I'm Back

Summer courses are over! No more reading and writing about God, ethics, existence, or reality. No more excuses for not blogging. Now I can go back to sleeping in and relaxing; doing nothing productive but enjoying it. Out of all the information given in my class the most valuable is knowing that getting up early killed Descartes.

Memin Pinguin vs Chief Wahoo

Which one is the racist caricature? That depends on what country you live in. Here in the U.S. I've heard people say that American Indian mascots are not racist or offense because they honor Indian culture and it's not a big deal anyways. President Vicente Fox did not make the connection between the Memin Pinguin stamps and team mascots in his argument for why they're not racist, though. He could've ended the controversy right away if he told us to deal with our own racist caricatures before we tell other countries what's wrong with their's. Or maybe the U.S. just needs another country to tell us what we're doing wrong, but I doubt we'll listen.

Technorati tags: memin pinguin

Blogger Adds Images!

Blogger now has an image service allowing users to upload up to 300MB of photos! It's easy to use, just like sending an email attachment. Now they just need categories, trackbacks, and site statistics and it'll be near perfect.

Yahoo! 360 Goes Public

I know this happened on June 24th but I still wanted to mention that Yahoo! 360 is now open to the public. I've been really busy so I barely noticed myself, but there wasn't much fanfare over it anyways. I have yet to write anything on the blog I have there because it's feels like a space reserved for personal topics. There isn't much to do with the service so most people aren't interested.

Boring Class

I think I've chosen the most boring class offered this summer. Nonetheless, it still occupies most of my time and I has kept me from updating. It's a philosophy course with a terribly written textbook that I can't sit down and read for more than five minutes. Some students take courses without reading the text and still manage to do well, but I always read the assigned reading because I hate skimming and scanning. Part of me wants to look for a different book and suggest it to the instructor, but it may translate to the instructor as me being lazy and desiring something easier to read. I won't worry about doing poorly since I can't stand being in class.

Trackerless Torrents Not Working

I've spent the past two days trying to download this roomba video with a trackerless torrent with zero success. After trying another trackerless torrent to see if the problem is just me and getting the same results I've given up trying until there is more documentation on what we should be doing. Has anybody succesfully downloaded anything using a trackerless torrent?

Calm Before the Storm

During the last three weeks I've been enjoying my summer vacation by watching movies, television, and wasting time on the internet as usual. Somebody asked me if I ever got bored doing nothing, but I like lazing around, so I haven't. Too bad it has to end very soon as I will beging summer courses and have to quit messing around. I guess I'll savor the last days of freedom by watching movies until next Monday...

Ultramercial

Just when I found a good way to avoid pop-ups advertisers come up with a new way to force me to view their ads. But this new advertising method doesn't bother me as much because I get something good in return. The ultramercial is running on Merriam-Webster now, giving me access to its Unabridged content for free. I had abandoned the dictionary site because too many of the words I looked up were only accessible to paid subscribers. To get a day of access to the subscriber's content all I have to do is watch an ultramercial. Now somebody create an ultramercial blocker ;-).

Create PDFs in Windows for Free

The best free way to create pdf files on Windows is to use CutePDF Writer. It's easy to use and it doesn't leave watermarks on the documents. Why create a pdf? Because Microsoft Publisher files can't open on the Mac and professional printers may require a pdf file.

MSN Messenger Disconnecting Solution

I think Am found out why MSN Messenger keeps disconnecting when using a router. He said it's because of uPnP, or Universal Plug 'n' Play. Older routers don't have uPnP and wind up dropping packets that are sent to the computer, resulting in a dropped connection. The solution would be to update the router's firmware or turn the firewall off. This should work if you have a Linksys router. Unfortunately, I don't think this works for the Airport Extreme.

Still Waiting for Tiger

Like many Mac users I was anticipating Apple's release of Tiger many months before any official details were revealed. Panther fixed a ton of bugs I had with Jaguar and added many minor tweaks that made my computer faster and easier to use, so I was hoping that Tiger would be even better for my machine. However, when Tiger was released and the 200 new features were published I was a bit disappointed. The only new feature I really liked was Dashboard, but it alone wasn't worth 55 bucks.

Another concern I had was that my four-year-old iBook couldn't handle another operating system. It has 8 gigs left, suffers from the spinning beach ball of death constantly in Safari, and only has a 600mhz processor. I want it to last much longer, but it may fall apart in two years. Putting Tiger on this computer is probably a bad idea. Maybe I should just delete some things and get an external harddrive.

Pop-Ups I Like

Like most people I hate pop-up ads. They get in the way of surfing and I don't like the products advertised. But one type of pop-up I like to see is comment boxes on blogs. If comments don't pop-up in a separate window then a new page loads showing one post but everything else (blogroll, links, and pictures) loads again too. It's just a minor annoyance for most, but if you read and comment on a lot of blogs it turns into a major pain. It's easy to turn on that feature in Blogger, but I'm not sure about WordPress and MovableType. All bloggers should have comments that pop-up.

Playing Games

That's what I've been doing the past week. Katamari Damacy and The Sims 2 have occupied most of my time and I haven't felt like writing anything. Unfortunately, it's going to end when summer courses start on Monday. I told myself that I'd get some stuff done during time off from school, but I did nothing. Oh well.

I Love Napoleon Dynamite

You are Kip Dynamite and you love technology.


Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Everybody who spends hours surfing the internet from home is Kip Dynamite in some form or another. Watch Napoleon Dynamite, it's the best movie with no plot.

Summer Blahs

Most people become weak and depressed during the winter months because of lack of sun light, exercise, and fresh air. But for me the winter months are the best time of the year. I love wearing heavy jeans and sweatshirts from universities I've never been to and waking up on a cool, dark morning. Summer is my least favorite time of the year. It's too hot outside, there are bugs everywhere, the sun is too strong, mornings too bright, and winter clothes are unsuitable. Summer depresses me because the heat gets to my head and makes simple tasks like cooking, laundry, and vacuuming much harder. And to think I wanted to go to school in Hawaii! I should move to a cool weather place like Iceland.

Video Card

To play the Sims 2 I need a new video card. I'm not sure what to look for and am not looking forward to installing this thing.

Lagaan on American TV

Since I've been talking a little about Bollywood I should mention that Lagaan will be airing on U.S. television on May 5 on IFC. It's supposed to be one of the better Bollywood films and from what I've seen it doesn't look too bad (the DVD I had was scratched). I'll update this post with my thoughts after I see the movie on Tuesday.

Update (5/5):
I watched Lagaan on Tuesday and thought it was better than most Bollywood films. Some of the songs were a little annoying, but that's because this film has an engaging plot that you don't want interrupted. However, four hours is way too long to tell a story about a cricket game. Rent this if you have a lot of time and patience. The quality of the film itself is good, the audio in sync with video, and everything (songs and English) is subtitled.

Andy Blitz's Pop Up Problem

Last month I was having problems with pop-under ads in Safari that were driving me insane! Others were having similar problems in other browsers and found that installing blockers like PithHelmet helped. Now I'm ad free and happy, but I remembered an extremely funny bit on Late Night with Conan O'brien about one of the writers, Andy Blitz, having pop-up problems. Andy calls NBC's tech support center and talks with Sharon, but then decides to visit Sharon in person to get more help (video). Personally, I wouldn't go to such great lengths to get my computer fixed.

Aishwarya Rai on Oprah

A ton of people came here searching for when Aishwarya Rai will be on the Oprah Winfrey Show, but found no information. That's because I didn't have any either and wasn't sure if she'd be featured on the show at all. Well she'll be on Oprah tomorrow, April 25, at 5 pm Eastern time on CBS. I guess it's supposed to be a mystery/surprise for viewers because there's no mention of her on Oprah's site. I'm not big into celebrity but Aishwarya's appearance is supposed to represent Bollywood so this should be an interesting show, even if part of the show's dedicated to Oprah's usual melodrama.

Update 4/25:
I watched the show today and you can watch Aishwarya Rai on Oprah for yourself, courtesy of Mansi from Aishwarya-Forever. Aishwarya did a lot better in this interview than on 60 Minutes and Letterman. She didn't elaborate much on the topics raised, something she could work on in the future, but she's just an actress not an anthropologist. I wanted to hear her opinions on Bollywood, especially the preference for light skinned actors, repetitive plots, and nepotism. BTW, I think Shahrukh Khan is in the video montage at the beginning of the interview.

Gastineau Girls Blog

Last night I watched seven episodes of Gastineau Girls, a show I'd heard about but never seen. It's about a wealthy mother and daughter who live in New York, don't work, go on vacations, shop, and complain. For some reason it's addictive even though Brittny's lazy and spoiled and Lisa does the spoiling. You have to keep in mind it's a TV show that's fun watching and be glad your life isn't being taped for the entertainment of others. The producer Jerry Kolber has a blog about Gastineau Girls and his other work. He wrote a post about why it's useless to complain about the women and their lifestyle. I can think of a few people who believe if a person doesn't live a certain way he's wasting his life. Anyways, I'm hooked to the show and have found another way to waste my own time yet again.