Archive for March, 2006

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Movie Review: North by Northwest

Posted in Alfred Hitchock, Cary Grant, movies, reviews with tags , on March 10, 2006 by Paxton


The wife and I have been on a classic movie kick lately. We love old Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart movies. As we watch them, I’ll put up short reviews of them in case you might want to check them out. The last one we just watched was North By Northwest.

I had watched this movie many years ago before I had a full appreciation for Cary Grant. The wife hadn’t seen it so I agreed to rent it and watch it again. Much, MUCH better than I remember. I thought, originally, that it drug in the middle and I was completely uninterested by the end. This second time, I was riveted throughout. Cary Grant is phenomenal. His drunk driving scene is unbelievably funny, yet scary at the same time. It seems he can do pretty much anything he wants onscreen. I can’t wait to check out more of his work.

The female lead, Eve Marie Saint, is just flat-out sexy. Period. She practically melts the film she’s so hot. The club car scene on the train between her and Grant is the closest I’ve seen two people come to having sex without touching. Just awesome. She plays a character with a nice story arc, and she does it beautifully. Did I mention she was dead sexy?

So if you are looking for a good thriller, especially by the master, Alfred Hitchcock, you can’t do much better than North by Northwest. Also, check out a young Martin Landau as the villain’s right hand man. He plays menacing characters so well.

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Why Windows Vista Won’t Suck Pt II

Posted in Microsoft, reviews, technology, Windows with tags , , , on March 10, 2006 by Paxton


Extreme Tech posted a followup to their Why Vista Won’t Suck Article. Check it out here.

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Why Windows Vista Won’t Suck

Posted in Microsoft, reviews, technology, Windows with tags , , , on March 10, 2006 by Paxton

I subscribe to several tech magazines. My favorite is PC Magazine. They always have really good articles on upcoming technology. Their website rocks, also. Their sister site, Extreme Tech, has some hardcore techie articles on it, but they recently put up a very good and in-depth article on Windows Vista. Check it out here.
I, myself, am eagerly anticipating the arrival of Vista later this year. This article sums up a lot of good points about why many of us are excited.

Some of the main changes I am looking forward to are the cleaning up of the user interface. Windows is getting an overhaul in the visual department. If your computer has the graphics capabilities, you will be able to run Vista’s Aero Glass, which is the REAL interface. It makes windows 3-D. You’ll be able to move windows all round the environment of your desktop, not just side to side, but back and forth. The windows will also be semi-transparent around the border so you’ll see the background through it.

Another cool little feature will be the Windows Sidebar. This will be a small menu that can dock on the side of your screen. The menu will contain little AJAX/Java applets called “gadgets”. This will be similar to the current Yahoo! Widget Companion (orignally called Konfabulator). I use the Yahoo! Widgets and they are pretty neat little apps that are updated real time and can show you your system resources, the current weather conditions, various world clocks or recite funny movie quotes. There are thousands of widgets out there that I’m sure will be re-written and ported to the Sidebar. Very cool stuff.

Security is another big issue Vista is addressing. The OS kernel is being re-written with security in mind. A lot of programs and actions will not execute through the kernel. When you add drivers or install software, since it isn’t updating the kernel, you won’t have to reboot. Theoretically. Hopefully this will work in the final product.

I don’t plan on upgrading to Vista right away, I’ll wait until it’s “in the wild” for a while then buy a new computer with enough graphics horsepower to run Aero Glass and have Vista pre-installed. For upgraders, If your computer can’t run Glass due to graphics liabilities, then Vista defaults to the classic Windows desktop without the graphical enhancements.

But really, what fun is that?

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My Blogs

Posted in blogging, Flickr, internet, personal with tags , , on March 10, 2006 by Paxton


Welcome to my blog!!

My friend Steve started a very cool blog over on Google Blogger (see his link Insight on Issues in my Blogroll) so I thought I would try my hand at writing a blog.  I have some good ideas for content so let’s see if anyone else will enjoy this or if I wind up writing this blog for my mother and 3 other people.  Hopefully we can all have some fun with this.

Other than this blog, I also have a photo blog at Buzznet. Check out my BuzzNet page here. I really haven’t updated there as much lately but I’m always updating my photo blog at Flickr.  Check out my Flickr page here.

So, without further ado, let’s kick off this blog with a few technology articles.

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