My Entertainment System

Over the past year, I've put a lot of effort into constructing my realistic dream entertainment system. The pieces are finally fitting together, giving me the multi-media experience I've always wanted. The system can play just about any format or type of media I use on a normal basis. With layers of redundancy between devices, it one method fails, another may succeed.

The components of the system are: Akai 42" Plasma HD Monitor Comcast HD-DVR Cable Box Samsung HT-WX70 Home Theater in a Box Nintendo Wii Sony Playstation 3 40GB WD MyBook World Edition 1TB

Display

Akai 42" Plasma HD Monitor
With no TV tuner card, this is not a television. Instead, it contains an HDMI port, two HD Component ports, a VGA port, an S-Video port, and an A/V port. It supports resolutions up to 1080i. Not the highest in picture refresh rates, but a much higher picture contrast ratio over LCDs, and at a much lower price. The burn-in of 4:3 resolution picture television, creating a dimmer middle area, is a little disappointing in how much it happened in under a year, but that's the only complaint.

Audio/Video

Samsung HT-WX70 Home Theater in a Box
At the heart of the DVD experience is the Samsung HTiB. It has a 5-disc changer and upscales DVD resolution to 1080i. It is XM Radio ready, and can play from an iPod/iPod Video, USB device, CD, VCD, and DVD. It can play DivX/Xvid encoded video, and MP3 encoded audio files. ... (Read More)

If haven't heard the song "Ladies & Gentlemen" by Saliva, then you obviously don't watch any TV. Currently, if you watch enough TV, you'll hear this song on:
• a Sony PlayStation 3 commercial
• a promo for the new "American Gladiators" on NBC
• and as the theme song for "Varsity, Inc" on ESPN.

I got several Nintendo Wii games for Christmas or with Christmas money.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
I purchased Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition looking forward to the zombie killing glory (having never played the game before), only to find out that there aren't actually any zombies in RE4. RE:UC delivers with unadulterated head blowing action. Don't even bother with walking, the game takes care of that for you. Point and shoot. This game delivers the high octane undead action with Wii controls, enough to satisfy any zombie killing craving.

Geometry Wars Galaxies
The XBox Live version of the game was evidently a huge hit. It has come to the Wii with motion controls, and intense galaxy level fighting. This game is addictive, like Asteroids on meth. The game is easy to learn and difficult to master.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition
Another blast of the past that's completely new to me. The pull of other games and kept me from fully exploring this one. It's seemed fun so far, but the bottom of the four new games.

Super Mario Galaxy
Mario is back with a new 3D game. Having gotten an intro to tri-dimensional Mario with Super Mario 64 DS, I was looking forward to this game. It's been a lot of fun playing with gravity and other multi planetary body aspects, though the game is a little on the easy side.

If you do a Google search for a movie now, there's a special little block of information at the top of the search results. Check it out with this example of Into the Wild; the new movie based on the amazing book about Christopher McCandless.

In the search results, Google gives you a link to a Google page with aggregated movie reviews and ratings, as well as a link to trailers, and an option to input your zip code to get movie show time listings. In addition, there's a line of information like running time, MPAA rating, and genre.

Google has made getting information on currently playing films easier with their search engine. Thanks guys!

If you haven't heard of Lexx, then there's a show on Joost, you need to watch. Check out the available epsidodes on The Lexx Channel by Alliance Atlantis.

2007 ended up being a pretty decent year for movies. From big blockbusters that actually delivered, like Michael Bay's Transformers, to foreign sleeper hits, like Pan's Labyrinth, 2007 made going to the movie theatre something to look forward to again.

2008 doesn't look to be too shabby, either, with a good slate of original stories and sequels to great franchises. It's definitely going to be another good year to be a movie geek.


Original
From the director of Superbad comes Adventureland, starring Ryan Reynolds. It's a post-college coming-of-age story set in an amusement park. Could be good.
Adventureland on IMDb

Vin "Too Hot For TV" Diesel returns to the big screen in Babylon A.D., which sounds like it might have a Children of Men vibe to it, but without the sappy "last man on earth" tone.
Babylon A.D. on IMDb

Cameron Diaz starring in a movie is more than reason to avoid that movie at all costs. But, the story behind The Box may boost the move pasts its crappy star. Though, James Marsden doesn't help much, either, but at lease he has proven himself in existential roles like in Interstate 60.
The Box on IMDb

Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Mackenzie Crook, and Martin Landau come together in City of Ember. This movie looks like it might be a very entertaining fantasy story, and with the cast should be full of solid performances.
City of Ember on IMDb

Initial trailers didn't include a title, but Cloverfield, by "Lost" create J.J. Abrams, has become one of the most hotly awaited movies ... (Read More)

The new iteration of alan.spacemonkeymafia.com has officially launched to the world. Built using Simian CMS, the PHP/MySQL powered content management system that I'm writing. I've written the Blog Pod for Simian CMS, creating all the blog capabilities of the cms, in creating this site. I'm happy with the progression so far.

There's still a lot of work to do on both of the front and back ends. But, I wanted to get this out.

Now that 2007 is over, I want to take a minute to look back. The year started with Mercedes & I having a progressive dinner up and down the 16th St mall, and ended with Mercedes and I snuggling on the couch watching V for Vendetta. In between, the year was filled with road trips that took us north to South Dakota, south to Texas, east to Virginia, and west to Nevada; we attended Burning Man and Burning Man festivals in 3 different states; Mercedes & I moved into an apartment together, and my work moved into a bigger office space; I have plans for at least 8 projects, and Urban Gibbon and this weblog have launched; I\'ve taken a couple more steps out of debt, and have gotten myself onto a 3-year plan to being completely out of debt.

The other day I finished importing the past 6 years of weblog and journal entries into my new weblog. At the launch of the new alan @ SpaceMonkeyMafia, the weblog sports almost 5,000 entries. The weblog currently boasts posts from my first weblog that I wrote myself, the subsequent WordPress weblog, and the LiveJournal journal I had along the way. The comments from the two weblogs have also been imported, though not the LiveJournal comments. I'm going to work on continuing to pull together posts I've made across the Internet into a single location. I hope you enjoy the Alan Archives.

Happy Christmahanakwanzaka!

I wanted to let everyone know about my new webstore: Urban Gibbon (http://www.urbangibbon.com). I've decided to start flexing my creative brain muscles and put together a Cafe Press store. I've been plastering my designs all over various kinds of clothing and fun stuffs.

I'm just getting the store off the ground, and there's a limited number of designs (12 as of this posting), but most of the designs on there now represent the first in envisioned series of designs. So, expect the selection to expand dramatically over the next couple months. This is the initial set of designs, just in time for that last minute holiday shopping. ;)

Be sure to sign-up for the Store Newsletter on the site and keep up to date when I post new designs or will be running any specials. I'm not going to be doing that here for the most part, so keep in the know.

So far, the best seller has been the How to Kill a Zombie t-shirts. I sold 3 of those before I ever even told anyone about the store.