Latest Posts

Zombies on Mass Transit

Random Thoughts

Ever seen the movie ‘Shaun of the Dead’? The scenes in the beginning when he’s riding the bus and all the people around him have this eyes-glazed-over look to them? That’s what my ride to work is like every day. More than ninety percent of the people just sort of sit there, lost in their own thoughts, or perhaps not having any thoughts at all. That means that less than ten percent of the people, less than one in ten, is listening to music or reading or talking. Even then, some of the people who listen to music do what I call “listening to secret music” … see, on my MP3 player, I have only songs that I like, songs that make me smile, tap my foot, bob my head, mouth the words… good music. Lots of these other people, they either have only music that they don’t like, or they’ve been socially shamed into not drawing any attention to themselves or showing any emotion at all. Except for the tinny sound escaping their headphones, you’d mistake them for the one who are just sitting there lost in their lack of thoughts.

This all leads me to another issue… I’ve been having dreams lately, pretty much every night… Zombies. Running through zombie infested cities, holding off the horde from a mall or a Wal-Mart, surviving against the odds. In my conscious life I find myself wondering, if it really happened, if zombies really did start to emerge and the world went to hell, would I survive as well as I do in my dreams? Would I be the movie hero, or would I end up being another mindless creature prowling for flesh? I’d like to think I’d be a survivor.

So I find myself wondering as I ride the bus, if these people, the ones with no emotion, eyes unfocused and slack-jawed, were to suddenly turn and begin the tell-tale zombie moan, how would the story end? My daydreams echo my night, and I stand on the MARTA train, never sitting, never letting myself get lazy, and I imagine a disturbance at the far end of the car, screams, blood, and I pull the emegency brake cable and I open the door and drop to the ground running, or I yank hard on the loose hand rail and lay in with skull crushing blows on the ‘infected’. And I smile, and the music plays a soundtrack to the destruction, and I tap my foot and I bob my head and I mouth the words, and I rejoice that I’m not one of those people… the living dead, slack-jawed and mindless, shuffling off to work the grind, shuffling home to rest up for the next day.

The Music of My Youth

Gaming

Okay, so this is going in the Gaming category, but only because it didn’t really fit into Random Thoughts, and it does actually have something to do with games. I’m not normally one to post about crap I see on the internet, but this I just had to put up.

Nintendo Choir.

Its only not safe for work if your PC is loud, but even then most people under 40 should laugh when they hear this. Its a choir singing songs from popular Nintendo (and other) games… Mario, Zelda, Mortal Combat. And they do a pretty good job of it too…

Enjoy!

Homeland Security

Random Thoughts

Since 9/11 I’ve been through security at the Atlanta airport a few times. People are so desensitized to it now that its automatic, when you approach the metal detectors and xray machines you take off your shoes and place them on the conveyor belt. People practically strip just to avoid getting hasselled. So I went to the airport yesterday with a certain expectation… and an expired driver’s license.

Now, my birthday was the 10th and I had just completely forgotten to renew it. So I got stopped and then turned away. They sent me to a desk to argue my case and see if they’d be willing to stamp me through. They didn’t.

However, the guy standing next to me had a different problem. His name was Steve Johnson, but his ticket was in the name William Hawkins. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.) So Steve begins to unravel his story… His name used to be William Steve Hawkins, but he doesn’t like the name William so he’s always gone by Steve. As a child, he was adopted, Hawkins is their last name. He didn’t get along with them, and a few years ago he sought out his biological parents, and found them, they were named Johnson. He’s made a good relationship with them and last year he had his named legally changed to Steve Johnson. Now comes the silly part, as if its not silly enough. Steve’s wife (still named Hawkins) booked his flight for him, using a credit card that was still in his old name. So his driver’s license says Steve Johnson, but his credit card and his ticket say William Hawkins. And they let him through.

So the lesson here is, if I had had someone elses driver’s license or someone elses ticket and a good story, I could have gotten on the plane. But since I had my own expired license, I’m a security risk.

A How-To Guide

Site News

Basically, it’s for my brother, but I’ve added a simple “How To” guide on Programming to the site here. It’s over on the right listed as “So you want to be a programmer?”

It isn’t anything fancy, just the basic rules that I personally follow when it comes to programming, which is what I do for a living. The main idea behind it is that you don’t need to spend large amounts of time trying to memorize all the nuances of a language, just learn the basics and fake the rest.

Goodbye VCRs, Hello Medusa!

Random Thoughts

Sometimes I really hate the Television Networks. They seem to insist of fighting head to head instead of spreading out all over the week. Every fall season, its inevitable that of the roughly fifteen hours of TV I want to watch it all airs in the real space of about 4 or 5 hours, meaning that quite often two, three, or even four shows are on at once. Seeing as how I pretty much hate having commercials interrupt my TV shows, I tape everything and watch it later to allow fast forwarding, which also allows me to make plans any night of the week because I’m always taping anyway. One of my VCRs decided to start dying on me… crinkling tapes causing me to miss shows when they didn’t record, and its tuner started making things fuzzy… so I went looking to buy a new VCR. No one really makes VCRs much anymore, and what I really wanted was a dual tuner device so I could finally pick up that fourth show some nights (I only had three VCRs)… they don’t make those. Even these new devices with a VCR and a DVR in them only have one tuner (you can’t record on both the VCR and the DVR from two different channels at once). After a long search, I finally just gave up and started looking for a complete alternative.

I thought about going with a Windows XP Media Center Edition based PC since I know a couple of people that have them and love them, but the price seemed to be a bit much, and it only legitimately supports two tuners. Of course, you can hack it to handle as many as you want, but reports are pretty consistant that Microsoft programmed their usual bloat and once you get the 4th or 5th simultaneous recording going it pegs the processor (which shouldn’t happen, since any decent TV tuner card actually has its on encoding processor on it and doesn’t use the CPU at all) and starts chugging, causing any number of problems, unless you spend a huge amount of money on a monster machine that can handle all that. Pricey. Then I stumbled on Medusa.

Well, really its SnapSteam Media’s software, but they titled this particular setup of 6 tuner joy after the fabled gorgon killed by Perseus. I followed their recommendations, built a $500 PC (could have been cheaper, but I wanted a special case that looked like a media component and not a PC) with the exception of a 320GB drive instead of a 40 (a nice 130 hours of storage on the “Better” quality setting), and SATA-150 instead of ATA-100; and bought the Medusa pack with the 3 dual tuner cards instead of 6 single tuners. And yesterday I successfully recorded 6 programs at once. Now, with the SnapStream Beyond TV software set up to record all new episodes of all my favorite shows, I’ll never need to set a timer again.

So, like the title says… Goodbye VCRs, goodbye video tapes, goodbye setting timers on multiple units and watching TV schedules like a hawk for unexpected changes, and goodbye pain in my ass… Hello 21st Century, and hello Medusa!

NASA and the Moon

Random Thoughts

I’ve always loved the space program. I’ll watch any movie or documentary on the subject, and I’ve done many a school report on both its successes and its failures. I want us, the human race, to get out there iin the Universe and travel. As a step to that, we, NASA that is, is planning on going back to the Moon.

Now, this is one point where I disagree with lots of people as I don’t think we should go to the Moon. For one, there really isn’t anything there. Sure, we might be able to put a base up there, but it will be about as self sufficient as a space station, only much further away and more expensive to travel to. Second, going out into space, seeking out new life and new civilizations and stuff, we need to get over our reliance on Earth based launches. See, in space, you don’t need aerodynamics much… a brick flies as well as anything else in a vacuum. So, in my opinion, we should be focused on building three things… Cargo launch rockets, large capacity as efficient as possible to punch through the atmosphere and take supplies to orbit; Lander crafts, nice aerodynamic space planes for taking people in and out of the atmosphere; and Flying Bricks, for hauling cargo and lander crafts across the universe, built in space and never intended to enter atmosphere. But forget all that, and lets just stick to NASAs “the Moon is the key to space travel” idea.

They unveiled their plan… Apollo on steroids. They put up the lander module in space with one launch, then launch the crew capsule with crew later, dock in space and head to the moon. Fine, sounds like a nice plan, and they’ll be on the Moon by 2018. They plan on sending unmanned probes to the Moon to do some scouting too, in 2008 and 2011… and this is where I have a problem.

We’ve got these rovers on Mars. We launch them from here, rocket them to Mars and land them, and now we have these little motorized dune buggy science robots roaming around the planet looking at cool shit. Its a good design… so, why not just adapt the existing Mars lander probes to do stuff on the Moon? Are they saying its going to take over 2 years to build a Mars lander? Or are they going to needlessly go back to the drawing board and start from scratch?

We should have a Moon lander in less than a year, period, end of discussion… why? Because, given what we’ve been able to learn about Mars using the landers, we’d probably be able to tell if its even possible to build a functioning base on the Moon and we won’t have to wait until 2018.

One of the issues with living on the Moon will, of course, be oxygen. One of the cool things about the Moon is that there is already oxygen there, in the rocks. I know it sounds funky, but one of the more common substances on the Moon is called ilmenite which is made of Iron, Titanium and Oxygen. Currently there is a contest going on, like the X-Prize they did for putting a man in space, where the object is to design a functioning process to extract the oxygen from the rocks. This is also why we need a probe on the moon within a year, to make sure we can do it, because in two or three years we will need to be sending unmanned robot vehicles with test equipment to see if it really works on the Moon. I’d hate for us to design and test, on Earth, a process for making oxygen just to get to the Moon in 2018 and find out that it doesn’t work out there. Now, maybe this is what they are planning for the 2008 and 2011 probes, but they only mentioned searching for suitable landing places.

Anyway, enough from me… my main point here is that we already have the technology, why design the same stuff over again? Just rig up a Mars lander and get thee to the Moon already!

On the Road

Reviews

Pretty much all my life I’ve seen and heard references to the book ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac. In movies, on television, in songs… its spoken of as a guide to life, a philosophical journey, even a right of passage… its talked of with a reverence that is usually held for things like the Bible… So, I was at the book store and I saw a copy on sale for $7 and I thought, ‘What the hell?’ and I bought it.

Perhaps the problem is that times have changed too much for Kerouac’s work to hold up, but, man, does this book ever suck!

Seriously, first off, its written in a stream of conciousness style from a man whose conciousness is like a wreck of freight trains, going in a dozen directions at once all piled on top of each other in an enormous mess of words. Secondly, none of his characters are sympathetic… perhaps in the late 50’s and early 60’s and even into the 70’s it was ‘cool’ and ‘with it’ to leave all responsibility behind and just run off and travel the roads, but that time has gone or at least I just don’t get it. The entire book I was waiting for someone to sit Dean Moriarty down and slap him in the face… He’s a completely reprehensible human being. He meets a girl, marries her, gets her knocked up, then immediately leaves town to find another girl. He blows off everything, storms into other people’s lives and leaves charred wreckage in his wake. The fact that Sal keeps hanging around this craphead is just annoying, and even more so that he seems to idolize him.

In the end, as someone who wants to be a writer, I’m glad I read the book. In my opinion, its a perfect example of everything not to do. I just wish it hadn’t been such a slow read so that I wouldn’t have wasted as much time on it as I did.

The Last Seat on the Bus

Random Thoughts

I ride the bus to work, and I really enjoy it. I get to read, or listen to music, all the while not having to worry about idiots in traffic. It doesn’t really take any longer than driving myself did, and with gas prices these days it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. At last tally, I’m saving myself over $200 a month by riding the bus. But there is one thing that bothers me…

I get on the bus as the main transit center, which means the bus is empty or near empty when I get on. Now, traditional society dictates that since all seats on the bus are in pairs, if you get on the bus and there is an open pair, you sit there before sitting next to someone else. Women are allowed a bit of leeway, it’s okay if they sit next to another woman instead of taking one of an open pair if she doesn’t want to risk sitting next to some random man later on. As the bus drives, we pick up more people, and always by the time we reach the transfer station to the train, the bus is full.

In the city of Atlanta, we have a large population of blacks and hispanics. So, its not unreasonable to believe that often I’m the only white guy on the bus. Sometimes there are a couple of white women, but not always. As a white guy, I also have a shaved head. My hair line is receeding, and I look awful when I grow my hair out, so I shave it because it looks better. I have a goatee. So, I’m a white guy with a shaved head and a goatee. I’m also a nice guy… I’ve got no visible tatoos, no scars, and I wear business casual clothes (polo shirt and khaki pants most days). I sit and read my book (science fiction, fantasy, classic literature, mysteries, the odd other book here and there) or I have my headphones on listening to MP3s from by PDA phone. Every single day, the seat next to me is the last one to get filled.

I don’t know what’s up… should I feel slighted? Discriminated against? I don’t stink, I’ve asked. And I’m not wearing any internationally recognized symbols of hatred. I’m just a guy reading a book and/or listening to music. And yet, once it gets down to the last seat available, the next person to get on the bus will look around, scanning the entire bus looking for a chance hidden seat, before finally fixing their face in a downtrodden look of defeat and resign themselves to being forced to sit next to me.

I just don’t get it.

Kill and Kill Again

Reviews

You are not supposed to laugh wildly in a martial arts action flick, not most of them anyway. But watching the 1981 classic Kill and Kill Again, I just could not stop myself. First, there is the cheesy opening sequence… Steve Chase is being awarded at the “International Martial Arts Convention”, only for some silly reason he is fighting like four guys who accosted some random girl. Then it turns out the random girl was looking for Steve. Her father is a scientist who has gone missing. This scientist was making huge advances in… wait for it… potato based gasoline. “There would be enough gas to drive all the cars to the moon!” Now, while you can get gas from other sources, I’m not sure anyone has ever gotten gasoline from a potato. But wait, the prospect of completely renewable gasoline resources in the form of french fries isn’t why the good scientist was kidnapped… No… See, while producing his potatoline (gasatoes?), the process creating a side product… a chemical that allows complete mind control over another person! Dun-dun-dun!

So, our hero, Steve, gets together his buddies, after securing a nice five million dollar price for his service… His buddies, of course, are Gypsy Billy, Gorilla, Hotdog, and The Fly. Five men, in a martial arts movie, and not a single one of them asian… four white guys and a black guy from Jamaica. Gorilla, the Jamaican, who is introduced having a tug-o-war… him versus ten other guys, he wins… comes along pretty easy. Gypsy requires a nice fifteen man brawl, one of the more watchable parts of the movie. Hotdog is found playing a sort of Russian Roulette… a bunch of guys are inside a metal hangar, they load a gun and then throw it, it goes off and the bullet ricochets around, last man to chicken out wins the pot. The Fly… well, he’s some sort of mystic or something… he levitates, and so does Steve, and if you haven’t turned off the movie yet, you should.

Then we meet the bad guy… Marduk! Ooooh! A scary name! Too bad he looks like a high school chemistry professor from the late 60’s stuffed into a military uniform. And his right hand woman has pink hair, and calls him cutesy names even though he asks her to stop. I stopped laughing at this point and started crying. If I only I could have found the remote…

Have I mentioned that this wasn’t the first time I’d seen this movie? I think it explains alot. Really.

The worst part about this movie, though, is that this is a sequel. The first Steve Chase movie was called Kill or Be Killed, and you shouldn’t watch it either. Lucky for you, its not on DVD yet so its much harder to find. Don’t try.