I’ve decided to make sure that I create content for this website almost everyday. I’m writing now, and the only real purpose for this post is a Technorati claim. I’ll see you in a few hours.

EYE8QCXTQ32Q

I’m not really a big fan of the Olympics. In fact I’m glad they’re over so I can get back to watching The Office every Thursday. So why am I reporting on the upcoming Summer Olympics? Check out the logo! It’s pretty clever if you ask me, using the year in the word and all, I really like it. But there’s something else about it…

London? That’s what it says, but look closer. Do you see it?

Yep, the original leader of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has taken over the game.

I’m placing all my money on the Dragon Zord to win.

[via No Pink Spandex]

Hey guys, I know I haven’t posted a whole lot of content lately but I have a really good reason for that. I have been working on a few projects for my web design business, — some are going great, other’s a pain in the ass — and have been really getting into some new hobbies. One of those is video editing and special effects. I’ve been messing around with After Effects and I think I have the program’s basics pretty much down. I’m doing a few tutorials, and really having fun with it. I kinda want to kick myself for not doing this sooner because I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I thought I should of chose this as my career instead of web design.

Don’t get me wrong, I love web design, but there is just so much more with video production that I like. Because of this I am going to start doing YouTube videos more often. They won’t be what I normally post either. For the most part I’m just going to start integrating this blog with the videos so the content will be more dynamic.

As that comes I will be continuing production on my movie, Radish Eradication. I posted the trailer on YouTube a while back but here is is in case you never saw it:

It’s a little crude, but don’t worry about it.

I’m thinking about making this a video series, and not a movie though. I hope that I can make YouTube partnership with this too, but we’ll see what happens.

Wish me luck with all this. I’ll see you back here next time with either one of the posts I’ve been working on, or my first vlog.

All this talk about the up coming release of the iPad has had mixed views on the internet. Some say that this is the most advanced device on the market, others have compared it to a rock. I’d say it’s somewhere in between. If you’ve been paying attention to technology news then you’ve probably seen the giant iPhone known as the iPad. No, it’s not feminine protection for Macs, it’s Apple’s new tablet PC that they announced a couple weeks ago. This device may look like a great new revolution in computing, but I assure you, it is just a giant iPhone/iPod touch.

The iPad will release at the end of March 2010 starting at $499 for the 16GB model, and a month later it will be released as a 3G device on AT&T’s network for $629. It has a 4:3 9.7 inch screen, 1024 x 768 resolution, 1GHz processor, WiFi, 3G (on later models), 10 hour battery life, and runs on the iPhone OS.

Yeah, the iPhone OS. Not OS X. Now that might not necessarily be a bad thing, but a OS X tablet would be great. I’d get one without a doubt. Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Autodesk SketchBook would be great on a tablet (that’s honestly what I think of when I think of tablet PCs) but we don’t have that kind of luck. How long have designers been waiting on a MacBook Pro tablet? Too long I’d say.

Three other short comings that really defer me from buying it that if they were there I don’t think ‘d have a real problem with the device are the lack of a camera, flash support, and input ports for USB, and SD memory cards. Mac fanboys have waged a holy war against those who speak this heresy on the lack of Flash support. I’m not a Mac user myself, but I do work with them so I know that flash is total crap on a Mac, but come on, this is something the device really needs. Sure there’s HTML 5, but that will take years to replace Flash… and that might not even happen. In the meantime we need Flash for a lot of the content on the Internet. Apple and Adobe need to put their heads together on this one, and fast.

As for the camera, I wouldn’t use it for taking photos, but for video conferencing on Skype or something. And the lack of USB or SD card support, that’s just dumb.

This isn’t the only tablet PC of its kind. We also have the upcoming HP Slate, the JooJoo Pad (formerly the Crunch Pad), and a crap load of android tablets. These things both offer some of the things that the iPad is missing, but also have their short comings, but that’s for another time — closer to when these devices see the light of day. But Apple definitely has some competition. Especially when JooJoo Pad pre-orders jumped when the iPad was released.

Will I be getting one? I still actually might. I’ll reserve my full judgment until it’s actually released. I’ll also be looking at the other tablets as well to see which one is right for me. With all the iPad’s shortcomings it’s still going to be a solid device, but I still can’t be certain if it’s right for me. As it stands I can think of a thousand uses for it, and if it had all the things I mentioned above I’d say it might actually be one of the best devices on the market.

What do you think of the iPad? Are you going to get one? Or will you be getting a different tablet? Let me know what you think in the comments.

A while back I was having a budget crisis and I needed to cut some costs. I was looking at my bills and found something that would be an obvious solution, and saving me a load of money — my cable subscription. I realized that being a couch potato did not have to include paying $60 a month for 500 channels that I never watch, and also that most of the content that I watch could be viewed online for free anyway. Ditching the cable was an easy decision for me, and you might not have any problem doing it either.

What should you do?

Well first you have to ask yourself a few questions: who are you? what do you watch? and what do you pay?

Who are you? It all comes down to if you are a family guy, if you have any room mates, or you are a single bachelor. In other words you wouldn’t want to turn off the TV on your kids, or your friends. If they watch it ask them what they watch and if they would think it’s a good idea. If you have kids then it might be a good idea to keep it for their programing which they can easily access.

What do you watch? Chances are if you only watch prime time TV then you can see it on Hulu, or your countries’ equivalent. I can see all of my programing on the internet in “various ways”. If you are a big time movie guy and need your premium channels then you also might want to consider a Netflix subscription and see if that suits your needs. I think you’ll find it a lot more useful.

What do you pay? Look at your bill, and ask yourself if you are truly getting your money’s worth. Chances are that you aren’t and you’ll find the same content online. Consult the people you live with –if any– and see what you can do as a group to either eliminate it, or just pay a little less. If you live with multiple people you should be dividing the bills anyway.

What’s killing TV?

Short answer? The internet, and cost.

There are so many ways to get your content online though Hulu, YouTube, torrents, and other streaming sites. There is nothing that will ever stop viewers from putting content online for everyone to see. Sure, there are drawbacks, and it may be illegal, but it’s not stopping anybody.

Piracy is what is taking over, and is killing the networks slowly. And in this ass backwards economy I don’t blame people for doing it. Prices are going up on everything, people are taking pay cuts, and people everywhere are losing their jobs because the people they work for don’t think they can afford to pay.

Look at all the piracy that is happening. Look at how more than 50% of the people who watch Heroes torrent it. Not only that but we also have things like Hulu making it easy for common folk to view TV shows they’d otherwise have to catch at a specific time slot. With all of this I think everything will be able to be viewed over the Internet within the next few years. I can see subscription fees for this, but I can’t see them as astronomically high as what cable and satellite providers charge.

My thoughts

I honestly refuse to pay $60 and up for basic service when I can get it all for free online. I have Hulu, a Netflix subscription, and a lot of “other ways” to see the content that is on TV without cable or satellite. If Hulu is profitable through ad revenue then I can see traditional TV dying within the next 3 to 5 years. I can also see websites like Hulu charging for premium content like the shows on HBO, and Shotime. I think that alone would be enough for the networks to make money if traditional TV goes moot, and everything goes online, but still, they would probably still charge for it in some way even if it is minimal.

In my opinion, cable and satellite services are for families, and when 3 or more people live in the same household, and you shouldn’t have to pay for what you don’t watch.

What do you guys think? Do you pay for your content? Are you sick of paying out the ass for crap you don’t watch? Are you going to heed my words? Leave a comment and tell us all what you think.

A website has surfaced that asks us the question biggest question of the new decade: Twenty-ten, or two-thousand ten? The website http://www.twentynot2000.com/ aims to correct our speech, and lead us in the right path. When the millennium started we began saying the year a different way. Compare nineteen-ninety-nine to two-thousand-one, big difference. But here we enter the next decade, and the website has this to say:

Say the year “1810” out loud. Now say the year “1999” out loud. See a pattern? It’s been easier, faster, and shorter to say years this way for every decade (except for the one that just ended) instead of saying the number the long way. However, many people are carrying the way they said years from last decade over to this decade as a bad habit. If we don’t fix this now, we’ll be stuck saying years the long way for the next 99 years. Don’t let that happen!

Honestly, I could care less about how it’s said, and I will be saying two-thousand ten because it just sounds a lot better to me, but how you say it is completely up to you.

What do you guys think? Do you think this site is necessary? Do we really all need to say it the same way? Let us know know in the comments.

Have a great new year everyone. And here’s to a brand new decade.

Via [Tech Crunch]

Avatar, and its damn hetero-sexual themes…

Let me say that Avatar was an awesome movie. There a little something for almost everybody: action, romance, incredible 3D animation and a lot more, and unfortunately that’s not enough for some people out there. As good as Avatar was, this article is not about that, but a very odd protest against it.

Apparently leaving a certain group of people out a film makes the creators of it intolerant douche bags somehow. In this case, the group that was apparently left out was gay people. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against gays or any group of people, but come on man, WHAT THE FUCK!?

The website leading this protest (stopavatarmovie.blogspot.com) says that the human race is evolving into gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered people and the fact that they are not depicted is bigoted and wrong… I know, it doesn’t make any sense. You do realize that if everyone was gay then we wouldn’t be able to reproduce, and wouldn’t even get to the time that Avatar takes place in, right? Hmm, maybe that’s what they mean, and we’re all supposed to be dead by then.

So, going by the logic of this website by excluding ANY group at all from any form of entertainment the creators are being racist and bigoted. Shit, I’ll have to remember that one. I don’t want to be protested or anything, that would just ruin EVERYTHING. Or hell, maybe I should just protest every movie that doesn’t include Native Americans, Midgets, British people, Orcs, or Elves.

One group of people that this website made sure that they didn’t leave out were Trolls. And that’s probably all this website is doing — trolling– but it still proves that no matter what it is, someone will bitch about it, even if it was the greatest 3D spectacle ever. One commenter said it best on their site by saying that the site’s owner should just focus on something important, like Proposition 8, and he was right, Avatar isn’t going to affect you at all, and there are a hell of a lot of things that could.

What do you guys think of this situation? Do you think anybody even cares? And what would you do if you saw someone protesting the movie? Leave some feedback in the comments, or shoot me an email.

Just wishing everyone a merry Christmas, or happy whatever holiday you yourself celebrate. I hope you got all the gadgets, and games that you wanted.

iPhone or Android? This might be a question I’ll be asking myself for a while as I recently had my first Android experience on the Motorola Droid, and I loved it. I am already an iPhone user, and have been so for a while. But still, I have Droid envy.

You’ve heard of iPhone envy, right? Well I am a proud iPhone user, but I just had my first experience with Android, and I absolutely love it.

The other day a friend of mine and I went to get him a new phone. Him being a Verizon customer I suggested to him that he get the Droid as it is one of the best smart phones on the market. He liked the phone so he got it, and from my short experience, it truly seemed like a great mobile device.

This was my first real sit down experience with any device running Android, and I must say that I think I like it a lot. Almost better than my iPhone.

Android is if course an open-source OS, as the iPhone OS is determinately not. Because of this I jailbroke my phone a while back to give it a better feel. The iPhone’s stock interface is nice, but I like tweaking things. But then there us Android. It’s everything I could ask for right out of the box. Customizable, no app limits, and the best part, I’m not a slave to Apple.

There are a lot of things about the Droid itself that make me loathe my iPhone(not that I actually do). Things like the keyboard, the LED flash 5 MP camera, a removable battery, the “Batman like” feel, and a lot more. The iPhone lacks all of these things, but I still enjoy the simplicity that the iPhone has, and I’m not quite ready to give that up for another phone quite yet unless Google does something that just blows the iPhone out of the water, and I can see that happening very soon.

As far as the companies go, I definitely trust Google a Hell of a lot more than Apple. I’ve been using Google’s tools like Gmail, and calender for a long time now so going with them would just make sense. Apple also seems pretty shady, and kinda fascist.

I went from Windows mobile, to the iPhone, and who knows, I may soon go to Android.

What do you guys think? Android, or iPhone OS? Will either of them come out on top in the end, or are we going to leave that to Rim, and Microsoft?

Oh, one other thing, I think I cured my envy by making my SMS sound the same one from the Droid. YAY, Winterboard!

Hey guys, I am back from my short vacation to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. It was quite a trip, it consisted of going to Dollywood, riding roller coasters in the cold, and an old lady yelling a lot. I took a few photos so I’ll be sure to upload some photos to Flickr later today. But since there is no place like home, it is good to be back.

There are a few things I want to post to get things really started with this blog, and a few things that need to be done. One of them being that I will be doing slight changes to the site as I have time to make it look better. (I’m still not completely happy with the layout, and it needs a few more touches.

There will also be a few Christmas decorations on the site in the coming weeks.

To get back on track with things the first thing I will be posting is a video review on a pair of electric scissors that my family found. That should be up Wednesday. I will also be doing the promised review on Google Chrome OS after that, and eventually I will have those game reviews up.

I also have an idea for a small video series. Blizzard has sent me an invitation to come back to World of Warcraft for free for seven days. I will probably take them up on this offer if I have the time, and document what happens. I’ll post the results on YouTube after the week is up. (You’ll be able to get the live feed on this by following me on Twitter — I’m @GeneralRoshambo — and seeing the Raptr updates from the game.) The series will be appropriately titled “Seven Days Of Warcraft” and the main verdict will be to see if I start playing regularly again. (My main reason for stopping was money.)

I’ll be getting to work on all of  the new content soon. Until then, be sure to  subscribe to the feed, my YouTube channel, and follow me on Twitter.

How was your holiday? Have an idea for the site? Any other comments for me? I’d love to hear it all in the comments below.