January 22, 2010 As the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien wraps up its final week, a lot of jokes have been made at the expense of NBC. In the midst of all this, Ben Stiller asks us to remember what’s really important – saving our planet.
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January 14, 2010 
I finally caved and went to see Avatar. It certainly didn’t live up to any of the hype I had heard from some friends, but it also wasn’t as awful as I initially thought it would be. The general consensus everywhere by everyone seems to be that it’s the most amazing movie ever made, ever.
Friend #1: Holy wow. Avatar. Just… … … Just go see it. Like, as soon as possible.
Friend #2: saw Avatar 3D last nite. Highly, highly suggest seeing it! Seriously, and I was one of those people who said I had no interest in seeing this movie. It was phenomenal!
Friend #3: I think we’re all in agreement that it was awesome. The 3D was very well done, sound effects work was amazing, and overall, great.
So, I can clearly relate more to friend #2 as I had very little interest in the movie itself. I was only really interested in seeing it since it is, after all, the first huge Hollywood extravaganza meant to showcase the 3D platform. So when I say that it comes as no surprise that there was very little story driving the movie, I’m not exaggerating in the least. To be fair, I can’t sit here and say that it was a direct copy of any one movie (as has already been hilariously described), but instead it pulled from so many. Now, again, I understand that this is generally how things are done in Hollywood…but Avatar pulled so unsubtly that it was disturbing. It was Pocahontas meets Dances With Wolves meets The Lion King (which of course itself is a rip off of Kimba the White Lion), meets Fern Gully, meets James Cameron’s own Aliens. Heck- even the epic battle had what I’d most certainly describe as a Final Fantasy moment [see: YouTube video ~0:30].
Yes, that’s it. I think, in the end, the main reason I will remember Avatar as a lack-luster movie is because it felt like a video game cut-scene gone on for far too long. Sure it looks beautiful, but wouldn’t you rather just play the game even if it means putting up with crappier graphics?
As for the good point(s). The whole 3D thing looks pretty great. I personally found it to be much cooler when used in the slower scenes versus the action sequences. It wasn’t that it made me queasy, it just didn’t look as good. I will say this, too: I had an absolutely pounding headache by the end of the movie, which I will feel free to blame on the 3D glasses.
A few questions that remain:
In conclusion: it was OK–far from incredible–and mainly a waste of my fourth dimension. When it’s all said and done, it’s not the pretty pictures I’ll remember, but rather the flaws that fractured the movie and kept it from being amazing. My main consolation is knowing that I didn’t give James Cameron a dime.
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December 30, 2009 Thanks to the WPtouch plugin, there’s now a mobile version of this site designed to play nicely on mobile touch devices (ie. iPhone, iPod touch, Android, etc.). Ya know, cause so many people can’t wait to hear what I have to say.
Sarcasm aside- it’s quite awesome, and I’ve also implemented it on the Solas site (which people actually visit). They also claim it can load a page on mobile browsers up to 30 seconds faster on and Edge connection. Not bad.
Not all websites are created equal, with some sites failing to translate well in the viewport of a small mobile device. Many WordPress sites today make heavy use of different javascripts which significantly increase the load time of pages, and drive your visitors on 3G/EDGE batty. So we’ve come up with WPtouch, a lightweight, fast-loading, feature-rich and highly-customized “theme application” which includes an admin interface to let you customize many aspects of your site’s presentation.
WPtouch has a couple of cool features, the first of which is direct messaging from the mobile site to the administrator’s iPhone (via push notifications) with Prowl/Growl. Do I actually want to use this feature? I don’t think so, but it’s an interesting option. Probably the biggest thing stopping me is the $2.99 price tag on the Prowl iPhone app. For the amount of times it would be useful (offhand, I’m thinking zero), it’s not really worth three bucks.
It also sports built-in integration with the WordTwit plugin, which allows you to show off your latest tweets and automatically send a tweet when you publish a new blog post. Interestingly, there’s also support for GigPress, but I’ve decided to stick with Gigs Calendar on the Solas site for the moment, as it seems to have a nicer layout.
Speaking of mobile: this post was typed up on the Wordpress iPhone app. Unfortunately, support for hyperlinks is basically non-existent, so I still had to save as a draft and add the links on my laptop. I hope they can figure out a way to make it easier, but I’m afraid the iPhone just isn’t built for such things.
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December 24, 2009 Best wishes this holiday season to anyone who reads this. It was quite a year, to say the least. I’ve been looking forward to Christmas vacation for quite a while… I plan on sleeping as much as humanly possible.
Started working with Solas again, and I’m just about wrapped on their new site design. The site is live, though there’s a few more nuts and bolts to screw down. They’re gearing up for their album release in early February, and wanted to get a fresh look. Though it took a while, it would have taken infinitely longer without Wordpress! On top of the new look and feel, the site sports tighter social networking integration thanks to ShareThis and other plugins.
The goal has generally remained the same: keep the design simple, modern, and easy to navigate. For the band, it needs to be simple for them to update (which is why I chose a Wordpress backend to begin with). Thanks to the mobile Wordpress apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, a quick update is a snap–essential for folks that hardly have a minute to sit between gigs.
And, looking forward to 2010…
Musically: I’m almost finished mixing the new album from Ol’ Bill Dollar, and mixes for batsupsidedown should be finalized in January (fingers crossed).
In the interwebs: I’ll be making a website for The Cascia Center set to be built at Broad and Ellsworth streets. Prepare for a new media blitz.
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November 12, 2009 So I didn’t know it was possible to become addicted to an iPhone app, and yet here I am. TiltShift Generator: http://artandmobile.com/tiltshift
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October 22, 2009 Thanks to some last minute tickets secured by my wonderful mother, we ended up going to the NL clincher. An amazing game all around–felt almost more exciting than World Series Game 4 last year. And standing room only is awesome… when you’re not on crutches.
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