Chuck

I've been watching this little know show, (maybe you've heard of it) called Chuck. extremely hilarious. all of a sudden TV studios have figured out how to target the nerd market. Just think about it, we have shows like Chuck, then we have Big Bang Theory, not to mention Heroes. suddenly TV studios have us nerds watching TV rather than toiling away in damp basements over lines of Linux code (do people still do that). anyway, I heard that Chuck is one of the few new shows that will be sticking around for a while a NBC just ordered some more episodes. that's really awesome news. well, awesome if the WGA strike ends soon-ish. either way, fun geeky show, hot women, awesome comedy moments and Adam Baldwin. keep up the good work guys.

Guild Wars: Eyes of the North

Have been putting my new PC through its paces. Didn't want to but ended up playing some Guild Wars. Its been a while since I've actually logged on. I think GW is a way better MMO than WOW, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure 8 million plus people are all ready to disagree with me. My entire beef with MMOs is the redundancy. let me summarize with an anecdote.

This hulking giant of a man walks into a tavern. He swings the doors open in an attempt for a dramatic entrance and then stands in the doorway as if waiting for someone. after a minute the tavern-master looks up from the mug he was polishing and asks, "Can I Help you?"
"Can you help me? no good sir it is I who should be asking if there are any here that need my help. For it is I, Balharium Shadowtamer. It was I who trekked across the great desert plains of santum to hunt the great dragon Panyanf and used his blood and bones to forge the great sword LifeFiend. It was this this sword that I was able to defeat the armies of the Unasal, unleashed on this world by the grand Warlock FootinMouth. He escaped me before I would land the deathblow. But my resolve was unshaken for with death of the warlock would the curse that entrapped the beauty of the east, Princess Peacecraft be broken and My love would be returned to me. So I traversed through the mountains to Dhoom and finally made my way to the lair of Asisibhool, it was there after a great battle that raged for day that the warlock fell and the princess was freed. In gratitude she bestowed upon me this pendant of fortitude and it was there that I ripped this here armor, enchanted by the blood of Griffonataurs, from my enemies dead corpse, making me a god amongst mortals. So again my fellow men, it is I who ask if I can help you, for a small reward of some kind of course."
Everyone in the bar stared in silence at the lunatic who was swinging his sword and clutching his pendant. The silence was broken when a bearded drunk dwarf placed two huge swords that appeared to be LifeFeinds and four pendants of fortitude on the table and said"n00b". everyone burst out laughing as the stranger left the bar in shame.
It is rumored that he was never seen on that server again.

My point with this entire story was that MMOs have yet to make me feel like the central hero in a story like one does in KOTOR or like Jason searching for the fleece. To me it makes no sense to keep paying $5 or $15 a month for this kind of thing.
That is why GW rocks. All the socials aspects of an MMO with the ability to use NPC heroes or Henchmen if one doesn't want to group. And to top it all off, no monthly fees. I just pre-ordered Guild Wars: Eyes of the North (or GW:EN for short) yesterday. Can't wait for the preview weekend at the end of this month. Those who need more info on the game just use Google or hit my IGN, Gamespot or the like.

My New PC

Just got done assembling my new rig. I wanted to get a decent enough gaming rig that I could eventually move under the TV set and use as a media center. with that in mind I set about trying to get a bang for the buck rig built. I went with a Thermaltake Lanbox Lite casing. The other components are an AMD x2 4000+ in 65nm, on an MSI k9AGM2-FIH motherboard with 2GB of Corsair XMS RAM and an nVidia 8800GTS with 640 MB. Rounding this off are two seagate 160GB single platter hard drives in RAID 0 and a Sony DRU-830A DVD burner. All this is powered by a Corsair 620W modular power supply. The system is awesomely quiet. The only things that I will need to do six or seven months down the line will be to get two USB TV tuners, an ATI 2600XT for HDMI output (or whatever equivalent is the market then), and maybe a creative X-Fi card for the sound. Overall I am in gaming heaven right now with the system scoring 5.9 in all vista performance categories except a 4.8 for the CPU. Now to catch up on pending games.

Dungeon Runners

I haven't had much gaming going on lately. I still have FFXII, Resident Evil 4 and Marvel AU sitting near my PS slim. I have this bet going with my self that I will finish these games before July 28th. before I move one to any other games; I have a huge xbox 360 backlog to cover. Any way rather than grind away at these games and stick to me schedule, I somehow ended up digging out a couple of oldies in my collection; namely, Warcraft III and HomeWorld 2. Never really played through the entirety of these games, but plan on getting through these this time around. Warcraft III looks really old. But its still fun. and of course Homeworld 2 is just a masterpiece. Its 3d gaming done right.

Anyways, not straying too far away from the header, I stumbled onto Dungeon Runners by NCSoft. Its a very simple MMO, kind of like a dumbed down version of Guild Wars or Diablo. its very pickup and play and best of all its free. well you will have to register for an account and download about 420MB, so free is a relative thing. but still its a fun game that apparently eating away a lot of my 15 or 20 minute breaks that one ends up with between daily events. I highly recommend Dungeon Runners to anyone looking to kill some time. but don't go blaming me if you end up addicted and start paying the $5.00 monthly

Musharraf "Takes Note"

Bump from Bloomberg Asia:

"March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistani police ransacked the Islamabad offices of GEO Television in a failed bid to stop the private broadcaster airing Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's disciplinary hearing.

Police fired tear gas into the newsroom, broke furniture and shattered glass in the building, 500 meters from the Supreme Court where Chaudhry's second hearing is being held. "They tried to get us out of the building and tear gassed us," Hamid Mir, GEO TV's Islamabad bureau chief said. "We received repeated messages from the police to stop our live coverage."

The Supreme Court is determining whether President Pervez Musharraf's action removing Chaudhry from the post last week is lawful. GEO TV has telecast live coverage of the protests and police action in Islamabad today. "This is unjustified and we will hold an inquiry," junior Information Minister Tariq Azeem told reporters outside GEO's office in Islamabad.

Newscast Stopped

The government ordered GEO TV yesterday to stop airing its main daily news program, "AAJ Kamran Khan Key Saath," or "Today With Kamran Khan," according to the News newspaper.

"I never knew that that the government would get so desperate and would lose patience so soon with this free flow of information," Khan said, according to the News. "We never had an agenda, other than providing people the most accurate news and an objective analysis on this most important turning point of our history."

President Pervez Musharraf has "taken serious note" of the incident and assured journalists that action would be taken against those responsible, GEO TV reported, citing Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani, who said he spoke to the President on the telephone.

I stand stunned as I watch this live and read about it. My only question is why? Is that how all tyrants are; they beat you up, hurt you, abuse you and then tell you not to cry and how sorry they are, and to "walk it off".

"Sorry" is the coolest word in the english language.

Democracy Inaction

...thought what I'd do is pretend...

Today is a sad day for democracy in Pakstan, sadder than most. The Dictatorial General Pervaiz Musharaf tried to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry from office. Many in the legal community believe that Justice Chaudhary was dismissed because he took up cases that were unpopolar with the government. Chief among these was a petition to recover missing persons, allegedly abducted by intelligence agencies. He also overturned the recent sale of Pakistan's state-run steel mills. In fact the judge is a very controversial figure noted for his firm line on government misdeeds and human rights abuses.
Freedom just doesn't intail choosing the best cellphone plan for yourself. It is a burden. It is the wounded and dying stranger that must be carried on ones back, through all the hardships ahead, just for the fun of it. That is the only way for it to survive.
Personally I am skeptical about all things organized; organized religion, organized thought, organized government. In my opinion they serve the purpose of getting a human up on his feet. But once a person stands up, it is that persons duty and responsibilty to move away, to start carrying freedom around like a log. It is easier to ignore this responsibility. Infact, most people do. but every now and then an idea comes around that makes you think. We have to think, even if we are powerless to act, because that is how ones gets to know oneself, ones beliefs. Is this infinite universe all our insignificant existence amounts to is our beliefs.
So as I see three celeberties dancing sensually on TV trying to cram down Joe's throat something they want him to think he needs, I try to focus on my thoughts; Two things come to mind.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. and,
In a republic who is the country?
This is how I see it; In a republic, people choose there leaders. They take another ordinary person and vest them with power. Power to make decisions for them, Power to deiced what is Best for others. But if power corrupts then, this approach becomes flawed. What do those with power want? Simple answer, more power. So to control those who we corrupt by giving them power, we set up a system where we give another person power to watch the first person. and yada, yada, yada, we end up with institutions that are there to maintain a balance of power.
So where does that leave us when one power hungary despot tries to consolidate it all. My answer. and I say mine because I hope yours is different, it leaves us with a flawed system falling apart. We see this in the world everyday in one form or another. Who knows how it all ends.
We have to remember that its was our power that got them where they are. We deaf-mutes.

FreeNAS

Wow, its been a long time since I posted. Work apparently takes up a lot of time. In the free time that I have, I've been messing around with FreeNAS. I had an old Celeron lying around which I scavenged to get this set up. FreeNAS is actually a very easy and inexpensive wave to get a RAID 5 network storage solution up and running on this. With this I can finally stop worrying about the day a hard drive fails and I lose all the data on it. Now all I need is a good gigabit Ethernet card so that I can get better throughput on my network once I move all my media files to this server. I think i am really doing this product a dis-service by not talking more about it, but I would urge anyone interested in a cheap backup or central storage to wiki more information here. It is really a very impressive piece of software. That works simply and as advertised.

MythDora

The new year came and went, and after a lot of searching as to how one should go about setting up MythTV as easily as possible, I stumbled across MythDora. It is a complete package on one DVD that installs Fedora Core and Myth 0.20 all in one go and gets you up and ready in almost no time. I have been running this off my desktop PC for a couple of days now and after I get used to the interface and work the kinks out, I will do a fresh install on a new PC that can act as a backend and frontend and be separate from my desktop. Only downside right now is that its based of FC5 and its 32-bit. but that's just me being nit-picky. Bottom line is that it works and simplifies a lot (but not all) of the hassle.