October 30, 2003
Snow Days
October 28, 2003
The Elegant Universe
Tonight's episode of NOVA is the first of two parts called The Elegant Universe. It's about string theory and is hosted by Brian Greene. That's all I know about it, but it sounds really cool and PBS seems to have gone all out on this one. You can even download the episode after it airs.
October 27, 2003
Misery
It rained all day today, I was soaking wet and cold, it sucked. And it was really busy, I was running around like a maniac. A maniac I tell you! Then there was this lady who couldn't decide if she wanted to sign for this envelope, she oohed and aahed about it for a good ten minutes. I felt like smacking her, I so didn't have time for people like that. Now I'm nice and warm and dry and I'm happy. For now. It's supposed to snow tomorrow. Gag!
October 25, 2003
It's not a tumor!
Dinosaurs get the coolest names. Gorgosaurus. Tyrannosaurus rex. What do us humans get? Homo sapiens. How gay, it's not fair.
October 24, 2003
City of Calgary Suckage
Yea, it's the weekend! I just got a letter from the city whining about my insurance expiring. Bastards! I tried to get some quotes during the week, but nobody was offering this type of insurance. I got some suggestions for places to check out though. I was going to bother John at Kamikaze Courier to see what insurance company he is using, but he uses the same insurance company as me and his insurance hasn't come up for renewal yet. I can't wait till this is taken care of, it's such a pain in the ass.
October 21, 2003
Max Payne 2
Four Fat Chicks review Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. Sounds pretty good. Played the first one, great game. Hated the end tho, had trouble hitting that last wire, had to reload a hundred fucking times. Otherwise, it rocked.
Infuriating dream sequences nearly ruined the first game, adding ridiculous (and insanely difficult) jumping puzzles to a game in which they had no place; again conscientiously respecting the feedback from fans, Max Payne 2 does sport dream sequences but with a drastic reduction to the frustrating mazes and jumping puzzles. No one minded the dreams as such, just that they were jarring and clumsy. The opportunity to explore the internals of Max's mind is actually kind of cool, and new graphics make the dream visuals very compelling.
I loved the dream sequences in the first game! I thought they were well done, fun and took you into a different, nightmarish world instead of the oh-so-familiar constant shootfest. And I didn't find them that difficult at all, quite easy actually. The part where Max is wired on drugs was damned hilarious as well. I haven't played a shooter for awhile, I think the last one was either Medal of Honor or Soldier of Fortune, both good games. Maybe I'll check this one out...
October 20, 2003
My RSS Feeds
I've pretty well finished working on my scripts for RSS feeds. I know it probably would have been a lot easier to just use an rss aggregator but it was kinda fun figuring out how to do it with perl. Kinda. The only problem I'm not sure I dealt with is when a feed is unavailable, it causes an error. The first time it happened I was going through my scripts trying to find out what the hell went wrong because it was working fine five minutes earlier. I wrote some code to catch the error and just skip feeds that don't work, but I don't know if it actually works. The feeds should refresh when the html file is older than one hour. The entertainment and news ones have basically nothing in them, I was just using them to test stuff.
So I just need to tweak some things and add more feeds. And sleep. I really need to go to sleep.
Update: nope, the script still crashes if the rss page fails to load. Damn, I'll have to work on that. I think I know where I went wrong. I only checked to see if it got the feed, but the problem probably occured when it tries to parse the faulty xml. Hopefully the parsing routine returns false [0] if it fails and I can use that to skip to the next feed. I hope. Nope, that still didn't help! Damn. Loading the bad xml url, I get "An invalid character was found in text content." Mmmmm, how to get around this?
October 17, 2003
Cargo Bond
I am so mad today. I've been waiting for the renewal notice from my insurance company in regards to my cargo bond needed for work. It's a requirement the City of Calgary insists on if you want to work as a bike courier. Well, today I got a letter from the insurance company saying they are declining my account because they are no longer servicing accounts under $5000.00. Argh! I've always paid my premiums on time and I've never made a claim, and I'm not likely to, the only reason I have the damn thing is to keep those paper pushers at city hall happy. But no, I'm too fucking small.
So now I have to track down some insurance companies that will offer this kind of coverage and compare quotes. And I'll probably pay more because if you're a new customer with an insurance company, they see it as an opportunity to gauge the fuck out of you. This has to happen now, right when things are starting to pick up. I'll have to take some time to run around and deal with this bullshit. I hate insurance companies, the bastards. You give them all this money and what do you get in return? A piece of paper. A measly piece of paper. Oh, the agony.
I am so depressed.
October 16, 2003
Perl
I'm getting a perl database error, an error window keeps popping up saying "perl caused an invalid page fault in DB_FILE.DLL". Groan.
Update: I simply re-installed the DB_FILE package using PPM and it seems to have fixed the error. When errors go away that easily, it makes me a little nervous. I'm used to banging my head against the wall for hours till I find the answer staring me in the face at two o'clock in the morning. And it's usually something really obvious that I should have noticed from the very start. Oh well, I guess I lucked out this time.
October 15, 2003
Angel
I thought the season opener [Angel] was great, but last weeks episode was rather lackluster. Then this weeks installment was not bad, not bad at all. They introduced a new character, Nina, a hot lycanthropic babe who might turn out to be Angel's love interest for the season. Spike's character didn't do much in this one, but it looks like next week is going to be a "Spike" centered episode, promising graphic images [?] and partial nudity. Woohoo! Then again, it'll probably be Spike pulling a Harvey Keitel.
And last week's episode pulled in 5.1 million viewers, up 21% over last year's second episode. Cool, maybe there'll be a sixth season.
A "I'm a monster too."
N "Like a... Frankenstein?"
A "What?! No!"
Sleeping Florida Boy Has 4 Fingers Gnawed Off By Family Dog
Fingers found in dog's stomach.
"I'll be OK. I can still play video games with one hand," he said.
Man steals ID of sex offender
A man convicted of drunk driving offences decides to steal the identity of his next door neighbour to get his driving license. Little known to him, his neighbour is a sex offender, hilarity ensues.
October 13, 2003
RSS Feeds
I've been messing with my RSS feeds page today. It could still use some tweaking but it's getting a bit better. Check it out. I got a form set up for adding feeds. Now I think I'm going to have to add specialized pages for different topics. And I think it still needs to be streamlined a bit to fit more snugly onto one page. The urls Blogdex places in their descriptions screws up my formatting as well. I wish they wouldn't do that.
October 11, 2003
Kohan
I just finished the game Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. It was OK, not great. Most of the game was very easy, except for the final scenario which was rather tough. The main problem I had with the game was its oversimplification. The resource gathering was abstracted to building improvements into your city and capturing mines. Battles were also simplified to the point of attack/flee. You couldn't apply any tactics, it was simply attack or don't attack. And if you fled, you couldn't control your movement until after the unit reached a rally point, rather frustrating if he was fleeing into trouble.
It was different from your typical RTS [real-time strategy] game. Balancing the collection of resources against the drain of resources required by your army was probably the most interesting part of the game. But once that novelty wore off, there wasn't much of interest left. The graphics and sound were serviceable and it did have more of a story going for it than say Rise of Nations. [which had much better gameplay tho] There were also the odd short cut scenes interspersed between scenarios. Let's hope their next game [Kings of War] has a little more meat to it.
Pictures
The first two pics are of the lion sitting in front of city hall. There used to a couple lions on the Centre Street bridge that dated from 1916. They were showing their age, so the city had them removed and replaced when they renovated the bridge last year[?]. They repaired this one and stuck it in front of city hall. I'm not sure but I think the other one is still in storage somewhere. I like this lion, it's a lot nicer than many of the sculptures in front of buildings downtown. Most are big, abstract turds.
The big ribbon is in Banker's Hall and is part of a fundraiser for breast cancer. It's huge! If this was an Omen movie, that big pin would fall out and impale a priest to the floor. Unfortunately, no such spectacle was observed. Yet. I'm still hoping.
Tracking Visitors
It's funny how I get a flurry of hits on certain subjects. First it was on the error involving MSN Messenger. I was getting a bunch of hits on this thing after making a couple entries on how I couldn't even solve the issue and had to rely on Trillian to do the IM thing. I wish I had the answers to help these lost souls. Too bad Microsoft couldn't be bothered to fix it themselves, their help on this problem was less than useless.
Then there's the Terra boot story. They're caving to pressure and pulling the ads. Lamers. I thought the ads were just fine. And I've seen a lot worse as far as having scantilly clad women hawking wares. C'est la vie, I guess.
Jackass the Movie
I missed the first half hour of this movie, but holy shit is it ever fucked up! These have to be the stupidest people ever assembled to make a movie. Some parts are pretty hard to watch, like the papercuts to the corners of his mouth. Eeek! At the same time, it was damned funny sometimes, like the old man shoplifting prank. If you can stomach it, there's a lot of puking, bleeding, bruising, naked feces-covered hilarity in this movie.
October 07, 2003
Speed Test
My computer was running really sluggish, so I re-booted and ran a speed test. Check it out:
2003-10-07 23:13:50 EST: 3384 / 500
Your download speed : 3384946 bps, or 3384 kbps.
A 413.2 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 500000 bps, or 500 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!
Wow, I think that's the highest upload speed I've ever clocked! Probably an error, I would think. At least I know my net connection is healthy. Oops, I guess the upload speed is in kilobits, not kilobytes. Nevermind.
Nice Boots
The Manitoba Federation of Labour is calling for a boycott of the Terra boot company because of its racy ad campaign using scantily clad women to sell their boots. Personally, I don't see anything terribly wrong with them. They're kinda funny and they grab your attention, making you wonder what the hell they're selling. What, should they be forced to use really ugly guys to sell their boots?
There's a couple more ads here. Also, their main site has a video called "The Protector" that actually shows boobies! Oh, the horror!
Terra is an official supplier to Canada's Department of National Defence. DND spokesman Jae Milana confirms Terra does have a contract with the government, says he doesn't know the length of that contract, and he couldn't say whether the department will continue to do business with Terra.
Dead Awake
Just started watching this movie but I have to go to sleep, got to work tomorrow. [ironically, this movie is about an insomniac] Too bad, this movie seems pretty good so far, hopefully I can catch it when it plays again. [Movie Channel] The weird thing is that it stars Stephen Baldwin, who I don't particularily like, most of his movies are crap. But this movie seems pretty cool, especially Michael Ironside as some wacked out bum rambling about midgets, circuses and paedophilia.
October 06, 2003
Weather Script
I fixed my weather script for like the millionth time. I think they keep changing their page just to piss me off.
October 05, 2003
Unfaithful
Spoilers, but who cares, this movie doesn't have any surprises.
Watched Unfaithful on the movie channel tonight. I had rather high hopes for this thing. Diane Lane was nominated for an Oscar for this movie and hey, it got a 6.7 rating on IMDB. Well, the first hour of this movie is simply Diane Lane's character, Connie, cheating on her husband [played by Richard Gere] with some obnoxious, self-centered Frenchman. Oh Hollywood, always breaking those stereotypes. I heard the French original that this movie is based on didn't even show much of the wife's affair. Oh, if only they had spared us that torment in this movie.
Connie is not a sympathetic character. She is as self-centered, obnoxious and uninteresting as her conceited, fake lover. We are made to watch these fucking bozos for a full fucking hour. Oh the agony.
Then the viewpoint seems to shift to the husband as he [surprise, surprise] finds out about the affair. And when he wacks the boyfriend upside the head [truly hilarious, best part of the movie] I thought the movie would begin to pick up and actually go somewhere. It doesn't. It just drones on for a bit and then abruptly ends. By the end of this movie I hated the wife, the husband, the lover. The kid was ok, hopefully he can find a nice foster home to take care of him.
The way she meets Paul, loverboy, is so contrived, it's laughable. And when Gere gets into an accident that fucks up his trunk lid just when he happens to have a body in it, contrived. And when an employee from Gere's company just happens to be having lunch where Connie is making out with Paul... well, one or two of these things would be believable, but this movie just piles them on, one after the other. Gag.
I was hoping to sympathize with Gere's character at the midway point of this movie, but except for the bashing-in-Paul's-melon part, he sucked. I mean, he seems to totally forgive his wife after he hears her message on Paul's answering machine [how convenient was that!] but she never really comes clean with him, never confesses, or says she's sorry or asks for forgiveness. He's just a pathetic, little wus. Well, except for the head-bashing part. And the only reason she goes back to her husband is because she caught her lover cheating on her with another woman. And how fucked up is that, seeing as she is cheating on her husband with him. Then she keeps on lying to her husband. And he lies to the police to cover her ass. Oh god, I hate these people. Where's the excess violence when we need it the most?
Yeah, I hated this movie. It's just as bad as Swimfan, but at least Swimfan was so bad it was funny. This turkey just bored me to tears in the most irritating way.
October 04, 2003
wait a second, it may not be a part of the show
Roy Horn of 'Siegfried & Roy' was attacked by a white tiger during a performance in Las Vegas and is in critical condition. Weird, they've been doing this show for 30 years with no problems. And it was his 59th birthday. Bummer.
"Everyone there I think , thought it was part of the act, because no one really freaked out," Kirk Baser said. "When it grabbed him and dragged him off the stage, I thought maybe it was like some magic trick where they switch a rag doll or something."
October 03, 2003
Quit bogarting that joint, Mr. Prime Minister
PM jokes he'll try pot once it's decriminalized.
"I don't know what is marijuana. Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand," he said in the interview.
So that's what head of state means. Word.
And of course the Americans are all in a snit about this joke. I think that's one of the things I hate most about the Bush administration, their total lack of humour. Fucking robots.
From the Globe & Mail:
It's an unlikely retirement scenario for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien: he's at his lakeside cottage, sipping tea with his wife Aline — and smoking a big fat joint.
Yeah, baby, yeah!
Swimfan
I just finished watching Swimfan. Ben Cronin is a high school student. Head of the swim team. Has a sweet, if somewhat simple, girlfriend Amy. Along comes Madison, the new girl. She takes a liking to Ben, and manages to force herself onto him one crazy night at the pool.
And that's all you need to know about this movie, because everything that comes afterwards is so predictable, so utterly unoriginal, anybody who has seen an obsessed lover type movie has seen this movie. Madison can't swim. Guess what happens to her, huh. Ben's swimming buddy hooks up with Madison but ultimately rejects her. Guess what happens to him. And who gets blamed. This fucking thing writes itself. But the filmakers stick so closely to the paint-by-numbers plot, its strangely compelling. You know exactly what's coming next, you have to watch to see if the film-maker is going to take any detours whatsoever. He doesn't. Not once, this is the ultimate distillation of the jilted, one-night stand, psycho outsider turns killer sub-sub genre.
Yeah, I kinda liked it. You have to be pretty brave to make a movie like this. Or pretty stupid.
Comcast raises broadband speed bar
Comcast raises broadband speed bar.
The Philadelphia-based cable company said on Thursday it will boost its maximum download speed of its Comcast Online service from 1.5 megabits per second (mbps) to 3mbps, at no additional charge to customers.
Mmmm, I wonder how my speed compares to that? I use Shaw cable. Lemme check.
2003-10-03 21:44:08 EST: 1211 / 327
Your download speed : 1211253 bps, or 1211 kbps.
A 147.8 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 327868 bps, or 327 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!
Yuck, shitty. I usually get better speeds than that. That was Speakeasy, here's LA.
2003-10-03 21:54:29 EST: 2126 / 265
Your download speed : 2126482 bps, or 2126 kbps.
A 259.5 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 265604 bps, or 265 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!
A bit better, kinda.
2003-10-03 22:02:03 EST: 3354 / 179
Your download speed : 3354406 bps, or 3354 kbps.
A 409.4 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 179775 bps, or 179 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!
Cogeco test, woohoo!
HL2 Source Code Leak
Shacknews link.
Slashdot discussion.
Blue's discussion.
While I do feel sorry for the people at Valve for having the Half Life 2 source code leaked onto the internet, they seem to not take very much responsibility for their part in this state of affairs. They had the source code internet accessible, they contracted the virus [or whatever it was] [unpatched Outlook apparently] and did nothing about it until it was too late. Actually, he couldn't find a worm or virus, so he reformatted his hard drive anyway. Then he observed suspicious activity with his webmail account [??] and there were keyloggers installed on several computers at Valve. This all sounds very strange and I don't think we're getting the whole story here.
Anyway, Valve will live, HL2 will be a huge success and this leak probably won't mean much in the long run. Maybe it'll force them to change Steam, which I found to be a pretty stank piece of software.
"If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details," he said. "There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great." Valve have set up a specific e-mail account, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com, for people to send any information.
Here's some info, you little fucking whiners: pay more attention to security, dumbass! [sorry, it's Friday and I'm feeling snarky]
From the Half Life 2 site:
To whomever it was behind this crime against a company that has supported us over the years better than any other before them; it looks like you're on your own. It's only a matter of time before you're caught, and you will be.
Yeah, this is right up there with the Holocaust and 9/11. Whatthefuckever.
From some usenet post:
Leaked internal valve aim log
TomCruiseMan: r u there?
1984Haxx0r696969: :)
TomCruiseMan: excellent, you know what tomorrow is?
1984Haxx0r696969: yeah, hl2 comes out, right gabe?
TomCruiseMan: *evil grin* i fuxxored it all
1984Haxx0r696969: what?
TomCruiseMan: i uploaded half-life 2 source to an ftp server
1984Haxx0r696969: GABE! WHY THE $$*(%(%&$ WOULD YOU DO THAT?
TomCruiseMan: LOLOLOLOL
1984Haxx0r696969: what the f is wrong with you?
TomCruiseMan: just kidding, it's not hl2 source
1984Haxx0r696969: whew, u got me, you dickhead!
TomCruiseMan: there is no hl2
1984Haxx0r696969: ?
TomCruiseMan: u heard me, there is no hl2. i uploaded hl1 source mixxed with
quake2 source and i replaced all "quake" with "source"
TomCruiseMan: ?
1984Haxx0r696969: *speechless*
TomCruiseMan: i don't want anyone to find out i've spent $10 million of our
hl1 money on doritos
1984Haxx0r696969: wtf
TomCruiseMan: vivendi thinks hl2 is almost done... man, it took 5 goddamn
years to write steam
TomCruiseMan: they forgot it took us years to write a quake1 engine game
TomCruiseMan: i'm fuxxored
1984Haxx0r696969: what are you gonna do?
TomCruiseMan: uploading the "hl2" source, blame it on outlook and then say
we're delayed another year
1984Haxx0r696969: wtf, blame what on outlook??? what about ati?
TomCruiseMan: ati is expecting a build by end of the month
1984Haxx0r696969: yup, you're fuxxored
TomCruiseMan: no, once i announce hl2 source is leaked, i can get 1 more
year to write hl2. sep 30, 2004
1984Haxx0r696969: if you hire carmack and god maybe.
TomCruiseMan: it would help, i can't code anymore, i've been working on
steam by myself for 5 years. my work keyboard is packed full of crumbs
1984Haxx0r696969: ???? where did everyone go?
TomCruiseMan: i fired everyone and bought the local domino's instead. free
pizza, mf'er!
1984Haxx0r696969: do they deliver that shit right to your mouth, bitch?
TomCruiseMan: f u, goat licker!
1984Haxx0r696969: goddamn idiot. you are going to get shot when they find
out the truth
TomCruiseMan: 1 year man, they bought that shit already for hl1, they'll buy
it again.
1984Haxx0r696969: where did all the screenshots and videos come from?
TomCruiseMan: counterstrike guys did it all as a favor... and free pizza
1984Haxx0r696969: shit man, what about nvidia?
TomCruiseMan: nvidia is suing my ass for $50 million
1984Haxx0r696969: what are you going to do?
TomCruiseMan: dump ati and go with nvidia... then trash ati
1984Haxx0r696969: you can't do that! everyone will see right thru you
TomCruiseMan: no way man, i will fuxxor ati and get those monkeys off my
back
1984Haxx0r696969: you are insane man, i like it
1984Haxx0r696969: but you're still fuxx0red
TomCruiseMan: listen bill, you used to be my boss, but now i'm my boss,
trust me
1984Haxx0r696969: ok. if you can delay until sep 30, 2005, then it will
match the longhorn delay. can you put in code to only run on longhorn?
TomCruiseMan: no problem
1984Haxx0r696969: k thx
TomCruiseMan: gtg, pizza is here
1984Haxx0r696969: bye
VeriSign's Wildcard
Looks like ICANN has given Verisign notice to stop their wildcard scam. Or else. Good, I hope they finish this BS once and for all.
Oh yeah, and Verisign sucks.
For all these reasons, ICANN has today insisted that VeriSign suspend the SiteFinder service, and restore the .com and .net top-level domains to the way they were operated prior to 15 September 2003. If VeriSign does not comply with this demand by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003, ICANN will be forced to take the steps necessary to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations.
October 01, 2003
Angel Premiere
I just watched the season premiere of Angel [Conviction] and I must say it was pretty entertaining. I've just started watching this series on Space [they have started playing it nightly from the very begining] so I still have a lot of catching up to do. Heck, they just brought in Wesley last week so most of the major characters have yet to be introduced.
*** slight spoilers follow ***
If you were hoping to see a lot of Spike in this episode, you'll be sorely disappointed. He's almost completely AWOL.
The return of Harmony was handled well, very funny back and forth banter with Angel. I think she'll be a great addition to the show, filling the void left by Cordelia. Speaking of Cordelia, I was glad they mentioned her instead of pretending that she never existed. After all, her and Harmony were best buds in high school. Hopefully they'll have Charisma Carpenter back on the show sometime to tie up the loose ends left by her departure.
The scene with Mr. Spanky was priceless. I can just imagine DB reading the script and getting to that last line. "I have to say what?!"
And the long, unbroken opening shot [after the intro teaser] touring the Wolfram & Hart offices was pretty cool. Nice camerawork.
The premise of the Angel crew controlling Wolfram & Hart while trying to manage the 'lesser of two evils' dichotomy should make for a very interesting and entertaining season. Plus the addition of Spike and Harmony, and hopefully some other exBtVS people. I don't know how good the earlier seasons were, but I think this one's looking like a winner. Much better than Buffy season 7, which I haven't seen in its entirety, but what I have seen wasn't terribly impressive.
From today's Calgary Sun article on the Angel premiere:
That said, Boreanaz does have a suggestion on how the series should end. "I think Angel should just become human and go walk outside into the sun and then get hit by a bus. That'd be funny, but I don't think it'd go over too well."
Messenger Install Error 1603
I seem to be getting a lot of people looking for the solution to the dreaded "1603" error while trying to [re]install MSN Messenger. You could try the solutions suggested in this forum, but I tried them all and I still got the error. YMMV
So I installed Trillian this morning to use in the mean time. After screwing around with MSN's horrid stupid passport system [I seem to have lost the password to my last account and you are pretty well f*cked when this happens] I got everything set up and it seems to be working fine. I'm fungii871 on MSN. I'm also fungii4705 but the bastards don't seem to believe me. I also have another fungii address and something like kajsd;lfkjdsla;ajf when I got really pissed off and frustrated. Trillian might get shut out of their network on October 15 so this might only be a temporary solution. The free, basic Trillian does not currently work on the Yahoo system, but they are testing a patch with their full-price version. Trillian also connects to the AIM and ICQ systems.
Trillian looks much nicer with this skin.
My IM nicks:
MSN - fungii871
AIM - Parkhurstcourier
ICQ - 151807490