WEBLOG:
I’ve had my Sony VAIO FW-390 (customized with 1920×1080 HD display, Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, Blu-Ray reader, 7200 rpm 320 GB hard drive) for a couple of weeks now, and so far I really like it. It took a while to customize Vista (it came with 64-bit Home Premium Edition) to my liking, and also to install all the necessary software for doing graphics, music, and other utilities I usually use for backups and system diagnostics. All laptop manufacturers install a bunch of crap before shipping out their laptops (they make money from installing trialware from software partners), and it can be annoying to find out what all those crapware are and how to get rid of them for good (if you’re not careful you could end up losing functionality of your laptop’s special functions like the FN and multimedia keys).
So far, I’m very happy with how quiet and how cool the temperature remains–compared to my previous laptops this is a huge difference. I would have preferred a laptop that could take two separate physical hard drives, but the one model I found that could didn’t meet the other requirements I had, and none of the VAIO models can take two physical hard drives. The glossy screen isn’t as bad as I feared, but then again I’ve only been using it in a dark room where the light sources are all strategically placed to not cause any glare. I suspect as soon as I take the VAIO out of such a planned environment the glare will be all over the display. Squeezing 1920×1080 into a 16.4″ display is a bit hard to get used to since everything becomes so tiny, but the detail is very sharp and the colors are beautiful–no complaints there.
The VAIO has a Blu-Ray ROM and I bought the director’s cut of Dark City and Black Hawk Down to give this whole Blu-Ray thing a whirl. It’s my first time dealing with Blu-Ray (apart from seeing the demo’s in store displays), and I have to say it is very impressive. It’s funny how when DVD was all we had, it seemed like they were enough, but as soon as we’re exposed to much higher resolution, all of a sudden DVD’s didn’t look so hot anymore. At this point, I have literally three full bookshelves worth of DVD collection, and I don’t know if I’m ready to just stop buying DVD’s and start buying Blu-Ray from now on. After all, the only Blu-Ray player I have at the moment is the one from the VAIO, and I’m not sure if I’d want to boot up the laptop every time I want to watch something at home. I suppose the best strategy is to slowly buy Blu-Ray versions of only my favorite DVD’s, while the rest of my collection will remain DVD only, and then future releases will be Blu-Ray only. Maybe I should get a Playstation 3 to kill two birds with one stone. I’ve never had a Playstation (of any generation) and it’s probably about time I did anyway, especially now the PS3 exclusives are picking up pace while the Xbox 360 ones don’t seem as impressive.
The hard drive in my old Toshiba Satellite had kicked the bucket, and I tried the freezer trick and it worked–I got most of the important files on it copied to the VAIO. I suspect it has something to do with the moving parts expanding and contracting from the temperature change, thus allowing the hard drive to function like it used to for a short while–until it expands fully from the heat again. While it’s totally frozen, it doesn’t work either–I’d have to wait for it to get slightly warmer for the hard drive to show up. I’m just glad I got the last files I was working on for the workshop off the old hard drive–it would’ve been a solid week’s worth of work wasted. I actually started to rewrite the missing material while experimenting with freezing the hard drive, and it’s interesting that later when I compared the rewritten material to the recovered version, it appears the when I wrote the same material for a second time, I dove into more detail and the coverage was more comprehensive. I suppose having done it once already makes it easy to expand upon the first attempt, even if you don’t have it in front of you to reference.
I always hated how laptops make your neck/shoulder sore because you’re always looking down, and I tried a temporary solution of propping it up with books and DVD’s, but it’s not very stable. I finally decided to buy one of those laptop stands/risers. I tried the Targus Portable LapDesk and it was too wobbly when typing and didn’t raise the laptop high enough. I then ordered a Kensington Easy Riser, which I hope will live up to my expectations. I’d still have to raise the front end with something though, since I don’t want to use a separate keyboard (not practical when traveling), and not raising the front end would make the wrists bend too much when typing. Here’s how I’m propping up the VAIO at the moment–using the box from the Korg NanoPad for the back end, and book/DVD’s for the front end:
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I tried out Bullet Witch last week, and even though I already knew it got bad reviews, I was intrigued by the character design and the idea of using magic along with weapons. I was actually surprised by how bad the game was once I started playing–it felt like a leaked alpha version with no polish whatsoever, and the presentation was also very disappointing and dated. If the damn thing had a good story I might have suffered through more of it, but even the telling of the story is horrible–you just couldn’t give a shit about any of it because they didn’t bother trying to make you care. I couldn’t even make it past the first level because I just couldn’t stand how bad the game was. I suppose I’m extra picky because I made games for a living, while the average consumer probably could tolerate bad games more readily because they just don’t know any better. There are actually some user reviews online that were very positive–some even claimed it’s one of their favorite games. Different strokes for different folks, eh?
I’m now trying out Eternal Sonata, and it’s pretty charming so far, though I have to say, I’m generally not a fan of the Japanese approach to game storytelling–so much of the execution just feels random and not conductive towards telling a compelling story. We’ll see how I feel after I clock in more hours.
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Quickie Film/TV Reviews:
Dead Set – I had read about this British horror mini-series somewhere and decided to check it out. It turned out to be better than my expectations, and was in fact, quite good. It’s pretty damn hard to do anything original in the zombie genre these days as so much has been done already, and if you stray too far away from the established conventions, you lose the flavor that makes the genre great. 28 Days Later was probably the last real breakout original in the zombie genre we’ll see in a long, long time. The amount of gore and violence in Dead Set rivals any zombie film ever made, which is quite surprising because you just don’t see that in TV shows, even if they’re cable shows. I wish the series could’ve been longer, and the character development more fleshed out, as the whole thing seemed to rush by and just when it started to get really good, it ended.
On a related note, Brad Pitt’s production company bought the rights to Max Brook’s awesome zombie apocalypse book, World War Z, and I hope it doesn’t get stuck in development hell.
Heroes (season three) – I tend to feel that some writers are careless when it comes to plot twists. When you so easily and quickly change the allegiance of characters and their beliefs, it becomes gimmicky, and that lack of sustained conviction and faith from the characters makes the audience care less, as we simply just can’t root for or care for people who changes sides all the time. It seems through all the changes, only Hiro and Ando remain faithful to their noble intent, and maybe it’s no coincidence that they are the most child-like (naive and innocent) in their outlook.
I had a problem with Battlestar Galactica as well in season three, when a lot of the character development felt almost arbitrary and gimmicky. This is something I think Lost does a lot better. The writers on Lost can inject excitement and changes into the show without having any of it feel arbitrary, and if there were changes of allegiance, it happened slowly, with reasonable justifications, and you see the characters struggle with their doubts. Realism is the key here, and I guess often writers just forget how people behaves in real life.
