I bought the new Star Trek movie on DVD and watched it today. My expectations have been quite low and I though this is going to be like Muppets Babies and Muppets – the original characters but just younger. From what I have seen in the trailers the movie looked like a mixture of Star Wars and Die Hard but everyone recommend it to me so I bought it finally. I didn’t get disappointed! The movie is really great for people like me who grew up with Star Trek Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space 9… I also watched “Classic” but just because everything looked so funny there. The new movie is amazing! You see the Star Fleet Academy, how the Enterprise gets built, how Spock gets a kiss and how Kirk gets born… wow!
This is Muppets Babies BTW- a cartoon with Muppets as babies
Yesterday I watched Donnie Darko for the first time and this movie stuck me! It’s the perfect Halloween movie IMHO. Really scary but not “splatter cheap”… just like “The Ring”. Somehow I can’t stop thinking about this Donnie Darko story – even today – one day after watching it. It doesn’t happen very often to me that I can’t forget a movie… but this time it’s different. The soundtrack is also very nice BTW.
Well, well… AOL and Time Warner are splitting up finally and I can’t stop wondering how this great success story could end so sad. AOL as a portal had what Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! never had – an access business. Users who have chosen AOL as their Internet provider used the AOL front page, AOL Mail, AOL Messenger and many other services and they have been happy with that! My wife for example has been one of the AOL users. She went online with it, used AOL Mail, their Weather and some other services like News. Not sure what really happened and at what point but AOL lost the focus on the access business… and that has been a big mistake in my opinion. AOL now tries to drive the same strategy as Yahoo! with focus on advertising in terms of monetization and I have to admit that their advertising network and technology is really good (Platform-A). So what can I say now they are splitting up with Time Warner? Good luck AOL! Hope you won’t layoff everyone over there…
Yesterday I bought the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Nothing special about that but what is interesting is the price online and in retail stores!
First I thought I will get it on the launch date via Xfire online-download-buy as I thought it only costs 60$ in their online-download-shop: http://callofduty.gamesplanet.com/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-game-xfire.html – that’s about 40€ – a good price for a new game that has been just released – but then Xfire or their parter site Metaboli messed something up in the localization and 60$ became suddenly 60€! I checked the price on a different local online-download-store by Metaboli (http://www.metaboli.com) called GamerUnlimted (http://gamerunlimited.gamesplanet.com/) and there the price has been 50$. Ok, that sounded reasonable to me and I tried to buy it there… but the ordering process failed as I had to run through an age verification that obviously didn’t work! Yesterday I went to my local Saturn store and bought the game in the traditional way in a DVD box for 45€! Well… Metaboli just messed up. If they would have had a consistent price throughout their co-branded online-stores and a working currency conversion I probably would have spent my money on their website.
If you don’t know Modern Warfare 2 yet – go check out this video!
Photo gallery of the people buying Modern Warfare 2 in a store in Vegas on the launch date:
Just in case you wonder what features the new DirectX 11 brings and what DirectX introduced in the past I’m posting these videos. Personally I’m still happy with DirectX 9 but the new version looks interesting indeed. I’m sure I will upgrade to Windows 7 and a DirectX 11 graphics card at some point but I think I’ll give it some more time.
The upper videos are more kind of ads than information but this one is really detailed although you can see that the guy in the video tries to explain everything in easy words
Today I learned about a new way of upgrading to Windows 7. Actually you don’t need to run to the store anymore or order it via the Internet. You can download it. It’s not for free of course but I think it’s much more comfortable and there is an option to order a backup disc.
I can’t believe this software is for free… I’m so amazed every time I use it! It’s so powerful and has everything I need. Kick Autodesk 3D Studio Max and other expensive professional-crap 3d packages… Get Blender! http://www.blender.org/
The screenshot is a clock model for my ETQW map PKiN – I don’t have much time to work on this map but I’m making little progress step by step. Recently I rebuilt the roof metal material. It now even has a detail map (if the player comes very close little scratches are visible – a very cool effect).
and other expensive professional-crap 3d packages… Get Blender! 
