Kick-Ass

I just finished watching Kick-Ass on Netflix. 
Having read the comic previously, I know why Hollywood picked up the movie rights.  It's a good story, well-written, and the art and layout of the comic make it an excellent candidate to get to the big screen.
I'm sitting here watching the credits roll, and I'm thinking that the movie interpretation was good, but in a different way.  They did exactly what I thought they would with Hit Girl and Big Daddy, and it came off well.  The main character was good, though the romantic interest storyline went down a bit differently than it did in print.
The action sequences were simply excellent, and unlike most fight scenes these days I didn't feel like they were designed to give me mild A.D.D. while establishing how much bigger badasses the characters are than anyone in real life could be.  Most surprising was the filmmakers' ability to add some pretty significant tension/suspense moments that I felt added a lot to the overall film.  Second most surprising was how contrived the ending seemed.  Now I realize I'm a Spoiled American Consumer and as awesome and as over-the-top as previous fight scenes had been, the finale had to be even moreso, but I felt that whatever budget was spent on the Final Gadget could have been better spent on more stuntmen, fake blood, and film.  I found myself wanting the end to be just as awesome as the previous fights but longer and with even more action-porn, if such a thing is possible.
I'll give it a 7 out of 10 for the amazing action and good direction/cinematography, and for following the original product *most*of the way through.

Media Box!

A couple of months back we bought a Sony SMP-N100 network media player at CostCo for around $100 after tax and instant rebate.  It has a home in our living room with the dvd player.
It streams a number of internet video services (similar to Roku) and has a usb port to allow attachment of external storage devices like a thumb drive with photos.  A sleek-looking little black box, it has changed many of our home entertainment habits.

First, the setup:
The hardest part was reaching behind our old tube tv to hook up the rca (composite) cables, after that bit of gymnastics it was very very easy.  The device registered itself on our network quickly and downloaded updates to get itself up and running.  We registered it with Netflix and Hulu (Plus), and logged in to Youtube, and it was ready to go.

In use:
Netflix streaming is excellent, our connection speed is detected to minimize buffering and our instant queue is fully available.  Youtube is quite good as well, 720p video shot with my G2X comes across very nicely.  Hulu Plus...buffers a lot.  There isn't a way to downgrade the video quality like you can when viewing on a computer, and our internet connection isn't fast enough to keep up as video plays.  I don't mind pausing to let segments load, but since Hulu breaks a program up into pieces to allow commercial breaks it makes for an awful lot of pauses while video loads.

Drawbacks:
The 2nd one we got (for back in the bedroom) uses WiFi since I haven't run a cable back there yet.  It got too hot on its shelf and spewed out connection errors.  Until I can get a shelf to put it on for cooling purposes it sits on a can of beans.  There is a $20 credit included toward a Hulu Plus subscription, but only for first-time signups.  Since we already had the service, we don't get to take advantage of this offer.

Overall:
Good, 4 out of 5 stars.  Good enough that there's a second one in our house now.

Fun Tech: Minecraftworldmap.com

We've recently gotten the Minecraft bug, buying three copies/memberships in the house.  After playing solo offline games for about a week, I installed the multiplayer server software on my computer so we could enjoy a bit of cooperative play.  The learning curve was easy, but I didn't think my machine had the proper resources to run it properly, so I got a month's worth of server time on a hosting service.  This ended up being more trouble than it was worth - the host was often unreachable, and ran far more slowly than our own in-house server did.  I cancelled the service and we ended up hosting a server at home.

This isn't about the poor hosting service (which will remain nameless), but something really neat we found to show off our little world.  It's a free service that you upload your World file to, and they render a google maps-esque map of your world.  It shows day, night, and cave views, and offers highly detailed zooming and scaling.  They also host the map so you can show off your work.

http://mcworldmap.com is the place, give it a try and then give them a donation!  While you're there, look up the Doodlebug map(s) and check our little virtual world out.  :-)

http://www.minecraftworldmap.com/users/Electrodyne

Holy cow it started!

I actually got my car to start, and it drove for almost 60 yards.  Brian from down the hall helped me push it the last 10 feet into my reserved spot.  Now I'm just waiting on my tax return to come in, so I can have it towed to a garage to have it fixed.

But at least it won't get towed now :)

Blogger app results

For posting content, it gets three stars.  Pictures are placed at the end of the post, with no option to place them in line with the text.  Instead, they go at the end, in last-in-first-out order.  That's why the first photos you see are from the last part of the post.

Other tech news: I picked up a little set-top streaming device for less than a hundred bucks.  Seems like a 4 out of 5 star device, more in the morning about that.

Testing the Blogger app for Android...

We walked over to Costco this morning, to tire out the kids before naptime.

Since it's very close to our apartment, Ben walked and Tesla rode in the stroller.

Ben was in and out of the cart several times, and is a good help with pushing.

When we get to the freezer section, he likes to "get the red things."  He's fascinated by the diamond-plating too.

Once we got all our groceries, he spent some time in the playhouse there.

He was a little bit reluctant to leave, but both little ones were ready for a nap when we got home.

Originally a reply to Jason's post :)

With the recent instability in galactic politics, we're all wondering, "Where's the safest place to put my credits?" Well, I'm here to tell you it's something that has seen a sharp rise in recent weeks, and if you've been keeping your eye on the commodity prices you're already aware of the fantastic opportunities in Wampa Meat!

We all know that following the tragic loss of the "Freedom Star" station, tourism to Hoth has increased immensely. Did you in fact know that the actual number shows an increase of OVER SIXTY THOUSAND PERCENT?
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