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I couldn’t sleep by midnight and decided now would be an appropriate time to rebuild my team’s TF2 servers, while on my treadmill. I had created a new master copy that the updated servers would be based on and now I just had to overwrite a few thousand files and re-apply the tweaks that made each server unique. This took another four hours and another eight miles. Once the servers were updated, the peripheral services had to be updated and this took another two hours and four more miles.

I took a nap, met someone for breakfast in Philly and walked around the Pennsylvania Convention Center. After that, I dropped off my car to be serviced, walked to the AMC Neshaminy to buy tickets, and then walked to Red Robin to meet some friends for lunch before seeing Skyfall. It was 2pm and I had put 30,000 steps on my pedometer.

Between my current commute largely consisting of driving to a train station and heavy walking days like this, there are streaks of days where I walk more than I drive. I smiled at this until I got the bill to get Wanda serviced. Maybe I should drive more.

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I saw The Dark Knight Rises today with someone that I had seen a bunch of movies with. We had never sat through a movie we both enjoyed together and this was no exception. She doesn’t bring out the worst in me so much as is good at bringing out the critical in me. That’s wonderful when there’s a shared object of resentment. I think it’s the last movie we’ll see in each other’s company at least for a good long while. Another chapter closed.

Kelly asked to borrow my carpet shampooer to work out some…stains in the carpet of her new place. I was glad to have her over and I showed her how it worked. I then unloaded a few pounds of superfluous carbohydrates on her including blueberries, prunes, and raisins. She’s a good friend.

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Me: So, do you plan on seeing the New Planet of the Apes movie?
Joe: You mean Return to the Planet of the Apes?
Carl: Isn’t it Rise of the Planet of the Apes?
Me: Which was the one with DJ Marky Mark?
Joe: I think it was Return of the Rise of the Revenge of the Planet of the Apes.
Carl: Wasn’t it Back to the Return of the Rise of the Revenge of the Planet of the Apes Part II?
Me: No, I remember, it was the Return of the Rise of the Revenge of the Aftermath of the Planet of the Apes Part II Reloaded: Ariel’s Big Adventure.
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s the one.

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Ken was already awake and had searched for his lost keys for several hours by the time I woke up about eight hours after the campfire ended.  He sat politely in the kitchen and watched my house wake up as he waited for a tow truck to take his car to the dealership so that it could be re-keyed.  Kyle came over and the three of us shared a mediocre breakfast at Erwin’s Country Kitchen where the best feature was a sign that read “Attention Parents: Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy”.  I dropped Ken off at the dealership and then moved to check off my next To Do item list of giving my DVD collection to Ockanickon.

There was a time when I watched movies or at least there was a time when I bought them.  I had a peculiar notion of how to build my library in that each time I watched a movie I bought two more so that my options would grow as I consumed films.  While a nice idea this proves a fantastic way to burn through money, space, and time of which each is precious so I simply stopped buying DVDs all together except for some TV stuff.  And with the depositing of four boxes, my movie collection from 2002-2007 was gone.

Next on the chopping block: Books or Magic cards, not sure which.

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I loathe seeing movies that in any way having a technical component for a reason explained by Penny Arcade so was avoiding “The Social Network” at all costs.  The combination of Aaron Sorkin and my social cadre’s interesting in seeing it drew me there anyway, so I took some notes:

  • Network Solutions charged $34.99 to register a domain in 2003.
  • A girl referenced “I hope it’s more cats that look like Hitler, I can’t get enough of those”.  catsthatlooklikehitler.com wasn’t created until 2006 while the period of time of the movie then was 2003/4.
  • Trent Reznor did the arrangement of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” used during the crew race.  Also, they used tilt-shift a bunch to get a ridiculously narrow depth of field at the race.
  • The color temperature of the lighting was heavy-handed.  The Mark Zuckerberg character was alternatively lit warmly and coolly depending on if he were friend or ruthless-web-exec.
  • The film had a “flame artist”, which I think was only used during the scene where a scarf is lit on fire.  The job also listed of “file wrangler” seemed much tougher to me.
  • During many of the scenes where it appears Mark is doing FB stuff, the address is shown as 127.0.0.1 which is the localhost and probably wouldn’t be connected to anything.
  • There’s a scene where the Winklevosses both appear features a guy with an Arm & Hammer shirt, I giggled.  (The Winklevosses were played by Armand Hammer).

For the first 90 minutes Mark was my hero to the point where I wanted a halloween costume of him which was then reversed during the supposed Shaun Parker-induced backstabbing of Eduardo which, like the break-up of Mark and his girlfriend, is not an accurate representation of what happened.  The wit and speed of the dialog is vintage Sorkin but I largely agree with Lawrence Lessig that the writing missed the point.  Lessig does a wonderful job explaining the magic that I only noticed because I read his review first but may have colored my opinion.

Finally, the closing where Mark refreshes the page waiting for his former girlfriend’s response should have had “I Promise You” by When In Rome playing as it faded out.

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The day in Dallas was just as I like them to be; we walked around, talked, and ate.

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I want little else except if there’s something very compelling to see.  We went to an art museum which would have closed in 90 minutes so we simply waited for the rest of our party in the atrium which acted nicely as a softbox.  Later, we walked to dinner and Dallas’s skyline was illuminated.

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Along the way there were more specific spots that looked better:

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I was tempted to use content-aware fill to remove the top of Dallas’s head but I’m leaving  it there as a polite reminder that doing the work in-frame is better than spending time in post.

We retired to the hotel room and two of my least favorite activities started, watching a movie and playing Scrabble.  I’m not terribly good at Scrabble in the grand scheme of things but I do little things like spell out letters and such resulting in the word “ens” being contested with far more vigor than I expected.  Movies encourage non-talk which is, to me, a waste of everyone’s time.  The movie was “The Protector” which is about a dude defending elephants.  The movie featured something very real in that its combat [non-sequitor link] largely consisted of dick punches.  Community came through counting the dick punches, anticipating tropes, and coming up with dick-based slogans.  This was followed by watching Jet Li in “Fearless” which features no documented dick punches.  Maybe that’s a way to identify the quality of a martial arts movie.

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I don’t generally look at movie trailer sites except that those I follow on Twitter have inundated me recommendations to check out the avatar generator for the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie.  I encountered the perennial problem of such tools for me:

  • Nobody is ever fat, just chubby
  • Artists rarely allow for a custom dunlop editor
  • One is often limited to having a single chin
  • There’s little room between blonde and dark brown
  • Shorts are either ridiculously short or ridiculously long

So, given the above restrictions, this was the closest I was able to get:

I think the sword sells it

I admit, the above is a little indulgent, I normally don’t wear an ascot with sandals.

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Joe and I wanted to see Moon this weekend but on seeing it only showing in Princeton and not wanting to go Princeton we wound up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.  About four minutes I noticed something.  Ever time a turtle made contact with some in combat is was via a swift kick to the throat.  9 of 10 combatants were defeated via throat kick and the 10th was hit in the head and then the solar plexus, averaging out to a throat kick.

I wonder if that was a side effect of the costume or if the actors received special throat guards for combat scenes.

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Joe and I wanted to see Moon this weekend but on seeing it only showing in Princeton and not wanting to go Princeton we wound up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.  About four minutes I noticed something.  Ever time a turtle made contact with some in combat is was via a swift kick to the throat.  9 of 10 combatants were defeated via throat kick and the 10th was hit in the head and then the solar plexus, averaging out to a throat kick.

I wonder if that was a side effect of the costume or if the actors received special throat guards for combat scenes.

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JJ Abrams Star Trek was a 12.  Easily blowing away First Contact and Undiscovered Country as my favorite.  Some notes:

  • When Chekov Harold Zulu Sulu raises his hand to indicate his skill in hand-to-hand combat he should have shouted “pick me, I’m Asian!”
  • Spock has cauliflower ear, he didn’t previously.  Probably got it kickin’ ass and taking apostrophed names on Vulcan.
  • JJ Abrams either bought a lens flare plugin for FinalCut Pro or bought them in bulk from Costco
  • The navigational deflectors didn’t deflect the debris around Vulcan

In other news I found that the guy I slyly called a jerk at the Neshaminy Red Robins remembers me from January.  Time to grow a beard and wear sunglasses or start going to the red Robins in Oxford Valley.  I’m kinda impressed/scared he remembered an offhanded comment made to a server via napkin from four months ago.