Yup... 
 
I told my self many may many many months ago that I would do a small concept album because I felt like I was wasting time doing nothing. Now, several months and sound changes later, I now have a small 4 track album I can share with people. I'm just really glad I finally got this done, but I feel like I could go back and edit the songs and mix them better ( because I don't know how to mix properly ). I also really wanted to add a fifth song but... ahh... I know that would have just delayed me further. 
 
So, if you if you guys want to listen to it just head on over to my website   http://bit.ly/5geIe 
   Let me just warn you, the sound ( loudness and such ) sucks. 

Okay, minus not really having any content... :( If you check the Sound section, I have two tracks and more if you click on the soundcloud link. The Idea Lab also has some arts, and is accessible by clicking Idea Lab, the Blogger logo, or the Light Bulb graphic.
 
Uhh, so I have a bunch of images that link back to the same places... Cos I'm not 100% sure about the layout. Gimmie some complaints or critiques, please. 
 
Gogoris

 
So, I was at my friend's house. He tells me that they are showing Taxi Driver on YouTube for free, rated "R" and everything. I get excited at the idea. I'm all like "No, way, awesome!!" 
 
So I have my laptop there, head on over to YouTube, and there I see it on the Spotlight section, which I usually never pay attention to. I start it up and here are some things I noticed, and am now thinking about because I like to think: 
 
Before I am allowed to view Taxi Driver, it displays the typical warning    

“Taxi Driver - Full Movie from Crackle”

The video you have requested has been rated "R" and may not be appropriate for younger audiences

  And right after that this is what I see: 

If you can't read the text, it just says 
 

"This video and related advertisements are provided by crackle.com, and information may be collected about you when you visit this page pursuant to the privacy policy described at crackle.com"

Okay, so I think nothing of it. 
 
Right after it displays that image for what seems like a split second, I'm greeted with a large MPAA Blue Band R rating. In case you guys have been living under a tree stump, the MPAA is a motion picture monopoly made up of the six ( eight if you count Lions Gate and the Weinstein Co. ) largest movie groups and their owners. Besides that, I could get on a bigger discussion with their war on piracy, but I'll probably get to that later. 
 
ANYHOO, so I'm given the R Blue Band, and after that I get an advertisement. Wopee... I notice that its for the US Army consisting of new young guys shooting guns, running around, and shooting guns. I did not pay much attention to it, because hey, some other YouTube channels have these annoying adverts, but the difference between this one is the others is that I noticed it was of very high quality, and all of the video functions were grayed out. 
 
After that.... COLUMBIA PICTURES. Ahhh the old Columbia Pictures intro with all its gooey grainy goodness. Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is now playing. BUT, the delicious feeling of watching this whole classic movie on YouTube disappears when I notice that the movie is riddled with strategically placed commercials in between scenes. I was paying attention to the movie when all of a sudden I forget about the ads, and a Volkswagen ( I think ) commercial starts blasting its pitch to me. 
 
The commercials consisted of GMC, Ford, US Army, and shorter Dell/Intel spots, and ONE VW commercial ( if it even was that, can't remember). All commercials have grayed out options, so they are unskippable and have no X to close them. Let me also add that I've been noticing that all the commercials are usually louder than the show I'm watching.
 
Here are some of the thoughts I had while watching this: 

•  "Hey, Taxi Driver on YouTube, sweet! Uncut and at a good quality, all in one part!" 
• I check the Cracked channel, they have Bill Murray and Bud Bundy on the front, suh-weet! I notice they have tons of great old shows and movies on their channel, suh-weet!! 
• I notice that one of the four subscriptions is Sony Pictures. Sony Corp. owns Columbia Pictures, so because of that, its where I figure all the commercials are coming from.
• The army commercials and car commercials reminded me of old WWII War/News Reels
• The Ford commercials consisted of comparing the new Ford card against some car from Germany's Audi
• A Cracked watermark sits on the bottom right corner of the screen, just like television
• I begin to think "oh my gawd, this is going to be the new television
• I am watching Taxi Driver like I would on, say, AMC, but with no editing. Its almost like being at a movie theater, but at home
• There used to be a time when people posted all kinds of stuff on YouTube, and there was no trouble with the MPAA or similar groups taking down videos or removing audio
• YouTube is free
• YouTube has new logo edit that says "1 billion views per day!" PER DAY
• What if everything on YouTube could be broad casted in HD
• What about Google Video, doesn't Google own YouTube?
  
• I should make a public domain channel and upload some old movies :D
• The future of the internet is in jeopardy
• Your image of television is the curved rectangle, or "screen"
• Your image of computer monitor USED to be that ( at least mine ) I see computer monitors as flat black screens on a stand now
• TVs are now trying to look like computer monitors
• The computer is trying to bring your television experience to your personal PC
• Is the television trying to bring your computer experience to the TV?
• It is being threatened by big groups like these, trying to nickel and dime you for everything
• Certain video is region locked. Why?
• Hulu is region locked, why?
• Its the big TV studios being threatend by the free internet
• Why is something like Pandora online radio locked?
• Because the music industry is being threatened by free internet
• I saw that "Life" Scientology commercial. It was really well made, but it made me feel odd
• Taxi Driver has some good fucking lighting and colors
• I can't wait for Shutter Island
• Random though about commercials, why are there so many prescription drug commercials?

 
Then after this, I just continued to watch the film with annoying ads in the way. 
 
Ok, so back to my title, I believe that the internet is at war with television. I believe the internet is going to take over that, UNLESS people try to cap your internet ( which some groups have been trying to do, while some already cap your bandwidth ). See, nobody is really watching TV anymore ( I think ). There's still lots of people hooked on it, but sometimes I feel like the TV people don't know what to do. They don't know how they can compete and they're pulling shit out of their asses. That's how I see most reality TV. That's how I see MTV and VH1, and how lovely they were when they were young, but now they've just become another TV channel. 
 
I'm wondering if the TV people are trying to infiltrate the internet. I wonder if they might leave the world of television, to come to this new internet television. Time slots can be removed, and programming can be played at all hours, at any hours. 
 
They already have to deal with things like DVR, machine that record commercials ( which makes TV channels money ), but can be fast forwarded. Now the same people that own music and movies are trying to fight people who are getting their stuff for free. But I mean, can you really blame them? 10 dollars or more a movie ticket already feels like a robbery ( to my cheap ass ) and their food and snacks are over priced ( again, to my cheap ass ). But can you blame me? 
 
This is the part where I talk about video games now. You see, the way I have seen it, and the way some of you guys probably see it is that the video game industry is young, and its growing rapidly. Almost too rapidly. We went from large carts, to compact discs, and then DVDs in such a short time compared to Video tape, or even record players. 
 
Lets take a break. I shall continue with a new segment titled "The Western World vs Japan" 
 
The Western world and Japan are in a new competition, They got us good with the introduction of Sony and Nintendo into our world a while back, but now they're really having to compete again. I'm kind of sad to hear from Japanese developers that they feel they cannot compete with the western world in video games. It really is tragic. Why? Because even though I see Japan as this annoying generic anime factory, they do have a lot of unique culture and a LOT of classic games that have only gone to inspire most of the western games. Its almost like a reversed Disney animation thing with Japanese animation. 
 
But the thing with me is, I feel like most western games are a fucking bore. They have no charm or distinct style. You can't ( I can't ) view a western RPG or FPS sometimes, and try to differentiate it from another. While I can usually tell the difference between a Japanese game ( though I may or may not have any interest in them ). 
 
So yes, Japan has all this nice technology, hentai, robots, and swordplay, but they can't compete with western games. I believe its because they're a bit stubborn and close minded. There's always talks of taking risks in the industry, and I really feel like the Japanese devs or publishers completely ignore it. You can name some one like Tecmo AND Koei who come out with nothing but DoA/Ninja Gaiden and Dynasty/Samurai Warriors. BUT, I can say somebody like Capcom took a huge risk with a game like Dead Rising. They threw away the idiotic "the gaijin westerners won't like it rorororo" mentality and really gave it their all. It was a zombie game, but it was not Resident Evil.  It was an action game, but it was not Mega Man. I really do believe it is this generations best "arcade" game. It has tons of enemies, lots of items to grab and throw, guns, platforming ( if you count running on top of zombies ), and most impressive of all, the game looks really fantastic. OH! And the voice acting is actually really well done, with a good story ( though some of the characters have that ridiculous Japanese touch ). 
 
Ok, but don't get me started on Resident Evil 5. That game is a shit Resident Evil, and I will forever keep it like that as my opinion. It is a shit Resident Evil, but it is a very well made Action game.  
 
*Forgot to add that there is a Western vs Japanese robotics competition going on right now. Boston Dynamics Big Dog vs Honda's Asimo. Both of these machines will eventually destroy the human race, but that's also another story
 
kkkk, totally sidetracked, but its okay cos you're not reading this. 
 
So in conclusion, the internet is being threated by big corporate bullies, the internet is competing against the music, film, and tv industry, and the internet is the best fucking invention of today. Screw sliced bread, screw mashed potatoes, or liquid nutrients like orange juice in a box. The internet can have the ability to remove people from being stuck in front of the tube and then re stick them in front of the monitor. What if we just made TV on the go, kind of like the quickly dying radio. Who listens to radio? ( a lot of people do, but since I don't, I just pretend that a lot of people don't ). Then all that would be around are television channels that you subscribe to on the internet. Which gives me an idea for my website. 
 
 
Ok, sorry for my half rant/half fake scientific study. 
 
P.S., that Scientology "Life" video is freaking scary. I'm sorry, I have to say it. Okay, so normally I wouldn't promote anything related to Scientology because I just don't believe it to be telling the truth, but the ad is really well made, and really, I want to make sure people understand that Scientology is going to take over the owrld soon. Maybe 2012.  
 
*EDIT my stuff came out all bold and added robotics part.

EDIT Ahhh, I meant to put this in Off-Topic :( 
 
So I woke up several hours ago, and a nice Amazon package was waiting for me. 
It contained my new Blue DSi and Rhythm Heaven.  
 
I am really enjoy the DSi. Looking through all the features. Downloaded Flipnote and the Web Browser but besides that nothing else. I havn't gone through Flipnote yet, but I have been messing with the photo channel. I popped in Chinatown Wars and it seems to be running smoother (could be my imagination) and New Super Mario Bros., which is only getting me pumped for NSMB Wii. 
 
I'll have to mess with it later cos right now I have homework to do, so I'll leave you guys with the first photo I took with the camera.    

 
And because I'm a nice guy, I'll leave one more so you won't be able to sleep tonight. ;D  


Seacrest, out!!

So I've been playing through my Steam games a lot lately, and I've been really enjoying the 16:9 1280x600 on my 16:10 screen.
I first stumbled upon this res when I saw videos of an "Ultra Widescreen" option for Burnout Paradise. Since then, I loaded up TF2 one day, and started messing around with its resolutions. My screen is 16:10 so I didn't really know I could use 16:9 settings. When I would pop in the highest 16:9 res, it would just look stretched or bloated. But if I chose 1280x600, I would get this: 
     So, since my TF2 looked so nice, I thought the "cinematic" experience would go well with Episode 2. 



















Best part about this res is that I can somehow run L4D with better graphics. At my desktop res of 1280x800, the game would run poorly if I tried to put any settings on high. Now, the game looks well and plays well, but the game won't run as smooth if I have my flashlight on. I have to say that the colors/contrast on the PC version don't look as nice as when I play the game on the 360. I'm guessing its just my TV settings.
 













Knowing that my game runs well now is making me consider buying the PC version of L4D2 over the 360 version.