Monthly Archives: May 2010

Red Dead Redemption and Hard Labor

Posted by on May 26, 2010 No comments

Just a quick post to let you know I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet (again).  The last few weeks have been spent diving into Rockstar’s new Red Dead Redemption and doing a bit of hard time demolition work in my back yard.  I hope to get a review of RDR up soon as I am probably about 50% through it now.  Initial reaction:  Amazing, go get it and expect to spend most of your free time wandering around New Austin.  Speaking of free time, in the back yard, I am tearing down the above ground pool that has lingered in all it’s ghettoness back there and it’s time for it to go.  So I bought a new saw (Dewalt 13 amp Reciprocating Saw) and I am carving it up like a turkey.  Hopefully I can take in the scrap metal and get some good cash out of it.

Also, we picked up a new car!  We traded in the Honda Fit and got a Ford Escape Hybrid model.  2010 with all the bells and whistles.  For a gadget geek like me it’s even got the Microsoft Sync stuff for integration with my phone.  I might even do a little bit about that later, but I wanted to keep this short.  So keep your eyes out for a full review of RDR and next on deck is Alan Wake! (which is sitting in all it’s shrink wrapped glory taunting me)

Iron Man 2

Posted by on May 12, 2010 1 comment

So it’s about time I finally got around to writing up my thoughts on the new Iron Man movie. Seeing as how it was back on Saturday that I went to see it. Honestly there is not a lot to say since I am a big comic book nerd (cue Ogre screaming NERDS!!!) I am a little biased when it comes to comic book based movies. Even the abomination that is Spider-man 3 holds a special place in my heart…a cold dark place in my heart where hopefully no one will ever have to watch it ever again. The thing about the Iron Man movies is that, wait for it,…….. I am not that big of an Iron Man comic fan!. I know I know, but I never really got that into him. If I wanted an eccentric millionaire that net his money on super hero toys I would just read Batman. Of course Tony Stark had a one up on Bruce Wayne in that he actually got drunk and didn’t just fake it. But I digress.

Sarah and I met up with some friends to catch a 5pm show in Fairfax. It was originally going to be the 4:30 show but the directors hall (fancy theater where you get to pick your seats) was nearly sold out. This caused a minor panic and had me getting to the theater for the 5pm show at like 3:30 to be in the non-existent line. Go me. Needless to say there was a lot of sitting and waiting. During this time Sarah discovered Plants Vs Zombies on the iPad and came to the realization that this new gadget of mine can stay…. Of course she renamed it the iPvZ device. Anyways, movie time rolled around and we took our seats. I used the best possible time to escape for a pre-movie bio run during the new twilight trailer, oh noes, did I miss anything important?. Yeah I didn’t think so.

——–Spoilers!!!  Skip Ahead if you don’t want to be spoiled————

For this movie it’s established that Mr. Stark is the Iron Man and now big brother wants to get his hands on the tech, but Tony isn’t selling. While the Govt. is claiming that others are creating suits to match Tony proves otherwise with his super transparent phone and everyone is happy. Well, except this Russian guy who is really into whips and has the stalker wall of Tony. Oh by the way turns out that the gizmo in Tony’s chest that’s keeping him alive is also killing him, so he goes a little bananas. Whip dude invents a suit and comes after Tony and bam the Govt. says “I told you so”.

So Tony works on getting hammered to finish himself off and Tony’s competitor enlists the help of whip dude to build some new suits, like we don’t see that backfiring in the future. Now Tony’s friend Rhody comes in to snag a suit and tell Tony off and Shield. Swoops in to clean up the mess that is left over, mostly Tony. They tell Tony that he doesn’t have to die, he just needs a good hardware based montage to find the answer. Bam just like that Tony invents a new element and he is healed!! (although the healing tastes like coconut).

Now Tony feels better, Rhody has a new and improved suit thanks to some new guns strapped to it, and whip dude has created an army of robot drones that are controlled from an orbiting space station that gets taken out by a kid and a droid….wait wrong movie. But the robot army is real. Tony receives a plot device, er, I mean phone call from whip dude boasting that he is going to blow up some of Tony’s stuff, Tony swoops in and saves the day and realizes that even he needs friends. Then everyone hugs and they fly off into the night.

———End Spoilers————–

Ok so maybe there was a little more to it than that, but you get the picture. Now, things I loved about the movie were:

Playful banter, somehow Robert Downy Jr just knows how to do the banter shtick. It worked great in IM1 and in Sherlock Holmes, and it works great here. The playful banter between him and Pepper Potts was great.

Simple plot, there was not a lot to the story here and that’s a good thing. A lot of time the superhero movies get mired down in story after story all piled on top of each other, and it just gets messy. One villain (unless you count Tony’s demise as a villain) and one main plot. Simple and great.

Great action, all of the action sequences where very comic book. Nothing overly Hollywood about them.

As for the things I didn’t like….there were very few. They could have explained a little more about the random cameos, the cap shield, Black Widow, etc. But it wasn’t that bad without it. Really I just liked the movie. If Marvel keeps with this recipe then they will do well with the rest of the Avenger cast movies!!

Wow, I thought when I started this that I wouldn’t have that much to say, I guess I was wrong. I am giving Iron Man 2 a good 8 arc reactors out of 10.

Quick Aside, this post written entirely on the iPad, and my hand kind of hurts now.

iPad Apps

Posted by on May 7, 2010 1 comment

So here is a list of what I have installed on the iPad so far.  Aside from this I have ported over my three essential albums of music, some episodes of Deep Space 9, the movie Sherlock Holmes, A bunch of pictures, and the D&D Reference books in PDF format.  As of right now, I still have 9.17gb free.  This list does not include the default apps that come on the device.

ABC Player – This one is for some of the full ABC shows that stream to the iPad.
AIM for iPad – Full AIM client with Lifestream
Air Hockey Gold – Air Hockey game.  Very cool, Works with 2 players too!
Beat the Traffic HD – Traffic App to show alternate routes
Captain’s Blog – Nifty LCARS style interface for a status updater.  Plugs into Twitter and Facebook for Updates only
Comics – Comics app that pulls from lots of publishers (no DC)
Dictionary.com – Dictionary and thesarus
DigiDrummer HD Lite – Drum Pad
Doodle Buddy for iPad – Drawing app for fun
Dragon Dictation – Speech to text dictation (uses online for conversion)
Draw for iPad – Another drawing app
Dropbox – Cloud based file repository
Epicurious Recipes – Cookbook
Facebook (iPhone) – Facebook app for notifications and such
Filterstorm – Photo Editor
Foursquare (iPhone) – Social checkin App
Game Table – Chess Checkers and Cards.  No AI, no rules.  Just the board and the pieces.
Godfinger for iPad – Cute game for playing God (Kind of like Black and White)
Goodreader for iPad – PDF Reader and file manager (kinda)
Google Mobile for iPad – Google Front End for all it’s services
Harbor Master HD – Neat game for guiding boats in and out of a harbor
Heads up: Hold’em HD – Head to Head Hold’Em game
iBooks – Apple’s e-book reader
iCARS Interface – Just a visualization to make the iPadd look like a PADD from Star Trek. Doesn’t really do anything
iMahjong HD – Mahjong game
IMDB Movies &TV – IMDB Front end for lookups to their database
Kindle for iPad – Kindle reader tied to our Kindle account
Marvel Comics – Marvel specific Comic book app
Netflix – Netflix front end for watching streaming movies and managing the queue
Now Playing – Movie app for seeing what’s in theaters and buying tickets online
Pandora – Music streaming app
PaperDesk LITE for iPad – Notepad app
Plants vs Zombies HD – Tower Defense game with Zombies
Pocket Legends for iPad – MMO kind of WoW-ish
Pocket Pond HD – Koi pond.  Top down view.
Real Racing HD – Racing game
Skype (iPhone) – Skype app for Voice calls
The Solitare – Solitare game
Tap Tap Radiation – Music Game
ThumDrum – Drum Emulator
Twitterrific for iPad – Twitter App
Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD – Piano Emulator
WarChess – Chess game with AI and battle Animations
Warpgate HD Free – Space based adventure game
The Weather Channel iPad – Weather app
Wikipanion for iPad – Front end for Wikipedia
WordPress – Blog editor for my site
Yahoo! Entertainment – Entertainment news/Videos, and a TV Guide type interface

iPad Day one

Posted by on May 6, 2010 No comments

My soul is now sitting in a neat little jar on Steve Jobs shelf.  For my birthday Sarah gave me permission to get an iPad.  I picked it up on Tuesday night on my way home from work.  (yeah, I know my birthday isn’t until NEXT Friday but my inner Verruca took over.  I was orginally thinking of getting the low end 3G model just to have the capability to do OTA internet when I needed it, but after a long dialogue with myself I realized that, I have a 3G phone for things like that and that extra $130 could be used for better things! (Like buying my wife flowers for being nice enough to tolerate my gadget addictions.)  So I ended up buying the 16gb WiFi only model.  They way I figure it, I do a lot of cloud computing so space on the device isn’t really important to me since most of my files are already out there.

So, when I got home I connected up to iTunes and, after the long install of the updated iTunes (I guess I should have used it more) I managed to get my first batch of apps loaded and started the casual using!  So I want to break this down into a few catagories for what I would be using the device for:  Reading/Browsing, Media (Videos/Music/Photos), Games, Apps.

Reading/Browsing:
This is probably the main reason for getting the iPad.  While I have a smallish laptop, it’s still a pain to sit on the couch with it and read, not to mention being more upwardly mobile.  So with Sarah’s Kindle account and the Kindle app now allow me to access all the books she has been buying.  So now I can finish Lost Symbol while she can still keep the kindle.  So far the reading seems ok.  It’s not as easy on the eyes as the e-ink screen but not as harsh as a computer monitor.  The web browsing is awesome on the device.  Most of the news sites I read came through just fine, even with the lack of flash.  Many of the site that use embeds have been using you-tube, and since you-tube has started using HTML5, you don’t miss much.  As a side note on the browsing, I downloaded the app Goodreader for use with PDF’s and ported the PDF’s I have for D&D.  They look amazing!  Very easy to use and search through and easy to read!

Media:
I didn’t plan on using the media all that much on the device but it looks pretty good for what it can do.  The Netflix app streams perfectly, though I haven’t had enough time to sit and watch a movie.  Not to mention,  could just watch on the Xbox.  I loaded a few episodes of DS9 on it that I had ripped in for my droid, so the resolution is still 320×240, but they still look good.  For music I copied over the mandatory albums of Journey, The Cure, and Depeche Mode, but again, I have streaming audio on my Droid (and the Pandora app on the iPad is cool).  So honestly, while I may use it every now and then, the Media side of the device is just there.

Games:
The iPhone/iPad/iPod platform has started to hold it’s own in the gaming world, and the iPad versions of the games really shine because of the size of the screen and the power of the device.  I told myself that if I got an iPad, I would get the Plants Vs. Zombies game (HD version) and I don’t regret it.  On the iPad it’s exactly the same as playing it on the PC and it’s easy!  Outside of that I am sticking with the freebies until I find something that’s really good.  Even the free games run and look great.

Apps:
Ahh the other reason for getting the iPad.  As I have stated many times, there are a lot of developers of applications that are only doing work in the apple environment.  While Android is the “up and coming”, it’s still not there yet, and I want access to the available apps that are out there.  Yes, we have an iPod in the house, but that’s Andrew’s and he rarely lets me play with it. Given that I have my Droid, I will have access to all that is Android, and now that I have the iPad, I have access to all that is Apple.  There really are apps for just about anything too.  There is only one little problem….. The iPhone/iPod apps are very small.  the iPad has a beautiful screen and when you run the iPhone/iPod apps, it’s tiny.  Yes there is a 2x button that doubles the size, but the pixels look bad and often it makes the app blury.  Case in point, the Facebook app.  There is no native iPad app for Facebook so I get to use the iPhone one for notifications and photos, but everything else is through Safari.  The iPhone Facebook app just looks silly when stretched out to iPad size.

The last two nights I have been able to sit on the couch, browse my Google reader and catch up on my news sites, sit with the family while we watched TV, and occasionally look up some info.  I am very happy with the purchase(present?) and will be doing much much more with it in the future.