Movie 2013.07.31 - The Wolverine

Movie should've been titled "The Wolverine Goes to Tokyo" because that's basically what it is.

So Logan is in his usual grouchy mood when a Japanese girl drops by and invites him for a day in Tokyo. Just to say goodbye to an old friend - a Japanese officer he saved during the bombing of Nagasaki. Turns out Yashida did pretty well, and is now one of the most powerful men in Japan. Only one problem - he's dying. He offers to make Logan mortal again. In exchange, he doesn't mind taking over Logan's curse. Win-win, right? Logan doesn't seem to think so.

So Master Yashida passes away, and his granddaughter Mariko is to be his successor. This didn't go down well with his son Shingen, who had the Yakuza kidnap her. Logan takes on the Yakuza, and gets severely wounded. Unknown to him, Viper has injected a micro-robot into his body, which is repressing his skillz. While hiding out in Yashida's hometown, Mariko is kidnapped again by the Yakuza, and then by Harada and his gang of black ninjas. Logan knows he needs to be at his 100%, so he opens up his chest and removes the micro-robot. Easy. And off he goes to rescue his lady love.

At the village, Harada brings down Wolverine with poison-tipped arrows and the Silver Samurai proceeds to drain his life force through his chopped-off claws. Turns out Master Yashida faked his death, and is using the Silver Samurai as an exoskeleton for his weak body. While all this is going on, Harada had a change of heart and helps Logan fight the Silver Samurai. Yukio arrives at the scene and killed off Viper. Mariko picks up Wolverine's severed adamantium claws and uses them to kill her grandfather. With all the bad guys dead, Mariko takes over the Yashida empire, and Logan flies off with his new bodyguard Yukio.

Book 2013.07.18 - Inferno

I've read all of Dan Brown's books. While interesting, I've never really like them. Inferno is no exception. He has stuck with his style of writing, which seems popular with the masses. I find it distracting and incredible.

I mean, Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks are running for their lives, yet he still has time to flirt with the girl, explain the intricacies of Botticelli's painting, Dante's epic poem, and Florentine history and architecture. "Lira for your thoughts?" Puh-lease.

But you gotta give it to the guy - he really did some research for his books. That's a lot of Google searching, Wikipedia reading, and Street View navigation. All the places that Langdon visited are described in excruciating detail, it's as if you're there. Heck, the book reads more like a travel guide. So many details that are not even relevant to the story. Does it matter if Langdon was wearing a Harris Tweed jacket and not something else? Does it matter if the USB stick holding the doomsday video is red? Does it matter if the Turkish man was driving a Bently and not a Toyota?

It's as if Dan Brown came up with so much researched materials, that it's a waste if they're not mentioned in the book. So his characters end up being mouthpieces spouting all these facts and figures and trivia and scientific theories that they all start sounding alike.

Dan Brown always prides himself that almost everything presented in his books are true. While certain things are factual, I would say their relevance is sometimes exaggerated for dramatic effect. And the plot twist at the end? Not cool. The spiky-haired girl that was hunting down Langdon? She was just shadowing him. The doctor in the hospital that was shot in cold blood? Blanks. And the doctor was one of their guys, too. Sienna Brooks? Zobrist's lover and confidant. So why did she tag along with Langdon in 90% of the book then? The deadly plague that's supposed to kill everyone? Just a infertility virus that has a 1-in-3 chance of success. Great, a virus that can do maths.

All these would've been okay if there is a strong plot and convincing storyline. Nope.

DVD Backup

For all your DVD backup needs, use either DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter. IIRC, both can bypass the copy protection mechanisms. DVD Decrypter rips the DVD into individual files or into an ISO image. DVD Shrink can only do the former. However, it can decode/encode/compress the movie to fit the target media.

If the DVD is single-sided, you can simply rip the DVD without using any compression. To burn the VOB files and create a functional DVD, use ImgBurn. For ISO images, you can use CDBurnerXP, ImgBurn, BurnCDCC, or DVD Decrypter itself.

Movie 2013.07.10 - Beautiful Creatures

Not a fan of romantic movies, but Beautiful Creatures is different enough to warrant a viewing.

Boy falls in love with caster-girl, who is cursed to be claimed to the dark side on her 16th birthday. To save him, caster-girl casts a spell to make him forget all about her. To make doubly-sure that caster-girl turns bad, her mom and cousin conspires to have the boy killed during a Civil War reenactment. The uncle disguises himself as the boy, and is shot through the heart. With his death, the curse is finally broken.

In the last scene, the boy is about to leave town for a road trip to NYU when he bumps into caster-girl in the library. They have a little chat, and off he goes. Right at the town border, he suddenly remembers who caster-girl really is

Rooting the Bauhn AMID-971R

A quick search on the XDA Developers forums tells me this is actually possible.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1742136

The "android emulator" rooting method is for the Sony Xperia, but it also works for the Bauhn. According to the actual post, you simply download DooMLoRD's rooting toolkit, connect your device to the PC, and run the batch file. I did just that - the daemon ran fine, but can't seem to detect the tablet. Wait, maybe I don't have the right USB/ADB drivers. So I download DooMLoRD's Flashtool-drivers.exe, which comes with a bunch of drivers for Sony Xperia devices. Nah, still not detected.

I begin to suspect that maybe it's Windows 7 that is messing things up. Fired up my old XP laptop and connected the tablet. Windows detected an Android device and began searching for drivers online. Came back with drivers for "Acer ADB". Ah, whatever. Ran the rooting tool again, and surprisingly the device was detected, and the toolkit did it's magic.

Using Root App Delete, I uninstalled Facebook and replaced it with Flipster. Also uninstalled the old stock YouTube app and installed the latest one from Google Play. Bad move. Won't even start up. Trawled the web for YouTube APKs until I found one that worked. Whew.

Ultima 9.7" Android Tablet

Would you believe it. Ultima 9.7" Android 4.0 tablet for $80 shipped. Well, they're not fooling anyone. It's basically a refurbished Bauhn AMID-971R. Technical specs below:

• 9.7in IPS display (1024 x 768 resolution)
• 16GB of internal memory
• 2-megapixel rear-facing camera
• 1GHz single-core Amlogic Cortex A9 8726M3 processor
• 1GB of DDR3 RAM
• MicroSD card slot
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
• VGA front-facing camera for video calls
• A mini-USB, mini-HDMI, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack

Came with Android 4.0.3 with build 20120829. Did a quick search and apparently there's a newer build dated 20120907. Followed the upgrade instructions from Tempo Australia, but IP address of the server hosting the firmware not accessible anymore. Another round of searching gave me a working server address (http://public.tempoaustralia.com/fw/). Firmware location present, but folder is empty. The newer dual-core 1.2GHz version (AMID-xxx) is still being updated though.

Came with apps like Twitter and Facebook which I don't need. YouTube is there, but no upgradable. Next thing to do is to root it, so I can remove these stock apps.