This is actually the popcorn maker I have.

I’m not even close to joking.. every time I’ve had it (3 times this week), I still can’t believe it.. neither can Liz or my roommate.

It’s actually all due to two lucky factors. First, I read about how to do it on my favorite site Lifehacker.com, and secondly I was lucky enough to have my parents down in the USA as the magic ingredient is only available (from what I’ve found) in the US, unless you want to pay for an outrageous shipping cost.. (and god knows how much in brokerage!)

So I’ve just said it, but there is a magic ingredient – but I want to go into some of the other factors as well.

Popcorn is one of my favorite snack foods of all time – and I’m going to eat a LOT more of it now that I don’t have to even put any seasoning or butter on it.. yes, it’s that good!

The first thing I should tell you is that I don’t own a hot air popper – and if you have one, I think you should throw it out. Even without the magic ingredient, you will get MUCH better tasting popcorn with an oil based popcorn such as the one I have pictured to the right. It’s only about $30 at Walmart and well worth it.. personally I don’t enjoy hot air popcorn at all anymore.. now I’m spoiled, great.

So I’ll tell you the magic inredient now – it’s called Flavacol. This stuff is magical, I swear. While I was doing some searching trying to figure out where to get it, I noticed that pretty close to where my parents were staying – there was a place that sold it. I won’t go into the story of how run-down this ‘warehouse’ was in actuality, but all I care about is that they were able to get my my Flavacol… and the big price (for a quart of it)…. $2. Seriously?? Two dollars?? Hell I can’t buy myself and Liz a coffee for $2!! And it’s a full quart of it! You want to know what else? You only use about 1/2 a teaspoon per serving!! Unbelievable.. this stuff is going to last me a long time .. at least I hope so.

Ok, it’s almost starting to sound like I work for the company or I’m doing a paid advertisement for them, and I can assure you that it isn’t the case. I do enjoy popcorn though, in fact tonight Liz & I are going to the movies and I can’t wait to compare the two Now I can just be happy I don’t have to get some part-time employment at Empire Theatres just to steal their secret.

Did I mention that I love popcorn?

OFFER AVAILABLE APRIL 12 – APRIL 22, 2010

Text SAVE to EMPIRE (367473) to get your mobile coupon for $2 off a General Admission Ticket! Standard text and data rates apply.

The first one here, “The Shining” was uploaded 4 years ago!! And I’m sorry.. I laugh so hard mid-way through.. unreal!

The Shining – Feelgood Movie Of The Year

The Ring – A Love Story

Wedding Crashers – Very Suspenseful

Toy Story – Scary Stuff

Top Gun – Brokeback in the Skies?

The Lord Of The Rings – Sam & Frodo – a forbidden love

<3>Mary Poppins – on of my favorites.. wow

Silence Of The Lambs – Clarice Falls In Love

If you want to see more, just go to Youtube and do a search for ‘recut’.. lots of results.

Unfortunately, you can’t use this with Avatar 3D, but I would imagine you could since it’s been in theaters for quite some time and I don’t see many restrictions.. simply text BOGO to EMPIRE ( ) and you’ll be presented with a code to use the next time you’re at the movies! Sweet!

Text BOGO to EMPIRE (367473) on your mobile device for your coupon!

Text offer available until February 04, 2010. Coupon is valid until February 11, 2010.

Interested in receiving more great offers from Empire Theatres on your phone? Text JOIN to EMPIRE (367473) and be the first to know about our mobile promotions.

Have questions? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions here!

Coupons expire Thursday, February 11, 2010. Only one coupon per mobile device during this promotion period.

* Conditions for the Coupon is as follows:

• Present the BOGO barcode on your mobile device to a cashier when purchasing one General Admission Ticket and receive second admission ticket free.
• Second admission ticket must be used at the same time as purchased admission ticket.
• One coupon per person, per visit, per transaction.
• Not valid for Digital 3D or IMAX® presentations, the drive-in or special events/programs.
• Valid at any Empire Theatres location.
• Subject to seat availability.
• No refunds, exchanges or time extensions on expired offers.
• No substitutions.
• Not valid in conjunction with any other discount offers, including Reel Deal Tuesday pricing
• This offer is not for resale. This offer has no monetary value.
• No copies or facsimiles will be accepted.
• This is a limited time offer. Empire Theatres holds the right to revoke this offer at any time.
• Promotion may end without notice.
• Standard text messaging and data rates may apply.
• To end a subscription to Empire Mobile, text the word STOP to EMPIRE (367473).
• Offer valid only to those who have access to a mobile device capable of sending and receiving text messages and accessing the internet.
• Only one coupon per mobile device during the promotion period

If you can’t see the trailer – click here to watch it online… looks like a great action flick. We’ll see though.

I’m not sure exactly what B.A. Baracus could have done to prevent hair loss but his mohawk looks a little smaller to me in the trailer.. trying to figure out who that is..:P

“I pity the fool who steals my character!”

Ha.. I remember some of those shows like they were yesterday.

I’m happy to report that I have started my Christmas shopping, and that between both Liz and I we do have a lot of people that we’ve completed shopping for, however unfortunately I have to say that it doesn’t look like I’ll be completed on November 25th as I was originally planning.

That’s ok though, I had a great weekend of playing some cards, some hockey, and most importantly.. two photo shoots which I had a great time doing on Sunday. Pictures of those shoots I hope to have up soon on my Facebook page.

Oh, we also went to dinner and a movie with Liz’s sister and her Boyfriend last night as well.. we went to see the movie ‘The Blind Side‘. I loved it! Liz and I watched the trailer a few months ago and couldn’t wait to see it, now that we have.. it really was a great movie, very inspiring.

As far as the shopping goes, I still have my list and watching some sale items online. It still seems that every time I buy something nowadays, something similar (but not identical so I can take it back) goes on sale online for cheaper. This week I noticed on the Buy.com’s Weekly Deals that they have a bundle of a hard drive AND the media player on for $149.99. Now mind you I haven’t read or heard anything about the Asus Media Player.. but still.. great deal to get all your movies that you downloaded off your computer bogging up space and onto a portable hard drive so you can watch em on your HDTV.

I’ve got a bunch of topics this week which I want to write about, but finding time to do them could be an issue so hopefully I’ll be back soon with a little bit of a writeup.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Anyhow, so obviously I like to save some money on going to the theaters.. as was quite evident all summer as I posted the daily deals they had every week.

ANYHOW.. here is a great Christmas special which I KNOW I’m going to take advantage of… I mean, I could give it as a gift.. but really.. I don’t even have to! I go to the movies enough that this would pay for itself!

Check it.. buy a gift certificate.. get $30 in savings.

The Coupon Bundle includes:

• One Free Admission on any day during your birthday month
• Buy one General Admission Ticket and get a second Ticket FREE
• Get $2 OFF any* Combo (*excluding Kid’s Pack)
• Admission Ticket, Regular Soft Drink & a Small Popcorn only $9.99 plus tax
• Purchase a Large Popcorn and get a FREE Large Coca-Cola® Soft Drink

A lot of these specials are just like the daily deals.. check out the Great Holiday Duo link and buy some.. I know I will be.

New WDTVLive

For those of you whom don’t know what the WDTV or WDTV-Live is, I will give you the basic idea.. actually.. scratch that.

If you don’t know what a WDTV is, go here and check out the details.. why re-invent the wheel eh?

REVIEW

Well I should start by saying that I got it on sale as it was regularly $149.99 but I got it for $129.99 plus tax so it came to about $147 total CAD to my door. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me, very happy with that price. I got it from NCIX.com the day after it was released.

I opened it up (on my lunch break of course), and set it up to my Plasma and old Kenwood receiver. I didn’t have time to screw around with adding the shares (thank god as you’ll learn later), but I tested out YouTube and played a few files from my Passport USB Drive and all worked great! Extremely excited about this new device.

I’ve been waiting for a device that I could use to play (stream) high definition movies and bluray movies from my computer upstairs for quite some time. I can honestly say that this little device does exactly what I want it to. However, I did run into some snags. Firstly, since I’m running Windows 7, it has a funky media library built in which I figured I’d use since the WDTV recognizes it as a media library. The problem with that is, the media library doesn’t recognize .mkv files which is the format a lot of high definition files come in. No problem, the WDTVLive also has a ‘network shares’ option which I figured would be easy to setup.

Wrong.

I shared my drives on my Windows 7 machine that gave permissions to ‘Guest’, I then turned on the Guest User and figured the network shares would show up downstairs in the WDTVLive (it did after all detect that we had two computers on the network). Unfortunately, the shares didn’t show up, and no matter how many times I screwed around with them, it would always give the error ‘no media in folder’. GRRRR!!

Looking online, I see that I’m not the only one with this kind of error, it seems a lot of Windows 7 users were having that problem, the good news is that there is someone one has a lot of knowledge with regards to the original WDTV, and in fact.. he turned his WDTV (regular) into one that could access the internet through a USB network card! (Holy smart!). Anyhow, I found instructions to upgrading the firmware which actually adds a lot of functionality to the device at his website here and decided to try it.

It was really simple to do, all I had to do was download his firmware, put it on a usb key (formatted to FAT32) and then put it in the device and run it.. it sees it as a new firmware and after installing it, restarts and you can tell it worked since the background is changed (a lot nicer), and some of the startup images, etc are different. Cool.

After some tinkering via Telnet, I was able to get my network drives running without issue.. but I have to ask.. why the hell do I have to do all of this? God help me if I was a rookie who just bought the device and wanted to use it with Windows 7 and High Definition files!

By the way, all the tinkering and information that I used (my nickname is lencurrie) can be found at the WDTVhd forums.

Now to sum up, I’m extremely happy with my WDTVLive device (now that I have network shares working).. I can load up my computer upstairs with media.. and have them all play downstairs via a tiny little box which connects to my computer up here. It’s pretty much exactly like XBMC without the great user interfact XBMC has. The fact of the matter is though, I was considering going out and getting an entire Home Media PC.. so I definitely saved some money going this route, and it does exactly what I want it to.

Another note, B-Rad and the developers of WDLXTV are BRILLIANT! They’ve turned this tiny little box into something much, much more user friendly with additions such as apple trailers, the ability to use an external optical drive, ftp servers, web interfaces, etc, etc. If you’re a bit of a geek (like me) you’d be crazy not to experiment with the new firmware they put out.. once you get it going the way you want it to, it’s very rewarding. I certainly can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to use anything like the age old DVD/VCR Combo units you can find all over the place. To be honest, it’s been months since I’ve burned off a DVD or even thought about it… that’s what’s great about this device. A++ rating from me!

You can see the details at Empire Theatres Mobile Site

Conditions for the Coupon is as follows:

• • Present the BOGO barcode on your mobile device to a cashier when purchasing one General Admission Ticket and receive second admission ticket free.
• • Second admission ticket must be used at the same time as purchased admission ticket.
• • One coupon per person, per visit, per transaction.
• • Not valid for Digital 3D or IMAX® presentations, the drive-in or special events/programs.
• • Valid at any Empire Theatres location.
• • Subject to seat availability.
• • No refunds, exchanges or time extensions on expired offers.
• • No substitutions.
• • Not valid in conjunction with any other discount offers, including Reel Deal Tuesday pricing
• • This offer is not for resale. This offer has no monetary value.
• • No copies or facsimiles will be accepted.
• • This is a limited time offer. Empire Theatres holds the right to revoke this offer at any time.
• • Promotion may end without notice.
• • Standard text messaging and data rates may apply.
• • To end a subscription to Empire Mobile, text the word STOP to EMPIRE (367473).
• • Offer valid only to those who have access to a mobile device capable of sending and receiving text messages and accessing the internet.
• • Only one coupon per mobile device during the promotion period

If you haven’t heard of what I’m talking about, take a look at the description below:

Combined with a My Passport portable drive (sold separately), this player is the most convenient way to play HD movies or user-generated videos, listen to high-quality digital music and show high-resolution slideshows of your family photos on your TV. Also works with popular USB drives, and digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices.

Key Features

• Optimized for My Passport and My Book storage, works with many other USB storage devices – Play content from most popular USB drives,and digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices.
• Full HD video playback and navigation – up to 1080p – Experience the spectacular picture quality of HD video and crystal clear sound clarity of digital audio. Use the included remote control to navigate through your entertainment choices using our crisp, animated HD menus.
• Collect without limits – There’s no limit to the size of your media collection; just add more USB drives for more space.
• Advanced navigation
• Thumbnail and list views – Browse your content by filename or by thumbnails of photos, album covers and movie cover art.
• Media Library – This unique feature lets you view all your media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives. You can view your content by categories such as genre, album, artist and date.
• Search – Search by genre, title, artist, filename and partial filename.
• Photo viewing
• Create custom slide shows with a variety of transitions and background music
• Zoom and pan
• Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date
• Movie viewing
• Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan
• View subtitles
• Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date
• Music playback
• Fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat
• Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date
• Access two USB drives simultaneously – Two USB ports on the player let you connect two USB storage devices and access them simultaneously. Our Media Library feature aggregates the content on both drives into one list sorted by media type.
• HDMI and composite video connections – The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port lets you connect to the highest quality HDTV or home theater. Additional composite (RCA) outputs ensure compatibility with virtually all television sets.
• Includes free media conversion software – ArcSoft MediaConverter™ 2.5 — a fast, easy-to-use application that converts photo, video, and music files into formats optimized for use on the WD TV HD Media Player.
• Ultra-compact design – Fits easily into your entertainment center.

Ideal For

Hassle-free playback of HD movies, home videos, digital music, and photos on your TV.
System Requirements

My Passport portable hard drive or other USB storage device with supported video or audio content stored on it.
Standard or high definition television with HDMI or composite video connections

Package Contents

• HD Media Player
• Compact remote with batteries
• Media converter software (Windows only)
• Composite AV cable
• AC adapter
• Quick Install Guide

You can find out more information at the Western Digital Page including a really cool movie describing it.

*Warning* If you buy this unit, it may be a good idea to go out and get some weight loss pills or something as you won’t be lifting your lazy arse off the couch for a very long time.