That's right, I'm back.

It’s been awhile since the last update, and it’s honestly not ALL my fault.  We switched hosting packages to a reseller account, and the domain propagation was stuck for my ISP and my ISP alone, which required me to wait forever and then call my ISP, explain the issue in detail (Their secondary DNS server wasn’t refreshing it’s cache, it was stuck) and then wait till they called me back, stated I was right, and that I’d have to wait normal 24-72 hours for the domain to propagate.

So I’m finally back, and I have quite a few more ideas and goals.  For one I want to get better at writing reviews, whether it be movies, podcasts I listen to, and the addition of video games I play (although don’t expect me to play new releases).  I’m going to be experimenting with some review stuff, so bare with me while I flop around like a fish.

In other news, it’s still cold, everyone is sick of the weather.  On the plus side, it’s making it so everybody wants to hang out, because everyone is getting depressed.  Personally, I can’t wait till my friend Georgia gets back from Egypt sometime today.  I probably won’t get to talk to her till tomorrow though.  It’s been weeks since we have been able to talk, and by the sounds of it, her trip has been a heck of a ride.

So yeah, this downtime has not been all my fault, and hopefully I’ll expand on a few ideas I have going.  Expect updates soon.

The “medication” in question was Traumeel, which is a joint pain medication.  For those of you unaware of what homeopathy is, this would mean that they’d find a drug that CAUSES joint pain, then put it in HUGE quantities of water till it’s so diluted that none of the said drug remains, and then they usually put it on sugar-pills to dry, then package and sell it.  So what’s contained is just sugar.  The idea of homeopathy is like cures like, and the more diluted it is, the more potent it is.

So, knowing this how could she overdose on homeopathic medicine?  Probably by drinking too much water, becoming over-hydrated and dieing of water intoxication.   This is the ONLY way homeopathy can kill you (well, besides ignoring actual treatments for things and using this instead).

If she wanted to kill herself using “homeopathic logic” then she should have taken only 1/100th of a pill.  Because that would mean it’s more potent.  Or perhaps, she shouldn’t have taken any at all if she wanted to overdose, imagine how potent that would be!

If you had a headache, and it was mild, you might take one pain killer.  If it’s severe you may take two or more depending on the strength and drug.  However with homeopathy it’s the opposite, if it’s mild, you take two or more, and the more severe the headache is, the less you take.  So the most potent dose is not taking any at all.

The logic is retarded, and I’m sure it’s got to be a test to see if you even have the basic ability to form thoughts.  It defies logic on so many levels is almost makes my brain feel numb.

On the plus side, luckily Alexa Ray Joel will live to see another day.  Unfortunately there are still people out there that forgo actual treatment and drink water instead.

Why Placebos Didn’t Kill Alexa Ray Joel

P.S.  I imagine that the homeopathic community will say the reason she didn’t die is because she took too many pills, thus there was “too much” drug, which made it less potent.

I also wonder what the doctor did when he heard she OD’d on homeopathic medicine, wheeled her into the hallway?  Or would he do a procedure just to make her feel better.  Psychic surgery perhaps?

Awww Kittens!

A lot of strange stuff has happened over the last few weeks which I’ll get to in the next following posts.  However I wanted to welcome my good friend Georgia to the world of blogging.  I helped set her up a WordPress install and now she’s well on her way to hours and hours of stress of trying to proofread posts as well as staying motivated to keep posting.

It’ll surely be fun and interesting to share posts with each other from now on though as there aren’t a whole lot of people I can casually pingback.

Good luck, and don’t sweat the small stuff.  It gets easier and better the longer you do it.

Georgia’s Blog

How immunizations work.

I just got my H1N1 immunization yesterday, and wanted to remind people that’s it’s probably a pretty good idea to get it.  I still think it’s likely to be Overhyped Bullshit, but it’s always best to err on the side of caution.  And I have a feeling that it’s likely to get into the yearly rotation of influenza (joining the common strain H3N2) so it’s best to get some immunity to it so you wont be bedridden for a week if you get it.

I also feel the need to clarify myself a bit too.  The reason why I say that the H1N1 is overhyped is because a lot of media were treating it as if AIDS went airbourne or something and we were all going to die, when in fact the statistics show that at this current time, it’s far less lethal than the seasonal influenza.

The big thing about H1N1 is it hasn’t been around since the 70’s so anyone born after that doesn’t have any immunity to it.  This is why your immunization is important, to get some defense against it in case you do happen to get it.  It’s not going to kill you, but you’ll make your suffering a lot shorter (hopefully) by getting immunized.

But I think I’m probably preaching to the choir though.

Movie poster for "Moon".

Wow. I really don’t want to say all that much about this movie because I want everyone to experience this movie without any preconceptions.  So I’ll keep it short.

It’s about a character named Sam who lives on the moon and has to control the mining operation there for something they call Hydrogen3.  He’s only got a few days till his three year contract is up, and then some stuff starts happening.

Sam Rockwell (most notably remembered by me for playing Zaphod in the recent rendition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie) is simply amazing. Kevin spacey voices the AI known as GERTY.  Again, won’t say any more because I don’t want to ruin anything.

It really is an amazing movie. I recommend everyone see this.   I’ll probably touch on this again in a few days/weeks to give people a chance to view it.

Note: I find it so weird to have so little text and a giant movie poster image, but I like how I’ve been doing it, so who cares.

Linksys Network Storage System with 2 Bays (NAS200)

As I posted what seems like forever ago, I had bought a Linksys NAS200.  Well, I’ve been having some trouble since I upgraded the firmware from V34R75 to V34R79.  This caused the media server to pretty much become useless.  Not only did it have problems giving a directory listing on my XBOX 360, but if I did manage to get something to play, it’d timeout about about five minutes of watching and I’d have to reboot the media server to get it working for another brief five minute interval.

So I did what I normally did, google around looking for a solution, but it seems a lot of people have this issue yet nobody has a solution.  Well, I have one for you!  If you don’t want to read about my adventure to simply rollback the firmware, skip down!

So after reviewing the changelog that talks about how they fixed the,  sorry “fixed” the media server to work with the PlayStation 3.  I dug around and it appears they went from Twonky Media Server to PVConnect.  Which for whatever reason was crashing or terminating which lead to having to restart it’s process.  The solution to me was clear, simply rollback to the V34R75 firmware, right?  Well My backup of it was missing in action, and the Linksys website didn’t offer the download location of old firmware.  So I decided to contact them.

So I decided to poke around the Linksys website and I eventually found a live chat support, which I felt was fine since all I needed was a download location of the old firmware.   However, upon connecting with a live representative I was informed that I wasn’t entitled to help for free because my warranty is over.  This irked me a bit, but I continued to say I wasn’t asking for troubleshooting just the firmware.  I was then told:

Daphne L. (10116): Inferno, this product is listed as being out of warranty and is no longer eligible for chat support. However, I do have a couple of support options that may be of assistance to you. First, we have our complimentary award-winning online support tools OR I can give you the 800 number to connect with our phone support staff where they can offer you technical assistance through various fee-based support options.”

Daphne L. (10116): Which option would you prefer, Inferno?

Me: Umm, well I just want you to offer to download the old firmware. The software that worked and didn’t turn it into a brick.
Me: I’m not asking you to help troubleshoot

Daphne L. (10116): Sorry, but we don’t have available firmware on our download site.

Me: Warranty or not, your ‘update’ destroyed my product you sold to me.

Daphne L. (10116): I understand, please also be informed that it is not advisable to upgrade the firmware of a device if it is working fine since it may corrupt the firmware.

Uhhh, what?

Me: Wait wait
Me: Your saying NOT to upgrade firmware for my products?
Me: I Don’t want to gets bug fixes and additional features?

Daphne L. (10116): Wait let me verify first, your only concern is to get the old firmware, right? We can double check if we still have it available.

Me: That would be wonderful.

So they eventually said they’d have someone call me back within 48 hours.  So I waited…and two days later I get an email from Celo Deavilla, who asked me to call his office or reply to his email.  So I did both, upon calling his office he wasn’t there, so I responded to his email with my contact information and when I’ll be available, and also offered to have the conversation via email if he wished.  I got no response all week, and I kept calling him daily and he was always away from his desk.

Finally on Friday I replied stating how I was disappointed in Linksys as I had waited for a week and received no help for my problem which was pretty simple, I just wanted the V34R75 firmware.  Which fortunately, got a response quickly, Cello pulled through and emailed me NAS200_V34R75.bin which was exactly what the doctor prescribed.

So I reinstalled the old firmware and everything works smoothly and cleanly again!  Problem solved.

The Solution: Install NAS200_V34R75.bin!

I’ve uploaded it and the full chat log.  I hope this will help someone else and they won’t have to waste over a week on tracking down the firmware.

NAS200_V34R75.bin

Linksys Support Chat Log

The premise of the story is that a father gets rushed by two thugs in his home, who kill his wife and daughter in front of him.  The prosecutor offers a plea bargain so that one of them gets the death penalty and the other gets a maximum of five years despite the father’s pleas to send them both to trial.  The prosecutor declines as he wants to keep his conviction-rate high.

The father is understandably upset and decides to dispense his own justice and apparently uses his skills as a government black-ops “brain” to start killing all those that are guilty of dealing with murderers (all the while giving people an out, as to avoid the destruction).  For instance he’ll ask for something, and if it’s not met, he kills more people.

I’m not sure if I was supposed to be on the side of the father or not, but I really was up until about the middle of the movie.  He was trying to force people to look at the injustice of the criminal system and that something needs to be changed and he was prepared to break a few eggs to make an omelette.  I felt it was pretty justified even if extremely vengeful and murderous.

Overall I’d say to definitely watch this movie, while I did have a big problem with the ending and felt a little ripped-off by the plot direction change in the middle of the film, it was worth watching.  The acting was pretty great as I was never distracted at all by any of it and the characters seemed to be able to mingle with each other quite easily.  If for nothing else though this movie is a great film to have a discussion about, as it illustrates how screwed up the system is, and what it will take to fix it.

Now, for what I didn’t like (Really only useful to those who have seen the film):

***SPOILERS BELOW***

So the problem I had with the movie starts when the father kills his cellmate in order to get into solitary confinement.  While I understand that this was required in order to get him into his cell in solitary to continue his acts of destruction I felt that it was a bit out of character and instantly made me dislike the father.

While I’m not sure whether I was supposed to identify with the father at all, I do think he was justified in wanting justice, and I don’t think it’s entirely wrong to act on your conviction to change the system.  Unfortunately not much in history has ever changed without violence and I can’t see this changing anytime soon. So overall I wanted to identify with the father, and wanted the movie to be a film about siding with the bad guy, and realizing that although it was terrorism, it was for the right reasons and partially if not fully justified.  To me it speaks volumes about how war and terrorism is NOT a black and white issue, and would have been quite good social commentary.

So once I was sort of put-off by his blatant murder of a presumably semi-innocent man (they never state what his cellmate did, for all we know it was tax evasion) I started to wonder if I was supposed to want him stopped.  While he did kill someone in cold blood that was totally not related to his plight, he was after-all still trying to change the system.

Once everything was wrapped up and they found out that the father was just tunneling out of prison, he didn’t seem like as much of a genius (except for the judge’s cell phone, that was totally unexpected and quite inventive).  This made me feel even worse about the character as I really did want to side with him even despite murdering his cellmate.  And from there they trick him into committing suicide as he knew he had to take out the officials at the meeting to get anyone to actually start to care about fixing the justice system.

So the father dies, and the lawyer goes to his daughter’s recital and the world is good again.  Except for the fact that the judicial system is still horribly broken, and despite the fact that the prosecutor won’t make deals with murderers anymore, nothing was really resolved.  I would ahve much prefered some alternate ending that would allow the system to be changed, even if it was just a weird emntion of congress discussing judicial branch reform and a massive overhaul of how the justice system works.

I don’t know, I was just really disappointed in the ending, and it seemed that the director and writer wanted to stray from the fact that terrorists have families and motives too.  They aren’t just non-descript people who just hate freedom.  Overall though, I felt that the first half of the movie helped fill that weird craving for brutal justice and revenge.  Sort of like going on a murderous rampage in Grand Theft Auto when you’re angry about something.  Then again maybe I’m just insane and ready to snap any day now.

Anybody else have any opinions on this?  I’d really like to hear them.

Terminator Salvation Movie Poster

It’s been quite awhile since this film came out so I decided I’d like to let people know how I would have ended it.  I know you were all dieing to know what I felt about it, so I’ll give a tiny review as well.  Keep in mind there are spoilers here, some might say I give away the ending (well duh) but I don’t think it really matters, but READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Alright so at the end of the film, we find out that John Connor’s heart is damaged and needs to replaced so Marcus decides to donate his.  Which to me was completely fucking stupid.

They opt to replace the almost indestructible robot who fights for the humans for some dude who will HOPEFULLY survive the procedure and then have a heart condition and need to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his natural life.  I really don’t get what they would be thinking if they were real, but as writers I can see that they wanted to give Marcus the chance to repay his debt to society and what-not, but it’s still a really stupid decision.

So anyway, what I would have liked to see happen was that John Connor dies (nice big dramatic moment and everyone thinks the resistance will fail especially when people lose morale when they find out their leader is dead.  So Marcus decides to take over Connor’s legacy by adopting his name, and through a few procedures (well, firmware updates) change his voice to match John’s so he can take his place as leader.

It would work quite well, Marcus is more than capable now as he had shown, and nobody actually knew what John Connor looked like to begin with and with his voice, he could continue the radio broadcasts.  It’d also add a weird twist to the movie and series because while John Connor helped in the resistance he wasn’t the Jesus they make him out to be, and it would leave Skynet still sending terminators back to kill John Connor when the real target was Marcus all along.

I thought it’d be a great ending, but what do you guys think?

As for the film itself, I’m glad they made it as it’s been wanted for quite awhile.  It was pretty much what I expected, and was somewhat mediocre but defiantly worth a watch especially if you followed the films as a kid.  It is a bit weird to see them practically toss out the whole motif of the previous films “The future cannot be changed, it can be changed, no wait it can’t, oh whatever look robots!”.  I also felt Christian Bale could have easily been replaced as I found his character recycled and bland, and really felt Marcus was the shining star of the movie and makes my ending more the better.

So without further delays, here is the Neave Strobe Illusion, be warned that if you are epileptic or sensitive to flashing lights of crazy black and white moving lines to AVOID this, as it screws up my mind pretty hardcore.

Neave Strobe

Zombieland Movie Poster

The wife has been wanting to see this movie for awhile and we finally got our chance.  While I was looking forward to it, this movie didn’t strike me as anything ground breaking or a must-see movie in theatres, and to be honest it really wasn’t.

That isn’t to say that the movie wasn’t entertaining, but it sort of followed a cookie cutter design and nothing really unpredictable occurs.  The most catchy thing about the movie is the humour in the fact that “Rules” appear on the screen which break the fourth wall but provide comedic relief.  This will most likely become an Internet meme though as zombies are really “in” right now.

The movie is about a fellow named Columbus (or at least nicknamed) who has made a habit of making “rules to follow” to survive the zombie invasion.  As I’ve stated these displayed the screen when they’re adhered to such as “Always check the backseat”.  He travels about America which he now deems “the United States of Zombieland” and befriends a dude, and then meets some others.

I can’t really explain much as there really isn’t much to the film, beyond the zombies there are very few characters and the film constantly broke the fourth wall for me.  While I was entertained the movie wasn’t all that spectacular, and I’d probably give this movie a “rent”.  It’s probably worth seeing, but only because of the memes it will spawn.

Sorry if this review seems a bit weak, there isn’t much I can give about the film that doesn’t give it all away.  The sum of the story could easily be fit into a paragraph.