Certain Patterns May Trigger Seizures With No Prior History.

My tax return finally came today and surprisingly, I did not go batshit crazy at all. I picked up Aliens Vs Predator for the PS3 and put a $10 pre-order down for Silent Hill: Downpour at Gamestop. I did not realize that it's finally coming out on Tuesday, after waiting since October, it's finally here. And it shows that I am losing long tracks of time, it's startling me. I've had my PS3 since Christmas and I haven't had any problems, until now. I popped the game in and started playing as the "Alien" and within two minutes, I find myself sweating bullets. I felt like I was spazzing out because the character I was playing can walk all over the place and it was driving me nuts and really driving my senses over the edge. The back of the PS3 boxes states:

WARNING: IF YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF EPILEPSY OR SEIZURES, CONSULT A DOCTOR BEFORE USE. CERTAIN PATTERNS MAY TRIGGER SEIZURES WITH NO PRIOR HISTORY. BEFORE USING AND FOR MORE DETAILS SEE INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PRODUCT.

So, that second sentence is what made me realize it was the game. So, I have placed the game aside and I cancelled my plans on going out to see Red Tails. I decided to lay down and chill out for a while and now I have decided to start my blog for today. I was liking the game play but I don't really know why it was triggering an effect on me.

Misleading, but sweet artwork.

Going back to earlier in the day, I found my rebate check in between two VHS tapes that were sent from two different ends of the U.S. I opened the first package which was a nice box containing Lady Terminator which I bought off Bill Knight who runs Midnight Legacy; he released Alien 2: On Earth on Blu-ray. The other package was one of those yellow-orange bubble-padded envelope containing Warriors of the Wind. And to those who do not know, Warriors of the Wind is the 80's American cut of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I had heard a lot of bad things about this cut of the film and even that Hayao Miyazaki detests this cut of the film. I can see why, but, I didn't find it that bad after watching it.

Sure, the name changes were not needed, but I was surprised when they first said Princess Zandra instead of Nausicaa. Given that the film is edited and about twenty minutes are cut, I can see why they ditched it all together since it's not Miyazaki's true version. It happens all the time that movies get cut and it's a shame. With Warriors of the Wind, I feel the hatred is all hype because I'm sure not a lot of people have seen it. More or less like people like to bitch about Star Wars being re-edited countless times by George Lucas.

I have finally narrowed my choices down on an external Blu-ray burner; Lite-On eHBU212-08 or Samsung's SE506AB/TSBD. Prices are similar with an extra three year warranty for about $27; places this to be about $175 and shipping is free. Both average a 4/5 in user ratings on NewEgg.com and what draws me to both is that they claim to handle BD-R DL discs which is what I need for making masters. From my perspective, I am cautious towards the Samsung BD burner because it's main power source is from the USB input; you plug it and you're good to go. With my old Lite-On, it had a power source and you had to plug it in; and that's what makes me lean towards that Lite-On BD burner. Then with the Lite-On BD burner, I am cautious because my old Lite-On BD-Rom did have problems reading certain Blu-ray discs, for example; Destroy All Monsters, Dracula 2000 (Canadian Release), Silent Hill (German Release), and various others I cannot think of off the top of my head.

It's such a shame that BD drives are still not that common in desktop computers. With the desktops that I am looking at; if you want an internal BD drive, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. I know about nine years ago when my parents got the desktop that had our first DVD burner, it was a good $1.5k for it and for that time, it was a strong desktop from Dell. Now, if you compare the strength of that desktop with ones made from today, it's a joke. That desktop only had 60GB of HDD, 512 MB of Ram, and I am not sure about the GHz because it's dead now. What I am looking at now for my planned new desktop is something stronger than my three year old Toshiba laptop; 230 GB of HDD, 4 GB of Ram, and a Dual Core 2GHz processor.

I am about to kick back for a bit before sleeping; I might give AVP another try or pop in Lady Terminator and call it a night. Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D starts tomorrow at the dollar theater and I am going to go see it. And to give a quick update on my DVD-R series Exploitation in the Third-Dimension, we're going to be assembling volume one soon.