Well, with one hour left in 2006, I’d like to take a moment to wish you all a happy new year, and to reflect on all the things that have happened these past 365 days. Windows Vista was released, along with the Zune. I got my first Mac, which I’m still using happily, and in just the past week I got a Wacom tablet as well! The return of Uru Live was both announced and carried out, and the Beta is still going strong, with new content coming soon. The Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii were released, completing the current generation lineup. The Dems reclaimed the Senate and Congress, and a Democratic governor finally won in Massachusetts. Our beloved Pluto was denied its Planethood. I chipped my tooth :D. So yeah, that’s 2006 🙂 Happy New Year!
A Series of Tubes
An archive of old posts.
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Vista Fiji and Vienna
Engadget has just posted an article about a few rumored Vista updates, mainly Vista R2 (entitled Fiji). It will supposedly add WinFS (a new filesytem which works off of NTFS, the current Windows standard), more sidebar usability, and a lot more stuff as well.
More interesting to me is this Vienna idea, which is the codename of M$’s rumored OS overhaul, which will completely change Windows, from the ground up (including an “all application” compatibility break, meaning none of your current programs will work on it, something I think they should do with Internet Explorer to bring it up to par with other browsers I could mention). This would mean no more Start menu/orb, no menus, toolbars, nothing. We’re talking a complete redesign.
Change is good, but too much is really, really bad. For example, this puts old Windows veterans in the place of n00bs. The methods of emulating current-style windows to support all current windows applications (and as my friends are constantly pointing out to me, almost all of the games currently on the market) will be undoubtedly slow. Not a wise move, M$…
Harry Potter 7 Title Announced
J.K. Rowling has hidden the title of Harry Potter 7 somewhere on her website, for you to find. I must say, I’m a little disappointed by it, but it does make some sense. There are a lot of rumors about this book, since it will have the responsibility of tying up all the loose ends of the series. Apparently, two main characters will die. Most people are betting on Harry and Voldemort, which makes some amount of sense, but I think it will be Snape and someone else. Whatever, we’ll find out when it’s released in 2007.
Final Night – The Ultimate Visual Guide
On the eighth and final night of Chanukah, I received the culmination of all 6 of the Star Wars Visual Guides, the Ultimate Visual Guide. It’s pretty cool, but I think it would be better if they simply put all of the visual guides as well as extra information into one monster book, since this doesn’t really have entries on everything that each guide had. For example, it defines “droids” and the important droids, but not which droids were used in the Battle of Geonosis, for example. Still, a great book.
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Night 7 – New Essential Chronology and PenAgain
On the second to last night of Chanukah, I got an awesome Star Wars book called The New Essential Chronology. It has the complete history of the Galaxy far, far away from the Rakata and Star Forge in 100,000 b.b.y. (Before the Battle of Yavin) all the way to the fall of Coruscant in 27 a.b.y. and the Killik Expansion in 36 a.b.y. With a color photo on almost every page, the book is really, really, awesome.
I also got an “extra” called the Ergo-Sof PenAgain, a pen shaped like a Y, which is apparently better on your hand then your standard pen.
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Night 6 – $40 and Shapeshifter
Tonight I first recieved $40 from my aunt (bringing me up to $393, but something like $300 of that is going to pay for one of my later channukah presents to myself…Technically it’s from my parents, but they paid for like $20 of it, so it’s really like I bought it for myself with their blessing. Whatever, I’m still really glad I’m getting it. More on that when it actually comes!). I’m currently saving to buy a 22″ monitor to hook up to Eve to get mad awesome display space…
Then later I got a second present, a registration code for Shapeshifter, the awesome-tastic skinning app for Mac computers made by Unsanity, makers of awesome Mac hacks. It’s really awesome.
Here are some screenshots. First, we’ve got the basic layout of the theme:
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Then an annoyance of the skin, VirtueDesktop is not affected by it…
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I’ll try to figure out why that’s happening later, for now I can live with it…
Clearification Vista Ad Site
The Clearification site from M$ (which is an ad for Vista) is actually really funny. It’s very hippy-ish, and the guy seems like he was actually in the middle of smoking pot when he recorded the lines for it, but it really is funny. “Let’s just say it involved karate…and crying…”
Night 5 – Fantastic 500 Puzzle Challenge
I got a book of 500 puzzles (logic, math, geometry, etc.) tonight. It’s actually pretty cool.
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Night 4 – Don’t Screw With the Evil Neurodiverse
Tonight I got an awesomely huge green tee that says “Don’t screw with the evil neurodiverse” and has a picture of a doll with knitting needles through him. I love it. 🙂
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Night 3 – Magnetic Sculpture
Tonight I got a magnetic sculpture. It’s a bunch of little metal X’s and O’s that are magnetized by a large circular base, so they can stand up and stuff. Very cool.
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