lsbva's Xanga

Back by popular demand (?)

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:30:38 GMT

It's hard to believe, but this time there's more than one person complaining about the lack of bloggage here. so I guess I will have to live without the kudos and worship that I've become so familiar with on other social networks. It'll be hard, but adversity strengthens us.

So having decided to write, I encounter the inevitable dilemma. What to write about? It's a lot like trying to figure out EVERY FRAKKING WORKDAY where we are going to eat, despite the fact we always end up in the same few places most of the time.

Life can be like that too. It only gets truly interesting when something out of the ordinary happens, and my life is spectacularly ordinary most of the time. But currently life has been more interesting than usual and soon there will be actual excitement! No, not a new toy (yet) although I'm Jonesing for an EOD 1D Mk IV DSLR. Not a new car, although I'd happily trade in my STI for a Nissan GT-R. Not even a new job... umm.. not yet anyhow :)

By the way, I lied about the new toy. I just bought a Garmin Colorado 400t. More on that later.

This particular excitement involves excellent seafood, unbelievably hot goth chicks who DON'T all look the same, 50,000 nerds and Cosplay! Yes it's time for our annual pilgrimage to Atlanta's 4 day geekfest commonly referred to as Dragon*Con! And just in time too. We sorely need a break from reality.

Last year Cheryl and I went as characters from Ghibli movies. If you still live under a rock, Ghibli movies are probably some of the best things to ever come out of the Japanese Anime system. With films like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle they have captured imaginations worldwide and definitely ours. So last year I went as Porco Rosso and Cheryl went as Yubaba.

This year the theme is video games. Cheryl is going to be a "Big Little Sister" from Bioshock and I'm going as the only male inhabitant of Fallout's fabled.. nay LEGENDARY Vault 69! Photos will be posted on my Flickr via mobile upload and then later in hi rez.

Toys, toys... oh yes, now I remember. For many years I've relied upon a venerable Garmin GPS V. It's a great device but has started to show its age. Not the least of its problems are a reliance on RS-232 for data transfer. So I finally caved, searched Amazon and found its replacement. The Garmin Colorado 400t.

The Garmin Colorado series is a really nice piece of hardware, but in common with everything Garmin makes, you have to take the rough with the smooth. And where Garmin is concerned the roughest part is their software. A lot of fanboys are willing to forgive Garmin for their deeply flawed software, but I'm not one of them. For instance, their installers (if they function correctly at all) tend to be hardwired to a particular location. Ususally C:\Garmin. Feeling sufficiently retro yet? Their website is crap. Hard to navigate, misleading in its content and frankly there isn't enough Flash in the world to hide its multitude of sins. But the GPS itself is a cool piece of hardware. A Hi Res screen, very fast updates and route recalcs, and physically sturdy. The firmware does display some of Garmin's shortsighted quirks but what the hell. It's not like there are many other options and you do learn to live with the shortcomings.

Time to hit the sack.

Keep up to date on the life and times of yours truly at:

www.twitter.com/llance
facebook.com/llance
Flickr.com/llance

Can't use xanga.com/llance as it's taken by someone who never uses it :(

Breaking news...

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:18:18 GMT

I'm blogging again. Out of the habit but trying hard to think of something to write. Might have something ready by the end of the day. Don't hold yer breath.

Is this thing on?

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:32:31 GMT

I'm thinking. I might just start using this again. After all I am paying for it. What the hell, I'll see if I can get back into writing.

Streamy's 2009

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:58:41 GMT

The Streamys were great! So much more relevant to me than the Oscars, and I actually gave a damn about the people who were up for awards.

Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/llance/3394711995/ and see how simply a revolution has started.

Twitter

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:56:27 GMT

These days most of my activity has been on Twitter. Not because I am bored with Xanga and the whole blogging thing, but it's sometimes hard to come up with stuff that's engaging and interesting. Also since I'm watched by many but so few choose to comment, I often feel like I'm talking to myself. Not a big deal per se, deathless prose this ain't, but it's hard to motivate myself to write something when I'm not even sure it's being read.

Twitter is different. It's short. Snappy. Immediate. Since the individual effort of each post is so small, I frankly don't give a crap if no-one reads it. I like to think of Twitter as the digital equivelant of a muttering hobo. If you stop and listen, you might be either offended or pleasently surprised. But if you walk by, studiously ignoring the crazy guy, well... no skin off my nose.

One of the great attractions of Twitter is the ability to consensually stalk your prey. Whether it'someone you know, wish you knew, or a celebrity you'd like to bone/hang with/hate etc. the world is your mollusc of choice. So in keeping with my traditional space filling blogging strategy, here's some of the better known (out of currently 142) people I follow on Twitter, and (if I can remember) why I bother. I had intended to also post their websites here too, but since you can easily find them via Twitter I decided to be lazy and let you discover them yourselves.

Here's the list.

georgeruiz
The Head of New Media at International Creative Management. Tweets with many cool people.

NeilInnes
Founder member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and extremely cool. 'Nuff Sed.

donttrythis
Adam Savage
Co-host of Mythbusters. Need I say more?

doctorow
Cory Doctorow
SciFi, Boing-Boing, Coolness.

eddieizzard
Brilliant. Transvestite. Comedian. Umm.. there's more? What more do you need? He's a frakkin' brilliant transvestite comedian! He's straight though. Nothing weird about Eddie. Not that there's anything wrong with you if you're not.

wilw
Wil Wheaton
Wil Frakkin' Wheaton bitches!

jonathancoulton
Songwriter who's songs speak to the geek. Wrote 'Still Alive' if you need another clue.

hodgman
Not a Mac.

BadAstronomer
Phil Plait
Skeptic and Bad Ass Astronomer. Oh! I see what he did there! I met him at last year's Dragon*Con. Nice guy and smart as a whip.

majornelson
Larry. Not Hagman.
XBox Live guru who often gives out free game codes along with his also interesting tweets.

kevinrose
Founder of Digg. digg.com is still my homepage despite a few issues I have with the site.

violetblue
Creator of the 'open source sex' podcast, writer on things moist and squidgy, and someone I think I'd like if I met her.

drtiki
Jeff Macpherson
Creator of the best podcast EVAR!!1! TikiBar TV rocks!

martinsargent
'let go' from both Tech TV and Revision 3, this researcher into the seedy underbelly of the net knows no fear, and about now is probably forgetting what food tastes like too.

dannychoo
Son of Jimmy Choo, the famed shoe maker, little Danny carved his own niche by moving to Tokyo and dancing in the streets for loose change, dressed as a Star Wars Stormtrooper. He does other stuff too but I'm pretty sure it involves cheap beer and hookers dressed as schoolgirls.

stephenfry
Famed British thespian and MONSTER tweeter. Seriously, I have no idea how he gets ANY work done at all.

tikilala
A compelling reason to watch TikiBar TV. Despite her frumpiness and plain-ness of face, her oustanding performances overcome her lack of atractiveness and really make the show shine. This it why the net rocks. In the real world no-one would look twice at her, but on the net she's a superstar!

tikijohnny
The bartender at the Tiki Bar, Animator and rescuer of the fallen.

alexalbrecht
For 5 minutes, a presenter on Tech TV. Ever since then, Kevin Rose's wingman on DiggNation, creator of the totally Rad show, Project Lore, Control-Alt-Chicken... he keeps busy!

greggrunberg
The telepathic cop in Heroes. Keeps pushing some net retail thing called Yowza. Seems like a nice down to earth guy.

DaveJMatthews
Dave of the Dave Matthews Band. He came from around these parts, if your parts are near mine that is.

xorsyst
A black blogger in Japan. As a Nihonophile myself, I find his unique perspective on the still mostly mono-racial Japan and it's culture most intriguing and entertaining.

kpereira
Co-host of Attack of the show, and a very lucky person.

oliviamunn
Co-host of Attack of the show, and the reason kpereira is a very lucky person.

summer_glau
Firefly/Serenity actress turned Terminator. Hot, cute, small and will totally kick your ass into next week.

sashagrey
Very cute and umm.. adventurous porno actress who actually has a lot to say. Not to imply other people in the porn industry don't, but I kinda like her. I think it's because she strikes me as a very raunchy version of Summer Glau. *blink*

neilhimself
Neil Gaiman. Author of note. Screenwriter of renown. Hoopy Frood.

bruces
One of the better known Bruce Sterlings
Writer of some kickass SF & Cyberpunk books.

jlist
Peter Payne
Runs JLIST, a web site for Nihonophiles, Anime freaks and just plain dirty old men.

BrentSpiner
Brent Spiner
Relatively unknown lounge singer who occasionally guested on Star Trek: The Next Generation to make ends meet.

jephjacques
Creator of one of the best web comics around, Questionable Content. A seriously good strip. Designs cool t-shirts too! Got a few myself.

hanneloreEC
martenreed
fayewhitaker
dorabianchi
svenbianchi
penelopegaines
All characters from the aforementioned Questionable Content web comic. They don't tweet much but when they do it's great! Well as long as you follow the strip it's great. Otherwise it's probably hella confusing.

pennjillette
Some grouchy has-been TV magician. This is a 'pity-follow'.

JohnCleese
Helped write a comedy sketch show a long time ago and has never been heard from since.

georgetakei
Played the only character in Star Trek The Original Series, who was camper than Shatner. Who knew?

WilliamShatner
A legend in his own mind, but despite everything you can't help but love the guy. The sneek peek 'behind the corset' afforded by Twitter makes the Shat a far more likeable character than portrayed by some.

mrskutcher
Demi Moore. Yes I know it sounds lame, but she's really cool and nowhere near as 'space cadet' as you'd imagine!

Amber Benson
Willow's hot girlfriend on Buffy, and now a sucessful author.

feliciaday
Geek Goddess. Accept no substitute. Buffy, The Guild, Dr. Horrible... and more to come!

malki
Creator of another fave web comic strip, WonderMark. Check it out.

terryandrob
The legendary, one and only British Crown Jewel... Terry Pratchett! And Rob. (who?)

Amazon Kindle: First impressions

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:21:49 GMT

So is my recently acquired Amazon Kindle worth the $360 asking price? Truth be told, it's a mixed bag. I'll not go into the technical details here as they have been covered everywhere else. This is really an opinion piece, so here's my opinion.

Some of the "unofficial" features (like the 3G "where am I?" hack) that were available on the K1 were very attractive, but they've all gone with the newest update. The K2 (my version) never had them. A real shame. Even more annoying is the lack of the original's SD slot. Not Cricket!

As an e-book reader it's probably on a par with anything else out there, but most of the extra features aren't quite there yet. Audio book listening is at best primitive but that's what an iPod is for amiright? The text-to-speech synthesizer sounds ok, but it peeves me greatly that Amazon caved in to the Author's Guild and allowed T2S to be defeated for a book at the publisher's request. Unsurprisingly the Kindle's Digital Restrictions Management sucks big-time, and despite all the things that Amazon "allows" you to do with "your" books, you still don't really own them. If you decide to go with another e-book reader, you've lost all your books, but most DRM systems work that way. Doesn't make it right though. The handling of alternative formats leaves a lot to be desired, and in the case of PDFs it's just plain nasty. Apart from that, as long as you keep away from anything DRM you're good to go.

Now the good news. Free 3G access!

The Kindle does not have any form of WiFi... yet. Since the device has a USB port and is Linux based, there's no real reason for it not to support USB network adapters (or mass storage come to think of it) but I assume it will be a cold day in hell before they are supported without some major nefarious hackage. However all is not doom and gloom. Inside each kindle is a "modem" that works on Sprint's cellphone network. This means that even in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest WiFi access point or unsecured wireless network device, you can still get online. Online with what? Well there is a very basic web browser in the Kindle's "experimental" section. It's slow, flaky, and only really works well with mobile targetted websites. Having said that, you can get to the web anywhere Sprint has coverage for no extra charge. So you'll be getting mobile network access for free, forever! Or until Amazon/Sprint change the rules and/or you decide to switch to another device. I don't know what a 3G data plan costs, but if it's around $30 per month then the Kindle will have paid for itself after a year.

So it really depends what you look for in an e-book reader. for me the deal-maker was 3G access. For you, maybe not so much. Either way the Kindle holds up well to its competitors. So whichever one you choose, welcome to the 21st century paperback!

Oh, and coming soon... color!

Great quote via a friend on Facebook

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:25:17 GMT

"George Bush says he speaks to God every day, and Christians love him for it.

If George Bush said he spoke to God through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad.

I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd."

Sam Harris

Aftermath of the 3rd debate

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:42:56 GMT

I definitely didn't get as drunk as I expected to be.

I'm utterly convinced that Obama came across as the more statesmanlike of the pair. His demeanor really worked in that arena, as opposed to McCain's exasperated sighing, furiously blinking, grimacing, petulant brat persona that was apparently his way of being more forceful and aggressive.

Hell, when even 'Faux News' is forced to concede it may have been a draw... you know McCain must have completely screwed the pooch. Twice. With attachments.

Hail to the chief Obama! Please try not to fuck this up.

Clash of the Mediocre!

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:55:32 GMT

OK it's the last of the US presidential debates tonight. I think I'm playing a drinking game. 1 shot of tequila for every 'maverick', 1 shot per 'change'... you know the drill.

I may not be sober enough to go to work tomorrow,

Taken from the Train to DragonCon 2008

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:41:39 GMT

If you want to see the descriptions and comments. hit the full-screen button or head over to Flickr.