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Back in the saddle

Back home after traveling 2 out of the last 3 weeks. And the last 3 weekends in a row.

Florida was nice. 80 every day. I could get used to that.

Messed around with Netjuke a bit last night to see if I could get downloading to finally worked. Installed gzip on Apache. The good news, you can now d/l one file at a time. The bad news, you can’t d/l more than one file at a time.

Looking at the gzip log files, it appeared to be an Internet Explorer thing (ha, there’s a surprise). IE 5.5 doesn’t read gzip encoded web pages right, nice bug. The pages are loading a lot faster though in IE and Mozilla, so a part of it is working right.

But in Mozilla, I couldn’t d/l multiple files either, so I think I need to play with my Apache configuration. (Ugh).

So I’ll add that to my to-do list, which keeps growing. And growing. And growing.

Alias

So the 3rd season of Alias has started, and it’s now Alias v3.0. Let’s recap:

1st season: Sidney works for SD-6, where everyone thinks they’re a supersecret subset of the CIA. They’re actually terrorists.

2nd Season: Sidney, having become a double-agent for the CIA in Season One like her father, still works for SD6.

In January, having the post-Superbowl timeslot, Alias v2.0 comes out. SD-6 is dismantled, and Sidney now works for the CIA (still) as a regular agent, with her father, and now, her love interest / handler Vaughn.

Season Finale: Blow up Alias and start over for Season 3, v3.0. Sidney has a climatic battle with her former best friend (who had been replaced with a double), and at the end of the show wakes up and two years have gone by unknown to her, with Vaughn breaking the news to her. And he’s now married.

3rd Season (now 2 episodes in) Alias v3.0

Thoughts so far: I was pretty annoyed with blowing it up at the end of the second season, after they had just done it. Said I’d give it one more change. (Ok, be real, who can’t watch Jennifer Garner?) I agree with critics / ratings that the show was too serial and hard for new people to jump into who hadn’t seen it before. The show still has that challenge, in my opinion. But it is a little less action oriented so far.

Things that irk me:

  1. After being gone for 2 years, not only is Sydney an agent again, but she’s already out in the field. (I know, her mystery is central to the plot again).

  2. In the first episode this season, she goes rogue and gets the item the CIA wants. She uses this to get her father out of false imprisonment he’s been in for a year since she was gone.

  3. Her father is a senior agent again already. After being gone for a year in lockup.

  4. Another love triangle. Last year, it was Will and Vaughn. Will is now in the Witness Protection Program (good excuse since he’s not on the show anymore I suppose). Now it’s Sydney, Vaughn, Vaughn’s new wife (who is the NSC liasion to the CIA in their office). Oh, and Vaughn had left to be a French teacher. He’s back in the CIA now. And saved Sydney on the second episode.

Overall, it’s a well-written, tight show. I just wish they’d stick with a plot line. But I do understand that as good as it is, it hasn’t pulled in the amount of viewers ABC has hoped for. Let’s hope this formula works (this time).

Yahoo Radio & MNF

Speaking of Yahoo Radio yesterday, what a disappointing service.

From a broadcast perspective, it’s gotten better. It used to be when they cut to commercial, it was dead air with no sound. Now you get local commercials.

But I’m a geek – I use Red Hat 9 on the box I listen to the game on. Well, doesn’t work with Linux. Fine. Use the KVM and pull up the other Windows box. Fire up Mozilla Firebird and go back and try and load it and Yahoo tells me I’m not running the right OS again. Takes me a few minutes to realize that I’m running the right OS, just not the right browser. Fire up IE, and bam, get the popup to choose RealOne or WMP as my player. Their OS / player detection page needs to define better the problem. And they should at least be Mozilla compliant. (Hmm, just thought of putting the plugin information in for WMP, but I don’t think that would fix it anyway).

And how about those Colts last night? By the definition of the Leaping rule as Al Michaels read on TV, Simeon Rice did break the rule – even if he landed late. But even to that point, for the Colts to score 3 TDs in 3:44, on the Bucs Defense, is amazing.

Sitting around watching the game last night, we all looked at each other and said this was a defining moment for Peyton Manning – and it was. Good for Dungy, especially after how the Glazers screwed him.

One down, one to go

Caught the Badgers on Yahoo Radio this weekend. Good win, but they should have been able to stop Penn State better.

On to Ohio State this weekend at Camp Randall. I’ll be there with bells on!

The Packer game was absolutely beautful yesterday. Had a chance to to walk around Lambeau, saw the Atrium, which is gorgeous. The weather was awesome – 55 degrees, sunny, not a cloud in sight. And the Pack dominated Coach Holmgren’s Seahawks. Too bad 4 of the 5 touchdowns were on the far side of the field from me. :)

So one undefeated team down, and one to go… the Chiefs. Dante Hall has to be my pick for MVP so far this season. Let’s hope the Chiefs are looking past the Pack. I’ll be there again for another full football weekend! Go Pack!

Green = Good

Finally the jinx is broken with the Pack and Badgers winning in the same weekend (only took them a month!)

Ahman green dominated Chicago as the Green & Gold spoiled the new grand opening of Soldier Field.

Now let’s see if the Pack can keep it up against the Seahawks and Chiefs over the next 2 weeks – and I’ll be there to cheer them on!

My Neuros

So after, what, 2 months? I got my Neuros portable MP3 player working with Ogg files!

Using the latest beta firmware (1.40a), and the Neuros Database Manager, an open source Java interface for the Neuros, Ogg files seem to be working fine.

Pretty darn cool.

Now I just have to:

  • Mow the grass with the 128mb player today
  • Get the 20GB Backpack working
  • Load it for my trip to Columbus this week
  • Get MyFi working for my drive to Green Bay next weekend
  • Listen to Oggs!

Misc. Updates

Still trying to get IcculusNews to work for the frontpage of Silwenae.net… Kelly helped take a look at it, but we need to look at it again so I can mail the email list to see if the problem with the daemon can be fixed.

I’m going to try to install IcculusFinger this weekend, it’s better documented, so we’ll see what happens.

If you use my music site, the new Quintessential 4.02 didn’t stream Ogg correctly. I worked with the developer, and the new Ogg input plugin fixes the bug for streaming Ogg. Get it here. Just a self-extracting exe file that will update Quintessential for you.

Set up a blog here for Alex (as you can see at the top of the page). Now I have to show him how to use it. It will be interesting to see how fast a 7 year old picks it up.

I was thinking about that, and when I got my first computer. (We had a Timex Sinclair – 2 of ’em eventually). I think I was about 7 or 8 when we first picked that up. I remember getting computer magazines and coding machine language by hand to play Breakout. (Which probably explains my addiction to lbreakout2 on Linux). ;D

I did purchase an original Timex Sinclair off Ebay last year along with an Apple //c and monitor. Gotta get that basement finished so I can set up my mini-museum of computers I used growing up. Just have to find a 286 at some point as well. And maybe a P100 at some point (had a Packard Bell once we could afford a computer, and that upgrade cycle with it started all of my learning…)

BBC – Dr. Who & Coupling

So the good news: The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the BBC is bringing back Dr. Who. That’s great news. It will be interesting to see if they use any CGI in it now – and let the debate begin on who the next Doctor will be.

And the bad news: Tried to watch Coupling last night. I lasted 5 minutes. It’s hard enough to get past the look of the actors being different from the BBC Coupling. The lines are the same – but they are delivered in such a different way.

I was impressed with the look of the set, very true to the original series. But the guy playing Jeff – one of the best things about the original Coupling is Jeff, not only the way he looks, but his quirkiness just seemed to be zapped out of him by the NBC version.

Ah well. Just can’t adapt to the change, I guess.

Star Wars on DVD – 2004!

The Digital Bits, one of the better DVD news sites on the web, is reporting in their Rumor Mill that the Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes IV – VI) will hit DVD for Christmas next year.

They report that Lucasfilm is so happy with the upcoming Indy box set, they want to do something quite similar (3 movies plus one extras disc).

According to the Digital Bits: “We’ve heard from a number of industry sources we trust (and who have proven their reliability in the past) in the last few weeks.”

And these are the re-released Special Edition forms of the movie — according to Lucasfilm, the originals don’t even exist anymore. Which, if true, is a shame, but I do understand Lucas’ wish for a definitive vision of his movies. (Even if Greedo shoots first now). It’s too bad they haven’t been preserved for history’s sake.

Berke's Back!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45450-2003Sep8.html

All hail the return of Opus!

Berkely Breathed, creator of Bloom County and Outland, is returning to Sunday comic’s with a new Sunday weekly this coming November.

2 years ago I started collecting all of the Bloom County books. Out of print, Berke never licensed them to keep printing (unlike Bill Waterson with Calvin & Hobbes). He had his reasons, and I respect them, but it was amazing re-reading them and seeing how many topics are still relevant – especially with the current administration.

The Washington Post has the story, as originally seen on Slashdot.