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Four jobs I’ve had

• Cart-pusher/Grocery-bagger at Fred Meyer
• Web Developer
• IT Administrator/DB Admin
• Shipper of Pepsi and Hot Pockets to rural Alaska

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
• Snatch
• Office Space
• Goonies

Four places I’ve lived

• Anchorage, AK
• Sparks, NV
• Orangevalle, CA
• Somewhere else (soon…)

Four TV shows I love

• My Name Is Earl
• The Shield
• Law & Order
• Futurama

Four sites I visit (semi-)daily

• Slashdot
• Freshmeat
• Yahoo! News
• eBay

Four places I would rather live

• Vancouver, BC
• Toronto, ON
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• Glasgow, Scotland

Four websites by friends of mine

• Jamie
• Amanda
• Marc
• Newman

(yes, everyone I know is addicted to LiveJournal)

Praising rap is like a kind of soft bigotry. It’s like praising people who can’t play a musical instrument OR sing. It’s also highly debatable as to whether a turntable or drum machine is a musical instrument. I’m not saying there’s not a certain level of talent involved. Not everyone can jump up on stage and ‘throw rhymes’ so there’s obviously more to it than just talking fast. If that were the case that guy who used to do those bad-ass Micro Machines commercials would have platinum fronts and hoes lined up around the block.

Now beatboxing is a different story. It definitely takes talent not only rhythmically, but physically as well. Though it’s still seems more like ADHD put to some use rather than music. Ice T is gifted to the extent he transcended genres and put together a metal band, yet he’s still most famous for writing a song about killing cops. I think I’m most pissed off by the fact that the thug-o-the-minute can be financially set for life after writing one song while people in real bands, playing real musical instruments, grinding out show after show for the better part of their young lives get the shaft. Every day it’s “Hey i got a song… i repeat my gangsta street name for two minutes and fifteen seconds!”… “that’s hot.. put that shit on wax!”. Let’s also not forget that this is the genre that introduced the world to “sampling” where as in every other genre it’s called “I don’t have enough talent to write my own music”.

The blatant hypocrisy of it all is what gets me. These people write music to supposedly show the world the social ills from whence they struggled acting like they’re trying to change something then they turn around and revel in it to sell records. Once that’s played out they hop the bus uptown and start putting out the puffy-ized bling videos.

Personally I think Outkast is the future of where rap/hip-hop is going. They’ve transcended barriers actually daring to try something new and they’re getting the recognition they deserve because of it. Kanye West on the other hand represents where rap in it current incarnation will hopefully die. He’s a fuckin’ knob.

Then again I know next to nothing about rap and hip-hop so I could be completely full of shit on all of it. Except for the Kanye West part, that’s true.

It looks like the ‘Chuck Norris Facts’ emails and news group posts have found their way out of the underside of the intarweb and into the spotlight of late. Local radio stations and even mainstream media outlets have been reporting on them on slow news days for lack of the usual death and destruction to in undate the unwitting American populace with. Some tool has also gone to the trouble to collect other people’s work from the past few years and put it all up on a single webpage consisting of all of the Chuck Norris Facts currently out there. I’m not going to condone this idiot’s pathetic attempt to gain fame from whoring old internet humor by actually linking to it, but anyone with a shred of Google-fu skills will find it. A quick rundown of some of the greats:

• Chuck Norris has counted to infinity. Twice.
• There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.
• Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.
• Chuck Norris built a time machine and went back in time to stop the JFK assassination. As Oswald shot, Chuck met all three bullets with his beard, deflecting them. JFK’s head exploded out of sheer amazement.
• Chuck Norris was the fourth wise man, who gave baby Jesus the gift of beard, which he carried with him until he died. The other three wise men were enraged by the preference that Jesus showed to Chuck’s gift, and arranged to have him written out of the bible. All three died soon after of mysterious roundhouse-kick related injuries.
• Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
• Chuck Norris has the greatest Poker-Face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game UNO.

Don’t get me wrong, of course they’re funny. Damn funny. Though now, just like then, people still don’t get the humor behind these kinds of internet jokes. The average person being lobotomized from years of watching Friends and drinking Zima won’t think anything is funny unless the punchline sits on their face and wiggles. Let’s conduct a quick humor test. I’ll make up a similar joke to guage your reaction.

• Chuck Norris used to smoke, but it was just to make a point. Eventually Hitler ran out of skin to put his cigars out on.

Now, if you thought that was funny, congratulations, your sense of humor is intact. If you’re still hung up somewhere before Chuck, allow me to ellaborate. This statement seamlessly combines the three essential elements of humor:

1. The unexpected in that you wouldn’t think of Chuck Norris smoking because he’s a bigger role model than Jesus and Gandhi combined in a Seth Brundel teleportation chamber accident.
2. The ol’ switcheroo leading too…
3. Hitler torture. Because he’s a total douchebag.

Fun AND fair. Class dismissed.

Over the past few days I’ve run into quite a few less than positive reviews of the N770. People don’t seem to understand what this device’s market niche is. It’s not meant to be a fully consumer-grade product yet despite the fact that some big name stores have heard the buzz and opted to sell it at retail outlets.

This first version should be considered a developer release. The underlying Maemo linux distribution isn’t finalized, there’s not as many apps available as most people would like (notably a PDA/PIM suite), there’s no synchronization ability yet with GNOME desktop apps and the media player still needs work. There’s also a reason why the N770 was sent out in advance to developers rather than the media. That tells me that Nokia was looking to build a developer community around the device to imporve it software wise before guaging the market for a future hardware upgrade which will all but surely happen. If you’re a gadget freak or just into playing with linux on extremely non-standard hardware you’ll love this thing as much as I do. If you’re looking for a finalized, polished product to replace that aging PDA, you’re better off holding out for v2.

I’ve compiled a list of N770 bookmarks for resources on everything from applications and games to packaging and development.

• Maemo Linux Home
• Maemo Application Catalogue
• Nokia 770 Firmware Upgrade (from Nokia Europe)
• ScummVM Maemo Port
• Nokia770.com - N770 News, Info and Discussion
• Beginner’s Nokia 770 Dev. HOWTO

When I got home from work today I had a FedEx door hanger on my door letting me know that my Nokia 770 had finally arrived. I almost forgot I had ordered it since demand is so high for the device that orders are taking up to 2 months to fill. So after scurrying over to FedEx and getting the package home, I tore into it like a kid on x-mas morning. Here are some first impressions after setting it up and playing with it for the past few hours.

Hardware: High-resulution (800×480) touch screen, 128MB flash memory (>64MB user) expandable by RS-MMC (currently available up to 1GB). Package includes 700 Internet Tablet, extra stylus, battery charger and 64MB RS-MMC card.

Software: The operating system is ‘Internet Tablet 2005 Edition’ which is Nokia’s commercial name for the maemo linux distribution. Applications include a Web browser (Opera 8), email client, internet radio streamer, rss news reader, media players, image viewer, file manager, search, calculator, world clock, PDF-viewer, notes (notepad), sketch (drawing tool) and games.

Within about 15 minutes of taking the unit out of the box I was online via a bluetooth connection to my cell phone seeing as how I have no wireless ethernet in my condo. And despite reviews that may say otherwise, the 770 isn’t strictly compatible with only Nokia phones. It works like a charm with my Mororola RAZR v3’s GPRS connection through CellOne, though it’s a bit slower than what I’m used to. The 770 also works with WiFi connections (802.11b/g) and web browsing with the added throughput is fantastic. I figured this out by hopping on one of the many insecure wireless access points my neighbors saw fit to set up for me. Considerate bunch.

The email client was easy to set up to read my rudeboy.org email address though it, though it’s functionality is pretty basic. You’re limited to viewing headers only or downloading the whole message attachments and all. Given the limited storage space available on the 770, a few large spam emails or downloading complete messages from a highly active account could be a problem. I’ve already put in a feature request to be able to browse the email headers and then choose to download the message text only.

GAIM is also available for the 770 and I couldn’t be happier about that. It allows me to keep in contact with all of my friends anywhere my cell phone can get a signal to pass a GPRS connection to the 770. Most people would think “why the hell not just call them?” which is a valid point, but I’m often in places where I can’t accept calls and instant messaging is much more convenient.

The Opera browser renders pages great in full screen mode and the included flash player doesn’t lag the system except for the most media-laden sites. I’d really rather the browser be a mozilla derivative, but I’m thinking that Firefox may be too large and Minimo may be too small. I’ll have to do some testing.

Aside from that I’ve installed X-Chat as an IRC client since I’m not a fan of irssi. I’m going to look into getting BitchX repackaged for the 770.

It’s a fact, Darkseid is the coolest character in the DCU. Now, some people seem to think he isn’t even the coolest character in the Looney Tunes universe, but they’re all bitches.

I once wrote a Darkseid vs. Thanos comic. Twenty-nine pages of epic battle destroying both the Marvel and DCU. Everyone dies like a punk except for Captain America, he dies like a hero. It finished with them destroying everything except for a bar and they just sit down and have a drink. I don’t care if Thanos is a recovering alcoholic or not. It’s quite possible the sheer magnitude of the story could break the internet in half. Then again it probably couldn’t for Darkseid IS, and he controls all thoughts and media. So the internet IS Darkseid! And Darkseid cannot be broken! FOR DARKSEID IS!!!

I know, it’s amazing. I should have pitched that to Joe Quesada and made millions. Though i think 29 pages might be a bit too lengthy for some of the quality work Joey Q has been known to greenlight.

It’s Kari’s birthday today. Happy birthday, babe. :)

I just finished upgrading the backend to WordPress 2.0. I’ve been putting off adding more sections for fear that the upgrade would likely cause my site to explode. So far everything seems to be working fine though it’s possible I’ve overlooked something. If anyone spots any post-upgrade shenanigans be sure to post a comment and let me know.