Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Filed under: Midweek Movie, Other — Malcolm Owen @ 11:03 pm
Kevin Smith has made a bit of a name for himself, being the God-like figure behind the Askewniverse creations “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”, “Mallrats” and that one about guys in a comic book store called “Clerks”. In my and my family’s estimation, the best work of the lot happens to be Dogma.
Dogma revolves around the whole concept of religious entities screwing up without realising what they are doing. A church decides, in order to get more people visiting during services, proclaims that anyone that walks through the doors would become free of sin and would guarantee themselves a place in Heaven….
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Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Filed under: Tech — Malcolm Owen @ 11:37 pm
Nothing says “This is a dead product” more than a large shopping chain in the UK saying they’re not going to stock it any more.
PC World (Stop Laughing) have declared that they are not going to be selling any more floppy disk drives, nor floppy disks. And by not selling any more, I mean they’re selling their remaining stock, but once it’s gone, they aren’t getting any more.
It’s been a long struggle, but finally people are getting the idea, using flash drives, MP3 players, CDRs, DVD-Rs, e-mail and removable hard disk drives to transfer their data, instead of the constantly failing and relatively expensive in comparison to it’s capacity floppies.
Of course, if you have a collection of old disks remaining, here’s an idea: Make spaceships out of them!
On a side note, PC World is owned by the same company behind Dixons, whom were the benchmark for when the VCR died. Hmm…
[Thanks to the Metro]
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Monday, January 29, 2007
Filed under: Gaming, Other — Malcolm Owen @ 11:40 pm
Teris is a game loved the world over. Sold many millions, and could probably be the reason why the Nintendo Gameboy sold so well. Many incarnations of the game have been made in software form, including on the side of a building, but no-one has made a physical version of it until recently.
Tetris Tower 3D is software Tetris in physical form. You have real, actual Tetronimos to touch and maneuver, and a slotted clear tower to drop the pieces into. The side of the tower has a countdown timer with how long you have left to drop something inside before failing, and the next piece you need to drop is displayed at the bottom, with the one after that flashing. 2 player games are good with it, consisting of either getting the most lines in a game, or by trying to force your opponent through the top line of the tower, which when playing with people not completely au fait with the Tetris concept, it’s great.
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Friday, January 26, 2007
Filed under: Apple, Other, Tech — Malcolm Owen @ 9:54 pm
Mr John Chow Owner of The Tech Zone, posted a list of things that he carries around as a mobile office on his blog. It’s a good list, which in itself is a good guide to those that have never owned a laptop before as to what they might possibly need to take their work on the road. Taking this to heart, I’ve accumulated my own collection of stuff that I use when I’m not at home. Granted, I’m not as good or as rich as the mogul Mr Chow when it comes to building a collection of tech delights to carry around, but it’s still useful if I go to a Starbucks or home.
Beware - There Be Large Photos in this “Homage” after the jump.
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Thursday, January 25, 2007
Filed under: Other, Tech — Malcolm Owen @ 10:32 pm
Question: What combines the explosive nature of war, the satisfaction of owning a firearm, and the ability to annoy the bejesus out of people? Answer: The Sonic Grenade.
The Sonic Grenade (I got mine from Firebox, your supplier may vary) is, well, a grenade. No surprise there, except that this grenade doesn’t actually explode and doesn’t directly maim or kill people. After pulling the pin, shouting “Fire in the Hole!” and throwing, a timer starts which upon ending emits an annoying siren that temporarily stops if you close the handle, but it will carry on sans timer if released. It will only completely turn off the alarm once you fit the pin into it’s hole, which can bring to mind some great ideas to make people more annoyed than they already are.
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Filed under: Gaming, Midweek Movie, Other — Malcolm Owen @ 10:30 pm
Doom is one of the biggest names in gaming. It’s been around for years, and has been fondly remembered by a crowd of geekish teenagers that completed the shareware and installed the Barney mod. Sadly, it suffers from the same thing that many other movies of games fall foul of too: Movie Adaptations of Games Are Rubbish. The only ones that manage to avoid the rule seem to be the Resident Evil films, but only because the whole Resident Evil thing is based on the horror film format in the first place.
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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Filed under: Other, TV, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 11:03 pm
For a while now, I’ve been wondering about TV on Demand and it’s place in the United Kingdom. Do I really need such a device, or would it be better if I stuck with good old VHS tapes.
After a curious advertising campaign, I installed and used Channel 4’s “4oD” service. Quite simply, you can rent TV shows from the varied history of the channel, to view on your PC. Sounds good enough in terms of selection, since there’s a ton of US imports, entertainment, films from the FilmFour back catalogue…
The service itself is pretty OK. The menu system is useable, downloading and viewing is dealt with in a coherent manner, and there’s a great visual style that not many other people could match at the moment.
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Monday, January 22, 2007
Filed under: Tech, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 11:36 pm
When you’re a large technology and computing site such as TechWareLabs, you have to deal with traffic. Lots of traffic. You have to make sure your servers are up to scratch, else all your readership could be viewing a big fat nothing when they go to your frontpage, because your server has crashed due to traffic. Again.
Normal people with higher than normal hosting needs will go for a complete server hosting solution, as opposed to the usual shared hosting we all know about. They select a premade server from the company’s existing inventory, and they get to work straight away.
Not TechWareLabs. They decided to build their own server, make a video of them building it, and then publish the result on their website. Running off the server they had just built.
I dream of getting a site big enough it needs it’s own server to keep everyone visiting. Of course, that probably will not happen. Unless I could actually afford it. Which is still just a pipe dream…
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Friday, January 19, 2007
Filed under: Gaming, Internet — Malcolm Owen @ 11:53 pm
It’s been some time since the latest You Don’t Know Jack release. You might have been one of the lucky ones and actually bought YDKJ 6: The Lost Gold, but you will always hold YDKJ 3 close to your heart.
Jellyvision has, for reasons that we can only think of as wise, decided to do their own version of the current podcasting trend, by making a daily quiz using one of their most beloved Jack ingredients: The Dis or Dat. And they’re doing it for no charge whatsoever, which will please the cheapskates that didn’t get the games when they were actually being sold.
My current favourite? “I Can Count to At Least Two“…
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Thursday, January 18, 2007
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Other — Malcolm Owen @ 9:17 pm
A bit of a change for once, we’re talking about an actual real news story of a serious nature. The drama (as readable at the Seattle Times…)
A 9-year-old boy who didn’t like his suburban Tacoma home stole a car, got caught, then ran away again and flew to San Antonio with a plane change in Phoenix before he was arrested, authorities said.
Investigators and Southwest Airlines officials were trying to determine how Semaj Booker, who was trying to get to his grandfather in Texas, got through airport security and boarded the flights.
…The 80-pound, 4-foot-9 fourth grader, held in juvenile detention Tuesday night in San Antonio, was “incredibly motivated to get to Texas,” Lakewood police Lt. David B. Guttu said. “He doesn’t want to live in Washington state.”
The boy’s mother, Sakinah Booker, said he dislikes the neighborhood where the family lives and is afraid of a sex offender who lives nearby.
Sounds reasonable enough. A boy runs away from home, commits various crimes, and has actual motivation to do so. Not out of the ordinary in terms of reasonableness. Indeed, it’s almost a wonder why I would be interested in the story, since it doesn’t contain stupidity nor gaming at all…
She believes he learned to drive from playing video games on a PlayStation.
…Erm, what?
As far as I can remember, the only car that controls in a similar way to a PlayStation would be the flying transformable automotive from Men in Black II. And that’s a work of fiction…
[Story Originally from Digg]
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