Well Thanksgiving is over, and I know that many of you are stuffed to the point of immobilization by the gigantic feast that you overindulged in. I know I am. I am just glad that after I fell asleep I didn't wake up 3 hours later thoroughly decorated with a Sharpie by my 2 year old cousin.
This year, besides just having dinner with my family, I went on a hike with some new friends early Thanksgiving morning, and when we reached our destination, we enjoyed a nice, cold brew. I was pumped. My friends have made this somewhat of a tradition, and I am so glad that I get to go along with them this year.
With that said, I realized that I have not really dedicated any of Nerdbrew to actual brews in a while now, so I thought I would give you guys info on some hopsy goodness.
This beer here, Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome, is the one that I enjoyed after my Thanksgiving day morning hike this past weekend. My initial thought was that the label was a little bit tacky, and the mouth has a foil cover on it similar to Magner's Cider. It is a winter ale, so it is seasonal, and will be gone soon. The foam that you get once it is poured is smooth and silky. The crisp, almost copper color is followed by a tasted of roasted malts, as well as a nice sweetness. None of the flavors are overpowering, but they work together to make a taste that was surprisingly good. I have not really came across a winter lager that I have really enjoyed, but this one is definitely worth it at least once while it is in season. More info here
Now I know there are a lot of people who like to keep the sweetness out of their alcoholic beverages. I am not one of them. I have always had a sweet tooth, and thatdoesn't stop when it comes to beer. So as you can guess, sometimes I like to go for a nice fruit flavored beer. The only fruity beer to ever land itself the honor of being in my top 5 favorite beers is Sea Dog: Blue Paw.
Blue Paw is a wild blueberry wheat ale that hits the taste buds just right. It doesn't taste like any other beer that I have ever had before. It tasted like a blueberry muffin. I have heard it referred to as a nice beer to go with breakfast. Some of you may think that this is a little weird, but after you have a few of these, you will realize that this beer actually does go great with a stack of pancakes. The blueberry spice in the beer is very tart and sweet. This isn't a beer that you can drink a lot of at once though. One or two of these will go great with a meal, or any other time you just want a beer to quench your hopsy thirst. More info here.
So right now I am watching The Godfather. As surprised as some of you might be, I have never seen it before, and I have been told by many that I need to see it.
The best part about catching up on movies is that every movie that is worth watching is at your fingertips. They are all easily downloadable from the internet, if you know where to look. Any film, video game, song, or computer program is available for free of charge. Of course, this is illegal. It breaks many of the copyright laws that are set to "protect" media from landing in people's hands for free who would otherwise pay for them.
The thing is, these laws may say that it is against the law to download stuff, but the enforcement of these laws are shitty. There has never been a good system for punishing media pirates, and people have been taking advantage of this since music became digital. As soon as CDs were first put on the market, and those music files could be put on home computers, people realized they could copy the music and give it to their friends for free. That is when Kazaa and Limewire came into the show, and started all the file sharing that costs the media industry millions if not billions of dollars a year.
This started of slow, though. Only a few people knew exactly how to do it, and many people were very impatient with how slow downloads were with those old dial-up connections that everyone had at that point. Everyone remembers how slow it was back then, and the annoying dial tone you had to deal with, not to mention that you couldn't get any phone calls when you were on.
Well things have changed, and internet speed has greatly increased. Songs that used to take up to five minutes to download now take a few seconds, and videos and games which would take immense amounts of time are now much more of a realistic download. Also, there is an army of pirates that can get by every tracker, piracy protection, and security programs that have been put out.
To get to my point, we are in the golden age of piracy right now. We are at the point that download speeds are fast enough that we can download whatever we want or need. There is nothing we can't get, so download all you want, and enjoy the freedom.
Unfortunately, the freedom that we have now is not going to be around for long. The internet is like the Wild West. We could go wherever you want, and there is nothing that anyone could do about it. Just like the Wild West, it will be controlled over time, and will be given the laws and regulations that every other area does.
The future of digital piracy is going to take a huge hit. As the internet becomes more understood, it will be better controlled. Some day in the near future, there will be a time when downloading will be tracked to the point where you will get a ticket in the mail every time you try to download something that is copyright protected. It will be impossible, and everyone will be punished.
I, for one, am not looking forward to this at all, and I know that many of you are not looking forward to it either. So, everyone go out and download every single movie, song, game, and program that you can, before you are no longer able. When this golden age is gone, it will be missed.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out tonight, as most of you know. The movie has been getting a lot of buzz lately, and all of the wizard wannabees are all as giddy as philippino men when their Miss Philippines wins the Miss Universe Pageant:
Anyways, I will be going to a midnight showing. I am a Harry Potter fan, but I am not a huge one. I have read all of the books, and I can throw a decent amount of info your way on it, but I am going because I was invited to go. I am curious to see how many people will be dressed like wizards, if any, at all. Hopefully, someone will drive by the theater and yell, "Harry Potter sucks" and I will get to see the reaction of everyone.
Side note: You know what is better than yelling that "Harry Potter sucks"? You have to yell the wrong series, like someone tonight yelling, "Lord of the Rings sucks". That really gets the hardcore fans going cause they think that you don't even know what they are going to see.
Hey, if I had a wizard's robe, I would probably wear it tonight, but I have a feeling that someone is going to take it too far, like this kid:
Don't really have much to say about that, cept that he is probably going to break his nose trying to get to platform 9 3/4s.
I will probably update this post with a little review about what I thought of the show in the near future. Hopefully it is good. I am not sure why there is so much hype, because everyone knows what is going to happen: There is going to be a huge cliffhanger since they split it up into two separate films... sorry to ruin it for ya.
Update:
Well, I think the movie was done really well, although I am not a very harsh movie critic, so take my comments with a grain of salt. The film was definitely much darker than any of the other movies that have been released. It definitely feels like all of the characters are growing up and finally leaving the cushy confines of Hogwarts. Character development is definitely there, but it is a long ways away from the adolescent love triangles that was in the previous movie. I can really see why they decided to split this book into two movies. There needs to be a smooth transition from how all the main characters changed so drastically since Voldemort has come to power, and showing enough footage of the characters going through experiences that force them to grow up rather quickly.
Of course, everyone that read the books knew that this movie was going to end in a cliffhanger, and I can honestly say that I am pumped to see the final film. Thank god they didn't decide to wait a year for it like Lord of the Rings had done in the past. It is definitely going to end with a big bang.
I wonder if this is the end of the media giant that is Harry Potter. JK Rowling has said in the past that it is the last book in the Harry Potter series. She has left things opened though:
Even though the Harry Potter saga essentially ended with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, author J.K. Rowling recently left the Hogwarts door open just a crack to penning more books about the famous boy wizard.
"I could definitely write an eighth, ninth, tenth," she told Oprah Winfrey on the talk show host's October 1 show. "I'm not going to say I won't. I don't think I will ... I feel I am done, but you never know." Link Here to full article.
I would like to see more of Harry Potter, and I am sure there are many other people that would love it too. I have never seen another book get more people reading than the little wizard boy and I am sure that she is being pushed by publishers as well as her fans to write another. There is a lot of money riding on another book, and I am sure there are a lot of people trying their best to get in on the cut. I wonder how she would do it though. Would she write a book that takes place after all the Voldemort Shenanigans, or will she write something that happens in the middle? She could even go through and write something about Lilly and James Potter, Harry's parents for those of you who don't know.
Most likely, if she was writing another, I think that it would follow in chronological order for a few reasons. I think that she would want to write more about Harry, Ron, and Hermoine. That is what the fans want, and I think that she would feel a emotional attachment to them. This kicks out writing about Harry's parents. Secondly, each of the books was about a year in Hogwarts. If she was going to write another book about those times, she would have to cram a whole book into a small area of one of the other books, unless she decided to do something about a summer vacation or something. That, I think, is a little farfetched. Finally, they already have actors, ones that fans are crazily in love with, that they will want to see more of. If they tried to make a movie about past events, they would have to get new actors, and no one likes when actors are replaced.
So we will just have to wait and see. She might come out with even a brand new book idea, but I do not think it will turn out nearly as good. She has to hurry up though.
So we will have to wait and see what comes out of it all.
I don't watch a lot of TV. Any free time that I have I think is usually better off playing video games than watching TV. I don't even have cable in my apartment. Anyways, there is one show that I will watch religiously, and that show is Dexter.
Now, the first thing people usually say to me when I say that is, "Dexter's Lab?" No. Not Dexter's Lab. Dexter is about a serial killer. It is now in the 5th season, and is still holding my attention greatly when it comes to the time of year that the show starts airing again. Dexter Morgan is the victim of seeing his mother killed at a very young age. The trauma of seeing this has changed his life forever, and he now has an unquestionable thirst for blood. His adoptive father Harry, which also happens to be the police officer who found Dexter in a pool of his mother's own blood, noticed this. Harry realized that he could never change Dexter, and that he was inevitably going to be violent as an adult. Since Dexter could not be changed, Harry tought Dexter how to kill people who deserved it, such as serial killers and murderers. More importantly, Harry taught Dexter how to not get caught.
You might recognize Michael C. Hall from the HBO show Six Feet Under
It is a very good show that really holds my attention, and is not mindless like most of the shows that you have seen coming out in the past few years. The character development is amazing, as well as the actors who play them. Unfortunately, this show only shows the recent episodes on Showtime, and if I won't even pay for cable, then I sure as hell won't pay for showtime.
This is where the internet comes in handy. We live in the golden age of piracy right now, but that is another post within itself. Usually, what is done is that you could download the video with torrents. These files are wonderful; HD picture and fast download speeds. I couldn't ask for more. The problem is that when you are at work, you can't use torrents, so you would have to find other means of getting your free videos.
This is where megavideo.com comes in. They have a shitload of free videos that you can watch, and they are all in fairly good quality when you compare it to other free streaming videos that you can find on the web. There is a catch though:
Nothing is more annoying than getting into a television show and then having this pop up. It is very unfortunate that they are trying to get cash out of you in this way. They are already letting you watch pirated videos, and they want to charge you for it? The reason that people watch videos online is so they don't have to pay for it. I don't know who runs megavideo, or who came up with this idea, but I doubt they are making a lot of money by trying to get people to pay for this service. From what I have seen on other websites, the memberships don't work properly, and you still get the error that you have watched too much.
So, after watching one and a half episodes of Dexter, and getting super pissed that I couldn't finish watching it, I tried to find a way to get around the megavideo limitations.
For an hour I looked, and I came up with nothing. I searched google, tried redirecting sites, changing my clock an hour ahead, rejecting cookies from megavideo.com...nothing. By the time I gave up, I had 4 minutes to go before my wait time was over.
If you really want to watch things on megavideo for free, you could try downloading an external program that let's you watch them. I was being lazy and was looking for an easier process.
So if you want to check out Dexter, they have the first four seasons on Netflix streaming, so I would seriously recommend you watch them that way. If you have already seen the first four seasons, I recommend that you download them with torrents and watch the season 5 episodes that way. For the few of you that are like me and are in a place where you can't use torrents, go to the site below, and deal with the love hate relationship that is megavideo.
