The Day After Tomorrow

2004.05.31

Finally went to see it yesterday afternoon. I'm pleased to say that it was slightly better than I expected. You're dealing with a Roland Emmerich film here, so don't expect too much, but it's a fun movie. The visual effects work is amazing. From giant tornados in Los Angeles, to 100 foot ocean swells sweeping through Manhattan, every shot is almost completely flawless.

Go to this movie for the visual effects and the spectacle, not for the story, script, or science. Enjoy the sequences of destruction, and forget about the environmentalist overtones. It's good fun, and nothing else.

Away

2004.05.22

I'm off to Nova Scotia for a week, so I won't be posting. Should be back next Monday, perhaps with some impressions of The Day After Tomorrow. I hope it's good.

Have a good long weekend!

Don't See Troy

2004.05.21

Just don't see it. It's crap. It takes a special kind of talent to turn source material like "The Iliad" into a horrible film. Unfortunately, it's the kind of talent which Hollywood seems to have in abundance.

The only thing good about "Troy" were some of the visual effects, and even then they are only technically good, since the shots themselves are boring. Oh, the fight scene between Achilles and Hector is amazing, but certainly not worth the price of the film. Direction? Awful. Editing? Horrible. Script? Oh my God! Score? Disgusting.

Here's an interesting bit of information about the film's score. Director Wolfgang Peterson hired Gabriel Yared to score the film, but after some of his work in progress music was put to a rough cut and shown to a focus group, they slammed it as being "too old fashioned". Yared was fired in March of this year, and replaced with James Horner, who I suppose did the best he could considering the two month time frame. Yared has since posted his score for Tory, in it's unfinished state, on his website. It's infinitely better than what Horner came up with, and might have actually improved my opinion of the film entirely.

You can tell that the entire film was created using focus groups and committees. Obviously Homer's masterpiece is too important to be left to the professional film artists; audiences and executives should be calling the shots. Well, they got the movie they deserved.

The Ultimate Use of the Internet

2004.05.19

News? No. Information? Bah! Communication? Please. Only and handful of websites actually use the Internet for what it was made for, and that's pointless, but hilarious, animations or audio gags. Check out some of these timeless classics:

Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Super Sonic Racing
Go Super God!
What's New Khannn?
Nintendo, It's a Cereal
All Your Base Are Belong to Khann
Agent Smith Sings
DDR Khannn
The Locutus Song
Planet Picard
Do the Mario!
Super Fighting Robot
Ask Mr. Hat
Darmok and Jilad

Many more hours of constant laughter await you. Visit www.ytmnd.com now!

Almost There

2004.05.18

Amateur rocket fired into space

We're almost there. With at least two teams expected to try for the X-Prize this year, it's almost certain that the world's first private astronaut will reach space soon. Granted, it will be quite some time before sub-orbital trips are available to the general public, at least at an affordable price, but it will happen some day. I'm hopeful the cost will come down enough in my lifetime so I can make the trip. I'm not sure what I'd be willing to pay, maybe something around the price of a decent car. It's not worth a house, unless you're made of money.

I imagine NASA is getting nervous at the idea of their little playground being invaded by the masses, not to mention the thought of having to set up some kind of space traffic control, although maybe Houston can pick up that responsibility. Luckily for NASA however, they don't have to worry about it right away. After all, they've got more pressing concerns.

Sign It!

2004.05.13

Save Don Cherry!

Clearly, this is the most important petition in the history of our civilization. Well, okay, I am exaggerating for effect here. This probably won't carry any weight, but if there's one thing I know, it's that online petitions never do any harm. Still, in a country where it's become illegal to hurt people's feelings, I don't expect much.

E3

2004.05.12

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, officially begins today. Yesterday brought the pre-show press conferences from the big three game companies; Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Nintendo definitely had the best show, although I'm a fan of theirs, so perhaps my opinion is biased. With the unveiling of Nintendo's new portable system, the DS, they seem to be realizing their goal of not only creating new and better looking games, but different kinds of games.

Sony's portable, the PSP, will undoubtedly sell well. I may even pick one up myself. It seems to have a stylish look, with a nice big screen, and is capable of playing back movie and music data as well as games. Battery life is going to be a problem however, with 10 hours for music, but only 2.5 hours for movie or game playing. We'll see how that pans out when the system ships in North America next year.

Microsoft seemed to be the big loser, only announcing EA's support of Xbox Live as well as Halo 2. Both are significant announcements as far as the Xbox is concerned, but they can't compare to hardware unveilings.

The biggest surprise was Nintendo's showing of a new Zelda game, featuring a grown up Link, a darker setting, and the more "realistic" graphical style that fans have been screaming for. The trailer was completely unexpected, and floored the conference attendees. With a new Zelda on the way, along with Metroid Prime 2 and Resident Evil 4, the Gamecube is going to see some fantastic games over the next year.

Now, on with the show!

Why?

2004.05.11

European space shuttle test successful

That's great and everything, but why? Hasn't the American Shuttle proven that the space plane idea has a long way to go before being financially manageable? The big problem, as always, is reentry. Human beings simply have not developed a good material to make heat shields out of yet. The Shuttle's ceramic tiles work well, so long as they're in pristine condition. They must be inspected and replaced after every flight, and even that extreme level of safety didn't save Columbia.

Aside from the heat shields, hundreds of other systems are checked because they have been shown to fail after only one flight. It's unfortunate, but we're no where near being able to build a reliable space plane. It really is a materials problem, and unless the Europeans have some new, top secret, heat resistant, miracle surface, I don't see how their Shuttle is going to be much more of a success than the American one has been.

Running Late

2004.05.10

Well, I'm not running late so much as I have more than the usual amount of stuff to do this morning. I'm also not inspired to write about anything in particular. Maybe tomorrow.

Elections

2004.05.07

It's going to be an interesting time when November rolls around and the US presidential election is upon us. You can rest assured that one terrorist organization or another will attack a US target days before the vote, just as they did in Spain, in an attempt to sway the outcome. Will America lash out at the polling stations as the Spanish did?

That doesn't even take into account what's going on in Iraq. Aside from the rebellions and hostage taking, it's become obvious now that US troops have been abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners for quite some time. Obviously the problem isn't massive, but it is big enough that it becomes hard to believe the Secretary of Defense wasn't notified. Even if he wasn't, that points to potentially serious evidence that the people in command don't actually know what's going on, which is almost worse. How could the military have over twenty abuse and torture investigations going on without Rumsfeld knowing? It's a PR nightmare now, and I'm not sure the US military will be able to recover.

Troops are being forced to stay in Iraq for extreme amounts of time. More troops are being sent to keep up the numbers. It's expected that America's 130,000 troops will be there for two more years at least. Two years! Bush isn't going to have it easy in November, and that makes it Kerry's election to lose.

Torture

2004.05.05

I was browsing CNN yesterday and came across an extremely disturbing poll. It read: "Should torture be used in interrogations?" I thought it was a fairly stupid question, with an obvious answers, but the only obvious thing about it was that I didn't have a clue. Forty seven percent of the respondents said "yes". Out of over 230,000 votes, over 100,000 of them supported the use of torture as an interrogation tool.

After seeing that poll, I was somewhat surprised. Aren't people in the West supposed to have a higher standard? I don't know if it's something that has changed, or if it's just never been true. In any case, when Bush and his officials denounce the recent actions of some American soldiers, calling them "un-American", I can't help but think that if almost half of America doesn't have a problem with it, how "un-American" is it?

Fucking Unions 2

2004.05.03

Part of the reason I hate unions so much is that their members very rarely know how the real world works, especially when you're talking about government employees' unions. BC Premier Gordon Campbell was quoted in the Vancouver Sun last week as saying that if the HEU workers would be willing to put in a 40 hour week, instead of their current 36, and would be willing to give up one of their nine weeks off per year, that they're wages wouldn't have to go down.

Nine weeks off? 36 hours a week? That's practically a handout compared with some of the world's more realistic jobs. I'd love to see these people living outside of the union umbrella, working 50 to 60 hours, and having to claw for their 2 week vacation every year.

About the only side of the union argument I do agree with is that a retroactive wage rollback is a ludicrous idea. You can't bill people for money you've already paid them, it's insane.