What's on my mind?

Hear Starscream Speak (UPDATE)

2007-04-25T12:58:00.000-05:00

Starscream, in the upcoming Transformers movie, is a Decepticon who is Megatron's second-hand man. Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons. Throughout the series, Megatron and Starscream constantly feud because Starscream wants to overthrow Megatron and become the leader of the Decepticons. The rivalry in the cartoon is awesome and the good news is that it will be preserved for the movie.

SectorSevenOrg has updated with a 20 second .mp3 file of Starscream speaking.
1.First, go to http://www.sectorseven.org/remoteclient.ac1903.html. In case you need to log in, use FWIFFO.
2. On the bottom there are 5 circles. Click the second one (e-mail).
3. Choose Informants.
4. Look for the message with the subject COD3X. Open it and click the sound file.

I think the voice is awesome. It sounds very similar to Starscream's annoying voice from the original cartoon and that's great news. Some people are upset because the voice sounds too cartoonish and they want a more realistic voice. But I think it's a smart move to stay true to the cartoon and not try to reinvent the wheel. Now if only they could get rid of Optimus Prime's lips, then Michael Bay will have a lot of happy Transformers campers.

Update: Michael Bay's blog was updated with the news that the clip in which Optimus Prime speaks was a test shot and won't be in the movie. It wasn't even Peter Cullen's voice. Great news for fans who hated the lips.

Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American

2007-04-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

Go to Google. Search "greatest living american". Here, I did it for you: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=greatest+living+american.

Sweet.

3 is better than 2?

2007-04-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

What happened to second-world countries? The second-person point of view? Second-party peripherals for video games? I guess nobody likes 2 anymore.

Transformers Updates

2007-04-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

Holy freakin' cow!!! These pictures are so awesome!!!!!! That's Optimus Prime right there in the first one, probably kicking some Decepticon ass.

Also, IGN has two new TV spots that are 30 seconds apiece. They're worth watching too.

"Hidden" and "Destiny"

Letter to Pepperidge Farm.

2007-03-31T15:56:00.000-05:00

I was frustrated and decided to e-mail Pepperidge Farm. They never answered. This is the letter I wrote up:

Last week I went to my local Duane Reade store and went straight for the cookie aisle with hope that the Dark Chocalate Brownie cookies with the chocolate chunks in them are somewhere on a shelf. I was very disappointed to find that the cookies weren't there. I came back a few days later and to my deep disappointment the cookies were absent from the shelf yet again. I stomped my foot in anger and disbelief and yelled out an expletive that I choose not to say here. And yet several days later I came to Duane Reade again on my way from home and felt a twinge of hope that there may be, somewhere on one of the shelves of the store, there may be a lonely box of cookies waiting for me to bring them home. To my extreme misfortune, you can guess that the cookies were once again a no-show. So I write to you now, in hopes that you will hear my cry and plea, and deliver more cookies to the Duane Reade on the corner of Kings Highway and East 14th. (Yup, the weirdest block in Brooklyn, NY). Thank you guys once again, and I will be forever grateful to you if the next time I come to the store to find a box of cookies that I can finally buy to enjoy.

Maybe they didn't reply because I misspelled 'chocolate'.

Reciting the alphabet backwards

2007-03-30T18:10:00.000-05:00

I'm very baffled by police officers. I haven't been pulled over yet in my young driving tenure, but I've seen TV shows & movies and I heard stories that when cops pull over a driver they suspect is drunk, they will subject him to several tests, one of which is reciting the alphabet backwards.

I tried reciting the alphabet backwards once. I got up to V. I thought some more. Then I got mixed up somewhere around the R-S-T combo. I failed miserably. Maybe I was drunk.

Or maybe that test is ridiculous. A sober person would need to think hard in order to recite the alphabet backwards. The only way I could recite the alphabet backwards is if I carved it out on my forehead with a switchblade and used a reflective surface to read it back.

Cops might as well ask the suspected driver to bunny-hop across a pool filled with alligators on a unicycle while balancing a stick which has on the end of it a spinning basketball.

It's all nonsense. All they need is a breathalyzer and they could possibly ask a person to walk the length of a straight line. If they pass, they're sober. If they fail the straight line walk test, they're either drunk, or just plain stupid.

GTA IV Trailer

2007-03-29T16:50:00.000-05:00

Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

The site is down now. I'm very disappointed with Rockstar. They should have been prepared for this.

USPS.com Makeover

2007-03-28T20:43:00.000-05:00

USPS looks completely different nowadays. They're celebrating 30 years of Star Wars by making their website totally awesome. I'm not a Star Wars fanatic (yet- I just started watching the movies) but that website looks pretty cool. If you refresh it, the image on the right changes.

TheForce.net also says that the postal service will be decorating mail boxes as R2-D2. I guess they look alright, if you want to feel like a robot that looks like a garbage can is eating your mail every time you want to mail a letter. [source]

Other news.

2007-03-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

Other stuff that happened recently:

:Adobe CS3 is priced. I'll give you a hint, it's expensive as hell.

:Yahoo announces unlimited storage by May 2007. 1GB is probably enough for me. How much more is infinity?

:Sony releases PSP firmware 3.30. When are they going to release something worth downloading? Download here.

:Harry Potter Book 7 gets a cover. Amazon

:A $1,000,000 (one meeleeon dollars!) laptop was created. I think it's so expensive because you can live in it, drive it, and it feeds you. No but seriously, it's because of a Blu-ray player and diamonds. Pfft. [Source]

Rachel & Monica Kiss

2007-03-28T19:59:00.000-05:00

I gotta figure out how to embed YouTube videos. It's not as easy as it looks. Anyway, here you go.

Probably the least exciting lesbian kiss ever. I would rather watch two turtles, both with broken legs, race uphill against a strong wind. No matter how boring it was, it was still every Friends fan's fantasy come true.

Getting back some hard drive space.

2007-03-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

Here's two ways you can get back some of your lost hard drive space. I did this and got (if I remember correctly) around 3GB back.

Recycle Bin
1. Right click on your Recycle Bin, and click Properties.
2. Where it says "Maximum size of Recycle Bin (percent of each drive)" with a slider over that, drag that slider to something like 1% or 2%. This essentially makes your Recycle Bin smaller, so it can't hold as much.

After you lower the percentage from 10% (I think that's the default) to say 2%, that means your Recycle bin will use up 8% less off your hard drive, meaning that space is now yours to use in other ways. My Recycle Bin is set at 1% because either way, when I send something there I'm going to delete it, so what difference does it make how much it holds?

System Restore
System Restore is a way for your computer to go back to a previous state in case of a failure[#]. Your system (I know this is on Windows XP, I don't know about other OS's) automatically creates restore points for your computer. But you probably don't need so many of them, unless you plan on going back to a point several weeks in the past. System Restore points take up a lot of space on your hard drive. Here's how to get that space back:

1. Right click My Computer, and click Properties.
2. Select the System Restore tab.
3. Under Disk Space Usage, there is another slider which I believe is at 10%. Drag it down to 2-4%. Mine is at 2% (637MB).

I checked how many restore points I have [Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore>Restore to a previous point] and I have around 12 in this month alone. That's way more than enough for me. Again, I got back around 2GB of space on my hard drive.

And that's all there is to it.

2 New Transformers Posters

2007-03-27T11:41:00.000-05:00

WOW. I can't wait for the movie even more!!!

Those are two side by side. Bigger version here.

The Official God FAQ

2007-03-26T12:53:00.000-05:00

This made me laugh.

The Official God FAQ

[Source]

Hugo Weaving = Megatron

2007-03-24T08:43:00.000-05:00

Another movie I can't wait for this year is Transformers. I just developed an obsession with it out of nowhere. I recently started watching the animated series, Generation 1, Seasons 1-4.

Today comes the news that Hugo Weaving will be doing the voice of Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons (the bad guys) Megatron. The announcement was made on the clandestine Transformers website, SectorSevenOrg. (By the way, this website shows up in the trailer during the playing of a recording at the Pentagon. The top right corner says Sector Seven Org).
When you get there, log in with NBETWO, then click the scorpion icon on the bottom, and read the newest e-mail.

I think this is great news for the movie. Hugo Weaving is a great actor, even when he's not on screen. His performance in V for Vendetta was amazing, even though we never even got to see his face. He was also very sinister and convincing in The Matrix trilogy as Agent Smith. I think that he'll do a great job as Megatron.

Also, check out the website for the Transformers video game, in which you can protect the earth with the Autobots or destroy it by being the Decepticons.

Transformers: The Game
Transformers Trailer

Source

Google Talk in your Firefox Sidebar

2007-03-23T19:14:00.000-05:00

Google Talk is a handy chat application, but I always hate cluttering up my computer with lots of programs. That's why Digital Inspiration posted instructions on how to use Google Talk, but in your sidebar in Firefox.

First, right-click on, and bookmark this link of the Google Talk online app. Then, go to Bookmarks> and right click that bookmark, then select Properties. Check off the "Load this bookmark in the sidebar" and that's it. Next time you click that bookmark it will load a Google Talk client in your sidebar.

Source

Downloading Music

2007-03-23T12:43:00.000-05:00

One thing I never understood about downloading music is why anybody would sign up for a monthly subscription. I always thought that was a foolish idea, and here's why.

Say for example you sign up on napster.com for $10 per month. By the way, I'm not trying to single out Napster. I could just as easily have used Yahoo! Music, AOL Music, Rhapsody, or Virgin Digital.

Sticking to Napster, you can download an unlimited number of songs and after a month is up, you need to pay the $10 again. So for a year of downloading unlimited music, that would add up to $120. Then say you get tired of Napster for whatever reason, be it the price, website, customer service or anything else. You want to switch over to Yahoo! Music. But now all the songs you paid for on Napster have DRM (Digital Rights Management) on them, and you can't listen to them anymore. Same thing goes for every other subscription service.

This is why I stick to iTunes and AllOfMP3. I buy most of my music on AllOfMP3. AllOfMP3 is a site that operates in Russia and they have been the target of the RIAA for some time now. Russia continually tries to shut down AllOfMP3 but it can't because AllOfMP3's lawyers claim they pay royalties to the artists and run a legitimate business. The reason I buy music from AllOfMP3 is because their music has no DRM, meaning it can be transferred to any media player and burned as many times as your heart desires. Also, the song are extremely cheap. iTunes charges a flat rate of $0.99 per song, while AllOfMP3 charges depending on the song's size. The bigger the file, the more expensive it is. But it's not expensive at all. An average 4 minute song (high-quality) for around $0.20. That's 20 cents. An album on iTunes could cost $10-$14 while on AllOfMP3 an album could cost around $3. AllOfMP3 also offers different file types for a song and different qualities.

The best part is that after you buy and download the song, it's yours to keep. None of that "pay a monthly fee to listen to music you purchased" nonsense.

Flying cars.

2007-03-22T20:52:00.000-05:00

What the heck is a flying car? Dictionary.com defines a car as "a passenger vehicle designed for operation on ordinary roads and typically having four wheels and a gasoline or diesel internal-combustion engine."

As soon as a car "learns" to fly, it becomes an aircraft, and no longer an automobile. The words flying car don't make any sense to anyone who thinks about them for 3 seconds.

So stop saying you can't wait for flying cars. It makes no sense.

Wii Baby

2007-03-22T18:31:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posting today. I was busy all day. By the way, this baby is awesome.

I sometimes do that too while playing Wii Sports. Tennis though, not golf.

Woot

2007-03-21T18:20:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know about Woot, you're missing out.

Woot.com is a website that posts one item per day. There is a limited amount and it's different for each item. The item is a "woot," hence the name. Woot.com updates at 1am est, 12am cst. What's interesting about Woot is that nobody, (except the Woot staff of course), knows what the next day's item will be. It's something different every day.

A user can buy up to 3 of one item, to make it fair for other wooters. If the item sells out in a day, then everyone has to wait until next morning for a new item. If the item doesn't sell out, it's still replaced with a new item the next day and the old item can't be purchased again.

Sometimes the items are refurbished, but most of the time they're new. Woot doesn't always have the best deals either, but a lot of the time it does. There's also a side-deal at the top of the page that's directs you to another website.

To make wooting easier, there's a Firefox extension called Woot Watcher that has been made that creates a toolbar with information such as the day's woot, price, and whether the item is still in stock. You can download it here.

To use Woot you need to sign up, but it's free unless you buy something. Sign up here.

Superstitions

2007-03-21T12:50:00.000-05:00

One thing I never understood is people's obsession with the number 13. It's just a number. Just like 4, 82, 57, 129, and 3,231,414. It's gotten so strange that people leave out 13 in elevators of hotels or office buildings. The thing that bugs me about that is no matter which way you look at it, the floor after the 12th will still be the 13th floor by count. Call it the 14th floor, the 16th floor, the green floor, or the potato floor, but it will still be 13th by count. Apparently the number 13 can be a serious psychological detriment to people who see it, and they feel safer, or more comfortable, if it is omitted. Even if the floor is 13th by count, people feel better that it's not called that, and they don't think about it as much. I still think it's all bogus though.

Just like when a black cat crosses your path. Why are people afraid of that? What if a black dog crosses your path, or a black car, or a black anything else. People don't fear that. But when you combine the color black with felines, people get chills up and down their spines. What about the people that own black cats? Surely they should just sit still in a corner of their room since the black cats must be everywhere, lest they step in any direction only to have a piano fall on their heads.

Or maybe I should be more careful next time 13 black cats cross my path...

Hard to Find 800 Numbers

2007-03-20T13:47:00.000-05:00

Have you ever needed to contact a company, only to go to their website and not be able to find their phone number? Well, hardtofind800numbers.com takes care of that. They have phone numbers for all the popular companies like Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, PayPal and Yahoo. They have tons of other phone numbers to browse through by letter. You can ever submit a phone number if they don't already have it. This is a very useful site that I visit quite often.

POTC 3 Trailer

2007-03-20T12:32:00.000-05:00

This looks promising. I hope it's better than the second one. Lots of excitement and apparently Jack Sparrow isn't dead. Who would've knew...

300 2!!!

2007-03-19T18:48:00.000-05:00

First, read this: http://www.filmwad.com/another-300--1934-p.html

HOW AWESOME is thAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

I was so excited when I read that, that I was ready to go to a theater and get in line to wait for it.

Seriously though this is a great move in my opinion on the part of the studio. As of March 18, 2007 300 made $154, 365,656 worldwide [source]. Even though it got a bad rating on Rotten Tomatoes (something like 60% last time I checked) many people apparently like it or it wouldn't be making so much. Frank Miller might be directing the next one and I would love to see what he can do behind the reigns. Miller will base the next movie on a different battle, and I hope it's as exciting as this one.

Coming soon: I will be in Watchmen mode.

HP: Book 7

2007-03-19T18:33:00.000-05:00

First off, Harry Potter is awesome. I always thought it was for little kids, until my friend forced me to read the first book. Then I asked for the second book. 3 months later, I read through all 6 books and saw the first 4 movies. I can't wait until Book 7. I was thinking about how many pages it would have. I tried thinking really hard. I began grunting and turned red from all the thinking. I still don't know how many pages it will be. I'm hoping for somewhere around 2000 though. Hopefully it's textbook sized- that would be a dream come true.

What I learned from 24- Days 1-6

2007-03-17T16:40:00.000-05:00

I recently finished watching 24 Days (Seasons) 1-4. I saw Day 5 last year and the show is currently in Day 6. I learned a few things about the way the story lines are structured. The following will contain spoilers, so proceed with caution.

*Jack Bauer has more lives than a litter of kittens. Every time a terrorist has a gun to Jack's head ready to pull the trigger, something pops up and he can't do it. Each time, Jack is either rescued or escapes. During one season, Jack's heart stops and he still manages to survive somehow.

*It is almost a given that during the season, Jack Bauer will, to some extent, be captured by terrorists, and probably tortured.

*Chase Edmunds is awesome.

*Kim Bauer, Jack's daughter, is stupid and annoying. She does some dumb things without thinking them through, and she ends up getting herself into trouble. Yet in season 3, she ends up working at CTU and she's good at what she does. The transformation is perplexing.

*Jack Bauer, Tony Almeida and a few other people at CTU actually know what they're doing.

*Every season, Jack Bauer either doesn't want to work for CTU, or gets into trouble and isn't allowed to work at CTU. He still ends up working there, and is usually the only one who gets results. His office knows he's the only one capable of doing anything, yet they try to get rid of him every season.

*Given enough time, everyone will be killed off. This usually takes around 3 seasons for the big guns, 1 season for the little guys. Everyone that is, except Jack Bauer. He dies, show ends.

*Each season, there is a high probability of there being a mole in CTU. Sometimes, the mole is on the President's staff. It's usually not who you think it is.

*If someone has an idea and it's shot down, it's usually turns out that this idea would have yielded better results than what course of action was actually taken.

*Jack Bauer personally spoke to 4 Presidents in 6 seasons, a few of whom he befriended.

*CTU is the only government agency (it's fake, but I'm referring to in the show) that terrorists target. The NSA, DOD, CIA or FBI are never targets. So the only agency that doesn't exist in real life is the only one that concerns the terrorists.

*The crisis is always solved in exactly 24 hours.

*Despite what happens in Day 1 (I won't ruin this), and despite Jack always saying he can't have a real relationship, almost each season he has a girlfriend (the season usually starts out with him already in a relationship).

*If you begin to hate someone, the writers will probably make you like the person by the end of the season.

*Anyone who holds a gun knows how to shoot it, even if the person explicitly says they don't know how to shoot a gun.

*Jack Bauer is as hardcore as they get. Also, Chase Edmunds is awesome (Day 3).

So there you have it. I haven't finished watching Day 4 completely, but I'm more than halfway done.