A site that I am just loving is CaffeMocha.com. It might be the best entry in the new Webzine category I’ve seen for over a year. It’s also a great jumping off point to a large number of well designed sites that I was unfamiliar with.
I really like what Kurt’s done with the new VersionTracker redesign. If you are a Mac OS user, this site is one you should know about. I use it daily.
Wow, I have quite the different opinion of the X-Men movie than Jim has. I also was a longtime reader of the comic book, and I actually even worked in a comic book shop for a year or so. I thought that the movie was entertaining, but was somewhat dissapointed with how little some of the characters, notably Jean Grey and Scott Summers(Cyclops) were developed and used. Overall, I thought it was a good movie if you are familiar and already love the characters, but I didn’t think it was a good standalone movie. There is a this rich history of stories from the comic that I wish they had tapped into a little more. Sabretooth is Wolverine’s father and they didn’t even hint that Sabretooth knew who Wolverine even was.
This brings up a bigger issue that I have been wrestling with about movies this summer. It seems like the overall quality of movies is declining to me. It seems like Hollywood is getting even more formulaic than they already were, or maybe there has been some change in me that makes the existing level of predictableness no longer acceptable. I've seen all the big blockbuster movies this summer and I wouldn't describe any of them as good movies with compelling stories.
A very happy birthday to my good friends and co-workers Clint and Sara.
Well, I’ve got some big news today. We sold our company to a larger pre-IPO Silicon Valley firm with what, I think, is a great future and an interesting strategy based on XML technology. The last couple of months has been pretty crazy as we(the arthouse management team) fielded offers from a couple of companies, made a difficult decision about which one, if any, we wanted to pursue, and then worked our way through the merger process. It’s been a great, but a little stressful, experience. I’m a little wealthier on paper today, but that’s never been the most important thing to me in the first place. I’ll link to the new company as soon as the press releases go out, I don’t want to steal any thunder from the PR machine.
I rented Sweet and Lowdown on DVD this week. I’m a pretty big Woody Allen fan, and I thought this film is among some of his best work. Sean Penn was excellent as Ray Emmett, the guitar genius who suffers from a lack of judgement, among other things.
PIX column :: Zeldman’s second site offers an interesting look into how major Interactive agencies are trying to communicate via their own Web sites. Speaking from the experience of a small agency, it’s a real struggle to keep the corporate site fresh and interesting when you can barely get all the actual billed work out the door.
I’m getting a lot done today on my apartment, which is slowly making the transition from the place where I sleep into a home. I really wish I could spend some time fixing all the problems with the current iteration of Bump and add some of the new content I was planning on adding when I redesigned a few months ago, but I much more focused on the real world right now. I’m still 40 lbs. lighter than I was in March, and I look much much better.(I know this because other people are noticing this fact on a regular basis. It’s flattering when someone you barely know stops you outside your building at work to tell you how great you look, but it’s even more flattering when an attractive woman you don’t know approaches you with obvious interest. This wasn’t happening a few months ago, and now it’s happening on a regular basis.) I’m still an emotional wreck from what’s happened in my life over the last few months, but at least I recognize that fact and am doing something about it. I appreciate my life so much more now than I ever have before, my family, my friends, my job, and myself.
Joe Jackson: Live In New York: Summer in the City is the result of Joe Jackson and two friends playing small clubs as a trio in New York City last summer. As a long time fan of the man, I’m quite pleased with this cd.
A good Salon.com article covers how The Patriot skews history and ends up making the British look far more sadistic than anything that actually happened in the American Revolutionary war. In fact, it compares this portrayal to actual war crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. How well will this film fair in Britain?
I just saw In God We Trust on Cinemax. Unfortunately, the full movie isn’t up on Atom’s site, but it was really entertaining.
What a great long weekend. I’m getting lots of stuff done, and spent three hours yesterday reliving my youth playing Risk with two of my work friends. I saw The Patriot, which I thought was mediocre, and The Perfect Storm, which I thought was mediocre. Both were a little too Hollywood for my tastes, and I thought the first was very much a slightly altered version of Braveheart set in the American colonies during the war for independence. I hope your weekend is going as well as mine. Now I’m off to configrue my home entertainment center(this is a monster job with 9 components).
Macintouch has a PC Expo 2000: Palm, Handheld and Wireless Computing Special Report. It includes a picture of the early Sony handheld prototype and some interesting notes on Bluetooth.
Sticking with the latest trends CNET launches a new Wireless section.
‘HTTP on steroids’ headed our way. What is BXXP? I’m going to do some looking around on this right now.
My Caffeine Sampler from ThinkGeek.com arrived this afternoon. It’s a scary amount of caffeine type beverages. I’m surprised the box didn’t explode or slowly vibrate across the floor.
MacWEEK: Sony to preview Palm handheld at PC Expo. It sounds more and more like Palm has no intention of being anything more than a operating system licenser. They haven’t come out with anything that really breaks the mold of the original Palm product. They’ve added color, more memory, and a faster processor plus wireless access, but the device has remained pretty much the same. I’m real interested in this Sony version, especially if I can stick a 128 Mb Memory Stick in it.
I’m playing beach volleyball in a league every Monday night, except I’m not really getting to play. Last week we were cancelled because they misplaced the nets, and this week they couldn’t get the lights to work. Maybe they’ll get their act together when we play in two weeks.
There’s also a weblog to track the carbonization of Frontier.
Userland releases Frontier 6.2 and thanks me in the process! I don’t really feel like I deserve their thanks with my crazy life taking me away from being as involved as I would like. 6.2 introduces a bunch of great new features including localization. Congrats to Dave, Brent, Robert and Andre on this accomplishment.
New to my daily visit list: K I I R O I
The Real World Blows does a good job of summing up my feelings about the show which features a bunch of disfunctional people living in an MTV constructed fantasyland. Of course, it’s like a car wreck and I can’t look away. (Found at the ever entertaining weblog wannabe)
Project Cool’s XML Concepts article gives an excellent high level overview of the language and surrounding concepts. WebReview does them one better with their excellent Taming the XML Beast. Read them both.