Nickelback with Chris Robertson of Blackstone Cherry Performing AC/DC's Highway to Hell.
Sunday 31 May 2009
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Saturday 30 May 2009
At Sony's E3 press conference on June 2nd they will be unveiling their next version of the PSP. It has been leaked that it will be called the PSP GO! Just days before the unveiling leaked images of the new portable console where released and I discovered them on Engadget. Here are a few.
What we know about the system and possible features:
I have been looking forward to this for some time as It has been said that it will come with built in memory in 8GB and 16GB versions and that it will be a sliding device. This made it sound likely that it would be a more all-round media device like the iPod Touch, than being mainly a gaming device. The extra memory to store music and video and the slider so that it can be a touch screen media player when not gaming. It has yet to be announced if the devices screen has any touch capabilities however and from some of the images it doesn't look like it unfortunately. The reason their is so much built in memory is probably just because Sony is removing the UMD slot and making all the game content DLC requiring more memory to store games, rather than to cater for our music and video needs. Also confirmed is bluetooth and tethering to your mobile phone for PSP web on the go.
Against everybody's wishes Sony have decided to stick with the current control scheme and not add and extra analogue nub even thought there is an obvious space right where "select" and "start" are located. Damn you Sony!
What I would like to see:
The current PSP plays music, video, pictures and has web browsing but all of these feel diluted. The browser is incapable of loading many sites and the music player has no organized library, just a folder structure with no option to even shuffle through your entire collection. My hopes for the next PSP would be that it does in fact have a full touch screen, a more powerful web browser (which seems likely with the mobile phone tethering) and better music and video organisation and features like that on the iPod Touch. This would make it a big competitor against more devices out there than just the Nintendo DS in the handheld gaming market. Just as the iPod Touch and iPhone are now established gaming platforms, the new PSP needs to be a bigger competitor in the portable media player market. Sony will need something more than built in memory and a hideous slider re-design. Basically I want PSP 2 not PSP 3000 cross-dressing with the Sony Mylo with an added slider feature.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
This post is for my latest YouTube video on TechTubeToday. The video will show you how to convert or encode any video so that YouTube thinks it's HD. This will mean it play in the large HD box if your viewers hit the HD button on the player. You can do this with any video. Even a horrible grainy mobile phone video. You can make that "HD". It will only loo as good as the original video but will play in the Bigger HD box.
I also show you how to encode your 4:3 videos (the old YouTube aspect ratio) to widescreen or 16:9 aspect ratio (Youtube's new aspect ratio). This will mean your video will stretch to fill the YouTube's widescreen video boxes and you won't get the vertical black bars on either side.
All you need is a video and a good video converter. I use Format Factory in the video so I recommend you use that too. It is completely free and legal to download. Middle click the link to open the download page in a new tab.
I rarely use Internet Explorer as I find it extremely slow and lacking of the security, speed and features found in Open Source browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
My default browser is Google Chrome. It lacks the add-ons and features of Firefox but makes up for it in it's lightning speed. Every now and then I use Firefox if a certain website or page element doesn't work right in Chrome, or if I want to use the StumbleUpon! toolbar.
Yesterday while trying to upload a video to YouTube using Chrome (in the blog post above) it failed with an unknown error. I retried many more times before trying again to upload the video with the Firefox browser. I thought it may have be a problem with Google Chrome, since I recently upgraded to Chrome 2.0. However Firefox failed to upload the same video and I spent the rest of the day trying and trying again to upload my video.
At the end of the day in the early hours of the morning I decided to to do something appalling to any Open Source lover or Computer Geek. I opened up Internet Explorer 8 and tried to upload my video with that. The progress bar moved so slowly and I waited for bloody ages (It was only a 49MB file) but to my surprise It actually worked. IE8 done something that Chrome and Firefox couldn't. I don't know why, but it did.
Maybe it was just a fluke that YouTube decided to work all of a sudden and it wasn't a browser problem. I guess I'll never know but you know what to try do next time YouTube's Uploader want to be an ass to you too.
Monday 25 May 2009
This is an extension onto the post from a few days ago on the Modern Warfare 2 trailer.
As promised here is the trailer in full. It looks amazing. The footage definitely isn't pre-rendered, it is the in game graphics but some of the animations look extremely complex for an FPS (throwing an enemy over your shoulder for example). I'm just wondering how they'll pull it off. But if I was to trust anyone with a first person shooter it would be Infinity Ward.
Sunday 24 May 2009
Today I went to see BBC Films' Tormented. It stars two of the original cast of E4's brilliant Skins. Them being April Pearson (Michelle in Skins) and Larissa Wilson (Jal in Skins). It also stars a whole host of other lesser known young actors including Calvin Dean who plays the lead character of Darren Mullet.
The film is set in an English secondary school and is a story of revenge. The plot revolves around the undead Mullet character killing off the rest of the main cast one by one. He does this in revenge for the bullying they had done to him while he was alive. They even post videos of themselves picking on him on a website they create. He is pushed too much and commits suicide only to come back on his revenge venture to get his revenge on those no good bullys ...............by slashing their bodies to pieces of course.
The film isn't brilliant but honestly picks up in the last half hour and provides some slightly dodgy acting and decent teen humour.
It reminded me of the Final Destination films, especially as some of the killing scenes are quite hilarious where others are just gruesome.
So as you can tell It's not a very intelligent film in terms of the plot. It's more about cheap thrills and teen humour than anything else. If you want to see a terrifying horror flick then this is not for you. If you want to see a hilarious comedy then this is not for you. If you just want to see an average comedy horror or you want to see more from the original cast of Skins, then this isn't bad.
However it is nothing like Dev Patel's, (Anwar in Skins) Slumdog Millionaire and probably will not be winning any Oscars either.
I say give it a go if your friends are already going to see it as It could be worse.
I give it a 6.5 out of 10.
Here is the trailer for you anyway.
Gametrailers have a World Exclusive teaser trailer for Modern Warfare 2.
Watch it below.
I'll embedd it here on the blog if I can.
All I can say is I am very excited about Infinity Ward's second outing into it's Modern Warfare franchise. Maybe we can get a new one every year now as they have dropped the Call of Duty title, so no more sharing that licence with Treyarch from year to year. Maybe we can just get a new Modern Warfare alonside a new Call of Duty each year. Double the fun. Well almost double. Treyarch's outings are never as good as Infinity Ward's in my opinion.
Tuesday 19 May 2009
I am a huge Lost fan and recently watched the finale for Season 5 entitled "The Incident". It was a two hour special and as always supplied more questions than answers.
First of all, the answers:
We find out the statue is of an Egyptian God, not one of the Losties as many had speculated.
We find out who Jacob is.
Not a mystical creature or an old man but a rather young handsome man. We discover that he had visited many of our favourite characters in the past and helped them get to the Island by psychologically nudging them along. This is especially true in Hurley's case where he straight up told him to go back to the Island after Hurley is let out of prison. We also learn that Jacob has a rivalry with another man as we see at the beginning and discover he has been helping people find the Island for many years judging by the old boat, presumably The Black Rock. 
We find out what is in the metal box. During the episode I started to think that the hydrogen bomb would somehow be in the box. It was just the way they where tying in the 1977 scenes with the 2007 scenes. I was thankfully wrong.
A lot of people said it would be Widmore in the box. When they where emptying the box out, I was really worried it would be the bomb or Widmore because I wanted a surprise. All I can say is that is what I got. First they show a dead body roll out, not showing who it is, keeping us all on the edge of our seats. We soon discover it is John Lock's dead body in the metal box, the same man that just walked down under the statue to kill Jacob.
This means the man we believed to be John Locke the entire series from the point the Agira flight landed on the Island was indeed an impostor, most likely the man we see talking to Jacob at the beginning. The man who says he wants to kill him.
Now for the questions:
Is Jacob good or evil? We see him in light clothing and his enemy in dark which is the universal idea of good and evil. But his enemy says how Jacob has brought people to the Island and how they always come and corrupt it making Jacob seem like a man who does not want what is best for the Island. This contradicts what we have been led to believe in the past.
At the end of the episode a dying Juliet smashes a rock against the un-exploded bomb core leading it to explode (if that is what the white light and loud noise was) which according to Faraday's (revised) theory will send the Losties back to the future and they will never crash on the island. I have many issues with this theory and have my own theories on the issue.
First of all we have always been told that whatever happened, happened and that you cannot change the past because it already happened. We learned this off Daniel Faraday early in the Season until one day he decides that we really can change the past, just before he dies by the gun of his mother.
If we think logically even if they could change the past, blowing up that bomb would still kill their present selves only their younger 1977 counterparts will grow up and never crash on the Island. Then the cycle continues as then they would never go back in time if they never crash meaning they would never prevent the Incident from happening. This would mean the Swan would still be built, Desmond would still not hit the button and their plane would indeed crash on the Islan on September 22nd 2004. It's the traditional time travel paradox.
One thing is for certain, there is no logic in the theory that blowing up the bomb would magically send the gang back to 2004 without any memory of the events on the Island and they would all saftely land in LAX. That just makes no sense.
Just as we discovered that dead really is dead as the episode "Dead is Dead" hinted towards maybe we should believe that the episode "Whatever Happened, Happened" is also a hint that whatever happened really did happen. I meant that's what Farady told us. maybe he just went crazy, or maybe he knew that he would have to die and convince Jack and the rest that they could change the future so that they would blow up that bomb. Why? Maybe the bomb is the Incident, just as Miles says. That would mean farady would have to convince Jack to cause it as thast is what he always did.
If this is true however it means the characters all died which doesn't seem a possibility as we still have a whole Season to go.
I'm not sure how this is going to turn out but I really hope the writers do something intelligent and not a "they all jump forward in time to 2007 to fight eveil Locke just as they bomb goes off" because that would really suck.
We'll have to wait until Season 6 to find out. Here's the Promo.
Monday 18 May 2009
When I began using this blog again I had to sign in with my old e-mail address as that is the address that I assigned to my Blogger account and the blog at http://icklebanana.blogspot.com.
This frustrated me but after a while of tampering with settings I figured out how to switch the e-mail address associated with the blog to my new one.
I had searched YouTube for a how-to video before hand and couldn't find any so now that I figured out how to do it I created my own video to help out anyone with the same problem. Here it is.
Sunday 17 May 2009
Recently Microsoft released the Release Candidate for Windows 7 for free so that anybody can download it and try it out for a year (All RCs will expire in June 2010).
I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC on my computer and found it a great improvement on it's predecessor, Vista.
I posted a video of a quick overview of the OS on one of my YouTube channels. The video is embedded below. I will be posting more thoughts and information on Windows 7 and other tech and non-tech related subjects soon. Thank you for viewing my first blog:)
If you want to try out the OS yourself download it here.
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