TechgnosisWeb Prime

Well, I hope at least some of you took advantage of that ‘Free Opera’ deal I pointed out yesterday. If so, I’ve got another freebie to point out to you: Linspire. The Linux distro formerly known as Lindows, Linspire is a nice, well-made Linux system that’s designed to be about as easy to install and use as Windows ever was. It’s a great way to get your feet wet with Linux, and more than good enough to be your full everyday OS.

The big advantage with Linspire is that, since it’s a commercial version of Linux, it actually has legal and paid-for 3rd-party licenses for things like mp3, Java, Flash, Quick Time, Windows Media, Bitstream fonts, Real media, music, etc., and this is all pre-loaded, tested and ready to use. No need to settle for crippled or hacked versions of the same media tools you’ve used in Windows. And the downloadable CD even works as a Live CD so you can try it out without needing to install it. Sweet!

Well, the story goes that some guy decided to try and take those components of Linspire that were completely free and Open Source, and put them together to create ‘Freespire’, a version of Linspire that he could legally distribute for free. This created some confusion, with people thinking that Linspire was releasing a free version and coming looking for it on their site. The creator of ‘Freespire’ has since renamed his project ’squiggle’, and the Linspire folks have handled this in an extremely cool way: instead of suing the guy for causing trademark confusion, or just telling people that there is no free version, they’ve decided to turn the attention into a marketing opportunity. Until September 6th, they’re giving away free copies of the full Linspire system to anyone who uses the discount code ‘freespire’.

Linspire is normally $49.95, but for a short while, you can snag it free. So go and get it: http://info.linspire.com/freespire/index.html

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I normally ignore these stupid forwards, but for some bizarre reason I felt compelled to answer this one when the Hussy sent it my way. I managed to amuse myself with my own answers, and, so, I share them here with you. WARNING: Blathering ahead.

Welcome to the new edition of getting to know your friends. Okay here’s what you’re supposed to do, and try not to be lame and spoil the fun! Just copy (not Forward) this entire e-mail and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you. Some of you may get this several times. That means you have lots of friends…

1. What is your full name? Daniel Alejandro Rodriguez Larregoity Rivera

2. What color pants are you wearing? Gray/brown. They’re my work pants. Microfiber: it’s the shizzle.

3. What are you listening to right now? RPGMP3com Worlds Largest Dungeon Podcast - Listening to about an hour of british geeks playing through the ‘World’s Largest Dungeon’ supplement for AD&D: a new episode every week! … I’m such a total dork.

4. What was the last thing you ate? Some sort of chicken/spicy rice dish that my mother in law cooked up. Don’t tell her, but I didn’t care for it much.

5. Do you wish on stars? That would be irrational.

6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Blue, totally.

7. How is the weather right now? Fuckin’ hot.

8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Lord Absu, hell-demon of.. erm.. hell.

9. Do you like the person who sent this to u? I suppose I can tolerate her prescence, if I must. Damned hussy.

10. Favorite drink? Bawls. I like the taste of Bawls. Nothing quite like some Bawls on a hot, sweaty day.

11. Favorite sport? I abhor all manner of sports.

12. Hair color? Dark brown

13. Siblings? One, but she is dead to me.

14. Favorite month? None yet. I’m betting the month during which I finally get the power to decide who lives and who dies will be pretty high up there, though.

15. Favorite food? I’m big on sushi lately. Otherwise, ’shrooms, cheese, italian.. s’all good.

16. What was the last movie you saw? I can’t even remember, but I’ll tell you what the next movie I’mm see is: The Man With the Screaming Brain. Written by, Directed by, and starring the greatest man this world has ever known: Bruce Campbell. Airing Saturday, September 10th, on SciFi: http://www.scifi.com/screamingbrain/

17. Favorite day of the year? Right now, it’s looking like September 10th. Hell yeah. Bruce Campbell is GOD.

18. What do you do to vent anger? I transform into a raging beast, and rampage across the countryside. Only the blood of innocents slakes my unholy thirst for vengeance.

19. What was your favorite toy as a child? I had this robot that turned into a cap gun. Shit, man, that thing was all I played with for about 5 years.

20. Summer or winter? Winter. Heat goes down. There are pretty lights. I get presents. Somewhere, it’s snowing. I will go there someday.

21. Hugs or kisses? While I normally avoid physical contact with other people, considering them unclean, I will share both hugs and kisses with individuals who have properly cleansed themselves and who I find sufficiently pleasing.

22. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? Chocolate for life, yo! Represent!

23. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? I have no control over my friend’s actions.. yet.

24. Who is most likely to respond? Yo mamma.

25. Who is least likely to respond? Satan, lord of lies. Bitch never returns my email.

26. When was the last time you cried? The past few days had been a blur. There was blood on my hands. It wasn’t mine.

27. What is under your bed? I dunno. The girlfriend stores all sorts of shit in there. I find it best not to ask too many questions.

28. Who is the friend you’ve known the longest? Juan Antonio, bless his drunken rum-soaked little heart. Someday, he will spell every word in a whole sentence properly, and then the Apocalypse will come.

29. What did you do last night? See #24

30. What are you afraid of? I fear heights. I fear not achieving my ultimate goal of immortality.

31. Plain buttered or salted popcorn? Butter, salt, maybe some cheese.. now we’re talking. None of that sweet popcorn shit, though. That shit’s just *wrong*.

32. Favorite car? Flying.

33. Favorite flower? Flowers, as everyone knows, are for pussies. Except for tigerlilies. Tigerlilies will FUCK. YOU. UP.

34. Number of keys on your key ring? I stopped counting after the first dozen.

35. How many years at your current job? 4

36. Favorite day of the week? The day when I don’t have any responsibilities, at all.

37. What did you do on your last birthday? I’m pretty sure there was a cake of some sort. My friends were probablty around. I’m betting someone gave me socks. I hate that person. I hate them *so much*.

38. How many states have you lived in? 1, NY. And then there’s this god-forsaken island.

39. How many cities have you lived in? The better part of 10.

40. Single or married? Commited.

41.Favorite music? The Blues. It’s the music of life, the music of defiance. It’s music that says “This here world’s hit me with everything it’s got. I been used, abused, misused, and confused for so long I don’t even know where I am anymore. But I’m still standing, and I’m still singing, bitches.”

Congrats to the Opera developers on their 10th anniversary! Opera’s one of the best web browsers out there. Although in recent years I’ve been a Mozilla/Firefox guy almost exclusively, back in the day (95 or s0) I used Opera all the time as a web browser. It was fast, efficient, usable, and tiny (it used to fit entirely in a single floppy disk, which I found absolutely priceless back in the day before everyone had a USB drive). Fastforward to today, and it’s still one of the best browsers (far better in rendering speed, XHTML compliance, and security than IE).

If you’ve been wanting to try out Opera, but have been turned off y the big ad-bar at the top of the free version, and have been spoiled by the other free clients and don’t want to pay for it, then I’ve got some big news: for one day only (today), till midnight (12:00 AM PDT), you can download Opera (A little under 4 MB total download), and then either email registerme@opera.com or go to Opera’s 10th Anniversary registration page and send in your email there, and they’ll send you your free registration code.

I allready did mine, and I’m loving it. Opera’s got some sweetlittle features, go check it out!

when Pastamania runs wild on you?!

And now we know that even the Hulkster has been Touched by His Noodly Appendage! Long Live the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Arrrrrr!!!

… I swear, I’m going to photoshop a pirate hat and an eyepatch on him before this day is over.

UPDATE: Because I promised you a pirate… Yarrrrrr!

Well, looks like we’re down to one a week, for now. I’m trying to ramp up to the three-a-week I promised, but between crazy weekends, eye infections, and just pure chance, it hasn’t been possible. Still, I keep pumping out bits of story. Special thanks to Eldrin for bugging me so I would put up this bit tonight!
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So, it’s been rumored for damn near forever that Google was working on an instant messenger client. Turns out that it wasn’t just a rumor. Today, Google made a couple fo big announcements:

First off, GMail is no longer invite-only. Now anyone can go and sign up for a GMail account without having to be invited first.. of course, pretty much everyone has a GMail account these days anyone.. but those 3 people who still didn’t have one? Yeah, they can get one too now.

The other, even bigger announcement is Google Talk. It’s a new IM client that ties perfectly into GMail and provides IM and voice chat services in a clean, simple, Google-esque interface. The client is tiny (900 KB), and the install is lightning-quick.

The guys over at the Download Squad have a review up of it, mostly positive. Go check it out here, but here’s some choice quotes:

Clicking on a friend in your buddy list will open an IM window for that person, and clicking on the phone icon to the right of their name will start a voice session. The buddy list allows you to rename contacts and tweak other settings, like whether Gmail-only contacts are shown. When you have multiple IM windows open, they show up in a neat sliding interface which you can dock to the buddy list, “roll up,” or tear away. The whole affair is the picture of simplicity and intuitiveness we’ve come to expect of Google, and is downright attractive to boot.

According to our friends at Google, there’s a lot in store for Google Talk. Google is keenly interested in keeping the protocol open, and in fact you can access Google Talk’s servers with any Jabber-compatible client like Trillian, Gaim, Adium X, and iChat. (If you have one of these, I’m told you can connect using server talk.google.com and port 5222.) Google tells us that SIP support is coming soon and are in talks with Skype, AOL, and Yahoo! concerning interoperability.

Another big feature they’re working on is “joint search,” which would allow two or more Google Talk buddies using Google and surfing the web together. This would be a natural segue to the fabled Google Browser, but there is as yet no confirmation from Google.

Google also tells us that they don’t yet have solid plans on making money with the service, but plan on using it to drive users to Gmail.

Mmmm.. sexay. Voice chat, interop with SIP, Skype, Jabber, etc. I’m really looking forward to that “joint search” feature too. Go get your copy at talk.google.com, and then invite me: katsushiro ( at ) gmail.com

Well, been out of the loop for a couple days, sorry about that, but I’m back now. I won’t bore you guys with the details, let’s just get right back into the story. Today’s chapter is a bit longer than usual, trying to make up for the past few days I’ve missed. Please, let me know what you think of the story so far, if you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas, just put them in the comment fields at the bottom of the entry. So, click ‘read more’ to see the next chapter of Massively Multiplayer,and enjoy!
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Whew… So I haven’t met a single one of my Massively Multiplayer commitments this week. Am I flaking out completely, as I always do?

Maybe…

Still, I have an excuse: this week was my birthday (on Wednesday, actually), and I just haven’t felt like being useful to society in any real way. It’s one of those things where I keep thinking I should be writing, I should be blogging, I should be doing something useful, and instead I just think ‘But it’s my birthday!’ and blow it off. Things should be more stable next week, I hope.

So, many of you are wondering if I managed to raise the funds to buy myself the Abacus PDA watch I was lusting after. Well, the short answer is: Yes. The long answer is: Yes, but I’m not buying it.

You see, when you live with a woman, certain things change. One of the things that changes is that you no longer get to decide what to spend your birthday money on by yourself. Instead, your girlfriend makes her opinion on what you wanted to buy known. And she does so rather forcefully. Now, in her defense, her arguments against the PDA watch were based on Common Sense: I already have a very good PDA that does everything this watch could do, and better, with a color screen, folding keyboard, Bluetooth, SD and CF card slots, etc. And this is all true. I tried to defend my side of the argument: ‘But… It doesn’t fit on my wrist!’, I cried, but, alas, not even this rock-solid logic-bomb of an argument would dissuade her. Alas, it was the doghouse for me if I bought that watch.

Now, mind you, I didn’t back off completely. Her suggestion that I should, instead, spend my birthday money on clothes was met with a disdainful sneer and a snort on my part. This is birthday money, after all! It should be for something fun, not something practical! Seeing that I would not budge on this point, we instead worked out a compromise: something fun, but that would not be basically duplicating something I already own. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the thing I’m going to buy myself for my birthday with the money I got.

This, my friends, is a GBA Flash Cartridge. 256, 512, or even 1GBit of storage space, battery power, internal clock, and ROM management software, ready to plug into my trusty and pimped-out little GBA SP. It allows me to carry 8, 16, or more entire game ROMs in one single cartridge, thus being able to have my entire Gameboy Advance game collection with me without carrying a dozen extra game cartridges around. It also allows you to download ROMs for games you don’t own and play them on your GBA, but you shouldn’t do that, because it’s illegal, and wrong. And if you find a place with lots of these illegal ROMs, you should tell me the address, so I know to avoid it. Bad, bad people.

So, right after I commit to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday update schedule for ‘Massively Multiplayer’, I immediately flake out on the first Monday. Par for the course for me, no? My apologies, but I was out earning money so I can feed my tech habit, and didn’t have time to write. However, I’ll make it up to you folks: to make up for today, and in celebration of my birthday on the 17th, I’m going to post a double-sized MM entry for Wednesday, so you can catch right up in the adventures of Rathnar the warrior. And just who is the mysterious new voice? Check the site on Wednesday to find out!

So, it’s my birthday on Wednesday, as I pointed out. And you might be wondering what to get me, still. Well, don’t worry your pretty lil’ heads about it, I’ll make it easy for you: cash is very, very nice. You see, I’ve been hit with a bad case of technolust for this lil’ puppy: the Abacus PalmOS Wristwatch.

It’s a full-fledged PalmOS 4.1 wristwatch you can wear on your wrist, with full 160×160 16-level grayscale resolution, touch screen, infrared, 8MB of RAM, and the capability to run pretty much every Palm app written (for 4.1 and below, of course). After seeing that little article on Phil Torrone’s site, and all the cool shit you can do with it, I just have to have one. Sure, it’s big, it’s bulky, and it’s a wristwatch you have to charge every night… But it’s also intensely nerdy, very versatile, and the perfect way to let my geek flag fly as time marches inexorably forward, dragging me closer and closer to my 30’s.

These babies were $299 when they first came out, but I can get one now for ~$100, and I’m allready $40 closer to that goal after my little side-job today of setting up a guy’s WiFi connection at home. So, if you wanna make a PimpNinja very happy on his b-day this year, just

and help me bring one of these sweet little monsters home.

Today’s installment of Massively Multiplayer is running late, but in the meantime, here’s a lil’ something to tide you over:

I’ve been accused, in the past, of overclocking.

But never, in my wildest dreams, have I overclocked like this guy overclocks:

7 Ghz, baby! w00t! I ph34r the Japanese 0v3rcl0ck1ng sk1llz, j0!

Well, this is new.

I’m writing this entry as I sit at the ‘bar’ in the Fast Lane near my mom’s house. The car’s not in immediate need of ‘lubing’, but it’s pretty goddamn filthy, both inside and out, and both the gf and the mother-in-law are starting to make their displeasure known with this situation, so I’ve headed out to pay someone to give it a thorough cleaning.

Never mind that it’s raining like a motherfucker and most of the roads back in Dorado have been reduced to rivers of mud…

Anyway, drove down here, since it’s the only place I really know where they do this sort of thing and do it fairly well. Now, I know it wasn’t gonna be cheap, and I was prepared for a bit of sticker shock. But then I get there and see the big sign right outside the door with the prices. The kind of cleaning my car needed? $100. Well, $99.95 but you get the idea. Fuckin’ ouch.

I tried contacting the gf to ask her if the car’s cleanliness really meant that much to her, but, to her credit, she didn’t bother picking up the phone. I tried 10 more times, same result. Ah well… I do get paid on Monday, so I guess I can be a man and suck it up. I walk inside, and there’s another list of prices inside. The services aren’t quite as exquisite as the ones described outside, but they seem like they’ll get the job done: they wash the car with a pressure hose, suds and wax from head to toe. They go inside, clean the glass, shine up the dashboard, vacuum the seats and the carpets, and they run some sort of cleaning process on the carpets. It’s not a full-on shampoo, but the girl at the counter said that they would spray something on them and then stick them into a machine of some sort. You know me, if there’s one thing I love, it’s machines. And it’s only $27. Well, $26.95, but you get the idea.

So, I plunk down the cash, put the car in the queue, and sit my ass down at the bar, order up a Malta, and set up my mobile blogging rig: Glitch, the keyboard, and the KatsuPhone right next to it, where I can establish a Bluetooth connection and upload this post as soon as it’s done. Ahhh… Technology. I’ll try to send in a picture of my view from the bar in a minute too, so you can share my experience, but that depends on if the asshat that just sat next to me goes away before the car is ready to go. It’s almost like you’re here.

Update: No pic, the asshat never moved and the car was ready a couple mins after I finished the post.

Heads up, loyal readers! The Friday episode of Massively Multiplayeris up… on a Saturday morning at nearly 1 A.M. Better late than never, eh? Dont’ worry, MM will start in on its new thrice-a-week schedule on Monday, so I’ll be posting up the next part of the story on Sunday night, and you can check in Monday morning to get your fix. Enjoy!

Tonight’s snippet shows what happens when a skilled warrior drinks a Potion of Speed: carnage. Bullet-time, medieval style, and the first inkling that all is not as it seems in Rathnar’s little world…
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So, you lust after a Mac, but can only afford a PC. You’ve heard the rumors, that there’s a version of Mac OSX (pretty, pretty, prrrreeeccciiooooooouuussssssssss) that can run on your crappy old Pentium 4 machine… well, it’s true! And now it works, without needing the special ‘MacIntel’ hardware.. All you need is a CPU with SSE2 (preferably SSE3), an external USB drive with at least 6 GB of space, an Ubuntu Live CD, bittorrent, and a massive downloaded file. W00t.

The detailed instructions are after the jump, and thanks to UNEASYsilence for the heads-up.
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My Jung Personality Type, as determined by Similarminds.com:

So, what’s yours?

So, if you’ve been reading this blog for the past week or so, you’ve probably noticed a couple of entries marked ‘Massively Multiplayer’, and you might be wondering what, exactly, it is.

I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.

But I think I have an answer now. MM is my novel. Or, at least, it will be, someday far, far in the future. Right now, however, it’s my version of a webcomic, and that’s something I can handle. Rather than try to deliver entire chapters, or even entire scenes, I’m delivering little bits. A couple of paragraphs, a few lines of dialogue. Roughly the same amount of story you?d find in your average webcomic strip.

I’ve never quite been able to sit down and write large passages of text, entire chapters. But I have no problem banging out a couple of paragraphs here and there. So I’m gonna use that to my advantage: I’m going to deliver MM to you guys as if I was delivering a webcomic, in small doses, small scenes, snippets of action. A serial story, in words rather than pictures (because I can’t draw worth a shit). And I’m going to commit to the same amount as your average webcomic does: one update, three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ll try to do more, certainly. I may, at certain moments, feel inspired and write out several pages worth of story. But what I’m going to commit to is three days a week, one small update, a few paragraphs long at most.

Let me know what you think, and if you’ve been reading MM so far, tell me if you like it or hate it, and any thoughts you may have. And stay tuned tomorrow for the next installment of MM as we begin our new update schedule!

you might think that after making 4 or so other posts today, that I might wuss out on my nightly pair of paragraphs for Massively Multiplayer, but you’d be wrong. Herein lies the next few strokes of the epic battle between Rathnar and the overgrown birds: wherein our hero unveils his secret weapon. Enjoy!
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So, the Kansas Board of Education (there’s a fucking oxymoron for ya) voted 6-4 today to open the doors to ‘Intelligent Design’ to be taught as an alternative theory, in science class, for all state schools…

I’ve said what I was going to say about this idiocy before, but I do need to add one thing: the correct response to this is for all out-of-state universities to consider a high school diploma from a Kansas school as less valid. And before someone comes up and says that I need to learn to respect and be tolerant of alternative viewpoints: I’m fucking tired of being tolerant and accepting of alternate viewpoints that are completely idiotic.

Fuck the Creationists, and fuck the South.

I’ve talked about EarthCore before, and, finally, the podiobook is all done. The last chapters were posted up last night, iPodder downloaded them and I just finished listening.

One word: OMG!!!!111!11!eleven

If you didn’t listen to it, man, have you been missing out. Thousands of EarthCrack junkies like myself can’t be wrong: this was one hell of a ride. Hardcore action right through to the end, no punches pulled. Extremely satisfying, and I’ve barely gotten any work done today because I spent a good chunk of my morning just focused on listening to the last few chapters. Scott Sigler, you are The Man!

If you missed it, all is not lost, however: the response to the book was so impressive that it got him a publishing deal. The new cover for the book looks freakin’ great:

And it can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com today! The book will be available on Sept. 15, but if you pre-order, keep that receipt: Scott’s gonna send out a free professionally produced CD with the entire audiobook, cleaned up, with the intros and promos stripped out, to everyone who pre-orders on Amazon! You can pretty much assume that I’ve allready got my pre-order on the way.

And here’s a hot tip for you: EarthCore may be over, and some of you missed it (and I know you’re kicking yourselves over it, because, goddamit, it kicked ass), so don’t let it happen to you a second time. Grab yourself some podcatching software, and then head on over to the site for Scott’s next podiobook, Ancestor, and subscribe! It starts Sept. 11, that’s only 1 month away, so hurry up!

Test Flickr Post by Email with pic

Originally uploaded by Katsushiro.

Alright, let’s see if this works outside of just a camphone.

Well folks, last night’s update of Massively Multiplayer: the Novel was delayed, due to the need to engage in assorted shenanigans related to my dear Natalie’s b-day. But now we’re back on track: Rathnar’s facing down a deadly quartet of giant bird-things, and things look bad for our hero. Will Rathnar survive? Will he manage to battle his way out of this one? Or will he become nothing more than chicken feed? Click the ‘more’ link below to read the next exciting update!
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