In the interests of maximizing the exploitation of our base audience (we’ve heard the word “profit” used in this context) and supporting their continued addiction to ebooks we have released two new eARCs for your enjoyment.

C’mon, it won’t hurt to take just a little look. It’s not like we’re the minions of Cthulhu or something….

— Baen Books

I hate and love Baen at the same time … I really do. They started it with the newest Honor Harrington book, and now they are offering it on Kildar … the sequel to Ghost … by John Ringo. Luckily I’m not caught up … but the minions of Cthulhu are temping … very tempting.

I’ve been jerked around since Tuesday about this bloody game. It’s like a drug dealer telling his clients that he’ll have more stuff on Tuesday … and then making them wait till Friday due to shipping problems. It just isn’t right … but I now have a copy so to quote Jayne “I’ll be in my bunk.” l8r.

For those of you who have no idea what Civilization is … I pity you. For those who do and for some reason aren’t rushing the stores, here is an interview about Civilization IV (with Barry Caudill of Firaxis) on ign. It’s a great read. There is, of course, the Slashdot q&a which outlines things like the AI customizations available for this game and other things people had questions about. There is also a great review on the multiplayer capabilities of Civ 4 on GameSpy. I so hope that this game runs under Cedega. Oh, and the new Tech Tree can be downloaded here. It uses A3 paper, but 11×17 works good.

The website for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is out. It has trailers, screenshots, and general information about the new drug that Blizzard is releasing.

Fill this in the really-neat category. A Jack-o-LED. Perfectly safe (read as “no fires”), cheap, and reusable Instructions on how to build your own Jack-o-LED are provided.

I was just over on the Arrogant Worm’s website and noted this concert listing for Feb 2006:

Feb 6 - Regina, SK…Knox United Church

It’s a weird place to have it … the only place equipped to handle a concert would be the gym on the second floor … it has a stage … but it is definitely not as good as the worm’s had at Dark Halle (in 2002 … or was that 2000?).

BTW … the worm’s have a blog too. To quote from the post about their last visit to Regina in March 2004:

Last night’s show was in Regina and I sucked. No I freely admit it, I was poor. Played guitar like crap, sang poorly and my banter between the songs was incoherent and unfunny. Not even funny bad, just poor. Hard to figure out why, it was the first day where I actually got some sleep, had a nice breakfast and dinner and then went out there and sucked. People seemed to enjoy the show and that’s a real relief and a testament to how good it is to be part of a trio rather than a solo act. Or perhaps it shows how insignificant a piece I am when I can’t even bring the entire show down.

I was having guitar problems initially and this really threw me. I’ve been using a new guitar recently (A Godin A6 for those guitar geeks out there) and several times it’s made a horrible noise during the show which we haven’t been able to figure out. It’s something to do with the input jack and I thought it was due to a loose contact. I had a technician look at it in Ottawa and he re-soldered things and checked it out and said it was fine so when it started happening again I was plenty pissed. Well, the tech in Regina (Paul) took the jack out and found a piece from a broken string in it. We plugged it back in and it worked fine. So a piece from the string I broke in Winnipeg was shorting it out. ARRRGGGHH!

Some nights are like that, you just don’t have it. I was really thrown by the guitar not working and got very distracted. During “New Car Smell” I forgot the chords during the bridge. Eventually I just stopped playing until we got to a part I knew. By this point I was playing Ben’s guitar so it wasn’t the guitar’s fault. Then when it was my turn to introduce a song I would just draw a blank. I’d talk for a bit and then run out of things to say and just look around blankly. Like I said, a stellar performance.

Oh well, tonight will be better.

However, the show wasn’t without highlights. The week before we had met the mayor of Regina at a TV station in Ottawa (we were both appeariong on the same show) and one of the staff knew of the band. We exchanged pleasantries and when they heard that we’d be in Regina the following week they urged us to come by city hall and they’d give us some “I love Regina” stuff. Well, we didn’t have time to drop by the office but when we got to the venue there was a bag of goodies waiting for us. A T shirt, a ball cap and a toque all black and proudly proclaiming that the wearer loves the Queen city. And we do. Be nice to play in a real theatre sometime.

Michael McCormick is being a little hard on himself … I don’t recall anything like that … I really enjoyed the show. Besides, they are so random and chaotic that even stuff like that seems normal. It also doesn’t look like they’ll get to play in a real theatre this time either. A real shame.

It’s sad that we as a society will let people out of prison who fall under the category of “High Risk to reoffend” … very sad.

Just a heads up. Tocsic and I picked up some kick ass phones from XS Cargo yesterday (err, I guess two days ago now) for $15 + tax. They are Emerson EM2630’s. Look cool, but very vunerable to outside interference. Works good on a normal PSTN line though … not so good on an ATA-186. Here’s what they look like:

Neat huh? Now if only there was a way to rid it of the damn static …

The background: Last Saturday, about 20 members of the American National Socialist Party were marching in Toledo, Ohio to protest gang violence in a local neighbourhood. Things rapidly turned ugly when the black gang in question took offence to the white supremacist march. The march ended in violence that at its height involved about 600 people. 65 people were arrested by police, but the police chief stated that they could have made a couple hundred of arrests. Reference: BBC World News.

Transparent aluminium, anybody…?

Interesting. It appears Bill Gates was in Fyn’s new hometown. Kind of interesting.