Reading the news that Bret Ratner is taking over filming X3 (X-men 3), I did a double take when I saw:
The original returning stars have been signed, and the cast is bolstered by Kelsey Grammer, Vinnie Jones and Maggie Grace (“Lost”), who just came aboard as new mutant characters. (As reported by VARIETY)
Kelsey Grammer? Really? I have to assume he’s the villain – his over the top acting might work in that role.
Wait and see, I guess.
I went to my first Twin Cities Linux User Group meeting Saturday. I’ve been to a few of the installfests, but was always too lazy to go downtown for a meeting.
It was pretty cool – held in the Computer Science building of the U of M, Jeff Price from Novell gave a talk on everything Novell is doing around Suse. While vague at times, Jeff gave a very good overview of how the entire suite of Novell products (Suse Linux Enterprise Server, Novell Linux Desktop, etc) work together, how NLD9 is different than Suse Professional 9.3 (corporate vs. hobbyist respectively), and various other topics.
His tone was conversational, and he skipped the slideware, which was just fine. Good participation from the audience, including sidebars on HDTV and MythTV. I’ve volunteered to burn some copies of Suse 9.3 Pro, so I’ll definitely be at the next one.
This weekend, I headed to downtown Minneapolis twice, which I rarely do.
Friday night I visited The Lounge, a bar in the Warehouse district to catch up with some work folk. This was one of the coolest bars I’ve been to in the Twin Cities. Before 10 or 11, they have a small area open near the front doors, with a bar, that turns into a bit of a dance floor later in the evening when it starts getting packed.
We were in the Cathedral room, a private room in the back, that adjoins the larger dance area & bar that opens after 11. The Catherdal room has faux stained glass ceilings, it’s own bar, DJ, and couches. The music was pumping, and a very good time was had.
Definitely worth a visit if you’ve never been there.
I’ve grouped the last batch of photo’s updated to Flickr for easier viewing:
This is Alex’s 3rd year in organized baseball. Last year was the coaches pitching with a manual machine, this year is the first with kids pitching.
It’s amazing the difference a year makes. Last year in 7-8 year old, most of the kids had a hard time paying attention, hitting, throwing. This year, even Alex, who I don’t practice with enough, has shown tremendous improvement in the skills department.
He has a fun time playing, and is lightyears ahead of where he was. Tuesday night, the night the picture was taken, he was 3 for 4, including the hit pictured here.
I’ll group ’em on Flickr this weekend.
I love GNOME. As I use Linux more and more these days (now averaging over 90%, the only exception these days seems to be some online music stuff), GNOME helps me do my stuff better.
Spent tonight catching up on GUADEC, the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. All the hackers get together and listen to speeches, meet each other in person, and collaborate on GNOME.
Watched Miguel De Icaza’s keynote speech while reading a PDF document of the slides Glynn Foster presented on the 101 things to know about GNOME.
Miguel had some very interesting comments in his keynote about usability testing, and how users use a computer desktop. He threw out a challenge to the GNOME hackers, and it will be interesting to see over the 2.12 and 2.14 development cycles how the teams start to address usability, especially from a beginner standpoint. People who use GNOME every day, might miss some of the forest for the trees sometimes.
Glynn’s slides took me way back. It’s amazing to me now how long I’ve used GNOME on and off over the years. Going back to my first Red Hat Linux purchase (5.2) in January of 1997, where has the time gone. From the panel tiles, to Eazel, Helix, and how the look and feel has changed over the years to what I’m using today, it’s been revolutionary.
The donation is coming, it’s too bad the GNOME Foundation uses Paypal, as Paypal hates me. I have increased motivation to get my projects done around the house (music server, fixing 2 PCs, lots of cleaning and the basement) so I can dedicate some time to a GNOME project of some sort.
I’m finally caught up on my TiVo from all of my traveling, and I watched the Alias season finale last night.
With 5 minutes to go, I turned to Kelly and said last night that Alias had a strong ending to the season that started off horribly. I’ve talked about this enough already, and then they had to drop the cliff hanger to end the season.
Even with all the reboots, I thought this season had tightened up, with more attention to the characters in a smaller environment, better plot management, and tying up the Rambaldi plot line well. Even the plot throwbacks to the first two seasons, with the Helix Protocol and especially the Mueller device from Season 1 and tying that to the finale was well done for those that have stuck with the show all four years, and for those new to the show, it wasn’t overwhelming.
But taking Michael Vartan’s character, Vaughn, the one constant good guy through out all four years, who didn’t have an agenda, who was the steady rock in Sidney’s life, even when he was married in Season 3, and turning him into someone with an evil past – this is almost too much. Implying that he was a bad guy (a different branch of SD maybe?), and there was a reason he was made Sydney’s handler, and then the car crash to leave you hanging, what are we supposed to think? I’ve already suspended my disbelief that Vaughn made a transition from being a desk jockey, a handler, to field operations, and now the show is going to imply he’s a double agent, or at least an agent with a checkered past?
If it’s not one thing, it’s another with this show. With such a strong ending to the show this season and really getting the focus back, I’ll continue to watch. (Yeah, I’m a sucker).
Welcome to Google’s Summer of Code.
In an effort to give back to the Open Source community, Google is sponsoring up to 200 students $4500 each to those who write code for an Open Source group.
Groups include Ubuntu Linux, the Gnome Foundation, , Python, Mono and many more.
Read the FAQ for more questions.
Students have to work with a mentoring organization, have their code approved and signed off on to qualify for the monies.
Very, very cool program Google has put together. It helps out the Open Source communities and helps teach students computer science, and how to contribute to Open Source. Props to Google and the Open Source groups involved (for listing out the specific bounty ideas and supplying a mentor).
I came across this article on Dr. Who, which is a primer and brief history for those who never watched the show.
Dr. Who was was one of my first introductions to science fiction. Introduced to me by a friend in grade school in the 6th or 7th grade, I remember many a Saturday night watching it on our local PBS station. Channel 10 would broadcast the entire episode, usually 90 minutes, every Saturday night, and would start over from the first Doctor on when they reached the end of the current shows.
One of the biggest disappointments I remember was in 8th grade, and the 25th anniversary convention was being held in Milwaukee. We had tickets, and my buddy got bronchitis and was unable to go. A year or two later, our local PBS affiliate stopped showing it (if I remember correctly, it was one of the more expensive licensees for a PBS station) and I could catch in on cable on Channel 2, the PBS station out of Madison.
The 4th Doctor was by far the best. I was also a fan of the 6th Doctor, I thought he never got his fair shake, and the storylines with him on Gallifrey were well done.
I’ve Netflix’ed a few of the shows in the last couple of years (The 5 Doctors), and was taken aback at how campy it was, but it was still amusing. I still have a goal of buying The Key to Time episode arc, with the 4th Doctor and Romana, probably my favorite by far.
I couldn’t agree more:
A Gamer’s Manifesto or 20 things Developers need to do now.
- Don’t use the online capability as an excuse to release broken games
The first time we hear the word “patch” in relation to a PS3 or XBox 360 game, we’re taking the console back to the store. Filled with our shit.
But surely the console industry, always more business savvy than their PC counterparts, will avoid making us gamers their unpaid beta testers.
Chances of that happening…
…again depends on how many turd-filled consoles they get stuck with. In other words, the consumer always gets exactly what they’ll put up with.
