Tag Archives: HD

Entertainment, Movies

Avengers: Age of James Spader

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spadertronKevin and I went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron on Sunday. It was great, but I had a couple minor issues — one with the movie, one with the seating. First, the seating. We usually always go to a new movie after it’s been out a week or two, so there’s no crowd and the seating is much better. This is what we did in this case. The movie has been out a couple weeks now, so we figured we were go to go. Wrong. I guess it says something about the popularity of Marvel movies, but it was still a nearly packed theater! We like to slip a seat and put our shared tub of popcorn between us, and I like to use both left and right cup holders (one for my phone, one for my drink) and put my sweater or coat in the other seat next to me. Well, I lost my sweater seat and extra cup holder to someone needing a seat at the last minute. Luckily we were able to keep our popcorn seat, so it could have been worse I guess.  As it was I had to hold my left arm to keep it from crowding the person sitting next to me, and had to force my left leg to stay in my seat area, which caused a bit of discomfort by the middle of the movie and through the end of it. But enough about the seating.

The movie was awesome and I only found one thing I didn’t like. The casting of James Spader as Ultron. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of James Spader–and that’s the root for the issue. Spader’s voice is all that’s used in the movie, you don’t actually see him, but his voice is so distinct and recognizable it pulled me out of the movie fantasy. I found my self thinking less “this is a huge, intelligent robot with a computerized voice” and more “hey, I know that voice from Boston Legal, The Practice, and what else was it…ummm…yeah, that new series I haven’t watched at all yet…what was the name of it… umm… ah yes, The Blacklist!” I just couldn’t think of him as a robot. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, excellent movie, awesome non-stop action, good humor mixed in perfectly, and the inevitable Stan Lee cameo always comes through as great, and funny, every time. Go see it. Or, better yet, wait for the Blu-Ray and watch it in the comfort of your own home, in HD, where you have room for your drink, popcorn, and perfect leg room! I guess the still-packed theater after being out a couple weeks is just another indication of how good the movie is though.  That very rarely happens to us when going to see a movie in Kenosha.

News

10 apps for 10 cents each for 10 days!

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Google just hit 10 billion downloads in the Android Market, so to celebrate they have worked with their top developers to offer a huge 10-day sale!  Some of the best (and most expensive) paid apps in the market will be for sale for 10 cents.  There will be 10 apps a day, changed daily, for 10 days, all for 10 cents each!  You can’t lose–hurry up and go shopping!  You can get them all every day and only spent $1.00!  Hurry!  Today was already day 1, so go grab some deals in the Android Market!  Even if you don’t already have your dream Android device, go buy them and they’ll stay on your account until you DO get your new Android.  This is even better than Amazon’s free paid app every day (except it ends in 10 days).

For me, I blew it–Just in today’s ten I had already purchased most of these apps for full price a while ago 😦  I paid $6.99 for Asphalt 6 HD, and Great Little War Game is also pretty cool.  I did grab Minecraft – Pocket Edition for 10 cents though–this one is normally $6.99 too, so I’m happy.  Kevin has been drooling for it for awhile but I kept telling him he’d have to buy it himself if he gets a tablet for Christmas…  Today he offered me a dime to get it.  I told him to keep the change.

News

Xoom & Honeycomb Tips

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Having had my Motorola Xoom for awhile, I recently sent Jay a bunch of tips and suggestions for his new tablet (also a Xoom).  I thought I’d post those tips here so they might benefit others as well.  Here they are:

  • My Movies Pro is awesome for cataloging your DVDs and Blu-Rays, and it’s designed for Honeycomb!
  • The Xoom takes 48-55 seconds to boot cold, if powered all the way off.
  • Hold the power button down for a couple seconds to power it all the way down or to power it on.
  • To force-reboot instantly, press the Volume-Up and Power buttons together.  Do this only as a last resort when frozen.
  • Download the free app “NVIDIA Tegra Zone”, it includes all the great games designed specifically for your chip.
  • The “Earthquake!” app is great on the Xoom, install it and set a nice, scary, notification sound as the alert.  15-20 times a day it will scare the crap out of you.
  • The Motorola Portfolio case was a let-down for me.  I ended up dropping it and getting a blue gel cover for it.  I use many different apps that are optimized for portrait orientation and others that look best in landscape on the Xoom, and also play several games (like Burn the Rope) that require you to rotate the tablet as you’re playing as part of the gameplay.  The portfolio case (at least Motorola’s version) drove me nuts trying to do all these things.  The prop was nice, but not worth the trouble for me.  It just didn’t feel right in my hands with the case being larger and the lid flopping loosely behind the tablet. So I went with the gel (feels great in the hand!) and also got a Casecrown Suede Xoom Sleeve for storage when I take it with me.  It’s cushioned, zippered, fits the Xoom perfectly, and has an additional zippered pocket for other things.  I keep a microcloth in there to clean the screen and a stylus for notes and drawing apps.
  • “HD Widgets” are a must if you like Weather and Clock widgets.  This one is specifically designed for tablets, and the “HD Tablet Header” widget is my absolute favorite, though there are several others included, all very customizable.
  • Reminder – make sure you’re checking the Amazon Appstore daily on your Xoom for the daily free paid app – now you can install ALL of them and try them out and never have to worry about space issues.
  • Act 1 is a video player that works great on the Xoom, and is the only video player I’ve found that lets you custom Zoom to the size you want when you’re watching any video.
  • Make sure you check out the “Staff Picks for Tablets” section in the Android Market.  You’ll see the edge of the title in the upper right corner of the Market’s home page in the Apps section.  Slide left to bring it on-screen.  They update it frequently, and all of these apps work great on the Xoom.
  • All of the apps by “GLU MOBILE” are a rip.  They’re free, and some of them even look really neat and visually stunning, but they’re the type of games like Zynga’s games that get you hooked, then make you install OTHER apps or “do other tasks” like purchase something from another vendor, to earn “credits” or “Coins” to progress further in the game.  Of course, as an option they always allow you to skip the tasks completely by paying real money for credits or coins!  GAWD what a racket they got going!
  • Beware of scams.  Someone actually recently put up “Angry Birds HD”, “Angry Birds Seasons HD”, and many others, made them look authentic and set the price at 99 cents and made a lot of money.  Turns out they were selling SCREENSHOTS of the actual games!  Just a single screenshot was all you got, but it promoted itself as being the new HD version of the game!  They also had the letters LWP in them, which should have been a clue—this means “Live WallPaper”.  I guess we’re supposed to know that if it says that, it just wallpaper and not a real app. 😦
  • When you’re ready to try a new launcher on your Xoom, the best one I’ve found for it (so far) is ADW Launcher EX.  They’ve done a lot to it to make it fully compatible with Honeycomb, including adding the top right and left homescreen links (which are changeable  too!) and an awesome scrolling app bar along the bottom (optional)!  I’m always trying out different launchers as well as apps, and this is by far the most Honeycomb-compatible to date.  You gain the following abilities with it, just to name a few:
  • Rearrange your homescreens
  • Add or remove entire homescreens
  • Plenty of effects to choose from for homescreen animations
  • Tons of configuration options, including custom grid sizes for your homescreens
  • Plenty of basic icon options like “rename”, edit, etc., that you’d think would have been built into Android already.
  • If you switch to ADW Launcher EX as your homescreen, before putting a lot of work into redesigning your homescreens, be sure to set the default launcher to ADW, then do a full shutdown and restart.  The first time you use it, if you don’t reboot after setting it as your default launcher, you can lose all of your widgets.
  • Also, switching  between multiple launchers on the fly isn’t a good idea.  I tried it, thinking I could gain the benefit of having double the homescreens that way using 2 launchers, but it doesn’t work that way.  I think it basically uses up all of the system memory and is unable to toggle back and forth quickly.  It resulted in everything just crawling and being very very sluggish.  This is another reason why you need to fully reboot after setting a new launcher as default.
  • There is a small bug in Honeycomb that you might run into occasionally.  I have 3.2.1 and it still happens once in awhile, so they haven’t fixed it yet.  Sometimes when a popup is supposed to appear  on-screen, the screen will dim, but nothing appears, as if it’s frozen.  It was very frustrating when this started happening and I didn’t know what was going on.  I scoured the web though, and eventually learned what was happening:  Sometimes Honeycomb can’t draw the popup properly, so it appears to freeze.  Easy workaround instead of rebooting or panicking: rotate the screen 90 degrees.  Once the screen rotates and redraws itself, the popup will then appear and you can continue normally.  Sheesh.  Yes, it’s annoying, but I guess no OS is 100% perfect.
  • As of last week, Netflix is now available for the Xoom (and all Android 3 tablets) in the market, and it works nicely.  I’ve been waiting for it since I got my Xoom, and even cancelled my Netflix account temporarily until it finally came out for the Xoom.
  • I actually like Google Books a little better than Kindle on the Xoom.  The way the pages turn (like a real book) is neat.  It’s pretty minor I guess, but the experience just seems nicer.  You sure can spend a lot of money on books though–I wish Google or Amazon would switch to the subscription method that Audible uses.  That would be awesome.  With Audible you pay a flat monthly fee and you get 2 credits a month.  A credit is worth 1 book–any book–no matter what the price is.  There’s also a lower-priced plan that gives you 1 credit a month.  You can still buy books at good discount prices as well, but I really like the credit model.  I can budget for it, and 2 books a month is a pretty good pace for me.