Remeber when CG animated movies first started to trickle into mainstream cinema? Toy Story, Ants, Shrek etc the technology was fresh and new and was the hopefull future of animation and pixar was behind it all. Who needs hand drawn artists when we can do it all with a giant rendering farm in a data center in the middle of nowhere? Fast forward to today where just about every animated movie that hits the big screen is a CGI flick about some ghey ass animals doing “funny” things. Disney shot itslef in the balls with death rays when they decided to axe a large percentage of their animation staff in favor of CGI and Pixar studios. Now I do love CG when done right but I am not supportive of its monopolistic approach pwning pencil and paper into oblivion. Ghibli and Miyazaki know where its at and have stuck with the good ole hand drawn style creating lush environments and beautiful worlds that finely detailed characters roam in. Ghibli is the last samurai in an industrial nation so to speak. Theres something about pencil and paper that I just cant put my hand on that CG will never be able to replicate. Ira has been concvincing me recently on another area CG has nuked, mechanical special effects. She states that she misses good ole puppetry, costume and animatronic Jim Hensen type stuffs, CG has wrecked havoc in this area as well. Id like to see a new fantasy based movie using animatronics killer costumes and puppetry with a dash of modern tech. After watching the new TMNT movie I can only wish that they would have just went back into the turtle suits and beat the shit out of shredder one more time around. Atleast I still have anime as a saving grace. although alot of it is moving to CG they seem to be using techniques that create a more hand drawn look and feel such as cell shading and digital pen and paper touchups. I wish CG and handdrawn animation could live in a happy coexisting world and be BFFs and nix the highlander shit CG is currently pulling.
ideji
ideji.net
Potentially my next phone!
And no its not the iphone. I really dig the iphone and all of its features but when I heard it would not sync with outlook that was a big deal breaker for me as pretty much my whole life is in that shizzle contacts email and calender etc. The hefty pricetag and cingular service contract doesnt help at all either. My old imate Sp3 is on its last legs and its about time for something more up to date. In comes the HTC elf pocket pc smartphone. Its on the low end of the upcoming pocket pc spectrum but it does everything I need it to plus a pinch more and it will be unlocked to any gsm carrier. Doesnt have the greatest storage in the world but the micro sd cards are getting up in size 4gb is almost or already here. In an ideal world id love to have a all in one convergance device so I could get rid of my zune and laptop. Unfortunatly battery life isnt there yet it would suck ass if my phone ran out of battery because I was listening to music or watching a tv show and then I wouldnt be able to get any calls. So the HTC elf is my next step until such a wonder device exists.If interested in the more nerdy aspects check the specs.
Robots of death!
Giant robots of death have been assimilating my apartment over the past couple of years. Ive been collecting mecha/robot figures on and off and it has recently came to my attention that very soon they will destroy the universe and enslave humanity. Gundams (kits or figures), Giant robo, Gigantor and Black Ox, Mazinkaiser, Getter Robo, Robotech, Gunbusters, Evangelion, Raxhephon, Patlabor, Macross etc etc. Alot of people are hardcore kit builders whereas I prefer figures to kits. I like to take them out of the box ASAP and display them instead of having to assemble a bagillion small plastic parts where the end product never looks as sweet as whats on the box. It also enables them to wreck havoc quicker. I just recently grabbed the revoltech Mazinkaiser, GR-2 and Patlabor Ingram 02 from amazon the other day and damn these revoltech figures are pimp grain quality. Ive also been snatching up some of the Gundam Fix figuration figures which are hella swank as well just not as poseable as the revoltechs but build quality is nice. There needs to be or I need to start a dedicated action figure store here in town. Something with mecha, super hero, designer vinyl and anime/manga figures. Not sure if it would be marketable really but sure would be a choice career change.Wonder what would go into starting such an endevour well let that idea marinate for a bit. I need to get a digi cam so I can start posting pics of the collection as these mecha are vein and will laser your mom if they dont have pics on teh webz.Giant Robots will pwn your soul!
My Music is almost dead!
Stayed inside and out of the cold to watch a movie yesterday everything was peachy. That is until the movie craps out in the middle and says it cannot find the file. This is very alarming to me as all of my media is stored on a central server and other then the movie the media center was running just fine which points fingers at the server. Checking the server I notice that its in a frozen state which is a normal occurence due to torrenting. Normal instinct is to reboot but this time when it came back up it did not detect my music drive. So right now all of my music is on life support which is way scary. I dont know what id do if I where to lose all of my music. I suppose I could survive and start my collection over again it would take a bit to get things back and I know for a fact that there are some albums that I wouldnt be able to find elsewhere. I have a new drive on the way from newegg so hopefully it will get here in time before things die. My reliance on technology and not haveing a good backup solution has bit me in the ass again. I dont much like physical media but I do have to say that with physical media thousands of albums just dont vanish in an instant.
*update* YAY! I was able to recover everything and move it to another drive. There are still some lingering problems with the server but everything is looking up.
Cafe Apropos
Its been getting really cold lately winter is finally setting in and there is nothing like a hot cup of chai to warm up with. We normally go to Zencha tea salon to get chai as its some of the best in town but being late on a sunday they where already closed. So out of the need for some sort of hot beverage we strayed over to one of the neighborhood cafes called apropos. Standard coffee house at first until you realize they sale/serve wine and beer both on tap and bottled! Not just any beer they have a good selection of tastey imports and a whole partitioned room for the wine buffs. So along with my very tastey cup of chai I treated myself to a bottle of Chimay which made it a bit easier to get comfortable despite the metal chairs. Ira, Matt, Thomas and I sat around and chilled out for a couple of hours and had a surprisingly good time on a sunday night. Speaking of hours they are open until 11pm on Sundays and its only a couple minutes from the apartment total score! Also the wifi is free and the coffee and food is quite yum if your ever in the area check it out.
Geni Ajax Family tree
Families are complicated the further you branch out even more so. Trying to figure out what uncle this 2nd cousin comes from or where great grand mothers 1st husband sits on the tree can be a bit daunting. Geni is a new web app that is here to make those connections a bit easier. Its basicly a web based family tree application powered by that fancy “web 2.0″ magic you have come to love or hate. I spent some time setting up my tree today and was able to scope out my immediate family in about 10 minutes. You start off with yourself and then branch out from there. You are represented by a square with navigation arrows around it. When you select up it wants you to select your parents when you go left or right it wants you to select your siblings and or spouse and down your children etc. The divorced check box makes things interesting for my tree atleast, it pieces together the connections that until now have just been a jumbled mess in my head and makes it all into a neat interactive web tree graph. The nifty part is that it just doesnt stop at your family if there is another connection down the line with a tree another user created it will jump into that tree. The idea is to get a ton of people on geni and have a massive geneology map and give you the ability to query your connections with others. Who knows it could link back up to the og alien humanoids somehow. This stuff is interesting to me and ill probably follow it and see how things develop. Right now its getting smashed by digg so the site is currently down.But def check it out we could be related somehow.
Mini Cooper ‘S’
Being so close to paying my car off and not having a car payment you would think that I would have no interest whatsoever in getting a new vehicle. Wrong! As of late ive been obsessing over getting a mini cooper ’s’ and cruising around being all sechsie little and fast. Ive been surfing autotrader for a couple hours today being tempted by the evil gods of consumerism and damn it I want one bad oh so bad. This thing takes turns like no other and would atleast be as quick if not quicker then my current GSR. I dare not take a test drive, for fear that I would buy one on the spot so im gonna try and stay my ass away from dealer rooms. Everything is a bit more future modern with this car both interior and exterior, the dual moon roof heated leather seats and sexy looking dash makes my Acura look as if it is from the early 80s. Not to mention being able to park pretty much anywhere I damn well please due to its “mini” size. BMW being behind the engineering doesnt hurt either damn them germans and their maths. I am definitly weighing my options and in reality its not the best one to take so ill probably pay off the teg and drive it to death while saving buckets of money instead. Eventually I will have one damnit!
Zune
So im pretty oldschool when it comes to mp3 players even before the age of ipod I was on the DAP scene repping my street cred in 1998 with a Rio PMP300 which was the first mass marketed mp3 player ever ever, shit didnt even have USB support. After that I bought its successor the Rio 500 which stepped up in the game with USB support and better audio quality this was in 1999. I had an OG first gen ipod and also a 4th gen. I most recently sold my 4th gen and decided to give the Microsoft Zune a shot. So far so good im running it on vista right now and didnt have any problems with the software I actually like it alot more then itunes. However I am dissapointed that it just didnt use the built in sync mechanism that windows media player has and integrate zune marketplace with URGE instead of making me install another software package. The sceen is amazing, landscape video play is sweet and the way it displays album art when playing a song makes me smile.I <3 the UI the clickwheel is nice once you get used to it. The wireless transfer or "squirting" feature works well but I am not down with it adding DRM to my songs that I already had on my PC I wouldnt mind so much if they where purchased from the marketplace but putting it on my own shit is redonkulous. Ive transfered files with a friend and a msft rep here at the jorb and it works like a champ. Although a little bit larger then current gen ipods I do like the casing, I got the black one and it has a slight blue hue to it and is way more resistant to scratches and fingerprints then the ipod. Audio quality is high and sounds a touch better then my old ipod using the same phones. All in all I like it alot but I have a feeling my next upgrade will be a multi use device such as the newley announced iphone or something similiar with phone,pda,dap smushed together in one device.
New year new design
First post of 2007. New design Dunno if I like it yet just thought id switch it up a bit. I like the long column blog style a little better it allows for more content on a single page. I just ate a yummy home cooked meal by “cookin mama ira” topped off with rocky road ice cream and am now washing it all down with a bottle of Stella Artois. 2006 went out with a bang of a party that the bots put together which was an amazing time, thanks for that. Mechazoid is still alive which is great its become a good communication platform for columbus area nerdy types and is still decently trafficked. Went to Ohayocon and purchased some new robot figures to add to the collection damn things are expensive. The two purchases that I dig teh most are the limited edition 12″ Canti and the MSZ-006A1/C1 [Bst] Gundam Fix Figuration they make my heart splode in all directions but now I have a need to get the rest of the fix series, robots are like vagina laced crack cant get enough. Stella Artois is all gone now time to listen to some Amon Tobin.
Spend money like I spin hoes
Tis the season to give shiznat to other people right? Not recently in the past couple months ive been a self whore and have bought a bunch of stuff for myself that I dont really need. Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Shuttle XPC, New CPU, new LCD for my laptop, ATI HDTV tuner card and a new set of speakers for my main comp as my old ones dont work well with vista. I cant really justify any of these purchases really and I still need to get my xmas shoppin out of the way before I spend too much on myself. I havent bought anything for myself in a while so once I did I got a little carried away. I feel a bit guilty about it actually but thats that.