gregsbigfathead.com

No Google Maps Street View?

No Google Maps Lattitude?

I want to go hiking!

Maybe this weekend.  We live about an hour from Yosemite.  The usual M.O. is to get up around 4:30 am.  Get in the car and get to whatever trail we want to hike in an hour or two.

This picture is from last year.  Sunset right after a rainstorm up on the Kaiser Pass Road just west of Teneya Lake.

New Miyazaki movie!  Woohoo!

If you aren’t familiar with Miyazaki, do yourself a favor and go out and rent any of the following movies:

• Spirited Away
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Porco Rosso
• Valley of the Wind
• Kiki’s Delivery Service
• My Neighbor Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki, much like Pixar creates animated characters you connect with and care for on top of absolutely gorgeous animation.

Absolutely top notch story telling.

This time Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson and a whole host of Hollywood-types lend their voices to the redubbed version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo.

Ponyo is a little baby goldfish who wants to be human. Soon she gets her wish and heads to the surface to befriend a human boy, but the balance in nature isn’t steady.

Expect Ponyo in August!  I’ll be there on opening night!

No It’s not ‘The Onion’.  It’s absolute madness, or the absolute stupidity of a legislature completely isolated from the consequences of their decisions. Take your pick.

It’s not complicated.  It’s not a nuanced issue.  California cities and towns are dying.  Family farms, generations old, have been left to twist in the wind. 

Our federal and state governments, (for and by the people), have decided that this…

is more important than businesses, citizens, and families, (at least those in the predominantly conservative California Central Valley region).

Federal and California State government has decided that possible damage to a the ‘Delta Smelt’ population overrides the economic and survival needs of its citizens.  As a result aging water-supplying infrastructure has been shut-off to rural areas in California.

California has not undertaken a major project to expand it’s water infrastructure in over 50 years.  While the population has exploded, California government has been paralyzed by the Sierra Club and other special interests who value minnows over people.

Environmentalist special interest groups wring their hands and talk about the hard decisions that must be made due to man made climate change.  They lie like a rug.  Over the last century, change in average rainfall in California is not statistically significant.  While California population has exploded, every proposed major water storage project in California has been voted down.

This post needs a summarization / conclusion,  something clever and witty along the lines of how government needs to hit the reset button every now and then, how the blood of tyrants and revolutionaries is the natural manure of the tree of liberty.  Right now, I’m tired and pissed.  I’ll finish this later.

I don’t consider myself WIndows or Mac, or Linux for that matter.  I use them all, I enjoy them all.  I try to maintain the “best tool for the job” approach.

That being said, I enjoy the Linux Free as in speech, Free as in beer approach.  Ubuntu is a fantastic OS and it doesn’t cost a dime.  It also gives computer afficianados that “wild-west” feeling that windows had back in 3.11 days.

But I’m really starting to like the design on Windows 7.

People may like to go on and on about the lower memory footprint or the less obnoxious UAC (which is a major improvement over VI$TA by the way),  but I like the little details that tend to get over looked

For example:

Keyboard shortcut for creating a new folder!      Cntrl + Shift + N = Shiny new folder in Explorer!   If you work w/ computers for a living this is pretty darn cool.  How many hours of my life have I spent right clicking on crap!  Keyboard shortcuts are the bees knees, and this particular one has never existed before.

Ok, It costs a lot more off-the-shelf, although cost over lifetime of the unit is probably less then the IPhone.  There are a few things that really sell the Nokia n97 to me.

Full Querty Keyboard (w/ real keys!). 

Beautiful Touch Screen.

5 Megapixel Cam w/ decent optics.

Some cool apps that Apple as a matter of business policy have nothing like.  Such as…

     Voice over IP Apps like Skype

     Apps that turn your phone into a Wifi hotspot

True, Apple has more apps available on their app store, but how many different versions of Tetris do you really need?  Nokia already has a wider variety of better apps then Apple launched with.  Need another example?  How about this one?

• Some friends and I went mountain biking along the lake this last weekend.  Ran an app on my phone that took GPS data along w/ photos / videos and posted to the web lnked below.   Way Cool!
• https://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=1131810

Promos showing off the design and the UI

I still like the IPhone, but I handle my jonesing for the Apple UI with My IPod touch. (Oh, which the N97 can give you a on-demand, where-ever-you-go Wifi connection for anyway)

Not Much Better

Posting Wired Magazines list today.
I’ll post a much better list next week, based on feedback, and my own inestima-ma-ma-ble opinion.

Top 100 Villains of all Time…

100. Mr. Joshua(Lethal Weapon)
99. Beholder(D&D)
98. The Others(Lost)
97. Francis Buxton(Pee Wee’s Big Adventure)
96. Sephiroth(FF7)
95. Stewie Griffin(Family Guy)
94. Braniac(Superman the animated series)
93. Norman Bates(Psycho)
92. Dean Wormer(Animal House)
91. Auric Goldfinger(Goldfinger)
90. The Gentlemen(Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
89. Bill Lumberg(Office Space)
88. Frank Booth(Blue Velvet)
87. Endo(Lethal Weapon)
86. Mr. Blonde(Reservoir Dogs)
85. Col. Kurtz(Apocalypse Now)
84. Deathstroke(DC comics)
83. The French taunter(Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail)
82. Luther(Tha Warriors)
81. Angel Eyes(The Good and the Bad and the Ugly)
80. Clubber Lang(Rocky 3)
79. Cancer Man(X-files)
78. R.J. Fletcher(UHF)
77. The Flood(Halo, combat evolved)
76. The Socs(The Outsiders)
75. Big Brother(1984)
74. Herr Starr(DC vertigo)
73. Biff Tannen(Back to the Future)
72. Tony Montana(Scarface)
71. Walter Peck(Ghostbusters)
70. The Balrog(LOTR, fellowship)
69. J.R. Ewing(Dallas)
68. Megatron(Transformers)
67. Venom(Marvel comics)
66. Sideshow Bob(The Simpsons)
65. Kevin(Sin City)
64. Syndrome(The Incredibles)
63. Samara(The Ring)
62. Gollum(LOTR, Return of the King)
61. Johnny Lawrence(Karate Kid)
60. Judge Doom(Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
59. Bob(Twin Peaks)
58. General Zod(Superman 2)
57. Principal Ed Rooney(Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)
56. John Doe(Seven)
55. The Overlook Hotel(The Shining)
54. Leatherface(Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
53. Cobra Commander(G.I. JOE)
52. Kid Miracleman(Eclipse comics)
51. Catwoman(DC comics)
50. Max Cady(Cape Fear)
49. Amanda Woodward(Melrose Place)
48. Iago(Othello)
47. Bill the Butcher(Gangs of New York)
46. Starscream(Transformers)
45. Mr. Burns(The Simpsons)
44. Godzilla(Gojira 1954)
43. Serpentor(G.I.JOE)
42. Keyser Soze(The Usual Suspects)
41. Hal 9000(2001 A Space Odyssey)
40. Buu(Dragonball Z)
39. Michael Corleone(The Godfather part 2)
38. Dark Phoenix(Marvel)
37. Predator(Predator)
36. Alex Delarge(A Clockwork Orange)
35. Roddy Piper(WWE)
34. Mayor Richard Wilkins(Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
33. Tony Soprano(The Sopranos)
32. Hans Gruber(Die Hard)
31. Grand Moff Tarkin(Star Wars)
30. Dracula(Movie with title not appearing on this site)
29. T-1000(Terminator 2)
28. Jabba the Hut(Return of the Jedi)
27. Hillbillies(Deliverance)
26. Jason Vorhees(Friday the 13th)
25. Ozymandias(DC)
24. Agent Smith(The Matrix)
23. Darkseid(DC)
22. Thanos(Marvel)
21. Red Skull(Marvel)
20. Khan(Star Trek 2, the wrath of Khan)
19. Green Goblin(Marvel)
18. Galactus(Marvel)
17. Magneto(Marvel)
16. The Thing(John Carpenter’s the Thing)
15. Pennywise(IT)
14. Freddy Krueger(Nightmare on Elm Street)
13. Aliens(Aliens)
12. Sauron(LOTR)
11. Darth Vader(Star Wars)
10. The Shark(JAWS)
9. Pinhead(Hellraiser)
8. Lex Luthor(DC)
7. The Borg(Star Trek, TNG)
6. Hannibal Lector(Silence of the Lambs)
5. Zombies(Dawn of the Dead 2004)
4. Dr. Doom(Marvel)
3. Palpatine(Star Wars)
2. Pazuzu(The Exorcist)
1. The Joker(DC)