I just got back from Finding Nemo, and i have to say that this is one of the most brilliant Pixar films they have made. Technically Pixar has advanced the technology of computer animation and has created a animation feel that no other production facility can match. The screenplay of this movie is solid and the characters are all well written. There are great performances given by the cast and the entire movie just comes together. So, here's the funny part. NO SPOILERS! Pixar always starts out with a short animation and then moves to the feature. Before Finding Nemo they have put an old Pixar animation from 1987 called "Knick Knack". I never thought i would see the day that disney would have to do this to an animation, but they CENSORED it. In the original Knick Knack, the snowman from Nome Alaska, is trying to get out of his little bubble to hang out with a particular "ashtray girl" from Florida. If you've seen the short, you know what i am talking about. BUT in the original the girl is VERY WELL ENDOWED. At that point using large simple pieces of geometry in computer animation was a sure way to make render times short. So the chest of the girl was two HUGE balls with a little blue stripe across them that made it look like she was wearing a very small tube top. I watched the short animation tonight and literally they just removed the balls and left the girl flat as a board. I know i must have been the only person in the theater that noticed, and YES i do feel a little strange that i even notice the BOOBS on cartoon characters, but it was a good little laugh.

So the other movie i was lucky to see was "28 days later". I have been looking forward to Danny Boyle's next film for a long time, but when i saw the first trailer for 28 days i was even more happy than i expected. It is not very often that a director tries to bring a genre of film back to life. (no pun intended) This is nothing more than the best zombie film i have seen since "night of the living dead". The film is shot entirely digital, and from what i have heard this is because it was the most cost effective way to save money for some very very large scale shots that were all real locations. The first 20 minutes of the film alone can stand on its own. As always Boyle is very comfortable with music and sound and really gets the movie going to the point where is has much of the same energy as the Beach. This was not a movie that my wife would watch in a million years. It WOULD give her nightmares. As for me, i am going to see this again when it comes out in theaters. It will be great to watch in a crowded theater with an audience that is really screaming. anyway, off to bed.

anyway, i can already see some applications for this. I've been reading some VERY heavy material on image comparison. You would not think twice about it, but when you get into the more interesting math related to the subject you realize that you can do comparison algorithms on just about anything. At this point i am just interested in images, but i realized that i could do the same thing to music or pieces of music.

In short its like this. You have the computer look at an image and then find another image that matches. Simple, but then... You have the computer look at an image and then find another image that contains that image or part of that image.

The literature on the subject is amazing. So many people have started working with these pieces of code because you could identify and match pieces of music as well as images. If you have ever used a new gnutella client you will notice that each file is identified with a code string. This is a very simple matching system. It does great for file sharing, but it would never be accurate enough to say match finger prints. So i understand the concept, but i really want to understand the math. And i don't have any kind of programming language under my belt that would come close to doing this kind of number crunching. So that's why i got my nose in a C book.

Ok, well i got a great shot of some evaporation. :)

anyway, he's been washing his hands in the fountain every night. I knew from the very beginning that it wasn't evaporation, cause the rocks that i have in the base of the fountain always get pushed around and usually end up on the ground around the fountain. So tonight Jen and i were watching TV in the living room and I left my door open in my office cause it's a nice night. I had the screen door closed, but we started to hear something coming from my office. I turned the TV off and walked into my office to realize that the sound was actually coming from the front patio. So the racoon is hanging out digging the rocks out of the fountain and washing his hands off.

Manchester United offers David Beckham to FC Barcelona

Ok, this is big news, and on FARK is was listed as a NEWS FLASH. (and rightly so) Most of the geeks who read fark have no idea whats going on in sports in the United States let alone the UK. So its really great to read the comments on this one, cause nobody really knows what the fark is up.

http://www.ezdeal4u.com/

Don't kid youself, this is nothing more than a pyramid scheme. BUT you've gotta admit these guys make it look so easy. That's the trick with the con. You make the idea look so simple and you fail to avoid the explanation of exponential growth. Anyway, check this out, its worth a good laugh.

the music industry

Its a fuckin simple concept. Basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer and football players all get paid per game. They sign a contract with their team and get paid. That's it. Golf is not the same. When you're talking about a tournament where there is a 1st prize over 1 Million US Dollars, that player has to perform to make their paycheck. (don't start about sponsorships either, ever sport has sponsors.) So what am i getting at? When you wait for a golf player to be in the middle of the backswing, and then you whistle as loud as you can.... You should just be fuckin shot. Now when the player you whistle at is the defending champion of the tournament that you're watching, you should not only be shot... you should be shot in both kneecaps with a very large caliber gun (and at point blank range). Ok, now maybe that's a little bit over the top, but at least... get the TV cameras on the ass clown as soon as you possibly can. Pull him out of the gallery of fans and escort him to a press conference where he can explain to the cameras exactly what the fuck he was thinking. At least ban him permanently from all PGA tournaments.

Here's their entry hole

Flash mobs!!!! Does anybody want to do this? I honestly wonder what people would do if you targeted a starbucks or a bank? Imagine the guards outside a bank when even 500 showed up. Some places already know how to deal with HUGE crowds, just think of all the tiny little places that you could go to and just stop everything.

Jen and I had our family over for Father's Day on sunday. We cooked and my brother cleaned. The next morning Jen woke me up at 7AM and asked me what my brother had done with the second caserol. She was planning on having a piece of it for lunch that day. I didn't know, and at 7AM i really didn't care. So i figured he'd thrown it away. So now i ask the simple question. What do you do with a cooked caserol that you want to save?

My nose starts to get lower in the kitch. I reach the stove. The burners are off. Its not a gas leak. Then the oven... hmmmm. Ok the smell is getting bad. I open the oven and there's the second caserol. I guess my brother had popped it in the oven when he cleand up instead of popping it in the fridge. So this thing smells so bad it could wake the dead. I clean it all out and now i have retreated to the other side of the house and lit candles and opened every door. Hopefully the smell will be gone by the time i go to bed.

Well i just got a call from my new landlord. Yup thats right kids, Jen and I are moving. AND we're moving into John and Kate Bell's apartment. It has been a joke how many times our rent has been increased over the last 3 years that we have lived here. Welll now we might be able to save a little money so we can buy a house. So Jen also called the old landlord today also to tell em about the fuckin raccoons. No word yet back from them. I don't even care anymore, they know now, its their problem.

I also went to OSH today to pick up a garden hose nozzle. I hooked up the hose in my front patio area and washed all the raccoon shit off the roof. Now i've just got the hose on waiting for tonight. I figure the radio didn't work, the banging on the ceiling didn't work, the spraybottle didn't work, so maybe the high powered hose will. At least if it doesn't work, i'll still be able to see a wet raccoon.

I should also talk about the rest of the weekend, but i am too lazy to grab the pictures off my camera. I'll do it tomorrow when i get up.

There were two that really caught my eye.

The address on the Hubble card is of a house that i know very well in San Marino. I never knew that he lived there. I might have to go to the Cal Tech library and see if i can dig up some more information about when he lived there. You can tell just how old the card is by the phone number on it. SY - 3 - 7731, which translated into the new phone number format is 793-7731. If you lived in San Marino, you recognize the good ol 793 prefix.

I actually dragged Jen on a little walk around Cal Tech after we left the Huntington. It was fun to run around on campus and go look in the Atheneum. Inside the entry way there is an arched ceiling. And at the ends of the hallway at either end there are two huge half-circle screens. On these two screens they have video projectors running animated fractal equations. you almost feel like you're in the griffith observatory watching laserium.

G5...

Do i have to say anything more?

The leak on a site this last week was just that, a well placed leak. The specs for the G5 were out and the Mac community was in a frenzy to find out if the rumor was true. All i can say is GAWD DAMN.

I made my first audio conference with Jason from coast to coast and we were both amazed by the quality. The technology has been here for awhile, its just nice to see somebody step up and implement it. Safari 1.0 has also been installed and I can't wait until the shipment of Panther (OS X 10.3). Anyway, if you are a hard core mac user or fan or just a true GEEK. Then you have to watch the Steve Jobs Keynote from WWDC 2003

You really need to extract the audio with a transformer and then patch it to the amp.

I really need to build an entire phone test circuit. This way i can pull audio coming from the phone as well as broadcast audio back to it. Then all i should have to do is plug the test circuit into my computer. I should be able to connect to somebody on iChat and pick up the cordless phone to talk.

I see a trip to radio shack in my future.

The guy just showed up to take care of the raccoons. There is no death involved, but he's doing what i have heard is the best thing. He's up in the attic dusting it with Bobcat and Coyote powder. This will make the raccoons think that there is a predator (bigger than them) living in the area. Then he's got a few large cages that will be left near my fountain in the front patio area. :) i can't wait to see these little fuckers leave.

I hope the person who wrote this has somebody write "EDUCATE ME" on their forehead.

I say clearly that i do not like the way i look, and that my first reaction was to post a nasty comment to that effect. BUT my better judgment leads me to hold in something that would be a mistake to write and just get over it. I instead talk to the person privately and try to explain how i truly feel. When the person questions my feelings and goes as far to call me "vain", i then realize that my feelings are not being communicated. At this point i am not willing to try to argue my own position. I really don't feel it necessary to explain my personal feelings when i know they will be scrutinized and questioned. Its just a waste of my time. I end the conversation by saying this has already gotten larger than it should and that it is not worth the time to dwell on it. I explain that even though it did rub me the wrong way i will get over it.

I thought that maybe this could be the end of it.

Well its been opened for discussion. So now i'm going to ask a few questions of my own.

1) Because one person is not embarrassed about their own physical appearance, does this afford them the right to ignore others own feelings of self image?

2) When a person openly tries to explain their feelings, should it be the position of the other party to argue the validity of the feelings?

3) Am i being vain?

4) Does anybody fucking care?

5) Is anyone happy that i have come out of my "non-confrontational" shell and decided to deal with this bullshit head on?

6) Does anybody doubt for a second that this is nothing other than BULLSHIT?

I now have a new way to deal with raccoons on the roof.

I hose them down while wearing my new coonskin hat. Thanks to John Bell for this fashion statement, that hopefully will also make the raccoons think i mean business. (don't worry its not real, even though i wish it was)

Its fucking spammers that make up fake email addresses on my domains.

I don't have a fuckin company working at iriggs!!! Its just me!!! I can't believe that people will make up fake email addresses and just sell them. Its such a scam. But i guess they are making a shitload of money by doing it. As a result i have received the one SPAM mail over 12 times.

Now here's the great part about it. It's for a fucking church organization!!! They're nothing more than a bunch of stupid fucks trying to collect money in "God's" name. I really hate people like this. They are doing nothing but exploiting people.