The Unmistakable Cone of Ignorance

I just saw the Dark Knight and it was amazing.

It could be a bad sign I was most sympathetic to the Joker.

Fuck it.  Let the planets burn!

I need to stop reading warhammer stuff.  It just makes me feisty(note that e came before i in that word just like weigh or neighbor or as if there were a c…. go go english) .  Anyways beyond the point I’m just announcing my intended travel plans for July.

Berlin 4 days with Nik.

Köln for a few days again probably with Nik.

Hamburg for 2 days or so(need to figure out where I’ll stay)

Heidelburg and Salzburg somewhere near the end.

And I need to work somewhere in all that.   Germany has been mellow for the last few weeks.  Got some good ideas for work. Starting in on them.  Trying to learn Qt and Xcode but those are both going slow.  Should work on OpenGL and more matlab but I’m feeling more mathy sooo math it’s gonna be.

Also Napoleon Dynamite sucks.  Finally watched it and it sucked.

As a final note:

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday dear STEEEEEEVE!!!!

Happy birthday to you!!!

the title says it all.  Go watch it.  This movie is completely out of control.

Just got back from seeing Hot Fuzz. It’s pretty damn funny and certainly worth watching. I’m feeling lazy so I’m not going to write a lengthy review. I’ve got a bunch of books I’d like to toss up reviews for sometime and a few other movies but it’ll have to wait for later cause I don’t have the motivation right now.

edit: I’ve now seen this movie 3 times.  Go see it!!!

What do those three things have to do with each other? Not a damn thing. They do however cover the 3 topics that have occupied the majority of my waking time this weekend(besides cleaning and eating). Amanda and I saw the new TMNT movie on Saturday. She thinks it might be the best CG in a film she’s ever seen and I’ve got to say I agree. Only complaints about the movie would be that it was a kids movie so it still doesn’t capture the original badassitude of the original turtles and the writing could’ve been better. But for style and art I’m giving it solid thumbs up(or whatever scale you want to use). As for the other two topics in the post I realized I had like 5 sets of bookmarks sitting around from 4 or 5 different installs and I’d never bothered to update/organize them so I spent a few hours updating those rather than doing anything truly productive and then I took some new pictures of my apartment.

Apartment circa 2005 — Gallery was generated using Picasa and simpleviewer under linux.

Apartment circa 20 mitues ago. — This set was generated using iPhoto and the iPhoto Export tool which explains the different configurations for SimpleViewer. I like the Picasa layout better so i need to tweak the iPhoto Export tool so I can make nice consistent galleries while I’m in Germany.

Zodiac Blues
We went to a 10:10 showing of ‘Zodiac’ last night in the middle of an ice storm. Both the storm and the roads looked less obnoxious than they actually were when we left but once we got near the theatre it became increasingly clear that Maryland has the snow competency level of a retarded camel. An ice storm has been going on for 6 hours and they’ve just started plowing the roads. Almost died twice getting to the theatre. Thankfully, growing up in Indiana actually means I can drive in snow even when it’s getting bad. Either way we made it to the theatre without any damage to car or body.

‘Zodiac’ is a very long movie, a very slow movie and ultimately, a very good movie. I can see how people might make complaints about it being boring cause it is so slow, but Amanda and I both really enjoyed it. It actually managed to be creepy without being overbearing and the biographical nature of it all was interesting. The Zodiac was one of those legendary serial killers surrounded in mystery like Jack the Ripper which makes him a fascinating snapshot of history. If you do a wikipedia search on Zodiac Killer you’ll see he was the inspiration for like 15 different movie villains.

Robotic Lust

I need to invest in the parts/gear/tools to start making robotic systems in my free time. Of course being a gradstudent I don’t get quite the luxury of a working stiff to have “office work” and “personal work”. When I’m working I feel like I should be working on grad school stuff and otherwise I feel like I should be relaxing. I work at home mostly or I’ ll go to the lab for a few hours any given day and work there. I tend to work in bursts which makes predicting when I’ll be working or when I’ll want to work difficult to plan around. I could arrange my life to be more of an “office” v “personal” arrangement but at the same time that just never seems to work out for me. Either way having a robotic arm to transfer cd’s from a spindle to the cd tray and then from the cd tray to a second spindle would make ripping my cd collection so much easier. I’ve ripped about 140 some CD’s so far but I still have about 250 left to go. Plus I’ll need to rerip any CD’s of Amanda’s I want since we have different directory and ripping standards. Maybe I’m just too obsessive. But soon I’ll never have to carry cd’s with me in the car or on trips again as I now have an iPod radio adapter as well as myBose noise canceling headphones.

Alright it’s breakfast time.. I’m going to IHOP cause I’m mildly addicted as I haven’t gotten to eat IHOP much in the last few years as they don’t stay open 24/7 in MD. It’s really weak.  Maybe while I’m eating I’ll even think of a theme for this blog beyond my life and things I do. Then again maybe I’ll just do more interesting things.  Either way I think I may make a page of self quotes to indulge is some serious narcissism.

Last Thursday I watched ‘The Departed’ then went to a midnight showing of ‘300′. ‘The Departed’ was a good movie but it certainly not a great movie nor an Oscar worthy movie. Especially not when compared to a movie like ‘Children of Men’.
In the end, I wouldn’t buy ‘The Departed’ and I probably won’t watch it again but it was worth seeing once.

Now as for ‘300′, I got to the theatre at 11:40 and on the way in I’m stopped by some teenager with a scruffy mustache and an attempt at facial hair who asks, “Are you over 21?” This is never a good way for a conversation to begin….

He then proceeds to offer me a dollar if I’ll claim I’m his legal supervisor or some nonsense. One, I’m not about to place my self in a legally compromising position for someone I don’t know when there is not a pressing need. Two, I’m certainly not going to do it for a dollar. Either way, this was a pointless side track from my intended goal of watching ‘300′.

Getting to the theatre for a midnight showing only 20 minutes early was in retrospect maybe cutting it a bit close due to the fact that I ended up only 3 rows from the screen.  This meant a lot of the “pretty” factor of the movie was disturbed by my proximity to the screen.

As for the actual film… 300 was very loud, very pretty, very violent and very, very, very epic. No one talked to each other but rather everyone conversed in speeches. I’m not sure how you can make a movie about 300 badasses and 2600+ auxiliaries holding a mountain pass against 100,000+ angry slave soldiers fighting for a self proclaimed god-king less epic but at the same time all the epic started to wear thin. [analogy comparing movie to loud pointless yet extremely fun and slightly immature activity/item]. That being said I had a blast, I’ll watch it again and I’ll probably buy the DVD but the movie certainly isn’t a masterpiece of writing even though it may be a masterpiece of graphics and artistic direction.

Oh … and I was probably the only person in the theatre that could say to himself, “Wow that’s exactly what the neck stump of a decapitated head looks like.” from personal experience.