World wide traffic

I’ve been monitoring my site’s traffic over the last few months and noticed an interesting trend that I feel is worth pointing out. I seem to get a lot of traffic from eastern Europe. With the search term “Bloodrayne.”

For those of you who don’t know what Bloodrayne is, it’s a video game and movie franchise that I blogged about months ago. For some reason the half vampire half human heroine who fights the undead. The movies are so bad they’re oddly entertaining. The video games are far more interesting.

At any rate, this is where most of my traffic goes.

Reunion tour 2008

This has been a rough couple weeks around here as some of you might know. I haven’t had much time to focus on writing frivolous diatribes about technology and the latest movie I watched. Instead I’ve been relaxing by finishing off Halo 3 in a little over 2 days and making my way through Perfect Dark Zero. Video games, for the win!

I’m hoping to get some photos up soon, I have a few things up my sleeves that I think people will get a kick out of.

So I just found out my 10th High School Reunion will take place this July. Crazy talk I know, but its been a decade since I wondered the halls of almost higher education. Soon enough I’ll be hitting the 10th college reunion - that’s when the head spins.

Since we last chatted I grew up a year. Yup, the birthday has come and gone and I’m that much closer to 30. As a kid that number always seemed big, but upon closer inspection, my eyes tell me it’s pretty small. Well, actually my eyes tell me it’s blurry but that’s what happens when you get old - right?

I finally saw U2 live, sort of

Bono stepped to center stage clad in black and sun glasses, belting out the opening count for “Vertigo,” hovering over a front row ready to receive his gospel of rock & roll.

Funny thing, it happened both live and months ago. It was U2, in 3D. Not the old blue and red glasses that we’ve come to know, but a new and exciting digital experience. “U2 3D” marks the first live action 3D film.

Wearing large clown glasses with grey-hued lenses, my experience of finally getting to see U2 in concert would take place at an IMAX theater, not an arena like I had always assumed.

For my birthday, my Dad took me up to the Minnesota Zoo where the largest screen in Minnesota (6 stories high) was showing the “U2 3D” movie, something I’ve been excited to see since I first heard about it in January.

As a U2 fan, I’ve seen all the concert films on VHS or DVD and have an iPod chock full of b-sides and rarities along with the cannon albums. But I have yet to see the band in person. This felt really close to seeing the band live, in fact it might have even had some advantages to seeing them in person.

Adam Clayton’s bass guitar swings over the crowd, Bono reaches his hand out to touch you on the head and The Edge floats over everyone to stand right in front of you delivering a killer riff, all while drummer Larry Mullen Jr. keeps rhythm and time right next to you.

The experience of digital 3D really gives depth for the viewer, your field of vision seems to go on forever. For a U2 show, you feel like you’re part of the crowd, even to the point of wanting to tell the guy in front of you to put his arms down - only to realize you’re talking to a flat screen.

The band played a lot of classics, including “The Fly,” a personal favorite that was heightened by 3D text floating through the air challenging the viewer to participate in their own mind.

Over all, digital 3D is exciting, fun to watch and an experience I look forward to checking out a few more times.

Upon reflection I’ve used the word “experience” a few times in this post and really that’s what it’s like watching U2 in 3D - it’s an “experience.”

Other functions for HD DVD players

Best Buy is advertising one of Toshiba’s HD DVD players in an interesting way. Hey, it’s an Upconverting DVD player! - oh yeah and it plays HD DVDs too, if you want it to, I guess.

HD DVD ends, Web uses greatest villain to comment

I just pushed a soon-to-be released HD DVD movie to the top of my Netflix queue, the first I’ve added since Warner announced last month it would end support for the format later this year.

When the announcement came days before the Consumer Electronics world entered its big trade show in January, the end of HD DVD seemed to be inevitable.

As the Web is so good at doing, a video popped up taking footage from a German film about the downfall of Nazi Germany re-subtitled with comments about HD DVD. I felt sick watching it.

A friend sent me the You Tube video with a chuckle, but I found it impossible to laugh at it. Comparing the downfall of a consumer electronic product to the greatest villain our world has ever known - a group that killed millions of people and set an entire country on a course it still strives to over-come.

While I’m not suggesting censorship, I’m completely against that, I do find it sad that someone took footage documenting the downfall of one of our worlds more horrific regimes, repurposed in this way.

There has been a lot of comedy at the expense of Nazis over the years, well deserved, thought out and pointed humor that serves to demonstrate the absurdity of their actions. This particular video seems to take a less thought out take on Nazis in an effort for a cheap laugh at the expense of a consumer product. Not really funny, more nauseating.

I understand where the creators of this video is coming from and I’ll give them credit for some interesting jokes at the expense of HD DVD, but placed over a backdrop with Hitler, it feels more like an ignorant frat joke that has the potential to open wounds instead of a light hearted video to be passed around the office.