Naming Conventions

As a lot of you may already know, I try to stick to a norse mythology naming convention for technological items I own–my older PC was/is Freya (it now belongs to my father… or is at least used by him.), my main PC is Mjolnir, etc.

But I’ve recently renamed a bunch of stuff, as the old titles just made no damn sense.  What follows is a list of the names of my current gadgets/computers, etc:

Freya – My dad’s computer, used to be mine–a Hewlett Packard I bought from N20.<br />
Mjolnir – My main gaming PC–I don’t seem to use it as much as I used to as a few parts are currently being replaced.<br />
Nasir – The only non-Norse thing in the list–my Dell Inspiron 1300 which I got for use with school studies, etc.  It currently is used by me every day in lieu of Mjolnir.<br />
Yggdrasil – My Linksys WRT45GL router running DD-WRT.  It gives the wonder that is the internet to all of my gadgets, consoles, and PCs.<br />
Ratatosk – (New as of July 8th 2008) – My hacked Fon La Fonera 2100 router running DD-WRT, and serving as a wireless bridge to hook my Xbox 360 up to the network and ze internet.<br />
Gleipnir – My PlayStation Portable–It used to be called “Ragnarok”, but that just made no damn sense, mythology-wise.<br />
Iðunn – My Nintendo Wii–I don’t use it nearly as much as I should, considering how much trouble I went through to get it.  Still fun for parties/gatherings of a lot of people, etc, but my friends and I usually end up just playing Rock Band on Quin’s Xbox 360.<br />
Ullr – My Xbox 360–Was originally Odin II, since Odin was my Xbox, but I’ve retroactively removed the name from my old Xbox, as it was sold on eBay to a new owner.<br />
And finally, Draupnir – Draupnir will be my PlayStation 3 when I purchase it.  If all goes according to plan, I should be doing so sometime around the 17th of July or later.  Just need to find an 80GB MGS4 bundle first.  (Easier said than done!  Most people claim they’re as rare as either a Wii or Wii Fit as of late.)

So there you have it–the list of gadget names.  Why?  Because I wanted a place to write them down where I could remember them, honestly.  It gets confusing, especially when I rename a few.  I’m pretty sure I’ll unconciously refer to my PSP as “Ragnarok” for a while still, but it really made no sense as a name.

(P.S.  As an off-topic note, I’m really back into Magic: the Gathering as of late.  Can’t wait for the Eventide release on the 25th!  Booster box, here I come!)

July 7, 2008 · Filed Under Announcements, Draupnir, Freya, Gleipnir, Iðunn, Journal, Magic, Mjolnir, Nasir, Projects, School, Ullr

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It was an accident, I swear.

OR: How I inadvertantly started the whole MediaDefender versus Rev3 fiasco.

It was an accident, really. I was poor, had no money, I was bored, and felt kind of sick. I didn’t like it, but I accepted I was going to download a movie without paying for it. I looked through the list of recently released-to-DVD/BD films @ Rotten Tomatoes, but couldn’t find anything. I then looked to the soon-to-be-released list, and saw Rambo/John Rambo. Now, I love Rambo. I was going to go see it in the theatre when it came out, but once again, I was doshless. Anyway, after finding a torrent for it, I was on my way…when I noticed that one of the trackers was on Revision3’s server.

That seemed wrong. They’re a legitimate company that publishes shows like The Totally Rad Show and my personal favourite, Diggnation. So I quickly hopped onto the Rev3 forums, and wrote a post about it to let whoever was in charge of their BitTorrent tracker know what was going on. You can see the post on their <a href=”http://revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?p=369753″ title=”Rev3’s BitTorrent tracker being used for piracy? – Revision3 Forums”>forums</a> from the 24th.

Shortly after that, someone who worked there pulled the plug on it, and said:

“while it means revision3’s tracker will be more complex and less robust, i have implemented whitelisting. let the server crashes begin again”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Since then, Revision3 has started to file a lawsuit against MediaDefender, and even has the FBI involved. (So you can see why I didn’t really want to post this.)

Anyway, I’m at least hoping that this will result in MediaDefender’s demise, because they clearly aren’t only targeting illegal P2P, but all P2P, which is just silly. I occasionally use Rev3’s tracker to get Diggnation (most often I just directly download it… it seems faster) but they don’t deserve to be DDoS’d for any reason. It looks like Rev3 wasn’t even helping spread the piracy of “John Rambo”, but were having their servers misused by MediaDefender to try and stop it. It still could’ve resulted in Revision3 coming under lawsuit for helping with piracy though, so I’m glad they’re no longer announcing illegal files.

(P.S. Since then, I’ve rented “John Rambo” on DVD, just to make up for downloading it early.)

May 29, 2008 · Filed Under Announcements, Freya, Journal, Mjolnir

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I, Me, Mine, I, Me, Mine, I, Me, Mine…

Bought stuff today.

Well… maybe I should start at the beginning… *cue flashback effects, and weird harp music…*

Woke up, got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my hea–wait, those are Beatles lyrics..

I got up at around 8:30 AM today. Had a shower, got a chance to use my new “Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner“, and it works well. I decided to clean out my bathroom, and realized I needed some new toiletries. (i.e, shampoo, toothpaste, etc.)

I figured since I was planning on going shopping today anyway, I’d pick ‘em up later.

After all of that, I booted up Mjolnir, and proceeded to watch the last disc of Smallville Season 2. It was pretty good.

I then realized I hadn’t anything to do for a few hours, so I figured I might as well play some Guild Wars: Prophecies. I finished a mission at Fort Ranik, and then logged off as I had to get ready to go out.

Basically, after that, I got dressed twice –Didn’t want to wear the grey shirt again today, went for the pink. Does it matter? –and went upstairs to wait for my mom.

She came home, we had lunch, and then I decided to read up on GW and stuff to kill a half of an hour, since she didn’t want to go out ’til she had taken a break. I did so, and then we headed out to London Drugs.

It took about 40 minutes to get there, due to horrendous traffic, but we were there. We went in, waited around for 12 minutes ’til someone finally offered to help us –Only after I told my mom we needed to look “rich and stupid.” We started thumbing through our wallets, looking at displays for Vista and what not, and put a glazed-over look in our eyes. Immediately someone came over and offered to sell us Vista Ultimate. I said we were just looking for Office 2007 Student and Home edition, they went into the back, said they couldn’t find it, and offered to sell us the Standard edition. They then asked a superior to help them, they checked the stock online, and found that they should have 13 copies of Student/Home there, went into the back and “managed” to find a copy, though it was all dinged up and scratched.

Anyway, we took it. I also went to look at the games, and decided to get Guild Wars: Nightfall Collector’s Edition. It was the only GW campaign/chapter I didn’t have, and I was in a GW mood.

We bought those items, and then left the Electronics/Computer department. After this, we picked up shampoo, soap, toothpaste, floss, socks, bottled water, chips, Tic Tacs, and pretty much everything else we saw. ;)

We finally left, and didn’t have far to go to get to the van, since we had gotten a great parking space beforehand, right outside of the door.

We left, and had a mostly uneventful drive home. Once home, I proceeded to install Office 2007 on Nasir (my lappy! Yay!), Sakura (my mom’s lappy, yay!) and Freya (my dad’s computer, now-a-days…)

Then I had dinner, went downstairs, and booted up Mjolnir again. I installed Nightfall, and by that, I mean I registered the key with my account, downloaded the extra soundtrack, ripped the soundtrack CD that came with it, and added my special “PCGamer Exclusive Minipet and Mission” code that I had gotten ages ago during the prerelease.

I was going to start playing Nightfall, or maybe just stick with Prophecies for now, but Quin was on Skype, and he said Ben had just been on. I decided to call him, and I left a message on his machine. I then decided to watch “The Making of Nightfall” to pass the time ’til he got back.

Half way through he came on Skype, we talked at great length about why Guild Wars rocks, and why he should get Prophecies, etc, etc, and Quin watched clips of Family Guy on YouTube.

We then finally started playing BF2, and continued to do so for many hours. From.. 8PM ’til .. 12:30 AM. Anyway, I made it to Gunnery Sergent, unlocked the Support class weapons, and decided to write this post ‘fore I went to bed. I am le TIRED.

P.S. I also watched Once More With Feeling again this morning. ;)

February 10, 2007 · Filed Under Announcements, Ben, Buffy, Freya, Journal, Mjolnir, Projects, School, Ullr

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“Inspiron” ?

First of all, I never ever ever post to this blog anymore. Maybe it’s because school just started, I made new friends, I’m busy studying and playing Magic: The Gathering after school for three hours nearly every day, or maybe it’s because I’m just tired from going to the gym every morning. Either way, I have gone into a blog-lull. Lucky for you readers though, I have to post here now. It’s manditory. It’s for school! In the 4th module of English 10 (last one, very short) 30 of the 100 marks you get are from keeping a journal, so I talked with le teachers, etc, and it turns out I can just make a daily post here about … my day, and get credit for it. Internet..huzzah!

Anyway, I’ve gotten back into playing Magic: The Gathering in a big way. Like.. super-o-bigga. It’s le fun, Coldsnap rocks, Time Spiral looks great, w00t for old mechanics, w00t for Urza. But on a more serious note, the courses I’m taking thus far this year are…:

  • Science 10
  • English 10 (for about a week to a month, just finishing it off)
  • Beginner’s German 11
  • Social Studies 10
  • Photography
  • Planning 10/11
  • Physical Education 10/11
  • And, if time permits, Math 9.

Because these courses vary so much, and because of the fact that I have a very hard time writing (penmanship-wise, not English-wise), and also because of the fact that the computers at school are on so much of a lock down that you can’t install Firefox, new virus definitions, or windows updates, and the last update was done in June 2005… I’ve decided to get a laptop. Only a cheap one, but one not so cruddy and without battery life that I can’t do anything on it. The laptop I chose?

The Dell Inspiron 1300.

Yes, a Dell. Yes, they explode, yes they come bundled with spyware and ass-gaskets, and yes it requires a lot of work to get it running normally. But I don’t care, it was cheap, and more powerful than the Lenovo C100 or N100. Specs posted below (taken from Dell website):

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735 (1.70GHz/2MB Cache/400MHz FSB)
15.4in WXGA Display
1GB DDR2 SDRAM (2 512MB Dimms)
80GB 5400rpm PATA Hard Drive
48x/8x CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW)
Intel® PRO 2915 Internal Wireless (802.11 a/b/g, 54Mbps)
Integrated Intel® Media Accelerator 900 Graphics (Comparable to an NVIDIA GeForce 5900 or an ATI Radeon 9600)
Genuine Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (Dell recommends Microsoft Windows XP Professional)

It’s a nice li’l machine, and I think it will serve me well.

For now, it has no name other than lappy. Why? Because frankly, I’m getting really tired of the Norse mythological naming convention. It’s hard to choose a good name for it. My router is Yggdrasil, my computer is Mjolnir, my old computer is Freya, and my PSP is Loki. But that’s it. I’m done. It’s just going to be lappy, or some weird Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, or … anything else with star in the title reference. Why? Because I’m a geek, damnit. When I get it, I’m going to check and see if I’ve got backup CDs for any software I want to keep, download all the drivers from the Dell and Intel websites, download the Office 2007 Beta for it, and then just wipe the damn thing and install Windows XP Home with the included $19 backup disc. Why? Because it will be faster. I’m also planning on dual-booting a distribution of Linux, but right now I’m deciding between Ubuntu and Gentoo. Debian = slow to update and outdated, Ubuntu couldn’t exist without Debian, and Gentoo takes for FREAKING ever to compile. Bottom line, no SuSe or Fedora Core. I like .debs or emerging things from source.

Anyway, this post has gotten long, and I have homework to do (well, I have a choice of either writing an autobiography sketch for English 10, or studying some German. Welches wählt man ich…?

September 12, 2006 · Filed Under Announcements, Freya, Journal, Linux, Magic, Mjolnir, Projects, School

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One helluvan update.

Okay, so maybe “helluvan” isn’t a word. I refuse to say helluva followed by a vowel. Sosumi.

My first PC Gamer finally came here. It rocks.

I’ve added a new album to my gallery and upgraded it to a newer version. Took a while, but ’twas worth it.

Because I’m too cheap and/or lazy to buy a Flickr PRO account, and zeeble won’t buy me one either, I decided to go back to using G2 for more than just screenshots. So, in short, (or long, rather), I’ve added a Photos album, with at least one sub-album. W00. I also renamed the gallery “TLC_G2: The Gallery of The Lazy Canadian”, just because the weird name that was en francais I had before was… tres lame. ;)

In other news; I’ve really gotten into photography. At least for now, that is. I’m planning on taking a photography course as soon as school is back in session, but there’s always the chance that I won’t get in, seeing as the last two years I’ve applied, but not soon enough. Here’s hoping I get in. (Wish me luck!)

Other than that, my life has been as it always is during the summer: Long.

The last discs of Buffy S4 came, and I watched them.
The last discs of Medium S1 are here, I’m in the midst of watching them.
I got a copy of Azumanga Daioh, and I’ve been watching it.
I bought Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 for $20ish, and I’m going to watch them.
I rented “She’s the Man” and “Pride & Predjudice (2005)”, and I watched them.
Ranma 1/2 DVDs are in the mail, and I’mm’a watch them.

Basically, other than take photos, and go for hikes/swimming, all I do during the summer is… watch TV or movies.

Boring, yes, but I can’t apply for a job ’til September as well, seeing as Ben apparently has an “in” with one of the places I want to apply at, and if I get a job during the school year, I get credit.

I asked my mom to pick up the “driver’s guide” book… manual… thing, so I can take the first test. Why? Because I’m so bored I’ve decided to learn to drive. I don’t really want to, but what else is there to do? At least this way when I want to go to Gibsons, I don’t have to convince one of my parents to go. (I could take the bus, yes, and I wouldn’t be bored, seeing as I’d have my PSP, but I don’t like taking the bus, because it limits the time I can spend wherever I’m going, since I have to keep the schedule in my mind.)

Eh.. what else (long post, ’cause I haven’t posted in a while.)

Oh.

I still haven’t recieved the free Gentoo CDs that I sent away for. I suppose I’ll just have to wait, but when they get here, I plan on setting aside a week to install it. :X

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on IRC again lately, and I’ve met most of the people that I fell out of touch with again. I must say I’ve missed ‘em.

Anyway, for the last few sentences, I’ve just been trying to check every li’l category box. And while I’m certain I could easily do so, by yelling something out about norse mythology and … uncategories, I won’t. Though now that I have… I’ll check the rest of the boxes anyway. (My Xbox isn’t used much anymore, my dad is taking care of my old computer, I like playing M:TG, uncategories ftw.)

August 1, 2006 · Filed Under Anime, Announcements, Ben, Buffy, Freya, IRC, Journal, Linux, Magic, Mjolnir, Projects, School, Ullr, Uncatagorized

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