Geek vs Life

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.

I’m a gadget geek for sure.  I love reading about all the latest and greatest gadgets, even if they are the types that make you question technology in general, however, I happened to come across the website of Shay Shafranek.  This young inventor has created something that just makes me giddy with geekness.   Welcome the Electronic Ruler!  I do apologize, for my excitement, but this thing is the epitome of awesome.    Head on over to Shay’s site to see how cool it really is.  If you do not agree that it is the bees knees, then I would seriously start questioning your Geekness.

Just in case you missed it,  Google (you know the search engine that became a multi-billion dollar powerhouse) has revolutionized telecom. Google Voice is officially the best thing since sliced mutton.

With just one Google Voice phone number I can ring all of the phones that I use.   If someone calls me on my Google Voice number, my home phone, my cell phone and my work phone all ring.  The caller ID shows me who it is, so if I choose to ignore it, Google will automatically send it to the web based voicemail.  Yeah, I said it.. web based voicemail, which allows you to listen to your voicemail online. This one feature alone makes it worth checking out.

So for example, if you’re at work and it would be uncouth to blast the sexy message from that  that hot girl (or guy,not judging) that you hooked up with the night before, (this is the awesome part) Google will transcribes the email in to text for you.   That way you can read all the juicy details via your web browser,with your fellow co-workers none the wiser. It must be said that the  juicy details in question will appear to be written by a 5 year old who is blind and sadly doesn’t speak english very well.  For the price the service costs, of course some concessions had to be made.

So how much can you expect to pay for a service like this? Well you won’t be paying $59.99 per year. Or even $24.99 per year. You can own this particular service for only 3 easy installments of absofreakinlutely nothing.  Yes you get all this for free.   The service is still in beta and no launch date has been officially announced, head on over to www.google.com/voice for more information.