mgroves

Posts Tagged ‘entertainment’

Someone has been uploading a lot of MST3K episodes to Google Video lately.

Every time I see a new one, I add it to the MST3K video list.

Feel free to send me any omissions.

In the meantime, enjoy my favorite episode: Prince of Space!

Now is your chance to ask me anything you want and have it answered.

Submit a comment below with a question: any question at all. It could be trivial and easy, or it could be metaphysical and difficult.

Here are some sample questions and answers, just to get your started:

Question: Why did you get into blogging? Answer: Because I don’t like you.

Question: Could you please explain what a Turing machine is and why I should care? Answer: Well, you see Mr. Reader…[blah blah 10 page answer]

Question: What is your favorite color? Answer: Five.

Question: Why do you Rethuglicans eat children and steal medications from my Grandmother? Answer: Eh, it’s something to do.

Seriously though, ask me anything, and then I’ll do a follow-up post to answer some or all of the questions. I promise that I’ll do my best to give a serious answer. I won’t promise that there won’t be a sarcastic component to my answers. I also won’t not promise that there won’t not be a not serious answer to your questions. Not.

Ask anything you want, and ask as many questions as you want.

I was introduced to a “new” band through several different channels in the last month.

They are an English ska band called “Madness”, and though that may not ring a bell, I’m sure you’ve heard one of their songs before.

First, when I was in Philadelphia, a friend took me to this great toy store in New Jersey called The House of Fun. You should definitely go if you are ever in the area. But anyway, they have this Madness song on their website:

Madness – House of Fun:

Okay, good. Not a bad song. Next, I came across a video for another Madness song on Youtube. I hadn’t connected the two songs yet. This song got me really interested in the band.

Madness – One Step Beyond:

So finally, after looking them up on Wikipedia, I searched for a Greatest Hits album. And guess what, there was one more Madness song that I had heard before, and you probably have too.

Madness – Our House:

So I finally connected all of these fine songs to one source, and now I have a new band on my playlist!

Brett Somers died on the morning of September 15, 2007 of stomach and colon cancer at her home in Westport, Connecticut.

Her obituary is available at BrettSomers.com.

Brett Somers, are you out there…?

Here’s who remains of the 6 Match Game All-Stars in the above cast:

• Betty White
• Fannie Flagg

Yikes.

So, there’s this thing that people do where they record stuff in a series. You are supposed to load it up on your iPod on a regular basis (automatically if you are using iTunes) and listen to it when you’re on your way to work or something.

Since I cancelled the XM and purchased the Game King-II, my commute has switched over to podcasts. My recent road trip to Philadelphia was also a great time for podcasts as well.

I will say that I very much prefer short shows, or at least a series of short clips. This is as much for practical reasons as it is about attention span. I will sometimes even break up long clips.

With that in mind, here’s what I’ve been listening to:

• 1UP – Retronauts. This is kinda a podcast that’s related to classic gaming, a topic in which I am well-versed. They usually start out talking about “retro news”, but usually veer off onto interesting tangents. I usually don’t listen to the whole show, and they update infrequently.
• Alan Watts podcast. Not really a podcast, but selected clips from the Alan Watts audio archive. I actually found a torrent of about 1gig of Alan Watts recordings, so I’ve been rolling my own podcast. A very interesting guy with a lot of great things to say.
• A Prairie Home Companion – News from Lake Wobegon. This is a 10 minute or so clip from the weekly NPR show. Garrison Keillor is a really good writer with a unique voice, and I enjoy listening to him occasionally.
• MBA Working Girl. Laura Adams gives quick tips to working business men and women on a variety of stuff. The tips are pretty short, but useful. Her tagline, “where business theory and the real world collide” bothers me with its triteness, but it’s still an interesting listen.
• Car Talk – Call of the Week. Car Talk offers a full 60 minute podcast, but again, I prefer the short clips. Car Talk is a great show with two really sharp guys. It’s not just for mechanics, it’s for anyone with a car.

Besides podcasts, I’ve also been listening to some audio books. So far, I’ve “read” 1984 (again), Animal Farm (again), Ender’s Game (again), and Rats in the Wall by H.P. Lovecraft. I have all the Hitchhiker’s books at the ready, as well as some more Ender’s books. It’s slow going listening to them at 15-20 minutes at a time, but it beats FM radio commercials any day.

I also started listening to a few “Learn German in Your Car” MP3s, which are pretty good. I haven’t really committed hardcore to learning another language, but I’m getting the basics down.

When jonjay posted some pictures of the inside of his Game King-II, I realized that even though
the instruction manual indicated a 1100mAh battery, that there was actually a 750mAh battery in there.
Such dishonesty from a random Chinese company!

But nevermind, why not just put a 1100mAh battery in it for great justice?

So first, I cracked open the Game King-II myself, to see about the physical size of the battery, and if
I could actually fit a different battery in there. Then, I went on to eBay to see what I could find.

The Game King-II uses a 3.7volt battery, which luckily for me, is pretty much the predominant battery used in cell phones. Next, I did a quick search for batteries in the 1000-1500mAh range. I found an LG 3.7volt 1100mAh battery which, by complete random luck, is the exact same size battery used in my cell phone. Perfect! Even if the mod doesn’t work, I can at least upgrade my phone. Not to mention I couldn’t really find any other batteries that would fit any higher than 1100mAh.

The next trick was taking out the old battery. It’s a ridiculously cheap looking battery. Imagine a tiny static bag filled with acid. The connections were soldered, and there were also some components connected to the battery on a small circuit board. I had to carefully removed the battery using a soldering iron.

Next, I had to figure out a way to connect the new battery. It’s made to fit in a cell phone, not to be soldered, so I had to get creative. I carefully dropped some molten solder on to the terminals. Please be very careful if you do this! There is plastic, heat, and battery acid, not things you want to mess with. I would only recommend this if you have precision experience using a soldering iron. Don’t apply heat directly to the battery.

I cut a couple of short jumpers, heated up the solder on the battery, and carefully attached them to the battery. I then wrapped it up with some electrical tape, but not too much, otherwise the battery wouldn’t have fit back in.

Fortunately, the board indicated where to connect the positive and negative, so I then made another couple of precision solders to the battery board. I tried to cover everything up with a small amount of electrical tape as best I could.

When putting the battery back in, I used some of the sticky strip that held the previous battery in place on the new battery. These batteries are almost identical in size. I closed the Game King-II back up after a quick power-on to test.

Voila! Upgraded Game King-II with longer battery life! It should last about 46% longer. All in all, it cost me less than $5 and only took about an hour.

So, you’re at the video store, browsing the new releases, and something catches your eye. You say, “Oh, hey, cool! The new Pirates of The Caribbean movie! But didn’t this just get released in theaters? Wow! There must’ve been a mistake at the distribution center! While those poor schmucks are waiting in long lines to see this summer’s blockbuster, I’ll watch it in the comfort of my own home!” But when you get home and watch it, it’s some B-movie knock-off starring Lance Henriksen.

Do they seriously expect some yahoo to mistakenly rent the title thinking it’s the current box-office hit? Who are the purveyors of such shady nonsense? The answer: The Asylum Home Entertainment. Here’s just a few of their knock-off gems:

Pirates of Treasure Island

While Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was breaking records last summer, Asylum snuck this beauty onto the shelves. Yes, Lance Henriksen is the star. Yes, he rocked in Aliens and Millennium. The movie’s IMDB “goofs” page tells the tail: “Numerous times during the film, people are shot at close range by pistols. In many cases, there is no muzzle flash nor is there smoke.”

Snakes on a Train

This one was very convincing. It didn’t seem implausible to think Hollywood executives would quickly flood the market with Snakes on a Plane spin-offs, capitalizing on the movie’s buzz.

King of The Lost World

And you thought Bruce Boxleitner was unemployable. When a property enters the public domain, anyone can use it. You could make your own Sleeping Beauty or Hunchback of Notre Dame. That’s why you always see those Disney knockoffs in the checkout lines of grocery stores. Watch Tron get carried up the Chrysler building or something equally derivative of King Kong.

The DaVinci Treasure

Lance Henriksen’s a busy man. This time he’s joined by C. Thomas Howell. You know, the guy from Soul Man. The one where the white guy tries to get a scholarship by disguising himself as a black guy. It won an Image Award. Anyhow, if his pedigree wasn’t clear, here he is in a DaVinci Code knock-off, playing the Tom Hanks character.

Transmorphers

Asylum was hoping to transform some Transformers fans into Transmorphers renters. See what I did there? Couldn’t they have at least gotten the Go-Bots license? Are they that cheap? Yes.

And finally…

Dead Men Walking

“Honey, how about this one?” “Oooo. Dead Men Walking. This is the one Susan Sarandon won an academy award for.” “What’s with the zombie on the cover?” “Oh, just shut up and rent it, ya damn nag.” The real film was, of course, Dead Man Walking, which I believe was also about zombies.

You’ll notice that they spend a disproportionate amount of their budget on the cover art. There’s an information asymmetry (MBA mental masturbation term) at work whenever someone rents a video. You don’t know what’s inside until you watch it. Unless it stars Lance Henriksen. Then you know it’s… awesome! He was ripped in two in Aliens! He spewed his milky android blood all over the place! God, that was a good flick…

Amazon is now taking preorders for Bender’s Big Score, which is the first of the new Futurama DVDs.

I’ve just placed my order.

I suggest you do the same! For the low, low price of $19.99 for what is essentially 4 brand-new episodes, how can you go wrong? Go ahead! Use your Tricky-Dick fun bill and splurge! Or else he’ll come in to your house at night and wreck up the place, and no one wants that.

Hat tip to Can’t Get Enough Futurama.

Is anyone else looking forward to the Knight Rider movie? Despite encouraging uncreative remakes of 80s TV properties, I’m still looking forward to it.

Here’s the poster for the movie, if you haven’t seen it yet:

See, kids? KITT doesn’t have a spoiler, so your 1993 Nissan Stanza doesn’t need one either.

Did you know that K.I.T.T. is an acronym for “Knight Industries Two-Thousand”? The two-thousand was always thrown in back then to make things seem more futurey. Worked on me, but I was just a dopey kid. I have more sophisticated tastes now, so I expect a suffix of at least 3000.

Also, I think this needs to be said, and I’m going to say it: KITT is a Cylon.

It’s pretty obvious, what with the red Cylon eyes LEDs. However, KITT could be a “good” Cylon, like Boomer, or something. I’m not the first to make this observation, of course; I’m just spreading the word!

Anyway, very few old TV shows have been converted into anything except crap on the big screen, with the possible exception of Mission Impossible or Charlie’s Angels (the first one anyway). I’m keeping my fingers crossed for cameos from the Hoff and Mr. Feeny. And KITT better sound British/gay!

Although it’s certainly easier these days than it used to be, it’s something of a challenge to download a video from somewhere in some format and be able to quickly watch it on your TV.

Sure you can watch it on your monitor or laptop, but that really isn’t the same.

I think the Mvix Multimedia hard drive does a lot to help out.

This thing is meant to be a component of your entertainment center, like a DVD player or a cable box. You stick a hard drive in the thing, copy files to it via USB 2.0, and then you can use a remote controls to view pictures, play music, and watch videos in a fine variety of codecs.

What’s even better is the outputs: RCA L/R, Coaxial, Optical(5.1ch), RCA Y, Pr, Pb, S-Video, IR-Ext, and an FM Transmitter. You should have no problem finding a free input somewhere for this thing. And what’s this? Y, Pr, and Pb?

That’s right, it can output upscaled 1920×1080 (1080i) or 1280×720 (720p) for your HDTV. Nice!

The codecs it recognizes are just what you’d want them to be: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, DivX3.11, 4x, 5x, XviD, and even DVD(IFO, VOB). Music can be AC3, MP2, MP3, WMA, OGG, and JPEG for photos.

The thing comes with a remote, which I think is key. A wireless keyboard just isn’t as convenient as the good old remote control. Also, there’s a nice 128×64 LCD display on it.

It’s $200, which seems like a lot, especially since it doesn’t come with a hard drive. However, I couldn’t build a comparable system for less, and certainly not with the same form factor. It would be cool if it had WiFi or even a regular wired network jack on it to set up some sort of torrent video feed deal or something. Maybe in the next version?

Anyway, I totally want this thing.