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Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) |
Category Archives: Entertainment
You love the Red Sox, but have they ever loved you back?
Last night, Sarah and I watched Fever Pitch. The movie was a light romantic comedy and was entertaining. It has Jimmy Fallon as an insane RedSox fan and his relationship with a woman and how the two mix and match, or don’t as the case may be.
Anyway, a lot of the movie takes place in Fenway Park, among other baseball stadiums. I’m glad I saw this movie at home as the repeated scenes of people eating hot dogs and drinking beer got to me. I had to drink a beer while watching the movie. I’m still craving a hotdog, but I can solve that today at lunch.
Children of the Gods
Slice of Sci-Fi recently interviewed one of the driving forces behind Children Of The Gods and what I heard got my interest enough to track it down, slap it on my iPod and give it a listen. Its an serious long term audio drama, which is a rare experience for those of us in the US who missed the golden age of radio.
Although, I have to say, ever since I first heard Well’s War of the Worlds audio drama, I’ve been a huge fan. There’s just no modern content. Except, maybe the Alien Voices stuff. I’ve bought a number of their CDs for car trips, and they are a great way to pass the time. But I digress…
The core concept in Children Of The Gods is that we’re seeing events 500 years or so after the events in Independence Day. Including the much mocked virus Jeff Goldbloom gave the aliens. The first chapter lays out this history of the world between the movie and the now of the story including technology advances, why we fled the earth, and the current system of government. I’ve in the middle of the third chapter right now, and its pretty good. I’m going to continue to listen to it.
A cool aspect of COTG, outside of the story, is that its mostly a volunteer effort with people providing voice active from all over the world. As its not professional voice actors, the quality of performance can be hit and miss, but not so much that its turned me off. My big fear was the quality of acting would distract from the story. However, Clerks showed me that in some cases, story and dialog can overcome sub-par acting. They are also only 3 chapters in, so I figure they are still shaking out putting together the podcast as well as the actors or whatever. For some tv shows that can sometimes take the whole first season.
Now that its easy to put together high-quality audio and video content on commodity PCs, I think its inevitable that we’re going to get some audience created content that is as high, if not higher, in story content that what the "content producers" are putting out. I think enough people are getting fed up with the crap coming from hollywood and the record producers that they’ll start rolling their own. The big question is if they’ll be able to get other people to pay for it, or if it’ll all be for the love of it.
I have no problem admitting it
I am a giant sandwich fetishist.
Snakes on a plane!
Have you heard Micheal and Evo?
Crystal’s Party Bar
In the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune was an article on Crystal’s Party Bar in Crystal Lake. This sounds like a place that 1) needs to be closer to me and 2) is close to the vision I had if I were to open a bar.
But the multi-player games are a little addictive at Crystal’s Party Bar in Crystal Lake. Like many suburban bars, Crystal’s has that all-in-one motif: A dance floor for clubbers. A bar menu and playoff games for the sports bar set. Fireplaces and couches for the lounge lizards…
But it’s the video gaming that sets Crystal’s apart. More Dave & Buster’s than Crobar, Crystal’s is adorned with flat-screen televisions at each of its first-floor booths, allowing interactive game play from just about anywhere in the bar…
And with Xbox and PlayStation2 consoles securely attached to the first-floor ceiling, patrons can play their favorite video games at any of the individual booths.
Just sign up, turn in your driver’s license at the DJ booth and you’ll receive a game and two wireless controllers, manager Brian White says. The bar staff will handle food and drink orders while you play (appetizers and sandwiches are available until 10 p.m.).
I think this is a great idea for a bar, its just too bad its too far out. I’ll have to drag Sarah out to check it out sometime. If only because their video Texas Hold’Em is a big draw.
I’ve always wanted to open a geek friendly bar, and I’m not sure this is it. Although, it has all the items I’d want in my place, except maybe wireless networking of some sort.
The party music, though, in my bar would be relegated to Friday and Saturday night. The rest of the week I’d like to keep it somewhat sane so someone could bring thier laptop and do some coding and drink a beer. Or maybe play Quake or something. Of course, I’d have a large beer selection.
However, running an bar would take a set of skills and a bunch of capital I don’t have. I’ll have to keep the dream alive. A place like Crystal’s Party Bar makes me think I’m not totally crazy.
Another feature I’ve been considering more recently is how to make it somewhat kid-friendly, or at least have a kid-friendly night. The video games certainly help there, but I’d also like people to feel free to bring their toddlers. If only for my own selfish purposes.
Really Slick Screensavers for FC4
For those who haven’t seen them, the Really Slick Screensavers they really are some nice eye candy. A number of years ago, Tugrul Galatali ported them to Linux, primarily for use with XScreenSaver.
I’ve been pretty busy the past few months, so I was living without the RSS on my desktop since my move to FC4. I finally had some time to kill today, so I went about to get them up and running, and in RPM form. Since last time I installed them (version 0.7.4) Tugrul updated them to version 0.8.0. The spec file I used needed to be updated to match 0.8.0, to fix a small bug in the 0.8.0 build system, and account for differences in FC4. After a few moments of screwing around, I’ve got a spec file that works, a patch that works, and a built rpm.
This spec file is by no means perfect, as I’ve been learning how to build spec files on the fly, but it’ll work in most cases. I haven’t loaded it up with BuildRequires, but if you’ve got a modern desktop like GNOME or KDE installed and their devel packages, you should be in good shape.
I have to give credit to who originally put the spec file together, but I forget who that was. I’m fairly certain I got it from Tugrul’s page, but I can’t seem to find it again.
Don’t ruin my beer!
From this mornings Chicago Tribune: Goose Island may partner with maker of Budweiser
The beer industry has been buzzing for weeks about talks between Chicago’s largest microbrewery and Anheuser-Busch Cos., fostering speculation the St. Louis beer giant may be interested in buying an ownership stake in Goose Island.
Goose Island president and founder John Hall confirmed that the maker of Honker’s Ale and other brands is in talks with Anheuser-Busch, but those discussions have been limited to “distribution issues,” he said. He declined to comment further on the nature of the talks.
The brewery that made Celis White was aquired by one of the macrobrews and it was never the same again. I’d hate to see the Goose ruined that way too.
The Firefly Treatment
Its sad to see Fox giving The Firefly Treatment to more shows I like…
From Networks cancel ‘7th Heaven,’ ‘Arrested’:
As for the demise of “Arrested,” it comes just as the acclaimed comedy came back this week after a hiatus to make room for Fox’s baseball coverage. The two back-to-back episodes averaged a paltry 4 million viewers Monday, sending Fox to fifth place in the 8 p.m. hour and putting a dent on the ratings of its lead-out, the rookie drama “Prison Break.”
There is a possibility that the show will be shopped around, but its high cost is expected to be prohibitive for a cable network.
Fox said Thursday that it will pull “Arrested Development” and “Kitchen Confidential” off the schedule for the remaining three Mondays of the November sweep, replacing them with a rerun of the previous episode of “Prison Break” leading into an original episode of the serialized drama.
“Arrested” and “Kitchen” are set to return to their time slots with original episodes December 5, following the fall finale of “Prison Break” on November 28.
I think both shows were only on for three weeks before baseball stuff geared up. Nice way to give them a chance to get an audience. At least they are showing those episodes in order, so maybe its not the full Firefly treatment.
Nasty sandwich
Today’s “What Would Dave Eat?” comes to us via Boing Boing: Sandwich cost $47, has 30,000 calories.
There’s really not much more to say than that.