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Summer hath begun! I am now completly and totally done with my first year of
college. So to celebrate I went swimming and then over to a friends dorm to hang
out. I'll be up here till Friday, so it's 3 days of just hanging out and
packing. Life is goooooooood.
Today is also May Day or what
might also be called Socialism propagada day.
Always interesting to read some off the wall opinions, even if I do disagree
with them.
Pizza always makes me really thirsty.
I have discovered a new kind of crack, and it's name is Frozen-Bubble also known as Snood to all you Windows people. I started
playing this game tonight because I was bored (my roommate already took the TV
home and everyone was either away or busy) and I couldn't stop playing. They
really need warning labels on these things. "Do not play if you want to have a
life"
I also went to go sell back some of my books today, and was shocked back into
reality when I remembered how little you get back considering what you spent for
the book. A $90+ dollar textbook gets you $30 in cash. So a note to all you
pre-college peoples out there, always buy and sell from your friends if
possible. The seller sells above what the bookstore will give you, and below
what it costs to buy used in the bookstore. So everyone wins! Yay! There is also
the chance that editions will change after you buy your text book. That's what
happened to chem and economics books this year, no one will buy them back since
a new edition is coming out in the fall. Most of the time however, it's just
some misspellings fixed and then rearranging the problems in the book to say
they've changed X% of it and can thus issue a new edition. It's such a racket,
but everyone has to put up with it. At least one person though advocates
not selling back old textbooks since he believes you're selling information
then back to the bookstore. Personally I would never look through most of my old
textbooks again, and some like chem I try to banish from my mind.
Peanut Butter jelly Time!
The creator of the Melissa virus was
sentenced to 20
months of prison for his act. It's nice to see a malicious virus writer get
what he deserves. I must not be very popular though, cause the only email virus
I've ever gotten was Sircam, and that was only one email. I'm not feeling the
love here people! If I was really popular and cool, I'd be getting
virus's all the time! Instead I just get spam for "Lose weight FREE!" and
"Would you like to get PAID every time you EAT!" stuff. Those spammers
really care about me don't they, always trying to help me out and make
me rich. How sweet.
OpenOffice 1.0 was released yesterday.
It's the open source version of Sun's Star Office, and works quite well. It's
completely free and can read and write Microsoft Office documents just fine,
except in certain special cases where there may be messups. It's well worth the
download if you dont' feel like paying $250+ for Microsoft Office.
Just two more days of the dorm life, and then it's over for 4 months. So sad so
sad. But next year I'll be staying in a brand new dorm (and paying up the wazoo
for that privilage as well) so it should be really cool.
Stars Wars Episode II will end up costing the economy $30
0 million in wages by people calling in sick in order to see the movie on
opening day. It's expected to hit the tech sector especially hard, for what
should hopefully be obvious reasons (geeks work in tech, geeks like Star Wars
much lot, put the two together.....) The article does point out though that
compared to the World Cup's 3 billion pound cost in Britian, Star Wars isn't
that bad.
At last, the perfect
summer job.
At lastly, I've created a brand new sound clip
of me sounding like a dork (I mean really, is there a "cool" way to provide a
sound clip of yourself talking?) to give everyone who doesnt' know me in real
life an idea of what I sound like. The "Chris" I mention is a friend who plays
my voice over and over again on his computer. Yes, it scares me too.
First a slight change in how I update my site.
Normally I update about 1 or 2 in the morning, when the date has already passed.
But since I usually talk about and link to whatever happened to me the
"previous" day, I decided to sorta move back updates by a day. So like for
instance as I type this it's May 5th and that's what date I would normally put
this under. But since I'm talking about events and discussing articles that I
found on May 4th, I'll put the date as May 4th. It also means that the date of
the current update will almost always be one day behind the real date, unlike
now where (assuming I update it every day) you get a brand new update whose date
coincides with the real date. The reason I"m doing this is because 3 years from
now when I'm looking at the archives, it'll make a lot more sense for stuff to
be put under the date that they happened. I'm sure 99% of yall don't really care
or understand, but that's ok. It's for that special 1% (or since I get about 20
visitors a day, the .2 of a single person) who cares. Thank you .2 of a person
for caring. Thank You.
And now back to your regulary scheduled updating.
I went to go see Spider-man (don't forget the hyphen, Spider-man fans are
fanatical about that hyphen!) today. It was pretty good, and I might go see it
again maybe. But then again I'm always a sucker for movies where the geek gets
the girl. I also bought tickets for the midnight showing of Star Wars
Episode II. They went on sale Thursday night, but I wasn't home then.
Thankfully they hadn't sold out yet. I'm thinking about dressing up,
anyone have some good ideas? :)
It's also easy to tell that college is out. My AIM buddy list is almost empty of
all my college friends. Everyone is always on when college is in session, but
during the breaks it's pretty vacant. Like there are more important things than
being online 24 hours a day.... jeez.
And finally the truth has come out, Mario is a Communist.
Happy Cinco De Mayo! Being half Mexican I guess I get to celebrate it.
Well except for the fact that I have no Hispanic culture in me at all. But since
I am partly Mexican, I can tell a really really bad joke. If this doesn't make
you groan, then something is wrong with you (or else you're my dad who is the
one who told me this joke and actually thinks it's funny, HI DAD!)
Since I'm half Mexican, I know stuff that most people don't know. Like that
Hispanics love their mayonaise. We've just got to have it. So anyways back in
the colonial days Spain sent over a shipment of mayonaise for the year to the
colonies in Mexico. However on May 5th a storm came up and sank the ship. And
from then on Mexicans remember the day as the Sinko de Mayo.
More Star Wars stuff coutersy of TheForce.Net.
First the front and inside of a brochure warning about Saga Costume Addiction
(SCA). It turns otherwise normal geeks into constume obsessed geeks that
are afflicted their entire life. And then an article comparing Spiderman to Padme. How can anything beat Natalie Portman though, I mean
really?
The Song of the Moment has been updated.
Apocalyptica is an awesome new group I discovered that plays Metallica songs on
a cello. It sounds incredible, and is well worth a download or two.
For every 1337 h4X0r out there, finally a world where h4X0rz rule. Some people
photoshopped images to put 1337 sp34k on them, and well the results are hillarious. (use email: m3000@hotmail.com and password: foobar)
My personal favorites? The Hacker God's 10
commandments and "Sex May Never happen in
your lifetime but if it does, L1n3x has no holes"
I finally saw Breakfast at Tiffney's tonight for the first time. Very good
movie. Audrey Hepburn is simply maaaaaaarvalous :)
Regular readers have probably heard me mention the DMCA quite a few times, and now the
Electronic Frontier Foundation has created an excellent summary of DMCA
consequences that it has had in the 3 years that it has been law. From
supressing scientific research, censorship, elimating certain fair-use rights,
and hurting innovation, it's little wonder so few people (outside of the major
media companies of course) like the law. Someday maybe we'll be free of the
DMCA.... someday.
Yay for Microtel! They produce super cheap OS-free computers for sale in
Wal-Mart, which gets rid of the "Microsoft tax" by not making new PC owners buy
Windows with the computer. Instead they can put on free operating systems like
Linux or FreeBSD. Anyways, the problem was that the modems shipped with these
computers didn't work on Linux well, but after an article pointed out the
problem and people at Slashdot and other places complained, Microtel fixed the problem and they are now shipping with Linux-friendly
modems. It's nice to see a company listen to people and fix something wrong with
their product.
"You know you're an engineer when you have no life and can prove it
mathmatically"
I went to Busch Gardens today to use my "Florida Fun Pass" ($50 gets you in all
year) for the first time. I need to go to theme parks more often on spring
weekdays, as the park was really uncrowded. I got to ride Kumba 3 times in a row
by just walking off and then walking right back on with no wait. I also had my
picture taken for the card, and in a flurry of scanning frenzy (hehe) I scanned
in a picture of my wonderful black and white
bad resolution face as it appears on my card (even though it looks like it's
from a bank security camera...). If you look closely you'll see my eyes are NOT
closed, but are instead slightly open in a picture, which is extremelly rare
for me. And speaking of the "Florida Fun Pass" who the heck came up with that
name? The "Fun Pass"? Granted Busch Gardens is fun, but well who really
understands corporate marketing anyways?
As my mom pointed out
yesterday, since I now have 61 credit hours, I am officially a Junior in college
with a 4.0 GPA at the age of 18. Neato :)
Star Wars fever is starting to
hit me especially bad. As part of that flurry of scanning frenzy that I
mentioned above, I not only scanned in my Episode
II ticket (note the 12:01 time..... awwww yeah!) but also my old original
Episode I ticket next to the Episode II
ticket. Now just waiting on that Episode III ticket.....
Put in more
milk into cornbread batter than cornbread recipies call for. Trust me on this
one. Trust me.
I finally got DVD movie playback in Linux to work today. In the process I
broke a few laws, but that's what happens when free
speech is illegal. Due to the stupid DMCA and the MPAA's CSS protection
scheme, it's illegal for
me to actually watch DVD's in Linux since it requires a piece computer code that
breaks the encryption scheme on DVD's. The encryption scheme was "originally"
supposed to stop piracy, but it doesn't stop that one bit since it doesn't stop
the copying of DVD's, just the playback. Instead it's more of a control scheme for the
MPAA to control how a person uses the DVD they bought. So much for fair use
rights eh? Anyways the end result is I can't legally watch on Linux the DVD I
bought. But the code required is easy enough to find (which it's illegal
to link to,
just ask 2600. Just search
Google for DeCSS or for some good examples at how futile trying to hide the
code is now, search for decss gallery) and I can now watch DVD movies with no
problems. Unfortunatly it's a bit CPU intensive so the audio/video sync gets off
after a while, but that's what happens when you have an almost 4 year old
computer. And for more DeCSS fun, check out this list of links.
Yeah, that's it for today. Sorry if you thought the DeCSS/DVD/DMCA stuff was
boring, but that's what happens when you read the website of a Linux and freedom
loving geek.
Ok, small update. Since I relieze that for 99% of yall, the first paragraph went
way over your heads, here is the simplified version: Almost every DVD movie made
has an encryption code on it called CSS (Content Scrambling System). This is
supposed to prevent piracy since the movie cannot be played without a special
piece of code to unencrypt it. This step is not noticable to people since it
happens automatically when you put the DVD in your DVD player. Unfortunatly
the program that unencrypts DVD's (so that you can view the DVD) is not
avaliable on Linux. So someone made a piece of programming code (called DeCSS)
to unencrypt the DVD on their own so they could view DVD movies in Linux and
other non-Windows operating systems. This violated the Digital Millinium
Copyright Act (DMCA). The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sued the
person who wrote the code, as well as anyone who put the code on the internet or
linked to the code. My problem with this is that I consider computer code to be
free speech, since it conveys ideas. So by suing people for posting computer
code, they are suing over free speech. The end result of all of this is that it
is illegal for me to view a movie on Linux I bought legally since it would
require the use of DeCSS to view. It has nothing to do with stopping piracy, but
is about control over how I view the movie I bought. Hopefully that made it a
bit clearer.
Well Episode 1 was on TV today, so I watched it to get in the mood for Episode
II on Wednesday night. If you cut out the scenes with Jar Jar, fix some of the
dialogue of the Trade Federation things, and remove most of Anakin's dialogue,
then it's actually a pretty good movie. Fortunatly other people feel like me
too, and hence an edited version of the Phantom Menance was created called The Phantom Edit. It's completely unofficial as it was created by a fan,
but it's what Episode 1 should have been. But from what everyone who's seen
Episode II has said, a lot of the things wrong with Episode I have been fixed.
Only 7 more days.......
Remember that DDR tourny waaaaaay back in January? Well I finally got the
pictures developed from it. Yeah, I know it's
been like 5 months but it takes a while for me to take all the pictures on a
roll of film. Sorry about the quality too, as when you're using a cheap
disposable camera and you're a bad photographer the end result is pretty bad
pictures. What I really want is a digital camera. Mmmmmm
Springtime means barefeet. Fun!
I can't parallel park.
Can't get 12:01 tickets to Episode 2? Never fear, it's already on the Internet.
Someone filmed the movie with a camcorder at a
screening earlier in the week, and it's being passed around on IRC right now.
Sure the quality is probably like watching scrambled cable,
but if you're really impatient it's one way to see it early and be the envy of
all the Star Wars geeks on your block. Yet another reason why the Internet is
the greatest thing ever made: FREE MOVIES!!!!!111
Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2 was
released today. Fixes some bugs and a security vulnerablity, so be sure to
upgrade. This should hopefully be the last release before the final and complete
1.0 version comes out.
Alright, prepare yourselves for something
amazing. Yes, AMAZING!!!11!!1. Are you sitting down? Good. I took a very
professional and sophisticated picture (holding a disposable camera out with one
arm) of myself in my dorm room. Yes, that
handsome and oh so sexy face is me, and I can yours for the low price of
$19.9.....er uh wait, that's not right. Anywho, that's me in a picture taken by
me in a picture scanned by me brought to you by me. Enjoy. Oh, and
notice the open eyes. Very very rare in a picture, so this is a
collectors item and makes a GREAT GIFT!
And finally a small update to the favorite bands
page. Think one of the bands I like is horrible? Deal with it and make your own
website. I'll be playing some U2 in the meantime.
I went to the beach today and succesfully managed not to get eaten by a
manatee or giant squid. I did drink a lot of saltwater though and attempted to
make a sandcastle, though some people who don't see my ingenious design might
call it a "a pile of sand" but they just aren't sharing my
vision.
Quadrinlingual programing? Oh yes, a very 1337 programmer indeed made a program
that compilies under four different
languages with no modifcation needed. And I have trouble just getting some
of my programs to compile writing it in one language.
Nintendorks is back up. And all is
good in the world again.
Penquin Power!
The Sci-Fi channel had a special on tonight highlighting many of the Star Wars Fan
Films that have been made in homage to the great film series. My personal
all-time favorite fan film is Troops, a short
movie paroding the Cops TV Show. It's very well done and quite funny. Only 4
more days.
Nirvana..... and Destiny's Child Booytlicious? For some strange reason, setting
the lyrics of Bootylicious to the music of Smells Like Teen Spirit works.
It's the latest use of the internet and digital music: spreading mixed
music called mash
ups that use one artist's lyrics ontop of another's music. Base58 has a large selection of the
combinations possible, and this opens up a whole new (though mostly illegal)
music genre.
Pollen sized "Stringlets" weighing several tons may have hit the earth and will continue to as they hurtle through space
at 900,000 miles per hour. They come in one side of the earth and about 20
second later exit out the other end, causing some earthquakes along the way. If
someone was really really unlucky though and got hit by one of these things.....
ouch.
Pizza ++good
Remember a while back when I talked about how playing copy-protected CD's in a
computer could cause it to crash and you have to reboot? Well in the new iMacs,
it really does crash, literaly. Once you put the CD in one of those
new iMacs, you can't eject it and you also cant' reboot your computer. The only
solution is to send it back to Apple to fix. That's pretty harsh punishment for
trying to listen to something you bought legally. It's so nice when you're
treated like a criminal for trying to listen to music.
Want to know the weather conditions in space? SpaceWeather.com knows. It has solar
wind readings, sunspot reports, aurora warnings, and near-earth astroid alerts.
Very cool stuff indeed, and yet another example of something that is only
possible through the internet.
It's Star Wars week at Foxtrot this week. I loved their Episode I
and Lord of the Rings comics, so this should be a great week for reading
Foxtrot.
3 more days.....
I discovered today that Star Wars
Cereal (that site proves once again that there is a site for EVERYTHING on
the internet) is the exact same thing as the Ninja Turtles cereal I was eating
10 years ago. Light sabre marshmellows are soooo much cooler than turtle shaped
marshmellows though. Tomorrow night is the night!
The Onion had also
supplied a few that
were leaked.
And finally the fun starts before the actual movie even
begins. Teaser trailers for the two Matrix sequels will be shown before the movie. Matrix Reloaded and Matrix
Revolutions are probably my other two most hotly antcipated sequels, so I'm
looking forward to this trailer. The Matrix and Star Wars on one screen the same
night? Ohhhh yes. Oh yes.
GO SEE ATTACK OF THE CLONES!!!! I went to the midnight showing today, and it was
incredible! One word to sum it up: Yoda. And one phrase to capture it all:
"Spiderman who?"
First an introduction to the night:
I got tickets for the midnight showing on May 5th when I went to see Spiderman.
Got in line at about 8:30 pm last night, with about 50 other people. First guy
in line got there at 3:30, second guy in line got there at 7. They let us into
the theater (one of four) at 9, and started the film at about 11:50 so that the
Star Wars screen popped up around 12:05. Where the heck was my Matrix
trailer though?!?! I read that it was supposed to be attached to the movie,
and other people said it was on their movie, but not on mine. Humph. And they
also wouldn't let lightsabre's into the theather, what the heck is up with that?
I felt sorry for all those people who brought some. Also saw two guys dresssed
up as Jedi, a few dressed up as Sith, and one girl dressed up as Padme in her
white suit. Gotta love Star Wars women :) Now onto the movie, first the
no-spoilers impressions.......
This movie is leaps and bound beyond Episode 1 and really starts to tie in
everything with the original trilogy. The fight scenes are jaw dropping, and the
CGI looks really really good. Jar Jar is hardly in the movie, and the dialgue is
pretty good overall, with just a few lapses, and there are some really powerful
moments. Natalie Portman is absolutly stunning and the entire movie is action
packed. It is defenitly a must see movie. And from now on watch out for
spoilers.....
**SPOILERS**
YODA!!!!!!!!! That fight scene alone will keep me going and going and going.
Forget Spiderman, I want my Yoda!!!! The packed theater I saw it in also went
wild when Yoda appeared, and cheered and clapped through the entire fight scene.
I LOVE STAR WARS FANS!
Overall I think this is one of my favorite Star Wars movies. This blows Phantom
Menace out of the water, mainly since it fixes everything wrong with Episode 1,
mainly Jar Jar. Jar Jar is good now, he's no longer annoying and is now just
another "weird alien guy". I like that. Storm troopers are explained now, as well as
Anakin's hate. I found C3PO's dialogue to be pretty funny, but reading other
reviews some hated it. Also read somewhere else how it seemed this movie should
be more PG-13 than PG. I've got agree, I'm amazed it got by with a PG rating.
Cutting off heads? And one more thing: Women Jedi Knights!
Anakin did have some acting problems, but nothing like Episode 1. Some of the
things he said ("I want to be the most powerful Jedi ever") just didn't sound
quite right in the way he said it. And as I read somewhere else, it did seem
like he was stalking her at first.
Speaking of the love story, it was ok.... Her love for him seemed sorta out of
the blue though. Or maybe I'm just jealous about her kissing him so much and not
me. I loved how everyone in the theater groaned in sympathy when she said "You
haven't grown up Anni" (or something like that). I mean it's a theater full of
geeks who have probably had very little success with girls, we feel the pain.
Also nice to note they'll be having the baby in wedlock.
And finally Natalie. Why do girls ALWAYS go for the bad boys
though? But man is she ever cute in this
movie. She has securered her spot as the most beautiful actress in
Hollywood.
Overall I loved it and I cant' wait to see it again. Yoda is too cool!
For the first time in 8 years, I went to bed before 9 pm lastnight.
That's what not getting much sleep, waking up very early, and then
spending all day at Busch Gardens does to ya.
Attack of the clones had
the 3rd
highest opening ever on Thursday, even beating out Episode 1. It also now
holds the record for the largest Thursday earnings ever. This includes the $6 to $8
million earned from the midnight showings alone. Weekend figures will be
interesting.
I also installed Windows XP Professional Edition on Wednesday. The Engineering
college at the University of Florida has a deal with Microsoft to give the
engineering students free MS software, so we can download Windows XP, Windows
2000, Visual Studio, and several other server/programming based applications
totally free. Essentially I just saved $250 by going to UF instead of having to
pay retail for it. The reason they do this of course it to get us hooked and
using MS software, so that once we're working we'll try to convinence our
employeers how great MS is.
Anyways, it is quite nice and worthy of an upgrade if you have a fast enough
computer. On my PII 450 though, it runs quite a bit slower than Millenium and
Linux. Not unusable, but it lags sometimes. It is nice though to see some
features that I've been using in Linux for 3 years now finally come up in
Windows. It looks a whole lot better than the Win 9x series, and for the new
computer users it is somewhat more helpful. Installing it wasn't too bad except
for some files that for some reason couldnt be copied. It's suspecious since the
files were uncopyable on the two seperate downloads and cd burnings I did of XP,
so it would have to be something with the download site or Windows XP itself.
Regardless it didn't cause any problems, so alls well that ends well.
Mandrake Linux on the whole has the better installation IMHO, especially when it
comes to partitioning and formating hard drives.
I'll still use Linux a majority of the time though, as it's so much more
convinent and quicker for me to do things in it, and still has a lot of features
that Windows hasnt' caught up to yet (cough*multiple desktops*cough). Anywho,
here's a screenshot of my
desktop.
More Star Wars fun! (What else do you really expect during times such as
these?)
I went to go see it for the second time today, and payed more attention to the
story and foreshadowing that Episode 2 provides. There's really a whole lot
there if you just look for it. Some people even think that Anakin may turn out
to be Darth Vader.
The movie may have a love story, but here's a real Star Wars love story
about a man who proposed to his girlfriend during the midnight premiere. It
turns out they had meet in line waiting for the midnight premiere of Episode
1. Awwwwww :)
And now for some "darker" Star Wars stuff. First up is a chilling sataire piece
on the Rebel's terrorist
attack on the Empire. Gives the vantage point that terrorism is a relative
thing. (and And getting off tangent here, but all the hoopla over
Bush "knowing" about the 9/11 attacks is getting on my nerves. Sure he may have
heard reports about a possible attack, but if we chased after every single
possible attack or rumor, we would drown ourselves in chasing invisible leads.
To think that our president knew and didn't do anything and let thousands of
people die just isn't the least bit plausable. Hindsight is always
20/20.
There is also an article making it's rounds across the net about how Empire was really good and shouldn't have been destroyed. Once again
uses some crazy reasoning, but it's quite entertaining.
$116
million in 4 days domestically, $183 million worldwide, and $88 million over
the weekend. That's a lot of money. Enough to make it the second fastest movie
ever to reach $100 million, and have the 3rd highest weekend on record. You just
know movie theaters are loving this.
Microsoft pulled out The
Best Excuse Ever (tm) today and said they couldn't open up Windows
source code and API's because of the War on Terrorism. According to MS, some
Microsoft code is so flawed it could not be safely disclosed, and hackers may use this to attack
Microsoft computers. If you extend this idea a little further though, then you
relieze that "Microsoft has therefore taken the position that their code is so
bad that it must kept it secret to keep people from being killed by it." And
people trust this stuff? The Open Source world has no problem disclosing their
code so that everyone can look at it and improve on it, and yet it's still
considered more secure than Microsoft's proprietery code. It's a bit scary to
think Microsoft knows there are serious and gaping security holes in their
programs but don't make them public until after someone points it out to
them.
E3 (biggest gaming expo of the year) starts tomorrow, but Nintendo
is already making annoucements with a $50 price
drop of the Gamecube to $150. This follows the news of PS2 and X-Box going
down to $200. The Monday Morning CEO also has a related article about what price
cuts mean to the
X-Box.
The last episode ever of the X-Files aired last night. The
Truth is out There
Anyone remember that show on Nick called Pete and Pete? Yeah, that show
ruled.
E3 Hath Begun!
America's largest gaming exposition kicked off E3 2002 today with press
conferences from all the major console contenders (including my personal
favorite Nintendo)
as well as tons of movies, such as this spectacular Zelda trailer. And with the recent price drops,
I'm more and more tempted to get a PS2 and maybe even an XBox. But then I also
have so many Gamecube games to buy... Money should grow on trees. I think I
shall invent a money growing tree as a matter of fact. Yes... yeeees...
muhahaha
Make this.
It's good.
Canada really IS evil! Notice the striking similarity between the evil Palpatine
of Star Wars and the prime minister on their $5
bill. Coincidence? I think not!
People are funny.
I've decided to do a little bit of "maintence" to the site, and redo the old
archive pages. I'll reverse the order of them so it goes from the start of the
month to the end, and I'll also be clearing up dead links to stories that have
been deleted or moved. There's an anamzing amount of link rot on this site,
which isn't too suprising when you consider how many links are on each page. So
first up is August 2000, which is when I
began the blog style of updating. For the
full history, check out the history page.
Dance Dance Revolution MAX is coming to the US! Gaming-Age confirmed during E3 that Max will be heading over here from
Japan in November. Unforutnatly it's only for the PS2, but now I definitly have
a good reason to put down $200 for a PS2. And I can finally get Gran Turismo 3.
And also Super Monkey Ball was announced for the Gameboy Advance. So many games,
so little cash.
Caffinated
Soap. Hmmmmm
And a toaster made out of
toast. Wouldn't that get moldy after a while though?
I got a haircut today. Snip snip go the skissers.
Up up, down down, left right left right, B A, Start (If you get that,
you r0x0r)
Contra is
back! The awesome NES game was announced for the Gameboy Advance and looks
smacktacular. Yet another game to go into bankruptcy for.
Behold the greatest keyboard known to mankind. It's
the keyboard for Phantasy Star Online 2 which will be released in the fall for
the Gamecube. As someone wrote upon viewing it: "That's the biggest freaking
controller ever made...made for loving."
The $.99 mp3. Now on
sale at websites near you. Such a bold step for recording companies to try and
sell their very first unprotected music file. Too bad it's of an unknown person.
But effort counts.
September
2000 has been funktafied.
E3 ended today. ::sniff::
But now for some more Major Media Company fun!
First up is a plan to
outlaw analog-to-digital converters. Hollywood wants this because you can
copyprotect a CD all you want, but then you can just set up a digital tape
recorder right next to the speaker and, boom, you have a free digital copy. The
side effects of something like this are enourmous though. It would turn digital
scanners, samplers, thermometers, seismographs, camcorders, cameras,
microscopes, telescopes, modems, radios, televisions, cellular phones,
walkie-talkies, light-meters, etc etc etc into highly regulated devices since
they all turn something analog into something digital (here's an explanation of
analog and
digital). If they really wanted to be technical about it, you may end up
with a "cellphone that switches itself off when you get within range of the
copyrighted music on your stereo".
Next is how several media companies
have broke the law (and just like I'm about to) in their stories about how copy-protected CD's can be defeated with a marker. Thanks to the
DMCA, it's illegal to tell how to defeat copy-right protection. Hence every news organization that wrote about the marker method broke the law.
And as the 2600 case proved, even linking to news stories that talk about the
marker method is illegal. So much for free speech.
You know, I wonder if
this makes me a "bad boy" now. Girls dig stuff like that right? I mean I can say
"Yeah...... I linked to the marker story" and girls will be all over me......
right? Right?!?!
In happier news, Mozilla
1.0 Release Canidate 3 was released today. Tabbed browsing and a built in
pop-up killer are reason enough to download it.
And finally, October 2000 is now ready
for consumption. I also finally got those Cornell pictures scanned in today
(yeah, the ones I took back in October 2000 hehe) so here's the gorgeous Cornell campus.
The Greatest Picture Ever
Took place about 2 months ago, but finally got ahold of the picture and scanned
it in last night. Special thanks to Ali and Kelly for making it all possible :)
Fun with Google. If they weren't
located in Silicon Valley (which I've been to and I most defintetly do not want
to live) Google would probably be my first pick to work at, well after
NASA anyways.
The XMatrix screensaver for Linux is the coolest screensaver ever. And that is a
fact.
Ummmm, yeah.......
November 2000: Attack of the
Chads
I went ballroom dancing tonight with a friend of mine. And while I'm terrible at
it, I did have a lot of fun. The two-step is about the only thing I do decently,
I can sort of swing, and the waltz is just beyond my grasp at the moment. I did
Samba (everytime a Samba song came on I kept thinking of Samba De
Amigo. I'm hopeless aren't I? :) )pretty well though, but I've already forgotten
how to do it. DDR did help me in being able to find the beat
though, so who says videogames can't help you dance? Overall, I still
prefer techno, though some swing songs are awfully fun to dance to.
My brother discovered this quote I said back in October of 2000: "I truly
believe the PS2 will be the Saturn of this next generation." Heh, that turned
out really well didn't it? :) I guess my future as a fortune teller just went
down the drain.
Now you too can "0wn the
Internet in your spare time". A worm that comprimises a couple thousand
machines could do a whole lot of damage if it continued spreading. The Code Red
worm (named after the soft drink that kept the coders awake while trying to
figure out how the worm worked) set a precedent, and one that can only get
worse. And someday it'll happen. (er well assuming I'm not dead wrong again like
I mentioned up above)
Mp3 software page updated with a link to
the spyware/adware free version of AudioGalaxy.
December 2000 is ready for
lovin.
The
Funniest Star Wars Video Ever. I laughed through the entire thing, and
looped it again and laughed some more. It's Conan O'Brien's dog reporter guy
visiting the lines of people waiting for Star Wars, and the results are
hillarious. :) "So this is your breathing apperatus.... (speaking to a
person dressed as Darth Vader), and so which one of these buttons
calls your parents to pick you up?."
Why can't they make cellphones that sound good? They can make them with huge
color screens and wireless internet access, but they can't seem to fix the super
annoying ringtones to make them sound like real music instead of R2-D2 on crack.
Is it really so hard to stick some Gameboy music chip in there? Or have a small
mp3 player or something? Is it really so difficult?!?!
A couple of people wondered where I got the wallpaper in my Linux screenshots from. Well I finally found the place, and it no longer
exists. Sorry!
No Comment
Circut City had $10 CD's on yesterday and today, so I stopped by there today
with intentions of getting Weezer's Blue Album, and Blink 182's and Jimmy Eat
World's latest albums. Unfortunatly Weezer was the only one they had, so I
picked up U2's The Joshua Tree as well then. Of course talking with a friend of
mine later I reliezed I totally forgot to look for Offspring or Stabbing
Westward CD's. Argh! All well, I'm sure some other store will do $10 CD's again
at some point. I hope. Maybe. Possibly. THEY BETTER!
Sleeping till 2:30 in the afternoon isn't as great as it seems.
The original auther of the Nancy Drew books died yesterday. I loved reading those books as a kid, they were some of my
favorites. And speaking of books, I went to a used bookstore today and picked up
Enders Game, Enders Shadow, and 2010. I'd read all 3 before, but they're really
great books and well worth the purchase. I reread Enders Game today
already (315 pages in 4 hours) and now am fixing to go on to Enders
Shadow.
I really suck at eating popcorn.
January 2001 is now avaliable
for reading. Operators are standing by.
A year ago today I graduated from high school. And I don't miss it one bit. Well
actually I do a little bit, certain aspects of it anyways (like the easy days
when you just watch a movie in class, and um, well, uhhh) and some of the
people, but no, I don't miss it.
The 2002 World Cup starts
tomorrow, meaning that for the next month there won't be as much work going on
outside of America. I myself am not a very big fan of soccer, though I did play
it when I was a kid. I may catch a game here or there though, and probably will
watch the championship game. Here's to hoping the USA wins it all (yeah like
that'll happen :)
thump thump goes the music. thump thump.
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