I was very resistant to watching this series because of the lack of Kevin Conroy voicing Batman but I finally relented.  To me, that is the absolute voice of Batman.  It’s like recasting a part that an actor had for 30 years for no reason.  Anyway, the premise is simply Batman + obscure DC hero fight obscure DC villain.  By comparison, Batman The Animated series focused on Batman and more of his detective like abilities.  This show highlights sort of the antics of Batman as a crime fighter fighting zany villains.  By just that description, you could say it’s worse and maybe geared for a younger audience, however the series isn’t so bad.  Maybe after watching so much Smallville and not seeing epic superhero fights, this is the balance.  I’d say it’s worth watching, but not taking seriously. Though I do wish there were more Green Lantern.

I grabbed the new Xbox Live Experience (XBLE) this Wednesday fairly late.  I wanted to avoid the potential problems that may crop up with billions of Xboxes try downloading at once or if there were any major bugs to avoid it until they were fixed.  Fortunately, it looks like Microsoft did a great job with distribution and the only bug I know of is some units won’t play sound when hooked up through HDMI which doesn’t concern my unit at home.  I take an HDMI cable to travel with my Xbox though so I’m not sure if it affects me when I’m at my parent’s house or at a friend’s playing Rock Band.

I have to say, I enjoyed the blades a bit more, there’s two menu options that feel completely useless and can clutter up the new menu system.  You can get rid of one, but you still have to deal with the other which is basically just XBL online video stuff.  I was greeted with the avatar creation system and made a fairly close looking guy to myself.  It felt very mii-ish but had a bit more customization.  No chance to see what the point of the avatar is yet since I don’t own any games that use them, but maybe they’ll be cool.

I installed Rock Band 2 to the hard drive.  It takes a bit.  I loaded it up and didn’t notice any phenomenal loading time difference.  I won’t say I didn’t notice any difference, it did seem a bit faster, but it won’t make the songs load up in 2 seconds or anything.  I did notice that the Xbox itself is very quiet, which is a huge plus when it used to be an annoying background noise.

Now based on this great Lifehacker article I installed TVersity onto my desktop and was able to stream all my video files except for .mkv extensions without any trouble.  I’m sure there’s a way to get those to stream but I haven’t messed with it yet, either way, I’m loving the new streaming options.  I even got some classic Star Trek up on the TV.

There’s one glaring issue with the Xbox and it’s unrelated to any new change and probably won’t affect people with new widescreen TVs.  But I have an old 4:3 HDTV.  So the Xbox setting for high def pushes it to 1080i mode which is fine, but when displaying content in 4:3 it should revert to 480p automatically like my DVD player does.  Now when watching 4:3 content, I get in in this centered little window on my TV and it’s annoying to manually switch.

Overall, the changes are kinda minimal for such a long wait for this update.  The best feature is installing to HD, but some games are hit and miss.  Halo 3 doesn’t like being installed for instance by design.  I’m dying to know how good the Netflix thing is because I kind of want to dumb regular cable for Netflix since I don’t end up watching a lot of TV anymore.  There are some things that I might really have a hard time not occasionally watching (Adult Swim/Globe Trekker/Food Network) so it’s a hard decision.

Brightening up your post-mid-week boredom I present a catchy tune:

The Cab – Bounce
Metallica – The Unforgiven III
Metallica – The Day That Never Comes
Mute Math – Typical
Coheed & Cambria – No World For Tomorrow
Coheed & Cambria – Gravemakers & Gunslingers
Coheed & Cambria – Once Upon Your Dead Body
Fall Out Boy – The Take Over The Breaks Over
Yellowcard – Lights And Sounds
Fall Out Boy – Fame Infamy
Tonic – Jump Jimmy
Sixto Sounds, Zircon – Lunatic Moon
Bang Camaro – Night Lies
Orange Range – Thank You
TiA – Ryuusei
Gorillaz – 19-2000

Through some curse I always manage to destroy a set of headphones.  Maybe destroy isn’t accurate, but they always seem to stop working through what I consider no real fault of my own.  I didn’t want to use the white iPod earbuds and advertise “Hey, I’m like everyone else with an iPod!!” So for a while I used these headphones that came with my laptop.  The coolest part of those headphones was inline volume control.  However, one day they just stopped producing sound unless the cord was in just the right position.  I had to go back to the iPod earbuds.  I was ok with this for a while until I noticed one day I’m having to keep the iPod cranked to full blast just to hear at a reasonable level.  I almost thought I was going deaf until I realized that I can still hear everyday things just fine.  I looked at the earphones and the connection at the iPod was looking like it was being ripped right out of the sleeve.

So it turns out there are 2 types of headphone connections, you have the straight in type, and the L shaped connection.  The way I wrap up my headphones when not in use really stresses out the straight in connection and I think that’s basically what happened with the first two headphones.  Now this wasn’t really my focus for my new set of headphones.  I was looking for a good set of noise reducing headphones which means that unless I want to have this battery pod on my cord, I have to go with canalbuds.  I wasn’t a big fan intially because the idea of jamming something so deep in your ear just seemed gross.  But I didn’t want to go to over the ear or clip ons.  So I settled in on these Sony Behind the Neck Ear Bud Headphones.

Overall, they’ve been pretty good.  I had to turn on the equalizer to treble boost and they sounded terrific.  I swapped to the large fitting and they do a really great job of muffling exterior sounds.  The reviews speak for themselves and I agree with most of the things they say.  They have a really short 1 foot cord with a 1 foot extension so if I ever got an armband the cord length would be awesome.  Otherwise 2 feet is plenty long enough.  The only downside is now I can’t pocket the headphones, I just have to take them off and put them around my neck.  On the plus side, it has the L shape connector so wrapping it around the iPod should hopefully not kill them.  That’s only on the extension though, the short cord has a straight connection.

Some other things I need to pick up for my iPod are a waterproof kit so I can listen in the shower and a car connection kit.  I think a waterproof speaker was only around $20 but the car kit is around $120.

Blizzcon 08

I have other far darker pictures (stupid no flash) that I’ll look at brightening up to see if they’re passable for posting.

I remember years ago when Max Payne came out and the office was abuzz with chit chat regarding the awesomeness of the game and it’s bullet time effect.  For some reason, I didn’t play it.  I managed to avoid the peer pressure.  Maybe I wanted to play it and never got around to it.  Maybe his scrunched up face was a little off putting.  Seriously, can Marky Mark pull it off?  Let’s see the comparison:

Look at that face.  Sure you look at the back of his head for most of the game but when he turns around that’s what I gotta look at!  Anyway, faces aside, the movie is coming out.  And I’m watching it, and they mention something like “The devil is building his army” and “God wants to stay hidden” and then I see these demons and I think to myself, “Ummmm, I don’t remember demons in Max Payne.”

SHOTTY however said that I was an idiot and should have played that game for it to make more sense.  I don’t see why you’d market something for the minority if you want to make a successful movie.  I mean, wouldn’t you want it to be accessible and give it a mainstream appeal?  Wouldn’t after the movie you want to go play those games?  I don’t think airing a trailer highlighting confusing factoids would do that.  Buuuuuuuuuuuuut, then he linked a quality 2 minute trailer:

http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/150748/max-payne/videos/maxpayne_livecomic_092308.html

and it explains everything!  Now, I’m thinking, “Hey, this might be a totally awesome movie that I might go see!”

Smallville Season 8 premiers tonight. The CW’s take this season:

THE JUSTICE LEAGUE RETURNS TO FIND CLARK AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE FORTRESS; THE NEW CEO OF LUTHORCORP COMES TO TOWN — The Justice League, lead by the Green Arrow (Justin Hartley), hits the Artic in search of Clark (Tom Welling), who disappeared after the fortress collapsed. The team immediately has a confrontation with the new CEO of Luthorcorp, Tess Mercer (Cassidy Freeman). Meanwhile, Chloe (Allison Mack) is being held prisoner by a suspicious group who has discovered she has a new power, and Clark has been stripped of his powers by Jor-El. Erica Durance and Aaron Ashmore also star.

I still haven’t watched the abbreviated season 2 of Heroes.  Other than that, Battlestar Galactica sounds like it’s postponed until next April and that’s all I watch.

UPDATED: Impressions of S08E01 past the break

Read the rest of this entry

Coincidentally most of the songs are recent Rock Band 1 DLC songs.  So great!  Very varied though eh?

For the last several years my friends asked me to fill in a spot on their fantasy league.  It wasn’t until last year I was faced with the ultimatum of “Play or we’ll get someone else” to which I finally agreed to play.  Unfortunately for them, I was the all time greatest player ever in the history of their league!!!  Ok maybe a little hyperbole, but I did end up winning the playoffs which was pretty funny however, I found out my victory is a little hollow due to how the system is setup.  The playoffs are played where most of the first string players are sort of kept fresh and don’t have as much playtime as usual.  So the best overall teams of the season get a little gimped when it matters most.

Ok and like last year, I missed the draft again.  So my automated team looks like this:

Manning, Eli QB NYG
Smith, Kevin RB DET
Tomlinson, LaDainian RB SD
Burleson, Nate WR SEA
Mason, Derrick WR BAL
Ward, Hines WR PIT
Gonzalez, Tony TE KC
Folk, Nick K DAL
Jaguars DST

Campbell, Jason QB WAS
Bush, Reggie RB NO
Edwards, Braylon WR
Olsen, Greg TE CHI
Texans DST

I think I got a fair team for missing it entirely.  Let’s see if I can pull off a 2 year streak!