I finally got around to playing Röyksopp's Melody A.M., my well-anticipated Christmas present. Wholey schmeezus! (Term Copyright 2007 Dirk Gadsden) I was already an avid fan of their song "Remind Me", which is featured in the Geico airport commercial, but it's just the tip of the iceberg in the bands' amazing musical conglomeration. Even half-way into the song and I'm already amazed.

After having played Call of Duty 4 multiplayer for over 20 hours I have come to the conclusion that it is a masterpiece of graphics and gameplay. As a forewarning, do not expect me to say it is better than Halo 3; it may be equal to Halo 3, but no matter how much Call of Duty fanatics whine and scream they cannot cover up the fact that Call of Duty 4 has just as many, if not more, faults as Halo 3. Off of that topic, I'm going to go back to salivating over the game.

Graphics

No matter how much those deluded Wii fans whine, graphics are still really important. Thankfully, Call of Duty 4 doesn't have to worry about bad ratings in the graphics category. With HDR, advanced night-vision, dynamic shadows, and great high-def explosions there is no lack of enticing graphics in this game. (The blood-splatters are really well done too; the guns really feel like they have some whump when the terrorists are thrown back a few feet if you unload a 10-round burst on them from an AK-47.)

Gameplay

Unlike previous Call of Duty games, it really seems like the developers actually exploited the convenient right and left bumpers on the controllers. (And didn't overuse them like the Bungie guys did in Halo 3.) The two bumpers contol the throwing of grenades, both your specialty grenades (Flash, stun, or smoke.) and the standard frag grenade. The developers also included lots of interesting equipment such as C4, claymores, and rocket propelled grenades. You can also use different "perks" that help to mix up the play a bit more, leading to the ability to make truly different and customized classes depending on your play style. You will love the claymores if your good at camping with a light machine gun or sniper rifle; though don't get too comfy, you'll still get taken out by counter-snipers or people with the Bomb-squad perk that allows them to spot your claymores more easily.

"Something truly amazing"

would be the correct description of Call of Duty 4. Combining a excellent degree of graphics, gameplay, and a degree of realism, Call of Duty 4 easily ranks in the top notch of games. It, combined with Halo 3, will definitely provide me with thousands of hours worth of entertainment for the next year.

I just got a chance to see this movie a few nights ago (Digital video recorders are amazing.) and found it to be one of the most touching movies I've ever seen. (Don't worry Radio, you still hold first place as the saddest movie ever.) Without going into the details, I'll say that Will Smith and the rest of the actors did an excellent job, turning an already amazing story into one of the greatest movies I've ever watched. (It's up there with 300, Gladiator, Ocean's 11, The Hunt for the Red October, and a few others.) If you haven't already seen it (Less than 6% chance of that.) then you definitely should.

I recently saw this movie and found it to be a riot. Produced in 1974 and starring Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, and Cleavon Little "Blazing Saddles" is a classic Western parody. Featuring over 4 LPM (Laughs-per-minute) and well-executed twists on general stereotypes the movie ranks near the top of the list in the humor category. If you have a chance I suggest renting it, it's well worth the money.

Pownce is a new social networking application launched by Kevin Rose and his cronies. (Woohoo! Daniel Burka!) Focused around the posting of messages, events, links, and documents, Pownce is like Twitter on steroids. But unlike Twitter, there's no limit on the length of your message. (Theoretically at least; in actuality they're likely using a TEXT type which means the max length is around 65,535 characters.) You also have 3 more types of stuff to spam the world with! You can share your favorite links with your friends, make events (Have not ever made an event on Pownce yet, so that feature is dead as a... dead... thing.), and upload files. (Whoop-dee-do. I can put up my latest design concepts for everyone to see and copy. I really need a WordPress footnotes plugin, because this is getting outrageous.) The Pownce designers also felt compelled to release a virtually worthless desktop application that opens everything in Internet Explorer. If Kevin Rose is so smart, can't he realize that IE is the browser equivalent of the Bubonic Plague? I literally get boils all over my skin whenever I start up the Pownce desktop application and click on a link that opens Internet Explorer. (Believe me, the boils are nasty.) Besides the desktop app and unused features, Pownce has a lot going for it. It seems to be like more localized, centralized, and Kevin Rose-alized version of email that allows you to mass mail stuff with out being called a "spammer." You also have to ability to record your items and set up groups to speed up the sending (Spamming.) process.

The Low-Down

Pownce is a powerful application that has a lot of both useful and worthless features. It is definitely a much smaller community and 50% of its popularity is because some Digg creators worked on it. No matter what your feelings are, this is my Pownce.