Rover Fastback

An amusing Rover commercial shown in England in the 1980s.

In real life the car was shit, and no self respecting German would be seen dead in one.

In England they call it a nasty turd, not Fastback as the commercial implies.

Oh No You Didn't

My favorite TV commerical right now. Just love the amusing song, the full version is available here.

Sarah Palin

In an attempt to steal the limelight from Barak Obama, old man McCain decided to name his vice president a couple of days ago. He picked Sarah Palin; a move that shows the depth of his ineptitude for all but the most stupid people to recognise.

After all the campaigning about the need for experience in the White House, he picks this 44 year old former pageant girl, who has been Governor of Alaska less than two years, and prior to that was mayor of a town with less than 9,000 people in it. A women that McCain has met once.

John McCain was 72 just the other day. If elected he would be the oldest president ever, with a slew of medical problems. And if he dies, this woman would be our president. WTF? How is she qualified to do that?

I think that McCain's decision only goes to show why he is utterly unqualified to run this country. It's not just that he is fucking old, or that he has voted with George Bush over 90% of the time, it is the fact that he is willing to abandon his own principles just to get elected. He seems to think that this young hottie will entice women to automatically vote for him because he picked a lady VP. Now I am sure that some women are that stupid, but seriously, any intelligent woman is going to notice that Palin is not Hillary, and never will be. Her politics are dangerously stupid, and she is not qualified to be VP.

Apart from he laughable lack of experience, here are some other interesting facts about her:

• She is strongly anti-choice, and believes that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. In fact she is a member of a right wing feminist organization called Feminists For Life. In a letter to them she once called abortion an 'atrocity.'
  
• In 2000, she supported right wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president.
• She thinks that Creationism is science, and should be taught in schools, along side evolution. Although despite stating this in a televised debate, she changed her mind the following day, and said that students should be encouraged to debate evolution, rather than place creationism on the curriculum. Fuck it, why not have them debate Pi and Gravity too. Let's not educate the kids, let's just have them learn to argue with teachers.
  
• She attacked the Bush administration for saying that polar bears are endangered (she didn't want environmental concerns to get in the way of drilling for oil in Alaska).
• She wants more oil drilling because she doesn't think that renewables will be around for years (which they probably won't be if people like her get to make decisions).
• She doesn't think that humans have any impact of global climate change.
• Although she claims to have gay friends, she has consistently campaigned against gay rights.
• She came second in the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant.
• Her five children are called, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Track and Trig.
• Palin has been accused of abusing her power by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from his job as State Trooper. She is part of an ongoing investigation into her abuse of power, that has cost the tax payer over $100,000 thus far.
  
• Palin claims to have tried smoking pot (perhaps not enough of it). But despite this, is in favor of people being sent to jail for possession, since she claims relaxing the law would send the wrong message to children. Maybe she should spend some time in jail since she has admitted to committing a crime.
  
• She favors the death penalty.
• She has left the country twice. Once to visit Ireland, and in 2007 she had a trip to Germany and Kuwait. UPDATE: Turns out I was misinformed here. This was another lie by her people to make her sound more worldly. She never actually went on a trip to Ireland. Her plane merely stopped in Ireland to refuel, on her way to Kuwait.
  

At the end of the day, as an Obama supporter, I think it is wonderful that McCain has chosen this women to be his VP. He has now shown beyond any reasonable doubt what a severe lack of good judgment he has.

Voters now have a clear choice. A man with vision and charisma and a genuine desire to repair the damage that the Bush administration has caused. Or an old fool, who thinks having an unqualified women on his ticket will win him the election.

Finally, on what should be a separate blog entry (but I am too lazy) I'd just like to ask those assholes who claim to be voting for McCain now (because Hillary didn't win the nomination) to go fuck themselves. Your dream candidate Hillary Clinton fucked up. She was the prohibitive favorite at one time, yet managed to lose to Obama. I was truly shocked, because I really thought at one time she was a slam dunk. But now she has lost, so stop being so childish and stop threatening to vote for old man McCain and his right wing bimbo instead. That's like being hungry, going to a restaurant, and then refusing to eat anything because they ran out of the daily special.

A vote for McCain is an indication that you are fucking stupid, and that you think that George Bush has done a great job. Don't be that person.

Spam

Thankfully my spam filter works very well these days, but I recently had a spam email get through that I found rather amusing. It's from a very 'dear friend.' Oddly I don't remember any dear friends called Nastechka, but once you get past 30, you don't remember things like you used to.

I have not edited this in any way, other than to remove the URL.

Ave, my dear friend!

What should we do to be happy? Everyone has it's own dreams and ways to go. Someone is looking for love other cares about health and children, career and well being are important for another, faithful friend is a value too. I love my family, respect friends and want to meet honorable partner. Control your desires/addictions and physical activity keeps me in excellent mood and makes me enjoy this life. I’m fond of reading and studying. I like fitness life and enjoy walking. I think it’s a pleasure to travel with your soul mate or go out like visit dance club, go to the theatre, have dinner in restaurant or make a party at home!
Find me www.***************.com/7677

Waiting for your
Nastechka

Get Real

There is no doubt that Real Player has become quite a force in online video imagery. An alternative to the clumsy Windows Media Player and the atrocious Apple Quicktime. But they just pissed me off enough to blog about them.

My sister in law just got married on 08-08-08, and I watched the Vegas wedding via web cam as I was unable to be there in person. I watched it using Real Player. And rather helpfully, the latest version enabled me to record a copy of it for viewing later or sharing with others. Or at least I thought that's what it did. But it turns out the geeks at RealNetworks have been hard at work inventing yet another unnecessary and annoyingly proprietary file format known as the IVR (Internet Video Recording).

So while you can record those precious online moments, you are forced to only view them with Real Player and you cannot share them with commonly used online video services like YouTube.

WTF?

Why do we need to spend time and money inventing a special format that can only be used by one player? Why invent a format that cannot easily be converted? Why have a format that common video services online can't read?

But all their stupid time and effort was wasted. Because here's how to convert an IVR into a commonly used format in a few easy steps:

Converting an IVR file:

1. Have Real Player burn a copy of the file onto a Video CD or DVD.
2. Locate the .DAT file on the disc.
3. Download one of the many free .DAT converters off the Internet.
4. Convert the .DAT file into a far more usable and portable file format.

What I resent is that I had to waste a couple of hours of my life figuring this out, researching how to do it, burning a CD for no reason, and then finally converting the file to a nice MPEG.

I don't know where these companies get off wasting so much time and effort when all it does is piss people off and within a few days has been figured out by some computer expert or hacker somewhere.

So that's my little rant. Thanks for wasting two hours of my life Real. Now please stop wasting yours with crap like this.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

When I bought my PS3 in April, I still had a bit of a wait for Grand Theft Auto IV to come out, so I asked the guy in the shop what game to buy. His recommendation was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. "It was game of the year, last year," he said. Apparently it was.

The single player mode isn't all that exciting. Interesting, but hardly mind blowing. But the multi-player game is incredible. Lots of strategy, interesting moments, problem solving, and head shots. Lot's of head shots. 2,900 as of this evening in fact.

Of course with any kind of game that involves interacting with others, you get some people who spoil things because of their inherent stupidity. So I decided to make a list of my pet peeves with people in the game. I may add to the list if anything comes to mind.

My favorite online game is the rather basic mercenary deathmatch. Two teams of six just kill each other as much as possible for ten minutes, or 75 kills, whichever comes first.

So here's my list, not exhaustive, and in no particular order:

1. Blocking the way. Please don't stand in a doorway or somewhere else that prevents others from getting past you. It's stupid and just likely to result in you and your team mate getting killed.
2. The noob tube. I saw on a forum that the gun mounted grenade launcher has been dubbed the noob tube by people who have played the game for more than a couple of hours. While it can be a good killing tool now and then, some people seem to spend the whole game using it. The problem with this is you gain no experience with your weapon, thus depriving yourself of bonus XP points and fancy skins for the weapons. Why throw away all those bonus points and weapons upgrades? Makes no sense.
3. Stupid noises. Thankfully, the rating of the game seems to limit the number of kids online talking smack over the microphone. I don't even possess a PS3 mic personally. But I do get to hear people talking shit, singing, playing crappy music, or heavy breathing. It is pretty damn annoying. Although one night I got to hear a woman spend an entire ten minute game berating her husband for wasting his time on the PS3 instead of getting off his ass and doing chores. She was evidently unaware that the rest of his team could hear her rant. It was quite amusing.
4. Disconnecting. This is more of a software issue than a person issue. At the start of the game, a player is randomly chosen to 'host' the game. If this person disconnects, or quits the game, it can end the entire game for all 11 other players. Personally, I think that if people do this a lot they should be excluded from hosting any more.
   

So as you can see, it's a pretty short list. The game is really good. As someone who used to be quite familiar with computer programming (68000 assembler was my language of choice), I can't even imagine what kind of genius it takes to write a 3D engine like this one. And graphically, it is astonishing how much attention to detail was put into the game.

I am grateful to the guy in the store for his recommendation. It is an amazing game, and will probably provide many more hours of fun for me. I'm half way to the coveted gold cross, and have not become bored yet.

The Two Coreys

The Two Corey’s on A&E was quite an interesting show this week. I just had a couple of issues I'd like to share with the group:

• Suzie, slutty bimbo wife of Feldman, is a total bitch. Sure this was apparent before, but in this episode especially she reveals her true colors. One minute she is pretending to be the supportive loving wife of Feldman and friend of Haim. Next minute she is whispering insults about Haim to her little husband. Then she pretends to care again, but within minutes is hurling abuse at someone she claims to want to help, and ends up openly insulting Haim's mother. I have to say, if I ever need help, she is at the bottom of my list of people from whom I'd like help.
  
• Corey Feldman is a control freak. And this episode actually highlights the reasons why Haim is so frustrated about the friendship. Let's not forget both of these former child stars were hard core drug addicts, not just Haim.
• Staging an intervention in this manner was stupid and arrogant. They were already in therapy, which could have led somewhere. Doing something specifically against the expressed wishes of Haim, just reinforces all the issues he has been complaining about on the previous episodes.
• Feldman has a nice BMW. Personally I'd not go for black (always looks dirty), and I think the six series is a little bit of an odd choice when there is a perfectly nice three or five series out there. But I do have an issue with the fact that he has an after market steering wheel cover on the car. Seriously, who buys a $90,000 car and puts a Walmart steering wheel cover on the wheel?
• Considering how messed up Haim seems to be, I thought he coped very well with what happened. And I hope he can continue working on himself.
• Finally, in closing, I'd just like to mention what a bitch Suzie Feldman appears to be. She acts awfully important for someone who's claim to fame is marrying a former child star she thought was dreamy in the movies, and getting her tits out for a porn mag.

Now I accept that there is a lot of artistic license taken with so called reality TV. We all know the escapades of Gene Simmons each week are completely fictional. However, with that in mind, I think that Suzie really does bring actual trailer trash bimbo bitch to the show, regardless of any additional scripting. Half the issues between the Coreys could be resolved if she wasn't there caniving; something she seems especially good at.

If Suzie Feldman is genuinely a nice person, just playing a role on this show, then my hat is off to her. Because she's doing one hell of an acting job to reveal such inner bitch. But I have a sneaking suspicion, she is not that good an actor.

UPDATE: I just saw a link online of Suzie Feldman, from her Playboy photo shoot. It seems she is as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside. That and being stupid. Oh dear, what a combo. [WARNING: Explicit Trailer Trash Nudie Ugly Content. Do not view within 2 hours of eating.]