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2005

Game Over

“Alias,” AKA Canceled – Nov 23, 2005 – E! Online News is the headline of a story over at E! Online. In a shock to no one, ABC has pulled the plug on Alias after 5 seasons.

I still hadn’t made up my mind on how this season was going – last year I jumped to conclusions way to early, and it turned out to be one of the better ones. Though little things still bugged me this season, I was willing to go along with it.

Alias executive producer Jeff Pinkner said in a statement that the crew was “very saddened to face reality that Alias is coming to an end.” He promised a “surprising” and “thrilling” finale.

The worst part of that article? One little blurb at the bottom that reports CBS has pulled the plug on Threshold as well. I was really into Threshold in it’s inaugural season. Poor Carla Gugino, Karen Sisco on ABC didn’t work out, and now this.

HTPC Case

I had picked out the Silverstone LC16M (in black) case for my upcoming Home Theater PC.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn, via a blog on Planet GNOME yesterday, that the Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) on the Silverstone case is Linux compatible. Linux drivers, linked from Silverstone, take you here: to the Imon page that has integrated Lirc support for the remote, and the VFD.

Bonus!

  • in Sports
  • 1 min read

My first Wild game

I had an opportunity to go my first Minnesota Wild game last night. I can’t believe it’s been 5 years already since the NHL came back to Minnesota, and I hadn’t even been to a game yet.

The seats were fan seats – the gentleman who picked them out before the Wild’s inaugural season put a lot of thought in to them. The 2 seats are on an aisle, 13 rows up behind the visiting goal, so 2 out of 3 periods, if the Wild are going to score, you’re going to see it. Sitting behind the goal gives you a unique opportunity to watch the plays unfold, as you see the wingers fan wide setting up plays, and fast breaks coming straight at you are something to see.

It was a great time – hockey live is 10x better than on TV.

The Wild ended up losing – Roloson was in goal, and had 2 goals against in the first period, and the Wild seemed to play from behind the rest of the night. Gaborik made his return, and had a goal in the first period. The Wild ended up losing with 50 seconds left in the game to a little dunk shot that went between Rolosons legs.

Good game, great tempo to the game, good fans, and a great time.

Radiohead Mash-ups

MP3Nova.org has the recap (and the torrent!) of a Radiohead Mash-up and Remix album.

Panzah Zandahz has released “Me & This Army”, the follow-up to “Breaks & Beats 12″”.

If you’re a Radiohead fan, check “Me & This Army” out – remixes and covers by folks like De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, and others, it looks like a must for any Radiohead fan. The torrent downloaded in just minutes for me, so head over to MP3Nova.org and check it out.

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

2008 Straw Poll

I don’t blog politics much, though I’m a pretty passionate liberal (no, really).

DailyKos, one of the more liberal and bigger blogs out there, shared their November straw poll results for the Democratic primary.

Surprisingly enough, Russ Feingold is 2nd in the straw poll for the 3rd month in a row, after Gen. Clark.

Now granted, DailyKos readers are extremely progressive, but I’m still surprised. I had the honor of meeting Senator Feingold one Sunday when we bumped into each other at lunch at Dotty Dumplings Dowry (alas, one of the best burger places ever is gone from Madison now) when he was still a state senator. I’ve followed his career avidly (being from Wisconsin myself), and have great respect for him. Not only is he a maverick, but he votes his conscience. That, combined with how he listens to his voters – every year he visits every Wisconsin county and has a townhall in each one, Sen. Feingold is someone in the party I have great respect for.

Installing and Configuring Ubuntu on a Laptop

LinuxDevCenter.com: Installing and Configuring Ubuntu on a Laptop. Jeremy Jones of the Weather Channel purchases a Dell, and installs Ubuntu on it.

It’s a pretty good overview, and he runs into a couple quirky things that installing Linux on a laptop always seem to have, but no more than desktop installations now. Linux installs on laptops have come a long way in the last two years or so. While I had a similar experience with HP dv1000, it always comes down to the little things. The only big thing I’m still stuck on is suspend support.

Pretty good article if you’re looking to install Linux or Ubuntu on a laptop, especially a Dell.

Wikis as Websites

One of the latest trends in open-source development, is for the projects website to be created with MediaWiki.

This article on Acts of Volition lists a couple others, as well as one of my current favorite pieces of software, Banshee, a music management and player for GNOME. (I’ve been meaning to blog about Banshee for well over a month).

I still have to put a long term plan together on integrating silwenae .com/.net/.org, and MediaWiki might address it. I don’t need all of the power of a Drupal, WordPress is already running my blog, Jinzora will power my music, and Flickr does my photos. I just need something sticky enough to link it all together.

I went and installed MediaWiki on the Apatheia.org website to see if the guild had any interest in using it as a tool. I’ve long thought it might help facilitate guildmembers signing up for a raid, managing rosters, etc, as the guildmembers themselves could update it, and you’re not reliant on one webmaster or officer to step up.

I integrated this hack to use logins from the guild forums into the Wiki, which was quite helpful. And my lack of knowledge around PHP & CSS started to show as I spend two hours last night, just playing with the header image. There aren’t a lot of good tutorials on creating a skin – especially one with a Novell-type flavor that utilizes a Wiki as a normal website. I came across this one, but it was pretty darn high level, and didn’t even go into the PHP elements.

I’m going to tinker with it, especially the navigation pieces and see what happens. I’m also curious from a social networking experiment to see if any guildmembers latch on to it.

Random Football Thoughts

This week’s random football thoughts:

  1. The Chargers’ powder blue unis are the best in football
  2. Unless you are the San Diego Chargers, you should not wear alternate jerseys
  3. Dom Capers is sooo fired
  4. I really, really like Carson Palmer
  5. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s headline this morning was right on: Kick. Win. Repeat.
  6. I really do think the Colts will go undefeated.
  7. Even with Vick having 2 games in a row with a passing rating over 95, I still think he’s overrated
  8. Why are you not reading the best football article anywhere? Go read the Tuesday Morning Quarterback