Christmas and
New Year came and went too quickly. Did you guys get everything you've
wanted ? No ? Well, there's always next year.
I did get a lot of gift cards, because I generally already
own a lot of stuff.
So... here are some recent items in my collection:
PRINT
The one thing I got out of "reading" Bam Margera's Serious As Dog Dirt! (published by MTV Books)
is that he's a big scrapbookin' mo-fo, aka packrat. Everything was
saved and reprinted in this book! If you follow the random photos,
calendar, notes, sketches, newspaper clippings, - it really tell you
the story of Bam from 1997 to 2009.
For those who don't know, Bam Margera is a professional
skateboarder, but recently is probably more famous for being in MTV's
Jackass. FYI, he wrote the two Jackass movies... no idea how you can
"write" those type of movies as I figure people aren't given scripts to
memorize.
Anyway, this book is probably not as detailed as a regular biography,
but it does tell you a lot about Bam. For instance, I get the gist that
he's dated quite a few women, likes bands (69 Eyes-type of bands),
travels quite a bit, likes to take photographs (of buddies and his lady
friends), and, yeah, of course, he's really into skating.
Besides from the various photos of Bam and his skateboarding, there was
one hand-writtten note which really sums up his love for the urban
sport. He donated $20,000 to his city to build a skate park for the
kids, and I guess for selfish reasons, he secretly wanted to use the
park as well. Unfortunately, when he shows up to do his thing, he
constantly get stopped by children and their parents for autographs. So
what does he do? In the sort of typical Bam move, he decides to throw
$100k and build his own private ramp in his own backyard.... which
prompt the city to ask him to remove it, because it's "a dangerous
structure". I don't know how the story ends, but I reckon Bam is the
sort of guy that would ignore the city.
Since this is a music-related website, I'll talk a bit about
what I think he likes: hard-rock, death metal even. So it was a bit of
a surprise to see that he's a fan of The Veronicas. I do admit that the
twins aren't bad as a band, but they just seems too pop for someone
like Bam. I'm wrong, because he requested a +5 on his guest list to see
& meet the two girls. He also broke his cup holder in his Mercedes
screwing with his girlfriend to a Veronicas song, "This is How it
Feels" (that song was decided to him at the concert).
If you got some Barnes & Noble gift cards from Xmas, this
would make a nice gift for yourself if you are into skateboarding, or
Jackass fan, or need a new book for your coffee table. The price may be
steep at $35, but you can generally find it discounted online for about
$20-ish (also consider that the 250+ page book is printed in color).
The best part? Not much reading is required to finish the book.
You can preview the book here. I would embed it here, but it looked funky.
AUDIO
I actually own a set of books
Angels & Demons and
The Da Vinci Code,
via a book club. I thought I'd have time to read it, but I never got
around to it. I lent it to a friend of mine and he's not given it back
(it's been two years now).
I used a gift card to get a Best Buy edition of the bluray
Angels & Demons,
which came with an abridged audio book. Having watched the DVD and
listened to the audio book - wow, they are so different. Characters
that's not Scottish (thanks Ewan McGregor) to the girl with shorts
(this was made such a big deal in the book!).
Still, enjoyable. Was the $35 Bluray/Digital Copy/Audio Book
worth it ? Sure, it's actually a pretty good deal, considering a
"regular" edition of the Bluray is about $25.
Speaking of audio books, talk about random, but I recently got
Shadowland. I drive a lot, and I tend to want new audio books or podcasts, etc.
The book was Alyson Noel's
Shadowland. I had no idea
this was the third novel in a series called "The Immortal", so I was a
bit lost. Eventually, I figured it was about Ever and Damien and their
struggles. From my understanding, the last book created a problem for
the two: they could never touch each other due to some spell or
something.
I know the series is targeted for teens (more precisely
teenage girls), but I just could not, in any way, relate to these
characters. I mean, for immortals who can manifest anything, do
anything, be as perfect as they are - they sure gaze, stare, gulp,
gape, gape, gape, and gape a lot. I mean, they have it all, and it
seems silly to me that they even have problems. If I had that kind of
powers, you'd never catch me complaining.
This book introduces some new elements in the series: The Book of
Shadows and Shadowland, some children from the netherplace (some
dimension?) and Jude, the laid-back surfer dude that's into magic and
mysticism. The story reminds me a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
minus vampires... and, like any serials, it's really hard to get into
the book if you aren't there from the beginning.
Anyroad, I'm sure The Immortals have their fans, why else is it a best
seller? Although the story or characters didn't work for me, I felt
that the price is right (about $12 for the audio book, probably much
less for the dead trees version). They are cheap enough that people
interested would jump on - but I do suggest starting from the first
book,
Evermore.
VIDEOSince I'm loving the
Netflix-thing on my PS3, I've been playing around with doing away with DVD altogether and
only buying Bluray Discs.
I bought the new Final Destination, yes, I am a fan of the series. The
Bluray version had the best bang for your money, for $20, you get the
bluray, the standard DVD and a digital copy. The 3-D is the red/blue
glasses, and isn't as effective as the polarized version that I saw in
the theaters. Still there are very few 3-D movies, so it's nice that
they put this out on 3-D rendering (some movies like Monsters vs Aliens
didn't even bother releasing a 3-D version).
The special features were pretty bare, just extra footage of
how they shot the death scenes. I was hoping for a commentary or
something.
PS, I was very tempted to pick up a Target Exclusive DVD, it came with a comic book. The pricing was all wrong, the Target DVD costs $4 more than the bluray! Lame.
So. I've recently ran into this problem of trying to get a very
large movie file to play on my PS3. When I'm talking large, I mean over
the 4 gig limitation of Fat32. Video files, especially of the 1080
variety tends to about five gigs and over, depending on the type of
compression you use.
First of all, make sure your PS3 can play your file. If you
rip the file yourself, just remember that the PS3 only support these
formats: MPEG-4, H.264/MPEG-4, MPEG-2, AVI, DivX, and recently WMV.
Fortunately, there are a lot of free softwares out that that lets you convert files - such as MKV to MPG using
MKV2VOB. Normally, my file of choice is Mpeg-4 (MP4) because the iPod Touch plays back files in that format (H.264).
The problem: You can't plug in a NTFS-formatted harddive - the
PS3 just won't see it/does not support this. Your only mean is to
physically put the file on a dual layer disc, since the PS3 won't
recognize NTFS-formated discs (including USB memory sticks). This is
not very cost effective, and obviously there's still the problem if
your file is well over 8 gigs. I know what you're thinking: 'what on
earth do you have a file that large anyway?' Answer, very large porn?
Kidding.
The solution: You have to download the file via networking. Now,
if you're like me, you don't want to mess around with networking and
securities and such. You want the path of least resistance and you want
it easy.
1. Download
Http File Server, run it (no installation involved). Allow it network access and add your movie files to the shared folder.
2. Launch your PS3 browser, put in your IP number. The HFS will show you the number you need to enter in.
3. When you find the file you want, click on the Triangle button
and click "SAVE". You can also stream the movie file, if you don't mind
some random buffering.
)
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