General

I have been playing too much Oblivion lately. And I didn’t feed my cat last night before bed - he’d shared my chicken at supper, I didn’t want to confuse his tummy too much. And he has been sick with a horrid skin infection to boot. So maybe that explains the dream. Things were ticking along in the subterranean mecha-opolis I visit often in sleep. Is that why I always identified with the Morlocks? I dunno. I was with a friend; I am pretty sure this friend had once been a cat. It may have been Nostromo (the cat mentioned above). But as I write this, I think it may have been Lochinvar. ...

My struggle to remember to watch TV continues. Last night, I installed MythTV on my Linux box, Baphomet. MythTV is an open source, free software solution to give Tivo-like capability to computers of all sorts. I don’t have a video capture card yet, but I went ahead and installed it anyway. Brought up the program guide and wow, there are LOTS of shows I would like to watch! Anime, Simpsons, Family Guy, SF shows I never saw before, just bunches and bunches of things. ...

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com wants to give you the longest email address in the world! Among the many advantages of having the address - Some webforms are unable to read your email address Some email software cannot be configured People have a hard time typing in your email address Companies think your email address is fake An idea for our busy, modern, spam-infested lives.

I’m not really surprised that I scored well into the danger zone of this test for Asperger’s syndrome, a light form of autism. Given I spent all my childhood without a clue about what other people were thinking or doing, confused, unable to do anything in a social setting until I knew what the routine was, and always doubting and mistrusting other’s motives, I expected it. In fact, I’ve self-diagnosed myself with Asperger’s for a few years, ever since I realized I was exhausting myself by trying to find the best cribbage hands in car license plates whenever I drove. ...

Scariest thing I have read today is about an Arkansas regional science education center that is not allowed to teach or even mention evolution or the true age of the Earth. Here’s an excerpt: With regard to Bob

Heard on my way home from a frantic pre-MC shopping run Sunday, this bit on Prairie Home Companion about finding love with English majors on the Internet was hilarious. I knew nothing about the Prairie Home Companion until the late 70s, when my cousin Mark put it on one night while we were visiting down to Billerica. I can’t claim to be a huge fan; I don’t really seek it out; but it’s funny and enjoyable when I catch it on. Next week they will have Vasen on; love that band, saw them live at the Monterey World Music Festival a couple years back (along with Steeleye Span, yay), when I lived in Monterey… I never appreciated all the things you could do in the Monterey area - the Osio Theater (and the historic State Theater a couple blocks away); the Forest Theater in Carmel where my kids and I saw many wonderful plays; and the famous Monterey Fairgrounds… oh well. ...

So anyway, everything we were hearing about Microsoft’s new Origami devices (er, Ultra-Mobile PCs - I liked Origami better) was confirmed today. They’re just small, keyboard-less tablet computers with built in WiFi and stuff. If it can’t play WoW, EQ1, EQ2, Vanguard and so on, what good is it? Using Remote Desktop and the similar, confusing-acronym-I-can’t-remember remote graphical session software for Linux, I could at least access Nova and Baph from anywhere… but without a keyboard/mouse, it would be clumsy. And RDC is just nasty. And it doesn’t play MMOs… so what good is it? ...

Initial reviews of Final Fantasy XII look really good. This is the one that uses a FFXI Online-like world map. If they could let me make my own characters and use them, instead of pre-generated ones, this would be anything I could ever want in a console RPG. And it still may be. Devices based upon Microsoft’s Origami project come out tomorrow. We’re already seeing a lot of Origami machines coming out of CEBit, the German consumer electronics trade show. It looks to be a small, handheld, wireless, tablet PC running Windows XP. The geek in me (get out of me, you GEEK) wants one just to have… but I am not sure what I would really do with it. , made a year ago, has it doing just about everything. EVERYTHING. The buzz is that it will be sort of a super video iPod, with an online store likely called Alexandria. ...

Being a liberal geek, my car radio is pretty much perma-tuned to NPR (especially if the jazz station is out of range). So driving home Sunday from Escondido after not getting my Miata started, I was listening to Car Talk - two brothers from Cambridge who weekly answer car (and other) questions. They have a weekly puzzler… This week’s puzzle wasn’t that hard (Given a thousand dollars in one dollar bills, what is the fewest number of envelopes you could stuff the money into in order to be able to hand someone envelopes containing exactly any amount requested). ...

Watched the Academy Awards; followed by placing my characters on the red carpet. I guess I should have gotten a better dress for Nash… Changed the name of my Guitar Hero band to the suitably necrotic Death2U. I also became a guitar god and was lifted bodily into Rock Heaven for beating the game on “Medium”. Working through it on “Hard” is going KINDA slow. Cleaned my son’s bedroom in the old apartment. An experience I never wish to repeat. ...