Becky and I went to see the Return of the King again last night.  It was just as enjoyable as the first time, if not more so.  We live very near the Tinseltown North theater in Austin.  Although I'm sure it's not as nearly as nice as the ArcLight that Peter is always raving about, It delivers a very satisfying experience.  Except for the little girl chewing gum behind us.  LOUDEST...CHEWING...EVER!  Seriously, I think if there was a competition for loud gum chewing, she would have beaten even the steam-powered chewing machine invented solely for the purpose of chewing loudly.

Although the movie was fantastic and well worth discussion, there were some very interesting previews.  The one for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow looked particularly interesting.  The story seems like a cross between Batman, The Rocketeer, The Shadow (knows), and Flash Gordon. (Ok, It's been ages since I've seen Flash, so I may be way off there.  It just brought it to mind.)  What really interested me was the visual style.  First, everything looks old, but futuristic at the same time.  Like how people in the 30s-40s may have envisioned the future.  The cinematic style is very much like an old school comic book and there is heavy use of digital grading to give the feel of black and white film, but with color.  Lots of contrast, lots of soft lighting from the back.  You don't get a really good notion of the style from the website, but watch the trailer and you'll see what I mean.

I'm excited I gotten some interest in my Wiki.  Some of us have already benefitted from the exchange of ideas.  Some people have inquired on some things. Like:

• What is the purpose of the Wiki?
• How do I add A FilmProject?

As you can see, I've addressed these issues in the Wiki itself.  If you have questions about it.  Feel free to add questions to the FrequentlyAskedQuestions.

Don't worry, I don't plan on abandoning the blog.  I believe it serves a different purpose than the Wiki though.  Many blog entries came become Wiki content as people are more engaged in discussion.

Several of you know that for the last year or so, I've been toying with building a camera crane, or 'jib'.  I've been putting it off for technical reasons until recently.

The main thing that was deterring me was building a pan/tilt head.  I have one pretty much designed, but I really don't have the equipment to be able to do a proper job of testing it as I go.  I even have a microcontroller programmed with my assembly program for controlling the stepper motors with a standard computer joystick.  Anyway, it was too big a job for a simple hobby.

I went as far as designing a crane with no pan/tilt head, attempting to acheive it all through pulleys and cables.  It wasn't capable or portable enough to be much use for my projects.

So, I'm going back to my original design, but I'm purchasing an off-the-shelf solution for a pan/tilt head.  I managed to find a full solution for around $100, and it's simple enough to be easily stuck on the end of a very long jib arm.

Hopefully by Friday I'll have a crane to use at the CD release party for Three Nails Short, a band that one of my former Sunday School students is in. I've talked about them before.

No one but Webdell seems interested in my Wiki.  I've got a few projects up there.  I'll give it a few more weeks to catch on.  I really find it useful for quickly cross-referencing my thoughts on stuff.

I just read a fanstasic article on designing for performance by Rico Mariani.  He's the .NET runtime performance guy at Microsoft.  It's a great article.

Ok, we have alot of discussions here in blog world.  Blogs don't lend themselves to discussions.  They tend to get left behind when new content arrives.  It's hard to get notified when someone answers your comment on someone else's blog.

Wiki to the rescue!  As an experiement, I've set up a Wiki where we can have our discussions about the BCS, smoking, Clinton, marshmallow peeps, or whatever we want.  I'd also like to collaborate on film projects and whatever.  It's a big experiement, much like this blog was so many moons ago.

Here's hoping I can start another trend.

Since I've been on a diet, I've been bagging my lunch much more often.  Actually, I should say Becky has been bagging my lunch much more often.  She does a fantastic job of putting that together just about every morning, and I would like to thank her publicly for that.

She is also becoming very resourceful.  For instance, we must be out of plastic sandwich bags because my carrots, sandwich, and multi-vitamin were all encased in Saran Wrap today.

Dave and I rented the GameCube version of Return of the King yesterday.  It was really awesome.  For someone really looking forward to the movie, it really heightened the anticipation.  It follows the storyline from the end of Helms Deep through the end of the movie (I guess, we didn't finish it by any means).

If you are a fan of the old Gauntlet arcade game, and a fan of the books/movies, it's fantastic.  It does contain real shots/environments from the movie, so if you're looking for that sterile movie experience, don't play it until after the movie, but this is such a well-known story that it shouldn't matter much.

Anyway, it's real cool, and has a nice multi-player cooperative mode.  I've heard the PS2 version doesn't look as nice, but should be pretty cool as well.

Well, Becky's parents came into town last night from El Paso.  I worked most of the day today and we all ate at P.F. Chang's, one of my very favorite restaurants.  It seemed a little silly to have a P.F. Chang's feast the day before Thanksgiving, but it was delicious anyway.

We just watched the first half of the special edition of “The Two Towers”.  All the new footage is great.  It really fills it in nicely.

Tommorow's the big day, all my practicing will come together, and we should have a great fried turkey.  I got it all marinated this afternoon, so we're all set.  Half cajun creole and garlic flavored, and the other half hot & spicy.

Since we're on the subject of eating, I'd like to reveal to everyone that I've been working hard and have lost almost 30 pounds in the last several months.  Really it's about 27, but 30 sounds better.  For the first time since college I weigh 200 pounds.  The best part is it's a lifestyle change that should be simple to keep.  I mainly realized that I was eating for about 6 people.  It all started when we had a health screening at work, and my cholesterol was high.  Since I was going to have to adjust my diet anyway to avoid cholesterol, I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone, and not eat them both for once.

My ultimate target is somewhere between 190 and 200, but with alot more muscle than I've got going on right now, so I plan on heading toward 190, and stepping up the exercise.  Becky's lost alot as well, and we both are feeling very good.  Mom and Dad are losing weight as well, and I'm very proud of them for that.  We'll be seeing them tomorrow, along with Andrew.  Poor Sara has to work.  Jeff, I'll be sure to get his email address.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!  I'll probably use the extra time to get up some pictures I've been promising.

In case you don't have an aggregator that tells you when posts change, I've made some adjustments to my wish list.  Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not asking people to buy these things, I thought it would be an interesting insight into my personality for my readers.

Another side-effect of my list is that it is causing me to think about what are the technologies that REALLY interest me, and build a roadmap for my hobbies.  Right now, I have so many hobbies that very few of them ever yield anything of interest.  I'm finding my efforts to be much more focused.  In the process I'm finding projects that combine many of my hobbies so I can kill several birds with one stone.  For instance, as a result of the list, I've decided I probably won't buy another DVD player, but rather focus on a concept called an HTPC.

There are lots of hobbies to be fulfilled here:

• Designing/Building things - It's going to require creating a case that minimizes noise, while maximizes cooling and looks wicked awesome.
• Electricity - It gots ta have wires
• Software - I can write all kinds of stuff for it to have cool features I've always wanted.
• Computers - It is one
• Movies - I can watch them
• Music - I can listen to it

I could go on and on.  But for now I won't.