The Jeff R Project

Whilst twiddling around the interwebs yesterday, I happened across a post that was all about movie infographics from various sources.

What’s an infographic you ask? Basically a graphical (pictoral) representation of information. Like a subway map or historical timeline. Click the link you passed over to read about them on Wikipedia.

Being a lover of movies and such, this collection was amazing, so I thought I’d share a couple of them.

The Trilogy Meter

Click on it to get a better look at it, but here it is in a nutshell. MOST trilogies go down hill (quickly) after the first movie. Now like most “review” type things, it’s subjective opinion and this is one guy‘s opinion (not mine). Take a look at the The Matrix, Jurassic Park, Planet of the Apes, Terminator, Batman above.

Now think about Star Wars, Indiana Jones (before the refrigerator incident), Lord Of The Rings, Die Hard, Rocky etc. They held up pretty well through their lifetime.

Here’s a less subjective infographic for you. A comparison of movie monster sizes.

Movie Monsters

This chart shows everything from Chucky and the Wicked Witch (dots at the left end) to Clover (Cloverfield) at the right! Wow. Someone did a bunch of work on this one.

Here are some other posts with movie infographics in them:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/10-awesome-movie-infographics/

http://abduzeedo.com/movies-infographics-collection

http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/22754/1/LOOK-AT-THIS-NOW-MOVIE-AND-OSCAR-INFOGRAPHICS/Page1.html

Chris and I took a giant step recently. One that would make some of our friends weep openly and question their ability to cope. Many couples would break up in record time if they took this step. But we have faith.

What did we do that was so drastic?

We shut our cable off for the summer.

Yep. And Novus took us seriously. About 3 weeks after the first of the month we came home to static. Last year we cut it down to the basics for the summer and it took them 2 months to make the change.

Cable companies do this for 2 reasons as far as I can tell. One is they hope you change your mind before they get here, the other is that 9/10 cancel requests are place where tenants move and they hope the new occupants will subscribe. Either way a month or two of service costs less than dispatching a warm body, so they leave it on until x amount of time passes or they “have a guy in the area.”

With TV season drawing to a close and our ability to watch shows online increasing daily, plus the impending summer weather (you hear me mother nature?) we want to try to lessen our dependence on the tube.

How’s it going? Other than the 2 – 24 hour delay in watching the 3 or 4 critical shows on TV, it’s good. Rumble gets more playtime, more work gets done, more walks get taken and Chris and I get to spend more quality time together.

Which inevitably means sitting at opposite ends of the couch ignoring each other in favor of our laptops.

I joke. That’s the scary time some other couples would dread. What do you do to fill the time otherwise filled by TV?

I’ll let you know how it goes, but being released from the LCD bonds of the TV feels good so far. Now we watch it on our terms. We may never turn the cable back on.

PS: by never I mean until September.

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So Chris and I are big fans of the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory with Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons. I haven’t mentioned it before for some reason, but it’s true. We have seen every episode, we have Seasons one and two on our phones etc. I love being able to say we have 2 seasons of a TV show on our PHONE! 2010 rocks tech geek hard.

I’ve downloaded the theme song from The Big Bang Theory partly because it’s fun, but also because it’s by Barenaked Ladies! There’s way more than the first 30 seconds we hear on the show each week.

The cast is a great ensemble with the aforementioned Parsons and Galecki, joined by Kaley Cuoco (8 Simple Rules), Simon Helberg (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) and Kunal Nayyar (um, he’s new). They’ve done some great stunt casting ranging from Summer Glau through Wil Wheaton to Stan Lee.

Stan Lee was the guest star last night making a special appearance at the boy’s favorite comic store. Must be nice to be in L.A.

My favorite part of the show was the beginning when Raj was wearing his Personal Soundtrack Shirt. It was pretty geek-cool and it’s real!

Basically it’s a t-shirt with a speaker in the middle, and a remote control. it comes pre-loaded with a variety of music and sounds, but it also has an SD slot to let you load it with just about any sound or song you can think of!

You really can have your own personal soundtrack to life. Raj plays everything from Darth Vader’s theme to the Jeopardy theme. He also punctuates with a buzzer and the “duh duh” sound from Law & Order! It’s awesome.

If I don’t get one of these for my birthday I’ll just have to find a way to go on with out it.

However, if you want one for yourself, or someone you like, simply click here to buy one from ThinkGeek.com

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Today is the 5th day of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The title alone is a mouthful.

Vancouver is alive with people. It’s pretty crazy how busy things are. Even tiny hole-in-the-wall places that locals avoid are busy with tourists. And of course the popular places are even busier.

Sunday, Chris and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (Yep, sunny and warm in February) and took in some of the Olympic sites. We’d been out Saturday but other than Robson Square didn’t “do” anything Olympic.

We went down to the jail cauldron to see what all the fuss was about. Wow, did someone screw that up. “Too keep people safe” they erected an 8 foot security fence over 100 feet away from it, completely obscuring the view. People were climbing on concrete crash barriers to get a 1/2 decent photo that didn’t look like it came from Guantanamo Bay.

We tried to visit the Royal Canadian Mint display, but it was closed for a private function, so we hopped on the Canada Line Skytrain and went to Olympic Village with the intention of taking the Olympic Line train to Granville Island. 45 minute line up. No thanks, so we walked the seawall – a much better choice.

Granville Island is known as “Place de Francophonie” or “The fake French area” during the Olympics. Honestly, I wasn’t feeling it. The eastern end of the island is blocked off and there’s a large area devoted to French culture and displays, but they were pretty uninteresting. I hear Quebec House is worse. That’s for next weekend.

We then did get on the Olympic Line train (courtesy of Bombardier) since there was no lineup to get BACK to the Skytrain. Cool. It was a nice ride, but not all that exciting. The Canada Line Skytrain back to downtown was lined up out of Olympic Village station! What!

So we walked over the Cambie Bridge and Chris got some great photos of the athletes village and Sochi House on False Creek.

We actually forgot we couldn’t get home our usual way from the Cambie Bridge and detoured up Beatty Street past BC Place, Alberta House and the Bell Ice Cube (huh?) and a huge crowd of people gathering around that area.

On the way home, we encountered a fleet of Mini’s that we had seen before. Canon has outfitted a fleet of 12+ Mini’s with camera lenses on top, and for some reason they really intrigue Chris and I.

After 4 hours on our feet and moving constantly, we finally got home and crashed. The dog was happy to have us back.

This week, we’re going to try to get out in the evening and enjoy some of the excitement and crazy during the evening. This will be “tricky” with having the dog at work, and the fact that Chris is working at 6:00am during the Olympics.

On the weekend, we’re hoping to make it to even more venues. Canada House, Northern House and a bunch of province ones too. I’d like to visit Sochi House as it’s supposed to be impressive, but Chris is disinterested. Considering the Russians tried to kill him last time he encountered them, I don’t blame him, so I may have to go with someone else. We’ll see.

Ok, I promise no more Twilight or Taylor Lautner posts after this one. At least for a while. When Eclipse comes out next year and the press starts up again we might see some more.

I was asked how Chris feels about my supposed obsession with Taylor. He knows all about it and usually just rolls his eyes and has another beer. It’s not an obsession. It’s simply an attempt to get people to pay attention to my blog.