I've had some fun with technology the last few days. Firstly I switch on my netbook on Monday evening and the screen is screwed up, green lines, flashing pixels like green snow, colour scheme that would make Windows 95 look classy, to say I wasn't impressed wouldn't exactly be an understatement. After some brief internet searching, I discovered the area around the side of the screen was somehow coming apart, so I clicked that back in, still the same.
Then I closed the netbook in annoyance and noticed the battery bit thing wasn't straight, somehow something there had come loose too. Out came the battery, and a quick repair later and I had one netbook looking like nothing had ever happened to it.
So I thought right, that's my weekly machine break down, it's all good. Then last night I decided to try n get a bit of iOS5 action going on for my little soon to be out of date little iPhone. I was expecting slowness having the drawn out process of going os3 - os4 still in my memory, but thought fuck it lets go.
The first part was more a lesson than anything, don't ignore iTunes updates, as I think I had to do about 150 updates to that first (that may be an exaggeration... may be). But then I was ready to go. I began the download, all ok and done in about 30 mins, much better than I was expecting, iTunes then backed up the creatively titled 'Andrews iPhone' (imagination pumps from every pore on times), it was time.
Time? Yeah! Time to friggin crash!
I was greeted with the soon to be infamous 3200 error, iTunes didn't know what it was or if it did it didn't want to tell me. The update stopped and the phone reverted to its previous state. OK, no big deal, no harm done. Let's try again. Same thing happened.
"To google!" I exclaimed (in my head) and started a search for this problem. Of course the Internet was instantly filled with know-it-alls who were making it their business to tell everyone how to fix it as they knew cos they were clever. They varied from restarting PCs to restarting phones to reinstalling iTunes itself. Nice one assholes, I've heard people talk shit before and I spotted it a mile off, so ignored them. However there was one, reasonable sounding post saying to just keep trying eventually it worked and they thought 3200 was some kind of server issue due to traffic.
This all made sense, it was doubtless busy at the moment, so I soldiered on. Numberous times I was thwarted at the metaphorical gates of Mordor by this 3200 error, but I battled back, only to be pushed back again. Then finally... it connected, the installation started, this was it... iOS5 would be mine.
Boom in comes a 3004 error and stops it dead, only this time no revert, I'm stuck in restore mode. I have no idea how to get out of restore mode. I stomp off for 5, phoneless...
A bit of research tells me how to reset the phone using the buttons, I do so and try again. 3200 kicks my ass all over again. Twitter is alight with part 'yay os5' tweets and part '3200 gumble grumble' ones. With a side helping of smug Android users (easy to be consistent if you never try anything new). One more item I think, just one more time...
Battle of Los Angeles (that's battle of, not Battle: Los Angeles) had been playing in the background thanks to Syfy+1 and was about to finish (and may I say what a piece of dog turd that film is. I know it's one of the Asylum low budget cash in films, but Jesus Christ, how do you make films this bad??) so I knew it was late.
I hit restore one last time and bingo, it worked, iOS5 was mine took seemingly an age to update and then it was done. To be honest, looks a bit prettier in places but so far not noticing a ton of changes, but I have used it for about 15 minutes to date. But improvements are the subject for another day. This was about my battle against 3200 and how I won!
Go me...
Showing posts with label battle los angeles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label battle los angeles. Show all posts
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Thursday, 28 July 2011
Battle: Los Angeles and How To Lose Friends & Alienate People
Over the last couple of nights I've been flexing my blu-ray muscles and have rented a couple of films I quite wanted to see ion the cinema but me 'n' the wife (got used to saying that now, it just kinda rolls off!) never got round too it.
Thanks to a few (rapidly expiring) blockbuster vouchers we have from when we bought the player we went down and picked up, Battle: Los Angeles and How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, two slightly different films no doubt.
Well first up was Battle: Los Angeles.
I quite like my alien invasion sci-fi films (shocking I know), Independence Day is overly cheesy but remains a favourite to this day, I even quite liked the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds... sorry. I was expecting a cliché ridden, over the top, 'Go America!' film, with minimal character development and stuff blowing up all over the place, ending with a initial victory for mankind but looked like it would result in overall glory.
Got what I was expecting.
It's by no means a bad film, the predictable plot and the flag waving patriotism are hallmarks of a bad film no doubt, but I didn't go in thinking it was going to get many screenwriters guild nominations. After a bit of a slow start, which set up many of the clichés from the outset (1 guy close to retiring, 1 guy's wife having a baby so fighting to protect it etc) it is action packed, the constant action to action movement with the narrative done in the lulls was very video game in it's style, shame then the game of the film, as with so many film tie ins, sucked ass.
The acting was very standard for the genre, I'm pretty sure Aaron Eckhart's jaw has never been so square for so long ever before, and (unless there's a sequel of course) wont be ever again. But overall I think the film worked on most of the levels it went after, stuff blew up, mankind started to win, a good time was had by all. I've made it sound like a very by-the-numbers 3 star film, and yes I think that's fair enough and sometimes that's all you want from a film.
Second, and on the following night, was a British film, ropey territory for a start, set in America How To Lose Friends & Alienate People.
For which I didn't really know what my expectations were. I'd wanted to see it purely as Simon Pegg was the lead and he's usually pretty good, but had never got round to it. From the box office (quite a heavy loss) I wasn't the only one.
Turn out this film was pretty good. I wasn't aware of the support cast, but to be fair once they were on screen they were mostly good, Megan Fox (who was awful, but it suited this part), Kirstin Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Bill Patterson, even 2 of the 3 leads from the IT Crowd, Miriam Margoyle and James Cordon were in it.
It was mildly funny where necessary, I didn't think all the slapstick was really required, but it kept the film moving along. It got quite predictable towards the end when it was always easy to see who would end up as the love interest, but it was a good watch. Pegg was very good, Dunst was good as she tends to be in a more supporting role (E.g. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Bridges was a little subdued but was funny on a number of occasions.
Bonus - no game to slate, it'd be awful anyway, just assume.
Battle: Los Angeles took better advantage of the blu-ray looking better, but then it's an sci-fi slash action film not a comedy, it would!
Of the two, it's hard to compare, but if it came down to watching one or the other again, I'd go for How to Lose Friends. It just worked better as a story, as it actually had a concrete not 100% predictable one. Go watch, if enough people do, it may one day break even!
Thanks to a few (rapidly expiring) blockbuster vouchers we have from when we bought the player we went down and picked up, Battle: Los Angeles and How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, two slightly different films no doubt.
Well first up was Battle: Los Angeles.
I quite like my alien invasion sci-fi films (shocking I know), Independence Day is overly cheesy but remains a favourite to this day, I even quite liked the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds... sorry. I was expecting a cliché ridden, over the top, 'Go America!' film, with minimal character development and stuff blowing up all over the place, ending with a initial victory for mankind but looked like it would result in overall glory.
Got what I was expecting.
It's by no means a bad film, the predictable plot and the flag waving patriotism are hallmarks of a bad film no doubt, but I didn't go in thinking it was going to get many screenwriters guild nominations. After a bit of a slow start, which set up many of the clichés from the outset (1 guy close to retiring, 1 guy's wife having a baby so fighting to protect it etc) it is action packed, the constant action to action movement with the narrative done in the lulls was very video game in it's style, shame then the game of the film, as with so many film tie ins, sucked ass.
The acting was very standard for the genre, I'm pretty sure Aaron Eckhart's jaw has never been so square for so long ever before, and (unless there's a sequel of course) wont be ever again. But overall I think the film worked on most of the levels it went after, stuff blew up, mankind started to win, a good time was had by all. I've made it sound like a very by-the-numbers 3 star film, and yes I think that's fair enough and sometimes that's all you want from a film.
Second, and on the following night, was a British film, ropey territory for a start, set in America How To Lose Friends & Alienate People.
For which I didn't really know what my expectations were. I'd wanted to see it purely as Simon Pegg was the lead and he's usually pretty good, but had never got round to it. From the box office (quite a heavy loss) I wasn't the only one.
Turn out this film was pretty good. I wasn't aware of the support cast, but to be fair once they were on screen they were mostly good, Megan Fox (who was awful, but it suited this part), Kirstin Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Bill Patterson, even 2 of the 3 leads from the IT Crowd, Miriam Margoyle and James Cordon were in it.
It was mildly funny where necessary, I didn't think all the slapstick was really required, but it kept the film moving along. It got quite predictable towards the end when it was always easy to see who would end up as the love interest, but it was a good watch. Pegg was very good, Dunst was good as she tends to be in a more supporting role (E.g. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Bridges was a little subdued but was funny on a number of occasions.
Bonus - no game to slate, it'd be awful anyway, just assume.
Battle: Los Angeles took better advantage of the blu-ray looking better, but then it's an sci-fi slash action film not a comedy, it would!
Of the two, it's hard to compare, but if it came down to watching one or the other again, I'd go for How to Lose Friends. It just worked better as a story, as it actually had a concrete not 100% predictable one. Go watch, if enough people do, it may one day break even!
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