So, hey! Did you hear the news? Internal beta of Crysis 2 leaked yesterday all over the place. And rather late beta version at that (signed 13th of January). Tho still with bugs, rather playable. As far as performance goes, well, saying “but can it run Crysis?” still stands strong.

But there’s one other thing that’s buggering me - everyone crying about how bad it is and how this only shows why PC gaming is dying. Well, you know what? Fuck you! Tho this is quite big and not everyday we get to see internal betas leaked, in the end of the day nothing is changed. It’s still quite far from finished product, so most you get it to sate your curiosity and confirm that no, your PC can’t handle Crysis. If anything it only helps the sales, as it gets more people talking about the game. Also, leak or no leak, I can guarantee you that it will be cracked and downloaded a million times first day it’s out. AND. May I point out that majority of pirates don’t buy their games anyway.

I’m not saying it’s ok, or whatever, but don’t act like this is the end of the world.

Fuck yeah! After some tinkering around firewall and Firefox Hulus geo-blocking is no more. And that’s without proxies or VPNs. Not that I couldn’t get stuff anyway, but still its nice to have it. All thanks to reddit.

In short it involves spoofing header so that Hulu thinks your from the great US. Basically how you do it is like this:

• Get this addon for Firefox.

• Set it up like this.

• Block outgoing UDP and TCP port 1935 in Windows firewall.

• Now block outgoing TCP port 80 for following ip addresses: 206.33.62.126, 198.78.201.126, 207.109.221.177 and 207.109.221.184. Also ping hulu.cust.footprint.net and block that ip as well, if it’s not one of those.

Lastly clear your cookies and you should be good to go.

Ok, so it’s on. Just 33 days till Oscars and nominations are now out. Nothing really surprising for the most part. So lets quickly go over my expectations from what I’ve seen last year.

The Social Network should and will most probably take home Oscar for best adapted screenplay, director, music and probably editing. As far as best movie goes, I’ll abstain myself from any predictions there. Most of the nominees have deserved it (tho I’m still doubting about Kids Are All Right after seeing it few days ago, but w/e).

My second favorite this year Black Swan will probably earn Oscar for Natalie Portman… and sadly thats about it. Tho I love it to bits, its more like heart and mind thing - your mind says it won’t be the one. But, oh, how I would like to see Daren Aronofsky going home with Oscar this year. He has never disappointed me.

The Kings Speech will most definitely get an Oscar for Colin Firths amazing performance as stuttering king George IV and also most probably one for Geoffrey Rush in supporting role. Those two made one of the best on screen duos this year. Tho I wouldn’t be to disappointed if Christian Bale won it for his role in The Fighter.

Another of my favorites, True Grit. Well, I see it earning Oscar for Hailee Steinfeld as best supporting actress, and possibly for best art direction and costume design. Tho both those nominations are rather… unimpressive.

Lastly onto special effects category, which leaves me bit lost. Only possible winner is see here is Inception. Other had either mediocre effects or… or… I don’t know. I mean, Alice In Wonderland and Iron Man… Yawn. Where’s Tron: Legacy and Scott Pilgrim? And, actually, where’s Scott Pilgrim in film editing category? But anyhow - when it comes to special effects it wouldn’t be the first time for some weird choices when it comes to academy. Remember the year Golden Compass won over Transformers?

There are some more categories, but this was what I mostly had to say about it all. Looking forward to another Oscar night on big screen this year.

After initially having very little interest in COD:Black Ops, I finally decided to give single player campaign a go (not really that interested in multiplayer as I finally have decently performing Bad Company 2). And wow. Was that a fun thrill ride. Ridiculous but impressive almost from get-go. I mean, Vorkuta… whoa! Tho I have no interest in playing it again, it was a day well spent.

Even tho story wise it was nothing really new, but definitely an upgrade from Modern Warfare 2 (whatever the hell happened there). Also this time with 2x more lolz then previously. I mean, cmon. “You see that Hind? We’re going to take it!” and Hudson with his shades somewhere near the end. Only thing it was missing was The Who blasting in background.

Overall - day off well spent!

As of yesterday I’ve semi-permanently joined the Reds. I mean, ATI-AMD. Finally after few months of abstaining from gaming since my 8800gts 512 finally kicked the bucket I finally got it replaced with HD 4870 1GB. Saying replaced as it wasn’t really that much of an upgrade, seeing how the green beast that 8800 was managed to get scores in 3dmark and other benches that weren’t far off from what 4870 achieves, tho it still scales better with higher resolutions.

Also I’m bit disappointed by it’s overclocking potential. Just mere 40~50 mhz increase in both VRAM and core clocks? Meh. Tho I have feeling core can go higher than that, it’s running hot as it is. 8800 was, like, made of rubber. No matter how hard one pushed there still was some room… until it kicked. Just as I was thinking about voltmod.

But anyhow. Considering I’m on a Intel motherboard and they are rather dirt cheap I’ll probably get another one next month and run ‘em in crossfire. That should be sufficient for my needs for a while more.

Some fiddling yet ahead to find out what it can really do.

According to latest press release from FOX they are releasing some of their screeners, namely 127 Hours, Black Swan and Conviction on iTunes for SAG members to download. While I pretty well know all three of those movies have leaked already, I sure as hell would like to see Black Swan in highdef and with at least some 100’000 members having access to those screeners I’m thinking there will be at least one dare devil/moron to his version up on torrents or whatever.

Today was the day I finally got to see TRON: Legacy and oh my, was it worth the wait (it doesn’t open here till next Friday actually). Best way to describe it would be audio-visual orgasm as this must be one of the most consistently breathtaking pieces to grace silver screen.

While I wouldn’t necessarily call it good movie in classical sense, this marks the first time in years I was giddy with excitement. Design, perfectly clean and neat aesthetics, Daft Punk, Olivia Wilde and Jeff Bridges playing the omnipotent creator. And speaking of him - watching Big Lebowski last night ensued for some amusing associations - especially after the “Man… You’re messing with my Zen thing” line. But all in all too bad there was so little of him in the action. But then again, there was Rinzler to ensue badassness.

This kinda makes me think what Avatar should have been like, without it’s blue cats and obnoxious environmental message.

There are so many coffee-and-stuff machines and dispensers here at work its almost like Borderlands with looting ever-changing weapon chests. Except instead of guns you’re looking for coffee and tea and stuff. Today I found out that one even has clear soup. Lol?

This was one of those movies, that in the end leave you looking bluntly at the screen with just one thought in your mind - “and your point was…?”. Ok, perhaps not totally so, thanks to Carey Mulligan, but talk about lack of payoff. It desperately tried to bring some huge none-existent message across with its heartbreaking story I’m not even sure creators themselves believed in/got it.

Yes, performances from Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Bambi… I mean, Andrew Garfield were great, visually it was beautiful, but all together not so much. Even tho I guess having made me feel slightly depressed in the end it wasn’t complete and utter failure it can still be summed up with “ambitious but rubbish”.

One thing it did, was leave me wondering how will Garfield handle Spiderman?