The Baby Blazers

With all the young talent Portland is stockpiling thee days, I'm beginning to get a worried feeling that they're going to be the L.A. Clippers of the 2000s.

Windows Media Version

Strange, the real player version works on my PC Firefox but there's no video on my PC Internet Exploder. But on my Mac, the Internet Exploder works fine while the Firefox hangs. Click here for the WMV version.

Testing

Testing streaming real video on this web server. Click here for the Real Time Version.

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Daniili-Who?

Eleni Daniilidou upset Justine "the Allez Cat" 2xH at Wimbledon yesterday. This is perhaps the biggest upset since Virginia Ruano Pascual beat the Chuckster in the first round in 2001. Why should we care? Because we're denied a Serena-J2xH match that was sure to have plenty of spice.

But the match to watch is Sharapova's second round match against our favorite trash talker on the tour, Sesil Karatancheva aka SK from our Teenage Smackdown report last year. For those who don't know and don't care, SK was the one who vowed to kick Sharapova's ass all over the tennis court at N-100 last last. Here's hoping that plenty of ass kicking and trash talking will ensue. Speaking of which, if gold sparkles on her shoes is Sharapova's way of expressing "bling-bling" on the tennis court, I'm not impressed.

Marc Who?

Iavaroni. The Oregonian is reporting this morning that he will be the new Trail Blazers coach although the Blazers deny it. Okay, we knew we weren't going to convince Phil Jackson or Flip Saunders to come but Iavaroni? Whatever happened to hiring an experienced coach who will demand respect when he rolls into town? Sometimes I feel that Blazers management has the attention span of a five year old with ADD. Oh, well. Wait 'til 2010?

Update: Well, it appears that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of Iavaroni and Nate McMillian. But, seriously, you think McMillian is going to come here? If Iavaroni is indeed their second choice after McMillian then you'd still better get used to Marc being coach of the Blazers.

My New Favorite Site

Never register for a web site ever again!

Get Internet Explorer

Right here!

Hmm ... on second, though, it looks quite familiar.

A "B" in Great Literature?!? — That's Horseshit!

Sigh, hopefully it won't keep me from getting into a good Oceanography/Dental Hygiene grad school. I also hope that they won't hold the lack of a good outer space physics class against me either.

At any rate, if the registrar of your alma mater won't give you the grades you know you deserved, you can create one here. You can also create diplomas and letters of recommendation letters. However, the true gold of this site is creating your own college! (Sadly, there's a fee for this one.)

Powerbook G5 — Intel Inside

The only thing surprising to me about Apple's decision to dump the PowerPC chip and move to Intel was that the decision wasn't made sooner. I always thought that the move would be to Apple's advantage since going toward the UNIX based OS X which could be programmed to run off of the Intel/AMD processor.

Indeed, everyone knows that the IBM/Motorla chip wasn't going to surpass the 3 GHz barrier anytime soon which is the only reason that Apple has had to tout the dual-processor horn during the past few years. If early reports are any indication, the new chip will run at 3.6 GHz and will easily outdual the single 2.7 PowerPC and even the dual as well.

As for the argument about loss of support for OS 9 classic, we can always hope that an emulator will be built into OS X-Intel but, really, when was the last time you ran an OS 9 application? (No, former Joyce people — GEMS does not count!)

Looking back on this development, I wonder why AMD didn't make more of a bid for this contract. It would have been a real boon for them and a nice single finger salute against Intel.

Obviously, the big question that comes out of this is if PC users will switch over to OS X-Intel from MS-Windows. And what happens when cheap PC shops (and Dell as well, come to think of it) start shipping ultra-cheap PCs with OS X-Intel. Will Apple sales drop proving once and for all that price trumps style? My prediction is that this move saves Apple and I see the reverse of what the Apple naysayers or saying. PC users will flock to the idea that they can run Windows and OS-X off the same Apple Box which looks infinitely more stylish and usable than dull PC boxes. The mod community has proven for years that style counts. If Apple can milk this, they'll sell lots of computers as well as copies of OS X-Intel. And a new OS to truly compete with Windows will be a breath of fresh air. Microsoft may even back off of its $300/copy price tag on Lornhorn, the long awaited and even longer delayed 64-bit OS. And I think they'll have to if Apple keeps the price tag of OS X stable — $120 for a new copy or a 5-copy family value pack for $200.

As for me, I'll keep my PowerBook and add OS X-Intel to my main computer's boot-menu once it's available. Hmm, that means my main computer will have the ability to boot into Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 98, DOS 6, Fedora, and OS X. Overkill? Nah...

The Most Annoying Person on TV

Okay, I've finally decided. Rachael Ray is, beyond a doubt, the most annoying person on television today.

What's It Gonna Do? Bite Me?!?

It may seem surprising but my most anticipated game for 2005 is not Oblivion or the next Final Fantasy but is Dragon Quest VIII.

I know, I know — the Dragon Quest/Warrior series has always been, at least to Americans, the ugly stepchild to Final Fantasy. But in Japan, DQ is the marquee franchise and not FF. In my opinion, they blew it with Dragon Quest/Warrior VII — it's obvious that they wanted to preserve the old school charm but it just ended up being, well, blech:

But from what it looks like, DQ/W VIII is going to kick some ass. Check out the video courtesy of G4TV.

And what can I say?

It doesn't get any better than 3D slimes!