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Showing posts from March, 2011

Super Hero Episode IV: A New Phantom Menace

Hello fans of super heroes worldwide, I trust that you have kept abreast of the exploits of our hero, The Super Duper Diaper Buster, and Master Swaddler Extraordinarie! If perchance you have not, I suggest you click on the following links. I assure you we shall wait patiently for you to catch up. Episode I Episode II Episode III There, now that we are all on the same page... ...we return to the Super Duper Master who can change diapers with one hand while photoshopping with the other. He has successfully figured out how to deal with Phage, a mysterious creature who at first seemed to be a ruthless omnivore. Through diligent scientific study, our hero was able to decipher that not all of this creature's victims were hapless meals, rather, many where highly esteemed entities which sparked Phage's curiosity to no end. Our hero discovered that Phage learns not by reading his subject but by eating it. Verdict: Phage is relatively harmless as long as he is monitored and prevent...

I think I might heart Zappos too.

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Do you heart Zappos, too? I'd already heard aobut Zappos state-of-the-art customer service and their high ranking amongst the "best places to work" , but when I visited their site something in particular struck me...their pricing. A $100 shoe costs just that. Not $99.95, not $99.99, but $100. Their prices looked so much neater and so did the photographs of their products. One could argue that the extra cent pools into hiring a competent photographer like...ahem...myself. Another could argue that the rounded numbers somehow save a tangible amount in arithmetic convenience and easiness on the eyes (fewer employee and customer headaches I presume). A competing store shaved a cent off their prices and at first their price looked as if it was a whole dollar cheaper (which is the point of such pricing in the first place), but once I noticed, it felt as if someone was trying to pull wool over my eyes and something inside me didn't appreciate it. I then knew I wasn't goin...

Review! The Adjustment Bureau

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Boy meets girl, they fall in love but the metaphysical hat-wearing powers that be, insist otherwise. How much is our hero willing to sacrifice for love? The Adjustment Bureu had me captivated through till its untimely end. It had an interesting high concept (thanks to the prolific Philip K. Dick ) with high stakes and taut pacing. It also had characters that, in my opinion, were quite memorable...especially Emily Blunt's who stole most of her scenes. All this excitement was good enough for me to nearly forgive the occasional plot hole or gimmick (such as the Bureau having their near-omniscient abilities limited by something as simple as water...gimme a break guys, this is Philip K. Dick we're talking about here). I was somewhat disappointed with the ending though. I agree with Roger Ebert that the filmmakers didn't have the guts to showcase graver ramifications of the conflicts that arose in the movie. Furthermore, the movie seemed to end suddenly, with a payoff that wasn...

Baby Internet

The person credited with inventing the internet is still alive. That tells me the internet is still very very young. We're still trying to figure it out and we likely haven't tapped anywhere near 1% of its full potential. Not that such is a completely bad thing because a fully grown internet is sure to be a scary thing ( The Matrix comes to mind). We haven't seen anything yet. The oldest people who have had Facebook present all their lives are only seven years old! These are people who will have so much to deal with that they won't have time to be saddled with old technologies that we have held on to simply because they were ingrained in our culture. Soon all generations who have lived a day before Facebook (yes including me) will be gone. The lifespan of technology (and I dare say, cultures) will be much shorter. Any invention or way of doing things we have held on to for centuries (because they 'work') will be replaced. Sorry newspapers and movie theaters bu...