I think I am all packed for WWDC and the nice low 60s weather of San Francisco.

Suitcase. Check. Sweaters. Check. Jacket. Check. Toiletries. Check. Laptop. Check. Power Cords. Check. Early check-in boarding passes. Check. $15/checked bag fee paid. Check.

I guess it has been a while since I have flown. This is actually my first flight where I have been charged the $15/checked bag fee. It is kinda sucky. It reminds me of all those "hidden" taxes and fees on cell phone and cable/internet bills. It was already bad before with people bringing huge bags into the cabin of the plane. I wonder if the fee is just going to make it worse. I did get lucky though. I was able to get exit rows for both legs of my flight. I am glad they haven't started charging for those seats yet.

Tonight my wife and I went on our first mini-date without the baby. We went up and got ice cream at the local Brusters. I am not a really big fan of their ice cream, but they make really good Oreo shakes. Our mini-date lasted all of about 10 minutes though. I am not knocking it. I'll take any chance we can get.

I think it will be really hard to be away from the kid for the week. I think I am going to feel like she has grown a bunch when I get back.

Starting tomorrow I'll start blogging the trip. It looks like the iPhone blogging software can post pictures (one per post) so I'll try and snap ones when I can. No one complain about the image quality. After all it is an iPhone picture. Just trying to keep the phone steady enough so the picture is not blurry is usually a task in itself! At least indoors.

I had to go out today and fork out some dough on a new battery for my MacBook Pro today. Unplugged I was only getting about 5-10 minutes before the machine would just shut off hard with no warning. Digging in the System Profiler I was only a Full Charge Capacity of about 700 mAh. The new battery is maxing out at 5580 mAh right now (About 3 hours and 45 minute of charge at my current power settings). I am in the process of doing my first battery drain as we speak.

The place I got the battery was this Mac shop in town called Connecting Point (Thanks Jay for the recommendation). They do sales and servicing and seemed really knowledgeable. It saved me having to go to the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store.

I needed the new battery for next week's WWDC. In some of the sessions it can get pretty crowded and you really have to fight for a plug in the power strip.

Speaking of WWDC, due to interest from people who know I am going, I decided that I am will try and live blog the keynote next Monday. I doubt I will be as high tech as posting any pictures like Gizmodo or Engadget, but probably just some random info.

I wish I could live blog some of the sessions, but you are under NDA for that part of the conference.

With WWDC a little over a week away, I got interested in reviewing some of the 2008 videos that were posted via ADC on iTunes. The videos can be technical, but they are really good. After the event last year I downloaded about 10 of the sessions that I missed, and a couple other sessions that I went to that were worth watching again.

I was stunned that my favorite session last year was on something that most developers probably think is mundane. It was on Internationalization and Localization (i18n and l10n) of your application. The presenter was really interesting and went into some nice depth on how different locales have different rules for presenting info on the screen. From my Windows development days I already knew about the certain problems related to Western languages like French and German, but seeing how to deal with Right to Left languages like Hebrew and Arabic was really pretty cool. And even the detailed complexity of character presentations in Mandarin, Japanese and other Far East languages was fascinating.

Since I went mostly down the Mac track last year and I am now much more comfortable with Cocoa, I am thinking of going down the iPhone track this year. I have written a number of little demo applications for the iPhone, but nothing worth putting up on the App Store. Maybe WWDC will help spur some thought into a possible do-it-on-the-side product idea.

I am a really big David Fincher fan. About the only movie I never really cared for was Zodiac. But I think the reason it never grabbed me because I was never very fond of movies that were set during the "dull" 70s. Otherwise films like Fight Club, Se7en, The Game and even Panic Room are on my list of films that are infinitely repeatable to watch.

This weekend my wife and I watched The Curious Case on Benjamin Button again. We saw the movie over Christmas 2008 in the theater and had to watch it again on video, it was that powerful of a film.

One of the things I really like about the movie is that there is no central antagonist figure. Every character in the movie has their flaws, but the real antagonist and what drives the story is time. Each of the characters are fighting time. Daisy and Benjamin are physically at different ends of the age spectrum. Elizabeth always thought she would have time to swim the English Channel. In 2005, Daisy is running out of time in a hospital bed. Caroline regrets not spending more time with her mother.

I also like how the movie has a central setting of an "old folks" home. The plot is always returning to the house in New Orleans, a house where there is constant change by death. There is so much change that Benjamin has a problem remembering the name of the woman who taught him how to play piano. His failure to remember the name of someone who had such significant impact on his life just feels genuine. How many times have you tried to remember someone you used to play with as a kid and just can't remember their first or last name. Yet every day for years they were a part of your life.

The deconstruction of the accident in Paris was also a fascinating part of the plot. The idea that just one little change in the course of events would have caused the accident not to happen resonated for me. Fate is a common theme in movies, but I like how it is executed in this movie. Again it is time becoming the antagonist.

Another bit of storytelling that I like in the film is that you never see Benjamin fight the perception that he is old. He has accepted the fact that people see him as elderly and incapable. Sometimes the audience doesn't have to be spoon fed information to feel the emotional impact of being segregated. It is elegant storytelling by design.

In typical Fincher style, the man who also got struck by lightning 7 times is great comic relief.

Benjamin Button is a great film. The best film of 2008 in my opinion. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. A new classic.

Due to a pretty good Macworld article, I think I figured out a good way to get video imported from the camera. We have some good footage of my daughter’s birth day and the her first bath, but trying to find a good procedure on how to import has previously not been easy with Mac software (unless you have Final Cut)

Luckily with iMovie 09 there is a good import as well as archive feature since I'll probably import for a nice size for the web and archive at full resolution. I may need to get another HD.

Friday night we watched Last Chance Harvey. It was my wife’s pick at the video store and I was really skeptical.

The movie, while predictable to a point, was pretty sweet and endearing. To see a romantic dramedy today that doesn't involve two 20-somethings is a real treat.

The story is set in London during what looks like Autumn or Spring. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson were great in this movie. They might not have had a bunch of sex appeal, but it was a nice elegant story. I think Emma Thompson can read the Constitution and make it interesting. That's how much screen presence she has, IMO.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars. I'd watch it again.

One of my new favorite apps on the iPhone is called Stanza.

It is an e-book reader with a cool networking feature like the Kindle where you can download e-books from an online catalog right to the phone. You can also share books from a Stanza client that you run on a Desktop machine. So I copied over some technical books that I have in .pdf format. The software does a really good job of formatting the text for the screen size.

One of the nice things about the online catalog is that it has a ton of free ebooks that are in the public domain including H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War.

I have always heard quotes from The Art of War, but have never thought to sit down and read it. Last week I watched a History Channel show called Art of War that discussed Sun Tzu's tactics in regard to US military battles since the Civil War. It was pretty fascinating.

So I am playing with Stanza's download feature and I grab the e-book. I was surprised to learn that The Art of War was so short. I read it in less than an hour. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

To make yourself invulnerable to defeat lies in your own hands, but the enemy himself must provide you with the opportunity to defeat him.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.

He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.

For some reason the quotes reminded me of the Haiku poem from Fight Club:

Worker bees can leave Even drones can fly away The queen is their slave

All-in-all the book is a nice and easy read. I recommend anyone take an hour to read it if they have not.

A number of lines from the book seem like common sense after watching a number of war movies, but considering Sun Tzu (if he was a real person) lived 2500 years ago, it is very easy to over look.

I love a good man versus animal display, but this animated gif had me on the floor laughing.

You can see it coming, but it is still funny.

With my wife home since last week we have been watching about 1 movie a day. Usually we watch with or after dinner. We watched Role Models on Sunday and National Treasure 2 on Monday.

Like I said earlier, I shouldn't really call them reviews since I hate giving out anything that could be deemed the least bit spoiler-ish or even going over major plot points. I guess I should try and think of a different name than "review". Unfortunately both movies were not very interesting.

Watching Role Models, I had a couple of small laughs in the first part of the movie, but the last half it was mostly crickets. While the role-playing McLovin was mildly amusing in the beginning. The last scenes were rather difficult to watch.

I am not a big Nicholas Cage fan. I picked up National Treasure 2 because I thought my wife would like it, but she barely lasted 30 minutes. Another unoriginal action adventure movie. The only thing that was mildly interesting was the "balance room" scenes. I know it is a Disney film and I am probably no longer in their target demographic, but the movie was really a pile of garbage.

We didn't watch any movie tonight, but we did watch 24. With the end of the season approaching they still have the both of us hooked. I am hoping the writers will deliver.

Two stars out of 5 for both movies. 24 this season has been 4 out of 5 stars.

We did a double header watching movies today.

We started in the early afternoon on Slumdog Millionaire. While the visual imagery of life in Mumbai was rather interesting, the story never grabbed me. The story has the typical structure of today's movies where the story jumps back and forth between two time frames. In this movie, one time frame was when the protagonist is a child and the other when he is a young adult.

I had high hopes for the movie because a couple of weeks ago I watched Sunshine, who has the same director, Danny Boyle. I just found myself fast forwarding through a number of slow bits.

While eating dinner, we watched Bride Wars, Marketa's pick. The movie was predictable, unfunny and soulless. I found myself laughing more at the supporting cast than either of the main characters. Kate Hudson was absolutely horrible. Her character didn't have one redeeming quality.

I give Slumdog Millionaire 3 out of 5 stars, mildly interesting but nothing more.

I give Bride Wars 1 out 5 stars. I would have given it no stars if I hadn't chuckled 2 or 3 times at something a supporting cast member said.