Nullriver’s Connect360 was just updated to version 3.2 adding support for Divx and Xvid files. Connect360 allows Mac users to stream Music, Video and Photos to a Xbox360. You will need to have the Fall 2007 Dashboard update installed on your Xbox360 but once you do, you will be able to stream Divx and Xvid encoded AVI files directly to your TV (finally!). The program costs $20 but they offer a trial version on their webpage.
Timbuk2 recently contacted me about using one of my photos for a redesign of their webpage. Of course I said yes as I love my Timbuk2 bag. Well today is the day they launched the new website and my picture is part of the header for the laptop section.
They also gave me a $125 gift card for using my picture and I made waste to that on a new Commute bag and a Monroe Wallet in a matter of minutes. I love my Blogger but hoping the Commute will be a little smaller. I do like the fact it has a place for water bottles on the outside. I’ve also given up on Jimi wallets as they keep breaking on me so I’m going to try my luck with a wallet from Timbuk2.
Earlier this year I started a comic podcast over at www.professorsexinthetoiletwiththelawnmower.com. I got a couple episodes out but the time it took to produce and the fact it was no fun doing it alone, I kinda stepped back from it until I can devote the time and resources needed. Right now the site is being used as a starting ground for stuff I would want to do in the future but thats about.
In the meantime, to satisfy my comic blog itch, I’ve signed on to be a regular contributor over at www.comicspoilers.net. I have 5 posts up already and plan on at least 1 new post a week but most likely more depending on the given week.
Digital comic files come in two flavors, CBZ and CBR. They are just renamed ZIP and RAR files containing JPG files. While Quicklook can look at JPG files, it cannot look into a compressed file for them. Over on the arstechnica forums, a user named gheritt has whipped up a Quicklook plugin that allows you to view CBZ files. It displays them inline similar to a PDF file. Only CBZ files work right now. There is no built-in support for RAR compression in OS X 10.5 so CBR files will not work, yet.
Download the file directly from here and install into /Library/Quicklook.
I few weeks ago I discovered Jott, which I found to be amazing convenient when on the run. While it was good for sending me reminders and the occasional Tweet, the one thing I found myself wanting is a way to Jott to my todo list. My todo list of choice just happens to be Remember The Milk. I tried to hack a Jott to RTM using my RTM email but that was a failure. So I sent an email to Jott a few weeks ago and lo and behold, they added a Jott Link for Remember the Milk today. It uses the RTM API so you can select where your tasks are saved. Right now it supports the task name, when it’s due and what it’s tagged with. If your a Remember the Milk user, the ability to call in your tasks epic.
I recently went to go see 30 Days of Night. 30 Days of Night is based off a Steve Niles comic of the same name. My exposure to Steve Niles has been minimal at best. I recently picked up his Simon Dark #1 and enjoyed it but that’s about as much as I’ve read. I picked up the 30 Days of Night TPB a few months ago but never got around to reading it. With the movie coming out, I decided to sit down and read it beforehand.
30 Days of Night’s concept is genius. Vampires invade a town in Alaska that is in darkness for 30 days straight. Simple but brilliant. Unfortunately, the graphic novel fails to execute the idea with success. The store is plagued with pacing and other issues. The art is beautiful but at times its so abstract, its hard to follow what’s actually going on. There is also this odd subplot of a guy from New Orleans going to the town to get proof that Vampires exist. He gets there and dies in one panel. It did nothing to further the plot and I still have no idea why this was in there. The biggest problem with the book is its pacing. When I finished the book, the first words out of my mouth was “That’s it?â€?. The book left more like 30 Hours of Night. There is no sense of time and everything that happens feels like it happens in a very short amount of time. I didn’t hate the book but with everything you hear about it, I expected it to be at least good.
The movie adaption is based on the book’s plot for the most part. As with any book to movie adaption, parts are changed to fit the movie medium. I went to see the movie opening night with my girlfriend who’s into horror movies and she loved it. Me, not so much. I thought the movie was boring. I couldn’t wait for the movie to just get to the end. Like the graphic novel, I didn’t hate it but I didn’t like it. Plagued by the same pacing issues of the book and the lack of suspense, the movie was just a gory snoozefest. There were also a few plot changes from the book that made no sense. The first is they broke up Eben and Stella. Ok, that in itself doesn’t bother me but they never mention why they are broken up. If they had been together still, the movie would not have changed a single bit. Thankful they removed the New Orleans vampire hunter storyline as it was useless in the graphic novel and would have certainly been even more useless here. My biggest problem was again the pacing. They made it seem like the vampires sat on the roofs for 29 days in the freezing cold just waiting while the survivors moved from place to place every week or so. I didn’t care about the survivors, they were mostly nameless extras waiting to get mauled by a vampire and that’s what happened most of the time. There was one guy, Vampire Hunter Hadgid, that you actually felt a connection to but his anti-climatic death was just a kick in the balls.
Not everything in the movie was bad though. I loved the art direction of the movie. There were some great scene in the movie and it really felt cold and dark the whole time. They movie was actually gory enough to make be cringe at a few scenes too. It’s too bad the story and pacing made it fall short. There were just too many WTF moments in the movie for me. Um, little girl shows up after 29 days like its time for Dora the Explorer and lunch? What?! or how about Eben basically committing suicide for no reason. He went to save Stella from a fiery death and the truck never blows up. All he needed to do was wait 10 more minutes for the sun to come up. Huh?
My name is Alec Peden and I’m 30 years old. I’m currently living in Connecticut and work as a Mac Genius for . I'm a gamer, comic reader, movie buff and all around tech geek.