pres.umptuo.us

• Nokia Connection 2005. My favorite cell phone maker comes out with new models, although not too big on the sliders.

  Tuesday June 14, 2005

Ta-Da! A return to boredom’s roots with this new look, as I tried to keep things very plain and simple once again, although this time I was able to use my XHTML and CSS skills to get everything perfect and as close to standards-compliant as possible. Doing CSS full-time has really helped quite a bit, and I’m really happy with the way this one turned out.

I’m in the process of slowly converting all the “Morning Post” entries into quickies, and reserving the left column for actual entries and not just little links of the day. I found the three-column layout necessary to accomodate that and the obsessions. People will notice the outgoing links (wannabes and friends) have been reorganized once again.

Movable Type gave me a headache, as usual. The pages were all layed out perfectly, but when it came time to turning them into templates I ran into the typical obscure issues, in this case the showstopper involved comments and thus the preview page does not look as I would like. I’ll work on that one.

Everything but the search should be working though, so let me know your thoughts on the new look and if anything looks off.

• Hilarious Experiences of an American exchange teacher in Japan.

  Monday June 13, 2005

Ten minutes into the movie Jane (Angelina Jolie) is waking in bed from her one night stand with John (Brad Pitt). She looks sad that he’s disappeared, but then the door to the suite opens and in he comes. And then, the camera switches to his point of view, and it starts shaking everywhere. “Blast it”, I said in my 60’s persona, “This better not be like Bourne Supremacy.”

But luckily it wasn’t, and then I recalled that director Doug Liman directed Bourne Identity and not the shaky-cam happy sequel Bourne Supremacy. Hooray for action sequences that I can actually follow.

Anything you think of Smith is probably spot on. You know the plot. You know exactly how it will all play out. There’s no big surprises here. Fun action scenes, great dialogue and relationship between the two gorgeous stars, and a good movie overall. I enjoyed it and heartily recommend.

For the O.C. fanboys (and fangirls), Adam Brody has something like ten lines in the movie, and watch for his Fight Club t-shirt.

• DJ scratches The Imperial March

  Thursday June 9, 2005

The funniest part in Return of the Jedi has to be when you see the black pilot die during the space battle, and not a second later the asian pilot goes too.

I just listened to Coldplay’s new album twice through, and it’s really rather dull. A few of the tracks barely stood out, and the rest all blended together. It could be that I’ve just grown old of Coldplay, but A Rush Of Blood To The Head is playing in my headphones right now and it’s definitely a superior album.

I’m not so much disappointed since I heard “Speed of Sound” only once on the radio and it didn’t grab me, and neither does this album.

Dodgeball wasn’t so good. It had its share of laughs, but nothing so funny that it made you want to see it again.

The very informative Super Size Me looked really good for a documentary. I expected grainy footage and lots of interview footage, but what I got instead were fun little animations, beautifully drawn transition titles and movie that didn’t feel like a small budget documentary at all (I’m assuming this was small budget).

The message itself is very clear, and for a few days afterwards I kept feeling like I was gonna die from all the fast food I regularly eat.

Went out and saw Crash after the many recommendations, and they were well deserved. This was a great movie on race relations, which is hard to pull off in itself without becoming overly stereotypical or preachy. I felt myself being drawn in throughout, never got bored and really feared for the fate of all the characters. Very highly recommended.

• Spelling Bee contestant does a Napoleon Dynamite impression. Flippin’ sweet.

  Saturday June 4, 2005

• Daily Show on Deep Throat. I don’t know much about the Watergate scandal (I’ll be taking a trip to Wikipedia later), but this commentary is hilarious as usual.

  Friday June 3, 2005

• VG Cats - 155 - High Ground.

  Friday June 3, 2005

It’s an entirely different experience when the original Star Wars trilogy is viewed in one sitting. I would have preferred to watch the original originals, unfortunately Mr. Lucas has denied requests to release them on DVD and so the special editions had to do. Of course I own VHS copies of the originals, but my system isn’t set up to handle VHS.

I never realized how slow A New Hope is. It takes quite a while to set up, but once they reach the Death Star it gets going, and the trench run is still great fun to watch. Han gets all the best lines in ANH and ESB, but his wisecracks were forced and fell flat in ROTJ.

The superiority of Empire really shows though after seeing A New Hope, it’s just so much better. Battle of Hoth, Yoda, the Jedi training, the asteroid chase, the love story, the stunning revelation. Still holds as my favorite of the trilogy.

Jedi was just blah. Damn Ewoks.

The overall feeling is just how much better these films are compared to the prequels. Damn prequels. So much done wrong.