To understand that title, you have to know that I’m nowhere close to a cyber geek , or even a guy that really has a clue about websites. Strange then that I list web designer in my “career” list on our handy dandy About page. How does that work?
Those were the beautiful 6 words that filled the subject line of the email I received from Best Buy a few hours ago. The best part is that I haven’t ordered anything from Best Buy since I pre-ordered Halo 3 almost 6 months ago. I knew that September 25 was the release date, and that it was just around the corner, but something about that warm, fuzzy email alerting me of all the awesome gaming I’m about to encounter just really filled me with glee. And I wanted to share that with you.
There, now that I’ve shared that glee, you may now return to your previously scheduled activities.
Alright, if you haven’t heard of them yet, you will… soon. The band is Mute Math. They have a video of their first released single called “Typical”. In said music video, the band plays in reverse. Lots of videos have been done in reverse, but few, if any, have been an actual performance backwards. The bandmates learned to play, and lip-synch, all of their parts from end to beginning, that way when the recording was played in reverse it actually looked like they were singing and playing regularly, but all of their movements were backwards. Follow me?
Well, last night Mute Math made history by being the first band to every play the song backwards on live TV. They recreated their music video in front of a live audience, and they did it all in one take. They didn’t stop the cameras and redo a part they screwed up, they did the whole song in reverse. It was actually pretty cool.
By the way, if you have a chance to see Mute Math in your local area, I definitely suggest it. They put on a very original, high energy show, which was probably the best I’ve ever seen. Share your thoughs in the comments.
On February 1st of 2006 I bought one share of Google stock. I paid $400 for it. I planned to ask for the certificate and display it in my office. I wanted to be able to say that I bought Google at $400.
Today Google closed at $555 and I am up a whopping 39%.
Suppose I sold my share today and took my $155 profit.
$155
-$40 for trading fees
————————–
$115 Gain
-15% Capital Gains Tax
——————————
$98 Net Gain
My net profit is $98 (24%) This sound pretty good, except that the dollar has dropped 34% since Feb 2006 and I have actually lost 10% on this transaction.
BTW, I left for a moment to sell the share during my composition of this post. I can’t afford losses like that. I bought SLV (silver) with the money. I don’t expect to make a profit on SLV, just freeze the $555 asset. I expect that the dollar will fall a lot more than 34% in the next year. Alan Greenspan actually said in his new book that it would be best to keep your money in “other than US currency”. Ironic isn’t it?
Now granted, this is on a forum frequented and managed by gold fanboys, but it’s hard to call bias on cold hard numbers isn’t it?
Or so says the month old article I read in Wired. How much? If we had to guess, we’d say over a million a year.
Mike and Jerry (or Gabe and Tycho as you might better know them) have their own clothing line, their own video game (to be released sometime in 2008), and their own own game con. Prompting their ascent to the lofty position of video game potentates.
Krahulik and Holkins make a comfortable living from the strip, what with 55 million monthly pageviews driving online advertising and merchandising. They have a full-time staff of 10. They oversee a charity that has given $2.2 million worth of toys and games to children’s hospitals since 2003. And in late August, their annual convention — the Penny Arcade Expo — will attract 30,000 visitors, making it the largest game conference in the US.
Here’s a random fact for you, NBC is a division of General Electrics, who knew? Okay, I’m sure a lot of you, but I just found this out 37 seconds ago.
You read the news, right? You know all about the NBC vs. Apple spat that ended in NBC planning to offer their videos through Amazon.com (ick). Well, it seems in a new development NBC will be launching its own free download service, called NBC Direct, for viewers to download their shows for free. The downloads will feature a TV like experience, complete with commercials that cannot be skipped.
The service, which is set to go public in November will allow users to subscribe to NBC programs and have them delivered to their computers automatically after the program airs, however the file will expire one week after the show first airs. To add further insult to injury, NBC Direct will only be available to Windows users. Take that Apple!
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this stem from NBC waiting to charge users more per download? And now they’ll be offering them for free? Umm, okay? I realize they will probably make a bit of money off the built in commercials, but can that really compare to the money they made through their offerings on iTunes?
Do the words Malacca Strait ring a bell? How about lanun? Didn’t think so. Peter Gwin knows all about though, and he want around the world to write about it.
Though his jailers remain unsure who he is, they know exactly what he is: lanun (pronounced la-noon). When asked for a direct English equivalent, an interpreter explains that there is none, that it is a word freighted with many layers of culture and history. The short, imperfect answer is: The prisoner is a pirate.
He earned that epithet when Malaysia’s marine police captured him and nine accomplices after they hijacked the Nepline Delima, a tanker carrying 7,000 tons of diesel fuel worth three million dollars, in the Strait of Malacca. It was one of several attacks reported during 2005 in the 550-mile channel separating the Indonesian island of Sumatra from the Malay Peninsula, Singapore perched at its southern tip.
The rivers are running with the tears of fanboys everywhere, as iLounge is reporting that you have to repurchase all those iPod games you’ve been kicking it with on your old iPod if you want to play them on your new iPod… even more tragically only three iPod games have been updated to work with the new line of iPods.
Okay, so how is this different from every time I buy a new cell phone and lose my ringtones and games that I’ve purchased for that? Oh yeah, Apple and the League of Extraordinary Fanboys aren’t involved! Sure it sucks, but it’s not at all unexpected, get over it and move on in life. You can do it, I believe in you.
With it’s own flavor of mountain dew, dedicated check-out lines in Wal-mart, and a million dollar diorama depicting a fake battle, you might be tired of Halo 3 hype by now. Or maybe we all should be thankful it hasn’t gone any further. From Reuters:
Items that did not make the cut were a “Halo”-themed lottery ticket, lingerie modeled after a female hologram character and toy guns based the game’s weapons. Instead, fans can expect high-quality action figures from McFarlane Toys, a tabletop game from WizKids Inc and replica weapons for mature buyers.
Interesting to note that the article does not rule out Master Chief boxers. Finish the fight. Believe.
I run a couple different websites off the same server and have had a few problems here and there, but lately I’ve been having nothing but problems. Recently we were moved to a new server. In that move one of my domains stopped functioning altogether and this domain started working intermittently, then all the sudden I was getting 403 Forbidden errors every time I tried to access a page. Twelve long hours later my websites are finally all in working order (for now).
Another website I run (which will remain unnamed) lost a good chuck of its MySQL database in the move. My host didn’t have a backup of everything (even though they were in the middle of a transfer between servers), thankfully I made a backup the day of the move.
So I’m shopping around for a new web hosts, any one have any recommendations?
