After visiting one of my clients in New York City yesterday I decided to take my wife to a German Beer Garden down in the East Village called Zum Schneider. The restaurant is located on 7th St & Avenue C. We have gone there before and really enjoy the restaurant. I had on of the best Weinerschnietzel I have ever had, period! My second best now, was in a Beer Garden in Vienna, Austria. I also kept nibbling on a Brotzeitteller which basically a cold platter with various cold cuts and cheeses served with a basket of bread. This was all washed down with numerous liters of Hofbrau beer. The place has a friendly atmosphere, you are seated at communal picnic tables which invoke random conversations with strangers. All in all we had a great evening. If you are in that part of town you have to give the place a try.
Hardware Hacking
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about hardware hacking. They are talking about extending the funtionality of off the shelf items. It is definetly a good read. The Link is below.
So Your Roomba Vacuums…. Does It Also Take Pictures?
Windows XP SP2 Force Fed!
We’ll the good news is that you can disable Windows XP Service Pack2 from being automatically installed on your system for the time being. This is a very good in the midst of a lot of end users complaining of problems encountered after the upgrade. I had to issue warnings to all my clients because Service Pack 2 breaks PPTP (VPN) protocols and there is not a fix for it. The bad news is whether you like it or not after 240 days from August 16th 2004, your system will be forced to install it. I guess that’s a good thing if you look at all the end users that don’™t install security patches and their machines become zombies in Internet attacks. However as I have written in the past it’s a step forward for Microsoft shutting down holes for Trojans but it is only a tiny step. I feel most users will get a false sense of security with all the hype behind this service pack. Truth be told I had a lot of applications that had free run of the Internet without Microsoft’s built in firewall batting an eye let alone asking if I wanted to let the application have internet access. If you would like to read more on about this issue, I have included a link below to Microsoft’s article.
Asteroids anyone?
We’ll it looks like Atari is going to re-issue 85 of its classic games including such titles as Asteroids, Centipede & Pong to name a few. Also it looks like they are also creating a mini version of their old 2600 & 7800 console that will inculde joysticks and be pre-loaded with 20 80’s game such as Breakout and Battlezone. To read an article on the announcement go to link below:
Miami Herald: Entertainment: Atari to Reissue Scores Of old Games
The Screensavers Are Back!
We’ll the Screensavers are back on the air live. This time their being shot in Los Angeles with their new Co-Host Alex Albrecht. The show was alright nothing special with a stumble here and trip up there. It’s a new set and a new Co-Host it will take a while for things become harmonious. At first I was like where did they find this guy, he just didn’t hit me right. Then after the first thirty minutes or so I started to warm over and I’ll be damned if I don’t think he might be able to pull it off. Only time will tell. Also Kevin gave away 4000 Gmail invites. I have to tell you within the first minute all the invitations were taken. It took a minute or so for his Typepad page to come up from all the massive hits it was taking. I wonder how happy they were?
Photo Album Done
We’ll took my down time this weekend to code the photo album for my site. So give it a try and let me know what you think. You can get to the Photo Album portion by clicking on the link on the menu.
Labor Day Weekend
Infinium Labs Soliciting?
I received an email today from Infinium Labs. It seems to be some sort of fact sheet designed to peak my interests to invest in the company. That’s what I have to guess because it is very vague and seems designed to show that it is looking to get listed on the Stock Exchange. They have had a very tainted past with background information about the founding president and lack of a working model for some time. They have also thrown lawsuits against individuals making any claims against their product, company and founder. The main sites that has really been holding a candle to this issue is [H]ardOCP as well as Where is Phantom. Below are some links to articles they have published as well as a copy of the fact sheet I received in my email this morning.
Here are the articles from [H]ardOCP:
Behind the Infinium Phantom Console Infinium Labs Vs. HardOCP – Round 2
Here is a copy of the email I recieved:
Republican Convention: Day3
Well so far there is not much difference with the security over yesterday with the exception of a Fuji/NYPD blimp hovering around overhead. I have a couple of pictures of it but will venture outdoors around lunch and see if I can grab a couple of better pictures. I still have not seen any demonstrators close by Madison Square Garden. The police are doing a good job of isolating the area from disruptions.