10:06p.m. The Thing About American Idol

Apparently executive producer Nigel Lythgoe is leaving American Idol.

I personally didn’t watch American Idol this year… I wanted to, but it just didn’t interest me. I think that this mostly has to do with the contestants that are being chosen for the show. They’re selecting people who aren’t always very appealing or at least very talented.

Regardless, the people they should pick should be people who just have not been discovered yet, instead of people who would never be discovered.

SYTYCD, however, picks more appealing/talented contestants, and the ones who aren’t appealing are off the show fairly quickly. I don’t know if this is because of the pairs, the fact that two people are kicked off each week, or the fact that the judges pick the first few people who are kicked off. For whatever reason, the contestants are more compelling and that is why I watch.

7:13p.m. Running Django on (mt)

So, I’ve been running on the (mt) Django beta container for a couple of weeks now. So far its been great. I’ve received some questions about it so I figured I’d write up a few notes on the Django container…

• You get total control over your app without having to manage an entire server.

• The level of control vs. stability is perfect. This is my most favorite thing ever.

• You set up and control your Django project/app with a set of terminal commands that all begin with mtd.

• Overall, it’s been extremely stable. I’d venture to say it seems more stable than the Rails container I used to use… my app has not crashed once yet.

• You can run on either the last released version of Django or the latest SVN of Django, and switch back and forth with a couple of mtd commands. You can also just download the SVN yourself if you want to be on a specific revision.

• Note: if you’re running the container on a current SVN of Django (rev. 8015 or above) you will need to add this line to your settings.py for it to run properly:

  FORCE_SCRIPT_NAME = ''

I have to say that (mt) has blown my expectations away as far as hosting is concerned, and the Django container is just a part of that. I’d highly recommend them.

1:35p.m. We Are Scientists at Bowery

So last night we went to see We Are Scientists at Bowery Ballroom. It was fantastic. They sounded great and as you can see above, they played a great set of songs. It was a nice combination of the new and the old album.

We arrived about an hour late, and we still waited for like twenty minutes until the opening act came on. Which means that some people just stood around drinking for over an hour. The opening act wasn’t too bad.

They’re one of my absolute favorite bands, and one of maybe three bands that I haven’t gotten to see live yet that I really really want to see. Loved every minute.

Almost the entire time there was hardly any light on the band at all. There was only a dark red light, and even with flash it was impossible to get good shots of the band. However, we did manage to get one when the lights came up in between two songs…

7:45p.m. *Swag — Cable YoYo Pop

Cable YoYo Pop (RadTech)

• Yes, I know I’m reviewing a ten dollar product.

• It’s designed to stick onto the back of your iPod. However, if you have an iPhone, you probably don’t want to stick your headphones on it all the time.

• So I stuck the suction cup to the included same-sized belt-clip. It worked like a charm.

• It took me way too long to find the ideal way to keep my headphones in my purse.

• Small and very thin.

• However not too tiny that you lose it within the first day.

• It’s the perfect size.

• Very, very impressed.

5:19p.m. Stupid-Simple Django Admin Previews

Incase you didn’t know, I love Django.

I love how Django just makes things stupid-simple, such as with its built-in automatic admin interface. Yet one thing it did not provide was an optional post-preview, where you could see exactly what your post will look like once it is live without others being able to see it.

For me this was a must-have feature. So I quickly thought up a stupid-simple way to add admin previews.

This technique works with or without newforms-admin and is insanely easy to implement.

(Read the rest)

4:53p.m. *Cinema — The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight (2008)

• As good as everyone is saying.

• Heath Ledger was fantastic. Creepier than anything ever.

• Seriously though, I had trouble watching half of his scenes simply because I was afraid of anything he’d do. Although this was less about his acting and more about his actions. I’m a wimp when it comes to movie violence.

• Maggie Gyllenhaal kicked Katie Homes’ butt. I mean her acting was just so much better.

• Loved Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine as usual.

• Christian Bale was good of course, though for a movie about Batman, it wasn’t really all about Batman.

• There is no way that Nestor Carbonell looks old enough to be a mayor. I’m probably just used to Mayors being old.

• The criminals (other than the Joker) were kind of… eh.

• Real, creepy, and highly enjoyable.