So I caught the ‘Best of 2007′ episode of the Totally Rad Show last night, and figured I’d put together my own list. I saw more movies in 2007 than in the last five years put together probably. That’s what happens when you move someplace that actually plays things you want to see.

So here are my picks, with the caveat that this is purely based on the movies I actually saw, either in theaters or on DVD, that were released in 2007.

1. Hot Fuzz
Fun, fun, fun. The team from ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (so far) can do no wrong. Definitely not the best crafted or written of my list, and won’t be up for an Oscar, but its energy and spirit more than makes up for it.

2. Planet Terror
Of the two ‘Grindhouse’ films, Robert Rodriguez’s contribution is definitely the strongest, taking zombie movies to the next level. The harsh, gritty, jumpy film effects really work well, making it feel like a real B movie.

3. No Country For Old Men
Great entry from the Coen Brothers, as usual. I still put ‘Fargo’ and ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ above this one, but I really enjoyed it. Definitely one of those films I feel I need to see again to really take it all in.

4. Bourne Ultimatum
Even though this Bourne installment feels a lot like Supremacy, it was still really fun. And we get to learn some interesting things about our friend Jason.

5. The Simpsons Movie
After many months of worrying that this movie might put the final nail in the coffin of my beloved Simpsons franchise, I was pleasantly surprised. This film was 10 times funnier than the past few years of the series. Makes me think that’s why the series has sucked so bad lately. All the writers were working on the movie. Maybe they should just retire the tv show and make more movies, like Star Trek.

6. Shoot ‘Em Up
Here’s one that just was a quick blip and was gone. This rates way up in my top 5 action movies of all time. It’s just non-stop, wall-to-wall, guns-blazing action from start to finish. Despite the fact that the plot is pretty thin and most of the action gags are unbelievably over-the-top, you can’t walk out of this movie not feeling supercharged.

7. The Golden Compass
I finally feel like I’ve found my ‘Harry Potter’. I’d never followed any of the books by Philip Pullman, and frankly never heard of them until this year. But I found myself really getting excited to see this film. Maybe it was because I felt like I was getting to learn about this new world, one that’s a lot more sophisticated than the Potter films, and kind of get started on the ground floor. I’m in the middle of listening to the audio book, which of course opens things up much wider.

8. Martian Child
Another film that barely registered on any radars. Amazing, funny, touching film with John Cusack about a single writer who decides to adopt a shy young boy….who insists that he’s from Mars. Definitely rent this one when it comes out.

Update, 01.27.08: I just now got around to seeing ‘Stardust’. What a fantastic movie! If I had seen it before I’d put this list together, it would definitely have been ranked pretty high. I think I may have liked it even more than Golden Compass. If you like stuff like Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc, you owe it to yourself to see ‘Stardust’. Quite possibly the best writing of them all. Yeah, you heard me.

Disappointments of 2007
Here are a few bummers of the year.

Transformers
I really wanted to love this, and it was definitely *good*, but it just has too many issues. While I don’t feel Michael Bay totally destroyed my childhood with this movie, it could’ve been so much better.

Spiderman 3
Again, I love the Spiderman franchise, and I think Sam Raimi is a frickin’ genius. But Spidey 3 just didn’t have the punch it should have. It may have suffered from what the Batman movies got stuck in, villain overload. It just felt like it was balancing so many competing characters and storylines it just got kind of muddy. And after years of waiting, we finally get to see Venom on screen, and I have to say it was a little disappointing.

Sunshine
The first two-thirds of this movie were amazing. Had the feel of a great submarine movie, only in space. But then the last act degraded into a bad monster movie and ruined it. I remember feeling like I enjoyed the movie a lot better when it was called ‘Event Horizon’.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
And finally, probably the worst movie of the year. The first Pirates is one of my all-time favorites that I saw twice in the theatre. The second one wasn’t as good, but had many redeeming qualities. This third one just plain sucked. The plot was just this tangled mess that seemed to go on forever. Regardless of the effects (and they were good), they couldn’t save this shipwreck.

Finally launched a very basic web app I’ve been piddling around with for a while. It’s called ClipRunner, and it’s only purpose is to help get bits of text from one computer to another.

I built this mainly for my own needs. Seemed like every time I turned around, I needed to get a little bit of text from one place to another. Usually things like a long URL, an IP address, WEP key, or something I otherwise wouldn’t be able to remember going from one office to another.

The concept is pretty simple. Type or paste your text into the big field, enter a “pickup code” in the little field. Then go to the other computer and go to cliprunner.com/yourcode to retrieve it.

Is it secure? Well, it depends on what your criteria is. There is no real authentication, so if someone guesses your code, they’ll see it in all its glory. But as the fine print points out, be smart about it. For example, pasting a Photoshop serial number is one thing. But don’t SAY it’s a photoshop serial. And don’t use a pickup code of: photoshopserial. I think that’s pretty reasonable.

At any rate, I’d love to get feedback on the utility of this thing, even though I know I’ll be using it myself

I’m happy to announce that I’m now on board the web development team for the video podcast called ‘dotBoom‘. I’ll be doing the PHP and Ajax work for the new site to be designed for season two. Or rather, Season 2.0.

dotBoom is a show about frustrated web designers, all done with puppets. Excuse me, people of felt. The show is created by Brian Hogg of Ontario, Canada. He also creates the puppets, sets, and performs many of the characters.

Check out their 28 episodes so far, plus all kinds of outtakes and behind-the-scenes. Be aware, that these characters are web developers, so there’s bound to be some strong language

More updates as they become available.

First, if you don’t watch The Totally Rad Show, probably none of this will make sense. For the uninitiated, it’s a video podcast featuring three dudes that stand around and talk about all things rad: movies, comics, video games, television, etc. It’s actually a lot more entertaining than it sounds.

At any rate, the artwork that’s behind them is submitted by viewers and changes every week. I’ve had an idea for doing one since episode one and finally got around to doing one. It’s entitled “Young Radenstein”, and is based on the movie poster for “Young Frankenstein”. Being so close to Halloween, I thought it appropriate to submit it now.

Click to view larger version

I had a ton of fun doing it, and hopefully the Totally Rad guys will like it enough to use it on an upcoming show.

Okay, so this is my first jQuery tutorial (or any tutorial for that matter). So here goes…

In my own experience, image rollovers for navigation is a pretty repetitive task. Almost every site I build has them. For the longest time, I simply used the javascript spit out by Dreamweaver. Sure it worked, but it required including an extra javascript file, and inline javascript for mouseover and mouseout events.

The more I got into jQuery, the more I realized this was an ugly solution. And as I stopped using Dreamweaver for regular development over a year ago, I thought I’d come up with a solution that could just be easily dropped into each new site and would just work.

Before I start, I should note that usage of this script assumes a couple things. It assumes your navigation images are contained within a div with an id (I use #nav). It also assumes that your over state images are named consistently. For example, if your contact image is nav_contact.gif, your rollover image will need to be something like nav_contact_over.gif.

It also assumes your navigation is structured thusly:

<div><a><img></a><a><img></a></div>

First, make sure your jQuery code is surrounded by the usual:

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$(document).ready(function() {
});

Now set up the mouseover event:

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$("#nav a").mouseover(function(){
});

Next, set the source (src) of the image file. This is done by finding the child of the link that was moused over, in this case, an image.

imgsrc = $(this).children("img").attr("src");

We’ll only perform the rollover if the image state is not already “ON”.

matches = imgsrc.match(/_over/);

If it’s not, add the ‘_over’ bit to the filename and change the image source with attr(”src”):

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if (!matches) {
	imgsrcON = imgsrc.replace(/.gif$/ig,"_over.gif");
	$(this).children("img").attr("src", imgsrcON);
}

And that’s it! Handling the mouseout is pretty simple. All you need to do is reset the image source to the value that was initially set on the mouseover:

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$("#nav a").mouseout(function(){
	$(this).children("img").attr("src", imgsrc);
});

One more thing. If you have a lot of nav images, or they are not tiny files, you might want to preload them. Here is a function that will automatically preload all the images within the #nav div:

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$("#nav img").each(function() {
	rollsrc = $(this).attr("src");
	rollON = rollsrc.replace(/.gif$/ig,"_over.gif");
	$("<img>").attr("src", rollON);
});

Line 1 creates a loop to run the following function for every image within the #nav div. Line 2 sets the image’s filename, and line 3 replaces ‘.gif’ with ‘_over.gif’. You can replace .gif with .jpg or whatever. And line 4 creates a new image element with the ON state of the image.

You can see the script in action here.
Download the .js file here.

So that’s it. This stuff is probably beyond basic for experienced jQuery users, but if you’re just getting started, hopefully this will help. I’ve got several other jQuery scripts like this, so hopefully this won’t be my last tutorial (even though this was more involved than I thought it was going to be

Apparently, a guy in Texas that has owned the DeLorean Motor Company brand since 1995 has decided to create a new, limited run of brand new DeLoreans.

They’ll be selling for over fifty grand, so my childhood dream of owning one of these gull-winged beauties will have to be delayed for a while.

But one thing’s for sure. If I ever did get one, you can bet your flux capacitor I’d be pimping it out to look like the time machine.

Click for the article

I just found a software application that I just HAD to share.

Ever been on the phone or in chat with someone and they just weren’t
“getting it”? Wanted to show them something graphically, but didn’t want to
jump through the hoops of taking a screen capture, annotating in something like Photoshop, then uploading or emailing?

This is where Jing comes in (http://jingproject.com/). It’s free software
for Mac/PC from the makers of Camtasia.

It lets you take quick screenshots or video captures and annotate them. It
automatically uploads it to a file server AND copies the link to your
clipboard for pasting into chat or an email.

To really appreciate it, watch the brief video tour. I probably could’ve
already used this a couple times just this week alone.

I’m sorry to report I only have a 22% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse. So in the event a friend or loved one turns into the undead and tries to gnaw on your flesh, you should probably look elsewhere for protection. I’ll probably already be feeding on brains by then.

The riverboat artwork is finally done. I could probably keep messing with it, but there has to come a time when you have to call it finished and walk away. For the first real piece of artwork I’ve done in years, I’m pretty happy with it.

Also, here are some wallpapers in different sizes:
800 x 600 | 1024 x 768 | 1280 x 1024

Not much done tonight, but managed to get the moon and some clouds in. I think I’m just going to add some shading and lighting effects next and call it done.