256… um 257

Projects, websites

as of a few seconds ago there were 256 posts on this site. This making it 257. My first post was from December 2004 a long time ago in a small office in Arlington. The old blog has come a long way since then.

Two hundred fifty-six is also:

* The number of characters in the new Braille 8-dot system.
* The number of different values in one byte, which makes it the typical number of different values in each color channel of a digital color image (see color space encoding).
* The year AD 256 and 256 BC.
* The Split-Screen Level in Pacman
* The number of counties in Texas.
* The number of characters in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita.
* An area code in Alabama.
* The number of regular season football games in the NFL.
* The frequency of Middle C on a piano in hertz.

Later!
Mark

Tips on Indy 4.

Entertainment, Movies

I found this list of thing the film makers can do to not ruin it. As a person who writes things down uncertain if anyone actually reads them I can appreciate his work. I would add, Keep George Lucas as far out of the loop as possible. I know he wrote, directed, or produced pretty much everything that was really good in the 80’s. But he’s out of it, totally out of touch with reality.

Tips for Indy 4

Smodcast. The best podcast evar.

Entertainment, The Interweb

Ok, so anyone that knows me realizes that I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan so this may not be the biggest realization. But the “Smodcast” (Smith-Mosier Podcast) is the funniest thing I hear all week. Kevin’s a really good storyteller so that might be a reason that all the episodes so far are really funny. They just tell stories about.. well about whatever they want to really, but mostly about things that happened to them. They just have so much chemistry together, I hope everybody can get time to listen to it.

Later!
Mark

Quick Stop Entertainment

The Table goes online.

Projects, Stuff and Things

Overhead shot 1

Overhead shot 1

I hadn’t posted any pictures of the table online since we’d been building it. I’d always planned on a) finishing the table and b) making some kind of cool website for it. I did throw together a small wordpress blog and gallery for it, but that was way too much work for little reward. So I decided to throw it out on flickr. I might try and upload some of the pictures to bpong.com and other dedicated table pages tonight. I’ll have to find the right descriptions and captions for the pictures. but most likely I’ll just watch Prison Break and eat dinner.

Later!

UPDATE – www.thetable.swalrus.org

The Core: Such a guilty pleasure I should be put to death.

Entertainment, Movies

I read an article about guilty pleasures once that said we shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that we like them. We’ll I’ll admit that I like ‘Roadhouse’ and ‘Rad’ or any other 80’s movie that starts with the letter ‘R’. But this is a tough one. ‘The Core’ has a solid disaster movie beginning, things blow up, birds go crazy. I mean come on an Oscar winner lands the freaking space shuttle in the middle of downtown LA. I mean the cast of this movie is awesome, Delroy Lindo, Hillary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, that guy, that other guy. All these people have been in other, much better movies. But somehow this became the ‘Showgirls’ of disaster movies. Not that this genre has had many shining moments. I really don’t know how this movie got made, I guess Hollywood does really think we’re all idiots.

I can pretty much put up a solid defense for the first half of the movie. Standard stuff, lone scientist finds out that the world is ending, nobody believes him, incredible technology… but that’s where this movie loses it. Unlike ‘Armageddon’ which has a remarkably similar plot (really really similar). There’s just no way anybody with a functionionign brain can believe the technology in this movie. So don’t try. Just ride it out. Actually you could just stop watching the movie at about halfway and just make up your own ending and be just as happy with yourself. You’d probably come up with something as good as the real thing.

Movie Physics Reviews

Don’t you know who I think I am?

Entertainment, music

So after the last post defending my overall musical taste I’m going to write a post about the new Fallout Boy album. I like their music, what I don’t like is that douchebags sometimes also like their music. This is best illustrated by a new cingular commercial where a random frat guy at the gym is talking about how the new song, “This aint a scene, it’s an arms race” gets him pumped. Then he procedes to have a seizure or play air guitar, whichever is worse.

Their last album was pretty much the soundtrack to my Metro rides last summer. So much so that I pretty much played out all the songs and can’t stand them any more. But give them a few years and they’ll be good all over again. Just like those Black Eyed Peas songs that I ran into the ground, circa 2 years ago.

At first listen the songs were nothing special, but I just put them in with the rest anyway. I found that whenever they would come up on shuffle I really liked them. So I listened to them yesterday in order again and I decided that they are in fact good. Which is pretty much the begining of the end for them. I’ll most likely overplay them and be done with them.

So it begins sir.

Mark