He does, but I think his fur is shorter on his face! Also, he is missing a leg. That's how we can tell them apart! He always fidgets too much for pictures, so it was a rare treat to have him sitting still until Bella came and caused him to move.
- joey
He looks a lot like my RubyRoo, except her "black fur face mask" just covers the top of her head, ending immediately below her eyes, so her nose, mouth and lower cheeks are snowy white. Did I mention that she has "cute tootsie roll poops?"
- Mark Jepsen
Oh, and I didn't notice the cat for quite awhile either.
- Mark Jepsen
Nice Bracelet, did someone local make the beads (or the whole thing for that matter)?
- Joe
there was an oz episode like that. it made my eyes leak. the prisoner was training him for a guard who spoke mostly spanish at home, and the prisoner had taught the dog to obey commands in spanish, to everyone's surprise. Of course, the prisoner was the one responsible for said guard going blind, but hey, you get your feel goods where you can.
- Baroness Von SmashAHomie
"Portis has had a vision problem since getting the concussion and it hasn't been getting better. Portis reportedly feels like his vision is good enough for him to get out onto the field but "the doctor feared if I took another hit like that it could get worse," he said."
- chaz2b
from Bookmarklet
Probably best for him not to play then. Brain injuries are very serious.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
agreed, John, i'm sad to see him go, and i'm sorry he never excelled like he did for denver, but he was still a great man for my team (the redskins), :(
- chaz2b
"Today's big budget movies have the technology to create worlds and characters unlike anything we've ever seen before... but is that really a good thing? What if CGI just distracts from all the important things about moviemaking?"
- Steven Perez
from Bookmarklet
"More worryingly, CGI has given free rein to the worst, most-OCD elements of moviemakers' imaginations. Whereas, before, worldbuilding would have meant coming up with the strongest stories and performances in order to pull audiences in, now both of those seem to often take backseats to the spectacle of the spectacle itself (Think of this summer's Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen,...
more...
- Steven Perez
yes, it makes everything look like a video game. go back to miniatures already! digital image compositing doesn't have the same issues.
- Joe Silence is not dead
2 of my favorite Science fiction films are pre-CGI. 2001: A Space Odyssey and Enemy Mine are both amazing.
- Jimminy
Tron would be kinda crappy without it.
- Rodfather
Pfft. Not that Fantastic Four had much of a chance to be good anyways, but I felt putting Chiklis in a suit vs using CGI was a bad decision. And on the pro-CGI side, what about Gollum? Or the Burly Brawl in Matrix 2 (which, granted, had not-very-convincing skin shading)?
- Andrew C
Again: it's all about a story. When you substitute CGI for story, you make a bad movie.
- Steven Perez
from IM
I thought Forrest Gump was one of the earlier films that made good use of it. You can't tell it's there.
- Rodfather
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within actually did a decent job with full character animation that didn't seem overly fake. Most of the background art was done large scale Matte paintings. Story was only so-so.
- Jimminy
It's just a tool like any other. The real measure of a filmmaker is in the story and how it comes together. That's why Transformers sucks, but plenty of CG-enhanced movies do not. Plus there's some things that simply can't be done without CG
- Mo Kargas
I actually felt FF:TSW had subpar animation. The big, fast stuff looked fine. The fine detail stuff that was hand animated looked fine. But all the medium stuff was clearly mocap and looked mocappy - in general, I think w/mocap that the motion just doesn't look right, perhaps due to limitations of mocap at the time.
- Andrew C
I also felt the CGI Spider-Man in the first movie felt wrong (not weighty enough) but among my friends this was not the common opinion. Even so, SM2 had much more believable CGI for my taste.
- Andrew C
Andrew, I'll agree with what you said, it was decent for a CG film at the time, the one thing that always caught my eye about FF:TSW was the attention to detail in the texture maps, the faces have noticeable pores, and hair animations where superb. It does have the mo-cap issues and the occasional facial glitch.
- Jimminy
District 9 is proof that you can have it all. The rest... bad movies.
- Adrian
from Android
Jimminy, yeah, that stuff was outstanding -- I just have a bias towards motion instead of top rendering quality. =)
- Andrew C
"More worryingly, CGI has given free rein to the worst, most-OCD elements of moviemakers' imaginations. Whereas, before, worldbuilding would have meant coming up with the strongest stories and performances in order to pull audiences in, now both of those seem to often take backseats to the spectacle of the spectacle itself (Think of this summer's Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen,...
more...
- Steven Perez
Movies are gradually moving away from storytelling and becoming pure entertainment for the masses. Which takes us back to books. All those bad CGI movies are laying the foundations for a book renaissance.
- Amit Morson
@Amit: enter Apple tablet... oh wait that would be like CGI books. :D
- Adrian
CGI is wonderful, but not when its use comes at the expense of having interesting characters and telling a compelling story.
- vicster
Hmm, I think that Cameron putting that type of work in is actually Tolkien-esque. We'll see if it pays off. (I agree with the thrust of this posting, though)
- Chieze Okoye
BTW... anyone been to Toys-R-Us lately? It's been Avatarized.
- Adrian
Like many new technologies, it's overused until it finds it's right place. Hopefully it will happen soon.
- Amit Morson
Adrian, likes it's been Nemoized and e-wallized and doraized and ...
- Amit Morson
... and Haloized and Gears of Warizized and...
- Adrian
"Movies are gradually moving away from storytelling and becoming pure entertainment for the masses. " ... what? Seriously? Spectacle has been part of movies since forever.
- Andrew C
Andrew, not really, check the history of film making. This is like saying that high Broadway is the same as some of the sleazy Las Vegas shows.
- Amit Morson
Look, I know I say this a lot but... Seriously, what would I do without Rachael? Today she was a rock (a stone cold fox of a rock) and she knew just the right time to ask me how I was or give me a hug. I love her more than I could ever say. Thanks babe, I will always need you... and I am grateful for that (Plus, how cute is she in this picture)
My son calls it "pancakeceratops", so I don't even know how i used to say it, besides *GAG*. =)
- Admiral Anika
Holly, I actually know some people who say "sirp" as one syllable, but they're from my hometown. As everybody knows, we're all a little crazy. I even know one person who says "sirps" like it's plural.
- ha3rvey (needs soup)
that's how a bunch of my family says it, D. :)
- holly
It took me a minute to even figure out what word you were going for. Usually sir-up. Missouri. But like Derrick, the syllables aren't particularly distinct.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Hrm....Sear-up. I'm from Brooklyn, NY living in GA. You might catch me saying Surrrp depending on who is around. Or Sissurp if I'm kickin it with Weezy.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Ohayou-gozaimasu. Hajimemashite? Oai-deki-te ureshii-desu. My Japanese is still very poor. I am thankful for such good teachers as you. ^_^
- Ken & Kiyomi
good, maybe you can explain the elements pf sentence too, like what does yoroshiku mean? or how do you compare these two phrases , etc. :)
- Mahmood Padura
Piacere di conoscerti. Un saluto dalla Sardegna
- Isola Virtuale
Wondering if we really need to see these tweets in real time on Google search results.... the quality of these tweets seems to be very low. Maybe Google should be filtering tweets.. Not sure how this is useful at all to someone searching Google for "Tiger Woods"
I think this will only increase twitter spam :(( Google is usually very very religious about their search result quality... not sure how this got through...
- Bindu Reddy
Exactly, the more you tweet, the better your chances are for a site hit
- sofarsoShawn
interesting. didn't even realize there's these kinds of google search results now. thanks for the heads up!
- See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
Yup, I am writing a bot that scrapes Google trends, extracts search terms and writes tweets every 2 minutes with those search terms :)
- Bindu Reddy
New SEO pioneering! I want in! & it's also not just Twitter, but also Jaiku, identi.ca Myspace, FriendFeed & Facebook. & Bing (except for FB & TW) won't be including them in their search results.
- sofarsoShawn
I the quality of all tweets seems to be very low.
- Gabe
Oh bleh. Just tried a search for "snow". The realtime results are very distracting. Let us opt out, or put it on the side somewhere.
- Laura Norvig
from iPod
It's good to bring more users to twitter though, as they keep getting twitter rubbed into their face. That being said I should try that search.
- Richard A.
Interesting. So you can try spam these services, and get a high position on Google immediately. But filtering... based on what? The usual filters work on authority which in turn often works on ratings, citations, backlinks etc., and these won't be real-time because people first have to see and digest the message in question in order to link, cite and rate it.
- Philipp Lenssen
It auto-updates and that is an interesting feature. That's something I could see some use for :-)
- Richard A.
On the spam and SEO topic. Don't you think it'd measure retweet strength. If a lot of people retweet a subject then the link would be more relevant/interesting than if just one person retweets. Sorry for going slightly off topic. As an aside do retweets move back up to the top of the search? Should try cop15 and see how it behaves.
- Richard A.
@Philipp: smart question (as usual). I guess that Google's rank/filter could be based not on the tweet, but on the tweeter: e.g. someone who has many followers is a good source, etc. E.g. Google too should (in this case) change its paradigm, switching from a "web of pages" to a "web of people".
- milivella
Google needs real time spam/foul language filter.
- ashish
from iPhone
Have they implemented safesearch for real time search?
- ashish
from iPhone
@Philipp You have nailed the issue :) It is really really difficult to get a good grip on "quality" if the information/data is real-time. I still can't really figure out what the motivation behind doing something like this on the Google main search results is.
- Bindu Reddy
Sometimes it is nice to see people giving their reactions to news or event in real time but I hope it improves overtime.
- ashish
from iPhone
Am I the only one here who is using Topsy http://www.topsy.com on a daily basis to cut through Twitter noise? Works like a charm. News recommender systems are the Next Big Thing.
- Sean McBride
"Virgin Mobile has launched a nationwide ad campaign featuring a hot gay kiss: "Agency of record Juniper Park created the new work to extend the 'Fearless' positioning introduced in September. New brand-focused television, print and out-of-home ads encourage consumers to 'hook up fearlessly' with secret lovers during the holidays–including one execution of two men kissing which Virgin says will run nationally.""
- See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
I always figure... if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will make the mountain in her own kitchen. (to paraphrase slightly...) So, if love is a box of warm Krispy Kreme donuts, then this must be true love :D
"An iceberg nearly 87 square miles in size and weighing 200 billion tonnes is drifting towards Australia. The whopping ice slab, which is nearly twice the size of Hong Kong - or half the size of the Isle of Wight - was picked up using satellite imagery. Its very existence is being hailed as once-in-a-century event. It's already far closer to Australia than icebergs normally travel, about 1700km south-southwest of Western Australia."
- RAPatton
from Bookmarklet
i posted that one awhile back, and this one demonstrated the sublime forthought involved, :/
- chaz2b
The chia keyboard is pure brilliance, though. :)
- Curtiss Grymala
especially since its my keyboard, :o (not irl, just i use a many generations ago compaq keyboard cause the one i got with this pc has faulty keys (dell))
- chaz2b
Using this when I leave my job (if they don't let me stay on part time)
- Lo is a Quitter
Mos Def on new Gorillaz album, playing Highline, in Blakroc w/ Black Keys & Jim Jones (video from Letterman last night) - http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archive...
"Disney has debuted the first official trailer for The Sorcerer's Apprentice on Apple. This new action-adventure movie stars Nicolas Cage as the Sorcerer Balthazar Blake, Jay Baruchel as his Apprentice, Monica Bellucci, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, and Toby Kebbell. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is Disney's other big summer movie in addition to Prince of Persia. I loved Enchanted and I've been crossing my fingers hoping this would have as much Disney magic as that movie did. It definitely looks nothing like that, much darker and intense, but the visuals look amazing. You'll be surprised and I'm pretty frickin' excited to see this now!"
- Derrick
from Bookmarklet
Chieze, it feels like a strange alternate universe version of National Treasure. Same players, same director and producer, and...of course, Cage.
- Derrick
That said, the visuals ARE pretty amazing. Oh, yeah Derrick, now that you mention it, yeah it does. (Kinda like how The Prestige felt like Bizarro world Batman Begins for the same reason)
- Chieze Okoye
Yeah, the lines sounded mediocre at best (eye-rollingly bad at worst -- thanks Mr. Cage), but the visuals sold it for me. I'm probably going to end up watching it.
- Chieze Okoye
The still above is almost enough to make me want to watch it. I love Nick Cage. the good movies are good, and the bad movies are fun.
- DJF
wow...it at least looks interesting. a cross between wanted, pirates of the Caribbean, and national treasure perhaps
- Sir Shuping
Cage is the same character in every movie, just with different hairpieces.
- rowlikeagirl
does cage even have hair anymore? I kinda of think he just wears a different wig depending upon his mood you know?
- Sir Shuping
I once ran into Cage a comic book store in '98-'99 when he was going to do Burton's Superman. He's a substantial man. Very broadchested. I can't really comment on his hair.
- Derrick
THis is not being my usual Disney Fan Boy/Shill but I got to see it on the big screen today (the Trailer) and every time I've seen new footage of this film, it makes me want to see more of it. Unlike the National Treasure flicks (which I've seen none of and is made by the same team), this looks hella impressive and fun. A science nerd who has to learn magic to save the world? I'm ready for it.
- Jason Toney
"Health insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield has been quietly working with the conservative, pro-business front group, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to pass legislation that uses the issue of states' rights as a pretext for declaring healthcare reform unconstitutional"
- chaz2b
from Bookmarklet
"The European Commission has earmarked 1.5 billion euros for development of offshore wind farms and carbon capture and storage projects, a move Brussels says will help cut greenhouse gas emissions and boost EU economies"
- chaz2b
from Bookmarklet
This thread receives my coveted *WINNINGEST FF THREAD AWARD" for the day. Congrats to all the players. I have nothing to add, except... how I should just get a tan!?!
- Adrian
I need to hear audio of you saying "Puto".
- Kamath (नमः)