Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

Within the last few months I have been making use of the two RedBox “automated retail systems” within the lobby of a nearby Wall-Mart. (And mostly being successful in resisting the urge to venture into Wall-Mart on each visit and get trapped behind a lady talking on her cell phone while trying to write a check to pay for 26 items in the 20 items or less checkout lane…you know the famous Wall-Mart shopping experience, and it’s not fun.)

While the selection at a RedBox DVD vending machine isn’t as good as Netflix, the average cost per DVD is lower, especially if you have intermittent viewing habits. I have taken advantage of my wife’s absence to sample most of the movies she would veto in favor of a better selection if she was with me (you know the ones that you’ve always wanted to see but the wife veto’s in favor of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2…..things like Hellboy II, Get Smart, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Forgetting Sarah Marshal, Speed Racer, Wanted, Zohan, Tropic Thunder, Doomsday, Drillbit Taylor, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Sukiyaki Western Django, etc). I watched the movies in the above list, and take it from me, you don’t want to. Well, actually, the first few on the list aren’t too bad. If you like comic-book or sci-fi movies Hellboy II is reasonably good, and Get Smart was funny. But definitely avoid Sukiyaki Western Django. Trust me on that one.

There are also several less well known movies that are excellent. Having watched a lot of RedBox movies, here is my list of suggestions that you may not have heard of before:

• Bickford Shmeckler’s Cool Ideas – This movie really surprised me. I rented it after exhausting most of my other (non-horror) options expecting to find a typical frat-party college movie. Instead, it’s a touching look at loss, depression, and re-finding what’s important in life, all in the guise of a frat-party college movie. It was especially well done and enjoyable throughout!
• Flawless – With Demi Moore an Michael Cane as the leads, this heist movie involves a woman trying to make it in the 1960′s male dominated diamond industry and an elderly vault robber who doesn’t want the money. A smart heist movie that is more about the characters than the diamonds.
• Charlie Wilson’s War – Based upon a true story; Charlie Wilson is a womanizing career politician who falls almost accidentally into covertly supporting Afghan rebels fight off the Soviet invaders. This is a smart political documentary wrapped up in an entertaining story.
• War Inc. – A biting and surreal satire of the war and subsequent political rebuilding in Iraq. A mix between Dr. Strangelove and America’s Sweethearts, think Grosse Point Blank in Turaqistan.
• King of California – What is insanity? What does it mean to be a family? How far would you go to find the American Dream? King of California starts out low key and gradually builds into a magnificent ending.

Of course, you can usually count on the major release motion pictures to be worth renting, and I also approve the following list (ordered by enjoyment):

• Kung-Fu Panda – Great family fun that everyone will enjoy.
• Wall-E – Pixar is just amazing, a must watch!
• Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull – For sheer entertainment value it’s hard to beat, but don’t expect anything too serious.
• Iron Man – A fun and light action adventure movie that’s better than The Dark Knight!
• The Dark Knight – Not quite as good as Batman Begins, but still worth renting.
• Juno – It’s all about teen pregnancy, but is much funnier than you’d expect based upon the subject.
• The Bucket List – Need a movie to watch with your parents? This is the touchy-feely movie that everybody will agree was worth watching.
• The Bank Job – Raw gritty heist movie with great twists and just enough humor.
• 21 – If you like MIT, or poker, or Keven Spacey you’ll like this movie.

An Apple iPod Touch review, with special attention paid to use with Linux and open formats:

Pros:

• Very nice high resolution screen. (480×320 at 163dpi)
• User interface is very slick and easy to use after a minimal learning period.
• Built in WiFi (802.11b/g) with very good mobile browser (Safari).
• Methods to hack (jailbreak) it and install 3rd party software are widely available, and many 3rd party applications are already developed for it.
• Base model has a generous 8GB of storage, 16GB and 32GB models are available.
• Design: Aesthetically, it's solid. Hardware, software, feel and aesthetics, everything is great!
• Battery life is good (5 hours of video, 22 hours of music, use of WiFi reduces this significantly).

Cons:

•  It's expensive. Almost $300 for the base model. (I won mine in a raffle, otherwise I wouldn't be reviewing it!)
• Funky machine readable file-system format for storing music: Why is F03/KLJE.m4a my Spin Doctors – Cleopatra's Cat? What's wrong with a human readable filename, Artist/album/song storage paths, etc…) 
• Doesn't support music encoded with Ogg Vorbis.
• Doesn't mount as a standard USB file-system.  (You need iTunes, or a iTunes clone to move music/photos to it, and can't use it as a USB drive.)
• Uses a non-standard (not a mini-USB) connector. (Yet another cable to carry around.)
• Integrated battery prevents easy customer replacements.
• Lacks many features of the full iPhone (Bluetooth, camera, cellular data/radio, speaker, microphone).
• Chrome on the back scuffs MUCH to easily. I've carried mine in dedicated hip pockets and after only a week I still have visible scuffs and scrapes on the "chrome" back.  Hopefully the glass on the front will resist scratches better than the "chrome" on the back. I still have the plastic protective cover that it shipped with over the glass screen, and am considering buying a static stick screen protector after my experiences with scuffs on the back.

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If your iPhone or iPod Touch is jailbroken, you can use the Installer.app to load and install many different applications. Below is the list of the applications that I found to be useful, fun or interesting: 

• Organizing multiple pages of applications:Categories
• Downloading/Watching YouTube movies: MxTube
• Photos alternative: PhotoBoard
• e-Book reader: Books 
• Information Lookup: weDict , iMoon , iTrac
• Networking: Stumbler, VNsea (VNC for the iPod Touch / iPhone), TouchPad Pro (VNC without the display, still very useful for music player / presentation control)
• Games: Marble , Chess, LightsOff
• Utilities: SysInfo, AcceleroLog, TouchLayer

If your iPhone is not jailbroken, you will not be able to add any of the above games until they are added to the apple store. You can always play web-based games found on AppSafari: http://www.appsafari.com

AT&T allows some customers to "unlock" their phones. This allows the use of a SIM card from a different provider (for example, VodaFone) while traveling. (It also allows you to use the phone with another GSM provider in the US after your AT&T contract is finished, which is one reason AT&T and other carriers lock the phones they subsidize.) 

I don't know exactly what makes a customer "eligible" to have a phone unlocked, but I suspect that you have to have made several payments on time and be in good standing. When I am under a new contract with a subsidized phone I typically wait a few months (in this case, about 6) before calling in to ask to have my phone unlocked. I've had T-Mobile unlock three phones (under 2 different contracts) for me in the past, but this was the first time I tried it with AT&T.  

I suspect that AT&T has an official policy of making it difficult to unlock your phone. Here is my experience:

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Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier tells the story of W.P. Inman, a wounded civil war deserter who's only wish is to make it back to his home in Cold Mountain and his beloved Ada. Unfortunately for Inman, the civil war has blighted the South, and although he meets many compassionate citizens as he trudges west to Cold Mountain, the war has also brought out the worst in others. Ada, abandoned with a farm but not the skills to work it by  her Father's death, is simultaneously on her own path of discovery and learning. Continue reading →

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason follows four  friends through their last year of college. The plot follows Paul as he attempts to unravel a centuries old mystery hidden in The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book more rare than the Gutenberg Bible. Are the secrets it contains really worth killing over? But the story is really about friendship. How it is forged, how it is strained, and how it is lost as people drift and are pulled apart by their separate drives. I found the book to be very enjoyable and interesting.  Continue reading →

Writ of Execution by Perri O'Shaughnessy is a cross between a Grisham legal thriller and an Evanovich Stephanie Plum novel. Nina Reilly, attorney, gets naked on page 13, but due to a fast moving plot doesn't get any for the rest of the book (427 pages worth).  The book revolves around a 7 million dollar jackpot that's won by a girl on the run.  A string of murders follow and it's a race to solve the murders and get the girl her jackpot. Continue reading →

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire begins decades before Dorothy falls into the scene, with the birth of a strangely green baby girl who has unusually sharp teeth. We follow Elphaba as she grows up, attends university, and falls into the political turmoil behind the scenes at the Emerald City.

Maguire paints a detailed background of the realistic politics that shape Oz into the country it is when Dorothy arrives. The Wicked Witch of the West may be a tortured soul, but for different reasons than you had previously thought. The book is perfectly understandable even if you have never seen the movie or read the original book, but several parts are much funnier if you have. The end of the story can drag on if you are not interested in introspective psychological monologues, but flipping past a few pages of internal commentary can speed the story along. Continue reading →

Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow is easier to read than Filth by Irvine Welsh, but the self-destructive protagonist still got on my nerves. I enjoyed the book more when I started skipping paragraphs of internal dialog to get back to the action. Mack is an ex-cop, washed-up lawyer, and recovering alcoholic. When a partner at his firm goes AWAL (with 5.6 million dollars) the managing committee shanghais Mack into looking for him. Or rather, the 5.6 million, because it turns out that very few people at the firm care much about the missing partner. Continue reading →

Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson tells the true story of two American wreck divers who discover a sunken U-boat off the coast of New Jersey where the historical records say none should exist. Over the course of several years they risk death (at least three other divers die while exploring the U-Boat) and their marriages searching for the identity of the U-Boat, both underwater and in historical archives.

Robert Kurson makes this historical narrative an exciting story in addition to being a very well researched piece of true history. If you are interested in WWII or Scuba Diving I strongly recommend this book. Continue reading →