Still As Life

I went and saw 10000 BC last night, what can I say? It was average.

The CGI in it was great, but that was probably the only redeeming quality of the movie.

10-15 minutes into the movie and there were already things that I can only call silly mistakes.

For example, when they decide to hunt the mammoth and the mammoth appear over a hill and that is when they are first seen and heard. That’s all well and good, but the amount of noise they were making, it would have been impossible to not hear them sooner. Then when they are actually hunting them, they are creeping towards them from upwind. It is established earlier on that they have hunted mammoth before, every time the mammoth pass. So naturally, wouldn’t the mammoth associate their scent with a threat and panic before the tribe got anywhere near close enough to them? Seeing as how they are upwind from the mammoth and all. It is particularly obvious that they are upwind because the grass can be seen blowing in the direction of the mammoth. Now, I know it’s just a movie, but that’s a pretty simple thing that could have been avoided.

Another thing I had a particularly big problem with is that there were ships, ships more advanced then the Egyptian ships of later times, yet Egypt had the first real ships.

Then of course there was the final section of the movie where it was quite evident they were meant to be in Egypt, with the Nile river and the pyramids being built, along with a cartoonish Sphinx.

Aside from all these things, there is the language question. D’Leh, the hero of the story, in his travels meets up with around 6 other tribes, the first of which is many days travel from his own tribe. Now, the leader of this tribe, Nakudu, is explained as being able to speak his words because D’Leh’s father, the previous leader of his tribe, had come to find new lands and had taught the leader of the other tribe his words. That’s all well and good. Then there are the other tribes, including ones that are days away from the first, where Nakudu is able to translate for. He is even able to translate the words of what I can only assume are the Egyptians, a people he is established as having never met and never gotten anywhere near where they are from. Maybe he is just a linguistic whiz, but I doubt it.

Of course there were then plenty more anachronisms, but to go through all of them would take a long time, and even then I would still undoubtedly miss some.

The acting was fairly reasonable. There were occasional spots where it was bad, but most of the movie retained the same average level of acting. I would not put any of it in the outstanding, or even above average categories, but in general it was reasonable.

The average user rating on IMDB at the time of writing this is 5.0/10, and I agree with that rating entirely.

If you haven’t yet seen it yet, here’s the trailer:

Popularity: 23% [?]

As with many other products that Coles do their own brand of, Coles have brought out their own energy drink, “Coles Zu Energy”. It is available in two flavours, today I will be reviewing the Sublime flavour. If you are looking for the Ballistic flavour, have a look at my “Coles Zu Ballistic Energy Drink” page.

Coles have really been pushing these drinks, at market day back in week 1 of uni, Coles had a stall setup where they were giving out heaps of cans of both flavours for free. There was no other energy drink company present at market day at all, so Coles pretty much had a free reign.

The Sublime flavour is meant to be a lime flavour similar to the taste of the standard V flavour. However, in my opinion it is far better. The regular V flavour doesn’t sit too well with me, but Coles Zu Energy Sublime is very nice. It doesn’t taste anything like lime, but it is good.

Each can is an average size of 250ml and as you can see from the photo, the colour of it is not that appealing, but it does taste much better than it looks.

They are currently $1.49 a can at Coles.

Coles Zu Sublime Nutritional Information

The label indicates the following per 100ml:

It is recommended on the can not to drink more than 2 per day which is a pretty standard warning.

Coles definitely did something right with this one, it tastes great and has a similar level of energy additives to the more expensive energy drinks. It does seem to sometimes coat your mouth with what I assume is a layer of sugar, I suppose this is something to be expected from a cheaper drink though. It doesn’t always happen, just sometimes, most often when I am eating pizza as well. So it may be something to do with that mix somehow.

Coles Zu Sublime Ratings

Quantity - 250ml
2.5/5

Price - $1.49
4.5/5

Flavour
3/5

Overall
3/5

Popularity: 49% [?]

I received an email a few days ago from Kel, of “The Travelling So & So’s”, who performed on March 16 at the Defusion party. The email was in response to my perception of what had happened on the night and cleared up some misconceptions. She clarified that it was in fact them that was still setting up late and not the Tricktronix.

To start off with, I would like to apologise for some of my comments. I was mistaken in my understanding that they turned up late. Kel let me know that they arrived at 6pm, an hour and 15 minutes before they were due to start. As a musician myself, I would have preferred to be earlier if I was performing, in saying that though, an hour and 15 should be plenty of time to get setup and have a warm up, assuming that the situation is as promised.

It seems the lack of organisation in regards to the live bands was caused by a lack of space for the drum kit and having to figure out an alternative placement for it, and from the organisers telling them that there would be certain equipment available, which was not there, such as PA speakers, microphones, and microphone stands. So they were not expecting to need to bring these things and had to chase it all up at the last minute. This is why people were arriving late with music gear.

So, I would like to apologise for my conclusion and statements regarding these events and the disorganisation of “The Travelling So & So’s”.

Kel also noted my comments about the large amount of feedback, and I may have misunderstood, but also indicated that I thought their musicianship was bad.

I apologise if it came across this way. As I said previously “They were all good musicians and the lead singer had a great voice…” Being a bass player myself, I am rather jealous that the bass player of “The Travelling So & So’s” gets to jam and play music with such a talented group of musicians.

My main problem with the music was, and still is, that the mix was bad and detracted from the otherwise good musicianship. Yes, I understand a room that is literally a cement box is hard to get a good sound from, I have played in similar environments and am well aware of that. However, that does not change that the vocals were far quieter than the instruments. I could hear maybe half of the vocals, and understand maybe half of that again. I understand that during the warm up, vocals were being improvised and that’s cool, it’s a pity it took two songs before the increasing amounts of feedback from the louder vocals (which were still way too quiet) was fixed.

I am glad to hear that the problems got sorted out in the end. Though it is a pity it wasn’t sooner or it could have been a much better night for myself and all the others that left by 10pm. Kudos to “The Travelling So & So’s” for taking it on themselves to organise the missing equipment and allowing the other bands to use it as well.

Thanks for taking the time to correct my misconceptions and let me know what actually happened.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Get a free copy of the new CD from Pete Cornelius and the Devilles, “Suburban Hell”, when you buy any Stratocaster replacement set from Powerhouse Music and Technology by the end of April 2008!

I haven’t heard his new album yet, but his previous music is excellent. Pete and the Devilles are a blues band with reference to rhythm and blues and some rock influences. Their albums are all available through their website if you are interested, I highly recommend having a listen to their music. It is well worth it. There are samples available on their MySpace, go for it.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I finally got fed up enough with my phone that I went and got a new one on Sunday when I ran out of credit instead of getting more credit.

I have been looking into a new phone for a while now as my old Panaxonic X700 has been playing up, switching itself off for no reason at all, there were quite a few days where every time I looked at it I would have to switch it on first and so on. It was getting quite painful.

Now, there have been a couple of phones that I particularly liked the look of, the Sony Ericsson K800i, K810i, K850i, and the LG U990 (also known as the LG Viewty).

I have been a fan of the Sony Ericsson’s for a while, they always seem to be very nice phones, and they are also one of the few manufacturers now that has a reasonable variety of phones that are not flip or slider phones. Rhi has the K800i and it is a very nice phone. I was particularly interested in this one because it was only $200 outright with Optus, so it could be pre-paid and I could continue to use my Optus sim card without changing anything.

However, despite it being listed as a current model on the Sony Ericsson website, Optus informed me that it has been discontinued, and to buy it direct from Sony’s online store, it is $500, which is far more than I want to pay outright for a phone, especially a phone that Optus was selling for only $200. None of the other phone providers had the K800i either, so that counted out this one.

The K810i I would have gotten on a plan, I was looking at the $49 cap with Optus, but they told me that this one as well has been discontinued, despite Sony still selling it. It was the same story at other phone providers as well. So this one was also out.

That just left the K850i and the U990. Pretty much every mobile phone provider has the LG U990 in stock at the moment as LG is giving it a huge push, and I can understand why given that in my opinion, it is a better phone than the more expensive LG Prada. The K850i is available pretty much everywhere as well at the moment.

All the different providers have these both at similar prices. Optus have the K850i and U990 available on the $49 cap + $15 a month in handset repayments. 3 have them both for that price as well. Telstra is around the same. Vodafone have the U990 for the same price as well, but they have recently dropped the price of the K850i to be free on the $49 maxi cap. Note that all of these ones are on 24 month contracts. According to the Vodafone website, the reason for this is that to buy the K850i outright, the cost has come down from $999 to $749.

This caught my eye in particular. Soul Mobile also have the U990 for free on their $49 cap. I am a bit dubious about Soul though as they are a much smaller provider, and while they use the Optus network, they do their own plans (which are fairly similar to the Optus plans) and billing and I have no idea what their reputation is like and I don’t know anyone that has a phone with them. So I would prefer to avoid them.

It was basically between these two options, and while I’m not particularly fond of Vodafone’s Customer Care service centre, I have found their service to be reasonably good with my 3G modem. I am much more inclined to go with the bigger, more well known company that maintains their own network than Soul, even if it is marginally more expensive.

So that made my decision for me, I was getting the Sony Ericsson K850i.

The Vodafone store at Garden City was reasonably quiet when I went in on Sunday so I got to speak to someone there almost straight away which was excellent.

Since I already have an account with Vodafone, I didn’t have to provide new information for my credit check, they just ran it off of the previous information which was much quicker, and I passed straight up.

Providing them with another copy of my license to prove I am who I’m pretending to be, and I had my new phone. I needed to transfer my mobile number from Optus though, this is where the painful part began.

According to the girl who was serving me, the number should have changed over to my Vodafone sim card in up to 3 hours. It didn’t.

It wasn’t until Monday morning that my Optus sim was deactivated. My Vodafone sim was activated at the same time, but no matter where I was, despite getting full reception, I could only make emergency calls, I couldn’t even call the Customer Care number. Since my old sim had been cut off, I couldn’t use my old phone either (not that I had any credit anyway).

I decided to wait for a day or so and see what happened. By the end of the day though, it still hadn’t changed, so I ducked into Vodafone at Queen St Mall on my way home from uni.

I was there for maybe 10 minutes, in which they determined that my sim card was faulty and they replaced it with a new one, and straight up my phone was working correctly.

On the $49 Maxi Cap, I get $310 worth of calls and texts a month, I also get 100 free texts to any mobile phone in Australia. So it actually works out better than the Optus $49 cap as well where I would have only gotten $300 worth of calls and texts. I could have chosen free calls to Vodafone numbers rather than the free texts, but I hardly call anyone on Vodafone so the texts are more worthwhile to me.

As for the new phone, well, I will write up my experienced with it as soon as I have some more time to play with it some more. It is a very nice phone though.

Popularity: 38% [?]