I think it’s time for another review of one of the ape’s things. This time it’s about a little electronic toy that lets you enjoy your iPod music in your car.

In my old car I had a built in solution called Dension iceLink. It worked pretty good, since you could control the device with the buttons on the steering wheel, but it was way too expensive. This time I thought I’m smart buying a replaceable device. I’ve heard about iTrip, which lets you hear the iPod music over the radio. After some research I found the Griffin RoadTrip as a better choice, since it has a holder and recharges your iPod while you using it. Good idea, bad implementation.

First of all: You need to have the device plugged into the car cigar jack to use it. It just doesn’t work without it. I know charging without beeing plugged in would be a littlebit impossible, but sending the radio signals couldn’t possibly use that much energy. The iTrip works without plugging too …

Second: The holder. It’s just not made for stable holding of the system. It’s huge, unhandy und tends to bend over to one side … not very safe while you are driving and the thing suddenly falls on your gearstick.

Third: The quality of the sound is a littlebit below radio quality. I could live with that, because I’m not a musician and don’t really hear differences between radio sound and mp3-sound … especially in a car. But I think it should be mentioned here.

The only good thing is: it works. You plug in any kind of iPod (even the 6th generation works), push play on the ipod, set up a frequency on the device and on your car stereo and enjoy the music. If this is worth the price … I don’t think so. I hope, next iPod generation comes with bluetooth and lets you control it via your car stereo.

Ridley and Tony Scott are two brothers. Both of them directed good movies (Tony: True Romance, Spy Game …; Ridley: Alien, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down …) and bad movies (Tony: Domino (bruhahaha), Ridley: GI Jane). While I haven’t seen Tony’s latest work Deja Vu I enjoyed Ridleys newest masterpiece American Gangster yesterday.

That choice of words already spoiles my opinion. I was excited. The characters are well created, the actors brilliant chosen (I didn’t realize Cuba Gooding Jr. is in the movie, I never expected much of him …). The only flaw of the movie is the length. It is not boring, but long. I know, for an academy award the movie needs to be longer than 2 hours (not officialy), but I think it wasn’t really necessary here.

That’s why I give it 9 out of 10 points.

Well, I know, Thanksgiving is originally on the fourth Thursday of November, but since it is not a regular holiday in Austria we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Saturday. With all of our friends from the “old time”, back when we had our youth-club “JuST”. Since then a lot of things changed, some moved abroad, some study and/or work in different cities. Anyway Thanksgiving is a good occasion to bring them all together and have a chat.

We do this now for four years and chances are very good we will go on with this tradition. You can see some pictures of this party here.

I really enjoy 3D-animated movies. Though I have to admit, the quality in fun was sinking lately. While Shrek, Monster Inc. and Finding Nemo were absolutely brilliant, I wouldn’t even watch movies like Robots and Chicken Little on TV.

Anyway Rattatouille was supposed to be good again. On a level of Finding Nemo. So my expectations were high, when I fell into the cosy cinema chair. Well, I have to say, I was a littlebit disappointed. Not because it wasn’t good, it was very entertaining. But I kindof missed the fun of vegetarian sharks or dragons in love with a donkey. Everything was as plain as a Disney movie. The outsider that turns into a hero, then gets in trouble just to find out that he can stand to his heritage and fulfill his dreams.

I’d say Rattatouille is a good Disney movie, but an just-above-average Pixar movie. I hope, they will find back to their qualities wil Wall-e (Trailer), their next work. I’d give Rattatouille 8 out of 10 points.

I have a littlebit to catch up, so I faked the date for this entry. Last weekend was a LAN-Party again. Of course it was a lot of fun. We played only 3 different games: Unreal Tournament, Warcraft III - DotA and Battlefield 1942. I think that’s a pretty good mixture and the small amount of games keeps the party aware of long install-sessions for games that are only played once or twice. So I hope on LAN LAN 6 we will do something quite alike …