Takedown

Not sure what the actual discussion was about, but recently one of my roomies recommended me to check out this movie called Takedown. It is the story about Kevin Mitnick. Not going to go into the details because it is a pretty interesting film. As a good citizen I should probably direct you to check it out from Netflix, Blockbuster, or any other rental place. For more details check out Takedown. If this sounds like something you are interested in watching let me know in person

Coffee…whats your drink?

So as the new term starts I find myself to be extremely distracted. Usually it is caused by Counter-Strike, F.E.A.R., Battlefield-2, or the Wii. So what does this mean? It means that I find myself staying up later and working on my projects and homework. So, before I never really drank much coffee. Before, it was always an ice cold Pepsi, or Mt. Dew. Not that I don’t drink soda anymore, I still do. I just like to have a coffee later at night. The new Starbucks in La Grande makes a nice Caramel Macchiato, I really have gained an addiction to this drink. You can get a 20 oz (Venti) Caramel Macchiato for something like $3.70. So thats my drink, what about you?

Zinio, digital publications in a flash…

As a member of Northwest Airlines Worldperks program all of my flights earn points, it works just like any other frequent flyer program. Anyhoo, to get to the point I never collect enough points in one year to upgrade a ticket to first class, or use my points toward free trips, so… as an alternative there is a magazine subscription program that NWA is involved with. While browsing through some titles such as PC World, Maxim, Businessweek, etc I came across Zinio. Zinio has purchased a license from Adobe to use there PDF technology for the backend design of there Zinio Reader. The Zinio account is free, once you have the account you can subscribe to magazines through the Zinio site, or you can go to the homepage of that specific magazine and subscribe. Its simple once you have a subscription you go download the Zinio software, its like 5-6 MB’s, install that and use the built-in Zinio Delivery Manager to grab the current edition.

Also available through Zinio, you can get single magazines (paying higher price of course) and different text books. With the text books you are limited to the machine that you originally downloaded the file to, so that means if you download the book at home on a desktop machine and intend on taking it to school on a laptop, you simply won’t be able to. This is not the case with magazine subscriptions though. If you download the file open it, delete it by mistake, re-format, download on another machine it will all still work.

The Zinio Reader is fairly simple. You open the viewer, browse you library for files you have downloaded, and open them in the Zinio Reader. You can zoom in and read text closer, or look at the page as a whole. The way I found to easily navigate was simply by zooming into the top of the first page and then using the Page Up and Page Down keys. It recognizes the location you are at, and brings up the last line you read plus new text. Once you get to the bottom of the page you can use the built in navigation tools at the top to change the page, you can also click in any corner to go back or forward, and to keep a fast rythym while reading you can hit Page Down to go to the next page. This is still new to me but, it is growing fast, very interesting to see where this distribution method goes.

There are other services out there such as Vongo, which has this same type of distribution for movies. I had Vongo as a trial with my new laptop, but the selection of movies was not worth the price of the monthly service fee. If any of this is interesting to you, check out www.zinio.com for a list of different subscriptions available.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade?…

During High School I spent many countless hours grinding, and trying to level my charachter. From the Horde aspect World of Warcraft was amazing, I never really experienced the Alliance side. By the end of my Warcraft tour of Azeroth, the world was becoming a place of “bots”. These “bots” sit around and basically do the boring little tasks to get gold. Prices on the Auction house became rediculous, and well the game became boring. You could get gold by spending real life cash, I guess if thats your thing go for it. My point is it ruins the game for the rest of us who actually work to get gold, it keeps the economy balanced. So, it has been since October of 2005 since Sargon (level 40, Troll Warrior) has been awakened. Tomorrow is the big day, the highly anticipated expansion releases. In some cases it releases tonite at midnight. If I am still awake I will prolly drive out to Wal-Mart and see if they have a copy, and probably purchase it. I realize I still have 20 more levels in the regular game that I could work on, but why not just go for the new one?

I honestly am not sure if I should continue with Sargon, he is only 40. If I don’t continue the game there is a good chance that I could actually pass my classes this term, and get the grades I know I can reach. So here we are left with the question, will The Burning Crusade match up to the same level of anticipation for World of Warcraft addicts?

so what exactly is going on here?…

Interestingly enough I never thought that I would ever consider myself to be a “blogger”. As a student working my way throught the ropes to gain a degree in Computer Science/Multimedia I have been directed toward the world of internet blogs. I consider myself a newb when it comes to blogging, but I am looking forward to this new endeavor here at Project Cyanide.

Cisco iPhone or Apple iPhone?…

Since 1999 Cisco has owned the “iPhone” trademark. The original “iPhone” is a Skype phone distributed under the Linksys brand name. During class today we watched the keynote speech given by Steve Jobs. According to Jobs, he seemed confident that Apple had everything covered, but it looks like they did not. You can read more on this at Tom’s Hardware to get the details. This is interesting to me. Although my first computer experience was on a Macintosh, I have never been a big fan of Apple. In all reality I guess Apple’s “iPhone” is packed with many new, unique features. I just don’t see myself using all of the features packed into that little device. This could be due to the fact that I have spent my entire life in rural America, and have not had a need or the resources (high speed, cell service, etc). In my opinion I feel that if I need to send an email to someone I will just use my computer, which is on a broadband connection. As for the wide screen iPod, well I guess that would be neat if I even used a mp3 player. I bought a cheap mp3 player at “Wally World” during high school for long bus trips, and even then I did not get much use out of it. I just don’t see myself using the new iPhone enough to justify the $599 price tag for the 8GB version, or even the $499 for the 4GB version.