Myst Blogs

What do Bay, One and Melita have in common?
They are all opening mobile phone divisions.

I haven't had time to do anything much these last days. Between studying for resits (whoop-dee-doo) and watching X-Files, I can't think of anything intelligent enough to say or write. It seems that my creativity has abandoned ship to make room for dogmas.

To do list:
Study
Watch X-Files
Enjoy X-Files
Finish a Short tale for Tall people
Finish another Mundus Obscuro story (no, sadly it's not Lineage)

I woke up this afternoon to one of my ‘forward looking’ dream-images (some of which, over the years, have come true to varying degrees). This time, it was a series of weblog posts about various things in the Myst community, but nothing at all related to Uru itself.

This makes me wonder if I really am at a new state in my life, regarding Uru. I’ve said to several people now two possibly conflicting statements:

1) Uru *can* work, but it needs some dire work to get there. This is the essence of my old ‘Response to Rand’s Letter‘ post on the Ubi forums, and even five and a half years later I stick by that.

2) With MO:UL’s closure, I’m not going to participate (other than Guard appearances for stuff like the ‘Pats Parade) on any successor. My #1 gripe at the Ubi Shutdown was that we never got any real chance to see Uru stand on its feet in a ‘paid’ format, and that’s all I ever wanted. I’m not going to get into what happened with MO:UL that made it not survive - plenty of discussion there already! - as that is not the point to me. I got to finally see it as a paid service, and as the cliche goes ‘my work is done.’

Now, I want to stress that this does not mean I don’t like Uru, and don’t want it to survive. Go back and re-read my first statement, including the Ubi post, as well as various forum posts over the years. I care, end of story. If you think otherwise - again, spend a couple days and read through my posts on UO and GOG forums, as well as here on the weblog. Then come to me with a good (and non-flaming!) argument, and I’ll listen.

But, as of last year, my focus has shifted (possibly because of the first Interregnum via UU). To me, the community itself matters more than what venue(s) we seek together. Its what drives me today as a whole - even outside that community. I still talk about Uru, and evangelize about it (though to a MUCH lesser extent than I used to). My main talking point now is its extensive and friendly community; Though not without its detractors (who constantly remind me of Prokofy) I think we do better than most groups.

And that’s something I can really rally around, until the end of time if needed.

–TSK

Just like my IC Blog took the leap into wordpressosity, so does this blog. Please update any bookmarks or links here.

Shrouded in a light mist beneath occasional drops of rain and a blanket of gray clouds, the hills rose up and swooped down, seeiming to almost move with that gentle haze. The air was slightly thick and close, warm like an embrace. In the distance, homes and trees were mere shadows and shades of gray amid the misty atmosphere. An almost melancholy serenity filled this thick, moist air, reminding the heart of despair gone by and love lost to the cruelty of time.

I wrote something similar to that in Revolution, when Ósídhe returns from Shaddenrod to this lonely and calm city Énid near where we now find the New Forest in the Salisbury Plain of England. Though his story takes place in Englan, not far from where Stonehenge now stands, the true Énid is much closer to my own home. I have viewed it for a couple years, and it was this very spot that had given me my first true inspirations for how Énid looks. This spot is at the Grayslake train station, just beyond the second parking lot, between the landfill of Libertyville and the distant town of Mundelein. It is a small area many people overlook. It isn't a very obvious area. In fact, I hadn't taken notice of it until about 2.5 years ago. In the sunlight it seems a normal place, nothing extraordinary, nothing we haven't seen before.

But then, on days like today, when the sky is cloudy, when there is fog and a gentle drizzle of rain, it transforms into a beautiful pocket of what I dream England looks like. I had invented Énid four years ago, spelled differently back then, but I hadn't actually taken the time to have it look special. The Golden Sword was only beginning then, after all. Then, when I moved to Grayslake, and when I had seen the fog rolling down those hills for the first time, I knew I had found my true Énid. It invoked a sadness, a longing for something I couldn't put my finger on, and it drew me deep into my own mind where I could no longer see the world around me and I could only see Ósídhe looking out across his city, standing with the enchanted forest at his back. It was one of the most emotional and intense, yet claming moments I've had while writing Revolution. Couple that with my Enya music or Loreena McKennit, or somone similar, and it drives home the experience and sets me on the path for Whim Work. Most of my Ósídhe chapters came from the inspiration of my secret Énid.

Today was a day of great inspiration, and I knew it would be because the clouds were heavy the moment I woke up this morning. As soon as I parked in the train station lot, I hurried to the platform, delighting how the fog misted my spectacles. It was like a preview of what I was about to see.

Then, there it was, my Énid! I quickly and haphazardly described it, as you see in the first paragraph of this post. I love seeing this special place at this particular moment of the weather because it is so perfect to how I wanted Énid to come off in The Golden Sword. Énid is a beautiful place: green, quiet, cool or cold temperatures, frequent but refreshing rainstorms, calm, a bit lonely, but inspiring of thought and reflection. It carries a heavy history of supernatural folk and of magic, and when you are there you feel as though you have stepped among something majestic. You long to be a part of this land, to understand its mysteries and histories, to be one with the magical folk who live there. You swear you can hear the extraordinary tones of the harp, but it is only an echo of times gone by. Or is it?

It is strange, perhaps, to find all this in a tiny piece of land, perhaps only about an acre in size. It is strange to find it among city things like trains and homes. But there it is, and I have found it. My secret Énid remains my muse for as long as she stands there untouched and unspoiled.

Woo, another one of those three-hours-of-sleep nights before a day that I have to work. But I found one thing to make it all better. I just found out that the grocery store in the mall has a breakfast menu.

And on that menu? Biscuits and Gravy for under $3.

You see, I’ve always had this thing for breakfast. My friends have never quite understood why. Kinda borne out of some of my younger experiences.

Back in the days of my youth, my father used to make breakfast for me every day before I left for school, french toast or pancakes, with a strong backing of orange juice and milk. And every morning with my delicious meal, I would take a little pill called Ritalin. Ritalin has a side-effect of suppressing hunger. I was put on it during regular school hours. So lunch was never really a big deal for me, I was never really hungry for it, and because of the quality of school lunches, never really cared. So breakfast was the only thing I had to look forward to each morning before drugging myself up to get shuffled off to the oppressive social nightmare of being an awkward overweight child in a small rural midwestern school.

But seriously, hot breakfast is the best thing ever. Woo.

I’ve been gaming a lot more recently. Audiosurf was on sale for $5.00 this weekend and I picked up a copy. Surprisingly fun and more than worth it for the free Orange Box soundtrack included. Very addictive little game. I bought it just last Saturday and I’d already put 12 hours into it by Monday. I also finished Bioshock, which was just as amazing as everyone said it was. Nearly finished with Psychonauts. Excited for Spore coming out in a little over two weeks. Thinking of picking up Overlord or Thief: Deadly Shadows on Steam for something to play in the meantime. Been playing a good deal of games with variations of Pheener, Edrick, TW, Vaaht and GS. With them, I’ve played Garry’s Mod, Ghost Recon, Unreal and Team Fortress 2. The new TF2 updates are sick. I haven’t earned any of the Heavy achievements yet, but I’ve loved what I’ve seen. Been playing a lot of Soldier and loving it now that I’m getting the hang of it. Arena rocks, though I’ve only been able to try one of the new maps.

*sigh* Two months this time. I'll have to try and do better...maybe I can make the computer bug me about it.

Well, my biggest news is that I got laid off earlier this week, so I'm kind of...jobless at the moment. If anyone hears of an opening for someone with a B.S. in computer science, please pass it along. Luckily I've got an interview lined up for this Friday, so hopefully that'll pan out.

I'm also prepping grad school applications for fall of 2009 (turns out I've missed the deadlines for this coming spring, an unfortunate miscalculation). Not much to say there. I'm looking at five schools: UIUC (again), Carnegie-Mellon, James Madison University, University of Arizona, and SUNY Stony Brook (whatever that is). These were mostly pulled off a list of good computer science graduate schools, so I don't have any particular preference.

Um...I've been continuing to scan things into my "online" checkbook application, as well as putting a few minor features in. I've been making good progress. Of all the bank statements I have (and I'm missing only one), there are 673 transactions accounted for. I have entered 531 of those, so only 142 to go.

I've been trying to learn/teach myself CSS, but it's been slow going...mostly because it's a low priority at the moment. I've got a trusty O'Reilly pocket reference and complete control over a private web server, though, so hopefully it's just a matter of time...and picking out a few key core concepts that I seem to be missing. As part of this, I've been trying to put together an "intranet portal," I think is the term, which will function as a useful home page. Among other things, it has a PHP-based random fortune-cookie thing that dispenses quotes from "Words of the Watcher" in Path of the Shell.

Um...Clark's been borrowing Futurama from Brian in segments, so we've been watching that over supper of an evening. It's...um, less objectionable than I initially thought it would be, and actually pretty funny in a lot of cases.

Apropos of nothing, I got my highest NetHack score of all time a few days ago, though I still haven't made it even halfway through the game. I died of a pretty stupid mistake, too, but I was still impressed by how far I'd gotten. Here's some info:

Log file entry: 3.4.3 1060530 1 29 29 180 180 1 20080822 20080820 1000 Val Hum Fem Neu Ahnotahm,choked on a wraith corpse
Status line:
Ahnotahm the Swashbuckler St:25 Dx:18 Co:18 In:10 Wi:15 Ch:10 Neutral
Dlvl:29 $:0 HP:180(180) Pw:56(56) AC:-24 Xp:18/1290174 T:49424 Satiated Burdened
Death text:
Farvel Ahnotahm the Valkyrie...
You choked in Gehennom on dungeon level 29 with 1060530 points,
and 34758 pieces of gold, after 49424 moves.
Killer: wraith corpse
You were level 18 with a maximum of 180 hit points when you choked.

I had four artifact weapons (Mjollnir, Magicbane, Werebane, and Ogresmasher), plus my quest artifact (Orb of Fate) and had dealt with Fort Ludios, Medusa, the quest, and the castle. I also had a set of +2 gray dragon scale mail which I'd made myself (thank you very much), as well as the amulet of reflection and a couple sets of backup scales. Oh, and gauntlets of power for throwing Mjollnir.

The castle was a rough part, as this arch-lich was there and he'd teleport next to me, take one action, then teleport back to the stairs. Unfortunately, "take one action" often meant "summon nasty monsters." Unfortunately, one of the monsters he summoned was a gremlin, which promptly got into the moat and actually filled up the available space, so it was impossible to move. I used the "Elbereth" trick a lot, obviously. I finally got fed up with him enough that I fought my way back to the stairs (where he'd go all the time), chased him up a level or two, and finally took him out.

Anyway, that's enough rambling about NetHack. Bedtime for me. G'night.

The split second before you instantly convulse yourself back into consciousness.


I love biking around on foggy nights. Just you, the misty moonlight, the white road lines, and the occasional brilliant night lights bursting through the trees. It's getting colder, though...

Two news stories surfaced today, right next to each other. They're previews of the features that will appear in the next generation of Internet browsers.

For Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is working on a "stealth mode" that users can activate to make them impossible to track. All data that is saved during a stealth-browsing session is thrown away at the end of the browsing session--cookies, history, browser cache, everything. As Ars Technica puts it:

A variety of implausible usage scenarios are described by Microsoft: looking at banking websites on shared computers or doing Internet shopping to buy gifts without the recipient finding out. The most likely situation, however, is the obvious one. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

Mozilla, on the other hand, is working on something incredibly cool: It's a natural-language command line for your browser, and it's designed to abstract away a lot of the technical details we have to worry about in our everyday Internet lives. (Here's a tutorial for the 0.1 version, which is their current prototype.) For example, if you're browsing somewhere and you find a section of text that's in a foreign language, the current way to translate it is to copy the text to the clipboard, go to Google Translate or somewhere, paste in the text, select the language you're translating from, and click Translate. The new model? Highlight the text, press a hotkey to bring up the command line, and type "translate". Firefox will translate it in-place--the text right on the webpage will change into English. And that's just the first command they came up with.

What they're working towards, obviously, is a Hollywood Computer. Another command they're working on is "email", the syntax for which is "email [message or object] [to person]". Give it a few years; my job will eventually become obsolete because users will just be able to bring up the command line whenever they have a problem and type "fix it". This will eventually stop because computers will begin "fixing it" by summoning Terminators to the residences of people who annoy them; at that point Skynet will take over and it will be the computers giving us commands instead of the other way 'round.

Until then, though, I'm really looking forward to being able to just type "Map all the restaurants in a five-mile radius, put them in order by their user reviews, and send the result to my phone." Or "Download all the music that's linked on this page and make an iTunes playlist out of it." Seriously cool tech. Keep trying, Microsoft!

Update: Fox News has picked up the story and given IE8's new feature a nickname!

GOT YOU, YOU SCARLET TRENCH COATED SEDUCTRESS.

I have a bone to pick with her. She's run off with my hat, and my London lot need their regular supply of its glory. Can anyone lend me £700 for a trip to North Africa? 

I'm looking at you, Snowcat. Do this for me, and I'll let you touch the hat with a special touching stick.

Because my French classes are unable to have UIE acquire the literature books necessary for the class, I found myself having to make time to travel to Europa Bookstore for my foreign language needs. this meant I had to rearrange my schedule and get up bright and early to catch the train to Chicago. Class began at 2pm, so I had plenty of time to get what I needed.

Allow me to now tell you that in order to both save money and to get some exercise, I refuse to take the CTA even when there is torrential rain or a blizzard. You see, it's $3 a ride and UIE is only about a mile from Union Station. $3 a mile seems a bit steep, so I go à pied. I decided I'd do the same to get to Europa. However, Europa is all the way down by the John Hancock building, roughly 2 miles or perhaps 3 from Union Station. I made sure to bedeck myself in shorts and a tank top for this purpose of walking many a mile. I'm unclear as to what image this presents to passersby because I did receive a few odd glances and I know I wasn't imagining it.

Once free of Union Station, I came upon Adams Street overlooking the Chicago River. For once, I wasn't bombarded with its usual putrid stench, which I found rather surprising. I zoomed past slow-walkers, going along at my normal power-walking pace. My sisters and I all developed this ridiculously fast-pace from our mom because of her tendency to all but run to stores from the parking lot. Sadly, this pace was never maintained in the stores. I soon began making a game of overtaking my fellow sidewalkers, with the help of my soothing music inspiring me to keep an even stride. by the way, the Art Institute has a fascinating exhibit on Benin, in case you are interested in visiting.

Michigan Avenue was a melting pot of class and status. the majority were high class women going shopping at Saks and whichever other stores line the magnificent mile (which isn't so magnificent when you walk it with a purpose). Others were pretentious college students who tried very hard to draw attention to themselves with their identical haircuts and massive sunglasses. They like to travel in packs and walk side-by-side down the sidewalk so that you have to veer off into the street and risk getting plowed down by voracious taxi drivers. Long have I wanted to bash upon the hood of their cars and shout, "I'm walking here!"

The other people were tourists, forever clicking away at their cameras, taking pictures of the lovely statues and the ugliness (in my opinion) of Millenium Park. Then, there were the studly men in their crisp business suits. Honestly, you can take the ugliest man, slap him in a suit, and I'd be drooling. I love a good suit! One was particularly handsome in a clean pinstripe. I nearly missed the walk sign due to gazing at him! there were other, like myself, who were in a great hurry and pushed through the crowds in order to be first at the crosswalk. My favorite, however, were the real people. By real, I mean people who didn't feel self-important because they were in Chicago. The people who live there, of course. They are friendly sorts, quick to joke, and yet very blunt and they won't take your crap. The true Chicagoan (which I am not and nor will I ever proclaim myself one since it takes a high degree of ownership and pride) has this sort of attitude. They admire common sense and common decency, and if you possess neither, you will be fated to suffer their anger and retaliation. All this means is keep to your own business and don't act high and mighty. I love to watch the true Chicagoan do his thing. Their clothes are not their Sunday best (like the super shoppers like to wear), and they don't look at you with judgment. They are casual, both in dress and in demeanor. They make eye contact with you and are unafraid to do so. They will talk to you if you inspire them to do so. They do not look about to see who is paying attention to them; they do what they do with or without you. Best yet is you can tell who is the true Chicagoan because when they stroll down the sidewalk they have an air that says, "This is my city." And it truly is.

When I realized the true Chicagoan, it made me smile. My own interactions with them had always been positive (or scary on an entertaining level), and jovial. I felt at ease among them. Well except those two strange ones on the CTA those two times. *cringe*

After what seemed an eternity, I made it to Europa. To my anger, they only had one of the four books I needed. Europa is a quaint bookstore, staffed by the very sort of people you would find in a French class: friendly, yet possessing a certain snobbishness. Trust me on that one, as I have been in many a French class. For some reason beyond me, French students expect a certain dignity and classiness from each other. It's strange, and it has led to me not making and friendships in my classes outside of acquaintenceship, but there it is. And so I live with it. You won't find "real" people in a French class, me included.

On the way back, this time to UIE, I took Wabash rather than Michigan. This road was beautiful, not at all pompous like its neighbor Michigan. However, it remained clear that this was still the land of the upper class. I rounded to Jackson, crossed the river, and found myself in familiar territory, the same corner I step out onto after leaving Union Station: Jackson and Clinton. The fancy people were gone. All you find on this side of the river are UIE students, business folk, and the ever fabulous real people. Clinton to Harrison was home to us. It was our place. And so I walked it, pausing briefly to be of no assistance to a guy who wanted directions to Cermak (I don't know ALL the streets!).

Long ago, I feared walking by the Greyhound station which is always full of less than savory sorts. But today, after being among so many self-important sorts dressed to the nines, I was content to look upon the intimidating folks at the Greyhound station. They were the real people. And oddly, I felt as though they viewed me the same. A mutual respect that led to both of us capable of ignoring each other and not feeling awkward about it. Much the same way you ignore nature as you pass it: it's just part of the background.

UIE was even a sight for my sore eyes (and sore butt at this point)! UIE is for real people--well, as real as college students can be. I might be stretching this here in my good humor. But I went to buy an apple juice and the student cashier was friendly and actually not apathetic. We had a goofy exchange, but it was enough to make me smile. It's the little things.

Sitting on the hard surface of the BSB floor was a deight, also, and I was able to delve into reading Warlock by Wilbur Smith.

My French literature class began at 2pm. Finally, we were able to enter the room when who do I see? Professor Miner! One of the two best French professors UIE has to offer. What really made my day was she was happy to see me, too, and I was able to not see my confidence in speaking my second language flee before my eyes. I successfully said, "J'ai fait une longue promenade à Europa Bookstore!" Which led to stunned questions about the length and if I had truly gone on foot. We chatted a bit as more familiar, yet not so friendly, persons filled the desks.

I nearly groaned aloud when I saw my classmates. These were the same ones I was with for French 201 and 202. Half of them were snobs, who, for some reason never cared for me. One of them in particular looked upon me with hostility that I could not fathom the reason for. I find his French hard to understand, so perhaps I let that show? I'm not sure. Perhaps he found my own French elementary and deemed me not worth his time, which I'd agree with. My spoken French is atrocious and I don't have a perfect ear for it either. But it's no reason to look at me as though I had a third head!

My new French teacher (Prof. Miner was in the previous class) was very nice. She has a good accent, but it seems like she is nervous to teach and has trouble speaking a fluid sentence, one without 50 ums. I am in no way judging, though. Rather, this makes me feel absolutely wonderful. This is because she will be very understanding of her students, and patient as well. In fact, she reminds me of myself because she seems very passionate about her obscure specialization and she makes little inside jokes which she laughs heartily at. I can't begin to tell how many times I've done that with my obscure historical jokes.

The rest of the class, though (or a large handful), was staring at her in much the same way parents usually stare at me. They were judging her, measuring her up, figuring out whether she was worth their respect. Now I remember, they acted like they were happy to see Prof. Miner, but as soon as she was out the door they began to talk badly about her. No doubt they were finding this professor's weakness. I think that is one reason they don't like me: I stick up for the professors or I don't collude in their negative feelings.

I am more often than not on the professor's side, and when I saw their faces and how the professor seemed nervous, it filled me with such anger and I retaliated by listening harder, taking multitudes of notes, and grinning broadly at her jokes followed by a light chuckle. The hostile guy watched me take my notes and when I looked over at him, he was glaring subtly at me with a look that wondered what was I taking notes on. e reminded me of a mean cat that was curious at a distance but vicious up close.

I felt it strange to be so suddenly protective og this teacher, but I think it was because I am proud, at last, to be at UIE. and I refuse to call it UIE anymore. From now on, I'm calling it by its proper name UIC. Originally, I had called it UIE because of the horribly rude and obnoxious students who go there and the mishaps with admissions and advisors, but I now feel it is a disservice to judge UIC by its students. Who are they, after all? It's the professors I need, and thus far they have, for the most part, been absolutely amazing!

I used to despise Chicago, but now, it is a part of me...or rather, I am a part of it. This city ain't so bad after all.

On the other hand, it could just be exhaustion from walking 6-8 miles talking.

Lookit what I am now the proud owner of... A 1/18-scale replica of the Back to the Future Part II DeLorean!









The detail on this thing is top-notch. The gull-wing doors open, the bonnet opens, the wheels fold down to hover, and there's even a flux capacitor in the interior. It's largely made of brushed aluminium - no cheap plastic here. The vehicle weighs around 900g/2 pounds and it definitely looks and feels like a finely-crafted replica and not a cheap toy.

Funnily enough, the store it came from? They had five different DeLorean replicas you could buy. The DeLorean vehicle itself unmodified, a replica from the first movie, a replica from the second movie with hover wheels and a Mr Fusion, a replica from the third movie with vacuum tubes on the bonnet and white-washed wheels, and a replica from the third movie with railroad wheels. Who'd have ever thought there could be so many different DeLoreans.

I was reading the news today when I saw an article about parents who don’t have their kids vaccinated. At first, I was wowed by the immaturity of parents when faced with the realization that other parents don’t have their kids vaccinated. They run away from the kids like they carry the plague. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t vaccinate your kids, but I am saying that parents are morons when they discover their parent friend doesn’t raise their kid the same way they do. Only in America, man, only in America. This all usually occurs in the WASP population, I have found, or variants thereof. White America has a wondrous tendency to overreact about everything that wasn’t dramatic in the first place.

I was reading about the shunned parents whining and I began asking myself why I was reading this article still, after seeing the confirmation of idiot parents right there on the screen before my eyes. Then I read the most ridiculous thing I have seen all day: “Many parents who choose not to vaccinate — often because of fear that autism could be caused by vaccines (though there's no scientific evidence of a connection), or they have other philosophical or religious objections —”. The philosophical and religious reasons don’t bother me. People can believe what they want and practice their beliefs how they want so long as they don’t annoy the crap out of everyone around them, especially me. But the part that made me reread the sentence for fear of having misread was the autism bit.

Excuse me? Is that for real? People don’t want to vaccinate their kids for fear of them contracting autism?! What moron made this claim in the first place, and why are people believing it? Parents of today actually BELIEVE that kids will develop autism (contract it like it was the flu) because they were given vaccines? Is this seriously a concern?

Now, let me ask you: are you vaccinated? Question #2: are your contemporaries vaccinated? Question #3..a very important question, to listen closely and answer truthfully: how many autistic people do you know?

My answers are yes, yes, and none. Holy crap, really?! You mean, all these people have been vaccinated and yet none of them shows any hint of autism? Then, please, tell me why and how this became so great an issue that parents are risking much just to prevent a disorder most autistic kids are born with pre-immunization! “Pardon me, Jane, but did you hear vaccines may cause autism?” “No way, Bob! Forget it! I’d risk my kid getting small pox any day over risking him getting autism.”

Do these parents actually stop to think? Do they actually consider logic anymore? This is absurd. As I read on in the article, my stomach grew tighter and tighter with incredulity. I am not sure if all these parents in the article fear autism as though it were some plague that would create an army of Rain Men that will destroy the world as we know it, but I couldn’t get past the notion anyone would think that and I displaced all those thoughts onto these anti-vaccine parents. Farther down the article I saw the anti-v parents are calling their play dates (which are also retarded) with other anti-v’s a secret society.

No! Secret societies are for people who want to change the world for the better and whose groups are illegal. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids because the risk of autism might be high because of it don’t deserve a secret society. They deserve to be stuck with giant needles! The great thing about this is if we ever get bombarded with some rubella biological weapon, the parents will be fine because their parents had them vaccinated, but the kids will all perish from this earth. Wow, in the time when people fear biological warfare, I think parents get an A+ for smarts on this one. Clearly, they are thinking ahead.

Now, I’m not pro all vaccines. The flu shot is a waste of time, in my opinion. Do you know how many new flu strains there are each year? At best, scientists discover 5 of them. And whichever 5 those are, they make vaccines for. What about the other 100? So all you fools who vaccinate yourselves against the flu better hope you got the right one. I, personally, have never received a flu shot in my life and I have never contracted the flu. But seeing as how I hate doctors, I’d never know if I had it anyway. Some people who get flu shots get sick with the flu, because those vaccines are just weak forms of the flu. Heh, and by saying that I’ll probably get the flu. Oh well. Too bad. It would have been difficult to prevent anyway.

Let me know when they can block every strain the flu like we can block every strain of IP addresses. I bet by that time, they’ll also find the little virus that causes autism because you know it is totally a virus.

Morons!

Cue inevitable fan outrage, and signs that all might be well.

'...any disappointment from the core fans should not be directed toward Fox.'

Something about that phrasing rubs me up the wrong way. Obviously those who were jacked up about the movie since the earliest stages of conception and happen to be on the message boards cited are going to complain the loudest, and Fox might be forgiven for trying to tone down the uproar. But what about the rest of us who enjoyed the original graphic novel and simply want to see a very decent work of fiction done right? Or those who just like the look of the film and don't want to let some legal wrangling stop it from being seen? 

Obviously I'm not saying that Fox should listen to every single fan opinion that exists on the net - anyone who reads Shortpacked knows how irrationally pig-headed any fandom can be - but the idea that Fox thinks only the people who eat and breathe Watchmen can take issue with the prospect of the film being denied a release does not sit well with me. 

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. I probably am. I certainly hope so.

Two good pieces of news in the notebook front:

-> Pulled out the 40 gig from its little case (the one I’ve been using to make it my Debian Slug disk) and looked up the part number on Toshiba’s site. It’s a 5400 RPM, and is the same size as the old Sager and HP disks. I can live with the 100 Meg/sec spec as given, that’s more than I’ll normally draw in most instances, other than installs. The 16 Meg buffer is a *very* nice plus though!

-> Debian ‘lenny 2′ installed just as beautifully as Etch did, with the added bonus of a working wireless card (after getting the firmware setup of course - for which a link to the appropriate instructions was included in the ‘dmesg’ boot sequence). That is a first for me and Linux, and doubly pleased when I discovered that in Linux, I had more hotspots mapped out and with better strengths than in WinXP (most locked though, good move in an apartment building ;) ).

So, new plans:

1) Put 40 gig disk in HP, re-install ‘Lenny 2′ and get wireless up again.

2) 60 gig disk goes in the external case (which is USB-2 and FireWire), re-format with ext3 and FAT16 partitions. Probably 40/20, respectively.

3) Drop a VirtualBox Guest OS (WinXP) on the external disk. See if I can get the old Half-Life games running on it, plus a couple other things that are needed for work (and is only in, or works better with, Windows - like the Exchange webmail, that is a damn sight better to use in IE).

The eventual goal - if this all works - is to look into converting the desktop to Linux, or a Linux/WinXP dual-boot (the latter by dropping in a new SATA disk just for Linux). It will be nice to finally use all 4G of the current system’s memory; It can hold 8G IIRC but I’d have to consider a dual-boot with Vista instead of XP to make that upgrade a more viable reality.

The only major issues I see in the games department are Oblivion (’nuff said) and perhaps Uru (though the CC variant I believe will run on Wine OK). Hence the sad need for a dual-boot - I don’t know if even a Quad-Core will be able to run something like Oblivion in a VM well.

–TSK

PS - As so the NSLU2 ‘Slug’ body, its been put away again. Once I’m happy with Linux on the HP, it can sit on the table when not ‘on duty’ and be used as the long-duration login system. Lord, I did not realize how much I depended on UNIX console access until I actually tried a system without one…

Warning: long rant ahead. Summary: Terrible movie. This movie was a huge disappointment, from the very beginning. I had been wondering, before seeing the film, how Lucasfilm would handle the opening, since the Star Wars movies usually start with the now emblematic text crawl, (which sets the stage for the action in the movie) at the [...]

Yes, yes, been busy, not updating, blah de blah. I'm sure this blogs readers (that's right - BOTH of you) were still able to sleep at night. More artwork from the delicious Steph Jackson, this one being a random three part comic idea I brainstormed a while back. Presented here is her take on the first part. Since she easily gets distracted by shiny things, don't expect the rest anytime soon. If you're nice I might post Back to Reality Chapter 4 tomorrow. Good? Good.









Yes yes.

Remember a few months back when I posted the first part of a three part comic featuring Jules and Ed? Naa? Fair enough. Well, here's the second part. Have fun.















And yes, for the record, I'm a huge fan of City of Death. One of the best stories of the Tom Baker era.