Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2019-10-07

Hello everybody this is Shane Arman row you’re in the passenger seat with me passenger seat radio. It is October 7 2019. You are on my 13 mile commute home Welcome to the show. No stops to make my phone calls are done. With any luck, we will have a quiet, uneventful trip. Plenty of Showtime. It’s Monday, weekend when by far too quickly, right back to work. Tired nonsense over the weekend. So let’s talk about let’s talk about the nonsense over the weekend to begin with. And then we’ll see what other topics on my list of stuff to talk about. We’ll get to so over the weekend, there was a huge controversy those of you who are in the the UK keyless quest, custom song beat saber world you probably heard all about it already. But I want to take the opportunity to fully explain what happened over the weekend. And for those who may not have been privy to the conversation hasn’t went down. So it Hey, there’s Justin poor Justin is gonna be bored out of his mind at least the first half of this. So, in order to in order to have custom songs on beat Saber, on the quest VR headset, it requires a program called a beat on beaten. And what that does is, is it patches, the game beat Saber, much like the PC version, it patches beat Saber, so that you can inject custom songs into the program. Well over The weekend and actually over the last week Hey Travis over the last week, Oculus quest re released the 9.0 iOS upgrade suddenly front and center all over the all over the UI it starts talking about how it is against terms of conduct terms and conditions are Terms of Service to to modify any software and or to use it basically to use anything pirated the whole bit. So they all of a sudden put all these warnings front and center. Right. And listing of course, a link and you know what, shut up Travis. So the developer of bead on made a big public announcement said due to these terms of services, these terms of service, I am no longer going to continue to maintain beaten which essentially means Is that when the next version of beat saber comes out which it did, coincidentally, right about the same time, custom songs would be locked out. And there’d be no way to legitimately patch beat saber to use custom songs. And the internet fucking exploded. There are like 700 up arrows on this subreddit, post. There are like 11 1100 replies to it. It was a whole bunch of nonsense. And, of course, Oculus nor be games are saying anything about it. They’re not helping alleviate anybody’s fears. So essentially, you know, the terms and conditions the way that they’re outlined. They can if you’re using custom songs on beat Saber, they can terminate your account they can do all sorts of other crazy stuff to you. So this the beat on developer never got any cease and desist or anything he voluntarily pulled himself out. And, of course, now everybody blames Oculus everybody blames Beat games. It’s this whole big thing. But you know it’s a it’s unfortunate because you know, Hey Alex, what’s up? Because, you know beat games Understand? Listen, first of all let’s let’s let’s not mince words here. People, a lot of people bought a quest specifically to play modified beat saber and play with custom songs. There is no way in hell beat games nor Oculus want to piss off that community. These are the people driving the sales and the quest and they’re selling beat saber like crazy. And it’s making both companies money. their interest is in protecting their ass, right? So anyway, so there was a whole big hubbub over the weekend. I personally was I was really upset upset about it, because I truly believe that they were going to disable the ability to do that not punish you if you did it, but disable your ability to do so. So as things panned out, you can still use an old copy of beats ever you can still use an old copy Beat on, you can still use all your custom songs. But you know, it’s become more Gestapo and that Alex Jay Lopez came on I don’t know if I said hi now. And so anyway, so that was I spent a lot of the weekend dealing with that drama and sort of radio because I have a vested interest in custom custom songs on the saber because of the tool that I ride my beat mapper tools. So it was a whole big thing. So anyway, I wanted to share that if you’re really interested in understanding exactly what happened from top to bottom, go to beat mapper tools. com and click on the beat gate tab. That’s what I’m calling it beat gate. I will tell you everything that happened from top to bottom what you know what the risks are, and all that other stuff. So anyway, so naturally, everyone’s running around trying to get old copies of beat Saber, old copies of beat on which by the way, he took down his repository was open source. So the repositories pulled down. So now somebody making their own patches for it. It’s all it’s all a bunch of nonsense But anyway, so that that took a lot of my weekend. Oddly enough, just the whole everything about it was just crazy. All right, so enough of that because Travis is all pissed off. I’m talking about beat saber. Again, I’ll tell I’ll say one more thing about beat saver before I move on. The one thing I do want to mention is I’ve been working with major pickle on a map. So I’m trying to learn from him because I like his mapping style. And so I’ve been trying to learn from him but I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and work with him one on one. So he made a map. And I I live it for him right so there’s two parts to making a map one is actually making the map and the other one is providing all the lighting effects and the strobe effects and everything else. So I I went ahead and let the map and so it is Debbie Gibson’s only in my dreams if you want to see a joint collaboration between myself and major pick There you go. So one of my listeners reached out to me on discord and he mentioned this this company called frog leap studios, frog leap studios. And this guy this Leo dude his last name I would butchered if I pronounced it so his name is Leo. He creates metal covers of like, totally not metal songs, right? So if you can imagine a metal version of give it away now from Red Hot Chili Peppers that’s not that far from right. So it’s it’s it’s kind of pop ish, but it’s it’s a little more heavy right? Now imagine john Denver’s country roads turned into a metal version. That sounds a little more interesting, right? So this guy has got ass loads of covers well over 100 I think and they all they all have this sort of weird Metallica sound To him, he’s got that gravelly ass voice that sounds like you know Metallica. So I got sucked into that. Yesterday I started going through all their stuff and they’ve got I mean if you can imagine Ace of Base is the sign or circle of life or any number of the songs Jolene from from a dolly parton ream you know, rearrange is a metal version. It’s pretty good. He’s got you know Africa by toto Sultans of swing. I mean listen a great variety of songs that he is metal five, and he’s got sort of interesting little videos and he brings these, you know, kind of hot chicks in his little guest singers to you know, backup singers or whatever. So it’s good I would, I would give it a chance if it even sounds remotely interesting. I’m going to second here I’m trying to merge myself and get myself in a position where I can let my car drive me the rest of the way home. So yeah, I got sucked into that. That’s pretty good. Somebody Too Richard cheese with the 1950s Big Band covers. Yeah, I don’t know about that one. I enjoyed it a lot. I got totally sucked into that. I spent a whole bunch of time listening to those and watching some of these. Yeah, so anyway, so I wanted to mention that to you guys, because I know is always interested in those sorts of things. All right, let me clear that one out. So I’m, as you may or may not know, if you follow me on social media, I’m now a top writer on medium regarding the topic of virtual reality. So I’ve been trying to write more articles, shorter articles, I tend to get carried away I’m a long form writer, as you can tell by a lot of my other posts in my review lagoon stuff and I like to write long form. Well, sometimes you just need to pound some stories out right so I released a couple of news stories. One is about metallic tip charging cables. This works for a variety of devices, but I focused on the Oculus quest. And I also wrote an article about interviewing Larry distance and why it’s important when it comes to virtual reality. I looked up I did a whole bunch of research for it’s a shorter story, but it checks out. So I’ve been I’m excited. I’m like in the top 10 writers, I like number four something for, for virtual reality writers on medium. So I’m kind of excited about that. And more and more of my articles are getting picked up for you know, recommended content, right. So the curators of medium will pick articles and then feature them inside of well curated groups within the medium organization, right. So I think my, my magnetic charging cables got picked up for gadgets, and then there was another category that it got picked up for. So that’s really cool. I mean, you know, I’m not making a ton of bank off it but it throws a few bucks in my account at the end. When people go to the articles and they read them and they clap for them. I get a few pennies here in there. So little shackles from my hard work. But I’ve been enjoying writing these little articles and it’s nice to get a little bit of recognition. But the iPod article for those of you who don’t really know about it and why it’s important, it’s worth looking at. And it’s worth understanding why different VR headsets work in different ways. So if you’re into that sort of thing, I would definitely check it out. Let me see here. Let me hop back to the channel real quick. Hey, Brian, hold K Man. What’s up, man? Travis is posting some links with some I think some big band remake covers. That sounds kind of cool. Check that out when I get home. Let’s see. So another listener off on this court actually posted a deal from humble bundle. And they don’t do a lot of software bundles these days. They do a lot of gaming bundles and you know, sort of hit and miss. And usually when they do some sort of a software bundle, it’s not it’s not a great Software bundle. Well, I’m a huge fan of grills products, especially their video studio and paint shop Pro. Hey, what’s up Jesse? Jesse Leonard is here for a second live show. He said that’s awesome. So, anyway, this humble bundle is called the painter essentials. I think it’s called You can’t miss it. It’s on the main page. If you go to humble bundle for 25 bucks, you get the ultimate edition of paint shop pro 2020. That’s the latest version. Not last year’s version. Not the year before is version. But you get this year’s brand new 2020 Ultimate Edition with all the extra plugins and goodies. 25 bucks plus you get a whole bunch of other software, including Pinnacle Video Studio, I believe. And what was the other one that was pretty good corral painter, as well as some pretty neat looking vector graphics based paint program. So listen, even if all you do is get corrals paint shop pro Ultimate 2020 for 25 bucks. That’s a no brainer. I mean, it’s good for the next day day and a half I think so. I have not actually upgraded this year to 2020s version of paint shop Pro. So I jumped on that immediately. And I’m excited I’m excited to be able to share that deal with you. Right What else we got in here? Let’s see TV wise I am. I’m caught up on American Horror Story, which need that we need to get around to talking about that at some point. I’m OC See, I started another I started another documentary abducted in plain sight. I’m not done with that one yet. So I don’t really want to talk about that one in too much detail. Mr. Robot started. Yes, Mr. Robot started. I it’s my new elliptical show. Right. I’ve got a lot of elliptical shows right now. I got Bad got American Horror Story I got creep show what else is currently running right now that I’m that I’m watching is an elliptical show so I got a whole bunch of mine bouncing around so I’ve got plenty to watch and I started the first episode of season four the final episode or the final season of by the way Mr. Robot Mr. Robot and of course it’s it’s just as entertaining as always there was a an amazing opening scene very shocking very amazing that’s how you open a season and I won’t talk about it yet because I’m you know i’m going to give that week grace period before I talk about that first episode that yeah within the first I don’t know five to 10 minutes it’s like wow, okay, that’s that’s shot right out of the chute. No debt, no doubts about it. Let’s see. I’m trying to think of what else I’ve been watching. Because been catching my son up. Of course you guys know that. I’m trying to get myself Son to watch some of the films that I grew up watching. While he’s still while he still cares about my opinion. Right. So he’s closing in on the age where he doesn’t listen, he won’t be listening to anything I say so I’m trying to work him through the movies. So recently we caught we caught house for which a lot of people are not aware that there was a house for and a lot of people who are aware that there’s a house for know that there was not a house three. Right. So the house movies I’ll talk about these a little bit. I haven’t. I don’t know if I’ve talked about house in a while. Sean s Cunningham, who the name sounds familiar, but you may not know exactly what he’s attributed for. He was the guy that created Friday the 13th. Right, Sean s. Cunningham. He did a whole run of sort of horror genre movies in that timeframe and He is also responsible for the first two house movies now house is an interesting series there’s three movies actually even though the Latin The last one is called house for the first movie featured William cat and British American hero fame and it was a more of a scary sort of a dark macabre sort of humor but it’s a great movie it’s it’s fantastic and then use a lot of cutting edge special effects no CG shit, or some stop motion stuff in there but overall it’s really good you know, he had he inherits his aunt’s house that is loaded with like interdimensional doorways and all sorts of crazy time you know time travel dimensions pretty neat. It’s pretty neat. It’s any movie. Anyway, so they made a sequel called house to the second story Haha, get it second story house. But it’s a completely different movie altogether. It’s a completely different ghost story. It’s a completely different house. It’s literally just another Mother movie about a haunted house. It’s got bill Maher’s in it. Amy yar black Senate, you recognize a ton of people that are in there. The guy that played the van, you know, in Fright Night who played, Chris Aranda is a handy man. The game the guy’s name suddenly eludes me. But he’s in there. Who else is in there? You might know. This probably the big people. But anyway, that was really good. It’s about about this guy. He basically, you know, gets this old house and he inherits it. And his parents were killed in this house and his great grandfather comes back from the dead fun movie. So anyway, house three was actually like, a completely unrelated to the series sort of thing and there was it’s very strange. It has nothing to do with the house movies or the house series. So when they came around to doing another house movie Proper. House three was sort of already sort of there, right. So they just skip the number and they went the house for. And what makes house for interesting is it was obviously considerably lower budget. But it’s still fun. And it goes back to sort of the original house roots where it was more of a dark humor. And they did bring back William cat, which is great as Roger Cobb. He’s not in there a ton, but he’s got some nice little cameos and stuff in there. And what’s your name Terry Travis, I think is her name. She plays sort of the lead in there. And this is back when I mean she was good. I mean, she looked really good in there and she, she runs around and bra and panties and gets little naked from time to time. So if you’re into that sort of thing as well, it’s worth picking up a taking a look at all of these are available on blu ray, by the way. So that’s neat. So I introduced him to that. So that’s fun. He likes that likes, he really likes the house movies. And so after that He was really disappointed that William cat wasn’t in more of the film, right? Because he’s like I say, sort of a little more cameo ish. And I said, Well, you do know that. That he’s the star versus American hero. Right? And he’s like, I did not know that. I’m like, Well, yeah. And I said, Why don’t we sit down and we’ll watch the pilots you can see you know, how the me is the greatest American hero? Well, it’s a series you can kind of once you have the the basis of the story down, you can jump all over the seasons, right. And there’s some great episodes a great great episodes of the greatest American hero, the beast and black of course being my favorite, wear the suit let’s and travel into the fourth dimension, which is very cool stuff. But then of course, there’s times when the aliens come back and give them another instruction book. So there’s all sorts of fun the episodes but you don’t necessarily need to watch them all in order. So now that we’ve got the premiere out of the way, the the pilot, if you will, he knows the entire backstory, all the Players are there. So now we can jump around and just watch the good episodes. So that’s fun. And we started Independence Day with the 1996, of course, Will Smith film, you know, and he was commenting on it because he’s sensitive to special effects and things like that. He’s not nearly as anti CGI as I am. But even he was telling, you know, we talked about, especially when we’re watching a lot of these older movies, we talk a lot about the effects He’s like, was that CG was that what was that? How did they do that? And it’s kind of fun to be able to sit and talk with him. And it’s like, nope, those are miniatures. You know, that’s why they look good. You know, a lot of the spaceships in Independence Day, a lot of the buildings being destroyed. A lot of that stuff is all just great practical effects. Now there’s some CG that flew in there from time to time, but it’s not grotesque and, and my son made the comment that independence day actually looks like Better from a special effects point of view than a lot of modern movies. And I’m like, yo, that’s because of the practical effects. The miniatures. They don’t look dated, they don’t age. They look great. So we’re, I’d say about just over halfway through that he’s enjoying the shit out of it, which is a great movie. You know, it’s funny. But you know, the summer blockbuster, right, because I mean, you know, growing up, even, I mean, obviously, all the way to 1996. The summer blockbuster has always been a very special kind of movie. And it’s hard to put parameters around it. What makes a movie a summer blockbuster, right? Is it the feeling of sort of popcorn, check your brain at the door, lots of random action, what makes a summer blockbuster, a summer blockbuster, you know, and if you go back and you look at the major releases, you know, you can always tell When summer was getting ready to start just based on the movies that are coming out these, these the summer blockbuster type adventure action movies. And I you know, in watching Independence Day I remember Independence Day being a massive summer release. I mean, it was gigantic and it’s got this huge cast. I mean, everybody in there somebody famous, right. And it’s got this sort of it’s it’s shot this in this bigger than light sort of way. It’s It’s interesting, you know, and to watch that going, Yeah, you know, 1996 there were still summer blockbusters, and I don’t feel that way anymore. Maybe it’s just my particular my particular feeling about films in general with the CG and all that, but I don’t feel like they’re shot the same way. I don’t feel like they have the same feeling to them. You know, every movies, a blockbuster. Maybe that’s Maybe I’m right on the money. So roll back 1015 years the studio’s put a lot of money, a lot of promotion a lot of own into the summer blockbusters tons of cash or spent $200 million budgets. And it was special you waited all year long for a summer blockbuster now, thanks to CG and and all of the advances in technology. There are no II there’s nothing. You can have a movie that costs $20 million look like a summer blockbuster that was $200 million 10 years ago, 15 years ago, right. So it’s like there’s no you’re not waiting for it. It’s not it’s not magical anymore. You’re not saying yeah, I can’t wait for the next Indiana Jones can’t wait for the next Star Wars. I can’t wait for summer when we get some good movies. Ghostbusters two is coming out bubble. There are there’s a lack of Excitement because they’re all movies are like that. Right? If you’ve got a movie like john wick or any of these franchises, any of these franchises, they’re all bigger than life, tons of cash, lots of technology. So maybe there’s there’s nothing that like separate the summer blockbusters from movies that you see all year long. Right? So maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like a summer blockbuster anymore. I don’t know. It’s my random thoughts here. So yes, I’m excited about Mr. Robot. I’m excited about that. I’m still in for creep Show. I’m excited about all this stuff. I’m eager to get back to my elliptical which I will be in probably in the next hour and a half. I’ll be right back on the elliptical. So as you guys remember, for those of you who are listeners of the show, I recently attended a b 50 twos concert, where I probably enjoyed orchestral maneuvers in the dark even more than the B 52. And I talked about that, of course ad nauseum here on the show. But Forbes, put out an article about OMD, sort of a retrospective article about the last 40 years of orchestral maneuvers in the dark. And they made reference to something that I didn’t know about, and OMD released sort of a sort of a generational, or a sort of a big collection called souvenir. And this is available on Google Play. Of course, if you happen or Google Play Music, if you happen to be a Google Play Music subscriber, you have access to the entire thing. It’s like, I want to say it’s like 36 tracks or something. But it’s all their greatest hits, plus a couple of their, you know, double A songs, fully remastered, they sound really good. And then along with some live stuff, and a couple of unreleased tracks. It’s one of those things where I would probably buy this physical media because I’m such a big ND fan, but it’s worth checking out I was skipping around some of the remastered songs. The one song that was missing if I may go into show my geek ism a little bit on OMD. The one song that was missing was from their sugar tax album called the speed of light. I like that song a lot. And it did not get a remastered treatment. A couple other songs off that album did Pandora’s Box sailing on the seven seas handful of other OMD songs from that album got remastered but not speed of light but that’s okay. The original sounded pretty damn good anyway, so all good. Oh good. So yeah, OMD souvenir available wherever, wherever quality music is sold. Let’s see what that ends my list of stuff to cover. I burn through that pretty quick. I have one more item to talk about, but I’m not in a position to talk about it yet. It’ll probably have to be tomorrow. So I have to wait for that to happen. Got something I have to do prior to discussing it. So I probably got 10 minutes left on my drive. So what are we going to talk about? What should we discuss? trying to think of there’s anything going on? Hey, does anybody has anybody played greed fall? One of my co workers came to me and said, You know about greed. Fun. I’m like, Well, I don’t even think I’ve ever even heard of greed fall. And he says, he said, it feels a lot like Wichard. I’m like, Whoa, Sumit down there hos. You don’t want to be invoking the W word. And, you know, loosely, it’s like saying some things like robot Ron, you know, are talking about, you know, sounds like the Beatles. There’s just certain things that you don’t bring up in comparison unless you’re absolutely sure. So I’m like, Okay, you got my attention. Now, let’s see if you’re right. So I took a look at a couple of trailers. And it’s like, I see where he’s coming from. There is definitely A vibe. And it’s not because it’s fantasy. It feels sort of like this. You know, the 16th century sort of thing. I don’t know. It’s interesting. I’m just wondering if any of the listeners have played this game. Not that I have time to play anything anyway. But yeah, it’s like I understand what he’s talking about why it sort of feels like winter. But listen, I’ve got Witcher three coming for switch. In a couple of weeks, less than a couple of weeks. I’ve got Overwatch coming on switch. I’ve got the new Ghostbusters remastered to play. I got too much to do peace and love, peace and love. I have too much to do. So I’m writing you with peace, love, I have too much to do. Peace and Love, Peace and Love, right? That too much to do. So I may take a pass on unless somebody tells me it’s really, really great. We’re also we’re also talking about Tim, one of the guys that listens to the show a friend of the show, he’s mentioning that seven days was it seven days to survive. I think it’s the name of the game. Now the sudden just jumped out of my head. That game I talked about a long time ago I put like 20 hours into it. I was kind of looking for another sort of the forest horror survival crafting sort of game. And I think I finally kind of gave up on it but Tim said that they had this several different massive drops updates and whatnot, talked about the multiplayer component of it. So now suddenly, suddenly I want to take another look at that game too. So you know, it never rains but it pours I’ve nothing to do for a while and now I’ve got everything to do. So I’m excited about maybe taking a look at that. What else is going on? All I got my 4k of the shining. Let’s talk about that. Wow. They did a great job. So I got the non steel book version. It’s a it’s a brand new 4k transfer. looks absolutely phenomenal. It’s got it’s got a commentary track by once like Kubrick’s biographer, and the other guy was one of his camera people, the ones the guy that basically invented the steady cam. I did not realize that the steady cam was a very important piece of the shining sort of made it a it might have been the first movie that was like shine a light on steady cam. But the the overall, the overall commentaries really, really good. They talk about the stuff that I want to hear about how they did the shot. What was going on, they talked about why they chose Shelley Duvall, you know, because you think that they would have chose somebody a little hotter for that role. But there was there was a mindset behind selecting her and they talk about that. They talk about the maze they talk about how they set up all the effects shots you know, it was a whole lot of salt. All of the snow that you see is basically salt. Lots of great stuff. There’s a couple of making of documentaries on there as well. Good stuff and the pictures same looks fantastic. 4k HDR. Looks great. Also that came out recently that I picked up was Addams Family Values right? That was the first time they got released on blu ray. That’s a very nice that’s very nice print as well they did a nice job. Considering Addams Family Values the sequel to the Angelika Houston and rode Julia Addams Family movie did not do as well as the first one it got some decent treatment. And it was a lot of fun. We watched that the other day again, it’s good stuff. Let’s see there’s something else that came out. Oh, the Stan, I think I already talked about that on on blu ray that came out. So I think I already talked about that once. I don’t want to cover old ground I ordered the 4k of Batman The original Tim Burton Batman with with jack nicholson Of course. And what’s his name, man? Damn, Michael keeps getting old man. So I ordered that. It was it was like six bucks off on Amazon, right? So it was under 20 bucks. I saw it. I saw it on sale at Target when I was over there and it’s like, Man, you know, I want to start picking these up. I’ll pick him up single if I get the right the right deal on them. And apparently it’s got pretty good reviews. So I’m excited to see what that looks like see what kind of a job they did on that. That might actually be here today. So I’ll have that to talk about. This coming out. There’s something else coming out that I’ve been wanting to pick up to. Yeah, john wick. The john wick movies were like 15 bucks at Target as well. I must pick those up. I got the first one. The second one was 15 I don’t remember if the third one was on sale yet or not, but maybe it wasn’t I saw one into or 15 bucks apiece. Almost picked up the second one. Haven’t seen the third one yet. Justin was telling me about it. It’s at lunchtime Today on our walk. Sounds great light on plot heavy on action. That’s my kind of my kind of calories movie. You know, my son, there’s a couple of movies My son has not seen yet including the matrix, which if you can believe it, he has not seen that yet. And equilibrium, which came out at the same time as the matrix, which actually you know, equilibrium is probably a better movie The Matrix got a lot of a lot of press and a lot of hype but if you want to go like story for Atlanta, no matrix is pretty damn good. Should I wouldn’t want to put those two against each other. I don’t know. equilibrium is so fucking good though as my first exposure to Christian Bale, and God the fight scenes in there, so great. Yeah, I don’t know. I love it the whole concept of the Grand Teton, cleric and ah, so good. The damn matrix is so good to time first showed the matrix vs equilibrium. Keanu Reeves vs. Christian Bale. I don’t know, I’d watch a show data that lets me I bet that’s on YouTube already. Somebody’s already done a showdown Battle of the flicks. She hasn’t seen that either. But equilibrium, you know, I don’t know if he’s really old enough to appreciate equilibrium, or the matrix for that matter. They’re both of them are sort of heavier thinkers. I mean, the action everything is good, of course, but I’d say the action, honestly, a lot less wire flew in equilibrium. So I would I would give a nod to the action over there. But man, the whole storyline of the matrix is so good. I don’t know. All right, I’m closing in on my Wi Fi point. I’m almost home. Hope you enjoyed the show. Well, we’ll have more shows this week. This is Shane. Norman row passenger seat radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care, everybody