Buy.com iPhone app

Sometimes my sister is totally hysterical. She found out that buy.com has an iPhone app. I was over her house Thursday night (getting ready for Zumba) and she was using the barcode scanner to scan everything in her house. See, you can point the iPhone camera at an item's barcode to scan it. Then the app finds the item on buy.com so you can get reviews and deals on stuff. I have to admit that it was pretty awesome. I took a few minutes to play with it myself. It was super easy to use. Just scan, type or even speak what you are looking for and *boom* there it is. I know that sounds dumb but so many apps take forever to do a simple search. We went through a good portion of my sister's house in less than a half hour. (She has a lot of stuff so that says a lot.) I'm just amazed at how fun it was. Stuff like this shouldn't be fun. It should be boring and informative. This makes me want to run out and buy an iPhone. I wonder if there is a Android version available that I could use on my Epic.

Speaking of apps for my Epic, should I start reviewing phone apps? No one in my house has an iPhone but my mother, my sister, and my stepfather do. I'm sure I could get them to tell me about their favorites. Maybe this will be a new feature!

TV review: The Cape

The 2-hour pilot for NBC's The Cape aired on Sunday, January 9 at 9PM. I've been waiting for this show to air for a long time. While I wasn't able to watch the show live, I did record it to watch last night.

Vince Faraday is a cop in Palm City. Many of the officers around him are corrupt and a mysterious blogger known as Orwell has been outing them. When the city's new police chief is killed by a masked criminal called Chess, Faraday sets out to make things in his hometown right again. He joins Ark, a private security company, run by Peter Fleming, on the edge of privatizing the police force.

Shortly after joining Ark, Orwell sends Faraday a message pointing him toward a shipment of a deadly toxin. Faraday and his partner, Marty Voyt, check out the cargo train delivering the shipment. Unfortunately, Voyt instead delivers Faraday into the hands of Chess, who is none other than Fleming himself. Fleming frames Faraday as the masked villain and sends his security force, armed with Nikon rifle scopes, to catch him. During the chase, the news helicopters above see him die in a large explosion.

However, Faraday is not dead. He is discovered by the Carnival of Criminals, a strange circus-themed group of bank robbers. Faraday buys his freedom with his Ark passcard. Soon, Faraday asks Max Malini, the head of the circus, to help him clear his name and get back to his wife and son. Max and the others teach Faraday hypnosis, cape tricks, and other skills that will transform him into the superhero known as The Cape.

As The Cape, Faraday goes after Chess and his henchmen. While on one such mission, he comes across Orwell trying to get the dirt on Chess. Quickly, Orwell and Faraday join forces to take back their city.

I had a lot of fun watching this show. My favorite character, by far, is Max Malini. He's not only wise, he's also funny and devious and just plain awesome. I almost wish he was the superhero! As for the rest of the characters, I am willing to give them time to grow. It seems like a lot was shoved into two episodes, almost like the audience missed a season and had to catch up to the storyline. I think that the writers should have kept the pilot as an origination story and kept some of the baddies for later. Hopefully they will not disappoint me. I want this show to be successful and, in order to do that, it has to be good.

Aluratek Cinepal

I was planning on waiting a few days to talk about this...but I just can't. On Friday, I received my Aluratek Cinepal multimedia player. After charging it and loading up a few jdorama episodes, it was ready to go for my daughter's Saturday morning swim class. I expected it to do "OK." It did a lot better than that. It blew my expectations away. For my first viewing, I used the earbuds that are included in the box. They are rather uncomfortable, but so are most packaged earbuds. The sound still came through nicely. There was no fuzziness, even when I had to turn the volume up to overcome a very loud swim instructor. Acceptable but not preferable.

The video, however, was beautiful. Absolutely no artifacting or slowness at all. It even handled the subtitles well. My one complaint here is that it auto-plays the next video if you have more than one uploaded. I had the first and second episodes of Tsuki no Koibito ready to go. Once the first episode ended, the second immediately started. I would prefer to make that selection on my own. But that really is a minor complaint that is more of a preference anyway.

Today, I used the device's speakers to listen to the second episode. They aren't anything amazing but they are adequate. No fuzziness or tinniness or anything distracting. Just don't expect to be amazed by them. However, I would suggest using the speakers over the earbuds. The speakers sound better and it will eliminate the uncomfortableness of the earbuds.

I can't believe how awesome this 8.9" media player is. It doesn't play video games, like an iPad, but it will play mp3s, be an eReader, and be a photo album. If you're looking to pick one up, I got mine at Newegg. Hopefully you will be as happy as I am.

No more snow please!

Today was a snow-filled day. It started shortly before I left for Zumba class, which made the drive slow-going. By the time the hour-long class ended, a good inch or two had fallen. Then my daughter had her first swim class for Level 5. Luckily, the roads were cleared by the time we had to leave. But the snow was still falling. It slowed a little as we walked into class but it was back in full force on our way out. In all, I think we got three or four inches. (I'm terrible at guesstimating that sort of stuff.) At least I don't have anywhere to go tomorrow. I'll be spending the day doing laundry, snuggling with my daughter, and trying to stay away from Googling things like North Carolina health insurance. Whatever I end up doing, I want the snow to stay away!

I love horseback riding

As you all know, I've been exercising a lot recently. I've been looking for ways to keep it interesting since I get bored fairly easily. When I was younger, I adored horseback riding. I thought about picking it up again, but I'm not sure when I'd find time to do it. I do spend a lot of time drooling over riding boots and outfits. Now if only there were another 24 hours each day for me to do the stuff I want to do instead of the stuff I have to do. More riding and less working!

Favorite Friday

My daughter was sick today so she stayed home from school. I spent most of the day watching the "We Are SMAP" 2010 concert with her. This is the dance Nakai performed in honor of Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, the dance was not included in its appropriate spot on the DVD. He uses some of Michael's songs and the copyright holders wouldn't give permission to include it. If you have the DVD, you can see the dance with different music in the bonus features. But it's just not the same.

My innate gifting ability

Why is it that I find the best gifts for people after the holidays? First there were some rare NASCAR collectibles at the farmer's market that my father would love. Then I found some christmas gifts at Personal Creations that my mother or my aunt would adore. (They totally need the snowman water glasses.) Needless to say, I purchased a few of these goodies already. They will sit in my attic until next year. Maybe I'll be lucky and I'll have my Christmas shopping done by February!

JMovie review: Rookies: Sotsugyō

Title: Rookies: Sotsugyō Also known as: Rookies - Graduation Release date: 5/30/99 Genre: Sports, drama Cast Sato Ryuta, Ichihara Hayato, Koide Keisuke Plot: The baseball team of Futakotamagawa high school are now seniors. After recruiting some freshmen players, the team once again begins their journey toward Koshien. Of course, their beloved teacher and coach, Kawato Koichi, is back to cheer them on. What is good: The characters seem to have grown up a bit. What is bad: The big payoff is missing. Letter rating: B

I was really hoping for some real closure with this movie. The boys would make it to Koshien and we'd see them kick everyone's butts in the tournament. Alas, we don't get to see that. We see the boys make it to Koshien but then the movie skips to their graduation. We never really find out how they performed.

That doesn't mean it was a bad movie. The two new characters, Akahoshi Shoji and Hamanaka Taiyo, are great additions to the cast. Without them, I think the movie would have felt repetitive since the team pretty much does the same thing over and over. I also enjoyed the actual graduation of the senior players. It was extremely heartwarming. There was more than one tear that came to my eye.

If you watched the drama, then you should watch this. It won't give you a ton of closure, but you will get some. However, if the drama wasn't your cup of tea, then you should be fine skipping this entirely.

Thank you!

Now that the holidays are officially over, it's time to write those thank you cards. I prefer personal thank yous like phone calls, but sometimes a card is required. Most of the time, I only use cards when the thank you is from my daughter. She's old enough to write by herself but not quite old enough to force her to talk to distant family members on the phone. There's only so much torture one kid can take :)

Movie review: Easy A

Olive (Emma Stone) is a normal high school girl. When she figures out that one's popularity doesn't rest on actual events in one's life, she begins rumors about her sex life to skyrocket her social standing.

The movie opens with Olive trying to avoid going on vacation with her best friend, Rhiannon, and Rhiannon's hippy parents. She lies about having a date with a college boy, which leads Rhiannon to believe that Olive will lose her virginity. When Monday morning arrives, Rhiannon grills Olive for details. Initially, Olive says nothing happened on her date. After attempting to endure Rhiannon's antics, Olive lies about having sex. The rumor quickly spreads around the entire school and Olive finds herself slightly more popular as a result.

In class, where they are learning about "The Scarlet Letter," Olive is harassed by one of her classmates. She uses a vulgar retort and ends up in the principal's office, receiving detention as a punishment. In detention, she meets Brandon (Dan Byrd), a gay classmate with bully problems. The two become quick friends.

Brandon convinces Olive to pretend to have sex with him a party so the other guys will think he is straight and stop bullying him. Olive goes along with the plan, believing that more fake sex will raise her popularity even more. When she receives a gift from Brandon afterward, she realizes that there is a financial gain as well.

Soon, word gets out among the unpopular kids at school. Olive will have fake sex with people for gift cards. Unfortunately, this leads Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the leader of the school's religious group, to try to reform Olive's evil ways. The two strangely become friends. Until Marianne's boyfriend, Micah (Cam Gigandet), lies about contracting a sexually transmitted disease from Olive. An enraged Marianne tries to get Olive expelled.

With her reputation in the trash, Olive realizes that this type of popularity isn't what she actually wanted. As she tries to figure a way back to normality, she finds out that her old friend, Todd (Penn Badgley), has been in love with her the entire time. He never believed any of the rumors about her sex life. Together, they crash the school pep rally, telling everyone to watch a webcast. Of course, everyone believes the webcast will be of Olive having sex with Todd. Instead, it is Olive telling the truth about everything.

This is one of those movies I wanted to see as soon as I saw the first trailer. Unfortunately, I ended up having to wait until it hit the RedBox. I'm sad that I waited so long because this was an awesome movie. I had a little bit of difficulty believing Amanda Bynes as a Bible Thumper, but that didn't detract from its enjoyability. Emma Stone was absolutely perfect as Olive. She has managed to perfect the sarcastic wittiness that the character needed. I'm sure many people will write this off as a terrible teen flick. Don't. Go see it!