Tag: awesome

David Schwimmer Directed a Movie

Wait… what?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmj8IWpN8tA]

I didn’t know he had it in him… Run, Fat Boy, Run looks awesome. It helps that Dylan Moran and Simon Pegg are two of my most favorite actor/comedians ever. If you don’t understand why, watch Black Books, Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz.

P.S. If only they hadn’t used Trailer Voice Guy…

Awesome. Just… Awesome.

Today was an exciting day. I’ll let ThinkSecret do the talking:

At a town-hall meeting with employees Thursday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that all full-time Apple employees will receive a free 8GB iPhone, while part-time employees who have been with the company for more than a year will also receive a free iPhone.

So, thanks to the kindness of Steve’s heart, this time next month (we have to wait until the huge customer demand is satisfied) I’ll have my sweaty palms on one of these:

iPhone

Then I’ll just have to pick a plan and start being one of the cool kids. It’ll be great.

P.S. Go see Live Free or Die Hard. It is 100% mayhem, and entirely stupid/awesome.

For All You Library Nerds

This means you, Ryan P. Craven.

I will fully admit that I am a huge library nerd. I have always loved going to the library, and, in fact, when we lived in Wichita, KS, I used to beg my parents to take me to the downtown library just because it was so enormous (3 floors!) and I could wander aimlessly through the sci-fi/fantasy books, and then browse the music, and then pore over obscure photography/art books.

I was a bit disappointed when we moved to Sugar Land because none of the local libraries ever seemed to match the sheer size of that great big Kansas library in my memory. I didn’t really get the chance to see an awesome library again until I went off to college – the SU library was pretty great, for example, although I could never seem to browse fiction the way I wanted to… I guess that’s just as well, though… I was really too busy to be reading for fun most of the time I was in college.

It’s just as well, though, because the Austin library system is awesome. As soon as I had an Austin-area lease document in hand two years ago, I made my way to the downtown library and got myself a card, and I haven’t stopped using it since. I constantly tell the people I know that they should get a card if they don’t have one… you’ll never regret having a library card, even if you aren’t much of a reader.

One of my most exciting realizations was the fact that the libraries here have a pretty excellent DVD selection, including entire seasons of TV shows that can be checked out all at once (I got the entire third season of Farscape from the library, for example, and that’s a hard show to find at a plain ol’ video rental place.)

It also just so happens that I have a newly-fancified-and-upgraded library just down the block from where I live. Good stuff.

Anyways, long story short, I was definitely excited to come across this 13 book hacks for the library crowd article on lifehacker.com. Especially interesting was the section on tracking your checked out books using a nifty OS X menubar addon called Library Books.

Setting it up did take a little bit of tweaking – the Austin library wasn’t included in the default list of libraries, but once I dug around on the library website a little bit, I figured out that it is based on the “iBistro/Sirsi Catalog System”, which is included in the Library Books menu.

The hardest part was figuring out which URL to use for the Catalogue Host:

https://www.ci.austin.tx.us/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/x/0/49

Once you’ve got that, all you need is a library account and an online sign-in. Here’s how the drop-down looks on my system:

Library Books menu

Razza-frazza @#$% Macworld Keynote

Stupid “new iMacs”:http://www.apple.com with stupid Intel processors and stupid “all sales final” employee purchase plan…

…actually, I kid… I am kind of disappointed that they did in fact update the iMacs after all. I was banking on them updating the Mac Mini and probably one of the laptop lines, but I really thought that since the iMac was updated in November that it wouldn’t be updated so soon. Oh well.

My computer is still absolutely awesome and incredibly powerful, and will continue to have the same life that it would always have had. I knew they were going to start introducing Macs with Intel processors sometime this year, and I knew that and went ahead and bought a new computer anyways because I wanted a _new computer_.

I’ve heard it said that buying the first revision of anything is oftentimes a bad idea anyways…

Ah well. Let’s be realistic here. For what I’m going to do with my computer (surf the web, write, listen to music, watch movies, design web pages, maybe edit some video, play with Garageband, etc) I’ve got more than enough iMac to go around. Hell, my old iMac only recently stopped being able to do some of those things.

oh, sweet!

this is what my parents got me for my birthday:

two (really awesome) books:

“On Directing Film”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140127224/ by David Mamet
“Three Uses of the Knife”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/037570423X/ by David Mamet

the following DVDs:

“Some Like It Hot”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00003CXCR/
“Groundhog Day”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005U8EM/
“School of Rock”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00018U9G6/
“Sideways”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007TKOAA/

tv shows on dvd

ah, the movie studios have got my number. i am a sucker for those box sets of tv shows that are so prevalent now. i mean, i knew this before, but this weekend i’ve started to realize that what gets me excited more than anything else these days is watching the first couple of episodes of a tv show on dvd and then realizing that if i like it, i can watch more. a lot more. these things are addictive. why, this weekend alone i’ve already started a fixation on both farscape and firefly (rented the first disc of that tonight). firefly in particular is *gorgeous*, looks very expensive, and was probably always too good for television. farscape is awesome, but the dvds are annoying. two measly episodes a disc? poo on you, ADV films.

i’ve got a couple more right at the top of my netflix queue:

Dead Like Me: Season 1: Disc 2
Freaks & Geeks: Disc 1 (Yes, i could borrow this from Doug. But I’m impatient.)
The Dead Zone: Season 1: Disc 1
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1: Disc 1
Six Feet Under: Season 2: Disc 1
Angels in America: Disc 2

for some reason i thought

for some reason i thought my last entry was much less coherent than it actually was. i read it today and it kind of makes sense (more than i expected). after i got back from the ‘dam, i’ve just spent the rest of the weekend basically sitting around. i went to the tate modern art museum saturday night, which was awesome. i also read “arcadia” by tom stoppard, which was awesome. i finished White Teeth on friday and it was pretty damn good, definitely worth a read. i just started on Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, which has already proved to include a whole lot of details either different from or not included in the movie. so it’s as much of a revelation as i was hoping it to be. last night i watched the Dead Zone on tv (the movie with Christopher Walken) and it was pretty good, but i read the book over the summer and they left out a lot. it was sort of like the reader’s digest version of the book, which i thought was kind of lame. they didn’t develop walken’s former girlfriend at all, or really any of the other characters as much as they should have. but every time walken had a vision, it was great. his flinches were intense, especially since the director (david cronenberg) was firing a pistol offscreen every time.

i’ve got around $1100 left, which is pretty good if i don’t tell you that i started the semester with $2200. oops. of course, i actually only have about a month and a half left here. i think i’ll probably travel to another country at least once or twice more, but i’ll try and be as frugal as possible (if possible). i can go to germany and stay with a friend, so i think I might do that. cause I mean, come on… it’s Germany! yeah.

it really does sort of feel like home here. i’m probably going to have reverse culture shock when i go back to the states, which will be not so much fun. i’m probably going to try to go to grocery stores to find the things i’m used to now, and i’ll fail miserably. oh well.

i feel like as a “writer” i should be writing more or something. but i’m lazy. endlessly lazy. i mean, i don’t have that crazy drive to write at all hours of the day. does that mean i shouldn’t be a writer? i don’t think so… i mean, i’m always coming up with these images and stories. or whatever. i just need to find a niche. or something.

you know what’s kind of annoying about being here? the fact that i want to see movies like: punch drunk love, rules of attracting, the ring, etc. etc. etc. that won’t come out here while i’m here. also, michael chabon (author of wonder boys and other great books) is coming to my campus… while i’m here. DAMMIT! oh well. i’m in europe. you make some trade-offs. ha.