Okay, if you were even remotely a fan of Transformers growing up, you need to see this movie. Michael Bay did a great job. Yes, lots of stuff blows up. Lots of giant robots fight all over. Yes, they talk. They got Peter Cullen (who did the Optimus Prime voice on the original cartoons) to do this film. Just awesome all around.

Of course, if you’re a “realistic” film type of guy/gal, you’ll think this movie sucks. In that case, stay away. And give me back my action figure!

Shia LeBeouf did an outstanding job of acting in a role that could’ve easily stooped to cheap humor and bland acting. I got hooked watching Even Stevens (yes, I admit it) because of him.

And dude, Agent Smith aka V aka Elrond does the voice of Megatron! Hah!

In closing, as my friends put it.. my favorite part of the film was when they TRANSFORMED.

Man I’m a geek.

P.S. – Pacific Theatres, you really need to work on your:

• Sticky floors
• Broken seats
• Terrible sound system

If you could do that, that’d just be super-duper. K thx bye.

Just awesome. Combining my favorite movie of all time with Pirates of the Caribbean.. genius!

Visit the website, GooniesVSPirates.com to read up on the editor (he works for G4.) I’m loving it.

He e-mailed me again with two fake e-mails. These are awesome! First, he sent me a fake letter from eBay, saying that his account has been “approved”, and that I need to ship the item ASAP:

And secondly, he asks “WHAT IS GOING ON??????”:

This guy/gal is great. Maybe I should play along, say I shipped it? Hah.

Woohoo! Adsense, gimme free monies. A whopping $113 is mine!

*dances a jig*

You know I listed my XBox 360 Premium console on eBay about seven days ago… last night, it sold on eBay for around $320. I was pretty excited, since that’s way more than I was expecting to get for it. So I went to bed, hoping the payment would come in that night or this morning.

I awoke to find an e-mail in my mailbox from eBay, explaining that the auction had been cancelled:

Uhm, what? If I’m reading that right, the entire auction is now deleted because someone let their account get comprimised, and illegal bids were placed via that account? Why not just BLOCK THE ACCOUNT, then? Why did you have to remove my entire auction? It literally doesn’t show up on the site anymore. I have no way of knowing who else might have bid on it, to do a “second chance” offer. Now I have to re-list it and wait yet another seven days to see the results.

To top it off, I got e-mails from the scammer(s) themselves, the first one faking a Paypal receipt:

Yeah, that looks legit, buddy. And look, it’s our friends from NIGERIA. I like how it says that it must be on it’s way to Nigeria “under 24 hrs”. Looking at the message header, it’s coming from belider1@gmail.com. And here’s the other e-mail they sent me, apparently from a Yahoo account this time, belider_w1@yahoo.com:

*sigh* Whoever you are, scammer, you need to get a life. Or maybe first, get a job. No, no, wait. First, find Christ. Then a job. Then the life will follow it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I noticed this morning that some of my older posts were getting crazy out of hand with their referrer lists. Some of them, even compressed with GZIP, were spitting out over 300k of content. That’s stupid!

So, in order to speed things up for regular browsers of my blog, I hacked a bit of the just-released version of DasBlog, specifically in the newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Core project, the Macros.cs file… adding this code around line 3130:

   1:  if (requestPage.Request.UserAgent != null)

   2:  {

   3:      if ((trk.PermaLink.IndexOf("q=") > -1 | trk.PermaLink.IndexOf("p=") > -1) &

   4:          (requestPage.Request.UserAgent.Contains("Googlebot") |

   5:          requestPage.Request.UserAgent.Contains("Yahoo! Slurp") |

   6:          requestPage.Request.UserAgent.Contains("Yahoo-Blogs") |

   7:          requestPage.Request.UserAgent.Contains("Ask Jeeves") |

   8:          requestPage.Request.UserAgent.Contains("BecomeBot") |

   9:          requestPage.Request.UserAgent.Contains("msnbot")))

  10:      {

  11:          // Let it happen.

  12:      }

  13:      else

  14:      {

  15:          continue;

  16:      }

  17:  }

This will see if the user-agent matches a common bot’s, and if it does, allows the code to continue building up the referrals list. Otherwise, it skips through them all and is completely empty.

But at the end of the loop, you need to check for the item count to be 0. If it’s zero, we know that we have no referrers to show, so we need to clear out the placeholder’s content (since it will contain an empty “Referred By:“ literal control:

   1:  if (count == 0)

   2:  {

   3:      placeHolder.Controls.Clear();

   4:  }

And there you have it, you’ve hacked DasBlog.

Update: Don’t listen to me. This is what Google calls “cloaking” and it’s a sure fire way to kill your pages (and get them thrown into Google’s “supplemental index”.) This is really lame. Yet Google themselves does “cloaking”. Seems a bit hipocritical.

As it stands right now, a majority of my blog’s search results are in the supplemental index now, probably because of my hack. And there’s no way I’m turning referrers back on (the pirates of the caribbean 3 blog entry I wrote is almost 600K gzip’d to the client because of all the referrers) — so I’ve turned referrers off completely. My loss, I guess.

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications
Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

I can't get get to sleep
It only beings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation
At least there's pretty lights
And though there's little variation
It nullifies the night
From overkill

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications
Especially at night
I worry over situations
That I know will be alright
It's just overkill

Been feeling a lot like this lately. Overwhelmed, worried about the future and finances. But today I’m strangely at peace with it all. Just thought I’d share.

Maybe I’m just in a weird mood, but the above comment I found on The Consumerist blog is hilarious. The article is about how Comcast/DirectTV/etc. installers are usually hackjobs who really cause damage to your home.

NinjaCast indeed!

I’m selling my XBox 360 Premium kit. Here’s the Craigslist post, or if you’re too lazy to look there, here’s the specs:

I have an XBox360 premium console, won from the Mountain Dew contest (came out before people could officially buy the XBox360!) Works great, hardly played, and in excellent condition. I've added onto the system over the years. Here is a complete breakdown:

1 XBox360 Premium Console
1 Wireless Controller
2 Play & Charge Kits (lets you recharge your controllers)
1 Wireless Network Adapter
1 HD-DVD Player/Drive
1 XBox 360 VGA Cable
1 Game, Halo
1 Game, Halo 2
1 Game, Gears of War
1 Game, Kameo
1 Game, Perfect Dark Zero
1 Game, Need for Speed: Most Wanted
1 Game, Fable
1 HDDVD, Phantom of the Opera
1 HDDVD, King Kong
1 HDDVD, Serenity
1 HDDVD, The Last Samurai

If you bought all of these things brand new, you'd easily be spending around $1100. I'm selling it for $800, or best offer.

If you purchase the system, you are buying it as-is. I don't believe that Microsoft's warranty covers it now, since it's a launch unit. I haven't had any problems, though. Make sure you have adequate cooling!

If you need photos, I can provide. I will only accept cash, no checks.

I'm asking for $800, or whatever the best offer is. If you know anyone interested, please have them send me an e-mail at iransofaraway AT gmail DOT com. Thanks!

Update: I actually decided to put it all up on eBay. Click here to check out the listings.

I was dumb many moons ago and purchased my laptop and a desktop computer from Dell. My main monitor at the time also died, so I decided to purchase another one. Long story short, I spent around $4k on equipment, and like a dummy, signed up for Dell’s Preferred Account. It’s Dell’s line of credit, like a credit card, except you can’t put anything but Dell stuff on it. Insanely high interest rate, but since I had a good credit score, they offered 18 months no interest. I took it.

Fast forward to June 7^th of this year. I finally have the money to pay off my Dell bill in full, so I call the automated phone system. No operators available, so I use the phone system to pay my bill. There’s a $9.95 convienience fee to do this. Why, I have no idea. Just another way to stiff you of money. Whatever, I want it done, so I pay it off completely.

I get an invoice today, saying I still owe $592.19. Looking at it, I see my promotion (interest-free) ended on 06/01/07. A whole six days before I paid my account in full (and paid what the automated phone system was saying as the payoff amount.) So since the promotion ended, they charged me all the back-interest.

I wasn’t very happy. True, I was late, but not THAT late, and the fact that I going from near-minimum payments to finally paying off the bill should’ve been good enough for them, right? I called up Dell, got an Indian* with a clearly fake American-sounding name. He explained that he couldn’t do anything, it was late, etc… I told him I wasn’t sastisfied, and wanted him to check further. He put me on hold and came back about a minute later, saying his supervisor would allow him to take $30 off of the total bill. Whoopie.

Lessons learned:

1. Don’t fall for interest-free enticements unless you’re going to for-sure be able to fufill the requirements before the due date.
2. Don’t sign up for credit lines with insane interest rates to begin with.
3. Save up money to pay for computers. They depreciate so fast, it’s not worth placing them on a credit account/card.

* I am not racist. I just hate hate hate speaking to someone who can’t clearly speak the English language. That goes for any race, color, nationality. If you’re in the business of speaking with someone on the phone all day, you should have a good and clear voice.

Found this over on TVSquad— all of the LOST “plane crash” events spliced together to run semi-cohesively. Pretty sweet, and gets me all excited for next season. If you’ve never watched LOST, this will either be a really interesting clip to you, or really boring. Whatever!

This is hilarious. But the Bobba Fett / Han Solo scene is a little disturbing

Worth Watching - June 16: First 3:10 to Yuma Trailer « FirstShowing.net.

Worth Watching has a great trailer up for “3:10 to Yuma” (a remake of the 1957 film.) Looks like a pretty interesting Western, and with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as leading actors, how can it go wrong?

Bill Gates Goes to College

The Microsoft bigwig teamed up with Napoleon Dynamite in this spoof video from PDC 2005. The camera's a little shaky, but you get the idea.

This is embarassing. I like Amy Winehouse’s CD… I’m guessing she wasn’t drunk when she recorded it, unlike this clip from the Charlotte Church show.

Via Gizmodo. ‘nuff said.

Lots of people are trolling Microsoft lately, after their announcement and demo of their new Surface platform. I don’t get it, really. It’s pretty darn slick. But people are saying it’s a rip-off of this, a rip-off of that, and naming Michael Bay’s film, “The Island” as one of the precursors. Turns out, this actually was the “Surface” device, in a very early state!

There’s a follow-up post at the same IStartedSomething blog with a video clip of the scene in question. Worth checking out if you’ve never seen The Island. Yes, I know, they obviously jazzed up the interface and did some art work to it, but you have to admit it’s pretty cool that they used an actual prototype for the film, and we’ve been oblivious this whole time.

I was actually thinking about him the other day, wondering whatever happened to him. Turns out, he kept doing what he loved until the very end.

Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) was probably the main driving force behind me getting interested in science and technology. I’m sure he also touched countless others. He will be greatly missed.

David at The Hot Blog has written two articles recently about the movie “Hostel 2” that came out this past Friday. His first one was a direct shot at “horror porn” as he so effectively puts it. After reading that entire article, I wanted to e-mail him and tell him how much I agree, and that we sometimes go too far. I just never got around to it. But last Friday he posted a followed up message, regarding feedback he’s received on his original post. Both articles are well worth your time to read.

I’ve never seen Hostel or Hostel 2, but I have no desire to. The concept and the execution of that concept are enough to keep me away. However, I’m game for most any “horror” flick. For example, I think Saw is brilliant, and it’s got a little gore in it, but I am able to rationalize/deal with that as part of the storyline. The gore isn’t there just to take the story “over the top”. The story is what’s totally messing with you. Hostel, it seems (and perhaps Eli Roth) is trying to use the gore element to make the audience happy. This is one thing that majorly turned me off about Saw 2 and Saw 3. There was just too much gore for the sake of gore, too much nudity for the sake of nudity, etc… and the story sucked for it.

I’m all for the first amendment, but there’s obviously a line/filter that each of us determine in our own minds as to what’s “okay” and what’s “crossing the line”. Christians would call it the Holy Spirit. Others can call it morality or humanity. But it does exist in most people. Do we really want this sort of entertainment advertised and pushed to thousands of movie theatres across the country? I sure don’t. I cringe at the thought of teens seeing this film. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not 18. You and I know it’s easy to get into rated R movies at an early age, thanks to movie theatres who don’t voluntarily enforce the MPAA ratings. It isn’t required by law, after all.

But this is garbage that shouldn’t be viewed at any age. I can’t imagine someone who would actually enjoy or defend watching something like that. Ugh.

This just pisses me off.

I recently had to reinstall Vista on my work machine. Upon finishing the reinstallation, I went to activate Vista online (with Dell’s OEM key.) Vista claims the key is invalid. So I have to call Microsoft’s automated activation line.

If you’ve never had to call this line, consider yourself lucky. Granted, it’s as simple as they could make it, but it’s just a pain. You have to read off six or so groups of numbers, each group containing six numbers themselves. In return, you get the same amount of numbers back to type in and verify the installation. If the automated process fails, you get transferred to Microsoft’s Indian tech. support center (apparently) to manually get the return codes.

Anyhow, after the call, and speaking to a live person, I was activated and ready to go. Until the next day, at least, when a dialog popped up and said my copy of Vista was no longer activated, and I had three days to re-activate. Yet another call to Microsoft’s automated activation line. Yet another group of numbers to type in. Valid again, yay.

I thought that would be the end of it, but today on my home machine, I got the dialog in the middle of programming. What? I purchased an OEM copy of Vista Ultimate for my home machine months ago, and have been running it without fail since then (activated it online originally.) Whatever. I try the online activation, but get a different dialog back, saying that my product key is in use on another computer. No, dummy, it’s not. Yet another call to Microsoft’s activation line. More numbers read off and returned, and finally I’m activated again.

I never had this problem under XP. Ugh. Methinks they clamped down on the product activation a bit too much. Meanwhile, I’m sure pirates and such are enjoying Vista for free regardless.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Vista, and recommend it for everyone. But this is just silly.

Okay, I totally knew about this, but forgot until recently. In HTML/CSS, you can actually specify more than one class name inside of the “class” tag. For example:

Go ahead, try it yourself.

Windows-Now.com has an excellent write-up on how to reset the view settings under Vista. It is not exactly the same as it was in XP! In XP, the “Reset All Folders” button worked literally for every folder. Under Vista, it only resets the current “type” of folder you’re looking at. For example, you could be in a “picture” type folder, and will only be resetting all folders that Vista determines contains pictures.

Also, if you want to get rid of the auto-type-sensing functionality altogether, they have another article on how to do just that.

Found a flickr account with this photo from inside Microsoft’s Zune department, of an “Amnesty” bucket with some iPods in it. Reading the comments is hilarious.

I love how Apple supporters are so defensive. God forbid there should be competition in the marketplace! Or that the Zune team should poke fun at Apple. Because Apple never does that.

<sarcasm>Yes, we should all own an iPod and do the exact same thing. Clearly iTunes is the best software out there.</sarcasm>

Ugh. This is the sort of fanboy-ism that I hate. It’s the same thing that drives Mac vs. PC debates. Look, use whatever OS/platform you want. I don’t care. What’s ironic is that Apple totally advertises that you can run Windows on your Mac, yet makes fun of Windows/PCs constantly. Which is it, Apple?

If you follow my blog, you know I sold my iPod a while back and bought a Zune. I did this because I was fed up with iTunes being a complete performance joke. Argue with me all you want, but plenty of other people are running into similiar problems with iTunes on Windows. I really like my Zune, but it isn’t without its faults. I wish the Zune team was a little more “open” to communication about their software, as there are some fairly simple tweaks they could make that would help immensely (see my post for some examples.) I have even more bulletpoint items that I don’t like about the Zune, but overall, I’m more happy with it than I was with my iPod.

And one thing I noticed when I first listened to my Zune was how crisp/fuller songs sounded. These were the same format (AAC) being played on my iPod and my Zune.. and the Zune would almost always sound better. According to this YouTube video and this forum post, maybe I’m not crazy. It appears the Zune does have better sound quality in general than the iPod. Yay Zune.

I am looking forward to what the future holds for both Zune and iPod… competition can only be a good thing in this area. Do you really only want Apple-based digital audio players out there on the market? (And before someone mentions Creative and the other companies with DAPs… yeah, right, like they’re even in the same league as iPod/Zune.)

Now playing: Tom Petty - Yer So Bad

Please please please don’t read this if you don’t want to know how this season is going to end.

With that said, the season’s finale sounds like a winner. I can’t wait to actually watch it. And what a mind-trip of an ending!