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

This guy really, really loves Black Sabbath which to be serious is what the band Heaven & Hell is about. Learned about him from the Heaven & Hell twitter account: http://twitter.com/hvnandhelllive

While the Ozzy lawsuit aimed at Iommi seems to be trying to make Ozzy part of the story it’s obvious that fans like this don’t care these days what the boys call themselves. Right now the band Heaven & Hell are cashing in on the Black Sabbath name, catalog and history.

And another Sabbath alumni vocalist Tony Martin is trying to do the same thing with his band named after Sabbath album: Headless Cross:

He continued, "So the idea is to commemorate 20 years since ‘Headless Cross’ and I can reveal that some of the songs have NEVER been done live before… like ‘Black Moon’… It’s a REALLY complex track, but we’re gonna bring it to the stage and show it off. Also, we’ve just left behind the anniversary of ‘Eternal Idol’, so there’s gonna be some more off that album too like ‘Born To Lose’.

Actually, Martin claims this wasn’t his idea, it was the promoter’s but hey, why not do this?  Good for them, I say. Ozzy should have made a new album with Sabbath during the Ozzfest years. I’d say the chance of that happening any time soon due to these new legal tangles is unlikely.

Now can we see Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan go out and form a band called Born Again please. In 9th grade if I’d known better I’d have been at that concert when they rolled through Green Bay, Wisconsin. Speaking of Deep Purple, here is a video of 1,683 people playing Smoke On the Water in Kansas City.

Sabbath with Tony Martin is an era which I haven’t listened to very much but will probably be buying those albums in the coming days as I liked the live version of Headless Cross performed in Brazil in 2008.

Sabbath fans, let’s just hope Ozzy doesn’t die from an ATV accident or anything else before one day the original Black Sabbath lineup can make one more new album together. Hey, the Eagles and Van Halen (sans Michael Anthony) got back together and did it, so why not Sabbath?

Heaven & Hell is playing at the WaMu theater in Seattle on Saturday August 8. Despite being a lukewarm fan of The Devil You Know there is no doubt these guys are a huge part of heavy metal history and I’d like to see them play the Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules stuff live.

It’s good to know that comment spammers from Turkey still have a sense of humor.

The post that was being spammed was a recap of the Janet Jackson breast dustup back in 2004 where I proudly proclaimed that breast censoring, save for dramatic purposes, would not happen at this blog. Yes, I will still do love them tits!

Didn’t update the blog when our 7th Xbox 360 went down, but now that we have our 8th, which is the Xbox 360 Arcade package that we purchased in November 2007, it’s unfortunately that time of year again. If there was ever a time for me to go thumbs down on something, it’s this:

Here’s the historical breakdown so new readers can catch up and old readers can shake their heads along with our family again.

Xbox 360 systems that have died since April 15, 2006
#8: Tuesday June 2, 2009, red rings.  We’re swapping it out at Best Buy today, June 17, 2009. Good thing we bought the warranty! My advice to all continues to be one of the following: 1) never buy an Xbox 360 without a warranty or 2) (new) never buy an Xbox 360 at all.
#7: January 2009, red rings. Didn’t record the exact day, but it was just after the first of the year. This unit is covered by Microsoft’s Red Ring of Death replacement and we just need to send it in.  Microsoft has stopped sending boxes, but we have the packing slip ready.
#6: Saturday August 18, 2008. Three red rings of death. We used Best Buy replacement plan to swap out with brand new Xbox Elite.
#5: January 1, 2008 (Happy New Year, Microsoft!). Status: three red rings of death, unrepaired. Under warranty, Microsoft replaced within a month.
#4: Xbox 360 broken November 3, 2007. Status: broken disc tray, unrepaired. We replaced this system by buying a new Xbox 360 Arcade package (and yes, bought 2-year warranty).
#3: April 2007. Status: red rings of death, replaced three weeks later on April 23, 2007
#2: September 22, 2006. Status: red rings of death, replaced on October 20, 2006
#1: June 14, 2006. Our first Xbox 360 dies. Didn’t even make it two months.

I think with my last post we’d reached ashamed status. Not sure what customer emotion comes next when or if we reach double digits with all these hardware failures. The biggest videogame player in our house is going into the Army in September, so maybe that means we’ll see fewer Xbox 360s die moving forward.

I want, maybe need, to be emotional about it but the truth is I’m past angry, disappointed and perplexed. Without being too dramatic it’s become more of a way of gaming life now. I don’t like it but have come to accept that the time will come when the Xbox 360 will error out and we’ll be forced to dig for the receipt and/or warranty paperwork.

Was telling a friend in IRC this morning that it kind of reminds me of the pinball machine we had. Pinball machines are notorious for requiring lots of maintenance. Too much for a guy like me that isn’t a huge fan of that kind of work. Kudos to those who are but we all have things we like that somebody else feels the opposite.

As long as these systems stay under warranty we’ll keep swapping them out. It’s hard for me to imagine another gaming machine in my lifetime that will have as many great games and encouraging gaming experience but be so completely awful in system reliability. It’s not like any of these 8 systems have tanked during a game – they haven’t - but when you shut the system off you walk away wondering if that will be your last gameplay session on that box ever.

Usually when something is this bad, it’s bad all around but that’s not the case for the Xbox 360. The software side is clicking while the hardware side is frankly inexcusable.

The funny thing is we have two of the original Xboxes and those are still working fine, so it must be a case of Xbox 360 design. Our PS3 and Wii are both doing fine. It’s well beyond making excuses when something breaks down eight times in (roughly) three years. It’s beyond making excuses if something goes bad twice in three years.

So I cannot and will not defend the Xbox 360 hardware problems any longer. As a gamer I will continue to play on the Xbox 360 platform. I’m starting to feel like something I’m not: a fanboy. Or a sucker. Maybe both. Tormented, there’s the word I was searching for.

Whatever the case, maybe some higher power can shower some good luck on our household so no more of these will die. Pretty please with a strawberry from Ms. Pac-man on top? If you are in the Xbox 360 has died brother and sisterhood, yes, we feel your pain.

These days I hesitate to share my anticipation for something based on a trailer, but the video game Brutal Legend just hits all my hot buttons. It’s a rock-based adventure based upon heavy metal album covers (awesome!) killer rock voices like Rob Halford, Lemmy and Ozzy and guitars as swords. Oh yeah. First, check out the trailer for yourself and judge for yourself:

I just showed our youngest teen the trailer and he said: “looks like a sweet game.” It’s coming out October 13, er, Rocktober 13 of course for both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Oh, and if you were wondering about face melting attacks? Check. Assuming you pull off a ripping guitar solo, that is.

Throwing up the Dio horns, this game does not have permission to suck.

There is some major irony in the following screenshot and activity:

If you follow the above blog’s RSS feed, you are treated to these worthless commercial interludes presumably to help ZDNet pay the bills. Sure, we could filter out crap like this by using a multitude of tools but haven’t enough readers railed against this type of pure noise, no signal use of RSS before? Sigh.

The television commercial model is under fire these days, at odds with common tech like DVR and the ability to buy TV series in higher quality on DVD and Blu-ray. There are a few scattered successes like the American Idol juggernaut, but by and large the way to make money on TV by interrupting viewers with commercials isn’t as healthy as it once was. And it was never a good idea to interrupt blog readers with a post consisting of only a clickable ad.

Then we’ve got DISH here locally and we still can’t watch ABC (channel 4) because of a fight over money, money, money that started in December with local station KOMO and Dish that resulted in the channel being yanked. When will it come back? Who knows. Meanwhile DISH customers go without why the finger pointing continues.

Where am I going with this? IT Project Failures is a ZDNet blog penned by Michael Krigsman. According to Krigsman’s ZDNet bio:

Michael Krigsman is CEO of Asuret, Inc. a consulting company dedicated to reducing technology implementation failures. Asuret’s suite of software tools improve the success rate of enterprise software deployments by quantifying and measuring governance issues that cause most project failures. Michael led the research effort underlying Asuret’s model of collective intelligence and its practical application to reducing IT failures in consulting environments.

And so presented to Mr. Krigsman via his blog’s RSS feed a “technology implementation failure” of dark proportions. Some free consulting courtesy of the RSS Zone. Unsubscribed.

Having been someone who has lost his temper before on an internet show I winced when I saw the normally calm and friendly Leo Laporte get angry and shut down the Gillmor Gang show over a Palm Pre review copy misunderstanding with Mike Arrington. I think the point Arrington tried to make was a very good one and it’s too bad that the usually passive Laporte took it as a personal insult and shut the show down. I think if given a similar situation 99 more times, Laporte would not have reacted the same way. But that’s not to say Arrington or Laporte did anything wrong.

Sometimes you just have bad days. That’s what I came away from this thinking.

I wish the internet mob would be able to look at these types of events and chalk them up as humans being human rather than trying to stir something up and going crazy as some are (apparently Arrington received death threats in the comment area of his apology post). We are all far from perfect and I think if each one of us looked inside ourselves when incidents like these come up we’d be able to say: yup, I remember reacting poorly to something and wish I could have that moment back. I sure do.

If you want to watch the live-aired version of what went wrong between Leo and Mike then click here to watch on YouTube, otherwise I’m embedding the funny keyboard cat version below.

I didn’t know what the keyboard cat was about and am normally not that fond of the LOLcatz animal humor but this video mashup cracked me up. Now go watch more keyboard cat at playhimoffkeyboardcat.com

Cooler heads prevail

Hopefully as the dust settles – and it seems by now Mike has already quickly apologized and Leo has accepted (in the comments area of same post) – the Gillmor Gang show should return and a serious discussion of the ethics of any company who might or might not be sending out gadget review units targeted primarily to those who will give a more positive review will be discussed and debated.

All keyboard cat kidding aside, that is a serious worthwhile discussion. What caused this spat is the primary reasons I stopped doing those paid ReviewMe reviews. The money was good and I didn’t feel obligated to give the products/services any particular positive slant. And I always started each review with disclosure for readers but at the end of the day something didn’t feel quite right. It left me feeling kind of dirty, so I stopped doing it. I wonder how many other tech pub writers have done the same?

While driving back to the office yesterday I heard over the local talk radio that there are some conspiracy theorists out there toting that the date of the 5/31/2009 crash for missing Air France Flight 447 adds up to 9/11: 5+3+1 = 9 and 2+0+0+9 = 11.

This is bunk. I did some quick math to come up with other dates that add up to 9/11 this month:

6/3/2009, 6/30/2009, 6/12/2009, 6/21/2009

In July:

7/02/2009, 7/20/2009, 7/11/2009

And in August:

8/1/2009

Should we expect other supposed 9/11 terrorist dates on one or more of these dates? Bogus. It’s all numerical coincidence and nothing more.  The reason the plane went down appears to be either mechanical or weather-related or combination of both:

It is believed that an electrical failure, which could have been linked to severe weather could be what is responsible for the disappearance of Air France flight 447.  France’s Environment Minister Jean Louis Borloo stated that, "Officials do not believe a simple bolt of lightning, something relatively classic in aviation could have caused the loss of the craft. There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation."

It’s doubtful that turbulence alone will be to blame despite the fact that turbulence can seem really scary as a passenger, but from the numerous articles I’ve read to date this plane crash has nothing to do with terrorists. But let’s assume it was, what would be the point of crashing a plane with people into the ocean? Who is that terrorizing, Captain Nemo?

Thoughts and prayers should go out to the families of Flight 447, not idiotic conspiracy theories.

E3 is the electronic expo (see the official E3 Expo website) where gaming and electronic goodies galore get showed off. Sometimes they are just promises more than guarantees, but this demo impressed Loren – and me too. It’s Project Natal for Xbox 360 and shows off you as the game controller of the future. If you aren’t seeing the YouTube video below embedded, then click on over and check this out.

If this thing works as well as demoed – and that remains to be played (not just seen) – then wow! Can you imagine what this will do to the game controller marketplace? And batteries!

Nintendo has already proven that games which get you physical can be very popular. This Project Natal looks like the Wii without the Wiimote.

Look, even Steven Spielberg is excited:

"This is a pivotal moment that will carry with it a wave of change, the ripples of which will reach far beyond video games"

Ian Paul at PC World wants to know five things about Project Natal:

1. When will it be available?
2. Will it work as advertised?
3. How much will it cost?
4. How complex can the games get?
5. Will Natal be backwards compatible with existing games?

All very good questions. Wouldn’t it be awesome if this technology would be available this upcoming holiday season? I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say it looks more like 2010 or 2011. Which of course gives Nintendo and Sony enough time to come up with their own controller-less game interface.

In the IRC we were just talking about how the adult market could seize upon something like this. Laugh if you like, but I’m serious here. None of the major game systems have an approved mature titles library, but that is a huge financial opportunity to whomever dares open the door. You can get XXX content on your cable, satellite, VUDU and online, but not your game system? Why not?

I suggested years ago here that Microsoft should embrace the adult marketplace rather than shun it. I think Sony is the most likely of the three to offer a mature gaming area based on present day company philosophies, but times can change. We’ll see.

Runpee.com serves mankind well by offering up a service that tells you when you can take that much needed bathroom break. Check out the logo which runs, pun intended, from white to yellow. Creative, I like.

To use the site, just click the movie you’re going to see and then the radio button. It will show scrambled spoiler text that can be unscrambled with what happens while you are gone runpeeing.

Hat tip to Lestat for sharing this one and helping to save bladders everywhere. Lestat, you must be off on a long bathroom break, as your blog was last updated in November 2008