5.73 - The One with Windcharger

I found this picture of my very first Transformer I ever got. I was about 5, in Sears at the Midtown Plaza in Saskatoon. Pretty sure my parents bought it for me...little did they know it would make me a lifetime fan of Transformers.

5.72 - The One with the great Summer '09 Movie Review

Here are my reviews of the summer movie blockbuster season. It was quite an eventful season starting with the leaked work-print of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which I think boosted ticket sales...to a remake of Star Trek, a sequel to Transformers and ending off with another 80's cartoon/toy movie: GI Joe. Now since I have a deal with my wife that I pick a movie, and she picks a movie...we've seen quite a number of movies. I'll try not spoil any movies...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The origin story of one of the most popular X-Men was much much better that the 3rd installment of the X-Men trilogy. By bringing back Hugh Jackman to play Wolverine made this movie. To think that they had cast Dougray Scott (the baddie from MI:II) originally for the X-Men movies as Wolvie, but had to drop out due to scheduling was a blessing in disguise. Jackman was born to play Wolverine. The story was loosely based on the comic origin, but they brought in elements that really had nothing to do with Wolverine. What they did to Ryan Reynolds Deadpool was ridiculous. Reynolds did well for what it was. He's the perfect guy to play the "Merc with the mouth", but what they did to the character was stupid. This movie was a good way to start the summer.

3 1/2 stars out of 5


Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

The first chick flick of the summer. Another Matthew McConaughey chick flick, and I believe Jennifer Garner's first film in a long long time. Story is based on "A Christmas Carol" with McConaughey playing the "Scrooge" type character. The twist is that he is a womanizer who gets "haunted" by his girlfriends past during the weekend of his brother's wedding. Pretty typical chick flick with some funny parts.

2 stars out of 5


Star Trek

Probably one of the most anticipated movie of the year. JJ Abram's knocks this one out of the park. A re-imagining of the original Star Trek, it tells story of the USS Enterprise's first mission. The casting of the original characters was very well done. It's hard to imagine anyone other that William Shatner playing Kirk, but Chris Pine does a pretty good job. "Hero's" Zachary Quinto does an amazing job as the new Spock. The lens-flare effect was a little over done...but this was THE best Star Trek movie yet.

4 1/2 stars out of 5


Terminator Salvation

Terminator #4...better than #3. They cast another John Connor in Christian Bale. This movie happens after Judgment Day with John Connor leading the Resistance against Skynet and all the Terminators. It was a good popcorn flick, but nothing that memorable. They did have a "cameo" of Arnold as the newest model of Terminator. I guess they had scans of his face when he was younger and they put that over the body double that was actually on screen. I heard that they are planning on doing a 5th Terminator...

2 1/2 stars out of 5


Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Ben Stiller and his gang from the NYC Museum of Natural History return, but this time they are wrecking havoc at Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian Institute. Hank Azaria is added to the cast an evil Pharaoh with a lisp, and Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. This movie actually makes me want to take a trip down to DC to check out the Smithsonian. This movie is not as good as the first...but still fun at times.

1 1/2 stars out of 5


Up

Wow...Pixar has done it again. Every movie they put out is simply amazing, and they get better and better. Although this one dealt with a lot more human emotion than the others. They story has 78-year old Carl, a retired balloon salesman taking his house to South America...by air. Joining him is 8-year old Russell, making for some great comedy. I think this movie by far has to be one of my favourites this year. The short film attached to the beginning was very good as well.

4 1/2 stars out of 5


The Hangover

By far, the best comedy of the year. 4 friends take Vegas by storm during a bachelor party, but can't remember anything in the morning. To make things worse, they lose the groom in the process. The on-screen chemistry of Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis was great, and a cameo from Mike Tyson was just simply hilarious. It reminded me a lot of Dude, Where's My Car?

4 stars out of 5


Year One

Jack Black and Michael Cera are a couple of hunter/gathers at the beginnings of human civilization and through stupid events, they make it out of their village into a bustling metropolis. It's a pretty stupid movie and at times sacrilegious. Cera's mellow approach to everything compliments Black's way over the top humour. There are some funny parts, but not enough to want to watch a second time. If you've seen the trailer...you've seen the movie.

2 starts out of 5


The Proposal

What happens when you don't pay attention to your work visa? You get deported. Oh wait...I have an assistant that will do anything I want...so I'm going to marry him to stay in the country. Then we'll divorce after a couple years. To sell this we need to go to his family's estate in...Alaska. Uh oh...his family is so great...I can't do this to them. I'll face the music and be deported. Oh ya...I've fallen in love with my assistant too...opps.

3 stars out of 5...only cuz Ryan Reynolds is hilarious. He gets 2 stars.


Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I was pretty hyped for this movie. That being said, I'm a huge Transformers fan so I'm a little biased. This is a typical Michael Bay movie. Awesome action, explosions, and camera angles. Bay may never win an Oscar, but his style is fast and fun. But as a movie...its not so great. I think it ran about 40 minutes too long. 90% action, 10% story, 100% Michael Bay.

3 stars out of 5


Funny People

By having Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen in a movie, you'd think that it would be a hilarious comedy. Also having the title of the movie as "Funny People", you'd think it would be an amazing comedy. Not so much. This movie was more a drama with some funny moments. I'm not saying its a bad movie, I really enjoyed it. It was pretty heavy at times...and a little long too. If you see it, go in thinking drama.

3 1/2 stars out of 5


G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Yo Joe! If you were going to make a movie based on a toy line and an 80's cartoon...this is how you do it. Complete with the cheesey plot, lines, and special effects. The casting in this movie was very very good. Paramount didn't allow any press to screen the movie because they didn't want negative reviews. I went into with zero expectations and I was pleasantly surprised at it. It really brought me back to my childhood. The couple catch phrases like "Yo Joe!" and "Knowing is half the battle" were stuck in for good measure.

3 stars out of 5

5.71 - The One with Batman fighting geeks

[via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]

5.70 - The One with 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to todays teenager.
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio bork this concept.)
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’

Computers and Videogaming

18. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
19. The scream of a modem connecting.
20. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
21. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
22. Using jumpers to set IRQs.
23. DOS.
24. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
25. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
26. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.
27. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.
28. Counting in kilobytes.
29. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
30. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
31. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
32. Joysticks.
33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
34. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
35. Recording a song in a studio.

The Internet

36. NCSA Mosaic.
37. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
38. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
39. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
40. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
41. Phone books and Yellow Pages.
42. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
43. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
44. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
45. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
46. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
47. Archie searches.
48. Gopher searches.
49. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
50. Privacy.
51. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.
52. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.
53. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
54. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs
55. The time before PC networks.
56. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.

Gadgets

57. Typewriters.
58. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
59. Sending that film away to be processed.
60. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.
61. CB radios.
62. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
63. Rotary-dial telephones.
64. Answering machines.
65. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
66. Pay phones.
67. Phones with actual bells in them.
68. Fax machines.
69. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.

Everything Else

70. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.
71. Remembering someone’s phone number.
72. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
73. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
74. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.
75. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
76. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
77. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
78. Neat handwriting.
79. The days before the nanny state.
80. Starbuck being a man.
81. Han shoots first.
82. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
83. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
84. Trig tables and log tables.
85. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
86. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
87. Swimming pools with diving boards.
88. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
89. Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil of break off the first finger
90. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).
91. Having to manually unlock a car door.
92. Writing a check.
93. Looking out the window during a long drive.
94. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
95. Cash.
96. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
97. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
98. Omni Magazine
99. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.
100. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.

[via Wired.com]

5.69 - The One with the nuts

The Hole In His Logic

Grocery Store | London, UK

Customer: “I’m looking for your nuts.”

Me: “Those are on aisle four sir.”

Customer: “I’ve already looked and I can’t find them. I’m looking for my favorites.”

Me: “All the types of nut we have in stock are in aisle four, if you can’t find them then we don’t stock them. Do you want me to have a look for you?”

Customer: “No no, I’ll go look again.”

(Five minutes later, he returns.)

Customer: “I still can’t find my favorite nuts!”

Me: “Then I am afraid we must not stock them.”

Customer: “But my wife gets them for me from here every week!”

Me: “What type of nuts does she buy you?”

Customer: “Donuts…”

[via Not Always Right]

5.68 - The One with the copy cat ad

I was watching TV over the weekend and I saw a new ad with U2 in it. I immediately thought that they were promoting iPod...but then as the commercial started to wrap up...the caption read "Blackberry loves U2". Wait...what? It sure looked like the Coldplay one that Apple put out months ago...

watch Blackberry:


[via YouTube]

watch Coldplay:


[via YouTube]

5.67 - The One with the King of Pop

In memory of the King of Pop...this is a video I shot when we were in Cuba last year.



I always loved the "Thriller" dance...

5.66 - The One with the Rude Designer

What a web designer really thinks [from the mind of Max Guedy]:

I'm max guedy, I'm a rude web designer

I'm overpriced

But at least you are warned in advance, since i will quote astronomically for the entire project. If you have no budget, then apply for a loan before contacting me.

Don't call me on the phone, I won't answer

All communication must be done by email, that way i can call you out when you forget what you've instructed me to do.

I won't listen to your design suggestions

You've hired me to do a design job, so don't try to tell me how things should look - i already know that you'll be wrong.

Take a chill pill before contacting me

It's not my fault if you're so disorganized, you now need the job done for tomorrow. So take a chill pill and don't expect me to barf a website out in my sleep.

You need me more than i need you

I have dozens of projects going on, so by all means please find a designer somewhere else if you have a stinky attitude. I don't care that much about your money.

[via Max Guedy]

5.65 - The One that will make you regular

(My dad was standing in an express line at the grocery store. In front of him was a well-to-do-looking woman, who clearly had several more items than the limit.)

Dad: “You know, it’s amazing that someone who is apparently so successful can’t read.”

Woman: *in a huff* “That sign’s for regular people, not for me!”

(An old man behind my dad taps him on the shoulder.)

Old man: “Here, give her this.”

(My dad hands it to the woman.)

Woman: “What’s this?”

Old man: “Metamucil. It’ll make you regular.”

[via Not Always Right]

5.64 - The One with Project Natal

At this year's E3, Microsoft brought out the big guns and previewed their motion controller. Taking a page from Nintendo's Wii, MS took it a step further. No Controller Required! Check out the video:



[via YouTube]

Sony threw their hat into the motion control arena as well, but since it's basically the same as the Wii, but a little better. I'm looking forward to Natal...hopefully it's not $200+

5.63 - The One at the zoo

Last week Naomi turned to me and said..."Let's go to the zoo..." So we went on Saturday. I haven't been to the zoo since I was a kid, and all I can remember is that there was a LOT of walking. But I was pretty excited. The weather was great, not too hot, and when the sun was beaming down, there was a nice breeze that came through. The highlight of the visit was the sting ray exhibit. An extra $3...but so worth it. We were able to pet and feed them. Not sure when I'll go back to the zoo again, but I'm sure that I won't wait as long as I did.



And for all you hockey fans...check out the BEST hit of the year. Too bad the refs blew the call and gave Kronwall a 5 minute major and a game misconduct for a clean hit.



[via YouTube]

5.62 - The One with the pier

Here's a pic from this past long weekend. A couple of girls drove down to the pier and got out. Problem was...the driver didn't put the car into park.

"I didn't even feel the bump." Uh huh...EPIC FAIL

5.61 - The One with the golf ball

Best quote from this weekend came from my round of golf with Chris and Rick. Picture 18th hole, slight dogleg to the right. Elevated green, 50 yard wide fairway...with a large tree, about 210 yards away, just off the right tree line. Chris tees up and nails the tree. We get up to it and try to find the ball. Some his ball ends up a few yards in front of the tree. I find it and place a pine cone on it to mark his ball. Chris grabs an appropriate wedge from his bag and Rick drives off in the cart to find his ball. I come up behind in my cart and drive over Chris' ball as he is looking out into space.

As I'm waiting for Chris to hit his ball I hear him yell, "HEY! Did you step on my ball?"

"No man..."

"WHAT?!?! That's not possible...it's like sunken into the ground!"

"Nope...didn't step on it..."

"??"

"I drove over it! HAHAHA!!!"

"HAHAHA! Jerk!"

...ahh gotta love golfing with friends...

5.60 - The One with the Job Applicant

I have respect for those who go out and try to find jobs. Especially the ones that go into a business cold and ask if they are hiring. BUT they say first impressions are everything...

A guy came in yesterday to the office dressed in shorts, a t-shirt and a cap on sideways. Asked if we were hiring. Now I try to keep an open mind about people when they come in...but this guy was asking for a job. I hesitated to say no, so I asked if had a resume. He gave me this shocked look, like it was something that shouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have one. FAIL.

Word of advice for job seekers...dress for the job that you want when you visit a business. AND bring a resume!

5.59 - The One with the 80's movies

2 of the movie that I am most excited for this summer are Transformers 2 & GI Joe. The first Transformers movie was pretty good...so I have high expectations for the sequel. GI Joe on the other hand...I really have no expectations for. It has the potential to be really bad movie. But I'm excited because its a throwback to my childhood, where Transformers, GI Joe and Lego reigned.

Check out the new trailers for them:

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen



GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra



[via Trailer Addict]

5.58 - The One with the Song around the World

One of my favourite songs is "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King. Such soothing sounds and amazing lyrics. I've heard a bunch of covers over the years. I think this is the best one yet. It all started out with It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California. Then is was taken around the world and produced this master mix.



[via Playing for Change | Peace Through Music]

5.57 - The One with the elevator ride

I'm a fan of elevators. Especially the glass ones. The one at the CN Tower is pretty sweet too. One time we had a bunch of people and a couch stuffed in one at the mall. The security guard wasn't too impressed, but what was he going to do? Confiscate the couch? He was old and a mall cop...we all know what they can do. Yes I'm talking to your Paul Blart...

So what happens when Porsche says that they want to have a press conference on the 94th floor of your building with one of their cars? How are you supposed to get it up there? Well...use the elevator!

[via jalopnik]

5.56 - The One with the Carbon Fiber Legs

Here's a feel good story:

In 2005, Ellie May Challis lost all of her limbs to meningitis. In 2009, she's become the youngest person ever fitted with carbon fiber legs.

Her original prostheses never fit perfectly, causing her pain and great difficulty when walking. So, with the financial help of their community, Ellie May's parents took her to Dorset Orthopaedic where doctors designed an extra small pair of carbon fiber legs—the same type of prostheses used by Olympic sprinters—costing about $15,000.

She'll need a new pair of legs every two years as she grows up.

But while doctors were originally worried that she'd have a tough time balancing on her new limbs, Ellie May is moving twice as fast as she did before. And as one specialist put it, "Within seconds of having them on, she was off. It will change her life."

[Echo via Neatorama]

I think this is pretty awesome. Look how happy she is...

[via Gizmodo]

5.55 - The One with the Vaporized car

Ever watch Mythbusters? It's pretty much the best show on the Discovery Channel. Recently Jamie & Adam (our Mythbuster guru's) decided that it wasn't good enough to pancake a car with two semi trucks. They had to smash a car with a rocket traveling 650mph. Watch what happens:



...gone in a blink of an eye...

[via YouTube]

5.54 - The One with Photoshop

I love Photoshop. Such a powerful program...but there are some that abuse it too much. yes I'm talking to you Tabloid papers. I must admit though...you do have some talented artists creating your headlines. This however...is clearly "Photoshopped".



[via Flickr]