Category: News

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News

Yup, I live in da hood, yo!

Received some scary news today, from the mailman no less. I was out pulling weeds in the yard when he came to deliver mail and said "so you had some excitement in the neighborhood this morning, eh?" I responded with "oh? what happened?" He said that early this morning some guys broke into a house, not but a couple blocks away from my house, holding the occupants hostage while they robbed the place.

Holy shit!

So I do a bit of research, and the only news story I could find was this (kptv.com). Yikes! My only hope, given both the time of morning and the way it all went down was that the assholes who did this knew the house and/or occupants. It seems too nuts to be totally a random thing. I mean, the occupants could have been trigger-happy, NRA card holding, 2nd Amendment quoting militia members. Seems more likely that there was some connection between the perpetrators and the occupants of the house. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself to feel a little better. 🙂

Either way, I’m going to be triple-checking the locks on the doors and windows, and making sure the porch lights are on from now on, even if my electric bill goes up a few bucks. I also talked to all my neighbors, so we’re all aware of what happened and can keep eyes out for each other. Up until this there’s not been a single bad event in my nighborhood (aside from a house around the corner that throws loud parties pretty much every night). Let’s hope this is a one-time thing, and not completely random. 

Categories
Entertainment Humor News Politics Television

Stephen Colbert, special report

This past Saturday night C-Span aired the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, a fancy gala that included the President himself. The final speaker for the night was Steven Colbert, of the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report.

Mr. Colbert roasts the President, the media, and everyone between. It is quite entertaining to see Colbert standing face to face with Bush, using his ‘right wing’ pundit persona to slam Bush and his approval ratings, the war in Iraq, etc. You can see it in three parts on YouTube (link is to the first part, the other two are listed on the right of the YouTube page). Enjoy!

Categories
General News

Slacking, and it’s imminent demise

Well, I know, I suck at blogging. I knew I would. On a day-to-day basis I find I have little to write about. I mean sure, I could write about how I woke up with a sore back, and then stubbed my toe on the dresser in my zombie-like shuffle towards the coffee maker (the life-giver). But normally I just wait until I have something I find worthwhile to write about, and even then ‘worthwhile’ is arguable.

Well, I do finally have some news, really good news. I’m about to end my ‘slacker’ life of freelancing and rejoin the regular working folk. I’m not sure what the etiquette is here, or more to the point the potential legal ramifications, so I’m not going to say what company, but it’s a great web software company located in downtown Portland. I figure that’s just vague enough. 🙂

Sadly I fear I’ve not taken full advantage of my little ‘forced vacation’. I’ve been very busy, perhaps too busy. Since mid-January I think I’ve had all of a week or two worth of not doing any work. I’ve been fortunate enough to have found a fairly steady stream of freelance work to keep plenty busy. And when I’m not coding or designing some web site, I’ve been doing a lot of yard work or other house work to fill up any spare time I might have had.

I’ve had more than one friend mention that I’m the bad at being unemployed. I just don’t do it right. I haven’t spent any time lounging around playing video games, or watching television, or sleeping until two in the afternoon. That means in almost exactly 3 months, I’ve had one week "off", and that’s me unemployed! I suck at this.

However, I am very happy about the new job. Looking forward to the challenge, and looking forward to working with the people I’ll be working for and with. The best part is, I won’t be starting until the Monday after Kelly and I return from the UK, which means I’ll be able to dive right in, free from all my freelance work and refreshed from my vacation. Yay! Perhaps between now and my trip I’ll find a bit of time to do some real slacking, before the opportunity is lost. 🙂

Categories
News Technology

Movies for Sony PSP endangered?

According to this article on Reuters, movies for the PSP (on their proprietary UMD, or Universal Media Disc)  may be going away. Apparently two major studio’s (Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures) have dropped the format already, and others may follow suit, due to lackluster sales of films on the format. The article mentions that Retailers are also considering dropping UMD from their shelves entirely. Bad news for PSP owners who like to relax on the train and watch movies. Fortunately there are a lot of titles out there now, and it will likely take a LOT for Sony Pictures to dump the format, so there may still be some hope, for a while anyway.

The article cites a few possible reasons for the drop-off in sales, two of which I myself found likely. One is the release of the fifth generation iPod (with video support), because between the device itself and the ability to buy television shows with iTunes it’s made a very easy (and relatively cheap) process for customers. Two is that there’s no way to hook your PSP up to a TV, so you can’t watch the movies you purchase on anything BUT your PSP (much less being able to play games on a TV). This was something that always left me scratching my head, make a slick device with good graphics, good game performance, add movie playback with a brand new format (UMD), and then don’t add any kind of TV-out on the thing. Huh? *scratches head* emoticon

Categories
Entertainment News Technology

Corporate greed abound

This morning I decided to catch up on some news articles (Wired, C|Net, and Slashdot, the nerdy trinity) and was again angered by the examples of corporate greed and complete disregard for us, the people (you know, the ones with the money), in their strategies.

First was news regarding the future of computers. TCPA (or ‘Trusted Computing’, an encryption system between the hardware and software) and DRM (Digital Rights Management, the system content distributors use to lock down your purchases) are working together actively. Initially TCPA described as a way of locking out malware (such as viruses and spyware) only. It’s clear now that the media & content restrictions possibilities are endless. Without getting too tinfoil hat, it’s certainly possible (probable? we’ll see) for new PC’s to reject my ability to install some software that’s not signed (say, Linux or some other open source software), or play my media that’s not signed (say, my own self-ripped MP3 or OGG files). I find it obtrusive and invasive that the next piece of computer hardware I buy will contain components that can track my usage and send data about my activities all over the web.

Grrr!

Next I read an article about how new high-definition disc players (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) may not have output support for component (a 3-plug system that all HDTV’s have, used to deliver high-definition picture from devices such as your dish receiver) because component is analog, and there is no way for content makers to restrict your viewing with it. Instead, in order to watch the new shiny HD-DVD disc you bought at full high definition, your TV will need to have an HDMI input (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) which is digital and can be restricted with DRM. The problem is, according to the article, nobody is talking about it and it will affect a lot of people. What may happen is if you only have component on your HDTV, it may drop the resolution down to what current DVD resolution (480p), thus removing any benefit of HD discs.

This sucks for a lot of people because until relatively recently many HDTV’s didn’t even have HDMI inputs, and if it did, there was only one (compared to multiple component inputs so people can plug in their Dish receiver, their XBox 360, etc.). Here again we see content makers pushing hardware makers into things not based on market pressures, but based on their desires to lock down what we do with the things we buy.

Double-Grr!!

Maybe we need to be reminded of how far corporate greed will go to make an extra penny, but I don’t see either TCPA & DRM or the new high-definition disc issues being things that benefit us (the people making the purchasing decisions) in any way. I’m more inclined to see it as another way for these big corporations to commit yet another invasive act (crime some would say), and this time we have no recourse thanks to the DMCA. I can’t hack my PC to not send personal data over the net, becuase I’d be breaking the law. I have to just take it. But I’m not going to be smiling.