Archive for February, 2006

Monday, February 27th, 2006

D&D hits the intarwebs

by Warren

Dungeons and Dragons, the grand-daddy of nerdy table-top role playing games, is apparently eyeing the mountains of cash generated by World of Warcraft and getting into the online space. Frankly, I’m surprised that it took this long, but the weirdest part of the article is actually the revelation that Vin Deisel is a huge geek with a great love for D&D.

Monday, February 27th, 2006

Apple’s “fun new products?”

by Warren

Apple’s got some new stuff out tomorrow…top of the rumour list is a ‘iPod boombox,’ a intel-based mac mini with media centre capabilities, and new iBooks. Any predictions, fellow Macophiles?

Monday, February 27th, 2006

Not so fast, China…

by Warren

Foreign Policy has an article about how China’s meteoric rise will soon be tampered by the rampant corruption and self-interested elites that run the place.

Saturday, February 25th, 2006

Sony’s march into irrelevance

by Warren

The grim spectre of Betamax is invoked by the NYT, with an article about how Sony is once again defying the rest of the industry and trying to force the Blu-Ray hi-def DVD standard down the consumer’s throat. I may yet have to suck that one down, as Apple has voiced their support for the Blu-Ray format.

But Sony does this with more than just DVD formats; the company seems to think that because they were once on top, that gives them leave to introduce formats no–one wants, like ATRAC, minidisc, memory stick and a myriad of others. Sony used to be an innovative company, with great, well-designed products. They could do so again; the PSP at least looks good, and their TVs, while ridiculously overpriced, aren’t bad units. But they need to realize what the consumer wants to buy is more important than whatever agenda they have cooking in their R&D department.

Friday, February 24th, 2006

Cool Spider-Man 3 poster

by Warren

Not much to say, other than me likee.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

Deeply frightening McDonald’s commercials

by Warren

You could of course make the argument that every McDonald’s commerical is terror-riffic, but Stay Free magazine has singled out a few choice winners for your consumption. Strangely, they don’t include the one with Ronald wandering around a nightclub mackin’ on the ladies, which always weirded me out something fierce.

Completely unrelated, but while looking for the aforementioned weird-assed ad (without success), I stumbled across an interesting interview with ex-Devo frontman and current film composer Mark Mothersbaugh.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

Delivering the mail…in Iraq

by Warren

Yup, these guys have got some serious balls.

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

Small business empowered by the Web

by Warren

The New York Times has an interesting article about how web services, along with email and IM, are letting small businesses play in the same sandbox as the big boys. Interesting, if a little late to the table, NYT.

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

Bitchiest car review ever!

by Warren

Courtesy of Cam, here’s a fine bit of hate aimed squarely at the Volkswagen Jetta. i don’t care about cars, and I laughed several times.

Monday, February 20th, 2006

“Housecleeeaaannnning!!”

by Warren

I’ve changed a couple of links around on the left hand column. I yanked Gizmodo, which I never check anymore, and replaced it with Engadget, which is an hourly ritual. I also replaced Something Awful (again, not so much with the checking) with Digg, a great (if somewhat wet behind the ears) Slashdot-esque technology site.

I also have to update the “What’s Freyburg reading?” section, as it’s woefully out of date. But that’ll have to wait until I have a free evening, an ever more infrequent event around these parts.

P.S. the title of the post is a very obscure in-joke aimed squarely at Doug Hardy, a guy I used to work with in the early 90’s (my collegeyearssaladdaysetcbbq). We worked at a hotel as room service monkeys, and when we restocked the minibars (a grueling, tedious exercise in uniformed wage slavery that I resented at the time but see as good character building now that I’m no longer a 21-year-old knowitall), Doug would yell “HOOOUUUSSSSEEEKKEEEEEEPPPINNGGG!!!” before entering a room, just to amuse himself. I have my doubts he’ll google his name and find this, but I figured if he did he’d get a chuckle out of it.

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