soapbox

I watch TV for adolescent girls, I might as well watch the movies too.

Have any of you seen Twilight? The concept actually has a lot of potential… pretty girl, vampires living in the cloudy parts of Washington State, star crossed lovers… you could make a cool movie out of that…

Unfortunately, in my eyes at least, it’s a failure. For one, who wants neuter vampires? They’re supposed to be lusty and bitey. Angel didn’t walk around saying “I’d like to bite you”, he had a growling undercurrent of needing to feed with the torment of not being able to eat people. Plus, the sign of his vampireness wasn’t glitter. I mean, come on, the thing that lets you know that Edward is a vampire is that he floresces in the UV? Did they have to make it such a 13-year-old’s wet dream too. Ooh, older handsome man who isn’t into sex at all so you just have to kiss once and then snuggle.

I’m so disappointed.

So one of K’s new-favorite-shows is Science/Discovery’s How It’s Made, which consists of 5-15 minute mini-documentaries of (surprisingly enough) how various items are manufactured, wrapped, etc.

I also have to recommend a slightly more upscale stuff-related documentary, “Objectified.” Check out the trailer here.

This is worth watching.

Dailymotion – High Voltage Cable Inspection, a video from monnotman. High, Voltage, Cable, Inspection.

“A recent iPhone app has appeared, one that will change the face of mobile entertainment forever!”

- Wired magazine, January 2009, volume 17, issue 1

While there may be a little truthiness missing from the above review, I do recommend that those unfamiliar with Tom Dickson’s “Will It Blend” video series get themselves educated. Certainly a thesis or ten could be written on the degeneracy of a culture that spends so much effort/time/money devoted to destroying perfectly good items, but ours is not to reason why.

At the risk of sleeping on the couch for eternity, I feel it is my sober duty to inform the rest of blogland of this fact… something that many guys have known for years and years: romantic comedies cause nothing but strife and unhappiness. Sure they have helped millions of guys have successful movie-dates and thereby get laid, and sure they have helped millions of women overcome bad breakups while bonding with their girlfriends, but those clever Brits don’t mince words.

</perhaps unfunny gender stereotypes>

Actually, the study is kinda interesting:

Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love….They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner. Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.

Obviously, that’s a working title… but with the release of Apple TV Software Update 2.3 it’s as good a time as any to complain about what Apple *isn’t* doing, which is to create a piece of entertainment hardware that provides exactly what I want.

What I want:
a combination Roku/TiVo/Apple TV-without-needing-to-be-hacked/Blu-Ray player, without any DRM or HDCP nonsense, able to navigate to myp2p.eu and play those streams smoothly without chatter or hiccups.

What is HDCP you ask? Well, if you plan on getting a new Macbook and want to use an external display, read this first:

Just got a new MacBook last week and finally found a mini Display Port -> VGA adapter so i could use my 19” external display. I rented a movie from the iTunes store yesterday and when I tried to play it on my external display, it gave me a warning/error that the display was ‘not an authorized HDCP display’ and it would not play. Plays fine on the small MacBook screen, just nothing external. To make it even worse, i tried all the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes store with the same result… NONE of them will play on anything but the MacBook’s small 13” screen. This is crazy unacceptable.