Merry Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas Eve!

(And Happy Holidays in general!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I've been working on my web site and hope to have it (FINALLY) online by the end of this week.

Casino Royale

I saw Casino Royale on Friday night and loved it. :D

Happy (Belated) Halloween!

Exactly 24 hours ago (unless I'm quite mistaken) I was trick-or-treating. Yay candy!

Happy belated Halloween!

The Long Tail

Oh, and I forgot to mention this in that post:

Today I started reading The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, WIRED editor. (That despite the fact that I still haven't finished Star Wars: Dark Lord...) And it's really good. Very interesting. Neat graphs.

In essence, with e-retailers like iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, and eBay, if you put the product out there it will find a market, no matter how small, no matter how niche. And with little or no distribution costs and no shelf space to waste, in the past decade or so it's actually started to make economic sense. Rhapsody still regularly sells copies of it's 100,000th most popular song, and so on. The long tail gets very close to zero the farther out from the "hits" you go, but it never quite reaches zero, and you have so much quantity way out there in the tail that combined it can still make up a huge part of, say, Amazon's total revenues.

Very very interesting. And it applies to just about anything these days - Google, Netflix, you name it...

Last day of being 16...

At 4:30 AM Thursday morning I will officially turn 17 years old. Whoah. That's... old.

And I still haven't gotten version 5.0 of my web site online. What kind of an almost-17-year-old am I!?

Fear not, it's coming soon... I'm getting there... it's already more complete than the current version, which is missing pathetically large chunks of good ol' version 3.0, so I've just got some finishing touches to do.

It'll be up by Thanksgiving at the latest! And this time I mean it... I think...

Last day of being 16...

At 4:30 AM Thursday morning I will officially turn 17 years old. Whoah. That's... old.

And I still haven't gotten version 5.0 of my web site online. What kind of an almost-17-year-old am I!?

Fear not, it's coming soon... I'm getting there... it's already more complete than the current version, which is missing pathetically large chunks of good ol' version 3.0, so I've just got some finishing touches to do.

It'll be up by Thanksgiving at the latest! And this time I mean it... I think...

U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million!

As of mere seconds ago, the United States population has officially hit 300 million!!!

CONGRATULATIONS USA!

(For an analysis of the milestone, and a mildly depressing note that we may have [i]actually[/i] crossed 300 million months ago, see MSNBC.)

LOST (and autographed Path of Destruction)

Last night I finished the first season of Lost... kind of. I think I skipped more episodes than I saw. (That's what you get for watching with friends who've pretty much seen it all. :) ) Oh well, I still get the gist of it. And it's still really good.

"He just..... exploded."
"...yeah...."

Oh, and yesterday I walked into Barnes & Noble on the way home from school and happened to find an autographed Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction sitting there right on the shelf. It was my lucky day... :)

Xbox News, Willy's Birthday and 4-Hour Deliveries

X06, Microsoft's annual Euro Xbox show, took place Wednesday and Thursday. There was a lot of big news, mainly:

1. "Halo Wars," a real-time strategy game set in the Halo universe and developed by the guys who made Age of Empires. Trailer here.
2. Peter Jackson teaming up with Microsoft Game Studios to create two new games, including one Halo-based one.
3. Project Gotham Racing 4 was announced.
4. Another Banjo Kazooie game from Rare was announced.
5. Bioshock, the next Splinter Cell game (after Double Agent), and two downloadable Grand Theft Auto IV "episodes" (to be released shortly after the main game) are now Xbox exclusives.
6. Assassin's Creed, an incredible-looking ex-PS3-exclusive game, was demoed live for the first time. The producer mentioned that the Xbox 360 version will actually have slightly better AI than the PS3 one thanks to better threading technology (whatever that means).
7. The original Doom is now available on Xbox Live Arcade.

Pretty exciting. :) The great thing about the Xbox Live Marketplace (the place for all Xbox Live downloads) is that Wednesday afternoon I had already downloaded trailers and demos of games just being shown at X06.

Speaking of rapid distribution...

I just learned of "LicketyShip Same Day Delivery." It'll get whatever gadget you order to your door within four hours. That's crazy. And incredible.

Willy's Bday

Willy's birthday was yesterday. One gift is now sitting on top of our Xbox: the Xbox Live Vision camera. It enables video chat during games (and outside them), picture messaging, custom display pictures, and gesture-based gaming a la the EyeToy. It also lets you overlay the current video on your Dashboard background with a few nifty effects, including a verrrry nice water effect that makes the image ripple when you move. (Not the text, mind you, only the background... rippling text with just get annoying...)

'Enemy of the State'; Bin Laden trail goes 'stone cold'

Last night we watched Enemy of the State on AMC. Quite a good movie, and incredibly relevant today, especially considering it was made in 1998 - the plot sounds like something that would be thought up today, not eight years ago. The amount of surveillance today is amazing, and not just on the part of the government. Thanks to Google, MySpace, and other wonders of the modern web, ordinary people have more ability than ever to spy on their fellow citizens.

Get a name, do a lookup on Google. Do a little phone book searching, or reverse phone book search if you start with a number. Find an address, get satellite and aerial imagery. And all of that can happen within a minute. Do a search on MySpace or Facebook and find even more. If their information is "private," ask to be their friend. Chances are they'll accept. If not, friend their friends to give yourself a little more credibility, so that it doesn't seem like you're coming totally out of the blue. It's creepy.

Of course, the government has far more capabilities, as explored by Enemy of the State. This morning I read an article on MSNBC about the ongoing hunt for Osama bin Laden:

WP: Bin Laden trail goes ‘stone cold’ - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

Very interesting stuff. Sounds like it would make for an excellent movie a few years down the road...

Back to School

Yesterday was my first day back at school. School means homework. Homework means sad Toph. :( Oh well, it wasn't all that bad...

In other news, Tophtucker.com 5.0 should be online by the end of the weekend. Wohoo!

Now I'm off to sleep... tomorrow I leave on a one-night orientation trip... off I go...

The Red Sox, Little Miss Sunshine, and Blake Ross

The Red Sox are kind of falling apart. They won tonight, but in the press conference Terry Francona was about as depressing (and depressed) as I've ever seen anyone on TV be. As the NESN commentators put it, you wouldn't guess from the sound of it that the Sox had won. After each question there was a long silence before someone finally worked up the nerve to ask another question.

I can't remember a time when so many of the Sox's star players were injured. Manny, Nixon, Varitek, Schilling, Papelbon, Mirabelli for a while... Ortiz has heart issues, and Jon Lester has cancer, for crying out lound.

Little Miss Sunshine

On a happier note, we went to Little Miss Sunshine tonight and it was excellent. Steve Carell was excellent, as usual, as was the rest of the cast.

Blake Ross

Best known as one of the lead developers on Firefox. I do not use Firefox, and I don't like the fanatical tack some people take on the issue, particularly folks like those at Explorer Destroyer who advise webmasters to actually block access to their web site if the user is using Internet Explorer. What!? That's ridiculous... I thought Firefox was supposed to be about giving users choice.

Today, though, I read a couple of interviews with Blake Ross, and he seems like a very sensible fellow. He's not afraid to say that IE7 is actually pretty good. He doesn't categorically denounce Microsoft as evil tyrants. His arguments are logical. He's not cocky, he's down-to-earth, he understands that there's a middle ground. "We really are trying to make it less of a religious thing," he said in the Seattle PI interview. As he puts it, he didn't start Firefox to destroy Microsoft. It's more that the whole field had become too stagnant; that you can't let Microsoft rest on its laurels, because that just results in the proliferation of spyware and adware and all that nasty stuff.

I wish that some of the more zealous Firefox advocates would be more like that. :-\

Back from Taconnet

We return earlier today from Taconnet after our four-week absence. Our stay was great, as usual... pretty soon I'm going to update my Taconnet site with photos and videos.

In other news, I'm using Windows Live Writer (Beta) to write this. I'm just trying it out, but I might start using it exclusively if it works well, which it seems to.

That's all for now... ta-ta. :)

Off to Taconnet!

We're heading off to Taconnet in a few short minutes, so I'll be even less likely to blog than normal. We're back at the end of August.

I just uploaded a new Taconnet minisite to my web site:
http://www.tophtucker.com/taconnet

I managed to integrate Windows Live Local into it... that was fun. The rest of my web site upgrade is coming at the end of the summer.

Off to Maine now! (I hope to get a ton of reading done...) Goodbye. :)

Zune + Xbox

As someone who loves conspiracy theories and evil genius and all that stuff, this is fascinating:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/20/the-clicker-zune-its-all-about-the-ecosystem/

Regarding Microsoft's failure in the music player market thus far: "Does that mean that Microsoft was wrong? Perhaps not. Perhaps they were just being a tad disingenuous in regard to their true plans. It's quite possible that we're just now seeing Microsoft's first real play in the digital audio player market. Perhaps, just perhaps, Microsoft has been stalling. And while claiming that Microsoft has just been stalling (as opposed to, say, clueless) might give them credit for an inordinate amount of self-awareness, we must closely examine this particular situation."

It's very interesting how J. Allard and the Xbox team have avoided being burdened by operating within a big, relatively slow-moving company like Microsoft by operating outside the normal rules of play. Supposedly that's what they're doing with Zune. Just throwing away Windows Media Player and everything and having total vertical integration, possibly including the Xbox.

It gets better. It was noted in an Engadget/Joystiq interview with Peter Moore on May 12, 2006 that J. Allard has been MIA since the Xbox 360 launch. Moore's excuse was that he had a BMX event or something, and that it was determined that Moore should be the singular face of the Xbox, and the Allard was super-busy running the platform. Turns out he's apparently been working on this project all along.

It, of course, remains to be seen whether Zune will be a total flop. Last time Microsoft launched a hype campaign (anyone remember Origami?) it turned out to be a disappointment, basically just a mini-Tablet PC with some extra interface stuff. But it'll certainly be interesting.

Coming Zune

http://www.comingzune.com/

All I can think of is ol' Didier from the Origen Xbox 360 hype machine. And if rumors are to be believed, the same team is behind Zune as was behind the Xbox 360. Oh how I love the intrigue.

In any case, initial pics of "Zune" are underwhelming. Come on, folks, you need something distinctive.

Also, it's a peculiar strategy in general - a full reversal of their previous one, which was handling the software end and letting partners make the devices and stores.

Also, after the big deal that was made about Urge, am I supposed to believe that this scraps that? And what about old MSN Music?

This is going to get interesting. As WIRED put it, get ready for the grudge match of the decade. Only, they were talking about Microsoft vs. Google. I'm talking more about Microsoft vs. Apple. But it's really more of a battle royale.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Blog!

Today marks this blog's third birthday... or should I call it the third anniversary of its creation? Regardless, it's three years old now. Congrats, blog! :)

Wow, lots of birthdays recently.

July 12 - Ben Burtt
July 13 - Harrison Ford
July 15 - MSNBC turns 10 [see here]
July 16 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince turns 1 [see here]
July 20 - This blog turns 3 [see here]
July 21 - My mom's b-day!
July 22 - Windows Live Messenger turns 7 [see here]

Congrats to them all! :)

Shadows of the Empire & Movie Recap

Shadows of the Empire

I just finished Shadows of the Empire earlier today, one year to the day after I finished Harry Potter 6. Overall, I thought it was very good. For the past, oh, 9 months or so I've been slogging throught the Original Trilogy time period, which means...

1. A New Hope novelization - out before the movie was, an interesting time capsule, but not exactly a page-turner
2. Splinter of the Mind's Eye - first spin-off book, released & taking place before Empire; again, an interesting and very dated time capsule (read: Luke/Leia romance)
3. The Empire Strikes Back novelization - not so interesting anymore, for the most part; by this point I'm slogging through my self-inflicted tour of the OT
4. Shadows of the Empire - see below.
5. Return of the Jedi novelization - I'm only a page into it and already it's gotten into "fourth dimention" mush

I originally started this because I had never read them, I thought it'd be interesting to go through the saga in order, and because there were no new Star Wars books out at the time. (This was after I finished the New Jedi Order and then The Joiner King, but before The Unseen Queen came out.) I thought I'd be able to get through it in no time, maybe by the end of 2005. Boy was I wrong.

Turns out most of these don't go by nearly as quickly as the latest reads. I was at the Battle of Hoth at the New Year; I finished Empire and started Shadows a couple months ago. In other words, it's taken me a pathetically long time.

I'll try to speed through Return of the Jedi. In the time I've been stuck doing this - and once I started it was too late to get out - several more major books have been released. Now, my to-read list (in the order in which I'll read them) consists of:

1. Republic Commando: Hard Contact
2. A short story or two
3. Dark Lord
4. A short story or two
5. The Unseen Queen
6. The Swarm War
7. Outbound Flight [?]
8. Survivor's Quest [?]
9. Legacy of the Force: Betrayal [?]

The last few are questionable because they depend on when/if I get a couple of the newer books.

So: I started this project because I was totally caught up and had too little to read. By the time I finish it I'll be way behind again. I'm hoping to be mostly caught up again by the end of the summer... Maine (where we go at the end of the month) is always a great time for reading. With luck I'll be done with ROTJ by then and I can get on to the fun stuff.

(Of course, you can't forget summer reading books; I have three.)

Anyway, how did I like Shadows of the Empire? In short: a lot. Suprisingly so, in fact. It's a story I'm familiar with; one of my first Star Wars videogames (along with Rogue Squadron, Rebel Assault II, and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter - they seriously need to make a sequel to XvT) was Shadows of the Empire for N64. Boy did I love that jetpack...

Anyway, I thought that SotE (only one letter off from that other OT bridge novel, SotME) did an excellent job of tying together the movies. It brought up some very interesting concepts, one of the most significant of which was Vader's attempts to heal himself. He was shattered, mentally and physically, after Episode III; he had, in many ways, lost touch with the Force. In SotE he draws on the purest dark side to let him breathe unassisted for precious seconds at a time; in Return of the Jedi he manages without his mask for, what, a minute? I'll never view that scene the same way again. Vader managed an unprecedented feat by drawing on, not the dark side, but the light side. Instead of pushing love and joy out of his mind, he embraced it. Yeah, so he couldn't keep it up for long, but he was pretty much fried by then anyway. It was a victory for him.

Reading the saga chronologically does have its benefits. I make some connections like that that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. I recommend to any Star Wars fan that they watch Episode I through VI in order; it only takes a day, and it's a neat experience.

Movie Recap

In Theatres

Cars - another Pixar success, albeit perhaps not at the same level as past megablockbusters like The Incredibles. Still, a great story, funny, sweet. And good animation too. And funny credits. :)

Nacho Libre - peculiar. Good, but not spectacular. Super-wacky - take, for instance, the point at which (SPOILERS!) Nacho hurls an ear of corn with all his might and lodges it firmly in some guy's eye socket, or when he flys at the end.

Superman Returns - awesome movie. Epic, a tribute to the originals. Great special effects, funny, good music, especially John Williams' classic theme.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - another excellent movie; another time I disagree with certain critics. Too long? Nah; I thought it was the perfect length! (I think I'm pretty much alone, even among otherwise positive critics, in saying that.) Confusing plot? No, but complicated; still, you can follow it. (At least, I could.) And ILM's VFX were great, to the point that many reviewers mistakenly referred to the all-digital villian Davy Jones as being done with prosthetics and makeup.

Oldies

Terminator - dated, but interesting. Pretty good overall. Lackluster special effects compared to today's flicks, but good for the time; stop-motion Terminator was painful, though.

T2: Judgement Day - much better. ILM's liquid-metal morphing holds up admirably to this day. Good story, characters, etc.

T3: Rise of the Machines - James Cameron is sorely missed. Execution is lacking; characters are, mm, so-so. But effects are great. I love the fact that this guy is now CA's governator.

Casablanca - a classic. Funny, well-written, enjoyable... it's amazing how many great quotes there are. "Here's lookin' at you, kid." "Play it [NOT 'again'] Sam." "I'm shocked - SHOCKED..." "Round up the usual suspects." "We'll always have Paris." "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Alien - wow, slow pacing compared to today's movies. But good.

Happy 10th Birthday, MSNBC!

My #1 online news site from the start, here's to a great ten years and ten thousand more to come.



...wait, ten thousand is a lot of years, maybe I'll stick to "ten more to come" for now and see where we are at that point. But still, you're a great site. Good news, good video, good layout. Keep it up, pal. :D

Out of School!

Today I got out of school for the year - woohoo! (Nonetheless, it feels very, very strange.)

I also saw Pearl Harbor for the first time... well, the first half of it, at least. :) I knew going into it that it was a long movie, about 3 hours, I think. And so, when FDR's address to Congress came to a close and the screen faded to black, I thought, "Hm, good movie, pretty long." And then... "Intermission. Please Insert Disc 2." I could barely believe it.

So I'll have to finish that another time. It's all right... I think I have a lot of time ahead of me. :)

Windows Live Messenger to gain Xbox Live Friends functionality?

Last week (I think), I noticed for the first time that Windows Live/MSN Messenger's Xbox tab no longer displayed online friends. Back just before E3, Xbox.com debuted a feature that allows PC users on the site to send and receive messages over the Xbox Live service. And Windows Live Messenger, the biggest update to Messenger in, well, a while, will likely exit Beta sometime this summer. And Microsoft has always talked about increasing PC-to-Xbox connectivity, especially at E3 with the news that "Live Anywhere" would essentially give cell phones and Windows Vista PCs Xbox Live functionality.

Together, all of this points toward one thing: that the final release of Windows Live Messenger will display your Xbox Live Friends as part of the main buddy list, and that you'll be able to carry on limited conversations with them. At least, that's what I think... and hope. Equal parts educated guess and wishful thinking, perhaps. But it certainly seems possible, considering the evidence.

Fon

Check out Fon. Very cool, and potentially quite useful too. Basically, if you set up your WiFi router with their software, you essentially donate your WiFi coverage to the Fon network, and in return you get free access to everyone else's Fon-enabled routers. (Conversely, you can choose to pay for access elsewhere and get paid when people use your router.)

Halo 3

For the past three days, Halo 3 is practically all that I can think about. Well, not really, but I have thought about it a lot. Why? See for youself. (NOTE: Prepare to be confused if you haven't played 1 or 2.)

E3 is underway now, and so far it's yielded some pretty incredible stuff. Take, for example, Microsoft's new "Live Anywhere," which will bring Xbox Live to your PC and cell phone. Whenever Vista finally launches, it'll do so with basic Live capabilities and at least one game, Shadowrun, capable of being played across platforms - PC vs. Xbox 360. Very cool... very cool indeed.

I'll update with more later, if I can remember... in the mean time, go watch the H3 trailer again. :)

Fun Links

360 Voice
Give your Xbox a blog of its own.

ROBO-ONE in the Space!
Actually planned for 2010.

David Hasselhoff
Singing.

Leonard Nimoy
Singing some more.

Back from Disney World

Mere hours ago I returned on a Song 757 from Orlando, Florida, where I had been at Disney World since Sunday. Go Mickey! :) Here are some of the rides I went on:

Epcot

Test Track
Get in a car. Go fast.

Animal Kingdom

Kilimanjaro Safari
We saw lions, elephants, alligators, rhinos, hippos, and much more.

Magic Kingdom

It's a Small World
Creepy yet classic.

Big Thunder Mountain
The biggest rollercoaster I'm willing to go on. I actually videotaped the whole thing -- well, videocarded I suppose, since it's on a xD card instead of a tape -- so with luck I'll get that online for all to see sometime soon.

Disney MGM Studios

Star Tours [x4]
It's Star Wars. Need I say more? Now complete with a giant water-blasting AT-AT standing guard outside in a recreation of one small piece of Endor, take the vacation of a lifetime to the idyllic forest moon. Along the way, though, there may be a detour or two... :) First you board the Star Tours Express, a ship seating maybe 50 people (they have six of them). All the action is seen throught the forward viewport, aka a large screen. :) The entire ship is mounted on a gimbal so that it can shake and move with the action onscreen.

Backlot Tour
Take a look at some of what goes into making a movie. See prop warehouses, costume design shops, and live pyrotechnics and water effects. Watch a select few lucky parkgoers make their own "Harbor Attack" minimovie.

Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular
Similar to the Backlot Tour, we saw many of the stunts and action pieces from Raiders of the Lost Ark, live.

Lights Motors Action [x2]
Cars! Motorcycles! Stunts! Jumps! Explosions! Again along the same lines as the Backlot Tour and Indiana Jones, this show takes you behind-the-scenes of producing a movie car chase scene. It'll give you a whole new level of appreciation for what goes into that kind of thing.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Play It! [x2]
In an authentic Millionaire set, complete with music, spinning lights and everything, compete for the chance to sit in the hot seat. No, you're not playing for a million dollars, but you are

Downtown Disney

Cirque du Soleil - La Nouba
Wow. Very cool bicycling, trampolining, spinning, jumping, and so on. These people are incredibly skilled.

Spring Break, Oblivion, & Disney World!

I just saw the Godfather (part one) for the first time. Good movie... pretty long, too. It must have had half a dozen different climaxes. In the car ride home, we were all kind of checking the seat behind us nervously to make sure no one was going to... uhh... get revenge or anything....

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For the past week I've been on Spring Break... woohoo! :) I've been getting some good web site work done... maybe by the end of next week I'll have put some parts online.

That's going to be waylayed, though, by a "trip out of the country," as my dad calls it -- a trip to the self-contained, totalitarian microworld known as Disney World. (Seriously, they should secede from the Union.)

What'll my favorite attraction be? Why, same as last year, of course - Star Tours! :D

If I have a chance, maybe I'll report live from the Mouse Front. Or not. We're being airlifted in at 08:00, or something like that. I'll send in a little report afterwards, at least... well, if I remember. :)

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So what have I been doing for the past week, aside from web work and prepping for insertion? Living in an entirely different world. Well, in the few spare minutes when my brother isn't. :)

That world is Nirn, specifically the 16 square mile Cyrodiil province as seen in the RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, available now for Xbox 360 and PC. (The second installment is remembered for an environment twice the size of Great Britain, but the land in Oblivion is much more varied.)

This game has earned almost universal 9/10 reviews or higher. Complaints about framerate or load times are not totally without reason, but are an utter non-issue. If you play this game, trust me, you won't care either. It's just... well, HUGE, and it presents endless possibilities. Buy and sell; barter; buy a house; buy a horse; steal a horse; go to jail; break out of jail; repeat.

Jail is actually kind of fun, which I suppose is a bad moral for kids to learn. ;) You can try to pick the lock, which is hard -- harder in the bigger prisons, like the Imperial City Prison. You could also try pickpocketing the key off the guard. (But if you do and you're recaptured, watch out, 'cause they're not dumb enough to give him the key the second time.) In smaller cities you might be paired with a jailmate. I once escaped by starting a fight with another prisoner and then running out the door as the guard came in to intervene.

I could go on for hours. Many reviewers do. Google it; you'll find some. If you have an Xbox 360, I highly recommend it; if you have a PC, chances are you won't be able to run it. But if you have a state-of-the-art computer that can handle the graphics and physics, go for it. :)

Office Live: New Web Site

Remember how I mentioned Office Live in my last post? Well, on Thursday I was lucky enough to get into the beta. The result is a new web site: www.tucklyne.com, for my family's ultrasmall business that does virtually nothing.

The online site-building tools are easy-to-use, powerful, and flexible. I was able to get a fairly good-looking site online in minutes. You can add images, documents, and little provided modules that give weather info, maps, stock quotes, slide shows, and more. You can create infinite pages, and organize them all under different sections and such.

You can give other people permission to edit the site, and create up to five email addresses "@tucklyne.com". You also get detailed reports of site traffic. See either visits or unique visitors with bar charts -- per hour, per day, per month, or during whatever time period you specify. See pie charts of what percentage of your visitors use what operating system, browser, and screen resolution.

And remember: all of this is for free. I didn't pay a cent for anything mentioned above. There's a waiting list for the beta now, but apparently already over 10,000 small businesses have been let in. Once this launches for real, it'll be a great resource. If you want even more, you can pay for it -- more storage (like you'd need it), more email addresses, additional domain names, online business management software, shared online storage, and more. Very, very, very cool.

A note of warning, though: Office Live hijacks your Hotmail somewhat. While you're logged in to Office Live, the Hotmail logos change to Office Live Mail and the MSN links change to Office Live links. This may now be one of the issues preventing me from entering the Windows Live Mail beta, which is really too bad. Overall, though, it's a great service, and awesome for small businesses with no previous web presence.

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It's interesting timing for me, because my main web site (tophtucker.com) just went down. I'm working on a new version now... I'll report back as I make more progress.

A Good Couple of Weeks for Microsoft

Microsoft seems to be on a roll. Over the past couple weeks they've launched a lot of new stuff, including a fair amount today alone.

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WINDOWS

1) Windows Vista February CTP

Microsoft released a generally feature-complete version of Vista. It's now looking pretty good... very good, actually. :) I just watched a video on its speech recognition capabilties; very cool. You can browse the web, open programs, and (of course) dictate easily. You don't need to switch between commands and dictation, like you do in today's Office (to an extent).* Just say "Start... Microsoft Word... the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," and it'll know what to do. Of course, that's just one of tons of cool features, from improved security (build-in spyware protection, firewall, kernel improvements, etc.) to better graphical capabilities (Aero) to more multimedia functions (WMP 11, Photo Gallery) to lots lots more.

* I have Office 2002; I'm not sure if anything's been improved in Office 2003.

WINDOWS LIVE

1) Live.com

This is one of the more minor upgrades; it's been getting little aesthetic updates here and there, which bring it more into line with other coming products. But, due to the open nature of Gadgets, the capabilities of this page are growing all the time.

2) Live Contacts

"Subscribe" to your friends' Live Contacts, and your info will automatically be updated whenever they get a new phone number, address, job... whatever. It's like Plaxo, only integrated into the rest of MSN and Windows Live.

3) Windows Live Local Tech Preview

This is very rough, occasionally glitchy, and incomplete, but it sure is cool! Drive around Seattle or San Francisco at street level. Very neat. Check it out.

4) Windows Live Messenger

They just rolled out a new update today, with a cleaner look, Live Contacts support, and more. Since the first beta, WLM has let users share files in Sharing Folders -- when one or the other person updates the file, it updates for both of them. Perfect for collaboration on group projects.

5) Windows Live Expo

Think craiglist + social networking + other stuff. I'm new to it, and not exactly an expert on all the craigslist stuff either, so I can't make any fair comparisons. But it's pretty neat. Search for product listings, and filter them by geographical or social (friends etc.) proximity. Get all results listed on a map. And drag stuff around. Like dialog boxes. Kinda pointless, but kinda cool. :)

OFFICE LIVE

While at the moment a pretty limited beta, get on the waiting list now, 'cause it's looking like an extremely useful product. Microsoft will actually give you your own domain name (www.youname.com, whatever...) for FREE and help you build a slick corporate online presence. You get email addresses and traffic reports too. For a small fee you get even more... check out the site to learn all about it and sign up quick.

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It's a pretty exciting time... :D

The Popcorn Guy ("Popcorn Bob") is back!

Today I discovered the most amazing and wonderful thing. Now, you faithful readers of this blog (if there are any) will know that I have long lamented the tragic loss of the Popcorn Guy when AMC bought General Cinemas almost four years ago.

That was March 2002. At the beginning of the new school year that fall, a couple friends and I noticed workmen dismantling the once-glorious Popcorn Bob sign on the face of our local General Cinemas 5. Today the pretentious - even downright EVIL - Filmstrip Man "Clip" stands atop Popcorn Bob's rightful throne.

As a sidenote, I just now noticed that AMC has just closed a deal to acquire Loews, too. Who knows what poor animated cartoon mascots will be mercilessly murdered in THAT transaction.

In any case, back to my wonderful discovery -- a copy of the mini-movie that used to precede every GCC movie. Here it is now, for all to see, courtesy of the kind and generous "pugpapaokc":



Enjoy. I know I have.

Until next time,
Toph Tucker
Loyal Devotee of the Church of Popcorn Bob

Web Site Version 5.0 & BSEC

I am happy to report that I am now hard at work on the next version of my web site. "Wait," you say -- "you haven't even finished upgrading 3 to 4!" I know, I know, but version four was already showing its age, and the design needed to be cleaned up. The new Flash home page improved things (certainly in terms of design, at least), but a couple people told be they couldn't see it for lack of Flash. It was a hard choice to abandon Flash for version 5.0, and I'll miss the animation capabilities, but in the end I think it will be nicer and more useful.

Gone is the strange color scheme, replaced by a theme reminiscent (for me at least) of Windows Live. Gone is the bad navigation, which improved in 4.0 but became pointless when 2/3 of the pages didn't yet exist. And here for the first time is a live feed from this very blog. This will make it easier for me to update the home page, and easier for you to stay up-to-date on all things Toph... not that anyone wants to... :)

Also, I've lapsed somewhat in my blogging efforts lately, averaging about one post per month. The BSEC blog, on the other hand, is doing pretty well. (BSEC stands for Beaver Science and Engineering Club, the rocket & robotics club at my school.) Check out the site for some new videos of our recent egg-drop (more like egg-smash) contest.

Homework: A Neccessary Evil?

It's certainly evil, and it's certainly not ALL neccessary.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050731/NEWS010202/507310367

"'Usually I get home and I eat dinner and do homework until I go to bed,' which is typically 9:30 p.m., Rebekah said. ... Such is the plight of today's active student ..."

9:30!? I wish... even in 8th grade that would've been pretty early for me, and I was getting home at 3:40, not 6:00.

"Lucian Doyle said he gives reading assignments to his biology students at Fairdale High School so they will seek answers to homework questions in the text. That reinforces what he's teaching in class and, he hopes, encourages students to seek more information on a subject."

How in the world are we supposed to seek more information when we barely have time to get through what we have!? I'd love to study more about quarks, or the histroy of Belgium, or the Iroquois Confederacy, but I have no time. Homework eats up hours that could be spent researching more interesting things -- not to mention, well, sleeping for once.

"'It seems like teachers don't realize we have other classes,' Stephanie said."

Quite true. At least, they don't seem to talk to each other enough.

"Many students hold part-time jobs and participate in extracurricular activities, and Doyle said he wouldn't necessarily encourage them to drop those. In fact, he said he wishes more students had extracurricular activities."

Yes! So do we! But we can't because of your homework!

"Doyle's advice: Never get behind."

Again, quite true, but easier said than done. What do you do when you have pneumonia, miss a week of classes, and return to find three different huge projects going on at the same time?

Now, the article says, "Teachers give homework for several reasons, the National PTA says. The reasons include helping students review what's covered in class and giving teachers a way to check whether students understand the lessons." Right. Got it. So how about making amount of homework inversely proportional to class performance?

And while you're at it, base it on the Xbox Live TrueSkill Ranking system. After all, you shouldn't neccessarily be overwhelmed with homework after one little slip-up, and with TrueSkill it can all be a bit more steady. If you get a bunch of homework for, say, Science -- and do it all -- you're probably going to do well on that test, since you know the material so well. So then you won't have homework for a while. Then, when the next test comes along, you'll do badly because you haven't been doing anything on it. That's why you don't want sudden jumps and DO want pretty frequent evaluations -- the TrueSkill rank can take into account homework, too, not just quizzes and tests. So, yes, homework must remain in some form -- but perhaps the load could at least be lightened somewhat.

All in favor say "aye."

(Aye!)

Logo Craze

What's up with all these logos popping up everywhere? Sprint I can understand; that was a merger, and I think it compares the two company's former identities pretty well. AT&T? Same thing. But then Intel, and now Kodak? What's wrong with old logos!? I liked them!

(In other news, more substantial news is hopefully coming soon. Maybe. If you're lucky.)

EDIT: And how could I forget AOL!? Cingular, too, to some extent. This may be going on all the time, but I feel like the past year has seen an unusual turnover in corporate identity. And they all update it in much the same way.

EDIT 2: And how could I forget LucasArts and much of the rest of Lucasfilm? And what about UbiSoft -- how long ago was that? Nah, too long ago to count... but do you see my point? Some of these updates are good, but some -- Kodak and Intel, I'd say -- go too far.