Posted October 27th, 2005 in Movies, Personal
A few months back I was looking online for costume ideas for this year’s Halloween and I ran into a few websites of people who are building full-on Star Wars costumes and props. These are not the cheap looking costumes usually found at the Party Store. These things will make you look like you’re in Tattonie looking for some Rebel Alliance scum who stole the mighty Death Star plans. Time to clear out that garage to make room for some power tools.
Going all out
TK409.com Do-It-Yourself Star Wars Props
DH2 - Costume and Prop Building
Home Made Star Wars Costumes
On the budget
How to Make a Jedi Robe
Free downloadable cutout masks, doesn’t get any cheaper than this
Steve’s Budget Star Wars Costumes
Technorati Tags: boba fett, halloween, star wars, stormtrooper
Posted October 26th, 2005 in Mac Geekery
As you might know already, the new iMacs ship with a new application called Front Row that allows you to view all your Digital Life in full screen mode a la TiVo. The thing is, as of today it only comes with the new iMacs. It’s not available for purchase or with any other computer, yet. However, with a little help from the internet, you can download the app and try it on your own Mac. Here’s Front Row running on my 12″ Powerbook. I found it to be very slooooow, like a beta version. But hey, to be fair this is a hack sort of speak, because it’s not optimized for a PowerBook and it might even be missing some necessary files to run properly. To enjoy the full Front Row experience you need to use it with a remote control. For this I used my Bluetooth phone with the free app Romeo and Wise Weasel’s Front Row plugin. I was able to navigate all of it from across the room using my phone as a remote. I really hope Apple releases Front Row for the rest of us. It is just too cool to be left out.
UPDATE: here’s the link
Technorati Tags: apple, front-row, itunes, itunes-tv, mac
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Posted October 25th, 2005 in Design
Having fun with Photoshop at Worth 1000
Technorati Tags: photoshop
Posted October 18th, 2005 in Music, Personal
It rained all day and all night yesterday. A rare thing here in L.A. Rainy days usually turn melancholic for me and yesterday was no exception. I felt so sad thinking of my Tata that I kept replaying in my head how everything went down the day she passed away. Early in the day I had found these 22 unreleased Elliott Smith tracks ( via Ed ) that are rumored to be disc two of what should have been a double album. They’re calling it “From A Basement On The Hill II”. So I listened to Elliott Smith the whole day. His voice carries so much fragility that I just connected with it because I was feeling just as fragile. Man, the power of music.
Link - This guy has a link to a 90mb “YouSendIt” file. Get it while you can.
Technorati Tags: elliott-smith, music
Posted October 15th, 2005 in Mac Geekery
In a media event this week, Apple released an iMac with a remote control, an iPod with video capabilities and a new iTunes that allows you to purchase videos. This means you can now purchase a TV show episode that aired the night before for $1.99. Sounds like a good deal, but what exactly do you get for $1.99 and how does it compare to a TV show you might be able to download using BitTorrent for free? Well, it just so happens that although we have TiVO in our home, I accidentally deleted the first show of the new Desperate Housewives season before my wife could get to watch it. So I went on and got it through BitTorrent one day before Apple announced the new iTunes. I couldn’t help but to download the same show from the Itunes Store to compare them side by side.
Technorati Tags: apple, bittorrent, itunes, itunes-tv, tivo
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Posted October 9th, 2005 in Movies
Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit is easily one of my favorite movies of the year. No kidding. I was introduced to Wallace & Gromit by my art school roommate Jonathan Richter, a stop animation genius himself who has made a fantastic marriage of traditional techniques with computer animation. If you are not familiar with Wallace & Gromit I encourage you to visit the Aardman Animation Studios website to check out some of their work. These are also the guys behind Chicken Run and Creature Comforts. There has been three short films with Wallace & Gromit but Curse of the Were-Rabit is the first feature film starting the two.
Technorati Tags: movies, wallace-and-gromit
Posted October 8th, 2005 in Web
To my fellow web developers, last year Mark Wyner wrote a great article on A List Apart about how to work around designing html emails using CSS. The tutorial covers many issues that would have taken me an eternity to figure out, hats off to Mark for his determination. I was revisiting this article today since I’m working on designing an html email right now and I wanted to share it with you in case you never read it. Here comes the geeky part: Do not use html, head or body tags, use divs instead. Use embedded CSS. Do not use classes that start with a dot, but u can do #div.class instead. The same goes to the a: tag.
Link: A List Apart: CSS and Email, Kissing in a Tree
Technorati Tags: css, web, web design
Posted October 5th, 2005 in Mac Geekery
Although the scroll wheel and the multi-button features of Mighty Mouse are very tempting, I am holding out for the Bluetooth version of it. It would be ideal if they release a smaller one for the road but let’s not torture ourselves here waiting for that one. In the meantime, how can we make the most of our faithful scrolling-challenged, single button, white pill wannabe pro mouse? With the help of a little app called Smart Scroll you can scroll like a Star Wars intro on steroids.
Check it out Smart Scroll at MarcMoini.com
Technorati Tags: mac
Posted October 5th, 2005 in Web
I’m finally running Shaun Inman’s Mint on the site I just finished, erwinmcmanus.com. Mint is one of the coolest little web apps I’ve come across. It’s all Ajax driven and it even has a Dashboard Widget that gives you the last month numbers. The design and functionality are both beautiful and elegant. It proves my theory that web developers should embrace design and programming together and not as separate entities. Mint is a stats application that summarizes your web stats into groups that you can easily understand. Through the history of the web there’s been a few stats program both free and commercial. Here are some of the most popular ones.
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Posted October 3rd, 2005 in Grub
boba fett art by themissy.com
I am seriously getting addicted to Boba a.k.a. Pearl Milk Tea, Bubble Tea, Tapioca Tea and also Black Pearl Tea. Boba is made of sweetened iced tea, milk and some big gummy tapioca balls. The balls, sometimes called pearls or bubbles are so big this drink requires an extra thick straw. Yummy! I got introduced to Boba by Ed some 8 years ago during our MGM days and ever since then I’ve been hooked on it. Although, now I’m seriously increasing my Boba intake thanks to the fact that I live near an asian part of LA. Back in the days I used to look forward to that magical green sign of Starbucks to get my caffeine fix but nowadays I’m hunting down the Boba places around town like a sniffing dog looking for drugs at the airport. We’re talking serious addiction here.
So I just realized today, hey I can look up online, why didn’t I think of that before? That’s how I ran into the funny art piece above featuring Boba Fett. Here’s some links I’ve found, you are welcome to contribute.
bobafind.com - a userbased search database. i just contributed my new fav spot.
Tapioca Express - a boba tea chain with store locator
LolliCup - another boba tea chain with store locator
quickly - a chain of boba tea shops around the world ( sucky website )
WikiPedia/Bubble Tea - The WikiPedia page on Boba
Google Maps - type in “boba, zipcode” and google will show any businesses with boba on their name in that zip code area
Technorati Tags: boba-tea, Grub, tapioca, tea
