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Sunday, December 26, 2004
I don't know what happened up in PA (I'm guessing a power outtage of some type), so for the moment, Literal Barrage will be redirecting over here. I'm going to restore service as soon as I return from TX. Thanks for your patience.
posted by ZaMoose at 12/26/2004 05:55:00 PM
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Supposedly Google is giving "active" Blogger users invites to use the new GMail system.
Figured I'd make a post and see if I get an invite. *grin*
posted by ZaMoose at 4/25/2004 01:21:00 PM
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Moving!
If you've come here looking for new content at any time in the last month or so, I'm sorry to disappoint. I plum forgot to update this page with my new & improved stomping grounds.
Presenting:
Literal Barrage!
Head over there for my up-to-date bloggings.
Where does the name come from? During the invasion of Iraq, BBC reporters near-daily referred to "literal barrage"s of American firepower. Prounounce it "litt-rull bear-rajj" in order to get the full BBC effect. A friend and I thought it might make a great website name, and, et voila!
So, the upshot is, Up Up Down Down is no more. I've imported all the UUDD posts into my new blogging software, so all should be well.
See you there!
posted by ZaMoose at 3/09/2004 01:59:00 PM
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Uh Oh
A call to Brad:
You wouldn't still have those X-COM install floppies from all those years back, wouldja?
'Cause they would come in mighty handy in being able to play MULTIPLAYER X-COM.</drool>
Otherwise, it's off to Gnutella to see what I can find...
posted by ZaMoose at 2/10/2004 11:17:00 AM
New Firefox aka Firebird aka Phoenix aka Mozilla Browser Released
You may have noticed the new button to your left touting Firefox. If you're looking for a great, standards-compliant, full-featured browser, give it a look. If you'd just like to point more people to it, consider putting one of the new Firefox buttons on your site.
And remember: Friends don't let friends use IE.
posted by ZaMoose at 2/10/2004 10:54:00 AM
Monday, February 09, 2004
LinuxWorld Expo 2004
Arrrrgh! Blogger ate my post!
Well, here goes another try. I originally wrote up an email recap of Linux World 2004 in NYC for my teammates at work. What follows is a slightly-edited reprint of said email:
LinuxWorld proved interesting yesterday.
This is purely my impression, but it seemed to be better attended than the past two years. There were definitely more biz-types, but, surprisingly, it also seemed that "geek attendance" was up as well. There seemed to be a lot of college guys floating around in a sea of suits.
Oracle, IBM and Intel were pushing "grid computing" (think SETI@Home) heavily. [SNIP]
I received demos from RedHat, Novell and Sun on three products that seem worth exploring.
Novell was touting RedCarpet, which they acquired when they bought Ximian. This tool allows for fairly good site-wide administration of package deployment. It was unclear as to whether it was only going to work with SuSE or with all flavors of Linux, but they suggested that they would continue to support the Enterprise RedHat offerings. (Actually, on viewing this page, it appears as if they're definitely going to be supporting Novell Netware services on RedHat and this suggests the same for Red Carpet Enterprise 2). [SNIP]
Next up is RedHat's new Provisioning module for the RedHat Network. Details on it are available here. In a nutshell, it
would allow us to do many of the things that Proto does now from a clean GUI interface, including package management, kickstart configuration, centralized config file management and the ability to assign different users differing RHN administrative roles. [SNIP]
Last is Sun's Control Station. Originally developed by Cobalt to manage their server appliances, Sun obtained it when they bought Cobalt. It allows for similar functionality as the RHN Provisioning module, but it also supports multiple Linux distributions (RedHat, SuSE and Sun Java Desktop as of now). It also supports Solaris clients, although the literature suggests that it only works on x86 platforms, which is a shame. If it allowed us to manage our Sparc boxes as well as our x86 boxes, I could see it being very useful. There is a 90 day trial if we
wanted to give it a look.
I also received a copy of Microsoft's Windows Services for UNIX 3.5. It looks interesting, although I don't know how useful it would be since we
already do a lot of UNIX-to-Windows filesharing by means of Samba.
I received a demo copy of Astaro Security Linux, which is a (by-reputation) excellent Linux-based firewalling and spam filtering
package. [SNIP]
I looked to see if anyone was offering a spam-filtering application. Other than SpamAsassin (built in to Astaro Security Linux), the pickings were pretty slim.
And there you have it. Only three weeks past due. A new record, if I do say so myself!
posted by ZaMoose at 2/09/2004 11:58:00 PM
Thursday, February 05, 2004
It's No Wonder I Don't Donate Money
This story has me fuming. As a Lehigh alumnus, I've already lamented at length about the idiotic trend established by the past two presidents, namely wreaking havoc upon the engineering college in order to fund the Arts and Crafts, errrm, Sciences and Business schools. First, they changed the mascot from the "Engineers" to the "Mountain Hawks". Seems no one told Gregory (C. Montgomery) Farrington or Peter "My one claim to national fame is that one of my nursing students shot up my new school" Likins that "Engineers" were train engineers, not slide-rule-wielding-dorks-about-town. It gave the school a bit of panache, IMNSHO, to have such a distinctive mascot, much like Purdue has the Boilermakers or Carnegie Mellon has the, ummm, Tartan.
But I digress.
Farrington screwed the engineering school by "reapportioning funds freed up" by an incredibly generous donation by an old Lehigh alumnus, P.C. Rossin. His continued meddling caused a great engineering dean to resign and the majority of the EE/CS department quit in a huff.
Here's the irony of it all: the multiculti crap that they've screwed 130 years of engineering tradition for just plain sucks. The departments don't have the recognition nor the reputation of their peers at the other "great" liberal arts colleges in the area, like Penn, Princeton, Haverford, etc. The philosophy and religion studies departments are filled with poseurs of the first order (wait, doesn't that apply universally?). One of them maintains that he was the inspiration for DeLillo's Jack Gladney, professor of Hilter Studies at the "University on the Hill".
This is most decidedly not the way to get nationwide exposure, nor is it the way to continue to receive donations from alumni. Art exibits like the one mentioned in the above article just show how clueless the administration has become.
*sigh*
[UPDATE]
Here's the art exhibit in question.
posted by ZaMoose at 2/05/2004 09:24:00 AM
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Assorted Reviews
[Originally created a week ago and just completed/posted today]
I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would run down some of the excellent media experiences I've encountered recently.
- Jak II. Extremely entertaining. Mix the first J&D game with some Grand Theft Auto and you have a compelling gameplay experience. It was so engaging, in fact, that my wife refused to let me play unless she could look on and backseat drive. *grin*
- Soul Calibur II for the Gamecube. I spent a good amount of time playing this over the Christmas break with my brother-in-law and was given it for my birthday by the in-laws. I've really enjoyed it and the single player mode, while a bit frustrating at times, really is worth playing, if only for all of the bonuses that you can unlock (in the form of bonus characters, new weapons and costumes). I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good, easily accesible fighter for any of the three major consoles. (I picked the GC version as my version of choice because it featured Link. I mean, how could I not?)
- Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers. Wow. I was absolutely floored by this album. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's upbeat, it's witty, it's catchy. I actually caught myself smiling involuntarily the first time I listened to the entire album. If you have any interest in "pop" music, I would rush out and grab this CD posthaste.
- Evanescence - Fallen. I received this one from my sister for Christmas. What a great disc! The fan reviews on Amazon apparently disagree with me. I'm not quite sure what they're railing against, but it seems as if they don't like it because it's popular. Oh well.
- Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Save My Soul. A good album, although nowhere near as good as their self-titled major label debut.
- Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash. This album is nowhere near as immediately accessible as the Jaxx's past two albums, but give it a chance. It really has grown on me with repeated play. It has tracks reminiscent of Moby, there is a track that wouldn't be out of place on a Portishead album, a track you could swear is a cover of a Prince hit, as well as tracks reminiscent of Deltron 3030. I recommend that you reserve your judgement on this disc until you've given it repeat listens.
posted by ZaMoose at 1/22/2004 04:42:00 PM
Knock Me Over With A Feather
I came across this one on the Corner today and I have to say I have a completely new view on Patricia Heaton. I loaded up Ms. Lopez's link to Feminists for Life and was greeted by the smiling visage of Ms. Heaton, credited as honorary chair. I was blown away. How refreshing to see an actress taking a strong stance on an issue where little deviance from the "party line" is tollerated in Hollywood.
posted by ZaMoose at 1/22/2004 04:34:00 PM
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