Just wow. I wasn't sure where Russell T. Davies was going with this after the last episode but he pulled out all the stops. I have many things to say and some thoughts on the arcs over the past four seasons. Those will be coming in the next post and it will be very spoilerific.

Current Mood: impressed

Ok guys. I know that the audiophile community has some very questionable ideas about cables but this is just fucking stupid. Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable. The description is just priceless:

Get the purest digital audio you've ever experienced from multi-channel DVD and CD playback through your Denon home theater receiver with the AK-DL1 dedicated cable. Made of high-purity copper wire, it's designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration and helps stabilize the digital transmission from occurrences of jitter and ripple. A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable's shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties. The connector features a rounded plug lever to prevent bending or breaking and direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable.

Oh yeah man I've been wondering why my downloads are so slow, must be due to the vibrations and that I don't have one of those fluoropolymer thingy maggigers. Holy shit! I just realized I plugged in the cable backwards! Boy is my face red. Now my uploads are slow but damn my porn is downloading at a record pace. Thank you Denon!

Whatever marketer came up with that blurb needs to be put up against the wall and shot. Seriously, did they just copy and paste the same bullshit audio cable ad copy and just find and replace analog with digital? If you want to fuck me up the ass, at least have the decency to sweet talk me first.

Current Mood: annoyed

The only thing I have to say here is that Steven Moffat writes damn good characters. And story arcs. And Dialog. And, well ok he has joined the ranks for writers I will trust implicitly.

I had a very long post written about the democratic nomination process. But I deleted it. Why you might ask? Well I finally have watched both Senator Clinton's and Senator Obama's respective speeches from Tuesday.

I just don't have anything to add to that . On the one hand you have someone talking about themselves and what only they can do for us. On the other hand you have someone actively reaching out to people telling them that they can make a difference. The former uses voters as bargaining chips, that latter tries to bring voters together.

The big difference is character and integrity. Obama has it in spades, Clinton has to look both words up in the dictionary. The speeches speak for themselves.

Yet another Steven Moffat episode that will be a stand out in the season.

I read a couple of weeks ago on The Who-Philes that he was going to be taking over producing Doctor Who. I'm trying to find a downside and failing.

Current Mood: ecstatic

Somehow I forgot about The Sarah Jane Adventures. Not sure how that happened but I guess it's because I'm a complete moron. Oh well I watched the first two episodes and pretty much liked them. But I had some questions. Basically where the hell did Mr. Smith come from, where the hell is K-9 and how do these kids know Sarah Jane Smith? Oh right, there is a "pilot" episode. Boy that moron line is gaining credence eh? So I watched the pilot/precursor and had most of my questions answered.

Now it definitely is geared to the younger crowd but there is plenty to enjoy for all ages. Plus sonic frackin' lipstick! Ok I must come clean here, Sarah Jane Smith was one of my most favorite companions. But still a good show so far. They have obviously benefited from the budget windfall that the recent Doctor Who popularity has generated. In the first two episodes the Slythene looked much better than they did in the original Doctor Who episodes.

I will admit a bit of sadness about K-9. Ok I know where he is, but... well crap I can't say more without spoilers. Although his scene in the pilot was pretty funny and pure K-9.

All in all though I like the direction the show is taking. I especially like Sarah Jane's kinder, gentler take on alien interference. I felt like she was channeling The Doctor but consciously and forcibly rejecting the solution he would come up with.



P.S. Oh and where the hell did Mr. Smith come from? The "pilot" did not answer that at all.

I've never had the desire to get any of the Guitar Hero games. I understand the allure, just wasn't my cup of tea. I felt the same way about Rock Band. I'm not sure what the disconnect was, I mean I spend hours killing orcs or humans on Warcraft, sending minions out to do by bidding in Overlord and I like music. So what's the problem? In retrospect I think it was the guitar thing, I never wanted to play the guitar so getting a game where I could pretend to play the guitar just wasn't appealing. I lumped Rock Band into that mindset as well.

So what happened yesterday was that my girl and I had time to kill near a Best Buy. This is never a good thing for my wallet. We walked in and she saw the TV displays near the entrance. So I did my standard "We really don't need a new TV and we should really spend our money on the wedding." Well it's true, we don't need one and we should keep saving for the wedding.

We walked around a bit and I looked around the Apple section for a iPhone headphone extension so I could use my phone to play music in my girls car. A helpful Best Buy sales guy asked if we needed help and after a bit of explanation he trotted off to see if he could find what I needed. This is where it all went south. Oh boy. I steered us toward the game section, never a good sign. Mr. Helpful BB Sales Guy found us and gave me a pretty good adapter. This is the good part. Of course my girl found the Rock Band display.

Side note here, this was a pretty craptacular display. The drum set was broken, the left drum was hanging by it's wires, the wire on one of the drumsticks was wrapped around the stand and one of the guitars was unplugged. This is not something that will sell a game by looks. So I helped her get it started and held the broken drum so she could play a bit. She wanted to try out the guitar so we got that working and I tried out the drums.

Hmm. I probably shouldn't have done that. Broken drum and all I had a blast. Five minutes pounding away at a run down, worn out display game brought me back to my teen years where I would hog the Apple IIe at the game store to play Tetris. But we had to leave. We also had to walk past the tower, I really do mean tower, of Rock Band game boxes.

Now I would like to blame my girl for us buying it. I really would, but that would be a complete lie and send me to hell forever. What happened was that she said "Why don't we buy it?" I, after thinking on my TV line above, was trying to figure out how I could say "FUCK YEAH!" and not be a complete hypocrite. Then, as is her wont, she saved my bacon. Since she had just got a gift card from work as a bonus she offered to use it. This gift card would pay for the whole thing.

I'm only human. I caved. No that isn't true, I dove into the pit of hypocrisy willingly and rolled around in the muck like a satisfied pig. I don't regret it a bit. We played yesterday afternoon and had friends over this evening to play. Fun was had and, even though I failed badly in front of people, I had a smile on my face the whole time.

I will probably never be a drummer, but god damn can I pretend. Rock Band has the appeal beyond the guitar, to the singer or drummer to be. The bonus? It really is like Tetris on drums for me. Maybe one day I might really get a drum kit and rock out.

Um do drum kits have an Easy Mode? Cuz Medium kicks my ass.

Current Mood: excited

The title is what I said about six times during the season opener of Doctor Who. I would say more but then you would have to kill me for telling you spoilers.

Torchwood and BSG last night. Doctor Who today. This weekend is filled with chewy geeky goodness.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programing.

Current Mood: ecstatic

I just started to watch season four of Doctor Who. Is it just me or did they change the music? I don't remember the string section being so prominent. Of course I could just be a clueless reprobate that wouldn't know music if it was blasted in his ears.

Current Mood: curious

I gave Russell T. Davies a pass on the first season of Torchwood when I heard "The face of Bo they called me." So I actually watched the second season of Torchwood. Wow was that a good decision. The cynical part of me wonders if it was my lowered expectation that caused me to think that this season was good. But I don't think that can account for it all. The writing and the overall character arcs just put the first season to shame and were actually worthy of being called good. Oh there were things that made me shake my head but I'm actually looking forward to season three rather than dreading it.

There is one thing though...

( Here there be spoilers )

Current Mood: morose

Doesn't suck.

Daring Fireball:

Regarding Ryan Block Asking Steve Jobs if SIM-Unlocking Apps Will Be Allowed ★
I have to say, I side with Block on this one. Just because the answer is obvious doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fair question. I don’t have a problem with Apple serving as a gatekeeper with approval over all apps, but if that’s the role they want, their policies should be explicit. In the presentation, they only listed things like porno and “malicious” apps as thing that wouldn’t be tolerated. Clearly, something that impedes on their carrier contracts won’t either.

It’s probably a moot point because of the data sandboxing (iPhone apps only have access to their own files, not the files of other apps), but would Amazon be allowed to write an OS X Touch app for buying songs from the Amazon MP3 store? Again, I’m not saying it’s outrageous if the answer is “no”, but if that’s the case, it’s only fair to get it on the record as to whether Apple plans to disallow any app that impedes on an Apple revenue stream.

Well I have to strongly disagree with Mr. Gruber here. On the one hand we have Apple not allowing an application that will obviously break exclusivity deals with the cell phone carriers they have partnered with. On the other hand we have, based on the examples you gave, applications that have no basis on deals with Apple directly but on the providers of content. Since there was a pretty obvious demo of AIM on the iPhone I really don't think Apple cares about the apps that compete with it. Especially in these categories. Oh sure Apple won't get the minor revenue if a user gets their music from Amazon. They still have that same music playing on the iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact it makes their platform more attractive and they can sell more hardware.

Ok maybe their policy should be more explicit. What will and won't be allowed, although I think they can't be too explicit since it will evolve over time. But the basic fact is that Apple has direct contracts with cell carriers and providing a way to bypass those carries is not going to be something they can legally allow. This is pretty obvious and leads to the quite right derision heaped on Ryan Block's question. If he had actually asked about Amazon (or any third party) music download or video rentals or anything like that I would be in support of him. Even if he asked about more explicit descriptions of what would be allowed for iPhone apps I would be on board. But his question as stated didn't lead to any answer that would even remotely, possibly be anything that wasn't "Er no, der." That is why people are castigating him.

I was going to title this post "Oh my fucking god, if I have to deal with another fucking, brain dead, mouth breathing moron today I just might go buy a gun then stake out the post office tomorrow. Ya know just to give postal workers a better name." but of course that was too long so waste of biomass is what you get.

I just read this post from Violent Acres. Strangely, although it talks about some chewed carrot for brains asking about adopting a pet (and please if there is a God he better not get one) it pretty much described my day.

Them:
So how do I go about putting the encrypted number on this form?

Me:
Well for all of the forms like that they usually use memory variables or cursors. Check out the function that creates it and do something similar to the way other information is populated in the form. (Translation: we stick shit in places that other things can find them.)

1 hour later

Them:
I can't seem to get the new information to show up.

Me:
Did you figure out how the other information was showing up on the form?

Them:
Yeah, yeah, but I did the same thing and it doesn't work.

Me:
Ok let me take a look. Uh, ok I see the problem. You didn't add anything new to the cursor where all the other data is coming from. You created a new variable that is local to this procedure. (Translation, you put information into a container that was going to be immediately lost, you might as well have stuffed it down the toilet.)

Twenty minutes of explanation and excruciatingly explicit examples later...

Me:
So you see if you just added a new field to this cursor that all the other information is coming from then you can reference it on the form.

Them:
Oh yeah, yeah I see now.

45.32 minutes later

Them:
For some reason this other thing I need to put in isn't being displayed in the form.

Me: ...

Me: ...

Me: Did you add a new field to the cursor?

Them: No I didn't want to change how it was currently working I tried to do it this way.

Me: ...

Current Mood: frustrated

Andrew Omsted: Final Post

Why is it you read something and wish you had a chance to know the person that wrote it? Oh yeah that's life. The bitch.

Current Mood: nauseated