The most disturbing movies are based on fact.

I watched a very disturbing movie the other night.  It is a documentary that is supposedly based on true events.  I have no doubt that 98% of this movie was true, there are only a couple of things that seemed scripted or altered. 

The movie, without spoiling it for you, is about an on-line relationship that starts on Facebook.  It delves into the creation of an on-line romance and shows how it can grow.  Catfish is about how sometimes you stretch the truth to make someone like you.  It is about what happens when it is time to meet in person.

I would love to tell the whole plot but I do not want to ruin anything for you.  I strongly suggest that anyone who has a MySpace page or a FaceBook page or a Twitter account go out and rent this movie.  It might make you see things in a completely new light. 

Inception, what a trippy movie.

It has been a very long time since I have done a blog about a movie but I liked this one so much I thought I would do one.  Inception is a pretty original idea, mostly.  Taking control of a shared dream to steal corporate ideas or in this case to plant an idea. 

It is almost like a bunch of movies cut up into one.  City of Lost Children, The Matrix, Dark City with a little Mission Impossible thrown in for good measure.  Let me just say I am not a huge Leonardo DeCaprio fan, strike that, I do not like him at all, but he did an alright job in this film.  The special effects did carry the movie and most every question was answered which is pretty good.

I didn't figure out the ending until about 30 minutes in, which for me is a good thing because I can usually tell how something ends 5 minutes into the film.  there are some twists and turns along the way that might have made me doubt what I thought the end to be but I was pretty much dead on. 

Am I ever going to get to the plot or anything here?  Okay, fine.  It is about controlling dreams, creating the places and keeping the dreams from falling apart too soon.  It would seem that the more control you put in the dream the faster it falls apart.  Follow me?  Well let me add that this is about controlling nested drams.  Dreams within dreams.

The further the dream is nested the longer the time seems in the dreams, which I thought was kind of groovy.  Whereas your main dram was like an hour to every 5 minutes of dream, deeper nested dreams could last what seems like decades.  This would have been nice if it was real when I went to school.  I could have learned everything I needed to know in one night and tested out of everything.  Oh well, I guess that is why they call it fiction.

It was a good movie overall but be sure to pay close attention or you may find yourself lost pretty fast and you may stay lost.  Have I lost you with my review?  Sorry about that.  Watch it for yourself and see what you think.

My New Toshiba Laptop Satellite L675D-S7015

I realized a couple weeks ago that it my current laptop (a Gateway ML6732) was starting to show its age. Two years old in laptop years is a lot! The performance was just not handling the demands of all my programs. I was going to try and switch the operating system over to Ubuntu. (That is Linux for those of you who don't know.) Unfortunately Gateway doesn't like anything other than Windows on their laptops.

After much thought and research I ended up in the electronics section of good old Wal Mart looking at what they had available. After a few minutes it was pretty obvious that the Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7015 was the best they had to offer. $698.00 plus the $99.00 for the 2 year warranty. Yes, I do feel that this is a necessary addition! This didn't seem like a lot of money when I started reading the specs:

Performance Processor:

AMD Athlon™ II Dual-Core Processor P320
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Graphics Engine: ATI® Mobility Radeon™ HD 4250
Graphics Memory: 256MB-1405MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory
Memory and Storage Memory: 4GB DDR3 memory (expandable to 8GB DDR)
Hard Drive: 500GB HDD (5400rpm)
Optical Drive: Blu-ray Disc™ ROM and DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash®
Audio and Video Display Size: 17.3" widescreen
Display Type: HD+ TruBrite® LED Backlit display
Display Resolution: Supports 720p content, 1600x900, 16:9 aspect ratio
Audio: Microphone jack (mono), Standard stereo speakers, Headphone jack (stereo) Communication Webcam: Webcam and microphone built into LCD bezel
Wireless LAN*: Wi-Fi® Wireless networking (802.11b/g/n)
LAN: 10/100 Ethernet LAN
Power AC Adapter: 65W (19V 3.42A) Auto-sensing, 100-240V / 50-60Hz inputBattery: Li-Ion (48Wh, 6-Cell)Battery
Life: Up to 3.73 hours
Expansion PC Express Slot: No PC Express Slot
SmartCard Reader: No SmartCard Reader slot
Media: Memory Card Reader
USB Ports: 2-USB (2.0), 1-eSATA/USB combo port
HDMI: HDMI output port

There are some things that I really like about it. 500gig HD is pretty nice. I can sure fill it up fast though if I am not careful. Thankfully large capacity hard drives are getting pretty cheap. I also like the 4gig of ram expandable to 8gig, I haven't opened the case to see what the configuration is but I imagine I will be upgrading that very quickly.

The size of the screen is pretty standard. The newer 18.3" laptops just don't seem worth the extra $300 to $400 so I am fine with that. I love the back-lit LED screen. I mean it is the best looking screen I have seen yet! It is only 720p but so is my TV at home so it is all good. Combine that with the HDMI out and the bluray player and this is perfect for watching movies on the laptop or on my TV at home. I guess it would have been nice to have a TV Tuner card but oh well.

It fits in my Swiss Army Laptop Bag but just barely. The addition of the 10key pad is nice. It boasts a full size keyboard but it still feels like a laptop keyboard and the keys on the bottom row are set up a little oddly and my fingers are going to take a bit of time to adjust. I would call it a 7/8th keyboard!

Now, for just a few things that I do not like.
First off is the fact that it does not have bluetooth. Though I am not even sure that that is an issue not that I have an iPhone.
Second, it gets hot. Like cook the legs hot and the single exhaust fan on the side is not nearly as good as it should be. I did purchase a Targus duel 17" lap chill mat. Though I think the one I got is for the old 17" laptops not the newer ones because it hangs off the edge a little. The mat really helps keep it cool so I stongly suggest getting one.

Third, there are just not enough USB connections. Two dedicated and USB/SATA combo just doesn't cut it. My old laptop had four total and that wasn't enough. I think I will be able to solve the problem by adding a USB hub to the chill mat. It looks like it will fit with some slight modifications, but with everything that uses USB these days I would think there would need to be more not less. Maybe everything is going to be moving to wireless LAN soon. Right now my iPhone is connected to the USB/SATA port, my wireless mouse is connected to one of the ports and the chill mat is connected to the third one. So, if I want to plug in one of my external hard drives I will have to unplug something- my iPhone.

That is probably a good enough preliminary review. I have only had the computer for about 12 hours so I am sure there will be more things to say about it in the very near future. Got any comments?

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