A Geek Girl's Random Musings......

DC Perl Mongers meeting

2009-08-05T12:19:00.003-04:00

Okay first off, I was always interested in programming languages. The thing that stopped me was that the prospect was always so daunting because I never knew which one to pick or where to go to get help (before the widespread use of the Internet and high speed connections). Fast forward to now, and the internet is a great thing. I discovered the great world of perl, python, ruby, Xcode. Finally! Something I could get some traction on.

I had heard of Perl Mongers meetings but had assumed they were just on the west coast. A Google search later, lo and behold, what do I find? A local Perl Mongers meeting. Yay!! :D I planned to go last month but got sidetracked. So, I decided to go last night and just show up. It was great! As I expected, I was the only female there out of about a dozen or so people. Fortunately, the other attendees weren't neck beard-y like I thought :P

Most of the discussion was WAY over my head, but they were super nice about my noobishness. I've yet to finish putting my brains in my head. LOL Anyways, now I really gotta get my butt in gear and start studying to come up with some intelligent questions for next month's meeting.

Off to studying....

Yikes!

2009-07-18T16:36:00.002-04:00

Okay. So I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Web 2.0. Finally, right? I had hoped to lay low until Web 3.0 came blowing through but no such luck. :/ Currently, I am appearing monthly on a Philadelphia radio tech show and it was becoming quite apparent that I need some way for the listeners to contact me off the air. (Unfortunately, this month I was accidentally bounced off the air before I could give out my information. Ah well, there's always next month.)

So here I am. A MySpace account and, shock of shocks, a Twitter account. A Facebook account is lurking somewhere around the corner.

I had wanted to give MySpace another chance for a while now (I had always had the impression that the place was a burnt out crackhouse of poorly designed pages). So today up came the perfect answer. My page is one of the few that will remain quite tasteful and plain as it will basically be used for caller support, not impressing some random 12-year-old. As for Twitter, I resisted signing up for all the Hollywood celebrity incursion ball-shaking recently. But as someone said to me once, I technically can follow anybody I like and not follow everybody else. :) Problem solved. Right now as it stands, I am quite tempted to get back on FriendFeed (I tried it before but it held no real interest as I didn't have much to contribute to it) now that I have multiple sites to pull from. We will see.

Well, the future awaits me .... I'll be back! :P

Long time, no blog...

2009-04-12T22:05:00.003-04:00

Ehhhh just being lazy :P Anyway, an update: Playstation Home now has expanded quite nicely. I DID get part of what I wanted from back in January. Resident Evil space has arrived and it's a fun experience except for one glaring error: no sound. At all. But the upshot is that despite no sound in that space and some rather crazy choices in music (an entire playlist of 50 Cent at one point and an entire playlist of ONE SONG at another time), the music Listen @ Home has fleshed out rather nicely (the music still doesn't travel far enough away from the set though :/ ). I really don't expect the Final Fantasy space to come until the game is released in North America which is apparently rumored to be released in early 2010. Which is fine with me.

There is also this thing that has been going on called Xi. It's a console Alternate Reality Game billed as the first one of it's kind. It started out as some weird code in PS Home and has now bloomed into a new space and apparently worldwide easter egg hunt for a woman named Jess. To say this is really interesting is a major understatement. :) More news shall be forthcoming.

In other news, a failed attempt at getting a modem driver to work correctly has resulted in having to reinstall BOTH operating systems (in one case 3x :( ). Well, that's not exactly the truth. The driver worked, it just totally borked Firefox. Grrrr..... Anyway onward and upward. :)

Now back to wrestling ...... :P

Not exactly tech related.....

2009-02-02T11:55:00.002-05:00

Okay I just gotta gush right now: I LOVE Lands' End!! First of all, their stuff is totally great and now their customer service is the best I have ever seen :) . Wow! The rep literally picked up after like the 3rd ring. A real live breathing human being right from the start. Wow! No machine, no button pushing, no frustration! Wow! So everybody, go shop at Lands' End LOL

LINKS:
Lands' End Site

Playstation Home

2009-01-29T12:15:00.003-05:00

For the record, I *love* Playstation Home and all the massive amounts of potential that it has. As it stands though, it's pretty good: You can play video games within the gaming center and in the Central Plaza, visit the Mall and purchase items and decorate you're personal space.

But I have four really top things that I would love to have placed within Home:
#1 More clothing for female avatars
There is just not enough of it in the Mall, I mean just FOUR shirts in the Diesel store when the boys get like 20 shirts and 5 pairs of pants?!?! Come on!!
#2 Do something with the Stuff store
For now, just putting the star section from the Furniture Store in the Stuff Store will do.
#3 More music please
I would really love to have a bigger selection of music than the 9 rap songs that are always in there.
#4 Final Fantasy and Resident Evil Spaces
I am a huge fan of these two video game series. I really want these two spaces in Home to hurry and come already but I do understand that this takes time.

Anyways, I can wait for all of this though. I can't wait to see what Home is gonna look like in a year when things really get rolling. :)

LINKS:
Playstation Home Main Page
Playstation Home Forums

Just watched WALL-E

2009-01-26T00:03:00.003-05:00

Oh my gosh! I just finished watching this movie! Wow, it is SO funny :P and WALL-E is such an adorable cutie :) I loved it. I downloaded it as a rental from the Playstation Network which is waaay better than Netflix :P

Dancing Sony Robots

2009-01-23T18:35:00.001-05:00

This video rocks! I want one :D

Not to beat a dead horse or anything ......

2009-01-17T00:02:00.002-05:00

But I figure I'd post the websites that were an *immense* help with my printing issues. I am not sure if it'll help anybody in the long run but here goes:

BSDnexus forums / CUPS Howto
Solved: FreeBSD as print server w/CUPS + samba + apsfilter
CUPS - FreeBSDwiki
Desktop FreeBSD Part 5: Printing - OFB.biz: Open for Business
OpenPrinting/Database/CUPSDocumentation - The Linux Foundation
The FreeBSD Diary -- CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) - installation and configuration

The first two links saved my bacon a *lot* :D and FreeBSD Wiki is worth its weight in gold (well okay maybe the servers' weight :P). Anyways, enjoy!

Okay as it turns out.....

2009-01-15T22:21:00.005-05:00

I did manage to get FreeBSD to print an independent document (aside from the test doc) for a grand glorious total of exactly 5 seconds. :/ THEN I discovered that I really didn't need CUPS after all and proceeded to destroy every bit of it. D'oh!! Right after which *nothing* would print. If you heard howls of frustration late last night, that was me. :P I then tried in disgusting amounts of vain to reinstall but CUPS refused. I guess deleting the associated folders out of the ports directory was a *bad* idea. Plus I think before that I downloaded a newer copy of CUPS and for the life of me I couldn't figure out where to find how to change the authorizations to change anything in the CUPS admin page, which sucked.

I wound up reinstalling the whole OS 'cause the stress of getting it to work was really annoying me. After a half day of reinstalling and reconfiguring, I manged to get everything to work beautifully again. The print commands look entirely nasty but *man* does it work! :D Meh, since I probably won't be printing *too* often from that box, copying the printcap file to /etc every time probably won't kill me and by the time it does, I'll probably have figured out a better way to do it anyways :D And I am almost positive there is an easier way to do it, but at this point I really can't care any less, 'cause like I said, at least it works :D I did all of this primarily 'cause I wanted to be see if I could not out of any real desire to be able to print stuff from *another* computer :P Plus I figured I'd at least get this out of the way now since I have high speed Internet connection at my disposal :)

See, kids? being hard headed and persistent really does pay off in the long run :D I can move on now :P

It worked!

2009-01-14T02:07:00.002-05:00

Well, shortly after that Saturday post, CUPS finished installing, beautifully I might add. I also installed a few other pieces of software that looked interesting, mostly for security and box management. The test page printed as expected but I am fumbling at the moment to get the exact command to print normally. I was just being a bit chicken and circling around it cause I don't really wanna screw it up again. I think I found the right command though.

I really have to buckle down and learn NMAP and wireshark (not for anything bad, but just to know cause I wanna get going on the networking super guru thing :) ). I already have the books / manuals from online but I am terrible at reading manuals which is really not a good thing for stuff like this :P I wish I could afford the actual books though. :/

Grr new addiction

2009-01-14T01:34:00.002-05:00

Why is Zuma so addicting?! Aaarrrrgggghhhhhhh...

7.1-RELEASE

2009-01-10T23:21:00.002-05:00

Okay. I have realized that FreeBSD 7.1 was a dud for me. You know that saying, if it ain't broke don't fix it? Well I broke that rule quite spectacularly. So I decided to just downgrade back to 7.0 and leave it well enough alone. Right now I am installing CUPS. So far, it seems to be coming along quite nicely. Since I've been able to actually get it to work before, this go 'round should be a breeze although I have been known to get bitten in the ass for speaking too soon. But hey, I'll live. :) Updates to come later.

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.....

2009-01-09T23:57:00.003-05:00

The good news is that I did manage to get CUPS working correctly and managed to print out a test page. Yay me!! :) The bad news is that I *had* to go and fiddle with some settings I don't think I was supposed to mess with and now I can't back into the CUPS printer admin page nor am I really even able to actually print anything :( Well, on to more slogging through zillions of man pages.

I did manage to reinstall CUPS but that didn't seem to work and sysinstall is acting like a baby and not installing things I need to install correctly. I think I shouldn't have been so hasty to install 7.1-RELEASE :/

Half the battle is completed

2009-01-08T00:07:00.002-05:00

Well, I finally *finally* FINALLY managed to completely install CUPS correctly tonight. I must say that this is definitely a rough learning experience that I am so happy I am going through. Thank heavens for the rm and rmdir command :P Tomorrow is the configuration phase of this fight :D

Update to 7.1-RELEASE

2009-01-06T22:08:00.003-05:00

Okay so all afternoon today I managed to update my FreeBSD box to 7.1 from 7.0 ostensibly to satisfy my update fixation (last night the update got killed cause apparently Comcast chose that very moment the go away :/) . :D Anyway I noticed that cups (it's the printing software) got updated (cause the version that I had was a big fat pain in my butt). So I try to get it from sysinstall but for some reason it just wouldn't download. I figure I'll just give the thing a rest for the night and bang away at it tomorrow.

Bigger Drive

2008-12-28T23:35:00.005-05:00

Well, I found out over the weekend in ever the most painful way that I really need a larger drive, apparently a *much* larger drive, to install KDE on top FreeBSD. :( Eventually...... But I think I'll stick with the 9 GB I have it on and work with that for now.

On a more irritating note, apparently every time I reboot back into FreeBSD from Ubuntu, the time zone never seems to stick despite repeated commands to copy the correct timezone from zoneinfo directory and adjusting the date. I just gotta figure out how to get NTP setup then I think I'll be all set.

Update: 1:20 AM 12/29/08
Okay, I managed to get the NTP thing going and so far it seems to be taking correctly.

Yay!

2008-12-20T18:06:00.003-05:00

Last night, I went into the resolution battle and came out victorious! As it turns out, Xorg was apparently the wrong tree I was barking up, I think. I went to the FreeBSD Wiki and got really good instructions for doing it. Rebuilding and installing the kernel was the biggest portion of time it took, maybe around an hour and a half or so. In the end, I managed to get it to 1024x768 I think but I do get the black bars on the sides of the screen. I think I'll take what I can get right now. :P

Next up on my conquer list is figuring out how to email external email addresses. I am armed with the wiki and the FreeBSD Handbook, so I am confident that I will eventually prevail :D

Oohhhhh goody :D

2008-12-18T21:38:00.003-05:00

Okay after over a month of futzing around, I finally got my baby toes into the FreeBSD pond and to tell ya the truth : it's great! I am really getting into the groove of it.

Years ago (God that makes me feel kinda old now :P ) I used to dabble a bit with a CLI but I really had no idea what I was doing and no real, easy way to get to the Internet (the neighborhood library was crap and I was poor). So I just tapped at the keyboard and messed up; I gave it up as too hard and put it off. Fast forward a few years, I got snagged into playing around with graphical Linux when I saw all the cool new developments, especially Ubuntu. And I was getting a bit tired of looking at Windows and Mac so I figured I'd look at that. I ordered Ubuntu and it sat for over a year as I had no machine I could safely put it on. :D So a few months ago, I came across a "sidewalk sale" and took a tower :D I would have gone back for the other tower but the effort from lugging the first one half a mile home was a bit much. So voila , I installed Ubuntu and had many trials.

So I was talking to some friends online and was quite quickly talked into looking at a BSD distro. And after looking around for a bit I settled on FreeBSD. Heaven!! :D Installed another hard drive and bam! on we go :P after many trials, screaming and hair pulling (getting it on the right drives, being too lazy to physically switch the hard drives around, having to switch the drives anyway, reinstalling and updating a billion times, etc).

I got irssi to work a bit more quickly than I had anticipated, which is terrific. I still haven't quite mastered the ins and outs, but it's working for the most part. Getting games setup was a lot trickier than I thought and that's another thing to work on, but having rediscovered make install makes that go a lot faster. Setting up the monitor resolution, which I'm working on now, is way tricky but I'm pretty sure I can work with it. I am making some inroads with Xorg. I decided to make a few study lessons that I'd work out over a couple of days to do myself instead of going "easy" and asking people because my intent is to really mess it up myself and learn from that rather than really getting any outside help. I'm the "throw to the sharks" type personality. :D

I am really proud of myself and motivated cause this coming up February is a FreeBSD conference and I really wanna be able to attend. I dunno If I'll be able to afford it though :( But the bright side is that I learn a new set of skills that are pretty valuable. :)

Anyways, off to study.....

OpenBSD

2008-11-08T19:32:00.001-05:00

So I downloaded it last night. I really couldn't help it..... :) And oh boy it's a lot of stuff. I think I should get through learning FreeBSD first before I dive into anything else. :) Anyways, updates on my progress to come ....

D'oh........

2008-11-07T09:21:00.004-05:00

Okay I have an embarrassing confession to make: after almost 2 years of having iDefrag on my computer, I discover that the other app that comes with it lets me burn a startup CD. Grrrrrrrrr..............

So, after 4 years, this only the second full defragmentation that my laptop has had (the first time was maybe 3 years ago). Consequently, it was bugger slow and the drive was grinding like crazy. And despite what you may have heard, my OS X really *did* need it (maybe not as often as in the past but I think I can get away with it now).

I've only just done it last night and already it has a noticeably faster startup and Firefox doesn't get "stuck" on its startup. But it really remains to be seen whether at least the grinding goes away. We'll see......

In other news: I finally figured out how to get my brand spanking new installation of FreeBSD (yeah so I'm an OS whore, sue me :D ) to dual boot with my previous Ubuntu installation (which incidentally I updated to the new 8.10 version). Cooooool!!!

Basically, FreeBSD is a CLI* and while I'd had some basic Unix experience before, it was so long ago I really have to relearn almost everything. A gentleman by the name of Randal Schwartz had really piqued my interest in it. FreeBSD is more a server OS than a real consumer GUI* OS. I can make it an internet server, a router, amongst other networking things.

The Ubuntu update which is a consumer GUI OS as far as I can tell ( I really wasn't into it so deep before as to be able to tell any deep differences) has the networking pane redone and some other minor tweaks.

Updates will be forthcoming as I dive into it and FreeBSD more....

LINKS:
Coriolis Systems
The FreeBSD Project
Ubuntu Site
*CLI = Command Line Interface
*GUI = Graphical User Interface
Randal Schwartz

2008-10-29T12:50:00.002-04:00

I love this commercial!!

Little Big Planet Demo

2008-10-10T22:33:00.003-04:00

Well, I just got the Little Big Planet demo yesterday and so far I am so loving it! I wasn't really too excited about it until I got to see some real game play of it. I made a little sack girl (of course!) but I haven't made any worlds yet cause I still wanna keep playing the game first. The demo will end tomorrow but that's okay cause I really did get a good impression from the game. I will definitely get the game at this point. Yay! :)

Finally...

2008-09-27T21:31:00.006-04:00

I found out a few weeks ago that The Third Birthday and Final Fantasy Agito XIII will be coming out on the PSP. Squeeeeeee!!!!! And this ladies and gentleman is why I will get another PSP. Not the skinny ones but the original fatty.

LINKS:
Final Fantasy Agito XIII will now be seeing a release on Playstation Portable
Final Fantasy Agito XIII, Parasite Eve "Sequel" Are PSP Bound

Sublime - Santeria

2008-08-16T02:51:00.001-04:00

Oh I love this song the way Terra Naomi sings it! :)

What's up with Google Maps?

2008-08-04T20:30:00.003-04:00

Okay this is really strange. For some reason, the satellite images on the Google Maps site (Google Earth appears to work okay still) are behaving really wonkily. Here is a link to a picture as it seems I can't upload it directly to this blog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bronwyn_2007/2733206555. Strange....
.

AdBlock Plus

2008-08-04T14:13:00.003-04:00

Oh...my... gosh..... This Firefox plug-in is the best thing ever invented (besides the Internet itself and sliced bread of course :) ). And the best part of it is that it works flawlessly (so far after 2 days at least) on my Mac. Finally no more annoying blinky ads.........

LINKS:
AdBlock Plus
Firefox plug-in

Foxmarks

2008-07-14T22:52:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I finally broke down and started using Foxmarks. I am finding it very useful because I have 3 versions of Firefox I really have to keep track of. Now I don't have to sneakernet my bookmarks everywhere. :D

Eight Websites I Cannot Live Without

2008-07-13T01:17:00.007-04:00

Yahoo!
Google
BMEzine (CAUTION: Not safe for work & children under 18)
YouTube
Wikipedia
Flickr
Vixy
And of course, the best one of all, TWiT Live!

Free Stuff..

2008-07-08T00:40:00.003-04:00

21" Radius PrecisionView 2150 and Dell Optiplex GX 200

Free stuff. Ain't it grand? I got the 21" Radius PrecisionView 2150 through a website called Throwplace (along with some other equipment) and I found the Dell Optiplex GX 200 on the side of the road. I had ordered Ubuntu last year but I never had a chance to really get into it until now.

Okay, so maybe the monitor isn't *totally* perfect (there's about a quarter inch to a half inch black bar across the bottom) and the tower isn't the newest or the most beautiful but they work for what I use them for.

Anyways, I *love* Ubuntu because it definitely satisfies my intense desire to tinker with stuff. This definitely affords me the opportunity to finally start learning how to use a Linux CLI.

External video, finally........

2008-07-07T10:04:00.003-04:00

Yay! I finally have a use for that white video connector that came with my iBook G4. ::grin:: I just got a new 19" HDTV and it has a VGA hookup to it. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get sound through it and I'm all set.

EDIT: Okay just found an audio cable.

Well...

2008-05-25T18:56:00.002-04:00

The other day I spoke to Don Reisinger, a rather well known (well to geeks like myself anyway) tech blogger for himself and for C|Net. He also has a podcast called The Digital Home.

I told him about how The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan is the best fantasy series ever. It was in his chat room and on his video stream (now people, don't get your panties all up in a bunch, despite the prevailing retarded drooling village idiot media view, all chatrooms/video streams ARE NOT predatory hunting grounds for sick twisted axe murderers, stalkers and child pornographers; it is really not as bad as the media loves to make them out to be) and it was very cool. I did tell him too that he looks a lot younger than I expected. There were a lot of other folks there for an altogether great time. I do hope that I can make this a sort of regular occurrence (man, Firefox's spell check thing is great!).

Well, back to trying to avoid watching television.....

Well, I did it.....

2008-05-12T09:19:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I went almost completely all day without watching television. Truthfully, it was quite painful but now I know I can do it. I might make it a Sunday habit. It was so oddly quiet but I had a book to read, new podcasts to listen to, live streaming to watch and IRC to chat in so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. So I am quite proud of myself now.

Okay, let the wave sweep the nation.......

Customer Service

2008-04-21T14:37:00.003-04:00

Ugh. Just ugh. I hate Symantec customer service. Everytime I call these places, I get "Mike" from "New Jersey". With a tenuous grasp on the English language and a thick Indian accent. It's making every interaction a billion times harder than it really needs to be. I am a person with very little patience so this situation is extremely intolerable for me.

What ever happened to hiring people who can actually speak (not to mention understand?) simple basic American English? Ummm oh like say an American? I do understand the need for internationalization (cause it's cheaper/keep costs down, they say) but damn this is approaching impossible to me. At what point does the need for inexpensive consumer electronics (or else sheer corporate greediness) completely override the simple need to be understood? Honestly, I wouldn't mind paying more to get more made-in-America people who can actually speak English clearly and fluently. Please...... Or else subsidize getting American kids into the IT field. "Oh but you can't say that!" you say, "It's not PC!" or "They do speak English (or are American), so get over it." Bullshit. It's my opinion and I am entitled to it.

As for Symantec, I am never buying another of their products. EVER.

Boston Dynamics' Big Dog

2008-03-18T21:47:00.004-04:00

First of all some background. Boston Dynamics is an engineering company specializing in robotics and human simulation. It was started in 1992 as a spin-off of MIT. It has many applications in the military and various robotic divisions around the world consult with Boston Dynamics.

Big Dog, billed as the most advanced quadruped on the planet, "... is being developed by Boston Dynamics with help from Foster Miller, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Harvard University Concord Field Station. Development is funded by the DARPA Defense Sciences Office". As you can see from the video and the specs on its web page, this is a rather large machine (at 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight) with impressive physical capabilities such as the ability to climb a 35 degree slope, trots at 3.3 mph and carried a 120 lb load. I can only speculate that Big Dog is to be initially used in military applications: weapons delivery, possible medical supply unit, scouting enemy lines etc. Hell, the thing by itself should make the enemy piss his pants.

This, ladies and gentleman, is the scariest fucking thing I have ever seen. And the fact that it makes a really loud buzzing sound DOES NOT help at all. And the second thing that went through my mind after I saw it was, "I want one!!" I cannot wait until this thing gets released to the general public. This is so cool!

LINKS:
About Boston Dynamics
Big Dog
Another video

Steve Ballmer is painful to watch ....

2008-03-09T00:19:00.002-05:00

::shudder:: Sometimes I wonder if he's gone off his meds or something....

Pakistan sparks YouTube outage!

2008-02-24T21:06:00.004-05:00

This story is just so insane I hadda say something about it. So in a fit of non-brain use, Pakistan decides to cut of YouTube to just the one country but wind on screwing everybody else on the planet. Is it that YouTube is so poisonous or their policy on how to conduct oneself so lax? This is what you get for trying to censor the Internet: you ruin it for everybody else who don't believe in your idiotic rampant mass psychosis to ban everything in sight.

Man, this is how the end of the world is gonna come....

LINKS:
Washington Post article
Slashdot Article

Oh please hurry up and come out already...

2008-02-17T23:27:00.003-05:00

These are two of the games I am so drooling over ......

Barack Obama - Yes We Can music video

2008-02-15T20:41:00.001-05:00

I'm actually kinda surprised this worked cause I've been having a lot of trouble posting videos from YouTube. It was one of those "D'oh!" slapping the forehead kinda moments but now it works. Yay!!

Xbox Live Outage...

2008-02-08T23:26:00.000-05:00

I know this is a bit late, but I figured I put my opinion out there. It may or may not be true, who knows?

In early January, I was hearing complaints that the Xbox Live thing went down for apparently quite some time (somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 14 days) around the holidays. Then in about late January on Major Nelson's podcast, I heard that some legal action (that he couldn't discuss) had been taken against Microsoft regarding the outage.
Personally, I think the Xbox Live servers got hacked and Microsoft got really embarrassed about it. Now, I'm not saying I had anything to do with it (which I didn't) or that I know who did it (which I don't), I just think it's really odd that he as the Director of Programming for Xbox Live mentioned the lawsuit in the first place then not mention what exactly it was for (although by now it was probably about the outage). Anyways, the results from what I can tell are that the gamers who were affected get a free arcade game worth about $10 and a company apology. Heartfelt, I'm sure. Eh well, that's corporate culture for ya....

I only mention any of this at all because I notice that his website is down. I don't visit that often so I have no idea what went on, but conspiracy minded that I am I have to wonder .... =D

PS: Despite what the Gizmodo article says, I still think it was hackers =P because I can't believe that as much as MS likes to shake their balls about how big and powerful they are, they weren't ahead of the game (so to speak) on this.

Let's pull out the very sharp knife shall we....?

2008-02-08T20:19:00.000-05:00

Grrrrrr..... Leet speak (i.e. ur so kewl. U no u r teh pwn) or whatever the hell it's called is so fucking annoying. I wanna chop off the fingers of anybody who thinks this is cool. I shudder to think that the lazy dumbass kids who use this (and think it's the way to go) will run this country in 20 years. God, please learn how to type in the fucking English language please!!!
/rant

End of the World....?

2008-02-06T23:54:00.002-05:00

Okay never mind. The post that was previously here I decided to take down because it was just crazy and absolutely nothing to do with tech.

EDIT: Okay I decided to put the post back in. Here it is:
PREDICTION #1 (initially made January 1, 2008):
Hackers hijaked and/or crashed all the DNS servers on the planet (of which there are a grand total of 13) and made the internet impossible to use. Then they demanded insanely huge ransoms from all the world's governments. (February 6, 2008) It all started as a diversion in late January - early February, 2008 when undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea and nearby waters were cut. Most conspiracy theories wound up proving true.

PREDICTION #2 (initially made January 22, 2008):
Worldwide government approval of cloned meat resulted in horribly deformed stock. Previously harmless viruses that contaminated the meat grew out of control and leaped to humans killing everybody. Fuck 99% to 99.5% dead; no immunity, no heroic scientist with a cure in the nick of time, no nothing: EVERYBODY DIES!

PREDICTION #3 (initially made January 22, 2008):
Something from space (either alien or dirty snow ball) got so fed up with humanity (or else think we're some sort of galactic cockroach) and destroyed everybody.

PREDICTION #4 (initially made January 22, 2008):
Absolutely nothing will happen.

Sorry to be such a downer, but I only mention this at all because currently the internet cables being cut (oh I'm sorry breaking mysteriously) right now could maybe probably possibly lead to something more sinister. I dunno why by whom, but I'm really curious to know if I'm right about this leading to the so called "end of the world". ::grin::

Microsoft to the "rescue".....

2008-02-04T14:39:00.000-05:00

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhh!! Why does Microsoft have to have everything their way? I really really don't want them to even touch Yahoo! stuff. I mean, don't get me wrong, MS does tend to make pretty things but their track record does not seem to bode well for focusing on one thing and doing it well.

Well, we can only wait and see how it all pans out and hope for the best.....

The Guild....!!

2008-02-04T03:31:00.001-05:00

You have gotta watch the Guild on YouTube. It's the funniest thing evar!

Lasers Make Other Metals Look Like Gold

2008-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

Oh this article in the New York Times is SO cool!

When Nerds get bored.....

2008-01-27T15:04:00.000-05:00

... and when data center cabling becomes art.

There's something in the air....

2008-01-16T13:35:00.000-05:00

OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH! I love the new MacBook Air (now if Apple put and "e" in the end of that it would be even cooler)! The downsides are that there is no optical drive and apparently, according to Engadget, you can't change the battery yourself. That sucks.... However, there seems to be a bright side.

But other than that it is so cool! So thin it can fit into one of those interoffice envelopes. But leave it to Apple to completely ditch a still living technology (ethernet ports): it's all wireless.

Man, I wish I were rich.....

That is so crazy!

2008-01-16T03:36:00.000-05:00

"Phonewires in India..."

"wrom"

Video Game Convergence......

2008-01-15T20:58:00.000-05:00

Hello again! I'm back. This post is all about the news fluttering around that gaming platform hardware should come together and be happy. Bullshit!

I think there should be more software exclusives for each platform. That will stimulate hardware sales and still make it easier for developers to make games for one platform. I mean, how hard is that?

The only reason I bought a GameCube in the first place was to play Resident Evil 4. I got the Wii cause I really wanted to play Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog again, believe it or not.

Not to mention finally having broken down and gotten an Xbox to play the Halo series (which I never really could get into, by the way). Temptation to get an Xbox 360 to play Crackdown, BioShock and Kameo: Elements of Power amongst others is almost there. The only real thing that stops me is the rash of nasty hardware problems MS was having with it last year but that's a post for another day.

I already talked about why I got the Playstation 3 in earlier posts. Plus I am a Sony fangirl to the bone.

So maybe I'm wrong but I think that hardware diversification is good all around, software whoring is the enemy here ......

LINKS
Hardware diversification is healthy, says Square Enix president
The Road to a Universal Platform

I'm annoyed.....

2007-12-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

Sony's delay of Playstation Home Beta is incredibly aggravating. But I am universally known as a patient person.... okay maybe sometimes, but this is getting a bit annoying.

Okay let's back up here. Home was initially slated for release in the Fall of 2007 per Game Developers Conference on March 7, 2007. It got slipped to Spring (presumably Northern Hemisphere) of 2008. There was a closed beta that started back in April which was open to about 15,000 users. Then, the "open" beta was scheduled to start this past November to December (remember, that was primarily why I got the machine in the first place). Come to find out it's been delayed too apparently until Q1 of 2008.

Arrrggghhh....... Come on, I want my Home already.

This is hilarious...

2007-12-21T18:50:00.001-05:00

Linux here I come.....

2007-12-17T11:04:00.000-05:00

Ubuntu is a great free Linux distribution. It can either be downloaded (great for the DIY'ers) or you can submit your address and in about six weeks or so you get a set sent to you (if you get the three different kinds).

I attempted to put it on my Thinkpad T20 but it took a couple of tries and some hair-pulling to get it to install right. Eventually I got to the desktop and it was grand! Then there was the hour solid of updating. From what little I saw of Ubuntu, it was great with plenty of little games to play with and ease of getting online. I was a bit nervous about the updating but fortunately an automated apt-get thing ran and it was no sweat and a little dialogue walked me through what other bits I needed to get the bits I wanted to work.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get much of a chance to really get into using it 'cause I missed my XP installation a bit too much. So it took me all night wrestling with it to get that back onto my T20. My poor laptop.... Anyways I did decide that I do like Ubuntu enough to purchase another cheap lappy to install it onto.

New Final Fantasy....

2007-12-16T11:55:00.001-05:00

Just recently, I started getting into Final Fantasy. It started actually with FFX-2 when I got a new Playstation 2 slimmy about 3 or 4 years ago. I played that for a while, got frustrated with it, put it down for a few months, picked it up again and I haven't stopped since. That game propelled me to getting the original game of which this is a sequel: Final Fantasy X.

I skipped FFXI because that needed a hard drive and a monthly fee. It is a huge MMORPG that I am thinking of getting now that I have a PS3 with a hard drive. I'm currently playing FFXII which is a great game so far, the only problem being quite minor but really annoying: I can't flip the camera control around. The way it's set up, it swings the opposite way than what I'm used to. I'm slightly used to it but it's still really distracting. But overall it's a really great game.

All of this is a preface to the new Final Fantasy that I am so drooling over: Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy XIII. It's a compilation of three games: Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII for the Playstation 3 and Final Fantasy Agito XIII to download to your cell phone (I can't imagine why you'd wanna play an FF game on a cell phone, but, hey, the Japanese are a weird people :P). If it's anything like the previous FF games, they'll be hella long and have a deep and intricate storylines.

I really look forward to playing these games. Now, back to kickin' some chocobo ass.....

Yeah .....?

2007-12-15T21:24:00.000-05:00

The Amazon Kindle. At first blush, it is an interesting piece of technology. You get to carry around several hundred books (not to mention magazines like TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes and some top national newspapers like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post) with you anywhere you go. It has free EVDO wireless functionality but apparently you can only go to Amazon's website to buy books. It has some limited web connection; mostly to blogs and Wikipedia. You can also e-mail files to the Kindle but from what I've heard there's a charge for that. It appears to have a rather nice screen with crisp clear text.

Good idea, horrible execution. That sucker is ooogly. It's too blocky and what's the keyboard for at the bottom? I mean how many missives could you possibly type on the thing? Unless you are a copious note taker in your books, that keyboard seems like wasted space. Generally, the way I would hold a book is exactly where buttons are. Other people I have heard talk about the Kindle have said the same thing. And judging by how hard I am on my electronics, it should come with some sort of double- hinged hard cover to protect the screen.

The only other problem I have with it is the fact that when you "turn the page", the text has a nasty tendency to flash and blink repeatedly. Since I suffer from pretty nasty migraines on occasion, flashing and blinking anything makes my brain and eyes freak out on me. Blinking once would be acceptable I guess but multiple times is insane to me. Anyways, I'd love to get my hands on an actual unit to really give it a good looking over.

Back to the paper book pile ......

eBay...

2007-12-05T19:23:00.000-05:00

Retail shock always hits me when I walk into any store nowadays. Lemme explain: why buy a nice jacket for $75 or a game for $60 when most of the time I can get it on eBay for upwards of 80 to 90% off? I do understand that stores do need to pay rent, employee salaries, stupid customer insurance, etc. but damn! does it have to be so expensive?!

The only reason I really go into stores at all is to actually look at the stuff I wanna get at the auction site. Besides as lazy as I am, I'd much rather have the hot UPS or post office guy deliver it to my door than me lugging the thing all the way back to my house. And the place has so many crazy things that you'd never find in stores like handmade stuff, expensive cars and Soviet-era submarines (granted those last never stay up for too long but I do admire the bold bastards that think that stuff up).

Anyways, I've gotta get back to crazy bargain huntin'....

Playstation Home.....

2007-12-04T17:42:00.000-05:00

Playstation Home is the main reason I really bought the PS3 in the first place. I absolutely cannot wait for it to come out. All right, so I completely fell for the hype bait.

But I get the really weird feeling that I will like it for exactly five minutes before I'd get so bored with it or else get frustrated with the pain-in-the-ass 14-year-olds that have crack-soaked delusions of grandeur. God, is there any place in online gaming where normal civilized adults can gather and have some nice, pleasant, legal fun? I'm beginning to think maybe not.

I didn't have the machine unfortunately when the first beta came out earlier this year, so I'm hoping this time around maybe I'll get into the second, supposedly "public", beta (whatever "public" is supposed to mean). I am really curious how this new digital social gathering arena is gonna revolutionize the world. I believe that I have already discussed Home being a Second Life clone so let's move on from there.

Me, I think I'll make my avatar kinda look like me. I mean, why not? It's supposed to represent me but then again I feel like I should go absolutely crazy and look really wild like a green spiky mohawk and bright day-glow pink skin. On second thought, I don't wanna get pegged for an idiot.

So, off to dreaming of electric sheep....

Technology Overload....

2007-12-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think there is way too much technology floating around. Is it so hard to brush your teeth manually?

And whatever happened to old fashioned letter writing. As I can personally attest, the ubiquity of the laptop has significantly contributed to both my dislike of writing anything down and my pig shit handwriting.

Television is sucking more and more, almost to the point where I'm driven to actually listening to NPR again or my podcasts/music. Or heaven forbid, reading an actual book. Not that I hate reading, it's that because of tv my attention span is infinitesimally small. Okay well, maybe not that bad but still... Does the world really need another video game about sports? Or for playing cards? Why not just play them for real? But oh I forgot, nobody wants to knock on a neighbor's door when they can have the "convenience" of playing online.

There should be a huge farm somewhere where you can go to just "get off the grid": no electricity or advanced technology of any kind. You know, to just sort of get used to the fact that eventually all this "high technology" is gonna end one way or another. Just as a side note, I wonder how quickly American society would devolve if that ever happened?

Well, i'm off to go dig my end of the world bunker now ....

Asus EEE PC.....

2007-12-02T20:13:00.001-05:00

The Asus EEE PC is such a cute and tiny little thing. I want one!!

The price is great and the size is great. The only thing that really bugs me about it is the screen. The image doesn't fill out most if it and it's too small. I have heard that a bigger version is in the works. Though the company seems to deny it. I would definitely buy one if the bigger screen were made available. If they are in the store, I'd definitely want to get a good look at them.

Now if only I can find a 10" screen......

Asus Eee PC 701 News Video
Asus Eee PC Review Video #1

Television......

2007-12-01T21:51:00.000-05:00

Recently I suddenly realized that I really only watch three tv shows with any amount of regularity: Miami Ink, America's Next Top Model and Intervention. Basically everything else is just random shows on the History Channel, CNN and the Discovery Channel. And Project Runway I usually only watch the first episode and the last half of each season when it gets catty and interesting.

I really should cut out even more of those random tv watching habits and stick to my top three and CNN. That would drive the television industry abso-freakin-lutely crazy, which is my intent. I'm basically on the Internet, play video games, read books and listen to podcasts and public radio all the time anyway. And with the writer's strike going on, television is getting even less watchable.

Anyways, back to not television watching....

Verizon FiOS....

2007-11-30T21:55:00.000-05:00

Woohoo! Earlier today, I bumped into a couple of Verizon reps crawling the neighboorhood. The really nice blonde lady really didn't need to try too hard to convince me that my area really really really needs FiOS to the curb. ::drool:: I want FiOS, I want FiOS, I want FiOS, I want FiOS. The only problem with it that I see is that the fast is a bit slower than my current cable connection but then again for the same price that I pay for cable I get a bit faster.

You know, now that I dig deeper into this I am beginning to like it less and less: the fine print always has some sort of snag. Apparently, the price given on the Verizon website is only for the first year or two but they don't bother to make clear what the price is after that. But I gather from the little video they show that the tech has to specially install and configure some software onto the main computer presumably to talk with the FiOS service. But then have an outrageous charge for other computers. For price stated (around $90 a piece), I'd just need to figure out exactly what software is installed then install it myself. No sweat.

Needless to say though, that kid in the commercial is so cute!

YouTube....

2007-11-29T14:13:00.000-05:00

At first, I thought YouTube was full of bored pimply-faced teenage boys posting short clips of themselves doing everything from sitting in their little caves staring at their monitor to stupid stuff like skateboarding off high structures.

Boy, was I ever wrong! I mean yeah there are those things on there but then there are music videos, how to cornrow hair, various types of lectures and, of course, we can't forget the occasional television blooper. YouTube is where I finally got to see Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. That was a great movie. It's a virtual cornucopia of bits of old cartoons (but I always did think She-Ra sucked ass because it was way too girly) and television shows I used to love to watch and fight about when I was a kid. Nowadays, I mostly watch music videos, technology videos, my favorite Mac vs PC commercials (and their spoofs) and brief videos made in other countries.

And, finally I leave you with this and this, my two favorite YouTube videos I found so far.....

MySpace and Facebook.....

2007-11-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

I hate MySpace.

Strong sentiment, I know, but have you actually had a chance to look at the site? I mean the extremely annoying habit some users have of having music start when you come to their page. Some are only mild (choice of music but still relatively fast load) to wanting to shoot their brains out for ever thinking it was a good idea in the first place (the kind that completely crashes my browser).

The page designs are absolutely terrible and incredibly tacky. It comes across as far too psychotic with ads taking up every unused piece of real estate. But then again, a bunch of 14-year-olds (both real and people who act like it) can't really be expected to have too much taste in anything.

And the ridiculous amounts of friends that I've seen (upwards of over a thousand people and more) is insane. Do these people actually have anything in common with any of these "friends"?! Or are they in some sort of twisted race to see how many more MySpace "friends" than the other guy they can get. Having had an account for all of 2 seconds I can attest to how easy and quick this can happen. In the brief time I had a MySpace account, no less than 10 people asked me to be their friend.

I think it was absolutely hilarious (not to mention extremely relieving that I don't have one) that MySpace gets hacked apparently several times. And people still use the site. Amazing!

On to Facebook. It was started by a college kid a few years ago for Harvard students. It has subsequently expanded out to other college and high school students around the world. Since I'm far from being either, I never got the chance to really see what the spot is about (having a much better "social networking" site elsewhere). I am really curious about it though. It's a definite possibility at some point in the future to check it out. My only hesitation is nervousness about getting hacked on a MySpace level. But that may well turn out to be unfounded. I just wanna wait and see.

Anyways, onto my friends....

Sentient Computers.....

2007-11-27T09:46:00.000-05:00

The term immediately brings to mind Colossus: The Forbin Project, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and War Games. None of them show a futuristic utopia. Sentient computers are a good idea in theory but once human psyche and intelligence are injected into it all sense goes out the window. Universal benevolence was never a strong suit of the human race.

Alyn Rockwood, Ph.D. has written a novel on the matter called How Noble in Reason. Personally, at first blush sentient computers / androids sounds kinda cool: tell it what to do and it can reason what you want and go do it. But then in the case of androids (a la I, Robot and this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation), sticky personhood issues crop up. Given the intelligence and possible strength that we ourselves have given them, full-scale revolt could possibly erupt.

I surely hope that if this comes to pass, some sort of safeguards are put into place to prevent this "revolt" because I really don't wanna end up being a battery......

* HAL Still Rules As Ultimate Computer
* University of Cambridge Sentience Research

SETI@Home.....

2007-11-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

I've been running SETI@Home since 1999. So far, nothing. What the deelio!? I wanna find me some aliens.

While I do believe extraterrestrial aliens do exist, I don't think they've actually come to this planet. Or rather, I'll believe it when I see an actual dead alien body with my own eyes (that's my Missouri blood talkin' right there). Although I must admit I'd probably run screaming if I saw a live one.

And another thing, have you ever noticed that when "UFO's" are supposedly sighted, the "evidence" is conveniently blurry and or at night? And to me, that's no real proof at all because you can say whatever you think it looks like. It would be nice if aliens would just land somewhere like Times Square or some other highly populated place. But humanity may well be just too bloody violent to chance it.

Personally, I don't think there is really any large-scale government conspiracy covering up anything. Most of it is just people's overactive conspiracy-seeking imaginations. I'd really rather not devote hours and hours stressing and obsessing over it in any case.

Now, back to alien huntin'.......

Successful stream....

2007-11-25T21:43:00.000-05:00

Okay I managed to fix the problem I was having with it by just switching over to my PC laptop and not having else running. So earlier this evening I turned it on for the first time. I wasn't as bad as I thought.

Good......

Ustream.tv....

2007-11-24T19:45:00.001-05:00

Okay, I just opened a Ustream account. I hope my ego can hold up......

Movie Tickets.....

2007-11-23T21:38:00.000-05:00

Man, I wish movie tickets were cheaper. At upwards of $9.50 - $10 a pop that is ridiculous. Weekly movie visits are getting insane expensive nowadays. Whatever happened to the $6 - $7 tickets of yore? And matinee tickets for two hours once every third blue moon when there's 12 feet of snow is absolutely crazy.

But I guess those super stars have gotta keep their habits and trips to rehab for "exhaustion" financed somehow.....

Holiday turkey.....

2007-11-22T20:24:00.001-05:00

Well, an overdose on Grandma's Thanksgiving dinner could not have gotten any better.

Cloning: Should we do it?

2007-11-21T21:01:00.000-05:00

Cloning. Stem cell research. Those are such loaded words. Words filled with controversy and contention and passion. One side has concerns over "Are we playing God?" The other wants only a chance to cure debilitating disease. Once, IVF was also facing these very same issues, as was eugenics in the late 19th to early 20th century, horrific "ethnic cleansing" throughout human history and euthanasia. Some outcomes were good and some were bad, these issues will always follow science.

Stem cell research and its uses, once stabilized, should be allowed to proceed but with caution. With any other biological technology, it can be abused and misused. But in the hands of the right people, cloning can actually be, for lack of a better term, a "godsend". For example, a child's organs for one reason or another fail or are damaged. That child has more than likely years to wait for a suitable transplant only to be then subjected to permanently take drugs to avoid rejection. Should that child be denied the chance to have a new set of organs grown specifically for him? While this is a scenario and many more like it are likely to take place years possibly decades in the future, the seeds of it can and should be cultivated today.

On the other hand, I think cloning shouldn't be used superfluously to, say, "replace" a deceased loved one. That is a waste. Everyone is unique and a product of one's environment and consequently irreplaceable. I do understand the pain of losing a loved one, but attempting to "recreate" that person will not diminish that pain, it may even be made worse as the differences would be quite noticeable. Like the old saying goes, "What doesn't kill us will make us stronger."

Cloning Fact Sheet
Stem Cell Politics Shifting (Cosmic Log/MSNBC)
Stem Cells (Wikipedia)
Stem Cell Controvery (Wikipedia)

Humans are a durable lot; we've survived this long.... A couple of stem cells won't kill us.

Touchscreens....

2007-11-20T20:39:00.000-05:00

Touchscreens make life so much easier and faster. They should be on every computer on the planet. But as far as I can tell, it's not quite this widespread. I've seen them everywhere in the retail world though.

I really want my laptops to have them and possibly use some sort of rubber tipped pen so the screen isn't demolished. Wouldn't that be cool? Except for the Nintendo DS, nothing seems cool enough to use a touchscreen with though. Apparently, Fujitsu's new Lifebook is taking the lead and implementing the feature. I might just get that model.

Now, if Apple would only follow their lead soon I would definitely be a bigger fangirl!

Okay I admit it....

2007-11-19T21:40:00.000-05:00

I'm on a mission. And that mission is to find great soft jazz music using iTunes. Let's face it, Limewire is getting a bit old and full of sometimes junk music files. I don't feel like having to hunt down good jazz music so I decided to do it the easier way: legally. Yes, you read correctly: legally. Amazing, ain't it?

Initially, I received one of those "get a free iTunes song" cards from Starbucks but you hadda sign up for an account. So I opened one and thought "hmm since I have an account now, I might as well download something." Jazz, that's the ticket!

Years ago, I was a bit nervous about buying music from iTunes, mostly it was because I had to put in a credit card number and I didn't have that or a PayPal account then. That turned out to be a completely baseless fear (I buy so much stuff online nowadays and so far nothing bad has happened). Plus, I wanted a place where I could actually look at the album covers and sample the music before I actually downloaded stuff (as opposed to Limewire). And so far I'm liking it. I've gotten started on some terrific artists like John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk so far.

Jazz is literally the backing soundtrack to my childhood. The radio was on constantly to some station where I don't think they ever had any sort of commercials or talking at all for that matter. So, as an aside, it's a little jarring to me when I listen to the jazz radio station on Yahoo! Music and somebody suddenly starts talking. It makes me relaxed in the evening and I think of my crazy fun childhood.

I do have a great list of other artists ready to go thanks to my Dad and the great folks in irc.dslextreme.com #techguy to work from so I am all set to get downloading.

Now, where did I put that salsa dancing card ...... ?

Podcasting......

2007-11-18T20:53:00.000-05:00

I would really love to get into podcasting. I'm just not sure what I should talk about though. It seems like there's a glut of tech podcasts out there (believe me, I listen to a lot of them). I really think I have to get a really good network first (not to mention business cards) before I go too much beyond this blog. Tiny steps, tiny steps.

I've already been mentioned on a couple of podcasts already and I do have a few really loose "acquaintances" with some podcasters, so I think I'll stick with that for now until I can figure out what I should do. Plus, it probably wouldn't kill me to read Podcasting for Dummies and do more research on the Internet. And hobnobbing with some bloggers wouldn't hurt either.

Anyways back to the research.....

Quiet Weekend...

2007-11-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

Nothing much to opine. See ya tomorrow.

Grrrrrrr....

2007-11-16T21:30:00.000-05:00

Spammers should die. Slowly. Painfully. Bloodily. Or better yet, be forced to actually use the products they hawk.

Now I notice they are starting to invade my television. Is the size of an average American man's penis really that disturbingly small?! As a woman, I sincerely hope not. Between that, the weight loss pills, the work-at-home gimmicks and the make money quick schemes, I am beginning to wonder if this will lead to the real apocalypse: An ultra skinny and / or super buff man with a huge dong worth $20 billion, all made from the comfort of his dark little bat cave of course, takes over the world. Then we can't forget his blonde girlfriend with the hugest boobs and tiniest waist ever comes stomping over the horizon to tell him to take out the trash. What a way to die.

Anyway, back to spammer slamming....

Mmmmmmm games .......

2007-11-15T18:24:00.000-05:00

In my mind, gaming should be on a dedicated platform. And computers back to doing the thing they were invented for: hard work. So, here are a few computer games that would hurry up and specifically come to the Playstation 3 as that is my platform of choice these days (seeing as how I've owned nearly every incarnation of the Playstation since it first came out).

The Marathon Trilogy (albeit the demos only) was my game addiction of the day when I played it on the Mac years ago when it came out. Now that I see Bungie has officially divorced Microsoft, I would love to see it updated and redone. So you can imagine my surprise when one of the games shows up for the Xbox 360 some months ago. Bah, Microsoft and their stupid monopoly.....

Man, World of Warcraft is lookin' pretty hot and tasty these days. Back when Warcraft started with Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, I became throughly impressed with it. And I have loved every demo incarnation I could get my hands on since then. I would totally buy and play WoW if it was released on the PS3. But at least according to 1UP, that probably ain't gonna happen any time soon. Waaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

StarCraft is another one of those real-time strategy games that would play so beautifully on a console. I was completely obsessed with the demo when I first saw it and I still play it maybe once or twice a year now. The huge multiplayer possibilities on the PS3 for it are mind-blowing.

It would even be nice to maybe have an updated version of Pathways Into Darkness. Now that was a great game, throwing-mouse-out-the-window hard, but great.

Anyway that is my holiday wishlist and I wish I was a game programmer and make my own damn games .....

Bring It On! .....

2007-11-14T20:29:00.000-05:00

Violent video games are the best things ever invented. Where else can you fire off a headshot, rape and murder some prostitute, blow something up, break some bones or knock somebody upside the head with a crowbar and not get thrown in the slammer for it? Unfortunately, there are some people out there **cough** **cough** Jack Thompson **cough** who refuse to acknowledge this.

I would much rather some kid do all that stuff to blow off some aggression in a video game rather than in real life, wouldn't you? Parents are crucial to making that kid fundamentally understand that it's a fantasy that does not equate in any way to real life. That's what continually frustrates me is that somehow parents are completely abrogating their rights to parent their own children and let the government do it for them. That's how this country got in all this mess. BTW, this isn't a rant against all those hard working parents out there (especially single mothers wOOt!! wOOt!! much love, mama!) who lay down the banhammer and control their kids.

It seems like to me, parents complain that video games are too violent but then do nothing to stop their kids from acting them out or even being really afraid of them. Then they wonder why the authorities are throwing their kid in jail for something the parent (not not playing the video game) should have seen and/or stopped in the first place. And that sniveling bullshit line about "Oh I was too busy at work" or "I can never find enough time" doesn't cut it. The health and well-being of your kids is much more important.

Now, some 5-year-old shouldn't be playing Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto, but why stop a normal, well-adjusted, well-taught 13, 14, 15 year old kid from playing it? I figure, as long as parents watch their kids for any signs of negative behavior, they nip it in the bud. And simply teach them basics like right from wrong and fantasy from reality then, hell, let the kid play whatever he wants. Kids are flexible that way. Violent video games aren't responsible for bad kids, stupid uninterested parents are.

Anyways, lemme get off my soapbox and play Resident Evil!!!

2007-11-13T22:30:00.001-05:00

Lazy Tuesday.........

The greatness of the Internet....

2007-11-12T21:22:00.000-05:00

The biggest time-waster ever invented and like, almost everything else, invented for none other than the military. The Intarwebs. The tubes. The 'net. The Web. The Internet.

My love of it is quite a drastic understatement. I literally get shaky and tense if I don't use it in some way when I am awake (if that isn't the textbook definition of addiction I don't know what is ). Hell, if I could use it while I'm asleep I would (I really can't wait until the Borg come and take over our brains).

Man, between Google and Wikipedia the Internet is an amazing place. From wild and crazy pictures on Flickr to somber memorials to loved ones lost. Beautiful paintings and places of higher learning vastly improve the human condition beyond all that was previously experienced. The Internet has contributed to shrinking our planet faster than ever.

On the dark side, there's the horrible sites that explore negativity like racism, terrorism, hatred and all around disgustingness which brings out the worst of the underside of humanity. The anonymous nature of the Internet is fertile ground for the warped minds of the depraved. It's a shame really. No one should be taught to fear others. Yoda was right: "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." One can only hope that this kind of devastation will get some sort of divine retribution (or else they die in really stupid accidents. This option definitely has my vote).

The power of the Internet can rally against political injustice, bring together family members spread across the globe, reunite old flames, throw back the covers over that which remains secret, order dinner. The power of brave, smart people keep it going. And hopefully .... peace will follow.

Now, I'm off to see what kind of cool new stuff I can dig up ....

Check Mii Out...

2007-11-11T20:25:00.000-05:00

So I just downloaded it from the Wii Shop Channel. It is so cool so far. I can't wait to see how this goes. I haven't uploaded anything yet.

Completely drool-worthy....

2007-11-10T19:34:00.000-05:00

Man, those big screen 1080p HDTV's look so beautiful with their HDMI inputs and flat thinness. It is so hard to choose which one I like. And for somebody as indecisive as me, this is absolute choice hell. Although, places like ExtremeTech and C|Net do help a lot in the process.

I wish there was a way to answer some sort of questionnaire to get through all of this. On one hand, I want big and bold, on the other, I'm cheap. But I like quality and longevity in my electronics. What's an HDTV virgin to do?

I've gotta go jump for joy over the abundance of choice .....

Blowing stuff up ....

2007-11-09T20:08:00.000-05:00

I love that show How It's Made! It's so interesting to see how common objects get made like ambulances, 18-wheel trucks and tattoos (which by the way, the steps shown are a little out of order). The narrator, Brooks Moore, to his credit does sound like a nice guy, but can he please speed it up a bit? I do understand that most of the audience may not understand most of the terms used, but gee, it's not like we're retarded or anything.

Another favorite of mine, while not quite tech related, is Mythbusters. Adam Savage really looks like he is having the time of his life blowing stuff up and destroying Buster the crash test dummy in as many different ways as possible. My favorite episodes are basically all of them but the one that stands out for me is the one where they tried to duplicate the Chinese astronomer attempting to get sent into space with something like 48 really huge firecrackers. Which failed miserably, I might add. Another one that I liked was lifting a small boat out of the water with ping pong balls. That one worked surprisingly well with less than half the balls on hand.

One last tech show I can't live without is Tekzilla. Okay, granted it's only on the web, but hey it's still a terrific show. Super-geeks Patrick Norton and Jessica Corbin work well together and the blooper reel at the end of the show is priceless. I think DL.TV sorta took a hit when Patrick left, but hey, everybody's gotta procreate eventually, right?

Anyway, I gotta go finish building my destructo robot....

Great.....

2007-11-08T20:34:00.000-05:00

Okay, I do realize the last couple of posts were kinda short. It's because this tech blogging stuff is hard! But, I decided to stay on top of this 'cause I really need to improve my writing skills, research skills and the ability to express all that stuff coherently. Now, onto the show.

HD-DVD vs Blu-ray. Eeeeeek, shades of VHS vs Betamax, Xbox vs Playstation 3, vinyl vs CD, Mac vs PC. Man, this is "battle" getting downright crazy. According to this though, Blu-Ray seems to be pulling ahead. I can't say that I sprinkled any of my magic blu-ray mojo around but that dance I did last night when it was raining and thundering seemed to do the trick. According to Engadget, here is some information attempting to clarify the matter.

Of course, the real deciding factor in all of this is where the porn industry is looking. The only scary thing is: Who wants to watch two (or many more) people screwing each other in high-definition? I certainly don't. HD-DVD seems to be edging out for porn, though. I'm rooting for Blu-ray because I sure as hell am not buying an Xbox 360 nor watching any sweaty bodies up close anytime soon.

Anyway, I've gotta go watch my Blu-ray movie in my Playstation 3 while I transfer all my VHS tapes and vinyl to CD on my Mac.

* A HardOCP article discussing the matter
* An Ars Technica article about the porn industry

Oooohhhh I want that....

2007-11-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

I really, really, really, really want a new cell phone. I know, I know, I've only had my second one ever since March but damn! There are so many cool new phones out there. The LG enV and the Samsung u740 really excite my geek parts. Any of the Motorola Razr phones, especially the V3 Magenta, I will happily carry with me anywhere. Those are basically the ones I have super phone lust for.

Crazy short, huh? I figure I'll spare the masses for one day.

I'll keep it short this time ....

2007-11-06T20:35:00.000-05:00

The Wii. What can I say about it? It's small and white and pretty to look at. I really haven't found much actual physical games appealing enough to spend $60. Although Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles coming out in less than a week will definitely be an addition to my library.

On the other hand, the Virtual Console is the best thing I've seen ever. I mean who can resist playing those great games you grew up with like the classics of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda? Old-skool, I know, but loads of fun. Not to mention Castlevania and Sonic the Hedgehog. Speaking of the Wii Shop Channel, there's a spot in there, WiiWare, that I like a lot. There isn't much there yet but I am looking forward to great indie stuff coming soon.

There are some okay pieces of software like the Weather and News Channels, but are they really necessary? I mean, who doesn't have access to some sort of computer to look all this up? So it seems kinda wasted. I just wish the Mii channel would be more than just a bump on a log. But it's definitely got some potential.

And lastly, the Everybody Votes Channel. I personally like that channel. There have been some interesting questions on there like "Which one of these would you rather dive into a pool full of? spaghetti or vanilla pudding?" I chose vanilla pudding.

Overall though, the Wii is a fun little machine.

Ummmm yeah ......

2007-11-05T18:02:00.000-05:00

I love my Playstation 3. It's big and heavy and black. Shiny, too. It even has a little red light on the front when it's turned off.

Naw, I'm just kidding around. I really do love my PS3. The kicker is that I got the 60GB version from eBay for $399 plus shipping when it was going for at least $100 more in the stores (man, talk about retail shock but that's a story for another day). So far, it's working like a champ, a particularly electricity hungry champ, but a champ all the same. The truth is, though, I got it because I am so excited about Home (ya know, the Second Life clone that's supposed to revolutionize digital socializing). I never could get involved in Second Life - truthfully my handy dandy little Mac was a bit too slow to handle it. Plus, like I said before, I like my games off my computers and on actual gaming machines. This machine is perfect for me cause I do have a ton of PS and PS2 games and I need that backward compatibility. Now I got three machines in one.

When I first got it, I think I literally downloaded something like 30 - 40 GB in the first week. I am surprised Comcast didn't just shut me off. I love the Playstation Store. If I ever work up the motivation to get one of those pseudo credit cards you can buy in the drugstore, I'm going on a spree. The demos are insane (Conan comes instantly to mind) and they have a couple of games that I want like - don't laugh - Q*bert and Medievil. Odd, I know, but great 'cause I can just download and play.

I have The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on disc and it's great for my obsessive-compulsiveness: get and find everything in the game and take as long as possible to do it. The only real problem I have with it, though, is the text is a skootch too small for my taste (as I only have a standard def tv GASP!!). I love extremely long RPG's like this because there is just so much stuff to do and get. Now if they can only make a real world version of this ... wait a second, isn't that what's called a job?

Resistance: Fall of Man is another game I have that is a first-person shooter set in the early 1950s. I haven't started playing it as yet because of sheer laziness. I will though ..... eventually.

In other news, The Orange Box is set to be released sometime in mid-December. So I decided to get on the ball and finally beat Half-Life (!) after 2 years of owning the game. Even though the end was kinda spoiled, I wanted to see how it ended. I feel sorta gypped; I thought the ending was gonna be more of a bang that it actually was. I mean, come on, literally five minutes after you beat the final boss, the game is over?! Including that non-decision the Gray Man makes Gordon make?! Oh well...

Great, now I wanna go play Champions of Norrath. Now there was an ending that was great.....

Don't Get me Wrong....

2007-11-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

I do like PC's, really. There are a lot of great things you can do with them like listen to music, having a wider range of film and audio editing software and apply for jobs at certain places. Not to mention games but I'm more of a platformer anyway so that last doesn't really apply to me. Windows XP is a great looking OS and Vista looks pretty. But like the old saying goes: With a lot of responsibility comes a lot of the viruses.

With a PC, I feel like I'll get completely flooded with viruses any second. Heaven forbid I should go to an innocent looking webpage for kids and blammo! I get something nasty (which thankfully hasn't happened). Since I go to relatively few trusted sites and sit behind a hardware firewall then I feel I'm safe. Maybe I've completely swallowed that whole pap about Windows machines from varying levels of Windows bashers being so insecure when really I, the user, should just be careful about what I do online which I like to think I am.

But, at this point for what I do, there seems to be only a few minor differences between Macs and PC's most of which are sheer habit. For instance, I use the keyboard much more frequently on my Mac because I've memorized where everything is, but on a PC this can get a little awkward and slow so I use the mouse more often. I do like the totally clean-ness the desktop can get in XP if you want (I just have the trash can on mine). The fact that XP has a disk defragmenter already built in is a good point in my book. Yahoo! Music also works on my PC, which is great. This is gonna sound really crazy but I do like the forward delete key, I mean one whole key devoted to just that. What will they come up with next? Then there's lots of fun little toolbars like Google and eBay. The programs I use on my Mac like Yahoo! Chat and Skype have much more interesting functionality on my PC.

I really thing people should look at what they intend to do most of the time and let their interests decide what kind of computer they should get. If you are just starting out then I think you should get a Mac. On the other hand if you are a hardcore computer user, then a PC is probably the way to go. Although at this point, since the Mac can also run a Windows OS, PC hardware may just go the way of the dodo in a few years. And if Apple plays their cards right, they may just have Microsoft wrapped around their pinky finger.

So this whole "Mac vs PC religious war" (and, let's face it people, in some quarters it has come down to just that) really boils down to habit and taste like Coke vs Pepsi. It's almost trivial. And it doesn't help matters at all when the heads of the competing companies and their cronies act like big greedy bullies and mudslingers. And Linux just smirks in the corner.

Well....

2007-11-03T22:05:00.000-04:00

I decided to finally get off my fat butt, figuratively, and get started on this whole blogging idea. As always, I'm a bit late out of the gate but hey, better late than sorry, right? Who knows, this might just turn into another media empire (now if only I can type straight then I'll have half the battle won.). On to the empire building.......

I am totally, completely and forever addicted to my Mac. More specifically, my old beat up 2-year old iBook G4 I got as a bribe. How and why is water over the rainbow.

Some people say Steve Jobs is a complete maniac but to me, he can't really be, I mean, I've got this beautiful work of art sitting on my lap. And as far as I'm concerned, he's off the hook right there.

Granted, like all PC fans say, there really isn't that much software for the Mac relatively speaking, but who cares? All the software I'll ever need is on the Mac. Firefox, OpenOffice, iTunes, iCal, Skype and GarageBand are basically what I really use anyway. I say, there is way too much software for the PC. How does anybody get anything done on one of those with all those choices? Besides, I've been using one Apple product or another since I was 9, over 20 years ago. And, except for a video iPod, none of them have let me down.

Anyways, I'll wrap this baby up now. I've got some Mac computing to do.