Watch This Show: Supernatural

For my third TV show recommendation post I am going to discuss Supernatural which is one of my favourite TV shows on right now. It just started its fifth, and possibly final, season. I say possibly final because this is the last season of a 5-season story arc and though they’ve teased us with the possibility of doing more the creators have said it would probably be five seasons and no more. Supernatural is the story of the Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean, as they battle monsters, demons, ghosts, and anything “supernatural”.

Usually a single episode falls into one of two categories: either its an “arc” episode about the overall seasons long story, or it’s a standalone episode which could also be referred to as monster-of-the-week. What makes this show so good is that whichever type of episode it is, it’s always entertaining. The arc-stories are epic and the standalone stories, which do tie into the arc sometimes, are interesting. The creators also really know how to play upon fans’ expectations and the fandom surrounding the show.

A great example of this is in the most recent season 5 premiere where a character is introduced who is writing what is known in the fan community as a “wincest” story. Or basically fanfiction about Sam and Dean having sex. Yes, people on the internet do that and yes, the makers of the show decided to show it and make fun of it on the show.

The music is also a great part of the show. Usually the previously on is set to some fucking awesome classic rock song like Thunderstruck or Carry On Wayward Son (which I started playing when I started writing this review, for inspiration) and that just gets you pumped for the episode to come. The character of Dean is obsessed with classic rock and that gives the creators the excuse to play some awesome music. I also bring this up because I wish they would release a huge, official soundtrack for the show but for now I’ll just have to deal with the songlists fans have written.

I guess the great thing is the mix this show brings. It has great comedy moments and pure comedy episodes like one last year about old-time movie monsters (e.g., the wolfman, dracula, etc) killing people. It has good action and special effects, and some gore. It can also be genuinely scary, which is very rare for a TV show.

So, go forth and watch this show. Get on the bandwagon before it ends. Seasons 1-4 are on DVD right now and Season 5 just premiered last night.

Play This Game: Trials HD

Trials HD is a new XBox arcade game in which you ride a motorcycle through various obstacle courses and try to finish as quick as possible, with as few faults (retries) as possible, and/or perhaps even just try to finish the course. I mention the last one because this game is hard, REALLY hard.

It’s really rare for me to like games that are extremely difficult as most of the time for me gaming should be fun and relaxing and to say that Trials HD is challenging would be an understatement. You get 500 faults (or tries from a checkpoint and checkpoints are not spread that far apart) and a maximum of 30 minutes to get through a level (where a flawless time might be something along the lines of 1 minute) and you do hit those limits on some levels. But I guess what makes that palatable is that the difficulty ramps up quite gradually. Tracks are sorted into beginner, easy, medium, hard, and extreme. And for extra challenge there are medals for each track (where gold is a quick flawless run) so that adds more levels of difficulty and more replayabilty. It doesn’t really get extremely difficult until hard but medium will start giving you a bit of a challenge on some levels.

The good thing is leaderboard replays. If you’re having trouble with a certain track, you can go to the leaderboard replay of that level and it not only shows someone doing it but also graphically shows the button presses and analog stick movements that the person is doing. The only thing I wish is that you’d be able to jump into the replays while in the level (you can only watch them while not playing a level), then you could come up to a hard obstacle that kicks your ass and immediately go into the replay and see how it’s done. But that might ruin a bit of the challenge.

Just going through the tracks is not the only thing to do in the game. There’s also tournaments which are groups of levels that must be done together without being able to restart from the beginning; getting good medals in these is extremely challenging because usually to get gold in a track it’s on about my hundredth restart of that level but to get gold in a tournament I’d have to do it first time through. Another section of the game is the skill games which are like mingames; there are skill games in which you have to crash and break as many bones as possible, or ride doing a wheelie as far as possible. Finally, there’s a track creator. I’ve not tried this out much so I won’t talk about it and I’ve also not played any custom tracks because it seems as if you can only share tracks among your friends which I wish wasn’t the case.

Trials HD is epitome of a simple to pick up, difficult to master game and this is due to the controls. The main controls are only really gas, brake and lean. But the other buttons you’ll be using quite a bit due to the game’s difficulty are the buttons to bailout, restart at beginning of level and go back to last checkpoint.

I’ve been playing this game quite a bit over the past few days and while I doubt I’ll ever finish it, I still feel it was completely worth it. Trials HD is available on the XBox arcade marketplace. If you don’t have an XBox there are also a couple PC games if you want to check it out.

Why Digg needs to be more bipartisan

Some things you should know. I’m a Canadian. I live with 3 major Federal parties existing. The Liberal Party, The Conservative Party, and The NDP. If you count The Bloc, then there’s 4. You can only vote for them in Quebec,which is only a province. Why can you vote for them as a Federal representation is beyond me.

For the sake of this article, though, I’m going to focus on American Politics.

Anyways, I pride myself on being a bipartisan voter. I think we should all take in to account the opinions of all parties involved in an election. To only listen to the voices of The Democrats or The Republicans makes you an uninformed voter and you shouldn’t be voting. You have the right to vote and the right to vote unintelligently, but that makes you a fool. Sorry, but it’s true.

In the past year, these are the top stories on Digg.com under the politics sections:

Top in “Political News” over the last 365 days:

• Barack Obama Officialy Becomes 44th American President: 25,106 Diggs
• Legalization of Marijuana Bill in California: 8,659 Diggs
• Undeniable proof that Arkansas is a backwards hellhole!!!: 7,965 Diggs
• Tina Fey As Sarah Palin: Katie Couric SNL Skit (VIDEO): 7,743 Diggs
• Whitehouse.gov - before and after: 6,943 Diggs
• Barney Frank Confronts Woman Comparing Obama to Hitler: 6,495 Diggs

Top in “Political Opinion” over the last 365 days:

• Hayden Panettiere PSA: Vote for McCain: 7,990 Diggs
• Legalize It: 7,493 Diggs
• US Military threatens to kill pet of deployed US Soldier: 7,129 Diggs
• Someone predicted this economic collapse A year ago, who?: 6,561 Diggs
• EPIC Obama ‘08 - Vote For Hope Video: 6,037 Diggs
• Democracy is… (PIC): 5,721 Diggs
• Liar…??: 5,506 Diggs

This is all pro-democrat propaganda. I really do mean propaganda because the stories on Digg are not representing the thoughts of sound-minded individuals. According to Digg:

“…we’re here to provide a place where people collectively determine the value of content. In doing so, we’re changing the way people consume information online.”

This is still the case, but unfortunately the majority of people on digg are turning it into a liberalist machine to further digg’s political agenda.

Fox news does the same thing. All the media pumping out of there is just going against the democrats by spinning real information to suit their needs. They use O’Reilly to intensify the already held beliefs of those watching Fox News. The people that watch this channel don’t consume their media from anywhere else. They may, once in a while, go to CNN, but that’s not much better.

This doesn’t sound like a sound-minded person, does it? No. Digg always has, and will continue to pump out stories of Fox Pundits’ opinions and state why they’re wrong. There’s nothing wrong with this, but you have to show the other side. As soon as the Liberal agenda is attacked, digg retaliates and plays the victim game.

This is unfair and unjust. Digg is doing nothing wrong here, since there are no editors. The community needs to look at themselves from another light and stop praising themselves for being “liberal”, “hip”, or “with-it” and take other point of view into their minds and maybe promote that to the front page, or all the kids that are visiting digg for the first time (the 13-17 year-olds) will get an uninformed sight of what’s happening in the world.

Instead of talking about it, do something. Give all voices a chance. Stop patting yourself on the back.

See This Movie: Gamer

I haven’t written anything in a while but now I’m trying to force myself to sit down and write at least a little bit a day so eventually, even if I don’t finish an article every day, I’ll at least be working toward a goal. For my first article in quite a while I’d like to tell you about a movie called Gamer.

Gamer is about a future in which people can control other people though nanotechnology implanted in the brain. This technology was created by a Bill Gates-esque super-billionaire named Castle (Michael C. Hall) and is used in two “games”. One is a Sims (or Second Life or Playstation Home) like game called “Society” in which you control an avatar (who is a real person) and you interact with other people controlling real people avatars. The other game is called “Slayers”, think first-person-shooter, in which death row inmates allow themselves to be controlled for the opportunity to gain their freedom. Survive 30 games you go free, but of course no one has ever done that. Kable (Gerard Butler) is getting close though.

The movie has an interesting plot and lots of action scenes. The problem is the plot is more interesting than entertaining at times and sometimes the action can be annoying. The action is shot in really shaky camera style, too close, with lots of quick cuts and when in a game there’s lots of superimposed digital effects too often to remind us as if we had forgotten that this was a game even if the stakes are real. The plot is interesting even if at times the plot scenes, as opposed to the action scenes, drag on a bit.

The plot is helped by a great cast. I’m a big fan of Michael C. Hall who is in full evil genius mode here. And is it just me or is Gerard Butler in everything right now? There was even a preview for another of his movies before this one. I can see why too, he’s a good star. Terry Crews (a.k.a. Cheeseburger Eddy) is also in it but it’s kind of weird seeing him in a one-note serious bad guy role when I’m used to seeing him in really funny comedic roles. I’d mention the rest of the supporting cast but it’d be redundant since no one does a bad job.

The real standout though is Michael C. Hall. I only wish he was in it more because the better scenes in the movie usually involved him (as did my favourite scene in the movie which I absolutely will not give away but to those that saw it you know what it is, it involves a song).

I wish the action was shot better because if it was this would be a ringing endorsement. As it stands now I’m still recommending the viewing of it but you won’t be missing much if you wait until you can rent it or something.

iPhone App Review #4: µMonitor

Here’s µMonitor for the iPhone, which was recently rejected by the appstore after the “AppStore Gods” reviewed it for 4 months or so. According to Apple:

“We’ve reviewed µMonitor and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.”

Basically, they don’t want to support third party apps that allow the use of BitTorrent. Thankfully, if your iPhone is jailbroken, you get the app. It’s already available through a quick search in Cydia.

Ain’t she sweet? This is one of my new favorite apps. The sweetest part of this app is being able to start and stop torrents remotely over 3G or EDGE on-the-go.

There’s really nothing to this app, except for what’s already been explained.

Unless you’re familiar with setting up the WebUI on µTorrent, I suggest you start here or use The Google.

Once you’re set up, though, it’s super-sweet. This is an awesome app and probably my favorite app not on the actual app store.