Friday, March 12, 2004
It's official.
So I didn't post yesterday. I'm sure some of you had a good long cry about it, but then managed to move on with your lives. I don't want to make the not posting a recurring theme since I like having the challenge of a deadline to meet everyday (albeit a self-imposed one), but I'm a bit pressed for time on Thursdays from fencing and what not. At least I fixed the picture (apparantly it was broken) so you can scroll down if you wish.
In the news...
I read the news a lot. It gives my eyes entertainment during my lunch breaks, as well as pretty much anytime I don't feel like doing stuff at work. A couple of the more eye-catching tidbits I've read about recently:
- Rejected reality TV show ideas include a Bachelor-style show where the Bachelorette must pick a man, but some of the guys are gay and if she picks a gay guy he wins money; a relay race where contestants literally have a monkey on their back (and the monkey has to pass the baton to the next monkey!); a show called Iron Lung where contenders must quit smoking; a show where virgins must compete with each other to get laid.
- There's a robot race run by the Pentagon!!! These teams have to make robots that can navigate their way through the Mojave desert, but experts seem to think nobody will make it.
More stuff that goes BOING!
You know the Ewok song? Well apparantly the lyrics mean something. Yeah, that's right. Somebody actually translated this into English. I still can't get my head around it. I mean, I'm all for geekery (the fact that I blog is almost testament to that) but I still have my limits.
I am a fan of commentaries on DVDs. I admit this. I think it's insightful to find out some of the inside stories behind the movies I watch, and often you can learn a lot of stuff about movies in general from the commentary tracks. Now some of these tracks are not so good, and I appreciate IGN going to the trouble of making a list of these sub-par tracks for us. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of reading to separate the actual "bad commentary" warnings from the "bad commentaries that are actually really funny" tracks such as the ones on Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Cannibal! The Musical. It takes even more sifting to sort out the silly complaints people have like saying the Chasing Amy track is bad because Ben Affleck makes fun of Kevin Smith. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are now born tragically without a sense of humor.
The more adventurous on the web might have heard of Real Dolls. They're life-sized sex dolls that you can order, well, to have sex with. Some guy has taken it upon himself to recount his experience with one. An interesting read, if only for curiosity's sake.
Again, in the news
I forgot about this the first go around. One of the biggest issues right now is spam. Email spam, text message spam, the works. Living in Ottawa, there are a lot of software companies, so naturally there is a large section devoted to "high tech" news in the Citizen, and consequently there was almost nothing but articles about spam and how to stop it. To all the spam-harassed people out there: ha, ha, and ha again. This is because I don't get any.
See, maybe I just don't do stupid things with my email address. I treat it like a phone number (I don't get many telemarketers either, for that matter). Either that, or maybe I am getting all this spam but I just don't see it because of filters on my mail server. Regardless, while I'm sure that some of you need to get your email through Yahoo! or Hotmail, where they sell out the addresses to advertisers or the addresses are easily farmed, so it isn't technically your fault, a lot of spam can be self-inflicted (by giving your address out to mailing lists or groups, or by trying to unsubscribe). And because of this... well... hm. I don't know where I'm going with this. It's like my argument was a train that just kind of went off a cliff. I guess my point is that I think the whole spam thing is over-hyped and can be solved with a fair bit of common sense.
Anyways, as evidenced by my running out of steam earlier, I'll go now. I do get to go home at the end of April for a week though, so I'm happy about that. Mmmyep. ¶ 6:53 p.m.
So I didn't post yesterday. I'm sure some of you had a good long cry about it, but then managed to move on with your lives. I don't want to make the not posting a recurring theme since I like having the challenge of a deadline to meet everyday (albeit a self-imposed one), but I'm a bit pressed for time on Thursdays from fencing and what not. At least I fixed the picture (apparantly it was broken) so you can scroll down if you wish.
In the news...
I read the news a lot. It gives my eyes entertainment during my lunch breaks, as well as pretty much anytime I don't feel like doing stuff at work. A couple of the more eye-catching tidbits I've read about recently:
- Rejected reality TV show ideas include a Bachelor-style show where the Bachelorette must pick a man, but some of the guys are gay and if she picks a gay guy he wins money; a relay race where contestants literally have a monkey on their back (and the monkey has to pass the baton to the next monkey!); a show called Iron Lung where contenders must quit smoking; a show where virgins must compete with each other to get laid.
- There's a robot race run by the Pentagon!!! These teams have to make robots that can navigate their way through the Mojave desert, but experts seem to think nobody will make it.
More stuff that goes BOING!
You know the Ewok song? Well apparantly the lyrics mean something. Yeah, that's right. Somebody actually translated this into English. I still can't get my head around it. I mean, I'm all for geekery (the fact that I blog is almost testament to that) but I still have my limits.
I am a fan of commentaries on DVDs. I admit this. I think it's insightful to find out some of the inside stories behind the movies I watch, and often you can learn a lot of stuff about movies in general from the commentary tracks. Now some of these tracks are not so good, and I appreciate IGN going to the trouble of making a list of these sub-par tracks for us. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of reading to separate the actual "bad commentary" warnings from the "bad commentaries that are actually really funny" tracks such as the ones on Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Cannibal! The Musical. It takes even more sifting to sort out the silly complaints people have like saying the Chasing Amy track is bad because Ben Affleck makes fun of Kevin Smith. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are now born tragically without a sense of humor.
The more adventurous on the web might have heard of Real Dolls. They're life-sized sex dolls that you can order, well, to have sex with. Some guy has taken it upon himself to recount his experience with one. An interesting read, if only for curiosity's sake.
Again, in the news
I forgot about this the first go around. One of the biggest issues right now is spam. Email spam, text message spam, the works. Living in Ottawa, there are a lot of software companies, so naturally there is a large section devoted to "high tech" news in the Citizen, and consequently there was almost nothing but articles about spam and how to stop it. To all the spam-harassed people out there: ha, ha, and ha again. This is because I don't get any.
See, maybe I just don't do stupid things with my email address. I treat it like a phone number (I don't get many telemarketers either, for that matter). Either that, or maybe I am getting all this spam but I just don't see it because of filters on my mail server. Regardless, while I'm sure that some of you need to get your email through Yahoo! or Hotmail, where they sell out the addresses to advertisers or the addresses are easily farmed, so it isn't technically your fault, a lot of spam can be self-inflicted (by giving your address out to mailing lists or groups, or by trying to unsubscribe). And because of this... well... hm. I don't know where I'm going with this. It's like my argument was a train that just kind of went off a cliff. I guess my point is that I think the whole spam thing is over-hyped and can be solved with a fair bit of common sense.
Anyways, as evidenced by my running out of steam earlier, I'll go now. I do get to go home at the end of April for a week though, so I'm happy about that. Mmmyep. ¶ 6:53 p.m.
