The computer generated scenery of the movie was beautiful. When in the forest surrounded by the natives, the CGI characters looked less like CGI (think the emotionless features of The Polar Express) and more like costumed people (think Lord of the Rings). One of the best things about the 3D in this movie that it wasn’t full of typical 3D gimmicks of things flying at you for the sake of flying at you. In fact, to me, the movie was less about things flying at you as it was about providing depth to the movie. James Cameron obviously wanted you to feel like you were part of the world in the movie, and he succeeded. I can only imagine what seeing this in 3D IMAX would have been like (the only IMAX theater in St. Louis was showing A Christmas Carol in 3D and not Avatar… Big mistake). The movie did drag on a bit, but I think it was necessary to draw the viewer into this alien world and really feel a part of it. Now that we’ve seen much of it, any possible sequel wouldn’t need to spend such lengths on pulling the viewer into the environment and detailing all the plants and animals.

The story was a decent story. Nothing groundbreaking. In fact, it draws parallels to the conquest of the Native Americans (and the story of Pocahontas), so the theme should feel very familiar. Also, if your ideology leans to the Glenn Beck side of crazy, you might even think that the movie is racist against white people because only white Earthlings were featured (which, of course, was not true at all, but who needs facts?). It also drives on themes of greedy corporations and environmentalism, but as I said, the story was decent. The imagery is the real draw to this film. If you haven’t seen Avatar in 3D at the theater, make sure you do. It is something that everyone needs to experience. This is my generation’s Star Wars leap forward in theater technology.

The computer generated scenery of the movie was beautiful. When in the forest surrounded by the natives, the CGI characters looked less like CGI (think the emotionless features of The Polar Express) and more like costumed people (think Lord of the Rings). One of the best things about the 3D in this movie that it wasn’t full of typical 3D gimmicks of things flying at you for the sake of flying at you. In fact, to me, the movie was less about things flying at you as it was about providing depth to the movie. James Cameron obviously wanted you to feel like you were part of the world in the movie, and he succeeded. I can only imagine what seeing this in 3D IMAX would have been like (the only IMAX theater in St. Louis was showing A Christmas Carol in 3D and not Avatar… Big mistake). The movie did drag on a bit, but I think it was necessary to draw the viewer into this alien world and really feel a part of it. Now that we’ve seen much of it, any possible sequel wouldn’t need to spend such lengths on pulling the viewer into the environment and detailing all the plants and animals.

The story was a decent story. Nothing groundbreaking. In fact, it draws parallels to the conquest of the Native Americans (and the story of Pocahontas), so the theme should feel very familiar. Also, if your ideology leans to the Glenn Beck side of crazy, you might even think that the movie is racist against white people because only white Earthlings were featured (which, of course, was not true at all, but who needs facts?). It also drives on themes of greedy corporations and environmentalism, but as I said, the story was decent. The imagery is the real draw to this film. If you haven’t seen Avatar in 3D at the theater, make sure you do. It is something that everyone needs to experience. This is my generation’s Star Wars leap forward in theater technology.

ACII was a great game because the story kept you interested. Normally I can only play games for 15 minutes before I get bored with them and want to turn them off. ACII wasn’t like that, but even if I did want to quit after a short amount of time there were plenty of checkpoints to make sure I didn’t lose my progress. The scenery was amazing and the game play was smooth. The building looked almost real and the scenes where the city would erect before you were awesome. I can only imagine how great it looks on an HD TV. The cut scenes that helped move the story along were great, if not long at points. The only time in the game where I questioned the makers’ choice was when I was forced to go all around Italy to gather Codex pages in order to progress the story. It was almost as if the developers said, “We need to make this game longer, how do we do it? Let’s send the player on a long scavenger hunt.” Besides that point in the story, everything else was great.  There were missions that you had to do and several others that you could skip.  And it doesn’t matter if you skip them because once you beat the game you still have free reign to go about the other missions, which I’m currently doing now. The final level snuck up on me fast and I was surprised at how easy it was to beat the final level, but I wasn’t disappointed. I’d have to say this should probably be up there as one of the top games of the year, but since I don’t game that much I can’t really make that call. All I can do is tell you that the game was fun and beautiful with a great story and great graphics. If you have a PS3 (or XBOX 360) you should buy this game.

ACII was a great game because the story kept you interested. Normally I can only play games for 15 minutes before I get bored with them and want to turn them off. ACII wasn’t like that, but even if I did want to quit after a short amount of time there were plenty of checkpoints to make sure I didn’t lose my progress. The scenery was amazing and the game play was smooth. The building looked almost real and the scenes where the city would erect before you were awesome. I can only imagine how great it looks on an HD TV. The cut scenes that helped move the story along were great, if not long at points. The only time in the game where I questioned the makers’ choice was when I was forced to go all around Italy to gather Codex pages in order to progress the story. It was almost as if the developers said, “We need to make this game longer, how do we do it? Let’s send the player on a long scavenger hunt.” Besides that point in the story, everything else was great.  There were missions that you had to do and several others that you could skip.  And it doesn’t matter if you skip them because once you beat the game you still have free reign to go about the other missions, which I’m currently doing now. The final level snuck up on me fast and I was surprised at how easy it was to beat the final level, but I wasn’t disappointed. I’d have to say this should probably be up there as one of the top games of the year, but since I don’t game that much I can’t really make that call. All I can do is tell you that the game was fun and beautiful with a great story and great graphics. If you have a PS3 (or XBOX 360) you should buy this game.

Things seem to freeze all the time. Whether it's Internet Explorer (yes, I use it to check the compatibility of websites I work on), Windows Explorer, Windows Sidebar, or pretty much anything else. I don't run a lot of programs at once and have 2gb of RAM (which Windows while idling uses about 44% of) and these things still freeze.

Things just don't work. Windows Media Center is a piece of crap and can't play DVDs without freezing or taking forever to load. I went to burn a cd this morning using Nero and clicked "Burn" forgetting to put in the cd. No problem, Nero notified me and I put in the blank disc. What's that? Windows decided to drop the drive altogether? Nice. So then I had to reboot the machine so it would pick up drive. All to burn the cd.

Another factor weighs in on my continuing hatred for Vista. My MacBook. While I do find some faults with OSX, for the most part, it's a good OS. It's fast on my MacBook, there's good software, and the look and feel is great. And I never run into any of the problems I run into on Windows. My next desktop computer is going to be a Mac. Too bad that won't be for a while.

I could install Linux on it, which I do have Ubuntu installed via Wubi, but I don't want to have to do a lot of work to get something to just work. I don't want to go around the bend to get my ATI card to work to it's full potential all while sacrificing other aspects of an environment I like (If I want to use the ATI drivers for desktop effects I can't play games or have a screensaver because the screen flickers while doing those things). Too bad OSX won't work on PC hardware (without mass amounts of hackery).

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Tech N9ne is definitely rewriting the books on being an independent rap superstar. You need no look any further than Killer for proof. Ice Cube, Paul Wall, and Scarface are a few of the bigger names that appear on the two-disc album. You can even tell that Tech is reaching for the mainstream with his selection of beats on the album. It's not his best album, but has several great songs in the 32 track set. The best song on the album, in my opinion, is a song in which Tech does what he does best. It's a song in which Tech takes us on a trip into his psyche and let's us into his deepest emotions. This song is about how he wishes he could cry just once. Everything would be better if he could cry and the tears could wash away all the bad things in his life. It's a pretty deep song and it's not every day you hear a rapper talk about crying, let alone wishing they could cry. Have a listen and purchase the album.

[See post to listen to audio]

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Now if I could just get Adobe to allow for the most recent flash to be on the Wii so I can watch Hulu, I'd be happy. Not the Wii's fault. Not Hulu's fault. It's all on Adobe.

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Last night, I purchased a book called 1920: The Year of Six Presidents. I never knew that six men who were/would be Presidents of the United States ran in that election. It should be a very interesting book. Does anyone have any suggestions for some more reading regarding 20th Century American history?

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A 3-ft.-high tablet romantically dubbed "Gabriel's Revelation" could challenge the uniqueness of the idea of the Christian Resurrection. The tablet appears to date authentically to the years just before the birth of Jesus and yet -- at least according to one Israeli scholar -- it announces the raising of a messiah after three days in the grave. If true, this could mean that Jesus' followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose on the third day -- and it might even hint that they they could have applied it in their grief after their master was crucified. Keep reading at Time.com

Of course, if you know your history, or have seen the movie Zeitgeist, you'd know that the Christians took a lot of mythology from past religions and deities, including being born upon a virgin, the date of Jesus' birth, the miracles he could perform, etc. If you've not watched the video, go watch it now.

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On August 27, 1906 T.R. decided to change the American language. Some changes were small and were quickly adopted by American dictionaries. Many words had silent vowels removed, such as the words I listed. Also changed were words like rumor, which was rumour. Some of the other changes were not as elegant and were not kept. For example, the word kissed became kist and blushed became blusht. As soon as Congress came back from their recess there was a great debate. Shortly after, T.R.'s changes were knocked down and the Government Printing Office was ordered to "observe and adhere to the standard of orthography prescribed in generally accepted dictionaries of the English language." Of course, since the dictionaries had already adopted some of the new spellings, they stuck with us. I bet T.R. "blusht" when he heard he had been beaten.

SOURCE: Mark Sullivan, Our Times (New York: Scribner's, 1930-36), IV, 162-90.

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Yes, I've blocked you msnbot. I'm tired of finding you in my stats coming from random searches that don't even show my site in the search results, such as "keeping," "album," "comments," or any of the other thousand or so one word searches you come to my site for. I don't show up in your search results (at least not high enough for me to care) nor do I really want to show up in the top 100 pages in search results for the word "keeping." So, you are no longer welcome here. I don't want to see you on my property anymore. I don't really care that this may drop me out of live.com's search altogether. It's a crappy search engine and anyone who uses it is an idiot and shouldn't come to my site anyway. So, in conclusion, stop visiting my site msnbot. You're not welcome here.

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I thought Batman Begins was great and I knew they had to make another. Every preview for TDK I've seen has blown me away. This does not look like a comic book movie. This looks like a crime thriller, such as Heat. It's being compared to The Godfather II, meaning it's a sequel that is so good it blows the first film out of the water. There are even whispers going around that if Heath Ledger doesn't win an Oscar for this it will be a travesty. Christopher Nolan is a talented director and Christian Bale is one of the top actors in the business.

I'm counting down the days until its release. I've seen every Batman movie in the theater. I've seen every one, since the first back in 1989, when I was 6, with my dad. I'm looking forward to going with him. It's one of our traditions. 19 years of Batman movies. Thankfully, Christopher Nolan was able to revive the franchise after the horrible Batman and Robin and hopefully he'll come back for a third in the series reboot. Until then, I'll continue to drool over more news and previews of TDK and wait impatiently for the day my dad and I can see it together.

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1937-2008

He was one of my favorite comedians.]]> Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:03:15 -0700 http://virb.com/shep/posts/text/682237 http://virb.com/shep/posts/text/674653

Last night I watched the movie Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def.]]> Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:10:04 -0700 http://virb.com/shep/posts/text/674653