Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Random Thoughts

Yesterday, Zombieland was released on Blu-Ray and DVD.  It was probably one of my favorite movies of 2009.  I mean, I paid to see it twice in the theater.  If you didn’t see it and you can handle a little zombie gore with a dash of comedy, then I highly recommend it.  If you haven’t seen it, or if you don’t plan to, then you missed out on one of the best opening sequences since the Dawn of the Dead remake used Johnny Cash’s “When the Man Comes Around”.

To help you out, here it is.  Be sure to switch it to 720p to give it a little more clarity, and turn off annotations to keep the viewing pure.  It’s not as good as seeing it on the big screen, but it’s still pretty damn good.  Enjoy…

The iPad

Random Thoughts, Reviews

You can search all over the Internet and find out about the specifications and tons of opinions on it.  Here are mine.

First, I think the name is silly.  The people guessing that Apple was making a tablet came up with dozens of better names.  Does no one at Apple have access to Google?  It would have taken less than five seconds to search “iPad” and find the years old MadTV skit.

Next, I am not impressed.  They showed nothing in their presentation that made me want to have one of these over a netbook.  However, I see potential.  To me, the ultimate success of this device will depend on two things:

  1. What applications get designed to fully use this device.  The best idea I’ve seen floated so far is a “cash register” type application since one of these plus a couple of peripherals is cheaper than most computer registers.
  2. The next revision of the hardware.  Apple is notorious for withholding features.  They like to put just enough in a product to make people want it, but hold back enough features to be able to also make revision two, three, and four worth buying too.  Expect the next version to have the front facing camera most people feel is missing, and more memory.

Lastly, I think they priced it almost perfectly.  The only way it gets better is if AT&T subsidizes the price of the 3G version in exchange for a 2 year contract.  Personally, I wouldn’t want the 3G, so it is priced right as it is.

To me, at the moment, the deal breaker is the keyboard.  The virtual keyboard looks like it would only be comfortable using if I can manage to have the device at a 45 degree angle allowing me to type and see the screen.  This means that I’d either have to be hunched over the device, or to be lounging on the couch with my feet propped up allowing my lap to hold it up at a usable angle.  But that’s because the biggest feature of a portable computer for me is writing, and the iPad seems to be aimed more at people who are more interested in reading and watching.  This could be saved if someone makes some sort of clip on keyboard and screen protector (i.e. – the keyboard folds up over the screen, kinda like the clam shell design of a laptop).  But it would also have to more than double the weight of the device because you can’t have the screen be heavier than the keyboard in that sort of design.

Another missing element for me that I don’t think will ever make it into the Apple design is the ability to use a stylus.  I like to do digital art (doodling more than anything) but I don’t like doing it with my finger.  Perhaps, if the iPad sells well, Wacom will decide to make the Cintiq into a full blown art tablet.

Overall, as I said before, I see potential, I even see this as being a device that plenty of people could put to good use, but just not me.  And that’s okay.

AMC greenlights The Walking Dead

Random Thoughts

I love zombies.  Not like in a romantic way, but like in a “they make a great setting for human drama” way.  I have enjoyed reading every page of The Walking Dead comic book, as it is probably one of the best zombie stories ever done.  I was thrilled to hear that a TV project was in the works, and now I’m simply over the moon after hearing that AMC has given the project a greenlight.

I cannot wait to see this.  It will be epic.

Help Haiti, Get Games

Random Thoughts

I saw this first from Raph, then Lum, and lastly Tesh, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.  A $20 donation through DriveThruRPG gets you $1,481.31 worth of gaming stuff.  I have a healthy interest in games and game design, and just like most writers will tell aspiring writers that the best thing to do is read, most game designers will tell you that the best thing to do is play games.  If you don’t have $20 to give, they’ll take and match any $5 and $10 donations.  But hey, why not just go for $20 and get the free stuff?

If Only Spam Were True…

Random Thoughts

Having run a blog for quite some time now, I’ve seen my fair share of spam.  Since installing Akismet with whatever version of WordPress it became included with, my site has blocked over ninety-six thousand spam comments.  This number is actually low because for a period of time I also ran the Bad Behavior plug-in that would block some spam before it got to Akismet (I had to disable Bad Behavior because it was causing other plug-ins to fail – long story).

Because of this, I have seen spam evolve over the years.  You still get the usual vigra and tramadol and other pharmaceuticals, and you get the porn, but as administration and spam catching have changed, so have the spammers.

One of the more common spam protections is to simply force all comments to be moderated.  Then, when a valid comment comes in and you approve it, that poster, assuming they use the same credentials, will bypass the moderation queue from that point forward.  To that end, more than half of my spam these days are attempts to get approved.  They say things like “Love your site. Adding it to my bookmarks!” and “I never thought of it that way, but now I am. Thank you for posting this!” and other similar things.  They almost look real.  In fact, if you dig through my comments you’ll probably find one or two that I’ve let slip through.  Of course, I don’t use that level of moderation, I use Akismet, so being approved once doesn’t mean you are approved in the future, and the ones that have slipped through are likely early spams before Akismet learned it was spam.

According to my feedburner and a few other tools, there are about 100 people who are not bots (as far as I and my tools can tell) who read this site.  Less than a dozen have probably ever commented.  Perhaps that is because I’m not writing things that are comment worthy.  Or it could be when people agree they are less likely to reply than if they disagree.

In any event, one of the things I am going to try to do in the future is to comment on the blogs that I read.  Maybe not every post, but at least every once in a while just to say “Hey, enjoyed reading this!” or something.  Because, you know, it is kind of lonely when only the spam tells you you are doing a good job.  Heh.

Hello 2010!

Random Thoughts

I am excited for this new year.  The job is going well, life is good, and everything is swinging upward.  Awesome.

The best part however is that my birthday, being October 10th, will fall this year on 10/10/10.  I don’t want to jinx it, but that is going to be a perfect day.

So, what sort of resolutions shall I make for the new year?

First, losing twenty pounds over the last year has been great, and I want to keep going.  That said, the new year is going to bring an examining of my diet and a look at shaking up my exercise a little.  I also want to run the Peachtree Road Race in July, so I have a goal.  Lack of a goal is usually the hard part.  I lost my last twenty because I wanted to be under 200 pounds, and since then I haven’t had much in the way of a solid goal.

Second, writing… One of the issues I have with writing is that it is almost impossible to do on my desktop PC.  The location of my desktop is not inspiring, and the PC has too many distracting things installed on it.  Luckily, I may have an opportunity to obtain a netbook, one of those little mini laptops, and that should help, allowing me to take my writing with me anywhere.  We shall see… in any event, I want to spend a little more time writing, and to help with that I have vowed not to start watching any new TV shows.  I refuse to get sucked in to shows that get canceled or wind up being mediocre.  Instead, I will only watch shows I am already invested in and new shows I’ll see on DVD or streaming courtesy of Netflix.

Third, programming… I am still, occasionally, working on my little games and my one business idea (see progress meters on the right).  I hope to be able to finish something in 2010.  I think I will try to work on finishing one of the smaller games and get it posted just to see if I can.  It is going to be lame, and for that I apologize in advance, but finishing something is an important step I need to take.

Fourth, the house… yeah, um, I might clean up the yard or something when the weather gets warmer, and there are a few trees I need to take down.  But let’s not get our hopes up…

Not a resolution, but this year will also be my first participating as staff for the MMO Track at Dragon*Con.  I’ve reached a point with the con that most of the panels are retreads of panels I’ve already seen.  This isn’t a bad thing, as newcomers will find those panels to be as exciting as I did when I was a newcomer.  But it means that the last couple of years I’ve been bored in some of them and more willing to skip them altogether when given the chance.  In fact, I pretty much only go to the MMO and Writing tracks with the occasional special event.  So I decided since I was spending so much time down in the MMO rooms, why not volunteer and help out?  I did, and I am.  Should be a lot of work and a lot of fun.

Anyway… welcome to 2010…

Goodbye 2009…

Random Thoughts

Looking over the last year, it started off rocky as I remained unemployed for a couple of months, but I did find work, and as a bonus I actually enjoy it.  I’m working at a small company again, only this time the boss seems to know what he’s doing and things are progressing rather than collapsing.  I’m still working on spending less and getting our budget under control, but I’ve also lost around twenty pounds and I’m floating around 194 and having trouble getting lower… looks like I might have to actually change my diet.

As far as gaming goes, I’ve canceled my last subscription MMO.  I simply don’t have the available time to make $15 a month worth the price.  Instead I’m playing some Free-to-Play games with micro transactions where that $15 makes for easily three or four months worth of play.

On the writing front, I failed the NaNoWriMo again, but made it further than I have before, and I completed a very short story, The Last Christmas, that I am quite proud of, enough that I posted it and plan to make revisions and keep working it.

In just about every way, 2009 has turned out to be a pretty good year.

I’m looking forward to 2010, but I’ll save that for tomorrow.  For now let’s just send 2009 out in style…  have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve!

Less Remake, More Reinvention

Random Thoughts

I recently learned that there is a remake of The Karate Kid coming down the pipe.  However, he does Kung-Fu instead of Karate, it happens in another country, and lots of other changes.  In essence, this isn’t a remake but a name theft.  They’ve take the name “The Karate Kid” and are slapping it on a movie with a few similar themes.  On the other hand, the theaters in recent years have been littered with remakes.  Taking an old movie and essentially re-shooting it with maybe a few minor changes, or a couple of big drastic ones that either ruin the movie or ultimately have no impact.

Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of remaking an old film they were to take an old film and tell the story from another angle?  Take The Karate Kid for example.  Rather than retread the same ground, why not tell The Johnny Lawrence Story instead – the story of a bully who learns that violence isn’t answer through the ongoing conflict with a scrawny kid named Daniel LaRusso.  Or rather than doing yet another remake of Hamlet, make Gertrude instead – the original story from the point of view of the mother watching her son go mad.  There are so many stories that this can be done to.  Pick another character and turn the tale inside-out and view the whole thing in a new light.

A man can dream…

Cats & Bags, Ledges & Jumping

Random Thoughts

Mostly, this post exists entirely to commit me to action so that I can’t back out and if I do people can call me out on it and say, “You said you were going to, then didn’t!”

Last year, I sat down on December first, thoroughly disappointed that I’d failed the NaNoWriMo, again, and thought to myself, “What I need is a smaller goal.”  So I decided I was going to write a short story and post it on Christmas Eve.  The story that I wrote, however, was very very depressing.  Not that I had intended to write something light and happy, but my initial turn toward darkness wound up being a death spiral into oblivion.  In the year since I didn’t post it I’ve only read the story twice and hated it both times because it was not only dark it was needlessly so.  It wasn’t just dark, it was black.  There was just nothing redeeming about it at all because it wasn’t even well written.  Obviously, I didn’t post it.

So, another NaNoWriMo has gone by and I didn’t win, again, but I had the same thought as last year.  That I just needed a smaller goal.  I kicked around the idea that sparked last year’s short and decided that since I, personally, am not in such a dark place this year (last year in addition to failing the WriMo I was also unemployed and a number of other things) I would take another crack at it.  I am very pleased with the results.  I still need to make another pass or two at it for glaring errors and then give my editorial staff (wife) a shot at it, but I do think it will be ready before Christmas.

As such, I am stating here and now that I will be posting a short story on Christmas Eve.  It is entitled “The Last Christmas” and I hope you return to read it and enjoy it.