SPOILER ALERT

I didn’t know anything about the Ironman comics/universe before I saw it.

I saw the movie yesterday and wasn’t that impressed. It was alright I suppose. I kept feeling like it wasn’t as good as previous comic-to-movie adaptations. The characters didn’t ring any chords with me; the arrogance of Stark was mildly amusing. His capture and realisation that he was doing evil wasn’t very convincing. I mean, mostly because before he was captured, they made him out to be this super-intelligent guy. Intelligent, arrogant people don’t get my sympathy. Plus, they were never going to kill him. They wanted their missile.

The bearded guy’s surprise betrayal was good, but it didn’t eventuate into anything. The fight didn’t have enough oomph. I thought it was lame that it ended up the way it did, and he was defeated the way he was. Partly because I couldn’t identify with Stark — as before mentioned, I have no sympathy for ingelligent, arrogant people. Secondly because there weren’t enough cool effects and shit being smashed up. Thirdly, it was all too predictable: disabled protagonist outwits dumber, stronger, slower opponent, opponent is killed by the very technology he seeks to make use of to destroy others, yadda yadda. Way too self-righteous for such an arrogant bastard like Stark.

The love interest with Pepper was screaming obviousness from the very first moment you see her on screen, with her ‘throwing out the trash’ quip.

I’m hoping the second one will be better. It needs something truly bad to happen to Stark, and it needs more action.

I give it 5/10.

So, as you may’ve recently read, I decided to order myself a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. For a few reasons, I’m keeping track of the whole process. It’s the first laptop I’ve ever purchased; it’s the first computer system I’ve purchased from a big brand-name; and it’s the first time I’ve bought something that cost more than a few dollars over the internet.

Accordingly, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the entire process.

• April 13th (Sunday), midday

  I placed my order using Dells configurator website around lunchtime. It went without a hitch, and shortly thereafter I received a few e-mails. One detailed the system I had purchased and provided an invoice, and another explained the Dell order processing and delivery system, and promised that Dell would keep me up to date on what was happening.

• April 13th (Sunday), mid-evening

  Around seven or eight o’clock that evening I received a call from Dell to inform me they were having trouble processing my credit card details. Turns out I’d entered them incorrectly; so I gave them the correct information and all was well.

• April 16th (Wednesday), mid-afternoon

  I received an e-mail informing me that my payment had been accepted, the system build had been completed, and my laptop was on its way. The e-mail provided me a link to Dell’s order tracking website which illustratively showed what was going on.

• April 17th (Thursday), late evening

  Checking the dell ordering website as above, it’s been noted that my laptop has arrived in Australia and is now with the local courier. The estimated arrival date is still April 23rd; presumably it’ll be heading up from Sydney via a not-so-fast courier.

• April 18th (Friday), mid-afternoon

  I was at work and received an SMS from my sister to let me know my laptop had arrived. Awesome!

• April 19th, mid-morning

  I arrived home to find my laptop, as promised. I opened the box and was surprised to find some extras that I hadn’t anticipated. Dell has seen fit to include: an IR remote control, some Creative in-ear headphones, and an organiser of sorts which has room inside for a pen, a storage area A5-sized paper, CD-wallet pages, and a microfibre cleaning cloth with its own holder. What really surprised me though was that in the A5-paper holder came two user manuals : an XPS M1330 owners guide, and a Dell Computers and Monitors Guide. The XPS manual is fully illustrated and instructs users on how to do everything with their new laptop. Also included, surrounding the laptop, is a carrying case, though it doesn’t have a handle or shoulder strap. All of the included accesories are emblazoned with the “XPS” logo so nobody will mistake your new toy for a vanilla system.

• April 19th, early afternoon

  Turned the system on, was surprised to note that the battery came fully charged. I’ve thrown in my XP CD and wiped away all of the Dell partitions; the 10Gb recovery partition, the 20Gb Vista partition, and the 2Gb Dell media centre partition which contains software that specifically allows the laptop for use as a media playback device. Dell handily provides XP drivers for all the hardware in the laptop on its support website.

• Aprtil 19th, mid-afternoon

  With XP installed, it’s now time to install Arch Linux. Installation was interesting. First off, when installing the packages, it seemed to lock up, so I rebooted. I then spent the next hour trying to figure out why GRUB wouldn’t install; it was complaining about files missing. Reason being was because before the package manager had installed anything, I had rebooted. Then, when I restarted the install, I went from the same step, without mounting any drives. Therefore I hadn’t actually installed anything to my hard drive, and GRUB was broken.

• April 19th, late afternoon

  After I figured out that dumb problem caused by me, I got everything setup and got the wireless working second go (after disabling encryption on the access point - I was too tired at this point to bother fiddling with that). I installed X.org and GNOME.

• April 20th, morning

  Continued setting up Arch — soo many things to configure. Decided to pop into XP to install all my drivers. I’ve been using the system on battery and am quite happy at the rate with which it’s consuming power. I think I should get about 3 hours out of the 6-cell battery with normal-heavy usage; and probably just shy of four hours with minimal usage.

So, that’s that for the setup. It’s going really well so far. The screen is awesome. I got the special WLED version which uses a different, LED-based lighting mechanism for the LCD panel. It’s meant to give much better contrast and lighting properties, and I think it’s doing that job well. I also got myself the 7200RPM hard-drive instead of the 5400RPM one; I’ll never use a 5400RPM drive again in my life if I have to. They’re much too slow.

Overall I’m very happy with the entire process. Now all I have to worry about is enjoying the freedom my laptop now gives me.

TrustedReviews’ Riyad Emeran has reviewed Asus’ new version of its popular EeePC: the new 900 model sports a few new pieces of hardware sure to please those critical of the original version. Starting with what’s obvious, this version comes with an 8.9″, 1024×600 screen, the benefits of which are two-fold; it increases the usability of the system by allowing websites and other documents to be viewed fully without side-scrolling, and also removes the ugly bezel which surrounded the smaller screen of the previous version.

Other nice touches include the 1.3 megapixel webcam, replacing the 0.3 megapixel one in the older version, and the inclusion of a new touch pad, which is not only physically larger, but enables some nifty scrolling features seen in more expensive noteooks: two finger control. You can use two fingers to scroll horizontally or vertically, and you can even drag two fingers away or towards each other to zoom in and out.

Unfortunately for some, the majority of the number-crunching components are still the same, with the 900 model making use of an Intel Celeron 900Mhz and 915GM chipset. The hard drive options have improved however, with 12Gb for the Windows version and 20Gb for the Linux version available. Also, the standard memory installed has been doubled to 1Gb.

The full review, with many more pictures, can be read here.

Who: The Presets
What: Apocalypso

It’s here. It’s arrived, finally. After The Presets smashed the clubbing scene with their massive hit My People and released a single in its namesake with some interesting remixes, the album to which this song owes its creation has finally been released. My, is it a gem.

Immediately as you pop the CD into your favourite playback device — I recommend something connected to a massive subwoofer — you will be blasted away by the opening track, Kicking and Screaming. Its heavy bassline will have you bumping and jumping; punctuated with a zippy beat and echoed with airy screams and the vocals of our boys Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes, this track is a testament to the quality of things to come.

Second up is the absolutely smashing track My People, which I’m sure you’ve heard of previously. There’s so much emotion and energy here, this I would have to say is my current favourite dance track. Perhaps the best I’ve ever heard. I absolutely love this song for its grungy, deep and powerful sounds. The lyrics are obvious and easy to sing along to, and the backing vocals support and blend seamlessly with the grittyness of the track. I recently heard this song played in a club by the support act for Muscles, and it made me forget about the main act altogether.

A New Sky introduces us with a melodic chanting; a relaxed and refined track which retains the leg-jiggling catchyness of the opener; this track is a great way to pass the time to the next track, and arguably one of the best on the album, This Boy’s In Love. It’s so poppy and wonderful, you could easily be forgiven for embarassingly bopping your head to this in public places. The lyrics are so powerful and emotional; you can’t help but sing along.

Yippiyo-ay follows with some thoroughly oldschool sounds, reminding me of mid-eighties disco music; it’s catchy, smooth and suave. The perfect song to dance to with that pretty girl across the other side of the multi-coloured checkerboard dancefloor.

The rest of the album follows as the first few tracks start it off; strongly. Talk Like That and Together introduce us to some further hard-pumping beats that make you want to jump off your feet and run around the room, while Eucalyptus and Anywhere provide us more catchy tunes to hook our brains around.

If I Know You stands out as an awesomely powerful and emotional track; slow, sad, and moving. It’s kind of an anomaly to a first-time Presets fan; having not known much of their previous work. It’s different and thoroughly enjoyable.

For only $20 from JB HiFi, this album’s a steal. I thoroughly recommend you go and buy yourself a copy right now.

Who: Cog
What: Sharing Space

Cog’s latest album, Sharing Space, has been a while in the making. Since early 2007, Cog have been working on the album in the quaint town of Weed, California.

The album takes a slight detour from the stylings of its predecessor; it seems as though the boys wanted listeners to focus more on the lyrics of their songs. This is not without reason, with a few of the songs exploring an anti-establishment mindset, most notably “Swamp” in which ‘the government’ is criticised and blamed.

The vocals are wonderfully typical of Cogs previous work, with multi-layered chorus melodies giving them depth; a welcome multi-dimensional quality.

In aid to this, you won’t hear as many ripping guitar riffs that we’ve come to know and love from Cog’s earlier work; which isn’t to mean the guitar has taken a back seat, its role has merely been reprised somewhat, with less show-boating, and more effort put into making the guitar work together with the rest of the song.

The drumming is foreboding, powerful, with a certain finality to it, ever-present in the background, driving each song by pacing itself with the beat. It’s quality stuff.

The songs “Bird Of Feather” and “What If” have been floating around the airwaves for a while now, and they’re epic tracks. Although “What If” seems to be quite similar-sounding to work from The New Normal-era, it fits right in as the fourth track on the album, followed by the powerfully moving “Bird Of Feather”.

If any complaints, the only I have is that the mastering of the album doesn’t seem quite as good as The New Normal: overall, it’s quieter. I suppose some would say this is due to the quieter, less punchy nature of the songs, but I think they could have done a better job.

Taking everything into account, I’d say that Sharing Space is another quality release from the Sydney band. At only $20 from JB Hi-Fi, you can’t go wrong.

Cog is touring with support around Australia in May and June, check them out.

It was fucking epic! Last night the gang and I went to The Met in the Valley to see one of my favourite artists, Muscles. It was every bit as awesome as I expected it to be; there wasn’t a moment that I didn’t enjoy!

Upon arrival, I grabbed myself a few bourbons and checked out the place. The Met was such an appropriate venue! Probably one of the best-themed clubs I’ve been in, they had so many different rooms and levels, it was an intricate maze of open-space dance floors and intimate, quiet areas for chilling. Couches and arm chairs could be found scattered almost randomly throughout the venue, and there were many bars, each with a different theme. The place has three or four levels, it’s immense!

The stage itself is modest, but the lighting setup is perfectly suited to the size of the space, and the stage is backed by a wall of widescreen LCDs, all linked together and displaying imagery to accompany the music.

The support act, The E.L.F warmed us up with some cute remixes of classic tunes, including Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys; but the best part was when he played “My People” — HOLY. FUCK. I absolutely fucking love this track, and to hear it played at The Met through the sound system there was simply epic.

After that, we warmed down a bit with a few more drinks and waited patiently for Muscles. He teased us a little by having his album symbol put up on the big screens while the interlude music went quiet — everyone started screaming and jumping, yet he wasn’t to show himself for another twenty minutes! Nevertheless, it caught most people off-guard when he did come out, which I think was his intention from the start.

Let me just say that if you haven’t heard anything by Muscles before, then I’d recommend checking out his MySpace. His songs seem to pop and fizzle and buzz with the energy and excitement of a childhood science experiment; if you let them, they completely envelop you in a sense of endless fun. It’s dance music with a twist. In an interview I read, Muscles said one of his influences is the techno-pop, energetic theme music he used to hear when playing his Super Nintendo as a child; games especially like Super Mario Bros whose musical accompanyments were designed to create an environment of surrealism. These kind of influences are evident in Muscles’ songs.

In addition, the lyrics to his songs are plain, obvious and easy to sing-along to: as opposed to the majority of dance tracks which are either too much techno, too much R&B, or too much of both, Muscles’ music and lyrics are not about head-banging or gang-banging, they’re about simple things like a love of ice-cream, having your friends over, and meeting people on public transport.

Listening to Muscles is a regular thing for me. I don’t get tired of the innocence and the energy in his songs. I did not stop jumping and throwing my fists into the air for the entire set. It was fucking awesome!