Okay I'm not going to lie, I've only watched one other episode, but Pieh-Gee is my favorite. It has something to do with the fact that she's Asian, but, moreover, she's the underdog. Plus, It's hardly like I can actually like any of the other survivors. I mean Todd's an ass. Courtenay's not so great. Old Woman with a mullet is an idiot; no wonder she's just a lunch lady. Amanda is redeeming, but hardly an angel.
        I'm so sad that Denise is such a retard. My god woman, you're not going to be able to the final three if he's still in power. Duh!

Apparently men with deep voices have more children, says an article from the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7013136.stm

Oddly enough, the scientists didn't mention anything about homosexuality. Let's see here, men with higher pitched voices are generally more likely to be gay than those with lower pitched voices, as the common Western stereotype goes. Furthermore, in Western societies, prior to the current tolerance to open gay relationships, gay men commonly had a fair number of children, however fewer than straight men of course. So it would stand to reason that gay men in a hunter gatherer society would also be subject to the same forces. Gay men aren't going to have as much sex with women because it's icky; less sex = fewer children. There you have it I just woke up and I've outsmarted the scientists.

Dodgeball should become a real sport. It's such a good spectator sport.

        So it was kind of disappointing, sure there was a ton of blood and gore, but the action felt so slow and drawn out. My god, after five minutes the slow-motion action scenes started taking their toll. Sure, I appreciated seeing Persian heads roll at 5 frames per second, but I can only take so much. Also, they had some weird casting choices, mainly the Persians themselves. Since when are Persians black? As in Black from Africa? I mean seriously. Persians look Mediterranean, not straight up black. Heck the Persian empire only included one part of Africa, Egypt, and last time I checked they didn't look too different from Greeks. Oh and there were weird mystical goats playing lyres in Xerxes tent, WTF?
        So anyways, I'll talk about the movie. It was alright, expect the whole Queenny political thing was a little weak, it seemed like they just threw that in for effect to parallel the US in Iraq. The blood and guts was cool for a while, but just became a little repetitive. I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you're in to that kind of thing, but otherwise the movie is a waste of time, unless of course you like seeing muscular waxed men walking around in speedos. The plot is obvious, since it follows a fairly well known historical event; and it was fairly accurate. I mean sure they glossed over somethings and over did a few others, but the basic plot was followed. I rate the 300 a fair B-, there's not much reason to see it besides for the blood and guts action.
        Oh and another thing, there was definitely quite a bit too much borrowing from other films. I mean you had a ton of Gladiator type effects and scenes which could have almost been ripped from it. Then there was the the Lord of the Rings influence: the Gollum-like hunchback, the Immortals looking like shiny Oruk-hai, the Elephant scenes. Plus Xerxes and all his henchmen (who were inaccurately portrayed as Black, WTF?, how hard is it to find a swarthy looking Italian to better fit the role) acted like Gou'ald from Stargate, they had that whole Egyptian theme and weird voices. Oh and the funny looking Ephors ring a bell? Palpatine anyone?

        Just minutes ago, I was at my final Swim team banquet, and it was then that the feeling struck me, it was finally over. Years of hard work and dedication ended up fruitless in terms of medals and trophies, but in the end I gained something that I value so much more, love. Yes, I could feel the love the friendship and the camaraderie. So what? I ended up never qualifying for one meet. I'm Scott remember? I value those things that others take for granted. In the end I'm not going to remember all those swims I did, in fact I barely remember them as it is. But in those special moments of reflection, I will always remember my swim team friends. For for the last four years, I have spent my time and effort with them. We have shared struggle and triumph. And now it ends.

I love you guys.

I can only wish that the future will be bright for you guys. I'll visit.

        Note: This was originally written by me for myself in the future, if I ever look for another camera. Most of this was written geared towards simple point-and-shoot cameras.

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Weird Words I've Never needed to know until Now
Macro mode: Its the setting that you put the camera on when you're trying to focus in on something really small. Usually, the button that's you need to press to turn it on is marked with a little flower.

Flash Recharge: This is how long you have to wait in-between taking pictures with flash.

ISO: The sensitivity to light. The higher it is the more light the camera sensor will take in. Also when the ISO is higher, the camera will take a picture faster, the picture will be brighter, and there will be more noise.
Noise: Off color pixels, that kind of look like grains in the picture.

Image Stabilization: It helps you get crisp pictures if you don't have stone steady hands. There are two kinds: digital and built-in (optical or CCD shift). Don't be fooled: digital image stabilization is just the camera setting the ISO levels higher so the camera takes the picture faster, it really won't help you that much.

White Balance: It makes the light and coloration look better against different kinds of lighting.

Zoom: There's 2 kinds of this too: optical and digital. Optical zoom is when the camera shifts its lense to focus farther away. Digital is when the camera just crops the out sides of a picture and gives a "zoomed-in" picture. With digital zoom, you get a lower quality picture, because the camera basicly just cropped the parts out that you didn't want, but you can do that on a computer and you might find out you wanted part of the picture that the camera cropped.

CMOS: A kind of sensor, it takes the light that comes in from the lens and turns it into a picture. It really doesn't matter if your camera uses CMOS or CCD, some CMOS camera's a really low quality, but that's because they're cheaper to make as low quality. But, companies that actually make quality cameras (like Canon) use CMOS in their Digital SLR's (the camera's pro's use). So it really just depends on what companies making it.

CCD: A kind of sensor, it takes the light that comes in from the lens and turns it into a picture. And see above for more, because I don't really want to copy-paste it over again.

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Flash Media
Now then, you're probably going to get a little overwhelmed by all the different types of memory out there so here's a little guide. Most people really don't need more than 512mb (generally holds about 400 pictures at 5 megapixels and 800 pictures at 2 megapixels) of space, unless you plan on taking a lot of video with your camera.

SD: This are the most commonly used type of flash memory in cameras, and in general. It's also the cheapest. Generally brands of cameras that use SD cards include: Practically everyone except Sony, Fujifilm, and Olympus. Oh and you can find SD cards in sizes upto 8 gb, cards over 2gb might not be compatible with all cameras though.

xD: These are used exclusively in Fujifilm and Olympus cameras. xD cards are avaliable in capacities up to 2 gb. These are usually the most expensive (by a little bit) of the cards, since they are only used in Fujifilm an Olympus cameras. Some of Fujifilm's most recent models (2007), now take SD and xD cards. Yay for conforming!

MS Pro Duo: These are used exclusively in Sony cameras. They're usually a little bit more expensive than SD cards, but cheaper than xD, and they come in capacities upto 2 gb.

xD, SD, and MS Duo's are all pretty much the same size, as in in-person.

Compact Flash: These are usually only used in SLR-like cameras or Digital SLR cameras of all brands, because some CF cards can hold up to 64 GB. They usually cost about the same as SD cards (for the same capacity), so they're not at all expensive. CF cards are also the largest in actual size, so it's a trade off.

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Megapixels?
Megapixels really don't matter that much. If you're just going to look at your pictures on the internet, send them to friends, and print them out on standard 4x6" prints, then you only need to be taking pictures at 2 megapixels. On the cameras I've used, I really don't notice much of a difference in the quality after they've been printed. However, if you plan on blowing up the pictures to like 8x12, then more megapixels will help some, but at the same time if your camera isn't that good, you're going to be staring down at some really nasty splotches of noise.

        After reading numerous rants regarding infamous Amazon's $100 Xbox 360 sale, I have only one thing to say: Suck it up people, it's not like you were going to be lucky enough to get one of the 1000 available out what? a million other people?!

Seriously it's like at Walmart, if they just opened their doors at 5 AM for Black Friday with no barricades, no queues, just straight up opened the damned things to the public, what do you think will happen? They'll clog up and the lucky few who rushed in at the head of the pack, blessed by the grace of God, would snag the deals. That is pretty much what happened to Amazon. All of you all, started hitting refresh at the same time a bout 300 times in the 10 minutes before the sale, and what happens? The servers clog. So lets go back to that Walmart analogy, Bob is over in San Francisco, while you're over in Cleveland. Both of you hit refresh at the same time. Now since Bob is theoretically closer to Amazon's servers his request gets there first, but his request still gets queued behind everyone that hit refresh before the sale. So he's stuck in line. You on the other hand get there slightly later, but alas you too are stonewalled behind the hordes of other treasure seekers. Your Internet speed is practically a non-issue. The servers, simply, were full. The lines were too long. So stop bitching about it. You should have realized your chances were slim to none anyways. I mean seriously did you think you could beat hundreds of thousands of people, if not a million to get one of the one thousand. I understand how all of you like to bitch about how your mocha-latte non-fat vanilla creme expresso things are too sweet or too cold, but seriously, no one is out to get you. Get over it. There are better supposed injustices to bicker about than equality in getting a $100 game console. Calm yourselves down, rip down those anti-Amazon banners on your blog, and find yourself a political issue.

Go to Adobe Labs: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html

And "Download Installer for Linux (GZ, 2.48 MB)"

Then unpackage it via terminal or some other program

If you're using the terminal you type in:
Quote:
Note: Make sure you're in the right directory.

Then copy and paste the libflashplayer.so file into your mozilla plugin's folder, usually it's in your home folder, but you have to change your settings to view hidden files. On Ubuntu the folder you're looking for is ./mozilla/plugins/

        I am appalled at what constitutes a charity these days. A few days ago, I recieved a phone call from the Children's Charitable Foundation, and I will admit I was taken in by the pleas of the caller, who spoke of sick children getting their last wishes fulfilled; in fact, I thought it was the Make-A-Wish Foundation calling. But no, I was mistaken this was the Children's Charitable Foundation. Nevertheless, I said I would pledge $25 to their cause, which, at the time, seemed very worthy.
        Well, today I got the mail and found their donation form. As soon as I looked at it, I knew something was up. Everything about their pamphlet just screamed "10 minute Frontpage job." Now, I'm not one to judge based on looks a lone, so I decided to do a little investigating. I had heard stories of many a charity that only spent around a quarter of their revenue on programs, but I never would have expected what I found out next.
        A simple web search of "Children's Charitable Foundation" was enough to yield a link to Give.org, which is the BBB for charities. The page lambasts the CCF being unaccountable. In fact, it failed to meet half of the standards for accountability. Now that's bad and all, but what really got me riled up was the percentage of donated money that they actually use for the children.
        CCF spends... 6% of it's funds on helping the children. No I didn't miss a zero, 6% on the dot. Now to put it all in perspective, they raked in $1.1 million in donations and gave out $60 thousand. Umm, that seems a little out of whack. Just a little.
        For god's sake, I know people that tithe at least 10% of their total income, and this charity can't even match that. Sickening.
        So what are they doing with all their money? Fundraising. Apparently cold calls, like the one they sent me, cost money; in fact, they spent 88% of their funds on fundrasing. Pathetic.

If CCF ever calls me up again begging for money, I'll give them a piece of my mind.

        Try disabling "slow keys," if it's enabled. I don't know how or why it got enabled, but it doesn't help.

Go to K > System Settings > Regional & Accessibility (near the top) > Accessibility > Keyboard Filters > Uncheck "Use slow keys"