I’m not sure if a documentary about guys riding around the world is really something that can be spoiled (after all they are still alive, obviously didn’t die as part of it), but if you feel it could be spoiled, then be advised this will contain spoilers.

In Long Way Round, Ewan and Charlie start out in London and then drive east… all the way around the world on motorcycles. During the first part of the series they are discussing what bikes to use; Ewan wants to use BMWs, while Charlie wants KTM (a brand I knew nothing about, apparently they are an Austrian company that makes motocross/off-road bikes). Ewan acquiesces to Charlie’s request and the Long Way Round team goes and talks with KTM. KTM after learning what they are trying to do opts to NOT provide bikes to them as they think they will fail and it would look very bad for the brand. Charlie gets super pissed (which is of course part of the show), but then agrees that they should instead get BMWs. The bikes are the very beautiful BMW R1150GS Adventure.

Their is a third biker with them, Claudio, who is their cameraman and rides with them. They also have 2 SUVs filled with support personnel (including the director and a doctor). Throughout the show they encounter a variety of people and situations, the former are in general very welcoming and more often than not they ended up spending the night in someone’s house, rather than at a hotel. The situations (specifically the off-roading) do get very trying for everyone, but thanks to the technical expertise they gained before the trip, they are able to surmount all the obstacles they are presented with.

Toward the last part of the trip, they get a few other bikers joining them, forming a small gang, if you will. The last episode has some teasing about them wanting to do this again, which is what lead to the Long Way Down.

Long Way Down once more sees Ewan and Charlie on BMWs, though this time they are riding BMW R1200GS Adventures (the successor to their previous bike). This time the journey is from John O’Groats, Scotland to Cape Agulhas in South Africa.

The situations in this series were a bit more problematic, specifically, trying to organize so many border crossings (which required delays of up to 12 hours). Additionally, at the start of the series, Charlie decided “to use the ‘bomb’ word” in the airport while leaving England, which of course caused a major ruckus. Most of the crew went on without him and he was eventually released without charge. It doesn’t happen very often, but throughout this show and the last you see Charlie acting like the big time movie star, demanding various things and causing various problems (such as accidentally splashing petrol in Ewan’s eyes, repeatedly), whereas Ewan acts so congenially that he really comes off as just an incredibly nice person, a real everyman.

Partway through the journey, Ewan’s wife, Eve, meets up with them and rides with them for a bit. Her personality is similar to Ewan’s and I think she really helps us all to understand how we would react in that situation (riding for hours and spending the night in a random village by the side of the road, for instance).

In the final bit of the show, as Ewan and Charlie arrive in South Africa they are followed by a very large number of motorcycles. Some of the shots they show… you can’t see the end of the line. This is a gang of motorcycles.

In summary: 2 guys riding BMW Bikes show us an adventure. These guys did not ride alone and they did have support personnel and vehicles with them. This means it isn’t something you or I could do by ourselves. As much as Jon and I like riding our bikes (and we are fairly decent at it), we would not be able to attempt this journey. I’d say the most we could do is cross country. Personally, I’m fine with that.

Lastly, if you’d like more info about these trips, I invite you to take a look at the movies or read the books: Long Way Round and Long Way Down.

(Note: Added to Category: Stupid Companies, because KTM lost out on a lot of business and publicity when they shot down Ewan and Charlie)

Let’s be totally honest, the Kindle Lighted Leather Cover is fairly pricey, as cases go.  The Kindle is $190 and the lighted case is $60, making it almost a third the cost of the reader itself.  You could go and buy the non-lighted Kindle Leather Cover for only $35, but in my case… the LED light was just too cool to pass up.  I know it’s only a light, but it is the concept that really got me.  Additionally, I’m not particularly impressed with Amazon’s execution of the light, but it does work.

So first, let’s talk about what I do like. In storage mode, the light fits entirely within the case and really had very little sticking out.  The transition from leather to plastic isn’t perfect, but good enough that you’d have to seriously work on catching it on something.  The light itself is a good brightness level to me.  It is bright enough to assist in low light situations (like say a restaurant with “mood lighting”), while not so bright that is it blinding in the pitch dark (like say in bed).

The other nifty piece is that the light is entirely integrated into the Kindle 3′s power.  If the light is extended, it only turns on when the Kindle turns on.  If you turn the Kindle off (or it idles off because you fell asleep), the light also turns off.

Moving on, let’s cover what I don’t like.  The biggest single problem with the light is the fact that it is mounted in the top right (specifically off to the side).  So that corner is well lit while the bottom left is much dimmer.  Not so much as to make it unreadable, but enough that it irritates my sense of balance.  I’d much prefer a centered light.  Also, due to how the plastic for the light is bent, it can require a bit more finesse than I’d like, just to get it in the case and stored again.  It would also be nice if there was a brightness control for the light.

One major caveat.  People don’t realize this, but the Kindle manages it’s truly amazing battery life by the fact that it isn’t in fact on and running most of the time.  The Kindle screen, being E Ink, is only drawing power when flipping a page or updating content.  The wireless, if you have it on, is only pinging out every once in a while to check for updates.  Why do I mention this? Because the light sucks batteries.  The light is, in fact, always on.  This is in contrast to everything else on the Kindle.

I’ve read reports that calculated the battery life of the Kindle, with light on, is approximately 20 hours.  This roughly jives with my experience.  I charged the Kindle last Thursday and used it to read at least 3-4 hours a day.  It lasted to the end of Monday, so roughly 4 full days.  During this time I left the Wifi AND 3G on the entire time, along with using the light most of the time.

To me, this is perfectly acceptable.  In reality I make a point of only turning on the wireless when I need it.  I also do not need to have the light on while riding BART; I only use the light at night.  I find it a little more pleasant to have a dimmer light to read by, rather than a 100W bulb lighting up the entire room.  I will probably be able to go 2 weeks between charges, even using the light.

In summary: The case is good, not great, but good.  I’d prefer they’d make some changes, especially to bring down the price.  The case will definitely be kept because if nothing else, it is a nice high quality looking case.  Besides, I enjoy being the one on BART with Chairman Mao’s little burgundy red book.

The Screen – I never really thought of the screen on the Kindle 2 as “pale”, but looking at the K2 and K3 side by side, text on the K3 is much darker.  Amazon says the screen contrast has been up’ed by 50%, and I’ve got no way to prove that – but it does look much nicer.  They also made the screen flips faster.  I’m not sure how much faster, maybe another 50% faster.  Needless to say it is very fast and shouldn’t be problem unless you’re stabbing the page button as fast as you can.

Size and Weight – Amazon says the K3 is 21% smaller and 15% lighter than the K2.  This is obvious right off the bat; as soon as you pick up the device you will feel the difference. At this point, the weight of the device only makes a difference for long reading sessions, but I know the K3 will be nicer to hold in the longer run.  As for the size, if you take off the top bar and right bar of the K2, you’ve got the size of the K3.  The one thing I will note, the K2 and K3 are exactly the same thickness, so nothing has changed there.

The Exterior – Everyone knows the Kindle 1 was not exactly a sleek device.  The K2 definitely fixed that issue.  The K3 improves yet again upon the sleekness.  First off, they moved the speakers to the top (back) of the K3, so your hands aren’t covering it.  Second, they moved the power button, headphone jack, and volume control to the bottom of the device.  I do mean the absolute bottom, on the same line as the power charger (which is still Micro-USB, thankfully).  Lastly, One very nice and unexpected change was the case itself.  They made the entire unit one type of plastic (no more brushed metal back).  This (what I am assuming is a new) material also has been given a slight rubbery feel.  It isn’t so much that it feels like you are holding a tire, but just enough so the Kindle 3 doesn’t feel so slippery.  Plus you can prop it up on a slippery surface (like a hard plastic palm rest of a keyboard) and it is much less likely to slide.

The Speakers – While the Text-to-Speech feature on the Kindle is nifty, I rarely use it.  Generally, when I want to read, I want to actually read.  That being said, I’ve been known to load up a few MP3s on my Kindle 2 so I can listen to some tunes as I read.  Just for fun, I loaded up the same MP3 on the K2 and the K3 and I’ve got to say, the Kindle 3 sounds much better. The Kindle isn’t going to win any awards as an MP3 player, but the speakers do play a fairly good rendition of the music.  They are much less prone to clipping on the high volumes, and possess a much more balanced tonal range.  Heck, I can even feel the slightest hint of bass coming from the unit on the drum beats.  Sure, it isn’t going to blow out any windows, but for an eBook reader, it is impressive.

The Page Buttons – So the Kindle 1 had HUGE buttons that were way to easy to accidentally press.  In the refined Kindle 2, the buttons were much smaller, but still had a tendency for accidental activation.  For me they were a problem after longer reading sessions where I ended up wanting to hold the K2 almost on top of the button because that was most comfortable for me.  In the K3, the buttons are tiny.  The K2′s buttons measure 1/2″ in width, the K3′s measure in at about 3/16′s of an inch (that’s less than half the size).  Effectively, the K3′s buttons are just the edge of the unit.  They’ve also changed up the layout a bit so Next Page and Previous Page are on both sides, while Home, Menu, Back, and the direction pad have been moved to keyboard.

The Keyboard – With the exception of the addition of the Menu, Home, and Back keys, the keyboard doesn’t look much different.  They did remove all the numbers (they now appear after clicking the Symbols button) and the forward slash.  With the shrinkage of the case, the keyboard also takes up less real estate.  The keys themselves are the same size, but the space in between them is greatly reduced.  I haven’t done much typing yet, but the keyboard seems to be much of the same.  The new direction pad, on the other hand, is quite nice.  It is smooth and integrated.  Most importantly, the K3′s direction pad doesn’t stick out like the K2′s joystick.

The Reading Interface – Most of the Kindle 3′s interface is just like it is on the Kindle 2 (nothing major enough to worth noting), but they made a number of changes to the reading interface which are quite nice.  First off, once you are into a book, the title bar (containing title, time, etc) disappears.  If you press the menu button, it reappears to tell you the book title, time, wifi status, 3g status, and battery status. The only difference from the K2 is the fact that the K3 no longer shows you the amount of free space.  Note: this is only when reading a book; when you are at the home screen, pressing Menu will still show you the free space.  The second change was to get rid of the bottom “bar” of empty space that you had in the K2.  In the K3, the location bar is now directly flush against the bottom of the screen.  These two changes combine to give you 3-4 more lines of reading space out of the same screen (on the smaller font settings).  The third change is the addition of new options in the font settings.  In the Kindle 2 you could change only the font size and “Words per line”.  In the Kindle 3 they have also added “Typeface” which gives you the options of “regular”, “condensed” and “sans serif”.  You also have “Line Spacing” with the options of “small”, “medium”, and “large” which reduces the amount of vertical space between lines (the “large” option is the default, and the size the Kindle 2 used).

In conclusion: If you don’t already have a Kindle and have been thinking about it, go buy a Kindle 3.
As for whether it is worth the upgrade, to me it definitely is, heck I thought it was worth it when I first heard about them, which is why mine arrived yesterday (Editor’s note: Jon preordered THE moment he heard about it.).
The question you should be asking yourself is: Are there any items in this list that I really wish I had on my Kindle?

My first impression of the ERats was very favorable.  They are dry and crumbly, but smell and taste lemony, just as advertised.  To me, if you overlook the lemon (it’s sort of an aftertaste), they taste like chocolate chip cookie dough (sans chocolate).  I think they are really quite tasty, enough so that I spent the next few days snacking on the left overs (The entire 1200cal block didn’t get eaten all at once).

Since part of the disaster supplies are for my mother, I had her try some.  She thought they tasted like a lemon shortbread cookie, a sentiment that I can agree with.  She also thought they were quite tasty and I caught her sneaking a few more bits of the ERats before dinner.

The last guinea pig was Gibson, who originally said that cardboard was a better option.  He agreed that these new rations were much better tasting (than the old horrible ones).  He tried to eat an entire block (400cal), but did not succeed.  I think he could have, if we hadn’t had dinner earlier, but he said it hard to chow down the entire thing just like that.

The end vote is fairly good.  Everyone seemed to think the rations were at least decent (where as I rather like them).  If you don’t feel like sinking $100+ for Box of 30, you can buy them individually for only slightly more.  If you’re serious about having some extra food on hand, buy a single Food Bar/Ration and give it a try.  If you like them, then buy yourself a box.  The Ready Store also has a selection of 2400 and 3600 calorie rations (which are the exact same thing as the 1200cal pack, just more blocks packed together), but I prefer the 1200′s since the units are easier to find space for in say a backpack.

Saeko Busujima (Kendo)

Recently a friend recommended to me a new manga by the name of “Highschool of the Dead” (Editor’s note: the manga uses “highschool” as one word, so when referring to the title we will as well, though the correct use is 2 words: high school). He described to me the basic story following high school students during a zombie apocalypse and to be honest I wasn’t all that enthused. I’m not a fan of the horror/thriller genre in basically any media. The three items that convinced me to give it a try was A) my friend thought one of the characters in the story was very much like me (it involves being trained by Blackwater) B) It’s got some good (funny) lines and C) Tits. Tits sell anything. After checking out the series, I’m glad I did. Enough so that I think everyone should check it out.

Takashi Komuro (Leader)

The basic premise behind Highschool of the Dead (HOTD) is basically as simple as I put it above. Our story follows a group of intrepid high school students who have entirely normal lives (for less than 5 minutes on screen) before the zombies start to show up. They are forced to run/fight for their lives, and make a few (busty) friends on the way.

Kohta Hirano (Blackwater)

One of the first pieces of information I found about this manga is that it is also being made into an anime. In fact, the anime is currently being simulcast in Japan and America (on The Anime Network). I don’t currently get The Anime Network (TAN), but I think this is very cool. I’ve never heard of an anime series being simulcast in both countries at the same time before. I’m not sure if it is the absolute first, but it is a first for me.

Saya Takagi (Genius-girl)

I got my hands on the first 7 volumes of the manga and the first 5 episodes of the anime (of which there will be 12 total). I can safely say that all the episodes of anime I’ve seen follow the manga very closely. There are a few minor changes in the anime (mostly the removal of trivial pieces and unnecessary people) and some minor re-ordering of events. The intro for the anime is also a nice piece of work with some kick ass music.

Shizuka Marikawa (Nurse Tits)

For the most part, I enjoy the characters; there are 7 “main” characters (in the group) that we follow. I gave them all nicknames because it make it easier for me to remember who’s who. You’ve got Takashi Komuro as Leader, give him any weapon and he’ll bash some heads in. There is Rei Miyamoto as Girlfriend, who’s a bit angsty over Leader killing her boyfriend (who had become a zombie), but still has a thing for him (Leader) – she’s my least favorite character. The most kick ass is Saeko Busujima as Kendo, she kills everything with a sword and a touch of sadism. The un-fighty Saya Takagi as Genius-girl: she’s the brains behind the operations and proves herself useful by figuring out what the zombies respond to. One of the reasons I started watching the series: Kohta Hirano as Blackwater – he’s a pansy ass till you give him a gun, then he goes nuts and kills bitches. Of course the over the top eye candy is Shizuka Marikawa as Nurse Tits, she patches them up, drives, and is tits. Lastly you’ve got Alice Maresato as Chibi, she’s just a little kid that Leader saves, she’s adorable.

Alice Maresato (Chibi)

The cast is quite fun, and their interpersonal bits can be quite hilarious. There are some other characters who come and go (most people who “go” end up as zombies), but I doubt the main cast will grow any more. Oh, and an important item to note, every female on the series is big on the top side (if you catch my drift, if not: she’s got big tits). The artists have a thing for big breasts, I guess, even with the female zombies. Nurse Tits is, of course, even more well endowed than the rest and as such gets special sound effects when even they feel like emphasizing her breasts for comic effect.

Rei Miyamoto (Girlfriend)

Overall though, the series is more serious and violent, than horror. There is lots of blood, but not as much as Elfien Lied. As of volume 7 of the manga, the story hasn’t majorly developed. That isn’t to say it is slow, it is very action packed, but they really are just getting up to speed. Generally, the overarching story line of any Zombie Apocalypse media is to get away safely ever after (or everyone dies), which hasn’t happened in HOTD yet. They are still at the point of trying to find out if everyone’s family is okay. I’m really enjoying the speed and curious to see how things progress. I’m also interested to see how far the anime gets, because the episodes don’t cover nearly as much material as the manga has (typical).

If you enjoy zombies, violence, tits, or just a well done anime/manga, I recommend you check out Highschool of the Dead. You can even stream it (legally) on The Anime Networks website (if you pay for an account). I know the series isn’t for everyone, some will be put off by the hilarious large breasts (feminists), others by the zombies and the blood (weak stomach). The rest, will get a series to enjoy (and I’m looking forward to the cosplay).

Gungrave is about the same length as Trigun (approximately 650 minutes), so it is a fairly quick watch. Overall I found it quite amusing, except for one little thing….

There will be some minor generic spoilers with relation to the story progression, though nothing terribly specific.

The story opens with the character on the cover of the DVD (“Beyond the Grave”) saving a girl and a scientist defeat some zombies. Then we get some backstory, and then a whole bunch more backstory. In fact we actually rewind several years and find out how we got where we are today for about half the series. During this, I found myself forgetting about the first sequence of the anime, that is until we find the first zombie (corpses that have been “necrolized” and are actually referred to as “ordmen); then I remembered that we were actually in a flashback and wondered how we were going to get back to where the show started.

I really enjoyed the “flashback” portion of the anime. The story was fairly well done though the protagonist was occasionally annoyingly terse. Once we got back to the main event, lots more death and destruction occurs. Which brings me to the part I didn’t like… the girl, Mika Asagi, is supremely annoying. I realize as the watcher I have more information than her, but she just continues to ask these idiotic questions and makes ludicrous suggestions/demands that make me want very badly for someone to shoot her, repeatedly, in the trachea.

Other than the incredibly annoying chick, this anime was quite enjoyable and I would recommend it to others. One big difference from Trigun: lack of humor, though if it had been inserted I don’t know that it would have held its air of despair as well as it did.

For the most part, it is much like 9.10, just better.  The OS feels slightly better refined, and just a tad bit friendlier off the bat.  The one major improvement, is the boot speed.  From the time Ubuntu starts (from GRUB) to the time the X login screen appears, took just 16 seconds.  I’ll admit, the first time I saw that boot speed, I was damn impressed.  Really, with the OS starting this fast, there is no need for these special “embedded” operating systems that many hardware manufacturers are now including.

As I noted before, there isn’t any major changes (that I’ve noticed) from 9.10.  The only downside I’ve seen (from my admittedly limited amount of testing), is that my wifi adapter’s 5 GHz side doesn’t seem to work.  It is a minor annoyance at best, as 5 GHz is still rare, and I’m sure I could fix it… I just haven’t bothered. Overall, the system works extremely well and I’m happy with it.  I should have gotten bored and tried this sooner.  I suspect from now on my netbook will be staying Ubuntu as it goes well with my Macbook Air and Windows machines.  Nice little heterogeneous network.

Cosplay of Yoko from Gurren Lagann, taken at Fanimecon 2010. Copyright Richard Tom.

This weekend I spent some of my free time watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or more simply Gurren Lagann.  This is by no means a new series (it has been out since 2007) I just never got around to watching it.  I had heard mixed reviews about it, especially around the character of Yoko.  Anyways, after seeing Yoko done well in cosplay, I thought I should endeavor to see such as a fantastic series.

Now that I’ve finished watching it, I figured I’d share my thoughts.  NO SPOILERS

Yoko's "Space" costume. I approve!

Overall, this series is over the top and a bit… nuts. I tend not to be a fan of that totally over the top style of anime, so the first episode or two I wasn’t too sure about it.  As the episodes continued the “over the top” bits weren’t so over the top as to turn me off, and actually turned out to be quite fun.

I found Gurren Lagann, as a series, quite surprising.  They went directions and did things I wasn’t quite expecting, and are fairly unusual for a “feel good” series.  I won’t spoil whom, but they kill off a character fairly early on in the story, which I really did not expect.  In a lot of animes, a death of a character would be cause for those close to them to angst for practically the rest of the series.  In Lagann, they lightly angsted over the death for the next episode and a half.  But the end of that second episode, they got their act together and pushed on.  There were other bad things that happened, but basically no one sat about angsting for any amount of time, except for Rossiu (whom I didn’t like anyways).

As for the accusations that Yoko (pictured several times now) is a problem in the series, I disagree.  She plays a love interest, on occasion, to give the series a little more diversity other than just continuous awesome.  In reality, even though I’ve posted multiple pictures of her and she’s one of the “core” characters of the Gurren Brigade (as they call themselves), she doesn’t actually get all that much screen time.  Seeing as how she is the advertising tits to get you to watch the series (hey, it worked on me), I thought she’d play a bigger part.  I didn’t find her personality or the way she acted particularly annoying, and would have liked to see more of her, but alas it was not to be.

The length and speed of the series was great.  It was 27 episodes, which is an unusual number of episodes, but that really didn’t matter.  Basically, each episode they powered through the enemies or challenges they had.  Rarely did the series spend more than 2 episodes in one particular area.  The series is about the good guys winning, kicking ass, and being awesome.  The director realized they didn’t need to spend 3 episodes on every demi-boss fight to illustrate how awesome our protagonists are.  Thank you kami-sama.  Not to say I wouldn’t like to have seen a little more of the series, because I enjoyed it so much, but they wrapped the series up nicely and tied a bow on it even.  When it ended, it left me with the feeling of “Ahh, that was good… and now it is done”.  No strings left dangling, no loose ends, just complete.

Kamina, Simon and Yoko

It should be obvious by now, that I highly recommend watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.  If I wasn’t, I would have included spoilers.  Let’s just say that the journey of Simon The Digger and his pig-mole, Boota (who is a critical component in the series), is a fun and worthwhile watch.  It might be crazy and over the top, but soon that becomes part of the hilarious good time of Gurren Lagann.

A few weeks ago I was in downtown Danville and noticed that a new Japanese restaurant was setting up.  I find it slightly amusing since they are literally across the street from two other Japanese restaurants.  Danville isn’t exactly big, but does it ever have a TON of Japanese food.  Win for me.  Jumping up to July 9th, I was walking by and noticed this new place, now labeled as Akira Bistro, had opened.  Fast forward a week and a half later to July 20th, I finally got to try it.

Normally any restaurant with the name “bistro” turns me off because they like to do this “fusion” crap and generally muck about with food I actually like eating.  So far, this isn’t the case with Akira Bistro.  Their menu is fairly standard for Japanese food, and that is just fine with me.  They actually have a few items that aren’t as common, such as Chicken Yakitori.  It isn’t complicated, it is chicken on a stick, and for some reason most places don’t carry it.

Anyways, my dinner was Chicken Teriyaki (that’s my review meal, always).  It came with miso soup, salad and rice, so about par for the course.  The chicken was different, but it wasn’t bad.  I’m not sure if they were using all natural chicken breast or something, but it just seemed unusual.  My only real complaint was the rice (odd, I know).  They had used too much water during cooking, so instead of being light and sticky, it was a bit mushier.  On the bright side, my one item dinner was only $13.  For the area, that is a nice price.

Because I was trying out a new Japanese place, I had to order some sort of sushi.  Akira Bistro has quite a list of rolls.  I was pleased by what I saw because they weren’t “out there”.  A number of new Japanese places are trying to spice things up by making some crazy rolls – most of which I really don’t like (Editor’s Note: Jon usually leaves the trying of new sushi rolls to me, fearing that they might contain a secret ingredient of poison or something).  What I tried was the 49er Roll (I think).  It was crab, avocado and tempura shrimp inside with salmon on the outside.  The roll was one of the most expensive ones on the menu (that I remember seeing) at $13.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this particular roll was massive.   Unfortunately the picture doesn’t convey the size well, but I was not upset at the price after seeing the size of the roll.  As for the quality, well the salmon was quite delicious (which makes me all warm and fuzzy inside) along with the roll in general.  I demolished the entire thing.

Overall I thought the experience was quite nice.  We sat out on the patio, we enjoyed our dinner (and sushi), and paid a reasonable amount.  Sure, I’ve had cheaper Japanese dinners, but from what I could see, Akira’s ingredients were all quality and the service was good. For the fact that they had only been open a week and a half when I went there, they are doing just fine.  Generally the minor issues (like rice) tend to work themselves out within the first month or so.  I’ll be going back and trying more of the sushi next time, maybe during lunch.

There will be minor spoilers, but nothing terrible unpredictable.

The film starts with people falling out of the sky and parachutes deploying in order to see them (more or less) safely to the ground. We gradually meet the full lineup of characters and find out more about all of them. Basically, everyone is armed (from a Shiv to a Minigun) and trying to figure out just what is going on, and it takes them a little while to figure out that they are in fact on another planet. The hero is played by Adrien Brody and he is packing an AA-12 with a Drum Magazine. The first guy he meets is a Mexican (played by Danny Trejo) carrying a pair of pistols and SMGs (MP5s IIRC). They are interrupted by a Russian with the aforementioned minigun. While they are talking, the woman of the film shows up with a sniper rifle pointed at them. Then they wander over and meet someone who was on the FBI’s most wanted list (complete with orange jump suit and shiv) and a member of the RUF (who gets an AK-47). Finally, they find Topher Grace in what appears to be yet another role he really shouldn’t have. Seriously, which genius thought he would have been a good Eddie Brock/Venom in Spider-man 3? This time he is a doctor and only has a scalpel with him.
Anyway, eventually they meet up with a member of the Yakuza (complete with pistol), and that completes our merry band of adventurers.

There are numerous homages to the previous films. Including Brody getting covered in mud and shouting “Kill me! Kill me now!” Also, at one point it looked like one of the corpses that the group came across had had an Alien inside him, specifically, it looks like something had burst out of his chest, rather than someone caving it in to rip out his heart. In Predator 2, when Danny Glover goes onto their ship, we see an Alien skull mounted near the rest of the trophies, so maybe this was their subtler way of showing off that relationship, as the killing of an Alien (and taking a trophy) was the highest honor in the Predator society (or so the comics have shown).