I hadn’t seen The Bourne Identity when it made its rounds in the theaters, but when it came out on DVD, I heard plenty of good stuff about it from my friends. When its sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, began getting good critical reviews this summer, I was intrigued. I’m not one to rent movies very often, but if I was going to see this new one, I thought I’d better play catch up. Finding The Bourne Identity at Blockbuster proved to be difficult while The Bourne Supremacy was in town, but eventually I was able to rent myself a copy.

I enjoyed The Bourne Supremacy when I finally got to see it, although I didn’t like it as much as its prequel. The Bourne Supremacy picks up with the “Happily Ever After” from the first movie and within the first 15 minutes manages to destroy just about everything the first movie stood for. Jason Bourne acts alone in the second movie and because of that we lose the interactions that gave us insight into what made his amnesiac assassin character seem so human.

One things both movies did remarkable well (and perhaps this comes from the Ludlam books, I don’t know) was realistically portray how people and agencies act and react when they don’t have all the information. I don’t think either movie was trying to make a political point, but it’s hard not to draw comparisons to current events.

The Bourne Supremacy was definitely faster paced that The Bourne Identity and I suspect that has a whole lot more to do with the directors than with the stories. The Bourne Supremacy was cut like a music video, sometimes to the point of distraction – a friend and I agree that the final car chase was filmed so tight and was edited with so many rapid cuts that you just couldn’t see what was going on. The one-on-one fight scenes were the same way – I felt far more tension in the first movie’s if only because I could see everything that was happening.

The Bourne Supremacy also had one other aspect that lowered it below the level of The Bourne Identity: Two endings. Well, okay, not really. But there was a distinct feeling of closure when Jason Bourne wrapped things up with the American government and then they had to ramp the movie back up for a half hour or so to get some resolution on the Russian side of things. I can’t help but think that they could have tied the endings together better.

Trivial Thought: Didn’t The Matrix teach us that lengthy camera shots in an action movie are a good thing?
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? Some of the characters. Matt Damon did well enough, as did Brian Cox. I’m starting to like that Lord of the Rings guy that was in Riddick, too (and Oksana said he did a very good job with his Russian lines!) I wish that Julia Styles was used more in both movies – I’m not a big fan or anything, but the trailers made it seem like she had a bigger part.
Would I recommend the movie? Yes.
Will I buy it on DVD? No, probably not. The movie was good and all, but I can’t see watching it over and over.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Spider-man 2
Shrek 2
The Village
I, Robot
The Bourne Supremacy
The Day After Tomorrow
The Terminal
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Fahrenheit 9/11
Van Helsing
Aliens vs. Predator
The Stepford Wives

I’ve been working at UAS (in my present role as Digital Media Specialist) for almost four years now. For the last three, I’ve managed to schedule my annual leave in mid-August… just in time to miss Convocation. I wasn’t actively trying to skip out on the returning faculty members and the ensuing ITS meetings that surround them. It was just a coincidence. Swear.

So here it is, my fourth year, and it looks like I’m finally going to be in town for Convocation. I figure my boss is going to be happy – he’s been ribbing me all this time because I (and my position) still haven’t been formally introduced to the faculty at large.

Oh, but of course there was a snag! Two years ago, the big reason to take some vacation time was for my wedding and subsequent honeymoon. It never occurred to me that getting married in August would be a problem down the road. I now realize that if I want to take a day off to celebrate with my wife, I would more than likely have to find a way out of three days of meetings.

Fortunately, that didn’t turn out to be much of a problem. I approached my boss last week and asked him if he had a Convocation schedule. He did, and the whole department was allotted just 45 minutes to talk about the new technologies and procedures that we’d be bringing to campus this fall. Obviously he didn’t need me to hop up there on the podium with him, so I quickly followed up with, “Great! Can I have half of Tuesday off?”

Oksana was going to be pretty busy at work, too, since a coworker was going to be on vacation. She didn’t think she could justify taking a whole day off, so we talked about a half-day instead. Besides, who were we kidding? If we took the whole day off, we’d just end up sleeping ‘til noon, anyway!

With our bosses’ approval gained, we were ready to make the best of our second anniversary on August 17th.
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There’s a special little corner of Hell reserved for directors like Joel Schumacher and Paul W. S. Anderson. In it they will be forced to watch their own movies for all eternity.

There’s a clip up on Apple’s trailer site that shows part of a featurette (no doubt destined to be included on the DVD) on the making of the Aliens vs. Predator film. In it, one of the SFX guys tells us that the director of AVP wanted to extend the Predator’s wrist blades “…so now they shoot out about four times as long as we’ve ever seen them before.”

Yeah, and Joel Schumacher thought it would be a great idea to add Bat-nipples.

The idea that everything must be changed for it to be cooler is what ruined AVP. It also ruined not just a Batman movie, but a whole franchise. Look, if you’re building a sequel, you’re probably doing that because there’s an established fan base. And the fans are there solely because the first movie was a success! Why on Earth would you want to deviate so far from the path of success?

AVP, from top to bottom, is filled with so many changes to the Aliens and Predator canon, that it completely distracted me from the story. For instance, I found myself thinking:

Weyland Robotics was founded way back in 2004?
Aliens gestate in the human body within minutes instead of hours?
Aliens grow to full size in barely more time than that?
Aliens no longer use stealth to their advantage?
Predators no longer use stealth, either? Why do they bother cloaking?
Predators can see INTO things with their visors?

Those points distracted me because I’ve seen all the movies upon which this one was built. If only that was it… There was far more to contribute to the ruining of my evening: The back-story was laughably chronologically inaccurate, the Predators were completely without individual personality, practically all of the humans were throwaway characters, lines were recycled for the sake of recycling them, and I’ll bet, if pressed, I could come up with fully a dozen plot holes you could fly a spaceship through.

I mean, hell, even the special effect technology was misused! Computer graphics have definitely come far enough to fully animate the Aliens, but I have to admit that I liked them better in Aliens (circa 1986!) Especially the Queen – in Aliens, with her ponderous movements, she lurches about almost as though she sacrificed the mobility inherent in her race to gain the ability to breed. In AVP she’s charges around like a T-Rex.

Everything is given too little time in this movie. The humans characters are not developed nearly enough. The stages of the Aliens are glossed over. The Predators barely interact with anything at all. Even the history is glossed over quickly… it’s like the director tries to keep things moving so fast just so you won’t have a chance to second guess anything.

Well, guess what, Mr. Anderson, it wasn’t fast enough. This movie sucks.

Trivial Thought: Why can’t Hollywood adapt an Aliens story from Dark Horse Comics? They wrote a far better Aliens vs. Predator and Aliens 3.
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? Not a whole lot, really. I guess the computer-generated Aliens (excepting the Queen) looked pretty good.
Would I recommend the movie? No.

Will I buy it on DVD? No. (Well, maybe if it came in a boxed set… that was being sold on eBay… for less than 20 bucks.)

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Spider-man 2
Shrek 2
The Village
I, Robot
The Day After Tomorrow
The Terminal
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Fahrenheit 9/11
Van Helsing
Aliens vs. Predator
The Stepford Wives

Last night, as Oksana and I were finishing up dinner, we received a call from her niece. She was staying the night with her friend and was just calling to spread some gossip. “Did you hear? The downtown Subway has been burning since 2:30pm!”

When Oksana relayed this news to me, my first thought was, “Wait a minute… Juneau doesn’t have a subway system!” Oh, but yeah… They do have a sandwich shop franchise down there. Well, at least that explained the hazy smoke we’d been seeing all day.

When Oksana hung up the phone, it was still only about 8:30pm and she wanted to go check it out. I thought it might be interesting to see the damage before the results of the inevitable cleanup. I know firsthand how tragic a fire can be, but there’s no denying that there’s a certain allure to observing the scene of an accident.

We grabbed her camera and headed in to town.
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I was tired last night. Too many consecutive nights without enough sleep, I guess, and I was quite content to go to sleep around 9pm. Before heading to bed, though, I took a peek outside to see if the evening’s forecast of thunderstorms had any merit.

At first glance, it didn’t look like it. The air was warm and while there were ominously dark clouds overhead, the air was still and Oksana and I were able to stay out on the porch in nothing more than a T-shirt and shorts. It was so uncharacteristically pleasant for a Juneau evening that, despite my desire for nothing more than an early bedtime, we stayed outside and watched the weather.

A huge black cloud was directly over us. We watched it churn its way north, over Spaulding Meadows before it began to break up. If I hadn’t looked out over Auke Bay to see another large mass of dark clouds forming, that would have probably been it – we would have been asleep by 9:30pm. But I thought that the conditions might be right for a third (a third!) thunderstorm this summer. And wouldn’t you know it, while we were waiting, we caught a few flashes of pink on the western horizon.
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Trying to write a spoiler-free review of an M. Night Shyamalan movie is as difficult as trying to explain the difference between red and yellow to a blind person. There’s not enough I can tell you that will give you a clear picture.

Overall, I enjoyed his new movie, The Village. That’s impressive, considering that the surprise – there’s always a “surprise” in a Shyamalan movie – was inadvertently spoiled for me by my barely-literate Russian niece. She saw it on opening night and despite my body language communication to the contrary (I covered my ears and said “nyahnyahnyah!”) she still let slip three words. Three. Words. If you don’t think that’s enough to spoil a movie’s crucial plot twist, just think back to the Sixth Sense. How easy would it be to give that whole movie away?

Anyway, as I was saying. Good movie, despite what I consider to be some weaknesses in the script. M. Night Shyamalan is a great writer/director and he deserves every penny he makes off these movies, but I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. I think of it as a lack of faith in the audience. Whenever he divulges the big revelation, he almost always uses flashbacks, voiceovers, or some other crutch to guide the audience to their conclusion. Personally, I’d like to be given a little more credit than that; it’s only a two-hour movie, after all. My short term memory can take it, trust me.

In The Village, I thought there were some problems with the story telling that could have been worked out. For instance, there’s a short section of the movie where sequences are told out of chronological order. It was obvious that he chose to do it that way so that certain… things… would be hidden until he chose to reveal them at a suitably shocking point, but to me that indicates a weakness in the script. I believe that, try as he might, he just couldn’t manipulate the events of the story to uncover themselves chronologically without sacrificing the dramatic tension. I’m not saying I could do any better, but I still think it’s a weakness.

Bah! Without citing specific examples, it’s too hard to explain exactly what I mean. Tell you what: Go out and watch the movie and we’ll discuss it later. I can’t say any more without giving away the plot points whose names we do not speak.

Trivial Thought: While I thought the movie was good, I’m surprised that it wasn’t “FATASTINOMICAL!!1” like the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. Oh, well. I guess that if M. Night Shyamalan can hold out for four movies before his sophomore slump, he can still be my hero.
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? The background story. It was obviously well thought-out. Also, the acting was top notch all around.
Would I recommend the movie? Yes.
Will I buy it on DVD? Yes.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Spider-man 2
Shrek 2
The Village
I, Robot
The Day After Tomorrow
The Terminal
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Fahrenheit 9/11
Van Helsing
The Stepford Wives

It’s early August and time to check out those Photoblog stats again. If you remember from last time, I opted not to do anything for the month of July that might increase the number of visits. As I suspected, I earned slightly fewer unique hits than the previous month, but the results were still educational.

Here’s the quick breakdown:

June = 83 unique visitors with 162 visits
July = 76 unique visitors with 174 visits

What’s interesting here is that the ‘blog indices in which I registered my Photoblog are still generating hits. Last month, I signed up in 20 or so indices. I’d say 15 hits on my site were from those same indices sending a ‘bot to check if the URL was valid. Since I didn’t submit to any new sites throughout the month of July, it’s arguable that I actually gained a few new visitors instead of losing 7 as the statistics indicate.

Looking over my list of referrers, I see a sprinkling of “globeofblogs,” “blogwise,” “linkexchange,” and “eatonweb portal.” Not a whole ton of hits, but at least they’re pointing some people my way.

I’m also noticing a few more keyword searches resulting in hits on the site. I¡¦ve got two each for “isabela de sagua” and “mendenhall glacier poster,” and one apiece for “nags head photo sunrise,” “isabela de sagua cuba,” “open-shutter photography,” and “pictures of el sano banano.” I know exactly which photos each of these point to — still no sales, but I hope they found what they were looking for. A couple people bookmarked my site this month, too — that’s a good omen for repeat visitors.
…
For the month of August, I’ve already implemented the next step — an XML syndication feed. The only change to the site will be a tiny little orange XML button at the end of each page. Getting this up and running was actually pretty easy since I had already sweated out the hard work on the ‘blog you’re now reading. What does it do? Glad you asked.

RSS, RDF, and XML feeds all do pretty much the same thing: They’ll let you know as soon as a webpage is updated. In order to do that, though, you’re going to need a new piece of software. Don’t panic! I’ll point you to one that’s free and easy to use.

What you need is a “news aggregator.” An aggregator is a program that probably looks a lot like what you use to read your e-mail, but instead of checking your e-mail, an aggregator will check all the RSS feeds you’ve signed up for. That’s where that orange XML button on my Photoblog (and the blue RSS button on my ‘blog) comes in — those are my feeds.

RSS feeds have changed the way I surf the web. Instead of roaming across the same sites every day to check to see if there’s anything new posted, I now let those same sites come to me. Every hour my aggregator goes out and checks for new content from sites like Slashdot, Wired, C|net, and the SciFi channel. If there’s something new, I’ll see a popup appear (much like an MSN Messenger message) near my taskbar. When I have a spare moment, I can open up my aggregator — it stays active 24/7 in my system tray — and read the newest news.

Okay, let’s talk specifics. I’m using an aggregator called Feedreader. You can head on over to their site and download a free copy right now. Once you’ve got the downloaded file on your computer, you can double-click-install it just like any other program. After that, fire it up and take a look around.

(By the way, this is simply the aggregator I’m using. There are plenty of others out there: Feeddemon seems to be one of the best, but it’s $30 after a 20-day free trial. A friend of mine is using Pluck — an aggregator that works as a plug-in for Internet Explorer. There are also plug-ins for Outlook, as well, and even web-based aggregators like Bloglines. If you really want to get into RSS, Google is a great place to start!)

Now that you’ve got Feedreader (or some other aggregator) running, you’ll have to supply it with an RSS, RDF, or XML feed. Don’t be alarmed — all it’s really asking for is a URL. Take my ‘blog for example. See the blue RSS button on the front page? That little button has a link to the RSS feed that Feedreader needs. There are a lot of ways to get that information into your aggregator, but because each person’s setup can be different, I’ll give you the only sure-fire way I know of:

* Place your mouse cursor over the button, but don’t click.
* Look down in the status bar at the bottom of your browser — the URL to the feed will be displayed
* Open up Feedreader and click the “New Feed” button.
* Type in the URL and click Next, then Finish

That’s it! Do the same thing with the XML button on any of my Photoblog pages and you’ll already have two sites that will notify you whenever they are updated (as long as you keep Feedreader running in the system tray, that is!)

What other sites have RSS feeds? You’d be surprised! Many, many sites that have dynamically changing content already use RSS feeds. How can you tell? Easy. Surf on over to the site in question and search the page for either “RSS,” “RDF,” or “XML.” If that doesn’t turn up anything, scan the pages for a button much like the ones I’ve used. If you still find nothing… well, not everyone is as cool as I am.

Just to get you going, here are a few of the feeds I most enjoy:

‘Blogs
Wil Wheaton dot Net — The journal of an actor turned writer (My hero!)
Neil Gaiman’s Journal — The journal of a fantasy and comic book writer
A Midgett Blog (‘natch!) — The most important journal in the world… to me.
A Midgett Photoblog (double ‘natch!) — See the world through my viewfinder

Technology
Wired News — Breaking Technology news
Slashdot — News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters
Dan’s Data — This guy really knows his stuff
Gizmodo — News and reviews of tech gadgets, delivered in an irreverent style
Engadget — MORE news and reviews of tech gadgets, less irreverent
PhotographyBLOG — What’s new in the world of Photography
Digital Photography Review — Very detailed reviews of digital cameras
Dynamic Artwork — There are some great Photoshop tutorials here

Entertainment
Boing Boing — Interesting links around the Internet
Sci-fi Wire — Science Fiction news
Slashdot: Games — Computer games
Penny Arcade — Online web comic and discussion about video games

That should do it. I’m really impressed with this new way of getting information — so much so that I’ll be starting up whole new ‘blog soon (stay tuned!) In the meantime, if you have any trouble getting started with RSS — either in using an aggregator or in modifying Greymatter — please don’t hesitate to ask me for some help.

Oh, and one more thing. I want to apologize in advance for the extremely ugly subject lines in my Photoblog’s RSS feeds. When I originally set up the site, I wasn’t expecting anyone would be reading the raw HTML code. Asi es la vida… at least you should be able to see a nice little thumbnail of each week’s photos.