Monthly Archives: January 2004

Just Stuff

Netflix

As a birthday present for me, my in-laws all got together and got me a gift subscription to Netflix

We’ve received three movies so far : T3: Rise of the Machines, Bend it like Beckham, and a interactive DVD game called Scourge of Worlds..

While I’ve never seriously considered a Netflix subscription before (I prefer to buy the movies, not rent them). I think its going to be a good thing overall since Kael has come along we haven’t exactly had a lot of time to go to the movies, so this will give us a chance to catch up on what we’ve missed, and I can use it to watch the movies on my ‘maybe’ list so I don’t go out and spend 20 bucks on a movie that ends up being lousy…

However, I don’t like Netflix’s website, its to slow and not intuitive to navigate… so.. I use Netflix Freak (available HERE ). I haven’t ponied up the share ware fee yet, but I will before the trial period runs out. It is a much better interface then the website and adds some cool extra features like the ability to shuffle your rental queue! a must have for any Netflix member (err..provided -of course- that you’re using a Mac….They don’t make a windoze version)

Current Events

Need a Movie?

Pixar is looking for a new distributor for their films…

I guess they spent the last 7 or 8 months trying to negotiate a new deal with Disney.. and couldn’t come to an agreement. From what I’ve read, Pixar was looking for a better deal financially (and rightly so, Pixar releases are the only ‘blockbuster’ movies Disney has had for years…) and Disney didn’t want to change the deal…

Now…if I only had a few million bucks laying around, I could start up my own movie distribution house and negotiate a good deal with Pixar…. to bad…

Tech

Micro$oft takes on kid

I’m sure you’ve heard about this by now… but if not….

There’s a 17 year old Canadian named Mike Rowe. He chose to register a domain for his design business, so he registered mikerowesoft.com (you can see where this is going can’t you?).

So… of course Gates and crew decide that it’s an infringement on their company name, and send the kid a letter stating that he must give up his rights to his own name. He asks them to make him an offer… they offer him 10 bucks for his name.. he replies with make it 10k (or $1,000 depending on which article you read)… a M$ accuses him of registering the name for the sole purpose of charging M$ a lot of money for it..

Yeah..cuz apparently windoze users often type in www.mikerowesoft.com when they really meant billgatesissatan err… I mean www.microsoft.com Hopefully, the kid will ignore M$’s attempts to buy his name.. and he’ll win the court case…

Apple

iLife ’04

Apple released iLife ’04 on the 16th. I’ve been playing with it for the last few days……

And so far, I’m impressed with the improvements made to all of the iApps (iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD…iTunes wasn’t updated with the rest of them, staying at its existing version 4.2).

iPhoto –

The major update is the ability to work with libraries of photos that are in excess of 25,000 pictures without huge wait times. Granted, I only have about 1500 pictures in my library at the moment.. so I still have a ways to go before I hit that size library, but even working with my smaller library has shown speed improvements.

Slideshow improvements – You can now use more then 1 song at a time in your slideshow, and there are a bunch of new transitions to use as you go from one picture to the next.

“Smart Albums” – a feature taken from iTunes’ smart playlists, you set criteria, and the albums automatically update with whatever pictures match your criteria.

Lots of other little improvements, and under the hood stuff to.

iMovie –

 Faster! much faster. New titles (Including the crawling text made famous by the Star Wars movies).

New transitions

The ability to edit your clip on the timeline – And undo anything you might screw up. iMovie is still a Non-destructive editor, which is nice

iDVD –

 The big one here is that the maximum movie size has been extended to 2 hours on a single DVD-R, due to enhanced compression. I haven’t had a chance to play with iDVD yet, so I don’t know if this effects encoding time, although I’d imagine that it does.

New themes, there are a bunch of new themes, and you can add a theme to each different menu page.

GarageBand –

Brand new application, allows anyone to create music, it functions as a full recording/mixing studio. Since I can’t carry a tune.. I don’t think I’ll be doing much with this, but it is fun to play with!

Apple

New version of iBlog

Lifli software has released a new version of iBlog. You can download it here Most of the features in the new version don’t apply to me, since I use the .Mac version of iBlog, and can only create a blog on my .Mac disk space. But one feature that does apply to all iBlog users, is a Auto Abstract feature (which I’m trying on this entry). The Auto Abstract is supposed to create the abstract version of each entry (the part you see on the main page, that has the short information with the “Read More” link.

The AA feature has got a little slider bar, where you control how much of your body entry is used to make up the abstract, anywhere from 1-100%, as well as a check box to enable/disable it. One bug I’ve noticed as I’m creating this entry, is that if part of the body that the AA feature chooses has got a hyperlink in it (in this case, the link to download the updated iBlog) the AA doesn’t keep the link information, just the text. I’ll have to remember to submit that one as a bug.

One feature I’d like to see added to iBlog is some indication to the reader, whether or not there is anything else on the ‘read more’ page. I’ve seen other Blogging software that has information in parentheses after the “read more” link that tells you how many more words, and/or pictures are in the “body” of the entry. I’ve requested the feature from Lifli Software, so who knows, perhaps it will end up getting added at some point in the future.

Just Stuff

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

So, after getting stuck trying to get to ‘the control room’ in HALO, I decided to give Jedi Academy a try.

For those not familiar with the series, it picks up after the last Jedi Knight game (Outcast), instead of reprising the role of Kyle Katarn, you pick up the role of one of the students. Haven’t got very far yet, but so far its an entertaining game. To keep performance up, I did turn down some of the video options, so it looks a little grainy… and its yet another video game that doesn’t take advantage of the full screen on widescreen displays. Must be because its a port of a windoze game..and so few windoze users have wide-format screens….

Now…if I could just find a way to make the deaths of the things I kill with my lightsaber gorier! =)

Just Stuff

Celebrity Mole

So, the first episode of Celebrity Mole aired last night. Since I had to work, we taped it (Man..I miss the PVR features I had with Dish Network..Hurry up TiVo…make a HDTV compatible unit!). And watched it tonight..

since its just the first episode, its hard to say for sure who the mole is (Although, we know its not Ananda Lewis, since she was the first person voted off).

Right now, my hunch is that Mark Curry is the Mole. Janice thinks its Tracy Gold.

So it will be interesting to see how it plays out this season…

Just Stuff

iTunes Music Store

One interesting tidbit that Steve Jobs revealed about the iTMS yesterday during his Macworld keynote, was that 1 customer (he didn’t say who) has spent over $29,000 (yes..that’s 29 THOUSAND dollars) at iTMS since it opened!

All I can say is..DAMN! that’s alot of music

29,000 / .99 = 29292 songs which is 3 of the 40 Gig iPods filled to capacity (ok..so the 3rd would have a little room left on it)

so.. this person has got enough music purchased..to listen to all their music for about 3 months..and never repeat a song!

Way to much spare time (and cash) on their hands…

Apple

MacWorld Announcements

Steve Jobs unveiled a whole slew of new goodies today

Where to begin, where to begin…

1. xServes updated to G5 chips, giving them something like 30 GigaFlops of processing power

2. xServe RAID updated, now supporting up to 3.5 Terabytes of storage (thats a LOT of porn– And it would probably hold quite a bit of other data, should you choose to store your Porn elsewhere)

3. Business card sized mini-iPods, in a variety of colors

4. Final Cut Express 2.0

5. updated versions of all the iApps, except iTunes. And added GarageBand to the mix, which really looks like it will be fun to play with. I’m really looking forward to some of the new features in iMovie and the expanded storage via iDvd (up to 2 hours per disc) will definitely make it easier for me to finally get around to doing something with all the footage of Kael I’ve got laying around.

All in all, a pretty good MW, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the new apps….

Current Events

Busy Day!

Oh where to start… do I talk about Britney’s marriage to some guy she went to school with? The Mars Rover? The Europeans’ still missing Mars craft?

Let’s start with the dumbass down in Florida (click here ) who not only shook her baby (causing Shaken Baby syndrome, cranial bleeding, and eventually death).. but since apparently that wasn’t enough for her.. she also BIT her 10 month old baby on the back, leaving visible bite marks. Then she can’t even keep her story straight to the cops, she apparently thought she had a boyfriend who abused the baby, and then seems to have remembered that she isn’t actually dating anyone. Lock her up, toss the key!

So… that brings us to space exploration! In case you missed it… late last week the European Space Agency landed a rover on Mars…and lost it sometime after it entered the atmosphere.. to date, no attempts to contact it have been successful including a couple of attempts from NASA’s Mars ships (en route to Mars at the time) to pickup the missing rover (Beagle 2) signals as Beagle’s landing site was flown over. Yesterday, our rover landed and today it made contact with us, sending it first pictures. A few days ago, we sent a probe into the tail of a comet to grab a handful of meteor dust so space programs everywhere are busy….maybe we’ll end up back on the moon soon.

and of course…Britney Spears tied the knot early this morning to a childhood friend….of course the article states that she’s going to have the wedding annulled, and mentions rumors of her being so drunk that she couldn’t walk…. wonder if she had a chance to consummate her marriage before she passed out into a drunken stupor?

(you can find links to all these articles on CNN.com, and probably every other news site out there)