EdKopp4

30 Years After “Message in a Bottle”

Ed — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:31 +0000

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 30 years since the release of The Police’s first #1 hit in the UK, “Message in a Bottle.” This song is a favorite of mine, as is evidenced by iTunes telling me that I’ve played the song 157 times, which doesn’t even include the 36 times I’ve played the live version or heard it on the radio. I’m sure that I heard it many times before this, but the first memory I have of really being moved by the song is when I saw Sting perform it live at Agganis Arena in Boston back in 2005. It may seem odd that he would play a Police classic while out on solo tour, but that was apparently one of his goals of the Broken Music Tour – to revisit his past. I certainly wasn’t one to complain, though, and neither were my fellow concert-goers, as we were thoroughly thrilled by his performance of the best hits of The Police and his solo career (At some points, people were even dancing by their seats. I don’t recall if I did or not, but it’s certainly possible. I was really digging that music). That concert was what led me to go out and buy the Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings CD box set, which contains all of The Police’s songs. Now, thirty years after this song thrilled listeners, Sting is putting “Message in a Bottle” to an even great use. He’s teamed up with numerous other major celebrities, such as Olivia Newton-John, Daniel Craig, and Harrison Ford, to send an SOS to the world, trying to get the word out to everyone that our world’s rainforests are in dire need of being saved. This song is used as the backing track to a moving video that will hopefully alert people to just how precious our rainforests are, and not just from a global climate change viewpoint. You can watch the video and learn more about The Prince’s Rainforests Project by going to this Huffington Post article on the matter or by going directly to the PRP’s website.

Posted in Music

Monk’s Final Season Premieres Tonight

Ed — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:36:34 +0000

At long last, the final season of one of the best shows on TV, Monk, begins tonight with its season premiere at 9 PM (EST) on USA Network. I had originally thought that the final season premiered on January 9th of this year, but as it turns out, that was just the premiere of the second half of the next to last season. Thanks to USA Network’s crazy scheduling of shows, it can be very confusing keeping track of whether or not your favorite show is delivering new episodes that week or if it’s on a break, as well as whether a show is beginning or ending a season or if it’s just going on or leaving a months-long break between new episodes. Between the network announcing the final season of Monk around that time and my belief at the time that the next to last season had already concluded, I assumed that the premiere in January was that of the final season. Luckily for me and other Monk fans, this was not the case.

According to the advertisements, it seems the writers have some interesting surprises in store for this season of Monk, with our favorite detective doing many acts that one would never expect him to do. My hope is that this final season delivers consistently good individual episode storylines where you’re frequently intrigued and left guessing until the very end, after which you’re amazed and impressed by Mr. Monk’s incredible skill and powers of observation. To make this last season perfect, the writers will also need to deliver some good character development and perhaps even some compelling multi-episode storylines, all ending in a final episode or two that give a bit of closure to series-long plot lines and character developments and resolve once and for all the mystery of Trudy Monk’s death. The writers on the show have really delivered in the past, so I feel confident that they will do the same again this season.

Posted in TV

Microsoft, Please Fix Bing’s Image Search

Ed — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:59:19 +0000

I’ll admit it. I really like Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. While it doesn’t have as comprehensive an index as Google, its results seem to be pretty spot-on, its video search is very handy thanks to its video preview feature, its travel search is incredibly handy, its one page image results load additional images instead of making you go to the next page, and the contextual links on the left are surprisingly useful and usually provide good related searches for most search terms. I have, however, noticed one glaring fault in Bing’s image search. For some reason, Bing cannot find any of the many images I’ve uploaded over the last few years to Flickr. If I go to Yahoo’s image search and search for the terms "edkopp4 site:flickr.com", it brings up 6,750 images, all of which appear to be images I’ve uploaded to the site flickr.com using my ID edkopp4. If I go over to Bing’s image search and enter the same terms, it returns no results. OK, maybe the "site:" operator just doesn’t work for Bing. However, when I search for just "edkopp4", I get only 12 results, of which none are from Flickr. Flickr is a wonderous treasure trove of some of the best images on the internet, with many of them tagged so well that you can usually be sure that you’ll find at least a few good images to match your search. If Microsoft wants me to take Bing image search seriously, they need to quickly index all images on Flickr and let me search for them with ease. This means that when a search term I enter appears in a Flickr image’s tags, title, notes, description, or the user who uploaded it, Bing needs to give me this image as a result for my search. This would make me happy because it would allow me and others to easily find my images, and it would make Bing users as a whole happy because they could finally have one of the biggest and best image sites included when they go looking for a particular photo.

Yahoo! has already figured out how to accurately search Flickr and its many images and return good results in its Image search, so there’s absolutely no reason why Microsoft should be without Flickr search. Especially now that Bing will be used to fulfill search requests on Yahoo!’s site, it is absolutely critical that Microsoft correct this oversight as soon as possible. If they don’t, then both Bing and Yahoo! users will be left without Flickr goodness in their image search. Google‘s results for this search also aren’t as good as Yahoo!’s, but this may have to do with the fact that I have a free account and you can only see my 200 most recent photos in my photostream. I suspect that this may interfere with Google’s bots’ ability to easily index all of my images on Flickr. However, at least Google properly indexes and returns 362 results for my search, most of which are photos I uploaded to Flickr.

Posted in Computers and Internet

Firefox 3.5 Now Available for Download

Ed — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:23:12 +0000

It’s been a fairly long time coming, but the latest major version of the popular Firefox browser is now available for download at Mozilla’s website. I’ve been using it since late this afternoon, and so far I’m fairly happy with it. As often happens with new releases of Firefox, many of my favorite extensions were broken by the release. I could enable them using Nightly Tester Tools, but I have a fear that doing so might turn on an add-on that really shouldn’t be turned on right now, leading to unpredictable behavior and a crashing browser. I don’t think I’ll have to wait long for my add-ons though. In the past, add-on creators, especially those responsible for more popular add-ons, have been very good about quickly updating their works not long after a new update is released. In terms of performance, I’ve been pretty impressed with the speed of this latest Firefox version. It seems to work much better on JavaScript-full sites compared to before, with Hotmail working noticeably better and Gmail and reddit seeming to be a tiny bit faster. I still want to say that Chrome makes pages load and work a bit faster than 3.5, but it’s really hard to say. I have a feeling that some sites will work a tiny bit better in one while others work better in the other. Regarding the rest of the application, the menus seem to be a bit more clunky than before with their opening being a bit delayed. This could very easily be caused by one or more of my extensions, though. I have been pretty surprised by the awesome bar. I don’t know if it has to do with me no longer needing the Hide Unvisited extension, but the awesome bar seems to load URLs as I type significantly faster than it was able to in the last version, in which I often observed a noticeable lag. Between its better JavaScript performance, Private Browsing mode, and other new or improved features, I think Firefox 3.5 should turn out to be a pretty good browser choice for most people, especially once the add-ons catch up.

Posted in Computers and Internet

Burn Notice Returns This Thursday

Ed — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:16:45 +0000

After a fairly long but expected wait, USA Network’s awesome series Burn Notice will be returning with new episodes starting this Thursday, 6/4/2009, at 9 PM EST. You may remember that it used to be on at a different time, but they’ve stuck it at 9 PM so it can be used as a lead-in for USA’s new series Royal Pains. Royal Pains doesn’t have me very excited, but Burn Notice certainly does. It’s delivered consistently over the past two seasons with great action, characters, and stories, and I expect this will continue. The end of last season was particularly good, thanks in part to the addition of Stargate SG-1′s Daniel Jackson (What? That’s not his name? Oh, that’s right.). When last we left Michael Westen, he was finally free of the people who burned him and will no longer be forced to do their every (usually illegal) desired operation. However, he’s still considered burned, meaning that he still has no spy job and no public employment history. Except for his friends and family, he’s on his own, and neither the US government nor the people that burned him will protect him. This means that he’s now at risk from anyone he may have crossed while he was a spy. This should be quite a season, and the slightly new premise leaves him open to a much wider variety of confrontations. In all, I’m very excited and hopeful about this season. If you’ve missed the last two seasons and want to catch up, you should check out USA Network on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, during which they’ll be showing Burn Notice marathons, including all the episodes from the first two seasons.

Posted in TV

Behold: The Power of Yelp

Ed — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:58:48 +0000

In addition to beholding the power of cheese, I’m also fond of beholding the power of awesome websites. To that end, I tend to be rather prolific when it comes to signing up for and trying out neat websites. In this Web 2.0 age, you can find a website that does nearly anything you want or gives you any bit of information you may be looking for. One of my favorite websites definitely has to be Yelp. It’s not an incredibly flashy site, but it’s an excellent resource if you’re trying to learn about local businesses. In particular, I find its reviews and photos for local restaurants to be a tremendously useful resource when I’m trying to learn about a restaurant or find a new one. I learned of many a great dining location in Boston and Tampa thanks to this site. You have to be careful when you’re looking at reviews and ratings and remember that everyone has a bias or may have had an unusually good or bad experience. Of course, this is true of any work of writing, reviews in particular. If you look with a discerning eye at the reviews of places near you, I’m quite sure you’ll be impressed by Yelp’s ability to point you to excellent restaurants.

Many people sign up for Yelp with the intention of writing reviews on the site. While I do hope to write some restaurant reviews at some point in the future, I expect that I’ll likely keep those reviews here on this blog instead of on Yelp. Instead, I use Yelp as a way of keeping track of many of my favorite restaurants. By looking at my list of bookmarked places on Yelp, you can see in one easy list many of my favorite food destinations in Boston and Tampa plus some others as well. Thanks to this list, you get easy access to the address, phone number, ratings, reviews, and other Yelp information bits for all these places. One really handy feature of this page is the map in the right hand column that shows markers for all these locations. By zooming in on different parts of the map, you can see the physical locations of my favorite places relative to one another and the layout of the city. While this is the main thing I use Yelp for, I also occasionally upload photos of my favorite restaurants and markets when I see that the place is missing a photo or if I think mine adds something to the quality of place’s photo album. At the moment I have 34 photos uploaded, and I’ll upload more in the future if I see a need. In all, Yelp is a really useful, easy-to-use website that makes expanding one’s culinary horizons and learning about the area around you about as simple as can be. You can check out my "local photos" by going here, and you can visit my Yelp profile page by going here.

Posted in Computers and Internet

Encarta to be Shut Down in October

Ed — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:56:18 +0000

As TechCrunch and other sites have recently mentioned, Microsoft will be shutting down its long-running digital encyclopedia Encarta at the end of October. I admit that I practically never use this service anymore with the accuracy and ease of Wikipedia waiting just a few clicks away, but I am a bit sad to see this service go away. We’ve already seen numerous restaurants, stores, newspapers, and other businesses close in recent months, and it seems that web services aren’t safe either, with their owners facing increasing financial pressure to have their web services yield a decent profit or face having to shut them down completely. While I won’t miss Encarta in my daily life, I will look back on it with fond memories whenever I think of computers and the internet in the pre-Wikipedia era.

Especially in the late 1990′s, Encarta provided me with a wealth of information and images. Finding content was incredibly easy thanks to its search feature, and it tended to provide much more up-to-date and detailed information than a traditional set of hardcover encyclopedias. In my dial-up internet days, and even in my early broadband days, such a wealth of easy-to-access information was a rarity, and Encarta provided me with much-needed information when I was pressed with the occasional information-requiring paper to write or a curiosity to be satisfied. The web we have now is very different from the one that existed then, and it seems that Encarta has been rendered irrelevant by the likes of Wikipedia. I hope that as it closes Encarta, Microsoft has the generosity to donate some if not all of its encyclopedia entries and images to the public domain. Wikipedia is generally accurate and thorough, but it could still benefit from the wealth of well-written entries and images compiled over the years by Encarta. Such a move would be a very nice gesture and would certainly benefit current and future people who rely on the internet for their information. Goodbye, Encarta. You served your purpose well and will be remembered fondly.

Posted in Computers and Internet

No New York-Style Pizza at JFK?

Ed — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:58:05 +0000

As some people who have been following my Twitter feed might know, I was recently at JFK airport in New York City for a short while on my layover going from Tampa to Chicago and on the one from Chicago to Tampa. My experience was generally a good one, but I was very disappointed to find that JetBlue’s fancy new Terminal 5 was completely devoid of an authentic (or even semi-authentic) New York-style pizza place. I had really hoped that I would be able to use this rare opportunity to further expand my food horizons and enjoy a New York-style slice in the general vicinity of its origin, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I would have even made do with a semi-authentic variation of the New York-style, like Pizzeria Uno does with its airport offerings, where you get the general gist of a Chicago-style pizza without the usual Chicago-style thickness or size. All I could find instead were overpriced bar and grill restaurants, really overpriced bar and grill restaurants, a sushi bar, and an overpriced food court.

In the end, I appeased my hunger with two Sicilian-style pepperoni pizza slices and one regular pepperoni slice from the pizza place in the food court that tries to be like a Roman pizza place. After having been to Rome recently and having tried good Sicilian-style pizza at Galleria Umberto in Boston, I can say with a great deal of confidence that the Roman pizza wasn’t what you would get in Rome, with the crust being reasonably similar but nowhere near the same quality and the toppings being inferior, and the Sicilian-style slices were like what you would get at Galleria Umberto but with inferior ingredients, not as hot and fresh, and not as much cheese. In all, I’d say it was a decent, rather expensive meal that was heading in the general direction of the intended pizza styles but fell far short. I won’t complain too much, though, because that’s just what I would expect with airport food.

I think that in its efforts to look trendy and appeal to wealthy travelers, the folks at JFK who were responsible for designing this new terminal really missed the mark in some respects. Yes, there is a decent amount of seating, although I much prefer cushioned seats like those in Tampa. Yes, there are charging stations where you can easily charge your mobile device with a plethora of power outlets. Yes, you have numerous rows of touchscreen-based delivered-to-your-seat dining stations. However, when I go to an airport, especially an airport in a famous, old, diverse, culture-rich city like New York City, I don’t want to go to expensive stores, overpriced generic restaurants, or knockoffs of good foreign food. Instead, I want to get at least a taste of what the city and the surrounding area is really like, and the best way I can think of accomplishing that would be to provide a decent number of restaurants and food court stalls that offer local cuisine, in particular New York-style pizza. Even if it is a bit overpriced (this is an airport, after all), I and I’m sure many other curious or cash-limited travelers would quickly seize the opportunity to grab a real slice of New York cuisine. I don’t want to feel like I’m in one of many overpriced malls when I’m in your airport. I want to feel like I’m in the gateway to "the greatest city in the world" (as they would say in the opening sequence to The Late Show). I hope that the people in power at John F. Kennedy International Airport come to their senses soon, but as long as customers appear to be reasonably happy and the vendors continue making enough profit, things will stay the same, and it really is a shame. What could have been a welcoming taste of what New York City has to offer is instead a cultureless, albeit pretty and comfortable, expensive shopping mall that doubles as an airline terminal.

Posted in Food

Stargate Atlantis Series Finale and Monk Season Premiere Tonight

Ed — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:40:40 +0000

If you like sci-fi shows or fun-filled detective shows, then tonight is the night for you. With its fifth season coming to a close, Stargate Atlantis’ series finale will be shown tonight at 9 PM (EST) on SciFi. It’s been a pretty good run, albeit shorter than that of its predecessor, Stargate SG-1, which lasted for an impressive ten seasons. Tonight’s episode promises conflict, action, and hopefully some story resolution to give at least a little closure to the character and story arcs formed over these five seasons. Also on tonight is the season premiere of the final season of Monk. This has been a great show and a favorite of mine, so it’s sad to think that it will be leaving soon, but at least we have one last season to enjoy. That episode will also be shown at 9 PM (EST) on USA Network, but if you want to watch both episodes like I do, then you should be able to catch the reshowing of the same episodes later tonight. USA will be reshowing the new Monk episode at midnight, and SciFi will be reshowing Atlantis at 11 PM. This is what my Verizon FiOS TV guide tells me, anyway. Happy viewing.

Update (8/7/09): I was originally under the impression that the premiere of the final season of Monk was on 1/9/2009, but that was apparently the premiere of the latter part of the next to last season, which followed a long period of time with no new episodes (except for the Christmas episode shown near the end of November). The premiere of the final season of Monk is actually tonight, Friday, August 7, 2009, at 9 PM (EST).

Posted in TV

Merry Christmas!

Ed — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:13:00 +0000

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas. Whether you’re having a white Christmas with lots of snow on the ground or a warm Christmas like I am (with the temperature supposed to get up to almost 80 degrees today), I hope you have a festive, fun day filled with presents, family, friends, good food, and lots of cheer. I’ll leave you with a picture of my family’s Christmas tree. Enjoy, and have a safe, merry Christmas.

Posted in Personal

My New Xbox Experience Avatar

Ed — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:57:01 +0000

I finally got the New Xbox Experience on my Xbox 360 this past Friday after signing up for the NXE Preview through Microsoft Connect towards the end of October. I was lucky enough to sign up during the short window before all of the slots filled up, but I wasn’t lucky enough to get accepted into the preview in the first or second waves. Finally, in the third wave of granting people access to the NXE, I was chosen, and as a result my console updated this past Friday, November 14th. The very first thing you do after updating your console and seeing the welcome video is to set up an avatar, and I must admit that it was a lot more fun than I expected. There weren’t enough clothing options, but there were far more possibilities for facial features and such than I had expected. I really hope that Microsoft keeps adding more options, and I trust that many of these additional options are kept free of charge. I could see myself coming back to my avatar and customizing it now and then to change up its appearance a bit as long as there are numerous free options. As it stands, my avatar looks a great deal like me (well, as much as a cartoonish avatar with limited customization options can).

Thanks to the update Microsoft made to Xbox.com last night, you can now see my avatar, as well as that of any other Xbox Live member who has one, right on their Xbox.com profile. Everyone not in the Preview will have to wait until tomorrow to download the NXE and customize their avatar, but that’s not too long. The wait is almost over. In the mean time, you can enjoy a look at my avatar below.

Posted in Video Games

Happy Birthday To Me

Ed — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:45:50 +0000

Today, November 11th, is a great day. Not only is it Veterans Day (formerly known as Armistice Day), and as a result a national holiday, but it’s also my birthday. In less than two hours at 11:00 AM (EST), I will turn 23 years old. It is remarkable how quickly time passes. It seems like just yesterday I was turning 21, and not long before that I had my 16th birthday. As a side note, today, more specifically 11 AM today, will also mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I. So, mark that on your calendar. 11 AM today is my 23rd birthday and the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War. So far I’ve been watching some World War II footage on the Military Channel to commemorate Veterans Day. Later, I’ll be opening presents, spending time with family, and having some tasty Italian food from Castellano & Pizzo for dinner. In addition, I’ll be having some ice cream cake from Publix for dessert, or possibly for an appetizer (or both). I hope everyone has a wonderful day today.

Posted in Personal

Windows Live Photo Gallery Stitches Are Easy and Impressive

Ed — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:58:13 +0000

I’ve been toying around with Windows Live Photo Gallery for some time now, and even still I am impressed by it. At the most basic level, it’s meant to make viewing, organizing, and uploading your photos a breeze, with some basic other features built in such as being able to crop a photo. It succeeds quite easily in all these areas, and for these features alone it would be a great piece of free software to have on your PC. However, Microsoft also managed to toss in some added features that make Photo Gallery really stand out. My favorite of these is the ability to create a panorama by having the software automatically stitch together select photos taken of the same place. Before I tried it for the first time, I couldn’t imagine that it would work very well. I’d seen other software before that could create panoramas, but you had to tell it what parts of each photo are shared among the photos.

With Photo Gallery, Microsoft has managed to make it as easy as selecting a few photos and clicking the button, then out pops a perfect or near-perfect panorama photo, with each individual photo aligned in the new photo so that they blend together properly. It amazed me the first time I saw it, and it still amazes me each time I see it. It’s especially impressive if the photos you’re using are of a grand scene that’s impressive in its own right. Whereas before all you could do was look at each piece of a vista on its own by looking at each individual photo, which at best captured one part of the overall picture, now you can blend them all together so you can truly appreciate the view just as you did when the pictures were taken. When used properly, you can feel like you’re back at the place where you took the photos. I especially found this to be the case with the photos I took of certain places in Rome. To see my current gallery of stitches I’ve made using Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can go to the photos section of my Windows Live Space and click on the album titled "Windows Live Photo Gallery Stitches." Not all of them were blended together perfectly, but I think that in most if not all of the cases this was merely the result of trying to stitch together photos that weren’t taken from the exact same location, which is critical for an accurate stitch. In all, though, I now have a collection of mostly-perfect panoramas from around the world, through which I can relive what it was like to be standing in each place the photos were originally taken. You may not be able to tell from the photos in my online gallery because they’ve been reduced in size for online viewing, but the stitches I have on my computer maintain all the original details and resolution of the photos used to make the stitch. If you were to open up one of them, you would be able to zoom in and see just as much detail as was in the individual photos. As a result, these panoramic photos are near-perfect blendings of smaller photos, giving one larger, more impressive photo of a place with all the original detail found in the photos that make it up.

If you want to make your own stitches, then you first need to get some photos that will work. You may already have some photos that qualify, or you may need to take some new ones just to make the stitch. Either way, for a photo to work with Windows Live Photo Gallery’s stitching tool, each photo needs to be taken from the exact same place. This means that, as the photographer, you need to have the camera positioned at the same height and location for each shot. You can then move a little either to the right or left (or any direction really – up and down, diagonal, whatever you like) and continue taking photos. While you’re doing this, be sure that part of each photo overlaps the one next to it (usually the one taken just prior to taking the photo). For best results, only move the camera a little for each photo so that each consecutive photo has a lot of overlap. This will give you a more perfect, smooth resulting stitch. Now, download and install Windows Live Photo Gallery from here. Once that’s done, open Photo Gallery and select the photos you just acquired by selecting the proper folder on the left. Select each photo you’ll be using for the stitch (which can be done by dragging the cursor to highlight the appropriate photos or by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting each photo individually). Next, click on "Make" in the top bar of the program and select "Create panoramic photo…" from the drop-down menu. Photo Gallery will then show you its progress and ask you where to save the file. Tell it the location and file name you want to use and you’re all set. You should now have a beautiful panoramic photo blending together the photos you selected. You may just feel like you’re right back where you took those photos.

Posted in Computers and Internet

Facebook Funkiness on September 29, 2008

Ed — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:31:41 +0000

There seem to be some weird happenings over at Facebook today. I first noticed something was going wrong this morning when I typed in "facebook.com" and it took me to facebook.com as opposed to new.facebook.com. This may not seem like a big deal, but facebook.com had been redirecting to new.facebook.com for some time now ever since my account was moved over to the new Facebook. This isn’t really much of an issue, indeed it’s more of an interesting point of note, but I did encounter a big problem when I tried to log in to the site. I must have tried more than a dozen times to log in, with every try being greeted by a message that I had entered the wrong password. I had changed my password a few weeks ago, so I double checked to make sure I was using the right password, and indeed I was. I even tried using my password from back before they changed it over to the new Facebook design. Nothing seemed to work. I deleted all the cookies in Firefox that were tied to the site. None of it mattered. Eventually, after trying even more, it logged me in with my latest password as if nothing was wrong. Very strange.

As if that first hiccup wasn’t enough, I now see that my Home page News Feed is littered with stories from about a week ago that had long since disappeared from my feed in favor of newer items. Other than these two issues, I don’t think there have been any more problems, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more pop up. Since I’m not on the Facebook team, it’s not immediately clear what the issue is. It could be as simple as server problems, or they could be tweaking certain parts of the site. I really don’t know why they insisted on moving everyone over to the new Facebook if there are still tweaks and changes to be made. If this were Facebook Beta (like the perpetual Gmail Beta), then it would be fine. This is, however, supposed to be a fully developed, final product, so such things shouldn’t be happening much at this point. I think it’s undeniable that not everything is working properly with the new design, irregardless of any of today’s issues. I still regularly have problems with a big gap composed of white space appearing between the bar on the left side of profile pages and the content itself, like the Wall feed. I also have had almost no success in viewing Posts by Others on my Wall that date back earlier than Sept 23, making it impossible to view anything older than the last five posts, which is unacceptable. I click on Show More Posts, but it does nothing.

I really enjoy Facebook, but their development team really needs to pull it together and finish tweaking and testing their site before widespread release next time. Today’s issues will likely be fixed soon, and with any luck the quirkiness present in the site since the redesign will be worked out eventually. In the short term, though, such occurrences can only annoy or even turn off the user from using Facebook, which is certainly a bad thing for a site that relies very much on user interest and interaction.

Posted in Computers and Internet

McCain’s Latest Political Stunt: “Suspending” His Campaign

Ed — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:46:56 +0000

As I’m writing this, I’m completely disgusted with the McCain campaign’s latest low move. On the surface, it may appear to be a genuine interest in helping the country solves its problems and do his job as a US senator, but if you dig deeper it becomes quite apparent that it is in fact nothing more than a political stunt intended to boost his numbers with only weeks remaining before the November election. It was just recently announced that John McCain will be immediately suspending his campaign for president, including all TV advertising, so that he may go to Washington and "solve" our current economic crisis. Just when I thought the McCain campaign might be running out of tricks, they pull this one out of nowhere, and it might just work.

Outwardly, this move seems like McCain is assuming his responsibility as senator and putting our country first. This is exactly what they want you to think. However, this image is merely a construct of his campaign manager’s imagination and is in reality far from the truth. First, if John McCain really cared about the success of our country and fixing our problems, then why has he been so reluctant to show up and vote when a major bill came to a vote in the Senate? In an article written on July 11, 2008 for The Washington Post, Jonathan Weisman noted that Senator McCain had failed to vote in the senate since April 8th. We’re not talking about just minor votes here, either. John McCain, whose job as a US Senator includes crafting legislation, understanding legislation crafted by his colleagues, and voting on legislation, has essentially failed to do his job from April 8th to July 11th, or a period of more than 3 months. Presidential candidate or not, such behavior is not good. While I don’t have another, more up to date source, to my knowledge he still hasn’t shown up for a vote, and it’s now September 24th. Either way, this information makes it apparent that McCain has shown little concern for doing what’s right and voting on important bills that could significantly impact our lives as Americans. For him to suddenly drop everything and run to the Senate to finally do some work wreaks of desperation on his part.

As of late, it has become more and more apparent to even the casual observer that McCain is clueless when it comes to economic policy. Those of us who have been following his campaign for a while have known this fact for some time, but it is now apparent to even the most uninterested voter that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In recent days, even as major financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers were crumbling, McCain continued to exclaim that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." While our economy certainly does still have a lot going for it, it’s undeniable that rapidly-inflating prices, stagnating wages, and numerous bankruptcies or other troubles for our major financial companies spell trouble for our economy. To me, all of those are major parts of our economy, "fundamentals" if you will, and they’re anything but strong. How anyone can take McCain’s economic wisdom seriously is beyond me, and that’s neglecting knowledge of his past actions that show his ignorance of the economy. His insistence in going to Washington to fix our economic mess will be trouble in every respect. First, since McCain has no idea how to fix the economy, it’s virtually impossible that his going there will do any good. If a person knows that his actions can do no good, then why do them at all? At best, he’ll be able to whisper his party’s line in the ear of those making the decisions. At worst, his presence will annoy or even hurt any possible economic fix, which even with the best people in charge will be difficult to execute.

McCain’s campaign suspension will only do good for one person: himself. By rushing to DC to fix an economy when he has no idea how to fix it, he knows that he can do no good. Such an action, however, makes it seem, at least to the casual observer, that he must know what he’s doing with the economy. After all, who in their right mind would try to fix something if they have no knowledge of how to go about fixing it? Also, this reinforces his fictitious image of being a good senator, a good patriot who puts his country first, and a responsible senator who cares about our problems. If he’s lucky, this stunt will make people forget his fundamentals-are-strong mantra and maybe even reassure them that he actually does have a clue when it comes to one of the most important aspects of being a president (sound economic knowledge and judgment). This alone is as great a reason as any for McCain to suspend his campaign, especially given the recent shift in voter preferences in Obama’s favor, largely due to Obama’s perceived ability to better handle the economy. This last effort might be the only way for McCain to plug the holes in his ship’s hull. The benefits to the McCain camp don’t stop there, though. By extending the invitation to Obama to suspend his campaign as well and travel to DC to fix the problem, McCain has handed Obama a no-win situation. If Obama says no, then he looks unpatriotic. People would think he’s unwilling to do his job, that he doesn’t care about them or their country, and that his words have no substance, especially his words about solving problems with both parties working together. If he accepts, then Obama will lose significant ground in the run up to the election. Obama needs every day he has left before November to campaign and show voters why he’s right for them. As was true in the primaries, Obama’s numbers tend to go up the more exposure he gets, especially after he visits a place and gives speeches. Stopping his campaign would halt his campaign’s momentum and keep his message away from prospective McCain voters who could likely be swayed by Obama’s words.

There really is no great option here for Obama. McCain’s latest move was unexpected, unwelcomed, and difficult to respond to for Obama’s campaign. No matter what they do, their actions can be distorted as a bad move. At the moment, it appears that the Obama campaign is making the only good move they have left. They will insist that they can fix the economy while campaigning at the same time. If it works out right, this could put Obama over the top by demonstrating that he truly is the only candidate with presidential material: the ability to handle more than one thing at once. I think it could work, and indeed I think it will generally work. No matter what some will say of their character and choices, the campaign certainly couldn’t risk suspending for any amount of time in this crucial period, so this is really the only sound choice left to them. I hope they can pull it off. I’m sure the McCain campaign won’t be happy about this, though. He was hoping to use this economic crisis to get around having to take part in this Friday’s debate where he was sure to get put in his place by Obama. To my relief, the Obama campaign won’t have any of this, insisting that they can debate with the best of them while fixing our economy at the same time. I look forward to seeing McCain squirm on Friday, assuming he even shows up.

Posted in News and Politics

Best Buy’s Price Drop Policy

Ed — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:59:48 +0000

In the past, I mentioned that Amazon.com has a pretty useful price drop policy that guarantees that if you buy an item from them and the price drops within thirty days, you can get the difference in price refunded to you. While I tend to use Amazon for a lot of DVD and CD purchases due to their free shipping (on orders over $25), no tax, and great prices, I also do a lot of shopping at Best Buy. As such, it would be in my best interest if Best Buy had a similar price drop policy like the one offered by Amazon, and as it turns out they do. I think most people by now know that Best Buy, like many other stores, will match an advertised lower price offered by another local store (or even its own website), but not too many know about their incredibly useful price drop policy.

I recently used Best Buy’s price match policy to my advantage, and I can attest that it was as painless as possible. I showed the competitor’s ad to the cashier, and to my surprise, he even recommended that next time I shouldn’t even show the ad and they’ll do the deduction anyway. I don’t know if I’d necessarily trust that advice, but it was still a hassle-free process either way. Then, not long after my first encounter with Best Buy’s price adjustment policies, I had good reason to see how well their price drop policy works. The weekend after I bought a DVD, Best Buy advertised a sale on all TV DVDs, so I looked it up online, and sure enough, it was cheaper. I verified that I was eligible for the price drop guarantee, and since I was, I subsequently received a gift card worth the price difference (since I had originally paid with a gift card), with a print-out of the sale item’s page on BestBuy.com as my evidence of the lower price when in the store requesting the refund. In all, it was incredibly easy, and I got back a decent amount of money in the process.

Much like Amazon’s price drop policy, Best Buy provides a very generous time frame for a possible price drop. With the exception of a few types of items, Best Buy gives you a 30 day window to find a lower price at a local Best Buy, its website, or a local competitor. If you find that an item that you bought within this window has dropped in price, just run on down to your local Best Buy and they’ll refund you the difference (110% of the difference if it’s a competitor). You can read more about this policy here. Also, if you prefer shopping at BestBuy.com, you can rest assured that you’ll be taken care of, too. As BestBuy.com describes on this page, if you find an item that you bought on the website is now a lower price at a Best Buy store or on the website, they’ll refund you the difference just like if you had bought the item in one of their stores. The only difference here seems to be that BestBuy.com won’t match competitor’s offers, while Best Buy stores will. This makes sense given that BestBuy.com is a nation-wide store and local sale prices can vary wildly across the country. Plus, it would be difficult for BestBuy.com staff to check up on every claim of a better local sale price.

Thanks to Best Buy’s price guarantee policies, you can be sure that you’re paying the best price when you buy the product and that you don’t get cheated out of a good sale price because you bought something just before a price drop (temporary or not). All you have to do is pay attention to Best Buy and competitor’s ads right before and in the month after your purchase. For cheaper purchases, you might not feel the need to put forward this effort and watch the ads since you’re not going to save a ton of money, but if you’re considering a big purchase or just made such a purchase, it’s certainly in your best interest to keep your eyes open for lower prices on the item you bought. Everybody likes to save money, right?

Upcoming Season Premieres

Ed — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:44:14 +0000

With the exception of a small number of good shows that are on right now, including So You Think You Can Dance, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, In Plain Sight, and Doctor Who, there’s currently very little on TV worth watching. That should all change in the near future when three great shows return with all new episodes, practically doubling the number of good shows on TV (sadly, Doctor Who will be back in reruns in the US shortly). Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing any more of The 4400, The Dead Zone, Bionic Woman, or Journeyman, but we will be seeing lots of three excellent shows that have been gone for far too long. Starting tonight, Burn Notice will return to USA Network (10 PM EST). Based on last season’s episodes, I expect this will be just as action-packed, funny, and well-written as ever. Then, tomorrow night marks the return of Stargate: Atlantis (10 PM EST), with the following Friday offering up the debut of the latest season of Monk (9 PM EST). It won’t be quite the same without Dr. Kroger helping Monk when he needs him the most, but I’m sure it will be well-written and well-acted as usual. If you can’t watch Monk or Burn Notice the first time around, they will likely be posting the episodes to USANetwork.com not long after the initial showings, so you should be able to catch these great shows whenever you are able to fit them into your schedule.

Let’s Be Friends

Ed — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:31:48 +0000

It’s amazing just how many web sites and services are now available to make it as easy as possible to keep in contact with someone or get to know that person better. Way back when, your best bet to keep in contact was to email them or perhaps to instant message them. For finding long lost friends, your only good hope was the now-antiquated Classmates.com. If you wanted to get to know someone better, your options were pretty limited, with a personal web page being about as good as you could get. Now, it’s possible to network with friends (and strangers), keep in touch, find out what’s new with people you know, get to know friends better, and meet interesting new people with minimal effort. Over the last few years, sites that make such actions easy have become incredibly common, and given my love of most things technology or internet-related, I’ve signed up with a decent number of them. If you know me, or even if you don’t know me and want to get to know me better, you now have a multitude of ways to keep up with what I’ve been doing lately and to get to know me better. Below are some links to some of the more significant social networking/profile sites I’m on. Feel free to befriend me (like on Facebook or MySpace), follow me (like on Twitter), or just give my profiles a glance. You can even poke me if you want (only on Facebook, I believe). For a list of more of the sites I’m on along with links to those profiles, you can go here or go to the main page of my Windows Live Space and click on the "My Profiles" link near the top left of the page.

Here are the links to my profiles: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, MyBlogLog, Last.fm, YouTube, del.icio.us, Xbox Live, reddit, Digg

No Dead Zone or 4400 Season Premieres in 2008

Ed — Mon, 26 May 2008 06:06:06 +0000

Thanks to a handy visitor statistics feature present in Windows Live Spaces, I’m able to see the referring address for visitors to my blog. I’ve noticed a trend over the last month or two that a number of visitors are coming here looking for information on the season premieres of The 4400 and The Dead Zone sometime this year. I thought that I should take a moment here and let anyone who happens to stumble across my blog know that you can stop looking for information on these premieres. Both of these shows were canceled, and as such you can expect no more season premieres or new episodes of any kind. I was rather shocked when I first learned the news from TV Guide late last year, but with the promise of new episodes of Monk and Burn Notice plus an interesting new series in the form of In Plain Sight, I’ve slowly gotten over losing these two great shows. They definitely had many exciting episodes left before their proper endings, but the last season finales should serve at least as reasonably solid series finales as well. Luckily, we live in an age where the majority of TV shows are available to own on DVD, and these shows are no exception, letting avid viewers like me relive these shows whenever I want. Sadly, besides the possible occasional rerun, this is our best way of watching these shows now.

Unbelievable Prices on Star Trek DVDs

Ed — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:53:54 +0000

I remember when seasons of Star Trek on DVD were around $100 (or more depending on where you shopped). For the longest time, it seemed like the price would never drop. I’ve been a fan of Star Trek in all its TV iterations for quite some time, and I was eager to own it and watch it in high-quality whenever I wanted, so I slowly but surely started buying the DVDs. After a few years, a lot of money spent, and some very generous gifts, I finally owned all of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and The Original Series. It was a lot of money, but I didn’t mind too much because I love those shows and knew I would get a lot of enjoyment out of them, and I certainly have done just that. However, after I’d bought those seasons and it seemed like the price would never change for years to come, Paramount went and lowered the prices on all of the seasons I’d already bought. As a result, it’s not unusual now to find the aforementioned seasons for about $50. Naturally, Voyager and Enterprise, the two series I still have yet to buy, still have the same old high suggested price. I’m not one for overpaying when I know there’s a better price to be had, even if it means a little waiting, so I wasn’t about to buy seasons from either series until the price dropped as they were bound to do sooner or later given the price drops for the other seasons.

Paramount (technically CBS Television now, I suppose) still hasn’t lowered the MSRP on Voyager or Enterprise yet, but that hasn’t stopped Amazon from going ahead and lowering the price anyway. Thanks to a handy extension for Firefox, I’ve been monitoring the prices of these Star Trek DVDs, and I was shocked when I unexpectedly saw Amazon’s lower price. At first, I thought it would be a temporary reduction, but after watching the prices stay the same ever since, I think it’s safe to say that Amazon is keeping the price of all Star Trek seasons low for the foreseeable future. Voyager season one had been $116.99 as of 10/30/07. Amazon cut the price to $59.99. Enterprise season one was $116.99 on 10/30/07. Amazon changed it to $69.98. Both of those price cuts offer a significant price cut to Trek fans, and it’s even more impressive given that the MSRP has stayed high with no expected change in the immediate future. As someone who still has yet to buy these seasons, that got me really excited.

Then, I saw Amazon’s latest promotion. As part of a promotion for a new section of its site called Amazon Cosmotopia, Amazon.com is lowering the price of all Star Trek seasons on DVD to $35.49 per season during the month of April (2008). I thought that $60 or so per season was a great price, but $35.49 per season is simply an unbelievable bargain that you may not see again this year (who knows, maybe ever). Unfortunately for me, I don’t have any spare money to get these DVDs right now, but that doesn’t stop anyone else out there from getting them at this stellar price (pun definitely intended). If you’re like me and don’t have the money to spare right now, the prices will likely go back to around $60 for a season after this month, which is still very reasonable compared to the old prices that topped $100. For your convenience, I’ve included links below to each season that’s on sale (technically, that’s all the Star Trek seasons). Amazon hasn’t just reduced the price on Star Trek, though. There are many other great deals to be had during this promotion. In my opinion, two of the best other deals are the entire series of Buffy on DVD (40 discs, no less) for just $99.99 and the first four seasons of The Dead Zone for a mere $11.99 each. So, if you have the spare money and are looking for some great, cheap entertainment to last you for years to come, this sale is just for you. I don’t think that you can beat these prices anywhere, either – even DeepDiscount.com isn’t this cheap, and in this sale, you’re dealing with a site you know you can trust no matter what and you won’t even have to pay tax (or shipping, for that matter, assuming you spend at least $25). Enjoy.

Star Trek (Seasons 1, 2, and 3) – $35.49 per season
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) – $35.49 per season
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) – $35.49 per season
Star Trek: Voyager (Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) – $35.49 per season
Star Trek: Enterprise (Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4) – $35.49 per season

The Dead Zone (Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4) – $11.99 per season; Season 5 – $15.49; The Final Season – $23.99
Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Collector’s Set (40 discs) – ~~$99.99~~ $164.99

Update (4/11/08): At least for the moment, it appears that Amazon has raised the price of the Buffy set up to $164.99. Shame on them. That was definitely one of the best DVD deals around.

Xdrive Ups Storage to 7.5 GB?

Ed — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:06:35 +0000

I was trying to upload some video files to Xdrive last night, so I fired up Xdrive Desktop Lite. It was taking far too long to browse to different folders and see their contents, so I decided to quit that and try the classic web interface instead. Before I did so, however, I noticed something curious in the top right of the screen. It said that I have "7.31 GB Free". While I found this odd, I thought that maybe it had something to do with the fact that I have a lot of full resolution photos stored at AOL Pictures and that there was an error in this fairly new program that misinterpreted my total storage space. However, when I navigated to the web interface in Firefox, I saw yet another unusual yet similar sight. In the top right next to the bar that indicates how much storage you’ve used, it says "7.49 GB available". To make things even more strange, upon highlighting the bar, I saw the alt text "7.49 GB of 5 GB remaining".

This just strikes me as odd. Is this a system-wide error? Does is have to do with the recently-released (although, in my opinion, buggy and slow – it results in the continuous accessing of my floppy drive) Xdrive Desktop Lite application? Lastly, could it be that AOL has felt more pressure in this space thanks to Microsoft’s recent release of Windows Live SkyDrive out of beta with an equivalent 5 GB of storage and has decided to up its own storage limit to fend off this attack on its territory? I would like to believe this is true, but the rest of the site indicates that they’re still only offering 5 GB in their free offering. As often happens with sudden product changes, however, it could just be that they have yet to change all of the related information on the site to reflect an increase in storage space. I suppose that only time will tell what the real situation is. Whatever the outcome, though, it appears that things aren’t going perfectly over at Xdrive when it comes to calculating storage space.

Update (3/27/08): Xdrive’s classic web interface is once again showing 5 GB as the storage limit. I guess this means it was a bug after all. I still hope that in the near future they will increase the storage space for real, though.

More Fenway 13 Midnight Movies Unveiled

Ed — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:34:00 +0000

It appears that the recent run of midnight movies at Regal Fenway 13 was a success, because four additional movies have been added to the list of upcoming films. The original list ended with Fight Club (to be shown initially on 2/22), leaving me to wonder just what other films, if any, would follow. Thanks to a recent post at the official Facebook group (Flashback Features At Regal Fenway 13), we now know what movies will be shown in late February and most of March. Here’s how the schedule looks:

Fri., 2/29: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Encore Performance – Wed., 3/5 @ 8pm)
Fri., 3/7: Home Alone (Encore Performance – Wed., 3/12 @ 8pm)
Fri., 3/14: Pretty in Pink (Encore Performance – Wed., 3/19 @ 8pm)
Fri., 3/21: Office Space (Encore Performance – Wed., 3/26 @ 8pm)

First, I have to point out that I cannot verify firsthand that this is in fact the correct schedule. However, the post by one of the administrators of the Facebook group seems very credible, so I’ll take him at his word. If I find out anything to the contrary, I will of course post an update, but as of now, I’d say it’s safe to say this is the schedule.

In all, I’d say that it’s a pretty decent schedule, although I think it could have definitely been made stronger had better choices been made. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off should bring in a large audience, and given that I’ve only seen it on a TV, it should be pretty enjoyable for me too. Home Alone is a classic, and although it would be better suited to a showing right before Christmas, I certainly can’t deny that it would be fun to see it on the big screen any time of year. Office Space should draw a good crowd as well, but I can’t help but feel that this slot in the schedule will be wasted on it given that I saw it during the previous run of AMC Fenway 13 midnight movies on 4/29/05. I suppose three years is enough space between showings, but I think I would rather see another classic film instead. The only strange choice in the bunch, at least in my opinion, is Pretty in Pink. I know that they’re trying to pick a diverse schedule that appeals to everyone, but I can think of much better films to take its place (I would much rather see Jaws or The Blues Brothers, thank you very much). Who knows, perhaps I’ll give it a chance and go watch it anyway. It’s only $6, after all.

If the previous movies are any indication, I’d expect all of these films to draw a pretty good number of people, and at $6, it’s hard to go wrong. It’s practically impossible to find movies in the theatre for even close to that price these days. If you read this and you’ll be going to one of these films, you’ll probably see me there as well. Look for me to likely be in the back middle of the front section since the middle front of the back section seems to always be filled when I get in the theatre. Maybe I’ll have better luck with one of these films.

Midnight Movies Return to Fenway 13

Ed — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:54:29 +0000

I was looking around the movie listings at Google last night in preparation for my viewing of Cloverfield earlier today when I saw something that immediately brought a smile to my face. In fact, at first I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there it was: a listing for Reservoir Dogs at 11:59 PM on 1/18 at Regal Fenway 13. Could it be? Yes, indeed it was. The long-absent weekly midnight movie series made famous by AMC when they owned that theatre has returned at last. I saw many excellent movies thanks to that previous series of midnight movies, and I was certainly upset when they discontinued it right before Regal took over. I was hoping that Regal would catch on and bring it back, and it seems that they have. I did some searching after seeing that listing, and apparently they are referring to this series of movies as "Flashback Features." At the moment, they only list six movies (including the one tonight), but with any luck, they’ll be adding to that list.

While I was at the theatre today to see the 1:10 PM showing of Cloverfield (which was excellent, by the way), I looked around with the hope of getting some more information about this series. According to the display stand they have set up in the lobby, this series of movies is exclusive to Fenway 13 and the list of coming movies shown on the stand agrees with the list I found online. Apparently, they also had one more movie in the series that was shown last Friday. That movie was Pulp Fiction. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t see it, but I wasn’t even in Boston at the time. I’m just glad that I found out about this before I had missed too many movies. Now that all the backstory is out of the way, here is the list of movies coming to Regal Fenway 13 that I found on this page at Fandango.

Fri., 1/18: Reservoir Dogs (Encore Performance – Wed., 1/23 @ 8pm)
Fri., 1/25: The Shining (Encore Performance – Wed., 1/30 @ 8pm)
Fri., 2/1: The Goonies (Encore Performance – Wed., 2/6 @ 8pm)
Fri., 2/8: The Matrix (Encore Performance – Wed., 2/13 @ 8pm)
Fri., 2/15: Princess Bride (Encore Performance – Wed., 2/20 @ 8pm)
Fri., 2/22: Fight Club (Encore Performance – Wed., 2/27 @ 8pm)

In particular, I’m looking forward to The Goonies (which I’ve only seen on the small screen) and The Matrix (which will be quite a treat since I really like that film and its sequels and haven’t seen it in its true glory since its original theatrical release). Also, as you may have noticed from the list above, all of these movies will be reshown the following Wednesday at 8 PM. That seems like a bit of an odd day and time, but if you can’t make it to the Friday night showing, it’s certainly nice to have an alternative. As if the quality of these movies wasn’t reason enough to see them, the fact that tickets are only $6 (as opposed to the student price of $8.50) should make you want to go even more. I know I’ll be seeing Reservoir Dogs later tonight.

Amazon.com’s Price Drop Policy

Ed — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:28:21 +0000

I love Amazon.com. It almost always has the best prices, carries pretty much any item I can want, especially when it comes to DVDs and CDs, doesn’t charge tax, and ships purchases over $25 for free. Thanks to an article at Lifehacker, a while back I got to liking Amazon for yet another reason. If you buy anything at Amazon.com and they lower the price on that item within 30 days after your purchase, they’ll refund you the difference in price. I don’t know of too many stores that do that. In fact, I don’t know if I can think of any stores that do that besides Amazon. I’ve yet to have an opportunity to test this policy myself, but it certainly is reassuring knowing that you can buy any item confident that they won’t lower the price just days later and you’ll be stuck paying the higher price. Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately for Amazon), not many people seem to know about this great policy. I know that I’ve tried to mention this to everyone when the topic of buying things online comes up in conversation, but people are still generally unaware of this fact. With any luck, this post and others like it will help make people more aware of the potential savings to be had, especially given how many purchases people made recently at Amazon for their holiday gifts. For the complete guide on how to use this policy to your advantage, you should read this wonderful article that Lifehacker pointed to in its article on the subject. Now go get some of your hard-earned money back.

Xbox 360 Fall Update Looking Good

Ed — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:58:04 +0000

Every spring and fall, Xbox fans start getting excited as they wonder what Microsoft has in store in its biannual 360 dashboard updates. Although some updates are better than others, every update has delivered at least some features that make using Xbox 360 more enjoyable and makes a great console even better. A while back I posted a list of the 30 improvements that I’d like to see come to Xbox 360, and these fall and spring updates are exactly where Microsoft would deliver such improvements. People have been speculating wildly lately as to what this fall’s update will bring, and as of today, they don’t have to speculate any longer. While there are still some things missing from this update that I would have liked to have been included, I have to say that this update is looking to be one of the best yet, adding a ton of new features and improvements that I and many others have been hoping for ever since (sometimes even before) we got our hands on a 360.

I’ll have to wait until Christmas break to download and experiment with this latest update, but everyone else with a 360 readily available and a high speed internet connection will be able to upgrade on December 4th. There are a lot of features that I’m looking forward to putting to good use, but a few really stand out. In particular, I’m looking forward to:

DivX and Xvid support – With this addition, Xbox 360 will finally support just about any video format you can ask for (well, unless you’re asking for Flash Video, in which case you’re out of luck). If you’re wondering about video specifics, the Xbox Team recently posted a handy FAQ over at MSDN on this very subject.
People who were under 18 when they signed up for Xbox Live (like me) but who have since passed this landmark birthday will no longer have to see that annoying "What are you waiting for?" message every time you boot up your console. You joined Xbox Live, you’re an adult, and now you get to be treated as an adult by Xbox Live thanks to a handy "child account graduation" feature. Major Nelson has more info on that here.
For those who linked their gamertag to a Windows Live ID they no longer use, you will finally be able to change the ID your gamertag is associated with. You can also get info on that here.
A faster Guide – I love the Guide. It’s handy, always there, and gives me a ton of info. However, it is definitely slower than it needs to be. If a line near the end of the fall update list of features is correct, the guide will now be a lot quicker. How quick? How about "~2x". Twice as fast sounds good to me.
Cheaper Xbox Live Arcade games. I call it finally lowering the prices on old titles that don’t sell as well anymore, they call it "Xbox LIVE Arcade Hits."
"Enhanced online profile" – Some people may not care for this, but I look forward to being able to put a little bit more about me on Xbox Live for my friends (or pseudo-friends) to see. Did you forget who I am because we haven’t played together in a while? That’s OK. Check out my profile to refresh your memory.
"Expanded Friends List access" – I don’t think I ever even thought of this feature before, but I’m really looking forward to it. The people I play with are all of a similar type, in that they all play nice, are good sports, don’t curse and scream, and are just all-around fun to play with. My friends also seem to only have people like that on their friends list. Instead of having to wait and play with some of these great people, I’ll be able to just go down a friend’s friends list and find someone fun to play with. This will also come in handy if you play with someone who you know is friends with one of your friends but you can’t remember their exact gamertag.

There are a lot of other fixes and features coming in this update, but these are the ones that get me the most excited at the moment. Now I’ll just have to wait a few weeks to give it a spin. For more info on the major features that have been added, check our Major Nelson’s recent article. If you’d rather look at the full list of updates heading our way, you can read this extensive article at Xbox.com. If these new features have you excited too, then go over to this thread at Xbox365 that I started and add your thoughts.

Dance to the Music? Not with iPod

Ed — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:57:54 +0000

To beging with, I own an iPod. While I still think that it’s overpriced compared to other portable MP3 players on the market, I certainly believe that it has one of the best interfaces available, a great look, and generally solid performance. However, one thing about the iPod that I have never liked is its advertising campaign. It seems like wherever I go, I see another advertisement for an iPod, with each ad looking almost exactly the same. It’s always an overly large, bright colored poster depicting an apparently young, happy person dancing while listening to music on their iPod. These people aren’t just dancing though. Many of them are so into the music that they look like they’re about to fall over. Never mind the fact that this is a bit unrealistic. Even in the best concerts I’ve been to where people were really into the music, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone act like that, but that’s OK. In the heat of the moment (and the privacy of one’s own home), I suppose it’s possible.

However, what I do have a problem with is that dancing to the music, exhibiting pure happiness and love of the music, and listening to an iPod simply do not go together in real life. Maybe the Apple advertisers would like you to think of their product as a cool, fun product that makes you happy and brings some joy to your otherwise boring life, but the reality is that the iPod seems to do just the opposite. It seems like wherever I go, whether it be waiting at an airport, walking down the street, sitting in a subway car, or standing in line to pay for something, I see at least one person listening to an iPod, and everytime, without exception, I see the exact same thing. Instead of showing happiness and feeling, these iPod junkies look dazed and out of touch with reality, almost like they’re staring at a TV right in front of them that only they can see. Rarely do you see one of them crack a smile, or even exhibit any emotion as a result of listening to the music being pumped through their iPod. If I didn’t know that they were listening to an iPod, I might otherwise think that these people were high on pain killers or some other equally-numbing medication or drug. These people paid hundreds of dollars for a device so they can listen to their music on the go and add some fun to their lives, and instead they get something that makes them look and act just like zombies. They’re as out of touch with reality while connected to an iPod as can be, and exhibit none of the social characteristics that a non-iPod person would. To make matters worse, many of these people seem to even be addicted to their iPods, sticking those white ear buds to their ears every chance they get, just as zombies crave human flesh.

Whenever I use an iPod, I tend to be in a situation where there is little else to do and I need something to occupy me, such as at an airport or on a train or airplane. Unlike these iPod junkies, though, I can never resist the urge to feel the music and tap or move as necessary with the music. If you see someone playing the air drums or conducting an invisible orchestra at the airport, that’s probably me. I don’t know why I am able to use my iPod like it should be used (for happiness and enjoying music) and these junkies are not, but it certainly is worrying. Our society already has too many people who watch TV or play video games so incessantly that they have lost touch with reality and their physical wellbeing has suffered as a result. I sincerely hope that in the future, this iPod syndrome doesn’t have any ill effects on us or future generations, because like it or not, it would seem that the iPod, and along with it its numbing syndrome are here to stay. If you’re wondering what you can be for Halloween (which is tonight, by the way – Happy Halloween!), don’t bother going to the costume store. Instead, just fire up your iPod and insert the white ear buds. I guarantee that you’ll look just like a zombie and perhaps even scare a few people who have yet to be infected by the iPod syndrome. Happy listening…

Adblock Working with Windows Live Hotmail Again

Ed — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:12:15 +0000

Anyone who was having problems with Windows Live Hotmail and Adblock (or Adblock Plus), such as not being able to compose new messages or reply to messages, should be happy to know that the two are once again compatible. I previously posted about a workaround that would allow you to block ads in Hotmail and still have full use of all of Hotmail’s features. That workaround still works just as it always did, but if you prefer not to use Greasemonkey and stick with Adblock, you can do so simply by updating your filter subscription. In Adblock Plus, this is done by either left clicking on the red ABP symbol in your toolbar near the top of Firefox (or right clicking on the red ABP symbol in the status bar near the bottom of Firefox) and clicking on Preferences in the menu that pops up. If you don’t see the symbol in either of these places, you can bring up the same Preferences window by going to Tools > Adblock Plus. People using the USA filter list should scroll down to where you see "Filter subscription: Rick752′s EasyList (usa)" and right click on that line of text. Click on the first option in the menu that pops up ("Update subscription now"). Once that’s done, click on OK on the bottom right of the window. The newly updated filter list should be fully compatible with Windows Live Hotmail and allow you to use all of its functions while also blocking all of its annoying ads.

If you’re using a filter subscription other than the one mentioned above, I’m not sure if it has been updated to be fully compatible with Hotmail, but it is very likely that it is, so you can follow the same procedure, but instead of right clicking on the subscription mentioned here, you will right click on the one you are using.

If you used my previously mentioned workaround to get full functionality in Hotmail with Adblock installed, you now need to undo the changes we made before (or if you just decided on your own to disable Adblock on the Hotmail domain). Here’s how we do that. Now that your Adblock Plus is once again compatible with Hotmail, you can block Hotmail in Adblock Plus. This is done by opening up the Preferences window as you just did, and finding the web address near the top in green under where it says "Exception rules" that applies to Hotmail. This entry is most likely something like "mail.live.com" with some additional text on either side of this address. Go ahead and right click on this address and click on Delete in the menu that pops up. Click on OK near the bottom right of the window.

Since Adblock is now doing its job of blocking ads in Hotmail, you don’t have to use the Greasemonkey script I mentioned in my previous post anymore (although you still can if you want to – there shouldn’t be any problems with using both the script and Adblock at the same time). Right click on the Greasemonkey icon in your status bar or go to Tools > Greasemonkey and click on "Manage User Scripts." Then, click on "Cipher’s Live Hotmail Companion 1.4" in the left hand column. If you think you might want to use the script again someday, just uncheck the box near the bottom left next to where it says "Enabled." If you want to get rid of the script, you can click on the Uninstall button near the bottom middle instead. When you’re done, click on OK near the bottom right.

Finally, if you also want to uninstall Greasemonkey because you have no further use for it, go to Tools > Add-ons. In the new window, click on Greasemonkey, then click on the Uninstall button on the far right of that same highlighted line.

That’s it. Adblock Plus should once again be working properly with Hotmail, allowing you to fully use all of Hotmail’s features and block all of its ads, and all of the changes made in my last post should be undone. Enjoy.

Problems with Live Hotmail and Adblock? Try this.

Ed — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:47:09 +0000

If you’re like me, then you love Firefox for its seemingly limitless number of customization options and the ability to add a wide range of useful add-ons to your web browser. Among these add-ons, one of the most crucial to a good browsing experience has to be Adblock Plus (or Adblock). This practically invisible add-on eliminates just about every advertisement you’d come across while surfing the net. Some may say that this is wrong and immoral, but I say that since I’m one of the people who never clicks on advertisements, serving me ads while I’m browsing is bad for everyone. It distracts me while I’m browsing and uses up my bandwidth, and it increases server load and uses up the server’s bandwidth. Plus, if I like your site’s content enough and your ads are unobtrusive, I’ll probably unblock your ads anyway.

If you share this mindset, then you were probably very disappointed when it was recently revealed that the latest release of Windows Live Hotmail (now available for everyone) has some major problems when it’s viewed in Firefox with Adblock Plus (or Adblock) enabled. In particular, it is impossible to get the Reply, Forward, and New Message forms to properly load, making it impossible to send email in Hotmail as long as ads are blocked by Adblock Plus. The Hotmail team recommends that everyone in this situation should simply disable Adblock Plus. Doing this will make Hotmail behave normally, but it will also make ads visible once again (both the top banner and the small ad in the lower left-hand corner). Another option is to find the exact filter in Adblock Plus that is messing up Hotmail and to remove it. This will leave Adblock Plus enabled on Hotmail, but it has the same effect as disabling it since it will make the ads viewable, plus it will make some ads visible on other sites.

Since neither of the above options sounds very appealing, I present to you another option that will not only make Hotmail work properly but will also block the ads just as Adblock Plus normally would. All you need to do is follow these steps:
1. Make sure you have Greasemonkey installed by going to Tools > Add-ons. If you don’t have it, then download it by going here and clicking on "Install Now." If it’s disabled, make sure you enable it.
2. Install Live Hotmail Companion 1.4 by going here and clicking on "Install this script" at the top right of the page.
3. Go to Hotmail and sign-in as usual. When it finishes logging you in, right click on the Adblock Plus symbol visible in either your toolbar or status bar. (If it’s not visible, go to Tools > Adblock Plus. In the new window, go to Options and make sure "Show in status bar" is checked.) Click on "Disable on …", where … is your Hotmail server visible in the address bar. (In other words, click on the top option, not the lower one that says "Disable on this page only.") This will disable Adblock Plus on Hotmail.
4. Go to another website and go back to Hotmail. You should now find that Hotmail behaves like normal but the ads are blocked. Test this out by trying to create a new email message. The email form should come up like normal, including the box where you enter the body of the email.

An added benefit of this Greasemonkey script is that it also removes the empty space at the top where the ad would have been, giving you even more space to view your email. I’ve tried this workaround personally and have found it to work very well, with the only negative being that it may make Hotmail very slightly slower (although this could just be in my head – the difference is negligible, at least on a high-speed connection on a fairly fast computer). While you’re improving your Hotmail experience, be sure to go to Options > More options… (in the top right of the Hotmail page) when you’re logged into Hotmail. Scroll down to "Customize your mail" and click on "Today page settings." Click in the bubble next to "Skip the Today page and take me straight to my inbox" and then click on Save. This will do away with that annoying Today page and take you straight to your Inbox next time you log in. You can still access the Today page by clicking on Today in the bottom left corner of the Hotmail page.

Monk Season Premiere Tonight

Ed — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 23:59:08 +0000

It’s been a bit of a wait, but Monk is finally returning tonight with all new episodes to keep your summer nights nice and happy. The premiere of Monk begins at 9 PM (EST) on USA Network, with future episodes being at that same time as well. Unfortunately, despite the obvious lack of good TV series currently airing new episodes, somehow the powers that be decided that it would be smart to show new episodes of Doctor Who on SciFi at the same time that USA is showing new episodes of Monk. It seems absurd that neither network could find a different time to show these great series even though most of their primetime TV slots are lacking anything worthwhile, but they nevertheless decided to leave them be at 9 PM on Fridays. I suppose it could be that the audience for these shows doesn’t really overlap very much, but I for one thoroughly enjoy both series. I guess I’ll have to try and catch a showing of Monk later in the week so I can watch Doctor Who tonight. Also of note is that the fairly popular series Psych returns with new episodes in a few minutes at 8 PM on USA. Personally, however, I’ll save my enthusiasm for Monk and Doctor Who.

Stargate SG-1 Series Finale Tonight

Ed — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:21:19 +0000

It’s been a great ten seasons of action-packed science fiction, but tonight Stargate SG-1 will finally draw to a close its impressive run on television. This season has been a rather unusual one, with many of the episodes of course dedicated to the major story arc involving the Ori threat to Earth but broken up unexpectedly every now and then with episodes focusing entirely on smaller, fairly unimportant plots that allow us to focus our attention more on the further development of the characters and making further progress on sub-plots that have been present on the show for some time. I don’t think it was the most cohesive final season of a show by any means, but it was still definitely a good one, and I expect tonight’s finale not to disappoint. The promo promises that the episode will focus on resolving the Ori threat, and my money is on the inclusion of a heavy dose of action to supplement a great deal of plot development. This historic episode will first be broadcast tonight at 8 PM (EST) on SciFi, followed by the season finale of Stargate Atlantis. In all, it should be a very good night of television for science fiction fans everywhere.

The 4400 and The Dead Zone Season Premieres Tonight

Ed — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 20:56:56 +0000

With the exception of a few shows like Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and So You Think You Can Dance, there are very few good shows worth watching on television right now. That will change considerably tonight, when two of the best shows in recent memory, The 4400 and The Dead Zone, return with brand new episodes to kick off a new season. As always, the ending to each show’s previous season left the viewer wondering what would happen next, and tonight’s episodes look to relieve that curiosity, at least to a certain extent. My only concern is that The Dead Zone’s new season promises to be "the season that changes everything." Frankly, I hope that they don’t change too much, because I really like the way things currently are, in particular the main characters and their relationships with one another.

They better not have one of the main characters become poorly written-out like the creators of Monk did with Sharona. It really would be a disservice to the show. I suppose some evolution on the show is necessary, though, since the main characters have been largely the same throughout the series, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a little shakeup. If you missed last season’s finales or just want a refresher, USA Network has been kind enough to provide these episodes free of charge for your viewing pleasure online. Just go to each show’s site for the proper links. You can watch The 4400 tonight on USA Network at 9 PM (EST) and The Dead Zone following immediately after on the same channel at 10 PM (EST). If you miss tonight’s episodes, then you should be able to see them again later in the week. Also, if viewing episodes online is your thing, then USA promises that the premiere of The 4400 will be viewable online on Monday.

Great Movies Coming to Coolidge Corner Theatre This Summer

Ed — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:59:25 +0000

If you live in Boston or the surrounding area and are fond of good, classic movies, then you’re in for a real treat this summer. I am very fond of Coolidge Corner Theatre, and I have been for some time now. Its purpose is a fine one, bringing classic, international, or otherwise unseen movies to the Boston area. Unlike most movie theatres, Coolidge is not-for-profit and is motivated only by the desire to bring the "finest international, documentary, animated, and independent film selections and series" to its elegant, old-time movie theatre so that movie-goers in Brookline and all around can enjoy some fine movies. I personally have seen a handful of good movies there, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Napoleon Dynamite, The Breakfast Club, and one of my favorites, Xanadu. I had a lot of fun each time I saw a film there, and I have a feeling that a lot of movie fans will be having a great deal of fun there in the coming months as well. Unfortunately, since I’m at home in Tampa right now, I won’t be able to enjoy these great films, but I am certain that many people in the Boston area will cherish these showings.

I had been expecting there to be a few good movies showing at Coolidge over the summer, but I was shocked at just how many they’d added to their list in the recent weeks when I viewed my Coolidge email newsletter earlier today. There are many other movies coming to the Coolidge this summer, but here are my personal highlights (movies so good that I would go see them this summer if I could). On Monday, June 18th, the Coolidge Science on Screen series continues with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. June 21st brings Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and August 23rd features the original Back to the Future, both of which are part of the free outdoor family screening series. August also features a number of other great films, including The Big Lebowski on the 6th, West Side Story on the 13th, Casablanca on the 20th, and Lawrence of Arabia not long after on September 3rd. Not to be forgotten, of course, is the charity screening of Serenity on June 23rd.

All in all, I’d say that Bostonian movie fans have a lot to look forward to, with the exception of an empty wallet after buying the tickets for all these movies. However, all profit goes right back into helping the Coolidge theatre. My hope is that Coolidge will continue to show such great movies over the coming year, because I found this past year to be relatively void of what I would consider to be great movies that appeal to me.

Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis Return Tonight with New Episodes

Ed — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:31:27 +0000

It’s been a bit of a wait, but two of SciFi’s best shows, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, are finally returning from many weeks of reruns tonight with all new episodes. Both will pick up where their respective cliffhangers left off, meaning that both episodes should be full of excitement. SG-1, in particular, should have a great deal of action and plot development given that this will be the first of the very last episodes before the show’s finale. Once the finale has come and gone, all we’ll have left to do is to sit around and wait for the already-announced SG-1 direct-to-DVD movies titled The Ark of Truth and Continuum (and keep watching Atlantis, of course). My XP Media Center PC is already set-up to record these episodes tonight, and if you enjoy goof sci-fi or action TV, then hopefully you will be able to watch them tonight or when they are reshown later on in the night. The new episode of SG-1, titled "The Quest – Part 2", will be shown at 8 PM (EST) on SciFi, followed by the episode of Atlantis, "The Return – Part 2", at 9 PM.

Xdrive Still Down?

Ed — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 14:40:34 +0000

I mentioned a few days ago that it looked like Xdrive might be adding improved performance and storage while the site was taken offline overnight. The upgrade was only supposed to last that one night. However, I have been trying each day since then to sign into my Xdrive account with no success. The website came back online not long after the supposed overhaul, including a slightly prettier main page. However, every time I go to sign in and enter my (correct) AOL screen name and password as I always have, it says "We’re sorry, but we’re unable to confirm that Screen Name & Password combination." I know for a fact that I’ve been entering it correctly. While I don’t see any obvious reason why my login attempts could be failing, I do notice that it stops adding asterisks in the password field as I type in my password after I have entered only 8 characters. While this may be intentional, it may also be possible that the system is only accepting 8 characters for the password from the user and as such it does not show these 8 characters as matching my (more than 8 character) password. I would usually find the website administrator’s contact information and send him an email letting him know about the problem, but in AOL’s infinite wisdom, they have decided that only paying customers deserve to receive email support. As a result, I see absolutely no way of informing the site’s technical staff about this obviously debilitating error. Everything else on the site looks and feels very finished and works correctly, so my guess is that this error is unintentional and that the site’s staff are currently unaware of it. I sincerely hope that someone (who is actually able to) alerts them or that they notice the problem themselves so that I will once again be able to sign into this handy website and actually get to experience the enhanced performance they claimed during the site upgrade.

More Storage Coming to Xdrive?

Ed — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 01:07:46 +0000

Just now I went to Xdrive.com to upload a few videos to my free Xdrive/AOL account for safe-keeping when I was greeted by something I had never seen before. Instead of the usual Xdrive login page, I was shown a short message that states the following:

Service Notice
Xdrive is down right now while we perform upgrades that will allow you to experience an increase in performance (faster!) and expanded storage capacity.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

We anticipate being online 9AM Eastern Standard Time.

Ever since AOL bought Xdrive and made it free to anyone with an AOL screen name, I’ve found it to be a useful yet inconsistent service. No one can argue that having 5 GB of free, secure online storage accessible anywhere with an internet connection is a valuable service. However, site responsiveness has always been very unpredicatable. Sometimes it will load pages quickly with no upload problems, while other times you will be lucky to login at all because it is so slow or you may have difficulties successfully uploading files. If this site upgrade does in fact improve performance, then it should make the site much easier and more enjoyable to use. Also, while 5 GB is a very large amount of storage space for a free service to offer as it is, any additional space offered for free would be very welcome. I look forward to the site coming back online and seeing how effective these upgrades prove to be.

Monk Season Finale Friday at 9 PM

Ed — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 04:52:58 +0000

It seems like the new season of Monk just started, and already it’s coming to an end. As always, it was a great season full of Monk’s wonderful tendencies, phobias, and awesome detective skills. The season finale looks like it will place Monk into an environment that a germ-ophobe like himself is sure to detest – the hospital. Hopefully Natalie will have plenty of wipes on hand, because I’m sure they’re going to need every one of them. The episode will first be shown on Friday, March 2nd, at 9 PM (EST). However, if you can’t watch it firsthand or have your DVR record it, then you shouldn’t have any problem catching it later on because USA is usually pretty good about reshowing new episodes of its series during the following week. Here’s the description of the episode from the official Monk website:

Monk goes to the emergency room for a bloody nose, but when a doctor in the hospital turns up dead, Monk joins the murder investigation … and soon finds his own life in grave danger. Don’t miss the Monk Season Finale — "Mr. Monk Goes to the Hospital" this Friday at 9/8C

Free Xbox Live Arcade Games for Me

Ed — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 18:37:40 +0000

On Friday, February 16th, I got an email from Microsoft that I really wasn’t expecting. I had completely forgotten that a while ago, I had registered on an Xbox promotional website with the promise of free Xbox Live Arcade games to come in the future. I didn’t think any more of it until I got an email with the subject line "Your Xbox 360 Reward is Here." As it turns out, just for going onto that website and registering, I get to download the full versions of Joust and Frogger from Xbox Live Arcade for free thanks to the two codes included in the email. Admittedly, I’m not the biggest fan of Frogger, but each time I tried the demo on XLA, it grew on me a bit more. As for Joust, I’ve always been a big fan of that game. I played it many times on Gameboy, and when the XLA version came out, I played the demo repeatedly on my Xbox 360. I tend to spend money on Live Arcade sparingly, but I was always somewhat inclined to buy this great title. Now that I get it for free, I won’t have to. I look forward to enjoying both of these classic arcade titles on my 360 over spring break and over the summer months. Thanks, Xbox.

RA’s Are Noisy Too!

Ed — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 04:28:59 +0000

Some people, in particular Boston University Office of Residence Life employees, would have you believe that their employees, in particular their resident assistants, are infallible, but I assure you that this isn’t the case as one recent incident shows. Last night I was sitting here in my room in Warren Towers browsing the internet as I often do. I usually have the window open a bit because it gets so hot in here, but not this time. No, this time I wanted it to warm up a bit. The open window usually adds a good amount of background noise and masks a lot of slight noises coming from beyond the walls or the door. This time, with the door closed, I could hear all – not that there was particularly much to hear. The walls do a good job of insulating noise, and there was no one in the hallway.

However, at that very time, I heard something that would most definitely be worthy of a noise violation if any RA were in hearing distance. Bu wait… what’s that? The noise came from the senior RA’s room (who just happens to live right next to me)! No, this wasn’t a case of playing music too loud. I had heard his girlfriend come into his room earlier (and not long after the incident I heard and saw both of them leave). How can I describe this noisy disturbance that penetrated the wall and reached my ears?

I can only characterize the noise as "female orgasmic exclamations." To put it simply, either the RA with high seniority status was watching a porn flick with his girlfriend in the room and the volume on high, or he was showing his girlfriend a really good time. I’m not going to judge him or his girlfriend. They’re both adults and should be able to do whatever they want in private as long as no one gets hurt and nothing illegal takes place. However, given the fact that these cries of "joy" were loud enough for me to hear through the wall, it’s a safe bet that such a disturbance would have warranted a noise violation. To make matters worse, the fact that two people of the opposite gender were in the same dorm room together with the door closed probably violates some BU housing policy (such an event happens regularly next door and on virtually every floor of every BU residence). It’s safe to say that Mr. SRA would be in a decent amount of trouble if the proper authorities had caught him.

I have no intention of telling on him though. I understand that everyone makes noise and that in order for a close-quarters residence like this to function properly, all residents need to be flexible and be forgiving of minor infractions against BU policy. I hope that RA’s, in particular this SRA, keep this in mind in the future. However, I can guarantee that if an RA gives me (another) noise violation for my reasonable music volume, then I will most definitely be filing a complaint with the Office of Residence Life about this apparently joyous incident. I wonder what this RA’s parents would think when they receive and read the letter from BU describing his noise violation?

The Serial Defecator

Ed — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:37:23 +0000

As we go about our daily lives here at Boston University, we usually assume that our fellow classmates are upstanding, law-abiding people. It would seem that, however, there is an exception to this rule. We do, in fact, have a criminal on our campus. No, he is not a burglar or some other common criminal. He is… a serial defecator! This past Friday night, it felt like a scene right out of Austin Powers. I was walking into the Men’s restroom on the first floor of Shelton Hall, ready to do my business and return to my room to go to bed. Things did not go as I planned, however. I opened the door and took a step inside. I immediately said to myself "this bathroom smells like shit!" I looked down at the middle of the floor, and to my horror, there was a pile of dark brown excrement lying in plain view. A voice inside my head said "it is shit, Ed." Well good, then at least it’s not just me.

I let out a few loud, shrill cries expressing my anguish, and I quickly left the bathroom and returned to the lobby. I told my friend Alex that he had to go to the bathroom to experience it for himself, but he thought I was pulling his leg. Oh, I wish I was. He comes back from the restroom shocked as well. Sarah Hemperley, the late-night security guard thought that we were working together to pull one over on her. After sufficient urging, she too went to the restroom to investigate while we watched the guard booth. Naturally, she too was disgusted at the sight she had just witnessed. While Sarah filled out the incident report, Alex and I felt it necessary to further investigate to confirm the exact nature of the defecation.

While it’s not possible for us to know exactly what happened, it appears that someone decided to relieve their bowels on the floor of the men’s restroom, squarely in the middle of the room. Someone, possibly the defecator himself, had stepped in it and tracked the excrement into the stall, leaving skid marks behind. Then, we looked into the stall and witnessed something that may make me not want to ever use that restroom again. Whether intentionally or by accident, the toilet seat was completely smeared with light brown excrement. Lovely.

With the incident report complete, Sarah informed me that I have the honor of being named the discoverer of the incident. Does that mean that I get a badge or certificate or something? As is customary, Sarah also called in the incident to the proper BU building and grounds upkeep people, and not long after, the usual Saturday morning B&G guy came and was tasked with cleaning up the mess. In his opinion, it was the worst mess that he had seen in three years. To make matters worse, it was apparently hardened into the floor, making cleanup very difficult.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been quite as bad if this was an isolated incident. However, according to Sarah, this had apparently happened a few times before on the ninth floor of Shelton Hall, where someone had defecated a while ago and proceeded to smear it on the walls. The B&G guy confirmed that such incidents have happened elsewhere on campus, including such places as residence hall elevators. It seems that we have at least one serial defecator on campus. It is up to us to find this person and hold him accountable for his disgusting defecation habits so that such incidents never happen again. I don’t think anyone ever wants to witness what Alex, Sarah, and I saw, and we don’t want the BU B&G crew to have to clean it up either. Remember: only you can prevent serial defecation!

30 Ideas to Improve Xbox 360, Live, and Xbox.com

Ed — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:06:25 +0000

Major Nelson recently posted a call to everyone interested in the future of Xbox to post either in the comments on his site or in the comments of the original post on this topic over at Ozymandias. He asked that the Xbox community detail its ideas for improving Xbox 360, Live, and Xbox.com, and the Xbox team would then take this feedback and use it to determine what should be included in future updates to the various Xbox platforms. This is just another example of why I love Xbox and the team behind it. Unlike many other companies who decide what they’re going to do and stick to it regardless of what the community thinks, Microsoft’s Xbox team has always been very good at reaching out to the community and asking for its input. As a result, past dashboard updates have made significant improvements to the Xbox 360 experience, and many if not most of the changes were at the direct request of the community. Xbox 360, Xbox Live, and Xbox.com are continuously evolving and improving, and we as the community are the main driving force in deciding how they change next.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist this chance to let my opinion be heard. It took a little while and a decent amount of thinking, but I finally came up with this list of 30 ideas that would improve Xbox 360, Xbox Live, and the Xbox.com website. This list doesn’t include all of my ideas, but I think it does highlight the changes that I think are most crucial if the Xbox platform is to continue to improve.

1. Keep releasing new updates to improve back-compat.

2. It’s currently very slow trying to go up one level when browsing music. It needs to be much faster like it is when using the other console menus.

3. There needs to be a way to categorize one’s friends list. Sure, I remember who most of them are, but it would be nice to easily and quickly see who is online that I often play Halo, Gears of War, Rainbow Six, etc with. One option is groups like Windows Live Messenger has. Another, better option is tagging. Allow me to make custom tags/labels like "Halo 2" and apply this label and others to any Live friend I choose. An option to message or invite all friends in a certain group/tag would be nice as well.

4. Allow me to keep a short, private comment on each of my friends viewable only by me on my console and on Xbox.com. This will make it easier to remember who a person is and to keep notes about future meeting times, etc.

5. When streaming from Windows Media Player 11, I am currently unable to stream track 1 in each of my albums. I should be able to stream all my tracks regardless of their track number.

6. I still can’t see the ads on my Xbox Live blade. I’ve had Xbox Live since fairly early into its lifetime on the original Xbox. It gets very annoying constantly seeing "what are you waiting for?" I’m not waiting for anything. I joined years ago and I want that message to go away. I want my ads. If age is a concern, it shouldn’t be a problem because I am over 18.

7. Support more video codecs. WMV is great, but I’d also like divx, xvid, .mov, and maybe even flash video. Other codecs would be welcome as well.

8. A universal, cross-game clan option accessible from the dashboard and guide. Unique clans for each game would also be welcome, because while I may like to play Rainbow Six with a certain group of people, I may like playing Halo 3 with a totally different group. The universal clan could be simply for people who I just like to play with and associate with regardless of the game.

9. The ability to listen to voice messages on Xbox.com and save them as mp3′s.

10. The ability to view Live Vision pictures on Xbox.com and save them as jpg’s.

11. The ability to send pictures using Xbox.com.

12. The ability to stream videos downloaded from Xbox Live on my Windows PC. This includes purchased content such as TV shows and movies.

13. I should be able to search the Xbox Live marketplace by keyword and results should be as fast and accurate as Google. The current categories are helpful, but there will come a point where it will be much faster to do a search for "halo" to find Halo 3 content instead of browsing for it the old-fashioned way.

14. Instead of just saying "Play game", my dashboard should say "Play" followed by the name of the game in the DVD drive.

15. I should be able to chat with more than one other person within the same chat session. If you have to, you can require that all people in the chat be in the 360 dashboard and make the chat a sort of application in itself (like it was on the original Xbox). A better option is to allow me to chat with more than one person while doing anything as I currently can with private chat. As each additional person joins the chat, make one of the private chat slots unavailable so that I don’t use any more bandwidth than the current version where I can have a few individual private chats.

16. Allow me to see the negative feedback I left on a person. It’s great that I can see in my recent players list that I left them bad feedback, but it could be helpful to see what that feedback was. For example, if I left negative feedback for a person not being good enough at a game and now they are good at it, I might want to change my mind and prefer them. However, just seeing that sad face next to their name might make me want to never prefer them even though I might enjoy playing with them now.

17. Provide a defragmentation utility accessible from the System blade. As I download and delete large pieces of content regularly, I’m sure that my hard drive is becoming rather fragmented. Along with this utility, include the option to cancel the defragmentation process at any time in case I suddenly decide that I need to use the console.

18. Discounts or occasional sales on marketplace content for Gold members.

19. Increase the maximum number of friends to 200. The current limit of 100 is simply too restricting for most online gaming enthusiasts, despite however low the average number of Xbox Live friends may be.

20. Allow me to do other things besides editing the id3 tags while a CD is being ripped to the hard drive. It would also be nice if I could listen to a song as soon as it has been ripped instead of waiting for the entire CD to be ripped.

21. Add more trims for the 360 dashboard blades.

22. Remove Xbox Live Arcade demos from played game lists, including the gamer card.

23. Provide a way for a person to capture a screenshot or video of his current game and allow the person to send this picture as a picture message to other Live members.

24. There should be a way to try out gamer pics from the 360 dashboard. Perhaps when browsing picture packs, there could be an option that allows you to see your gamer card with each of the gamer pictures you are considering.

25. There also needs to be a way to try out themes before buying. One option is to allow a person to use it on his console for a minute and then have it automatically display a message asking if the person wants to buy the theme. If he says no, it’s automatically deleted.

26. It’s nice having status messages telling people if I’m online, away, etc., but it would also be nice if I could set a custom message, particularly for when I’m away.

27. It’s nice that we can now fast-forward/rewind while watching a video, but we should also have this option for music. It’s been a standard features on PCs and regular old CD players for many years, so it’s only right that 360 should have it as well.

28. Provide a way to download original Xbox free downloadable content to the 360 hard drive using the marketplace instead of the in-game option. Sure, I could pop in each disc and use its custom downloader to download maps and other content, but marketplace is just so much easier.

29. It would be fun to see a list on Xbox.com showing how many people are currently playing a game while connected to Live. It’s always interesting visiting Bungie.net and seeing how many people are playing Halo 2. It would be even more fun if I could do this for all games in one convenient place. Plus, if I see that no one is playing a game, it might save me the trouble of popping in the disc.

30. I love downloading free content from marketplace, but it gets annoying when I have to browse through every game just to find a free gamer picture here and there. There needs to be a way to browse only the free content on marketplace.

This list of ideas can also be viewed in the comments section of Major Nelson’s post by going here.

2007!

Ed — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:19:54 +0000

Happy New Year! I hope that everyone has a wonderful year, full of happiness and prosperity. May this year bring peace to places where there is unrest, joy to those who are sad, good health to those who are sick, and success to those who are going through difficult times in their various endeavors.

YouTube Spam!

Ed — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:41:58 +0000

No, someone didn’t post a video featuring everyone’s favorite canned meat. Instead, I’ve been noticing lately that my YouTube General Messages inbox has been filled with spam one day after the next. It’s bad enough that we’re subjected to spam in our e-mail inboxes, but I really don’t want to receive it at YouTube as well. I know that people like getting the word out about their website, but the fact is that I do not want to visit your sex site. The problem got so bad that I had to tell YouTube to stop sending me emails whenever I get a new message. Luckily, this problem seems to be getting better in recent days, but the problem never should have happened in the first place. Does YouTube have spam filters? If it doesn’t, then it desperately needs them, and if it does, then it really needs to improve them. It’s sad that we as internet users are subjected to spam at every site that offers us a messaging feature. I guess it’s just one of those things that we’ll have to learn to deal with. In the mean time, I’m hoping that YouTube prevents this from ever happening again and that other sites learn a lesson from this (MySpace, I’m looking your way).

Show Me the Money is Awesome

Ed — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 05:40:53 +0000

I was a little nervous about Show Me the Money before I watched its first episode on Tuesday night. It seems like all the time a new game show is popping up, and it fades away just as quickly thanks to a poor concept, boring contestants, or a bad host. It doesn’t feel like this has been happening as much recently, but it used to be pretty common and still is to a certain extent. It’s therefore pretty much a given that I was unsure whether or not ABC‘s latest venture in this space would be a success, despite it having one of the best hosts imagineable in William Shatner.

I still don’t know whether or not the series will be a success. That’s unfortunately entirely up to the American viewing public as a whole. However, I can say with certainty that I very much enjoyed the first episode of Show Me the Money. It started off a bit slow, which is only natural given that it’s a new show and that you have to get the audience and the contestant used to the rules of the game. However, once the rules became clear and everyone had settled into the style and pacing of the game, it was a lot of fun. Thanks to the way the show is set up, knowledge and luck play large roles, with knowledge giving the player the upper hand and a chance to walk away with many thousands of dollars. If I recall correctly, the first contestant won more than half a million dollars.

The game seemed complicated at first, but it is really rather simple. Essentially, you choose to answer one of three questions that begin with the same phrase. If you don’t like your question, you can choose one of the remaining two, and if you still don’t like that one, then you can choose the third question, which you then have to answer. Once you’ve answered the question, you pick a dancer who has a poster revealing a certain large sum of money. If you got the question right, your total goes up that much. If you got it wrong, it goes down by that amount. Once you get a total of six right or six wrong answers, the game is over and you leave with your ending total. This system makes both luck and skill important. If you get a question right, then you have nothing to worry about, and you want to get the highest money poster, but if you get one wrong, you want to get lucky and land on a low money poster. To make things more suspenseful, they don’t reveal if you got the question right or not until after the money poster is revealed. For a little added suspense, one of the posters contains the "killer card." If you pick this one, then you better hope that you got your question right or that you can answer a question posed to you. If you can’t do either of these, then you leave right then with nothing.

As I said, the game is simple but complex enough to keep it interesting. That alone would make it a good show. However, it really shines thanks to its host, William Shatner, its dancers, and the dancing they do. It’s easy to imagine a modern show where lots of pretty women come out in revealing dresses and dance around to music. That happens here, too, with dancing taking place regularly for commercial breaks, at major milestones in the game, and when the show starts. However, what you won’t find anywhere else is William Shatner, Captain Kirk himself, dancing along with them. Of course, he’s wearing a nice suit sort of outfit, and he doesn’t dance as well as the women, but it may even be better because of it. The simple fact is that witnessing William Shatner dancing many times on the show is simply a joy to watch. It’s not great dancing by any means, but it’s very entertaining and sometimes funny. As if all this lively dancing wasn’t enough to keep you interested, Shatner also uses a wealth of facial expressions, hand gestures, and unexpected but often funny remarks to keep things fresh and interesting.

Overall, I was very happy with this show’s first episode. It started slow, but once the audience, the contestant, and Shatner got into the swing of things, the show got really good. I hope that next week’s episode on Wednesday at 8 PM is just as entertaining and that America makes the effort to watch it as they should. I don’t think that they’d regret it.

My Music Isn’t Too Loud (But Certain RA’s Are Too Senseless)

Ed — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 05:10:42 +0000

Common sense would tell you that a person who is a resident assistant at a fine higher education institution like Boston University has some common sense of her own. It would seem that this isn’t necessarily true. I sometimes like to listen to my music a little loud (no, not really loud, but sort of loud, to the point where you can hear it a little if you’re standing right next to my door). I sometimes do this at night while I’m doing homework or doing things on the computer. It helps pass the time, and it’s fun. So, I figured, who would it hurt if on a Friday night I listen to a little great music at below-normal level. Apparently for one BU Warren Towers RA, it was a huge deal.

The time was 11:20 PM. A short, thin, Asian girl with glasses knocks on my door. I figure that it must be someone soliciting, as often happens at night in Warren Towers. I was wrong. Instead, she told me that my music was too loud because she could hear it through the door. I had passed another person on my floor earlier who was getting told to turn their music down, but I didn’t think much of it because their music really was loud. Mine was not. At best, it was just audible from a little beyond the door. What a shock! Someone can hear something from beyond a room’s door in Warren Towers?! Anyone who has been in Warren for any length of time knows that virtually everything can be heard through a room’s door, whether it’s someone talking, the traffic noise from I-90 if a window is partially open, a bottle opening, etc. The fact of the matter is that the doors here are made of such poor insulating material that virtually any sound can be heard through them when one is standing in close proximity to the door. Because of this, it is necessary during the night to place limits on noise within rooms. However, this RA went way too far.

Let’s break it down. It’s a Friday night at 11:20 PM. I’m guessing at least 90% of the residents of Warren are out getting drunk or partying in some other capacity. Second, virtually no one does homework on a Friday night, certainly not at 11:20 PM. Third, a little common sense tells you that if music is just able to be heard when you’re standing a little beyond a door, there is almost no chance that it can be heard in someone else’s room if they have the door closed (and probably not even if they had the door open). Plus, if the noise truly was a bother to someone, then I’m sure that they would have approached me or the RA about it to get the problem resolved. Naturally, this didn’t happen, nor has it ever. I presented the RA (whom I had never even see before) with my arguments, and she presented me with the most illogical responses possible.

To my arguments that it can’t be heard in someone else’s room and that it wasn’t particularly loud, her only fallback response was that the BU policy is that music cannot be heard in the hallway. Genius! Pure genius. Someone give this girl a Nobel prize. The simple fact that music can be heard at some arbitrary location in a hallway is not grounds for it being too loud. Such a policy defies all reason. If a student were studying two feet away from my door in the hallway, then I could understand it, but they don’t (and I would be a little freaked out if they did). Students study in their own rooms, usually with the door closed, or in the common room. The chances of my music penetrating the hallway and into the place where the student is studying are so slim that it’s more likely that George W. Bush would learn how to pronounce "nuclear" correctly. Even if this were technically BU’s policy, then the person tasked with enforcing that policy should have the sense to enforce it wisely and in the spirit of the policy, instead of mindlessly reciting the policy verbatim. This is why we have judges in our judicial system. They are supposed to be wise enough to understand the law and make rulings as best they can based on the law’s intention.

So, let’s run through it one more time: no chance of anyone studying because it’s Friday night and no one is here, no chance of anyone being able to hear my music, and everything that takes place in a room can be heard at almost any volume within a short distance of the door anyway. All that this girl’s telling me to turn down my music could do was lower my level of enjoyment of my music. The music was affecting no one else.

When presented with my logic and refusing to budge, I stood firm and reiterated my reasoning. Coming up short of a reasonable argument in her defense, this RA got extremely defensive and started essentially flashing her badge, saying that if I had a problem with it, she could give me a noise violation and I can take it up with her boss. Naturally, I wouldn’t want a noise violation, and I have a feeling that her boss is probably as thick-headed as she is. All I know is that any level of respect I may have had for her was quickly destroyed when she started asserting her authority. It was roughly equivalent to a police officer declaring that he can do whatever he wants simply because he has been placed into a position of power.

Frankly, I don’t care if you’re a resident assistant and have been given certain powers. That doesn’t make you instantly wise, and power without wisdom is a dangerous thing (just look at how certain politicians behave). To be an RA, one must be at least an undergraduate junior. This is truly scary. This girl will be going out into the business world shortly, she’s completed at least half of her "higher education", and she still lacks almost all common sense. I have never seen this girl before tonight, and I hope I never do again. Going along with the song I was listening to, I hope she spins herself right round and never comes back.

While this demonstration of a lack of common sense had little major impact on me or others, it is a perfect demonstration of how well-educated modern people, in positions of power no less, can lack the sense that is so vital to their future ability to properly deal with others in a positive way and make the world a better place. Our world desperately needs many improvements if we as a species are going to continue to inhabit it in the centuries to come. Up until now, our major shortcoming as a species has been a profound lack of common sense and our inability to use logic in solving real world problems. It accounts for pollution and global warming, it’s accounted for many wars, and it has accounted for many prejudices (as well as many other major problems). If we are to overcome the problems that face us, then we urgently need to adopt common sense and employ logic as best we can in as short a time as possible. I thought that we were on the verge of this, but tonight’s incident is yet another reminder that we might still have a ways to go before common sense really is common. I just hope that the majority of people adopt it before it’s too late for all of us.

As a last word, I sincerely hope that this RA isn’t in the school of management. The thought of her making major decisions and telling others what to do in the business world is truly terrifying. To quote a great novel: "the horror!" Also, for future reference, never argue points of logic with an intelligent person who is also a big Star Trek fan (like myself). Endless numbers of hours of watching have impressed a great deal of Vulcan logic on me, and combined with my own knowledge and experience, I have a very sound knowledge of logic and the employment of common sense. I doubt that any BU RA touting a rule book can match that.

Show Me the Money on ABC Tonight

Ed — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 02:00:38 +0000

I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about watching something on ABC. ABC is not usually my first choice for primetime TV programming, but thanks to its newest gameshow, that may very well change. Tonight is the series premiere of Show Me the Money, starring William Shatner. With the exception of Boston Legal, I’ve watched all of Shatner’s major recent TV series, including the wonderful but under-appreciated Invasion Iowa and the short-lived Iron Chef USA (it only lasted two episodes). Even if the rest of tonight’s episode is awful, I know that William Shatner will make it worth watching. Show Me the Money will run from 9:30 PM to 11 PM tonight (EST), and in subsequent weeks it will be shown during its regular one-hour time slot at 8 PM on Wednesdays. Be sure to watch it tonight, and remember – hold on to your shat!

Windows Media Player 11 (Final) Now Available

Ed — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:53:26 +0000

I was ecstatic when I saw that the latest version of Microsoft’s popular media player, Windows Media Player 11, was finally out of beta. It did make sense, though, given the fact that the recently released fall update for Xbox 360 added the ability to stream video from WMP 11. This feature wouldn’t be of much use if one didn’t have a final build of the media player. I had a lot of reason to be excited about this software release. I tried the beta (beta 2 I think) on my home computer over the summer, and except for a few bugs (which I could easily ignore given that it was a beta product and most betas are full of bugs), I was really impressed.

The interface is simply gorgeous, and in many ways more pleasing than iTunes. I was a little hesitant at first about whether I would like the new black color scheme, but after using the player for a bit, I found that I really liked it. The different album views for music worked very well, thanks in particular to an effective use of album cover art. The search feature was surprisingly fast, and the relocation of certain buttons and menus worked really well compared to previous versions of WMP. Except for the bugs and the fact that it can’t sync with my iPod, I thought that the software was nearly perfect. In fact, I was so impressed that I even said to myself at the time that once the final version is released, I may very well start using it as my primary media player for music over iTunes. That’s quite a statement given that I’ve been using iTunes exclusively as my mp3 player on my school computer since the fall of 2004. Sure, WMP 11 doesn’t have the neat Cover Flow option for viewing album artwork that’s present in iTunes 7, but that’s not a very big deal. Frankly, I’d take WMP 11′s awesome visualizations feature over Cover Flow.

Given my apparent love of Windows Media Player 11 and my anticipation of its release, you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that I wouldn’t be able to install it on my school (primary) PC. As I often like to do before install major new software, I took a look through the release notes, and I was very sad when I read that WMP 11 could be installed on virtually every version of Windows XP (that has the latest patches) except for Windows Media Center Edition 2002 and 2004. Unbelievable. I bought a WMCE 2004 PC from Dell over the summer in 2004 in preparation for going to college. It’s served me very well over the past couple years, functioning as a great PC (carrying all the features of XP Pro) and a great TV/PVR/media player. I wasn’t thrilled when I saw not long after I bought that PC that WMCE 2005 would have more features, but they weren’t that significant to me. I was just happy that my PC was as great as it was.

Then, when going to install the next great piece of Microsoft software, I see this:

"Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP cannot be installed on computers running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002 or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004."

It just doesn’t seem right. My PC is still pretty high-end, even more than two years later, running a rather new version of XP in Media Center Edition 2004, an operating system that has its media abilities as one of its major features, if not its biggest feature, and yet I can’t install the latest version of Windows Media Player on it. I really hope that Microsoft figures out how to modify WMP 11 such that it can be installed on PC’s running WMCE 2002 or 2004 so I can use this great WMP 11 on my primary PC. In the mean-time, I guess I’ll be sticking with iTunes. It never has cared what version of Windows I’m running, and I’m hoping it never will.

If you are running any updated version of Windows XP other than WMCE 2002 or 2004, then I still highly recommend you go here and download the final version of Windows Media Player 11. I think once you play around with it a little bit and get a little used to its new interface, you’ll really enjoy it and may even find that you want to use it as your primary media player for now on. Enjoy.

PS3 Launch Titles Look Good for a Reason

Ed — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:27:21 +0000

Now that the PS3′s often-delayed release is nearing closer, it’s becoming more and more common to see hands-on reviews of the system and some of the games that are scheduled to be released at the same time as the console. Even though the PS3′s release date is so close, it seems that many features of the console still have yet to be enabled, including its online network. Because of this, journalists posting their impressions of the console have tended to focus instead on what they actually can experience at the moment with the PS3 – near-final games and the basic user interface.

Overall, the reactions to the UI seem a bit mixed, with some people loving its simplicity, and others hating it because its too small and doesn’t work well enough given how many features of the console it has to incorporate. It worked pretty well for the PSP, but a next-gen console probably needs something a bit more complex and user-friendly for its UI. This really isn’t the focus of this post, though. The more PS3 hands-on articles I read, the more frustrated I get at the people who write these articles and the websites that publish them. It’s never a good sign when I start yelling at my computer monitor because an article lacks so much sense that it infuriates me.

Over and over, I read that these journalists are very impressed by the PS3 because its "launch" games look as good or slightly better than the Xbox 360′s launch games that came out at the end of last year. Some are sensible enough to state that this bodes well for the PS3 in that its launch games look so good, and others are more willing to proclaim their ignorance by declaring these games as proof that the PS3 is superior to the Xbox 360 in terms of power. These "launch" games may look very good, but there’s a reason for this. These games are not launch games in the typical sense. Historically, launch titles are games that launch along-side a new console and are intended to be the first foray by many developers into a new generation of games. Developers often spend an unusually short time developing these launch titles. Many big-name games take years to develop, whereas many launch games are developed in under a year, with some only undergoing major development for about half a year. Obviously, this difference in development time would dramatically affect the end quality of the games. As a result, more launch games tend to look (and sometime play) very poorly.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, including the original Halo. Such games as this are very much a rarity in the gaming world. While other launch titles get the usual half year to a year development time, Halo was in development for years before the console launched, just not the Xbox. Once Microsoft realized that it would be launching Xbox in Fall 2001, it quickly bought Bungie so it could secure a good launch title in Halo for its new console. As I said, this was a very unusual circumstance, and most launch games in the past have not had the benefit of this extra development time. This was also generally true for the launch of Xbox 360, where many of the games were developed very quickly or were slightly-modified high-end PC ports. Microsoft delivered the final dev. kits to developers with very little time to spare. Between the lack of development time and the short amount of time with final dev. kits, it is a given that Xbox 360 launch games would suffer the same fate as most other launch games of years past: they played fairly well and look rather good, but they were not nearly as revolutionary or breath-taking as they could have been.

Playstation 3 "launch" games almost entirely defy the term "launch title" in every way. Unlike the Xbox 360′s launch titles, PS3 launch titles have had far more time in development. Most games developers switched over to next-gen. development when Xbox 360 was on the horizon. However, they didn’t just begin developing for Xbox 360 at this time. Instead, they also started development of PS3 titles. Since Xbox 360 launched about a year ahead of PS3, 360 games had approximately a year less of development time in comparison to PS3 launch titles. One would certainly expect PS3 launch titles to have better graphics than 360 launch titles when they’ve had that much extra development time.

Another major consideration is that much of the work necessary to make great-looking next-gen. games was done right before Xbox 360 launched or after its release during development of Xbox 360 titles. This could mean as little as the fact that developers now have far more experience with next-gen. game development thanks to their experience developing for Xbox 360, or it could mean as much as the fact that many developers have the basic assets needed to create impressive next-gen. games already done thanks to work with 360 games. While these advances in developer experience and programming assets will also provide a great deal of benefit to upcoming 360 games by making them easier to develop (leaving more time for polish and improvements), it will also come across unfairly when people look at these assets being used in PS3 games.

Some oblivious people might mistake a good-looking PS3 launch game as being a fact that the console is easier to develop for given the fact that its launch titles (which usually have a short development time) can look so good and have such impressive gameplay. While the power of the PS3 certainly is a factor here, the main reason that these games are so impressive is because of these games’ unusually long development time (thanks largely to the numerous delays of PS3′s release date) and the fact that these games were able to be developed easily since developers had already created much of what was necessary to build the games while working on 360 titles.

I’m not saying that PS3 titles aren’t impressive and have great graphics. I’d just like to remind everyone that when they see a PS3 title, you can not make a direct comparison to already-released Xbox 360 titles, especially launch titles. While these PS3 games may be called "launch" titles, they are essentially second-generation titles debuting as launch titles due to an unusually long development time. It is true that some code optimizations could not be done because final PS3 dev. kits weren’t delivered until relatively recently, but the fact remains that the bulk of the games could be completed before the final dev. kits arrived, making these titles still essentially second-gen. games.

If you want a fair comparison between Xbox 360 and PS3 games, I suggest you compare the premiere PS3 launch titles to soon-to-be-released 360 titles like Gears of War. All I’ve seen so far from hands-on previews thus far is that while PS3 launch titles look incredible for launch games and compare favorably to already available 360 games, they all fail to match the gameplay and visuals of Gears of War and other great 360 titles being released this fall. Once PS3′s games are finally able to catch up to this fall’s great 360 games, even more impressive Xbox 360 games will be released one after another, including such sure-to-be great games as Mass Effect and Halo 3. It’s possible that PS3 may someday be able to surpass Xbox 360 in visuals and gameplay, but I really don’t think it will matter, because by the time it happens, 360 owners will have been enjoying excellent games for years and the next generation of consoles will be upon us.

To all those who have yet to embrace Xbox 360, there’s no better time than now. Jump in.

PS3 Overly Power-Hungry, Cost to Consumer Mounts

Ed — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:34:40 +0000

Gizmodo recently claimed in this article that Sony’s upcoming Playstation 3 will consume far more power that any other gaming console, including Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s upcoming Wii. Here’s the important information from the article:

Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 3, due on US shores on November 17, sucks up 380 watts of power, a far cry from the PS2 which sips a mere 45 watts. That means the PS3 uses more than twice the 160 watts consumed by the Xbox 360. The PS3′s 380 watts will cost you around $40 a year to run if you play it two hours a day.

This will have a major impact on gamers planning to purchase a PS3 come November. While PS3 is well-known to be the most expensive console of this generation, many fans were writing off the inflated price by stating that PS3 will offer many things for free, such as its online service, wheras the competition charges a yearly fee. Thanks to PS3′s enormous power-usage, even though Playstation online will be free, PS3 owners who play for around 4 or 5 hours a day will essentially be paying the same amount that Xbox 360 owners pay for Live ($50 a year) plus power usage, except they’ll be paying it entirely on their power bill. In the case of Live subscribers, we’re paying for a superior online service and a miminal amount of power usage. I have a feeling that many PS3 buyers won’t realize this cruel economic fact until well-after they’ve bought and played with their new big, black console. I predict that PS3′s power usage will come back to bite PS3 owners in the wallet a year or more down the road when they finally realize just how much energy their consoles have been consuming, courtesy of their overly-large power bills.

To make matters worse, PS3 owners will have to shell out extra for component or HDMI cables since PS3 only comes with composite cables. Also, Sony fans who want to take advantage of free online voice chat will have to buy a headset separately since that isn’t included either. Sure, PS3 comes with the equivalent of the 360′s play-and-charge kit, but the sum of the prices of the headset and HD cables is far greater than the $20 a play-and-charge kit costs. I hope Sony fans have some deep pockets full of lots of money, because they’re going to need it.

Windows Live Mail Getting Better, Still Needs Work

Ed — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:08:30 +0000

Commenting on other people’s blogs is fun, especially when those blogs get a lot of page views and a lot of comments. Since I use Windows Live Mail (the next generation of Hotmail) as my primary email, I naturally like to visit the blog of the team who makes Live Mail so I can find out what’s new. It’s also a great way for me to post my concerns and ideas for improving Windows Live Mail. I did just this on October 6th, and it was very interesting seeing what came of it. I was just posting my thoughts and feature requests in the hope that the team would read my comment and adopt some of my ideas for their future releases. Little did I know just how many people would read my comment and post after I did.

I was one of the first people to post, and I guess a lot of people like to read the first set of comments, because a large number of the subsequent posts referenced mine. Some agreed with my statements, some echoed my thoughts without actually referencing my post, and one person even commented that I made so many references to other email services that I must surely be "an agent of Yahoo! and Google." I’m not an agent of Yahoo! or Google. I’m just a tech-loving guy with a thirst for great email products. If I see something great in another company’s products, I won’t hesitate to mention it because I want Microsoft’s Windows Live Mail to be as great as it can be when it comes out of Beta at some undetermined point in the future.

I’ll likely be adding more thoughts on ways that Windows Live Mail can improve as time goes on, as well as how I think it fares in comparison to other email services. In the mean-time, I thought I should post the comment I made on October 6, 2006 at Your mail is here, come and get it!. I encourage you to read it and see what you think of my thoughts. If you have an interest in the future of Windows Live Mail because you’re a current Live Mail or Hotmail user, or if you’re just a technology-oriented person who would like to see Microsoft’s next webmail product be the best it can be, I ask that you do as I have done and post your thoughts and suggestions for improvements to Windows Live Mail on the team’s blog. They won’t know that people want certain changes and additions unless we speak up and let them know. My original comment from 10/6/2006 follows:

I’m really happy with the improvements you’ve made in this release. It’s a significant upgrade over M7, and I really appreciate the work you put into it. Even if you had just added the Windows Live button with the drop-down list of Windows Live sites, it would have been worth the release. I do, however, still have some features that I would really like to see added before the final release, most if not all of which I may have posted on this blog before. They are as follows:

1) The ability to flag an email (make it a high priority/mark it as important). Windows Live Mail Desktop now has this feature (and it’s a very nice and needed feature, too). I would love to see this added to the web version of Windows Live Mail, however perhaps in not exactly the same way as it is implemented in Desktop. Desktop uses an entire column to display whether or not an email is flagged, and this uses a lot of screen space. For the web version, I think it would be sufficient to remove this column. Instead, add the ability to right-click and email and flag it. If an email is flagged, it would have a small red flag icon in the pane that displays the list of emails, right next to the message’s subject line by the icons that indicate if the message has an attachment. You could then add the ability to sort by whether or not an email is flagged, as well as the addition of a "flagged" category to the farthest left pane, perhaps under the other folders and in smaller font. As an added bonus, you can make it so that Windows Live Mail’s flags and Desktop’s flags automatically sync (although this feature isn’t absolutely necessary).

2) The ability to scroll through all my emails at once, without clicking on an arrow to show the next 50 messages. I get a lot of email, and while I don’t go very far back in my email often, it’s very annoying when I do need to do so. This feature could be implemented like the previously available continuous scrolling of search results in Windows Live Search. As the user scrolls down, more emails are loaded. Since this feature would probably require a good internet connection, you could have an option in the settings menu to switch between the continuous scrolling and the current method.

3) Accurate search results. While the relatively-new search is a welcome addition to Live Mail, it is not nearly as thorough and accurate as it needs to be. I have found that its indexing tends to be very behind (hasn’t indexed the last few week’s email quite often). Also, it seems to omit quite a few emails when I perform a search. If I search for, say, "bu.edu" (without the quotation marks), I expect it to return all emails that contain "bu.edu" in the subject line, the body of the email, or in the email address of a sender. I have found that search currently omits most of these emails. Granted, I do have more than two and a half thousand emails in my inbox, but the size of my inbox should be irrelevant. As previously said, such a search would also very often return results from a week or two ago, but omit very recent emails that should be included. To be useful, a search function needs to be completely up-to-date (like Gmail’s search function is).

4) The Today page needs more functionality (and by functionality, I don’t mean more advertisements). It’s far better than it used to be, but for me to have to look at it every time I sign in, it needs to be more useful and show more information that I care about. Perhaps it could tie into the calendar built-into Windows Live Mail and display Notes, Tasks, and the current day’s calendar listings. Perhaps it could show what the subject line and From fields of unread messages in the Inbox. Maybe it could somehow tie into other Windows Live Services. For example, it could include a Windows Live Favorites gadget like I can have on my Live.com page. It might even be sufficient if it just shows a few of the most popular MSN Video clips. No matter what you make it do, it needs to be more useful. Otherwise, it’s largely a waste of my time.

5) Automatic check for new email. It’s great that I can click on a button to check for new email, but I really shouldn’t have to. Like Gmail, Windows Live Mail should check every minute or so for new email in my Inbox and in other folders and update my current panes accordingly. It’s a relatively minor feature, but it would be a huge help. Outlook offers it, Gmail offers it, and Windows Live Mail should also offer it.

6) A better calendar. Sure, I can keep using Google Calendar, but I would really rather use the one built-into Live Mail. However, until certain features are added, I won’t be able to. All it would really take is a little Ajax goodness.

     First, when I click on a day in Month view, it should automatically give me the option to add a new appointment to that day. I shouldn’t have to click on the actual numeric date.

     Second, I need the ability to have more than one personal calendar. For example, let’s say that I want one calendar for my personal appointments and another one for the upcoming movies I’m looking forward to. I want to display them on the same calendar so I can see them at the same time, with some way of differentiating appointments on each calendar (such as a different color for each calendar’s appointments). I should also have different sharing options for each calendar should I choose to share one but not the other with friends.

     Third, it would be nice to have an RSS or Atom feed of my upcoming calendar appointments. I could use this feed in my feed reader or give it out to friends so they know what I’ll be doing.

     Fourth, there needs to be a way to quickly add calendar appointments. Google Calendar does this very well with its "Quick Add" feature. A similar method for easily adding appointments would be most welcome (although not absolutely necessary).

     Fifth, I should be able to search my calendar appointments. A full-featured search with lots of customizations like Google Calendar’s would be very welcome.

     Sixth, it would be nice to be able to set an appointment for any time of day, rather than just on the hour and at 15 minute intervals. Realistically, not everything starts at one of these times. I could do something from 10:20 AM until 10:45 and another thing from 10:45 until 10:55. It wouldn’t happen all the time, but I really should be able to set the appointment for any time I want.

     Finally, one feature you could add that Google Calendar lacks (and that would make me quickly switch over) is a way of syncing appointments, tasks, and notes between Outlook and Windows Live Mail’s calendar in a way similar to how Windows Live Favorites can sync with Internet Explorer when using the Windows Live Toolbar with the Favorites add-in.

This seems like a lot of complaints, but it really isn’t. I love Windows Live Mail. I just think that the addition of these features would make it a near-perfect service that can easily trump anything the competition has to offer. While I obviously don’t realistically expect that you’ll be able to add all these features any time soon, I sincerely hope that you add at least some of them before the final release of Windows Live Mail. Thank you.

You can read all about the improvements that the Live Mail team has made recently in the M8 release of Windows Live Mail by viewing their latest blog post. Windows Live Mail in its current state is a great email service. With the right feature additions and subtle tweaks, I can see the team pushing it above Yahoo! and Google’s email offerings by a significant margin in certain areas. As with any beta product, it is up to us, the people using the product, to find what needs changing and recommend these changes as vocally as possible. The team’s blog has a comment feature, and I think it’s time we put it to good use. (By "good use," I don’t mean leaving ridiculous comments like 2/3 of the commenters currently posting there. Oh well, at least we can make sure that there are some valuable comments on the team’s blog.)

So Loud!

Ed — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:09:09 +0000

I discovered some things tonight about drunk college freshman girls that I had never really noticed. They’re incredibly loud, to the point where you think you’re going to go deaf if they continue screaming much longer, they like to sit down in the elevator, they tend to repeat their floor number out loud over and over to themselves, presumably so they don’t forget it in their altered state, and they like to curse – a lot. That is all (for now).

Amazon.com Adds Comment Option to Reviews

Ed — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 03:50:57 +0000

It appears that Amazon.com has once again added another feature to its popular site in the hopes of improving the user’s buying experience. It already had the ability for customers to add reviews, ratings, images, forums, and tags to each product on the site. Now, Amazon has finally added the ability for users to comment on other customers’ reviews. Previously, the most you could hope to do in response to a review was to say if it was helpful to you or to add your own review in response to the review. It is likely that many people never had the desire to submit an entire review of a product simply to respond to another person’s review, and knowing how many people found a review helpful may have only been of limited use to users.

Now that Amazon.com has added the option to comment on any review, it is fairly likely that more people will feel compelled to respond to a controversial review. I can see this being particularly handy in three cases.

#1 – Many people on Amazon.com are at least of average intelligence and leave helpful, thorough, and accurate reviews. However, for every intelligent person on the site, it seems like there are five others who aren’t intelligent yet feel compelled to write worthless reviews on every product they own (or don’t own). Often, these reviews make outrageous claims that aren’t backed by fact, or they are used simply as a means of voicing a person’s hatred of a series/movie/idea. Obviously, these reviews contribute nothing of any value to the site, and some are so infuriating that you feel the urge to respond and set things right. Now, with the use of comments, users should be able to easily put bad reviewers in their place.

#2 – Many good reviews are generally full of accurate information, but they often get one or two facts incorrect, sometimes resulting in confusion for any shoppers using the reviews to help them gain information about a product and make a buying decision. Comments should allow users who come armed with the real facts to clarify any ambiguity or set the facts straight. This should be a huge help to shoppers.

#3 – Just as they are usually used on other sites, comments should allow users to easily voice their agreement or disagreement with a review and explain their position. Voting whether or not you agree with a review is somewhat useful, but it doesnt explain why you did or didn’t like the review. Comments should let users fully explain their reaction to a review, and looking at such comments should allow people who read the review in th future to put it into a better, more accurate perspective given the opinions of previous shoppers.

Overall, I see the addition of comments to user reviews of products as a welcome addition to Amazon.com, and it should significantly help most users in the end. I think the only question left to ask is what took Amazon so long to add this feature.

IE7 – My First Impressions

Ed — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:24:44 +0000

While studying for an exam tomorrow, I managed to install the final build of Internet Explorer 7 on my school PC without any problems. The installation did take a bit longer than I expected, but I suppose that’s always the case with major software installations. I did have to restart my computer twice, but with all that done, everything is working perfectly. Installation was problem free, and it was fairly automated as well. I do have to say, though, that I see absolutely no difference between the final build and the last release candidate. I guess they didn’t find any problems in the release candidate so they just decided to release it as the final version, or perhaps they fixed a few bugs I can’t readily see. Either way, I’m looking at the same interface I’ve become accustomed to.

If you haven’t installed IE7 yet, I do have to warn you that its differences in comparison to IE6 might come as a bit of a shock at first, in particular the button layout. Nevertheless, once you get used to the new look, you’ll find that this is a huge upgrade for IE. Is it as customizeable as Firefox? Not even close. However, the user interface is very stylish and clean, and although many of the buttons are in seemingly unusual places (refresh and stop are to the right of the address bar), they work well once you use them enough. The search bar in the top right is just as handy as it is in Firefox, and luckily it isn’t as wide as the search box in Firefox 2.0 RC3 is. The tabs work as you would expect, with the user being able to close each tab thanks to an X that appears in the top right of the tab you are currently using (much like Firefox 2.0). The only down side to this is that you have to switch to a tab in order to close it, whereas in Firefox 2.0 you can close a tab no matter what tab you’re looking at. One nice feature of IE7′s tab system is that you can click on a small tab to the right of the other tabs to get a preview of what all of your tabs look like at the moment. This can make switching between tabs effortless. If that doesn’t work for you, you can also use the drop-down box to select one of the open tabs (another feature that has been added to Firefox in 2.0).

So far, I haven’t had any errors or other problems, which is very encouraging since it seemed like in the last release candidate I was getting "Error on page" in the status bar for almost every site I would visit. Some other features of note include the superb built-in phishing filter (which was recently found to be the most effective phishing filter available), a pretty and useful way of looking at RSS feeds, and more. One of my favorite features is the ability to view a web page in "Full Screen" mode. While Firefox has a similar feature, this one is definitely superior. When you switch to this mode, the web page expands to fill your screen, leaving only the status bar (if it’s enabled), your address and search bar row, and the tab row. After a short time, this top bar vanishes. If you need it again, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the top of the screen where it was. In this way, you can get as much screen space for your web page as possible while maintaining full functionality.

Once again, a built-in pop-up blocker is included, and for the first time, IE can autodiscover RSS feeds for you (a feature found in Firefox for quite some time). I am also very pleased with how little space the address bar, tabs, and the rest of the interface take up. I really get as much space on screen for the web page as possible with this browser. In another move to save screen space for your web pages, the menu bar has been removed. You can reenable it as a toolbar if you wish, but you should find that just about every common function found in the menu bar can be found instead in a set of buttons, in particular "Page" and "Tools" located to the far right of the tabs row. This very nicely frees up more space. As an added bonus, if you are familiar with the menu bar shortcuts (like holding down Alt+A) to make the Favorites menu open, then you will find that IE7 handles this very nicely. When you hold down the shortcut, the menu bar reappears with your selected menu open, allowing you to make your choice from the menu. When you are done, the menu bar once again disappears. I find this particularly handy for opening my favorites and selecting a favorite quickly using only the keyboard while maximizing my screen space for content I care about.

With all this being said, there are still some notable drawbacks to IE7. First, as I said previously, the customization is extremely limited. You can add toolbars, change your default search engine, and add, remove, or rearrange non-essential buttons like Home and Tools. However, you can do very little else. You are stuck with the look of the buttons and the interface with no ability to add you own theme. You can’t resize the address bar or the search bar. You can’t but toolbars in the same row as the tabs. You can’t even move the Refresh and Stop buttons back to their traditional locations. The ability for the community to add its own extensions is extremely limited, with extensions being almost entirely limited to space-hungry toolbars. There are some other more irrelevant details that tend to get annoying as well, such as the fact that when you try to add a favorite, it provides you with a drop-down list of your favorites folders. However, instead of showing them in the order you have arranged them in your favorites menu, they are instead listed in alphabetical order. This may not seem like much, but if you work with a lot of folders and favorites, it gets old very quickly. All they had to do was add an option to view your favorites folders as they actually are.

As it is, there’s a lot to like about IE7. It’s a significant upgrade over IE6, and once you get used to the changes, you should find it a far better web browser. However, Firefox continues to gain ground, and rightly so. It’s fast, user-friendly, has most of the features of IE7 (and has had them for a long time), and is customizeable in almost every way thanks to its built-in customizations and a variety of user-made extensions and themes. It will be very interesting to see how this browser war evolves. The good news is that no matter which browser you pick, you should have a lot to like.

Internet Explorer 7 (Final) Now Available

Ed — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:12:42 +0000

The wait is finally over. Microsoft’s latest incarnation of its popular Internet Explorer web browser, Internet Explorer 7, is finally available for download. You can read more about this final build of IE7 by going here, and you can download it by going to this page. I’m currently typing this on Release Candidate 3 of IE7, so I guess it’s time for me to upgrade. Now I just have to hope that the installation goes smoothly and that they worked out all the bugs before this final release.

Firefox 2.0 RC3 Now Available

Ed — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 04:44:51 +0000

I admit it – I still use Internet Explorer for most of my web browsing (the latest build of IE7 to be exact). Maybe it’s the sleek interface, or maybe it’s how I love how all my favorite sites work perfectly in IE. It also may have to do with the fact that I love being able to hold down Alt+A to open my favorites instead of Alt+B. However, like many saavy computer users, I have a particular fondness for Mozilla Firefox, and I find myself using this great open-source, free, web browser more and more, especially now that I have lots of great extensions and themes for it. It has a nice, simple interface, it’s easily customizable, and because of its open-source nature, it is very easy to create add-ons for Firefox. As a result, you can find most any extension or theme that you can imagine online, all available to download for free. This means that a well-configured Firefox can have abilities lightyears beyond certain aspects of IE.

If you like Firefox like I and many others do, then you should be happy to know that you can now download Release Candidate 3 of Firefox 2.0. As long as no major bugs pop up in the near future, this version will actually become Firefox 2.0 eventually. Be warned, though, that many popular extensions and themes are not yet compatible with this version of Firefox. However, I would expect that most will be updated soon. FoxyTunes and IE Tab are already compatible, which makes me happy since those are my two favorite extensions. The download should be available from the main Firefox site soon, but in the mean time, you can download the installation file from here. If you want the US/English version, you can download it by clicking here and downloading the EXE file to your computer and running it.

Virgin Megastore Closing = Great Prices

Ed — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 21:39:23 +0000

Virgin Megastore is a great store, not because of its prices, but because you could always find that rare CD that no one else had in stock. Sure, they have DVDs and video games, but that’s not the main reason for going there. Now, this once-great staple of Boston’s Newbury Street will be closing shortly, leaving many like me wondering where I’ll be able to go except for the internet to find some more obscure CDs. While this is a sad time for music-loving Bostonians, it’s a great time for bargain hunters who are interested in music, movies, games, and related apparel.

Because the Virgin Megastore at the corner of Newbury St. and Mass. Ave. will be closing in the near future, they have to sell their entire stock in a short period of time. I went in there a few weeks ago, and at the time, the discounts were still fairly low. I was able to buy a couple items at a good price, but in general, most movies, music, and games on my wish list were still overpriced even after the discount. I went back yesterday, however, and things are much different. From now until November 4th, all music, movies, electronics, and games are 50% off, while all apparel is 75% off. I don’t really care about the apparel, but the discounts on everything else got me really excited.

I’ve noticed in the past that Virgin Megastore is very slow to mark down prices on items, even when they’ve been on store shelves for a very long time and show no signs of selling any time soon. This store must have recently changed its ways, because virtually all of the video games it has left in stock are marked down to $9.99 (before the 50% discount). While many of the better games are now gone, it is still possible to find many good games there, in particular Xbox games. There seemed to be an endless numbers of relatively recent sports titles, a handful of racing titles, and more copies of Half-Life 2 than I could count, all for just $9.99 pre-discount.

In terms of movies, it seemed that most of the good titles were already sold out. You could find a decent drama or sci-fi movie at a slightly good price post-discount here and there, and there were still a few good comedy DVDs left. If you’re looking for TV on DVD, most of the good TV series, including Star Trek, were gone. I was hoping to find some Star Trek: Voyager or Enterprise for cheap, but it just wasn’t meant to be. There were still a decent number of copies of less-popular shows, though.

When it comes to CDs, there are still many great bargains to be found. Many of the really popular artists like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were sold out, but many slightly less-popular artists still had a decent selection left, and obscure artists had a generally large selection remaining on shelves. As always, the prices on many CDs were very high, but a good number had sale prices on them. Add to that the 50% discount, and all CDs are a bargain, with some being so cheap that you likely would pay a few dollars more at a used CD store for a used copy of the same disc.

The lines were long, but they moved fairly quickly thanks to very competent employees working the cash registers. If you live in the Boston area and have any interest in CDs, DVDs, or video games (especially Xbox games), then I highly recommend that you get to Virgin Megastore as soon as possible. The lines are long, but the prices are well worth it. Practically everyone in the store was leaving with a basket full of music and movies. I don’t expect the good selection to last much longer, though. I’d expect that in the next week or so, there will be very little desireable merchandise left in the store. By November 4th, I’d expect there to be almost nothing left. With all that explanation done, here is what I bought, along with the great prices I paid (all items were new unless noted otherwise):

CD:
The Calling – Camino Palmero (used)	$2.49
The 5th Dimension – The Age of Aquarius	$5.00
Def Leppard – Rock of Ages The Definitive Collection	$11.00
Marc Cohn – The Very Best of Marc Cohn	$6.50
AC/DC – Highway to Hell	$5.00
Electric Light Ochestra – A New World Record	$5.00

Xbox games:
Need for Speed: Most Wanted	$5.00
Half-Life 2	$5.00
Medal of Honor: European Assault	$5.00

DVD:
The Dead Zone The Complete Fourth Season	$17.50
Stargate SG-1 Season 8	$25.00

What I’ve Been Up To – 10/9/2006

Ed — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:36:56 +0000

I was thinking today (well, I think everyday, but today in particular I was thinking about my blog posts), and I realized that I’ve been a little negligent lately when it comes to writing updates describing what I’ve been up to. I decided that I’d start with today and start working my way backwards over the coming days. In general, I only do exciting, non-school things on Friday nights, weekends, and days I have off, so I will most likely only describe events that happened on those days.

Today was a federal, and hence a school, holiday, so I thought I’d take advantage of it by getting a ridiculous amount of sleep. I am very fond of sleeping-in, and I’ve slept for some very long periods at times, but this is definitely one of my longest (if not the longest) spans of sleep I can recall. I went to bed last night at 11:30 PM, woke up today at 12:30 PM, went back to bed about an hour later, and finally woke up for good at close to 6 PM, for a grand total of about 18 hours of sleep – that’s crazy! I love sleep, but I think this time I pushed it to the limit. I had a good reason, though – my legs were incredibly tired and sore (and still are), my face and neck had slight sunburns, and I had a bit of a headache. The reason for these ailments will be revealed in a later post.

Finally awake, I decided to be semi-productive, so among other things I caught up on some TV I recorded with my handy media center PC (in particular Friday’s episode of Nanny 911), and I got caught up on the latest web happenings. I then made my way over to Best Buy so I could enlarge my CD collection by purchasing The Best of Van Morrison and America – The Complete Greatest Hits. They were cheap to begin with, but my $2 off collegiate coupon made the deal even better, making the Van Morrison CD only $7.99 for 20 songs and the America CD only $12.99 for 22 songs. Later, I delivered my camera to Alex so he can take some wicked good pictures when he goes to California tomorrow to catch what should be a great baseball game between Oakland and Detroit. You see, I used the word "wicked" so it would seem more like I’m in Boston right now. It’s hard to talk like a Bostonian, though – wicked hard, in fact. For dinner, I endured the overly-long lines of the Warren Towers dining hall so I could eat some above-average vegetable pizza, a cheeseburger, and a grilled cheese sandwich (better than usual, in fact). I’ve decided to switch from Mountain Dew to Sierra Mist as my regular drink, so I washed it all down with a couple of refreshing glasses of cold soda fountain-made Sierra Mist. For my post-dinner slightly-smaller-than-dinner snack, I went to Taco Bell and had my usual – three soft tacos and a "Mexican" pizza (The quotation marks are there because it’s hard to really call Taco Bell food "Mexican," especially once you’ve really been to Mexico.).

Now that my stomach is full and I’ve had a sufficient amount of TV watching for the day, I’m about to call it an early night. I’m hoping that my coming updates are a little more exciting (no promises though) and will be written in a timely fashion. If this or my other posts don’t excite you, though, you can always look at my numerous photo albums. There should be enough pictures there to keep you busy for a while.

Stop Talking!…

Ed — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:04:40 +0000

in the bathroom. I don’t know what the protocol is in women’s restrooms, but back where I come from, there’s a sort of standard for how one behaves in a men’s communal restroom, and that standard includes not talking. You go in, you do your business, and you leave. If by chance you encounter someone you know and your eyes happen to meet, a manly head nod or a slight grunt might be in order. However, at no time should you talk. Ever. It’s just odd… and sort or rude to the people who are trying to get down to business. For the past two years, the freshmen on my floor have understood this bathroom etiquette. This year’s freshmen, however, must have been brought up by a different standard, because they seem to be very fond of talking, no matter what they’re doing. They could be in the shower, brushing their teeth, or relieving themselves, and they still feel the need to talk. Granted, some don’t, but many do. That’s not normal. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I find it very hard to do my business when I or others are talking, and I’ve never been all that comfortable with the idea of talking while in a restroom. I guess the times are changing, and the current group of freshmen in college seem to believe that anything goes in the bathroom. What will they think of next?

Engadget Reader Meetup Tonight in Boston

Ed — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:03:21 +0000

As is mentioned in the Engadget article titled "Engadget Reader Meetup in Boston Tonight!", there will be a gathering of Engadget fans tonight at Jillian’s, which is located right behind Fenway Park’s right field on the corner of Lansdowne Street and Ipswich St. It’s not every day that the people who run a high-profile site like Engadget come to Boston, so I’m definitely going. I’d go just for the event, but to spice things up, the folks at Engadget will also be giving away a bunch of stuff to the people who come, including free Engadget t-shirts for the first 100 people. I love technology, and I also love free stuff, so this is a win-win situation for me. If you’re in the area and are free tonight, come on over. The event should last from 7 PM until about 9:30 PM.

Google Playing Catch-up with Windows Live

Ed — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:21:50 +0000

People always love to make fun of Microsoft for its borrowing of other companies’ ideas. Sometimes they’re right, and many other times, they’re wrong. In fact, it’s amazing how many times I’ll hear people say that Microsoft’s products are blatant rip-offs of Apple ideas. Many times this is not true. In fact, usually Apple is the one that copies other companies (such as copying Konfabulator, now known as Yahoo! Widgets, and taking its original MacOS interface from old Xerox ideas). Microsoft often just follows suit, not because it loves to copy ideas, but because the ideas are good and worthy additions to Microsoft products.

As a result of my annoyance with people’s love to claim foul at Microsoft’s copying, I got kick out of loading up my personalized Google search page tonight. Google has offered its users a personalized homepage for some time now, with its main draw being that you can see your favorite RSS feeds on your Google search page, in addition to a preview of your email and the local weather forecasts. This interface, however, has always been fairly basic (and arguably ugly). I never really cared too much for this interface, but I was impressed with Microsoft’s approach. Since its launch, I’ve been using Windows Live (just recently out of beta; previously known as start.com). I’ve always been impressed with Windows Live because of its sleek interface and handy options, such as the ability to have many pages through the use of tabs.

When I loaded up my Google search page, I was stunned to see that Google had done the unthinkable – it had copied Microsoft’s Windows Live! In a manner almost exactly like Windows Live’s tabs, users are now able to have multiple pages for gadgets and RSS feeds on their Google personalized page. Also, an "edit" function can now be found to the left of every X at the top right of each feed and gadget. Windows Live has an option just like this in the same location in its interface, except in the case of Windows Live, it’s "Edit". Now, I don’t think that the "edit" similarity is a very big deal, but the addition of tabs to Google’s page is a blatant rip-off of Microsoft’s sleek Windows Live. The mighty Google has copied the "evil" Microsoft. Nice move, Google. Now we’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes Google-lovers to proclaim that Google created tabs for search homepages. I’m sure it won’t take long, because, after all, Microsoft is always the company at fault, or so it would seem to many people. Microsoft, keep up the great work. After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Google, you can keep your new tabbed interface. I’m sticking with Windows Live.

Greek Fest and Napolean Dynamite This Weekend

Ed — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 22:55:53 +0000

Here’s a quick heads-up that there’s a lot of fun stuff going on in the Boston area this weekend (technically, it’s all in Brookline, but it’s close enough). Each day this weekend, the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral of New England is hosting its annual Greek Fest in Brookline, complete with lots of great Greek food and entertainment. From what I hear, the food isn’t exactly cheap, but admission is free, and even if it is a little pricey, the food is still sure to be tasty. The festival runs from noon until 11 PM each day. You can find out more about Greek Fest 2006 by going to this site and scrolling to the bottom of the page. Also, Coolidge Corner Theatre will be showing the very popular comedy Napolean Dynamite each night this weekend. Each showing is at midnight and the cost is $7.50 per ticket. I’ll be going to both Greek Fest and Napolean Dynamite tonight, and I’m really looking forward to both. Hopefully, within the next couple days, I’ll be able to make a post about my experiences at both as well as what I’ve been up to lately.

It’s a Great Day for Baseball

Ed — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:00:28 +0000

Later today, I’ll be seeing my first baseball game ever at Fenway Park. My good friend Alex Fontana was doing some searching late last night and came across a deal we just couldn’t pass up. For just $12 each, we’ll be able to get standing room-only tickets to see the Red Sox take on the White Sox tonight. Although this will mean that we’ll have to stand for much of the game, the price is hard to beat, especially for Fenway Park, where you usually have to pay an insane price for tickets. While I’d usually root for the Red Sox, since the Red Sox have practically no chance at going to the playoffs and the Whiet Sox still have a decent chance, I’ll have to cheer for the White Sox. I really don’t want the Yankees to win the World Series, and I think the White Sox would be their best competition. No matter who wins tonight, it should still be a very enjoyable game.

Great Prices on Video Games at Circuit City Today

Ed — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 19:48:50 +0000

I usually read the Sunday ads on Sunday, but since I was busy yesterday, I waited until today. I was just going through them, and I was amazed at some of the prices Circuit City has on some great games. Unfortunately, these prices are only good for yesterday and today, but if you run over to Circuit City now, you can get some great Xbox 360 games for dirt cheap. Both the newly released Ninety-Nine Nights and Call of Duty 2 Game of the Year Edition are on sale for $34.99 each, which is a savings of at least $15, or as much as $25. If you are even slightly interested in these games, then you should go buy them now. I played the Call of Duty 2 demo thoroughly, and I can say that it is definitely a great game worthy of purchase. Since I’m at school and away from my Xbox 360 until Christmas, I’m going to wait until later in the year to get Call of Duty 2, although I will definitely get it at one point. I’m really hoping that it and some other games will drop in price to about $20 by Christmas-time. My best guess is that many Xbox 360 games will drop in price drastically in the after-Thanksgiving sales. While you’re there, go ahead and pick up Tom Clancy’s Classic Trilogy for Xbox as well. It includes Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, and Rainbox Six 3. All of those are great games, and you can’t beat the price – just $9.99 for all three together.

Summer is Almost Over

Ed — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 05:24:10 +0000

It seems like this past school year was just ending and summer was beginning. Now summer is already pretty much over. It’s hard to believe that those few months went by so quickly. It definitely seems like it went by more quickly than ever, but come to think of it, it seems like it goes faster every year. Perhaps this is simply a realization that comes with age. As we grow older, perhaps we pay less attention to basic everyday things, so it seems like the days are actually passing more quickly. Whatever the reason, it seems like this summer came and went far too quickly for my taste. It was, however, a very productive summer for me. I worked four days a week at USF Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and even though it was technically work, I really enjoyed my time there.

While my work mostly consisted of various office tasks like answering the phone, filing, and entering things into the computer, I learned something from many of the tasks I was given. In the case of answering the phone, I grew much more comfortable with taking people’s calls and answering them as best I can. I’ve always been a little nervous when it comes to the telephone, so this was a bit difficult for me at first, but as I did it more, I became much more relaxed when called upon to answer the phone. That’s one life skill that will surely prove to be useful later on. Even when my tasks were somewhat monotonous, the people around me still made them interesting. That’s definitely one advantage to having great coworkers. No matter how slow the actual work may be, being around great people like these makes things go much more quickly and easily. I think I made a real difference while I was there, and I hope that I helped them with their various projects. Of course, it was also really nice getting paid for my work there this summer. The money I made will be put to good use during the coming schoolyear.

Through my parents’ generosity, I was also able to afford to buy a lot of things this summer that I wasn’t really planning on buying originally. My TV that I’d had for quite some time died on me. Well, perhaps die isn’t the right word. I could turn it on and it would work, but it would turn itself off after a short while and continue to do so whenever I had it on. This proved to be rather annoying at first, but it eventually got to the point where we just had to replace it outright. I now have a very nice 20 in. black Magnavox flat-tube CRT TV. The picture quality is excellent, but I was even more impressed by the sound quality. It sounds almost as if it has a top of the line speaker system built-in complete with subwoofer. I also had some problems with my Xbox. I bought that Xbox on launch day (Nov. 15, 2001), and I got a lot of use out of it since then. However, one day later this summer, when I went to play some Halo 2 online as I often do, I got a loud clicking noice coming from the Xbox when I turned it on. I would turn it off, turn it on, and repeat multiple times, but it kept doing the same thing. Based on what I have read about hard drives, this seemed to perfectly mimic the sound of a dead hard drive, rendering my Xbox useless.

I needed something to play Halo 2 and other games on for the rest of the summer, so after discussing it with my parents, my mom went ahead and bought me an Xbox 360 at Best Buy. I’m not sure if it was the magical presence of the 360 or simple luck, but after installing the 360 and trying my Xbox one last time, it actually worked properly. It’s worked fine ever since, and hopefully it will stay that way. This meant that I now had a functional Xbox 360 and a functional Xbox. You can’t ask for much more than that. I wasn’t about to let the 360 go to waste, either. I marvelled at its beauty and ease of use, in particular the interface. I fell in love with Hexic, and the downloadable demos really proved useful. I soon discovered the joy produced by connecting my 360 to my TV’s component video input. Halo 2 never looked better. I couldn’t stop there though. I soon bought Uno and Geometry Wars Evolved, and I saw Perfect Dark Zero LE on sale not long after at Circuit City for $20, so I bought that as well. I have thoroughly enjoyed my 360, and my Xbox got a lot of play time this summer as well. I’ll likely be writing up much more on my thoughts on the 360 in the coming days.

I also spent a lot of my free time this summer watching DVDs. In case you don’t know, collecting and watching DVDs is a sort of hobby for me, so I really enjoyed having some extra time to sit down and watch some great TV shows and movies on DVD. In particular, I was very impressed by the original Superman movie, I was able to see the complete Back to the Future trilogy from beginning to end, and thanks to a very generous gift of The X-Files Seasons 4-6 this summer, I was able to get through all but the latter part of season 6 as well. My movie watching wasn’t entirely confined to home though. I went out a number of times with friends to see movies or do other things. While this wasn’t the best ever summer for movies, it was pretty solid. Superman Returns was very well done, An Inconvenient Truth proved to be a very controversial but important film, Talladega Nights made me almost like Nascar while laughing at the same time, Pirates of the Carribean 2 was surprisingly good, and Snakes on a Plane was an all-around classic.

I also did a lot of non-movie things with friends. I had a wonderful night catching up with Paul over dinner at Crazy Buffet and elsewhere. A handful of my friends and I also had the pleasure of seeing Journey and Def Leppard in concert. These bands might be a bit older now, but they still sound great. That was one concert I won’t soon forget. I also had two great long weekends with my good friend Alex. He came to Tampa for a few days and we got quite a bit done, with Busch Gardens definitely being one of the highlights. Later on in the summer, I joined him in Chicago thanks to the generosity of his family, where we were able to see three White Sox games (a sweep of the Tigers, no less) and tour much of the city, including many sites we had seen before as well as some we hadn’t, such as the Shedd Aquarium and Navy Pier. Naturally, we also feasted on a lot of great food from such places as Chinatown, U.S. Cellular Field, Dixie Kitchen, and Marshall Field’s. That was a really enjoyable trip.

Of course, I was also able to visit with many other friends and family members over the summer, all of which was very enjoyable. That’s one of the downsides to going to school so far away from home – I don’t often get the opportunity to see certain people. However, I try as hard as possible to visit with them over the summer, and I’d say that I was generally successful at this over the summer. On a different note, I also made some good additions to my DVD and CD collections, adding some especially good music I was able to get rather cheap at a local used music store, Vinyl Fever. I’ve already listened to these CDs quite a bit, but I anticipate they’ll get even more play time now that I’m back at school. I should be able to come up with quite a few good music recommendations thanks to these new CD acquisitions. Well, now the summer really is just about over. Now I just have the burden of packing up the car and moving into my room and I’ll be all-set for school. Coincidentally, now that I’ll be back on my superpowerful computer, expect a lot more updates to come. In the meantime, take a look at the new pictures I’ve posted.

Gear Live iRiver Clix Giveaway

Ed — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:26:24 +0000

Being a technophile at heart, I love to visit a number of great computer and technology websites and blogs to keep up on the latest happenings. For quite some time now, I’ve been visiting PC World as well as a number of other sites, including such major tech blogs as Engadget and TechCrunch. However, some months ago I stumbled upon a site that has become very dear to me. Its name is Gear Live. Originally, I went there just so I could enter an Xbox 360 contest. I decided to keep visiting the site afterwards, though, and I grew to really enjoy reading its articles. It’s updated very often like most major blogs, and it focuses on news relating to the latest in technology and gadgets, along with in-depth reviews for many of the gadgets mentioned on the site.

While this makes it sound like a great but relatively commonplace tech blog, Gear Live is actually much more than that. Most major blogs, in particular certain ones that have major corporate backing (such as Engadget) have a very industrial feel to them. While I’m willing to visit the sites to keep up on the latest happenings, I don’t truly enjoy myself because of the very nature of the site. It’s almost as if I’m making a deal with the Borg when I visit these sites – I know they possess a lot of valuable information and can help me, but it just doesn’t feel right because of what the sites stand for (making money, squashing the little blogs with one’s power, and doing a little bit of good journalism on the side). Captain Janeway could learn from this. Gear Live is different. The folks behind the site, in particular Andru Edwards, are very committed to making the site the best it can be and providing good, knowledgable news stories and articles for the site’s visitors. These people are passionate about technology and gadgets, and you can tell by their writing. No, the site isn’t some huge blog powerhouse like Engadget, but it’s a loveable, smaller site that still manages to do one amazing job of reporting recent events and pumping out high quality reviews like you wouldn’t believe.

Because of my love for Gear Live, I am always looking for ways to help the site. Every now and then, Gear Live hosts a giveaway, with the main prize usually being very nice (and expensive), such as an Xbox 360. While contests like this are great at generating more hits for the site, I felt that the last few contests didn’t live up to their potential because of the means of entry. Essentially, the entry method made it very difficult for your average reader to win, let alone want to participate in the contest. I (Admiral_Kirk) voiced my concerns in Gear Live’s forums, and it appears that someone was listening. At the beginning of August, Gear Live kicked off one of its best contests yet, with the prize being a really handy and innovatibe mp3/media player called an iRiver Clix. Unlike the most recent contests, this one should appeal to anyone. All you need to do to win is to support the site and post about your efforts in the proper forum thread. You can do this in a number of ways. You can digg Gear Live’s many news stories and reviews, you can add a link to Gear Live to your various forum signatures, you can put an ad for Gear Live on your site, you can participate in Gear Live’s forums and comment on its articles, or you can do something even more creative. In the end, the person who they judge to have done the most to support the site will win. The contest does end at midnight on August 31, 2006, so you better get going if you want to win. Even if you can’t win, I encourage you to support Gear Live. It’s a great site thanks to the people who make it possible, and the site deserves to prosper. We can go a long way towards making that a reality by doing whatever we can to support it.

Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis Premieres Tonight

Ed — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:52:47 +0000

I’m really glad that I read my TVGuide.com newsletter earlier today, because if I hadn’t, then I would have no idea that two of the best shows on TV are returning tonight for an all-new season, with one of them, SG-1, beginning its historic tenth season (even The X-Files only lasted nine seasons). Stargate SG-1 will premiere on SciFi at 9 PM, with Stargate Atlantis following at 10 PM (EST). Naturally, I’m very excited because this marks the return of two of my favorite shows for another season, but I’m even more excited than I would usually be thanks to last season’s jaw-dropping cliff-hangers. Atlantis left us on the edge of our seats, and SG-1 made us feel like we were about to fall off a cliff. I hope that these premieres can live up to the promise of the preceding finales, because if they are able to do so, we will be in for a real treat, with the fictitious fate of the planet resting on the outcome of these two episodes (no fictitious wars or fictitious presidents, though – poor Michael Moore). Like usual, I’m sure that the main characters will find some crazy way to defeat the enemy, at least for the moment, allowing the episodes to close on a happy note. I think the only down side to tonight is that I’ll be forced to miss the new episode of Monk that’s on at 9 PM on USA Network. Luckily, USA tends to be pretty good about rerunning their hit shows throughout the week.

The Dead Zone Season Premiere Tonight

Ed — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:57:57 +0000

To my delight, there is yet another great season premiere tonight. This time, it’s The Dead Zone‘s turn, and tonight’s episode will mark the beginning of season five. Unfortunately, one of the big creative minds behind the show, Michael Piller, will be absent this season due to his passing away on November 1st of last year. He had many great achievements in the industry, chief among them a large role in shaping Star Trek, and his absence will certainly be felt by many. However, his son and many others are very capable of doing a great job on The Dead Zone, and I’m sure that they will do just that. It is still one of the best shows on TV, and it should continue to be so until it finally ends, if for no other reason than the fact that the cast is truly excellent in their roles. Tonight’s premiere is at 10 PM (EST) on USA Network. I also recommend seeing the new episode of The 4400 being shown on the same channel at 9 PM. I will definitely be watching it.

Mmmmmm, del.icio.us!

Ed — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:48:45 +0000

Do you use del.icio.us to bookmark sites you find as you browse the internet? No? Well, why not? I just started using this very popular site/service recently, and I have to say that I’m hooked. Now, whenever I come across a webpage or article that I find very interesting or useful for future purposes, I add it to my del.icio.us favorites. Del.icio.us certainly isn’t a replacement for the favorites in my web browser, but it is a very handy tool. It’s also really great that I can access these favorites from any computer that’s connected to the internet. No one has to use del.icio.us, but I highly recommend it. It’s great for saving interesting sites on-the-fly, and its tagging system allows you to easily find bookmarked sites later. While you’re busy surfing the net and adding sites to your del.icio.us favorites, you can also take a look at my del.icio.us favorites.

The 4400 Season Premiere Tonight

Ed — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 10:15:42 +0000

It seems strange to be watching season premieres given that the main television season just ended. However, this is the time of year when all of the great summer shows start back up. So You Think You Can Dance started off the summer season well, and tonight The 4400 will kick start the summer with a big bang. Tonight’s two hour season premiere episode looks very promising, and I think that at the very least this season of The 4400 will live up to the quality set forth by the past two seasons. Personally, I’m expecting the show to get even better. The creative talent behind the show certainly has the ability to make it excellent season after season. The premiere is on USA Network and will run from 9 PM to 11 PM (EST). If you still need something good to watch after that, you could change the channel to Sci Fi and watch the reshowing of the season finale of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who Season Finale Tonight

Ed — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:42:27 +0000

If you’re a fan of the modern incarnation of Doctor Who, any of the past versions of Doctor Who, or sci-fi television shows in general, then I recommend that you watch Sci Fi at 9 PM (EST) tonight so you can see the season finale of Doctor Who. This episode was already broadcast in the UK last year, but for us here in the US, this is the first time it is being shown on television. I started watching this new, modernized version of Doctor Who when Sci Fi started showing the season one episodes this year, and I must say that I am hooked. It’s a clever, quirky show that has a good blend of sci-fi, drama, and comedy. Because of this, I think that most anyone can find something to like about the show. If for no other reason, you should see the episode simply so you can hear an endless number of Daleks screaming "Exterminate!"

Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector Coming Soon to DVD

Ed — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:42:28 +0000

I was very disappointed earlier this year when I was unable to see Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector in the movie theatre. It wasn’t my fault, really. Shortly after its release, virtually all movie theatres in the Boston area stopped showing it. Within a few weeks, only a small number of theatres in the entire state were showing it, and shortly afterwards, it was gone from Mass. altogether. This was especially annoying because I would look at the movie listings for Tampa, and even though no theatre in Boston had the movie listed, practically every theatre in the Tampa Bay area had many showings of it each day. I guess northerners simply don’t appreciate Larry the Cable Guy. It certainly seems like southerners do, though. It made me very happy to see that this potentially-hilarious movie would be coming to DVD much sooner than I expected. The Digital Bits reported late yesterday, June 8th, that this movie will be arriving in stores on DVD on August 8th. I think that 8/8 is easy enough to remember, and I’m sure that I and many others are looking forward to this date so we can finally see this wonderful movie. Git ‘r done!

New Halo 2 Playlist Changes Now in Effect

Ed — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 03:15:17 +0000

In case you haven’t logged onto Halo 2 recently, Bungie just released within the past day an update to the Halo 2 playlists. A number of things were added and removed, with some of the most notable changes being the addition of an unranked Team SWAT playlist and the removal of Big Team Battle and 6v6. Taking their places are BTB Skirmish, which is ranked and retains your Big Team Battle rank, and BTB Slayer, which is unranked. You can read the full details of this latest playlist update in last week’s Bungie Weekly Update.

Deal or No Deal and The Apprentice Season Finales Tonight

Ed — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:45:47 +0000

I just wanted to remind everyone that the last of the big season finales are tonight. Deal or No Deal‘s season finale is tonight at 8 PM and will have a grand prize of $5 million. To add a little more spice to the episode, Celine Dion will guest star. Based on the times listed on NBC.com, this finale will run for an hour and a half. Immediately following this, season five of The Apprentice will wrap up with its season finale. This episode should also go for an hour and a half, with it finishing at 11 PM. (note: all times are EST)

Why, Lucas, Why?! No Anamorphic or Restoration for New Star Wars DVDs

Ed — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:13:35 +0000

It was the announcement that thousands, probably millions, of Star Wars fans had been waiting for – the original, unaltered, Star Wars trilogy will be coming to DVD later this year. For years, fans had been begging for the movies to be released in their original form, but Lucas always insisted that his new, heavily altered trilogy was the only version that remained and that we would never see the originals released on DVD. This left many fans annoyed, because although many people, myself included, don’t mind the new versions, a large number of fans grew up on these films and love them in their original form. Keeping the original versions from them and only releasing altered versions was almost like betraying part of their childhood. There was no clear answer for them as to what they should do, so some bought the overly large and expensive laser disc versions of the original trilogy, others grudgingly bought the altered versions on DVD, and some even bought the illegal DVD release, made using the video from the laser disc release, that could usually be found online easily.

Not long ago, StarWars.com broke the news that the unaltered original trilogy would be released as bonus discs along with the new versions of the films on DVD. Some were annoyed at this announcement because it meant a dreaded double-dip on the part of Lucas, which is seen by some as simply a way of making more money. Most people, though, were just glad to see some of their favorite films finally released in their original form on DVD. This happiness was soon spoiled, though, when it was revealed that these discs would be no better than the illegal versions already available, because like them, these would be simple copies of the laser disc versions, with no improvement to the image quality and no anamorphic widescreen. This may not seem like a big deal, but I and many others are certainly not happy about this.

While I am perfectly happy watching the new versions with their pristine restoration job, I think that it is shameful that Lucas is refusing to have these films restored to their original glory. I know that Lowry Digital could certainly make this happen, as could many other film restoration companies. Lucasfilm has made many excuses as to why it’s impossible for a restoration to happen, but upon further inspection on the part of industry experts, it appears that these excuses are generally false. I know that Lucas considers the new versions of these films to be the true versions, but releasing the films in this form does them a huge disservice. These are great films, and their original form serves as a testament to the huge accomplishment that Lucas and others made in making them originally. It is only right that they should be restored to their original form so that we can appreciate these iconic films in their original splendor. As it is, it comes off as a cruel attempt at making more money off of dedicated fans.

It’s also very sad that such a huge DVD release would lack anamorphic widescreen. Virtually all widescreen DVDs that are released today are anamorphic because it’s easy to do and is expected as an industry standard. Although this omission does not affect me and many others today because we’re still using TV’s with a 4:3 aspect ratio (full-screen), in the future, when most people have widescreen TV’s, this lack of anamorphic widescreen will be a huge pain. Anamorphic allows a widescreen movie to expand to fit a widescreen TV because the TV and the movie itself have generally the same aspect ratio. The lack of anamorphic prevents this from ever happening, even on the best of widescreen TV’s.

The following is a post that Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits made when it first became apparent that nothing would be done to enhance these films for their upcoming DVD release. It accurately describes the problem as well as the feelings of many Star Wars fans and DVD enthusiasts.

We’ve confirmed something that we’d begun to suspect… and it’s probably going to disappoint a lot of you. It certainly disappoints us here at The Bits. Those new DVD editions of the Star Wars films? The original theatrical versions of the films are going to be non-anamorphic (our original post on this indicated otherwise, but we have confirmed that the widescreen versions will be letterboxed only). What this likely means is that Lucasfilm has simply re-purposed the non-anamorphic transfers that were done for previous laserdisc and VHS releases of the "original" versions of the films. And with that, our enthusiasm for this DVD release has just dropped through the floor. Anamorphic-enhanced versions of the theatrical editions, we’d buy in a heartbeat. But what we’re going to get instead is little better than a ported-over laserdisc. In this day and age, releasing a widescreen film without anamorphic enhancement on DVD is just unacceptable. Does Lucasfilm really think fans want those versions of the films on DVD so badly that people just won’t care? Yes Virginia, they do. How many versions of these films do you suppose Lucasfilm will try to get fans to buy in high-def over the coming years? And think about it… you just know the studio has to be prepping yet another standard DVD release for next year’s 30th Anniversary of the original Star Wars. Do you suppose this means that the theatrical editions won’t be included in the super-über box set of all six films? Probably. Ugh.

I sincerely hope that Lucas changes his mind before this DVD set is released, but so far, it appears that nothing is going to change. Either way, I am still happy that we will finally be seeing the original trilogy in its unaltered form making its way to DVD. Despite numerous statements by Lucas over the years that this would never happen, it finally is, and this gives fans everywhere a reason to celebrate. The DVDs will be released on September 12th, and they will only be available for a short time, so if you really want to add these to your collection, then you should act quickly before it’s too late. You can preorder the set of all three DVDs from StarWarsShop.com for the overinflated price of $59.99, but my guess is that you’ll find a much better price when the set comes to stores later this year. You can find out more about this DVD release and the simultaneous release of the LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy video game by reading the original article that broke the news at StarWars.com. StarWars.com has also posted images of the cover art for these DVDs here. For your convenience, I have included the images of the widescreen DVD cover art below.

Are Newer Xbox 360′s More Reliable?

Ed — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 22:44:29 +0000

It would seem that the newer Xbox 360′s being produced are in fact less prone to errors or complete failure. In part three of its Glitch in the System series of articles, IGN details the long-running problem of Xbox 360′s dying not long after purchase, beginning with the launch of the system and following the problem to present day. While the article notes that the number of IGN employees who have had to get their 360′s replaced is truly staggering, it would appear that the problem has been significantly lessened over time, with clerks at major gaming stores such as EB, Gamestop, and Best Buy reporting less returns because of hardware problems in recent days. I think that this is pretty encouraging news, especially for people like me who haven’t yet purchased an Xbox 360. The first time I ever even saw 360′s in a store was the weekend before last, so it would seem that demand is still pretty high, but with Microsoft producing far more units than they were before thanks to better production methods and the addition of a third manufacturer, I’m confident I’ll be able to find a 360 when the time comes. This information is especially relieving because it means that the chance of my buying a faulty system is decreasing all the time. I just hope that the price of games goes down by the time I get an Xbox 360.

Must See TV is Dead! Long Live Must See TV!

Ed — Fri, 19 May 2006 02:50:32 +0000

Tonight’s finales of Will & Grace and ER have brought new meaning to the term "jump the shark." I thought that NBC’s quality had gone down before, but this affirms it. This is by far the worst season finale of ER, and the Will & Grace season finale has left much to be desired (although it wasn’t all bad). Expect more of my reactions to come soon.

A T Token from Long Ago

Ed — Mon, 08 May 2006 08:34:18 +0000

A few weeks ago, I noticed a T token sitting there on the floor by the elevators in my dorm. I certainly never mind coming across free money, because that’s essentially what a free T token is, carrying a value of $1.25. I was even more surprised, though, to see that I had never before seen a T token that looks like this. Everyone in the Boston area is familiar with the usual design – a T on one side and the back of a subway car on the other. This token is different, though. It as the usual T on one side, but the other side has the words "Sail Boston 1992" in a special logo. I wasn’t in Boston in 1992, but this must have been a big event for the city if they went to the trouble of making different T tokens just to commemorate the occasion. Here are two scans of the T token:

I Wonder Where Ed Likes to go…

Ed — Fri, 05 May 2006 01:31:38 +0000

Have you ever asked yourself "Wow, it seems like Ed has all these wonderful adventures and goes to all sorts of great places in Boston and Tampa. I wish I knew where he likes to go."? No? Well, then maybe you’ve asked yourself "Ed sure does talk about all sorts of great places and restaurants. I wish I knew exactly where he’s talking about." Still no? OK, then lets say that you’re simply curious about the best places to go in Tampa and Boston. No matter which of these fits you best, it doesn’t matter, because I now have a map of Boston and a map of Tampa that will help you out. Using the Google Maps API, I’ve constructed interactive maps of these two cities, complete with markers for all my favorite places in each, as well as descriptions for each marker. Now, whether you’re simply trying to figure out what sights you should see in Boston or if you just want to see Ed’s favorite destinations in Tampa, you can go to these maps. Just click on the map to drag it around and change where you’re looking. There’s a zoom scroll bar on the left-hand side, and you can see a marker’s description by clicking on it. If you want to center the map on a place, simply double-click on that location. Don’t forget to try out the Hybrid view and zoom in as close as you can – that’s where it gets really fun. Do remember, though, that these maps are not yet complete, so if you’re wondering why I didn’t add a marker for a certain place, that’s probably the reason why. Also, keep in mind that the satellite imagery used in these maps is a few years out-of-date, so don’t expect it to look exactly as things do today. For the maps index page, go here. The Tampa map can be found here, and you can get to the Boston map by going here. Enjoy.

Attention Firefly Fans: Join the Firefly / Serenity Union at Gamespot.com

Ed — Fri, 05 May 2006 01:14:53 +0000

I know that there are a lot of Firefly fans out there. I also know that there are a lot of people out there who enjoy playing video games. Why not combine the best of both worlds? Back in December 2005, I was one of a small group of founding members of a Firefly / Serenity union on Gamespot.com. Since then, our membership has grown steadily, but it’s still a little on the small side at 27 members. I’ve visited a decent number of Firefly forums and websites, so I know how much Firefly fans love to discuss the show and movie. I’d expect that a lot of these same people are passionate about video games as well. If you care about these two topics of interest, or even if you’re simply a fan of Firefly, then I encourage you to come on over and join our union dedicated to Firefly and Serenity. To join, you do need to be a Gamespot.com member (registration is free and easy), but once you’re a member, just head over to the union page and join. It’s as easy as that. Once you’re a member, you can leave comments, discuss things on the message board, and more. We welcome as many members as we can get. Even if you don’t want to join, head on over and check out the union anyway. I’m one of the major contributors of content that goes on the main page, so I wouldn’t mind it if my content gets seen by a few more eyes. Who knows, you may even find that this union is a great source for your Firefly-related news. Go ahead – come on over to the Firefly / Serenity Browncoat’s Union. Can’t stop the signal.

Food Reviews? No, Not Yet – But We Do Have Pictures!

Ed — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 00:30:44 +0000

You might be wondering why I haven’t posted any of those restaurant reviews I promised a while back. Don’t worry, they’re still on the way. It’s just that I want to make sure that those reviews are thorough and have lots of pictures to go with them, and I haven’t been able to sit down and write those reviews yet. I will have much more time during the summer though (which is rapidly approaching), so I expect to have them done in the early part of summer – if all goes as planned, of course. I do, however, have many of the picture pages online already. The intent of these pages is for you to be able to see the awesome food that Alex and I get to have when we go to these places and for you to be able to see what it is we’re talking about.

The only problem is that all the picture sites out there that allow easy access to pictures downsize them so that you don’t get the full resolution picture. I could give you this, but I want to make sure that you have the full-sized image just like it was originally – how else can you fully appreciate this food? This requires that I upload each image to ImageShack and then construct these pages myself, and this takes a lot of time. As a result, the pages aren’t quite done, but as they currently are, they should give you a good idea of the food that will be reviewed. Enjoy, and don’t make yourself too hungry. The pictures can be found here.

Serenity Day

Ed — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 04:00:08 +0000

If you haven’t heard already, June 23, 2006 is being called Serenity Day amongst Firefly fans. Its sole purpose is for fans of Firefly and Serenity to make enough noise that some executive in Hollywood will listen to our message and pay attention. The theory goes that people buying the DVDs, CDs, and other Firefly-related items throughout the year is great, but if we make a concerted effort on one day, we can finally be noticed and our numbers recognized. While people are being encouraged to buy Serenity on DVD on this day, many screenings of Serenity have also been arranged in theatres across the country. I encourage everyone who wants to contribute to the cause to go to Serenity Day for more info. If you want to know what theatres will be showing Serenity on June 23rd, you can see a full list here. There are currently 29 cities lined up, with a few holding their screenings on the 22nd and a few on the 24th. Proceeds from these screenings will go to charity. More info on the screenings can be found at Can’t Stop the Serenity.

Firefly is a great show, and Serenity is a great movie, so I think that anything we can do to raise awareness of them must be a good thing. The only problem I see with this plan is that most Firefly/Serenity fans probably already have the movie on DVD, so if a fan were to go out and buy it, it would most likely be as a gift for someone else. I know that these fans are dedicated, but how many are willing to go out and spend $15 on a DVD they already own? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I do see a lot of promise in these charity screenings of Serenity, though. I know that most if not all will probably sell out, and they will certainly generate some buzz for the movie. It figures that they’ll be holding a screening at the awesome Coolidge Corner Theatre not far from here, but not when I’ll be here. I’ll be in Tampa, and naturally, there are no plans for a screening in Tampa. At least Firefly fans in those 29 cities will be able to enjoy the movie come June 23rd.

Buffy Sing-a-Long at Coolidge Corner Theatre

Ed — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:16:10 +0000

If you’re interested in the TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer and you live in the Boston area, then be sure to head on down to Coolidge Corner Theatre tonight to catch one of two showings of "Once More, with Feeling," the beloved musical episode of the show that features the entire cast in various singing roles. The audience will be encouraged to sing along with the show (subtitles will be provided), and everyone will receive a goody bag along with their admission. Following this episode, another episode of the show, chosen by the fans in attendance, will be shown. You get all this and a great time for the price of $9.50 – remember, Coolidge is a non-profit theatre, so every bit extra they make goes straight to helping improve the theatre so that it can continue to serve the community. Here’s the description of the event from the Coolidge website:

Our one-of-a-kind Sing-A-Long production of everyone’s favorite monster-fighting cult TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, returns for one final night of shows! We’ll give you "Something to Sing About" at this special screening of Joss Whedon’s classic musical episode, including goodie bags full of interactive activities (and plastic vampire teeth, of course), subtitles so you can sing-a-long with Buffy and the gang… and bunnies! Ahhhhh!

After the singing, stick around for an extra episode from the series – voted for by you the audinece! Buffy nights like this are popping up all over the country, but it originated here at the Coolidge and always sells out our midnite shows. This is the first time Buffy hits prime time. Don’t miss out on the fun!

The showings are at 7:30 PM and 10:00 PM. Have a good time, and remember to sing.

YouTube = Best Tube Since the CRT

Ed — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:34:33 +0000

If you have no idea what YouTube is, then it would be best for me to describe it simply as one of the most popular websites on the internet for viewing and sharing videos. You can find all sorts of videos there, but I think that they tend to gravitate towards humorous content. I’ve seen all sorts of things there – short clips from movies, TV shows, and commercials, self-made videos of a person playing a video game, instructional videos, videos showing people doing stupid things, and a wide range of other kinds of subject matter. I’ve recently taken to this site because of its wide range of offerings, and I figured that since I already have my videos uploaded to Google Video, I might as well upload them to YouTube as well to maximize my viewership. As it turns out, this was the right move.

I uploaded my videos on April 8th, and since then, I have had my videos viewed more than 5,200 times. While each of my videos has received a decent number of hits, the one driving my total number to such a high number in such a short time is a clip from the AFI Lifetime Achievement awards show where William Shatner is on stage singing to George Lucas. So far, it alone has more than 3,700 views, and 51 people count it as one of their favorite videos. This number of views goes up by a few hundred or more each day, so by the time you read this, that number will be even higher. When comparing the numbers for each video over the time period that they have been on both YouTube and Google Video, I have found that Google Video gives me a slightly higher number of hits in general, but some types of content seem to do better on each service. I’m just happy that so many people are enjoying the videos I’ve uploaded. You can find links to all of my videos, both at Google Video and YouTube, by going here, or you can just see my YouTube videos by going here. My most recent video is one I made with my digital camera on Easter Sunday at my aunt’s house, so you might find that of interest (note: the video has no sound). You can find it here (YouTube) or here (Google Video).

Anyone Need Invites?

Ed — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:31:50 +0000

Here’s a quick reminder that I have some invites to a few invitation-only beta programs, so if you need one, just let me know. I currently have 5 invites for Windows Live Messenger, 5 for Windows Live Mail (the successor to MSN Hotmail), and 100 for Gmail (if anyone even cares about those invites anymore). Just leave a comment in this post on my MSN space saying what you want, as well as your email address (for your own sake, don’t use ‘@’ – do something like "name (at) domain (dot) com"). If that doesn’t work for you, you can always send me an email at edkopp4.webmaster (at) gmail (dot) com.

501st San Diego Comic-Con Exclusive Figure

Ed — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:26:48 +0000

Every year, Hasbro has a few exclusive action figures, and one or two of them usually end up being exlusive to some special convention somewhere (usually someplace very far away from where I live). Luckily, they tend to make most of them available at StarWarsShop.com after the event for an inflated cost. I usually get my figures this way, but there’s usually one figure or so that you can only get at the actual event. Of course, this makes it very difficult to get all the figures you want unless you are willing to go to every big Star Wars event in North America. For example, I wish I had been able to get the Jorg Sacul figure (George Lucas in X-Wing Pilot Gear), but I couldn’t make it to the event where it was sold and I refuse to pay an insane amount for it.

This year’s big figure, at least at the moment, appears to be the 501st San Diego Comic-Con Exclusive Figure. As the name implies, it’s a figure of a member of the 501st legion of stormtroopers, and it’s exclusive to this year’s Comic-Con is San Diego. I’ve always wanted to go to Comic-Con, if anything just to take in the atmosphere, but this figure makes it even more enticing. As always, I won’t be going this year, so I guess this is one more exclusive I won’t be getting. Of course, this year’s Comic-Con won’t just be great because of this figure. There will be many big-name guests in attendance as well as many vendors. Among the big names in attendance this year are Ray Bradbury, J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame), and many more, including a plethora of well-known comic book writers and artists. If you can go, I highly recommend that you do. If you know me and you’re going, I certainly wouldn’t mind if you picked up one of those $15 501st figures for me (it never hurts to ask). You can check out Rebelscum.com‘s reports on this figure by going here and here, and you can find out more information on this year’s Comic-Con by going here.

Can you Digg it?

Ed — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:41:54 +0000

Have you been swept by the Digg craze? Well, if you’re not into tech stuff, then I guess probably not. However, I highly recommend that you check out Digg.com sometime. It’s rapidly becoming one of the best way to get the latest and most interesting tech, video game, and other news. The reason why it’s so great is that it’s entirely user-contributed. Users submit links and descriptions of stories they find on the internet, and then other users "digg" each story they find interesting. Using this method, stories that become popular with the general Digg community are promoted to the front page, so each time you visit, you see the most popular recent tech happenings. Since the users are knowledgable and have read the stories, this should generally ensure that you see the most relevant stories on the front page. It can also be a lot of fun digging stories and watching their popularity grow. This is also a great way for you to get a significant but little-know story read by a lot of people. If it’s a good enough story and has some appeal to a lot of people, odds are that it will be on the front page soon. Another great thing about Digg is that each user has his own RSS feed of the stories that he has dugg recently. Mine is located here. If you have a Digg account, you can also add other users to your Digg friends list. You can view my profile and add me as a friend by going here.

I Feel the Need…

Ed — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:25:29 +0000

The Need… for dim sum! OK, so it may seem odd to pair a rephrasing of a classic quote from Top Gun with Chinese food, but not really when you think about it. In Top Gun, they soared high thanks to their love of flying and their awesome aircraft, and in Chinatown, I soar high because of my love of good food and the awesome food they serve there. After a decent while without any, I will once again be having Chinese food in Chinatown tomorrow morning (likely including dim sum, as well) with family and friends. I know the food will be good, and the company is sure to be entertaining as well. The only down side is that I’ll have to get up early for it, but it’s more than worth it. Chinatown, here I come (bright and early!).

Show Me the Comments!

Ed — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:16:35 +0000

Come on, I know that everyone who reads my entries has an opinion on things. Don’t hold back. Go ahead and let your voice be heard. While my website does not have a comments feature, my MSN Space does. I see how many hits some of these entries are getting, and yet I don’t see any comments. As of right now, I only have one comment on my entire MSN Space. That’s just not right. The next time you visit and you see a post that you find really interesting or you find that you have something to contribute, go ahead and leave a comment. Don’t worry if you don’t agree with me. Let your thoughts be heard. Just remember to keep it clean. I’d really like to see the number of comments on these posts increase, so don’t be afraid to leave a comment next time. Your comments are (almost) always welcome.

New Photos Now Online

Ed — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:07:04 +0000

OK, so you’re looking at the images in the Photos section of my MSN Space, and you’re asking yourself "Surely he has more recent pictures than that! These pictures haven’t changed in a long time." If you said that, then you’re right. Unfortunately, MSN Spaces has been having some problems recently. I’m not sure if it is isolated to only certain accounts or if everyone is affected, but based on what I have been reading in the comments section of the official MSN Spaces team blog, it appears that quite a few people are having problems. In general, I can still use my MSN Space as always, but I haven’t been able to upload pictures for quite some time. Have no fear though. I’m still taking lots of exciting (and sometimes delicious) pictures, and you can still view them online.

Once I find that my MSN Space is working again, I’ll of course upload all these pictures to the Photos section, but until then, you have a few ways that you can see these pictures. If you’re in college and you go to BU or you’re on my friends list, you can view most of the photos on The Facebook. Naturally, this doesn’t work for most people, so I invite everyone to take a look at my photos at Flickr. You can find all of my latest photos there, so enjoy. While you’re there, I’d appreciate it if you left comments on the pictures you find interesting. For example, you might say "Oooo, that looks like one tasty sausage" in the comments section of one of the pictures I took while eating some sausages bought from The Sausage Guy. When you’re done doing that, you can also take a look at my Flickr profile. If you also have a Flickr account, go ahead and add me as a contact.

Ed’s Music Recommendations – Entry #3 – Earth Wind & Fire

Ed — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:12:07 +0000

I have to admit that I’ve been a bit delinquent when it comes to updating this column as I had originally planned, and as a result, it’s been a few weeks since the last update. Nevertheless, here is the next installment. My choice for this week is Earth Wind & Fire. It actually hasn’t been that long since I bought their Greatest Hits, but as always, I’m glad I did. I was originally drawn to this album by the song "September," but after investigating further, I realized that I really liked a lot of the songs on the CD. That made me buy the CD, but after listening to it once, I became an instant fan of all the songs on it. I love this music for many reasons, but among them, I think the most notable are that:

1) it’s very lively

2) it makes you want to dance

3) it never seems to get old

I think that those are some great qualities for music to have, and the songs on this CD do them all. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with the rest of Earth Wind & Fire’s songs, but since this CD is supposed to representative of their greatest work, I can safely recommend my favorites of theirs. As always, I like far more than just these few, but these are my top choices:

- September

- Let’s Groove

- Boogie Wonderland

- Reasons

- After the Love Has Gone

Oh, who am I kidding? While I was researching what songs to recommend, I went back and listened to them all, and I have to recommend the entire album. It all sounds great, it’s all lively and entertaining, and you’d be hard pressed to find fault with any one of the songs. I guess the picks that I made will have to stand because I can only choose a few, but if you appreciate good music and you don’t already own an Earth Wind & Fire’s greatest hits CD, then go and buy it as soon as possible. I guarantee you’ll be dancing all night.

Updates to Site and MSN Space – RSS for all!

Ed — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:05:56 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed already, I’ve made a few neat improvements to my site and MSN space that you might find useful. At my MSN space, I’ve updated the handy little menu in the top left of the screen. Before, it just had a link to my site at people.bu.edu. Now, it has that, a link to edkopp4.com, and a link to my RSS feed. Speaking of RSS feed, I have made some significant changes in that area. In the past, I’ve had a few icons on my site that took you to my RSS feed, and you could also get to it through an icon at the bottom of my MSN space. These icons are still there, but now all of them except the one at my MSN space take you to my new RSS feed.

I recently made the decision to create a FeedBurner feed for my site, and I now consider this FeedBurner feed to be my official site feed. You can still access and use the old feed, but this is the preferred one. There are a number of reasons why I decided to make the change, but they all center around the fact that FeedBurner gives me more options with my feed. It does a great job of keeping track of the people who are subscribed to my feed. As a result, I can see how many people view my feed and what programs they use to do so. If you want, you can even see how many people are subscribed to my feed at the moment by going to the bottom of my site and looking at the number on the little blue icon. Keep in mind that this number isn’t perfectly accurate. Other great features of my feed include the fact that all posts in my feed now include the options to email the post to a friend and to add the post to your del.icio.us account. I think that overall, these things make the FeedBurner feed much better than the old one generated MSN Spaces. The last great thing that my new feed has enabled me to do is add a handy box to my MySpace profile that lets you see what the latest posts are and go to my site by clicking on the box. You may notice from that icon I mentioned that not many people are subscribed to my feed. Of course, I’m subscribed, but that leaves a lot of room for improvement. I attribute the lack of subscribers to most people’s lack of knowledge of what RSS is. Basically, it’s a format that allows you to gather all of the latest updates from your favorite sites in one convenient place without even having to go to those websites. You can subscribe to RSS feeds in a number of places. Firefox has native support for it, the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 will have native support, and there are many programs you can download and use. To see what I use and download it, go to the Favorite Free Programs page on my site. If none of those methods work for you, you can also subscribe to my feed from a number of websites such as Yahoo and Google. For a bunch of buttons that make this as easy as one click, go to the bottom of the right-hand column on my Personal Information page. Please try and subscribe to my feed if you find my posts useful. I’d really like to see that subscriber number go up.

The final change I have made to my site, also having to do with RSS feeds, is that I have added some code to each page that includes an RSS feed. This code lets your web browser automatically recognize the feeds on that page. What that means for you is that if you’re using Firefox or IE7, you can just click on that little orange icon in your address bar that appears when you visit my site, and that will let you easily subscribe to any feed mentioned on that page. I think that’s all there is for now. Keep checking my site and space for further changes, though. You never know when they’ll appear.

Babylon 5 DVDs for Half-price!

Ed — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:32:25 +0000

I’m speechless. OK, not completely speechless. If that were the case, then you wouldn’t be reading this, but it is understating the truth for me to say that I am incredibly shocked by what I recently discovered at Amazon.com. You never know what you’ll find there. The prices usually stay about the same, but every now and then, you stumble across a great deal that doesn’t last for long. If you have the money, you should buy this item when you see it, because I’ve found over the years that these deals do not last forever. As an example, Amazon used to have the box set of all Star Trek: Voyager seasons listed for about $485 if I remember correctly. Now they’re selling it for $737.99. That’s one big difference.

Just recently, I was browsing my DVD wish list at Amazon.com just out of curiosity. I went to the very end of my wish list, and sure enough – there was each season of Babylon 5 (in new condition and ready to ship), as well as the movie collection, listed at $44.99 apiece. I’ve been watching the prices on these DVDs for years, and they have never been even close to this cheap from what I’ve seen. For the longest time, Amazon has had them listed at around $80 or $90 with very little fluctuation. I really wish I had the money to buy these great seasons now, but of course, I don’t. I can only hope that this deal lasts long enough for me to purchase these DVDs. If you do have the money, though, and you are a fan of Babylon 5 or scifi in general, then by all means go ahead and buy these as soon as possible. There’s even free shipping and no tax. As if this wasn’t a good enough deal, Warner Bros. is also doing a deal where they give you money back by mail if you buy more than one season and send them this form and the proper UPC’s and receipts. They’ll give you $10 back if you purchase two seasons, with the dollar amount increasing by $10 with each extra season you purchase. That means that if you buy all five seasons, you get $40 back, resulting in a total of about $185 for all five seasons of Babylon 5. I guess this leaves Star Trek as the only series with expensive DVDs (although it appears that’s starting to change). If you want, you can see all the Babylon 5 DVDs here, or you can just click on the following links.

Babylon 5 – The Movie Collection

Babylon 5 – The Complete First Season

Babylon 5 – The Complete Second Season

Babylon 5 – The Complete Third Season

Babylon 5 – The Complete Fourth Season

Babylon 5 – The Complete Fifth Season

Call of Duty 2 Update

Ed — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 06:04:34 +0000

The Call of Duty 2 Xbox Live update is finally available! Download now and be amazed. Saddle up. Lock and load. This update should finally allow Xbox 360 owners to have the Call of Duty online experienve they’ve been hoping for ever since the game came out. It’s really too bad it took this long for them to come out with the update, but I guess it’s encouraging that the developer listened to consumer feedback and took the time and effort to improve their game. They certainly didn’t have to – the game has and will sell many copies, but it’s great to see that someone still listens to what the buyer has to say. I would go and download it now, too, but of course, I don’t yet have an Xbox 360. Someday I will though. You can read more about the update here.

Halo 2 Soundtrack Volume 2 Release Date

Ed — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 06:02:36 +0000

Although this announcement is extremely overdue, it made me very happy just now when I saw that we finally have a release date for volume 2 of the Halo 2 Soundtrack. It will be released on April 25th. I’ve had volume one for a very long time now, and it quickly became one of my favorite CDs soon after I purchased it. Hopefully, this new CD will be just as good as the first, but even if it only comes close, it will still be excellent. You can read more on this announcement by going here.

These Cakes Really… Take the Cake

Ed — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 03:12:00 +0000

Engadget recently held a week of giveaways to celebrate the site’s second birthday, and on the final day of giveaways, they had a special challenge. In order to win, one had to bake them a cake that in some way relates to Engadget or tech gadgets. People put forward an unbelievable effort, but it’s only natural: the winner received an Alienware PC. I must say that I am truly amazed by the results. Who knew that tech people could cook so well? You can see the winning entry as well as the others by going here. While all the entries are very impressive, the winning cake is simply unbelievable. Through a ridiculous amount of effort and creativity, Kirk Sutherland managed to create a working Treo 650 cake. Not only does it look delicious and accurately mimic the real thing on a 1:6 scale, but it has a 13" LCD screen and runs a program that allows it to turn on, acknowledge that a memory card has been inserted, view its contacts list, and dial a number at the press of a few buttons (made of cake, of course). Luckily, the cake’s creator has made a website dedicated to his invention. I highly recommend that everyone watch the video he made of the cake at work. As I said, it’s really unbelievable (and surprisingly tasty-looking). Let them eat cake!

EdKopp4.com

Ed — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:28:46 +0000

I am pleased to announce that you can now get to my website and my MSN space simply by going to EdKopp4.com. Thanks to Microsoft’s new Office Live Basics deal, I was able to get this domain name for free, as well as a good amount of bandwidth and storage on their server. The only down side to this was that I had to use their page maker to create my homepage for the domain. Otherwise, I probably would have transferred my website there altogether. However, the domain will still serve as an easy way for you to access my site and space, and it’s also a lot easier to remember in comparison to the lengthy addresses you need to type in to access my site or space. I even get five email accounts featuring an "@edkopp4.com" ending, but given how many addresses I already have, I don’t think I really have any use for them at the moment. So go on – give the new domain name a try.

Come on, FCC – Get over it already!

Ed — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:18:15 +0000

I must say that I am really annoyed and perhaps even disgusted with the FCC. According to a recent article at TVGuide.com, the FCC is fining twenty of CBS’ stations $550,000 for broadcasting what has come to be known as such things as "booby-gate" and "warddrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl. In my opinion, this is beyond ridiculous. If CBS had known that this event was going to occur or had reasonable cause to take preventive measures, then I could see a reason to fine them. In reality, though, there was no reason why CBS should have worried about anything of the sort happening during their broadcast, and it is absurd to hold them liable for what happened.

Apparently, the FCC is also up in arms over CBS’ broadcasting of an episode of Without a Trace that showed some scenes from a teenage orgy, and they’re going so far as to impose a $3.6 million penalty. I don’t care if the FCC is currently controlled by conservatives and answers to conservatives who are in charge of the government. They need to wake up and get back to reality. All anyone has to do is turn on the TV and watch some of the news or watch MTV to realize that the things that CBS showed pale in comparison to most of the filth and immoral junk that is shown on TV on a day-to-day basis. The problem is that the FCC and the American public in general has simply become too accustomed to such things on TV. If the FCC is trying to protect America’s youth, then they should realize that it’s really too late for that. It is a well-known fact that most people are at the very least exposed to many kinds of sexual material at a young age these days, and many are even engaging in sexual actions. Overreacting to a breast being shown on national television will hardly restore the purity of America’s youth, and it will do nothing to keep them pure in the future.

I think that the FCC’s recent actions do serve to highlight their blatant hypocrisy, though. They let all sorts TV shows and movies featuring extreme violence, gang fighting, drugs, and other seemingly immoral things be shown without even an eyebrow raised, but when a show tries to mention sex or shows some of the most innocuous nudity possible, they start hurling multi-million dollar fines left and right. I hope that sometime soon the FCC realizes what they are doing and changes their ways, but I find it very unlikely. I could go on with this topic and explain a similar situation that is taking place with the video game industry and certain well-known politcal figures, but I’ll save that for a future post. Here’s the original TV Guide article:

WITHOUT WARNING: The Federal Communications Commission has rejected CBS’ appeal and is fining 20 of the network’s stations $550,000 for Janet Jackson’s 2004 wardrobe malfunction, according to the Associated Press. (Would they have been charged twice if both of her gazongas had gotten loose? The mind wobbles.) At the same time, the government agency is slapping dozens of Eye affiliates with a record-breaking $3.6 million penalty for broadcasting a 2004 episode of Without a Trace that included scenes from a teenage orgy. Crap… and here I thought my TiVo knew to record anything with the word "orgy" in the description!

Eric Cheung Mentioned in a Boston Newspaper

Ed — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:56:27 +0000

A congratulations is in order for my cousin Eric Cheung. For those that don’t know, Eric is a standup comedian in his off-work hours, and he frequents most of Boston’s comedy clubs, with a performance lined up just about every night. In the past, he has been profiled in The Somerville News and was even invited to LA for an NBC comedy showcase. Recently, Eric was mentioned in Sampan, a prominent newspaper in Boston’s Chinatown. Congratulations, Eric, and keep up the good work. You can view the article by going here.

World’s Richest People

Ed — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 22:32:18 +0000

Forbes recently released its updated list of the world’s richest people. As expected, Lord Gates still reigns supreme with $50.0 billion (coincidentally, he is also 50 years old). It appears that Microsoft is very well represented, with Paul Allen taking #6 with $22.0 billion and Steve Ballmer at #24 with $13.6 billion. I think it’s sort of funny how Donald Trump is probably the most public rich person in America, but Bill Gates is by far more wealthy than he is. Perhaps we will soon have The Apprentice: Bill Gates Edition. I know I would watch it.

TV Networks Make Me Angry

Ed — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 04:19:26 +0000

I hate it when TV networks try to confuse me. Well, maybe they don’t actually try to confuse me on purpose, but it certainly does seems like it sometimes. Before tonight, the last new episode of Monk I watched was on February 3rd. After that, it was week after week of reruns, so I figured that they’d be back with new episodes in a month or two and make some big announcement when they do. I was wrong. They started showing new episodes again last week, and I had no idea. As a result, I missed "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut." As a result, I now have to wait for them to reshow it this summer. They certainly didn’t come back with many new episodes, though. The season finale is next week. I don’t know why they couldn’t just keep showing new episodes in the first place instead of the few weeks of reruns.

I’m also very annoyed with NBC. They’re finally showing the new episodes of Joey that they’ve had for some time now, but in their infinite wisdom, NBC is showing them on Tuesday nights at 8 PM, which is the exact same time American Idol is on. These two shows have the exact same target audience and are on at the exact same time, except American Idol is more popular. Which one do you think people are going to watch? I think it’s fairly obvious. I, too, love American Idol, so I’m forced to record Joey for later watching. While I may be willing to do this, I doubt that many others will. If Joey wasn’t already dead, NBC certainly is trying to kill it. I’m also not happy about how they moved The Apprentice to Monday nights. I’m not saying that I dislike its new day. In fact, I think that it is much beter for the show given that it would otherwise be competing against American Idol on Thursday nights. My problem with the move is that they had virtually no publicity concerning the new day. I didn’t find out until the day or two before the new season premiered, and even Donald Trump said recently on Larry King that many people didn’t know about the day change. If you ask me, NBC has no idea what its doing when it comes to correctly positioning its shows and advertising them properly. If NBC isn’t careful, it may very well kill off the few good shows it has left.

Repackaged X-Files Seasons 7, 8, and 9 in June

Ed — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 23:51:28 +0000

It was only a matter of time until Fox revealed the release date for the final three seasons of The X-Files on DVD in slimmer packaging. While Fox hasn’t actually given out any information to the general public, it does appear that they have shared some information with certain retailers, including Amazon.com. Amazon’s website now has these three DVD releases available for preorder, with each season set to be released on June 6th. Unfortunately, there aren’t any pictures of the sets yet, but I would expect the covers to be just like the already-released X-Files sets only without the "Collector’s Edition" text. It’s great to see all of these sets being released so soon, but it’s a bit annoying for me because I only have so much money and the best deals tend to be during the week a DVD is released. You can read TVShowsOnDVD’s report on this by going here.

One Great Night of Television

Ed — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 23:43:40 +0000

If you have any interest in Stargate or Monk, then tonight is your night to rejoice. Beginning at 8 PM tonight, Scifi will be showing the season finales of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, and at 10 is a new episode of Monk on USA Network. Although I am not looking forward to the long span of time between now and the new seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis, this night does promise to be one of the best in quite some time.

Ed’s Music Recommendations – Entry #2 – Billy Joel

Ed — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:22:46 +0000

This week, I thought that I would go with another very recognizable artist. If you’ve been reading my posts for some time, you know that I recently went to a Billy Joel concert and enjoyed every minute of it. Unfortunately, not everyone can have this same great experience, but that’s what CDs are there for. I actually didn’t really get interested in Billy Joel until about midway into last year, but I certainly am glad that I did. I was first drawn to his music after inquiring from a friend about the song We Didn’t Start the Fire, and given my love for that song and the fact that I had heard of some other Billy Joel songs, I thought it wise to purchase The Essential Billy Joel. As it turns out, that was one of the best CD purchases I ever made. As often happens with me, I bought the CD for a few songs, but after listening to the whole thing a few times, I fell in love with just about every song on the CD (well, two CDs in this case since there are two discs). Admittedly, We Didn’t Start the Fire is my most played song of all time (according to iTunes), but I really do love all of the songs on there. As a result, it’s almost impossible for me to recommend just a few songs. Anyone that likes good music and likes even one Billy Joel song should pick up the CD I mentioned. Nevertheless, I still have to make my picks, so here they are:
- We Didn’t Start the Fire
- Piano Man
- Only the Good Die Young
- It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me
- You May Be Right
- Allentown
- I Go to Extremes
- The Downeaster "Alexa"
That is a few more songs than I would prefer to recommend, but it was hard enough just narrowing it down to that many. Now, go forth and enjoy some great music.

JAG Coming to DVD

Ed — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 06:55:07 +0000

Many people out there love JAG, and there’s a reason for it: it’s a great show. Granted, it’s no Star Trek or X-Files, but it’s still a great show. Because of this, many people, including myself, have been puzzled for the past few years as to why such a popular show hasn’t been released on DVD yet. The wait will soon be over, though. The first season of JAG will be released on DVD sometime in June according to this post at TVShowsOnDVD.com. While I won’t be buying it because I have so much else on which to spend my money, this is great news for JAG fanatics.

Dim Sum Reigns Supreme

Ed — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 06:38:35 +0000

It’s official. I still love dim sum. As expected, I had a wonderful time at lunch today, and I finally got to experience dim sum in all its glory. Don’t get me wrong – TC Choy’s is great and all, but it’s hard to beat China Pearl in Boston’s Chinatown. I still can’t get over how big the restaurant is. From the outside, it doesn’t look that big, but it’s actually two incredibly large floors of dining area. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s close to four times the size of Big Fish Seafood, which is right across the street from it, and by no means is Big Fish a small place. In fact, I’d say it’s rather large. Anyway, back to food. I have no idea what the dim sum dishes I had are called, with the exception of shu mai (Yes, I know I probably butchered those words when it comes to spelling). Shu mai is awesome, by the way – definitely a new favorite. All the dishes had a unique taste, and they were all fantastic. Eating these dim sum dishes reinvigorated my love for certain flavors that I first discovered at TC’s, and it made me fall in love with even more flavors. It’s a wonderful thing watching cart after cart full of dim sum come by at an interval of what seems like less than half a minute. We also had some other more typical Chinese dishes, and those were all excellent as well. The curry with noodles was very good, and the chow foon was very well prepared. I also must say that they had what is probably the best tea I’ve ever had in Chinatown. Considering how often I’ve been to Chinatown, that’s saying a lot. I liken it to a sort of toned down English Breakfast flavor. The only real complaint I have is that they didn’t bring out more tea or water at a fast enough pace, but considering how busy they were (the place was filled to capacity, and considering how many tables they have in there, that is a ton of people) and that we had a fairly large number of people at our table (meaning that we drank more quickly), the delay is understandable. Now I can’t wait until the next time I get to have dim sum. Speaking of Chinatown, as you can see, I haven’t yet posted my review of Big Fish Seafood Restaurant, but I assure you that it is in the works and should be online sometime soon. Until then, you can feast your eyes on some delicious-looking pictures I posted in the Photos section.

Joey on DVD

Ed — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 06:16:25 +0000

TVShowsOnDVD.com recently revealed that the first season of the TV show Joey will finally be coming to DVD on May 30th. I own all of the Friends seasons, but I’m still a little undecided about this DVD. I like Joey, but it’s certainly no Friends – is it really worth the purchase? I’m just not sure. Maybe a really good price will help make up my mind. On a related note, it’s really a shame the way that NBC has treated Joey recently. It started off a little shaky, but it’s turned into an above average show that easily bests most other comedies out there and certainly blows away anything that NBC has aired in trying to replace it. The simple fact is that NBC’s "must-see Thursdays" aren’t what they used to be. All it has left are ER and Will & Grace, and after this season, there will only be ER. The shows that NBC has added to Thursday night are severely lacking, and if they do in fact cancel Joey after they air its remaining episodes, their Thursday night will go from "might-see Thursdays" to "watch ER at 10 Thursdays." NBC: If you’re listening, please don’t kill off Joey. It’s one of the few good shows you have left, even if it isn’t as good as Friends was. Please don’t destroy Thursday nights. However, given NBC’s extremely poor handling of Emeril, in which they cancelled it prematurely when it was getting to be one of the funniest shows on TV, I don’t have much hope that NBC will do the right thing.

My Mouth Waters for Dim Sum

Ed — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 06:23:20 +0000

At last, I will be having dim sum in Chinatown tomorrow (well, today since it’s technically early in the morning right now). I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time – ever since I first had dim sum at TC Choy’s in Tampa. Tampa is great for many things, but dim sum is not one of them. With the exception of TC Choy’s, there are virtually no places to go for dim sum in all of Tampa, at least not that I know of. However, just the sampling that I had at TC’s those few times has made me want to indulge myself further in this wonderful food. There is really no place better to do this than in Chinatown (except for China, of course), and so I’d been hoping to have a family gathering there for dim sum ever since I came to Boston. Unfortunately, most of my northern family lives a decent drive away, so we never had the chance… until tomorrow (today). It will be especially interesting since one of my family members that will be there is well versed in all that is Chinese. Dim sum, here I come!

I Think Vulkon Hates Me

Ed — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 06:01:19 +0000

Back on January 20th, I posted about how excited I was upon seeing that there will be two Vulkon conventions in Tampa this summer. You can’t blame me, right? After all, it’s not every year that you get two awesome sci-fi conventions in Tampa in one summer. Recently, my hopes were dashed when I went back to the Vulkon site to see if they had updated the listings at all. Well, they did, but not for the better. Originally, they only had the dates posted as well as one of the guests. At the time, it showed Alexis Cruz, who played Skaara on Stargate SG-1 as being on board for one of the conventions. To my dismay, he is no longer listed, and they have identified the theme for each convention. They do not make me happy. When I read the first listing, I thought it had to be a joke or something – who in the world would go to a Bionic Woman convention? Believe me, I don’t know either. It’s nice that the Bionic Woman herself, Lindsay Wagner, will be there, but I really could care less. I want sci-fi! The theme of the second convention isn’t quite as bad – it’s called "Slayercon," indicating that it will be based on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and any other Buffy-related things. That theme doesn’t get my heart pumping too fast, but it could be worse. If the guests are good, I might go to it. In the end, though, I’m still dismayed that there will be no sci-fi convention in Tampa this summer, whereas I originally thought that there might even be two. This will be the second summer in a row with no sci-fi convention in Tampa, and it doesn’t make me happy (Star Trek works for me, too). I look at the other conventions, and I see that cities like Cleveland are getting a huge array of great Star Trek, Stargate, and other guests, and I just wonder why Tampa can’t get the same treatment. There will be a sci-fi convention in Orlando in October, but since I’ll be in Boston at that time, it doesn’t do me much good. Oh well. Maybe I’ll have better luck next year.

Ed’s Music Recommendations – Entry #1 – Journey

Ed — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 02:52:35 +0000

After initiating the Kopp & Fontana Culinary Adventures series of articles, I thought that it would also make sense for me to make weekly recommendations on good music as well. Unfortunately, it seems that many people these days simply have no appreciation for good music. It could be because they have different tastes than I do, but I think the real reason lies in the fact that many people today, especially younger people, have simply not had enough exposure to great music (I even know someone in college that had never heard of The Police until just recently). As a result, all they know is today’s "music", if you can even call it that. For the most part, modern music is sorely lacking compared to music of the past, in particular music from the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s. As another part of my effort to broaden people’s tastes, I will be selecting one musical artist or soundtrack each week and recommending what I consider my favorite songs done by this artist or appearing on this soundtrack. You can be sure that these will all be great songs, and hopefully anyone that reads my recommendations will find them great as well.

My selection for this week is Journey. I recently purchased Journey’s Greatest Hits, and I cannot stop playing it. In fact, since I bought the CD, I have listened to "Any Way You Want It" 45 times, and I just bought the CD this past week. You should get a great deal of enjoyment out of any of the songs on this CD, but my personal favorites are:

- Don’t Stop Believin’

- Wheel in the Sky

- Any Way You Want It

- Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

- Lights

As I said, these are just a few great Journey songs. If you have the money, I recommend you buy their greatest hits album given that its price is so low. You should get many hours of enjoyment out of it.

Kopp & Fontana Culinary Adventures – An Introduction

Ed — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 00:52:56 +0000

In part of my ongoing effort to educate people on the wonderous food that is to be found in the Boston area, I have decided to start an ongoing series of articles on various places I recommend for eating or shopping for food. Since coming to BU, I have been constantly amazed at how much great food is within a short range of the school, including all types of food, whether it be American, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Thai, Japanese, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Russian, Greek, seafood, Afghani, or some other type of delicious food. However, I have been just as amazed by how little most people in this city know about its wide range of excellent food destinations. My friend Alex Fontana and I regularly go to all sorts of food places in this area, and we almost always come away very happy.

In the hopes of educating Bostonians on the wealth of food places in Boston, I will add updates to this series of articles on a regular basis, or at least if all goes according to plan. Also, Alex Fontana usually accompanies me on these food adventures, and if he has the time, he will hopefully be providing his thoughts on these food stops as well. Between his superior knowledge of almost all types of food and his many experiences with eateries here in the Boston area, I know that Alex’s comments on Boston’s food destinations will prove invaluable. It is my hope that these articles will give a great deal of insight to anyone seeking an honest look at many of Boston’s fine eating establishments. To spice things up, I will be adding pictures to accompany these articles, assuming I bring my digital camera with me to the places we eat. The only down side to all this is that you will surely become very hungry while reading these articles. I look forward to the next entry in this series, and with any luck, you will get a great deal out of them as well. I think it is fitting that I should leave you with the words of a great man, Chairman Takeshi Kaga of Iron Chef fame: "Allez cuisine!"

I Want this SUV!

Ed — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 04:15:15 +0000

I’m not usually a fan of SUV’s. I mean, why should I be? They take up too much space, they get very few miles to the gallon, they’re expensive, and they’re prone to rolling over. However, I have to make an exception this one time. Gear Live recently posted an article that shows any Star Trek fan’s dream car (SUV). In essence, it’s an SUV with two normal front seats, with a back seat that I can only compare to the helm of the Defiant from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This is by far the most intriguing SUV I’ve ever seen. The only down side is that it appears that this SUV will never make it into production. It’s a real shame too. Here are some pictures of the SUV courtesy of Gear Live. Warp speed now!

I’m Famous… again! – Thanks to Bill Hunt at TheDigitalBits.com

Ed — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 05:07:30 +0000

Back before I posted my recent news post concerning the possible Munich DVD covers, I emailed the editor of The Digital Bits, Bill Hunt, telling him about the survey I took, and I included the questions that I was asked as well as the cover art that I posted in that news post. I check The Digital Bits everyday because it’s one of the best DVD news websites around, and I figured that such news might be appreciated. As it turns out, it was. This weekend, I was sent a very pleasant email in response to my original, and as I had hoped, my information was actually used on The Digital Bits. The cover art and basic info that I sent were used in Bill’s "My Two Cents" post for 2/13/06 on The Digital Bits’ main page. Thanks for posting my news, Bill, and I’m glad that my information could be of some value in your daily DVD news. Currently, this mention is visible on the main page at TheDigitalBits.com, but at some point, it will be archived. While it does not yet have a permanent page independent of the main page, based on the apparent naming system used in creating archive pages for "My Two Cents" posts, it appears that this mention will eventually appear on a page located here (currently, that page doesn’t exist, but it appears that there will eventually be a page at that location where you can read the mention of the info I submitted). While I highly recommend that you visit The Digital Bits now and in the future, here is the mention that Bill Hunt made of my info as can currently be seen on the main page of that site:

Finally this morning, it seems that DreamWorks has been soliciting advice about the cover artwork for Munich (TBA, but we expect it to be announced soon for release on 5/9 via Paramount). Bits reader Ed K. participated in an online survey last week, in which he was asked to select his favorite among the following five choices (keep in mind all of these are early mock-ups only)…

I don’t know about you guys, but I kinda like that first one (top row, left), although the third one over is on the right track too. Anyway, I expect we’ll see the final design fairly soon, but this is at least an interesting look at the effort the Hollywood studios often go through when creating cover art for their DVD releases. Thanks again to Ed K. for sending these over.

I’m Famous! – Thanks to Major Nelson

Ed — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 04:39:06 +0000

I’m a little late in posting this, but I felt that it was still more than significant enough for me to post it. Many people, especially those who are fond of Xbox, are familiar with the name Major Nelson, but many are not. For those who don’t know who he is, Major Nelson is the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming service for Xbox. Of course, Major Nelson isn’t his real name – it’s his gamertag. His real name is Larry Hryb, and he’s become widely known among gaming fans because of his blog. Unlike most people that work in the gaming industry, Major Nelson actively maintains a blog so that he can communicate what’s going on in the world of Xbox to gamers everywhere. Not only does he give out information, but he also listens to gamers and uses their feedback to improve Xbox Live and Xbox in general. For quite some time now, he has also been doing what he refers to as a "blogcast," which is essentially a different name for podcast. He usually does this every Sunday, and it tends to last between an hour and an hour and a half. Over the many months he’s been doing it, it has grown tremendously and is now the most-downloaded gaming podcast on iTunes. Naturally, being an avid Xbox fan, I too listen to his blogcast every week. One of the most popular features of his blogcast is his weekly "Name the game" trivia contest. Each week, he plays a short sound clip from one Xbox or Xbox 360 game, and over the course of the next week, listeners email him what game they believe is the origin of that sound clip, and during the next show, Major Nelson pulls one of the correct entries out of a hat. The winner doesn’t just get any prize, though. He gets an exclusive Major Nelson Plantronics headset for use with Xbox Live. That headset is only available from Major Nelson, and it is very good looking. Of course, I enter every week, and of course, I never win. This isn’t surprising considering that he usually gets quite a few entries. Well, around Christmas time, he had a "Name the game" that lasted much longer than usual because no one sent in the correct answer. Eventually, he had to give a hint or two on one blogcast. I picked up on the hint, found the most logical game, and sent in the email. The next week, as I was listening to the blogcast, I was absolutely shocked to hear Major Nelson announce that only four people sent in the correct answer and that I was the big winner! I could not believe it. I actually won a Major Nelson Plantronics headset, and gamers everywhere heard him announce my gamertag as the winner. In fact, one person over at Xbox365 even noticed that and commented on the forums about it. Major Nelson sent the headset to my house later that week, and it apparently looks like a great headset. When next I play Xbox Live, I’ll be using a Major Nelson headset. Unbelievable. You can download the full blogcast by going here (this blogcast is titled "Show #159 The one after CES" and was posted on 1/22/2006), or if you just want to listen to the part where he announces that I won, you can right-click here and click on Save Target As to save a little clip I made. Finally, to see some pictures of the Major Nelson Plantronics headset, go here. Thanks Major Nelson!

Munich DVD Cover Art Possibilities

Ed — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 02:56:41 +0000

This isn’t my usual kind of DVD news post, but I thought that it would interest DVD enthusiasts, especially those that are fans of the movie Munich. I participate in a couple survey groups, and so I get a new survey link in my email inbox every now and then. I took a survey tonight, but this one was more interesting than usual. This survey asked what I thought of the various covert arts that are currently being considered for the DVD release of Munich. Although the survey tried to keep me from saving the images of the cover art by blocking my right-click, I was able to recover the images using my browser’s temporary internet files. Following are the relevant questions that were asked in the survey, as well as thumbnails of the cover art images included in the survey. You can view the full images by clicking on the thumbnails. Here are the questions:

- Here is a rough version of a potential package design for Munich. When the DVD is released, it will be complete with information on the back and will be of the same high quality as other DVD packages you normally see in stores.

- Looking at this package design, how interested would you be in buying Munich when it becomes available on DVD, either for yourself, your family, or as a gift for someone else?

- Regardless of whether or not you would actually buy Munich on DVD, if you saw this package design in a store, how likely would you be to pick it up and look at it?
- Now please focus your attention on the package design. Looking at the package, what, if anything, do you like about this design for Munich? Please be very specific, and give as many responses as possible.

- What, if anything, do you dislike about this design for Munich? Please be very specific, and give as many responses as possible.

- Again, please focus on the package design. Here are some phrases that might or might not describe the package design for Munich. Please look them over for a minute. Thinking specifically about this package design, please indicate the phrases that you feel describe the design very well.
- Please look again at the package design very carefully. Here are more phrases that may or may not describe this package design for Munich. Please indicate the phrases that you feel describe the design very well.

- Based specifically on this package design, what type of movie do you think Munich is mostly? Do you think…

- Based specifically on the package design, for whom do you think Munich is most appropriate? Do you think it is most appropriate for …

- Based specifically on the package design, do you think Munich will appeal mostly to males, mostly to females or to males and females about equally?

- If you decide to buy Munich, when do you think you might buy it?

- In addition to the package design shown to you, the makers of Munich are considering a few other designs. Which of these designs is your favorite for Munich on DVD?

- These are some of the people associated with this movie. For each person, please tell us if, before today, you had seen or heard of them.

- And would you say Steven Spielberg is one of your favorites, very good, good, fair, or poor?

- Which, if any, of the following movies do you own a copy of on DVD or on pre-recorded videocassette – (not recorded off TV)?

I’m Shocked… and awed. Star Trek DVDs – for CHEAP?!

Ed — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 12:07:30 +0000

As most Star Trek fans and DVD enthusiasts know, seasons of Star Trek on DVD are usually sold for about $100 each. Recently, however, I saw a forum post over at TrekWeb that made me very hopeful that the prices would soon be dropping, at least for some of the season sets. In the post, the author states that beginning this Tuesday, the first three seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be re-priced to the much-lower price of $69.99, and the complete seven season sets for each of these series will be carry the new MSRP of $460. Of course, these prices are merely MSRPs, so the actual prices would be much lower. While these words did get me excited, as any person that regularly visits forums knows, forum posts can’t be trusted. They do, however, often provide a great way to get information before it is released to the general public. Recently, many people, including myself, noticed that Amazon.com has changed the price of many of its Star Trek seasons. Star Trek: The Next Generation seasons one, two, and three are now listed at $51.99 each, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seasons one, two, and three are now listed at $55.99 each. These prices are unheard-of, and they are certainly the lowest prices I have ever seen for these DVD sets. Also of note is that Amazon.com is also selling all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation together for the very-low price of $390.99 (you would usually see this set retail for about $700). These new prices seem to validate the forum post I mentioned earlier. However, after reading Best Buy’s ad for this week, I discovered that it gets even better (which seems impossible). I already own all of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so I didn’t care too much about those prices I just listed. All they did was make me hopeful that other seasons would soon be dropping in price. Well, thanks to Best Buy, my hopes have come true. Apparently, the new regular price, at least for the moment, for the first three seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise is $56.99 each. This week, however, you can buy each season for the jaw-dropping price of $44.99 each. Yes, you read correctly – seasons one, two, and three for just $44.99 each, but only for this week. Since I don’t yet have any of Enterprise on DVD, this makes me very happy (I’m not joking – I was at a loss for words when I first read the ad). If you’re a fan of Star Trek and you don’t yet own these DVDs, then I recommend that you log onto Amazon.com or go to Best Buy as soon as possible and purchase these. I doubt that you’ll find a better price, at least not for the near future, and you’ll certainly enjoy your purchase. Now I just hope that they re-price Star Trek: Voyager in the near future.

Update (4/14/08): It didn’t seem like anyone would ever be able to top these prices, but Amazon.com has done just that. See my post here.

Reminder – All New Sci-Fi Friday and Monk Tonight

Ed — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:24:22 +0000

Hopefully, everyone that’s interested in Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, or Monk is already aware that all of these series are back on TV with new episodes, starting with last Friday. These new episodes continue tonight with more sci-fi goodness on Sci-Fi, as well as everyone’s favorite obsessive-compulsive detective on USA. Enjoy the best night of the week for television. Sci-Fi Friday and Monk are an unbeatable combination.

Two Vulkon Conventions in Tampa This Summer

Ed — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:11:46 +0000

In July 2004, I went to my first Star Trek convention. Well, to be more exact, it was a sci-fi convention, but there was still a lot of Star Trek in it. I had always wanted to go to a convention, but I never had until that point for the simple reason that there are very few conventions in or near Tampa. However, not long before the convention, I came across the website for Vulkon, which puts on sci-fi themed conventions in a few cities across the country. These aren’t your huge, Las Vegas scale conventions, but that may be what makes them so great. You’re not surrounded by large crowds of people. Instead, it’s a much more intimate atmosphere, and you’re surrounded by generally nice people that care a lot about sci-fi, and you still get to see lots of big sci-fi stars. That convention I went to in the summer of 2004 included many well-known people, including Christopher Judge, Connor Trinneer, Garrett Wang, Patricia Tallman, Jeffrey Willerth, Manu Intiraymi, Dean Haglund, Michael Forest, Robin Curtis, Lee Stringer. Christopher Judge was very funny and interesting, and Garrett Wang was more amusing than I thought possible. He does some very good impressions of the Voyager crew. I also managed to get some very hard-to-find figures and such at the convention for very cheap. The only down side to that convention was that I wasn’t able to see Connor Trinneer because he was there on the other day of the convention, whereas Christopher Judge was there only on the day I was there. I had such a great time at that convention that I was very disappointed to find out the following year that there would be no sci-fi convention in Tampa for 2005. However, it looks like Vulkon is making it up to us this year by giving us not one but two conventions in Tampa this summer. According to the upcoming conventions page at the Vulkon website, there is a convention planned for June 23-25 as well as one for July 28-30, with Alexis Cruz, known for his role as Skaara on Stargate SG-1, already on board for the latter convention. If for nothing else, this should be an exciting summer just for sci-fi conventions.

Mel Brooks Box Set Collection at Amazon.com – $69.99

Ed — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:55:34 +0000

Not too long ago, I posted that the Mel Brooks Box Set Collection had finally been announced with a street date of 4/4 and a suggested retail price of $99.98. As I had hoped, Amazon.com will be selling the item for significantly less than that. Currently, the site has it listed for $69.99, which is much more reasonable. I’m still hoping that they release Robin Hood: Men in Tights as a stand-alone DVD as well, but I have yet to see any information on that.

American Idol Premieres Tonight

Ed — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:22:32 +0000

Finally, tonight is the season premiere of the next season of American Idol. It seems like it’s been forever since the last season ended. With good television going the way of the dinosaurs, we need something like American Idol to fill the void in TV land. If you’re free tonight and looking for a laugh and a good time, then watch FOX at 8 PM for two hours of American Idol goodness. I know I will. Who knows, we could see the next William Hung on TV tonight. Kopp, out.

Jade Empire Limited Edition – $19.99 at Circuit City

Ed — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 07:46:43 +0000

As I always do, I did quite a bit of shopping after Christmas. I had a fairly easy time finding most of the items I was looking for. However, one thing eluded me – Jade Empire Limited Edition for Xbox. Almost everywhere I went (and I went to a lot of places), all I could find was the regular version. Well, who wants a regular version when you can have a limited edition? I did find the limited edition a few times, but each time it was either used or was priced at $29.99, which is $10 more than the regular version. The last place I looked, after much searching, was Circuit City. They had three or so copies of the limited edition, but they were all marked at $29.99. Since this was the last place I would be going to look for it and I was worried that if I waited much longer I may never see the limited edition again, I went ahead and bought it. However, to my surprise, it rang up at $19.99. Apparently, the game is listed in the Circuit City computers at $19.99, but the labels on the games themselves show $29.99. If you’re still looking for the limited edition of this great game, then head over to Circuit City to get it for a very reasonable price.

After the fact: Billy Joel Concert and Lightning game

Ed — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 07:39:35 +0000

Well, the big events of the last two days are done. As expected, the Billy Joel concert was excellent. He did thirteen songs that I easily recongized, as well as many others with which I wasn’t as familiar but were quite good anyway. To my delight, he did my all-time favorite song of his, We Didn’t Start the Fire. Between the excellent use of multi-colored lights, great singing, and Billy Joel’s great performing ability on stage (how about playing the piano, singing, and playing a harmonica all at once?), it was quite a show. The Lightning game was also a blast. The Lightnint actually won, which was a nice treat since they’re not doing as well this season. It was also great to have such amazing seats – center ice, just far enough up in a luxury suite with food. It’s hard to beat that. It also gave me one last chance to spend some time with me friend Joesph Caintic before we both go back to college on Sunday. Thanks again, Caintic.

Praise the Lord! – Robin Hood: Men in Tights on DVD

Ed — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 07:31:44 +0000

It’s about time! After emailing every DVD website I could think of and receiving the answer "I don’t know" every time, I finally have my answer. The Digital Bits is reporting that the Mel Brooks Boxset Collection, which includes the wonderful Robin Hood: Men in Tights, will be released on DVD on 4/4 with an MSRP of $99.98. That price seems awfully high, but I’m hoping that major retailers like Amazon.com will offer it for significantly less. Despite it being one of Mel Brooks’ most popular works and a favorite of many of my friends and myself, this is the first time that Robin Hood: Men in Tights will be released on DVD. Given the rate at which studios produce DVDs these days, you would think that it would have come out years ago. Here is the relevant text from The Digital Bits, posted on 1/13/06 at 4:30 PM PST:

First up is the long-awaited Mel Brooks Boxset Collection (due 4/4 – SRP $99.98), which will include High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, Blazing Saddles (in conjunction with Warner Bros), Robin Hood Men in Tights, Silent Movie, To Be or Not to Be, Twelve Chairs and Young Frankenstein! We’re still working to confirm this, but we believe each title will feature anamorphic widescreen transfers. Extras are expected to include theatrical trailers, HBO specials and other featurettes on select titles, audio commentary by Brooks on select titles and more. We’ll post a confirmed spec list when we have it.

The only downside to all this is that it is still unknown whether or not Robin Hood: Men in Tights will be available outside of the box set as a standalone DVD. Hopefully, it will, but even if it isn’t, this is great news.

Thursday and Friday will be awesome!

Ed — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 03:46:07 +0000

This week, I will be having lots of fun on Thursday and Friday night. Strangely, I will be at the Ice Palace (also known as the St. Pete Times Forum) both nights. On Friday, I will be seeing Billy Joel (yes, that’s right – THE Billy Joel) live in concert, and on Friday I will be at a Lightning game in a luxury suite thanks to my good friend Caintic. I can’t even remember the last time I was at the Ice Palace (it’s probably been a few years), and now I will be there two nights in a row. As you can imagine, I am definitely looking forward to it.

Posting Your Email Address Online – Don’t do it!

Ed — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:24:49 +0000

As I’ve become more computer saavy over the years, I’ve come to learn a few things. OK. I take that back. I’ve come to learn a lot. Unfortunately, many people do not know as much about computers and the internet as I do, and as a result, many people go through some very unnecessary experiences, and among them is spam (no, not the well-known canned "meat"). No matter what you do, spam is not always preventable. Somehow, even if you never give out your email address to anyone but friends and the most trusted websites, it seems that you still get a spam email here and there. How this happens, I’m really not sure, but it does happen. My best guess is that it’s a combination of many factors, among them are the rare, evil person at a website that might want to sell people’s email addresses to spammers to make some money, spyware, and viruses that harvest email addresses from your or your friends’ contacts lists. While we don’t have too much control over these things (just because you have good virus protection, don’t assume that all of your friends and family do), you can do some things to significantly limit the amount of spam you get. Some just require common sense. For example, never give your email address to a website that looks a little fishy – stick with the reputable ones. Also, if you ever register for a contest or mailing list, make sure you read the fine print – many of these automatically sign you up for email that you don’t want. In fact, some even sign you up for generic email that can come from any of a site’s "trusted partners" (just because the website trusts them, why should you?). I think the most important thing you can do, though, is to never, for any reason, put your email address on any message board, website, or other place on the internet. It is a known fact that many spammers out there have little programs that search the internet, and I mean the entire internet, looking for email addresses. If it finds one, it is added to the spammer’s mailing list, and you can bet that there will soon be mountains of spam sent to that address. Sure, you have a spam filter, but why should you have to use it? It’s much easier to prevent spam in the first place. If you ever do have to post your email address on the internet, I recommend that you change it a bit. For example, instead of typing name@domain.com, you should type "name (at) domain (dot) com", or something like it. The idea is that you want to make your email address look as little like an email address as possible while making sure that the reader still has all the necessary information to email you. In particular, you want to be sure to not include the ‘@’ symbol, which is a giveaway that it’s an email address. Of course, this method isn’t foolproof. If a spammer is really devoted, he can search message boards and such himself and manually enter your email address into his list, but since the internet is so large, the odds of this happening probably aren’t too high. If you really want to be secure, you could make up an email address that you only use for posting on the internet and use a separate one for the rest of your email. For example, I’ve done this for my website. On that note, you may be wondering why I typed in my exact email address on my website. The secret is that I actually haven’t. I use javascript to make it look just like my email address, but the actual code for the page has my email address significantly broken up to the point that it looks nothing like an email address, which should hopefully fool any email harvesting programs that may come across my site. So, to sum up, if you want to avoid spam, use common sense before you give out your email address, read the fine print, and be very careful about posting your address on message boards and other places on the internet.

Thank you, Gear Live

Ed — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 05:46:33 +0000

As many people know, I am an avid enthusiast of all things related to computers and technology. As such, I visit a good number of sites to keep up on the latest tech news. Among these sites is the excellent technology blog Gear Live. I started visiting this site not that long ago, and ever since then, I’ve been impressed with its coverage of the latest technology gadgets and news. To celebrate the holidays and reward visitors, Gear Live recently held contest in which they gave away a good number of useful technology gadgets from their Holiday Gift Guide. Each person could only enter the contest for one of the items, and although many of them caught my eye, one in particular appealed to me the most – the Vaja iVod DJ, which is a very well-crafted iPod case. I was thrilled to find out that I was the winner of this wonderful prize. Thank you, Gear Live. You can see the list of winners, including me (Admiral_Kirk), by going here and scrolling down to the third post.

Vanna White gets a star?!

Ed — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 05:36:04 +0000

I absolutely can not believe that of all people, Vanna White will be getting a star on the Hollywood walk of fame soon. I have nothing against Vanna White. In fact, I really enjoy seeing her on Wheel of Fortune. However, it is impossible to deny that she has done practically nothing to warrant a star. I can understand why Pat Sajak or Bob Barker would get stars – they’ve been on TV for a very long time, host very successful TV shows that have become part of American culture, and have many lines of dialogue in each episode. Vanna, on the other hand, says practically nothing each episode. Her job basically comes down to walking on stage, touching the edges of letters on a big board, clapping, saying a few words at the end of each episode, wearing a fancy dress, and smiling. That’s it. I find it even more amusing that she actually doesn’t even have to touch the board anymore. Ever since they went digital, they can actually "turn" the letters by computer, but to give Vanna something to do, they made it so that the letters change when she touches their edges. I think Vanna White is great and all, but could we please reserve stars on the walk of fame for people that actually do something major to deserve it?

Own the Lucas Family Action Figures

Ed — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 05:23:33 +0000

You can now own the entire George Lucas family in action figure form. Many Star Wars fans are aware that everyone in George Lucas’ family, including George himself, can be seen in costume in Star Wars Episode III. Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of figures of George Lucas (the previous Jorg Sacul was extremely popular), Hasbro has made action figures of the Lucas family’s movie characters and has packaged them together as a set. You can purchase the set at StarWarsShop.com for $34.99.

Need a Windows Live Messenger invite? Ask and you shall receive.

Ed — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 03:18:28 +0000

I’m currently enrolled in the Windows Live Messenger beta program, and, of course, I love the new software. Unfortunately, you can only enjoy this beta software if you have an invitation to join the beta, and I was lucky enough to get one a few weeks ago. Today, I received 10 invites to distribute. If you want an invite, just send me an email at edkopp4.webmaster (at) gmail (dot) com – just be sure to remove the spaces and change (at) to @ and (dot) to a period.

Edit: 0 invitations remaining. Congratulations to everyone who received one!

Happy New Year!

Ed — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 04:14:22 +0000

I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year. It’s still hard to believe that 2005 is already over. It seems like every year, time passes by more quickly. As always, 2005 was filled with many memorable events, both good and bad. I’m sure we can all look back on some things that happened that we wish hadn’t occurred, especially with regard to world affairs. However, there will always be bad things in life, and we must keep going and look at the good that takes place all around us. We will always have the memories of being with family, enjoying new adventures, and seeing new things. 2005 was filled with many firsts for me, many of which I probably can’t even remember. 2005 included the first time I went to Chicago, the first time I went to the top of the Prudential building in Boston, the first time I went to Athan’s bakery, lots of good times spent with relatives in Massachusetts, and of course, lots of good times spent with my family here in Florida. With 2005 finished, who knows what the next year will bring? Hopefully, it will be a more peaceful time across the world and there will be a reduction in terrorism. Perhaps the economy will continue to improve, and global warming will be reduced. While this all might not happen, I know that many good things will still take place next year, and I look forward to them. I know that we can expect to see more progress made in computers and technology in general, more good movies, more entertaining plays and musicals, and who knows – we may even see George W. use proper English. I hope that everyone has a great New Year’s Day and that 2006 brings everyone lots of joy and good memories.

Ho Ho Ho!

Ed — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 08:59:03 +0000

Merry Christmas!

There Can Be Only One – Highlander Movie News

Ed — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 07:37:02 +0000

This isn’t exactly new news, but very few people have heard about it. I’m sure that many people have never heard of the television show Highlander, but those that have probably know that it was a great show featuring Adrian Paul as Duncan McLeod, the highlander. I still consider it one of the greatest shows of all time. Where else can you get sword fights, flashbacks to various events taking place over the course of a few centuries, beheadings, people being killed and returning to life, and great music? Actually, on second thought, that does sound a little bit like the Bible (sans the music part). Anyway, it was a great show and lasted for six seasons. Not long after the show was finished, they released a movie called Highlander: Endgame, featuring Duncan McLeod and Connor McLeod (star of the other Highlander movies that preceded the TV show). Unfortunately, this movie was a major flop. However, this doesn’t seem to have deterred the show’s creators, and as a result, they are currently in the process of filming a trilogy (yes, you read that right – a trilogy) of Highlander movies that will explore the origins of the immortals. The first of the movies, titled Highlander: The Source, should be in theatres sometime in 2006. You can visit the official site by going here.

Review of Serenity DVD at IGN

Ed — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:34:03 +0000

IGN has posted their review of the Serenity DVD, and judging by the review, it should be a very good DVD. Overall, they gave the DVD a 9 out of 10, which is a very good score. The movie itself is awesome, and if the rest of the DVD is as good as they claim, then this should be a must-buy for any Firefly or Serenity fan as well as any sci-fi fan in general. The DVD should be available in stores a week from today on December 20th.

Quake 4 PC Demo Now Available

Ed — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 02:54:21 +0000

A demo of the game Quake 4 for the PC is now available for download. You can find links to its download locations by going to the official Quake 4 website.

The X-Files Seasons 4-6 Repackaged and Repriced

Ed — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 02:51:51 +0000

Back in October, I posted that seasons 1-3 of The X-Files will soon be repackaged and released on DVD with a much-lower MSRP of $49.98. As I had hoped, this trend will be continuing. It was recently revealed that seasons 4-6 of The X-Files will be repackaged and released on March 28, 2006 with that same low MSRP of $49.98. You can view TVShowsOnDVD.com’s article on this development here.

What Professors Really Mean

Ed — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 02:45:31 +0000

My friend Alex Fontana sent a very interesting link my way recently, and I felt that I should share it with everyone. Basically, it’s a list of statements that professors commonly make, with the true meaning of each statement given. Most of the statements and meanings are very amusing, but what makes it even more funny is that the meanings are often accurate. So, here it is: What Professors/Teachers Mean

December 2005 Update to Xbox 360 B.C. List

Ed — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 02:39:47 +0000

Microsoft recently issued its December update to the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility emulation software. New in this month’s update is support for all flavors of Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, and Ghost Recon. For a short time after the update, some people experienced problems when playing Halo 2 on their 360s, but Microsoft has since updated the update. As a result, there are no longer any problems. You can view the complete backwards compatibility (BC) list by going here, and you can read Major Nelson’s blog post on this topic by going here.

X-Men 3 Trailer Now Online

Ed — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 02:27:00 +0000

The first teaser trailer for the upcoming movie X-Men 3 is now available online for your viewing pleasure and can be found here. As I’m sure you can tell from the name, this is the sequel to the two other X-Men movies that have already been released, and it will hit theatres on May 26th next year. Judging by the trailer, it looks just as good as the two other X-Men movies. In other words, it looks awesome. You can also visit the official website for the movie by going here.

Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter – $49.99 at Kmart

Ed — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 17:54:35 +0000

If you like great bargains, then you’re going to love this one. Although I do not have any firsthand knowledge of this great deal, based upon what I have been reading online, it seems to be legitimate. According to numerous posts in one thread at the TeamXbox forums, Kmart has the Xbox 360 wireless adapters marked at the usual price of $99.99 each, but at least for now, the item rings up as $49.99. If you’ve been interested in this item, then I suggest you head over to your local Kmart as soon as possible and see if this deal is true. The thread I referenced can be found here.

Special Holiday Episodes of Monk and The Dead Zone this Weekend

Ed — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:24:01 +0000

USA Network will be showing special holiday episodes of Monk and The Dead Zone this weekend, with the Monk episode first being shown on Friday at 10 PM and the episode of The Dead Zone debuting Sunday at 10 PM. As usual, you can expect them to be reshown at various times throughout the week. I encourage everyone to watch these episodes – the previews make them out to be very good. Also, this is the only time you’ll be able to see new episodes of these series until their new seasons. The new season of Monk doesn’t begin until January 13th, and The Dead Zone doesn’t return until June 11th.

Oprah on Letterman!

Ed — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:46:31 +0000

I never thought that I would see this day. I’ve watched David Letterman for a very long time, and I have fond memories of him constantly making fun of the fact that Oprah would not come on his show and that she would never invite him to be on hers. Of course, it always got lots of laughs, and part of what made it so funny was the belief that she would in fact most likely never be seen in the same room as Letterman. Well, all of that will change soon. According to TVGuide.com, she will be appearing on Letterman’s show on December 1st to promote The Color Purple. Here’s what TVGuide.com had to say on the subject:

"OPRAH, MEA CULPA":Oprah Winfrey has agreed to appear on David Letterman’s late-night talker for the first time since he switched networks to CBS in 1993. Although the origin of the celebs’ "feud" is unclear, Winfrey once told Time that she felt "completely uncomfortable" as the target of Letterman’s barbs; not helping matters was the talk king’s infamously awkward "Uma, Oprah" shtick at the 1995 Oscars. Oprah, out to tout her Broadway production of The Color Purple, will sit with Dave on Dec. 1. Oh, this can’t be good: The other guest for that night is Deepak Chopra.

GameSpot Likes Perfect Dark Zero?!

Ed — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 04:39:17 +0000

In a move I never thought possible, GameSpot has reviewed the Xbox 360 game Perfect Dark Zero and has given it a 9.0 out of 10. This is huge news considering that many had been saying that this game would most likely disappoint eager fans expecting too much from it. GameSpot is well known for being extremely harsh when it comes to reviewing games, especially Xbox games, so this must truly be a great game. You can read GameSpot’s full review here.

Step into the 3-6-0!

Ed — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 04:09:37 +0000

The day is finally here. Tomorrow is the release of Microsoft’s new gaming console, Xbox 360. Even though I am not getting one at launch like I did with the original Xbox, this is still an exciting time for me. I can feel it in the air. At midnight tonight, a handful of Best Buy stores, as well as many Gamestop and EB Games stores, will open to the public so that people, most of whom preordered the console, may purchase it. The other Best Buy stores will be opening an hour earlier tomorrow (at 9 AM) to allow gamers to come in and make their purchase. All other stores will be opening at the usual time and will be selling 360′s on a first-come, first-served basis. Many thousands of gamers will be patiently waiting in line for hours with the hopes of getting one of the few available at each store, while others will be going from store to store hoping to find a remaining console. I wish everyone the best of luck in his quest to purchase a 360. Tomorrow is truly a great day for gamers. The most powerful game console ever created will finally be available for purchase. I can think of no words more fitting than those made famous by the TV show Dance 360: "Step into the 3-6-0!" Happy Xbox 360 day!

Black Friday is Awesome

Ed — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 08:11:05 +0000

If you haven’t heard already, you can see almost all of the ads for this upcoming Friday, also known as Black Friday, by going to bf2005.com. I am very impressed by many of the ads. Of course, like always, some of the ads aren’t that good, but most are. Here is the list of what I found most appealing in the ads (in other words, if I could get to all of these stores, this is what I would buy):

– EB Games –

Doom 3 Collector’s Edition (Xbox) – $19.99

– CompUSA –

Fever Pitch DVD – $9.99

– Best Buy –

Apollo 13 DVD – $5.99

True Crime (Xbox) – $4.99

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (Xbox) – $9.99

** Toshiba Progressive Scan DVD Player (after rebate) - $29.99

** 7" Insignia Portable DVD Player (after rebate) – $69.99

** LiteOn DVD Recorder (after rebate) – $69.99

** Samsung Progressive Scan DVD Recorder (after rebate) - $99.99

– Kmart –

Buy 1, Get 1 Free Star Wars 3.75" Figures

– Circuit City –

Brother in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (Xbox) – $9.99

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Xbox) – $9.99

** Gameboy Advance SP with Zelda and Pitfall games and headphones – $67.99

** Polaroid Progressive Scan DVD Player – $19.99

** 7" Portable DVD Player (after rebate) – $76.99

** Toshiba notebook computer with 512 MB RAM, 60 GB hard drive, DVD/CD-RW drive, Celeron M processor 370 (1.5 GHz), and built-in 802.11g wi-fi + free all-in-one printer and free wireless g router - $199.99

– Wal-Mart –

** CyberHome DVD Recorder/Player – $79.86

** Venturer 6.2 inch Portable DVD/CD Player – $79.86

** = I probably wouldn’t buy this because it’s too much money, but it’s still an amazing deal.

JAG, The Sentinel, and Star Trek: The Animated Series DVD News

Ed — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:56:10 +0000

As always, the good people over at TVShowsOnDVD.com have been hard at work trying to find more news on upcoming DVD releases. Recently, they posted a number of very interesting news articles on this topic. According to the articles, Paramount’s press website has a folder for every property that is either currently on DVD or is in the works and will be released in the future. Apparently, folders have recently been added for JAG, The Sentinel, and Star Trek: The Animated Series. While there isn’t any official word on a release of any of these titles, this seems to indicate that these series will definitely be coming to DVD sometime soon, with TVShowsOnDVD believing that they will almost certainly be released in 2006. You can click on these links to see the article for each series: JAG, The Sentinel, and Star Trek: The Animated Series

Xbox 360 Launch Lineup Announced

Ed — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:39:09 +0000

Microsoft has finally revealed exactly what games will be available next Tuesday when Xbox 360 launches. The list includes 18 games, and you can see which games are included by reading Gamespot’s news article. Unfortunately, the much-anticipated The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Dead or Alive 4 won’t be able to make launch, but it shouldn’t be that long of a wait until they’re released. Even without these games, the lineup is still very impressive.

Xbox 360 User Manual Viewable Online Now

Ed — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:34:22 +0000

Since the Xbox 360 will be coming to stores next Tuesday, it is only natural that certain things get leaked online shortly before release, and thanks to the FCC’s website, this is certainly the case. By going here, you can see the Xbox 360 user manual that is included with the console. Just so you know, it is in .pdf format, so it might take a second to load.

Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility List

Ed — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:29:06 +0000

Microsoft recently unveiled the official list of what Xbox games will be playable on Xbox 360 when the console launches next Tuesday. Surprisingly, the list already contains more than 200 games. Of course, the list is missing some major titles, but this is mostly due to the fact that some of the more popular Xbox games such as Splinter Cell are harder to emulate on Xbox 360, so it is taking a bit longer to get them compatible. Have no fear though – Microsoft is working hard on these games, and it is certain that this list of Xbox titles that will work on Xbox 360 will keep growing. You can read Gamespot’s article on this by going here, and you can read the question and answer article on backward compatibility over at Xbox.com by going here. The official list of original Xbox games that will work on Xbox 360 can be found here, and it will be updated as more games are made playable on Xbox 360.

Birthday Pictures

Ed — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:20:33 +0000

My birthday was this past Friday, November 11th, and my parents were here to celebrate it with me. We did quite a bit from Thursday through Sunday, and I used the excellent digital camera I got for my birthday to take pictures of much of what we did. You can see the pictures by either going to the Photos section or by looking at the right column of this page.

XBList – A Very Useful Xbox Live Friends List Application

Ed — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:52:44 +0000

If you play Xbox Live, then here is a program that you could find very useful. It’s called XBList, and it works very much like an instant messenger buddy list, except it shows your Xbox Live friends. It organizes your friends by what game they are currently playing, and it displays each person’s Halo 2 emblem next to their gamertag (or their Xbox.com gamer card picture if they have one). If you double-click on a gamertag, it opens up your internet browser and takes you to that person’s gamer card. Also, if you right click on a gamertag, it gives you the option of opening your browser and going directly to that gamertag’s Halo 2 stats page at Bungie.net. You can download this program here.

Google Desktop Version 2

Ed — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:45:43 +0000

Version 2 of Google’s popular and very handy desktop search application is finally out of beta and is available for download here.

Office Space Game

Ed — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:43:37 +0000

If you like the movie Office Space, then you should really enjoy this online game over at FoxHome.com. In it, you get to relive some of the greatness of Office Space as you race through the office to collect all of the TPS reports and sneak out before the boss, Lumbergh, catches you. I think someone has a case of the Mondays…

Xbox 360 Demo Unit at CompUSA

Ed — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 07:43:25 +0000

I visited a local CompUSA store earlier tonight, and I made a very interesting discovery that brightened my evening. I made a post about my discovery over at the Xbox365 forums just now, which you can find here. Here is what I posted:

I only recall hearing about 360 demo units being seen at EB, Gamestop, and Best Buy, and I did a search of previous topics and didn’t find any word on this, so here it goes. I was at the CompUSA store by the Braintree T station in Boston earlier today, and naturally I was browsing the video games. However, I was shocked when I glanced over and saw an Xbox 360 demo unit, complete with console, HDTV, and two controllers. I had never heard about this store having the playable 360s, but sure enough, they had one. I must say that I am in love with the console’s interface. Naturally, most of the functions were disabled, but browsing through the menus was as easy as could be. It was also nice to see how the ring of light on the console and the ring of light on each controller work with the interface and how they show who is what player. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to play any of the demos, but it looked like this system had all the demos that have been mentioned to be on other demo units in other stores. As a side note, they had a very large cart in the aisle right next to it filled mostly with Xbox games, and the cart had lots of signs on it all stating that the games on that special cart were buy two, get one free – not a bad deal really, and most of the games were priced as they would be at Gamestop or EB.

This Weekend’s Midnight Movie: Top Gun

Ed — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:29:10 +0000

Although I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. If you live near Boston and want something fun to do either Friday or Saturday nights, go to AMC Fenway and see the midnight movie. The movie last weekend was The Shining, and I was shocked on Friday to find out that it was sold out. I’m not sure if that means that people love the midnight movies or just wanted to see a scary movie, but either way it means that these midnight movies are very popular. This weekend’s movie is Top Gun. I own the movie on DVD, but because of when it was made, I have never seen it in theatres, so this should be a real treat.

Serenity on DVD

Ed — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:57:04 +0000

Although it has been rumored on the internet for some time now that Serenity would be released on DVD on December 20th, Universal has finally announced this as the official release date. In addition to a great movie, this DVD will also include deleted scenes, commentary, and lots of bonus materials. You can read DVDAnswers.com’s coverage of the announcement here, which includes large pictures of the box as well as the menus. Also, Amazon.com has finally listed the DVD for sale, and you can pre-order the DVD here for $20.99.

Episode III and Office Space DVDs Tomorrow

Ed — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 23:48:13 +0000

Here’s a quick reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday, November 1st, is the release date for the highly anticipated Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD. Each store will be having its own exclusive deal, so you better look into what free gift you want before you go out and buy the DVD. Personally, I recommend going to Wal-Mart because they will be including a bonus DVD. Target and Best Buy do have very good offers, though. You can see what each store will be offering tomorrow by going here. Also, tomorrow marks the release of Office Space – Special Edition with Flair on DVD. You should be able to find it for a pretty reasonable price at any store. However, before you buy it, you might want to consider buying the Office Space Extra Special Edition Exclusive, which is only available at Best Buy and includes the DVD as well as many extras. Of course, this box costs more than the DVD alone.

Office Space DVD Videos at IGN

Ed — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 00:35:06 +0000

If you like the movie Office Space, then you might want to click here and watch some very amusing videos from the upcoming DVD. In case you’re wondering what this DVD will look like, you can see a picture of it here. Don’t forget that you can buy this DVD this coming Tuesday, November 1st.

My Xbox Feature Now Available at Xbox.com

Ed — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 00:22:53 +0000

If you play Xbox Live, then you should head over to Xbox.com and configure your My Xbox settings, including setting up your gamercard. Once you fill out a little information, you can see your friends list, including when and what your friends last played. Also, you can click on your friend to see his gamercard. This gamercard also allows you to list your favorite games, the systems you own, your motto, your gamer picture, and the zone in which you will want to play with Xbox 360. Once the 360 launches, you will also be able to see your recently played games, achievements, reputation, and gamerscore. Another nice bonus is that you can add your gamercard to your website or blog. In fact, I have already done this. You can view my gamercard in the top right part of the Personal Information section of my site, as well as a link to a page that has the gamercards of all of my Xbox Live friends.

First Snow

Ed — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 00:13:53 +0000

Today was the first snow of the school year here in Boston. When I woke up this afternoon, I was greeted by a thick snow that made it difficult to see very far. Unfortunately, the temperature wasn’t quite low enough, so much of the snow turned to water when it hit the ground, and what didn’t is quickly turning to water throughout the night. The snow has now stopped and turned into a cold, light rain. While this wasn’t a major snow storm, it is certainly a sign that it’s getting to be that time of year where snow is frequent, and this makes me very happy. Admittedly, I don’t have to shovel snow, so I might be a little biased. In honor of this change of weather, I think I might go see The Weather Man later to break up the time spent doing my homework.

I Held an Xbox 360 Controller

Ed — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 08:13:09 +0000

I held a 360 controller for the first time earlier today at EB. It felt really good, but I will definitely have to get used to the new size (duke is how I like it). The console was unfortunately turned off, so I wasn’t able to test the controller in-game. Even without an actual play test, it seemed like the shoulder buttons will be easy to use. The triggers will also take some getting used to. They’re quite a bit smaller than the ones I’m used to, and they don’t seem to depress quite as much. They still felt like they would do a very good job in-game though. I really like the little grips they put on the thumbsticks. All and all, it’s a great controller, and its being wireless makes it even more appealing.

Batman Begins and Dodgeball DVDs

Ed — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 05:08:01 +0000

It seems that Best Buy has no respect for the great movie that is Batman Begins. Although their website used to list the deluxe edition of the DVD, it no longer does. As a matter of fact, I have yet to see the deluxe edition in my local Best Buy store. So, basically, if you want to buy the deluxe edition of the DVD instead of the bare bones version, you’ll have to do it at some store other than Best Buy. On a happier note, Best Buy has the lowest price I’ve seen recently on the unrated version of Dodgeball on DVD. Best Buy is selling it for only $14.99. That’s a much better deal than Amazon’s over-inflated $21.58 price tag.

Incredible Friends DVD Prices

Ed — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 04:57:22 +0000

While this isn’t quite as good of a sale as the one I posted not that long ago concerning the Sam’s Club deal on the ten season set, this sale should delight anyone that already has one or more seasons of Friends on DVD. Although it is hard to say how long these low prices will last, I do know that for the moment Amazon.com has the lowest prices pn Friends DVDs I’ve ever seen. Seasons one through eight are just $19.97 per season, and season nine is $22.47. Season ten, which will be released on 11/15, is marked at the usual price of $29.24. You can check the prices on all ten seasons at Amazon by clicking here.

What I Did on Friday 10/21

Ed — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 00:17:30 +0000

This past Friday, I went to the Prudential mall and then to the Copley mall next to it. Unfortunately, neither the Gamestop nor the EB there has the Xbox 360 demo unit. This was a little disappointing given how I keep reading online about how most Gamestops now have the demo units. However, given the small size of the Gamestop at the Prudential mall, I’m not surprised that there was no 360 there. After that, I took in the wonder that is Shaw’s (the one by Copley Square). I really wish that we had Shaw’s in Tampa. It’s so clean and bright, it has a wide selection, and the meat and seafood look almost perfect. Afterwards, I walked past the reflection pond or whatever it’s called next to the Christian Science building, and it was gorgeous and peaceful as always. I then proceeded to walk back to Kenmore Square and then up to the AMC theatre by Fenway, where I watched Doom on its opening night. Luckily, they were showing the film in their largest theatre, which is also THX certified. As a result, the picture and sound quality were tremendous. The crowd was larger than I expected, but the theatre was still far from full. The movie was better than I expected, and as many critics have said, it is certainly one of the best video game based-movies ever made, second only to Mortal Kombat. The Rock really fit his part, and the rest of the team of heroes was well chosen. The movie was a mix of action and frights, and so the pace was always kept fast. If you don’t like to be frightened of if you get dizzy easily, I highly recommend that you don’t see this movie. They did change a few things from the video game, but in the end, I think these changes worked well. Most notably, there is now a team of main characters that hunt down and kill the demons, and the demons do not come from hell as they did in the game. I though that this second point might have hurt the storyline, but I was pleasantly surprised by the explanation provided in the movie. Doom doesn’t have an incredible plot, but it is sufficient to move along the movie. It was also nice to see a little bit of comedy tossed in for good measure. After the movie was over, I came back to my room and relaxed a little, after which I went to JMP (at the Super 88 Food Connection) and had my usual – the dinner special with chicken curry, garlic naan, rice, ginger ale, and that flat bread thing that has a name I can never remember. It was good as always. When I was done eating, I went back to AMC Fenway and watched the midnight movie, The Ring. It did a pretty good job of delivering some scares, and it managed to keep the viewer interested in what will happen next. Throughout the movie, I kept wondering the reason behind the events was. However, the end of the movie ruined any bit of believability that the rest of the movie had created. It was still a good movie overall, but the final explanation makes absolutely no sense. Following are my thoughts on the ending – if you haven’t watched the movie, don’t read it.

*Spoilers*

In the end, the boy tells the mom that she wasn’t supposed to help the dead girl that’s been killing everyone, and he is very scared that she helped the girl. He acts like her helping the girl made things worse, but that makes no sense. Before the girl was helped, she killed whoever watched the tape after seven days, and after she was helped, she did the same thing. Nothing changed. Also, it seems ridiculous that the girl would kill the boyfriend. He and his girlfriend are responsible for bringing to light the truth behind the girl’s death, and how does the girl repay him? – by killing him. That takes a lot of nerve. Also, I hate that the magic way to appease the girl is to copy her video tape. What idiot came up with this? Apparently, all you have to do to keep from being killed by the girl is to copy her video tape. Wow. According to the movie, this would satisfy the girl’s desire for people to hear her. If she wanted this so badly, then why didn’t she just tell whoever watched the video that they should spread her message? Instead, she kills whoever does listen to her. That’s not a very good way to get people to listen. Finally, the boy told his mom at the end that this would never end, that the cycle of copying the tape, people watching it, and people copying it would never end. That’s not true though. At the start of the movie, the cycle had been stopped for many years, because all you have to do to please the girl is to copy the tape. For some reason, she doesn’t care whether or not you distribute it. Because of this, all the mom and the boy have to do is copy the tape and get rid of it. There is no reason for it to never have to end.

*End Spoilers*

I still thought that The Ring was a good movie. It just lacked an ending that made sense. That’s what I did after classes were over on Friday, 10/21/2005.

Xbox Live and Xbox.com Down on 10/24

Ed — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:05:09 +0000

Xbox Live will be offline for about 24 hours on 10/24 so that Microsoft will have time to update the Xbox Live service. This update will incorporate all the new features necessary for the future Xbox Live that will be accessible on Xbox 360. Also, Xbox.com will be offline all day to allow for the total redesign of the site. When the changes are complete, the site will look completely different, including a greater focus on Xbox 360. Not long after the update, a very important new feature of Xbox.com called My Xbox will be launched. If you’ve been reading about the many features that will be incorporated into Xbox 360′s version of Xbox Live, then you know that it will be able to do a number of amazing things. Among other things, it will be able to show you your achievements in a game and compare them to those of your friend or let you see when your friend last played and what he was playing. While you can always do these things on your Xbox 360, My Xbox will allow you to do them on Xbox.com. You can read more about Xbox Live and Xbox.com being down, as well as the new features of Xbox.com, by reading GameSpot’s article, and you can learn more about My Xbox by reading Xbox.com’s description of it.

Far Cry Instincts on Sale at Target

Ed — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 07:57:16 +0000

Target’s ad for this week reveals that the store is having a very good sale on the Xbox video game titled Far Cry Instincts. Even though this game just came out, they already have it on sale for $28.88. While this tactic is usually reserved only for bad games, this is certainly not the case with this game. IGN gave the game a 9 out of 10, and GameSpot, which is usually very hard on Xbox games, gave it a 9.2 out of 10. In all, the game has an average review rating of 87% according to GameRankings.com. While this game looks to be a very good first person shooter, it appears to be an excellent game for Xbox Live play. From what I’ve read, it offers some great multiplayer action, as well as the ability to use a map editor. If you like FPS games or are fond of playing Xbox Live, then you certainly shouldn’t pass up this sale.

Great Sale This Week on Horror DVDs

Ed — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 07:50:09 +0000

You might want to pay attention to your local Circuit City and Best Buy ads this week. In preparation for Halloween, both stores are having very good sales on horror DVDs. Best Buy has quite a few on sale for $7.99, and the sale is valid both in-store and online. You can see the full list of sale items here. Also, Circuit City has a good number of horror DVDs on sale for $7.49, but this sale is only valid in-store.

Great Price on Friends DVDs

Ed — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:09:03 +0000

As I have learned recently, great prices on DVDs can often be short-lived. However, even if this price may change at any time, I think you should know about this anyway. If you’re a member of Sam’s Club and you don’t own any of the Friends DVDs, I encourage you to go to SamsClub.com. They are currently selling all ten seasons of the show on DVD in the form of a box set named Friends: The One With All Ten Seasons for the incredible price of $186.42. That’s an unheard-of $18.64 per season. It’s hard to believe that I paid $60 per season for seasons one and two shortly after they were released.

So You Think You Can Dance – Season 2

Ed — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:59:49 +0000

Everyone who enjoyed the surprisingly good TV show So You Think You Can Dance should be happy to learn that Fox has announced that there will in fact be a second season of the show next summer.

Amazon! What are you doing?!

Ed — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:51:08 +0000

On 10/17, I wrote that Amazon.com has Buffy the Vampire Slayer – The Chosen Collection for the excellent price of $129.99. One day after I wrote that, what did they go and do? That’s right. They raised the price. While it is still a very good deal, this set will now cost you $169.99. Come on, Amazon. Why’d you have to go and raise the price?

Vote for Me!

Ed — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:25:41 +0000

I am currently entered into a contest over at Hex168.com to win an Xbox 360, three games, a year of Xbox Live, and a trip to an Xbox 360 event. Please help me win by voting for me. You can do so by going here. A vote of 10 is highest. Thanks for your help.

KotOR II Now $29.99 at EB

Ed — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:04:44 +0000

If you’ve been holding off on buying Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords because you weren’t willing to pay $49.99 for it, then your wait is finally over. It seems unbelievable that this game has been out for so long and has remained at $49.99, but EB has finally lowered the price to $29.99. It’s not $19.99, but it’s still a very good price. To see this game’s page at EB, click here.

Buffy DVD Set

Ed — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 21:42:41 +0000

If you’re a fan of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you don’t already own the series on DVD, then you may want to add another item to your Christmas list. November 15th is the release date for Buffy the Vampire Slayer – The Chosen Collection, which includes all seven seasons on 40 discs. That’s not all, though. You can own this package for just $129.99. That’s one very impressive deal. To order it at Amazon.com, click here.

Firefly on SciFi

Ed — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 21:07:59 +0000

Beginning this Friday, October 21st, SciFi will begin airing Firefly on Friday nights at 7 PM. The entire run of the show will be shown with one episode airing each Friday, and the order of the episodes has been determined by Joss Whedon.

Chicago Pictures Added

Ed — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 01:28:10 +0000

I’ve added all the pictures I took during my Chicago trip this summer to the Photos section of my MSN space.

MSN IM and Yahoo IM Networks Linked

Ed — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 00:28:50 +0000

In a move that is sure to please MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger users everywhere, Microsoft and Yahoo recently announced that they are working on making their IM clients interoperate. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until the second quarter of next year to see the results of this, but when all is done, users of both services should be able to IM each other. For example, using MSN Messenger and my MSN ID, I could IM with a friend who’s using Yahoo Messenger and his Yahoo ID. I’m all for interoperability, so I’m very happy about this. You can read PCWorld’s full explanation of this here.

Upcoming Movies

Ed — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:28:29 +0000

Because I saw Serenity last night, I got the usual 15 minutes of movie trailers. However, this time most of the trailers were actually good. If you haven’t seen Serenity, then you should definitely make a point to go and see that. Next Friday, 10/21, marks the debut of the movie Doom based on the hit video games series. Even though most movies based on video games aren’t very good, this one looks like it has some potential and should at least deliver a lot of action. Also, 11/4 is the theatrical release date for the movie Jarhead. While this movie may not be for everyone, the trailer really caught my eye. Although I am not sure of the plot, the movie seems to be based on a group of US soldiers fighting in Iraq during Desert Storm. Even if the plot ends up not amounting to much, it seems that this movie will at least have some good drama and action. Finally, the much-anticipated The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will come to theatres on 12/9. The preview of this movie was excellent. Even though the movie stars children and is based on what is typically considered a children’s book, the movie looks to be very similar to the Lord of the Rings in many respects, including large battle sequences.

Serenity

Ed — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:11:42 +0000

I finally got around to seeing Serenity last night. For everyone who doesn’t already know, Serenity is the movie sequel to the short-lived TV series Firefly. Even though I had never seen the series, the movie was surprisingly good and fairly easy to follow even if you had never seen a single episode of Firefly. In fact, it was so good that I have added both Serenity and Firefly to my DVD wish list. It is hard to compare the movie to other movies because its feel is so unique. You can compare aspects of it to many TV series or movies, but it would be hard to directly compare them or say that Serenity copied something from other movies. Instead, you simply see similarities appear here and there. For example, The Alliance in Serenity brought to mind The Empire in Star Wars. The depiction of the ships and some other parts of the movie actually reminded me a bit of The Chronicles of Riddick, although I can’t think of any specific similarities. It’s really just a feeling. The characters in the movie are extremely likeable, and by the end of the movie you wish that you could see more of them beyond the movie. The movie’s plot is very interesting, and unless you have read lots of spoilers online, it should keep you constantly guessing as to what will happen next or who may die. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you enjoy sci-fi, action, or suspense, then you should head over to your local theatre before it’s too late to see this movie. The theatre where I saw the movie actually had a decent crowd. This really surprised me because I don’t think that college kids today care very much about sci-fi, and the crowd seemed to be almost entirely college kids. Adding to my surprise is the fact that this was the 11:15 PM showing, so I really didn’t expect that many people would see this movie that late in the day. Despite the apparent interest in the movie here in Boston, it appears that the movie is not actually doing as well as many had hoped based on what I’ve been reading online. Hopefully this will change soon because this is a very good movie, and it deserves to do well.

Let There Be (A Ring of) Light

Ed — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 06:38:41 +0000

If you’re anxious to play the Xbox 360, then your wait may be over sooner than expected. Although the Xbox 360 doesn’t actually hit stores for sale until November 22nd, you should be able to find Xbox 360 demo kiosks in your local retailer beginning the week of October 24th. This means that you can finally stop reading all of those previews of 360 games being written by a few people that have actually had the privilege to play the games. Now, you too can experience the power of the 360 in the form of demos and trailers of its launch games. To read more on this, click here.

DOA 4 + Halo = Very Good Game

Ed — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 06:21:11 +0000

In case you need any more convincing about whether or not you should buy Dead or Alive 4 for Xbox 360, I might just have that little something you’ve been waiting for. According to the most recent issue of Game Informer magazine, DOA 4 will include a female spartan as a playable character. For those of you not versed in the Halo universe, no, this doesn’t mean that you will get to play as Master Chief. Instead, you get to play as a female character that wears armor exactly like his and who took part in the same spartan program intended to create humanity’s ultimate soldier. As if it weren’t enough that we get to play as a Master Chief look-alike, we even get a special Halo level set inside a space vessel that may look very familiar to fans of Halo 2. To see screenshots of this character and level in the game, go here.

New iTunes Now Available

Ed — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 05:35:46 +0000

The lastest version of iTunes, version 6, is now available for download. Also of note is that, as many had been expecting, Apple announced their new iPod capable of playing video. What can I do with an iPod that plays video, you ask? Well, it appears that Apple is hoping that you will be willing to pay $1.99 to download a TV episode and watch it on your iPod or your computer. Currently, only five shows, all on ABC, are being made available, but since one of these is Desperate Housewives, this download service might actually stand a chance after all. If TV shows don’t interest you, Apple is also making a number of music videos available for dowload (also for a price, of course). You can read PCWorld.com’s full discussion of these announcements by going here.

Lots of Windows Updates Today

Ed — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:27:34 +0000

I just checked the Windows Update site, and as expected, there are nine new high priority updates now available for download. If you’re using Windows, I encourage you to go to the update site and download these as soon as possible.

Hotmail to the Extreme

Ed — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:33:50 +0000

WinSuperSite.com has posted an in-depth look at the future of MSN Hotmail. Although the new Hotmail isn’t going to debut until sometime next year, the new version looks like a winner so far. In terms of appearance, it should greatly resemble Outlook and other email applications. You will now have three window panes when viewing your inbox, and this should make it much easier to quickly read your mail. Also, this new version will have many new features that should make things just a little easier, such as the ability to right-click on messages and get a pop-up with options such as those you would see in a typical email application. You will also now be able to drag and drop messages into folders, making it much easier to manage your mail. The part that I’m most looking forward to, though, is that the storage limit is being increased to 2 GB for everyone, up from the current 250 MB limit.

IGN’s Episode III DVD Review

Ed — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:24:47 +0000

IGN’s DVD section has already posted their review for the upcoming Star Wars Episode III DVD. Personally, I disagree with the reviewer almost completely when it comes to his opinion of the story and the movie itself. However, ever since Episode I was released, I have become accustomed to people disliking Star Wars. Even if you disliked the previous two prequels, though, I think that it would be hard to dislike Episode III. Everyone’s entitled to his opinion, I guess. Anyway, on a brighter note, it looks like we are in for one perfect DVD. IGN thoroughly tests each DVD’s audio and video, and both received a 10 out of 10. In addition, it appears that the extras will be something to look forward to as well – IGN gave them a 10 out of 10.

Test your Internet Speed

Ed — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:16:50 +0000

Does it ever seem like your internet browsing experience is a little more slow than usual? If it does, or if you are just curious what your internet speed is, you can test your download and upload speeds by going here. For most internet users, your download speed is most important. However, if you regularly upload files to a server, do a lot of file transfers, or play games online (such as on Xbox Live), your upload speed is also pretty important.

Xbox 360 Videos at GameTrailers.com

Ed — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:05:07 +0000

If you’ve been wondering a lot about certain features of the Xbox 360 hardware, software interface, or games, then wonder no more. GameTrailers.com has three excellent videos online for you to watch by going here. I recommend that you watch Episode 1 – Hardware, Episode 2 – Dashboard, and Episode 3 – Technical Capabilities. They’re a little long, but they answer most any question you may have about the 360.

Where have all the cookies gone?

Ed — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:54:50 +0000

I find myself very dissatisfied with the Warren Towers dining hall. The reason: they never seem to have the things that they should have. Even though there was a surplus of cookies every day last year, I am lucky if I can find cookies once or twice a week this year. It is rare when there isn’t a line for pizza (not because the pizza is substantially better than last year – it’s just because they are much slower at making it than they were last year). While they may have run out of plates by the pizza and burgers every now and then during peak hours last year, this year it is a common occurrence. The result: I have to use pasta bowls to carry my pizza. But wait, it gets better. There is always a rather lengthy line for sandwiches, and there is often only one kind of soup if you are there during non-peak hours (whereas there were almost always two kinds last year). Last year, there would always be a few special menu items each day and they would change each day. This year, that is gone. Also, during the second half of last year, they decided to switch from excellent Minute Maid juice to some no name brand. Naturally, this juice is well below average, and ever since they switched brands, I have found the juice to be so sub-par that I will no longer drink it (diet Sierra Mist for me now). Naturally, they have yet to switch back to the good stuff. The overall food quality is pretty good, but you still have to have a good selection and good service to go with it.

On the service note, I have found that getting a Rhetty-to-Go meal is significantly more difficult this year. Last year, I could just go up to the register to pick up my meals, and the person at the register always spoke English. This year, in its infinite wisdom, the dining hall staff decided to no longer let you pick up your meals at the register. Now, you must go to the back counter and stop someone that is busy preparing food so they can go in the back and fetch your meals. Not only is this inconvenient, but it comes with an added problem. It seems that almost all of the people that work behind the counter in the Warren Towers dining hall don’t speak English. As a result, I will often approach one person behind the counter after another, stating that "I need to pick up some to-go meals," only to be met with blank faces that convey a complete lack of understanding of what I just said. After staring at me like I’m crazy, these people will then ask the person next to them if he/she has any idea what a to-go meal is, and this person will be just as puzzled. After coming to the conclusion that no one nearby knows what a to-go meal is, the person I just asked proceeds to ignore me and continue working instead of finding someone that does know what a to-go meal is. Eventually, after asking enough people, I find someone that does speak English and can fetch me my meals. After spending an unusually long time in the back room, this person will return with only a fraction of my meals, forcing him/her to go back and look for the rest at my insistence. Finally, he/she will return with my meals. It’s hard to believe that it takes this much work just to get me my to-go meals. I won’t even get into the fact that my meals rarely ever have what I ordered (usually a different fruit, different cereal, or different drink is included instead of what I ordered). To all this, I feel that it would be best to quote the original Joe Schmo and say "What is going on?!"

Office Space DVD will have a Special Ed. Gift Set at Best Buy

Ed — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:05:37 +0000

In case you haven’t heard already, the movie Office Space will be released on DVD on November 1st with the title "Special Edition with Flair." This new edition should include far more extra features than the previous DVD release. To make things even better, Best Buy will have an exclusive Office Space Special Edition Gift Set that will include this new DVD as well as a red stapler, a coffee mug, a mouse pad, a pen and pencil set, a notepad, and a magnetic picture frame.

Chewbacca at Fenway

Ed — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:55:39 +0000

In case you didn’t get to see it when it happened, here is a picture of Chewbacca, one of the most well-known characters in Star Wars, throwing out the first pitch at one of the last Red Sox games of the season. This was done to raise awareness for the upcoming Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science, which will be opening on October 27th.

GTA: The Trilogy Coming 10/18

Ed — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:40:28 +0000

If you’re a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series of video games or just getting familiar with it, it may interest you to know that Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy will be released on October 18th. This multi-pack will include GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas all packaged together for what should be a lower price than if you were to buy them separately. You can read Xbox365′s article on this by going here.

Xbox 360 Production Line Video

Ed — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:34:46 +0000

If you’re excited about the Xbox 360 or just curious about how it is being made and tested, I recently saw an interesting video that shows this process. You can view it here.

Must… Eat… Cake

Ed — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 06:27:27 +0000

If you want to see some of the most perfect cakes you’ve ever seen in your life, go here. It’s hard to believe that this place is on Washington St., just a short distance from where I am. When I get married, I hope my cake looks that good. In fact, the cakes look almost too good to eat. If you haven’t been to Athan’s yet and you live in or near Boston, then you must go there as soon as possible. Their gelato is simply amazing. My two favorites: Green Tea and Rose.

Hurricane Theta is now a category 5?!

Ed — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:35:20 +0000

Not that long ago, my friend Joe Quintas sent me the link to a very interesting article that describes the problem facing the Hurricane Center involving the naming of hurricanes . As everyone knows, this year’s hurricane season has been unusually severe, and the Hurricane Center may actually run out of names for all of the hurricanes. They reserve 21 names each year for hurricanes, but at the rate that hurricanes keep popping up this year, we may soon go through the entire list. If this happens, then the Hurricane Center says that they will "go to the Greek alphabet." Just imagine – we could have a Hurricane Alpha, a Hurricane Epsilon, a Hurricane Mu, or even a Hurricane Upsilon. Of course, no one hopes that we have this many hurricanes, but it certainly would be interesting to hear news stories involving these names. At the very least, mathematicians and scientists should get a kick out of the names.

Google is crazy! (and funny)

Ed — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:18:26 +0000

My good friend Alex Fontana has pointed me in the direction of two extremely amusing Google searches that he found on a website. Next time you visit Google’s website, type in "failure" (without the quotation marks) and click on I’m Feeling Lucky. After doing that, go back to the Google main page, type in "french military victories" (still no quotes) and click on I’m Feeling Lucky. If you have any sense of humor, you should find these two searches very amusing. Just in case the results of these searches should change for some reason, here are the results. The first search, failure, sends you here, and the second gives you this.

Great Prices on X-Files DVDs

Ed — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:06:51 +0000

I have some news that should make X-Files fans everywhere happy. The X-Files was one of the first TV shows to be released on DVD, and for the longest time it was also the most expensive (that’s right – even more expensive than the very expensive Star Trek sets that tend to cost $100 or so per season). In fact, when the season sets were originally announced, their MSRPs were set at $149.95. Not that long ago, Fox blessed X-Files fans by finally lowering this insane MSRP, yielding prices typically in the $80 range. Recently, there have been some good sales at Amazon and Best Buy in which the prices were reduced to $50, but these sales were very short lived (perhaps because they were too popular). Now, Fox has done as we have all dreamed that they would. On January 31st, seasons one, two, and three of The X-Files will be re-released in smaller packages and carry a smaller price tag: only $49.98 MSRP. The sets will contain the same material and same box artwork as the originals, but they will take up much less space (no more fold-out cases – it’s about time). With this reduced MSRP, we should be seeing extremely reasonable prices. Amazon already has them listed for just $34.99 each. Just think about it – that’s about the same price as a season of Friends – very cheap, indeed. To see TVShowsOnDVD’s article on this, go here.

Me at Xbox365′s Forums

Ed — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 04:25:13 +0000

Just so you know, if you’re ever browsing the forums over at Xbox365.com and you see a post under the name Admiral Kirk, that’s me! Of particular interest is a post I just made concerning an observation on the relationship between the show Dance 360 and Xbox. If you want to read the post titled "Dance 360 -> Xbox 360?", just click here.

Lol!

Ed — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 05:49:14 +0000

People seem to think that Star Trek is dying because of the recent early end to Star Trek: Enterprise and the poor box office perfomance of Star Trek: Nemesis. I don’t believe this to be the case. In fact, I think Star Trek is more alive than it’s ever been. In fact, it’s all around us. Have you been on the internet in the last few years? If so, then you’ve noticed that you can’t visit any website without seeing the word lol (also written LOL). No, it’s not a word. Some people seem to think it is though. It is supposed to be shorthand for laughing-out-loud (or something to that effect). In reality, I think most people use it for a very different reason: they heard it on Star Trek. That’s right – long before LOL! became mainstream, it was the name of Data’s daughter in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Actually, her name is Lal (don’t believe me? – check it out), but it’s pronounced like Lol (if Lol were a word), and it looks very similar. I believe that when people use the word lol, they are actually subconsciously referencing Data’s daughter. So, you see, Star Trek isn’t dying – judging by the internet, it would seem that it’s alive and well (or at least the name of Data’s daughter is alive and well).

MSN Spaces now up and running

Ed — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:19:07 +0000

Hi, my name is Ed Kopp. My official site is http://people.bu.edu/edkopp4 . My site has News and a Picture of the Week, as well as sections for Personal Information, Security Tools and Information, my Favorite Free Programs, and my Favorite Websites. While my website is the main place to go for all of my great information, I’ll also be posting my News updates to this blog for now on. I hope you enjoy these updates, and hopefully you’ll enjoy my website as well.