Cinematic Titanic

Cinematic Titanic, the next version of making fun of bad movies from the creators of MST3K.

Amazon's mp3 store

I used Amazon's mp3 store for the first time this evening by purchasing Depeche Mode's song Precious.

Purchasing an mp3 from Amazon is like purchasing anything else from them. Precious was encoded with a bitrate of 256 kbps and a sample rate of 44,100 Hz. While it recommends their program for downloading (Windows and OS X only), it is not required, so things work just fine for those of us using Linux. I played it in Amarok and it sounds great. I highly recommend purchasing music from them.

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight movie review

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight movie

Jan 21, 2008 by Steveproduct

Dragonlance - Dragons Of The Autumn Twilight

3 out of 5 stars

I purchased the DVD and finally watched it today, trying to not keep expectations high. I figured that at least Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis were involved with the making of the movie, so that would prevent any kind of major disaster.

The movie did a pretty good job sticking with the story and moved at a good pace. A time of 90 minutes is a bit too short for the movie, however, as I think viewers unfamiliar with the book will get lost in a couple of places. I also missed the bits of interaction that Raistlin and Fizban had in the book. What bothered me the most, however, was the leaving out of a part that I thought was pretty vital to character development - Riverwind getting blasted by Oynx. Especially since Riverwind and Goldmoon go from "I am a princess and cannot be with a shepherd, no matter what my feelings may be" to dropping all such pretenses by the end of the movie, showing no such change in them between.

The animation was fine, but not the best I have seen. I did not care for how most of the elves looked - too many lines in their faces is the best description I can come up with for what bugged me. I think I caught one part where Tanis had weapons when he was not supposed to, but it flashed by pretty quickly. I wish better detail could have been done with Raistlin's eyes. While the golden hourglasses are there, they are rather plain.

The music was good, but I was hoping for a bit more with the sound, especially since it was using Dolby 5.1. I was hoping for some surround sound aspects, but was disappointed there.

While the voices for the characters did not match what voices I have in my head while reading the story, the voice acting was a closer match than I expected. I was worried about Lucy Lawless doing the voice of Goldmoon, but she did a good job. Raistlin was not as mean as I expected him to be, but I blame that more on the script. There was only one part where that could come through, and it was done well.

I am hoping that the movie does well enough to make the other two books into movies and hopefully encourages someone to make live action movies at some point. On the animation side, it would be interesting if some anime artists did their own rendition of Dragonlance.

Back before there was MST3K

There was Mad Movies (goes to a YouTube search).

Social food likes Web site

The following idea came to my mind while having lunch today:

There are sites such as Last.fm and Pandora for discovering other music you might like based on what music you like. Netflix can recommend movies based on what you have rented and liked. Could something similar be done for food?

If people were to post their favorite foods, recipes, and the like, would there be any correlations? Would a recommended food or recipe based on my likes and dislikes introduce me to something new that I would like?

I could not find any site that does this. I do not have the time to create such a site, but would not mind giving some sort of help to anyone who wants to create it.

ZINK printers - promising photo printer of the future?

PC Magazine gives a report from CES on Polaroid's ZINK printer. The ZINK printer apparently only goes on two by three inch paper, for now at least, so is not really feasible for photos right now, and apparently the quality isn't perfect yet. Still, it will be interesting to see what this technology brings in the next few years.

I rarely do regular printing at home, to say nothing of printing photos, so ink jet printers are not something I am interested in, as I don't care for the trouble that comes about from not using them for a while. I'll just stick to going someplace to get photos printed for now.

Reno and Sparks, Nevada storm photo, part 2

Icicle - January 2008,
originally uploaded by Sperlock74.

This second photo is of one lone icicle hanging from my house. Not the biggest one, but one that just stuck out at me.

Reno and Sparks, Nevada storm photo, part 1

Snow covered bush - January 2008,
originally uploaded by Sperlock74.

The total measurement of snow from my house today was 5 inches. This first photo is of one of the bushes outside of my home.

Reno and Sparks, Nevada storm report

Today's storm has definitely been an unusual one. It is rare enough for Reno and the surrounding area to have precipitation all day. It was raining when I woke up this morning at 6:20 and continued raining until it started turning into snow a little bit before 5:00 this evening. What made this storm unusual was the consistent strong wind that we have had all day, and blizzard conditions are expected until around 6:00 in the morning. Thankfully, my umbrella survived the strong wind where two or three umbrellas I saw did not.

We supposedly had flooding in a few areas (the past two floods have also been near New Year's Day), downed power lines, and a rock slide at the Vista Blvd. exit for Interstate 80. I have only heard of one power outage so far.

The snow is piling up as I type this and looks to be almost an inch thick. Forecasts expect us to get about 6 inches from this round of the storm.