r4ndom h4x

Afro Samurai. Gimme a break. Manga, Anime, and now PS3 video game. Mugen would kick his ass, and he’d do it wearing Geta (a feat in itself – or is it feet? sorry..).

Mugen is an obvious match though – who else would kick Afro’s ass? Vash the Stampede (with massive damage to the surrounding area), Spike (although he’d get severely beaten up while doing it), and probably Pikachu.  Okay, maybe not Pikachu.

Afro is just a pussy with a headband fixation.

I work in the IT department for a large national company. We use a fairly typical mix of vendors I guess – HP, VMWare, Citrix, EMC, Cisco, Microsoft.

So, more than 18 months ago I scored myself a new laptop. It came with Windows Vista Business. It took me six months or so before I finally couldn’t handle it any longer. And so it was settled. I would run Linux as my primary OS on my work machine.

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I’ve chucked up a page with a couple of videos – basically a little Tamiya nitro RC car with a wireless camera strapped on top. I haven’t been able to find the source video but I do have a higher quality video on a USB stick.. somewhere..  I will upload better quality versions when I get a chance!

My video page is here, but to save the trouble here are the videos it contains :

The first video was made in a shopping centre. I was driving. I hit the shopping cart.

I’m not allowed to drive any more.

This next clip was made around the same time as the one above. We were really just messing around with a few ideas.

I just had a need to convert an audio file from Monkey‘s audio to something else on my Ubuntu 8.10 box. I tried Audacity, but it doesn’t seem to read Monkey’s audio. Then I came across soundconverter. Brilliant. It’s a simple to use and effective converter of audio formats.

I converted Monkey’s to MP3 with no probs at all. I would have used ogg but I’m encoding it for my PS3 so choice is limited

soundconverter main window

“The average motion picture cost the MPAA member companies $96.2 million to make and market in 2005. Six out of ten movies never recoup their original investment. Fewer movies will be made and fewer creative risks will be taken if piracy continues to rob those who invest in movies.”

This is a quote that I lifted from the Motion Picture Association of America’s web page on piracy.

Almost $100 million US dollars? On a movie? And  there is a better chance than not that it won’t make it back? This is easy to fix, folks. Don’t spend so much money on this stupid trash! The world doesn’t really need “legally blonde 2″!

Seriously, the business model needs to change. If it is no longer profitable to do what you’ve always done, then do something else. Stop bitchin’.

Apple iphone.

Ooh, apple made a phone! Who gives a shit?

I agree that the interface is good. I like it. But the rest of it – you know, the bits that make it into a phone – is shit. Wait for version 3 I think.

The surprise isn’t that apple could make a decent interface for a gadget. The surprise is that Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola couldn’t.

iphone headline generator:

10 if ( NewIPhone == True ) then print “Apple releases new iphone that sucks less”
20 print “Apple releases new firmware, blocks jailbroken ipones”
30 print “Hackers release new iphone hack”
40 goto 10

Windows 7.

Ooh, microsoft is making a new operating system! I really don’t give a flying rats arse.

Here’s the thing. Microsoft’s operating systems all eventually kick you in the nuts. Some do it sooner than others. (Vista, Win ME). Why should I celebrate a potential delay to being kicked in the balls? It’s like waking to the realisation that someone is going to bash your head in with a cricket bat but you’re not sure when it’s going to happen.

Future Windows 7 headlines:

“Windows 7 boots [faster|slower] than [XP|linux|Vista|OSX] and uses [less|more] memory”
“Microsoft issues free upgrade to windows 7 for all new PC’s purchased with Vista as of June”
“Windows7 revalidates license every time PC has internet connectivity in name of security”
“Hackers bypass WGA checks.”
“Corporations waiting for SP1 before deploying windows 7″
“Microsoft releases SP1 for Windows 7 early”
“Security vulnerability found in latest service pack. Microsoft knew about it.”
“New poll discovers people would still use Windows98 if it could run latest games”

There. I’m hoping that I can now go through a couple of weeks without having to read any windows or iphone stories. Hopefully the tech news sites can find something else to write about.

I’m 37. When I was in primary school here in Australia, everyone had a Commodore-64. (Well, everyone that mattered)

By the time I made it to high school, the schoolyard arguments had evolved to Amiga vs Atari ST.

I’ll conveniently ignore NES vs Sega Master System. Sega Saturn vs Playstation. Gameboy vs Atari Lynx…

Now.. PS3 vs 360.

I like the PS3 and it’s my favourite console. There are plenty of good games, the media centre feature is.. okay but needs a bit more work. The PSP remote play feature gets used most weekends to control the media player which is pretty cool. Plus the blu-ray player is a plus, the web browser is good for those “check out this thing I saw on youtube” moments.

A workmate of mine just bought a 360. His reasons? Microsoft have apparently worked out most of the hardware problems with it, a new hack was released to make it easier to run pirated games (sorry, can’t find a link) and all his mates have one.

I wonder how many 360′s are sold for exactly the same reasons?