It’s so good I’m writing this post while I watch a second time!

My new EeePC
I picked up one of Asus’s delightfully tiny new netbooks, the EeePC. A netbook is a new category of sub-notebook device with low end specs designed primarily for browsing the web. The EeePC clocks in at a measly 900Mz, but at 9″ and under 3 lbs it’s easy to forgive it’s specs in lieu of it’s ultimate portability. So far I’m finding it an ideal email machine for use at meetings at work, and as a great bedroom/couch machine for keeping an eye on the tubes while relaxing or watching movies.

Being entirely solid state (the EeePC 900 series comes with 12GB of flash memory rather than a hard drive with spinning platters) it’s shock resistant, and gets surprisingly good performance for it’s diminutive specs. Due to the random access nature of flash memory the EeePC boots quickly and gets great battery life (3 hours of real use). While solid state drive (SSD) technology is still not competitive in price or storage capacity to typical hard drive (HDD) technology I can see the potential and am starting to get excited about the predictions that in 2011 or so SSD will all but completely replace HDD technology in notebooks and desktops.

While the EeePC 900 I picked up came pre-loaded with Windows XP I’ve done some experimentation with putting Ubuntu on it. As with my typical annual cycle I attempt to put some variant of Linux on my computers to see how the OS X/Windows competition is doing. This time however I was surprised – the latest Hardy Heron (8.04) release of Ubuntu is slick, polished, and works ‘out of the box’ on all the hardware I had laying around. While Ubuntu might be getting attention as a decent desktop alternative where I think it really shines is on a low end PC like the EeePC – it’s limited feature set and lean architecture work perfectly on a device with CPU and memory constraints.

Movies
Being a 3 day weekend I took the opportunity to see a couple of movies with Brien and Brian. We saw both Indiana Jones 4: The Crystal Skull, and Iron Man. Both movies were excellent (if not over the top) and fun movies to see while on holiday. I was never the hardcore fan of the Indy series that Brien was, and much to his horror I actually liked the newest one best from the series. It captured the fun essence of the earlier flicks while maintaining a fresh and modern feel even while being set in not so modern times.

Iron man also kept a modern feel, although it did so with a very modern setting. Having never read the comic book I assume I missed out on a lot of the back story, but still found the story presented in the movie touching and engaging. Having grown up idolizing gadget superhero (Hello, Inspector Gadget) it’s nice to see a modern take on a technological super-hero. Final note on the movie: I need a flying metal suit, that looks fun!

Lensbabied sneaker opus
Last but not least, a quick shot I took with my Lensbaby 2G while out on a photo walk on Saturday. I’ve been using my 18mm and 50mm primes a lot and decided to take the Lensbaby out and go for a stroll. I’m certainly glad I did as one of the resulting shots is a clear winner in my odd little abstract world.

A quick glance through the collection shows I have 8 of these movies unopened in my collection so those will be first up on the viewing list:

Barry Lyndon (1975)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Juno (2007)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Magnolia (1999)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
The Shining (1980)

Which leaves 168 remaining movies to select from, listed in the full post. If you have a suggestion of a favorite movie from below that you particularly like and think I should prioritize onto the list leave a comment and let me know!

3:10 to Yuma (2007)
8½ (1963)
A Christmas Story (1983)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
All About Eve (1950)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
American Gangster (2007)
American History X (1998)
Amores perros (2000)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Annie Hall (1977)
Battaglia di Algeri, La (1966)
Belle et la bête, La (1946)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Boot, Das (1981)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
C’era una volta il West (1968)
Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das (1920)
Casablanca (1942)
Casino (1995)
Chinatown (1974)
Cidade de Deus (2002)
Citizen Kane (1941)
City Lights (1931)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Crash (2004/I)
Diaboliques, Les (1955)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Du rififi chez les hommes (1955)
Duck Soup (1933)
Ed Wood (1994)
Fargo (1996)
Frankenstein (1931)
Gandhi (1982)
Glory (1989)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Goodfellas (1990)
Grindhouse (2007)
Harold and Maude (1971)
Harvey (1950)
Heat (1995)
High Noon (1952)
His Girl Friday (1940)
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Hotaru no haka (1988)
Ikiru (1952)
In Cold Blood (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Into the Wild (2007)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Jaws (1975)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Ladri di biciclette (1948)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Leben der Anderen, Das (2006)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Lola rennt (1998)
Léon (1994)
M (1931)
Manhattan (1979)
Metropolis (1927)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Modern Times (1936)
Mou gaan dou (2002)
Mystic River (2003)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
North by Northwest (1959)
Notorious (1946)
Notti di Cabiria, Le (1957)
Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)
Oldboy (2003)
On the Waterfront (1954)
Once (2006)
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Out of the Past (1947)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Patton (1970)
Per qualche dollaro in più (1965)
Platoon (1986)
Quatre cents coups, Les (1959)
Raging Bull (1980)
Ran (1985)
Rashômon (1950)
Rear Window (1954)
Rebecca (1940)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Roman Holiday (1953)
Rope (1948)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Salaire de la peur, Le (1953)
Scaphandre et le papillon, Le (2007)
Scarface (1983)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
Sleuth (1972)
Smultronstället (1957)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Stalag 17 (1953)
Stalker (1979)
Stand by Me (1986)
Strada, La (1954)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The African Queen (1951)
The Apartment (1960)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
The Conversation (1974)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
The Departed (2006)
The Elephant Man (1980)
The Exorcist (1973)
The General (1927)
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather: Part II (1974)
The Gold Rush (1925)
The Graduate (1967)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
The Great Dictator (1940)
The Great Escape (1963)
The Green Mile (1999)
The Hustler (1961)
The Kid (1921)
The Killing (1956)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
The Pianist (2002)
The Prestige (2006)
The Searchers (1956)
The Sting (1973)
The Third Man (1949)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Umberto D. (1952)
Unforgiven (1992)
Untergang, Der (2004)
Vertigo (1958)
Vita è bella, La (1997)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Wo hu cang long (2000)
Yojimbo (1961)

Update:Removed Amelie and Spirited Away from the list as I didn’t recognize their non-translated titles. Bad Sparky – BAD!

The entire user experience is re-envisioned to be more flashy – much more fun to use. The fact that the AppleTV can now independently sync podcasts, buy music and TV shows on the iTunes media store, and rent movies makes for a most delectable icing on an already moist and delicious media cake.

For some strange reason I decided upon Hairspray as test of the new HD rental service. The rental experience was a breeze – two clicks of the remote (plus a one-time password entry) and the HD movie was playing with surprisingly good quality within two minutes.

I went into Hairspray with low expectations and came away impressed. The movie is fun, engaging, and oddly thought provoking. Don’t get me wrong – it’s completely campy and over the top, but really well executed. The music and choreography is well thought out and the cinematographer did a great job of showcasing some of the dance moves without distracting the viewer with too much camera movement.

Featuring fantastic performances by John Travolta, Christopher Walken (it had been so long since I’d seen the Weapon of Choice music video I’d almost forgot how good a dancer he is), and new to film actress Nikki Blonsky who leads the film with confidence and flair.

For the record: John Travola in drag is just plain wrong, but wrong in the kind of way that I can get behind. Travolta in drag for President 08!

The show covers everything from the more immediate effects in the days and weeks following our disappearance, and continues on for 100′s and 1,000′s of years showing the effects of natures reclamation and the collapse of the great works of man. The special effects are surprisingly well done and do a great job of illustrating how important day to day maintenance and a good coat of paint are at keeping the global landmarks of today from turning into rusted heaps of metal.

While the concept is neat there is one thing about Life After People that bugs me: the lack of people. While the whole premise of the show is about what would happen if people vanished in an instant I can’t think of a good scenario which would bring this about. There are no dead bodies, no damage, nothing to explain it in the show – people (although not their pets or any other animals) just vanish. There are plenty of ways that people could vanish from the earth, but none of them would leave no trace of our destruction like the show proposes.

All in all a highly recommended watch though – check it out if you like thought-play, engineering, or ecology! Such a visceral depiction of mans greatest achievements and technology facing the true test of time really does provoke thought and give the brain something to chew on.

Aside from the car life has been good. Traskpro has his a solid and stable 0.9 (and graduated from alpha to beta) and is rocking my task list right and left. I even have acquired a few other heavy users which is oddly gratifying. I’ve still got 31 remaining features/tweaks to make, but those can happen gradually over the next few weeks as I continue to ramp up on JavaScript.

Also in the world of good things Scott came over last night. He hadn’t experienced a proper viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End so we did dinner and a showing of that. As silly and overly-Disney as the film is I really do enjoy watching it. I really do hope that big budget swashbucklers never die – they are just so much fun to experience.

Right – back to work now. I have to finish up a ton of stuff today and tomorrow to be ready to take off a few days to be home for Christmas!

Today I woke up early for brunch at the B&O with Brien (mmm Beni Thai Crabcake Benedict!) and then to go for a photo walk. I had to pick up some food for Skype so I decided to start out in my car and after picking up the food went back to my perennial favorite location to shoot: the conservatory.

My favorite shot of the day – a backlit palm frond in the conservatory. I actually shot it specifically with an iPhone wallpaper in mind (and tried to frame it correctly for the overlays at the top and bottom) and am quite pleased with the results. You can check out the iPhone specific version here, and the rest of the shots I liked from todays walk can be found here in my Flickr archives.

“Sunlit frond” by sparktography

Sunday brought the handyman wizardry, along with all the trials and tribulations that home ownership brings. I awoke Sunday morning and stumbled into the bathroom only to splash my naked feet into a large puddle of water. Upon discovering that my toilet had sprung a leak (and after finishing the oh so gay ‘I got toilet water on my feet’ dance) I managed to get the water turned off and started looking for a solution. After consulting with some friends and the Internet I determined that my best plan of action was a quick trip to Home Depot to get replacement parts for the interior of the toilet.

An interesting note about the repair kit is that on the box all of the instructions clearly show the user tightening everything with their hands, yet upon getting home I discovered that clearly some tools would be required. Luckily for me Brien was able to provide some tools for loan and I got things started. Once I got everything apart the reason for the leak became instantly clear: the toilet was very old and every single rubber gasket had all but disintegrated. Every time I touched one of the gaskets it fell apart in my hand, leaving inky black stains everywhere.

After about an hour of man to toilet fighting I was able to get everything back together and working again. The new inner workings of my toilet are even quieter which is a nice bonus for having spent several hours of my day splashing around in dirty water and sweating in my bathroom. I was feeling quite triumphant and domestic until I stepped outside of the bedroom and discovered that my air conditioner was leaking all over my bedroom. I managed to get the leaking in the bedroom stopped and discovered that the condensation pan at the bottom of the unit had sprung a leak on one of it’s welds. For now I have a pan under the air conditioner, but until I can get in touch with the manufacturer I’m scared to run the thing while I’m out of the house.

I miss the renting days when this kind of problem could be solved by a quick call to the landlord.

Content gamut aside one of the things that has struck me as odd over my past week of using my iPhone is how differently implemented the YouTube application is on my iPhone versus my AppleTV. They both allow for the browsing of a partial selection of the YouTube library streamed directly from the internet, but they both have some features the other lacks. Here is a breakdown of client-specific features that have puzzled me:

AppleTV:

• On my AppleTV I can sign into my standard YouTube account using my Google credentials.
• Because I can sign into my YouTube account I can rate videos.
• I can save videos to my accounts ‘favorites’ list for later viewing on either the AppleTV or in a web browser.
• Unlink the iPhone there is no way to share videos with friends. Although I understand that there is no built in web browser one would think you could at least sync the recommendation to iTunes and have iTunes send a mail using your default mail client on the desktop PC.

iPhone:

• I can’t sign into my web-based YouTube account.
• There is no way to rate videos, however I can view what others average rating for a video is.
• Because I am not signed in I cannot mark a video as a favorite. There is a bookmarking feature which serves a similar need, however bookmarked videos do not show up in my favorites list on the YouTube website or on my AppleTV.
• I can send links to YouTube videos from the mail client on the iPhone via the ‘Share’ button in the YouTube UI. Sharing is fun and creates a very social experience out of it.

All in all I think YouTube was a great addition to both product offerings, but I’m puzzled as to the disparity in the feature lists. I will be interested to see if future software updates for both platforms bring their feature sets closer together. Google’s “cloud of data” and Apple’s experience in creating engaging and intuitive user interfaces making for a market juggernaut that will be hard to beat.

I was a little disappointed that the Transformers were more robot and less car when converted – I really liked how in the original series the transformers ‘humanoid’ forms were still very car-like with their arms being made of car parts and their faces being the grill of the car. The new Transformers have some automobile in them, but they are larger and far more elaborate than the machines they transform from.

On Thursday night I went out with Troy and Tommy to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. It’s a fun little flick with great action sequences, and over the top special effects. The Davy Jones locker sequence is particularly well done both artistically as well as using a unique and brilliant storytelling method to help the audience experience Jack Sparrows stay in the locker. There are a good number of cheesy lines sprinkled throughout – no doubt a side effect of being a Disney production.

Aside from the Pirates of the Caribbean showing I’ve been doing quite a bit of photography the last few days and I plan to keep it up over the next two as well. I’d put down my camera for over a month being so busy at work and it’s really nice to pick it back up again and continue to build my skills and explore new ideas:

Jesse, Nate, and Brenda joined me at Greenlake park in Seattle for some experimentations with water and high speed photography. A flash and a fast shutter speed (combined with a attempts and experimentation) resulted in some pretty cool results. This is an arc of water suspended over Jesse.

To see a moment about 1/10th of a second of this photo check out this photo. For a look at all the photos from our water tossing experiments that I posted check out my throwing water tag on Flickr.

In pursuit of more photography, and due to the increased number of forms I’ve had to print and sign of late I decided to finally bite the bullet and buy myself a printer. I planned on getting a cheap little thing for black and white document printing but once I got to the store I realized that for not much more money I could get a great Epson photo printer with a built in scanner thats a higher resolution (and color bit depth) than the one I have now. I ended up heading home with an Epson Stylus Photo RX580 and so far I’m pretty happy with it. The scanner seems very accurate (I’ll have to really put it through it’s paces tomorrow), and with 7 separate ink colors it seems to do a pretty decent job of printing on high quality photo paper.

“Water arc over man” by sparktography

Going in I knew it was by a Spanish Director (Guillermo Del Toro), but had no idea the audio was in Spanish as well. Normally I’m not a huge fan of subtitled films, but in this case it added a sense of charm and the fact that I couldn’t understand the vocals and thus was more able to let the poetic sounds of the script brought me deeper into Del Toro’s fantasy world.

It’s very much a dark fairy tale – it’s certainly not for kids with the amount of blood and violence, but it’s not gratuitous – used instead to show what horrors the ‘real world’ had to offer the heroine Ofelia. As dark and horrific as the real world is the fantasy world balances it out entirely with bright and visually mesmerizing visuals and a fanciful look and feel brought to life with the sublime art direction.

The hardship faced by Ofelia and the classic themes in fairy tales (three tasks, three bad guys, three good guys) work well with the style of directors style. In watching the movie for a second time I picked up on a number of subtle nods to both other fairy tables and common fables.

Between Del Toro’s Pans Labyrinth and Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men I see what all the fuss was about over Spanish directors at the Oscars. They might not be “proper American filmmakers”, but their vivid and well thought out style mixed with their excellent storytelling leaves audiences world wide immersed in new worlds, sprung up from film and into reality. Both movies leave the audience with a series of thoughts spinning about in their heads, and with a need for more answers.

The movie is currently only available on DVD so no high-definition viewing yet, but the DVD transfer is decent and the audio is available in DTS EX 6.1 as well as Dolby Digital. The sound is well done, and the simple but catching music works well with the subject matter. Javier Navarrete pulls from subtle melodies that echo through the worlds ears, regardless of if performance by a full symphony, or hummed quietly by the heroine at several key points in the film.

If you haven’t seen it yet pick up a copy – you will be glad you did!

On Sunday I had planned to hang out watching the BBC/Discovery channel miniseries “The Planet Earth” on HD-DVD (my copy arrived earlier this week) with Troy, but he ended up sleeping most of the day and I was still feeling slightly under the weather and ended up not doing much. In watching a few episodes I highly reccomend it to anyone even remotely interested in nature – It’s some of the most stunnging footage I’ve ever seen, it’s beautifully mastered for 1080p on HD-DVD, and so far it’s done a great job of exposing me to facets of the worlds I didn’t even know exsisted previously. I’m looking forward to watching the rest of it over the next couple of days (and yes Troy – I will gladly watch it again with you).

I watched a couple of episodes of Planet Earth on Sunday, but for the most part just played Marble Mania and relaxed. In doing so I finally feel like I’ve shaken the last of my Pneumonia and feel ready to tackle my big week at work. Here’s to health and hoping the sickness is behind me!

As I’ve previously mentioned I’m pleased with my purchase of an Apple TV. Now that I’ve spent a little over a week with it I have more formal opinions on the little white wonder. First off a couple of things that the Apple TV got right:

1. Fantastic out of box experience. As always the Apple TV provides an experience when opened. It’s neatly laid out in it’s packaging and practically begs to be unwrapped. Setting it up was a breeze – I had ordered an HDMI cable in advance, so all I had to do was plug in HDMI and the power cable and I was up and running. Right away it asked me for my language preference, and then let me select my wireless access point and enter my WPA password. Within a minute of plugging the thing in I was at the main interface and ready to sync with iTunes. Setting up a sync partnership is almost as easy as with an iPod – you type in a 6 digit code from the Apple TV and then your files start to sync over right away. I was watching TV shows from the iTunes music store within 2 minutes of plugging the Apple TV in.
2. Movie trailers! Having 720p streaming trailers from the internet is a major feature in my book. You can scroll through new and upcoming movies and select any trailer to have it start within seconds. You can do the same thing from any computer with Quicktime installed but having HD movie trailers on the big screen and sound system really does change the game. The Xbox 360 has had this feature for a while, but not nearly as polished requiring more clicks and a full download to display HD trailers. The inclusion of 720p streaming also hits at possible on-demand hi-definition services from Apple in the near future.
3. iPod like simplicity in the on-screen user interface. The AppleTV comes with a standard Apple remote which offers a 5 way direction pad and a back button (technically ‘menu’). Regardless of if you are an iPod user or not figuring out how to watch TV, listen to music, or browse your photos is brain dead simple and all wrapped in the usual layer of Apple interface bling.
4. Simple syncing and streaming. Having content local to the Apple TV is handy for anyone who turns off their computer on a regular basis and setting up syncing is as easy as setting up syncing for an iPod. The default settings are good enough for most users, and for power users very granular control is possible. For me I’m just putting unwatched Podcasts and TV shows on mine and streaming everything else, but having the opportunity to do both will make a much wider audience of users find both features useful.
5. Sleek design – with a form factor like that of the Mac Mini, but less than a third the height it’s hard to beat the Apple TV’s form factor. They get bonus points for it being nearly silent while in use, an internal AC adapter (no power brick needed – just a cord), and it’s the smallest component in my AV system. Check out some of the photos I took for a size comparison of the Apple TV to the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or take a gander at the below image.
6. An attractive screen saver. While playing music or idle the Apple TV presents you with either your photos or album covers slowly flying up the screen. Every once in a while the pictures rotate around the screen to add a bit of visual flair. Having old photos from my library streaming by is a great way to use the Apple TV as an a nearly infinite picture stream evoking memories of fun times past. Given how advanced some of the transitions in the slideshows are I would expect a much flashier screen saver – more on that in the next section.

Size comparisom between the Apple TV, the Wii, and the Xbox 360

Next come a couple of things Apple missed the ball on:

1. Why can’t my Mac automatically open iTunes when I try to browse it from my Apple TV? Having local content on the 40gb HDD is very handy, but I have over a terabyte of media in iTunes on my main desktop machine. I don’t always keep iTunes open so when I am in the living room and want to watch something streamed from my main computer I need to get up and go open iTunes on my desktop. Either moving the streaming functionality into a system daemon or setting up a launchd trigger for opening iTunes would be ways for Apple and greatly increase the usability of the streaming functionality.
2. I want a better screen saver! Don’t get me wrong – I’m in love with the memories brought up by old pictures scrolling past, but with so many cool effects in slide show mode when I’m browsing images I would love it if the screen saver pictures did something a little fancier than spin around every few seconds. That kind of sizzle sells and makes for great eye-candy to showcase on the HDTV in the living room. With Core Animation just around the corner let’s see some flashy effects for what is now the default idle state of my TV.
3. Enable plug in support out of the box. Websites have reported that by opening up your Apple TV and connecting it’s internal HDD to another Mac you can install the Perian plugin set to greatly increase codec support. Since the Apple TV is basically running a stripped down version of OS X this kind of thing is easy to do. I can understand Apple not wanting to provide customer support for 3rd party plugins, but at least put a feature into iTunes to allow me to manually copy over codecs at my own risk
4. Why can I browse top movies and TV shows on the iTunes Store and watch trailers, but not purchase the media from the Apple TV. I could understand if they required iTunes to be open on the syncing computer, but at least let me initiate the transaction/sync from the Apple TV directly.

While it’s easy to point fingers at Apple for these ‘bugs’ they are all things that should be quite possible to fix. Given the OS X like architecture and inclusion of Software Update functionality I’m hoping to see future software versions for the Apple TV and iTunes address some of these issues.

All in all I give the Apple TV an enthusiastic thumbs up – I love mine and use it every day as a clean and simple to use bridge from my iTunes media collection to the HDTV and stereo equipment in my living room. Apple has a major competitor on the line with the Xbox 360 Live experience: plain and simple the Xbox 360 with the Live online service does more (gaming, hi-def movie and TV downloads, works with portable hard drives via USB), but in typical Apple fashion their reduced feature set is extremely well implemented, marketed, and aimed at a targeted market. Seeing how the two services evolve in the coming year is going to be an interesting experience, and hopefully one that is highly rewarding for the consumer market!

I also spent quite a bit of time futzing with iPhoto and cleaning/organizing some of my 65,000 photos. I’ve come to love my AppleTV for a number of reasons – not only does it get all of my iTunes content into the living room, but the smallest of features has ended up being my favorite: the screen saver. While idle or playing music the AppleTV shows photos from your computer in an attractive flyby slideshow. I’ve become addicted to this as it brings up fond memories to see photos from my past flying by at idle moments.

I spent a good 8 hours organizing my existing collection so as to archive really bad photos (for instance anything completely out of focus or unrecoverable under/over exposed) and driving cool photos from years back into albums that I can sync out to the AppleTV. I now find myself leaving the TV on and tuned to the AppleTV whenever I’m home, even when it’s not doing anything specific – it’s turned my TV into an interactive photo frame and done a damn fine job of it.

Bravo Apple for making such a great device. While it’s does far less than it’s biggest competitor (the Xbox 360) it manages to do what it sets out do very well. It’s got a high level of polish and really stands alone as a simple to use set to box.

P.S. BSG Season 3 is amazing. I had dismissed it when the crew landed at the end of Season 2.5, but now realize the err of my ways and am catching up fast!

In other news I still love my car. I wish the weather would start cooperating so I can give him a bath and do a proper photoshoot with my DSLR. For now the following shot from last Wednesday will simply have to do:

“A6 front grill” by sparktography

So far we are thinking doing a homage to cult Sci-Fi movies by making our own from the leavings of others. We have a library of 750+ DVD’s to pull samples from, and access to decent video editing tools to make our job easier. We may interleave audio and video from different sources simultaneously to allow for more dialog and action options, but only 8 seconds per sample will be allowed.

We are looking for help in everything from envisioning to helping polish the final project. Obviously this is not for money, but it should prove to be a blast. If you have creative ideas that might make this better we want to hear them – join us in our creative endeavor – just leave a comment or drop me an email!

Someone recently commented to me that my blog was very beige. They didn’t mean the color scheme, but more the fact that my life is rather boring. I actually appreciated that more than the person intended: I like the boring quiet life! Luckily I still do have the occasional splash of color in my life as yesterday exhibited:

The afternoon movie showing was quite exciting! I had 8 people show up for drinks, movies, and other sorts of orgastic excess. Skype of course had a blast – it’s almost more than he can bear to have that many drunk people show up and play with him. For an idea of the happenings check out the (dark and long) Quicktime timelapse I made.

Take that beige! Now back to our regularly scheduled beige.

Oh yeah – and I’ve developed a love affair with Tilda Swinton! She’s just so good at being bad!

I’m using Quicktime because it’s higher quality than flash and since with this one I’m experimenting with high frame-rates and larger video sizes it just made more sense. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

In addition I also picked up a copy of EvoCam for my iMac. Bre suggested it as a Photobooth replacement when I was looking to remove the “screen flash” and I ended up falling in love with it for some of it’s more advanced features. At first I was a little hesitant to throw $25 at webcam software, but even after just a few hours I was in love with EvoCam.

It has a really neat way to set up motion activated time lapse movies using the iSight. Basically my iSight is on all the time now. Whenever movement is detected (i.e. I am sitting at the computer) it takes a photo every 15 seconds, and adds the photo as a frame in a time lapse movie. At 24 frames per second playback speed and 15 seconds of real time per frame of video it makes it easy to watch my life go by at a 6 minutes per second. Even cooler is that since it’s motion activated there are no long gaps of nothingness while I’m at work or sleeping.

I’ve got it set to cut the movie and start a new one each day at midnight so I’ll end up with a detailed log of my computer usage, and something that’s actually pretty cool as an art project by itself. Below I’ve posted a quick one that only takes up an hour or so of “real time” and was more of an experiment than anything else – be expecting cooler versions at some point in the near future.

The Quicktime version is very large, but has a keyframe for every single shot in the time lapse so it’s very high quality. I’ve compressed it down to a flash video to show here, but might be making DVD’s to mail out if any of the coming days produce anything particularly interesting or thought provoking. Without further ado:

If you like media you are well familiar with the iconic Tower Records. Sadly they have filed for bankruptcy and are having their final going out of sale-sale. Check it out for 25% or more off CD’s, DVD’s, and games + free shipping – I just bought a bundle and so should you!