Rule 32: Enjoy the little things in life.

The Pretender by the Foo Fighters is one of the greatest songs of all time. It is the quintessential rock song, having all the things that make rock ‘n roll great, in excess. A great chord progression, extremely catchy and singable chorus, great, fantastic rebellious lyrics praising the power of the individual, calling for others to take up the call and overthrow the evil. It’s an anthem. It’s what rock ‘n roll should be. It’s awesome. It’s one of those songs that you can’t turn up enough. To make it satisfiably loud enough (yes, I think I did just make up a word there) it would be painful on the ears, and then it’s awesomeness would demand more volume still. In other words, yes, The Pretender needs to go to eleven.

It’s hard to accurately describe how awesome of a song The Pretender is without simplify turning on the radio and cranking it. The music and guitar riffs and drum beats just flow the prefect way, creating the right amount of tension and energy and rock. Towards the end the start of low with drums and guitar and slowly builds up, and up and right before it’s at full intensity, it drops back down for just a few seconds the BAM! It’s rock and roll. Such awesome, such greatness, such blind powerful strong amazing freakin’ ROCK!. So yeah, play it loud, play it proud, play it awesomely, as there’s no other way to do it.

A long long time ago in a galaxy far away, a saga was born. And it was great. Great characters, epic story, good versus evil, this movie had it all. Two more movies later, and the Star Wars Trilogy was complete. A bright, shining example of greatness. Thus everyone hungered for more. Fast forward to not so long ago at a movie theatre near you, we finally got our wish. And the lesson we all learned was ‘Be careful what you wish for’. But I digress. Remember the hype? The promises of greatness? The sheer excitement of, simply put, more Star Wars? Enter our hereos. Five friends in their mid-twenties for whom Star Wars is more than a hobby, more than a great movie. It’s a way of life. It’s a fandom.

Windows, Zoe, Eric, Hutch and Linus: The Fanboys

Set shortly (six months, twelve days, eight hours and a few minutes to be exact) prior to the release of Episode I, Fanboys follows our heroes as they undergo one of the most fantastic heists in geek history. They plan to sneak into Skywalker Ranch under the cover of night and steal a copy of Episode I. Along their way, they encounter such trials as Trekkies, the police, Vegas, Kevin Smith, Seth Rogan the pimp, Darth Maul, parents and a gay bar. All this in the name of friendship, for Linus has inoperable cancer and will not likely survive the six months until the movie is released. So, in the name of friendship and fandom, they set off down the road and into geek history.

What made this movie stand out to me is that you actually grew to really care about and like the characters and empathize with their struggles. They’re more than geeks, they’re actual people. It’s more than a movie about geeks. You care about them, about Linus’ struggle with cancer, with Eric’s inner struggle between what he wants to do and what his parents want him to do, about Windows’ lovelife, about Zoe’s conflict between her geek and feminine sides and Hutch….Hutch is just Hutch.

But yeah, Fanboys would have been a entertaining movie had it been just a Star Wars tribute, but what really elevated it in my mind is the characters and the story. With such likeable characters and the story about friendship and just life made it a great movie. Also, the best use of the song “Fair” by Remy Zero since Garden State. So if you like Star Wars or atleast crazy hijinks, please see Fanboys.

Lastly, the trailer.

–theindiegeek, also a fanboy

Greetings, as a follow up to my last post about the droid, here a few free apps that I’ve found interesting/useful/neat. The first two are the most important, then the rest are listed alphabetically.

Top 2:

Advanced Task Killer – The first app you should install. Will save your battery life by a ton. Free and paid versions, free should suffice.

Pandora – If you like music, (which you should), you should already be using Pandora on the web. Now that it’s on smartphones, Pandora is even better. Creates radio stations custom-tailored to your liking. Great for walks, or plugging in to your car stereo. Truly an awesome thing. Cannot recommend enough.

The rest:

ACV Comic reader – For my fellow geeks out there who save comics on their computers, this is a nice viewer. Currently I have all of Cable and Deadpool on mine. Good way to kill time when my piano students don’t show up.

Amazon Mp3 Store – Comes pre-installed on the droid, it is rather quite useful. I like amazon’s mp3 store. I used iTunes for a long time, but their fancy file formats and DRM are a pain to deal with. Amazon uses straight mp3s. Nice an easy and same price as iTunes. No reason not to use it.

Astro File Viewer – Easiest way to browse the files on your phone. Clean, efficient, I like it.

Bible (you version) – Just a nice bible app with alot of nice features like reading plans, etc.

Google Goggles – Essentially, a visual google search. Take a picture and then google attempts to search for what you took a picture of. Not perfect, but fun and useful. Great for looking up ratings/prices of things you might buy.

Google Sky Map – A rather ingenious app from google. Turn on your GPS, and it’ll tell you the name of constellations and other heavenly bodies. Wish I had this one during ASTRO 101.

Mabilo Ringtones and Wallpaper – Great free apps for finding Ringtones and Wallpaper. Acutally have a very nice selection.

Musical Lite – Found this app when I needed a metronome. There’s a paid and free version, paid has all sort of neat features, but you can probably get by with lite.

NewsRob – Great RSS feeder. Plugs in with Google reader.

Shazam – Identifies songs. Great for when you start listening to a song in the middle on the radio.

Sudoku Free – Great way to kill time. Simple, good input method, multiple skill levels. Nice.

The Schwartz Unleashed – A great lightsaber app. Yes, me and one of my coworkers have had lightsaber fights with these…

Twidroid – The best twitter app I’ve seen. There is a paid and a free version, free seems sufficient for me.

UrbanSpoon – If you’re like me, you’re probably indecisive about where to eat. With your GPS on, this slot-machine like app recommends a place to eat. Quite fun.

Weatherbug – This or the Weather Channel app. Both are great weather apps.

Today is a very good day for music fans. Along with new releases from Gorillaz and Broken Bells, Christian Kane has finally released his new EP. Now, I’m not usually a country fan, but after hearing his music in Angel and Leverage, I couldn’t ignore the simple fact that Christian Kane can play, and he’s got the vocals to match. The five tracks on this EP show his skill quite well, as well as his range, from hard rock to soft ballads. For the price tag (around $3.50), you really can’t go wrong, and it would be ashame to miss out.

Now, onto the tracks:

American Made is a nice rock song that starts off the EP strong and loud. Good melody, and wholesome, American lyrics.  The House Rules is just an awesome song. A great tune that you can’t help but crank the volume up on.  And put on repeat. Whiskey in Mind has a really great chorus that will stay in your head long after you turn it off.  Very catchy.  Making Circles is a slower tune that helps bring things down.  I quite like this ballad. Some nice piano work on this one. The final track, Let Me Go is absolutely beautiful. A great way to end the EP. Make sure you pay close attention to the lyrics of this one, they’re great.

The EP is available on both iTunes and Amazon, as well as www.christiankane.com. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

At the beginning of the year, I finally got tired of my Verizon EV2’s lousy reception. Down town Valpo was fine, but in my house I could barely hear a thing. Which is weird, as the rest of my family didn’t have this trouble. After looking at new phones for a while, my MP3 player died as well. This, as well as the recommendation of several friends, made me take a serious interest in the Motorola Droid. I never had an iPhone, so the world of smartphones was new to me. Nevertheless, as trial by fire is the best way to learn something, I took the plunge and upgraded (as per my plan with Verizon) to the Droid.

The Motorola Droid

My Droid, which I named Pip after Fallout’s Pip-boys, is awesome. I don’t know how it compares to other smart phones, as I don’t have much experience with them, but I do love my droid. The integration with google’s services (i.e. Calendar, Gmail) is great, as I’ve been using them heavily for years as my main email and calendar, and being able to access them from anywhere is fantastic. Also, the built in GPS (which works with Google Maps) does a fine job. And yes, the reception is more than significantly better.

One of the main things I use it for is listening to music. My last MP3 player was an 8gig Creative Labs. The Motorola Droid has a 16gig SD card built in. Apps are rarely more than a megabyte. So allowing a few gigs for pictures and apps, and I still have a large amount of space for music.  The speaker by itself is surprisingly sufficient.  Usually when I take Quinn for a walk I turn it on and put it in my pocket w/o headphones and it loud enough.

Now, a device is only worthwhile if it’s got the battery life to support it, and suffice to say that the droid’s battery is quite ample. The ‘advanced task killer’ application is a must.  Droid applications run in the background, and there are upside and downsides to this. The upside is that applications are pretty much saved as is until you call upon them again. The downside is that they consume resources (memory, battery) while they’re hidden in the background. Advanced Task Killer clears them from memory. There’s also an ignore list for ones you do want to keep running in the background, and it’s a free app. First app I had on there.

Now onto something very important, the interface and input. The main screen has three panels, center, left and right. Generally the center is where most people put their most used apps. Gmail, twitter, marketplace, camera, etc. Then the left and right panels are usually used for widgets, shortcuts etc. Simple, but more than does the job. Phone status updates are on a panel at the top which can be slid down for more details. The rest of the apps are kept in a tray at the bottom that’s slid up to reveal all the remaining apps.

Droid Main Screen

Droid Widgets

There are three different keyboards that can be used. When the phone is in it’s vertical position, a keyboard similar to that of a Blackberry takes up the lower half of the screen.

Droid Vertical Keyboard

The second is my input method of choice, the horizontal keyboard. Big enough for my piano player hands to manage. Admittedly there is a bit of a learning curve, but once you get used to it, it’s my preferred keyboard.

Droid Horizontal Keyboard

The last is, of course the physical keyboard. A very acceptable method. Great for the beginning of the learning curve.

Droid keypad

So if you’re on the edge, let me tell you one of my average uses for it that should help convince you. The other weekend I was taking a trip to my cousins’ house.  Been over a year since I’ve been there, so naturally my memory was fuzzy how to get there. So I fired up the GPS on Pip (my droid if you’ll remember) and navigated the way there. Also, while this was going I had Pandora running on Pip, providing us with an ample supply of great music. Guster and the like if you must know. While this was going on, my friend was surfing the net and facebook via Pip’s web browser. And we were still able to make and receive calls. I’m personally starting to think the word phone is a gross understatement. Perhaps smartphone is even an understatement. Personal Computer? No, we already have those. I don’t know. You tell me.

Welcome to Shutter Island

About a week ago, a friend and I decided to go to the theater and see Shutter Island after numerous recommendations from friends and family members. Being a fan of many of the people involved, I went in with decently high expectations. After all, this was the team that made The Departed, which was amazing. To sweeten the deal, Shutter Island was written by one of my favorite authors, Dennis Lehane, author of such books as Mystic River, A Drink Before the War, and Gone Baby Gone. Some of the adaptions of his books were great, some were alright. I wanted to see how this one compared.

Let me start by saying this is one of the best book to movie adaptations I’ve seen. It’s one of those cases where the book is already great, and the director doesn’t try to add in a bunch of nonsense because he can. Martin Scorsese is better than that. He remains true to the source material, only cutting minor details due to time constraint. With a story as carefully nuanced as that of Shutter Island, this is important.

Speaking of the story, I am unable to over-emphasize that you have to enjoy psycho-trillers to like this movie.  It is not horror or action, but a Thriller.  My favorite kind of movie. I’m not too keen on horror, apart from zombies, but I love a great mind-bender, and without giving too much away, just remember that Dennis Lehane is a master thriller writer.  The end twist is great, and WILL make you want to see it again.

Of course, a great story is nothing without great characters and great actors to play them.  Leo is great as Marshal Teddy Daniels, as is to be expected.  But let us not forget the rest of the cast.  Mark Ruffalo is fantastic as Daniels’ partner Chuck.  I’ve been a fan of Ruffalo since 2009’s The Brothers Bloom, and was excited to see him in Shutter Island and he did not dissapoint.  Ben Kingsley as Doctor Cawley and Michelle Williams and Teddy’s wife are also stand out performances.

After the movie was over, I stood up in the theater and declared “Now THAT’S a movie. Damn good.”  So yes, it is a good movie.  The visuals are great, as is for most Scorsese movies, there’s some really great shots by the cliffs of the island. Now go see it. Now.