For nearly two years now I’ve been a Netflix member, during that time I’ve only had one really bad experience with an otherwise flawless company.   My problem was a DVD that arrived in two pieces, mailed it back and got another one in two pieces, mailed that one back and the third one showed up in 5 pieces.  Ready to give up, I marked it as damaged and returned it to finally get an in tact disc, sadly the movie was terrible.  In any event, their system just works.

Several months ago I showed you how to stream movies from your Mac to your TV and that’s how I’ve been enjoying the vast majority of movies from Netflix as of late, even reducing my plan down to the 1 disc at a time deal as I can fill the void between sending and receiving movies by streaming them.  Streaming works great on my FiOS broadband connection and I rarely have any issues, except for the night before last.

Not thinking anything of it, I passed it off as a glitch in the Netflix servers and went on with my evening.  I was pretty happy when I opened my email last night to see this:

How nice of them.  A company admits they had a problem and offers a discount without me even contacting them.  This may be a reason why Netflix stock trades at about $37 a share right now and other companies, like GM for example are hovering closer to $1.

With fall here and winter right around the corner coupled with the early sunsets, my ability to exercise outside has nearly come to a halt.   I’m now in the gym 3+ nights a week on the dreaded stationary bike which is no where near a close second, or even third or fourth to my road bicycle, but I need to keep active.  I’ve kept myself busy with my video iPod and utilizing TvRSS to get caught up on shows and watch them when I want to, but I’m almost out of TV shows and movies now.   Last night I sat down in front of my computer, opened up iTunes and went through their video podcasts, there really didn’t seem to be anything interest to me and the overall selection was slim at best.  Even the audio podcasts don’t seem that interesting anymore and the list is much shorter than I recall.

One audio podcast I downloaded called Tri Talk had potential, since I am still throwing around the idea of doing a triathlon so I downloaded the newest podcast and started to listen last night at the gym.  It was the author saying, in a nutshell, that it was his last podcast and it was a good run but he’s not into doing it anymore.  Great, the one podcast I find is totally useless to me.  The other thing I noticed was most video podcasts aren’t much longer than 3-4 minutes, with the exception of diggnation.  Diggnation tends to be funny, but sometimes I need more to look at and listen to than two guys on a couch talking about websites I can’t easily visit since I’m not in front of a computer.

So, I’d like to ask, what podcasts (audio and / or video) do you subscribe to and why do you like them?  I’m into a vast amount of topics, from gadgets / electronics, photography, current local / world news, cycling, pure entertainment, etc.  Video podcasts are preferred since I’m stuck on the stupid stationary bike for 45-60 minutes at a time but audio ones work great for when I’m on the treadmill and can’t focus on watching the video screen of my iPod.

Photo by: Alexandre Van de Sande

Last week my local paper ran an article about Michael Bay filming for a few days at the site of the former Bethlehem Steel for the Transformers 2 movie. The Steel is about 15 minutes from my home, but I have yet to make it over there to check things out. Lucky for me (and you!), some friends of mine have. What you see below are exclusive shots shared only with Randomn3ss for your viewing pleasure. From what has been discussed at the location, the scene being filmed is part of the opening sequence that takes place in China. All images and video coyprighted to YUL and SciPi.

Video by SciPi:

Photos by YUL:

Thank you to SciPi and YUL. More video footage and photographs are being edited and this will be updated shortly.

So you have the iPod (or any MP3 player) loaded up with all of your favorite music and want others to be able to listen to it with you wirelessly, there has been no easy solution until now. What Aerielle has done is create a small, in-line wireless transmitter that you place between your headphones and mp3 player, it then broadcasts over a 2.4GHz RF to anyone within about 30 feet of you that also has an i2i Stream plugged into their headphones, allowing them hear everything you do.

My first thoughts on this product were wow, finally a way to share music on a plane ride with my friends who got booked 2 rows behind me. Then other ideas of sharing music started to sink in, like in a school library across a table while studying or even for 2 kids in the back of a car who want to listen to something other than what their parents have on.

They come with an internal rechargeable battery, it is oddly powered by a USB computer cable though, but a wall charger is promised to come out soon.

I can’t seem to find an answer anywhere on their site, but I’m also thinking you could broadcast wirelessly to any sort of small stereo speakers that has 1/8th headphone jack, which would be really cool to do. Then it would be possible to control the music played at a party from just about anywhere in the room.
They should be available in January 2008 and prices are set to be $70 for one or $120 for two with skins available for around $10. Keep glued here to Randomn3ss for more info on these.

Checkout the old-school dance moves the cop busts out in this promo video too.

i2i Gear official site: i2igear.com

First thing this morning I checked to see if anything new was on the popular invite only bittorrent tracking site Demonoid.com only to see this message

The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb and assume they will come back online at some point, this isn’t the first time the CRIA has threatened to shut them down. I’m also going to assume that when they do come back online, they will have their servers hosted in a different country.

Thank you to the boys over at MetalSucks for basically ruining my plan to save money by reposting the following announcement from the band TOOL:

My friends, we can no longer hide the terrible truth. The holidays are rapidly approaching, and with them the NEW TOOL DVD/VIDEO for VICARIOUS is scheduled to be released on DECEMBER 18th (or 19th) and will include an EXTENDED CUT, lots of BONUS MATERIAL and, of course, SPECIAL PACKAGING.

This means that I will shell out between $20 and $40 for some music DVD that will sit next to my dusty copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars rarely to be viewed. Now, that’s not to say that it’s not an interesting DVD – as I’m sure the new Tool one shall be – it’s just that the CD drive on my laptop is broken and I can’t figure out how to hook up my DVD player to my HDTV. Also, I need to make rent and, you know, eat, but my rampant American consumerism won’t let me – I must have this DVD. I’m apparently a lazy piece of shit who doesn’t deserve the fabulous electronics that litter my house. But I do love me some Maynard!!

Seriously, if this DVD is anything like the live show, it is going to have ridiculously amazing graphics/visuals (think acid trip but you don’t need the drugs… but they help) and my face is going to be melted off by the end. I would seriously try to explain it like a competent writer, but I’m too much of a fan to do so. In other MJK news, Puscifer’s new album drops at the end of this month… freaking hell, it drops just around the same time that rent is due. Damnit. Looks like I won’t be eating anymore this month… but at least I’ll be skinny and have the Puscifer CD.

A week and a half ago I wrote a review for Redbox DVD rentals and free promo codes, the review was fairly honest, yet I was a very new customer at the time. Over the last ten days, I’ve rented about a half dozen movies, all with help from the codes in that article, costing me nothing more than gas money and time to go get them. While this is all well and good, I have had two negative experiences with Redbox thus far.

• Scratched DVD
• Scratched DVD

The first time it happened was a day after I published the old article. Wend and got a movie around 11.30 at night, came home and started to watch it. Six minutes in, it skipped and then froze. After getting the disk out of my DVD player I noticed a large scratch on the bottom. This was a pretty deep scratch, one that my fingernail got caught on, cleaning was not going to help. The Redbox case has instructions on the proper way to clean a DVD, nothing was going to help this thing though, but they did have their toll free number on it. What the hell, it’s only midnight, lets see if anyone is answering the phones.

Sure as shit, within 15 seconds of dialing I had a customer care specialist on the phone. I explained the situation to her and she apologized and asked for the barcode number on the disk. After reading it, she confirmed the disk I rented and the location I got it from. A few seconds later, she apologized again and offered to give me a promo code to rent another movie. She followed this up with the caveat

If you are going to rent the same movie as you have now, rent it first with the promo code and then return the scratched one to ensure you don’t get it again.

This kind of bothered me, is there no way to stop it from pulling the scratched disk? In any event, I drove back, got another movie and all was good, but the total conversation was less than three minutes and overall a very good experience, as good as customer service calls can be I guess.

The second instance happened night before last. I returned movies that I had out and rented another one, again with a free promo code. Got it home and made it 17 minutes in before it too started to skip and then freeze. Looking at the bottom, this was scratched just as bad, even on the top of the disk. Once again I called the toll free number, explained the situation and added that this is the second time in a week it has happened to me. This customer service specialist responded with

I understand and apologize for the inconvenience, I’d like to give you a promo code for the scratched movie and want to let you know that I’m putting a note in that it is to be pulled. We have service people checking the machines every few days and this will get pulled out at that point. I’d also like to give you a second promo code for another movie for the inconvenience.

Now mind you, this is all after a 30 second conversation. Clearly this must happen often if they are willing to give out promo codes that easily, or they are hoping you’ll keep it for more than a day. Either way, I am more than happy with the speed, courtesy and overall experience with Redbox. all that warm and fuzzy stuff aside, if I continue to get scratched disks once a week, it won’t be worth my time driving back and forth, I’ll just look into NetFlix.

Several months ago while at Wegmans I noticed a big red kiosk at the exit offering DVD rentals for $1 per night. They are being offered by Redbox, a company that is owned by McDonalds apparently. I’ve heard of the service but never put much thought into actually using it until last night. The concept is, a self service DVD renting kiosk, much like a soda vending machine. Put money in, product comes out, only difference is that you must return the product when you are done with it. In my part of town, they only have kiosk in two grocery stores, but the offical website seems to mostly list kiosk locations inside McDonald restaurants across the country, which makes a lot of sense.

While leaving Wegmans around midnight with some sushi and granola in hand I stopped at the kiosk and looked at the titles. For a buck, why not give it a whirl. If I didn’t make it back by 7pm the next night it would cost me another $1. The system works by a touch screen monitor, you select the title you want, it gives you a brief description of the movie, mostly what you would find on the back of the actual box had one been there and you can add it to the shopping cart. Checkout by swiping your credit card and agreeing to the terms of service, followed by the movie coming out of a slot on the side of the machine about 30 seconds later. Grab the movie and leave. There is an option to enter your email address for a receipt; I opted not to, mainly because I figured they would just end up spamming me. Because of this, I made sure to use my American Express card, not a debit card. If there are overdraft charges or anything funky, American Express will cover my ass.

There are about 50 titles to choose from and a sign said that they get new titles in every Tuesday. After looking at the titles on signage to the right of the machine, the entire ordering process took no more than about two minutes. The simplicity of this service makes me more apt to use it on a regular basis, especially since I had to talk to not a soul to complete my purchase.

What I did notice when I first started the ordering process was a button on the touch screen that said, Enter promo code. This had me thinking. When I got home I did a quick Google search led me to InsideRedbox.com and all of their glorious promo codes for free movie rentals, broken down by state! The site lists out promo codes and if they have worked recently or not by percentage, driven by a userbase. You need not be a user to get the codes, a part I really like about the site. They also offer up RSS feeds for your state search results. I found my state, got about a half dozen codes and wrote them down for when I had to return the movie I had just rented, and try to get a free one.

This evening I returned the movie, this time to a different, closer grocery store that has a kiosk. The beauty in the system is that it doesn’t matter where you return the movie to. You could rent a movie on Monday before hopping on a plane, get off the plane and provided there was a Redbox in that area, return it and do the same for the return flight. No more being stuck with just one local rental store or having to wait for an online company like Netflix to send you something.

The return process was just as painless as the buying processes. Touch a button on the screen that says you are returning a movie, insert the movie into a slot on the side of the machine and you are done.

With promo codes in hand, I tried one out, no good. Second one worked and I was given access to a free movie rental! After picking out the movie I wanted, checkout was the same, indicating a zero dollar balance, but I needed to swipe a credit card anyway, in case I didn’t bring back by the 7pm following day deadline.

Since the selection is somewhat limited to about fifty movies, I can’t see doing this every day, but they do offer some uniqueness to them, like recent UFC fights. The concept is there, so much so that I’m tempted to buy stock in McDonalds just because I think this will bring them in some serious money.

If you are into movies, find a Redbox near you, get a promo code for a free movie and let me know what your experience is like. It’s free, why the hell not give it a try!

Recently, the internet and some friends have been buzzing about the 9/11 conspiracy-theory documentary Loose Change. Written and directed by 23-year-old Dylan Avery, this documentary posits that the events of September 11, 2001 were perpetrated by the United States government and not Al-Qaida operatives. While there are many 9/11 conspiracy theories out there (ranging from the extreme, neo-Nazi driven to the watered-down Michael Moore versions), this is probably the most coherent alternative explanation for the bizarre and frightening events of that day.

Avery and Co. suggest that the US manufactured the attacks and was the only entity both technologically and financially capable of doing so. Motives of personal greed, opinion polls, and the ability to initiate scrutable foreign policy moves influenced the attack. The filmmakers cite the lack of wreckage, scientific paradoxes (jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel, etc), and refusal of the US government to release specific documents and pieces of evidence (where are the flight recorders?) as their bases for this theory. While the film doesn’t answer every question that the viewer might have, it certainly offers a twist in the way one typically thinks about 9/11. This fact does not harm the overall effectiveness of Loose Change; rather, it only proves that not all theories are water-tight, including the socially-accepted theory that a group of poorly-organized Muslim extremists brought down landmarks of freedom in the most militarily powerful country in the world.

I want to state that I am far from your typical conspiracy theorist. I also want to state that 9/11 conspiracy theorists are NOT anti-Holocaust sympathizers (apparently, according to 9/11 conspiracy websites, this is a typical complaint of standard-9/11-theory proponents and is a common misnomer). I lost people in 9/11 and was paralyzed into a state of fear momentarily as I watched the towers fall on live tv. I now have a man in the Iraq, involved in a war that neither of us believe is right, so I feel especially connected to this issue, as 9/11 has been used as the justification for much of our recent foreign policy. I ache for those affected, because no matter who was at fault, it was senseless and a blow to the American psyche. It should not have happened, but it did. Now, as protectors of free speech and democracy, it’s up to us to demand an explanation of why and how.
The film is currently undergoing a third revision to be released in theaters in the near future. Until then, there is the passable 2nd version, that while intriguing is marred by a too-personal first person narration (the narrator explicitly states his opinion; not only does the audience not care, but we also should be thought clever enough to let the facts speak for themselves). No matter your thoughts on 9/11, I highly suggest that you give 90 minutes of your life to viewing this movie, if only to get other opinions. You can view the 2nd cut free of charge (yes… gratis. They just really want you to see the movie) through the links here (you can choose either Google video or DivX platforms. The resolution isn’t stellar, but it’s, you know, free).

Give the video a shot and leave comments below, or feel free to get at me directly. I’m interested to see what others think or know about this issue! While you’re waiting for it to load, check out these other 9/11 conspiracy-theory sites:

• 911 Research
• 9/11 Review (incredibly comprehensive, with links to dissenting opinions)
• Physics 9/11 (scientific myths and research)

The Walt Disney Company has finally decided that it needs to be more politically correct and has a new movie in the works which will feature the first black princess. The name of the movie is The Frog Princess.

John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Disney and the Disney-owned unit Pixar Animation Studios, said the movie would return to the classic hand-drawn animation process, instead of using computer animation that has become the industry standard. He called the film “an American fairy tale.”

Being that it will be hand-drawn, it is not set to be released until 2009, which is why I can’t figure out why major media outlets are starting to cover it already. The significance of this movie great, I can’t believe that it has taken this long for Disney to wake up that white kids aren’t the only ones watching their films.

Source: CNN