Following suit, and due to what we in the business call “lack of motivation,” I’ve decided to do short reviews of four movies I’ve seen recently. In fact, I like this idea so much, I may keep up with it.

Ocean’s Thirteen ☆☆☆☆☆ (3.5 / 5)

Very fun flick with big-name talent, moments of hilarity, and some very cool heist, and heist preparation, scenes. I’m not sure how it stacks up in comparison to the last two, as I’ve not seen them, but I quite enjoyed this one. Definitely worth seeing in theaters.

Shrek The Third ☆☆☆☆☆ (1 / 5)
Went from a cute series laden with jokes adults and kids could each get, respectively, to trashy, unfunny and low-quality animation at its worst.

Reservoir Dogs ☆☆☆☆☆ (4 / 5)

Though completely violent, at a certain point, the violence in its very excess becomes comical — there sure is nothing like watching someone’s ear get cut off to the tune of the “Sounds of 70’s” on the radio, playing in the background.

Knocked Up ☆☆☆☆☆ (5 / 5)

I laughed from the minute the movie started to the minute it ended. As Judd Appatow — writer and director of the film — mentioned in an article for what I believe was Time, unlike last year’s large production, Talladega Nights, there was less effort put into getting high profile actors for the movie (though these were hilarious, several hailing from the Freaks and Geeks cast) as it was directing efforts towards what ended up a hysterical script.

Overall: 5/5

Update: Sample shots here

I just recently got something I’ve been interested in for a very long time: a digital SLR camera. After researching and considering the multitude of more consumer-oriented dSLR’s on the market, I ultimately chose the Nikon D40.

In my five days so far with the D40, it has unceasingly proved to be my dream camera. During my research, time and time again comments in reviews suggested that the D40 is a great camera for previous point-and-shoot owners — something I couldn’t agree with more. Like its point-and-shoot 2nd cousins, the D40 is compact, easy to use, and created with consumers in mind. Where Nikon had room to make or break this camera, however, was in whether this was to be an excellent point-and-shoot or, like they fortunately decided, a consumer dSLR somewhere in between. It is in making this decision that Nikon’s D40 shines; for instance, while there are several excellent automatic modes for specific shooting situations, there is also complete manual mode, and while there is quite good autofocus with the great 18-55 kit lens, there is also manual focus. Essentially, the D40 is the camera you, with your specific needs, make it out to be. In my several days of shooting, I’ve tended to lean more towards manual settings, but the D40 suits the vacationers who simply want high quality shots with no fuss, no muss just as well.

As for features, unlike its big brother, the Nikon D50, many of the D40’s settings are accessed via the very easy to use menu system on its large 2.5-inch screen. I can imagine that this would be a hassle for more professional photographers who not only need to change such settings, but are familiar with using tactile means to do so. However, for those whose past cameras were point-and-shoots, if their previous cameras even allowed for the changing of settings like ISO or white balance, it was probably done on the screen as well. With consumers still in mind, one new feature specific to the D40 include various editing capabilities within the camera itself. I’ve yet to try these out, but have heard that certain post-processing effects can actually improve photo quality in some cases. Keep in mind that with a camera so filled to the brim with features and settings to explore, it’s hard to know what all of these are and how to work them within just a few days!

One of the reasons I’ve really enjoyed the D40 so much is because of this exactly: even though I haven’t learned the ins and outs of the camera, I’ve still been able to take great photos. This can also be attributed to the fantastic lens that comes with the kit D40. It has an equivalency of about a 3.5x zoom and provides wonderful depth-of-field and quite good autofocusing (it’s a shame that there are only three points on which to train the lens’ autofocus sensor, though).

On the topic of lenses, it is definitely worth noting that the D40 is not an ideal camera for those with a collection of non AF-S/I lenses from Nikon. One of the reasons the D40 is able to be so compact is due to Nikon deciding to nix an internal motor to drive the autofocus functionality, as found in near all other dSLR’s and all other Nikon dSLR’s. Because of this, a new system of lenses called AF-S/I lenses have been developed with internal autofocus motors. The problem, though, is that these new lenses are few in number. In my opinion, this is probably not an issue for the D40’s target audience of those looking to break into the world of dSLR photography for the first time, versus those already owning lenses. Either way, the collection of AF-S/I lenses is sure to expand over the coming years.

All in all, the D40 has been a joy to use these past few days. What excites me the most about it is that unlike previous point-and-shoot cameras I’ve owned, the D40 gives me room to grow as my knowledge of photography develops. In my experience so far with the D40, taking photos is not a difficult or bothersome task in any way, as it used to be with previous non-SLR cameras. With fast and widely adjustable shutter speed (that’s right, blurriness be gone) and superb photo quality, now photography is fun and very rewarding for me.

Thank you, Nikon, for creating one excellent camera.

Overall: 5/5

I just watched the biographic Man on the Moon, which portrays the life and times of the zany comedian who wasn’t a comedian, Andy Kaufman. For those not familiar with him, he was an eccentric performance artist active in the 70s and early 80s, characterized by his unpredictability when it came to distinguishing the boundary between his life and his work. In fact, he himself didn’t see his work as that of a comic, he thought himself to be a “song and dance man”. Often his acts consisted of that exactly — It was only somewhat later in his career that these strange acts began to be seen as comedy, though, still, only by the audience.

What made Kaufman such a quirky person is that life for him almost entirely meant being in character. Much of what he did in life was in jest, but only for him. Invoking uncertainty and confusion in people when it came to his acts and, really, publicity stunts, was almost a way of life for Kaufman, from assuming different characters to assuming entirely different personalities.

I have seen a number of videos of the actual Andy Kaufman, and Jim Carrey, who portrays him in Man on the Moon, does a dead-on recreation of him in his mannerisms, the inflections in his speech, even his body language. This, combined with spot-on, near exact recreations of events in this captivating man’s life, made this movie really enjoyable for me.

I saw The Pursuit of Happyness yesterday (and no, they “y” in happiness isn’t a typo, and is explained in the movie ) and really enjoyed it. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• What I knew: it was based on the true story of a father trying to better his already unstable and difficult life while still trying to keep his son and himself afloat.
• What I expected: it to be ok, sort of sappy.
• Bottom line: very good, sincere, and interestingly, a lot of it was actually true, as far as locations and events are concerend, versus most films said to be based on a true stories.

Overall: - certainly worth checking out if in need of the kind of movie that really makes you feel for the characters.

I saw Rocky Balboa yesterday. I’ve never seen any of the other Rocky movies, so I didn’t exactly know what to expect, but knowing the general idea of the series, I thought it was pretty good. Come on, the classic training montage with the instantly-recognizable theme song, and the slow-motion fight scenes? Priceless!

Even though some of the dialogue was fairly cliché, and the story was pretty basic, it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re in need of a fun, mindless action flick.

If there’s one video blog worth checking out it’s Ze Frank’s The Show. With its tagline of “Thinking So You Don’t Have To”, The Show is almost like hearing someone’s snarky, strange, and sometimes down-right hilarious thoughts and rants that they would otherwise keep to themselves. But beyond this, most of the time Ze’s commentary on the news (though often masked with humor) is almost chillingly dead-on, and he has a way of really grabbing your attention. Then again, the exclusively close-up camera angles (which provide an interesting touch) might attribute to this! If you haven’t already seen it, then I definitely suggest you watch an episode or two.

As I’m assuming everyone knows by now, last Tuesday Apple released and announced some really cool products. I won’t go into detail as it’s been plenty covered, but I will say that I broke down and got a “new” 5.5G *80 gig iPod*. Insanely great is really the only phrase that comes to mind when talking about it, strangely enough. And yes, I know, it’s more or less the same iPod With Video, sans a widescreen display with a virtual clickwheel, that’s been on the market since last October, but in my case it’s the brand spankin’ new iPod that’s been sitting on my desk for just over a day!

I really do like the iPod a lot, and having a 80 gigs of storage is mind-boggling, even a little crazy, though I’m sure that once I start dumping videos on it I’ll be thankful for all that hard drive space. Speaking about the hard drive, maybe it’s just because it’s so high-capacity, but when I select say a video, I can actually feel the iPod vibrating slightly and hear the drive quite distinctly. I suppose I’m just picky, and on second thought, you’re going to have earbuds in or headphones on when you’re listening to music or watching a video anyways, which entirely block out the noise (which is somewhat faint to begin with). In any case, my iPod remains a great device and will surely remain so for a long time. Well, at least in this blogger’s eyes…

Up until a day or two ago, on OS X I had always used iChat as my AIM client until a friend of mine recommended something I had heard about but never tried: Adium.

Adium has now stolen my heart, with its highly customizable (and even more minimal-than-iChat) appearance, and exceptionally high tweak factor among other things. In addition to this, Adium is open source, with an extremely active development community. This means that tons of different styles, extras, and plugins are available; in fact there’s a dedicated web page for this because there’s such a large number of them. If you have a Mac, and use AIM (or nearly every other IM protocol), Adium is definitely worth checking out:

Website
Adium Extras

When talking about internet radio, for me at least, ad-ridden audio with a little music on the side (much of which is seldom what I’m looking for as the genres are far too broad) comes to mind. Folks, internet radio is so 2001. Say hello to Pandora. Pandora is internet radio meets Web 2.0., and as has been the theme of Web 2.0. (a near second bubble), it’s all about the user. Unlike many Web 2.0 sites which are dependent on user-created content, Pandora does not feature user-created music, but rather lets users craft their own radio stations. How is this done? It couldn’t be simpler. You go to pandora.com, type in a song or artist you like, and then instantly Pandora creates a playlist of similar music to that of the artist or song you specified. Like the song you hear? Give it a thumbs up (really like it? there are links next to the song info to buy it on Amazon/iTunes–unfortunately many of the more obscure artists aren’t available, at least on iTunes). Not so crazy about it? Give it a thumbs down, and Pandora will skip to the next song (you can skip songs 6, or 7 times per hour, I believe it is). You see, the point of rating each song is, based on your feedback, Pandora further tailors your station to fit your musical taste, and at the same time tries to expose you to music you may otherwise not have the opportunity or knowledge about to explore. Pandora’s a really innovative site, and I definitely recommend that you check it out.

My first impression of Textpattern has been quite a good one. For one thing, it was really easy to install, and was all graphical, which definitely was a plus (uncommenting lines in cryptic config files isn’t nearly as fun!). But the biggest thing for me, seriously monumental, was the way in which Textpattern handles templates/themes. More or less, you code the HTML skeleton, sans content, with no Textpattern standards to conform to, and then you merely insert special commands, almost like server-side includes where the various bits of blog-goodness should go. For instance, all the blog posts have a command (txp:article form=”default” limit=”15″ listform=”default”, which spits out a max of 15 articles per page, and compared to other CMS’ templating formats is elegant), and I just inserted that into a Div, and voila, a blog! MovableType is similar to this, but more complex, and don’t even get me started about WordPress. You see, WordPress has a templating language (!) written in PHP, which is hardly easy to learn (let alone use).

As you may notice the blog part of this site is directly tied into the rest, as far as design goes. To sum it up, in Textpattern it took all of 2-3 minutes to copy in the HTML/CSS from the main page and adapt it to the blog by inserting those special commands I talked about. It would have taken me–you know what, I was gonna say 2-3 hours to do in WordPress, and then I thought 2-3 days, but you know what? Even for a simple design like this, I doubt I could even do that in WordPress. And you know what’s crazy? I had used TextPattern for all of 10, maybe 15 minutes before setting up this template, and yet I’ve been using WordPress for months and it’s far more cumbersome. But in WordPress’ defense, I would definitely say that there are developers who use WordPress, and then there are the end-users.

Aside from templates and the like, there aren’t any huge distinctions between WP and Textpattern. From an administrative perspective, I think Textpattern has a much cleaner interface, and WP’s is just too busy. But on the other hand, I do kind of like WP’s admin design a tad more. Another big thing to note is the actual blog entry form, you know where you type in your article. What about it? Well, Textpattern is really lacking here. WP has a full-blown WYSIWYG editor, with ‘Bold’ / ‘Italic’ buttons, things of that nature–rich text editing. Textpattern? Um…no. That’s a bummer. Textpattern does support Textile, which is some sort of mark-up, but that’s just one more thing to learn, and I prefer nice little buttons anyway.

So, who wins this vicious, bloody war of the CMSs? Oh man, I don’t know–download both and see which one you prefer! That’s the beauty of free software. Woohoo @ FLOSS!