Microprocessors : The TI MSP430F1232

This gal is an angel. Low power, cheap, and easy to use. You can do almost anything with this little guy, and migrating to bigger, more powerful microprocessors in its family is a breeze.

Recommend? YES. It's even gentle with the babies.

Microprocessors : The Atmel AT89S8252

This processor licks chode.

Recommend? NO. It will only fail on you and make you spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours trying to fix and update, only to eventually be replaced by something that actually retains its coding on power up.

Movie : The New World

We watched this movie for an hour and fifty minutes, until the lady three rows up told us to stop snickering so much. We figured the fun was over, so we left. What happened in the first hour and fifty minutes? Honestly, all I remember were lots and lots and lots and lots of shots of scenery (water droplets, birds, trees, light through windows) and more voice-overs than all other movies in history combined. The voice-overs mostly consisted of: "When I first saw her, I knew I loved her. She was my Goddess," (said by John smith) and, "When I saw him, I knew he was my god," (said by Pocahontas.) Then there was some rolling around on the grass and stuff. Then John Smith sailed across the ocean, and Pocahontas seemed sad and very muddy. Then Christian Bale started saying the exact same things in voice over, and the lady told us to be quiet. I don't know what happened after that, because we left. It was probably really funny.

Recommend? Oh yes, totally.

Movie : Me and You and Everyone We Know

This movie showed me that the true desire of the heart is to poop back and forth, forever.

Recommend? If you can't tell, then you don't know.

Movie: Doom

This one could have gone either way, so I had no expectations other than seeing some demons shot with machine guns. The movie definately serves this, and plenty of it. However, it also serves a pretty decent, if slightly rushed story. I will say that they could really have milked the atmosphere a bit more and spent another twenty minutes at the beginning of the movie, but it was actually better than I thought it would be. On par or slightly better than Resident Evil.

Recommend: As far as video game movies go, this is definately one of the top ranks so far. As far as real movies go, its a descent sci-fi flick with some cool special effects, a couple really cool scenes, some descent character moments, and a pretty cool first person shooter perspective sequence. However, the Silent Hill movie looked better before I saw Doom, looked better after, and I am hoping will be the coolest videogame movie ever.

Movie: Infection

Japanese Horror movie. Kind of in the tradition of the Japanese versions of The Ring, The Grudge, and Dark Water. Really creepy atmosphere throughout. The acting is solid although the script is a bit weak when it comes to the character moments. Basically, a hospital is about to go fall apart financially, and the half-competent staff are struggling to keep the patients alive. Then, an ambulance who can't find a hospital to take their severely ill passenger decide to simply deposit him in the hospital. Japanimation style psychological weirdness then ensues.

Recommend: Yes. Just keep your eye on the fruit...

Movie: Undead

This is a zombie comedy from Australia. In my opinion, as far as zombie comedy goes its much better than Shaun of the Dead. Some totally cool ideas throughout, although the low budget does cause some minorly frustrating moments where it just plain gets cheesy. However, they make up for those frustrating moments with some suprisingly well rendered moments later on in the story - once the aliens come in there's actually some pretty sweet large scale special effects.

Recommend: Highly entertaining. The best low-budget zombie horror film I've seen in quite a while.

TV series : The Office (BBC version)

Sung to acoustic guitar, during a staff training session:

"I got free love on the freelove freeway,
the love is free and the road is long,
I got hot love on the hot love highway..."

Same training session:

"Gareth, we're sharing our ultimate dreams, what's yours?"
"Two Lesbians, probably. Sisters. I'm just watching."

Recommend? Yes. It's awkward and painful, and freaking hilarious. One of my favorite shows right now.

Chest Infections: Mine

This is really starting to get annoying. I'm feeling a lot better now, the fever broke and seems to be gone for good since some time between Friday night and Saturday Morning, but I'm still coughing up balls of green gunk. Seriously. I'm done with it. I hate being sick, and I've been sick since last friggin Sunday. Not to mention that my voice has been shot to hell and I've got to teach tomorrow with my voice dying on me every five minutes like it did on Friday.

Recommend: As illnesses go, its pretty good for the bitching about it factor but as for as the feeling like suck portion goes this ones not at the top of my list.

Music: Hypnotize

by System of a Down. I know my last review of a System of a Down CD was a little indifferent, but I think they're onto something good with this CD. Some totally sweet tracks if you like heavy music that rapidly changes tempo and melody throughout nearly every song. Of course, this CD does have a couple more stable tracks to form kind of anchor points for the album which actually helps quite a bit. I really liked this one. The last track absolutely kicks ass.

Recommend: banana banana banana banana terracotta banana terracotta terracotta pie.