All I said was...: October 2007

Leopard and the Justice League and Star Trek...oh my...

It's been some time since anything of substance was really written. So let's strap in, turn on the 80's Internet radio station in iTunes and get busy, shall we?

First, it's been a busy few weeks at work, sorta. What with a new product launch and all. Everyone's getting up to speed and trying to get a handle on the ins and outs of the new product, and I'm no exception. Fall has also quite clearly arrived here in the desolate Pacific Northwest and instead of greeting the day with a groggy-ish smile as the sunlight creeps across my face in the early 'morn, I instead fight to reach a level of consciousness to let me stumble out of the house, make it to Symantec without wrecking and hope that sunrise comes soon.

Have I mentioned that I prefer the Spring and Summer? The only thing Fall has going for it is the end of Daylight Savings, and Winter has nothing that even remotely interests me.

So this weekend has been the weekend of Mac OS X, Leopard. It was pre-ordered, promptly arrived and was promptly installed on October 26th. It took a while for it to back up my data with Time Machine, but it's an overall snappy and responsive OS and has some neat features. So far it's 9 out of 10 for me with how I use it and need to use my system. Just a few things did not work for me after the update:

1) Inquisitor X - but an update was released this weekend. I haven't installed it just yet, but will get it installed as soon as I hear everything is OK. It's a neat plugin for Safari that will provide search results as you type in the Google field. But nothing I can't live without.

2) Unread Mail Menu - This is a Mail.app plugin that provides an icon in the menubar with the total number of unread messages in your mailboxes. Since the new version of Mail has an option to display all unread messages on the icon in the dock, not just unread messages in your main inbox, this is even less of an issue. Still, I'm used to looking up at the menubar for new messages.

3) Adobe Photoshop 7.0 - Ruh-roh, Shaggy! This is a more serious problem. Albeit one that doesn't really shock me all that much that it happened. I'm running an Intel-based Macintosh, Photoshop 7.0 was a PowerPC-based application written about 5 years and 3 versions ago, running via Rosetta and Adobe is famous for apparently not using Apple's provided developer tools to create their applications. Frankly, I'm amazed that it lasted as long as it did. So now it's time to try to scrape up enough money via eBay to get the CS3 upgrade.

The new 3D Dock is a bit of a change. Instead of a solid black triangle underneath each application to let you know it's running, there is a little white dot with a blue halo around it instead. Oh, and since it's in 3D and the icons are now offset to the "back" of the Dock to provide reflections, the icons are now smaller if you have several applications in your Dock, as I do, and I suspect I'm not alone in this type of arrangement.

Still, overall, pretty good, and it'll take a bit of getting used to in contrast to previous versions. Some stuff is moved around, but unlike Vista, it's not change for change's sake. It's more of a change that's a bit more logical in the approach. For example, the firewall has moved in System Preferences from Sharing to Security. Makes since, really. At least to me, and apparently to the Leopard dev team.

Next up - the Justice League. The LIVE ACTION JUSTICE LEAGUE MOVIE specifically. It seems that there is potential for a strike in the Writer's Guild of America and studios are trying to fast track many projects before the deadline. The Justice League is apparently one of them. It also seems at this stage that Brandon Routh, the current Superman, and Christian Bale, the current Batman will not be participating in this project.

That, frankly, is the least of the concerns with this endeavor.

The Justice League animated series on Cartoon Network was fantastic, an animated JLA movie would also be welcome in my home. Seeing a live action version of same fills me with dread. Especially with the circumstances in which it is being developed. A movie with the seven founding members of the Justice League would be a very expensive movie to make, even with modern CGI effects. The money needed for the cast alone would be astronomical, unless they cast unknowns. Especially if they did manage to sign Routh and Bale into the Superman and Batman roles.

That said, a World's Finest movie with Routh and Bale would be fantastic and I would totally go for that if they could pull it off. But it's the budget of course that could prove problematic with something like that as well. I'd much prefer they start with something like this and see how it goes over and then let's think about the rest of the Justice League and see what can be done about the budget.

Then we have our new crew of the Enterprise cast for the new Star Trek movie opening Christmas day, 2008. This is going to be an interesting experiment from Paramount - recasting the ENTIRE Classic Series crew to make a new movie. Right now I have the date penciled in on the calendar to go see opening day, but I'll wait for the buzz before I start making concrete plans. This could turn into wait a couple weeks, or wait for the cheap second run theater depending.

Nobody right now knows what part of the Classic Trek era this is going to take place in, but they have cast the original seven main members of the crew. This includes of course Dr. McCoy and Scotty. That means it is unlikely it is pre-the Original Series as far as the original pilot with Christopher Pike as the captain of the Enterprise that didn't have either Scotty or McCoy, or the second pilot with Kirk, who had Scotty, but no McCoy (it was Dr. Piper). So, it might take place right before the Original Series continuity, or possibly right after the end of season three. I'd hazard a guess that we won't see the first captain of the Enterprise, NCC-1701, Robert April at all.

However, if Chris Pike puts in an appearance, pre-The Menagerie, Ray Liotta is the only man for the job. They've already messed up with not getting Gary Sinise as McCoy. That would have been a slam-dunk, and let's not forget that McCoy was always supposed to be older than the rest of the crew.

I am tentatively excited. Tentatively.

Labels: Justice League, Leopard, Macintosh, Star Trek

New York Pictures

The New York City pictures are now available for your perusal. Again, this is an edited subset to avoid boredom, but you should get the flavor for it I guess. I did include this little gem, which is a long standing, yet blurry due to the rush I was in to take the picture. In the preceding picture in the sequence, you see the Ed Sullivan Theater, which is the home of The Late Show with David Letterman. Across the street is the home of DC Comics. Naturally, if I'm going to be lucky enough to be in New York, I'd want to visit DC Comics.

Well, long story short, that wasn't going to happen. But the very helpful security guard on the first floor suggested that instead I take the elevator to each floor that DC was on and I could at least get a glimpse of the offices. Doing this I saw what I took the picture of when the door opened on their final floor. I had to have that shot, and so I took it, even as we held the doors open and I fumbled with the camera and the door alarm started to go off and heard someone approaching. Worth almost getting caught... I'm such a fanboy...

Labels: DC Comics, New York City