Thursday, July 31, 2008

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Brightkite

So, somebody sent me an invite to Brightkite.com yesterday. I'm not sure who it was, but whoever you are, thanks!

I signed up and started playing around. It took me a while to get my settings tweaked in order to get my posts and check ins to go to twitter, but thanks to a really helpful Brightkite guy, I got it worked out.

I just question the value of location-based blogging. It's an interesting idea, but it just feels like something I'm tacking on to Twitter.

Brightkite might grab me more when we eventually get our iPhones. Yes, that's right. Rhea and I have pretty much decided that we're going to get iPhones when our T-Mobile contract runs out in October. I still have to find out how the data plan works and how much it will cost us per month, and I'm also hoping they patch in MMS messaging by then also. That's really the only sticking point I have right now. It's almost a deal breaker. I wish I could test one out before I buy it and see what the difference is.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Gears of War Event

I went to one of my local Gamestops last night for the Gears after hours event. I actually went to two Gamestops, but the first one wasn't holding the tournament because nobody had signed up. So, I ran to another one that was right down the road and got in.

First, we watched the video hosted by Cliffy B. It was maybe two minutes long. There was some cool looking gameplay shown, but not a lot obviously. Cliffy said that you would be fighting on the highest peak of Sera to the lowest...area. Something like that. It was over so quick I barely remember.

The GS manager told us later that the video was "defective" and that it should have been an hour and a half long. I don't really know if I believe that. The video we watched during the first event wasn't that long. Not sure they would produce an hour and a half of video for this little event, but whatever.

So, then they got our names and started up the "tournament". It was basically one round, 1 vs 1, on Gridlock. They removed all the power weapons so nobody could "get lucky with the boomshot". I was knocked out the first round, which wasn't a huge surprise to me. It was a close match, though. It ended up with us at very close range using shotguns on each other. Both of our screens were bloody. He just happened to get a lucky shot.

By the way, we had to play on the Xbox 360 kiosk machine and the little LCD display on split screen. And we watched Cliffy's video on what I think was a 13" CRT. Very nice!

I did get a t-shirt out of the deal, so I'm happy.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Batman, Meet Dave

We caught The Dark Knight last night with Alana, Kenneth, her friends and my dad. It was a good movie, made even better/creepier by Heath Ledgers performance as The Joker. He really stole the show, and I wanted to see more scenes with him in the movie.

I'm not going to say that Dark Knight was the best move EVAR! It's easily up there, but I think the length hurts it a bit. I had heard that there wasn't really anything that could be cut out, but I disagree with that. I won't go into details here since I don't want to spoil anything. I just think it could have been tightened up a bit and kept to a solid 2 hours.

Ledger's performance was incredible. He really made you think that he was completely insane, and therein lies the brilliance of The Joker. He has a plan, but it's wrapped in so much insanity and chaos that no one has a chance at unraveling it. Except Batman, of course.

And by the way, why does Bale talk like that when he's Batman? You know, with the growl. I remember Keaton having a different voice for Batman, but it wasn't that pronounced and weird.

And since I love seeing a great superhero movie do well as much as I love seeing a crap movie tank, let's talk Meet Dave. I was reading up on the box office totals for this cinematic piece of shit, and by all accounts it's as big a flop as Pluto Nash. It cost anywhere from $65 to $100 million to make (I've seen both numbers online), and only made a little over $5 million its opening weekend. Damn, that makes me happy.

My main question is, who the hell went to go see it? Who arrived at the theater with money in hand and told the person behind the glass "One for Meet Dave"?

Seriously, we need to find out who these people are, or at least don't let them leave the theater once we have them. They should all be transported to some remote location in the desert and studied, then shot. I mean, first we need to isolate that gene that makes you want to see a movie like that, then eradicate it.

We also need to go ahead and stop Eddie Murphy from making any other movies. I honestly can't tell you of the last good movie he was in. Beverly Hills Cop maybe?

Really? Do we have to go back into the 80's to find a decent movie for this guy? And Shrek doesn't count because 1)all of them suck and 2)he's just reading a script and doing a voice.

And by the way, who's holding the purse strings on these movies? Give me $65 million and I'll greenlight something good. Something with action, guns, and boobs. Lots of boobs.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Six Flags

My wife's birthday is this Sunday, so as her present I decided we would go to Six Flags this week. We have been talking about it for a while since they had the kids pricing going on, so it was a good idea.

We got there around 10:30 a.m. when they opened. We left at 9:00 p.m. Yea, we were tired. :-)

It was really great because we didn't have to wait in line for long to ride any of the rides. The longest wait we had was to get on Tony Hawk's Big Spin. We were able to just walk onto the Texas Giant (and get our picture taken).

I got a bunch of great pictures that I put up on my Flickr. It was funny, because I wanted to get my picture with the Joker and Riddler, but they left before we could get it the first time. So, when we saw them towards the end of the day, I jumped at the chance. I did feel like a big dork, but that's nothing new for me. Hehe.

Texas Giant

Sunday, July 13, 2008

MSN Auto Design Challenge...Thingy

Thanks to Deaconblade360, I've been trying to get some free MS points by entering this MSN design contest. They basically give you a Dodge Charger and some color options and decals and let you go to town. It's a little deeper than that, but I'm not so deluded that I think anything I design will win, so it's really just about making the gayest car I can.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Flickrdown

Yesterday, I posed the question on Twitter whether there was an app that would allow you to download all of your Flickr photos to your desktop. I was quickly answered by Jay900, who pointed me to Flickrdown. I used it last night, and it is awesome!

The only thing that I can see that this app needs is some RSS support. My idea is something like an RSS reader, but it automatically downloads any new photos directly to your machine. No need to go in and select the new ones. I'm sure this is possible, and if I had any idea how to implement this, I would.

You could even go as far as having a separate folder for photos that you tag. The app would recognize the tag (for example, the tag "print"), and then you could know that you want to print that photo. Then uploading it to a store like Walgreens would be a snap.

Basically, I take a lot of photos with my phone and send them to Flickr, so those pics rarely actually get saved on my hard drive.

Anyway, it's a great program and I recommend it if you use Flickr with your phone.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Fireworks And A Three Day Weekend


fireworks
Originally uploaded by Gemini Ace
It was nice to have a three day weekend. I was scheduled to work at Kohl's on Saturday night, but I called in sick. We had both asked for it off, but they scheduled me anyway. Not cool.

We went to Alana's and hung out for a while. They had fireworks out there, which was cool. I tried to take pictures with my phone with varying results.

We're going to get new phones come October when our T-Mobile plan runs out. We're thinking about going with Verizon and getting the Glyde or something else like it. I don't really want the iPhone because I don't want to be tied down to Apple and iTunes.

Anyway, it was a good weekend. Played a bunch of UT3 on my PS3. I might be almost done with the campaign. I've been seeing people that are playing it on the 360. I'm hoping Epic adds trophies to it since they had to give it cheevos on the 360.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Free HD-DVD's = Happiness


free hd-dvds!
Originally uploaded by Gemini Ace
I finally got my free movies for buying the HD-DVD add on for the 360 back in March. Can you really beat a $50 player and 5 free movies? I think not!

Funny thing is, I only got one movie that was listed on the original form. The others were all substitutes, and definite upgrades to what was originally offered. I mean, Transformers in HD? Yes, please!

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Force Unleashed

While it's still 2 months away, I can't help but start to get excited for the new Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed. It's one of the few games I'm planning on actually buying on release this year. The question I have is whether I'm buying the Xbox 360 version or the Wii version. I guess I will have to wait for some reviews, although the 360 and PS3 versions were developed by LucasArts, while the Wii version was handled by a 3rd party. I'm not sure if some exclusive content (and multiplayer) will be enough to outweigh the cheevos. Of course, if the motion control works well and you can realistically use the lightsaber and force powers, then I'm totally there.