Mike Browne’s Blog

Cool viral video done be EA to promote the release of Tiger Woods 09.

I think I’ll do some research into the copyright of this poem. I have some cool ideas for a movie very loosely based on it.:

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

~ Robert Frost, 1922 [source Wikipedia]

Iambic pentameter is tha shiznit. Just ask that Shakespeare fella.

Awesome, especially if you’ve seen the final episode of The Sopranos.

Dan, our new UX guy here at MovieSet brought his new bike to work on the West Coast Express from Port Moody this morning. This cool looking bike is a folding bicycle called a Speed P8 from Dahon.

The coolest things about this bike are that it is completely adjustable, someone Dan’s height (over 6′) or mine (5′ 7″) can buy and ride the same model, as well, it folds up in a more managable package that Dan says he carries on to the train and if there are no seats he can sit on the bike itself. It can be wheeled like luggage or easily carried. Finally it comes with a pump inside the seat post to keep one’s tires inflated.

Here’s a picture of Dan’s bike all folded up:

Cool! Now I want one.

People have been telling me I need to watch House so rather than start a few seasons in Carol bought me the season one DVD’s for my birthday. We started watching and on the second episode the DVD began to skip and freeze up. Upon inspection we disovered that the DVD was flawed internally (not scratched) and needed to be returned. After a few days of waiting to find out what happened to the lacrosse player with the shunt in his head we had our new DVD’s.
[continue reading…]

I am able to blog from anywher now via this iPhone. I’m betting that it will come in handy a lot. Even if it doesn’t it’s fucking cool that I have the option. I just have to learn how to type faster with this damn phone.

Look! It’s mikebrowne. Yes, all one word. Not Mike, not Mike Browne, it’s mikebrowne. That’s what my friends call me and so should you.

This is the place to find me blogging from now on. I needed a change. I have this awesome URL of my name so why not use it. My old blog at blog.mikebrowne.com will remain exactly as it is for the time being the only difference being I’m updating it even less frequently than I do now (read: never again).

I’ve gone through quite a bit of a transformation over the last few months. Work slowed down in the movie biz over the winter and due to the writers strike and the threat of the actors strike, which is still not resolved. As a result I was out of any regular form of work for a long time. I became seriously depressed, gained a pile of weight, hid out in my office playing World of Warcraft, leveling a Draenei Shaman named Upuaut (an Egyptian God known a the “opener of ways to the underworld“) all the way to 70 and didn’t really think about blogging at all.

I went ot a few seminars to get out and network and I kept seeing Colleen Nystedt, CEO of MovieSet.com at a number of them. I immediately thought that the idea of MovieSet was a great one. I got frustrated with the lack of work in the movie biz as the spring and summer progressed so I thought, “Why not send Colleen my résumé?” I did and was hired pretty quickly. Now I work there. I get to blog, consult on product development andam working on a number of other creative things at MovieSet to drive traffic to the site and give people some cool original content to view there. I have the pleasure of working with Patrick Sauriol of Corona’s Coming Attractions fame. A movie blog I used to read. Corona’s Coming Attractions is itself is a coming attraction and relaunching soon. I’ve seen the site and it kicks some serious movie blogging ass.

What’s MovieSet? Basically, our goal is to give fans the authentic behind the scenes experience while allowing production to retain control over how much the public sees and to integrate the process of production with promotion. We’re building free “Crew Tools” applications to streamline the production work flow by bringing it online utilizing the latest in web technology. In other words we’re building something very cool that no one else is working on.

With this new gig my balls have grown back as I feel like I’m contributing again. It’s interesting how much of my self-esteem is tied up in the amount of money I’m bringing in. How frigging cliché is that? What a fruit.

I’ve got new toys – iPhone, new laptop and some nice new glasses. I’m losing weight and starting to exercise more. I’m even feeling more social. Perhaps as well as blogging more I might actually go outside or heaven forbid hang out with people.

So cool that Canada’s NFB is putting some of their film catalog online and free while others are just previews. A lot of these films I remember seeing on CBC as a child. For example, here’s the full version of ‘The Log Driver’:

I don’t really need to say much more. That widget is really cool. If you want to see the site check out NisHere.com