I've seen the long-awaited MASH premiere mentioned a couple places and it definitely looks like a entertaining film. I can only imagine the bike culture that exists in San Francisco, where I'd think you have to be fairly hardcore to brave those hills. If I didn't have a 23.7 mile drive to work, I'd think about biking in to town. Though, considering I'd have to keep away from the interstate, it'd probably be more like 30-35 miles in the end. 10 miles is probably my limit.
I just got around to reading Mister Elegant, Chuck Palahniuk's short story in Vice from late last year. It's definitely Chuck and worth the read if that appeals to you. Obviously, just watch out for all the NSFW banner ads and images on the Vice website.
Relatedly, I'm more than halfway through Rant and I must say it's a bit surprising, in a good way. I'll have to see how he wraps it up before I settle on a opinion, but it's a refreshing update to his very idiosyncratic style. After which, I have a big stack of books to read this summer, including three more of Chuck's books.
Right after I switch Silent Uproar back to Google Analytics, Reinvigorate goes and adds an access manager and creates a local, real-time stats monitor in Snoop. While I'm still not switching SU back again, at least I have new toys for this site's stats.
And we're back from the honeymoon! The Canadian Rockies are basically amazing. Amy and I had a great time, with a nice combo of outdoor activity and laziness mixed in. At this point, we're seasoned travelers. We can do major metropolitan cities, long road trips, The Great Outdoors and the beach — who can't do the beach? Now we just need to travel off the North American continent.
I'm in the process of uploading photos, but Amy has already posted several. Amy's folks also got us a Sony Handycam DCR-HC96 for a wedding present, so I'll be editing those videos together this week and probably posting them to Vimeo.
Update: Just got through uploading my photos. The grandness, color and feeling don't come through in the photos very well. It will at least give you the gist of what we experienced.
Amy and I are off to Lake Louise near Alberta, Canada around 8:00am for our honeymoon. We're staying at The Fairmont and I'm really looking forward to it. See you next weekend.
I'm going to see Battles at The Milestone on June 14th.
Sam Adams Pale Ale is unfortunately not so great. Highland, Sierra Nevada and Bear Republic Brewery have the lock down on pale ale. I advise to steer clear, unless it's included in a summer sampler.
Flickr is down tonight from 8-10 PST. They're directing visitors to their blog where they've posted some stats. Their ongoing bandwidth is 3.5 gigabits per second or roughly 12,000 photos a second! That's hard to fathom.
I love that the new Microsoft Surface site was made in Flash. Also, I love that the "brand new technology" of Surface is exactly the same as the multi-touch technology that Jeff Han showed off almost two years ago at TED.
I hit my 5-iron about 190-200 yards smack dab into the middle of a pin at the driving range tonight. The distance and accuracy are very rare. I was at least aiming at the flag. Will unfortunately cannot corroborate this, but he was there at the time.
Sam Adams Light is not what I expected. I'll stick with Boston Lager.
I played Guitar Hero for the first time tonight. I have to say it's probably one of the best games ever.
Daniel just announced the launch of the new KNI site on Twitter. I must say it was a bit of shock at first, but once you dig in it's very well done. Their superb attention to detail is pleasing.
I found a Flickr gallery of a Fortwo Smart Car. If I had a bunch of city driving to do, the 60mpg would be great. I can't help but think that thing would get eaten up on the highway, as 80-85 seems to be its top speed. Of course, I could just laugh at everyone who has to fill up more than once a month. It seems the small car trend is coming to the US.
I won my first game of online Risk over on GamesByEmail. Joey, Will, Clay and The King Brothers fought well, but they were no match. I recommend starting one up, if you need a quick break from the work day.
Continuing in the unending fight against comment spam, I've closed comments on posts after two weeks. After taking note of the daily activity on my home page here, it seems discussion on even the most highly trafficked posts ends after about two weeks. I'm naturally annoyed by all this comment spam, but it's a nice learning experience.
Spiderman 3 was strong through its first hour, but otherwise really kind of... sucked. On the other hand, Hot Fuzz was hilarious. Much like Shaun of the Dead, it was the perfect mix of humor, gore and pop culture references. Verdict: rent Spiderman, go see Hot Fuzz with as many friends as you can scrounge up.
Amy and I got up around 7am on Friday morning and made our way down to the Wachovia Championship at Quail Hollow Club. It was quite a long and temporarily soggy day of walking, but I rarely thought about the time.
Around 9am, we arrived via shuttle and made our way to the 16th tee. We watched Zach Johnson, Tiger, Vijay, Luke Donald, Vaughn Taylor, Stewart Cink, Charles Howell III, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and John Daly come through. After that, we picked back up with Vijay, Luke and Vaughn Taylor on 3 and followed them through the front nine. I noticed Luke didn't have much support, so I'd slip in a "LUUUKE" when he'd hit good shots. The highlight was definitely Vijay hitting the ball to about 3 feet with a fairway wood for a tap-in eagle on 7. For some reason, that never made it to the highlight reel for the day.
After eating some lunch, we tried to follow Sergio and Boo Weekley from 10. However, Boo is the PGA redneck everyone's been waiting for and he drew a fairly large crowd. His crowd plus Sergio's were a lot more annoying than the crowd following Vijay. So, we dropped those guys on 11 and walked back down to 7 to pick up another group.
At 7, we picked up Nick Watney, Geoff Ogilvy and Brett Wetterich. These guys were definitely more our speed, so we watched them play from 8 through 18. Aside from Wetterich's melt down over the middle holes, they were a great group and I was able to stand a few feet from them during some of their fairway shots. I watched how they handled different lies and approach shots, besides being thoroughly entertained.
After said group finished 18, we changed seats a few times before settling in the public grandstand. There we watched Jason Gore, Rory Sabbatini, Adam Scott, Jason Bohn, Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk, Stuart Appleby and Justin Leonard finish out their rounds.
Reading back over my recount makes me realize how much of the course we covered in 10 hours. As I said, it was a long but enjoyable day. I know now you should definitely bring along a chair and probably some binoculars, but this was my first PGA event. If you enjoy golf, attend a PGA event. I wasn't sure how I'd feel at the end of the day, but it was a lot of fun.
I always like to see strong portfolios from NC designers. Said portfolio is the work of Brantley Barefoot, a friend of a friend.
While Michael might be on a LCD Soundsystem kick, I've been addicted to Silverchair's Young Modern. After watching a performance of "Straight Lines" on YouTube, I have a better feeling for the song. Until now, it seemed like the weakest link. I'm looking forward to procuring a copy of the domestic release, if and when it hits the US in July.
I finally found a use for the 3D glasses The Bronx stuffed in their last album — NASA released the first series of 3D images of the sun.
We received a free 3-month HBO preview when we ordered digital cable from Time Warner. During the past few months, I've slowly become addicted to Entourage. I watched the first part of the 3rd season on TV and then rented the first two seasons. I can't get enough.
In case any PC folk are interested, Linotype finally put out that PC version of FontExplorer X for the Windows set. Let the organization begin.
Pitchfork gave the new LCD Soundsystem a 9.2 out of 10. I wholeheartedly agree. If you haven't heard it yet, they've got samples of the entire album on their website.
Darren Aronofsky recently produced some meth prevention ads for the Montana Meth Project. I have to say they are some of the most disturbing anti-drug ads I've seen.
Amy and I are heading to the Outer Banks here in a few hours. We're still trying find a place for the wedding we both like. Wish us luck.
I wouldn't usually link YTMND stuff, but this one is too good to pass up. Prerequisite knowledge of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and whistle tips is required for full enjoyment.
I've been watching 4-5 movies per weekend, lately. This past weekend: Stranger Than Fiction, The Prestige, Babel and Running With Scissors. I recommend them all.
I wanted to start putting up two sentence movie reviews and 5-star ratings a la Kottke, but who needs another movie critic?
Talk about an exercise in futility: Netscape announced last month they'll build the ninth version of their horrible browser in-house. Apparently, it will feature tight integration with netscape.com. I know Netscape is partially responsible for what Mozilla is today, but what an utter waste of time.
Just in case any of you designers out there didn't see these yet, NAPP posted some Photoshop CS3 videos a while back. I just got around to watching the other two.
I caught Sparta and mewithoutYou at Tremont on Thursday night, but I missed all of Aloha's set. Since I was by myself, I took photos off and on the whole night. Unfortunately, out of 100 or more shots, I only got about 3 decent ones. I tried to salvage what I could and posted them on Flickr. Regardless, I think mewithoutYou put on the better show. Brother, Sister, was one of my favorite albums last year.
I was able to catch a sneak preview of 300 last night at Phillip's Place. Let me tell you, it was probably the single most fulfilling moviegoing experience I've had in a long time. That's all I'll say until more people have seen it.
In addition to picking out wedding bands and doing some other work, it was essentially a movies weekend. I managed to fit in The Departed, The Science of Sleep, Y Tu Mama Tambien, 16 Blocks and Assault on Precinct 13. Those are listed high to low.
I got a peek at Skate during an episode of Rob and Big on MTV last year. EA has finally decided to release a teaser video for the game. I'm a big Tony Hawk fan, but this game looks fun. I hope they keep the interface elements off the active game screen for the final release.
Amy, Cooper and I had a fun time at the park on Saturday afternoon. I took a lot of pictures of Cooper with Amy's new camera. She uploaded several of them to Flickr. I was messing with the film speed and some of them got a little washed out. I'll know better next time.
The new Battles track is crazy and weird. I love it.
I'm officially 28 years old.
I'm excited for the return of Lost. Amy signed us for digital cable, so no more commercials!
One New Egg order, a UPS shipment, a new video card installation, a driver update, a resolution change and we're at 1680x1050. One thing I definitely notice right off the bat is how crisp everything is on this screen. I definitely recommend the 2007WFP monitors from Dell.
Infinite Solutions with Mark Erickson is very informative.
The new Luc Besson movie, Angel-A, seems like it'll be decent. It's not mind blowing, but maybe the trailer isn't revealing all there is to be revealed.
Humanized has created a launcher application for Windows by the name of Enso. I've been searching something that works like Spotlight for Windows. Maybe this is it?
I saw a greenish, glowing ball of light fly across I-85 on my way home last night. It split into two pieces and then faded away. Most people seemed skeptical my story, however, I'm happy to report I wasn't the only person in Charlotte who reported this mysterious incident.
Danny Boyle's new movie, Sunshine, looks like it's going to be amazing.
Anyone out there with a Last.fm account use the Last.fm software? Is it worth it? Can you minimize it to the system tray now?
I accidentally missed the first two hours of 24 tonight! I thought it was a Monday-Tuesday 4-hour premiere!
In between scouring the internet for episodes from the forthcoming premiere DVD, I caught Demetri Martin: Person on Comedy Central. I highly recommend it for a good laugh. He's definitely honed the art of the one-liner. Time will tell if he can sustain the clever observations.
As many have noticed, Windows Vista is supporting Martin. In between each segment, Windows aired commericals for The Institute of Advanced Personhood and Clearification. That Clearification site is well done.
The majority of Studiobanks should be attending the AIGA Charlotte event tonight at the Neighborhood Theatre. Thomas Romer from The Chopping Block will be speaking about his work and life as a designer.
Aside from one inexcusable line, Rocky Balboa was good. It was everything a Rocky movie should be, complete with "hurt bombs." The theme song still makes me smile.
I rented Lady In The Water and Jackass 2 this past weekend. Lady In The Water was nothing to write home about, but Jackass 2 was so far and above the first movie it's ridiculous. Highly recommended, if you enjoyed Jackass at all.