Vampire Hunter Dud

I placed Vampire Hunter D on my Nexflix queue last week and I have been anxiously awaiting its arrival. It came over the weekend and I eagerly placed this Special Edition DVD into my player and was completely disappointed.

Before any of you die hard fans freak out on me and remove my feed from your RSS readers let me clarify this statement for you. I was not disappointed by the movie itself, far from it I really liked the concept of a distant future where Vampires and gigantic Werewolves roam the earth and courageous men known as hunters keep them from slaughtering all of the innocent villagers. What disappointed me was the fact that a "Special Edition" DVD could have such piss poor visual quality.

You see I remember standing on the bleeding edge of the DVD revolution; and I remember when a "special edition" meant just that; there was something special about the disc. I realize that this is an older film but surely there was an old Japanese gentleman with a Q-tip and some kind of solvent that could have cleaned up the negative a little bit so that I could actually see what was happening in the scene. Perhaps someone would be willing to digitally remaster this film, because when I watch a movie I want clear visuals. I can handle darkness for effect but not something that seems of poor quality. Especially when I sit down and watch something animated nine times out of ten it is the visual elements that draw me into an animated film.

I don't know maybe Ghost in the Shell as spoiled me.

DOOMED!!!

Everyone goofs off at work. That has to be one of Newton's laws, I mean lets face it popular tradition has it that Newton himself was goofing off when he discovered gravity.

As I was saying everyone goofs off at work, I am no exception...actually I probably goof off more than any of you could possibly imagine. I have many clever ninja-esque techniques that allow me to goldbrick without detection. Every once in a while these techniques fail. Take today for example. I was sitting in my office downloading the new DOOM trailer when the Director of the Library and the Vice President of the College step into my office to have a quick chat.

With feline reflexes I minimize the window and pull up the decoy application that helps me fool the unwashed masses into believing that I am actually doing work. Everything appears to be going well until Quicktime, thoughtfully, decided to automatically begin playing the trailer once the download completed. By this time I am no longer at my desk but across the room too far away to close the window that is now showcasing Vin Diesel kicking alien demon ass. Naturally I decided to download the fullscreen trailer not the postage stamp sized one.

After the trailer finishes there is a moment of silence and I say the only thing that a person can say in that situation. "Whoops." Fortunately everyone laughed and I don't think that I will get into too much trouble over this incident. I do know that I will be modifying some of the default settings on Quicktime.

Give Me an iBook or Give Me Death!!!

I felt that it was my duty to bring this story to the attention of my reader who may not have made it out of their caves this morning.

In case you haven't heard tragedy struck this morning in Henrico County. The County was selling one thousand four year old decommission iBooks for fifty dollars. As is often the case demand for old computers quickly outstripped demand and massive throngs of people showed up hoping to claim their own slice of the Apple pie. (Oh yes I just wrote that!)

These people did what intelligent law abiding citizens do when denied the object of their desire; they stampeded!

An event of this magnitude must be imortalized with the first official Mike Evitts commemorative lithograph series.

With out further ado I give you this day in history:



Drawing By Mike


Drawing...I mean...LITHOGRAPH By Mike


Lithograph By Mike


Lithograph By Mike

I have read a few accounts of the ensuing stampede and they range from factual journalistic records to gristly tales of human suffering. One story even goes so far as to claim that the angry hordes who were denied an iBook tried to sate their thirst for technology by eating babies.

I left such sensationalism accounts out of my Lithographs because I was unable to confirm them...but as soon as I can I will present to you one hell of an anniversary series.

Sometimes It Pays To Go To Work

Every once in a while it really pays off to go to work in the morning.

Today is one of those days. I stumbled into work this afternoon with the sole intention of finishing half of the Range-finders that I had to create. For those of you not as steeped in the Library Arts as I am; a range-finder is that tag on the end of the book shelf that tells you what books are located in that particular area or "range." Consider yourselves enriched.

Now creating new range-finders is a task that my library has avoided doing for the last twenty years, so I got to start from scratch. This means I had the great fortune of learning how to create templates and stylesheets on MS Word that correspond to diemensions that no one in thier right mind would ever dream of using.

Thankfully I perservered, once the template was setup the job turned into pure data entry so I took this opportunity to explore the podcasting feature embedded in iTunes.

I spent most of my time typing and listening to TWIT which stands for The Week in Tech for those of you not in the know. In the words of one of the commentators TWIT is essentially an Algonquin Round Table for geeks. They discuss technology and gadgets, rumors and innuendo. I find it pretty interesting stuff.

But do not for a moment think that this is what made my arrival at work worthwhile! As I completed one floor's worth of range-finders my coworker came into my office and tossed a copy of the Heavy Metal Encyclopedia on my desk. This is the second time in two weeks that she has finally, after two years of employment, ordered a book that I have requested.



For those of you who do not have a copy of this fine resource at work, run to whomever orders your office supplies and demand that they requsition you a copy or else you will be forced to split thier skull like Dave Mustaine after a three day bender.