I download a LOT of podcasts daily (I currnently have 10 solid days of audio waiting for me to listen to and growing) and keep only a small percentage of them. I have so many, that the only way I can manage them and keeping sane is using the EXTREMELY useful iTunessmart playlist feature.
The only problem with this system was that I could not delete the smart playlist items I had already listened to directly from the smart playlist menu, I would still have to sift through iTunes‘ Podcast section and individually delete all the old podcasts…
I’ve FINALLY found a solution, all you need to do to fix this is to select all the smart playlist items that you want to delete and while holding the SHIFT button, hit DELETE. This brings up the regular iTunes deltetion dialog box and presto! Problem solved. This also works from any iTunes playlist, smart or otherwise by the way.
Now, I use Windows, so I don’t know if this fix works for Mac users, but if you run a Mac and have this problems, try this fix and let me know in the comments below.
I’m usually the “tech guy” for our office, but lately I’ve had to try and get help from some much more seasoned tech people both at Dell and Microsoft, but up to now, my tech problems at work are still troubling me, even though I’ve had very helpful techs working on my case.
Now though, my friend Dan sent me this clip from Break.com and I thought it was so fitting considering what I’ve recently been going through. This is hilarious, especially once the IT guy wants to get himself a screen shot.
After watching this clip from Best of Youtube (subscribe here) of a guy texting while cruising down the highway on his motorcycle, I almost fell off my couch. Even though this guy could manage to lean back, text AND drive his bike at the same time without crashing into a wall or another car, I could barely manage sitting on my couch… truly sad, I know.
I think I know at least one person *cough* Tara *cough* who might just get a kick out of this video… or maybe hate me for sending this out. Either way this video is crazy.
Ever since Tim Russert’s passing, I’ve noticed there aren’t that many interesting, exciting and original voices speaking out about politicals. The people that come to my mind that I enjoy listening to are Chris Matthews, Rachael Maddow, Tavis Smiley, Penn Jillette, John McLaughlin, John C. Dvorak (who is a technology writer, but who loves stirring it up interesting with interesting political views) and…. Dan Carlin.
Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong… the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime, to just name a couple.
I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that’s why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar’s animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain’s City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard’s live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff GarlinJohn Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.
This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I’m going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.
I’ve been waiting a while to see Hancock, but I was very surprised with what I got with this movie. I HATE it when the trailers reveal too much about the plot of films, especially when they reveal the film’s final scene, battle or closing explosion.
It turned out that the trailers for Hancock really didn’t reveal anything about the plot and that was refreshing. I didn’t even realize, going into the film that Charlize Theron was in the cast. I don’t usually like her, but I loved her character in this film and I thought she gave a great performance that I didn’t expect at all. I’ve never really been attracted to her, but she has never been more beautiful than in this film in my opinion.
Jason Bateman plays a struggling public relations agent who has taken up the task of pitching an idea that no big company wants anything to do with and it was fun just watching Bateman pitching his absurd, yet hopeful ideas.
Then, there’s Will Smith as Hancock. The film opens with him being woken up by a little kid (Atticus Shaffer) who tries to get him to dispatch some criminals, only for Hancock to blow him off because of his hangover and the kid calls him an asshole, a name he really doesn’t enjoy being called. He ends up saving the day, but at a definite cost to the city. This paves the way for us, the audience to see what we’ve got in store for us.
It’s only after Hancock saves Jason Bateman and Bateman tries to pitch a new image for Hancock that things start to change… slowly. I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot, but I must say, this was a fun movie.
The problem is that there really wasn’t anything special about this film. It was a fun summer movie, but not so much so that it was memorable for anything in particular. This may have been director Peter Berg’s fault. The movie wasn’t filmed in a great way and there are some scenes and dialogue that could have been cut down a bit, but there aren’t many bad things to say about the film.
One thing I did notice from the trailers was that there was a lot of talk about Hancock, the hero that no one wants because he brings with him chaos and destruction along with his “help,” but there was never any mention of an enemy for him to grapple with… after watching the film, I can see why, there really were no interesting baddies in this film. There was a main villain, it is just that it wasn’t very satisfying watching Hancock face the film’s big bad… although, it was fun watching the irony in how the big bad was ultimately defeated.
I also found these two videos from Attack of the Show, Gun Apocalypse and Gun Apocalypse 2, where we get to see some of the most extreme guns available. These are some crazy guns that go way beyond necessary, but they look like a lot of fun too.
I love watching Jackie Chan, especially when he seems to lose his mind and do some crazy stunt that you just can’t believe a person could survive, like falling over 50 feet from a clock tower. You also have to love watching his drunken boxing style in Drunken Master and Legend of Drunken Master.
If you have a ton of Styrofoam that you don’t just want to throw out, maybe from packing peanuts or just some disposable plates or cups, you can melt them into seeming nothingness with just a bit of acetone (available at any hardware/paint/walmartesque store) or some nail polish remover… but I’d recommend going strait for the acetone, you get a much cooler (and faster) reaction.
After George Carlin died, you realize just what a loss it is to the comedy world, especially with all the work he did behind the scenes with young up-and-coming comedians. Jerry Seinfeld wrote an op-ed about his friend in the New York Times and I wanted to share it here, which I found out about on a recent Larry King Live (subscribe here) interview with Seinfeld.
After what I thought was a TERRIBLE marketing campaign during the runup to Kung Fu Panda’s release, it took me a while to actually bring myself to the theater to see it. It wasn’t until I saw some of the previews for Tropic Thunder, another movie starring Jack Black, that I got excited to see this film. Below is that promo.
Now that I’ve seen the film, I wish I had gone sooner. This was easily the best Jack Black film to date, with King Kong and School of Rock trailing behind. One of the best moments comes right at the beginning of the film where the first style of animation we see transitions to the film’s main animation style. The way it was done was stunning. It made it very hard to tell that the style transitioning to was animation at all! I was very impressed.
The story was a lot of fun, a definite winner of a kids movie. There really weren’t any adult wink wink nudge nudge moments, but the movie was hilarious so I didn’t mind at all. There were some reviewers *cough* Filmspotting.net (subscribe here)*cough* that thought it was unwise to portray the Chinese villagers as yellow buck toothed bunnies, but I didn’t find it to be offensive or in bad taste in any way. When I was looking for this, I found that in actuality, the villagers were really represented by a few different animals: bunnies, pigs and birds. So I felt this was a real non issue. Seriously though, if you want some great movie reviews, check out Filmspotting.
I really think that if you want to just go in to see a film and spend the majority of the time laughing, this is an easy choice for a film to go see.
Now, I know this is a sticky topic, which is going to get on some people’s nerves, but I took some time to think about this after my cousin Richard let me know about this recent court decision. Even though it is very hard to argue in any wayfor child rapists, I ultimately agree with the majority opinion from the court’s 5-4 final decision.
Hear me out on this, I agree because of the underlying issues surrounding the case, not because I don’t think a child rapist should die a horrible death. Just because I think someone should be killed for committing a heinously crime, like raping a child, doesn’t mean that it should be the lawful to do so.
I do not believe in the merits of the death penalty anymore, so the idea of narrowing the scope of when it can be used is something that I agree with. The point was made by Justice Anthony Kennedy, that the penalty of death is not a proportional punishment for a crime which does not result in the death of the victim, which is another point I agree with.
I also do not believe having prisoners spend an average of more than 10 years on death row (which has been the case since 1995) is a humane way to treat a prisoner, it certainly doesn’t give the death penalty the perception of being a deterrent to violent crime with such a long time from conviction to execution either. I am not advocating leniency with these prisoners by releasing them or anything like that, I just believe that instead of sentencing them to death, sentence them instead to over 100 years in prison without bail or the possibility of parole.
One of the reasons behind these long stays on death row is no doubt the length of time the appeals process is for these inmates, but the right to appeal (and the advantages potentially available) is another reason for being against the death penalty. We are coming up with new technologies all the time and we hear of people being exonerated for crimes previously convicted of based on things like new DNA evidence. Once you put an inmate to death, there is no way to bring that prisoner back if it is later discovered that the person was wrongly accused, but if sentenced instead to spend their remaining days in prison, then an appeal could then be made at any point in the future to release the wrongly accused if new credible evidence surfaces.
I know there are many arguments both for and against the death penalty. Let me know what you think about this recent decision or just about the death penalty itself.
OK, now that I’ve probably thoroughly depressed you with this weighty topic, I need bring to you as a treat a very apropo to the above topic. The Onion just came out with another hilarious video (subscribe here) that just so happens to involve both the Supreme Court and the death penalty.
Watch as a brave voodoo doll tries to save its fellow voodoo dolls from harm. If you can, try and check out the high quality version to get a feel for some of the amazing detail work that went into this!
Enjoy a visually stunning 4 minutes created using Maya and After Effects.
Oh, by the way, as of this week, full episodes of both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show are now available at hulu.com for free! Check it out and spread the word!
It’s hard to believe that it has been 14 years since we last got some Wayne’s World, but you can watch the video from MTV here as well as watch the entire award show if you like as well, the whole show is available online.
I was hoping that the Sex and the City movie would be that holdover. I enjoyed the television show, but I can’t say I’m a part of its rabid fan base. So, the advantage for me was that I knew all about these 4 women going into the film…
After watching the movie, I felt that it held pretty true to the television show and would satisfy the film’s built in fan base. It felt like 3 or 4 episodes of the television show back-to-back. After telling the person I saw the movie with this, I realized that this may not be such a good thing after all.
The film didn’t just feel like 3 or 4 episodes of the show, it felt like the film ran long, with these episodes just tacked onto the back of each other, instead of a tight continuously flowing story.
The next realization I had was there was very little setup for the main characters (and why the casual viewer should care about these 4 relatively well off women). Now, for someone like me, who knows these four strong ladies very well from their tv escapades, this was not a problem, but what about for someone who has either never seen the tv show or has only seen a handful of episodes? Well, these people just get a quick (~2min) video recap of the tv series laying out the history of the characters and a voice over by Sarah Jessica Parker to go with it and my guess is that this will leave the uninitiated confused and in the lurch.
Even with these misgivings and the fact that there were times when I felt the film was just a bit long, I DID enjoy the movie, there were a handful of unexpectedly funny moments, Charlotte’s troubles during international travel being one of them (a point I disagree with my favorite reviewer, Roger Ebert on). I feel like for those people who are NYers, New Yorkophiles or fans of the tv show, you should definitely go out and see this film (especially if you’re planning on pre-gaming with a Cosmo or two), but if you’ve never really seen the show or know the characters, you’d be better off not initiating yourself to this world with this film, just go back and rent/borrow/buy the dvds of the original series.
I started this page because I got tired of sending out emails with links, pics and vids to huge list of recipients. If you enjoy any story, leave a comment about it. If you really enjoy it, subscribe to the RSS feed so you can always stay up to date!
If you want me to add anything, email me:
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