It’s either really cool or really lame that I recognized the Voltron toy used in one of the episodes of Robot Chicken (the sketch where Voltron “got served”). It’s the exact one I had as a kid (and still have in one of my keepsake boxes). I used to LOVE that show.
EDIT YET AGAIN:
And Cartoon Network and the YouTube posters play cat and mouse. The video works (for now), but unfortunately no lyrics any more.
Have fun!
Tag: geekiness
Categories
TiVo Inks Deal with Comcast
Woohoo! TiVo has signed a deal with Comcast (archived copy on archive.org) to provide a customized version of its software to run on their DVR boxes. Maybe this will be the thing to keep them alive.
Categories
Interview Time
This came from a friend of mine:
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You’ll update your web log with my five questions and your five answers.
4. You’ll include this explanation.
5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
(3 – 5 are, of course, optional)
Categories
Battling Comment Spam
UPDATE:
I’m leaving this post in place for historical purposes, but quite a while ago I dropped AuthImage in favor of Spam Karma (link no longer relevant), which seems to do an excellent job of blocking pretty much all my comment spam.
UPDATE THE SECOND:
I’m no longer updating this post to talk about the latest way I’m battling spam here at Sliding Constant (not because I fear the reaction, but because it’s something that changes a lot, and I don’t feel like repeatedly updating this entry). So, as before, I’m leaving this entry in place for historical purposes, but it won’t be updated.
Categories
Tenet Misquoted?
I followed a link today from Slashdot to an article from the Washington Times about George Tenet speaking at an “information-technology security conference” in Washington.
Categories
Mozilla/Firefox plugins
Slashdot does has useful information occasionally. Today, they led me to an article over at Wired (archived copy on archive.org) that has links to some pretty cool Mozilla (including Firefox) plugins.
My favorites so far are Googlebar (link defunct) and ieview. I’ll probably also end up trying BugMeNot (link defunct) before I’m done.
Categories
The 5-year Mission Continues
Okay, this is just frightening.
These are a bunch of people who got together and decided to film “the rest of” the original series of Star Trek… using the original characters (but with new actors). They have made the first episode available for download, and I just got done watching it. The costumes and sets are incredibly accurate. The acting is a bit over-the-top, but I’m willing to forgive them that since they did such a good job of remaining faithful to the show. They have the full blessing of Roddenberry’s estate and the help of his son for the second episode.
Categories
ESR rant about GUI design
I was very pleasantly surprised to see such abundant cluefulness in a rant by Eric Raymond (known as “ESR”) on the state of graphical user interfaces in open source software projects. He takes the CUPS project as a specific example, but he rightly says that it is only an example of the numerous projects that sin against the proverbial “Aunt Tillie”. Be sure to also read the followup article. The CUPS maintainers were actually very receptive to Raymond’s comments.
I must admit that I was floored. Raymond is one of the open source/free software advocates that frequently strikes me as being a bit too much of a zealot to be taken at face value. I appreciate that Raymond and people like him (such as Richard Stallman, known as “RMS”) must exist in order to help balance the scales toward the center, but I am frequently put off by his rhetoric. For once, however, I find myself in complete agreement with him. Now that open source has proved its technical merit, those that wish to make a significant step into the average user’s desktop must learn lessons such as the ones Raymond teaches here.
Categories
Cool Mac IM Client
Thanks to Amy for finding a seriously cool IM client for Mac OS X called Proteus (link defunct). This thing is pretty awesome. It does meta-contacts like Trillian Pro, and the author is asking only $10 to register it. It didn’t take me long to find my credit card.
Categories
WOOHOO!
I’m posting this entry from the living room couch using my brand new Apple iBook 14″. I’m just getting the hang of it right now, so no earth-shattering revelations. However, I can say that I really love the aesthetics and usability so far.
Oh… and the new wireless network kicks some serious butt. The AirPort card in the iBook and the ORiNOCO gateway are happily talking to each other with 128-bit encryption (and with a MAC address restriction on the gateway that only allows the computers I specify to connect).
The only pieces left are the extra RAM (to bring the iBook up to 640MB) and the carrying case, which had to be ordered by a friend (thanks, Misty!).