No, not the wrestler, the big green gamma radiation induced monster. I went to see The Incredible Hulk yesterday. It stars one of my favorite actors Edward Norton. It was a fun movie. It wasn’t as good as Iron Man, but it was worth seeing. Now that I have seen this new Hulk movie, I would like to re-watch the Ang Lee (of Brokeback Mountain fame) movie The Hulk again.

Last night, I watched the local fireworks from our big 6th story window, which was nice. Today, I grilled a tasty steak in the rain using this tasty method. The missus and I are spending our weekend playing Lego Indiana Jones and having a good time with it — just having a nice, lazy, long weekend. Still no extensive plans. We thought about doing some camping, but we’re watching the neighbors cats this weekend and we both imagine most campgrounds would be uber-crowded, so we’ll wait a couple weekends.

Toward the end of August, we’ll probably visit the New York Renaissance Faire and New York State Fair - make a long weekend out of it. They were both fun last year, I think it will be a nice way “birthday getaway” with the missus (her birthday, not mine).

I decided my previous “home page” wasn’t really serving much purpose, so I have just changed things so my blog IS my home page. This required making a few additions to my blog’s sidebar, redoing my “countdown timer” so it fits in the sidebar, and a few other minor tweaks, but I think I am happy with it. I lost my “Frappr” map and my GamerTag as they don’t fit, but I don’t think I was really using them, so…

No big plans for the long weekend, probably play some games, see some movies.

In my seemingly never ending search for the ultimate Instant Messenger client, I recently discovered Digsby. I used Pidgin for a while (but stopped, thanks to the thick-skulled developers). I tried Trillian but decided I didn’t think it was worth, to me, what they charge for it (the free version doesn’t meet my needs), and MSN Live Messenger has frequently has problems communicating with Yahoo IM folks.

Digsby takes most of the features of a Trillian or a Pidgin but goes several steps further. Sure, they support all the major IM services (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Google, etc.) but they also allow you to integrate your email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. right into the client so you can see when you get new messages or updates of what your friends are doing on facebook. Plus, Digsby has a very nice and highly customizable user interface. If you use IM, you should check out Digsby.

I looked at a bunch of Wordpress Themes last night with an eye towards a new, fresh look. I am thinking of making Wordpress my primary website… migrating a bit of information from my old home page into Wordpress Pages. Opinions on the theme I picked? Let me know if you see any amazing Wordpress themes.

I’ve been playing Lego Indiana Jones on the 360 with the missus. This is her first “platformer” game - mostly she enjoys solitaire-type games Patience fro the Palm and games like Bejeweled 2 and Puzzle Quest. But, I think she is really enjoying it and the strong focus on co-op play is a lot of fun. If she continues to enjoy this, we’ll probably pick up the Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and maybe Lego Batman later this year.

We went to see two movies this weekend. The first was Wanted starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. I cannot speak highly enough about this movie. While I loved Iron Man, I think Wanted was the most trilling, exciting, mind bending action movie since The Matrix. If you loved The Matrix I would suspect you will love Wanted.

The second movie was WALL-E. With WALL-E, Pixar yet again demonstrates that they are the masters of animated film and WALL-E belongs in a place with the very best of the Pixas movies. WALL-E has both wonderful animation and a wonderful story. Suitable for (probably?) all ages, you will be doing yourself and your loved ones a disservice not going to see WALL-E.

While many movies work just as well on DVD as in the theater, I would strongly recommend seeing both Wanted and WALL-E on the big screen.

My wifes poppy passed away last month. I have posted a memorial picture set on Flickr, based on a PowerPoint presentation “uncle Bob” put together. Les will be missed.

At the urging of a co-worker we attended the Coney Island Mermaid Parade last weekend. We witnessed mermaids of all shapes and sizes. Lots of fancy costumes and various states of exposure. A good time was had by most, but if you were “accidentally” visiting Coney Island just expecting a quick walk down the boardwalk and a ride on the Cyclone Roller coaster, you were probably terrified at the huge crowds of barely controlled paraders and onlookers. Predictably you can find a bunch of pictures in my Flickr set.

The 3G iPhone comes out in a couple weeks. I have had a Treo 650 for probably four years now, I’m over 2 year out of contract but I’ve been waiting for something to grab my attention. I ignored the iPhone last year because of the lack of 3G, I may get a 3G iPhone. We’ll see, I am waiting to see how it handles my “non-Apple” email. It would mean switching carriers, but that isn’t really too big a deal - AT&T works pretty well here and seems to get good receiption on my apartment. Check backin a month.

My existing iPod Video 30gb has served me pretty well - I take it everywhere I go. I had a problem a few months ago that the headphone jack broke (only audio from one headphone). I had it fixed at TekServe (a local iPod shop). This last Saturday this it broke again. I took it back to TekServe and learned that it was 90 days to the day since I had it fixed last time, so I was on the very last day of their warranty. They fixed it for free, but if I had waited one more day to bring it in I would have had to pay for the repair again. Yay!

My previous headphones were the Etymotic ER6i - I loved them. They were comfortable, light, provided great isolation, really nice sound, relatively reasonably priced. The one really nice thing about the ER6i headphones is they have a “flat response”, so they don’t artifically boost the bass, etc. Sadly, their cord is somewhat lightweight and I accidentally stretched the cord and destroyed them. I am researching how to fix them (Etymotic will not repair them), but in the mean time I found a really good deal on a pair of  Shure SE210 headphones. In general, they sound great with good isolation. The dowside is that they are a touch bulkier, the cord is noticbly heavier and they don’t come with a “shirt clip” to offset the extra weight of the cord, but they have a nice feature that the majority of the cord cam be detached and replaced if I break it - which is incredibly attractive since I have now stretched out the cord on two pairs of headphones. I have rigged up a shirt clip, but I would like to find something a bit more professional looking.

Finally, I’ve been meaning to mention this for a long time — for my birthday I got iHome IH9 alarm clock for my iPod. In short, I reall love it. The only feature it lacks is an “auto time set”. The only thing it doesn’t seem to do well is play AM radio, even using the included external antenna. It works with the iPod beautifully and intuitively. The FM radio works well. The alarm can be set to 2-day (weekend), 5-day (week-day), or 7-day. The alarm itself can be set to buzzer, radio, iPod, or a specific iPod play list. It is pretty much just the right number of buttons and they are logically laid out. The display backlight can be set to (something like) 6 brightness levels ranging for blinding to off - I personally thing there should be a few more settings between their dimmest version and “off”, but it is nice that I can turn the blacklight completely off and it emits no light at all. At night I just leave it completely dark. Finally, unlike most clock radios, the IH9 has really good sound. I don’t think anybody would confuse it for a Bose Soundwave, but it sounds very nice.

The missus and I are watching Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance (we’ve watched it every year). This last week Katee and Joshua did a great Broadway dance to All For the Best from Godspell, which brought back a lot of memories for me; my mom used to listen to the Godspell album frequently. This led us to watching the Godspell movie via Netflix streaming over the weekend. The movie was filmed in New York City. There are lots of shots of the World Trade Center, Central Park, and Lincoln Center. Neither the missus nor I had previously seen the movie, but it was to fun to watch because we recognize many of the locations in the film and two of the actors have gone on to do quite a bit we’ve seen. The first, Victor Garber (who played Jesus) was most recently the boss in Eli Stone which the missus and I really enjoyed - interestingly, he does a bit of singing in Eli Stone, too. The second, Lynne Thigpen, is a very memorable character actor who appeared in lots of stuff including The District, L.A. Law, and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. On Saturday we were at Lincoln Center and saw the “shell” where they shot one of the songs in the movie.

According to Playbill, Godspell is returning to Broadway this summer. The missus and I may have to go see it.

Over the weekend I went to see The Strangers, a suspense horror film. If you saw the trailers and thought it looked interesting, you will probably like it. It was very effective at building the tension. There is actually very little blood and gore in this film, it mostly just tries to demonstrate the fear the characters are experiencing. For that reason, I enjoyed the movie. It isn’t a 10/10, but if you like the genre I would call it a solid 8/10.

After 82+ hours of play, I finished Grand Theft Auto IV to 100%. There are still some achievements I can get and there is the multiplayer that I haven’t even touched, but I am finished with the absolutely majority of the game. I can safely say GTA IV is a contender for game of the year, nothing so far this year even comes close, although the year is still young - Fallout 3, Too Human, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gear of War 2, and several others are still to come, so we’ll see.