Big Fat Ostrich

Over the last couple of weeks, this idea has been running around my head: I want to learn how to ride a motorcycle. I mean, I’ve always wanted to, just that I never learned how.

Anyway, Since I was on call this weekend, I figured I’d rent a couple of movies. Easy Rider came to mind since I never saw the whole thing, and it’s basically known as THE bike movie. Then what happens the next day? Dennis Hopper dies! I swear it happened just like that. My mind exploded from the sheer coincidence.

So I watched it, and it was completely enjoyable, if not bittersweet. Sometimes when you watch a movie like this, especially something from that period (1969), you have to remind yourself of the era and the context, and how it may have been perceived at the time. So yeah, it was nothing if not groundbreaking what with the portrayal of coke and the “marijuana” and them all dropping acid in New Orleans. I’m not going to go into the whole death of the ’60′s analogy and all that because it’s been done a zillion times. Let’s just say that it was worth watching.

Oh yeah, the documentary on the DVD made an interesting observation about the romanticism of riding a chopper across the country. As Peter Fonda and one of the producers said, you’d have to be nuts to try it. Riding in that gorilla position for too long is incredibly painful. Peter Fonda lamented on not being able to move his arms for days.

P.S. RIP Dennis.

From the dude who gave you “Titanic”. Here comes a tale of Ewoks and wheelchairs. And magical braids and blue assholes who attack helicopters with bows and arrows, EVEN THOUGH THEY SPEAK PASSABLE ENGLISH.

That’s right folks. After months and months of resistance, I finally gave in and watched Avatar. And guess what, I was right, didn’t even have to watch it! It tries very hard, and it fucking fails. This is not a review. I just wanted to say, fuck Avatar. Mel Gibson wins in the end, I mean, Aragorn, after his freedom speech. And the bad Europeans are driven away by the powers of mother nature, just like in Dances with Wolves, or was it last of the Mohicans? No no, the Postman.

Try to give us acceptable CG next time, like in Transformers. And fuck the “toilet paper tree”.

- Dan

Radiation Juan

Well it’s about time that Juan sends us something to post. We understand that he can barely write his name half the time, but seriously, the guy is on contract to us for something like, 20 posts at least! Anyway, here’s his 5th installment. That bastard:

Cielo de la Entrepierna

Every time his fist connected with my jaw I saw the same constellations. Through cosmic dust I imagined my tormentor to be some genius master of time and space, as if he could transport me to Cassiopeia at will. I heard his voice as I drifted past Orion.

“Where’s the fucking hash?”

Suddenly I was traveling at a billion miles a second and I was back on Earth, tied to a chair in my soiled Dockers. Yeah, bullshit they’re stain proof.

“Hash?  No comprende, amigo.”

“I’m not your amigo. Now where’s the hash?”

I wished I could tell him. I hadn’t had a hashball in months, since before that statewide bust. Pickings were slim.

“I don’t have any. You want maybe some weed instead?”

Bang. I was back in space, but I was soon brought back by the voice that, were my hands free, I’d strangle the neck that housed those vocal chords.

“If I wanted weed, I’d mow the lawn with your face. I want the hash. NOW!”

“That’s it”, I thought. The space travel was losing its edge and the fucker’s voice was grating on me.

“You really want it?” I said. “Fine. But I’m warning you. It’s in my pants.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised, you sick perv. I heard about you and Poco Colima. And the blue waffle. That’s how I picked up your trail.”

Fucking Poco Colima. They’ll fuck you and keep on fucking you long after you’ve gone.

He first cuffed my hands and then untied them from the chair, releasing my legs next.

“Stand up”, he leveled the revolver at me. I did as I was told.

“Good…now I’m going to…oh what the fuck…jesus!”

The stench hit me pretty good as well although I was almost used to it. I can’t describe it but it was still topped with Poco Colima. He dropped to the floor. I couldn’t help but laugh, vomiting as I did so.

I knelt down and unwittingly finished him off. The proximity of my crotch proving to be too much for his nervous system.

I got the keys, freed my hands and took the dude’s cash as well as his revolver.

As I pulled up my pants, I thanked god that I didn’t own a belt.

OMFG and Double You Tee Eff, the people at Songbird announced that they’ll no longer be developing my favorite music playin’ application for Linux anymore. That’s right.

No mo.

Which kind of sucks since it’s so lightweight and basically does just what I need it to: play music. Yeah, go ahead and read about why I liked it so much over here in an earlier post.

But why? WHY INDEED. Let’s just say that the people over at Pioneers of the Inevitable have decided to focus on Songbird for Windows and Mac OS only. At least that’s what’s stated over in the Songbird Wikipedia entry. Songbird will actually still be available for Linux, just no longer supported.

But there’s a silver lining because some Songbird community members are going trying to continue developing an open source music player under the guise of Nightingale, which will basically be a branch of Songbird 1.8.

That’s all I really have to say about it. I mean, what else is there to say? I’ll still use Songbird on Ubuntu 10.04, and when Nightingale becomes available, I”ll test it out. I’m not desperate enough to go back to Amarok 2. I’m definitely never going there again. Never!

Yeah, I did it. I finally did it! I bought a laptop. A Dell Inspiron Core i3 64 bit 15 inch thing to be exact. It came preloaded with Windows 7 and the usual Dell crap and McAfee, which has a generous 10 day free trial. Wow guys. That was awesomely generous indeed!

So after about a week of tweaking this thing, checking out that thing, and generally yawning over the whole Windows 7 experience, I took the next plunge: INSTALL UBUNTU 10.04 LTS!

It worked out stellarly.

I’m glad I waited the week. I was going to install Karmic on it, but then I read that Karmic doesn’t support i3 processors. Lucid Lynx does, and the install was smooooth. In fact, this release is all about change. No longer can we refer to Ubuntu as “Brownbuntu”. That’s right. They’ve removed that hideous brown theme and went with a purpley splash screen. It’s a little sleeker than the last release, and maybe even edging a little closer to Mac OS in style. Still, it feels like Linux and performs great.

Everything works. Video, audio, and the integrated wireless card. It’s kind of ridiculous for me to call it an integrated wireless card in this day and age, isn’t it? It’s a laptop! Everything is integrated!

So, after the install, I installed VirtualBox OSE and installed Windows 7 as a VM. That’s where Windows 7 will live. Forever. And with the VM running, you can really feel that you’re getting your value out of those 4 gigs of RAM. You don’t even feel it, even with Compiz running which is on by default. I may tweak Lynx to use less memory, but for now I’m enjoying the fact that there is no lag whatsoever, no matter what I do!

Now. About the D-Link 615 piece of crap router that I bought from  Dell with my order. I’m about to break the thing in half and go back to my wired router. Wireless is fine. Wired is fine. Browsing anywhere on the ‘ternets? Fine! How about ssh from my laptop back to my wired server? It doesn’t fucking work. I can reach my wired network from my wired machine. But the router seems to be blocking ssh and port 443 just from the wireless network. I’m 100% sure that this has nothing to do with my Dell Inspiron I3.

And yeah, I forwarded ports 443 and 22. Don’t think I didn’t, cause I did.

I’ll let you know how it all works out!