Designed by Apple

Sorry, last Wall-E related blog, I swear! I just couldn't resist since someone posted that Eve looks a lot like Apple's Automator icon. What do you guys think?

Wall-E Impressions

I took Ari to see Wall-E Friday night. Pixar scores again! So far it's turning out to be one of the best reviewed films of the year. It's also Pixar's best looking movie to date. What impressed me more than the visuals was the robot voices, created by Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt. The soundtrack is definitely something worth showing off on your surround sound system when the DVD/Blu-Ray disc comes out.

No spoilers in this review but after you watch the movie, read this article and see if you caught any of the Easter eggs. I missed a few but did note the Apple related references, although I didn't know that Eve was partially designed by none other than Jonathan Ive until after the movie. I should have known considering she has shiny iPod white skin.

Memory Madness

Although it's been well known that the price of computer memory continues to dip, historically the PC3200 DDR DIMM's my PowerMac G5 uses have remained stubbornly high. For some unknown reason it finally dropped to more affordable levels, so I bought two Crucial 1GB sticks for $83.

After installing them I now have a total of 3GB and my Mac couldn't be happier. OS X boots faster and memory hungry applications like Photoshop and Word load much quicker. The best part is I no longer hear my hard drive grind as it no longer pages memory to/from the disk.

I compared the various memory statistics Activity Monitor provides and can see proof that the benefits aren't imaginary. After a few hours testing my page outs is still zero while before it was half of my page ins. Free memory went from 12.75MB to a whopping 2.01GB.

So what's the moral of this story? OS X loves memory. Feed it as much as you can and it will reward you with awesome performance. I figure at least 2GB is where you should start and add more depending on your applications and workflow.

Giant Robot on iTunes!

I couldn't believe it, but when I saw that Johnny Sakko and his Giant Robot was on iTunes, I had to download the first episode! I remember growing up always wanting one of my own, or at least a toy of him, but never actually finding one for sale.

Well, after all this time, I actually do know where to go find one, though it may not always be on sale every time I go to this "store." I've seen it on sale from time to time at a place in the City of Industry, at a place called Frank & Son Collectibles. It's where I also got a copy, closer to bootleg quality, of the "movie" for David a couple of years back.

The series was only about 26 episodes in Japan, and the movie version was an American splice job of the series. That didn't matter, I liked the splice job. But now that there is access to the series on iTunes, I probably will download it for my iPhone!

WALL-E and Friends

Like most animation fans, I'm looking forward to watching WALL-E (apparently not spelled with a *) next weekend. Each trailer I watch looks better than the last.

I couldn't help noticing all the blog chatter about how Pixar's latest robot looks a lot like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. Even the movie posters look a bit similar. What do you guys think?

The Ray Dream Experiment

The other day Rob gave me back a very old book I bought called The Ray Dream Handbook. It brought back some good memories of me trying out my first 3D model, using the castle tutorial.

I wanted to revisit it again using my more modern computers but I couldn't find the original Ray Dream Designer 4 installation CD so I ended up buying it on eBay for 99 cents. It was a Mac version but I figured I could run it on my G5 using Classic or at the very least on my iMac G3 when booting natively to OS 9.2.2.

Turns out I was wrong. It installed with no issue but would lock up when trying to load. It would freeze so bad I had to restart my iMac in order to recover. The same thing would happen in Classic mode on the PowerMac as well. I tried to find some update online but came up empty. I figure the software is so old it would only work on a very old System version (version 5 required System 7.0 or later).

I haven't given up on my 3D quest, I'm downloading the successor to Ray Dream, called Carrara. The latest version should work great with my native OS X Tiger operating system.

Not Very Happening

I saw The Happening today. Just like what my previous post predicted, the trailer was better than the actual movie. Much better. I won't spoil any of it in case you want to see it but don't say I didn't warn you. This blog pretty sums up my feelings about M. Night. Come back!

The one positive I can give it is that it features the creepiest doll I've ever seen in a movie, unfortunately it's only shown on camera for just a few seconds. First Disney, then Warner, now it's a matter of time before Fox drops the director. I guess there's always Sony...

Duke Nukem Forever Video

I figured Rob needs his annual DNF fix. You have to suffer through some lame interviews before you get to it but here's an article with a link containing a short video clip of Duke Nukem Forever being played.

BestBuy Gift Card

I forgot to mention that I recently took advantage of the BestBuy HD DVD gift card program. They are giving out $50 for anybody that bought a HD DVD player from them before February 23rd, 2008 ,which of course included me when I bought the Xbox HD DVD add on back in October. I had to call the 1-888-BEST-BUY number to get it since they didn't have my address on file but they were able to look up my purchase since I kept my receipt. I'll let you when I actually get the gift card as she said it may take up to 8 weeks to receive it.

CryEngine 2

Wow! I either need to get a new powerful desktop Mac or build a powerhouse pc! I'd rather have the Mac, but building a suitable pc might be a bit more economical. Sad day.

The CryEngine 2 is simply amazing! But who can run it with the highest settings?! Sheesh! I ended up buying Crysis, but even on my shiny iMac, I can barely run it on medium settings. I was hoping I had enough horsepower to see it run smoothly, but it's just too much for my lil iMac. :-/

As it is, I've been trying to get a ticket to Philly, and with gas prices the way they are... traveling is getting much harder now. Must... buy.... Mac Pro.... tix to Philly... Mac Pro... Philly...!