Just Stuff

They’re Coming! They’re Coming!!!

Its finally going to happen! They’re finally coming!

Look here!

Mark your Calendars…place your pre-orders NOW. September 21st is the magic day! The original Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes 4,5, and 6 – The Special Editions, not the original theatrical releases) are finally being released on DVD! A 4 disc set that includes all 3 movies, new footage, behind the scenes stuff…and other goodies.

As all good SW fans know..the SE versions are the only ‘official’ version of the movies now.. Lucas states that the SE is what he intended all along, but the technology wasn’t there when he filmed them originally… with the exception of the whole Greedo shot first thing.. The SEs are basically the same as the original releases.

Anyway.. its good that they are finally being released… Time to go see who is giving the best deal on pre-orders.. and place my order for 2 of ’em…

Just Stuff

Survivor: All Stars

So the second ‘All-Star” was voted off last night

If you watch the show, you know that Tina was the first to go last week, mainly because she had already won. A strategy I understand..but that I think will come back to bite the people using it in the ass.

The all-star voted off this week, was Rudy…so I guess we won’t be seeing him win… unless of course, there is the whole “outcast” tribe like there was in the last survivor….

On the plus side…. all 3 tribes finally (after more then 3 days) have Fire….

Tech

Microsoft’s Anti-Virus Strategy

Since they apparently can’t patch the security holes in their products….

M$ has decided that the most effective way to try and prevent the rampant exploit of the truck sized holes in their code… is to get schools to hang up posters (link here) that warn about viruses, worms, and hackers (if you leave hackers out.. it almost sounds like a sex ed class)….

Of course..this means we’ll see lots of people ‘modifying’ the posters, to make fun of M$… my favorite so far is here. Hey…maybe M$ can put up a big sign like McDonald’s has (you know.. XX billion served).. M$’s could read “150 Billion viruses and flaws in our products… and counting!”

I should set up a rule to forward all the Spam I get because of these viruses/worms to Billy boys mailbox….

Just Stuff

Celebrity Mole: Yucatan

So..there’s only one episode left now

Tonight’s episode narrowed it down to the final 3. You may remember from the previous entry, that Janice picked Tracy Gold as the Mole, while I picked Mark Curry. Since Tracy was ‘executed’ tonight…she was not the Mole. I still think its Mark, but I guess we’ll have to wait a week to find out.

I’ve watched both of the ‘celebrity’ moles that have been aired… and apparently, this is one step above the WB’s Surreal Life as far as TV shows that will take washed up celebrities.. I think the show was more entertaining when it originally aired, and the players were all ‘normal’ people…

Current Events

Janet’s Boob

Everyone else is talking about it… I suppose I should too!

By now… you’ve heard about it…. 183 million or so people saw Janet Jackson’s boob on TV during the half-time show of the SuperBowl on Sunday.

And as usual, since the American media, government, and a good portion of the population are prudes with their heads up their Asses… they are acting like the sight of a boob is the most horrible thing they’ve ever seen… and media in the rest of the world is laughing at the US

I mean.. c’mon people… its a fucking breast… its not like Janet and Justin took off all their clothes and started having sex during the half time show… if the sight of a woman’s breast offends you do you keep your clothes on all the time (if you’re a woman) or make your wife/girlfriend/whatever keep her clothes on all the time (if you’re a man)????

I know people’s response is going to be “it was inappropriate for kids” As a parent… I don’t think it was… why on earth would you want to teach your kids that the body is something to be ashamed of and kept hidden? I could have sworn that the puritan mentality died in the Salem witch hunt. Don’t we have more important things to teach our kids? things like oh.. reading, writing, arithmetic, good grammar, proper english, why canadians on South Park have flappy heads? If seeing an attractive female breast is the worse thing that ever happens to your kid…consider yourself lucky.

I think Janet should have borrowed the words for her apology from a song by Suicidal Tendancies:

“I’m sorry if I offended you, but maybe you needed to be offended, so here’s my apology, and one more thing….FUCK YOU!!!!” (I’m going from memory…so that might not be the exact line…but you get the idea)

I do want to know where I can find that nipple shield though… I think its cool! For those who haven’t seen it yet:

Pasted Graphic

Just Stuff

Survivor: All Stars

So, after the Superbowl.. the new season of Survivor started…

18 past players of the game returned, including Rupert from the last season… poor guy must have only been home for a few weeks before he shipped off to repeat his 39 day stint….

After watching the first episode.. I think I want Rudy (The old guy from the 1st series.former SEAL..absolutely hilarious) or Rupert to win…

Of course.. you’d think that after 6 (7?) shows.. .these people would spend a little time in their backyards learning how to make fire… I mean come on people! Every season starts with the ‘survivors’ needing to build a fire… and these guys are the freaking “Best of the Best”????? they’ve all gone 3 days without fire… not exactly a great showing from the “All-Stars”

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!