Author: Gary

One day companies will realize the success of Google is because they make stuff that doesn’t suck. Their mapping system is very nice.

I watch a fair number of movies. Not counting DVD’s, I’ve easily seen over 50 films at theaters in 2004. I’ve seen all the films nominated for the Best Picture and most of the other performances. Here are my thoughts:

Best Picture
Who should win: The Aviator
I thought this was easily the best picture I saw in 2004. Its a big bio epic type of film that usually wins Best Picture. I’m a sucker for these type of films, so my support isn’t a big suprise. Million Dollar Baby has gotten a lot of buzz lately and it could win.

Best Director
Who should win: Martin Scorsese
There is a very high correlation between the winner of best picture and best director. Martin Scorsese has never won an Oscar and this might be sort of a lifetime achievement award. (Like when Paul Newman won for The Color of Money) The only other real contender is Clint Eastwood who has already won the award, and is nominated for best actor. Those things shouldn’t really matter, but they do.

Best Actor
Who should win: Jamie Foxx
If anyone had uttered the words “Academy Award Winner Jamie Foxx” a few years ago, they would have been committed. In fact, of all the people on the cast of In Living Color, if you had said one would win an Oscar, he probably would have been at the bottom of the list. Nonetheless, he’s gonna win. Its a slam dunk. His performance was sort of like George C. Scott’s in Patton. He became Ray Charles.

Best Actress
Who should win: Hillary Swank
Another slam dunk. She isn’t thought of in the same league as Nicole Kiddman or Julia Roberts, but she is going to join an elite group who have won more than one oscar for acting. The amazing thing is, if you look at her movies since she won for Boy’s Don’t Cry, its been a bunch of crap. (She was in The Core for christsakes)

Best Supporting Actor
Who should win: Morgan Freeman
Not only did he legitimately have the best performance of the bunch who were nominated, this is also sort of a lifetime achievement award for him. He won best supporting actor in the SAG awards, and I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t win here.

Best Supporting Actress
Who should win: Cate Blanchett
Assuming she wins (and I think she will) she will have won an Oscar for playing the woman who has won more acting Oscars than anyone else (Katherine Hepburn…she won 4) All four of the acting picks I’ve made won SAG awards and I think all four should be pretty easy wins.

If you are in an Oscar pool, check out the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Its a market type system where you can buy and sell shares of actors and movies. They have an uncanny ability to pick the winners.

As you may have noticed, I’ve upgraded the site number to 4.0 (it was previously 3.1). I think the changed warrent a whole number change.

I’ve had a personal website now since before the term “blog” was coined. I’ve never considered this site a “blog”. To be honest, I don’t really even like the word blog. This is just my website. With it I can post information like this, store photos, or run a shoutcast server (which I used to do…and would really like to do again if my ISP let me do it).

A “blog” to me is something that requires a great deal of effort. This is just a play thing for me and a place to put stuff . I may actually start a blog with a particular topic focus, but that’s a different discussion.

I have a hard time writting updates for this site. I’ve easily writting more updates that have never made it online than I have ones that have. Sometimes I just never hit submit before my computer reboots. Other times I just abandon it because I’m not pleased with how it sounds.

I don’t like writing about politics. There are more than enough people out there who do that, and another voice isn’t needed. Besides, I really don’t care. Politics isn’t the most important thing in life, or in our world for that matter.

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When I hear a song I like, I’ll often go a few days listening to it over and over. Right now I’m listening to “O Superman” by Laurie Anderson. I’ve heard parts of it before, but I heard the whole thing on a BBC documentary on Minimalism and it got stuck in my head (which is sort of the point of minimalism I think). The song was actually #2 on the British pop charts in 1982.

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You’ll notice a bunch of new links on the left side of the site. This is a good chunk of my bookmarks that I visit every day. My current favorite “blog” (I’m always going to put that in quotes) is Foreign Dispatches. Its written by Abiola Lapite, who is a Nigerian born Mathematician.

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Nate writes: what is better about Word Press compared to Movable Type?

1. The plugin system is really easy. Because its open source, there are a lot of plugins that can do a lot of things. There are plugins that can change how you do posts, admin, comments, and everything.
2. There is a big support community. There is a well developed wiki and a lot detailed FAQ’s for doing installation.
3. MT, or at least the version I was using, didn’t allow automation of simple HTML in Firefox. I can do that with Word Press.
4. There are no restrictions on how you can use it. The latest verion limits you to one author. Beyond that you have to pay.
5. Link management is built in.

Usually when you change software, there is something about the old software you used that new software lacks. I can’t really think of anything MT had that WP doesn’t. (editing CSS files is a pain, but it was a pain with MT also) The process of migrating from MT to WP was also very very easy.

I can see no reason other than inertia to use MT.