Apple designed the iPhone 4 to be flawed just to move their excess supply parts. They have a shitload of unsold 3GS surplus components and the only way to move them is by making the 3GS still a viable option for the everyday consumer. They also knew that iPhone 4's Retina Display's production will be slow and supply will be scarce for at least the first few months and the only way to slow up demand is by playing up the media with these "non-committal" responses to the "death grip" problems.
Now this would definitely force some fringe iPhone 3G upgraders to consider getting the cheaper 3GS instead of the 4 and potential iPhone adopters would definitely look at the 3GS now instead of going to the 4 because of the not so glorious reviews. Consumer Reports even recommends the 3GS over the iPhone 4.
That leaves the iPhone 4 solely for rabid and hence more forgiving Apple supporters which Apple realizes still would be enough to move the 4's to make a profit but NOW the supply won't overwhelm the demand because they will STILL sell the 3GS.
So they will move their supply of old 8 gig flash memory chips by slapping them on their aging 3GS hardware while the slow production of iPhone 4's still continue. And they will move BOTH! And I won't be surprised that once they dwindle their surplus, they'll finally insulate the iPhone 4 antenna and ultimately fix the antenna problem but not a say a word about it.
After 12 hours of in-game time and months and months of sneaking in some real-life play time, finally beat Ninja Gaiden 2. It's not a bad game but it's not as good as the classic Ninja Gaiden 1. Too many cheap projectiles and the environments and bosses are uninspired. Mentor Mode? Probably, but I have to beat Bayonetta first.
Let me put it bluntly, Franco sounds a lot like Urbandub. Early pre-synth and sampling Urbandub, to be precise, with a prominent reggae dub twist. The first time I got a whiff of their song "Castaway", I thought it was Urbandub with a cool guest vocalist. Put your money on the soaring hearty vocal melodies and harmonies, substantial gut-wrenching wall-of-sound distortion alternating with floaty delay-laden guitar riffs, deliberate mathematical drumming, all tinged with a dub and reggae sheen, and it all works like street-grade tetrahydrocannabinol. The pedigree is understandable, though, as a good part of the band is made up by Urbandub. Gabby Alipe plays guitar and Jan-jan Mendoza handles the skins joining Parokya ni Edgar's Buwi Meneses on bass and Eight Toleran of Queso on yet another guitar. Which is not a bad thing, at all. The early Urbandub has some of my favorite songs of all time and Influence is probably my choice for the best OPM album ever. What gives this band a fresh new twist is Franco Reyes' commanding presence, vocal and otherwise. The new Urbandub sound is somewhat infused with experimental forays into electronica and soundscape samples, probably designed by the band commitee, but Franco's sound is a more straight-forward, in-your face modern rock machine. What I love about these wall-of-sound guitar bands is how the gentle, extended vocal croonings intersperse with the massive, buzzsaw. monster guitar rhythms. Think Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream with better singing. Yet everything sounds so fresh and exciting. I kept imagining what the band would sound like if Alipe was singing instead of Franco, I would suppose it would more than alter the feel of the songs. Franco Reyes is more of a darkly-timbred baritone while Alipe's register is a lighter tenor. Franco sounds like a rugged gentleman waiting to hitchhike so he could serenade you with his road-weary travelogue while Alipe sounds more like your hyper emo younger brother planning on slashing his wrists in the room corner while waiting for dinner. So naturally Franco's songs are more like barked commands and Urbandub's are like pleas for help. But enough of the unfair comparisons. How's the album? The album was packaged in an eco-friendly paper case (it's okay, but I still prefer a plastic case to protect it) and the tracks I think were mastered in a gapless sequence.
Ok, now there's their signature song, "Castaway", a floaty, dreamy ode to rejection but my favorite song has to be 'The Last Waltz". With its exotic delayed guitar, awesome time signature changes, a dirty,raunchy guitar solo part, it sounds like Muse, albeit an octave lower. Some songs are a potent mix of metal, modern rock and dub ( which Urbandub also had in a lesser extent) . Franco's diction actually morphs between a reggae rastafari and his usual rock crooner self which he definitely flaunts in the track " Song or the Suspect" with a single sample of the word "rastafari" slipped in. See what I mean. It's a collage and he knows it. Other songs in that vein are "Touch the Sky", "This Gathering" ( with a slinky slide guitar intro) and "A Mass for the End of Time". These are rollercoaster tracks infused with Tool-like riffage and Vibronic dub reggae atmospheres. They all work like they're supposed to. Happy but mad. My other favorite tracks are more of the straight-laced melody rock variety. "Seasons" is a poppy bootycall love song with nice riffage (shades of Gabby Alipe again). Same with "Memory Kill" and " The Gathering". I'll do a double-take and say they're great Urbandub songs if not for the voice."Next Train Out" is a little harder for me to pinpoint. The vocals are more wrenched here, starts a bit like (forgive me for saying this, I'm pulling this off the top of my head) Chad Kroeger perhaps, but thankully the song gets better as you go along. One oddball track they threw in is "Tetrahydrochloride", this probably is just a filler. With lyrics like "How high can you go?" and "embrace the natural" in rastafari mode, we all know what this is all about. And finally, the last acoustic track " For My Dearly Departed". Set against the sounds of an ocean, it's a rather generic song, but it showcases Franco Reyes' voice nakedly. It sounds like it was a one take song, which prominently gives it a rootsy, raw, homely feel. Good way to end a great album. So was this whole album worth buying? Definitely! Franco's sound is like Urbandub's older cousin. Same roots, totally different personality. Like the band itself, it's a total whirlwind of contrasting sounds and styles working cohesively for a great,new, wondrous experience. If you're a self-respecting Pinoy music advocate wondering where Philippine rock will fan out, get this album now!
- Francis TelevatorMuzak Navarro
Monday, February 1, 2010
Got an Emachines ( Yeah, Emachines! You heard me) Netbook for 228$. It's basically the Acer Aspire One without the Bluetooth. Feels the same, runs the same. It's got Windows 7 Starter, but for 228, you can't ask for more!
This a short demo I made of the VNC Server Veency for the Iphone/ Ipod Touch. This allows you to control your device remotely with a Mac or a PC.
For this demo, I used 1) A jailbroken Iphone 3G 2) An app from Cydia called Veency 3) A 27" Imac with Snow Leopard 4) A VNC Viewer for OSX called Chicken of the VNC. For Windows users, you could use TightVNC, UltraVNC, any VNC viewer would do. Have fun!
Pros: Improved facial models and skin and hair textures. Great looking stadiums with nice lighting effects. More player and team specfic animations in offense and defense. Gameplay flows quicker with better player movement. Extensive play control. My Player mode is involving.
Cons: Passing animations sometimes feel robotic. Nerfed post defense. 2K online servers are buggy. My Player mode is frustrating. My Overall Rating: 9.1/10
October usually means two things for me, cooler days in the Arizona desert and time to play as the Suns in the latest NBA 2K. This year is 2K's 10th anniversary so it's inevitably special, moreso as the Live series has been steadily improving the past few years, breathing hard on 2K's heels. First off, graphics. Player models have vastly improved from 2k9. Skin textures are incredible. Pores and wrinkles show through realistic sweat without looking like plastic. Even the coaches and the scrubs look fantastic ( check out the Sun's Lopez). And they made an extreme effort to make hair look like hair ( again check out Lopez). They've upgraded the crowd in the stands with actual polygonal models and the stadiums are beefed up with more lighting effects. And amazingly no anti-aliasing issues, no jaggies are apparent. Soundwise, they've recorded a lot of new color commentary with Clark Kellogg flaunting his opinions on teams and superstars. There are repeats from him and Kevin Harlan but not often enough to annoy. What I like the most about the audio are the crowds. They react frighteningly spot-on all the time. Like when I was playing as a in the zone Nash, they actually chanted "MVP! MVP!"! Nice touch. Makes the game more organic. We could talk about graphics all day, but without good gameplay, this would be a brick. Fortunately, 2k made good strides. Now you have extensive play control with 5 tabs with 4 plays each position and 1 quick play tab. My gripe is the time it takes to choose the play. You have to navigate in real time while the ball is live and you still have to get into position and wait for the play to develop. We only have 24 seconds after all. One thing I notice though is that player movement flows a lot smoother. They've added some real nifty off-ball moves, players actually do make an effort to get open. Post play moves have also been beefed up ( there's even a specific practice mode for it.) Now there's a button combination for fancy passes and backboard shooting. But even with all these improvements, sometimes passing animations still look a little robotic like old 2k games. They've also changed the shooting timing. As a veteran of 2k, that kinda ruined my shooting a bit, but that's an easy adjustment. On the defensive side, you could finally steal from behind. So instead of pausing and swiping at a opposing player's butt, your player would actually try and get around to the ball. They kinda nuked post defense though. I used to spam the steal button when someone posts me up, hoping for a steal. Do that now and you'll be out of position and you'll be blown by. The defense lock has been also been replaced now with Intense D. Overuse it though against great drivers like Parker or Paul and you'll be punished by a lay-up ( I use Nash though so that's supposed TO happen) but it works wonders against Ray Allen or Korver. Help defense has improved, so even if someone blows you by, the bigs would react appropriately ( leaving you his man open though) Also, there are different levels of double teaming now. Instead of doing a hard double team each time, you could fake it or do it softly. These new defensive tools actually make playing D really enjoyable. Now what you will enjoy the most are the new extra features. I like the full blown practice modes. In here, you could unending scrimmages and practice your team's plays over and over till you get them down. ( yeah, lt's like a fighting game practice mode, you could just spend your whole time "perfecting" your moves on a dummy, I'll probably spend a lot of time here and enjoy it! ) Another surefire time-waster is the My Player mode. Here you create a player from scratch, develop him through drills and games, have him drafted and see if could be a NBA superstar. Now I like the RPG qualities of this mode, but it gets too frustrating early on. Your player has less than stellar skills and he has to fulfiil game objectives to gain skill points. There's also this thing called Team Grade and this depends on everything you do on court. The mechanics are unforgiving and lopsided towards punishing errors. One time I got five straight assists without gaining a grade but after my man scored on me, it dropped a notch! Aggravating! But for all this mode's faults, I'll probably play it to death just how far my player will go. Other new features are NBA today and 2k insider. these are real-time reports and blogs on any particular day's schedule. But since the Season hasn't started yet, there are no posts yet. But judging it by the preseason games, I think this mode will let you play any game matchups made on the current schedule. Making their return are Living Rosters and DNA (constantly updated rosters and player ratings based on current season developments), 2k file-sharing ( for custom options, sliders and rosters), 2k reelmaker ( for highlight video-making), the Association ( franchise mode) and NBA Blacktop ( street mode with 3-pt shootout and dunk contest. What I haven't really tested is online play though. As of this writing, the 2k servers were having issues. It was painfully slow to log-in, so just imagine finding a match and playing lag-free. It's pretty cool though that you could create your own crew of up to seven players and play online against other crews aside from the usual online leagues you could join. So there it is, my ultra epic NBA 2K10 review. I was always a huge 2K fan since their Dreamcast days ( I played EA's Live before that) and it's about time I went all out on it. I only had the game for a few days ( oh yeah! Believe me!) so there might still be things here and there I haven't caught on yet but if you're a gamer and a NBA fan this is a must buy. It still has issues but with all the improvements they've added, it's totally the best b-ball game I've ever played. Get it while it's hot!
Graphics and Sound: 9 Gameplay: 9 Lasting Appeal: 9.5 My Overall Rating: 9.1
