Welp, just additional testing on this…

Yet another test for tags.. it’d be nice if they made this just a tad bit easier..

quote! test test

Lidge, a normally awsome closer, blows it. They had the game in the bag, 2 outs and only 1 more strike and he throws this nice little ball to hit. Next thing you know Pujols is on deck and Lidge throws him this nice slider and its knocked out of the park. Damn you!

test

For the last few weeks, I’ve been planning to head to Baton Rouge to see an LSU football game. Originally, it was supposed to be the Tennessee game. Naturally, that was cancelled with Hurricane Rita. However, at that time my father and I made plans for me to go home for the Auburn game. I’m planning to leave Thursday night, and return Monday night.

Everything’s set. We have tickets for the game. We’re planning to tailgate, I’m going to see my 4 1/2 month old nephew, and all will be merry… or not. See, it’s all very possibly going to be scrapped- and why, you may ask?

One word: Wilma.

Tropical Storm Wilma has formed in the Carribbean, and if it keeps the projected path it would be bearing down somewhere on the Texas/Louisiana coast around the same time I would be driving back. Since I have no idea what path the storm will take, I may have to scrap the whole goddamn thing.

Typical. Fricking typical.

Out.

Update: (pylorns)

They have absolutely no idea…

Thats right, its that time a year again. This year I’d like to be more than a quitter! Yeah I got something like 25k words written and then life caught up with me. But that said I didn’t plan ahead. Anyway here is the scoop:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and — when the thing is done — the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2004, we had over 42,000 participants. Nearly 6000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from your novel at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: Sign-ups begin October 1, 2005. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Wow. I walked out of History of Violence last night not knowing exactly what to say. It was good, in a shocking sort of way. Basically what they did was shore more gore, violence and sex in a more realistic way. In a non-hokey-horror movie kind of way. But there is some very sublte subtext in this, is that we, as Americans crave it. We have a history of it. But not even just Americans, Humans. Rolling Stone has an awsome review of it:

Other films this year will have to sweat bullets to match the explosive power and subversive wit of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. It slams you like a body punch and then starts messing with your head. Because the film concerns a family in the Midwest, and suspense and sexuality do a seductive mating dance on the plot’s surface, History is being touted as the Canadian maverick’s olive branch to the mainstream. Maybe so, but only if you’ve never heard of subtext or watched Cronenberg sabotage all things packaged as bright and beautiful. There are those who rag on the director as Dave Deprave, the flesh freak who plays mind games with damaged, oozing body parts in films like Scanners, The Fly, Dead Ring- ers, Videodrome, Crash and Naked Lunch. Open your eyes, people. This is a world-class director, at the top of his startlingly creative form.
Working from a fierce and funny script that Josh Olson loosely based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, Cronenberg sucks us in with cunning skill. He makes life look Norman Rockwell normal in the off-the-map burg of Millbrook, Indiana, where Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen in the performance of his career so far) runs the local diner and runs home to his hot lawyer wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and their two kids, Jack (Ashton Holmes), 15, and Sarah (Heidi Hayes), 6. The Stalls are not the Waltons. After twenty years of togetherness, Tom and Edie still sneak off for kinky fun, with Edie dressing like a cheerleader to stiffen Tom’s ardor.

Role-playing takes another guise when two armed robbers threaten to shoot up the diner. The mild-mannered Tom is suddenly Indiana Jones, throwing scalding coffee and leaping across and under tables — getting stabbed in the foot in the process — before grabbing a gun and killing the men. Cronenberg gives the scene a quick, brutal urgency bolstered by fluid camerawork from the gifted Peter Suschitzky. We’re shocked by the violence, but also complicit in it. We want the creeps dead. The media saddle Tom with a new role: hero.

Tom’s face on the tube catches the attention of Fogarty (the ever-superb Ed Harris), a black-suited, dead-eyed, scar-faced Irish hood from Philly who limos up to the diner and unnerves Tom by calling him Joey Cusack, a fellow mobster Fogarty has been hunting down for years. Tom’s denial leads to even uglier confrontations with an underworld — William Hurt mixes mirth and menace to devastating effect as one of its kingpins — turning a wonderland into a waking nightmare.

Is Tom a killer or the victim of a “wrong man” scenario out of a Hitchcock thriller? I’ll never tell, and you shouldn’t let anyone else squeal. Consider only that while Cronenberg expertly throws us curves, he is also showing how an unprecedented burst of violence can turn a peaceful man into an object of fear and intense attraction. At school, Tom’s son (Holmes gives the role a touching complexity) batters the bully who’s been battering him. Again, we cheer. Edie is less certain.

Cronenberg couldn’t ask for better actors to fill these tricky roles. Mortensen, best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy but at his best in smaller films that make larger demands (The Indian Runner, The Portrait of a Lady, A Walk on the Moon), meets every challenge of a role that calls for subtlety and sureness. And Bello is dynamite as a woman who is forced to look for signs of a stone killer inside the gentle man she married. In a scene that’s sure to stir up controversy, Edie fights Tom off on the family staircase. He thinks sex will reinforce their bond. But when her resistance gives way to lust, it’s not for her husband but for this stranger who scares and excites her.

Cronenberg knows Americans have a history of violence. It’s wired into our DNA. Without a hint of sermonizing, he shows how we secretly crave what we publicly condemn, and how we even make peace with it. The family tableau that ends the film is as chilling and redemptive as anything Cronenberg has ever crafted. You won’t know what hit you.

So now we have a new James Bond. I watched the movie Layercake just last week and I must say, it was a pretty good flic. I think he’s a good actor but I am not sold on his ability to pull off James Bond. When they announced Pierce Brosnan back in ‘94. I knew he’d be an awsome bond. It just made since, he had the same pinache that Connery had. This guy, not so much. I guess we’ll see.

LONDON, England — One of the worst kept secrets in the entertainment industry is no longer a secret.

Daniel Craig, a blue-eyed and blond British actor, is the new James Bond.

Sony Pictures on Friday confirmed media reports that Craig will replace Pierce Brosnan as the suave British spy of the silver screen.

Craig’s selection — revealed by having the actor travel down the River Thames aboard a military boat, wearing Bond’s trademark tuxedo and dark glasses — ends months of speculation over the role of agent 007.

Later, at a news conference in London, Craig appeared to be at a loss for words about his new job.

“It’s something else, I can tell you, really,” he said.

Craig added that his first reaction when told by producers was to say, “I need a drink.”

Producers said last year that they were seeking a replacement for Pierce Brosnan, 52, who has played the suave British spy in the last four Bond films.

Rumored to have also been in the running were British actors Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gerard Butler and Ewan McGregor. Irishman Colin Farrell and Australians Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger and Eric Bana were also mentioned.

But after all the guessing, it was Craig’s mother that let the cat out of the bag.

“Obviously we are thrilled to bits,” his mother Carol told the Liverpool Daily Post newspaper on Thursday.

“It has come at a very good time in his career. He has worked extremely hard all his life and this would be his biggest populist role,” she was quoted as saying. “It will be life-changing”.

Craig, 37, appeared in the 1990s TV drama “Our Friends in the North” and in such films as “The Mother,” “Enduring Love” and “Layer Cake.”

He also played Paul Newman’s son in “Road to Perdition,” was poet Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sylvia Plath in “Sylvia” and appeared in this year’s thriller “The Jacket” with Adrien Brody.

Craig’s personal life has also been a source of media attention.

He has dated model Kate Moss and has been linked to Sienna Miller, his “Layer Cake” co-star and on-off fiancee of Jude Law.

Craig will appear in the 21st Bond film, a remake of “Casino Royale,” which is due to be released next year.

“Casino Royale,” published in 1953, was Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel. The 1967 film version was a spoof starring Peter Sellers, and it was one of the few Bond adventures not to feature any MI6 gadgets. (MI6 goes online in plea for spies)

According to Apple, the 30 GB version (which will hold 75 hours of video) will sell for $299, with the 60 GB version (150 hours of video) will sell for $399. The player will be available in both white and black starting next week, the screen will be 2.5″ wide and videos will be available on iTunes this week.

Okay, two questions on this announcement:

1) Will the player allow for Windows Media Video files to be used in their native format, as Apple doesn’t allow the iPod to play Windows Media Audio files?

2) Will the player allow for different codecs to be used for standard video files? For example, one of the more popular .avi file format codecs is diVx. Will the player support that codec- or for that matter, .avi or .mpg files, or will it only allow for the Quicktime .mov format that Apple owns?

In any case, this is pretty cool news to come out today.

Out.

UPDATE: Looks like Apple is laying down the rules on what the iPod Video will be able to support and won’t. Take a look at the tech specs for the player, and you’ll see the same disappointing omissions I did- no .avi, no .mpg. The specs do say that the firmware will be upgradeable to support “future file formats,” but I find it very odd that they would leave out two of the most used standards for video today.

People are complaining up one side and down the other about their IPOD NANO scratching by just putting it in their pockets. I’ve had a regular Ipod and it doesn’t scratch.

Hi,
I bought the Nano on Sept 14th. Recieved it on the 22nd. This was my first time buying an Apple product, and I had really high expectations of it. After all, you always hear great things about Apple.

However, all I can say is that I am quite disappointed. The Nano is designed superbly, I couldn’t ask for anything more. But in regards to scratch resistence, it is very low in quality.

I don’t know if this is because they manufacture the Nano from China (mine was directly sent from SHENZHEN, CN). I scratched my Nano on my first day. I placed my Nano in my pocket, and when I retrieved it, my LCD display had a very visible scratch to my dismay. I suppose this came from the earphones. So now, I place my earphones on one side of my pockets, and the Nano on the other.

This is truly a unique product. However, I cannot say that it is a great one. If it was not for my personalized Nano, I would have returned it by now. I hope next time I purchase something from Apple, my experience will be better.

Because Apple should strive to be more than good. It should strive to be great.

and Apple is trying to cover their tracks…

Here is the post that got deleted 1 minute ago:

In my lifetime, I have spent 10’s of thousands of dollars on Apple computers, PDA’s, printers, and other gadgetry. I own Apple stock. I have experience in the PC industry as a design and Q & R engineer at companies like Intel, HP, Via and Nvidia. Thus, I have insight and experience into the development of technology for the mass market that many customers do not.

My post(s) have been clean, sane, reasonable. I have not ‘ranted’. If I have violated the terms of use, I don’t see how. Just because you do not like my allegation doesn’t make it objectional in general.

To re-cap:

1. Apple had full control over the materials that went into the Nano.
2. The Nano scratches much more easily than previous iPods.
3. The screen dot pitch is much higher that previous color iPods.
4. By using inferior plastics on the Nano’s face, they have essentially produced a defective display. (Most scratches will be larger than the dot pitch of the display)
5. To date, Apple has not provided a satisfactory protective casing, and when the tubes -do- arrive, they will not protect the screen.
6. Given 1-5, Apple’s famous attention to detail, and recent trend of maknig easily scuffable products (compared with pre-iMac products), it’s logical to conclude that the Nano was intentionally designed to scratch easily.

To what end?

To encourage frequent purchases and re-purchases by a technologically naive buying public. This is a business tactic used by ethically lesser companies in the industry (I need not name names). Seeing Apple sink to this level is deplorable.

As a shareholder, longtime customer and advocate for those who do not know about the industry as much as I do, I stand by my logic.

If Apple cares about new (and longtime) customers, they really need to fix this.

And just what is Apples official line on this?

The people have spoken, and Apple has heard them. Sort of. On Tuesday night the computer and music player company admitted that there are problems with the screen of the new iPod Nano, just three working days after The Register broke the story.

Correction: a problem with one manufacturing batch, affecting “less than one-tenth of one per cent” of the units shipped in which the screen actually breaks, according to Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of worldwide product marketing, who called it “a real but minor issue”. Those will be replaced for free under warranty, he said. He wouldn’t say how many that covers.

But hold your horses, if you’ve discovered how easily the screen scratches and think that Apple is going to exchange and refund on those. Uh-uh. Schiller told MacCentral: “We have received very few calls from customers reporting this problem - we do not think this is a widespread issue. If customers are concerned about scratching we suggest they use one of the many iPod Nano cases to protect their iPod.”

The question of why the Nano seems to scratch so easily, when Mr Schiller says that it uses the same materials as the fourth-generation iPod, remains open. One Register reader, Gene McMurray, who has had a lot of experience with polycarbonates (the material used for the iPod screen) comments: “Most of my personal experience with the stuff comes from the polycarbonate lenses used for paintball goggles and motorcycle/racing helmet visors. The stuff is very strong under impact or bending, but will scratch if you look at it funny… I wonder if the whole thing is just a cock-up between the engineering dept and the design dept. If the designers told the engineers to pick a “strong” material, they’ll get polycarbonate. If they said to pick a “hard” material, they’d get something else, but it won’t be as strong. Lots of people don’t understand the difference, but from an engineering standpoint the difference is huge. A great example is diamond, the hardest material known. It will scratch and cut anything, but hit it with a hammer and you’ll smash it into a million pieces.”

It appears Britany Spears put her bra up for sale on ebay. Yeah. Classy. When the bra reached $60,000 in bids she pulled it stating “oh its not the ‘exact’ bra I wore onstage at HBO event.” Britany put this onsale in order to raise money for the Katrina victims. No, don’t bother donating yourself, just sell your underware. Really, who gets the sick delight to buy a 60k bra and put it on display. “Yeah this here bra belonged to Britany Spears.”

What are you smoking? You going to buy her panties too? What about when shes 80 years old and wearing depends? Are you going to buy her soiled diaper?

Waiting is released today staring Ryan Reynolds. Trailer here. Now, this morning MJ comes in and says “People are calling into the local radio and talking about how worried they are that waiters will start doing these ‘dastardly deeds’.”

We’ve got news for you: people who wait tables HAVE ALWAYS done what’s portrayed on film. It’s nothing new. Act like a total ass to your waiter and chances are he’ll wipe your french toast all over his genitals. Moral of the story, tip your waiter.

I had hope for humanity at one time, y’know.

Things were good, life was going alright, and then…

Then I read the news that Tom Cruise has spawned.

She’s lost for good, folks. Time to give up the battle to Save Katie.

Out.

Check this out.

This is the case peer-to-peer file sharers have been waiting for. Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has countersued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of “outrage”, and deceptive business practices.

Ms. Andersen’s counterclaims demand a trial by jury.

Ms. Andersen made the following allegations, among others:

1. For a number of years, a group of large, multinational, multi-billion dollar record companies, including these plaintiffs, have been abusing the federal court judicial
system for the purpose of waging a public relations and public threat campaign targeting digital file sharing activities. As part of this campaign, these record companies retained MediaSentry to invade private home computers and collect personal information. Based on private information allegedly extracted from these personal home computers, the record companies have reportedly filed lawsuits against more than 13,500 anonymous

Okay, so there’s this show set in space, right? It’s written by some guy that’s been in tv for a while, and it never really gets great ratings, but it starts building an extremely loyal fanbase that watch every week without fail. The network doesn’t help, to be sure. It doesn’t show the original pilot first, and either keeps moving the show or doesn’t show it until the ratings take a huge dive. Unsurprisingly, it get cancelled- but here’s the thing. Over the following years, the fanbase- which has begun to take on a name for themselves- become more vocal. They want MORE. They get more, and how, with a big damn movie.

Now, pop quiz- was I talking about Star Trek, or Firefly?

I was talking about both, but the difference here is that while Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a questionable choice to start a franchise, Serenity (which opened last weekend) was a perfect follow-up to the 2002 series.

This movie, admittedly, could have been difficult for non-fans to follow were it not for Joss Whedon creating a small segment early that gave a primer on what’s going on. As a result, both Browncoats (the name given to fans of the Firefly series) and non-fans alike have given this movie incredibly good reviews. The best part of this is that it’s deserved.

Serenity is a great movie, and serves to open up a new franchise if the nujmbers are good. Word of mouth will help get people into the theaters this weekend, hence the following plea.

Go see it. Please. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it more than any sci-fi movie in the last ten years. It’s that damn good.

Out.