Weekend update...

Wow... I think I had a busy weekend! It has flown by! Busy = good, but flying by is not so much.
Saturday I went with my friend to see "Shoot 'em up". I wasn't too sure about this but my friend wanted to see it. It wasn't like he had to twist my arm either, I mean it has one of my favorite actors in it - Paul Giamatti. I also like Clive Owen too. Monica Belluci? Eh... nice to look at, but I've only seen her in the Matrix and some foreign film which was way too twisted for me to even watch in its entirety called "Irréversible".
I will say some good things about the movie... there were some really nice shots. Occasionally the cinematography had a real nice style to it. Since it was a sort of "campy" film there were a lot of comedy bits thrown in. Some of those bits made me chuckle. The other thing that held my attention was Paul Giamatti. He played an excellent bad guy. See, thats how talented I think he is. If you look at Paul, he's kinda heavy-set, kinda nerd-ish, but he's such a good actor that he pulled off a really "bad-a$$" character that I was amazed. Again, Monica was almost annoying to me. He Italian accent was thick and I had a feeling she was struggling to get the english words out. Very distracting to me. Not to be cruel either, but some of the shots portrayed her looking a little dare I say... old. Just not flattering in the photography I think.
As far as story, etc... eh. It didn't cut it for me. Too much action, and over-the-top scenarios for me. Can't recommend this one. (I guess I should point out though.. my friend liked it so there ya go :)

Moving on...
I got home late Sat night and checked my mail. Much to my surprise... I have been picked to serve Jury duty! Petite Jury to be specific (whatever that means) - I am by all means not petite :) So In October, I'm going to get to (maybe) see what this is all about. I have really mixed feelings about it. I've ALWAYS heard how people hate jury duty and always try to figure out ways to get out of it. So, I don't know why people hate it so much. I'm also concerned from a moral standpoint. I don't want to be responsible for sending someone to jail. I'm wrestling with this. If tables were turned, and someone committed a crime against me, I'd probably want that person to serve his full "justice" - but I'm not sure I'm willing to be the one to "dish it out". From a religious point of view also, I'm not sure it fits with my beliefs.
So, I of course will go along with it all and see what the experience is like. I will actually be a little shocked if they choose me, because I have a beard and long hair. I will dress nice (have to, that's on the summons!) but I kinda doubt a lawyer would want some old hippy sitting on the jury.
If anyone has positive or negative experiences with jury duty, please post in the comments. I'm curious to know what it's all about.

Lastly...
I went to my MAKEPHILLY meeting today! Many thanks to "J" for allowing me to... I felt horrible... I had gotten a phone call from my dad and I offered to take he and "J" out for her dinner celebration. The following day, I had remembered that I had my MAKEPHILLY meeting! Doh! So I asked, and she "allowed" me to postpone it a week so I could still make the meeting. I hope she forgives me :) Happy Birthday J! :)
That being said... it was a GREAT meeting! We had a guest speaker that was very interesting!
It was Slavko Milekic, M.D., PhD. He gave a really great talk about "eye tracking". He's an associate professor of Cognitive Science and Digital Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I unfortunately missed the beginning of his lecture, I could not find a parking spot anywhere! So I was 15 min late. But I did catch most of it, and it was really fascinating. I hope we continue to have guest speakers!
Then, like all of our other MakePhilly meetings, we have a "maker challenge" for the second half. This time, we did what is called an "exquisite corpse" (which I've never heard of) but apparently it's something they do in the literary world, where you have a person or group, start a word, sentence, or paragraph, then the story gets passed to another group to continue the story. So, what we did, was break off into about 5 or 6 groups, and each group had a platform about 11" x 17" of wood. There was an "input" and an "output" instruction. For example, my team had the last platform. We had an input of "tumble" with the final output of "raising a flag". The platform that connected to ours, had the output of "push" so their "push" motion had to trigger our "tumble" motion. When all the platforms were set and put together, we had a giant "rube goldberg" device! It was awesome! I've always wanted to build or help build one of these contraptions and finally had my chance. With a few rocky starts, and minor tweaks, we finally had a totally unassisted succesful "launch" from start to finish! There was a great cheer at the end! I brought my video camera, and lent it out to a fellow maker to tape, while I was working on my platform with my team members. So I hope he is a good videogrpaher! :) I hope to edit it together sometime this week, and post on youtube!
We also had "royalty" in the audience too!!! We had Bre Pettis show up from MakeZine.com! He's there video guy (and more) and all around creative person! I'd like to think we are "e-friends" as we have shared emails, and I've taken part in a group he created called photogamer (which sadly has fizzled out). So it was great to meet him again (I met him briefly at the maker faire, but just long enough to shake hands.) I got to speak to him a little more at the end of the meeting, and he really is a nice guy. From the looks of it, he too had a good time at the event. If he posts anything about the event, I'll be sure to update it here too.
The above video is one I found on youtube just as an example of what a rube goldberg device is. It's NOT the one we made :)

Good weekend!
Hope yours was as well!

Tech Tags: movie shoot+em+up paul+giamatti jury+duty petite+jury makezine makephilly rube+goldberg bre+pettis