Olde Tyme TV: Buck Rogers

Out of a fit of nostalgia I watched a couple episodes of “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” I found it interesting, even if no one else did. I hadn’t seen them since they originally aired in 1979. The two episodes I watched were two hours long each. So it was a lot of Buck Rogers for one night.

I had only remembered a few things about the show. Like Twiki’s “bidibidibidi”

noise (which drove everyone crazy within 15 minutes), and the fuel lines for the space ships, which are those lighted cables they use for parties now. And the tight jump suit that Erin Grey wore (some things stick with you through adolescence).

Everything else I had really forgotten. I had forgotten that the fighters looked pretty cool. I had also forgotten how much skin they showed. I had really forgotten Gil Gerard’s awesome fighting stance. It’ll probably take another 29 years to forget it.

I don’t think I realized, when I was 11, how much they took from “Battlestar Galactica” in terms of props and stock footage.

I look forward to watching the rest of the episodes. I don’t think the rest of the family understands that I need to watch these old shows and movies every once in a while. It’s a chance to re-visit my childhood, no matter how cheesy and badly acted they are.

Technorati Tags: buck,rogers,twiki,robot,1979,nostalgia,tv,television,jumpsuit,skin

Weekend with KDE4

Okay, I did it.  Most of Saturday and most of Sunday was spent using KDE4.  Overall it was a good experience.  I only had two applications crash, but I’m not sure which ones they were (strange, but true).    If it wasn’t for the video screwing up in VLC and Mplayer I would have used it all day Sunday.  I forgot to try disabling the compositing, though.  I wish I had remembered to do that.

I think I’m ready to switch over full time, once I get that figured out.

KDE4 — Another Try For a Day

Today is Saturday, and we all know what that means.  Yep, this morning I updated my KDE 4 and I’m going to see if I can keep on using it for a full day.  A few things failed this morning, like kdeedu.  I couldn’t be bothered to figure out why, so I just skipped it.  However, I did emerge extragear-plasma which gives me a couple of new things on the desktop.

I also enabled the background slide show.  It’s pretty interesting but it does cause a slight delay before the next picture is loaded.  This may have something to do with the fact that my SATA drive isn’t working at full speed for some reason.  I blame the motherboard for that.

I still have compositing turned on so I’m still getting some funky video artifacts.  I’d turn it off but I just like the effects too much.  I’m willing to deal with them.

Sound and video are working properly, so I should be good to go for the day.  As long as nobody reboots the thing, we’ll be able to see how it works for the day.

I’m a bit disappointed to see that you can’t do an “Open with…” in Dolphins column view.  I was ready to switch over to that.

On a non-KDE4 related note, I’ve gotten quite used to using Windows Live Writer for writing my blogs.  I find it a lot easier to deal with pictures and stuff.  I really wish there was an application for Linux that worked the same way.  I’ve tried Drivel, but it’s not quite the same.  I think it’s the plugins that hook me, because I really like the Polaroid picture plug in available for it.  That’s what I used for the previous blog.

Mars Revisited

So, first there was the “Face on Mars.” And that’s fine. For anyone who doesn’t know me by now you need to understand that my position on the “Face” is quite simple. I don’t know if it’s artificial and I don’t know if it’s natural. For me, it go could go either way. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a mystery that

won’t be solved until we go up there and take a look at it. I have no respect for people who dismiss it out of hand as being a natural formation, and I don’t have respect for people who are dead set on it being artificial. We ain’t there, we ain’t gonna know until we really look at it. Trying to justify either position from Earth is silly.

After the rovers were roving for a bit, another interesting thing showed up. Some people were claiming it was a Martian body. Considering the weather on Mars, I shouldn’t think it would be. And it didn’t look too much like a skeleton to me.

Actually, it looked like it came from the set of “Planet of the Apes.” But it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say it looks kind of like a statue. What does it for me is the raised ground stretching down from the chin. While being very uniform, it still looks like it could be covering more of whatever it is. It looks similar to the “Face,” too.

Finally, there’s the new picture. Even though it isn’t new. This one looks like that Bigfoot photo from the 1970’s. It looks like a figure walking across the landscape. Or a Sand person from Star Wars. Or a figure who used to be seated, perhaps on a throne.

This could all be wishful thinking, sure. Maybe they aren’t monuments, statues, and figurines. But wouldn’t it be interesting if they were? Wouldn’t it be great if someone else thought it would be worth going up there to check it out? At least publicly?

Technorati Tags: mars,face,statue,figurine,anomaly,weird,space

Haggis

Well, here’s a bit of good news.  Scotland is thinking of asking the US to reconsider its ban on Haggis.  Proper Haggis, that is.  Right now we can get it, provided it doesn’t contain offal.  Which means it’s not a real haggis at all.  I don’t see it happening any time soon, though, because of Mad Cow Disease and whatever else.

One day I’ll get to try it.  One day.

While you’re not eating haggis, you may as well not drink these soft drinks along with it.

KDE4 for a day — How it worked

Some people might actually be interested in how I fared using KDE 4.0 for a day. The truth is, I wasn’t able to go a whole day. I needed to look at some media clips and, for some reason, VLC would only display the very top line of the video. Mplayer showed a scrambled screen.

I’m willing to blame the composite system for that, but I didn’t think to turn it off. I just went back to KDE 3.5.8 for the rest of the day.

I still like it, though. I can see myself using it more and more. That’s really the same thing that happened with BeOS. I installed it just to look at it and ended up using it more and more until it was my normal operating system. I only used Windows for games.

There’s been quite the UFO flap in Stephenville, TX this week. A number of people are claiming to have seen one (possibly one). That’s fine with me, really. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m OK with UFO’s.

But as I get older I get a bit more skeptical. It’s not that I don’t think the universe is a large enough place to have another (I’m being gracious here) intelligent species or two. It’s just that I don’t know why they would be here. It seems to me, if we have alien visitors then they’d probably be from somewhere local. Like Mars or something.

The other thing that bothers me is the lack of video evidence. As of last night, there were no pictures or video. Even if there were video or pictures they’d be crappy. You know that. In this day in age when you can get a really good shot of Brittany Spears’ coochie there should be no excuse for not having a decent shot of a UFO.

Texas is no stranger to UFO’s, though. In 1897, Aurora, TX supposedly had a visitor from another planet. Aurora, by the way, is not very far from Stephenville.

SimCity -> Micropolis

I wasn’t expecting this: SimCity has been open sourced and changed into Micropolis.

Before anyone gets too excited, note that it says SimCity and not SimCity 2000.  This is the original beast.

It’s available here if you want to try it.  I don’t think it’s ready to run for Windows, though.  I’ll wait until it hits the Gentoo Portage.

Now, when will they open source Little Computer People (the original Sims)?

KDE4 - Trying it for a day

I’ve installed the latest SVN for KDE4.0.  I figure today I’ll make a go of trying it for the entire day.

I may have to remove it and re-emerge it, though.  I’m getting some weird screen artifacts.  In fact, I can’t see anything when I log into it unless I hit CTRL-F8, otherwise I get a blank screen.  I’m pretty sure it has to do with the compositing. Maybe I’ll just wipe out my .kde directory first.  That seems a bit more sensible.

Other than being slow when I’m compiling something (which I’m sure has to do with my SATA drive and DMA that I don’t know how to fix) I kind of like it.  It’s different, and I like different.

Right now I’m re-compiling the network apps so I can get AIM working in Kopete.  Hopefully.

My other problem of programs bringing up KWrite with a .desktop file appears to have been fixed.  Unfortunately, I lost my icon for the Open Office word processor.  At least Firefox is working.

Oh, I kind of with the Task Manager widget thing had more options.  Right now it only has one, for the tooltips.  Hopefully soon I’ll be able to change the settings to more how the old Kicker is set up.

Slow Down

It’s all about being faster.  Computers get faster, airplanes get faster, even trains get faster.  It’s all about “being there” as quickly as possible. 

Back in the old days, if you worked in New York City and had business in San Francisco you would have to allot yourself enough time to get there.  Now, you can be there within a few hours.

Is it really necessary, though?  With laptops, Blackberries, cellular phones, cellular and satellite broadband and everything else that’s on the way, is it really necessary to be there right now?

What if…  the train were a bit more affordable?  Or affordable at all?  Wouldn’t it be more interesting to take a day or two to travel and work as if you’re working from home?  Presuming you have a good place to work, like a cabin. 

What if they brought back the airships?  If they could make them safer than the Hindenberg, wouldn’t that be an awesome way to travel? 

Technorati Tags: hindenberg, blimp, airship, aeroscraft, computer

Movie Trailer Reviews

These trailers can be viewed at http://www.apple.com/trailers and you need Quicktime installed.

Speed Racer: I liked the cartoon. I really hope the movie is better than the trailer. Everything looks… fake. Okay, maybe that sounds kind of stupid but, really, everything looks fake. The movie is not a cartoon, it’s live action. But everything in it looks computer generated. And what really looks bad? Speed’s helmet. Really bad.

Kit Kittredge an American Girl Mystery: It looks like a 1920’s period piece about a girl who wants to be a reporter. Not usually my cup of tea, but it has Wallace Shawn as a cranky newspaper editor in it. How bad could it be? Also, Jane Krakowski is in it. Damn you, Janie Krakowski, etc.

10,000 B.C.: I don’t know about this one either. Wooly Mammoths figure big in this flick. Basically about a guy that leads another bunch of guys in a war against some other dudes back in 10,000BC. Oh, and a lost civilization. I can’t figure out if it would be easy to have a lost civilization in 10,000 B.C or hard (how long could they have been lost for?). Anyway, it’s full of action and near-naked guys so it’ll probably be a hit. The women look quite nice for neanderthals.

Wanted: A “Train the incompetant kid to be an assassin” movie. It has “Summer Movie” written all over it. Also, it has Angelina “Hot Lips” Jolie. And a Dodge Viper. This is definitely a summer movie and, as such, I am required to watch it no matter how bad it is, or how stupidly unrealistic the stunts are.

Hellboy II — The Golden Army: If you liked the first Hellboy, I don’t see any reason (so far) not to like this one. It looks like more of the same. Also a summer movie if I’ve ever seen one.

The Dark Knight: After Joel Schumacher ruined Tim Burton’s Batman vision, the studios decided they had to start from scratch. Good idea. Christian Bale is a decent Batman and this movie looks like it’ll be pretty good, if comic book to movie conversions are your thing.

Wall-E: A Pixar flick about a robot. I like all of Pixar’s movies, so I reckon this will be good. The trailer is pretty funny. It still looks more realistic than Speed Racer.

Hancock: Will Smith is a super hero who racks up a lot of damage and doesn’t quite do the right thing. This looks good, too. The trailer is worth it just for the whale.