Photo by Finnigh.
Today’s featured photographer is Ivan. Check out his beautiful skyscapes. The rest of the photos are mostly from the HDR pool from flickr. Check out my series of articles on HDR if you want to know more.
In this post, I cover some Rocketboom, a new TV pilot called Traveler, some Big Brother, some Zooomr, the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie The Lady In The Water, a short dreamlog, the length of my posts, photography, racism, politics and more!
Traveler
Another one of those leaked pilots, Traveler recounts the story of a terrorist attack on a NYC museum and the involvement of three post graduate students during their roadtrip.
I was very surprised by this pilot, I didn’t expect much. But I was wrong. The show revolves around three friends, just graduated from Yale. They decide to go on a road trip through American before starting their careers two months later. There is the smart poor one, the rich one and the deep one. I won’t even bother with their names for nom, because it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say, that they are quite stereotypical. The smart poor one has got a hot girlfriend, and this makes the other two somewhat jealous I think.
At NYC, they decide to pull a prank, after having convinced the smart poor one to participate against his will. They put on rollerblades and blade through the museum. The deep one films them and then says goodbye whilst they whirl away. The smart poor one and the rich one make it out. They get a phone call from the deep one asking them if they had made it out, they did. The deep one says he’s sorry and then the museum blows up.
The two guys make it back to their hotel room and check out the news, only to find their faces plastered on the telly. They are suspected of having been involved. They try to contact the police, that doesn’t work out. The rich one takes the time to call his dad, who tells his son to get out of the city. He also informs them that before the museum blew up, a large number of a financial insurance company’s share, ten million shares, were dumped right before the museum was blown up. The financial company insured the art of the museum, so the father informs his boy that someone high up knew about this.
The smart one and the rich one come to the conclusion that their pal, the deep one was involved with the attack. During their escape, they get the aid of a mysterious fellow, which just adds to the conspiracy jitters.
Fast paced, surprising and leaving you out on the brim of wanting to know more, this show will probably be picked up for a whole season or two. It’s by ABC, and is one of the smarter shows of the coming fall season, with Heroes from NBC.
Lady in the water
Looks like M. Night Shyamalan last picture isn’t getting the response that he wanted. It’s getting very bad ratings in Canada and the USA. The film was dropped by Walt Disney, so Shyamalan had to find another distributor. Also, Shyamalan has the tendency of writing himself a part in his movie. This one is no exception, and his part is supposed to be even bigger. And it’s not like he’s the best of actors.
However, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village and Signs grossed about 1.5 billion USD. Will this one be as successful and good? I don’t know yet, since I haven’t seen it, but I am willing to give it a chance. But with so many bad ratings, it’s hard to see how this will happen. Also, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 grossed 252 million until now and did not get good review either.
Zooomr
I am in the process of backing up most of my photos on Zooomr. With 2.25 GB still left until the end of July, I have to use it all before the beginning of the month of August. That is no problem, since I have a few spare GB of photos lying around.
One thing that Zooomr has to improve is the functionality of the tag words. It takes too long to find my own tags, there should be an easier way to do this. And I haven’t yet found a way to change the privacy of a photo, from public to private. I’d like to see that addressed as well.
Also, I would like to be able to configure the viewing of some photos, so that some users can see them at archival quality, whilst others can only view the smaller scaled down versions.
I have yet to see how to designate a contact as family or friend.
Dreamlog #12 & #13
I have had some weird dreams over the last few days. Yesterday’s involved me being stuck in winter somewhere and taking a very fast train (TGV) to go home with someone. It was like being stuck in the steppes of Siberia. There where a lot of tourists for some reason.
I am on a boat and we are being boarded by some soldiers. They pick up the people and sequester them. This has been going on for some time and it is getting tiring. I am on a luxury liner, one of the biggest and the captain is a woman.
I am with someone in my old house. My dad is very upset with me. He keeps making a lot of noise. It seems that he can’t sleep and has come down to the basement to play videogames. Naturally, they are mine and he is making a lot of noise. I go out of my room and try to make him stop, he ends up storming away and being very upset.
Length of articles on The Memoirs
There has been some discussion going on about the length of my posts, which varies from 1000 to 3000 words, depending on how much I have to say to you, the reader. Now I am open to suggestions. I have thought about breaking up my posts into a few smaller posts. This would naturally take a bit more time and the illustrative quality of the posts will possibly be affected. I have gotten used to writing them long for a reason, and I do cover a lot of subjects in one post. I feel that these posts are an effective digest of what has gone through my mind in the last 24 hours and reflect parts of my reasoning and though processes. I used to post a lot shorter articles and blogs.
Please leave some comments about this and what you think would be best, I will take them under consideration over the coming days.
Photos of thunderstorms
Last night, there was a thunderstorm. There was a lot of lightning and thunder and water. I tried taking some pictures but was getting frustrated with the shutter speeds of my point and shoot. And I think that if I was able to shoot rapid consecutive photos or set up a tripod for a long exposure that would have been better. Anyways, I’ll upload scaled down versions to my zooomr account today, so check them out.
Brutal attack sets of racial alarms
A Sudanese man who survived polio, war and the refugee camps of East Africa is recovering at his Kitchener, Ont., home after being beaten unconscious with his own crutch.
Francis Pitia said yesterday he was set upon by a group of white men hurling racial epithets. Anti-racism groups are reacting with shock and outrage, and police are investigating the possibility that the attack qualifies as a hate crime.
After the few articles that I have written on racism in Quebec, this is another incident that happened this time in Ontario. I think that there is no place for racism in Canada and this should be considered a hate crime. No matter what we way about the government, I am glad that we have strong laws on the hate crimes. Canada is a nation formed by its immigrants who become Canadian. We all contribute to changing Canada’s identity to something better, nowhere is this more apparent than in culturally diverse Montreal.
Israel prepares for ground assault
It looks like Lebanon will become Israel’s Iraq. There are all these micro conflicts all around the world, from Afghanistan to Iraq. And we are not even going to mention conflicts all over Africa.
Rocketboom
JoCo is getting better and better. She is no longer annoying and is making the show entertaining. The last episode was about tying your shoes. Sounds stupid but it is funny. I wonder when we are going to see the 1st ads.
Big Brother USA
Nakomis was evicted on BBUSA last night. Nothing more to add on that show except that Kaysar should have never trusted the Chilltown alliance. Danielle is going on about how Diane and Jase are secretly allied.
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