Fallout 3
Mothership Zeta
Point Lookout
Broken Steel
Operation Anchorage
The Pitt
Stalker: Clear Sky
Crysis: Warhead
Wolfenstein
Street Fighter IV
The newest addition to my family is the 'baby' Glock 26. Ultimate reliability, light, tiny, 10rd capacity and full-size accuracy. This will be replacing my Sig P229 as my carry piece and man is it lighter. It accepts its daddy's (Glock 17) magazines as well as the model 19. It comes with a 3mp camera, GPS, geiger counter and zombie detector built right in... not really.
Seeing as though I live in the deep south where everyone owns both a horse and oil well and we're all supposedly backwoods, inbred Jesus freaks, it sure is difficult to get a concealed handgun license. I know you'd guess that in TX you can walk down to the corner drug store and pick up a pack of smokes, a .45 revolver and a $5 carry license, but that's simply not the case. They do make you jump through hoops like a circus animal just to see if you are paying attention. I paid my $130 for the 10 hour class, qualified at the range and then sent in another $140 to Austin for a piece of $3 laminated paper with my picture on it. I have my pin and currently am waiting for said laminated goodness.
During the class it was clear a few folks were not quite up to the task of carrying, much less pointing a pistol in any direction, but who am I to judge someone's ability to exercise their rights? Nobody! That's who! Still, it was both funny and sad to witness some of the things which happened to others in my class. The instructor made it a point to skool us on how to avoid the slide breaking your thumb, that nasty phenomenon where you grip the rear of the pistol's slide with your weak hand thumb. He made a point to show us the negligent technique and said if he had to hand you a first aid bag, you will fail your qualification. How poignant was it that 2 days after that, a guy in my class failed his qualification for the exact injury! Some folk in the class had never shot a gun before. Others hadn't held a gun in years. A couple people had purchased their first pistol that day. The instructor told the other 4 guys and myself that we were the best qualifiers he's had in a very long time. I asked if he was joking and he said he was dead serious. I was proud and very glad I wasn't in with the guy who grabbed the slide while firing or some of the others who may have swept their pistols in all directions.
A buddy of mine just received his CHL with an unflattering photo, equaled only by my own. My photo is only slightly better than my driver license and 100 times better than the one on my debit card. Neither of us owns a horse nor oil well, sorry.
To me at first Windows 7 just seemed like a half baked attempt at a Vista save face. After using it for the past 3 months or so I have eaten my words. Windows 7 is finally what Vista should have been: an OS which works. Aside from the new cutesy Aero interface and amazingly confusing relocation of many of the tools you used before, Win7 is stable, fast (at least the 64-bit version), apps are compatible and perhaps most importantly THE SIDEBAR IS G-O-N-E - GONE! You still get desktop gadgets, but they are optional and can be distributed randomly across your desktop or, by default, not even exist.
App preview thumbnail
Themes and opacity
ALT-TAB switcher
A slick new feature of the interface is the taskbar, which is similar to XP and Vista, but features much more advanced and intuitive operations. Instead of the Quicklaunch buttons being a simple launcher for an app, it actually becomes the representation of an instance of that app. Clicking a shortcut will open the app and expand the Quicklaunch button into an actual instance in the taskbar. Mousing over that part of the taskbar will popup a real time animated thumbnail of the full sized app. Hovering over the thumbnail for a second will pop up a full size representation (Aero Peek) of that app and where it is located or will be located on the screen. Mouse off the thumbnail and you have the original state of your desktop. The old ALT-TAB interface actually shows a real-time rendering or preview of every app you have open. Stepping through each rendering will also give a full size Aero peek view behind the ALT-TAB content.
In XP you can WindowsKey-M to minimize all windows on your screen essentially bringing up your desktop. This is still available in Win7, but an addition to this functionality is the ability to grab the menu bar on your current window and shake it back and forth, literally. This gesture will minimize all other open apps to the taskbar leaving you with only the app you want open, for instance so you can access your desktop without minimizing a video you're watching.
Microsoft is fed up with people calling them, so they have built in self repairing functionality. I don't know, maybe they are fed up, but it is a nice feature. I've not encountered much which requires a Microsoft phone call, but the other day ran into a perplexing issue. I shared a folder on Windows 7 to be accessed by another PC on my network running XP. Streaming an AVI kept causing Win7 to lose connectivity to my network altogether. Requisite troubleshooting showed me that I could not ping my default gateway, but I knew it was up because my other box was on the interwebs. So, a frustrating collection of minutes later without being able to get my NIC reconnected, I decided to use the once useless Diagnose option. To my surprise, Windows actually found that the gateway (my router) IP had been lost and fixed it. I have no clue what it did, but having already disabled, re-enabled, uninstalled and reinstalled my NIC with no luck, whatever was done worked, because I was reconnected. Note that I cannot stream media from my Windows 7 box to my network because it continually exhibits the same issue, so this may actually be a bug. This is the RTM - final public beta - as it were. Service pack 1 will be the final version of Windows 7 after all.
Seemingly 100 years after the release of Windows, we finally get the privilege of creating our own freaking THEMES! You can now change the color and opacity of the taskbar and windows menu bars, etc. You have the ability to make the taskbar almost completely transparent so that your wallpaper shows through, or make it opaque with whichever color you can blend together. Aside from stability, this is one of the things I've always wanted, personally.
For performance comparison purposes, my specs are as follows. Aero may not be available if your hardware is not up to spec.
FINALLY! After almost 3 years Warner Bros. is releasing the long anticipated Trick 'r Treat straight to DVD. Although this would have been a real nice change of scenery in the ridiculously pompous and uninteresting landscape of the big screen, at least we get to view it on our big screens. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, right? So, it's time to rent, download or acquire this film, dim the lights and crank up the surround sound.
Trick 'r Treat is a flick in the vein of horror anthologies such as Creepshow and Twilight Zone the Movie. However, whereas the Creepshow franchise read like a multistory comic book, TrT takes multiple stories and intertwines them with each other. Each story overlaps, builds upon the previous and weaves in characters from past and future events within the same town. I find that films like these seem to leave my mind's belly more satisfied due to there being more to digest as opposed to a single, 2 hour plot. The concept is fresh and fun. The screenplay ties the characters, stories and macabre message together all with a bright, bloody bow. I came to feel for each character, then, at their end, their ultimate demise, had a satisfying feeling. Muahahahahaaaa...
Overall, TrT is a horror flick. But, along with the horror, gore and suspense comes a very dark and sometimes disturbing humor. At times it is very satisfying to giggle and then look upon yourself in disgust at what you had just found humorous. I like that in a horror movie. Of course there are a couple roll-your-eyes moments as have many other films in this caliber, but just as you disregard one cliched trick, you're hit with another treat like the single pair of boobs I caught.
With all the remakes out there, it is so refreshing to take in an original picture. What Trick 'r Treat lacks it more than makes up for in storytelling and character development. It's creative, suspenseful, flirts with your dark side and may make you gag a bit all while requiring you hold your bladder lest you miss the next scene. Enjoy!
On this hot, boring August day, Optimus decided to have a go with my Sig P229. Grainy, blurry pics care of my Crackberry. Don't worry, the photo session came after a full safety check of the weapon. No Autobots were harmed during the shoot.
Japan has for years been experiencing the problem of a rapidly aging population which the U.S. will soon see in full effect. They've ramped up their research in robotics attempting to mitigate the aging populace using robotic care givers. Honda is the most notable innovator in human-esque robots and has plenty of proof of concept via their ASIMO design. ASIMO is simply amazing and just a little spooky as can be seen in this video.
Hollywood just... can't... STAND that there is a distribution method they cannot patent! Instead of embracing and capitalizing upon probably the single most relevant, important and visionary invention of our time, the studio execs continue to try and stifle it. But, no matter how hard they try, their highly trained hit squads incessantly shoot at shadows.
Although I don't condone piracy, I do recognize the important contributions of outcasts and troublemakers throughout history, especially in my hometown of the U.S.A. Those fellows who bucked the trends to their own ultimate detriment only to generate an evolution down the road. I think the invention of Bittorrent, via the Napster revolution, is bigger than VHS, DVD and Blu-ray combined. I also think that it will be quite a while before it is recognized as such, but is inevitable.
Holy crap! After 27 years technology has finally caught up with Tron rezing in as Tron Legacy! In 2010 a 3D sequel to the original film will hit theaters. Here is a nice clip to tide us over.
Plot synopsis: Tron Legacy is a 3D high-tech adventure set in a digital world that's unlike anything ever captured on the big screen. Sam Flynn (Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Bridges), looks into his father's disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin's loyal confidant (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.
Plot, you say? Yes, there is a plot, but who CARES! There will be light cycles... and flying discs of death... and Recognizers...
I'm not completely sure if at this time my mind is moribund or Hollywood is all at once in its cycle of new blood much like the human body every 7 years, but I just saw the 3rd homerun this summer: Terminator Salvation. It's not like I went into this film with high hopes, but I didn't see it expecting a cesspool, either. The typical prima donna film critics hated this flick. So be it! They obviously have no clue what movies are about.
Terminator Salvation ignored, at least so my senses informed me, the 3rd abortion in the franchise, Terminator 3. T3 was a useless piece of garbage. It read like a chapter in a book which neither explored characters nor introduced any plot elements or interesting story developments. It was devoid of any pandering to fans and lacked typical moviegoer draw. It was useless. Salvation was truly worthy of its namesake. It ground up relevant elements of the first two films, added some 21st century CG spice, chopped up its own director's vision and sprinkled some great sci-fi theory including time travel and social commentary into a tight, flavorful cyborg cigar. Smoking this cigar is smooth with a bounty of flavor, not too dry, but enough to foment the apocalyptic namesake of the franchise. The smoke is only harsh enough to heighten your senses of the robotic elements and delightfully flavorful so as to bring the original characters back to life and leave you satisfied, yet hungry for more. There are a few delightful surprises as well which will make you smile and seriously contemplate inhaling. Also, putting all analogies aside, I was supremely impressed that the SFX artists used a good deal of animatronics and puppets in lieu of CG. That was the single most faithful and reverent element that impressed me the most.
In short, I'm glad the critics hated this movie. It makes it all the more enjoyable.
If you are one of the lucky computer users like myself who purchased a Logitech G7 mouse and are having a problem with loose battery connection issues, here is a very simple fix. Just cut a very thin rectangle of duct tape and adhere it to the end/bottom part of the battery pack just below the center seam. This is the part where the lever contacts and locks the battery pack into place. This a much simpler and quicker fix than calling Logitech to find out they no longer support this incredible mouse, which is, IMHO, the best and most practical mouse available today. I'm not sure if this simple trick will fix the double-click quirk or the signal drop out issue, but my batteries are making firm connections now.
The truth about the media's recent sickening, uber bias toward Obama's election. O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! HOWOBAMAGOTELECTED
Additional eye opening details here. Take an ignorant, brainwashed, sleepwalking constituency, mix in slobbering, biased media hounds and you get an Obama administration. Good stuff!
For additional common sense philosophy 101 and why-didn't-I-think-of-that epiphanies, see Ted Nugent in this Texas Monthly interview. Classic stuff.
Man, the ginormous, gargantuan weekend gross Transformers 2 earned really belies all the silly critic reviews. Geez! It's a movie, for pete's sake! It was entertaining. I see this film like a vote: people would prefer entertainment to a boring, condescending director attempting to influence his interpretation of life upon them.
Additionally, let's clear up some misconceptions:
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I was lukewarm toward this picture initially. I found the first film good. Tasty. Even savory at times. One of the many things I found distracting was the interaction between the CG and human characters. The dialog just didn't seem to fully match up, sort of like all the TF lines were done in the studio individually with no actual actors or script in front of them... which is most likely the case. However, the CG was virtual perfection in my eyes. Overall, a great summer action movie.
If TF was good, ROTF is excellent with perhaps a slight too many unneeded sequences which interrupt the flow. The dialog and interactions are outstanding. The CG, though, leaves a little to be desired in spots. Some of the CG scenes look as though Bay and Spielberg ran over budget and had to finish them on their home Mac Pros. Sure it looks nice, but Spielberg's home PC has nothing on ILM's legion of server rendering farms. Regardless, the film is excellent! Lots of giant f***ing robots beating each other up and tearing into the country side.
The plot revolves around Sam (of course) and the Autobots racing against Megatron's Decepticons and the Fallen to find the Matrix of Leadership which activates an ancient weapon. That's all there is! Just a bunch of giant bots fighting is really all we need, right? Well, there are lots of other surprises and delights to top off the cake. You get a nice addition of characters like the brief Arcee scenes, Soundwave and Ravage, Devastator the Gestalt (combiner) and Jetfire the ancient Seeker. The story had many themes from the original G1 series such as the human leaders turning on the Autobots, the bond between a boy and his car, Megatron and Starscream's infighting and death and rebirth. A warning to the prima donna film critics and art film dorks: there is no learning here! There is no preaching. There is no profound underlying meaning to decipher. No potshots are taken at Bush. People die needlessly. There is a clear delineation of good and evil. Therefore, it is a good movie. Get it?
For all its many pluses, there are a few minuses as well. There are many gratuitous boooring scenes which seemed to just interrupt the flow. The main things which bugged me as I watched it with my 10 year old niece were the animal and bot humping scenes and overuse of most of the four letter words, you know, the ones George Carlin joked about, with some additional ones thrown in just to make you a little more uncomfortable sitting there with your impressionable kin. I don't have a problem with them personally, but a kids movie should be a kids movie. An occasional S or D bomb may be acceptable, although unneeded. Overall, it was a helluva big sheewww.
SPOILERS - highlight below to view
Many more bots join the fray in this episode: Jetfire, Sideswipe, Soundwave, Arcee (who Bay must hate because he took her out like the trash on seafood dinner night), Ravage and Devastator, to name a few. There is also a cornucopia of treats for fans of the various 80's TF series. Frank Welker voices Soundwave. Jetfire is actually an ancient Seeker brought back to life similar to the G1 episodes. Insecticons make an appearance. A Pretender is involved. The Matrix of Leadership acts as the main plot point. Gestalts (combiners) are featured a few times, including Devastator. There is much more satisfying G1-esqe head butting between Megs and Starscream which is very appreciated by me and I'm sure other fans. Starscream comes alive, birthed into the classic groveling, whining, conniving character we all know and love. He takes quite a few beat downs from Megs. Ravage gets to use his hind-mounted weapons. Sadly, Bumblebee gets absolutely 0 lines in this one beyond his car stereo proxy. Why? WHY??? The first one at least gave us a single inexplicable line at the end. All in all very gratifying for fans of the original.
I've enjoyed my iPod touch for a while now and fortunately recently decided to jailbreak it, rendering it completely useful. I have to say that if you pwn one and have the wherewithal, you should not hesitate to jailbreak your iPod. Jailbreaking enables many useful features like enabling OpenSSH so you can connect via a FTP-like interface to transfer files, a terminal app to navigate the underlying Linux system, various media players which allow you to play most any video/audio formats out there and a browser interface similar to the Mac OS Finder. There are many more 3rd party apps not available through Apple you can install and play with.
The method I chose was QuickFreedom on a 2nd gen iPod touch with the 2.2.1 firmware. This simple utility gives you a GUI with options for changing the boot and charging background images. It provides you a link to automatically download and save the current 2.2.1 firware for easily restoring the iPod and creates a custom, jailbroken firmware package with the click of a button. It walks you through 5 steps to crack any iPod touch. If you are not technically inclined, do not want to void your warranty and don't care that your iPod is only 1/4 functional from the factory then you should not jailbreak it. JAILBREAKING WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND COULD BRICK YOUR IPOD!
There were a couple things I had to find a fix for. One was that after installing the LIBUSB drivers, I had to restart QuickFreedom before it would recognize the drivers. Next, creating the custom firmware would not run beyond 0%. Finally, after a glass of wine and scouring the interwebs I found that you must run the temp file ipsw.bat. Once I figured these 2 issues out, QuickFreedom's documentation was simple to follow and cracked my device as advertised. The Installer app which QuickFreedom gives you the option to install on the Create Firmware step (Install Installer) is officially dead and no longer supported as of July 1, 2009, so untick this option before creating your custom firmware.
Not being a true Trekkie or Trekker, but having enjoyed the franchise for quite a while and appreciating much of its lore, I finally went to see Star Trek. If not for having been the first movie on my 10 year-old niece's summer to-do list, I probably would never have seen it willingly. I was afraid of director J.J. Abrams' vision as well as having been burned by many other countless remakes, reboots, tragedies, etc. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Felicity, Alias, Cloverfield or Lost and that is putting it very, very mildly... without any distasteful analogies or 4 letter words. So, with a little trepidation and the sheer loving force of my niece, I dove in and coughed up the hard earned dough to see this flick.
WOW! Was I surprised when the first 5 minutes knocked me the f***k OUT! It is typical for a summer schlock-buster to do this, but what is atypical is a full 2 hours of this phenomenon. I was never bored through the entire runtime. Like any nostalgic nerd, I constantly challenged the next scene to live up to my personal Trek standards whether via characters, philosophy or aesthetics. It never disappointed. The characters were lovingly true to their forefathers and the actors portrayed them extremely well. The writing was phenomenal (typical, overzealous word) and the mechanism of the franchise reboot was nicely constructed. Unlike other reboots/remakes, this one is not a lazy recasting with a presumptuous, tacked-on screenplay to milk the franchise to its bitter end. No, this was artful and engaging both for true fans and newcomers. I'm sure it won't placate the die-hard, linguistic Nazi, scientific detail oriented fans, but it hits home at the heart from whence the franchise was born.
Of course, as is the case with any film, there are flaws. The greatest of which is the overuse of lens flares. That would be the blinding whiteout you get when you turn a camera into the sun, or like when opening the doors of a dark movie theater to the blazing Texas sun at noon on a hot summer day. Sure, it's a nice effect, but use it sparingly, please. There are many graphic design analogies I could cite, but I won't. Beyond that, I can remember no glaring flaws or pet peeves. The cliched shaky cam filming technique promised to be a blight, but turned out to fit the flow of the flick.
I have to say that the single most enjoyable aspect of the movie was the fantastic sound design. The CG was outstanding, but this film was a truly magnificent example of the greatness of those invisible, little known film contributors in the sound department. At no point did the music or sound design get in the way of the storytelling. Bad sound design is typical in films and it takes a truly dedicated team of artists to overcome. In movies there are very few sounds in the final film which are actually recorded on the set save some of the dialog, and even then all of that is run through computer enhancement processing and sometimes even dubbed over. For instance, sounds of footsteps, clothing swooshing or rain falling are artificially created, edited and inserted by a sound technician dubbed a Foley. If you are observant (or neurotic like me) you can spot all kinds of mismatches in dialog, odd weapons clicks, dubbed voices here and there, overused stock sound effects, etc. Star Trek was an orchestra of auditory fulfillment. In short: I loved it... can you tell?
Earth Hour. Probably the best idea the Earth could ever imagine. An hour devoid of power! Just think of it! We could save the Earth. By turning your power off for one hour on March 28, 2009 you, too, can save the Earth. Well, on March 28 I will do my part. I will be trying to make up for all the lost power revenue across the globe by turning on every conceivable electronic device in my possession. I will plug in every cell phone, television, iPod and computer I have. I will run stress tests on all my computers for 24 hours. I will blast my A/C. Every light in my home will be switched on for 24 hours straight. I will have my TV and surround system blasting. Every piece of laundry I have will be washed... maybe twice. I have a Honda, so unfortunately I will not be able to waste too much gas, but, it's an Si, so it doesn't get the extended mileage of most Hondas.
I hope I'm not the only one who pushes back against the brown shirts, the global warming nutz. Against the religious climate change Nazis who are devoid of intelligence, blindly following the myth of man made global warming. We are living among a new tyranny which is the environmentalists. They can do anything under the guise of saving the Earth. Hitler pulled the same shit using the advancement of the Aryan race as a guise.
Well, well, well! It seems our new president is already showing his true Marxist, anti-civil rights colors. That was pretty quick. Not even a honeymoon period to gain the faith of the people. His first initiative was to take a trillion dollars and give it to losers like people who should never have been given a home loan and ancient, dried up car companies. Yeah, I said it: L-0-S-E-R-S. GM just announced a $9.6 billion loss for their Q4 and an additional $6.2 billion in the last 3 months! What the hell are these companies doing with our money?
I started the day with an article that shows how Obama plans to undermine our constitutional rights by reinstating the assault weapons ban under the guise of making our border with Mexico safer. The original ban, instituted by the great President Clinton, did oh so much good. Let's not forget that the bank robbery incident in California entailing two heavily armored gunmen sporting BANNED AK-47 rifles happened DURING THE BAN!!! Do I need more exclamation marks, or did that make my point?
Let's take a look at what defines an "assault weapon" according to the federal U.S. government. I guess I'll keep it short and make a comparison. This may not make sense to most liberal gun control enthusiasts, so you can skip to the next paragraph. For everyone else living in the real world, you will be able to see the asinine nature of the assault weapons ban. Let's say you have a 9mm pistol. If you have a 10 round magazine, you are good to go. If you have an 11 round magazine, well, now you have an assault weapon. Not much logic there to me.
George Orwell's 1984 is alive and well. H. (I'll just refer to Obama as H. from now on. They did it with W., right?) contradicts himself over and over again in every speech he gives while simultaneously sounding intelligent and mesmerizing his followers using hundreds of words that pile up like useless shares of GM stock. How can you cut the deficit in half while spending almost the same amount in one go? He's going to cut spending, yet there are already plans for ANOTHER $400 billion "stimulus" package in the next 6 months. Anyways, how can anyone even take seriously the man who said the following:
"...this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...". -Barrack Hussein Obama from his Democratic Nomination Victory Speech
These are must-have targets! Forget practicing on target silhouettes or pictures of terrorists or guys with ski masks. When would you EVER face those in real life? What you need is a zombie target. Prepare for the invasion. Practice your head shots. The only thing between you and the mall is an ability to destroy the brain.
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