Hero Inc.

Thanks to Joe, I have seen the first trailer/teaser for the movie Choke. You can check out the trailer here at MTV Overdrive or visit the teaser site which has the trailer as well.

Choke is a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) and is one of my favorite writers. Choke, according to chuckpalahniuk.net, is:

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park.

At first, I was excited about this movie due to the actors involved (Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Houston), but I was more worried about what they would need to change. Choke is not a very main stream friendly book in any regard. Out of all of Chuck’s novels, I would say Fight Club was as main stream as he could get and that’s saying a great deal. However, after seeing this teaser/trailer, I’m excited again to see this movie. It looks like they might try to stay true to the book.

Hopefully if this movie does decently well then Survivor and Invisible Monsters (my favorite) will receive the greenlight for production again. But again, this movie will probably bomb with the masses.

That’s right. On this wonderful holiday, I’m choosing to celebrate by beginning my summer of dorkiness. With the girlfriend away (Europe and Asia), I am now able to tackle the following IT tasks:

• Reformat Mandriva – Basically looking to do a real install rather than the Live one I did. This is more for me to relax and truly install from the start. I also originally installed with the dual boot option for Windows. However, with my VirtualBox, I never need to boot back into Windows. My Linux box will grow from 20GBs of space to 40GBs of space. That’s a big deal even though it is still small.
• Finish my Perl book – I’ve started the language and it’s ok. I now feel I should have went after Python, but that can be my next task.
• Complete and update my WordPress Plugin – With the addition to GCStar in my life, I began building a simple WordPress plugin. I have version 0.0.1 written, but I have ideas of what can be next for it. Once I have it to an “acceptable” level, I’ll release it for others to download and mock my poor understanding of a simple solution. Yeah, I don’t have too much faith in my programing skills for the masses.

It’s time for the SUMMER OF BEN!!!!

UPDATE: Here are a few screenshots of my newly installed Mandriva system. Click on the images to get a larger version to view.

Due to climbing gas prices, I made a monumental decision on April 24, 2008. I decided that I would stop driving to work. Looking at head at four dollars for gas, I decided that was an insane value. I mean, it was/is going to hit an amount that is 400% higher than what I remember gas being when I start driving. What once would fill up my car ($20) will not even provide me with half a tank.

On April 25, 2008, I began my no car to work initiative. It sounds cooler if I call it that. The approach was to ride with my roommate to work. He lives roughly half a mile from a MARTA station. There is a MARTA station near our apartment, but activity and me do not mix well without sweat. I’m working on that as well. Anyway, I would walk to the MARTA station in the morning. Then when I came home at night, I would ride to the nearest MARTA station and walk home. The walk home is roughly 1.5 miles. I don’t mind the perspiration in the evening since I’m going home and do not need to present myself in an acceptable manner then.

Eighteen days into the initiative (I didn’t walk for a few of the days), I’m still going strong. My current problems with the walk are the following:

• Body Temperature – Even with the minimal walk I struggle to keep my body temperature down. This will grow in difficulty as the humid Georgia summer approaches.
• Weather – The evening walks are not bad except for when you walk home during a tornado. Having 1/4 of your body in water isn’t the greatest.
• Time – I don’t really get home at a “reasonable” time anymore. Part of this is due to my current client being on the west coast and I’m not traveling at a car’s speed here. Of course, my commute home is still shorter than most Atlanta residents who drive. That’s just sad.

Now, this is a numbers game we are ultimately playing so I’ll provide the real figures people are wanting to know.

• $45.60 => This is the amount of money I have saved by not driving to work each day. This number only includes days I would travel to work and an average gas price of $3.75. If I included everywhere I would have driven during this time period and chose to carpool or walk instead, the money saved would be $71.81. I was able to carpool home from Trivia, to kickball games, and to Winder to see my sister’s house.
• 1.9014 => This is the number of miles I walk daily. This includes the walk in the morning and the afternoon walk home. If I stay at home to work instead of going to the office, I will try to at least due the afternoon route by running to and from the starting location.
• 30.4 => This is the number of miles I have walked in just 16 days. Technically, this number is 36.4 miles including the two days I ran the afternoon route instead of going to the office.
• 3 => This is the number of pounds I have lost. Now, I don’t trust this number just yet. I’m hesitant to believe my scale even though I try to weigh myself at the same time each time I weight myself. This number can also be thrown by the fact that I am slowly trying to watch what I eat and improve it for a majority of the week.

I’d like to thank my walking coach, Mr. Will. He provided a great list of Do’s and Don’ts that have helped along my way. I only hope to match his 20 pounds he lost from walking in D.C. That’s a dream worth “walking” for. That and my wallet will thank me for it. I also want to thank the people that let me bum a ride by becoming my carpool buddies: Brad, Charlie, my parents, and Dan.

I’ll provide another update to this post during the summer when I face my real challenge in the heat.

The more I search for a great application to solve my current issue, the better each application becomes. The current "find of the century" is GCStar .

GCStar is a media collector that can catalog Movies, Books, Video Games, Board Games, Stamps, etc. It even allows you to create your own type of collection and define the specified fields needed for each item in the collection. I personally jumped at this application due its ability to record my DVDs and pull the necessary information from the web. The additional collections were just secondary items that sweetened the deal.

Before GCStar, I had built my own PHP/MySQL based application to hold my DVDs and display them. I had to input the information manually and it was a pain at first but decent in the long run. GCStar would pull the information from the web (IMDB, Amazon, etc). The only changes I had to make were to resize the DVD images so there was a consistency across my collection. GCStar also allows the information to be exported to different formats. I found the HTML format (samples of how it can be displayed [Books,Movies] and best to use FireFox) to be the most useful because I wanted to display my collections on my website. This also led me to begin building a simple WordPress plugin to assist me in posting these collections faster. I’ll post more on this plugin once I have a user friendly and limited manual input version ready to post on WordPress plugin websites.

GCStar also lets you track who has borrowed items from your collections. By saving the name and email addresses, GCStar will launch the local email client to send automated emails if you require your items returned. I find this especially helpful since people seem to borrow my movies and games and my horrible memory doesn’t remember it.

Tellico is another program that promises to perform the same tasks as GCStar but it was originally developed for books and that’s where it seems better suited (based on limited interaction). I’ve found GCStar to be simple, intuitive, and powerful. I also like the XML data that is stored instead of using a database. This may mean I have to wait a longer period of time before my collection is loaded into the program, but it also means I can take the data later and use it as I please if GCStar doesn’t continue providing me with all of the features I enjoy. Based on the screenshots alone, I was ready to download the program and begin building my collections.

Not much to say here other than, GO HAWKS!!!!!!!

I’m not a big basketball fan, but I will be a fan of Atlanta teams. Don’t call this the bandwagon. Just call this, me supporting you doing the improbable (not impossible). I wish you the best and regardless, you have accomplished more than anyone expecting out of you.

GO FREAKIN’ HAWKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IRON MAN

Before the movie even began I was given my money’s worth. That’s right. The trailers. Iron Man unveils a new Narnia, Incredible Hulk, Dark Knight, and Indiana Jones trailer. I even enjoyed the You Don’t Mess With The Zohan.

Now for the movie. Tony Stark is Robert Downey Jr. No, I didn’t write that in reverse. I meant what I meant. In the comics, Tony is a playboy who has had it all, lost it, and worked to get it all back. He is a womanizer and an alcoholic. Robert Downey Jr. is all of that and more. With this perfect comparison, people will tend to love Tony almost as much as they do when he is Iron Man. I probably enjoyed the first half of this movie more because it was about Tony and the way he became Iron Man. Within the first 10 minutes of this movie, you will realize if you like it and will enjoy the rest of it.

The visuals were amazing. Unlike the Spider-Man movies, when Iron Man is on screen, it is very realistic (at least for me). The director, Jon Favreau, stated his movie would be defined by Iron Man vs. 2 F-22 Raptors. He was almost right (RDJ as Tony was even better) because the scene was very cool and fast paced. It mixed a good collection of humor and action.

My only complaint would be the final conflict between hero and villain as well as Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth plays Pepper Potts, Tony’s personal assistant. She basically keeps the billionaire playboy in check for meetings and ceremonies. I thought she was doing a great job early on, but that’s because she had a limited role. In the end, I realized she was playing the character straight from the pages and provided no true depth to her. She could have learned a thing or two from RDJ or Jeff Bridges (who is quite believable as the corporate head that wants it all). I won’t add much on the final conflict just so I don’t ruin anything.

In my eyes, Batman Begins is the movie that other superhero movies should be measured against. In the end, Iron Man was no Batman Begins, but it was very close.

Note: When viewing in the theatres, stay to the end of the credits. A short, amazing clip is shown that you will not want to miss.

[Rating: 4.5/5]

My buddy, Will, has produced his second (or version 1.1) of his musical podcast. It brings to light many bands that most of us will never hear about but still enjoy. Head over to Mustachioed.net and check it out. Hopefully he will keep these going because it’s a great listen during a morning commute.