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Cloverfield

Reviews

I could tell you about the Transformers screening I went to last night, and about how it was better than I thought and go into details about this new relaunch of the eternal struggle between Autobots and Decepticons. But frankly, the details are unimportant, it was better than I thought, and its a good fun summer action film. Stuff blows up, giant robots fight, and good wins out in the end with just enough nods to the old cartoon to make us old folks smiles without entirely rehashing the old cartoon.

Instead, as the title suggests, I’m going to mention Cloverfield. But what is it? If you go to the Internet Movie Database you won’t find an entry for it. If you go to Apple or Yahoo, you won’t find the trailer. In fact, right now the only way to see the trailer is to go see Transformers. But if the thought of that movie completely repulses you, then you can at least go here to get the low down.

There really are few trailers for movies that get me excited without knowing anything about a film. Normally, I know what’s coming, I know the story, or the characters, I know what the movie is generally about. When I saw the trailer for Cloverfield, I was stunned. I’d never heard of it (in fact, the movie isn’t even named in the trailer and Cloverfield may not be what it is really called) but despite that I was riveted. The last time a trailer got me like that was Cliffhanger.

But seriously, Transformers was good enough that when coupled with this trailer make it totally worth the price of admission.

I Am Legend

Reviews

Normally, I am not a vampire guy. Except as bad guys. That whole Anne Rice immortally tortured gay blood sucker thing just put me right off. About the only time I have ever liked a vampire as the hero has been the TV show Angel.

Luckily for me, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend isn’t about do-gooder or tortured vampires.

The story tackles an idea normally reserved for zombie movies, what if the world were overrun by vampires. A virus of some sort has swept the world and slowly the world succumbed. There are two kinds of vampires, dead ones and live ones, but there is only one man left. Robert Neville is the last man on Earth, and with no end in site, with everyone he loved gone, for some reason he just won’t give up. He keeps garlic on his doors and windows by night and goes out for supplies and to kill sleeping vampires by day.

Given the bleak subject matter, its a true testament to Matheson’s writing that the story doesn’t spiral into a morose somber mess. Instead there is an odd sense of hope, and even humor, in Robert Neville’s life. The end left me a little wanting, I understand what Matheson was doing there, but some part of me just felt a little… cheated. But the rest of the book is good enough that I’ll forgive him.

If you don’t care to read the book, it has been made into a movie a number of times in the past, although always under another name (The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price and The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston directly, and I’m sure the story influenced quite a few other films), but this year we’ll see a more direct adaptation in I Am Legend starring Will Smith. I suspect it will deviate from the book much like Mr. Smith’s previous I, Robot did. But I would still recommend reading the book.

Putting Your Stamp On It

Random Thoughts

I have in the past worked with and from time to time still do work with people who absolutely must put their own stamp or spin on everything.

Let me give you an example. We are designing a database and a process for managing and populating the tables. I sit down with the other developers, we hash out what we need, then we lay out the database. Next, we have a meeting with the project manager to show the design, flesh out the process and begin documentation. Table A, Table B and Table C are source tables for Process 1 that populates Table D. Process 2 takes Table D, Table E, Table F and Table G and produce Table H. Table H is displayed to users. Process 3, initiated by users, takes user input and an entry from Table H and inserts into Table C, which is as indicated prior a source for the first process. Essentially, this design maintains an inventory, matches it with traffic data, then provides the user with a list of available space and equipment usage. The user then picks a unit for making new assignments to and that is stored to be fed into the inventory to keep it up to date.

Simple.

So, the project manager runs off and comes back with a document that states: Table A and Table B are used by Process 1 to Populate Table D; Table C, D, E and F are used by Process 2 to create Table G and Table H; G and H are used with user input to update Table C. The design team gets this document, disagrees, rewrites it to match the original discussion and submits it back to the manager. The manager runs off again and comes back with another document that matches neither the original discussion or the document he first did. This time the user interface is feeding Tables C, F and H, and Process 1 is using every table except G. Totally wrong. So we go around again. And again. And again.

We waste hours and hours, and the manager keeps saying, “Let me see if I understand…” and then always explains it wrong because, clearly, he does not understand.

Eventually we come to a point where someone on design gets mad and says, “Trust us, if it doesn’t work the way WE say it, we can redesign it later.” And of course, we aren’t wrong, it works and we don’t have to come back to it.

I’ve got no solution, nor really much else to say. This is just something that frustrates me as a worker that I’ve added to the list of things I will never do if I’m ever manager. That is all.

1408

Reviews

Last night I went and saw a screening of the new Stephen King movie 1408.

It stars John Cusack as a writer who does books on haunted places, mostly going to them and talking about the history and story, but debunking the actual haunting. He gets a postcard telling him not to check in to room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel in New York. So, of course, he goes. The rest of the movie deals with him getting the room and what happens inside.

All in all, it was a very well done movie. I don’t jump alot at horror movies, but this one got me about four times. John and Samuel L. Jackson are very believable in their roles. As with many horror movies, there comes a point where the scares stop and the resolution of the film begins, and as with many horror movies this is 1408’s weakest point. The ending doesn’t suck, but it is definitely lower key that the rest of the film.

Still, a good movie, and worth it if you like movies about hauntings.

Urban Dead

Gaming

Thanks to Sanya, I’ve learned about a game I must investigate as I pursue my own endeavor.

Urban Dead is a browser based text adventure. Sure, its not ground breaking, but it is free.

I’ll be checking it out.

Music to the Masses

Random Thoughts, Reviews

Let me just get this out of the way… I like Kelly Clarkson’s music. There, I said it, now let us move on.

CNN has a story up today about Kelly canceling her tour. And on one hand I feel bad for her because she was having poor ticket sales and I feel bad for her fans because the ones who did buy tickets won’t get to see her (No, I didn’t buy tickets), on the other hand I’m kinda glad to see another arena tour fail.

Don’t get me wrong… I love a good arena show. But there is a certain type of arena show I like. For example, in August I’ll be going to see Def Leppard, Styx and Foreigner. And whenever Poison puts on one of their Glam Slam Metal Jams, I’m there. I love a good festival show, like the local radio station 99x’s Big Day Out. But a huge arena show needs bands that demand it, or needs to feature a few bands. U2, prime candidates for a solo arena tour. Same with the Police on their current reunion. Not only do they have a huge library of their own music which will easily fill two hours on stage (plus an encore or two), but they have the current pull to fill the seats. While each band on my 3-band August show ticket could have at one time filled an arena on their own, these days they haven’t had a whole lot of hits.

Kelly Clarkson is a pretty good artist. She sings well, performs well, and all in all I like her. I would definitely go see her live… if it were a smaller show. For her Atlanta date, she was playing the Arena at Gwinnett Center, half house (which is actually more than half), running her about 8,000 seats, give or take. For $50 to $70 (plus handling fees), that’s just too much to wind up being in the nose bleeds for an artist with only her third album coming out and a handful of top 40 songs. Now, put her down at the Roxy or the Tabernacle and drop the price to $15 or $20, I guarantee she’d be a sellout. Heck, in a smaller venue I might actually be willing to pay that $50 or more for an artist who is know to hang around and talk to the fans or put on an awesome show. For $50 I expect to be able to watch the artist perform, not to watch the artist perform on a giant TV because I’m too far away to watch the artist.

I see the draw of the arena show, the same draw it always has had: more money and less time. You play one show, 5,000+ people at $30+ a head, even if you only take home 25% of that, its $37,500+ for one night. Do a tour of 20 or 30 of those and you can probably net near a million dollars. Plan it right and you can do that tour in under 3 months, and take the other 9 off to work on songs and plan your next tour, or maybe do a leg through Europe or Asia. Meanwhile if you do the little shows, you have to do more of them, you have to stay on the road. A year, 18 months at a stretch maybe, at least that’s what those guys on Behind the Music always say. It would be hard work… like, I don’t know… working retail every day, or sitting in a cubicle punching out programming code. Except, you’d be in music, and seeing the world, and making a living entertaining people and putting smiles on faces. Arenas always seemed to me to be a way to facelessly rock as many people as possible.

Maybe I just need to catch more bands on the upswing. I went and saw No More Kings play down at Smith’s Olde Bar, and I and my friends chatted with Pete Mitchell for nearly a half hour. But that doesn’t cover it entirely… I’ve seen Better Than Ezra in concert a half dozen times, once or twice they were part of a festival where I got to see twenty bands, but mostly they’ve been at places like the Roxy, or Underground, or even in the Centennial Park, and even though I’ve never met the band, their shows felt more personal, they were better.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Ms. Clarkson, if you or your people read this, come to Atlanta, play a small show, I’ll be there and I’ll sing your praises.

wis.dm

Random Thoughts

I have a new addiction and wis.dm is it’s name.

It is really interesting to see questions people ask. It is also fun to think up questions you wonder about.

I’m hooked.

And I’ve already created my own metagame out of the site: creating questions that invent unique entires for the word cloud. If you want to play, you can’t just completely go out in left field, you have to ask a real question. Example: I asked a question that revolves around the movie Tremors, so I created a keyword/keyphrase of underground monsters. I would have gone for the gusto and said “underground God damned monsters”, but I don’t know the site’s policy on dirty words.

If you get there from here, add me as a friend.

They don`t live here anymore

Random Thoughts

Furthering my pursuit to stop junk mail, I have begun attacking the mail that I get that it addressed to previous residents of my home or people who have never lived here.

The first step is the catalogs and coupon mailers that come addressed to someone else “or Current Resident”. One previous tenant was a golfer, I’m not, so the weekly (sometimes twice weekly) fliers from the Golfsmith has to go. The fliers contained no information for opting out of their mailing list, no phone number to call, except the local store who informed me that they were not responsible for the fliers and he wouldn’t give me the main office number. But in the age of the Internet, this didn’t stop me. I went to the Golfsmith website and used their contact page. After a few emails back and forth trying to make the customer service team there understand that I hadn’t ordered anything and just wanted off the mailing list, they finally got it and have claimed that I have been removed.

Thankfully, that was the hardest one to deal with so far. Others have immediately understood what I wanted and responded accordingly, so the catalog of horrifically expensive watches should stop, the fishing catalog, and handful of others should stop within the next few weeks.

Next to deal with are the real mail items for other addressees. Legally, I can’t open their mail to find out if there is a contact number. Nor am I supposed to just throw it out. According to the post office, mail not addressed to me should be marked “Not at this address” and left in the mail box. I’ve been doing this for almost a year now and they still deliver mail for the same wrong people. I suppose I may just have to live with it.

The last thing to deal with is random junk mail, usually for local businesses or those packets of coupons for services I don’t need from companies I’ve never heard of. This level of junk is called Direct Marketing, and there just happens to be a Direct Marketing Association and they publish a method to be removed from their lists. You can find the instructions here. Now, unlike the prescreened credit offers I posted about before, being removed from this list isn’t free. It is going to cost you $1 per name/address combo you want removed. But $1 is worth it to me, not only to stop me from getting this junk, but possibly reducing the amount of this junk that gets printed.

The fight against junk mail continues…

Zoom

Reviews

I am a dork for Tim Allen movies. I am also a dork for superhero movies. So, Zoom, a Tim Allen superhero movie is right up my alley.

The movie stars Allen as Captain Zoom, a superhero once part of a super team. Zoom and his brother, Concussion, along with a few others saved the world a bunch of times, then Concussion, driven mad by being dosed with radiation, killed most of the team. Zoom lived and Concussion was defeated… or so he was told. Turns out that Concussion was just trapped in a dimensional rift of some sort and it looks like he’s coming back. So the military wants to put together a new group of superheroes and they enlist Zoom out of retirement to train them.

Zoom has a very similar feel to another Tim Allen movie, Galaxy Quest, but it is definitely aimed at a younger audience. Still, though, it is fun. The kids learn to be a team, Zoom flirts with the scientist lady, and much comedy ensues.

The only problem I had with the film is the fact that they made Spencer Breslin wear a fat suit, a bad fat suit. It just looked awful, and it wasn’t really needed. But outside that, it was a good movie, fun for the whole family. Its worth the money to buy, or at least a trip through your rental queue.