Movie Review - Hero

My wife rented Jet Li's movie, Hero the other day from the Library as something to watch. She said she didn't remember much about it except that color played an important part in the movie. (She's a professional illustrator). I vaguely remembered watching part of it many years ago, but it didn't make sense to me at the time.

We finally got to sit down and watch it due to a passing thunderstorm. My initial response is this: It's good but had a few things that should've been left out.

As with many movies these days, directors like to push the line with what is appropriate. This is one of them, part of why the movie earns it's PG-13 rating. For this reason I won't own it, and for this reason it's down in the "Good" category. If it weren't for that it easily jump up to "Better" status.

But besides that, the story was really good and very interesting I think. As with many of the oriental style movies, the story dives deep into ideas such as war, honor, and where true happiness can be found. It definitely gave me subjects to think about and discuss. If you liked it I wouldn't mind hearing your comments on it. Especially how you think the colors influence the feelings in the show.

HP Deskjet 3050 All-In-One Printer instructions

We bought an HP Deskjet All-In-One 3050 a while ago and it took me about 8 hours to get the thing to connect wirelessly. The printer seems to work fine once I got it set up but I couldn't find much help at all online, so I'm posting these instructions to hopefully help someone else who might be scouring the internet for help.

Problem:
Printer is connected through wireless to the router, but now the computers won't connect to the printer to install it. You can find an IP address for the printer. Happenes in MacOS 10.5 and Windows XP SP3

For Windows XP:

-Download the latest version of the drivers and software from the HP website. (I got version 22.5.0).

-Install them and this time it will give you the option to connect to the printer using its IP address.

-Type in your printer's IP address and the software will tell you it still can't connect to the printer. (You can find the address by printing a diagnostics page from the printer or checking the connected devices on your router. Use Google if you don't know how to do these.)

-Tell the install program to use the IP address you entered and install anyway.

-This was all I had to do to make it work. (Just make sure your printer's IP address doesn't change)

For Mac OS (I was using 10.5)

-Go to System Preferences, then go to Print and Fax.

-Click on the '+' to add a new printer

-Click on the IP icon on the top.

-Make sure that the protocol is "HP Jetdirect - Socket"

-Type in the IP address of the printer. It should recognize the printer, give it a meaningful name and hopefully you will have success! I did.

-Another tidbit I heard: If it doesn't recognize the printer, go to the drop down menu Print Using, chose select printer software, and type in f4500, and it should be the only one on the list. Then click add, and it will think for a second and the printer should get added.

Link to HP's video they recently put up

Link to my forum thread on the topic

Movie Review - Voyage of the Dawn Treader

We went to see two matinee movies on Saturday to catch up on the movies we've been wanting to watch. It's awesome we both got to see two movies at the cheap theater for the price of one new movie ticket.

Voyage of the Dawn treader is a movie that I can say I liked more than the book. How often is that said? :) I remember when I first read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in 5th grade I was really excited about it. Mom told me there was an entire series and I started into them. When I got the the Dawn Treader I remember getting bored quickly and the whole book thinking "Uhg all they're doing is sailing and having troubles and being miserable!" I found the fourth book much more interesting and it picked up for the rest of the series. (Yes, it was the third book in this series, I didn't read the modern version that put the Magician's Nephew first).

The thing I liked the most about the movie was how well they kept the symbolic elements of the story. I'd expect your common director to try to cut those parts out. But in this movie they were there and in my opinion much easier to spot than they were in the book.

Another thing I liked is how well they moved things along and how well they did the effects. It made me consider getting the entire series of movies when they finish them. At least this movie. That way when our kids watch it they'll wonder about the rest of the story and want to read the books. :)

Movie Review - Prince of Persia

So I want to start throwing up reviews about movies and games and such. Here goes my first one:

First of all, I wanted to say it doesn't rely on the games at all. I've heard people say they didn't go see it because they didn't play any of the games. It just borrowed an interesting story idea from one of the games and added some depth to it.

I also think the storyline was interesting. Interesting enough that Shara and I discussed it for a while after the movie. The characters weren't as flat and boring as I expected. Also note that I usually don't like movies that involve messing with time because they are either cliche or go about it all wrong.

The movie surprised us how clean it was. I was totally expecting lots of immodesty in such an action flick but there wasn't. I would say there was only a little, and it was done in a way where it wasn't the focus of the shot, but filled in the setting of the scenes that had it.

So the bottom line (literally). I thought Prince of Persia was a pretty good show! I won't go and buy it but it was fun to see, and we're glad we did see it.