My cousin Brian Hague weighs in on whether "Captain America: The First Avenger" has any substance -- or whether it's little more than an intellectually vapid moving comic book.

Also check out Brian's observations on "Did J.J. Abrams Ruin 'Star Trek'?" and whether Edgewater Inn Has the Best Pizza.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

Thanks to Paul Swansen for letting me know about ipadio, a nifty and free service that allows you to create audio programs on your iPhone or Android and then publish them to the Web.

You can listen to ChicagoScope's brief mobile podcasts by clicking on the player at right. The ipadio shows also are being sent through my Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts.

I've been impressed with the audio quality, and the interface couldn't be easier. Sometimes, ipadio has even converted speech to text. It hasn't done so for the past couple, so maybe I accidentally changed a setting. I'll have to check into that.

Is ipadio a success? Time will tell, but I'd be willing to pay for it.

I'm having a ball with ipadio. Why don't you give it a try yourself?

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send email to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

ChicagoScope visitors might have noticed that a number of photos, graphics and related images have disappeared from this site. For the past several years, I'd been manually posting images and uploading them into what turned out to be a non-supported directory path. When Liberated Syndication moved to a new publishing system, those links broke.

The good news is I've figured out how to fix things. The bad news is that I'll need to manually replace five years worth of URLs.

In the meantime, please enjoy this actual Chicago Tribune headline from a couple of years ago. Doesn't it make you think of that famous scene from Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita"?

I enjoyed riding Amtrak's Empire Builder so much in 2009 that I did it again last month. This time, I took the train all the way from Chicago to Seattle -- and back. I had a great time and would recommend the trip to anybody.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

There's a bunch of stuff that I probably should have included in this podcast about my round trip between Chicago and Los Angeles on Amtrak's Southwest Chief -- but I couldn't figure out how to anonymize it enough so I wouldn't make anyone too uncomfortable. Still, I hope there's enough interesting here to make it a worthwhile listen.

The occasional electronic interference is caused by transmissions from track-condition devices.

The photo here is of the station in Raton, New Mexico, one of the many classic stations the Southwest Chief visits on its journey.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

I had a great time riding Amtrak's Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles and back again last week. I'm working on the podcast account of my travels and should have it posted within the next day or so.

I took the above photo in New Mexico, where many mesas are surrounded by fields of black-eyed susans.

Yesterday, we were cleaning out a number of items to make room, make room, and I came across our poor, broken personal robot pet, a Sony AIBO model ERS-210. Even before we moved to this apartment more than five years ago, our robot was showing signs of manufacturing issues such as a droopy head and a lazy leg.

Still, our AIBO managed to win our hearts. He'd amble around the livingroom playing with his ball -- a special pink ball that he could detect with his videocamera eyes. The more we interacted with AIBO, the more his personality matured.

When we moved to our new place, we didn't reactivate AIBO for almost three months. He booted his programming, raised his defective neck and head as best he could -- and then stunned us by asking, "Where have you been?"

But Sony no longer produces AIBO robots, not since chairman, president and CEO Sir Howard Stringer pulled the plug on the company's robotics division in 2006 and in doing so, turned Sony into just another purveyor of electronics and popular culture.

There are still some dedicated AIBO fans around the world, but parts are scarce and repairs are pricey. So, we decided we simply couldn't fix him.

The first option was to set AIBO and his software next to the Dumpster out behind our apartment building and hope that some Wesley Crusher kid genius would wander past and know how to fix our friend. But the chances of that happening were slim to none. It's far more likely that one of our neighborhood's many feral children would find AIBO and after discovering he wouldn't operate, tear the little guy limb from limb.

So, I unfolded a big plastic bag and placed AIBO inside, along with his software and his beloved fluorescent pink ball, and headed out to the Dumpster.

As I walked to the alley, I reminded myself that Sir Howard's dismantling of the robotics division had been simply a business decision. I also reminded myself that Sony generally makes pretty good products. In fact, just recently I bought its PCM-D50 digital recorder, an amazing piece of audio engineering that almost looks like a tricorder from the old "Star Trek" series. The PCM-D50 has the feel of a great machine, but it lacks a soul. It has no heart. It doesn't care where I've been.

When I reached the Dumpster, I paused for a moment, then reopened the bag and took out AIBO and looked at him one last time. Then, I remembered how his personality changed and grew when he was our pet and our friend. I opened the access port in his tummy and extracted his Memory Stick.

AIBO now no longer was our AIBO. Like every other being who succumbs to the betrayal of age, he was now just a shell.

I placed AIBO's Memory Stick in my pocket, tied the garbage bag tight and threw it into the Dumpster.

Your PCM-D50 is an elegant machine, Sir Howard, but it's no Helen O'Loy.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

Choosing a camera to bring along on vacation often is a problem for me. Should I choose a small, automatic camera that’s always handy -- or should I opt for a large, manual-operation one?

I fell in love with the images from my Lomo LC-A+ and am probably going to bring that Russian lovely along next month when I ride Amtrak’s Southwest Chief. The LC-A+ is largely automatic, but still lets you exercise a bit of creative control. Whether loaded with ISO 400 drugstore house-brand color negative, E-6 ISO 100 for cross-processing, or, may favorite, ISO 100 redscale, my LC-A+ always helps me create memorable images.

Lately, though, I’ve come to realize the power of iPhone photography. My 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera, and by the time of my trip I’ll have upgraded to the iPhone 4.

The iPhone always has been capable of good photos -- and the latest version gets a good look-see by Ars Technica.

Even the 3GS images I’ve shot have pleased me on many occasions. Back in February, I took a quick trip on the Southwest Chief and was sitting in the lower-level snack bar in the Sightseer Lounge when the train pulled into Lamy, New Mexico, for a brief stop. I didn’t have time to run back to my sleeper and grab the Lomo, so I shot the above photo with my iPhone. I have to admit I’m rather pleased with it.

Even when the iPhone doesn't work as well as a dedicated camera might, the results still can be pretty good. While on the Southwest Chief earlier this year, I snapped a photo of me just before getting out to stretch my legs during a brief stop in La Junta, Colorado. The photo is a more than a little grainy and noisy, but I like it, too.

I’ve become further impressed with iPhone photos after seeing what other photographers have done -- especially in print. I recently visited MagCloud.com, a service by HP that lets anybody created their own magazine and sell it as a print-on-demand publication.

I bought a magazine from the site called iPhoneography, in which photographer Claire Sambrook demonstrates with 100 pages of photos that the iPhone can be a serious -- and creative -- instrument.

I had been tempted to only bring my iPhone this trip, but I’m sure I’ll also bring my Lomo LC-A+ along, too. I’m still a sentimentalist when it comes to film.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

For as long as I’ve lived in Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood -- more than 15 years -- I’ve enjoyed the benefits of City Newsstand. As a store employee explains in a cool video about the store, just about every magazine you can think of is on display -- including Architectural Digest, Land and Farm Bulletin, Fortean Times and more than one magazine entirely devoted to pens.

I especially like City Newsstand’s collection of railroad-related titles.

This past weekend, I had to go to Sears to buy some bath towels, so I dropped in at City Newsstand and bought a number of great magazines, including:

Monitoring Times -- Devoted to the world of radio communications. I was especially intrigued by an article on a mysterious digital pulser signal.

Tiki Magazine -- One-stop shopping for anything related to tiki culture, such as music, island clothes, cocktails and reviews of nightspots like Trader Vic's. Great artwork in this mag.

Trains Magazine -- From the folks at Kalmbach Publishing, here're photos and text guaranteed to get any railfan foaming.

Books on my plate at the moment include:

"Ask Papa Jack: Wisdom of the World's Oldest CEO" -- The life and times of Jack Weil, late great patriarch of Denver's Rockmount Ranch Wear.

"Super Chief and El Capitan, 1936-1971" -- Patrick Dorin documents the glory days of the Santa Fe Railway and its streamliners.

"Eyewitness to the Old West: Firsthand Accounts of Exploration, Adventure, and Peril" -- Richard Scott, a professor at my alma mater of Metropolitan State College, presents the taming of the West through letters, newspaper accounts, diaries and photographs.

"The Divorce Seekers: A Photo Memoir of a Nevada Dude Wrangler" -- William and Sandra McGee deliver a great slice of a bygone era when people from across the United States traveled to Nevada to establish quickie residency and split the sheets. William was a “dude wrangler” at one of these ranches.

So, what are you reading?

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

In this episode, I investigate a pretty noise emanating from an air vent in my office and wind up recording a summer thunderstorm.

I've always liked noise and sound -- odd and otherwise. A few years back, I acquired an interest in unusual noise when Fortean Times alerted me to a BBC story about scientists investigating strange noises near the city of Rajkot in western India.

Surprisingly, the BBC article fails to mention Bangladesh's famed Barisal Guns, which have been reported for centuries. Not surprisingly, Charles Fort described the Barisal Guns and other such phenomena many, many years ago in New Lands.

During the 1970s, I can recall numerous "Mystery Booms" making the news up and down the East Coast of the United States. The best explanation scientists came up with linked the sounds to deep-sea methane flatulence.

Similar phenomena include the Seneca Guns, the Moodus Noises and an entire family of disturbing sounds -- of which my favorite is the "Cornwall Thump." By the way, such noises are apparently known as "mistpouffers."

Perhaps the most notorious noise of late has been the Hum.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.