I am deep into development on two sites right now, www.bwhawksoccer.com and www.tlcelectronics.com , (what you see there right now is not my work). The first one should be going live in about a week and the second one might take a couple weeks because the company is still trying to figure out exactly what they want.  Important things that I have learned,

1. XHTML Strict means nothing to IE6

2. Alpha transparencies with PNG mean nothing to IE6

3. Everything you want to do with javascript has already been done, so just use their code.

4. I want to be better at graphic design, but that’s just not going to happen, best to leave that to the pros.

I am also deep into a class on programming logic.  For loops, and while loops and structured programming and IPO charts and uml.  Delicious.

And then there is interpersonal communications… it’s so boring.

I got a very small link on laughing squid today thanks to doctor popular.  Check it out.

-Josh

Seven Pounds

This is another Will Smith movie.  Directed by Gabriele Muccino who also directed Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness.  This movie looks very good in much the same way that The Pursuit of Happyness looks very good and I’m not going to see it in much the same way I didn’t see The Pursuit of Happyness.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Who’s bright idea was it to remake this movie?  They should not be allowed within five miles of authority to green light a film.  This is a modern remake of the 1951 classic “B’” movie of the same name.  For the record the trailer is just the worst…. the absolute worst.  How does anyone expect to take a schlocky sci-fi film and turn it into something that might have box office draw?  Or at least street cred?  Theory – it can’t be done.  2nd Theory – it shouldn’t be attempted again least Hollywood dies with a remake of Manos: Hands of Fate.

Fast & Furious

What what what?!?!?!  I don’t know what it is about this franchise, but they put out the best movie trailers.  In this one (number 4 for those who are counting) Paul Walker teams back up with Vin Diesel for… um… crime? Maybe not crime?  Who cares?  The trailer rocks.  Fast & Furious is directed by Justin Lin who also directed The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift which I did not see, but many people said they liked.  Game on.

Bedtime Stories

Adam Sandler stars in this Disney film where the bedtime stories that his niece and nephew help him make up end up coming true.  The trailer is very cute and if I had a niece in the area I would very willingly bring her to see this film.  It’s directed by Adam Shankman who has built a pretty solid career turning out crappy Hollywood films (read as: The Pacifier, Bringing Down The House, Cheaper By The Dozen 2, and my favorite A Walk To Remember).

Valkyrie

Maybe it’s the scientology thing but I don’t really care to see Tom Cruise in movies anymore unless he is unrecognizable.  Valkyrie is the ‘true’ story of an attempted assassination of Adolph Hilter by some members of the SS.  See?  Tom Cruise tries to kill Hilter so Tom Cruise can’t be all bad!  Incidentally the film is directed by Bryan Singer so it has a lot of buzz and it’s written by Christopher McQuarrie who also wrote Singers breakout flick The Usual Suspects.  I think I have digressed too much.  The trailer gives away almost the entire plot of the movie, while it did make me interested to see the film I believe that these sort of trailers ought to be banned.

-Josh

Not only does it raise our taxes it also amends the Minnesota constitution in a move that says “let’s take two completely unrelated things and make people vote on them like they are one thing”. And this amendment gives a dissenting voice to those who chose to have no voice at all.

It does make me wonder if this amendment had already been in place if this bill would still have passed. Should they subject it to it’s own scrutiny?

This is a message to Pawlenty and the Minnesota Legislature, STOP TAXING! STOP NEEDLESS SPENDING! Let’s fix some bridges and potholes and do the things that the government supposed to do.

-Josh

Work is going the best it has all year, knock on wood. School is also going well. Wife is good and dogs and house are well.

My M1330 on the other hand has had some problems that have caused me stress. I crashed it the other night and I’m having a nightmare of a time getting it back up to stable performance. I had a marathon session with Dell today and got nothing at all accomplished, last time I had to call Dell (5 years ago) I got the best service I have ever received from a company today I got just about the worst service. I asked for documentation specific to my M1330 on how to reinstall Vista, which drivers are specific to my machine and so on… seems like an acceptable request right? My dell service tag identifies my specific laptop and they should know exactly what drivers my laptop needs, right? Well when I asked this very simple question I was met with the audible equivalent of a stare. Why on earth would I need to know what drivers my laptop uses? After much poking and prodding and restating the question the guy (guy was supervisor of first person I talked to… first person was completely useless…. I mean that…. she told me everything from ‘it’s caused by Google Chrome’, to ‘your memory needs to be reseated’, and my personal favorite ‘windows update is breaking everyone’s computers and Dell recommends that you turn it off because it’s not compatible with your hardware’… but I digress) the guy told me that I need to install the chipset driver first and when I asked if Vista would recognize my chipset driver on installation he said ‘yes it would, but it might not be the best driver’ so I asked ‘how do I know what the best driver is?’ he back peddled and basically the whole conversation was a waste of my time and utterly (utterly) useless. Finally he provided this build order for reinstalling Vista….

Install the Hardware Drivers on the Portable Computer

Install the appropriate hardware drivers. Locate the Drivers and Utilities CD you received with your computer.

For the system to function properly, you must install your hardware drivers in the following order:

Desktop System Software or Notebook System Software

Chipset or SMBus driver

Processor Driver (if applicable)

Video

Audio (sound)

Input Drivers (keyboard/mouse)

Modem (Desktop computers have a separate CD for the modem)

Network Card

I mean wow… right? That’s just the kind of documentation that I’m glad I paid extra for.

Alright, enough venting. Time for me to get back to my javascript studies. Bye!

-Josh

1. No more solo tour. You can create a band and go through the world tour and it doesn’t matter if it’s just yourself or if you have three friends with you.

2. Quick Play; Play all songs. Now in the Quick Play mode there is an option to play all the songs in a category (i.e. apprentice, or genre).

3. The goals and ‘levels’ of the world tour are much better defined. It tells you exactly how many stars you need for a specific thing, and how many fans and so on.

4. All of my downloadable content just works.

5. World Tour over xbox live is finally an option! I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure it’s good to go.

Now the caviat. I’ve been pondering and wondering for months now about weather they are going to let you play the disc songs from Rock Band 1 in Rock Band 2 and then answer is YES! BUT!! Yes, but you have to buy a license key over xbox live for 400 points! Kinda bull shit if you ask me considering I already paid for those songs. But I’m stuck at the mercy and ponied up the dough.

I have not tried the drum trainer yet, so I’ll report back on that later.

Otherwise the game is exactly the same. When I use the game I feel ripped of for being charged again for essentially the exact same game that I already own. But then I realize that the set list owns and if I were to buy each of those songs over xbox live it would have cost way more than 60 bucks.

-Josh

Eagle Eye

Directed by Shia Laboufs live in boyfriend D.J. Caruso who also directed him Disturbia.  This trailer is pretty great, they cut it together in a way that makes me forget it stars Labouf and it is directed by Caruso.  The trailer starts with Shia getting a call from an anonymous voice telling him to escape from the feds who are out to get him.  It all seems very Matrix-y and it’s got a cool vibe.  But the movie is going to be terrible, I have already decided, and I’m sure people are going tell me months from now “It’s actually pretty good” and then I’ll be disappointed in them.

Blindness

Did you see City of God?  Did you see The Constant Gardner?  Are you like me and think they are amazing?  Me too!!!  The trailer for Blindness has a crazy dystopian Children of Men kind of feel.  A disease sweeps the world that causes people to go blind, and the infected get swept away into quarantine colonies.  Julianne Moore stays with the blind for some reason and becomes some kind of leader of the infected.  The trailer is amazing.  Ah-freaking-mazing.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Michael Cera is back as a musician snob who has one crazy night with a beautiful girl while trying to avoid his ex-girlfriend.  One thing can be said about this trailer, it sucks.  It did not make me want to see the movie, and that’s pretty significant because normally all you need to say is Michael Cera and I’m on board.  The trailer suffers from the popular syndrome of talking too much about the films plot and failing to show us why we would actually want to see the movie.  The film is directed by Peter Sollett and it’s based on a novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan and adapted for the screen by Lorene Scafaria.  Despite this trailer, Michael Cera is still enough to get me to see this film.

Death Race

Written and directed by the arch-nemesis of quality, Paul W.S. Anderson, who also brought us Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat (I guess I could soften the blow by mentioning that he also made Event Horizon).  Death Race is a remake of the ’70s era cult classic Death Race 2000 and it stars Jason Statham and a few other people.  The trailing was crappy and totally not interesting and I’m making an early judgement call that this film is going to be equally crappy and uninteresting.

Hamlet 2

Wow.  Just plain wow.  Hamlet 2 looks like a brilliant mixture of Family Guy and Waiting for Guffman.  There is an obvious heavy influence from a particular episode of Family Guy in which Peter directs a stage version of the King and I which turns out schlocky and terrible and people love it.  But I digress.  Hamlet 2 is about a high school theater teacher, played by Steve Coogan, who needs to put on the best production of his life in order to save his schools theater department.  So he comes up with a sequel to Hamlet in which Hamlet uses a time machine to meet Jesus (which leads to the hit single “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus”).  I really think that this film will be both brilliant and terrible at the same time.  The trailer for the film does a nice job of hitting key points and giving some good laughs, it’s not the best trailer, but it’ll do.  The film is directed by Andrew Fleming who directed an episode of Arrested Development and one of my favorite films Dick.  Fleming co-wrote the film with Pam Brady who I have mentioned before as being brilliant, she created the show The Loop (which I loved the first season of) and the film Hot Rod as well as working with the South Park guys on the features they have made.  Did I really just write this much about this film?

-Josh