What's with today, today?!

i wish i had time to watch lots and lots of movies

2006-11-13T18:24:00.000-05:00

In my COM201 class we have been working on movie reviews, and it reminded me how useful IMDb is for finding out information about movies. The Internet Movie Database is a website that I use on a regular basis to find out information about any movie or actor. Users can search by names of actors, movies, directors, producers, writers, etc. Each movie entry includes a list of all the actors and their characters, a plot summary, reviews, interesting facts, discussion boards, and memorable quotes.

The reviews are submitted by users who are registered with the site. Anyone can register on IMDb and review films, although a good reviewer can gain credibility because other users can rate the "helpfulness" of each other's reviews. The other information (trivia facts, quotes, cast lists, etc) is compiled by the professional creators of the website. The information on IMDb is well organized into sections within each page. Visitors can easily search for any movie and then click on links to people invovled in that movie. All of the different categories of information give a well-rounded portrait of every movie and actor in the database.

A website that competes with IMDb is rottentomatoes.com. Rotten Tomatoes has most of the same features as IMDb, but its movies are reviewed by professional movie reviews from a variety of newspapers, websites, and magazines. This gives users a more critical look at the movies, and makes the reviews a bit more dependable. Both sites are very useful, and even allow users to search for movie times in their area so that they can go out and see the films which they have just read about.

Random Rants (or "Procrastination")

2006-10-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

I am not excited for my first big midterm exam of this year: African Art History. It's tomorrow, and I can't bring myself to study nearly enough. That's the main reason I'm writing this second blog entry of the night... procrastination.

Normally I'm a fan of autumn- the folliage is pretty, the temperatures are not at either extreme of too hot or too cold, and I love shopping new cozy sweaters- but I do not appreciate being catapulted into winter temperatures because the heater in my dorm room does not work. I think it's because the powers-that-be at BU refuse to pay for heat until it is absolutely necessary, and will probably refuse to turn our heaters on until January. Last year, my room was ALWAYS an uncomfortably toasty 90 degrees (even if there was a blizzard outside, I was sitting on my bed in a tank top), but this year I have keep piling layer after layer of blankets on my bed (i even pulled out a blanket that I bought last year and hadn't even taken out of the package until yesterday).

I HATE ALL THE CONSTRUCTION IN KENMORE SQUARE. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS RIGHT UNDER MY WINDOW AND BEGINS AT 8AM. I dread having to go to the bank, because just to get to the other side of kenmore square I have to cross the street at least 5 times (that's 4 more times than it should take to get across the street, and 5 chances to get killed by crazy drivers). Not cool Boston, not cool.

my mother always told me to write thank you notes

2006-10-16T21:02:00.000-04:00

I have added links to a few of my CS103 friends' wonderful blogs on the sidebar of my blog... so you should visit them!

Thank you very much to Meghan and Julia for agreeing to list my blog on their sidebars. Hopefully this means I will have more than one reader next week, and my Google Analytics data will start to be less depressing.

google analytics

2006-10-10T20:05:00.000-04:00

I installed Google Analytics on my blog. I have had one visitor. Yay!

Data Range	Visits	Pageviews
10/3/06 - 10/9/06	1	1

theyrule.net

2006-10-02T17:15:00.000-04:00

On theyrule.net (a site that connects boardmembers of corperations to eachother through companies, similarly to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon) I chose to connect CVS and Walt Disney. I picked these companies because they were on opposite ends of the alphabetical list, and they seemed like they would have almost nothing in common. I was very surprised to find that there were only 3 boardmembers and 2 companies on the path connecting them. The path was from Walt Disney to Boeing, then Fannie Mae, then to CVS. This seemed like a really strange array of companies to be connected by the same boardmembers. It was striking to find out that so many of the huge corporations that run our lives are so interconnected.

Bookmarks

2006-09-26T22:41:00.000-04:00

Here is a list of the bookmarks that I added to my favorite bookmarks on Ning.com. I chose random websites that look like they would provide mindless entertainment:

Just in case you were planning on stealing anything from my fabulous blog...

2006-09-25T22:47:00.001-04:00

Please take notice of the new addition to the sidebar of my blog... it is an "Attribution Share-Alike" lisence from Creative Commons. Click here to find out about this and other lisences that are offered on Creative Commons! I chose this lisence because I wanted to make sure that I am given credit for anything that is taken from my blog. I also want to be sure that anyone who takes that information in the future from other sites, gives it the same attribution.

On a completely different note (and therefore a different font): I am so excited for the packages that I got today. The movies I ordered from Amazon.com finally showed up.... Casablanca, When Harry Met Sally, Cruel Intentions, Me You and Everyone We Know, American Beauty, and Almost Famous. These are all movies that I love, yet for some reason I never owned. Now I do. And now I can waste even more time watching movies I've already seen a million times! Click on the picture above to check out imdb.com and look up all of your own favorite movies.

I could KILL my computer right now!

2006-09-20T16:54:00.000-04:00

So, I was going to write a whole blurb about the two jobs I had this summer, how I still barely made any money, and how much I don't like the job I have here at school (a continuation of my summer job; I was simply transfered from one branch of the company to another)... alas, my computer is FREAKING OUT today and I can't type more than one sentence without having to wait 5 minutes while it catches up with me. So here are the basics, and since I need to have two hyperlinks in my blog to fulfill today's assigmnet, you can learn about the places yourself.

American Eagle. Crossgates Mall, Abany, NY... Newbury Street, Boston, MA.

Spectrum 8 Cinema. Albany, NY.
--If you're ever in the Albany area, come check out the interesting independent movie selection and the yummy cakes, coffee, brownies, etc at the snack bar!!

Fashionably Late

2006-09-13T17:36:00.000-04:00

I would like to begin my very first blog by telling you about my roommate. She is currently sitting at her computer, talking to a few friends online, even though she has a meeting at the GSU (roughly a 20 minute walk from where we live) in 25 minutes. She just told me about her meeting and in an attempt to be supportive I told her that she wasn't going to be too late, that she had just enough time to get there. She replied, "no, but I still have to shower."
So, as I have discovered is her normal pattern, she will be very late to the meeting. Her habits go beyond normal procrastination, something we both do (a lot!). Although I have only known her for a little under two weeks, I have learned that she lives in her own time zone which is about 1/2 hour to an hour behind normal Boston time. Thankfully, the one exception to the rule is that she has no problem getting to classes on time. As long as I am not the one depending on her to be punctual, it is very entertaining to watch her get ready to go out to a party or anything else. She is eternally optimistic that she will actually be on time and tells people things like " I'll see you downstairs at 6:30 sharp!" Although she will probably start getting ready at 5pm, she will inevitably still be rushing around the room at around 7pm fixing her hair, changing her shirt one more time, or answering a million phone calls from the people she was supposed to meet ("yes, yes, I'll be downstairs in like 1 minute!"). This is not an exaggeration. This happened on Saturday... and Thursday... and today.
Despite all her chronic lateness, everything seems to always work out just fine. So, I guess it really doesn't matter in the end as long as she gets there eventually.

PS. I have spent 20 minutes writing this entry, and she still has yet to leave for the meeting.