I was thinking my next blog entry would be a continuation of my last one. I was going to whine about how every show I like gets canceled, everything I collect or buy gets discontinued, every menu item at restaurants I like gets eliminated, and since the finale is upon us, every American Idol contestant I actually want to win gets eliminated. I sat down for the finale tonight, excited because my favorite contestant, David Cook, of Blue Springs, MO. was head to head with Prince Gaspian Squinty Mc Smilesalot (David Archuleta). Now, no Idol I've actually liked has made even made it into the top 4, so I was terribly excited for David Cook to be in the top 2, but didn't expect it to go any further. Hell hath no fury like teenie boppers, and thats David Archuleta's demographic.
So the final moments of the show tick away, the lights go down, and shit the bed, David Cook wins it! Holy Cockandballs! For the first time, someone who I've liked and rooted for from the very beginning, AND someone who is a Rocker and not a R&B/Country/Pop artist has WON! (By 12 million votes!!!) Congratulations David Cook!
I learned a valuable lesson today. Don't EVER invest interest in a TV show on CBS. I was a fan of the dearly departed Jericho, which was canceled, then brought back due to an uprising of never-before-seen proportions, then swiftly canceled again last month. Today, I learned that Moonlight, a show I was quite fond of has been canceled by the douchebags as well. Moonlight recently won the people choice for best new show, and has seen a lot of positive buzz recently. What's interesting is that in both of these examples, the shows performed far better than many shows allowed to live on on other networks. Are CBS setting their standards too high based on ratings? Are they just upset that these shows don't bring in the ratings of CSI / CSI Miami / CSI Zimbabwe / CSI North Pole / CSI Candy Land / CSI Your Mom / CSI The Early Years? The big lesson (that was supposed to be) learned during the Save Jericho campaign was that you can't rely on archaic and outdated Neilson rating systems anymore. CBS quickly learned that a very significant portion of Jericho's viewer ship was coming from their online site which allowed people to watch the show there, as well as from viewers watching the show in syndication outside of the good 'ole USA. How quickly they forget. I got to thinking about my experiences with CBS and its parent company Paramount and its big daddy Viacom, and realized how much douchebaggery they've performed within my circle of interests. They've canceled two of my favorite shows despite ratings other networks would be glad to have. They dropped Blu-ray like a hot potato during the HD Format war for an exclusivity pay-out, only to have to come crawling back just recently with egg on their faces. They dropped HD DVD like a hot potato when HD DVD began it's downward spiral, instead of honoring their scheduled releases (just like they did to Blu-ray) They canceled Star Trek: Enterprise just when the show started to become really, really good. Additionally, the CBS logo is ugly and outdated, much like their executives.
Paramount finally announced that they are supporting Blu-ray with titles to back it up on Tuesday. After Universals unveiling of their upcoming Blu titles a few weeks ago, this finally means all studios are aboard the Blu train and ready to leave the station. (Except Weinstein, but they arent really 'major', and they will be releasing Blu 3rd/4th quarter) In celebration of 2 upcoming Paramount titles which I'll be picking up for sure on June 3rd, I made these: G'night!
Does anyone else find adobe flash to be difficult and not very intuitive? Maybe it's just 'cos this was my first day working with it. I generally pick up on new programs pretty quickly, especially ones with graphic or video functionality, but it took me half a day to learn how to make a photo slide show and a bouncing ball for Christ's sake. To make matters even funner, I have to have a website template done for a client by Friday complete with flash elements built into each page.
As far as the LG phone I mentioned before, it underwent some drastic changes when I realized most people would not like holding something perfectly round (as in disc shaped, not a sphere) in their hands while talking. My design still has the main feature and function that I was aiming at making, just a very different shape. As weird as it sounds, it almost looks like Darth Vader when you deploy the keypads. Heres a sneak peak of the front. Sorry for the annoying watermarks, but I don't want anyone stumbling across my website and stealing the design. Not like it matters since I already submitted the design, but still.
Ryan and I finally watched Cloverfield tonight (ON Standard Def DVD. ::Shakes fist at Paramount::). I enjoyed the movie quite thoroughly. I understand theres likely a sequel which would take place during the events of the first movie, only told through the lens of someone very different, like a news crew. I think if they do that, they'll have to do it very carefully, or it would run the risk of easily looking like a boring re-hash.
Well, as they say in Chattanooga, I'm done blogging for the evening.
I really have no agenda in this entry. I just feel obligated to keep the cob webs off my corner of the interwebs.
Now that the weather is starting to warm up, we're learning just how sauna-like our townhouse gets in warm weather. It's especially lovely upstairs, where it's probably a good 15 to 20 degrees more miserable. You don't really care about that I'm sure, but I'm sitting here covered in sweat so I felt the need to bitch about it.
In other news:
LG is having a phone design contest (Link) which ends on April 30th. I have been thinking about what my 'dream phone' would be like, and have finally come up with a cool design idea which I haven't seen on any other commercially available phone. I think I'll call it the "LG Disc" or "LG Orb" or "LG Elipse". That should probably give you some idea of it's aesthetics, but I don't want to give away my design idea completely over the internet. Which name do you guys like best?
I've been itching to get a new camera, and I have had my sights set on the Sony Cybershot DSC-H50 megazoom camera for a while. It's available in May and it is just a step down from DSLR/pro level stuff. Then, I decided I might want to get a Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 which has a whopping 14.2 megapixels. Dell has a bundle which includes 2 lenses with the camera.
Well, today, I saw the coolest frickin' camera I've ever seen. It's called the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, and it has features unlike anything else in existence. Here's a few tidbits: This camera can shoot an astounding 60 full sized images in one second. (JPG or RAW) Most point and shoots can do maybe 1 pic per second, most DSLR can do 3 or 4 pics per second with the ultra mega top-of-the-line at 10 or so. This thing does 60. *&^%ing 60! It also can do this cool thing where if you're waiting for some event to happen, you can depress the shutter half way and it's continually recording full sized images to it's buffer in a rolling cycle so that even if you accidentally snap the picture too late (or too soon), it captures the image you wanted anyway. This thing sounds like a machine gun firing when you press down to snap a photo. The dual flashes are sure to induce seizures, too. Another cool feature is the motion sensor. You can set up a shot, say of a flower or what have you, put the camera in motion sensing mode, and just leave it for however long you want. Say a humming bird swoops in for some sweet flower action and BAM, the cam powers up and starts firing off its machine gun 60 images a second capture. And this is just the still photo aspects. This thing comes loaded with sweet sweet video features, too. It can shoot your vanilla SD 30FPS video like most all digital cams, but this thing can also capture 720P and 1080i HD video. Here's one of my favorite features: High speed video capture. You can record 300FPS, 600FPS, and 1200FPS. (My Sony Handycam has a similar feature, though its probably locked in at 300FPS or less, and the quality is sub-par, and you are limited to like 10 second clips.)While as far as I can tell, your slow-mo vids are only limited by SD card space, there is a trade-off, in that the higher the frame rate, the smaller the resolution of the videos. Heres some samples:
300FPS
600FPS
1200FPS
There are some additional trade-off's for incorporating all the fancy new tech as well. The maximum image resolution is 6 mega pixels, which I don't necessarily have a problem with except that its a step down from my 8 mega pixel I have now. Also, to help cut costs, the view screen isn't the most flattering quality (The thing already costs $999). As bad-ass as this mother is, I think I might have to wait until the next iteration of it comes out with a few improvements, and hopefully a slimmer price tag.
Holy crap. It's quarter til' 2 in the morning. I have to go to bed. G'night peeps.
op 2, but didn't expect it to go any further. Hell hath no fury like teenie boppers, and thats David Archuleta's demographic.
