Green Lantern – Movie Review
Typically I usually don’t end up at movie preview events, but I managed to check out the Green Lantern at one such event. I saw the movie on Wednesday night (6/15/2011) with a few other people I know who managed to get passes also. I have never had any interest in the Green Lantern at all, so the source material is not something I am very familiar with or know about. Before I begin to get into the review I want to warn you there will be spoilers in the review and if you don’t want to read them you should click back now.
Read more 
Snipping tool
When I need to take screen shots for my blog posts I use a combo of the “Print Screen” button and Paint.net to get the job done. In Vista, Microsoft added a new toy to the OS. It’s called Snipping Tool, Microsoft’s attempt to beef up screen captures. It allows you to snip portions of the window or desktop you are working on and save them in an image format. The tool can be found in the Accessories folder under All programs.
Paper vs. E-Ink – Amazon Kindle review
I didn’t always love to read. It just happened late into my high school career. I have been enjoying ready for well over ten years. I’ll read most anything from magazines to books and my topics will cover things from bad Sci-Fi books to historical books. Reading is a wonderful past time that allows me to flex my awesome imagination. The journey books can take you on is only limited by your interests and imagination.
I spent the past month reading a trilogy of books called BattleTech: The Warrior Trilogy. Reading all three books sequentially was very rewarding, but to me it also put forth the best test of the Kindle. I enjoyed the fact that I can carry around 900+ pages of text in a light (10.2 oz.) format. During my reading I did “purchase” some free books and samples of other books that interest me. The process was easy to find and buy books. It was a little slow but I only had 2 bars when I was in the store, but speed was not important to me. The kindle lasts about 14 or so days on a single charge without using whisper net.
Wii like movies – Netflix on the Wii Review
When Netflix was announced for the Wii I signed up for a disc. My Disc arrived the weekend I went to Boston for PAX and has been sitting idly by until this past weekend. I have been looking for a good excuse to try this disc out. Everyone at my day job has been telling me good things about “King of Kong,” what better way to test out the streaming for the service than with a documentary on the high score of Donkey Kong. That is sweet gaming irony right there 
.
Anyway, putting the disc in and launching into Netflix is easy. It’s just like playing a regular Wii game. Once Netflix loads which takes about a minute or two, depending on your connection, to the main screen. You can then browse your instant queue, movie genres, TV shows or a slew of other categories. You are only really limited by the content in each category. So lets say you are browsing the Television category, you will see only a 100 different TV Shows. Which is limiting if you are looking for a particular one. As far as I can tell you can’t sort the results in each category item, so you will have to look through all the items to see if what you want is listed. Which depending on what you are looking for maybe a short look through or might take some time. I do wish Netflix would have included a search feature instead of browsing through categories. Just makes loading up movies for streaming not an easy task. Just means I’ll be using my instant queue list more and adding things while surfing from my PC.
I did some simple tests on movie loading from inside of Netflix. It seems to take about 15 seconds from the time you press watch now to the video starting to play. I did not find that to be anything too long. I watched “King of Kong” completely through this service and I had no issues. The picture was very good and it looked like I was watching a DVD. I couldn’t have asked for a better quality video. There wasn’t any skipping or needing to buffer the video while it was playing. My Wii is a good 50 ft away from the wireless router and has several walls between the two. Results may vary based on your setup and internet connection.
Next I decide to try “Babylon 5: The Lost Tales” since I already watched that streaming on my PC so it would be a good test. I only had a few minor issues with the compression of this but overall it was another very good quality video. My issues really came up when Sheridan and Galen in the dream sequence after showing New York City in the future. The dark purple background was pixelating and artifacting in a way I didn’t notice when I saw on my PC. I also decided to check out a few other titles on the Instant Streaming. I noticed that it depends on the movie or video you are streaming through the service as each seem to use different compression technologies.
In conclusion, I would recommend the Netflix Streaming Disc if you have a Wii and a Netflix account. I should point out that the TV I used to watch the Netflix streaming is a 20” LCD that maxes out at 480p in resolution, your experience on a larger screen may differ. I do plan to use this service more as it’s a perfect way to really get in and right into a movie with in 5 minutes with really not setup at all. I have also heard several people say you can’t rate movies through this service. I’ve rated a few movies I watched with no problem and they show up on my Netflix account.
