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What I don’t like about the Dell Venue Pro

Selling off my HTC 7 Mozart and going back to my loaner Venue Pro (portrait WP7 slider) made me finally realise why I don’t like it: it has a curved screen.

The curve on the Venue Pro is convex, meaning that it’s got a very slight bulge outwards; exactly the opposite of what you really want on a display. When the iPhone 4 came out, many tech pundits harped on about how the glass on top of the display was fused to the LCD underneath, and how that made the content appear that much closer to your finger whenever you touched it.

The Venue Pro is the opposite; the horizontally-convex (that is, bulged outwards in the middle and less so at each side) display means that content feels further away from your fingertips, which makes for a weird touchscreen experience. On a display that already feels sub-par, it’s exactly what you do not want.

Anyway.

Heaps of posts upcoming. There’s something special coming up very, very, soon, and then there’s the big ol’ MicroServer write-up I might do, oh, and a HP TouchPad review-slash-webOS extravaganza somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t expect the TouchPad review until early October, and the MicroServer sometime after that. Uni will get really busy really soon, and doubly so for me, procrastinator extraordinaire.

I just need a Millennium Falcon!

I just want the website to be small and functional, with some character… Let me put this in terms you’ll understand: I don’t need the Imperial Star Destroyer. I just need a Millennium Falcon.

Your Highness (2011)

Ooh, a movie review! Let’s get on with it, then…

Truth be told, my experience of Natalie Portman in movies has been limited to just the Star Wars franchise. Hearing her spout lines like “Oh Anakin, you’re breaking my heart” doesn’t exactly do things for me, but Your Highness changed all of that.

Look, I’m not a huge fan of stupid comedy. I prefer my stuff to be a little more subtle, a little more intelligent, and Your Highness was a perfect example of what I dislike about the genre. It’s trying a little too hard — a little too much sexual innuendo here, a little too much forced acting there. I like fantasy and the whole “sword/medieval/magic” genre, don’t get me wrong, but some of this stuff was just plain stupid, and not in the good way (if it tries to parody other stuff from the same sort of genre, it does a terrible job of it.

The only saving grace of this movie is Natalie Portman. She’s a badass, and that’s about as apt a description as I can think of right now. It also means I’m off to acquire more of her earlier work. She’s not the lead character, but far and away, she carries the movie across various terrible sub-plots.

Seriously, watch this movie, but only for Natalie Portman (or James Franco, if you’re a female).

The movie is bad, but Portman is a badass. There’s a difference.

Your Highness, 2011

Girl