Anybody have any WordPress CSS suggestions? I’m having a bit of some difficulty with my site theme. In IE8, when navigating between blog posts and pages the site “jerks” quickly to the right then left when you go back to the homepage. Not sure what is causing this issue. Seems the site looks different in IE7 too but.
Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!
I can’t wait. Ghostbusters: The Game hits this Tuesday. I bought a Reservation Card from Target to ensure I get a copy Tuesday – and I also apparently get a $5 Target Gift Card too!
This game is going to be amazing!
I’m aware that this blog is a little bland and in need of some more work. Consider it a work-in-progress. I’m hoping to find some time to work on the UI for the site in the next few weeks. Just been really busy with work lately 
I’m a huge sucker for behind-the-scenes movie and TV stuff. I’ve got books following the pre-production and production of films like Spider-Man 1 and 2, Batman Begins, and the first 3 Star Trek: The Next Generation feature films and a bunch of books on the production of the Star Trek TV series. This includes pre-production and production art, script and storyline development, and how they shoot the film or episode.
No such book exists today for the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie unfortunately.
But that’s ok.
Several key folks who worked on Star Trek have blogs and websites showcasing their work they did on the film. And let me tell you – this stuff is amazing. Beware – some of what is talked about below and in these articles may contain spoilers.
Conceptual Illustrator James Clyne is now showcasing concept art he did for Star Trek on his site. A lot of his concept art focuses Nero’s ship the Narada (Nero is the film’s villian played by Eric Bana) which includes the very important drilling rig seen in the film as well. Click here to go through James’ Star Trek concept art. James also did concept art for Transformers, War of the Worlds, and X-Men 3: The Last Stand.
James also helped with the designs of the U.S.S. Kelvin Bridge which was also the Bridge used for the Kobayashi Maru simulation.
Neville Page is a Concept Designer that focuses mainly on character and creature design work. For Star Trek, he worked on the monster that chases Kirk on Delta Vega – affectionately known as “Big Red”. Click on Big Red below to see more of Big Red. TrekWeb also has an interview with Neville worth checking out too.
Neville also did work on Cloverfield (which J.J. Abrams produced) as well as Watchmen.
Ryan Church is another fantastic Concept Artist who worked on the new U.S.S. Enterprise for Star Trek. He essentially designed the new Enterprise – or (re)designed it. Either way – the new U.S.S. Enterprise rocks. Hands down – one of my favorite Enterprises to-date (the Enterprise-D still tops the chart).
I have a huge request for Ryan (assuming Paramount let’s him) – let’s see more of the Enterprise! I want to see some better detail shots of the ship. More designs that you did. Ryan also did work for the upcoming Transformers sequel and James Cameron’s Avatar. One other thing for Ryan… could you please clear up the confusion regarding the size of the new Enterprise? Gizmodo is running with it being over 725 meters (over double of the Enterprise-A or “refit” Enterprise from the older movies). After watching Star Trek 4 times now and watching how everything looks in relation to the Enterprise such as Shuttles and windows (like the Bridge window on the top of the saucer) – I totally don’t buy that the new Enterprise is that big. Just doesn’t make sense to me.
The International Cinematographers Guild has an article on Cinematographer Dan Mindel who did the cinematography for Star Trek. It’s a great article and offers up some insight behind the “lens flare” look they used for Star Trek (which I really liked).
And CGSociety is running an extensive article on the CGI of Star Trek which was done mostly by ILM with Digital Domain stepping in for a few things.
I also have to give a shout out to John Eaves who now has a super cool blog called Eavesdropping with Johnny where he showcases a lot of his work – with a lot of it coming from his past work on the Star Trek movies and TV shows. John was the author Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies – one of the books I mentioned in the first part of this post. It’s a really neat book and John did some excellent work especially for Star Trek: First Contact.
Oh and shout out to Doug Drexler too!
Sidenote: I think John Eaves did some work for the new Star Trek movie but I don’t think Doug Drexler did. I am giving these guys a shout out none-the-less because they rock in general and have great contributions to Star Trek regardless.
The new Star Trek film was an amazing movie that truly reboots the Star Trek franchise for a new generation at the same time honoring what’s already been done in the Star Trek universe. I have to admit, I was extremely nervous about how this movie would turn out. But now I’m desperately awaiting the sequel.
The History Channel has this show called UFO Hunters featuring 3 “investigators” taking on supposed UFO sightings they call “cases” and trying to prove the evidence associated with each case.
I’m certainly someone who believes there are UFOs. But I like the ground things based on scientific fact.
That’s why I love SciFi Channel’s Ghost Hunter series. In Ghost Hunters, Jason and Grant (who ran TAPS) try to “debunk” everything they possibly can with science and technology. Even if they discover something that is unexplainable they often are sometimes very hesitant to label a place as “haunted” but will admit they can’t explain some activity they have caught. For them, just because something is unexplainable at some location doesn’t mean that location is haunted. They want require really hard evidence.
With UFO Hunters, the biggest problem I have with the show is their “lead investigator” Bill Birnes (who is also the publisher of UFO Magazine). He apparently also runs The History Channel’s UFO Hunters Blog too.
Bill always has some far out explanation on every show that supposedly proves UFOs are real and extraterrestrials are involved. He never looks at the reasons that disprove anything – he always tries to do everything he can with any explanation possible to prove the whole UFO/extraterrestrial connection. Even his colleagues like Pat and Kevin sometimes appear frustrated on the show because no matter what, Bill has a explanation even if facts say otherwise. In one episode of the show Bill says he considers pilots reliable sources because “they are pilots and are trained to report strange things they see”. Uh, that doesn’t mean what they are reporting is reliable. Give me a break. Ultimately I believe Bill hurts the whole UFO thing with his attitude of 100% acceptance UFOs are real and are from extraterrestrial origin with any fact he is represented with. He’s not credible.
I will admit, they have shown off some interesting evidence on UFO Hunters that really make you go “hmmm” and really think about possibilities. But it’s not enough to make the kind of statements Bill is making. While Kevin and Pat express their skepticism on many of the cases against the crap that Bill says – it’s just too much crap coming from Bill that hurts this show.
I want them to take people’s reports of UFOs and do shows where they say “these are the reasons why this isn’t a UFO”. Disprove things.
Oh and is there a reason why Bill can’t take off his sunglasses on the show?
I moved to the Seattle area this last December and am continuing to explore the area and “see the sights” so to speak. I’m familiar with what Seattle offers but its the surrounding areas and the non-City stuff that is of interest to me. A few weeks back my girlfriend and I visited Snoqualmie Falls.
I thought I’d share some photos. I took them with my Nikon D40. I think the settings on the camera is possibly a bit off as the images look a little grainy. It was suggested I perhaps turn down the contrast a bit.
By the way – I absolutely love the ability to embed Photo Albums from Windows Live into a blog post via Windows Live Writer.
I finally had some time this weekend to spend some time updating the theme for my blog here and getting things going on my personal blog. Being as busy as I am, not sure how much time I can dedicate to blogging here but it will certainly continue to remain the best place for me to talk about opinions and other geeky stuff that is of interest to me.
So I’m no longer using Telligent’s Graffiti CMS. Graffiti is a pretty neat platform with a lot of potential. But I do not believe it is getting the attention by Telligent that Graffiti needs to survive and grow. When you are a blogger, you want to be on a platform that will continue to be improved upon with a reasonable amount of releases. I expected Graffiti to be a platform that receives continued improvements with a “reasonable amount of releases” but that has certainly NOT been the case. In using Graffiti, I’ve sat on the sidelines watching friends and fellow blogging colleagues receive impressive updates from WordPress. Essentially I got a little fed up and decided the best thing for me is to move back. After I made the move back to WordPress several weeks ago, Telligent blogged about the future of Graffiti (with yet again more apologies):
“Secondly, we were not fully prepared for the effort required for version 2.0 of Graffiti after releasing version 1.2 in December. While we had every intention of releasing version 2.0 this spring we quickly found that we were understaffed and not in a position to dedicate more people to both Graffiti and Community Server. We decided that we needed to put those people / resources into Telligent’s core products to accomplish some of our very aggressive plans for the next release of Community Server and Evolution, thus slipping Graffiti 2.0.”
Essentially, Telligent explains they are pushing Graffiti 2.0 back as they dedicate people to their core products which of course is products like Community Server, Evolution and Harvest. I give props to Telligent for coming clean and essentially setting expectations to current Graffiti users (unlike the unacceptable period of silence we had in 2008).
Will we ever see Graffiti 2.0 get released? It certainly looks more doubtful today but who knows.
But I couldn’t remain on a blog platform that remains in “limbo”.
Now, what Telligent is doing makes perfect sense especially with the economy being what it is today. Many companies are refocusing work on products that of course are essential to their business. Graffiti isn’t essential to Telligent’s business.
Looking ahead, I look forward to see what Telligent does with Community Server and especially Harvest.
In bouncing between platforms in the past year – I’ve lost a lot of content. This was incredibly stupid of me and does hurt my personal “brand” I try to maintain here via this blog. Essentially, there is a lot of content indexed by search engines which is no longer live. So when people stumble upon content that I was blogged via some search engine and try to go to it – it will most likely throw an error. I’m looking to try and restore some content based off backups I have but at this point I am not sure when I’ll get around to trying to import the content back in. Piece of advice: when blogging pick a platform and *stick* with it!
Please be patient while the site goes under some construction.
You can follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brandonleblanc
Thanks!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! I am testing blogging while doing development of this site. Please be patient. Thank you very much. w00t.
