Logical Eccentricity

Citibank raised their E-Saving APY to 5% today. This is the highest rate offered by any retail bank. I strongly suggest that you go and open up one of these accounts. It is a great deal for anyone with a Citibank account.

I finally got a chance to watch Syriana now that it is out on DVD, and it was a very interesting movie. Based on that trailers that I had seen, it seemed like an action paced movie with hardly anything else. It was actually a very interesting movie with multiple plot lines all revolving around oil.

It is a little hard to follow all the plot lines, but basically it’s all about controlling oil. One plot line revolves around a major merger between two oil companies that will create a huge conglomerate that will be one of the most powerful companies in the world. Driven by their greed, the people involved will stop at nothing to see the merger successfully through, including sacrificing one of their own employees. Combined with this, is the law firm dealing with merger. Since the merger will create a huge company, with undoubtedly large legal needs, the law firm is just as eager to see the merger through and will do anything to achieve their goals.

Next we have a power struggle in the Middle East between the two sons of an aging king, which has attracted the attention of the American government. The American government, fueled by business interests wants a clear and decisive victory for the younger son. The younger son is willing to let status quo stand, and has no vision for the future. On the other hand, the elder brother wants to reform his country and build a nation to benefit its own people. Finally, we a have a plot where we see how the oil struggle fuels and pushes people into the radical Islamic movement in the Middle East; a religious movement that provides people with a feeling of brotherhood, righteousness, and most importantly, a sense of belonging in a world where they have nothing.

Overall, Syriana was a pretty good movie. The various plot lines can be hard to follow at times, but they are all tied together in an excellent manner.

Over the past few weeks, since I launched this new layout I have been tweaking the CSS file in an attempt to make my site look the same no matter which browser you use. This is a real problem, because all browsers render CSS differently. Mainly it is a huge problem trying to get Internet Explorer and Firefox to look the same. The best tool for a web developer in this problem is installing as many browsers as possible on your computer. For example, I have FireFox 1.5.04, Opera 9.00, and Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 installed on my computer right now. While I do not have all of browsers installed, I have the major players.

A very important and amazingly useful site is www.browsershots.org. Essentially this site takes a screenshot of your website using several different browsers, and posts the pictures online for you to view. This is made possible through their screenshot factory that automates the entire process of going to a website, taking the screenshot and posting it online. If you have not used this website before, I highly recommend it.

As soon as I get access to them, I will post the screenshots of this site in a post to give you an idea of what it looks like.

I finally got around to watching X3 tonight. While it was a good movie, I must say that I was disappointed by it. I felt the first two movies were a lot stronger, and more thought out. Basically, it seemed as if this movie jumped from one point to another, without tying it together. This leads directly into the other major flaw, irrelevant character development. A couple of the major characters barely get any development, for example we meet Kitty in this movie, and hardly find out anything about her. On the other hand, Warren Worthington, the Angel, is introduced in the start of the movie, and it seems as if he will play an important role but doesn’t. He barely has any lines in the movie. Finally, the movie was way too short. Had it been two and half or maybe even three hours long, it would have been much better. All the necessary characters could have been fleshed out completely and the movie would have made more sense overall.

That being said, it was a good movie, and was defiantly worth watching on the big screen. The movie is action packed and a lot of fun to watch. Out of the big name action movies so far this summer, it was pretty good.

As a side note, my favorite mutant from this movie was Colossus, and I hope he plays a bigger role in future movies.

PS - When I first saw the kid, Leech in the movie, I knew I recognized him from somewhere… He is Cameron Bright, and was in Stargate SG-1 recently, and that was where I saw him. Just kinda cool, and felt like mentioning it.

MyWallop is Microsoft’s attempt at a social networking site. The social networking space is very competitive, with numerous sites competing for members. Microsoft will have a hard time successfully entering it. I was able to get an invite to MyWallop and have been playing around with it.

The entire site is built on Flash, so it looks and function very nicely. Flash is extremely smooth when used correctly, and the transitions on MyWallop flow naturally. But that’s all it has. The interface is non-intuitive. While it looks pretty, it has hard to understand the connections between people, and how to add people as friends. When compared to the other social networking sites out there, My Wallop certainly looks impressive, but it is too difficult to effectively manage.

Beyond the difficulties of the system, right now it is unclear how MyWallop will generate revenues. Most social networking sites sell advertisements; currently MyWallop has none. While this may change, the entire site is in flash, text ads will look awkward along such a design. Furthermore, since most of the pages have the same basic layout, the only logically position ads right now would the lower right corner of the site, not a very effective location for text ads.

In conclusion, MyWallop needs a lot of work before it can be released to the public. It has the potential of being big, if it is correctly launched. However, with an extremely competitive environment, it will be hard.