The Future Mac

New Mac vs. PC commercial. In this one, PC travels to the future, 2150, to see if PCs are now more stable. Sadly, it turns out they aren't. But really, you can spin these commericals in any way you choose. What find more interesting are these:

1. PCs seem to have vastly superior technology than Macs, with the ability to time travel. In fact, not only does the Mac lack this technology, but he seems surprised at its mere existance. Clearly inferior.
2. Apparently in the year 2150, Macs still have such a low percentage of the market share that they still must contend with PCs in these commercials. Further, Apple has yet to come up with a new innovative advertising campaign, instead relying on the same old format used since 2006.

Hotdocs

Hotdocs, Toronto's yearly documentary film festival, has been running for this past week. Hot docs offers this awesome late night pass which, for only $10, lets you into all 9 of the late night showings at the Bloor Cinema. I think it was a good buy. I saw several of the films that I wanted to see, as well as a couple that were awesome but I would have never gone too otherwise. There were a few bad ones though; Wednesday's showing had a large number of people walk out during the first half hour.

But, overall an excellent experience. The only real drawback was the fact that I only got 4 hours a night of sleep during the week. I somehow remained productive at work though, so it was all good.

The late night pass is a button! How awesome is that?

We were talking about our favourites last night so I've decided to rank the 8 films I've seen as of this posting:

1. Best Worst Movie - Troll 2, worst movie ever = awesomeness
2. The Wild Hearts - Danish moped club, lots of young male nudity
3. The Yes Men Fix the World - Two guys pose as corporate spokespersons telling it like it should be.
4. Soulwax: Part of the Weekend Never Dies - Electro-punkumentary
5. Ascension - Soviet space program footage
6. Graphic Sexual Horror - About insex.com
7. Grass - A film about the US drug war against marijuana
8. Aka Ana - About Japanese sex workers. This was Wednesday's show

I have to say, Best Worst Movie was awesome. I highly recommend it if you ever get a chance to see it. Hell, I say buy the DVD as soon as it's out.

The Wild Hearts was very fun. Perhaps a little too much drunken Danish male nudity, but fun.

Soulwax was not a film with a plot of narrative. It simple tried to show the audience a Soulwax experience. It was awesome for it's editing. The cuts and interweaving of countless shows was pretty cool.

Anyway, Hotdocs was a good week.

UPDATE: Best Worst Movie scored #4 in the Top 10 Audience Picks. (From Michael Stephenson's Twitter stream)

Ah, Giant Abraham Lincoln In Space

My fiancee was working on a PowerPoint presentation for her class this morning. The class involved history on slavery as she had a section to do on Lincoln. So, being helpful I sent her these images from a quick google search:
Ah Star Trek. The episode where the Enterprise encounters a giant Abraham Lincoln in space. For some reason she chose not to use the images I sent.
Actually, despite what you may think if you've never seen this episode, it's not bad. It also has the first canon appearance and reference to Kahless, the Klingon Jesus figure as well as Surak, a Vulcan historical figure.

Anyway, there is your classic Trek history lesson for the day.

D&D Podcast

Last year Wizards put out a 8 part podcast series of the folks at Penny Arcade and PvP playing an adventure with Christ Perkins. A couple months ago they started another with Wil Wheaton (of Trek and internet geekdom fame) added to the team. I've quite enjoyed listening to these on my morning commutes and with the last episode wrapping up last week, I'm thinking I can't wait until they do another (and I hope they do)!

High points for me included the awesomeness of Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics), the party Wizard. He pulled out the rolls and rocked the first series, and in this second he did not disappoint. Jokes of his legendary powers throughout the series (You? You are not Jim Darkmagic. Jim Darkmagic is seven feet tall! With a shock of red hair!) had me laughing on the subway with people staring.

Of particular amusement in the final part was Jerry's (the Cleric, Omin) consistent rolling of ones. We've all been there, and you feel sorry for him, as he sounds pretty upset during the final fight when he rolled double ones on his attack (Wil used a power to give him a reroll), but at the same time the banter directed at him was pretty funny. They posted a comic of his final attack with quotes straight from the recording:
And Wil posted a power card of the attack he personally was going to use on Jerry if he missed: "Wheaton's Vicious Cock Punch of Furious Anger"

Anyway, the point of this all is to say the series is a fun way to pass some time.

Wedding Dress Woes

With my fiancee's year trip to Korea, we've already done a lot of planning for our wedding so as to be ready for the fall.

There's a lot of superstition around weddings, and it gets a little ridiculous when you tell people something and they are beside themselves in shock, thinking your relationship is now on the rocks over the littlest thing. Yes, I know what my fiancee's wedding dress looks like, and I don't think the world has ended.

My fiancee occasionally goes on this forum, weddingbells, which is a congregation and focus of all women really obsessed with their weddings (I know, it's fully understandable...biggest day of your life and all...).

She occasionally finds posts like these, where her response is, "I've lost a bit of my hope for humanity":

So we got some of our engagement photos back "edited", and when I loaded them on my computer, I didn't notice they were loaded into my "dress" folder. So he was sitting next to me & we went through the photos, we got to the last e-pic & the next one was of me at the bridal shop in the dress I ordered (when I was trying them on).

I gasped & covered the screen right away....and now I am freaking. I've since been hunting for a new dress (well, just looking online), but can't find one I like nearly as much.

What to do? will he remember my dress? I'm so upset that I was sooo stupid & didn't watch where I loaded the pics.

*sigh*

She would actually consider buying a new dress over this? Whoa...

April Fools' Day - You're Being Watched

An office April Fool's prank.

As my company is a telehealth organization and thus deals with both patient data and video cameras, you can imagine that security and privacy are important issues. Well, someone (I suspect I know who), posted this in the hallway to the washroom for April Fool's day. It was quite well received and quite well done. Several have commented on the level of quality of the poster, which has a very professional ring to it.