Yo yo yo yo yo

Everyone plug this url into your rss sockets:

http://jasonschwartz.tumblr.com

And remove this url from your rss sockets:

http://jasonschwartz.blogspot.com

Because that's where I will be sending the data for your information processors and it's 2x as tasty

Scribblenauts

This game looks pretty cool. It's coming out in less than a month. I'll definitely get it on my M3.

Doeo

I've been making a bit more music. Mostly experimental hip-hop that is very inorganic and sounds more like odd electronic jazz with some weird dub and a good amount of idm. I have some decent tunes on my MySpace account so check that out if you haven't heard it.

!!!!!!!!!!
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list of foods i ate yesterday/why i now have a stomach ache

in order:
slice of cold pepperoni pizza
two pieces of buttered sourdough
bowl of honeynut cheerios
ice cream sundae
pepsi
quiche
barbecue lays
pepsi
ice cream cone
taco bell chalupa
taco bell double decker taco
taco bell volcano taco
dibs

Television

I'm going to start watching tv shows and anime so I'm never really bored. I'm downloading The Office (US), Avatar: The Last Airbender and Cowboy Bebop right now. Then I want to watch like some old anime I used to like. Like Fooly Cooly, YuYu Hakusho, maybe DBZ.

failure

I haven't posted here in over a month. June is close to being over. I've been pretty occupied with school finals stuff and then work and parties during the summer. I think I'll work on posting stuff here more often but we'll see how it goes.

Lately

I have been way too busy to do anything productive. Recently, I've been considering playing more games. I'm too busy/lazy to play video games. WTF!?! Besides that (which I'll most likely get around to this week), I've actually been thinking about doing some sort of digital collage. ZOMG ZOMG!!! I haven't done one in forevs!! Yeah, but really, I've been looking at my old one's and I don't like them as much as I did before. I should make a good one that is up to today's standards. This ever changing world we live in. Fuck. That's it. Wait, no. Wait, yeah.

New Mew album?

Fine by me.

Winamp ipod sync fail

I hate iTunes. It's bulky and takes a long time to open. I currently only use it for podcasts and have been syncing music to my ipod with Winamp 5.x for the past couple months. I have much more than 80gb of music on my hard drive and only an 80gb ipod so I am constantly deleting music. However, I usually keep about a gb or so empty. Today I looked to find out that 13gb of space was free on my ipod. WTF? For some reason Winamp deleted individual artists from my ipod for no reason. I'm not going to back to iTunes and Winamp is great except for these syncing problems. Far better than Songbird even with syncing. So... I guess I'll just live with this. If I find a missing artist that I want I'll just re-sync.

classic shit

"I will fuck all the ducks in the kingdom."

-some dick

TF2 screen from last month

Playing on Well (ctf, I think) with Beau. Sudden death = heavy fight with melee only. Very lulzy.

LOL songs to stop illegal immigration

The US Department of Homeland Security has sent a CD of 5 tracks to radio stations in Central America to convince citizens not to illegally immigrate to the US. The songs contain scary stories about immigration including one with rape. I find this funny.

via [guardian.co.uk]

April is almost over

I've been finding myself with more and more things to do and less and less time to do them. I could honestly play Team Fortress 2 for at least 5 or 6 hours a day, let alone all the other games I'm playing right now. Usually, video games will take up a majority of my time after school and I don't even play them as much as I would like. Homework? Hardly ever have time for it or anything like it. I've been trying to do weird things like challenge myslef to do the least amount of work and productivity-related things at home and trying to fit them into my days' slight free periods. I don't know.. Just thought I would say that.

RE: why piracy is winning against the studios

I just read an article from the Epic Fu blog (by Steve Woolf) about piracy and the Pirate Bay's recent court battle. I posted a comment on the article but I will post my reply here as well.

Original article: [link]
Summary (by myself):
Studios think they beat the Pirate Bay and pirate movement in court with sentence but they are wrong. They are making people more aware and sites most likely will not be shut down. In an ideal world, piracy would not exist, but this isn't an ideal world. Piracy is here. It will never leave. However, if studios could appeal more to the consumer's new needs (media when, where, and how they want it) people may be willing to support them.

My retort:
You are contradicting yourself. You yourself said:

"So why does piracy exist? Are people really just thieves underneath it all? Of course not. People use sites like the Pirate Bay because it's available to them."

Piracy has long been upon us. Almost all media is free. Why would people pay a flat monthly rate like $9.99 for unlimited content if the unlimited content is already free? People who aren't afraid to pirate music, films, television, etc. will not stop now. Some like to say that if they could play a small fee like this they would. But would they? I doubt it. Piracy is never going to leave. These studios that think they have won anything are, as you said, completely wrong. They are putting piracy more and more into the mainstream's attention.

STALKER, TF2, tomorrow

Right now I'm installing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl which I torrented in like 2 hours while playing some awesome Team Fortress 2 with Beau. Probably going to sleep in a half hour or so... Going to work tomorrow at like 10:30/45am. After that I might see Kyle and Richard and then I have the Kalamari Dinner at Soquel. That's like 6:45 or so until like 8pm. Then party at the 418 with Keke and all those kids... Going to be a good weekend.

Doeo - 40Z

Mixin' it up with tha doeoz... like I do.

myspace: [link]
download 40Z (mp3): [link]

Silversun Pickups - Swoon

I have been listening to the first single off of the Silversun Pickups' new album, Swoon, and it is AMAZING. I recently listened to the entire album and I have to say it is not as great as their debut (which I love so much) but it is still very good. The single I was refering to, Panic Switch, is just soo amazing. Everybody should listen to it.

link to the Silversun Pickups' myspace: [link]

Team Fortress 2

Me doing my engineer thing on 2fort. I love TF2 very very much.

the best

The new Jesus... basically.

Fallout 3 screens

I've been playing Fallout 3 and I won't say anything except that it's a pretty good game. Here's some screens I took randomly. Settings are on High (out of LMHU) w/ GeForce 9500GT 1GB mem.

tumblr update

Tumblr has been confusing me. Sometimes I want to use it instead of blogger, sometimes I only want to use blogger, and most of the time I want to do different variations of using both. I have finally decided that I will not use tumblr at all because, after trying to do a few things, I have decided it is not as good as blogger. Soo that's that.

The Rookies: NEW Microsoft Ads

I've seen three new ads from Microsoft using children to show how simple their OS's are (focused on features of the new Windows Live Photo Gallery). Everyone who knows anything is probably saying, "LOL, Microsoft finally found a marketing group suited for their products", but think about it. Is Microsoft as simple and child(/elderly)-friendly as Macintosh? Maybe XP or 7 but Vista would be confusing as hell for someone who didn't really understand computers. Definitely not as simple as Mac OSX would be. Besides for the reality of this, you have to admit that this is a genius marketing scheme. Who has lots of money? Elderly people love to buy computers for inane, simple tasks like email and word processing alone. They also love to buy presents for their kids and grand kids. "Oh, Microsoft Windows is obviously really easy for kids to use because I saw this commercial."





(The one more I saw with "Adam, 8" was harder to find on an embeddable site.)

HOWEVER, the same boy is in this ad from a series of 3 new ads from Microsoft which even further stress simplicity for CHILDREN and the ELDERLY.
("7 vs 70", "8 vs 80", "9 vs 90")



ALL children's Windows Live Photo Gallery ads: [link]
ALL children & elderly ads: [link]

Imageshack

I love how imageshack now has the direct link to your image (AND a new short link) in plain view at the top instead of hidden at the very bottom. This is now the ultimate reason why I will use it more than photobucket.

nin @shoreline amphitheater

NIN is playing at the Shoreline in Mountain View, CA on 22 May 2009. My dad said he was going to try to get tickets and the presales aren't sold out as of this post so I think I have a good chance of going. It sounds like it would be awesome because I saw them in winter 2006 and they were great. Also, I've liked their latest releases and live footage AND really wanted to see them during their last North American tour but missed them.

tumblr update

Going to use tumblr to post photos and other things and blogger to post blogs.

switching to tumblr

I am now going to be posting to my blog at tumblr because I like it a little more than blogger. I will keep this blog up and have my tumblr import its posts if I ever use it again.

Subscribe to my blog @ http://jasonschwartz.tumblr.com/

News feeds

Since Nick introduced me to RSS last year, I have been regularly reading various blogs and other feeds. I just thought that I would let everyone know that I do (almost) regularly share posts that I like and you can subscribe to that here or just check my blog.

Domestic violence

I have never condoned domestic violence and never will. That being said, I've been hearing a lot about this whole "alleged" Chris Brown and Rhianna situation. So Chris Brown "allegedly" abused Rhianna? If this is true, I'm with everyone else. But, come on! Has anyone been looking at what is being said? First of all, everything is "alleged". He "allegedly" did this and "allegedly" did that. I haven't seen any pictures of Rhianna with bruises or other injuries. I haven't seen any official statements. All that I have heard and seen is accusations. And now guess what? They're writing a duet. They're writing a book, too. I don't want to be Mr. Super Skeptical, but at the moment, I am. I smell bullshit. And I don't like it.

Watchmen Re-Hash

I saw the film Watchmen by Zach Snyder three days ago (last Saturday, March 7) and immediately gave it a pretty harsh, negative review. At first, I really didn't know what to think. I very, very much enjoyed the movie. After a half an hour or so I started to think I liked it okay but then after a talk with my dad, who also saw the movie (but didn't read the book first), I decided I really didn't like the movie for a number of reasons. As of now, I have spoken with multiple people I know who have seen the movie and at least half of them haven't read the book (while a good amount still had). Finally, after a few interesting discussions on the book and the movie (and re-reading portions of the book and movie art book) with my good friend who first showed me the book, I have decided that I like the movie much more than I originally thought.

There are a good amount of problems with this movie (mostly, I will now say, with the portions left out of the movie) but there are also a lot of great things. Snyder decided to almost directly translate the scenes he shot from the book instead of taking the books general story and themes, tones, etc. and making that into a movie. I'm not really sure what I think of this as I have no idea how the latter would have turned out. However, I have realized that the performances of Rorschach by Jackie Earle Haley and Dr. Manhattan by Billy Crudup were actually outstanding. Also, the fight sequences were alright considering I re-read the fights in the book and found that they were quite similar, contrary to my earlier belief.

Besides for this, I am still in between loving this and being really happy about it and disliking it for obvious reasons. Every time I hear a good review I go, "Oh yeah! It was awesome because of all that." And then every time I hear a bad review I go, "Oh yeah... He did do that." So I just don't know. I don't want to praise it or trash it. Some parts were good, some parts were bad. Some actors were great, some okay, some were terrible. Some details that are included make it amazing and some are just too much. One thing that I really believe is that at least Rorschach's history should have been included more and possibly more emphasis on the Keane Act. So, anyway, whether you read the book or not you should probably go see it. But if you can, definitely read the book first! It is 100% better than the movie.

Watchmen 2009

I love the Watchmen. It is definitely one of my favorite books ever. But.. I strongly disliked this movie. Honestly, there are just a few major problems that ruin the whole thing. First, it tries to be too many things. The book wasn't an action movie. The insertion of these dramatic fighting sequences, that for the most part hardly even took place in the original work, completely trash the story's integrity. Second, the story is not intact. In the movie, the direct plot line of the book is made into a motion picture. None of the details are present. So many things happen that make no sense to the viewer because details were left out of the adaptation. Things that are shown to have great meaning are really just shallow pieces of garbage compared to the strong deepness of the writing. Third, the movie just can't portray the darkness of the book (especially, Snyder's direction). Watching Rorschach kill the murderer's dogs and then kill the owner and seeing the rape scene and watching Rorschach pour the oil on the man's face just looks stupid in the movie. The graphic violence doesn't come across as dark or moving or anything like that. The real, true darkness of the book lies in the words. The actual events are what scars your mind and makes you think and re-read what just happened. Fourth, the acting is terrible. Aside from a few choice actors all of the acting in the film is cheesy and stupid. I know it is hard to adapt comic book style dialogue and movement to film but these actors do not do it justice at all. Also, before I move a little more in depth, (old) Sally's make-up was terrible.

Now I will just say a few things I felt about this movie and its production. Zach Snyder is a great director. I loved his Dawn of the Dead remake and 300. When the production started for this, for some reason, I thought he was the perfect director for the job. Now that I've seen it, I know better. He is a dramatic, action-movie, 300 adapting, CG kind of guy. I'm not going to call him big-budget Hollywood just yet because I think he is going on to make much smaller movies currently. However, this is a big-budget movie and that is a main reason that it is so bad. The action scenes don't fit. The story is too shallow (similar to the Lord of the Rings adaptations). If Darren Aronofsky had actually made this (as he was earlier alleged) it may have been much better. Aronofsky has style, like Snyder, but he doesn't have to have over the top action scenes. He doesn't need huge amounts of CGI. This movie could have been a much more story-oriented intellectual film instead of a Blockbuster Hollywood action movie like it turned out to be.

I have so much to say about this but really not that many people read this blog and those who do probably didn't even read the small amount I did write. Overall, I was disappointed. But now that I think of it, I don't know what I expected. It just all makes sense now. Big budget = corporate input = action scenes and story cuts.

Plus, no tentacle monster? Come on!

Right nao

My mom is being really aggravating... Anyway, I have an appointment today at 3:30pm to get my teeth examined for some root canal goodness. After that, I plan on playing Xbox as I just got 13 months of Xbox Live Gold (actual good thing my mom has done for me this week).

I guess I'll just use the rest of this post to say that I wish I wasn't at school... And TF2 is amazing.

///also...

I have gotten a job

And that job is at the Beach Boardwalk. Yeah, I only get $8.25 an hour and I can only work 16 hours a week until spring break starts but I don't really care. I got a job. I get to give prizes to little kids and deal with angry people. So... now I'm gonna make bank. AND drive a Range Rover.

Academy Award 2008 results

I am so disappointed with this year's Oscar awards that I won't say much in this blog. 8/20 of my picks were correct and that means that 12 were not. Strongest in my mind, I am disappointed that the Wrestler wasn't even nominated for best picture and further that Mickey Rourke didn't win best actor. In then end, I think it is ridiculous how much critical success Slumdog Millionaire has earned because I really didn't think the movie was anything special.

Windows 7 MS Paint Update

The new MS Paint update that I got on Windows 7 is actually pretty cool. I've stopped using Vista completely because with Windows 7, I now realize how much I really hate it. Yet, I'm still not at the point were I have all my old software from Vista on 7. I just download things when I feel I want or need them. So, back to the point, I've been using MS Paint for all my Photoshop-esque needs and haven't yet had the need to pirate Photoshop CS4 or get back on the old GIMP. That being said, I haven't made any real artwork for a while so we'll have to wait and see. Also, I haven't really delved into Paint's features to see if it is even better than before. I just think it looks cool.

Runescape

Right now, I'm playing Runescape. More precisely, I am grinding on cows and eating kebabs. I just made 10k by cutting down oak trees for an hour and selling the logs. I was grinding for an hour on trees! I know the graphics aren't good, but I love this game.

The International

I just saw the movie The International with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts and I should say that it wasn't a terrifically good movie but I did enjoy it. It started off fantastic. There was great writing (Eric Singer), cinematography (Frank Griebe) and directing (Tom Tykwer). The film had a very interesting style that was similar to the British crime thrillers like Snatch and L4yer Cake but very different in a more subtle manner. The film was also more grounded which is something I enjoy in a movie of this sort. Up until the big action scene in the Guggenheim Museum (which was an entire replication of the museum! and was an awesome scene!), I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Then, just after that scene, the movie lost all credit for its great style and attention to detail by snowballing into a sort of cheesy Hollywood finish that had a very hollow meaning. Particularly, the interrogation scene and ending scene were disasters. The film touches on subjects like truth, corruption, the world's current condition and things of that sort, but where it started of hard it ended weak. I think the writer started of with a good point and way of putting it out there but got lost in the complexity of the issue and failed to come through with substance. All in all, I would recommend that you see it if you like yourself some Clive Owen.

Dollhouse Premiere

I know that it is about 3 or 4 days late, but I just had to make sure I saw the right video. Dollhouse sucks! It is one of the worst television shows I have actually watched in awhile. I don't even know if I will see episode 2.

American Idol - Season 8 Hollywood Outcome

WTF American Idol?! The last two episodes of Hollywood (S08E10, 11) weren't so bad after you trashed the previous one's with that drama bullshit. But towards the end of the Hollywood finale you fucking send the black guy with the piercings home and let Tatiana Del Toro through AND the chick with black hair who forgot her lyrics twice? First you use terribly poor editing to try and create drama in the auditions and Hollywood segments and then you implement groups AND the latest sing-off crap. So stupid.

Infectious mononucleosis

So, I'm sitting at a computer in the library getting warmed up by listening to IDM on Pandora Radio, reading some rss, checking my mail, and checking torrents. Then, I reach into my pocket to pull out my 8gb flash drive but it isn't there! So that sucks because I thought that I brought it to school today. There is always a chance that I left it at my house, but I really hope I didn't lose it.

Anyway, I still have a little over 30 minutes until lunch starts so I'll troll around a little longer. Also, I have to walk home today which really won't be that fun.

Academy Awards

So... the Academy Awards are coming. Last year the Oscars was the first award show I really watched with interest and I thought it was okay. I saw the Golden Globes this year and thought that was kind of lame. Anyway, here is what I want to win for each category that I can make a fair guess about (I know that a lot of these won't turn out how I would like).

Best Motion Picture of the Year - Milk (Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks)
(Why wasn't the Wrestler nominated?!)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role - Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - Meryl Streep (Doubt)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role - Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role - Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

Best Achievement in Directing - Gus Van Sant (Milk)

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen - In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published - John Patrick Shanley (Doubt)

Best Achievement in Cinematography - Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight)

Best Achievement in Editing - Chris Dickens (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Achievement in Art Direction - Donald Graham Burt, Victor J. Zolfo (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button)

Best Achievement in Costume Design - Danny Glicker (Milk)

Best Achievement in Makeup - Greg Cannom (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button)

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score - A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song - A.R. Rahman ("O...Saya", Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Achievement in Sound - Ed Novick, Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo (The Dark Knight)

Best Achievement in Sound Editing - Ben Burtt, Matthew Wood (Wall-E)

Best Achievement in Visual Effects - Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, Craig Barron (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button)

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year - Andrew Stanton (Walle-E)

Best Short Film, Animated - La Maison en Petits Cubes (Kunio Katô)

Windows 7

I love Windows 7! I think that everything about it is an improvement from Vista. Recently I've been using the gadgets and althlough they aren't as good as Mac OSX they are 1000% better than in Vista (I am actually posting this blog from my Blogger desktop gadget). The new taskbar is also very great. It allows for better tasking and is very, very smooth. Although, (as Nicholas pointed out to me) it does not work like OSX's dock in which programs will remain open until closed (meaning that you can close your windows and leave the program running). The control panel is still a little messy but is definitely better looking in the finished view and the aero effect is also smoother in my opinion (especially with proper hardware). So I won't really go more in-depth but I think Windows 7 (build 7000) is a great OS, especially for a beta.

Two things I dislike, however, are that certain programs that worked for Vista don't work and that this beta is very lightweight and will probably be bloated in the official release. I am sure that the programs I need will work eventually and I hope that the official build is as light, in the end.

Nike Team Wolf sneakers

Nike is selling less than 72 pairs of these limited edition Team Wolf sneakers. They are SOOOOO awesome. And they are also $200.
[link]

Running On Hope

Hilarious video I saw on the Epic Fu Blog (post by Zadi Diaz) originally posted on Vimeo.

>.

saturday school

this is what luther wrote today in saturday school:

Once upon a time, there was a great hero. He fought demons and bears. He also had a large cock. That cock was a snake and it ate its way to freedom. The cock/snake attacked a virgin and she screamed as it penetrated her deepest hole. Then an explosion. Then the end.

it was hilarious and we all laughed waaaaay too much.
but still... i'm so bored today.

photoblog

i deleted my account at photoblog.com because, even though it was kind of cool to be able to look at pictures i took everyday, it was a hassle and i can post stuff like that here. so, anyway. that's that.

driving, photoblog

today i took my final driver's training lesson which means that i am now applicable for my driver's license. all i need to do is pass the test which i am signed up to take on friday. i'm pretty sure i'll pass so i should have my license soon which is awesome. i can't wait to drive places that i couldn't go before like san francisco and what not.

besides for that, i am posting daily on my photoblog which you can subscribe to with rss.

2009, new year

2008 was an alright year for me. I don't know for sure if I would say that it was a good year or a bad year but it was definitely an important one. I turned 16 and made new friends and really changed as a person. Now that it's 2009, things are probably going to be really different.

some resolutions:
1.exercize
2.meditate
3.eat well
4.take care of myself
5.not take things too seriously
6.watch a lot of movies
7.read philosophy and other informative literature
8.be nice to people
9.get a job
10.take photographs