Toph Tucker

Nineteen Eighty-Four in 60 Words

2009-10-05T19:36:00.003-04:00

I was just searching my email inbox and stumbled across an email I had sent to myself on Feb. 4., 2008. I don't know exactly why I sent it to myself, but it contained this interesting tidbit.

You may or may not be familiar with Microsoft Word's AutoSummarize feature, which tries to intelligently summarize long blocks of text. Well, since George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has entered the public domain in certain countries, it's pretty freely available online, even though it's still under copyright in the U.S. I pasted the full text into Word and asked it to generate a 60-word summary. This is the result.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR IN 60 WORDS

by George Orwell and Microsoft Word

Winston turned round abruptly. Winston belched again. Winston sighed inaudibly. Winston paused involuntarily. Winston stopped short. Winston followed. It’s Winston—Winston Smith.’

Winston woke first. Winston thought. Winston began reading:

Winston met his eyes. Winston’s entrails contracted. Winston uncovered his face. Winston’s heart sank. Sometimes, Winston. Winston thought. Winston lay silent. Winston thought. Winston worked it out. Winston’s heart stirred.

OS X 10.6, Windows 7, and the "Good Enough" Revolution

2009-08-30T05:13:00.002-04:00

From Christopher Saunders @ internetnews.com:

Apple's Snow Leopard puts the industry to shame

It's not just Apple; both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are relatively minor upgrades largely focused on performance, polish, etc., and neither really pushes the limits of your hardware. But it's not just Apple and Microsoft, either. It fits neatly into an idea of a "good enough" revolution, which Wired wrote about in its September issue.

"In the age of Windows Vista, this seems incredible," writes Saunders. Maybe it would have then -- but we're no longer in the age of Windows Vista. Nowhere close.

The fact that a new OS doesn't require new hardware isn't reason to celebrate in and of itself. It's only reason to celebrate because the changes we've been seeing in operating systems don't seem cutting-edge enough to warrant new hardware. So, as we relish only having to pay $30 to load Apple's latest and greatest onto our computers, perhaps we should shed a lone tear for the age when a new OS simply couldn't run on old hardware -- when it was actually progressing by leaps and bounds.

We've moved on. Oh well.

Or maybe we haven't.

Whatever.

Parallel Universes

2009-01-27T17:53:00.001-05:00

Thanks to both Lost and math class moving past four variables/dimensions, I’ve been thinking some more about parallel universes and multiple dimensions of time. I have NO clue what I’m talking about, but it’s at least interesting to think about.

“Universes”—defined, I suppose, as 4D objects of 3 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal dimension—could be parallel in time, or in space… that is, separated in some 5^th dimension which is either spatial or temporal. Right?

For instance, if reality “branches” in time continually… well, maybe that would mean that every possible decision was made, but at different coordinates along the 5^th axis. (That’s kind of assuming we have free will, I guess.)

If reality “branched” in space continually… well, I guess that would be more along the lines of the “many worlds” envisioned in, say, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass). These other worlds may be described as being very very very close to our own, but slightly separated in that 5^th dimension. And they may be described as, potentially, entirely different, despite being so close—like a book of various photos taken all over the world.

That doesn’t really make sense. It would be more like a scatter plot than a continuous function, and I don’t see any reason why that should be the case. It makes more sense that the parallel worlds closest to our own would look very similar to our own, except some objects would be bigger, some would be smaller, and some would stay the same. The rates of change could be very different, of course, depending on slope with respect to this 5^th axis.

So, sadly, the possibility of moving 1 mm along this 5^th axis and discovering magical new worlds is slim. The book is more like a flipbook, with each page very similar to the last. But maybe if we travelled far enough… it could be a whole new kind of frontier! Of course, if the rest of the universe is 5-dimensional, then we probably are too… so that’d be a little weird. Well. It’d take some getting used to. Not as weird as you might expect, probably.

Along some axis we can’t see, perhaps the various cosmological constants that shape our universe change. Maybe the amount of dark energy (if it even exists) changes. If the expansion of our galaxy is dependent upon the amount of dark energy, and if the amount of dark energy is variable… well, maybe, to avoid a situation where the universe tears itself apart, or where it collapses, we could escape along this 5^th axis to a dark energy “sweet spot” (red).

Maybe an extra dimension could be used for other things, like combating entropy by siphoning energy away from other parts of the universe (multiverse? megaverse? whatever…).

Or maybe we’re just stuck in our lonely four dimensions. I don’t see why there would be dimensions we can’t perceive. Then again, I also don’t see why there should only be 4 dimensions. What an arbitrary number! Maybe there are INFINITE dimensions! Why not? :)

Election

2008-11-04T20:08:00.003-05:00

I voted.

Gosh, I wish I had more time to soak it all in. But I have a paper due which I reallllly ought to be working on.

In 50 years, which will I remember better--the paper or the election? Which will I judge to be more important? The election, almost certainly.

But right now, which do I prioritize, regardless of having a pretty good sense of how I'll feel in 50 years? The paper, of course.

Monopolies

2008-09-09T21:21:00.004-04:00

AT&T was hit with an antitrust suit (ultimately resulting in its break-up) at age 89.

Microsoft was hit with an antitrust suit (almost resulting in its break-up) at age 23.

Google could be hit with an antitrust suit at (or shortly after) age 10.

Who's next? And how young will the company be?

Off the top of my head, Facebook could potentially one day be a serious contender... it's 4...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10036948-38.html

Last Post as a Beaver Student

2008-06-07T19:48:00.003-04:00

This is my last post as a student of Beaver Country Day School, my school for the past 7 years. We graduate tomorrow. Since I've never before posted here except as a BCDS student, I thought it an appropriate time to quickly attempt to answer the question: why?

This blog has been utterly pointless since the beginning. Every so often I may post something interesting, but the vast majority of the time it's pointless. I've cut down on the pointlessness since the early days, but the question remains: why bother?

1. It's largely a resource for me to keep track of my line of thought. It's interesting for me to look back at what I was thinking in 2003, regardless of whether anyone else cares. A blog is a pretty convenient format for that.

2. I don't have a #2.

So there you have it. Farewell. :)

Email, pt. 2

2008-06-01T03:33:00.002-04:00

I have received 3395 emails to my Hotmail account since July 2004, and sent 349 since June 2006, when Hotmail stopped automatically deleting sent messages. By contrast, I have sent and received 4218 emails at my school account in the past 365 days alone.

Overheard @ Bowen Elementary School Biography Presentations

2008-05-16T10:42:00.002-04:00

One kid was dressed up as Bill Gates with a ThinkPad and a boxed copy of office:mac on his desk. I asked him what he thought their most important product was. "Probably, um, Office [holds up the box]... I think, um, a lot of people are using Word these days..."

And then I asked him what their biggest new product moving forward would be. "I think more people could, um, really start using Excel a lot..."

Hm, this Excel thing sounds pretty nifty. He could be on to something here!

Mesh: A little glorious piece of the future, right here in 2008

2008-04-24T21:27:00.001-04:00

I just got invited to the Live Mesh beta. And it's incredible. Impressively fast. Super easy. And remarkably, well, wonderful.

This feels like a taste of a future where it doesn't matter what device you're using, where all you need is a user name and password. (Maybe just a fingerprint.)

And, as much as any of Microsoft's "Live" products, this truly embodies "live."

I wish new mail was pushed to Hotmail. I wish new news was pushed to Live Search News. I wish new sites rising through the ranks were pushed to the top of Live Search results as you watched. I wish additions to the GeoWeb were pushed to Live Maps as you explored. I wish Live was more Live.

For one thing, it'd simplify branding. "What does Live mean? Oh, it means you see the news stories come up as they happen."

But anyway, back to Mesh. I'm just in my first hour or so of using it, and so far I've been timid. I really ought to just mesh my whole Documents folder, instead of selected folders here and there. Well, baby steps.

Really, this feel like it's the dawn of a new era. Maybe this--software plus services, as Microsoft might say; connectedness intertwined into the very fabric of even traditionally "offline" computing--will be Web 3.0.

P.S. Lost in half an hour. :)

Villips: Dedicated Tangible/Wireless Communication Links

2008-04-24T00:41:00.001-04:00

In Star Wars, there is a species called the Yuuzhan Vong. The Vong abhor traditional technology, opting instead for elaborate bioengineered creations. One such device is the head-shaped, head-sized villip.

The gist of it is that two Vong would have a pair of villips, one each. When stroked, one villip contacts the other telepathically, and thus opens a dedicated communications link. The villips can shape themselves into likenesses of their master's heads. Thus, it's a lot like a one-on-one video chat.

Microsoft has a, um, table called the Surface that you may also have heard of. There is also good intel that a spherical version exists.

Once you read up on the villip and the Surface, you may have an idea where this is going.

I envision a head-sized spherical Surface used as a dedicated communication link between two people. As with a villip, simply stroking the orb would "call" the other person. Alternately, depending on the level of trust, you could leave the link open and step into the field of view when you wanted to make contact.

It'd be reprogrammable, of course, to "bond" to someone else. But I like the idea of it being a dedicated link. As simple as simple can get. Tech so elegant it disappears.

But wait, there's more. This real-world villip could make use of the Surface's object recognition tech, too. So to send a batch of pictures to your pal, just stick your camera next to the villip and it'll dump it all over. (There are details to work out, of course, but I'm just talking about general ideas.)

I'm drawn to the villip example in part due to the Star Wars connection, but you could just as easily have a "magic window" that acted like an always-on portal to another place. (It could have shades for privacy.) OK, to a large extent that's already out there, but I think a lot more could be done with it. I imagine this would be great for collaboration between offices (already happening), or for families spread out across the globe (not so much).

Of course, the same data transfer ideas could still apply. You could send photos "through the window" just by waving your digital camera in front of it or something.

It's about telepresence. And on that note, there are a few final links I'd like to pass on:

TouchLight - Wiki and video

Microsoft Research video: Surface chess (fast forward to 3:44; I know there's a better version out there, but I don't know where)

OK, here's a better one, but I'll leave that one 'cause it's cool in other ways. (fast forward to 1:00)

Sort of overlaps, but lots of in-depth cool stuff in these two:

PlayAnywhere

PlayTogether

...and now I must finish my homework. :)

Microsoft, Mesh, etc.

2008-04-23T14:45:00.003-04:00

Mesh is cool. And it supports my belief that there's no reason the web should be constrained to the browser.

"Asked whether Microsoft could make a bid for Google, Ballmer said in part that he did not think Google would be interested and that such a bid would raise regulatory issues. Yahoo and Microsoft rank second and third in Web search, respectively. Google is No. 1." Forbes

Had anyone ever seriously considered that as a possibility? Hey, while they're at it they could merge with Apple, Facebook, Wal-Mart, General Motors and Exxon-Mobil.

Email

2008-04-19T00:42:00.001-04:00

Over the past several years, I think my use of email may actually have declined. At least, email's share of my personal communications pie shrank. This is thanks mainly to Facebook, which serves as a nice middle ground between instant messaging and email.

This year, though, my email use has ballooned. I don't entirely understand why. But it has happened. Maybe I just have more to say, and the growth happens to be happening mainly in the email area of the chatter spectrum.

An extreme case of this: on April 8th, I sent and received more than 520 emails. A year ago, I think I usually topped out around a few per day.

Just something to think about. :)

Superhero Idea

2008-04-17T02:16:00.001-04:00

A superhero who, instead of getting his power from the sun like Superman, got his power from killing people. And with his power he could save people. The ratio would be something like 100 people saved for every 1 person killed. Can you imagine the moral dilemmas?!? (Note: having him kill "bad guys" is a cop-out. There are essentially no villains in this.)

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

2008-03-19T17:39:00.003-04:00

Renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke passed away either today or yesterday, depending on your point of view. (Yesterday I'd have said "today or tomorrow," which would have been even stranger.) He is well-known for his work on "2001: A Space Odyssey," as well as for conceiving of geostationary satellites.

These are the quotations listed on his Wikipedia page:

Clarke's three laws

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside."

"The truth, as always, will be far stranger."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Of UFOs: "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth."

"Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what's over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you'd go crazy."

"We should always be prepared for future technologies, because otherwise they will come along and clobber us."

Of his epitaph: "I've often quoted it: 'He never grew up; but he never stopped growing.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

Nighttime Shuttle Launch

2008-03-11T02:17:00.003-04:00

The nice thing about staying up late to do homework is getting to see things like the nighttime launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. "2 minutes until the release of the hold." I don't even know what that means.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html?param=public

Earth

2008-02-28T19:02:00.002-05:00

I noticed a little while ago that the #1 result on Google for Earth is... Google Earth. It's not even Google bias--Live Search and Yahoo agree. What does that say about us?

P.S. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/224

StarWars.com: 10 Star Wars Superweapons

2008-01-25T22:47:00.001-05:00

I just finished Fury, so I've been reading up on some stuff that would've been too spoilery to read first. Take, for instance, this:

Star Wars: Expanded Universe | Checklist: 10 Star Wars Superweapons

There's just one spoiler, but it's pretty big. But if you don't care, it's a hilarious read.

Also: The Force Unleashed looks awesome. Too bad DMM can't be applied to *EVERYTHING*... yet. I love the glass shattering and sucking guys out into the vacuum. Sounds like a great gameplay mechanic for Battlefront III. ;)

MSNBC: What to do with tax rebate?

2008-01-24T18:49:00.001-05:00

This is sort of interesting...

10 Tips: What to do with tax rebate? - 10 Tips- msnbc.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T20:43:00.001-05:00

Gobble gobble. :)

GO RED SOX!!!

2007-10-29T23:15:00.001-04:00

WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!

I'm going to the parade tomorrow. Ought to be fun. :)

Harry Potter VII

2007-07-22T20:11:00.001-04:00

I just finished the final Harry Potter book. Pretty good. I won't say more than that. :)

Happy 4th of July, 787, etc.

2007-07-05T13:40:00.001-04:00

I'm out of school now. Haven't been updating much recently. Oh well. :)

Happy late 4th of July!

Boeing 787

The Boeing 787 is pretty cool. Check it out:

http://www.newairplane.com/

They're officially launching it on 07/08/07. How appropriate. :)

So, on the eve of its launch, it's fun to look back on the launch of the 707.

http://www.aviationexplorer.com/707_roll_video.htm

Pretty cool! :)

Fun Days

2007-05-08T23:58:00.000-04:00

Friday was May 4th.
May the Fourth be with you!

Saturday was 05/05.
Cinco de Mayo!

Sunday was 05/06/07.
How come nobody pointed this out? At 08:09:10 it would have been especially exciting. And I missed it! :(
...but Sunday was only 05/06/07 if you're going MM/DD/YY. I generally go DD/MM/YY, so I suppose I'll wait until 05/06/07 -- that is, June 5.

New Computer Update: Nice Vista Touches

2007-05-05T17:34:00.000-04:00

As I use Vista more, I notice more and more nice little touches. Long Zheng has blogged about a couple nice ones, and here are a few more. (Note that some have been mentioned in the comments over there. Hey, I can't be completely original...)

Calendar Zooming

Click once on the clock, and it brings up a calendar. No, not the date settings, but a real calendar. Mr. Zheng mentioned that, but what he didn't mention was that if you click on the month, it zooms out to show the whole year. If you click the year, it zooms out to show the decade. Click once more, and it'll show the whole century. All with nice animation.

Also: multiple time zones; clock that doesn't look like Windows 95
What could be improved: link to open in Windows Calendar; show next appointment from Windows Calendar

Gigantic Icons

Hold Ctrl and scroll when you're at the desktop to make your icons tiny or huge... really huge. Depending on what you have on there, there are some really nice-looking icons. Allows for a pretty slick looking, uncluttered desktop. And it encourages me to keep my desktop clean. :)

WinKey + Number

Shortcut for Quick Launch shortcuts. WinKey + 1 for the first shortcut, WinKey + 2 for the second, etc. Not sure if this is new in Vista, but it sure is handy.

Per-Application Volume Mixer

For when I want to leave my music at the volume it is, but turn down AIM and IE.

Also: sound icon changes depending on volume
What could be improved: bug where blank app controls show up en masse; fixed just by closing and re-opening mixer

Auto Scroll in Folder Tree

No horizontal scroll bar needed. Vista scrolls to the right or left automatically as you navigate.

Breadcrumb Folder Navigation

I mentioned this earlier, but really, it's great. Y'know, with the little drop-down arrows between each folder name.

Previous Versions

Right-click a file, click Properties, and then Previous Versions. Great if you save over something you need by accident.

Also: delete a file by accident? Previous Versions still has it archived

Copy File Animation

It's really cool. And glowy. Try it. I actually started at it for a full minute or more, admiring its beauty.

Flip 3D

Especially in Flip 3D. That particular feature may not worth the hype, but it's not as useless as I initially thought. When I have a ton of stuff open at once, as I tend to, it's nice for finding a particular document or folder window because I immediately recognize it visually.

Also: just plain looks cool, especially with video; live thumbnails in Alt+Tab and upon hovering on a taskbar item

Reliability and Performance Manager

Keep track of errors and application failures, as well as your system performance as a whole. Nice.

InkBall

Fun game, though I still miss Pinball.

I'll add more as I remember them...

200th Post: Random Links

2007-04-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

I hereby celebrate my 200th post on this blog with a few random links that've caught my eye.

1) Live Search: I was about to go to the CIA World Factbook, but on a whim I tried "population density of india" and it worked.
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=what+is+the+population+density+of+india%3F&form=QBRE

2) Colbert's Google Bombing successful: Colbert declared "greatest living american"
http://www.google.com/search?q=greatest+living+american&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DKUS

3) Wal-Mart to put their weight behind HD-DVD?
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

And finally....

4) iPod Killer
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070420.html

Vista Thoughts, Remote Assistance, and Fun Links

2007-04-15T18:55:00.000-04:00

So I've been using Windows Vista for a couple weeks now, and so far it's working great. It's running on a Dell XPS 410, a computer that basically replaced a Dell Dimension XPS T600. Funny, I had never known the XPS nameplate had been recycled from an old Dimension line.

Both Vista and Office 2007 have been working great. A few notes on each:

Vista

I love search!!! It's everywhere in Vista, including the Start menu, and when you hit Start it has cursor focus automatically. And it searches basically instantly, which, while now the norm in modern desktop search programs and elsewhere, is immensely gratifying to someone who never really bought into that whole market.

So opening MS Word is as easy as typing WinKey + "word" + Enter, which takes me all of half a second. And becauses it indexes not only files and programs and all that stuff but also IE Favorites and History, opening starwars.com is as simple as WinKey + "starwa" + Enter.
The Sidebar is quite handy.
I love breadcrumb navigation in Windows Explorer...
The much-advertised Flip 3D, aside from being incredibly satisfying, is actually kind of handy because it gives you a much better sense of what you're flipping through and thus makes it easier to find a window if you've got a ton of stuff open at once, like I usually do.
Seeing live video play in Flip 3D, Alt-Tab thumbnails, or taskbar thumbnails is truly a "wow" moment.
But Search remains the REAL wow moment.
Little things like a taskbar calendar that doesn't make you change the date if you just want to see what May looks like, or the per-application volume mixer, or the transparency effects, or ultra-high-res icons, really add up to a much nicer overall experience
But Search is the nicest experience.
My desktop has never looked better thanks to aforementioned high-res icons and the fact that you can resize desktop icons by holding Ctrl and scrolling your mouse's scroll wheel.
Voice command is incredible. In IE you can just say the name of a link and it'll click it. Or in Solitaire, say "2 of Clubs" to click the 2 of clubs, and then "3 of hearts" put it on the 3 of hearts. You can do literally anything with it, as far as I can tell. Sure, it's not always faster than keyboard and mouse, but sometimes it is.
I love the general emphasis on tagging and metadata throughout Vista.
Did I mention I love search?

Office 2007

It's just so.... so easy...
I actually use formatting styles for the first time ever.
I love macros. Not that that's new.
All the design templates have finally been updated from the old 90's-era relics.
Sadly, traditional Word Art is still there and ugly as ever
But it's been replaced in part by new, much much better text styling
Images can be given nice reflections and everything in a matter of seconds
There's just too much to mention it all
Some old rarely-used functions can be hard to find now, and one or two are actually gone. They won't be missed by many... but I'm still kind of sad they're gone. But literally, one or two things. That basically nobody ever used.
Every once in a while, evidence of the old Word 2003 UI comes and mars the experience a bit.

Note that for both Office 07 and Vista, you need to actually use it for a little while to really appreciate everything.

Remote Assistance

It's been in Windows since before XP, but today I'm using it to help my brother on a Spanish menu publication while he's working on one computer and I'm still working at the other. I don't understand why Support teams can't start using this. Though, for all I know, maybe they do. But I must say, it's a real "wow" moment, and it's not even new! In the slightest! Oh, the gems that lay hidden due to overwhelming UIs and lack of discoverability...

Fun Links

Just a few quick things to end on:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonniegrrl/sets/72157600031506494/show/
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/laura/techfest-07-playanywhere-meets-playtogether/
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/tina/first-official-look-at-the-xbox-360-spring-dashboard-update/
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/04/12/407562.aspx
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/soldierportable.html
http://theforce.net/latestnews/story/Star_Wars_101_105039.asp
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18096644
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9SpdCZeg0

New Computer, Pt. 2

2007-03-31T11:47:00.000-04:00

And this is one of my first acts on the new computer! :)

New Computer

2007-03-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

We just got a new computer, so this is my last post on this one--indeed, my last act on this one, aside from turning it off--before it's moved to the old folks' home (aka the basement). Farewell, computer. You have served us well.

Nineteen

2007-03-19T23:49:00.000-04:00

Nineteen years ago today, my parents got married, on March 19. Nineteen months later, I was born on October 19. And Star Wars Episodes I and III came out on May 19.

Nineteen also happens to be the smallest Higgs prime for squares and cubes that has an index among Higgs primes that is less than its index among primes overall (because 17 is not a Higgs prime). Wait, what??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_%28number%29

SATs, R2-D2, MS Ad Comparison

2007-03-10T15:44:00.000-05:00

SATs

I just finished taking the SATs around 2:15 today. Well, that was fun. I must say, the best question was certainly--

Wait. I guess I'm not allowed to say that. Too bad, it was a pretty awesome question. :)

And then there was this other really puzzling one where--

Never mind. Move along.

R2-D2
http://www.theforce.net/topstory/story/R2D2_Mailboxes_Confirm_Rumors_104142.asp
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/09/usps-goes-postal-with-r2d2-mailboxes/

I was just watching Episode IV last night. And R2 is certainly awesome. And I have a feeling he basically plans everything that happens. (All right, not everything, but a lot--finding Luke, reuniting him with Obi-Wan, etc....) He is, after all, just about the only guy who has a clue, at least once Obi-Wan "becomes one with the Force" and all. He saw everything. Funny how he's the guy we can't understand, and he knows everything.

MS Ad Comparison
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070310/windows-tv-ads/

P.S.
Worms is a great game.

Flags of Our Fathers & ESB SE turns 10

2007-02-21T21:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we saw Flags of Our Fathers... on the 62nd anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima. Whoah, eh? Total coincidence. :)

In other news, today marks the 10th Anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition! Hoorah!

Tophtucker.com v5.0 is going online!

2007-02-20T01:17:00.000-05:00

The first parts of Tophtucker.com v5.0 are going online now! I have some space issues, so I'm trying to do some spring cleaning at the same time. In any case, the new home page is now live, with more to follow in the next few minutes. :)

Super Bowl Ads

2007-02-15T01:48:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know, this is really late. But anyway--while overall I didn't think this year's Super Bowl had a ton of great standout ads, I'd just like to say that I loved all three Coke ones. "Vending" in particular is fascinating if you watch carefully... actually, there are a few kinda creepy aspects of it if you pay attention. Watch and see if you know what I mean. ;)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16566275/

Star Wars Anniversary Year: Ep. IV SE

2007-01-31T21:30:00.000-05:00

As I'm ashamed to note I never mentioned before, this is a very special year for Star Wars fans: it's the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Episode IV. And now, today, we celebrate the first milestone: the 10th anniversary of the Special Edition of Episode IV.

Sure it was controversial, but it sure did clean up the film a lot. :)

See here.

Happy Anniversary, Ep. IV SE!!!

Congrats to Microsoft on Vista and Office 07

2007-01-30T11:38:00.000-05:00

I'd like to congratulate Microsoft on (finally) launching both Windows Vista and Office 2007 today. Vista is certainly a huge upgade from XP, and while it doesn't surpass what's out there in a lot of ways, it's an important springboard looking to the future. I'm excited for Service Pack 1 already. :-D

As for Office 2007, I think it's actually pretty revolutionary. The whole ribbon, the ease-of-use -- I think it's a huge leap forward. Next up they need to get super-easy (as in, Google Docs-easy) collaboration in it and maybe an "Office Lite" online version to keep pace with Google on that front. But really, I've tried Google Docs, and while it's passable if the computer doesn't have Word, it just can't compare. I *need* the Word feature set... and keyboard shortcuts. Those are critical. :)

Meanwhile, MSN is *NOT* dead and Windows Live is *NOT* replacing it, no matter what some people may say. Read this: http://liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/01/28/msn-revival-the-january-effect.aspx.

---

Speaking of long-delayed products, my web site v.5 should be online in the next couple of weeks. But I'm in the midst of a huge History paper, so don't hold your breath. But look on the bright side -- it's been in development for merely 1/5th the time as Vista!

Happy New Year!

2007-01-07T14:08:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! Sorry I've been silent recently. I don't really have any excuse.

But here's some fun reading:

Patrick Curry's 52 Game Ideas (one from each week of 2006)
http://www.patrickcurry.com/thoughts/?page_id=67

And this looks really neat:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/06/nikkos-r2-d2-skype-callin-and-media-playin-oddities/

Merry Christmas Eve!

2006-12-24T17:21:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas Eve!

(And Happy Holidays in general!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T23:11:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-18T00:26:00.000-05:00

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

Happy (Belated) Halloween!

2006-11-01T19:57:00.000-05:00

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

Happy belated Halloween!

The Long Tail

2006-10-18T23:57:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-10-18T23:56:00.001-04:00

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...

2006-10-18T23:56:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-10-17T07:39:00.000-04:00

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)

2006-10-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-29T21:11:00.000-04:00

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

"Halo Wars," a real-time strategy game set in the Halo universe and developed by the guys who made Age of Empires. Trailer here.
Peter Jackson teaming up with Microsoft Game Studios to create two new games, including one Halo-based one.
Project Gotham Racing 4 was announced.
Another Banjo Kazooie game from Rare was announced.
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.
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).
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'

2006-09-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-06T23:50:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-02T01:24:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-26T21:05:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-07-29T10:41:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-21T20:44:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-21T19:23:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-07-20T01:07:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-19T23:59:00.000-04:00

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...

A New Hope novelization - out before the movie was, an interesting time capsule, but not exactly a page-turner
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)
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
Shadows of the Empire - see below.
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:

Republic Commando: Hard Contact
A short story or two
Dark Lord
A short story or two
The Unseen Queen
The Swarm War
Outbound Flight [?]
Survivor's Quest [?]
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!

2006-07-15T20:41:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-06-09T23:38:00.000-04:00

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?

2006-05-21T21:01:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-21T20:53:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-22T17:49:00.000-04:00

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

2006-03-30T20:20:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-03-25T23:14:00.000-05:00

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....

---

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. :)

---

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

2006-03-04T17:16:00.000-05:00

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.

---

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

2006-03-01T19:40:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-02-20T22:42:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-17T19:20:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-01-30T02:20:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-08T19:10:00.000-05:00

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.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005-11-18T17:42:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to the 12:01 showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Quite good, I'd say! :) The theater was packed, the crowd was excited, and there was one movie trailer that I'll never, ever forget... hehehe, it was hilarious. But I can't say what it was... because that would spoil it!

I'll update with more impressions later.

Happy Birthday Toph!

2005-10-19T23:19:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to Toph,
Happy Birthday to me!

--------

Woohoo! Today's my birthday! And, in honor of that, I though I'd give a long-overdue update on the state of things.

=====
MOVIES That I've Recently Seen
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Flightplan

Flightplan really capitalizes on the current national state of mind, and it ended up as a pretty good, if not spectacular, movie. There are a few very thought-provoking moments, and it sure keeps you guessing.

Well, it kept me guessing, at least. :)

Serenity

The first thing I thought about this movie is, "Wow. That doesn't sound like a sci-fi movie name." I'm suppose I'm used to something as blunt as "Star Wars." :)

Speaking of which, Serenity has a number of sequences that appear to be largely inspired by SW, and it has a similar overall feel, albeit with some very, very brief moments that lean more towards the "horror" genre. A few things for SW fans to look out for:

Serenity itself is very Millenium Falcon-esque, and the captain is very Solo-esque.
Space sequences seem very reminiscent of the Episode III space battle...
...especially the end.
Highly recommended for any sci-fi fan.

In Her Shoes

This isn't typically the kind of movie I would go to. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I won't waste too much time describing it, aside from saying that it does a pretty good job of what it's meant to do.

Elizabethtown

Again, I probably wouldn't see this normally. But I did like it. It's awfully reminiscent of Garden State in a number of ways, while remaining unique and funny. And an excuse for popcorn is always enjoyable. :)

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WEBSITE Version 5.0 on its way
======

As I've said before, I'm somewhat dissatisfied with version 4.0 of my web site (which I haven't even completed, by the way). So I'm abandoning it. It didn't really accomplish the task at hand -- that is, to clean up and organize the site -- and I don't quite like the design, although I do think it's an improvement in many ways.

Just like the early stages of version 4.o, expect 5.0 to come in bits, starting with the mere skeleton of a site and then building up to its v.3 glory and beyond.

--------

I must be off now, so fare thee well. :)

School, Rockets, Segways & Websites

2005-09-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

Well, school has started again. It's been pretty good so far -- and the BSEC has been born. :D

Standing for either "Beaver Science and Engineering Club" or "Beaver Society for Environmental Catastrophe," the BSEC is a new club I've founded with a couple friends. We're focusing primarily on rocket, potato guns, and robots. Hehe... it should be fun. :)

However, the most exciting news of the past few weeks is that I got to ride a Segway! Last weekend the Third Annual AltWheels Transportation Festival took place at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum. My Phyiscs teacher suggested I go at the last minute, and I sure am glad I did! Seascoast Fun Rides (website under construction) was giving 5-minute Segway demos on a p-Series. I got to go on one -- it was really, really fun!

==========

I'm currently in the conceptual stages of redesigning my website... again. Yes, I'm unsatisfied with version 4.0, which isn't really even done yet. The new site will feature a more unified look across all pages, including the home page, which is currently a random Flash thing. I think I'll have a quick Flash intro, but have the regular site be mainly just good old HTML.

I'm also hoping to get this blog on the front page, if I can ever figure out how... I need a web-based RSS newsreader... hmm...

Last Day of Summer

2005-09-05T23:34:00.000-04:00

Three posts all summer long. Not so great, eh? Well, school -- yes, dreaded school -- is now upon me. I have just over eight hours left until I begin. It's been less than one since I finished my summer reading. Fortunately, I ended on a good note -- Rocket Boys, which inspired the movie October Sky.

While I haven't been a reliable blogger, I have still kept track of my summer. Oh yes indeed. It's probably my most well-documented summer ever. It's just that the documentation has yet to be sorted out. Perhaps, if I ever find some free time, I shall "retro-blog" as I said I would in my last post.

One last thing, before I retire for the night. In honor of the summer of 2005 drawing to a close, I have renamed this blog from the faux-egotistic and initially-temporary title of "Toph's Awesome Blog." It is now entitled, quite simply, "Toph Tucker." It matches my website better, and -- with luck -- eventually this site will match that one in style as well.

That is all for now. Happy September, and fare thee well.

Two Years Old

2005-07-22T13:30:00.000-04:00

As of Wednesday, my blog is exactly two years old! Wohoo! Wanna know why I missed it? Probably 'cause I haven't posted here in over a month. Sorry about that. :( Here are some quick updates.

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Half Blood Prince

I went to Barnes & Noble at midnight and got the new Harry Potter, and finished it three days later. That's the fastest I've ever read a Harry Potter book, and (I think) the second-fastest I've read any book. It was quite good, albeit sad... well, that's all I have time for now.

Website

I uploaded some minor changes to my site yesterday, including a revised home page. Check it out. More changes coming at the end of the summer, although I'm thinking of giving up on this version -- too messy, really, and I still haven't gotten it all working -- and skipping on to a very similar version 5.0.

Taconnet

Mere minutes from now I'll be on the road, heading for a wedding in New Hampshire. From there, on Sunday, we'll be going on to Taconnet. So I'll be relatively out of touch for the next month or so.

Retro-Blog

I have been keeping track of what I've been doing this summer... just not here. :) So I've been thinking of "retro-blogging" -- altering the time & date manually to make it look like I actually have been posting all this time. If I do, though, I'll put a little disclaimer towards the bottom.

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Okay, gotta go. Fare thee well.

Last Day of School

2005-06-10T23:53:00.000-04:00

Wow... I've been so busy lately I've barely been updating at all. Since my last update, I've studied for endless hours for exams, taken my exams, gotten my exams back, and -- today -- had my last day of school. I'm now, officially, a 10th grader... at least, that's what they say. I'd actually lean towards calling myself a 9th grader.

Gotta go... bed time. Late, it is. To bed I must go.

Xbox 360, Movies, and More

2005-05-24T19:11:00.000-04:00

It's been an extremely exciting and busy time lately. For the biggest reason, head over to my new Star Wars blog, which is replacing the old Blogger one. Yes, Episode III has come out, and yes, it's awesome!!! :-D

In addition to seeing Revenge of the Sith six times so far, I've been swamped by homework, projects, and exam review. Here's my attempt at a worthy blog update.

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Xbox 360

You know it's been a long time indeed when a whole new console has been announced and I haven't said a word about it.

Xbox 360 was officially launched during an MTV event that aired May 12th. Then, at E3, they revealed more information... kind of. The launch has been somewhat underwhelming, but there's sure to be plenty of new information as the launch -- this fall -- approaches.

It seems like X360 is going to be slightly less powerful than the PS3 this time around, but they're very, very close. That's interesting, since PS3 is launching 1/2 a year later. Hopefully the power differential will be balanced out by X360 being easier to develop for than the PS3.

A couple of promising games thus far include Gears of War, Project Gotham Racing 3, and, of course, Perfect Dark Zero. (What a weird name.) Also, it's been suggested that Halo 3 will launch day-and-date with PS3, which, personally, I find hilarious. Take that, Sony!

Backwards compatibility? Check... kind of. Word is X360 will support compatibility with only the best-selling games from the original Xbox. No, that makes no sense, but whatever. ;-)

One category in which X360 clearly has PS3 beat is online gaming. From micro-transactions to the marketplace to downloadable content to video chat to Live Arcade, persistent Gamer Card, reputation & stats... X360 looks to blow PS3 out of the water. You'll be able to create your own content and put it online for others to "buy" from you, as well as buy other people's custom work. Having one unified online persona really has its benefits.

Every connected X360 will have access to "Xbox Live Silver," which is basically all the features of Xbox Live but online gaming. "Ha ha," you say, "well what does that leave?" Stats, gamer ID, content download... a lot more than non-Live subscribers have today, that's for sure! Subscribe and you'll get Xbox Live Gold, which adds actual online gaming. It looks like some X360 games could get as many as 64 gamers per game, and I have no doubt someone will exceed that after a year or two.

Xbox 360 will also have Media Extender functionality built-in. Basically, that means you can stream video, music, photos and more from your Media Center PC and access it all from your Xbox. That means that, even without the optional, removable, upgradable hard drive, you can get Custom Soundtracks in every single game.

X360 versus PS3, I'd definitely go with X360. I expect the power & graphical differences to be negligible, and online/Media Center capabilities make up for all that. For more information, check out...
- IGN Xbox 360
- TeamXbox
- Xbox.com
- Xbox360.com

Movies

No, I won't mention a certain sci-fi epic. You can read plenty about that at my other blog. However, a couple weekends ago -- Saturday the 14th of May, if I'm not mistaken -- I saw Kicking and Screaming in theaters with my friend, and then went back to his house and saw Collateral. I couldn't find two more different movies if I tried. The former was pretty funny, although not extraordinary. The latter was very serious, though, and rather gruesome. It was good, though. Well done.

Constitution Day

"WASHINGTON - The Constitution long has ensured that Congress can’t tell schools what to teach. But that’s no longer the case for at least one topic — the Constitution itself."

That just about says it all. Click here for more.

Dreams

Last night I dreamt a little group of neighbors, including me, cleansed the neighborhood of all wildlife and then re-introduced only our favorite animals -- which, strangely enough, happened to include a giant man-eating frog. It got loose and started scaring people off. I think that's when I woke up.

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Gotta get back to History now. I've probably spent too much time on it as is. Fare thee well... and do yourself a favor and go see Episode III!!!

SAT IIs

2005-05-07T15:29:00.000-04:00

Today I took the SAT II Physics test. Fun. Not. I didn't even finish the test. Oh well... I'm glad it's over.

Forza, SAT IIs, and New York, oh my!

2005-05-04T23:00:00.000-04:00

Today we finally got Forza Motorsport, which I actually got for Christmas but which didn't come out until this week. I've barely gotten to play at all, but so far it's great! You can customize you car in I'd say about a duotrigintillion ways. In addition, you can use the "Drivatar" technology to train your own AI driver who drives just like you do, and then have your Drivatar race for you in races you don't want to do yourself. You can also race against your own Drivatar, which is cool. Forza also supports split-screen and Xbox LIVE play.

(I've loved racing games on Xbox ever since the original Project Gotham Racing, which was one of the very first games we got.)

In other news, I'm taking the SAT II in Physics this Saturday. Fun. Not. And my brother's going to New York tomorrow with the 7th grade, just like I did two years ago. They stay until Friday. (Friday the 9th grade also has a field trip: going to a Red Sox game!)

I have to go to bed now. So bye. :-)

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish

2005-05-01T00:02:00.000-04:00

Today we saw the 5:30 show of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I liked it, although I don't think it lives up to the book. Still, it does an admirable job. I thought the casting was great, and the opening scene is hilarious. It's a fun movie -- I'd recommend it.

Tests and Weekends

2005-04-20T17:42:00.000-04:00

First of all, I had three tests today. Actually, I technically had only one, but I also had a quiz and an exam. (Quiz in Spanish, Test in Geometry, and Exam in History.) They weren't too bad, but still - it's a bit much, I think.

Second of all, I realize I never wrote up an overview of my long weekend, so here goes.

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Friday

We went to Fever Pitch for the second time, which was fun. We saw the Episode III trailer again -- my fifth time in theaters -- which was even better. (We didn't have Friday off, mind you.)

Saturday

We went to my older sister's birthday party.

Sunday

First we went to my cousin's First Communion, and then to the after party at his house. That night we went to another birthday, this one for a family friend. That took up pretty much the whole day, but I got some good reading in what with all the commuting. Actually, I got quite a bit of reading done almost every day of the long weekend.

Monday

Patriot's Day! Every year we've always gone to a parade out in Concord (where my grandparents live) and then to watch the marathon at Heartbreak Hill. This year we managed to get Red Sox tickets and went with a few friends! The marathon route passes very close to Fenway, so we stopped by before leaving and watched for about 30 seconds, as opposed to several hours last year. When we got back there was some Xbox to be had, and then a little game of baseball with those same friends we went to the actual game with. Ugh.

Tuesday

Web site work, which I had also done some of the other four days, and homework. I was up pretty late, so now I'm tired.

---

That long weekend made this a three-day week for me! Last week was also a short week, but for a different reason -- I was out sick on Wednesday.

I have to go do homework now. Fare thee well.

Congrats to the New Pope

2005-04-19T13:02:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Pope Benedict XVI. I'm sure it's no coincidence that he was chosen exactly one month before Episode III is released. :-)

New Tophtucker.com Home Page!!!

2005-04-19T12:13:00.000-04:00

I've just completed and uploaded a brand-new Tophtucker.com home page, unlike any it's ever had before. Complete with a Star Wars theme to celebrate one month until Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, it's done entirely in Flash. Check it out!

(I've also completed miscellaneous other updates around the site.)

I worked on the new home page some last weekend, but I did most of it over the long weekend -- we had today and yesterday off form school. Anyway, enjoy the new look, and tell me what you think!

Fever Pitch

2005-04-09T23:28:00.000-04:00

I just saw Fever Pitch tonight, and it was great! They also had the Episode III trailer playing before it, which was a nice surprise. :-)

End of Vacation

2005-04-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

At 8:00 tomorrow, I must go to school. Grr. Silly school.

Oh well... I actually got some web site stuff done today! And saw Miss Congeniality 2, which was pretty good.

Abduction!!!

2005-04-01T11:33:00.000-05:00

Just this morning, I was abducted by evil aliens trying to take over the world!!! They broke into my bedroom through the window at 4:00 this morning, while everyone else was still asleep. They grabbed me from my bed, immobolized me with some kind of stunner, and then loaded me onto a hovercraft that was hovering outside my window. At that point the commotion woke up my brother, who came in to see what was happening. They stunned him, too, and then flew off to their mothership with me!

Once onboard, I was interrogated by their Supreme Overlord. He asked me all sorts of random questions -- how old I was, what my hobbies were, and so on. Just then, right in the middle of the interrogation, there was a fire drill on the mothership! I couldn't believe my luck. We all walked calmly but quickly from the Overlord's chambers, just as we had been taught to do. As we were all lining up so the alien fire chief could take our attendance, I spotted an escape pod right next to me! While the rest of the aliens were preoccupied, I dove into the pod and slapped the eject button. (I couldn't read the alien writing, so I just pressed the most prominent button, and it worked!)

By the time they noticed I was gone, I was already re-entering Earth's atmosphere. They shot at me a couple times with their laser cannons, but I was too far out of range. I had made it! I had escaped!

I landed in a field in Virginia. Sadly, I didn't know how to operate the parachute or reverse thrusters or any other landing equipment the pod might have, so it was quite a hard impact. The pod totally destroyed the surrounding field and an adjacent pod -- I hear you can see the crater from space!

So anyway, now I'm back safely, but I'm going to be tried for involuntary manslaughter on a massive scale. Too bad... I'll try to keep you updated on any new happenings.

Hans Brinker

2005-03-29T23:41:00.000-05:00

Another thing: we watched "Hans Brinker" tonight, which is a hilariously dated skating movie. The acting is, shall we say, sub-par. :-)

Walt Disney World

2005-03-29T21:27:00.000-05:00

Just a couple hours ago we got back from Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It was very fun!!! Here's my report.

Day Zero (Thursday) -- Disney Board Walk

We arrived on Thursday, March 24. As soon as we got to our hotel room (roughly 18:45) I rushed to the TV to see if they had Cartoon Network so I could watch Chapter 24 of Star Wars: Clone Wars, which was on at 19:00. Tragically, they didn't. We got the laptop set up, though, and downloaded it from starwars.com soon thereafter. We also went outside and explored the area behind our hotel, called the Disney Board Walk. There "Jeff" pointed us in the direction of a little restaurant -- and arcade.

Day One (Friday) -- Disney-MGM Studios

We spent our first full day at MGM, which remains my favorite of all the different parks. There we went to see, among other things, "Star Tours," Indiana Jones, "Lights, Motors, Action," and the nightime spectacular "Fantasmic!"

Day Two (Saturday) -- Epcot

Our second day was spent at the land of the giant golf ball. We saw (among other things) "Honey I Shrank the Audience," "Muppetvision 3-D," and "Test Track," which I did not go on.

Day Three (Sunday) -- Magic Kingdom

The Magic Kingdom is probably the most famous of the Disney parks. We spent the morning at attractions like "Big Thunder Mountain," "Splash Mountain" (which I didn't go on), Buzz Lightyear, Indy go-karts, and the Country Bear Jamboree. We went back to our hotel by way of Epcot shortly after noon, and then returned at night for the amazing parade and fireworks. ("Sal" helped us out then with seating suggestions.)

Day Four (Monday) -- Disney-MGM Studios, Disney Board Walk

We returned to MGM on Monday, this time doing "Who Wants to be a Millionaire - Play it!" twice and even more "Star Tours." I went on Star Tours five times total duirng our vacation. Later in the day, we fully explored the Board Walk, again assisted (this time in our quest to learn more about Disney's navy) by Jeff. We rented a little pedal-powered buggy to ride around the lake on, which was quite an interesting experience.

Day Five (Tuesday)

That's today! We spent a bit of time on the Board Walk, then packed up and left. Disney World was lots of fun -- perhaps when I have a bit more time I'll go more in-depth with my opinions on it.

Disney World

2005-03-23T18:37:00.000-05:00

In 24 hours, I will most likely be in our hotel room in Disney World. Again, I'll be sure to report in afterwards!

In other news:

Yesterday and the day before yesterday, my family did the exact same thing at night.

Watch the latest Clone Wars chapter
Eat dinner while...
...watching The Incredibles

We finished The Incredibles yesterday. It's a very good movie, and the DVD has some absolutely hilarious extras, which we also watched last night. Note that when I was watching The Incredibles last Saturday, it was with some friends, separate from our little family watching campaign. :-)

Vacation

2005-03-21T14:03:00.000-05:00

As of 14:10 this past Friday, I'm on vacation! This time, my family's actually going somewhere, which is rare for us. This Thursday we're flying down to Florida to Disney World! It'll be the first time my brother or I have gone.

I'll report in when we get back.

Movies

2005-03-20T23:25:00.000-05:00

Over the past three days, I've seen parts or all of nine movies.

Friday:
The Perfect Score (all)
Carolina (some)
Ace Ventura (some)
Austin Powers (some)
Forrest Gump (all)

Saturday:
Millions (all)
The Incredibles (some)

Sunday:
Robots (all)
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (some)

The Perfect Score was weird. Forrest Gump was good. Millions was trippy. And Robots was very good, very funny, and very fun to watch.

Bed time... adios!

Xenon

2005-03-09T23:37:00.000-05:00

Today, the first details surrounded the next-generation Xbox (code-named "Xenon") emerged at the Game Developer's Conference. Click here to see IGN's coverage. Sounds very cool indeed!!! :-)

Troy

2005-03-04T22:35:00.000-05:00

We're studying Homer's work in History, and so our teacher suggested we watch Troy. It was pretty good.

Exams

2005-03-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

Well, I had my two exams yesterday. They went all right, I didn't end up spending too much time on them.

The good news is: we got today off because of it. The bad news is: we would have had today off anyway, because of the snow. Why couldn't the snow wait just 24 hours!?!?!?

The bad news is made even worse by the fact the Middle School, for no apparent reason, got yesterday off -- they don't have exams. My brother Willy is part of the Middle School. I was fine with him getting Monday off, since I knew I would get today off, but now he's gotton both days off! Very unfair indeed. :-(

Dogs & Exams

2005-02-27T14:33:00.000-05:00

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:

Boy, it's been a while since I've had one of those, hasn't it!? This entry, though, is actually largely about Rosie, and not so random...

This past Monday (which I had off... go presidents!) was the one-year-anniversary of us getting Rosie!!! I have some pictures that, with luck, will get on my web site sometime within the next year....

This past Tuesday was even more exciting -- our neighbors got a new cockapoo named Cooper! He's very cute. He met Rosie for the first time yesterday, which was very entertaining -- Cooper kept on hiding under the chairs, where Rosie couldn't get at him, and then jumping out and attacking Rosie's cheek, neck, or tail. Rosie, in turn, would paw at Cooper, occasionally trapping him.

Exams:

This Monday we have our first exams of the year. You see, we have each class for two out of the three trimesters, so we have our first exams 2/3 through the year. Fortunately, I have only two on Monday: Physics and Freshman Seminar. In fact, I really only have one (to study for, at least), because the Freshman Seminar one is almost exclusively opinion-based.

I'm certainly not looking forward to the end of the year, when I'll have four. :-(

Happy Valentine's Day!

2005-02-14T23:11:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! :-) Valentine's Day means candy, and candy means goodness... yay!

Today at school we got our Math tests back. As a matter of policy, I don't state my grades, but I will say that I've gotten the exact same score percentage-wise on this Math test, our recent History quiz (both were last Friday -- we got the History quizzes back 15 minutes after taking them), and the History test before that. Crazy, isn't it?

However, my Math score looks like it's about to be overturned due to some noble arguing by a few of my classmates and I regarding question #16 during class today while reviewing the test. Here's the problem. (Specifics may be off, but the gist of it is right.)

Line AB is congruent to line BC. Line AD is congruent to line BD. Line CD is a perpendicular bisector of line AB. True or false.

I say false -- you can draw it so it's either way, so it's false. The teacher says true. What do you say?

Patriot's Parade = No School!

2005-02-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

Since the Patriots Parade is today, we were told that, if we had permission from our parents, we didn't have to go to school today! Yippee! :-) I would have gone, but we'd get nothing done in class anyway with so few people.

Go Pats! :-)

SUPER BOWL CHAMPS!!!

2005-02-06T23:54:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to the good ol' New England Patriots, winners of Super Bowl XXXIX!!! YIPPEE!!! Four championships in as many years for New England... not too bad! :-)

Feel like checking who won the last 38? Head on over to MSN Search (advertised today during the game) and search "Who won Super Bowl [insert number here]?"

GO PATS!

More Mirrors

2005-02-01T21:35:00.000-05:00

We've actually just started studying mirrors in physics class (what a coincidence!), and I'm rapidly losing confidence in my explanation of why objects in mirrors are closer than they appear. It still makes a tiny bit of sense, though -- in a strange, pointless kind of way... ;-)

Additionally, I'm now reaching greater understanding of the part mirror curvature plays in image size. For a long time I've had a basic understanting of how the light bends differently because of the curve, but only now am I learning about focal points and focal length and such. Light is an extremely interesting subject. :-)

Enough of this light enlightenment... back to Spanish homeowork. :-(

More Sledding, "Kiss me Kate"

2005-01-30T21:05:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I started the day off with a trip to the bookstore. Next I went sledding at the same place I went last week. Much of my old camp remained, though the new snow had made it a bit harder to see.

This time I actually sledded a bit more, but I also spent a lot of time building a nice little snow tunnel with a neighbor of ours. (His younger brother was there, too, but he was sledding most of the time.) The snow's deep enough that we could build a nice deep tunnel with a sturdy roof and not have to increase the natural depth of the snow at all. :-)

Last night we went to my uncle's school's production of Kiss Me, Kate, which was good. It had a couple of especially funny parts, such as a random wandering donkey and a nice little dead bird!

School & Snow

2005-01-25T22:13:00.000-05:00

Despite rampant AIM-based speculation to the contrary, we did have school today. Oh well. Yesterday's snow day was very enjoyable -- my younger brother's friend came over and we played videogames (Halo 2 & Mercenaries) and went sledding.

Almost the entire time they were sledding, I was working on a little base camp at the top of the hill (so would it be a... umm... summit camp?). I flattened out a pretty big area -- plenty of room for the three enough, with plenty of room for a couple more. The flattening was crucial -- there was so much so it was next to impossible to walk otherwise. I then created custom-made spots for out tubes. I also defined the top of our run, complete with a queue area. I also made an elevated flattened area -- the "Snow City Cafe." There I had three little bowl-shaped indents in the snow for eating our M&Ms out of. :-)

Videogaming was also, of course, plenty of fun. I had one particularly great solo game (meaning my brother & his friend were doing something else) of Team Fiesta on Beaver Creek. I ended up winning the game for our team with 20 kills. At the end, I was doing really well with a rocket launcher -- I was so proud of myself. :-)