Sundries
June 7th, 2009 by Assorter
There have been enough random occurrences and serendipitous discoveries of interesting odds and ends in my life to constitute sufficient content for a blog entry. So here goes!
My thoughts on the Star Trek movie
May 17th, 2009 by Assorter
As I am a self-professed Star Trek geek who jumps at every opportunity to rattle off voluminous amounts of Star Trek minutiae, a lot of my friends have been asking me for my thoughts on the new Star Trek movie. So, here are my neatly-arranged and spell-checked thoughts. Warnings: spoilers and excessive geekiness ahead.
More Music
March 7th, 2009 by Assorter
I recently discovered a new artist that had me rushing to Amazon’s fantastic mp3 store: Tya.
To me, Tya is a fusion of Enigma and Deep Forest. It combines Enigma’s mysterious and melodic quality with Deep Forest’s worldly tones, with very interesting results. I’ve actually only downloaded a couple of his songs–Akwaba and A Place to Rest, both from his album Akwaba –but am seriously considering others. This is definitely consistent with my rather non-mainstream musical tastes, but it’s still cool to be a nonconformist, right?
By the way, I discovered this artist on Pandora. What a great service. Between that and the musical interludes on NPR, the world can be your musical playground!
Turn on that router
February 16th, 2009 by Assorter
Just got back from a short trip to Chicago for the President’s Day/Valentine’s Day weekend (I try to coordinate my trips to Chicago with President Obama, when possible). So here are a couple blog-worthy items:
Dell fake updates Adamo website
February 10th, 2009 by Assorter
Dell has finally updated their super-secretative Adamo website. Actually, I think it would be more accurate to say it’s added a piddling amount of content that basically consists only of links to videos and articles about the Adamo that first appeared after it’s sort-of announcement at CES 2009. The videos and articles are fine enough, but if you’re someone who’s been gobbling up Adamo content like hotcakes (that’d be me) there’s absolutely nothing new for you at the website other than an obviously contrived marketing campaign.
But that’s fine. Good things come to those who wait.
Super Bowl Ads
February 1st, 2009 by Assorter
All of the ads from Super Bowl XLIII are available for your viewing pleasure on Hulu. So, if you missed Conan O’Brien hilariously pretending to be Swedish, or if you’ve forgotten the mighty powers of a Dorito chip, they’re all there, neatly assembled for you.
Of course, an advertisement plays before each video. So, basically, in order to watch one advertisement, you have to watch another advertisement first…
Maybe you should just watch them on Youtube instead.
EDIT: Okay, it seems like you’re no longer required to watch an ad before the video plays. This means that the folks at Hulu either (1) saw my blog post and the irony finally dawned on them; or (2) realized that you could see the videos without ads on about a million other sites and relented. My bets are on the former.
Laptop is fixed!
January 31st, 2009 by Assorter
O frabjous day, calloh, callay!
My laptop is fixed. It’s as good as new, and ready to rock. Not only did I get the hinges fixed, I also had the keyboard swapped out (some of those keys were barely hanging on) and had one of the battery clips fixed.
Sweeeeeeet.
Kicks from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
January 25th, 2009 by Assorter
This weekend, I burst into joyous rapture on two separate occasions listening to two different episodes of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. Impressive, isn’t it?
First. I was listening to the January 18, 2009 podcast, and during the first segment, the caller was given a trivia question about Ricardo Montablan’s unfortunate recent passing. After the caller answered, Peter Sagal launched into his usual background and banter on Montablan and at one point noted that he played the over-the-top villain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. At that point, the always-entertaining Charlie Pierce chimed in and noted “and in the Original Series episode Space Seed,” and then almost immediately someone from the crowd shouted “YEAH!!!“ in an obvious display intended to both congratulate Pierce for knowing that Montablan appeared in a Star Trek episode, and, of course, show some solidarity among Star Trek fans! Simply awesome. If you want to listen, the segment starts around 7 minutes into the show.
Second. This one is from yesterday’s (January 24, 2009) show. At about 3 minutes and 45 seconds into the show, Sagal notes that he still feels like he’s in a science fiction movie when he says “President Obama.” To demonstrate this feeling, he exclaimed “President Obama promised a strong response to the invasion of the Corellian fleet!” Did you catch it? It’s a reference to Star Wars.
In short, these guys are geeks. What a great show.
Not Surprisingly, Delays
January 21st, 2009 by Assorter
Apparently, there are reports that the Dell Adamo may be delayed until the second half of 2009. Of course, in light of Dell’s emphatic statements at CES earlier this month that their new, luxury ultraportable would be ready the first half of 2009, this comes as no surprise.
Good thing I just bought a Gateway 200ARC on eBay to mine for parts and repair!
