I took the compressed air to my GBA this morning to get the dust off of the LCD/Afterburner and apparently in the process of doing so made the aforementioned bubble under the antireflective film go away…. How cool! There is a bit of a “mar” on the righthand edge of the film, but I think I can make that go away with some playing… I might just leave it alone since it isn’t actually in the way…
Now that the screen is pretty dust-free and that bubble is gone I am really happy with the Afterburner…. It makes the system way better… I just wish Nintendo did this from the start, I mean, I would have easily paid another \$35 on top of the price of the GBA for a light…. But since they didn’t, and the Afterburner is only \$35, things worked out alright in the end…
After work I met up with Matt and we headed to the Boston Common to see Episode 2 in the Digital Theater… First things first… While I did notice the occasional aliasing (jaggies) on some text, that is about the only negative thing I have to say. The picture was so bright and the colors were so fantastic… I was astonished that I didn’t notice any compression artifacting….. Sorry this isn’t coherent, but if you are looking for an endorsement, you’ve got one as far as seeing this film digitally goes… I would like to see a few films that were shot on film on the DLP projector before giving an overall endorsement, but other than that….
Seeing the film again was nice, but about 4 minutes before the ending credits there was a fire alarm and the theater needed to be evacuated… I need to go back tomorrow for my refund, which blows… I guess I will go on my lunch break. The alarm came after all the action, but before the plot was fully tied up… I find it funny because when looking for the address of the theater this afternoon I came across this Citysearch page and one of the reviews at the bottom says “I have seen about 10-15 movies there since it opened and 3 of them have been interrupted by fire alarms.” Doesn’t sound like this theater has its shit together..
I also got my Afterburner kit for the GBA today, and I installed it after I got home. The installation took me about an hour, and I am going to need to get another antireflective film and re-do that part (a little bubble got trapped dead center, so I will need to reapply it). It is amazing how it accentuates dust on the screen, though… I don’t have any canned air here, but I do at work, so I can take care of that tomorrow…. In a stroke of genius I decided to use a Swiffer sheet to collect the dust off of the unit and when I did, it left a nasty translucent residue behind…. DO NOT DO THIS!!! It took about 20 minutes with a lens tissue and windex to get it back to normal.
BUT, now that it is all installed, I can also fully endorse this product… While it isn’t for the feint of heart (the installation gets your hands pretty “dirty”), the end result is worth it 100%. The screen clarity reminds me of the Atari Lynx and the Game Gear. The colors are a BIT washed out, but not as bad as many people have purported…. I think it looks beautiful…
Adam did his before me and gave me plenty of warnings; I doubt my install would have gone so smoothly without him to jump on the grenade for me… He completely screwed up the antireflective film and ended up skipping it in the end, and the colors without it are TERRIBLY washed out and there is horrible reflective banding… Apparently it is worth the effort… Some people who installed the AR film didn’t realize that BOTH sides of the AR film had protective coatings, so some complained that it made it look shitty… If these people applied it properly they wouldn’t complain…
Stayed up working until 5am… Haven’t done that in awhile… Definately behind a bit but catching up slowly…. Next weekend will probably be a doozy as well…
But I get to take a break tonight and see Star Wars again in the digital theater…. couldn’t make it (sorry about the badness, Joe), so Matt is going to go with me to pick up Joe’s ticket… Should be a swell time…
I was encoding Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Strategies Against Architecture III” and when I looked it up on freedb the original submitter filed it under the “Pop” genre. This amuses me greatly.
Ok kids… I have to say, that while I expected Episode II to be better than Episode I, I was really suprised by it…. Sure some of the dialogue and acting sucked, but this was a Star Wars film, did you expect otherwise? I was on the edge of my seat, and I can’t wait to go see it again on Monday in the DLP theater….
Things that ruled:
First things first: Yoda was fucking bad-ass. No other way of describing it.
The big jedi battle was awesome….
They are getting much better at the CG…. While there were still a few places where I was knocked out of my suspension, mostly it was good
Natalie Portman. Nuff Said
Things that sucked:
Jar-Jar, although it was great to hear Padme cut him off…. He got played like a tool later in the film
Man, some of the dialog was awful
They should have shown Anakin rage out on the Bespin’s a bit more….
Natalie Portman didn’t get naked. (Ok, I wasn’t really expecting that one).
I consider Lucas as redeemed, and I am really looking forward to the last film…. I just wish the DVDs for 4, 5, 6 were out….
Made it into work today, and have started climbing the long hill of catching up.. We are going to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory today because Mario’s brother (Alex) is heading back to Panama… Alex kinda pseudo-interned for us for a few months, and he will be starting college in a few months, so we wanted to see him off.
Going to see Episode II tonight at 7pm…. I hope it doesn’t suck.
Ok, I am forcing myself to go to bed now. I subscribed to emusic.com on the advice of a friend and it really is amazing. I downloaded a bunch of albums tonight including Painkiller’s Execution Ground, an old favorite that I let fall through the cracks…. I also downloaded some Scorn, which brings my mind back to Acheron my freshman year at CSH… Anyway, I think I am endorsing emusic.com, they have tons of good music, in regular old mp3 format, available for a monthly subscription… Pay them the small fee and get unlimited downloads… Give it a shot, they have a free trial.
My tooth situation has improved, it is now only sore, hopefully by morning it will be hunky-dory.
I don’t know what hurts more… My mouth or watching this press conference (Condoleeza Rice addressing the pre 9/11 “hijack intelligence”)… I am no fan of the Bush Administration, but some of these reporters are awful… The same questions asked over and over again trying to turn something most-likely benign into some big cover-up…
My mouth hurts, and the stuff I am taking to try and stem that has done a number on my stomach and I have been on the toilet all day… I am staying home today, so it looks like I will be working all weekend…. Suck.