James Andrews

Earlier this year when Coraline came out in theaters I was mezmerized by the 3D animation and the captivating story. It was all I thought it could be.

Today Coraline was released on DVD. After work I stopped by the Target in Framingham and snatched up the $15 edition, as I see no need in the “special” edition. Now a friend earlier had asked me if I had planned on getting the version with the 3D glasses. To my surprise all the available versions came with the green and purple 3D glasses.

When he first asked me, I couldn’t have cared less. 3D TV has not hit primetime, and I highly doubted that blue and red (or in this case green and purple) glases would match the awesoeness of today’s 3D studio. Though so far I am pleasantly surprised. The 3D is actually quite close to what I remember in the theater. Not exactly the same, but it is quite enjoyable. And here I thought I wouldn’t get to see it again in 3D any time soon.

I guess the best way to describe it is, today in the theater it actually seems like you can reach out and grab something on front of you. While it seem like I can reach out and grab things, things do seem to pop out of the screen a little, making them a bit realistic.

Anyway, you should buy it, it’s a great movie in 3D or in 2D…

I was on Facebook today when one of the ads on the right sidebar was an advertisement for theplunge.com, a website dedicated to helping grooms, and groom’s men survive the wedding, and wedding planning process unscathed (well as unscathed as you’re going to get). The site was of particular interest to me because I am engaged and getting married in September, but unlike most grooms, I am actually planning the ENTIRE wedding (she lives in Japan, wedding #1 is here in the US, my family, my friends, my responsibility), and wanted to see what kind of advice, they’d give.

First off the site is fracking hysterical! I spent the entire afternoon reading article after article in tears of laughter. While the articles are sport full of comic relief, they have a lot of really useful information. Topics range from “Ring Buying” and “Popping the Question” to “How to stay just enough out of the brides way” and “How the groom’s men should behave at the bachelor party”.

My favorite articles so far How Every Groomsman Must Behave at a Bachelor Party and How Wedding-porn is brainwashing your fiancee.

First bullet from “How Every Groomsman Must Behave at a Bachelor Party“:

1. Keep him hydrated.

I don’t care if he’s running around buck naked with his Blackberry clamped between his teeth, screaming out lines from Jedi like, “The Death Star is fully operational! The Death Star is fully operational!” Even if he’s still demanding more shots of whiskey, make him drink water. In fact, Project Hydration should begin well before he turns into a naked Admiral Ackbar. Every other time you buy him drinks, also slip him a glass of water to chug.

Good stuff, though personally if he were a naked Admiral Ackbar he’d be running around yelling “It’s a TRAP!!!”.

Besides all the great articles they also have some real useful spreadsheets for planning the bachelor party budget (for the best man of course), and the wedding guest list. Which makes life easier for the bride or the groom.

Anyway, if you are a guy and getting married, or your guy friend is getting married, or you just want a really good laugh, you should check out theplunge.com.

Up is the story of Carl who sets off fulfill a promise he made to his wife and childhood sweetheart Elle. A a child they both admired a very famous adventurer of South America’s Paradise Falls and as a child he had promised that one day he’d take her there.

I’ve been dying for months to see this film. Who as a child has not had the dream of doing something crazy with a thousand balloons. The movie is full of warmth and great comedy, and is also very touching and sad for a couple moments. I did not pay to see this movie, but I gladly would pay to see it a second time. Pixar’s 3D was not overwhelming, and brings in just enough to bring the movie to life. There are some great references to classic movies. My favorite being the Star Wars reference. See if you can find it!

Pixar has yet to make a movie that I haven’t enjoyed. This is just another in the long line of hits and I hope they keep on coming. Great fun for the family!

The other day I went over to a friend’s house who I hadn’t seen for a while. During my visit he went to show me some video. He grabbed a keyboard and start media player application on the PC attached to his TV. The application was XMBC an open source media player. I am a mac user, and a while back XMBC forked and Plex was created for OS X. Yesterday I downloaded Plex and started looking at it’s potential to be my multimedia app, instead of buying an AppleTV.

If you have used XMBC you will be happy to hear that the interface is identical. You can add your movies, music, photos, pretty much whatever media you have you can play, and it does it well. One of the things about XMBC and Plex is the ability to add plugin bundles. These bundles allow you to play videos from Comedy Central, Hulu, BBC and a slew of other online video resources. There are even some questionable un-supported bundles for “mature materials”. I tried a few of the different bundles and they worked pretty good. I did have issue with Comedy Central’s pluggin. Some videos listed didn’t play at all, and I am not sure if it was my internet connection or something wrong with the content, but I was slightly disappointed with that.

Plex also allows you to change the skin of the media player, but most of them are piss poor at best. The Best of the bunch is called Mediastream and is the default one that loads with it. You can change the background images to be what ever you want. Images from your favorite TV show, pictures you took on your vacation, or video. It’s all very cool and customizable. Though there seems to be no way to fas tforward through video, It always seems rewind. If you get to the beginning it will go to the end and rewind. I’ll have to investigate more.

I have an XBox360 and some time ago I bought the Harmony Remote for it. It so happens to support Plex, so I also programmed Plex into the remote. I took a little figuring out, but you can easily navigate through the menu items. Though there is still a lot they could do better. For example the VCR controls could actually control the video properly. play, stop pause etc. They don’t act correctly with the remote. Same problem exists with fast forwarding. You click on the right arrow expecting it to fast forward, and it rewinds instead.

I also think it would be real neat if it played mp3+g media (mp3 based karaoke). I need to get a mac mini so I can create a dedicated machine, but that’ll have to wait until later this year. early next year. I would have used an old iBook G4 I have, but Plex only works on Intel based macs.

For more information you can check out http://www.plexapp.com/

I give Plex 4 out of 5 remotes.

Tonight I ordered a “Dominos Breadbowl Pasta”. Specifically I got the Pasta with Marinara sauce an no toppings. I called at about 6:15 and it arrived a little after 6:40. Which is what I would have expected.

First off the pasta and sauce. The pasta they are using is Ziti, and was slightly undercooked, but edible. The sauce is the same that they give out with the bread sticks they sell. It’s ok, but nothing to write home about.

The bread was undercooked. The bottom part of the bowl was still uncooked dough and quite nasty. While what was cooked was delicious, it the rest of it being undercoked ruined the meal.

Rating: 1 out of 5 bread bowls