GaiaOnline

So I just started playing around with GaiaOnline. Dorky I know but I’m an old school gamer (RPG not video games) and there is a bunch of that going on out there. The tough part is slogging through it all to find a good game, one that isn’t just full of lamers attacking one another and throwing wild insults. I think there will be some good opportunity for some good gaming if I can hook up with the right crowds. Still haven’t quite figured out the rules of the Gaia system (the published rules are like no cybersex, be nice, etc. I’m talking about the cultural rules about how you go about indicating your actions playing nice with others and such.)

Stupid iTunes just started acting up. I swear Microsoft is doing something to make it less cool than windows media player. Well sorry I’m a fan of AAC and it syncs to my iPod so byte me. On the whole I’m less thrilled with the HP Compaq nc6000 than I was with the IBM T40 (sorry about the link but they're up to 42 now.) The battery life is almost as good and it has a couple of really handy keys at the top of the keyboard. One locks the computer, one does something with wireless, not sure what it’s disabled on this one, company choice not HP, and one activates presentation director or whatever they call it. Cool part about presentation director is you define what that means. You can have it set your screen up a certain way, open an application (like maybe PowerPoint) and set your power mode (if say you’re expecting to be on battery in a conf room. I’m not sure if it will switch the monitor to the external properly or not I’ll have to set it up and start using it when I watch movies at home. Will have to do that before I buy the cyberhome DVD-CH300 from best buy. Progressing scan pal/ntsc conversion, a couple other features, but best of all: can be made regionless and only costs $40!

Nice.

Somebody near me on the Bart smells very good.

Not that I’m an uber AV addict so I can’t tell you if the specs on the player are lame or not but it’s the fact that I can get into the player for under $80. I have two kids and my wife stays home to care for them. That’s four humans, a car, a cat, and a mortgage all on my meager little salary. I don’t buy things, not because I don’t want to but because I can’t. Mostly the things I don’t like about this machine are all small it’s just that there are a bunch of them and that gets on my nerves. It’s an entire collection of near misses. Stuff like the PCMCIA ports don’t have covers. They come with little blanks to stick into them. Why on earth would I want that? So if I stick something in there I have to find a place for this stupid blank.

Just finished Chungking Express this weekend. Gets 4 ½ stars. We’ll see if I like it as much as In The Mood For Love after I watch it about five times. So far not it’s obviously an earlier work and he seems to have learned a lot from it but it’s still fantastic. In fact it’s like two movies in one. There are two separate love stories that go on in it connected only in the middle. The first one showed some definite promise but it seemed like an early work by someone I’d really like (which it was.) Then the second one kicked in and it was like a whole different movie. It was as if he had figured out how to make the movie in the first segment and then made it in the second. Plus it has Tony Leung as the lead (same guy from In The Mood For Love) and he is fantastic. There’s a whole thing where he talks to his apartment and various things in it like they are old friends projecting his emotions on to them. The best part is it’s obvious that he knows he’s projecting them and using it as a tool to make himself feel better.

Now the crap part is it was almost all in Cantonese. The one’s I borrow from friends are in Mandarin but Wong Kar-Wai is a Hong Kong director and most of his actors are from there so they all speak Cantonese. I assume the other WKW stuff I get from Netflix will be in Cantonese as well. It’s a shame because I was looking forward to ITMFL again (have I mentioned that I am obsessed about that movie.) and it won’t be the same since I will be completely reliant on the subtitles and won’t understand a damned word of what they are saying. Guess it won’t be too much of a loss. When Chinese talk to fast or mumble I still have trouble telling them a part some times. I’m not up to hearing Mandarin at speed. Sometimes I have to listen to something four or five times to realize they’re saying things I know quite well. I’m excited to see Infernal affairs II, Net because I’ve heard great things about it but because it’s got Jun Hu (Kwan Wu) in it. It’s a shame he wasn’t in the first one I hear that it’s A way better and B got Tony Leung in it.

Time to get off my butt and start doing more of the things I talk about doing.

Just sent an email off to the adopt a blog project volunteering my services (hosting.)