Warning: Contents may blow

Okay I admit it, the H.264 codec in QT7 is pretty damn cool. What is even better is the fact that the Batman Begins and Serenity trailers are available for viewing the 1024p version is a whopping 1600×680 pixels requiring a bandwidth of about 1Mb per second (so about 8000kbit).

This is the future of movies here folks. This is a level of magnitude greater than standard DVD (more than 6x the resolution of standard video).

To bad my G4 is too slow to play it back at a proper frame rate, and I won’t be upgrading the desktop machine until Apple releases their multi-core processor G5 later this year (assuming that the budget allows for it).

This is great Post Secret

Cara accepted the job in Bristol today, of course she doesn’t start until August 8th (that’s 3 1/2 months from now). This means that our next task after the wedding will be to start shopping for houses. I’m sure our vacation next week will include discussions about where we’d like to live. Right now I’m voting for Newington because it’s still close enough to Hartford and Manchester so that it’s not a pain to see my friends, close enough to Bristol that Cara shouldn’t have too much trouble getting to work in a reasonable amount of time and I won’t have to battle rush hour traffic too much to get into and out of work.

How much to you commit to the union of marriage? Do you change your name and join your bank accounts? If your future wife doesn’t want to change her name, do you? If you create a buffer by keeping separate names and separate bank accounts are you going into your marriage “covering your ass” and making it as easy as possible to get out at a later time?

A friend of a friend actually shops for food separately (using their own money) and keep it separately in the fridge. One pays the other a portion of rent as well. This sounds more like a roommate than a spouse. I wonder how the personal relationship works if they’ve created such a wide social boundary. Do they have two beds that they sleep in? Two televisions? Two phone lines?

Maybe none of this bothers me because Cara will be taking my name, and she’ll probably always make more money than I will. However, if the shoe was on the other foot, I don’t think I’d feel any different. I think I’m a pretty independent person, which might indicate that I too would like to create a buffer that would allow me to hold on to as much of that independence as possible, but I don’t. I look forward to the merger.

Maybe none of this bothers me because the relationship I have with Cara gives me a lot of independence, or maybe things like your name and your bank account are really more of an illusion of independence and not true independence.

Cara is getting close to a decision in regard to her future job. She went on another interview over last weekend and has the last interview this Wednesday. Part of this process involves us figuring out where we want to live. After a bit of searching I was able to find Connecticut Town Profiles on the DECD site, which has lots of cool stuff about various towns (including cost of houses and crime).

May is almost here, and that means it’s almost Movie season… I mean summer. With that in mind, here are my predictions (on the movies that I give a crap about).

4/29 - Hitchhikers Guide - It will be good, but not great. Certainly not great enough for us to ever see another Hitchhiker’s movie

5/13 - Unleashed - This will be greatness (it already makes me want to spiz). This will probably end up on my 10 favorite movies of all time. Jet Li and Luc Besson (when is he going to direct another movie damnit), what’s not to like?

5/19 - Star Wars III - Better than the first three, but we’ll still walk away from the theater thinking “Fuck George“.

6/10 - Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Big fan of Doug Liman (he’s gone from Swingers to this action genera (and he’s doing a damn fine job). Hell if I could have the life of any director it would be him.

6/17 - Batman Begins - Could Warner Bros. finally do a super hero movie that doesn’t suck? It helps that fuck head has nothing to do with this one.

6/24 - Dukes of Hazzard - Popcorn flick. Sure it will suck ass, but at least I don’t have high expectations, so it should be fun.

6/29 - War of the Worlds - Many of you know I’m not a Spielberg fan, but at least I’m over my boycott of his movies. This should be a fun movie.

7/01 - Fantastic Four - Kind of ho-hum, it’s not going to be all that great (we probably won’t see another one).

7/15 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - I have to admit that this one is right up fuck head’s, still doesn’t change the fact that he’s a fuck head.

7/29 - Stealth - A.K.A. Iron Eagle 5 (or whatever number is next,) this is going to suck so much I’m surprised it’s not a direct to video movie.

8/05 - Mike Judge Movie (untitled) - I don’t care what it’s called, this one looks like it may be even better than Office Space

10/28 - Legend of Zorro - Big fan of the first one, this one should be a fun ride.

8/30 - Serenity - This is sugary goodness. It’s not a Buffy or Angel movie, but perhaps even better. I know that the movie itself will kick ass, the question is… will people watch it enough so that we can spawn some sequels? Here’s hoping.

9/02 - The Transporter 2 - The first one had a lot of potential (and the fight in the oil was awesome), let’s hope for something as good, if not better.

10/07 - Wallace & Gromit - Again, something you know is just going to be a lot of fun.

10/21 - Doom - I’m a big fan of the Rock. The problem is that it’s a video game movie, and they’re never very good.

12/09 - Chronicals of Narnia - This is Lord of the Rings to me. I’m so much more interested in this over a bunch of Hobbits on vacation.

12/09 - Underworld: Evolution - I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. The concept was pretty good even if the rest of it was questionable. I think they’ll do a good job with this and we’ll see something better than the first.

12/14 - King Kong - Even if I wasn’t a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson kicks ass. Of course then you also have Jack Black I mean, how much fun will this movie be?

I don’t think you immediately realize when a TV show that you used to love jumps the shark. It’s a rising discomfort as your interest wanes. Then one day you stop watching all together because it’s not worth your time.

I’m there with Alias. I enjoyed the first three seasons quite a bit, but the fourth season starts with Sloane once again in charge of Sydney and company calling the shots. That was “it” the shark had been jumped, but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I just stopped watching, shows started to pile up on the ReplayTV. I thought, “maybe if I’m bored I’ll watch them.” Well last night I finally canceled recording that show and deleted all the outstanding episodes.

It’s not like I am able to use that time for something else now because ABC just started a new series “Eyes” which probably won’t last long, but is far more interesting than “Alias”.

I’m happy to see that Apple added the ability to “Undo” text editing in Safari 1.3, it was a feature that I’ve been missing since I moved from Camino. Now if they would allow searches in text input boxes as well (and even better, search and replace).

Okay, I understand the concept (which is true), but the implementation is questionable…

You are ‘French’. In the nineteenth century, it was the international language of diplomacy. It is a ‘beautiful’ language, meaning that it is really just a low-fidelity copy of Latin.

You know the importance of communicating ‘diplomatically’, which for you means both being polite and friendly when necessary and using sophisticated, vicious sarcasm when appropriate. Your life is guided by either existentialism or nihilism, depending on the weather. You have a certain appreciation for the finer things in life, which is a diplomatic way of saying that you are a disgusting hedonist. Your problem is that French has been obsolete for a long time.

What obsolete skill are you? brought to you by Quizilla

I spent most of last evening (from about 6:30 until almost Midnight) at a Manchester planning board meeting. My parents are attempting to build a small condo complex in Manchester, but in order to do so they need to have the zoning changed for the area they wish to develop.

Things started out mundane (and mind boggingly boring) enough when they finally started their presentation (at about 7:45). Their presentation (where their lawyer, two engineers and another architect besides my father spoke), ended around 10 wherein it was opened up to the public. This is where it got interesting.
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Ran across http://www.consumating.com/ which is a community/dating site, but what makes it (potentially) interesting is that it asks a weekly question. A good way to get noticed, but more importantly, it’s not always easy to talk about yourself. It’s a whole lot easier to answer a question though (even if it is about yourself).

Today I spent some time grabbing my old posts from both my old blogging software and blogger.com. I still have some serious work to do on this site to get is shaped up… but so far so good.

Cara was in the area last night interviewing in Bristol. She likes this place she interviewed at, but it’s a bit far (and the owner doesn’t want to hire someone who lives too far away). It could mean that we’d have to move to Newington or that area. I guess things went well which is good, but of course this is the first of four interviews (so far).

I have still yet to touch my taxes (which are due tomorrow). I guess I know what I’m doing tonight…