Archive for May, 2007

Movie Review Double Header

To start off the big summer movie season I saw two of the most hyped movies, Spiderman 3 and 28 Weeks Later. Both of these were supposed to be action-packed movies with a thrill a minute. Needless to say I was not impressed by either. First Spiderman 3... when exactly did they decide that the needed to make Spiderman more Emo in this movie? Were they doing market research and said "hey lots of kids today are whiny bitches let's make Spiderman more like that so people relate more to him." The main problem with the movie is that there were too many villains and no plot line. We get the the New Goblin, Sandman and Venom and yet the stories for all of them are beyond lame, and none of them are really bad guys they're just misunderstood. Heck Sandman even killed Spiderman's Uncle and he still forgives him, lame. The special effects were cool but they weren't enough to make of for all the cheesy lame scenes. The film opens with Mary Jane singing some lame song on Broadway, oh boy cuz all those comic book fanboys love musicals, yuck. When Peter Parker does he little Saturday Night Fever strut down the street you know the movie is totally garbage and the only reason it was made is because the studio execs knew it would make money. Of course a lot of people will say oh it wasn't that bad, really? These are the same annoying people who complained that X-Men 3 was the worst movie ever and that they hated it. Was X-Men 3 worse than Spiderman 3, no of course not they're both part 3 did you really expect them to be that good? Spiderman 3 is horrible don't see it, buy it or rent it. Watch the 70's Spiderman show its much better than this crap. Secondly, 28 Weeks Later. So all of the infected people in England have died and the American Army moves in to clean everything up and they start bringing people back. Of course everything goes wrong in a predictably retarded way. The main characters kids come back to see him and they run off from the safe zone back to their old house to get a picture of their mother because a) its apparently easy to sneak out of a heavily guarded military compound especially if you are a teenager and b) plagued landscape be damned they need a photo (or they can't wait a little longer until the zone is cleaned to get it because obviously it isn't that far if they can get there by scooter. So they get to the house and find their mom who they thought was dead is their and she's infected but she's not showing symptoms because of a rare mutation, blah, blah, blah. They take here back to th military base where the one doctor wants to study her to find a cure because they need a cure for a disease that they eradicated or something. The general just wants to kill her because if shes dead they wont need to find a cure because the disease will be gone, duh. So while she's quarantined her dumb husband sneaks in, because obviously the last infected person on the island wouldn't have guards or cameras watching her no, and makes out with her. Then he gets infected and kills her and escapes. He kills a bunch of other soldiers who apparently can't kill someone running at them with their guns because, yeah. Then they lock up all the civilians in a room to protect them, of course their is a back door to the room, because why wouldn't you put them in a room with an unguarded door, it makes perfect sense. Then evil dad breaks in and infects everybody and all hell breaks loose. Other crap happens that whatever, and eventually the kids whose mother was infected and whose dad started all the trouble escape with a soldier. He has some change of heart and decides along with the doctor that these kids need to be saved to find a cure. Even though the army just fire bombed the city and killed most of the people that needed to be saved but whatever. Long story short all the people die except for the dumb kids who get a way on a helicopter and the one kid, the boy is infected but hes immune like his mother. Of course the last scene is stupid because we see the helicopter in ruins and infected running across Paris. So not only did they not find a cure but they have now infected mainland Europe, congratulations. My speculation is the boy made out with his sister and she got infected and started killing everybody, but we can save that for the DVD extras. Overall the movie was totally pointless and had so many stupid logic flaws it was just dumb. Its better than the first movie but the first movie sucked so who cares. At least they didn't say that these people were zombies like in the first movie, when their just "infected". All of George Romero's Dead movies had a point and lots of social commentary. These movies are trying to do that but fail miserably and just end up being a lot of people running around and puking blood, oh boy. Rent Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead (the original) and do yourself a favor if you want to see a real Zombie movie. Well so far the summer movies have sucked, big surprise so I'm sure the upcoming ones will suck as well, but people will see them cuz what else is there to do.

Deep Lake Water Cooling: Saving the Earth, one Skyscraper at a Time

In the past we've talked about some things that you can do to make your house more energy efficient. Some things are easy, like putting in Compact Florescent light bulbs, while others are on their way in the near future, like your own personal wind turbine. There's only so much you can do at home, though, and many of us live in large, air-conditioned office buildings. How could a glass-covered skyscraper possibly use less power for cooling in the summer? If you live in Toronto, it's easy - just tie into the Deep Lake Water Cooling System. Deep lake water cooling system in Toronto The system, by Enwave, draws water from Lake Ontario, deep below the surface where it's always a chilly 4 degrees Celsius. The water runs through huge heat exchangers before making its way into the city's normal water supply. A separate cooling loop transports water chilled by the incoming lake water to various buildings in the financial district where it is used in the air conditioning system. Here's a diagram of the system at work. The city is seeing substantial benefits since it tied into the cooling system:
Metro Hall went online with Enwave's Deep Lake Water Cooling system in June 2006. With the addition of this building, energy consumption will be reduced by 1.7 million kilowatt-hours per year and reduce CO2 emissions by 1,915 tonnes annually - equivalent to taking 383 cars off the road.
According to Enwave, the system uses 90% less energy than a traditional air conditioning system and is price-competitive. This is one of those cases where you don't even have to pay a premium to reduce CO2 production. Here's a picture of the gigantic heat exchangers: Deep water cooling heat exchanger Other large Great Lakes cities like Chicago, Cleveland, and Buffalo could take advantage of a system like this as well. Add in a few off-shore wind farms and the Rust Belt could take a real lead in green technology that makes use of the local geography. So what do you say, Cleveland?

Sick of PowerPoint Slides? Here’s a Better way to Present Data

If you design web sites, write reports, or do presentations, you should probably take a look at the work of Edward Tufte. One of his best-known essays tells how your typical PowerPoint presentation can obscure information more than it helps illustrate. So what do you do if you have a ton of numerical data and just two and a half minutes to present it? Well, if it's data about the pron industry on the Internet, you could do something like this: (Might be NSFW) [youtube]QOFTQpNhsWE[/youtube] Thanks to TechCrunch for digging up the video. The video might seem like just a punchline, but seriously, this is the perfect way to present this data and I think it could be translated to other subjects as well. Obviously it would take a bit of creativity, I don't mean to say that your quarterly sales data should be sharpied across your significant other's backside. A simple example: if I had data about food, I might capture my audience's attention with pie charts made out of, well, actual pie. Tufte is not really a fan of pie charts, and I admit this example is more about capturing attention than effectively conveying complex data. Can you think of any novel, but amazingly appropriate, ways to present facts and figures? And in case you need the executive summary (read: no data) of the above presentation, here it is: [youtube]QtiGd58J0bY[/youtube]

Extreme Japanese Sports, Nagano Makoto

I am not a very sports oriented person, as several people will tell you. In fact, I learn most all of my American sports knowledge from my mother-in-law. But, I do like extreme sports, like skate boarding, snow boarding, and the Ultimate Viking Challenge. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this challenge, this is possibly the most difficult obstacle course ever made. It was originally a Japanese show but now airs in the US on ESPN and in Europe. I don't often get the chance to watch the show, but when I do it's definitely worth it. Anyway, I am not writing about that right now, what I wanted to talk about today, actually to show you a video of today, is Nagano Makoto, the only person so far to get to the final stage of Viking, The Ultimate Challenge. He lost by running out of time in the last five feet of the course. Below is a clip (albeit of very poor quality) of Viking so you get an idea of what is going on there. [youtube]SUEnEGYRuz0[/youtube] Nagano Makoto is on another show very regularly, a similar obstacle course themed show called Sasuke, or Ninja Warriors in America. He is a common guest on this show. Either way, check out his video below from his appearances on Sasuke. He is amazingly graceful and agile. [youtube]QkBkZpK-fYQ[/youtube]

George Bush is a Satanist

That's right people the president George W. Bush is a Satanist. I know he goes around saying Jesus this and Jesus that, but if you look at his actions not what he is saying it's clear he is a Satanist. The kind of Satanism I am refering to is the one founded by Anton LeVay. Its ethical teachings are on indivudalism, self-indulgence and "eye for an eye" morality. Looking at W's behavior over these past 6 years its clear that his philosophical beliefs are the same a Satanist. Satanists believe in individualism, the individual must enforce his own meaning in life and rise above the masses. Satanists do not worship Satan as a god, but rather themselves as one. They turn religious worship inward not outward. Now look at George Bush, he himself has said the he is the "decider" (sp?). Clearly he thinks he is above everyone else and doesn't listen to or care what other people think but makes decisions on his own. Look at the war in Iraq the majority of Americans do not support the war and neither does Congress, who represent the public, but George Bush still just listens to himself. Obviously George W. Bush has positioned himself as a god who sends people to die without any thought as to the consequences.  Self-indulgence is the next teaching. One of the first things George Bush said after 9-11 was that people shouldn't stop buying things and should keep the economy going. Basically don't think about all the people that died and how we can change what we've been doing to make a better world, but just keep thinking about yourself and pretend like nothing happened. He has also given massive tax cuts to the rich and made sure all his cronies have lucrative government contracts. His daughters also are self-idulgent just look how many times they have been caught boozing it up. George Bush just cares about his money and making the country better for the super rich. The last teaching is an "eye for and eye". This is much different than the Christian teaching of  love, compassion and sympathy for all. This law of retaliation states that you should only treat those who deserve it with love and compassion rather than everyone. After 9-11 George Bush stated that America would retaliate agaist those that caused the tragedy and led us into war against Afghanistan and Iraq. A Christian would have acted with love, sympathy and compassion and tried to find a peacful decision. George Bush as a Satanist though could not wait to start shooting and get revenge. As you can clearly see George W. Bush is a Satanist far more than the Christian that he claims to be. So for all those people who voted for him you really voted for the devil.