The Amazon Kindle 3G Review

A few months ago I bought one of those new Amazon Kindle e-book readers everyone’s raving about… Well ok… Not everyone.

The Kindle 3G

I always had my eye on these new e-ink e-book readers but they used to cost quite a few pounds so I never really ended up buying one.

Recently, maybe thanks to the whole new tablet market, the kindle price got slashed and I bought one for something like 180 dollars shipping included. If you live in Italy, like me, there’s no way to buy one from amazon.co.uk or .de or .fr or .it as it will automatically redirect you to the american amazon.com website.

Upon receiving the kindle it came in a simple but sturdy amazon box with a simple leaflet explaining how to start it up. First thing i did was try to take of the thin sheet of plastic these kind of gadgets have on the screen when they are new… you know that thin plastic layer on your new phone’s screen or on your new iPod. To my dismay it was a trap!

There was no screen protector. What looked like a FAKELY written phrase (you know the fake screen printed on a thin sheet of plastic to act as an Ikea-style product demo) saying “please attach your kindle to a pc usb port to charge it” wasn’t fake at all. This was my first ever experience with E-ink technology. I was truly amazed.

The new Kindle screen looks like paper. Absolutely no distinction. It has no backlight it has amazing contrast… Damn this thing is like…MAGIC.

I bought the 6″ screen Wi-Fi version (i don’t see why anyone in the world would buy a 3G data plan version) which is the size of a normal paperback book page. I quickly pop it on my pc (immediately recognized by Windows 7) and register it to my amazon account. I am then given a list of free un-copyrighted books that I can download. Such old classics as Treasure Island, Sherlock Holmes, The Mysterious Island and many others. I immediately downloaded Treasure Island to try it out.

The feeling the Kindle gives you is just what you would feel reading a book but better. There’s no screen glare that you can have with iPhones or iPads and the Kindle is very light so it won’t strain your hands while reading in bed like a book usually does to me. Another plus is that there’s no more of that easy page/hard page while reading on your side. Depending on what side i’m lying on there’s an easy page (where the side of the book rests on the bed) and a hard page (when you have to hold the whole book up to read the other page with your hand turning into a Dr.Zoidberg claw), making me toss and turn in bed like a maniac. Glad that’s gone…

Amazon offers an amazing variety of e-books so you’re going to find pretty much everything you want, except more obscure books. Nonetheless it has accepted any e-book format i’ve been throwing at it including .azw (obviously), .epub, .mobi and .pdf so you can buy an e-book from anywhere else on the internet and pop it on your kindle by dragging and dropping through the usb cable. If your e-book is unsupported you can send it to your kindle email and it will be converted into a usable format and sent automatically to your Kindle.

Speaking of transfering e-books to the kindle, Amazon does a great job with what they call “Whispernet”. When you buy an e- book off amazon.com it will ask you where you want it sent. You can send it to your registered kindle, your iPhone, your Android phone or even your Kindle app on your PC. By simply connecting your Kindle to your Wi-Fi network you can sync all your items with a push of a button. Not only does it sync all your books, it also syncs all your highlights, popular highlights by other people and what page you were on last time you read the book so that you can pick right up from where you left if you want to read from your iphone or from another PC.

One of the nicest perks you get on the Kindle (and on most ebook readers for that matter) is that you can move your cursor right next to a word you don’t know and it will give you a quick definition on the internal dictionary and if that’s not enough it’ll let you search it on google, wikipedia or anywhere else you want on the internet. I’ve never been the kind of guy to pick up a dictionary while reading so this is a great addition.

There are a few drawbacks to the Kindle and I believe it isn’t just a Kindle problem… With a paperback book you can buy it and read it. The best thing about paperback books is that if you like them you can tell other people about it and do something that used to be regarded as granted… LEND IT.  Unfortunately Amazon and many other e-book retailers have put DRM protection on all of the e-books they sell. This is absolute bullcrap because I wanted to lend an e-book i bought to my mother recently and realised the only way was to make her buy it again for her kindle… Which to me sounds stupid. I know this DRM crap is all about stopping pirates but come on!

Apparently Amazon is working on a “Lending” option for e-books but they still haven’t enabled it for European users.

I also noticed that the price of e-books is variable. Most of the ones i’ve seen cost more than their paperback brother. Some people say other books cost more than their e-book version. Nonetheless I’ve always paid something more for my e-book than I would have paid for my paperback which does piss me off a bit.

The Kindle is a great e-book reader then… yes… but unfortunately for me, it’s quite a nightmare for manga afficionados.

Manga on the Kindle

Not because you can’t read them… not at all… but because of the tedious convertion you have to go through. I haven’t found any legitimate source to BUY e-manga. Not the ones I like anyway so I had to go and find illegal scans. After downloading the scans you have to convert them into something kindle-friendly with a program called Mangle (Manga+Kindle aaaaah) which isn’t really always 100% perfection. It sometimes mixes up page numbers and you end up having to delete all your converted images and start again. I have officially given up on converting manga scans for the Kindle. Too much time and not much reward. You can read this if you are interested.

The Kindle has some other minor and hidden features such as an experimental (but very good) internet browser, a minesweeper game, a text-to-speech reader and an automatic Twitter/Facebook updater (sends your highlights to your feed).

Oh I nearly forgot!! The kindle also sports a pair of speakers from which you can hear your text-to-speach voice, mp3’s and audiobooks. A nice addition even though you have to watch your space as the Kindle has 3Gygabytes of internal space which isn’t expandable.

One small tip. Don’t buy an original amazon.com leather case. Apparently they’ve been making Kindles freeze without any explanation. Not to mention they cost like £30-£50. I ended up making my own carry case for the kindle by carving an old Diary:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can definetly reccomend a Kindle if you are an avid reader and interested in new technology/gadgets.

o/

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Best Videogames of 2010

2010 Has passed in quite a breeze and there comes a time when one thinks back to what made the year a special one.

In this post (and probably the next few posts) I’m going to list the best stuff I’ve seen/played/done/experienced and explain why I think it’s worth your time.

Best Videogames of 2010

Let’s start with what I love most. The videogame market per se (and by that I mean retail videogames) hasn’t been very extraordinary in 2010 but some games outshined others. Here are my top 10 videogames of 2010.

This list is based on what I had most fun playing this year.

10 – Call of Duty: Black Ops – Xbox 360, PS3, PC

The Call of Duty Franchise is already at the pinnacle of the 1st person shooter genre.

You would think this top-selling blockbuster game would be higher on the top 10 chart but I didn’t like the single player at all.

The story is cliché, the AI is so embarrassingly 1992-programmed that even Pac Man CE seems to do better in that area.

It has some very good parts though. Piloting a Helicopter, or infiltrating Vietcong bases killing them in their sleep was worth the effort.

I included Black Ops mostly because I had fun playing multiplayer with friends over xbox live.

On the other hand, I do hope the whole 1st person shooter genre renovates itself in the next installment (I wish there wasn’t another iteration in 2011) because personally I think the Call of Duty franchise is getting very boring indeed.

9 – Need for Speed Hot Pursuit – Xbox360, PS3

I felt like I needed to include a racing game in the list.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit has gone back to the origins with the first need for speed games. I remember how cool it used to be to play “Cops and Robbers” in the older games on the PC and this new game has brought that all rushing back with a hint of novelty that makes it a whole new, great experience.

You can either race as a Bandit, increasing your wanted level by escaping from police capture or you can play the cop, increasing your rank by catching baddies! The gameplay is simple and arcadey and that’s what I was looking for this year. I was pretty tired of the old driving simulators. Forza Motorsport 3 and the endless wait for Gran Turismo 5 didn’t really do it for me.

8 – Sonic 4: Episode 1 – XBLA

People hate it a lot, others hate it less.

I actually liked this modern take on the classic Hedgehog. You might say I’m a little bit of a fanboy (playing Sonic on my Sega Master System II and Game Gear), but I actually really enjoyed it this time. After endless shitware Sonic games, finally something playable! The levels looked great, sonic controls pretty well (even though some people say he is too floaty), the lock-on feature is awesome and the Sonic avatar costume you can unlock makes it worth playing!

Only a few downsides to this one. It cost me 1400 Microsoft Points and considering its length it wasn’t worth all that money. The cost of the next episode will determine if I’ll buy it or not.

Oh and the music… OH THE HORROR! Play this one on mute!

7 – Game Dev Story – iPhone

This little gem for the iPhone made my battery run out very quickly for a few weeks or so. The idea seems really stupid and uninteresting until you actually start playing it.

You impersonate the founder of a game developing company and you start by hiring some coders to make your games. It’s similar to what an imaginary Game Dev Tycoon would be. You can buy licences to develop for consoles with silly parodic names such as the Playstatus instead of the Playstation and so on.

You can choose what kind of game to develop and what genre it will be.

Your aim is to sell as many games as you can and in the end you will also be able to develop a console.

It’s hard to believe such a great game could come out of this idea but I urge you to try it out to see for yourselves. I wasted more than a few weeks on this one.. Ask my girlfriend! A true gem of 2010.

6 – Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Wii

Speaking about my girlfriend… Kirby’s Epic Yarn wouldn’t even be on this list if it wasn’t for her. This has been my “sit on the couch with my girlfriend and play together” game of 2010.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn graphics are incredibly innovative. Everything is made of yarn and you can move the whole background by unzipping it or pulling a well placed string. Your co-op characters will sometime merge together creating a truck or train and sometimes even a huge mech that shoots missiles. These parts of the game are really exciting and really need you to cooperate with your partner to get to the end of the level safely.

Death doesn’t exist in Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Instead you are faced with humiliation… a gamers’ worst nightmare. The score of the level depends on how many Beads (Bijoux for Gloria) you can collect. By falling into pits and getting hit by enemies you lose most of your beads. And the humiliation comes when you finish a level without any beads at all. This formula is kind of new and it works pretty well with the game as it makes you want to keep those beads to end the level well and removes the frustration that dying might give.

On the negative side we couldn’t care less about personalizing our virtual kirby-home with the stuff we collected (Animal Crossing Style), some of the storytelling was way too childish (and also weird sexual references like Yin Yarn putting stuff into his weirdly placed sock), and playing alone with no-one to help you can be quite boring.

I mean… look at his sock!

Definitely a game one should own just for its innovation and co-op fun.

5 – Red Dead Redemption – Xbox360, PS3

I love westerns… and I love sandbox games… therefore I love Red Dead Redemption.

I actually had good and bad times with this game but pushing through and finishing it paid off in the end.

The game is what you’d expect from Rockstar. A GTA-similar open world-ish game with a Western theme.

Missions are mostly cool and horse riding really looks and feels amazing. The good nature of John Marston (the main character) makes for a nice change instead of the usual GTA bad boy.

The animations are so amazing in Red Dead that for the first time in videogame history I actually felt like crying when my horse got shot and died or when shooting an enemy’s horse by mistake and killing it.

I did get bored halfway through the Mexico campaing but I pushed on and the ending was truly worth it. Buy this game and finish it and you’ll know what I mean.

4 – Enslaved – Xbox 360

Enslaved… I wish I could put you at number one…but I can’t.

I have said, more than once, that Enslaved was my game of the year 2010, and I still want to believe it. So why is it sitting at number 4?

Enslaved has proved that proper acting can make or break a game… at least that’s what I wish it did. There’s a book (Extra Lives) that speaks about this thoroughly…and it seems that gamers don’t care enough about acting in videogames as they should, but that’s a topic for another day.

The acting portrayed by the characters in this game is so good it deserves an Oscar. Facial expressions, tone and especially EYE and eybrow expressions were all incredible and really made the story in this game a joy to experience.

In reality, other than the AMAZING acting there’s a good game underneath it all. I underline good and not great… It has a simple combat mechanic and the game could have done a lot more in the customization sphere of things.

You are Monkey, a very agile – Prince of Persia mixed with Goku – kind of guy and your weapon is infact an extendible Staff (just like Goku in DBZ, not to mention a floating cloud to roam around in). The first part of the game is one of the best I’ve seen in a while and I won’t ruin any of the story for you because it’s worth going into this one with no preconceptions.

I can’t bring myself to say anything else about it because you absolutely need to buy it and see for yourself. Game developers should learn from Enslaved and use that kind of acting to improve the whole videogame market.

3 Limbo – XBLA

Another XBLA game in my list… now you’re realizing why I mentioned a bad year for retail videogames in the beginning of this post.

Limbo is something you experience rarely in videogames, especially in modern videogames. Limbo’s gameplay is NEW and novelty is something new gamers don’t seem to care about. We are always fed iteration after iteration of the same type of game until the franchise is too milked to sell anymore.

Limbo is an amazing achievement, and a game that is different in how it makes you feel.

You are a child who wakes up in this black and white shadowy world inhabited by monster spiders and man eating shadow hounds.

The game is a solid mix between platforming, adventure, and strong puzzle gametypes and it delivers all of them perfectly.

The ending is something you hope to be prepared for but it really hits you hard. It personally left me open mouthed for a minute or so.

This game is ART.

An easy buy for 800 Microsoft points.

2 – Mass Effect 2 – Xbox360, PC

I have to admit… I only played this recently…and am still playing it. All of this because after having played Mass Effect 1 I knew how much time I’d spend being sucked into Mass Effect 2.

I decided not to import my previous character from ME1 because I wanted to start from scratch and create a female character with different stats.

Here she is (I tried to make her resemble to my girlfriend but to her say, I failed miserably).

Mass Effect 2 is just what you would expect but better. The story is amazing, gameplay is better than ME1, characters are well developed and they make you want to get to know them and help them in their own personal subquests.

You know an RPG game is good when you WANT to do the side-quests before continuing on your path with the main story.

Also: 2nd best start scene of 2010 (after enslaved ofcourse).

There’s little to add except to say this game is near perfect on every level.

The only downside it has is that it’ll suck up so many hours of your life you want to plan ahead for it, reason why I only got to it in January 2011, exactly one year after its release. SHAME ON ME!

1 – Super Meatboy – XBLA, PSN, PC, Mac

Man oh man… another XBLA game in the list and NUMBER 1 too!

Super Meatboy, just saying it makes me shiver with various emotions that include love, hatred, rage, fear and frustration.

Super Meatboy started as a small flash game created by 2 people that I personally never played. It got then converted and improved into an XBLA game and BOOM!… mega success.

It’s a simple 2D platformer that takes from all the best platformers ever made and merges them into a game that not only will amaze you, but it will make your hands hurt like with old school hardened games.

All you can do is jump and move left and right to reach your girlfriend in each of the hundreds of levels. Yet it ends up burying itself right in your heart as one of the best games ever made.

The sheer happiness you receive after completing a level you were trying for the past 4 hours after dying 600 times is something I hadn’t felt since reaching the second castle in Alex Kidd in Miracle World on the Sega Master System II.

You can see some of my videos trying some of the most frustrating levels in Super meatboy right here:

I did complete them later off-camera.

So that completes my top 10 videogames of 2010.

Here are some Best of the Rest that didn’t make the top 10:

Donkey Kong Country Returns – Wii

A great reboot of the saga that deserves to be bought

Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Wii

Great game but it’s just more of the same

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX – Various

Having missed the CE version I decided to buy the DX version and I couldn’t believe how I could still be enjoying Pac-Man after so many years.

Hope you enjoyed the list and obviously I want everyone to have their say!

o/

You Know What Grinds My Gears?

It’s been a while and I feel like I need to vent some of my repressed anger issues. I have a lot of little things that really annoy me. This will be a mega-rant post.

1) I hate Football, I hate football players and I hate football maniac-fans. The sport used to be good, the players used to love kicking the ball around. Now all I see is overpaid pseudo-legends that throw themselves on the ground without even being touched, holding their knees just to get a penalty. They actually think it’s a tactic. If I was their coach I’d sell them to some other team. I remember when I was small and I used to play football in a team. I was taught to always try my best to stay on my feet. You never know… you might miss a goal opportunity if you fall down.

2) I hate my allergies. I have had allergies for about 5 years now. Some kind of grass pollen. It makes my eyes water, my nose stuffy, and gives me light asthma. I stupidly mowed my lawn 2 weeks ago and I had one of the worst asthma attacks I’ve ever had since I was 10 years old. Stayed home a whole week and took heavy doses of Cortisone. I’m fine now but I guess I won’t be mowing the lawn anytime soon. Let the grass be freeee!

3) I hate when trains aren’t on time. I went to see my girlfriend in Trieste this weekend and on Sunday I had to take the 17.44 train. We ran to make it on time, only to be told the train doors weren’t working. This meant it took 30 minutes to change train and get on our way. I had to take a replacement bus to get home. I hate replacement buses too.

4) I hate LOST. With all my heart. I have watched it for 6 years every fecking week. I saw the latest episode a few weeks back and quarter of the way through I just had my jaw wide open…I just said “WHAT THE FUCK” to myself and turned it off. I tried finishing that episode but ended up turning the tv off again because it’s just not enjoyable at all anymore. Even the actors hate the show. You can see it in their faces. Jack just wishes he never started acting in this show, Kate has become ugly, there are 2 alternate realities, Locke is not Locke bah fuck it. They don’t deserve to be watched anymore. I don’t want to hear anything about lost for another…BILLION years. I doubt I’ll watch the finale. Here’s Jack thinking what I’m thinking:

5) I hate organizing holidays. I’ve been trying to organize my summer holidays (a week in the south of Italy), but I just can’t bring myself to sit down and find a decent bed and breakfast, call them, book a double room etc.

6) I hate going to the toilet at work, opening the booth, and smelling someone else’s shit at 8.30 in the morning. Who shits so early at work anyway? Word of warning… If you use public toilets often, always choose the booth with the most open door. People who take a shit are usually subconsciously ashamed and always close the door on their way out. That was a free tip, on the house.

7) I hate a messy dinner table. Sounds weird I know but after a few weeks my dinner table becomes home to a million pieces of paper, letters, crumbles of food, bags, receipts etc. I try not to make it happen but it always does. I cleaned it up yesterday and now my house looks less like a den and more like a house.

8 ) I hate my neighbor. I live in an apartment and the woman underneath mine is the most annoying person in the whole world. She’s probably a whore from what I gather. She has a Spanish accent, maybe Cuban but I’m not sure. She has a “smoking” kind of voice if you know what I mean and really high pitched. The Spanish accent doesn’t make it any better. I’ve heard her shout and fight with different male voices (hence the whore) and she has a very stupid small dog. On weekends and occasionally on Thursdays she plays (AND SINGS) raggaeton music. The ONLY fucking music genre I loathe. She also rambles on about how I throw shit in her garden when it’s obviously not true. Sometimes I have my window open and I can smell her smoking weed. Woman… you’re too old to be smoking that kind of shit. Stop it bitch.

9) I hate trying to lose a few Kilos. I’m trying to lose a few Kg because I had stopped training for 3-4 months. This involves a decent diet. No carbs at dinner. I hate no carbs at dinner. It means I can’t eat potatoes, I can’t eat pasta, no rice, no mashed potatoes, no polenta, no pizza… All I eat at dinner is Meat, vegetables and vegetable soup. No parmesan on that crap either. And I’m not losing any fucking weight.

10) I hate my watch repairman. I gave him 3 watches to repair last September 2009. He still hasn’t done them.

11) I hate having to go to sleep. It’s like fast-forwarding 5-6 hours of lifetime just to get to work.

12) I hate Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2. This image sums up multiplayer pretty well.

13) I hate smoking. I used to smoke. I’ve stopped since January 2009. I don’t know why this hate came upon me so hard but it’s crazy. I can’t stand the smell of people smoking close to me, I can’t stand how my clothes smell after I’ve spent time with a smoker, I hate how people say they’re addicted to the nicotine… we all really know they’re just addicted to the actual gesture of smoking. I hate cigarettes, I hate ashtrays, I feel like my lungs are being raped by other people’s smoke. Cigarettes should be erased from the face of the earth.

14) I hate people that just do stuff to get noticed.

15) Which brings me to how I hate Facebook. It’s unbearable. All I see is people that cry out “look at me”, “ask me why I wrote this”, “look at what I’m a fan of”, “look at what I just liked”, “look at my cleavage on this shot”, “look how clever I am by making this witty remark”, “look at how farmville is ruining my life”. I can’t stand it. Showing off is one of the things I hate the most.

16) I hate hating.

17) I hate not having a job in the videogaming industry. It was always a dream of mine. I still hope to fulfill it one day.

18) I hate the fact that if I do leave this job, I would leave all the benefits that come with it.

19) I hate that my Boss still hasn’t given me my yearly evaluation. Does it mean he’s scared to tell me how shit he thinks I am?

20) I hate travelling. I’ve travelled around the world most of my early life. Maybe that’s why I hate travelling so much. It’s not that I don’t like going to new places… it’s just that I hate what it takes to get there. Train rides, car journeys, airplanes, airports. Waste of time. Still hoping for instant teleportation soon.

21) I hate how new technology is already old when it is released. For example Iphone 2g,3g,3gs. Mostly why I don’t think I’m going to buy an Ipad.

22) I hate the Italian Government. All of it. They should’ve been on that plane that crashed in Poland with all their politicians instead.

23) I hate going to the toilet and seeing people playing Quake 3 Arena on their workstations…fucking IT department.

24) I hate waking up early in the morning to go to work. I also hate waking up late on weekends and miss the whole day.

Good god.. I think that’s enough.

0/

Riqz’s Avatar Review

Riqz’s Avatar Rant Review

Yep it's Jake Sully on his Wheelchair

Spoiler ahoy:

Jake Sully, a crippled marine gets a new job on the planet Pandora. His brother got killed by nobody knows who, because he got robbed. Jake is the only one with the same genes as his brother (because they were twins) so that’s why he got this job. This new job involves getting into a machine and possessing this empty meatbag clone of one of the Navi’s (An alien spieces indigenous to Pandora but they know fuck all about the Navi’s but they can make exact clones of them).

The humans are on Pandora (the Navi planet that uses trees for internet) because they need to mine some kind of shitty mineral mentioned ONCE in the whole film and nobody knows why the fuck they’re mining it. There’s some kind of special force involved to protect the company mining from the angry Navi. They look like U.S. Marines but are really mercenaries with no emotions left in them except for XENOPHOBIA.

Jake Sully is skeptical about this whole avatar project but once he realizes he can walk again (he was crippled in action remember?), he starts liking it.

He goes on an expedition with 2 other meaningless actors/characters/avatars who we can forget about now because they mean nothing at all, in the middle of the forest.

Jake is a bit curious (of course! He’s got legs now!), so he wanders off and gets attacked by an alien CGI monster. He gets separated from the group and ends up nearly dying until a Navi girl (which he falls in love with pretty much as soon as we see her) saves him.

At a certain point some pollen gets stuck all over Jake and Navi girl is amazed and he goes to their main treehouse. He is given a chance by the “mother superior” (again you can forget about her now as she is meaningless) to learn the “navi way”.

He gets a mount, he shoots an arrow, he rides a donkey (all this by sticking his IEEE 1394 port hair into any animal he can see), the navi girl falls in love with him.

Jake doesn’t want to live in the human world anymore and when he comes out they tell him they want to mine underneath the Navi treehouse because there’s a HUUUUUGE amount of that shitty ore they’re mining. AND THERE’S NO OTHER PLACE but there. THEY WANT TO DESTROY THAT TREEHOUSE like as if it was Bin Laden’s hideout.

Jake tries to tell the Navi but they don’t believe him and tie him up to a cross.

This is when the humans go fucking insane. Maybe they all took some crack cocaine together and they all want to fucking RAPE NAVI FACES. The angry colonel doesn’t give a shit about Navi’s and wishes they were exterminated Hitler style. Nobody knows why he is so angry or why so racist or why he’s so “I don’t give a shit about anything”. He just is.

Here's the Colonel not giving a shit about anything

The humans throw about 2million% more bombs than were needed against the treehouse and a lot of Navis die.

Jake cries.

Jake manages to jump (WITH THE GREATEST OF EASE) onto the biggest pterodactyl on Pandora (the most mean beast that ever lived and that only 3 men have ever ridden him, the rest got eaten by him) and becomes THE ONE.

Jake gathers like 50 different Navi tribes (apparently Pandora is huge with soooo many Navis which begs the question…Shit maybe they have other treehouses or there may be other mining sites or what the fuck is this film going on about).

The humans are heading towards another bigger sacred tree (the Navi Internet Service Provider where navis stick their hair ports into to listen to voices of dead Navis) with a “bomb” (a box full of really small c4 charges rigged together to explode on impact….DIDNT THEY HAVE A FUCKING BOMB???NO! They had to stick 400 small c4 charges together and make a poor man’s bomb). They have to push the box out of the plane… how ridiculous.

Jake (the new appointed navi leader of PANDORA, although he is human and Navis HATE humans) fights with his new army of troglodites against year 2513 technology with spears and arrows and IEEE1394 ports (by the way the huge fucking spears, cos navi’s are 10feet tall, have poison on them. Because being a huge fucking arrow wasn’t enough).

So yeah they fight airplanes and helicopters  (that have machine gunners and missiles) with spears and flying donkeys and donkeys. And after a few minutes of dieing, they somehow manage to win and the huge c4 collage doesn’t get dropped on the tree.

Jake fights the evil colonel or general or Hitler (who is on a mech…WOLFENSTEIN anyone?) and nearly loses because he nearly gets ripped out of his “avatar box” (where he connects to his navi avatar) and is nearly dying to Pandora’s toxic air. He is saved by his Navi bitch at the last second.

Colonel......Wait....WHAT?

Jake is turned into a navi at the ISP tree.
END OF THE MOVIE

I felt pain just remembering the film.

A quote i liked from Encyclopaedia Dramatica:

“A nagging thought throughout the film when it comes to Jake, is that how come human technology can be so advanced as to have accomplished interstellar flight and generate giant fighting ‘Mechs, but no one seems to have given a shit about upgrading the basic design of wheelchairs?”

Come scaricare con Usenet

Scrivo questo “tutorial” su Usenet perchè sinceramente molti mi chiedono dove trovo tutti i film, videogiochi, musica eccetera in cosi poco tempo.

Bene… ora sono pronto a svelarvi questo segreto…Il “segreto” di come Riqz scarica da internet.

Voi direte: “beh si usa il mulo no?” oppure “ma si sarà uno di quelli che scarica da rapidshare che pacco”. Invece no. Qui si parla di usenet.

Cos’è Usenet? Beh agli albori di internet esistavano dei newsgroup. In questi newsgroup si parlava di tutto, praticamente gli antecessori dei forum di oggi. Ci si “abbonava” ad un news service provider (NSP d’ora in poi) che ti metteva a disposizione i loro server per poter leggere e anche scrivere su vari newsgroups che variavano da musica, film, fino a cose più specifiche come fotografia, medicina, e qualunque hobby immaginabile.

Arriviamo al punto… Questi NSP dopo un pò di anni hanno anche dato la possibilità di aggiungere file ai propri post. Immagini file di testo ecc. Questo si è poi evoluto in veri e propri newsgroup Binary, cioè newsgroup dove si potevano trovare file di vario tipo.

Questa evoluzione ci porta al giorno d’oggi dove si utilizza Usenet per scaricare qualunque cosa ci serva.

Premetto subito che non è un servizio gratis come i Torrent (anche se esistono private trackers a pagamento) o come emule. Quale vantaggio ha allora vi chiedete voi?

Beh il primo e più importante vantaggio è che pagate un servizio e quindi scaricherete alla velocità massima che avete a disposizione. Per esempio se avete una linea 3Mbit scaricherete a circa 393 kb/secondo. Se invece avete una linea da 13Mbit come me scaricherete a 1,7Mb/secondo (si avete capito bene, uno virgola sette MEGABYTE al secondo).

Questo ormai mi ha anche un pò viziato siccome i film non li guardo neanche più in standard definition (di solito 700mb di dimensioni) ma solamente in HD (variano dai 4-6Giga per un file 720p e fino a 15Giga per un 1080 p).

Come si fa mi chiederete?

Beh ora ve lo spiego:

1) Vi serve un abbonamento ad un NSP. Io vi consiglio vivamente UsenetServer che vi da anche 14 giorni di trial. Costa 10 dollari al mese (una scemenza e QUI potete trovare il link all’offerta). Se invece volete fare un periodo di prova in Gigabyte allora c’è Newshosting che per qualunque piano scelto vi offre un trial fino a 30GB di download. Altro NSP valido è Easynews che offre sempre un trial di 14 giorni e/o 10GB di download. Uno recente invece che costa €4.43 al mese(prezzo incredibile) è XLNED (per 10mbit al secondo). Una volta iscritti, vi verrà mandata una mail con username e password da voi scelti. Scriveteveli su un foglio di carta che poi vi serviranno. Vi daranno anche un’indirizzo del server che per UsenetServer sarà “secure.usenetserver.com” (cryptato SSL per più sicurezza).

2) Ora vi serve un programma per poter scaricare i file estrapolati dai file .nzb (pensateli come file .torrent). Io consiglio vivamente Alt.Binz e userò questo programma in questo tutorial. Scaricatelo ed installatelo. Scaricate anche Winrar se non lo avete già (serve per scompattare file zippati) e anche QuickPar (questo serve per riparare i file .rar se vengono scaricati male). Installate il tutto. Una volta finito proseguite al punto 3.

3)Aprite il programma Alt.Binz e cliccate su Setup. Su “Download” scegliere dove volete salvare i file scaricati.

Su NZB togliete il flag da tutte le opzioni “Import as Paused”.

Sull’opzione Servers sotto “Name” scrivete il nome che volete dare al Server (io metto UsenetServer SSL). Nell’ “Address” mettete secure.usenetserver.com. Flaggate “Server requires authentication” e scrivete il vostro username e password che vi siete scritti sul foglietto. Mettete “number of Connections” 20 e “Port” 563 e a questo punto cliccati su add as primary.

4) Ora che avete aggiunto il vostro server proseguiamo ad aggiornare delle opzioni. Su “Par2” delle opzioni flaggate tutto a parte “recheck all PAR2 sets on start”.

Su “Unrar” flaggate AutoUnrar e Delete archives after successful unraring. Su Miscellaneous flaggate sotto “Start” Autopush Connect Button.

5) Il programma è ora pronto per scaricare. Chiudete pure il programma. Ora bisogna trovare qualcosa da scaricare. Vi consiglio un “Search Engine” grezzo che si chiama Binsearch. Su binsearch si può cercare qualsiasi cosa esista su Usenet (quasi tutta ma non entro nel dettaglio ora). Solamente che non sarà ben organizzata come ci aveva insegnato NZBMatrix. Qui su Binsearch gli .NZB dobbiamo crearceli da soli scegliendo tutti i file che ne fanno parte. NzbIndex invece cerca di organizzare un pò meglio quanto si trova su Binsearch.Facciamo che voglio scaricare un episodio di How I met Your Mother. Eccolo qui. Clicchiamo sull’episodio che ci interessa e mettiamo un baffo sulla casella a fianco del file. Cliccate il bottone “download” e poi . Questo vi scaricherà il file .NZB che aprirà automaticamente Alt.Binz che comincerà a scaricare il file. Purtroppo su binsearch cercando il nome della serie tv o film raramente si trova il file completo. Questo perchè gli NSP cancellano dai loro server i file. Per evitare che i file vengano rimossi gli uploader non mettono più i nomi del film o delle serie tv nel nome del file uploadato. Qui entrano in gioco i nuovi siti di NZBIndexing tra cui il mio preferito NZBGRABIT che verrà descritto sotto, dove gli utenti caricano l’NZB con il nome del file “criptato” dicendo a tutti i membri di cosa si tratta (per esempio il file 111123131.rar potrebbe in realtà essere How I met your mother S03E01).

Purtroppo (o anche no), visto che nessuno in italia usa Usenet non ci sono molti film in italiano, ma vi consiglio comunque di vedervi i film in lingua originale, al massimo scaricate i sottotitoli. Ci sono anche serie TV a gogo (1 ora max dopo l’uscita in america), videogiochi ecc ecc.

Spero che questa guida sia da aiuto ai nuovi arrivati nel mondo di usenet e so che una volta provata non tornerete più sui torrent o su emule.

Se volete delle precisazione su come fare a connettersi, retention, problemi, troubleshoot ecc non esitate a postare un commento e risponderò appena possibile.

Inoltre vi ricordo che scaricare materiale da internet che non è già in vostro possesso è illegale.

La diffusione di materiale coperto da diritto d’autore su qualsivoglia sistema di filesharing è vietata. L’utente che utilizza i programmi e le tecniche descritte in questo articolo è tenuto a verificare la libera e legale distribuzione (espressamente autorizzata o materiale di pubblico dominio) dei files che intende scaricare.

Saluti!!

Se questa guida vi è stata d’aiuto e volete vederne ancora di questo genere potete darmi una piccola mano donando al sito per mantenerlo aggiornato. Mi fareste un grandissimo piacere. Cliccate sul bottone sottostante per donare qualunque cifra con paypal e grazie!

Questa guida è proprieta e copyright di Riqz. Chiedete il permesso prima di postarla da un’altra parte.

o/

Greek Riots

Greek riots.

A picture is worth 1000 words?

I wish.

Japanese Bento

You are obviously wondering what the hell a Japanese Bento is. Firstly, it’s a present I got for my girfriend Gloria from Japan. Secondly this is what it is:

It’s not just a normal bento…It’s a TOTORO bento wooo!

Okay okay… can you guess what it is yet?

This might help:

Not guessed yet?

It’s practically just a lunchbox. You cook something in the morning or the day before and then stick it in the bento and then you can take your food with you in this microwave oven friendly bento.

It’s very popular in japan and not only for kids. Recently there has been a rise in men using bento’s due to the economic crisis.

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