A Geekish View of Life

Okay it’s not exactly JGR, but it definitely seems to be inspired by. It may even be slightly more, “realistic” in that it make a degree of sense why these kids can skip up walls. But I’m getting ahead of myself. AirGear is a new anime series that features characters with hyper advanced rollerblades with powerful motors in them! Self propelled rollerblades = teh cool! But there is more to life in Air Trek (that’s the title given to these skates), or as the cool kids call it AT. AT is a whole sub culture, much like skater culture today, but it is far more organized than most people give skate culture. They have an advanced setup for progression and pecking order. There are also tons of teams and rivalries and hyjinks to be had. The Storm Rider (that’s the technical term for the participants) battles are always for the honor of the clan/gang/team whatever you want to call it. Basically it’s rather like Jet Grind but without the controversial use of graffiti. They short cut the tag process to stickers.

The short version of this is, this is a fun new show from the same guy the made Tenjho Tenge. While not as Fanservice-riffic it is still definitely from the same Oh Great! (That’s what he calls himself). Don’t fret, there is still plenty of boob jokes and sexy girls to go round, they are just less prevalent aka more judiciously used. All in all fire up your BitTorrent porgy and get on this show!

Coming Soon! A Page Designed by Me!

It’s alive! I have webpage! WITH my own domain. w000t!

SCIFI.COM | The Amazing Screw-On Head

It’s weird, it’s kinda wacky, and astonishingly fun. And if you’re into mildly morse and odd hurmor actually rather funny.

MicroSoft and cool have been almost diametrically opposed for some time now.  And with all the good things that Google has been doing the MSN search and website just haven’t been cutting it for most users.  Well interestingly enough the mighty M$ has listened.  They always say they do but now it seems like it’s really coming together.  Take for example their new meta page, Windows Live!  I’ve only poked at it alittle, but it seems like if they can actually pull this off … they will have a pretty compelling product.

So what’s it do?  Well the trend that people are calling Web 2.0 is the idea of interconnected services that congregate on one page.  For example, you want to check your mail, your stocks, your favorite sport/team, and read your favorite blogs; well normally you’d have to bookmark them all and then visit them one at a time, unless you have tabbed browsing and then you’d have a batch of tabs.  But then you’d still have to go to each page individually, which is time consuming and tiresome, well sometimes.

Along comes the meta page, well I’m calling it a meta page.  What it does is take all these separate services and streams of information and puts them all on one page.  This can be a huge time saver and or just a great case of laziness.  Either way it’s cool.  So Google and Yahoo! and now MicroSoft are really trying to turn their vast amounts of power on this idea.  They aren’t the first, check out protopage and goowy, also very interesting implements of this idea.  Personally I use Google’s thing.  But my little blogging service has written a little “gadget” that makes the M$ live page look … well a little more interesting.  It’s nothing fancy but it is kinda neat all the same.  It is a little element that can be added to the webpage that allows for basic blog management.  Although I happen to like the main site’s interface just fine.  I donno.  I’m not sure if I want to sign up fro another service.  I have way too many of them in my life as it is.  Well anyway if you do use the Live page, which has a really cool traffic tool, and you happen to use wordpress.com it might be worth looking into.  But check out the list of features.  It’s actually pretty impressive, it includes checking your gmail account.  But I already use the google site for that … but eh.  It’s an interesting attempt to gain internet mind share.

It’s not the usual wine-journal entry.  But seriously am I?  Last night I watched the end of Full Metal Alchemist. While that doesn’t sound so bad I was only on episode 34 of 51.  And I watched the movie too.  Roughly six hours of anime, when I count on my fingers.  But that doesn’t add up … probably means I must have been deeper than ep. 34 … maybe 40 something.  Anyway I watched way too much anime and didn’t get much sleep.  Which brings up the title note.  I don’t think I’m especially stupid but sometimes I wonder … why?  Why did I do that?

I put part of the blame on caffine.  I had several very strong iced teas at work so … there’s that.  And that at the end the story got all crazy and I had to finish it.  It was sorta like the last five chapters of a really good book.  You just can’t stop.  Although the movie wasn’t nearly as strong as the series.  Anyway I feel silly and I have an eight hour shift today.  Not very good planning on my part.

Damn Amazon ad CD Japan … they make me want to spend money I don’t have!  ARG!  L’arc - en - Ciel and The Pillows!  ::cry::  AND Seat Belts!  They’re the guys who perfomed the Cowboy Bebop sound track.

Just found out The Pillows, were in San Fransisco on the 28 of June!  Damn it!  They actually had a US show and I didn’t know!  ::sigh::  I guess it’ not such a big deal … but I don’t think any of the other Japanese bands that I like are ever going to have a US show … guess it’s time to do some serious website sluthing.

It is possible that I may have found a new favorite web browser.  For anyone who keeps track there are really only three major browsers IE (Internet Explorer), Firefox, and Opera.  Okay … wait no … there’s four, I forgot Safari.  For some time now Opera has been a pay browser, it was like most any software you buy on the net.  But when version 8 arrived it also brought with it the birth of Free Opera.  Now at ver. 9 Opera is as strong or stronger than ever.  You can check out their website for all the details.  But the short version is it is everything I liked about Firefox, but all in one place.  Although the new “Widgets” business is kinda … odd since I already use Yahoo Widget Engine (formally Konfabulator).  Plus if you have OSX.4 you already have a widget thing, it’s the Dashboard.  They all have their place I’m sure, but so far between the Dashboard and the YWE (Yahoo Widget Engine) most of my “useless” but cool stuff is covered.

Also Opera was one of the first to be “standards compliant”, meaning that the guidelines set out by the W3 commitee should all be executed the way the W3 decrees they should be.  This doesn’t mean as much to browsers since most sites are still built with IE in mind but it does mean that everything should work when you visit a page, and in the off chance that it doesn’t then you probably need IE anyway.  But hopefully with all the new stuff coming out of the Web 2.0 movement most of that will slowly fade into the distace.  (looks prayerfully to heaven)  All in all try it.  Between Firefox and Opera I’m pretty sure you’ll find an excellent replacement for IE.