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Thursday - May 26, 2005
Ick
In case you have not seen the picture of the world record 124-pound catfish, here's a link to the story.
Posted by jcraven at 9:55 AM | Sports
Return of the Sith
I know I'm probably one of the last geeks to go see Episode III. It took me a whole week to get out and watch it. Overall I think it was a pretty good flick.
Positives
- Good fight scenes
- For the most part, better dialogue than the other Episodes
- The film does a decent job of tying the originals with the prequels
Negatives
- Chancellor Palpatine's transformation was comical
- They may have gone a little overboard with the Jedi killing (did we really need to see the dead kids?)
- The scenes on Kashyyyk seemed mostly unnecessary
- Padmé (Natalie Portman) didn't get much screen time......and was wearing too many clothes ;)
Overall, I'd recommend the movie for anybody that has seen the other films. It probably wouldn't mean much to you if you haven't though. So the big question, do we have to wait 15 years for Episodes VII through IX?
Posted by jcraven at 9:48 AM | Comments (1) | Movies & Music
Monday - May 23, 2005
WEP Cracking
Tom's Networking has created a great step-by-step guide on how to crack wireless networks, even when protected by WEP keys. Click here for full details. Maybe I should revisit the security of my network, and segment off the wireless and wired LANs. I still think an attacker would go for an 'easy kill' if there's one around, and in my neighborhood, there's no shortage of open access points.
Posted by jcraven at 1:03 PM | Comments (2) | Tech
Friday - May 20, 2005
Creepy
This has to be one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while. Be sure to watch the video. I wonder what Maggie and Blue would think of it?
Posted by jcraven at 3:40 PM | Tech
Mmmmmmm mouse.......
Best mouse ever........ Click here for more detail.
Posted by jcraven at 10:51 AM |
Thursday - May 19, 2005
Can't wait
The HD trailer for DOA4 can be found here. It looks absolutely amazing! Beware though, the download is almost 500MB, and you need a pretty beefy system to play the clip. I hope all the in-game footage looks this good. This alone may be enough of a reason to save up for a 360.
Posted by jcraven at 1:49 PM | Tech
ER season finale
Tonight's season finale of ER will feature the departure of original cast member Noah Wyle. I'm disappointed to see him go, but I'm sure he'll do well with his career. This may bring about rumors of the demise of the show, but I personally think this season has been one of the strongest in recent memory.
Posted by jcraven at 9:58 AM | Television
Wednesday - May 18, 2005
Alrighty then
Hmmmm, for some reason, I have an urge to buy a PSP. Maybe Sony should adopt a new marketing campaign?
Posted by jcraven at 9:18 PM | Tech
Tuesday - May 17, 2005
Xbox 360 from E3
This picture is from the 360 rollout at E3. One interesting thing to note is that according to the slide, the 360 will integrate with your iPod and PSP (along with a handful of other devices). It will be interesting to see what they do here. Also, they announced there will be some backwards compatibility with original Xbox games. I guess we'll get more details on that later.
Posted by jcraven at 9:50 AM | Comments (1) | Tech
New phones
Last week, I picked up the Uniden 5.8GHz cordless phone set from Circuit City. Here is a link: TRU8865-2. I plugged them up to my Vonage router, and they worked great on the couple calls I made. One of the reasons I picked this unit (besides the 5.8GHz band), is that it does not have a built-in answering machine. Instead, it has a blinking light on each of the handsets to indicate when you have a voicemail waiting. This works great with the voicemail service provided by Vonage, and I assume any other carriers that offer the service. It's expandable to 10 headsets, but we're currently only using 3. I'll have to do more testing with its range and some of the more detailed features, but my first impression is that it's a great little system.
Posted by jcraven at 9:37 AM | Tech
Monday - May 16, 2005
Waste of time
We spent all night watching the season finale of The Bachelor on ABC. I have no idea why the damn thing had to last 3 hours. Even fast forwarding through the commercials and some of the fluff didn't help dull the pain. Oh well, I guess I'm glad Sarah B. won. I'm more glad that I don't have to watch it for at least a couple months.
Posted by jcraven at 10:52 PM | Television
Travel
Over the weekend, we drove to Asheville to attend Nate and Jenn's baby shower. We had a good time as always. We have a handful of pictures here.
Posted by jcraven at 10:07 AM | Misc
Friday - May 13, 2005
Yawn......
Last night's launch party on MTV for the Xbox 360 was pretty boring. I guess it's exactly what most MTV viewers were expecting though. First of all, why was Frodo hosting the show? It started off with a fairly lengthy performance by The Killers. Then they introduced the hardware for the 360. It was pretty much the same as all the leaked photos I had seen. They confirmed the controllers will be wireless, the games will be in true HD, and there will be replacement faceplates to customize the look. Other than that, you learned very little about the new system. Half of the show consisted of 4 professional gamers (ie, nobody you would know), playing deathmatch. They were annoying, and I fast forwarded through most of it. They did show some clips of upcoming games, and Madden 06 looked amazing. All in all, a disappointment, but I'm looking forward to E3. You can view pictures of the hardware here.
Posted by jcraven at 7:32 AM | Tech
Thursday - May 12, 2005
Firefox security update released
Today the Mozilla Foundation released a security update for their Firefox browser. Click here to download. For a list of vulnerabilities that were fixed, check here. I installed the update this morning without any issues. My favorite extensions continue to work (including Adblock and ForecastFox).
Posted by jcraven at 11:01 AM | Tech
Wednesday - May 11, 2005
Tick, tick, tick
Thirty-five days and counting. Keep an eye on the timer on the left of the main page. More news to come.
Posted by jcraven at 1:29 PM | Comments (1) | Misc
New toy
Yesterday, I picked up a DELL 1905FP 19-inch Flat Panel Monitor. My buddy Dave was nice enough to sell it to me for a decent price. I hooked it up, and everything went well. It even works fine with my KVM switch. It's a big change from my old 17" Sony CRT. I did run into one small problem, I forgot to turn down the display settings on the PC and Mac before installing. Since the new monitor couldn't display 85Hz, it would not sync up. I had to reboot both computers and then everything started working fine.
Posted by jcraven at 9:33 AM | Tech
Monday - May 9, 2005
Gold Box part deux
Amazon.com has quietly brought back their Gold Box specials. They've revamped it a little, where you now get a choice between two items, with the option to 'save' one and look at the next item. I've gone through the new one twice now, and it appears to be as useless as ever. Still, it's an entertaining 60 seconds to see what kind of crap they try to sell you.
Posted by jcraven at 4:00 PM | Deals
Saturday - May 7, 2005
Something that bugs me
This week I ordered the Amazing OpenX. They advertise this as a great tool to open those annoying 'bubble' packs that electronics are sold in nowadays. I absolutely hate these packages. It's probably the most annoying packaging since those hologram dogbones they used to put on CDs when they first came out. I'll post a review once I get to try it out. For only $5 shipped, I figured it was worth a shot.
Posted by jcraven at 1:06 PM | Comments (3) | Tech
Friday - May 6, 2005
TMI
Hey Andy, maybe there's some things you just shouldn't blog about.
Posted by jcraven at 11:43 AM | Misc
Tuesday - May 3, 2005
jeffcraven.com
Over the past weekend, my website officially topped 10,000 hits since I implemented the blog format, according to statcounter. Fun times.....hopefully the visitors have found something remotely entertaining or helpful in their journey.
Posted by jcraven at 2:07 PM | Tech
Monday - May 2, 2005
Family Guy returns
We watched the season premier of Family Guy last night. Overall, one of their better episodes. The lead-in was great.
"Everybody I've got bad news. We been cancelled."
"Oh no! Peter, how could they do that?"
"Well, unfortunately Lois, there's just no more room on the schedule. We just have to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for terrific shows like Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That 80's Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girl's Club, Cracking Up, The Pits, Firefly, Get Real, Freaky Links, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunman, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal, Ohio, Pasedena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The Street, American Embassy, Cedric the Entertainer, The Tick, Louie, and Greg the Bunny."
"Is there no hope?"
"Well, I suppose if all those shows go down the tubes we might have a shot."
Posted by jcraven at 12:40 PM | Television
Star Wars
I spent most of the weekend playing Lego Star Wars on the ol' xbox. Scott was kind enough to let me borrow it while he is in Boulder. The game is a pretty cool abreviated adaptation of Episodes I, II, and even III. It's a fairly easy game, and has a decent cooperative multiplayer option. The story mode is fairly short (probably less than 5 hours). But you can go back and play each level with your unlocked characters to collect all the hidden items. Fully unlocking everything will be a fairly long process. I won't give any spoilers for the movie, but based on the events of the game, it should be something to look forward to.