All posts in General

This was probably the most difficult monday after DST that I can ever remember. Having had a head cold all weekend, and am I a little off balance from that, additionally the hour switch has really got my head spinning. Throughout the day I was reliably and hour “behind” everyone else when talking about times.

Recently, I posted this response to the following article on SlashDot:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/03/1428248&mode=thread&tid=129&tid=188

Unfortunately, issues like this are what lead to reality television. The simple fact is that writers, actors, and in this case voice actors are pricing themselves out of the business. Sometimes it seems like a big deal to give out the $1 million dollar bounty at the end of reality TV shows, but that is really chump change. The voice actors are currently making $2.75 million per season. That is $2.75 million for talking into a microphone. Is that honestly justified in itself? Now, if they get their raise that would kick them up to $7.92 million per season. To put this in perspective, the president earns a $400,000 annual salary, with a $50,000 expense account, so effectively $450,000. If you figure the difference between the president?s annual salary, and the price of one voice over for the Simpsons, it comes out to $90,000. So, apparently, running the great nation of the United States for a year is only 125% of the difficulty of doing a voice over for one episode of the Simpsons. Think about that.

Furthermore, in all likelihood the money actually exists and it is more than likely going into the pockets of network executives. I am in no way stating that this is a great state of affairs either. My point here is the misappropriation of funds in corporate television. I would much rather see the $5.17 million go into better programming. The networks need to take more risks; in the past shows had more than a few episodes to pull in the ratings, they might not have even been any good in the first season, but they were still renewed and allowed to grow. It seems like now, if you do not bring in the big numbers immediately you are cut and usually not even allowed to finish out your first season. Thus, as the actors want more money–and the executives want to keep their pockets well lined–we are stuck in our current state of affairs with such horrors as Survivor, and whatever other reality TV is still floating around.

This is just one example of the disturbing trend in the growth of corporate power in the United States. It seems that in the past we have thrived with a powerful consumer driven society, where business tried to please the consumer, and decisions made by the consumers had an impact. Well, that is not longer the case. Now corporations are developing into monopolies, and have entirely too much impact on the government. Thus, if a corporate group does not like the policies of consumers, they will change the laws in their favors to punish consumers for undesirable behavior. In the past business would adjust to the consumers? desires.

The disturbing trend appears to stem from the stagnation of our government, and the efficiency of the corporation. If we continue on our current course we will soon abolish government, and be run by corporations in a truly hellish world. In conclusion, I believe that the Simpsons going on strike is a sign of the end of times, so repent, rinse, and repeat.

Well, today I have lended my skills to Brian, and Wesley in order to help improve their sites. Admittedly, the change made to Wesley’s site is minor in comparision, it is still a change. If you want to check out my working template for Brian check out the following link, it will work as long as my PowerBook doesn’t take a nap:

Demo Drunken Eagle

Also, if you want to check out the changes made to Wesley’s site you can just head directly to his web destination:

vanlandw.no-ip.com

Having freed myself of an enormous burden, I decided to spend a good chunk of Friday either sleeping, or staring off into space. I slept in today, and started to feel a little more like myself. Though I have a significant workload ahead of me, as I allowed it to pile up while working on the evil senior project, I decided to watch movies all day. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say most of the day. I spent the morning getting my bearings back, and wasted time chatting online. It was about three or so before I left to start watching movies. The first two, the Ladykillers, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were not playing as the declining Grand Haven 9, so I had to trek on up to Muskegon to witness them at the significantly better facilities. After witnessing those two movies, I swung back into Grand Haven to catch a showing of Taking Lives.

Ladykillers was indeed an enjoyable film to watch. It was refreshing to see a level of dark comedy that has not been in the movies in recent years, as Hollywood has become increasing unoriginal. Actually, the entire entertainment industry is really falling through, perhaps one of the reasons they fight so hard to protect their “intellectual property,” because they are incapable of creating new ideas. Anyhow, that is a rant for another time. Anyhow, the Ladykillers is a good movie. It has good comedy, interesting camera work, decent writing, and wonderful characters. I highly recommend it if you are into that kind of thing.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was definitely the best movie that I have seen in a long time. I felt that not only was it written well, it was acted well. This is particularly important, because the of the of the film. For the actors to maintain the emotional connection relevant to the moment, and the ethereal nature of the dream/memory state was amazing. I also found it to be intellectually, and emotionally provocative. The story addressed many issues dealing with human nature, love and memory. I suppose that I may have been doubly influenced, since in high school I was really into girls like Clementine. All things considered I have to highly recommend this film. I enjoyed it so much that I am planning on going out and renting other movies that Kaufman has been attached to: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, and Human Nature. I really like Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine, so hopefully I will enjoy these other fine titles.

Now I must deal with the ugly business of dealing with Taking Lives. I cannot really think of anything good to say about it. I mean, well Keifer was in it, but his role was pretty much superfluous. There really was not anything good in the movie though. I guess the idea was someone interesting. I mean, and epic serial killer who assumes the identities of those he slaughters, etc… But, damn, was it poorly executed. It has been a while since I have been genuinely bored in an action/thriller movie, but I was in this. I think I traced all over my cup holder with my finger trying to entertain myself. The entirely movie seemed to be a grand culmination of derivative scenes, and concepts from typically actions/thriller movies. The writing was unintelligent and uninspired. I could go on more, but I am trying to keep my posts down to one page. Lets just say, that all things considered this was a horrid movie, and I cannot recommend that anyone other than Wesley Vanlandschoot go see this movie. And, since he did, I see no point of keeping it in theaters any longer.

So, I worked on Senior Project until 2 AM Thursday Morning, then got up again at 6 AM to go work on it more. I began what I now know as: “the horribleness.” From 8 AM Thursday, until 6 AM Friday morning I was in EOS. Only taking restroom breaks, no meals, not sanity. Only madness. The entire process was entirely horrid. I met with my American teammates at 8 AM Thursday morning, as well as the Swedes via IRC. My fellow Americans ditched before 11 AM to get to work. So, it was just the Swedes and me for another 11 hours. We made a lot of progress for a few hours, then we started having problems that never should have been.

All things considered we dealt with a lot of crap that just wasted time. One of the Swedes dropped before John (one of the Americans) came back at 10 PM. At that point it was two Swedes, and two Americans. We pushed through, and accomplish most of things we wanted to do. By the time both of the Swedes dropped, roughly 2 AM Friday morning, we were up to debugging the AI, the final component of the project. John and I debugged it until about 5 AM, where we hit a wall, and were unable to make any meaningful progress. So we worked on presentation material, and what not until about 6 AM.

At this point we left to take a shower and get our heads together. I got back at 7:30 AM, and John a little after 8. The Swedes showed up about twenty minutes later. The last member of our American team showed up about ten minutes before the presentation.

So, we presented, I was far from eloquent, I dare say it was my worst speech in college. I actually said “uh-um” quite often, which is uncharacteristic for me. At best the presentation was poor. Then, it got worse when we dealt with the presentation. After all the freaking work I had put in, in the past 24 hours, we had as much work, as worked the previous day at 8 AM. If I wouldn’t have been so tired I would have been furious. The failure in our presentation stole any satisfaction that I would have taken in the project being over. Now, at least for the immediate future, I will be haunted by what should have been.