Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Update!

I haven’t posted in awhile for a number of reasons, the foremost being the computer I usually sit and type things up on died over Christmas. Well, it turns out that it was just the video card that died and I’ve managed to get it up and running again.

I’ve had some people ask me recently about the Watchmen Movie legal case as it was supposed to go to court again back on the 20th. Good news is that Fox and Warner Brothers settled, and the movie is still on track to come out on 03/06/09. Here is a link to a Variety article, pardon the giant ad that pops over the screen.

There is a semi-interesting bit at the end of the article about moving release dates of movies opening on the same date as movies from the other studios so they wouldn’t compete and using actors contracted to the other studio. I really love the statement "Warner Bros. and Fox, like all "Watchmen" fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film's March 6 release in theaters." Which translates to, "We are sorry to have upset you with this fight Mr. Fanboy, please see our movies."

My friend Brad also pointed out if you keep with the whole counting down to midnight on the clock theme, that release date is pretty cool.

I’ve been watching the Watchmen Motion comics on iTunes and although I like it, I really wish they hadn’t edited it down. They didn’t cut it down very much, you would hardly notice, but they cut out a few of my favorite lines. There was also some critisim on the iTunes feedback about one guy reading all the voices, and as major fan of Audio books I agree. With a production like this they should have dramatized it with several actors. It isn't a straight audio production of somebody reading a story where is okay to have one narrator.

I have also been listening to Comic Geek Speak's Watchmen Footnotes episodes. Just eating up anything "Watchmen" until the movie comes out.

Another thing I’ve been doing is messing around with an Interactive Fiction editor. At first I started to use Adrift, which I had experimented with back in 2004. Although there have been a few bug fix releases, there really hasn’t been a new version since 2003. I quickly found myself having the same problems I had before all over again. So I switched over to Inform7 which appears to be much more powerful.

I also tried wearing my beard differently; I shaved my jaw line so I essentially had a goatee with full sideburns, pointed in. Nobody really commented on the change though so I took that as a bad sign and reverted back to my normal shaving routine. Speaking of which… I went to buy new razor blades and found that a pack of Gillette Mach3 blades cost something like (actual numbers may be a bit off as this was a month ago) $24 AUD. But at the same time they were selling the new Schick Quattro Titanium Freestyle razor on sale for $14 AUD. The blades for it were also on sale for that price. So I was able to buy this new razor with 3-blades, a 4th edging blade, and a battery operated hair trimmer and another box of blades for 4 dollars more than a box of Mach3 blades. Too back the Schick razor SUCKS! It isn’t giving me anywhere near as close a shave as the Mach3 did. Now I have to wait till I go through all these blades and buy a whole new Mach3 as I threw the old one out. BTW neither Gillette or Schick are getting links to their websites because both of them pissing me off with their auto-redirecting to Australian versions of their sites and requiring special version of flash players.

Finally, for my "in the news section" South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, who has been blocking an 18+ rating in Australia has given an interview where he explains his rational. It basically boils down to the same old untrue crap about how games are more interactive and you are "rehearsing harmful behavior," "desensitizing children towards violence," and that video games are "addictive." He states that only a few very video games are denied classification (read as banned in Australia) each year. What I don’t think they is realizing is that a large number of games that maybe should be classified as 18+ are instead being classified as 15+.

Oh, one last thing. Every few months or so I would look up Fez which I blogged about last February. They have finally put out a press release announcing their publisher on their new website. They put up a new picture the other day comparing the old graphics to the new. I don't know what to think about the new graphics, they look like old school console graphics which leads me to wonder about what platform they are going to release on.

6 comments:

BugHunter said...

When you use up your razors and it comes time to buy a new one, you will be tempted by the Fusion. "Hey look, 5 blades, that's way more than 3, it must be better than the Mach3." you might think. This would be wrong. Do not buy the Fusion. I repeat. Do not buy the Fusion.

Cap'n John said...

As awesome as the Fusion looks I stayed well away from it, but I do particularly enjoy the 3-blade head of the Mach 3. Hmm. Enjoy? Perhaps that's not really the word I'm looking for ;)

Oddly enough, I needed new blades not long ago as well, and I decided to give Gilette's 3-blade disposable razor a whirl, because a 3-pack was so much cheaper than a pack of Mach 3 blades. I really like their Mach 3 because it shaves really smooth, and I can get multiple shaves out of one cartridge, but the Gilette 3-blade Disposable is terrible. It's basically a disposable razor, as in shave once and throw it away. Try shaving a second time and you'll feel (& look) like you went a couple of rounds with Wolverine.

It reminded me that while I greatly prefer a blade over an electric, I'm not a huge fan of Disposable blades. I promptly went out and bought a pack of Mach 3 cartridges.

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

But... I don't understand... five is a bigger number than three! How can five not be better than three? I'm so confused!

There was a Saturday Night Live fake commercial I remember seeing years and years ago about a mafia razor. The skit went something along the lines of the first blade brings the hair up and the second blade cuts it close and the third blade find the hair's family and cuts them, etc. I can't find any reference to it, just the 3-blade razor before there was any such thing with the tag line, "because you'll believe anything."

Back to the "Schick Quattro Titanium Freestyle." Could they make that name any longer? And do I really want to associate "freestyle" to a razor? Sounds a bit risky to me.

BugHunter said...

speaking of risky razors. I remember one of them having a battery so it could vibrate. What idiot was sitting around in R&D and decided that the best thing to add to an extremely sharp object pressed against someone's neck would be unpredictable vibration?

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

For all we know the vibrating blade might have worked really really well. What I want to know is why the marketing people didn't address what they should have damn well known our reaction was going to be. They HAD to have known that the first thing people were going to do when they heard of the razor was think it was a bad idea. They should have gone right after that mindset in their commercials. Have two guys talking and one of them mentions his new razor that vibrates. The other guy starts to say something about not wanting a vibrating razor blade slicing his throat open to which the first guy responds to with all the factual stuff about how that isn't the case, how it produces a closer shave, and that he should try it out.

Cap'n John said...

I thought the battery-powered razor was to stimulate (in other words, shock you) the skin and make the hairs stand up, so you could get a really close shave.

I remember seeing in maybe Mad Magazine, an ad for something like a 5-blade razor. And this is going waaaaay back, too, like at least 15 years.

"The first blade shaves you close, the second even closer.
The third blade removes the top layer of skin, while the fourth blade shaves off the newly exposed hair!

Or something like that :P