Episode 17: “We can bring peace and unite cultures”

The video I want to show you guys has been popping up all over the place today and just as quickly it’s being taken down. It’s sort of a promotional piece from the Church of Scientology featuring Tom Cruise and was shown in American morning shows yesterday morning. This afternoon I saw the whole thing on YouTube and all of the parts have been taken down. However, I’ve found two alternative sources where you can find it: here and here (there’s also a transcript if those videos also get taken down).

It creeps me out a bit. I’m all for accepting and tolerating other religions, but I’m not sure what to make of this. Some of the things he’s saying just doesn’t make any sense. For instance:

Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anyone else. As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one that can really help.

Ehm, as if normal non-Scientologists can’t help? Or wouldn’t help? And then this bit: “We are the authorities in getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind.” No, you’re not! You’re a bunch of people that for some reason don’t believe in psychiatry and psychology, thinking that your way is the only way.

So what do you all think?

Episode 16: “…”

Raise your hand, if you’re just as sick and tired of the writer’s strike as I am. It’s been going on now for 10 weeks and 2 days and everyday the news gets grimmer. Writers have been fired, pilots for next fall won’t be developed and popular series have been indefinitely postponed (24 might even not be shown until January 2009). Then there’s a big possibility that some TV shows might not even get the chance to finish their stories, like Scrubs and BSG. And don’t get me started on all those replacement reality shows…

Since Thanksgiving Day the Writers Guild of America have been releasing videos featuring well known actors and actresses as part of the Speechless campaign. The videos express the idea of the actors being scriptless and speechless, demonstrating the necessity of writers. So far, there are 31 videos, with new episodes coming out weekly.

I’ve listed a couple of my favourite ones here, but if you have time you can see the rest of the episodes on the Speechless site or here on YouTube.

Interesting links for January 16th:

• Flickr: Photos from RedandJonny – The daily life of a Stormtrooper. Photos from a couple posing with a Stormtrooper helmet on in their travels.
• Stephen Chow’s CJ7 Alien Creature Revealed! – New images from the movie from the guy behind Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer. This alien is too cute!
• iTunes Subscribers Could Feel Pinch From Writers’ Strike – People that have subscribed for a season pass of a tv show in iTunes, don’t really know what will happen now that some series are having less episodes this season due to the writer’s strike (they paid for 23, but are only getting 11).

Episode 15: “Do you believe in miracles?” “No“

I just watched Battlestar Galactica: Razor and now I’m just craving for more episodes. I can’t stand it that SciFi Channel has the nerve to wait till April to broadcast the episodes; I want them now! On the other hand, I’ve kind of made peace with the fact that the second half of the season will be shown next TV season. When the writer’s strike started, most of those episodes hadn’t been written yet and with the writer’s strike not being resolved yet, it will take some time till they’re recorded and broadcast. In other words, even if they had wanted to show it after the first half of the season, they wouldn’t have been able to. Either way we would have had to wait.

Back to business: I’ve got two videos for you guys today. The first is a promo from the SciFi channel for the fourth season for BSG. The second is a mini featurette of season 4, containing clips and cast interviews. Watch them at your own risk; there are (of course) new scenes and spoilers. Although I have a feeling that most of the stuff is from the first (and maybe the second) episode.

Interesting links for January 15th:

• How to complete your PhD (or any large project): Hard and soft deadlines, and the Martini Method – Some small, but good tips on how to finish a project and keep to your deadlines. Definitely going to try this out.
• Heigl’s Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride – ComingSoon.net – Interview with Katherine Heigl about her new film 27 Dresses.
• Indiana Jones 4 Wallpapers – Great wallpapers from Indy IV.
• Summer Glau: io9 Talks To The Newest Terminator – Short interview with Summer Glau about her new role in Terminator (and a bit about her previous role as River in Firefly)
• First Look: Disney’s The Princess and the Frog « FirstShowing.net – The first image of Disney’s attempt to go back to basics with a 2d-animation musical. I love the Disney 2nd-wave classics (Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, etc) and am really hoping that this goes great.

Episode 14: “I dreamt a beautiful dream about riding a balloon and flying”

So today I went for the first time to a karaoke bar/room thing. I mean, I had done karaoke before, but more the “Let’s hook up the tv to the computer and here’s a mike!” type of student karaoke. This was much better, but it brought back memories of the student karaoke, specifically a very weird Korean karaoke video. We were looking for subtitled music videos and some how found this hyper Korean song with pseudo English subtitles. It was fast as anything and impossible to sing along to.

I couldn’t find that video (sadly, cause that one was brilliant!), but I came cross this other equally weird karaoke song. I can’t even describe it, you just have to see for yourselves.

Interesting links for January 10th through January 13th:

• The Death of Checkers – I love it that somebody actually used the brute force method to “solve” the checkers game. And it only took 18 years!
• Official Guide to the Summer of 2008 « FirstShowing.net – Great list of the movies coming out next summer, including (when available) links to the trailers. It’s going to be a busy summer 😀
• Flight of the Hamsters – Cute flash game where you have to launch hamsters.
• Torchwood: Torchwood Snogging, Synopses, And More – Two clips from the next season of Torchwood (I think it’s safe to say there from the first episode).

Episode 13: “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

I’m in an Apple mood anyway today, so here’s the video of the Think Different commercial: 

The complete text used in the commercial is:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do. 

By now most of you Leopard users out there will have discovered the “cute” Blue Screen of Death for network Windows machines. And most of you should know the significance of the ICal Date (July 17th 2002 was the day Apple introduced ICal at the MacWorld Expo). But today I stumbled on some other cool Easter Eggs in Leopard.

It started by stumbling on this post about the TextEdit icon. If you take a look at the TextEdit icon in Coverflow, you can actually read the text on it. Seems familiar? It’s the monologue from the Think Different commerical (see here). But who are Kate and John Appleseed? John Appleseed could refer to Johnny Appleseed, an American pioneer that introduced the apple (the fruit, not the computer) to some parts of America. The “Kate” character is a bit more difficult to pinpoint. Some believe it’s a reference to the KDE text editor, while others believe it refers to Katie Cotton, the Apple Vice President of Worldwide Corporate Communications. One thing is certain: both names have also been used in iPhone ads: Kate Bell is calling at the end of this commercial and John Appleseed is calling in the middle image here.

Then you also have the Keynote icon. Blown up in Coverflow you get this:

Ken Drake managed to decode the text and it reads this:

God, I dreamed there was an angel Who could hear me through the wall As I cried out-like, in Latin “This is so not life at all Help me out-out-of this nightmare” Then I heard her silver call- She said: “Just give it time, kid I come to one and all”

She said: “Give me that hand, please And the itch you can’t control Let me teach you how to handle All the sadness in your soul Oh, we’ll work that silver magic Then we’ll aim it at the wall” She said: “Love may make you blind kid- But I wouldn’t mind at all”

It’s the bitch of living (Bitch, just a bitch) With nothing but your hand (Just a bitch, yeah) Just the bitch of living As someone you can’t stand See, each night, it’s like fantastic- Tossing, turning, without rest

It’s the first lines of the song “The Bitch of Living” from the musical “Spring Awakening”. The big question here though is: why this song and what is the significance of Q4 2008? Is something big going to happen then?

Two other cute discoveries are the icons from Dictionary and Mail. The Dictionary icon has the text “Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Etiam” on it. The typical Lorem Ipsum doesn’t continue with Etiam, but some quick googling shows that there are some generators that use this version. Another explanation is that one translation of Etiam is And Further, which could be interpreted as a type of Etcetera.

If you look closely at the Mail icon you can see an Apple stamp on it with the words “Hello from Cupertino CA” around it.

There are other interesting icons, but so far no one has been able to figure out what they mean. For instance, the Calculator icon has the number 12374218.75 on it. What does this number mean?? No idea. And the Stickies icon has had for every long time the phone number of Lou on it (555-7361). Who’s Lou?

I also have a feeling that both the Numbers icon and the Spaces icon also have some hidden message within them. Especially the top left space in the Spaces icon has to contain something interesting.

Anybody else found other cool easter eggs in Leopard?

Episode 11: “One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve”

I kind of stumbled on this video yesterday, but I recognized it straight away. It’s one of those clips during Sesame Street, you know, one of those ones they can reuse over and over again in multiple episodes. I must have been 5 or 6 when I saw this for the last time.