I lost count of the number of movies that they pulled from – someone should host a contest where you have to figure out how many movies they used…but since they listed them in the YouTube sidebar, I guess it wouldn’t be a very fun contest. đ Among the many I saw were Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Troy, Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Aliens, and more. They used frame by frame Photoshop retouching to overlay Thundercats “faces” onto the actors. I can’t imagine how long this would have taken – go check out the high-quality version.
Month: December 2008
VistaPrint.ca: We’ll Happily Overcharge You
I’ve been using VistaPrint to print my business cards for years – they have excellent prices, and great quality prints and paper. Almost two years ago, VistaPrint opened a printing location in Canada, and started serving Canadians from Vistaprint.ca. Seems like anyone in Canada should order from Vistaprint.ca, doesn’t it? You’d expect to save on shipping because it’s within the same country, and the prices should be in line with what Vistaprint.com offers, right? Wrong. I was ordering some new Digital Home Thoughts business cards today, and check out the differences between the .ca and .com sites. First up, we have the .ca pricing of $77.95 for 500 cards:
For $78 I could get the cards printed locally and likely have quality nearly as good as VistaPrint. Now check out VistaPrint USA’s pricing:
The base price for 500 cards is only $5 difference, but VistaPrint is known far and wide for their sales – they have a constant sale on their business cards, so the 80% discount isn’t unusual. Amazingly, the Canadian arm of VistaPrint rarely, if ever, offers any type of promotional sales – and you’ll notice that all of their base prices for upgrades are also higher than the US prices. So why would I order from them?
Well, maybe shipping will make up the difference? Wrong. Priority, 7-day shipping from the USA is $20.31. Priority, 7-day shipping from within Canada is $29.36. Even once I factor in a 25% or so currency difference, ordering from VistaPrint USA was more than 50% less expensive than ordering from VistaPrint Canada.
What does VistaPrint assume, that Canadians are stupid and lazy, and won’t bother looking on the USA site?
How To Disable Vista’s Offline File Sync Center
If you’ve ever been browsing a network drive and right-clicked on a folder and accidentally selected “Always Available Offline” (it’s easier to do than it sounds), you’ll have no doubt seen the little green Sync Center icon that comes up every time from that point forward – even when you’ve de-selected all the offline sync folders, and it has absolutely nothing to do, it still loads at every boot. The solution to stopping it isn’t found inside the Sync Center itself – where you’d think it would be – instead you have to go to the Control Panel and double-click on Offline Files. Once there you’ll see the above window, and it’s as simple as clicking on “Disable Offline Files” (in the image above, I’ve already done this) and rebooting. Voila – no more Offline File Sync Center.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I’ve been a big fan of the X-Men since I was in my early teens, collecting several variations of the X-Men comics for about a decade. I no longer actively follow the comic books, but I remain a big kid at heart where comic book super heroes are concerned. On May 1st, X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes out, and they’ve just released the trailer for it. One word: awesome! I’m tempted to go to the IMDB listing and see who’s in the movie – the characters I mean – but I want to be surprised. Gambit is in the trailer, but beyond that I was unable to identify the other heroes and villans (I think that big guy is supposed to be The Blob). May can’t come soon enough!
A Whole New Jason Dunn I Was Mistaken For
Normally, the only Jason Dunn I’m mistaken for in the online world is this singer guy. Well, last night I had an all-new case of mistaken identity: I was watching The Ultimate Fighter Ultimate Finale with a friend, which we were watching on the Xbox 360 via the Windows Media Center UI (man I love that!) and I received an invitation to a “photo party” from a contact that I had approved earlier that day via the Zune software. Confused yet? Yeah, it’s kind of messy. The Xbox 360 and Zune avatar/handle system does such a good job of protecting user identify, I usually have no clue who I’m adding to my buddy list – I always assume it’s someone that I know, and eventually I’ll discover who.
I ignored the “party” request from this person, and after we finished watching the show I noticed I had a new message. I listened to it, and laughed: it was a message from someone I didn’t know, who was complimenting me on my great tattoo work. Now while I do like my one and only tattoo, it’s not particularly impressive from a design standpoint (and in fact needs filling in because it has some gaps), so I was kind of confused. I listened to the message again, and realized that he was talking about tattoos, as in plural.
Then the pieces fell together: he thought I was this Jason Dunn, a very talented tattoo artist. Jason Clay Dunn also happens to have a particular talented for Japanese-themed tattoos, which I find interesting considering my own passion for certain aspects of Japanese culture. I’m still pondering my next tattoos – the Kanji on my back was just a test – but wouldn’t it be cool to be tattooed by my namesake? There’s a certain synergy there that I find appealing.
At any rate, I wish people would grasp the concept that in our vastly interconnected world, there’s nothing particularly unique about a name. Everyone’s identity is multi-faceted, and just because you find the person with the name you’re looking for doesn’t mean you’ve found the right person. What’s really amusing about this whole thing is that Jason Clay Dunn is more connected with social media than I am: he’s on Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and two ink Web sites.
And so the world of Jason Dunn’s continue to broaden – I used to think all I had to do was out-last the career of a NFL player and a rock singer, but I doubt this pottery guy and this artist guy are going anywhere soon. đ
A Sobering Video About the US Economy
I don’t pretend to know much about the policies of Ron Paul – I’ve heard both good and bad things about him – but when it comes to the economy, his words ring true to me. This video, which liberally quotes his words, seems almost prophetic when you look at where things are at right now.
Finally Home For a While
What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been! While in Mexico on vacation for a week (photos still being processed, sorry Rafe!) I managed to catch a cold, likely from someone on the airplane. I had three days of enjoyable vacation followed by four days of a chest cold that brought with it a lot of coughing and hacking. The cold quickly moved into my head of course, then I became that guy you see in warm paradise locations blowing his nose as if he were in a freezing climate. Let me tell you, that sucked. Of course, it did mean that I wasn’t up for much more than sitting by the pool and relaxing, which was the whole point of this vacation, so it wasn’t all bad. But it was mostly bad when I then caught some sort of a stomach flu bug from Ashley in the latter part of our week-long vacation.
After getting back from Mexico and being with with a cold and minor flu, I spent most of the weekend holed up watching movies. Then last Monday I had to get on a plane again and fly down to Seattle for the fall Mobius 2008 event, cold and flu still in full effect. I had lots of fun there, but definitely wasn’t on my game – not eating anything but dinners will do that to you. I’d eat dinner each night to see if my stomach was back to normal, but it never was, and we all know how that goes. Mobius ended on Wednesday night, and that night I was coughing so hard I had trouble breathing (with thoughts of the expensive American health care system running through my head), so I got in a cab at midnight and went to the nearest 24/7 pharmacy to get some meds. I managed to make it home, where I promptly collapsed into the fetal position and tried to coax my immune system into functioning. The combination of a cold and flu is frustrating, because when I’m not eating on account of my stomach, my immune system is being starved of the fuel it needs to fight the cold. It was just ugly.
Monday of this week was the first day I felt like I had any energy, so I’m now in the process of digging myself out of two weeks of backed-up email and work. The thing I hate most about going away on holiday is the work that piles up when I’m gone. There’s so much to do, and we all know how productive the week leading up to Christmas is (as in, not very). But I’m on the mend, and so glad to be home – even if home is a cold, frozen wasteland at the moment.