The Buzz Media

The Woman in Black Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:40:00 +0000

Tense and genuinely creepy, the Woman in Black delivers pretty much everything as promised from solid performances, understated but spot on effects and expert direction to make this the most satisfying filmed ghost story I have seen in years. The Woman in Black tells the story of a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a [...]

Haywire Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:12:06 +0000

If you are going to have an action film with almost no story then you need to deliver wall to wall action to make up for it. Haywire does not do this. Haywire follows Mallory (Gina Carano), a spy for hire who is burned by the agency she works for and framed for a murder [...]

Patrick’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2012

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:58:12 +0000

2012 has started out pretty rocky for films. The cineplexes are currently clogged with the dreck of the year just like every January/February, months which are widely held as the dumping ground for films not up to par. With this in mind, I look a head to better times to come in the year with [...]

Contraband Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:52:41 +0000

Contraband is a forgettable middle of the road crime thriller heavy on the crime and light on the thrills. Following a plot rehashed from dozens of other crime movies, most notably Gone in 60 Seconds with a sprinkling of Kiss of Death, Contraband tells the story of Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) a reformed smuggler who [...]

imgscalr 4.2 Released

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:37:56 +0000

Quick heads up to the Java developers out there using the imgscalr Image Processing Library, version 4.2 was just released! There is 1 new feature in this release and 1 bugfix: New Feature: New ULTRA_QUALITY scaling Method provides the nicest looking scaling result typically better than GIMP’s highest quality scaling method (Lanczos3)! Bug Fix: When [...]

Uncharted 3 (PS3) Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:26:58 +0000

Summary [7.5 out of 10]: Uncharted 3 is the disappointing third game in an otherwise incredible series. I love Uncharted. I bought my PS3 with the express purpose of playing the first game and I thought the second game was one of the best ever made. I expected this same level of quality from the [...]

Patrick’s 10 Least Favorite Movies of 2011

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:09:00 +0000

Okay here we go. Same deal as the list of my favorite movies. This are not the objective worst films of the year but rather the ones that I liked least. In some cases, I outright hated them. If you want to comment or debate then do so in the comment section below but please [...]

Patrick’s 10 Favorite Movies of 2011

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:58:57 +0000

Alright, it is that time of year again when I look back on the year and pick out my 10 favorites put them in a vaguely arbitrary order and post them for the enjoyment of several people who will attack me and my sexual preference and history because they don’t agree with me about movies. [...]

The Adventures of Tintin Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:12:22 +0000

A rollicking adventure with great animation, 3D and the most badass terrier ever, the Adventures of Tin Tin provides a nice distraction from heavy awards season pictures and abysmal overly sentimental dreck. Based on the Belgian comic series of the same name, The Adventures of Tin Tin follows the eponymous hero (Jamie Bell), an intrepid [...]

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 1 Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:07:31 +0000

Generally, despite their failure to approach real quality, the Twilight movies have tended to get better with each installment owing mostly to better directors taking the helm. Sadly, with Breaking Dawn part 1, the trend is thrown into reverse and we are handed easily the worst of the series, and for those of you keeping [...]

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:38:44 +0000

Intense, visceral and well drawn the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo nails the feel and tone of the book. Based on the novel by the late Stieg Larsson, the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo tells the complicated tale of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) who is hired to investigate a decades old murder in the [...]

Detailed Look at the Brilliantly Simple CouchDB File Format

Riyad Kalla — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:35:43 +0000

I’ve been researching CouchDB’s file format for the last week along side a few other efforts to understand resilient storage that is optimized for SSD or flash-based performance metrics. As it turns out, log-based file formats (and file systems) are optimal when working with flash memory like SSDs. CouchDB uses an append-only, copy-on-write approach to [...]

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:34:32 +0000

Mining the same paydirt as the first outing, the second Sherlock Holmes film struggles to find gold but still manages to be worth the effort. Game of Shadows picks up through lines hinted in the first film and brings Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) into direct conflict with the character’s greatest adversary, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), [...]

Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:38:11 +0000

Exciting and fun to watch, the fourth Mission: Impossible outing not only proves that the franchise still has sturdy legs under it but that director Brad Bird is just as good with live action as he is with CG animation. After a botched mission in Russia which leaves the Kremlin destroyed and the entire IMF [...]

How to Unlock an AMD Radeon HD 6950 to an 6970 Easily

Riyad Kalla — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 17:23:53 +0000

I purchased an XFX Radeon HD 6950 (2GB) video card a few months ago in preparation for all the triple-a titles that have come out in the last year; while I miss the PhysX support for the occasional game that supports it, I’ve been mostly happy. Shortly after the dual-launch of both the 6950 and [...]

The Descendants Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:51:15 +0000

Both funny and heartbreaking, the Descendants offers a realistic portrayal of the trials of death and discovery and the things people go through to survive the death of a loved one who had some unexpected skeletons in the closet. Matt King (George Clooney) is a lawyer and land baron who finds himself trying to reconnect [...]

imgscalr is Available from the Central Maven Repository

Riyad Kalla — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:45:45 +0000

imgscalr is a tight and simple image manipulation library for Java. As imgscalr’s popularity has grown more and more people have asked for access to it via Maven’s central repository. While The Buzz Media has provided access to imgscalr via our own Maven repo as well as GitHub downloads, developers have pointed out that it [...]

Saints Row 2 is more inspired than The Third

Riyad Kalla — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:30:29 +0000

I finished the original Saints Row and Saints Row 2 and remember them both very fondly; I was excited when the hub-bub around The Third started to get rolling as the game looked like more over-the-top, don’t-take-your-too-seriously shenanigans that made 1 and 2 so much fun in the first place. When it came time to [...]

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360) Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 06:58:30 +0000

Summary [ 10 out of 10] The fifth installment of the incredible Elder Scrolls franchise once again proves while this series is the gold standard for western RPGs. With an enormous amount of content and streamlined UI and tightened controls, Skyrim is head and shoulders the best game in the series and arguably the best [...]

The Muppets Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:11:22 +0000

A perfect blend of music, comedy and nostalgia, the Muppets hits the sweet spot in delivering a movie that will deliver for adults and children alike. Written by Jason Segel and Nick Stoller, the Muppets is everything awesome about the Muppets in a fresh package. Walter (voiced by Peter Linz) has always felt like the [...]

Immortals Movie Review

J Patrick Ohlde, Reviews Editor — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:16:44 +0000

With a bit more style than substance than I would have liked, the Immortals is still very successful at what it does and is definitely worth a look at a matinee. Immortals is a retelling of the myth of Theseus although it is much like any other movie based on Greek mythology in that a [...]

imgscalr 4.0 released – Optimal Java Image Scaling

Riyad Kalla — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:13:30 +0000

imgscalr is an optimized, fault-tolerant and simple Java library used to resize, rotate, filter, crop or pad images. imgscalr implements the most optimal code-paths for these tasks as recommended by the Java2D team and internally works around a number of hidden JDK and even JVM bugs pertaining to image operations via the Java2D pipeline. imgscalr [...]

Steam Cannot Connect to Internet for Qwest DSL User: Steam.exe exception and Hung Updating

Riyad Kalla — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:34:12 +0000

If you are a Qwest DSL subscriber using one of the Actiontec Q1000 models and in the last few days (around 11/11/11) you noticed that when you run Steam, it just hangs during Updating… and after a minute or so of waiting it pops up with a cryptic “Steam.exe (main exception): .. connect to the Internet“, even [...]

The Growing Divide in Ubuntu – Apple’s Methods meets Linux Community

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:18:26 +0000

This article is my opinion. Mark Shuttleworth is dragging Ubuntu (and by extension) Linux, kicking and screaming into the “design-first” world of computing lead by Apple. This progress requires that he, to some extent, ignore an entire community that has never prided itself on or been particularly good at design aesthetics. Ignoring such a community has… it’s [...]