Oops, they did it again, they brought back another season of The Apprentice. But it is not just any season, it is a season full of celebrities. But honestly though, the biggest celebrity of them all is Donald Trump and you know it. I would bet that most everybody has no clue who half of these “celebrity” apprentii are or why are they are even famous. Nevertheless, it has been interesting so far to see these semi-famous individuals try and do business. These celebrities put out work that is not that far off from the work of the business professionals that we’ve seen in previous seasons. And it makes me think that you don’t really need to major in business to MAJOR IN BUSINESS. In otherwords, business has no requirements, anybody can do it. And because of this, I must widen my definition of what a business person is to include drug dealers and hoes. Donald Trump would like you to believe that you need to go to the Wharton School of Business to be successful, but he is only speaking what he knows. There are plenty of people that are more successful than him that never went to that school or any other school of business.

I can say this, if it weren’t for Ivanka Trump I would have stopped watching ages ago. Ah cha cha cha.

This week I received my XBox 360 Premium from NewEgg with the goal of streaming video from my computer to my XBOX.

Previously, I had to have my laptop computer connected to the TV and then via that I would browse the network and play the video file I wanted to watch. But that was such a hassle and if I wanted to use my laptop for other things, well then I would have to disconnect it from the TV and reconnect it later. Now that I have a dedicated XBOX near the TV it makes life much easier. The XBOX’s interface makes browsing through my collection of videos simple so that anybody can use it.

Using Media Center Extender
XBOX 360 can function as a Media Center Extender, meaning that the interface which you see on your computer for Media Center, is the same interface that you will see on the XBOX. So acts as a computer that is running the Media Center program.

At home I have two machines, one my Vista development machine and the other is a XP machine with all my media and video files. I was able to use the Media Center extending capabilities of the Vista machine, but when I tried to add a shared folder from off the network it would only recognize shared folders from machines that were running a Media Center capable operating system. So all I could see were the shared folders for our laptops and my Vista machine.

There were two options at that point, upgrade the XP machine to Vista to be able to use Media Center Extender or find another way to stream the videos. Because I didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of upgrading the machine, I opted to find another way. Plus the Media Center Extender interface was slow and unresponsive at times.

Using Nero MediaHome Server
So then I tried the latest version of Nero’s MediaHome Server , version 8.2.8. I had used it previously to serve up videos to my cousin’s Playstation 3, but even when I did that I noticed major reliablity issues. I thought it would be worth another try to see how well it interacted with my XBOX 360. Surprisingly the interaction between the server and the XBOX was a lot better than it had been with the Playstation 3. What makes Nero MediaHome server attractive is that it could re-encode all the videos into whatever format the device needs.

After testing it out what I found is that navigating all the videos was incredibly slow. We’re talking about 1000+ videos. Another feature I disliked was the fact that when you navigate to say “Nero Media Home (NATHANI)” it then brings up its own menu with options, “My Videos”, “My Music”, “Web Radio”, etc.

Using Windows Media Player Sharing
Windows Media Player 11 has a sharing option that allows you to share your media with other devices on the network including the XBOX 360. At first I was hesitant about using it because you know, Windows Media Player is kinda crap, but this crap suprised me. Serving up a list of 1000+ videos took only a few seconds. Setup was easy, there were no extra programs you needed to install, buy, or configure, and it integrated well. For navigation Windows Media Player sharing presents a list of the folders that you are sharing. It is great. I already know what I have in which folder and I can navigate to which ever one I want accordingly.

Using TVersity
For the Playstation 3 I tried TVersity. I didn’t get a chance to try it for my XBOX 360, because I was turned off by it. The software’s interface is a piece of crap and looks like a poor rip off of Apple TV. Seriously, if I wanted an Apple TV, I would have bought one, but thank God I didn’t. Even on the Playstation 3 the TVersity software didn’t seem to work all that well it just didn’t feel robust.

Compared to SageTV
Another product available that will allow you to watch videos on your television is called, SageTV. It is something that I’ve even developed a plugin for. After my experience with the XBOX 360 I’ve found that the XBOX tops any sort of machine that runs SageTV. Can SageTV play games? I didn’t think so. Either way you’ll end up paying for a new machine having to sit next to the TV, unless of course you have a really long cord that just connects from your computer to your TV. With the XBOX 360 you get more bang for your buck compared to what you could get with a machine that has SageTV installed on it.

Listen up Hollywood, and you too Sylvester Stallone, “Your sequels blow!” Rocky, you should be dead by now, give it up. Rambo, vietnam is over, come back home!

As we watched the previews for Alien vs Predator 2, today, I couldn’t help but notice all the trailers were for sequels. Let’s see we saw previews for Step Up 2 which looked like another gay dancing movie and Rambo which is horribly predictable. You ought to pay me to see those sequels and you should have paid me to see Alien vs Predator 2.

When Alien vs Predator 1 was released I thought that some of the sets looked fake, especially the one with the frozen town. Granted, it had a decent story and was able to keep my attention. Something I can’t say the same for Alien vs Predator 2.

The whole movie was dreadfully slow. It was painful, like pulling teeth. Whoever approved the script for it should be fired. There were a lot of “filler” scenes were you would just see fighting between an alien and a predator. How boring. Wake me when it’s over. At least in the previous film, there was an interaction and understanding between the humans and the predators. Not so in part AVP2. There was just so much killing and dieing that you didn’t care who lived and who died anymore. To hell with ‘em all. They even had the audacity to kill of the hot chick at the end played who was played by Kristen Hager. What kind of world are we living in where the only hot chick in a movie dies. Pathetic.

Perhaps they tried to had. No, they did try too hard. It was over KILL. They must have sat down at a table and said, “What haven’t we killed before? Let’s see.. Oh! How about children and pregnant women. Sounds great! Lets do it.” And so they did. Hold on, I am going to give away the ending (don’t worry it is not worth seeing anyways) but at the end they even killed the whole town! Where haven’t we seen a town blown up due to containmentation before? Boring. It would have been better if the military came in and killed them all with hand weapons and then used the alien technology to build a ship and fly to deliver the nuke to the alien home world. Now I’m thinking that I should be writing the scripts. People that know me, know I’d be good at inventing crazy-ass plots like that. What has Hollywood come to!

It was the same old story. I wanted the aliens or the predators to do something new that they’ve never done before. Don’t they ever invest in technology. They are able to travel through space, but yet they can’t come up with like better weapons. The only weapons the predator has is 1). Kung Fu 2). A knife 3). A shoulder mounted ray gun 4). a comakozie bomb on their wrist. Aliens what can they do besides pour acid on you and pop out your belly. Give me something exciting, not the same ol’ dog and pony show. My brother complained because they only sent one predator after all the aliens. And it is true.. one predator? Lame sauce supreme!

The only saving grace is that they set themselves up well for Alien vs Predator 3. I am just not convinced that these same directors can pull it off.

It has been a while since I posted anything about television, but I liked this movie enough to post about it. Atonement is about a love story that never happened that should have happened but didn’t happen. A little girl had to ruin it. The story takes place before, during, and after World War II.

Over the break I saw several movies including War, Charlie Wilson’s War, Rush Hour 3, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Rise of the Footsolider (sux), and lastly Atonement. I would have to say that National Treasure and Atonement were byfar the best. If you’re looking for a film to rent, I would highly recommend this one.

Kitchen Nightmare has got to be one of the best shows on television right now. Each episode tackles a failing restaurant to try and help save it. Most of these restaurants are heavily in debt. There have been several that have been $500,000 or more in debt. It’s insane. Gordon Ramsey, a decorated chef, brings his British flare to the table. He acts as a consultant on the show and exposes why restaurants tank and what can be done to help save a sinking ship. In one of the older Kitchen Nightmare episodes on Clubway 41 aka Jacksons, Gordon Ramsey outlines some simple rules one should follow when running a restaurant.

1. Don’t assume that by winning an award that people will know who you are and where you are
2. Never appoint yourself head chef if you can’t cook
3. If you lose all powers of communication under pressure you shouldn’t even be in the kitchen
4. If your chefs can’t distinguish between heavenly and hellish flavors your customers won’t be coming back for more
5. Don’t give an establishment a name that makes it sound like a strip joint
6. Second floor establishments are extremely difficult to fill
7. Don’t attempt to cook elaborate food if you can’t master the very basics
8. Don’t assume you can run a restaurant just because you’ve worked in one
9. You’re only as good as your last service
10. Don’t sink your life-savings into a restaurant if you’re in any doubt

Probably the best movie I’ve seen in the longest time. Amazing Grace is about the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain and William Wilberforce’s crusade to end it.

It appears that talks are underway for The Apprentice to come back for it’s seventh and final season. They must have known that I enjoy watching it and didn’t want to upset me. All the news on the Internet makes it sound like The Apprentice will be back for sure, but I unless I see it with my own eyes I will not believe it. Right after the show ended they announced that was the end of that and now they want to bring it back. Uh huh. Apparently it will have celebrities contestants. Whatever gets them more ratings.. right? I mean comeon, which celebrities, besides Kato Kaelin and Larry Birkhead, would want to humilate themselves on national television by stepping in front of Donald Trumps firing line? I don’t know of any that would or any that would be stupid enough to. Why are they even considering bringing it back, you ask? Because, NBC’s line up is pathetic, and adding The Apprentice couldn’t possibly make their line up any worst than it already is.