Battlestar Galactica Returns and Ends
Permalink | Tweet This! | | January 7, 2009 by John in Television
One of the top 10 science fiction series ever, Battlestar Galactica, returns on Friday the 16th for the second half of the final season. They’ve already found earth, and it wasn’t what they hoped for. Die hard fans weren’t surprised though. There is also a 12th and final Cylon model to be revealed, plus a heck of a lot that needs to be explained about the last four that were revealed. Watch the catch-up special for free on Amazon.com Video on Demand. Unfortunately Amazon deactivated the 10 recent webisodes which was nice because I didn’t have to watch the commercials ahead of each 3-minute epsiode on SciFi.com.
I commented on Consumerist
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Computer-Internet, Music
Apple: Give Us Money And We’ll Remove DRM From Your Music
99% of my music is from CDs or from Amazon. I’ve probably purchased 2 dozen songs through iTunes mostly due to convenience, and it hasn’t really been a problem.
All you people complaining about “paying again” for music you already “paid for” BOUGHT THE DRM-LADEN MUSIC. AND YOU KNEW IT HAD DRM. Maybe not the first one or first few, but eventually you figured it out and kept buying DRMed songs. DEAL WITH IT. You still get to play your DRMed music. Nothing has been taken away. You can either get some kind of DRM-stripping software, burn audio CDs and re-rip the songs as MP3s, or suck it up, and pay the “DRM stripping fee” of 30 cents a song. It’s just a service charge and most people won’t need to pay it.
Buncha friggin whiners…
Creepy Hands
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Computer-Internet, Humor, Photography
Creepy hands and bad reflections pretty much sums up this collection of the 20 Biggest Photoshop Disasters of 2008 (via Creattica and PhotoshopDisasters.com).
This is a mild example, but I need to run home and check my copy of “300″:
Home sick
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 29, 2008 by John in Health-Medical, Humor, Of a Personal Nature
It started with a sore throat on Friday and now I can’t breathe. Self-administering massive amounts of Vitamin C, Zicam, Ibuprofen, Sudafed and Lolcats to get through the day…
Update 1/1/9: Nearly a week later and just coming out of it. I can actually breathe through my nose again. One more full night of sleep should do the trick. Most of the drugs listed above failed me (add NyQuil to that list, although DayQuil seemed to help a little). Sticking my head between a towel and steaming pot of water was the only consistent help. I think the (dry) cough is going to linger for a bit.
My Kind of Xmas
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 25, 2008 by John in Video Games
Now THIS Gives me Holiday Cheer
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 24, 2008 by John in Auto, Humor
Novelties: 50 Vanity Plates That Slipped By The DMV (not for the easily offended). Here is a tame example:
Star Wars + 60,000 Legos = Nerdgasm
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 23, 2008 by John in Geekasm, Movies
60,000 Piece LEGO Hoth Battle Diorama (via Geekologie)
“College” Scams
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 22, 2008 by John in Career, Education, Tom Leykis
The biggest scam of all, and I hate to rain on people’s parades, after the broadcasting business, when they have these broadcasting departments at universities, and people who couldn’t make it as DJs or news people, there they go and they go to a college and teach other people how to do that for a living, and there’s people paying $25,000 or more a year to major in broadcasting at major universities, only to find out that if the person teaching them had any talent they wouldn’t waste their time at a university teaching, they’d be out there doing it for a living. So that’s the biggest scam.
And then, after that, the biggest scam is [...] culinary arts. People who study to be chefs. And the reason is, because studying to be a chef is like studying to be an NBA center, okay, there’s 30 NBA centers. And that’s it. And so what happens to the vast majority of culinary arts students is that they end up getting $9/hour to be the sous chef at El Torito. Alright? [...] You’ve got Bobby Flay, and you know you’ve got Wolfgang Puck, and then a bunch of sous chefs. And that’s a big scam.
[...]
I can’t speak for any particular institution of higher learning [, but] any college that has campuses in more than one state, or has an 800 number probably isn’t really a college. [...] Also, any college where you have to draw “Winky” to get in probably also isn’t a real college.
-Tom Leykis, The Tom Leykis Show, 12/19/2008, Hour 3
Germany or Florida? Round Three
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Humor, Religion
It’s been a while since I stumbled across a news story for the “Germany or Florida?” bit. Since most whacked out things happen in one of those to places, see if you can guess which one this is. Answer after the jump.
A 49-year-old … woman says her former church is threatening to reveal her sins to its congregation after learning that she is in a “sexually immoral relationship.”
[She] told [us] that [the] Church … was against her relationship with [her] boyfriend … because the two were sexually active but not married.
When she wasn’t willing to obey the church’s orders to leave him, she decided to leave the church instead, allowing her two children to remain active members.
Now, she says, church elders have given her the worst ultimatum yet: In a Dec. 8 letter, they told her she either has to meet with them and end her “immoral” relationship or she will face public humiliation.
Disappointed in Top Gear
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Auto, Television
I loves me some Top Gear. It is consistently the most entertaining and best produced automotive show in the world. While I acknowledge it’s mere entertainment and not automotive journalism, they’ve demonstrated a serious lack of integrity. To be absolutely clear, the show, including co-host Jeremy “the blowhard” Clarkson presented a lie. Seconds after saying the Tesla electric sportscar should run for hundreds of miles on a charge, they faked a situation where they said it ran out of juice at 55 miles. They presented this as FACT. Top Gear Tesla didn’t run out of juice (via Jalopnik, emphasis mine):
A spokeswoman for the popular motoring show confirmed to Register Hardware - as Tesla’s head of spin, Rachel Konrad, recently claimed - throughout the test, the show was never without a working Tesla.
“They never had to push a car off the track because of lack of charge or a fault,” Konrad wrote earlier this week. “It’s unclear why they were pushing one into a garage in the video; I’ll refrain from speculating about their motives.”
Now we can reveal the answer: according to the Top Gear spokeswoman, the tested Tesla was filmed being pushed into the shed in order to show what would happen if the Roadster had run out of charge.
“Top Gear stands by the findings in this film and is content that it offers a fair representation of the Tesla’s performance on the day it was tested,” the BBC said in statement.
Again, it was presented as a real event that the car expired at 55 miles. They never presented the scene as hyperbole. BBC and/or the Top Gear staff and hosts owe the Tesla Motors a huge apology. I don’t care if the rest of the spot was “favourable”