Pixar Wins Again

1 comment (closed), posted on may 31, 2003, tags: entertainment

Finding Nemo was absolutely fantastic. From a visual standpoint, the movie was stunning. It was so gorgeous and fun to watch, I almost didn't want it to end. The characters looked so great and the environments were at times unbelievable in their fantastic-ness.

The voice acting was also great, specifically Ellen DeGeneres' character who was hilarious. And, like usual, Pixar picked plenty of really cute young voices for small characters that just make you want to squeeze the screen.

The story was great, the scenery was great, and the movie in its entirety was great. Even if you don't think this movie is for you—it is. No one will dislike it. In fact, I can almost bet anyone would love it.

Also of note is that there's a trailer for Pixar's next feature film—which comes out in November (really soon!)—about defunct superheroes. It looks hilarious.

Quote of the Day

posted on may 28, 2003, tags: random

Steve, looking for a job, IMs this my way: "Eh, who cares. [The application] was for F&P Cigar... and I don't even know if my design style fits that. It's all brown and rustic... I just thought it was cool because it was close and I could smoke at my desk." Brilliant.

What Else?

5 comments (closed), posted on may 26, 2003, tags: site

Entries have been few and far between over the past week or two mostly because I've been working on a new version of this website. Based on some things I've read from other weblogs lately, I decided to circumvent the Movable Type template system and go back to PHP (specifically, in this case, the Smarty PHP Template Engine) to create dynamic templates for the new version.

It's a really fantastic way to do it, to be honest. I don't have to worry about rebuilding and have much more control over how things are displayed. For instance, the new version will have the cleanest source code of any version to date. I know that means nothing to 99.9% of visitors, but a few people will appreciate it (Courtney) and for someone like me with an obsessive-compulsive nature it's really nice to see.

I've also added a few new features (breadcrumb navigation, PHP-based spell-check for previewing of comments to name a few) and changed some core functionality to smarter systems. When I'm done (about another week, I think) I'll need to design the front-end, but then it will be all ready to go. I think it's going to be the most functional version of ManiacalRage yet.

The Last 68 Hours

posted on may 26, 2003, tags: entertainment

Friday night at around 8:00PM, Shawn, Katia and I walked to Enid's in Greenpoint. We drank for about two hours. Then we walked across the park to the Turkey's Nest. We drank for about two hours. Then we went to Palace Fried Chicken and ordered, and we all walked home while eating greasy [fantastic!] chicken.

Saturday we slept in until 2:00PM, lounged around for several hours, and then hopped on the L train to Bedford to stop at a fish market and grocery store, where we got ingredients to make Tuna Ceviche and Chicken with Peanut Sauce. Long story short, several hours later, the Tuna Ceviche turned out like shit and I ended up eating Chicken with Skippy on top (you must try this, it's great). After that nightmare, we journeyed into the city and saw Bruce Almighty with Shawn and then stopped by Ben & Jerry's to get ice cream (I got a chocolate shake of which I had 1/3—the rest was used by Katia to "stop the hiccups"). The movie was funny, and even thought the ending was cheesy, it was minimal and there were some really, really hilarious parts (specifically one with Steven Carell (of "The Daily Show" fame), who I really enjoy). If you like Jim Carrey, it's worth it.

Sunday we slept in until 1:30PM. Then we made pancakes (Aunt Jamima's Mix) and then ventured into the city midday to visit the Guggenheim, which ended up being a bad idea since it was Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend and it was packed with all sorts of people. So we walked down to the Met and took a stroll through some of their exhibitions before heading back down to Union Square where we stopped at Petco to get some large things of cat food and then to Barnes & Noble and finally the Virgin Megastore where we purchased—sadly—Twister on DVD (long story short—we were having an awkward craving to watch it and the local video store here doesn't have it on DVD). We traveled home and watched the movie.

Today we slept in until 1:00PM. Then we made eggs and bacon, and I went into the city to buy a bicycle (at Toys 'R' Us no less). It's a Murray, in case you're curious, and even though that's a great coincidence, it is not, however, the reason I bought it. And for those of you who associate TRU with childrens' bikes—while you might be right in your association, I promise I didn't buy one. This is a bike for big people. I'm big. Then Katia and I rode around for a few hours all over Greenpoint. A few minutes ago we ate Sushi we ordered from a place nearby we had never tried (it was good).

And now I'm writing this. In case you were curious what I did this weekend.

Refer This

6 comments (closed), posted on may 25, 2003, tags: web

I've been running Dean Allen's Refer on this site for several months now. In that time, I have compiled a list of roughly 100 referral hits that I've had to block because they were spam. I am not the only person facing this—in fact, it seems as though with the wide-spread use of Refer, Dean Allen has not only created a useful and usable tool, but also created a whole new form of Internet spam.

To Dean's credit, this was obviously not his plan. In fact, as most things go, the idea was noble. He provided yet another easy way for the weblogging community to reach out and, well, touch itself, in some sort of, as it's been described lately by my live-in girlfriend, "incestuous, sick circle-jerk."

The problem, however, isn't the use of Refer. It's the misuse. And recently, the rapid misuse is making it nearly unusable. I've spent more time in the past month adding URLs to a block-list than I have writing entries. And still, every day, a URL involving "free cams" or, most recently, "massive cocks" has found its way onto my list.

So what's the solution? Well, there really isn't one. I can continue doing what I have been—adding a few URLs each day until the block list creates a 20MB text file a year down the road—or I can scrap the whole thing. I find myself using Refer on the site very frequently to see who/what is linking to ManiacalRage, but I wonder if anyone else ever even looks at it?

If not, then this has all been for nothing. After all, I have my own statistics script that I run behind the scenes. So then, do you ever check my Refer log? Cause if you don't, I'm tossing it. I'm tired of being so tempted to look at massive cocks.

Enter the City

4 comments (closed), posted on may 18, 2003, tags: me

Finally, after months and months, Steve and Ellie actually got around to visiting Brooklyn yesterday. Granted, it took Shawn and my birthdays to get them here, but never the less they made the long trek from Jersey into the city and we all had a nice time.

They got to see my apartment and Shawn's, and we all ate at a mexican place near Union Square before going to a bar called Revival. They left at about 10PM, and then Shawn, Katia and I went to one of her friend's house/apartment-warming parties here in Williamsburg.

The party was fun, and ended up just being us three drinking and talking on our own in one of the apartment's corners. Since we (well, Shawn and I) didn't know anyone there, we didn't have to talk to anyone else, so the apartment basically became a place for us to talk to each other and while drinking other people's booze and smoking lots and lots of cigarettes.

A few hours later, and slightly drunk, we went our separate ways. Pretty great day, if I do say so myself (and I do).

Part Two

1 comment (closed), posted on may 18, 2003, tags: entertainment

I'm going to make my comments about The Matrix Reloaded short and sweet. I feel like wasting time giving overly general feelings and not being able to say anything about parts of the film (most notably, the ending) in specific aren't worth it. In a week or two, after the rush to see the film is over, I plan to go more in depth into what I thought about specific details and story-lines.

In general, I liked it. At first I felt a little disappointed by some elements, but the more I think about it and the more it settles, I really liked the film a lot. It was exactly what it should have been: the line between point A and point B. There were definitely parts of the film that were poorly handled (the most obvious was the digital fight scene with Neo and the many, many Agent Smiths), but in the long-run the action was tight, fast and really, really fun.

All in all, the film was really great and I'm planning to see it again in the next few days because I'm the type of person who does that sort of thing. If you haven't seen it yet, you definitely must. In a few days, I will write [extensively] about what the movie means to me / theories of what we could see in Revolutions.

Kips Bay Screwed Me

posted on may 18, 2003, tags: entertainment

We were supposed to see The Matrix Reloaded at 7:30PM on Thursday at the Loew's Kips Bay Theater on 2nd Avenue between 30th and 31st. I left work at 5:15PM that day and got the theater at 5:30. There weren't very many people there, to my surprise, and I began to feel like a jackass for getting there so early.

Just to be sure, I asked someone at the customer service kiosk when they would start a line for the 7:30 show. She told me no earlier than 7:00PM. So I waited, playing Time Crisis 3 (you can switch weapons now!) until Shawn and Katia met up with me at 6:30. We decided, since there was no line yet, to go grab some food at a pizza place around the corner. We got back to the theater at 7:00, and there was a very short line of people to get in. I was confused, and when we got up to the ticket collection guy, we saw a huge crowd of people waiting for the 8:00 show, but none for ours, which, sadly, meant that they had already let everyone in.

We walked into the theater and it was already nearly full. There were, however, about 35 seats near the center/center of the room that weren't taken, but they were roped off 'reserved.' Apparently, Loew's decided it was acceptable to sell a group of tickets to some small company, give them all the best seats, and then literally tell all the complaining people (myself included) that we could either sit in the front row or wait for the next non-sold-out-show (11:00PM).

I almost lost it, started screaming at the manager, and then we attempted to just get in line for the 8:00 show (which we did, but then got our tickets checked at the door and kicked out). We got our money back and decided to find somewhere else.

That somewhere else ended up being the Battery Park Stadium 16, which is actually a much better theater anyway, all the way downtown. We had to wait in line for an hour and a half outside, but we were nearly at the front of the line and ended up getting the best seats in the house. And finally, after many hours, plenty of rage, tons of cigarettes, and walking later, we saw the movie.

Ma' Birfday

9 comments (closed), posted on may 15, 2003, tags: me

Well, today Jamie-Lynn Sigler and I turn 22. Doesn't feel much different than 21, probably doesn't feel much different than 23. I can't speak for Jamie, but today just seems like a normal day to me, only now I'm closer to the mushy middle of my 20s. Wee!

Reloaded

1 comment (closed), posted on may 11, 2003, tags: entertainment

Then she asked when the next birthday was. I said mine, May 15. She asked what we were doing, and Katia replied that it was "Matrix day." That's what we were doing. The conversation quickly moved on, and though her father looked almost asleep in the corner, slowly dragging on his cigarette, minutes later he suddenly shot up and yelled out, "Reloaded!" We laughed hard and long.

Finally, after nearly four years, the sequel to one the more visually stunning films in my memory is coming. I purchased my tickets yesterday, and Shawn, Katia and I will be attending Thursday night.

Sure, I'll have to be in line for hours to get good seats, and tickets cost 35 bucks for the three of us, but it's all worth it. For a nut like me, this is the perfect birthday present. I can't wait.

The [New 15GB] iPod Review

16 comments (closed), posted on may 10, 2003, tags: tech

Note: This review references the first release of the 3rd generation 15GB iPod. When this review was written, the 15GB iPod was the mid-range model in the 10/15/20GB line-up. Currently, the 15GB model is the base model, and therefore no longer comes with a wired remote and dock like it did back when I bought it.

Well, it's been 8 days since I bought my new iPod, and I've been using it like crazy. What follows is my extensive review and thoughts about this wonderful little device.

» Continue reading The [New 15GB] iPod Review

Sorry for the Wait

2 comments (closed), posted on may 8, 2003, tags: site

Posting comments to this site should now be significantly faster. I had to remove some MT Macros that were just killing rebuild time here on the site. When you have so many category pages, archives, etcetera, having intensive Macros can slow rebuilding down almost to a hault. That's one of the [few] negative things about MT. But, I've used PHP as a work around for friend links, and for now the acronyms are gone. They'll return (using PHP) soon.

I hope this makes it less painful to post comments. Thanks.

CH Users?

7 comments (closed), posted on may 6, 2003, tags: plugin

If you're a CurrentlyHearing user, and you're not listed on the plugin page, please email me or post a comment on this entry and give me your site's URL. I would like to continue to build a list of links to everyone who is using the plugin. Thanks.

So Where are We Now?

5 comments (closed), posted on may 6, 2003, tags: site

I started this website on December 1, 2000. Well, officially, at least. Before buying the domain maniacalrage.net (and, subsequently, maniacalrage.com), this site was hosted on a subdomain of another website I ran at the time. Also, before becoming ManiacalRage, the site was called Garrett.Online.Org, a name which I'm glad didn't survive. Back then the site was just an about me section and a journal (which I hard-coded in HTML for each entry).

In October of 2000 I began to learn PHP and MySQL. This would forever change things. I purchased the domain and began to write the site from the ground up in PHP. As I learned, I constantly wrote and rewrote the site's back-end, bettering it and adding new features. In the past three years I have written two versions of my own CMS, used one a friend wrote, and now I'm using Movable Type.

As of this writing, there are 132 entries, starting in May of 2002. Before that month, there were roughly 150 other entries which were removed permanently on December 1, 2002. Those entries were old and of a different frame of mind. I tossed them and I've never looked back. There are also currently 416 comments, which means each entry receives an average of 3 comments. Well, that's not entirely true, since most old entries have 1 comment and newer entries tend to average 6 or 7. Either way, reader feedback is much higher than it used to be and that's something I'm really happy with.

There have been eleven visual version of this site (roughly). The current design has been in place since January 12, 2003. Elements of this design, especially the graphical dates, got widespread praise and caused quite a link-trail. I was linked on What Do I Know. Who knew people would like the tutorial so much?

In July of 2002 I wrote and released my Winamp2 plugin, CurrentlyHearing. CH is a simple plugin that allows you to show what you're "currently hearing" in Winamp on your website. Version 2.0 was released on December 21, 2002. To date, there have been over 4,000 downloads of CH. Many people use CH every day on their website.

The average number of unique visits a day to Rage in June of 2002 was 43. Last month, April of 2003, the average was 253. In less than a year, the average has increased nearly 6 times over. Monthly totals are as currently as high as 7,700 unique visits a month, a number which astounds me. I went from 5 unique people reading my website total to this in less than three years. There's something nice about that.

And I'm not done yet. I've felt a resurgence of this place in the last 8 months. I'm enjoying this more than I ever have. I hope you'll stick around to see what happens next.

X-Men United

4 comments (closed), posted on may 6, 2003, tags: entertainment

Due to the iPod event, I waited until Saturday night to see X2: X-Men United. Being a huge fan of Wolverine since I was a child (one of the few comic books I actually read), I was pleasantly surprised that the first X-Men film was nearly entirely about the character. That, combined with the fact that Hugh Jackman pulls that character off so well and that the claws looked so cool, made me really happy with the first film.

The sequel, whose title makes more sense after seeing it, was very different from its predecessor. In the first film, action sequences were usually light-hearted and sometime comical. In this film, however, it's very different. For instance—Wolverine kills people. Several. A few of them in a rage that had nothing comical or light-hearted about it. For people who think that comic books are like cartoons, this movie will be shocking. It's often depressing, sad, scary and raw.

For those of us who grew up with X-Men, this film is exactly where it should be. The effects, story and acting were all in the right places. The third film should be interesting.

Live from SoHo

1 comment (closed), posted on may 2, 2003, tags: me

I decided to take a minute, since I'm here and there's WiFi to spare, to post from the Apple Store in SoHo. I'm currently sitting in the theatre listening to some crazy Apple guy talk about all of the new iPod features over and over. He's really excited. More so than I, and I just bought one (more on that later).

The line into the store was outrageous. It took about 20 minutes to get in, and we were wrapped around the corner and a block away. Crazy. But eventually we got inside, and were greeted with another line to purchase. It took a long ass time, but now I'm resting here writing and enjoying high speed Internet before closing my PowerBook and heading home in the rain.

I plan to run the iPod through its paces tonight, and I'll have all the details tomorrow. Bye!

Meet and Greet?

1 comment (closed), posted on may 2, 2003, tags: me

If you're a regular reader of this site and/or you run your own, and you're going to be at the iPod event at the Apple Store SoHo tonight, please let me know. I would love to meet some of the people who read this site or meet other bloggers from this area. Who knows, it could be interesting...