• The interface is the best Netflix interface I’ve used yet. It’s easy to navigate your queue, similar titles, recent additions to the streaming library, etc.
• Activating your Wii is painless, and done online. (Like the PS3 and Roku) No need to try typing your email address and password into the Wii.
• For those of you that have a hacked Wii with a USB drive for storing games — good news, the Netflix disk rips quickly, and runs from USB with no problems whatsoever.

So basically, I have a Netflix disk for a Wii if anyone wants to use it. AND, I suspect you’ll be able to download the Netflix Wii ISO from nefarious sites everywhere shortly. Heck, if you twist my arm I might rip it myself. (But I’ll never admit it online, because that would be RONG. )

And now? Back to work… ttfn

UPDATE: Wow, look, a fancy download link for a WiiNetflix.iso file. I’m not claiming to be responsible, but, um… Yeah. You can trust the link.

UPDATE THE SECOND: Yes, it’s only 37MB compressed. It expands to 4.7GB. Also, contrary to popular belief, I’m not a douche.

UPDATE THE LAST: You don’t need an ISO file anymore, there is a Netflix channel. If you need to install the new shopping channel so you can download Netflix, but don’t want to update your system, check out THIS LINK. Cheers!

Some people will be angry. And the reason they will be angry is because they know they can’t be angry.

Amazing. Go see it. Really.

The back of the bottle explains the name, “Layer Cake” by saying good wine should be like a layer cake. There should be a layer of chocolate, a layer of fruit, and a layer of spices. I liked the imagery, so bought the bottle. (Plus, the guy at the wine store said he liked it.)

Here’s my take. My metaphors may not be as colorful as Gary Vaynerchuk’s, but I’ll do my best:

The wine has nice color. It’s a Zinfandel, and has the deep color you’d expect to see. It’s fun on the nose. Not literally of course, but smelling it. It has a really powerful overripe fruit smell. It’s almost like fresh red licorice. It’s not like the dried out stuff, but that powerful almost chemical smell of fresh red licorice. It smells intriguing.

The taste is a bit startling. Now, I know you’d think if there’s a picture of cake on the bottle, I should expect it to be sweet. Honestly though, this Zinfandel is hard to place on the sweetness scale. I did not expect a dessert wine, but it’s definitely sweet. Sadly, not quite as sweet as a dessert wine would be. To me it’s tough to fit it anywhere.

As far as flavor (mid-palette I guess is the proper term), it’s fairly fruity, but there’s not much to write home about. I thought there would be more tannins based on how deep red it is, but really it’s a pretty simple wine. You can swish it as much as you want, and you’re not gonna get that much out of it. It doesn’t taste bad, it’s just not as exciting as I thought it would be based on the smell.

The finish, or as us hicks call it, “aftertaste” isn’t really great. My first thought was to describe it as though the wine was crapping in my mouth on the way down. The only lingering flavor is a weird bitter taste that just won’t go away. I’m normally a big fan of lingering flavor in wine — but I wish this one would stop. Please.

So while I have no idea how I’d rate it, I can tell you it’s not worth the $17.99 I paid for the bottle. It’s not bad enough I’ll dump it out, but I won’t buy it again. I also wanted to comment on the screw top. First off, I’m not a zealot. I have no problem with screw tops, rubber corks, or cork corks. I’ve had crappy varieties of all 3. In fact, some of the worst wine I’ve had has been under an actual cork. I’m fine with screw tops, I really am. The only thing I miss with them is the uncorking process, which I actually rather enjoy.

So there ya go. Layer Cake… Not so great actually, but better than no wine at all. If semi-sweet wine is your thing however, you might actually like this wine. If you find it on sale, pick some up.

Don’t get me wrong, about the same time I signed up, Nearly Free Speech had some MAJOR routing and DNS issues. My site was offline or horribly slow for over a week. Then, they had a major MySQL crash, and my site was offline for another half a day. Since that time, several months ago, it’s been great. I’m OK with a company having problems as long as they fix it, and communicate the problem with their clients. NFS did both.

Plus, they’re DIRT CHEAP!!! I started the account with about $10 in the “bank”, and only today did I feel a need to add more money. Not because it was low, but because I am adding another website to the account and I want to make sure it’s “spike proof”. See, if a website gets Dugg or Slashdotted, their servers happily scale for you — but you pay for the bandwidth such a spike generates. It seems very fair to me.

So if you’ve been looking for a really inexpensive way to reliably host a website, especially if it doesn’t get much traffic or store much data — Nearly Free Speech might be a good choice. I’m happy with it. When my hosting package is done here at GoDaddy, I’ll be switching this site over too.

Enjoy! (Oh, and here‘s where the video lives on the Linux Journal site — there’s lots more information there, and since I “point” to a link during the video, it really looks best from their site… )

Second, we just read, as a family, the whole Spiderwick series. There are 5 books in the set, and they are a very quick, very fun read. They are the sort of book that just begs to be read out loud to kids. Thankfully, it’s fast paced and fun — so it’s fun for the whole family, even our youngest. (She just turned 7)

Something that tickled my fancy, but was sort of a bummer for the kids, is that the books are WAY better than the movie. They noticed this. Very quickly. Also, they noticed how drastically different the movie was from the book. Again, all wonderful things for children to realize, because now they might actually see the advantage to books.

Don’t take that as a shot at the movie. The movie itself was awesome. Great special effects, great plot, fast action (no boring beginning, the action starts pretty early on). The kids, and their parents, truly liked the film. It might be a bit scary for particularly young children, but it’s not TOO bad. Nothing a hug from Mom wasn’t able to make all better during those scenes.

Looking at the credits, the 2 book authors were (I think) executive directors, or producers, or one of those fancy “we’re involved” titles. I think that’s really good, but it must have been heartbreaking for them at the same time. They had to butcher the books quite a bit. I don’t think they made any bad choices (apart from Hogsqueal, his character in the book is done soooooo much better), but lots of changes were made.

Anyway, I heartily recommend the movie, and forcibly urge you to read the books. If you have kids, read the books out loud to them. They will like it, and so will you.

There’s no such thing as bad press, so I’m not complaining. And it wasn’t really a bad review review, but I thought I’d share anyway.

Here’s the link to the Linux Journal site, if you want to comment there, and possibly suggest future game titles for me to review.

I’m talking about more than tomato and tomato. (See? It doesn’t really translate to text) But product names, company names, etc. can be crazy. Add that to regional differences, and I either sound like an uncultured hick (largely true), or a snooty Yankee (eh, not so much).

Have you ever thought about pronunciation? It’s a funny beast.

THEN, more stuff started coming my way, along with new orders to review a wider variety of things! This week, for example, I’ll be reviewing a video game. That’s right, I’m getting paid to play a video game. Every 10 year old child’s fantasy. The problem? I really stink at video games. I don’t plan on silly little things like “facts” deterring me, however, so review the game I will!

Details and review video coming in a day or so. I’ll post it here, and you can all sleep better at night again.

So, like any filmmaker, I decided it was time to use makeup. Very macho and professional of me, right? Well, not so much. You see, I’m guessing when guys in the movies get themselves all painted up, they don’t use their wife’s makeup. In fact, I might bet some money on that. I, however, didn’t really have a choice.

In my attempt to wear “as little makeup as possible”, I spread the stuff on very thin. When you spread on makeup thin, however, you have to rub HARD. Which, for a fair complected bloke like myself, turns your skin red.

So picture me, with my wife’s makeup, poorly applied, and with my entire face beet red from rubbing. It did draw the attention away from the 2 ganky pimples on my forehead — but wasn’t really any improvement. So I had to apply more of my wife’s makeup. To cover up my mess.

Anyway, it turned out fine. I don’t think I’m going to leave the house before scrubbing my face like crazy, but really — who could ever find out?

Anyway, wish me luck. The well guy is coming today at 5:15, and hopefully he’ll wave a wand and everything will be fine. Uh hu.

Here’s this week’s product review, however, if you’re into that sorta thing. OH, and the company is GIVING AWAY 2 of these products through the Linux Journal website. It’s another video thing, apparently, but the prize is a TON better than a T-Shirt. For the record, Brad (our local commenting buddy) was the only one that won a T-Shirt, so winning might be fairly easy. I dunno. Click here to read more details.

On a similar vein — have you seen Fawlty Towers? Absolutely hilarious, and definitely some of the best television ever produced. You need to see this show, really. It’s available on DVD, so you have no excuse. (Don’t whine about money — this comedy is more important than food I’ll have you know…)

Most of the folks reading my blog are intelligent people. Although varying in tech skills, I value everyones thoughts. Regarding the video reviews for Linux Journal:

1) Should I record reviews of things I don’t like? I don’t want to look like a marketing tool, and only review things that I think you should buy, but I also don’t want to waste your time by showing you what not to do.

2) Should I only stick to “cool” things? The review above is about a product that lacks the “holy cow, I want one now” factor for many folks. I think there is a market, but is it wise to review in a video such devices?

3) What’s your opinion on me being harsher than I am if I do dislike a product? In the video above, it’s pretty obvious I’m not a fan, but I didn’t bash the company either. Is the optimism sickening, or lack of ranting refreshing?

Thank you much. For participating in my survey, I’ll give (most) of you next Tuesday off work. If you have to work, my apologies, I did my best.

Here’s the problem: I’ve never seen the show, and I don’t have satellite TV, so I probably won’t be able to watch it before next week when I’m supposed to call in. So, cross your fingers for me that I won’t look like a moron. I’m going to try to find a way to watch an episode or two before next week, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to swing it. I might just have to wing it.

And here’s the direct links for those who can’t see the embedded videos on the Linux Journal site. Watch this first, and then this.

Enjoy!

I’m Linux Journal‘s new, “Gadget Guy” — and I do video reviews of products for them. The first video is up, and depending on the feedback they get, I will be a continuous feature on the Linux Journal website. So like, go watch it and stuff. And tell your friends. And neighbors. And people you meet at the grocery store. And tell the Santa at the mall. Email your congressman a link.

Well, at least go watch it. It’s not a dry product review, I promise. Just click on the picture above.

1) Time machine, it all it’s awesome splendor, is pointless for me. Sure, I could repartition my drive, and make a spot to mirror to — but would it really have been that hard to allow me to just point to a folder? Come on, it doesn’t do anything magical to the second drive (or partition), so why make me reserve a crapload of space? And don’t get me started on the inability to use my Airport-friggen-Extreme hard drive for Time Machine. Guess why I bought that overpriced access point? Yep, the upcoming “amazing” program. Ugh.

2) Mail got all crazy, what with it’s ToDo, Notes, etc. I’ve read that it’s so much faster now, but I haven’t noticed ANY speed increase on my IMAP connection. The one redeeming quality is that I can actually have it permanently accept my self-signed SSL certificate — I was never able to figure that one out in Tiger. But still, I’m not impressed with the redesign, and since I despise HTML mail anyway, Mail seems to be ALL fluff.

3) While I understand the need to ask about opening a new application, that “first run” acceptance window just stinks of Vista. Again, I know it’s a feature, but it just makes me throw up a little in my mouth every time I install a new app.

4) iCal doesn’t sync with my 10.4 machines. I haven’t actually tested this with the retail version, because it borked up my calendars so bad with the pre-release. Does it have to be so tied to the OS that a simple application update couldn’t bring them up to speed?

5) iSync in general is a bit odd. Do I really need my Dock to sync? What if I have different applications? What if I use some things at work, but don’t want to even see the icon at home? It just seems like a weird feature to me, but since this is my review, that’s what matters.

6) Spaces is a feature that I’ve always liked about Linux. I don’t use it very often, but I like that the idea has finally made it to OSX. It’s not easy to figure out how to move applications to other spaces, but it is possible, so I won’t complain too much. It just doesn’t seem as easy as with Gnome or KDE.

7) Here’s the real deal: I don’t see any reason at all to upgrade. I know, that’s harsh, but really — apart from a few more translucent menus and such, Leopard has been a really expensive upgrade that amounts to a new, “theme.” WTF? Why are all the reviewers so amazed and so happy?

I’m not terribly impressed. No, it’s not out in retail yet, but it’s awful close. Maybe it will grow on me, but now I’m just more annoyed at the changes than I am impressed by them.

I can’t say much more, or Apple might sue me — but stay tuned, I’ll be talking about the newest kitty on the block in the future as well.

Am I reading too much into the Bratz phenomenon? I hope so. I just know I don’t want my daughters to consider aesthetic beauty to be king. My hope is that after seeing the movie, I have to retract my comments here. Hopefully the movie will counter some of the image that plagues the Bratz dolls.

I’m not optimistic.

[audio:harlotdollsthemovie.mp3]
Download Audio File Here

I was quite happily wrong.

The Order of the Phoenix, which I just saw with my wife and brother in law, was in my opinion better than the last. Here’s a short list of the whys:

1. Harry, while still mad all the time, finally realizes he’s mad all the time. In the words of G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.
2. Hermione (yeah, had to look that spelling up) is no longer portrayed as the cleavage induced eye candy that she was in movie 4. She’s back to the cute, down to earth kid that everyone likes as an actual person.
3. The kids actually do some, you know, MAGIC. This has been a frustration with the books as well as the movies. If Harry is this all incredible bad guy slayer — why is he always such a weenie when it comes to the wand? At least there was some sign that he might be an advanced wizard. I was really frustrated when Hermione always showed him up in the last movies.
4. The older Weasley boys are always great — but they shined in this movie.

It was really a good flick. I’m looking forward to the last book, which comes out in a week or so. The timing is really nice. And no, I’m not camping outside my bookstore, and I didn’t wear a cape to the movie tonight. I don’t want to be that guy.

UPDATE: Since I confessed to not reading the Harry Potter books on another blog, I guess I should clarify that I’m looking forward to the 7th book so I can read the spoilers online.