Warcraft, the Movie

I am going to see the movie "Warcraft" tomorrow afternoon.

I am worried it is going to be bad, but so far I have not heard any negative reviews. It might actually be better than Batman Vs Superman (which I liked overall, but was disappointed by the whole "Wait, your mom's name is Martha?!" thing).

The problem I have with movies based off of computer games / video games / board games is that they are often horribly made, have bad plots, often missed the point of the game or story, and/or had very little staying power - as in you watch it one time and then if you ever watch it again you become disappointed with it the second time and never watch it ever again.

Examples...

Battleship - great board game, awesome movie. I have totally watched that movie multiple times.

Conan the Barbarian - The new one is based off the computer game, not the original Robert E. Howard books. I felt the movie is good the first time you see it, but really boring the second time you see it. In retrospect I now consider that movie to be horrible. For multiple reasons, each of which are due to meddling by the video game company Paradox Entertainment.

Dungeons and Dragons - Awesome roleplaying game, horrible movie during which the plot made very little sense, the villains were ridiculous, and it was amazingly cheesy.

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight - Awesome book / roleplaying game series, but the movie was horribly animated. Done properly, the Dragonlance series could be an amazing series of films - but you would need someone like Peter Jackson to do it justice, and it should be live action, not animated.

Wreck It Ralph - Technically there was never an arcade game with this name, but it was still a pretty good animated movie.

Pixels - No comment. I have not seen it yet.


Review of Warcraft - Four stars out of Five. Not a great movie (like Avatar), but not horribly bad.

The film has an underlying environmental theme, which I feel could have been elaborated more on.

Also the film left it open for sequels, which makes the fans happy. However I should point out that the "artsy fartsy movie critics" will not like this movie, as it doesn't offer much in the way of substance. Fans of warcraft will enjoy it, and myself, someone who is not a Warcraft fan but I am a fan of the fantasy genre, I enjoyed. But it wasn't a "great movie".

But it was good. It is worth watching. But it won't make the artsy fartsy critics happy, but to be fair those same critics thought "LOTR: Return of the King" was a bad movie. Depending on which "reviews" you read people are either saying that Warcraft financially tanked (which is false), or that Warcraft broke records. The latter is true. It is now one of the top 3 most grossing movies based on video games. The mixed responses tell me that some movie critics want the movie to fail and are apparently spreading false rumours about the film tanking. Anyone who can do math will realize the film was extremely popular.

I also feel the burgeoning love story of two main characters could have been explored more. Clearly that is meant to entice us towards sequels, which look likely as the film has already doubled its money - and the director is already talking about prepping for a sequel.

Millwood Wine Works, Making your own Wine in Leaside, Toronto

Millwood Wine Works
905 Millwood Road
Leaside Neighbourhood, East of Bayview Avenue on Millwood Road
Toronto ON

Review by Charles Moffat.

Last year the missus and I went on a wine tour in the Niagara region, of the esteemed Trius Winery. We really enjoyed the tour and for myself it was a reminder that my grandfather had made red wine decades ago and it was fascinating to see the process my grandfather had gone through making his wine - although to be fair, his process was likely much simpler and old fashioned that the modern witchery that goes into Trius wines.

Nevetheless the tour got me thinking. Not from where the missus and I live in Leaside, there are two small "make your own wine" locations.

The first being the aforementioned "Millwood Wine Works" and the second being the "Cellar Door Winery", which is literally across the street from the Millwood Wine Works. (Maybe someday I will review the Cellar Door Winery across the street, but for now this is just a review of the Millwood Wine Works.)

The missus and I discussed making wine last year in the Autumn, but kept putting it off. Thus we got the chance this year I figured enough is enough, lets do this!

So we went in together and picked out a nice gentle Riesling for $140. I wanted red wine, but I rarely win any arguments with the missus and so we got the Riesling instead - with the promise that the next time we make wine, she has to pay for it, and I get to pick the type of wine we are making.

We watched in awe as Kevin Whitaker (owner and "assistant winemaker") prepared everything for us, making everything was clean and shipshape. Then he handed me the yeast and I sprinkled it in "like a pro". Honestly, I was just sprinkling the yeast around like I would do with salt on a plateful of eggs, but whatever, it looked very good with the yeast swirling around in there.

Then everything was sealed up and we waited 4 weeks for our wine to be done.

Yesterday, 4 weeks and 1 day later we got up and went to collect our wine. Purchased 30 bottles for all the wine to be stored in, I disinfected and cleaned the bottles, while Kevin poured the wine into the bottles which were cleaned.

Then came the corking machine. This part I really enjoyed and I even took a selfie of myself for Facebook. The machine was apparently powered by air pressure, but for curiousity's sake I asked if there was an old fashioned was of corking bottles, and I was pointed to a device which was foot-powered. Woot, I love things that are foot-powered.

When it was all done we had 30 bottles of Riesling. Which if we do the math is:

$140 for the wine kit / service, $30 for the bottles = $170 for 30 bottles of wine. Approx. $5.67 per bottle. Each bottle contains approx 750 mL of Riesling, at about 7 to 8 %.

We plan to give away a few bottles for Xmas to family members. The true test came last night when we finally sat down to toast us becoming winemakers. Tasty!

We shall have to do this again sometime. Either at the Millwood Wine Works, which had great friendly service, or maybe we should try the Cellar Door Winery across the street.

Note - It is hard to switch to a different location once you have already found a place where you like the service. Quality service after all is hard to beat when compared to the "unknown factor" of trying a new place you've never tried before.

Shopping for a New Cell Phone

So I recently (yesterday) decided to start browsing for a new cell phone. Partly because my old phone is getting pretty old, and I have to wonder if I can get something better - possibly even something that can do slow motion video, which is something I crave for making videos.

However as I begin browsing cell phones I also start looking at the specs and the reviews of various phones that are available.

For my purposes I am currently looking at Samsung phones, since my old phone is a Samsung and it has worked quite well for me during the past 3.75 years.

Purchased circa August 2012, the phone in question is a Samsung S II i9100 which comes with the following:

4.3 inch screen (480x800 pixels)
8 MP camera with 1080p at 30 fps
16 GB storage
1 GB RAM
1650 mAH battery life

Originally released in April 2011, it was an older model at the time I got it.

Now compare that to the Samsung Galaxy J1, which came out in January 2015.

4.3 inch screen (480x800 pixels)
5 MP camera with 720p at 30 fps
4 GB storage
512 MB RAM
1650 mAH battery life

Same screen size, a smaller camera, only one quarter of the storage space, half the ram, and the same batter life. It is actually a DOWNGRADE from my old phone. It is also slightly thicker and heavier.

So obviously that phone is clearly a dud. Also the reviews on the website I checked were dismal. It is the kind of phone you clearly don't want to buy.

Okay, fine.

Lets see what else Samsung has to offer.

Note - I won't be listing all the phones Samsung currently is offering, because some of them are remarkably similar to my old phone, or remarkably similar to the J1 above - which makes me wonder if we have reached the limits of how much technology we can pack into into a phone.

The Samsung S5 Neo

Released in August 2015
5.1 inch screen (1080x1920 pixels)
16 MP camera with 1080p at 30 fps
2 GB RAM
2800 mAH battery life

Now we're talking!!! Bigger screen, bigger camera, double the RAM of my old phone - and extra 1150 mAH worth of battery life over my old phone. This sounds like a dramatic improvement. Also as a bonus it is water resistant, which is something ALL phones should be.

The Samsung Galaxy S6

Released in April 2015
5.1 inch screen (1440x2560 pixels)
16 MP camera with 2160p@30fps, or 1080p@60fps, or 720p@120fps
3 GB RAM
2550 mAH battery life

Okay, so similar to the S5 Neo, but with a camera with a range of video options that makes me drool, lots of RAM, a slightly smaller batter than the S5 Neo, but still more battery power than my old phone. Definitely on the short list of possibilities. Thinner than my old phone, slightly heavier (likely due to the extra battery power).

The Samsung Galaxy S7

Released in March 2016
5.1 inch screen (1440x2560 pixels)
12 MP camera with 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@240fps
4 GB RAM
3000 mAH battery life

I was wrong. They have found a way to fit more technology into a phone. With a slightly smaller camera - due to the fact they wanted to make the camera jut out less they decided to make it smaller, but still with the robust range of video options I crave, and a waaaaay bigger battery, and more RAM.

But there is some cost differences.

The S7 is $899 CDN at Virgin Mobile (my carrier of choice).
The S6 is $729 CDN.
The S5 Neo is $549 CDN.
And in case you are wondering the J1 is $129 - for a phone so bad, my old SII is actually better than it.

At present I am leaning towards the S6, mostly because its camera is slightly better than the S7, and because it is slightly cheaper. With a 2 year plan from Virgin I can also get it currently for a mere $149 CDN, which makes it much more reasonable.

Now you might wonder, wait, why aren't I even considering BlackBerry or Apple products.

Several reasons. Yes, BlackBerry is made in Canada, and I love it when products are made in Canada, but I have never liked the BlackBerry designs. They simply don't appeal to me.

As for Apple, Apple products break all the time. They are fragile. Count the number of times you've seen someone using an Apple iPhone with a broken screen because they are stuck in a contract and don't have a choice but to keep using their crappy broken iPhone.

Also I should note that with the exception of the screen and the case, the inner bits of iPhones are actually made by Samsung. Samsung makes all the electronic bits for iPhone, all Apple does is take the technology and repackage it inside a shiny case design and use their own software and their own batteries (see note further below). Thus why would I buy an Apple phone when it is really made by Samsung???

For purposes of comparison here is the Apple iPhone 6s specs:

Released in September 2015
4.7 inch screen (750x1334 pixels)
12 MP camera with 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps,1080p@120fps, 720p@240fps
2 GB RAM
1650 mAH battery life

Okay, so it has a smaller screen with less pixels. Camera is similar to the S7, but a little nicer. Only half the RAM of the S7, and only about half the battery life too. In fact, the Apple phone only has the battery life of my old SII phone.

What is also fascinating is that the pixel quality is so low that it is significantly WORSE than the camera. Compare to the Galaxy S6 or S7 and you can see they are making an effort to get the pixel quality higher.

Note - Wow. Apple really needs to invest in some better battery technology if they are still using the same batteries from 2011. This is 2016 already and they apparently are being left behind in the dust by Samsung with their 3000 mAH batteries.

We do similar to be stretching the limits of how much technology we can fit inside a cell phone. It might explain why Apple recently started to make their phones bigger, realizing perhaps that we now live in a world with tablets and where people play on their phones a lot - which means they want bigger screens for a better gaming experience. Apple is still clinging to old designs like the smaller 6s, but trying to play catch up by releasing bigger phones like the Apple iPhone 6s Plus.

Released in September 2015
5.5 inch screen (1080x1920 pixels)
12 MP camera with 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 1080p@120fps, 720p@240fps
2 GB RAM
2750 mAH battery life

In the spirit of one-up-manship it has a slightly bigger screen than the Samsung Galaxy S6 or S7 - but somehow has less pixels, which means the picture quality is still lower, the same camera as the regular iPhone 6s, the same RAM as the regular iPhone 6s, and a bigger battery. So basically all they did is make it a bigger screen with a bigger battery. Everything else is the same as the 6s. And still less pixels, and less battery power than the Samsung S7.

Fragile screens, shorter battery life, and the innards of a Samsung does not encourage me to buy an Apple product. It encourages me to buy a Samsung.

After all, why buy a phony rip off like Apple when you can get the real deal from Samsung.

For me, I am going to get the Samsung Galaxy S6. All the phone I need, the camera that I want, and a good price too. In theory I could wait awhile for the price to come down, but I will likely go get it sometime in the near future.

Happy Shopping!

A Review of Capitalism

A Review of Capitalism...

Capitalism works better than socialism or communism. But it isn't perfect. Capitalism and the sole focus on money leads to greed causing harm to people's health and mental health. It is like a gambling addiction, wherein people are often forced to choose between a boring office job for 40 years and slowly kills their soul or a high paying job that causes you to be selling a product that slowly kills the consumer. Eg. Tobacco.

In North America the system pervades everything, even religion, and greed for the almighty dollar is the ruin of modern health via obesity, drug addiction and destroying the mental stability of consumers via a variety of means.

Clearly capitalism (and neo-capitalism) isn't working for our health (mental and physical) and to survive we need to adjust our methodology to create a system of Moral Capitalism. In such a system morality comes first and instead of poisoning people / destroying their mental health, we always question: "Is this moral?" before we try to sell a product or service or higher a person to do a task which we know is bad for people.

It isn't ideal because unfortunately there will always be people willing to do evil acts to make a quick buck, but people should be encouraged to operate personally on that level.

At present our current system inflicts harm on people all the time but people think they are powerless to stop a system that pervades society. But if we take personal responsibility for our own actions, suddenly we can change our actions and in turn set an example which does change the system, even if it is only a subtle change by adding the word Moral to the word Capitalism.

Sea Witch Fish and Chips

Note, To Do.

Sea Witch Fish and Chips located at 636 St Clair West, Toronto.

I keep going by it and I want to try their food sometime.

They have a mural down the street which is definitely effective advertising.

So kudos on their advertising at least.

Krazy Kitty Organic Catnip

So I decided to test out "The Original Krazy Kitty Organic Catnip" from krazykitty.com.

To test it out I filled an old "holy sock" with catnip - as in, all the catnip in a single package, 14 grams or half an ounce in this case - and then wrapped the sock up and bound it with three elastic bands to keep it firmly in place.

Then I gave the sock to Victoria to see how she would react to it.

I think the video below speaks volumes by itself. Definitely a positive review from Victoria. Later I took the sock away and she spent some time laying in her favourite box and then sitting on the window sill watching the world go by. Since that kind of behaviour is normal it is hard to judge, but she seemed rather sedated and tired after all that exercise.

I am hoping filling an old sock with catnip will prevent her from stealing my other socks in the future. She has a tendency to collect them and carry them like kittens to her favourite mat.

Cane Sugar Root Beer

Wow. This stuff is really good. I should try the other flavours sometime.

Duke of Richmond's Veggie Burger

Last year around mid January I became a vegetarian for 30 days as an experiment to see how it would go and tracked any weight loss, my food cravings, etc.

Needless to say I was craving bacon by Day 3.

However one of the best things I ate during that 30 day time period was the veggie burgers at the Duke of Richmond, at 20 Queen Street West, Toronto.

It was by far the best veggie burger I have ever had. (Most of them are really awful.)

A close 2nd was the Johnny Rockets near Dundas and Yonge (which closed last year because their lease ended).

The patty of the burger is made mostly from black beans, and for whatever reason, that ingredient made their veggie burgers really good. If I think about those veggie burgers for a bit my mouth starts to water at the memory of how good they taste.

I would even argue that it tastes BETTER than their beef burgers. The fact I am still oohing about the veggie burgers a year later shows just how amazing it was.

The Black Bean Veggie Burger sells for $12.99 at the Duke of Richmond, the same price as the Duke Burger.

The Battered Fish on Queen Street, Toronto

As fish and chips places go we are giving this place 4 stars out of 5.

The fish was good, the chips were awesome, the coleslaw was actually TOO cold, and the drinks reminded us of Subway (Coke products)...

Price wise it was comparable to going to South Street Burger - a gourmet fast food place that I also give 4.5 stars.

The Battered Fish has one major problem. Their menu is CONFUSING the first time you go there as it is all about mixing and matching things. A better solution would be to list 12 different popular combos, and options for customizing those combos. This complex mix and match process leaves customers struggling to say their order properly, as opposed to simply saying "I would like combo #3 please."

Also we felt there should be an option to "shark size" the combos, or "whale size" it. Or even "the Moby Dick". More for amusement's sake than anything else.

Which brings us to one last thought. Change the name to "Moby Dick's Fish N Chips". Much more awesome name. The Battered Fish is too meta.

Gaudet Sweet Goods Inc. Apple Pie - where is the baking time???

Awhile back I purchased a "Gaudet Sweet Goods Inc. Apple Pie" and left it in the freezer.

Today I finally got it out and decided to bake it. Because I was hungry and said "Mmm apple pie... I love apple pie..."

Looking over the packaging I am trying to find the recommended appropriate baking time and temperature ...

And the packaging is blank on the subject of baking time.

It has all the nutritional info there. Just no recommended baking time and temperature. Nothing. Zilch.

Baking times can truly vary wildly from apple pie recipe to different apple pie recipe.

Judging by various recipes online it can vary between 20 minutes and 60 minutes.

• For example one recipe calls for 425° F for 20 minutes.

• Another recipe calls for something rather complex: 15 minutes at 425° F, then reduce the temperature to 350° F, and continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes.

• Another calls for 375° F for 50 minutes.

• A 4th recipe I found calls for: Bake at 450° F for 10 minutes.  Lower the heat to 350°F and continue to bake for an additional 40-45 minutes.

So apparently we are supposed to GUESS the appropriate baking temperature and time and then check the oven every 5 minutes to see if the pie is burning.

I think part of the problem is that Gaudet Sweet Goods Inc. is producing conveyor belt apple pie... the pies are made by machines, mass produced, and the company really doesn't care that they forgot to add recommended baking instructions on their pies.

Now I admit, I LOVE APPLE PIE. Hence why I purchased their product in the first place. I couldn't care less that a robot made the apple pie, I am sure it will taste great as long as it is baked properly.

Thus I am giving their company TWO THUMBS DOWN because of their lack of proper baking instructions. I don't care if it turns out to be the best apple pie I have ever eaten (which I doubt as it looks pretty generic), they should at least have the decency to list recommended baking instructions on the packaging.

Gaudet Sweet Goods Inc. is based in Acton Vale, Quebec. Shame on them!