Chazography

For my birthday, I received a brand spanking new Halo 3  Edition Xbox 360, Halo 3, Bioshock, and a 1-yr subscription to Xbox Live from my family.  Yes, I know… what an amazing birthday present, and yes, my family kicks some serious arse.  The wonderful thing about the Halo 3 Edition Xbox 360 is that, like the Elite version, it has an HDMI port built in.  Since I have a Dell 3007WFP-HC Monitor, the inclusion of the HDMI port is a godsend since it should allow me to connect my beautifully large monitor to my spiffy new Xbox 360, and getting the two connected should be as simple as buying a DVI-HDMI adapter and plugging the monitor into the back of the Xbox 360.  If only it were that simple…

As it turns out, it’s possible but not quite plug and play.  If you’re trying to recreate this setup at home, here’s what you’ll need:

1. DVI->HDMI Adapter
2. Xbox 360 with HDMI
3. Second Display

First, hook up your Xbox 360 to the second display.  Once it has booted into the Xbox Dashboard, navigate to the System Blade and select Console Settings->Display->Screen Resolution.  You should now see a list of different resolutions (640×480, 848×480, 1024×768, 1280×1024, etc.).  The Dell 3007WFP-HC doesn’t perform any scaling , and consequently, supports only two resolutions: 1280×800 (single-link) or 2560×1920 (dual-link).  The Xbox 360 supports a maximum resolution of 1920×1080 so we’re forced to use the monitor’s single-link resolution.  Since the Xbox 360 doesn’t support 1280×800 exactly, we’ll select the next closest resolution at 1280×768.  After selecting this resolution from the list, you can now plug the 30" Dell 3007WFP-HC monitor into the back of your Xbox 360 using the DVI->HDMI Adapter.  Congratulations!  You’re all done!

So now I’ve got my giant 30" Dell  monitor hooked up to my Xbox 360, but there’s one caveat.  Since the Xbox 360 is only outputting 1280×768 and the monitor requires a resolution of exactly 1280×800, the bottom 12 pixels of the screen are a repeat of the top 12 pixels of the screen.  While not a deal breaker, it can be a little bit distracting and annoying at times (i.e., if the top part of the screen is very bright and the bottom is very dark).  Oh well, it’s time for the Master Chief to get back to saving the world!

It’s been a while since this page has seen a refresh, but I’ve decided it’s about time to change that. Fortunately, this past weekend alone I saw three different movies (well, amost three movies at least) which provide ample fodder. So for those who are a little slower on the uptake, this post is going to be about "Movies, movies, movies."

The first film to be graced by my keen insight and brilliant critical analysis will be A Prairie Home Companion. This wonderful "gem" of a movie is stacked with a star-studded cast including such names as Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Maya Rudolph, and Meryl Streep. It’s just unfortunate that the producers of this movie forgot to obtain a decent screenplay to showcase the talents of their all-star cast, and consequently, this movie failed to interest me at all. In fact, I was so thoroughly bored and disinterested with this movie that I actually walked out about thirty or forty-five minutes into the story; it was just that bad. The story (so far as I could tell) revolved around a live radio show that called the Fitzgerald, a small-town theatre, home. All of this information along with the fact that the theatre would be performing its last live broadcast before closing down is disclosed in the film’s opening narration. However, you’d be hard-pressed to learn much more than that from the characters ambiguous, nonsensical babble, and I found myself thoroughly confused and bored by a lack of plot development. To all those thinking about seeing this film, I’d highly advise against it, but what do I know?

After sitting through the excruciatingly painful thirty or forty-five minutes of A Prairie Home Companion, I decided leave and go see Pixar’s latest animated film Cars. I have to be honest that when I first saw previews for Cars I wasn’t very excited about it, and I actually wasn’t planning on seeing it. If it weren’t for my father recommending it and being completely un-entertained by A Prairie Home Companion, I very well might have skipped it, but I’m definitely glad I didn’t. Pixar did a wonderful job developing the cars as interesting characters that the audience could truly relate to. The cars had wonderful animation that seemed to bring them to life, and I really that I forgot they were simply inanimate objects. The story revolves around one car’s, Lightning McQueen, journey towards becoming the next big thing in the world of racing. Though brimming with talent and potential Lightning still has a lot to learn about racing as he still doesn’t understand that racing is a team sport; rather, Lightning believes everything revolves solely around him. In fact, it is hubris that costs him an easy win in a big race resulting in a three-way tie with both his nemesis and the reigning champ. The remainder of the movie revolves around Lightning learning that there’s more to life than just himself or winning as he interacts with other cars in the quaint little town of Radiator Springs. If you’re looking for an entertaining movie and you enjoy animated flicks, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie.

Finally, I saw The Omen which is a remake of the 1976 cult classic. I never saw the original so the story was completely new to me, but from what I have been told, this new rendition is a very faithful (almost scene by scene) transcription of the original. Just like the exorcist, I did not find this movie all that terrifying even though it was considered to be quite frightening upon its original release, but I must confess that the little kid who played the son of satan did creep me out. For those who are unfamiliar with the basic plot of the movie, a couple has a child who is born on 06-06-2006, and the father is told by a priest that his child died during delivery. The crafty priest is able to hoodwink him into believing that his wife suffered severe trauma to her uterus and would be unable to conceive another child. There is another child, however, who’s mother died while giving birth, and the priest tells the man that he should take that child and tell his wife that it is their own to spare her the heartbreak of giving birth to a stillborn baby. What the man doesn’t realize is that all of this is a ruse. His child was killed, and this other child, the son of Lucipher, was born unto a goat (since it apparently states in the Bible that the son of satan will be born unto a goat). The rest of the movie consists of this father being warned by several figures that his child is evil and that he must kill him. It is not until his wife dies and he sees that his son has a birthmark in the formm of 666 on the back of his head that he truly believes the admonitions he has received. He then proceeds to try and kill his son in the manner that he was instructed by a knowledgeable priest, but he is killed in the process and satan’s son is spared. This of course leaves room for the sequels which followed the original–whether or not those will receive remakes is unknown to me. Overall I found the movie mildly entertaining; it’s not a must see, but I wouldn’t advise against it either. If you’re on the fence about this one, you might as well wait for it to become available as a rental. Well, there you have it. Three incredibly wonderful reviews that you probably couldn’t do without. Tune in for the next installment in my entertaining world tomorrow. It will be marked by an early trip to the gym, work, a trip to the dentist, and one final trip to the gym. Wow, I can’t believe how excited I am for tomorrow already! Let me go ahead and express my jubilation with a barrage of words expressing my elation and delight: wooooohoooo, yiiippppeeeeee, woooowwwzzeerrrssss, teeerrrrriifffic, g-r-r-r-r-eaaaaat!