May 2007 Archives (8 posts)
Sky Blue Sky
The peregrine falcon swooping into a flock of starlings over Rome was chosen as the best photo out of 17,000 and gave Presti the 2005 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
Posted in Music and Photography at 3:32 PM | Comments (2)
CBS purchased Last.fm
CBS has been busy this month. They recently purchased videopodcast site, Wallstrip. Now they’ve purchased social music site, Last.fm for $280 million.
Last.fm is one of the fastest growing online communities with 15 million active users. I’ve never used the site but it allows you to connect with people that have similar music tastes, helps you discover new music and allows you to create your own online radio station.
Earlier this month CBS invested in Joost and contributed more than 2000 hours of CBS entertainment, sports and news programming. It seems like there is another dot.com boom percolating.
Posted in Web at 9:55 AM | Comments (0)
Small Is Essential
37signals is profiled in TIME.
In the article, 37signals president, Jason Fried says “Interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity.” I couldn’t agree more and this is why I prefer to work after 5 PM — I get more work done because my phone isn’t ringing and I receive fewer “urgent” emails.
Posted in Web Development at 10:14 AM | Comments (2)
Buy! Buy! Buy!
There have been a lot of online acquisitions lately. Here is a recap if you missed some of the biggest deals this month:
Google is in the final stages of a deal to purchase Feedburner for $100 million. How much bigger can Google get?
Video blog, Wallstrip liked the Livebait.tv tagline (Where sub-culture meets pop-culture) so much that they copied it for their new tagline — stock culture meets pop culture. Last week they were acquired by CBS.
Amazon.com purchased Dpreview last week. Dpreview is a UK-based digital photography review site. If you’re looking for information on a digital camera, chances are that you’ll end up on this site and read their reviews.
Posted in Web at 11:19 PM | Comments (1)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
It took a little while for me to get around to seeing Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) but it was worth it. Everyone knows something about the collapse of Enron but how much do you know about “the smartest guys in the room” — Jeffery Skilling, Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fastow and Lou Pai.
Alex Gibney’s film provides a great overview of the Enron scandal by giving us a glimpse into the lives of some first class weasels. Lou Pai is by far the luckiest and the smartest of the weasels. He left the company with $280 million, became the second largest land owner in Colorado and married his stripper girlfriend that had his love-child.
Without being to ‘preachy’, Gibney’s documentary shows how these guys thought they could outsmart the system. Their incredible greed and their willingness to rip off their stock holders and customers is legendary. There is a lot of information to absorb in this film but it does a fabulous job of explaining the whole scandal.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)
MenuShade
I noticed that my menubar was burning into my 23” Apple Cinema Display. I didn’t think this was supposed to be a problem with LCD displays but the burn in is pretty obvious in full-screen mode.
MenuShade from Nullriver Software is a great little application that dims your menubar or blacks it out completely when it’s not in use. And the best thing about MenuShade is that it is free!
Posted in OS X Software at 9:25 PM | Comments (0)
Gummo (1997)
Writer/director Harmony Corine is one strange dude. Gummo (1997) is one strange film. It follows two bored kids as they wander around a small town in Ohio looking for things to do.
They sniff glue, listen to black metal music, ride dirt bikes, kill cats and run into some of the strangest residents in the US. Harmony Corine claims that he cast the bizarre secondary characters in his film by hanging out at a Burger King for 45 minutes. I believe him.
Some of the more memorable moments in the film:
- trailer trash hanging out in the kitchen, drinking beer and wrestling chairs ( I actually laughed out loud during this scene because it was so absurd and probably real)
- a deaf couple screeching while having an argument in a bowling alley
- kids sniffing glue and getting high
- a mentally challenged woman shaving off her eyebrows
- an albino woman without any toes talking to the camera
I tried watching Corine’s other film Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) and didn’t enjoy it either. Somebody in Hollywood thinks that Corine is a genius because of his bizarre films — random scenes, no narrative, weird characters.
His films could be described as experimental but I prefer to call it crap. This guy doesn’t come close to the creative genius of say, David Lynch.
Harmony Corine’s latest film Mister Lonely (2007) is due to be released this year. I’ll take a pass and I doubt that I’ll watch another film by Corine. In my opinion, there are much better films out there that I could watch.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
Photos, Renos and Livebait
I’ve been a little wrapped up with work in the past couple of weeks. Instead of rushing off to the office this morning and sifting through email I decided to drive out to Oakville.
Trilliums
It felt good to get out and shoot some photos, even if it was for only for 90 minutes. I haven’t picked up the camera in a while and look forward to getting out and taking more photos.
Up and Over
The home renovation has started and stalled. If you don’t read stuffandjunk then you’re finding out now that we’re doing a home renovation. It started with me wanting a home office. When the dust settles, we’ll have a garage, a completely renovated and larger ground floor and a brand new second floor (with a home office in the back overlooking the backyard).
Soon, very soon we’re going to get a final budget from the contractor and they’ll start digging. Soon! Really soon! I’ve been hearing this for almost two weeks now and am losing faith that I’ll have a home office before September. July 17 was the original date of completion.
Livebait
I have about ten movie reviews waiting that need to be written and two Livebait.tv stories to be edited. The last Livebait story we did was about Hot Docs. I interviewed James and couple of his friends about the film festival.
If you’re at all interested in documentary films and didn’t get to Hot Docs this year then watch the latest episode.
Posted in Photography at 3:36 PM | Comments (0)
