MorrisonFilm

Someone got a pasta maker for Christmas! (Me) (Taken with...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:23:23 -0500

Someone got a pasta maker for Christmas! (Me) (Taken with instagram)

Prometheus Trailer

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:19:51 -0500

God I hope this movie is great. Not just good. I want great. And I don’t think it’s asking too much. It can’t be overstated how Alien and Blade Runner are two of the best sci-fi movies of all time. No one has really ever come close.

Most exciting for me is that Scott’s two sci-fi movies were hard science fiction, not fluffy action sci-fi. No one makes hard sci-fi, not anymore. So if Prometheus is true to his previous genre efforts we’ll be very lucky.

The big question about Prometheus has been, how connected to the Alien universe will it be? And it seems that we’ve got an answer from the trailer: quite a lot. I see the “Pilot” and the U-shaped ship from Alien, which is a hell of a lot more than I expected to see in the trailer.

Also I really love how the letters of the title for “Prometheus” build on screen just like the title in Alien. Nice touch. Actually, the whole trailer is a callback to the the original Alien teaser trailer, including the music.

Have I mentioned how excited I am about this movie?

Panning for Gold

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:55:00 -0500

I got to thinking recently. Why pay $10 or whatever a month for Spotify or Rdio¹ when I’ve got 30GB of music on my hard drive that I never listen to? The problem is I open up iTunes, scan through the list of artists and think “I hate all this crap.” But here’s the trick: I don’t hate it all. I just forgot about all the good stuff.

So I started an insane project. I am rating every single song in my iTunes library. The short version of this story is that I’m having a blast and finding a ton of great music I had lost touch with.

There are a few things I’ve done to make this easier.

1) I made a smart playlist that singles out all the unrated music and excludes stuff I don’t care to rate like stand up comedy, movie scores and Christmas music.

2) I’m not rating songs based on good vs. bad, I’m rating them based on whether they belong in a radio-style playlist. In vs. out.

3) My cutoff for “In” is three stars. It’s too mentally challenging to rate every song on a scale of 1 to 5 so I’m really only rating songs “In” or “Out”. “In” songs are three stars and “Out” songs are 2 stars. Only if I have a particularly strong opinion do I bother with giving something 1, 4 or 5 stars.

4) I now have a playlist called “Shawn Radio” with all of my 3 stars and greater songs. It’s an easy go-to when I just want to listen to music but don’t want to decide on a particular album. I know everything in there is going to be pretty good.

Before I started I was curious what percentage of my library would be “Shawn Radio” worthy. So far I’ve rated 536 songs and it’s split almost exactly 50/50. I have 4,032 songs left to rate.

Once I’ve got them all rated I’ll have a good base with which to create other smart playlists. I can siphon off only the 90s alternative or only Hip Hop. Yes, it’s a lot of shit work but I think the payoff will be worth it. Plus, on the way there I get to rediscover a lot of great music.

¹ Obviously services like Rdio and Spotify provide value above and beyond what I can harvest from my existing iTunes library but the goal I’m trying to solve right now is finding good music to listen to casually.

No trombones

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:34:37 -0500

No trombones:

This is my favorite kind of rant. It’s something I’ve never thought about before but John’s totally right. The childhood band situation sucks. I would love to know how to play the piano right now. Instead there’s a rusty saxophone in my parents’ garage. We didn’t know better when I was a kid but hopefully I can change that for my kids.

Upgrade your low-bitrate music files using iTunes Match

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:47:25 -0500

Upgrade your low-bitrate music files using iTunes Match:

Works perfectly.

Trailer: Snow White and the Huntsman

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:20:16 -0500

Trailer: Snow White and the Huntsman:

Wow, this actually looks really good.

This morning

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:33:32 -0400

Sara: Oh no!!
Me: What?! What's wrong?
Sara: Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard are breaking up.
Me: ...
Sara: What? It's sad!

Steve Jobs

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:05:33 -0400

I felt silly sitting on my couch crying about a man I’ve never met. But he was a hero. And that’s what you do when heroes die. I’ve only been developing for iOS for two years but Steve Jobs has been an influence on me my entire life. Not just his products. His words always inspired me to want to do great things. He always reminded me the world was an amazing place.

I just keep thinking how sad it is that we’ll never again see him enter the stage at Moscone sipping a bottle of Smart Water saying “Good morning!” Then introduce something amazing that changes the world.

Thank you, Steve, for everything.

How to be a dick about the Red Sox collapse

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:26:56 -0400

If you’re a Yankees fan and feel the need to rub it in that the Sox engineered the worst collapse in baseball history (as if I were capable of feeling any worse about it) here are some pointers.

Don’t Straw Man Me

Yankees fans love to do this. LOVE. This is how it goes. They find some douche bag Sox sportswriter and quote him as if he speaks for Red Sox fans, then throw it in my face when he’s wrong.

Shaughnessy is the usual go-to guy for this because he writes such nonsense. I guess people who aren’t Sox fans don’t realize that he’s the biggest tool working in news today and yes I’ve heard of Fox news. Shaughnessy’s goal is to antagonize Sox fans. Whatever he writes is pretty much the opposite of what every Sox fan thinks and feels. Tony Massarotti is a close second, especially with this jackass article he wrote

The current one being thrown around is this NESN article from Jan 2, 2011. The first hint that something’s fishy is that this article was written by a TV station, but whatever. Also I’ve never heard of Eric Ortiz and the only reason we all now have is that he wrote a bullshit piece of link-bait.

The money quote from the article:

The 2011 Red Sox could accomplish a feat that has never been done. They could unseat the 1927 Yankees as the greatest major league team of all time.

Quoting this back to me now on September 30th doesn’t “get” me or “show me” anything. I didn’t write that shit. I never thought that shit. Had I read it at the time I’d have called it what it is, horse shit. Only someone desperate for click throughs would write that nonsense. And only an idiot would think showing me this article humiliates me in some way.

I suppose if your only goal is to make me angry it succeeds on some level but only because I get angry that I have to explain basic logical fallacies. You don’t think I could find some article from YES.com to throw in your face? I’m certain they must have produced a “Yankees Legend” piece on Joba Chamberlain back in 2007.

But I won’t. Because that shit’s too easy.

There’s a million legit things to throw in my face right now, but don’t straw man me.

Journal Entry

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:59:01 -0400

I’ve never written out my experiences from 9/11 so I thought I’d finally do that. I wasn’t in the towers or even downtown that day, so my story is not so crazy or anything. I don’t want to be dramatic about it, it was just my perspective on one day, but I felt like writing it out. My friends would probably find this the most interesting but here it is for everyone.

Anonymous Facebook Comment

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Wow, what a fucking useless thing to say. Do these vapid gems just pop into your brain all the time or is today a special day?

This is a comment I want to post to Facebook about once a day that I am instead posting on my blog because if I posted it to Facebook that would make me mean and I don’t consider myself a mean person. So here we are.

(sorry Krysten Ritter, some images are permanent)

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:43:50 -0400

(sorry Krysten Ritter, some images are permanent)

LA Light by Colin Rich via spiegelman

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:13:46 -0400

LA Light by Colin Rich

via spiegelman

Hot lineup (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:23:42 -0400

Hot lineup (Taken with instagram)

Griffith / Downtown (Taken with Instagram at Griffith Park)

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:14:34 -0400

Griffith / Downtown (Taken with Instagram at Griffith Park)

Transformers 3 uses footage from The Island. Micahel Bay is...

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 21:26:10 -0400

Transformers 3 uses footage from The Island.

Micahel Bay is certainly allowed to do so. It doesn’t make him suck any more than he already does. But you know your movies are recycled drivel when you can just swap shots from action sequences and no one can tell the difference.

(Well, no one except YouTube user cinefilojermain23).

(via Go Into The Story)

Final Cut Pro X

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:33:29 -0400

I’ve been following the insane Final Cut Pro X backlash since it’s release last week. I say insane only because I can’t recall a version of any software, let alone Final Cut Pro that was so controversial as to be late night joke worthy.

What I keep thinking about when I read scathing, panicked reviews is this: What post production house rushes to upgrade to the latest software the second it’s released? Maybe things have changed since I worked in post production (this is possible?) but when I was a full time editor the key to a good system was stability. You didn’t upgrade anything (the software, the hardware, the OS, anything) hastily. You waited. You read the reports. Only when you were between projects and the new versions had time to mature did you upgrade. I saw editors keep a system locked to versions of Final Cut or Pro Tools for months or years simply because it was stable. Editors are stubborn. Which is why I’m not surprised there’s negativity about Final Cut X. What surprises me is the lack of perspective. Editors are reacting as if they must upgrade today and will be fucked because of X’s limitations.

This is a classic Apple 1.0 release. They create the foundation for the future, often including radical new concepts, and then they wait and watch, and incrementally develop until they have a best in class product. This is exactly what Final Cut Pro did with version 1.0. Professionals laughed at it too.

I don’t see a single problem that Apple can’t remedy in terms of FCPX’s limitations for professionals. Everyone just needs to chill the fuck out and keep using FCP 7 until things settle. And last time I checked my FCP 7 install disks didn’t burst into flames the second X was released.

At first I wondered why they put ice cream on my waffle #butter...

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:43:35 -0400

At first I wondered why they put ice cream on my waffle #butter (Taken with Instagram at Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles)

Karbon West My (dear god I need a chair let’s hope...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:56:34 -0400

Karbon West

My (dear god I need a chair let’s hope it’s extremely) temporary home office.

ronbabcock: White people problems - when there’s a shortage of...

Wed, 25 May 2011 10:13:56 -0400

ronbabcock:

White people problems - when there’s a shortage of fun.

Having recently been to Catalina Island I can definitively confirm it is the capital of white people problems. What with the “casino” that has no gambling, the movie theater with one movie showing once a day, the “arcade” with no video games, the Cubs spring training facilities that have been unused for 80 years. Don’t even get me started on the Mexican place that requires they pick you up in a van because the road to it is littered with falling boulders.

So yes, get ready for a tropical island getaway only a privileged white person could find problems with. (That’s me!)