Per my boss Ramesh's recommendation, I finally saw Shawshank Redemption for the first time last night. I don't know why, but I expected it to be some kind of action movie. I'm glad it wasn't. It was a sweet story, but I found myself wondering sometimes if I should be sympathizing with these criminals (Tim Robbins excluded). I found the warden's character a bit inconsistent. First we see him as a Bible-toting, God-fearing man who turns out to be a bribe-taking murderer who, for purely selfish reasons, won't give a fellow Christian a chance at redemption.
The twist at the end was clever and had me going up until 30 seconds before it was revealed. Red's "final quest" was a bit sappy but I suppose it was the only way to wrap up all loose ends and leave the audience with a warm fuzzy feeling.
Overall, I thought it was a good movie, though not without its tiny flaws. It was definitely long overdue to be crossed off my "Movies to Watch" list. Next on the list: who knows?
I just picked this up off of del.icio.us. It's an online vendor that specializes in travel-sized groceries and domestics. The prices seem reasonable, and much better than what you'd pay at CVS or Walgreen's for travel-sized items. I'm not that frequent a traveler, but for those who are, this is a great resource.
Now here's a cool little web applet. It'll take any image online and turn it into a Polaroid-style photo, complete with rotation and caption.
For example,
came from this.
Technorati tags: polaroid, photo, photography.
(via Lifehacker)
If you think the moon is unusually large over the next few days — don't panic! You are not in Majora's Mask/Vector Prime, it's only an optical illusion. What you'll be experiencing is an illusion similar to Ponzo's Illusion (shown at the site linked above) and so is impossible to capture with a camera. Keep an eye out for it and make sure that eye isn't in a viewfinder. I'll of course try to get pictures of it, but if the engineers at NASA say it's impossible, it must be, right?
Technorati tags: nasa, space, moon, summer, illusion.
Flickr is a photo-hosting site that, unlike others, places a lot of emphasis on sharing your photos. You can have a "buddy list" of sorts and comments are easily posted and accessible from a picture's page. Emphasis is placed on tagging, not "albuming", and so it is easy to see photos that are related to yours.
Yahoo recently purchased Flickr and instead of completely destroying it with suits and bottom lines, they've outdone themselves and not only increased features, but lowered prices. Free accounts are still free (can't get any cheaper than that) and its features were doubled (2omb upload per month and 200 hi-res pictures archived). Pro accounts are now $24.95/year and give you 2gb upload per month, down from $41.77/year and 1gb upload per month.
Despite having my own gallery, this new price/feature combination is making Flickr very tempting. I'd like to get my photographs a bit more exposure and get in on the whole community aspect of it. What del.icio.us has done for sharing bookmarks is what Flickr will do for sharing photographs. Maybe it's about time I jumped into that too.
The sound of a lawnmower outside my window marks what I consider the beginning of spring. The trees are finally showing a little green and shorts and a t-shirt are all that is needed to be outdoors. Winter was long and dark but we have finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel. My favorite time of day is at night when the breeze cools me instead of making me shiver. I am still looking forward to going home, but I'm not looking forward to über-summer's 99% humidity and temperatures in the 90s, that's just too hot. To me, this is the perfect weather.
This is why you shouldn't…
- Spend all of your time looking at people's AIM profiles.
- Take a class on Hinduism.
- Solicit strangers to write papers for you.
The link above is only the beginning, there are a few more stories on the main page.
