swaits.com

Full length documentaries online

Posted by Stephen Waits Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:03:05 GMT

TayTV has posted links to 10 documentaries, which they recommend, and are available online - for the moment anyway.

I hope to check a few of them out soon.

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E3 2006

Posted by Stephen Waits Tue, 16 May 2006 17:56:00 GMT

So another E3’s come and gone. I didn’t quite break my record low enthusiasm mark this year. I was slightly more interested than the last few years. I did spend more than two hours on the floor this time around. That’s mostly because I got there before Ralf and HK and then resaw everything with them after they arrived.

My friend Tim managed to get us into the Gears of War playable room. I didn’t play, but both Ralf and HK did. I’m not sure about the gameplay, but I have to say after seeing the live demo, I’m convinced this can be the next Halo – the 360 pusher. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if all of the Halo-buying-mass-market-homos in the world will be able to open their eyes wide enough to see anything other than Halo 27: More of the Same Crap for Wal-Mart Shoppers Everywhere.
MotoGP on the 360 looks great. I think a lot of the next-gen graphics are a little crazy. Everything has incredibly high-contrast edges, so that what should be smooth fields of grass end up looking like a Photoshop experiment gone bad. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should do something everywhere! Producers and Designers please take note of this!
Otherwise it seemed to me that MS had the usual sort of decentralized unfocussed booth we’ve become accustomed to seeing from them.
PS3 had more playable games than I expected. I liked Warhawk and will definitely play it - though it clearly had some issues. Gran Turismo HD looked really good, even if it’s just a hi-res version of more of the same. The PS3 F1 game looked fantastic, but didn’t play so well. Madden looked like a bad joke.
Sony needs to seriously do some crowd/fluid dynamic simulations on their booth design. The relentless MGS trailer was always causing the entire PS3 area to be swamped. If you were interested in the PS3, but not MGS, you would find yourself in a mass of people staring up at a giant screen – all of them perfectly in your way of just getting close to one of the PS3 titles. You could wait in line to go upstairs, but nobody waits in lines do they?
Wii. As of now, non-existant for me. Nintendo, being highly fanboy-driven, has always had the most packed booth at E3. I think this always added to their hype-level, in a good way. This year they closed the booth down, and you had to stand in line to get in. No. I’m certain they’ll have 2 or 3 truly great games on the platform some day.
PSP had a decent showing; many more games than I’d expected. Some looked great. However, this show was about PS3 and Wii.
DS Lite looks cool. I’ve wanted one for awhile and it was nice to see it in the flesh. I still think touch and dual screens (and Wiimote) are completely gimmicky; however, I want to play Brain Whatever it’s called and Animal Crossing.
Kids. I saw kids at the show again. WTF. There’s already enough of us idiots who work in the industry but don’t really need to be there packed onto the floor.

As were were trying to escape the lunacy of the floor, heading toward the doors, Michael Madsen grabbed my arm and told me to take a picture of him with a fan. I didn’t realize who it was at the time, and thought to myself, fuck you. Then his son or whoever was with him said, “it’s ok, I’ll take it”. But MM reiterated, “no, I want him to take it”, pointing at me for no logical reason other than unbalanced brain chemistry. Ralf says, “it’s ok, he’s doing it”, talking about the kid, and we left. About 15 feet later we realized who he was. Whatever.

I really enjoyed hanging out with Tim, Ralf, and HK. We weren’t able to connect with Jeppe for some reason, but I’m sure I’ll see him soon enough.

Tim and I had scheduled a 40 or 50 mile bicycle ride for the Saturday after the show. I planned it all out. Of course that fucker flaked on me. I’ll see him this coming Friday where I can give him more shit about it, but he should consider this his public flogging!

Finally, I spent the 4:30 hours on Amtrak (about 2:15 each way) watching Long Way Round which I’d ripped onto my PSP the night before. Not many people know what this is.. but it rocks. It was a seven part TV series where Ewan McGregor and his best mate Charley rode their motorcycles from London to NYC – only they went the “Long Way Round”. It was fantastic. I got through 6 of the 7 episodes on the train and watched the last one at home. Highly recommended!

There you have it.. My E3 ‘06. Not sure there’s any reason for me to go to E3 any more, so this may have been my last – at least for awhile.

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Great weekend!

Posted by Stephen Waits Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:35:00 GMT

Wow, I had a really fun three day weekend. It began Friday morning. I got to do our weekly ride with Bob and Max from work. It’s a 25 mile out and back and is a fun getaway from work. We did it just over 16mph. Definitely slower than last time, but fun. That evening Cathy picked up some Buca di Beppo for me, and Panera for herself, and when I got home we feasted! I was carb-loading and it was a delicious way to do it!

Saturday morning, I woke up and scoped out the weather. “Thunderstorms” (kind of a joke in San Diego) were supposed to show up, but it looked like it’d hold for several hours. It was the monthly Trek ride. They offer two rides, a 20 mile “fun” ride and a 40 mile “sport” ride. I’d done the 40 two months prior and bonked. It was awful. I finished at 14+ mph. Really bad. And I felt guilty riding with the sagger – though the Trek store guy who rode with me was super nice. Props to those guys.

So, to get on with it, I was a little apprehensive about doing the 40. I decided to go for it. I ended up doing great. I really paced myself through the first 25 or 30 miles of the ride, intentionally staying toward the back. I forced myself to eat from the very beginning, consuming about 400 calories in the first 80 or 90 minutes. As we neared the end I still felt really good and had plenty of energy left. I even managed a few 20 second hard sprints in the last mile. It felt great to bring it home strong like that and finish in the top half of the whole group! My average was 16 mph. I know I can do better than that! In my defense, the route has one long climb, and the rest is rolling, and a traffic light every time you look up. It was a great morning!

When I got back to the house I called up some people to invite them to a boardgame night at our house. Mike, Bill & Stacy, and Francois & Stephanie all ended up saying yes! I’d like to invite more people; however, we aren’t quite setup for that large a group just yet. Hopefully soon!

Now we had to get ready! First we were off to Whole Foods to buy some drinks and snacks for the evening. When we got home, Cathy and I spent several hours cleaning up the house. We got a lot done. Vacuum, clean kitchen, touch up the floors, and clean toilets. Whew. I must still be on my cycling high at this point! I just had a few minutes left to go print out a list of my collection, sorted by maximum players (we anticipated 7), and then rating.

Arrival time encroached and so I shot off to pick up the Filippis pizza. By the time I got back with two large hot pies, Francois & Stephanie were already there visiting with Cathy. Mike showed up shortly after that, and then Bill & Stacy just a few minutes later. We poured some wine and dug into the pizza. Ohhh it’s so yummy.

On full stomachs, I pulled out several games that met our criteria. I decided we should start with Time’s Up, a simple, but fun party game. I decided I’d referee the game and run the timer, leaving 6 players to play. Cathy teamed with Mike, Stephanie with Bill, and Stacy with Francois. It seemed like everyone in the group really enjoyed this game. The first huge side pain laughter outburst came from Francois doing “Darth Vader”. I think I cried a little. Somehow we managed to have 3 or 4 baseball players in our stack, and James Earl Jones and Darth Vader. By round three, people were forced to get really creative. There were lots of laughs and a ton of fun here. Francois & Stacy won, I say because of some excellent pantomiming skills.

Next up we played BANG!. This is a light card game themed in the the realm of spaghetti westerns. I’d read over the rules before and realized they were horribly written. So, a big mistake of hosting games, we dove into a game I knew nothing about. The group was patient though, and we figured it out, and it was fun. Next time I’ll be much better prepared. In fact, I’ve already printed out some really nice reference sheets and put them in the box. As to be expected in that situation, we missed a few rules. That said, the Outlaws (Cathy, Mike, and me) won when we killed Sheriff Bill.

I intentionally kept the games light. Over time I hope to introduce interested people into some heavier games. It wasn’t too late and we could have played more games at this point, but I sensed the group was a little tired, and we closed the night down. After a brief tour of our house, everyone was on their way. It was a really fun night for both of us, and we hope to host again soon!

Sunday morning I made some eggs and bacon and grits. Yum. We decided today would be the shopping day. I packed the laptop, some lunch, and a few books and we headed down to Fashion Valley. Once there we split up, each armed with our cell phones. I went to the food court and ate my lunch – a banana, two tangerines, and a Larabar. I was very impressed with the bar; it was very tasty and nutritional! Then I dove into my book, Bike for Life. It’s great. Full of seemingly sound advice, and some incredible interviews from cycling giants. I read about half of the book by the time Cathy was finished.

We headed home, and ended the night vegging out to some TV. It was relaxing, quiet, and nice.

Monday, MLK Day, was a holiday for both of us. I asked Cathy if she was interested in going Geocaching and she said yes! So I printed a few nearby caches out, El Cuervo de Mayo and Cache of Cammocles, we put on our hiking boots, I programmed the GPS, and we set out! We easily found the first one after about a 20 minute hike. My little [Foretrex 201] was acting much more accurately than I expected – it led us right to the cache! The second one would elude us for awhile; but we didn’t want to give up. We searched and searched and reread the description but weren’t finding it. We even ran into another geocacher and his dog looking for the same cache! We finally agreed to decode the hint and then found it within a few minutes. This was my first time geocaching and I really enjoyed it. If nothing else, it was very nice to introduce Cathy to Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, the canyon where we live.

Next we went to a movie. We saw Last Holiday, the Queen Latifah / LL Cool J movie. It was surprisingly great! I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good date movie or chick flick.

Wow, it’s been an action packed and incredibly enjoyable weekend so far. How could we top this off?

We kicked ass at Hockey on Monday night. That’s right, the Shockerz laid down a 10-3 ass beating, and it felt damn good. We have a ringer; no, we have two or three ringers now. Playing with guys that can seriously play got the rest of us to really step up our game. We could skate when it was important, instead of the hysterical skating like madmen we usually do. Despite our ringers, the scoring was pretty evenly spread out amongst several players! Ryan, our new big defensive presence has a killer shot. Wow. Derrick and Bryce performed really well together, and Mike was up in there too. Timmy did very well on defense, and I’d like to continue that if he’s interested. Maybe he and Mike can switch off when they want. I even managed to get a few shots off, about four, I think. My first hit the post. Second was going to hit a post but landed in a glove. Third was about eighteen inches high, and Bryce managed to deflect it in – but no goal, high sticking. And my last was no less than five feet wide. Still, man, that felt great!!!

Now it’s Tuesday. Back to work.

Posted in cycling, boardgames, movies, food, journal, hockey, geocaching | no comments | no trackbacks