Geek Heaven!!!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Oh man, am I ever in heaven! I just installed my Airport Express wireless station. Now, I’ve been using a wireless network at home for years…couldn’t live without one.

But this..this is special! The unit is about the size of the ‘power block’ for Mac laptops. It has 3 ports on it. One for an ethernet cable (from your wired network, cable modem or whatever), a USB port to support wireless connectivity to a USB printer, and an audio out.

Audio? Oh yeah! With software they’re calling AirTunes, I hooked the Airport Express up to my home theater unit (using a mini-jack < -> toslink cable…you can use basic RCA jacks too). Now I’m sitting on the couch across the room, playing iTunes on my iBook, but directing the output through my home theater system.

It ROCKS! No more digging out the CD I want to hear, putting away whatever is in the player, and all that mucking about. Instead just fire up iTunes, find the song(s) I want to play and off we go!!

Setup was easy to the point of triviality. Everything worked like a dream. I’m stoked!

Blockbuster vows to go after Netflix

Posted on by Nimgimli

CNN.com – Blockbuster vows to go after Netflix

This should be a good thing. Competition can only help the consumer.

I used to despise Netflix with every fiber of my being due to their aggressive and intrusive online ads. Then I stopped using IE and started blocking pop-ups and gradually my hatred faded enough to give the service a try.

And now I’m a huge fan. One thing that Netflix offers that Blockbuster doesn’t, at least in their brick & mortar stores, is a huge selection of non-mainstream DVDs: anime, foreign films, tv series on DVD (though I suppose the latter is fairly mainstream these days).

Blockbuster has its work cut out for them, but another intriguing factor is the idea of renting games and DVD’s from the same source. If I could get the same quality of service that I get from Netflix and Gamefly via one account with Blockbuster, I might be convinced to switch.

BugMeNot

Posted on by Nimgimli

Now here’s a nifty website: BugMeNot.com. What’s it do? Well its a repository of logins for free, registration required sites, like the New York Times or The Washington Post.

Go to the site, right click on Bookmarklet and save it as a favorite. Go to a site the requires registration, and and click on your bookmark. A window will pop up with a username and password. Use ’em and you’re in!

No more jumping through hoops to get to web content!

Developing on a Mac

Posted on by Nimgimli

I don’t usually go into OS discussions here since I’ve got enough things in my life to argue about without adding my choice of computers to the list. But left to my own devices, I’m a Mac user, since the introduction of OS X. I have a PC for work because some of the tools I use are Windows specific, and I have a PC at home for playing games on. But most of my personal ‘serious’ computing is done on a Mac.

So where I find an article like It’s a Zen Thing (and my apologies…CMP makes you register to read their sites these days, apparently) I just have to share it with whomever I can. Its an article about how nice a platform OS X is for developing web and *nix applications. Worth reading, imo!

King Arthur

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yet another film I saw this week. This one is inredibly misunderstood and it saddens me to see people who I’m sure would really enjoy it turning their noses up based on the trailers.

This isn’t your typical King Arther tale. This is a Dark Ages King Arthur, a Roman soldier faced with fighting back an invading Saxon army while the might of Rome is leaving the people of Britain to fend for themselves. Arthur, who is actually half-British, can’t find it in his heart to leave the common folk to be slaughtered by the Saxons (who are killing and burning everything as they advance) so he stays to fight.

The knights are there against their will. Merlin is the leader of the Woads (the native people that have been driven north of Hadrian’s Wall by the romans) and there’s not a spot of magic or mention of a Holy Grail throughout the film.

It might be easier to ignore the title and just see it from the point of view of a Dark Ages period piece. Its a damned fine film and its a shame that its being overlooked by so many.

Spiderman 2

Posted on by Nimgimli

Finally got to see Spiderman 2 today. No big surprises…I loved it just as much as everyone else did. I hope there’s an extended or director’s cut version, and I’d love to see a ‘making of’ featurette too.

Toby Maguire is such an unlikely candidate to play Spiderman, and he pulls it off so damned well. Its amazing how authentic he can look as a nerd AND as Spiderman. The special effects were freaking AMAZING. I think I snagged one effect in the entire movie that ‘jarred’ by not looking like it fit in perfectly. Kirsten Dunst is still pulling off the ‘incredibly hot yet very wholesome’ thing, and the actress who played Aunt May looks like she stepped out of the pages of the comic book.

Some really funny scenes, some great cameos, lots of incredible action, some real tear-jerker moments…the movie just hadseverything you could ask for. It gets my vote for Movie of the Year so far!

Armitage: Dual Matrix

Posted on by Nimgimli

I watched Armitage: Dual Matrix the other day. It was pretty good if you’re an anime fan. It wasn’t good enough that I’d recomend it universally, as I would say Spirited Away or Grave of the Fireflies or even Princess Mononoke. But for anime fans, a decent movie.

Fairly typical plot. You have your earthers and your martians. The earthers hate robots and want to suppress robot rights, the martians like robots and need them to help the colony survive. Some evil dude sets up a massacre so that it looks like the robots killed a bunch of people. Armitage is a robot, a “type 3” and she has to fight the conspiracy while avoiding capture. Someone wants to take her apart to see what makes her tick since she’s done something no robot has ever done.

Lots of action, a decent if predictable plot. Good voice work on the English Dub. All in all, as I said, a decent movie for anime buffs.

Mary Oliver

Posted on by Nimgimli

I finally finished New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver and I have to say, I can’t really recommend it. I mean, her stuff is “nice” and if you’re a nature freak than you might enjoy it. But for me there was way too much wildlife and way too few people, which left the poems feeling a bit vapid to me.

Obviously poetry is a very personal thing, though, and she is wildly popular. I just think I’d prefer something a bit edgier…