A barrel of fun with Steve Carrell

I just saw a preview for the next Steve Carrell (The Office, 40 year-old virgin) flick, which is a remake of the classic Get Smart TV series, originally created by Mel Brooks. It’s basically about the adventures of a goofy secret agent trying to save the world. Here’s the trailer so you can see what it’s all about.

Preview entire CDs, including Jack Johnson’s latest, on AOL Music

As I was browsing the web yesterday looking for some free live concert recordings, I stumbled upon AOL’s CD Listening Party Page. This is a site that gives you a chance to listen to entire recordings that are coming out. They change the selections on a weekly basis so that they don’t stay up too long, but otherwise, you are really listening to the whole thing.

Doing a bit of research, the quality of the selections really varies from one week to another. However, I lucked out this week falling on Jack Johnson’s latest, Sleep through the Static. If you read my blog regularly, you might remember that I said that I did not really like this new album after listening to the 30-second sound clips on iTunes. However, I must say that my opinion has changed after listening to all of the tracks in their entirety. While my opinion that a lot of the tracks are a bit more gloomy, the album still has a very nice ring to it and flows very smoothly from one track to the next. I have not gotten myself a copy of this CD yet, but it is a definite possibility now.

I am guessing that the selection of music on the AOL site will probably change on Tuesday, so head on over if you feel like listening to it. Enjoy!

Another promising title for the DS

After talking about some cool adventure games that will be released this year yesterday, I wanted to mention that the Action-RPG front is also looking promising on the Nintendo DS for this year, starting with the release of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – Ring of Fates. This new title is a continuation of the GameCube title that is really more action-based than RPG based. You basically control your character in a 3D environment and fight monsters in real time instead of a turn-based mode. After reading a hands-on preview on IGN, I think that this will definitely be a title to get this year.

The best adventure games come to the DS in 2008

I have always been a big fan of adventure games on the PC. Titles such as Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango were just amazing games to play through with their creative content, great graphics, and funny situations.

The adventure game dies off a bit for a number of years and then came back more recently with titles like Syberia and Runaway. Both of the companies producing these games have recognized that the Nintendo DS, with its two screens and stylus, is a perfect platform to play adventure games. So, in 2008, we will see at least 3 great adventure games on the DS.

• Last King of Africa: A DS version of Benoit Sokal’s Paradise
• Sinking Island: A DS version of the Benoit Sokal game with the same title
• Runaway: The Dream of the turtle, available April 1st, a DS version of the second game from spanish company Pendulo Studios

I’m going to have fun this year with my DS

Alone with the girls

This week is something quite unique for me. Andrée is away to a photographer convention in Florida while I am taking vacation and staying home with the girls. Two days into it, things are going pretty good. I’ve managed to get Evelyne to school this morning on time and then came back home and had a good time with Gabrielle. As I am writing this, both girls are taking a nice long nap. We’ll see how the next five days treat me but so far, it is nive to have time with the girls and they have not been too hard on me.

Putting too much trust in pre-ordering music?

I’ve been using the iTunes Music Store for a couple of years, ever since I got my first iPod. While I love the concepts of being able to buy music singles or entire albums at my leisure and getting easy previews of the songs, I’ve been appalled recently by the number of album pre-orders that are showing up on iTMS. For example, the new Jack Johnson CD (Sleep through the static) has been on there since Christmas).

Pre-ordering a DVD of a movie you have seen or that you saw a good preview for is one thing, but my main problem with the concept of pre-ordering music is that you have no clue whether or not an artist’s next CD will be good or not. All you get is a single song preview which is typically one of the best tracks of the album, or which is just the first single released.

Again, going back to Jack Johnson, I was tempted to make a pre-order for his new CD since I absolutely loved his last one, “In Between Dreams”. It was kind of tempting since they even offered an extra track that you would not get when the CD actually comes out. In the end, I decided not to pre-order and was actually glad about it when I logged onto iTunes today and saw that there are not really any tracks that catch my ear on his latest effort. Perhaps 30 seconds song clips are too short to form an opinion, but the opinion of many others on the site seemed to indicate similar feelings towards the new album. So, in short, I wonder how music pre-orders have become so popular.

iPhone goes 16 GB while iPod Touch goes 32 GB

After making everybody jump at Macworld when they announced that iPod Touch users would need to pay to get access to the new applications for the platform, Apple has just silently introduced new higher-capacity versions of their iPhone and iPod Touch. The new devices sport 16 GB and 32 GB of flash respectively.

Personally, the phone capabilities of the iPhone is not something I need while the 32 GB of the touch just seems overkill. Seriously, how many songs and videos does someone want to carry around? I recently converted my ENTIRE music collection to Mp3 format in 129 kbps format and it clocked in at 9 GB. In a 16 GB device, this still leaves 5-6 GB of space for videos and other content. Of course, I only placed music that I legitimately own. If I started to download and put any kind of music on there, then I guess that I could use up a lot more room.

Great little boombox from Sony

While a surround sound system is useful for a home theatre system, you often need to have other radios around the house, especially the kitchen, to listen to music while performing your chores.

The old Sanyo Boombox that I had since my college days was starting to behave very strangely, not always responding to button presses or doing the wrong thing on a button press, so I decided that it was time to retire it.

Using my AirMiles points (yes, these do come in handy sometimes), I ordered myself the Sony ZSSAT1 boombox. It comes with AM/FM radio with digital tuning (no more static!), a CD player that recognizes MP3s, a stereo line in jack to plug in my iPod as well as the ability to plug in an external antenna to get satellite radio programming.

While I will probably never use the satellite functionality, this is a very nice little radio with a full sound and all of the options needed to listen to my music any way I like. If you’re looking for a nice little radio, I would definitely recommend this one.

Daniel Bélanger, as good as ever on stage

My wife Andrée and I had the pleasure of seeing Daniel Bélanger on stage at a local college’s theatre this Thursday. After last seeing him on stage about 5 years ago, Bélanger is back on the road to support the release of a new album, L’échec du matériel.

With his laid back appearance (long beard, untamed hair, jeans and a sweater), his presence on stage was very strong and gave us an insight on his personality. The stage itself was also very interesting, with antennas and chimneys to make it look as if the band was playing on the rooftops.

More than half the set list was made up from songs from his latest album, but he still gave some room to his classics with some new musical arrangements. He also did about five songs where he was playing the guitar alone on stage to accompany his lyrics.

All in all, it was a very good show. It was also the first time that we were leaving Gabrielle was babysat at home. At least we felt that they were in good care since it was my sister taking care of them. The only other time when she had not been with us was for two nights at her grand-mother’s in December.

The High Definition format war is almost over, but wait before buying

As you might have heard, there are currently two high-definition DVD formats that are trying to get control of the market: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Both offer high quality 1080p images that look magnificent on a HD Television set and have similar technical specs. However, what has fueled this fued for more than a year is that most of the big Hollywood studio have sided with one side or the other, which meant that buying only one type of player would keep you from being able to see some titled in HD.

It looks like this conflict is going to be coming to an end in the near future since the one studio that was still on the fence, Warner, has sided with the Blu-Ray camp.

Even with this announcement, and the quasi-certitude that Blu-Ray will now get the upper-hand, don’t rush out and buy a Blu-Ray player, especially not a stand-alone one. This is because the Blu-Ray standard is not completely defined at this time. A new revision of the standard is expected in the fall of 2008. People who have invested in first generation stand-alone players will then have to buy a new one to be able to see new discs coming out at the end of this year. If you are considering the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, then you are pretty safe since they can easily do software updates to the video player part of the device.

I am personally waiting until the end of 2008 before investing in a high-definition player.