Analog-Theater 2.0

I am sadly forced to explain here that a “Shout Out” is not physically possible given the medium in use. In order to execute a “Shout Out” one must be able to speak, or as it describes “Shout” out to the person being Shouted at. Oh, bugger, forget it.

I’m actually putting up here something that has confounded me ever since watching this movie yesterday. You see, “He who should never be trusted regarding movies following his admission that he like the League of Extraordinarily bad plot line, acting, story, directing, and this movie should never have been allowed to be scripted” suggusted that I watch Equilibrium. Several other people did as well over the past year, so I added it to my Netflix Que. Well it came in and I watched it, and walked away with one major nagging question that no one can answer. You see in the future all of Man kind in on a drug that is supposed to suppress all emotion with the notable exceptions of anger, greed, ambition, lust, gloating, and envy as far as I can tell. Mr. Spock would have raised an eyebrow at them. And in one notable scene, designed to make the protagonist more human and likable, he is saddled with a puppy. Well, without giving too much away, he then kills about 15 or 23 people in order to keep said puppy alive and well, and then left it in his trunk without food or water. So what happened to the puppy? We never see it again! Is he in for a nasty shock in a week or two when he opens the trunk? Was it a loaner, a rental, did he have to sign the car in and out and get a new one every day? What? Where is the puppy? You can’t go around showing me this cute, adorable, puppy, who leaps into the protagonists arms, licks him in the face, and then cries as it is given back to the mass puppy murdering evil doer (Probably the best acting in the film) only to just forget about it. People want to know these things, we don’t care when you slaughter 1000 soldiers who are just doing their jobs and getting killed because they followed bad orders, we do care when dogs are left in the trunk! Don’t make call whatever future version of the ASPCA is out there.

All intelligent comments welcome following post, so long as they have solid theories regarding the whereabouts of said puppy.

First, I just wanted to take a second and make a shout out to some old friends with whom I have lost touch. First, my best friend in high school, Randy Moles. The woman I loved more than any other, but never got, Melanie Hutchison. My favorite lackey, Kieth Zimmerman. The greatest person I met in Virginia, Samantha Plotkin. I love you all (the guys only as friends) and I miss you. Drop me a line or give me a call.

Talking about shout outs. I’d also like to give a shout out to the hottest woman that I never met, Francine Dee. The coolest actor I’ve ever seen, Christian Bale. The two coolest actresses that I’ve ever seen, Milla Jovovich and Summer Glau. America’s greatest chess player, Gata Kamsky. My personal hero, Josh Waitzkin. And the very funny Jon Stewart. You guys are terrific and I’d love to meet you. In fact, if you are reading this, you are all invited to my birthday party this year.

That is what I should do, I should throw myself a big party this year for my birthday (which is right after the National Open). That could be a busy month. And I’ll invite all my friends and a bunch of celebrities and knowing my luck no one will show up. RSVP now and if I get enough interest, I’ll actually do it.

On a completely unrelated topic, I’ve been seeing some stuff here and there about Earth Hour and I decided to look it up. It turns out that it is tomorrow evening. For one hour everyone is supposed to turn off there lights for one hour to help the environment and cut down on carbon emissions. Everyone should feel free to join in.

I went to the book store today, after my brother came over and woke me up at the insanely early time of 8:45. I was looking for some mangas. Of course, all the ones I want aren’t out yet. Hikaru No Go vol 12 doesn’t come out until May. Saiyuki Reload vol 8 doesn’t come out until June. Battle Angel Alita: Last Order vol 10 doesn’t even come out until December! And I already knew that Samurai Deeper Kyo vol 28 doesn’t come out until May either. And Kino No Tabi vol 2 still doesn’t have a release date. Come on you guys, this is killing me. It’s already published in Japan, hurry up and translate this stuff. Since none of my mangas were out and I have a coupon that was about to expire, I ended up buying Memories of Ice by Stephen Erikson instead.

Mangas aren’t the only thing I’m stuck waiting for. TV is almost as bad, and compounded even more because of the writer’s strike. I’m waiting for the new seasons of shows knowing that I’ll only get half the episodes. Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles had their season finally already and I’m still waiting to hear if the show will be renewed for another season. Both the TV Guide and the Hollywood Reporter say that it’s likely to return next season. Battlestar Galactica’s fourth season is being cut into two due to the strike. The first 10 episodes will start airing April 4th and the other 10 will air in 2009. Doctor Who’s new season will start airing on the Sci Fi Channel on April 18th. USA’s hit series Burn Notice won’t start airing their new season until June 16th. Well, at least I still have Lost to keep me entertained while I wait for the other shows to start. I’ll admit that I’m addicted to Lost. They have mastered the art of not answering questions.

Lastly, this is actually old news, but I doubt that anyone heard about it. Rani Mukherjee, one of the greatest Bollywood actresses, is going to get married. Aditya Chopra is divorcing his current wife of five years to marry her. The divorce should be finalized this May. Just another woman who will miss out on her chance to be with me. I feel sorry for her and sorrier for myself. Poor me. Oh well, this just means that I’ll have more time for video games.

Robert and I did a Yahoo! search for Analog-Theater and the first page that came up was this site. Now, we just need to get people to look up Analog-theater. Maybe a “What is Analog-Theater” advertising campaign would do it?

We’re not the only ones who are number one. The World’s number 1 ninja has been spotted. That’s right, these are promo shots of Snake Eyes from the upcoming G.I. Joe movie. Snake Eyes will be played by Ray Park, who also did Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode One and Toad in X-men. Also starring in G.I. Joe is Dennis Quaid as Hawk, Channing Tatum as Duke, Rachel Nichols as Scarlett, Marlon Wayans as Ripcord, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty, Saïd Taghmaoui as Breaker and Karolína Kurková as Cover Girl. As far as the Cobra characters go, we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander, Sienna Miller as Baroness Anastasia DeCobray, Lee Byung-hun as Storm Shadow, Arnold Vosloo as Zartan, and most importantly Christopher Eccleston as Destro.

You know whats not number 1? I have to move. My roommate bought a house and is moving in at the end of April. That means I have to move out too. A friend of mine is looking for a place to move into at the same time. We were trying to work out him moving into where I’m at, but its a no go. So, come the end of April we hope that he has a place ready and I’ll move in with him there. Doesn’t matter that I hate moving. I have been at where I’m at for about 3 years and I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff, mostly books and furniture. I’ll need to find some suckers to help me move. And I just got a new 27 inch TV. That thing was a pain to take upstairs. I guess I’ll have to start lifting weights more to get ready to carry all that stuff down stairs and then most likely upstairs at the new place.

Most of my work having already been accomplished today, I happened to peruse one of the few sites that I enjoy reading on a near daily basis. They provide fairly high quality news regarding the industry I work in and that also encompasses most of my hobbies. While reviewing the list of todays headlines, I happened to encounter this article here.

To paraphrase it, there is a growing digital divide in this country and a study done in Boston has shown that those families with more education and socioeconomic standing are more likely to use google, trust information from universities, and if unhappy with search results they will go back to the original list and try another site or tweak the search phrase.

Those with less education, and a lower socioeconomic standing are more likely to use AOL search, not return to the original search list, and not tweak the search phrase.

This is possibly the result of people with more education having been taught how to look for reliable information. The study calls it a skill deficit.

Now, not jumping to any conclusions or passing judgment, but why didn’t anyone tell me AOL was still around? Let me go Google it, the search box is built into my browser.

Ok, so how are we for time? Good, well then the only question is where to start. One thing I have noticed is that it is never easy to take this ungainly mass of ideas, inspiration, and input and then forge from it a single cohesive stream of consciousness that anyone in their right mind would actually understand, much less actually want to read.

So, let us then start at the beginning, first, the gallery (And now the slide show as well) is not broken. The Sideshow over there on the left however, is. I was a bit surprised this morning to discover that not only was the gallery working but, well, that the pictures I put in it before moving the entire directory structure around where still there. This makes me really happy because I can now share with you, my happy reader, the wonderful picture I took of the three pound bag of coffee that greeted me upon my return from the great white north. I’ve never ordered $33.00 (including shipping) worth of coffee before, but after buying 1lbs at Safeway for about $10.45 I figured that it would really be worth my time to just go online and get the really, really good stuff available at Higher Grounds. I originally would have only ordered 1lbs, but first, with three pounds the shipping stays the same, and then the savings that come with buying bulk put the price within $0.12 of the stuff from Safeway after tax is figured into the local purchase.

Now, why would I, someone who is mostly in his right mind order $33.00 worth of gourmet coffee? Well, to be honest, because this is just really good coffee. Second, for only $0.12 per pound more then the local grocery store, I get to be all socially and environmentally conscious. This bag of coffee is Organic, Shade Grown, Fair Trade certified, Arabica bean, low acidity, damn good coffee. The key here is the low acidity, it has almost no bite at all, and it is amazingly not bitter. Very mellow and smooth. Now, I know some of you are sitting there thinking I can go down to Walmart and get some Green Mountain for a bit over $8.50 a pound, and they have the grinder right there. Ok, so you got me, the Walmart stuff comes out to about $0.33 per pound less before shipping and lot less after shipping, and I will admit it isn’t bad stuff, I have some Hazelnut left over from my trip north.

The problem, or one of the problems, as I see it, is that I won’t shop at Walmart if I can feasibly avoid it. Around here, Northern Virginia, that isn’t a problem, and is actually very easy. You see visiting a Walmart locally is like a crime against the human soul. They are crowded, dirty, noisy, filled with rude people, and the customers are even worse. This, by the way, is in striking contrast to the ones I have visited in New York and Florida, those are oddly clean, well lit, with polite and pleasant employees. My fiancée and I tried to buy a Christmas Tree stand at our local one a few years ago, for our first Christmas in our own place, and we where almost run down by woman who was literally twice as wide as her cart. And the evil perfume stand troll in her Pink Tutu is an entirely longer and more disturbing tale of Walmart at night. So, as you can probably guess, I have no problem staying out of there just for the shear enjoyment of staying sane, but once you leave this area, it is more a matter of choice and belief.

But, since I am talking about Walmart here, let us discuss my now two year old Theory of the Walmart Event Horizon. Ever since roughly half of my immediate family moved from the far southern extreme of the east coast to the far northern extreme, I’ve made a point of trekking up there by car and dog sled. On the first trip, one of the oddities I noticed was that all the stories about Walmart moving into a community and shutting down most of the local small retail shops are true. While driving the roughly 100 miles through small town after small town, what I witnessed was that on the edge of town would be a Super Wal(Ultra Mega Hyper)mart complex, and than when driving through the town proper I would see all of the shuttered private retail stores. Being an avid reader, I recalled the Douglas Adams theory of the Shoe Event Horizon in which shoe shops came to dominate a planets economy and it became impossible to build anything else, but in a real life parallel what I believe happens is that when Walmart moves into a region and the region is already depressed the smaller stores are rapidly shuttered as they can not compete with Walmart on price, the larger chains with the exception of K-Mart, which is already on the verge of a second bankruptcy, have no presence, and that means no one is left to compete. Now some might mention Target, but no, they are aimed at a market segment one step up, and in the regions we are looking at that market segment very limited. So, we are left with no one, this means economically, only another Walmart can really compete with Walmart, thus the Walmart Event Horizon. It is not economically viable to build anything except another Walmart. I fully expect that we will witness this in much of the North East, MI, and some parts of Southern Virginia, Pennsylvania, FL, and other areas that I have no personal knowledge of. It is kind of depressing.

One thing I did notice at Walmart, when I went in and wandered around, is that their electronics are way over priced. Stay away, if you want to save money, visit Newegg, they have much better deals. Although I do have to say the deals that Walmart offered on the open box desktops wasn’t bad, they where priced at roughly the same price I would pay to build it myself.

But speaking of computers, I had wanted to mention a few things, first, does anyone out there use VLC? The VideoLan Player? I’ve been using this little wonder for a couple years now and just realized it had replaced all of my other media player software, with one small exception (DVD player on my Mac), it plays everything that I have more or less thrown at it. It will play the .iso DVD Images I have stored on my little server, it plays my .mp4 files that I rip for my iPod, it plays my .mp3 and .acc files, it even plays standard DVD’s. And buried under the hood are some major features that I don’t even understand how to use. The one and only glaring issue with VLC is the interface. It is boring, it is skinable, but that took me 5 minutes on google and a lot of tinkering to figure out how to use.

When researching VLC before typing this up, I downloaded Winamp again, ahh, my first and former favorite audio player. But it seems that ever since AOL decided that employees at Nullsoft where no longer a requirement, Winamp has languished and now is just a great big cumbersome beast that doesn’t do anything new, but does so in a much more difficult way. Interestingly enough, while learning all of this, I was also trying to use the Mac browser Safari, but on my Windows Desktop (I wanted to play some Rome Total War last night before bed). Yes, my reader, Safari is available for your use on the Windows Desktop. Sadly however, it isn’t ready. I was impressed with the slick interface, and I love tabbed browsing (I have 6 open right now) but when I click to launch a Vocal Trance stream at my favorite online radio station, Digitally Imported, or something more mainstream (or even not so mainstream) at their sister station Sky.fm, I want my default application to launch, I don’t want to download the playlist and have nothing happen or even worst have iTunes launch. Don’t get me wrong, I like iTunes as much as the next Mac junkie with a 160gb iPod Classic, but I don’t want to use it to listen to online radio, I want to use it when I rip a CD or load my iPod. I want to use a nice small application, which is already listed as my default and launches automatically in like VLC when I listen to online radio. The other issue I had was that Safari kept stalling, freezing up for a few seconds, and just acting slow. This ontop of the fact that Safari looked like it was trying to display at a lower resolution and then had been blown up, i.e. it was all blurry and did not impress me.

Next up on our little list of things is Asus EeePC. I’ve been hauling mine around for a couple of months now and can still only think wow, this is small every time I pick it up. Weighing in at a total of 2lbs, with a screen size of around 7in, and a battery life right at or around 3 hours the EeePC is an amazing piece of engineering. All models come with a 900Mghz Celeron M and 512MB of Ram, wifi, ethernet, and 3 USB 2.0 ports, what differenciates the models is the amount of internal storage, the battery, and a internal web cam.

I chose to purchase an open box 4 Gigabyte Galaxy model in black. No web cam, and shorter battery life, but I could still upgrade RAM. Besides, I never use web cams, so why pay for one? Overall, I honestly think it was a good buy. I have upgraded the ram to 2 GB, installed an 8GB SDHC card in the internal reader (for a total of 12GB) reader, and installed EeeXubuntu on the little devil when I finally became frustrated with the installed version of Linux that it came with, but not all without sacrifice.

The original operating system(OS) will load in about 15 seconds, this means that you turn it on and can almost begin to work right away. Sleep, suspend, and everything else work flawlessly. And the original OS is simple to use. The top of the screen shows a number of tabs, simply click the tab for what you want, say internet, and there are icons for Firefox, email, IM, etc… Same for Office, System, and Edutainment. Simple, easy to use, but you know, I like to tinker. For some people this is the perfect system. All you have to do is plug an external monitor in, keyboard, and mouse, and off you could go.

What I use it for:

• Watching Movies
• Quick Email
• Web Browsing
• Playing Classic Nintendo, SNES, and Sega Genesis Games.

What I do not use it for:

• Typing Word Documents, you can, but the right shift key is the same size as all the others and I keep hitting the up arrow instead.
• Typing long emails, see above.
• Working on the site, or any site. The screen is too small, I can get around this a bit by using multiple desktops, but it messes with my perspective. I’m used to 19-21in screens. 7 is a bit tight.

They are currently available online starting at about $300 for the 2GB version, but I would recommend going with the 4GB for only $50 more as you could then upgrade the RAM to 1 or 2GB on these models and that does help offset the slower processor. One note, the originally installed operating system does not allow you to use more then 1GB of Ram regardless of what you install. So 2GB will only show as 1GB if you are using the Asus provided OS. 1GB is more then enough with the original OS.

Ok, so…where to start. Yes, I have returned from the Great White North as about half of our current readership is aware. This would be because 1. I told you so, 2. You where there, or 3. You read Jared’s post about it.

So, tonight I’m trying out a new keyboard, and so far I’m not liking it. I bought these months ago, but they have languished on the server and I though, you know, this is a nice curved, ergonomic keyboard, so much nicer then my non-ergonomic wireless keyboard, but not so. The keys make this loud clanking noise that I don’t like. And there is no weight to it, or resistance. I’m just going to have to break down and bring home a nice Microsoft wave keyboard, which is what I thought this was. But, due to volume you will all have to wait until morning for a full post.

We need to talk about:

1. The Walmart Event horizon

2. VLC Player, the ugly littler player that could

3. Safari, now available on PC, but still broken

4. Di.fm

5. Why the gallery is still broken

6. The Asus EeePC and what it can really do for you.

During the last few days, I’ve been looking for something to watch (it’s amazing how hard it can be to find good programing).  Well, I did come across a show I like and very much want to emulate.  No, not Viva La Bam, actually I want to do that too.  I came across No Reservations with Anthony Bordain.  They were reruns, not his new season unfortunately.  I saw two episodes the other day, one was his trip to Osaka and the other was to Thailand.  His trip to South Korea is by far my favorite episode, but they didn’t run it yesterday.  Having seen these episodes, I’ve just been craving oriental food all day.  What I really want to try is octopus balls, but I doubt I can find any place around here that sells them.

To make things worse, I spent too much time checking my email this morning and didn’t have time to go out.  So, while I was at work I was looking up recipes.  And I thought I would share with our wonderful readers.  And yes Dad, you can use this on your website.  Having made a few modifications and simplifications, I dub this new recipe Bachelor Chow on a stick.  10 points for anyone who knows what Bachelor Chow is.  And another 10 for anyone who noticed that I ended a sentence with a preposition.

Bachelor Chow on a stick:
Take boneless chicken breasts.  Cut them into 2 inch by 1/2 inch strips.
marinate them in teriyaki barbecue sauce
take several bamboo skewers and soak them for 30 minutes in water then pat them dry
preheat oven to 400 degrees
skewer the marinate chicken strips and bake them 12 minutes.  Turn the skewers over and then back for another 10 minutes
Finally, enjoy.

Going back to Anthony Bordain’s show.  My dream job would be to do what he does, travel around the world and eat good food.  I like food and I like travel.  I just need to organize a crew to film me and I need to get over being self conscious about being on camera.  Anthony has a local guide show him around the place.  I think I can one up him on that, I’ll get a local attractive woman to show me around.  I guess I could start doing things local and work my out as my audience grows.  I was thinking about doing this before and with work and stuff I just never got around to it.  I’ve figured out a way to post video clips inside the blog, too.  I’m just not sure if I really want to use YouTube.  Actually, I guess I could, it would be another link out there to this site.  What do you, my few loyal fans think?  I will also start a thread in the forums for suggestions about where, how, and when to go.  I also need to find a way to involve chess…

In other news, NCSoft is planning on revamping the Ranger class in Tabula Rasa in patch 1.7.  They are going to get rid of the Carpet Bombing ability and replace it with Fire Support.  From the description it sounds like it does the same things.  They are also going to make some modifications to Spies.  I’ll just have to wait for the patch and see what happens.  I’m still waiting for patch 1.6 which is supposed to come soon.

Just in case anyone was worried, Robert is still around.  He went on vacation to Upstate New York where there is nothing but snow and Walmart as far as the eye can see.  He has returned safely and is supposed to post something soon, if his dog and his girlfriend will let him.

As you can see, I finally got the ads on the front page.  Horay me!  Though Robert did figure out how to do, while I did the actual work.  We make a good team, sometimes.

Also, I added a link to our blogroll.  It’s my Uncle Doug’s blog.  He just set it up, so there’s not much there.  I’m sure with time it will grow.

Thirdly, I’ve transfered over some more posts from the old archive to the new one.  I still have a ways to go.  I’m hoping to finished January soon and start on last year.

Lastly, I just finished reading Samurai Deeper Kyo vol. 27.  Demon Eyes Kyo and Yukimura fought again.  It was a draw.  The two of them are now equals.   Yukimura was a little disappointed that he still hasn’t surpassed Kyo.  After the fight, Akari offered to heal everyone if Yukimura (he’s a pretty boy in this series, think?) gave him a kiss (Akari, for those of you who don’t read this series, is a transvestite).  Yukimura accepts, but at the last moment switches places with Kosuke, one of his bodyguards that happens to be a woman.   Then the group split up and infiltrated the Mibu Palace.  And now I have to wait until May for the next volume.

I wanted to take a moment out to mention a few people who have died recently.  I know that I mentioned the passing of Robert Jordon a few months ago, but as it is inevitable, other great men have died.

It was just brought to my attention that Arthur C. Clarke, one of the greatest science fiction authors that I know of, passed away on Wednesday.  He was born December 16th, 1917 and was best known for his books 2001 and 2010, both of which became motion pictures.  In 1994 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his 1945 proposal for communications satalites and in 1998 he was knighted.  Clarke moved to Sri Lanka in 1956 and lived there until he died.

Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, also passed away recently.  He was born July 27th, 1938.  In 1973 Gygax founded TSR with Don Kyle and published the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  In the late 90’s until 2006 he worked on the d20 system that most role playing games have adapted.  He won several awards for his work in role playing games.  Gygax died on March 4th, 2008 at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.