Last night I was having dinner with Charles Manson, and in the middle of dinner he turned to me and said "Is it hot in here, or am I crazy?"
Gilbert Gottfried
1st May 2008

Ponderings For 2008-05-01

  • 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.

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4th February 2008

Ponderings For 2008-02-04

  • 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

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17th December 2007

Ponderings For 2007-12-17

  • Son of a…… So Universal didn’t stop releasing Sliders on DVD after the 3rd season release in 2005 after all. They’ve suddenly announced the pending release of season 4. Excellent. Now, if only Sony would release the second (and last) season of Ned & Stacey, Fox would release the last 3 seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the last 2 seasons of The Bob Newhart Show, the second (and last) season of The Loop, Warner would release ANYTHING beyond the first season of Everwood (heck, they need to release the first season of Everwood CORRECTLY), anything beyond the first season of Night Court (best of collections DON’T count), BBC would release the second (and last) season of Manchild, MGM would release ANYTHING beyond the first season of the new Outer Limits series (and stop constantly re-releasing the classic Outer Limits). I think that covers the series that have had partial releases then dropped off the face of the earth. Oh, and Sony, get going on those Parker Lewis Can’t Lose sets. Seriously. It’s my mostest wanted series on DVD that is yet to get any release.
  • I’m 2 chapters into a fascinating book I picked up yesterday. I had a 40% off coupon for Borders to burn off and did my usual perusal through the Media book section. I stumbled upon a new book titled Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN. I’m a TV nerd, and knew the broad strokes of the story and some of the players involved, but this book covers it in such wonderful detail and insight. The WB was my favorite network during the majority of its 12 year run, so it’s interesting to find out how things really went down behind-the-scenes. The book is well written and has already revealed far more than I ever knew about the formation of the networks. I’ll be reading this book during my meals (my typical routine) with great interest over the next week or two. Highly recommended.
  • Happy birthday to the transistor - 60 years old yesterday
  • Arthur Clarke has released a brief video on his 90th birthday (the man just keep on going…)
  • Speaking of Arthur Clarke, it looks like Morgan Freeman continues his quest to get the Rama movie made.
  • Here’s an amusing write-up on why you should make the upgrade from Vista to XP. I agree with many things it said. I made this upgrade on both my home desktop and work laptop, and was very happy after having done so.
  • Speaking of which, PC Mag has named Vista the #1 tech disappointment of 2007.
  • A funny cop story
  • A perfectly executed jump
  • I Am Legend had no trouble at the box office
  • Unknown actress Gemma Arterton has been cast as the next Bond girl
  • I’ve got more reviews rolling in, just not as fast as I’d hoped (raise your hands, all you who are surprised)

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3rd December 2007

Ponderings For 2007-12-03

  • Finally, some of the long overdue movie reviews are starting to get posted…
  • Looks like we’ve got 3-6″ of snow inbound for tomorrow afternoon here in the Chicago area. First major snowfall of the season (we’ve had a light dusting or two). Should prove fun.
  • Jericho has been slotted for a February return.
  • Here’s a great way to get back at annoying passengers on public transportation. Make their annoyances even more public. Some hilarious stuff in there.
  • So, Vista’s WGA kill switch is to be removed with Vista’s forthcoming SP1 release. A small step in the right direction for the troubled Vista.

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19th November 2007

Ponderings For 2007-11-19

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