Looks sweet. Works on my G3 233MHz, albeit it won’t be breaking any speed records. But at least it’s up and running. Netnewswire Lite is the news aggregator for OSX, although it doesn’t appear to want to import OPML data.
The mail client looks really good. I’ll be using it for a while instead of my procmail/spamprobe/mutt routine and see how it works out.
Bought a 233MHz G3 plus monitor from the school today. Cost: 500 SEK.
…so. Now I have a Mac. Any idea what I should do with it? It runs OS 8.5 at the moment. I force fed it with 256MB of additional memory, so now there’s a total of 320MB.
MindControl is a nice application launcher. Sure beats fumbling around with Finder and Last applications.
Any other utilities I should know about? Still looking for an RSS aggregator. Netnewswire is for OS X. Haven’t managed to install it yet — will be interesting to see what it thinks about 233MHz…
I just realized something.
I’m barely “surfing the net” anymore. I’ve stopped using it. And the reason is this: it’s not fun anymore.
Sure, I’m still heavily addicted to IRC and ICQ. But the surf is over. The waves are gone.
I check out a few news sites. I read a few forums (all of them about roleplaying). I click a bunch of links in the blogroll. But that’s it.
It’s not fun anymore.
“But will we win, Daddy?”
“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”
“But will people be killed, Daddy?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
— John le Carré
What about China? Have you seen the Great Wall?
All walls are great, If the roof doesn’t fall.
Oh, and today is my 23rd birthday.
I’ve joined the Marines. Sort of. I’m playing America’s Army, a free game by (have you guessed it?) America’s military. Quite good, actually. The basic gameplay is like Counter-Strike, only with more mature players that don’t cheat. And with more tactics (should you choose to use them).
Tonight I had the luck to end up on a team with two other players who like to play it tactical, and we rocked on for several hours. The map we played was a snowy mountain with limited vision, where the assault team is to reach a convoy and the defense team is to, well, stop us from reaching the convoy.
Trouble is, most players get bored just standing still waiting for the attackers to arrive, so at least half of them run off on their own, resulting in them bumping into our fire-team sooner or later and getting picked off one by one. The first turn we simply snuck around the central peak and onward to the convoy.
The defense team managed to get their act together and actually defending after a few more turns, and then we were pretty even. There are many ledges they can wait for us on.
Need to practise my M203 skills, though. Hard to lob 40mm grenades in the fog.
Anyway, I had a great time with those other two players. Much fun ensued. Will definetly be playing more.
I’m seriously thinking about picking up wargaming again. I use miniatures to represent combat in D&D anyway, so there’s quite a bit of overlap.
Too bad that Warhammer (or Warhamster, as I call it) is so expensive. Games Workshop has lots of nifty miniatures in both their 40,000 range and Fantasy Battles range. 40k is probably the most popular, but if I get started I’m thinking about Fantasy Battles. I get the impression that FB players are more mature, while 40k draws all the low-end teenagers with its big guns, tanks and heavy armor. Not that FB doesn’t have big guns and heavy armor too, though…
For the latest edition of FB, the Undead have been split in two different (and often opposing) armies: Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings. In previous editions, the Undead used to have all sorts of ghosts, skeletons, zombies, vampires and mummies. Now the Vampire Counts have all the typically gothic undead, and the Tomb Kings have been refitted with a pseudo-Egyptian style with mummies and skeletons.
What I really like about the Tomb Kings is that it isn’t just a shambling horde of bones and mummy wrappings with rusty weapons; it’s a resurrected, well-organized army lead by an undead Pharaoh. Just the way I like my undead.
There’s one scene in The Mummy (you know, the pulp movie with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz) that sums up the Tomb Kings perfectly. Near the end of the movie, three undead tomb guards march up in phalanx formation with their shields and kopesh swords held ready.
Ye gods, I’m in rant mode. Sorry about that. I just like Egyptian mythology. And undead. Especially in combination.
Skeletons and mummies are easy to paint, too. Black primer (I never use a white primer, even for skeletons), base coat of bleached bone, a brown ink wash, and then drypaint and highlight with skull white. Or skip the skull white to get a weathered and ancient look. These guys are supposed to have been buried in the desert for a thousand years.
Well, there’s more to paint than just bone, since the Tomb Kings are organized and well equipped. But still pretty easy, with open areas on shields and weapons.
…but as I said, it’s darn expensive to have a GW game as a hobby. The Tomb King battalion box costs 1800 SEK, but gives you a full army. A bone giant costs 300 SEK…
Not planning to start playing WFB at the moment, though. I have better things to waste my money on. And I would like to have a look at Mechwarrior: Dark Ages too.
All of these articles essentially state that war will cost the US of A one hell of a lot of money, and Bush will be unable to keep his promises about the war not affecting the homeland economy. He will go down in flames, never be re-elected (well, he didn’t get elected in the first place, did he?), and will take Blair and Aznar with him.
And where did Spain come from, anyway? Something like 90% of the population is against war, but Aznar still dropped his pants and bent over the barrel when Bush said “do you want to be my new friend? Those other guys don’t want to play with me!”
In other words, he commited political suicide.
The title of this entry is the name of a song by Puissance. Also, Winamp just decided to play “Smoking Enemy” by Cleen, followed by “Mad World” by Gary Jules.
And then “End of Ages (Genocide Remix by God Module)” by Grendel.
Every now and then you actually stumble upon something well-written on Slashdot, though it is a rare event indeed. The comment in its entirety, since I thought it was so well-written.
Unfortunately, sir, the Bush regime does not recognize the proper definition of the term terrorist. If you will examine the list of known “terrorist” organizations they released, you will see quite a few political groups that have never been involved in acts of terror, nor advocated them.
Furthermore, your suggestion that America is right to attack Iraq is ludicrous. There are only two types of people dying in Iraq: children who die because we have imposed harsh restrictions on the nation of Iraq, and criminals who die for violating the laws of Iraq. How is this any different from America? Where, in the month of March, nearly 300 men have been put to death in Texas alone. The primary difference, you might say, is that some of those criminals in Iraq are merely political dissidents who oppose the Iraqi regime.
This thinking is flawed in two regards. First, America itself has begun to jail political dissidents as part of their war on terrorism. I can think of no better example than of the three men who were arrested for donating money to help Iraqi citizens. Members of our government have repeatedly claimed that financial contributions are protected as political speech, and yet the same rights have been denied to critics of our government. We jail dissidents while Iraq kills them. Obviously, we are morally superior to Iraq, no? Obviously he’s a horrible despot who slaughters his citizens by the hundreds. Yet, from the perspective of nations like France or Britain, we are the morally depraved for we kill our common criminals. By the hundreds, we kill them. Should we expect the British or French to wage war against America to stop us from immorally killing our own citizens?
Of course, you may counter by reminding us of the Kurds, whom Saddam willfully exterminated. However, America has comitted a similar atrocity against its own people. You may suggest that that was long ago, and that it no longer matters; that we no longer butcher our citizens. This is true, but only because we instead murder the citizens of other nations. How can we claim, then, to be any better?
Despite your concerns about the loss of our civil liberties, you nonetheless advocate war with Iraq. I promise you that, once Iraq has been bombed and Saddam killed/deposed, that the loss of our liberties will continue, but at an increased rate, for the invasion of Iraq would further strengthen the resolve of the many anti-American rebels who remain in this world.
Another interesting thought: what would Uncle Sam say if Saddam is defenestrated and a democratically elected Iraqui government starts a nuclear program?
