nathan jara

Clearly, this guy knows how to dress. Needless to say, I’m excited for the movie : )

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that the Caped Crusader set up shop in Pittsburgh over the last few weeks for his newest big screen adventure. Thanks to the gentle cajoling of a friend, I made my way downtown this past week to see if I could catch a scene or two. After a delicious Italian eggplant sandwich with marinara and a side of risotto, we walked around Cherry Way, which was closed off for filming. Walking through the downtown area was interesting in that it really did feel like I was on set. Fake snow lined many of the streets and a fenced in area hid Batmobiles and Bat bikes. A shortcut through the downtown Macy’s to the opposite side of the building gave a good view to the afternoon action where, SPOILER ALERT, the Tumbler tumbled into a giant hole in the middle of the street. Geez, I hope Batman called the Gecko, Flo, or that guy with the blue telephone ahead of time.
 

This past week, Netflix announced to subscribers via email that the company will be changing its movie plans starting in September. As a current subscriber, I receive unlimited online movie streaming along with 1 DVD rental at a time for $9.99 per month. Beginning in September, streaming and DVD rentals will be permanently split into separate plan options, each service costing $7.99. In other words my monthly bill will be going up $6 a month. I was annoyed at the change mainly because I know others who have been long-time Netflix subscribers who have gotten grandfathered in to new plan changes without this significant of a price increase. And it just kinda stinks. There’s been a lot of comments and complaints about the change over the internets, but in the end I won’t be canceling either of the services to which I’m subscribed. So, in conclusion, Netflix must be pretty smart. They’re going to make another $72 from me every year :P

If you have the Google Chrome browser, a friend at work shared a really cool website with me today. It’s called The Wilderness Downtown. The website allows you to type in any address, preferably one that has been cataloged by Google Street View, and create a movie in your hometown. The application uses the street view of the address you type in along with the satellite imagery of that area as the backdrop for an online film. The application was created using new HTML 5 techniques for the Chrome Experiments project, which is a web development project that continues to explore and push the capabilities of the growing HTML 5 language. Half way through, you can interact with the movie using an HTML 5 canvas and custom font. Try yours, it’s pretty spiffy!