Elvis Ripley Dot Com {b}

December 7, 2007 • 3:32 pm 0

Speed Racer Trailer

I don't think many people have heard about the Speed Racer movie directed by the Wachowski brothers. In the 90's the Wachowski brothers took visual elements from a Japanese movie called Ghost in the Shell and made it into a move called The Matrix. It looked and felt in lots of ways just like Ghost in the Shell and also carried over many of the story elements and themes introduced there.

This time they took a Japanese TV show called Mach GoGoGo, which in the US was called Speed Racer, and then made a movie that looked just like the TV show. You can see from the Speed Racer trailer that it looks a lot like a cartoon and even a cartoon from the 60's. The Matrix is just a similar to Ghost in the Shell but not many of people have seen that so you probably didn't notice. You may not have seen Speed Racer but I just told you that it looks similar but here is the opening movie anyway.

Some of the scenes and maybe even a lot of the scenes, were shot using 3 cameras to simulate the way Speed Racer used sharp and blurry parts of the scenes to shift the viewer's focus. That meant that scenes took 3 times longer to shoot but it also gives an unreal feeling to most of it while at the same time giving the viewer clues on what to look at.

The trailer is below and here is a link to the HD trailer in case you want to check that out. Also, Speed's brother and monkey are always tagging along so they can get some of the action. That is where most of the episodes' side stories develop.


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October 15, 2007 • 3:49 pm 0

Feamster Photo Shoot

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Sherri and Brad

I spent a few hours yesterday taking some pictures of the Feamster family at the request of Sherri shown to the right. It was a fun time and I think that they all worked out really well. Check out the set of hundreds of pictures here if you are interested.

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Brad, Sherri, Me and Brooke


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October 10, 2007 • 4:29 pm 1

Catch Up Power Post! A Cat and Drupal

I received some complaints about not keeping the site up to date but now that my mom has complained I thought I had better do a catch up power post.

I Ran Over a Cat


Hair, Eye Brows, Beard, Shovel, Cat, Jeans, Shoes

A couple days ago while I was leaving the house I ran over a cat in the driveway. As I was leaving the driveway and pulling onto the street I looked back and saw a cat flopping around. It was pretty violent. Then, it stopped. I knew as I went about my business for the next couple of hours that when I got home I would have to do something with the cat. When i got home it was pretty stinky and so I got the shovel out of the garage and wandered around for a little bit avoiding sight of the head. Eventually I scooped it up and took it next door to an open lot where it would get exposed to lots of sun and varmints. It is still there but I am sure those varmints will be along any moment to clear the whole situation up.


The Dead Cat

I Am Still Learning Drupal

The reason I haven't been posting much is because I have been learning my CMS of choice, Drupal. when I feel like blog time has come around I go about constructing my site style. I have been playing around with some pre-made styles and changing the way comments are handled, changing menu structures, altering layout, stuff like that. I am getting closer but it is pretty tricky to get just what I want. I should just put up something and then re-build it but it is tough to not set it up like you want even though you don't know what you want to put up. Something like that. In terms of management of content and building of new big sites, that is going better and I feel pretty comfortable with that. I have broken the site a few times and had to rebuild the database, which is good to do so you know that you have a solid backup.

Fat rock is probably the only thing that can help right now in my time of trouble with cats and drupal.


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September 14, 2007 • 11:53 pm 0

Dan Mayo, Hospital Pictures

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Dan Mayo is in the hospital for a little bit getting his brain replaced. I thought it would be fun to take some hospital pictures and so did he. I put together a weird set of photos along with some not so weird photos of Dan doing hospital and iPhone stuff.


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September 11, 2007 • 1:53 pm 0

A Surprise Stuffed Bird

Some Kind of Surprise Bird
Some Kind of Surprise Bird

Update: It was Heather. She was just goofing around and not telling me that she left it for me. I am glad that is finally taken care of.

Last evening I sat down at my office chair and looked out my office window. I saw a little bird sitting on the outside of my window looking in. I ran to check it out and it was this stuffed bird with glasses. It is looking at me right now.

So the point is, I don't know who left it, when they left it but I am pretty sure they did leave it because they think I am super special. If you know anything about this bird let me know.


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September 7, 2007 • 6:59 pm 0

Creating a Drupal Theme

I am working this weekend on creating a Drupal theme. Hopefully I will be kind of done by Monday. I you come by the site and find it to look especially plain, like plain text on a black background, that means there is no style applied because I am testing something. Don't worry and everything still works so just continue like normal. The problem with most Drupal sites is that they look like they were made with Drupal. I don't know if that is too big of a problem but it would be nice to have some style. I am going to try it out and see where I can get with it. I might need to wait another week before I can have the site like I want it. Maybe much longer, it is pretty tough.

Update: It is going to take a while longer. It was harder than I thought and my first attempt wasn't very usable. It was just a little kloogy. I am going to work on a module first and see how that goes. I need some more understanding about what is going on behind the scenes. I could modify an existing theme but I didn't think that was the way I wanted to go. I am trying to get started fresh so I can understand the way Drupal is trying to lay things out. So depending on the week ahead it might be done or it might not. I would like to get this done so I can move onto some other sites.

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September 4, 2007 • 1:47 am 0

Trying Out Drupal

I am trying out some new site management software. Send me an email if you notice anything you need to work and I will go through and fix it. Missing images, broken links, keep that stuff in mind when you are going through the site. It will take about a week for me to get the look and feel of the site how I want it. Right now this is just a test version of the site as I am mainly working on database stuff and things behind the scenes.

I decided to try this because I wanted to set up a new version of The Tractors site that was more flexible and could be easily updated. I thought about using WordPress which is what elvisripley.com ran on before. WordPress works really well for pages and blog posts but for anything else it doesn't offer much. I looked around for a better content management system and found a few places running Drupal, then I found some big sites and started researching it. I wanted to try it out here first because I wouldn't mind dealing with whatever issues came up and I could always go back to WordPress pretty easily.

I will spend the next week making this site work like I want and look like it should and then spend the next couple weeks making a Tractors site that won't be anything like this site. That should be a good experience.

Also, for the next couple days you have to register to post stuff and not have it say anonymous. I am working on it.

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