this aint Narnia, kiddo…

OMGwtf

In case you have not noticed (I’m talkin’ to you, robot.txt, my most avid reader) this website kinda fell over and stubbed a hypothetical toe nail.  And by that, I mean I moved (back) to WordPress; I just found it too much a hassle to make so many work arrounds with Tumblr.

That being said, I totally forgot how much hassle writing a WordPress theme was, and how amazing the Tumblr, very-Wiki engine was.  As was I that I forgot, I too, wonder why WordPress has not attempted a similar implementation.  But alas, that is not the case.

I am still working on some Google things, working with the indexes of my other page and having those links head here instead.  Also, I hit a giant wall of crummy school work and have, recently, had less time to write.

But I do want to write, and I do want to look into the news regarding Edward Norton and the upcoming Avengers movie.  And that reminds me of something I must stick to – not being a news reciprocal.  Everyone knows how to copy a Digg story or a Twitter trending topic, but not many people try to look into the stories as I do.

Or at least, as I wish to do.  This also reminds me, I am attempting a more personal blog, that also means I will post less YouTube videos when the news week is a dry one.

And the new Megadeth album, “Endgame” was sorely disappointingly.  It was funner when every song was about how you hated Metallica, David, not with you crying about the government.

Because some people thought the IHC ads for the 2012 movie were real…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjoq-dyc2kc&hl=en&fs=1&]

Spider-Man 4 hopes third (writer) is the charm

Although not as sparatic as Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet movie, the road to production that Spider-Man 4 has been driving through has been no easy ride. Last week it was announced that Sony hired Gary Ross as the films third writer, after tossing James Vanderbilt and then David Lindsay-Abaire . And we all know what great luck the Spider-Man series has had with the number three.

I will give the studio one thing, they manage to get me really excited for a movie right before they throw it down the shower drain of a hairy Albanian man.

Case in point? The ending of Spider-Man 2 had a perfect (perfect) set up for a Venom story, and if it was going to reach another two movies, the Carnage story and then the Venom as an anti-hero story to finish it off.

And then this happened.

One of the first bits of news regarding the Spider-Man 4 movie was that it was being penned by James Vanderbilt, the writer of the critically acclaimed film Zodiac. The news was that he had actually written a script that he was to split-up into both Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5. This was great news, as it seemed in line with the hiring of a similarly award winning Alvin Sargent for Spider-Man 2 – the best critically rated movie of the franchise, and one of the best superhero movies of all time. A title that could have also been awarded to Spider-Man 3, which he also worked on, but the persistent trash Avi Arad forced upon director Sam Raimi kept it from being so.

And then David Lindsay-Abaire came into the scene. He would be the second Pullitzer Prize-winning writer to work in the series, as Michael Chabon did write a complete draft (available here) for Spider-Man 2 and did share credit for the story, but he would be the actual first playwright for the series. Another talented writer that would have been very much, especially in the wake of the abomination that was Spider-Man 3, appreciated.

Bill Maher on the fatness of Americans

New Rule: You can’t complain about health care reform if you’re not willing to reform your own health. Unlike most liberals, I’m glad all those teabaggers marched on Washington last week. Because judging from the photos, it’s the first exercise they’ve gotten in years. Not counting, of course, all the Rascal scooters there, most of which aren’t even for the disabled. They’re just Americans who turned 60 and said, “Screw it, I’m done walking.” These people are furious at the high cost of health care, so they blame illegals, who don’t even get health care. News flash, Glenn Beck fans: the reason health care is so expensive is because you’re all so unhealthy.

Yes, it was fun this week to watch the teabaggers complain how the media underestimated the size of their march, “How can you say there were only 60,000 of us? We filled the entire mall!” Yes, because you’re fat. One whale fills the tank at Sea World, that doesn’t make it a crowd.

President Obama has identified all the problems with the health care system, but there’s one tiny issue he refuses to tackle, and that’s our actual health.

And since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol — and alcohol actually serves a useful function in society in that it enables unattractive people to get laid, which is more than you can say for Skittles.

I’m not saying tax all soda, but certainly any single serving of soda larger than a baby is not unreasonable. If you don’t know whether you burp it or it burps you, that’s too big. We need to make taking care of ourselves an issue of patriotism. If you were someone who condemned Bush for not asking Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, the same must be said for Obama and health care.

President Arugula is not gonna tell Americans they’re fat and lazy. No sin tax on food on Obama’s watch. And at a time when it’s important to set new standards for personal responsibility, he appointed a surgeon general, who is, I’m sorry, kind of fat. Certainly too heavy to be a surgeon general, it’s a role model thing. It would be like appointing a Secretary of the Treasury who didn’t pay his taxes. He did?

Leo Laporte blows up at Mike Arrington of Tech Crunch

Anyone that follows the Podcastosphere like I do has long since figured the feeling and credibility given to Mike Arrington and his website Tech Crunch. If not, this video is essentially that, and the only thing surprising is hearing Leo Laporte get so damn upset!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsV-lgnAjps&hl=en&fs=1&]

Last.fm2iTunes imports your play counts from Last.fm to iTunes

As someone who is not inherently cool, I have to compensate by downloading a lot of music (but I try to keep it under 80gb). While there is a way to backup song ratings, I have not been able to keep my play counts (something very important for Smart Playlists).

Forgive my latency, but I just found my new favourite toy; Last.fm2iTunes, both available on the PC and Mac (the former being far more complicated, but I am not sure – I work on a Mac).

I warn you, however; it does bug out halfway through my Music list. Normally, this would turn me off completely from the product, but play listing half of my list is a lot more than play listing none of it.

If you do know how to get around this issue posted above (or if you never got it at all), please free to post a comment below – if not, well, enjoy the play counts you do get.

Iron Spider to join the team in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Although Katsuhiro Harada, director of the Tekken series, feels that unlock able characters are no longer useful, comic book fans do not. At least, not me… not yet.

The Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 alternate costumes have been released!

In this game, characters will only get one alternate costume, as opposed to the three from the last game. That being said, they are all damn awesome.

I can hardly post all of the alternate costumes (there are about 25 of them) so here are just a few of the stand-outs,

Spider-man in his Iron Spider suit;

Green Goblin dressed as the Hobgoblin;

Iron Fist as Bei Bang-Wen;

Gambit in his Age of Apocalypse get-up;

And, last but not least, an unmasked Deadpool (yes, that is why he wears that mask;

The rest of the roster (Human Torch, Songbird, Penance, Ms. Marvel, etc) can be found over at the homepage of one of my favourite podcasts, The Flickcast.

Facebook Lite ditches the Vampires and Werewolves

I heard over a podcast was yesterday that Facebook just got ‘Lite’- this is good news. One of the biggest arguments against MySpace was how damn ugly and busy it was, how giving people that know jack all about design the power to edit HTML was down right retarded.

Before it got popular, Facebook was a nice break from that business. But then it did, and with that it came werewolves… and vampires… and mobs… and hatred. Unadulterated hatred.

It was a year ago this summer that Facebook implemented its latest layout change, as per usual, there were millions of “ANTI NEW FACEBOOK” and “Millions Against Thew New Stuoid Facebook Layout” groups and, eventually, a few “Anti Anti-New Facebook” groups. Luckily, the same kids that cry whenever something changes have the attention span of a goldfish and got bored of their own crap so quickly that it only lasted a few, albeit painful, weeks.

So what is Facebook Lite? In the strictest sense, Facebook Lite is what Facebook was when it was good. I was never one to actively follow a Facebook feed, but when I do, I like to catch up on how my friends are and not who is turning who into a Vampire, who has a crush on who or who was Honest in someone else’s box. That is what Facebook was and what Facebook (Lite) now is.

My first example is (probably) the first page you will
see, already a cleaner interface;

The Settings page, however, has the most drastic change and is almost as simple as the iPhone app;

The most prominent feature, of course, is the removal of Facebook applications. In all my years of Facebooking, I think I found less than half a dozen useful applications. I say think because I haven’t used them in long enough to remember what they were.

Can you imagine a Facebook without constant invitations to stupid causes and stupid groups and stupid games? I don’t know about you guys, but I gave up on imagining that kind of thing ages ago.

Mind you, I still don’t use Facebook outside of auto-Tweeting my messages, but I sure do hate it a lot less now. Now I just have to adjust my DNS settings so I default to lite.facebook.com…

Apple catches up with itself with iPhone 3.1 and iTunes 9.0 [updated]

Apple had its fall event the other day. Although it featured no heavily-rumoured Apple tablet, Steve Jobs did make an appearance. And, as per usual, iTunes was given a 9.0 update and the iPhone was given a 3.1. In pure Steve Jobs style, this update gave me a few updates I totally needed but did not know it yet.

iTunes 9.0 is easily one of the most important iTunes updates in recent memory.

The basics are here, iTunes video now has the Quick Time X hover navigation, the icons have a bit of a refresh and the background is now white (not my favourite feature). But there is (thankfully) more!

One of the more prominent (and important) features is within the overall iTunes Store overhaul is the new iTunes U tab. iTunes U has been in the store for a while now, but I had never given it much thought until Leo Laporte made such a big deal about it.

I am not sure what the pricing method was before 9.0, but everything now is free. iTunes U works just like the podcasting system does. The difference being they are lectures by professors and administrators from places like Yale, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Stanford University on topics ranging from Science to Religion, Engineering to History and Language to Humanities – not 14 year olds on Harry Potter.

Whether or not you even buy music from iTunes (or just use it for new album alerts)

Each category of the iTunes Store; Music, Movies, TV Shows, App Store, Podcasts, Audiobooks and iTunes U, have their own individual page and sub-categorical pages. It both looks better, and also displays its contents better and makes it easier to find what you are looking for.

Along with an updated iTunes Store, the 3.1 update gave the iPhone a new interface inside iTunes itself. The Music tab has been given a two-column look, giving you more control over the Artists being synced and, one of my favourite new features, the option to Automatically fill free space with songs. As someone that would always try to create some Smart Playlist to fill up that space – it is an amazing tool.

Steve Jobs and the Apple Store – before the iPod

Steve here is just about as enthusiastic as he is now – the only difference is this one has a healthier liver. The part I found most humorous was near the end with his advertising of the different MP3 players, cameras and video cameras…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBMR3FUNsD4&hl=en&fs=1&]