ThinkSoJoE's Thoughts

Those of you who follow me on MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook, probably saw the image I posted earlier this afternoon of a lanyard adorned with the "This Is It" movie poster and the caption, "I'm at the movies.  It's a rare occasion."  Indeed, I took the time to see Michael Jackson's "This Is It" earlier today.

I actually wanted to see this film in an IMAX theater, but unfortunately the only film showing in the format at the local IMAX theater was "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs."  I decided on the 12:50PM showing at the local Regal Cinema, knowing that at 12:50PM on a Friday, most people weren't at the movies.  I was right.  My girlfriend and I were two of maybe 8 people in the theater for the showing, allowing me to get the full experience without a crowd of people.  On a second viewing, I might try for the opposite.  A crowded theater may add to the atmosphere.

We were handed the lanyards when we purchased our tickets, which is a cool memento, even if it's main purpose is to shill the inevitable Blu-Ray and DVD release.  Popcorn and drinks in tow, we head to the theater and sit right smack dab in the middle, surrounded by absolutely nobody.  After a seemingly unending chain of trailers, rather than the usual theater fodder telling you to go buy snacks in the lobby, we're greeted with a scrolling introductory statement about how the footage was captured.  Several dancers talk about how great it is to work with the King of Pop, before Michael himself sings "Human Nature," all the while giving instructions to his band.

Through performances of several of Michael's hits, we're treated to immaculate dance numbers, re-imaginations of several of Michael's videos, and performances from a vibrant and full of life Jackson, who delivered captivating performances even in rehearsals.  The two highlights of the film for yours truly were the Smooth Criminal sequence - in which Jackson finds himself chased through classic gangster films - and of course, Thriller. 

The new Thriller sequence looked amazing in 2D.  Watching with the knowledge that it was supposed to be shown at the concerts in 3D on screens surrounding the audience on the sides and above, essentially making them feel immersed in the video, it makes you long for what could have been.

I highly recommend this film for anybody who was a fan of Jackson.  By that, I don't necessarily mean somebody who owned all of his albums and merchandise - I mean anybody who enjoyed Michael's music and performances.  You won't be bored by Michael's captivating performances, and you may find yourself staring at the screen in awe of one of the greatest performers to have ever lived.

Thank you to AEG Group and Kenny Ortega for allowing us this glimpse of what could have been.

As I sit here, open on my laptop is a program called jEdit, and in it are several PHP documents.  I'm working on a new backend to power any future websites that I make.  I took some time out to go on Twitter, and I saw a trending topic that really hit home for me.

RIP GeoCities.

I remember when I first found GeoCities.  I actually had difficulty signing up.  I went with my buddy Dan - yes, former thinksobrain bassist Dan - to the local library after school.  Hell, we had to be 15, 16 maybe.  We looked at some websites - some that had song lyrics, some with guitar tabs, and one that pondered "Where the hell is Megadeth Arizona?"  I decided, hell, I gotta get me one of these.  How do I do it?  So I did a Yahoo search - which was also new to me at the time - and it brought me to GeoCities.com.  You sign up, you pick a neighborhood, pick a template, then type what you want to have appear on your website.  Thus, my fascination with creating websites was born

I'm sure if I dig through enough boxes, I'll find a floppy disk that had my Metallica: Overload website files on it.  Now there's a memory.  I learned how to do HTML code from some guy on AOL, and my sites always got a little better over time, but they still felt like Geocities webpages.  I, like many others, was not immune to spinning e-mail logos, "best viewed with Netscape Navigator" buttons, or the ever famous <blink> and <marquee> tags.  Hell, one of my animated gifs from that old Metallica fan site I put together on Geocities served as the inspiration for my first tattoo - Metallica's "Scary Guy" logo.

Eventually, when I wanted my own domain name - joepac.net - I registered it and hosted it with GeoCities.  Still looked like a GeoCities page.  I only kept the domain for one year, because I think I realized how pointless it was to pay $10 a year for a website about me when I'm not really famous for anything.  Which is why this site is on a subdomain of thinksobrain.com instead of being located at thinksojoe.com.

Eventually, I moved out of the GeoCities, learned PHP, CMS, and XHTML, and I started creating all of my own sites, starting with the oft-neglected stupid5pin.com, which I'd built from scratch using nothing but PHP and a few how-to eBooks.  Now I run WordPress for mostly everything, but I'm still building sites with PHP for the hell of it (including the one you're reading now), but I seriously doubt that any of them - stupid5pin, boredwrestlingfan, any of them - would exist today if it weren't for GeoCities sparking my love of web design.

Thank you, GeoCities.  You will be forever missed.

GeoCities

1995 - 2009

I'm a member of a site called e-rewards, where you take surveys and get rewarded for your time with e-rewards currency that can be applied to things such as gift cards, magazine subscriptions, airline miles, and things of that nature.  I went to do a survey about an hour ago, and I got this message:

What is it with sites saying that they don't support Netscape?  First of all, Netscape hasn't been relevant in about 6 years (nevermind that Netscape support was officially dropped last year, AOL took over the company and ruined the browser in '03).  Second of all, the browser I'm using is called Firefox.  I mean, I can totally see why your survey doesn't support the browser.  It's only got like, a billion users.  What are the odds that any of those billion people are taking your survey?

Ah well, luckily I'm running Windows again and was able to use IE to do the survey (hey, it was worth $5 in e-Rewards currency!).

For a site that doesn't suck ass in browsers outside of IE, check out my new URL shortening service, sted.me.  I just launched it yesterday and I'm trying to get it off the ground.

I saw this display at the local Dollar Tree:

Because you can't have a wedding without severed limbs and a sign that says "ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK."

And then there's this interesting artifact (that I kinda wish I bought) that I found at a local Toys R Us

It may have been a few years since I saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, but I'm pretty sure that this is Michaelangelo, not Splinter as the package says.

I have to get my monthly post in over here at ThinkSoJoE's Thoughts.  I've been super busy lately, to the point where one of my most ambitious projects has pretty much fallen by the wayside.  Meanwhile, I've taken the CMS that I designed to use for this site and modified it for extra security, and I'm considering adding in an installer and distributing it freely.  That's not the project I alluded to in the title of this post, however.

I'm working on a new pop culture site - that will have pretty much zero to do with celebrities.  I don't care about celebrities.  Sure, two of my last three posts were tributes to fallen celebs - but they were legends in their fields.  They're people whose contributions to their respective industries were so great that you had to respect them.  But my new site has nothing to do with that.  I'm not giving away too many details right now, but I will say that I intend for it to be a tribute, of sorts, to one of my old favorite websites that doesn't update much anymore.

I'll be back soon with more details.