Archive for May, 2005
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
What a movie!
I had been waiting on this with wet dreams since last fall when we saw the first trailers. It does not disappoint.
I liked the first two new Star Wars movies. I like the technology, I like the battles, I like them for everything that Lucas wished he had back in the day, and is making up for now. Incidentally, the opposite is what people love the old movies for, and I believe that I am in the minority in liking the newer ones better.
But the second movie especially, had such forced dialogue, that it would have been better if it was solid action. This movie, that is not the case. The dialogue may not be the best, but it is believable and much less of a nails on a chalkboard effect then the last movie.
But the scenes in this one. The opening battle in space with all of the ships, the battle on the Wookie planet with the trees and the water, and all of the machines and characters, from General Grievous to the ships and Imperial attackers, everything was so amazing. The design, the texture, everything is so rich.
Then, you have this little thing called the story. You have empathetic characters that question what you would do in their situation.
Anakin becomes more powerful as the movie goes along, but he is seduced by the dark side only in hopes of saving Padme. Then we realize Senator Palpatine is Dark Sidious, and all of a sudden all of the Jedi are being killed, betrayed by their troops. The land is falling, and then Anakin is fighting Obi Wan on the lava planet of Mustafar.
It ties to the old movies so well, and you see the pain and suffering of Anakin as he falls and is badly burned, and then the ultimate transformation into Dark Vader. It is all so amazing.
This is the best movie of all six in so many senses. You have to see this. This is the best movie I have seen since Spiderman last summer.
Firefox Extensions Part 3
I read today that there is somewhere around 400 extensions for Firefox now available. Pretty amazing. I continue to come across really useful extensions, making me fall in love with Firefox all the time and hating Microsoft more for not allowing me, the user, the most important person, do what I need with my own browsing experience.
Google Preview - Thumbnails in your google searches
Simple and straight forward, this extension gives you the power to see a small version of what a website looks like before you actually visit. Kind of like searching for images where you get a small thumbnail view first, here you get a small thumbnail of the homepage for your search results. Check out the screenshot I took below. I searched for “Really cool computer cases” and this is what my screen looks like;
Rating : 10 of 10
Cool just because. But seriously, I like to see whether I am visiting a crappy designed site, or a reputable site with good information. Funny how things like that can even be read into at a small scale.
19th May 2005
We get breakfast for dinner tonight, so that is always fun.
Sarah is going insane because it is the end of the year, and partially because she can’t say no to anyone so she gets too much going on. This is my little fortress of solitude.
Real quick, found a new sweet extension today for Firefox today, giving you a thumbnail in your google results of the page you are going to visit.
Sections Updated: Browsers
How do I customize my Windows Startup menu?
This was the question I had the other day when I was looking to rename some of my menus. By default, Windows has a strategy for organizing and naming all of your startup menus depending on the programs that are installed. After awhile you get a mess of unorganizing programs, and I found the following tip to be really helpful.
I like things alphabetized, because that helps me find things faster. In your startup menu, you can actually click, drag, and hold down a menu and drag it to another place to organize it how you like. So here are your steps;
1. Turn on your computer.
2. Click on the “Start” button.
3. Roll your mouse over “All Programs”.
4. Click and hold down on one of the program sections like the image below is demonstrating.
5. Drag the section to a new area. A thin black bar will indicate where you can drop the section, usually between two others.
Customizing the start menu.
Now, to customize the start menu to have the programs or shortcuts that you want, follow the first two steps above.
3. Right Click on the “Start” button. Choose “Open All Users“.
4. Double Click on the folder called “Programs“. You should have this folder, but if you don’t, try any folder that you see.
5. These folders correspond to what is in your “All Programs” list. You can now add, delete, or change the links and names of any of these programs to best suit your needs.
What I was looking to do was add a shortcut to the list. In order to do that, these are the steps. It is just like making a shortcut normally, telling a link to point to where the program actually is located.
1. Click on “New” and Choose “Shortcut“.
2. Click on “Browse” and then look for the program that you want to link to. Usually it will be located used My Computer > Local Disk C: > Program Files > (Program Name) > (Program).exe. It will almost always be an .exe or executable file, the file that runs the program.
3. Your shortcut is done. Drag it into the folder you want inside “Programs“, make a new folder, or just leave it where it is.
4. Click “Start” > “All Programs” and you should now see your new shortcut in the list.
I hope this was helpful.
18th May 2005
Yesterday was a ton of fun for me.
I had this deadline for this past weekend, that at it’s core, meant designing and building two full websites over the span of five days. So I was working feverishly to get them done.
Yesterday was the deadline, and it felt good to have hit it. Chris and I went over to Walker to see the guys graduate that we had worked with for the past month and a half. We got to talking with our three favorite guys, who want to learn and are all really bright guys.
Later in the afternoon after we got the second site launched, I needed a breather, and Chris had an errand to run, so I went with him. Over the weekend he bought a new computer, 64 bit Ahtlon processor and some dual channel memory. He found out later that the memory was messed up, so I went with him to take it back to Fry’s.
Now, from what I understand, Fry’s is a chain from California. But it is welcome here in Indy. Damn. Fry’s puts Best Buy and Circuit City combined times five to shame . They have everything, and 25 of it. The store is just overwhelmingly huge and is every computer nerd’s dream. I could have spent the whole day in there, instead we only had an hour and I spent it dreaming of getting a computer case that better fit my workflow.
We got back downtown just in time for the Buggs Events kickoff event. Buggs Events was the second site we were working on, and they are just a blast of a client. Always fun and easy to work with, Buggs Events is the event planner for the canal and other special occasions with individualized settings. They just had the most gorgeous and tasty food down on Vermont and Indiana. A high end event planner, I wish that I had Buggs Events when I planned my wedding. Especially the chocloate dip fountain for marshmellows and strawberries, and hell, your shoe if you were that hungry.
I came home just for a bit to see my gorgeous wife, and then I bravely went all by my lonesome to see The Ring 2. That was a good bookend to the first movie. I really liked the story, and the second time round the anticipation was what was the scariest.
Tonight, we are watching Smallville in hopes of seeing some sneek preview scenes from Batman Begins. Mowed the ‘ol lawn, which is becoming scarily ritual, and just doing some relaxing.
Sections Updated: Movies, Windows
The Ring 2 (2005)
When Sarah and I rented “The Ring” a year and a half ago, we didn’t know what to expect. We were scared out of our minds, where we couldn’t even pee alone that first night. Nonetheless, even though I don’t enjoy movies that scare me, it was a really different and the story was really interesting. The second part ties everything together.
The story is about Noami Watts (mother) and her son, who are looking to make a new start. They are scarred from their experiences involving a deadly video tape and a little girl that was murdered. Just as they think they are in the clear, the little girl finds them.
If you haven’t seen the first movie, the basic premise is that there is this video that teenagers are passing around and watching. Seven days from the time you watch the video, you die. This time round though, the consequences are a little more dire. I really could go on and on about the second part of the movie here, but you really have to see the first part to understand.
The little girl that is the ultimate evil in these stories is looking to take over the son’s body and become a real child again, to have a new mother. Watts has to convince those around her she isn’t crazy, or abusive to her son, as well as figure out a way to get him back before time runs out.
There is plenty of suspense, from the two messed up faces that are the trademark from the first movie, to a scene where the car Watts is driving is viciously attacked by large deer, about 20-30 of them to be precise.
Not a movie for children, although some stupid parents brought them anyways, I think you have to be a certain type of person to like this movie. But the idea of a deadly video tape, with some very bizarre footage on it, some haunting music, and some interesting use of cut footage make this movie intriguing to those who like interesting cinematography.
Yahoo Mail Expands to 1 Gig
Your expectations of free email are changing daily.
I debated on where to put this information. But I decided on software because a mail program, although very common, is a piece of online software that most of us take for granted. And because of Google’s push into the free email arena, the capabilities of email are growing daily.
As of last count, my gmail account has almost 2.2 Gigs of space. Everyday that email space keeps growing as Google adds more and more servers.
This amazing amount of free space for email is a new idea. Only a year ago Google Mail was in beta, and all of the other free email players, Hotmail, Yahoo, were still in the dinosaur age, offering anywhere from 10-25 MB of free space. Not more than a few months later Yahoo mail extended to 500 MB, and Hotmail much later to 250.
But as Google expands, Yahoo has been trying to keep up. I am sure still bitter that Google didn’t just work explicitly for their needs back in the days when Google powered search results in Yahoo. At the beginnging of May, Yahoo extended their free email service to 1 Gig.
What I am going to do now is compare the two. I use Yahoo as my primary email, and google as another account with some random people to keep it active. But I have chosen to keep on using Yahoo, read below exactly why.
Address completion
Just like Outlook, Yahoo will complete an email as I type it. I am not one of those people that is good with remembering exact email account addresses. People change their email all the time, and it is hard to keep up. A standard UI option has been to have a “Nickname” which would be a shorter way of remembering an email. Type in the Nickname, the program would know to use the email you assigned to that nickname.
But essentially, it is still the same amount of info to remember. You still have to remember exact nicknames for everyone, and even if you keep it as simple as their first name, what happens when you have two friends named “Steve”?
Well, in the last 6 months or so, Yahoo has implemented this auto completion, where you type anything in the address bar, and it will enter not only a list of possible nicknames, but email addresses as well.
If you notice, this is something that Google Mail also does. It just doesn’t do the nickname part, which is probably a holdover from the original idea. Until I looked just now, I didn’t know Google Mail autocompleted. So Yahoo and Google come in a tie here.
Notifiers
Google has what is called the “Gmail Notifier”. This is basically a little program that runs out of your windows system tray and will tell you when you have new mail. You can set it up to log you in when you boot up the computer, or when you feel like it. This eliminates the need to have a browser open at all times.
Yahoo also does this, but does so in a little bit more cumbersome way. You have to have their messenger and their messenger when notify you will a little tiny popup, like Google, from the system tray that you have gotten new email. I do not factor in a the seperate program anymore now that I use Trillian ( a program that combines all your instant messengers like MSN and AOL into one, a later article.)
In my opinion, they come out even here too.
Email shortcuts
I am only reviewing things that I use here, and shortcuts are one of them.
In Yahoo, you can press Ctrl+Shift+P and you can compose a new message. There are a slew of other shortcuts, like Ctrl+Shift+C to check mail, and Ctrl+Shift+F to browse your folders. I used to really like Yahoo’s shortcuts, but then Google did them one better.
Google’s shortcuts are an option that you can turn on. This means you can use them if you want to, but you don’t have to. Google’s email shortcuts are even shorter, and a touch faster (both are faster than a button click). Compose in Gmail is “C”, and “N” and “P” for next and previous email, to browse through each one.
My main complaint for this one is that you have to click “Settings” in the upper right and then “Learn More” under Keyboard Shortcuts to figure out what they are. I am a lazy internet user, and that is two click too many. Why can’t they have them pop up when you hover over a link if you want, or be on the button options like they are in Yahoo?
For those reasons, I think that Yahoo and Gmail come out even again.
Bottom Line!
Until I wrote this, I hadn’t gone that deep into Gmail, or used it frequently enough to know. All I knew is that I didn’t like the “reply” option being at the bottom of the message. That is unusual for me, and something that will take some getting used to. But Gmail is so fast, using a lot of DHTML and CSS to function.
From what I have seen, Gmail is much more powerful as well, from searching email down to those user options and settings for customizing your email program to fit you, which is a new concept. Why didn’t anyone give us this before. Also, if you use Google for searching, which you should, it seamlessly integrates into all of their other programs.
I am having the two break even, but largely because I have so much time vested in Yahoo now. But after doing this comparison, I am going to try to use Gmail to see more about their features and how they work.
Coolness Rating
Yahoo Mail
Gmail
15th May 2005
Other than working yesterday, I did some gaming and other misc. development things.
Sarah spent the day cleaning the bathrooms and doing laundry and even doing schoolwork. She does an amazing job balancing it all.
Today I got into reviewing Yahoo Mail vs. Gmail, because of such a rapidly changing landscape, and fierce competition in free email sparked by Google. I surprised myself in what I learned.
Sections Updated: Software
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