The uber geeks

No iPods for you, North Korea

By Colin Devroe with 3 reader comments

The U.S. “wants to ban sales of iPods, Plasma TVs, and Segway electric scooters to North Korea”. (source) - Thoughts?

Poll: What movie would you watch?

By Colin Devroe with 9 reader comments

Actually, that isn’t the entire question for this poll so I will rewrite it here since I didn’t want the title to get too lengthy: What movie would you watch if you had the day off of work and you were forced to watch a movie? Perhaps you could list two?

I’m feeling a bit under the weather today, and as such I don’t feel like sitting in my office chair the entire day. One of the comforts of working at home and having a Macbook as my primary machine, is that I could retire to the couch should I feel like it. If I do, I’m wondering what I should watch.

Give me your movies in the comments.

Review: Annapolis on DVD

By Mike Stickel with 1 reader comment

Last night I watched Annapolis which I rented during my two week trial membership for Blockbuster Online. Before last night I hadn’t heard any reviews from friends, family or even strangers about the quality or even story-line for Annapolis. The movie was quite enjoyable and the cinematography had some interesting dynamics for the action sequences but there were still a few elements that kept this movie from being great.

DVD specs

  • Genre(s): drama/sport (boxing)
  • Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 (widescreen)
  • Rating: PG-13
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Movie time: 104 minutes

The movie

Annapolis centers around Jake Huard (James Franco, Spiderman 2) who works as a shipyard welder. Jake’s goal is to make it into the prestigious navel academy, conveniently located across the river, and graduate from the program. He has had a seemingly hard life with little support from his friends and familly so he really has to work hard for everything he gets, including his admission to the academy. Once Jake makes it to the academy, with some help from Lt. Commander Burton (Donnie Wahlberg, Saw II), he is forced to confront his personal problems and fall inline with the rest of the academy students.

James Franco pulls off the character of Jake quite well and it doesn’t seem forced. The supporting cast — Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Chi McBride — also works well with the exception of Jordana Brewster. Jordana is great eye-candy for the movie and I can understand the decision to cast her. To me she seems like the only person that doesn’t fit in her role at the academy. It almost feels like they’re trying to adapt the Top Gun formula for today’s audience.

Special features

  • Commentaries by: Director Justin Lin, writer David Collard
  • Deleted scenes
  • “Plebe Year: The Story of Annapolis” featurette
  • “The Brigades” An in-depth look at how the boxing sequences were choreographed, filmed, and how the actors were trained

Final thoughts

All-in-all I enjoyed watching Annapolis. The boxing scenes were shot in an interesting style as opposed to the style of the Rocky films. A variety of dynamic close ups and wide shots work well to keep you in the middle of the action.

The story itself was simple enough, meaning it wasn’t very high concept and too much to grasp, it is a story of growth and acceptance. Everyone I know can relate to this concept. Unfortunately I didn’t find myself very emotionally invested.

There are typical and predictable points in the movie that most people will notice. Sure, anyone that watches a lot of movies can say that but a good movie will have me rooting for the predictable moment to happen instead of wanting the film to hurry up and get to the point. Annapolis was more of the later in my opinion.

In the end I would suggest adding Annapolis to your “want to see” list and if you find it on sale at Walmart, a purchase would be prudent. The movie is entertaining and quite enjoyable if you enjoy some good action — the boxing sequenses — mixed in with some drama. The cast is made up of good actors and there isn’t a lot of fluff throughout the movie.

Wordpress.com surpasses 500,000 blogs

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

This number may include accounts for people that just use Akismet but according to Matthew Mullenweg, WordPress.com has surpassed 500,000 blogs.

Poll: Would you pay YouTube to serve higher resolution versions of your videos?

By Colin Devroe with 4 reader comments

YouTube offers hosting your videos online for free. Would you pay them money to host and serve higher resolution versions of your videos?

Say you have a video podcast that you produce daily - and you want to save on hosting by putting those videos on YouTube. You can do that right now, for free, but the quality of the video that is actually served (even if you upload a really high quality clip), is less than desirable to anyone that cares about the quality of their picture.

So, would you pay YouTube? Or anyone else for that matter?

Mark Cuban recently wrote about Web video and HDTV and while I see where he is coming from, I’m not necessarily looking for services like YouTube to host and serve HD quality video. That could get extremely expensive. However, as I commented on his blog, I wouldn’t mind seeing incremental updates to the quality of the videos being served by the YouTubes of the world, even if it meant that came at a small cost.

What do you think?

del.icio.us will eat itself

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

“del.icio.us will eat itself” - Jason Kottke. People submitted links to links that go to links within del.icio.us.

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Sara Bareilles - Between the Lines
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