Ugh. I was looking forward to UPN and WB merging, but the CW is junk. I won’t even get started on the programming (it’s bad enough on its own) but my main beef is with their “HD” content. They take standard definition shows and zoom in on them slightly, leaving small black lines on the left and right.

Lame.

Another thing… the only two shows I watch on “The CW” are Smallville (don’t make fun of me!) and Veronica Mars. Both are filmed and broadcast in HD… when The CW feels like it. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with my local carrier/affiliate, but half the time the shows remain in standard definition, with the “Available in HD” flashing at the bottom of the screen, mocking me.

Arg!

I wrote a letter to their network site, and my local affiliate, and haven’t heard back. Didn’t think they’d write me back, anyhow. What do they care? They’re getting their advertising dollars, right?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20349888-2,00.html

Wow, bummer. I even went and saw his Crocodile Hunter movie with Jason.. he seemed like a great guy who had a big vision for educating the world about animals, often misunderstood ones.

Man, the fun never stops around them wacky MySpace offices!

P.S. — I now have a “MySpace” category on my blog. Be afraid.

I am convinced that MySpace’s “technical group” consists of a single man, a workstation, and a 24–pack of Mountain Dew.

It’s amazing the site even runs at all. They need to fire whoever is heading up their technical staff; and I seriously doubt it’s “Tom” working on it— it is worth at least $580 mil, right? I feel like we’re back in the hayday of the dot-com era here. Just waiting for the bubble to burst, and if the error messages, spyware-laden advertisements, sexy not-safe-for-kids advertisements, exploits (hi Samy!) and more are any indication.. it will be bursting very soon. Check out the Wikipedia article on MySpace, it’s hilarious.

Also, good luck contacting their support department. I still haven’t been able to change my account’s e-mail address..

If you are in charge of running IT at your company, you owe it to yourself to block MySpace.com from your networks at all costs. I don’t even want to get started about how many people I see at my work goofing off with it when they’re supposed to be working.

In case you didn’t catch the Emmys last night, it opened with a parody/skit of many different Emmy nominees. They spoofed Lost up front, with Conan crashing on the island (mind you, they don’t show an actual plane crashing..) and running into Hurley, who leads him to a hatch, which leads him to the Office… just watch and see.

Anyhow, there was a real plane crash in Kentucky a few hours before the Emmys aired, and people are calling the Emmy spoof insensitive. Look, I’m sorry the plane crash happened, that sucks (and I’m still trying to figure out how that happened.. talk about a stupid mistake), but come on, it’s clearly spoofing LOST, a show about plane crash survivors. Also, I doubt the network is going to ditch an entire opening segment (which they probably spent numerous hours/dollars on) just because of an accident.

Nikki Finke over at the Deadline Hollywood daily rants how poor taste it was, blah blah here, asking “What was NBC/Conan thinking?” I’ll tell you what they were thinking.. that 99.99999% of the country would find it FUNNY, genius.

People just need to lighten up. It was a hilarious opening. Not that I really care about the Emmys, though.. 

This stinks.

Nickel Creek was one of my favorite bands, and they will definitely be missed collectively. They are all immensely talented individuals, and here’s hoping they find success in their own ways. Just won’t be the same..

I guess I was lucky to see them when they stopped by Borders last August, and get my CD autographed.

Hey everyone, I made an initial design of the site. Let me know what you think, if it looks good on your browser/screen, etc.. any feedback is appreciated!

http://www.mickeyrevealed.com/

Don’t make fun of the opening text too much. I wrote it at 3am. Want to write something interesting for it? Let me know.

Thanks!

This is somewhat bittersweet for me. I’ve loved this show, and it’s been one of my favorite sci-fi series, next to Farscape. But you really do have to admit it’s been on a reaaally long time. I’m just bummed that Ben Browder and Claudia Black will be disappearing so soon as well. The show just had it’s 200th episode, which is unheard of in most television series. I believe it sets a world record..

Source: http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=2&id=37607

P.S. — If you’ve never seen the show, and/or you didn’t watch the 200th episode.. the image to the right is going to be verrry confusing.

http://www.accesshollywood.com/news/ah1277.shtml

Get a little liquor in her, and wow, off she goes… click on the link, then follow the link on the bottom that says “Click here to watch Kelly get crazy”. Gotta love the fake flashing, rubbing of her nipples and drinking Jack on stage. Wheeee! Isn’t celebrity life grand?

That might be the longest subject ever to grace my blog.

• Fergie’s “London Bridge” song is one of the worst songs I have ever heard in my life, hands down. The lyrics boggle the mind. What the heck does “my london bridge wanna go down” mean? Ugh. First you talk about your “humps” and now your “bridge”. Update: If you want to know what the song means, GO HERE.
  
• My coworker showed me MGM Grand’s new website. Wow. Talk about your sweet Flash designs, and a genius navigation to boot.
• [via HDBeat] If you’re lucky enough to get HDTV, namely the UniversalHD channel, and you’re a fan of Firefly, Joss Whedon’s prematurely cancelled series, you’ll be in heaven in September. UniversalHD will be running the series in 1080i format, starting September 24th. Browncoats, schedule your DVRs!
• Snakes on a Plane may look like the worst movie ever made, but it’s actually the best. Make sure you get Samuel L Jackson to send a personalized e-mail or phone to your friends to tell them to go see it with you. Yes, seriously, Samuel will call them for you! And no, you can’t do it to me now; I’ve already been called.
• Do you use Outlook or Thunderbird to check e-mail? Tired of spam? In the past, I used the free and excellente Spambayes, but it has not been updated in some time, and is starting to catch less and less of the newer tricks (such as “image only”) mail. The other day I stumbled across a new free/open-source application called Spamato. This program uses many different types of “spam checks”, and has really impressed me. Give it a try!

Study: Raunchy Lyrics Prompt Teens To Have Sex. No kidding. Start dabbling with sexual things and you're going to start thinking about them more and more… I’m amazed that teens constantly listen to music (particularly rap/pop) that degrades women. Even women do the degrading sometimes (*cough*Fergie*cough*) Goes for any form of media or entertainment, really..

The timing couldn’t be better for this rant from Stanley Crouch about the MTV generation that is accepting of the black culture portrayed by MTV.

When did it become cool to be a sexist pig?

If you could pick only a handful of CDs to take with you on a desert island, what would they be?

For me, I’d have to say..

1) October Project – October Project [only $10 at Amazon!!]
2) Live – Throwing Copper
3) Loreena McKennitt – The Mask and Mirror
4) No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom

Pretty random, I know. You probably recognize Live and No Doubt, but wonder who the heck October Project is, and Loreena McKennitt for that matter. I’ll save Loreena for another time, but let’s just talk October Project. It’s really a struggle to describe what type of music they are, so you’re better off just listening/watching a few clips to get the gist. Mary Fahl has a truly unique voice and it’s a perfect match to the rest of the band.

I think the album means even more to me having been recommended by my father to me.. he would purchase random cassettes at K-Mart and try them out. Found October Project, and it became his favorite band. There’s really something there for anyone, as the songs go through a range of emotions and journeys. “Bury My Lovely” still puts me in this peaceful mood every time I hear it.

It’s a shame that they were only able to make two albums in their time together. The followup, “Falling Further In” is almost as good as their first album. Shortly after that, they were dropped from their label, and the lead singer left the band. They tried to re-form with a different singer, but really.. Mary was the core of the “sound” of the band, and things just weren’t the same…

Ahh, I could ramble forever about this band.. but I’ll spare you. Just check ‘em out, you may like them. You may not. My friends don’t seem to care for them, but I take no personal offense. Everyone has their tastes!

[ Now playing: October Project - Bury My Lovely ]

A lot of my blog hits from Google are coming for my Astro Blaster’s secrets/hints post, as well as my Pirates and Disney Logo posts.

I’ve been playing with the idea lately of opening a Disney ‘secrets’ site, where people can post any trivia they know about various Disney properties, such as the films and theme parks. I remember visiting Hidden Mickeys a lot growing up, but the site is really stale now, loaded with ads.. etc.. I remember e-mailing the webmaster and offering to help convert it to a better design, database driven and all, and our conversation never really went anywhere.

I want to do better than HiddenMickeys— have it be more community-driven and personalized, as well as modern and fast. I’ve started to sketch out a site/features map, and will probably talk more about this soon, but just wanted to get everyone’s feedback on the idea in general. The site wouldn’t be completely about “secrets”, mind you, and would have sections to review Disney rides, films, post your own photos from visits, discussion forums…

I’m still debating a name… nothing fancy has come to mind yet.

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

Well, sort of. Mike’s started a new venture called RiffTrax, where for a low-price, you can purchase play-along commentary for a film. Right now he just has commentary for “Road House” (ugh) but his next film will be The Fifth Element.. can’t wait for that one!

I’ve got a pretty darn good rig.. Intel DualCore 3.2 GHz, 2 GigaBytes of RAM, ATI X1900 XTX 512meg video card, RAID-1 300gigabyte drive array.. and yet, I cannot for the life of me get Quicktime high-definition movie trailers to play without dropping frames every few seconds.

Really annoying, considering my PC can play WMV-HD just fine, as well as DiVX-HD, etc..

I’ll try posting about this to Apple’s mailing list and see if I get anywhere, but I doubt it. They’ll probably just say “buy a Mac”. Bite me.

Seems I’m not alone in my problems..

My sister had her baby suddenly this morning (a few weeks premature). My mom woke me up around 3am and we headed down to the hospital to meet her and Jeff there. At 5:30am, she delivered Joshua Almond (I believe that’s the final name they decided on.)

Wow, birth is an amazing thing. I was almost crying by the end of it, and I wasn’t even looking at it directly.

Here’s a picture of Sarah and her new baby boy:

I really really really like the movie “Ever After”. Okay, scratch that. I love it. It’s easily my favorite romantic film of all time, and it reminds me of simpler times.. finishing my sophomore year, onto my junior year, as well as a summer spent with a woman I thought I was destined to be with. *sigh*

Oh, where was I? Yes, right. Anyhow, I remember seeing the trailer and thinking the accompanying soundtrack sounded pretty darn cool. I was already a Robert Miles fan, so to hear “Fable” in a movie trailer was nice. But the first song was from an artist I had never heard of, Loreena McKennitt. The song was titled “The Mummer’s Dance” off of the “Book of Secrets” album. I’ve since purchased all of Loreena’s albums, and thoroughly enjoy all of them.

Hrm, distracted again. Okay, back to the subject at hand, Ever After. I got a press kit for the movie a long time ago, and never bothered to do anything with it until tonight. I’m not sure if anyone wants this sort of thing, but it’s free for the taking anyhow. Please remember the images are copyright 20th Century Fox... (if anyone from Fox is reading this and wants them taken down, shoot me an e-mail.)

P.S. — The font used for the film’s title is “Serengetti ITC” by Linotype.

(DiVX Web Player is needed to view this trailer. Click here to get it.)
Click the play icon to start the trailer.

I forgot to mention that in front of Pirates 2, there is a new Disney logo.. and it’s amazing. Mike Gabriel is supposedly the one who designed it, and I was blown away. It’s all 3D.. nighttime, the camera pulling back across a city and water, then up and to the side revealing a very large Sleeping Beauty castle. I believe there were fireworks, too..

I’m sure someone will post it up on YouTube or Google Video soon..

Updated 2006-07-10: Here's a static shot of the new logo:

Update 08-16-2006: Someone posted a rip of the new logo on YouTube. Click here to view it on their site (this means you, LiveJournalers), or I've embedded it below:

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

Replying to Susan about my Astro Blaster’s score, I made a list of tips/secrets for the ride. Let me know if you have any more!

1) Just keep shooting, every 5 "misses" or so, you get some "pity points". It's so kids don't get a score of 0 even if they didn't hit anything. You'll know you've hit something if the back of your gun flashes white.

2) Aim for these shapes (in order from highest to lowest points): diamond, triangle, square, circle. Targets that are lit up give you more points. Aim for the tiny black hole in the center of the target.

3) There is a hidden target (at least at Disneyland) actually on the Zerg character, in the center of his armor. It's a tiny black hole.

4) There is another hidden target in the dark tunnel.. you'll see one on your left, and one on your right.. but look up! It's worth 100k!

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

What a great movie, and a perfect followup to the original. My only disappointment is in myself for forgetting that they are already working on/almost done with a third (and this film’s ending leaves you hanging..)

But I highly recommend it if you liked the first one. ILM has really outdone themselves with the special effects; Davy Jones just looks real.

Also, stay after the credits are over for a funny little followup to one of the minor characters.

And with that, I’m totally exhausted and going to bed. ‘Night!

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

I almost forgot to post my picture from Astro Blasters.. a new high score for myself, 600k+! Awesome. Next time I hope for at least 800k.

Related: For tips on getting a high score, check out my other blog post.

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

Yesterday I went to Disneyland with some friends, snapped some photos, and generally had a fun time. Got to ride the new version of Pirates, and it was pretty darn cool. The Davy Jones mist effect is pretty neat, and fits perfectly where they placed it. I also noticed some of the “burning” effects are updated. While passing through the burning town, there is a man above you (the “dirty feet” pirate) who is holding a jug. The top of the jug now has a tiny flame coming out of it. Later on, when you’re passing through the burning buildings, there are little fires on the hottest parts. It’s hard to explain, and I wish I had taken photos of ‘em.

The person in the front of our boat kept taking photos every couple of seconds, flashes and all, until someone else spoke up about it and he stopped. Ugh. Talk about common sense. Another irritating thing happened on the Haunted Mansion ride— a young kid with a laser pointer thinking it’s funny to use it everywhere during the ride. In Leota’s chamber, he shone it on her head, making the video all red and washed out, as well as reflecting in everyone’s eyes. Where are the parents? Bah. Anyways, I finally got to see the new “spirit” effect in the Haunted Mansion, and it’s not as cool as people made it out it to be, but it is definitely a welcome update to the attraction.

In a completely random subject, I found out that a nice splash of Goldbond body powder on my thighs successfully kept them from rubbing and getting raw as they usually do when it’s hot and I’m walking around all day. That might have been too much information for some people, or it could be a godsend for others. Who knows.

For lunch/dinner, we ate at the new “Cafe Orleans” (I believe that’s the name of it..) It’s signage is updated to be better themed with Pirates. Kind of strange, but cool. Their menu is totally different from before. I had a delicious Monte Cristo sandwich— I had no idea what a Monte Cristo sandwich even was before then, but I didn’t regret ordering it one bit. You’ve got your meat, your cheese, your fried pastry shell, and then to top it off a sweet-tasting berry syrup to dip it in? Count me in. Heart attacks, ahoy!

So yeah, that’s about it. Tomorrow I’m supposed to go with the gang and watch Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest. It’s getting mixed reviews, so here’s hoping for the best. Ciao!

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

To my brilliant neighbors who decided attaching an M-80 to an arrow and firing it straight up would be a good idea: @!($)%* you!

Your arrow missed my friend’s young daughter by two feet.

Gah. Next time, do the world a favor and hold the M-80 in your mouth.

Found this online, don’t quite remember where, but it’s a scan from the “Raising the Bar” book about Half-Life 2’s development. If you’re a fan of the game, it might be of some interest to you. I know it was to me.

Also, these people are not the ones who do the voices for the character(at least for the major characters.)

Voice Actors:

Robert Guillaume - Dr. Eli Vance
Robert Culp - Dr. Wallace Breen
Lou Gossett, Jr. - Vortigaunt
Michelle Forbes - Dr. Judith Mossman
Merle Dandridge - Alyx Vance
Mike Shapiro - Barney Calhoun
Mike Shapiro - Gman
Harry S. Robins - Dr. Isaac Kleiner
Jim French - Father Grigori
John Patrick Lowrie - Citizens/Misc. characters
Mary Kae Irvin - Citizens/Misc. characters
Ellen McLane - Overwatch voice

Character Face Models:

Jamil Mullen – Alyx Vance
Scott Lynch – Barney Calhoun
Larry "The Count" Heard – Dr. Eli Vance

Got a widescreen monitor? I’ve got a Dell 2005FP and I love it. Or maybe your laptop is widescreen? Check out these wallpapers. There are some “not safe for work” ones in there, but for the most part they are harmless. My current one:

Oh yeah, almost forgot about this site too. It seems to have more photographic widescreen wallpapers.

And if you'd like some amazing Disney wallpapers, DaddyB can help ya out!

Update 08-12-2006: Found another site called InterfaceLIFT which has tons and tons of widescreen (and regular) wallpapers.