Just a quick reminder that this Saturday I’ll be spinning from 2pm-10pm for the UAA Dance Marathon fundraiser for the Providence Children’s ICU (at least, I’m pretty sure that’s who it’s for…someone correct me if I’m wrong). I’m honestly not completely sure if this is open to the public, or how it would be handled, but if anyone wants to stop by, say hello, and give a few dollars to the cause, nobody would complain too terribly much.
Geekery
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
The cam is back
One of the side benefits to the new ‘puter is that as I’ve decided to stick mostly to OS 9 on this box, leaving OS X to be my webserver on the iMac for now, it allows me to resurrect some features of this site that had been on hold for a while. The most notorious of these — the Wudi-cam! Well, it’s back folks…for better or for worse, it’s there. No gaurantees on how often it’ll be up or down, though — guess you’ll just have to check to find out if I’m broadcasting, huh?
At the moment, I’m using free software that only allows me to do incremental updates — the picture will update every 10 seconds, and the page will refresh every 30. I hope to eventually get software that will allow me to do streaming video, but until then, this will work.
Snoogans
My single DVD purchase for the day — Clerks: Uncensored!
Back a while ago, Kevin Smith and company were creating an animated show based on the characters from his film Clerks. Six episodes were made, but only two were ever broadcast (neither of which I ever saw). This 2-disc edition contains all 6 episodes, uncut (some footage would never have seen the light of day due to network concerns), complete with commentary and animatics for every episode! I’m really looking forward to finally being able to watch these shows.
New ‘puter!
This just rocks — I’ve added a new ‘puter to my stable here at home. One of the guys at work was selling his off for a good price, so it came home with me today.
Now the iMac that was playing a dual role as my main work machine and webserver (which occasionally caused the server to go down when I needed to do certain things on that machine) has been designated as just the webserver, and the new machine is my workhorse box.
For the curious, the new box is a 350 MHz blue and white Power Macintosh G3, with 128 MB memory, DVD player, 22.3 GB of storage spread across three drives (1 ATA/IDE, 2 SCSI), and dual 17″ monitors, one running off an IMS Twin Turbo card, the other running off an ATI Rage 128. Quite the step up…and I’m cheezing like mad. Time to play!
Completing the set
Got a good-sized paycheck at Suncoast today, so decided to finally finish my James Bond collection by adding The James Bond 007 Collection, Vol. III to my movies. I’d held off on buying this one for a while, as there had been a lot of reported problems with some of the movies in the set, but as I’d just read word on the ‘net that the movies are going on moratorium (not being sold) as of early March, I figured I’d better finish the series while I could. So, I’ve now got a collection of all 19 official Bond movies to feed my testosterone fix when I need it…woohoo!
Great Napster discussions
I just had to get something up on this — there’s an absolutely great discussion of the seemingly never-ending Napster controversy going on over at the Home Theater Forum right now.
I understood Metallica’s plight at first. There music was being hijacked, goddamn it! But their waning CD sales weren’t from Napster, but from the fact that they were like a tough version of Poison; they should have become extinct when the meteor of alternative hit.
— Ike
Who didn’t cringe at Xzibit preforming Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” in a F*** Napster shirt? (I didn’t censor that, his actual shirt was censored.) Here was an artist who was as carefully managed and kept as any of the boy bands preforming one of the greatest songs ever, in a shirt that went against what Chuck D was wanting? Would the “power” not be those that want to close down a forum like Napster? (His friend on stage was wearing a “I Voted For Gore” shirt. How radical you are!)
— Ike
When a music journalist on VH1 said that the superstar would be lessened down because we would have a choice. Amen! Who cares that Limp Bizkit’s “My Generation” is in the top 50? You can get the best song titled “My Generation:” The Who’s. The ideas presented in The Who’s “My Generation” overshadows every baiting anti-gay, drug supporting lyric that today’s group can muster. The Who didn’t care if you understood what they said. They’d rather die before they got like you. The end, an explosion of feedback still hits hard today.
— Ike
Can anyone remember Garth Brooks’ whining about used CD sales? Does it strike anyone else as vomitious that a multi-million dollar recording artist, who stood to lose practically nothing from used CD sales, was trotted out as a poster child representing the unfairness of it all, while struggling musicians would give major organs if someone would just consider buying their CD?
— Buzz Vinard
Just a quick test of Lynx
I’m just experimenting a bit here. One of my little quirks when designing websites is to try to make sure that I always make them Lynx compatible. Lynx is a purely text-based web browser, back from the early days of the web, when content was considered much more important than flashy graphics, Flash animation, or any of the other doodads that have taken over the web today. Anyway, while checking my page with Lynx today, I thought I’d see if it was possible for me to not just view it, but update the postings via Lynx — and if this post appears, then it would seem to work. Pretty nifty….
Kind of amusing how a Mac-junkie like me still loves being able to do things through a command line and a text-based terminal from time to time…guess I’m showing my age as a ‘net old-timer or something. :)
But will I remember it?
Just found out about a movie that I’m now really looking forward to seeing when it comes out — March 16th is the release date for the U.S., but who knows when it will actually show up here in Alaska. Anyway, it’s a flick called Memento, and sounds just fascinating. Rather than butcher the description by doing it myself, I’ll just give you the brief summary from Coming Attractions‘ page about the movie:
After suffering trauma, a man named Leonard now has a rare form of amnesia, preventing him from remembering anything in his short term memory. He forgets the start of the conversation he’ll have with you, or where he was going, or whom he’s spoken with. To jolt his memory, Leonard writes down fragments of his life on scraps of paper, so when he reads them again he’ll remember. He even goes as far as to write the important things he needs to remember on his body. When Leonard awoke this morning he read his chest: John G Raped And Murdered My Wife. Now Leonard knows what he was doing yesterday. But when your mind forgets who you can trust and who is your enemy, how can you ever hope to solve a mystery?
For more information, and an absolute slew of not just good, but outstanding reviews, check out this page, or if you’ve got the bandwidth to handle it, check out the trailer.
Sugar and Spice
As I am one of the many people who have to suffer though Valentines Day while being single, I decided to treat myself to a movie after I got off work tonight — headed out to see Sugar and Spice…and had a blast. While most definitely a ‘fluff’ film (did anyone think otherwise), it was a lot of fun, and one of these days I’m going to have to sit down with my friends and see just how many shots were parodies of/tributes to famous crime/drama flicks — I know Reservoir Dogs was in there, and recognized quite a few other shots, though I couldn’t bring the specific films to mind. In any case, it was thoroughly enjoyable.
A little too obvious?
Okay, so Micro$oft unveiled the beta of the next iteration of Windows — Windows XP — at an event yesterday. Funny thing is, this time Micro$oft’s brainwashing wasn’t enough to hide the fact even from their own minions that, as usual, they seem to be following in the footsteps of Apple.
This is so sad. They’re just lamely trying to copy Steve Jobs’ Apple presentation — right down to the guy having a black shirt and black pants…. It’s almost like Windows ME 2. Or as Apple might call it, Windows Me Too.
— anonymous Windows tester, while watching the webcast of the unveiling of Windows XP