With just a week and a day away from the AWESOME The Avengers movie coming to US theaters, I already ordered my ticket through Fandango, planning to see it on Saturday at a 9:45pm showing (a non-2D). I’m glad the later airing, which is easier for me to catch after work, is the 2D one, since I find 3D completely overrated. Given that this was filmed in 2-D (not specifically 3-D, meaning Disney (owners of Marvel now) opted for a conversion), I especially don’t want to see this film in 3-D. Now, if I had an IMAX theater closer, I’d definitely pay more to view it in one of those, but 3 1/2 hours is too long of a drive for me.

Earlier this year, I saw Underworld Awakening, and I saw the 2-D version. Having saw the 2nd and 3rd in theaters already (of course, I saw the 1st, just not in theaters), I found making the 4th in 3-D unnecessary. I also saw Wrath of the Titans, at a theater that doesn’t even do 3-D, so by default, I saw the 2-D one, and my only gripe is with the theater, which had very narrow seats (I’m not obese, or near obese, and my butt could barely fit). Maybe it’s because I never seen a movie in 3-D in theaters, but I honestly don’t think every possible blockbuster needs to be in 3-D.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the extra money (at my theater that does have 3-D screens, it’s a $2 fee) that keeps me from going for the 3-D version. As stated, it’s mostly if the movie wasn’t filmed with 3-D in mind, or if previous films in the franchise wasn’t filmed for it either (in case of Wrath, the 1st movie, Clash of the Titans was a post-converted that everyone said was terrible. I’ll take their word for it. And for Underworld, none of the previous films were filmed that way, nor even post-converted, as the 3rd film was in January of 2009, before it was the craze in Hollywood it is now). The Saturday before, I saw The Cabin in the Woods (good, by the way), and I’m glad they ultimately decided to not go the 3-D route with it.

But, the important thing, I have my seat reserved for The Avengers, and just yesterday, I got Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger on Blu-Ray now, to go along with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor I’ve previously had, so before I go, I can have my own little movie marathon. And, if past Marvel movies are any indication, remember to stay tuned to after the credits.

Did I forget to mention the fantastically awesome dude named Joss Whedon is the man they got to direct this epic movie?

Yep, with my renewal up on my hosting account at GoDaddy, I decided to finally take the plunge and get away from the domain name registrar that has proven to not really be the go-to place for registering domain names. So, now I am a customer of NameCheap.com.

Since I’ve never done a transfer of this nature (dealing with a database), there might be some rough edges. Luckily, I had successfully backed up the whole database for WordPress with phpMyAdmin, and a simple Import with phpMyAdmin, has successfully restored my blog. So this part should be A-Okay! It’s the rest of the site I’m working on, but since I work on static pages locally then upload with FTP, it should be fine.

January 18th, 2012 is the day that sites like Reddit will go dark in protest to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) that are wondering around in Congress.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

The White House has already chimed in against certain parts of SOPA, realizing the bill would hinder innovation and free speech.

I have decided that the main page to Awesomely-Aloof will be a blackout page, but I had previously placed a banner on this blog, as I’m too lazy to blackout the whole site. Of course, I realize on my part it doesn’t matter, but I’m sure others with small sites are joining in with the larger sites that will definitely make for a very interesting day.

The point of the blackout is to show that if the bill passes, this would be what the Internet would become, lots of nothing.

Some large sites, such as the major search engine, Google, will place a link on its homepage in protest. Wikipedia (the large online encyclopedia) plans to shutdown the English portion of its site for the day.

And, if these bills make it through, the blame would be on the usual suspects: MPAA and RIAA (Movies and Music industry).

The article linked below from BusinessWeek had quotes that say sites like Wikipedia and blogs and Social Networking sites would be unaffected by the bill and shutting down a site as protest is nothing but fear. [Honestly, though, I think tech experts know more about the bill and what it'll do than anyone Congressional politician, and it's the lobbying groups of the movies and music industries that are essentially paying them to say whatever they want them to say]. However, I say, if big companies get their way, what’s to stop future legislation on just blocking foreign site altogether? That’s how I see it, and that’s why it needs to be stopped.

Learn more about the Internet blackout: SOPA STRIKE
Google Plans Home Page Protest

Having had a computer at some point since Dec. of 1997, I’ve come to know all the little possible problems that can go wrong with a computer. The first computer we had as a family, was re-formatted multiple times with Windows re-installed (this was pre-XP, so it was less of a hassle to re-install. It first had Windows 95, but we eventually got Windows 98 (2nd Edition). And this system had a 2GB hard drive. And overtime, from one PC to another, hard drives got bigger, and cheaper as well. We usually bought a new drive for the purpose of expanding storage. There was never anything massively wrong that resulted in absolute failure.

Toward the end of 2006, I decided to buy each computer part after each paycheck, (or after a few paychecks, depending on the cost of piece), and Dec. 2006 it was completed. Total amount was around $1,000 (probably a little more), with case and 300 Watt PS, AMD motherboard w/ nForce chipset, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Dual-Core Athlon processor (if I remember correctly, it 2GHz, or maybe less), I want to say an 80GB (at least that, maybe 120, I really can’t remember) hard drive (IDE, not SATA, but the motherboard did support SATA connection, DVD-RW optical drive, Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, and Viewsonic 17″ flat panel monitor. Five years later, the only upgrade I had done was a 2nd hard drive (I think around 200GB). I once tried to put more RAM, but a third RAM stick caused memory errors, so it stayed at 2GB RAM. I never added a video card (the onboard video was good enough for Enter the Matrix, and that was all I needed, as I’m not much of a PC gamer anyway). I got Vista 32-bit a month or two after it came out in order to try it, but ultimately went back to XP Pro, which is the same installation of it still on it. I eventually partitioned the main drive, to triple boot it, adding two different Linux distros (PCLinux 2007 and OpenSUSE (whichever one was near that year), allowing me to tinker with Linux, while still keeping WindowsXP.

Just a few months ago, we booted it up, and it still works. A little slow, but the damn thing still works. The monitor, of course, is one of the best ones we’ve had (had built in speakers) and never one dead pixel ever surfaced. Basically, I got seriously lucky with that build. Everything still works. And when to the point where I wanted to have a laptop, in May 2008, I finally got one at Best Buy, a Toshiba Satellite, with 320GB HD, 4GB RAM, Intel processor and graphics, webcam, harman/kardon speakers, DVD-RW drive, and, what they seem to no longer have now, Firewire port to go with the 4 USB ports. Unfortunately, it was pre-loaded with Vista 64-bit. Fortunately, I have NEVER re-formatted it, do any reinstall, and only this year did I partition a sliver of space for a tiny Linux distro (Puredyne), just to try. I’m typing with it now. So, luck can hit twice.

Sometimes, though, aren’t so great. The computer I had before I made that build, was a Dell laptop that crapped out on me after two years (basically, right after any warranty that usually would’ve existed). While my current laptop has performed well (okay, it’s not as fast as it was when it was new, but is expected since I’ve installed/uninstalled software over the years). The Dell was absolute crap. It came with XP Home (the useless XP variety). I did manage to get XP Pro, since I was in community college, as a student I got a copy of XP Pro.

Now, my more recent build, the HTPC experience I blogged about way back in April of this year (not actually too many posts back). Everything was running fast and smooth when I got Windows 7 Home Premium and eventually even added Linux Mint 11 beside it. The dual boot worked great. Windows for everything, using Windows Media Center to record TV shows (with analog cable and the clear QAM channels), do some net surfing, plus a project I started working on at the end of summer, trying to backup all my DVDs and Blu-Rays to go with my Media Center. Linux was good for net surfing, but I also found it much faster at encoding video in Handbrake (Windows loads so much in the background, I think that makes a difference in performance of the same or similar software, or maybe it’s just in my head).

To recap the build, I got a pretty large case for an HTPC case (but I want to be able to put stuff in it, and even fit an standard ATX motherboard) w/500W PS, AMD AM3 motherboard (no onboard video), AMD Athlon 3GHz Regor Dual-Core Processor, 4GB Crucial DDR3 RAM, 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue HD (SATA II), Sparkle GeForce 210 512MB DDR3 video card (PCI Express 2.0), Hauppauge HVR-2250 TV tuner card (PCI Express x1), which all came to about $405. I first tried to only use Mythbuntu, but I could’nt get the TV tuner to play nice with it, and had to use my Vista 32-bit I had bought about 4 years earlier, and even then that didn’t perform the DVR stuff well enough (had to use a third-party plug-in just to try to get the QAM channels). Eventually, I bought Win 7 Home Premium (OEM), and got a Sony Blu-Ray burner along with it, so that brought the total to about $605. All through the summer, it worked flawless, beautifully, allowed me to record QAM without any additional tweaks. I even go MCEBuddy to automatically convert those pesky WTV files to a more friendly (and smaller) mp4.

Well, at some point, after summer, the screen kept blacking out. I’ve seen this happen before, with the 2nd machine we got, which was in late 2001, a Compaq, unfortunately, with Windows ME (terrible OS). That one, we, of course, got XP on it eventually, as well as added a video card (GeForce). Well, it didn’t have a fan, so when I tried playing Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, it blacked out. We put in one of those little case fans that take a PCI slot up, and it worked fine afterward. So for this new machine, when it happened, what was once a good rated video card on NewEgg, wasn’t as high. Seems the fan isn’t a very good fan. So I had to put down $60 for a new card, since I couldn’t wait for a NewEgg delivery, I bought it in store at Best Buy (thus I paid more than I liked). It is still a GeForce 210, but PNY brand and with 1GB DDR2 RAM. Once I installed it, no more blackouts, and my Windows experience rating went from 4.8 to 5.1. Was it worth $60? No, but it got it working. My old card will probably work fine, just need to have some kind of secondary fan.

But the real reason for this post: the Hard Drive. Linux Mint 11 was when I first saw some issues arise. It was being real slow at accessing data. I looked at the Disk Utility, and it said there were a few bad sectors, but it was in green. So I checked in Windows. It loaded fine, and I got the Speccy application to read SMART data, and it said the drive health was good. So I figured, maybe a Linux thing. So I decided, well, the new Linux Mint 12 was just released, so I formatted the old partition to make way for Linux Mint 12. It installed, loaded up fast and worked fine. Disk Utility still said a few bad sectors, but again, was in green (versus red). But, I was also starting to notice some issues in Windows, particularly in playing back TV Shows. There was some freezing, and also, some video failing to properly convert to mp4 (or it converts but unable to write the new file, causing the totally fine converted file in the temp folder to disappear when the next video starts conversion).

Finally, it seemed ever more evident as Linux Mint 12 would no longer boot at all, and while Sunday I got Windows to load up and record the first 2 FOX animation shows (I watched other 2 live as ‘Leverage’ recorded). I watched both recorded FOX shows straight through, maybe one freeze-up, but when I did ‘Leverage,’ I couldn’t get half-way through. On Monday, I believe ‘Terra Nova’ recorded fine, and ’2 Broke Girls’ worked fine as well. Tuesday, Windows loaded fine, but it took forever to just highlight the ‘My Computer’ icon once clicked. I found an ‘Ultimate Boot Disc’ I made last year, and used a Diagnostic tool made for Western Digital drives, and it barely got ten seconds in before it brought up error code 0007. And on the Western Digital site, 0007 is in the range that says ‘Replace Drive’. Luckily, I had bought a 1TB Caviar Green drive from Staples (double the space, but more than twice the price, thanks to the Thailand flooding). Hence the title: Great Time for Hard Drive Failure. It didn’t give me a heads up on eminent failure before the price increases due to the flooding. Nope, while the prices have skyrocketed, that’s when I got worried enough to go ahead and buy a new hard drive for $100 (when I purchased the 500GB drive in late March, I paid $40 [note OEM drive from NewEgg, not a retail store purchase]).

So, back a few days when I bought the drive, I found I couldn’t install it alongside (at the time) functioning drive, as my Power Supply, only had two SATA Power connectors, and they were both in use. So I had to order an adapter, and while at it, a way to put the second drive into the 5″ bay. Both of those items came in Tuesday, just in time for when loading Windows is gone. So, a fresh install was the only way now.

Not so fast! Unfortunately, I misplaced my Win7 disc. So, at this time, I am using the ‘Ultimate Boot Disc,’ which just so happens to have Cloning tools. I’m using the HDClone Free Edition, and at about 30%, it had about 1,440 read errors.

One more thing to add, the drive bay adapter thingy I bought, kind of leaves a little opening into the case, but hey, maybe that’ll add more air near the drive.

Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully know more, and maybe the cloning tool will be successful, but with my luck, if I don’t find my Win7 disc, I may either try to find a Linux distro that’ll play nice with the HVR-2250 (I want both clear QAM and analog, but definitely need the QAM ability), and if that fails once more, it may come down to needing to buy Win 7 again, but I really hope that if it came to that, SSDs can go down a little more, because, if I’m gonna put more money into this, might as well upgrade to a good SSD for OS and programs, and this 1TB drive would be for storage. I’m also hoping I can get a replacement drive as it’s well within the 3-yr warranty (I registered the 1TB drive the day I got it, but I never did for the Blue drive, and since I’ve never been in such a situation as this, I don’t know what I can do.)

Jeez, I sure haven’t posted in a while. Of course, I’m trying to make this blog less me talking about television shoes and more sharing my opinion on whatever else. So in thinking of what I could talk about, I decided on tablet computers. This month, Amazon will release the Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet. With a price of $200, it sure is to be quite the seller, just as the Kindle was for the E-Reader market.

I myself do not have a tablet, and right now the biggest one is the iPad line from Apple Computers. I do know, I will NOT get anything Apple, especially an iPad. The devices are too limited, push iTunes more (which is a bloated piece of software (or should I say, package of useless software)), don’t get me started on DRM. I’ve been using iTunes, as I found it’s features easy to use and it did what I wanted (which was mostly just play MP3s (that I ripped from CDs I own, or bought from iTunes store (well, after I burned those and re-ripped them before the option of converting to MP3 came along, with a few more pennies added to the price)) while I surfed the net. But after I built my new computer to use as a DVR and media center, I decided, no iTunes. I had it on there briefly, but I would not want to listen to music through my TV, so iTunes (and Quicktime, Apple Update, Support) were taken off (luckily, I found how to never install crap like Bonjour to begin with, which Apple should learn to make an optional add-on, instead of forcing that shit on people).

Anyway, back to tablets. Regarding, not just the iPad, but the Xoom, and Acer, Toshiba ones out there. They all have hardly anything to offer, other than doing what smartphones do, except a bigger screen, slightly larger storage, and excluding the phone part. Sure, they are more light-weight and portable than a laptop, and have killed anyone’s desire to get a Netbook (very useless array of devices those were). But, in the end, why pay $400-$500 for such limited functionality, when for the same or slightly more, one could just get a decent laptop?

Then again, there are uses. As I’ve mentioned, from what I gathered with the iPad basically being the iPod Touch (which is the iPhone w/o the phone), but larger (and few extras), and the other ones are like larger Android-based phones, but without the phone part. I do not have a new phone, I actually have the same LG enV I’ve had for almost 4 years now. Why? Because it still works. (I hear another blog post I could rant about). And when Amazon announced their tablet, I near about thought, maybe I should consider.

If I just want to browse the Internet, then a tablet can be very useful when I don’t want to fire up my laptop. And with Amazon offering theirs for $200, it’s a much more attractive price that $500 the cheapest iPad throws out there. With an iPad, you’re stuck in the Apple world. With the Kindle Fire, yes, you are stuck in an Amazon world. But for a price, I’d rather be stuck in an Amazon world. I do have an Amazon account, Amazon does have individual MP3 songs as well as albums, just as iTunes. Both also allow for purchase of digital movies, though Amazon, from what I hear, allows for re-downloading that which you buy, while, from my experience with iTunes, once you download it, that’s it. Your hard drive crashes before you get a chance to back it up, it’s gone (though I hear Apple having an iCloud service, which I believe will do what Amazon is offering for its customers, storing content in the cloud that they can access). The plus, also on the side of Amazon, larger selection of books. But, I wouldn’t use a tablet for reading books anyway. With Fire’s announcement, also came the announcement that the basic Kindle with special offers is now $79, and that is something I now most definitely want to get. Store a thousand or so books on a little device is much more attractive than bookshelf of books taking up space and getting dusty.

In terms of specs, iPad’s internal storage starts at 16GB, while Fire is 8GB, but Fire is relying heavily on cloud storage. Hopefully, next generation Fire will up storage because, my music collection right now, sits at about 14 GB. In terms of Apps, okay, iPad may have an edge (90,000 vs 16,000), but honestly, 75% are more likely useless junk (on both sides) (remember, “there’s an app for that,” but I’ll reply back, “yeah, but do you REALLY need it?”). Pretty much, on both fronts, any useful and important apps, more likely would be available. Both are dual-core processors and have built-in wifi. iPad may have the cameras, but I would think a future Fire would eventually get one anyway. So iPad can be hooked into a cellular service, but I can’t afford those damn data plans anyway. Both don’t have external storage options (such as SD card or something). Both have near same battery life, but those numbers are usually inflated to minimal use.

In conclusion, I’m now open to getting a simple tablet for quick Internet surfing and media consumption, but not now. This is the first Kindle Fire, and I’m waiting until the rich people buy theirs to complement their iPads and Galaxy Tabs, and let the reviews and bugs come out for public consumption. Who knows, maybe there will be a Kindle Fire 2 next year, with the same $200 price tag, but has an expansion slot along with double internal storage, and those cameras people are bitching about.

Here are some iPad vs Kindle reads:
Fire vs iPad: Pick Your Garden – Technology News

Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2 vs. Nook Color: Specs and Features Compared – PCMag.com

As a Netflix subscriber, with the current $9.99 DVD-streaming combo option that will cease to exist come Sept. 1 to current subscribers, I thought I’ll weigh in on what’s going on.

As most people are aware, Netflix made a streaming only option for 7.99, while increasing to 9.99 for having unlimited streaming and DVDs (1 at a time), last November. Going from 8.99 to 9.99 wasn’t a big deal, I think most people understood as it costs money to send out DVDs (you know, postage). Now, with Netflix set to separate their two services, having the already existing 7.99 streaming only, and adding a 7.99 DVD-only, meaning to have both, you add those together to get the $15.98/mo, which is what current $9.99 subscribers will be paying, starting Sept 1, unless they decide one way or another, or as some people (stupidly) are threatening to do, canceling altogether.

I find canceling to be stupid, as Netflix is by far the best paid streaming option out there. Right now, even the paid Hulu Plus has ads, while Netflix doesn’t. The streaming limits of Netflix is why people liked the DVD option. All the other streaming sites have limitations to what they offer, because it’s all a matter of what licensing rights they can get. It’s not Netflix’s fault that Warner Bros. doesn’t want Netflix to even had the DVDs available until 30 days after release date (I believe same goes with Redbox). It’s not Netflix’s fault that HBO and Showtime don’t want their shows available to stream, even after a season has been released to DVD/Blu-Ray and is available to rent in that form. Though, in our eyes, being able to rent the DVD or Blu-Ray out should be seen as the same as streaming, when it comes to studios, they don’t see it that way.

From their fear that streaming is easier to rip (though, DVDs are easy to rip, but whatever), or they think people won’t subscribe to their premium network if they can just stream it, about eight months after the season ended (I’m using True Blood‘s releases as a guide for that number). Well, same can be said if they can rent it as well, but, whatever.

None of these are Netflix’s fault. And, now, their partnership with Starz could be lessened when the contract is up (I believe in January). Right now, current shows from Starz as a 90-day wait period, as Starz is hoping some people would subscribe for the course of a season to what a show now, versus waiting. If this experience shows that people were okay to wait, it wouldn’t surprise me that Starz doesn’t renew any deal with Netflix.

But, if Netflix can phase the option for DVDs out completely (as it is their goal), then funds could potentially go towards purchasing more (or even better) rights to streaming shows and movies. Of course, don’t expect HBO, as they have their HBO Go service, which is only available to subscribers (and not even all, as I know Time Warner customers don’t get it). Would it be nice to allow people who don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for digital cable (which, I think is at least required to even get premiums, so set-top box fees on top of minimum digital cable, it’s just ridiculous).

Worse yet, ISPs aren’t happy with Netflix, which accounts for a good chunk of web traffic in peak hours now. That’s why ISPs experimented and implemented bandwidth caps. This is one reason why we need government regulations to prevent ISPs from jacking up prices while speeds see no improvement. If we can get some good investments into fiber optics in more places, then cable companies will have more competitors, and thus, will have to have lower prices just to compete.

But I’m getting into something else, so back to Netflix. I myself like the DVD option, but like others, I only rent out a DVD about once a week (I work full time, I hardly have time to stream with Netflix). Though I get why Netflix is doing this (phase out DVDs by pushing people to go streaming), I think they could go about it better. If someone makes use of the unlimited DVDs on top of the streaming, then they should essentially pay for the two options (If they squeeze 2 DVDs in a week, that $7.99 a month plan is cheaper than buying from Pay-Per-View (which is about $4 a movie), cheaper than renting from iTunes (again, $4), renting from any Blockbuster or video store that has somehow managed to stay in business (and those require going out and using gas, plus risk of late-fees which apparently plagued people who rented a movie without considering if they had time to watch it that night or couldn’t get it returned in time), and is about that same as the $1 rentals of Redbox ($1 a day, that is, so if you have the movie in your possession for two days before you get to return it, it could add up.

But, if you’re like me, you don’t rent but no more than 4 DVDs a month from Netflix, so, I think it’ll be fair to keep a 9.99 plan with a DVD limit of, say, 2 a month. I think that would be fair.

So, come September 1st, would I drop my DVD side and go streaming only? I don’t know. There is a large streaming library, but, new releases are DVD only and come with wait times as everyone wants to see a new movie. Right now, my DVD Queue has some TV shows not available to stream and aren’t syndicated on any network (I’m watching Night Court now (which I’ve had since Thursday), actually, so I can send it off tomorrow and get a new one Friday (I Am Number Four is next on my list).

I have until September to ponder over it, but for the extra 8 bucks, I would need to squeeze in two a week to justify the increase, which could be possible when hours are cut in the fall (I got Netflix when I was unemployed, and used a lot of it when I got a part time job, but full time, I can afford it better but not using it as much, interesting huh?).