Can there be something more boring? [Link]

Sigh, I love MAME, but I have to agree with the writer, MAME has morphed into a sad story. [Link]

Seems a lot of people have been having problems with their Nano. The surface of the device scratches very easily and its upsetting lots of people. I checked out some of the pictures and it got me really worried. Luckily my Nano hadn’t shipped yet from Amazon so I just canceled my order. Will wait and see how serious of an issue this is and if Apple will fix it. [Link]

I have a lot of CDs, Videogames and Books and it has always been a dream of mine that I could organize them in some sort of catalog so I could keep track of what I have. I believe I finally found what I have been looking for all my life, Delicious Library.

Delicious Library is a software for the Mac that allows you to organize your stuff very easily. There are various ways you could add stuff to the library, at the moment I am entering the bar code numbers manually and the software automatically searches various sources online and then returns with a whole bunch of info on the product I just entered. Current prices, reviews, ratings, album cover, and a ton more info just by entering the bar code. If you have iSight or any other firewire camera you don’t even have to manually type the bar code numbers, just take the bar code and place it in front of the camera and it will automatically scan it just like the supermarket people use the bar code scanners. If you are lucky enough to have a bar code scanner (cuecat owners click here) you could also use it to input information into Delicious Library. You could even add stuff by typing in the CD or book titles, for example I typed in Blind Melon Soup and it returned 2 results, I clicked on the right one and thats it, its automatically added into my library.

After you add all your items to the catalog you can then search for songs, artists, authors, publishers etc.. you can even have it print out the whole catalog for you with all your items listed. You can add notes under each item also for example the name of the person you lent the item to and even find items similar to one you have highlighted.

Delicious Library isn’t free though, it costs $40 but its worth it. So make sure you check it out. [Link]

Note: If you are interested in a cuecat modified to read barcodes, you can find them on Amazon for only $9.99. [Link]

Note 2: If you are a PC user there is a software called Readerware that supposedly does the same thing except not as pretty looking. [Link]

The dolphins were trained by the military to fire “toxic dart guns” at terrorists are now free in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not a joke. [Link]

I have been addicted to American Hot Rod for like 2 months now. Its been more entertaining then American Chopper and Rides since there are a lot of problems on the show and most of them I could relate to. The pace of work, the impossible deadlines, the how fast can you do it not how good can you do it mentality, all typical issues common here in Kuwait. Yesterday night though Charley the painter, the most chilled out guy on the show had enough and decided to leave Boyd Coddington and join Boyds competitor, an ex friend and ex employee, Chip Foose. Foose is a regular on Rides and has his own show Overhaulin also on Discovery. It seems American Hot Rod is falling apart. None of the employees are happy and the best people have left the body shop so I don’t think I will be watching it anymore. For fans of the show if you want to talk to Charley he posts regularly on the Overhaulin forum, his nick name is idahoboy. [Link]

Yesterday I watched a cool episode of CSI, it starred Wil Wheaton and Stephen Baldwin. I had actually been waiting to watch Wil Wheaton in CSI since I first read about it on his blog. For those of you who don’t know, Wil Wheaton played the part of Wesley Crusher, Dr. Beverly Crusher’s son on Star Trek The Next Generation. TNG is one of my favorite shows so I am a big fan of Wil Wheaton. Sadly though he didn’t have a very large role in the show which was disappointing since I had been expecting to see a lot more of him. Wil played the part of a crazy homeless guy who was a suspected of murdering a kid. Having Stephen Baldwin also in the same episode was awesome, he played the part of a cocaine dealer and we got to see him a lot more then Wil. I hope a lot more celebrities start popping up on CSI, makes the show even more cooler.

Tivo-Guy just purchased a new machine Intel machine to run OS X and he installed and ran Xbench and here are the results:

My Mac at Work
G5 Powermac
CPU Speed: Dual G5 2.0GHZ
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 1GHZ
1GB RAM
Score: 97.06

Tivo-Guy
Intel Computer
CPU Speed: Pentium 4 3Ghz
L2 Cache: 2MB
Bus Speed: 800Mhz
1GB RAM
Score: 47.63

My Mac at Home
Digital Audio PowerMac
Dual G4 1.6ghz (GigaDesigns)
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 133Mhz
1.25GB RAM
Score: 44.86 46.16

Tivo-Guy’s Mac mini
mac mini
CPU Speed: G4 1.4ghz
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 167mhz
1GB RAM
Score: 37.04

Ripping Fabric
12″ PowerBook
CPU Speed: G4 1.33ghz
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 167mhz
512MB RAM

Score: 29.18

Nat
12″ PowerBook
CPU Speed: G4 867mhz
L2 Cache: 256KB
Bus Speed: 134mhz
640MB RAM
Score: 25.13

I was expecting Tivo-Guy to get a much higher score then mine but surprisingly we are pretty close. My brothers (Ripping Fabric) and Nats Powerbooks were the slowest but thats expected. Although again I was expecting my brothers Powerbook to be a lot faster then Nats.

Update: I added a Mac mini and G5 Powermac to the list above.

Update 2: I rearranged my hard drives and somehow I now score a 46 instead of a 44 bringing me 1 point difference between my Mac and Tivo-Guys Intelmac.

Cool.. Kevin Smith’s Flickr Account.

Update: Who is Keven Smith? He produced Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, Dogma and more. He starred in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (he was Silent Bob), Mallrats, Chasing Amy and more. For more info check him out on IMDB.

The past week I have been having serious issues with Spam on this blog. For some reason my previous spam checker Hashcash was letting some spam through and I was getting at least 30 comments a day via email awaiting my approval that were all spam. So I decided to try a different Spam plugin called Spam Karma. Right away it detected the recent spams and adds them to the blacklist. So far I haven’t received any new Spams but the day is still young. Hopefully though I won’t be having any more spam issues.