Matt Van Stone

Apparently there is a significant group of people that think that Nerf Guns need to be more powerful. The site gives details on how to modify your Nerf guns so that they fire harder and farther. Now, I have always considered myself to be somewhat of a geek, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. The guys at nerfhaven really really should be ashamed, they are giving us every day geeks a really bad name.

Naah, seriously, I should give them a break. They are lucky enough to have found something they are very passionate about and that’s great. In fact they are so passionate about it they have organized annual gatherings called Nerf Outs where they play Nerf war games.

Anyway if you want to be the first person to kill someone with a Nerf gun, check out this site:
Nerf Gun Modification @ Nerfhaven.com

Or you can just go to the main page to check out their forums, Nerf inspired artwork, news articles, homemade Nerf instructions, and a gallery of hundreds of photos from their “Nerf Outs”.
Nerfhaven.com

This movie looks freakin’ awesome. Seriously guys. I mean yeah… I know Keanu Reeves is kind of a spoiler, but he was pretty good in Constantine. He is good at playing one character and that character happens to be in this movie. I’m totally stoked on seeing this, the story looks interesting and it has got some pretty sweet eye-candy.

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I found this video of Leo Laporte on Google Videos from the show The Screen Savers on TechTV. Its a feature they did in 1998 where they built “The Ultimate Gaming Machine”, and by ultimate they mean a Pentium II 300 MHz with 128MB of SDRAM and a whopping 13.2GB of hard drive space. WOW, I am jealous. I think they were running Descent II during the clip to show off it’s wicked graphics.

Its just funny to watch, I mean if computers were like cars this would be like comparing a Corvette Z06 (today) to Fred Flinstone’s foot-powered rock-mobile (1998). Somehow, the fact that I’m a huge geek has just become very very clear.

Check out the video at Google Videos:
The Ultimage Gaming Machine (1998) TechTv Segment.

Both Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien have signed new contracts with NBC for their shows The Tonight Show and Late Night. Basically what it comes down to is Leno is sticking around until 2009 when he will retire and Conan will take over as host of the tonight show.

Check out the full story at cnn.com:
O’Brien to replace Leno on ‘The Tonight Show’

Jesse Cook is an amazing guitarist. I don’t know how to better describe him. His style of music is this sort of jazzy African influenced flamenco. I have been listening to him for a few years now and since have missed two chances to see him, once in Calgary and another time out in Banff for different reasons. I’m hoping I can make it out for this show.

The funny thing is I used to hate Jesse Cook. I think it’s because I never really listened to the music from a guitarist’s point of view, which is strange because that’s how I generally listen to all music. Anyway the point is the people around me who played his music played it to death and even though I tried to never listen to it, I could still pick out one of his riffs any day.

It was not until one day I was discussing wicked flamenco guitarists with a buddy of mine we were talking about Strunz and Farah and I said “hey, have you ever heard Jesse Cook, he’s Canadian and uh, has wicked”. Funny thing is even though I was bringing him up I never really listened to him by choice. If you have not heard of him I highly suggest heading over to the official Jesse Cook website and checking out some of the videos and sound bytes he has over there. If you like music you won’t be sorry.

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I know lots of people have probably heard me say it before, “I hate blogs” and now here I am creating one myself. Well, I came to the realization that I don’t really hate blogs, I hate the word blog. Seriously, it’s the tech word of the year that everybody is tossing around. I mean weblogs have been around for a long time, it’s just now over the past year or so that everybody is jumping on the band wagon. Watch me jump. Now its not even that everybody is jumping on the band wagon that upsets me, its that there are too many blogs out there that just steal content from other sites. A good weblog is a site that writes its own content, original and professional, as if it was going to be published in an actual publication. A bad weblog is one that says “hey check out this weblog that has this content”. This site will probably be a mix of both.

And now for some ranting…
Blog is just one of those words that makes me cringe every time I hear it. It’s like when people say GUI, you know, like “gooey”. Its just one of many acronyms that shouldn’t be read like it’s a word. While on the topic of annoying tech speak, URL is another acronym that isn’t supposed to be read as a word. It’s U.R.L., not “earl”, but apparently some people don’t get that. And trust me its not the Aussi model, I’m pretty sure it’s the OSI model. I must say, another one I’m not too fond of is Skuzzy. I mean really, it’s a pretty big stretch to turn SCSI into skuzzy.

Now, there is a flip side to this. It is acceptable to say acronyms that don’t sound retarded when they come out of your mouth, like RAM, GIF, or RAID. With some it’s almost as though they were designed to work as words. All I’m trying to do is stop it from getting to the point where people are walking around saying things like tee-see-pip (TCP/IP) or one which is already starting to catch on…. viop. Please people, please, its Voice Over, or V-o-IP, please don’t start calling it viop. I beg.

Now, I am willing to help anyone out with this, so if you ever wonder if you are wrong by saying an acronym as a word instead of individual letters ask me and I’ll let you know. I know this is all sort of a tangent as blog isn’t even an acronym, but it still makes me want to punch myself in the face whenever I hear it. I would rather say B.L.O.G. or weblog than blog any day.

What it really comes down to I think is for non technical people its a lot easier to put a meaning to a catch term than an acronym, so that’s why we are getting all these lame acrowords… er wordronyms popping up like blog and viop.

Okay, I think I’m done now.