Posts from — September 2003

As big as the Grand Canyon? Is this for real? Apparently is isn’t. But it is one of the best hoaxes I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s too bad, these things are very cool.

Hey! The Red Herring is back! Yipee!

Following up on a recent post, I think the new season of Enterprise stands a chance of being good. We’re three episodes in and so far I like what I see. As promised, the show is a bit edgier, the special effects are top-notch and the new continuing storyline is good. I’m happy the show turned out fine because there is little else on TV worth watching.

There will soon be a point where I will no longer watch commercial television. Nevermind the mindless crap the networks throw at us. It’s the bombardment of advertisements, during breaks and now while the shows are running that is annoying the hell out of me.

This month, Wired magazine did a bit about the future of television and it has some interesting news. They report it will be the consumer who forces changes in the way they use new technology like TIVO to skip past commercials.

Mark, had fun during your visit. Looking forward to seeing you again.

So the Galileo spacecraft crashed into Jupiter the other day. After completing its mission, NASA wanted to make sure it was completely destroyed. This was done to avoid any chance it would come into contact with Europa - a moon that may possibly contain life. It was thought that the Earth bacteria on the craft may possibly contaminate the moon so crashing it into Jupiter would avoid this. So after all these years, collecting huge amounts of data, this craft comes to an honorable end. Very cool stuff.

My twin brother Mark is here for a visit this week. He’s in training on the other side of the city. Crap. We picked him up at the airport on Saturday. Along the way, they closed part of the expressway so we got off. On the way back, going down another expressway we came upon another closure and had to get off. The next day; we took him to his hotel and along the way, we got stuck in another freeway closing. We sat there for an hour waiting to get through. Taking a different route back home, guess what? That’s right, ANOTHER FREAKIN’ FREEWAY WAS CLOSED. We must have waited in traffic, with all these closings for over 3 hours last weekend. It wasn’t a good time to be out on the roads.

One of the things that bothered me the most was the online traffic reports didn’t mention any of these closings. I checked before we left for the airport at AAA’s site and they showed clear sailing all the way through. Whatever.

City Creator is a fun website. You drag and drop objects to create all sorts of buildings, roadways and everything. It has a great interface and the site is very slick. I had a great time building my city called “Frontsidebackville.” I give this site 5 out of 5 stars.

I’ve mention Gibson Research before but you should go back to their site. They feature a tool you can download to check for DCOM vulnerabilities. If you don’t know what this is, go to the site and get a comprehensive explanation.

Get ready. Enterprise returns tonight with a promising premiere episode. We last left Archer and the crew entering the Delphic Expanse in search of the bad guys who attacked Earth. Tonight we get to meet some tough marines stationed on the ship, creepy new aliens and perhaps a lot more excitement.

Being a diehard fan of Trek from it’s very beginning, Enterprise disappoints me. During the summer reruns, I barely watched an episode again - something unheard of with The Next Generation or Voyager. I guess the characters don’t excite me too much and the storylines were, well boring.

I’m crossing my fingers hoping the producers will turn the show around and make it a never-miss event like the shows before it.

Another one to watch for is Jake 2.0. TV Guide lists very few new shows this fall that are worth watching and Jake is one of them. The previews look good and I’ll check it out right after Enterprise.

I’ll report back later to tell you what I thought of these two shows. Let me know what you think.

Hey Dave, did you forget that you owe me $10? I hope not.

I just upgraded to the new version 2.64 of Moveable Type. It has a bunch of new features that make it incredibly easy to manage your own weblog. With this upgrade, it leaves me open to finally update the site itself. We’ll see if I have some time this weekend.

I brought home a Tomb Raider edition Jeep Rubicon tonight from work. It was loads of fun driving around. I don’t think I’ll ever want to own one but it was nice to borrow it for the night. I was telling people it is the actual Jeep they used in the movie but very few people believed me.

My research has found a cool app for the Palm. Novii Remote has been around for a while but the new version is bundled with a TV listings guide. This guide is scheduled to be released very soon and you can be sure I’ll be giving it a look.

This is a lot of fun. My band’s name is Link and the Static’s.

“Now a question of etiquette; as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club

The Labor Day weekend went well for us. We managed to get out and stay busy most of the time. The highlight was the Arts, Beats and Eats festival in Pontiac. We went early on Monday and found very few people there. This left us to enjoy the eats and arts without the usual uncomfortable crowds.

So a lot of you have seen that clever Japanese matrix-style ping pong game right? Here’s a site with that bit and a few other funny videos.

One of my favorite apps on my Palm has gone away. Pocket TV Manager stopped working last week for no reason. The site explains that TV Guide online, which provides the schedules decided not to allow others to access them. This is a huge bummer for me, that app was the best. I’ll continue to search for other programs but all the good ones use TV Guide for their source of information.

I like free. So I love this site, Free Tech Books.