PC Magazine listed their favorite applications available at BlackBerry App World, and some others that haven’t made it to the store just yet. I downloaded the Google Maps application after reading this article. Mwahahahaha.
20 Top Picks from BlackBerry App World – Reviews by PC Magazine
We rented The Notebook this week, a 2004 starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, as well as James Garner and Gena Rowlands. It’s a romantic drama based on a book, taking place in the 1940s. The primary reason I wanted to rent this movie was that I’ve heard this movie cited as a great movie by the morning radio show DJs time and time again. The 2nd reason I wanted to rent this movie was to make up for that Made of Honor crapfest I watched last week.
The Notebook (2004)
The Notebook is about the Gosling & McAdams characters getting together as a couple, with the will-they / won’t-they? thrown in. It was a decent movie, but I the Rachel McAdams character Ali kept changing her opinion/interest a bit much for less-than-logical reasons. Then again, her character is a 17-year old teenager, so I guess that’s to be expected. Dang, how much trouble is Lily going to cause me when she’s 17?
Uh oh!
I thought this was interesting.
We celebrated Lily’s 1st birthday party in style this Saturday. For the first time in a long time, we got the entire immediate family together — both sets of grandparents, and both sets of aunts and uncles. We haven’t all been together since the baptism last August. We didn’t want it to be a large affair, focusing on just family. Folks started arriving at 2pm.
For my fellow food aficionados, here’s the menu. My wife put together pita to dip in ether roasted eggplant dip or hummus. For dinner, you could have fancy meatballs or swordfish kebabs, a zucchini medley, and couscous. Dessert was obviously the birthday cake.
Lily’s birthday cake
Lily was the big winner in all this, as she was the center of attention, which is probably the best gift she could ever receive. 🙂
Who is the underdog? The consumers or the big media companies?
[Side note: I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a soft spot for The Karate Kid. It’s a great, fun, nostalgic movie. I have no interest in Will Smith’s version releasing whenever. I’ll take Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita any day.]
We live in interesting times, in regards to the Internet. It’s changed our lives, and I think for the better. Yet so many people are trying to catch up with the changing dynamic. If you’re a media company, how do you protect your intellectual property? In the past, it’s been all about people downloading songs without paying for them, then later trading video online. It may not seem a big deal to us, but it’s a loss for the studios. For example, 20th Century Fox is likely to take a box-office hit because of the recently leaked Wolverine origins movie. Hulu is a joint project by Fox, NBC Universal, and many other studios and networks to publish movies and shows online for free, but the content owners would pull everything off if it was stolen or misused.
I don’t want media companies to lose money to counterfeiters and other folks, because if I was in their shoes, I’d probably be incensed. Maybe my bonus would be bigger, except for the unrealized losses due to my product being stolen and traded daily around the world. However, digital rights management (DRM) blows. I mean, I hate it. Stop the counterfeiters, but as the normal, average, every-day consumer, I should have the right to do whatever I want with the media. I should be allowed to export that movie on DVD easily to my iPod. I shouldn’t have to be restricted if I want to make a ringtone out of a song I already purchased and downloaded. I think if I wanted to share a couple of songs with a friend or family, it’s not a big deal. Slippery slope, me thinks.
Let me get to the point. Last month, I downloaded and installed a 14-day trial of the Play On media server software, which came highly recommended by friends. If you read, I was jazzed up by the possibilities — watching old-school and new-school tv shows and movies streamed to my TV. I let the trial period lapse, but knew I was hooked. Meanwhile, Hulu recently began using countermeasures against companies like Boxee and others “stealing” or misappropriating their content. Hulu benefits with all the content if they display the video from content owners on their website with minimal ads. If you just stream the content with no ads, is it stealing? Is it not?
I purchased the license key for Play On today, but lo and behold, Hulu is not working (“data is corrupted.”) It would appear that the encoding trick is working. Media Mall put out an advisory this week that there was an outage related to Hulu content, but they were working on a fix. I like the Netflix streaming, and the ability to watch YouTube on my TV, so losing Hulu is not entirely a deal-breaking. I think, for us, access to Hulu was a large chunk of the oooohs and aaaaahs.
I just got an email that the Hulu outage is over, due to a new fix they pushed out to users automatically. I haven’t checked it yet, and if it’s working, phew! However, I feel like this is going to be an on-and-off-again problem as companies fight to block access, and we consumers wait for workarounds.
That calls for an immediate 😐
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
I used some reward points to pick up two new games: Killzone 2 and Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune arrived today in the mail, and I started playing it late this evening. This game is awesome! This platform game is in the same vein as the Tomb Raider series, but I like it so much more. Yes, it is a lot like Tomb Raider, but it feels like I’m also watching (and participating) in an Indiana Jones movie. The gameplay intermixes with cutscenes wonderfully, and there’s just enough tips and hints at these early stages to help me find my way. Controls are pretty intuitive too.
The premise of the game is you play Explorer Nathan Drake, a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, who begins a search for an ancient relic that is linked to his ancestor. With the help of some sidekicks, you-as-Nathan traverse jungles, waterfalls, caves, and ruins while avoiding scummy modern-day pirates. I’m having a kick-ass time, and it’s only been 90 mins. That’s usually the sign of a good game.
This game came out in 2007, and there’s already a sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, coming out in Fall 2009. Why didn’t I get a PS3 years ago?
See the trailer below. This is actual gameplay. I know, I know, I bet all you console guys and gals have been doing this for years. I’m catching up to all the fun now. Kanishk, you were so right.
It’s one of those quiet Friday nights — everyone is asleep but me and the fish! I’m doing some tidying up, so I thought I’d stream a Netflix movie while I sorted the mail. I watched Corpse Bride, a stop-motion film by Tim Burton. Interestingly enough, the editing was performed using Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Neat.
This movie’s style was very reminiscent of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film I watched in the theaters back in 1993. Corpse Bride is an interesting but odd movie. I don’t know if it really worked on all levels. It’s PG, but I don’t know if I’d want my kids watching it before their teens, because it’s a little on the gothic side. It’s not quite for adults, because there is a bit of singing that I could do without. It also wasn’t the most exciting story either. I’d say it was average, a definite rental or at least something to watch on a Friday night when you’ve got nothing much better to do except watch a Tim Burton stop-motion film.
Corpse Bride (2005)
Lily experienced some big steps today — literally and figuratively. At the doctor’s office today for her 1-year checkup, the doctor saw her first tooth beginning to pop through. Yowzers, finally. Just like her older brother, she started teething about 6-7 months ago, and never stopped. It’s about time!
Today, my wife saw her take her first steps in the morning, at the doctor’s office, and at school. I haven’t seen it yet, but maybe tomorrow? We were so happy, we decided to celebrate with dinner at P.F. Chang’s. Isn’t that what everyone does?
Is Spring finally here? The weather seems to have picked up. Today, we hit 70 degrees, and I took the kids to the park to hang out at the playground. Lily had her experience on the swings, and Josh got to push her. Some of Josh’s classmates showed up, and I watched him run around with them.
It was a nice weekend overall. Did I mention it was Lily’s birthday on Saturday? Yeah, we kept it simple — a late breakfast at a nice restaurant Saturday morning, then just hanging out as a family, and we went to a church event in the evening. The actual birthday party will be next Saturday.
I can’t believe Lily is 1 years old now. Heck, we can’t believe we survived 12 rounds, er months, with her, but we did. We were spoiled with Josh — he was always so easy-going as a baby, and later, as a little guy. Lily has been the baby with a little attitude and a heavy need for attention. Luckily, she’s cute as can be, so I guess that makes up for it. 🙂
My wife and I played LittleBigPlanet together this weekend. I played for a while by myself yesterday (got really far), but I hit a number of areas where you need a friend along in order to get special items like stickers and stuff. She joined me today for 30 mins, and we had lots of fun. Just like in real life, I really liked having her there for company. I have the best fun with her that way.
This month, I watched the end of Battlestar: Galactica. It wasn’t canceled. After the 2003 miniseries and four seasons, the writers wrapped up the story. I’ll really miss the show as the show was simply unpredictable — you didn’t know what was going to happen next, and the stories kept me on my toes. Sure, there were one or two bad (or “eh”) episodes, but not every episode can be a home run.
The show had so much going for it, but I think I will especially miss the space battles. They were so ingenious, surprising, and fun. Some insurmountable battle with seemingly no way to prevail, yet the humans would use some crazy strategy that made you go, “Wow, I never thought of doing THAT. That is awesome!”
In honor of the end of Battlestar: Galactica, some links.
I’m gonna miss that show. 🙁
The Galactica
