I am determined to start writing consistently. In the past I have written a good post and not done anything for months. It’s not really a good way to practice writing, and since I’m trying to make this my career, I think that I may need to step up and start writing. Whether it gets me more readers or just manages to keep the 4 that I have, I need to do more. I waste time just browsing when I could be writing or sharing the last cool thing that I found. Maybe if I make my website my homepage I will remember to write.
Today I need your help. What helps you write, why do you blog, or if you don’t why not?
After last summer’s giant success of Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr, a sequel was inevitable. The only question was when it would be made. But that question has been answered, the sequel has been made and is tentatively set to release on May 7th 2010. There’s also the giant hype that it has to live up to. With the new villain Whiplash, played by Mickey Rourke, I hope that the writers will remember that the story of the first one is what made it such a compelling story. One thing that does bother me is the fact that Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character of Rhodes is now being done by Don Cheadle. A better actor, in my opinion, it will still be odd to see a different face for a character that has already been established. Thankfully that will be the only major character change, but people will notice this and possible it will effect how they view the movie as a whole. Jon Favreau made a big name for himself, even though he’s been directing for about 10 years, he directed Elf, maybe you didn’t realize that. If he successfully makes this movie a hit, he is guaranteed to have this franchise for as long as he wants.
One of the best things that could possibly have happened for this movie is the purchase of Marvel Entertainment by Disney. With the massive amount of money that Disney has, they don’t really have to worry about a budget anymore. Also there is news that this might come out in 3D, something that Disney is very fond of doing right now. Disney did the freaking Jonas Brothers Movie in 3D, if they don’t give that same treatment to Iron Man 2, they are going to be losing out on a lot of money. Keep in mind that while a regular ticket costs $9.50 a 3D ticket costs $14, according to Fandango.com. Those prices are from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but maybe they will find a cheaper way of doing this in 2010. 3D is also just really cool to watch, especially if they do it right and utilize it to it’s fullest. Up, was a good movie and got great reviews, but the 3D was unnecessary and didn’t add anything to the movie, unlike Coraline which was done in stop motion and used 3D to its fullest. The depth of the movie was amazing and it’s not the same if you watch in it’s regular format. I paid a lot to see those movies in 3D and if they double the price they better have some good justification for doing so.
As with every movie, when this comes out, plan for the worst. It’s always possible that they can ruin a character, but with action sequels based on episodic graphic novels, now that the character development is out of the way, they can focus a lot more on action sequences and making it a really great movie. While I am always hesitant to say that this looks like it’s going to be good, it does have a strong possibility of being one of the best of 2010. As of right now, it only has to compete with the MacGruber movie, a reboot of Nightmare on Elm Street, and don’t forget about Sex and the City 2. Iron Man 2 is definitely on my “to see list” and I think that it will determine if super hero or comic book movies continue. Disney has given them the money so now they need to use it and make the great movie that we are all expecting.
I have been editing, deleting, and generally going through all of the photos that I have taken in the past. Ultimately I did this to justify my purchase of a Flickr Pro account. Which, if you are a photographer is totally worth the price. While I personally believe that a good photographer has to be created, the tech that they may or may not use is always interesting. So today I thought I would tell you about what I am currently using.
Camera: Nikon D5000 with Nikkor 18-55 mm AF-S VR Lens
Computer Stuff: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
-LR2/Mogrify Plugin
-Flickr Uploader
-GIMP
-Photomatix Pro 3
As you can see, I go through a few steps before I actually upload to flickr. Step one is always just go through the pictures and weed out the ones that are blurry, too dark/light, etc.(i.e: ones that cannot be fixed). I then go through the ones that I kept and color correct them. For fast action things that may be random like weddings or sports or children, take as many pictures as you possibly can and always try to get your lighting adjustments set before things happen. Cropping is the next major thing for me and I almost always crop things out of the pictures that I like. For pictures that I think would look cool if altered I through them into the GIMP (a free photoshop alternative) and play with the filters. This is the part where people just go crazy though and end up ruining a picture. I’ve seen people just layer filter on filter until you can hardly tell what the picture once was. A tip to all photographers amateur and pro is to keep it simple. Over saturated HDR pics may be all the rage right now, but instead it should really be used to take photo’s that show all parts of the picture in great light and rich color, not a rainbow exploding in your face. Photomatix is a great program, but there is a special way to use it and not everyone can take a good HDR photo. It’s the same with Tilt-shift and every other type of artsiness in photo. Moving on. The plugin that I mentioned is wonderful and is the best possible way that you could add frames, watermarks, titles, or all of those to one or multiple pictures. At first I thought I would just upload my work as is, but then I looked at people that did frame their stuff like this and it really made the picture pop, but it also added a name to the picture and I could use it multiple places and not have to worry about copyright or getting any recognition. Then we export and use the uploader. Yes, I do know that there is a flickr uploader plugin for lightroom, but I have had horrible trouble with it and it took forever, It has also crapped out on me in the middle of an upload overnight, so it was there for a good 5 hours doing completely nothing. Not very helpful. I think I have said all that I need to. I’ll add links to all the software tomorrow, it’s kinda late. Stay pretty.
I’m an amateur photographer. Recently I bought a Nikon D5000 and I love it. Using a 16 Gb card, I can shoot thousands of pictures without having to worry. It also has the ability to shoot 720p HD video at 24 fps. While it’s not exactly necessary because it can only shoot 5 minutes at most, It’s nice to have the ability, you never know when you might need to take video. My flickr account is being constantly updated, since I have hundreds of pictures that I took before I had a pro account. The simplicity of uploading, viewing and sharing photos makes it worth the 25 dollars a year.I take pictures of everything, unlike my brother who takes pictures of only animals and landscapes. I have been trying more recently to do portraits and candids that really focus on capturing emotion. The pictures from my uncle’s wedding show that, and some of them came out pretty well. A note to any photographers, how many pictures do you find yourself deleting or editing out of the final collection? For me it’s about half. That’s all I really have to say about me and photography, I’m sure I’ll have more to say later and some better pictures to share. Peace out all you cool kids.
So every once in a while I do this whole thing where I disappear from the internet and then come back to apologize and say that I will blog more. I have realized that I can never really make that promise. With writing being more of a hobby than a career right now, I have to deal with both school and work and when I’m not busy with those things I’m busy cleaning or fixing something or photographing or sleeping. I tried to keep this blog tech/movie based, but I think that I need to change that so I can really just yell about what ever I feel like. I still want parts of this to be about movies and tech, but I would also like to incorporate photography, food, tv shows, sports(sometimes), bacon, and other stuff. I also need some reader feedback, I know there aren’t many of you, but I need to know what I am doing right and wrong and what I should be posting about. Everyone has an opinion and I can take the harshest ridicule there is. If you want to look at music I like, you can check out music.nadnerb.net I have only music there. It’s nifty. Thanks for reading and I’ll post some more stuff tomorrow.
New movies are being annouced left and right about now and with the summer already half way through (oh man it hurts to say that) Some of the movies that we are seeing trailers for are only the tip of great things.
Coming soon are movies like:
50 Dead Men Walking, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, 9, and Gamer. All being released by the end of September we have some good things to look forward to. I have already read the script to inglourious basterds, directed by Quintin Tarentino and staring Brad Pitt. It will be good, that’s all I should say. 50 Dead Men looks interesting mainly for it’s plot. It’s about an Irishman being taken by MI-5 to infiltrate the IRA. It’s got Irish people, spies, explosions… how could this be bad? District 9 is a movie by Niell Blomkamp and Weta Workshops thats produced by Peter Jackson (which really doesn’t mean a lot, just his name will bring in some people). The story is about a stranded alien species on earth that humans are holding hostage in South Africa. We want their weapons and technology and they just want to leave. At some point they get fed up and fighting begins. From that point on I don’t know any more details. Moving on, 9 is a movie by Shane Acker that is developed from his short film of the same title. It’s a post-apocalyptic story where 9 dolls holding the souls of humans have to fight machines and protect humanity. Oh, and Tim Burton is producing, but who cares. These are just a few to look out for, there are many more that I left out.
Just browsing what is coming up in the Future:
Pride and Predator (yes, pride & prejudice/predator)
World War Z (based on the Max Brooks’ novel)
Indiana Jones 5 (maybe they’ll get 4 right this time)
The Hobbit Parts I & II (Directed by Guillermo Del Toro)
Tron Legacy (Lightbikes and all)
Thundercats
Alice in Wonderland (3D w/ Johnny Depp. Tim Burton Directs)
So I said I was going to blog today so even though it is late in the day I guess it still counts. Right? I only have one good reason for not blogging more often and that is James freakin’ Joyce. Taking multiple upper level English courses in a single term was really rough, but I passed and I don’t have to worry about those anymore, now I only have to worry about the other new classes. But it’s summer now…WOOOHOO!!!! amirite? New things are happening everyday and it’s generally just a great world. Don’t yell at me for not talking about “real” news. I know about the bad things that are happening in the world, but why not look at the great things that we have instead of what we have lost. Remembrance will only remind us of the things that we will never have again. Today was interesting because of Michael Jackson’s giant funeral, which deserved, was a little over the top. The music world is constantly changing, and although we have lost a great artist, (I never knew him in person so I can’t say anything about who he really was) there are many new musicians that are very talented. That reminds me, we are launching a new blog at music.nadnerb.net and it will focus only on music. We need contributors to help write reviews of songs, albums, shows, and other music news. If you can help out just send me an email at brendan@nadnerb.net
A techie tangent: Google annouced their new Chrome OS today, and it’s all based on cloud computing, I have been waiting for this day for a long time mostly because I’m a google nerd. It will be another great addition to the OS world to fight with Microsoft and Apple. I hope to see great things from this light and easy to use operating system.
That’s all I have to say for today, I hope to begin blogging on an everyday basis after today. Stay pretty Y’all.
Having been gone for quite sometime, our return to planet Blogosphere was quite refreshing. As it is already too late to recount our journey I will return tomorrow.
In a good way though. Music is really what I love in life. On average I’m listening to some form of music for a good 9 hours a day. Constantly on music blogs I love finding new music and showing people good music. It’s why I got a radio show, KBVR 88.7 Corvallis Mondays from 5-6 or Here. We each need some form of music in our lives, and whatever you have is great just for you. I will almost never criticize people’s musical choices or favorites. I suggest artists that I like, but since music is such a subjective thing it is wrong to expect that people are going to have the same taste as you. I let people listen to what they want to and if I don’t like it, that’s what FSM created headphones for. Finding new music is often difficult for the analog folks though. Going to a record store every day is unfeasible for most people and might even turn some people away from finding new music. Sites like hypem.com and a few others aggregate millions of music blogs a day to find the best new music that people are talking about. No, I’m not being paid by them, I just really like the site.
I’m not really sure what I would do with out music, probably be more proactive and get my work done faster instead of dancing in my room by myself to daft punk. You all do it, Don’t judge me! Music can follow our moods and really plays into how we behave each day. There is upbeat music for when we are happy, sad music for when we are sad, and daft punk for everything else. If we attempt to live our lives to their upmost potential, we first have to realize that music helps us. But sometimes it is good to take off the headphones or turn the stereo down and just listen to the music around us we just need to pump up the jams, have a good time and rock out. Enjoy your music, and stay classy.
Someday I will write a novel that starts like that. I’m not really sure what it will be about or if will be any good. But if you steal my idea, my hand to Gad, I will straight up bitchslap ya.
On to more important things, like me. If you haven’t noticed, my faithful 7 readers, I have been gone for a while, this may be due to a large amount of school work and reading way to much James Joyce and 19th Century English Poetry. I really do enjoy writing, and reading, this is why I am an English major. The part I really don’t enjoy is analysis of a story. In someways, I can see how it is good and allows the reader to become more involved in the story, but too often the book is overanalyzed and it really can ruin it. Like Freud said, sometimes the cigar is just a cigar; sometimes the green light is JUST A FREAKIN GREEN LIGHT. It doesn’t have to be anymore. By the way, that reference was from “The Great Gatsby”, a favorite of mine that is too commonly overanalyzed.
If you happen to be a writer of any style, imagine if someone read your book and completely misinterpreted your character, or review, or story, a screenplay even. It’s crushing right? A writer’s stories are his/her babies(in a way. Roll with me here). We are affectively killing when you give meaning to things that never really needed anything more than what they already were. As an English major, it’s really hard to see that these things happen, going into reading a book for school you expect to read it with a highlighter and a pen, but for me it really just kills the joy of reading. I really hope that you are reading just because you enjoy reading. All books need to be enjoyed no matter what they are, there is probably one guy in the world who actually enjoys reading textbooks, but make him answer questions on it, all the enjoyment is gone.
From this point on I am going to at least attempt to write daily, it might be short and meaningless, but it’s there, and I’m writing. AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!! BWAAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Sorry about that. Have a nice day and enjoy the weather, it sure is nice.
