Review: Wall-E

Posted on June 29, 2008 · 7 Comments

Wall-E Poster

Well, I can not hide the fact (especially since I mentioned it last week) that I was really looking forward to seeing the latest Pixar Studio creation, Wall-E. This is of course, a double edge sword. On the one hand (and I have no problem admitting it), I am a Pixar fan. They have completely redone animation, and made it not about creating a cartoon, but about using the animated medium to tell real stories, with solid plotlines (much to the chagrin of some that can’t seem to get past the fact that the story is animated and I guess would prefer a mindless slapstick piece instead.)

On the other hand with high expectations, comes the potential for a monumental disappointment. I mean, Pixar hasn’t thrown a clunker (in my opinion) since A Bug’s Life.

So, this weekend I piled the family into the car and we headed off to see the latest installment.  The one thing that concerned me, and I did not fill in TheWife and LatteGirl in on ahead of time, was that the first 1/2 hour or so of the film has absolutely no dialog, and I wasn’t sure how this would play out.   We also had the issue that LatteGirl was uncertain about going to see this movie.  Her friends had already tagged this a “boys film” because it deals with space and robots.  So, she was leery to begin with, and was the complete opposite of my “highly anticipated” vantage point, and I thought would or could pose an interesting alternate views of the movie.

I won’t hold out any longer to let you know.. I loved this movie.  Pixar once again showed, that not only are they masters at animation, they are excellent story tellers.  But what did the skeptical 8 year old think?  She loved it even more than I did.  How much?  Well, before we actually got home from the theater, she asked if we could go see it again next week, and even offered to use her birthday money to pay for everyone to go again.

It really didn’t take long for me to get past my original complaint about how Wall-E looked like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.  I completely forgot about it very quickly and just saw the new character.  The graphics in this film looked a bit more… I don’t know… “cartoony” than some other Pixar films, but that was probably a conscience decision as it really fit the scenery and futuristic theme and feel of the movie quite well.

There were some message’s in this film that people who are so dead set against having a clean planet that any message along those lines is a battle cry of  “subversive,” “anti-consumer,” “anti-corporation” and other such non-sense.  It is true, there is certainly a stance being shown, how we need to care for our planet and care for ourselves.  But, only if you are so hell bent on being “anti-human” does it really affect your movie experience.  (I could go on about this for some time, but this is about the movie, so I will stop here on this particular matter… for now)

I am not going to try and break this film down.  One, I never do “spoilers” and two, there is just no way (without the spoilers) I could do this any justice, other than to say this.  For those with “boys”  (I put that in quotes, because I am sure there are some girls that enjoy this stuff as well) there is space and robots and slap-stick comedy.  For the “girls,” there is the pre-adolescent sort of “chick flick” love story angle.  For everybody, there is a good time to be had.  Load up the family and take ‘em all to see Wall-E.

Filed Under: Earth Friendly, Kids Stuff, Reviews

Not probably the reputation they want

Posted on June 26, 2008 · 2 Comments

As I was trying to get caught up on some blog reading that I am so terribly behind on that Google Reader is starting to mock me, I stopped by This Full House. As Liz went on about how she was warning others about bringing her “skanky-ass toes” to BlogHer, I started to get excited. (NO, not about her toes… weirdo).

BlogHer ’08 is less than a month away. No, I am not attending BlogHer.  Don’t get me wrong.  I would love to actually see these events unfold live, and try and count how many people actually attend the breakout sessions vs those that attend to just be there.  Not to mention it has been quite a long time,  and San Francisco is such an awesome town to visit.  But thanks to $80 bajillion dollars it would cost to fly out there these days… it is just not going to happen.

So, I will have to sit back once again and just wait… a watch… and wonder…. what will be this year’s controversy? Will we have a new term as once again a group rally against the term MommyBlogger instead demanding they be known as Female American Bloggers (FAB)?  Will somebody complain that a food company adds something to the goody-bags that {gasp} has something to do with the kitchen and thus insinuating that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, and conveniently forgetting that perhaps the fact that they are a FOOD company and there is no ulterior motive behind it?  Will battles continue to rage whether you have the right to monetize your blog?   And how many blog posts will be written about people licking, kissing or dildos?

Don’t get me wrong.  I am sure there is a lot of useful information, I know (and read) some excellent people that speak or are (were) on BlogHer panels, and there is certainly value to the conference.  But, that is rarely what you see when people return home and start blogging about the events.

I doubt this is the sort of reputation that the folks BlogHer really are looking for, but it is exactly the sort of mid-summer entertainment I have come to expect (and even occasionally enjoy) as the outcome of BlogHer.

Filed Under: Station Break

TechParent: Evernote

Posted on June 25, 2008 · 1 Comment

I am late with my TechParent piece for one reason, I am in love (so far) with Evernote.  It is rare that I will start with such an exclamatory, but Evernote finally managed to do something that I have been complaining about in many areas.  Take several ideas that are good on their own merits and make them better just by connecting the dots with other similar ideas.

Evernote does that in the area of becoming what I would consider (and please excuse my outdated reference) the Web 2.0 version of an actually working DayRunner.  Perhaps I should clarify that a bit for those that don’t remember or aren’t old enough to remember when you simply could not live without a DayRunner.  Day “planners” were of course around forever, but in the mid to late 80′s the “DayRunner” (and their clones) became in the analog world, the single most important “tool” a business person (or really any busy person) could have.   It has places and compartments for your Calendar, Address Book, Business Card Holder, a pad for scratching out thoughts, notes, etc and so on, all in one single easy to carry tool(and unfortunately easy to lose… a “feature” Evernote doesn’t share of course).  It is this all-in-one single and EASY TO USE metaphor that makes Evernote… uh… noteworthy.

Products like Google Notebook is good for jotting notes… so long as you are in your web browser.  Jotting a note or taking a picture as a reminder (the only thing I really consider the camera on a phone good for using), is fine for what it is, but it is separated from your other information, and the pictures and notes are separate applications, so you can not search across this information.  Evernote combines, text written files, web “clips”, audio files, pictures and combines them into a searchable repository that is available to use and retrieve from, both at your  PC through a client, any PC via the Web Client as well as on your mobile phone (assuming you have a SmartPhone.  If you are away from your own computer (and don’t have your phone handy), you can even e-mail something into Evernote.

Evernote bills iteself as your “external brain” and it is (or can be) a fairly good description.  All those tidbits stored away, regardless of the source, there ready to be tapped when you need to remember something.  Graphic laden items are run through a recognition engine, which when added to your tagging, makes it a powerful tool to remember and search through even say pictures of a book you spotted in a bookstore or coffee shop that you may want to buy later.  Or photograph the label of a bottle of wine you spotted in a restaurant, but wanted to buy later.  Even take a picture of notes you scribbled on a napkin, if your handwriting is reasonably legible… Evernote will convert it into searchable text.

You can even share certain notebooks with others.  And of course the fact that you can “share” will (justifiably) immediately bring up the one concern… privacy.   Well, to that end Evernote has a (granted somewhat limited) answer.  You can encrypt text in notes (images cannot at present be encrypted).  This can only be done presently from the Desktop client (available for both Windows and Macintosh).

It is a great way to organize everything, and more easily searchable than that stack of post-it notes cluttering your computer screen.  There is a premium pay version ($5/month or $45/year) which gives you more storage, but for many (and to check the service out) the free version which gives you 40 MB per month is more than enough.  That is enough space to store (approximately) 20,000 text messages or  400 camera phone snapshots or 270 Web Clips.  So why not give Evernote a try… think of it as an external hard drive adding to your brain capacity… and what parent couldn’t use that extra capacity with everything we try to remember day in and day out?

Filed Under: TechParent Tuesday

George Carlin 1937 – 2008

Posted on June 23, 2008 · 2 Comments

George Carlin
“Atheism is a non-prophet organization. ”

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”

“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”

“A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it”

“I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.”

“You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.”

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

“Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.”

“What was the best thing before sliced bread?”

“Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.”

Filed Under: Quote of the Day, Station Break

According to the AP

Posted on June 18, 2008 · Leave a Comment

That could be a phrase you see less often around the blogosphere.  In a truely bone headed move, the Associated Press has shown that they are not much different than the MPAA and RIAA, where they try to hold old media standards to the web, because they don’t think they are getting paid enough by everybody.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Last week, the Associated Press sent the Drudge Retort seven DMCA takedown notices, demanding that the site remove excerpts of AP articles ranging from 33 to 79 words that were linked through to authorized copies of the AP stories.

See what I did there?  I quoted another source, attributed it to them, and linked to the full article, providing potentially more traffic to them.  I did not steal their story, I followed what has been considered Fair Use, even before the days of the Internet.  Before you would have a Reference Page, Foot Notes, etc.  You needed to ensure your credited and cited your sources, but it has always been fair use to quote another source.

Not so according to the AP.  They want you to link to them, AND NOTHING ELSE.  After the inital lashback against their tactics, the A.P. backed off (sort of) according to the New York Times.

 After that, however, the news association convened a meeting of its executives at which it decided to suspend its efforts to challenge blogs until it creates a more thoughtful standard.

“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.

Now, reading this at first, it sounds like maybe they learned their lesson, but in “hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so guidelines can be released soon” tells me that they are only trying to find a new tactic, because after all there are already guidelines in place as I said earlier.  It is known as Fair Use and it is already codified by the U.S. Copyright Office.

On a bit of a side note, I would love to know who decided that the Media Bloggers Association should have the right to negotiate this.  I mean, no offense to Mr. Cox and those that are already members, but I don’t know you.  You stopped accepting memberships, because you don’t even have a clear set of policies (by your own admission), and while you may very well have the best interest of bloggers in general, I do not find this to be an acceptable situation.  Suffice it to say, as an independent blogger, and not a member of your organization, I do not find that I will feel obligated to follow any guidelines set forth by this meeting and your “agreements” with the Associated Press.

It is also probably germane to point out that the Associated Press is owned by its 1,500 daily newspaper members… those very same people that have not yet been able to find a way to use the web properly and continue to bleed red ink (while blaming the Internet in general and Bloggers specifically for their eroding fortunes).  These same people that fight and attempt to keep bloggers from getting credentials because they are not part of the media.  Seems to me, they want to have their cake and eat it too.

Filed Under: Corporate sneaks, Rantings
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