Geek On The Mountain


Weight Loss or Not


Sep 30

Posted: under Fitness.

I haven’t been losing weight really. That is to say, I haven’t been trying. I actually gave up on FitDay around the same time classes started….I just never got around to logging what I was eating. For a time, I was still eating right and just not logging anything, but eventually it progressed to doing neither. I tend to try to eat to feel better about life and being depressed as of late, I haven’t much cared what or how much I eat.

On the up side, I’m not terribly bad off. I’m still down a fair amount from where I started. I’m going to start eating less again, and I’m about to go for a walk/jog. I’ve heard exercise is good for depression anyways. I’m not sure if I’m going to bother with FitDay though. It’s easy enough to use and all, I just need to bother to take <5 minutes to input everything on a daily basis.

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Serenity is Out, Reviews Are In


Sep 30

Posted: under Movies.

Since Serenity is now “out?, reviews are posted all over. They mostly look pretty good.

Roger Ebert had some good things to say about the movie.

“Serenity” is made of dubious but energetic special effects, breathless velocity, much imagination, some sly verbal wit and a little political satire.

He gives the movie 3 (out of 4, I think) stars. He also expresses an idea that many others reviewers have expressed as well:

I’m not sure the movie would have much appeal for non-sci-fi fans, but it has the rough edges and brawny energy of a good yarn, and it was made by and for people who can’t get enough of this stuff. You know who you are.

Several other reviewers have made comments similar to this. I’ve been hoping that it will have more widespread appeal (this translates into more $$$, of course). I guess time will tell. Hopefully, what fan base it already has will be enough to support it if non-fans aren’t going to be interested in it.

Yahoo lists is as having a rating of B from the critics (based on a A-F scale, a B is roughly 4/5, pretty good). Rottentomatoes gives rating of 80% from critics, also quite good.

On the downside, according to the-numbers.com, it’s only opening in 2188 theaters. The big blockbuster movies will always open in 3000+, generally about 3600 or so these days. This is going to limit its potential. If you want to listen to what’s to be said on the-numbers.com, it will bring in around $17 million for the weekend, which is a good enough pace for it to make some actual profit. I’ve seen budget guestimates from $45 – $50 million for the film, so it would be good if it hit at least close to that (even when movies can’t bring in enough at the box office to cover their expenses, they can often make much of it up on DVD sales, though).

Unfortunately for me, I’m working all weekend, so I’m pretty sure I won’t get a chance to see it :( I’ll find time at some point though…I’m not going to miss this one on the big screen if I can help it.

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Serenity


Sep 29

Posted: under Movies.

Serenity opens tomorrow, finally. Serenity is the movie remake of the show Firefly. If you’ve never seen it, check out the movie’s official site for more info and the trailer and such. Apple, of course, also has a the trailer, which might be easier to view as the movie’s site looks a little bogged down just now. It’s basically about these people on board this spaceship who do odd jobs (generally “illegal” in nature, though they tend to take a moral highground) just to keep their ship (named Serenity) in space. It has a definite “western” feel to it, though don’t let that turn you off if you’re not a big fan of westerns. The main idea of the movie should be centering around how they pick up this girl and her brother who are running from the law, if you will. There’s something mysterious about her that the alliance (government) seems to be responsible for. That’s basically the idea behind the show, which the movie should more or less follow. Hopefully the movie will take it a bit further though, since the show ended rather abruptly when it was canceled. (It did very well on DVD, which is how it is now a movie.)

I’m assuming that any true Buffy fans already know that Joss Whedon is behind all of this, but if you liked Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the show, not the movie that got thrown out of whack) then you’ll find a lot of the same quirkiness in Firefly/Serenity. Interestingly as well, I just saw the other day that Joss is set to direct a Wonder Woman movie due out in 2007.

The trailer for Serenity actually looks really good. It doesn’t do it much justice to see it on your computer, but if you can see it on the big screen (or at least on your TV), it looks awesome. I would have seen it even if the trailer looked crappy, but it’s really good to see that it seems to be the kind of thing that will draw in non-fans. Of course, it’s a trailer, so it can’t really be much of a representative for the movie. If you’ve seen Joss’s previous work (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), then you know how well written everything is. I have no doubt Serenity will be just as well done, but of course a 2 minute trailer (and especially a 30 second trailer) can’t properly convey that.

I love the show and I really hope the movie does well (I technically hope it is an actual good movie, but I have little doubt in that). Apparently Joss is under contract to do a second and third movie if this first one does well. So go out and see it! I want more Firefly… :)

It should be interesting to see the reviews tomorrow and the box office estimates on Saturday. It’s rated quite high (8.4 based on 3,333 reviews just now) on IMDB, but of course it’s a very skewed vote at this point. It will be interesting to see how much it changes.

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The Depressed Me


Sep 28

Posted: under General, Personal.

I’ve been overly depressed lately. I don’t know why. Or perhaps rather, I do know why, and that why is that there is no reason…..n/m.

I could probably use some sort of therapy. I’ve been “meaning” to set something up for a long time. I’ve been “seriously” thinking about it for the last few weeks. It just occurred to me the other day that even if I did, we can’t even afford so much as the co-pays considering I should probably start off seeing someone a couple of times a week. Perhaps worse yet, my insurance only covers 25 visits per year. Seeing as though I think every other week would be far, far too little, I’d run out and have to pay full price before I made it too far, which is in the end what makes the idea really unattainable.

What I really need to do is to quit it with the things I’m addicted to. Of course when I say quit, I really don’t mean quit. Not exactly anyways. There are several things I do to pretty much keep my mind off of reality. These things aren’t bad in and of themselves, but I abuse them and they become bad. I’m not hesitant to use the word “addiction” either. I’m quite well convinced that it’s not entirely dissimilar from being addicted to alcohol or drugs or anything else (though it’s obviously not 100% the same either). My problems stem from TV/movies, my computer, games (from time to time) and books. I need to pretty much drop these things from my life as much as possible. TV had become easy to cut back on now that BG and SGA are done for the season. I’m not about to quit watching The Simpsons, but then that’s only half an hour. I don’t plan on giving up football for the season either, but it’s amazing how quickly TiVo can make 3 hours of football go by… :) Milenka and I occasionally watch things together as well, and that’s fine. I just need to stop, say, watching TV in the middle of the day when I should be doing other things.

Books are kind of hard. I really need to pretty much restrict my reading to school related stuff and otherwise only while I’m at work (I actually can’t think of a more appropriate time to try to escape reality…).

I need to cut back on my computer usage as well. I can waste away hours….daily. I generally start reading this or that and then find links to more and more and more until I have a window with 20+ tabs open. For the time being, I’m giving up on reading much in the way of anything, including blogs and news. I still plan on writing, and the whole computer science thing usually involves usage of a computer at some point, but as far as everything else goes, I need to keep it to a minimum.

Annoying me as well is the fact that I can’t wear my wedding ring. I tried it again, and I still have a reaction to it. From a brief googling of the topic, it looks like people generally aren’t (if ever) alergic to the gold itself but rather nickel that they’ve mixed in with it. The higher the gold content, the less nickel and also the more expensive the item and the more likely that they’ve used some other, more expensive material in the alloy other than nickel.

Adding to all of this, Milenka doesn’t care. That’s not exactly true, but better than half of the time she’s just fed up with me and unwilling to help me in any way. While that’s not helpful, I can’t really blame her either as I’m plentifully fed up with myself as well and I’d probably feel the same way were the roles reversed.

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Napoleon Dynamite


Sep 26

Posted: under General.

I’d been hearing good things about Napoleon Dynamite for quite some time. We’d been meaning to see it and last week Netflix delivered. Boy, did it suck. I can’t believe IMDB (it’s users, that is) rates it at 7.1. I gave it a 2. I mean really…..this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I’m not just saying it sucked because I didn’t like it. There just wasn’t anything to like.

First of all, it’s a comedy, but it’s not funny. I laughed maybe 2 or 3 times through the movie. Someone breaks their coccyx , and it only occurred to me the next day that this was probably supposed to be a joke. I’ve heard people say that this movie uses “dry” humor, but this is beyond dry, it’s just desolate. If you want dry humor, look into Monty Python, not this crap. Obviously a lot of people found the movie funny or else they wouldn’t have given it such a high rating, but not me. When it was over, I actually thought to myself, I could have just watched Office Space.

When a movie fails at it’s primary intent, that pretty much makes it bad movie. Of course, there can be other qualities that make it at least bearable. You don’t see these things in Napoleon Dynamite though. Take the cast for example. This has got to be the ugliest cast for a movie ever. With a couple of fair exceptions, everyone in this movie is ugly. This isn’t helped by the fact that the time that the film is set in isn’t concrete. I have to imagine that it is set in roughly the present, however most of the time people dress like they’re in the 80’s, which make them look all the worse. Many of the characters are lifeless. Most notably Napoleon and his best friend Pedro. They walk around with little emotion and no energy for the entire movie. The only time they seem like people is when they pissed off. I’d blame it on bad acting but it’s beyond just bad acting and more like bad directing. On the other hand, it’s obviously done in that manner to fit their style of comedy, but then I’ve already said that didn’t work for me so everyone just looks stupid instead of funny.

This all left the movie with pretty much no redeemable qualities at all for me. I was almost happy when I saw that it had only brought in $45 million at the box office, but since it looks like it operated on a total budget of $3.4 million, that’s really a huge success. I suppose a lot of people like it, so chances are better than not that it’s worthwhile for you to check out if you haven’t seen it, but if you’re anything like me you’ll probably hate it. My top 3 comedies (in no particular order) are The Blues Brothers, Office Space, and Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I think I’d rather have picked up an Ernest movie than watch Napoleon Dynamite.

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