Please to be finding here a page of basic info about yours truly. The blog linked above contains much more current stuff, but I'm not sure I can put my ancient PHP code into anything other than this page, so this page remains. Here you will get to bore yourself with the following topics:

• Movies Movies Movies
• Other wacky interests
• Computer Stuff
• Junk about moi
• Closing Random Quote

movies movies movies!

Definitely my one big addiction. I see as many movies as possible, although being a parent does tend to cramp one's movie-watching style. DVD helps a lot in this regard (as does having my DVD player next to a treadmill). I used to have something here about how it was getting harder to deal with videotape. Actually, I can't remember the last time we rented one that wasn't a kids' movie... and even those we don't rent, we get from the library. I've been a Netflix subscriber since 1998, believe it or not, and as such I haven't been to a Blockbuster in years.

I'm a big Kubrick fan (R.I.P.), and would probably include three of his movies (2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove) in my top 15 of all time (although the AFI didn't even put any of those in their top 20!). I also like Sergio Leone, Scorsese, Kurosawa, John Woo, Joel and Ethan Coen, and of course, good ol' Quentin T. And, BTW, if you don't know about the Internet Movie Database, well, you should.

What have I seen recently? Consult the table on the right over there, pulled dynamically from a database, thanks to PHP and MySQL! (These are my last 10 viewed movies... to see all reviews, visit http://movies.chrisandmaria.com/...)

other wacky interests

Let's see, there's..

• UFOs, especially the theories of Jacques Vallee. One of the first books I remember reading was one on UFOs, which probably explains a lot. Some wacky contactee guy named George Adamski, who of course has his own Wikipedia entry.
• The JFK assassination. I remember seeing Geraldo Rivera on Good Night America showing the Zapruder film on TV, which was its first public showing. Shortly afterward I bought my own copy and would show it to various current affairs classes at high school.
• The above entries explain one of my favorite TV shows, The X Files. It ended with a whimper rather than a bang, and had jumped the shark around Season 5 or 6, but when it was good, damn it was good. It also explains a good book I read (new edition now includes 20 bonus conspiracies!).
• Other truly great TV shows? Well, I'm a latecomer to being a Joss Whedon fanboy. Thanks to my sis I've got all the Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs up to Season 6, as well as Firefly. My other faves includes MST3K (R.I.P.), The Prisoner, and Twin Peaks (which I watched to the bitter end, and I do mean bitter). I've got the Season One DVDs; hope they do Season Two sometime, although that season really is uneven. Shows I watch nowadays include The Daily Show, Iron Chef America, 24 (when it's on), and Lost (although I'm fading fast on it)..
• As for Lone Wolf and Cub, Dark Horse Comics did it! They finished publishing ALL of these classic Japanese samurai manga, with new translations and in their proper order. The final episode was sad, as expected, but had an interesting twist. Wow, what a series. Read about it here. And Animeigo has released all six of the original Lone Wolf and Cub films. I've seen the first three, and they're great... I hear the last one doesn't end in the same way as the manga, though. Too bad. My daughter and son now read manga and watch anime too, and they've gotten me into such things as Yu-Gi-Oh, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat. Myself, I've watched Bleach, Witch Hunter Robin, Cowboy Bebop, and Samurai Champloo on Adult Swim. (BTW, the themesongs to Cardcaptor Sakura and Cowboy Bebop are both just fantastic.)
• Lots of different types of music, and I'm listening to more now that my wonderful wife got me an iPod mini... some of my favorites include Shonen Knife, Laurie Anderson, Matthew Sweet, Suzanne Vega, and Public Enemy (now there's a mix for you) I also listen to a lot more podcasts nowadays than music, in particular This Week in Tech, the HDTV podcast, Major Nelson (more on that next), and Anime Today (by Right Stuf International). I'll link those sometime, but not today.
• I like video games; I suck at playing them, but I still like them for some reason. The Marathon series was incredible and made me a Bungie fan. It's hard to be as big a fan now that they've been assimilated, but I'm still fond of them and look forward to Halo 3 on a 360. Yep, I got a 360 and have had a great time with it, particularly with Gears of War, which is a very impressive next-gen title. I still play the DS when I can, usually Nightmare Troubadour to improve my Yu-Gi-Oh skillz..

computers 'r' us

Wow, I haven't updated this section in two years, and boy does it show. Last time I did, it was two years ago, and I mentioned that my G3 iBook was still limping along. Two years later, it's finally been supplanted by a MacBook Pro that I got through work. The G3 has Ubuntu PPC running (well, yes, limping) on it, just to say I could get it working. The MacBook Pro is much bigger, much faster, and since it's got Intel Inside, it can use Parallels fantastic virtualization product to run (yes) Ubuntu Linux or Windows XP in a virtual machine right alongside of OS X. Pretty incredible. I still have the dual-2.5GHz G5 at work and it'll do fine until Apple announces its Intel-based replacements. If I were getting a Mac for home, the new MacBooks would be tempting, as would the Mac minis... we got one of those at work just recently and they're astoundingly small.

As for Windows, I still have a couple of boxes that the kids and the Mrs. use, and which I use for various transcoding utilities that are only available for Windows as far as I know. However, I managed to carve out some space from my main PC's hard disk and now use it to dual boot my machine for XP and (yes) Ubuntu. I had to play around with Xgl once I heard about it, and it really is some impressive eye candy (particularly the Xgl/Compiz fork called Beryl). If I get a new system, I'm debating whether to bother getting Windows for it.

And as for our friend the Penguin, as you can tell from the above, I'm back into it with a vengeance. At first I'd stuck mainly to the version of Linux that came with MythTV and KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth is a easy way of installing MythTV, which is a do-it-yourself digital video recorder that works incredibly well given its 0.19 status. It does waaaay more than a TiVo would let you do: schedule recordings from anywhere, set up custom recording profiles, copy things to a DVD, play DVDs. You name it. But now in addition to the KnoppMyth box, I'm doing a lot more Ubuntu. It really is quite an impressive OS, particularly for the price.

Here's an outdated list of sites I visit for all things computer-related (will try to update soon):

• Macintouch--always gives you current links to the latest Mac software patches and bugs.
• TidBITS--a good Mac-oriented weekly electronic newsletter.
• Mac OS X Hints--fantastic resource for OS X tips and tricks, especially emphasizing getting at its Unix underpinnings.
• Anandtech--reviews of PC components and overclocking.
• Tom's Hardware--see above; more techy and more opinionated than Anandtech, but good for some other opinions of PC stuff.
• Slashdot--get breaking info about Linux and Windows and other tech-related items, and watch the big fights break out between the KDE and Gnome people, or the Red Hat and Debian people, or the Windows and Mac people, or....
• Digg--this year's Slashdot, where I found out how to run and maintain Ubuntu, as well as links to dumb YouTube videos.

dewar's profile (kinda)

Birthdate:	March 1, 1960
Age:	You do the math, I'm bitter
Originally from:	Kansas City (born on the Kansas side, raised on the Missouri side)
Subject I'm most glad I took in high school:	Typing
Undergrad work at:	Northwestern University
Master's Degree at:	University of Michigan
Majored in:	Biology
What biology has to do with current occupation:	Actually, now it's a fair amount; certainly more than when I was here!
Favorite Northwestern alum (?):	Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Favorite place to ski:	Salt Lake City (with Vail a close second and Whistler-Blackcomb right up there too)
Favorite coffee (on the web):	Torrefazione Italia

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Slim: [after kissing Steve] It's even better when you help.

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