Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Soloist Review

















The Soloist is a good film but, has issues.  Joe Wright's Los Angeles feels slightly set in the future with polished concrete reminiscent of  Gattaca (1997), where the disparity between have and have not screams.  The worlds are set so strong in black and white figuratively with classes meeting between these two characters in under freeway acoustic worlds.  The world has gone mad.  Newspapers are dying, people are off their meds and the future looks bleak.  Most of all Soloist spends too much time in madness.  The story feels laden with heaviness that it can't escape.  All of the people in Nathan's (Jamie) World are so crazy that it just does not feel balanced as a movie.  Feels more like a bad acid trip.  

Not that movies need to have all the answers, but Solo falls short of brining anything new to the table after 2 hours.  You finish at a slightly different point from where you started.  Soloist does not know what issue it is trying to tackle and gets confused, poverty, mental illness, classism, the economy.  You want Nathan to be victorious some how but the film never quite gets there.  Still I would recommend for your Netflix account.

There is a beautiful gift in the center of the film.  For a moment inside of Nathan's head and we get to see music the way he sees music.  This catches you completely off guard and takes you back to the first time you saw and a laser light show set to Pink Floyd, but dare I say better.

What did you think?

Spikes

Straight Razor Shaving
















I have been meaning to write about shaving with straight razors for a couple of years now.  I got into it about 3 years ago and I have to tell you that it is fantastic on so many levels.  1. Financially inexpensive, 2. Environmentally sound, 3. One of the best shaves you'll ever have and 4.  Shaving becomes a deep meditation.

If you decided to try shaving the #1 thing is buy a great razor.  Make the worthwhile investment.  The best in the business is Dovo.  www.dovo.com.  And the smartest  man about shaving is Lynn Abrams of the Straight Razor Place.  www.straightrazorplace.com Lynn is an incredible resource.  Skip all others.  There is a lot of bad information online.  Some of Lynn's talks are online. Here is another how to link about... shaving 

The proudest moment is to know that in about 2 months your razor pays for it self and you never have to put another piece of trash in a land field ever again.  

Let me know about your straight razor experiences.

Spikes

Sunday, April 19, 2009

First Auto Show

Taking your daughter to her first Auto Show: Priceless

Friday, April 17, 2009

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Live Air Traffic Control







If you are odd like me and love listening to air traffic control while flying now you can listen to live feeds.  It is great if you are learning to fly.  Helps train your ears to flight commands.  United Airlines is the only airline that lets you listen to ATC (Air Traffic Control) while flying.  Channel 9.  Helps also if you have a fear of flying.  Takes some of the mystery out of it.

Enjoy


Spikes

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Wearable Gesture Technology


Unveiling the "Sixth Sense," game-changing wearable tech



Thursday, April 9, 2009

Terminator Rides Again











Confederate F131 Hellcat Combat.  Just leaves you speechless.  Confederate Machines built some of the bikes featured in the upcoming Terminator.  Wildest looking thing on 2 wheels.


Spikes

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Segway's P.U.M.A.


Segway's new P.U.M.A. Hmmmm all I can say is don't hit anything and don't get hit.  I would rather ride a Ducati myself.

Spikes



The Story of Prototype


Alex Mercer is a Prototype in a Military experiment gone wrong.  Or maybe gone right depending how you look at it.  Alex is on a hunt to find out who did this to him and get revenge.  You are Alex in this wild first person vengeance game.  Check out the behind the scenes clip setting up the game plot.

Spikes

Terminator is here.




Sarcos has produced an Exoskeleton for the Army.  Terminator is here today.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Streamy Awards









Check out the Streamy Awards .... basically the Oscars for WebTV.  Very smart and needed.  There was a lot of web content that I thought should have been nominated that wasn't but that's another blog for another day. :-) 

Spikes

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Wired For War




















I just started reading PW Singer's book on the future of Robotics Wired For War.  Really well written book that takes a historical journey from the beginning of man's thoughts and ideas about robots to the future and possible drawbacks to how we use robots in warfare.  Have not been able to put it down.

Good positioning given the upcoming Terminator release.

SS

Friday, April 3, 2009

Go Humans Go

Quaker Oats launched great campaign.