Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Blog Times

(These are a few of my Favorite Things)

Google Search Yahoo Search Msn.com


Court Side with a Hot-Peppered FLEA.

A blatant Laker Fan writing a Blog for NBA.com. Good court-side perspective with a jazzy edge.
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Wil Wheaton, a.k.a. as Ensign Crusher, is STILL Treking New Worlds and Civilizations.

Trek Fans pushed "the KID" off Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Kid grew up, (He discovered he was no longer the center of the universe, a tough job for a celebrity and most of US). He's also a BIG LA Dodger Fan (like Freddie).

Yet he managed to landed firmly on his feet with a Blog that struck a strong enough cord to land him a Nice Book Deal.

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The DOOMed Man From ID: John Carramack.


I began reading the programming WHIZ when he was writing a Pre-Blog TO-DO journal about programming and DEBUGGING Doom, and Quake. What he has to say about programming Games is still Must-Read.

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The MS Show Of Shows: Channel 9, on a Video Podcast near you.

Very Candid Camera at Microsoft.

The MSDN-Slanted Tech Topics in WMV format Video (Called Video PodCasts). Still very interesting.

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Surfing fo Answers?

There are Lots of New WAYS of Presenting INFORMATION on the WEB.

10X10 100 pictures arranged in Order of occurance in daily newsfeeds.

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Daily Rotation. 300+ Tech News Headlines arranged in order of YOUR SETUP on
One Web Page.

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RSSOWL My favorite RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Reader.

It works in Windows and Apple and Linux.

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Wikipedia. The Web Encyclopedia that is teaching Britannica a Thing Or Two about
community Authorship.

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REFDESK. A Family-Friendly Reference Desk that the tames spinning windmills of our Times
for the Don Quixote in all of us.

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A New Band of Brothers (Luaplayer programmers) .

These guys working hard on Homebrewing the Playstation Portable (PSP), and just won Best

Developer's Award from IGN.COM for 2005 for their Efforts.

Yashimaru, my son's Avatar, is One of these clever programmers.

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And a quick jump to MY Other BLOGs and Natterings:

ELO's Mass Media Course Correction About Linux, Mass Media and the WEB

Written by ELO About My Writing IDEAS

Media Citcus 2 Revival of Media Circus Webpage

One of the many New BLOG Search engines is Technorati.

Want your OWN Blog? Visit BLOGGER.COM (It's how I did it!).




Thursday, December 15, 2005

The FAB 60's

This is Not about the Beatles Invasion, but rather about the Bargains that are available in computer parts these glorious days.

Technology for home use that would have seemed ridiculus a few years ago. As Dylan told us, in the Sixties, and is STILL telling us today (thanks to the PBS Special by Martin Scorsese) the Times, they are a-changing.

I began my computer life with a Cassette Recorder as a storage device. I even subscribed to a monthly cassette magazine called Chromasette for the TRS Coco (Color Computer). The cassette recorder came with the Color Computer, but you could buy one from your local Radio Shack store for about $60 bucks. Incidently, it was the recorder of choice for UFO hunters. You could buy one at your local Radio Shack store of which there were about 9,000 at that time. Because you could run it on batteries it was considered "portable" and could be taken out into the field where the invaders roamed. It appeared in a few X-Files too, because they paid attention to trivial details like that.

I just recently updated my storage device to a DVD -R dual-layer Burner. It cost me about $60 bucks from my local Best Buy store. The DVD burner replaced my TDK burn-proof 121032 CD burner which I've had for about 4 1/2 years now and cost me around $250.00 at the time, because it was state-of-the-art.

This kind of stuff is normal for computer parts. Get use to it.

My first 5 gig Hard Drive cost $205.00 from the Pomona Computer Swap. The only place to go in those days to get a bargain on computer parts. Now you can get a 250 gigabite Hard Drive for about, yup, $60 bucks, from Fry's E;lectronics a computer superstore (think: like Home Depot for Electronics).

If fact, my last four OS's (Operating Systems) cost about $60.00 each. I've bought one of those just about every other year to stay on the EDGE of the Linux revolution. The last one I bought about 3 years ago came on 5 CD's. It was for SuSE 9.1 Pro and came with the 32 and 64 bit version. Talk about cutting edge, MS Windows won't be releasing a 64 bit version of Windows until some time in 2006, maybe.

The newest versions (I'm using SUSE 9.3 now) can be had for the price of a British magazine called Linux Format (about $15.00 stateside). Each monthly issue comes with a 4 Gigabyte DVD, containing the latest in Open Source software.

Because of the work of Klaus Knopper (of Knoppix fame), a rescue disk project has become the backbone of "LIVE" CD's and recently, LIVE DVD's. This allows you to Test-Drive a Linux Distribution without installing it to the Hard Drive. These can be as bare-bones as fitting on a BC (business card) CD or as maxed-out as the NEW DVD versions which come with thousands of Open-Source programs (some of which I'll talk about here)

By the way, the reason I went to a Dual-Layered DVD burner is because I heard the New Open-Suse Linux Distro (Distribution), was coming on Dual-Layer DVD Media. Yeah, it holds twice as much as a regular DVD (about 9 Gigabites).

Computer technology, I think this is all just Too Fabulous.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Old Becomes New Again

The Old Blogs I had were just too Hard to Find, so I decided to resurrect my Old Webpage from my Earthlink, AOL and before days, and bring back: Media Circus.

This Blog revolves around my view on what MASS (and now Minor), Media is doing FOR us and TO us. And to search for some answers regarding its impact, good and bad, on society and technology.

The fun part is that the playing field is getting bigger and bigger.

The dangerous part is that the playing field is getting bigger and bigger, and as the saying goes, we sometimes can't see the forest for the trees.

So jump aboard this reconstructed view, and join the awareness brigade. Our future depends on recognizing the signs and sign-POSTS that litter our consciousness terrain.

Big words for big Ideas.