Kalan Porter’s first music video, Single, debuted today on MuchMusic. His awkwardness is normally endearing, but it really does not work with this video, since the song has a forthcoming and confident tone. His expression is both awkward and creepy throughout the entire video, which made it difficult to sit through. Though, from what I understand, he has no acting experience, and the director didn’t seem to give him too much direction with respect to portraying the right emotions. The shattering mirrors at the end were a bit too much, as well. Overall, it’s probably one of the more interesting first-video concepts for any of the Idols, but that’s really not saying much.
Archive for January, 2005
I don’t know why, but most of the TV shows I watched recently had main characters breaking out into song. First of all, Shannon sang that French song on Lost last week. On Veronica Mars, Veronica was investigating at a karaoke bar and ended up singing onstage. She was actually pretty good, but it had that fake actor-turned-singer sound to it. This week’s episode of The O.C. featured Sandy singing a few songs to Kirsten for their twentieth anniversary. Elsewhere on the FOX Network, it is Hal and Lois’ twentieth anniversary on Malcolm in the Middle. For no clear reason, Malcolm buys a guitar and sings a self-written song to his family. Incidentally, it turns out that his song is a re-hash of the tune of the Meow Mix commercial. Finally, on Joan of Arcadia, Joan joins the school musical and performs a big closing solo. This performance was the best of them all, since she actually did a pretty good song and her voice wasn’t bad either. Now, I just want to know why they’re all suddenly singing now.
The all-new Mac Mini provoked lots of cheering and applause at the MacWorld San Francisco keynote today. My jaw dropped when I saw how incredibly tiny that thing is. I can’t believe they fit a whole computer into something the size of a 2″ thick CD. My gut reaction was, “A Mac for $629 Canadian?? MUST! BUY!” I thought that the headless iMac rumours were nothing more than just rumours. I was pretty shocked when I heard the announcement.
However, the biggest drawback to its small size is that it has no PS/2 ports. There are enough ports for your power cord, Internet connection, monitor, keyboard, mouse, iPod and speakers. And nothing else. If you want to plug in a digital camera, you’ll have to unplug either your keyboard or mouse first, since there are only two USB ports and no PS/2. Which is really, really inconvenient, in my opinion. Everyone in my house has PS/2 keyboards and mice, so I’d have to go out and buy a new keyboard/mouse combo and yet still not have enough room for my camera. The other option is to buy a wireless keyboard/mouse combo to free up the USB ports, but that’s even more expensive. A Bluetooth module costs $65 and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo will run at about $130.
For the average user with no digital camera, webcam or other extra peripherals, it won’t be much of a problem, but things like these make me a little wary of the Mac Mini. When I load it up with all the options I want, it costs $1170 Canadian which is a bit pricey, if you compare it with Windows/Intel PCs. It’s still a pretty decent deal though, since the main reason I want a Mac is for the operating system and I’m willing to pay a little extra to get it. Will I buy it? Perhaps. I’m going to wait for the next Powerbook and iBook revisions to be released, then I’ll compare. Nevertheless, the Mac Mini is a good effort by Apple to encroach on the entry-level consumer market. I’ve heard lots of people say that they’d buy Macs if they were cheaper, so it will be interesting to see how many people actually put up their money now that the cheap Mac exists.
As a final thought, I would like to announce that I think the iPod shuffle is stupid. Why would anybody want to buy an MP3 player that doesn’t let you pick what song you want to hear?
I believe this marks the time when we can begin to lay off our nutritional attacks on fast food chains and start going after Starbucks.
Take a look at the nutritional information (from their Web site) of their new six ounce Chantico Drinking Chocolate, described as: A drinkable dessert with an intense, full-bodied chocolate flavor and silky, rich texture.
Calories: 390
Fat Calories: 190
Total Fat (g): 21
Saturated Fat (g): 10
Cholesterol (mg): 25
Sodium (mg): 105
Total Carbohydrates (g): 51
Fiber (g): 6
Sugars (g): 40
Is it just me, or does 21 grams of fat in a 6 oz. drink sound incredibly unproportional?
My first week at one45 Software was really good. The experience I’ve had so far really validates my decision to choose this job over the UBC one, since one45 has such a relaxed environment. Admittedly, I had more excitement and anticipation when I got my Starbucks job a year and a half ago, but probably due to the fact that it was my first real job.
For most of this week, I was learning new languages and getting familiar with the current codebase. I’ve known XHTML and CSS for a while, as well as a bit of PHP/MySQL, so I primarily focused on learning how to use JavaScript to manipulate DOM elements. I’m really glad that we learned about trees, nodes and linked lists last term, because having that background really helped me to conceptualize how DOM works.
Yesterday, I fiddled around with an 17″ Apple Display that was lying around and I managed to get it going! I’m happy that I get to use an LCD monitor now, since it’s much much thinner than the fat CRT I was using. I can put this much farther back on the desk, so that it doesn’t hurt my eyes as much. Now, if I can get sound working on my computer, I’d have the perfect workstation. I’d be able to listen to Clay, Kelly and Kalan at work!
Also, we went out to Moderne Burger for lunch yesterday, since the whole office goes out for lunch every Friday. They have awesome, awesome burgers there. I can see why they like going there, since it’s also only a five minute drive away. Afterwards, we picked up some cinnamon buns to snack on back at the office, since it was Russell’s last day.
You know that life is good when you look forward to going to work.
