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‘District 9′ Review

Sci-Fi-Fantasy — Comments Off

November 5, 2009

District 9 is one of the most original and memorable movies of the past years. Its also not easy to watch emotionally (its rated R for violence and gore), but you can’t stop – it is a suspenseful action Sci-Fi at its best, with enough effects, action and explosions to please, but with the look and feel of a low budget documentary.

The visual style of the movie is striking – a pseudo-documentary on the extraordinary events that happened that day, including interviews with various reporters, breaking news feeds, shots from security cameras and live action. This immediately immerses you in the action and is very realistic.

The lead actor is funny, emotional and likable. Superb performance from a guy that has never acted before. Another amazing tidbit is that the movie was made in a budget of $30M, which is about 1/7 of today’s Sci-Fi budget (Transformers cost $200M).

The story is compelling, completely original, and unexpected. The less you know, the bigger the punch in the stomach you will get. If you think you know what the movie is about from the trailers, you are wrong. This is intentional.

Do not read any reviews on the movie, as each of the ones I have read has different spoilers, just go see.

Tags: Brilliant, Peter Jackson, Recommended

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iDon’t

Commercials — Comments Off

November 5, 2009

A very funny commercial from Verizon. I won’t tell you which phone they are smacking, you will have to guess. Very well done.

Tags: Android, Funny, iPhone

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‘Stardust’ review

Sci-Fi-Fantasy — Comments Off

October 11, 2009

What if at the other side of the wall of your village there was a complete other mythical and forbidden world?

What if a fallen star that landed in this magical world would manifest as a lovely girl?

Based on a smart and original story by Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Good Omens), Stardust is a wacky and fantastic adventure – dramatic and suspenseful while light-hearted and hilarious at the same time.

Director Matthew Vaughn (Lock Stock, Snatch) assembled a brilliant cast – from the relatively unknown but charming Charlie Cox and Claire Danes in the leading roles, supported by awesome performance by Robert de Niro as the dreadful pirate Shakespeare (or is he?), Michelle Pfeiffer as the sinister decaying witch, and a touch of Peter O’Toole as the hilariously devilish dying king of the fairy kingdom.

Vile and murderous princes, evil witches, sarcastic ghosts, flying ships, swordplay, pirates and unicorns are all weaved into a charming tale about loyalty, betrayal, magic and love.

The majestic locations and wonderful camera sweeps remind of The Lord of the Rings in some parts. Coupled with captivating music, high-quality production and topped by the wacky humor that reminds of The Princes Bride, this fairytale for adults is a gem that for me is an instant genre classic.

Tags: Movies, Recommended, Review, Sci-Fi-Fantasy

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4th Edition Reflections at KublaCon 2009

Games — 5 Comments

May 30, 2009

A few months ago I decided to return to DMing and roleplay, after several years of downtime. As such, I still have to make a choice regarding the system I would like to run my game on. Apparently I missed a lot of excitement since 3.0 with two major game releases in a few years – both the 3.5 which I heard good things about, and the recent 4.0 which I am playing with right now.

So when KublaCon, the biggest yearly RPG Con in the Bay Area came by, I decided that it is worth it enough for me to bear the cost (a day off away from the family during the Memorial day weekend is extremely expensive, believe me).

So here are some tales from first day ever in a game con… And some thoughts that it provoked on the state of D&D.

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Tags: D&D, Rants, Review

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Why is D&D 4th Edition Broken

Games — Comments Off

May 16, 2009

D&D 4th edition is a big disappointment.

I played and DM-ed 2nd and 3rd edition for many years. For me Dungeons and Dragons is a game of imagination, role-play, innovation, problem solving, teamwork and memorable moments. I don’t care as much about the mechanics – I would like to see less and simpler mechanics (like Burning Wheel, for example, which is in my wish-list). For me 3rd and 3.5 editions are a natural progression of the game, striking a healthy balance between introducing more options and trying to keep it simple.

In the 4th edition WotC invented a refreshingly new, simple and modular system for character advancement: All classes have several “at will”, “encounter” and daily abilities. The difference between all classes (and characters of the same class) is which powers they can choose. On the face of it, its a wonderful system. Its so much simpler then anything that came before it, and makes running the game much simpler for the players (and the DM). Moreover, when you print the character sheet from the official character builder, you get all powers as cards (they fit suspiciously perfectly in “Magic The Gathering” sleeves). The essence of character progression becomes “get more power cards”.

This in itself is not a problem – it could be the best mechanic ever. In a way, the 4th edition is a brand new game that is deeply different from its predecessors. From a heroic fantasy game it became a tactical combat game, centered on the maneuvers and blows during combat. The game seems to have been rebuilt from the ground up to reflect this purpose. As such, it does what it does very well. It might be that WotC wanted to bring the game back to its Chainmail origins, refresh the game, and bring it closer to other tactical miniature games like HeroScape.

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Tags: Analysis, D&D, Rants

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CPU Price-Performance Analysis – Nov 2007

Hackintosh — Comments Off

November 24, 2007

I have refreshed my CPU price-performance analysis, to reflect several months of price drops.

This time Ihave added new data from Xbit-labs, which benchmarked the newest 1333MHz FSB CPUs. I added to that my previous data from the March Xbit-labs benchmarks, which I posted on my previous CPU analysis post. I have included Intel CPUs only, as my current focus is builing n Intel based Hackintosh.

The main interest in the following graph is that is shows the performance of the different CPUs relative to the CPU cost (all costs are from NewEgg, November 24 2007).

Analysis

It is interesting to see that pretty soon after their introduction, the newest 1333MHz FSB CPUs (E6550 and E6750) have made it to the front of price-performance graph, and achieve the same value (performance per dollar) as the previous value champs, the E4400 and E4300.

On the dotted line, all CPUs have the same performance per dollar ratio, so the choice becomes really a matter of optimization on the overall system cost. For a medium cost system ($800 or so), I would choose the E6750, as it costs only $60 more then the E4300, but delivers much higher performance.

Tags: Analysis

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“The Lost Room” Review

Sci-Fi-Fantasy — Comments Off

July 21, 2007

Very rarely comes a TV series that is so innovative, intelligent and fresh as The Lost Room, that changes your expectations from what TV should be like.

The Lost Room is a brilliant and intelligent Sci-Fi channel mini-series, with a fantastic and original plot. I don’t want to give even a hint as to what this is about (not to ruin even a minute of it), but this supernatural mystery thriller will hook you from the first minute till the very last.

Complementing the top-notch effects and good acting, the series music was exceptionally touching. This mini-series has a mesmerizing, eerie and melodic score, that made me want to hear more.

We saw it almost straight through, and stopped only to get some sleep. I prefer to think of it as a superb 6-hour movie – it does not have the slowness and fillers of regular TV series (Lost, to mention the obvious, has very little story development per hour, with its 80% flashback fillers). The Lost Room is simply impossible to stop watching, and is one of the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy movies I have ever seen.

Tags: Brilliant, Movies, Review, Sci-Fi-Fantasy

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Building my Hackintosh – Part 1: CPU Analysis

Hackintosh — 3 Comments

July 13, 2007

This is a first article in the Building My Hackintosh series. This article discusses the choice of CPU in a new PC system, with price-performance analysis and recommendations.

AMD or Intel?

When approaching a new machine build, one of the obvious decisions is the CPU manufactory – AMD or Intel. The brand will affect the motherboard directly, as motherboards are designed for a particular CPU brand and socket type.

Usually, this choice is rather simple, and would be most influenced by taste and cost optimization concerns. In my case, building an OSX86 setup introduces more constraints. Initially, only Intel CPUs were supported by OS-X – but as time passed, unofficial AMD support started to appear.

From a superficial browsing of the hardware compatibility page at the osx 86 project, although the page actually shows support for both AMD and Intel, I decided to reduce the risk and go with Intel – based on the assumption that an Intel-based Hachintosh might have less snags and will be more robust then AMD.

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Tags: Analysis, Hackintosh, OS X

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Building my Hackintosh

Hackintosh — Comments Off

June 23, 2007

I have decided to build a dual-boot Mac OSX86 / Windows machine, AKA Hachintosh.

First of all, I am getting more and more frustrated with the my current machine, which is understandable considering its a 5 year old Pentium 3 box – it is actually amazing I was willing to put up with that for so long.

And if I am already building my own machine, why not try to shoot for the best-in-class productivity OS?

So, for the previous months I immersed myself deeply in analysis, trying to learn both what does it mean building your own machine from scratch, plus getting a sense of putting together an OSX86 system.

Here is the result of my analysis. This represents my point of view and tradeoffs – yours might be different.

My Main Considerations

For this project, I have several requirements in mind.

Mac OS X Compatibility – The machine must be able to fully support the latest MacOS X, with minimal hassles as possible. I don’t mind fighting it to work, but it would be very dissapointing to eventually not to use a critical feature.

Modern Gaming Performance – I want to run modern games (under Windows) in an enjoyable framerate, good enough resolution and effects.

Cost/Value – I am aiming for a good tradeoff between cost and value, trying to find the sweet-spot on the value curve. This is somewhat similar to what [Sharkey Extreme] are doing with their [Value PC Guide], although they place an arbitrary limitation of $1000, whereas I am just trying to minimize costs while getting as much as I can from it.

Upgradability – One of my key assumptions is that I am not building a system that would be good enough to last for 5 years, but rather a value system that would be goof for now, with the assumption that as prices drop in the coming years, differernt parts can be replaced for incrementaly small costs.

In the following weeks I am going to detail the different aspects of the research. Stay tuned.

Tags: Hackintosh, OS X

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My blog moved to WordPress

Open Web — Comments Off

June 20, 2007

I have moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress – and I am amazed of the richness, flexibility and looks.

The main reason that pushed me from Blogger was my need to have pages – static page structure that allows me to have articles and other static pages, not in a blog concept. There are some things that simply do not fit in a blog.

On the other hand, I got addicted to the ease of posting and management in a server-side platform like Blogger. Its very easy to add a post, no need to deal with HTML, cross-linking, correct URLs, etc. Once you get used to it, its very hard to go back to building a site from scratch.

WordPress is amazing. The themes are gorgeous, infinite plug-ins, rich control – the site is PHP based, and you can add your own functionality.

Here are some of the goodies I am already using.

QPwilm theme – with some more tweaks

Search Pages plugin – allows search inside pages, not only posts

Sticky Menus plugin – allows customizable menus all over the place

WP-Table plugin – allows creation and management of tables through WP admin

Exec-PHP plugin – allows pasting PHP code as part of the post, which gets executed on render time.

So far – so good!

Tags: Blog

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