I usually don’t get excited over movie trailers… but the new trailer for Moon has me wishing June 12th would come sooner.  Sam Rockwell looks amazing, albeit from the trailer alone.  He was most notably and recently in Frost/Nixon and before that Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.   Apple has this to say about it:

It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Taped messages are all Sam can send and receive. Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife, Tess, and their three-year-old daughter, Eve, in only a few short weeks. Finally, he will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty,” the base’s well-intentioned, but rather uncomplicated computer.

It looks like a much needed diversion from modern sci-fi’s “pew pew” to a more restrained and psychological, an old throwback to the Arthur C. Clarke days.   Well, what are you waiting for? Go watch the trailer. Now.

If Those One Billion iPhone Apps Were A Village Of One Hundred

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periodic table of controllers

Originally uploaded by Pixel Fantasy

An epic piece of geekdom, Flickr user Pixel Fantasy has created a periodic table of controllers. Take a look-see and you’re bound to recognize at least one of those genius button layouts.

You know those days that everything just feels a bit off, one way or the other.  Well, today I feel like my world is backwards.  It’s 2009 and everything must have dramatically shifted sometime when I was unconscious or something to that effect.  Just a few years ago, the world, much less my world, was a different scene.  I was in high school.  I was living at home (yeehaw!).  Only the huge bulky baseball players were being accused of using steroids.  People were sure Michael Jackson’s career was over.  The U.S. economy was doin’ alright, so I’m told.  I know sometime in the past two years the stocket (stock market) peaked.  The president was white.  The American people didn’t trust or like their government, especially former president George W. Bush.  “Young people” didn’t care too much for national and international affairs aside from P.Diddy telling them to go out and do something.

Today things are just plain opposite.  I’m not in high school anymore.  I live a thousand miles away from home.  Even the overpaid not-that-great baseball player Alex Rodriguez did steroids, and then lied about it.  (Personally, I prefer that all baseball players do steroids, I’d like to see a 1000ft home run sometime.)  And look how great Michael Jackson is doing.  In 2005 his only dates scheduled were court dates, now he has a sold out stint in London, including an extensive contract that we don’t even know how awesome it is.  It really is mindboggeling, but I’m okay with change.  But I’m not so sure about this…

I thought that America would learn…wait, before I continue, I’m going to just explain it.

We all know who won the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.  He ran an amazingly impressive campaign.  His budget for the campaign was as spectacular as his budget proposal is today.  His national tour seemed to be more of some spectacular event put on by AEG or some other promoter.  Every day I was seeing massive crowds at his rallies on the news.   It was in my former city of Portland that his rally drew a record amount of people, 75000 (still just saw it on the news).  It blew my mind to see that kind of devotion, especially at a time when people were so skeptical of big government.  And the people there were my friends.  People my age.  Even people that couldn’t vote love him.

It’s a far cry from the overwhelming skeptecism from across the board during the last administration, but for all past administrations really.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a mountain of faith placed in a U.S. president before.  “Oh my god, I looooove Obama.”  I hear that all the time, is he the new Tom Cruise or something?  I didn’t realize that political leaders were such statues of fandom.  That’s what’s scary about this change in our world today.

I feel like the fact that Obama was able to use and envigorate his role as celebrity has given him the approval of the American people.  I’m not saying that he’s doing a bad job, because really nobody knows, we have to wait and see.  Like he said, it’s about patience.  But people in America trust celebrities for whatever reason.  And one that can also be taken seriously is the greatest of them all.  America has almost just shunned away a lot of its God given right to question itself and those who run it.  Every day I run myself into some argument with an avid Obama fan about something without trying to.  The people who are so avid that they just skim through as many things about what he’s doing as they can and then regurgitate it to me as their argument.  They thrive on talking about it, I swear, he’s “…bigger than Jesus.” (thanks John Lennon.)

I feel like I need to end this now.  All I’m asking is please, don’t put so much blind trust in somebody.  We as a country have been duped many times, don’t be fooled by your desperate need for just a “change” from George W. Bush.

Goin in,

Cutter

First of all, you need to be able to recognize when you’re in a horror movie scenario.  When Johnny over there doesn’t come back after getting wood from outside, you probably shouldn’t send 1 person to check on him.

1. When people say they see crazy shit, believe them.

2. Don’t fuck up your hands or feet doing stupid shit.  (i.e. running blindly through the woods at night)

3. Always look behind yourself.  Use your fucking eyeballs and periphs.

4. Screaming only tells them where you are.

5.  Stay in the house.

6. Don’t split up.

7. If there’s a black guy with you, use him as a diversion early on to escape.  Those guys always die first anyways.

8. When facing paranormal activity, you’re either: a) all going to die, b) some of you might live, and will have a lifelong bond, or c) you all wish you’d die.

The BBC is reporting that a 67 year old woman on the way to a cemetery to bury her husband was killed when the hearse she was riding in was rear ended. The coffin slid forward and hit her in the back of the head killing her instantly, in a sadly ironic fashion. Her 76 year old husband died the day before of a heart attack. Authorities are investigating to determine the cause of the accident.

via [The BBC]

New segment I’m thinking about doing: recapping the last week in headlines, in case you missed any of the important ones.

• Sarah Palin and many online sources say that the San Francisco Chronicle had hidden audio from their interview with the candidate from earlier this year on his stance on coal in the United States.  It turns out that these were just fabrications, and even the McCain camp has bought into them.
• The Washington Post is reporting that Barack Obama’s grandmother Madelyn Dunham died earlier this morning, as she lost her battle with cancer at her home in Hawaii.  Obama was campaigning in Florida this morning when he learned the news.
• The election is in its final throws, and candidates aren’t stopping there, Politico reports.  Both candidates will travel to multiple states holding rallies on this last day of campaigning.
• Certain game manuals for Electronic Art’s new game, Red Alert 3, were incorrectly printed and are missing the last digit of the serial number.  As per their online help base they recommend users guess all 36 combinations of their key using A-Z and 0-9 to fill in the last digit till they find one that works.
• XKCD started an epic 5 part comic which concluded last Friday.  The entirety of it can be viewed here.
• Ars Technica is reporting that MTV and Harmonix, the makers behind the popular Rock Band and Rock Band 2 are developing a stand alone Beatles game in cooperation with McCartney, Starr and the survivors of Lenon and Harrison, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.

If you’re reading this blog and this is the first you’ve heard of this magical “vote” phenominon that is sweeping around the country, then you probably have some problems.  But if not, this is one more reminder that this election seems to be a major turning point in Modern American history.  Also; if you vote tomorrow then head over to Starbucks, you’ll get a free tall coffee.   If a free cup of cheap coffee isn’t enough to get you to vote then maybe a free Krispy Kreme doughnut is.    Still not enough? Well, Ben and Jerry’s isn’t offering human breast milk icecream yet, but you can get a free scoop of any of their other types of ice cream tomorrow.

Americans like free stuff, and if they vote, they get free stuff.  Win win situation my friends.

Over the course of my last semester in Math courses, I wrote down funny/strange things my professor had said:

• “Please let me know if you can’t see… I’m talking to myself otherwise.”
• “I had a stapler in my bag but I lost it… somewhere…”
• “I really shouldn’t be tell you guys this…”
• “I couldn’t visualize this stuff… so I did really bad and bombed my exams.”
• “Understand what I just did? Great.  If not… well I tried.”
• “Like on this one we sorta learned something.”
• “That might mean something… I dunno.”
• “If you can’t make math class funny, what can ya do?”
• “After an infinite amount of time I’ll get there, but who wants to do that?”
• “I should’ve learned how to spell but I got lazy.”
• “That one dude who blew houses down… he had to have a strong vector with wind.”
• “Why I chose this problem as an example is beyond me.”

I hope I encounter many more interesting professors who’ve overcrowded the language part of their brain with math knowledge.

Today, of course, is 8-8-2008, and the day that the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies begin at, you guessed it, 8 PM.   I discovered another interesting conincidence on the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics website.  They have a count down till the 2014 Olympics begin, and guess how many days till that is? 2008 days.