I’m not really sure how well this will work, but we’ll see. I’m writing this via my sidekick. Lauren and I are driving up to A&M to visit Ashley.
We’ll keep this short.
Jade empire rocks. Sahara is a good popcorn flick (Steve Zahn is funny shit). The Sox won. Who could really ask for a better weekend.
Blogging at 70mph rocks!
Now theres a combo.
We’ll take these one at a time since they each deserve equal bantering.
Saturday night Lauren and I hung out with Ashley and went to see Fever Pitch, the new movie about a guy who loves the RedSox. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The story was mediocre and I really dislike Drew Barrymore as an actress, but the subject matter was there and it was good to feel a little Boston pride. The reviews are split right down the middle. Most are calling it a mildly interesting movie about baseball and fanaticism and the rest are calling it the date movie of the year. I thought it was probably about a 70%. Like I said, the subject matter is there, Jimmy Fallon doesn’t completely suck and there are quite a few moment where I laughed out loud. The rest was your average date movie. I can’t see it doing well at the box office though. It’s a movie about Boston, Boston Fans and the RedSox. People actually IN Boston will think it’s cheesy and people outside of Boston won’t get it. It was pretty much made for people like me, a fan, who wasn’t actually in Boston when they won. It brings that feel good hometown thing to the big screen for everybody that didn’t get to experience it first hand. Unfortunately for the box office numbers, that not a lot of people. We were 3 of about 30 people in the theater… and the movie just opened on Friday. Not a bad flick. Folks like me and Nagle should drag their girls to it so they can begin to understand about RedSox fans… everybody else can wait for DVD.
Taxes. Why me? After doing our taxes last night with the help of Turbo Tax, it appears that we owe the government $850. Wonderful. Just wonderful. It seems that Lauren and I both put “Married 2” on our W4’s, which means the government takes less each paycheck but you get less back, if anything, at the end of the year. Well, the places Lauren worked for last year took that to an extreme and took out next to nothing. Out of $5000 she made at one place, they only took out $120. That’s just not right. Although, maybe it is. Our W2s match our pay stubs, so, it could be right. If it is, we’re really getting the short of end the stick this year. It also doesn’t help that we’re into the next tax bracket by about $1000. Huzah. So, instead of a few hundred back, we’ve got to shell out $850 in the next few days. Isn’t that just awesome. I’m so happy the government is working for us and doing so many wonderful things, aren’t you?
Sigh.
Ok, we’ll end this on an up note of sorts. Video Games. I’ve got 3 to drop on you and only one of them was playable. That’s right. One. Last week I took a look at Prince of Persia 2, Star Wars Battlefront and Acts of War.
Prince of Persia 2 wasn’t even remotely playable. It didn’t pass my 15 minute test, mostly due to technical issues. When I loaded it up, the Bink movies that are the intro kept crashing the game. I wrote to UbiSoft tech support about it and got the canned “update your video drivers” answer. Well, considering Brothers in Arms as well as BF (something I play everyday) use Bink movies, I hardly think video card drivers are the issue. So, I found a save game and loaded past the intro movies to actual game play. It was canned, repetitive and completely uninteresting. They seriously toned down the one thing that made PoP good, the jumping/puzzle solving. Instead they focused on a combat system, which while interesting could be found in every run of the mill fighting game. Nothing innovative about being able to make a hit combo, sorry guys. Final Grade: D+ / C- (if you can get it to work).
Acts of War was at least playable. The concept was different: a RTS based (loosely) on current world events. I think the real problem here is that whoever was developing this had never made a RTS before. Reinventing the wheel didn’t really work out of them. Also, they really stripped down the standard RTS model and tried to replace it with “nifty” things. Resource gathering doesn’t really exist, neither does building anything more than troops. It’s a lot like C&C. You have a base, the base creates an army, you go blow stuff up. End of story. It also doesn’t help that the story itself is super weak. US soldiers protecting Paris during a UN converence? Come on. There are so many better RTS games out there, this one just isn’t worth the time. Passed the 15 minute test, but only for about a half-hour. Final Grade: C+
StarWars Battlefront was both playable and enjoyable. It’s actually fun AND interesting AND capable of being played for more than 15 minutes without wanting to rip out your eyes. The premise is simple: a FPS based on the StarWars universe and played in a Battlefield model. You have conquest spawn points that need capturing, you can hop in vehicles, be different classes and recreate any of the major battles from any of the 6 movies. The geek level from being able to grab a Tom-Tom on Hoth and go after Imperial walkers is unreal. The game also looks nice graphically. The interface is easy, it’s got some pretty decent bots if you’re playing Single player (campaign or instant battle) and of course the real meat is the multiplayer. Servers are a little sparse but once you find a couple that are actually populated the game becomes very enjoyable. I’ll stick with Battlefield but it I ever need a StarWars fix, this will do the trick. My only real complaint is some of the mechanics and weapon issues, but if the game were to get any sort of a following, those would be things that could be fixable in patches. Final Grade: B+/A-
Matt out.
Dunno really why it was broken. I looked at the php, poked at it, didn’t change anything major, just moved some things and changed some spacing to clean up the code. I uploaded it on a lark and now it works, go figure.
Long long week is finally over. Looking forward to spending some time with Lauren and relaxing a bit. Her dad’s birthday is tomorrow, I think we might be going to get some food.
Oh, and I’ve got a few game reviews for you guys once I get around to typing them. Prince of Persia 2, StarWars Battlefront and Acts of War are all subjected to Matt’s famous “15 minute test”. I’ll let you know which ones passed in my next post. Until then, enjoy the working Recent Links as well as the weekend.
Later.
What a weekend. It was kinda all over the place. Saturday I worked the 100th Aniversary party for American Nation Insurance or something like that. It was a crazy party with probably well over 1000 people. We were hired to photograph couples as they came in as a gift to them from the company. After that we were to photography the party, dinner and the presentation afterwards. The party was so big that we called in 2 extra photographers. I’m not sure how much they helped but it was nice to have someone to help carry stuff. Things went pretty well for the most part. My camera suffered a massive error and died about halfway through dinner, but hey, that’s what backup cameras are for, and we had 2 of’em. It was actually a pretty sweet rig, Canon 20D with booster pack, 17-35 L-Series (pro) lens, Quantum QFlash and Turbo battery kit all stuffed onto a custom bracket. I think it’ll be my main wedding rig once I figure out whats wrong with the camera. It might just need a firmware flash or maybe a good nights sleep.
Speaking of which, I didn’t get home until 2am from that shindig, which, with the time change became 3am. I slept in until about noon on Sunday. I haven’t been feeling well, I’ve got some sort of sinus/throat thing and it’s been real bugging me. I’ve been doing my usual Nyquil and OJ and it seems to be keeping the full-on cold at bay.
Sunday was pretty cool. While I was asleep, Lauren’s cell phone rang and it was Dan (from SCAD). He had a 4 hour layover in Houston before his fight back to San Diego. We figured since he was in the neighborhood we’d pay him a visit and grab some dinner with him and catch up. It was good to see Dan and he seemed to be doing well aside from stomach trouble from his excessive drinking the night before. He wanted to get something “Texas-ish” to eat so we took him for some mexican at Papasitos. After that we still had some time to kill so we stopped in at Frys before we brought him back.
Frys is quite possibly my favorite store on the planet now. It’s super Walmart sized and its full from floor to ceiling with everything electronic and computer related. It’s the only store I know of where you can go in and browse the “motherboard section” and physically handle the display board before you buy it. Not to mention the fact that isles to follow have every other component you can image. You can quite literaly walk into Frys and walk out with all the pieces to build a new computer at below retail, almost NewEgg prices. Add DVDs, CDs, Software and Home Electronics sections and you’ve got one sweet store.
And speaking of CDs, I went over to their techno section (yes, they actually have a techno/dance section) to look for the new Danny Howels Global Underground (after Chris reminded me which one it was) and ended up coming home with the greatest mix CD set ever made instead.
Renaissance: The Mix Collection by Sasha and John Digweed
3 CDs of pure genious. The quotes on the box sum it out pretty well…
“The re-release of this remastered 10th anniversay edition couldn’t have come at a better time” … “For many it was the first mix album they ever bought and for us it remains the best” … “Perhaps the greatest mix CD of all time”
Yeah. This is actually a re-release of the Uber rare original, which if I’m not mistaken, is going for hundreds on Ebay. It’s old school audio bliss. It makes me remember why I like techno in the first place.
Anyway, after we dropped Dan off we headed south back towards home when we decided to go see SinCity. A few phone calls later and Robin and Laurie are coming with us. We catch the 8pm at Cinemark.
SinCity is one of those movies I’ll have to sit and think about for a while. It wasn’t bad, it was ok, and there’s nothing that I can pick out instantly as something I didn’t like, I just can’t help feeling that it was only mediocre though. Not for any particular reason, it just didn’t thrill me as much as I thought it would. Like I said, it’s not “bad” so don’t think that I didn’t like it, it just needs some time to digest I think. The direction and cinematography were very well done. The visuals were perfect and consistant and the mood was as close to a Frank Miller comic book as you can possibly get. I think there was a thin layer of “cheese” on top of the whole thing and that most of the actors were dry and that every line felt like a one-liner instead of dialog. This could also be because 99% of the lines were taken directly from the books, not to mention about 90% of the shots through out the movie. They did a great job of trying to recreate EVERYTHING from the comics but in the end it just feels a little forced. There’s a quote from a reviewer that reads: “Accuracy isn’t the same thing as quality.” and I think I agree with that. Out of 10, from me it gets something like a 8.5. Apparently, the tomato agrees – RT 78%.
Today is my day off so I’m spending the whole of it enjoying my new CDs, trying to get rid of the spyware I just found (stupid f’ing ecards from my mom) and playing some more Brothers In Arms. I considered briefly getting a new Xbox game, but there’s nothing out right now that I feel like spending $50 on. DOA Ultimate is a thought, but I’d rather wait until it’s in the “Hits” package and $20 cheaper.
Lastly, my “Recent Links” plugin is completely borked. I’m trying to fix it but keep getting parse errors. I’ve sent an email off to the author, we’ll see what he says. That should be back up (or gone) in a day or two.
Matt out.
Last week I had dental work done. It was the first half of a crown. It still hurts. I hate dentists.
I shall elaborate. For those of you who have never had a crown, basically it involves them taking the tooth that you’re having problems with, getting out a big ass drill (not the small one they use for filling cavities or anything) and removing half your tooth to make a “stub” to attach the crown to. Only problem is that they send the crown off to be made out of a mold of your original tooth and it takes a while (2 weeks in my case). So, since they’ve already made whats left of your tooth into a bloody stump, they stick a “temporary crown” onto it. That a great idea in theory, but it’s just a smooth cap thingy to keep your stump from getting infected. It’s not made for chewing or anything. Infact, since it’s just a cap, it isn’t really much of a tooth at all. This angers the rest of the teeth in the area. Their friend has gone missing and this cap thing is in it’s place. So, what do they do? They start to hurt too, because the cap doesn’t fit 100% perfectly and your bite/jaw line is completely fucked up. So, instead of one tooth that hurts originally, you now have a stump, a cap and half of mouth of pissed off teeth. Well, you do if you’re me, cause nothing nice ever happens to me. Fucking teeth.
It’ll be the 18th when I go back for the “real” crown. Until then I have to pop 16 advil a day just to keep the swelling down. I’m sure Chip remembers that time my wisdom teeth came in and my face was the size of a basketball. Well, this is worse.
Fucking teeth.
I love coffee. Some might say I’m an addict. I like a good frothy cup of hot coffee in the mornings and even a nice mocha or decaf mocha in the evenings. If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s sub-par coffee. To me, powdered non-dairy creamer make about as much sense as a Jewish Hitler. I don’t get it. It’s a powder… that’s not milk… that’s suppose to stand in for milk…. but it’s a powder? Huh? Last time I check, you don’t get powder from a cow. I can understand the non-dairy part if you’re lactose intolerant, but for the love of everything holy, at least use a LIQUID non-dairy creamer. I think my main problem is the taste. They just can’t nail down artificial flavors. Fake milk sure doesn’t taste like real milk. Fake fruit flavors don’t taste like real fruit. When is the last time you had a piece of gum and thought, gee, this really does taste like grape. Grape is the worst offender. They’ve never been able to get that shit right. Compare a grape soda up against a glass of grape juice and see what I mean. But milk… why even bother making fake tasting milk. It’s like the shitty “soy milk” my Mom tried to get me to drink when I was a kid. I’m sorry, you don’t “milk” a soy bean. If you did they’d probably arrest you for lude conduct with a legume.
I digress. I think what’s made me mad is that I brought a carton of real cream to work and put it in the fridge. Everyone else is 100% cool with drinking that powdered shit, I figured it would be safe. I went to make my coffee this morning, guess whats missing from the fridge. Yup, my creamer. I got ONE cup of coffee out of that creamer. One cup of coffee that didn’t taste like ass and now its gone. So, what am I drinking. Brown sludge with white powder in it. Huzzah.
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