Just as how Godzilla came from the Japanese cultural horror reaction to the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Cloverfield is producer J.J. Abram’s modern giant monster movie for a nation of handycam equipped, post 9/11 Americans. After the sudden and unexplained attack of a huge creature upon Manhattan island, a video tape is found among the ruins by the US military. When you go to see Cloverfield in theaters, what you’re witnessing is the one hour and fifteens minutes of raw DV footage found on a camcorder discovered in what was previously known as Central Park. The footage is completely unedited.
Contained within this footage is a first hand account of the attack from the perspective of a small group of New York friends at ground zero just hours prior to and during the monster’s hellish rampage upon the city. The tape is in fairly good condition even though parts of a month’s before previously recorded Coney Island date by the film’s main couple periodically appears when the camera was violently shaken or the tape temporarily removed.
All in all, I highly recommend seeing this movie. It’s a roller-coaster ride that grabs you from the moment it begins and maintains that feeling that you are truly witnessing this historic event as it occurred until the final, bitter-sweet shot. It’s an awesome premise that makes something as silly as a giant monster attack feel as real and plausible as any modern day disaster scenario you might happen to watch unfold live on television.
Steve Jobs finished giving the MacWorld 2008 keynote presentation just a few hours ago. What has become a sort of tradition for me, I decided to take the day off so I could relax at home and follow all the online coverage in real-time. Knowing full well that it would take something miraculous to top last year’s legendary iPhone announcement, I went in with modest expectations. Overall, the presentation was rather ho-hum even if the super-lightweight new laptop revealed was far, far thinner than expected.
Broken into four parts, the Steve started by covering how much of a great success Leopard has been. I agree but this is old news. Part two covered the iPhone and its success. As expected, he talked about the new 1.1.3 upgrade which was leaked weeks ago. It adds several nifty new features such as pseudo-GPS to the maps application and customizable home screens. More importantly, they’ve set the groundwork to make adding more third party apps to the device easy in the future. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually announce anything in the area of third party applications so I’m going to have to wait until February to find out more. That’s when the official SDK is scheduled to debut. None the less, I’m happy to have the new firmware installed.
The third part of the keynote was dedicated to what is probably the most significant announcement in my opinion: movie rentals in both standard definition and high definition from the iTunes store. This coupled with a new version of the Apple TV set-top box shows Apple has a strong desire to own the home theater space. While I think it’s great Apple is going to offer rentals, this isn’t something I’m probably going to use much of. With Xbox Live, I already have this functionality. What Apple does bring that’s unique is the ability to share your rentals between your TV, computer and mobile devices. Also, they got every every movie studio to back them on this deal; something Microsoft wasn’t able to do.
The fourth and last announcement was the hugely rumored MacBook Air. This thing is slim and light. Apple was going for pure sex factor with this design, even so far as to take out some practicality. For example, it only has one USB port. However, I respect their bold design decisions in what is clearly designed to be an “ultra-portable”. I’ve already heard people complaining about the lack of an internal optical drive but that is silly. In my opinion, optical media is on the way out anyway, Apple is again just being a trend setter. No-matter how sexy it is though, the price is high ($1799) and should be considered a luxury device. One last interesting note about the Air, it has a thin 80GB hard drive (PATA) but they also offer it with a 64GB solid state drive as an option… but for an additional $900 bucks! Clearly, solid state drives are, at least for now, an option only for people with money to burn. All said, that doesn’t make me wish I owned one any less.
Yeah yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Another “I’m gonna loose weight” New Year’s resolution. Well, this time I’m serious. No really, I’m totally f#*king serious. No messing around. I’ve got a plan and it’s simple and straightforward. It’s broken down into three concurrent parts which I will begin practicing tomorrow… religiously.
Part One: I will be exercising for no less than one hour every day. Every single day. There is absolutely no reason I can’t do this. I always have hours and hours of spare time after work every day of the week. Furthermore, I have access to free gym facilities at the university where I work, including a pool, so there is always someplace I can exercise. Preferably, I will want to mix 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise with 30 minutes of weight training however an hour of any type of exercise will be just fine as long it’s every day. This will be a massive improvement over the ZERO exercise I’ve been getting for the past several years of my waisted, sedentary lifestyle.
Part Two: I’m going to refine my diet. Along with continuing to only drink water, I’m going back to having Slim Fast for breakfast and lunch. I have done this in the past with great success. Unlike some people, I enjoy Slim Fast drinks both for their convenience and their taste. The big change is that I’m going to be eating smaller, better portions for my dinner. I usually pig out at dinner time but not any more. I need only train my metabolism to get full on smaller portions. I just have to stick with it.
Part Three: Incentive. I’ve come to realize that while it can be helpful to set goals to achieve, it’s far more important to make this a lifestyle change that I want to keep up indefinately. Encouragement helps, so I plan to make my efforts public by posting regular updates here on my blog for my friends and family to read. Knowing that they are out there following my progress gives me even more incentive to keep at it and make the transition to this new lifestyle easier.
So, where am I right now? As of this morning, I weigh 262 pounds! This is the most I’ve ever weighed in my entire life. In March, I have a doctor’s checkup and I know he’ll be expecting me to be thinner. As long as I transition to this new behavior, it shouldn’t be difficult to loose quite a bit in three months. However, that is only a short term goal. The only real goal I want to set for myself is to be able to look back one year from now and appreciate how much I’ve transformed my health for the better.
