seriously. If you're gonna force us to wade through them as part of the watching the film/episode, at least let us turn on something that will make them autoplay. I'd rather you just leave the extra content off the release and use the space on the disc for something else rather than this "click select to activate this interview, or click select to activate this Encyclopedia Galactica entry (entries which are exceedingly lame and such, btw - the whole Enctyclopedia Galactica stuff is lame and worthless)." Still, the episode transfers are beautiful, and that's what really counts.

Ponderings For 2007-12-04

Submitted by GuyGG on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 2:59am
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