Seamonkeys and Robot Chickens

In a recent post, Asa brought up the limited lifetime of Seamonkey and a fairly hysterical forum blitz followed. Basically, the Mozilla Foundation has been planning on phasing out development of Seamonkey, the basis of the Mozilla Application Suite, and a lot of people seem to think this means the end of Mozilla Suite forever. Mike Connor has eloquently summed up the situation on his blog. I don't really see the need for future Seamonkey development myself. If you combine Firefox and Thunderbird, and throw in an IRC client and an HTML editor of questionable usefulness, you've got the Mozilla Suite. Or, put another way, it's Netscape Communicator with 2005 compliance standards and a number of bug fixes. Do we really need that? In any case, it's open-source software, so even if the Mozilla Foundation stops development on Seamonkey, the project can (and probably will) live on for years.

And speaking of Thunderbird, I found the minimize to systray extension I'd been looking for at The Extensions Mirror. It's sort of an unofficial database for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla Suite extensions. Why these extensions aren't posted to Mozilla Update, where they would go through extensive testing and bug-checking, I have no idea.

I saw the premier of Robot Chicken on [adult swim] tonight, and it was funnier and stupider than I'd hoped. I have no idea why stop-motion animation action figures falling down is funny, but somehow, it's really fucking funny.

I discovered that my beautiful (if used) Philips 107P monitor supports 1360x1024, so that's what I'm running now. It also supports 1600x1200, but I'm nearsighted enough.

More Old New Hardware

So I went to Rite-Aid this morning to by paper towels and light bulbs and dog food (of course) and that sort of shit, and I picked up a rather crappy five-button "4D Internet Wheel Scroll Mouse," made by something called Sakar International under the brand "iConcepts." The two thumb buttons are positioned so far forward that they're almost useless. The hastily-written software came on a floppy disk and the mouse isn't even optical. So why did I buy it? Because it was three dollars, that's why. Cheaper than the light bulbs. I really don't know why, but I have three or four ball-mice now and not one optical mouse. I think it was worth buying this one just to not have to clean out one of the others again.

The NBA All-Star Game is on right now, and I'm not even watching it. Look, I'm a huge NBA fan, but the Skills Challenge last night was horrible. All-Star weekend just keeps getting worse every year, as it gets more and more commercialized, and as the league tightens its grip upon the whole thing to push its more marketable teams and brands. Let's just get back to basketball already.

Oh, and one more thing. PimpZilla, bitches.

Pimped

Is PimpZilla the best Firefox theme ever? Yes. Yes it is. Go download it right now.

Took a look at both the Opera 8 beta and that Netscape Browser prerelease that came out a while back. To be honest I can't tell much difference between the Opera beta and Opera 7.54u2, the most recent full release. It's nice and fast and all, but without adblocking I just have no use for it. When I want to fire up a browser for a minute without loading all my Firefox LiveBookmarks, I use K-Meleon 0.9.

The Netscape prerelease is clearly an alpha, whatever they may have called it. I ran into two bugs almost immediately: it stopped responding to keyboard input entirely, and if you close the browser window while a download is in progress, you have to create a new profile (or stop the download) to get it to open up again. Early bugs aside, the interface is just odd looking. It's very green and very busy. By default, there are two scrolling news tickers and a stock ticker on the "personal toolbar." It also opens two huge, obnoxious Netscape-hosted home pages. But that can be changed. It's based on Firefox 1.0, so the rendering engine is literally as good as it gets, but really, what's the point of Netscape Browser? If I'm not mistaken, Firefox 1.0 is also based on Firefox 1.0.

Gates on Firefox

From Asa at mozillaZine, via Slashdot, comes a meandering interview with Bill Gates at ABC News. Said Billy:

The browser space that we are in we have about 90 percent. Sure Firefox has come along and the press love the idea of that. Our commitment is to keep our browser that competes with Firefox to be the best browser — best in security, best in features. In fact, we just announced that we'll have a new version of the browser so we're innovating very rapidly there and it's our commitment to have the best.

Cute. Clearly the directive to announce an IE7 beta the day that Firefox 1.0 hit 25 million downloads did indeed come from high in the Microsoft food chain. Peter Jennings asked, somewhat indirectly, whether IE7 was being rushed because of what The Mozilla Foundation is doing to IE6's market share, but Gates, as usual, ducked the question.

I may have found the reason for the somewhat unsettling performance increase I got switching from Win98SE to XP Pro. According to the AMD Duron product brief, they were invlolved in the development of XP, and made sure it was optimized for Duron (and Athlon) architecture. On the other hand, I also found the marketing schlock for the AMD K6-III 3D, and it says pretty much the same thing. I know from using that processor in an old Compaq that it's breathtakingly underwhelming, even at 500MHz. In certain situations, my old Pentium 133 could out-perform it. The Duron, on the other hand, has been fast and flawless.

XP Pro and 25 Thousand Thousand

I have to thank Garrett for hooking me up with WinXP Professional (perfectly legitimately, of course) this weekend. Surprisingly, I manged to format, install, and configure it in less than a day on this second-hand Duron box. Had some problems on install with XP freaking out about the second HD, but I sorted it out by trial and error. There's still a PCI conflict that I can't seem to get rid of, but it doesn't affect anything. And the OS has managed to resurrect the onboard audio, which I thought was dead, and is using that instead of the Herc sound board, despite the fact that the Herc is installed and properly configured with up-to-date drivers. Doesn't really matter though. With just 128MB of PC100 RAM, I thought I would run into memory errors and slow performance, but it actually seems to be a bit faster than 98SE was. I think the Duron 800MHz gets the credit.

Firefox 1.0 broke the 25 million downloads mark yesterday. SpreadFirefox.com is planning a special update for later today. In related news, there's been a lot of yapping about Microsoft's pseudo-low-key announcement that an Internet Explorer 7 beta will be released this summer, and even more yapping about posting this information in an IE team blog, where the tech-types will see it first, on the same day that Firefox reached a landmark download number. I personally don't think there was anything particularly insidious about this (by MS standards). Blake Ross pointed out the most important line in this announcement:

I think of today’s announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: “Hey, Microsoft heard you. We’re committing.”

There has been a massive migration away from Internet Explorer since November. Firefox has become the most successful open-source application in history, and MS has to realize that they created this situation by allowing their software to stagnate for literally years, something you just cannot do when you have a monopoly.

So the question presents itself: Is it too late for Internet Explorer 7? I think so. By the time IE7 final is released, Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 will be too widely distributed. When the mass conversion to Longhorn begins (and it will), users will have to choose a browser; MS won't be allowed to prepackage their own again. So why get IE7 when Firefox is just as good and just as free, and by then, will have equal (or better) name-recognition? How will Microsoft focus their ad campaign? "Remember how much you loved us in 1999?"

Madrid is Burning

A freakin' skyscraper almost burned to the ground in Madrid yesterday, and now they're worried about it collapsing entirely. Take a look at the really eerie AP photos that BBC News posted.

This AlphaGrip controller is just freaky. I can't imagine ever getting comfortable using that thing. Maybe if it didn't have a tiny plastic trackball for mouse control. Hey guys, how about an analog stick? They're not expensive.

It looks like Mozilla Update is finally working again. For whatever reason, it wasn't updated from December 24th until late last week. And speaking of Mozilla, we're roughly a week away from passing 25 million Firefox 1.0 downloads, having passed 24 million today. Firefox users unofficially outnumber AOL subscribers now, as Asa noted last week that AOL has dropped to 22.2 million paid subscriptions.

I Heart Duron

So I picked up the spare parts I needed to get that Duron box running, along with a 128MB stick of PC100 RAM, which turns out to be more than I need. It runs Quake 3 Arena at 1024x768, with every conceivable graphic detail maxed out, at a solid 70fps. Half-Life at the same rez at 100fps. That's the good news. Unfortunately, the USR 56k is pre-v2 standards, and is slow as all hell. While that's not a big deal since I'm rarely putting this box online, there's a more serious problem. It resets, and shuts off, for no reason. At first, I thought it was caused by the Herc Muse XL sound board, but now I have no idea. Add an mp3 to a Winamp playlist, and it resets. Open cdplayer.exe while a browser applet is playing sfx or music, it shuts down and won't restart. Hell, today I checked a random dialog checkbox totally unrelated to the audio subsystem and it rebooted immediately. This is on a clean Win98SE install, after a scandisk/defrag. Anyway, it games flawlessly. I'm just wondering what's going to happen after I install the GIMP and do some RAM-heavy photo editing.

Finally got around to seeing Napoleon Dynamite this afternoon. Nice little flick. After the commercial blitz the studio unleashed, there's no reason to think of this as an indie film anymore, and as a mainstream comedy, it works very well, but only if you have the right sense of humor. Kind of like Monty Python and the Meaning of Life. There are a ton of tiny little touches in Dynamite that almost knocked me off the couch, but I can see how a broad audience wouldn't get it. There's a definite Wes Anderson feel to it, and I'd say it's more entertaining than Bottle Rocket, if not as ambitious. I hear that the commentary is quite good, but I didn't have time to get into it. In any case, in terms of 2004's major comedies, it's no Anchorman, but it's worth a rent.

PC Salvage

I temporarily pulled the 64MB PC100 DIM out of this Compaq PC today, along with the Philips CD-RW, and managed to boot that junked PC I got last week. Turns out the CPU is an AMD Duron 800MHz, which would have been my last guess. Still, it's better than I expected. The Duron is a vastly underappreciated processor. The primary, 40GB hard drive had Win98 installed, along with a huge amount of useless garbage. The system tray had 13 icons in it before I started ending tasks. I couldn't access the second hard drive, but later I realized it was because its previous owners had connected the secondary IDE cable connector to the master drive. The second drive is 30GB, and I think I might just wipe it before I get around to seeing what's on there. This box is in serious need of a clean format/reinstall of Windows.

All I need to make this machine usable is a power cable, an internal audio cord to connect the PCI sound board to the CD drive -- both of which I know I have somewhere -- and a stick of RAM, which I'll be buying this week. The only snag is that while I know this machine can use PC66/100/133 RAM, I have no idea if the motherboard supports DDR RAM, which would mean I could get a 256MB PC3200 stick for cheaper than a 128MB PC100 stick. Hopefully, the random PC guy at Office Depot will know...

In any case, I'm looking forward to using it as a primarily offline time-killing machine, as it ran Half-Life very nicely at 1024 in my short test, despite some awful texture tearing. That should be resolved by the Radeon 7200 drivers I'm running on this box, as well as the huge RAM upgrade. I think I'll also leave the CD burner in this Compaq and put the DVD-ROM in the junker, as it should have significantly better DVD-playback capabilities.

Gmail, AOL, and Frame Rates

Thanks to David Tenser for the Gmail invite. He and Asa at Spread Firefox are giving out a ton of invites they've suddenly been given. Looks to me like Google's viral marketing deal is winding down. I set up my account in Thunderbird 1.0, which is still the best free mail client I've ever used on a consistent basis, and I actually managed to send a test message, as well as recieve one. I hadn't been able to do that with any POP/SMTP mail account using any client while using PeoplePC. I think PPC blocks the default SMTP port. Gmail uses a different one.

Speaking of Asa, he raised an interesting question yesterday: Do Firefox users already outrank AOL subscribers? With 23 million downloads and counting, it looks that way. If not, there clearly will be before Firefox 1.1 (final) is released on June 1. And speaking of AOL, in an article at CNet News about the upcoming Netscape Browser's phishing counter-measures, I saw this:

Netscape claims to be the No. 2 browser company--after Microsoft--but sources close to the company say that Firefox is gaining "really fast."

"Firefox is moving the needle," said one source close to Netscape who asked not to be named. "They are gaining very rapidly."

That's just bizarre. Firefox is known to have over 5% of the browser market already, with IE just below 90%. That means Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, and god knows what else are sharing the remaining 5%. So what the hell is AOL talking about?

Anyway, turns out that Half-Life maps with low r-speeds, like the entire hazard course and Opposing Force's boot camp, run quick enough with this Rage 6 that I get a frame rate between 45 and 60fps even at 1024x768. And Quake II, which was released before my video card was made, holds a rock solid 60fps at that res. That surprised me a bit, as id Software built the Quake games with 3Dfx chipsets primarily in mind. Hell, GLQuake requires 3Dfx drivers. Anyhow I installed the Quake 3 Arena demo, and it runs decently enough, but to get a halfway decent frame rate I had to tweak it 'til it looks like complete crap. I cut my teeth on this game on a borrowed box I had for six months, and I'm too used to playing at 800x600 with all the graphical goodies turned up high to actually go out and buy a copy now. At least, not until I can see what this junker box I got last week can do. There's a gigantic heat sink sealed onto the CPU that I can't seem to get loose, so I don't even know whether I'm dealing with an AMD or Intel chipset yet.

Spare Parts

First, the non-me news: Ars Technica has posted that the groovy new Sony PSP will be released in North America on March 24. The minutes of the most recent Mozilla staff meeting are online. And Avant Browser 10 build 121 is available for download. If you haven't tried Avant and still use Internet Explorer for any reason at all, go get Avant as a backup to Firefox right now. You do have Firefox, don't you?

I picked up a stripped-down old computer the other day for nearly nothing, along with a very nice used Philips 17" flat-screen CRT to replace the 15" Compaq-branded .28dp monitor I've been using. The PC has no RAM and no optical drives at all. But it did have an old ATI 32MB Rage 6 PCI, which I immediately installed in this old Compaq. So now, along with the new monitor, I'm browsing at 1280x1024 (32-bit), instead of 1024x768, and I'm playing Half-Life (and Blue Shift and Opposing Force) at 800x600 in OpenGL mode at 60fps, as opposed to 320x240, software rendered at 30fps. But I don't want to strip down this old box entirely just yet, because it has two hard drives, a 30GB and a 40GB WD, and I'd like to see what's on 'em first.

Our former neighbors, who are moving to Kentucky after their house was foreclosed upon, finally agreed that we should keep their adopted former-stray rottweiler Maggie. We've been taking care of her for so long that nothing will really change. She'll continue to sleep in our yard (or house, when it's below 35 or above 85 at night), play with our other dog (Lucy the Jack Russell/mini pinscher mix), chew up our stuff (shoes, towels, furniture, etc.), and eat the food we've been buying for her (mostly Pedigree, with Alpo thrown in for variety). But it'll be nice to have the added insurance of a rott in the backyard to keep an eye on the place, assuming she hasn't managed to force her way through the fence into someone else's yard yet again.

Staring Blankly at My Keyboard

I just spent twenty minutes writing a detailed profile of Mike Miller for the new Memphis Grizzlies blog I'm starting, only to have Blogger cough up blood as I tried to submit it and delete it forever. Thanks, Blogger. That felt really good.

Anyway. I'm starting this offshoot blog because I have endless rants about the Griz and the state of pro basketball in general bubbling away in my head, and I have to get rid of it somehow. Also, as far as I can tell, there's not a single unofficial Griz blog on the internet, and I'd like to continue focusing this blog on Mozilla, the coming browser wars, and tech stuff in general. For example: I saw on Slashdot that there's a new Doom 3 Boardgame. Can anyone tell me why? Didn't fucking think so.

Anyway, I picked up Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery on widescreen VHS at Rite-Aid, of all places, this afternoon, because it was four bucks, and I alread have the other two Austin Powers movies on DVD. I'm going to go watch it now. Blogger, and all of you, can kiss my ass.

By the way, Avant Browser has yet to cause me even the slightest bit of grief, though I must admit I'm writing this update in Firefox.

Maxthon, NetCaptor, and Avant

There are a couple of non-standards-compliant web sites I need regular access to that won't display correctly in a Mozilla browser. Not willing to pay for Opera, or put up with its gargantuan banner ads, I spent a day trying out what are considered the three major IE shell replacement browsers in an attempt to drop that big blue E from my desktop permanently. I'd also like to get away from ever needing Internet Explorer again after the adventures in spyware I experienced in October. Anyway, all three of these browsers feature tabs, skins, and nice security features, including the ability to disable ActiveX entirely.

First I installed Maxthon 1.1.120 Combo, formerly MyIE2. Maxthon seems to be aimed directly at power users, possibly being the most customizable browser I've ever seen. The options window is so crowded it's almost unusable unless you already know what you're looking for and where to find it. Unfortunately, no one at Mysoft Technology seems to have realized that what power users actually want in a browser is transparency of use, so to speak: a browser that does what it does quickly and easily, without calling attention to itself. With all the Maxthon toolbars and sidebars active, there's more browser on screen than web page. But the real deal-killer for me was the way it deals with Java applets. In every one I tried, the right mouse button was either inoperable or doubled as a left button. What? Thanks, anyway.

So I moved on to NetCaptor 7.5.3. Having adjusted to the way Maxthon handles itself as an app, I found NetCaptor easy to get into, as the two browsers are very, very similar, although NetCaptor is clearly intended for a much less experienced user. This is actually a good thing. The free version is not full-featured, and has a fairly unobtrusive rotating text bar just above the browser window. For whatever reason, tabs are stuck at the bottom of the window, and tab controls are not as intuitive as those in Firefox or Opera. Still, it's a quick, easy browser that makes IE completely irrelevant.

But Avant Browser 10 makes NetCaptor look quaint and outdated. Avant is freeware, like Maxthon, but is so feature-rich, so stable, so user-friendly, and just so... professional, that it makes the $40 Opera look like a complete waste of money. Yes, Avant uses IE's rendering engine, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it plugs up at least 90% of the security holes that make IE such a horrible application to begin with. Avant also seems to have the smallest memory and processor footprint of the three browsers I tested, and is quicker than any I've used, aside from the Gecko-based K-Meleon. I made only one or two quick changes to the default toolbar layout, and decided that I actually prefer the tab bar on the bottom of the window, above the status bar. It even has an integrated RSS/Atom feed aggregator that works very well, much better than K-Meleon's aggreg8, though not as slick as Firefox's Live Bookmarks. Still, I've yet to find a major fault with this app, it's just a beautiful piece of software. It still can't stand up to Mozilla Firefox as the world-class browser. But the question must be asked: given Avant Force's resources, how is it that they can turn Internet Explorer into such an outstanding browser, and Microsoft cannot?

Updates

Asa has posted a new Gecko roadmap that shows a February 9 completion date for Gecko 1.8b, with Firefox/Thunderbird 1.1 released shortly thereafter. So that's cool.

I'm still fiddling with this Blogger theme. Added a tag or two to get rid of link underlines and updated my list of external links. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it's just a damn blog, after all...

A new version of Winamp was released yesterday. Does anyone care?

I'm fighting very hard against my brain's preinstalled WinInstinct package, which is telling me I need to format my hard drive and reinstall Windows now, before things get any worse. It's been less than six months, but odd things are starting to happen with this computer that I can't fix. I think it really comes down to the fact that this is a pretty old box, with no major hardware changes, and it's only a matter of time before components start arbitrarily failing.

I rented The Forgotten and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this week. The Forgotten was about what I expected. A little too fast-paced for the kind of atmosphere it was going for, but not bad overall. The theatrical version makes no sense at all compared to the extended edition included on the DVD. Sky Captain, on the other hand, was much better than I'd hoped. I wanted to see it because I dig movies that try new stuff visually, but this really is a modern, consciously over-the-top version of the old sci-fi serial shorts from the thirties and forties, which I'm a huge fan of. At first, you're acutely aware that the entire movie is blue-screened in behind the actors, but once you get used to this, you can kind of lose yourself in it. In fact, I'm going to go watch it again right now, and tomorrow I'll consider adding it to my favorite films list in my profile.

More on Battier and Google "Defections"

The Memphis Flyer's Chris Herrington has written a nice little piece on Shane Battier for this week's issue. I didn't know about Shane's plus/minus rating, though I can't say it's surprising at all.

Darin Fisher, another full-time Mozilla developer, has left to work for Google. Like Ben Goodger, he'll still be working on Mozilla projects. Personally, I don't see any point to a Google-branded Firefox-based (or Gecko-based) browser. Branded browsers are always crap. What, it'll have integration with Google Desktop Search and Picasa? Isn't that just feature-creep? Doesn't it defeat the whole point of Firefox, and isn't that the reason Mozilla Application Suite and Netscape Communicator are nowhere near as popular as Firefox?

Sunbird, Mac mini, etc.

I installed the second release candidate for Sunbird 0.2 a couple days ago. As far as I can tell, I really don't have any use for it, but I'm keeping it around for a bit longer, because, like all Mozilla projects, it's just so damn slick, even as a pre-beta.

Like everyone else on earth, I really want a Mac mini. It's clearly a bare-bones system, particularly in terms of video performance, and it's essentially non-upgradable. But I happen to be in the market for a new $500 computer, and I already have a spare monitor, keyboard, and mouse...

Tech-Blog.org has posted a feature on a new standard keyboard that just might be the dumbest thing I've seen online so far in 2005. If Dvorak can't catch on, what chance does a 53-key, Lego-esque POS like this have?

Finally, Mark Stein continues to be my favorite ESPN NBA analyst, as he has kept the Memphis Grizzlies at number 9 in his NBA Power Rankings for the third consecutive week. That, and because Rick Bucher is a walking tabloid and Stephen A. Smith can't stop yelling long enough to make a fucking point.

The Browser Waters Get Murkier

Suprising news from Firefox lead engineer Ben Goodger this morning, as he says he's taken a job with Google and left the Mozilla Foundation payroll. He'll be staying on the Mozilla staff and continuing to work towards the future major releases of Firefox, but Neowin.net raises some interesting questions about how this new information may tie into the long-rumored Google web browser. Given that Google has been branching out in every conceivable direction since going public last year, and their existing loose ties to Mozilla, a Gecko-based browser seems entirely likely...

The Underdogs

It's taken less than three months for Firefox to reach 20 million downloads. In that time, Internet Explorer's share of the browser market has dropped below 90% for the first time since Communicator 4 was released and everyone just gave up on it. Meanwhile, Slashdot finally got around to mentioning the release of K-Meleon 0.9, which I still think will have a nice little niche for itself once Firefox becomes ubiquitous and the geekiest of us start looking for a less-mainstream, but just as good, alternative.

In another underdog development, Kelly Dwyer at SI.com seems to have noticed that the Memphis Grizzlies have quietly become one of the better teams in the NBA. But even after winning fifty games last season, it's staggering how little respect they get from NBA officials. It's not a secret to anyone that the league office would much rather see its marquee teams make the playoffs and get the nationally televised wins, but is that really a valid excuse to turn the referees into hired cronies? Even against bad teams like Utah and the Clippers, if the Griz are winning by ten or more, calls start going against them almost immediately. And in the fourth quarter, they don't get any calls at all. I've seen it again and again and again. I can count on one hand the number of games Memphis has played in the last two seasons with balanced officiating. There was even a game earlier this season, at home against Houston, where the refs made seven consecutive bad calls in the third quarter, all against the Griz. I saw the replays: they were all bad calls.

What's especially aggravating is that the Griz players, for the most part, have stopped complaining to the refs entirely, while certain teams (OK, the San Antonio Spurs) clearly get the benefit of the doubt every night and yet whine and bitch like spoiled little girls after every call that goes against them. Tim Duncan and coach Greg Poppovich are particularly guilty of this. The other night in a game on national television, I watched Coach Pop scream for five minutes about how the net on one of the baskets was different from the other, and therefore the Spurs were at a disadvantage. Excuse me? It was different because it had to be replaced mid-game after one of your players hung on the original net and broke it. So shut the fuck up and play the game.

Representing a Niche

In my efforts to help the Web community as a whole in testing various beta-level applications on a lower-end but still quite usable machine, I've run into a few hurdles. But Netscape is reaching for a whole new level of suck.

After reading about several limited beta releases of a new, Firefox-based Netscape browser, I finally found a public download of one at Softpedia. So I started the download and, with the freedom of a dial-up connection, I took advantage of the wait time by carefully orchestrating some exercise time for my two dogs. In other words, I put them in the backyard and threw a tennis ball around for twenty minutes. When I came back inside, I navigated my way to my application installers folder and double-clicked on the new Netscape setup file. And boy, was I surprised when I was treated to a dialog that said that since I had less than 64MB of RAM (this old box has 56MB, for some reason), Netscape can't install itself. I was given a cheerful "OK" button, and that was that.

So let's all give a nice round of applause to AOL's software team, who once again have proven that you don't actually have to please the actual user as long as you've pleased the average user.

Don Poier: The End of an Era

The Memphis Grizzlies released a statement today saying that Don Poier, the voice of the Grizzlies since their inception in 1995, died today in his hotel room in Denver before the game tonight against the Nuggets. He was just 53.

I only found out about this two and a half hours ago, and honestly, I just don't know what to think. Don Poier was the best play-by-play man I've ever heard. He left a high-paying gig broadcasting football games in the PAC-10 to join the Vancouver Grizzlies radio team ten years ago, knowing this would be a struggling franchise for years, simply because he loved the game. There's no way to quantify how many fans he won single-handedly in Memphis through his obvious love for his Grizzlies. Not only was he enthusiastic and genuine, and a lot of fun to listen to, Poier was also a damned good play-man. He knew the game of basketball inside-out, to such an extent that you got the feeling listening to him that he really didn't even need a color man.

Earlier this evening, on a local news station, the Griz VP of communications compared him to Chick Hearn. "He was that good," he said. And he was right, Don Poier is in that category of legendary broadcasters. He wasn't just the voice of the Grizzlies, he was the Grizzlies. He loved the players, he loved his job, he loved the fans, he loved the cities of Vancouver and Memphis. And we loved Don Poier.

Amiga OS4 and Navigator 3.0

Ars Technica has posted a ridiculously detailed review of the Micro-AmigaOne and Amiga OS4 Developer Prerelease. While I don't think I've ever actually used an Amiga, and I'm probably never going to, it's still a really cool article. It's nice to know that someone besides Microsoft and Apple is still working on simple, user-oriented operating systems (various non-developer Linux builds notwithstanding).

Someone called Pikachu90000 (I know) has been posting mediocre Firefox themes at deviantART almost continually since the end of December, and he finally got to me with this Netscape Navigator 3.0-based theme. I don't know why, but I just can't get enough of it.

K-Meleon 0.9

So I did play around with Mozilla Suite 1.8 Alpha 6 for about a week, and I quite like it. Composer is more usable than I expected, and the browser has some nice features if you don't ever want to have to tweak it. I ended up uninstalling it because it kept fucking up my RSS bookmarks in Firefox.

But tonight I saw on mozillaZine that the Gecko-based but awkwardly-named K-Meleon 0.9 was released yesterday, so I had to try that, too. Apparently it's been around for just over four years, but this is the first I've heard of it. And I really like it so far. It's very simple, but extremely customizable, even compared to Firefox and Opera. It doesn't integrate RSS and Atom feeds as smoothly as Firefox, but at least it does have a nice little RSS reader, which can be viewed in a tab (K-M calls them "layers"), which is more than can be said for Netscape. There are some very nice, elegant themes available as well, but K-M's best asset is its speed. It's just a really, really fast program in all respects, much faster than any other browser I've run on this admittedly slow machine, including IE. Without extension support, it doesn't offer the kind of range you get with Firefox and Mozilla Suite (I really miss Adblock), but I can't imagine not using this browser on a regular basis, at least as much as I use Firefox now. I'm sure I'll find more faults, but this is the best first-impression I've gotten from a piece of software since Thunderbird.

By the way, after I installed Netscape 7.2, I had four Windows hard-locks in less than a week. When I uninstalled it, they stopped.

Indie Goodness

I bought Pieces of April on a whim a couple weeks ago. I saw it standing in a huge rack of ten-dollar DVDs and remotely remembered seeing it reviewed, positively, by Ebert and Roeper, so I grabbed it. And it was a good decision. This is a wonderful example of indie moviemaking. Katie Holmes stars, with Oliver Platt, Patricia Clarkson, Derek Luke, and Alice Drummond. It's filmed entirely in hand-held DV, and it's brilliant. What's more, this DVD has the best commentary track I've ever heard, consisting solely of writer/director Peter Hedges.

Also, I borrowed my dad's copy of One Hour Photo. This movie was so fucking creepy that I had to pause it to watch some random TV several times just to break the tension. It was written and directed by Mark Romanek, who created the genious Nine Inch Nails videos for Closer and The Perfect Drug. The big draw for One Hour Photo is, of course, Robin Williams, in the role of a tightly-wound, button-downed, seriously eerie photo-mat clerk stalking Connie Nielsen's family. Eriq LaSalle also shows up with a confidently vanilla, but important part. I really liked this movie, so I stayed away from most of the DVD's special features, to keep Williams in check, but the Sundance Channel "Anatomy of a Scene" was quite interesting.

The Coming Domination of Gecko

I spent a lot of time this week using Netscape 7.2 and Opera 7.54, and I've come to the conclusion that there's just no reason to use anything but Firefox and Thunderbird anymore. Tomorrow I'm going to download and install Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6, but it really is academic at this point, even if there are 400+ bug fixes. There's just no denying it anymore: Firefox and Thunderbird are the state-of-the-art browser and mail client, and there's no reason to use anything else now.

This is especially significant to those of us who remember when the upcoming release of Netscape 2.0 was a huge deal, because there was no longer any reason to stick with Mosaic, and Lynx was suddenly irrelevant. We also remember when Netscape announced that Communicator Gold (4.0) would not be free, while Internet Explorer 4.0 was gratis. That ended up being the end of the browser wars. The next version of IE was integrated into the new version of Windows (Win98), and though Microsoft paid billions for that little marketing ploy, IE ended up with more than 90% of the browser market. But today, from the ashes of Netscape, comes Firefox, and it's so good it makes IE not only irrelevant, but backwards and downright dangerous. That's a little something called karma, and Bill Gates should probably watch his ass, because more cosmic retribution is coming his way.

In more me-centric news, I had the battery terminal connectors replaced on the Explorer, and disconnected the useless alarm system. Next week I'll try to take the alarm out of the car entirely. At any rate, it's nice to have a quick-firing truck around, even if it's still running a bit too hot for me to be entirely comfortable.

By the way, here are some Google blogs I found this week that I thought you'd be interested in:

Sails That Carry Me Home
While I Was Smoking...
Mental Hopskotch
Hugh-Morris

Underrated

When are the sports reporters of the world going to wake up and take a hard look at Shane Battier? We've been screaming about this kid in Memphis for three and a half seasons now, and nobody in the national media seems to have noticed. In 2001, Pau Gasol was the runaway Rookie of the Year, but who was second in the voting? Pau's teammate, Shane Battier, who, I'd like to point out, was the consensus NCAA player of the year in his senior season on the national championship-winning Duke Blue Devils. I suppose you have to watch three or four Grizzlies games in a row to realize just how good this guy is, and nobody outside of Memphis actually does that. So I'll summarize.

Battier is a 6'8" small forward, not the most athletic guy, (though he swears he won a slam-dunk contest in high school), but a guy who knows his limits, and who knows the game. And by "knows the game," I mean that this kid has started an NBA game at all five positions in less than three years, and with no more than a day's warning. What's more, he's a guaranteed winner. I've never seen a professional baller hit the ground more that Battier. If the ball is loose and he's within ten feet of it, it's his ball; that's just the way he thinks. Battier really comes into his own in the closing minutes of tight, hard-fought games, when guys start to dog it, and fatigue becomes tangible. He subconsciously ups the ante, and suddenly, he's got that crucial offensive rebound, he's stolen that crucial pass, he's made that crucial, impossible basket. He's the definition of a game-breaker, the guy who comes out of nowhere to seal a victory with a single play. I've seen him do it again and again and again. So why does his name keep coming up in trade rumors?

Because the people who write up trade rumors don't know anything about his game. They only look at the numbers, and Battier's stats are underwhelming. Fortunately, Grizzlies president of basketball operations Jerry West knows a thing or two about clutch, because he, too was that guy. Granted, he was also a superstar, one of the greatest players ever. But he sees every minute of every game, and he knows he can't trade Shane Battier for anything less than a future Hall of Famer.

And something else about Battier: he's a media darling. He never, ever turns away an interview, and he will give anyone, press badge or not, some of the most candid, lucid insight you will get out of an NBA player. I remember seeing a Cribs-style look at his home on a local news program midway through his first season here, and despite his maximum rookie contract, he eagerly showed the cameras around his tiny, cheaply furnished downtown apartment. He took more than adequate time to show off his small DVD collection, which included such masterpieces as Spaceballs and Austin Powers.

I've been an NBA fan since I was old enough to sink a basket on our nine-foot backyard hoop, and Shane Battier is by far my favorite player. It may be my inherent desire to root for the underdog, the unheralded player. If so, I don't think I'll change my mind even when the world wakes up and realizes what an all-star really is.

The Age of Fratello

So the Grizzlies won a fifth straight game tonight by blowing the defending NBA champion Pistons out of their own building, 101 to 79. The Griz are now 12-6 under Mike Fratello, getting easy road wins over Minnesota and Detroit after finally getting a couple of full practices in under their third head coach of the season. I have to tell you, I love this guy's fire. You can tell he's a disciple of Hubie Brown, I mean the guy just wants to win, and he'll do whatever he thinks he has to do to get his team to fight.

Firefox 1.1 is just over the horizon now. I'm particularly looking forward to the Gecko update that will bring it in line with the Mozilla trunk. It'll give me a reason to uninstall Mozilla, which I've noticed is a bit more stable and compliant than Firefox 1.0, but is a bit bloated for my needs, and doesn't have the endless toolbar configuration Firefox has spoiled me with. I'm also hooked on a Firefox theme called Bluemonkey, which is not the most user-friendly or compatible theme, and not the easiest to find, but it's just so damned slick.

Bleedy

Got a nice cut across the back of my right hand the other day, and it doesn't seem to want to heal. I was trying to duct-tape up the plexiglass inserts to the double steel storm back doors, when I accidentally dragged my hand across a jagged shard of safety glass (irony implied) sticking out of the interior sliding door. The glass in said sliding door was shattered like ten years ago, but the shards are still there. Maggie the lovable but ridiculously destructive rottweiler popped the plexi out for about the fifth time trying to get into the house. See, my deadbeat neighbors stopped paying rent and got kicked out of their house, and they abandoned about 7 cats and Maggie. As for the cats, I think most of them have wandered completely out of the neighborhood by now.

So screw my bleeding, doesn't matter. I've seen so many movies lately I can't possibly get into detailed reviews, because I got three hours of sleep last night and I've been up for 20 hours now. So here's the gist:

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: Funny, at times very funny, but only if you can immediately browse through all the DVD extras. Also, I still have "Afternoon Delight" running through my head.

Shaun of the Dead: Not only is this the funniest movie of the year, it's also up there with Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as both hilarious and meticulously well-crafted. Plus, it's got zombies, motherfucker!

Dreamcatcher: Extremely well acted, particularly Damian Lewis and Donnie Walberg, and at times nice and scary, but the pacing is all wrong, and it just gets tedious. Beautiful cinematography, though.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story: Unlike Anchorman, a great party movie, as it is gratuitously and immediately funny due to all the shots of people getting whomped in the face with shit. The deleted scenes consist mostly of character development, which is useless in this kind of movie. My suggestion? Buy the VHS. It's cheaper, and more the the point.

Stuck On You: Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon are conjoined twins, and wackiness ensues! Or not. Stupid and unfunny and predictable and I haven't looked at the extra features yet, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended DVD Edition: Nearly an hour of additional footage, scattered evenly throughout the already epic-length film, but it really is only for total Tolkien geeks like myself. I just bought the thing this afternoon, so I haven't gone through the two DVDs of bonus material yet, but if it's anything like the quality of the extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, it's well worth just thirty bucks.

The Pseudoreality of Late-Night TV

When I went to bed late last night (ok, early this morning), the death count in south Asia was estimated at 16,000. When I woke up this morning (ok, this afternoon), the paper said 20,000. Then CNN told me that, no, it's closer to 33,000. Later, the local news said 44,000. And at 11:15 pm, the BBC said it was an estimated 60,000 dead in at least nine countries around the Indian Ocean.

ABC News has had the best coverage so far, including some downright fucking chilling first-hand accounts. But the BBC has had the most devastating video, including a couple carrying their dead, mud-covered infant twins aimlessly through the streets.

You know all this, of course, what I'm getting at is how disturbing it is to watch Late Night and the Late Late Show blithely forge ahead, oblivious. Now, I can understand carrying on with the comedy when a tragedy happens, because of laughter being the best medicine and all that shit. But after Sept. 11, 2001, both these shows set aside a respectful amount of time to talk about it. And I remember staying up late, watching Late Night with David Letterman in 1989, when Dan Rather broke in to tell me that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. Then it went back to Dave and he was pretending to be a monkey, and I thought, "This just seems wrong." In 2001, 3000 people were missing in Manhatten, and American television just stopped. As I type this, days after the quake and tsunamis killed at least 60,000 people in Asia, Conan O'Brien is rubbing a live chinchilla on his face.

Draw your own conclusions.

Sleet and Opera 7.54u1 Beta

Memphis has become a frozen, unnavigable mess, and we had no warning whatsoever. "You might see some isolated freezing rain and snow today," the weathermen cheerily told us. I guess what they meant was, "It's going to sleet for six hours across the entire tri-state area, then the temperature will stay below the freezing point for the next three days, making it impossible to go anywhere or do anything." Fortunately, our crack Municipal Adverse Weather Patrol Squad, or MAWPS, a name which I just made up, sprang into immediate action by de-icing the interstates. Not the on or off-ramps or any other roads. Just the interstate. Whatever. It got me out of any sort of Christmas get-together, so I say, Go MAWPS.

I downloaded Opera 7.54u1 the other day. I actually like it quite a lot. Not enough to pay nearly forty bucks to get rid of the ad banner, but it's still very good, much better than the last version I tried years ago, and, like Firefox, it easily outclasses Internet Explorer in nearly every way. I particularly enjoyed noting that it's substantially faster as an application than IE, even though IE is half-integrated into Windows to begin with. Of course this means I now have four web browsers and four email clients installed. I'll probably go ahead and drop the Mozilla suite, as it's the least useful. I just can't seem to come up with an excuse to use it.

Which brings me to another thing that's bothering me. I still can't resolve any non-PeoplePC SMTP mail server using any email client. You only get one email account with PPC, which I can understand at 11 bucks a month, but this forces you to sign up for additional POP3 mail services unless you want to go with webmail. And I don't. I fucking hate webmail, because all webmail services suck. I want to use Thunderbird, or christ, even Outlook Express, anything. But when I try to send a message, any client I try will invariably time out trying to reach the outgoing server. I've tried every conceivable configuration. I've tried numerous support databases. I can ping any SMTP server I want, getting instant, regular returns. I just can't send mail to 'em. The only thing left to do is to call PPC support, and I know, as a former ISP tech support rep, that they'll just tell me it's not their resposibility. It's just so fucking maddening. I've even tried a POP3 service based in Ireland, for christ's sake.

The hell with it. I'm going to go watch the DVD commentary on The Royal Tenenbaums.

Mozilla Application Suite 1.7.5

Mozilla 1.7.5 was released yesterday, so I downloaded it. I don't know why. I really have no use for it. Its browser is based on a build of Gecko so similar to Firefox 1.0, which I have, as to be more or less indistinguishable, aside from some aspects of the interface. The mail client's nice and all, but I'm going to install Thunderbird 1.0 this weekend, so I won't need that either. I haven't looked at Composer since Netscape 6, however, so maybe I'll like that. In any case, I might as well keep it, because why the hell not.

I'm reading Mostly Harmless and The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams, as well as Sean Astin's odd little narrative, There and Back Again, an Actor's Tale. I also rented Minority Report, Snatch, and From Hell. And I managed to find a place in Frayser, in the shitty, backwards heart of Frayser, in fact, that gets The Memphis Flyer. Apparently, I'm just trying to keep myself as occupied as I possibly can so I can go on pretending that there's no such thing as Christmas. Seems to be working.

Blog Post 27

I really didn't want to blog this shit, but it's life, and karma, and there's no denying it. Reality exists, and I should share it.

Shredder the Incredible Megadog has met his match, and is no more. Every superhero has a tragic end, and for Shredder, a 14-year-old, 110-pound doberman, it was one winter night too many. Shredder had to be euthanized. Three days ago, my mother and I agreed that it was in the best interests of Shred himself. He's been suffering through inoperable hip problems and the general issues a dog gets when he's lived through three generations of owners. The poor guy could hardly walk anymore, but he was game to try, and after carrying him into the house the morning we made the decision, and after carrying him to the car, I decided to help him walk from the Explorer into the veterinary clinic, through the waiting room, to the examination room. He'd been a watch-dog in Frayser his whole life, and he deserved to walk to his death, humane as it may be, under his own power. Shredder was nervous but calm, as he dropped to the floor under the steel exam table, exhausted, his head on my lap. I sat with him, on the hard floor, waiting for my mom to fill out the paperwork in the lobby. He was only half-interested in the people walking to and fro around him, mostly focused on me. I think he knew that this was it. He was old, older than a dog his size should ever be, and his breathing was steady. He looked at me like he always did, eager to please, but muted. You did your job, and I know it, boy. After a while, though, after my mom joined us, he did get a little restless. We had a while to wait still, and Shredder just wanted to make himself useful. So he tried to stand up a few times, and at first we let him have a go at it, but he just couldn't do it. Eventually the vet came in with his assistant, and Shred allowed himself to be lifted by three of us onto the exam table, looked passively, almost apologetically, at my mom and me, and passed quietly away as the vet injected him with whatever it is vets use to humanely silence wonderful pets forever.

It had been arranged that the clinic would do with Shredder whatever it is that state regulations say should be done with expired dogs. Still, it felt somehow wrong to have left Shredder there, still and silent on a steel table, while we climbed into a much emptier Explorer, backed out of the lot, pulled into traffic, and drove home. But that's how it works. Shred was an incredible dog, a terrifying but lovable dog, and nobody but my mom and myself will remember him as being anything but that.

The Greatest Movie in the World

...is not Crossroads. But Crossroads is damned close. It has everything: A cast full of newcomers who couldn't get through a junior high talent show without giggling about the chemistry teacher's bow tie; a plot that a coked-up Paris Hilton would find "endearing;" a soundtrack so incompatible it seems like a sick joke; a plot aimed at pre-teens that involves rape, child abuse, abandonment, and abortion; and best of all, a wonderfully miscast, confused-looking Britney Spears as a geeky, introverted valedictorian. Crossroads could possibly be the basis for the best Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode ever made. As it is, it's easily worth the ten bucks you can probably get it for at Target. I can't WAIT to hear the DVD commentary.

In serious, non-ironic cinematic news, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the best film I've seen all year. Really. Jim Carrey finally nailed a dramatic role head-on, after near-misses in The Majestic, which was good but just too boring, and The Truman Show, which was aimless and condescending. Eternal Sunshine has everything. There's just no categorizing this movie. It seems like a drama, then a dramatic comedy, then a romance, then an abstract indie. Then it turns out to be all at once, and that's something you just don't find in American cinema. I checked out my copy of the DVD from the Raleigh branch of the Memphis Library, and that is exactly where this film belongs: in a library, where anyone with a face and a driver's license can find out what filmmaking is supposed to be about.

JuCo My Ass

Lionel Hollins is many things, but an NBA head coach he is not. Sure he's in the Junior College Basketball Hall of Fame, but so the fuck what? After repeatedly watching him get blatantly out-coached, it was interesting watching Mike Fratello tell his team exactly how ball games are won tonight as the Griz spanked the one-trick pony Sixers. I was right about Fratello being the perfect fit for this team. Of course, it helped that Pau Gasol had a monter game, with 34, 15, and 3 blocks. The Sixers had absolutely no answer for him. I was waiting for him to turn to one of the sideline cameras after facing one of Philly's hapless forwards to scream, "I claim this land in the name of Spain!"

In non-living-vicariously-through-others news, I spent twenty minutes late, late last night chasing Shredder the Ageless Doberman around Frayser in 40-degree weather without a jacket after he forced his way out of the back yard. The only thing shittier than trying to catch a huge dog who doesn't want to get caught is catching up with him when he's sniffing around a stray chow mix who doesn't want you to live. So that was fun.

Anyway. The audio commentary on the Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines DVD really sucks. There are a few different commentary tracks, but the actors one, which is the only one anyone wants to hear, is terrible. Everyone was recorded separately, except Claire Danes and director Jonathan Mostow, and it's clear immediately that they are the only ones actually watching the film. Arnold, Kristanna Loken (the chick who plays the terminatrix), and the new, non-Eddie Furlong John Conner guy are clearly giving interviews, with excerpts pasted into the commentary. This is especially bad with Gov. Schwarzenegger, who rambles on and on in endless run-on sentences like some monstrous Faulkner clone with a bad accent about how important it was for the terminator to get dragged through a building by a crane. But the movie itself is surprisingly good. Much like The Matrix Reloaded, the writers have gone out of their way to bring the most stupefyingly unrealistic action sequences to the screen, and they pulled it off somehow.

To make this deluxe-edition update complete, I'll mention that I spent a couple hours yesterday customizing Firefox. I've got this browser doing things Internet Explorer can't even dream of. I can't stress this enough, people: Firefox, if not Mozilla as a whole, is probably the single most usable and effective internet application ever. And it's open source. Maybe that says something about the state of the mainstream, stock-exchange-listed computer industry.

A Festivus for the Rest of Us

I'm already sick of Christmas. I've done Christmas. It should end when you're nine, like Easter. Sure, when I was a kid I got a lot of cool Star Wars shit when it was brand new, but I immediately took it out of the packaging so I could play with it (like every kid), so it's worthless now.

Anyway. I sat through a couple movies this weekend, and I might as well make you people sit through my reactions. First, Buffalo '66. Written, starring, and directed by Vincent Gallo, who is seriously in love with himself. There's no plot at all, just the outline of a story about a guy getting out of jail and immediately grabbing some random hot girl, played by Christina Ricci, and dragging her to his abusive, neglectful parents' house to tell them how successful he is (they've been too engrossed in Buffalo Bills football to notice he was arrested). I had to fight with myself to sit through the whole thing, and I lost. I watched it all. Gallo builds and builds this film to either one sort of climax or the other and ends up with neither. He gives you both the happy ending and the sad ending, then tells you which one was real. A depressingly Hollywood anticlimax to what could have been a nice indie setpiece flick.

The other film I saw was Lost in Translation, which got enough hype from the Academy Awards that I don't have to say anything about it, other than it was much better than I thought it would be. Again, there's no real plot to speak of, and it's extremely slow, but it's never, ever boring. The cinematography is excellent and the pacing works. The acting is believable, and the dialogue is instinctive and genuine. What's more, the ending is somehow satisfying and inconclusive, an almost impossible feat. The only disappointment came when the credits came up and I remembered that Sophia Coppola wrote and directed it. Somehow you just want privileged kids to fail, you know?

Atmosphere of Winning

There's really nothing I can say about Hubie Brown's sudden retirement that hasn't already been said in the Commercial Appeal. And I'm not surprised at the outcome of the last two Grizzlies games. Lionel Hollins was clearly out-coached by Don Nelson in the second half of the Dallas game, which is why Hollins looks to be quickly replaced as head coach by Mike Fratello. If there's a better candidate out there, I can't imagine who it is, and that includes Phil Jackson. Fratello assisted Brown for years in Atlanta and had equivocal success. He was knocked out of the playoffs with the Cavaliers repeatedly by Michael Jordan's Bulls, understandable defeats. What sucks is that there's going to be a long adjustment period after the new coach takes over, and the extra losses are going to be hard to deal with when the playoff race starts.

I guess we've just become used to winning in Memphis. For two years we endured losing seasons easily, enjoying Pau Gasol's development, J-Will's flashes of brilliance, and The Stro Show. Now we've tasted fifty wins and domination over conference rivals like the Rockets, Warriors, and Blazers, so struggling to beat the Mavericks at home leaves people looking for answers. Clearly, injuries are playing a part. As Hubie pointed out in yesterday's press conference, last year we had no major injuries to deal with until the end of March. This year, Gasol, Posey, Swift, and Cardinal have all missed a significant amount of court time due to injuries, and it's not even December.

Personally, I've taken a step back and thought about how bad this team was when it came to Memphis in 2001. I've seen every televised Grizzlies game since, including the numerous losses, so I can endure more. It's about basketball, people. Winning is the goal, but enjoy the game.

Cripple Fight!

I was watching the Pacers at Pistons game tonight on ESPN when The Fight broke out. And even though I was impatiently awaiting the start of the Memphis at Sacramento game, I was riveted. And ESPN immediately cashed in by continually showing slow-motion replays of guys getting punched in the face and hit in the head with exploding beer bottles, which is what we all wanted to see. There's never been a more ferocious fight at a pro basketball game. The only ironic thing was watching professional broadcasters get their panties all wadded up about it, despite the fact that there have been fights at international soccer matches that put this little melee to shame.

Anyway. I finally saw Elf on DVD last night. The movie was pretty good, Will Ferrell's slapstick genious saving it from obscurity. At times it was so cutesy I felt faintly nauseous, but the double-disc home edition has enough special features, including alternate/deleted scenes with optional director commentary, that I was too distracted to throw it away and put in Bad Santa, the sort of Christmas movie you'd actually enjoy watching with your grandparents.

Substandard Movie Reviews

This week I saw three newish movies for the first time; School of Rock, The Italian Job, and The Day After Tomorrow. My recommendations for watching them would go in that order. School of Rock if you want to see a good film, The Italian Job if you're bored and want to be entertained for a couple of hours, and The Day After Tomorrow if you're absolutely desperate for something to do. Ian Holm gets third billing during the opening credits of this one, which is a little pathetic, since he spends only slightly more time on screen than I do.

I suppose the good news is that the third Harry Potter movie will be out on DVD next Tuesday. I still haven't seen this one, but I'll be buying it anyway. That, and the extended edition of the third Lord of the Rings film, shortly after it comes out next month. I just like dork movies, what can I say.

I don't feel the same way about video games, however. I watched some of TechTV's coverage of the Halo 2 release, and I feel way less geeky than I did before. Honestly, is it really worth standing around for 36 hours and missing work just to play a game 12 hours before a bunch of people you'll never meet will? "Microsoft's inconceivably expensive ad campaign told me this was the game of the millenium, so I'm going to play it almost a whole day before anyone else!" Hey, that's great, dude. Let me know how you feel about this in three years, and whether you could have saved yourself a ton of hassle and waited a few days to buy it.

Clean Slate

There's just something refreshing about getting back to business after you've fdisk'ed and formated a hard drive. I tried to get a clean Win98SE install on this system, but after six hours and a dozen error messages, I gave up and ran the system restore CD after another format. Now OS and ISP and all my software are working in harmony again, aside from those random DUN freezes. I installed newer versions of Firefox, Ad-Aware, and ZDoom. Now I'm just fighting the problems you get with 64MB of RAM.

I actually managed to re-play the first few episodes of Half Life and Blue Shift at a slightly higher resolution than 400x300 and with Direct3D turned on. As much as I love Half Life's two add-on episodes, I'm pissed that the first, Blue Shift, is so much shorter than Opposing Force, the follow-up, also by Gearbox. Blue Shift is much better. OpFor's more detailed architecture more than halved my Blue Shift FPS. Couple that with new enemies (which I did enjoy) that can hit you twice as quickly, and you have some frustrating gameplay. Still, it's fun whomping a useless private in the face with a monkey wrench so you can take his M-60.

Oh yeah, the Griz beat the hell out of the Lakers tonight. It's satisfying watching your team beat someone senseless the night after being robbed of a divisional road win in a fixed game.

You Deserve It

Remeber when people would walk outside because they wanted to get some "fresh air?" Well, forget about that. Even if you don't live in a major city, which something like 80% of us do, there's just no fresh air to be breathed. It's unfortunate, as several recent studies have shown that polluted air is doubling and trebling respiratory diseases worldwide, some of them fatal. But President Bush has re-declared his resolve to ignore any new initiatives to hold corporations accountable for the amount of carbon dioxide their plants pump out, in addition to his "whatever you want to spew out, go for it, as long as you've got a lobby" platform. CO2 is the most devastating contributer to global warming, a theory no longer realistically deniable. Bush's other policies are allowing industrial plants to fling enough toxic aerobic particles into our skies to turn us all into zombie media whores who'll gladly watch Ashlee Simpson riverdance her way into our collective subconscious. I suppose having three-fourths of the world's published scientists set against you is no obstacle as long as almighty god is telling you to ignore those thoroughly researched reports and bow low in subservience to your political contributers. After all, Gee Dub has been making national policy decisions based on political priorites for three years, so why stop just because you've been reelected? He could always run for Senate. And there are the political futures of his siblings and offspring to worry about.

Athens

Yes, Athens, Georgia, will soon become the focal point of the world, as the R.E.M. song "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)" will soon be the most popular song in the history of Earth. Not only does it appear that George "I Rule You" Bush has been, to the horror of all right-thinking people, reelected, but we seem to be, as of 1:15AM Central, in for a recount and god knows what else in the state of Ohio. John Edwards is telling us this, as I type. But then, as big a pain in the ass as this is, I couldn't care less. I've said it before, and I'll type it now, if the Democratic party nominated a bowl of oatmeal, I'd fucking vote for it, if it stood a chance of unseating Bush from the Master of the Universe throne that Skeletor and God loaned him.

After dropping the proverbial ballot into the proverbial ballot-box this morning, I thought I could sit back tonight and watch this proverbial democracy correct its horrible mistake from four years ago. Of course, I quickly realized I was wrong, so I started slamming through the proverbial 12-pack of Milwaukee's Best Ice and watching Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2. As masterful as Vol. 2 is at completing the story, I can't help but agree with every professional critic I've read. Vol. 1 is the movie I'd rather own. Sure, the story isn't complete until you've seen the second film, and sure the dialog in Vol. 2 is spot-on perfect. But something like 200 people get creatively slaughtered in Vol. 1, and that's what I'd rather watch in slow-motion, zoomed in 2X.

Oh, and by the way, all you brainless, conservative, god-fearing citizens who think Dubya will protect you from all the bogeymen in the world? All I can say is, check your facts. Everything you accept as gospel that Bush's administration has told you, look into it. Look deep. You've been lied to, again and again and again. And as of now, there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it for years and years, short of an impeachment. Fortunately for you, we'll probably suffer another devastating terrorist attack long before it comes to that. God bless America.

Comedy, Seriously

You wouldn't think that the guys behind the brilliant satire newspaper The Onion, the precursor and probable inspiration to The Daily Show, would need a refresher course on comedy, but it seems to be so. I've recently watched Drop Dead Gorgeous on DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as an over-the-top black comedy mockumentary. Perhaps because this hasn't actually ever been done before on a large scale, The Onion AV Club reviewed the movie as a film made by morons for morons. Excuse me, but you didn't fucking get it. Taking Christopher Guest's patented, and wearing thin, deadpan mockumentary style and throwing overtly excessive comedic plot devices and funny, stereotypical characters on top of it is something new. And quite entertaining, were one to step out of his film professor loafers for an hour and a half. Yes, one of the characters is mentally deficient, and yes, he's used for cheap laughs. It's only a movie, so get over your indignant reaction and enjoy Will Sasso's performance. Yes, it's predictable, but so are all slapstick comedies. The point is to enjoy the gags and the actors, and The Onion didn't bother to mention Brittany Murphy's show-stealing performance or multiple-Emmy-winning Allison Janney showing up as the foul-mouthed heart and soul of the film.

At any rate, I suppose I've made my point, and managed to work my irritation at The AV Club into a DVD review. I only brought it up because I was irritated with their review of Underworld, which they thought was overly moody and derivative. For the last time, guys, I don't care if it's derivative! A movie can be entertaining even if it's in a genre that's already been done by a more heavily-hyped flick. It's like saying Deftones' White Pony is pointless, because alterna-rock has already been done by Nirvana's Nevermind. It's time for The Onion's movie reviewers to take a step back and realize that not all movie-goers are perfectionists; we only want a well-spent two hours.

Halo 0x

I spent some time this past week going through my many, many Nine Inch Nails CDs. There really are a lot of gems buried in Trent Reznor's nationally published personal hard drive. I can't claim to be as fluent in the NIN discography as some people, but at one time I was a huge fan. For me, it started with the Quake soundtrack. I bought the Broken EP in 1996, then Pretty Hate Machine. I was still trying to figure out just what the hell was going on with this Reznor guy, when I drove to Knoxville on a whim, listening mostly to Ride the Lightning-era Metallica and cruising at my Bronco II's limit of 110mph. I arrived early, with a sore right foot (no cruise control), and with some time to kill I bought The Downward Spiral in a record store on Cumberland Ave. I parked under a bridge by the Tennessee River and played the whole record, looking through the then-revolutionary liner notes-turned booklet. Rez hooked me.

I ended up buying pretty much the whole NIN catalog, but the slow pace of Reznor's releases has caught up to me. I bought The Fragile the week it was released, and I still think it's one of the greatest double-albums ever, but I didn't bother to buy Things Falling Apart (I Napster'd it, back when Napster was free and legal) or the live DVD. Eventually I started selling off some of my old NIN remix albums, particularly the imports, after I'd burned the few tracks I really wanted to keep. I can only hope the new album, which I'm hearing should be out soon, will renew my faith.

20,000 bhp

Through a friend of my mom's, I got free tickets and pit passes to Memphis Motorsports Park this weekend for the Nascar Busch Series race called, unfortunately, the "Sam's Town 'He Dared to Rock' 250." Ridiculously overwrought name aside, it was a damned entertaining race, what with the record number of caution flags, all but two caused by wrecks and spins in turn two, smack in front of the east grandstand where I happened to be sitting. It was my third trip to MMP. Nearly eight years ago I went for a local NHRA drag racing event, and a year or so later for Busch Series qualifying and an ARCA race. But this was the first time I sat down for a full-fledged, nationally televised, sold-out Nascar race. I've been to 30 or so NCAA football games and at least as many division 1-A basketball games, but nothing quite like this. There's something about seeing nearly 25,000 people all around you standing and screaming, completely mute, because the roar of 43 unmuffled race cars tearing down the track 50 yards away obliterates all other sounds. This is the most-attended spectator sport in America today, and I can see why. Watching five years worth of races on TV is nothing compared to actually attending just one.

Marionaction!

Should be seeing Team America: World Police tomorrow afternoon. The tagline for this movie is, "Putting the 'F' back in Freedom." I think the "F" is supposed to stand for "Fuck." Hooray! I haven't seen Orgazmo, but if South Park and BASEketball are any indication of what Trey Parker and Matt Stone like to put down on celluloid, I'm going to like it. Which is why I'm paying to see it. So, there you go.

Anyway, I just watched Underworld, finally, during a free weekend of movie channels on DirecTV. Loved it. Absolutely fucking adored it. I missed out on what turned out to be a very good Nextel Cup race to see it, but it was worth it. Cool plot with great pacing, kickass action sequences, a sparse but excellent soundtrack put together by Danny Lohner (NIN, etc.), a cool backstory, and, most importantly, Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight vinyl bodysuits, killing people in various hideous ways. If the DVD has a decent amount of extra material on it, I'll have to pick it up, as soon as possible. Material like, say, footage of Kate Beckinsale stuffing herself into a skin-tight vinyl bodysuit.

Sucker Punch

So a few nights ago I'm browsing around, listening to music, playing some Tetris, basically killing time, and I decide it's time I go to bed. So I go to close down whatever's open, and as I close IE, something odd happens. I get a ton of HD activity, and I start getting a lot of downstream traffic for no apparent reason. When I try to get offline, my ISP's software hangs, and becomes unresponsive. No big deal, I think, as I try to end-task it, and that's when I notice three running apps I've never heard of before. I shut it all down and reboot. The vaguely named programs show up again, and I realize some blocked pop-up has installed spyware. Took me two fucking hours to uninstall and remove no less than six applications and all their affiliate software from my HD, and manually remove all mention of them from my registry and IE's trusted sites listings. Then I had to install SpyBot S&D to scour anything I may have missed and "immunize" IE against future invasions. Bottom line: stay off the internet.

Anyway, I hear that a former producer of Bill "Me Me Me" O'Reilly's super-non-objective talk show has accused him of sexual harassment. Among other things, he, allegedly, called her up and described his "sexual fantasies and exploits" while, ahem, using a vibrator on himself. I have to quote Craig Ferguson from The Late Late Show, who said, "Please, god, let this be true."

In non-sex-toy-related news, I found out that if you try to randomly combine Half-Life mods with no idea how to seamlessly do so, you can get some pretty entertaining results. I was tryng to use BotMan's Bot10 with Valve's Deathmatch Classic mod, and I got all kinds of neat-o surprises. Like playing DM2 with no weapons or enemies, or DM3 without the ability to switch between weapons you've picked up, or DM6 against bots who don't make any sound, ever. I suppose it's good that I gave up. The last thing I need is to get really into this and write a bot program for an obscure mod for an obsolete game.

Peter Potamus

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is the funniest animated show on television today, including Family Guy and Futurama. It's probably the funniest show on TV, period. I can't be sure, since there are roughly 477 sitcoms airing that I won't watch on the basis that they're sitcoms, and all sitcoms are derivative and predictable and embarrassingly unfunny. The only show that can even come close is Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which, not at all coincidentally, is also produced and aired by [adult swim].

In other news, never buy smokes at a bar. Four bucks for a pack of Turkish Gold is outright larceny. Unless it's the kind of bar that runs illicit slot machines behind a curtained door in the corner and sells weed behind an unmarked back door through the bartender. In that case, you're in a redneck bar and four bucks is an outright bargain. Another sign that you're in a good redneck bar: The jukebox goes from Willie Nelson to Stevie Ray Vaughan to the Beatles to Kid Rock to Parliament to Incubus to Lorretta Lynn to Creed to the Eagles. And there's no George Strait. My kind of dive.

Redirection

I spent several hours Tuesday driving around midtown and the university area. I didn't find what I was looking for, but ultimately I suppose it worked out. I spent some time in SpinStreet looking for used DVDs, and instead I found Cake's new album, Pressure Chief, on sale for ten bucks. So I bought it. I don't think I like it nearly as much as Prolonging the Magic or Motorcade of Generosity, but it is excellent driving-aimlessly-around music. I spent a good part of the afternoon driving through all my old neighborhoods, with the windows down and the moonroof open, and it made for a pretty goddamn pleasant atmosphere. So I highly recommend it for that sort of usage.

Nothing else good has happened recently, other than figuring out how to get into the Half-Life pak file to alter all the weapons to make them slightly more powerful and to make Barney slightly less useless. I see that the Grizzlies are looking to carry 60 regular season games on their very own TV channel. Isn't that nice? I especially like the part where they want a deal with Time Warner, a known outpost of Satan on earth. What pisses me off is that they seem only marginally interested in pursuing a deal with DirecTV. As if DTV subscribers can simply get a separate hook-up to TW cable. I can't believe I've watched 240-something Griz games over three seasons only to be summarily cut out of the loop because the Grizzlies' ownership group isn't making enough money from television revenues. I am not going to drive to some fucking sports bar three or four times a week to watch my fucking hometown team play. Now I know how all those Catalonian fans feel.

Wasting Time

I'll be driving all over town this week looking for copies of Blue Shift and Quake I, and, if I can't find them, Quake II and the Quake II Mission Packs. It's not that I can't order all this software over the internet, which I'm perfectly capable of doing. It's just that it gives me an excuse to spend hours and hours out of the house, driving 'round Memphis in an overpowered and obnoxiously mufflered sports coupe, looking for stores where I can waste time ogling at video cards I want and software this computer can't possibly run.

Despite the numerous emails I received practically begging me to take part in the alumni band's halftime show, I declined to attend the University of Memphis' homecoming game against Houston. Sure enough, DeAngelo Williams racked up 262 yards on the ground and beat Houston's defense into the fetal position. If the Tigers were in the SEC we'd be smelling Heisman by now.

Meanwhile, the Titans lost yet again, but who the hell cares? The Grizzlies re-signed Pau Gasol for 7 years! Life is good again. Only a few more weeks til the Griz tip off against the Cavs in their preseason opener, and I'll be right there, watching and waiting for the national media to finally figure out what we're all so excited about. We beat the goddamn defending Eastern Conference Champion New Jersey Nets by 47 points last year, the largest winning margin of any game in the league last year, and heard barely a murmur from the national press. Just wait til we're giving the Spurs a run for lead in the division, ahead of the Rockets and the Mavs.

Minimum System Requirements

I spent more than two hours driving around Raleigh today trying to waste money. That's how much Raleigh sucks. You have to work like hell just to throw money away. I was looking for some cheap DVDs or CDs or maybe a game or two, but I didn't want to drive the dozen-year-old Explorer way the hell out to the Wolfchase area or downtown while the Probe is having growing pains (more on that in a bit). I tried the Cat's Music and Blockbuster out there before getting desperate and driving to Kmart, where I found lots and lots of fullscreen editions of The Hulk and even more obnoxious, screaming kids. Oh, boy. Finally I ended up at Wal-Mart, where I bought Half-Life/Team Fortress Classic and an Ultimate Doom/Doom II/Final Doom bundle for a combined 25 bucks.

The best part is how the Doom95 front-end on this CD will not, no matter what I try, recognize that I have a mouse. I mean, I do have a mouse, and DOS Doom recognizes it, and the old copy of Doom95 on my original Doom II disc from 1994 worked on this PC when I installed it last winter. I even switched mouse drivers a couple times and checked the documentation, which, in classic id Software style, cheerfully recommends playing the game with the fucking keyboard. Anyway, I ended up installing ZDoom into three different directories and using that as my launcher. Problem solved.

So about the Probe. The other day my mom decides to go get the oil changed after I found out it'd been over 10,000 miles since the last one, and guess what? The "Check Engine" light came on before she even got out of the driveway! You know about the Check Engine light, don't you? It means, roughly, "Something's wrong, and I'm not going to tell you what it is". It might as well say, " Uh Oh." So after I added two quarts of oil, because it was that goddamned low, a $60 diagnostic said the spark plugs weren't getting enough juice. Replacing the spark plug wires didn't put out the light, and another diagnostic said that there's probably a faulty sensor. So, basically, the computer that controls the Check Engine light is setting off the Check Engine light. Oh, hooray.

Trevor the Pseudo-Magical Toad

It's funny how Stargate can simultaneously be a slightly underrated movie and a vastly overrated television series.

I'm watching Conan O'Brian's show and wondering why Tears for Fears is playing a 20-year-old song and how Selma Blair could possibly be any hotter. If there was ever a reason to pay to see a John Waters movie, it's to see Selma in A Dirty Shame. Or anything else she's ever been in.

Yesterday I got some cash in the mail and realized it was my birthday. Funny how that happens. If you try real hard not to think about the fact that you're almost 30 and have no apparent future whatsoever, you can actually turn 27 or 28 and not even know it. My favorite part is skipping out on family birthday parties where you're expected. I did that last year, or the year before, I forget. It was awesome. I imagine birthday poon is pretty fucking cool, too, but I wouldn't know. I've never actually managed to hang onto a girlfriend long enough to have one during a birthday. I think.

Anyway, this is the kind of thinking that used to send me to vodkaland. Fortunately, I've evolved as a person so that I no longer think about that kind of thing until I'm already the mayor and secretary treasurer of vodkaland, where I'm more than equipped to deal with such questions.

Antiproductive

Seems like I've gotten so much done in the past couple weeks, until I stop to think about it.

Ripped 140-something songs from 30-something CD's. Still not halfway through. Thing is, I'm probably spending as much time looking for neato Winamp and Coolplayer skins as I am actually listening to music. And when I do have the full playlist going on random shuffle, I'm just waiting for it to get back around to Deftones' "My Own Summer."

Getting really, really tired of the scrollwheel bug in Firefox. Maybe it'll be fixed in the next release or update, but if anyone knows a patch or something, for god's sake, tell me about it.

Spent a couple hours mowing, edging, and blowing my mom's front and back yards again yesterday. I rather enjoy it, to be honest, but I'm beginning to hate her lawn mower. There's just all kinds of stuff wrong with it that I can't fix, and as far as I can tell, the only way to change its oil is to actually hold it upside down to let it drain. Oh boy, I can't wait to get around to that.

Watched Reign of Fire on cable. Better than I expected, though I'm starting to wonder what the deal is with Christian Bale. I suppose taking oddly-spaced roles in B-movies about psychopaths and dragon-slayers is one way to get over that child-star stigma. But the guy can definitely act, so how about making some good movies instead?

Speaking of child actors, walking punchline Edward Furlong got arrested this week for walking into a Kentucky grocery store hammered and trying to "free" the lobsters from the tank in the seafood aisle. Way to go, Ed. That's just the sort of determination and creativity that will really get people behind the animal rights movement.

Finally got around to reading Diary and Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. I read Choke and Survivor and half of Invisible Monsters years ago, and these two were no different. Dark, sparse, twisted, presumptive. Reminded me of Jim Goad's nonfiction. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, I'm looking forward to Haunted and I should really get around to reading Fight Club.

The World of Tomorrow!

So I finally realized what year this is and started getting some DVDs. I've been clinging to VHS because, like most people, I have a huge number of tapes and a VCR so old it would kick its feet into the air and die the moment I tried to move it. But that's why god made DVD/VCRs.

So I've been catching up on my movies, Digital Video Disc-style. In the past month, I've watched, in no particular order, Master and Commander, Austin Powers 3, A Mighty Wind, Bad Santa, Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminator 3, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Evolution, 28 Days Later, The Royal Tenenbaums, Old School, EdTV, Starsky and Hutch, Hellboy, Hidalgo, Jeepers Creepers 2, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow, AC!

Idle

Not doing much tonight. I've ripped 80-something songs to MP3s because I was tired of switching CD's, but I just end up looping my Deftones playlist. Just now I'm on Mascara, a song I can relate to in a rather gruesome, unholy way. Anyway.

I'll be toying with PhotoPlus later tonight or tomorrow, because ver. 2.0 of the Gimp is making me want to tear my hair out. Not literally, because I gave up the Battle of the Hairline a year ago and I shave it off, but still. It's making me that mental.

Only other major news for me is that Don Poier will finally be
calling Grizzlies games on TV. I swear to your god, I've been praying for this announcement for three years. Matt Devlin, that overrated talking hairdo, will be broadcasting for the Charlotte Bobcats, those poor bastards.