Final Four

Even though I've previously mentioned that I'm not a huge college basketball fan I'm really looking forward to the two Final Four games today. I think the Georgetown vs Ohio game is gonna be an instant classic with Hibbert going against Oden. Its rare to find two such talented big guys and I've heard some comparison to the Olijawan/Ewing showdown back in the day. As for the Florida vs UCLA game I'm not really familiar with either team but Noah on Florida is really fun to watch and I think his experience gives Florida an edge.

Bloc Party Show!

Last night I saw Bloc Party at the Orpheum theater in downtown Boston. The show was AWESOME! I'm starting to become a huge fan of this band and the more I listen to their music the more I appreciate it and enjoy it. In concert they tore through a face paced set and never let up rockin the crowd. I'm really digging the live music scene in Boston and I've got tickets to several shows coming up including Ozomatli, The Books and John Brown's Body. Should be good times!

More NBA

Well my shout-out to Kobe was very well timed. Last night he scored 62 points making him one of only four players to ever have three consecutive games scoring 50 points of more. Quite a personal achievement for sure but I don't think he's gonna win another title with the lakers. At least not until they surround him with some better players. Odom is pretty good but they really don't have anyone that can step up if Kobe isn't at the top of his game. In other news, the Celtics lost again last night but Pierce jammed his shoulder in the process. I think its time for him to go on the injured reserve list and let the young guys finish out the year. As for Doc I think he's done a good job of developing the young guys like Jefferson and Rondo but it certainly seems like they have a long way to go in terms of winning games without a strong performance from pierce. The West-Green-Gomes-Jefferson-Perkins line up has played the second most minutes (behind the Telfair-Pierce-Szczerbiak-Gomes-Perkins) but has one of the poorest over-under point differentials out of any of the other five man combinations Doc has used.

NBA Personalities

Just a few thoughts I had regarding some of the players around the league. Gilbert Arenas is a weird dude. I like him but there is something off about that makes him seem like a nerdy teen and not an NBA superstar. I feel like he is becoming the NBA's version of a WWF character - making these bold predictions about his performance before a game and then not coming anywhere close to backing it up. Gilbert's persona (at least in my mind) is so different from a guy like Shaq. Shaq oozes confidence and composure and is like the unofficial ambassador for all fans of the game. He is approachable and marketable to guys like me yet he s seems to embody the entire strata of NBA personalities - athlete, comedian, actor, poet, and aristocrat. When Shaq talks I listen. Also, I jut wanted to mention that the strange experiment going on in Denver is giving me a new found respect for AI. He just wants to win and he's changing his game to do it. I don't think they have a chance against upper echelon teams in the west but they are certainly fun to watch.

Comic Wonder

What the hell happened to me!? How did I become a "comic book nerd" and why am I proud of it. Isn't it strange that I should be embracing the medium at an age when most people are out growing out of it as a childhood past-time. Well there are a few things about the comics that I like. Firstly I like comics that have some indie creed and are more targeted to adults. Authors like Brian Wood make me think there are some legitimate young artists who found the comic book medium as an expression of their creative vision. Guys like Eisner and Spielgman write autobiographically about their lives, the jewish condition and real issues that most kids wouldn't really understand. Even books about confused teens like Blankets and Sloth can't really be appreciated until the reader has gone through the teen age experience and can reflect upon that part life with some subjective objectivity. And even the comics aimed at a young audience are written by adults who speak in their approximation of youth thinking. This not only is a self fulfilling way of dictating youth culture but also a way to tapping in the youth culture as an outsider.

Basketball in March

So it's mid-march and all the sports media outlets and clogged full with news about the annual college basketball tournament. To be honest I don't really give a crap about the tournament and still prefer to watch pro basketball if given the choice. Granted I will probably tune in to watch the Final Four and the championship game but mostly because that'll mean getting a preview of the Celtic's first round draft pick. Currently the Celtics are the second worst team in the league with a three game difference over Memphis for the bottom spot. The way the NBA lottery works the two worst teams share about a 50% chance of getting either the first or second overall pick. Its really a win-win at this point cuz either Durant or Oden will be the first and second picks and I'll be happy if the Celtics end up with either. Also, just wanted to point out something that i think has historical relevance but most people aren't paying attention to. Kobe Bryant just scored 65 points the other night and then followed it with a 50 point game. (And don't forget that last season he scored 85 in a game.) Now back when Kobe and Shaq won three championships with the Lakers it seemed like everybody fought about which of the two were the better individual player. Then Shaq went to Miami and won another championship and in my mind claimed the honor as the better if the two (even though Shaq had Dwyan Wade and a bunch of role players making a team much much beter than Kobe's Lakers). Still, a case can be made for Kobe looking at his individual achievements on a team much worse than Shaq's.

Verizon FiOS

Big things happening at the Grossman estate. My dad has enlsited me and sis to orchestrate the change over from Commcast/ATT (cable/dsl) to the fiber-optic goodness of Verizon's FiOS. The difference should be very noticeable. DSL is slow as hell and comcast doesn't broadcast all that many HD channels. Also, the Verizon DVR seems fully loaded and has a cool feature that lets you share recorded shows with other tvs in the house.

New HD TV?

So, yesterday my dad decided to buy himself a new 42' plasma HD tv for is birthday. So he sat down at my computer and placed the order. Unfortunately he didn't sign out of my account and he ended up buying two tvs - one on my credit card and one on his. I got the order conformation email this morning and when i got to work I tried to cancel the order. Apparently the tv was "being prepared" for shipping and I had missed the cancellation deadline. All I can do now is refuse to sign for the order and it will get taken back to amazon at which point I'll get my refund. As adamant as I am about getting my money back I'm kinda tempted to keep the tv. I'd never let myself make this purchase but deep down I wish could. So, what do you guys think - should I keep the TV? Check it out....

Comic Round-Up

Its been a while since my last comic review so its time to catch up! Here's what I've been reading:

Astonishing X-Men

This is my first foray into mainstream superhero genre but with Joss Whedon as the author I thought I'd give it a try. Granted a lot of subtle (and not so subtle) plot points flew way over my head but overall this was an enjoyable read. With vols 2 & 3 already on stands I'm looking forward to more reading goodness.

Blankets

Blankets is the ultimate indulgence of a sensitive male indie author. While it is "highly emotive" I still found a real connection with the story in itsdepiction of young people falling in and out of love. I really enjoyed the story and I've starting reading another, similar book called "Sloth"

DMZ vol.1 , vol.2

Brain Wood is one of my favorite indie authors and while these books signify his work becoming more mainstream (distributed underDC's Vertigo imprint) these are his best stories to date. With DMZ Wood has created a scary and immersive near-future world with great characters (Check out Zee's back-story in the final chapter of Vol.2). I highly recommend picking up both volumes!

Next Wave

From Warren Ellis, the author of Transmetropolitan, this comic is one of my new favorites. Its got great style, tons of action and its really funny. I'm looking forward to the next volume coming out this summer.

Brit

I'd never heard of this book when I found it on the stands at my favorite comic store but when I saw it was written by Kirkman I had to buy it. As I read Brit I so excited to discover that the story takes place in the "Invincible Universe" and is infused with the same sense of humor. While it does add greatly to see a new perspective on the world of the Invincible books Brit hold up on its own. I was so enthralled with this book that I read it one sitting! So, if you're a fan of Invincible or just want a good read (from one of the best authors in the game) I highly recommend this! Note: The edition of Brit I purchased I can't find anywhere. Its called "Brit Volume 1: Old Soldier" and is a hefty compilation containing "Brit", "Brit: Cold Death", and "Brit: Red, White & Blue".)

DST Strangeness

I have a penchant for commenting on things that I don't totally have my facts straight on (so feel free to call me out if I say something totally incorrect) but this new daylight saving time (dst) concept is a complete fiasco. Apperently, the US Congress felt compelled to legisilate a three week time shift moving forward the traditional annual dst change in an effort to save money. First off, who the hell gave congress the right to change time! In my mind time, as a concept,isn't just some arbitray thing - its dictated by our concept of the universe and how quickly earth spins. Congress has no right to tinker with scientific laws. Ok, granted I might be taking that point too far (and sound like some insurrgent US seperatist) but Congress made a huge mistake. The concept of people not turning lights on, hence saving energy and money, do to a slight time change only really makes sense in rural areas. In cities people have no concept of "conservation" anyway - the power is almost always on and almost always stays on. So even with that faulty logic Congess still failed to consider the widespread ramifications of changing time which in effect cause a mini-Y2K with electronics. Computer manufatures all over had to write patches and bug fixes resukting in huge unforssen cost expenditures.

From Film to Web

Here's a quick explination of the process involed getting the footage from my camera onto the web. 1) Record digital film to the camera's memory card. 2) Transfer footage from camera's memory card to computer's hard drive via USB 3) Batch process footage from camera's native avi format to mpeg 4) Load mpeg movies into Aobe Prmiere and edit 5) Export from Premiere to local hard drive. (Eported film file ussually more than 200mb at a resolution of 720x480) This is the final verison of the film in its highest quality form. 6) For film to be seen on web the footage should be about 10mb or less. To do this I re-encode film in QuickTime Pro and output a 176x144 QuickTime Movie file format file. 7) Finally, I upload the QuickTime file to Blip.Tv and they automatically cross-post it to my video blog Mike's Movies. Voila! Another movie ready for feedback and critique.

Project #2

As you might have noticed there is a new spin-off web site called Mikes Movies. I've created this site to host my weekly video projects. Currently on the site is my most recent project but be on the look out for project #2 early next week! For those who are interested here is a quick outline of my one week development lifecycle for each of my video projects

Monday - Friday:
Brain storming and planning (includes purchasing materials and storyboarding)

Saturday - Sunday morning:
Filming and Production (gather all footage and 3D composites/animations)

Sunday afternoon:
pre-processing and editing (includes getting film in the proper format for use with Adobe Premier)

Mon or Tues (after work)
post-processing and posting to the web.

Check out my next post for an in depth explination of the digital film transfer and processing steps!

Mike's Movie Blog

Check it: http://zzzmikedogzzzmovie.blogspot.com
I'll be posting my weekly video projects - enjoy!

Video Game Ethics

Is there such a thing as video game ethics? Are there rules of fair play that exisit between two human players? A lot of times a player will call foul and label some manuver as "cheap". In my mind there is a big differnece between "cheap" and cheating. The "cheap" plays are ussually ones that bend the rules of the video game enviornment to create a favorable winning condition for a player. Maybe "cheap" but I see no ethical breech in this. Video games are designed to allow certain game play strategies to give players advantages. So then, what is cheating? Here are a few things that come to mind:

1) Looking at the other player's controller in an effort to predict their moves or choices

2) Un-pausing a game while another player specifically calls for a time-out

3) Turning off the video game system before the game has ended (i.e. in an effort to aviod the result of the game from being saved)

4) Knowingly not telling another player how buttons map to game play after the other player has asked

Blogger Hell

So I've always been a huge fan of blogger.com - there where a few things that didn't work perfectly but I liked the service because it was simple and easy. I was even able to add cool widgets - life was good. But things soon turned for the worse when I noticed that my blog looked funny in Internet Explorer. The left side-bar would drop down below the body text and it seemed impossible to fix it. By the time blogger.com offered the chance to "upgrade" my blogg I had no choice - it was the only way to fix the side-bar formatting issue. Truth be told the "new" blogger is really cool with features like the interactive layout wizard and mobile phone support. But after the upgrade my normal style of posting was ruined. Ussually, on the bus rides home from work, I fire up my Motorola Q and via the phone's web browser I go to blogger.con and do a quick post. Problem was the Q no longer was able to work properly with the new blogger dashboard (the "publish post" and "save draft" buttons wouldn't work) and with the Q's intergrated gmail account I couldn't post to go@gmail.com (the mail uses gmail as a gateway so my gmail username isn't used). After a week of fiddling around and losing a bunch of posts in the process I finally figured out how to post from my phone. Using my Q's web browser I go to http://gmail.com/mail and then email the posts to go@blogger.com. Anyway, it took a while but at least I figured it out and now I can get back to blogging as usual.

Jew Kryptonite

What's the deal!? According to some trust-worhty female jews there is a disturbing trend emerging: Asain women are stealing all the eligible Jewish men. Personally, I've never even dated an Asain woman but I do see the appeal. Aside from all the "model minority" bullshit, one thing remains abundantly clear. Asain women are nothing like "Jewish mothers". I think men look for women who are nothing like their mothers'. Thus I see this alleged trend to be a logical conclusion of fact. (NOTE: The photo above is of an actual JDate member)

"Tell your friends: 'Burke Sucks!'"

That whats the locals' say - and it seems to be working. On a President's Day weekend, right after the first big snow storm of the season, Buke mountain had virtually no lift lines and the conditions were near perfect. Burke is really a hidden secret. Aside from the three hour trek (each way) from Boston I would definitely recommend Burk. (Also, my sister and I found out the hard way what "Not Snowboarder Friendly" means - we had to practically cross-country ski our way down the entire eastern side of the mountain.)

The Presentation

I'm psyched to get a long weekend this weekend but I know I won't be able to fully enjoy it. On Tuesday, when I go back to work, I have to make a presentaion. Yes, the dreaded public speaking engagement. I haven't made a formal, get-up-in-front-of-your-peers presentation since I left Digizaar. Back then it was easy, almost second nature. So, as rusty as I am, i've got a little aprehensive about it. But the thing about public speaking is that you need to get up and do it to get better at it. All I can do is prepare as best as possible, know my shit, and then just suck it up and get it over with. I know that with practice I am good at this stuff but it takes just that: practice. Honestly, in terms of my job, for how ever long I'm there this will be the hardest thing for me to do.

The Weekend of James (aka The Binge)

James was in town this weekend and I had a great time. Here's a recap in cronilogical order:
Pulled Pork sandwich w/ mashed potatoes (Blue Ribbon)
Bacon, Egg & Cheese on plain bagel w/ decaf coffe (Bagels by Us)
Grande Chicken Colorado burrito w/ chips & salsa (Bocca Grande in Kendell Sq.)
Beef & Broccoli lunch combo (Beijing Star)
Bacon Cheese Burger w/ Ranch dressing (Godzilla Burger in Cleveland Circle)
Coffe & Chocolate Mouse frozen yogrt (Rancitories)
Plain bagel & cream cheese w/ decaf coffe (Dunkin Donuts in Watertown)

Best day EVER

Maybe god is really a cheap-ass wino pron director? How else could I have been cast along side a kinda hot norweigan computer science graduate student chic? This defies the one known law in this universe: there is not such thing as a good looking (or average looking) female computer sciencetist/programmer. Even Angalena Jolie knows this and thats why she stared in that movie "Hackers" - just to stickit in our collective (pimpled) faces. Anyway, maybe not best day ever but still a good change from the normal dulldrum. Is it an oxymoron to say "biggest pleasent surprise" ever?