Happy Holidays

Merry Xmas, Happy new year. Blah, Blah. Hopefully everyone is well and having a good year end. Weta is closed for two weeks at the end of every year, so my poor widdle typing abused hands and my muddled brain are getting a rest. There are heaps of new pix up on flikr

STFU & GBTW's photostream

and Mrs. STFU put her xmas letter up in blog format.

Mrs. STFU's blog

Both of those are set to be relatively private. If you don't have permission and think you should, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I'll see you all next year.

Surrender

Ok, I surrender. I give up trying to run a web server from the office. I signed up at flikr.com and I've started uploading the stuff from my gallery. It's here

My flikr photostream

but I've got the permissions set pretty strictly so I'll have to add you as a friend or family before you'll be able to see anything. Let me know your login.

Base

wingsuit base jumping from doubleA on Vimeo.

Help

So we're eating. W is spooning whatever it was we were having, some sticky, food type substance onto #4's plate. Sticky is the important concept here. It's not just dinner, it's sticky dinner. No, I don't remember what it was, doesn't matter, it was sticky, that's the important bit. Ok? We're all on the same page? Can we continue please? So Mrs. is shaking the spoon up and down a bit, since, not only is the dinner sticky, it's tenacious. It's clinging, nay, sticking to the spoon with great determination. It's late in the fourth quarter and the home team of food and various coefficients of static friction are looking unbeatable as W, gravity and inertia can't seem to get the offense together.

"#4 can you help me out, please?" says W, looking for a utensil to come off the bench and give the offense a lift.

#4 stops talking to #1, quicky asseses the situation, reaches out and grabs W's hand holding the spoon and starts shaking it up and down. Cal beats Stanford. Down Goes Frazier. Hilarity ensues.

Official

It's official, I signed new contract on Friday that will carry me through almost to the end of the show. I'm officially a 'CG Supervisor'. We're still waiting to hear back from immigration on the status of the application for residency, and having a contract extension should help. Residency will make it easier to get a home loan, and so on down the line. Hopefully the new deal will be the first domino. I'm still supposed to be in New Orleans in August. Maybe I'll take a couple days and hit the East Coast.

Action

If there's one thing I know, it's "people suck". Aside from that, another thing I know is movies.

Why Jason Statham is the planet’s purest action star


See E? It's not just me. You've got to work on your movie picking skills.

North: Part 1

So there ended up being five of us. The guy with the Indian couldn't get a warrant of fitness in time, since the bike had just arrived in the country (sounds just like last time, no?) but we picked up another rider. There was me on my 600rr, Duncan on a 1000rr, Grant on a late 80's Ducati 750-F1 and Reese on a late 90's Wide Glide Harley. And Shawn, who isn't 'allowed' to ride after he crashed the last time he went for a Sunday ride with Duncan and myself, but who didn't want to miss out on a weekend away, driving his 1990 300zx turbo. All the motorcycles met at a cafe on Oriental Parade around nine o'clock Saturday morning and headed out from there, up SR1 towards our first waypoint, Stratford, 314 klicks.


View Larger Map


Not only is SR1 straight and boring, it was a three day weekend, so the traffic was horrendous, until we got a couple of hours away from Wellington. But still, boooooooooring. Shawn had left a couple of hours before us, and we caught up to him just in time to stop in Whanganui for lunch. After lunch a by-god real Irish pub, I'm talking bagpipe music here, we gave Shawn another head start and continued North. Now that the traffic was thinning out, Shawn never had a chance. We overtook him almost immediately, and headed for Stratford. I think we got into Stratford around two o'clock. We waited for Shawn and got gassed up and headed up into the hills on The Forgotten World Highway to our final destination for the day, The Whangamomona Hotel.



View Larger Map

Again we gave Shawn a head start, figuring that we would catch him before we actually got to where we were going. And we did. Right here.


So, there we are, in the middle of nowhere. And believe me, I know the middle of nowhere when I see it, I used to live there. We're in the middle of nowhere, and all we have to get Shawn's car out of the ditch is four motorcycles. We're fucked. As fate would have it a very handy man in a van came by and helped us get the car out of the ditch.


After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Z was pulled from the ditch. The Z had, rather convincingly, lost is short, and intense, argument with the fence.

It ran, poorly. Luckily for Shawn, Grant, who had come along on the Ducati, is actually the handiest man in the known universe. We, and when I say we, I mean that I stood around taking pictures, had to rip quite a few parts of the front of the car that were rubbing on the front wheel when you tried to turn. You know the scene in "Armageddon" where the drilling guys are going over the rovers and pulling parts off and throwing them away? Yeah, like that. I was just impressed that Grant actually knew what the things he was pulling out from under the wheel well were.

So we kind of slowed it down and shepherded Shawn and the mortally wounded Z the rest of the way to Whangomomona. It's just as well, right after where Shawn crashed, that road turns into a real motherfucker. I managed to only have one crap my pants moment, after which I thanked my rapidly fading 40 year old reflexes and promised myself that I would invite every last engineer from Honda that worked on the 600rr over to my house for a beer, because that bike is a god damn miracle of modern technology. Every time I think I've found out how far I can push that thing, I find out I'm wrong. So The Forgotten World Highway is a very technical ride and I'm either not as good a rider as I thought, or Reese, who came on his Harley, is batshit crazy, as he had no trouble keeping up with the sportbikes. Hopefully it's a little of both, either way, I was in awe. One turn leads to another and before you know it. We're in Whangomomona. Look at the pretty machines! If you look very close at the rear tire of my 600, you can see how far towards the rim that brand new Pirelli is scrubbed out. Woo-hoo.



Day one ended with everyone in one piece. A big meal, some rugby on the telly and a couple glasses of Laphoraig later (I'm not sure when I turned into a scotch drinker) it was time to call it a day, we did have to go back out the way we came the next day. And we still had to figure out what to do about the Z. Stay tuned. Same Z time, same Z channel

Busy As

I'm responsible for some stuff that has to be done by the end of the year. Pretty busy, not much blogging.

Knife

Fun With Fireworks

As a denizen of SoCal, it's shocking to be able to run down to the Wherehouse (NZ version of Target) and by fireworks I spent $40 and had enough fireworks in my car to get 5 to 10 in Southern California. Fucking A. Guy Fawkes Day was Wednesday, but I had a basketball game at 9:00, so we lit some of the sparklers and spinners before I had to go play. I've got the rest saved up for New Year's Eve. Here's a couple pictures of the crew and their sparklers.






Not too bad for handheld.

Variation

Paul Gilbert is one of my favorite guitar players. This is a good example of why.

Right

I don't care what the polls say, ask John Kerry about polls. I'll believe that McCain won't win when I see it. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AMERICA, DO THE RIGHT THING. I DON'T WANT TO BE BACK HERE LATER TONIGHT SAYING "I TOLD YOU SO".

The Unit

My very good friend Dave is the Effects Supervisor on The Unit. Chewie thinks it's boring.

Shhhh! Don't tell mom I'm on the couch!

Home Again

At home, well, I was home for thirty seconds and then I came to work. Am in one piece. No worries. More later.

Stupid Rain

Well, hitting the road with the bike tomorrow AM and of course its pissing down at the moment, got my fingers crossed for it to clear up tomorrow.

South? No!

I got a new NZ driver's license last week. It's a really horrible picture, but, I transferred my California Motorcycle endorsement to my NZ license. Yay! Which means I'm 100% legal for next weekend. What's that you say? What's happening next weekend? Well, I'll tell you. It's the second semi-whenever motorcycle weekend getaway for men warily eyeing that thing sneaking up on them in the rearview mirror that looks suspiciously like middle age. That thing. We're ditching the South Island and it's crap weather and heading North for a couple days. We're going to head up to Taranaki, where, at the end of a little road called State Highway 43, there's a little town called Whangamomona (Wh is 'f' in Maori). Doesn't sound too exciting? What if I tell you that SH43 is about 150km long, and usually takes three to five hours to drive it and when I say that Whangamomona is small, I mean small.




So traffic? Not so much. And one more thing, what if I told you that no one calls it SH43, it's the "Forgotten World Highway". How does this sound?

"Built on colonial bridle paths formed in the late 19th century, the highway is remote and mysterious to the extreme. "A bit upsy downsy" is how one local resident puts it - a classic New Zealand understatement to describe a road that hugs the rugged contours of the land to provide a natural roller coaster experience"

Sounds like Oh .. Hell .. Yeah. Only 4 bikes this time and one of them is a fully restored Indian so I'm not sure that really counts. Since Shawn can't ride since his accident, he's going to drive, so we have a chase car for gear and luggage. I'll have a camera this time and I'm gong to try to rig something up to get some 'bike's-eye' footage. Also, since we do have a chase car, I'm going to take my Powerbook and jot down my thoughts as I go, so I'm not trying to remember what happened months later. Shoud be fun. I get to keep going as long as I keep coming home in one piece so keep yer fingers crossed.

Review: Body of Lies

As much as I hate to say it, I think DiCaprio has turned into one of the better actors in Hollywood today. He stars with Russel Crowe in this political action flick based on Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’ 2007 novel about a CIA operative who's working official cover in the middle east. Ridley Scott is one of my favorite directors and he delivers again here, deftly managing a complex plot. Crowe and DiCaprio both give excellent performences. Quite unlike a Bond movie, it's a very gritty look into what I imagine the world of "spies" is actually like. My problem with this film is that the story is a little flat. While somewhat interesting, it certainly isn't new and considering the subject matter, not nearly as compelling as it could have been. A good movie for the most part, but, come on, it couldn't even beat a Talking Animal Movie at the box office it's opening week, so I imagine that most people will see it from their couch. Worth watching.


Six out of Ten

Review: Babylon AD

I'm a sucker for Action/Sci-Fi, and I wouldn't say that I'm a Vin Diesel fan, but he can be all right in the right movie. This is not that movie. I honestly don't know how this movie even got to the point where they put images on film. The story is dumb. I could go on and on about all the things that are wrong with this movie, but I'm going to sum it up in two words. Don't fucking bother.


Three out of Ten.

Walk

The weather has been really great the last few days, especially nice since the kids are all on break for a couple of weeks. We went with Sean and Lynette and their kids and dogs with our dogs down to Seatoun beach.


the kids can't stop climbing up stuff


or climbing down stuff

and the doggies love to play in the ocean


There's lots cool stuff to see

When we got back, we had some knackered doggies

The kids still had so much energy, some of them reached critical mass

BBQ followed


and to make sure the day wasn't a total loss, I lost the car keys at the beach, but it was OK since the spare set was in the truck ... the locked truck that I could unlock ... if I only had some keys.

Cool Shit

Tom Rothman (Head of Fox) talks Avatar

IESB: So, potentially, this is a franchise?

TR: If it does well, yes, absolutely, in terms of an arena a whole new world. But for us, it isn't any of that, it isn't even the technology, it isn't even the look and the world all of which is the coolest shit I've ever seen, it isn't even any of that, it's that it's a great story. It's just a great story ...

Review: Taken

I've been seeing the trailers for this for a while and it seemed like a pretty decent action flick, but Liam Neeson, as an ass-kicking ex-spy? I wasn't quite sure I was going to buy that one. It turns out that he's pretty good, and a pretty good fit for the role. A role that included some serious ass-kicking. Neeson was pretty good as the ex-agent, ex-husband, ex-father.

This is what a spy movie should be like, And Neeson what what a spy on a mission should be. No questions, no prisoners. People that don't get shot in regular spy movies? In this movie, they get shot. The whole thing is pretty visceral. Unfortunately, it's also the problem with this movie. The premise is simple, but effective. The action is great. The dialogue? Horrendous. The director knows how to direct an action sequence, but either doesn't recognize bad acting, can't be bothered to ask his actors to act well, doesn't know how or just doesn't care. We're talking groan worthy dialogue, just awful.

This one hasn't had too much success at the box office, but I really liked it. I can forgive the bad dialogue and acting since the action was great. You might not want to spend $11.00 to see it in the theater if you're not a big action buff, but it's a definite rental. One that I give


Seven Stars

Review: Wall-E

It must get boring for the guys at Pixar, everything they do is awesome. Not only that, but they really are getting better and better and better at making movies. Wall-E is not only the best movie that Pixar has ever made, it's the best movie that I've seen this year, and it's quite possibly one of the best movies I have seen, ever. There's not a single negative thing I have to say about this movie. It doesn't make for much of a review. Awesome this. Beautiful that. Kids liked it. Funny. Timely. Blah, blah, blah. Go see it so Pixar makes some more money, so they keep making movies like this one.




Ten Stars

Bailout

So the House and Congress let the White House bully them into rushing the most important financial decision, if not since 1929, then ever, passing some god forsaken disaster of a bail out for Wall Street. Private Hudson, what do you have to say about that?

.500

The Tribe was the second best team in baseball after the first week of July (It's true, look it up) but after their disaterous start to the season it was only good enough to fininsh third in the AL Central at a dead even 81-81. Last year's ALCS collapse still stings a bit, but they're a good young team and should be back in the mix next season. I consider myself a true fan. I will perservere.

In other baseball news that I've been meaning to comment on. OMG the Dodgers got Manny from Boston at the trade deadline. MAN-EE. MAN-EE. MAN-EE. MAN-EE. Thank you dumb ass Red Sox management. Thankyouthankyouthankyou. Manny torched NL pitching for the last six weeks of the season, hitting .396 with 17 homers, 53 RBI, a .489 OBP and .743 slugging (if you don't follow baseball, that's just ill. Manny Ramierez is one of the best right handed hitters to ever play the game of baseball.) propelling my adopted baseball team the Dodgers to the NL west title. Which I missed because I'm in god damn New Zealand again. I didn't make it to a game during Siggraph, which makes this only the third(?) year in probably 20 years or so that I didn't see at least one baseball game.

I'm going to feel a little bad when they knock The Cubbies out of the playoffs. As an Indians fan, I feel the pain of the Cubs fans who've been literally waiting a lifetime for a World Series title, but, too bad for you. How does this fairy tale end? Manny hits a game, and series, winning bomb in the seventh game, against the Red Sox. That would be awesome. The Red Sox fans were lovable when they were like the Cubs and Indians fans, but after two recent World Series wins, they're just dicks. Fuck 'em. I hope Manny breaks their hearts.

Review: Hellboy 2 - The Golden Army

Mrs. STFU and I saw, this, hmmmmm, maybe three weeks ago? I really liked the first one. This one, meh. It felt like Del Toro was trying to hard to take everything to the next level. Part of the reason I liked the first one was that, even though it was out there, you could kind of buy it. It was almost believeable. The sequel was just off the hook, over the top, like, out there man. Too much character pseudo-development, too fantastical a story. It was all just a little bit forced. The effects were competent, and the action was decent, it's just not as good as the first one. The reviewers on rottentomatoes.com love it, which just goes to show you that movie critics are idiots.



Five out of Ten

UPDATE

It's been a little crazy around here. I had a birthday. I'm 3 movies behind on my reviews. Basketball has started again so my Wednesday nights are full. Work is good. Work is full on. Getting a promotion is a double edged blade sometimes. Haven't talked to anyone at home in a while. It's getting warm though. Spearfishing weather soon. Had the second semi-not-really-regular-whenever-we-feel-like-it pancake breakfast at Casa del Smith. Twenty seven people! Not including us!! Do you know how god damn long it takes to cook seven pounds of bacon? A while. Good times and I have some pix so it will eventually get it's own post.

Help Wanted

Best ... help wanted ad ... ever





P is Kiwi-speak for crystal meth, btw.

Jones

The latest republican meme seems to be that the subprime mortgage crisis is the fault of .. wait for it .. Bill Clinton. Ummmmmmm. No? A little? Ok, a little. Who can you trust, besides The Daily Show? I trust Editor & Publisher, The Nation and these guys

Where Credit Is Due: A Timeline of the Mortgage Crisis

Required reading for this topic

Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Glass-Stengall

Remember folks, when McCain gets elected, Phil Gramm is going to be the Secretary of the Treasury. Good luck with that.

Trust

I keep hearing about how Jon Stewart is now "the most trusted man in America" and how The Daily Show is the place get The Real News ... This has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Don't get me wrong, I love The Daily Show. But it's funny because I already know what's going on. I have a clue. Liberals watching TDS without a clue are no better than the idiots who parrot the talking points on Rush, or that go to Hannity for their news.

Calling

I'm calling it. I know, "what about the debates?". Fuck that, the debates don't matter. They don't matter. It's over people. It's over, and McCain is going to win. He is. I know you don't want to hear it, you don't want to believe it, but I think you know that it's true. The Americal electorate is stupid and the American electorate is racist and every bible banging yenta soccer mom from Devner to Pittsburgh and all the way down to the Gulf coast is going to equate every attack by Democrats on Palin as a personal affront. Karl Rove has been fucking the DLCC in the ass for, what, three presidential election cycles now? Every four years he shows them exactly how to win an election in the US, and they still just don't get it. The Democratic party is an object lesson is what not to do in an election. It's a dead heat. It's a fucking dead heat with a trillion dollar albatross hanging around McCain's neck. With the most woefully unqualifed running mate, possibly ever. The crazy little man is riding a eight year tsunami of failure into the election, and it's a dead heat. The Republicans are going to play nasty, they're going to purge democratic voters from the rolls, they're going to cheat where they can. All they have to do is keep it close until November and you're all going to wake up one morning in February to see that we've invaded Iran. Paranoid? Fuck that. Those things are allready happening. It sucks. The American electorate is stupid and will not only get the government that it wants, but will certainly get the government that it deserves.

Oh yeah, we're bad.

"Weta is running four clusters that are each equipped with 156 of HP's new 2-in-1 blade servers, and use liquid cooling to manage the heat loads. The Weta render farms currently hold spots 219 through 222 on the current Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers."

State Of The Art Data Center For Weta Digital

Torture

Really great piece from Elaine Scarry

Presidential Crimes
Moving on is not an option

very long, lots of footnotes. Guaranteed to piss you off.

IQ

Looking to break into CG? Maybe just digital photography?

Check your color IQ

I got a 3 on an uncalibrated Samsung SyncMaster 204b at work. Should've gotten a 0, but it was at work and I was trying to not waste too much time.

Sad

'Peanuts' animator Bill Melendez dies

Responsible for 'Charlie Brown Christmas,' 'Great Pumpkin'

Flip Flop

This was aired before Palin was announced as the VP candidate. Brilliant.

Goggles

Courtesy of fark.com





I laughed.

Contest

What ... the ... fuck? Are Obama and The Crazy Little Man having a fucking contest to see who can pick the worst running mate. Good luck with the next four years America.


Historical Analysis of the '08 Election.

Review : The Dark Knight

Just saw this in my drafts for this blog. Got as far as putting the picture and links in and then promptly forgot about it. It's been a while since I've seen it at this point. Sure it made a bazillion dollars at the box, sure it's good, but was it that good? I don't think that it was. It was certainly too long. I think Robert Downey Jr said it best when he said.

"didn't get it. ... [I] still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character." He said that while watching the movie, it dawned on him, "I get it. This is so high-brow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie." He then added, "You know what? Fuck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

Which is, maybe, a little harsh, but Downey is a Marvel whore now, so what do you expect, but this sequel wasn't any better than Batman Begins. Don't get me wrong. It's a great movie, and you should see it. It's just not all that, as the kids say now-a-days. It's about twenty minutes too long and parts of it feel a little forced, bit it's still pretty good. Good enough to earn


8/10

Review: Wanted

Here's everything you need to know about this movie in three easy steps

1. Physics ... who needs it?

2. Long on action, short on story.

3. Angelina Jolie is ridiculously hot.


Like Tropic Thunder, I'm torn between a three and a four for this movie. I was entertained, certainly, but it could've been so much better. I going to take that as I sign that I should be rating on a scale of ten, instead of five and give Wanted


6/10

Review : Tropic Thunder

Checkout at the hotel in LA was at noon, and our flight was at 8:30 so some of had some time to kill Saturday. There was a theater across the street from the hotel, so Nick, Keith, Simon and I walked over to check out a matinee showing of Tropic Thunder to help wile away the afternoon.

I've seen a lot of movies. I've been in a lot of movie theaters. I've seen movies at Mann's Chinese and the Arclight. I've seen world premieres at the Hollywood Bowl. I've been to drive-ins. I've seen movies on big screens. I've seen movies on small screens. I have never, never, in my life been in a movie theater as awful as the one that we saw this movie in. Simon and I were going to get popcorn until Keith pointed out the, sadly full, glue roach traps just out of sight around a corner in the lobby. I was wearing sandals and I really didn't want to put my feet on the floor while we were watching the movie. The carpet was dirty. The seats were threadbare. Bad screen, bad sound. It was just terrible.

Which is too bad, because Tropic Thunder is really, really funny. It does a pretty good job of taking the piss out of Hollywood in general, an actors in particular. Robert Downey is brilliant as the melanin-challenged Australian, but Tom Cruise is just as good as the studio exec. The two of them are almost good enough to make me forget that I hate Ben Stiller. Worth seeing. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and round up to


Four Stars.

Quickie Movie Reviews

All the new Qantas flights from Auckland to LAX have on demand movies. In no particular order, I can remember watching ...

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Neil Patrick Harris reprising his role as himself? Classic. Some flat spots, but overall pretty god damn funny. George Bush as lovable pot head. Awesome.

Three Stars

Jason Statham, the most underrated action hero in Hollywood today in a supposedly true story of Royal intrigue and West End thuggery in Early Seventies London. Pretty good. It's no "Snatch", but worth a rental.

Three Stars





Crap. Put me right to sleep. You know you've fucked up when you can make George Clooney look bad. No Country for Old Men might not be the Cohen's worst movie after all. Fuck that, yes it is.

Two Stars

I've read the book that this was based on so I was looking forward to this one. Spacey is excellent. Good Movie

Four Stars








I think that I'm forgetting one but it's all a bit of a blur.

Day [4 .. n]

So classes started on tuesday, 8:30 to 6:00 or so every day, which is hard enough when you're not jetlagged. On top of that, the subject matter is sometimes, shall we say, dry? So going to a party Tuesday night and being up until two or three in the morning was not condusive to being a fully functioning human at 8:00 in the morning. It was my one and only party this year as I am getting far too old for that shit.

Classes went until thursday and I went to a lot of stuff. Saw some presentations for "Wall-E", "Horton", "Kung-Fu Panda", "Pirates III" and "Indiana Jones". Went to a couple really interesting technical presentations on hair scanning and rendering. By Friday my brain was jam packed with new stuff. Spent a couple hours on Thursay walking around the Booths, you can't walk ten feet without seeing someone you know, so it's cool to catch up with people. Frankie and I went down to Imageworks on Friday for a while and I caught up with some of the old timers there.

Going home on Saturday was an adventure. I had so much crap with me that I bought in LA, that I totally got profiled and hassled by customs in Auckland, missed my flight and had to get the next one down to Wellington.

I wish that I could have made it to a Dodgers game, but it's amazing how busy you feel like you need to be when you're there on someone else's dime. Looking forward to next year in New Orleans.

Day 3

Pixar took us out to dinner on Monday, or maybe Weta did, all I know is that I didn't pay. And since we were meeting with the software development guys, and the head of software development at Pixar has a brother who just happens to be a world famous chef, who just happens to have an Italian restaraunt in Los Angeles with a two month wait for a table, well, we got treated pretty well, I guess. All fourteen of us. We got to sit in the private room in the back. I wouldn't say that Italian is my favorite food, but this was a very good meal. I even drank some red wine, and it wansn't awful. For me that's saying something, since I usually can't stand the stuff.

President of Walt Disney Feature Animation and founding member of Pixar Ed Catmull gave the keynote speech for Siggraph. He was awesome. He talked about "ideas" vs. "people". In short, you can give a great idea to a mediocre team, and they'll just fuck it up, but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they'll either make it work, or throw it away and come up with somehting better.

Day 2

I don't travel well across multiple time zones. Very jet lagged. Got up late, 10:45 local time, 5:45 biological time.   Went to Chano's for lunch. OMG best burrito in LA.  Dan L and I walked down to the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Stopped and checked out the Architecture of the Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry up close.  Both very cool.  Work took us out to eat at a fancy, of course, Mexican place.  Stayed up too late at the fourth annual Siggraph poker came.  Won a couple bucks.

Quickie Day 1

Left Wellington at 11:15. Five hour layover in Auckland. Seat next to very large, not fat, just a very large person. Squeezed into seat. Kid kicking back of seat. Insane mom. At various points in the flight she told her daughter that "we don't use toothpaste, it's poison" and "no it's not butter, it's margarine, you can't eat that, it's made of plastic" and something about her "third eye" and "astral travel". Left my favorite brown hat on the plane. Picked up rental car with Guy, went to In-and-Out. Discovered that I had lost all my travel documentation and my per diem, ouch. Went to hotel and checked in. Showered. Actually took mass transit in LA to Hollywood from downtown. Still had to take a $10 cab ride from a totally insane Armenian taxi driver from the subway stop to The Guitar Center. Mrs. bought me a brand new JS1000 for my birthday/father's day. Very first brand new guitar. Very excited. $30 cab ride back to hotel. Haven't really slept in much in 48 hours. LA is a shitty place to not have a car.

Talk

When it comes to the police, in my opinion there's only one thing you need to remember, despite the "protect and serve" claim on every cruiser in the country, the police are not your friends.  They are not there to help you.  Now, I have another rule for dealing with the police.  Keep your fucking yap shut.  If a cop wants to ask you a question, refuse.  We're talking "a nice young policeman came up to me as I was walking down the street seemingly at random and wanted to ask me a question".  No, no, no, no.  Never talk to the police.  Think I'm paranoid?  Well, maybe so, but here's why I'm right about this in two parts ...

one from a lawyer



and one from a cop

Flat

According to the BBC, there's quite a healthy flat-earth subculture on teh intarwebs

Do they really think the earth is flat?

John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, has this to say

"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."

I'm going to go with, C) People who think the earth is flat are preaching blind faith, monumentally ignorant and anti-intellectuals of the worst kind and while it's nearly impossible to put into words how much people like that aggravate me, it's a nice segue to an interesting article that talks about how the internet is, instead of spreading truth, enabling this kind of idiot to only receive positive reinforcement of his totally fucked world view and his "pursuit of willful delusion".

My Facts, Your Facts

Holy crap the Greeks knew that the earth wasn't flat. In 400BC they had already figured out how big and how far away the moon and the sun were. Flat earthers are a creation of religious backlash against science in Victorian England. Thank you Christian Apologists, the same knuckleheads that brought you this


Anti-Itellectualisim, it's not just for the dark ages anymore!

Family

We are finally, after seven months, a family again. We picked up the dogs on Saturday. I think it's going to take Zipper about seven more months to calm down. I'm pretty confident they are very happy to be 'home'.

Review : Hancock

Another Fourth of July, another Will Smith movie. Can someone tell me exactly how the Fresh Price got to be the biggest, baddest, most bakable movie star in the universe? Let's see ... Independance Day, Men in Black, Wild Wild West, I Robot, Hitch, Pursuit of Happyness and I am Legend. That's what, a couple billion dollars box office? Some of those are actually really good movies and Smith is actually really, really good in a couple of those movies.  Can he continue his summer movie domination with Hancock? Does the pope wear a funny hat?  The critics hate this movie, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why I like it.   I think the only thing it proves is that critics are idiots.  Mrs. STFU did like it as well, which means that you'll probably like it.  Smith is great as the anti-hero Hancock. That's about all I can say without getting into spoiler territory.  It's a good movie, it not the usual Will Smith summer blockbuster, but I liked it enough to give it





Four Stars

Review : Kung Fu Panda

I'm a little behind on the movie reviews. AM has been talking about seeing this movie for, oh, I don't know, like, a year. It finally came out, and off we went. it's Dreamworks' first real animated offering that wasn't a Shrek movie since, hmmmm, Over the Hedge? It's been a while, anyway. The only preconceived notion that I had going in to this movie was that I was pretty sure that I was going to annoyed by Jack Black, as the voice of the Panda. I was, thankfully, not. Yeah, you could tell that it was Jack Black, but he at least attempted to play a character. Quite unlike Shifu, who was played so brilliantly that when the credits rolled, I was utterly astonished to find that he was voiced by Dustin Hoffman.

I flat out loved this movie. I loved the look, and the art direction. The plot was offbeat, but still engaging enough that at the end, when it all came around full circle, I wasn't sitting there thinking "yeah, I got that thirty minutes ago, thanks". I was genuinely caught off guard. Maybe because I'm slow, maybe I was just too busy being entertained, hard to say. The escape of Tai Lung is probably the most awesome action sequence I have seen in a film, live action included, in a long time. I usually don't like it when all of the voices are played by "name" actors, who, in general, couldn't voice act their way out of a paper bag. And although most of the voice actors for Kung Fu Panda were A-List types, it didn't bother me as much as I would have thought.

This movie was funny because it was a funny movie, not because it was a movie that had funny people in it. It was hugely entertaining. Good fun, enjoyed by the entire gang and can only be given


Five Stars

Gallery

I am sitting at my desk, at work, right now, looking at

www.thisoneparticularharbor.com

so I know that it's working.

Want

Nerf chain gun, fully auto, belt fed. Want.

Teh Werk

Sorry about not posting. I've been slammed for the last two or three weeks at work. Starting to calm down a bit. Getting ready to go to LA in August.

Promo

Just a quick news flash. I was given a field promotion to CG Supervisor on my show. It doesn't really mean anything more than recognition for the job I'm already doing, but it's official, so it's nice to be appreciated.

Rules

I'm not usually one to pass on e-mails, but this is pretty funny.

Rules for Men.

• Men are NOT mind readers.
• Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.
• Sunday sports It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
• Crying is blackmail.
• Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
• Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
• Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
• Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become Null and void after 7 Days.
• If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.
• If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one
• You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
• Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.
• ALL men see in only 16 colours, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A colour. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.
• If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
• If we ask what is wrong and you say 'nothing,' We will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
• If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, Expect an answer you don't want to hear.
• When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine...Really.
• Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as instant replay or the designated hitter.

Same Old

NAACP head: Obama win won't solve racial injustice

The head of the NAACP, Julian Bond, makes a valid point.

Julian Bond, a veteran civil rights leader, said Obama's candidacy doesn't ''herald a post-civil rights America, any more than his victory in November will mean that race as an issue has been vanquished in America.''

He follows that up with this bit.

But he drew loud applause when he said the country, and ''all of us here,'' are taking pride in the success in this year's campaign by a candidate who couldn't have stayed in some cities' hotels a few decades ago.

Yeah, when people would have looked at Obama and seen A Black Man. Like Mr. Bond can't look at Obama and see anything but ... A Black Man. How can Bond expect anyone else to see Obama as just a person if he doesn't?

South: Part IV

Did you think I was never going to finish? Hell, I didn't know if I would ever finish.  When we last saw our intrepid group of two wheeled maniacs, they had just barely beaten the rain to Hanmer Springs for lunch .......





We're in Hanmer Springs for lunch ... and it's raining, and it's raining, and it's raining.  We eventually figured out that it wasn't going to stop raining, so we better get moving if we wanted to get to Murchison before it was dark. We'd only come about 130 klicks so far, and we had about 200 to go, and we were going to have to do it in the rain.







View Larger Map





It's really too bad about the rain. It's not that any of us minded riding in the rain. Obviously we would've preferred for it not to be raining, bit it was what it was. The scenery was pretty even in the pouring rain, I would've like to have seen it in the sun.



If there's one thing the rain does, however, is separate the men from the boys, so to speak. When I say that none of us minded riding in the rain, I mean that some us didn't mind less than others. We had a tendency to get a little more spread out on this leg of our journey, meaning the two of us on the sportbikes were waiting for everyone else a bit more than usual. This included one main stop about halfway so that everyone could catch up and get a bite and wring themselves out as much as possible. Here we are in all our drowned cat glory.

Yes, we made endless fun of that pink and purple rain suit.



There's not a lot more to say about the rest of day two other than any motorcycle gear that claims to be water 'proof' eventually becomes water 'resistant', water 'logged' and finally water 'fucking useless' when subjected to a South Island summer downpour. We all managed to not die in the rain and finally pulled into the place we were spending the night, just past Murchison.

This lovely home was actually owned by an American  ex-pat from Hawaii. And when I say 'American' I mean 'Hippie' and when I say Hawaii, I mean 'Outer Space'.  I don't know where the grow house was but I'm sure it couldn't have been too far.  Here's some shots of the view from the front porch, left to right.

I was plesantly surprised.





I'm not going to get through all of Day Two tonight, so stay tuned for part five.

Yuppie?

Let me start off by saying that I like our Land Cruiser. When everyone was going to school right near home it was great. When they switched schools, it became not so great. It became, Holy Christ We're Filling Up The Tank Every Nine Or Ten Days At $150 A Pop not so great. The thing is, I'm at work most of the time and at least ninety percent of the time the car is in use, it's only for five people, but we do need a car that seats six for the times when we all are going somewhere together. Soltion? Buy another car! Problem solved with our first BMW

1994 525i. Gets a lot better milage than the Cruiser. "Just" 220,000 klicks. Only $2700 dollars. That is a crazy bargain. I really like it, which is good, since I will never get to drive it. BMW gets no love here. I don't get it. That car would easily be five or six grand in LA. It's in great shape. It's been well taken care of. All the Kiwis say "won't it be expensive to maintain?". Well, not as expensive as a car that breaks down every five minutes which is the NZ idea of a bargain. Of course, now that I've said that, it will probably fail to get me home tonight.

Pussies

Andy Orstoy gets one exactly right

Quarrantine

Got to see the dogs yesterday for a little while. I don't think that I've ever seen them quite that excited before. When we had to go, Chewie ran right to the door like he's saying, "OK guyz! Let's go!" They didn't quite get why they weren't leaving as well. The place seems nice enough, but it's not very big, and they don't have anywhere to run about. It sucks, but only one more month.

Post

Hitler as producer, classic.

Move

I just switched offices again at work, hopefully the last time for a while. At my new desk was a shiny new HP computer. Dual 2.66 GHz quad-core Xeon, 8 GB RAM and a Nvidia Quadra FX 4600. Oh yeah. That is a seriously bad ass desktop computer.

Woof II

Doggies are in Los Angeles and are set to fly out tomorrow night and arrive in Wellington Friday Morning. They'll be in Quarantine for thirty days. Those of us that don't have jobs are going to rent a bach ("batch" (stupid name for a vacation house)) ,in Levin where the dogs are, for two weeks so that they can see them every day. They only have to be isolated from other dogs. Fingers and paws crossed all around please.

Review : Price Caspian

NOTE: I don't know if anyone's noticed but the images of the posters for the movies in the reviews are links to the page for that movie on imdb.com. Now, starting with this one, the post title is a link to the page for the movie on rottentomatoes.com

I mentioned in my review for The Hulk that we managed to see two movies that weekend. On Sunday, the girls were both invited to a birtday party that kicked off with all the girls going down to Island Bay to see Prince Caspian. The boys are friends with the birthday girl's older brother and we occasionally hang out with their family and we wanted to see the movie anyway, so the rest of us sort of tagged along. The Island Bay Cinema is a 'boutique' movie theatre. I'm pretty sure that there's only two screens and each one seats maybe ... fifty people?

We took up about a quarter of the seats for that show, I think.I've read all of the Narnia books more times that I can remember and Price Caspian was never my least favorite, that honor is reserved for "The Silver Chair", but it's probably right above that. So I haven't been really geeked out to see this or anything. Since it's nearly my least favorite, I can't even remember the last time I actually read the book, but from what I remember, the movie was pretty faithful to the sounce material. The film, like the book, is a little darker and a lot more action oriented. I just don't find the material terribly engrossing. It's my understanding that this book had to be next since it's the only other one besides The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe that has all four of the kids in it and for the sake of continuity, the studio wanted to make the movie before the kids got any older. That does mean, however, that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is next, since it has Edmund, Lucy and Caspian in it, and I am totally geeked for that as it was always my favorite.

So, the kids liked it, and they're the target audience so it couldn't have been that bad. I got exactly what I expected so I'll have to give it ...

Three Stars.

Harbor

OK! I updraded some software on the PC. New version of PHP, new version of Apache, got rid of some old stuff, and, the web server seems to be working OK. So if you go to

www.thisoneparticularharbor.com

you should get the gallery.

Woof

If everything stays on target the doggies will fly out of the Atl tomorrow. We're all quite worried about them and just want the whole thing to be done with. Many props to STFU&GWTW-in-law for putting them up and putting up with them for six months.

TED

Queue

Tired : coming to work Sunday night.

Wired : no one else is here, so I'm making the render queue my bitch. My job is on about 600 cpus. Muhahahahahah.

Top Five

You can't see it, but it's there. Right down at the bottom of the page below the posts. It's a little tiny bit of html. A couple of lines really. They just archive a little bit of data every time someone reads this blog. Yes, big brother is watching, never fear, it's all anonymous. It does, however, let me know where my traffic is coming from. And that's the thing, I have no explanation for some of the traffic I get. I wrote in here for years as a sort of diary, never telling anyone about it. When I moved to NZ, it seemed a good to keep people up to date on how we're doing. The thing is, here's the data for the last week

51 Visits
22 Absolute Unique Visitors
77 Pageviews
1.51 Average Pageviews
00:02:04 Time on Site

Twenty two? Holy fuck, who are all you people? Twenty two!? in one week. I can't even begin to imagine that there's twenty two people that would be interested in what I have to say. Here's the last three months

371 Visits
145 Absolute Unique Visitors
535 Pageviews
1.44 Average Pageviews
00:01:28 Time on Site

Cool.

Well, since it seems like I get, if not a lot, then at least more traffic then I expected, I'm going to see if I can't make this a bit more interesting. I'll be playing around with my layout. So keep your eyes peeled, I don't want you to miss anything. You're probably still wondering. "Top five what?".

Things

that make us laugh.





I don't know why, but I can't look at this picture without, well, maybe not quite laughing, out loud, but it always makes me chukle.

Review: The Incredible Hulk

I'm going fairly flat out at work, we've got some stuff that has to deliver on Monday so it been a long week. We did get out to see a couple of movies last weekend, on Saturday we wen't out for dinner and a movie with Guy and Di. We went to Matterhorn for dinner, which, considering we usually just grab a kebab or thai or some such thing at the mall where the theatre is, was quite the deviation from the norm. The food is very good, but a bit on the pricey side. Well north of two bills for four and during the paying for dinner phase of the evening I insited on splitting it 50-50 and then made the mistake of letting Guy go first, since he the promptly paid for the whole thing. We ended up seeing the big green guy. I obviously, and ever so graciaously, paid for all the movie tickets. There wasn't a lot of quality cinema to be had last weekend and The Hulk was the least of all evils. Hulk was never one of my favorite comic book characters, although I remember watching the tv show a fair bit when I was young. It's a pretty good comic book/action movie, but in the back of my mind the whole thing just served as a way to get the viewer to the inevitable fight scene between The Hulk and The Bad Hulk at the end of the movie. It was a 'reboot' as Marvel, just like everyone who saw it, tried to forget the first Hulk movie had ever been made. There's and interesting cameo by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, as well as several "Stark Technologies" labels on military equipment throughout the movie. It seems like Marvel's trying to keep all their properties in the same universe, which is nice. Decent movie, far better than the first.


Three Stars