Author: Shmee

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2016 Is The Year That Expanded Universes Came In To Their Own!

Ever since Marvel showed that audiences will buy in to Expanded Universes, movie studios have been rushing to cash in, and in 2016 we finally saw it happen.

We got not one, but two DC movies in the same universe (Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad), and while they were critical failures, they still brought in a combined $1.5 Billion.  Warner Brothers was also able to kick start the Harry Potter Universe films by successfully opening Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  It may not have been as big as they were hoping for, but it will bring in north of $750 Million off of a $180 Million budget, and that is a return on investment studio heads will make every day of the week.

Meanwhile we are in the middle of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story‘s run, and it has already cashed in almost $400 Million, so it should get to about $1 Billion.  Not bad for a movie that isn’t about a Skywalker.  Sure there is one in it, but this is not Darth Vader’s story.  Between the Marvel Universe and the Star Wars Universe, Disney may not be the House of Mouse anymore, but the Universe of Movie Universes.

After 2016 I am pretty sure every blockbuster being made will somehow link to another movie in some way.  The links may be small like Fantastic Beasts, the fictional writer of one of Harry’s text books, or more substantial like Rogue One, the events leading directly in to A New Hope, but they will be there.  I can’t wait for the Jurassic World Raptor Team solo film.  I am sure it will be filled with intrigue.  In all seriousness though I hope the Expanded Universe films they are making are at least in a universe worth exploring.  The Hasbro Expanded Universe they are working on sounds like nightmare fuel, but hey at least we are getting that M.A.S.K movie! (said no one ever)

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Lost Odyssey Starts With Two Hours Of Nothing!

Let me recap my first two hours of Lost Odyssey.  I fought in an intro battle for fifteen minutes, and then I walked around and talked to people (well people talked to me) and kicked stuff for an hour and forty-five minutes.  Good times were had by all.  Well okay, boredom was had by me

Granted the world was interesting enough for me to keep playing for that two hours, and now I think I am finally to the part where I start to play the game ‘for real’, but you never can tell with JRPGs.  I mean this game had a ten minute dream sequence that was just scrolling text.  I got thirty achievements points for reading it which was nice, but you would expect more from a dream.

This game has a lot of fans, so I am going to give it another chance or two, and it is hard to complain about a free game (until the end of December), but something more interesting had better happen soon.  I don’t know if I can kick any more garbage cans or probe any more pots.  I am just kidding I love to probe pots.  They are full of all sorts of possibly useful potions and stuff.

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I Hacked My T-Mobile CellSpot And Got An Asus RT-AC68U!

T-Mobile decided that it would be a good idea sell fantastic routers at a great price to try and then use those routers to expand their cell coverage, and you know what?  It is a good idea.  Unfortunately for them they decided to repurpose the very popular Asus RT-AC68U to do it, so everyone and their brother used Asus’ great firmware tools to flash the T-Mobile CellSpots to either stock Asus firmware or high end custom firmware.  This of course displeased T-Mobile since the whole point of selling routers cheap is to expand their cell range, so they had Asus make the routers harder to hack, but guess what?  Nerds like me are still hacking these routers and they work great!

I am not going to go in to detail on how to hack a T-Mobile CellSpot since there are a great many good guides online, but I will say if you buy a CellSpot now you will need to follow this step first: Press All The Buttons, and then I followed this video:

Until he put custom firmware on it.  Instead I went the ‘official route’ and flashed the router to firmware version 376.3626 with the Asus Recovery Tool to change the memory size to 64 MB from 32 MB, and then after that simply applied the most recent firmware from the Asus site.  You can download everything you need from the links included on this page: SlickDeals Asus Page.

Overall this router has been a major step up from my Asus RT-N66U.  Everything is just faster, plus there are more options, and it feels good knowing that I got to stick it to the man a little bit by only paying $60 for a $150 router.  Though I think this model is still worth it even if you pay full price and don’t want to bother rewriting boot loaders.  If you haven’t got an AC router yet, there aren’t many consumer routers available better than the Asus RT-AC68U.

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Rogue One Brings War To The Stars!

I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story twice over the weekend and loved it both times.  This the type of prequel fans were hoping for when the prequel trilogy was announced.  It explains things fans have wondered about for years while still showing us something new.  Which is hard since there have now been three movies to focus on a Death Star.  Four if you include Attack of the Clones, and Five if you consider The Force Awakens’ Starkiller Base to be just a bigger Death Star.

Rogue One follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) as she tries to find her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) who was in charge of designing the Death Star.  This quest will take her all over the galaxy with a rag tag crew of misfits.  It is the Star Wars equivalent to The Dirty Dozen, except there are only a half a dozen of them.

I enjoyed how they made a story about a giant flying death ball personal.  While soldiers trying to find a way to take out the Death Star is an interesting premise.  A woman doing it to fulfil her father’s legacy is even better.  Plus Rogue One was fine living in the gray areas of the Star Wars Universe.  There are no white knight heroes here.  Just people doing what they have to in order to defeat The Empire.

The cast was fantastic.  Of course I am biased towards anything featuring Alan Tudyk as a back-talking reprogrammed murder bot.  Felicity Jones leads this film perfectly as a conflicted soldier who is unsure about fighting for a cause that has only brought her loss, and Diego Luna as a fighter who is wondering if he has crossed too many lines in his fight for the Rebellion.  They all just work really well together.

The film is not perfect though.  It bounces around too much in the beginning, so it is hard to focus on what is going on.  I understand that Gareth Edwards wanted to show that this was a galaxy wide war, but there are just a few too many planets.  Also Rogue One pandered to our nostalgia just a little too much.

All in all Disney’s second Star Wars film is a rousing success.  It is like they made an adult version of the Star Wars: Rebels cartoon.  Which is something I can fully get behind.  Rogue One is the best prequel film that has been made, and while that may have been an easy bar to clear, it is still a great film that was fun to watch.  I can only hope the Han Solo film is as successful as Rogue One.