BSD & Gaming

I’m really happy that the show CHUCK returned for a 3rd season. There are very few shows worth watching today and this has been one of the few greats out there. The first two seasons were “awesome” to say the least <snigger>.

The latest season has had some good points to it so far, but there is definitely a lack of clarity in the stories that makes me think some executive up the food chain is interfering with the script writers and are trying to drive up ratings with tired old plot formulas.

The focus on Chuck’s work at the Buy More and the relationships there has been minimal and that’s missing out on a huge part of the character.  Another area they are messing with is the love interest part of the show, “will they or won’t they?”.  That only works for a season or two at best before it starts to drive an audience away, I wish decision makers would learn that lesson already. Dragging their feet on the Chuck & Sarah plot is not helping.

There are only 15 shows ordered for season three and we’re just about half way through. While I plan to see them all, I do feel the writers need to get their groove back and finish the show with a big bang not a whimper. Speaking of the season’s final episode…  my gut feeling is the 15th show will be the last episode ever for the series….I do hope I’m wrong about that.

The newest Firefox 3.6 makes a big change in how new tabs are loaded. The old way opens a new tab to the far right. The new way opens a tab immediately to the right, this bugs the hell out of me.

If you like or want to know more about the way version 3.6 handles tabbed browsing and the changes to come, then take a look at this page – [LINK]

For those dinosaurs like myself who prefer the old way it’s a simple enough fix.

Go to about:config and filter for browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent, then change the value to “FALSE”.

All done, PHEW! now I can go back to surfing the way I like it.

I’m sure the MacZombies will be running out and snapping up the new iPads as soon as they can. I don’t want to sound super critical of Apple or their products, but once you look at what it offers my reaction is definitely apathetic. Again, no offense but once I looked into the details my first thought is “Mehhh.. whatever.”

According to the reviews and product specs, at the starting price of $499 you get 16gb storage, a 9.7 inch screen and a non-multi tasking OS.Basically what you do get is a large screened iPhone that is not a phone. Apparantly it does not include a standard usb port, does not include wifi or 3g access, does not have a flash card slot, the web browser cannot view Flash media, etc etc etc. Those items cost a boatload more cash or are not available at all.

While it does purportedly have an impressive 10 hour battery, a slim profile, and the usual slick apple product styling, over all it’s just not worth it for the money to my way of thinking…  not for me anyway. I’d be a lot happier with a $399 netbook of similar screen size and profile that I could load my own OS onto [ PC-BSD or FreeBSD ] and have memory card slots, usb ports, wifi capability, etc etc for a LOT less cash.

Great news for those of you awaiting a new release for PC-BSD. Version 8.0-RC [Hubble Edition] was released this month! This is great since the base is FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2 and it supports more of the new chipsets than version 7.0 did.

For example; my Toshiba X205 series laptop has one of those built in intel wireless cards and intel based front panel media controllers which works with v8, however under v7 they were unabe to function. Now they function perfectly…NICE!!

Read about it here  – [LINK]