Lost Returns

First three minutes and I already had an OMG moment! There is a car chase and we find out Hurley is the one in the car and when he is caught he says he's "one of the Oceanic Six" which I assume means only six of the people on the island are rescued. We know three of them now: Jack, Kate, and now Hurley! I would even say I know who "the six" through clues and assumptions and ideas I have. I believe the fourth person would be Locke because in the last episode of Season 3 Lost during the flash forward Jack went to a funeral which no one else seem to go to. It's arguable that Locke had the best connection to Jack (aside from Boone who is dead now). And I don't think anyone else cared much for Locke but I believe deep down Jack may have a soft spot for him (for reasons I'll explain later). The other two people to fill out "the six" would be Claire and her baby because Desmund had a vision that when Charlie flipped the switch he saw Claire and the baby, Aaron, getting on a helicopter and leaving the island. So the people who make it off the island who Hurley referred to as "the Oceanic Six", I think, is Jack, Kate, Locke, Hurley, Claire and Aaron. I think I'll elaborate more on my VideoBlog this Sunday about my thoughts on "the Oceanic Six"

24 minutes (yeah, I counted) in and future Hurley is met by a Oceanic representative and he asks "are they still alive?" And I believe that means that their are people still alive on the island even though six of them were able to leave. How do I think this way? Let's go back to the oh so important last episode of Season 3 with that final scene with Jack and Kate. What was it that Jack kept screaming? "We made a mistake! We have to go back Kate! We have to go back!" Back to what! Knowing Jack and how he wanted to fix EVERYTHING would most definitely go back to an island of people I'm sure he believes he has failed for whatever reason. But the great question. Why was it that only six people got off the island and what happen to the rest?

I had another OMG moment 45 minutes in when Jack pulled the trigger on Locke but the gun wasn't loaded! Wow! If there is one thing we know about Jack it's that he's true to his word. He said the next time he'd see Locke he would kill him and he most definitely had the chance then. On top of that he was going to shoot Locke in the middle of what he was saying! Wow!

Last five minutes future Hurley and Jack meet and we discover that the "Oceanic Six" were set to say nothing about "what really happen on the island." But what is it!? For some reason I think they made some sort of deal with these people who got on the island. This "other group" that even the others fear. In any case, this was a fantastic episode! 10 Stars!

Next episode should be a great one. So many questions. Whole new season!

Oh and I've done some more rotoscoping today:

Oh and I finished typing up the script to my up-and-coming Lupe Fiasco music video.

Peace.

More Rotoscoping and Nap!

I had no finals today but I have a big one tomorrow so I did a little more rotoscoping and took a nap as I listened to MuggleCast.

Since I don't buy the Harry Potter DVDs (for my own reasons which I do not feel like giving an explanation to right now) I had no idea there was a sneak peak to "Half Blood Prince" on the "Order of the Phoenix" DVD. When I found out today I went to YouTube and look who's about to kiss! Harry and Ginny (see below)! This is going to be so great! Haha! They are exactly the same height even though Harry is supposed to me much taller than Ginny.

Screenshot of Draco " Petrificus Totalusing" Harry on the Hogwarts Express. I just read this bit the other day. By the way, I'm reading "Half Blood Prince" right now.

New Quidditch Uniforms. It's supposed to be much more hardcore.

Death Eater Attack Targers Muggles! Harry Potter The Chosen One!

Peace.

Rotoscoping Whoopi vs. SilentBat II & NeoOffice

It takes a long time to rotoscope stinkin' lightsabers. From 2PM-6PM I've been doing 10 seconds. 10 SECONDS of my lightsaber in the final duel:

Gotta love After Effects though, eh? So I'm going to estimate that I'll be done with the final duel early to mid-March.

ATTENTION ALL MAC-USERS!

If you own a Mac and do not have the means to afford Microsoft Office then a fantastic alternative is NeoOffice! In fact, I would say go with NeoOffice instead of Word. It's really great. The first amazing thing about it is that it's completely and entirely free (but there is a suggested $5 donation which should be paid to these incredible people). Second, it can save out as a Word document so you can start a document on NeoOffice on your Mac and take the file to another Mac with Word on it or a PC! Third, you can export directly to a PDF! Amazing! Not even word can export directly to a PDF file! Five, you can make presentation on it like on Powerpoint or Keynote. Six, it's free free free! FREE! FREE!

Peace.

Finals Week

Not looking forward at all to tomorrow. But after tomorrow it will be a breeze!

My Movie Star Friend!

I finally found "The Shield" episode called "Haunts" which had a short scene with one of my old good friends named Brittany McCulty (IMDb her or click her name). Look at the little TV star! (images below)

It's funny cause she's really nice and she had to say "shit" in the episode. I believe the exact line was. "He used to give us sandwiches and shit."

Oh and here is so Mac vs. PC stuff


Just try and tell me Mac doesn't own PC. Just try it. I dare you.

A free word processor that is just like word! OMG! 

I've been messing around with it and it's really great. The only problem with it I would think is that you can't save a NeoOffice document and put it on another person's computer to print it out because not many people would use it but it's great to use as a free word processor. It has everything word does. Good stuff. Good stuff.

For all you ladies and some of you guys!

Peace.

The Force Unleased

Magic the Gathering the Election '08

Magic the Gathering Club was today.

Other than that nothing much happen. The rain stopped even though I was geared out for it. We didn't have to do our mile run in P.E. and probably won't do our final run test of the semester tomorrow. 

I just took this test to see which candidate I would match up best with statistically (see below).

It said I matched up best with Edwards and the funny thing is right when I was watching something television I was like "I like the things Edwards says ... I think my vote may go to him." And then FOX was like go to our site and take our test. And lo and behold there is Edwards! At first I was between Clinton and Obama but then they had that scuffle during the North Carolina debate and I really disliked that Clinton's Campaign was starting to attacked Obama personally but what was also shocking is that Obama came down to her level and started talking about her personal pass. 

Last year I had American History (AP) and most of the elections were really scandalous and cruel and most candidates were clamoring against their opponents rather than discussing the issues of the country and how they can improve on them. After Obama and Clinton had their childish scuffle Edwards stepped up and told the South Carolinas that bickering would not give them better health care (he referred the "bickering" toward Clinton and Obama).

Today while I was watching Edwards in the news he made another valid and strong point (that I'd always wondered about before). He mentioned that candidates (like Clinton and Obama) come to certain states like Iowa or New Hampshire solely for their campaign and for their support but not really to speak to them about the issues but to speak to them about giving the candidates votes and then they leave. My Economics teacher told me Clinton and Obama spent millions of their campaign dollars for commercials and ads in Iowa and New Hampshire and I was thinking, "Wow, a lot of that money could be going to those healthcare plans you two keep promising you can pay for!"

I don't know. But if I had to vote today I would be going for Edwards.

Now we all know it's really between three people (really two) for the presidency. Whoever wins the democratic party will more than likely be the next president and I know A LOT of my friends are going to be old enough to vote and/or have registered for California's primary and are wondering who to chose. Well here's a nice place to go:

Barrack Obama

John Edwards

Hillary Clinton

Peace.

The Moment of Truth

The show was meh. It has a few bugs to work out. Didn't engage me too much. 

I was doing the opening titles for Whoopi vs. SilentBat II today. Fun. Did some motion tracking with this shot. Pretty cool.

Peace.

R.I.P. Heath Ledger

Wow ... so young. So much talent. Gone. Can't believe it.

The Dark Knight will be out. He just finished filming he scenes as "The Joker" but whatever "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" was will probably not see the light of day with his face as whatever he was going to play.

"NEW YORK (AFP) — Australian-born actor Heath Ledger, 28, the co-star of the Oscar-winning movie "Brokeback Mountain," was found dead in a New York residence on Tuesday, police said.

"Heath Ledger was found dead at 3:26 pm this afternoon," a police spokesperson said, saying he was found in an apartment in the posh district of Soho. "We don't know the cause of the death.""

(Read More)

(Much better and detailed article here)

Sounds like the cause of death was overdose on sleeping pills (unintentionally) which lead to his cardiac arrest (heart attack). Darn ... Hope it wasn't suicide. I really liked him (as an actor). That's a lot of talent wasted there. I really thought his career was about to sky rocket with "Dark Knight".



On a lighter note ...

By the way. Fantastic film. Anyone who doesn't see that is blind to a great piece of work.

Peace.

Update on the New Star Wars Series

[Let's hope they stay true to these dates]

The next few years should be great for Star Wars on TV. The CGI Animated Series and the Live-Action Series should have some great content with it. I walked across this article this morning on IGN.com that all Star Wars fans should check out. Here is an excerpt:

"January 18, 2008 - It has recently been revealed by producer Rick McCallum that Boba Fett will be an important character in the upcoming live-action Star Wars series. This is the first specific fact we know about the show, beyond George Lucas and McCallum saying it takes place during the 20 year span between Revenge of the Sith and the original Star Wars (AKA: A New Hope). In his recent interview, McCallum said "The series will be about brand new characters, a group of people we haven't seen yet, except Boba Fett.""

[Read More here and find out IGN's top 10 characters that should be in the series]

So today I did a lot of last minute rotoscoping for "The Massacre" scene in Whoopi vs. SilentBat and some compositing for it as well. One of the visual effects I did was cutting the top of someone's head off which lead to this conversation:

So if you all watched my blog yesterday you'd know that the new Quicktime screwed around with my After Effects and its ability to export out. So today I decided to find the older version of Quicktime with the help of Whoopi. Below is the Quicktime 7.4 demon!

 

I installed this program called "Pacifist" and it gave me the ability to replace the newer Quicktime with the older one. If I tried to do it without "Pacifist" my Mac would not allow me the install Quicktime 7.3 because "a newer version" was already on my computer.

All was well in the end.

And I exported "The Masscre"! Tomorrow Whoopi will give me some scenes and on Wednesday I'll give him this.

I also did some effects with some "possession" eyes. (Also for Whoopi vs. SilentBat II)

It's gettin' there but it's not there yet.

I think this is obviously fan-made but it's still cool.

Peace.

VideoBlog #31

I spoke too soon about my After Effects:

Happy birthday Lillian!

Resume Draft for Apple

TOO LATE TO HELP ME NOW! I'VE APPLIED! Let's cross our fingers and hope!

Attention After Effects Users!

Apparently there is a problem with AE's rendering with the new QuickTime update. I think it only effects those with CS3, as that's where all the complaints are coming from. I have version 6.5 and it works nicely still! :)



http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1345330&tstart=0

More editing!

Peace.

CAD Animated Season 2

The first season was cool until the mid episodes ... this looks meh. They aren't there yet. Gettin' there but not there. I'm definitely not paying to watch these again. I'll wait until someone posts it on YouTube.

I also did some editing.


Peace.

Apple Heaven Starts Today

So MacWorld opened today and it had some big announcements today like ...

Movie Rentals on iTunes
MacBook Air (it's thin enough to go in a yellow envelop thingy!)
Capsule
Etc.

Go to Apple.com. NOW!



Peace.

El Concierto De Lupe Fiasco

Pictures are very lacking from this experience. Therefore ... lots of text! Woot! Reading is fun!

So it started with my mom picking me up from my house and right when I got into her car I put in "The Cool" and we played that all the way to Kiyah's house to Downtown Disney's House of Blues.

The line to get in was long. Inside was standing only.


The wristband (see below) signified that I was under 21. But that wasn't the worst part. What really sucked is that we couldn't bring cameras inside! And on top of that. If we didn't have the means of putting our cameras back in our cars we had to pay 3 dollars for THEM to hold it. Lame! Lame I say!

So once we gave them our cameras we walked into the House of Blues and it was packed. Plus, it was standing only. We headed downstairs to find a cool place to stand but we were blocked by a lot of really tall people. But it was chill because for the first house they had this band called Optimus up there that was meh. When they left we squeezed our way forward (hmmm ... I should say Kiyah squeezed our way forward) and we waiting for Lupe to come out. At first, he poked his arm our of the curtain and then fifteen minutes later he open the curtains a little bit just enough for people to the left to see him. The spotlight guys were having a little fun too. They would turn the spotlights on and off as if they were about to start the show.

Finally, after 30 minutes after Optimus was up, the curtains pulled away and Lupe, with his back turned to the audience, stood there as still as a statue as the music started to boom for "Real" from Food and Liquor. After a few beats he turned and started. For the first full hour he sort of took the audience on an adventure through "Food & Liquor". He did pretty much everything from the album except "Kick,Push II", "Emperor's Soundtrack" and "Just Might Be OK". Some special guest were Matthew Santos, Gemstones (who was once named Gemini), and Bishop G.

Then intermission came and Gemstones came out and belted a few notes! Man, that dude had vocals and he could rap. To me, he was the highlight of the show and I think he was just there just to hold us over during the intermission. Can't wait to hear more from here. By the way, if you too are interesting in Gemstones take a listen to "The Die" on "The Cool" and the chorus in "Dumb it Down" except the second chorus when it's the stereotypical white guy.

Soon, Lupe came back and did a few tracks from "The Cool" like "The Coolest", "Little Weapon" and "Superstar" (etc. etc.) Superstar got the biggest response. I think I was only one of the few to keep up with him on "The Coolest" because he was doing it acapella and very very fast. But when Superstar came around the place was super loud with the sounds of the audience singing along.

[Pictures from my cell phone being inserted later]


Peace.