Long Time no post

And this won't be the post you are all waiting for. Basically this is just an update to let people know that I have updated my collection. It now has a few more movies and I have added it so that they are in order that I have added the DVDs to my collection so that if you check later you will just have to look as far back as you want to.

RIM pays out to NTP

So it has been a few weeks since the courts decided that RIM owes NTP 612.5 millions dollar to settle for the ongoing patent allegations. I still don't know how I feel about this and hearing many media outlets talk about it doesn't help me find my own opinion.

One the one hand I tend to agree that NTP does deserve money since it does seem apparent that the patents were legitimate and I feel that they have earned it. On the other hand I don't like patent companies who just run around and patent things just to sue companies. This might lead to more of these getting the press and media to help them when their less warranted cases.

I want to see people to be able to go out and develop and design things with all the protection to earn what they deserve. So in the long run I think that even though there was plenty of media and probably governmental pushes for these patents to get voided that NTP got their money.

Review : The Brothers Grimm

This past weekend I picked up and watched The Brothers Grimm. This movie stars Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as the brothers grimm. Most importantly it was directed by Terry Gilliam of 12 Monkeys, Time Bandits and Brazil fame, not to mention those lesser known Pythons (Monty that is!).

Now I knew the basic plot going in that this story was about two brothers (Ledger and Damon) that use folk lore to swindle money out of town's folk. This all goes awfully array when their tricks catch up to them and they have to stop and actual curse. Now this doesn't sound too interesting but add in Gilliam's delightful charm and you have some twists. Gilliam tends to follow the more dark version of the tales that were orginally drafted.

As for acting I will admit it that I am a Matt Damon fan and Ledger tends to keep up. Add in a decent supporting cast and you have a movie that can be believable which is one of the only things I really care about when I am trying to enjoy a movie. Now most reviews I read disagreed with me but I tend to say screw them.

Overall I still enjoyed the movie even though it lacked at points. As per usual I would suggest watching most movies since I find I tend to disagree with many reviews I read.

Review : Quake 4

I recently returned Quake 4 for the XBOX 360 to my rental subscription so I thought I would update with this review.

Just to start out I have played all Quakes that have been made and I still will never find one that will give me as much fun as the first one. I played that multiplayer for 100s of hours in LANFest, tournaments, or just pick up games. Nothing will top Quake 1 CTF with the grappling hook or if there is something I hope it comes soon, but I digress.

Quake 4 single player was actually still quite enjoyable. You play Micheal Kane a rough and tough marine, who as usual gets the short end of every stick.

The graphics are very clear, I was expecting this to be a poor port from the PC but I was happy when I saw them. The problem from the port I think happened at points when I noticed the screen get choppy. Now the XBOX 360 is like a mini nuclear reactor so I think for all that power it should be able to handle almost anything thrown at it. Luckily these points were far and few between.

The gameplay can never match a mouse and keyboard for the first person shooter and this is no exception. It as your standard button layout as per most first person shooters and since there is nothing particularly special I don't feel like going into it.

Replayability is something that I have thought about more and more now that I rent most of my games. Quake 4 was fun I was say it again but I don't think I could play through it again on single player for a while. Now where it should pick up some replayability is the multiplayer but somehow this was screwed up. Basically you join games as per any FPS game and there a few types to start. Now once you enter a game a clock will count down 2 minutes as soon as two people are in the room. This is nice since it gives more people a chance to join but eventually cuts the loses and starts the game (if 8 people show it starts). So you haven't even started and you are at 2 minutes wait now you have to load. This is where I started losing my cool. There was another 1-2 minute wait to load. So I haven't even started but each time I want to play it is 2-5 minute wait to play. To top everything off I found that lag problems arose once I started playing and I had never seen them before in other games which started also getting me down.

I would suggest if you have enjoyed previous FPS and you want a game to play rent this and play through the single player but just don't even bother with the multiplayer.

Podcast : DL TV

I haven't updated my podcast list in a while on my site so I am going to add DL TV to the list today. This is a Bi-Weekly podcast/IP TV show hosted by Patrick Norton ( not from Norton Antivirus) and Robert Heron. It is a little different in that they are trying to lead the way with IP tv and is more run like a television show. Yes this means there are commercials, but No you don't have to pay.

They usually have three segments and cover basically whatever is being requested from TVs to hardware to video games. They are also good at answer viewer questions to give them a direction where to find the complete answer.

They now make the show in about 5 formats so if you are picky about what you like watching in you should have no problem finding one you would enjoy.

Basically even if you don't think you will like it give it a chance because I think this is a great way to get media and supporting this will show there is a market for more.

Click the link to get the RSS feeds and more information.

Been looking for a good concert?

If you enjoy going to a good concert once an a while like I do this might be the site for you. One of my podcasts recommended this site to make and after playing around with it I admit it is pretty cool. Basically you go and enter your city, in my case Toronto, and it returns a list of concerts for the current month. Now I know what you are saying, Ticketmaster can give you the same listing. This is true but this site also provides you with samples of the music if you want to just give it a listen to see if you want to take a chance on some new band.

Anyways check it out.

That is a red dot you see!

This isn't really new news but I thought I would still comment on it since I have found it very interesting. Have you ever wondered how when you tell the cell phone company that you just dropped the phone neglecting the fact it was somehow in the toilet? Well wonder no more! According to this link there is a little dot on the inside of your cell phone under the battery. Some of you might ask yourself "Self I noticed that before but didn't know what it meant". Well this is yet another way for the man to screw you since it will be turning red when water damage has occurred to the phone.

So basically either stop dropping your phone in the toilet or just get cheaper phones.