The acting was good and the computer graphics were breathtaking; best of all, it didn’t have the gaping plot holes that movies like The Day After Tomorrow had. The only complaint I have about the movie is that like most disaster movies, it’s a bit predictable. Every time the protagonists would get into a vehicle, they’d narrowly escape death in a similar way, just in the nick of time. Everything in this movie happened just in time, not to mention that the driving and piloting was far from realistic; seriously, who’d drive through a collapsing building or under a falling freeway? The story was fairly straightforward, but it only started to make sense at around the halfway point. About half of the main characters survived, with the other half dying in heroic, manly deaths.

The graphics were incredible, if not a little excessive. The cause of the disaster seems a lot more believable than other movies, which rely on global warming, aliens, etc. However I feel this movie had a bit too many deep emotional moments, and that just made it drag on for even longer, making this two-and-a-half hour movie feel longer than it actually was. The writers of this movie tried to inject a little bit of humor into the dialogue, but it ended up feeling forced and detracted from the whole “end of the world” mood. The ending is your typical sappy ending, with happy couples and a bright future…

All in all, 2012 was a fairly enjoyable movie, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes disaster movies such as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and Knowing. Out of 10, this movie earns a solid 7. 

Apps, Apps, and Apps

The app store was one of Apple’s greatest innovations- a centralized database, where users can buy, rate, review, and update their apps. Using it is a joy, and happily, most of the apps are of a very high quality. Just like the ads say, there is an app for everything. If you can think of it, there’s probably an app for it. Since several readers have iPod Touches as well, I’ll list my top apps:

• Mail, Safari, Notes: These are all fantastic apps that come with the iPod by default, and I use them on a daily basis. A lot of the posts here are written in that Notes app and then copy/pasted into the WordPress app for publishing.
• Facebook: A great app for wasting a lot of time.
• Tweetie: A paid app, but it’s one of the best, if not the best, Twitter client for the iPod/iPhone.
• Flashlight: A deceptively simple app, but one of the most useful if you need to find something in the dark.
• Beejive IM: At $9.99, it’s a rather expensive app, but it’s a top-notch IM client, and chatting with multiple accounts on it is seamless.
• Ego: A great stat-tracking app. I can track my Mint stats, Twitter stats, Feedburner stats, and Pagerank.
• Reader: A fantastic RSS reader.
• iStat: It shows the iPods performance, and has a “free memory” feature which frees up valuable RAM, making the iPod run faster without a time and battery-consuming restart.
• Convertbot: An awesome conversion app, it can convert almost anything, and it has a very nice UI to boot.

Durability and Longevity

With a good case and a screen protector, the iPod is virtually indestructible, and has survived long falls unscathed. The battery life is still pretty good, and the screen still functions like new. Using the touch screen feels natural and fun, even after a year. The small animations scattered throughout the OS are still nice and haven’t become annoying, even after a year.

Space

Even after a year I still have plenty of space left on the iPod. This might not be the case for everybody, but 8gb is more than enough for all my needs. Currently I have several movies and about 700 songs on it, with room to spare.

Conclusion

Even after a year, my iPod Touch remains a very useful little gadget. I use it almost every day, and I’d say it was $300 well spent. 

The record starts out with a soft keyboard track, titled Rebirth, which is somewhat reminiscent of the synths in the previous album. The second track is quick and violent, with a nice melody as well. The second track is pretty much more of the same goodness. After that comes Now Arise, which is one of the longer songs on the album. The keyboardist provides some solid backup vocals on the track as well. The following two tracks are good, but nothing exceptional. After those comes Exist, which I consider to be one of the best tracks on he album. It’s heavy as well as melodic, with a lot of technical riffing. The track ends with a fantastic palm-muted breakdown, which is one of the qualities Born of Osiris is known for. The track that comes afterwards is a very melodic one as well, with a catchy, almost chorus-like middle. It ends with a slow melodic section, leading into A Descent, which has a mellow intro, followed by punishing technicality. The title track is unexceptional, much like the title track in their previous release. An Ascent follows after, and is as melodic as A Descent. The last two tracks are good enough, but nothing special.

Compared to their earlier release, the guitars have greatly improved, and they take the lead this time, with the keyboard only providing atmospheric sound. The keyboardist provides more backing vocals in this release, and the bass is inaudible as usual. The drumming remains top-notch, and vocals have improved slightly, but they were pretty good in the last release as well. The vocalist has a somewhat limited vocal range, staying with the mid-range screams, but he uses them well, providing a solid performance throughout. Production is just as good, if not better, than that of the previous album’s.

Summary

In conclusion, this record is a worthy succesor to The New Reign, but it does have some flaws. Some of the tracks on the record feel like filler, and the whole record is a bit short, due to the short song lengths. Out of 10, I’d say this record earns a solid 9. If you like metalcore, deathcore, or any combination of the two, this record is worth picking up. If you’re a Born of Osiris fan, then getting this record should be a no-brainer for you.

Pages load much faster, and even though it’s a beta, Safari 4 never lags or freezes, even after opening ~100 tabs. The develop menu, when enabled, is amazingly useful for web development. I can easily disable images, javascript, and styles with just one click. Safari also has the ability to change its User Agent, so that websites see it as a different browser. For example, I could masquerade as IE 6 for those annoying websites that require IE. The web inspector is almost exactly the same as Firebug, but it looks a lot nicer. See the two screenshots below for comparison:

Firebug (Firefox)

Web Inspector (Safari)

The new tab placement is very much like Chrome’s, with the tabs at the top of the window. After using Firefox for so many years, it feels a bit awkward to have the tabs at the very top, but after using it for a day, I got accustomed to it. My only gripe with the tabs is that I can’t drag the tabs around unless I use the little drag area on the right of each tab.

Safari Tabs

Now Glims adds some nifty features of its own, such as the ability to reopen a recently closed tab with cmd + z. Having closed many tabs by accident, I cannot even begin to stress how useful this features is. Another useful feature is the ability to switch between tabs using only “,” and “.” By far the most useful modification is the expansion of the search bar. I can now choose from dozens of search engines as well as Wikipedia. When I start typing, a whole auto-suggest overlay pops up, which looks cool as well as being quite useful.

Search Suggest

As with all good things, Safari has some annoyances, the main one being its annoying form-handling. Whenever a form element is focused, an ugly glow appears around the element. Unless explicitly defined in the CSS, Safari will always display the glow. It would be nice if Apple gave us the option of turning off the annoying glows.

Safari 4 also has the “Top Pages” view enabled on new tabs and windows by default. It shows the top 9 sites in a rather gimmicky, faux-3D kind of way. Cover flow is also enabled in the history, which is actually quite useful, as it allows me to see previously visited sites rather than just looking at URLs.

By typing any letter (when not in a form, of course), Safari activates the page search and dims the website, highlighting the found terms. Esc closes the search. Very useful and efficient, as I don’t need to use the mouse.

Page Search

So far I’m really pleased with how Safari 4 is turning out. I’m hoping the final version will be even better.