I thought this little slideshow from CNET was kind of neat…
CNET: How Lego Makes Its Bricks
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10008183.html
Latest D&D Adventure – A Cask of Ale Amongst Pirates
LFR Adventure Log for 7/6/2011 – A Cask of Ale Amongst Pirates
http://www.tampadnd.org/players-blog/lfr-adventure-log/a-cask-of-ale-amongst-pirates/
Saturday = Video Day
Bah – it’s one of those kinds of Saturdays … why don’t we just skip the prose-based formailties and watch some YouTube videos today instead?
Would you rather own … a house identical to the one from the movie UP (minus the flying)…
Or perhaps an actual turbine-powered bat mobile…
This one’s a little older, but Angry Birds + Dominos (the toy, not the pizza) = Very Cool!
And last but certainly not least, leave it to the Gregory Brothers to turn this cat lover into one of their catchiest auto-tuned songs to date…
John Lasseter is just a cool guy!
I came across this video rather unexpectedly today, but once I started I had to watch the entire thing from start to finish – it’s a day in the life of John Lasseter, Disney’s Chief Creative Officer over both the Disney and Pixar Animation Studios as well as Principal Creative Advisor over Walt Disney Imagineering. Basically, the man truly has the dream of all dream jobs, overseeing not only all of Disney’s animated features but also design around the theme parks as well, and so needless to say it’s just kind of neat to see what a fun guy he is…
…and also, how he’s got an incredibly awesome house! What do I have to do to get a secret passage in my next house?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5HN3-l_f-U
Thin Post : Gotta Lay Off the Snacking…
I have a bad habit of snacking when I’m overly stressed or really backed up on deadlines, and I’ve kind of felt myself slipping back into that trap once again lately amidst everything else that I’ve been juggling creatively this summer. I don’t know what it is, but somehow when days become weeks late in meeting a deadline or even posting a column, somehow indulging in comfort foods that are actually horrible for me can help me to get things back on track … and unfortunately, knowing that it often times actually works does nothing but reinforce this bad behavior that helps in the short term, but then makes me feel lousy about falling off a completely different horse the next day!
My vice as of late, ironically enough, has been Pop-Tarts. Despite that column being more or less fictional when I originally wrote it last month, I’ve since made the mistake of embracing the very themes that I satirized therein because boy, have I eaten more Pop-Tarts than I’m proud to admit over the last couple of weeks! My all-time favorites are the chocolate ones that you see pictured there, although Brown Sugar Cinammon and Frosted Strawberry also made many an appearance on late nights … primarily because those two happen to be what my vending machine of choice posessed.
And it’s weird because it’s not even legitimate satisfaction – not only did I feel guilty already by the time that I was diving into the second one, but that whole thing about high-sugar diets just encouraging even more sugar is entirely true as well because it honestly wasn’t much long after that I caught myself wanting another snack, despite having just eaten 400 calories worth of Pop-Tarts in 5 minutes!
At least hopefully my solution to get around this should be fairly straight-forward – I need to get back to not carrying $1 bills in my wallet again because I’m just too easily tempted to sneak out to the vending machine for a quick fix … whatever I want to snack on throughout the day, whether it be pudding or granola bars or fruit, just needs to come with me when I leave the house because it’s pretty easy to regulate at that point if I start to feel like I’m loading up an entire grocery bag for a single day’s worth of food!
On top of all that, I also need to simply remember more self-restraint when I go to the grocery store so that I can avoid buying these sweet treats in bulk altogether. And honestly, that really should be easy enough, too – make a list in advance, stick to the list, don’t go shopping when I’m stressed and more likely to splurge.
I’m hoping I was able to derail this little bender before it did too much damage. I haven’t really touched a scale lately because I don’t feel like I’ve been doing much of anything to affect it in a positive manner, but I would argue that a little bit of the pants and shorts being too big effect that I was awkwardly proud of last month seems like it has disappeared just a bit, so it’s really time to get back in gear and start moving in the general direction towards Skinny Town once again!
P.S. America, Fuck Yeah!
Also, it seems that they’ve finally released a new trailer for Captain America that actually makes it look like a decent action movie. I was gonna go see it anyways, but this certainly helps its cause because now I’m at least a little bit excited about it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCTv6i3589A
More than meets the eye? Don’t push it…
So I finally got around to watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon last night and with one very important caveat, I really enjoyed it!
Specifically, that caveat was as follows:
I went into this movie with almost zero expectations.
Giant robots fighting, lots of explosions – that’s what I wanted to see from Transformers 3 and if nothing else, it was certainly fun to watch gigantic things shoot at each other and blow up for 2.5 hours. We saw it on the IMAX giant screen downtown and specifically addressing those two movie-going expectations, Transformers did quite well.
Outside of that, I mean, sure – the movie was horrible. The story was ridiculous, even considering that it was a movie about giant robots trying to invade the planet, Megan Fox’s replacement was essentially a cardboard cut-out of a lingerie model, and not for nothing, but why was Megatron wearing a cape?! Was that supposed to tell us that he’s only a fractured pauper of the king that he used to be??? Because at the end of the day despite missing half of his head, he’s still a 40-foot tall robot with guns on every conceivable part of his body!
In particular, I wasn’t too crazy about the opening scenes where they doctored the footage from Kennedy talking about the original moon landing, just because it didn’t seem like it was very well done; same with the Obama scene where Sam gets his medal. Buzz Aldrin’s cameo was kind of cool, except that it seemed silly when Optimus said in return that it was an “honor” to meet him as well, which seemed a bit too humble even for Optimus Prime…
“You’ve been to the moon? Congratulations – I could go there right now if I wanted to … should I bring you back something?!”
I guess it says something where the most obnoxious character in the last movies – Agent Simmons (the Sector 7 guy) – was now one of the most entertaining. I mean, John Malkovich was weird, but really, John Malkovich is just a weird guy, so no surprises there. I still have no idea why Sam’s parents were there, except maybe the writers needed to fill 5 minutes and were running out of explosions or something. Honestly, the best character interaction was probably during the last fight scene (i.e. the last hour of the movie) where the only dialog was variations of “Holy shit – that’s a big fucking robot!” and “Holy shit – this is fucking insane!”
I did really enjoy the robot fighting and the explosions, though – I suspect that roughly 95% of the budget went into the special effects, and it shows. The giant worm robot that eats entire buildings was pretty cool, and both Bumblebee and Optimus got to show off their general badass-ed-ness in one form or another. The twist at the very end was a little unexpected, however the last movies have basically proven dying to not be that big of a deal among Autobots and Decepticons alike, so I don’t really expect the outcome to have much of an impact on future sequels to come.
Honestly, at this point if they wanted to just give up on the whole “script” thing and toss that money into even more explosions and CGI robots, I think I’d be fine with that, too.
Hobbit Thoughts
I know I’ve said before that I wasn’t really looking forward to Peter Jackson’s theatrical take of The Hobbit, but after watching these video blogs that the crew has shared thus far, maybe it’s the legendary soundtrack and imagery and all of the quaint reminders of just how absolutely amazing the Lord of the Rings movies really were when they first debuted a decade ago … I think I’m finally back on the bandwagon…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc6TVoYeKJU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OjSQulGw7U
And for what it’s worth, my main point of contention the whole time wasn’t really that they were making the movie at all, but simply that they were breaking it into two parts because I feel like that’s just becoming way too popular of a trend now, between Harry Potter and Twilight, and for me the lines are starting to blur whether it’s a true artistic need to tell as much of the original story as possible or just a blatant Hollywood cash-grab because they know that the diehard fans will wait in line to watch both parts. Admittedly, a lot of my ire is towards the Harry Potter series because I am so sick of those movies at this point – as far as I’m concerned, the last decent one was Goblet of Fire and although I did enjoy the books right up until the end, the final book came out two years ago … I’m over it!
That said, I’m kind of glad that I stumbled across these videos purely by coincidence earlier this afternoon because it reminded me why these movies might very well be different. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is referred to as my generation’s Star Wars and even looking back, it’s just cool to see how powerful those movies were – the epic battles, the terrifying chase scenes, the times when hope seems all but lost – I get chills just remembering some of those, and maybe it’s because I first read those books in the 4th grade when I was 10 years old, but it’s just an incredible story – one that defines your childhood, I guess you could say.
Of course, The Hobbit did come even before that, so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised come next Christmas when I have a new Tolkien tale to go explore around the holidays – who knows? I’m still a little hung up about the breaking point because whereas the Lord of the Rings had very easy points defined by each of the three books, Jackson will be forced to manufacture one this time around, but then again, maybe like most of the Pixar films have been, this is one where I just have to take a leap of faith in hopes that I’ll be miraculously surprised by the time we get to the closing credits…
designing and designing and designing…
If I would’ve had any idea that the project I’m working on would be this intensive … I still would’ve started it anyways, but boy, am I sure going to be happy when it’s finally done!
I know I’ve been a little hush-hush about it, although I think I’ve dropped enough clues here and there that you could probably stumble upon it if you really wanted to. I just don’t want to officially point people to the site until it’s completely 100% done, and for what it’s worth so far I am extremely happy with the way that it’s been turning out. It really isn’t as much of a blog as a whole network of different types of content to highlight my passion for the thing, and even though it’s unfortunate not to mention quite tedious to think that I’m a month and a half behind schedule and it’s still going to be one hell of a push to get done by August 1st, it’s exactly what I’ve wanted this new site to be since I first started brainstorming concepts back in 2008.
Maybe even 2007???
Wow – I just checked my notes back to some early renditions of articles that won’t be appearing on the new site and it was indeed 2007 when I made my first attempts at crafting this new project, albeit at the time if I recall it was going to be simply a new feature incorporated into my main site whereas now it’s basically a stand-alone project all by itself. It’s going to be some work to keep the content up to date – basically doubling the amount of writing I do for The Humor Column each month, but it’s a fun topic and from what I’ve already written to date I think it should flow pretty naturally because it’s a little different writing style than what I currently use for my other projects.
So anyways, the original theme of this post was intended to be about designing because I basically spent the majority of my weekend figuring out a couple of minor, but not insignificant design issues. I’ve definitely learned a lot about WordPress and PHP in general throughout the course of this project, and I’ve been trying to share my experiences for the greater good as I’m able to work through them. It’s truly been a great example of “Don’t let code limit your design – decide what you want and then figure out how to make it happen…” and I really hope that the final product shows it. I really wanted to create something unique that every other blog isn’t already doing, and I think I’m on the right track.
Now whether anyone else will actually want to visit this unique site once it’s completed, that’s another story altogether … but in the end, all I can do is create something that I enjoy and hope that others like it, too, so all joking aside, we’ll see what happens!
Anyways, hopefully by this time next month I’ll finally be posting a little blurb here directing everyone to come check out the new site and it’ll be a smashing success, but between now and then I’ve still got a lot of work left to do to get there. So many late nights, long weekends, and time secluded away from the wife hunched over a keyboard – all I can hope is that at the end of the day it’ll all have been worth the sacrifice.
Until then, I guess here’s one more clue for the curious, little monkeys in the crowd…
Cleo Gets a Visit From Her Arch-Nemesis/Brother
Of Cleo’s five brothers and sisters, only one has yet to be adopted, so the person fostering them brought the lone puppy over for a little playtime with his sister. As you can see, apparently sibling rivalries amongst puppies are pretty much the same as they are between humans…
The last one is my all-time favorite – I call it Matrix Cleo and upon first discovering this gravity-defying marvel caught on film, I’ve been forever on the lookout to catch her running up the walls or stopping bullets in mid-air when we’re not looking.
“Do not try to bend the dog bone, that’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth … there is no dog bone.”