As you may recall, I was hardcore into Tiny Tower. One of the aspects of the game is shutting your bitizens up the tower to their requested floor; the more floors you have the longer this could take, as the elevator only moves so fast. So, you can upgrade your elevator by using tower bux. You can spend real money to buy bux, or you can earn them throughout the game: by delivering people and getting tips, fully stocking floors and fulfilling people's dream jobs.
I upgraded my elevators to a point where the next was the infini-lift, which was crazy fast, but also crazy expensive at 499 tower bux. It would take a long time to accumulate that many, but it was a goal I wanted to head towards.
Over the weeks I would take many opportunities to "play" the game. When I'm visiting my parents, when I'm watching television or movies, etc. Two weekends ago I hit 400. And I decided to go for it. I started around nine with a movie, and continued playing continuously until I hit 499, then I bought the elevator. By this time it was nearly one in the morning, and I was exhausted. The elevator was just as fast as promised, and suprisingly controllable.
The next day I had no urge to play the game: you see, there are no faster elevators. I have no urge to save up and accumulate tower bux, as the only thing I can really do with them is move floors around and buyout product to make quick cash. I don't want to find people anymore, as it's time consuming and a waste of time now. So my playing of the game has slowed considerably, and I just think to myself how thankful I am that I didn't invest any real money in the title - although it wouldn't be such a terrible thing as I spent so much time in the game.
Also of note is that I discovered there is a limit to your tower: around 130 floors. I guess they can add more floors with updates - more businesses. Will I reach it? There is no doubt, over time that I will, but my gusto to do this has fallen considerably. With no clear goal, and the time required to build floors, it's just not happening. It was fun while it lasted!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
I never saw the remake with Travolta and Washington, and not for any real good reason, of course. Perhaps it looked like another one of Denzel's generic "action" pieces. The original is on Netflix, and with the proper alignment of the stars and planets, I immediately put it on. I've always been a bit prejudiced against older films: they lack a certain sheen that newer movies have. A certain bit of processing that may or may not be a good thing. But, I've been taking in some older films over the past year or so, and have been pleasantly surprised.
Pelham is no slouch, and I'm impressed with the movie on all levels. I've mentioned it before but it's worth mentioning again: the characters, sets and writing all feel "lived in." That is to say, it really feels like they just set up a camera in an actual control centre and subway tunnel and just let the film fly. Round it out with believable characters: there's not a single attractive person to be seen here. I was recently listening to an audio commentary from Doug Limen on The Bourne Identity and he mentioned one of the director's assistant's duties: to make the world believable. This involves directing extras, ensuring there is traffic on the streets and basically presenting us with a world that we find believable, so we don't immediately think we're looking at a set. I think this practice has been lost over the years, as these old movies seem to nail it perfectly.
Walter Matthau is fantastic, bringing a wry sense of humour to his role that drives the film.
The end of the movie is brilliant. The bad guys know the end is up and there is no big reveal. They don't have a backup plan. In today's movies they have backups to backups to backups, and false endings abound aplenty. Not here: the bad guys lose and the good guys do what they must. Life moves on, and this is driven home during the movie as some characters want to get the train system going again at any cost: are the lives of 20 people worth shutting down the entire subway system in New York for a couple of hours? Clearly, they are, but the question has be put out there.
The crew of hijackers come in disguise and refer to themselves as Mr. Colour. Yes, just like Reservoir Dogs, we have Mr. Brown, Mr. Blue, etc. For some reason I thought it was an invention of Tarantino, but alas, it's another nod to classic and great films of the past.
Also, why are the numerals in the remake's title shortened down to digits? I've always been a fan of the actual words themselves.
And finally, the music is fantastic. If the intro notes don't pull you into the movie, I'm not sure what will.
Pelham is no slouch, and I'm impressed with the movie on all levels. I've mentioned it before but it's worth mentioning again: the characters, sets and writing all feel "lived in." That is to say, it really feels like they just set up a camera in an actual control centre and subway tunnel and just let the film fly. Round it out with believable characters: there's not a single attractive person to be seen here. I was recently listening to an audio commentary from Doug Limen on The Bourne Identity and he mentioned one of the director's assistant's duties: to make the world believable. This involves directing extras, ensuring there is traffic on the streets and basically presenting us with a world that we find believable, so we don't immediately think we're looking at a set. I think this practice has been lost over the years, as these old movies seem to nail it perfectly.
Walter Matthau is fantastic, bringing a wry sense of humour to his role that drives the film.
The crew of hijackers come in disguise and refer to themselves as Mr. Colour. Yes, just like Reservoir Dogs, we have Mr. Brown, Mr. Blue, etc. For some reason I thought it was an invention of Tarantino, but alas, it's another nod to classic and great films of the past.
Also, why are the numerals in the remake's title shortened down to digits? I've always been a fan of the actual words themselves.
And finally, the music is fantastic. If the intro notes don't pull you into the movie, I'm not sure what will.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Bourne Trilogy
All three movies for $25.
I had downloaded these a while back and basked in their glory, and this deal - just over 60% off the retail price - was too good to pass up. I shopped around to see if anything else was worth buying: there wasn't. My standards are relatively high, although questionable. I put the item in my cart and proceeded to check out. Then I froze. What am I doing? I haven't been regularly buying movies in ages, especially since purging my DVDs a while back (I still have too many). I took a lunch break, and came back to it at the end of the day, fully resolved to make the purchase. I love the movies.
This is a trilogy that I will enjoy for a long time to come, and yes, I have bought them before (on DVD) and I believe the third movie, on HD DVD. Well, it was time to pay up and buy these movies again; the discounted price is the only reason the decision was on the table to begin with. And I felt that twinge of excitement again. This time around, I wasn't buying out of necessity or because the collection was special in some way. I verified the quality was excellent, and proceeded because the movies are just fantastic. It took me by surprise to see how often I've revisited the films over the years. So now, with the package arriving this afternoon, I find myself watching them again. This time, I'll be watching with an audio commentary, getting some insight into the making of these films.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Shadow
When I was collecting DVDs I had a good number, and a decent number of those were movies that I actually enjoyed. Further to that, I tried to stay with DVDs that were technically sound, such as: anamorphic video, high bitrates (thanks Superbit), dts sound and so on. There was also a local store called Mudsharks that carried more movies than your regular Wal-Mart or what have you, but the store was basically a drug front (they had movies, music and bongs). All of their movies were available for rent, and purchase. It was a weird system but it was effective in seeing different movies.
One of the movies they always had on the shelf was The Shadow. When I was a kid, I loved this movie - for reasons unknown - and Mudshark's actually carried it. As we always did, I poured over the back cover of the case and analyzed the technical contents within. Something stood out: this film has been modified to fit your screen. That meant full screen. Further analysis confirmed it. This would not stand, and the movie would taunt me as it stood on a thin wooden shelf, unmoving throughout the years. I had memories of the film as a child, and they were good. It's not like I had a widescreen television at the time, so full screen should have sufficed, but I was a film elitist who wanted to see movies the way their director intended (and still do). But one movie here or there - modified - shouldn't be a problem. So why couldn't I rent this classic?
I was terrified of ruining my childhood memories, and it's simple as that. When you're a kid, you see them differently, and over time, your tastes change. Your imagination fills in the blanks and you remember them different - perhaps as some kind of defense mechanism, I'm not sure. But then again, you see some films as a child, like Ghostbusters, and it's still just as awesome as it was back then. So would The Shadow be terrible? Was I fooling myself?
The Shadow is on Netflix, and I faced my fears. I loaded the movie, and much to my delight, it was in widescreen, and high definition (although this type of HD is questionable: more like an upscaled DVD). Regardless of the technical specs - as I tell myself that I've gotten over that - I enjoyed the movie. By all accounts, the movie sucked. The story is so inane that I didn't quite follow it (it didn't help that I was rebuilding my PC in the background at the beginning of the film) and the characters are just wretched. The movie has this weird feel to it, you know, that weird mid-nineties feel. It has that transitionary look to it, where we were moving away from traditional special effects and entering the age of CGI. The miniature work looked fairly cheap, probably because they spent more time with awkward shadow effects and stop motion faces on mystical knives. It's that weird conglomeration that we don't get anymore as everything is CGI.
What I really can't get over is how many stars are in this movie. First, of course is Alec Baldwin as the lead role. Peter Boyle, Tim Curry (!) and Ian McKellen, to name just a few. Perhaps one of the reasons I loved the movie so much as a thirteen year old boy is Penelope Ann Miller. There were also various recognizable characters, such as Patrick Fischler and Ethan Phillips - actors who are just in things, that are always a pleasant suprise when they turn up in your favourite movies. It's like you're happy to see that they've been gainfully employed for so long.
There is a lot of history behind the character The Shadow that I'm completely unaware of, which probably helps in my enjoyment (fanboys I'm sure were able to find lots "wrong" with the interpretation here). It also adds to my enjoyment as I try to piece together some things about him; I love the myth tidbits that are dropped here and there, and can really appreciate that this guy is an older superhero and yes: this movie is a superhero movie without being lumped in with all the recent Marval and DC adaptations. It's my love for the comics that drive me to enjoy this movie, and really makes me sad that we don't get more. I don't remember the final showdown involving the mind so much; it was like watching an early version of The Matrix where The Shadow must free his mind and concentrate on his own reality. If you try too hard, just as Neo casually accepts he is not in a real world, The Shadow must casually accept control of the knife.
Perhaps it sounds crazy but I want more, and if this means I have to buy a few comics books, then so be it. In one of our pilgrimages to Fan Expo I picked up a handful of The Shadow comics, not knowing that this particular series I bought has been derided by fanboys simply because The Shadow uses automatic weapons - a big no no, apparently. All that being said though, and my high regard for the film, doesn't mean you will enjoy it. Nostalgia does have away of clouding a man's mind.
One of the movies they always had on the shelf was The Shadow. When I was a kid, I loved this movie - for reasons unknown - and Mudshark's actually carried it. As we always did, I poured over the back cover of the case and analyzed the technical contents within. Something stood out: this film has been modified to fit your screen. That meant full screen. Further analysis confirmed it. This would not stand, and the movie would taunt me as it stood on a thin wooden shelf, unmoving throughout the years. I had memories of the film as a child, and they were good. It's not like I had a widescreen television at the time, so full screen should have sufficed, but I was a film elitist who wanted to see movies the way their director intended (and still do). But one movie here or there - modified - shouldn't be a problem. So why couldn't I rent this classic?I was terrified of ruining my childhood memories, and it's simple as that. When you're a kid, you see them differently, and over time, your tastes change. Your imagination fills in the blanks and you remember them different - perhaps as some kind of defense mechanism, I'm not sure. But then again, you see some films as a child, like Ghostbusters, and it's still just as awesome as it was back then. So would The Shadow be terrible? Was I fooling myself?
The Shadow is on Netflix, and I faced my fears. I loaded the movie, and much to my delight, it was in widescreen, and high definition (although this type of HD is questionable: more like an upscaled DVD). Regardless of the technical specs - as I tell myself that I've gotten over that - I enjoyed the movie. By all accounts, the movie sucked. The story is so inane that I didn't quite follow it (it didn't help that I was rebuilding my PC in the background at the beginning of the film) and the characters are just wretched. The movie has this weird feel to it, you know, that weird mid-nineties feel. It has that transitionary look to it, where we were moving away from traditional special effects and entering the age of CGI. The miniature work looked fairly cheap, probably because they spent more time with awkward shadow effects and stop motion faces on mystical knives. It's that weird conglomeration that we don't get anymore as everything is CGI.
What I really can't get over is how many stars are in this movie. First, of course is Alec Baldwin as the lead role. Peter Boyle, Tim Curry (!) and Ian McKellen, to name just a few. Perhaps one of the reasons I loved the movie so much as a thirteen year old boy is Penelope Ann Miller. There were also various recognizable characters, such as Patrick Fischler and Ethan Phillips - actors who are just in things, that are always a pleasant suprise when they turn up in your favourite movies. It's like you're happy to see that they've been gainfully employed for so long.
There is a lot of history behind the character The Shadow that I'm completely unaware of, which probably helps in my enjoyment (fanboys I'm sure were able to find lots "wrong" with the interpretation here). It also adds to my enjoyment as I try to piece together some things about him; I love the myth tidbits that are dropped here and there, and can really appreciate that this guy is an older superhero and yes: this movie is a superhero movie without being lumped in with all the recent Marval and DC adaptations. It's my love for the comics that drive me to enjoy this movie, and really makes me sad that we don't get more. I don't remember the final showdown involving the mind so much; it was like watching an early version of The Matrix where The Shadow must free his mind and concentrate on his own reality. If you try too hard, just as Neo casually accepts he is not in a real world, The Shadow must casually accept control of the knife.
Perhaps it sounds crazy but I want more, and if this means I have to buy a few comics books, then so be it. In one of our pilgrimages to Fan Expo I picked up a handful of The Shadow comics, not knowing that this particular series I bought has been derided by fanboys simply because The Shadow uses automatic weapons - a big no no, apparently. All that being said though, and my high regard for the film, doesn't mean you will enjoy it. Nostalgia does have away of clouding a man's mind.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Lenovo Y460 Keyboard Replacement
I've had this Y460 for over a year now and have (basically) been enjoying it quite a bit. Screen is really nice, it's a good size and weight, and it gets the job done, the job being: to surf the internet. There are only a couple of problems: it gets too hot (which is not usually a problem because it's on a cushion on my lap) and the keyboard is terrible. The keyboard's problem is that it's bilingual. You have to understand that in Canada, laptop makers are equipping these bilingual keyboards on almost all their laptops: the ones that seem exempt are more of the professional and business series stuff, so basically anything over $1000. For those more inexpensive models, we get a bilingual one.
What does this mean? Some of the buttons are changed around, which I can deal with, for the most part. But they made one grave error, that I can't forgive: they've shrunk the left shift button down, and pushed it further to the left. This key is the key that I use for capitalization every. single. time. When they move it, my decades of habit are ruined and I can't type properly. It's made typing very difficult, with a lot of mistakes. It's slowed me down but over the past year I've gotten pretty used to it.
When I first got this laptop I contacted Lenovo to see if the modified keyboard was on it: they assured me it wasn't, but I was obviously talking to someone who didn't know anything. I received the laptop and the funny keys were there; however, returning it would be a pain, and there wasn't any better option at the time. I even called them up to try and replace it, but it was a no go.
So the other day it popped into my head and I went looking online to see if I could buy a replacement US-layout keyboard. Turns out we have a guy in Ottawa selling them for $32. The others were all coming from Hong Kong, presumably where they are made. I placed my order and it arrived just a few days later. The switch is very easy: replacing keyboards on laptops is probably one of the easier things you can do on it. Flip the laptop over, take out the battery and remove seven screws. Flip it back over and the bezel just above the keyboard can be flipped up. This is always a scary part as you feel like you're breaking the plastic clips that are holding it there. A flathead screwdriver is a good idea here. The keyboard then slides out easily - although do it slowly as there is a thin ribbon that connects it to the motherboard. Flip a switch, pull it out and the other goes in just as smoothly. Snapped everything back into place and I was in business.
And now I have my regular, traditional keyboard back. And typing this up on it is much easier. Here is a comparison shot: the top is the old, bilingual one and the bottom is the US layout.
What does this mean? Some of the buttons are changed around, which I can deal with, for the most part. But they made one grave error, that I can't forgive: they've shrunk the left shift button down, and pushed it further to the left. This key is the key that I use for capitalization every. single. time. When they move it, my decades of habit are ruined and I can't type properly. It's made typing very difficult, with a lot of mistakes. It's slowed me down but over the past year I've gotten pretty used to it.
When I first got this laptop I contacted Lenovo to see if the modified keyboard was on it: they assured me it wasn't, but I was obviously talking to someone who didn't know anything. I received the laptop and the funny keys were there; however, returning it would be a pain, and there wasn't any better option at the time. I even called them up to try and replace it, but it was a no go.
So the other day it popped into my head and I went looking online to see if I could buy a replacement US-layout keyboard. Turns out we have a guy in Ottawa selling them for $32. The others were all coming from Hong Kong, presumably where they are made. I placed my order and it arrived just a few days later. The switch is very easy: replacing keyboards on laptops is probably one of the easier things you can do on it. Flip the laptop over, take out the battery and remove seven screws. Flip it back over and the bezel just above the keyboard can be flipped up. This is always a scary part as you feel like you're breaking the plastic clips that are holding it there. A flathead screwdriver is a good idea here. The keyboard then slides out easily - although do it slowly as there is a thin ribbon that connects it to the motherboard. Flip a switch, pull it out and the other goes in just as smoothly. Snapped everything back into place and I was in business.
And now I have my regular, traditional keyboard back. And typing this up on it is much easier. Here is a comparison shot: the top is the old, bilingual one and the bottom is the US layout.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)