SubscribeNaim Falandino
a guy who doesn't write enough
21
This past weekend I went out of town with some good friends to go relax on the west side of the state. Other than a lot of lounging in the sun, swimming and eating we also watched the inspired-by-true-events movie 21.
I have to say, it was very entertaining. You can definitely tell where they took some liberties with the actual details of what went down toward the end of the movie, but it was still pretty well done. The acting was good, the pacing was good, heck even the effects (what effects they had) were good.
There have been a lot of movies about “stickin’ it to the man” but this one came off as a bit different. Perhaps because it wasn’t completely formulaic (although it was still relatively predictable) or perhaps because the dialog in general was very well written and delivered. It was also a very stylish portrail of what could have been pretty much a documentary. You really got a feel for what it might have felt like to be a college kid with hundreds of thousands of dollars and an ego to match.
Overall it’s a very well done movie and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.
Better late than never: Battlestar Galactica
My buddy is letting me borrow the first season of Battlestar Galactica. It’s one of those shows I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time (like Lost, which I still need to do) but never quite got around to.
Now I’m getting caught up. So far I’m only through the first few discs but I can say I’m really enjoying it. It’s just what I need to be honest. With as busy as I’ve been the past few weeks a little relaxing downtime after work with a good sci-fi show suits me just fine.
Edit: I finished Season 1 last night and yeah, I am hooked. Great show!
Again and Again
Pretty fantastic music video set to “Again and Again” by The Bird & The Bee. I love seeing creative stuff like this. What a cutie too.
Boomerang by Cirrus
I know I’ve been bad lately and haven’t posted much. Sorry, I’ll explain that later tonight in a different posting. This one is just to say that this song that I found on Pandora is one of my new favorite tracks. Beautiful vocals and great musical structure to the song itself.
Great stuff huh? Makes me even consider getting voice lessons myself; vocals can go along way to making a good bit of music great. Well, even if I don’t go that route I think I’ll definitely consider putting up an add looking for a female vocalist looking to do some collaboration.
SSE: A very annoying and fun game mode
Last night Paul did me a huge favor by coming over and helping me beat SSE. Prior to this playing that mode (for me) was basically like pulling teeth. It wasn’t that it was too hard or anything, I just didn’t think it was that fun. It was long, felt awkward at times and generally didn’t feel that fun.
But co-op changes everything and this is a great example. While a few things were still frustrating Paul and I were able to power through the last 60% of the game and I really enjoyed it. Of course, the joking around and wackiness was the most enjoyable part, but the game itself became much more entertaining as well. It almost felt as if it was designed to be played with two players from the start.
As Paul mentioned we coined the phrase “binch” which basically means “to pinch a bitch” or vice versa. Much binching was had. I don’t even know how that word was invented, but there you go. Put it in the Urban Dictionary or whatever.
I’m mostly just glad we unlocked a bunch of characters.. I feel like all that stress of having to beat SSE is gone and now I can actually play the part of the game I like.
10,000 BC
Yesterday I took a vacation day. This is worth noting because I have hardly taken any vacation time this past year. Unfortunately one of the major reasons I did that was to work on my taxes (more on that for another post). I did take a break after lunch to go see 10,000 BC with my dad and sister though. My impression of this movie was that it had cavemen, dinosaurs, saber tooth tigers AND pyramids. I basically expected this to also have some crazy alien twist and a gigantic explosion.
While the movie was good and entertaining it took itself far more serious than I thought it would. There were no dinosaurs or aliens or explosions. The movie was lacking because of this. I wanted something completely over the top that was unbelievably ridiculous. This movie is rated PG-13 and unfortunately it’s way on the tame side of PG-13. It should have been R. I just needed more in every way.
Camilla Belle was extremely attractive in this film, but again, PG-13. I was hoping for slightly more compromising caveman attire.
Seriously though the movie needed dinosaurs. And men riding those dinosaurs, using them to build pyramids made out of diamonds for their alien overlords. It could have been so much more…
TV is full of spiders
I watch what most would probably consider a below average amount of TV. The shows that I do watch tend to be the kind that usually inform. For example, I’m a big fan of a lot of stuff on Discovery HD Theater. Not just because it makes my Bravia look amazing, but because there’s some genuinely cool stuff on there.
But whenever there’s a show that has to do with nature at all – especially documentaries – I have this constant, underlying fear that they will cut to a closeup of a spider. I mean, spiders are in nature right? Well, apparently nature is made up entirely of spiders in my world view. Shows about forests will have all kinds of terrible wolf spiders and black widows. A show with the desert will invariably have camel spiders the size of small SUVs. Even places that have no right containing spiders will have them. Mountain dwelling spiders. Arctic spiders. Subterranean sonar-using spiders. It doesn’t matter where that NatGeo or Discovery camera crew goes, I somehow feel that you can count on the fact that there will be spiders there and that they feel it is their duty to display those spiders to you in an arbitrary fashion.
This makes no sense. The vast majority of shows that feature nature have nothing to do with spiders. And in fact, I like to enjoy nature in person quite a bit so I have first hand knowledge that there are not spiders waiting for impromptu cameos around every tree. Believe it or not, it can at times be harder to find a spider than it would be to simply not find a spider.
I don’t even hate spiders that much. I’m not a fan by any means, especially when they get above a certain size, but I can deal with them. Something about one-thousand eighty progressive lines of spidery detail (particularly when it is hairy and features numerous eyes) given without any warning bugs me. You could be watching something entirely relaxing, like a tree canopy, or water fowl and then it’s an immediate cut to a horrifying spider view. Put away the fucking zoom lens, mister camera operator.
I’m not entirely crazy for feeling this way since I’ve gotten burned before, but I’m still overreacting. Thankfully I think I’m starting to get over this. It hasn’t been easy but little by little I grow more accepting of spiders and that they simply are in nature and sometimes they get caught on camera.
Prof. Layton the jerk
Last night Paul came by and hung out. As always it was good times. We went to the Coney Island near my house that I’ve been meaning to check out for a few months now for dinner and it was totally great. There’s something about a Coney Island place with friends that is just fantastic in my opinion. The food was pretty good too I can happily say; not quite to Zorba’s level (and certainly not as good as Lafayette) but it was pretty damn good.
We headed back to the house where I gave a quick demo of some of the beats I’m working on and then moved on to Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the NDS. This is a game about solving puzzles. It’s very much like that comic shows actually. Every time you try and do something, a person tells you, “Hey, how about you do this puzzle first.” Being a jerk of a professor who acts like an insufferable know-it-all you have to prove to the simple villagers that their pointless mind games are child’s play.
The game is actually quite pretty, with very nice looking art and a level of animation for critical scenes that surprised me, even voice over work (which was hilarious on in its own way). We hadn’t really gotten too far into the game to see what exactly made the village so curious except for the obvious stack of homes reaching into the sky. We did, however, learn that I am an absolute bloodhound at finding “hint coins.” Must be from those days as a kid playing pixel-hunting adventure games.
The puzzles kind of attempt to fit with the game’s plot/story/environment but sometimes they’re pretty blatant about the “Hey, solve this math problem,” attitude the game has. That said, a couple that we came across were actually quite tricky and fun. I don’t really have any puzzle games like this that encourage actual critical thinking (I have to do a lot of that at work as it is…) but this might be worth picking up when I can find it used for cheap.
After that we watched a few episodes of Flight of the Conchords, one of my favorite shows as of late. Paul seemed to appreciate the dry and often wacky sense of humor that the show has, and that we both also share.
Before it was time to call it a night Paul helped me unlock level 5 in Rez HD. After failing on the final boss (making me realize just how bad I am at this sort of thing now) I realized it was after 11:00 and that I should probably head to bed.
I have no less than seven drafts sitting in my WordPress right now. Seven. Several of these are really good posts too… Or will be when I actually write them. Work is really hitting hard right now and I’m running on all cylinders to keep up. Hopefully I’ll get some time this weekend to do a little writing.
Breathe
I’ve been listening to Pink Floyd basically non-stop for the past two days now. It’s probably because we heard that tribute band the other night that got me going on this kick, but also because the philosophical nature of a lot of their lyrics is hitting close to home at the moment. The music itself is sublime (Gilmour is one of the greatest guitarists of all time in my opinion, saying nothing of the fantastic bass playing that Waters provided while he was with the band) and when you combine that with their lyrics I can easily say that Pink Floyd is one of the greatest – quite possibly the greatest – bands of all time.
Anyway, one of their songs that I like the most is “Breathe” off of The Dark Side of the Moon. I’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves in this case:
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don’t be afraid to care.
Leave but don’t leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down it’s time to dig another one.For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.
I really need to learn to play guitar. Then I need to magically learn to play guitar like David Gilmour.
About Naim
Naim is a 27 year old software magician, electronic musician and puzzlematician. By day he is a pro software architect and developer. By night he is at the helm of KnowLogik, a tech-creative R&D, strategy and design outfit. Naim is an information and design geek who loves making and learning stuff. In his spare time he writes, takes photos, and is chill.