Happy Halloween. I don't have too much time to write this entry, but in the spirit of Halloween I just wanted to mention a decent "documentary" from the other day on AMC about the 20 scariest movies of all-time, called appropriately enough "Entertainment Weekly's 20 Scariest Movies of All-time". I am unsure when it will be replayed again (or even if it was made this year), but Bruce Campbell hosted it with his usual wry humor. Their top 20 movies of all-time in no particular order to follow:
Evil Dead
The Exorcist
An American Werewolf in London
Carrie
Psycho
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Jaws
Lost Highway
The Hitcher
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The Omen
Se7en
The Shining
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Poltergeist
Silence of the Lambs
Night of the Living Dead
The Thing
Halloween
I've seen at least part of 17 of these movies and have a memory of the entirety of 14 of them. It is hard to argue with this list (at least if you live in America). Two movies out this weekend may make this list (Saw, The Grudge). My big quibble is with Lost Highway, which even if I totally understood it has no place on this list, though it does have one of the great freaky scenes of all-time (Just imagine an albino midget standing in front of you while a voice on the phone tells you "I'm in your house, right, now". I suspect Henry: The Portrait of a Serial Killer also does not belong on this list. I would replace those two with The Ring and The Blair Witch Project, but admittedly, neither one of those movies would crack the top ten of this list.
Update: The Sixth Sense also deserves to be on this list.
The largest and thus most influential paper in the swing state that could decide the presidential election (yeah, yeah - how do you separate FL, PA, and OH?) has chosen not to endorse a candidate (loading a Salon ad and walking away for a bagel may be required). The first person I mentioned it to thought it was honorable for a paper during some a contentious contest to allow the readers to form their own opinions. That is one way to look at it. Another is that when even people who live in the area and should be well-versed in the issues important to it cannot decide who to vote for, what chance does the average voter have?
Note: Yeah, the article claims the publisher overruled the editorial board, but all we know for sure is the final result.
I never look at the Chronicle online. Nowadays I can't even think of any particular Duke site I visit. I learned about Nelson's injury from ESPN (though we still have the meaningless title of best starting five in basketball). Apparently, someone does read the Chronicle since they posted an article on kuroshin about an apparent uproar over an editorial about "The Jews". I haven't actually read any of this at the moment, but I just want to assure the world Duke is not an anti-Semitic location. While any community composed of diverse individuals will have diverse opinions, the University is generally an accepting and open place. Hopefully, if there indeed is an uproar, it will not leave a negative impression of the University.
Apparently Ashlee Simpson was a victim of a "technical malfunction" during her appearance on SNL this past weekend. For her second song, the band played "Autobiography" while the voice track for her first song, "Pieces of Me" was played over it. After about 30 seconds, Ashlee just walked off stage and SNL cut to commercial.
Watch the video here. I think Ashlee... is confused.
As someone who has been meaning to get their passport renewed for a while now, I definitely will hurry to do so before the end of the year. Why you ask? Well, apparently any yahoo will be able to walk by your passport and get your name, address, date of birth, etc. once unencrypted RFID tags are integrated with them starting next year. Make no mistake - this is a very bad idea. Admittedly, mass encryption schemes with TSA employees in charge would be ticking time bombs of failure, but at least provide some challenge to the naive stalker / thief. This really seems like the wrong technology for the job. Whatever happened to smart cards?
In a move that challenges the principles of movie distribution, the NY Post reports that the movie Noel will be released in theaters on the same day a disposable DVD is made available on Amazon for purchase, with a one time airing of the feature to follow on TNT two weeks later. The company behind this 48 hour DVD is the Atlanta-based Flexplay (bought by the Convex Group).
I am all for new modes (or at least models) of distribution, but for someone who now sees a Blockbuster rental at a little less than $4 with tax (when coupons are unavailable) as a little pricey, $5 (what about shipping without adding items to your cart?) seems like an interesting price point for a rental one will be receiving a few days after ordering. I'd much rather see VOD for a reasonable price ($1 or $2 per movie). Additionally, though I have no idea what percentage of the population is savvy enough to do this, what prevents one from just copying this DVD (besides ethical standards)? Recordable DVD media can be had a quarter each in bulk (yes, I do not believe dual-layered) so how much sense does it even make to produce disposable DVD's? I doubt the disc has any decent circumvention-prevention mechanisms since that usually means breaking the standard and making the disc unplayable on a large number of DVD players.
I am currently too tired to write a dissertation on the importance of sports in society (Go NL! (~crying)) However, perhaps sports really should decide everything (as someone suggested about the recent Olympics and the war and their original purpose when Athens played Sparta) instead of everyone wasting their time to stop at the voting booth. Apparently since the inception of the Washington Redskins in 1936 (aka since they moved from Boston), their performance in their last home game before a presidential election has predicted the incumbent party's fortune - 17 straight times. As the author points out, if you look hard enough in a set of data one is bound to find a pattern (such as no MLB team ever coming back from 3 down in a best of 7, grrrrrrr), but if one truly believes these events are independent and not factoring in how good the Redskins usually are versus how often an incumbent gets re-elected, the odds of this occurring any given time is 1 to 1. Thus the odds of this occurring 17 straight times is 1 in 131072 - not amazing, but exceptional. The last home game for the Redskins before the election this year is on Halloween against the Packers, so root accordingly.
Taking a look through the referrer logs, apparently someone came to our little neck of the wires via a site called IconSurf. They apparently list sites by their icons which they randomly(?) pulled off the net. I am amazed that anyone would click on the extremely poorly done icon for this site that you should be able to see to the left of this address in your browser taskbar. I would say since the inception of this site an idea for a better design has been tossed around. Btw, I feel other sites are cheating by having icons with greater resolutions than suggested. Boycott them! Boycott them all!
I just received my invitation to join Rojo during their beta. It's a long (or short) story about how I heard about them - one of their developers was working on a project that was very similar to an idea I (and I am sure A LOT) of people have had. One of those ideas that makes so much sense that I don't know why it isn't already developed. Rojo is on the path to that idea, but not quite there. Basically Rojo is a web service that sorts incoming news for you into whatever categories you want (or you can use their default presets). There is more to it than that, but admittedly I haven't thought too much about it in a while and I haven't even read a story yet after picking my default categories.
The reason I post this is because part of Rojo is flagging stories to share with contacts and since I am too lazy at this moment to search for contacts, I am announcing to the world that I am available for contacting. Also my understanding is that when they begin to grow I might be able to issue invitations, so if anyone wants to get in the queue, let me know (via comments).
Who knew that dogfighting was illegal in Oregon? Who knew that you could get suspended from your job merely for being investigated for a crime? Who knew that NBA players get paid during the pre-season?
If this would have been any other team besides the JailBlazers, I would be up in arms about a player's premature suspension by a team. When you are the only pro team in town and every member of your team has either a drug arrest or domestic battery charges on their record, a player really has to stay well above criminal suspicion.
Btw, this is in interesting contrast to the Baltimore Ravens who made Jamal Lewis their captain for his last game before serving a league-mandated suspension for pleading guilty to facilitating a drug deal that will require a 4 month prison stay during the off-season. The Baltimore Ravens - sending a strong message to the kids.
We've been really trying to avoid politics, but this is too funny / sad. Monday, Edwards said while stumping in Iowa: "People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again with stem cell research." Isn't this a little crass to say the day after Reeves passes away? Yes, he did mention Reeves death prior to this comment. Despite his great over-simplification of a complicated issue, couldn't he have still phrased this better?
(yes, stolen from Wizbang)
For a person who actually bought Eminem's last album (and saw 8 Mile), I was actually amazed to discover that he has apparently released a new album / single. Just goes to show that I am out of the MTV loop. So how did I find out about it? Michael Jackson may sue over it. Watch 'Just Lose It' before Viacom pulls it off MTV like BET. While I love some of his previous work, this song is all retread. Plus taking on Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Pee Wee Herman - how bold! And 1980's!
Additionally, will Paris Hilton soon take over all media? She had a forgettable stint last week on (the surprisingly good) Veronica Mars and has a needless cameo in this video.
Update: Apparently, MTV believes they can make more money off Enimem and will keep the video on the air.
I used to pride myself as a man who did not want too many material things, but recently the list of items to purchase keeps getting bigger and bigger. If only I could throw some kind of big gala celebration, where people would be compelled to fly in from around the nation to bring me gifts... jk. Perhaps the least justifiable thing I want at the moment is a LCD widescreen HDTV monitor (yes, apparently people do make non-widescreen LCD HDTV monitors).
First, I'm still using a 17 inch Dell monitor from 1996. It has been extremely faithful, but it is a little big, which eats up real-estate on even my largish desk and puts the thing next to my eyeballs. Additionally, I'm typing this on a widescreen LCD laptop monitor which is just a beauty to interact with and something I want to become accustomed to all the time. For programming and reading LCD's are just terrific plus widescreen should just be the way everything should be. Additionally since I am a man who loves to combine things a TV would be just great for the bedroom. A decent size TV right there against the wall away from my bed, thus greater than 20 inches would be nice with no numbers/measurements to justify this decision. There is a furniture constraint that limits the size to about a 30 inch screen (yes, the $150 piece of furniture will factor into the decision), but honestly with prices the way they are it shouldn't be much of a problem. Yes, LCD's are getting cheaper all the time, but they are still not cheap. Oh, a last thing, why HDTV? My previous article made no mention of HDTV and in fact this monitor is going in my bedroom. Well, in a move to copy someone I know and to let freedom ring before the copy protection flag comes into effect, I was going to build a HDTV DVR and stick an antenna out the window. Do I have absolutely any idea what HDTV channels are available? No, absolutely none, but hey, I expect to keep this monitor for a while so at some point HDTV will become pervasive or Blu-ray DVD's will be out.
So keeping in mind my criteria and the little issue of money, what god-like devices satisfy my demands? Quite honestly, even removing the money issue leaves no perfect choices. The 23 inch Apple Cinema HD display seems like an ideal solution (20 inch doesn't seem capable of HD and the 30 inch needs a pretty powerful graphics card), but it is not really a TV. It would be terrific as a monitor, but it is not very TV-like. No remote or tuner (though admittedly the box could control these aspects, but I need a shutoff timer and I'm unsure whether there is some hack available to provide this. Plus the $2000 price point is not terrific, though it could be had for a little less at places besides Apple. Yes, one could save a few hundred by buying the older model, but new is just the way to go.
When price is a concern, Dell should be considered, and indeed they do have a line of LCD widescreen TV's. In fact they currently have a sale (they always do) which makes the 23" only $1049 and the 26" $1649. Quite honestly I can't hope for much better on the price. Why don't I jump on the deal? Well, because I don't believe they would make very good monitors. Their native resolutions are 1280 by 768 and I've read it is not a good idea to run an LCD monitor at something besides its native resolution since the picture will just look terrible. To give one some idea the 15.1" monitor I'm using right now is 1280 by 854. I don't plan to be across the room when using it as a monitor so this seems a little unacceptable. The apple's run at 1900 by 1200. I've even seen these LCD TV's in action at Dell mall stores where they were setup so badly I can't believe anyone would buy them even for TV, but I am definitely convinced they are TV's and not monitors.
There are some other players in the game. HP has a 23" monitor (review) that sounds a lot like the Apple. I even saw it at a Best Buy where the salesperson was quick to tell me the Apple was better (at only $100) more. Take away the USB / firewire hub and i wonder if they really are any differences.
All the other brands I've looked at have the same problem of being too much TV or monitor. Even Sony doesn't have an offering which is on the nose. I'll eventually have to sacrifice one of my criteria I imagine or suck up a deficiency, but one thing about technology is that there is always something new to be desired.
This will be the greatly shortened version of this story about how great technological dreams are shattered. Though I've lived on my own for years, this was my first opportunity to choose all the technological options from a clean slate (especially since the other party wanted no part of it). Immediately, road blocks were hit.
I decided this was a VoIP world (perhaps somewhat irrationally) since I was planning on making a lot of long distance calls during the day for work, so my cell phone plan (which I need to change) and regular phone service did not seem like great options. Ironically, this made DSL a less attractive option for broadband since without a phone line one cannot even get an accurate price on the web for the service - I even ended up just choosing a number in the complex). However, I've always had a great experience with cable, so that was the way I was leaning anyhow. The catch: I had my heart set on DirecTV (which I really plan to order tomorrow) to get Panthers games with NFL Ticket (Duke games should also fall in line) plus a very hackable DirecTV Tivo. Adelphia was running an ok deal, so I started with basic cable and modem figuring I would cancel the former and after 6 months pay $10 more for the latter. Unfortunately, I have come to learn that the service isn't as fast as I'm used to (though it does stick to the terms of what I ordered, damn tiered pricing). What makes the cable modem even more of a hassle is that I bought it out-right for $10 (it was free the next week), and I calculated afterwards that even counting gas and time at 0 with taxes thrown in I'll have to use it past my contract to save a dime. I can't even find a decent way to hack it since especially in Ohio they frown on that sort of thing.
I came into this deal already with a cable/router, but needed wireless. What made this even more interesting was the (perhaps ill-thought out) belief that the cable modem / router should be in my bedroom where it will be near 3 (or more) computers as opposed to by the TV where my soon-to-be less-used ReplayTV resides. Especially since I was not using local phone service (and thus wiring), it needed to be connected to the Internet. That is where the fun begins. It turns out a wireless access point, a device which I still figure is dumper than a router, is needed to make my Replay wireless (since its USB ports have yet to be activated by Sonic Blue after years of promises). However, this device is significantly more expensive than a router, especially with the current sales. Thus the trickiness, the trickeration, of using a second router as an AP. First, despite the protests of Netgear, I read online that their wireless g routers could be bridged. This goes to prove do not believe everything you read on the Internet, perhaps a smarter (or at least more patient) person than I could get this to work, but even the person who made the claim later emailed me to say he had no idea how to do this. Fortunately, I did return them exactly 30 days after purchase without penalty - good thing I didn't attempt to send off the rebates. Then I bought 2 Belkin routers for a theoretical $6 each (really like $41, I'll never see that rebate money since they shipped it late to me), which actually did this bridging. Yes, it took hours of manipulation even though it was mentioned in the manual, mainly because one cannot bridge them with WPA encryption. Yes, so for any real hackers out there I have a sign written in WEP saying "steal my bandwidth" - though broadcast is turned off so perhaps they'll have to be a little cleverer to accomplish the feat. The goal of this exercise was to perhaps save $40 after wasting A LOT of time and energy.
Like is good. I hooked up Vonage with a Linksys phone adapter (another rebate I'll never get). I attempted to use a "friend recommendation" to get a discount - which didn't seem to work since I had already bought the adapter and did not need it shipped. Shortly after they dropped the price of the service - I will fight unreasonably long if they attempt to charge me that extra $5, both on new customer and "friend recommendation" grounds. Great service, except I need to use my p2p and Adelphia is not lying about my upstream bandwidth. I apparently sound like I'm using a string and a tin can while on the moon if I try to use Vonage with p2p going full speed. What would be great is QoS to give my phone traffic (in fact, just that Ethernet port / address, if not VoIP) highest priority. Wait, that exists since the Belkin is just like the Linksys version, and that company (now Cisco) has released its modified linux firmware - heck, I, Cringely mentioned it. Sveasoft releases what I hear is an excellent firmware update for it that includes QoS. Heck, there is even the BatBox and HyperWRT distributions which adds some features. Unfortunately, the Sveasoft developer(s?) says Belkin has not been playing ball. I can totally understand concentrating on Linksys/Cisco since it is the much larger market and a company that sees the benefit of helping people contribute to their project (in order to incorporate their ideas), but the Belkins are so damn cheap. I honestly don't believe I have the skill set / time to learn the skill set to do anything about the problem, but I will contact the Belkin representative they mention.
Anyway, short of buying a lot more bandwidth or another device, I have to run to throttle my p2p when I get an incoming phone call at the moment. What is frustrating is I know the technology is there, the devices are just not effectively talking to each other right now. Plus their is the additional frustration of having no idea at what price to value my time.
A while ago the eulogy for the first computer I ever built was posted on this site (which reminds me of the time years ago when I heard a kid down the street had built his own computer and the first thought that came to my mind was "Really, he soldered transistors, resistors, etc. altogether? WOW" - no , kids, it is a lot simpler than that and getting simpler all the time). Well, my diagnosis of a vaporized motherboard was way off the mark (which if I had concentrated more on the symptoms of black smoke and a recent occasional inability to quickly restart the machine would have more directly led me to the proper cause of a melted power supply), but geeks should not look too poorly on me for this mistake since a) it was the first computer I built, b) the motherboard unfortunately has known problems which is why my USB is flaky at best, and most importantly c) after 4 years, I just wanted a new motherboard, aka computer.
Well, I, of course, spent a significant amount of effort and time in designing my new machine with better or worse financial resources than previously depending on how one would like to look at it and with a slightly more evolved understanding of the machine's purpose (Development, p2p, video editing, and DVD authoring (of course, surfing, email, rss, etc.) with as much multi-tasking as possible). Quite honestly, it had to be good, but not the most unbelievable machine of all-time - a game more advanced that FreeCell has not been found in the memory of one of my machines in ages so no fps's and I've given up on the SETI @ home race in practice if not principle years ago. Thus the goal was value and some upgrade path in the future. In the last 4 years I really hadn't kept a close eye on the latest and greatest in the PC game, so it was a bit of a learning curve. AMD was good to be last time out and though it wasn't going to buy me much now, I was going to go with a 64 bit processor (and Suse 9.1 to eventually dual-boot with Windows 64-bit). Socket 939 was a bit too expensive (yeah, I know, I know, right around the corner it is going to fall in price, but that is always the case), so I decided on a socket 754 and to pray that AMD wouldn't leave me out in the cold a couple of years from now (let's be honest, I'd probably just buy a new motherboard / CPU anyway). The motherboard was actually the hardest part to choose since I'm no overclocking fiend and only people who get that 1 in 1000 freak board that would only run their memory at the lowest speed and worships the devil ever bother to post their experience on the Internet. I priced the components at CompUSA, Best Buy, and even a local computer store (wow, who goes to these stores? The guy was only willing to sell me OEM parts at greater than retail without any warranty. I even mentioned Newegg to the guy....). Right before pushing the button on my Newegg on-the-edge-of-an-uncomfortable-wallet shopping cart, I decided to do some simple tests with the board and power supply, even using my really old, doorstop computer. It quickly became apparent that the power supply was the problem. Even more so when I did exactly what they tell you not to do and opened it up to reveal the blackness inside.... the terrible blackness. Btw, does anyone have an idea where to get rid of old computer parts, such as a worthless power supply, in NE Ohio? After a longer than necessary trip to CompUSA, I had a power supply that I paid a little more for to be a little silenter (which it wasn't, I'm tempted to bring it back or perhaps buy the no-name CompUSA brand they sell to see if it is any worse) which brought the dead back to life. Unfortunately, I've been thinking for a while now I should upgrade / rebuild this computer and now I am convinced it must be done. Unfortunately, the only parts I plan to salvage are the drives, so I wonder if I should a) sell the old computer after putting a cheap hard drive in it, b) sell it piecemeal, or c) just keep it around as clutter like I and generations of my family tend to do. I'll let the world know when I've made my decision.
Today marks the anniversary of the birth of a special girl. She has had an amazing year and is climbing her way up the ladder of her chosen profession. Yes, Happy Birthday, Michelle Wie!
Oh, today also marks the birthday of someone who is really making it in the entertainment industry despite her young age and can occasionally play the funny role. Yes, Happy Birthday, Michelle Trachtenberg!
Oh, today is also the birthday of my sister and part namesake of this site. May she have a good trip to that overly-discovered country, Italy.
Congratulations to Duke for winning their first football game of the year! Especially since it avoided the depression of losing homecoming (again). The credit for this victory has to go to the schedule maker for having the foresight to put a division I-AA military school on the sheet in a year where we won't get our lone victory against a division I-A military school. Though I will claim that we are better than UNC - I don't know how they managed to beat GT a couple of weeks ago. Was someone paid off? This victory does gets Duke off the Bottom 10 - since rules are rules and a victory (despite division) automatically gets a team off the list for a week.
Btw, for those who might think Duke was running up the score by scoring on a 83 yard touchdown run on the last play of the game when up by 11, stupid Citadel called a timeout with 30+ seconds left leaving Duke with a 3rd and 5. Why we had to recover the onside kick afterwards, I have no idea.
In honor of that blessed period between the pleasant experience of a Bar examination and the unveiling of its results here is a story on Snopes about an incident that occurred over a decade ago during the California Bar. The analysis offers a lovely defense of the legal profession, but in a frightful trend on their wonderful site (usually involving political legends), their determination is incorrect even by their own research (the story should be marked "mixed" though it shades to "true" - definitely not totally "false"). A group of students were given no special consideration for saving a man's life during the test except for upon petition the segment that was interrupted was not counted against them if it did not help their final score. I'm sure some of the readers of this site will agree that not all sections of the Bar are created equal plus worrying about this for the next two days of test taking can not help one's final score. Everyone should think of what they would have done in the same situation. EVERYONE!