My predictions were 62.5% correct. I scored 15/24 and tied my coworker in the contest. He won on the tiebreaker, but has graciously decided to give me the prize anyway. So thank you, @nagle!

Two Oscar-related videos here. The first one says thanks:

(Edit: video removed from YouTube.)

And the second is “a trailer for every Academy Award winning movie ever”:

(Nod: The Daily Dish for both)

Add this one to my list from the weekend:

(Nod: TV Squad)

(Hint: they’re probably worth nothing.)   My coworker Jon Nagle has an Oscar contest, so I decided to fill out a ballot… and then decided to post my predictions (or, rather, guesses in some cases) here.   We’ll see how I did later.

Best Picture: Avatar
For anyone who takes the film-going experience seriously, the achievements of Avatar cannot be ignored.   In a recession economy, this film became the highest-grossing film of all time by well over $100 MILLION dollars (as of this weekend, it stands at $720 million).   Dollars aside, the technologies both invented and pushed to the next level will have a profound impact on how movies are made in the future.   Was Avatar the best film of the year.   Perhaps not.   But its contributions to the industry are unmatched.

Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges
I didn’t see Crazy Heart (or any other on this list) (actually, come to think of it, I’ve seen very few of the nominated films this year), but the Bridges has the buzz.   And he won a Golden Globe.   And a Screen Actors Guild award.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Christoph Waltz
He foxtrotted away with a Golden Globe, tangoed with a SAG, and tonight, he’ll waltz with Oscar.   Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Actress in a Leading Role: Sandra Bullock
This one will be close, but the feel-good-ness of the film and her performance (so I hear) will speed her away with this award.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Mo’Nique
Is this a competition?

Animated Feature Film: Up
Just because it’s Pixar doesn’t make it a shoe-in, but this one’s a shoe-in as it was the film that was hiding under our porch because it loves us.

Art Direction: Avatar
For certain the best on this list.   Breathtaking creativity.

Cinematography: Avatar
This will be either Avatar or The Hurt Locker, but the 3D-nature of Avatar will push it ahead.

Costume Design: The Young Victoria
I have no idea, but everyone loves a period piece, right?

Directing: Kathryn Bigelow
Because the Academy plays politics, this is her consolation prize for not winning best picture.   Pretty good consolation prize if you ask me.

Documentary (Feature): The Cove
I just started watching Food, Inc. (disturbing, very, very, very disturbing), but I hear The Cove makes a bigger, umm, splash.

Documentary (Short): The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Topical.

Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
Didn’t see the film, but I understand the editing plays a central role to the success of the film.

Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon
Yep, just picking something here.

Makeup: Star Trek
If Frida can win for a unibrow, then Star Trek can win for pointy ears.

Music (Score): Up
Typing Up here and not Avatar hurts me.   This is the one category I feel I can give an honest prediction (does that mean I’m lying in the others?).   Up was NOT the best score of 2009.   Maybe Avatar wasn’t either.   But of the five nominees, Avatar was by far the best musical achievement.   Given my past abhorrence of everything James Horner, I can’t believe I’m advocating for a win over Michael Giacchino who is easily one of my favorite film composers.   That said, Giacchino has won a Golden Globe, BAFTA award, and a Grammy.   Tonight he’ll win his first Oscar.   If the Academy asked me (they didn’t), Up wouldn’t have been nominated because the best Giacchino score of 2009 was Star Trek.   If Up wins, though, I will definitely be happy for Giacchino.   And at least this year, the as-Oscar-worthy-as-Windows-is-bug-free rubbish of Gustavo Santaolalla won’t win.   (If you’re so inclined, you can read my reviews of James Horner’s score for Avatar and Michael Giacchino’s scores for Up and Star Trek.)

Music (Song): “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)”
It’s been winning other awards.   How’s that for concise compared to the above category?

Short Film (Animated): A Matter of Loaf and Death
Nick “Wallace and Gromit” Park will win.   But Logorama is awesome.

Short Film (Live Action): Kavi
No clue.

Sound Editing: Avatar
Sound Mixing: Avatar
I have no idea what the difference between these two are.   But Avatar had great sound.

Visual Effects: Avatar
Avatar should win this award and some other super-awesome-technical-achievement special-award.   Because the visual effects were better than Megan Fox, Scarlett Johansson, Miranda Kerr, and Bar Refaeli walking into my bedroom at the same time.   With whipped cream.   Seriously, there’s no competition in this category.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Up in the Air
The best?   Or a consolation prize?   Probably both.

Writing (Original Screenplay): Inglourious Basterds
This film will need something other than best supporting actor.   So screenplay it is.

Well that’s the end of the list.   Thanks for watching.

Some very creative people cut new LOST title sequences in the style of other TV shows.

Full House:

Friends:

Smallville:

The Office:

That 70s Show:

The Wonder Years:

A couple weekends ago, some coworkers and I traveled to New York City to visit The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).   This trip marked the first time I had been to the museum.   Here are some of the photos I took.

Road trip? More like a rail trip:

Walking from Grand Central, I ducked inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral:

Parked:

MoMA:

Museum-goers:

Claude Monet’s water lilies:

“The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh:

Museum-goers:

“Cinema Redux” of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. A frame was captured every second in the film, and each row represents one minute of the film. More here.

In the same section of the museum, there was this amazing touchscreen application called “I Want You to Want Me.”   The application pulled together information from multiple dating websites and created this interactive display of what people want and who they’re looking for.   Read more about the project here.   The official video:

Post-MoMA, the Chrysler Building in reflection:

Back at Grand Central:

Headed home:

Via TUAW, the 2010 edition of the MLB At Bat iPhone app will allow you to stream audio in the background while you accomplish other tasks on your iPhone.

While Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party apps to run in the background on the iPhone or iPod touch,* Silicon Alley Insider notes that you can listen to audio in Mobile Safari while using other applications. It’s this trick that MLB exploited with At Bat 2010. With the tap of a button, At Bat will push an audio stream to Mobile Safari.

Note that MLB didn’t come up with this trick, nor is their app the first to exploit it. ESPN Radio does it, as well as Scanner911 and FlyCast. Still, it’s nice that MLB’s devs acknowledged that some users might want to check email or hop onto Twitter while listening to game, and made it easy to do so.

Dear Apple: please make this available sans-jailbreak and sans-hack.   Thank you.

Thus always to fans of Rome?   Entertainment Weekly is reporting the HBO series Rome may finally be headed to the big screen:

Fans of HBO’s critically-beloved (but short-lived) series Rome may not have seen the last of Vorenus and Pullo. Multiple sources have confirmed to EW that a big-screen sequel to the sword-and-sandals series is well underway. Rome creator/executive Bruno Heller who went on to create CBS’s hit The Mentalist has finished a script for Morning Light Productions, which financed the development and will produce the film. Series stars Kevin McKidd (Lucius Vorenus) and Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo) will likely sign onto the movie, which picks up in Germany four years after the series ended. The next step for Morning Light is to find a director and a studio, since HBO Films won’t be involved.

Fantastic news if you enjoyed the short-lived series.   I caught the series on DVD, and I wasn’t disappointed.   The production value of Rome was astounding the costumes, the set pieces and the play on Roman history was delightful.   I hope this film happens.

(Nod: /Film)

Back in January, I wondered why there was no web-app that transformed a photo you upload into a Na’vi character from Avatar.   While I still haven’t found one (although I really haven’t been looking), I did find these fantastic instructions to Photoshop yourself as a Na’vi.   The example the author walks you through creates a Tom Cruise avatar:

And via /Film, here’s Shrevatar:

Apparently this was a known thing amongst the LOST internets, but in looking for the sound effect made by the Smoke Monster this morning, I learned something new.   Note the sound Locke’s calculator makes in this scene from “Walkabout” (Season 1, episode 4):

Sound familiar?

Terrific infographic from Permuto.   Click for full graphic.

(Nod: GOOD)

I’m not really sure why, but for some reason, I’m really looking forward to this film.   Maybe because the original was so good.   Or maybe because Pixar is amazing.   Whatever the reason, I’m looking forward to seeing this.   Here it is, the final poster:

(Nod: /Film)

The Olympics rarely fail to disappoint in the orchestral music category.   Usually the gems come from the ceremonies (think John Williams’s classic themes that have become a staple of NBC’s music package and Basil Poledouris’s Atlanta piece), but in this case, this gem, composed by Canadian composer Darren Fung, was in a network commercial highlighting their coverage and the success of the Canadian Olympic team.

(Nod: Cinemusic)

This short film by H5 is nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the Oscars on Sunday.   “Amazing” doesn’t begin to describe the creative achievement in LOGORAMA.

In a world made up entirely of trademarks and brand names, Michelin Man cops pursue a criminal Ronald McDonald.

Watch the video (contains profanity):

Big thanks to Jon Nagle for showing me this!

From Funny or Die, President Obama is visited by past presidents trying to convince Obama to fight for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. All-star cast and directed by Ron Howard:

A CFPA overview from the LA Times:

The core idea behind the proposal, supporters say, is to pull together consumer oversight powers that are now scattered among various agencies, and to put consumer interests where they should be much higher on the priority list than they were during the years leading up to the housing and credit bubble and bust.

Along with something else, a consumer protection agency is an area where we lag behind of other Western nations.

Steven Heller discusses:

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

Tom Toles:

(Nod: Ezra Klein)

A very informative motion graphics piece:

(Nod: GOOD)

Last week during a snowstorm, I needed a mind-clearing/creative exercise after work, so my camera and I took a stroll around West Hartford for over an hour (and I think the cold I have had for the last week was because of this excursion!).   Here are a few shots I took:

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

As if you haven’t been able to tell, I like quizzes.   Here’s today’s.   How many Olympic host cities can you name from their emblems?   I scored 18/20.   How about you?

News from the helicopter world via Wired: Eurocopter is developing technology to reduce the noise generated by helicopters.   The first technology is a different blade design.   Instead of a straight-edge blade, angles are built-in to the blades:

In addition to the Blue Edge rotor blade, the company also introduced something called Blue Pulse technology. Also designed to reduce helicopter noise, the Blue Pulse system uses three flap modules in the trailing edge of each rotor blade. Piezoelectric motors move actuate the flaps 15 to 40 times per second in reduce the “slap noise” often heard when a helicopter is descending.

Both of these technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it.

Here’s a demo:

Pretty amazing.   I’d say look for this technology in those unmarked black helicopters, but you won’t hear them coming.

Awesome tilt-shift of New York City by Sam O’Hare:

I tried this with some of my photos once. Cool effect.

Black. Orange. Brazil. Rivers. A well known brand named after a famous Brazilian river perhaps?

The Brand Quiz tests your knowledge and color/visual association of specific brands.   For each question in the quiz, you’re presented with two colors from the brand, a visual clue, and a cryptic text clue.   Some are easy; others, not so much.

I scored 18/21 on my first trip through.   I’d love to know the answers of the ones I skipped over.

How did you score?

(Nod: Brand New)

Take the Pew Research Center quiz to find out.   Millennial, of course, referring to the Y-Generation, or Millennial Generation.   I scored 90/100.   How did you score?

Ten Minutes:

The 5-minute nap produced few benefits in comparison with the no-nap control. The 10-minute nap produced immediate improvements in all outcome measures (including sleep latency, subjective sleepiness, fatigue, vigor, and cognitive performance), with some of these benefits maintained for as long as 155 minutes. The 20- minute nap was associated with improvements emerging 35 minutes after napping and lasting up to 125 minutes after napping. The 30-minute nap produced a period of impaired alertness and performance immediately after napping, indicative of sleep inertia, followed by improvements lasting up to 155 minutes after the nap.

Maybe if I took a nap during the day I wouldn’t fall asleep on the couch at night.   I wonder how my department’s management would respond to my nap requests.

(Nod: The Daily Dish)