Categories
Culture

My Favorite Nerd Memory

… has got to be sneaking into a computer lab at the University of Manitoba in highschool (around ’95 or ’96) with a couple of friends to play Warcraft II:Tides of Darkness over their IPX network.

The worst part was, because the machines were ghosted (or some archiac version of ghost) on boot up, we had to do a fresh install of the game everytime. Though this did do a great job of covering our tracks when we left.

Categories
Culture Review

Revision 3: Live Streaming Has A Long Way To Go

I tried to watch a live stream of Revision 3’s Tekzilla yesterday, at revision3.com/watch.

It was absolutely painful!

I was under the impression that Tekzilla was going to a Live format. To my dismay, they were simply broadcast the recording of Tekzilla. This meant getting to see Patrick Norton, redo portions of the show, over and over and over and over again; and other tedious “behind the scenes” stuff.

Maybe this is just a baby step, testing the waters of their streaming infrastructure. But they’ve certainly got a long way to go before they’re on par with the old TSS.

Categories
Culture Google Random

Google Street View Is Fun

For some reason Google’s maps of Japan show the locations of 7 Eleven stores.

Categories
Culture

The Love of God…won’t get me to fall for your scam

I received this confusing email the other day. I’m pretty sure this was in response to a question I posted to an advertiser on a kijiji.ca property rental listing.

I think this email represents a change in the way Nigerian 419 victims are being lured in. A few interesting things are happening in this email:
1) The premise of the scam is not mentioned in the email at all. Are scammers counting on their charisma to win over feeble minds? Seems like a long shot…
2) The scammer essentially admits he’s from Nigeria. He mentions “west africa” and the +234 country code is Nigeria.
3) The email contains very specific and accurate local information. “355 MAGNUS AVE” is a valid residential address located in “Winnipeg (North West)Manitoba”. Also $690 for rent in that area of town is pretty close to the mark, albeit somewhat suspiciously low when you consider that it includes an “electric cooker.”

Granted all of this information could be gathered/verified via google. I think this idicates that these scammers are putting a lot more effort into finding victims, which hopefully means they’re having a harder time ripping people off.

Here’s the email:

from    the love of god <[email protected]>
to    [email protected],
date    Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 12:58 PM
subject    house for rent

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

I am new to this internet stuff and probably I am newer to renting out  houses.My name is Rev Michael Savage, I am the owner of the house you responded to the advert I placed online I lived in the house with my Wife Katherine and my daughter Lisa before I was transfered to California to head the Halfane Mission house branch,hence the reason I placed the advert .

The house is complete with hydro washer,internal heater and electric cooker and all other ammenities to make life comfortable the rent goes for $690 and it is available for immediate occupancy.

The house holds lots of memeories for us and we would like someone that would take good care of it and keep it neat and clean at all times.I started building an indoor fountain for the living room last month if you are someworth of a handy person it would give me great joy if you could complete it.I am presently in West africa Lecturing in a six week theology seminar on the divinity and godliness of Lucifer an intresting topic by the way i would love to share it with you if you might be intrested.

You can call me on +2348029684719 if there are any details you would like to clarify.The house is located on 355 MAGNUS AVE Winnipeg (North West)Manitoba you can go and view it and get back to me if you find the place suitable so i can forward you an application form.

God Bless you,

Rev Michael Savage

Categories
Culture From The Archives Review

Episode III: RotS (litterally?)

Egad, I’m glad that debacle is finally over. Star Wars episodes I-III has got to be one of the worst trilogies of movies ever. As a moderate Star Wars nerd, I’ve been waiting a good 8 or 10 years (since the first rumours of EPI) for this moment. I can honestly say my teenage boy dreams are feeling a little shattered. I need to use my next day off to purge myself, who wants to come over for an EP IV,V,VI marathon Friday?

I started writing the post a few days ago, i was going to talk about how much I hated episode III right here. But I keep changing my mind. I need to watch it one more time. My only comment at this point will be that the last half of the movie seemed like a checklist of things that had to be covered by episode IV. Lucas seemed to go through this list without much thought. Other than that, action and effects were awesome!

I’ve done some thinking about the differences between the original trilogy (OT) and the prequel trilogy (PT). The main difference has got to be childhood. Watching star wars as a kid i was fully engrossed by everything about it, everything was new and completely amazing. The OT literally brings a young boy’s imagination to life. Also, even when I first watched the movies in ’86 or so, the technology was still quite groundbreaking. Much fresher than the current effects. There is also something about the presentation of the Star Wars Universe in the OT, everything is thrown at the audience at face value. For example, we don’t: understand R2D2, know what “e chu ta” means, know who yoda used to be, care who built ATATs, understand the nature of the force in scientific detail, etc. The PT trilogy spends far too much time on exposition, but again, this could be a product of my age.

That’s all for now.
I will probably launching the php section later on today or tomorrow, in anticipation of a few hits from potential employers