Buses

I should change the name of the blog to Reed Solomon hates public transit. I probably already ranted about how i hate sick people who take the bus rather than kill themselves, but did you know I also hate when wheelchairs get on the bus? I DO! they take forever to get on, deploy the ramp and shit. and then all the old people who sit at the front have to move to the back where i am and stink it up with their old people stink. But fine, whatever, i can live with it. But what I hate worse is people with baby carriages who get on the bus. If you have a baby, stay off the damn bus with your huge ass baby carriage. and a lot of the time they try to get on the bus and then they have like 3 baby carriages and a wheelchair. seriously, its ridiculous. its like bringing a shopping cart on the bus. I like taking the bus because i dont get road rage, but then i get poor people rage. I can't win. I guess if i had a limo and a servant who drove me around, that'd be ideal. I'll have to look into that I guess. But I wouldn't get a tax credit for that :(

Happy Anti Piracy Day everybody!

Microsoft announces Global Anti Piracy Day

I think I'm gonna pirate Windows Vista just to celebrate. Also cause my laptop came with Vista pre-installed and I may as well have a WORKING FUCKING BACKUP CD!!! Even though I'm using Kubuntu.

And a broken copy of Medal of Honor (first CD is broken.. oops)

"It's one thing to buy a fake handbag or a designer scarf but when you're putting pirated software on your computer at work, who knows what you're really getting and what kind of damage you could do!" HAHAHAHAHAH. Really, Microsoft guy, you're an idiot. Pirated software isn't software people would have paid for. Piracy takes away jobs? Microsoft has made billions, and has mostly kept that money hidden away for a rainy day. Sure they created jobs, but how many jobs? Will more sales of vista = more jobs? NO! 50 billion dollar loss. How can anyone say that with a straight face.

Fuck you Microsoft, fuck your PR, fuck you working in collusion with the RIAA and CRIA and trying to influence the governments of the world to create new laws like ACTA. new laws like Bill-C61 or whatever its called. It's a sad thing that the governments of the world attract the least intellectually adept people to them. That people actually believe these talking heads is insanely pathetic.

But hey, if you really want to reduce software piracy, INSTALL UBUNTU. It's linux, it's free, its pretty good.

That said, anyone who PAYS for pirated software.. is a moron.

And remember kids! DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!

moar yootoobes

Mega Man 3 is one of the best games ever, with one of the best themes. This guy wrote lyrics to it.

Girls Halloween Costumes

It is an odd yet amusing fact that most girls halloween costumes are in the "Sexy" category. I don't really know how that came to be, but it works for me. I guess maybe girls are in the majority more likely to buy the "sexy whatever" costume than anything else. Who knows, I'm not a psychologist or a sociologist. Maybe girls just want attention and like having Halloween as an excuse.

A year or two ago CollegeHumor.com came out with this video. I was reminded of it earlier in the day thanks to bannination.com. Here it is.

Clean your ears

Today I took the bus and there was a guy with the dirtiest fucking ears sitting in front of me, with some white shit in them. I tried not to look but he kept turning his head to talk to the disgusting woman sitting next to him. Clean your fucking ears you troll. That's all I have to say. Buy a q-tip. Screw the Q-tip warning saying they're not for ears. That's what people use Q-tips for, Q-tip company. Get over it. Well, except for this guy on the bus. God if I didn't hate driving (I easily get road rage, go figure) I'd never take the bus.

Netbook

So guess what, I bought a netbook. No, I didn't end up buying the Dell mini inspiron 9. I bought the Linux 8gb version of the Acer aspire one. It was on sale at Futureshop for $299, and had better specs than the Dell mini for $100 less. It's a useful little device. I quite like it. I'm typing on it right now.

My only complaints are the 3 cell battery, and the international keyboard that comes with Canadian versions. The American keyboard seems far less annoying to use. But I got used to the keyboard for the most part. Also the mouse could be improved. It's a pain to press so hard on the mouse buttons, and their positioning is really annoying.

Minor quibbles include a lack of bios options, such as disabling the trackpad, The ridiculously complicated method to add an extra stick of ram (complete dissassembly really).. And the Linpus linux distribution while serviceable.. is annoying for anyone but skilled linux users like me to enhance. I really hope Acer switches to Ubuntu. It really is a better option, with better support, especially from the community. In any case, I did hack linpus up enough with fedora rpm's to have a workable xfce desktop and working divx media players.

Still, its impressively fast on the atom processor, you can play Quake III arena with most of the options turned on. As well, it comes with TWO slots for SD cards. Which really expands the storage options so that you don't miss having a built in hard drive.

The 3 Cell battery gives you 2.5 hours with wifi turned on. Wifi is 802.11g, and its a pretty good card for finding hotspots. Still, I'll wait for a 6 cell battery that can last 5 hours. 2.5 hours is a little bit shorter than what I'd like. 6 hours would be better, 8 hours would be best. There is an extended 6 hour life battery for the aspire one, but its 1) too expensive at $110 dollars, 2) seems to add too much to the bulk of the acer aspire one. I'll wait a bit to see if prices go down and/or they design a version that sits flush using better battery technology or something.

Another thing is that in the future there will be 3G options on these things. That's exciting. Or it would be, if I lived anywhere but Canada. Still, here's hoping Rogers gets some competition in the wireless internet arena.

I think a cool thing would be if they added an e-ink page to the lid, so that closed you could use it as an e-book reader, using the same internal hardware somehow. They could justifably charge more for it, and people would probably pay more for it. if they could do it in a way that it didn't seem obtrusive. That'd be neat.

Also it'd be nice if Ubuntu/Redhat/Xandros et all got together to create an Apple store type place for apps and games, and/or certified hardware. Perhaps using the old Lindows click and run as a base. It would certainly help convince some developers to port their software to the linux platform. Don't get me wrong, I use primarily open source software, but I'm not adverse to seing things like closed source games perhaps ported with wine being sold for download onto linux. At least it will get people on a free open source platform. Plus a lot of games require a CD be inserted, wheras these little things.. kind of eliminate that option. Anyways, I like it. Plus it doesn't have a Windows key, instead it has a little picture of a house. I guess its a "home" key.

Something I'd do with the keyboard, aside from having a US keyboard rather than the awkward international one, is swap the home/end keys with the pause/break/printscr keys. Home and End need a dedicated key, not something tied to a function key. Print screen though, is probably fine as a function key. Ideally, Where PrntScr is, I'd put page up, where Pause is, I'd put page down, where page up is, I'd put home, where page down is, I'd put end. And I'd simply assign Printscr/Pause Break to some funtion key somewhere. maybe f2 and f3.

Finally, I'd like to see some more aftermarket addons for this (and other linux based netbook style) devices. First of all, a retractable portable power cable would be nice. It's such a hassle carrying a brick when its unnecessary. I was a bit saddened that I couldn't charge this thing with a USB port. I mean, I realise its more powerful than a pocket PC.. but whatever. I'd at least like a retractable power cord, universal for all countries wouldn't be bad either. There are other official products they could add on.. like those teeny little USB addons, or whatever. Micro Bluetooth USB. That's what im thinking. I bought one, but if someone set up a netbook store that sold stuff like that, that'd be great. Kindof like apples store again.

So thats my acer aspire one review. The end.

Opus the penguin

If you haven't heard by now, Opus the penguin, star of the Opus comic strip, is going to be killed off by his creator, Berke Breathed. On November 2nd. This is sad for two reasons. First, Opus won't live to see the end of the Bush presidency, second, I like Opus. All the same, I suppose its nice that its coming to an end, Breathed was really milking it in the 90's and 2000's, just doing a sunday strip.. I mean, theres just no commitment there. Outland and Opus were never as funny as the original Bloom County strips. But they were still pretty good, hopefully they get replaced with something that isn't banal and tedious. Oh Marmaduke.. I don't mean you, you huge dog you. You're doggone funny.

At least Bill the Cat isn't being killed off... again.