Of course, my other friend Tom decided that there must be a solution out there somewhere and did some googling. He found this little gem:

getdropbox.com

I don’t really have to much need for such a program, but I decided to download it anyway. I must say it is rather nifty. After installing the program and registering it to your account, you are given a folder that represents your Dropbox. It acts just like any other folder in your filesystem except for one very important rule – in the background the Dropbox program is constantly checking for updates to the folder and updating as necessary. After syncing with the online storage, any other computers running dropbox and set up for the same account will see and automatically download changes.

But that’s not all! Since it all works by syncing remotely, you also have the option of logging in through the web interface to download files you might need without having to install the program on another computer. It also can help you undelete or roll back changes.

But wait, there’s more! Not only can you log in and get access to your files, but you can also put files into the public folder in the dropbox and share them with friends via a link. Or you can put the files in your photos folder and create a gallery that can be viewed in slideshow form.

And that’s not all! You can also invite users to share folders in your dropbox. Then any of them can make changes and everyone will be able to see the changes instantly. That’s really sweet for collaboration on a group project.

So, if you’ve ever been wishing for an easier way to keep files in sync between multiple computers or for a way to instantly share some of those files with friends without having to upload to something like flickr, look into dropbox. While it’s in beta, you’re limited to a free 2GB storage limit. They have plans to offer a paid 50GB storage limit down the line, once testing is complete.

MarsEdit meets my needs pretty well. It allows me to save drafts locally and work on them when I don’t have an internet connection. It also allows me to drag and drop pictures into my posts with no additional work. I can literally drag a picture from wikipedia and drop it into the edit box, having it come out as it did in my previous post for Cog Sci. It handles all of the uploading and resizing automagically.

MarsEdit certainly isn’t the only desktop blogging application. I’ve tried a few others before. Mainly Ecto, and a bit of Blogo. I feel MarsEdit has the cleanest, most useful interface I’ve encountered though.

It does come with the unfortunate price tag of $29, which seems a little steep for the amount of use I personally will get out of it. (Seeing as my blog only stays active about one month a year.) I’m not sure if I’ll find myself buying the full version when my trial expires, but if I don’t, I think I’ll have a hard time replacing it. Bottom line, if you need to make posts to a blog on a Mac, wish to avoid using the web interface, and are willing to pay some money, MarsEdit is definitely a worthwhile tool.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the nifty Flickr integration, which doesn’t affect me a whole lot, since I rarely post to flickr, but it can upload your images to your Flickr account before dropping them into your post.

Now that the objective part of the reviewing is out of the way, let’s get to my own opinions on the movies.

 The Fountain – 4.9Ï€ / 900º

Everything about The Fountain screams out “masterpiece.” Visually, it’s a feast for the eyes. The visual effects are top-notch and will remain so for a few years to come at least. The entire movie is just pretty, the golden color leaking in to almost every crack of the film. The acting is well done. They couldn’t have chosen a better man for the leading role than Hugh Jackman. Rachel Weisz makes an absolutely stunning leading actress. All of this pales in comparison to the story, however, which is absolutely brilliant in ways that will leave a more active mind turning over for days.

 It’s helpful to understand that the storyline is left intentionally vague and open to interpretation. This is part of the brilliance. The intention wasn’t to write a story that you passively follow while watching the film and throw away when you’re done. It was to write a film that makes you think for a while, makes you scratch your head. And while that might seem a bit pretentious to some, I think it makes up for it by really making you think.

The movie follows three stories, each somewhat distinct. There’s a story set during the Inquisition and Spain’s conquests in the New World. This story is the first introduced, and later we find it tying into a story set in our own time of a man trying to find a cure for cancer – hopefully in time to save his wife. Turns out that the story of the Conquistador is one being written by the man’s wife. Later we’re introduced to weird floating tree in space with Hugh Jackman living next to it. There are many possible interpretations of how this last story fits in, and I think that the line is intentionally blurry on this one. If you think your brain might explode reading just the explanation than you probably wouldn’t appreciate this movie to the fullest extent possible, but if it sounds intriguing to you, I highly recommend seeing the film.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters – 4.5Ï€ / 900º

If you’re not an Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan, you’ll probably be able to ignore pretty much everything I say, but I warn you that you are a horrible person for not liking Aqua Teen. Yes, I know that 2007 isn’t over yet, and that, as far as movies go, the year has just begun, but in my mind they might as well just start 2008 right now to make it fair for all of those other movies. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters is hands-down the best movie of 2007.

The story starts millions of years ago, in Egypt. 3 PM. Downtown New York. 1492. The humor continues from there. Actually, it starts before that. I could have walked in and sat down for everything up to the opening credits and been amused enough to have had my money’s worth. The rest – as in everything following the opening credits – was just a bonus. It was like watching an hour and half long ATHF episode, which is just awesome.

To everyone not understanding what I see in Aqua Teen, I know where you’re coming from. When my roommate subjected me to a season’s worth of it, I had no clue what he saw in it. After a while though, you start to see some really funny stuff. It just takes a certain taste (or lack thereof) to enjoy. It’s probably even better if you’re high when you watch it. In many ways, it is sort of a spiritual descendant of Beavis and Butthead. Brainless, but almost witty at the same time.

300 is a historical film, based on 300 Spartan soldiers who stalled the entire Persian army for several days while the rest of the country prepared for war. More than a historical film, however, this film is also based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. The same Frank Miller we should all know and love from Sin City.

We can see the wonderful style of Frank Miller come through from his graphic novel onto the screen in this movie as well as we do in Sin City. The shots throughout the movie are beautiful, and the fight scenes artistically embellished.

Fight scenes? Oh yes. This movie is two hours of violence and ass kicking. Spartans are historically known for their fighting skills, and this movie makes sure to touch on that fact. A lot. If you’re in the mood for some action, look no further.

Don’t let that turn you off if you’re not into the whole fighting thing. If you’re not into action, then you’re probably either a chick or gay, and in both cases, you’ll probably be pleased to note the fact that 75% of the movie is about near-naked, sweaty men. In fact, that’s probably the reason this movie only gets a 4.7Ï€. It’s a pretty good movie otherwise.

The actors in this movie all do a terrific job, especially Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie does a good job of helping you feel the panic that must have been about in San Francisco due to the Zodiac as well. I particularly liked how music was used to add to the setting.

Unfortunately, the movie follows real life far too well. Unless you want to feel like the detectives who had their lives sucked away trying to solve this case, you’ll find the movie lacks appropriate pacing. Zodiac follows the true life storyline so closely that we’re treated to 30 minutes of excitement and 2 hours of tension that eventually becomes boredom as we desparately hope for a break in the case, or at least for the Zodiac to do something new.

The movie can also be disorienting, jumping large spans of time almost randomly and without warning, but this is important since the killings were quite spread out. I wouldn’t pay money to see this movie, but if you have the chance to see it for free as I did, you might not be completely disappointed. I rate it at a measely 2.3Ï€.

The story centers around a young boy named Danny, who’s rather bright, and his family. We quickly learn that Danny’s not the average 5 year old boy. He knows and understands at a level many adults couldn’t grasp. This is not because he’s some super genius, though he is rather smart, but it’s because he has “the shining.” Psychic ability, shining, intuition, call it what you will, but Danny has it.

Alone, that makes for an interesting story, but that’s just the beginning. The boy’s family is going to be living in a hotel called the Overlook over the winter, since his father has been hired as its caretaker and the hotel gets completely snowed-in during the winter. Unfortunately, there’s something sinister to the Overlook, and that’s where King’s horror story skills come in.

I don’t want to give too much away, because my description couldn’t hold a candle to King’s literary talent. The book makes for a riveting read, and is worth looking into if you don’t mind the fact that you may have to sleep with the light on for a night or two after you finish it. I’ll give it 4.5Ï€.

With Christopher Nolan writing and directing, one couldn’t really expect any less. He’s the same guy who made me actually care for the Batman story again with “Batman Begins,” and freaked out my brain with the backwards story telling of “Memento.”

The movie stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, or, if you prefer: “batman” and “wolverine.” The two aspiring magicians are working as assistants to an aging illusionist, but after a horrible accident occurs during one of their perfomances the two become bitter rivals bent on outdoing each other. They quickly escalate to sabotage and other dirty acts of one-upmanship, right up to the conclusion.

“The Prestige” follows Nolan’s preference for non-linear storylines. We switch scenes from present to flashbacks, to further back flashbacks and back again, so one needs to pay a bit of attention to keep track, but the end result is that you’re left with an awesome story that keeps you guessing. This movie gets 4.8Ï€/900º.

Superman Returns – Not so super.

I saw Superman the other day and I just have to say I wasn’t completely impressed. Sure, the special effects were amazing enough, but overall I didn’t find it quite as interesting as I would have liked.

First, I have to admit that I have not seen the old movies. I know they were trying to just pick up where that left off and I couldn’t expect to fully appreciate everything going on without seeing the older movies. Still, I think Superman Returns was lacking. It seemed more about showing what Superman could do with new special effect abilities than about a storyline.

Speaking of storyline, the ending seemed to me to have one glaring plot hole. (Spoiler follows:) If the island is Kryptonite-ish, how in the hell does he just pick it up and throw it into space? Sure, I get that he was really straining to do it, but does that mean he’s just being a pussy in the older movies when people are using a single little chunk of Kryptonite against him? I mean, if he can tough it out to lift an entire island made of it, why in the hell can’t he tough it out with a little chunk of the stuff?

I will say there was good casting in the guy they picked for Superman. He was definitely a good choice for someone to look like Christopher Reeve.

Really though, other than the special effects and the reminiscing for the people that saw the old ones, Superman Returns was just not that great. I know there was a need to cash in on the comic book movie craze, but they certainly could have done better. With the Superman name and legacy, I expected better of it.

Silent Hill is a story about a little girl who has very vivid dreams and sleepwalking issues. They’re constantly getting worse, and her parents can’t really do anything about it. Sometimes she talks about Silent Hill in her sleep, and sometimes she ends up wandering off into dangerous situations involving cliffs or highways.

Since she can’t ever remember these occurrences when she wakes up, her mother, Rose, decides that perhaps the best thing to do is to find Silent Hill and take her there so little Sharon can remember. They figure it might have something to do with her birth parents, as Sharon is adopted. As is often the case in horror movies, this turns out to be a very dumb idea.

Rose and Sharon head into Silent Hill, and crash trying to avoid hitting a child crossing the street. When Rose wakes up, Sharon has once again disappeared. Rose tries to find her daughter in what seems to be a completely abandoned town. Occasionally she sees a girl darting around town, and she tries to catch her. After following what she hopes to be her daughters footsteps down a dark alley, sirens go off and she finds that Silent Hill is pretty much (in the literal sense) hell when that happens (with really awesome CG transition from foggy, ash covered Silent Hill to metallic, rusted, burning Silent Hill).

To go on would – of course – ruin the story, but the surprising thing about this movie is that there’s actually a story to ruin. Most video game movies are so horribly lacking on storyline I didn’t expect this one to be much more than a thinly veiled attempt to show lots of monsters killing things. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find myself completely drawn into the very well written story that is very psychologically deep (almost as good as Donnie Darko).

For other important things in movies, soundtrack and acting, the movie was not at all lacking. The soundtrack was completely haunting and my roommate and I want to find it for sale somewhere so we can buy it. I thought the acting was very well done. The father character probably didn’t have a strong enough role for most people to fully connect to him.

I think the critics don’t give it enough credit because there’s a very healthy amount of nightmarish violence and gore, or because they’re unable to fully understand what is going on in the movie. This is the best video game movie ever made. My roommate and I both hope the DVD version has the full length cut, which was rumored at 3 hours+. This movie will definitely become part of our collection. 4.7Ï€ out of 900º.

WoW. It’s the new pr0n. Startling new evidence from the Department of Agriculture has confirmed, after much devoted research (some of it probably far too in-depth) that internet pornography is losing it’s edge. Just in the nick of time for the nerds too it’d seem Ð since parents were starting to realize what the word pr0n meant. The interesting part is it’s unlikely replacement Ð the game World of Warcraft.

This shocking graph tells a disturbing picture Ð one that puts all that “internet smut” (ª) in the trash, along with those that make a living from it, as early as 2009, which is just in time for Blizzard to release it’s sequel to World of Warcraft entitled, “No More Jokes, Just Heroin” which comes pre-packaged with a needle.

With their newfound addiction to World of Warcraft, nerds find themselves no longer in need of their beloved pr0n. One such nerd was quoted as saying: “d00d, that guild robe thingy totally makes my undead boobs bigger. W00t lol roflmao [1337-speak translation: I'm so never going to get laid, better enjoy this while I can].” There’s one nerd that won’t be needing any more porn.

“With all the time spent trying to my character to level 39, who has time for sex?” questions Banana Splits, a somewhat-well-known adult actress. “I sure don’t. Good thing too, because now I can catch up with all of my old fans and go on a dungeon run.”

So, in short, you may want to hold on to some of those secret files you’ve got stashed on your hard drive (under C:/Documents and Settings/User/Faxes/important/dontlook/confidential), because they’re about to become collector’s items. Porn is on the out. World of Warcraft is on the way in. With an addiction to WoW, who needs anything else?

—

I agree whole-heartedly. Really, who needs things like blogs?

I got sucked into World of Warcraft this week, and, well, it’s stolen my soul. It really is addicting. I was tempted to try and get a wireless signal from bed and play it instead of writing this post. Awesome game. Give it a try if you’re not afraid of the distinct possibility of never again leaving the computer. 4.8¹ / 900¼

Oh, and yes, I’m sure someone else has already done this kind of article somewhere on the net.

PS, if you’re Blizzard, don’t hate/sue me, I love your game. I was just joking around, honest. Please don’t delete my level 14 ‘lock! I love him!