Well done Sony, you've given millions of video gamers a quick comeback to accusations they are wasting time. Playstation 3 will come equipped with software that allows the PS3's unused power to be harnessed into a network that works on cures for, among others, Alzheimer's . So when mom says stop playing video games and go out and be productive, you can say "Sorry Mom, I'm just trying to help scientists cure Alzheimer's".
Monthly Archive for August, 2006
You may have noticed that Citizen Jake is being redesigned a bit. Hopefully the new site will not only look nicer but also feature some cool new tricks. It's taken a significant amount of trial and error to get things working but let me tell you about some of the new features and you can tell me what you think about it.
First off major thanks to Bharath Kumarwho designed this style and basically the whole look of the place. The man did a great job. Kumar's design is, as you can see, a three column design that uses K2 as its framework. K2 is basically the sickest Wordpress theme around and makes running a blog both much easier and much cooler. I'm very glad to have it up and running here.
OK now for the new features. First to the stuff in the sidebars. In the first sidebar, the one in the middle basically, you'll notice a search box (which features live search, very cool) and a recent posts section. Nothing too new or fancy about that. Next though is a recent comments section. This is pretty cool; it will show what posts have been recently commented on and who made the comment. It makes it much easier to continue conversations and see who's talking about what. Very glad to have this implemented. Next is the Adsense block (click on it and make me some money damn it!), nothing new there.
On to the right sidebar. You've got the RSS feeds, for those of you with an RSS reader (something I highly recommend). Then the Links section featuring the other site in the Citizen Jake stable, The Sports Note (soon to be relaunced, I promise). Next is the catogories section; click on one and see all the posts I've tagged for that category. Then another Adsense block and the sitemeter reader.
Now to the coolest new thing: the Movie Ratings Page. You'll notice at the top of the blog a tab labeled "Movies". Go there and you'll see all the movies I've seen and rated, along with brief reviews. I'll be updating this frequently as I've got quite a backlog of movies to rate (luckily I've saved every ticket stub from the last ten years). Big ups to Paul Goscicki for creating the plugin.
Anyway thats pretty much it. Thoughts, comments, complaints? Leave'em in the brand new comments
There is no way in the world this kid on the Saudi Arabian Little League team is 13 years old. He's 6'8", 256 pounds for one thing but look at the "kid's" picture; he looks like he's an old man. Forget being 16 or 18 or something like that, I think he's 65 at the least. Danny Almonte has nothing on this kid.
[tags]Baseball, Little League, Sports[/tags]
Jason Calacanis posts an ethical question on his blog : He's already pre-ordered Bob Dylan's new CD, so is it alright for him to download it for free. Putting aside why Jason can't just burn the CD to his computer or iPod when he gets it (he can't be that impatient can he?) I think the answer here is pretty clearly: absolutely its alright for him to do so.
In my mind the only compelling argument against free (see:illegal) downloading is that it takes money out of the pockets of the artists. Now in many cases the big name artists, your Rolling Stones, 50 Cent, Blink 182, etc., etc., don't need anymore money; they've got plenty already. But its still, in a real sense, stealing and I can see how that might hurt smaller, less established artists. In Jason's case though this doesn't apply: he's already buying Mr. Dylan's CD. Dylan is still getting the money that's supposed to go to him, I think the saying "No harm, no foul" captures things quite nicely. In this case Dylan's not getting harmed, so who cares?
On a side note I should point out that must CDs these days don't have 12 good songs on them. Yeah, Paris Hilton's new single is kinda catchy (and yes I am ashamed to say that) but does anyone believe her whole CD is good? Thank God you can buy single songs now through iTunes (and other places) but if the recording industry is really worried about CD sales dropping maybe they should focus more of their attention on putting out quality material. Just a thought.
[tags]Jason Calacanis, Music, Ethics, Bob Dylan, Paris Hilton[/tags]
Let me get this out there at the start: Juan Dixon, Steve Blake, Lonny Baxter, Chris Wilcox and Byron Muton, the Maryland Terps starting five when they won the NCAA Championship in 2002, can do nothing wrong in my eyes. Sports were never so much fun as that Terps season and it was pretty cool when both Dixon and Blake were Wizards.
Now having said that, WTF Lonny? Whats with getting arrested for firing a gun a couple of times a few blocks away from the White House? Whats the point of that? I still love you Lonny but you got to help me out a little bit on this one.
[tags]Lonny Baxter, Arrests, News, Basketball, NBA[/tags]
Via Deadspin, here's an interesting little quiz that supposedly matches you up with your NBA equivalent. Apparently I'm similar to Tony Parker, who knew? My basketball game is based on hustle and effort; I can't shoot, I can't really dribble, I'm a decent passer and rebounder; but I do play in your face defense. Here's the quiz, leave who you turn out to be in the comments for comparison's sake. I'm going to go work on my crossover so I can be more like my main man Iverson.
[tags]Quizzes, Tony Parker, Basketball, NBA[/tags]
Everyone's got a blog these days and you can now include Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the ranks of the great unwashed masses out there typing away at their computers late at night. Yes people, the President of Iran has his own blog and this, probably more then anything, marks the offical jumping of the shark moment for blogging.
The site itself is pretty well done with a fairly pleasent, though slow-loading, design. It has several language options, thankfully including English. There's even a box for asking questions, maybe some day Ahmadinejad will be doing a mailbag? That could be kinda cool I suppose. There's also a somewhat odd candid shot of Mr. Ahmadinejad writing with pen and paper, an odd old school image to include on a new school communicating tool. Oh and there's also Mr. Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel, anti-Jews rants which form the core of the site. Always nice to see people attacking my people.
Now I'm going to link to Mr. Ahmadinejad's blog, despite my intial hesitation. Just writing this post put me at what, a 76% chance of landing on some sort of watch list? So linking to the blog itself probably bumps that number up to something like 93% chance of guys in dark suits knocking on my door late at night. Don't laugh, just by reading this you are guilty by association. Anyway, here's the link , don't say I didn't warn you.
UPDATE: Wow, Mr. Ahmadinejad is even slicker then I imagined: apparently his blog is set up so that if people from Israeli IP addresses visit the site they get a sent a virus that exploits IE holes. The guy really hates Jews I guess.
[tags]Blogging, Iran, Jews[/tags]
This isn't good. First Clinton Portis hurts his shoulder in a meaningless preseason game, now Gilbert Arenas hurts a groin muscle while practicing with the US National team. Freddy Adu and Ryan Zimmerman better watch out cus something's out to get DC sports stars.
I am incapable, by the way, of expressing the emotions I will feel if Portis is out for an extended period of time, derailing a potential championship season even before it starts. Get better Clinton; please God get better. I need you.
[tags]Washington Redskins, Washington Wizards, Gilbert Arenas, NBA, NFL, Clinton Portis[/tags]
The gang is back together apparently and o September 22nd the second Jackass movie comes out. From the looks of the trailer it should be pretty good. I wonder what would have happened if YouTube had been around when the show was orginally on. Seems like every Jackass wannabe has their video up on YouTube these days. Watch the trailer here.
[tags]Movies, Jackass, Trailers[/tags]
A new poll has come out that shows that 30% of Americans, almost one third, do not know what year the attacks of September 11th occurred. That, to me, is insane. I can maybe understand people not knowing, oh I don't know, the year of the Pearl Harbor attack or something like that but 9/11 happened a little under five years ago. I know we all have short attention spans but thats nothing.
6% of the people polled said 9/11 happened before 2001, 18% said sometime after and 16% they had no clue at all what year. During the course of completing my politics major I become aware of how, ah, ignorant the general population is on a wide variety of issues but even still this stuns me. Luckily though 95% of the population was able to say what the month and day were of the attacks, more then likely they were helped by the 9/11 name, which helpfully gives you the month and day right there. I suppose you could get it confused with November 9th but then you'd be really dumb.
[tags]9/11, Polls, News[/tags]