Stargate :Atlantis ends much like Stargate: SG-1 ended, with a titanic battle right in front of Earth involving Zero Point Modules, Atlantis, and weapons platforms.
And now we have the launch of Stargate: Universe which is, apparently, a remake of StarTrek: Voyager and Space: 1999.
Like Voyager a terrible science experiment brings the crew to the outer edge of the universe. Like Space: 1999 the ship can not be controlled.
I am worried that this will be a fiasco much like Voyager was a fiasco.
But I long to be proven wrong.
January 10th, 2009
Wow. this is nothing short of amazing. I will say I played super mario twice, this game I played a lot. And was the reason I bought the Wii.
Well, that didn’t take long.
According to game-tracking website VGChartz, sales of Nintendo’s pop-culture phenom Wii Sports have surpassed those of legendary platformer Super Mario Bros., making the breakout Wii title the best-selling video game of all time. And it only took two years and two months to do it.
The data is based on cumulative worldwide sales figures ending the week of December 27, 2008, which indicate that lifetime sales of Wii Sports have exceeded Mario’s staggering 40.24 million units.
Shocked? Don’t be. Unlike most video games that can be bought at retail, Wii Sports comes bundled with the Wii hardware in every territory other than Japan and Korea. In other words, if you bought a Wii, you bought Wii Sports whether you liked it or not (chances are, you liked it). With over 45 million Wiis sold worldwide to date, it’s only logical that Wii Sports would start smashing records sooner or later.
WII SPORTS: RESORT SCREENS
And before you brand Wii Sports a false champion due to being bundled with hardware, consider that Super Mario Bros. was also sold as a bundle with the original Nintendo Entertainment System during its mid-80’s heyday. Plus, Wii Sports has been a major hit even in non-bundled form, topping Wii sales charts in Japan at over 3.2 million copies sold in 2008 alone.
A new version of the game, Wii Sports: Resort, is due out later this year.
Wii Sports is best-selling game ever – Video Game Feature – Yahoo! Video Games
January 7th, 2009
cross posted from eastmeetswest.krung.net
I find it ironic that I became a Habs fan in 1984 because of a goaltender who only played 91 games in his career. After all there were better reasons.
I moved to Montreal in 1973 at the age of one.
That year there was a Stanley Cup parade. And there were four more by the end of the decade..
Starting in 1974 my mom worked at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. She had a long term parking contract at a lot that was across the street from the forum.
My mother and I must have walked by the forum dozens of times. And not once did it register to either of us that this was the Mecca of Hockey.
My elementary school gym teacher was Bruce Blake,
the son of Hector ‘Toe’ Blake. I mean, I was doing push ups, playing floor hockey, running with the son of a coaching legend, and I had no idea who he was. He was just the guy who made this slow, fat kid work out.
I started playing hockey at the age of 7. I mean sucked, but I still played. All my teammates imagined being
Guy Lafleur or Larry Robinson. All I wanted was to get off the ice and read a book.
My earliest memory related to hockey isn’t about a
Stanley Cup. It’s a front page article covering a car accident involving the great Guy Lafleur. I remember people being very anxious. I had no idea why. I thought he was a famous actor or a politician or someone important.
Neither the proximity to the forum, the Stanley Cup parades or the Great Guy Lafleur broke through my shell.
It was, of all people,
Steve Penny.
In 1984, the Habs sucked. Not sucked like they did in the late nineties or early part of the 2000’s. But they did suck relatively speaking. That was the first seasons since before my parents were born that they had had a losing season.
Late in that season, Jacques Lemaire became the head coach. It was an odd choice. Jacques had quit on Montreal to go become a coach in Switzerland. Apparently he wanted to be free of the Montreal press. While in Europe he learned of the neutral zone trap. A deadly, soul destroying defensive scheme that sucked the fun out of hockey. In 1983, no one knew what it was. And in fact, no one knew how to play the damned scheme.
But Jacques taught his team how to play this new style.
And by the time the playoffs rolled around, the team was executing the trap perfectly.
The Boston Bruins, who were at the time a great team, with players like Rick Middleton and Terry O’Reilly and
Pete Peeters were swept by the Habs. And after that all of Montreal had only one name on their lips: Steve Penny. And somehow that registered with me.
Before the playoffs he was a punch-line to a joke. Whose going to lead the Habs to the Stanley Cup? Steve Penny!
The improbability of a nobody playing that well was surreal. For a geeky kid, who sucked in sports, there was something almost mythic about that story line.
And then we beat the Quebec Nordiques in seven games. It’s funny now, but those were bitter rivalries. No, bitter is an understatement. Montrealers hated the Nordiques. We loathed their very existence. They had no right to claim any loyalties of any Quebecer. And yet they did. And so the series wasn’t just a series, it was a minor war.
And by then I was in love with this sport. A sport where some nobody could become mythic. It was like a fairy tale come true. The farm boy pressed into service by the king, saves the day and gets the girl. That was Steve Penny. That was hockey.
And by the time we met the Islanders I was hooked. At the age of 12 I had a 10ish pm bedtime. And now I was demanding that I be allowed to stay up until the game was over. My parents were suddenly very worried. I, who had never shown any interest in any sport of any kind, was demanding he be allowed to stay up until the late hours of the night to watch the Montreal Canadiens play the New York Islander. They had no idea why I would care.
But we had a basement, so they allowed me this indulgence.
And we won the first two in New York. And by then, my dad was kinda curious to see what I was watching. But unfortunately midnite struck. And the magical run was over.
The Islanders figured out the lethal trap or maybe we stopped playing it, who knows.
But I was hooked.
January 2nd, 2009
After I bought my Storevault system, I discovered that the 6 year old powerline adapters from Netgear were no longer cutting it.
The bandwidth was okay but the latency blew chunks.
My first option was to get an improved version of the product. The problem with the improved version was that although bandwidth had improved and latency had improved, it was still too slow. For example, a ping revealed at least a 3 mS average.
My next option was to look at wireless networking and try and create a wireless bridge.
At first I was terrified by the fact that such technology did not seem to exist. I believed I would have to enter the realm of custom hacks etc.
But Netgear came to the rescue with their WNHDE111 devices.
Now the good news is that the devices were very, very easy to put together and use.
The other good news is that I got the latency I wanted (1mS).
The bad news is that I can not seem to get reliable bandwidth. I can not seem to get more 15->18Mbit/Sec. Which is annoying because it means I can not stream HD video from a CIFS share. Given I have an HD capable camera, that is a major bummer.
Obvious issues are the distance (greater than 20 feet), and the intervening walls.
So i am not expecting full 300Mbsec. I am expecting approximately 100Mbits. And I don’t even get that.
My first thought was: oh well. But then I started to fiddle with the equipment and observed that I was able to get 100+Mbsec. But not consistently.
Another wasted Christmas 
January 2nd, 2009
I decided that using my random thoughts blog to blog about hockey would hurt my cool and hip image.
So I have a new hockey blog:
http://eastmeetswest.krung.net
Sometimes, I will cross post ..
January 2nd, 2009
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081224/ts_alt_afp/usfinancefraudwieselfoundation
How terribly sad, that the Elie Wiesel Fund was wiped out by Bernie.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost more than 15 million dollars — nearly all of its assets — in the alleged fraud scheme run by Wall Street baron Bernard Madoff, the fund said Wednesday.
“We are writing to inform you that the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had 15.2 million dollars under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities,” said the foundation, which aims to combat anti-Semitism, on its website.
“This represented substantially all of the Foundation’s assets,” it said.
“We are deeply saddened and distressed that we, along with many others, have been the victims of what may be one of the largest investment frauds in history.”
The statement added that the foundation “remains committed to carrying on the lifelong work of our founder, Elie Wiesel. We shall not be deterred from our mission to combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice around the world.”
Wiesel, 80, a Nobel laureate and prolific author who survived the Holocaust, created the foundation some 20 years ago to foster international dialogue and youth programs to teach tolerance.
He is among dozens of wealthy Jews to have lost substantial amounts of money in Madoff’s scheme.
Prosecutors say Madoff confessed to losing upwards of 50 billion dollars over years of running a pyramid scheme, where new investors were secretly fleeced to pay returns to earlier investors.
The 70-year-old former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the powerful American Jewish community is currently free on bail of 10 million dollars as police continue their probe.
December 25th, 2008
Obama says he won’t be smoking in White House – Yahoo! News
Holy shit.
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama failed to give a straight answer when asked on a U.S. talkshow on Sunday whether he had managed to quit smoking.
In a country where cigarettes are responsible for one in five deaths and smoking costs tens of billions of dollars in health care, Obama has been under pressure to set an example by giving up his reported two-decade-old habit.
Appearing on NBC’s "Meet the Press" program, interviewer Tom Brokaw told Obama he had ducked answering the question during an interview last month with ABC’s Barbara Walters.
Not that it matters one way or the other, but the fact that this was not covered in any part of the mainstream press is amazing! Not that it changes anything, but you would think somewhere somehow it would have been mentioned.
Ironically Hillary’s smoking ban makes it impossible for him to smoke in the White House. Question, does he have to exit the White House grounds? Is there a special presidential smoking area?
Ah the humor.
December 7th, 2008
Type *#7370# from the standby screen while your phone is on.
It will ask for the lock code which is 12345 unless you have previously changed it. Make sure you do this right, because if you do it too many times the wrong way you can lock up your phone.
November 6th, 2008
4-6 year old kid shows up at my door for trick-or-treating wearing a bobba-fett costume.
So I go:
Cool boba-fett costume
kid says:
Jengo fett
Man, when I was a kid there was no stinking jengo fett….
October 31st, 2008
