I’ve been in the on again phase of Netflix online watching movies through our Xbox 360 Elite and somewhat ironically came across the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Those with a Netflix account around the time this is being published should be able to go check it out in the instant viewing. If you don’t have an account, it’s like $9 but to get one and this movie alone is worth the price of a month’s membership. And then you can go and watch a bunch more movies for no more $$. Quite the late Xmas 2009 present for yourself.

Maybe I should couch that a bit by saying you will love this movie if one of the following does not apply:

1. you aren’t portrayed negatively in the film
2. you are a videogame geek who takes gaming way too seriously

Bonus points for loving this film if you, like me, dug hanging out in the arcades in the early 80s and played games like Pac-man and Donkey Kong. The title is no joke, those games could gobble quarters like none other.

King of Kong is a documentary that primarily follows one gamer’s quest, Steve Wiebe, in trying to set the world record for Donkey Kong.  His chief competitor is a guy named Billy Mitchell who is portrayed in the first half of the film as the master of gaming because when he was like 16 he set some extremely impressive high scores at Centipede and Donkey Kong. The much older and presumably wiser Mitchell opines about life and video games and it’s difficult at times to determine where one stops and the other begins. If Mitchell is being serious – which I kind of doubt – he’s every dweeb’s worst nightmare reflection.

Later in the film, Mitchell buys an 80-year old lady a Q-bert machine and sends her to the annual Funcom event where she can compete for the world’s high score live but she also has another mission: take this VHS tape of a new high score Billy has set. Switch back to Steve Wiebe who tries to get Mitchell to meet him for some “friendly competition” at Funcom – but Billy doesn’t show up to play. Wiebe goes on and sets the world record for a live referee event of 985,000 or so. Enter Billy Mitchell’s tape which puts a new wrinkle on the situation. That’s about all I can say about Mitchell and Wiebe in the documentary without ruining it, so I’ll leave them be but the hilarious parts include such classic moments as a gamer stating that he doesn’t drink or smoke or do drugs, but has a far worse addiction in playing video games. And perhaps my favorite part of the movie is where one of the veteran gamers walks around and eagerly tells the other Funcom attendees: “just to let you know we may have a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up.”

Priceless! And if you think I spoiled the documentary, forget about it. Just go and read the intense off screen drama that followed the documentary with posts like this one from Robert Mruczek. But instead of pointing out the obvious that the documentary is also about entertainment, not to be confused with the exact truth of how good or bad these people really are, let me point out this quote from Mruczek about how he has painstakingly analyzed the Donkey Kong footage and sees how a nearly unbeatable Donkey Kong high score could be reached (editor note: I left the spelling errors as written):

I sent BOTH Steve and Bill my completed yet unreleased comparative articles citing their 1.006M and 1.014M performance. I sent them the EXCEL spreadsheets as well. In fact, I spoke with Steve on at least two occassions, and publicly stated as much on the forums, that after watching his performance, it was clear that he had the potential for higher. I also discussed some specifics and analysis from my spreasheet data, and pointed out where the two gamers differed startegically in the various stages. For example, I discussed how in the hammer stage Steve made more points on top than Bill, and this was again the 1.006M vs 1.014M performances. I discussed my logic as to why. I also discussed the pie factory differences and how both players shared the same propensity overall to point press on all stages thru perhaps level 10, then stave off, and then press again once they reached level 17-18. I suggested that eventually, one of them will want to try pressing every step of the way, and whoever can first pull it off…press in every stage successfully and reach stage 115 on the 1st life, then milk three times and go to the kill…that would be a nearly unbeatable record. Bil lwas told same, yet neither player had tried that to date.

I never reached this level of videogaming prowess with Donkey Kong. I think my best score ever is in the 50k range. I’ve done a little better at Pac-Man, but again  … kill screens? Only the Obi-won Kenobi’s can achieve such greatness.  And yes Billy Mitchell is actually compared to Obi-Won in one segment by Twin Galaxies Videogame Referee and budding musician Walter Day. No, I can’t make this up, but I’m chuckling as I write this post. This movie made me laugh out loud. Rotten Tomatoes critics loved it too, giving it 97%. It’s easily in my top three favorite documentaries ever. Grade: A+

Never thought a movie could have too much action but if you ever needed an example go see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That’s not an endorsement because it’s like running a marathon without taking a breath or gulping any water along the way. We paid $40 to go see this movie last night and I wanted to ask for my money back.

There were a few redeeming moments in the film like where Megan Fox runs around and her breasts bounce through her shirt or the bit part machines making some humorous asides. I read a few reviewers saying that there was no plot, but there is one and it goes something like this: there is a magical shard that Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) carries with him that sets off in his brain an ancient map to a massive power source in Egypt. Because the Decepticons took over a satellite they can listen in on the world’s conversations and they just happen to catch that Sam is the man they need to target to find this power source. The Decepticons want this power source so they can kill the sun and the only one that can stop them is a Prime like, well, Optimus Prime.

If you are saying yeah, right, then you probably understand why some reviewers felt the movie was thin on plausibility and long on grinding, loud action scenes. The movie is ouch loud too. We made the mistake of coming in early before they show the 15 minutes worth of previews at the movie start time (when are they going to end this stupid trend?) and before the volume goes from 15 out of 100 to 110. No, really, my ears were hurting at times.

I was going to show a picture of the Transformers tickets price but a Google image search of Megan Fox is much better. This movie is not even rental worthy, don’t bother. Grade: F

J.J Abrams having created the Firefly TV series and Serenity movie is no stranger to space fantasy (Correction: Abrams is behind Lost, Joss Whedon is behind Firefly & Serenity. My bad.). At the same time many of the Star Trek motion pictures have been terrible. Then add in that retelling a space fantasy as fabled as Star Trek and the bar is pretty high.

I’m happy to report after seeing this afternoon’s showing of Star Trek along with our whole family ($75 later after tickets, popcorn, candy and drinks) that Abrams and company did very well. This is the Star Trek motion picture that long time and new fans should go see. Is it perfect? No. The whole time travel cliched plot device was used to help pave the road for a different Star Trek than we remember going forward. How that will equate in the guaranteed-to-be-coming-down-the-road sequel mill will be left. If they do continue making Star Trek using the new Original Series crew, then please, please, please do something with the Gorn next.

The movie takes place by thrusting us into an alternate time where baby James Kirk is being born in the midst of his father captaining a ship fighting a vengeance-driven enemy from the future. Fast forward to a rebellious Kirk with fast cars, run-ins with the law and bar fights with Starfleet officers. Don’t worry, not too much time is spent in history mode which is what the writers of Wolverine should have figured out.

Throughout the movie we are treated, and don’t take that word lightly, to the introduction of the other famous members of the original series crew like Scotty, Bones, Chekov, Sulu and Uhura. There is some weird romantic thing going on with Uhura and one of the other members that I won’t ruin here, but this is one distraction that didn’t work for me. Always seems to be some hollywood urge to thrust romance into every plotline where it’s not needed.

Then again there could be some tension to this side story in a future sequel. There is more than a cameo part by the original Spock. I’m going to stop here before I ruin any of the movie for those who haven’t seen it. I think even the most hardened Star Trek fans will be hardpressed to find much wrong here. Go see it in the theater, it’s well worth it.

Grade: A

In case you were living under a heavy metal rock, the closest thing to hearing brand new Black Sabbath music came out last Tuesday, April 28 courtesy of Dio, Iommi, Butler and Appice under the name Heaven and Hell.

This same line-up was responsible for arguably the last respectable Black Sabbath album Dehumanizer. A few of those tracks are my favorites from the Dio-era Sabbath.

Many have argued that Black Sabbath without Ozzy and Bill Ward on drums isn’t the Black Sabbath. I’d love to see Ozzy and Ward get together with Iommi and Butler and make at least one more Sabbath album but I’m not sure Ozzy has the vocal chops left. Also, this kind of sniping from former bandmates won’t help.

There’s no doubt musically it could happen. Also from the first and last time I’d seen them together at Ozzfest Ozzy seemed to be going through the motions rather than pulling some surprise songs from their legendary catalog. We’ve all heard War Pigs and Paranoid, but what about something less predictable?

At any rate, the Heaven & Hell lineup, quite wisely, are ensuring they won’t meet Sharon Osbourne’s wraith by using the name of their greatest Black Sabbath hit for the new music.

Whatever they want to call themselves officially it’s still Black Sabbath to me. When they toured as Heaven and Hell a couple years back and released a live album, they played almost all old Sabbath stuff and you can bet the tour with the new album satanically titled The Devil You Know there will be Dio-era Sabbath songs.

That all aside, the new album sports a modest 10 songs:

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW Track Listing
1. “Atom And Evil”
2. “Fear”
3. “Bible Black”
4. “Double The Pain”
5. “Rock And Roll Angel”
6. “The Turn Of The Screw”
7. “Eating The Cannibals”
8. “Follow The Tears”
9. “Neverwhere”
10. “Breaking Into Heaven”

Wal-mart has two exclusive covers of the CD, according to the Heaven & Hell official website:

offers an alternate cover featuring the traditional Black Sabbath devil logo.  While choosing the album artwork, the band narrowed it down to two covers, both of which will be available exclusively at WalMart.

Meanwhile, Best Buy, where I went to buy my copy of the CD is including an exclusive DVD showing unreleased video of the making of the CD. The suggested retail price for the CD is $18.99 while the digital version is already available on AmazonMP3 for $9.99. I almost pulled the AmazonMP3 trigger, but decided I’d rather have the CD version. I eagerly waited for Best Buy to open at 10am so I could be there making the purchase.

To my surprise, Best Buy was running a sale for the CD for the same price as the digital version, $9.99.

As I drove around throughout the day, I’ve listened to the album and here are the various tracks, organized by heavy to mellow, not by the track line-up listed above.

Heavy

“Atom and Evil” – catchy verse riff that reminds us why Tony Iommi is known as a riff master in rhythm circles and by Ozzy.
“Fear”
“Double The Pain”
“The Turn Of The Screw”
“Follow The Tears”
“Neverwhere”
“Eating The Cannibals”
“Breaking Into Heaven”

Mixed heavy and mellow

“Bible Black” – I wish we’d hear more Iommi acoustic guitar music. How about an unplugged Sabbath album someday?

“Rock And Roll Angel” – more nice acoustic work in what might be the most mellow song on the album and yet it’s not a ballad.

Overall this album is just OK. It’s no Dehumanizer and a long way from the Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules albumes. It’s not bad, but it’s not that great either and have already replaced the CD in the player with something else. I’m glad they put out an album but with the exception of Bible Black and Rock and Roll Angel, I’m not super excited about any of these songs.

Grade: C+

Ever since seeing the first X-Men I’ve been curious of Wolverine’s history.  I never followed the comic book so don’t know the story line.  How did he get all that weird metal inside him? Why? Sure, I could Google all this or be lame (and lawless) and seek out the pirated version, but what’s the fun in that? Even less fun and more stupid would be losing your job by reviewing the pirated version like Roger Friedman did.

In a couple days, those of us who don’t know the history (and please, no spoilers in the comments), will find out. Wolverine is the first movie to come along in the theaters in awhile that I’m interested in seeing. I’m also looking forward to Star Trek. We might not be going opening weekend, but I want to see Wolverine in the theater. 

By online vote, Tempe, Arizona got the first screening last night. Fans in Mexico no thanks to the swine flu pandemic will have to hold off on their premiere:

A spokesperson for Twentieth Century Fox said: "We were not only concerned about Hugh’s welfare - and we would never send anyone into harm’s way - but we also have an enormous office filled with people we care about.

You going to see it in the theater or wait for the DVD / Blu-ray?

Update Monday 5/4/2009 7:41am PST: Caught the 2:50 showing on Saturday and man this movie dragged … and dragged. And dragged. The history is there, but I’d rather have seen the History channel do something on this fictional character. If you are as anxious as me, prepare to be disappointed. This one has ‘rental when nothing else good is there’ written all over it. Saved from a failure in that the history about Wolverine is told. Too bad there isn’t much else worth watching.

Grade: D+

July last year I learned about a program called Belvedere from Lifehacker that helped keep Windows desktop file and icon clutter managed. This morning, thanks Betsy, I learned about Fences from Stardock which is another free program (this one in beta) that allows you to manage groups of files on your desktop. The short video walk-thru explains the various features of Fences, but the most attractive one to me is the double-click to instantly clean your desktop.

While Belvedere is good for getting the clutter off the desktop and into other organized places, there is no quick hotkey way to bring it back. This is where Fences shines gives the ability to group the clutter and decide right down to file by file what you want to do. I was hopeful that Fences would allow me the ability to group off the desktop items in one fell swoop like Belvedere, but after installation and checking it out that doesn’t appear to be an option. Maybe that will be added in future update?

When you run Fences for the first time a handy option is included that will auto sort your icon clutter. Here’s the before and after shot of my desktop.

Before Fences:

After Fences (auto organize on first time program run):

Note: in the screenshot above to the right is the program Rocketdock and not a part of Fences. Rocketdock is a handy Mac-style program launcher.

The auto sorting fences created are as follows:

• Quicklinks – contained folder shortcuts and one game shortcut misidentified by Fences (should have gone into the ‘Programs’ fence)
• Recent Things – most recently accessed files on the desktop
• Programs – click to launch these programs. Redundant for those using Rocketdock, unless you have programs you want to try out (like Fences) and then once you decide you will use them regularly enough to add to Rocketdock.
• Web Links – Mine was empty since I almost never save web links to the desktop. I deleted this group.
• Folders – I would have thought the folder shortcuts placed in Quick Links would have gone here, but not the case. I deleted this empty fence too.
• Files & Documents – this fence was the only one with a scrollbar and sort of a catchall for everything else. So now instead of having my entire desktop fill up with junk from left to right, this would catch everything? Nope. When you add a new file it goes to the desktop and must be sorted. Bummer.

If I’m not going to take time to delete or move the file on the desktop to a folder off the desktop, it’s doubtful I’d move into a fenced off area. It’s really a bummer that Stardock didn’t add a feature which captured anything saved to the desktop and auto sorted. Without that feature, it’s sort of a non-starter for me. It’s not a bad start.

The best solution is not having to run program(s) like these at all. Just be neat and not clutter your desktop, but that doesn’t seem to work for me who likes saving things to the desktop for quick access versus navigating to a file. For example, when I want to save a picture that I’ll use in a blog post I’m working on like this one, I’ll save it to the desktop and then drag it into Windows Live Writer. The step that I neglect all too often is the cleanup of this image file. That’s where Belvedere has come in handy. Good news for fellow Belvedere users, you can still run alongside Fences.

I’m going to try using both Fences and Belvedere for awhile and see how it goes. My early opinion? This adds another step to the process of organizing the clutter and if I’m going to organize, why rearrange dust? Instead, it should be cleaned away like Belvedere does, right? That said, the double-click for quick clean desktop could come in handy and I liked how I could make organized fences around my desktop image of the notes on the guitar fretboard. Only problem there: as new stuff is added, I have to reorganize, which I probably won’t do. I’m mixed on this one, but curious what others think. Grade: C+

After the last post on automated related links in posts I mentioned liking the relevancy provided by the Zemanta service and promised to check into the service in greater detail. Bonus: Andraz the Zemanta CTO stopped by in the comment section and answered a few questions which piqued my curiosity further. I like seeing company executives and reps out responding to blog posts, being transparent about their service. Andraz promised more features were on the way as backed up by the active Zemanta GetSatisfaction page. I’m guessing he’ll dig the info in this post for his team which is loaded with wish list items to make Zemanta a killer application.

Important note: the spam category placement is not intended to imply that I think Zemanta in any way spams anybody, rather I’ve noticed their service is being used by some spam blogs and splogs. There are lots of legitimate tools that are being abused/used by spammers, this is not meant to be nor should it be construed as condemnation of the Zemanta service.

I downloaded the Zemanta Windows Live Writer plugin and have been experimenting with using on a few posts at our group blog, VTOReality.com (e.g Anarchy Online 30 day free offer expires December 31, 2008). There are Zemanta plugins available for self-hosted WordPress, wordpress.com, Blogger and more, but I won’t be covering those here.

What Zemanta does

Think of Zemanta as an almost real time blogging research assistant. On GetSatisfaction they self-describe as:

Contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.

Imagine having somebody — or something — that sits beside you while you write posts and presents you with ongoing number of choices for adding external content to your blog posts like: pictures from Flickr, Wikipedia entries, homepage links, links to related stories around the web, company info, map locations and more. 

Above you’ll see a picture of what it’s like working in Windows Live Writer with the Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer active in the middle. Along the right is a full-size screenshot of only the Zemanta pane. 

Wish list #1: Allow width resizing of Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer.

The Zemanta pane is either open or closed by clicking on the two right arrows (<< and >> respectively). When writing I tend to want as much space as possible, but found that I liked the idea of having this pane open a little bit. This brings me to my next wishlist item.

Wish list #2: let users customize what sources and types show in the Zemanta pane

For example, maybe I only want to see pictures from Flickr. And maybe only pictures licensed for commercial use. There is a Zemanta filter option but it’s not clear how to use that to only retrieve commercial licensed ok pictures. If that is possible, then please somebody tell me how? Most of the plugins I’ve seen for showing related pictures don’t include this very important option. This blog has advertisements, turns a profit, and thus is considered commercial use by many TOS so a tool that shows me non-commercial licensed images is useless here.

Also maybe I don’t ever want to see links by Wikipedia or links to posts made by resources I already use or feel are too common. Then there are certain times I want to see only related content from sources in my OPML list. 

Wish list #3: increase number of sources from 160 to 500+ and include feature to allow to only draw from these sources

Lightbulb flashes went off in my head when I learned you could add your own list of sources, but was quickly disappointed to learn only a maximum of 160 sources are currently allowed. This comes up short for the number of individual sources used at VTOR and the number of current sources which I pull for this blog is over 600 RSS feeds alone, not counting my network of Twitter and Friendfeed contacts. We haven’t even gotten into StumbleUpon, digg or the many other places one can find stuff that encourages them to write a blog post.

I’m not expecting Zemanta to cater to users like Scoble who pulls from tens of thousands sources, but there lies a middle road between that extreme and 160. That’s where I’m at anyway and hazard a guess that plenty of other blog writers fit this demographic. Please let me know otherwise in the comments if you have less than 160 sources including Twitter, Friendfeed. I doubt many do that are blogging regularly these days.

As I’m writing this it occurred to me one could create a plugin mashup using the Y! context checker and provide those results from their own sources checked say once every few minutes or so. This would give the ability to draw from a specific source list much greater than 160. A toggle could be used for pictures or external articles giving very similar functionality to Zemanta. I wonder if some enterprising developer has already done the lifting here?

Wish list #4: Fix Windows Live Writer (WLW) plugin stability issues and allow easy disabling/removing of WLW plugin

If this wishlist were in order of importance, this would be #1. During the writing of this post with the Zemanta plugin activated, WLW crashed multiple times. Before activating the Zemanta plugin, I rarely encountered WLW crashes like this so I’m led to believe Zemanta was the culprit. Indeed, I exited the Zemanta plugin and finished the rest of this post and it never crashed again. Here are the errors received:

Obviously the worst kind of blog helper imaginable would be one that came and shut you down in the middle of writing something.

Fortunately during each crash I could save before the application needed to be restarted and my work-in-progress was safe. This is where Zemanta as my blog assistant got fired. I tried to disable the plugin in WLW. When restarting after the plugin being disabled it still starts up in the middle pane. Huh? This needs to be fixed ASAP. When something is marked as disabled it should not fire upon application restart. I exited again and uninstalled from add/remove programs in Windows. I saw a complaint on GetSatisfaction that another user had to use RevoUninstaller (freeware) to purge the Zemanta installation files completely. This type of once we’re installed we don’t leave on uninstall behavior is totally unacceptable and borderline adware tactic. Fix this now.

Wish list #5: scrap the Terms of Service requirement to use the Zemanta reblog image service link and allow something more (better) customized

I don’t see myself using Zemanta on this blog for the other wishlist items mentioned but the Zemanta TOS requiring me to use their button in every post that I use anything showing in their interface is a big reason to say thanks but no thanks. I wonder how many are using Zemanta to find related content and get angles are skipping fulfilling the TOS requirement which clearly says this is not optional.

Here’s the Terms of Service quote, Zemanta users:

• Service Description. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content on your site or within your application, you agree to display the Zemanta Icon logo.
• Service Icon/Logo Display. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content, you agree not to make any changes to the shape and size of the Zemanta logo, or other Zemanta created content
• Service User Interface Display. When a reader clicks on the Zemanta icon logo you agree to hyperlink that logo directly to our home page at http://www.zemanta.com, or other appropriate page within our site.

NOTE: even though Zemanta screenshots are shown in this post and the review is about the service absolutely no links or content was used from the interface, so you won’t see that image link here as required by the TOS. In fact during the writing of this post I uninstalled the plugin as mentioned above.

Zemanta, just get rid of the TOS requirement altogether. Credit link in a blog post like this should be more than sufficient as a site-wide mention of the service. This post will be spidered by Google and will remain as long as this site — or your service — is live. There is no reason for me to promote Zemanta in every single post where Zemanta was somewhat helpful. That would be the equivalent of mentioning a human blog assistant’s name in every post even when it’s not relevant. It starts to feel kind of spammy to me, which leads to another concern I had about Zemanta. And one that I voiced to their CTO in the comments about my familiarity with their service to date.

I’ve noticed a considerable number of sites using posts from this blog as related links on very spammy/sploggy blogs and trackbacking in from those posts. This just sullies the Zemanta brand. It also could lead to search engines punishing these unrelated, forced Zemanta links someday. The lines between paying somebody to put up a link without rel=nofollow and bartering for the link (which is what Zemanta is doing) are fuzzy, IMO.  I’m not saying that Zemanta is spamming anybody or is a haven for spammers nor that they can control whether or not spammers are using their services, but it’s an issue worth mentioning.

Andraz pointed out in the comments that these brand name companies are using Zemanta: Real Networks official blog, HP Marketing Blogs, Chris Brogan, some start-up CEOs, Geekdad blog at Wired.com, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to deprive Zemanta any credit for being a blog helper — links here and there where relevant are fine, just not in every single post. Adding to that I strongly dislike where these links point to: the Zemanta reblogging web interface.

This thing is an eyesore from a design and usability standpoint.

Not sure if it’s the hard to read text (writers need their eyes!) or the fact that we’re being sandwiched into a dual pane and then being asked to give Zemanta our blog login credentials. It’s all around fail to me from a blog owner perspective. Why should I send other bloggers off to use that? Most bloggers already have their own blog interface they are happy using. At the very least give me the ability to customize what that link does and/or provide the interface directly on this blog at least. It would be awesome if Zemanta would allow Zemanta registered users to redirect that link to their blog interface of choice: e.g launch windows live writer with that text highlighted or Firefox plugin and so on.

Zemanta still the most useful that I’ve seen in this class of tools

Despite Zemanta’s shortcomings mentioned in this Hmm Review, it is the best I’ve seen/used to date at what it does. Much better and contextually related than Sphere. If Zemanta fills the wishlist items mentioned here, I’d strongly recommend this tool to blogging friends and probably use more myself. As it stands now, the Windows Live Writer plugin needs too much work to be added to my workflow. Might be worth reviewing the other plugin options to see if they are better. As always, I invite you to agree or disagree below. Grade: C+

Axl Rose, Dizzy and a bunch of other good musicians that make up the 2008 version of Guns N Roses have released Chinese Democracy on MySpace first, followed by a Best Buy only release this Sunday.

After listening, I know one place I will be this Sunday besides watching the Seahawks get beat again.

Yes, you can now listen to every Chinese Democracy track in or out of order for free streaming and after the first listen through I figuratively wiped my brow.

Wow.

There are some powerful, mind bending guitar riffs in here. If like me you miss the days when songs were layered with catchy guitar solos, you are in for a serious treat when you listen to what’s behind the Chinese Democracy curtain. Major kill switch, guitar bending, screaming action on some of these tracks.

Sure, the guitar wizard Slash isn’t there — and no disrespect is intended by the title of this post or the following admission — but you don’t end up missing him that much. This is either a testament to it taking nearly 20 15 years to get this GNR album published or the reality that there are 2008 guitar wizards in the making. I saw this 8-year old kid on YouTube yesterday that might grow up to be a future guitar god, who knows.

But what does Slash think about it? He has already weighed in — and likes it:

To tell you the truth: I already listened to it. At first I thought that I would never listen to it until it’s released, but someone handed it to me and I was in my car and I was like, "Okay, let’s give it a try." So I listened to it: It’s a really good record. It’s very different from what the original GUNS N’ ROSES sounded like, but it’s a great statement by Axl. Now you understand where he was heading all this time. It’s a record that the original GUNS N’ ROSES could never possibly make. And at the same time it just shows you how brilliant Axl is. So it was a relief for me to actually hear it.

Like former GNR guitarist I too felt prepared for disappointment and was pleasantly surprised by how good this album sounds. This had Spore-like hype written all over it but unlike Spore, Chinese Democracy delivers.

Track listing and notes

1. "Chinese Democracy" - for a title track and intro to the album, I suppose it works, but it had a bit too much going on for my taste. Not that I don’t like complex music, but this one feels like you need an Iron Maiden type lineup of multiple guitarists to pull it off faithfully live. I like music that doesn’t feel too much like it was over-processed and this track just oozes over-production. This doesn’t take away from it being a decent song melodically, but stripped down a bit I bet this would have rocked more. The guitar solo foreshadows perfectly (3:26) that this will be a guitar album that kicks ass.
2. "Shackler’s Revenge" - this has been available and playable on Rock Band 2 for awhile now. One of the weakest vocal tracks IMO. A little too new wave sounding for me, although love the guitar work. Fun to play this on Rock Band.
3. "Better" - Ironically, this is where the album starts to pick up some serious steam for me. I’d heard a bootleg of this a few years back and enjoyed it then. Professionally mixed it sounds even better. Catchy verse and chorus. Layered with some thundering power chords. This could have been a B-side cut — and a good one — on Use Your Illusion II. If you were worried if Axl could still sing, this track answers with an exclamation mark. Great track.
4. "Street of Dreams" - the first mellow track on the album, heavy in the keyboard area. Axl’s verse vocals seem off the first few listens, like he’s singing in a can or something but it grew on me after a few listens. This isn’t "November Rain" or "Patience" but it’s pretty good.
5. "If The World" - has a groovy 70s-era riff going.  Almost like this could be something you heard playing in the background of a Shaft movie.
6. "There Was A Time" - an almost religious song like opening and closing, quickly replaced by a guitar moaning in the background and catchy beat. One of the best guitar solos on the album. 5:21 listen for the liberal kill switch. I think it’s songs like this that will have budding guitarists everywhere adding kill switches to their axes.
7. "Catcher In The Rye" - second mellow song. Just OK. Kind of a Bon Jovi-ish la-la-la chorus part that didn’t work very well for me. Too much layering and overdubbing here again.
8. "Scraped" - a vocal assault opening that leads into a "Rocket Queen" type riff. Digging it, especially the wah-wah guitar solo.
9. "Sorry" - Sebastian Bach of Skid Row sings backup vocals on this haunting third mellow track.  This is one where the tons of layering guitars and overdubs actually works quite well. Might be the best lyrics of any song on the album or at least the easiest to understand. Liner notes needed.
10. "Riad N’ The Bedouins" - easily wins the strangest song title award. A beginning with a theme that moves into an upbeat, rocking moaning intro. I don’t have any idea what this song is about but it jams.
11. "I.R.S" - (somewhat) mellow track #4. Better than "Catcher in the Rye" but not as good as "Sorry" and "Street of Dreams"
12. "Madagascar" - mellow track #5. There is some similarity to the last track with this one, although the beat is different. Gotta dig the clips of King’s famous "I have a dream" interspersed with the "Failure to co-mun-nicate" clip in "Civil War" — nice way to pay homage.
13. "This is Love" - this is the sixth and final mellow track complete with piano, keyboard and vocals only opening. When the guitar comes in around a minute in the song, it’s surprisingly subdued but effective. Axl layered vocals are nice. This kind of reminds me a bit of Black Sabbath "Changes" in the overall feel, though the melody is nothing like it. At 2:15 the guitar power chords start to color the song leading to a heavy, somber solo. Cheap guitar solo nowhere to be found on this album. Thanks GNR!
14. "Prostitute" - the drumbeat to this one reminds me a bit of "Locomotion" on Illusion 2. This might be my sleeper favorite of the album with the gripping melody. Some nice Axl screams before the guitar wailing. I thought at first, hey this solo was short, but stay with it as more riffing assaults your ears (in a good way) at 4:23. Oh yeah this is good. Are we going to be left with a piano outro? The drums fade into the distance and keyboards dominate. You can imagine smoke rising through the stage. And then like that it’s just … over.

Can’t stop listening to these tracks on MySpace.

Kudos aside, back down to earth it’s clear that Chinese Democracy isn’t Appetite For Destruction. There is no smoking gun of a song like "Sweet Child O’ Mine" on here, but there are several very good, catchy heavy tracks like "Better" that will get plenty of rotation. The guitar work alone deserves high marks.

Axl would likely be the first to say that creating another Appetitle wasn’t what he was trying to do. I believed he’d botch up Chinese Democracy, but there are brushes of brilliance on this album. Axl might be difficult to get along with, but there’s no denying he’s got major talent and knows the recipe for good music.

Appetite is a classic and even if the original GNR got back together I doubt they could bring back the fire and magic of that album. I’d put Chinese Democracy somewhere between Use Your Illusion I (which I didn’t much care for) and Use Your Illusion II (which is a classic). The 6 of 14 mellow songs make it feel very Use Your Illusion 2 like as far as overall theme. It’s world’s better than the crap on Spaghetti Incident. Although they are two completely different types of albums, I put it about on par with Lies.

Where does this work for a grade? The wait was much too long, but it feels worth it in a few of these songs. The overall vibe of the album is thumbs up. Easily one of my favorite albums of the year among the best of the new music by 80s bands. A few of the tracks are weak, but even the weakest are better than expected. And hey, don’t forget your free Dr. Pepper! Now I’m stoked for a live GNR concert. Grade: A-

Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you’ve probably heard something about UFOs, aliens and Roswell at least once in your lifetime. The year was 1947, some 21 years before I entered this earth and would not hear about Roswell for a good 10 more years or so.

The facts 

In years since I knew something happened, there was some kind of crash, on a farm Northwest of Roswell. A rancher by the name of "Mac" Brazel stumbled upon the wreckage and was worried about having it on his property because his sheep would not cross past it.

He gathered samples and took them into town to the sheriff. His story in the beginning was that he didn’t know what the material was and took it into town, wondering if it might be the wreckage of a flying saucer.

The sheriff phoned the local 509th bomber group and was routed to military intelligence officer Jesse Marcel Sr. who went out to the sheriff’s office to review the strange material. Marcel wanted to see where it came from and Brazel led him out to the spot where the wreckage was on his property.

Marcel took more samples of the material in his car. He stopped home and after swearing them to secrecy, showed his wife and his son what was discovered. He told his son — according to his son, Jesse Marcel Jr. — that it wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before. They touched the material which was like aluminum foil, only lighter and without one side being paper-like. They handled it carefully, not wanting to damage it.

Marcel took the material back to the base and after showing his superior, General Ramsey, the general checked  around with other military bases to see if it might be part of an experiment, a sensational press release was made that was retracted later. What was described as debris from a flying saucer was quickly amended to a misunderstanding: it was just a weather balloon.

This is where the story twists, depending on who or what you want — or are willing — to believe.

Common sense and Hollywood

It’s important to note that neither Marcel or son has ever claimed to have seen any aliens. They both only claimed to have seen material they hadn’t ever seen before. I was unclear on this until I read Marcel Jr.’s book, The Roswell Legacy, pictured above. This is the only book I’ve ever read on the subject, but I believe almost everything happened as Marcel’s son described.

The book isn’t laid out in story format. Instead it’s told in first person with little narrative and mostly descriptions of what Marcel’s son had witnessed firsthand and/or been told by his father of what really happened in 1947. It isn’t filled with a bunch of grandiose hypothesis about what might have happened, as I’ve seen to be the case with the Roswell incident over the years. It’s a mere 174 pages, including appendix.

The book also goes into a little bit of who his father was, his military credentials and what happened to him after Roswell. There was a TV movie in 1994 called Roswell starring Martin Sheen which takes some poetic license with the story, but remains somewhat faithful to what Marcel Jr. says really happened to him.

There are other stories portrayed in that TV movie which get much more difficult to believe — like there was a second crash site Marcel didn’t see that had the aliens, one of which was still alive. Don’t get derailed there though yet, let’s stay with Marcel who only said he saw material not of this world, later rebuffed by the government to be common material he should have been able to identify.

Marcel Jr. a surgeon has also been a career military man like his father and the only reasons he claims (and I believe) he wrote this story were:

1. to keep a promise to his father over getting the truth out about what really happened in 1947
2. to defend his father’s honor that was besmirched over mis-indentifying the Roswell crash debris as something other worldly instead of a weather balloon.

Marcel Jr. has served in Iraq as recently as 2005. He a credible source to me.

Marcel being part of the elite 509th bomber group, the unit behind the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have been able to easily identify the wreckage if it came from some known material. That only makes sense. Especially if it was a weather balloon, which was the government’s official story shortly after the first report put out by the 509th.

A weather balloon.  They’ve stuck by that story for the most part. Amending it later after reopening the investigation to a mogul balloon.

In the book, Marcel Jr. provides a scan of his father’s diploma from radar school dated September 8, 1945. He also lists his various military awards and despite his alleged gaffe identifying the debris, he was later promoted to lieutenant colonel in the reserves.

This doesn’t sound like the type of guy who would go out to a local ranch, bring back some material, show his boss the general the material, and then be part of putting out a press release that said it could be from a "flying saucer."

I did some internet fact checking to see if a copy of the original press release could be found online. Wikipedia, in fact, has a scan of the story in the Roswell Daily Record dated Tuesday July 8, 1943

 
Source: Wikipedia

So was there really a UFO crash in 1947 or not?

At least for this post I’m going to steer away from the hard to believe claims about seeing actual aliens at the second site, that one of them might have been kept alive for five years. Or that the government actually had an exchange program called Project Serpo from 1965-1978 where military personnel visited the planet Zeta Reticuli (and later allegedly died from "excess radiation"). You can visit YouTube, type in "Roswell" as the query and be treated to a bunch of clearly fake alien autopsy videos or use your favorite search engine for any of these terms to learn more if so inclined.

(But hey, if you want a good laugh then check out Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs — lol! Don’t you dig it when people try to be serious and it’s funny instead?)

Mea culpa: I wrote back in August 2006 that I believe aliens have visited earth and that the U.S government has proof of it. I’m not sure if this first happening was Roswell in 1947 and the book being reviewed here doesn’t try to answer that (and if it does, then it fails to be very compelling in that regard). What it does try to answer was if there was a crash of something not from earth. If you can’t go as far as me and believe in E.T then at least see if you can go as far as believing something crashed here not of this earth.

I am ready to believe the wreckage Marcel and his son touched wasn’t from earth. There are simply too many holes in the government’s response to believe otherwise. Weather balloon? Come on.

Where it came from, I don’t know, but if we knew it came from somewhere on earth what would be the harm in the government declassifying this information 60+ years later? Since the declassification hasn’t happened, one of the following possibilities must be true (pick your poison):

1. the government knows where it came from and doesn’t want to tell us
2. the government does not know where it came from and doesn’t want to admit this to us
3. the government knows where it came from on earth, and doesn’t want to tell us
4. the government does not know where it came from on earth and doesn’t want to admit this to us (yeah, similar to #2)

I was glad to be able to solve the lingering riddle in my mind about what happened in 1947 just outside Roswell. For that reason I give this book the highest Hmm Reviews grade possible. The book doesn’t get all "tinfoil-hat" to use the author’s own description of the fringe UFO crowd — and don’t worry readers, I’m not joining that crowd either. In fact, until the last chapter it doesn’t get too far afield of what the author and his father witnessed. That type of non-fiction works great for me.

In the last chapter the author explains why he thinks we’re not alone in the universe. I agree with much of his thinking there too. We can’t be alone and it’s arrogant to think we are. The universe is much too big and there are too many parts we know absolutely nothing about.

He thinks the aliens that have contacted us have been benign and that they might have some Star Trek like prime directive. That would make some sense as to why we don’t see aliens everywhere but they might have been in contact with the government.

The Russians have acknowledged crashed debris as being not of this earth while the U.S government has done so to date. I think before my death, assuming living out a ripe old age, I’ll see this happen.

I think it’s well past time for the government to declassify the material in 1947 that’s sitting on a base somewhere, waiting for further critical study and research. Why not?

Conspiracy theorist or realist

Now if I’m to be labeled conspiracy theorist for believing the government has botched up the Roswell cover-up, so be it. I put this one with the JFK assassination as far as believing the government lied to us. I’d also add in the more recent Bush administration lying about the whole weapons of mass destructions.

I think it’s harder to believe that the government has never lied to us, don’t you?

Conspiracy theorist or realist? I’ll take the latter. If you are looking for a story about what really happened in 1947 in Roswell, run, don’t walk, to the bookstore and get The Roswell Legacy. It feels about as close to the truth as we can get until the government declassifies what they are secreting away from us for our own [snicker] protection. Grade: A+

Last night there was the annual Best Buy customer private party and I saw voodoo for the first time. Er, VUDU [vudu.com] rather which is pronounced like voodoo. Here’s what this VUDU $299 DVD/HD/1080p on demand in a box badboy looks like:

Little bigger than the now defunct Xbox HD-DVD drive and a little smaller than the Xbox 360. What does it do? Delivers movies up to 1080p/24 to your TV over broadband internet.

VUDU comes neatly packed with everything you need to hook up to a 1080p TV and broadband network:

- network cable
- HDMI cable (also includes standard AV cables for those without HDMI)
- VUDU box (pictured above) which has 250GB storage
- AC power supply
- radio frequency antenna for remote (shown in the right rear of the picture)
- remote + required 2 AA batteries
- $200 in free movie credits (cannot be used on adult movies), more on this later

Don’t be dumb like us and forget to screw in the radio antenna first before trying to use the remote. The "Start Here" manual tells you to do this, BTW. Good idea to thumb through before digging in.

With RF frequency you don’t need to point at the box in order for the signal to make it to the box. You can put the box behind the TV if you want and it will work just fine. Downside to this is getting it to work with Slingbox, but in the VUDU forums I found some people who were successfully using VUDO with a Slingbox and IR dongle.

The VUDU has a USB 2.0 port which is planned to be used for external storage since it only has 250GB of storage. In the meantime you can use the VUDU servers for archival storage if you decide to build a library of movies in addition to renting movies. Not sure it’s wise spending too much money on buying movies from a service you probably haven’t ever heard of before. I hadn’t heard of VUDU until last night and I’m looking for new gadgets like this to try out.

Gotta dig the VUDU remote which looks like an alien’s head and has a simple, but effective design:

Pressing and holding the VUDU button for five seconds starts the step by step process. Vudu will test your broadband network and decide how long it takes for Standard Definition (SD) and HD movies to play. If you have 2.0 Mbps - 4.0 Mbps you can watch SD movies instantly without any waiting but you’ll need to wait for the HD movies.

You need to activate the VUDU at vudu.com/activation which involves entering in a VUDU activation code provided in the setup, putting your information in on the website along with credit card and agreeing to fund your vudubucks account with at least $20. The website is also where you turn on the adult movie feature if you want to be able to watch any adult movies. By default, VUDU is set not to show any movies in the After Dark category.

There are a handy set of parental controls to restrict what movies can be rented and watched without a pincode. By default everything is wide open (except adult as mentioned above) without any code required.

Once you provide your details and give VUDU at least $20 via credit card, the VUDU box will go through the final update stage and then you can start browsing, renting and/or buying movies to watch.

$200 in free movies — the catch

If you buy the VUDU during the promotional period you are also given the $200 in movie credits. Reading the fine print I learned that:

- the $200 in movie credits must be used within 4 months of activation or you lose the credits
- the $200 credits do not apply to any adult movies through the AVN after dark area
- if you return the VUDU they will bang your credit card for whatever movies you’ve rented, the credits only apply if you don’t return VUDU

Tall tales by VUDU sales rep

The VUDU rep wasn’t completely straightforward with us on the whole "having to wait" thing. I asked him point blank if there would be any waiting time of HD and he said there wasn’t. Wrong. There can be a wait, and can be a substantial one if you get the HDX (1080p) movies which are around 10GB in size. If you have 4.0 Mbps or greater connection you can get the HD movies instantly according to the documentation.

On every page of the VUDU website you can test your connection. When VUDU tested my speed through the box it put it at 2.0 Mbps speed, but from browser I’m seeing this:

From the Info & Settings menu you can force VUDU to use the higher setting.

The VUDU rep also told me the average price for movie rentals was $2.99. I found from browsing most of the newer movies seem to be $3.99 for HD and more for HDX. I didn’t see any HD movies for under $3.99. The movie rentals work similarly to renting movies through Xbox Live. You pay for a 24 hour window of time.

Watch movies the day they are released on DVD

The big selling point for VUDU is the ability to rent movies in HD quality the day they are released. Netflix which is going to be available through Xbox Live later this month streams movies as part of their monthly subscription.

The VUDU rep told me that they get movies the day they are released on DVD which is different from the other similar movie on demand services I’ve seen but unfortunately not every studio in Hollywood let’s their movies be immediately available for rental. He said the window was two weeks before the new DVDs become available to rent through VUDU which isn’t bad if you can wait. I don’t recall which studios he said made their movies available for rental on the day they were for sale, but it’s stupid that any studio does that. Hollywood being dumb again.

Iron Man, for example is available to buy ($19.99) but will not be available for rent until November 12.  It’s cool that VUDU shows you exactly when you will be able to rent movies, as well as provides coming soon dates of upcoming DVD releases.

Vudu menu is slick and simplistic

The VUDU UI is easy enough for a child to pick up and begin searching through movies. I was impressed with the design which consists of five top level options: Most Watched movies, New on VUDU, Explore Catalog, My VUDU and Info & Settings.

As the screenshot above shows, as you move to the right with the VUDU remote scrollwheel, the movie box art grows bigger and shows at the bottom the rating as well as range of prices for rental and to buy. If you don’t see any $5.99 or less price it means there is no rental available, it’s purchase only. Simple, but effective.

Most Watched - shows the top 100 movies other VUDU users have rented or purchased from the previous week
New on VUDU - here you can see what’s recently been added as well as when the movies will be available for rent
Explore Catalog - sort from thousands of titles (our list of ‘all’ showed over 7,000 titles) by genre and subgenre (like comedy-romance). You can also search by keyword on title and even actors in movies. VUDU also has TV shows available to buy at $1.99 per episode (upscaled in HD) which might give you the best picture over SD DVD set available to buy in stores
My VUDU - shows active rentals, movies you own, TV shows purchased as well as a wish list for titles you’d like to rent or buy someday and an archive/delete menu for moving content onto the VUDU servers
Info & Settings - adjust parental and other VUDU settings

There is an in-depth VUDU user guide (PDF) online detailing each feature available.

Is VUDU worth $299?

If you love to watch movies like we do and in the highest quality you can see them, we own over 600 DVDS (including some HD-DVD and Blu-ray) and we regularly rent movies through Xbox Live (paying $3+ for the privilege), the VUDU is worth checking out.  With the Best Buy $200 in free movie credits promotion, that brings the price of the VUDU + some movies/TV to watch down to a more reasonable $99. Something tells me they aren’t moving huge numbers of these because:

1. they are bit too pricey for something that requires spending more to watch movies and
2. they aren’t very well known and thus could be a here today gone tomorrow gadget. I remember Slingbox being something nobody had heard about once upon a time, but don’t think VUDU is as widely useful as the Slingbox.

Another downside is VUDU is yet another box around your TV and will fight for an HDMI slot among your gaming systems, cable/dish box, etc. If we keep the VUDU then we need an HDMI selector. I’m having to plug and unplug into the back of the TV too much already. Two HDMI slots and 4 HDMI devices doesn’t work.

I’m not sure we’re going to keep VUDU yet (30 day money back guarantee), but like the idea of being able to rent newer DVD movies without (hopefully) too much hassle. It takes way too long for new DVDs to reach the movie channels like Cinemax, HBO and Showtime. Xbox Live has them sooner, but there is still a noticeable delay. If Hollywood wasn’t lame, they’d make the movies available in VUDU on the day they are for sale for rent, just like they are in movie rental stores.

If the window of time that VUDU gets the newer movies is shorter than it takes to get to Xbox Live, it fills a niche for us versus getting the all you can watch subscription at say Hollywood Video. I also like not having to pay for a monthly subscription fee, but will probably be getting Netflix with Xbox later this month and comparing vs. VUDU. The quality of movies through Netflix vs. VUDU could be what separates the two.

If you watch a lot of new DVDs and don’t care as much about the picture quality then VUDU will be more expensive than one of those all you can watch plans from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video even when factoring in gas if you need to drive to/from to get the movies. Gas prices aren’t almost $5/gallon any more so this makes sense.

VUDU would be more attractive with an internet browser

Why can’t I check my email on this thing or watch vid clips from sites like YouTube? Or (gasp, competitor alert!) visit Hulu.com and watch TV shows for free. I think they didn’t put this option in for fear (?) that it would cut into people paying for the content versus going to legal, legitimate channels to get it and works against the overall value of VUDU.

Watching a movie or TV show in a pixelated browser window is not worth as much as seeing it in 1080p. Until the web offers that kind of deal for free (legally), VUDU shouldn’t be afraid of making a browser available. The Xbox 360 doesn’t have a browser either. So, it’s off to the PS3 or Wii if you want a browser.

The other possible issue here is bandwidth cap from your internet service provider. If you watch a lot of HDX movies at 10GB a piece and have a 250GB per month cap, you could run into additional charges from your ISP. Add all this up and VUDU could be ideal for heavy duty moviephiles who like the best quality they can get without having to leave their house to get it.

Grade: B-