Tim Powers Film - Kickstarter

Some months ago, Arcana Pictures optioned the television and film rights to Tim Powers' World Fantasy Award-winning novel Last Call. Now they want to raise money to film a scene from the book. The purpose is to use the scene to pitch a larger project. They're using Kickstarter to raise the capital so dig into your pockets and the back of your closet and pledge. More details are available via the link.

Tim Powers Update — THE BIBLE REPAIRMAN AND OTHER STORIES

Tim Powers Update — THE BIBLE REPAIRMAN AND OTHER STORIES:

J. K. Potter recently turned in the dust jacket and interior illustrations — one for each tale — for Tim Powers’ upcoming The Bible Repairman and Other Stories. We’ve fully designed and proofed the book. All that remains is for Tim to take a pass through the pages and sign signature sheets. As soon as those two tasks are completed, The Bible Repairman jumps to the head of the production list and heads to the printer.

All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records

The Tower Records story is about a man, his company and the unprecedented economic and cultural impact it had on the music industry and people around the world.   Tower Records begins with the man who created it… Russ Solomon.

From an early age, Solomon had a special love of music, a dynamic personality and the inventiveness of a crafty entrepreneur.  His first job was sweeping floors in his father’s drug store, located in the Tower Theater building, in the sleepy northern California town of Sacramento.  Still a teenager, Solomon had the idea to sell discarded record singles from the counter-top jukeboxes for 5 cents a piece. His father gave him a shelf in the back of the drug store and this became the training ground for Russ Solomon, the young man, who would one day create a Billion dollar a year music empire.

From the opening of the first Tower Records in 1960, Solomon empowered employees at each store to make the decisions necessary to help foster the local music taste.  This leadership style gave each Tower outlet a great sense of individuality and to its employees a great sense of responsibility and pride, not often found within the "corporate" environment.   Tower records helped lay the groundwork for what would become the modern music retail business and in the year 2000 alone, the company did over one billon dollars in business.

From a cultural standpoint, Tower Records had a monumental impact on millions of people, worldwide.   It was “the place” to escape for a few hours; a sanctuary, a haven. Tower Records was a place to meet your friends, your co-workers or a place to meet new friends who shared a common love of music, literature and all things cultural.

Yet, in 2004 the company filed for bankruptcy and by the end of 2006, Russ Solomon's Tower Records had shut the doors to nearly every one of its worldwide outlets.
So here is the “What, Why and How”…
As you can tell, we are looking to finish the production on our documentary film.  So far we have pooled resources and some initial seed money to get the project off the ground.  We are approaching this as a passion project, and as such are dedicated to making this film as cost effective as we can. In other words, we are trying to do this grassroots.

We hope that with a little help from you, and the Kickstarter collective, we will be able to see this project to completion. Your donation will go towards the small nuts and bolts of filmmaking.  These monies will help pay for various production and post production costs; including things like equipment rentals, additional personnel, and travel to locations to conduct interviews.

This will be a long process that will involve lots of time and energy but one that we are very passionate about.  Our goal is for this to be a communal process, so please be a part of it!  And please pass this along to friends and family, post it on your blog, twitter and Facebook pages...help us get the word out!
You can also follow the project on Facebook and Twitter:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tower-Records-Documentary/150978738296041
http://twitter.com/#!/TowerRecordsDoc

Video Photos Courtesy of: Karen Salomon

Video Music Courtesy of: Three Eighty Three's and La Strada
"All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison

Flix Brewhouse coming to Round Rock

Round Rock's version of Alamo Draft House is set to open in the summer 2010, the plan is to have six movie screens and six taps of house brewed beer (32 taps total).

http://flixbrewhouse.com

Create a Free Disposable Web Page with DinkyPage

Create a Free Disposable Web Page with DinkyPage: "

Have you ever had the need to create a free web page quickly to share information with a group of people or even a team member? You have to fire up your editor, make the page and then upload the page to the site, find the URL and pass it around.

Now we have discovered a service that does ALL the hard work for you! It’s called DinkyPage and can be found here.

All you need is content and if you want to use pictures, a place to host them.

When you arrive at the Dinky home page you have one large option and a smaller one below. You can create a new free web page or create a custom page with a custom name. This means your page’s URL will be something like www.DinkyPage.com/Name instead of www.DinkyPage.com/74u…

This is a great way to make the URL easy to remember and it looks better in an email. Create one of the links and move on.

If you choose the custom name for your page you will have to input it before your page is created. Next up you will find yourself looking at a What You See Is What You Get editor (WYSIWYG) – this makes creating the page ultra simple.

Start by naming your page in the page title area. This will show up in the web page’s header. Below that you have a text box to enter anything you want. Type in some text and then highlight it. Click the globe with a paperclip in the toolbar to create a hyperlink. This means when your reader reads this page they can click on this line of text to go somewhere else. The link will appear underlined. Go ahead and try it out.

The dialogue box looks like this:

For a normal link just leave it as is, but if you want to make the link a Mail To: or link to another portion of the page pull down the link type box and choose accordingly:

Now like I said before if you want to add images to your site they need to be hosted elsewhere. You can hotlink to an image by right-clicking on the website it is hosted on and selecting properties. Copy the image’s full URL and paste it into the URL box. The image will appear in the preview box on the right.

Hit OK and your image will appear with your text like so:

So below you can see my page with some text, a hyperlink and an image. I then hit the Publish Changes button in the upper left hand corner and the site is now live on the world wide web. You can see this page here: http://dinkypage.com/74u.

This is what your page looks like online. Not too shabby for a few minutes of work.

And if you used a custom name for your URL it will look something like this:

If you are feeling adventurous you can click on the HTML mode button in the upper right hand corner and edit the real deal HTML of your page. This is awesome for adding other code into the page or pasting in a ready made document.

Partly cloudy, chance of labels

Partly cloudy, chance of labels: "by Wiktor Gworek, Software Engineer, Blogger (Krakow, Poland)

In April, we announced that we wanted to hear from you about your wish list for features in Blogger. Many of you said that the label gadget should be more flexible. Today we are rolling out two enhancements to the label gadget.

Label Cloud

Previously, the label gadget showed a list of labels—and by far the most requested enhancement was to present the labels as a 'cloud' instead of as a bulleted list. That's now supported in the gadget directly:

Once enabled, the more popular labels appear in a bigger font than the less popular labels:


Selected Labels

If you've been on Blogger for a while, you might have more labels than you know what to do with. Don't want to show all of your labels in the widget? No problem: go to the label gadget settings and choose 'Selected labels.' You will be able to select a subset of labels to be displayed in the widget:


We hope you like it!

This is one of many features announced as part of Blogger's 10th birthday. Happy Birthday!

"

Google Reader Unleashes A Gaggle Of Nice Social And Feed Management Updates

Google Reader Unleashes A Gaggle Of Nice Social And Feed Management Updates: "

A few days ago, I sent out a tweet wondering how long it would be until Google Reader added a tweet button to the bottom of each feed item. My guess was that it would be very soon. I was quite right. Today, the Google Reader team has unveiled a bunch of new updates to the product, including, yes, the ability to easily tweet any item.

But that’s hardly all this update contains. You can also now easily send feed items to a number of places including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogger, and others. To enable any of these, simply go to the “Settings” area of Google Reader and enable the ones you want to use. If the services you want aren’t listed, you can even customize the “Send To” feature to enable sending items just about anywhere.

Another new feature allows you to easily subscribe to feeds owned by people you are contacts with. This is an obvious, but nice addition, as it makes it easier to locate feeds you may be interested in — assuming, of course, that you’re actually interested in the people you follow on Google Reader. This feature also includes Twitter updates, so you can easily import all of those and see that person’s tweets through Google Reader if you don’t feel like scanning Twitter all day.

But the best feature of the bunch may be the ability to have more control over the “Mark all as read” functionality. We all use the “Mark all as read” button when we’re too far behind on our feeds to possibly catch up. But now you can just mark items that older than a day, a week, or two weeks as read, saving the newest ones for you to still be able to read. That’s a great idea.

Google Reader still has some social issues, but it’s hard to argue with any of these features.

"

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a sucker for this kind of movie. It is an "up all night in the city, having an adventure" type of film. Similar but totally different films: Judgment Night, Go, The Warriors, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and even Adventures in Babysitting.

Incredible songs make me want the Soundtrack for my iPod.

I am getting a bit tired of Michael Cera playing the Dufus underdog rolls he seem so well suited for.

Put it in your Netflix queue and enjoy.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

My review

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finished book 2 just as Taylor finished book 3 of the Harry Potter series. I don't think that I will ever be able to catch up with her at the rate she is flying through these books.

It is nice to have a little book club right here in our own house, just Father & Daughter.


View all my reviews.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

My review

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I do not know why it took 14 years for me to "discover" this book. I guess I was waiting for my daughter to be old enough to read it first. Not bad for a "children's book".


View all my reviews.

Therefore, Repent!

Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe

My review

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

My first stab at reading a Graphic Novel. The plot twist at the end boosted my rating to "it was ok". I would have liked this better as a traditional novel. I need more exposition to flesh out a story enough to hold my attention.

I have not yet sworn off Graphic Novels, but one more like this will push me into the uninterested group of readers.


View all my reviews.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

My review

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting future history where there is no death, set for the most part in Disney World. You can buy this book at your local bookstore or Amazon, but it is also available for free from the author's website: http://craphound.com/down/


View all my reviews.

Shopgirl

Shopgirl by Steve Martin

My review

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nice to read a book by Steve Martin that is not humor based.


View all my reviews.

Quantum of Solace

Like a breath of fresh air, I finally got to see a movie that was not suitable for all ages. My Brother In Law Joe was nice enough to watch Taylor while Tawnya and I went out just the two of us.

Quantum of Solace is Daniel Craig's second movie as James Bond, and the first direct sequel in the Bond franchise. We saw Casino Royale in 2006 and Loved It! I suggest that you watch the first movie before you see the second as it will help keep the story line straight as well as help keep in mind his revenge motivation that fuels this entire film.

There are no Gee-Wiz gadgets aside from Super-Techie computer stuff and no cornball double entendre one liners. Also gone are the Shaken, Not Stirred drink order and the Bond, James Bond introduction. Returned is the classic Bond theme music interwoven throughout and the silhouetted girls during the opening credits. 

In the end, this was not as good as the last Bond film, but better than anything Roger Moore ever walked through during his term as 007.

Life, the Universe and Everything

Douglas Adams told me that the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything was 42.

Now that I have made it that far, I would have to say I will need to take him on his word. I am as happy as can be expected, but not anymore enlightened than my younger self. I find that I am at an age where I am still young enough to enjoy things, but old enough not get too excited about them. I am old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway. I am at the halfway point at which to the young I am old and to the old I am young.

I guess it will be smooth sailing until I hit 46, the average age at which 10% of middle aged adults experience a self-described midlife crisis which lasts about 3-10 years in men.

I certainly hope not, I don't tan very well and since the price of gas has gone up, I couldn't afford to refuel a Corvette with Premium very often.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

After listening to Sarah Vowell read from The Wordy Shipmates at Book People last month I decided to drop past the Round Rock Public Library and checkout the Audio Book The Partly Cloudy Patriot. 

The book was an interesting mix between a history lesson and a blog. Sarah mentions her family and friends almost as much as historical places and events. It helps put a handle on past events for regular people to be able to relate to. There were several celebrities that read quotes from famous and some not so famous people, and original musical interludes were provided by They Might Be Giants.

Listening to an author read their own words is never as dramatic as when read by a professional actor, but it somehow gives you a little more insight on who they are. Sarah is a bit of an odd duck, but I enjoy what she has chosen to share with the world.

Bolt

Another weekend, another Kids Movie. This weekend we saw Disney's Bolt. Bolt is the first Disney movie that was overseen by Pixar's John Lasseter. The movie has a simple plot like you would expect from a Disney movie, but it has the visual texture of a Pixar film. I had thought that the stunt casting of Miley Cyrus and John Travolta would be distracting, but it was not too bad. I wish they had cast George Gray as the agent because he looks like he was the model for the character. My favorite character was Rhino the hamster who was voiced by a storyboard artist that did such a great job in the rough track audio that they could not find anyone better to replace him. I expect that when the DVD is released it will include a short starring Rhino. Backgrounds were so photo realistic that I spent half of the movie not even watching the characters, but their surroundings. 

Time for me to see the latest 007 flick and get out of this Kids Movie rut.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Last Saturday we spent the day as a family of three, just Mom, Dad and Kid. We ate lunch at the brand new Mimis Cafe in Round Rock near the Premium Outlets Mall. The food was very good, and I especially enjoyed the Strawberry Lemonade. Since lunch went longer than we had planned we missed the 2:40PM showing of Madagascar 2 that we were aiming for. Since the temp was hovering around 50 degrees and we had left the house wearing only short sleeve shirts, window shopping the Outlets was out of the question.

We opted for the 3:30PM showing and sat in the "warm" theater and "enjoyed" the on screen infotainment/ads for half an hour. I laughed more at this movie than I did it's predecessor, but I was shocked at how much they borrowed from Disney's Lion King , including a version of Uncle Scar sporting a pompadour haircut. Part 3 of the Madagascar saga was green lit before Madagascar 2 even premiered, and opening weekend grossed more than the entire theatrical release of the first film in the series. I also heard that the penguins will soon have their own TV show.

All that aside, I am just pleased that David Schwimmer can still get work.

Zack & Miri Make a Porno...With My Brother

Saturday evening Tawnya and I saw Zack & Miri Make a Porno at Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Austin on 6th Street at the former Ritz theater. My brother Ron and his wife Lisa were in town for the weekend, and they joined us for their first Alamo experience.  The Alamo Drafthouse serves a full menu of dinner and drinks to your seat while you watch the movie. The theater is laid out like a traditional movie theater, except every other row of seats has been replaced with a long narrow table for your food and drinks. I chose the “PORKY’S” Pepperoni Pizza and a Frozen Margarita.

The movie was not as graphic, but much funnier that I thought it would be. I am a big fan of Kevin Smith, but I was worried about others in my party who were not very familiar with his previous work. Everyone seemed to like the movie as much as I did, although the 3 Coronas that Ron had during the show made him visit the loo with 20% of the movie to go.

We wandered up and down 6th Street long enough to see a drunk girl fall off a curb, Leslie Cochran wander by in a denim mini skirt and a disturbing fella in women's underwear in front of Ester's Follies .

To round out their Austin visit we also visited SoCo for Amy's Ice Creams and a drove across the Congress Avenue bridge so they could see the great view of the Texas State Capitol Building.