Month: January 2009

I don’t have cable television which includes Showtime or the SciFi channel, so I cannot watch the Stargate shows.  As a supplement, I have subscribed to the GateWorld Podcast for my iPod.  It’s a really good show, fun to listen to and I can piece together episodes from it.  I’m not worried about spoilers, by the time Atlantis is cheap enough for me to justify buying the DVD’s for seasons 3-5, I will have forgotten any harmful spoilers.

As you know, Atlantis was cancelled this past season, and there are no new Stargate shows airing until this fall.  Which means, there’s no weekly episodes for the GateWorld postcasters to talk about and dissect.  As such, one of the comments on this weeks ‘cast was that Lost was now the best show on Television.

I had never seen Lost, so I took the comment as a recommendation, and surfed on over to ABC.com, where I found the entire series available to watch free on the internet.  I am up to episode 15 in the first season, and I have to say… well something.

It sucks, it’s boring, etc..  Those are fitting descriptors, but I’m going to continue to watch in the hope that some kind of substance eventually gets written into the storyline.  Like, maybe when they’re done introducing the castaways, the show will take a new direction and illustrate a purpose.  I haven’t seen any character development yet, or any viable story arcs…  I mean there’s nothing there.  There is nothing to this show.  It is substance-less.

If I wasn’t watching the episodes together, I’d have ‘lost’ interest half-way through the first episode.  Even with the five separate 30 second commercial breaks online, I find it hard to keep clicking that continue button.

I get the impression the entire season was filmed in a 1-2 week period of time.  It’s like watching a daily soap opera, only instead of a day to pause in the middle of a conversation, it’s a week.  Honestly, after that long can you really remember what was being talked about?

I can see, I will NOT be tuning in to the show on Television IF I ever get caught up to the current season.

I really hope it gets better.  J. J. Abrams is the guy we have entrusted the Star Trek reboot with.  Sure, Fringe is kick-ass good, but it was good from the first episode.  Lost just sucked from that one, and it’s still sucking all the way through episode 14.

I hope it gets better.

They finally said it!!!

I love the new show Leverage on TNT. I can’t watch it when it airs on television, so I catch it later when I get the time on the internet. In this case I just finished watching the most recent episode "The Mile High Job", and when the line I’ve been waiting for came, I jumped up and yelled, quite loudly, "Yes! they finally said it". Keep in mind, that it is after two o’clock in the morning and my walls are paper thin. I hope I didn’t wake anybody up.

If you know the show, you’ll know the line without me telling you, but for those of you who don’t, beware of the spoiler, because I am going to tell ya.

Leverage is a cross between Oceans Eleven and The A-Team. It’s about this group of thieves who steal from the bad guys to help the underdog good guy. I love this show. I was a huge A-Team fan back when it first aired-yes, I’m that old-and I still watch episodes every now and then on Hulu.com. And as you know there was a famous line delivered at the end of a lot, if not all, of the episodes.

Leverage is so much like The A-Team that I always expect to hear that line. I have even considered writing a fan letter to Dean Devlin asking him to drop that line in at least one episode. And here it was tonight! I’m so happy!

"I love it when a plan comes together."

😀

I admit, the only reason I haven’t written for a while is because of the big let down when Qumana crashed the other day and I lost the post I wanted to write when United States President Obama was still president-elect.

So, sorry about that, I’ll try to look past the dread that crosses my mind every time I want to sit down and write something for this blog.

Also, I have been hitting the Official PlayStation Home forum.  The PlaStation Home people had a contest for us users to name the new cafe.  It was supposed to be judged on originality and creativity.

I suggested The Percolation Sensation, which is a wonderful play on words, and fitting a chat-room of this caliber.  It is 100% original as the term does not exist anywhere on the net, and it’s 1005 creative.

Not only can it refer to percolating coffee and how one perceives the aroma and flavor through the senses, but a gathering and sharing of ideas (percolate) in a festive and celebratory manner (sensation).

The winner suggested "The Sixth Axis".  Where I do agree, it is a fitting name for a Home space, it is hardly original, and not only is it uncreative, it is copyrighted already by Sony, which is a direct violation of the official contest rules, which stated the entry had to be uncopyrighted.  Or is that simply "the Six Axis"?

Anyway, a quick search on the internet reveals that it is also already used for a business in Madison, Wisconsin.

Well, I may not participating in any future "contests" from those guys.

Qumana crashed earlier today, and I lost at least 5-6 average sized paragraphs of an important post.  I am still very upset over it, so much so that I am not going to try to rewrite the article, which was a look at the up-coming President of the United States.  I wanted to post it the day before the inauguration, but that won’t happen now.  By the clock it is already the next day.  So screw it.  Maybe I’ll do it later, though then it will seem like retrospect.

I stumbled across a lost post today.  It was categorized as a draft in Blogger.com.  I had such a hard time getting the formatting to work, that I just saved it as a draft instead of posting it.

Well, I have just resurrected it.  After a few miner changes to the content, here is the original entry originally dated August 3, 2008, without the original code snippets and detailed explanations:

"Background: I have always wanted to know C++ so for the past 10 years or so I studied as many tutorials and books teaching the language. At the conclusion of every one, I felt confident I knew the language well enough to code my own programs. However, since all the programs I needed, were already written, I had no practical use for the knowledge, and the fact that none of the material I read taught GUI, was discouraging.

"I am a Linux user, and for the most part very happily doing everything in Linux that I once did, and occasionally still do, in MS Windows. I say almost because, so far, Linux does not have one thing I want; a Linux native Yahoo! Messenger with all the features of the real thing.

"I have been waiting years for someone to write a full feature clone of Yahoo! Messenger, and the outlook still looks grim. Apparently most Linux software developers simply are not interested in a Yahoo! Chat (I wrote CHAT, not IM) client, or the voice and webcam features Yahoo Messenger offers.

"The Project: I have decided to launch a personal project in an attempt to accomplish two objectives; 1, Teach myself C++ GUI programming with QT 4; and 2, Provide the Linux community with a full featured Yahoo! Messenger clone.

"The Problem: No, not biting off more than I can chew, (the whole point is to learn how to chew it in the first place). That is to say, that since libyahoo2 exists, I decided to use it to write my client. After all, that’s how this stuff works, right? The problem is that my instruction in QT 4 was limited mainly to the GUI, which I understand great. But it lacks in practical application. In other words, I’m having trouble getting my GUI code to blend with the libyahoo2 functions. The specific problem I’m getting is during the compile stage and appears to be dealing with scope.

"Any Linux coders out there want to put this whole thing out of my misery? I’m not really a programmer, just a wannabe."

Utahans are the rudest and most inconsiderate people who ever walked the planet.

As past readers of this blog and personal acquaintances can attest, I hate Sick City, Idaho.  But there is one aspect to this town that I absolutely love.  It goes way back to when I was little, though it’s not so popular anymore.

The scent of burning coal in the air on a crisp autumn, winters, or spring day.

I’m not from Sick City, Idaho, but I did spend some time here back when I was a curtain-crawler.  Back then there were more homes heated by coal, and the scent was strong and constant.  Any time I catch a whiff of it today, I am transported to that time.

I love the scent of burning coal.  I wish I had a coal furnace, but like most of the old homes here in Sick City, Idaho our house’s furnace was replaced years ago with a propane furnace.  Many homes still have the coal shoots, but our coal room has long since been converted for storage.

But every now and again, I catch that scent.  It’s then that I realize those moments almost make it worth it.

Duh, they’re playing a marathon all day on ABC Family.  And, yes, the character’s name is Amanda.  Can’t wait for tonight, I hope I don’t forget it again and end up missing it.  But then again, it is the 21st century, so if I miss it I can just catch it on abc-family.com or Hulu.com like I have to anyway with Greek.  That one comes on while I am working, so I never get to see it on T.V..

So, I have been offline, so to speak, as far as this blog is concerned for quite a while.  Wow, for like 2 years.  Jeeze.

As you know, Blogger is hard to post to.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing for it though.  I have, but as I mentioned before, I end up just scrapping them.  The topics were mostly government or politics related anyway, so they weren’t important in the least bit.  Trust me, no loss there.

I think I mentioned once that I had bought a Playstation 3.  Well, if not, I did (buy one).  I bought it towards the beginning of last year.  I was able to take advantage of the holiday Blu-ray special I had found online, so I got 5 Blur-ray movies free.  My current Blu-ray collection is 12 movies, but I have two more coming in the mail.  Even on a standard TV, the output is crisper, clearer, and more colorful then DVD’s.

I prefer first person shooters, and I have Resistance, TimeShift, and Call of Duty 4.  (I have lots of other games too, but those are my favorite FPSs.)  COD4 is my absolute favorite, I spend more time with that game than any other game I have-online of course.

PlayStation Home Bata was just made available for me a couple weeks ago, so I have been there too.  I have been anticipating it for a year.  It rocks!  I enjoy the bowling, pool, general chatting and exploring the glitches.  You can often find me at Sully’s bar dancing on the bar. 😉  The new Red Bull area is cool too.  So far, I crash a lot, but every now and then I can get all the rings.

The main criticism I have for PlaStation Home is that there is no voice chatting in the public areas.  That aspect really needs to change!  This is the 21st century after all.  Typing in chat rooms and bulletin boards was fine back in the 80’s and 90’s, but come on, technology has advanced, give us voice.

The same plea can be made for any instant messenger in Linux by the way.

I would love to give you my PlayStation username so you can look me up and we can play together, but the current use policies for the PlayStation forbid telling people your username.  I know, lots of people do it, but I enjoy the system too much to jeopardize my privileges of the online services.  It shouldn’t be hard for you to discern it if you wanted too though.  😉

Well, that pretty much suggests everything I have been up to in my spare time.  Oh, except there is Hulu.com and other free movie sites, which reminds me, all the T.V. shows I like are retuning again.  Yay!  Monk and Psych returned last Friday, and tonight, its Kyle XY.  We finally get to find out what happened to Amanda (she is sooo cute!).  Gosh, it’s been so long, I can’t remember if that’s the characters name or not.  I’ll have to go to abc-family.com to re-watch last years season finale, to catch up.

When it rains, it pours.  I am in the mood to blog.  It is so much easier now, I can’t tell you.  I just cannot express how much simpler it is to blog with a blog client and the messy website scripts.  I wish I had done this long ago.

One foreseeable problem though, is now that I can do everything from one application, I may not spend enough time on the editing as my previous method allowed me.  And, as those of you readers who have read through my other posts can attest, I still could have done with more editing.

I’ll do my best, and I hope the reader will forgive the often erroneous spelling and grammar, I think, for the most part, you will be able to ‘get the drift’ so to speak.  Still, often I do miss the negative forms of certain statements, like neglecting to type words like "not" and their derivatives.  I’ll have to continue to change them as I find them.

Dyslexia can be such a drag.  Well oh…