StereoDevil

I started this site to document things I find interesting and I think I have been lacking when it comes to writing posts. The only difference between a journal and a blog is that the public can read it and comment on it if you allow it. I often wonder why there are so many blogs and what do they reveal about the human condition? I believe that as time passes and more and more of our lives are integrated into social networking that we can get a more accurate sample of human thinking. The explosion of Facebook and Twitter have really gotten to me. I get tweets and status updates and all kinds of crap on my phone. Slowly I have to wean myself off of this. It’s strange how addicting this is. I am sure we will see an episode of Intervention with someone addicted to the Internet. I did an experiment (and I can’t say what it was because it is still running) in which I posted something to see if anyone caught it. Very few people did. It was something very important to me and I find it depressing that the flow of information is an onslaught of tweets and updates about people’s lives that I truly don’t have time to process. There is no selective thought put into what we tell people. We have a whole generation of kids that can only communicate on computers. It’s now what I envisioned as a child in the dawn of the computer age.

I find it sad in many ways because the majority of blogs are just rambling. Humans with egos on one end and self loathing on the other. Of course things like tech blogs are different. I am talking about personal blogs. I have to be truthful and say that I post my thoughts because I think that my outlook is unique. Sounds a little egotistical. They say we are all unique. Well if you have a box of matches they all have the same form but no two are alike. That does not make any of them all that unique but even in the throes of information asphyxiation I cling to the thought that I have something interesting to say.

I know that I like millions of others think I am complex, maybe smarter, have some inside knowledge of life. Most likely I don’t know shit any more than you do. So in the future I am going to blog about what I like as usual but I want to add some stories about my experiences. The estimated number of humans to have lived on the earth through time is around 250 billion. So I cannot claim that my experiences are really that special. All I hope to get out of it is to make someone smile or bring them a similar if only for a few minutes. I really want to at least send out to the world something someone can use and I like to make people laugh. I don’t need to tell you when I took a crap.

We will see how it goes.

I watched The Wrestler a few days ago and I have to say that I think it deserves every award it won or will win. It really is not a Hollywood movie at all. It sometimes feels like a documentary. I never really was a fan of Mickey Rourke. I mean I didn’t care either way. This is good for me because the character and story are so engrossing I am still having a hard time not believing that the movie is real. The writers have taken great pains to avoid cliches and the typical movie junk. I really really recommend this movie. It is that good.

I brought my Kindle with me to Romania and so far I am accomplishing one of my objectives. Reading. I have always been a reader but it’s so convenient. I have to say that I am getting my money’s worth from my Kindle. When people hear about it they are quick to dismiss it but when they hold it the same people say it’s really cool. Books have a sort of mystery to them that goes back hundreds of years. I can see why it seems blasphemous to some to not read an actual book. The Kindle and other e-book readers have advantages that are great for me. For example, the font used in most books is too small for me and I find myself not going to the next line but restarting the same one but now I just make it bigger and no problem. The Kindle really does look like a book. There is no backlight which a book would not have. For all you enviro-junkies think of all the trees you will save.

So I was going through and decided to check out this book I had called. Stephen King, On Writing. First let’s clear up one thing. I have never really been a fan of his books. I have read some of the earlier ones like Christine, The Dead Zone, and the Bachman Books. I enjoyed them and as he wrote more I found I didn’t like the situations. He’s a great writer but for me it doesn’t hold my attention. Well I decided to check out his book on writing and I have to say it is a fantastic book. First off he tries to (In his words) cut the bullshit to the minimum. The book is arranged with a section on how he became a writer and the key points that defined who he was as a writer and as a human. He discusses his first novel Carrie and how it came about. After that he gets to the nitty gritty of how to write a book and it is surprisingly short (oh man i am having deja vu right now as I type this) and to the point. Active voice not passive, paragraphs, and other things that are deceptively simple and with a healthy dose of humor.

I am a very technical person in that I think there is a way to do everything and with writing I struggled with that. Worrying about form, plot, and all that. I really did not realize that all I had to do was apply my technique of writing music and it would happen. You know what that technique is? There isn’t one. You just fuck around and suddenly something comes out and your adrenaline and excitement go through the roof. I wrote a chapter in a book I am working on and I have no idea where it came from. All I had was the first line and somehow it was coming so fast I couldn’t type fast enough and I type pretty fast. It was like writing music. Then I wrote the last line of that chapter and it was fucking genius! To me at least. My poor wife, she gets the story in pieces.

I really do recommend this book if you want to write or already are. It’s not a huge book which is unusual for Stephen King. If you are not into his work don’t worry about that, you will gain alot from this book and truthfully it’s funny as hell.

I am in the process of moving all my domains to one registrar and it’s a pain in the ass so please bare with me.

This is my little Devil. His name is Razvan and he has been sent to conquer your planet. You will kneel before his power. His Galactic rule shall reign over you puny humans for eons. Prepare for your new master. Bring him swiss cake rolls now puny Earthlings!

I saw the new Transformers trailer. WTF is that thing at the end?!?!?! It’s insane. I really like the way Optimus is portrayed. He is an idealist and although my idealism was killed off by the human race long ago I still like to think that if I was an idealist I would be like Prime.

My personal opinion of the first movie is that although it is very cool it has some extremely major flaws. My number one complaint is the scene where the Transformer catapults over the woman in the blue dress in the street. That makes me cringe every time. I mean it’s almost embarrassingly stupid. It’s the one scene that should have been on the cutting room floor for sure. The second thing is all that jerky camera movement. You know there are only a few directors that do handheld well. Spielberg is one. The rest seem to think this creates action. I can’t figure out what goes on in these morons heads. The thing we all really want to see is the camera pull back and let us see the bigger picture of robots duking it out. Truthfully this movie is about the best Michael Bay can and ever will do. I liked The Rock but I’m sorry Bad Boys and Armageddon were just totally stupid and a waste of time. He seems to have a desire to remake everything. Texas Chainsaw, Amityville Horror (started good and went to shit by the end), Friday the 13th, and nightmare on elm street. Yes the latter two are coming out soon. There is one movie he should be ashamed of and that is Pearl Harbor.

Ok so back to Transformers. I can usually get past all the corny stuff like those retarded ass hacker characters. Hahahahahha. I really love the detail in the Transformers, I admit that it is incredible. The scene where Optimus and Bonecrusher battle is so off the scale (of course we must have the typical car with the kid inside). There is a good wide shot of them both falling off the highway and then Prime shanks him in the neck. I like how his eye pops out when Prime puts him in a headlock.

Well my wishes of a very dark and gritty Transformers war movie are gone. Maybe my expectations are too high. Oh well I can live with the bad so I can see my childhood heroes and villains battle it out on the big screen. Bring on the Decepticons, my boys got some ass kicking to do!

You know I have some strange fascination with cube and wooden puzzles. When it comes to the Rubik’s cube I just can’t stop learning about them. I got the 4×4x4 and the 5×5x5 still in the box. I have some other ones too but I can’t remember ever solving one. Maybe that is the mystery for me. I love to just play around with them. I have decided once and for all to solve this damn thing so I will bring my cube home from work and sit down and do it. This is without looking up the solution.

If the Universe is a bubble in infinite Hyperspace then every possible outcome will happen. This is awesome because you are going to make decisions that in another universe were wrong but you got them right here. Sometimes though you have to face the fact that you are in the wrong Universe so go back to sleep and try again tomorrow.

So let me explain a little first. The simple thing is that I lost a CSS file that I really need. If you don’t know what CSS is just go to wikipedia. It’s a very important file when building web pages. It controls not only the colors, fonts, and so on. It also controls the actual layout. You are probably thinking “Well did you back it up?” and the answer is yes but sometimes you just make mistakes in an order that ruins any sort of backup.

So I opened Dreamweaver and created a new site. I switched back to another site to show my wife how to create and change between the two sites. Mistake number one came at this moment. I created a new site and I inadvertantly saved the CSS file to the other site. Bam file gone. Overwritten. See ya.

Now the backup drive is another story. The night before I noticed it was not plugged in correctly and the following morning I fixed it. So I open the backup drive and go to the folder where I keep the backup. (Now I don’t know how long the backup has not been running correctly). Now I make mistake number 2. I look in the folder called “Websites” and see a very old version of the site that doesn’t even have a CSS file yet. So I assume that the backup has failed and I have lost the file.

I then use several undelete tools and recover the file but it is corrupted and unreadable. So that leads nowhere. Now I am really pissed off at myself. So I went to bed. That night the backup runs correctly. Which copies the newest site to the backup which has a new css file that is blank (because I haven’t rebuilt it yet).

So this morning I get up and look and see no backup. I am scratching my head and then I see something that makes me very depressed. The backup does not go to the folder “websites” it goes to a folder called “wamp”.

Hahahahah. A comedy of errors of tragic proportions. If I had looked in the wamp folder yesterday there would have been the file backed up but since the backup was not working when I looked in the wrong folder and saw a very old copy I assumed it had not been working. So why are there two folders? I use wamp as a testing server. Very convenient and can just click and run different server and database and php configs. I simply never removed the “websites” folder.

I will just retype the code this weekend and clean up the backup and do a double backup since I hav multiple USB drives. Yeah I’m paranoid but apparently not paranoid enough.

What a clusterfuck.

You know I have both and X-Box and a PS3. Yes I know it’s overkill. I originally got an X-Box because I knew alot of gamers on there. Don’t do that. Trust me it doesn’t matter. You will make “gamer” friends on there and in reality you might not see much of your real live friends online at the same time.

I have put forth the reason I think PS3 is better in other places like my Myshit blog. Let’s see, Blu-Ray player, can use any bluetooth headset, controller is USB rechargable (no batteries needed), and the online gaming is free.

So the cheapest Blu-Ray I have seen is $250. The PS3 is $400. If I buy a Blu-Ray player that leaves me $150 for a gaming system. So it’s a good value. Blu-Ray really is that good. How can such video quality make the movie any better? Well I have Dark City which is one of my favorite movies and the city is more detailed, the characters are more lifelike. It really is a better experience. If you don’t see this and think it’s a waste that cool. You can live in the TV dinosaur age. Doesn’t hurt me but I’m not watching shit at your house. Don’t waste the invite.

I won’t get rid of my X-Box. There are some cool games on there. You can only play Halo and Gears of War on X-Box and plus you won’t get shit for it at Gamestop. I also like Live Arcade and play Tiqal like a mofo and Zuma is addicting. Zuma is easier on a PC though, just so you know.

Most of the games you are playing are using the Unreal Engine. Might as well play a game by the people that design the engine that runs all the others. This leads me to the the reason I even started typing this completely worthless blog posting. Unreal Tournament III. This is by far my favorite game. There really is no true campaign or anything. You just run around killing each other. Wow that sounds like fun Rick you are saying. Well you know I get bored easily from games but this game is just fun. I think the controls are very smooth, the weapons are fun, and you can set the bots at various levels that are truly different. If you set them to Godlike you are fucked beyond fucked.

I don’t even need the online challenge of humans. I can play the AI on this game and it will be fun. Check it out if you can. It’s relatively cheap now. Like $20 bucks new at Gamestop. I guarantee you will think it is a well spent $20. Hell what will $20 buy you nowadays. 2 People at Jack in the Box is like 16 freaking dollars!