I’m a Tard
Posted on July 11, 2008So since I didn’t buy an iPhone today, I thought I would treat myself and get a Pinnacle HD Stick. It’s a handy little device with a USB doodle on one end and a coax doodle on the other end. With the included EyeTV software I can connect it to analog cable and watch and record tv on my Mac, much like a Tivo. Hella cool. Once I upgrade the EyeTV software I’ll be able to schedule recordings, edit clips and cut out commercials, and convert to iPod video. All very awesome, except for one thing.
I forgot to buy a coax cable. My cable input is on the opposite side of the room from my computer, a good thirty feet of distance. So I need to buy an extra long cable. Until then, I’m stuck using the included antenna, which only picks up 3ABN, a very Jesus-y channel. So I don’t have much to watch on my new tv-computer for now. Oh well.
Filed Under Apple, Tech | 5 Comments
New Tech at Home
Posted on July 10, 2008Since USPaul had to go all high and mighty and brag about the cool new stuff he got, I figure I’d do the same. Gotta show off the goods, y’all.
- A Navigon GPS unit - Not technically here yet, but it should be by next Monday. Woot had these on sale the other day for 80 bucks. I’ve been wanting a GPS unit for a while, but was a little leery of the price point. Not that a good GPS unit isn’t worth $300-$400, but I’m not sure if I’d get $400 worth of use out of one. However, at a sub-$100 price point, that’s well worth it to me. And it’s even a talky kind, which is more than I was expecting at that price. I’m pretty ‘cited.
- New RAM for the eMac - I got the eMac a couple months back, and while neat and a great deal, it was kinda light on the RAM. Only 256 MB. So I finally put down a little money and got a gigabyte’s worth from OWC. And I’ll be damned, but the thing is hecka zippy after the upgrade. By the way, the upgrade was super easy, only one phillips-head screw to deal with. Now I just have to find some OSX install CDs for it (I’m watching you eBay), because my experience with Linux on it has been, shall we say, sub-par. (Seriously, no sound on it, and no chance of getting Flash working, ever. F that.)
- Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii - I f’ing love this game. I’ve already sunk several hours into it and I’m only a tiny bit through. It’s the same basic premise as the past couple of Mario games, collecting stars. But this game has the best graphics yet, a great soundtrack, and is trippy as hell. You play on little planets, and so half the time you’re hanging upside down. When I first started I was afraid of jumping because I didn’t know if I’d fall off or not. Still, this game is fun. I’d say the best installment since Super Mario RPG for the SNES.
- No New iPhone - Which is strange I know, because it’s pretty much expected of me. Hell I do want one, I really do. Even though my current iPhone will get the version 2 software. Even though it would represent an extra $15-$20 a month on my phone bill. Even though it’s the same kind of crappy camera, and the same processor. I still want one. Faster internet is one thing, but I’m most excited at the prospect of having 16 gigs of flash memory versus my current four, and having better battery life. But, here’s the dealbreaker. There’s no 3G in Nebraska. Whatsoever. In fact, a huge majority of the country lacks AT&T’s 3G coverage. And I’m just not at all willing to pay an extra $20 per month that I’m simply not getting. F that.
But then again, at least it’s not Rogers Wireless.
Filed Under Apple, Lists, Meta, Tech | 2 Comments
Tweets of the Week
Posted on July 8, 2008Highlights from the past week on my Twitter account.
⇒ I love watching carnies chain smoke. - 10:33 PM July 02
⇒ Nothing makes you feel cooler than driving through a town of 700 with Judas Priest blasting out the stereo and all the townsfolk staring. Nothing! - 04:24 PM July 03
⇒ My Native American name would be “Comfy-in-Slacks” - 12:38 PM July 04
⇒ Going on a man-date with Tyler. Red Lobster and then Wall-E. So not gay I swear. - 6:15 PM July 06
⇒ Apple rumor: Segway’s CTO joining Apple as product design lead so Jonathan Ive can become CEO, as Steve Jobs is stepping down. Oh noes! - 12:14 PM July 07
French News Hottie of the Week: Melissa Theuriau
Posted on July 7, 2008
Today’s News Hottie of the Week comes to us courtesy of France’s Métropole 6 television network. Melissa Theuriau received her news journalism degree from the technical institute at Pierre Mendès-France University. She went on from there working for various news programs before settling down at M6 in 2006 as editor-in-chief and presenter of Zone interdite, a weekly magazine show featuring investigative reporting. She also presents Un jour, une Photo and Deux, trois jours avec moi.
In March of last year, she started an organization with five other (also attractive) French female journalists which works with UNICEF to improve girls’ education around the world.
In 2006, the Daily Express voted her the world’s most beautiful news reporter. She was similarly voted “TV’s sexiest news anchor” by readers of the US edition of Maxim. In May 2007, she was voted most beautiful woman in the world in the French edition of FHM. Paris Match has referred to her as la bombe cathodique (”the television bombshell”). So she’s clearly credentialed. Also: There are published photos of her topless at a beach. And I’ve seen them.
As a special NHotW bonus, here’s a video of just her, looking good and speaking French:
Filed Under Hottie of the Week | 2 Comments
Guest Column: Goddamn Happy Birthday America
Posted on July 4, 2008
Guest Columnist Earl Joe Maynard — Goddamn it’s been 222 years since the goddamn Illuminati started this little country we call the North American Union (Oh it might not be called that yet but in eight years when president-colonel Ron Paul unites the four nations on this continent [after Texas revolts and becomes a separate nation state of course] just you wait and you’ll see ole Earl Joe is right).
Goddamn kids already lighting off the ole fireworks next door without knowing what America is all about. You punk kids think you’re hot shit in a champagne glass but you’re just cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup compared to Earl Joe. You see I was over in southeast Asia killing Vietnamese boys during the secret Vietnam war all through 1974-1977. Because of me you sumbitches get the liberties you do without me coming over with my goddamn rifle and putting you in your place. And you don’t even recognize the fact. Bastard school systems don’t teach you about the secret wars I bet, because they’re too busy brainwashing kids into believing that George Washington started this country and not Adolf Hitler’s great great grandfather. Goddamn teachers probably believe that themselves. Learn your history people! Watch my public access show on channel 99 ever Friday night at nine thirty after the Tortilla Hour. Goddamn illegals and their goddamn cooking show. Ole Earl Joe will teach you all about what really happened when the King of Spain ruled America during the Civil War. Goddamnit. Happy Goddamn birthday America.
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Guest Column: In My Day, I Could Write a SYMPL Interpreter in My Sleep
Posted on July 2, 2008
Guest Columnist: Robbie the IT Guy — I tell you what. These fucking people I work with. I’m amazed that they even go to the bathroom themselves. These fucking kids don’t know how great they have it. When I got into this business, we didn’t have these pansy ass graphical interfaces to work with. No we had 40 columns of monospaced green text, if we were lucky enough to have a high end CRT. And you know what? We wrote some god damned fucking great code with that.
I could write a fucking spreadsheet app in my sleep. And it would be under 128 bytes, let me tell you. These pansy-ass motherfuckers have no idea what it’s like to have to fit your entire porn collection on a floppy disk. I was downloading tits over a 300 bit per second smart modem from a BBS before these assholes knew how to suckle their own mommy’s teats. Fucking snot-nose punks around me, I tell you.
These assholes get all bitchy too when they run out of Rock Starz and Ballz and Mountain Dew in the fridge. Those pussies wouldn’t even know what to do with themselves if they had to mix Coca Cola and hot coffee, they way we did around the old Deltaur offices back in my day. And we liked it. God damn kids.
Filed Under Guest Columns | 1 Comment
Leaving Tomorrow
Posted on June 30, 2008Going up to my step dad’s home town of Butte Nebraska for Pancake Days and Independence Days celebration. Because it’s a town of about 400 people, most of them elderly, in the middle of nowhere, I don’t expect much in the way of internets. Though I will be wardriving the little town. I might even buy some chalk. Realistically though, I’ll be lucky if I even get cell phone reception. We’ll see. (The town has a website, so there must be internet there somewhere, right? Unless they outsource their internets to O’Neill…)
And talk about timely, this just got posted today at Photojojo. Expect Pancake Days pictures upon my return.
Filed Under Meta | 3 Comments
Pet Peeves
Posted on June 28, 2008I’m sure I’ve done this post before, and in a couple years I’ll probably damn well do it again, but there are things that bug me. And since I’m interminably locked in at work for the next seven hours. I have to fill my time with something, don’t I?
First of all, one thing that really bugs me is people that use songs as text message notifiers. It’s one thing to have to hear a shitty external mobile phone speaker blasting out a thirty second clip of “The Cupid Shuffle” or whatever your latest jam is whenever someone calls you. It’s an entirely different thing when it does that every time somebody sends you a text. If you, like the average teenager or twenty something, get 20 text messages a day (for some this may be a lot, but for a lot of people this may be low-balling it by quite a bit), that means your shitty music has been playing long enough to hear four to five full songs. A text message isn’t an opportunity to listen to some piece of shit song. All it should require is a simple chirp. That’s what my phone does, because I am a proper human being. One who doesn’t want to hear your crappy ringtone every three minutes.
Secondly, the word “definatly”. Or more appropriately, the non-word “definatly”, and its many and varied brothers, such as “definately”, “defanitely”, “defenatly”, and so forth. Not only can people not spell simple and common words, but I often find that people can’t even misspell them consistently. I’ve seen several instances of people using both “definately” and “definitaly” in the same paragraph. That’s a special kind of retarded.
Finally, Windows Installers that require a restart, but do not offer the option to shutdown. This is less and less of an annoyance for me, because I’ve pretty much all but abandoned Windows on any of my Macs. I don’t think I have a Windows VM on my MacBook, and I have no idea if I have one on the iMac. Who knows? But still, on the rare occasion when I do load into Windows, there’s always a hundred or so updates, bug fixes, and security updates to be installed. So I let it update, and meanwhile do what I need to do in Windows. And when I’m done, the updater says I have to restart. Okay, whatever. But there’s never an option to shut down. I’m done using Windows, I don’t want to restart, but since I’m not allowed, I have to reboot into Windows, wait for my Weatherbug and my Bonzai Buddy and Clippy and thirteen instant messengers to load up, just so I can hit Start -> Shut Down, because I didn’t want it open anyways. And usually there’s another update in the system tray, that just came out in the time it took for me to restart the VM. Annoying.
I’m done ranting now, I’m going to drink some warm milk and have a lie down.
Save Me Obi Ken Schimekobi, You’re My Only Hope!
Posted on June 4, 2008Tornado sirens went off about half an hour ago. I was a bit confused because, outside of the twice weekly tests of the civil defense system. Because basically there’s not much threat of an air raid these days. Here’s a map of what’s happening right at this moment, I live right at the point of the blue arrow:
About 45 minutes ago, being as there was an apparent immediate threat of tornado, I naturally went outside with the camera, so as to show others exactly what this storm looked like. Here’s the first picture, facing south Lincoln:
I live right near
You can even see the reflection of the southern sunlight in the building’s glassy fascia. Pretty keen, huh? The joys of living in the Great Plains.
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Back to Posting Soon
Posted on June 1, 2008I think.
“ha’p’orth” is my new favorite word.
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