Shmee.Me

December 20, 2013

I Made An App For My Phone With The App Studio Beta!

Windows Phone App Studio is a new website from Microsoft for building easy apps. It pretty much allows you to create static text apps, or appify your website or blog. I was a little skeptical, but since I needed to sign up for the beta to get the developer update to Windows Phone 8 GR3, I gave it a shot. I was surprised at how well it works.

The process is simple, you first upload a logo and give your app a name, and then you plan out the sections of the app. For each section you have to give a data source: A Collection which is a bunch of info you punch in; A RSS feed to get info from your website; A YouTube channel for all you film makers; A Flickr account to share your photos; A Bing search because this is a Microsoft tool; Or lastly you can just write out some HTML. Once you have setup your data source, you pick a template to display all that data on. You can also create menu’s with subsections too if you have a little more information to share.

You than get to pick the color and the icons for your app, and do a few little design tweaks, but that is all there is to it. When you are done it may look a little like the app below.

I would publish this app to the marketplace, but a full fledged developer license is $99.00 a year, and since no one pays me to blog, it will be just for me. Though if they have a special deal on a license, I may put it on the store. If I did have a business, and I wasn’t very tech savvy. I would totally pony up the money to put my app out there. It is fun and easy, and it is a good way to get your info out to your customers.

If you are looking for an easy way to make an app for your site or company, The Windows Phone App Studio is great way to do it. Since it is still in beta, I will be checking in from time to time to see what improvements they make to the site. If you have a developer unlocked phone and want a copy of my app just leave a comment below, and I will send you an email with it.

December 19, 2013December 19, 2013

Yet Another Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde is a 2013 Lifetime/A&E/History Channel miniseries based on the lives of the titular Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. It was very successful for the A&E owned networks, but it has been done before and better.

The story starts off with the iconic shot-up Ford being towed through a small town, and some kids uncovering the body of Clyde Barrow (Emile Hirsch). The corpse then begins to tell us the story of his life, and how he and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger) became the notorious gang leaders.

The problem with this show is that it adds nothing important to the story of Bonnie and Clyde. It is just an excuse for more sex and violence on television, and because it is based on a true story it can be billed as “educational”. The problem is that they, like everything based on a true story, like to spice it up a bit. They decided that Clyde needed the ability to see the future, and that Bonnie Parker’s only will in life was to be famous.

The leads do an admirable job as Bonnie and Clyde, but the script doesn’t give them a whole lot to work with. I hope they can find more interesting work later. The gun battles were still fun to watch, and I love all the 1930’s style, but everything between battles and the fashion just fell a little flat. This may have been better as a ninety minute made for TV movie than a three hour miniseries.

I enjoy the thought of TV networks doing more special event programing like this in the future, but I hope that they can find something a little more entertaining to do. If you are looking for the best Bonnie and Clyde to watch, it is best to stick with the 1960’s Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway version.

December 18, 2013December 18, 2013

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Signs On For Vertigo’s The Sandman!

Interesting news yesterday as Deadline.com reported that Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be staring in and directing Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman for Warner Brothers. Gordon-Levitt afterwards tweeted that he would just be producing with the possibility for more as the film progressed, but still it confirms that Warner Brothers is moving ahead with one of Vertigo’s (DC’s art house brand) most successful comic books.

The Sandman should be a fun movie. The comic book was written by the great Neil Gaiman, and he has given his blessing to this film. The Sandman has some of the craziest art to ever be in a mainline comic book. This movie will either be awesome or someone’s fever dream, but I am kind of hoping for both.

Considering they are just naming writers and producers at this point, I am guessing we have a ways to go before we will be watching this at our local mega-plex, but it will give you some time to check out the comic book!

P.S. Speaking of awesome Neil Gaiman comic book movies, you need to watch Stardust. It has a purple case, and it looks like it is for thirteen year old girls, but it is fantastic.

December 17, 2013December 17, 2013

It Is Hard To Go Back Again: Fallout 2

Fallout 2 a 1998 RPG by Black Isle Studios made my list of favorite games of all time, so when it was free on GOG.com, I jumped at the chance to play it again. I am glad that I did, but it is play sessions like this that prove how far we have come in making video games.

The plot continues some time after the first game, and the village the Vault Dweller from the first game founded is in trouble. It is up to you to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit to save the village.

The things I loved about Fallout 2 fifteen years ago are still what I love about the game now. It has a wide open world, and you can do pretty much whatever you want. The dark humor is fantastic, but much like all things in life, my mind forgot the bad parts of this game.

This game has one of the worst interfaces of all time. It requires you to press down on the mouse with just enough force not to select an action, but kind of click hover, and than drag the mouse up or down to select the action you would like to preform. It is so frustrating kind of picking all sorts of things, but not having them work.

It also lacks a good quest log, so I am always trying to remember exactly what I was trying to do, or that I accepted a quest at all. Than add to that, there is no auto-save, so if you die and have not saved in like fifteen minutes you will have to hover-click and figure stuff out all over again. This is particularly troublesome because for the first part of the game just about everything can and will kill you.

Not to mention if you, like me, decide to make a smart fast talking character, you will have to get used to the word “missed” a lot because you cannot hit anything. You will just sit there and stab at that scorpion for what seem like an eternity. In the mean time you will have no antidote for all the poison that has been thrust in to your frail frame, so you will just have to watch yourself die a slow and painful death.

I am not taking Fallout 2 off my favorite games list, because once I got used to all limitations of the game I started to really enjoy myself. It is always difficult to play old games because of all the streamlining and tweaking that has taken place over the last few decades, but if you tough it out you can still find what made you enjoy them so much in the first place.

December 16, 2013December 16, 2013

Shmee Enjoys The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!

A year has past since The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and Bilbo and his pack of Dwarf friends continue their quest to reclaim the throne of the King Under The Mountain. Peter Jackson once again helms this Hobbit tale, and if you liked the first movie then you will like this film more, but if you did not care for the first Hobbit, I am not sure that this improved film will win you over.

This movie starts out with a little background in to how the quest got started, but then quickly gets us back to Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Thorin (Richard Armitage), and the rest of the dwarves as they continue to run from the orcs that are chasing them, and their quest to get to the Lonely Mountain by the last light of Durin’s Day. Along the way they will have to contend with giant spiders, jerky elves, the aforementioned orcs, and Smaug himself. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) meanwhile has to deal with another threat.

Despite the over two hour and forty minute running time, they should really call these movies The Hobbit and The Lost Tales due to all the added material, The Desolation of Smaug has a much brisker pace. They must have cut out all the random walking about, and just stuck to the action scenes. Which is great because An Unexpected Journey gave me enough walking scenes for the rest of my life. There are quite a few long action scenes in this movie, and they all show Jackson’s deft hand at directing since they are all wonderfully framed and a joy to watch.

From a technical standpoint though the action scenes are not perfect. It must be really hard to show molten gold because it is by far the worst effect in the whole movie, and whoever convinced Jackson that it would be fine to use a GoPro 1 camera in the river barrel scene should be flogged. Other than those two examples Weta Workshop continues to show that they are a top tier effects company because this movie looks great. They just need to find a new gold animator.

When I first saw Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel in promos for this film, I was unsure about her addition, but she great in this film, and adding a female character to this all male cast was much needed. Adding Tauriel gave more depth to the elves as well as the dwarves, so she is not just a throw away character. Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is fantastic. It is great to see a character drawn to the power of the ring, and not just suffer the weight of it. You can see the lust for its power in his eyes, and how he changes when he wears it. He is better than the Bilbo in the book (Geek Note: I am not saying however that the movies are better than the book, just Bilbo). The rest of the cast is great too, but they are pretty much background for Freeman.

This movie is much improved over The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but it still has one major flaw. Its ending, or I should say its lack of an ending. It simply does not have one. I won’t tell you where it ends or how, but after all the fun and adventure it ends in a questionable manner. That is not enough for me not to recommend this movie however, and I do. Especially to all of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fans out there. It is a fun film with some great action sequences, and it is a good time in the theaters!