Wanted: A Review
June 29, 2008 | 0 Comments
Last night I saw Wanted. Going in, I only knew what was shown in the trailer; basically that the movie was going have high action and a moderate disregard for the rules of physics. Moments before the movie started I learned that the whole thing was originally created as a graphic novel. Based on these things I figured I was in for a good time.
Wanted follows a group of high-end, specialized assassins known as The Fraternity. Each assassin has a particular specialty: knives, fists, guns, and the ability to “curve” bullets. Wesley Gibson, an “account manager” with an anxiety disorder, quickly finds out that he is the son of a member of The Fraternity who is killed in the opening scene. Wesley’s tasked with killing his fathers murderer, a rogue member of The Fraternity. From here the film kicks into high gear with wild chase scenes which include Angelina Jolie driving a car with her feet while lying across the hood and shooting at a van. Did I mention the moderate disregard for physics?
Despite twists that can been seen a mile away, the movie is actually very good and written incredibly well. The films writing, especially the Wesley Gibson narration, felt like something Chuck Palahniuk would put together. This is actually pretty surprising considering the writing team’s previous credits feature the likes of 2 Fast 2 Furious. Even more impressive is that the film is directed by a Timur Bekmambetov, a Russian director who prior to Wanted had not made a single American film. Somehow these rag-tag elements came together and manufactured a quality action flick that stands out from the typical summer-time popcorn movie. Needless to say I enjoyed it and recommend it to any interested.
Skydeck: My Social Network
March 31, 2008 | 0 Comments
Last week I managed to snag one of TechCrunch’s 500 Skydeck invites. Skydeck is a new web startup that says the “most important social network is the one in your phone.” Basically Skydeck connects to your cell phone provider’s website (you give it your account username and password) and, very much like Mint, downloads your call log. Once you upload the vCard from your Address Book, Skydeck connects the phone numbers with your call log and creates your network. All calls/text messages can be tagged, logged, etc which then let you search through them very easily. Want to see how much time you spend on the phone for work? Tag business calls. Want to see if any of you calls/messages incurred additional charges? Skydeck will show you that as well. In the Address Book each person is ranked based on call volume and information is displayed showing the date of the last call, if you make all the calls to that person or if they call you more, and any tags attached to that person.
The system is very simple, focusing on just the Call Log and the Address Book. Although it’s simple, it’s search and tag features are quite impressive and give a very good view of just what your phone habits are. It would be nice, as Skydeck moves through it’s beta stages, to include integration into other social sites, like Facebook. The only real gripe I have with Skydeck (and it’s not really their fault) is that the system has no means of updating mid-billing cycle. The problem is that my cell provider doesn’t update their system until the bill is printed. So, right now the most current data Skydeck provides is from March 13th. The crazy thing is that because my cell provider keeps copies of online bills just about forever, Skydeck’s data goes all the way back to June of 2006 (or over 7500 phone calls).
All in all it’s a pretty cool little startup doing one thing pretty well. It’ll be interesting to see what features are added throughout the beta before the system goes full tilt. If you want to get in and play with Skydeck, I have a few invites available so get in touch with me and I’ll pass one on.
Mint: Worry Free Money Management
February 13, 2008 | 1 Comment
You could say I’m slightly obsessed with my finances. Some of the habits I have developed are pretty good; I check my bank account at least once a day, which might sound a bit obsessive but it helped to spot fraudulent charges a few years back. However when it comes to balancing the checkbook, or even tracking where my money goes, I’m not really where I should be.
My poor money management isn’t exactly for lack of trying though. In high school, back in my Windows days, I ran Microsoft Money religiously. But then came college and multiple bank accounts and credit cards. It just became a bit too much work. When I started my Mac days I tried some of the third-party Mac apps designed to manage your money like iBank and most recently Cha-Ching.
Cha-Ching is a very simple program that did almost everything I could ask for in a money managment application: it simply and graphically showed where my money was going, tagged transactions so that I could easily find related expenses, and simply showed when spending in certain categories went over pre-set budgets. I enjoyed using the application but my love affair only lasted a few days. Cha-Ching was missing one thing: the ability to get new transaction information from my bank without me having to input it by hand. I’m lazy, what can I say.
A few days ago, while looking for a web app that shares the same name, I stumbled on Mint and found the solution to all my horrible money management woes. Mint is essentially a web-based version of Cha-Ching (though they of course are not related) but Mint connects to my bank’s web site nightly and downloads all of the new transactions, keeping everything up to date. Great right? It even goes a step further and automatically tags all the transactions based on Mint’s database. For example, whenever Mint sees Publix in one of my accounts it knows that that is a groceries purchase. Needless to say Mint had me sold in minutes.
Sold is just a word of course because Mint is a free service. I presume they get their funding from all the major banks and investment firms as Mint’s “advertisements” comes in the form of suggestions on how to save money. For example I could earn another $346 a year if I switch my savings account to E*TRADE which offers a better rate.
Bank of America has a similar concept to Mint in their Portfolio service which comes with Online Banking though the difference is that Mint is user-friendly and fun to use. For each transaction I make I can see how much I’ve spent at that place in the past, if that purchase has put me over budget for the month, and how much people spend (on average) at that place across the country. I presume that Mint’s users are more tech-savy then your typical American as the average monthly spending at iTunes, according to Mint, is around $25 a person. This, of course, made me feel pretty good considering I was below the national average despite a music-loving clicking-finger.
Another thing that Mint does is notify me should my accounts have suspicious activity on them. This, of course, is no big deal as all online banking services offer this, but Mint’s alerts can be sent via send text messages as well. Considering my phone is always with me, it’s good to know I’ll know immediately if something is awry.
I was concerned about security for about a half a second, after all I’m plugging my online banking usernames and passwords to a third party website to be stored in their database. Mint seems to elevate this fear by having just about every verification system on the internet covering them, including VeriSign, which is good enough for me. Bank of America also just added a new password requirement to make online transfers, so even if Mint’s database is compromised my accounts are still safe. Worry free money management, there is nothing better!
I think my poor money management days might be a thing of the past considering Mint is a fool proof way to see where my money is going. Now the only thing that could stop me from keeping tabs on my money is forgetting my Mint password… which is 14 characters long!
The Sopranos Series Finale
June 10, 2007 | 0 Comments
Earlier this evening The Sopranos took it’s final bow. In the weeks leading up to tonight’s final episode thing went from good to horrible very quickly for Tony and everyone surrounding him. He:
- killed his nephew, Christopher, after Chris caused a huge car accident after falling back into drugs.
- fell into a huge gambling debt.
- quit therapy because, after nearly seven years, Dr. Melfi (and the audience) finally realized Tony was playing her the whole time.
- had to pull his son, AJ, out of the pool after a botched attempt to kill himself.
But Tony’s biggest struggle arose out of the guy who runs the New York crew, Phil. Everything came to a head last week, when Phil ordered hits on Tony and his top guys. The week ended with Bobby, Tony’s brother-in-law, dead and Sil, his #2, on the edge of death in a hospital bed.Going into the final episode it was as if the series could end a few different ways:
- Tony gets killed
- Tony kills Phil and takes over New York
- Tony gets tired of it all and, to save his family, turns to the Feds
What happened? None of the above. After a secret meeting with Phil’s crew, Tony agreed that they all should back off, for the sake of everyone involved. Everything back to normal, Tony still had Phil killed for the sake of all the trouble he caused. The series actually ended with The Soprano family sitting at a table in a diner, Tony constantly looking over his shoulder, and Meadow entering to join them and “Don’t Stop Believing” playing in the background. Not exactly what was expected by any means.There was a ton of symbolism in the episode that I’m too tired to figure out (there was a cat that constantly starred at Chris’ picture; every episode this season, save last week, started with Tony waking up, etc) but ultimately this series was a show about Tony’s family — The Sopranos. All the mafia stuff was just what the father happened to do for a living. I’m sure it’ll be debated for weeks as to why the ending was brilliant or why it sucked, but I suppose it’s fitting that when it’s all said and done, the family is together and seemingly happy.
Buffett Does Tallahassee
February 12, 2007 | 1 Comment
On Saturday night Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band pulled into the Tallahassee Leon County Civic Center. Needless to say, I was there. It was the first time Buffett played Tallahassee since 2002, when I was a freshmen.
The show was great, of course, and even though I was behind the stage the view was great. It was a fun weekend 18 hours seeing old friends and enjoying some great music.
For those who care, you can find the set list here. It was cool seeing some old stuff including Pencil Thin Mustache, which I hadn’t seen in concert since 2003, as well as some others that I had never seen in concert like Bama Breeze, Changing Channels and the new rendition of Floridays. There were also a cool video called Here We Are (you can find it on iTunes) which shows Parrotheads through the years.
Anyway, it was a great show.