Saturday, June 05, 2004

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban

I saw the movie last night (and have tickets to see it again tonight) with my wife - we both enjoyed it a lot. Quite a different feel to this movie - the change in directors is VERY evident - but it's a good thing in my opinion. The pacing was better, and even though the movie is 2 hours 21 minutes it didn't seem really long. I liked the Dementors, and the effects were well done. And once again the film makers have done some very inspired casting. David Thewlis as Remus Lupin and Gary Oldman as Sirius Black were fantastic! Hopefully I'm not too tired tonight that I fall asleep in the middle of watching it for the second time - didn't get to sleep till after midnight, and I had to get up at 4:30am to get to work by 6am. No rest for the wicked, apparently...

Friday, June 04, 2004

Is your PC toxic?

This article is rather disturbing. But it is good to know that these PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl) compounds are being phased out. Of course, all the lead and mercury and other junk in PC's isn't going away soon - and is toxic too. I'm not advocating throwing all your PC's away (especially since these flame retardant compounds are present in TV's and other electronic equipment - so you'd have to toss EVERYTHING out), but this does present a problem similar to the problems discovered with asbestos. I guess it's becoming unsafe to do just about anything these days.

In much happier news - I'm going to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tonight (and tomorrow night as well), so I'll be sure to post up a review tomorrow. I'm hoping it's even better than the first two movies - we shall see...

Thursday, June 03, 2004

RUSH!!!!!

Saw the Rush 30th Anniversary tour last night at [Product Placed Car Dealer] Amphitheatre, and it was amazing! They played almost 3 and a half hours, here's the setlist -
R30 Overture - (medley, with retrospective Jerry Stiller dream intro) consisting of : Finding My Way->Anthem->Bastille Day->A Passage To Bangkok->Cygnus X-1 (Prologue)->Hemispheres (Prelude)
The Spirit of Radio
Force Ten
Animate
Subdivisions
Earthshine
Red Barchetta
Roll The Bones
Bravado
YYZ
The Trees (Daytripper ending)
The Seeker
One Little Victory (with dragon intro)
(-Intermission-/'That Darned Dragon' intro)
Tom Sawyer
Dreamline
Secret Touch
Between the Wheels
Mystic Rhythms
Red Sector A
Drum Solo
Resist (acoustic-Geddy and Alex)
Heart Full of Soul (acoustic-Geddy/Alex/Neil)
2112 (Overture/Temples of Syrinx/Grand Finale)
La Villa Strangiato (W/Lerxst rant)
ByTor & the Snow Dog->Xanadu
Working Man (reggae ending)
Encore:
Summertime Blues
Crossroads
Limelight
(Jerry Stiller outro movie)

There was actually one more song in the encore - but I can't remember what it was :(
The Jerry Stiller intro and outro were very funny - although a guy in the row in front of me was all "Look man! It's BEN STILLER" to his buddy. What a moron. The rant Alex (Lerxst) does during La Villa Strangiato was hilarious - and weird. He ended up talking about a goat going into the production office with receipts, and how did a goat get receipts? And were does he keep them? See, weird - I told you! It was a great show, and if anyone wants to buy me a present you can go here and buy me the Golf Shirt or the program. Just in case anyone out there felt like getting me something ;)

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Seething with jealousy...

Man, am I ever jealous of the students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. They have fiber optic connectivity across the campus - over 16,000 fiber ports on campus! Plus the campus network supports 802.11G wireless access!! Geez man - these kids are going to get spoiled rotten! Plus, they can download music WAY faster than other college students ;)

In other news, the lovely RIAA is encouraging Macromedia and SunnComm International to develop technology that will limit the number of times you can copy a CD - BMG Music Group is currently testing the SunnComm version of this "secure burning" technology. The technology is - of course - based on Microsoft's DRM (Digital Rights Management) software. yet another way for the man to keep us down. Damn the man!