Randomness Redefined

Just letting everyone know that the site should be much faster now thanks to a great plugin for Wordpress. I am now using W3 Total Cache to speed things up as this plugin works with Amazon’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) Amazon Cloudfront. My site should now be cached worldwide for much faster viewing. Please let me know if something is broken so test the heck out of things. Also, please use my suggestions link on the right hand side of the page if you would like me to write about something.

I am helping out with the testing efforts for the Standard Theme. I cannot really talk about this theme yet but I like the new look and that is why the blog looks a little different. Stay tuned for more information.

Fellow blogger Paul Stamatiou announced today that he has launched his Blog suggestion service Skribit. You can see the suggestion widget that the service offers on the right hand side of the page. If you have any suggestions for posts that you would like me to make please feel free to use the widget. I wish Paul great success with his startup and hope it all goes well!

I know that is is sad that he is dead and I was a child of the 80’s so I grew up with his music but come on the man was a little odd. I know he had a very rough childhood and a abusive father but the man was a bit of a recluse. I was in the middle of my shift on Thursday when the news hit so we went into scramble mode as we do host some news sits un our data centers. we had to work pretty quickly in order to keep the sites online so I didn’t have time to reflect on the event. It’s been a few days now and I still don’t really feel anything about his death. I did find these pictures from a co-workers and I found them a little funny. Apperntly people found a star on the Walk of Fame with the name Michael Jackson on it and so they held a vigil to honor his death. Apperently no one did their homework because the star they were mourning at was for an LA Radio host by the same name who is stil alie.

The pop star’s actual star on the Walk of Fame is near the front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. On the day of his death the star was covered by scaffolding in preparation for the “Bruno” movie premiere. Its sad that Americans have become so uneducated as a whole. What the heck is happening to this country?

Do you have any thoughts on the three celebrity deaths of last week?

A little bit of geeky humor that I found funny.

Neat huh?

I just thought this was really cool.

Overall I had a pretty good, if short, 25th. birthday. After scrambling to finish my final paper for my Information Security course i finally passed out about 1:45 AM on Monday only to wake up a few hours later to head to my Operations Management and then to work. When I got off work I met my parents at Zios Italian Kitchen as my family’s usual tradition dictates. After ordering my brother presented me with the gift of music. The gift included the soundtrack for the now canceled Firefly television show that I have mentioned a few times and that Matthew and i have fallen in love with. I had not had the time to track down a copy so I am glad that now i do not have to go to the trouble. Also, he gave me the soundtrack to the firefly movie Serenity. This I was not exactly expecting but I am glad to have it as the music from the Firefly verse’ so now I have several hours of really excellent music to enjoy and in addition I took two of my favorite tacks from the show and made them into ringtones. I have noticed that more people notice me when my phone goes off, and no not in that annoyed way, they either ask me about the song which allows me to convert more people or they come up and ask me if I am a Browncoat, either way so far it has been a conversation piece.

I also at long last got my very own digital camera! I have been working to bet one of these shiny things for a number of years but something always prevented me. They are finally cheap enough that my parents purchased one for me for my birthday. It was picked out by my good friend Zack over at Best Buy so of course it is exactly what I wanted. The camera is very light weight and it fits perfectly in my hand or pocket without being microscopic so I do not have to worry about losing it. The only real requirements that I had were that it needed to be easy to use, take fairly high quality photos (IE 4 megapixels or higher), and that it was portable. I am no expert but this camera will be perfect for me when all that I need to do is take the occasional snapshot and this camera has all the automatic features that I could want such as autoblur and whatnot. As soon as I can I will post some pics that I have taken with it on Flickr as well as and some descriptions and whatnot to my MSU tour pics. Till then take care.

I did not mean for this to happen but somehow I ended up purchasing several things today. First up was the Serinity RPG book. I have not been a Browncoat for very less than a year but none the less I am a pretty dedicated fan. For weeks now I have been listening to my favorite Firefly/Serenity podcast and they have interviewed and discussed the Serenity RPG. As you know I am a bit of a geek so I was interested in the back story and how the inner workings of The Verse were described. I have been trying to get it for a few weeks now from my local gaming store but they have been out. On Tuesday they said that they were expecting a new shipment of the books so I didn’t have time to get there until today. Luckily they had three copies left so I snatched up one.

Later on this evening Erik and I headed out to grab a burger after work and since we were right across the street from Best Buy we thought we would head over and hang out for a bit. I looked for my cohort Zack who worked there but he wasn’t working. So I rang him up to see what was going on (he has a Razr phone so I am jealous:P). We chatted for a bit and then I went browsing the used DVD bin and found one of my favorite slapstick comedy, Clue. It was only 5 bucks so I grabbed it. Mainly, in the bins all that I could find was mainly various chick clicks which have absolutely zero appeal to me so I skipped over that hoping to find a movie that would be as enjoyable as laughing at the gags and intrigue of Clue. As I dug deeper I found another gem of a DVD at pretty much rock bottom prices!

Erik noticed that they also had a few copies of Gattaca. I have love this movie and I have seen this movie numerous times and I consider it to be a cult classic Sci-Fi film. I am probably alone in this but I think this is a pretty kick ass movie and I like it alot so I don’t really care what others may think. After all, its my money. The movie takes place far in the future and your entire life, career, mating partners, etc is determined by the DNA profile that you have on file. People with the bets genes are at the top and can do whatever they want, if you don’t have those genes your life is much different. I will not spoil the movie for you but if you are interested in this movie, head on over to the ever useful IMDB or maybe add it to your Netflix cue. Actually, has anyone used that and if so is it worth it? I cannot decide if I want to get a Netflix account or pick up a TiVO or DVR from my cable company. If you have any thoughts put up a comment.

At any rate I should get back the to 8-10 page research paper for my Writing II class on IT startup feasibility that is due on Tuesday and the 10-12 page final research paper on open source VPNs that is due after my 24th. birthday. I have to give a presentation for that as well, so I hope I don’t have to go that day as most likely I will be hung over. On another note take some time to click on the Frappr link on the right hand side and fill out the form so I can see where my readers are from. Also, I suggest using my RSS feed that has the entries in it as I am including links I find that are interesting, etc so I don’t just repost what others have done. If you have any comments, etc feel free to post a comment or email me. Take care everyone!

I’m sitting here in an empty room over at MSU because for the second time today I apparently do not have a class but I missed the memo. Soooooo, since I have nothing to do for over an hour I’m listening to The Signal Podcast on Big Poppa, my kickass iPod and I thought I would test out the new Camino version and make a post here. In other news, I have some brand new shiny purchases from Amazon.

First up was my latest DVD purchase, and in my personal opinion an absolute necessity for my movie collection, we have the wide screen edition of The Hitchhikers Guide To The galaxy! This movie totally rocks and I recommend that you all go out and get it. Remember one thing when you are traveling across the galaxy “always know where your towel is”.

Next up we have my newest book purchase, and yes it IS extremely geeky. I have always been a big fan of PHP and MySQL and I have been looking for a really good book to further my education of this two awesome technologies and I think this is the one. The reviews that I read indicated that it was good for all skill levels and included many examples, the only way that I learn is by example so this is excellent! I have not had a whole lot of time to read it yet but I will do so when i get some more free time (oh how rare that is) and I will let you know how that goes if I remember.

If you want to borrow it you are welcome to as long as you are willing to drop by the apartment and borrow it. At any rate, its too damn quiet in this room and I am getting creeped out so I am going to wrap this up. Take care everyone.

Looks like PHP:”PHP(PHP Hypertext Processor)”:http://php.net/ decided to be a naughty boy and not work. This has since be resolved and everything is running just perfectly. I have found some more interesting stiff online today that I wanted to share.

Broadband TV comes to the Mac only (via Participatoryculture.Org)

This piece of Mac only goodness (for now) is called DTV. This looks like a pretty sweet little app, it uses RSS and Bittorrent to subscribe to channels and then you download them for a period of 6 days or so and you can watch them over and over again whenever you want. You can set it to check for new stuff whenever, but the default is every hour. I have it installed and I have downloaded several of the shows and the quality is pretty damn good! I will play with is some and write a bit more maybe but here’s a screenshot of it in action:

The interface
The channel guide
A channel

I don;t know if this will go anywhere but its a cool idea, like a Tivo only free!

I found a lamp I need for my new place (just kidding but its got a vague Star Wars feel to it doncha think?) (found via Gizmodo)

Even though this thing is kinda phallic and costs $240 my need for shiny thins is hard to resist. Take a peek at it:

Microsoft throws in the towel on their Windows Genuine Advantage program and send it back to the drawing boards (via The Inquirer)

It seems the Microsoft can not keep up with the hacker community as they break every effort they make to prevent piracy of their Windows operating system within hours so they are giving up for now/ Apparently it was not even designed to stop hackers, etc. but it was instead designed to:

Help innocent customers realize “the full value of authentic Windows software while protecting investments made by our partners”.

Sounds like a way to trick all the sheep out their but whatever, I actually own a legal copy now (thank you Microsoft Academic Student Alliance, I hope you guys liked my $13 for XP Pro ) so I don’t have to worry or something like that.

And my favorite one of the day: the ebay deal of the day: WiFi Speed Spray (via Gizmodo again)

This has to be completely and utterly bogus but its a great laugh none the less.

As your computer sends data, each bit also carries hundreds of invisible WiFi Speed Spray™ “scrubbing� molecules. It works at the speed of light. and even penetrates lead walls (not even Superman can do that!). Within .0025 seconds, the entire path between you and the receiver is cleaned, scrubbed, polished, and sanitized. You’ll notice the improvement immediately as your productivity soars!

I am no engineer but this has to be utter crap, I think I agree with the Gizmodo guys thoughts on this.

I could use some increased productivity. I could also use a beer.

That’s all for now, I’m going to go pass out now and get up in a few to keep hunting for stuff for my new place. Peace.

I just wanted to take a sec to post about a movie called Serinity that will be coming out in September based off of the short lived, but not dead show called Firefly by the creator of Buffy and Angle television series, Joss Whedon, and the podcast tat has appeared called The Signal. I was not a fan of the other 2 series but I fell in love with firefly after just hearing the opening music on the pilot episode on DVD (I was ignorant of the shows existence as I do not watch FOX and no one told me about it till after it was canceled. ). Oh well, I will do what I can by converting as many people as i can to the Browncoat movement by showing the DVDs to as many as I can! In the meantime take a look at the banner below and check out the podcast in itunes or you favorite podcatcher.

Also, go buy this box set! Its worth it, trust me!