July 2007

Torchwood
Submitted Thursday, July 26, 2007 - 2:37:31 AM by Klaitu

Now, how cool is this?

Torchwood..

Doctor Who..

They're anagrams! Get it!

Torchwood is the spinoff series of Doctor Who, the main character being Captain Jack himself. I thought I'd give it a try, as I've recently been on a kick of converting videos into hi-def for my PS3, so I did the entire series of torchwood.

Torchwood.. it's like The X-Files, except if the X-Files was on HBO. So, basically.. it's the X-Files with cussing and nudity, flimed like CSI. Oh yeah, and there's British people all over the place, snogging.

And it's set in the same universe as Doctor Who.. how weird is that? Because Torchwood is in no way like Doctor Who, except it uses Doctor Who characters, including a guest appearance by the Doctor himself.

Overall, it's pretty cool. I highly recommend you watch it.



Economics, Big and Small
Submitted Sunday, July 15, 2007 - 4:01:14 AM by Klaitu

Goldberry had an interesting post over on her blog at http://canadiandana.com which discusses the general cost of living. It's a subject that I find fascinating.. and it amazes me how different people view value differently.

So far as my personal cost of living, it's pretty cheap! I spend about $200 or so a month on various bills, and the rest of my money I can choose to spend (or not) as I please. I have no debt, and I don't purchase anything I can't afford. On average, for about every one dollar I spend, I earn 3 others.

In the US, most people spend 1.22 dollars on every 1 they earn.

I still live with my parents. Lame? Lots of people think so. These same people then want to borrow money from me.

Let's look at it this way. Rent an apartment? I essentially pay someone continuously for the right to dwell somewhere. If I continued to live in apartments, I would never be free of rent payments. So then I ask "Why even start?" It seems like a tremendous waste of money when I could take that "rent money" and invest it somewhere for the same length of time and come out with MORE money than I started with.

Then I could use that money to buy something, like a house.

Oh, sure, I could afford a pretty posh apartment, but the only thing it would accomplish is to slow down my accumulation of wealth.

The same principle applies more or less to cars. Why make payments with interest when you can make the payments into an investment and come out with more money, and then buy the car at the end outright (and in less time than a loan would take to pay off). It seems silly to me.

And while we're talking about cars, What's the deal with gas prices? Goldberry mentioned them in her blog, and I can't blame her. I spent $40 on gas today, for me, that's just under 3 hours of work.. just for a product that is literally burned away.. and maybe that doesn't seem so bad until you realize that gasoline was discovered by the ancient chinese thousands of years ago. This is not a new technology.

The price doesn't bug me the most, it's the fact that we're living in the 21st century now and we're still burning chemicals in order to propel our vehicles. Heck, Blade Runner promised we would have flying cars by now! Where are my flying cars? I was promised flying cars! (http://noflyingcars.ytmnd.com/)

Two members of my family work in the oil industry (my dad also used to as well) and I have no real problem with the industry in its own right. I view it like the railroad industry, or the whale oil industry, or the coal mining industry, or the luxury liner industry. We still have these things, but we have other, better things too..

I think we need our cars to powered by something cooler than gasoline. Hydrogen maybe.. solar power.. capacitance gel.. heck, they need a car that runs on air. Then I would never need to gas up!

And it better freakin fly, too!



Evil never Pays
Submitted Wednesday, July 4, 2007 - 1:54:43 AM by Klaitu

All that stuff with the bad magic, flying dragons, and startin wars!

If only sauron had 700 bucks, he could have just BOUGHT the ring.

http://shop.newline.com/cat/Lord-of-the-Rings/Jewelry/Rings/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-18K-Gold-One-Ring-to-Rule-Them-All-in-Wooden-Gift-Box.html



Adventures in Arda
Submitted Sunday, July 1, 2007 - 2:54:40 PM by Klaitu

Last friday a group of friends and myself made a trip, a bit of a virtual journey if you will in Lord of the Rings Online.

Sounds pretty nerdy, right?

The advanture is pretty compelling in LOTRO, we had just assisted Aragorn in ridding Middle earth of a dangerous Barrow-Wight, an undead creature in a crypt. Our next adventure would take us to the Lone Lands.

Together, our tiny fellowship trekked over hill and dale, avoiding all sorts of creatures dangerous enough to kill us all. We met with Radagast the Brown, who more or less told us we were too weak to start out on the adventure he had for us. Looking at the map, we discovered that we were now the closest to rivendell that any of us had ever been. We decided to set out on the journey.

It was a long trek, It didn't look like it would take that long on the map. We trekked across the entire Lone Lands and entered the Trollshaws.

A place like Trollshaws might make you think of some cave-infested warren of slime, but it was actually quite a peautiful mountain valley. It was in thie area that Arwen washed away the nazgul in the first movie. We even forded the very same river.

Perhaps it is a testament to the LOTRO art department that all of us recognized the river without actually having ever seen it before. We pressed on.

We then came across a wandering minstrel, another player who was a dwarf equipped with a harp. He flagrantly asked us what we noobs were doing in such a dangerous area. He was right to ask, as even the badgers in this area were capable of rending the flesh from our bones in a single blow.

We replied that we were the noob patrol. And indeed we were. The highest of us was level 17, but the creatures in the areas were in the 40's.

We continued the journey up, up over the mountains and down again finally into the valley of Rivendell.

You may recall Rivendell from the movie. It's an elf habitat full of elegantly carfed wooden structures, waterfalls, and trees in perpetual autumn. The sight in the movie was very impressive.

As we turned the corner into a rock precipice, we could see Rivendell in its entirety.. and it was an incredible sight. The lighting, the design, the artstyle... Never before have I felt so impressed in a video game.

I wouldnt say that LOTRO's graphics are better than say, oblivion.. but there is just something about the way they designed Rivendell that makes it absolutely spectacular.

But our adventure didn't end there, we next sought out the stablemaster, the one NPC who could allow us to travel between Bree-Land and Rivendell again.. and this time safely. We did find him, on the far side of Rivendell. Along the way we bumped into some famous people.

The first was Boromir.. in several minutes, we had located the entire fellowship as well as Elrond. The characters in the game are not meant to look like the actors in the movies, but to some extent they do.

It was truly an impressive time. Kudos to the LOTRO developers, it's been a long time since I've had a truly exciting adventure like that.