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So I just finished watching Jeremiah. If you weren’t aware of this show back when it aired (2002-2004), it’s a post-apocalyptic series starring Luke Perry (yes Dylan from 90210 1.0) and Malcolm-Jamal Warner (Theo Huxtable!). I love a good dystopian story and they are hard to come by.

Jeremiah was written and created by J Michael Straczynski, better known for creating Babylon 5. Jeremiah wasn’t the greatest show but it also wasn’t horrible. When I first heard about Jeremiah I had thought it was just a rip off of Jericho but I didn’t realize at the time that Jeremiah was aired 4 years sooner. The story tells us of a world where 6 billion people died (virtually everyone except for children that had no hit puberty) caused from a plague they call “the Big Death.” The series sticks to just the continental U.S.A. and focuses on the people trying to rebuild a country and the obstacles they face.

One thing that irked me was the lack of cars everywhere. With over 100 million cars in the USA, if 90% of the population were wiped out, I would have expected to see many more abandoned cars everywhere. I won’t hold this against Jeremiah too much though, I could come up with explanations to the lack of cars much easier than I could explaining why every alien and human from another world is able to speak English on StarGate…or why those humans have flashlights and walkie talkies that look just like ours.

The series made it through 2 seasons (35 Episodes total). Unfortunately JMS and MGM did not work well together and JMS left the show. Luckily they decided to cancel the series as opposed to bringing on new writers. Without spoiling, I will say that the series does end without one of those horrible cliffhangers and whether the ending was a happy one is open to interpretation.

Jeremiah was originally based on a Belgian comic book series by Hermann Huppen first written in 1979 but is still written today. You can find the comics fairly inexpensively on eBay for $5-20 each.

What I do find surprising is that although you can find the complete first season on DVD on eBay for under $10, the second season is priced on eBay, Amazon.com and Walmart.com for over $50! I guess the first season’s sales were not as stellar and production on season two DVDs was much less. Best Buy has season one available but doesn’t even offer season two. So if you find an inexpensive copy of season two, be sure to buy it.

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It’s called the Pippin. Originally developed by Apple to be an early type of media center. Bandai licensed the platform in 1994 and called it Bandai Pippin @World player. Just 42,000 units were sold, at a cost of $599 each, before the console was discontinued in 1997. Katz Media Productions made 5,000 consoles in Ireland for European distribution. They called their verion the KMP 2000 and is considered the rarest of the Pippin models. PC World Magazine gave the Pippin 22nd place in it’s list of 25 worst tech products of all time.

The cool thing about the games is that they will place on the older Macs of that era. So if you wanted to play Gundam Tactics or tinker with the Dragonball Z Anime Designer, you can do it on an old computer as opposed to trying to obtain of the the original Pippin systems.

You can sometimes find the console and games on eBay. Here’s a few currently available:

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So I’ve pretty much watched complete seasons of every TV series worth watching in the last decade. In November, I started watching Charmed. A lot can be said about this series and it was probably said years ago when the show was airing so I won’t bother.

I do want to point out one thing that the internet seems to have overlooked. There seems to be one prop camera that is consistently used over and over again over the seasons of the show. It’s a Nikon camera and I’m not sure of the model.

When Prue decides to become a photographer she’s got the Nikon camera. Whenever someone like Sheridan is using a camera to catch the girls in action–the Nikon camera! When Phoebe is getting photographed for magazines? It’s with that Nikon camera. When Piper, Leo and the kids are getting their family portrait…guess what? It’s that SAME Nikon camera.

If you’re about to watch all 8 seasons of the show, take a look any time someone has a camera.

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It’s not just a boring T.V. show! It’s also reality…

BOSTON (CBS) – A 74-year-old professor who has lectured at Boston schools for two decades has been charged with running a methamphetamine lab. Irina Kristy, who teaches math at Boston University and Suffolk University, will be arraigned next month for allegedly running a meth lab out of her Somerville home. Kristy’s son Grigory pleaded not guilty to the same charges last month. Kristy has been placed on administrative leave at Suffolk. BU officials, meanwhile, said they are aware of the charges.

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Dan Trachtenberg made this Portal inspired film. It’s pretty cool and the cinematic quality was great. over 7 million views in just over 2 months is pretty good.

Synopsis: A woman wakes up in a room with no memory of who she is or how she got there…This is a short set in the world of the Portal video games created by Valve Software.

With 720p video and a cool soundtrack, I’d recommend watching this video in full screen:

Could this video be the stepping stone to something more? Will part two include a pair of Long fall boots?

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So over the last few months I started selling t-shirts for Minecraft and Portal 2 as well as some neat collectibles. I’m aware there are many cool things people have done in Minecraft like making an emulator and all sorts of 2D 8-bit images. The Portal experience is pretty cool. Here’s parts one:

and part two:

If you’re looking for some cool Minecraft or Portal 2 swag, the items below are just some of my available goodies.

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So I just finished watching King of Fighters the movie. A few days ago I gave a review for Tekken the Movie. I thought I would compare the two. Both were live action movies made for western audiences.

Just like Tekken, I was unfamiliar with the game story line for the King of Fighters games. This gives me an advantage over those who are aware of the original story as both movies probably butchered the game story. The dialog in KoF was a bit cheesy at times but overall I was pretty happy with the story. Three ancient artifacts help teleport fighters into another dimension via Bluetooth hands free devices (lol, no joke!) and they are able to battle it out with one another to finally win the title “King of Fighters.” In this other dimension is an evil being called “Orochi.” Which is a Japanese term for a snake or serpent. Orochi wants to escape the dimension and probably rule/destroy our own.

The cast had quite a few familiar faces. Francoise Yip, Maggie Q and Ray Park were all in the movie. I like all three actors and have been following their work for quite some time. Ray Park almost always plays an antagonist. He handles the role well though I’m looking forward to him being a good guy in a future action movie. He was Snake Eyes in the GI Joe movie but he didn’t speak in that movie and he was covered in costume. Sean Farris played Kyo Kusanagi and received top billing but I’m not really familiar with him. I did see “Never Back Down” but I’ve mostly forgotten that movie. Will Yun Lee was also in the movie. I had to look up his name as I recognized him but couldn’t remember his name. I’ve seen him in a few other shows and enjoy his characters.

The special effects in the movie were pretty cool. They were battling with different color fire balls/chi/enery or whatever you wish to call it. IMDB.com listed the movie’s budget at $12,000,000 so I found the effects to be surprisingly “special” for their cost.

If I had to recommend King of Fighters or Tekken, I would definitely suggest King of Fighters. Though I did enjoy both, King of Fighters was slightly more enjoyable.

I wonder if there will ever be a Virtua Fighter movie.

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A friend of mine brought this to my attention:

If you notice above, the progress bar on the video has been altered. I thought this was neat and I wonder how many other Easter Eggs are hidden across YouTube. I do know that a few years ago they did an April Fool’s prank where all of the videos on their main page were redirected to a RickRoll video.

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I just finished watching Tekken. It’s a live action movie based on the popular series of video games.

I did enjoy the movie. There was some decent fighting and it wasn’t too excessive. That is to say, the fights lasted a reasonable amount of time. A 10-minute battle gets boring (see the Matrix 2). My one grievance with the movie is toward the end…

***PLOT SPOILERS***
The tournament’s winner is declared yet 3 fighters had not yet been eliminated. I realize that their fights would be unnecessary to continue with the plot, but to me the movie feels incomplete without those minor battles.

I also found Jin’s lack of monogamy amusing. Society tends to assume that a couple will be exclusive. So when Jin and Christie are having their fun in the middle of the movie, I couldn’t help but laugh when Jin goes back to his chocolate-loving girlfriend after the tournament.
***END PLOT SPOILER***

So I won’t say it was a great movie. I won’t even say it was a good movie. It was an entertaining movie and I wouldn’t warn anyone away from seeing it. Though to be fair I am not familiar with the Tekken storylines so for all I know they butchered the plot, which is highly likely.

Next video game movie on my watch list is King of Fighters.

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Yesterday I was trying to decide if I should see Green Lantern in 3D or the regular version. I went online to see if there were any opinions. All I found were unkind movie reviews.

One such review was written by someone named Josh Wilding. My biggest grievance of his laundry list of complaints is about the abundance of unnecessary humor in the movie. About half way through the movie I couldn’t help but wonder, “where’s all of these hit and miss jokes Josh promised?” Sure there was some levity early in the movie but that was necessary for Hal Jordan’s character. Hal was supposed to be an irresponsible guy. Having him acting care free is how you portray that. Later on in the movie things naturally change. The humor was actually quite minimal; especially when compared to another comic book movie, The Green Hornet. Even Iron Man had more jokes being cracked and yet that was a great movie.

As far as how this rates against other comic book movies, I’d say it was certainly better than Elektra, Daredevil, Punisher 1 and 2 and Ghost Rider. I’d rate it at about the same level as the Ed Norton Hulk, Wolverine Origins and the Fantastic Four. That puts it right below Iron Man and Thor.

So anyway, I usually never listen to critics. This time I did and I was hesitant to see Green Lantern. I ended up not going for 3D and I’m now wishing I had paid extra for it as it was definitely an enjoyable movie. If you were on the fence about seeing this movie, definitely go see it.

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