May 31st, 2009 by Max
My favorite bird is the Osprey. I think they’re both magnificent and elegant. And I’m a little bit proud of these images … make sure you click through and look at the images in their larger versions. They’re relatively unique!
It bugs me a little that the most elegant flier of the Raptors was used for the name of the most awkward of all the military aircraft. The military version should have been called a hummingbird!
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May 30th, 2009 by Max
Yes. The bird that Ben Franklin, my hero, wanted to be the national symbol. I’m glad Ben got outvoted on this one.
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May 29th, 2009 by Max
Ok, this may be the best picture of this group.
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May 28th, 2009 by Max
At least I think its a greater one. Could be a lesser. They’re really pretty good yellowlegs whatever they are.
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May 27th, 2009 by Max
Great Blue Heron up close
I’ve taken a lot of pictures of Great Blue Herons. They’re fairly photogenic.
Posted in Arts, My New York, Photos | 1 Comment »
May 26th, 2009 by Max
There’s a classic tale about a young boy who doesn’t know that he is born to greatness, who lives his life in relative obscurity until his destiny finds him and he becomes a great leader.
Star Trek, is not that movie. From the begining “Star Trek” promises what we already knew would happen. Captain James Tiberious Kirk would become a legend in this world created by Gene Rodenberry so many years ago.
Still we are there at the birth of the boy hero, and we learn of how Kirk, Spock and McCoy meet and are destined to be the now classic characters that they became in the television show from a thousand years ago.
“This is not your father’s “Star Trek” the adds say. They’re right. [Spoiler] They’ve changed the timeline, now we have the same characters, with license to make a whole new history! [end spoiler]
The others are there. The Millionaire, and his wife. The movie star and … No, wait. Different show. This one has Uhura and Chekov and Sulu and Scotty and enough Romulans to make you nervous. In all, a good mix.
First. The best fun of the movie is seeing the characters recreated. Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban are near perfect as Spock and McCoy. Particularly Urban who has the vocal meter and inflection of “Bones” down perfectly. Quinto as Spock looks and holds his body and moves just as Nimoy does (yes, Nimoy is in this one too!) though his voice lacks a bit of the resonance of Nimoy.
Now for the good news. Chris Pine really doesn’t remind you of Shatner at all, though he clearly IS Captain Kirk. In fact they sell it just a bit too much. But at least he doesn’t Shatnerize.
Urhura is luscious. Chekov is fun as is Sulu, but if you’ve seen Harold and Kumar I dare you to not think of John Cho as Harold and not as Sulu. Scotty didn’t exactly sell me as James Doohan, but he was a fun character.
The plot was a little busy. We have a time travel movie here, but with all the action and all the characterizations, I found it just a tad too much to hang on to, though I will be seeing this one again.
A little too much to do here. Too much plot, too much action, too many cuts and too much camera movement – in other words just a bit too much J.J. Abrams (and I like Abrams) keeps this from being a 5, but its just too much fun to give it less than a 4.
We’ll all be seeing these guys again! And the next time – there’ll be Klingons!
“Star Trek” 4 of 5 Smiling Maxes!
Director:
J.J. Abrams
Writers (WGA):
Roberto Orci (written by) &
Alex Kurtzman (written by) …
Release Date:
8 May 2009 (USA) more
Genre:
Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi more
Tagline:
The future begins.
Plot:
A chronicle of the early days of James T. Kirk and his fellow USS Enterprise crew members.
Cast
Chris Pine … James T. Kirk
Zachary Quinto … Spock
Leonard Nimoy … Spock Prime
Eric Bana … Nero
Bruce Greenwood … Pike
Karl Urban … Bones
Zoe Saldana … Uhura (as Zoë Saldana)
Simon Pegg … Montgomery Scott
John Cho … Sulu
Anton Yelchin … Chekov
Ben Cross … Sarek
Winona Ryder … Amanda Grayson
Chris Hemsworth … George Kirk
Jennifer Morrison … Winona Kirk
Rachel Nichols … Gaila
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May 26th, 2009 by Max
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May 25th, 2009 by Max
Predisposed as I am, to liking Will Smith movies, I have a couple of problems with “Seven Pounds” that make it a movie I cannot recommend.
Ok. It has Will Smith as I said. And he’s charming. But the story is a downer, and I’m just a little bit tired of the literary device of showing you the beginning of Act III right at the start of the movie. It creates suspense. You think “Does this hold up? Will this really happen?” But the reason you don’t trust it is you’ve seen too many of these movies.
The suspense is all about what they’ve taken away. You hang on trying to figure out where you are in the timeline that will take you up to Act III Scene I and they keep showing you crumbs. This could be a compelling story, though I think it really isn’t, but the director doesn’t believe in the story enough to show you. He just plays out bits and pieces small enough to keep you guessing.
And I think Gabriele Muccino does that because this is not a story you’d like to hear.
Rosario Dawson joins Smith in trying desperately to save “Seven Pounds” and for a while she holds the film, but eventually its too convoluted and just plain sad to save. Barry Pepper who was perfect in “61*” has no hope of making you believe his part of the story, [Big SPOILER] as the best friend who conspires with his childhood best friend to aid his healthy suicide. Its the script, not the actor. Even Woody Harrelson as a blind pianist – no, wait … Woody Harrelson as a blind pianist? Can’t do anything to help. In fact, he makes it worse.
Two smiling Maxes – out of five. Can’t recommend “Seven Pounds” And that’s a surprise given the cast. But surprises are the problem and the cast is the only thing that keep this movie from being awful.
Director:
Gabriele Muccino
Writer (WGA):
Grant Nieporte (written by)
Release Date:
19 December 2008 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama more
Cast
Will Smith … Ben Thomas
Rosario Dawson … Emily Posa
Woody Harrelson … Ezra Turner
Michael Ealy … Ben’s Brother
Barry Pepper … Dan
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May 25th, 2009 by Max
Today’s bird is unknown to me. Can someone tell me what species this bird belongs to?
Posted in Arts, My New York, Photos, Science | 2 Comments »
May 24th, 2009 by Max
This sequence will have some of the better pictures of birds that I’ve taken in my travels.
Every set of bird pictures needs a RWBB
Posted in Arts, My New York, Photos | 1 Comment »
May 22nd, 2009 by Max
D2C move happend [with issues but its under control]. Small parcel desk move happened [also with issues]. It was a tough week but computer repair happened.
The sad thing is computer repair is probably a doomed profession!
Whatever happened to my 386 with the 10 gb hard drive with jumpers and DOS 6.22?
Posted in Changes in the World In My Lifetime | 3 Comments »
May 22nd, 2009 by Max
Nobody talking politics anymore. Except Dick Cheney. It just dawned on me this week that “enhanced interrogation tactics” was another marketing phrase.
The man should have been impeached for usurpation of power, and for what he did with that power, which is cause people to be tortured.
Yes, there are bad people out there. We probably captured some of them.
We should be, we want the United States to stand for something, better than people who torture other people.
You’ve heard the references. The US tried Japanese for using these tactics. Other references. Other bad people who used waterboarding to torture people.
Dick Cheney uses so many straw men to defend himself – that useful information was gained. Maybe. We also got useless information. How do we know which is which. That its not toture – well that’s not a straw man, that’s a lie. That America would be safer. We certainly have more enemies now. And that if America were under nuclear attack we must be able to torture people. We’re not under nuclear attack. We never were under nuclear attack. And if we were there is no evidence that waterboarding provides swift accurate answers. If so why did they do that one guy 186 times over a month long period. Its a canard as Keith Olberman would say.
Its a lie.
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May 21st, 2009 by Max
Cool car. – Kid in the drive through window at Wendys.
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May 21st, 2009 by Max
Rachel listened to the Dick’s speech, and listened to Obama’s.
She had trouble with Obama’s and made an excellent point.
Obama is talking about creating a policy, which may (and I hope not) create a legal framework for holding people indefinitely (and she said without being tried).
I didn’t hear the speech. But in it Rachel said that Obama said that the W cobbled (my word) a fake set of rules for holding people illegally.
She said Obama sounds like that’s what he wants to do.
The W damaged my constitution immeasurably, I would oppose Obama if he did the same thing!
Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »
May 21st, 2009 by Max
Strange tough week for computers. But the Dell is back. For now. It was expensive in that I had to buy another external drive – my first terabyte drive – and I had to by software to save the data – which will have to be run again, and last night I had to buy another wireless NIC, because the old one simply refused to see any wireless networks. It installed – and then just scanned the channels over and over again.
But the new one seems to work great so we’ll see.
The Mac arrived at my house today. Back from its third trip to the repair shop, but I was not at my house today. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll get together.
Two small projects that were big deals for me at work today. Both “clusters” both my fault. Dave saves the day.
Tough week for computers.
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May 18th, 2009 by Max
There’s probably an empty box on my porch right now, for the Mac to go out in, when I get home.
I didn’t get all of my pictures back on the Dell. The Dell will not see the network card I just installed, which was working intermittently. So I’m going to wipe it and start over – yes, just the hard drive. I’ll disconnect the two external drives so that nothing unfortunate will get reformatted this time.
Then I’ll build the Dell back. Unformat one external onto the other again [Afer I burn what I have saved to a million CD's] and then see if I can get EVERYthing back.
Meanwhile, the PC repair guy is without a working computer…
Unless you count this one.
At work!
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May 13th, 2009 by Max
I thought that the village justice hit me a little hard with the fines yesterday. I was told by a friend at work, who is himself a village justice, that it would be at least a $200 fine for Facilitating Aggravated Unlicensed Operation. When I heard $500 it knocked the wind out of me. I was just starting to get my finances in order and would not have to pay the $250 oil bill for the two upcoming months!
So today I called the court clerk to ask if it had been the correct fine.
She told me that she had just mailed a letter stating that they had, and the fine was $250 less. Still a lot of money for innocently trundling down the road – but it helps! And she added that I didn’t have to pay it as fast as I said I could last night. $100 a month would be fine (no pun intended).
I guess they felt bad for me when I told them I had just paid off my heating oil bill, so I would have that $250.
I still owe a bunch and I’ll have more to say about how I think this plays into politics – but for now – it just feels better to pay $100/month.
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May 12th, 2009 by Max
Three people in my immediate department, including the guy who sits behind me in the cubicle, were let go. All of them have helped me out at one time or another and as in the last two or three layoffs they are people I really enjoyed seeing just around the halls.
So many people I really like have been dismissed already. They may not be people that you hang out with on the weekends, but they are people that you were glad you met in the hallway. Its sad. Most, have really good attitudes and many are going back to school.
Then I went to traffic court. New York State now charges a mandatory $85 surcharge for each ticket. I got each citation reduced – and still left with $740 in fines. That’s too much money for missing a 30mph sign on State Route 206 going downhill from a 55mph zone, and a bit of absentmindedness.
So … not such a good day. But I guess, better for me than my friends!
Posted in Politics, Social Commentaries | No Comments »
May 10th, 2009 by Max
… and the Mac is dying. I think I can resurrect them both … but stay tuned.
Posted in Blogroll | 5 Comments »
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