Useful Concept - Review

Inception Plot Questions

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:20:00 -0400

Just watched Inception and found myself with a few questions regarding the ending. These are spoilers people so DON'T READ unless you have seen the movie. Really. Regarding my opinion on Inception: I love movies that make me think and want to discuss. So from that end I enjoyed it. I didn't like the uselessness of the female architect (she could have rebuilt the place at will right?). A few minor plot holes maybe, but overall fun and I was engaged the whole movie. Questions: Ok so at the end we see the top spinning. Is it about to falter? Does it go on for ever? Two contradictory items of evidence for us to ponder. 1) In the real world, or what we are to think is the real world, the top does in fact stop a few times. It shouldn't if they are not in the real world. Or maybe the top means nothing at all. Just a made up construct. Cobb is the only one to actually use it after all. 2) In the end the kids haven't aged at all and they seem to be wearing the exact same clothes. Are they doing the actual same pose as the dream sequences? Very unlikely to be reality. So, does the fact the top proved reality before (by falling) but the end it doesn't - mean that he was still in limbo, but a new version (having dealt with his two ghosts)? Did the movie just cut out too soon and the top was going to fall over (it looked like it could)? Was this just a metaphor for accession to heaven? My opinion is that in the end it was a dream. Or at least not reality. Metaphor for navigating through purgatory to get to heaven for committing suicide? Or something along those lines? Or was he actually fine until he got to limbo at the end, in which case he rebuilt it after his wife died to what he wanted.

Skybus Review

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:12:00 -0400

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I took a quick trip down to Florida. We opted to use the new airline called Skybus. Since it is a new airline I thought I would write up a quick review for others who may be thinking of using the airline and worried about it in some way.

One thing to note is that Skybus lists their airports based on big named cities nearby. That means that Boston, MA is actually Portsmouth, NH and Fort Myers, FL is actually Punta Gorda, FL. 30 to 50 min away. If you are not prepared for doing a bit of traveling once you land you may be in trouble. This may not be true for every city.

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Margot at the Wedding Review

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:27:00 -0400

Margot at the Wedding is basically about two sisters dealing with each other for a week before one gets married. My first thought about this movie once it was done... "I am utterly thankful that I can't relate to this movie in any way."

The movie was fun and disturbing, like many movies I watched this weekend. However in the end there was nothing endearing about either sister, their bizarre love/hate relationship and inappropriate behavior to their children. I gave my wife a big hug when it was done. Thank goodness she is sane and doesn't treat people like that. Thank goodness she has a nice family.

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I'm Not There Review

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:15:00 -0400

I walked out of a movie theater for the first time ever tonight. Actually it wasn't a movie theater, but a Music Hall, which was showing a bunch of new movies as part of Telluride By the Sea. I have gone to this yearly Celebration of Cinema every year that I have been able and try to see most if not all the movies available.

I'm Not There is a portrayal of Bob Dylan's life told through six different actors. Some disclaimer here. I don't really care for Dylan's work. He is a fine enough guy. I have seen him perform live and understood none of it.. I like some of the earlier stuff, but in general it just doesn't do much for me. I know nothing of his life or history, etc. So I wasn't planning on watching this movie, however the preview sounded really interesting. A very creative way to approach the subject at the very least and it has gotten some good press.

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Into The Wild Review

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 10:46:00 -0400

I have the pleasure of living in Portsmouth, NH. That means that once a year I get to attend Telluride By the Sea, Telluride Film Festival's little seacoast cousin. At Telluride By The Sea we get to watch 6 select movies that just recently were shown in Telluride the week before. These movies are often some combination of provocative, moving, troubling and beautiful.

Last night was opening night and they showed Into The Wild. My quick review: I liked it.

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What is the Best Tequila

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:42:00 -0400

Last night some friends of ours gathered around for a fun experiment. A blind tequila taste test.

We gathered 6 different tequilas ordered below in price.

Pepe Lopez Premium ($9.99)
Jose Cuervo Especial ($15)
Hornitos Sausa ($19)
1800 Silver ($19.99)
Don Julio Blanco ($36.99)
Patron Silver ($48.00)

We bought a lot of little dixi cups of various prints, and served to seven people a small sample of each. Turns out those little cups leak after a short period. I don't recommend using them. We randomized the distribution so people were drinking a different tequila than their neighbor so as not to be influenced. This requires at least one person to be running the taste test and not partaking (me and friend Jess). Get a handful of people to sit down and focus. We then wrote each score down against each tequila, also noting the person. This way later we could see the persons favorite vs the group favorite.

Something like:

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Simpsons Character and Transformers Thoughts

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 11:35:00 -0400

Following many others I made a Simpson's character. I opted to build something that doesn't look like me in any way. I do wish I had the tshirt though. On another note, I saw Transformers last night. I liked the action, but the story was really really bad. So many holes, bad dialog and a pointless romance setup. The movie itself was long. There were numerous scenes that could have been removed to help. I enjoyed many parts though. We all laughed several times (not sure we were supposed to for a couple of them). The action scenes were great. Turns out if you decapitate a megabot he dies. Who knew. At any rate in thinking of earlier films by the same director I liked on the whole The Rock and even Independance Day better. Transformers had big battling robots, which is super cool, but the D - story still brings it down. So sad. That said, I will probably buy it on DVD when the price is inexpensive. It should look good on the projector and that kind of fun action is great background movie stuff when I am working on a project. Story be damned, I guess I like fighting robots.

Panasonic PTAX100U LCD Projector Review

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:30:00 -0400

First a bit of backstory. I have no TV. No Stereo. No home theater. Instead i have a few PC's with Media Center installed on them. I use them to watch tv, record tv, play music, etc. One really handy thing you can do with them is share the media with an extender. For me, the extender is the xbox 360. So how does the Panasonic PTAX100U LCD Projector fit in?

If I have an xbox 360 i need to display it somewhere! Plus I always wanted a big screen display. So I went to my office to get our projector, connected it with a ceiling mount to my xbox 360, and presto I am streaming tv and such from my pc to my projector to an 80" wall space.

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where does one draw the line?

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 23:50:00 -0400

I am getting much more traffic to my blog after my recent efforts to do a make over. That is great, don't get me wrong. I am also getting a lot of emailed requests to link, promote or review sites or products I have no connection or interest in.

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Samsung SCH-u740 Review

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:44:00 -0400

I have been in dire need for a new cell phone for some time now. I have been using a Treo for a VERY long time. I started with the Treo 270, then the 300 and finally a Treo 600. All of them had significant hardware and software problems. I can't count the times I had to send one back for speaker issues, mic issues, etc. In fact they finally stopped letting me. So I had to fix them myself. Yes, I had to take apart my 600 a few times to properly insulate the phone from the battery interference. No more expensive Treo phones for me.

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Why we want you to be Rich - Review

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:19:00 -0400

Why We Want You to Be Rich is a book written by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki. Most people know Donald Trump by now, either from his TrumpTowers or the Apprentice TV show. Robert Kiyosaki has other books out in a series called Rich Dad Poor Dad.

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Toyota Prius Review

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:47:00 -0400

I have owned my Toyota Prius for a few years now. Its a 2004 Prius Black and sexy as hell. I still get a fair number of questions about it. They are either 'How does it work?' type of questions or 'Do you still like it' types.

First, I should mention that we are actually a multi Prius family. I put my Prius on order and two weeks later my girlfriend at the time (now wife) put one on order for herself. Little did we know that her parents had also ordered one. A few months later all three Prius were delivered and we were happy as clams. Me with my Black, Jen with her Red and Jens parents with their Silver.

The photos of black prius always have tinted windows like that. The car isn't that cool looking though without the tint. I didn't tint them, but secretly I want to. HOT.

To date none of us have had any trouble with the cars. They work exactly like they are supposed to. I have only done basic maintenance. I know that eventually the large battery banks will need to be replaced, but that shouldn't be for many more years.

I don't drive my Prius very much at all. I get somewhere between 40-50 mpg depending on the season (colder weather lowers my mpg). My wife drives all over NH and MA and as such puts a lot of miles on her car. She has better milage than me. Closer to 50. Her parents really try hard to keep their MPG high and as such are always over 50.

When driving a Prius you see your mpg in real time. You know that gunning it really kills your efficiency. You also know that coasting to a stop at a light helps. It is really fun to try to max your mpg. Seeing it pegged at 100 mpg for a few miles feels good, if only because your in a car and are bored otherwise.

I tend to drive like I don't care about my mpg and thus I think mine is lower than normal because of it. Still 45 mpg on avg is freaking great. Other cars may get that once in a while, but not as an average. The other day I was well over 60 mpg due to a lot of downhill driving.

The car surprised me in a lot of ways. It is very roomy for being considered a small car. When we moved to our new house we used the cars all the time and just put the seats down. Being a hatchback helped in that regard a lot. Many many trips to Home Depot.

The interior was also a lot better than I expected. My last car was a Jeep Wrangler that I drove till it died. So anything was an improvement, but this car has so many little bells and whistles. Keyless entry has to be the single best feature. I don't think I will get a car again without it. It is that great. I just walk to my car and it unlocks itself for me. I don't put my key in the ignition. It knows I am in the drivers seat and I just press the start button and we go. If only my house door were that smart. I would spend serious money to connect my wireless car key to my door lock.

One thing we didn't get is the Nav system. Since I don't drive much it wasn't needed for me. Jen didn't drive much at the time either, but now she drives everywhere and so we got a little portable GPS nav unit that has come in very handy. If you drive much you should consider it.

The only thing I would change about the car is the computer display. It may be different in the newer models but I think that the monitor that shows your stereo, mpg, car stats, etc could be utilized a lot more. The UI is poor, and the information provided is clumsy. Better than nothing, but I would think you could update it over time or customize it further. Toyota, let us mod it!

Well, guess that is it. Send me comments with any specific questions. Happy to answer them.

Vanguard Review

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:15:00 -0400

Well, that was quick. I started my trial copy of Vanguard maybe 30 minutes ago and I have already had enough? I am sure I am not giving it a fair chance and I will try again but here are my initial thoughts. The interface seems old school. Lots of options though. I opted for a dark elf caster. I then was able to customize my character. I was overwhelmed with choices here so I just clicked on randomize a few times to get something interesting then off to play. No tutorial or intro that I could find. Instead you jump strait into playing in a starter area. I attack something nearby, kill it. It showed a bag to loot, so I try a few times. I see text in the bottom chat area saying no loot. Hmm. I see a guard or something with an icon over his head so I run over to talk. I did something wrong. Not sure how and I attack him. He kills me quick. I rez somewhere else. No idea where I am or where I started. I run around for a while. I finally get back to starter spot, find the guy again talk to him correctly and he instructs me to kill some feeble elves. Ok, gotcha. I see them right next to us (why didn't he kill them?). They are all talking already stuff like "why doesn't someone put me out of my mysery" stuff like that. So I attack. They start attacking me (but I am only doing what they ask) and say stuff like "what are you doing? I kill the requisite 6 of them. I get more quests. I find most quests to be more of the same. Kill 10, collect 6. Graphics are choppy at times. It took a while to load. I find nothing impressive. It is at night, so everything is dark. I should try again during the daylight hours of the game. Ok, enough for me to be a bit put off compared to the beta of LOTRO. I have a 10 day trial of Vanguard, so I will certainly give it another try or two.

Lord of the Rings MMORPG Beta Review

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:49:00 -0400

Lord of the Rings MMORPG Beta My first review: I happened to stumble upon a free closed beta account a few days back for LOTRO and thought I would give it a whirl. I have played a number of online role playing games over the years, starting with UO, EQ, AC, then growing into DAOC, Lineage II and WOW. I am sure I missed one or two in there, but they were probably worth forgetting. I really enjoyed parts of UO, EQ, DAOC and WOW and with that we now can check out LORTRO. Keeping in mind it is a beta, and not even open beta yet. First thing to note is that downloading this thing sucks. Even using their recommended bit torrent client. Once download complete you then patch for quite a long time. I was sick at the time and quite grouchy about downloading a game only to download what seemed like the full game again in patches. Thems the breaks I suppose. I am running on a brand spanking new PC with Vista Home Premium. 2GB Ram, Athalon 64 Dual Core, and a GeForece 7600 GT 256MB Ram. My windows system score is 5.0 over all due to my processor. Install went well, and pretty easy once all the files were downloaded. The introduction is nice. I feel the character selection is poor compared to many other games out there, but then again they are locked into LOTR story and thus this is probably a good thing. I opted for a Hobbit to start, picked a female and made her look as much like my wife Jen as possible. Cute redhead. I named her Jennybug as Buttercup was already taken. I chose her class to be Burglar. Mostly because I read somewhere that you could tell riddles to confuse opponents and that sounded like fun. You start off with a bit of a solo adventure. No talking or even seeing any other live characters. Rather you jump right into a story line and some NPC's and that was great. I wont spoil you with any story information. Quick side note, I tried also a female Elf lore something or other and it seems the model for beginning a new character is similar in system for each race. You start with a quick mini starter instance with you and some NPC's, then you go to your starter area with the other newbies. You only stay in that area up to lvl 6 or so. Getting some core mechanics of the game out of the way in tutorials and quests. Then something cool happens. You are told that you are finishing the main quest story line for the area and to confirm if you want to leave that area (and jump into a big battle). These types of battles are little instances. In this case you go solo, join with NPC's and play out the little mini-game. I found it to be fun, if a bit confusing the first time. Once I finished with everything I was set into a pretty little shire. Here I was a lvl 6 hobbit and now I was in this big zone full of wonder, beauty and other people running about. The graphics are really quite nice. I found my card ran everything at near top quality without any trouble. I find the foot connecting with the ground a bit off somehow, and sometimes the audio of sound effects (bear in distance, etc) to be a bit off. But other than that the graphics are fantastic. I read somewhere that we are only using the low end textures as they don't' have you download the high end. Not sure if that is true, but if this is low end then WOW. There are more quests than you can shake a stick at. The shire area is really a bunch of little groupings of families and farms, so it works out to be a dozen or so mini communities with their own stories and quests, animals and fauna. The quests do a good job getting you to explore spreading a bit of the base story and keeping you entertained with silly little side quests and tasks. I have made it to LVL 12, so can't speak to anything more advanced about the game. I know there is PVP, and I am just high enough lvl to try it out which I plan on doing. A few other things to note: Crafting: I have started off as a tinkerer. That means I mine (prospect) make jewelry and can cook. I found cooking near impossible unless I buy ingredients which seems silly. Mining was difficult to do at first since I couldn't find much but you find good areas to go to when you need. Jewelcrafting only starts out with a few items to make and I dont' think you can even wear them until after lvl 10 or so. So far I find it a bit boring, but then again I have no instructions and may not have found recipies. I also haven't tried to sell anything I have made at the auction house. I did try out tailoring and that seems a good path for a cloth/leather wearer as you can start making a half dozen equipable items right away. I have yet to see any equipment that has special abilities other than stat buffs. I am not sure lotr has that sort of vision in mind for equipment really. There are lots of buffs/debuffs in skills though. Fighting: The fighting is pretty simple. Click on target then click on attack type of commands (hot keys). There may be combos you can do later, but I found nothing like that so far. I enjoyed sneaking as a rogue and zapping things from afar as a lore keeper. There are quests you should do as a group (fellowship) and they are clearly marked in the quest guide. Titles!: This is really fun. You get titles from all kinds of things. For example I made it to lvl 5 without dying so my title was "Jennybug the Wary". I also killed a lot of wolves so I had an option of changing my title to "Jennybug the fur-cutter". Some titles happen due to a quest, some to how many things you kill, other by gaining skill in your crafting area, etc. Plus you get other stats based on your completion of quest chains, use of skills, etc. Makes for a really customized character and lots of little progress indicators which I really enjoyed. Some bugs are in the game right now. Most frustrating of which is that my map sometimes forgets where I have been. But hey, its closed beta. I think it runs really quite well for beta. Better than I was expecting. This game has a lot of polish as the lvl that I have played thus far and I am looking forward to trying it some more. I only wish I had to beta keys as I would love to be able to play with my wife at the same time. Thats all for this post. Feel free to ask me any questions you have. I am right now installing a trial copy of Vanguard to see what that is like.

Reno 911 Movie Review

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:06:00 -0400

Just got done watching Reno 911 the movie. If you haven't seen the TV show it may not make much sense. If you have seen the TV show then you already understand that they are stupid people and shouldn't carry a gun. It is their personalities and how they interact that makes it funny. Nothing is realistic and that is more than ok because it is a spoof of the Cops TV show. The writing can be very funny at times but it isn't consistent. There are a lot of guest appearances. You will see people from 40 Year Old Virgin and Anchor Man. The Rock. Pee Wee Hermen (I think). Etc. The story is a bit better / more interesting than I expected (as a whole idea). The execution is about what I expected. That is to say it is a TV episode but longer, in Miami and not bleeped/blurred. The ending should have been erased. I think they put it in for filler because it would be too short otherwise. Seriously it dropped from a 5.5 out of 10 to a 4 out of 10 because of the crap ending. Bottom line: If the movie is shown on Comedy Central and you like the TV show then watch it. Don't watch it in the theater. Probably shouldn't rent it unless you have nothing better available. High notes include: Boobs Whale parts Simultaneous Masturbation scene The Scarface character Low points include: Ending Intro Entire lines from the tv show in the movie ('moving like a cheetah') Stealing exploding whale real life event