What better time to watch movies than Thanksgiving break?
Today I kicked back and watched The Kingdom. I’d seen this movie before, but at the time I’d been less politically aware and far less able to spot genuine acts of badassery. I wouldn’t say Jamie Foxx is the ultimate badass (because he doesn’t, at any point, say “yipee-ki-yay”) but I’d say he’s pretty close. When you have not one, but two “x”es in your name, then beat the shit out of a military officer in front of his whole squad for slapping your friend, “badass” is an unavoidable word.
Reading into it a little bit, the movie puts in quite a lot of cultural, political, and diplomatic dialogue. Not all of it is positive, but they’re definitely trying to go from boom boom pow action movie to “It’s an ugly world, here’s what might happen.” In my opinion, this is a must do for any action movie without massive robots that turn into cars that haven’t even come out yet.
The tension between almost all of the characters throughout the movie is almost palpable (though I’m sure many people would argue with me on this point) and the final scene is so far above and beyond my expectations that I was surprised again, even though I knew what would happen.
Though it’s definitely just a movie, The Kingdom somehow adds elements of surprise, plot, and character that make it feel like this could really happen. Just the right amount of spontaneity mixed with just the right amount of holy-shit-that-was-so-cool moments.
A must see, and one of the most underrated movies I’ve ever liked.
The game has been out for almost two weeks now, I know. I’m not trying to sell this game, I’m just here to announce to the world my absolute love for this game. As soon as I put in the game, I saw the intro movie and then made my way to the menu. The simple, wonderful, three-part opening screen which said “Special Ops,” “Campaign,” and “Multiplayer,” spurred me to promise myself not to write a blog post until the progress percentages underneath each section said 100%. So here it is.
I love this game. My first holy-shit-I-love-this experience with Call of Duty didn’t happen until December 27, 2008. I got home from Blockbuster (too broke to buy a game after laying down all of my christmas money for my new PS3) and slid Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare into the machine. The campaign took me the rest of that night and the first part of the next day to beat. The whole experience was essentially a stretched out loss of my gaming virginity: As it happened, I was too amazed to focus on anything else. I had so much fun with it that it ended quickly, and when the credits were done rolling, I sat there stunned and satisfied, but wishing it hadn’t ended.
Then, gazing longingly at the main menu, I noticed “Multiplayer.” At this point I had two weeks left in my winter recess, and in those two weeks, I fell in love with console gaming all over again.
Needless to say, when I heard about Modern Warfare 2, I freaked out. I spent hours on YouTube looking for gameplay clips and watching trailers. Nothing prepared me for this though. It’s SO fun and SO deep. From having to use trigger buttons to climb ice walls to defending my teammate (roommate) on the ground with an AC-130 gunship to ranking through the online challenges on a variety of very cool maps, I feel – as I put it to my girlfriend – like a little kid at christmas time. It’s awesome
Based on the opening sales, anyone who cares about the game already has it, so I won’t bore you with details. I probably would, but I have a Search and Destroy mission to get to.
Over and out.
I haven’t posted in a few months because I am very conflicted about this blog. I know what I have to do to get a good number of hits: write about current tech trends (things likely to take water from the Google river) and, especially, Twitter. There’s only one problem with this model: I don’t enjoy it. I don’t really care if Twitter just signed a deal with Google (they did) or if Microsoft’s Bing is growing faster than any other search engine (it is). Okay, so I guess it’s not that I don’t care. I just don’t care enough to write about it. If I – uninformed, internet-dwelling college student – know about it, then it’s already been written about. Extensively.
So this blog is getting a makeover. Maybe not in appearance (at least for now), but in content. I’m sick of uploading these little blurbs about tech industry news so that I can be another outlet for the same information. No, that’s being done (and much better than I can do it) already. So from now on, this is – both literally and figuratively – my domain. I’ll write about whatever I want in whatever format I want. I don’t need your hits, not here. I’m sick of selling my soul for hits that won’t ever even translate into any monetary gain. So for now, and on The Dobbs Method, forever, I’m writing what I want to because I want to.
If you don’t like the direction I’m taking, then don’t visit my blog. My feelings won’t be hurt, it’s okay. I’m not sure I would want to be lectured by another geek about his geekery either. But for those of you out there who want to see into the mind of a gamer/blogger/boyfriend/son/student/slob/college boy (not in that order), then stick around.
Later,
Taylor
P.S. Why am I not starting over in a new blog? Because the stuff that I have posted here still gets hits, so someone finds it useful on a daily basis. It’s not lost, it’s just not what I want to do now. The Dobbs Method is whatever I want it to be, and more than anything else I want it to be dynamic. That’s why this post is just above one that is exactly what I was saying that I don’t want to do.
AT&T recently expanded its coverage into Vermont, where I live. Being a complete geek, I quickly got myself an iPhone. Of couse, I was excited. Over time, the splendor has faded. Here’s why:
On Thursday August 6th 2009 at 9:45 AM, some hackers somewhere claimed victory; Twitter and Facebook were down. At the same time. The victory was rare and short lived, as Facebook came back up (though showing some problems) within minutes. However, as of 11:35 AM, Twitter was still down. Those who gather news on Twitter (and send it out) are obviously paralyzed for a solution.
According to a PC Magazine article, Twitter confirms this outage in their status blog, updating that they “are defending against a denial-of-service attack.”
The site is likely to return to working status before the end of the day. It seems as though such a large and clearly coordinated attack on large social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter would have been noticed and prepared for. Clearly, Facebook was more ready than Twitter for this. They’ve been around longer, have more hardware and more staff to deal with such problems, and have likely faced them before.
Whatever the case, this has been a clear reminder to Twitter of its vulnerability (They shouldn’t need one – they get hacked almost weekly).
The social news site Digg (mentioned in my last post) has recently accounced that they are developing an Application Programming Interface, which will make it easy for programmers and web designers to create anything from desktop apps to online bots that automatically digg or submit stories.
This move by the site comes after it’s fallen somewhat to the background in the world of social media. Though it has a very large user-base, the average user does not use digg, whereas an average user has an account on either Facebook or Twitter. It appears as though digg is hoping to become an everyday part of the internet experience, with widgets on sites and maybe even a desktop application for heavy users.
As with any API, the effect of this decision will not be seen until developers get their hands on it. If digg is trying to catch up in the social media world, they’ve taken a step in the right direction.
In my never-ending quest to have a strong and enjoyable presence on the internet, I’ve created a tumblr page to compliment my blog as well as Twitter. There are so many thoughts I have that are worth more than a tweet, but that I don’t have time or energy to put into a blog post. I’m hoping tumblr will help me fill these gaps and help me get my two cents in.
You can find my page here. Tumblr is simply a mini-blogging site. I can make a quick post of a cool video I’ve found, an article I liked, or a quick story from my day. We’ll see how it goes. Enjoy!
