Movies and Moonbeams - Shreveport Riverfront

I found a pic this morning of the July screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was presented as part of Movies and Moonbeams. An estimated 600 people showed up, far more than I originally guessed. I'm in the pic in the front row with a green shirt (tiny, tiny), along with Katie, Billy, David and Jeff.

The next Movies and Moonbeams show will be Aug 18th in Southern Hills Park. This time, Jurassic Park will be the movie of choice... sweet. I haven't seen that on a big screen in a long time. Sweetening the deal even more, the movie will be free.

Tiny mouth, big food syndrome

Katie has an eating disorder. It's sad, but true. She suffers from tiny mouth, big food syndrome also referred to as tiny mouth big fork syndrome (TMBFS) - a syndrome which affects millions each year. It's symptoms are easily recognizable. It most commonly manifests itself in the inability to place food correctly in the mouth without most of said food ending up on some non-ingesting body part or other innocent object.

She had a particularly bad episode this past week when we had a hamburger tombstone pizza for dinner. Somehow, when she took a bite of pizza a little hamburger piece ricocheted off the side of her mouth, onto her shirt, her pants, the table setting and the table. A piece of hamburger managed to leave red marks on 4 different objects within seconds. Devastating. Stephen Hawking would be baffled by the physics of this piece of hamburger.

So, please keep Katie and her clothing in your thoughts and have compassion for those people you know that may suffer from TMBFS.

International Monkey Day II

Being the last Saturday in July, today marks the second annual International Monkey Day - a day where I let Katie (AKA Monkey) know, in my kind of way, that I think she's special. It marks the one year (give or take a few hours) anniversary of the creation of International Monkey Day, when I came to Ruston and treated Katie to a bit of shopping and entertainment.

The days leading to Monkey Day

Thursday morning she received an e-vite to attend the events for the day. She was instructed to keep her Saturday afternoon open, since after all it's a holiday.

Friday night she came home after work to find a form based itinerary for the day which she got to fill out as she pleased. It had a slot for a movie with coke and candy, dinner out with dessert, her choice of a new book or a new pair of shoes (a choice which could've caused the universe to explode) and a few little extras for her to check off.

Today she headed out to do some shopping, and I went into sneaky Jordan mode. For those unfamiliar with sneaky Jordan, it is regular Jordan with an inconspicuous expression (*mouse over). Anyway, I donned the inconspicuous look and grabbed a few honeymoon pics I'd secretly sent off to be printed this week and framed one and gave her the rest. I also put together a cd of a few new songs she likes.

After the presentation of the goodies, we headed out to see Pirates of the Caribbean, ate at Chili's for dinner and had some type of chocolate heart attack device with ice cream and brownies for dessert. As one of her extras, Katie selected a world famous massage. So I'm about to fulfill that request. For now though, she's content to read her new book, Marley & Me, in the living room.

And now, I must head to the living room to drag her away from her book for a massage.

To anyone who is married or has a significant other, you should try creating a day for that person. Even if you're not able to do something expensive, or spend any money, just take some time to show them you think they're special and that you appreciate them.

An idea to ponder

Does Tom Hanks end all his emails with

Thanks,

T.Hanks

...?

Guitar Hero: The impulse buy

Those sneaky buggers at Best Buy have had the best of me once again. They put out a 60" lcd tv, two rocker gaming chairs, two guitar hero controllers, and a ps2 with Guitar Hero all loaded up and ready to play. A specially designed Jordan trap...

Katie and I were walking through Best Buy last night, after being scolded out of Target for playing with baseball gloves we were testing out for purchase, when we saw the guitar hero controls sitting there, all lonely. Katie gave me the "look", which to a person unfamiliar with "the look" may look like an ordinary glance. However, I know this to actually mean "I challenge you to a video game duel."

We sat down and played two songs, much to the dismay of the little kids who claimed they "had next" after our first song ended. I have to say that we were both hooked. We'd both played the game before and we both liked what we'd seen, but the ability to play against each other was too tempting. Katie beat me the first time, which will always be brought up when we compete. However, the second time I came back with a score slash himself would've been proud of and made Katie ashamed to call herself a video game player. Needless to say, my mind went into buy mode.

So, I devised a plan to buy the ps2 and guitar hero game, with extra controller, play them until we get sick of it then sell them all on ebay for a short loss. Basically, the ebay rental program (AKA the e-bay rental for things you can't rent program). You use the item until you can't stand to look at it anymore, then you sell it on e-bay for a 20% ($45 bucks or so in this case) loss or so.

We bought the game late last night, played until almost 12 (with only one controller though) and managed to pry ourselves away from it so we could sleep.

For those of you who may not have heard of guitar hero, it's a rhythm game much like donkey konga. IGN describes it better than I can:

Guitar Hero works similar to other music-based games in that a track of notes scrolls down the screen. Like playing a real guitar, you need to hold the correct fret and then strum at the right time. You can hold the note before it needs to be played, because the strumming part is what actually registers the note, which again, is exactly like a real guitar. The whammy bar lets you modify the pitch of notes, which any bad-ass axeman will consistently shake to please the gods. (via ign.com)

The songs really make the game... I like almost all of them. Here's a list of the most popular, though I hear there are somewhere near 30 after unlocking some of the other ones.

• Red Hot Chili Peppers- Higher Ground
• Boston- More than a Feeling
• Megadeth- Symphony of Destruction
• The Donnas- Take it Off
• Jimi Hendrix- Spanish Castle Magic
• ZZ Top- Sharp Dressed Man
• Black Sabbath- Iron Man
• White Zombie- Thunderkiss 65
• Queens of the Stone Age- No One Knows
• David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust
• The Ramones- I Wanna Be Sedated
• Franz Ferdinand- Take Me Out
• Deep Purple- Smoke on the Water
• Cream- Crossroads
• Sum 41- Fat Lip

So far I'm happy with the purchase and extremely happy with the game itself, but a good deal of that happiness depends on whether I'll be able to resell this game for an acceptable loss (i.e. acceptable rental/time played cost). I'm off to wake Katie up with a medium difficulty, expert rendition of Thunder Kiss 65.

A thought from work...

My most productive thoughts usually come at work in the morning, just after a cup of coffee and just before the coffee starts a chain of events that will open the bomb bay doors... Yesterday I was thinking that I should design a fan with a pirate theme.

It should have three speeds: "Blow me down", "Shiver me timbers", and "Avast, ye Matey!". It should also have a wooden leg, and a parrot sitting on it. Every package will come with a tiny bottle of rum.

I apologize in advance

I had to do it one more time tonight. This video is just too good... Time 4 Bed.

Daily Show's bit on net neutrality

As if everyone hasn't heard enough about Ted Stevens quote on net neutrality, I'm adding a link to the Daily Show's take on Ted Steven's quote.

Another good link before bed

I found this page of humorous math equations via del.icio.us/popular

Play the blues on the internet

This site is great... a little novelty-ish, but great. It allows you to play the blues with a few clicks of the mouse.

My Flickr page added to sidebar.

I added a direct link to my flickr account on the left sidebar in case anyone wants to check out some of our pics. Katie, now you can find the link easily.

Nintendo DS Lite - How did I miss posting this?

Maybe I just assumed that I had posted it, but as I look back I see that I haven't made mention of the fact that I bought a Nintendo DS Lite. I have to believe that because I played the DS non-stop for the first two weeks or so that I had it I was unable to post about it. It's really not like me to not talk about gadgetry, especially new shiny nintendo gadgetry.

Here I am though, telling you that I own one and that you should too. Well, maybe you should just rent one. It depends on how you think the game selection will fare over the next few months. If you, like me, think that there aren't any more big blockbuster, must have games coming out, then you might want to just borrow a DS or steal one from a little, punk kid somewhere (they're already bitter, give them a reason to be).

For me, the 'reason for buying' game was 'The New Super Mario Bros.'. I still love the mario games... all of them. Even the mediocre super mario 2 where you yanked radishes or some nonsense out of the ground to throw at people. Almost every game that came out of the mario franchise, yoshi, some warios... most of them have been good too.

This game, however, just had mario and me like it used to be back in the day. Those were the days. Pick-a-card bonus levels, mushrooms, evil ducks (or whatever), 1-up sounds ringing in my ears... they're all back now. In addition, there are new moves and power-ups. From memory, which has been iffy of late, I'd like to outline the my favorite new-ities of the game.

• There's a butt-smash, as I call it. Jump in the air, hit down and you come crashing down... smashing blocks from the top, down.
• Nintendo has also added the wall jump. Hurl yourself against a wall, press the arrow keys in that direction and hit jump again to kick off the wall for a jump up in the opposite direction.
• Hugification mushroom - again, my name -. You get this mushroom and you grow to a screen filling size and smash through everything for a short time.
• Mini-games. The mini-games are great. I just wish I had some wireless competition to play against

In order to avoid turning this into a mushy Nintendo lovefest, I'd like to cut all the good things I have to say about the DS a little short, adding only that we have really enjoyed the DS, Mario, and the Big Brain Academy Game. Check out their reviews and find out more about them from the professionals (buy one, then play me... that's the main point here).

Movie exchange site

Well, after talking about this project for quite a while now, I think I'm finally getting somewhere. However, I don't want you to think that I got somewhere on my own... that would be crazy talk. I actually found a similar product online, an open source software package to manage dvd collections and keep track of who they're loaned to.

Since I didn't design it, it's not customized exactly to my needs. So, I'm going to spend some time customizing the look and the functionality of some pieces of the site. In the meantime, though, I thought I'd post a few screenshots of the application - VCD-db. It's a really great piece of software.

Take a look at the following screens. They will show the loan system (in it's current state), the category listing, the category listing (image view mode), and the page that shows a dvd's information.

You'll notice that the dvd info page closely resembles the look of the imdb page (and references it on the page). It does so, because when you add movies you have the option of typing a title and having the site search the imdb collection for similar titles. If you find a match, click the format (DVD or DVD+R or Divx... etc.), the number of discs then click confirm and your title is added with all relevant imdb data including a dvd cover, if available.

It's a time saver when adding DVD's... though even with that feature it's still time consuming. However, now I can track my DVD collection (along with a printable list the next time I go DVD shopping).

The downsides seem to be that the loan system is a somewhat manual process. Providing a list of users in addition to a custom borrowee would have been nice. Also, the ability to request to borrow a DVD from the category or movie page would be absolutely great. Granted, this would require some kind of queue management, but I think it would be a huge feature.

Lastly, my biggest complaint initially was that the my movies page didn't show my movies. That's crazy talk. I added a little code to show them on the my movies page now.

Don't let these complaints mislead you to thinking that this is a poorly written or designed software package... it's not. It's a great package, and it's well designed from a code standpoint. I would just like to improve the usability of the site.

So, in summary, I now have a system that will let me do most of what I want. List my DVD's, allow others to add their collections, and then trade the DVD's if people wish to do so. I just have to customize the look and try to improve some of the functionality. The last step (which should be the first step) will be to find a system that can host the site... as my host doesn't support PHP 5, which is a requirement of Vcd-db.

Movies and Moonbeams - July 2006

I posted previously about movies and moonbeams, a movie presentation at a public park each month in the Shreveport (and maybe Bossier) Louisiana area. I'd been talking it up as a great idea for quite a while, and finally successfully attended a show last weekend. I say successfully because we tried to attend one two months or so ago and apparently it had been rescheduled, or we went to the wrong park. Katie and I showed up just as the movie was starting and were able to find Billy, David and Jeff and set up our chairs right down front - prime time.

They showed Raiders of the Lost Ark on a huge inflatable screen. There were concessions available - waters, drinks, bags of candy, and of course... popcorn. While that's all great, the best thing about the night was the amount of people watching the show. Probably two to three hundred people (by my fingers and toes estimation at least) showed up.

I mention this as the best aspect of the show for two reasons. First, because of the amount of people there you can tell that something like this was needed - and also because I'm telling you... something like this was needed. Secondly, if you've ever watched a good action/family movie with kids around, you've probably noticed as I have that the movie becomes better. It works the same way when a group of people gets together to watch a funny show on tv... it always seems funnier/better in groups.

I wonder what they're showing next month...

Weird Al Interviews Eminem

I found a great clip over at youtube of Weird Al interviewing Eminem... who knew they didn't have a beef between them anymore...?

There are also quite a few more weird al videos on the site, including "I lost on Jeopardy".

The clip requires macromedia flash... install it. Watch.

House situation

In my last post I mentioned that Katie and I were looking to get a house in the near future. Well, that day is upon us. We're going to go on Friday to initiate the house building process in the legacy subdivision in North Bossier. As I understand it, we'll go and pick our lot, put a small chunk of change down then get final approval from a mortgage company. Only then will building commence.

Katie and I are both excited and very nervous about the prospect, as it means that neither of us will be able to lose our jobs any time soon. It's not like we're running around looking for ways to get fired... but you know what I mean. We've got to hold on to our jobs like a fat kid holds on to a bag of flamin' hot cheetos.