X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the newest movie in a long line of planned X-Men comic book to movie adaptations, or as we call them in the industry… “geek cash cows”. Without ruining the story, the movie follows Wolverine from boyhood till just before the events from the original X-Men movie from 2000.

All of your favorites are there: Wolverine, The Blob, Sabertooth, and my personal favorite, Gambit… even an appearance by Charlie from the TV series LOST, or the Lord of the Rings movies, if you really want to get nerdy about it.

The graphics are great, the soundtrack is pumping, and you get to see Wolverine… you know… tear a lot of things to shreds, because hey, that’s what you really want to see anyway… oh, and him riding a motorcycle, chewing on a cigar! The movie has some great moments, not to mention some serious “chops”… sorry, couldn’t resist! The movie stays close to the comic books without many gaping holes, and for the most part, they got it all right. I really loved it.

Bottom line: Go see it. It’s a great action flick that’s easy to follow, even if you aren’t a fan of the series. It’s rated PG-13 or 12A in the UK, there isn’t any gore really to speak of and a very small amount of blood. If you’re looking for a great action date movie, this is a great start to the Summer movie season! Bring on X-Men Origins: Mystique! W00T!

Comic, Movie, Reviews geek, Movie, review, X-Men

So, you want to play Crysis as bad as I do, but your PC barely has enough power to run MSPaint, let alone the sickest, power hungry FPS out there? Well, MaximumPC has put together a sweet gaming rig for under $500 including a case this time… versus the cardboard box they used last time.

The build includes a PowerColor AX4870 512MB Videocard ($175) and a Intel Pentium E5200 2.5GHz Wolfdale CPU ($71), both great choices in terms of power, but I think there are a few more video cards around the same price that you could substitute.

The Parts:
Videocard: PowerColor AX4870 512MB
CPU: Intel Pentium E5200 2.5GHz Wolfdale
Motherboard: MSI P43 Neo3-F LGA 775
Memory: Crucial 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-S223F 22X DVDR
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200AAJS 320GB
Case and Power Supply: Rosewill TU-155 II 500 Black

I couldn’t find every, single part, but I found most at TigerDirect. If you are willing to spend a little more, for $89 more you can get a EVGA 790i Ultra SLI Barebone Kit – Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 OEM, 4GB OCZ Fatal1ty DDR3-1333, 1TB SATA2, Clear Side ATX Case, 550 Watts at just $589. Bring on the Crysis! [via Gizmodo via MaximumPC]

Deals, Gaming, Tech Deals, Gaming, geek, pc, Tech

If you’ve seen the Microsoft Laptop Hunters ads [Lauren, Giampaolo, and Lisa and Jackson] and they have your Apple rage burning deep down in your soul, or you just think that Microsoft just doesn’t have a clue (Lauren “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person”), then this video should make you feel better… if not, at least it’s still really funny! Meet Homeless Frank.

Comic, Funny, Windows Bizarre, Funny, geek, mac, Windows

Peter S Kolmisoppi, one of the co-founders of Pirate Bay, tweeted sadly that, “According to leaked information from the court we lost (got the news last night). Trustworthy source as well.” The site’s 4 owners each face a year in prison and over a $3.5 million fine if the judgment comes through.

For those of you that don’t know, The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes, stores and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files, such a music and movies. They are charged with being accessories to copyright infringement, but Kolmisoppi says that, “nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing what so ever”, although the outcome is still uncertain in my opinion.

I’m sure that the defendants will appeal the verdict and finally buy that island they were looking for, thus starting their own country… kinda like Waterworld, but with better acting.

Movie, Music, News, Rumor, Tech free, geek, internet, Tech

Watch the Scarpar Powerboard take on sand, snow…even go off-road (watch around 1:34 where is climbs over a huge log! CRAZY!), this cross between a snowmobile and a skateboard gets a major thumbs up from me! I have been a Mountain boarder for years and it sure beats walking back up the hill after every run! On The flip side, I have serious doubts that this thing could actually move with me on top of it… like the time I tried to steal my little cousin’s Power Wheels Jeep and it wouldn’t move at all… Anyway, the Powerboard is still in development and no release date is set yet. I want it bad! [Scarpar via Engadget via Gizmodo]

Beta, News, Tech extreme, geek, sport

The CSIRO has developed a way to network household and commercial fridges together in a distributed peer-to-peer fashion that lets them ‘negotiate’ with each other the best time to consume electricity. The organisation’s Intelligent Energy Research team based at Newcastle has developed a controller that can be retrofitted to any existing refrigerator.

Not quite as cool as last weeks Twittering Washing Machine, “The controller connects the fridges together using a distributed peer-to-peer system, according to Sam West, an engineer at the CSIRO. ‘It’s peer-to-peer so there’s no central point of failure and it’s very scalable,’ said West.”

The technology allows the refrigerators to coordinate their on/off cycles in order to use the least amount of energy possible between all connected devices.

In the future, all your home appliances could be linked together such as air-conditioners and dryers in order to save even more energy and money. Solar panels could also be networked to alert the other appliances that there is less power being created (the sky became more overcast), thus scaling down the power usage of connected appliances. As long as it keeps my Dogfish IPA cold, I like it! [via iTnews]

Hacks and Mods, Kitchen, Tech automation, fridge, geek, internet, network, robots