Distractions from work

Since work is insanely boring from time to time, you need distractions. Quick ones, that are easy to close fast as well. Also it has to have a score so you can compete against your co-workers. Enter Copter.

It’s not new to the interweb, but it’s fun, and fairly addicting (“Just one more run”). My top score has been 1,345. Beat it. Let me know.

Star driven animation vs. character driven animation

I was reading an article on “The Terminal” where it was speaking about how Spielberg and Hanks both work well together, and it mentioned Dreamworks SKG, where Spielberg was the “S” in SKG. I couldn’t remember who the K or the G were (Jeff Katzenberg and David Geffen for those who care), so in finding the Dreamworks website, I found out about Shark Tale.

Putting aside any similarity to another fish movie, it made clear to me again the differences in Dreamwork’s style of animated film and Pixar’s style.

Take the advertising for Shrek: “Hey we have this animated movie, with Eddie Murphy, Mike Meyers and Cameron Diaz playing the lead roles, and by the way there is a story somewhere in there.”
Then you have Monster’s Inc: “Hey we have this great story with monsters in the closets, and oh yea, by the way Billy Crystal is playing one of the characters.”

Completly different marketing stratagies, and also different goals as a movie.

Dreamworks has it’s focus on it’s talent that it brings into it’s movies. It wants the stars names to drive you to see it. Go for the stars, and it’s a bonus that the movie might be good. Pixar on the other hand is so story driven that it’s the characters that matter much more than the actor that plays them. Not to say they don’t get top rate talent, and that they don’t push them, but for an example see the latest trailer for “The Incredibles,” the latest Pixar movie coming soon. Do ever really get to see who is actually playing these characters? No, it’s focus is on the creators of these great stories that you remember, and the quirky new one they have created, not Will Smith as a fish!

This isn’t to say that I don’t like Shrek. It was a fun movie, and I will probably watch it again someday. Sure I’ll also see Shrek 2 and possibly even this new Shark Tale movie. For me, at the end of the day I care more about what happens in Pixar movies and where the characters end up when the movie is over. For some people, it’s different, and that is why Dreamwork’s movies do so well in the market.

Beating me to the punch

Every once and a while, I’m sure like all of you, I get a great idea. Something that would be really great to do and would be helpful to lots of people. Then I go and play Dr. Mario or something and do nothing about it. One of those ideas for years has been to scan in old Nintendo manuals in high quality and not to put any kind of watermarking, tagging or selling them like some other sites.

Enter HQ Scans. These guys have been scanning in manuals from all sorts of different systems and preserving all of it with nice high quality releases, giving them out for free, with no watermarking or tags. They are even scanning in things like the maps, ads, and warranty information that could easily be forgotten about and lost. I have to commend these guys, and even try and contribute to their worthy cause.

Here is a torrent link to their latest NES pack: NES Manual Pack 1.01 torrent

Give it a looksie, help them out, and be glad that someone wasn’t as lazy as I am and actually did something about his idea.

The Blog

Why blog? It’s not as if there arn’t 2,000,000 other blogs out there pertaining from the mundane to the profound. This is more of a learning experience and a way to express thoughts on whatever is happening around.

I’m not verbose like some people seem to be, typing and typing just to hear the sound of the keys, and LoL hoping that somewhere in the midst of all that a nugget of sense might pop out. Short and sweet. We’ll see what happens.

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