UsefulConcept

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I took a quick trip down to Florida.  We opted to use the new airline called Skybus.  Since it is a new airline I thought I would write up a quick review for others who may be thinking of using the airline and worried about it in some way.

One thing to note is that Skybus lists their airports based on big named cities nearby.  That means that Boston, MA is actually Portsmouth, NH and Fort Myers, FL is actually Punta Gorda, FL.  30 to 50 min away.  If you are not prepared for doing a bit of traveling once you land you may be in trouble.  This may not be true for every city.

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Margot at the Wedding is basically about two sisters dealing with each other for a week before one gets married.  My first thought about this movie once it was done...  "I am utterly  thankful that I can't relate to this movie in any way."

The movie was fun and disturbing, like many movies I watched this weekend.  However in the end there was nothing endearing about either sister, their bizarre love/hate relationship and inappropriate behavior to their children.  I gave my wife a big hug when it was done.  Thank goodness she is sane and doesn't treat people like that.  Thank goodness she has a nice family.

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I walked out of a movie theater for the first time ever tonight.  Actually it wasn't a movie theater, but a Music Hall, which was showing a bunch of new movies as part of Telluride By the Sea.  I have gone to this yearly Celebration of Cinema every year that I have been able and try to see most if not all the movies available.

I'm Not There is a portrayal of Bob Dylan's life told through six different actors.  Some disclaimer here.  I don't really care for Dylan's work.  He is a fine enough guy.  I have seen him perform live and understood none of it..  I like some of the earlier stuff, but in general it just doesn't do much for me.  I know nothing of his life or history, etc.  So I wasn't planning on watching this movie, however the preview sounded really interesting.  A very creative way to approach the subject at the very least and it has gotten some good press.

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I have the pleasure of living in Portsmouth, NH.  That means that once a year I get to attend Telluride By the Sea, Telluride Film Festival's little seacoast cousin.  At Telluride By The Sea we get to watch 6 select movies that just recently were shown in Telluride the week before.  These movies are often some combination of provocative, moving, troubling and beautiful.

Last night was opening night and they showed Into The Wild.  My quick review:  I liked it.

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Last night some friends of ours gathered around for a fun experiment.  A blind tequila taste test.

We gathered 6 different tequilas ordered below in price.

1. Pepe Lopez Premium ($9.99)
2. Jose Cuervo Especial ($15)
3. Hornitos Sausa ($19)
4. 1800 Silver ($19.99)
5. Don Julio Blanco ($36.99)
6. Patron Silver ($48.00)

We bought a lot of little dixi cups of various prints, and served to seven people a small sample of each.  Turns out those little cups leak after a short period.  I don't recommend using them.  We randomized the distribution so people were drinking a different tequila than their neighbor so as not to be influenced.  This requires at least one person to be running the taste test and not partaking (me and friend Jess).  Get a handful of people to sit down and focus.  We then wrote each score down against each tequila, also noting the person.  This way later we could see the persons favorite vs the group favorite. 

Something like:

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Following many others I made a Simpson's character.  I opted to build something that doesn't look like me in any way.  I do wish I had the tshirt though. On another note, I saw Transformers last night.  I liked the action, but the story was really really bad.  So many holes, bad dialog and a pointless romance setup.  The movie itself was long. There were numerous scenes that could have been removed to help.  I enjoyed many parts though.  We all laughed several times (not sure we were supposed to for a couple of them).  The action scenes were great.  Turns out if you decapitate a megabot he dies.  Who knew.  At any rate in thinking of earlier films by the same director I liked on the whole The Rock and even Independance Day better.  Transformers had big battling robots, which is super cool, but the D - story still brings it down.  So sad.  That said, I will probably buy it on DVD when the price is inexpensive.  It should look good on the projector and that kind of fun action is great background movie stuff when I am working on a project.  Story be damned, I guess I like fighting robots.

First a bit of backstory.  I have no TV.  No Stereo.  No home theater.  Instead i have a few PC's with Media Center installed on them.  I use them to watch tv, record tv, play music, etc. One really handy thing you can do with them is share the media with an extender.  For me, the extender is the xbox 360.  So how does the Panasonic PTAX100U LCD Projector fit in? 

If I have an xbox 360 i need to display it somewhere!  Plus I always wanted a big screen display.  So I went to my office to get our projector, connected it with a ceiling mount to my xbox 360, and presto I am streaming tv and such from my pc to my projector to an 80" wall space.

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