Thanks to twitter, I was able to keep a detailed record of the entire trip my wife and I took this year as we went, rather than try to recall it all after we got back home. It offered my friends and family up-to-the-minute news of our vacation, which made for a great way to let everyone know what a grand time we were having. It also had the interesting side effect of not having to tell my twitter followers and avid facebook friends about my trip at all – as they already knew everything we did! So for those that didn’t fall into one of those camps, here’s a breakdown of how it went:

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Bridgestone

FedEx

Pixar

Coca-Cola

This looks pretty awesome. Even if you didn’t care for the prequels, this may at least peak the interest of anyone who may have wished to see what happened during the Clone Wars. We shall see…

“The saddest, most desperately lonesome and melancholy mainstream film in recent memory.” – Walter Chaw

and i loved it.

After a fairly decent continental breakfast, we ventured down to Seattle Center.

Our first stop was the EMP (Experience Music Project). Now from reviews on TripAdvisor.com, we weren’t sure if it was going to be a so-so experience as many people found it boring (absolutely not) and overpriced (it was worth the $$). There was an excellent gallery showcasing the birth of rock as it related to the Northwest, and showcased very exclusive memorabilia from the 50’s all the way up to modern rock. An entire wall was devoted to the “grunge” scene.

Other highlights included an wing devoted to the birth of hip-hop in the 70’s, a gallery of show posters from all eras, an incredible wing devoted to Hendrix, and a huge room that held many of history’s most important and most peculiar guitars. It was awesome to see some of the earliest known guitars, the first Martin, first Les Paul, first Strat… a really amazing collection. The most awesome piece of the entire museum was a sculpture comprised of over 700 different guitars, basses and a few random drums, keyboards, and computer-controlled guitars that performed a live music soundtrack using MIDI. It was at least 2 stories high and really amazing to view and listen to.

We ate lunch at the brand new Revolution Bar & Grill (it was the their 2nd day open). Krissy after scraping off a few fish eggs, she enjoyed her “Seattle Rolls” sushi and a very flower-tasting iced tea. I had a Prime Rib and Cheddar with au jus. Yum!

We then strolled over to the Science Fiction Museum located in the same building. This place was excellent! All kinds of weapons and aliens and books and videos and movie memorabilia. The best stuff for me were the “Alien/Aliens” egg, facehugger, Alien Queen (she was HUGE!) and Power Loader. Really surreal to see them up close.

After about 3 hours spent meandering through the museum we walked across the street and Rode The Ducks. They took some WWII tankboats and converted them to tourist-carrying tour buses that took us all around Seattle and right into the water for a lap around Elliot Bay. The guide had plenty of lame jokes and unique tidbits about the city.

We headed back to the hotel via our great complimentary hotel shuttle and decided what we wanted to tackle next. We chose to stick to the Seattle Center area and drove over to the Space Needle area and ate a cool little pizza place called Zeek’s. We did the usual – half veggie, half meat. It was a little light on sauce, but fresh and tasty with hardly any grease.

Now that the sun had gone down we walked over to the Needle. It was a fast 45 seconds to the top. It had been a light rain all day so we figured a night view would be better than a cloudy day view. Walked around the observation deck and looked at some of the inside descriptions of the history and construction. It’s something you’d only ever need to do once, but still interesting and a great view of the city.

Our last event of the day was at the Pacific Science Center Laser Dome. When we were at the hotel I was looking up info about the center and noticed they had a new show playing that night. A TOOL show! Krissy and I are big fans, and we wanted to do something cool to end the night, so it was just the ticket. We stood in line with about 50 other young hipsters and then once inside, sat in the reclined seats and waited. The new single, “Vicarious” started the show. It was LOUD. The visuals were trippy and an epileptic’s nightmare. The show had songs from all throughout Tool’s discography and had some really cool fog and light effects that created swirling clouds of light and made what appeared to be 3D blocks and lines all throughout the dome. The music lended itself so well to the format since Tool’s rhythm is clearly defined. I talked for a bit with the laser operator and was surprised to find that he not only created all the animations, but most of the show was performed live, on the fly. He must have been a real fan himself because it was so well timed to the music.

We drove back to the hotel, took a quick dip in the indoor hot tub, and then went to bed. So now it’s Sunday morning. Our plan is now to check out the Pike Place Market and some more of the waterfront, and possibly hook up with Krissy’s friend’s sister, Amber, who lives out here in Fremont.

Daniel Baxter’s animated shorts suggest some better endings to popular movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Matrix Revolutions.

How It Should Have Ended

(Via Screenhead.)

Well I dove headfirst into some Flash programming this weekend and came out with a success. Now I know this is probably not the most efficient way, correct way, or best way to do this, but it got my XML parsing chops up, and I learned how to tap into the Amazon API while creating it. I’m stoked at the result.

What it’s doing is it’s taking my last played song’s Album Title and Artist Name (thanks to Audioscrobbler/last.fm) and sending it along to Amazon as a keyword search. Amazon then gives back an XML file with the results, and then my Flash app parses the XML and finds the node with the CD cover that matches the keyword’s search results. So if you look over there in the sidebar, you’ll see that the cover appears as it would show on Amazon. Pretty neat huh?

And here’s the code, if any Flash junkies want to see what I was working on. If you have any questions about it, email me or hit me up on IM. I still have to add something if there is no image available, and maybe try another service (Google, AllMusic) if Amazon comes up short.

// Allow this Flash app to show the loaded images consistently from the remote server, images.amazon.comSystem.security.allowDomain("http://images.amazon.com");////var audioscrobblerURL = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/rdf/history/[YOURPROFILENAMEHERE]";var audioscrobblerReply_xml:XML = new XML();audioscrobblerReply_xml.ignoreWhite = true;audioscrobblerReply_xml.onLoad = function(success) { if (success) {  //  trace(audioscrobblerReply_xml);  processAudioScrobblerXML(audioscrobblerReply_xml); } else {  trace("error loading"); }};audioscrobblerReply_xml.load(audioscrobblerURL);function processAudioScrobblerXML(audioscrobbler_xml) { audioscrobblerArtistTitle = audioscrobbler_xml.firstChild.firstChild.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild; trace(audioscrobblerArtistTitle); audioscrobblerAlbumTitle = audioscrobbler_xml.firstChild.firstChild.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild; trace(audioscrobblerAlbumTitle); // set the standard Amazon URL var amazonURL = "http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&SubscriptionId=[YOURDEVIDHERE]&Operation=ItemSearch&Keywords="; var urlEnd = "&SearchIndex=Music&ResponseGroup=Images"; var keyword = audioscrobblerAlbumTitle+" "+audioscrobblerArtistTitle; // create new XML var amazonReply_xml:XML = new XML(); // ignore the whitespace amazonReply_xml.ignoreWhite = true; // trace the returned XML and process it amazonReply_xml.onLoad = function(success) {  // trace(amazonReply_xml);  if (success) {   processXML(amazonReply_xml);  }  error = "error loading"; }; // send off the URL to pull back the new XML data from Amazon (note variable "keyword" comes from textfield on stage) amazonReply_xml.load(amazonURL+keyword+urlEnd); // create the function of processing the returned XML function processXML(amazon_xml) {  // amazon_xml is now a reference to the XML  // object where information is stored  // trace(amazon_xml.firstChild.firstChild.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.firstChild.firstChild);  albumCoverURL = amazon_xml.firstChild.firstChild.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.firstChild.firstChild;  //load CD Cover image into movieclip on stage  imageHolder.loadMovie(albumCoverURL); }}

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Extended Edition, has been released.

The Extended Edition will add an additional 50 minutes to the film, bring the total for the Extended trilogy to 11 hours and 20 minutes.

wow.
That’s a lot of movie to watch.