Matt’s Blog

The Blue Plate Diner is an excellent little cafe in Salt Lake City.  It’s fairly new, about two or three years old I’m told.  But it’s got a great atmosphere, with lot’s of rusty bikes chained up around the place.  There’s clocks on the wall that don’t work, and the help is very friendly and talkative.  Though they claim to have ironport soda, which is a favorite of mine, it’s but a mere shadow of the real thing.  I’ll have to keep looking for that.  The Blue Plate is definitely worth a try if you’re in the area.

Just saw A Scanner Darkly tonight with a friend.  It’s not really the kind of show that’s meant to be enjoyed.  It’s more of a story than a commentary.  At the end, there’s a list of dedications from the author to friends who lost battles with drugs.  While it’s a bleaker view of the future world than I’d care to forecast, I’d say we’re already there in many respects.  And not just necessarily with drugs.  Media has become such a narcotic in our lives, it’s just as addictive as chemicals in many ways.  And it definitely changes our perception of reality, but in a different, more dangerous way than drugs.  Chemicals alter our brains, while media alters our minds.

The Sci-Fi channel announced it wouldn’t be picking up SG1 for another season. While I am sad about that, I realize that it’s inevitable. I only hope that there are many more stories to come from the universe, and there is still Atlantis, which I think is shaping up to be just as good as SG1 was, not to mention the fact that it offers a great chance for appearances from SG1 characters

The Minibus website has got some new features. Make sure and check them out and give me your feedback. I’m slowly but surely learning Flash. It can be very frustrating at first, since you have to use the mouse a lot, and many of the tasks require you to do steps in precise order, and if you don’t you have to start over. But I’ve slowly started to get the hang of it. Now I just need a great graphics designer to do the icons.

Stargate SG-1 is an incredible series. Honestly, I’m a die hard Star Trek fan, and I never thought there would be anything to compare to it, but Stargate does. It’s a different kind of science fiction, because it’s happening in the present day. Star Trek can be so distanced, because it’s placed so far in the future, the people seem so different from us. But Stargate is in the present day. It’s a reflection on how we would react to finding out that the universe is not devoid of life as we think of it now. It looks at human values, and tries to determine what kind of decisions those values would help us make with a bigger picture in mind. That might seem extremely nerdy, but it’s really more than that. It’s an exploration of human nature, and that’s the most intriguing thing a human can do, the way we gain the most knowledge, is by exploring ourselves. Stargate does that in a way which no other series I know of does, and it does it in present day terms. And that’s why I hope to see it continue, even though some feel, and justifiably so, that the series should conclude.

I recently discovered Project Gutenberg while browsing the Wikipedia. It’s a project started in 1971 by Michael Hart with the goal of creating and distributing e-texts. There are probably thousands of volunteers adding e-texts daily to it. Today there are more than 20,000 texts in the collection, and they can be browsed at gutenberg.org. I’m constantly amazed at the passion for knowledge that some people possess. The volunteers are literally typing in these books for this project. Just to make sure that they are preserved. It’s a breath of fresh air in today’s commercial jungle.

    Jumpan, the greatest game ever. It’s a simple little game from the ’80s in which you are a superhero, and your job is to collect bombs. There’s lots of different levels, each with it’s own peril. It’s simple, fast, and mildly addictive. Not so addictive that you play until the wee hours of the morning without even realizing it, but enough so that you’re not bored by the game. I have fond memories of playing it as a kid on our IBM PC jr. This computer didn’t even have a hard drive, so we had to stick in a floppy to play. It sat on out kitchen counter for years. Our savvy neighbor held the high score for years.

My lastest Netflix arrival is the City of Lost Children. I’ve been running down the line of Jeanne Pierre Jeunet’s films because I find them refreshing in their different style. The films coming out of Hollywood have been very cookie cutter lately. I liked the film, though it was much more bizarre than I expected it to be. My favorite part of the show was One, he was a great character, reminds me of another favorite character of mine from The Wheel of Time, Loial. Both are big, slightly dumb, but fiercely loyal to their friends. A little like a human pet. Nevertheless, I wasn’t dissapointed and found the movie to be very different in style, but a little on the long side, probably not one of my favorite Jeunet films.

Well, my friend and I were unable to get a spot to present our transportation idea in the conference we were hoping for. Thus we are turning to the great and vast medium of the internet. I’ll be working up a cool flash website to help generate some interest in the project. Since I don’t know flash, it could take a little time. I’ll be posting to this test site for a while until we get a finished product and a domain for it: Minibus

Sometimes things just don’t go your way.  It’s easy to spiral down into oblivion by creating a chain of dissapointments to complain about, going from one to the next, and getting more and more angry about the circumstances.  It’s times like that when I prefer to concentrate on living life in the present.  Thinking about the past or the future can lead to dissapointment and doubt.  The present is the only time that matters, the only time in which one can make a difference.  Leave the past to the dust, and the future to your tomorrow-self.