I vaguely recall hearing that an Iron Man movie was in the works, but more or less ignored it. I like superhero movies when they are done well: Batman Begins was done well, the first Spiderman was done well, but many (most?) such movies end up being more or less… bad. And I didn’t have a lot of hope for Iron Man.
I saw a trailer today that changes all of that. Check it out, then tell me that Iron Man doesn’t look cool.
May 2, 2008: will the movie be as good as the trailer? One can hope…
It started innocently enough. I was considering upgrading to a larger format monitor sometime in the next year or so. I like having lots of video “real estate” and, although my ViewSonic VP201 20″ LCD display has served me well, I am starting to feel crowded.
The display format I’m considering is a 30″ 2560×1600 size, perhaps something like this Samsung. An important consideration is the number and type of video inputs: I want something that can have at least two computers connected and switch between them. So I’m still pondering, and before I can go for the new display I need to do some serious reorganization of my work space at home.
Which leads to today. As I was considering this potential future monitor purchase, I started considering the impact on the rest of my computer. My PC currently supports a 1600×1200 display, and the video card (an ATI X1950XTX) is getting a bit long in the tooth. A 2650×1600 display would mean the video card would be pushing twice as many pixels: over 4 million of them. That has to have an impact on performance and, even if I scale back most games to say 1600×1000 or something, I imagine I’ll notice it. And I’m already getting fussy about the performance of my machine.
The only solution to this problem is, of course, more hardware. I’m not quite ready to build an entirely new PC, but ATI just released a new dual GPU video card, and the price is actually pretty reasonable (under $500). Naturally, I have that very card in my hands at this moment: the Diamond ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2.
I’ll post some data on the card once I’ve done my pre and post upgrade benchmarks. I’m expecting to double my current video performance (d’uh: dual cores = double), but I’m not sure how that will impact my “seat of the pants” perspective of performance in various games. And as for the 30′ monitor…I’m still pondering. I’ll likely end up making the plunge some time later this year, though. The allure of all that space is compelling, and getting the whole “wall of video” thing going on is just too geeky for words.
The final chapter… the nail in the coffin…. the slow, inexorable decline into oblivion: I’m there. I went to the optometrist today and, horror of horrors, I need bifocals.
Naturally, since I’m a geek, I can’t just get ordinary bifocals and be done with it. No, I’m getting progressive lenses, and even then that isn’t good enough. To satisfy my cravings for technical superiority, I’m getting wavefront technology progressive lenses by Hoya. What this basically means is that the distortions traditionally associated with progressive lenses are reduced by a much more complicated lens.
None of this diminishes the fact that my eyes have betrayed me yet again. I can expect continuing degradation in my vision for at least another decade before my vision “stabilizes”. There are no signs of glaucoma or other more severe issues so really this is just a bit of trivia directly related to my advancing middle age.
This isn’t any kind of real surprise to me: my eyes have been getting progressively worse since I turned about 30. But there is something rather depressing about hearing the word “bifocal” in conjunction with my own vision. Next on my list: a cane, so I can wave it at the kids as I shout at them to get off my lawn.
Sally Anne Bowman was found dead on a driveway near her home. Semen that is a DNA match to Mark Dixie, the man accused of her murder, was found on the body. According to Mr. Dixie, who knew the victim, he came upon her lying on the driveway, seemingly unconscious, and decided to have sex with her. It was only after the fact that he noticed she was dead.
It bears mentioning that Ms. Bowman had been stabbed seven times and was lying in a pool of her own blood at the time. Mr. Dixie claims not to have noticed this. And he was never found guilty of a brutally violent assault and rape of which he was accused several years earlier in Australia, so his lawyer claims that the previous incident is immaterial to this current case.
Basically, this bastard’s defense is that he is a completely disgusting and apparently totally ignorant excuse for a human being. But he didn’t murder anyone. Because that would be, you know, *bad* or something.
It sounds to me like the world would be a better place if we just shot Mr. Dixie, cremated him, and shot his ashes into the sun to avoid any chance of contaminating the planet further.
That said, I have an interesting time visualizing discussions between Mr. Dixie and his lawyer. “No, I don’t think anyone will buy you having sex with her *before* she was dead…let’s go with the necrophilia defense, that’s easier to sell”
I found this parody video from the Onion to be a bit too close to the mark…
The truth is, I suppose, that the “real” issues are too hard to judge for most people. And answers to questions like “where do you stand on public health care” or “what is your position on America’s war in Iraq” don’t translate into nice, short soundbites.
But whether a politician wears a hard hat or jeans… now that’s bullshit the average voter can understand
I’ve updated to the latest version of WordPress (2.3.3), the software that makes this blog work, and also updated half a dozen of the plugins on my site. In *theory*, none of the changes should be noticeable to anyone visiting here.
However… I’m doing this rather quickly, and undoubtedly something is broken now. If you notice any problems… well, feel free to complain to the management
I am not really the “typical” Wired reader. For one thing, I’m far from “cool” or “hip”. I’ve got the “geek” thing down, though. Despite being outside the correct Wired reader demographic, I often enjoy reading the columns by Lore Sjöberg in Alt Text. His most recent one regarding the lies told to us by that ultimate deceiver, our own brain, is really a hoot. Check it out, and don’t turn your back on your brain!
One of the objectives of my web server upgrade was to end up with a Linux/PHP/mySQL configuration that would work with Gallery 2. All of the photos on my site have been managed via Gallery for years now… unfortunately, so long in fact that the version of Gallery I’ve been using is three years out of date.
Not any more: I was finally able to successfully upgrade to Gallery version 2 tonight. The process was reasonably smooth: a couple of hiccups slowed things down
I lost all of the long descriptive text I’d written for some photos the first time I imported: I redid the whole process, and using the tools Gallery provides in their migration plugin I redirected my lengthy “titles” into the new description field. Downside: all of the photos now have the default generated titles provided by the old Gallery: things like “aaa” and “aab”. Not a big deal, I guess
once the migration succeeded I had a bit of trouble getting links to the old Gallery to “redirect” to the new Gallery. I fixed the problem by creating an empty ../albums directory in the G2 home directory and placing the appropriate .htaccess rewrite rules within
Everything appears to be more or less working: you can see the new gallery at http://gallery.kgadams.net. Excuse the default appearance: I’ll get that fixed up once I know a bit more about what the options are. Next on my list is getting the random photo block on this page working again, then I’ll attempt to embed Gallery as a page on this site.
UPDATE: I have the random photo plugin working again: the pictures are appearing properly in the right navigation bar of this site. You should also now see a “Gallery” link above (I’ll likely rename this to “Photos” or something later). Click on that and you’ll see the whole gallery. Currently there are some serious problems with formatting of that page- the fonts are unreadably small, for example. I think I have a handle on how to get that fixed, but I won’t get to it until later. I also may do a re-import of all the photos: the “descriptive text” problem I noted above bugs me, and there is another approach to the problem I will try
I still haven’t completely restored the Gallery here on my ol’ website. The Gallery itself is still here, and still works fine, but the code that puts a little random picture here on the blog isn’t working quite right so I’ve left it turned off for now. My intent is to upgrade the gallery software itself before I re-activate that plugin. It is only a couple of hours of work, but I’ve been distracted this week. I’ve also been researching a few nice new features of the updated Gallery that I want to incorporate into this blog- we’ll see how that works out.
I’m off to the Casino shortly to see my Mom and sister, and then I have a bit of office work to do… so it is unlikely that the Gallery update will get done today. Mostly, though, I didn’t want any of my regular visitors (all three of you ) to think that I’d forgotten.
I’ve been playing less and less of EQ2 during the past year or so. Other than logging in for our regular Saturday session with my Sister Judy and her husband Bryan, my Nephew Shane and his wife Monique, and of course my wife Irene, I really haven’t been playing at all.
I’ve been playing massively multiplayer RPGs for over a decade now: I have a collectors edition version of Ultima Online So I could easily chalk it up to just being “bored” or tired of such games in general, and that’s what I did. I even tried a couple of other games. Vanguard was one, but it didn’t appeal, and ultimately the game itself sort of “died out”. More recently I re-activated my World of Warcraft account- that was fun, but more importantly I started to figure out myself and my disinterest a bit more.
Then my Nephew called up and suggested I get out of that WoW crap and create a new character in EQ2- that might be just the thing. Once I started playing that “new” character (actually one I created a year or so ago- a Kerran Paladin), the final piece explaining my ennui fell into place. I’m back to playing a couple of hours several days each week in addition to our Saturday session. And I’ll likely cancel my WoW account again shortly.
I’m sitting in a classroom at the conference now,...
