Meet Krista… my parent’s golden retriever. I shot this when we first got her, when she was probably 10 weeks old. Most parents record and cherish their childs first words, their first steps, first day at school. Well here we got Krista’s first “accident” in the house and first fart. She also learns that when you eat something, it dissapears. Takes her a little while to figure out though.
Enjoy.
To kick off my new video blog, I bring you…. Vanilla Coop. In college, a buddy of mine, Cooper, made a career out of gettin’ funky to Ice, Ice, Baby whenever it happened to be played at parties. One night last fall, it came up next on the playlist, I grabbed my camera, and this is what I got. Enjoy.
Gearing up to start posting my own videos, so figured I’d spend some time checking out all the vlogs out there.
Here was a good one about “The worlds youngest vlogger”
Turns out there is a new kid in town, here is Jordan vlogging his day at the petting zoo. Pretty good stuff.
Also, go check out Phil Hamilton’s blog as it has some pretty good stuff in it. This one cracked me up.
Why am I going to start a video blog? Because I have an existing collection of everything from quality Spring Break clips, to burying a roomates car in snow, to beer tours, to goofy white guys singing Ice, Ice, Baby. So, this should be fun.
As a resident of Kansas, I find this hilarious.
Group seeks ban of 20th Century from Kansas school textbooks
“This is a video that apppears to be castmembers from Walt Disney World horsing around in character costumes — Belle performing a striptease, Tweedledee and Tweedledum administering a beatdown to Pooh, and so forth. Pretty mild stuff, and reasonably funny. Mostly notable for the fact that the characters, especially the “head” characters are pretty sacrosanct when they’re onstage. 5MB Quicktime Link.”
Now that I realized how useful it is to code pages for cell phone use, another idea popped into my head. I constantly visit AvantSlash on my cell phone because http://slashdot.org/palm sucks. So why not make another geek favorite site cell-phone-friendly too? I bring you Mobile Bash.org, something that took a whole 5 minutes to code thanks to the great work already done with the Bash.org RSS feed.
Now enjoy the stupidity of IRC chatting at your fingertips wherever you go. So be sure to bookmark it on your phone/PDA for whenever you get bored.
Well, I finally got around to giving Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) a whirl. I wasn’t trying to do anything spectacular, just something functional to wet my appetite. I started out just wanting to allow people to send me text messages via the side bar. I got it all set up using PHP in about 2 minutes, and I thought… “It works, but I hate reloading the page for something so simple.” And then Ajax popped in my head and thought it would be a great first script.
So off I went to grab the latest version of SAJAX (Simple Ajax), and boy were they right about the “simple” part. Within about 30 minutes, I had a functional script that you can now find on the side bar. Before you try it out, please use the demo page, as I don’t need everyone sending me text messages just to see how it works.
Next step, getting my responses to show up. =)
Edit: At first that last comment was a joke, but two hours later…, that was shockingly easy. I’d like to get it integrated into the side bar, but out of time tonight. I’ll post the code when I have a bit more time to work on it. So feel free to send a message or two, as I can respond rather easily. If you get annoying, I can turn it off via my cell phone too. 
Having just finished watching the controversial film, Elephant, I’ll have to say that it was a very good, and also a rather haunting movie in which people will either love or hate. Some say this movie was Gus Van Sant attempting to portray the Columbine shootings, however I believe it is fairly obvious when watching the movie that it is was more inspired by Columbine as well as all the other high school shootings in recent years. Those were events that really engrained the reality and trauma some kids endure throughout high school, and the actions they can sometimes take.
I must say, there was little point or purpose to the film except to take you into an average day of a High School, but it was filmed and depicted in a very artistic and poetic manner. Events and characters in this movie were not meant to be taken literally, but they were more representations which should be taken in a symbolic nature. The characters represented the stereotypes which you find at every high school. The scenes depicted the boredom, the insecurity, and the self-indulgence in high-schoolers lives. High school ended quite a while ago for me, but it is still fresh in my mind that I could easily finds parts of characters to relate to. It was also relieving to see high-schoolers actually play high schoolers, and high school not portrayed as a perfect little world of beautiful people as you commonly find in movies and TV now days.
This movie was needed becuase we don’t need a re-creation or a hollywood-esque movie with a dramatic 30 minute standoff and suicides at the end telling us what exactly happened that day at Columbine, or how to feel about the events that have happened at numerous other high schools. Van Sant rather exposes us to the banality of high school life, and the tragedy that can occur and let’s us make up our own mind and feelings about what is happening. I highly recommend this film, but be warned, it’s not for everyone. You’ll either love it or hate it. If you liked Almost Famous, you’ll like this. If you liked Armegeddon, you’ll hate it. If you liked Garden State, you’ll love this. If you thought Con Air, Coyote Ugly, or Dude Where’s My Car were good movies, you’ll hate this.
Wow… 3 posts in one day, new record.
I just finished watching the documentary Overnight, featuring Troy Duffy’s overnight rise and fall in Hollywood. If you don’t recognize the name, he was writer and director of the cult hit The Boondock Saints. TBS really was an entertaining movie and from what I understand has had rather impressive DVD sales for being a low budget independent film. The sequel has “been in production” for quite some time, but likely won’t ever be made.
It was amazing to see how quickly “the next big thing” to hit Hollywood can crash back down to earth. He had, what appeared to be sure-fire success as he landed a movie deal with Miramax and a record deal with Maverick at the same time. He was convinced he was going to be the biggest thing ever in that town and stated multiple times that no one has ever done what he was about to do in the history of Hollywood. But, he let his ego become the largest in Hollywood (which is quite an accomplishment), and pissed it all away.
How does one blow guaranteed success like that? Easy, make enemies with the most powerful man in Hollywood (Harvey Weinstein, Miramax Chairman), call one of his executives the C word who ended up being a very powerful woman in Hollywood, piss off your band-mates, screw over your friends, get yourself blacklisted, and ultimately sign a crappy movie deal. He told his crew (about 7 longtime friends) that if they played their cards right, they were looking towards at least “20 years of success in the industry” and it turns out they didn’t even have one. He thought there would be a bidding war at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his movie. “In my opinion, this film will go big at the box office. Real Big. It’s one of the best independent films there ever was, and I am one of the best, and will be the best.” Turns out blacklisting yourself from the industry killed those chances.
My favorite part was when he was speaking to a film theory college course and managed to insult half the classroom by pointing out individuals who he felt weren’t going to succeed and calling others assholes for paying him compliments (which he was too stupid to realize).
Definitely worth checking out. It can really remind you how important staying humble is if given the chance at big time success. It is also a very interesting look at the insides of Hollywood.
The movie ended with the perfect quote…
“No man is really changed by success. What happens is that success works on the man’s personality like a truth drug, bringing him out of the closet and revealing… what was always inside his head.” - Author, Albert Goldman
