Disney's A Christmas Carol

Although I can't say this is my favourite rendition of the classic story, that honour going to the George C. Scott version I grew up with, it IS definitely a fantastic journey into the story.  The animation is just superb taking on the style of Roger Zemeckis's first animated movie, The Polar Expresss.  Jim Carrey as the voice of scrooge hits the character out of the ball park.  Actually making him even MORE unlikeable and dispiseable then even George Scott could do.  You can't get more miserly than what was portrayed.   Now for the 3D aspect of things.  I DID go see it in 3D and I must say I am not impressed.  This was my first time seeing the new Real 3D technology and I think it will be the last.   Not that it wasn't amazing  in some scenes.. but I just felt that it didn't add anything to the movie.   I think I would have preferred seeing it in 2D and avoid the annoying glasses.    Anyways that's just my opinion.   

... And The Winners Are!!!

Finally at the end of the day after much deliberation it was time to announce the winners of the Widget Hack-a-thon.  Christopher Smith and Tim Neil were present to give out the hardware and gift certificate prizes to the top 3 teams.   3rd place went to the "Ham or Spam" team pictured above for there Email Triage Widget. The team consisted of; Bryan Lahartinger, Severn Tsui, and Rob Currie.

Second place went to the "Widgets R Us" team for there BlackBerry Search application.  And for those who didn't see it, the animations on their widget were fantastic.  :-)  

Finally, last but not least.  First place went to the "Device Application Platform" team for their Wiki Notepad widget.  This little widget allowed its user to add markup to a regular notepad entry to enhance it with colour, emoticons, pictures, fonts, etc.  Making for a richer visual experience for a regular notepad entry. They took home $150 of gift certificates and title of "Widget Gurus"  The "Device Application Team" consisted of; Alex Pedwyocki, David Han, and Tomasz Buczek.

Arulsothynathan

Another great name but for the life of me I still can't figure out how to pronounce it.   :-)  The "Arulsothynathan" team consisted of; Ahmed Hamdy, Glen Harmann, and Stefan Dimitrov.

D'Flamingo

The "D'Flamingo" team consisted of David Gao, Diana Jung, and Derek Rabindran.

Hello World

The "Hello World" team consisted of Allen Tang, Kelvin Chun Liang Ng, and Timothy Li.

Team Name

The award for the most "original" name goes to "Team Name"  :-)  LOL  Great name Marek.   The team members consisted of Yazan Al-Alul, Marek, and Rebecca Guo.

Team KDE

This hardcore team decided to go old school and code their widget without the use of either the Eclipse or the Visual Studio plug-ins.  Notepad++ I believe was there tool of choice.   "Team KDE" consisted of; George Wright, Jakob Petsovits, and Jeff Rogers. 

Bhasins Assassins

Hey...  I thought that there was supposed to be a maximum of 3 members.. ;-)  It looks like the "Bhassins Assassins" team has recruited some ringers.   The team consisted of; Nukul Bhasin, Jeffrey Heifetz, and Jon Deardon.  The other two are Alex Babut and  Benjamin Kurz.

Fans Of Bacon

Everything is better with bacon, in my opinion.  The "Fans of Bacon" team consisted of Ryan Salter, Trevor Camero, and Tyler Garton.

Widget's R Us

The Widget's R Us team consisted of Kamen Vitanov, Laura Doktorova, and Michael Brown.

BlackBerry Widget Hack-a-thon - Day 2

The BlackBerry Widget Hack-a-thon started again this morning with many of the teams coming in early to get started.  From the sounds of things, some midnight oil was also burned in order to get a leg up on the other teams.  It was great to see all the hard work and dedication going into this contest.  The competition is definitely feirce.  

This means WAR!!!

So the friendly rivalry between the AWESOME IDE Extensions Team and the Eclipse Web Plug-in team continued today during the BlackBerry Widget Hack-a-thon.  Here you can see pictures of the IDE Extensions team (Team Name) and the Eclipse Web Plug-in team (Cayman Rules) as they worked hard to out do each other.  Let the best team win.  (Visual Studio ROCKS!!!)

To give credit where credit's due. The Cayman Rules team is only two members. Pretty impressive if they can pull it off.

BlackBerry Widget Hack-a-thon - Day 1

Today was the the start of the very first BlackBerry Widget Hack-a-thon.   The morning started by the explanation of the rules.  (Basically there is no rules.) as well as the theme that the participants were to base there widgets upon.  The theme was to take one of the various BlackBerry core applications; mail, contacts, facebook, etc. and improve on them in some way as a widget.  Anything was up for grabs, UI, functionality, etc in regards to the improvments. 

There really isn't a lot of time in order to accomplish something that can be compelling.  Tomorrow at 1PM is the deadline so everyone pretty well kept there noses to the grind stone.  As for me it was interesting to hear some of the various ideas floating around.  I can't wait until tomorrow.   I also loved the names for some of the team names.  "Lover's of Bacon", "Team Name", "Cayman Rules"

2012

On the whole not a bad action movie.   It definitely kept me entertained throughout.  Which is saying alot as the movie was extremely long, coming in at 2.5 hours.   I do have a couple of nitpicks though.  The length being one of them.   Normally I don't mind long movies, as long as all the scenes in the movie make logical sense and aid in the story.   In this case, I felt that there was a few scenes that could have been removed and have the movie be better for it.   I think the director probably kept them to add to the visual entertainment.. but in my opinion they were distracting.

As a Christian I also didn't appreciate the implication that God wasn't a part of the plan.   It was implied in the end that God didn't exist and that humanity and humanity only was able to save itself from extinction.   The distruction of a church as a bunch of people prayed and died drove that point home.   I know, you are going to say..  what do you expect from a end of the world movie and honestly I don't know... just maybe to leave it open.

Anyways, it was a good movie, well worth the ticket price.

The Box

The box is an interesting movie based on a short story that was made into a "Twillight Zone" episode.   The writers of the movie took this T.V. episode and expanded it out to both give more back story as well as extend it past the ending.  Now this could have been a BAD thing if done improperly but they did an great job of integrating the new material and the movie does succeed in feeling seamless while still maintaining the sense of paranoia and freakiness of the original.   Definitely a great suspence that will keep you guessing throughout the whole movie.   Not really necessary to see it at the theater though...  this movie could be enjoyed better sitting cozy on your couch with your loved ones around.