Riddick- Yes I am gonna see this Tomorrow.

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I am not sure what it is about the Riddick series but I MUST see this movie. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

Pretty much anything that Katee Sackoff is in I HAVE to see. She is one of my personal hero’s. I can’t wait for Longmire to come back so this will have to hold me over till then. I will let you know what I think once I get out of the theater!

My Open Letter to President Obama and Syria

By | Life, Politics | One Comment

Dear Mr. President,
In 2004 when I saw you give the Keynote speech at the DNC I was mesmerized. I thought, Man when is this guy gonna run for President! We NEED him. Then in 2008 I was a HUGE supporter. Wearing my Obama shirt wherever and whenever I could. I cried when you were elected. I was ready for Hope and Change. I wanted those things very much.

After a rough 4 years and deciding that even though you didn’t do some pretty important things that you said you were going to do during the campaign, like ratifying Kyoto and some other environmental things, I thought that over all things were better and in 2012 I was sure as hell NOT voting for Mitt Romney. So once again I got my Fired Up Ready to Go shirt and wore it almost daily until the election was over.

Right now those shirts are gone. I am ashamed to wear them. I don’t have my Obama magnet on my car any more. I actually threw it away. I am ashamed.

And now you want to bomb Syria. I don’t get it. You were the President that was here to end the wars and bring our troops home. No matter WHAT you and the defunct congress say now, there will be more force and more countries involved and ultimately more of our Soldiers involved.

Never mind that we are not the World Police or World baby sitters, and never mind the absolute tragedy that is going on in Syria’s civil war. Why would we subject our soldiers to more war when we are not even properly caring for the ones that are coming home now? We have no functioning relief for these brave men and women who have sacrificed so much for wars which have no benefit for anyone but the Gigantic companies who make war machines. Why should they benefit from so much death? Why should anyone.

Bombing Syria is not a solution. It isn’t going to help anyone. It is only going to make more people angry. It is going to give people that are already angry a catalyst to hate America more and strike back at us. We don’t need that and Syria doesn’t need to be bombed.

To the people of Syria, I just want you to know that a vast MAJORITY of the American people do NOT want to bomb your country. We don’t want more violence. IF there is a way to end this conflict and come to a resolution using diplomacy then we are more than willing to help with that any way that we can. But Mr. President, the American people have spoken. NO WAR WITH SYRIA. Our representatives in Congress have FAILED at their jobs. Failed miserably and have not listened to us. They should all be removed.

Please Mr. President. Look at that speech you gave in 2004. Look at the man you were in 2008 running for President, find that man inside of you and PLEASE do the right thing. You know what it is.

Sincerely,

Nora Crest

Samsung Unpacked 2013 Episode 2 (Recap of the event- Review to come later)

By | Technology or Nerd Central | No Comments

Today I watched the entire Samsung Event LIVE from Berlin.

Let’s see what Samsung is “Unpacking” here with this event!

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First up is the next evolution of the Galaxy Note. The Galaxy Note 3.

It is said to be Slimmer, Lighter, Larger, Faster, Longer Battery Life.

You get true multitasking with being able to use more than one application at once.

It is coming with Samsung Knox new security system.

They are offering it with Catagory 4 LTE over multiple Carriers.

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And then they bring out the Galaxy Gear. A watch the works in tandem with your phone. You can make and receive calls through the phone hands free. Gives you Text messages and emails. Giving you “Smart Freedom” to work with your Galaxy Note 3.

Then the President of Mobile busted out the Note 10.1 edition. It has all the capability of the Note 3 but on a larger screen.

The Galaxy Note 3 and Gear will be launching on September 25th and the Note 10.1 launching in October.

Now comes a more comprehensive demonstration of the power of these new devices.

They didn’t make the device wider but they made the screen wider. There is a leather back that hugs your skin. The colors are Black, White and Pink. The S Pen fits in the top. There are various cases and flip covers that you can get for it.

Then they went into the S Pen features which are integrated into more functions than just using it as a pen.

They break down the “Action Memo” where you can write a memo with a name and number and the handwriting recognition software can translate the name and number into a contact. Pretty neat.

Using the “Circle” function you can save any content you want scrapbook style in your phone that you categorize. And it captures not only the small section of the webpage that you were keeping but the original link that the content came from.

There is a new S note with a more intuitive than before, easier layering and writing capability. The content will sync to your PC, Tablet or another phone. You get Evernote premium for 1 year.

Showing the multitasking capability they do a demo of being able to use the same app twice at the same time. The demo was chatting to two people at once, side by side and being able to copy and paste conversations between them with ease.

Pen Window is another way to make two apps run at the same time. You draw a box, whatever size you want and then you can make the other app run in the box you have just created.

New native app “My Magazine” collects all the things you want to follow and places them all in one place.

Now there is Multi Vision for the note. You can put together 2 or more Note 3s together to create a bigger screen to watch something on video.

The next demo is all about “Gear” and how it works with your phone so that you can get all notifications without taking your phone out of your pocket.

When you receive an email and look at it on your gear if you need to look at it on a bigger screen you just pick up your Note and it is automatically displayed there. There is voice command capability and motion recognition. When you get a call, you just raise your hand to your head and you are talking. Gear has a camera as well. You can point your wrist and take a picture. But it is moving toward integrations with augmented reality, like taking a picture of a sign in a foreign language and having it translate that for you. There are a series of apps that work along with it too.

Back to the Note 3 13mp camera on the back and 9mp on the front. You can take 4K videos from the phone. LED flash and stabilizer. 24 bit Audio files. Comes standard with 3 gigs of Ram. Battery life is 40% more or 4 hours longer.

Samsung Knox security keeps your private data private. It has a 2.4 Quad core processor and will be available in October for sale.

Then they start to talk about the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 tablet. There is a new backing for the tablet to match the Note 3. It is lighter than previous editions. Ultra High Definition Screen. Now they will have Samsung hub for Tablets. Multitasking works just a seamlessly with the Tablet. The S Pen works the same on the Tablet. Running Jelly Bean 4.3.

Closed Circuit

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This movie is getting TERRIBLE reviews.

And honestly I don’t know why. It was a great movie.

It was paced well, the actors were great, the story had a fantastic arc and it was really well done.

This is the kind of movie that you actually have to THINK while you are watching it. It is not going to be laid out for you at all. You have to watch.

Also it is a government conspiracy that may cut to closely for some Americans. Also the “Closed Circuit” title implies that the cameras are gonna play a larger part than they do so I guess the voyeurs out there were probably disappointed.

Go see this movie!

The Butler

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I am still not sure what to say about this movie.

I know what I think. It is hard to put it into words.

I learned so much from this movie. I saw the “Civil Rights” movement as I never had before. And I can see how far we have come and how far we have yet to go.

I felt a deep connection to this movie. I was sobbing uncontrollably in the theater and all the way to my car. Talking about it now I still cry. It is that powerful.

I hope this movie becomes required viewing like Schindlers List did when I was in High School. It is that important and has that much truth in it.

The cast and writer were on point and all AMAZING. I LOVE this film. Thank you Lee Daniels. It is a masterpiece.

The Spectacular Now

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This movie hit me very hard.

It was hard for me to stop crying once I saw it. I couldn’t talk about it afterwards for a bit.

It was like someone had taken the different parts of me and put them into two characters and made a movie about me and my relationship with my dad.

It was me minus the drinking. But the sad clown is me. Was me.

This movie is raw and wonderful and sad and funny and just truth. See this movie. It will rip your heart out and make you think.

The Grandmaster

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This movie was a beautiful, moving story about the man who became Bruce Lee’s master.

The series of seriously unfortunate events that leads to this man living in Hong Kong at the exact time that Bruce Lee happens to be a child and wanting to learn Kung Fu couldn’t have been planned by ANYONE.

This movie was so beautifully made. It was like watching a fine opera unfold before my eyes and seeing all this wonderful martial arts done so eloquently was wonderful.

See this movie. It is beautiful and brilliant.

Jobs

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The person who wrote this movie clearly HATES Steve Jobs with a passion.

This movie was such a one note debacle.

It started out really well. I thought that is was going to go really well. I was excited, but 20 minutes into the movie it went down the drain and never came out of it.

Ashton Kutcher was terrible and mean and I hated it.

Paranoia

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I had WAY high expectations for this movie. Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford? WHAT Happened?? This movie was so all over the place I got dizzy trying to keep it all in line.

It was the typical, I made you now I am going to take you down and squash you to bits movie. We have seen this before. But it was ALL mean. And Liam Hemsworth was TERRIBLE. Just flat and lame. Who cares if he goes down. I didn’t. It was just LAME.

Elysium

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I liked this movie, sort of. The special effects were tremendous. But the story was weak.

It is basically the Jesus story but told WAY in the future and Jesus is a bit of a jerk. But ultimately he does sacrifice himself for the good of all. His sins are the sins of man and he rises above them to save us all.

The bad guys are rich people who have no crime but apparently all LOCK their doors. Since the only way into a house is to break the glass on the doors. And in the future no one can get past a door that is locked. So it is good to know that some things will never change no matter how much technology we have. Doors will stop you.

It was entertaining enough but a 1/2 hour could have been cut out and I would have been happier with that. Matt Damon does a good job but there were too many bad guys. And I HATED that the good guy from District 9 was now a HORRIBLE person in this one. I know he is an actor and all that but I didn’t like it.