The Sick Laptop- Update.

I've successfully installed Fedora on the laptop, though honestly the installer on the live USB I made did all the hard work.

I've never used a Linux system before, so I am still getting used to it, but so far I love it! First of all it runs really, really fast, compared to a Windows system. Second, coming from Windows, some of the features are mind-blowingly awesome. One such feature is yum, which allows you to download and install programs directly from the package repository.

If you want to try out Linux, but haven't done so yet, I urge you to just try it. It's just for nerds, so far I've found it to be very user friendly. Also you can install it along side your current operating system if you don't want to wipe your hard drive, so you have nothing to loose by trying it out.

Linux.org
Fedora Project


 

The Sick Laptop

I've acquired a free laptop with a deeply ill copy of Windows 7 (64 bit) installed on it. Fortunately, this gives me just the excuse I need to lobotomize it an install Linux on it!

DvD Pickups

Just a few DvD's I've picked up recently
 

The Great Stuffed Animal Hacking Adventure.

I like stuffed animals and I would like to try my hand at making my own some day, but you gotta start somewhere, right?  That's why I decided to start out by putting my own touches to an existing stuffed animal.

I started with this cute little victim I picked up at the store:

Adorable, right? I believe he's supposed to be a cat, that's why I'm gonna stitch some bat wings on to him. I am using the shell of a worn out coat that I couldn't bear to see thrown away, and I plan on using the liner to make some other stuffed animal. Maybe a chupacabra or something.

Not having a sewing machine, I hand-stitched them on. This ended up taking most of the afternoon, much longer than I had expected.

The finished product, and a big improvement if you ask me. 

Movies I Reccomend: Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter, 1974

 

For a long while now I've had a special place in my heart for all of Hammer horror movies, but if pressed I would have to offer this little gem as my favorite.

When Dr Marcus (John Carson), a medical doctor living in a small village notices young girls being drained of their youth, he calls in a old army friend of his, Captain Kronos (Horst Janson). Kronos bears the scars of his time in the army and of a vampire attack, which upon surviving he devoted his life to hunting vampires. Kronos is accompanied by Caroline Munro as the film's obligatory pretty girl and by his hunchback assistant Professor Hieronymus Grost, who acts the brains of the operation to Kronos's brawn.

The movie departs greatly from the formula used in Hammer's Dracula series in a couple of important ways: First, in the universe of Kronos, there are many different types of vampires each with their own specific strengths and weaknesses, and a major (and unintentionally funny) plot point of the movie revolves around the character's attempts to discover how to kill the vampire.  Second, Kronos is able to battle the vampire on equal footing and the movies climax is an between Kronos and the vampire, both of them master swordsmen. Today audiences expect that of their vampire hunters, but keep in mind this movie was made in 1974 and Peter Cushing's Van Helsing was representative of the heroes in vampire up to then, and movie audiences expected vampire hunters to battle their foes by waiting for sunup and throwing the curtains open.

This movie stands out as one of Hammer's more creative vampire movies. The director of the movie (Brian Clemens) had wanted to do a series around these characters, but it never came to pass as Hammer was having financial problems by this point. If there is some parallel universe out there somewhere where the director got to film his Kronos series instead of this lone movie, I would give almost anything to be able to visit it long enough to see a Kronos marathon.

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter IMDb

Snowmageddon 2

We had a another big snowstorm today, less than a week after the last one. Although it was big snowstorm, it wasn't as big as the one we had last Thursday, nor was it as big as everyone had feared. People were so spooked of the snow yesterday that we had a run on milk and bread at the grocery store and Kansas City declared a state of emergency before the snow had even started. It may not to be totally foolish however, as I heard on the local NPR station that 8 of the city's plow trucks ended up off the road this morning.

Now it's mid afternoon and the temperature is right at freezing. he roads are clear and I can see people out and about out my front window. All in all I got less than six inches of wet, sloppy snow that stuck to the side of my maple tree. And... looks like I will be able going to work tonight, which is good. I became bored out of my skull after three days of being snowed in last week.