Matt McDougall DOT COM

November 24, 2006

The 20 Sexiest Sci-Fi Babes

Filed under: Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 10:29 am

Furinkan High School Kendo Club: The 20 Sexiest Sci-Fi Babes Part 1

As a Sci-Fi nut, I thought this was nifty. They run the gamut from popular to more obscure stuff like Lexx. Here’s one of my favorites:

6. Kaylee Frye (“Firefly” 2002, “Serenity” 2005”)

“Goin’ on a year now I ain’t had nothin’ twixt my nethers weren’t run on batteries!” You know, Kaywinnit Lee, if’n that tree stump of a doctor ain’t gonna help y’all out in that respect, I reckon’ I might be willing ta fill in there.

Little Kaylee is as much the heart of Serenity as the ship’s photon-reaction drive. But the plucky, homily-spouting cutie is apparently a wildcat in the sack as well. She’s the one ship’s engineer with whom I’d like to get trapped on an island. Sorry, Scotty.

I find it disappointing that they didn’t include Samantha Carter from SG1, Dr. Elizabeth Weir from SG Atlantis, or Aeryn Sun/Vala Mal Doran from Farscape/SG1, respectively. Oh well.

November 17, 2006

The New Car – Part 2

Filed under: Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 7:34 pm

Well, roughly $1000 later, the car has been repaired to a comfortable level.

Now, there is a bit of irony in this. On the way in to the shop, as I got out of the curves heading into town, the speedometer went out. Oh well, what better time to have something stop working than on the way to the shop. I have them check out the car and run a diagnostics. They checked if a tune-up was a priority, the steering problems, and they looked into the speedometer.

While I waited for the prognosis, I sat in the waiting area and beat the hell out of Grand Prix mode on Mario Kart DS. Yes, all of it that I had left.

In the end it came down to having to replace the front ball joints, brake pads, rotors, tires, speed sensor, and get an alignment. The bill was to come to nearly $1000… so, as anyone would do after seeing the number, I hesitated. But, I went through with it. I figured that if I spend $2300 on a car, it would be better that I know more about what’s good and bad in it. Besides, its in pretty good shape and seems like it will last me a while. Anyway, I went through with it. They told me it would take roughly 4 hours, so I called Josh and had him pick me up while they worked on it since he lives right down the road.

I sat around for the most part, watching BS TV shows. Daytime TV sucks. After about 4 and a half hours, I call to check in. They were just taking it for a test drive, so I headed back. I paid my dues and took off…. and then the speedometer didn’t work. Argh. So, I spin around and head back and have them take a quick look at it. They’re not exactly sure what the problem is, but they think the speed sensor that they put in might be defective. They asked me to bring it in on Monday so they can replace it free of charge. The nutty thing is that it was working when the tech took it for a test drive. Go figure.

Finally, I depart the shop and head off for Wal-mart to get a quick check on how they’re handling the Wii launch tomorrow night and then head home… and then the nuttiest thing happens. As soon as I get out of town and I can pick up speed, the speedometer starts jumping up and down and acting crazy. Then, as I’m getting even closer to home, it stablizes. I’m not taking any chances, so I’m gonna have it looked at on Monday if I can.

Oh well, dren happens. :)

November 5, 2005

California Man Charged in Far-Reaching Botnet Scheme

Filed under: Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 10:19 am

Top Tech News – Tech Trends – California Man Charged in Far-Reaching Botnet Scheme

The suspect made about $60,000 by installing adware on some 400,000 compromised computers, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Among the systems affected by the botnets were computers at the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center, as well as machines operated by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Interesting news. I’m glad to see someone taken down for this crap, but what I’m more amazed with is the first paragraph, shown above. USN and DoD hit by this crap? What in the fucking hell? I thought they were supposed to have the most secure computers on the planet… sure shows them for thinking their mandatory use of MSIE is going to stop everything. I’m not going to say Firefox or Opera would have stopped everything, but they would have blocked a good portion of it. This shows you that money does not solve everything, it also takes a good deal of IT knowledge. If I were them, I would be shitting in my pants and repremanding the people in charge of those machines. Why? Because for their sakes, it could have been more than the relatively simple malware that it was. It could have be a trojan to steal military secrets. Simple and to the point. I don’t believe the OS is necessarily the culprit, though. DoD tends to employ the use of some of the strictest Windows group policies out there. I wish I had the link to where you could download and import them into your OS, but alas I do not. In the end its user stupidity and an insecure browser that is to blame. Fantastic.

October 31, 2005

AOL founder resigns from Time Warner

Filed under: Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 8:46 pm

AOL founder resigns from Time Warner

Steve Case, the founder of AOL, on Monday said he has resigned from the board of Time Warner Inc. ending a painful chapter in the history of the world’s largest media company.

Its about damn time. I don’t think we’ll see any good come of this for a while, if ever… but it is better than nothing.

cre824 – USA Pre-Selection – Webdesign International Festival

Filed under: Journal, Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 12:18 am

cre824 – USA Pre-Selection – Webdesign International Festival

Anyone want to go to this? I’m thinking about it. I first heard about it on Diggnation. Both Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose will be there shooting an episode of Diggnation, as well as many other things going on. Competition, seminars, workshops, etc… all about webdesign. Sounds interesting. Could be cool to find out what kind of web languages to focus on learning, and gleam some ideas.. and just have an all around good time. Online registration ends November 7, so act fast!

October 30, 2005

One Free Wordpress.com Invite!

Filed under: Journal, Site Updates, Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 10:56 am

Wordpress rocks, and when I found out Wordpress was working on a free service similar to blogspot or xanga, I jumped on and signed up for an invite. Now comes the time when they have chosen me to have an invite, but since I already have my own WP blog, I am going to give it away for free. Who’s cool? Who wants it? Who’s going to actually use it?

Whoever wants it can shoot me an email or contact me via any means that you know. I will need to know what username you want (will also becomes subdomain, username.wordpress.com), the blog’s title (short quip about the blog), and email address (password will be sent to that email). Act fast, this expires in a week.

October 25, 2005

GP2X Game System

Filed under: Gaming, Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 11:51 pm

GP2X Game System

If there’s one thing I love about the PSP, its the ability to run homebrew apps such as emulators. However, with Sony cracking down on this ability, I’m going to find it harder and harder to do so in the future. Well, I no longer have reason to worry, as the GP2X Game System is on the way. All I know about it is that which is on the Lik-Sang website, but it looks pretty sweet. Who wouldn’t want a relatively inexpensive linux based game device that’s basically designed around homebrew and emulation? I know I want one. Check it out above… If I get one, I’ll be sure to post up a review.

Passports to get RFID chip implants

Filed under: Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 8:08 pm

“Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as ‘fingerprints or iris scans.’”

Passports to get RFID chip implants

Now this is frightening. I wonder if the suits realize how easy these things are to hack? Most use very little encryption at all, and all it would take for someone to hijack your information is an amplified transciever and the proper computer setup to pull the data from when you walk by, and a few hours to crack the encryption… essentially giving them all of your identity that resides on the RFID chip. Someone could essentially park in an international airport terminal and farm out loads of information. Now, I’d not like to make such a conclusion, but I’ve seen that its quite easy to do this sort of thing. It all just depends on how stout the encryption is, and what data is on the RFID chip… even then, its going to be a government ID, so it can be traced back to you regardless.

October 23, 2005

Pandora

Filed under: Music, Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 6:02 pm

What do you get when you combine internet radio, artificial intelligence, and an extensive song detail and research project? You get Pandora, possibly the most amazing internet radio on the planet. You plug in a band or song, and it will begin to find songs and artists that it believes you will like. This isn’t some corporate mastery that one might think it is. This is based on the technology and research of the Music Genome Project, an exhaustive survey of thousands of songs, each being detailed on 400 points of reference by HUMAN ears, not a machine, each taking an average of over 30 minutes to research. The end result is an amazingly well working radio station that plays what YOU want to hear, not what THEY think you want to hear. Yes, there’s a slight downside. You are only allowed 10 hours on the free trial. However, I’m simply in awe of this, and I am not hesitating to pay the $36 it costs for one year to subscribe. I believe that if you’re not amazed in that 10 hour period, you’re either dead broke or don’t love music. The first band that I plugged in was Soundgarden, and its not pulled up all that many misses.. and for those that I don’t like, its easy enough to say you don’t like that song and move on.

This comes highly recommended. Try it out today!

October 22, 2005

Boycoot DooM

Filed under: Gaming, Tech News — Matt McDougall @ 1:05 am

Whatever you do, do not see this movie. It is complete ass. If you’ve seen Resident Evil, you’ve seen a better version of this movie. No demons, no hell. The only references to hell in the movie are from the religious guy who gets killed off early. Yes, I’m spoiling this movie for you… I hope you never fucking see it. The “demons” are caused by a 24th chromosome… and if you’re a “good” person, it makes you SUPERHUMAN.

My advice is to avoid this movie at all costs and show Serenity some support. Serenity deserves all the support it can get, and the sad thing is Doom will most likely outperform it in the box office. If you are sane, you will heed my advice. I would have done better seeing Serenity for a third time. What a fucking waste of time. I could have spent that time in Earthsea. Ugh.

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