Geek vs Life

Woe is me! The White space initiative is moving along, for sure, but it does seem to be dragging.  Who gives a rat’s bottom about economic woes, or health care debacles?

I want cheap, fast internet and I want it NOW.  

Thank Shay Shafranek* that Google and Microsoft are both working on it.   If you are like me and have the attention span of a gnat, then click on over to the article at dailywireless.org and get the image-laden info on what is going on in the realm of the WHITE SPACE…..

Then go tell your Congressman that you don’t care about any of that national deficit crap, we want CHEAP BROADBAND ACCESS!!!!

* Read “Shay Shafranek, God of the Geeks“

Space…. The Fido Frontier…..   Ok,  I will say there are some people who get really creative in dressing up their pets.  There is, however, one rule for dressing mans best friend, which is:

DONT DO IT DRUNK!

Click HERE to see what I mean.

So here is the thing.  I am broke, and as usually is the case with broke persons, I cannot afford to buy alot of the software that I need to maintain my Geekness.

Fortunately, there are Open Source solutions for most of the areas in which I compute. The trouble with Open Source, however, is finding the stuff that works. You pretty much have to go on a Internet wide scavenger hunt to just find one thing that you need.

Thankfully, the Geeks atOpen Disk have created an “essentials” kit.  This ISO image has pretty much everything that you would need for general computing.  From OpenOffice.org to TightVNC, it’s all there.  

Check out their website to view the contents and download your copy, free of charge.

District 9 to me is the little movie that possibly could. Not a lot of foreign movies get decent screens in the US (before you sent hate mail, yes there are exceptions but let’s agree that they are few and far between), but this South African film directed by Neill Blomkamp is getting the full release treatment. Having Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) as your producer and backer, probably helped matters quite a bit.

Without wanting to give too much away, the film is about a ship full of aliens (nicknamed “prawns”) who arrive to Earth in the early 80’s and are placed by the humans into a “colony” of sorts named District 9 located in Johannesburg. In 2010, when Multinational United (MNU) decides to relocate the “colony” to a new location outside the city, they send their man, Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a lowly bureaucrat to lead the team who will be handing out the eviction slips. Things go very wrong from then on.

The film is adapted from a 2005 short film called Alive in Joburg, which deals with undertones of xenophobia and social segregation. It is inspired by events that occured during the South African apartheid in the city of Cape Town, which had a area called District six.

The movie which cost a paltry (all things considered…) $30 million to make, looks and feels like what sci-fi should be. The effects are superb and well done. The movie is gruesome at times, but still with just enough heart for you to feel for the aliens. Well written, well acted and well directed. Good film all in all.

Side Note: On the way out of the theater, one lady to another said: “The movie was okay but will not work here. They should have set it here so people can relate to it better.” Clearly she missed the point.

Do you know the guy, the one in the Dyson Vacuum commercials?  

I always thought he was just a tool.

But you know, I came across something on the good ole’ intarwebs that has changed my mind about the guy. He gives awards for innovative inventions that improve our existence.   That is pretty nice of him to encourage people to make things that don’t suck. (That is, unless invent a vacuum, then your invention is supposed to suck.)  

Check out the James Dyson Award page to get more details.  While you’re there, take a look at a few of the projects, they are quite cool.