Well a couple of super awesome things came out today. Guitar Hero 2, the long awaited sequel to the Guitar Hero video game. Legendary, awesome, totally sweet are adjectives that start to describe how fantastic it is. Sweet. We hooked it up and played on a big screen for like 2 hours after watching a crazy movie called Blue Velvet. It is 89% on Rottentomatoes.com and the reviews for it are pretty good but it was definitely one of those movies that you know is a good film but is still kindof hard to watch. The tension and style of filmmaking in Blue Velvet was very interesting, the lighting and camera movements especially added a lot of tension to the film and really added to the story. The topic was kinda gross and not really all that fun to watch, and I didn't really feel like any issues were really tackled and discussed - it was more of a "what you see is what you get" kind of deal and I found myself trying to find more meaning in it (a la Borat) than what was just presented on the surface. It didn't seem like there was a lot more to the story that what was shown on the screen and explained, and with an issue like domestic violence I would have thought there would be more open-ended questions and the film would leave you with more to talk about at the end of the film. The filmmaking style though was very good and the visual tension brought on by the camera movements and lighting especially as I mentioned were really one of the best parts I think.
After watching the movie we played Guitar Hero for a bit and now I am back at my apartment and just watched a whole bunch of the Cars DVD that I got today. It is SO awesome. I finally saw Mater and the Ghostlight which is the short film on the Cars DVD. I watched and re-watched the raytraced neon-light scene in Radiator Springs a few times, maaaaaaaaan that just looks amazing. That is one of the most impressive parts of the whole movie I think. It sure is exciting and inspiring to see what has been done in Computer Graphics over the past 10 or 20 years and wow the raytracing in Cars is just beautiful. Now after having written my first Raytracer it's cool to see Cars again and just sit back and be amazed by how much it rocks. I went to a talk with a few of the people who worked on this stuff in Cars and that was a very interesting discussion and wow it sure makes me even more pumped about how much Cars and Graphics in general just totally rock the house. :)
Other good news!! Alex's laptop came today but as I expected he wants to open it when he arrives so I just set it away and we'll let Alex have the glory of opening it (since it IS his laptop!!!) haha awesome. From the box it looks pretty amazing. First time Core 2 Duo processors have been in Mac Laptops so that is cool. This whole multi-proc and 64-bit wave that is coming now for the public is going to be the next big wave in Computer technology I think. This is going to change a lot for the common user and make much more complex computing possible. Exciting stuff. Hehe sure makes me want to get another computer. :)
Let's see what else is up. Alex and I are getting our plans together for his trip out here and that should be awesome. Looks like some friends of mine are going to hook us up and show us around their workplaces so we should get to see a few really cool companies in the area and when we are in LA as well, so that's always fun. Also I like free food so wahhoo!!!!!!!! :)
US Midterm elections were today and looks like the Democratic party has taken the majority of the House and have gained some Senate seats at the moment too. I am not sure what effect this has on governing but in my moderate Canadian political attitude, I am always a fan of balance in government. If one party is the majority of every political area, they can make decisions that may not take into consideration the opposition. When doing something as important as running a country, especially one of the world's leading countries, I feel like it's pretty important for the leaders to have a balanced approach to decision making. The opposite, where the leader says, "I want to do this, and I can because we are the majority of everything" is never good. While the balanced system is much slower and people may argue that nothing will ever get done, the alternative where one set of people on one political extreme are in charge of making decisions for everyone is not ideal.
In Canada recently the Liberal government was beat by the Conservative government. Since all the parties in Canada generally are much more moderate than they are here in the United States, plus it is still a minority government in Canada, these balances are in place which force the leaders to consider the opposition rather than just running them over by outvoting them on every decision. That's always good I think!
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