I added a new icon for this here website. It’s not a gold-plated S-etched phallus – it’s a tophat! Really!

I want to say that I’ve survived yet another year, but next week looks bleak. And the week after even worse. I could very well be dead in a couple of weeks and then you’ll all laugh at the irony – we don’t want that.

I have absolutely nothing to rant about. My life has become so dull. Or perhaps my life has become so condensed with things to do that there is no more room for imagination (just whining).

I am going to conclude this fourth paragraph starting with “I”, then read my daily comics, and go to sleep. Good night.

What’s worse than a week of doom? The little week after the week of doom that pretends to be friendly and cute, and then when you get through the week of doom, the cute little friendly week turns into a flesh-tearing manifestation of Cthulhu and has its way with you.

I had my appointment with the speech pathologist today. It involved stuttering in front of a camera, in hopes that naive students can learn from my misfortune (consent form signed to that effect). Then, followed by a short term memory test, reflex and rhythm test, hearing test, and some specialized personality tests. (The results that I have received on the spot were all normal — I’m NOT going deaf.)

I received $10.00 for my troubles, which I wasted on a Pita (from the pit), and Programming M&M’s (and a chocolate croissant, with chocolate milk, but that’s a secret).

Now that my profile has been acquired, the next step is to get my fMRI, which wont be until after January (or possibly February). Looking forward to it.

So, what happened this week? XBox 360 has been released!
Interesting points about it:

• XBox being sold for phat lewt on eBay.
  Current prices range from $750-1050 USD.
• Microsoft is losing money again? ¹ (Remember how Microsoft lost a few billion in the underpriced original XBox, including game profits?)
  
  Microsoft is gaining money for a change?
  No one knows.

  ^{1. These estimates aren’t really accurate, since they take retail prices of each component into account, and not bulk contracts, like it’s actually done.}

Alright, I reached my Microsoft-talk quota for the month. We’ll be resuming our regular programming (Google-related chatter) in our next installment of shazow’s blog.

Google Discovery of the Week: A Google Images Feature

Type in the address of your favourite site, and get all the images that Google has indexed from that site.
Example: shazow.net @ images.google.com

Isn’t that fantastic? Too bad it doesn’t cache full-size versions, since most of them don’t exist on here anymore. But it’s still nice.

So here’s my status from last friday, to next friday:

• Friday 11th:
  
  Economics term test (The stench of death was mild for this one.)
• Monday 14th:
  
  Computational Complexity and Computability assignment (Or Tuesday, if I don’t want the 5% bonus.)
• Wednesday 16th:
  
  Programming Languages assignment
• 59 seconds later on Wednesday 16th:
  
  Operating Systems assignment (Going to screw over 2 other partners for this.)
• Friday 18th:
  
  Databases assignment (Only one other partner is going to hate me for this.)

I cannot recall who was victimized by my ranting and who wasn’t, so I’ll re-rant to insure full encapsulation of victimization. Or something.

So, I’m getting an fMRI of my brain (and getting paid for it) for stutter research at UofT. Next week I have to “come in for a speech-language assessment done by a qualified Speech-Language Pathologist” ($10 for this trip). Then, couple months later, I get shoved into a giant electronic magnet and am going to be asked to read and speak to them while they “ooh” and “aah” at pictures of my brain. And then I get a CD of all the pictures of my brain, and a toasty $15.

Don’t you wish you had pictures of your brain?

The annual NetHack Tournament is among us. Unfortunately I’m nowhere good enough to compete. I’m kind of sad that I am yet to find anyone else who plays (I need to make some new friends with people that do). Seeing as how I don’t know anyone interested in it, there wont be any use in me ranting about it, but I’m going to do it anyways: Here’s an awesome public NetHack server, nethack.alt.org. What’s awesome about it is that you can telnet to it and see other people play live. Though I very much would prefer a tiled version, like I play on my PPC.

I have no more assignments or tests for a week and 4 days. Isn’t that fantastic? It is fantastic! Maybe I’ll do something productive, or maybe I’ll go play some NetHack.

My accomplishment for October: I watched all episodes of House, M.D.. Very good show, though I don’t know who I’d recommend it to, it’s very heavy.

By the way, the pricing scheme for PS3 is out. This is to settle an old bet with ol’ Mark:

- PlayStation 3 will start at under 40,000 Yen (or under $346 USD) (Source who can’t do currency conversion).
- XBox 360 will start at at least $299 (Source). Many sources speculate that it’ll rise beyond $350 by the time it actually launches.

Anyways, the point is, by the time they come to release, they’ll most likely end up being the exact same price, which is what I said to begin with. Only difference is that the PS3 is scheduled to come much later than the XBox 360. Oh well, gives more time for the XBox 360 to fail miserably and for ex-fans to seek refuge in their new saviour. (I’m somewhat biased towards the Microsoft-less alternative.)

I also noticed that I’ve been growing more Microsoft-hating lately, like a good little Linux fanboy ought to be. Why? I am dunno.

Quick analysis of Doom:
Budget: $70 million (+ $8 for the motion blur)
Opening weekend: $15.5 million (worldwide)
Second week in: $22 million
Rating on IMBD: 5.5/10 (preliminary, likely to shrink)

Quick analysis of Serenity:
Budget: $40 million (No motion blurs were harmed in the making of this film)
Opening weekend: $13.8 million (worldwide)
Second week in: $22 million
Rating on IMDB: 8.3/10 (21k votes, not likely to budge)

Serenity wins. Humanity escapes eternal damnation by small margin. (It’s still very depressing that it only won by so little, but better than nothing.)