Blog Archives

Remakes have a lot to standup against. Some fall short and some don’t.  

Right now I’m looking at a high cliff and Charlie’s Angles is right on the edge.  I remember the original Angles and this one doesn’t have the right feel.  The actresses don’t seem comfortable in their roles and are still learning how to hand those roles.

Handing woman a pistol, sexy dress and a case to solve doesn’t make them an Angle.  It does make them screen candy but right now that is where it stops. Drew Barrymore as one of the producers doesn’t guarantee it is going to be a hit  I’ll give it a couple more chances but I don’t see it have wings to continue.

I know Barrymore has a vested interest as the producer and it would also appear she was given some advertising deal.  The first three commercial breaks included commercials featuring Barrymore.

The new Charlie’s Angels is going to have a Devil of a time living up to the Classic.  

ABC needs to quit dreaming, give the actress a bit more training on handeling weapons, driving and perhaps even some acting lessons.  Bosly is to young, doesn’t feel right.  He needs to be a bit older and more fatherly.

I’m willing to give it a bit more time, but I’m not pinning my hopes on it.  I simply don’t think it has a prayer.

This is just an amazing example of why geeks and gamers shouldn’t be discounted.  We can do a lot, we may not do it the way you do but we make a difference.

Dungeons and Dragons was/is my game of choice and of course Angry Birds.  Second Life just wasn’t for me.  I’m not in to fake social interaction.  If my gaming could help solve a problem, I’d be happy as a Orc in mud, a Hobbit smoking the finest weed of the Southfarthing or a Zombie in a morgue. 

Non-Gamers think that gamers are just a bunch of losers who smell bad and are hunkered over a table in a basement rolling dice and playing with little statues.  We are not all siting in front of a computer playing Elf-Quest or one of the other MMORPG that are out there.  Not all of us are.  Some of us are mothers, fathers, Dr., police officers, teachers, actor or actresses. Some have been accepted to Juilliard School of Music, double majored in mathematics and music performance, have been a National Merit Scholar and have graduated as valedictorian of their class. (Felica Day).

Remember we geeks and gamers – think out of the box and develop some really cool things, have a different point of view on problems and make a lot of things in your life.

Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle | The Raw Story

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where — exceptionally in scientific publishing — both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.  

Firas Khatib of the university’s biochemistry lab said in a press release, “The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems.”.

Where was Facebook when I needed it? Falling behind. I’ll admit it I have I have religated Facebook to sitting in the Dunce corner. The one I look at when my inbox says HEY – someone who is still on Facebook wants you to know see <insert picture of their spring break trip, their 40th high school reunion or even their newest photo of the little rug rat playing in the sand>. Isn’t he so cute and he is <insert line that could be taken as referring to an animal or to the other persons partner> and so on… and most times I either hit archive or delete. Most often delete. Yes there are a few people that I happily check in on, but I’m not that interested in everyones daily updates.

As I have continued using Google Plus, my usage of Facebook has dropped. I am using add-ons for Google Chrome that allow me to do all of the things that I did when I used Facebook. Some of the early add-on I used have now been replaced by features incorporated in to Google Plus. They listen.

I can cross post to Twitter very easily, even Facebook, and that has made the transition to Google Plus easy and painless. What I like most about Google Plus is that I can follow people who share quality content. The exchange of information is free and open. I don’t miss the forced communication of Facebook, my ribs aren’t hurting from all those pokes and no Farmville request.

I don’t get request to come to events I don’t want. Best of all is I can see all the stupid Gifs I want when I want. I’m still learning how to use the Circles feature of Google Plus. Being able to sort and filter content was something I could not do on Facebook, until they copied the idea from Google. I chuckle at the thought of the late night meetings those Facebook engineers where having. I’d have enjoyed being a fly on that wall.

“Damn it, GIVE ME CIRCLES. Just don’t call them that. Why didn’t we think of this? Make sure we still have a way to control those ‘CIRCLES’. Our users are so stupid we better just sort their friends in to ummm… ‘Smart List’, then tell them it has happened. We will put it out as an upgrade to privacy, a feature that allows you to share cute cat photos with grandma and not share all those spring break photos. WHY didn’t we think of this?” – imaginary product manager.

NPR covered this story yesterday, spoke to a few Facebook users. Every last one of them commented that it was a feature that they were glad to have and that it should have happened earlier. What I noticed was that the two people NPR featured in snippets were both wanting to keep family from knowing what was going on.

Facebook is playing catch-up in some areas. For me, Facebook is like a light-bright. It was cool when I first started using it. After a while it just did the same thing, let me poke people, mutually stock people, forced me to publicly ignore or lie about my attendance at events, be annoyed by Farmville and see those stupid photos of people on spring break. I’ve gotten older and my taste have changed. Facebook isn’t keeping up with those changes. I’m not a fan of the New Improved Facebook, nor was I a fan of New Coke. Coke did it right the first time and Facebook should have also.

Google Plus is still developing features. Features that are being driven by user request and they address those request openly. Their not pre-sorting our friends, family and acquaintances. They don’t assume they know our taste better than we do. 

Google Plus didn’t try to free up my saturday by guessing who went in to which Circle. Google Plus didn’t try to guess what I wanted to do with my saturday. 

Facebook on the other hand.

“It is silly for you to spend a Saturday afternoon categorizing your friends on Facebook,” Facebook director of product management Blake Ross Blake Ross said. “We want to make it as easy as possible to organize your friends.”

That really is a great idea to let me organize my ‘friends’. Why did it take so long? Why is it that you think you know how to organize my ‘smartlist’ better than I do?

Facebook needs to be more open and listen to users more, but I degrees. I need to get back to my email and search for all those ‘pokes’ and delete them. Oh – wait, I did that years ago with filters Gmail provided. Just one more reason I love Google.