Blackjack

This weekend I saw the movie 21. It's based on a true story of a really smart MIT student who needs to raise money for Harvard medical school. One of his professors, who notices his math skills, trains him and five fellow students to become card-counting experts, with the intent of swindling millions of dollars out of Vegas casinos. It stars Kevin Spacey, Jim Sturgess, Laurence Fishburne, and super hot Kate Bosworth. I really enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it if your a fan of Ocean's 11 or 13 (12 sucked).
Exp. Rating +10

Speaking of Kate's, my friends and I also had a discussion on who's the hottest Kate: Kate Bosworth, Kate Hudson, Kate Beckinsale, or Kate from Lost (Evangeline Lilly). I think we collectively decided Kate Beckinsale wins after we watched Van Helsing (Exp. Rating +5) this weekend too. She teams up with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in this movie and fights vampires, werewolf's and even Frankenstein. And she has Transilvanian horses (the bestest horses ever!) which trumps Kate's horse from Lost.

Monkey Tricks

An Indonesian monkey riding a mini bike in the streets. Probably the coolest monkey trick I've ever seen! Monkey +10 Exp. Points

True Fear

The polar bear discussion (can a human outrun one?) has moved over to a more real level for me this week. You see, a mountain lion was sighted on one of my favorite mountain biking trails, Blackstar Canyon. I know it's mountain lion country back there, but it's been a while since I've heard of a sighting. Mountain lions strike fear into mountain bikers, like sharks do to surfers. It's just one of those things you have to be smart and educate yourself about and never ride in these areas alone. Also videos like below don't help either! And yes, I know it's a tiger in the video but it's still very scary!

Let's Have Cake!

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts today, Buzz Out Loud, and someone called in asking to explain the saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." I also never really understood what this meant and thought it was a stupid saying because, I can have cake AND eat it to. What it REALLY means is, once you eat your cake - you don't "have" it anymore. It's now gone. The confusing part of this saying is the word "have" because in the English language we say we are going to have cake - which means eat cake. So if you want to continue to possess (have) your cake, you can't eat it. It now makes sense!

Double Kill

Once again the battle rifle was set aside this holiday weekend and I grabbed my favorite Easter candy, a box of marshmallow peeps (surprisingly no invert sugar either), and watched two movies.

First up, Beowulf. This is one of the few stories from high school that I remember enjoying, so I was looking forward to seeing the movie adaptation. Beowulf is the story of a young warrior who fights and kills the monster Grendel, then Grendel's mother and finally a dragon. Reading all of this in high school, I had imagined some pretty epic battles against some really scary monsters. Flash forward to the movie and WOW! what a disappointment! Grendel looks like a zombie Gollum from Lord of the Rings - not even as scary as he is written about in the original story; and Beowulf kills the monster by cutting off his arm - pretty much as the original story is told.

From here, the writers of the movie thought they were better than the anonymous author of the legendary, epic poem so they re-wrote the story to have Beowulf not kill Grendel's mother but rather be seduced by her and have a demon child - the dragon. Now Beowulf must kill the dragon (his son) to save the kingdom. Why the writers thought they could re-write the story and make it "better" is beyond me. The final battle between Beowulf and the dragon is pretty cool to watch but other than that, this movie is terrible.
Exp. Rating -10

Next up was Drillbit Taylor. Owen Wilson, one of my favorite actors, plays a homeless, ex-soldier who is tired of his life and has an idea to move to Canada, "Where the government pays you to take the land". In order to get the money, he tricks three kids into hiring him as a bodyguard, so he can steal their rich parents' belongings to sell at a pawn shop. While this movie is not one of Wilson's best, it still has a lot of funny stuff in it to make it worth checking out.
Exp. Rating +1

Free Heroic Map Pack

Bungie announced that this Tuesday, March 25th, the Heroic Map Pack will now be a free download on Xbox Live Marketplace. The 3 maps are: Standoff, Rat's Nest, and Foundry. Click Here for more info.

Week in Review

I learned a few interesting things at work this week and thought I'd share with all our readers.

1) A human can outrun a polar bear (and easily escape on a bike). This topic happened to come up as one of this site's editors is going on a fishing trip to Canada and was worried that a polar bear might eat him. While the polar bear is an excellent swimmer, and you would be dead in the water against one, on land it's a different story. A polar bear weighs on average 660–1320 lbs and can only run a max 25 mph for short distances. Humans FTW.

2) Invert Sugar - Sucrose can be split into its two component sugars (glucose and fructose). This process is called inversion, and the product is called invert sugar. Because this creates very fine sugar crystals, invert sugar is used in making filling or coating for cakes, pastries, and candies which require a smoother product. This was the second ingredient on my pack of sour patch kids after the first ingredient sugar. Since I have started reading labels, I've never heard of such a thing before and while we all know high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is addictive and bad for you, I have to say invert sugar gets +5 experience points.

Legendary Map Pack

3 new Halo maps are coming April 15th! They will be titled: Avalanche (a re-make of Halo 1's "Sidewinder"), Ghost Town, and the third is still a mystery. Let's all hope for a "Hang 'Em High" re-make! Click Here for more info.

*Update*
Just got some more info on the maps. The third one is called Moonlight Sonata and I heard a rumor that it could be a re-make of Lockout!! Lockout would seem to match the name of the map. I don't know what I want more, a re-make of Lockout or Hang 'em High...Can we have both Bungie???

Puzzle Quest 1.5

I really love Puzzle Quest. Other than Halo 3, this is probably my next favorite game. It is available for pretty much every platform (I happen to own the DS version) but the 360 version is by far the best now! A new expansion pack for the Xbox 360 has just been announced that includes four new hero professions, scores of new spells to cast and items to collect, challenging new quests, monsters, bosses and much more. Click Here for more information.

I also can't wait for Infinite Interactive's upcoming sci-fi game: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix too!

Xbox 360 Video Capture

Game Platform: Xbox 360
Capture Card: Pinnacle MovieBoard Plus
Capture Software: Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus

My setup is connected as such:
Xbox 360 (RCA Component) --> Pinnacle Movieboard --> PC Computer (Via Pinnacle Movieboard PCI Card).
The Xbox 360 video output displays in a preview screen in the capture/editing program. Merely make a film clip of your Halo 3 video and go to Studio and you will see Halo 3/Xbox in that preview screen and just navigate to your video. All you have to do is start your film clip and click start capture.

In my search to buy a capture card and capture video from my Xbox 360, I found almost no affirmative results of capture cards and devices that worked or worked in a simple manner. I read of people running it through splitters, camcorders, VCR's, TV's, etc. This is my solution to this problem using the Pinnacle Movieboard Plus and its video editing software.

One thing that you may not realize is that not only do you need to be able to capture the video, but you also need to edit and convert it. This is why you also need some sort of video editing software. The Pinnacle Movieboard comes with it's Studio 11 software which allows for decent editing (plenty of tools to make a montage and such) and output formats in AVI, Mpeg, etc

Note: Movieboard does not support HDMI or HD Component cables, it only takes RCA, S-Video, DV, USB, and Firewire. Also , Movieboard installs via a PCI slot.

So what you need to do is get the Moveboard, its about $130.00, not bad when you consider you get editing software and a kick ass capture device. Install it according to how the instructions tell you.

Now, once you are done, make sure that when the Windows: Found New Device window pops and up and asks to try and install it that you go along with EVERYTHING. This will pretty much let Windows go through exactly what you did when you installed the software, but for some reason, the PC may not read the Xbox 360 if the software/hardware is not installed by Windows.

So hook up your component (RCA) connection to the Xbox 360 (Movieboard does not support HDMI or HD Component cables, it only takes RCA, S-Video, DV, USB, and Firewire). Now plug the RCA cables into the little black box that comes with Movieboard and make sure its plugged into the Capture Card installed in your PC.

Finally, start up the Pinnacle Studio software and go to capture. Now click on Setup and go to Capture Settings. From here set Video and Audio to Pinnacle 700-PCI. Everything should now be set to capture and all you need to do is save your Halo 3 film clips and then start the movie in your preview screen and click capture!!

Go through the tabs and select the clips in order and put them in your project then go to the make movie tab and select your output format and make the movie. You now have your first captured video from Halo 3.

Our First Halo 3 Video

Here it is, our first Halo 3 video ever posted to the site. Unfortunately we have to go through YouTube at the moment so the quality won't be that great, the capture card worked wonderfully and captured a quality video.

I have read about people having a lot of problems with video capture devices and their xbox 360; the setup I used worked so well that there will be another post describing how to do this with the Pinnacle Studio Moviemaker Plus.

Halo Inspiration

Can not wait to have this hanging in my office.
Exp. Rating +10

Triple Kill

This weekend I put down the battle rifle and decided to watch a few fantasy movies.

First up was "Stardust". It's about a young man who journeys to a magical world to win the heart of his true love. On his campaign to find a fallen star for his true loves hand in marriage, he upgrades to a much hotter girl, sails with pirates, battles witches and discovers his destiny. It's a really enjoyable movie!
Exp. Rating +10

Next up, "The Spiderwick Chronicles". I haven't read any of the books and knew nothing about the story going into it other than it was a fantasy with monsters. It is a story about a magical, invisible world that exists within our own and a book is discovered that holds this worlds secrets and it must be protected from falling into the wrong hands. It was a fun hour and a half.
Exp. Rating +5

Finally, I attempted to watch "The Golden Compass". I say attempted because I was unable to finish the movie. About 45 minutes in, I just couldn't take any more. One of the worst movies I have ever seen! It has a terrible and confusing story and absolutely zero character development. Avoid it completely!
Exp. Rating -10


--- Tom Kore No More Parries Master Chief ---

Let me 'sticky nade' Master Chief's allotment of points to Stardust and Spiderwick Chronicles. -10 and -5, respectively. Proof that Master Chief would rather plug into the plasma that enhance the innards of his helmet.

Stardust - My halo-loving 8 year-old thought Stardust was lame with lack-luster special effects. Only saving grace was to see Deniro dancing in a tutu.

Spiderwick - My daughter's first eureka that movies suck compared to the book.
Put down the battle rifle MC and read :)

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