Mike Jutan's World

Friday, October 06, 2006

Cars Podcast on iTunes

Hi all,

I came across a really cool thing on iTunes today, a Video Podcast for Disney/Pixar's Cars!! Awesome!!!!!!!! There is lots of filming at Pixar and of the work that went into the movie. It is totally awesome. My manager from last term introduces one of the Podcasts too which is super cool!!!

So that was exciting and tonight we all went out for Pizza and then I came back here to sort out my iPod because the CD artwork was messed up from the recent iTunes upgrade.

I read a review today in Consumer Reports of the Canon SD630 which was the camera I was about to buy this term. It gave it a pretty bad rating compared to some other cameras and said it only takes 160 pictures before the battery runs out as compared to an older version which takes more like 520 pictures so I am not sure if I am going to hold off until a new version comes out.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Hotel Cafe concert... AWESOME.

So tonight we went to the Hotel Cafe concert at The Great American Music Hall and it was just out of this world. It was unbelievable... soooo amazing!!!

From http://www.myspace.com/hotelcafetour:

Once just a small coffee shop, The Hotel Café has quickly blossomed into not only one of the premier singer/songwriter venues in the United States, but also an all-purpose clubhouse for a burgeoning community of Los Angeles songwriters.

After an enormously successful first run in the fall of 2005, The Hotel Café Tour is ready for its sophomore road trip. Twenty-five artists will share one bus, one band and one crew and embark on a six-week journey throughout the United States.

The tour will feature a rotating lineup of at least six artists at every show, all sharing musicians and supporting one another, making for a unique night of music. The traveling circus is held together by performer and co-organizer Cary Brothers, who will be present for the entire tour.

After major success with his song Blue Eyes on the Grammy Award-winning Garden State soundtrack, Cary Brothers and The Hotel Café Tour continue their relationship with Zach Braff, featuring many of the artists included on The Last Kiss soundtrack.

The Hotel Café Tour has no cookie cutter corporate American Idols, just real music, written by real artists, surrounded by real friends, who actually have a story to tell. Check your city to see who is playing and expect lots of surprises! And show up early, as it's not a normal opener/opener/headliner line up!

So yeah it was just totally amazing. Out of this world. One of the best live shows I've seen lately. Josh Radin played and was totally awesome just like his concert I saw a few weeks ago.

The lineup tonight was:

Cary Brothers
Jonah Matranga
Joshua Radin
Brett Dennen
Joe Purdy
Buddy
Brian Wright

Cary Brothers played "Blue Eyes" from the Garden State Soundtrack and that was just amazing, and Josh Radin played some sweet tunes with some different musicians than he was playing with last time I saw him.

My favourite acts were Joe Purdy and Brett Dennen and they were both incredibly talented and also totally different from each other. Joe reminds me a little bit of Teitur and has an insane amount of passion in his lyrics and singing. It was AWESOME. I couldn't believe it as he was playing and his band was just rockin' out... it was soooo much energy and pure talent. Fantastic.

Brett was TOTALLY different and TOTALLY awesome too. I found out from his website that he is opening for John Mayer this year and was on the Dave Matthews Band cruise tour, no wonder I thought he was awesome. He was a totally crazy dude on stage, hair over his eyes and making funny faces and saying lots of weird stuff and just a total character. So that was great... and more importantly his music was so insanely good. This dude was nuts on what looked like a Classical-Electric guitar, and playing songs about living life well and to the fullest, and songs about war and love and "just having fun" as he said. Oh my gosh his lyrics were awesome and he had a sort of funky, reggage, bluegrass style. It was just glorious.

So yeah obviously I bought both of their albums.
I got Joe Purdy's "Julie Blue: A River Record by Joe Purdy" and Brett Dennin's "So Much More." On Brett's CD cover there is a quote from John Mayer: "A beautiful and spirited record. Instantly likeable."

Check out these websites:
http://www.myspace.com/joepurdy
http://www.joepurdy.com
http://www.myspace.com/brettdennen
http://www.brettdennen.com

At the end of the night, all the musicians played on stage together, like 15 people on stage all rockin' out. It was an amazing moment and it's really quite cool that this many musicians get along so well and put in so much effort for the fans and for the music!! Soooo awesome.

I just listened to Joe Purdy's album all the way through and now it's 2am and I am listening to Brett Dennen's album now... wow I have 2 new favourite musicians. :)

Check those sites out, these guys are just amazing.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

More Mt. Tam hiking photos

Here are a bunch of awesome photos that Bill took on our hike this past weekend. Mt. Tam is totally sweet and it was a huge hike but really amazing.

Looking good before the hike

Sarah trying to bite me

Word!!

Doing some kind of dance

Chillin'

Homeys

Mark and I in a pensive mood

Bill and random hand gestures

Bill, the mad creator

Haha best photo of the day

Haha

Me and Sarah

Awesome view

San Francisco!!

Awesome mountains

North Bay

Friends chillin' on top of the mountain

Word

Sarah the hiking fiend

Bill's Stanford homeys

Cool photo

Good one of Mark

Another good one of Mark and Bill

Bill doing some Ninja moves

P. Coleman looking very Top Gun style

Sarah in cautiously optimistic mode

Mmm... water

Chillin'

Word

Me, and the San Francisco Bay Area!!

Me standing back from the edge!!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Figuring out courses for next term

Hehe yes I know I should be asleep right now, but I got an email from my buddy Joel asking about what courses I am going to sign up for during the signups which are next week. I am not totally sure what to do because it's my last term and I have to fit in the stuff I still want to take, but also I don't want to unnecessarily stress myself out now that I've already taken the courses that I care the most about and are the most important to me.

I need to take 2 4th year CS classes, 1 Math and 2 Electives. I think it's likely going to be Social Implications of CS (which is going to be sweeeeeeeet!), Soundtracks in Film and Judaism 217. I'm interested in another Modern Film class too which is a backup plan. For Math I am not sure what to take so I need to figure that out. At this point I figure it's got to be either super useful or alternatively, reasonably straightforward. I think I am past the stage of "hard for the sake of hard" - there have been plenty of those at Waterloo during my degree. :) There is a Pure Math class called Elementary Number Theory that would be cool, but I'd really like to take a Geometry class if it was available. Looks like that won't work out so maybe just an easier Mathematical Investment class... not sure there. For the other CS it looks like there are a few options, I think I might end up taking a User Interfaces class, but there is also a Medical Imaging class or another new one called Frontiers of CS which actually could be really cool too. So that is a bit undecided at the moment but I still have a week to decide so that's good.

Anyway I better stop reading this stuff now and get to bed, it's been a long day. :)

The Bad Pixels

Back at Alias in December 2004, we had a holiday party where we needed some people to rock out really hard and get the crowd going. The fine, the talented and the attractively-named "The Bad Pixels" were formed, about a week before showtime. :) We practiced on the 2nd Floor of the Alias building, rockin' out to some punk versions of Beatles songs and show tunes.

I'm not going to lie to you, it was freakin' awesome. :)

Haha in all seriousness though, this was a fantastic moment in Alias culture history, and I really enjoyed being around for it, and it was very gracious of my Alias homeys to include me in the punk troupe. Fantastic.

The Bad Pixels logo

The famed Cory Mogk, awesome bass player, drummer and confidant, just posted our old band logo to his new Maya blog on the Autodesk site so I figured it seemed more than appropriate to share this fantastic link. Brought back some great memories!!! Thank Cory, you are still the most bad-ass drummer I know. Plus we can rock out like nobody's business with only 3 days to prepare for it. Sweeeeeeet!!

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/blog/4/blogpost/4202/

Man that rocks.

Jutan

Monday, October 02, 2006

Goodwins at Pixar, Mt. Tam hike, new friends

This past weekend has been a busy one. I was about to go to bed as it's Yom Kippur tomorrow and it's going to be a long day, but I downloaded the new Picasa and it was taking a while so I decided to post these before going to bed.

Ros and Graham Goodwin, our awesome family friends from Australia, came to visit me at Pixar on Friday!! They were stopping by the Bay Area for a couple of days on the way back from a big trip through Sweden and Italy I believe. They were really excited about visiting Pixar and it was really fun to show them around because they are exactly like my parents. :) Ros was VERY excited just like my Mom and I think that Graham was very impressed by the work atmosphere and culture just like my Dad!! :) Awesome.

Friday night we went to Sarah's apartment and watched some Dane Cook (a comedian) which was kindof funny. Then we watched some Dave Chappelle (one of my favourite comedians) and that was SUPER funny. We ate a lot of good food and Bill brought some fancy wine which rocked.

Saturday was super busy too. We drove to Mt. Tam and hiked up and down it, and saw some fantastic views of the Bay Area. In total we hiked for about 5 hours and it was pretty sweet. I met Alexi and Mark, two new guys who are starting at Pixar in a couple of weeks and they both totally rocked. After the hike Sarah and I made some wraps and then I passed out from tiredness on the couch for an hour. Then we drove to Oakland and watched a girl from work compete in this super insane Roller Derby thing, which is basically a full-contact rollerskating sport, it was totally nuts and the crowd was crazy. The girl from Pixar was awesome and totally won the game for her team so that was great. It was fun to chant "Let's Go Oakland!! Let's Go Oakland!!" haha awesome. The fun super insane day didn't stop there though, after this Sarah and I went to In N' Out burger which rooocckked and then watched The Big Lebowski due to the relationship between In N' Out burger and The Big Lebowski. Fantastic.

Today was less nuts, we just went to EBC as usual and then to Berkeley Bowl to get a bunch of food for the pre-Yom Kippur feast. My friend Yaron is back up here for the holidays and we had a big meal tonight before just relaxing this evening and watching some Scrubs and The Incredibles. I listened to a really well-done version of Kol Nidre by a chazzan (the singer who leads the Hebrew songs at a Synagogue) from Dallas, Texas! It was really good and they had a choir too, pretty fantastic.

Anyhow I am off to bed, I hope you are all well and those who also have Yom Kippur tomorrow, I hope you have a good fast, and a day full of thought. L'Shannah Tova and Happy Jewish New Year to you.