side notes

by Matt | Feb 16, 2004 | Imported Entry

A few side notes that didn’t have anything to do with car racing or stupidity. They warrant they’re own post.

First up, Chip was telling me his friend Delia was having FireFox issues with themes and disappearing taskbars. In that light I thought I’d pass around an also-unreleased theme thats working very well for me in v0.8. It’s actually a port of the default OSX theme (pinstripe) and really looks slick. Check it out at MozillaZine.

Also, in case you’re looking for some new wallpaper and don’t feel like waiting 10 years for devaintart to load, check out PixelGirl Presents (Desktop Images section). It’s where I’ve gotten some of my favorites over the years. I’m not sure I ever passed the link along.

Serious bling-bling. Uber Diamond found in space.

“Plant Piracy“? Give me a break. They’re roses people. That’s like me taking out a trademark on the phrase “water” and making everyone call it “tasteless non-colored liquid” or else I sue them.

In Silent Storm… you start with guns and get frickin’ lasers halfway through. How cool is that?!? Sorry… I just got to that part of the game.

They drive in a friggin circle!

by Matt | Feb 16, 2004 | Imported Entry

Lets start off by stating the obvious. NASCAR is not a sport. Anyone who begs to differ can leave right now. I will admit that it take skill to drive a car, especially at high speeds, but I will not declare it a sport. A sport, by definition, requires some sort of physical activity, an object, spherical or otherwise, that is used to fascilitate scoring and some semblance of “team” mentality and perhaps even strategy. That is my definition of a sport. That basically covers anything from ultimate frisbee strait through polo and everything in between. I say again, driving in a circle is not a friggin’ sport. But the zeal with which it is covered certainly makes it seem that way sometimes.As an example of my dislike for this “sport” I will entertain you with tales of yesterday. For it was yesterday that the Daytona 500 was occurring at the same time Lauren’s family was trying to have two separate birthday parties at two separate locations. Lauren’s grandfather, a very nice man, was watching it when we arrived at Lauren’s parent’s house shortly after church. That was fine, it was on merely in the background and it wasn’t bothering anyone. We had lunch and cake and the headed over to Lauren’s uncle Jon’s house. Uncle Jon is a rather large man, a mechanic by trade, and so he has an affinity for racing. Understandable since both his livelyhood and hobbies involve engines of somekind. Jon’s sister and husband were also there, I can only assume to torture the rest of us. They had the race on too. Actually when we arrived the race had just finished but for some reason we were forced to watch the “post-race wrap up”. This is absolutely fascinating to me since only insane people would want to watch the “highlights” of something that a) isn’t exciting in the first place and b) they just finished watching and obviously know the outcome of. I’ve been told by some that watching it again is simply done to “see the crashes”. Those people have issues. What also got to me was the annoying banter back and forth debating perticular drivers worth and skill. Something to the effect of “number 34 should have beaten number 8 and I can’t believe that number 16 came in 5th”. I also completely made up those numbers, so don’t go looking those up or anything. The converstation was mind numbing at parts as they retold the heroics of “Alison’s pass of Gordon on lap 112”. They even got the phone out to call their other NASCAR friends and ask them if they had seen the same things they did. Surprise! They did… because they were glued to the idiot box for 5 hours as well. What’s almost worse is the warping of the little kids. Since it was “race day” the kids were dressed in matching Daytona t-shirts and hats with their favorite drivers numbers on it. There was also controversy over the birthday cake, which had the wrong drivers number on it and didn’t match the match-box car on top of it. I sat very quitely in the corner of the room, hoping, if I stayed quite long enough, I could ride it out and leave without having to discuss “someone’s new engine” or “the new paint job on number whatever’s car.”

So, let me get this strait… they drive a little bit, then turn left… then left again… then left again… then left some more… and they do this 500 times and whichever moron has driven in a circle the fastest wins? Idiots. At least Indy car racers have to turn right occasionally. They at least qualify in the “skill” category. Shit, they even had Ben Affleck in the pace car. Do NOT tell me HE has the ability to tie his shoes let alone drive a car that fast. That boys, does not add credibility to your sport. Now, give each car some guns or rockets or something and I’d be there… but if all they’re doing is driving in a circle, then yes, the crashes are the interesting part. Simply because they’re a break from the monotony.

/end rant

Sweeeet! FireFox and Thunderbird

by Matt | Feb 9, 2004 | Imported Entry

Just found out this morning that the Mozilla teams just released FireFox 0.8 and Thunderbird 0.5. I’d switched to FireFox, which until now was known as Firebird, months ago as my browser of choice and recently gave Thunderbird a try and I’ve loving it. You can check out the main news page here (firefox and thunderbird), but it’s been down for the past few hours because it’s getting hammered with requests for the downloads… I was going to give you guys the links to the direct downloads but I figured I’m the only one that would be using them under Windows anyway, so what would be the point. So, since there’s no point in giving you the windows links, I’m going to give you the whole release directory and you can pick what you want, all the releases (osx, winxp and linux) should be there… Thunderbird & FireFox. You’re welcome.

Other than that it’s the same old thing around here. It’s Monday, so I have the day off, so I’m sitting here in the computer room in my bathrobe at 10:30 in the morning. I’ve got two rather expensive cigars here on my desk, one for me and one for Nagle, ceremoniously of course, and I might have to enjoy one of those this afternoon on my veranda. I’ve also got redesign on my mind as I think most of you do to, well, at least those of you with web pages. I dunno, it’s spring, new things need to happen with web pages. I guess technically it’s only spring here in Texas, so maybe I’m speaking too soon. Regardless, I’ve got a design that I like and I’ve asked Nagle to take a look at it since he’s the bomb in terms of design. It’s actually a pretty simple design. Centered, one main pannel and a smaller one to the right. That’s about it. It’s got a little worn/grunge/WWII fighter plane sort of look to it. Metallic and retro. You’ll dig it. I’m going to keep the main design a surprise, but I will show you this as a teaser:

In fact, if you liked that, how about a wallpaper or two…
1600×1200
1280×1024
1024×768

That’s about it kids, I’m off for a long and well deserved day of R&R. Later.