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A quick note. If you have not seen this movie what are you waiting for? This has to be the best film that I’ve seen in several years. I’ve seen it twice already (i never watch a movie twice) and I still get goosebumps watching the previews. It’s more than worth the ticket price.

Everyone knows that I love coffee… but that’s not the kind of Java that i’ve been into recently. I’ve been doing alot of reading and some experimentation in Java programming. I can see some of my friends and C-enthusiasts cringing behind their keyboards right now. Two projects that i’ve been really interested in are Jmonkey and Project Darkstar. They might give you a hint about what I’ve got floating in my head this holiday season.

The Hunt for Gollum is a wonderfully made short film, especially if you are a Tolkien fan. From their about page, “The Hunt For Gollum is an unofficial not for profit short film by a group of enthusiast filmmakers. As a Lord of the Rings Fan Film, we are not affiliated with the Tolkien Estate or New Line Cinema and are producing this project as an entirely non commercial film. As with other fan films we are making this purely for the enjoyment of the material and the experience of making a high quality low budget film.” Check out the movie on their site here. Enjoy!

This is too interesting not to mention. The State Department under Secretary of State Clinton is hosting the first government sponsored TED Talks (Read some details on the White House Blog). Along with fora.tv TED Talks is one of my favorite outlets on the net. It is an annual conference that aims that offers some of the brightest people around a platform to share their ideas. If you haven’t heard of it you owe it to yourself to set aside a few minutes (the talks are all under twenty minutes i believe) to listen to something different and interesting. So Bravo to Madam Secretary for partnering with the great minds of the country. This kind of partnership gives much reason for optimism about our general state of affairs.

I was reading skudd’s blog today and he mentioned a music service called pandora. It uses the “The Music Genome Project” to classify music mathematically based on over 400 attributes. It is very interesting and I’ve never heard of it before his post (yes, I live under a rock). Now it has become my primary means of listening to good music. I just type in a few artists that I enjoy and it automagically creates a line up of similar music. This is an excellent way to get exposed to new music.

I’ve created this easy listening station that I have been listening to. Enjoy the service and let me know if you share my taste in music or even share a station that you’ve created.

I have finally found something that i just can’t stomach. For those that don’t know I am not squeamish about eating exotic or weird foods. I’ve eaten everything from garlic sautéed frog legs to turtle fitada (sea turtle is a delicacy here) and I enjoy most. Well, i’ve finally found something that I just refuse to eat…Fruit bat.

It is also a delicacy here in the islands and like sea turtle it is illegal to harvest locally. Isn’t that the best kind of delicacy though? I’ve added a picture here and i’m not sure how well you can see it but the bat is prepared whole in a soup (kadu). People eat everything, the inside of the head, the fur, everything. I just couldn’t force myself to dig in and only had a small piece of meat from the leg. It tastes like chicken.

Anyways, that’s enough of that. Happy Easter everyone!

For the last few days I have become submerged in another world. I have been playing World of Warcraft pretty frequently. As a rule I am a cheap person… maybe frugal is a better word and this frugality has kept me out of the Warcraft experience. Now however I have found a decent private server for WoW and so I’ve decided to give it a try. So if you game but won’t sign up for that monthly fee download the official client and sign up on Inner-Realm. Make sure that you follow the installation instructions on Inner-Realm (the client must be 3.0.9).

Give me a shout if you do. I play a dwarf hunter named Meagher.