Moving In To New Digs

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately. Not that I haven't had anything to say - its just that I got tired of running too many blogs, and I got in to some major re-design projects for some websites I run. Most of those re-design projects are winding down. But I was still wondering what to do with my personal blogs and the two people that read them :) So, I decided to condense about 4-5 personal blogs or half-started and abandoned blogs into one blog over at WordPress.com:

Matt's Musings and Meanderings

WP has a few less features, but cooler looking skins and constant updates. I have placed all of the posts from this blog in to one category, and you can see new posts that fits with this blogs theme by clicking here:

Your Official Portal to Geekdom category listing

Someday soon I may also see if I can get the postings from that category fed in to this blog, just to keep the design up. Until then, enjoy the new digs....

Summer Movies So Far

I have seen a few - but not all that I want to. Got to keep the budget under control, so several will have to wait until the dollar theater. My thoughts so far:

Iron Man just... rocks. It better win a bunch of awards. It's just that good. And I never was a huge Iron Man fan growing up.

Speed Racer was way under rated. This was a great film. It was the only film I have ever seen that got a standing ovation from the audience when it was over. Seriously.

Indiana Jones and the Title I Can Never Remember was a good flick If it had come out two years after Last Crusade, everyone would have loved it. People just have to remember what they liked about the first one to connect with what is great about this one.

Lost is not a movie - but that season finale was intense. I really liked it, and I was glad they stretched it to three hours. I think the only weakness was that they tried to do too much and probably needed that extra hour that got cut due to the writer's strike.

Still need to see Prince Caspian, Expelled, Kung Fu Panda, and Sex and the City. Didn't know I was a SatC fan? Well, I' not at all. Just seeing if you are paying attention. Also waiting for The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Hellboy 2 (I really liked the first one) and some other ones that I can't remember now.

The Return of the Geek

Been out of the loop for a while. I guess I could just say that I am resting for this summer and all the geeky movies coming out. But that's not really the case. Truth is, I have been contemplating condensing several of my blogs in to one personal blog. Mainly out of pure laziness. We'll see.

There are some interesting movies out or coming out this summer season. Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Dark Knight, Expelled, Prince Caspian, etc, etc. None of them will be perfect, but I will probably end up watching all of them and enjoying every geeky moment of it.

Of course, I have to mention that the new season of Lost has been incredible. Flash forwards? Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

I've also been digging in to some more books recently. Just finished the first book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. Really strange. To the point where I'm not sure if I want to read on. But I probably will.

Also intriguing is "The Man in White" by Johnny Cash. Johnny is an incredible story teller in music, and equally good in print. The Man in White is Mr. Cash's take on the life of Paul. Yep - THE Paul. Biblical dude. And it is really interesting.

U2 3D: The Movie

My wife and I saw this a while back, but I forgot to post on it. The U2 3D movie is awesome. Even if you don't really like U2, the 3D technology is so realistic. I'm not talking the red and blues glasses of a few decades back, or even the funky plastic cheap-o Disney ride glasses of the last decade. you still have to wear funky glasses, but the advances in 3D film are really noticeable. The shots that look over the massive crowd in the soccer stadium make you feel like you are really there looking out over the crowd. The drum set also looks incredibly real in 3d. On top of all of this, they also added some graphics to a few scenes - basically, they took what was showing on the screen behind the band and made it float transparently in front of the band. Neat effect.

We saw it an I-MAX, which really added to the realism. I recommend taking this route if you can.

LOST: The Island is Hell

Yep.... been watching Lost. And formulating some theories. So, here goes....

There is this new character named Matthew Abaddon. We first saw him last week in a flash forward, posing as a lawyer that asked Hurley some weird questions about the other survivors. The Lost Easter Eggs Blog posted a creepy slow motion clip of Abaddon leaving the mental hospital. It doesn't look like a human is leaving. Maybe the smoke monster?

http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/2008/02/matthew-abaddon-slow-motion-leaving.html

If you look closely, you can see the door handle shining through where his waist should be. Weird.

I also remembered hearing the word Abaddon in the Bible somewhere. I looked it up on Wikipedia quickly, and thought the entry there had some interesting points:

Abaddon (Hebrew Avaddon, meaning "destruction"). In Biblical poetry (Job 26:6; Proverbs 15:11), it comes to mean "place of destruction", or the realm of the dead, and is associated with Sheol. Abaddon is also one of the compartments of Gehenna.[1] By extension, it can mean an underworld abode of lost souls, or hell.

In Revelation 9:11, it is personified as Abaddon, "Angel of the Abyss",[1] rendered in Greek as Apollyon; and he is described as king of the locusts which rose at the sounding of the fifth trumpet. In like manner, in Rev. vi. 8, Hades is personified following after death to conquer the fourth part of the earth.

Locke's Dad told Sawyer last season that the island is hell. Maybe so? Or maybe some weird place for lost souls to find peace? But not purgatory, because they have already said that it is not purgatory.

The Best Spaceships in the Galaxy

IGN.com created a list of the top 10 space ships, based on "pop-culture impact and all around cool means of transpo." It's a pretty good list, although I have one gripe: no X-Wing? Come on. That is the top fighter craft in SciFi ever. I would kick that video game space ship out of number 7 and put the X-Wing in there. Why would a video game space ship be in here anyway? Give them their own list. Also, if I really thought about it, I would probably find something to replace number 10, even though that is a cool space ship.

Another thing I have to disagree with: "can't explain what people were thinking when they came up with TNG's D" (in reference to the Enterprise-D of Start Trek: The Next Generation). Whatever! That was the coolest Enterprise ever, even though it is a little dated now.

The coolest thing: Serenity makes the list....

More on the Digital Piracy Controversy

I've been writing other places about all of the controversy surrounding digital file sharing.
For the record, I don't think that it is right to steal music or movies or anything else in the long run online. I do think that it should be legal to be able to sample or preview something before you buy it, even though in most cases this is lumped in with piracy, so it still has to be avoided. I also think we need to deal with things like out of print titles in the debate. Like, re-issue them or release them for free online and stop complaining about it. But, I'll just link to my other posts on these issues.:

EduGeek Journal post on "The Great Copy Protection Debate"

This post comments on an ongoing debate on the New York Times website about copy protection. It's an interesting read on two sides of the issue. I became really fed up with the way on side was presenting their take, so I commented on the issue with some more thoughts. My comment is number 3 (posted at 2:27 pm on January 16, 2008) at the bottom of this page:

Bits Debate: Mixing It Up Over Remixes and Fair Use