R2-D2, the secret leader of the Rebellion?

I don’t usually re-post things I find on BoingBoing, but this was just too good. It posits that R2-D2 is in fact one of the leaders of the rebellion, given the information he has that, by the time A New Hope (Episode 4) starts, few other people in the galaxy are aware of. It’s pretty convincing…
r2d2.jpg Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO’s memory wiped but not R2’s. He wouldn’t make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy’s top experts at hacking into other people’s systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.
Read the rest here

A Moo Moo Here and a Bahh Bah there…

That title has nothing to do with this post, it’s just that I can’t get the words out of my head. You might be as surprised as me to find those annoying kids songs actually work on a newborn. Frankly any kind of noise works though. I guess they’re used to hearing background noise when they’re in the womb, so Benjamin is not a fan of quiet. A fact which was made abundantly clear to us, yet again last night. Which might be contributing to my apparently newly developed dyslexia.
I apologize if my spelling is atrocious. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of early-onset, pre-senile dementia, or just a side-effect of being a new parent, but it seems that I can no longer type. I type words and numbers out of order with disturbing regularity, and this weekend things I typed suddenly disappeared, while things I swear I didn’t type showed up. Annoying in personal correspondance, but when it’s entered into EasyWorship and put up in front of the whole church, it’s just downright embarrassing.
(Side note: even worse than typos is when you right click on a misspelled word to correct it, and accidentally add your misspelling to the dictionary… which I just did. I swear this whole parenthood thing is actually making me dumber…)
Anyway, I wanted to intelligently capture my first impressions of two of the hottest tech toys of the year so far: The Nintendo Wii, and the MacBook Pro.
The Wii is, in a word, fun. It’s unlike any other video game system ever made, and in my mind, can’t be compared with any of them — save maybe for DDR and Samba Di Amigo on the Dreamcast. But it’s better than DDR, because anyone can pick up a controller cold, and be having a great time within 5 minutes. Despite the occasional effort, I’ve never been able to do anything but suck horribly at DDR.
The graphics are not much to look at, when compared to the XBox 360, although I’m reserving my final judgment until I can pick up some component cables and see what it looks like in 480p with a proper widescreen ratio. But it doesn’t really matter because once you’re playing the game, you don’t care. It’s more about you and what you’re doing than what’s happening on the screen. It just feels like a more healthy and social experience than mashing buttons on a regular controller.
It was lent to me by a friend who’s off in France right now, so I get it for four months, and so far I’ve really enjoyed having this system. I doubt, with our new priorities, that I’d go out and buy one, but if I were young and full of money, this is where I’d be spending my entertainment budget.
And then there’s the MacBook Pro, easily the most lusted after laptop on the market. I know some of you are wondering how I got one, and I’m not going to go into the whole story. But some of you may remember that second job I took — the one I can’t legally get paid for. The use of this amazing machine is part of my remuneration, and the best tool I could have been equipped with to cover the wide array of technological responsibilities I deal with during a given week.
videocall.jpgThe MacBook Pro is worth every cent I didn’t pay for it. No laptop compares. I saw a high end Sony Vaio the other day, and when I saw the plastic latch that holds the thing shut, I had to hold in an arrogant laugh. Everything about the MacBook is elegant: from the brushed metal enclosure, unmarred by any sort of protruding latch, door or port, to the recessed webcam built-in to the monitor, to the multi-finger control of the trackpad that manages to provide all the functionality of a many-buttoned pointing device, without interrupting the smooth lines of the case, to the ambient light sensor that adjusts screen brightness and backlights the keyboard as needed.
Mom and Dad, you need to get a MacBook (the cheap one will do) so that you can see your grandson without having to get up off the couch. The screen shot is me talking to our friend Jon Bates, who is also rockin the MacBook Pro action. Later we added in Brian on his MacBook for a 3-person video chat.
This machine has replaced 3 computers in my life: a G4 Cube, a Dell Latitude D610 Craptop, and a PowerMac G4 Dual, and I dare say it’s more functional than all 3 combined. There is literally no program I desire, whether for Windows or Mac, that I cannot run on my laptop, and I don’t think I’ve been so technologically satiated.
Now if only I could get some sleep…

OK, OK here's some more pictures…

Benjamin stayed with a babysitter for the first time last night! Our pastor and his wife very kindly volunteered to take our baby and send us out for a date night, and we weren’t about to say no!
We ate at a cool little inn, without stopping even once to burp the baby. And apparently he was an angel at their place until we returned — at which point he realised he’d been duped, and that was a bottle he was eating from, not a boob, and he wanted us to know how angry he was about it. He then fell asleep as soon as the car started.
By popular demand, here are some more pictures. Our flash is acting up, so our pictures are ending up either too dark or blindingly bright. A few worked out OK though. A huge thank you to Buddy and Debbie for giving us a night off!
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Reading with Mom
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The second bath was a whole lot easier (and warmer) than the first
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Getting out of the bath is still the best part though.
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Time to sit for awhile a ponder about the mysteries of — ZZzzz…

Comin Home

100_2814.jpgBenjamin is cute and all, but he’s not always my favorite person… like say 4:30 in the morning. The last couple days he’s had a cold. We went to the doctor on Saturday who said it’s nothing major — but tell that to our baby, who figures a little snot is the end of the world. He’s been fussy and cranky, grunting and moaning at everything. As usual, Nic’s been a rock and has been taking the brunt of it so that I can be functional at work, but it still sucks. Huge thanks to Leah for buying Nic a couple hours of rest yesterday — we all appreciated it!
Speaking of the little guy, I know there are some of you at home looking forward to meeting him. We’re planning a trip for just that reason at the start of February, so get us on your calendars. Here’s where we’ll be…
Friday, February 9th – Spent all day at my parents new place
Saturday, February 10th – In the Aylmer area at Nic’s parents place
Sunday, February 11th – In the St. Thomas area, at church in the morning, then heading out to Port Stanley around dinner time.
Nic’s sister is planning an open house for Saturday afternoon, but feel free to drop us a line if you want to get together at one of the other exciting stops on Benjamin’s tour of southwestern Ontario.

MacBook Pro + Parallels = Awesomeness

mbp.jpgThe MacBook Pro I have to use arrived yesterday and I set right to work trying to make it run both Mac OS and Windows. Things have come a long way in the past 6 months thanks to BootCamp and Parallels, but it’s not quite user friendly yet. I think I installed Windows 4 different times, on different partition configurations before I found one that would work properly sharing data between BootCamp and the Mac. Once that was working, I had to install Parallels a couple times, and reconfigure the virtual machine at least as many. But I think I’ve finally got it, and it was worth it.
The new Parallels Beta lets you use the BootCamp install of Windows for the virtual operating system, so I can run Windows in a window on the Mac, and then, if I need a performance boost, I can restart in Windows-only mode, on the same instance of Windows. This is a good thing.
Seriously, this is digital nirvana.
I can run FinalCut Pro and develop high-end videos in one window, and run VisualStudio 2005 and develop Windows applications in another.
I can have Mail.app on one screen, and Microsoft Outlook on the other.
I can pick the platform that works best for a particular tasks, without having to shut down the platform that works best for the other tasks I’m doing.
And I can’t rave enough about the latest beta from Parallels. It has some bugs — it sure would have been nice if FAT32 would have worked so I could write to my Windows partition without starting up the virtualization layer. And the Coherence feature needs a little work before it’s really worth using, but hey, it’s a Beta. And aside from those two complaints, and a few bugs that require recreating the “computer” every once in awhile, the app is outstanding. VMWare has nothing on Parallels.
I should also add that the MacBook Pro is the sexiest laptop I’ve ever held. I ended up with a revision 1, and I’m afraid it runs a little hot, but I can deal with that cause otherwise the beast is incredible. Here’s a screen shot of VisualStudio running in-line on my Mac…
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Wiiiii!!!!

OMFGRTFAROTFLOLBBQ!!!!!1
The Nintendo Wii is SO much fun!
I played golf last night in my living room, and I swear it was like I was really swinging a club. Then I bowled 120 on my first try… Tennis, I was not so hot at.