Category Archives: reviews

Reviews / feedback / comments on books, movies, television, technology, food, etc. (These might be short snippets and not long reviews)

Today I Spent Money…

Posted on May 29, 2006 | 1 comment

So with the sales today I bought a few things.

Digtial Picture Frame
I Saw these the other week at Target and said when they go on sale I’m gonna get one. It’s medium quality, it might go back the the store, but for $99 I didn’t really expect much. What I want to see is how it looks if I scale the photos first…
Frequency
These movies are for my 50 excellent movies item on my 101 in 1001 days list. Frequency is a great and slightly different time travel movie (for everyone, not just geeks). I considered putting this on the list, but when it hit $5.99 (at CC) it was a no brainer.
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Gena Davis as an action heroine.
The Chronicles of Narnia
It’s just plain great, I think anyone would like this even if they don’t know where Narnia is.
Digital Thermometer
This was on the clearance rack at Target for cheap and it’s got the humidity sensor, the outdoor connector (wireless), moon phase and syncs to the atomic clock. All this for only $12.50, I should have got two!

I’ll do reviews for the movies when I watch them. It seems like I bought more but I’m not going downstairs to check…

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Orbit by John J. Nance – Review

Posted on May 26, 2006 | 2 comments

I read a great book yesterday. Please note I didn’t say I finished it, I read the whole thing! Orbit, by John J. Nance, is a novel about a man who wins a day trip into space. An accident causes the vacation to end abruptly and the adventure begins. After determining the ship will not fly and he has no radio contact with Earth he figures eventually someone will find his body either in the near future or the far future so in-between sleeping and watching sunsets and sunrises he starts to write his life story. From his current (disastrous) marriage to his first love (and first time) he blogs writes about it.

What the heck, he’ll be dead by the time someone sees it, right? And if he’s rescued, he just has to delete it. Here’s the catch: keystrokes are recorded and sent back (one way) to Earth. He’s a hit, in essence it’s the most popular thing (blog?) ever, everyone is reading it and he doesn’t know it, everyone is talking about it (commenting) but he doesn’t know it. Since it’s keystrokes, they even see what he deletes. With nothing to lose he writes about everything: good, bad, regrets, just about everything.

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Skype gets more free! Gets free-er?

Posted on May 16, 2006 | 4 comments

So I’m sure you’ve heard of Skype, right? You can use it to make “phone calls” from computer to computer for free. I used it to make phone calls from Egypt to the US while I was there, it cost me about 2.1 cents per minute to make a call to any telephone in the US (I could have called another Skype computer for free).

They’ve just made it more free. Yes, I said free, to call the US and Canada for the rest of the year (2006). It shouldn’t matter where you are in the world, to call me would be free for the rest of the year. So download Skype now and give it a try.

FYI, I’ve ditched my landline phone at home and have just my cellular phone. So I programmed Skype with my local police/fire number so if I ever have a crisis I can at least use my computer for an emergency phone call (if needed). I just called up and said, I’ve just got a cell phone what’s the best non-911 number to call when I have an emergency.

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TVisto Multimedia Player

Posted on April 12, 2006 | 2 comments

Tvisto2500So I got a new cool toy, it’s a TVisto Lite 2500. Think of it as a mini-hard drive that hooks up (and is powered) by your USB 2.0 port (Macintosh, Windows, probably anything), then you drag video, mp3 and photo files over to it. Then you go hook it up to your TV/stereo system (with the included cable and power adaptor) and a menu pops up and you can play the video, mp3 or photos on your TV and speakers. You can use the buttons on the box or the included remote control. It’s an easy way to get those files off your computer and play them on any other TV/stero at home or at a friend’s. It’s awesome!

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Deal? Or No Deal?

Posted on April 3, 2006 | 4 comments

She had 1 penny, $400,000 and $750,000 on the board so they offered her $375,000. A very generous offer as the show goes. If she doesn’t take the money she has to open one more. She said she was a gambler so this should have been easy and Howie pretty much spelled it out for her that there were 3 options if she picked the case:

  • She could pick the penny and the offer would go up (probably to about $575,000, IMHO) and you could play between $400k and $750k or go.
  • She picks the $400,000 case and the offer stays at about $375,000 (the logical spot is the same amount, but I think Howie inferred it’d go up) and you should quit.
  • This is the worse option, she picks the $750,000 and the offer drops to $200,000 (Howie did the math for her on this one and I’ve never seen him be specific before) and you’d have to quit then.

    It’s all a win at that point, so to me you keep on playing. At that point even making a bad choice you still have $200,000!!! And the good choices (66%) are better!

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    Schrodinger’s Deal (or No Deal)

    Posted on March 27, 2006 | 2 comments

    I love Deal or No Deal they offer people money and people constantly turn it down. It’s kinda funny actually giving away free money.

    What really happens is they have 26 briefcases with money in it from one cent to on million dollars (semi-evenly increments randomly placed) you pick a briefcase which is now “yours”. You then pick other cases to removed them from play, obviously whatever you pick is not in your case, then every so often they offer you money to “buy” your briefcase. The more big numbers left the higher they offer you, they don’t want you to walk out with $1,000,000. The numbers they offer you are often statistically sound, if it’s down to two cases they generally offer you somewhere in the middle. When it’s a half dozen cases it’s pretty scattered but I can still guess pretty close as to the offer.

    People really make bonehead moves though. They’ve got five low numbers and one high number and they keep opening cases. Yes, it drives the price up but if you hit the one case you lose! And they generally get too greedy. Or they keep going and then they chicken out and take the money when they were offered way more the previous turn.

    The weird part is you never see anyone get the $1,000,000. Why you ask? Because if it’s down to two case $0.01 and $250,000 and they offer you $125,000 are you really going to say no deal when you might only get a penny? Maybe if you have two cases and it’s $250,000 and $500,000 (offering you $375,000) you might take the chance since you’re a big winner either way (but statistically it’s still only $250,000 difference either way).

    I’ve still got a few more things so read on (I haven’t even discussed Schrodinger yet, nor the fact that it’s not really your case).

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    Alex Rider and Harry Potter

    Posted on March 22, 2006 | 8 comments

    First we digress: This post was supposed to be a follow up to a post that I thought I did but can’t find the message but I can’t really do the follow up first now can I?

    So I’ve always thought there were connections between Alex Rider and Harry Potter. Young English boys who are orphans and get to go on the adventure of a lifetime. Harry gets to be a wizard and Alex gets to be a secret agent. Both had father’s in the business but didn’t get to know them (or all the secrets). Plus they’re always getting injured…

    SPOILERS! If you haven’t read book four, Scorpia, don’t read on, I’m going to give the ending away.

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    The Unit

    Posted on March 7, 2006 | 1 comment

    TheunitSo I’m watching the pilot of The Unit, which sucked me in, it wasn’t my plan. I’m tired and I’m on call for the shelter tonight (until 8am) so I was going to hit the sack in case I go called. But I’m really liking this show. I like the cast (Dennis Haysbert, Scott Foley and others I can’t think of) and then after a few minutes I realized it was the David Mamet show I heard about, I hadn’t heard anything about it (I think I saw it on the front of the entertainment section but then missed the article). He usually does theater or movies, I’m guessing this is his first series. The one thing I remember hearing about him is that if he does something and didn’t write all it he uses a pen name for producing (or something like that). So back to the show, it’s a group of military guys in a unit, a unit that has no name, a unit that gets things done. I like it so far. (a lot)

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