More of my writing (often real-time) can be viewed at your leisure here: http://aberinkulas.soup.io/

My reviews and funny jokes are usually backed up here: http://nailbittingcombats.blogspot.com/

• 7Feb 10

  Anticipation!

  So Best Buy had the Xbox 360 Arcade for $200 plus a $25 gift card. Best Buy is not in town, so I went down to the nearby town that does have it and bought it. Then I put the console in my car and walked back in with my reciept and bought a two year warrenty for the 360, using the gift card they just gave me moments ago.

  Mom said I had to wait until my birthday to play it. Lame. My birthday is February 26th.

  I've got everything figured out: I'll plug it into our downstairs, not-HD TV first - which just happens to be next to our one and only wired internet connection - and patch the system and the games. Then I'll bring it upstairs (where there is no internet) and play Halo 3 until I'm dead. Good plan? I think so.

  I've got the HDMI cables handy (which I bought for $1 a piece on Amazon and they work wonderfully), and everything is pretty much ready. It's like the tickle before a sneeze.

  Can I just say that Microsoft's prices of hard drives are so bad that I won't be buying one? It's true. Same for about 90% of their accessories. As long as the games play, I don't care about any of that crap; not if they're going to charge that much.

  I'm debating what I'll pick up for my 360 before the day of fun begins. I'm thinking Bioshock or some other, older, cheaper used title.

  I want Mass Effect 2.

  ---

  I watched most of the Hangover. The buzz was a little too loud. It was funny, yes. Not that funny, but enjoyable.

  After that, The Invention of Lying. Simple, amusing, and actually pretty funny. It would have been better had I known less about it.

  Last night, District 9. I did not like it. Everyone was mean, evil, stupid, or all three. Not very fun. Some of the action scenes were neat, but they got old quickly. The last few action scenes made me think of Metal Gear Solid, funnily enough.

  • Posted Feb 7, 2010 2:53 pm GMT
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• 5Feb 10

  The Beatles = awesome

  I watched Across the Universe.

  I owned Abbey Road. I have for at least a year or two.

  I now own Revolver, as of about an hour ago (the 2009 remaster version). It's the first physical CD I've bought in seven months.

  I got Help! and Let It Be from the library.

  I love the library.

  The library has Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper but they were out. I'll get them eventually. If I like them enough I'll buy the 2009 remasters myself.

  ---

  Xbox Live for the Xbox 1 is about to die. Hail Dorthy, the witch is dead!

  ---

  GOG.com gave me a free game for making guesses on their countdown thread. I snagged Arcanum.

  The download speed was slower earlier but it's faster now. I'll blather on about how wonderful it is later.

  GOG.com = awesome.

  Across the Universe = awesome.

  Beatles = awesome.

  Library = awesome.

  Stephen Colbert's book = awesome.

  awesome = awesome.

  All of the work I have to do this weekend = not awesome.

  ---

  Occasionally Somethingawful comes up with something that makes me laugh. This needlessly lusty piece is one of those times. Probably the least safe for work story I've read in years.

  New note: I'll be cancelling my eMusic subscription soon. Their selection really does stink.

  • Posted Feb 5, 2010 2:02 pm GMT
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• 4Feb 10

  Yes, it's one of THOSE blogs

  I haven't creates a useless blathering about Linux for a couple of months now, only because of a few reasonable objections. First off, now that my blog base has muiltiplied, I don't want to go off offending anyone who might consider the ideals of Free Software "communist." McCarthy may indeed live and persecute again. Secondly, ever since I swapped to Fedora 12, I've had nothing to write about, other than a random "squee" noise I usually edit out of my blogs for continuity's sake.

  But there's a new master in town, my friends. Its name is Scientific Linux.

  Most Linux nerds are fans of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a massively stable plethora of outdated software that literally cannot crash. I know: I've tried to make it fall apart and I can't. The folly of this project is that it costs money to purchase - your enterprise gains support and this wonderous platform, but greens fly faster than Microsoft's OS stability envy. The folly of this folly, is, naturally, the entire thing is open source. Remove the trademarks, and voila, you've got a stabler than stable platform to redistribute to the pocket protecting, freedom-loving masses.

  The last Red Hat clone I used was CentOS, whose unweildy nature and lack of support for practically everything I chalked up to old age. It sure looked nice, and any box you threw it on was set for life, but try and set up a wi-fi network or your Windows hard drive share on the thing and you were in a world of pain. (Tangent: it shows how far Desktop Linux has come, considering these were all issues in 2007 that are now completely and utterly erased!) Could stable Linux be such a burden?!

  No, claims Scientific Linux! You can have the same stability, the same stability that those huge atom smashers are using to power millions of squillions of dollars of research, the same stability that a handful of the world's super computers trust, even more stable than the computers that built Avatar's CGI (which used some foreign, Yahoo-powered nonsense called Ubuntu - link), all within the power of your laptop.

  Scientific Linux, while built upon communist ideals (and will probably enslave said atoms about to be smashed into its utilitarian, dictator-loving views - a small price to pay), takes the stability and wonder of CentOS and makes it work with your Wi-Fi and Windows-based hard drive. And Flash works out of the box. And so does MP3 and all of those codecs. I mean, come on, people, what more could you possibly want from an operating system?

  Firefox 3.6? Oh, um...err, see, uhhhh...See, it comes with 3.0, I mean, look at that! It comes with Emacs! Everyone loves Emacs, right?

  Ah, poo. Well, if you wanted the newest crap stuffed into a LiveCD, you'd use Fedora 12 like me. Or if you were a manly man, you'd use Fedora Rawhide, whose name sounds badass. Rawhide contains software that hasn't even been run by its creators yet. If you survive that, you deserve your access to your normal computing functions.

  ---

  I've been listening to Stephen Colbert's audiobook of "I am America and So Can You!" for a good hour straight. Can you tell?

  I can't remember who said it, but the saying "I've got to make it funny so they listen" certainly applies. hopefully I entertained you. Also, Colbert's book/audiobook is a riot and you should go get it.

  I raided a friend's movie collection (which is permission, naturally) so if I start banging my head against the wall, kindly remove the DVD's from my hand and guide me to the nearest institute ASAP. Can I make it through Tron again? Will Twilight kill me? We shall see. I always have Team America and District 9 to fall back on.

  Are there any laws against single college aged males watching Twilight alone on their laptop? I don't want to get into any legal issues. I just want to watch it so I have context for the millions of parodies that exist across the internet. And if High School musical taught me anything, it's that anything that makes millions of screaming girls swoon must be unintentionally hilarious.

  • Posted Feb 4, 2010 5:16 pm GMT
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