…….

hmm……

i’m actually having a really hard time trying to figure out what i learned today. i know…shocker. it’d be fun to be able to REALLY learn everyday and remember it. the truth is, i think, is that we DO learn every day…but we just never realize it. nor do we hold it to into our head. that’s why sometimes i wish i was little again, where everything that was told to me, i believed, and took as the truth.

it’s amazing sometimes when i see parents teach their kids, and they just take it…willy nilly.

as a grownup, you close off your mind and refuse to try and learn stuff. when i’m back at swim school tomorrow, i have to get in touch with my inner kid. it’s actually quite an interesting process….one that i find difficult, but also rewarding at times.

which brings me to today. hmm….still trying to think about what i’ve learned today.

blah…i learned nothing.

anyhoo…today was father’s day and…well…of course i’m always just a little bit sad on this day. as always i tend to wonder how things woulda been if pops was still around. i wonder if he woulda been proud of what i’ve “become”. ha. i like to think i’m proud of myself. but every now and then you start wondering….

a funny thing happened today though while walking around in jersey with my cousin and mom. mom was talking about how we almost lived in long island, but my dad didn’t want to do the commute. i never knew that. and how we ended up where we ended up….was really all my dad. apparently he loved the house i grew up in, and almost immediately put money down for it when they saw it.

funny….something about that house intrigued my pops. it probably was how it was situated in the neighborhood…and the lawn…and the way the house was laid out. i guess my pops saw a lot of potential in it.

ha…..another interesting story mom was telling during dim sum…somehow or other we got onto the topic of modern day parenting. and how nowadays, young parents might tend to give in to their child and not discipline them enough.

mom was having none of that. she remembers telling my dad not to contradict her in front of us. and of course, pops obeyed. but then she always said pop was the one we wanted to hang out with cause….well….he’d get us stuff. haha

i have a feeling i’d be exactly like him.

anyhoo….not a bad day at all. heat just lost (ha)…and well….even i got to practice some of my parenting skills with this kid. hmm….

sigh.

just got out of the theater and saw this thingy. the funny part is that after leaving, there were people taking surveys about the movie right after. didn’t they do that BEFORE the movie was released? anyways, i hesitate to think what the overall reaction was to the film. but going by metacritic and rotten tomatoes….it ain’t good.

and…unfortunately, i’m in the same camp.

so here’s my review in a nutshell. the good? hmm….um…semi-interesting story. decent soundtrack (which sounds A LOT like Inception’s soundtrack). uh…oh… Kevin Costner. probably the only believable character in the entire thingy. superman’s foster dad, to me, has always been central to the story. and Kevin Costner plays the quintessential version of Clark Kent’s pops.

ok..now the bad.

GAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!! look…i appreciate the attempt at trying to “reboot” Superman. but man…i never thought i’d think the Superman Returns could be slightly better than this. the problem lies in the fact that, to me, superman has always been a boring character. he’s got super powers. yay. while it was fascinating seeing his “home planet” and it’s history and why it destroyed on itself…it’s also downright laughable really.  from the moment the film started, i couldn’t help but think that this is gonna be wack.

why?

i guess it’s because i’ve become accustomed to the Superman “story” (thanks Christopher Reeves). and this…this just seemed like it tried to hard to be “authentic”. it was downright silly.

the evil bums are just as equally ludicrous as the original General Zod from Superman II.

and then Lois Lane? blaaaaaah. cardboard cutout, really.

i dunno…maybe i’m being too harsh. but man….not only was i bored at times, but i was even yawning and rolling my eyes. something i haven’t done at a movie in a long time.

and the fight scenes? overly long. overly loud. and overly over the top. Superman is there to help save the people of earth, right? all he had to do was really give him himself up and the people of earth probably would’ve been ok with it. instead, they fight for what seems like an eternity…and probably KILLED more people in the process! and how many times are you gonna fly into the space and fight and fly RIGHT back down to the same spot in the US all the time? it’s like too perfect.

and whats with all the in-movie product placement during the fights. 7-11? Sears?! iHop?! so distracting.

while there are certainly some very impressive renderings, the CGI felt a little too much for my tastes. and the cinematography? just say “no” to shaky cam!………and STOP WITH THE SNAP ZOOMS!!!!!

phew………gah….i just vented all that out.

again, i’m probably being REALLY harsh on this, but man i really wanted to like this film. it just didn’t do it for me. the highlights, really were the scenes with Clark Kent as a child and discovering his powers…with Kevin Costner providing the moral background for his son. to me, those were the moments that saved this film.

as for everything else?……sigh….i dunno….maybe it’s because it’s Superman…a franchise so boring and dull that there really is nothing you can do to fix it. or maybe the guys that made this tried a LITTLE too hard to be important. in the end, it comes off as pretentious.

boo to that.

——————

Man Of Steel

Kevbo’s Rating

@@ (out of 5)

yeah that’s right.

it’s kinda messed up how Lebron is getting crapped on by the sports press though. i don’t think all of this is really his fault alone. the spurs need to be given some credit here too ya know. they ARE a pretty decent team. and like i predicted, if they win… i think it’ll be in 6. heat? they’ll win in 7.

as for tonight? i see lebron going crazy…or at least become the MVP that he is…but the game will still be close. i see the heat winning by 4 tonight. and if they don’t? well this series is ovaaaaaaaaaaaaa……and jordan wins again.

but…hmm…i dunno….i just never got into it, even though it has everything going for it in a sport. violence. action. speed. strategy. teams.

maybe it suffers from the same fate as soccer and all the low scoring. hmm..i think it also had to do with the fact that during the pre-HD years, it was freakin HARD to follow the puck around on the screen. i kinda miss that time in the mid to late 90s when they decided to put that purple orb around the puck for the tv audience so they can see that.

but now that we have crystal clear HD, you can see the puck just fine. hmm…

i think it’s also cause i know nothing about the rules besides the fact that you have to get the puck into the net. what the heck is icing and why do they call it all the time. in fact, everything i know about hockey is from video games and maaaan it was so annoying playing and then all of a sudden “ICING”!

anyways, i guess since this is the only thing on, i’ll try to follow along. being a bulls fan, i’ll root for their hockey counterpart for this series. and who knows, maybe i’ll start actually following this sport. but until then, i’ll be hoping that they re-release Blades Of Steel…cause that game was the best!

now the other gal in the class seems deathly afraid of the deep end. me? not so much…i mean kinda. like losers, we were using them floating noodle dealies so no biggie, and then just dunking our head in the water to get used to it. gah…so embarrassing. but whatever. i’m committed and damnit i want to this already.

but maybe that’s my flaw. like everything i do, i want to do this NOW! i want to be able to do this already! but nope…not just yet. my biggest problem is this whole floating on the back and kicking thingy. for whatever reason, i just can’t keep my hips up. and i’m just too freakin skinny to be able to float properly. its freakin annoying.

it got to the point where i decided to just hang around afterwards and commit myself to get it down. hmm…i can’t say i’m a master at it, but i can say i THINK i’m making some kind of progress. i think the instructor is impressed with my desire to do all of this…cause the other girl just bounced when time was up. me? i wanted to do it already. “enough of this,” i thought to myself.

sigh….

truthfully though i have no idea if i’m doing good. i mean…i’m getting farther and farther and i’m moving along….but…this is all floatation device-assisted. what’ll happen when we take it away?

hmm…the instructor said i’ll be fine. well…i sure hope so.

so…..my thoughts?

hmm, of course, being the apple fanboy that i is, the minute “MAC PRO” jumped across the screen at the keynote i was hooked. YAY! finally….Apple says that there IS a new mac pro…that it’s ON its way this year. and that it will be super duper fast and have a super duper cool design.

yay to everything so far.

DUAL GPU? wow. THUNDERBOLT 2? aight…cool…(even though there ain’t anything out there to support it). 12-core Xeon E5? yum. Next Gen PCI Express flash storage? Cool……..wait what?

now this is where it gets interesting. as much as i don’t mind the new design (iGarbageCanPro!…i think it’s cool), the expandability of this dealie is a in question. 4-slots for RAM (which is what i got already), but from the looks of it, it looks like you can’t even replace the hard drive…much like the current situation with the Macbook Pro Retina. the non-pro out there will say, “what’s the big deal…thats what thunderbolt is for.”

and that’s the reason they’re a non-pro.

right now, on my 6-core, i have 4 internal drives…all neatly packed into that thing, not requiring any more boxes than needed. i also have a PCIE capture card in there that DOESNT need some kind of thunderbolt breakout box in order to run. so now you can see why the pros are a little peeved. this dealie (which has no price yet) could very well cost MUCH more once you figure in thousand-dollar thunderbolt chassises in order to house all your internal drives you bought over the years. and what if you want a new BOOT UP drive??? hmm….from the looks of this cylindrical dealie, it doesn’t look possible….but i could be wrong.

oh and one more thing, while the dual AMD GPUs are OPENCL based and can run Premiere or FCPX like butter, can you even change them if you wanted to??

probably not.

and don’t get me started about the lack of an optical drive….i still rip my CDs!!!

so…with all that being said, here’s how i feel about all of this…..

IT’S STILL PRETTY COOL!!

yeah..eff the haters.

look, THIS is what happens folks. let us all remember that it was Apple that killed the floppy drive. and that it’s almost always Apple that tries to force-obsolete stuff right in front of our face. this isn’t new. but the truth is, WHAT’S AFTER NORMAL HARD DRIVES?

flash.

what’s after optical media?

downloadable media.

does that mean all of that is really dead? well…it depends. not necessarily if you want to dole out extra dough for adapters and such. yes it does suck, but unfortunately, we work in a world that is constantly changing.

my happiness is more from the fact that Apple is attempting something new and different. my sadness is from the fact that more and more stuff is being killed off.

but here’s the upside for me….i just bought a mac pro in 2010. i haven’t even fully tapped out the power of my beast yet. so i’m gonna say i have a good 4 maybe 5 years left of this badboy before i even consider something new. by then…the Mac Pro Cylinder should be better at what it does, thunderbolt chassises should be cheaper, and i think someone out there will figure out something to address the internal storage situation.

so, in conclusion…..yay for new stuff. boo to restrictive stuff. but huzzah for the future.

anyhoo…tomorrow is WWDC!! for you non-nerds out there, this means that a guy with glasses will get on stage, talk about how great Apple is and talk about some new stuff they’re going to come out with to all of the people in the audience…..who for the majority of them…wear glasses. yeah that sounds about right.

but here’s the dealie, i’ve been a waning Apple fan for the majority of the past couple of years (ahem…FCPX) and i would LOVE for Apple to return to form for us professional folks out there. but a part of me just doesn’t see it. while i would love to see FCPX updated to include even some more newer and innovative features, i don’t think it will happen.

but what i REALLLLLLLLLY want to see is a brand new Mac Pro. i’m probably one of the VERY few people you know that actually buys Apple “towers”. “towers?” you say. yes…they do make towers.

the funny thing is that i think little kids these days have NO idea what a tower is. maybe i’m wrong, but i think Apple really is right on not going after the pro market. but i really hope they come out with a new Mac Pro for the 1% of us out there that actually purchases them. and if not…i would LOVE to see them license OS X to 3rd party manufacturers so that it can be installed on normal PCs.

will it happen?

hell no.

but i can dream right.

hmmm…..

but here’s my predictions for tomorrow. i’m leaning at a 45% chance that they announce SOME kind of replacement for the Mac Pro. but it’ll be wack. a souped up imac or mac mini with no PCI ports…and nothing but thunderbolt to expand. my hope is they at least give us some kind of hard drive exapandability.

what really will be the talk of the show is iOS 7 and OS X. iOS 7 will have a super overhaul but i think will pretty much look the same….except less “glossy”. i think it’ll feel fluid-ier and once again put apple back in the limelight…despite showcasing stuff that Android has already had for years. us Apple faithful won’t care though.

OS X? personally i think OS X will be dead soon. 10.9, though, will showcase more of the iOS-ification of the operating system. multitasking?…it’s gonna be A LOT like iOS. under the guise of “easy to use”, it’ll close off a lot of the stuff that makes the pros more productive. like how they killed Expose and turned it into the horribly named Mission Control. blah….

yeah i don’t really have my hopes up for tomorrow, but yes…i still do pay attention.

the crazy part is that this past year i’ve been thinking MAD HARD about switching to PC. because really…if my industry starts going that way, then…thats the way i’d have to go. the only things keeping me from pulling the trigger really is iTunes (my library is crazy…and iTunes on PC ain’t that great)…and iPhoto (again…it’s a database thingy and to transfer that to something else would suck).

but who knows…maybe tomorrow will change my outlook on apple. we shall see….we shall see.

today was pretty much an almost perfect saturday for me. woke up late. watched tennis. did some grocery shopping. researched some tennis courts around the area. watched more tennis. took a nap. woke up. then played tennis for 3 hours or so. then went home. ate pasta. took a shower. and now….laundry time!

so…as i wait for laundry and relax, i must say, that i had a pretty busy afternoon…all to my liking. as i wait, i’ma do the next best thing i watch a movie…hmm….whats in my DVD stash….yeah…i still watch DVDs.

hmm…..dont know what to watch. i think i want to watch a horror film.