I missed 2004, but I am not missing 2005. It’s been tough to really think about new and ground breaking things to speak about; the suggestions come freely when I ask the community, so maybe I’m holding my standards too high?. I submitted what I think is cool, and then utilized the new teaching opportunity they are offering to deal with the things everyone else requested (majority). I submitted 3 potential sessions and 3 potential, half-day classes. We’ll see what bites by the end of next week, hopefully, so I can plan modifications, travel, feedback, etc.
Blog
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Sky Captain & The Forgotten
No spoilers.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
It was ok. I dug the whole 50’s, bluish feel, the soft tones, the grandiose, yet dark feel of the filming. I liked how air superiority was a truly expounded concept in this flic.
However, I thought a lot of character development was not very well executed. I found it hard to really attach myself to any of the characters, aside from a minor one they encountered in Tibet. They jsut didn’t have much too them, and although they weren’t shallow, there just weren’t enough quirks. The personification of the plane was another example towards the personification side of things; the plane could of been taken soo much further. Remember the Batmobile in Batman? It had character, it had style, it WAS a personfied part of Batman. I think the plane was almost there… but the relationship between pilot and craft was on the extreme of indifferent. The flip-side would be like Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars… now THERE was a relationship.
Worth $8? Wait for the DVD unless you have a student/company discount.
The Forgotten
Fuggin’ awesome. Basically, a mother’s lost her son in an airplane crash, and is trying to emotionally deal with the loss, which is obviously hard on her. She’s in therapy, in a nice house in the city. However, certain “forgetful”ness things start to happen. It starts with a cup she thought she had just placed on a table… to forgetting the location of objects, to pictures not looking the same as before. Things go deep from there…
It’s one of those flics that has the calm intensity of Pitch Black, the ability to rouse a theatre out of their seats more than once (only saw that ever happen in Signs and the original Scream), and make you feel pretty small and insignifant, yet hopeful at the same time. Great date flic… better than Sky Captain. It is Sci-fi, but doesn’t have that as the overall tone, blatant enough to sell itself as it, so non-sci-fi’ers may still find this one approachable.
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No pay no play, the 6 attempts rule
My site & email were down all day yesterday and today. Turns out my credit card expiration was different than said card on file, thus my hosting company suspended my account after 6 attempts. Geez, 6 attempts! Imagine how much love could be expoused amongst couples in the world if people took that approach to rejection.
“So, hey baby… uh… your hot, can I uh… like, …buy you a drink or something?”
“No.”
“So, yeah… what if I pay for it?”
“No.”
“How about 2 drinks?”
“No.”
“What if I get on my knees, beg, and buy you drinks till the club closes?”
“No.”
“Alright, playing hard to get, eh? What if I go find the hunkiest, most metro-sexual, yet hetero guy here, and talk about how you think he’s hot, thus increasing your chances of scoring a potential interest?”
“Uh… no.”
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks?”
“Tempting, but… no.”
“Bummer… well, I’ll just stand guard here, and ensure any bloke who attempts to even gaze at the glorious countenance that is your presence, will pass the test of appreciation, realizing that you have the eyes that can see right through me, a smell that makes me float and forget what time it is, a …”
“I’ll take a Rum & Coke… just shut up!”
I’m not saying those sayings work, merely that a loving connection with potential could be established is people didn’t fear rejection, and instead made more than one attempt… even 6. Thanks for expanding my self-reflection MediaTemple Credit Card Transaction dude!
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XML and Text Viewer Panel
I’m a Flash Developer, and I parse XML all the time. Your a Flash Developer, and you potentially parse XML all the time.
I’m not sure how you handle schema’s, but typically I’m making up the XML format as I go, and since the structure isn’t memorized, I’ll typically either open it up on Dreamweaver or Notepad, start coding my parser in Flash, and toggle back and forth when I need to refresh my memory on what the XML I’m parsing looks like.
For smaller chunks, I can just paste an example in my code, and refer to it that way.
…both ways suck. So, I created this panel that allows you to load text into it. I then can load my XML file into it, dock the panel, and refer to it while I’m coding. You can load any text file, but typically one would use it for XML files.
I hope this helps your productivity, too!
JXL XML and Text Viewer Panel – MXP | ZIP
