Paulie Pages

So I’ve read more of the Amazing Spider-man. I’m at about the 100th issue. The writing has come a long way since the beginning. The stories are a bit more in-depth and there are less cop-outs on peter’s part at least. There are still points in the story where be definitely doesn’t act like the genius he’s supposed to be but I guess they just weren’t as focused on story as much as action back then. In any case I’m approaching gwen’s death and that is supposedly known as the end of the Silver Age of comics. At that point apparently the actual stories started getting a bit more attention and they start giving characters a bit more depth too. I’m looking forward to the issues where relationships are just as important as the fights. But who knows how many issues til that happens, I mean I’m only through about twenty percent of the comics, not even that really.

The iPhone app I’ve decided to take its rightful place on my favorites on my homepage (it replaced Safari because I never actually use it unless something else opens it for me… i rarely go directly to it on my own) is Pandora.  The music quality is good enough (i can understand it not being perfect, it sounds only a bit subpar to a standard 128kps mp3… sometimes it actually sounds like it has comparable quality) and its actually pretty easy to use.  Its a shame it can’t run in the background because if you want to do anything else with the phone, you gotta stop the music.  Its extremely easy to use with easy access to an iTunes search of the song, a thumbs up or down to the song, and even a button for a description as to why it thinks you’ll like the song.  you can pause or skip forward, but you can’t go backwards.  the last time i used pandora (a long time ago) there was a limit to how many times you can skip forward within a certain time frame.  i haven’t had too much time to see if thats still there as i’d rather have a good set of preferences set before randomly skipping songs.  So I dunno if that limit is still in place.  In any case, if you have the iPhone or any of the devices that can support the 2.0 interface, i highly suggest this app.  the only reason i can see someone not wanting this app is if they don’t use their device for music.  if you do use it for music, this app is pretty much a must AND its free.  i’m using it on wifi, so i dunno how its quality is over 3g or EDGE.  its possible that it may degrade (especially over EDGE), but i’ve had no skipping so far over wifi (Verizon FiOS as the service provider).  I’ll let you know if the experience is noticeably different over 3G or EDGE  whenever I get around to it.

Sorry to all who have left comments. I have been pretty busy at work for a long while. I’m hoping to work pm that.

But the auto correction feature makes my typo of “im” into “I’m” instead of “in”. It’s a minor annoyance but acceptable I suppose. I mean other than that so far the auto correction is amazing. I can’t expect it to be perfect. Oh yea, in other news I bought am iPhone 3g. I never owned an iPhone before and was hesitant to buy this one but so far I’m glad I did.

Testing wordpress iPhone app. This may lead to a bit more frequency I’m updates if it works.

I didn’t think I’d have to do this, but apparently someone is so interested in my site that they’ve been trying sql injection attacks. Now I gotta spend time and see what I can do to make sure I’m as protected as I can be from that. Ugh. If anybody has any ideas off hand, please let me know. Thanks.

Well, as odd as it sounds, I’ve read the first 20 issues of The Amazing Spider-man from way back in 1963. I’ve read a lot of the current stuff (Ultimate Spider-man, The Amazing Spider-man post-500 issue, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, and a few others). I have to tell you that it seems like there wasn’t as much care given to the art back then. I think it was the second issue, they messed up Parker’s last name and they were calling him Peter Palmer. I’m also pretty sure they messed up Watson for Watkins in another issue (though, technically, they *might* have been talking about someone else, but it seemed unlikely). Even outfits and actual people were confused at times. In one issue, they drew the wrong guy completely, but the dialogue and plot made it clear it was supposed to be someone else. Beyond that, its easy to see the cultural differences in what people apparently expected from a comic back then. I mean, it seems the reader was expected to be much more naive about things. Spider-man escaping from the Scorpion because the Scorpion hurt his hand by punching Spider-man. Scorpion decides he’ll come back to finish off Spider-man when his hand stops hurting. Also, the writers gave Spider-man much more credit when it came to his spider-sense. He’d be able to track down people just by following his spider-sense. I think its much better as a reactionary thing to immediate danger. It was also interesting how the writers went out of their way to point out how great the cops are in the town. Not that I disagree with the idea, it just seemed to be out of place to mention. The relationship angle (right now it only involves Betty Brant, JJJ’s secretary, and I guess in an indirect way, Liz Allen) is also very shallow. Mary Jane Watson has been mentioned however. Aunt May and Mrs. Watson are still trying to set Peter and MJ up for a date, but something keeps getting in the way (not excluding Peter trying to ditch out of it because he’s expected MJ to be hideous). It’s kind of interesting to see that play out knowing full well who MJ is. I guess it would be somewhat of a shock to finally see MJ that first time around (with her famous opening line, “Face it, tiger… you just hit the jackpot!”) since one would have had the same idea in their head that Peter did. It’s actually a win-win. Back then, that little plot worked out because it was a shocker, but even now, it still works because you’re laughing to yourself knowing who this chick really is. Anyway, it’s still somewhat annoying about the lack of story arcs at this point. Everything is always tied up within that issue. They’ll make references to a past issue, but not in any significant way. You’re pretty much able to start reading at almost any point and there’s no problem. I’m looking forward to the future when Marvel was one of the first to break the mold (and everybody fortunately followed) and start story arcing, and further made history with actually killing off a character close to the title character (when they killed off Gwen Stacy… it was almost unheard of at the time for something so tragic and ‘permanent’ to happen to a title character, aside from origin stories, such as the death of Ben Parker, etc.). Not that I’m looking forward to the death of a character that still hasn’t joined the series, but I’m just not enjoying these small stories as much as the more in-depth stories you get nowadays. This early on, characters aren’t as deep or well defined as they are today.

Well, I know its probably weird for me to be reading all of these given the cosmic reset in the Amazing Spider-man continuity (A Brand New Day). But that’s actually the reason I wanted to read ‘em. I wanted to know what was making everyone upset with the whole reset. I wanted to know what people felt they were losing. It sounds odd, but I feel like I’m now watching a remake and feel guilty for not having seen the original, so to speak.

All in all, I don’t recommend reading this early stuff unless you’re a real Spider-man fan. The action is somewhat lame, the stories aren’t as intelligent, and it just reads as being very naive. I’m still going to continue reading on and every so often I may give you an update.

Throughout the Resident Evil trilogy, it seemed to morph from a horror movie (the first R.E.) into a horror/action (Apocalypse) into an action movie with some shock-horror moments (movie’s all quiet and bam, something pops out… can be scary, but only for that moment). Honestly, I don’t have a huge problem with that. I mean, the trailers pretty much advertised them as such. Your only excuse is if you never watched the trailers and even then, you shouldn’t expect a certain type of movie only because thats how the last one was. Resident Evil didn’t really strike me as a horror trilogy. It struck me as a trilogy. Period. It told a story that spanned three movies. That being said, as the conclusion to the trilogy, it didn’t feel ‘concluded.’ I mean, when you watch it, there’s two things left unresolved and up to your imagination. Both Alice and the rest of the caravan have somewhat unresolved endings. You can easily assume that both stories are finished nicely because they set it up that way, but they don’t actually show the completion. Its not out of the question to think that they both succeeded, well… within the logic of the movie at least… cause I’m fairly certain that in real life one helicopter will not get them as far as they’re wanting to go, though you would not have gotten that impression from them. I guess when you’re watching a movie about zombies and a woman who made a guy bleed from his head in the last movie just by looking into a camera, well, I suppose you gotta suspend your disbelief for a little bit =P Anyhow, technical criticisms aside, the movie was entertaining and definitely feels like it accomplished what it set out to do. I doubt they were trying to write an Oscar-award winning movie here. They got to write survivor stories, each with its own feel. The first being trapped in very close quarters (which helped with the whole horror feel), second being an escape from a city (which still had some horror, but had some action as well), and the third being just plain surviving in the huge expanse of the desert (with little bits of horror thrown around, and a decent amount of fighting). I have to say that they should have given a little more of the story in-between Apocalypse and Extinction. Through story line you learn a little bit and there is a short introduction, but I just feel like it was too much of a stretch between the two movies. Well, I’d say the acting was mediocre to pretty good among the main characters, though somewhat sub-par for the supporting actors, but not bad enough to detract from the movie. Overall, it was a pretty fun movie though its strongly recommended seeing it only if you’ve seen the first two. They sorta fill in some holes through dialogue covering the past events, but people will still feel lost in the movie (especially the very beginning) if you haven’t seen the first two.

3/5 (Just supposed to be entertaining, not a masterpiece)

I’ll be making a copy of this post as a static page under the BYOPC as well. I’m skipping to this step because I’ve seen I’ve gotten quite a few hits from people searching about how to install the wusb54gsc onto gutsy.

Physical Things you’ll need:
Linksys WUSB54GSC Wireless Adapter (duh)
Linksys WUSB54GSC Install CD (I’d prefer if you used this instead of my bandwidth. Bandwidth isn’t cheap. However, I have linked* to the files required from this CD) (* - I’ll link as soon as I get the chance. You can probably also get it directly from the Linksys website)
Ubuntu 7.10 Install CD (only if you need to install the first package in the prerequisite step so you can use the ‘make’ command)

Files you’ll need:
Driver for the WUSB54GSC Adapter (finally uploaded it. sorry for the wait.)
usb8023.sys
rndismp.sys
ndiswrapper package (link to homepage, not the actual files) (i used v1.51)

Prerequisites:

• Make sure adapter is unplugged
• First step is to ensure you have the required packages installed on your system (this step may require your Ubuntu CD)
  If you’ve never used the ‘make’ command before, you’ll probably need to install the package. Type the following in the Terminal:
  sudo apt-get install cpp gcc build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Step 1 - Install NDISWrapper

• Extract NDISWrapper
• In a terminal window, navigate into the NDISWrapper folder
• Type the following:
  sudo make uninstall
  make
  sudo make install
  sudo ndiswrapper -m

Step 2 - Getting the drivers

• The files usb8023.sys & rndismp.sys should be able to be located in a Windows System directory (i had ‘em there) if you have a Windows installation. If not, I’ve linked to them above. I’ll continue linking to them as long as they don’t cause me to use up too much bandwidth. Supposedly they’re aso on the wireless adapter’s install CD.
• The file WUSB54GSC.inf should be located on the Linksys Install CD. I will be uploading this file as soon as I get the chance.
• Copy these 3 files into a new folder on your system

Step 3 - Installing the Drivers

• In a Terminal window, navigate to the folder with the 3 drivers
• Type the following:
  sudo ndiswrapper -i WUSB54GSC.inf
  sudo cp usb8023.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/wusb54gsc/
  sudo cp rndismp.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/wusb54gsc/

Step 4 - Ensuring the drivers & files are installed correctly

• Type the following:
  ndiswrapper -l
• Now, it should read something along the lines of:
  wusb54gsc : driver installed
• Note: THIS DOESN’T MEAN THE ADAPTER WILL WORK YET. DO NOT PLUG IT IN YET

Step 5 - Getting it to work in Gutsy (or anything thats Fiesty or beyond)

• In Fiesty (and thereafter), a safety feature was introduced that limited the power to the USB ports. This was too stop too much power from overpowering and blowing out the device. However, the limit is unfortunately too small for the WUSB54GSC adapter and therefore it doesn’t get enough power.
• In a terminal window, type the following:
  sudo nano -w /etc/udev/rules.d/99-custom.rules
• In the resulting window that opens, type the following on one line:
  BUS==”usb”, SYSFS{idProduct}==”0026″, SYSFS{idVendor}==”13b1″, RUN+=”/bin/sh -c ‘echo 1 > /sys/$devpath/device/bConfigurationValue’”
• Hit Ctrl-O, enter, then Ctrl-X.

ALL DONE! At this point you can configure the wireless adapter. For odd reasons beyond my knowledge, the light on my adapter doesn’t always turn on. This doesn’t mean its not working. Sometimes it will turn on though too. Dunno if thats just my adapter or if it’ll occur on all adapters.

I’ll type out how I configured my wireless adapter a little later.
Please comment with any questions you may have and I’ll try to answer them. I’m in no way an expert on Ubuntu or Linux. This is just a collection of stuff I’ve found around the internet. If anything doesn’t work for you, I’ll try to help to the best of my abilities.

Just saw the movie last night. The movie was highly enjoyable under one certain condition: suspension of disbelief. There are many many things that occur in the movie (mostly various stunts performed by Mr. Smith, played by Clive Owens) that are well beyond anything that is actually possible. This movie is for those that just enjoy pure action movies. There’s a plot behind it all, though its somewhat stretched. However, I think the plot served more as a device to explain how these situations can occur in the first place. Still, I won’t ruin it because they kind of let the plot unravel as the movie progresses and reveal it sort of as a twist. Even if I had told you, it most likely wouldn’t ruin it, but it may for like 1 or 2 people in the world. The situations were a mix of humor, impossible acrobatics, improbable sharp shooting, and an unbelievably high death toll. And yes, there is an obvious, violent parallel between the main conflict, between Giamatti’s Hertz and Owens’s Mr. Smith, and that of Elmer Fudd & Bugs Bunny. They even make various comments to this end, though the biggest symbol is Mr. Smith’s constant carrot eating.

All in all, I’d say the movie is only for those that aren’t quesy at the sight of blood and don’t mind watching stuff that looks cool, but is absolutely impossible.

3.5/5 (Great action, somewhat thrown together plot, but overall entertaining)

PS: I highly enjoyed Clive’s character, Mr. Smith. His anger at all the things that piss a lot of us off and his reactions are welcome (running a guy off the road for swerving in & out of traffic w/o the use of his blinker; stealing the rich prick’s car for parking in a handicap spot; etc.) Gets angry at things most people get angry at, but has no qualms about doing something about it, even if its a severe punishment.