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Back From Germany

2008 Dec 14, 4:59

View from Jon'sSarah and I are back from Munich, Germany as of Thursday and I've just about recovered. The trip there via Air France we watched many movies and it was much better than the trip back in which the entertainment system failed and I had a cold. When we arrived, Jon met us at the airport, helped us with the subway system, we played Guitar Hero, ate at a Bavarian pub, and then later at an Australian bar.

Neuschwanstein CastleThe following day we met up with Jon and three of his friends, one of whom was visiting from England and we all took a train to Neuschwanstein Castle. Apparently its the 'Disney' castle in that Disney's castle's are based upon it. The castle is filled with images and statues of swans in homage to the Swan Knight. We ate in the town at a cafe with traditional Bavarian food before taking the train back and getting all you can eat fajitas for dinner.

PermalinkCommentsgermany personal vacation nontechnical

Nikon unveils Coolpix S60: Digital Photography Review

2008 Sep 27, 7:18"Nikon has launched the Coolpix S60 in addition to the four S-series compact cameras. This 10MP digital camera with 3.5" touch-panel LCD and 5x zoom lens, has Vibration Reduction along with features such as time-lapse movies, in-camera retouch and HDMi output."PermalinkCommentsnikon camera digital photography photo review

Party Movies Recommended by Netflix

2008 Sep 18, 10:31
Poster for 24 Hour Party PeoplePoster for Human TrafficPoster for The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down

Netflix has recommended three party movies over my time with Netflix and if you're OK with movies featuring sex, drugs, rock&roll (or techno) as almost the main character then I can recommend at least The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down.

24 Hour Party People is based on the true story of Tony Wilson, journalist, band manager, and club owner (not all at once) around the rise of punk and new wave in England. Like many true-story based movies it starts off strong and very interesting but gets very slow at the end like the writers got bored and just started copying the actual events. Unless you have some interest in the history of music in the 80s in Manchester I don't recommend this movie.

Human Traffic is fun and funny following a group of friends going out for a night of clubbing and partying. I had to get over seeing John Simm as not The Master from Doctor Who but rather as a partying youth. It felt like it was geared towards viewers who were on something like the totally odd techno musical interludes with the characters dancing for no apparent reason. Otherwise the movie was good.

The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down is done in the style of an old educational movie on the topic of clubbing and partying. It sounds like a premise that would get old but they do a good job. While demonstrating drinking and driving they have scientists push a mouse around in a toy convertible. Enough said. It was funny and I recommend it.

PermalinkCommentsparty movie netflix

Tag Metadata in Feeds

2008 Aug 25, 10:13

As noted previously, my page consists of the aggregation of my various feeds and in working on that code recently it was again brought to my attention that everyone has different ways of representing tag metadata in feeds. I made up a list of how my various feed sources represent tags and list that data here so that it might help others in the future.

Tag markup from various sources
Source Feed Type Tag Markup Scheme One Tag Per Element Tag Scheme URI Human / Machine Names Example Markup
LiveJournal Atom atom:category yes no no , (source)
LiveJournal RSS 2.0 rss2:category yes no no technical
(soure)
WordPress RSS 2.0 rss2:category yes no no , (source)
Delicious RSS 1.0 dc:subject no no no photosynth photos 3d tool
(source)
Delicious RSS 2.0 rss2:category yes yes no domain="http://delicious.com/SequelGuy/">
hulu

(source)
Flickr Atom atom:category yes yes no term="seattle"
scheme="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/" />

(source)
Flickr RSS 2.0 media:category no yes no scheme="urn:flickr:tags">
seattle washington baseball mariners

(source)
YouTube RSS 2.0 media:category no no no label="Tags">
bunny rabbit yawn cadbury

(source)
LibraryThing RSS 2.0 No explicit tag metadata. no no no n/a, (source)
Tag markup scheme
Tag Markup Scheme Notes Example
Atom Category
atom:category
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
category/@term
Required category name.
category/@scheme
Optional IRI id'ing the categorization scheme.
category/@label
Optional human readable category name.
term="catName"
scheme="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme"
label="category name in human readable format"/>
RSS 2.0 category
rss2:category
empty namespace
category/@domain
Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.
category/text()
Required category name. The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy. Processors may establish conventions for the interpretation of categories.
domain="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme">
MSFT
Yahoo Media RSS Module category
media:category
xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
category/text()
Required category name.
category/@domain
Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.
scheme="http://dmoz.org"
label="Ace Ventura - Pet Detective">
Arts/Movies/Titles/A/Ace_Ventura_Series/Ace_Ventura_-_Pet_Detective
Dublin Core subject
dc:subject
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
subject/text()
Required category name. Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.
humor

Update 2009-9-14: Added WordPress to the Tag Markup table and namespaces to the Tag Markup Scheme table.

PermalinkCommentsfeed media delicious technical atom youtube yahoo rss tag

SPLITREASON.COM :: Time Travel t-shirt

2008 Jun 19, 11:10Most excellent! "Because time travel is still one of the most interesting motifs used in games, movies and on TV, we bring you this fine piece of cotton. Oh, and it comes from the future!"PermalinkCommentstshirt timetravel bttf purchase wishlist shirt

NetFlix Media Center and Ong-Bak

2008 Jun 15, 7:57

Ong-Bak movie poster.I just installed vmcNetFlix which lets you watch your on demand NetFlix movies via your Vista Media Center or any Media Center Extenders like the Xbox 360. It works well but fails poorly with some cryptic error messages and long timeouts. Be sure to get NetFlix on demand movies working in your browser before installing this plugin. Once I did that everything worked very well.

To test it out I watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior in which Ting must travel from his country village to Bangkok where he works with his cousin in the city to recover his village's stolen religious artifact. Its a mix of Perfect Strangers, Street Fighter and Pad-See Ew. Martial arts movies, like porn and video games, aren't required to have a strong plot but Ong-Bak has a fine plot line and enjoyable Thai martial arts. I saw the Tiger Knee in there several times. An enjoyable movie that reminded me of watching martial arts movies with my friends in high school.

PermalinkCommentsmedia-center thai netflix ong-bak vista

Featured Windows Download: vmcNetFlix Streams Watch Now Videos to Your Xbox 360

2008 Jun 13, 12:52Stream NetFlix's on demand movies to your Vista Windows Media Center and all extenders including Xbox 360.PermalinkCommentsvia:dotjosh lifehacker movies vista xbox plugin mce windows netflix movie

Been-Seen.com:: Cool Stuff - Guerilla Drive-In

2008 May 19, 3:47"Ever get nostalgic for the Drive-In movies of yore? Now with the new global guerilla drive-in movement, MobMov, the drive-in is making a comeback--thanks to the wonders of modern technology."PermalinkCommentsdrive-in flash-mob movie car projector

Wired 14.04: The Culture War

2008 Apr 8, 1:52"The Culture War: How new media keeps corrupting our children." Article snippets condemning novels in 1700s, the Waltz 1800s, Movies, Telephone, etc etc. for corrupting the youthPermalinkCommentsarticle wired videogames culture youth media censorship comic politics history humor

Bad Movie Physics: A Report Card

2008 Mar 14, 2:39FTA: "We rated 18 movies based on how many laws of physics they mangled, and here's our report card."PermalinkCommentsscience physics tv movie fiction scifi humor

The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007 - The New York Times

2008 Feb 26, 10:08"February 23, 2008 The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007 Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build ovPermalinkCommentsmovie movies visualization via:swannman information graph

YouTube - Anti-Piracy Ad from The IT Crowd

2007 Oct 3, 2:50Parody of anti-piracy ads you may have seen at the beginning of movies recently.PermalinkCommentsvia:felix42 copyright humor video videos piracy legal law advertising politics ip

Awesome Movies Unknown to Me

2007 Aug 12, 2:50Thanks to Netflix I've been able to enjoy several movies that I'd never heard of.



Brick is a classic PI film set in a modern high school. Its fun figuring out which high school students correspond to which film noir archetypes.

Primer is a sci-fi movie but it doesn't focus on action or effects. Its like watching an excellent Twilight Zone episode. I hate to describe this any further for fear of giving something away.

The Amazing Screw-On Head is an animated version of the one shot comic. It feels like the 1800s precursor to the The Venture Bros. and stars Screw-On Head, a steam-punk robot head thing and Abe Lincoln's top spy for occult matters.

The Quiet Earth is the movie version of the book about a man who awakes one day to find himself alone(... or is he?) It was made in the 80s and in Australia but don't hold that against it.PermalinkCommentsscifi primer movie amazing screw-on head personal netflix brick the quiet earth

Movie Times

2007 May 1, 3:48The Sunday of the weekend before last I had friends over and we watched Antitrust and Sneakers. Watching Antitrust makes me wonder if Bill Gates has seen it. Tim Robbins plays a character that is essentially based on him but so over the top that its ridiculous.

A few days before that I watched The Prestige with Sarah. I can't tell if I was or wasn't supposed to know what was going on until the end but it was cool anyway. I didn't know until later but David Bowie plays Tesla which is just awesome all the way around.

We also watched The Illusionist sometime before. Both movies are adaptations of novels with stage magicians set in turn of the century England. And I enjoyed both of them. I thought one would be a rushed attempt by one studio to compete with the another on the same ground but that doesn't seem to be the case. I've noticed this before with those asteroid disaster movies and the two movies about Truman Capote. It turns out Wikipedia has a huge list of competing similar movies.PermalinkCommentspersonal movies nontechnical

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

2007 Apr 15, 7:37Friday Jon, Daniil, and I saw Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. It was really great. The quality of individual Aqua Teen episodes varies wildly but this movie was very funny. It was like watching an excellent episode that happened to be 87 minutes long.

I had some difficulty generating interest for the movie as many didn't think this was 'their kind of movie'. I asked Sarah and she said no but I talked to her about it again later after she watched a clip and she said she really didn't want to see it because it looked too weird. I asked her what she saw in the clip and she said a man with weird pants was talking with french fries while a drink was getting a meatball to push him around in a cart.

Well, when you put it like that it does sound weird...PermalinkCommentsmovie personal nontechnical

Report Says the Young Buy Violent Games and Movies - New York Times

2007 Apr 13, 2:52Shocking newsflash: Kids view adult content! OMG! FTA: "Commission investigators also found that youth access to violent fare had fallen since 2000, especially in video games. Only 42 percent of unaccompanied young buyers were able to buy games rated M (fPermalinkCommentsarticle business censorship government rights violence videogames

Add music and movies to your iPod from any computer without iTunes - Lifehacker

2007 Feb 20, 3:02An article on syncing music and video to and from your iPod on any computer using a non-iTunes application.PermalinkCommentsipod itunes software music howto mp3 lifehacker blog article neat-fp

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

2007 Jan 22, 7:06Essay putting Chewie and R2D2 as key figures of the Rebel Alliance. Reconsidering ep 4 in light of 1-3. Its easy to put words in the mouth of the characters we can't understand.PermalinkCommentsstarwars movies analysis humor essay article nerd nerds scifi

Squirl: A Site for Collectors

2006 Dec 27, 3:25Another one of these crazy social collaboration deals. In this one its all about collections of arbitrary things. "Squirl is the best way to catalog, organize and share your records, movies, books, comic books, stamps, coins, or practically anything elsPermalinkCommentscollections web2.0 social collecting

Top 10 Public Domain Movies - Wired 14.10: START

2006 Oct 4, 1:16Top 10 Public Domain MoviesPermalinkCommentsarticle copyright domain free public movie video torrent read
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