Jun 14 2012

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted review

This past weekend a friend and I went to see Madagascar 3 in the theatre. We both had had a rough week at work, and thought that a funny, completely fluff film might help take off the edge. Having seen the other two Madagascar flicks, I expected that this one would be filled with humour, edgy jokes that would be above the kids’ heads, and have some wit to boot. My expectations were, indeed, fulfilled throughout the course of the show.

Madagascar 3 circus afro

This latest piece in the Madagascar puzzle follows Alex, Marty, Gloria, and Melman as they try to get back to their home in the New York City zoo. This time, though, they end up in Europe (in search of the infamous penguins). After causing quite a hubbub in a casino in Monte Carlo, Captain Chantel DuBois–the Chief of Animal Control–is out to capture the gang… especially Alex. Whilst trying to outrun the police, the group runs into a travelling circus that could use a little assistance out of their rut. It just so happens that this circus is headed for London, and then New York City!

There were times during the film that I felt like I was trying to play catch-up; it was incredibly fast-paced, and seemed a little bit scattered. However, that type of sitcom-esque scene jumping might have been intentional in order to keep the attention of the intended audience–namely, children. Other than the slightly attention-deficit-inducing scene shifts, my only other qualm with the film was the unnerving sea lion named Stefano. While he had some quality lines that made me chuckle, his accent was obnoxious and continuously made me think about Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. We certainly don’t need any reminders of that awful character.

I don’t want to give away any of the outstanding one-liners or the crux of the storyline, so I’ll leave you to see Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted for yourself. Coupling some AMAZING computer animation (especially during the circus performance scenes, which reminded me of Rainbow Road from Mario Kart 64), great humour, and even a touch of romance between King Julien and a tutu-clad, mute, giant bear make Madagascar 3 an outstanding addition to the series.

Madagascar 3 - King Julien and the tutu bear

7 / 10 for being just plain fun!

Filled starFilled starFilled starFilled starFilled starFilled starFilled starUnfilled starUnfilled starUnfilled star

Cheers,
Zach

Jun 13 2012

T-Mobile SGS2 ICS update via Kies successful

Yesterday, I ran into a few problems when trying to update my SGS2 (SGH-T989) to Android 4.0.3 ICS. The problems were indeed related to having Window$ installed in a virtual machine. Both Windows 7 and Windows XP exhibited problems, though different ones, respectively. Today at work, I used my laptop (which has Windows 7 as the host OS) to install the updates via Samsung’s Kies application, and it went through without any major issues. The only problem that I had was that my work’s firewall wouldn’t allow for the download of the firmware. Luckily, I just used another phone as a mobile hotspot, and the upgrade was successful!

After I gave the problems of last evening some thought, it occurred to me that they were likely caused by the USB passthrough functionality of the Type II hypervisor. The operation could have required special privileges in terms of direct USB access on the host machine. As such, the sandboxed environment would likely reject such requests. However, it would have been nice for VirtualBox to have logged some type of error. However, I would imagine that the problem I experienced with the firmware upgrade is similar in nature to 1) not being able to directly access a GPU from within a guest OS, and 2) not being able to burn an audio CD from within a guest OS. Maybe one day these two operations will work, but until then, at least my SGS2 is running ICS.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich ICS

As for ICS, I do like it compared to Gingerbread, but I still don’t like the Samsung proprietary skin of TouchWiz (although it is better than HTC’s mess that is Sense UI). I greatly prefer AOSP ROMs, and especially CyanogenMod (although there is likely a personal bias involved). I’m sure that we’ll have CM9 sometime in the future; at least a completely functional “unofficial” port. Until then, I haven’t found an AOSP ROM of which I’m particularly fond, so the Samsung official 4.0.3 shall do. 🙂

Cheers,
Zach

Jun 12 2012

T-Mobile US Samsung Galaxy SII (SGS2 SGH-T989) update to Android 4.0.3 ICS

T-Mobile of the United States announced on their support blog yesterday that owners of the T-Mobile variant of the Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2, or model SGH-T989) would now be able to update their phones from Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread) to Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich [ICS]) via the Samsung Kies application. Interestingly, the update to ICS is only available through the manual installation method through Kies, and will not be sent out OTA (over-the-air).

Since I don’t have any computers that run Windows or Mac OS, I had to fire up a virtual machine in order to install the Samsung Kies application. Other than the download being a bit on the slow side (probably due to Samsung’s download servers being overloaded) and the typical Samsung bloatware, the Kies installation went smoothly inside of a Windows XP SP3 VM. Thereafter, I simply had to enable USB Debugging in the settings menu, connect the phone via USB, and enable USB passthrough in the XP VM. Of course, I had to reboot the VM in order for the application to function properly, as is the case with most Windoze programmes.

I’m not sure if it was related to having Kies installed inside of a VM, but I had to minimise the main Kies application window immediately after starting the programme. If I didn’t do so, the firmware upgrade screens were behind the main application window, and none of the options could be selected. Further, once the process started, the progress window glitched and didn’t display any status updates. After that glitch, the firmware transfer simply halted. At that point, I decided to try the upgrade in a Windows 7 VM. The application installed successfully, and didn’t have the visual glitches that were seen in the XP VM, but I couldn’t get the drivers to function properly in Windows 7, so no go there either.

So much for upgrading to ICS a little bit early… at least from within a VM. Maybe I will give it a try tomorrow on my work laptop, which unfortunately has Windows 7 as the primary OS.

Cheers,
Zach