Stuff... and Stuff.

I've been reading the Wikipedia articles regarding two cars in competition for the title of "World's Fastest Production Car": the Bugatti Veyron and Shelby Supercars' Ultimate Aero TT and here's what I say: personally I prefer the styling of the Ultimate Aero TT to the Veyron's bulbous kind. The Ultimate Aero TT manages to produce more horsepower with half the cylinders, half the turbos, and a slighty smaller displacement. The Veyron has a faster acceleration (2.5 vs. 2.78) and more standard equipment. Neither article says anything about the handling, but I suspect the Veyron would more likely have the advantage, since American cars have a poor track record in that regard. The Veyron has the higher price, at roughly 1.8M$, compared to the other car's 700K$. Also, the Ultimate Aero TT has better fuel economy at 27 MPG on the highway compared to 10 for the Veyron. However, about 300 Veyrons will be made compared to the Ultimate Aero TT's supposed 25, not surpising when you consider that the Veyron is being made by Volkswagen. With all this power, I wonder if it would be possible to put a trailer hitch on either of them.

I have this thing for women with shaven heads. I keep wondering if any of them enjoy having their scalps stroked. Personally, I think that the women who look best without hair don't look particularly good with it.

For some reason, the slash key on my keyboard went kaput the other day, so I decided to take it apart to see what it was made of (so many tiny screws!) I was hoping to find a spare keyswitch and some solder to repair it, but alas, it was a dome switch keyboard, and the switches were on a laminated plastic sheet. So I cleaned the sheet--by sweeping off the crumbs with my hand--it was on the kitchen table--and reassembled it, but unfortunately, I seem to have knackered it. Ah well... Anyway, I've resorted to using a Kensington keyboard from a computer we don't use anymore. It doesn't glow, and the keys are a litte stiff, but at least it has Mac drivers.

I recently came across something on the Top Gear website called "Carbage". It's a gallery of the worst-looking cars according to pictures sent in by viewers. A few are clearly victims of neglect, but most are clearly Ill fated attmepts at improving the appearance of cheap cars, like Vauxhalls and Trabants. I'll admit I liked a couple of them, but most are hilariously awful.

On April 26, Amiga Inc. decided to sue Hyperion Entertainment, a company they contracted to write Amiga OS 4, quite possibly the best incarnation of the OS yet. Why, for God's sake? Because Hyperion was contractually obligated to release Amiga OS 4 on March 1, 2002; it was released on December 24, 2006, becoming a four-year-plus overdue Christmas present. According to Amiga, Hyperion violated the terms of the contract and is infringing upon the former's trademarks. Goodness gracious, Amiga! It's done, innit? Stop splitting hairs and be thankful! Considering that they were trying their darnedest to add modern features to an operating system that was in some respects aging, I wouldn't be surprised! Sigh. And it still can't support multiple users, which is disappointing. I have the mind to mail them about this...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the new computers they're planning to release this summer, particularly the cheap one, which is slightly under US$500. I presume it will be a BYOMAID (Bring Your Own Monitor And Input Devices) kinda deal, considering the price. I was initially disappointed at the specs for the machine (no PCIe? puh-leese), but after considering Amiga OS' famed compactness and speed, I figured it didn't need any more. I hope that, eventually, the subsequent hardware will be more powerful (PA Semi processors, PCIe, DDR3 RAM, etc.) Personally, I think new Amiga hardware will only appeal to longtime users, fanatics, and guys like me, who are interested in the platform for it's own sake, considering the OS' quirky interface and lack of support.

Gregory Despres, killer of country music star Fred Fulton and his de-facto wife, was declared unfit to stand trial today, not surprisingly. Seriously, I always knew the guy was bonkers.

I'm sorry for my rambling paragraph on my grandmother in the last post. After she moved out of my mother's house, I became obsessed with her personality flaws. Seriously, she is not playing with a full deck. She kept feeling underappreciated and used, combine this with her intial optimism and you get a rather nasty brew. She was also always irrational.

To support the statement made by the title by citing my mother's and my experiences with two individuals, namely my grandmother and a man I only know as Jamie.

First, Jamie. While my mom still lived with me, he would visit with moderate frequency. What I say then was a gentle, compassionate, pleasent character. However, once my mom moved in with her boyfriend and Jamie, the dreadful truth was revealed. At home, he was a mannerless, selfish, apathetic, brute. He was also seemingly misogynistic, ordering my mom around to do various things. He also had some curious personality quirks. For example, he hated plants and anything plant-like. He also didn't like cleaning since he believed that the dirt made the place look lived-in while the quantity of the dirt, to him, was a record of his stay. He was also very overweight, with eating habits to match. I once saw him in front of the TV, sitting in an almost lewd position, eating nothing but five sausages, one-by-one, with his fingers. Ugh. He also didn't have much of an emotional range, leading me to speculate that he may be borderline-psycopathic.

The other person is my grandmother. Initially, she was a fairly pleaseant woman, albeit overly exuberant when expressing her love. However, after a while, her flaws became apparent. First off, she was obsessed with order and perfection to the point that she was incapable of percieving either. She demanded that everyone follow her rather lofty standards while barely bothering to achive them herself. She was also paranoid, partly a product her large ego, failing memory, and arrogance. She accused my mom and her boyfriend of taking her stuff, tampering with records, renegeing their part of the mortgage, yadda, yadda, yadda. The person who bore a very large part of the assault was my mom's boyfriend's son, whom she accused of taking marijuana, among other things. She also accused my mom's boyfriend of signing a contract in disappearing ink and minupulating my mom (I used to think it was the inverse). She also prized objects a bit too much--during her moving out, I remember getting disgusted at the look on her face as she looked at one of her prized dolls--it was a spectacular materialistic pride. She also took a chainsaw that she paid a part of, insisting that she be paid back for it. The early morning before she left, she had a fit, accusing my mom of tampering with her records, which I know isn't her style. So, the next morning, I exploded on my grandmother. Now, she hates my guts, but in retrospect I could have said it to her better.

There you are, two examples of people with dark sides.

My dad chewed my brother out today for his poor marks and for lying to him about his reasons. You should have seen my dad's fury, not a raving, loud fury, but a frightening, nauseating, low boil, the kind of rumbling that occurs just before a full boil but never quite gets there. You could see anger in the man's every movement since. But back to my brother, his real reasons, I suppose are sleeping problems, dissastisfaction with his lessons, lack of ambition, and neglect of duties, usually by playing a lot of video games. I remember going through that stage and I look back at it in shame and disgust; but don't most of us go through that stage? An age of recklessness, sleeplessness, and living for the moment that most of us forget, hindering our understanding of teenagers. For my brother, I do not believe I can do much but hope it passes. He will repeat grade 9 (again), but hopefully he will come out wiser.

Anyway, back to Yeltsin. Today, I also read an article by Gwynne Dyer, one of my favorite commentators, about the erstwhile president of Russia and ex-organism (I'm trying to not be too narrow here). Turns out the man, whom Dyer actually met, was a man with a lot of gusto and charisma but no ideas, who ran his country on instinct. In other words, a man with good intentions but the wrong one.

Well, Boris Yeltsin is finally dead, a bit earlier than I expected, but still dead. I say, why bother commemorating him? The man was a buffoon who ran his country through an alcoholic haze to near ruin, chose an autocratic KGB agent to be his successor, and is loathed in his own country. If you ask me, he deserves no honors.

I recently discovered these strange shoes by Vibram called Five Fingers: they are essentially five-toed shoes. When I first saw the website (I first saw the shoes on a french blogger's site) I got a severe stiffy for some bizarre reason. Even though I have a foot fetish, the sensation wasn't sexual, at least I didn't think it was. Anyway, I even considered requesting a pair of custom ones, once I got enough money. They would've had roller heels and grind plates (licensed from Heelys) as well as being knee length and buckle fastened, but I figured they look clownish enough, so I decided not to bother. I still plan on getting their regular ones though. Besides, I'd rather get theat combination of features on a pair of leather or pleather jikatabi (aka ninja boots).

On controllers though, I recently discovered one called the Parallax, by BodieLobus (strange name). It has a trackball instead of a right thumbstick. They acheive this by using what they call "Reflex Technology" which translates the velocity of the trackball into the appropriate thumbstick signals. It would be great for most of the functions that the the right trackball gets, like pan-and-tilt and camera control. It would also be wonderful for FPS'. It looks hideous and cool at the same time (the trackball was compared unfavourably to an exploded testicle by the guy at Gizmodo) and it's only for PS2, but I plan to get one. Funnily, I was considering the same thing for the standard controller for this game console I'm outlining; I guess I'll have to license.

The other device I'll talk about is the AlphaGrip. It's a keyboard and mouse replacement that looks like a game controller with buttons out the wazoo and a trackball embedded into the front. They claim it'll accelerate typing, something that would be much appreciated as I can only hunt-and-peck. They also claim it's an excellent "high-speed game controller", but Paul Miller of Engadget jokingly claimed it must refer to the speed of the thing as it's thrown in frustration. It also looks ugly, like some relic from the 90's, designed solely by engineers. My biggest gripe is the fact that the arrow keys are arranged like the ones on a Symbolics keyboard from the 70's.

My final entry is about a single-panel webcomic called The Book of Biff. It's about the surreal, slapstick adventures of the eponymous bald, white-skinned humanoid. Imagine a cross between Mr. Bean, Dexter's Laboratory, and Bunny. My favorite strip is one subtitled "Harvest day is an exiting time on Biff's Mashed Potato Farm" and you see Biff, in front of a field, in coveralls, holding a pitchfork, with one hand on a large, plunger-style detonation box; it's #174 - Potato.

That's it for now.