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I don't really update this much any more (ever), but I do still blog pretty often. If you like games check out my gaming blog at http://virtuadept.casualgamer.net.
I probably won't update this LJ much, sorry, spending effort on the gaming site. |
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So now Ars Technica has an article about how theater movie ticket sales are in decline for the third year in a row. Ticket sales have dropped a cumulative 12.6 percent since 2002, the last year ticket sales showed an increase. Why is this?
Are we just not getting good movies recently?
You know, after my experience the yesterday evening with King Kong, I think I know the answer. The problem isn't a lack of decent movies, although that is somewhat of a concern. The real problem is that I can get a BETTER experience watching a movie at home on my big screen TV. I do not have to put up with assholes in the crowd. I do not have to put up with shitty quality film reels, like the one in Kong last night where a near constant blip of green lines across the screen pretty much ruined any suspension of disbelieve. I do not have to put up with small seats, I get a big comfy couch. I can eat my own snacks and drinks and not be charged highway robbery prices for the same thing at the theater. I can even pause the picture and go to the bathroom without missing any of the latest 3 hour epic.
The author of the Ars Technica article suggested that the movie industry should release to all distribution channels at the same time rather than staging them out. I imagine that if that happened, I'd watch even fewer movies at the theater. For one thing I would no longer ever go to a movie that has been in the theater for more than a week. Movies that are this old have been worn out and are always shown in the shittiest small ass screen they have and it's just not worth it at all. I would still probably go see "must see" blockbusters at the theater if I could fit them in my schedule during their opening week, because on the bigger screens at the theaters with better sound systems it really is a better experience, assuming a random ass-munch audience member doesn't ruin it.
If theaters are going to survive, they have to make their experiences better than what I can get at home. Otherwise, they can die off, and I won't lose sleep over it.
BTW, stay away from Cinemark. They suck giant monkey ass. |
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Just Pathetic. Is it the Americans' fault, for not paying attention to the news, or is it a lying administration's fault, for trying to downplay all their mistakes and outright deception? The only consolation is that the numbers are better now than they were in 2004. Link provided by Boing Boing. |
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Kim and I went to go see a movie this past weekend. Narnia was what we went to see but it was sold out. The next showing for Narnia and Kong were over an hour wait, and Kim didn’t want to wait.
I had seen previews of Syriana and it looked like it would be good, plus it was rated R so I though maybe it might have some nice adult content. First of all, there was NO reason for that movie to get an R rating. None. It didn’t have any sex. It had very little violence. There was one gratuitous torture scene that lasted all of a minute or two tops. Hell, they had a great opportunity at the end to show some carnage, and they just faded to a white screen instead of showing it.
Oh yah, and it had terrible camera work, with “shakey cam” that just made it nauseating. I hate that style of filming, I wish whoever thought that would be a good way to make a movie would craw into a hole somewhere and die. And after about 30 minutes of this movie I almost felt like walking out. I probably should have, at least then I’d have saved myself another hour and a half of torture. During the afore mentioned torture scene in the movie I couldn’t help but think to myself, “he should just show this movie to the guy, he’d be talking in under 10 minutes, begging for mercy.”
In a nutshell, Syriana would have been a good movie. It had good actors. It had a good premise. But it was terribly implemented. There was barely a thread of a plot. There were so many loose ends at the movie that they didn’t bother to explain. I felt like I was watching a sequel and that I was supposed to know stuff about what was happening already, but since I didn’t, what was shown barely made any sense. On top of all this, barely anything at all happens in this movie apart from talk talk talky talk talk talk up until like the last 15 minutes. I literally almost fell asleep.
Normally I give a movie Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. I give Syriana the finger.
Avoid. At all costs. |
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Okay, so I gotta get me one of these RSS News Toilet Paper Dispensers. Oh, sure, it's not real, but I think this is a definite WINNER!!!!!1!11ONE |
| » Visual Basic .NET . . . . . i'm lovin' it. |
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da da DA da DAAA! I'm lovin' it.
Visual Basic .NET that is. I've been in training all week at Hilton Computer Strategies to learn VB.NET, an accelerated course covering TONS of stuff, I can barely keep up. This language is great, I can't wait to use it, I've got to come up with some project to work on from home during the spare time so that my knowledge will not rust between now and when we convert our app at work from PowerBuilder to VB.NET. If anyone has any good ideas for a somewhat simple first project let me know.
And I have updated my gaming blog Knight Games with two new reviews.
Dec. 1st, 2005 @ 09:12 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Ok here's my Black Friday story.
Wife gets my sorry ass up at 3:50 am. Grab a quick shower, throw on some rags. Got in the car and drove 15 minutes to the Best Buy. Got there at 4:40 am.
O. M. G.
The line goes from the Best Buy door... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL
the way down past the Barnes & Nobles, the Office Max, the travel agency, a Subway, and two more little stores I forgot, then turns the corner, and goes AAAAALLLLL the way down that side of the shopping strip past about 5 more stores.
I said "Fuck this, I'm not waiting for this just to save a few bucks."
Kim said, "Ok well go wait in the car then."
I said, "Fuck that. I guess we'll wait."
So we waited. And at 5 am they started letting people in. About 50 or so people ever 2 or 3 minutes. It took us about 25 minutes to get in the door, the line moved surprisingly fast.
We had a game plan. I was going to hit the games aisles and she was going to snag the CD's and movies that were on our list.
The sad thing was, we were only doing this to buy stuff for her brother. ;-)
Soooo anyway I get to the game section, and start trying to get games, and I see the last copy of Destroy All Humans and try to go for it, almost had it, and this punk kid in a ripped up Tony Hawk T-shirt and a Chicago White Sox had worn backwards tries to grab it from me.
I said, "Hey, I have this!"
"No way, fucker!" was his response.
"You little shit, you're not even old enough for this game, assclown."
"SIF, stfu n00b, i pwnz j00!"
"What the fuck was that? English, motherfucker, do you speak it?"
"ZOMGWTFBBQ?"
So I smack this little bitch in the mouth and he runs off to whine to his mommy.
Actually I had no problems finding all my stuff, I just threw that bit in for your entertainment. So then I go to check out, and I got the PC COD2, Destroy All Humans (x2, one is a gift), and Ultimate Spider Man, and on the way through the line I snagged one of the $10 cordless Xbox controllers (works surprisingly well actually).
Kim wasn't so lucky, only managing to snag 3 CD's and wasting far too much time searching for some DVD's that she never found. I was done checking out by 5:40, and it took her another 15 minutes or so but we got out before 6 am. And then we drove to Target and searched in vain for some Scene It games for some of my nieces.
And after that I was done shopping because Black Friday officially sucks, and I wanted donuts. And a bed.
And so we went home, I did more shopping over the nice, friendly, safe, and pain-free Internets, and was a lot happier about it, even if I didn't save any money. So there you have it folks.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRY THIS AT HOME.
IT'S JUST. NOT. WORTH IT.
Nov. 25th, 2005 @ 05:47 pm
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| » Austin Bound |
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Kim and I are going to Austin this weekend (starting tomorrow morning) for some fun on our anniversary. We've got a train ride planned for Saturday, and golf planned for Sunday. On Friday night we'll be heading to Sixth Street to watch a comedy show Esther's Follies. Friday is our anniversary night so we'll be eating out at a nice restuarant before the show also. It's going to be a blast!
I also updated Knight Games.
Nov. 10th, 2005 @ 09:29 pm
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| » The Power of 4! |
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Wow, and I thought the Fantastic Four was cool, but this site is the coolest! (I swear I haven't laughed so hard in a long time)
Sep. 16th, 2005 @ 09:01 pm
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| » Katrina Sucks |
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I can't believe it took four frickin' days for relief to finally start flowing into New Orleans. It's a disgrace!
Oh, I updated KnightGames a few times since last posting.
Sep. 2nd, 2005 @ 07:19 pm
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| » Nothing To See Here |
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I haven't posted recently in my journal, but really, there hasn't been anything major to post about that I'd want to share with the planet. We're still watching Buffy, on the 5th season now about mid-way. I'm still playing World of Warcraft occasionally, rarely, not that often actually. I also have spent time on other games (gasp), but I'll save that for my gaming blog. Work is still... work. One exciting thing I guess is that I'm flying to Denver in a couple of weeks to do a face-to-face meeting with the clients for a big new module I'll begin working on soon. I'm dreading doing all the documentation that is required, however.
Aug. 5th, 2005 @ 07:03 pm
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| » I Want a Trunk Monkey |
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Apparently, Jamie Dehart in Morehead, KY has a trunk monkey named Boo Boo. I wish I had a trunk monkey.
Jun. 28th, 2005 @ 12:59 pm
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| » WoW and Happiness |
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Ok well I really enjoyed playing WoW last night with Tami & Steven. They were kind enough to help me clear off some of my early quests, and we even did one they hadn't finished yet. And of course, they gave me too much stuff. [wink] But I'm enjoying it, it's nice to have friends in the game, it's so much more enjoyable than solo grinding, or grouping with strangers, who may or may not be an ass-hat.
Unfortunately, our time was cut short, when I got paged for a failed job at work and had to quit WoW to log into the VPN and fix some stuff. But hopefully soon we can try this again! :)
One thing I have noticed, and I don't know if this is a Horde thing or if this is a Hellscream thing, but NO ONE WORKS TOGETHER. I mean, I did manage to get one person to join up with me against some gnolls, for about 10 minutes, but in general I have had a hard time finding pick-up groups. I don't know if this is because there's a shortage of players or what. I did run into a bunch of players while in Brill, but none aparently were interested in teaming up.
Looking forward to more WoW, but I have a review game I have to work on tonight (Area 51, an FPS). I promised I'd do it quick so if it arrives in the mail today I need to do it.
Oh and Lyndal, don't feel bad. I *was* going to watch Sopranos with Kim, but she went to bed early and I had WoW open for testing the new Kick Ass "Windowed Maximized" video mode, and they just happened to log in. We really only managed to get in about 45 min before I got the page for work. So what I told you was true. At the time. It just didn't turn out true. (Now you can post about how great a time you had with Sean over on Argent Dawn)
Jun. 24th, 2005 @ 11:57 am
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| » WoW Fun on Hellscream |
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Having a blast so far with my undead priest Soulrezor on Hellscream in World of Warcraft. Steven and Tami are playing low level undeads also but they got ahead of me a bit. But they helped me out with some phat lewt so I should quickly catch up with them. :)
Game Chronicles has published a review of mine for the game Still Life. Check it out if you like adventure games. This game is available on Xbox and PC. I rated it 8 of 10. Reminded me a lot of the movie Se7en.
Jun. 22nd, 2005 @ 10:53 am
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| » Restricted Area |
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Vacation was relaxing. Got to swim a lot which was fun and of course eat lots of BBQ. I just posted up a preview of a diablo-style RPG called Restricted Area on my gaming blog.
Jun. 20th, 2005 @ 12:42 pm
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| » Yet Another Example of Copy Protection Being Worse Than Useless |
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I love reading Mark Cuban's blog. Mark is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks not to mention the owner of a big media publishing company. Mark's latest entry talks about how Macrovision is suing some small companies who have apparently developed software to break their DVD copy protection scheme.
Here's a choice quote:
Now maybe I’m reading this wrong, but the way I understand it, the CEO of MacroVision, a company that sells copy protection software to DVD publishers, is sending out a press release saying…
”Our software doesn’t work. It sucks. We can’t stop a bunch of little companies from writing software that completely busts our copy protection that we are selling for millions of dollars to publishers.”
If that’s the case, why in the world are DVD publishers paying Macrovision any money at all?
So basically, we get this copy protection crap, that drives up prices of DVD's, and inconveniences legitimate customers who need to make backups of their paid-for DVD's, and it doesn't even help stop the crooks. They already busted it and are selling black market DVD's in Hong Kong. You would think that copy protection schemes would be illegal by now, since they obviously never work, and all they do is cost consumers money and hassle.
Jun. 16th, 2005 @ 08:35 am
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| » Co-Op RPGs |
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Posted an entry on the gaming blog about the top co-op multiplayer RPGs for the PC (and some for Xbox).
Jun. 15th, 2005 @ 08:09 pm
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| » How the Music Industry Could Make Money From P2P |
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This site does a good job of showing in a simple way how the music industry should handle the P2P file sharing situation with regard to music. In a nutshell, everyone will pay a license, say $5 per head, via fees added on to ISP or University or whatever. This license, paid once a month or however often they set it, entitles the user to download all the music they want via P2P. Then the music industry's licensing organization tracks which songs are being shared, using the methods they are already using now plus some new ways which will be opened up by making this all legal, such as polls. From this tracking data, they decide how to split up the vast wads of cash that this method will generate. Everyone's a winner.
Jun. 15th, 2005 @ 01:44 pm
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| » Vacation Friday |
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I'm looking forward to my vacation on Friday. Even if it is to go to a family reunion, you know how those can be sometimes. But all in all it should be a lot of fun.
I have posted up some more gaming info on my gaming blog. This time Nintendo seems to have dropped the ball big time.
Jun. 15th, 2005 @ 09:40 am
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| » Fate |
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I have posted up a preview of the game Fate, a diablo-style RPG that recently came out. Here's the link to my gaming blog.
Jun. 6th, 2005 @ 10:26 pm
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