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Copyright |
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©2005 Jason Cross
All Rights Reserved
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 Tuesday, January 28, 2003 |
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Responding to pressure from the international community, the U.N. ordered enigmatic candy maker William "Willy" Wonka to submit to chocolate-factory inspections Monday.
"For years, Wonka has hidden the ominous doings of his research and development facility from the outside world," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said. "Given the reports of child disappearances, technological advances in glass-elevator transport, and Wonka-run Oompa-Loompa forced-labor camps, the time has come to put an end to three decades of secrecy in the Wonka Empire."
The chocolate-making capabilities of Wonka's heavily fortified compound have long been a source of speculation. Wonka, defying international calls for full disclosure, has maintained his silence regarding his factory's suspected capacity to manufacture confections of mass deliciousness.
Secretary of State Colin Powell praised the U.N. announcement.
"No more will this sinister figure be free to pursue his nefarious endeavors without fear of reprisal, protected by loopholes in international candy-making law," Powell said. "With this ruling, the U.N. has issued the global community a 'golden ticket' to draw back the curtain behind which this mysterious confectioner hides."
Click here to read the whole story. |
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I have made it back from Cozumel. Snorkeling, diving, enjoying the sun, all of it great. I have extensive info, which I'll post in the next couple days as I get it all edited. |
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Sunday, January 19, 2003 |
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I've been wanting the Samsung A500 vision phone for some time, but the $300 price tag has kept me away (which is a real surprise to those who know my gadget habits). Until today! I'm eating breakfast at Country Kitchen with mom and Shawn (who turned 40 today, by the way) and I'm flipping through the Best Buy ad when I see that they have a deal where if you buy two accessories, you get the phone for 1/2 off! Instantly, no rebate! So now I have the A500, plus a headset and car charger for just over $200!
I also bought a new treadmill today to pick up after my trip. Time to start 2003 tennis training! |
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Tomorrow I head south to the Mexican island of Cozumel. We leave Des Moines at the unholy hour of 5:45am (meaning we'll have to be at the airport around 4:30am). From there we take an ATA turboprop to Chicago Midway, sit around for a few hours, then a flight to Cancun, followed by a bus to Playa Del Carmen and a boat to Cozumel.
I have loaded up my laptop with CD images of SimCity 4, Age of Mythology, all of my music CDs, and some movies to watch along the way.
8 days in the tropics - my skin forecast is sunburnt. ;) |
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Wednesday, January 15, 2003 |
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SimCity 4 was released yesterday. Being a player of SimCity since its original release (ah, all the square parcels of land...) and through the 2000 and 3000 incarnations, I have been awaiting SC4 for some time. Videos and images released last year looked very promising, but no release date beyond simply "2003" was set. Thus my surprise last week when I saw a sign advertising "Coming Tuesday January 14th!"
So after work yesterday I went to Best Buy and spent $50 on the game (who says I don't support worthwhile products?) as well as buying Undercover Brother and Blue Crush on DVD (and I get two free DVDs by mail for purchasing both - what a deal!). I got home, loaded the game on the PC (does EVERY game have to take a Gig of hard drive space these days?!) and went through the tutorials.
The detail in the game is amazing. Day and night cycles. Cars travel in 3D detail. Place a golf course and you see the holes, zoom in far enough and even see the people walking on the course. You can even place Sims in the game (either ones that are pre-made for the game or your own Sims from The Sims) and they'll move in to one of the houses in the residential zone, get a job at one of the locations in town and give you feedback.
What's also nice is the fine-tuning to some of the more annoying parts of the game mechanics of earlier games. Large zoned areas automatically place side streets, so you don't have to compartmentalize so much between streets and zones to make sure a street is close enough. Power and water grids create themselves over an area around their respective utilities so you only need to deal with power lines and water pipes to get from major area to major area. And you can even create multiple cities on a single map, purposing cities towards industrial, residential, etc, allowing for less of a balance to be required to make your particular city function.
So if you're in to Sim games, check it out. It's a great new version of an old classic. |
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Sunday, January 5, 2003 |
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Today I turn 25. Paypal makes the perfect gift. ;) |
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Saturday, January 4, 2003 |
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Ok, so I haven't blogged for a while... I'm losing my five readers to apathy! But I have had a couple requests for new movie reviews, so here goes:
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
After passing up a chance to see the movie two days early at the local theatre in favor of watching Part 2 of the extended Fellowship of the Rings DVD with Lori, I finally caught this movie the following Saturday.
Where as Fellowship was a more leisurely pace allowing the audience to get to know the characters of Middle Earth, Two Towers hits the floor with all wheels turning. It's nice to see a sequel (of sorts) NOT waste a lot of time rehashing who the characters are to appease those who haven't seen the previous movies. I think much of this comes from the fact that the entire trilogy were filmed as one MASSIVE movie.
The battle scenes were exciting and filled with amazing shots of Saruman's army (over 10000 computer generated characters at once!), and it really felt like the fantasy aspects of Middle Earth were more pronounced with the introduction of the Ents, wargs, oliphants and fell beasts.
And despite grumblings from some, I feel that the humor elements played through Gimli were appropriate, making me notice the character who I had always considered somewhat boring by comparison to the others before. It was good that they didn't go over the top, though, and make him total comic relief.
Gollum was well played, definitely not Gollum Binks, though I did try and scare some people into thinking he might be. I was expecting some of the filmed Smeagol/Deagol and their finding of the ring in this movie, but I suppose that's in Return of the King.
As an aside, there was this parent who took his probably three year old kid to the movie which was somewhat inappropriate. We were sitting in the next to back row, and he's in the very back and over a bit, and his kid keeps alternating between crying loudly, running up and down the stairs, and running down our aisle, standing next to Lori and crinkling this pop-tart or potato-chip-like foil package. Parents - if you can't get a babysitter, just stay home...
Catch Me If You Can
It surprises me that Steven Spielberg made this film. Any more, it's easy to think of Spielberg as a kind of specialty filmmaker concentrating on larger than life subjects. Dinosaurs. The Holocaust. Androids and the future. And then this movie comes out.
The movie centers around the true-life exploits of Frank Abagnale, Jr, in the 1960s. When Abagnale was a junior in high school, his parents got a divorce. As a form of escapism, he ran away from home and started making a new life built on fiction - pretending to be airline pilots, a doctor, even a lawyer - all through a series of creative forgeries and lies. Tom Hanks plays the counterbalance to DiCaprio's Abagnale as FBI Agent Handratty, the man who pursued, caught, and in time even befriended Abagnale.
Catch Me If You Can is very entertaining, tightly paced, and is a great story. It also reminds me that Steven Spielberg can be a great director even with a relatively (for him lately) down-to-earth subject. |
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