Only one problem. Emily isn’t real. She’s an animation. Not motion-capture, mind you. Animation. As in, the face is photorealistically built from scratch by software that uses an actor’s performance and builds the face to go over the original. You can see some of the effects possible towards the end of the vid, and the final shot (the ‘Plate’) shows the real Emily.

In my opinion, they should have made artificial Emily completely different from the model, in order to better highlight the power of the imaging process. Because, frankly, they started out with an attractive woman. Who I would plow anyway until next July.

Eh… screw it. Get me true VR and some sort of artificial vagina and hook me up.

Emily, the artificial spokesperson. [via Gawker]

Image-Metrics Site

This is also known as the Greater Internet Fetish Theory, and was made hilarious by an XKCD comic.

In simplest terms, if you can think of it, the internet has it. Not sure I buy that, but it got me thinking about some of the more insane things I can think of. This made me realize two things: I am about as screwed up as any person could possibly be, give or take and; There are some truly bizarre things out there on the internet if this is true. For example:

- Sex with jars of peanut butter.
- Sex with jars of chocolate sauce.
- Sex with peanut butter cups for those who cannot decide between the above two.
- Sex with people in ‘bubbles’ who are not allowed contact with the outside world so there is a permanent penis holster installed like the gloves on an incubator.
- Sex with car headrests.
- Sex with television remote controls.
- Sex with the battery slots on power tools.
- Sex with (unloaded) grenade launchers.
- Sex with homemade versions of Cousin It from the Addams Family.

… and so on.

These are the great gifts man has bequeathed upon history. We look at the past and see pyramids. Our descendants will look at us, see the infancy of the global net, and see dudes humping toasters. Awesome.

(2:23:19 PM) Carl Reyes: saw ‘Wanted’… good flick
(2:23:28 PM) Carl Reyes: very loosely based on the comic (which I have yet to read)
(2:25:14 PM) Dave @ GTalk: yeah, apparently the only thing that they brought over was the name
(2:25:27 PM) Dave @ GTalk: i thought it was decent. ass-shot of jolie didn’t hurt
(2:27:14 PM) Carl Reyes: basically it’s a confused wanna-be Fight Club successor…
(2:28:29 PM) Carl Reyes: jolie needed a sammich
(2:29:35 PM) Carl Reyes: I’m more into Kiera Knightly anyway. Saw Domino not too long ago…
(2:29:39 PM) Carl Reyes: movie was kinda dumb
(2:29:48 PM) Carl Reyes: lapdance… made it watchable
(2:30:22 PM) Dave @ GTalk: yeah, i saw that in the theater
(2:31:08 PM) Carl Reyes: lapdance… and she looks really good with short hair.
(2:31:35 PM) Carl Reyes: I mean… wow.
(2:31:40 PM) Carl Reyes: she’s only 23, too.
(2:33:48 PM) Carl Reyes: *groan*

(2:33:50 PM) Carl Reyes: Oh no
(2:34:02 PM) Carl Reyes: oh Jesus. Tittyfucking. Christ.
(2:34:16 PM) Carl Reyes: Terminator… Salvation.
(2:34:28 PM) Carl Reyes: Christian Bale as John Connor
(2:34:33 PM) Carl Reyes: Josh Brolin as Terminator
(2:35:00 PM) Carl Reyes: with… Helena Bonham Carter?
(2:35:01 PM) Dave @ GTalk: heh
(2:35:03 PM) Carl Reyes: really?
(2:35:05 PM) Carl Reyes: jesus
(2:35:14 PM) Dave @ GTalk: did i ever get you to watch ‘The Hole’? knightley flashed in that one
(2:35:24 PM) Carl Reyes: hmm
(2:35:30 PM) Carl Reyes: must put in netflix queue
(2:35:42 PM) Dave @ GTalk: also, seriously, fuck the terminator series
(2:35:44 PM) Dave @ GTalk:
(2:36:00 PM) Carl Reyes: it was fucked pretty much at the end of T:2
(2:37:25 PM) Carl Reyes: “I know now why you cry… but it is something I can never do.”
(2:37:31 PM) Carl Reyes: My bowels watered a little bit
(2:37:44 PM) Carl Reyes: Bowel Disruptor ray, right there
(2:38:54 PM) Carl Reyes: also, T-800 can apparently set off a nuclear blast simply by overloading its battery core (according to T:3). Seems like the fucking series could have been 3 fucking movies and a TV series shorter if Arnie had let that shit fly in the first Terminator movie.
(2:39:28 PM) Carl Reyes: continuity notwithstanding, though… it’s given the very cute Summer Glau another show to be sexy and dangerous in.
(2:39:53 PM) Carl Reyes: and after last season’s miniskirts and panties lesson, this season there is supposed to be ‘jealousy’.
(2:40:06 PM) Carl Reyes: and fuck me if I don’t likes me some crazy jealous hot robot chick
(2:41:57 PM) Dave @ GTalk: i couldn’t bring myself to keep watching the series
(2:42:01 PM) Dave @ GTalk: even with summer glau in it

This is why Dave and I need our own review show.

He purchased it, ostensibly, as a way to acquire a supposedly ‘future-proofed’ Blu-Ray player at a reasonable price. I say he’s full of it.

Of course, he had incentive. Thanks to a promotion from everyone’s most-loathed big-box retailer, his final cost ended up being $299 (plus tax and shipping, presumably). This requires a bit of fuzzy math, but that’s the gist of it.

Am I angry or unhappy with his choice? Not particularly. Not being his conjoined… screw it- his siamese- twin, what Colin does in his free time (be it play PS3 or have masturbatory fantasies about his groundhog) is none of my business. But I feel a certain sense of disapproval, disappointment, if you will. Colin is, to his very core, a geek like me. He is as aware of the excesses of Sony’s corporate strategies as I am. And he doesn’t care.

Rootkits, the RIAA, the MPAA, ludicrous copyright claims… take your pick of Sony antics. They are the robber-barons of the electronics age. But their slick packaging and quiet Blu-Ray and built in DVD upscaling and their interface are apparently a lure too sweet to resist.

Well, not to me. I will never buy a Playstation 3. In fact, Colin will have to watch his PS3 carefully to make sure I don’t carry out my desire to place my testicles into it’s blue-lasered maw for a gentle suckling.

*DISCLAIMER: I own a Sony-Ericsson phone. The w810i. I purchased it through Amazon and MADE $100 on the deal. Every man has his price.

Roman Glass Gaming Die

Dated circa 2nd century A.D. I love this part:

Lot Notes: Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used.

Several polyhedra? A d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, maybe? You know they were slaying dragons back in the day.

(via BoingBoing)

Well, two-and-a-half, really. My brain is mostly non-functioning due to the alternating scenes of cute furry animals dancing and hot women… dancing… in my head.

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Any comments or suggestions?
Email: Colin, Carl, Captain Damage
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.418.4113

Production Engineer: Carl “Crazylegs” Reyes
Post-production/Editing: Colin “Rock N’ Roll” Rego
All music composed and recorded by Karl “King Kong” Kornfeld.

I never threw away the old iPod. I stuffed it in a drawer, as I have done with so many other bits of tech over the years. And there it has languished for over a year. I occasionally ran across it while looking for something else, and I kept telling myself I would one day fix it or get rid of it, or something.

I finally got around to being motivated enough to look for a replacement battery. Imagine my surprise. A company called Laptops for Less sells replacement battery kits for several iPod and iPod Nano models. The kits include instructions, a 4-way screwdriver tool, and the battery, all for a reasonable price. In my case, a 4th-gen battery was $15.95 plus shipping, bringing my total up to about $22. Not too shabby. I’m not endorsing this specific retailer, though I had no problems at all with my order. I’m just pointing out how simple it was to find what I needed at a surprisingly low price.

Once I got the padded envelope with the blister-pack kit inside, I set to work. I followed the instructions exactly, and although a very minor scratch at the seam where the plastic meets the metal back was unavoidable, it went pretty smoothly. Again, following the instructions. I very nearly tore off a ribbon cable at one point because I misunderstood something, and that would have sucked.

Batteries in iPods (gens 1-4) were plugged in, rather than soldered. This made removal and installation a breeze. Apparently the iPod Video (a.k.a. 5th-gen and 5.5-gen) is not only harder to open, but also has the battery soldered in for that extra kick in the ass. Replacing it might be better through Apple at this point, as not many people have the soldering skills necessary to not fry or otherwise destroy the delicate connections.

Total work time, from start to finish was about 10 minutes.

EDIT: Regarding the aforementioned ‘wonkiness’. The iPod wasn’t syncing, was showing disk errors, and would freeze up. Replacing the battery and performing a complete restore seems to have solved all the problems. Huzzah!

And now they say I am more likely to die.

Awesome.

Remy, care to weigh in?

They are finally getting XBOX Live!

You know, XBOX Live!… part of the whole XBOX thing they fucking support in their super A-1, awesomely trained Tier 1 Support Center.

Gah. Just… gah. I mean… no, I must be nuts. Of course you don’t need access to a product to support it. I mean… That would be crazy. To actually be familiar with it… that’s heresy to even think.

Mother-goddam-poke-shitstorm.

So, of course, I was due for a problem. But this one is weird. A few weeks ago I noticed I would get weird artifacts on the screen. Almost like ghost images. Especially on screens where a lot of blue or black was displayed. There would be this weird lighter blue banding across the screen, or surrounding objects. It was almost like taking a computer set to 32-bit color and scaling it back to 16-bit, but a little more severe.

At first I thought it was my HD cable. It wasn’t. Then I thought my receiver was suffering from interference. It wasn’t. I even tried my XBOX on Colin’s HD cable and screen. No difference. I could no longer play DVDs (the video would go blank), and I could no longer adjust the resolution of the screen (say, from 720p to 1080i).

Finally, angry and depressed, I called up Microsoft’s help line. I got a call center in India. Which isn’t a bad thing, really, except in my experience first-tier support is usually staffed by technically… challenged people. Add a language barrier to that, and you’ll understand the nightmare this is leading into.

The nice lady with the heavy accent said “Hello, Mr. Reyes” tried to lead me through her script. I interrupted her description of installing my console by mentioning that I knew how to install my console, that it had been installed for some time, and that the problem only recently manifested, so it isn’t my install.

Without missing a gods-damned beat, she says (I swear to god) “Hello, Mr. Reyes” and asks me to install and check my HD cable! Sonofabitch, this is going to be a long call! I tell her again what my problem is, and I can almost hear her brain shut down. She asks me to hold.

She comes back 5 minutes later (I was timing this) and asks me to reboot my console. To reboot my fucking console! I remind her that I had already done this, but went through it anyway. She has me reset the console using the right trigger and ‘Y’ button or some useless crap. Same thing, I say. We go through a few other things. She asks me to hold again.

She returns 23 minutes later. And says- wait for it- “Hello, Mr. Reyes,” and proceed to fucking tell me to INSTALL AND CHECK MY HD CABLE.

At this point, I am done. I interrupt her and say, “Look, you had me go through this at the beginning of our call. Don’t you even remember that? I told you then that was not the issue, and I don’t think it’s different now.” She asks me to go to my Console Settings tab and look for a menu item that does not- and never has- existed on the 360 console. When I tell her that there is no such menu item, she goes silent for a full minute.

Once again, the death of her brain is almost audible. She puts me on hold… AGAIN. Come back after 10 minutes and tells me I need to speak to XBOX live, because it’s a fucking update issue and I need a PC to burn an update CD! I ask if I can’t simply download the updates using my console… and she says yes, but she doesn’t know how!

So I get punted to Live. Mercifully, thankfully, I get back to the states. Ohio. An American picks up the line, I cut him off and describe my problem. And he starts chuckling, because he knows their India call center is staffed by script-monkeys. Worse, it is staffed by script monkeys who don’t fucking understand English. And so describing ‘blue banding and artifacts’ to them is like the fucking Obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He tells me I need warranty service.

I get punted somewhere else. A guy named ‘Jojo’ picks up, and though his accent is neutral and I cannot tell where he is, his silence to my comment about brain-dead call centers in India makes me think he’s not two chairs away from robot-woman from the 11th fucking dimension.

Fuck him, at least he understands English. A box is being sent to me for my console. That should take about 5 days. Then it will take 2-4 weeks for me to get my 360 back. Gods damn it!

Still, not much I can do except send it in. With a clear description of what is wrong taped to the console for whoever opens the box.

And to Microsoft, I have nothing against call centers in India. I understand it’s cheaper. Good for you. But c’mon, some fucking quality control would be nice. How about making sure your staff:

a) understands FUCKING ENGLISH. It’s not that hard. You are serving Americans, understand English. Understand fucking English. Understand what ‘blue’, ‘banding’, and ’screen artifacts’ mean.

b) understands the product they are supporting. If someone gets thrown for a loop because your Pacific Rim documentation is assy, fix it. If someone doesn’t understand what 720p is, or the difference between a DVD and the hard drive, you need better staff.

Oh, and total time on the phone for this one excruciating call? 78 minutes, 23 seconds.

I’ve tried using clean analogies. “You wouldn’t drive without seatbelts, would you?” or “You make sure you check your oil and change it every 3500 miles, right?”

None of these seem to work. I don’t understand it. Maybe they don’t wear a seatbelt (click it or ticket, assholes), or they don’t change their oil.

In any case, the best analogy I have ever come up with is also the one that never fails to impress the importance of good computer security and practices. Unfortunately, it’s also the one I can’t usually tell people because they might get all ‘offended’ and cry to someone.

It goes this way. Imagine you are your computer. After watching all the Mac v. PC ads, that shouldn’t be too hard. Now, imagine the internet as a gritty, grimy city street system, with shit and piss and gods know what else floating past your ankles in the unwashed gutters. Along the various streets are banks, or stores, or newspaper stands. But there are also porn shops catering to every (and I do mean every whim and desire), mobsters and thieves lurking every few feet (some with obvious weapons, some not so obvious in their intent), deadly disease carriers (both unwitting and deliberate) coughing ebola and hanta and tuberculosis into the air you breath, and sharp rusty metal spikes and caltrops everywhere. It’s New York City in the 70’s.

Now, with that image firmly in mind, go back to imagining yourself as a computer. If you do not have adequate, reputable, anti-virus and anti-malware, and if you don’t use good surfing practices, and if don’t have good passwords…

You are walking in that city naked. How long you figure you have before you get anally raped by some guy who steals your credit card and lobotimizes you with a rusty spike?

Anthropomorphizing computers and the internet in such graphic terms seems to help get the point across. Get good virus protection, get good malware protection, lock down your machine, and don’t visit questionable sites.

Unfortunately, The actual IT person in the room (me) was asleep at the helm. And it didn’t occur to me what a horrific idea it was that the only backup recorder in the room to Colin’s wonky-behaving iMac was Karl’s wonky-behaving laptop.

So, you know, fuck me. I’m not sure who or what I am pissed off at, but between a sound guy, a programmer, and an IT guy, we all managed to fuck it up. We’ll try not to let it happen again. We’ll be back for Episode 82 (The Rewind) this weekend.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if some die-hard fan doesn’t want to take a wet, knotted rope to our balls.

- C

First of all, Rocketfish seems to be part of Best Buy. Which isn’t bad, in and of itself. I’ve reviewed a few Insignia products, and on the whole I’ve been very pleased with them. Just remember when the salesperson is pushing the product on you, is all I am saying.

Anyway, on to the mouse. The Twister Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse is a nice little laser mouse with a twist (get it? ahhhh, I slay me). Actually, that’s its gimmick. It twists. As you can see in the photos, it twists over so you can have an approximation of a standard mouse, but then twist it back into a flat position for easy storage in its little foam pouch, which I assume must then tuck neatly into a briefcase or whatnot.

Aside from that twist, there isn’t really anything innovative about the mouse. I’m not saying it isn’t a good mouse, just saying… it’s a mouse. It has the standard left and right buttons, as well as a center ‘3D flat scrollpanel’ for scrolling (it’s a trackpad). The scroll panel doubles as a middle mouse button, so heavy-fingered users will need to adjust. Also, the scroll panel is insanely sensitive, so it takes a little time to get used to moving your finger slowly to control scrolling effectively. The control set is rounded out by a thin red button for your thumb which defaults to the ‘Back’ function on web browsers. Cute.

It’s wireless, as most good notebook mice tend to be nowadays, with the wireless USB receiver tucking neatly into the side of the mouse when not in use. It also runs in the 2.4GHz band, which is also pretty standard. I found the range on the wireless to be more than satisfactory, easily beating out the Logitech I use with my home desktop. The optics tracked smoothly and accurately, and there was no cursor-jumping, another problem with my Logitech.

The styling and comfort, by nature of its ‘flatness’ leaves a little to be desired, at least in my opinion. I have pretty average hands, but the hump created by twisting the mouse into it’s normal operating mode was small, and nowhere near my palm, and I found myself guiding the whole thing with a thumb and two fingers. Since I like resting my palm on a mouse, I found this a bit disconcerting. This might be standard for travel mice, but it makes it hard to replace my everyday mouse. Its looks are also pretty tame, and I am guessing they’re aiming at the average business traveler with this one.

All in all, it’s a good unit, and aside from the vanilla styling and dubious comfort, I have no complaints. My twitchy fingers eventually mastered the scroll pad, and this mouse didn’t let me down once during testing. It sells for $44.99 at Best Buy, which puts it in just about average range for quality wireless mice. Depending on your personal needs and tastes, it might be right up your alley.

PROS

- Slim, flat design delivers on portability

- Battery life seems astonishingly good

- Excellent wireless range

- Accurate tracking

CONS

- Bland, vanilla styling

- Poor ergonomics

- Silghtly pricey

Anything about me that doesn’t appear here will appear there, as well as rants, raves, and non sequitur. The blog itself will always be Safe For Work (except for the occasional written profanity), but it may link to things that aren’t (such links will be tagged). Nothing has changed. All my regular reviews and other geekery will continue here. My blog is just an added dimension you can occasionally wander to if you feel like this place is just too sane.

You have to join to comment, but you are free to comment on whatever you want.

Case in point. I set up servers regularly for jobs. One of our areas of specialty is security, and servers have to be built a certain way before they go out the door. It’s not so much a labor-intensive process as a time-consuming one. First the OS has to be brought up, security policies set, database software installed, and finally the specialized door control and alarm suite. It takes several hours to install and double-check. Then it gets shipped wherever, and I hopefully never hear about it again.

So, I thought it was hilarious when I sent out a server on Monday, and it came back on Tuesday. No one could log in. Now, I’m pretty thorough in testing, and I know I didn’t do anything wrong. The technician dropping it off told me that the systems administrator for the client had possibly changed the passwords, and they couldn’t get back in. Odd, I thought, but fine. They could have just asked him for the password. I grabbed my copy of the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor and popped it in, thinking it a simple matter to reset the Administrator password on the Windows 2000 install on this particular server.

And here is where it got interesting, and the full story came out. The spiral of madness leading to less-than-satisfying denoument. The password reset did not work. In addition, when I booted the domain list did not include an entry for XXXXX (THIS COMPUTER) that Windows machines usually have.

It turns out the sysadmin had deleted the local admin account entirely, rather than simply assign a strong password. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was then removing it from the domain by logging into the primary domain controller and deleting the server entry from the server list.

Let me explain something to any would-be sysadmins. I feel I am entitled to lecture, since I have been in the IT field for almost a decade, and have been an actual sysadmin for 6 years. Also, this lesson is short and simple. DON’T. GODDAM. DELETE. LOCAL. ACCOUNTS. EVER.

Gods damn you straight to the 66th layer of the Abyss, you overzealous morons who do this. This is bad, bad, BAD, ridiculously bad form. If you want security, change the gods-bedamned password. If you want better security, change the NAME ONLY on the Administrator account AND use a strong password. In an absolute worst-case scenario, disable the administrator account. But ALWAYS leave the local admin account there.

The why is simple: because you might need access to it! Shocker! If your domain controller borks for any reason and you have trouble accessing your credentials on your uber-secure server (it does happen), your smug little smirk is going to disappear really fast when you realize you basically locked yourself out of your car, and there’s no AAA to save you. Deleting the local Administrator account does NOT make your server more secure. It makes it obvious just what a hack amateur you are.

So here I am, rebuilding a server. You goddam schmuck, you know who you are.

I have had several opportunities to enjoy the salsa recipe Karl usually goes by. It’s spicy, savory, and full of my favorite herbs and spices, like cilantro. Colin hates cilantro, by the way, so be sure to order him a lot of it and send him bouquets.

Anyway, I had dared Karl to make a salsa that would challenge my spice-loving palate. See, his salsa is spicy. In fact, it is probably too spicy for most people who think they like spicy. His tasty home-made salsa not only makes Old El Paso’s ‘Hot’ seem suitable for baby food, but it reminds me just how shitty the mass-produced stuff is. Seriously, Old El Paso is iffy at the best of times, but putting it next to Karl’s salsa makes it look like a dog ate a tomato and then vomited it back up just as my cat was whizzing on it.

My palate is geared to foods with zing. I used to hate spicy foods, too. Hated them. Now, I can’t get enough of them (well, going in at least). Hence, my half-jested challenge that he use some of the habanero paste I brought him back from Arizona.

The result? An offering of three new recipes at my Memorial Day Cookout, and the usual baseline of tastiness:

- Tame Pineapple. Not really tame by any means. The heat was there, but subdued beneath a blanket of natural sweetness provided by the pineapple. The cilantro, lacking a spicy mask to hide behind, really stood out. It was Colin’s least favorite, I think, but I loved it. Though Karl rated it at ‘half a star’, upon maturing in the fridge, I found the heat a bit turned up, and would have to go closer to two stars on it. Peppers are sneaky like that.

- Menacing Mango. A two-star offering with mostly-ripened mangos that gave it not only sweetness, but a tasty chunky texture that complemented the thick salsa well. The cilantro was mostly in hiding, but other wonderful flavors, like the onion and garlic, played awesomely well with the mango, and impressed me mightily. Not many people can do original things with mango, and Karl managed to do so without producing the usual oversweet orange concoction people think of when they think mango salsa.

- Spicy Original. Three stars and you feel every one. Everyone who tries Karl’s salsa says the heat sneaks up on you. He is a master of getting you to try a couple of chips loaded with the stuff before that first one hits you, and at that point it’s like being rear-ended by something out of Mad Max. Tears begin to stream, noses run, and everyone goes for a drink, although you still can’t get enough, and all the complex flavors are still easily discernible, heat or no.

- Hijo de Puta. It’s Spanish. Look it up. If Spicy Original feels like being rear-ended, this five-star stuff feels like a nine-car pile-up on a god-damned volcano. Honestly, it’s like someone took a dull, rusty razor, soaked it in alcohol, and ran it several times across my tongue. It was like taking a kick to the nuts, a punch to the head, and a shot of Everclear all at once. But only after two or three chips (or about a half-dozen, in my case). Damn Karl and his sneakiness. And here’s the kicker: you become addicted to it. The endorphin rush from the brain, the flavors still easily discernible. I could detect the onion, the cilantro, everything. It is probably the best salsa I have ever had. The burning, the runny eyes, the downing of dry chips and sweet soda to kill the heat. Pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth for that brief shot of pain afterward.

Spectacular. Thank you, Karl, for the awesome salsa.

This week we discuss chimps leg up in the evolutionary race, deflector shields for real-real, and Jacklash. Another fantacular episode of Greg Howley’s GameGeek Challenge. On Boston in Brief, Urban Dare Boston.

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Any comments or suggestions?
Email: Colin, Carl, Captain Damage
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

All music composed and recorded by Karl Kornfeld.

So, the opportunity to review their latest portable DAP excited me. I excite easily. And the NS-DVB4G is certainly worthy of attention.

Unpackaging the NS-DVB4G brought back to mind some of the features I really liked about both the DVD player and their previous 2-gig DAP, the NS-DV2G. It also brought up some questions and yes, a little disappointment.

Let’s start with the technical specs. The NS-DVB4G boasts 4 gigs of internal memory, Bluetooth, a 2.2″ LCD screen, Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port, two headphone jacks (one of which can also be used as a line-in jack), rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, FM tuner with 20 presets, microSD memory card slot for expanding its capacity, hold button, and upgradeable firmware. It manages to pack all that into a 2.4-ounce frame that is a mere 4 inches long by 1.8 wide, and barely more than a half inch thick. A mini-USB cable, earbuds, and software CD round out the package.

One of the things I liked about the 2-gig DAP was that it felt sturdy. Nice and solid. While I don’t think the new model is exactly fragile, something in the way it felt in my hand was just… off. The plastic felt a little cheap. The entire back is made from the same micro-textured plastic they use, that sort of almost oiled-leather feel of the old Thinkpads, and that’s pretty cool. The front is shiny and slick with the screen dominating about two thirds of the surface. Controls fill out the remaining area. It looks almost exactly like its predecessor, except they must have switched up the scroll wheel model or something, because it felt really cheap. Like cardboard, almost.

I was once again perplexed that there was no wall wart included to charge the unit, meaning that all your charging will be done from a USB port on your PC. Normally I wouldn’t complain about something so trivial, but if you happen to be traveling with a laptop, well, that’s slightly inconvenient. Chargers with mini-USB plugs are available, though, so it isn’t a big deal. Also of note is that the unit goes into a sort of stand-by when connected, so you can’t charge and listen at the same time. And if you are using a PC to charge, you can’t do anything wit the unit while it’s connected, but more on that in a bit.

The earbuds are adequate, in the same way that iPod earbuds are adequate. The sound was a bit tinny, and my (apparently) odd-shaped ears do not like being tortured with round pieces of hard plastic. But that’s not the ideal listening mode anyway. Ideally, you’ll be taking advantage of the built-in Bluetooth functionality.

On to the good stuff. Plugging the unit into my laptop was simple enough, but I ignored the instructions to install the included software. Although the unit supports Plays for Sure, I don’t. I also don’t have an account with Best Buy’s Digital Music Store, so I was unable to test that functionality. I also found out the included software was nothing more than Rhapsody in a different skin, and that just didnt sit right with me.

If you do not wish to install the included software on a PC, you can open the device in ‘My Computer’ (it’s recognized as a removeable drive), open the ‘INSIGNIAMP3’ folder, and drag your files in there. For those not really computer savvy, this could be a little problematic, but the included software works just fine on a PC.

Which brings me to a major gripe. I skipped the software because I mainly use a MacBook, and apparently that pretty much precludes using either Plays for Sure or the Best Buy service, even if I were inclined to use them. In the previous version of this DAP, it was a simple affair to drag files from iTunes onto the player and have it all copy. Either that doesn’t work anymore, or else Insignia isn’t supporting or endorsing that method, because it is completely absent from the manual. The only method included in the sparse instructions is the ‘removeable drive’ method.

The interface on the Insignia is nothing short of amazing, especially considering its budget status. The screen is clear and bright, once again reminding me of a good cell phone. The oddly green welcome screen gives way to a blue and silver screen displaying current artist (with artwork if available), album, and track information. There is also a clock, charge indicator, and track progress bar. All very similar to the iPod. One feature I never noticed on the iPod, and one that I really like on the Insignia, is that at the bottom of the screen is displayed the name of the next track in the queue. Really cool. Browsing through the music library menus are a breeze, allowing you to look by track, artist, album, genre, all at the turn of the wheel.

Hitting the Menu button takes you to a fluidly animated scroll menu, reminiscent of the T-Mobile SideKick. The menu has Settings, Music Library, Audio Books, Video, Photos, FM Tuner, and Recording options, which allow easy access to all the functions of the player. There are decent presets on the equalizer, control of the backlight and repeat/shuffle functions, control of the recording quality and FM station presets, time, and other mundane stuff. The only function not included that I thought might have been useful is a way to control the idle interval before the player shuts itself off. Once it does, hitting the Play button does nothing, and holding down the Power button for two seconds is required to power the unit back up.

Sound quality is fantastic through my preferred headphones. I mean, there really isn’t anything more I could say about that. Clear, crisp sound. Photos display well on the screen, and browsing through them is simply a matter of clicking through. Video playback is a little streaky, which is perfectly normal for a tiny LCD. And although I probably wouldn’t watch full-length features on it, the included music videos were a nice diversion. Don’t take that as a negative, though, as there aren’t ANY small screens I would watch movies on, my vaunted iPod included.

The recording functions are basic, but useful. You can choose from four recording ‘qualities’, whether to record in PCM or WMA, and as mentioned previously, there is a line-in/mic jack, though you will need a pre-amp for the mic. There is, sadly, no way to record from FM that I could see.

I did not get a chance to run the battery down. It is advertised as having ‘up to’ 20 hours of music playback, but based on experience with other players, I would probably put it closer to 16. Still, not shabby at all. Video playback is rated at 8 hrs of battery time.

I’m leaving the newest (and possibly coolest) feature for last. Bluetooth. The NS-DVB4G has built-in Bluetooth, but… well, control your drooling. It only works with Bluetooth headphones. Nope, can’t transfer files, videos, or music over the wireless connection. That was a bit disappointing. But hey, it’s still more wireless functionality than the iPod gives you, right?

All in all, this player is a spectacular value for the money. At only $160 on Best Buy’s site, you could do a lot worse. It has many features the iPod Nano does not (video, FM, recording), and a smaller price tag to boot. It’s only $40 more than its predecessor, and has twice the memory and Bluetooth.

Pros:

Excellent interface, easy-to-use menus
Excellent sound quality
Good video playback and photo display
Bright, clear screen
Solidly built
Long battery life
Compatible with Rhapsody Music Service and Best Buy Digital Music Service
Plays many formats, including MP3, WAV, PCM, WMA, MOV, AVI, and MPG.
Plenty of memory

Cons:

No charger included
No way to use or access the devices internal menus while connected to USB
Bluetooth only works with headphones, not for file or music transfers
Scroll wheel feels a bit cheap

We discuss 9 geek movies we feel everyone should see on this episode. No, I won’t list them here. I don’t want to spoil it, that’s why. This may become a semi-regular feature for the podcast. We will discuss movies great and not-so-great that advance geekiness. No snooty Academy, no pretentious James Lipton. Just geeks and the movies they’ve seen.

Download

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: Colin, Carl, Captain Damage
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

All music composed and recorded by Karl Kornfeld.

November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007

Requiescat in pace.

I suppose the fault is mine. You remember how last week’s episode was posted tardy because I was sick? Well, Colin thought I was trying to advance weasel my way out of helping him with his home-improvement project.

So instead of resting my sorry ass and recording, I went to his house Friday night and began work on his kitchen. Which continued through Saturday… and Sunday. Through this, my cold got progressively worse. It had migrated from an annoying cough to the full-blown watery-eyed sniffle-fest I have come to loathe so much. I was in no shape to record Sunday night.

Unfortunately, Monday was no better. I actually got sent home from work after only two hours. I crawled in bed at about 10AM… and didn’t crawl out of bed till about 10PM.

And now I am better. But it’s Wednesday. I ask your forgiveness, fans. I am neither chronically ill, nor (as Colin thought you might assume) a “lying sack of s**t.” I rarely catch colds. When I do, though, they tend to be doozies.

This site is pretty cool, considering it saves one the trouble of looking for all these things themselves. There is a blog, but the home page is actually the lecture list. There also doesn’t appear to be any insane advertising. Just a simple, clean site you should check out if you miss the school days of yore or want to listen in on some good material.

It works like this: In any given situation, a creatures occupies a multiple of 5-foot squares. Five feet wide by five long. One such square will accommodate a standard ‘medium-sized’ creature, such as a human, or dwarf, or elf. Four (10′ x 10′) will accommodate an ogre. So far, so good. The space is meant to encompass not only the creature, but his actions within the square (i.e. holding a sword or axe, the backpack hanging off his back, his need to move freely).

The problems arise when one is forced to do something like design a room in a dungeon. In a standard 15′ x 15′ room, only 9 people will fit. But what if they’re prisoners? Slaves? Purposely stacked like cords of wood? How do you design a dramatic fight in a 15′ x 15′ room, a room which is large by most people’s standards? With more than 4 people in the room, it becomes too crowded to fight. I think the joke originated because someone put far more than 9 people in this room (I’m sure one of the group members can chime in with the exact origins).

Then other idiotic things pop up. If I am holding a spear or lance, why am I not required to have more than five feet in front or behind me? I certainly have reach with the weapon (meaning I can reach a target more than five feet away), but I am not required to have any additional room to wield it. Similarly, a ten-foot long spiked chain or bull whip does not require any extra space at your sides to gain the momentum in the swing. Nothing is ever mentioned of the height of the room.

This of course is for the sake of expedience. No one really wants to calculate distances, arcs, etc. But it does make for humorous conversations and situations. Thankfully, most of the time players will be easy-going enough to accept from the Dungeon Master that no, they cannot wield a ten-foot chain in a corridor only 5 feet wide by five tall. Other times, well, I guess that’s why we have suspension of disbelief.

A while back… I don’t know.. two, maybe three years ago, Dell sold a server tagged the SC420. It was the successor to the 400SC. The only reason these two tags are important is because the machines rapidly became darlings among the computer geek community.

There were two main reasons for this. One was cost. Both machines sold for dirt cheap. The 400SC and the SC420 both, at various points, sold for around $200. While the stock options at this price included a 2.53GHz Celeron processor, 256 megs of DDR2 ECC RAM, and an 80-gig SATA hard drive, insane rotating deals could double your hard drive space, double your RAM, or give you a Pentium 4. Not bad for less than it would cost to build the crappiest of barebones machines.

The other reason was the undocumented potential of both machines. Though Dell definitely did not support installing anything other than Windows Server or Red Hat Linux, it quickly became apparent to anyone with any computer skill that with minimal tweaking and detective work finding drivers, Windows XP would work quite nicely.

The graphics were nothing to write home about. The 4-meg card built on the 400SC’s mainboard was only slightly outclassed by the 8-meg card built into the SC420. No gaming there. No sound either, but there are at least three open PCI slots on these machines, so that was never a problem.

And here is where things get strange. It was a cost-saving measure, I am certain, but Dell used mainboards with ‘unsupported features’. The 400SC had an AGP 3.0 slot, and the SC420 had a PCI Express slot.

Unsupported never stopped the geeks, did it?

Well, the 400SC’s part of the story ends here. I never owned one, never got into the various motherboard revisions, the jumper mods, the strange hoops the masters of the original hidden gem had to jump through. I bought the SC420. Anything with that much potential was going to pique my interest.

The deal I got in on was the Celeron 2.53 with the 80-gig hard drive and double the RAM. 512 megs of DDR2 ECC. Which was vastly more expensive than straight DDR2. I paid $239, shipped. Dell sold so many of these systems that they quickly ran out whenever they had them in stock, machines being ordered in multiples of ten in some cases. They’d quickly show up on eBay. But I got mine, and that’s all I cared about.

It’s been sitting around, all this time, pretty neglected. I haven’t paid much attention to it because, of course, I have always had numerous computers. It got lost in the shuffle. Relegated to being a plain web server. I knew it could do more, if I gave it a chance. But honestly, I don’t really like building out computers in my free time. In fact, I mostly loathe working on machines when I am not at work.

And so it languished. Until my computer-fueled meltdown and near-disavowal of all things computer. Then I took it out, dusted it off, dropped all my hard drives into it (the 305-watt PSU that came stock with the SC420 is easily beefy enough to run the 6 hard disks and single dual-layer DVD burner I have), dropped a sound card in (venerable Sound Blaster Live 5.1), and hooked it up. The results were adequate, but nothing special. I began to look up the old articles, to remember why I bought the machine in the first place.

The first thing I did was upgrade the CPU with a true Pentium 4, running at 2.8Ghz, with a meg of L2 cache, far better than the Celeron’s paltry 256 megs. Gone are the days when the Celeron was an overclocking champ. This was also the first time I had ever encountered a Socket 775 CPU. Luckily I have a sack of spare parts, and finding an upgrade CPU was not that hard. After this, the machine performed significantly better, but still not great. I had already upgraded the RAM to 2 full gigs, so I knew that wasn’t the bottleneck. No, it was the graphics subsystem. I needed to get a better graphics card.

There is a PCI Express slot on the mainboard. Dell doesn’t support its use. In fact, on the description page of the server, the following quote was always visible: “The Poweredge SC420 is ideal for your first server & network. Note: For server use only; CANNOT BE USED AS A DESKTOP. Dell does not support the use of a graphics card on the SC420.” Needless to say, that isn’t much of a deterrent. I have a PCI Express x16 ATi FireGL graphics card with 128 megs of DDR3 RAM. Not the best money can buy, but it’s a nice dual-output card that would drive two monitors just fine. Just one slight problem. The PCI-e slot isn’t x16. It’s x8. And there are little plastic dividers in the slot that make it impossible to simply drop the card in.

Fortunately for me, most x16 graphics cards will run just fine at x8. The difference has been compared to the difference between AGP 2x and 4x, or 4x and 8x. Not noticeable under nearly all circumstances. But there was still the problem of getting the card in there. I looked online, read a couple of articles, and plunged in. I went to my local mega-hardware and purchased a blowtorch. Nice propane torch you use to weld copper pipes in the home. I needed a really hot flame, as my trusty Zippo was not up to the task (I tried it).

I set up in my home office with a lit blowtorch on one side and a giant fire extinguisher on the other. I took a small flathead screwdriver, held it to the flame until it was nearly white-hot, and then plunged it into the plastic divider. It sizzled, it melted, it gave way like… well, like plastic before a white-hot piece of steel. It took 5, maybe 7 minutes, tops. Then I carefully extinguished the flame, took a razor blade, and went to work cleaning out the remaining deformed bits of plastic from the slot.

And then I popped the card in, wired the whole thing up, and hit the power button.

Success! Everything booted just fine, and Vista runs really sweet on it now. I have my pretty decent workstation, patched together from a $239 server, a salvaged video card and processor, and some extra RAM.

Dell no longer offers up servers with such hidden potential. The SC430 was a poor, poor successor, and it’s never been the same. Which is a shame. Because obviously on the rare occasion when a manufacturer DOES offer a gem like thes, it sells out fast. I can’t imagine that’s bad for business.

Scientists Erase Single Memory in Mice

Can a company that does this on a consumer level, for humans, possibly come to exist?

Pick up the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

There are… a few people, a few moments, I could definitely do without. I’m not certain I want someone erasing my brain, though.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my aged computer. It hadn’t seen upgrades in well over three years, and that’s ancient for a computer. It had an Athlon XP 2100+, two gigs of DDR RAM, a pair of Dual-Layer DVD burners (okay, those were fairly recent upgrades), and a GeForce4 Ti4200 video card with 128 megs of DDR RAM.

The new specs were slightly less ancient. It was to have a new motherboard, an Athlon XP 2500+, and an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro video card. Not a vast improvement, but I wanted to load up some Vista and get comfy with it before using it in the real world.

Simple enough, right? I mean, it’s work I’ve done for nearly a decade, and I’ve swapped countless parts. I’m the Wilt Chamberlain of parts-swapping. Imagine my surprise, then, when I couldn’t get my new(er) machine to boot, to even POST. Imagine my frustration. I’m not good with frustration. I overheat, I sweat, I get very angry very quickly.

I calm down and decide to go back to my old configuration. Except… it won’t boot either. I originally had three working computers, and all I am left with now is a pile of parts. A disappointment, and a testament to my ultimate lack of patience. Three motherboards, processors, PSUs. A dozen RAM chips, three video cards. Nothing works. The lights come on, the fans spin up, the hard disks spin up, but there is no POST beep, no display, nothing. After three days of plugging, unplugging, testing, parts-swapping, I scrapped it all, consigned it to a pile of junk in my basement.

I resolved to never again bother with a desktop workstation. After all, I have a nice little MacBook. I can surf the net, write my documents and blog posts, do any recording I need to do, listen to music, and download anything I need. Who needs a bulky desktop?

Apparently, I do.

Days one and two were fine. I planned out how I was going to take my web server (a surprisingly good Dell SC420, one of the rare machines put out by a manufacturer that far exceeds expectations) and turn it into a file server, and stick it in my computer closet next to the printer. My desk would from then on be clean, the MacBook and my GameCube its only occupants. I hadn’t hit withdrawal yet.

Days three and four weren’t so good. My computer addiction is akin to a drug addiction, it seems. I couldn’t go one day without changing the plan. I bargained with myself, as all addicts do. “Well, there’s no point in sticking it in the closet, since I have a widescreen Dell monitor. May as well use it for more than just my GameCube.” I began loading Vista on it, instead of re-installing Windows Server. I was still only going to use it as a ’server’, justifying the loading of Vista by telling myself that in my profession, it pays to learn an OS before it gets adopted. I hid my shame. I could control myself this time. You know, only do it a little. I’m not an addict, I can control it.

Day five and I was pushing just a little further out beyond the line. I have Vista already, and a 20″ widescreen… may as well put a DVD burner in there too, right? And because most of my video editing software was erroring on install, I dropped in a sound card. Just my old Sound Blaster Live! 5.1. Sure, I’ll take a hit. I’m still in control, right? Only doing it on the weekends. Just for a little fun.

Day six and I upgraded the stock 2.53 GHz Celeron processor with 256 megs of L2 cache to a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz with 1 meg of cache. You know, for the video and stuff. Hehe… wow, that was an interesting slip, but you know, I can get myself back under control. It’s not like it was before, I’m okay.

Day seven, and I am sitting in my office, staring at the PCI-e x16 ATi FireGL video card I will later install to update the crappy on-board graphics adapter that came with the SC420.

And there it is. In one week, less than one week, I went from no bulky workstation to a fairly decent bulky workstation with stats that outpace even my original plans for updating. And the reason? I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I felt anxious, incomplete, without a workstation. No matter that I rarely ever used my old one, that it was only there for the torrents or occasional video edit. I hide in the darkness, needles in my veins, pumping 1’s and 0’s into my blood.

At one time, I had seven working and running computers. This was a few years ago. Now I have three computers and a laptop. Plus three machines-worth of scrap, most of which I am certain works just fine (despite my lack of success with them). I know I don’t need them all. I don’t. I have a terabyte of storage on my workstation, and have no need of a separate server. I suppose I could say the homebrew PVR has a perfectly valid existence. But that sounds hollow to me, since it isn’t actually being used. The truth is, in some ways I am a techno-junkie. I can no longer rationally exist in the modern world without a connection to the ‘net. I need my fix, and a bulky workstation represents a steady supply, untroubled by the concerns a laptop would have. No batteries to deal with, no chance of dropping it.

It’s an illusion, I know. But should I care- DO I care-, when I can lean back and let the sweet warmth wash over me, gently lifting me away on a wave of web-surfing bliss? Besides, I’m still in control. I can quit any time I want.

In a moment of baffling stupidity, the Boston Bomb Squad detonated a suspicious item in Boston’s Financial District.

The problem? IT WAS A GODS-BEDAMNED TRAFFIC COUNTER. Property of the City of Boston.

What’s next? The fountain in the Boston Commons? Statues, whose gazes hide dark explosive secrets? Oh, I know! Whole f***king BUILDINGS. Cars. Dogs. The fiberglass cows on Boylston.

Look, I respect the need for law enforcement. I respect the need to keep the public safe. But when you are detonating CITY F***KING PROPERTY you have to turn around and look at how far past idiotic paranoia you’ve come into the asinine twilight zone of insanity.

The only thing that would make this shameful piece of idiocy even worse is if Menino came out and said the cops did a good job because… you know, those traffic counters could be hiding whole teams of extremists or something.

*BLAM*

“I’m sorry, did I break your concentration? You were saying something about best intentions… Oh, you were finished? Well, allow me to retort.”

This is how our explanation of what happened to this week’s podcast would go if we lived ultra-cool gangster lives like Vincent and Julius in Pulp Fiction. Alas, we don’t. No black suits, no chrome .45, no discussion on giving a woman a foot massage.

There isn’t a podcast this week. We know. It was a tough decision. But, see, it’s like this…

On Thursday, Colin gave himself a dire case of food poisoning. Fortunately for me, I was able to balance my concern for my friend against the overwhelmingly funny mental image of him actually pulling over to the side of the road and vomiting on someone’s sidewalk. He didn’t really recover until yesterday.

Karl went to the hospital with what he thought was the flu, or an abdominal… thing… I don’t know. Instead, he found out he had appendicitis. I told him not to spend that night with the two Thai midget hookers. But did he listen? No. And now we got filipino pirates chasing us.

I slipped and fell on some ice on Sunday. My hand stung. And my neck was a little sore.

Be that as it may, there were a few stories this week we wished we could talk about. Here are some links and a couple of brief comments for you to enjoy. Normal recording returns this weekend.

Honda Overclocks Odometers

Apparently, this problem is common. There is actually an acceptable level of inaccuracy in odometers. Unfortunately for Honda, 7% is far beyond that level. And they’re paying $6 million to customers who own cars that seem to be packing on the miles faster than expected.

Honestly… I can sort of understand an inherent level of inaccuracy. But seven percent? That’s more than a glitch. It’s incompentence.

Cisco Settles With Apple Over iPhone Name

Cisco is like the wheedling child that threatens to tell his mom about his babysitter’s boyfriend visiting. The babysitter just wants him to shut the f**k up so she can continue to use the couch for her dirty deeds. Hence, Apple and Cisco reached a deal. Apple gets to use the word iPhone, and they have to “explore a potential joint endeavor with Cisco.”

I hate patent trolls. I hate trademark trolls. Wankers.

Sirius and XM Want to Merge

HAHAHAHAHA. Not in this lifetime. As my friend Jason points out, when two companies control 99% of the satellite radio market, the odds that the FCC and SEC are going to approve a merger are slim to none, and slim just left town. Unless those agencies are sleeping at the wheel. And we all know government agencies would never sleep at the wheel and let stupid s**t happen, right?

Oh… dammit. We’re f**ked.

TJ Maxx Breach Occurred A Year Earlier Than Previously Thought

Seriously? F**k TJ Maxx. Right in the ear. From now on, if I want to buy something there, I’m paying cash. I suggest you all do as well.

It’s interesting that the digital age has made me so paranoid with some places that I am willing to take a step back in economic evolution and start paying cash for things again.

Well, there it is. Again, we’re sorry we didn’t record. But with one case of food poisoning, one appendix, and a slight bruise… well… we’re sorry.

Till the next episode, stay tuned, kiddies.

In homage, and because I was discussing it recently with Greg, I would like to present my own version of the Movie Quiz.  It’s tailored to make it both easier AND harder.  This particular quiz focuses solely on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.  Can you name the film and the character Arnold played?

Here goes:

1- “Crom laughs at your Four Winds.  He laughs from his mountain.”

2- “You’re a funny man, Sully.  That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”

3- “If it bleeds, we can kill it.”

4- “You should not drink and bake!”

5- “Killian!  Here’s you’re SubZero… Now, Plain Zero!”

6- “Howdy, stranger.  If things have gone wrong, I’m talking to myself and you have a wet towel wrapped around your head.”

7- “It’s NOT a TUMOR!”

8- “You want to be a farmer?  Here’s a couple of ‘acres’!”

9- “Can you hurry up?  My horse is getting tired.”

10- “Surprise, I am your new cell mate. And I’m here to make your life a living hell. Prepare for a bitter harvest. Winter has come at last!”

There you go.  All Arnold movies.  Name the character, name the movie.

Enter the Insignia NS-DV2G Video MP3 Player and Image Viewer.

Loyal readers will remember Insignia as Best Buy’s in-house brand.  Simply unpackaging the NS-DV2G brought back to mind some of the features I really liked about the DVD player.  It also brought up some questions.

Let’s start with the technical specs.  The NS-DV2G boasts 2 gigs of internal memory, a 2.2″ LCD screen, Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port, two headphone jacks (one of which can also be used as a line-in jack), rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, FM tuner with 20 presets, microSD memory card slot for expanding its capacity, hold button, and upgradeable firmware.  It manages to pack all that into a 2.4-ounce frame that is a mere 4 inches long by 1.8 wide, and barely more than a half inch thick.  A mini-USB cable, earbuds, transparent belt case, and software CD round out the package.

It feels sturdy.  Not quite as industrial as the first-gen nano, but nice and solid.  The entire back is made from the same micro-textured plastic they used on the cover of the DVD player, that sort of almost oiled-leather feel of the old Thinkpads.  The front is shiny and slick with the screen dominating about two thirds of the surface.  Controls fill out the remaining area.  Not very assuming, it reminded me of the LG Chocolate, without the whole phone part.

I was perplexed that there was no wall wart included to charge the unit, meaning that all your charging will be done from a USB port on your PC.  Normally I wouldn’t complain about something so trivial, but if you happen to be traveling with a laptop, well, that’s slightly inconvenient.  Chargers with mini-USB plugs are available, though, so it isn’t a big deal.  Also of note is that the unit goes into a sort of stand-by when connected, so you can’t charge and listen at the same time.

The earbuds are adequate, in the same way that iPod earbuds are adequate.  The sound fine, but my (apparently) odd-shaped ears do not like being tortured with round pieces of hard plastic.

On to the good stuff.  Plugging the unit into my laptop was simple enough, but I ignored the instructions to install the included software.  Although the unit supports Plays for Sure, I don’t.  I also don’t have an account with Best Buy’s Digital Music Store, so I was unable to test that functionality.

I skipped the software because I mainly use a MacBook, and apparently that pretty much precludes using either Plays for Sure or the Best Buy service anyway.  Oh well, a minor inconvenience, as the included manual indicates how to transfer music to the device manually from iTunes.  It’s a simple drag and drop affair, although users should be warned (they are not, in the manual) that Apple DRM-protected tracks will not play on the Insignia player.

If you do not wish to install the included software on a PC, you have two options.  Use the same drag-and-drop method from iTunes, or open the device in ‘My Computer’ (it’s recognized as a removeable drive), open the ‘Music’ folder, and drag your folders in there.  For those not really computer savvy, this could be a little problematic, but the iTunes method is there for that, not to mention the included software.

The interface on the Insignia is nothing short of amazing, especially considering its budget status.  The screen is clear and bright, once again reminding me of a good cell phone.  The oddly green welcome screen gives way to a blue and silver screen displaying current artist (with artwork if available), album, and track information.  There is also a clock, charge indicator, and track progress bar.  All very similar to the iPod.  One feature I never noticed on the iPod, and one that I really like on the Insignia, is that at the bottom of the screen is displayed the name of the next track in the queue.  Really cool.  Browsing through the music library menus are a breeze, allowing you to look by track, artist, album, genre, all at the turn of the wheel.

Hitting the Menu button takes you to a fluidly animated scroll menu, reminiscent of the T-Mobile SideKick.  The menu has Settings, Music Library, Audio Books, Video, Photos, FM Tuner, and Recording options, which allow easy access to all the functions of the player.  There are decent presets on the equalizer, control of the backlight and repeat/shuffle functions, control of the recording quality and FM station presets, time, and other mundane stuff.  The only function not included that I thought might have been useful is a way to control the idle interval before the player shuts itself off.  Once it does, hitting the Play button does nothing, and holding down the Power button for two seconds is required to power the unit back up.

Sound quality is fantastic through my preferred headphones.  I mean, there really isn;t anything more I could say about that.  Clear, crisp sound.  Photos display well on the screen, and browsing through them is simply a matter of clicking through.  Video playback is a little streaky, which is perfectly normal for a tiny LCD.  And although I probably wouldn’t watch full-length features on it, the included music videos were a nice diversion.  Don’t take that as a negative, though, as there aren’t ANY small screens I would watch movies on, my vaunted iPod included.

The recording functions are basic, but useful.  You can choose from four recording ‘qualities’, whether to record in PCM or WMA, and as mentioned previously, there is a line-in/mic jack, though you will need a pre-amp for the mic.  There is, sadly, no way to record from FM that I could see.

I did not get a chance to run the battery down.  It is advertised as having ‘up to’ 20 hours of music playback, but based on experience with other players, I would probably put it closer to 16.  Still, not shabby at all.

All in all, this player is a spectacular value for the money.  At only $120 on Best Buy’s site, you could do a lot worse for a gift this holiday season.  It has many features the iPod Nano does not (video, FM, recording), and a smaller price tag to boot.

Pros:

• Excellent interface, easy-to-use menus
• Excellent sound quality
• Good video playback and photo display
• Bright, clear screen
• Solidly built
• Long battery life
• Compatible with Rhapsody Music Service and Best Buy Digital Music Service
• Plays many formats, including MP3, WAV, PCM, WMA, MOV, AVI, and MPG.

Cons:

• No charger included
• No way to use or access the devices internal menus while connected to USB
• Included belt case is flimsy clear plastic

80’s Nintendo Commercial

This is our generation.  Dear gods, oh dear gods…

Download this episode (18.8 MB, 41:20)

• iPod Ships with Worm
• Listening to the Sound of Skin Cancer
• PS3 Online: How it Works
• 2006 Life is Good Pumpkin Festival
• AJAX Experience

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com, carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

All music composed and recorded by Karl Kornfeld.

NOTE: I forgot to mention our new ‘Name of the Game’ segment with our friend, Greg Howley.  Check it out.  This week, we’re giving away a prize!

Download this episode (18.2 MB, 39:50)

• DVD Jon Breaks Apple DRM, Sells It
• Digital Cure for Hiccups
• The Fate of Online Gambling
• n-Track Studio
• StoryGames Boston at Pandemonium

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com, carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

All music composed and recorded by Karl Kornfeld.

Enter one of my favorite commands, largely unheard of, but fun for the whole family: ’shutdown’.

It isn’t a complicated command.  On your own machine, bring up the ‘Run’ box by clicking ‘Start’, then ‘Run’ (this works in Windows 2000 as well as XP, whether or not Remote Desktop is active on that machine).  In the box type ‘cmd’.  A command window will pop up.

Now type ’shutdown /?’, just for fun.  The following should come up:

Usage: shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "comment"] [-d up:xx:yy]

        No args                 Display this message (same as -?)
        -i                      Display GUI interface, must be the first option
        -l                      Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
        -s                      Shutdown the computer
        -r                      Shutdown and restart the computer
        -a                      Abort a system shutdown
        -m \\computername       Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
        -t xx                   Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
        -c “comment”            Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
        -f                      Forces running applications to close without warning
        -d [u][p]:xx:yy         The reason code for the shutdown
                                u is the user code
                                p is a planned shutdown code
                                xx is the major reason code (positive integer less than 256)
                                yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536)

Yeah, it’s a little confusing.  But there is really only one command combination we need from this to reboot a remote machine, and it looks like this:

shutdown -r -f -m \\computername

Let’s break it down: ’shutdown’ is the instruction, ’-r’ tells it to reboot, ‘-f’ tells it to force quit any running applications, and ‘-m \\computername’ tells it which computer to do the deed to.  Of course, replace the ‘computername’ part with the actual name of the computer being rebooted.

This command is especially useful if the only way you can access a machine is via Remote Desktop (as I do with my file server), and you get the ‘too many sessions’ error, where you aren’t allowed to log into your machine (as I occasionally do).

Download this episode (24.3 MB , 53:06 )

• Virgin Atlantic Revises Battery Rules
• AT&T Bringing Home the Bacon
• Apple Lashes Out… Again
• Guitar Hero Coming to the 360
• HD-DVD Won’t Put a Hole in Your Wallet
• PS3 Adds Improvements, and Woes
• Engadget Reader Meetup in Boston on Thursday, September 28
• Harpoon Brewery Serves Beer and Bratwurst in Boston

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com, carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

And yet, the technology to display photos has not really kept up with the technology to take the photos. Digital photo displays are still few and far between, and most options are a bit pricey. And their quality leaves just a bit to be desired.
Enter the Philips 7FF1AW Digital Photo Display.

I was a bit skeptical at first, when I was told I was going to be reviewing this computer-age objet d’ art, and not without good reason. I’ve seen a digital photo frame or two, and I usually find the colors too dark, or that the LCD can only be viewed from a specific angle, or that the thing is incredibly difficult to manage. In addition, manufacturers often try to copy the design of wooden frames, which just makes the whole thing look bizarre. So imagine my surprise when I received it.

It’s sleek, very sleek. The picture on the box got my hopes up. An image of a screen surrounded by glass, and a chrome stand. The image represented ont he LCD is bright, clear, and looks just like a photograph.

Reality was in some way less, and in some ways more, than what I expected. The frame surround is not glass, but polycarbonate acrylic (which, in retrospect is probably a good thing, as glass has a rather distressing tendency to break). The stand is not chrome, but satinless steel! Incredibly heavy, it’s shape lends itself to a variety of alternate uses, including (but not limited to): doorstop, paperweight, sap (for taking out enemies silently and efficiently), and thrown projectile (if an employee or pet irritate you enough). I kid, I kid (maybe). The truth is, I was pleasantly surprised by this little touch. Many frames have wobbly, often flimsy stands on them. And when you have an expensive piece of tech like this, you want to make sure it isn’t going to break on you.

There is a power switch on the back. It’s a slide-style switch, which, as I have expressed in other reviews, I find baffling. In addition, there are six buttons across the upper edge on the back,
The unit come with two cables, a power adapter, and a CD.

 

Even without reading the manual, I found operation a breeze.  The icons that appear on the screen mirror the functions of the buttons on the back, helping to guide your fingers when you are looking at the front of the unit.  I will point out, however, that both the hard-copy QuickStart Guide and the ‘Online’ User’s Manual contained on the CD are fairly concise, indicating what all the little functions are for, what all the little buttons and settings to.  I just didn’t feel a need to actually read them.

On to function.  The Philips 7FF1AW has slots to read CompactFlash, Sony Memory Stick and Memory Stick Duo, SD, MMC, and MS cards, which isn’t bad.  In addition, it also has a USB port to hook up directly to a camera and then detect and import all the images on the camera, or to a PC, which will then treat it as a removeable storage device you can transfer images directly to.  I’ve gotta say, I was impressed with the ease of operation in the various modes.  Even the mildly techno-savvy can figure it all out.  The internal memory unit is claimed to hold about fifty photographs, although I didn’t get a chance to test that.  However, it will also read directly from media cards, meaning your stored number of photos is, for all intents and purposes, limitless.

Menus are standard fare, similar to pretty much every digital camera on the market.  Rotate functions, slideshow speed and look, brightness and contrast, the usual stuff is all here.  In addition, you can choose the rate of rotation for your slideshow, so that you can have a new picture show every day, if you wish, as opposed to every few seconds.  I found this feature to be probably the most useful.

There is a Contact Sheet feature, that displays thumbnails of multiple images on the screen, so you can choose which images to transfer to the device or to display in the slideshow.  It works excellently, although as the number of photos increase, the responsiveness of this feature begins to dip as the unit slows down, processing through the images.  I can imagine that with a hundred or more photos, it can get a bit irritating.  Still, it’s not horrible, and if you use your PC to do this work for you, you’ll never see a problem.

If I had to point out one thing to criticize about the Philips DPD, it would be that in ‘Browse Mode’, the resolution of the photo is firmly displayed across the bottom, and the menu bar is firmly displayed across the top, with no apparent way to make them go away.  This means that there is no aesthetically pleasing way to just display one photo permanently.  You might not want to, of course.  In fact, I doubt that with this tasty device anyone would want to, but I’m nitpicky like that.

Image quality wasn’t exactly as described by the pretty picture on the box, but it was pretty close.  Images are bright and colorful, though obviously will only be as clear as your camera allows them to be.  Paired with a decent camera, however, there is no reason this cannot replace the ten pictures of your family that currently clutter your desk.  And if you want to show others your pictures, the internal battery will keep the frame running for about an hour before a recharge is needed.  You might complain about low battery life, but for a 7″ screen and a battery that small, I think it’s just fine.

All in all, I highly recommend this to those who want (and can afford) an alternative to the clutter of numerous picture frames.  I found very few things to complain about, and I’m a guy who likes to complain.  Though it is a little pricey (MSRP is $249.95), it can certainly be found for less.  And for what it does, it’s actually a very reasonable amount of money to spend on a gadget.

PROS

• Ease of use
• Excellent slideshow feature with the ability to change the delay between photo transitions
• Versatility of media, camera, or PC
• Durability
• Internal battery for showing photos without dragging the cord
• Bright, clear images
• Clean look

CONS

• No ‘Static Image’ Setting without leaving graphics on the screen
• Slide-style power switch
• Numerous photos can slow down the Contact Sheet thumbnail screen

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you install a program on your PC, and it launches some part of itself when you first boot? Apple’s Quicktime, for example, loads the ‘qttask.exe’ process, even if you turn off that annoying icon in the system tray. If you’re like me, you hate having uninvated guests at the bootup party. Usually, these automatically launched tasks do nothing, and merely take up resources.

So, let’s see how we can get rid of them, shall we?

First off, this tip only works for Windows XP… unless you’re willing to be a little inventive. See, there is a tool called ‘msconfig’ in XP that doesn’t come standard with, say, Windows 2000. But, for some reason, the tool works just fine in 2000, if you download it. Here is a good place. They also have a Windows 95/98 version, but if you are running either of those operating systems… well, get a new computer.

Anyway, once you have it downloaded and saved (if running a non-XP environment), or on your XP desktop, pull up a run window by clicking ‘Start’, then ‘Run’. In the box type ‘msconfig’. If you are running an OS other than XP, you may have to type the full path (i.e. C:\msconfig). A window will come up:

See all those things? Every line is an item that Windows automatically starts at boot time. These things use up CPU time and memory. And since a lot of them are completely unnecessary, I see no reason to continue letting them run.

NOTE: I assume NO responsibility for any damage or loss of data you may incur while doing this. If you’re careful, you should be fine, but there’s always an element of risk.

Now, see ‘Acrotray’, ‘iTunesHelper’, and ‘qttask’? These are Adobe Acrobat, iTunes, and Quicktime tastks, respectively, and none need to be running at boot time. So uncheck those boxes. ‘WLTRAY’ is a component of my wireless LAN connection, so I’ll leave that be (actually, I’ll leave the first five or six items on that list be, as they are somewhat important). Similarly, ‘VPTray’ is part of my Symantec services, and is a good thing to leave running.

It takes a little knowledge, or at least an intuitive understanding of how to use Google to search for what a process does, but you can eliminate many useless startup items this way, decrease boot time, and maybe speed up your machine just a bit.

Now, click okay and let your machine reboot. When it does, a nag box will come up saying that you used msconfig to alter your boot sequence. Ignore it and cleck the ‘Do Not Show Me Again’ box.

There you go! An easy tweak.

Download this episode (20.8 MB , 45:27 )

• TOR Servers Seized in Germany
• Wikipedia Won’t Bow to Chinese
• Amazon’s Unbox Uncool
• There is No Jungle in Jungle Speed
• MIT Pranks, Pays Respects
• Boston Music Awards And NEMO 2006
• Boston Film Night
• 30 Hours of Art

CARL’S NOTE: On the podcast, I mention that I think Lion’s Gate Films is owned in whole or in part by Disney. This assumption was incorrect. While the two studios have collaborated on projects, Lion’s Gate is an independent studio.

COLIN:  Because I promised. Carl, the sidewalk ornament.

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com, carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

You’ve just purchased a new Windows-based computer.  It’s shiny, it’s new, it’s pretty.  You spent several hundred (or over a thousand) dollars on it, and you’ve just unwrapped it.  You turn it on, and there are a dozen or so icons already ont he desktop.  AOL, Earthlink, Quicken or MS Office trials, Web shortcuts, etc.

The Tech Tip is simple:  If you have the technical knowledge, or know someone who does (neighbor’s child, your kid, your nephew), before you do ANYTHING on your new computer, take the software restore discs and reformat.  Re-load Windows from scratch now, and save yourself future troubles.  When it’s done, you will have a clean Windows installation with no additional crap software.  If you want to take it a step further, once this is done and you have all your settings just the way you like them, create a restore image of your hard drive using a utility such as Symantec Ghost.
NOTE: Some have even written tools specifically tailored to clean certain manufacturers machines, such as Dell.  I have not used these tools and so cannot recommend them.  I would probably still do the reformat and re-install of Windows.

Download this episode (16.6 MB , 36:19)

Show Notes:

• Verizon, BellSouth, Qwest, Take The Money and Run
• Die, Diebold, Die!
• Sony Says, “Our Batteries are Just Fine”
• Cool Games Come to XBOX Live!
• Dan the Automator Presents: 2K7
• Boston Derby Dames

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com, carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

So, tech tip #1 concerns Virtual Private Networking (VPN) and wireless LAN connections.  It was frustrating figuring out what a certain problem was, and the solution irritated me enough to want to make sure it never happens to anyone else.

The Setup 

Specifically, I will be focusing on my experience with both the Cisco VPN Client (v. 4.7) and the SonicWall Global Client, on a Dell Latitude 520 notebook computer.

The Dilemma

When connected to a LAN via the ethernet port, the client notebook creates and maintains a secure tunnel over the virtual adapter.  When attempting to connect wirelessly, however, the tunnel either cannot be created or seems like it is created but will not pass any data.  It’s frustrating, to say the least.

The Solution

Apparently it’s a known issue.  Well, it’s known to Dell.  Good luck finding the explanation on their site.  It’s an issue with the Dell Wireless 1350, 1450, 1390, and 1490 network adapters in the Microsoft Windows XP operating systems, and there is currently no patch for the driver.

There is, however, a workaround:

Right-click on My Computer and click Properties.

The System Properties window comes up.  Click on the Hardware tab and then click on Device Manager.

Click the (+) next to Network Adapters and double-click on Dell Wireless WLAN Adapter.

In the box that pops up, click the Advanced tab.

Scroll down to VLAN Priority Support and click on it to highlight.

Select Disable from the Value dropdown menu.

Click OK.

Close all the open windows.  You’re done.  Everything should work just fine now, including your VPN connection over wireless.

You may have a similar problem with a different wireless card.  If so, try this.  It can’t hurt, and might actually help.

Pluto Stripped of Its Title

I remember the debate started in 2003 with Xena (which, if I recall correctly was also named ‘Planet X’).  For quite some time, there were those who said our solar system now had ten planets.

Being resistant to change as I occasionally am (and unwilling to talk about ‘Planet X’ because it seemed stupid), I never acknowledged the concept of ten planets.  But apparently, behind the scenes, a war raged.

And the result?  Not only is ‘Xena’ not a planet, neither is Pluto.  The new rules are simple:

- It must be large enough for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape, and it must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

- A planet’s orbit cannot cross another planet’s orbit.

Sadly, Pluto’s orbit crosses Neptune’s.  I can’t exactly say that was even my first clue, as Pluto was the only non-gaseous ‘planet’ outside the Asteroid Belt, and it’s orbit is an elongated ellipse which does not follow the solar system’s ecliptic, or plane.

So what is Pluto, exactly?  A dwarf planet.  One of three classifications for objects which are not satellites.  The other two are planet, and small solar system body.

So long Pluto.  You were an icy little reject planet for 76 years, but you were still a planet.

Since deciding to purchase my MacBook, I have convinced four others to go out and buy the little white notebooks, and another is thinking about it.

In less than a month, I have helped Apple sell several MacBooks, iPods, and various other items.

I’m no evangelist.  I am a prophet. 

Colin takes exception to this.  It’s like witnessing a religious conversion to him.  What he doesn’t realize is that I am merely basking in the momentary joy.  I don’t love Apple, I love the MacBook.  Unlike the myriad fanboys out there who truly love the Cupertino-based company, I can and will be easily lured away by the Bigger Better Deal, the Next Big Thing.  I am not blinded to innovation elsewhere, I just admit that right now Apple does it best with their slick OS X and their joyous little music players.

I used to be an Intel evangelist.  Overclocking my Celeron 300A to 450.  Then I switched to AMD, for their price-to-performance was the stuff of legends.  Now I say f**k AMD and give me my Core Duo.

It can happen with Apple too.  Until then, though…

All hail Satan… I mean Steven!

So it was with some optimism that I installed Micro Machines on my computer. My experience was mixed.

I’m only moderately interested in racing games. I mean, at least one good racing game is always in my gaming stable, and I break it out whenever i have the need for some speed. But I’ll give anything that looks like fun a shot, and remembering my childhood playing around with toy cars seemed like a good time.

The install went smoothly, and I had everything up and running relatively quickly. The PC version is a DVD, however, so have a magazine ready while installing.

The controls are simple. Forward, back, left, right, weapon. Controlling the vehicle in-game is a matter of learning to powerslide while holding down the accelerator, and only occasionally slowing down. The game has a fun battle element, as players gather up items strewn about the track and use them to take out opponents. Don’t worry, though. The actual violence is minimal, on par with anything I’d give an ‘E’ rating.

There are over 750 vehicles to collect, but I found that dizzying and exciting number to be a bit of a letdown, as the vehicles themselves tend to be bland and generic. All you really get is a different paint job sometimes, and they’re not even exciting paint jobs. I was more impressed with the various vehicle stats, which introduced a good strategy element to the game.

Vehicles handle differently in the game, with some giving better acceleration/grip/maneuverability than others. This allows you to pick the best vehicle for the job. Unfortunately, with 750 vehicles to choose from, you’ll probably just find yourself building a bond with 5 or 6 and never touching the others.

There are three types of race in the game, including laps, checkpoint, and battle (where the goal is simply to vastly outrun your opponents), and the game has simple, stable multiplayer support for up to 4 players. Frankly, I was confused by that, as it seemed this game would lend itself well to having upwards of 16 players at one time on some of the larger tracks.

Speaking of tracks, there were some awesome ones. By far, this was the best element of the game. Aside from the usual household furniture, fixtures, and appliances, the cars could also go outside and explore a bit, tearing through the garden, over rooftops, and even through a chicken coop. This was a welcome addition to the game. Driving around made me feel a bit like a kid again, and when you’re playing with toy cars, who can ask for more?

If I had to pick out one glaring problem (for me, at least) it would be the camera control. As in, there isn’t any. It’s a problem I have seen in numerous games, and have been irritated by them all. The camera in this game follows its own path, sometimes behind, sometimes from the side, and it can make controlling your little speed demon a nightmare. On courses where the slightest deviation could send you into a tub of water or off a counter, I found it more than a little frustrating.My only other gripe is with graphics. I’m a graphics whore, and in this day and age there is no excuse for lackluster sprites in a game. While Codemasters upgraded the scenery a bit, it didn’t feel as polished as it should have, and the cars were still blocky and uninspired.

Overall, I think the game was fun though. A lot of fun, especially for kids who parents might want to provide with some video game entertainment without worrying about sex or violence. The replay value is pretty high, and adding a few friends to the mix via online play makes it even better.

I’d give it a solid 2 1/2 out of 5 stars. Like the latest action flicks, it won’t win the Academy Award, but it’s still a lot of fun.

Actually, Greg Howley, a longtime fan of our podcast, has teamed up with us to produce an as-yet unnamed segment for our Gaming Table portion of the ‘cast.

He’s a cool guy, one of the first to win one of our giveaways, and we hope you’ll enjoy his contribution.

Welcome Greg. And to our other fans we say, “Rejoice, for our ascension is at hand!”

Colin’s Addendum: And, we will have some new content for Math Geeks arriving shortly in the form of a weekly article chock full of mathematical goodness.  I will leave it at that, so as to build up suspense or something.

Carl’s Post-script: As long as we don’t end up with “There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t,” I am also looking forward to it.

SG1 Ends Run; Atlantis Back

Honestly, I never saw the allure.  I thought the Stargate movie was fun, but the series… meh.

 

Download this episode (22.1 MB , 48:06)

Show notes:

• Steve Jobs Lives!!!
• Relakks, Don’t Do It…
• This Dell Will Self-Destruct In Five Seconds
• Dead Rising (not affiliated with George Romero)
• Order of the Stick
• PodCamp Boston
• Oktoberfest Boston

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com, carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

Work was fine, nothing really special. My boss paid for lunch, which was awesome. Got a bunch of work done. Overall, it was a slightly better-than-average workday.

I got into my car at 5PM and started the engine. Cranked up the AC. Reached back into my backpack to snag my black 30gig iPod. Plugged it into my tape deck adapter. Noticed a dark spot on my screen.

*urk*

Noticed… a dark splotch on… my three-hundred dollar screen. Okay… calm. Looked closer. Powered it on. Maybe it’s dirt. Hit the power. Saw the splotch stay dark, saw the two large cracks across the LCD glass. Heard the clickwheel. Saw nothing except the backlight on the screen. Began full-scale adrenaline dive into coronary infarct.

Calm. No point in getting incredibly upset. Been under so much stress lately, I didn’t think I could deal with it just then, behind the wheel of 2.4 tons of Korean steel, glass, and aluminum. I decided I would just drop it off at the Apple Store in the South Shore Plaza. If my Apple Care Warranty wouldn’t cover the repairs, it couldn’t possibly cost more to fix than to replace it. I mentally calculated as I drove.

I got to the mall and quickly hurried to the Apple Store, bypassing the shelves of shiny swag and making a beeline for the Genius Bar. I was quickly tended by an associate named Matthew, who took my name and made for me an ‘appointment’ (Apple’s semi-elitist way of saying ‘take a number’). As it turned out, by the time he entered my info, it was already my turn.

I showed him my decimated iPod. The outer case was perfectly intact. Not a scratch. I had always stored it in a leather case with steel slats designed to protect it. I didn’t know what had happened. He took it, looked a little surprised, as it just didn’t appear to have suffered shock or trauma.

“Will Apple Care cover this, at all?” I asked. I was unprepared for the answer.

“Well, no, not usually,” Matthew replied. “But… there’s no damage on this. So, I’ll just swap it out and give you a new one.”

“Really?” I asked, incredulous, disbelieving. “Wow.”

It took 10 minutes total. I felt it necessary to gush about my recent MacBook purchase. About how I was an IT admin who had only ever badmouthed Apple, but that I was repentant. I felt like I was at Confession. And I walked out with a brand new black 30gig iPod. I couldn’t have been happier at that moment.

I know this was the store, this was one person using what I am certain was the ‘discretionary’ leeway associates are given to satisfy customers and keep them spending money. I know this was local, and probably rare. But, if Apple takes this tack with all their customers, they’ll definitely have a customer for a very, very long time.

Has Dell ever been so easy to deal with? Not for me, certainly.

So begins Apple’s latest round of clever television advertisements. Surely you’ve seen them, and if not, you can easily find them, and the parodies of them, on sites like YouTube. So I won’t bore you with an explanation.

But if you watch the ads, and have listened to me rant from the Microsoft camp at Colin and his ‘latte-swilling hippiness’ and Apple fanboy behavior, you know that such utterances as the above would probably begin any joint therapy session he and I ever went to. He’s laid back where I am not, he dressed cool before I did, and he does enjoy his fancy coffees (not to be confused with my predilection for ‘complicated’ coffees, which is not at all the same thing).

For the longest time it was Windows v. OS X, Intel v. PowerPC, two-button mice v. one-button atrocities (okay, on that one, even Apple fanboys agree with me). I was occasionally tempted to go to the other side, but I managed to maintain my tenacious grip on sanity, remembering the falsehoods of the benchmarks, remembering the comparative dearth of software.

And then, the Switch. THE Switch. Apple moved to an Intel-based architecture, and my PowerPC arguments sloughed off like a zombie’s dead skin (Also, by now, I had started dressing cooler, in button-fly jeans and clever t-shirts). But Apple swore gave every indication they would never run Windows, and I grasped at that statement with all the fervor of a horny nerd grasping at the cruelly teasing tendrils of a hot girl’s taunting ‘maybe’ to accompany him to the prom.

But, like that hot girl, Apple was lying. They released BootCamp (currently a Beta release. The complete Gold release is expected to ship with OS X 10.5 a.k.a. Leopard, in Spring ‘07), and suddenly Intel-based Macs ran Windows XP. Oh vile harlot, oh tempestuous splinter of insanity in my mind, why must I be tortured so?

The new MacBook line was announced, and I wanted one. Colin purchased one, and I wanted it more. My fiancee purchased one, and I knew I had to have it. I sold my trusty, if aging, IBM Thinkpad T23 on eBay, along with various other items, and raised the money to place an order for my very own MacBook. And thus began my own Switch story.

I ordered the base model MacBook, with a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 512 megabytes of PC5300 DDR2 RAM, and a cool white case. I wasn’t even tempted by the black model. If I was going to descend into madness, I was going all-out, slathering myself in my own feces while holding conversations with the Founding Fathers. And why not? Surely I couldn’t be blamed. I had given in, broken like a cheap toy. I placed my order online, and that was a mistake.

For you see, the next 14 days would be spent not in the unholy bliss of fornicating with my MacBook’s hardwired ethernet port, but in the 8th level of Hell, where hapless customers are sent to wait for their laptops to arrive from China. Shozhou, to be exact. Somewhere deep in the heart of the largest of East Asia’s countries, a team of spectacularly trained and repeatedly beaten workers spent loving hours crafting it. As I caress its keys, even now, I can almost hear the cries of children saying, “Mommy, please come home. Stop working overtime at the factory.” But their cries go unanswered, and I feel like I have traded the software evil of Microsoft for the hardware evil of Apple, and I feel mollified, as though I haven’t really abandoned evil as a lifestyle.

But enough hyperbole. After 14 days of ranting, railing, beating my fists against the inequity of the U.S. Customs Service and Apple’s ridiculous habit of sending online orders to China, I got the notice from FedEx that the package had arrived. Oh glory, oh happy day! I left work at 4:57PM, and although my afternoon commute seemed to take forever, the truth is that I broke various laws to get home in a record 21 minutes. By 5:28PM, I was sitting on my couch, staring at a brown cardboard box. What was inside I knew, but I was so excited that it permeated my very loins. At that moment in time, not even an incredibly hot porn starlet could have grabbed my attention. That’s just not like me at all.

Beyond the cardboard lay the actual, official, Apple box, mocking. I heard it whisper to me to take it out slowly… gently. Like a naughty little crumpet, it guided my hands. Before I knew it, the MacBook was in my lap, power adapter plugged in and charging. It occurred to me then that I had to install the 2 gigabytes of RAM that I had purchased from NewEgg to max out the notebook’s capabilities. And so I removed the battery, unscrewed the metal strip that allows access to the innards, and gently removed the included SO-DIMMs. With great care and considerable force I pressed in the new RAM, sealed it all back up… and powered it on.

That initial start-up sound, Apple’s signature ‘bong!’ cut through my heart, and immediately cauterized the wound with Apple love. It was like it had taken my favorite childhood toys away, and replaced it with sweet, sweet morphine.

The setup took all of 15 minutes. I mean, seriously. I’ve spent more time adjusting Windows menu settings than that. Oh sure, I spent time here and there over the next week adjusting things, setting application preferences, changing icons, setting up email applications and bookmarks. But I was ready to run after only 15 minutes.

I installed BootCamp immediately. For two reasons. One, if anything went wrong and I had to reload OS X, I didn’t want to have a lot to redo; and Two, it allowed me to still cling to my precious Windows. I justified it by saying I still needed to use Photoshop, and Rosetta did a piss-poor job of running Photoshop, which has not yet been released as a Universal Binary.

And that was it. Windows spent three days on my laptop. I never booted back into it. But I knew it was there. It comforted me to know that. I told myself I really had bought a new Windows machine, with the benefit of having OS X should I want it. Of course, I was lying to myself. I installed Photoshop CS2 on OS X and lo, it ran fine. Though it will buckle under the heavy use a true graphics professional might put it to, for my piddly twenty-meg files it practically screamed. In fact, it screamed on pretty much everything I threw at it. Though it hiccuped on a True-Type font or two, on the whole I had no problems.

And with no excuses left, I did the unthinkable. I deleted my Windows partition, blew away the install completely, and have been running OS X exclusively on this… beauty, this siren from Cupertino. And I’ve been impressed, and happy with it. I haven’t yet done too much, but I can see myself really enjoying this laptop. Even as a small voice inside me still cries out for the comfort of a registry, for the familiarity of thousands of DLLs. I still use a PC at home (three, actually, if you include my PVR and web server), but most of my daily activities are migrating to my MacBook.

The built-in iSight works incredibly. The resolution is excellent. The included iLife software bundle is astonishing in its completeness. Nothing Microsoft ever included with their operating systems even come close. I just… don’t have anything at all to complain about. I wish I did. I’d feel less dirty. But I am dirty. I’m a dirty little Apple whore now. Sure, I can still complain about Steve Jobs, still complain about the Reality Distortion Field, still support Microsoft. But it all sounds a bit hollow, now, doesn’t it, as I drink my elitist’s beer or sip my Starbucks coffee, sitting in my worn 501’s, my clever t-shirt, my Vans, caressing the white chiclet keys, gazing lovingly at the 13.3-inch glossy screen?

“My name is Carl Reyes, and I’m a Network Administrator.”

Some Game Store’s Training Vid

Via Joystiq

EDIT: Link updated because GameCrazy (or someone) have no sense of humor and had it removed from YouTube.  Thankfully, teh Intarweb will not be denied!

Download this episode (29.6 MB , 1:04:37)

Show notes:

• Germans Clone Dolly the Passport
• AOL Lubes Up Employees
• WWDC Keynote Notes
• Dead Rising
• HUMANWINE
• Gnarls Barkley
• Peeping Tom

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com or (for Beer) remy@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

Download this Episode (23.4 MB , 51:03)

Show Notes:

• Apple to Do eBooks?
• Zune to Bring the Pain to iPod?
• AMD Buys ATi (Finally)
• Theophrastus
• Shakespeare on the Common
• Boston Magazine

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

Download this Episode (31.6 MB , 1:09:02)

Show Notes:

• ABC Floats Ridding the World of FF
  
• Sony Intros Movies on Mem Stick
• ePassports. Prepare to be Violated
• XBOX Live Arcade Wednesdays
• Nintendo Power #1, For FREE
• Big Dig Tunnel Collapse UPDATE: MORE Parts of the Dig Closed
• Sex Tips and More at Coolidge Corner

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

CORRECTION: The seminars are held by Good Vibration. They opened in the location previously operated by Grand Opening, which is now a web-only presence. The two do collaborate, and Grand Opening used to hold these seminars. Sorry ’bout that. –Carl

CORRECTION PT2: The movie title I so inneffectively groped for was THX1138, not Farenheit 451.  Mea culpa.

All good and important questions. And with Father’s Day coming up, a device like this could make the perfect gift for dad. But does the Insigniaâ„¢ 10.2″ 16:9 Widescreen TFT Portable DVD Player, with its large swiveling screen, various ports, and light weight (2.6 lbs), fit the bill? Or does it come up short in the race for gift-giving greatness?

Insignia is Best Buy’s in-house new brand, and they aim to come out swinging with several portable DVD packages, including several screen sizes and several option packages.

Let’s begin with what you get with the IS-PDVD10 model. Along with the DVD player, the box contains a very thin remote control, a power supply, a power adapter for the car, and an audio/video cable. Pretty basic fare. The unit itself is sleek, at only 1.5 inches thick when folded and light at 2.6 pounds with its Lithium ion battery installed. It has a black finish reminiscent of a Lenovoâ„¢ Thinkpad. That kind of matte black finish that almost absorbs oil and fingerprints, but also feels expensive.
The manual is clear and concise, with instructions in English, Spanish, and French. All the options are detailed, and there are lots of illustrations to help even the most technically challenged figure it all out. I didn’t even really need it, but it was nice to see the Luddite love.

The 10.2″ screen is expansive, more than adequate for those of us who hate squinting when we watch our movies. The sound output to the speakers is adequate, but with my trusty set of Sennheiser PX-100 headphones, it was very good indeed, even thoroughly drowning out the whining of the drive. And it does whine, quite loudly, which is a common problem with many portable DVD players.

The remote is thin and easy to use, but it has a surplus of buttons you are not likely to use, normally. Nearly every feature, from zooming and shrinking, to sound set-up, is accessible from the remote. Inexplicably, however, the brightness is not accessible from the remote. It took me a little while to find the brightness and color intensity buttons, but once I did, they were pretty basic and simple.

Another problem I found with the remote is that in the unit’s folded position, with the screen rotated and locked back, the remote is un-useable. The IR receiver is located low on the front where it is at least in line, if awkwardly, with the remote. However, in the folded position, the receiver moves to the top and back of the unit. Fortunately, in the folded position, the most necessary controls are accessible on the front of the unit. Seeing as though the player would be in the folded position when, say, mounted on the back of the seat in a car, this doesn’t seem to be a problem.

There are more than enough inputs and outputs on the player. One input allows you to use the screen as a monitor. The digital audio output is great, if you plan on hooking this up to a receiver (not something I would normally do with a portable player, so maybe this is overkill), while the A/V Out allows you to use the included cable to route your DVD goodness to a television.

The feel of the unit alternates between really nice and really… well, not really, but a little not-so-nice. The buttons are firm enough, and the silver color certainly make them look nice, but there is kind of a sharp, unfinished feel to them. Similarly, the simple slide switch for power feels like it could have been designed better. The volume knob is a simple potentiometer instead of a push-button electronic interface.
The top is black and has the aforementioned feel of the Thinkpad, while the bottom of the case is gray and has a less refined feel.

Now on to the most important part, image quality. The LCD screen is clear and has very little ghosting, though the colors can be a little strange. During the test movie I watched, oranges appeared normal, while other colors were slightly washed out. Increasing the color intensity helped all the other colors, but then the oranges appeared just a little too red.

Lastly, we come to the unit’s battery life. I wouldn’t normally bother to mention it but in this case, I think it’s important. The unit’s battery is advertised as lasting three hours, but I found it ran closer to two-and-a-half. That’s more than enough for most movies and common for portable DVD players, but forget using this on a long flight, as the battery is a rechargeable Lithium ion pack, and it’s proprietary. Another annoyance is that the battery will not recharge while the unit is playing a movie. So you basically have to shut it off, plug it in, and forget it for about four hours. This is fine after a car trip, or a short plane or train ride, but on that flight from New York to L.A., you’ll just have to fork over the extra cash for that airplane adapter you were putting off buying.

At a list price of $279 on Best Buy’s site, this feature-rich portable DVD player might just be enough bang for the buck. It’s certainly larger, and has far better image quality, than the off-brands sold by some of the discount clubs. While you could get the same quality or better- and similar battery life- off a laptop, an ultra-portable would cost you about five times as much. And it probably wouldn’t allow you to plug your XBOX 360 into it, either.

PROS:

• Large, clear widescreen LCD
• Easy to use
• Feature-filled remote
• Good sound quality
• Very good image quality
• Plenty of options for audio output
• Video input
• Light, at only 2.6 pounds
• Thin, at only 1.5 inches
• Car adapter included

CONS:

• Oranges a little too red
• Inability to recharge while playing movie
• Feel of the buttons and bottom of case could be better
• Remote doesn’t work with screen in swiveled and opened position
• Slightly pricey

http://cdbaby.com/cd/humanwine

A full-length HUMANWINE album?  We already ordered our copy.

The video is massive, but well worth every second.  Watch Bush lose his smile in the first 4 minutes or so.  It’s up on YouTube.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

This guy is ballsy.  Seriously.

UPDATE: YouTube sucks.  They removed the vids for ‘Copyright Infringement’.  Here is an updated link to the whole speech.  Beware, other content on the page may not be safe for workplace consumption.

Dungeons & Dragons Laptop

Only like $1300.  Not too bad.  Get it quick, though, as the run is limited to 100.

Check it out over on Fleshbot

This probably is Not Safe For Work, though it contains no nudity.  Just some pretty foul language.

First, for reference, you need to read the article that offended me so:

With ‘Yes,’ Dolls Step Out From Behind the Schtick

Oh, where to begin? Let’s go paragraph by paragraph…

Firstly, our intrepid reporter says that Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione, the duo that make up the Dolls, came on the scene to occupy the ‘Brechtian punk-cabaret niche, an anemic genre to be sure…’

As Colin is so fond of saying… wikki-wikki-what? Brechtian punk cabaret is a niche? Since when? Are there many bands that occupy this niche? Why can I not find any? In fact, as far as I can tell, the Dresden Dolls are unique in their style, musical and otherwise. Well, unique in this corner of the country, at any rate. I’m sure out in California there must be something vaguely similar among the cultural hodge-podge.

She calls them a ‘breath of fresh, if freakish, air.’

Oh gods, make it stop. Why are they freakish? Because they wear face make-up to look pale, and because the way Amanda’s mascara and lipstick runs is actually a component of the show as much as her music? Because they have a loyal ‘brigade’ of fans who dress up and make every concert a unique showcase of creativity and individual artistic expression? I suppose that might seem strange to some, but is it really stranger than the make-up KISS wore? Than the way the KISS Army (as the fans were often referred to) dressed? More freakish than Ozzy Osbourne, arguably one of the major deities of rock, biting the head off a bat?

She goes on, ‘They made a charming, intense record and a fan of Trent Reznor, who invited the Dolls to tour with Nine Inch Nails last year. But red mouths and striped stockings only take you so far in the music business. Likewise hyper-stylized songs about surgical blunders and inflatable boyfriends.’

As I pause for a moment in the tearing out of my hair over this woman’s inane and obviously flawed understanding of the Dolls, I can only conclude that she has never actually listened to their music. Or that she is otherwise old, and probably thinks the last good record was written by John Denver. Amanda Palmer is one of the best singers I have ever heard. Her voice, sometimes melodic and other times raw, can convey such a range of emotion that it actually transcends the lyrics and brings the audience on the emotional rollercoaster behind the music. And Brian’s drumming is astonishing in its skill and complexity. To dismiss this skill in an off-handed comment about striped stockings is almost criminal. It would be akin to saying the sum of Van Gogh is that whole ‘ear thing’.

And as for terming their album ‘charming.’ Charming? This is the reward talented artists get from mainstream media when they are original, soulful, honest about their work? It’s no wonder most new artists today are, in the words of my friend Jason, just another blink-182 knock-off. She has the temerity to call an album that included songs like “Good Day”, “Half Jack”, and “Slide” charming? Songs that carried such eerie and chilling feeling amid the piano solos, drum staccatos and vocal arias as to make them more than the sums of their parts?
We’ve only just finished the first paragraph, and I have written too much and am too tired to continue. I think you get the point, though. The reporter to wrote this article is a moron, that’s my opinion.

If you don’t believe me yet, let’s skip to the last paragraph. She says, ‘Producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie captured the Dolls’ energy in all its pungent, off-kilter glory for 12 consecutive tracks, at which point the album comes crashing to a bizarre conclusion with ”Sing.” It defies reason that this earnest and lackadaisical invocation to join voices in unifying celebration — an entirely unrepresentative song, and not a very good one — was chosen as the album’s lead single.’

Earnest and lackadaisical? Celebration? Perhaps the reporter was too busy smelling her own farts to even attempt to understand the point of “Sing”. It is about the unity of voice, certainly. But apparently that’s the only part she understood. It’s about commonality, about finding a way to connect with your fellow humans, especially in times like these when that is all too hard to do. It isn’t about celebration, it’s about defiance. Defiance in the face of fear, in the face of the differences between generations, social classes. It’s about looking at the person next to you and realizing that for all your differences you can still raise your voices together and… sing.

One Eyed Stanley is the name of a local band from Newton. Yes, I know there are a lot of local Boston-area bands, and yes, I know you expect more from me than that. Keep your pants on. For the love of all that is holy, keep your pants on. Unless you’re a cute girl… but I digress.

I was recently contacted by bandmember Adam Schatz, who indicated One Eyed Stanley would be performing at TT The Bears in Central Square on Thursday, April 27th. He also sent me a link where I could sample some of their musical stylings. Yes, I’ll share the link with you, but it’s at the end, so you’ll hopefully read the whole post. Nyah.

I gave them a listen, and although they list Elvis Costello and Alice in Chains as musical influences, I also felt satisfied by the uniqueness of their sound. They classify themselves as ‘Indie/Pop/Rock’, but that doesn’t really convey the tone of their work. I got a great dose of jazz, a little swing, and even some reggae as I listened to Few and Far Between and The Time. Their music has an upbeat, energetic sound that doesn’t feel angry, depressed, or preachy (hard to find in this day and age), and I found myself really enjoying it. I’m hoping to check out the show, and you should too.

One Eyed Stanley, at TT The Bears in Central Square on Thursday, April 27th. Admission’s $8 and it’s an 18+ show. How can you go wrong?

No, seriously.  EVER.

Tom Cruise to Eat Placenta

 

That poor, poor girl.

That poor, poor girl. 

 

Episode 27 (28.5 MB , 1:02:06)

Show Notes:

 

• AOL Caught Tweaking Their Extortion Scheme (WebPro News)
• Steve Jobs Makes Little Girls Cry (CBS)
• Tivo Wins vs. EchoStar in Grudge Match (Ars Technica)
• Oblivion… Best. RPG. EVER.
• UbiSoft Dumps StarForce, Takes Custody of Sanity  (GameSpot)
• Girls of CS.  ‘Nuff Said.
• White Wolf Wiki
• Dresden Dolls

Check us out (and vote for us) on:

• Odeo
• Podcast Alley (Votes appreciated)
• Podcast Pickle
• FeedBurner

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

BERNARD (to Mr. Eko): “I think I liked you better when you just hit people with your stick.”

Hehehehe.  Best. Line. EVER.

STOP criticizing Boot Camp.  People have started complaing that in some cases, installing Boot Camp and Windows XP works, but then people can no longer boot into OSX.

It’s a public beta.  Apparently people selectively ignore or otherwise choose to forget that part.  Do you know what a public beta is?  It’s when a developer takes code that is nearly complete and releases it to real-world experimentation to expose problems just like this.

In other words, the fact that Boot Camp is buggy shouldn’t be a surprise.  This is, in fact, exactly what it should be doing.  Then the Apple people take the bugs, figure them out, and create either a second beta or the ‘gold’ vesion of the software.  Only when using a gold version of software should people be allowed to complain.

So stop it.  Stop bitching and moaning if Boot Camp does weird things.  Instead, notify Apple and help them create a better product.

That being said, it takes an ignorant fool with his head buried in the sand not to be chilled to his core by this…

Quotes by George W. Bush:

• I don’t see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?
• Senator Kerry assures us that he’s the one to win a war he calls a mistake, an error, and a diversion. But you can’t win a war if you don’t believe in fighting.
• America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
• You know, if that’s what they (Democrats) believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it. They ought to stand up and say the tools we’re using to protect the American people shouldn’t be used. They ought to take their message to the people and say, ‘Vote for me, I promise we’re not going to have a terrorist surveillance program.’

And now the following quote:

• Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Can you name the historical figure who said this? If you said Hermann Goering, Nazi Reich Marshal, you’d be correct.

Bollocks, I say…

This ‘developer’ makes a point of noting that OSX can’t handle 95% of the world’s software, how Apple survives mostly by the inexplicable loyalty of their fan base. She points out that if OSX were simply as good as Windows, Apple wouldn’t have to cater to the masses and ‘promote’ Microsoft’s stable.

This developer is misguided. She is also apparently blind to two very important things:

1) BootCamp merely provides Windows with a phantom BIOS (because Macs use EFI) and drivers. It doesn’t advocate, promote, or otherwise enable anything. Windows won’t come bundled with Macs. According to Apple, such a thing will never, ever, happen. Granted, that last part might be a lie (like when they said Macs would never run on Intel chips, or that Macs would never officially support Windows), but it certainly isn’t the case now, and development of OSX proceeds apace.
2) Apple shares jumped 10% on the announcement. Obviously, someone thinks this is a good idea.

Bear in mind, Apple has not licensed OSX to run on any hardware other than their own. So that market is still there. Also, Apple designs much more aesthetically pleasing products, period. In addition, Windows XP, for whatever inexplicable reason, runs blazingly fast on the Mac, faster than an equivalent PC. No one has figured out why that is yet. Lastly, Apple machines’ prices have fallen in line with comparable PCs from reputable companies, when you consider what you get in terms not only of hardware, but also in software packages. In fact, it’s a far better value than many PCs out there.
So, what has Apple actually done? They have taken the most beautiful machines out there, with the most comprehensive set of out-of-the-box tools a consumer could want, and given it the capability to satisfy the other 95% of the world.

That sounds like one of the best decisions they ever could have made. Apple loyalists will still buy their Macs, and now I will too. I’ve always been a Windows fan, and my only legitimate reason has been the overwhelming amount of software Windows runs versus the Mac. Now that the OS is no longer tied to giant ugly boxes or small underpowered ones, why wouldn’t I want a sleek 20″ iMac on my desk, or a MacBook Pro in my lap?

Developers should stick to developing, not prognosticating.

For those not in the know, the XBOX 360 Harmony Remote is a sleek product from Logitech that was designed to match color and design with the console it is named for. It even has the four colored X-Y-A-B buttons.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to spend approximately $130 for one on Amazon. Even though I have been using at least two remotes for my daily entertainment experience, even though watching a DVD meant bringing out a third. Also, there were aspects of the Harmony I didn’t like. The green backlight for the LCD, the off-white color of the remote.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a coupon for a similar remote on one of my favorite deal-finding forums, a coupon that would bring the total cost for such a tasty gadget to only $50, after shipping. I ordered it, and waited eagerly.

The model in question is the Harmony 520 Universal Remote. It’s very similar in design to the 360 offering, sans the multi-color buttons. It, too, is programmable via the USB interface, and as such can be made to control up to 12 devices out of a databse of 80,000. Yes, there is quite a list of supported devices, from televisions to media center PCs to infrared lighting controls. Even the XBOX 360 is supported, though the A, B, X, and Y buttons are assigned elsewhere. I was mildly surprised that my home-brew PVR running Windows XP MCE worked flawlessly. And if there is a device the system doesn’t have in its database, you can program it manually, not with codes, but with a simple infrared learning function. Push one button on the original remote, and the corresponding button on the Harmony, and there you go.

In addition, the software wizard walks you through setting up ‘tasks’ (essentially macros), so that with the press of a single button you can power on your XBOX, TV, and receiver all at once, or dim your lights, power on your TV, receiver, and DVD player, and enjoy an evening with your home movie theater. If something doesn’t work just the way you want it, a simple yet powerful help system walks you through tinkering with your settings.

For example, no matter what task I am performing, I never want my PVR to turn off. The way the remote set itself up, powering off the TV put the media center to sleep, undesirable if your goal is to record movies or the like. So I went into the help system, told it something was set up incorrectly, and it asked me if I wanted to leave the media center on all the time, but still control the channels. No problem!

As star-struck as I am by having this remote, however, I cannot say that it isn’t without its share of problems. For one (though it isn’t a problem so much as a gripe), holding the remote pointed at your entertainment center until it is done processing all the commands is tedious, especially if you have numerous components. Also, the buttons on the 520 have a somewhat cheap feel to them and some make a pretty loud clicky noise when depressed. I suppose I shouldn’t gripe about it for only $50, but the 360 version does feel more polished.

I highly recommend this remote for anyone who has to contend with more than two remotes already. This will replace them all, saving you headaches and batteries.

Episode 22 (24.9 MB , 54:31)

Show Notes:

• iTunes TV Subscriptions (Yahoo News)
• Vista Won’t Have EFI at Launch (apcmag)
• Microsoft Unfolds Origami, No Inner Peace Found (Reuters)
• XBOX Live Free Gold Weekend
• XBOX 360 Heat Foil Issue… Not. (Xbox-Scene)
• St. Patrick’s Day Boston

Check us out (and vote for us) on:

• Odeo
• Podcast Alley (Votes appreciated)
• Podcast Pickle
• FeedBurner

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

Forget paintball.  Forget laser tag.  This is the real deal.  Pictograms, puzzles, locks, clues, PDAs, RFID keys and intense physical activity are all part of this super-high tech live-action first-person game experience.  Billed as part video game, part obstacle course, it should satisfy anyone looking to exercise their brain and their bodies at the same time.

Check out this blog for some details in English, and check out the official Negone site, in Spanish.  I’ll post a link to the Wired artcile when it becomes available on their website.

Why would I bother posting a link to a game that, no matter how cool it is, is currently located only in Madrid, Spain?

Why, because they’re building one in Times Square to open late this year.  A 30,000-square foot complex of mazes, traps, and puzzles.  Suddenly, New York City seems a nice place to visit.

But last night something happened that actually gave me material to write.  I was watching TV with my fiancee and noticed that Real Time with Bill Maher was on HBO.  The show’s been on break for three months now, so I was fairly psyched.  When I switched to the channel, however, the video and sound cut out, and I was greeted with a screen carrying a “Restricted Content” warning.  Unfortunately, it looked like my viewing pleasure was to be dashed upon rocks of asinine industry.

Or was it?

Let me give you a little bit of background here.  I have a home-built Personal Video Recorder running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.  All my TV viewing first passes through this box to allow me to do cool things like pause and rewind my shows, and record them.  It’s somewhere on the hierarchy of coolness between consumer-friendly TiVo and uber-geeky Linux boxes running MythTV.

It has always done what I needed it to do, and never given me problems.  I had never received errors before, and have recorded HBO and Encore without any problems.

So I was surprised, needless to say. It had been my understanding that these broadcast flags were not to be implemented just yet, and that even when they were, it was only to prevent copying files from one computer to another.  I began fuming, repeatedly asserting that I would be calling Comcast this morning to cancel my subscription to HBO.

I also began to do some digging.  To be honest, my original intent was to simply find a hack or workaround to disable HBO’s pathetic attempt to control my viewing experience, one I pay exhorbitant sums for already.  What I ended up finding out was that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t HBO’s fault.

I own an XBOX 360.  In fact, I managed to purchase it 48 hours after launch, thanks to Colin’s tireless efforts.  One of the neat features of the 360 is the way it can interface with a PC running XP MCE.  It does this through a piece of software installed on the PC called Windows Media Connect.  In order to install Windows Media Connect, you must first install Update Rollup 2 for Windows Media Center Edition 2005.

Well, apparently there is a problem with the Rollup.  A fairly well-documented one, from what I can see.  Apparently installing it can cause Windows Media Player 10 to overwrite certain DRM files.  Microsoft has a Knowledge Base Article here on a similar problem.

Yeah, noticed that, did you?  The article doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the problem I am relating.  As far as I can tell, Microsoft has no article detailing the precise (and again, very common) problem I am relating.  I could speculate why that is, but that would just lead me into another pointless rant.

What is important to note is that there is a fairly easy fix.  It’s detailed on this page, among numerous others easily found using your favorite search engine.

Oh, I meant it was fairly easy for an IT person.  Or perhaps a 14-year old hopped up on Red Bull and Doritos.  The point is, if you own a PC from HP or Dell with XP MCE 2005 on it and install Update Rollout 2 (which is part of Windows Update, so you might install it even without an XBOX 360), you could bork your TV viewing.

So do you blame HBO, or Microsoft?  If you answered “yes”, you are correct.  Goddamned DRM.  If HBO didn’t transmit the flag, the rollup wouldn’t affect you.  If Microsoft built better software, you wouldn’t see a problem with the DRM.

Until, of course, you tried to convert your recorded TV to some other format, such as DVD, or put it on another computer.

Ball lightning is a rare, near-mythical freak occurance that has only ever appeared in nature during intense thunderstorms under incredibly rare conditions.

Until now, that is.

Ball lightning is a ball of superheated charged plasma, created- scientists believe- when a bolt of lightning hits the ground in the right conditions.  But now, Israeli scientists have figured out a way to create the phenomena in a lab using a ‘microwave drill’.

Honestly, I don’t know what excites me more, the lightning or the microwave drill.

Link to videos of this stuff in action.

(via BoingBoing)

I will bludgeon Colin accordingly.

Colin’s note:  True, aside from being poor writing form to have REALLY long article titles, it will mess with the stylesheet.  Never once have I claimed to be a master webdesigner.  If Carl wishes to actually do some work on the site, I have no problem with that.  But, we all know that won’t happen.

Carl’s Rebuttal:  Now that BostonGeek is actually popular with some people, I probably shouldn’t be let loose on it, knowing as little as I do about style sheets and web design in general.  I mean, seriously, the only language I know is HTML.  Also, bite my shiny metal ass.

Carl Zimmer, author of several books and a frequent contributer to the New York Times, wrote a fascinating article on the Ampulex compressa, a species of wasp that is just… horrific in its manner of procreation. You have to read the article to understand. One of my favorite paragraphs:

The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp’s burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.

I hate roaches. Don’t really like wasps either. But this story makes me shudder in areas of my brain horror movies long ago ceased to affect.

via BoingBoing

I’m not the only one, though.  The winner of our First BostonGeek Giveaway, Greg Howley of Canon City, Colorado, hates them too.  He has a great blog, chock full of info and surprising info.  I hope he keeps up on his posts while playing Spartan Total Warrior on his Xbox.

Did you know Courtney Love can write a cogent letter?  Astonishing.

Check out Greg’s blog.  And congrats, Greg. 

Total Warrior is Sega’s latest offering based on the Total War games, which are based during the tumultuous time of the war between the Romans and the Greeks. But the similarities pretty much end there. Where Total War is a strategy game, Spartan: Total Warrior is an action game through and through. Total War got your brain juices flowing, but this game is more suited to exercising the muscles and tendons in your fingers and hands.

I got the chance to play this game and let me tell you, it was pretty thrilling. The action is intense, the gameplay mostly intuitive, and the AI was really, really good. I really felt like I was fighting a horde of independently-thinking enemies, each with their own attack strategy.

And attack they do. Ferociously. As many as ten enemies at a time come at you from all sides, slinging swords and shouting. The hero has some interesting moves, including diving rolls and nice finishing moves like thrusting your sword in an enemy’s chest, jumping on them, pulling your sword free, and kicking the corpse away. This happens in slow motion, with blood splatters adding just the right dose of gore.The game has missions, and even some puzzles to work out, such as opening a gate for reinforcements or shooting exploding barrels to take out a dropped portcullis. You have to occasionally guard people, retrieve quest items, or destroy enemy placements.

And here is where I tell you why it was just a good game, and not a great one.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what the quest is, it really all amounts to the same thing: kill them a lot. Help a bomber to destroy siege engines by killing everything that tries to get in his way. Retrieve a quest item by killing everything that gets in your way. Open the gates for reinforcements by… you guessed it. Hey, some people like straightforward hack-and-slash, and for them this is fantastic. I prefer a more mixed gaming experience.

Also, all those great finishing moves are kinda hard to see, as you play the game from a free-floating third-person camera that seems like it’s about fifty feet away from the action. It’s enough to enjoy it, but not really feel like you’re participating.

The voice-acting leaves something to be desired. In this day and age, when gaming companies are regularly hiring top-notch talent to do their voice-overs, I expected something more. I expected a lot more, actually. Still, in the context of what this game is about, I don’t suppose it would have made that much of a difference.

Ultimately though, what really disappointed me was the complete lack of multiplayer capability. This just seems like a game that would have benefited vastly from cooperative online multiplayer action. A squad of you and your friends against the legions… alas, such is not to be.

So, my verdict? If you regularly play action games alone, or are looking for something to play when taking a break from more serious and involved games, this is definitely worth it. With earnable achievements that unlock special powers and awards, and varying difficulty levels, it has plenty of replay value.

If, however, you enjoy a more strategy-oriented games with plenty of varied and thought-provoking things to do… this game probably won’t be as fulfilling as you’d like.

Spartan: Total Warrior, by Sega. Check it out.

Police, Army Robots to Debut Within 5 Years

I love this part:

“The three sorts of wheeled robots will be used for various applications: cleaning rooms, health-care programs, Internet connection, home monitoring or reading books to kids.”

You know, I’m a gadget lover. Seriously. I love over-complicated pieces of tech with too many buttons and too many features. I have an iPod, an Xbox 360, features I still haven’t figured out on my car…

But it will be a cold day in hell before I let a machine watch my kid. Don’t people understand that reading to your child is about the time you spend with your child, not about the reading? If you are going to have a robot read to them, just give them a CD player, or park them in front of the television (I advocate neither approach, unless you want irresponsible sociopaths with ADD on your hands).

via Engadget

I’ve just been sick. Coughing up yellow balls of something resembling jelly.

I’ll post soon, I promise.

But here, I bring you a treat…

Robo-roaches

via Engadget

Jesus has deserted Boston.

Damon, you f**ker.

$52 million is a lot of money, though. Not much I wouldn’t do for that kind of cake. Even cut my hair, shave the beard… and change every other identifying trait about myself. So I guess I can’t blame him too much. Still… kinda sucks, even to a non-fan like myself.

My fiancee, on the other hand, is pretty broken up. She IS a huge fan, and her sister’s a Yankees fan. Sibling rivalry will reach a new height. And I will probably end up prying my wife-to-be off the mangled corpse of her gloating sis.

Our best and warmest wishes to the proud parents, Jason and Kelly, and to Kelly’s speedy recovery.

And a toast and a cheer to the addition to the ranks of geekery!

Episiode 11 (26.1 MB , 56:07)

In our Tech Top Three, we revisit the Wikipedia discussions from last episode, we discuss MTV’s iTMS competitor, and talk about Steve Case’s 20/20 hindsight vision. On the Gaming Table, I talk about White-wolf.com’s recent security problems and Carl talks about his impressions of Sega’s Spartan Total Warrior. And, on Boston In Brief, we talk about a fun way to ring in the New Year in Boston: Boston’s First Night celebrations.

But wait… there’s more (I always wanted to say that), BostonGeek is holding its first giveaway. Three tasty morsels are up for grabs. First, the copy of Spartan Total Warrior (for Xbox) that we received from Sega to review will be given away to one lucky listener. In addition, we have a 3-Month Gold Subscription to Xbox Live for the Xbox 360 as well as a silver Xbox 360 faceplate. So, how can you win? Well, easy. In the podcast, Carl plays a soundclip that is in reference to videogame. If you can name the game, you can be entered to win!

Please send all entries to: bostongeek.contest@gmail.com
In the subject line: BostonGeek Giveaway
In the body: Give us the name of the game from the question and also include whether you own an Xbox, and Xbox 360, or both. That way we know which drawing(s) to include you in. Only one entry per email address will be accepted. Each entry with a correct answer will grant you entry into one or more of the drawings (e.g. if you own only an Xbox, you will be entered into the drawing for the Xbox game, if you own an Xbox 360, you will be entered into the drawings for the Xbox 360 accessories, if you own both, you will be entered into all 3 drawings). The way we will choose winners will be to randonly draw winners from the entries with the correct answer. Winners will be notified by email, and shipping will be arranged. If we do not hear a response within 1 week of sending a winner announcement email, we will re-draw a winner for that prize. Phew! I hope I didn’t forget anything. Oh! of course: Contest Deadline is December 31st, 2005. All entries received afterwards will not be eligible.

Show Notes:

• Internet Encyclopaedias go Head to Head (Nature)
• MTV, Microsoft Set to Take On Apple’s iTunes (Yahoo)
• It’s Time to Take It Apart. My Case for Dividing the Media Giant (Washington Post)
• Spartan Total Warrior
• White Wolf Publishing’s Database Hacked (White Wolf Publishing)
• First Night Boston

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

Unbelievable CGI Image

Especially if they make some sort of hot stripper game. Pick the girl, the hair, the outfit, and watch her dance…. mmmmm…..

via Digg

You might ask why the Japanese seem to shun the console we’re adoring. One of the answers is, of course, loyalty. Just the same way we constantly trumpet how people should buy products made in the USA, the Japanese tend to be extremely loyal consumers. This means that they’re more likely to buy from a Japanese corporation, like Sony. That’s right, the kids in Tokyo are itching for the release of the PlayStation 3, and the most Microsoft can hope for is gaining a small measure of the market share in the time it takes Sony to get their own next-gen console to market.

This Asian surplus is reflected in the decided cooling of XBOX 360 auctions on eBay. A Premium Console purchased for $399 (plus applicable taxes) on launch day (November 22) was able to sell on November 23rd for $2000 or more. This overheated demand extended to things like the Core System and hard drive as well. Core Systems valued at $299 were going for $1000, while hard drives were selling for $175, up from their list of $100.

Now there is barely a $150 markup on the Premium console, and a seller is lucky to get a $50 profit for their Core. In a funny twist, I saw an auction where the seller apparently lost $9 on the hard drive.

I am guessing there are a few late-comers who bought a bunch of consoles hoping to make a huge profit. And maybe now they are hurting. I say good! Similarly, there are buyers who paid outrageous prices and are now seeing their ‘investment’ devalued right before their eyes. Hell, even cars depreciate more slowly.

I laugh at them all while enjoying my xbox 360, for which I paid no horrendous markup. Yes yes, I bought the hard drive separately, but I only paid retail. In the end, I still spent less than a lot of the suckers out there. And they are suckers. I love my 360, but I wouldn’t have ever paid $2000 for it. Now there’s a glut in the market as Microsoft decides to redeploy future Asian shipments to the States… and everyone can have one.

And a happy time was had by all the villagers.

Oh, and remember kids, put something other than summer ‘touring’ tires on your car if you expect to do anything other than burn rubber for a gods-bedamned hour just to drive a half mile. I just hope I didn’t damage my car.

Seriously, I actually checked into a hotel tonight, because I couldn’t get home. I did eventually get home, but I spent $90 on the hotel room. Had to get one before the went full-up. No one was going anywhere this afternoon.

[edit: That's some tasty language ... wash your keyboard out with soap - Colin]

Why This Brain Flies on Rat Cunning

A whole bunch of Doomsday movies about this sort of stuff come to mind.

Episode 9 (37.9 MB , 1:21:57)

Show Notes: Coming Soon

Any comments or suggestions?
Email: colin@bostongeek.com or carl@bostongeek.com
Skype: bostongeek
Voice: 1.617.209.4200

Marvel MMO To Be Developed By Sigil

The coolest aspect? It will be released for both PC and XBOX 360. And be cross-platform. This means that people playing on the 360 will be able to play with people playing on the PC.

Sweet.

Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2

Bravo, I say. At only $149, it’s hard to resist.

via BoinBoing

TiVo to Let Users Buy Movie Tickets, Check Traffic

New Services they plan to offer include the ability to purchase movie tickets, check traffic and weather, listen to radio and podcasts, and view photos on Yahoo!.

Seems an ass-backwards approach when compared to say, Microsoft, who started with a computer OS, and then added media center functionality. Wonder which approach will work better.

Because most Live-enabled games automatically log in to the Live service, there is no way around this. You might say that it’s a neat feature. After all, you can see what games your friends play, and when they play. So can the authorities.

Not only that, but you can not only peruse your Friends list, but see which Friends they have on their lists as well. So can the authorities.

Now, I’m not saying the FBI monitors what games we play, or who we play with… or who those people play with, but it sends just a bit of a shiver down my spine that the first thing I thought when I saw this feature was, “Oh…. shit,” and not “wow, cool.”

Was I going to witness the birthing of a child? Perhaps I was late for a hot date? Perhaps a highly profitable business deal? No. Nothing so mundane.

It had arrived, by UPS. It was here, and all mine. I had burned a lot of luck last week getting it, and now… now I was going to have it in my hands.

I speak, of course, of my brand new XBOX 360.

Oh…. oh, you haven’t heard of Microsoft’s latest gaming console? Then stop reading this, and go back to your cave… on Mars… and put your fingers back in your ears… and cover your eyes again.

I arrived home and ran to the rental office for my apartment complex. I barely registered the cute rental associate wishing me a good night as I grabbed the box, signed, and ran out, clutching the brown box, eyes darting furtively around as if I expected to be accosted at any moment by some foul xbox stealing denizen of the darkness.

I was so excited, I did not take pictures of the opening of the box. Before I knew it, there was a slick, shiny green box sitting among the ruin of a brown shipping box and filler.

Huh? Yes, I said green. I ordered a Core system, and my Hard Drive should be arriving in the next couple of days. I also picked up the high definition cable. I know it ended up costing me extra, but not by much, and the point is, I have a 360.

My fiancee entered at some point right around this time, I think. I may have been imagining her presence. And Colin called me as well, and I narrated my experience in a monotone that at one point prompted him to exult, “I’m more excited about this than you are!” While I doubt that very much, it did jar me from my surreal dream state and prompted me to hook the damnable thing up.

The connecting of the 360 was the sort of mundane thing anyone who has ever hooked up a VCR has gone through, so I won’t bore you with those details. The power brick is, as reported, massive. Gigantic. Fully 20% the total size of the 360 itself. I placed it in such a way that overheating should never be an issue. The controllers I have are wired, and after feeling their confortable light weight and small size, I am not sure I even want wireless.

With Colin on the phone, and with me ignoring the presence of my hungry fiancee (I had promised her dinner), I powered up the 360 and sat back.

It took a good thirty minutes to navigate my way through all the set-up menus. Time zone, video and audio preferences, and my XBOX Live account (made inifinitely easier by linking my Microsoft Passport Account to my Live account). It was a little tedious to type in all my information with the controller, which is probably why it took so long.

After this came the testing. The first thing I did, at Colin’s insistence, was connect an iPod to one of the USB ports. And, sure enough, it was instantly recognized. I was able to browse it and play music right off the thing. SO very nice.

Next came the big moment. With bated breath I carefully removed PGR 3 from its case (my fiancee may have had a hand in removing the impossible-to-remove wrapper, I don’t recall), and dropped it gently into the tray. With a soft whine and a click, the tray retracted, and I sat back, controller in hand.

A choir of angels could not express my joy. Although, to be honest, I think a lot had to do with being one of the few people fortunate enough to own one of these tasty consoles before Christmas.

Project Gotham Racing 3 is, in a word… scrumlicious. Yes, a wholly made up word contracting ’scrumptious’ and ‘delicious’ together into one superword. And it is inadequate. There are many, many reviews of the game online, and I’ll talk about it in the next podcast, so I won’t go into more detail here. But as someone who has wholeheartedly embraced the idea of ‘bullshot’- that is, the hyped graphics gaming companies claim they have versus the reality- I can honestly say I was impressed.

Alas, I only played for about 10 minutes, then powered down. I experienced one brief display problem which had nothing to do with the 360 and everything to do with my accidentally disconnecting the Red cable from my RGB connector coming off my receiver, but other than that, it was a flawless test run.

More to come, after I get over my cold and actually play with it.

My XBOX 360 shipped this afternoon. I should have it in my hands by Monday or Tuesday.

Thanks to Colin for getting me in on a few that were in stock at an online retailer. They sold out within 22 minutes, and I had my doubts on whether they would even fulfill my order. But they did, and I got shipping confirmation.

I got the Core System, which means no hard drive. I did get a bundle, but it wasn’t a useless one. Extra controller, 64-meg memory card, Project Gotham Racing 3. I’ll buy the hard drive at some point. Not bad.

a) 3000
b) 5000
c) 7000

If you answered ‘c’, you are correct. The average person will consume over seven thousand calories tomorrow.

Think about that.

No, I didn’t add an extra zero. Five. Thousand. Dollars.

I’m torn by revulsion for the profiteers, envy (after all, I would gladly have stood in line and dumped a 360 for a $4500 profit), and a mixture of pity and contempt for the slavering consumers who make these machinations possible.

Actually, it’s kind of funny. People were profiteering even before the 360 went on sale, throwing auctions up on ebay for nonexistent systems they promised to ship today. I wonder if they refunded the money to the people who paid a thousand dollars or more and couldn’t deliver.

According to a report by Gamepolitics.com Jack Thompson has removed himself from the Grand Theft Auto lawsuit in Alabama, Strickland v. Sony.

This report is backed by additional information in the Tuscaloosa News, but you’ll have to register to read it.

Thompson, in all his usual bravado and mis-statement of fact, has cited his expertise as reason for recusing himself, indicating that his withdrawal was inevitable, as he would likely need to take the stand as a witness in the case. I fail to see why, as he has no expert credentials, no forensic expertise, and would probably just want to get up ‘on stage’ to launch another tirade against games. No responsible judge would ever allow it.

More interesting is the fact that his recusal came as the presiding judge in the case, the Honorable James Moore, was considering whether or not to revoke Thompson’s Pro Hac Vice status in Alabama for this case. Considering that neither the judge nor the Alabama Bar have any love for the Florida attorney (who is, incidentally, currently under investigation by the Florida Bar), one is forced to wonder just how much of this was Thompson’s attempt to save the case from being torpedoed before it even began. Thompson had responded to the court’s request for reason behind his actions with this letter, in which he manages to plug his book while making some pretty large claims about Blank Rome, the law firm representing Take Two/Rockstar.

Jack has also made point of seizing upon comments made by Warren Spector recently, who indicated displeasure with the way Rock Star was implementing their gaming technology. Spector recently spoke out against the “mindless killfests”, and indicated his frustration with Take Two and Rockstar for not making better, more intelligent games with their technology. According to GamePolitics, Jack has indicated that “Warren Spector just got himself a free plane ticket to testify in the Fayette, Alabama video game murder lawsuit, for plaintiffs. Trust me.”

Oh Jack… do you do children’s parties? You wouldn’t have to wear the funny shoes and rubber nose, just stand there and talk for a little while.

While I’m reading Reuters…

Thankfully, some senators want the same answers I do. They want to know why heating and fuel bills will be so high this winter, when oil companies posted record profits this past quarter. Exxon Mobil made $9.9 Billion (with a ‘B’) pure profit on $100 Billion in revenues for the third quarter.

No no. Read that again. For one quarter. Three months. This on top of the $14.5 Billion (with a ‘B’) in energy industry incentives the Bush Administration has granted them.

Senators, oil execs to debate profits

How is this geeky? Well, considering that heating bills will be abut 25% higher this winter in New England, I’d say it affects Boston, at least. Plus, you all are going to have to keep your computers and PVRs off when not in use to offset some of those bills.

The horror.

‘Intelligent-design’ school board ousted in Penn

See, that’s what happens when ultra-conservative righties try to plant the kiss of religion on science. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for intelligent people and elections.

I love the penultimate sentence. “U.S. President George W. Bush, whose re-election was boosted by many Christian-conservative votes, has said he believes intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution.”

Cause you know, if Shrub likes it, it must be good.

So why, oh why is Microsoft declaring their intentions to do the same thing okay?

Well, there are a couple of differences in the proposed model Microsoft has. For one, they are promising only to offer works in the public domain, at least initially. After that, “MSN will then work to extend its offering to other types of offline content. The digitized content will primarily be print material that has not been copyrighted, and Microsoft will clearly respect all copyrights and work with each partner providing the information to work out mutually agreeable protections for copyrights.”

The other difference is the length they are going to integrate not just print, but other forms of media into their massive index, and tie all that in to other offerings by MSN. While I think that Microsoft is once again playing Johnny-Come-Lately to the party and merely copying someone else’s innovation, at least they are being legally savvy about it.

Let’s face it, Google is not the tiny dotcom it once was. They don’t get to sit around loft offices throwing nerf darts while the business world looks on and says, “aww, how cute.” Having posted earnings of $381.2 million (yes, that’s profit) for the fiscal quarter ending in September, they have to start acting like the big players they are and realize that money is like blood in the water.

Do I think Microsoft will go unscathed in this creation? No. But they seem to be learning from Google’s apparent mistakes, so we’ll see.

Wizards of the Coast is sponsoring an offical Worldwide D&D Game Day.

Saturday, November 5th. No matter where you are, look at their list of participating stores and go check this out. I know I will.

Like Comstock and McCarthy before you, your self-important frothing at the mouth has finally turned you into nothing more than a caricature. Your empty threats, your insane ramblings, your absolute devotion to accusing everyone and everything else around you for what are essentailly your own character flaws, have amounted to nothing more than this:

Jack tries to get the guys at Penny-Arcade arrested.

Penny Arcade (Scroll past the review at the top)
GamePolitics
Slashdot

You harass, threaten, cry, scream, and otherwise behave like a two-year old with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and yet you have the temerity to accuse others of intending or causing you harm. You really hate that they made that donation in your name, don’t you.

I just wish I had something truly important, truly… illuminating to offer at this point. While it is all well and good that all sane people agree he’s a thrice-bedamned moron, high-fiving eachother on it as he slobbers himself to stupidity (and hopefully to a disbarring hearing) is pointless.

Instead, we should all sign petitions like this one, only… you know, for real and with more impetus.

Jack Thompson has had very few actual court wins. Oh, he claims wins, certainly. He claimed victory when Eidos declared they’d be delaying their new game ‘25 to Life.’ He’s claimed other victories when games have been delayed. But what he obvously doesn’t understand is that in the video game industry, games are delayed all the time. He should read up a bit. It took four years for Daikatana to make it to the shelves, and Duke Nukem is a running gag in the gaming community. Next thing you know, Thompson will take it as a personal sign from God that he’s doing the right thing if it rains in New York, where Take Two Software and Rockstar Games have their headquarters.

Jack, you’re a lunatic with a superiority complex. Your smug sense of self-righteousness would be funny if it weren’t so sad. You have said that gamers cannot understand your wit. To that, I point out that a lot of gamers are Computer Science students, not just burger slingers. Your computer was likely designed by someone who enjoys Grand Theft Auto. It’s a feat I’d like to see you replicate. You were a medical malpractice attorney in Florida, which most people equate with ambulance chasing. Not that I make any direct correlation between what I am sure has been your illustrious career and that kind of unethical behavior, but I certainly have my suspicions. It is my opinion that you decided to take on a moral crusade not because you like to exercise your right to free speech, but because you love the spotlight.

Go home, Jack. No one likes you, no one cares what you have to say except other nutcases. It is my sincere hope that Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins sue you for harassment, and that the Seattle PD file charges against you for filing a false report.

Stewie Live

In the box, tell Stewie what to do. Some of my favorite command words:

Poop
Shoot
Dance
Sex
Eat
Sleep

Try ‘em out and see if you can come up with some of your own!

So, to get back to my point, I get a lot of cold calls. For a lot of different products and services. Some of which make absolutely no sense to me. Sometimes, though, one actually offers something I just happen to be in the market for. Enter Barracuda Networks, makers of the Barracuda Spam Firewall.

I was offered a 30-day trial on this particular piece of hardware, so I took them up on it. I mean, the buyout price, if it worked, was spectacular, at under $2000 for a 1U rackmount box and about $700 annually for the service subscription. For an enterprise-level spam filter, that’s not just a good deal, it’s a great one. If it works. Especially since my company, like all companies, gets inundated with spam.

So I gave them a chance and told them to send one down. I ordered the Spam Firewall 300. A few days later we received the box, opened it, and extracted the thin rackmount appliance with the fish for a logo. I was surprised at the design. Didn’t look like much. The thought that this machine could cut our spam by 80% or more seemed almost amusingly farfetched.

Set-up was exceedingly simple. An instruction sheet came with it, indicating how one should use the console to log in and set up things like IP address, passwords, and filtering options. Walking through those was easy. We set up our domain names and then physically placed it between our firewall and our email server. Then we pointed all incoming email to the Barracuda first, so it would then pass on to the Exchange server.

And that’s pretty much it. Basically, the Barracuda is in constant contact with Spamhaus, SpamCop, and Ordb. Whenever an email comes in from an external email address, the first thing that is checked is the sender domain. If it is listed at one of those services, it is instantly blocked. We can also add domains to our own blacklist, though that is rarely necessary. If a new spam domain gets set up, there is typically a 24-hour lag time before SpamHaus gets it, verifies it, and updates the Spam Firewall. All automatically. It has never crashed on me, never hiccupped, and never blocked something it shouldn’t.

It has, as I mentioned, a blacklist feature. But it is also highly customizable in other areas. There is a whitelist (to keep important email addresses and/or domains from getting blocked), filtering of all sorts (so in-depth we rarely actually touch it for anything), and one of my favorite features: logging.

I don’t mean that the Barracuda just logs incoming and outgoing emails, though it definitely does. I mean it actually keeps a copy of every email that comes in from an external address or goes out to one, for 30 days. This is extremely useful when tracking down security breaches, email policy violators, and other ne’er-do-wells who think that deleting their sent items saves them from being found out. In my own paradoxical way, I am a Libertarian/Orwellian. I chafe at the yoke of the system I am a part of, but at the same time… power is good, when it’s in my hands.

So here is a box that does it all. Logs emails, blocks spam, keeps me from having to mess around with ineffective or system-hogging software on the Exchange server. Needless to say, we bought it. We’ve had it for about 6 months now. And I couldn’t be happier with it.

And it’s a Peter Jackson joint. So far he’s producing, but we can hope he takes a hand in directing the movie based on one of the most popular video games ever made.

You remember Peter Jackson, right? He made the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Movies on MTV

This weekend I made it out to King Richard’s Faire in Carver, MA. My fiancee had never been to a renaissance fair. And just because he made a big deal of how his name didn’t need to be mentioned, I will tell you all that Colin, his wife, and little sister-in-law went as well.

Like all renaissance fairs, King Richard’s is overpriced. Twenty-four dollars gets an adult in, and then you have to buy the food, pay for the activities… it can be expensive.

Unless, of course, you are a Pastafarian. I wore one of my Flying Spaghetti Monster baseball jerseys (which can be purchased from CafePress here) to the fair, and was astonished when I encountered fellow converts. And it was funny because not only was I unaccustomed to people knowing what the FSM is (I’ve had to explain it more times than I can readily count), but because these guys actually bowed before me. It was all parody, of course, but it was fun. I also got comped to the knife-throwing booth and the maze by my fellow pastafarians. I only wish I’d taken a few minutes to thank them more thoroughly for their faith in the Touch of His Noodly Appendage.

So here’s to the true believers. Ramen.

Oregon RIAA Victim Fights Back

via recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com.

This is a fantastic idea. I might want a couple for myself.

Last night, at the 2005 Boston Music Awards, the Dresden Dolls won some awards. Specifically, they won Best Live Act and Best Local Female Artist.

Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione are the duo that make up one of my favorite bands period, and that they’re a local band is even cooler. So congrats to them, and here’s to their next local show and many more well-deserved awards!

Having said that, let me add that the reason I enjoyed it had very little to do with the plot which, although very nicely put together, was hardly original. It also had very little to do with special effects, although these were nice too. Very nice indeed.

I could say that to one as jaded as I, Joss Whedon must have found his thousandth monkey for his thousandth typewriter to bang out Hamlet. Or I could be truly kind and say only that the writing was very well-paced and the story well-written. That’s about as far as I can go, since “Joss Whedon is a hack” has been a precise quote from me. Sorry browncoats, I repent. Somewhat.

Perhaps the best aspect of the movie, however, was the acting. I looked up all the actors from the series ‘Firefly’ and the movie. Not one has had a spectacularly prolific or incredibly well-publicized career in film, and yet all were professionals who really made their characters enjoyable, believable, and likeable. Maybe it was that much more enjoyable for the relative anonymity of the actors, as I focused more on their performances and the movie itself than what lines a star would spew out. Even the villain was memorable, truly evil. And yet he was a sympathetic character.

I highly recommend seeing this movie. I’ve seen a lot of crap at $9.50 a ticket. Even though I didn’t pay for this screening, knowing how good it is, I would have. If you need an endorsement to see ‘Serenity’, just think that it converted someone who hated Buffy more than he hates smelly cheese. And I really hate smelly cheese.

Today marked the opening arguments in a lawsuit that promises, for better or worse, to help shape America’s educational system for a long time to come. I refer, of course to Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District. I’ll spare you all the details here, as you can read it on the ACLU’s website here. What it boils down to is that several families and the ACLU are suing the Dover, Pennsylvania schoolboard for attempting to introduce theological doctrine into a science classroom. The schoolboard wants to say that evolution is just a theory, and therefore is no more valid than any other theory, including Intelligent Design (ID for short).

Now, some have said Intelligent Design is a thinly veiled attempt to pass Creationism along as valid scientific theory. Although I personally tend to agree, attempting to use that to deflate ID proponents is pointless. Instead, I would like to take a moment, a secular, unbiased moment, to examine a couple of points that both the Pennsylvania schoolboard (indeed, all ID proponents) and the ACLU have apparently overlooked.

Let’s start with the statement that “evolution is just a theory.” This statement is embraced by proponents of ID (and Creationism), who point out that there are holes in Darwin’s classic theory that have yet to be explained. This statement also infuriates those who endorse Darwin’s theory, who struggle to point out proof and evidence.

What both sides forget is this: It’s an accurate statement, but only inasmuch as scientific theory goes. You see- and this is the nasty little part that politicos and religious zealots don’t want to understand- scientific theory and mainstream theory are not the same thing. When you tell your child you have a theory on how the cookie jar got emptied out, you are not subject to the stringent experimentation and peer review that scientists are.

For a scientist to publish a theory is for him or her to have performed extensive research, decades worth in some cases. The scientist must perform constant and vigilant experimentation, and know that in the future, someone might offer further proof or complete refutation. A scientific theory is specifically defined as a conjecture which is borne out through experimentation.

Gravity is also a theory, as is relativity. And yet, these theories allow us to predict impact damage by an asteroid and prepare for disaster recovery, they let us create nuclear power plants and weapons. What this means is that while we may not have witnessed the birth of our planet, or the speciation of Homo sapiens, we can look at actual, physical evidence and connect dots.

This leads me to my second point. The Republican Right absolutely adores their buzzwords. The latest is good science. Good science, on the face of it, would simply seem to say we should have irrefutable evidence. A policy I normally endorse.

However, science only rarely ever allows for absolute certainty. In fact, I am unaware of any absolute certainties in science. What science does give us is a framework in which to attempt to understand the clearly observable phenomena around us. The people who endorse ‘good science’ as a political policy use it to pander, not to elevate science, and it insults my intelligence whenever I hear that we shouldn’t stop greenhouse emissions because ‘good science’ says we should wait for all the facts. By the time the certainty level on global warming reaches 99.5%, how many more cities will have been flooded out? How much larger will our deserts have become? And do we really have to teach philosophy alongside Darwinism simply for lack of absolute certainty?

Evolution is, admittedly, only a theory. However, it is a theory which has been reached through observation and experimentation. We can carbon date, we can analyze rock strata. We can look at things and draw a cogent conclusion.

Intelligent Design is not a theory. It never has been, it never can be. There can be no experimentation. You cannot say “life is too complex to have arisen in its current state by natural selection,” and then not offer an alternate verifiable explanation. And the poorly veiled attempt at Intelligent Design to cloak itself in the trappings of science by saying that it does not ponder the source of this design will herald its death knell, as soon as people wake up. Scientific study requires you to ponder every aspect, from beginning to end. Who created this creator, if ID is true? Where is this creator from? How did the creator get here, what was their purpose?

Wonderful philosophical musings, nothing more. There is no verifiable data to analyze. It is conjecture and vague philosophy, nothing more.

The school board in Pennsylvania is wrong. Absolutely wrong. Not because I think Intelligent Design is religion (although I think it is), but because it is not science. In fact, I think the ACLU should not have filed the lawsuit it did. The families who filed argue that religion has no place in school. It’s a tired argument, and unfortunately one subject to the whim of culture and politics.

What they should have done is argued that ID is not science. It would have been a slam dunk. All you would have to do is ask any proponent of ID to produce a single shred of evidence. Something any student of Darwin can do.

Now, I’m not going to rehash the problem. You can read the original article posted on cNet here. Or you can read through the informative (and sometimes emotional) thread at the Apple forums here.

No, instead I’d like to guess what the cause might be. Some people say neglect, others say poor design and construction (which as you’ll see might be true, but not necessarily intentional). I tend to believe it’s a little more basic, and at the same time a little less obvious. It might be the plastic.

Plastics are ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. To paraphrase Morpheus from The Matrix: “It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes.”

But not all plastics are created equal. What most people call ‘plastic’ is a family of synthetic and semisynthetic polymers that include bakelite, PVC, urethane, styrene, acrylic and nylon. What most people call ‘plexiglass’ actually isn’t.

Plexiglass is a trade name for polymethyl methacrylate. It also goes by the trade names ‘Lexan’, and ‘Lucite’. It’s used to make aquariums, lenses for tail lights, and helicopter canopies. It’s malleable, easy to produce, and durable, if not incredibly scratch-resistant.

The other commonly used clear plastic is polycarbonate. Made tougher, it’s used for CDs, DVDs, and eyeglass lenses. It resists scratches and breakage really well, but is of course much more expensive.

Now, I haven’t been able to find the data sheets on materials used in the construction of the Nano, or any other iPod for that matter. But if earlier (or more expensive) iPods use polycarbonate and the nano uses polymethyl methacrylate, possibly to save on production costs, well… that could go a long way to explaining the ease with which the Nano’s screen can be scratched.

At any rate, I understand my theory is not necessarily a new one. I merely posit my own opinion. I could be totally off-base, along with everyone else who’s thought of this. The one thing I do know is that if Apple skimped on materials to save money, the grumbling will only get louder. And if they don’t address the problem soon, they might find themselves in real trouble with all their loyal fans.

This blog is a responsibility I’ve been neglecting for a little while. Rest assured, however, that I’ll be bringing you more of the sticky oozing mass that is my mind.

My true passion in music, however, is the cello. The range of emotion that can be conveyed by a master cellist is incomprehensible in its depth. It can bring joy to your heart, or tears to your eyes. I’d be lying if I said I’d never wept while listening to Bach’s Cello Suite Number 5.

In the world of modern music, I often cling to artists who make use of heavy guitar chords, as it is in these chords that you can find some similarity, a certain kinship, with the deep longing sound of a cello. Don’t believe me? Listen to a few concertos and a few tracks by Metallica or Nirvana, and it’ll hit you. Seprated by a century or more, their music can pull at you in much the same way.

Still don’t believe me? If I told you that you could take the guitars out of songs, say those by Metallica, or Tool or even Slayer, and replace them with cellos, do you think they’d sound the same? If your answer is ‘no’, allow me to re-educate you. Enter one of my favorite bands, Apocalyptica.

Apocalyptica is a Finnish band, whose members (Eicca Toppinen, Paavo Lotjonen, Perttu Kivilaakso) were trained as classical cellists at the prestigious Sibelius Academy. Unwilling to be stifled, to be relegated to playing classical pieces simply bacuse it is the norm, they sought to break free of the stereotypes associated with both classical and heavy metal music and merge the two into a hybrid form.

They succeeded. In 1996, their debut album, Playes Metallica by Four Cellos, hit store shelves, introducing the world to a concept none had ever dared put forward: that an instrument long associated with the upper crust, with classical pieces written by long-dead composers, could not only be pressed into the service of metal, but that it could excel.

Indeed, some of their playing is indistinguishable from guitar. Through a combination of bows and rosins, as well as their amazing talent, the members of Apocalyptica are able to coax not only the sweetest notes you could ever expect from a cello, but also all of the staccato rhythms and lingering chords of a guitar out of their intruments.

Their early success allowed them to push the envelope even further. Most of the music they play is orignal, and exhibits both sweet classical resonance and hardcore metal rhythms. Two worlds that would otherwise clash have mingled, and it is good. Their albums Inquisition Symphony, Cult and Reflections met with enthusiasm and critical acclaim, and assured them a place among musical greats.

And so it was with great eagerness that I bought tickets to their concert at the Paradise on September 15th. There is something uniquely gratifying in standing in the middle of one of the best known rock clubs in Boston, watching tattooed headbangers and nerds like myself standing side by side, entranced by the same music. We were all eager, all waiting for a show we knew would be great.

The musicians came out and took their places, sitting on chairs whose backs had skulls carved in them. With no preamble, they placed bow to strings, and began.

The floorboards shook and the air resonated with the sounds of their instruments. I rocked out, was moved by dulcet tones, and walked away glad to have seen them, to have felt their music live. It’s a show I highly recommend. They play with the fervor, mannerisms, and dress classically attributed to metal, but their skill rivals- at least in my opinion- any classical musicians I have ever heard.

Oh, wait, that was an episode of The Simpsons.

Actually, we were sitting around discussing some pointless article of minutiae as we usually do, passing the time with banter and barbs, when this little gem rolled off my friend Jason’s tongue:

“Carl, the only things you do are play D&D and make sex films. The day that anyone pays you for either is a sad day indeed.”

Now, I understand that context and setting are everything, so you really had to be there to appreciate this. I think what was more amusing than the great delivery was Colin’s response. Though he is easygoing and laughs readily at funny things, I rarely see him completely lose it. This was one of those great occasions where everyone was laughing out loud. It was great.

And J, don’t worry. Your uppance will come!

Optimus Keyboard

Jeebus. I’ll definitely be getting one of those.

His hometown of Marblehead herladed him a hero, and everyone mourned his death. Except the protesters.

Why would anyone stage a protest at a hero’s funeral? Why, to point out that American soldiers are dying because America tolerates homosexuals, of course. That’s right. Ridiculous as it sounds, the Church of Westboro (www.godhatesfags.com, I kid you not), staged a protest, holding signs that said, “Thank God for I.E.D.s” and “God Hates Fags.”

Their well-reasoned (and of course, I inject the sum total of my scorn and derision into that) argument is that American service people are dying, and going straight to hell, in these conflicts because of America’s tolerant policies toward homosexuals. God hates homos, apprently, so he didn’t grant the power of invulnerability to our servicemen. I guess if we burned homosexuals at the stake, car bombs and copper-jacketed bullets would probably only cause minor bruising when they came into contact with American flesh.

I find myself extraordinarily torn. On the one hand, I respect the Freedom of Speech. The First Amendment of the Constitution is probably the amendment I hold most dear, especially in these McCarthian/Orwellian times.

On the other hand, I’d personally like to see someone take a baseball bat to every gods-damned bigot like the followers of this so-called ‘church’, beat the ever-loving snot out of them, then ask them why God let them suffer if they’re so damned great.

And even though their views are extreme, and they certainly don’t represent the full body of the Republican Party, the views of the most vocal constituents of the GOP certainly have more in common with these useless wastes of flesh than with the great majority of moderates in both parties or the left-wing liberals of the Democratic Party. I say this not to deride Republicans, but because these kinds of ultra right-wing crackpots are currently drowning out the voices of normal people with actual brains and having an effect on how we run the country. A country founded on the ideals of tolerance and freedom.

Use your voices people. Don’t let your future ever be decided by someone holding a god-damned “Thank God for I.E.D.s” sign.

George Romero is considered a minor deity among horror aficionados. He created the original zombie thriller, Night of the Living Dead, in 1968. It was heralded at the time as one of the scariest movies ever made, and to this day has a cult status that transcends age and social boundaries.

Unfortunately, some say George’s magic touch didn’t last. Romero still enjoys cult status, but ask anyone how many sequels there were to Night of the Living Dead, and there is a good chance they won’t know the answer. Certainly the sequels were gorier than the first, and shot in color, and filled with buckets of disgusting blood and gore. But the thrill, that initial shock, was gone. This is the natural order of things, I believe. You cannot maintain a high level of shock beyond initial stimulus. People need to see more, new, greater, better.

And this movie really wasn’t it. Don’t get me wrong, I still found it enjoyable. Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo were spot on as the evil villain and his henchman. And there were more than enough severed arteries, spilled intestines, and shattered skulls to please. And Asia Argento was hot dressed as a hooker (I have a thing for the slutty look).

But in the end, even though the movie wasn’t bad, it wasn’t exactly good. It had the unenviable honor of being simply mediocre. If you want to see a good zombie flick, rent Shaun of the Dead, a parody of sorts that actually manages to be an excellent movie in its own right.

Verdict: Rental

I got enormously lucky, responding immediately after receiving the email. I scored four tickets to what is sure to be an awesome event. Those who read my earlier review of their concert at the Paradise on April 25th will remember how awestricken I was by the pageantry and surrealism. Well, they’ve encouraged even more this time around! They want people to dress up. If you were lucky enough to score tickets, please make it an event to remember and dress up in something. I’m not planning on going full face-paint, but I’m going to put in a little effort.

See you there!

So said Butt-head in an old episode of Beavis & Butt-head, and so I say it now.

After nearly crossing party lines and buying an iMac G5 with a tasty built-in 20″ screen, I was in a quandary. I had been lured by its sweet siren song. The iMac is a thing of beauty (as most offerings from Apple tend to be), and made the anti-Fanboy in me quiet down. Like Jason and his Argonauts, I was lured in, seduced by the sweet melody of the cool white case that contained everything I would need to compute in one thin package, including a dual-layer DVD burner.

But thankfully, my better sense prevailed. It’s a long story, but it ends with me not buying the Mac and desperately wanting a consolation prize. I am now determined to upgrade my PC over the next six months to something beefier than my good old Athlon XP 2100+ and adequate (if dull) Acer 17″ LCD display.

I found out that Dell’s 2005FPW WSXGA LCD display uses the exact same screen as the screen in the 20″ Apple Cinema Display (LG Philips Part #LM201W01). Having been wowed before by the pretty screen, I decided to look into it.

Dell lists this item for $749 list. They usually have a deal where anywhere from 15-30% is taken off that. Most recently, it was listed on sale for $524. Well, being the good shopper I am, I went looking for coupon codes at various sites, and found two useful ones. $90 off any $750 purchase from Dell Home, and 35% off the 2005FPW. Stacking them and adding some filler (a mousepad) to bring the pre-discount total above $750 brought my net total to $404, shipped.

This morning it arrived, and as I unpacked it I heard an angelic choir. I’m telling you, this was good in a way only sex and chocolate brownies usually are. I plugged it in to test for the usual dead pixels and something not so usual called “screen bleeding”. I won’t link to the myriad forum discussions dealing with large widescreens and this phenomenon, but basically it’s when looking at the screen, you notice light bands along the corners, top, or bottom. It’s basically you seeing the LCD’s backlight shining through, and it’s usually only visible when looking at a black screen. Only some units display the problem, and it seems to be a production issue, not a technical one.

I am happy to report that neither problem was present with my new toy. Not a single dead pixel, and no problems with the lighting. I was actually surprised at the lack of a single dead pixel. The LCD industry nowadays isn’t noted for zero-defect offerings, which seems incongruous considering the various pre-2000 laptops I have owned or worked on never exhibited stuck or dead pixels. One would think quality would improve, but I guess the old NASA adage is true: Fast, Cheap, Good; pick two. Fast and cheap won, I suppose.

Anyway, on to testing. The screen is capable of a decent 1680×1050 resolution, boasts a 12 millisecond response time, and has a contrast ratio of 600:1, which makes it pretty decent for gaming and video. It has VGA, DVI, S-Video, and Composite Video inputs (nice for just plugging a DVD player or XBOX into without turning on your PC). It also has 4 usb ports and functions as a USB hub, which is a nice touch for those of us tired of reaching behind our full-tower cases to blindly connect our MP3 players and the like.

The colors are crisp right out of the box, but if you want to adjust anything, the On-Screen Display is incredibly detailed, giving you control over pretty much any setting you’d want to fiddle with anyway. It was pretty in a way that makes anything short of a skimpily-clad Jessica Alba seem like something the cat dragged in. So much real estate. No words…. they should have sent a poet… And because of its excellent resolution, it is capable of displaying high-definition video. Did I mention it also has built-in Picture-In-Picture?

An excellent piece of equipment at what was an excellent price. Highly recommended.

No, that’s not a misprint, and yes, I do think it was a necessary statement to make.

There have been a few action stars to come out of China over the past forty years or so. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, just to name a few. But Hollywood, in its wisdom, has always seen fit to limit these stars in their scope of work. Fight, kick ass, show off lightning-fast moves and precision choreography.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Chinese action star show actual acting talent. Maybe it’s the language barrier, maybe it’s Hollywood pressure to focus on getting the 13-30 demographic packed into sticky-floored theaters. Whatever the reason, it seems to me a terrible waste of talent. Jet Li proves this in Unleashed, the latest film from Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional).

The premise of the movie is fairly simple. Jet Li plays Danny, a man who’s been raised by Bart (played brilliantly by Bob Hoskins), a loan shark and gambler, among other things. Bart has raised Danny like an animal, keeping him in a cage with a collar around his neck. Danny has been trained so that when the collar comes off, he will attack, visciously and without mercy, until called off by his master.

A series of events take place that leave Danny alone and on the street. Remembering a brief moment of happiness he felt when he met a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman), he returns to that place, and by chance finds the piano tuner again.

What follows is Danny’s emergence from his simple animal cocoon. Through kindness and love shown to him, he discovers what it is like to be a man, to be a human being with thoughts and feelings.

Unfortunately, the happiness does not last. A chance encounter with his old master’s thugs puts Danny right back in the old life, only now he has thoughts of his own. This leads to the film’s climax, and I’m not going to spoil it here.

There was some incredible, eye-popping fight sequences. The music was kept turned down, so that you could really hear and focus on the sounds of fists hitting flesh. The meaty ‘thwack’ was visceral and jarring. Luc Besson’s style and talents as a director shine through his use of camera angles and lighting.

But there was also Jet Li. He plays the wounded soul well. When the collar is on he is gentle, head cocked to one side, walking with a slight limp, eyes wide with childlike wonder. When the collar comes off he is muscle and anger, and there is no hint of a soul behind his eyes. Mr. Li pulls off both with equal ability, and I really did feel for the character. I honestly hope this marks a new phase in Hollywood action movies, and in Jet Li’s career.

Verdict: Theater Movie

For those who don’t know, last Thursday (April 28th), TigerDirect filed suit against Apple Computers and requested an injunction against the computer manufacturer because of its use of the name ‘Tiger’. TigerDirect holds trademarks on the names TigerDirect and Tiger. They claimed that Apple was, to paraphrase, “diluting their brand name and causing confusion in the marketplace.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but if anyone should be able to claim ‘dilution and confusion’, it should be Apple. I’ve purchased things from TigerDirect, and not only is their customer service horiffic, but just try getting those mail-in rebates!

But, the law is the law, and if TigerDirect actually does own the name ‘Tiger’ (ridiculous as it sounds that anyone can trademark a single word), then Apple is potentially in trouble.

I’m no fan of Apple. Or rather, I’ve been convinced they do have a lot to offer, and I’m on the verge of getting a Mac Mini for myself, but I’m no Fanboy. But I’m even less of a fan of pointless, frivolous lawsuits. Our society is so gods-damned litigious that you practically can’t take a piss anymore without getting sued for missing the bowl.

So when I read the following article, all I could say was, “Wow. Cool!”

In a Snarl over ‘Tiger’

Originally via HardOCP.

That, according to a supercomputer named Deep Thought, is the answer to the question about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Of course, the question had to be figured out in order for the answer to make any sense… and of course, that will take ten million years. And that on top of the seven million years it took to figure out the answer!

Douglas Adams was a brilliant writer whose life was cut tragically short by a heart attack in 2001. He never got to see his best-known work brought to the big screen, though he did manage to write a large portion of the script.

I went to see the movie on opening night. The theater was, of course, sold out. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but I was hoping for what I thought might be the first in a series, or at least a trilogy. Of course, being a fan and not a studio executive, I could afford such fantasies. I don’t sign the checks.

Since the movie really only follows the books loosely, I’ll do my best not to include any spoilers.

The movie opens with a narrative about humanity and the fact that we’re only the third-smartest species on the planet. Amazingly enough, we don’t know this. We also don’t know that our planet is slated for destruction, in order to make room for a hyperspace super-highway. Alas, the Vogons don’t really care.

A few minutes before Earth is disintegrated, a man named Arthur Dent is outside his home in his pajamas, trying to keep it from being destroyed (a little irony never hurt) by bulldozers. His closest friend, a man named Ford Prefect (played very well by Mos Def), comes and drags him off to the pub, where they drink six pints of beer and a bowl of peanuts and Ford proceeds to warn Arthur about the imminent end of the world. Arthur, dazed and naturally skeptical, goes back outside to find that his house has already been destroyed. Dismayed, he stands there while Ford comes over, grabs him, and sticks his thumb out to hitch a ride. A moment before the Earth is blasted to nothingness, they are transported aboard one of the Vogons’ ships. From there, it just gets stranger.

If all of this sounds a bit confusing, it should be. The books were a little disjointed in the way a lot of British comedy is, but they were funny and charming nonetheless. The movie stays true to that, with memorable and laughable characters that grab your attention a lot more than any special effects. And through it all, Arthur moves along, apparently only dimly registering what is going on around him.

This isn’t to say that the movie’s effects aren’t well-made, as they certainly are. It’s just that, for once, this is a sci-fi movie with a plot more engaging than the eye candy. Thanks to a relatively small budget (under $100 million), CGI effects were somewhat sparse, and this was a good thing. Instead, puppets from Jim Henson’s Workshop were used, and the movie was much better for it.

Add to that the wonderful acting of Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel, the great voice acting of Alan Rickman, and a spooky cameo by John Malkovich, and you have one of the best sci-fi comedies to come out of Hollywood in a very long time.

The movie was a composite of the four books “The Hitchhiker’s Guide top the Galaxy”, “The Restaurant at The End of The Universe”, “Life, the Universe, Everything”, and “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.” While remaining faithful to the author’s vision and style, there were a fair number of differences that may not sit well with purist fans of the books. Which is truly too bad, as such purists must be unaware that the books themselves were a departure from the orignal radio show.

So, no spoilers. I managed to get through the review without spoiling it for you. Watch this movie, though. You’ll laugh, you’ll… well, laugh… and then you’ll want to read the books again (or for the first time, for those who never have).

Verdict: Theater flick.

Original Post by Carl:
I’m no Apple Fanboy, but after reading this review of OSX 10.4 at Ars Technica, I can’t help but be impressed.

Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies

So asked my good friend Dave at the Paradise last night.

No, it wasn’t a strip club. No, it wasn’t an art show, though it certainly was art. No, it wasn’t a wild orgy plucked from the fertile ground of my imagination. If it were, I’d still be there, and not writing this.

No indeed. What it was, what I will always remember it as, is one of the absolute coolest live music shows I have ever seen.

Imagine, if you will, arriving at a concert venue (a.k.a. club), and seeing outside something out of an old European carnival. Girls in frilly dresses and face make-up, guys on stilts and wearing top-hats, people in costume standing like statues. It was surreal already, and we hadn’t even set foot inside.

I’ve been to the Paradise before. I recently saw Handsome Boy Modeling School there. I didn’t really think much of the place, to be honest. I mean, compared to the acoustics at the Orpheum, it’s just another club. Nicer than some, certainly more pleasant than the Roxy, at least to my eyes and ears, but nothing spectacular.

But heading inside this unremarkable music club, my perceptions were transformed amid a wash of sights and sounds. There were women standing perfectly still, living statues so well trained even their eyes didn’t follow you as you moved. There were goths, punks, posers, average joes (and janes), and a few characters I’m not entirely sure of (how do you describe a six-foot, six-inch man who has buckled his very thin frame head-to-toe in leather? Or the one girl who wore those fantastic blue booty shorts and spent the entire evening bent over the banister of the upper level?). And they all added to the atmosphere. It was almost as if their very presence contributed to the show, made it better, augmented its surrealism.

As a taste of entertainment to come, there were human marionettes, a short act of puppeteers and puppets, truly reminiscent of old-time cabaret. It got us in the mood.

And then there were the semi-naked girls. The quote above alludes to them. Two perfect specimens of the female form, beauteous and enchanting in the simple elegance of period lingerie. They wore panties, bras, striped stockings, and garter belts. Their skin pale, their faces impassive masks behind which were hidden who knew what thoughts, as they stood as the most alluring pair of living statues there. Before them were several containers of paint and brushes for audience members to paint them with. I abstained, as I was sure I’d never want to leave their company if I picked up a brush.

And then, the music. We open the evening with Thomas Truax , who uses a rather unusual instrument called a ‘hornicator’ and is accompanied by the competent (if rather unlively) ‘Sister Spinster’. The man is fun, energetic, original. He engages the audience, goes unplugged to rove among the fans, then returns to the stage and finishes his entirely too abbreviated set to applause I’ve never heard for a first opener.

On his heels arrives Fluttr Effect, opening with a hardcore cover of the Imperial March from Star Wars. Kara Trott was moving spasmodically to the music, a marionette with strings tangled. Vessela Stoyanova was awesome on the marimba, and Valerie Thompson is one of the hottest cellists I’ve ever had the pleasure of setting eyes upon. Troy Kidwell wailed on guitar, while Jason Marchionna energetically and very competently played percussion. Their music was both haunting and engaging, and again, the applause when they left the stage was deafening. Opening acts do not usually get this well-deserved response.

Normally, the audience would wait for a half-hour or so until the main act comes out and begins their set. But of course, this show was already anything but ‘normal’. A few minutes before the band stepped on stage a rather thin man with an unstrung tennis racket came out. His name is Al Millar, and he’s a contortionist. I’d seen him in Harvard Square a few years ago, performing on the street, and I enjoyed seeing him again. Well, except when he amazingly (and very audibly) dislocated his shoulders at one point in the act. Nothing quite like hearing a club full of people gasp at the sickening pop of a dislocating joint. And yes, he does pass his entire body through a regulation tennis racket.

And then Brian and Amanda, the performing duo that are the Dresden Dolls, stepped onstage. Amanda took her place at the keyboard, and Brian sat at the drums, and their energy exploded. I’d never heard their music, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was impressed. Their combination of piano, drum beats, and vocals are reminiscent of both cabaret and punk, with Amanda’s voice going from plaintive near-whispers to celebratory arias, and Brian’s drum work from gentle strokes on the cymbals to rapid-fire staccatos.

They were incredible. They were beautiful and damaged and happy and pained. A lot of their music involved alcohol, and it’s abuse. I’m not sure if there is an actual story behind it, but at certain points it sounded like a lonely yearning for something. At other times, it sounded like a raucous last call at a local pub. Actually, that pretty much describes all their music. From sad to happy, from playful to angry. The gamut of emotion played out on nothing more than a drum and a piano, with the occasional help of a guitar (also played by Brian).

If you get a chance, see this band. They are actually going on tour with Nine Inch Nails, so $16 seats may soon be a thing of the past. Honestly? Double that would have been a bargain for the experience we had last night.

A Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).

I was looking through the information for this upcoming game and was impressed. If they can pull off everything they claim, this could be the Next Big Thing for us table-top gamers. I’m a graphics whore, so I never went in for Ultima Online or similar games. But this appears to combine the massive environments of worlds like Ultima with the decent graphics of Neverwinter Nights.

I highly recommend reading their FAQ. I think I’m going to sign up for the Beta, so maybe I’ll see you in there!

via Reuters

After my recent rant against pointless spending, I forced myself to avoid hypocrisy (and by force myself I mean I told Colin, who always manages to poignantly point out when I’m about to step in something foul, even if I don’t always listen). This meant that instead of buying the shiny new motherboard I wanted, along with new memory, video card, and cpu I would gladly give over someone else’s firstborn for, I was just going to buy what I needed to repair my current problem.

There were a couple of problems with my machine. First of all, whenever I booted, there was about a 30% chance the machine would bluescreen and halt dead with a rather ambiguous “Hardware Fault. Contact Your Hardware Vendor” error. Since I put this machine together myself with components purchased three years ago from various vendors, I suppose that meant me. Great, ’cause I was no help.

Secondly, whether it gave the BSOD or not, there would always be a loud grinding noise, like a fan wasn’t doing its job properly. Since I put the machine together back in my overclocking days, there were six fans that could have been causing that noise.

So, armed with scant patience but a fatalistic realization that things needed to get done, I went to my favorite online dealer, Newegg, and ordered up an Asus A7V600 to replace my aging EPoX board. There was no point getting a beefier motherboard, considering I still run an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ CPU, and PC2100 DDR RAM. Besides, total cost was only $38. And the new board supports SATA drives, making it attractive for any hard drive deals I come across.

At any rate, I pulled my full tower PC case out of it’s spot next to my desk and dragged it into the livingroom. Then I opened it. After allowing the bats to escape and dust to settle, I very carefully began cutting all the zip-ties I had used to make everything look neat and clean the last time I put the thing together. It was around this time that I spotted my first problem. A few motherboard manufacturers are known to have had problems with leaky capacitors, and EPoX has had a worse track record than most with this issue. I can only assume this was causing my random bad behavior. Also, my capacitors looked worse than the ones shown in the pics linked above!

Japanese Mech

Seriously, check this out.

via HardOCP

EDIT: Hrm, the feet never leave the ground, leading me to the conclusion that it’s sorta rollerblading around. Still, damn cool.

The laptop that ignited my ire in this particular case (although there have been others), is a Compaq Evo n115. The specs are unspectacular, as the machine is a couple of years old, at least. Athlon running at 1.2 GHz, 256 megs of RAM, 14″ screen. I upgraded the hard disk to 60 gigs and loaded Microsoft Windows XP.

The laptop was decommissioned from my workplace because it’s previous owner abused it. When I got it the shell had stress fractures in a few places and the whole thing looked about ready to fall apart. So I took it home, tore it apart, and carefully began reinforcing the cracks with super glue.

The plastic most laptops are made with is basic ABS plastic. It’s cheap, easy to get into all sorts of shapes, and probably won’t ever decompose. It is also pretty flimsy and fragile. Taking the case apart last night to fix a crack where the super glue had failed, the whole piece I was to work on just broke off in my hands.

After much cursing and tantrum-throwing, I sat down with a file, ground down all the edges of the broken pieces, and super-glued them back together. After I finished, I noticed the bond, though strong, would not prevent a repeat occurence. The laptop designers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make that part of the case structurally important. Apparently, the screws that hold the LCD display to fairly strong steel brackets must be screwed directly to tiny nuts mounted on this flimsy plastic back. It would be akin to bolting steel rims to a steel axle with bolts made mostly from plastic. Not very bright.

So this morning I went out and bought some epoxy, resolving to repair this case and not go hunting for a new on on eBay. Meanwhile, I find myself looking at other laptop cases. A lot of them are designed like this. Sure, there are the nice laptops that use anodized aluminum, magnesium, or even titanium for their shells, but these materials are often used mostly for cosmetic purposes, and they always drive the price of a laptop up considerably.

I just can’t fathom why some manufacturers use crappy plastic in machines that typically cost around a thousand dollars (before incentives and rebates). IBM uses plastic, but they are renowned for their laptops’ durability and quality. The stress fractures I notice on my project laptop are in places that should seem obvious to anyone. Would it really have cost that much more to reinforce the case with some sort of small steel bracket? Or at least reinforce the plastic pieces with thick ribs in the case?

I didn’t even know what the play was about, really. I didn’t want to know too much. So, after a quick bite to eat (which turned out to be a good decision, as you’ll see), Colin and I headed over. The air was a bit chill, the sky threatening to rain, and our moods were expectant.

Before we get to the play, let me just say the new Arrow Theater is beautiful. It reminded me of a dollhouse on the outside, and of a minimalist art gallery on the inside. The lobby space was clean, sparse, and well-lit.

The theater itself seemed odd. Like the stage and seats are modular, mobile. I would imagine seating configurations can be changed, depending on what is showing at any given time. And I honestly hope the next play I see there has something to do with decadence and comfort, and that they carry that theme through to the seating. The seats in this theater make the seats at Fenway Park seem like comfy lounge chairs. After the first part of the show, a full one hundred minutes, I felt as though my coccyx had been hit with a ball peen hammer. And there was an additional forty minutes to look forward to. Needless to say, I shifted and moved constantly.

The lighting is flourescent, everything painted white. It gives the space a cold, industrial feel. Honestly, it was as if between that and the seating the producers were trying to draw the audience in, to say “Don’t get comfortable. This is going to be an uncomfortable experience.”

The play begins unceremoniously. A girl sitting at a table, sullenly staring straight ahead. The flourescents go out and incandescents take their place on-stage. The girl’s father Mike, expertly played by Bill Camp, makes her a cup of tea. And from there begins a journey from which the audience will return shaken, disturbed, and maybe a little nauseated (hence watching it with some food in us was probably a good idea). Camp explodes on stage, using the lights to excellent effect to highlight and make visible the spittle flying from his mouth as he raves. He commits a horrible act and is sent to prison, and you see throughout the play that he never seems to recover his sanity.

Why I would recommend watching this film, and why I think it may not be for some…

The first thing you will notice is the comic book (or graphic novel, if you prefer) feel of the film, and with good reason. Sin City is based on the graphic novels of the same name, originally created by Frank Miller. According to Wired Magazine, co-Director Robert Rodriguez convinced Miller to allow the filming of the movie by pre-filiming the entire first scene with Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton and using it to sell the concept. Miller reportedly liked it so much, the entire scene was used as the opening for the movie. The article containing that and more juicy and interesting information can be found here.

Another obvious (and not so obvious) feature of the movie is the filming itself. The movie is in black and white, with only occasional reds, blues, yellows, and fleshtones thrown in for emphasis or effect. That much is obvious. The not-so obvious is how this was achieved. The film is entirely digital. From beginning to end, not a single frame was shot on conventional celluloid. In addition, none of the scenery is real. The entire movie was shot on a soundstage, with all the buildings, streets, cars, and rain, digitally inserted. While other filmmakers have used digital cameras to great effect (George Lucas and Peter Jackson come to mind), Rodriguez really tests the power of the medium.

Enough drooling over technique and technology. The movie was, in a word, great. The acting was top notch, with a list of stars rolling in the opening credits that raised my eyebrows. Some of these had only a couple of minutes on-screen, but they made those minutes count (as a nod to my friend Remy the Yeti, Rutger Hauer was really good). The dialog was mostly smooth and expertly delivered, reminiscent of 30’s and 40’s film noir, including constant deadpan and gravelly-voiced voice-overs delivered by the heroes. It invoked the kind of nostalgia that made me want to go back and watch the original D.O.A. or The Third Man again. The characters’ angst and internal conflict was really communicated well through these voice-overs, and the movie would just have been a confusing kill-fest without it.

Last night I happened to glance down at the space under my television. Nothing particularly special about the moment, I just happened to look down. And I saw my dust-covered XBOX, Gamecube, and original NES. And then I looked over at my bookshelf, where I keep all the games I never finished. For the record, almost every single game I own is still on that shelf, and I have about twenty five games. I have not even played some of them. Ninja Gaiden (for XBOX) sits barely touched (I think it has two hours of gameplay on it). Ghost Recon: Island Thunder (XBOX) was still in it’s orginal shrinkwrap until recently, and I only opened it to play an online game with Colin. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3 (XBOX), one of my old favorites, collects dust. Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, barely touched. It reads like a death roll. And I have a Gameboy Advance sitting in a drawer. And now the Sony PSP is out. And I think this has triggered my state of distress.

We spend too much on pointless things, especially toys. All the bleeding-edge tornado chasers out there, the early adopters who believe their own strength of character or social status is tied to the latest, greatest techno-craze, are the advance scouts of the masses. People with microwave attention spans and the decision-making skills of a puppy offered his choice of steak in gravy or… steak in gravy.

I don’t blame marketing hype. I don’t blame corporations. They are out to make money, and are masterful at manipulating the soft clay of our minds into forms suited to their economic growth. I blame us. We give them the clay. We look at our neighbor’s TV and want it bigger, we look at their video games and want more graphics, we see their iPod and want a different color. Hell, they see their iPod and want a different color. I know a woman at work with three iPod minis, all identical except for color.

You could argue that if someone has the money to waste, then they should be allowed to do whatever they want without criticism. My response to this is a resounding NO. Bad dog! That kind of thinking is positive reinforcement for corporations and advertising to continue what they are doing. Buy what you need, what you can justify through practical means.

Nowadays, with the glorious offerings from Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, all of which have mammoth computing power and games built into discs with multiple gigabytes of storage, if you want sex, it isn’t hard to find. Right there, in full 3-dimensional glory. DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball is a good example. There are others more risque, dating back to the early days of FMV, but I’d like to point you all to an article that pays homage to the pioneers of sex in video games.

Sexual Moments in Video Game History, from i-mockery.

The 2005 Lexus RX boasts something called the Adaptive Front Lighting System. The basic premise is that the headlights pivot as you turn, illuminating the road as your tires encounter it, not after. Lexus makes it sound like a marvelous feat of engineering. What I don’t see mentioned anywhere on their site is that this marvelous idea is over fifty years old.

Let me start with a short explanation. When a car turns, the front wheels pivot at an angle from the body of the car, by as much as 45 degrees or so. The headlights, however, usually remain fixed pointing forward, which means the beam of the headlight follows the turn, illuminating road only after the body catches up with the wheels. This can be potentially dangerous on sharp turns on a dark road, where deer or a cliff can loom around a hairpin turn.

What Lexus has done, and I do applaud them for their dedication to safety features, is make the headlights move with the front tires. The left light moves by up to fifteen degrees, while the right one moves as much as five.

So far, so good. My basic problem is that though it looks impressive, and I am sure Lexus would love to take credit for it, it isn’t new. This particular safety feature was first introduced by Preston Tucker in his 1948 Tucker Torpedo. While the two main headlamps were fixed, a third was mounted in the center of the hood and pivoted with the steering mechanisms to illuminate the road with the turn.

Alas, Tucker’s car and company suffered some major setbacks, and only fifty cars were ever produced. Interestingly, nearly all of them are still roadworthy. They had many other technological innovations to their credit, and the cars themselves boasted impressive specs, including 166 horsepower and a whopping 450 lbs/ft of torque at 1800 RPM.

Now, I know Lexus has not indicated they invented the pivoting headlight system. Nowhere do I see them saying “we invented this.” But they also make no mention that they borrowed, or even improved on, ideas that came before. I mean hell, an ad that featured a Tucker in old-town USA and then an RX in a modern metropolis followed by a catchy slogan would have been a nice homage.

Instead, those who don’t know their automotive history will be left ooh-ing and aah-ing over an invention over five decades old.

So I did a little research, and decided on the Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra from Creative. It seemed to do everything I needed it to, though the lack of a digital (or at least fixed audio) output and remote control meant that using it in the car would be a bit painful. Anyone who has tried to scan through their playlists in traffic knows what I mean. According to Creative:

Carry all the music you’ll ever own in the NOMAD® Jukebox Zen Xtra! Simply transfer all your music with Creative MediaSourceâ„¢ and the ultra fast USB2.0 into the player, press the play button and get set to enjoy high-fidelity music. With advanced features such as Quick Scroller Navigation, Find, Playlist Creation and automatic ID3 tag categorization, managing and organizing your music will be a breeze. And the NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra doubles up as an external hard drive for storing all your documents such as photos, documents and other data files.

Well, not quite. Let me say I am adequately satisfied with my Zen Xtra. Let me also say that while Creative does not lie about their product, the advertising certainly makes it all seem simpler than it actually is. Of course, all companies do that, but I don’t have an MP3 player form most companies.

I paid $179 for the 30-gig model. I figured it would, indeed, ‘carry all the music I’ll ever own.’ And it was half the price of a 30-gig iPod at the time. So I bought it, took it out of it’s plastic packaging (yes, it came in cheap ‘hang this on display at Wal-Mart’ packaging) and looked it over.

First of all, it’s heavy. According to Creative, it’s about 8 ounces with battery. Which is certainly noticeable, especially when compared to the 5.6-ounce iPod. It’s also a bit bigger than it’s Apple cousin. The USB, power, and headphone jacks are mounted across the top, while the buttons are mounted on the sides. The front and back of the case is made from anodized aluminum, but the buttons and remainder of the shell are plastic, and can feel a bit cheap.

Still, it has a user-replaceable battery and standard laptop hard drive for us geeks who want to void the warranty and double the storage (for tips on how to do this, please check out this site). So I plugged in the power and USB cable, attached it to my computer and…

Fortunately, I saved the transcript of the interview. Going over it, I thought it might be interesting to share my somewhat more balanced view of the game with the masses. Hopefully you’ll learn something from it. And if you flaggelate yourself in front of a cross after committing the sin of ogling the girls in the Victoria’s Secret Catalog and think D&D is Satan’s Game, and this article doesn’t persuade you in the least, you can take your closed-minded opinions and do me the favor of not bothering to post them as comments about how I’ll burn in hell for pretending to cast magic spells. If there is a hell (see my rant on my lack of religion), I’ll probably go there for my massive porno collection or some other plague I’ve helped perpetuate on this world.*

That being said, I do welcome constructive comments and questions.

Now then, on to the interview…

*This rant has been brought to you by the letters ‘F’ and ‘U’, and by the number ‘666′. Actually, this is a rant to make sure I haven’t lost my offensive edge. Take it or leave it.

Since Colin rebuilt the ‘Geek, he’s been badgering me to come back and let my creative juices flow all over the place. And let them flow I will. My brain gravy will saturate this page!

Okay, so, let begin with a parts list…

Compaq EVO D510 small form factor PC
Pentium 4 2.4A
512 megs of Crucial PC2700 DDR RAM
2 Seagate Barracuda IV 120-gig hard drives
LITE-ON 4X DVD-R/RW
nVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 with 64 megs of DDR RAM
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 video card
MSDN copy of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005*

*Disclaimer: To date, Microsoft has not released Windows XP MCE to the retail market. It is only sold to OEMs and resellers to create Home Theater PCs. I have a licensed copy through the MSDN as an IT professional. I highly suggest you adhere to Microsoft’s EULA and other copyright and licensing policies…. blah blah blah. I covered my ass, now let’s get on with it.

The first thing I should mention is that Windows XP MCE 2005 is not really at all like its predecessor, WinXP MCE 2004. While superficially it bears a resemblance, under the hood are more than a few changes that make the 2005 version extremely appealing for home-brewed PVR builders.

WinXP MCE 2004 was designed for specific hardware manufacturers, such as HP. Though it was built on the basic XP operating system, the media center components were keyed to only a few drivers supporting a limited number of video cards, video capture cards, decoders, and sound chipsets. In addition, there was no way to add drivers from other card manufacturers without having a degree from the University of Nerd. And even then, the sacrificing of small children might be necessary for some configurations.

2005 signaled an apparent end to Microsoft’s hubris. The new version of the OS came with more drivers, and allowed you to install drivers for new hardware quite easily. A mere Associate’s Degree from Nerd U is all that is required.

So I got my machine together, prepped the two CDs with the OS, and sat down to work.

Let me say now, if you’re expecting a long-winded write-up on the agony of defeat and the burning sensation accompanying urination on the failed project, you’ll be disappointed. As a PC person, I am more than willing to admit Windows (all versions) has certain…. idiosyncrasies. Which is to say, you can usually expect to feel like you’ve been dragged over hot coals and jagged shards of broken glass while being slowly sodomized with a red-hot iron poker wrapped in rusty barbed wire.

The install, however, couldn’t have gone more smoothly. The install is pure Windows XP, and nothing remotely special happens until you go to set up the Media Center features. I managed to acquire an MCE remote from my favorite PC parts reseller, Newegg, plugged it in, and began setup.

The wizards walk you through it. You set up sound and video, autodetecting the video card, sound card, and video capture card. And then, the most spectacular thing. Spectacular enough to give me paroxysms of joy. It actually autodetected my digital cable box, and helped me calibrate the IR blaster to change the channels for me! In addition, I chose my preferred region and cable provider so I would get the correct Enhanced Programming Guid (EPG), and I was pretty much all set.

Yeah, that’s right. All set. I turned it on, set the Media Center features to auto-start with Windows, and away I went!

Now, you might look at the parts list above and say, “Well, sure, but TiVo is only $149! You have several hundred dollars of parts listed!”

Yes, that’s true. Except I already had the PC doing nothing (I’m a nerd, don’t ask). I also had the video card and Hauppauge capture card from previous experiments. Actually, I had the RAM and hard drives as well. My total out-of-pocket costs were pretty much $50 for the remote.

What are the advantages of MCE over TiVo? I can load all my music up in the ‘My Music’ category, load video into ‘My Video’, pictures to the ‘My Pictures’ section. I can control everything from that one remote, including my cable. This is in addition to recording capabilities on par with TiVo (except the supposedly intelligent recording feature that tries to ‘learn’ your preferences… but I never liked that feature anyway). And if I need a quick check of my email, I can minimize the MCE interface and use the PC right off my TV.

Fan-freakin’-tastic. Oh, and another feature not included with TiVo: I can burn my recorded shows right to DVD.

On January 6, 1996, I moved from Rutherford, New Jersey, to Boston, Massachusetts. I turned my back on my ‘family’ and drove (okay, bussed) forward to meet my own destiny. In other words, I moved here for a girl.

Okay. Granted, that turned out to be an enormous debacle. And I use the word in its literal, as well as figurative, sense. Not only did the sweet, fairly pretty girl I moved here for spend the next five and a half years turning into a bitter, petulant, spoiled little brat who did entirely too much drugs and drank entirely too much alcohol, but she also went from a pretty normal 5′7″ 140+ pounds to a whopping 260 when I left. The details, as well as why it took me so long, are personal. But needless to say, I hope she continued eating herself to a point where she collapsed under her own gravitational pull and became a black hole. It would match her personality.

But anyway, I digress. In August, 2001, I was suddenly a free man. Free to pursue other more…. satisfying dalliances and liasons, not to mention free (coincidentally) to purse some career changes. I could have moved.

But I didn’t. After a brief bout of insanity (self-labelled, not clinical), I met (and indeed, fell for) a beautiful woman who chiseled through a lot of repression and melancholic musings to expose what I believe is my true self (being a bit too much like Glenn Quagmire from Family Guy to ignore). She was sweet, extremely attractive, and very… limber (see Fight Club, you’ll understand). At about the same time, I found a really good job at another dotcom, and life seemed perfect.

I was anchored now, again. So I did not even think of moving. I made a boatload of money, I had a pretty girl on my arm, and I was developing close ties with the few people I am honored to call ‘friends’.

Fast forward to July, 2003. The Break-Up. My ‘darling’ turned out to have a hidden secret. Who knew that recovering alcoholics who’ve spent the last ten years in a mental coma on a combination of alcohol, drugs, and abusive relationships could go all psycho on you? Well, imagine my surprise.

Coincidentally, not long after, the dream job collapsed. As with so many other dotcoms, the one I worked at shot down. And when I remember that day and the absolute cowardice shown by the useless flotsam known as ‘management’ (they wouldn’t even look us in the eye), my gorge rises and I have to suppress the urge to start ranting in profanities that would make Matt Parker and Trey Stone (South Park) widen their eyes and take notes. I could have moved.

But I didn’t. Despite the freezing winters and sweltering summers. Despite the swill that passes for ‘clean’ seawater, and the forlorn stretches of salt-tolerant grass that passes for a beach. Instead, I had another dalliance, then (surprise) reunited with my ex-girlfriend. It lasted about five months before I was forced to break up with her again. On Valentine’s Day. You may criticize me for that, but it was due to some astonishingly bad behavior on her part the night before, on her birthday. I could have moved. I have friends in Colorado (ironically, where my ex is from), and I could have probably landed a job there. I could have moved.

But I didn’t. I sank into some self-destructive phase. I dated a girl with zero redeeming qualities. And then I once again started seeing my ex. What can I say, she IS limber. That was actually fun. Things seemed to be going so well I even let my thoughts start wandering back toward thinking of a future with her.

And then it’s October. And I once again break up with my ex. For the last time. And still I don’t move.

Because I look back at the past nine years and realize, this is the most time I have spent rooted to one area since I was born. And Boston feels like home. I have my dear friends, some so close I consider them siblings. I have a new girlfriend (hopefully not psychotic). I have my apartment, a new car, and a stable job. And I have goals. I’m institutionalized.

All the things that have happened to me… could have happened anywhere. And the winters? Well, It’s true I could move somewhere warm, I suppose. But then what? What else do I gain? No, Boston is home, for better or worse. And when I hear certain songs or turn down a certain street I’m flooded with memories of the place in times past, and I smile. For better or worse, it’s nice to have roots.

Giggidy-giggidy! OH!