So I've been trying to think of more things to post recently, but nothing shock or awe inducing has really transpired. With that being said though, a few weeks back I was talking to my friend about her top 5 bands and I thought I'd throw together a similar post (in no particular order....except Rage).
Top 5 Bands (yes, I only have 3)
Rage Against the Machine
System of a Down
Tool
Top 5 Movies (or series)
Fight Club
Gladiator
Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
The Matrix
Terminator 1 & 2
Top 5 TV
24
Arrested Development
Family Guy
The Prisoner
Scrubs
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
That little red envelope
I'm not sure when they rolled it out, but I just realized today that netflix has their "watch now" tab up and running. There is no additional charge and you can view as many hours per month as your plan costs (my plan is $10/month so I can watch 10 hours). This is a tremendous boost especially to the lower pricing models. While I sometimes let my one movie sit around for a few days or a week before watching it, other times I watch it right away and am then movie-less. Now of course they don't have most of their movies available so far (only 6% of my queue was available), but they are constantly adding new ones.
I was so excited I decided to "test drive" the functionality and had no problem with the stream. The quality was good enough (I watched a movie from 1976 so it's hard to know where the limitations were) and I had no interruptions of sound or video whatsoever. My only knock against it is that I had to use IE to view the movie. Annoying, but nevertheless, two thumbs up !
I was so excited I decided to "test drive" the functionality and had no problem with the stream. The quality was good enough (I watched a movie from 1976 so it's hard to know where the limitations were) and I had no interruptions of sound or video whatsoever. My only knock against it is that I had to use IE to view the movie. Annoying, but nevertheless, two thumbs up !
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Conspiracy Theory
Everyone who is reading this should know the storyline behind the "Terminator" series. Man builds machine/computer, machine/computer becomes "aware", machine/computer attacks man. It's an age old science fiction story that goes at least as far back as Frankenstein if not farther. We are ever so quickly inching closer to that day.
Monday in the Wall Street Journal there were two articles that would seem unrelated except to a trained (and paranoid) eye. Below are the article titles along with a few excerpts.
Intel plans to unveil superchip
-"... they have developed the world's first programmable processor that can deliver so-called 'teraflop' performance. It uses less electricity than most home appliances."
-"The first teraflop computer was developed ... in 1996. ... supercomputer filling 104 cabinets, covering 2,500 square feet, using 10,000 processor chips and consuming 500,000 watts of power."
-" Intel expects it to be available in everyday computers by 2012."
Now the term "teraflop" doesn't mean much without any context, but suffice to say this is pretty freakin fast for a chip. It also makes a point how fast the speed of chips are still jumping ahead every ten years.
Nasa technology to help increase stem cell output
-"... the launch of technology to grow large numbers of stem cells ..."
-"It grows cartilage and muscle tissue very well."
Before the "machines" were able to make that x-files guy turn into liquid metal they had gotten pretty good at making "metal surrounded by living tissue", you know like say cartilage and muscles.
Now to top it all off "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" was on AMC that night. Coincidence? I'll let you decide; I'm personally looking into adopting a German Shepard.
Monday in the Wall Street Journal there were two articles that would seem unrelated except to a trained (and paranoid) eye. Below are the article titles along with a few excerpts.
Intel plans to unveil superchip
-"... they have developed the world's first programmable processor that can deliver so-called 'teraflop' performance. It uses less electricity than most home appliances."
-"The first teraflop computer was developed ... in 1996. ... supercomputer filling 104 cabinets, covering 2,500 square feet, using 10,000 processor chips and consuming 500,000 watts of power."
-" Intel expects it to be available in everyday computers by 2012."
Now the term "teraflop" doesn't mean much without any context, but suffice to say this is pretty freakin fast for a chip. It also makes a point how fast the speed of chips are still jumping ahead every ten years.
Nasa technology to help increase stem cell output
-"... the launch of technology to grow large numbers of stem cells ..."
-"It grows cartilage and muscle tissue very well."
Before the "machines" were able to make that x-files guy turn into liquid metal they had gotten pretty good at making "metal surrounded by living tissue", you know like say cartilage and muscles.
Now to top it all off "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" was on AMC that night. Coincidence? I'll let you decide; I'm personally looking into adopting a German Shepard.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
My Day With the MS
So I attended the Microsoft QPB (Quarterly Partner Briefing) at the MS office in the city on Wednesday for SMS&P (Small, Mid market Solutions and Partners). MS like the government has acronyms for everything. Before I went we sat through a brief overview of their most commonly used ones by one of the guys in my office, I kid you not. It was very interesting from my perspective because it wasn't a technical conference. It was almost solely devoted to sales and meeting other MS partners and networking with a few technical aspects thrown in here and there.
There were blocks of sessions that we each attended during the day, three in total. Since I had never been to one of these before I decided to attend two sales and marketing sessions. The first session was on the use of metaphors in advertising which was OK, but nothing too great. I consider myself a well rounded person when it comes to education so nothing that was said was too surprising.
The second session though I found to be outstanding. It was given by one of the keynotes at the conference; Larry Bailin who is the CEO of Single Throw Internet Marketing. He started off by telling everyone how he wasn't a "tech" guy which was driven home during his presentation when practically all the techniques he pointed out could have been applied to advertising for any type of company. There were no secrets or "magic bullets" here, most of the items he touched on were just common sense. Target your customer, "a specific message for a specific customer" was how one of the other people in the class put it. Make things easy for your customer; it sounds so simple! It's amazing how many examples there are out there where this is not the case though. The best one that stuck in my head which I see everywhere is that when filling out a form with my contact information on it, why do we have to put our city, state and zip code? The zip code determines the former so nothing more than that should be necessary. Simple, one less thing to fill out on a form. There were other examples as well, but that was the one that stuck out the most.
As an added note I saw the movie "Babel" later in the day (nominated for a best picture btw) and I thought it was really bad. I was generous and gave it 2/5 stars on netflix because it made some good points about language and different cultures and how they can be tied together by seemingly unconnected events. Due to the fact that there was practically no plot, non-existent character development, Brad Pitt being on screen for only like 20 minutes of a 140 minute movie and it's slow pacing and length, I whole heartily do NOT recommend this movie.
There were blocks of sessions that we each attended during the day, three in total. Since I had never been to one of these before I decided to attend two sales and marketing sessions. The first session was on the use of metaphors in advertising which was OK, but nothing too great. I consider myself a well rounded person when it comes to education so nothing that was said was too surprising.
The second session though I found to be outstanding. It was given by one of the keynotes at the conference; Larry Bailin who is the CEO of Single Throw Internet Marketing. He started off by telling everyone how he wasn't a "tech" guy which was driven home during his presentation when practically all the techniques he pointed out could have been applied to advertising for any type of company. There were no secrets or "magic bullets" here, most of the items he touched on were just common sense. Target your customer, "a specific message for a specific customer" was how one of the other people in the class put it. Make things easy for your customer; it sounds so simple! It's amazing how many examples there are out there where this is not the case though. The best one that stuck in my head which I see everywhere is that when filling out a form with my contact information on it, why do we have to put our city, state and zip code? The zip code determines the former so nothing more than that should be necessary. Simple, one less thing to fill out on a form. There were other examples as well, but that was the one that stuck out the most.
As an added note I saw the movie "Babel" later in the day (nominated for a best picture btw) and I thought it was really bad. I was generous and gave it 2/5 stars on netflix because it made some good points about language and different cultures and how they can be tied together by seemingly unconnected events. Due to the fact that there was practically no plot, non-existent character development, Brad Pitt being on screen for only like 20 minutes of a 140 minute movie and it's slow pacing and length, I whole heartily do NOT recommend this movie.
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