November 2011
62 posts
Jonesy Goes to the Movies: The Muppets
Everyone’s favorite felted creatures are back and it’s about time. This movie was great. It brought back all your old favorites with a few new ones and put them into an adventure worthy of the Muppet name. The movie is kid-friendly without boring the adults in the crowd. I wouldn’t mind seeing Jason Segel and company team up for another feature. It was truly a joy watching this.
Play
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No More Rack →
nomorerack.com
Sounds like they have some great flash deals. Just missed a really cheap PS3. I’ll definitely be checking this more often now. Come on cheap iPad!
NBC orders 'Munsters' pilot from Bryan Fuller | Variety →
variety.com
Please don’t suck. I’ve got a special love for the Munsters and would love to see them on TV again, but only if they don’t ruin it.
Wait Wait ...Don't Tell Me gets its own TV show! →
nytimes.com
I maybe find this entirely too exciting.
“Wait Wait” creator Doug Berman says it would be a typical show, “except NPR has to add a budget line for pants.”
very awesome! [pics from Wait Wait in LA back in 2008]
Awesome. Just tell me when and where.
UI Idea
It’d be cool if when you pull down the date menu in OS X it displayed a list of todays events from your iCal. I don’t think it’d be that hard to implement (at least for Apple) and it’d be really handy to get a glimpse of your upcoming events without having to open iCal or pull out your phone for a list.
I am watching Teen Wolf
After careful debate, Abby decided she wanted to watch a movie with a great montage. Accor…
I was told today that I’m a maven of technology/internet. I’ll admit I had to double check the meaning but upon doing so, it seems to check out. I am indeed a bit of “a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.” Thanks for pointing that out, Rachel.
Dear Apple,
Sometimes I wish if you were on your iPhone’s home screen and turned your phone to landscape, you’d get a “cover flow” view of your apps. It would also be awesome if there was some sort of list view that could be sorted (name, date added, recently used, etc.). Sometimes I just can’t find which home screen has my desired app.
Sincerely,
Christopher Jones, a designer you clearly need to hire.
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design →
worrydream.com
Great rant. I mean truly great, go read it!
Disappearing Car Doors: A Revolutionary Concept in Car Technology & Design →
disappearing-car-door.com
Not completely sure if this is real (leaning towards no?)… but it’s damn cool either way.
I am listening to Childish Gambino
NPR has the full album streaming. It’s not bad, very smooth flow.
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Rocky, Paper, Scissors, Shot (Almost)
I finally got around to shooting Rocky, Paper, Scissors yesterday. It’s a short film I had written with some friends a few years ago and for one reason or another (mostly the film festival it was intended for failed to happen) it never was made. Well yesterday it actually got filmed, in HD no less. The whole thing went fairly smoothly and I think we got a lot of great shots. The weather was spectacular (very out of character for a MI November) and we were able to get almost every scene we needed done. The entire day was going great… that is until our last scene.
The last scene was set in a parking garage at night. We opted for one on campus, as most of our movie took place around there anyway and many of our extras lived on campus. We got everyone gathered there about 8 PM. As people were arriving a few of us were there and took note of a car with two guys drive in, slowly go by us and then proceed to back into a spot in the corner of the garage. We jokingly made some comment amongst ourselves about them being drug dealers and went on with our set up for filming. As we continued our movie-making the car drove around us (we were pretty much dead center of the garage) checking us out. At one point a second car came up, and then quickly left upon seeing all of us. It became clear our joke of an impending drug deal was probably not so much a joke at all. After circling us, the guys returned to their corner spot, back in and shut the car off again, but never left the car. That is, they didn’t leave the car until a little bit later and approached one of my friends.
At the time I was thoroughly enthralled in filming so all I caught was one of the car guys saying “how long do you guys think you’re going to be” and one of my friends replying with “15–20 minutes, but definitely not longer.” I just continued on with this feeling the situation was nothing to be worried about and thinking I was damn close to finishing this movie so I fully planned to. Everyone else seemed very scared and anxious to finish and leave ASAP. What I didn’t know, because I was on the opposite side of our crowd and therefore further away from where this went down, was that the car guy initially walked towards one of our group members, hands in pocket, and said something like, “I’d like to speak to you in private for a moment.” My friend replied with something like “I’m good here” and after another very similar exchange the question of time remaining occurred. I’m leaving out the part where this guy did appear to be “hardcore” and his hands in the pockets, and his tone did give an impression of gun possession. Luckily, he found our time estimate to be acceptable enough to return to his car and not shoot us. We managed to finish up our movie-making in a short amount of time and then all of us sped out of that garage rather quickly.
At the time I still was unconvinced of any real threat because I hadn’t witnessed the whole exchange, but upon meeting up with the group afterwards it became clear we were actually in a pretty dangerous situation and probably were actually interrupting a scheduled drug deal. So that’s the story of how my little movie almost got my friends and I shot… My only regret is not having the whole thing filmed, what a great short that could have been ;-) Also, keep an eye out for Rocky, Paper, Scissors which is set for an early December release.
