Is 3d worth the extra money?

So we've all gone to the movies and have seen that that for only a few dollars more, you could go see your movie in 3D. But is it worth it just to watch a few things pop out of you or should you save those 5 dollars and just catch another movie with the money you saved.

                3D as we know and love it is the visual wizardry of having objects or debris popping right out in our face for our entertainment. It was most popular in the early 2000’s with almost every movie coming out at that time being in 3D and boasting how great it was. I myself like 3D to some extent, but never enough to justify paying the extra amount.  The way I saw it is that while you might enjoy the movie a little bit more, the 3D really detracts from the other points of the movie, and could leave you dazzled but clueless to what’s really going on.  But the worst part of the whole experience is those damn glasses. Now these days the glasses are made of a hard plastic, almost like a pair of sunglasses, back in the day your standard issue 3D glasses were made of cheap cardboard and little red and blue pieces of plastic. they wouldn't stick on your face no matter how you put them on; they were uncomfortable and distracted me more than the movie itself.

                Now 3D isn’t all that bad, with the added visual element that it brings to table can improve a movie greatly, but only very specific movies. A good example of this being that new 300 movie that I actually shelled out the extra cash to go see it in 3d.  I talked to a few of my friends who didn’t see it in 3D and they said that it would have improved the visuals and thus, improved the movie.

                So is it worth the extra cash to go and see movies in 3D. My verdict is maybe. Like I said it really depends on the movie with films with very vivid and colorful graphics such as the 300 movies working best with 3D, but other more serious films such as the last few harry potters having 3D being more of a negative impact to it. So the next time you are at the movie theaters, put some though into it before you pay the extra to see it in 3D.

Divergent review

So this weekend I decided to go out and catch another movie. I decided to go see Divergent as I read the book awhile back and wanted to see if the movie was true to the book.  Unfortunately the movie did not meet my expectations in the long run, and proved to be a disappointment for me in the end with it cutting many parts in the book and slowing many scenes down to almost a stop.

Divergent is a movie akin to the hunger games with a strong female lead in the main role. The plot is that society is split into 5 different factions, with each of them being different and consisting of people with the same personalities (Bravery, intelligence).  The film starts with our main character that is known as Beatrice. She lives in the faction abnegation that runs the government. But every year, the government gathers all of the 16 year olds together to determine what faction they best fit in with. But Beatrice has aspects of each of the factions shown in her test, and she is labeled as divergent. This is very dangerous for her as divergent means she can think on her own and poses a threat to the government. With this in mind, she quickly chooses to join the faction known as dauntless and starts her training; with the fact of her being divergent nestled deep in her mind.  She begins to start her training to join her faction, when she meets four, her main love interest. As their relationship begins to form,

Divergent was a book I quite enjoyed, with its new take on a dystopian society proving to being interesting and kept me reading from cover to cover. But unfortunately, the book puts the movie to shame with its slow nature and boring characters doing nothing for it. The age difference between the two leads was also a letdown, albeit a creepy one, with our heroine looking young enough but having our main love interest four being 24 leaving an almost 8 year time gap. The visuals were good and portrayed the book and the setting well, but they couldn’t help the movies slow nature and overall boring feeling it brings to the table. My suggesting is that if you wanted to see a movie with a strong female lead akin the hunger games, check this one out if you want, but any readers of the book will be disappointed and wanting their money back.

Justin Beiber out of control?

Celebrities seem to always make the news in some way or another, so I doesn’t surprise me that Justin Beiber has popped up in the news again for supposedly cheating on Selena Gomez. This sint the first time he has popped up the year and certainly won’t be the last. But when is enough for the young pop star, and when will he finally do something do arrogant or stupid enough for him to realize he is not invincible?

Justin Beiber has had his name in the papers for some time now, so I shouldn’t surprise you when you see it there again. But lately, he isn’t known for his singing talent, more his selfish attitude and ignorance. Just recently he has been accused of cheating on his on again off again girlfriend Selena Gomez. Now many of you may remember him drag racing in his car while drunk while still a minor. These events are becoming more and more popular, with Beiber also being accused of ruining his neighbor’s house by throwing eggs at it, visiting multiple brothels while on tour, and .  

I believe that Beiber will step over the line many times more before he finally wises up and stops. Many on his fans say that he is just going through a phase of some sort, and that he will mature and grown out of it eventually.  I believe that this might not ever happen, as I think that Justin will keep on doing his stunts until something major happens to him. I don’t think he knows the damage that these little stunts are doing to him, as even his fans are losing hope. I don’t know what, but I think that he will be doing one of his little stunts again, and then he will hurt someone else or hurt himself. Only then will he realize that his fame does not make him invincible.

These stunts have to end, whether it is throwing eggs or drag racing. Justin is 20 and the things he is taking part in are extremely immature. He needs to know when enough is enough and to not take his fame and wave it around like he is doing now.  Come on Justin, grow up.

                

Minecraft Review

Today I will review a game that has changed the way video games have been looked at. It has broken several records and is still one of the most immensely popular games on the market right now with it being released on almost every video game console and app store to date. Videos made about this game garner millions of views on YouTube, with it being one of the most popular games posted on their site, right up there with Call of duty. But what game may this be and why is it so popular?

The game I was talking about is called Minecraft. Even if you aren’t very video game savvy, theres a chance that you will have heard about or seen stuff about Minecraft.  For those of you who don’t know, Minecraft is a game released back in 2009 by a Swedish developer named Markus Persson, who created the game after playing a few other games. He liked the look and feel of them and decided to try and make his own game, based on what he liked from the other games. And thus Minecraft was born.

But let me begin to talk about the game play. You start with nothing in a randomly-generated world made of many different types of blocks, filled with multiple types of blocks, as well as wildlife like sheep, pigs, cows, and squids with no tools or shelter. At nighttime, monsters such as zombies, skeleton archers, and the rage inducing Creepers come out to try and kill you. Your goal is to build shelter, craft tools, find food and survive long enough to delve deep into the surface to claim valuable minerals such as diamond and emeralds to help you progress. Shelter keeps the monsters away from you, while food allows you to regenerate lost health, and keeps you from starving to death.

The presentation of the game shows that graphics don’t always make a game great. The blocky graphics look as if they came 20 years late to the video game party, but they have a unique charm, and Minecraft’s simple yet sweet graphics has become the most recognizable aspect of the game. It’s also a key part of the game play, as the entire game revolves around destroying blocks of the environment, collecting the raw materials that drop from the blocks, and using them to build something anything that your heart desires, whether it be a giant castle or a sleek modern home with chairs and a aquarium built right inside.

Another major part of Minecraft is its multiplayer. You can make your own personal server inside of the game, where other players can join you and help build. People from anywhere in the world can connect with you and share in some great moments. Servers also have the ability to install mod’s, which can do anything from change the look of the blocks around you, to adding in 100’s of new features such as new animals wandering around the world, to new items to spruce up the game play. There are even mod’s that change Minecraft completely into whole different genres, akin to an RPG or a FPS.

I personally have played a lot of games in my spare time, and I have never had the same experience with a game as I have with Minecraft. There’s just something special about it that I can’t pinpoint. If you own a computer, Xbox, or even have access to an app store, I cannot recommend highly enough buying this game right away before another update where it’s even changing price will go up.

Transcendence Review

This weekend I decided it had been far too long since I have gone out and seen a movie. So I decided to go out and see the movie transcendence.  While the movie does start out somewhat slowly and doesn’t pick up much speed until the climax, the ending is well done and the movie finishes on a high note.

The movie starts off slowly like I said, with our main character names Will (Played by Johnny Depp) is working on creating a computer that has life of its own. But unfortunately, he is shot by a terrorist and is severely wounded before he could finish his project. Dying, his wife Evelyn brings him to his computer he has been working on and uploads his mind to the computer to stop him dying.  He then requests to be connected to the internet to gain more power and knowledge.  Her friend objects to this however, but she still manages to connect him to the internet.  After this, her friend gets abducted by the terrorists and taken to their headquarters.  They question him about his involvement and force him to join their side. While this was happening, will was using his power to build himself a little town for him and Evelyn on the outskirts of a town in the desert. But after he build the town, the government intervenes and shows up with an FBI agent and a Scientist (Played to Morgan Freeman). They are then tasked with choosing to have all of our modern technology destroyed by will, or for them to suffer transcendence.

Now that I have given you a little look into the movie, I am going to go over the ups and downs of it all. I thought that the movie tried to convey a suspenseful feel throughout, which it accomplished in some places and failed to work in others. I also thought that the movie was way to slow in the beginning, and didn’t really focus on the characters as much as I would have liked to. Even though everybody was devastated that will was shot with the poison bullet, it didn’t faze me at all considering that they didn’t really build up and tension or back-story for him. But for all the negatives the film has, it redeems itself somewhat by wrapping up very well with a good ending and climax that really made me think. I think that you should see this movie only if you were looking for a movie that will make you think and not something action packed with explosions every 5 seconds. 

How to not get scammed on EBay

So about a week ago I was on eBay just doing some window-shopping when I came across a particular item. This item was a complete DVD box set of all of Quentin Tarintino’s movies. I have seen this before on websites priced at around 150$ dollars. So I was pretty astonished when I saw it up for only 20$. I immediately bought it and waited for a confirmation Email. That email did not arrive. Just yesterday I was on my email when I noticed I got one from Ebay. I opened it up to see that customer service had told me that the account I bought the item from was a fake Chinese account that took my money then disbanded the account. At first I was amazed that I could have fallen to such a stupid scam and how ignorant I must have been. But after thinking for awhile, I decided to help you guys out and make a few tips for you to prevent falling into the same situation I was in.   

Tip 1. The very first step you should take is to check the persons username. I know this may sound a little weird, but sometimes you can tell if the account was made with a bot or a person if you just read their username. Then, check the approval rating of the person you are buying from. Most of the time if it’s below even 75%, the person is a scammer or fake and you should generally just walk away to prevent being scammed. Then after you’ve cleared that, make sure that you check out all of the other items the seller has been selling and check the feedback. If all seems positive, then continue down to step 2.

Tip 2. After you have checked their history and background, send them a message. Most people don’t know that you can communicate with people through eBay, and it saves a lot of hassle. Before you buy your item, make sure to establish even a brief contact with the other person to make sure that they are indeed human and not some robot in China.

Tip 3.  Even if you have received a message back from the person, check the items they have sold and search for things like that item. If you see other usernames that pop up selling the same or similar item with almost identical usernames, you know that they are all bots and you should stay away.

So the next time you are surfing EBay in looks of a great deal on some new shoes or a game, make sure you do your homework first unless you want to end up 20$ short with nothing to show.

           

Iphone C vs S

Corresponding with a recent blog of mine of a cell phone nature, I decided to take the two most recent Iphone’s and compare them and see which is the better buy and which one I would choose.

When you look at the two phones, they look almost identical in height. This can’t be said for their weight and overall appearance is quite different.  The Iphone s is made of metal with a significant weight advantage over the Iphone C, which is made of some sort for pseudo plastic. They both have the same strong feeling that all the iphones have, albeit the c is just lighter. Another major new feature that the Iphone s has over its brother is its fingerprint unlocking technology. For those of you who don’t know, the new Iphone has the ability to unlock itself with only your thumbprint and only yours. But this feature shouldn’t persuade you from not considering the Iphone c.

Now I personally don’t own either of these phones, but I have talked to and inquired about them to friends who own them. They said that the battery life on them is about the same as past iphones, so they both finish at the same place there.  They both run the same software, albeit the s tends to improve on the c in many ways such as a slightly better camera (From what I could tell). In almost every way it seems like the Iphone edges out its cheaper brother in almost every category.

Now a good reason many may see in picking the c over the s, even in its inferiority, is its around $100 less cost. Personally, I think that even thought $100 may seem like quite a lot of money, in reality it really isn’t. I think that if you for sure wanted to pick up one of the new iphones, you should go for the more overall better one, even if you are paying slightly more for it. This will not only guarantee you a good phone that will last you a much longer time, you will soon come to find out that the benefits will soon outweigh the downsides of spending the extra cash.

With cellphones being all the rage now a days, having the best one is always the right decision. From what ive looked into, it seems that if you wanted to buy an Iphone, the best bet would be to buy the S. Even though its much more expensive then the C, it boasts better camera quality, a more durable feel, and a all around more stable feel and design that will long outlast the C.