Hijinks Inc.

Category: News

  • Saturday’s Shenanigans: Recent Entertainment News

    It’s been a pretty slow week in my neck of the woods, there’s just not a lot going on in the sports or entertainment world these days. Here’s the bits and pieces I found worth sharing:

    MGM is in a heap of trouble folks, they’re in such a financial mess that they’ve officially canceled the next Bond movie, and The Hobbit becoming a reality isn’t looking so good either, as it looks like they might’ve just lost Ian McKellen.

    There’s some good and bad news for you in the casting department over at Marvel. Ed Norton won’t be back as the Hulk for the Avengers movie, which really sucks. Apparently Marvel just didn’t want to pony up the cash and decided it would be better to recast the Hulk for a 2nd time in 5 years. Norton was the one and only reason I had any interest in a Hulk movie. In other news, Kevin Bacon is set to play the villain in the upcoming X-Men First Class movie, which is a prequel to the other X-Men films.

    So after all the Team Conan and Team Jay nonsense that NBC created over the course of the last year, and then the asinine decision made to let Conan O’Brien go instead of Jay Leno, might really backfire if things don’t pick up for Leno. Comcast may replace Leno when they take over NBC Universal later this year.

    I’m not sure which is sadder, the fact that a “transient” 23 year old died in a movie theater, or the fact that the last thing he was subjected to was the latest ‘Twilight’ movie. Man, I wasn’t interested in this movie before, if it might kill me I’m definitely not seeing it!

    Join us after the jump for our newest feature of Saturday Shenanigans. (more…)

  • Where it all started for me: the TRS-80 Model I

    Ah, the memories.  The first computer I ever lay hands on was the now famous TRS-80 Model I.  While I was probably only about five or six years old, I remember it like it was yesterday.  I wanted a computer, bad, as my father used them in his line of work as an engineer, and got me hooked on them.  He had acquired quite a collection of old TRS-80 memorabilia from garage sales, and set me up with a TRS-80 Model I.  All I really did was type at the command prompt, for after all, I was only five, but you gotta start somewhere right?  I soon learned a little BASIC language, inputting simple programs, but alas, the expansion interface was defective, and wouldn’t communicate with the 5 1/4″ floppy disk drive.  However, the cassette interface still worked, so data could be saved to, or loaded into memory from a cassette tape.  I’ll never forget the sound of data being read and written to a cassette tape (if you’ve never heard this, listen to a fax machine transmission to get an idea.)

    From the TRS-80, I moved directly into working extensively with the Tandy Color Computer line, which kept me occupied for at least the next few years, until Dad finally got that Pentium 133Mhz Swan laptop (yes, Swan… that was the brand.)  You can guess the natural progression after that, but as I look back on it, I’m glad I was lucky enough to start with one of the first personal computers in production, and was able to follow the evolution of what is now the personal computer.

    If you’re interested in learning more about the history of vintage computers, check out oldcomputers.net

  • Blizzard Says No To Accountability, Yes To Anonymity

    The floor recognizes Mike Morhaime. Mr. Morhaime?

    Hello everyone,

    I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

    It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name. (more…)

  • Hulu Plus – The Good. The Bad. And the WTF?!

    Hulu PlusAfter an agonizingly long few days of waiting, Hulu has let me into the preview for Hulu Plus. Cue the trumpets! Is it all I dreamed it would be and more? Frankly, no.

    Here’s the basics of what you need to know. First off, the preview period is more of a 30 day free trail. You have to provide a credit card in order to qualify and are warned that you’ll be charged if you don’t cancel before your 30 days are up.

    Spoiler alert! (more…)

  • The MMA Minute – A Brief History of MMA, Part 1

    Typically the MMA Minute will focus on a weekend event, either in a preview or review capacity. However, this is one of the slowest months in MMA over the course of the last year or two, and we’ve already had the only notable event, UFC 116. So instead of our usual focus on a singular event, I decided to take a little turn and focus on the world of MMA, and break it down into small portions for anyone that might be interested in learning more about this increasingly popular sport.

    Now I’m not by any means some sort of MMA aficionado, but I’ve recently gone back to watch most of the UFC and Pride events (2 of the most notable organizations in the history of MMA), so I feel I am at least on stable ground to talk about the sport.

    To start off, MMA is short for Mixed Martial Arts. As usual, Wikipedia (which I used for most of this article, merging various articles and adding my two cents in between), does a great job of summing it up quickly and precisely:

    Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a full contact combat sport that allows a wide variety of fighting techniques and skills, from a mixture of martial arts traditions and non-traditions, to be used in competitions. The rules allow the use of both striking as well as grappling techniques, both while standing and on the ground. Such competitions allow martial artists of different backgrounds to compete.

    Many detractors will write MMA off as some adrenaline infused showcase of brutality, there really is alot of artistry and strategy behind all the mayhem. (more…)