Geekomon

Firefly is coming.
Well Firefly: Serenity, the movie version of Joss Whedon’s TV creation. Harlan Ellison will  prolly have a fit that I capitalized tv…

Anyways. It’s good. It’s awesome. Here’s some few bits of information regarding Serenity.

Vids:

River Tam Sessions
The premier

Most of this stuff is from Whedonesque. I just collated it. If you like the vids, then you’ll prolly read the interviews. And the further vid/interviews. Mark your calendars, September 30. Vive le’ Revolucion!

Okay, so WinMX is dead. How are you going to get the Japanese/Korean/Chinese songs that you love/crave? Itunes Music Store isn’t even up in Korea/Hong Kong and Sony’s being a bitch about their products so…I do not condone piracy. In hopes that the RIAA will shut these bastards further, I will now explain how to get Japanese songs via Winny.

Don’t throwaway your WinMX just yet either because it’s got Open Nap which means Nodes. With a little bit more sweat, you can do whatever you were doing before WinMX died. No, I don’t meant that. Get your hands away from your pants.

GETTING WINNY SETUP

Step1: Download the Bitch.
Go download Winny from http://nyar.under.jp/index.php. If you’re scared, go to wikipedia. It’ll link you to the English version 66. Now if you go to the links section of that page, you’ll get to nynode.info which is nyar.

I tried all 3 versions. 66, 71 and the latest. So far only 71 works well.
So get 2.71.

Step 2: Install/config. Put in the Nodes.

Okay, you’ve got this zip file. Oh my god! What do I do? You unzip it. Put it in C:\Winny or something. You might want to do some regional settings to make your OS Japan friendly. Make a shorcut to the winny.exe.
You should see a UI with a black screen—very winmx-ish.

It’s in Japanese! What will I do? Google is your friend. Go to this site uguu. It’ll explain what you need to do.

1. Go to the Config Button.


2. Go to the Bandwidth and pick out your speed.


3. Go set your port.


4. Die of cancer.


5. Now set your Down folder and Up Folders to whatever you want. You can skip this if you want.


6. Now go to your winny folder. Make a Noderef.txt. Capital N.


7. Google some nodes. “winNY node” brings up a few hits. Should look like this. I use peerto’s nodes.

@kdjfklsjfalsfjldsjfslkdjfskdfj
@kdfjlsadjflksfjsklfjsklfjsklfjs
@232342343242343242343
Copy and paste this to Noderef.txt in your winny folder. Node   reference, you dig?

1. Go type something in the Keyword search bar. If you don’t know where it is, go look at the uguu link again.


2. Congrats, it’s a boy. It also wouldn’t kill you to learn a bit of Japanese. Stuff like Close, Apply, Delete, Stop and “How much for A Blowjob” is useful. Ikura…blowjob des ka?—hah.

How to set up WinMX with Open Nap

There’s plenty of English Tutorials out there. What do you need me for? I don’t really like the OpenNap limitation either. It’s not exactly nodular. More like hubular. Those aren’t words by the way.

The short of it:

• Chidori- one of the century's Whisperers/Einsteins, they are living manuals of future technology.


• two factions want her. Either dead or working for them


• Mechas are made by whisperers so BATTLE


• Enter Hero: Sagara Bodyguard and soldier of one of said factions

The long of it:
I don't know whether this is a serious foray into scifi fiction, fanservice, or mecha anime.

There's already 9 episodes and they still dont explain wtf the Mithril Organization is. Who funds it? Why are they the good guys? What makes them the good guys? Why are the bad guys insane? Why can't their be intelligent, and normal bad guys?

It reads like really bad romanticized fan fiction. Just very kiddy stuff. Like A dislikes B because of his dirty fingernails. G is evil because he sucks, nyuh.

And the Arm Slave stuff. It's gundam. It's mecha. Why call it fraggin arm slaves? Why not use real world terminology? In the real world they would be part of the armored divisions. Why set it in the present world, with modern day aircraft carriers, contemporary clothing, and war tech if you are just going to spew made up shit. And what's with the bullshit Lambda drive technology. Ooh, it's a wish fulfillment drive--in a fucking mecha?

So here are the faults.

1) If it's a serious anime, it has too much fanservice. (four or five shots of fanservice in the whole series, admissable. But with more--Why the fuck do you need to pan Chidori's panties 2 times in a space of 5 frames?

2) If it's a fanservice anime, it has too much scifi gobbledeegook.

3) The scifi gobbledeegook is done with little research, thereby undermining the whole basis of the world. No foundation to be credible upon.

4) The designs are weak. The mechas are designed for the miltary, not to be power rangers.

I don't know what target audience this anime is aiming for.
I mean, it isnt getting my vote.
It doesnt have enough fanservice/porn to get Jascii.net's vote.
Who the fuck does it want to entertain? It's like a 10 year old wrote and directed it.

I did something bad today.
On one of my many nightly trips to the airport to get frozen fish—yes, frozen fish, craps, snails, and frogs (stop interrupting me)—I happened to be hungry. Famished. So I said: Mcdonalds. And the driver says: Sure.

As we edged toward the take-out window, I realized something strange. WE DIDN’T ORDER anything. So I made a corporate decision. I took someone else’s order.

Now, it’s very very bad of me to do that. It inconvenienced everyone behind me. Which is funny because of the domino chain wrong-order effect.

In my defense, the clerk should have---well, hehe. Nothing since it was totally my fault! But it sure was funny! Yeah, we jetted out of there toot fast.

Well, No Ipod Nano for me.

TUAW's picked their top ten. Their using grammatically correct sentences as guideline. No loose talking. So even though some of the entries are boring, they are at least grammatically correct.

So me and Mario are out of the running. I mean, Mario and I.

Gorram frakkin' TUAW. Sniff. Ah wan' wun of dem Ipod nanoes. Ain't no one in dem right mind woudn't wan' wun. Sho' is a pretty lil fing. Loike me Pa used tah say, before he shot hisself proper: "Yah ain't lucky, son. Frem the day yah was born, ah says, 'Doctah, don't worry about hurtin' him none. He's already got one goram awful life ahead o hisself, be a kindness if by chance yah shook him to death early on'. An' that's whoi ah named yah Richard. Short fer Dick, yah ken? Screw otha folk befo' dem folk can and yah'll survive. Otherwise, be the right time to be digging a nice grave fer yerself." And then he took another swig of moonshine and beat me withing 3 inches of life.

I'm lying by the way.

Who do you think has the better post anyways?

Mine

Marios

Two words. Fugly.

There's more at the engadget site. None of them are any good. Maybe this one is okay.
I would have made him wear more Uncle Samish clothes. Maybe the jacket and the hat. Although, i dont think this is international enough.


I was going to do one but i couldnt learn Adobe CS 2 vector art in time.

My first idea was a Huge e with teeth, with a robotic monocle in the center of the e.

My second idea was Blueprints for an Engadget radio tower with the E as a broadcasting tip.
-Or a death ray.

My third idea was a Batman Console with the screens flashing the logo, and a small cat on the chair. The Engadget Cat. Totally brand new logo for engadget modeled on a cartoon i saw where someone drew Schroedinger's cat. Literally.

My fourth idea was to draw up a chinese font and put it on a coat of arms.

(Picture the crest in the center, bigger, a white overlay instead of printed, and a dark blue thin cotton shirt instead of gray)

Kinda like this but with the guards as "I, Robot" robots. The shield( white outline) is kept, separated into four parts, 2 e's mirror imaged on the 4 parts. So a white E (inside the shield, centered on a blue background) on quadrant II, the waves (blue on a white background) on quadrant I, heading right. On quadrant III, white background, blue waves, heading left, and on quadrant IV, an inverted white e with a blue background. On and below the shield are 2 banners: engadget.com on the bottom and chinese on the top banner. 安子達 That's the Chinese way of saying Engadget. The shirt would be totally blue with a rougher type of cotton as the crest. That way, when you run your fingers through the crest, it feels like rough skin because it's smooth, then rough, smooth then rough. And when the white overlay starts to peel, it does so by patches. The thing becomes pockmarked like gravel. It makes it look even more ancient and worn. This is a good thing. Vintage style. This one is plagiarized from a Oxford University T-shirt I had that got lost in the wash. Oxford doesnt have it anymore. It was in created in 1977 or so, back when Oxford had some taste.

The 1st idea was what I planned to submit though. The last one was unfeasible because a T-shirt with a white overlay is a tad more expensive than just laser printing it.

Awful.
What's the criteria? If you like stuff like 08th MS team, and Giant Robo (only episode 4, 5, 6, and 7) then you prolly will hate GSD.

For one thing, the character designs are shoujo. Tall Lanky girly boys that screams "essence of hermaphrodite." Gundam designs that are half Gundam Wing, half Power Rangers. No military research or logical streamlining of the mechas. A lot of Gundams have a sort of internal logic to their design. The F-91 series were all inspired by Roman armor. The GP-X series was designed by a real engineer. The V series are tranformable and therefore, clonky looking but all the mechas were uniformly clonky.

In GSD, it's a hodgepodge of design themes and concepts. That's why the colors are so garish. I love to draw mecha. That's one of my hobbies. I even draw Gundam Wing and I don't even like Gundam Wing that much. GSD mechas are just--they don't make a bit of sense. Lots of vestigial parts that have no function.

/rant.

I should draw one of the GSD robots just to show you what I mean. Hold up.

I don't know if you know this but I'm not the only poster. It's Richard's birthday! Everyone wish him lots of luck.

Richard: That's not blogworthy.

Mario: Look, you use the word blogworthy one more time and I'll beat you with this log here.

Richard: Yeah yeah. And throw away your damn logs already. It's cluttering up the room.

Mario: Neveeeeerrrrr!

Why is smoking bad for you?
Sure, it causes cancer. We KNOW that.

But why do soldiers do it? Why do people continue to do something that they know will have long term detriments?

There has got to be some benefit involved.
It cant be all peer pressure.

So google ‘benefit’ and ‘nicotine’. You’ll get several articles on the therapeutic effect of nicotine as well as certain experiments that’ve been performed with soldiers. I leave the googling to you because even if there’s a wealth of information out there, the surest way to know shtuff is try a stick yourself. Maybe before a big showdown against an enemy regiment. Or company meeting.

As for me? I don’t smoke. I don’t want to have to depend on drugs to keep cool. But I will if it becomes necessary, and then, when I do, the effect will be maximized since I haven’t built a resistance to ‘em. I have the same stance on antibiotics.

Yes. Seven frakkin' versions. While it might seem insane, know this. Their are seven departmental chiefs in Redmond. Their is also a growing need to compete with free or low cost operating systems in countries like China or Africa.

So there's Starter which is their foray into low budget emerging PC world. (They have to offer cheap ass OSes because there's no way China's paying 300 dollars per OS per box.)

2 Versions of Home. Home and Home Premium
A Basic Pro Edition. A Small Business and a Enterprise. More like Plugins
And there's Ultimate, which is the fully featured OS.

Here's the link to the Ars post that talks about Microsoft's new insanity. You should check the comments section too. Lot of Microsoft PR people trolling around.

Come on. You do know why the Apple removed the iPod mini when they introduced the iPod nano, right? I thought Microsoft was supposed to be good in business...

I can understand the Starter Edition. But 2 versions of Home? 3 versions of Professional? And a Extra one called Ultimate? It's one thing to maximize your profits by realizing the price point of multiple target markets, and it's another thing to fragment your market so that they have to buy multiple Windows OSes in order to function.

Here’s something I thought was utterly stupid but yet brilliant at the same time.

Ars Technica’s Nano Review

Ars Technica decided to road-test the new iPod Nano. Now, far be it from me to suggest to the Powers That Be on the proper way to test appliances, but, as far as I’m concerned, RUNNING IT OVER WITH YOUR CAR is not an IEEE approved procedure!

Goram. It was a black Nano, too. Frakkin’ idiots. (Having said all that, the demolition test was pretty funny, and a brilliant stunt.)

However, some decent diagnostics on the nano would have been appreciated. You know, before yah smashed it into non-controvertible pieces.

Battery type and how many read/write cycles on the thing. You know, how many times can I charge/read/write from the thing before it dies out.

-dun out

Go. Google 'miserable failure' in your Firefox searchbar.

Click on the first link you see.

It's linked to George Bush Jr. biography.

Ah. It's funny because it's true.

I’m not sure if you know who Derek + Swoopie are—Well, you should. They’re a couple of VERY popular podcasters. They do a nice little show called Skepticality where the message can be summed up, “Don’t take stuff at face value.” It also helps that they sound like very decent people. For example, I’d buy pharmaceuticals from them.

Be a skeptic and get proof. And it’s a real interesting topic. Mostly because they’ve got a wonderful team writing for them. Mostly because their real people talking about stuff that interests them.

Unfortunately, however, Derek is sick. BNA, a form of brain aneurysm or cyst. Very bad stuff.

I hope it’s recoverable but by the tone of Swoopie’s PSA on his condition, it doesn’t look too well.

Damn, that sucks. A thousand wishes from a thousand fans across a thousand wires of broadband, Derek. I’d like to think God’s (in all his various incarnations) an avid Skepticality listener, too.

Two Contests.

Contest 1 where you have to blog about your 10 favorite TUAW posts, and then post your blog link that you've done so.

It's not a bad contest. Very accessible.
Everyone and their dog will prolly want to join it.
The Prize: A IPOD nano.* REMEMBER TO POST YOUR BLOG LINK TO THE COMMENTS SECTION IN THEIR CONTEST POST. Just click here to go to their permalink.

Contest 2 where you have to get unique hits linking to them..

Ilounge wants to espouse their IPOD FAQ on people. Don't know why. Normal blogs will prolly never win. Good thing their are booby prizes. Various ipods. Just put a banner on your blog. It doesnt hurt. Prizes are Shuffles and Ipods, 'fter all.

Here's the Banner you've got to put on your Blog/Site.

or the text equivallent:

<a href="http://ilounge.com/blogthebook/"><img src="http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y200/muikano/te/125x125freeipodbook.gif" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com" ></img></a>

*Here's the link to the particulars of the contest for those that still don't understand the particulars.

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In Addendum: Don't know about you folks, but I'm SICK of hearing about Sept. Apple Keynote. Multiple posts on the same keynote when it's nothing but 3 product launches. It's a keynote but it's doesnt deserve this much attention. I mean, the X-server and Apple/Intel keynotes were phenomenal news--ah, never mind. On with the product launches.

MOTOROLA ROKR Uninspired interface. Bleh. Apple isn't techno superiority, it's usability/design superiority.

IPOD NANO: Flash device. It's actually pretty sexy and fully featured. I like the keylock implementation. (link:iLounge Gallery.)

ITUNES 5.0: Very minor but nice updates. (link: itunes 5 feature review) Makes Itunes load-up on Windows XP much faster. Check. Destroys compat. w/Badfruit.com. "Itunes is only for Ipods!" yells Mr. Jobs. Check. Forces upgrade to Q7 or I5 won't work. Check. *Streaming codec in Quicktime 7 for Windows needs a lot of cpu power. 0.8-1.0 ghz won't be able to support it. Maybe if you have specialized instructions sets like SSE3, you could. Maybe.

Hrm.

So that was the Apple Keynote. Hrm. Methinks the Steve Jobness is losing power on his Reality Distortion Field Crystals.

That last one really sucked wads, dinnit?

Come on.
Showcase a phone that was suppose to be out months ago. Check.
Wipe out the most popular ipod machine. Check.
Force a buggy version of Quicktime 7 down the throats of Itunes 5. Check.
Introduce Harry Potter Ipod version, codename Gimmick. Check.
Introduce a 4gb flash player. Check.

I mean, all this stuff is good and all but come on. Where’s the cool stuff that was promised? Golly. Itunes is a finely tuned prog though. It’s very very good.

I swear to god, sometimes I think Apple hates and fears the word ‘solid-state’. They also hate the word NIMH battery. What I wouldn’t give for a Ipod nano that ran on AAA…

I got this from this mrbarret.com

Here’s the link

It’s quicktime. Fast becoming my favorite online movie clip format.

Anyways, it’s about the disaster in New Orleans. While YOU may be unaffected, it calls to think—wow, what if something as catastrophic as this happened to my city? How would the government respond? As you can see by New Orleans, the answer is: not very well. If at all, even.

There’s been reports of rapes and murders and all sorts of Lord of the Flies stuff. And while that boggles the civilized mind, it makes a sorta weird sense. After all, when there’s no order, there’s chaos.

Warrenellis.com had some of the pictures of a white guy getting beat up. Don’t start a racial war with your black neighbors because of this. I’m sure the same thing would have happened to a black guy had the light colored folk’ve been the majority in the Superdome housing them poor, sapless Louisiana refugees.

It’s just human nature folks. Nothing more. Nothing less. You tend to forget that you’re American when you’re hungry, exposed to the elements, and with no indication that support is on the way.

And by the way, and this is a certifiable fact, the military has turned away Red Cross from helping Louisianites. Because of the violence and the looting and the general panic that’s ensuing. You know, kinda like the drowning man can kill the lifeguard draggin him. Same difference.

So why are you still donating to Red Cross?

I have a Sansa, yes I do. I want to ask one thing. Why sell this FM Transmitter when a large part of your existing users are UNHAPPY with the software support of this device? Asswipes. Also, how are they going to power the Sansa from the car lighter? There's no dedicated 2 way power/data port. It's just a AAA battery with a audio jack. That's all this mp3 is. No DC out. No Data Out.

Here's a picture of a chair I drew at an airport. I touched it up a tad with charcoal.
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Here's something from a failed design for a mantou production bag. The mascot if you will. The avatar in my blog is the same character, mind you.
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I like this one. Not anatomically correct for having a Iron Man-like Armor but I like it. Especially the legs and the joints. I spent a lot of time thinking of the joints.
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Here's another from the archives. Notice the kneecaps. 3 rotating balls as kneecaps. Very DC design. Sortal looks like Rocket Red. Old Old pic.
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I'm using Picasa! Google, you ass. Stop trying to take over my desktop! Google Suite Apps are like the iLife of Apple. Awesome. Picasa is a full fledged product unlike GDS. Very useful.
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Here’s my review of Google Desktop Beta
Email
The plugin is decent but the limit of one email is laughable. My dog, for instance, only has a Hotmail account since he doesn’t have opposable thumbs. Myself, I have seven. Accounts not dogs. The Thunderbird e-mail client laughs at this dinky plug-in.

Scratch Pad and Todo list
This is useful,useful, useful. The whole GDS can prolly rename itself this by the way.

Quick View
Totally useless and inaccurate. It would have been much better if it aped my quick launch bar with user definable categories…instead it’s a shuffle of links—half of which I’ve never even heard of, much less frequently use.

I do use gdTunes which is like the Winamp plugin but with less memory hogging and a bigger area—it’s just a miniplayer that autohides like the Start Bar. Supremely useful—but unfortunately still lacking in a few features. I want a volume and step up control on it dammit. It’s basic shit!

There’s also weather. Yawn. What makes this different from Yahoo’s Konfabulator and Apple’s Dashboard? Well, the Google Desktop Search and by connection, it’s Photos plugin.

It’s basically a poor (PC) man’s Spotlight. Spotlight, as you well know, is Apple’s baby, their file indexer for Tiger OS X. Since spotlight was built from the kernel up in OS X, it’s considerably faster, indexes recently added files in good time, supports filtering and—goddamn it, it’s just better.

But seeing as how Vista’s late, not 5 minutes late, mind you, but late like a baby with a 5-year gestation period, this is the best PC users can afford.

Sigh. Oh wait, I promised you guys a picture. Here’s my rendition of the 5th Robin. Don’t mind the long arms. I like to make the arms longer so I can shrink them digitally later.