Inside Stretch » Opinion

Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of E.T.

Posted by Stretch | Filed under Movies, Opinion

This post contains a spoiler, if you do not want to know what happens in the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skulls, stop reading now.

I went to see the new Indian Jones movie this past weekend. As a movie its a decent movie. As an Indiana Jones movie, it sucks. I’m sorry but Indiana Jones, and ET just doesn’t work together. Jones is trying to find the reason behind the crystal skulls and why it has an elongated head.

On a wild goose chase in South America, he finds a temple. In the basement of this temple is 6 or 7 crystal skeletons of aliens. The skull he’s been carrying around half the movie is the skull to one of the aliens. These aliens came to earth thousands of years ago, and collected vast amounts of knowledge. Once the skull has been reunited with its body, the aliens take off in their spaceship, leaving a huge gaping hole in the earth.

Now why doesn’t this work? Let’s look at the previous 3 Indiana Jones movies.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Renowned archeologist and expert in the occult, Dr. Indiana Jones, is hired by the U.S. Government to find the Ark of the Covenant, which is believed to still hold the ten commandments. Unfortunately, agents of Hitler are also after the Ark. Indy, and his ex-flame Marion, escape from various close scrapes in a quest that takes them from Nepal to Cairo.

The Temple Of Doom: After arriving in India, Indiana Jones is asked by a desperate village to find a mystical stone. He agrees, and stumbles upon a secret cult plotting a terrible plan in the catacombs of an ancient palace.

The Last Crusade: When Dr. Henry Jones Sr. suddenly goes missing while pursuing the Holy Grail, eminent archaeologist Indiana Jones must follow in his father’s footsteps and stop the Nazis.

The Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, and mythical stones. And now Aliens?! Indiana Jones is good for pyramids, and temples, mythical items. Indiana Jones movies are action/adventure movies, not sci-fi movies.

George, I know your intentions were most likely good, but you went a little too far on this one. Please no more Indiana Jones movies.

Read more | Comments (0) | May 29th, 2008

The Camping Trip - The Aftermath… or “Where the hell did the time go?”

Posted by Macheadcase | Filed under Blogs, Computer Industry, Opinion, Personal, Photography, Rants, Software

One thing that can be said about shooting nearly 5,000 pictures on a camping trip: it DOES take forever to process afterwards.

I have finished making a selection of the photos that will most probably make it on my SmugMug gallery. I shoot in RAW so what this means is that I have to convert the ones I want to keep forever twice: the first conversion in .tif (for archiving purposes) then in .jpg for the uploads. Converting the images in .tif, I have read, is great because the type of file format is stable whereas RAW keeps changing all the time. As an example, Canon’s own RAW file format has changed twice in three years: it went from CRW to the current CR2.

Since we have Photoshop Creative Suite 2 (Creative Suite 1 would NOT open CR2 files!… :rant: ) this is the software I use to convert and tweak my photos. And I hate it at times with a passion. Why? Because the damn Camera RAW Plugin that can deal with the CR2 files ignores what my camera shot and I have to manually tweak it to bring it back closest to what it was 95% of the time!

It judges a photo by the histogram alone. Every book on RAW file format and photography will tell you that histograms are useful but are certainly NOT the only way to calibrate a photo. Sometimes the plugin changes so much the look of the photo, I just can’t get the TINT or the colour TEMPERATURE back to what the original file shows and have to use Canon’s own Digital Photo Professional which at least has the good sense to respect the settings. And if I do use Canon’s DPP software, I have to import the .tif file in Photoshop anyway for the other tweaks like for instance sharpening, shadows and highlights, etc.

*Sigh*

On rare occasions, the Camera RAW Plugin will give me something that improves what was originally there to start with but that is THE exception. I looked everywhere in the plugin’s preferences to import photos without changing anything and to let the user choose the tweaking before making any changes to the image and it just doesn’t seem to be an option.

So all this adds to the time it takes me to convert each photo. When you have hundreds to play with, can I say here that it takes forever to plough through those photos?

Well truth is, I am particular about my photos though…

So enough about my griping, just to let you know that school is starting tomorrow morning at eight a.m. (man, am I ever nervous… :blink: *Gulp*) so I really dunno if I will have time to upload any pictures today in a SmugMug gallery I have yet to create, .jpg images I have yet to convert… My .tif conversion is around 60% done though. So if you have the patience to click daily on my SmugMug link, you could probably see daily uploads…

:hmm:

In any case, I will keep you guys posted on this so check back later to see what I am up to.

Read more | Comments off | September 24th, 2006

My visit to the Carrefour Laval Apple Store

Posted by Macheadcase | Filed under Apple, Computer Industry, Cool, Design, Hardware, Opinion, Peripherals, Personal, Photography, Reviews, Software, Technology

Oops! I was supposed to post something earlier about my visit to the Carrefour Laval Apple Store but life got in the way. Or rather Photo Sorting got in the way…

Anywho.

Monday morning, before a doc appointment I went to the Carrefour Laval Apple Store, our very first Apple Store in the greater Montreal area. It opened while we were gone on our three week camping trip (so I missed my Apple t-shirt ).

Even though I haven’t visited any other Apple Store, the Carrefour Laval store seems to follow the same store layout as most of the others, from the online photos I’ve seen. It’s super classy, lots of room to move around and there aren’t any shelves taking up floor space, only tables displaying the products. A couple of counters do have shelves neatly tucked under the horizontal surface and in the back of the store there are shelves on the walls for software boxes and some accessories.

The store had a lot of new stuff, including the brand new 24 inch iMac but other products hadn’t arrived yet (this was the case for the 80GB iPod and the iPod Shuffle).

Speaking of the iMac 24 inch, it is awesome. It was displayed side by side with the 20 inch model and, even though you might think it sounds too darn big, I found that it could be quite accommodating: since the iMac’s footprint is basically the same as the previous model, it doesn’t change anything much. Besides if you dream of owning a 30 inch Cinema display with a Mac Pro, you can certainly use the iMac 24 inch model!

The store is a bit far from where I live, especially if you don’t have a car though. I heard that there is a Laval bus that takes shoppers to the Carrefour Laval shopping centre, I just wonder how long the ride is since Laval is on an island to the north of Montreal. And I’m pretty sure it has to be a bit uncomfortable to carry a computer box around in public transit!…

But all in all I liked my visit a lot. Even though our visit was early in the morning, there must have been about 20 or 30 clients as we were leaving so I think the store will do quite well.

Oh!… and when you buy something like a Wireless Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, you get to carry it back home in this nifty kewl Apple Store bag!

You can see the rest of the photos from my visit right here.

And here’s how to get to the Apple store…

Read more | Comments off | September 21st, 2006

The Gates Foundation: only for needy and starving kids?…

Posted by Macheadcase | Filed under Opinion, Other OSes, Personal, The world, man...

I remember a few months ago there was this big hoopla on some websites about Steve Jobs being a billionaire and not publicly donating some of his cash while Bill Gates, Micro$oft’s co-founder, was in the news about his charity donations and setting up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for needy children around the world. Some of his donations in the past were all about giving away some computers and software to the needy, so I’m sure the starved kids got their tummies full with all those computer parts and software… Holy smokes, the software might go directly to their brains, come to think of it! :yikes:

It was said back then that Gates was the good charitable businessman while Jobs was a baddy keeping all of his cash for himself. Except me thought at the time, that this was all a show for the media and an attempt to win the public’s favour on the part of Gates. But what do I know, right? Besides, as a few people noted in comments, what if Jobs did donate but wanted it to be held secret and not make it a public display thing?

Anyway, the Drudge Report has an entry on the Gates’ Foundation maybe not being all that it is publicly known to be for, Bill Gates ‘Charity’ Foundation finances newspaper purchases.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation declares its noble mission is to bring “innovations in health and learning to the global community.”

But the world’s largest philanthropic organization also is among the organizations that collectively loaned nearly $400 million to MediaNews Group INC. — for the acquisition of newspapers in California and Minnesota!

“I thought this foundation was all about starving kids, not starving newspapers,” mocked one Seattle insider.

MORE

The Gates Foundation loaned an unspecified amount to MediaNews, along with General Electric.

In April, MediaNews agreed to buy four newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, from McClatchy Co. for $1 billion. MediaNews also bought California’s Monterey County Herald and the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. It also own the Denver Post. …

I’ve heard that newsprint paper has a lot of fibre in it… Maybe the ink is a source of extra protein?

So I wonder what the Pro-Gates/Jobs-bashers have to say about this charitable gesture from the Gates’ Foundation… I for one am very impressed, as it looks like Gates is trying to diversify his earnings as a true businessman.