Something caught my eye on TechCrunch the other day: Jott Jott is a free voice-to-text transcription service. You sign-up, confirm your email address, then pair it to your cell phone. After that, you can dial the Jott Number (1-866-JOTT-321) then dictate an up to 15 second note. It then emails that note to you (well, a link to it in the free version). You can also schedule that note to be forwarded via SMS as a reminder to you. ...
Watched the morbid, buddy-comedy The Bucket List last night. I enjoyed it…literally one of those “I laughed, I cried” kinda films, but for weird reasons. There are some genuinely good one-liners in the film, particularly the running gag about “The world’s most expensive coffee. Worth watching, but not if you’re in a bad mood. This movie is DEPRESSING. I was sad much of the time I watched this film, for lots of personal reasons. My family’s on intimate terms with cancer. I hate hospitals. I haven’t travelled and seen as much as I’d like in my life. I’ve got alot of broken relationships and estranged friends in my past. The memory of Maria’s dramatic birth via C-Section is still with me, so any scene where a couple says “goodbye” and operating room doors close is tough for me to watch. ...
First things first, let me say–my wife’s Skyline Chili recipie is DELICIOUS. * * * I got Jeff to come with me to the event (“I need an adult. I NEED AN ADULT!!”) to …ahem…keep me grounded. Plus I figured he’d enjoy it. So we headed down there, and I got right into a 135i convertible, including iDrive. We tooled around Lexington on the prescribed course for a half-hour, then returned. ...
And I did enjoy it. But you’re too kind - we were … Jeff Roberts - Aug 5, 2008 And I did enjoy it. But you’re too kind - we were briefly off course when I had you make a left instead of a right down by the airport. Cool car, but after seeing the stickers over there, it’s great to climb back into (or onto) the paid-for vehicle. ...
Friday night, Whitney and I went on a date. Honest-to-goodness, dinner-and-a-movie evening together. We ate at Friday’s and went to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army. We even went to a theater that didn’t smell like urine this time! I loved the film. Loved it…it was relentlessly funny, beautiful, and fun. As the film opens, we watch a younger Hellboy watching Howdy Doodie with his father, who reads the overeager Hellboy a bedtime story about The Golden Army, a warrior race of 4900 indestructible Goblin-forged machines, commanded by the elf-king in his war against mankind. Though the Golden Army triumphs, the Pyrrhic victory fills the king with remorse: He has become the destroyer himself. To atone, he locks the Golden Army away and separates the crown that controls them into three pieces, one of which he gives to man. ...
Wow. Imagine Vince Vaughn, minus 30 pounds, plus lots of hair, still unable to act. Then imagine a vapid plot, based around hollow, vapid Hollywood people. At that point, you’ll have Swingers, a picture of the walking id that is maleness in America in the 1970’s…er…I mean, the 1990’s in Hollywood. From reading the trivia on imdb, it looks like Writer/Director/Star/Gaffer/Wardrobe-Mistress Favreau based the plot on his own life when coming out to L.A. ...
What an awesome, awesome weekend it was! Productive, surprising, exhausting, with both family time and some time to myself. Friday night Whitney and I watched Juno the indie hit from last year that made Ellen Page an ingenue phenomenon. A nuanced film, it has the same deep characters and self-deprecating humor as Little Miss Sunshine. We both liked it. Saturday was busy, as most Saturdays before Autocross are for me. But man, was I motivated–up at 6:30, TODO list in hand, ticking-off chores. It freaked-out Bella just a tad: “I get freaked out when you’re…organized.” We were the snack-bringers at the final Coach-pitch game of the regular season at 4, but we decided to head into Lexington to buy Bella some new running shoes and head to Sams. ...
Sounds like a full and fun weekend. I’m trying to… Jeff Roberts - Jun 1, 2008 Sounds like a full and fun weekend. I’m trying to decide if my class will go feral if I leave it next weekend and go with Sandra to pick up Kate from camp.
So, Kung Fu Panda This 92-minute computer-animated extravaganza has all the elements of a great kids-and-adults flick: Slick looks, top voice talent (Jack Black, Angie Jolie, Dustin Hoffman), a fat-kid-makes-good plot, and merchandise-friendly anthropomorphic animals for characters. The plot centers around a vision of the sage in residence (a Galapagos tortoise, natch!) who has a vision that the big bad, Tai Lung will escape from his prison to once again ravage the Peaceful Valley. In response, he thinks it time to choose the Dragon Warrior, who will gain cosmic power to defeat evil–and Tai Lung, the leopard on steroids. ...
You did not just review “Kung-Fu Panda”. Chuck Fouts - Jun 1, 2008 You did not just review “Kung-Fu Panda”. Yep. Tomorrow, “The Rainbow Brite Movie”
Let’s get this out of the way first: This is an unnecessary movie made solely to bilk folks out of their hard-earned money. It stars an over-the-hill actor (Harrison Ford) and features a contrived plot line with holes like Swiss Cheese. It’s also great fun, laugh-out-loud funny in places, well-paced, and genuinely exciting. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, since the whole thing feels like National Treasure 2 and 1/2, right down to the treasure map and the hokey history references. ...
…so, they’ve put together an “Innovation” lab over here, populated with all sorts of cool gadgets, gizmos, and decorations, everything from a Magic 8-Ball to the latest iMac and Nintendo Wii. There’s remote-controlled this, electronic that, and lots of “so, what’s THAT good for?” One thing I was really salivating over showed-up the other day: Yep, it’s a Kindle Amazon’s eBook reader. VERY neat. It uses an ’electronic paper’ display…instead of being the normal LCD screen on, say, an iPhone, it’s a contrasty, easy to read display that looks like a super-duper Etch-a-Sketch. It looks like, well, a printed page. After a few minutes, the device disappears, and it’s just like you’re reading a book. Controls exist for flipping forwards and backwards through the book. Even the form-factor is pleasant and intuitive–like a big paperback or a small hardcover. ...
Ooooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of… Jeff Roberts - May 4, 2008 Ooooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of those…
W-O-W. WOW. WOOHOO! This was an absolutely fun move. Great (not overwhelming) SFX, tight editing, and excellent performances from Downey, Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges. This movie made me appreciate: How dull the Superman movies are How overwrought the X-Men franchise is How truly BAD DareDevil and Electra were How much of a genius the Batman series was (Burton’s two and “Batman Begins”, only!) Look, I’m no comic-book geek (I know, I know, surprise!). I had no preconceptions going into Ironman but it’s a frickin’ feast–action everywhere, neat “gee whiz” gadgetry delights, and the quips and one-liners from the top-level actors remain punchy throughout. Robert Downey, Jr., is a revelation–Smart, self-deprecating, and yet utterly human. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the demure wallflower, Pepper Potts, and the stunner proves her acting chops by making us believe she IS unsure of herself. ...
It’s been a few years since I tried out a new version of my favorite Linux Distribution (ubuntu), so I downloaded the 64-bit ISO and put it on my 3GHz AMD64 Dell box here at work. The short version? It’s sick. Good sick. SIIIIICK, yo! In prior lives (back when I ran Redhat 6 on my 866Mhz PIII in college), I was a KDE fan, so I grabbed Kubuntu (KDE + Ubuntu, get it?) instead of the Gnome-based Ubuntu this time. It’s flashy and fast, and includes the new KDE 4 GUI. Nice *enough*, I suppose. Having programmed in Qt once upon a time, I have lots of respect for the GUI paradigm that Qt & KDE enforces. ...
Nice review! I may just try KDE sometime, but unti… Ryan - May 5, 2008 Nice review! I may just try KDE sometime, but until then, GNOME’s just fine.
 Link In lieu of going skating with Joey and Whitney yesterday, I put Maria down for a nap and watched Cate Blanchett reprise her role as Good Queen Bess in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. As the story opens, it’s 1585, and Elizabeth has been on the throne 27 years. Still, intrigues surround her throne, as the Catholic Spain seeks to remove “the bastard whore” from the throne and put Mary Stuart (“Queen of Scots”) in her place, or so it seems. ...
I liked the movie…lol. Susan - Apr 2, 2008 I liked the movie…lol.
21 was great, if you like ill-paced movies with recycled plotlines. After enjoying other such pictures about genius kids (Real Genius) and breaking the bank at Las Vegas casinos (Ocean’s 11), I hoped for a tight, enjoyable romp, with a good “nerd + hot chick” love story and lots of nerd-rific references–sort of like War Games in Vegas. Yeah, not so much. The elevator pitch is dynamite: MIT students act as a team to count cards at Vegas blackjack tables, facing opposition from the latest technology (biometric scanners) and old-school Vegas security men, as well as internal turmoil. Somewhere between there and adapting the bestselling fact-cum-fiction book Bringing Down the House, this movie becomes a mess of recycled ideas and predictability. By the end, I was rooting for security guards to nab the lot of them. They’re just annoying people we’re given no reason to care about. ...
How is it that I’ve lived 29 years (21 of those a gearhead) and not seen Vanishing Point? This film is hard to pin down. It’s like: Easy Rider, in a car Smokey and the Bandit, but no midget and it’s not funny Cannonball run…no Dom DeLouise, and it’s not funny. Apocalypse now/Heart of Darkness but no jungle Homer’s Odyssey but no boat More precisely, this film has the same overall theme as “Cool Hand Luke”–an ordinary man comes back from war (in the case, Vietnam), knocks around awhile and gets into trouble, and pays the price. As the audience, we’re supposed to identify with the main character, and see how “the man” and “the squares” are hell-bent on destroying the utopian hippie vision of freedom and love. ...