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  • Honey Flash!

    Cutey Honey
    (Cutey Honey after blocking LOTS of bullets with her sword)

    So I finally got a chance to see the Cutey Honey live action movie. It was one of the more fun movies I’ve seen recently. Cutey Honey first came out years and years ago as a TV series by Go Nagi (the individual responsible for many classic shows) and has had numerous other animated versions throughout the years. Finally, someone did enough drugs to decide that the next incarnation really needed to be a live action movie.

    What makes this movie great is that instead of going and tweaking the story too much it sticks with the same over the top feel that the anime has. It almost feels like you are watching an animated movie with live actors subbed in. It’s cheesy as all hell, but then again Cutey Honey is cheesy to begin with. My only complaint would be that the ending battle where she goes up against Sister Jill left me wanting more, but in the end it works out alright. Now I just think they should do a live action TV series. I mean, if they can do a Sailor Moon one this should be no problem! Oh yeah, and the theme song for the movie, performed by Koda Kumi, rocks.

  • QOTD 11/15/2004

    Hubert H. Humphrey
    “In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.” [via Quotes of the Day]

  • QOTD 11/14/2004

    M. C. Escher
    “He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.” [via Quotes of the Day]

  • Just What *IS* flickr Anyways?

    About 2 weeks ago I received a Nikon D70 Digital SLR camera in trade for some computer work I’ve been doing for a neighbor. I’ve long wanted an SLR of any type and this has helped energize the creative side of me a bit. It also means I’ve been putting pictures online more and making much more use of Flickr. Which has also led to many of my friends asking “so what’s so great about this Flickr thing anyways?”

    Flickr is a photo hosting/sharing service from ludicorp that’s been in beta for a while now. I think I first started using it around 8 months ago, but didn’t really get into it until the new camera. I’d fiddled around with running my own photo gallery software a few times, tried a few other services, but nothing really jumped out at me until Flickr. Flickr is all about finding ways to organize and ways to share your photos. Like most other photo hosting services you can upload pictures, create photosets (albums), etc. It also has a bit of social networking type stuff built in so that you can choose to only share photos with your friends or family.

    But where Flickr has really hooked me is with some of the other features. The biggest of which are tags. Tags are keywords you can add to a photo to provide more data about it. For instance, in this photo that I uploaded there are a bunch of tags. I can then choose to look at only pictures of mine with the tag ‘squirrel’, or I could see all the public photos on Flickr that have the tag ‘squirrel’. You can also put notes onto a picture that show up when you mouse over a certain area. Oh yes, and they also have it set up so that you can post your pictures to your blog or LiveJournal from within Flickr and they accept photocam posts too.

    One thing the tagging system has done is that some tags have a following. People will take pictures that can be tagged with a certain keyword. One of my favorites is squaredcircle, where people post pictures of circular things in a squared image. This one has enough of a following that someone has created a group for pictures like this (groups are things you can join which have their own photo collections).

    The other thing that made Flickr my choice for a photo hosting service was that someone wrote a plugin for iPhoto so that you can export your pictures straight from iPhoto (instead of saving them and uploading with the web site or one of their uploading tools). When it’s this easy I can’t help but want to post stuff all the time.

    Flickr is currently free, also also has a Pro option. With a free account you can upload 10MB of pictures a month, have 3 photosets, and people can view the 100 most recent images you have uploaded. The Pro account offers quite a bit more, you can upload 1GB per month, there’s unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth use, unlimited photosets, and permanent archiving of high-res images. In the future Ad-free browsing will be added to that. You can check out their FAQ for more info.

    The last thing I have to say about Flickr is that it has really inspired me to really learn more about taking pictures and to actually get out there and take them. The other day someone invited me to a group called ‘sky‘. For the next few days I was on the road and everywhere I went I kept looking for good shots of the sky (and I finally got one I really liked). It really ends up being quite addicting after a bit.

    Oh, and no, Flickr isn’t paying me to rave on and on about how I like them. I just think it’s one of the cooler sites out there and want more of my friends to use it.

  • I’ve Been Noticed?

    A few friends of mine have been getting trackback spam for a while now and I still didn’t quite believe it really existed. Until today. The spammers have finally discovered that I can be pinged. Luckily mt-blacklist seems to be catching at least a bit of it. It still annoys me though.

  • QOTD 11/13/2004

    Horace Walpole
    “The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.” [via Quotes of the Day]

  • More Signs of the Times

    Thinking that students might be threatening the president by performing Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”, the Secret Service paid a visit to a Boulder, CO high school this week.

    School Talent Show Draws Secret Service

    Colorado Band Singing Dylan Song Seen as Threatening President Bush

    BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 12, 2004 — Parents and students say they are outraged and offended by a proposed band name and song scheduled for a high school talent show in Boulder this evening, but members of the band, named Coalition of the Willing, said the whole thing is being blown out of proportion.

    The students told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver they are performing Bob Dylan’s song “Masters of War” during the Boulder High School Talent Exposé because they are Dylan fans. They said they want to express their views and show off their musical abilities.

    But some students and adults who heard the band rehearse called a radio talk show Thursday morning, saying the song the band sang ended with a call for President Bush to die.

    Threatening the president is a federal crime, so the Secret Service was called to the school to investigate. [abcnews.com]

    For further reading, here’s the lyrics to “Masters of War” (which was first released in 1963).

  • QOTD 11/11/04

    Robert Frost
    “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” [via Quotes of the Day]

  • A Sign of the Times?

    From CNN.com:

    TV stations canceling ‘Ryan’ telecast

    Worried about FCC sactions; film must run uncut

    NEW YORK (AP) — More than 20 ABC affiliates around the country, including two in Ohio, have announced that they won’t take part in the network’s Veterans Day airing of “Saving Private Ryan,” saying the acclaimed film’s violence and language could draw sanctions from the Federal Communications Commission.

    The decisions mark a twist in the conflict over the aggressive stand the FCC has taken against obscenity and profanity since Janet Jackson flashed the world during the last Super Bowl halftime show.

    Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning movie aired on ABC with relatively little controversy in 2001 and 2002, but station owners — including several in large markets — are unnerved that airing it Thursday could bring federal punishment. The film includes a violent depiction of the D-Day invasion and profanity.

    “It would clearly have been our preference to run the movie. We think it’s a patriotic, artistic tribute to our fighting forces,” Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, told AP Radio. The company owns three ABC affiliates in the Midwest.

    …

    Cole cited recent FCC actions and last week’s re-election of President Bush as reasons for replacing “Saving Private Ryan” on Thursday with a music program and the TV movie “Return to Mayberry.” [CNN.com]

    I don’t know about you, but I certainly find “Return to Mayberry” to be much more offensive than “Saving Private Ryan“. I really hope this isn’t some kind of sign of what TV will be like in the near future.

  • It’s Not Easy Being Green

    Since I saw the Shrek Twinkies at the store today, I just had to get some and take pictures of them. I was only able to stomach a few bites though. I’m just not a huge Twinkie fan.