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    January 28

    My First Live Leafs vs. Habs Game

    Thanks to a very awesome client, I got to go to the Leafs game last night at the Air Canada Centre and they played the stupid Habs. It was an awesome game. We were sitting 22 rows from the ice behind the net. Amazing seats. The Leafs won 4-1 and I had an absolutely awesome time and not just because they won either.

    I do have some pictures to share but none on of them were taken by me. All the credit for the shots goes to Laura. She took some video too but unfortunately I can't add those. On with the pictures:

    These two guys were sitting right behind us. I think I agree with the guy on the right.

    Behind this fist is the first goal of the night...score by the Leafs of course. WOO HOO!!! Can you believe some jerk threw his hand up like that just because the Leafs score...  I would have done it too. 

    This was a scrum that took place at the far end of the ice.

    Last but not least, here are the Leafs celebrating a well earned victory. Again, it was just an awesome night.

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    Movie Reviews are Back

    Well,  I just noticed that I have posted one of my little quickie movie reviews in a while, so I'm going to do a few now for some of the movies I've seen over the past month in the theatre:
     
    Children of Men
     
    This movie was as good as the trailers promised.  It had great performances, especially Michael Caine, great writing, and some surprises I wasn't expecting.  It also had a great visual style to it, not unlike Harry Potter 3 of course.  The scariest part of the movie is how much I could see something like this happening, maybe not in 20 years, but sometime in the future.  Just a great movie that I think everyone should see and will probably be overlooked during this awards season.   
     
    Pan's Labyrinth
     
    This was one fantastic movie.  It had a great story and good performances.  The creatures were really well done and very creative.  There actually weren't as many of them as I expected.  While they say this a fairy tale, I would not recommend that young children be taken to it as there is violence, swearing and some scary images.    As good as this one is, and despite all the great reviews, I think Children of Men was a better movie. 
     
    Primeval
     
    This movie was Hotel Rwanda meets Lake Placid.  It had all the elements of your typical monster movie but it also tried to have a social conscience about the civil wars in Africa.  Supposed this was based on a true story, so I'm actually curious to see what actually happened.  The acting wasn't too bad but the the story was a mess and the last 20 minutes were more like a Jurassic Park movie than anything. 
     
    The Hitcher
     
    I haven't seen the original for this, so I can't make those comparisons.  However, this wasn't a bad horror movie.  Sean Bean plays a great psycho and Sophia Bush played the traumatized victim quite well in some scenes.  Sure there were some cheesy and "what the?" moments but over all it was pretty good.  There is one point in the movie where you can really tell that Michael Bay was involved (he produced it). 

    They had a preview for Dead Silence, the new movie from James Wan and Leigh Wannell, the guys who created the first Saw movie, and it looks really cool, even though Donnie Wahlberg is in it. 
     
    Smokin' Aces
     
    This was an amazing movie and definitely one of the cooler ones I've seen in a while.  It's like a cross between Tarantino and Ritchie (pre-Swept Away).   Everyone in it was perfect for their roles and gave decent to good performances.  Piven was especially good as Buddy "Aces" Israel.  The only person I didn't care too much for was Andy Garcia, but then I never do.  It is a rather violent movie and definitely not for kids.  While not as good as his previous movie Narc, Joe Carnahan has great potential to be a good director.  I highly recommend this to everyone.
     
    That's it for now.  Hope my quick comments help in your theatre going decision making. 
    9:23 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it
    January 21

    Back on Live

    Well as I'm sure many of you have noticed, I am finally back on Live after 5 long weeks.  My 360 died on me about 2 weeks before Christmas and I took it back to Future Shop to have it repaired since it was past the one year mark from when I bought it and also because I had the extended warranty.  So after waiting for weeks, I complained about it taking so long.  Last Wednesday, I finally received a phone call advising that they were going to exchange my broken one for a new one.  Needless to say, I was ecstatic to hear that.  So I went to the store to get the new one.  After they handed it to me, I asked them if my warranty was going to be transferred over to the new one.  That's when they more or less kicked me in the nuts and told me that it wasn't because this exchange was more than a year after manufacture date.  This is apparently store policy.  After arguing with them, they decided to be generous and offer me a 4 year warranty for the price of 2.  I told them to forget it and took the system.   I also asked how long it would take to get the other one back.  They told me it was in the repair depot's hands and they would need to contact them and get back to me.  Apparently, their repair depot is trying to repair it themselves as opposed to sending it back to Microsoft, which they originally told me they were doing.  So while I finally have a 360 again, my new fight with Future Shop begins.  There's no way I'm letting them get away with stealing my warranty from me.  Bastards.  It's getting real hard to shop at that store.  Their customer service has been in a steady decline for quite some time now. 
     
    In more positive gaming news, I finally got a chance to play the new Gears maps and they're fantastic.  That game is a lot of fun online even though it is a little limited.  I also rented Wario Ware for the Wii and I'm having a lot of fun with it too.  I think it may become a purchase sometime in the future.  At the moment I have an ever growing list of games I need to play and I want to avoid adding anything else to the pile.  I did add Lost Planet this week and I'm really looking forward to playing through it. 
     
    In response to your question Vellan about the PS3, I would say that it probably doesn't live up to all the E3 hype....yet.  It's definitely too early in the PS3's life to see it's full potential and I really believe the system has a lot of potential and I'm really enjoying it so far.   I feel the same way about the Wii and 360.  The 360 is now finally in full swing and the Wii will get there too like the PS3.  They just need to play some catch up.   This really is a great time to be a gamer.  Microsoft has just announced that they are raising the size limit of Arcade games to 250MB and there really is no other reason for this than the fact that Sony had this to start with. 
     
     
    10:15 PM | Add a comment | Read comments (4) | Permalink | Blog it
    January 13

    PS3 Update - Online Play

    This is a follow up on my original PS3 thread from earlier this week.  I figured that since I've played some games online, I can now do a post about it. 
     
    I picked up a bluetooth headset to use in games that do offer voicechat.  You can use a  wired USB headset, but I've become quite the wireless snob and therefore couldn't have that.  Plus the wires usually aren't that long on the headsets and I don't feel like sitting that close to the TV.  I got the Motorola H300 after reading other people's thoughts on the PS3 forums and it was one of the favoured ones.  Pairing it with the PS3 was very easy.  Unlike some headsets, you don't need to pair it with the system every time you start it up.   However, after pairing it with my cell phone to try that out, I noticed I had to re-pair it with the PS3.  I don't think I'll ever use it with my cell, so that's ok. 

    I tried it out in Resistance tonight and it worked fairly well.  Not a lot of people were using the voice chat in the game but the sound quality was ok but nothing spectacular.  That could be because of the other headsets people were using which ranged from bluetooth to SOCOM.  Once nice thing is that unlike the wireless 360 headset, there was none of that annoying feedback.   The only semi-annoying thing in the game is that you have to click the L3 button to talk but that's not too bad since I guess you always have your thumb on it anyways.   From what I can tell, you have to hold the button while you speak.  I haven't determined though if only one person can talk at a time or if more than one person can.  I haven't been in many games with lots of people talking, so it's been hard to tell. 
     
    I also picked up Full Auto 2:  Battlelines.  I really liked the original on the 360, so I decided to pick this up as well.  I've played some online in it it as well.  It plays really well online, unfortunately it has no voice chat. 
     
    So bottom line, while the PSN is nowhere near being as good as Live, it still offers what it needs to. 
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    January 07

    Sean80 is Now Fully Next Gen!!!

    Just over a week ago I made a rather large purchase and I wanted to post about it right away but I thought maybe I should wait and have some experience with the system first so I can give you guys some observations and other thoughts on it.  So that big purchase was a 60GB Playstation 3.  Yep, I am now fully next gen compliant as I have a 360, a Wii and now a PS3.  Well I guess as fully compliant as someone without an HDTV can be.  Someone has to stick up for the SDTV crowd so crap like Dead Rising doesn't happen again. 
     
    So now on to the main topic at hand, the PS3 and here are a few quick observations:
     
    I don't know if it's because I'm so used to the noise made by the 360 or not, but I'm finding this to be a very quiet system and it also does not get nearly as hot as the 360 either and this was after playing Resistance for a few hours and watching a movie.   I have two other friends who also have PS3s and one says his is quiet like mine and the other says his is really noisy like the 360.  So I'm curious to see what others are finding as well.

    I've noticed that the volume level of anything that you play off of the hard drive (i.e. a demo or Lemmings) is higher than that of a disc.  This is only based on Resistance so far. 

    Not having changeable batteries for the controller is a pain in the ass if it dies.  The cord that comes with the system is way to short  to play games with but being able to charge it on the PC is nice. 

    I am finding the dash to be easy enough to navigate.  It helps though that I used to have a PSP since they are pretty much the same layout.   

    I do wish that the PS3 had the option of whether to start up to the dash or to autoload whatever disc may be in the system. 

    Everything I've downloaded so far from the PSN downloads at about the same rate as anything from the Live Marketplace.  I do think that so far I'm liking the layout of the PSN better so far. I guess it's just got a little more sex appeal to it.

    Entering information such as your name is quite similar to doing text messages on a cellphone.  I think it's easier on the 360 as well.

    Although the controller is more or less the same as before, the 360's controller is far more comfortable to use.  Although the PS3 controller is unbelievably light.  Must be the lack of rumble.  Although to be honest, I haven't really missed the rumble.  I beat Resistance and all throuhg the entire game, I never once thought to myself about rumble being missing.  
     
    Also you can share games with up to four other people.  You can set up a shared account with the PSN store and then each take turns downloading a game (similar to XBLA games).   You set this shared account up under a different user on your system because the user is separate from the PSN account.  Once the game is downloaded, you can use it under your main user account.  This is great for keeping the costs of downloading games down.  Too bad Microsoft doesn't have this policy too. 

    Overall, I'm really enjoying the system and I'll probably have more thoughts on it once I've had a chance to do some online gaming.   I have done some online stuff though.  Gripshift (a redone version of the PSP game) was fun and played very well online.  Althought it didn't have voice chat.  Neither does Full Auto 2 but it was a lot of fun.  I've only played a bit of Resitance, without voice chat because I didn't have a bluetooth headset yet, but it played very smoothly.  It will never be as good as Live but it'll do for now. 
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    January 03

    A New Year Has Begun!!!

    As every new year comes around, most people make resolutions of what they plan to do in the coming year.  I have decided this year to try and do the same only these are my resolutions for not only 2007 but for the rest of my life.   The following is a quick list of what I'm hoping for:
     
    1)  Try to Live a Healthier Lifestyle
     
    This is probably one of the more important.  While I'm not a complete junk food fiend or anything like that, I do have a weak spot for it.  I plan on cutting as much of it out of my life as possible.  I also plan on hitting the gym more than I do now.  While I personally find hitting the gym to be rather boring, I do think it's important that I get there when I can. 
     
    2)  Travel More
     
    While this is an expensive resolution,  I really want to try and travel as much as possible to all the places I want to go.  The first places I want to go are out to the Maritime Provinces in Canada, i.e. Nova Scotia, P.E.I., Newfoundland and New Brunswick.  I also really want to go to Vegas and California.  In a couple years I plan on going to England to see my family that lives over there.  One thing I will defiinitely do this year is go to Boston again for a Red Sox game.  I went to one last summer and it was one of the best times of my life. 
     
    3)  Try to Experience More Local Stuff
     
    It's amazing how much of Toronto I have never experienced or gone to.  I've never seen Casa Loma or been to the Beaches district or eaten on the Danforth.  There is also a lot of stuff in and around Ontario that I've never done and I'd like to try and do them as well.
     
    4)  Just Try to Live Life More to the Fullest
     
    I know that sounds like a bit of an awkward way of saying it but it's the best way I could think of.   I just feel like I need to get out and do more with my spare time.   While I realize I'm not exactly a hermit or anything like that, I just feel like I could be doing much more.  Maybe I'll try and join a sports league of some kind in the summer.  Of course, I'll never give up my gaming though.  Gotta have my downtime too.  :D
     
    5)  Find the One for Me
     
    I guess I'm just getting to that age where I want to find the person I can spend the rest of my life with.  I realize this may not happen right away and that's fine.  I hardly think I'm old at 26 (yep, I hit the big 2-6 about 2 weeks ago) but this is just one of the thoughts that is starting to run through my mind.  But like they say, good things come to those who wait. 
     
    I'm sure there's more that should be on the list but those are the most prevalent to me at the moment.
     
    Lastly I would like to wish each of you and your loved ones a very HAPPY NEW YEAR and hope you all have a great 2007.
     
     
    11:51 PM | Add a comment | Read comments (2) | Permalink | Blog it

    Sean's Top Movies of 2006

    Now it's time for a few of the best movies I saw that were released this year (in no particular order):

    1)    Saw III

    I love the Saw movies and this was no exception.  It was definitely better than the second one.  I'm having a hard time seeing how they'll do numbers 4 and 5 but I'll just have to give them some faith.

    2)    Hills Have Eyes

    I know that remakes are not supposed to be better than the originals but this one sure was.  It's from the director of the French horror movie High Tension ("Haute Tension").  This is one of the most balls to the wall horror movies I've ever seen.  Not for the weak of heart.

    3)  The Descent

    This is definitely one of the scariest movies I've ever seen.  They really captured the terror of being trapped in a cave.  

    4)  Beerfest

    I love Broken Lizard and this is their best movie since Super Troopers (if you cound Dukes of Hazzard).  Had me laughing the whole way through.  

    5)    Jackass Number Two

    This movie had me nearly falling out of my seat I was laughing at it so hard.  Definitely not for the squeamish or easily offended.  

    6)    The Departed

    While a little long, Martin Scorcese gets great performances out of everyone involved in his latest soon to be classic.  Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio really come into their own in this one.  

    7)   Jet Li's Fearless

    I love anything Jet Li does and this is no exception.  Too bad it's one of his last movies of this kind.

    8)  Little Miss Sunshine

    This is one of the best movies I've seen ever and everyone in it was fantastic.  It should rightfully sweep up all the awards but unfortunately it won't.  Just a great, great movie.  

    9)  Superman Returns

    I really enjoyed this movie, although it's no Batman Begins.  The whole thing with the kid being his son wasn't exactly great in my eyes but the rest of the movie was quite enjoyable and Brandon Routh was fantastic as Superman/Clark Kent.  He had all the charm of Christopher Reeve but really made the role his own.  Kevin Spacey was also great as Lex Luthor.  

    I'm sure there are a lot more and I may do another post of them but these are the ones that stick out at the moment.  I had a great time seeing movies in 2006 and I can only hope that 2007 is even better with Spider-Man 3, Transformers, The Simpsons, 300, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many more.  

    Here's a quick list of some of my 2006 disappointments:  Date Movie, Talladega Nights, Rocky Balboa, and Black Christmas (it was ok but not what I expect from the creators of Final Destination).

    What were some of the movies you all enjoyed or hated this year?


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