When Can I See it in Theaters

1 comment on this article Posted by Jachin in Technology on January 22nd, 2011 .

I have an idea for a website. It may already exist. If anyone knows of a service like this, telling me about it would be awesome.

Here’s the problem. I watch a lot of movie trailers. I see a trailer for an interesting looking movie and maybe it’s not going to have a wide release. I have not been able to figure out a good pattern to determine when these limited release movies are coming to a theater near me. Sometimes I get lucky and happen to look at movie show times and notice a movie I wanted to see just so happens to have a show time I can make, however more often then not I miss my chance to see it.

So here’s a solution. Make a website, you can create an account and it makes it really really easy to add movies to your ‘I want to see it in a theater’ list. In your account you set up a list of theaters based on your location. When one of your movies get a show times at a theater near you the site lets you know. You would configure your profile so you could choose from any number of common communication systems (email, RSS, SMS, twitter direct message, IM, etc) for it to let you know when you were going to have a chance to see a movie on your list.

I think the profit model for a site like this is fairly straight forward. You could put ads for other movies on the site and in the notifications (in a not annoying way of course). The ads could be more effective then random ads too, because you could show ads to users for movies they would be likely to want to see based on the movies they were interested in.

Here are some bonus features.

  • Some basic social networking features (following other peoples list) so you could see what movies your friends were excited about seeing.
  • Say there’s a movie you kinda want to see but are not really excited about. I have a few cheap theaters in my area, I could add movies to a different list that would tell me when movies on that list made it into a cheap theater so I could watch it there.
  • Taking the previous idea a little future, you could have lists for movies you want to know about when they’re on netflix, pay per view, DVD, rental, IMAX, etc.
  • Along the lines of how someone could make money with a site like this, it would be cool if it could suggest movies based on what movies you already expressed interest in.
  • I could see something like this also being extending to work with TV too. I have a cool dash board widget called TV Forecast that does a pretty good job, but it might be nice to have this all rolled into one system
  • The same thing could work for concerts too. Last.fm does a really nice job of this already (sometimes shows don’t get added though), but again, having it all in once place would be handy.

Anyway, if no one has made this yet, and no one does soon, maybe I will.

Let me know if you have any ideas that would make this site even cooler.


Jachin’s Christmas Playlist for 2010

1 comment on this article Posted by Jachin in Cool Stuff, Music on November 27th, 2010 , tagged with , .

I’ve never been a huge fan of Christmas music, some it’s ok, and there are a few songs I really like, but I usually have to be careful to avoid it until the few weeks right around Christmas or I risk getting burned out.

I’m borrowing (was inspired by) something from a blog I read pretty regularly called Planet Dan. In fact he just came out with his 2010 christmas playlist.

Me and Dan don’t exactly have the same musical tastes but there were some really good songs he found. So, between the stuff Dan has picked and a few Christmas albums/LPs I’ve collected that I like I figure I’ve got enough material to make my own Christmas music playlist this year.

So here you go:

  1. The Killers – A Great Big Sled. A fun song about remembering Christmas when one was young.
  2. Elvis Costello – (What’s so Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding. Maybe not really a traditional Christmas song, but it was the big number in A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!, so I figure it is on its way to becoming a classic. It feels Christmasy too because the song is asking the questions that get to the heart of what I think Christmas is all about.
  3. Haley Bonar – Rabbit in the Skate. I will take almost any opportunity to listen to Haley Bonar.
  4. Sufjan Stevens – Holy, Holy, Holy. Maybe my favorite version of this old classic. Also, I’m studying the book of Isaiah this year so the words have new significance for me.
  5. Haley Bonar – Only Xmas. Again, any excuse to listen to Haley Bonar.
  6. Sarah McLachlan – River. This is a sad sounding song, and it feels like it is more about winter then Christmas, but it sounds so good, and that kinda the point of this list. Also, even though it is sad, it makes me feel grateful for the good relationships in my life.
  7. Sara Barielles and Ingrid Michaelson – Winter Song. Two good singers, singing together and they sound great.
  8. Sufjan Stevens – Joy To The World. One of my favorite Christmas Carols and this is probably my favorite version of it. Sure, it’s fun to hear it really belted out in church but I prefer the slower quieter take on it.
  9. Rogue Wave – Christmas. One of the many songs about “what christmas is all about”. I kinda get tired of that theme, but this song is cool enough so I don’t mind.
  10. Krista Detor – Christmas in London. Not sure what the meaning of this song is, I’ve only listened to in a few times, but it seems to fit well with everything else on the list.
  11. The Be Good Tanyas – Rudy. A sad and beautiful song about a homeless guy on Christmas. A good reminder not to ignore people who may need help.
  12. Sufjan Stevens – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. One of my all time favorite hymns. I did not really know it was a Christmas song, but it was on a Christmas album and that’s good enough for me.
  13. Haley Bonar – Orphan Song. More Haley Bonar, and it still does not feel like enough. I’m not really sure how this qualifies as a Christmas song, but ever time I hear it I think of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen which I remember my parent’s reading to us kids around Christmas time. Plus it’s on Haley’s Christmas LP, so I’ll just take her word for it.
  14. Regina Spektor – My Dear Acquaintance. Just finishing things up with a new years song.

Carol and the Clear Creek Bandits

1 comment on this article Posted by Jachin in News, Personal on November 8th, 2010 , tagged with .

I got a call from the impound lot of Sunday afternoon. I did not get it because I was at the Vikings game (great game). They found Carol. No word on her condition though.

Monday morning I planned on picking her up. Before I could call to confirm things with the impound lot a got a call from the officer in charge of my case. He explained that they had arrested the person they found driving the car (there were two people in the car when they found it, they may have arrested both of them).

It sounds like they stopped the car shortly after midnight, Saturday night, so I guess they had the car for about 12 hours. In that time they smoked a lot. Among other things they took/ate all my Altoids (two nearly full tins of them) and took the cars manual. Looks like there might be some smallish external damage as well, but that’s nothing new for Carol.

At the impound lot they gave me the “keys”. It was a keychain, the key for my car was on there, but so were a few others. I told the lady only the one key was mine, but she said they were all mine now. I also found any (empty) 24 pack of Clear Creek Ice. They also seemed to take a rather destructive interested in the road atlas I bought during my road trip.

In the future I will be referring to them as the “Clear Creek Bandits”.

The lamest thing though, is that the impound lot charged me $138 to get Carol back. That seems a little unfair considering she’s there as the result of a crime someone else committed. Maybe if they can charge the Clear Creek Bandits I can get that money back.

So I guess next up for Carol is a thorough cleaning. We’ll see if anything else interesting turns up missing or found (hopefully nothing gross).

Also, I have a great roommate. Before I could get my car I had to go to the DMV where I need to renew my license that expired on my birthday (which I would have done on Saturday, if I had, had my car) and then the impound lot. I could have bussed/walked but Ben agreed drive me around and saved me a lot of time. Thanks Ben.


Home – Day 11

1 comment on this article Posted by Jachin in News, Personal on November 7th, 2010 , tagged with , .

The final day only entailed about an hour or so on the road, at least, that was about when I think I got home, I was pretty tired.

I was just going to take one load of luggage inside, then go straight bed and take care of the rest in the morning. I found a little energy left once I got inside though so I went ahead and unloaded Carol. Then slept, slept for a long time.

After sorting email and getting caught up on some computer related stuff, I decided to go for a little walk and take some final road trip pictures of Carol. Get the final millage count, etc. However when I went out to the parking lot, Carol wasn’t there.

I called my roommate, called my apartment’s towing company, and eventually filled a police report for a stolen vehicle.

Irony.

Fortunately, knowing how old Carol is (and having trouble in the past with her reliability) I have planned most of my life so it still works with out a car, I also knew Carol probably didn’t have a lot of time left, still, it was a bit sad. With this road trip I was only a few thousand miles from 200,000 and I was hoping to see that. Oh well, we’ll see if she turns up somewhere.

Here’s some stats for the road trip:

All the states I traveled, in order:

  1. Minnesota
  2. Wisconsin
  3. Illinois
  4. Indian
  5. Ohio
  6. West Virginia
  7. Virginia
  8. North Carolina
  9. South Carolina
  10. Georgia
  11. Florida
  12. Alabama
  13. Mississippi
  14. Tennessee
  15. Arkansas
  16. Missouri
  17. Iowa
  18. Minnesota

I feel kinda bad I missed Kentucky, I guess I just went all the way around that one.

Getting lost: I made numerous navigation errors, wrong turns, poor road selection, etc (too many to count). Nothing that really threw a wrench into any of my plans though. With a GPS it’s kinda hard to really “get lost”, but the GPS was on my phone so that made looking at it as often as I should have difficult.

Police: No direct encounters with the police. I totally ran a red light in Tallahassee right in front of a cop, I’m really surprised I didn’t get pulled over. Most of the time though I was not flaunting the law, so I guess it makes sense the police should leave me alone.

Car Trouble:
Not really anything new. I did leave my gas cap somewhere in Missouri. Also, losing my car at the end, I guess that might count as a car problem.


9 Hours in 30 Minutes – Day 10

0 comments on this article Posted by Jachin in News, Personal on November 7th, 2010 , tagged with , .

I ended up visiting with Isaac most of the morning. I do not talk with him enough and we had a some catching up to do. Typically Isaac gets Friday off so it being a Thursday night he didn’t mind staying up late. We actually ended up staying up so late talking I got to see Allison (Isaac’s wife), as she was getting up to go to work. Then I decided it was time for me to go to bed.

After some sleep Isaac showed around the house and explained all his projects and made us a hearty breakfast.

Then it was time to hit the road again. I left Meta a different way then I had arrived, but the road was just as exciting (steep hills, sharp turns) and with the daylight I could see how pretty the land scape around there is.

After coming out of the hills, it was time to tuck in for hours and hours and hours of empty corn fields. The one break came when I tried to stop in a small town in Missouri while driving around Kansas City, and get on the internet. I’d had, had good luck at McDonalds everywhere else, but this one didn’t have WiFi.

My legs were sore from all the sitting and pedaling, so I decided to drink my milk shake standing up out side. There was a guy who I had noticed coming in, who was still out there. He’s was sitting in an expensive looking tan SUV with the windows down, about 50 years old, listening to some sort of rock and roll I didn’t recognize, just rocking out. It was strange, but I got a kick out of how much he seemed to be enjoying him self. Just as I was about to leave the cops showed up, the part of the conversation I over heard went something like:
“Oh hi”
“Um… what are you doing here?”
“Just listening to music”.
“Well… you’re kinda freaking people out.”
“Really? I was just listening to music.”

I’d imagine the conversation when on for some time like that, seemed like a nice guy, hopefully he can find a place to enjoy his music with out a bunch of squares around trying to ruin his fun.

The rest of the trip seemed to take forever, and when it was done, it was like only a few minutes had past. I think that was probably because each mile looked pretty much like the last one. I feel kinda bad pilling on Iowa about how boring it is, but man, I-35 through Iowa is not exciting.


Previous entries
Recent entries