Phishing e-mail contains EULA

What a way to bring this blog back with a pretty ballsy phishing e-mail I just received. After the typical bad spelling, and poor grammer, and over use of commas was a EULA. Yes, an End User Licence Agreement stating that:

The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and privileged material.Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of,or taking of any action in reliance upon, this informationby persons or entities other than the intended recipientis prohibited.If you received this in error, please contact the senderand delete the material from any computer.

So what do I do? Tell the world. I await the Cease and Desist.

The e-mail in question.

The e-mail in question.

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Personal Effects:Dark Arts

Well it finally happened. J.C. Hutchins, along with Jordan Weisman, has released a print book. It hit store shelves today, June 9th 2009. And I don’t have my copy, yet. Right now my copy is sitting in a UPS sorting facility in Austin waiting for delivery tomorrow. But there are people that have already read the book. Famous people, and not just those in the social media circle. Horror writers, actors, directors have given this book high praise. Which just makes me even more jealous.

This video-blurb is my favorite. It’s the creator of Jason Voorhees, the scariest slahser villian of all time. And when he says something scared and disturbed him. I tend to believe it. Now you will.

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Red2Blu, Wraner Bros. Awesomeness

No it’s not some knock off of Red vs. Blue. It is Warner Bros. stepping up and being awesome.

How awesome you ask? Super Duper awesome.

How Super Duper Awesome you ask? Err..Before I get out of hand.

Warner Bros. is offereing to give you BluRay versions of your HD DVDs at Red2Blu for only the cover art of the HD DVD you want to trade, and $5 per flick and $6.95 shipping.

Yes, you get a BluRay version of a WB movie and you get to keep the HD DVD version of the same flick. That’s freaking brilliant!

I’ve sent in an order for BluRay copies of 300, I Am Legend, Blade Runner: The 5 Disk Collectors edition (this was 9.99), and the 3-Pack of the Ocean’s Movies (this was 14.99).

When I first heard of this program I thought you had to trade in your physical disks, and I wasn’t really that interested. But then I read that you only sent in the cover sleeve and I jumped at the chance. Plus with my scanner you can hardly tell that the art isn’t original. The only one that shows is the Blade Runner collection, the cover of the original was all shiny. And with the Ocean’s collection, I only had to send in the slip case of the box set.

I never had a problem watching HD DVDs via the 360’s HD DVD player, but I’d rather not have the 360 running all the time, especially now that I watch TV through the Media Center capability. I’d rather not have another RRoD travesty.

Now Universal needs to step up, I want to exchange my Heroes Season 1 set.

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Classic Jason vs. the 2009 Jason

Jason Voorhees has had a troubled past. He was unsupervised whilst swimming in a lake during summer camp and drowned. Watched his mother be decapitated by a camp councilor in training several years later. Only to rescue her head and make it into a shrine only to obey her bidding to kill any person who violated the cardinal rules of horror movies.: have pre0marital sex, do drugs, or be a douche-bag.

For nearly thirty years the Voorhees family has scared the pants off of preteens at sleepovers. Teaching them that immoral behavior will get them brutally murdered, for even the most minor indiscretion. Not every sequel to this horror franchise has elicited the scare the pants off you terror the first two movies did in 1980 and then in it’s sequel did in 1981. Hollywood had found another horror villain to get people into theaters. With characters like Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers scaring teenagers week after week, Jason Voorhees became a money bag, subject to the marketing ploys of 3-D and endless sequels and an inevitable crossover with the other big 1980’s horror villain Freddy Krueger in the 2003 film, “Freddy vs. Jason.”

Click to continue reading “Classic Jason vs. the 2009 Jason”

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Battle of the iPhone organized crime apps

I’ve taken it upon myself to join three organized crime families via three iPhone/iTouch applications: iMob, iMafia, and Mafia Live, the latter of the three being the only paid app of the trio. All three boast similar experiences of starting small and growing your empire to being the ultimate Don of the virtual underworld. All three apps have very similar mechanics of doing jobs, earning money, and fighting rival mobsters in your quest to be top Don. But which app should you devote your time to? Is the $2.99 price point of Mafia Live really worth $2.99? Read on and decide for yourself.

iMob Homescreen

iMob Homescreen

iMob has a fairly large user base. And makes it very easy to add people to your group by a friend code system (all three use this system or a variation of it). With an included forum link users can post their unique nine digit code for all the others to see and added. Growing your mob quickly insures that when you fight other mobs you are as strong or stronger than your opponent. Mob size isn’t the only factor for a succesful mob you’ll need weapons. The weapons dealer has those ranging from the trusty crowbar (it was good enough for Gordon Freeman) all the way up to automatic rifles and armored trucks. Make sure you have a lot of these, as other mobsters have made a ton of cash and spared no expense equiping their mob. How might you earn this cash? Three ways: buying property, doing missions, and beating up other mobsters, natch.

Doing missions is the quickest and easiest way to bankroll your mob and earn experience to make you  stronger. More quests are unlocked as you go along, all requiering their own tool set and mob size. The other way is to fight, either by roughing up other mobsters in the fight panel, or fullfilling a hit on a marked man. As it is in the real world, beating up on the weak is the best way to win a fight, and if you go after a bounty kill bring a large mob and lost of weapons as these guys are usually very strong, but offer huge rewards if you are succesful. Buying property and business is a passive way of earning money, taking time via a one hour timer, cash is deposited to your wallet overtime. The more property you own the bigger the payout.

Here in lies the main problem with iMob. When it was first released there was a major glitch where on could roll the clock on the iPhone ahead days even years and earn billions of dollars with out doing anything. These cheaters then bought hundreds of guns and properties. Ensuring that they no longer had to play the game the real way, just sit back and kill anyone who joined late. The developer has since fixed this bug and set the timers to run off the game server and not the devices clock, but the cheaters still have all of their equipment and cash, taking much of the enjoyment out of the game for newcomers.

iMafia is the second of the two free mobster RPGs. Using all of the same mechanics that iMob does. Its one main

It's all Lanscapy.

It's all Lanscapy.

difference is a more graphical insterface and landscape presentation. A few of the mechanics have their own tweaks. You grow your mafia by purchasing henchmen from the Godfather either by cash or respect points, and you can only own one weapon, armor and vehicle per mafia member, including yourself of course. This makes fights much more balanced and dependant on your stats and equipment. iMafia uses a central server to host much of the information, making load times during peak usage slow and often causing disconnects. It also uses a lot of the iPhone’s memory, occasionally giving a low memory warning and the promise of a fix. Along with the heavier memory imprint comes faster battery drain, and unless you are on a wifi or 3G connection, it’s best just to leave the app closed untill you are charging your device. I am having the most fun playing this version as everyone is equal and honest. Once their slow servers catch up with the growth I believe this will be the preeminant mafia RPG on the iPhone.

Boring doesn't even begin to describe this interface.

Boring doesn't even begin to describe this interface.

Last up is the paid Mafia Live. Sporting a $2.99 pricetag, one would think that this app would be the best of the three. Unfortuantley this game falls very short of being worth its pricetag. Having all the same mechanics as the previous two it lacks in two major areas. One of those is the friend/mob adding category. In order to grow your mob you must know someone that has also paid for this application and accepts your e-mail request. There are family codes, but with these only viewable by yourself unless you post them to the interent or by sending out e-mails, it is the hardest of the three to grow your mafia family. The second and most important is the lack of any graphical interface of anykind. This is a text based application. Not something you’d expect getting after paying three bucks on something. Especially a device that can play some pretty decent graphical games like, Super Monkey Ball, Krash Bandicoot, and Google Earth. I hope in future updates that some form of GUI is introduced to justify its pricetag, especially since it goes off of sale status with in a week.

Save you cash and go with iMafia. You’ll have a much better experience and have another reason to not put down your device.

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First impressions on Win7

Been playing with this OS since it was released. I’ve found some great things and some really bad things.

The OS installed very fast, within 30 minutes. Much faster than the XP installs I’ve done both on my laptop and tower. It got 90% of the drivers right away through Windows Update. I had to manually install the tablet driver and the monitor button drivers (used for rotating the screen from landscape to up and down).

I’ve run into a huge problem using Windows Journal. I use the application to mark up receipts for my Pest Control work. This is a way I can keep my paper and ink use done if the customer doesn’t want a receipt. I’m a green company. However with the template that I use, it causes Journal to fail and shut down. I can open a new note, so it isn’t all journal’s fault. I believe it’s using a pre-made template. Not a problem I’ve just found a PDF markup tool called PDF Annotator (it costs though, business expense, natch).

I never played with Vista. And I didn’t really believe all the shit talking about the OS when it first released. Any OS that is rushed out is going to have problems with drivers. It was only a matter of time before manufacturers caught up with the OS, and this being a derivitive of Vista, all the drivers I’ve needed are for Vista and work perfectly.

I ran into a huge problem this week. I couldn’t connect to my network from my laptop. Wireless could see my network, but would only give me “limited connectivity”, same with wired. I have a USB dongle that I used for my tower, and even that would only give me the same “limited connectivity.” So I took it over to my folks house and tried their wireless network thinking it was my network. Still no go. Something failed on my laptop; very, very annoying.

So not wanting to be without access to the tubes from my chair, and exhausting all my knowledge of tcp/ip and DHCP. I did a full wipe of my laptop’s HDD and reinstalled Win7. Now everything works perfectly. No having to change my tcp/ip settings and I can see my entire network plus the glorious internet.

The whole interface is easy to work with and looks great. Things are grouped better, and easier to manipulate. It’s also a lot easier to make it so people that don’t know what they are doing not mess with anything. I’ve noticed that programs like Firefox load faster, not much faster but a couple seconds is a couple seconds. Boot time is drastically reduced, and shut down is amazingly fast. This is also due to the fact it’s a fresh install on a clean HDD, but it makes life easier.

I have bought a copy of Windows Vista from NewEgg for $110. Win7 Beta ends in August, and I’ve lost my restore CD for the laptop, so I’ll need an OS if Win7 ever stops working again, and I don’t feel like messing with a beta version anymore.

Win7 has my money when it’s released. Hopefully in an upgrade version.

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Chipotle Mashed Sweet Potatoes

This is one of the major highlights of our families Thanksgiving dinner. I was never much for sweet potatoes. I absolutely abhor the stuff with marshmallows in it, and can eat a backed one if served with plenty of butter and brown sugar. So imagine my surprise when several Thanksgivings ago when my mom served this dish and I instantly fell in love with it. I can safely say my mother is one of the best cooks I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating her creations. This is one of my favorites and I share it with you in the hopes that it spreads a little bit of joy to your next family meal.
Chipotle Mashed Sweet Potatoes
  • 2 1/2  pounds sweet potato
  • 1/2  cup cream
  • 3  tablespoons  butter, softened
  • 1 chipotle chile canned in adobo sauce, chopped (this means one chile not the entire can…2 if you like it spicy)
  • 1/2  cup  packed brown sugar
  • 1/2  teaspoon  salt
  • 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
  • 3/4  teaspoon  ground cinnamon, divided
  • 1 tbs roasted chopped pecans

Heat oven to 450ºF. Wash and dry the sweet potatoes and prick skin so they don’t explode while roasting. Place in the hot oven (no need to wait until completely heated either) and roast until done (45-60 minutes; reduce oven temperature to 350º. Let potatoes cool long enough to handle and scoop out pulp into medium-sized bowl. Adding remaining ingredients except for 1/4 tsp cinnamon and pecans. Place sweet potato mixed in an ovenproof dish (gratin dish works well), sprinkle top with remaining cinnamon and pecans. Bake for about 30 minutes. Can be assembled ahead and baked for about 45 minutes.

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Big Damn Heroes

4 Lithographs from TFAW.com

Need to find some frames.

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In Defense of George

It has become commonplace for much of the revewing world and fans of George Lucas to rip apart any new work the writer/director releases post “Episode 1.” When the world first encountered Lucas’s penchant for radical ideas, or what some would call going bat shit crazy.

Growing up with the original Star Wars trilogy I found it hard to stomach some of the changes to the mythos Lucas made when the force changed from a spiritual well that any one with the right kind of training could learn to tap, to a microscopic parasite called Midichlorians, thus crushing any hope for becoming a Jedi, or Sith Lord. Also came the introduction of the Gun-gun race, and specifically Jar-Jar Binks, while appealing to the younger audiance, made legions of fans cringe at his pseudo-black face, and soft shoe dance antics. Lucas began cutting his role back in Episode 2, and making him a lynch pin of the formation of the Empire, to almost being a background character in Episode 3, but the damage was done.

Then came the re-edits of the original trilogy. Lucas made minor tweaks and enhancements to characters and special effects. And some changes that were not so minor; like Hahn shooting second, adding in a dance number to Jabba’s Palace, changing the Ewok song, Lapti Nek,” at the end of VI, and replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. While many of the enhanced special effects, and reworkings of more of the rubber monster scenes was a great improvement and made it appeal to a new audiance, the changing of Han shooting first, and placating Christiansen by replacing the older ghost of Anakin, continued Lucas’s trend downwards.

Lucas’s latest two endevoures, Indy IV and Star Wars: Clone Wars, have been met with utter hate and vitriol, it would make a lesser man curl up with his Sarlacc plushie and cry to sleep. We’ll start with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Now besides the extra long name, there are three scenes that people hang on as the worst of the worst, the CG Prarie Dogs, the great fridge escape from a nuclear bomb, and swinging on the vines with monkeys. The latter two scenes are at the heights of two intense action sequences, and while are both hard to take seriously, how seriously could you take a mine car jumping a huge gap and landing safely back on track, or running away from a rolling boulder or rushing water. And the prarie dogs aren’t on the screen for more than a minute, and provided a moments levity, hardly worth daming a film over. Then there is the overall story arc of dealing with aliens. Why is it so easy to believe Indy can tackle anything involving religion and mysticism, but once the word Alien is bandied about, a film becomes a plague.

Lastly we have the latest foray back to the Star Wars universe, with the CG flick “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” Aimed squarly at a younger audiance the goal of the flick doesn’t dissapoint in that regard, offering a fantastic action ride, with out any of the political intrigue of the prequel series. Though it wouldn’t be a George Lucas flick without something to hate. And apparantly Ziro the Hutt takes that pink frilly cake. With a voice that is described as Capote-esque, a skin tone of a purplish nature, with feathers and facial tatoo, the internet has found a new scapegoat. While the children seeing this movie won’t really understand that the character is gay or effemanent, they will see the humor that the character brings, and hopefully see the difference between Ziro and Jabba and that not all the Hutts are Crime lords.

Now. Wy does George Lucas do these things to his movies? Why make characters and plot choices that don’t always mix well with the majority of a viewing audiance, or at least the ones with interent access and a blog? Because it’s his world. He created the worlds, and can do with them what he wants. Those same people say that he should leave the Star Wars realm alone, would you say the same thing about Superman, or Batman? We’ve had 30-plus years of those characters, it’s time to leave well enough alone. We don’t need any new stories, just go ahead and stop writing new comics DC. It is time to let go. Right, let’s stop producing money. Because, you know, money isn’t all that great.

Lucas is doing the exact same thing as the rest of the entertainment world, trying to keep his worlds fresh and new, constantly reinventing them and adding new things. These new things may not always work, and some may even prove to have a neative effect on how we perceive the worlds. But its not the end of the world. Lucas is a film maker, and has lots of ideas that he’d like to share with the rest of the world, and because he has the money to do so, I’d expect to see more from Star Wars and Indy in the future. I’m already standing in line.

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Appointment Internet

Recently there was a one week event that happened on the internet. This week was host to 3 videos released on 3 seperate days. No big deal right? People post videos of themselves on the net every 15 seconds. Now a days anyone with a digital camera can make their own TV shows. So what made this series of videos any different? A little something called production value.

There are a great many indie- “webisodes” and “vidcasts” out there, Loading-Ready-Run, Hero Envy, The Guild, pretty much everything from Revision3 (Tekzilla, The Totally Rad Show…), and a thousand other vidcasts found on iTunes or the Zune Marketplace. The first 3 are akin to normal TV fair, falling somewhere near the sit-com genre of television, while Revision3, and Lab Rats, and many of the other “How-To” and news shows cover the non-fiction genre. And the majority of them do it extremely well Though many, through no fault of their own, look like they are filmed with Sony HandyCams, and don’t have actors that the common person can name; though those of us in the net culture know them by face and stand in line for their autographs. They use this to their advantage. They fill a gap that conventional TV can’t or won’t fill, because taking chances costs money.

Then along comes the writers strike, and one man, not to be put down, continues to write. But he has a problem he can’t sell this material to conventional media outlets, because by all rights, he shouldn’t have been working in the first place. So what does a man in his position do? Call up a group of your closest actor friends and guilt trip your family into helping, and put together 45 minutes of one of the funniest Super-Villian musicals ever.

This is exactly what Joss Whedon did. And he had the internet captive for 3 days waiting for the continuing adventures of Dr. Horrible (Niel Patrick Harris), Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and Penny (Felicia Day). Thus bringing apointment internet to more than just the geek culture, reaching outside of the normal circle of folks who would normally watch a webisode/vidcast (I know, my mother asked me if I’d heard of this “Dr. Horrible Sing Along” web site).

Traditional media is trying to capture the internet content realm by producing it’s own webisodes off of some of their more popular series. NBC has “Heroes” and “The Office.” SciFi had a webisode series for “EUReKA!” it’s first season, and USA had web only content for it’s scifi series “The 4400″ and “Psych.” And with the exception of “EUReKA!” the web series do not have the main characters, and all of them don’t affect what happens in the show proper. While a sometimes nice addition to the main story, the webisodes are nothing more than pointless videos that usually end up being a 5 minute commercial for the show and it’s sponsor.

Amanda Tapping, of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, recently proved the exception to the rule, and predated Dr Horrible by almost a year, with her web series “Sanctuary.” The show had the advantage of professional writers, cameramen and F/X folks, and it helped. The show was option by SciFi and will be premiering on the network soon. But it all started on the internet, and the generosity of a group of fans. While Sanctuary did have a release schedual, you could hardly set a clock by it. True appointment internet is still a ways off.

With the advent of the DVR, the common person is able to timeshit, and store programs for future veiwing. It is even possible to place shift this content )legally even) to a portable device for watching outside of your living room. And with the world becoming more connected (albeit slowly thanks to the phone companies, but that is another article) we are able to watch TV shows, and surf the web from our phones. We are always looking to fill in down time with some form of entertainment, some distraction from our daily lives, the grind of working 9-5. This is where the webisode/vidcast comes in, but in order to attract the common person into watching this content, higher production value, and named actors are needed. There will always be an audiance for the indie productions There will always be that gap that can’t be filled by the traditional media companies.

The internet is ripe for more content, and we are all here at the beginning to witness the best, and the worst.

PS> Comments are broken for some reason. I can’t figure out the problem, help is greatly appreciated if you are familiar with css and PHP. If you’d like to comment I’m on Twitter under Gorbash. Thanks for reading.

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