sethcheek.com

My last post’s title is wrong.  Though to be fair, I did qualify what I meant later on in the post, I feel a little silly about it now.

First off, I have an iPhone 3GS, and I really like it so far.  Secondly, I didn’t even pay the discounted retail price for it, so my sentiment about the price not justifying the features still stands.  However, for what I paid for it, it’s definitely worth it.

My dad recently joined the ranks.  When he was deciding what kind of phone to get, I showed him my iPhone, and he seemed genuinely impressed.  He decided to get one.  Then, in looking at pricing, he debated the 3G for $99 or the 3GS for $199.  Then he thought of a third scenario.  He’d get the 3GS, and let me pay the difference, then he’d take my recently replaced 3G with a brand new Apple Care plan on it, and I’d take the new one.

Dad has a 3-week old 3G and I have a 3GS now.  When we separated this morning from the AT&T store, he was confident he could make and answer calls.  After a brief session with some of the apps last week, we now know that Dad wants the Google app, Vlingo and a few others neither of us could remember.

Saturday, I’ll be heading over to his place to get him fully set-up, with Wi-Fi at the house, the apps he wants and an overall comfort level with his phone.

With the enhanced camera and video camera, I’ll try to get some more stuff up on my site more often.  Maybe I’ll put up a cool image gallery or something, instead of the turd of a photo page I have now.

By the way, looking at some site data for my blog, I found that a few dozen people found my site by a goofy joke I’d typed in the last post about the iPhone 3GS+.  This is how rumors get started…

Seth Tech, iPhone

As much as I love my current phone, I’m going to pass on this new one, at least for now.  Here’s why…

First off, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t take one if someone handed one to me and said “it’s on us”, but at the price point, the features it offers are not enough to justify the cost.  I suppose my post’s title could be a little misleading, but “iPhone 3GS – I Would Want It Either Offered More Features or Took a Price Cut” wouldn’t fit in many RSS readers.

Arguably, the biggest feature of this new phone is its camera.  Both the video feature and the fact that it’s more than just a cell phone camera are compelling.  In demos, they showed off the ability to click an object on the screen that the camera is looking at, and that object will be what’s in focus.  So if you had a foreground, a subject and a background, clicking on any one of those elements would make THAT element crystal clear.  It’s also a 3 megapixel camera, which is leaps and bounds better than the turd on my current 3G.  However, I don’t take enough pictures with my phone for a better camera to be an attractive feature.  It’s not REMOTELY what I bought or use my iPhone for.

A feature that I WOULD want, if the price were right, would be the voice activation/dialing/etc.  However, a week before launch, I’m not completely assured that the voice activation isn’t in, or can’t be added to, the new 3.0 OS that EVERY iPhone will be getting soon.

I guess if the phone was more attractive to me, personally, I’d be more up in arms at the fact that as a 3G owner, I’d have to pay full retail price for one, starting at $399, instead of what NEW owners get to pay, starting at $199.  But that’s if I wanted one.  As it is, I’m not upset because I don’t think it’s a worthwhile upgrade for what I want out of the phone now.  As time goes on, I might change my mind.

Now, my friend Chris is looking forward to getting one, and for good reason.  One, he’ll be getting it at the acceptable price, and two, he’s moving up from his EDGE phone.  He’ll have the jump in features that made the 3G so attractive, PLUS the bells and whistles of the 3GS.  Hell, the jump from EDGE to 3G in itself was the most attractive thing to me about switching phones last summer.

Maybe I’ll wait for next year, and see what the iPhone 3GS+ can do…

Seth Rant, iPhone

And he knows why.  This was pretty funny, and clearly he has a sense of humor and appreciation for his past and what made him famous.  This in itself might be reason to record his show tonight.

Seth Family, Funny

New for me, anyway.  I just bought the car featured below.  I REALLY love it.  Before getting it, I considered things like air conditioning and a radio to be luxuries.  Now, I suppose I own a ‘luxury car’.  The video was on Kenny Kent’s website, but Sean helped me pull it off, so enjoy a video that would make Ken Burns cringe.

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This is also a eulogy for the 1990 Plymouth Voyager, known by Luke and Liv as the “Sweet Van”.  It’s coming up on its 20th birthday this year, and has been a loyal vehicle, albeit without a lot of features used commonly for driving, such as power brakes, an aim-able driver-side mirror, a driver-window that rolled down, a functioning oil gauge, AC, heat, a radio, a functioning lock on 2 of its three doors and several others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

I’ll put a picture up next time I’m home and near the van.

Share your memories of the Sweet Van in the comment section.  (If you’re having trouble, pretend it’s Bunny or something…)

Seth Car

Not only did I receive my first financial compensation for acting this week, I’ve also now been listed on IMDb.com for the same project.  So now, I’m a professional actor, with a foot in the door of where professional actors are listed.

HERE is my page. 

The movie is called Bloomington and it looks like it’ll be out next year sometime.

Now I suppose I have to find a headshot of some sort.  I think I have to pay for it, though, so maybe it can wait.  If/when the movie Lewis directed gets off the ground, maybe I’ll have a SECOND item.  Then I’ll have really arrived.

Man, I need to get back on the Twitter horse.  I’ll tweet this.

Seth Movies

I’ll start out by saying that I never watched the leaked “work print” of the movie that came out several weeks ago, which seems to be the source of most of the trash talk, since it was only released four days ago (from posting this).  After hearing all the negativity, I had pretty low expectations about the movie, but I thought, even if the movie around him is bad, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine would still be fun.

By the way, I’ll keep try and keep this as spoiler-free as any trailer you’ve already seen. 

This movie ended up being somewhere around the first X-Men movie, not quite to X-Men 2 level, but far better than the third movie.  Like I thought, Hugh Jackman was good, but some of the story around him was equally good.  There is MUCH creative license with his origin. Had this been Spider-Man they were dinking with, I probably would have been more critical.  However, with Wolverine’s past, so much of it has been muddled with false memories, amnesia, his healing factor “healing” his brain from painful memories, brainwashing and so forth, that it’s hard to definitively nail down his past, even IN the comics.

It pretty action-packed, with a few slowdown parts to show that Wolverine has a heart.  That may be another sticking point with die-hards.  He seems to be VERY sympathetic in this movie (and the following ones).  From what I’ve read in the comics through the 80’s and 90’s, Wolverine was more apathetic and self-centered than this, but I understand that you’ve got to care about the guy.  Otherwise, why would some of your audience watch the movie?

The weakest part, as I’ve discussed with some other people familiar with the source material, is the expendability of some of the complimentary characters.  From what I’d read, Gambit was an afterthought added by the writers after realizing that they’ve skipped him in three movies already, and the fans wanted to see him.  But unless there’s some director’s cut, he’s SEVERELY underused, using his kinetic power MAYBE twice, never his hypnosis, and otherwise just being really good at fighting with a staff.

The weakest part of the entire storyline, and what I’m betting is the most upsetting to the fans, is what they do with Deadpool.  It’s very weak, and I wish they’d just created a new character to do what he does, but instead, I suppose for name recognition, they pulled in Deadpool.  The only positive of that is that it doesn’t take up much time in the story.

Overall, I think the movie was as fun to watch as its predecessors, and don’t understand all the bad press it’s getting.

Now, the second, bigger surprise was the game of the same name.  This game is incredible.  It’s not the same as many other movie tie-in titles, rushed out the door to make sure it’s there for kids to buy as soon as they leave the theater.  This game is a Wolverine game, that just happens to have some ties to the movie. 

In an interview with Major Nelson, Don Vondrak with Raven Software’s explained that after doing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, they wanted to make a mature Wolverine game, and it wasn’t until a way into development that they were approached for movie tie-in themes.  The game, which was already very violent, could have some tweaks made to the plot, and they could continue making the game they wanted to make.

Then, in another bit of rare game development, Vondrak said the game had been wrapped up in December of 2007, but after the movie was delayed, they were given an extra 12 months of development time, which they used to polish it into exactly the game they wanted.

I’ve played several hours into it, and I’m TOTALLY impressed.  There are already several story lines that have nothing to do with the film, so I feel like I’m really forging new ground with Wolverine. 

Also, the game maintained the hyper-violence most suited for the character, instead of being watered down to match the tone of the movie.  So you get a better sense of the Wolverine in the comics, that you’re actually leading down this cool path of his broken memories.

Another amazing feature of the game is this incredible physics engine they use to destroy and rebuild Wolverine’s body as he takes damage.  His body can be stripped of skin, then muscle, then down to just bone.  Then, it will slowly rebuild itself as you watch.  It’s REALLY fun to experiment with.  At one point, I had taken a shotgun blast to the head.  Half of Wolverine’s face was gone, and just his metal skeleton showed through, but slowly, muscle tissue regenerated over it, then skin, then hair.  It was WILD.

I really liked both, so it was a good weekend for geekery.

Seth Movies, Review, Xbox

I apparently like game trailers with interesting music choices, like in my first post like this.  This is an old one, but now, after starting watching House, I remembered this one.  If you know the show, you’ll probably know why.

Do you like this one?  What trailers stick with you?

Seth Music, Xbox

I’m slow on some issues.  Many of my friends, including probably the biggest proponent, Regan, have been hounding me to start watching House, M.D.  I kept saying, “I have too many shows already.  I can’t get involved in another.”

This was a mistake.

I recently got Season 1, Disc 1 from Netflix, and watched the pilot and second episode.  I’m now disappointed that I’ve let the show go for so long, but at the same time, SUPER-EXCITED that I’ve got a show to watch this summer, when all my other shows stop.

The reason I’d been holding off is because I’m now into Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, Law & Order, LOST, The Office, 30 Rock, My Name is Earl and maybe one or two more I can’t recall right now.  It would be hard to commit more time to more TV.  But the timing of my discovery couldn’t be better, because all of my shows will be wrapping up in about a month.  Then, I can catch up at my own pace to the new kid on the block.

Also, Chris and I finished Army of Two last night.  After buying the game, brand new, for $19.99 at Wal-Mart, I talked Sean and Chris into picking it up.  Sean and I played through the first few levels together, but with his erratic schedule, it’s often kind of tricky catching up online.  Then Chris picked it up, too, and he and I blasted through it in three or four nights.  There’s still plenty of reason to go back and play more, also, so not only is squeezing the life out of existing games fun, but now finding the cheapos and having fun with them is great recently, too.

Seth Friends, TV, Xbox

Man, I had fun at the shoot Monday.  Getting there was a little stressful, since I slept through 45 minutes of alarm.  I needed to get on the road, I’d estimated, around 6am, to be there at 10am our time, 11am theirs.  I woke up at 5:45am.  Great start to the day.  So, after rushing to get ready and get on the road, I then was talking with Garth several times about whether he thought I could make it in time.  After talking with him, I got more confident about the situation, and he was right.  I was there with 20 minutes to spare.

After getting settled, checking in with one of the producers, and hitting the craft services table for some food, I pulled out my DS and waited for them to call me to the set.

I had about two hours of waiting around, which was fine because I talked with crew and producers, the costume designer and make-up and hair, and, as I mentioned, played a little bit of Chinatown Wars on my DS.

Now, the crew of this movie was unbelievable.  Around 20-25 people, dressed in black, wearing radios with earpieces and crazy utility belts.  There were electricians, gaffers, audio, grips, a director of photography, set director, THE director, producers and more.  It was a WELL-oiled machine.

When it was my time up there, I was called by a person with an earpiece to go to the set and get into make-up.  I sat in a chair and the make-up artist and hair stylist spent around 15 minutes making me look decent.

Then, it was onto my scene.  I think I had around 12 lines, MAX. We shot for around 5 hours.  We’d do the scene 10 times, then the crew would change the angle.  The actors would have to leave the set to get out of the way, and then be called back in 20-30 minutes later.  Then we’d do the same scene 10 more times, and the cycle would repeat.  Between takes, the director would come out and give us, well, direction, in what she wanted out of the scene. 

I had two scenes, so I had a wardrobe change.  Also, my hair was CRAZY spiky to an almost fauxhawk.  Apparently teacher’s assistants are TRENDY at this unnamed school.

It was INCREDIBLY interesting watching the process.  I’m SO glad I was a part of the project.

If/when I find out details about its release, I’ll definitely post here.

Seth Movies

Who uses those little skinny powder packets that try to make drinking water interesting?  I started about six months ago, and I really like a certain kind.  For some reason, the only ones that I feel are actually good for me are the invisible ones, that is to say the ones that dissolve without any dye, so they still look like water.  For some reason, I have it in my head that those are better for me, so I usually only drink the Propel ones.  My favorite is grape, but I’m branching out with Kiwi-Strawberry this week.

Also, in the upcoming film I was cast in, the costume designer has contacted me to know my sizes on certain things.  Will a tailor just do that for free?  Is there a place I can get it done?  I know some, but not everything.  What can I do?  Is it as simple as getting a cloth tape measure?  This is new to me.  I got a C in costume design.  I also got a C in ceramics, so I think I must just get C’s in classes that start with C.

Seth Theater