REPO! The Genetic Opera

REPO! The Genetic Opera
I heard about this show because I was listening to a small-ish web radio station where the DJ's play crazy stuff from time to time. The song that got me started was Zydrate Anatomy. Youtube Link1 Link 2 (enjoy)

Now on first glance it may appear that this is a production much like Hedwig (and The Angry Inch). But I was wrong. REPO! is not nearly that good. Sure Repo has a one or two good songs in it, but the acting, direction, set-work, and singing are just not up to snuff. The acting and directing in particular appear to be done with a "Stage" in mind rather than making the jump to "Screen".

Hedwig is a movie that I have actually watched all the way through, and I enjoyed it very much. The subject matter transcends the mundane topic of just another transvestite and becomes something more fundamentally human, and of course the music ROCKS. ( in the right places ) In example the song "The Origin of Love" expertly washes from soft to hard and back again with a floating mood and melody that just really work. I'm not saying that the movie for Hedwig is perfect in every way. It's that Hedwig has an elegance in it somewhere that draws in the flaws and makes a greater work from them.

Repo! is a movie that I have not watched, but I did spend an inordinate amount of time watching and re-watching the clips that are available on Youtube. But I feel I've gotten enough of a feel for how the people are moving and I've heard at least a few of the songs. They did a fine job but it cannot be described as great. I may at some point rent/watch the movie, but I don't feel a pressing need to do this anytime soon.

But I still think the song Zydrate Anatomy is fun!

Unrelated idea for a show

So this doesn't relate to the next post I'm about to write, or at least not directly. But imagine if you will a young girl. Kept in her room because since her mother died her father has been overprotective and locked her in there to keep her safe. It's a normal room with normal furniture, except for the window. The window is one of those really nice big bay windows, sticking out over the house, and this is how she gets to see the world. Trick is that the window is mecha-magical and there is a control panel at the ledge. She can not only look out on her street, but any street, Anywhere. Adjust a nob or move the stick and the window flies along to where-ever, now she's looking over a stream in the middle of Colorado, next she's looking at a street corner in Tokyo, etc.
This isn't just an image of that street or etc. The outside of the window physically moves to that location. So if you were a backpacker out near that Colorado stream you'd see a strange bay window floating above the stream with apparently nothing to hold it up. She can open her window and smell the breeze an yell down to the people, if she wants to. But turn around and she's still in her room at home.

I'm pretty sure that if someone could reach up to the window they could climb through and they would be in her room. Her father would probably put bars on the window to prevent that in some way (thinking of lions and bears possibly jumping through) but I can't decide if the bars would be on the outside of the window or inside her room.

Global Flu Warming Carbon

A good friend of mine sent me a link to a story about a second flu vaccination that is only available to special members of government. Linky Apparently the Parliament gets a special vaccine that doesn't kill people or something.

My response, or random babble (whichever you prefer to call it) was thus.

I'll see your special flu shots for parliament and raise you global carbon commodities markets.

Global =Man-made= Warming has become big business.

For years now, any scientist that is looking for funding has been tacking on a Carbon-footprint angle because that's where the research money is to be had these days.

Carbon "Cap and Trade" policy states that everyone will be allotted a certain amount of carbon credits, and then you can sell whatever credits you don't use as commodities. So if you install a new set of filters on your smoke stack that reduce your Carbon Emissions, you can sell your extra credit points on the open market.
On the other hand, if you don't feel like 'going green' you can just buy carbon credits from some other company and presto! you're still within limits.

Carbon Trading Markets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jr4MDd9dAw

Not all scientists are convinced that man-made carbon is the root cause of Global Warming......
The Great Global Warming Swindle - Produced by WAGTV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzSzItt6h-s


And that has been debated at least some...
Global Warming Swindle Debate Pt1/8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIjGynF4qkE
(IMHO - not an evenly weighted panel of debaters)


Thing is, no matter if the IPCC report on Global Man-Made-Carbon Warming is correct or not there are people that are already looking at Carbon Taxing to be a Multi-Trillion Per YEAR business. Yes, another boom/bust derivatives market to squander.

Most of that money is going to come from well developed countries like USA, Germany, Japan, England, France and be redistributed by the IMF over to third world countries to help them develop into industrialized countries. Well, really they won't be "countries" any more, more like states or zones. (World government would of course overrule any local prejudices or laws.)

All This will be regulated by the G20 and the International Monitary Fund (IMF) which will oversee every country's Carbon Allowance and be empowered to judge who's naughty or nice. Sanctions for the Naughty carbon Emitters (USA)

Are you ready for World Government? Here it comes, in the name of Carbon Taxes and Cap-n-Trade! Whoo-Hoo Socialism for the People of Earth! Socialism - take money from the rich and give it to the poor, because then everyone's equal! Well, everyone execpt the bankers and people running the G20 of course, they're in charge so of course they still get their Lear jets and cocaine.

Why are they going to take money from the rich and dole it out to the poor?
Well, you see to get 3rd world countries to be developed you have to give them energy. It would be unfair to tell big nations "Cut your emissions" and give the 3rd world a free ticket. The USA and other big guys have all had the liberal use of cheap energy, coal, oil, etc.
Going Green costs megabucks, which is something that we can afford but in the 3rd world where people don't have basic electricity it's kinda impossible.
Don't expect them to go directly from burning sticks for cook fires to Nuclear, Geo-thermal and Solar for their emerging needs. To develop these 3rd world countries they're going to need a hand up the energy scale, so they get funding from the IMF that allows them to buy infrastructure and such. We foot the bill.

Eventually the Carbon Tax will apply to every facit of your life. Not just to the big companies with smoke stacks. There's already been talk about narrowing it down to a per-person basis. What kind of car you have determines how often you get to drive, your home thermostat will be scrutinized so that if you use your A/C too much then it would effect your personal carbon footprint.
In fact, even having children would effect your total carbon footprint. Having extra children makes you a bad global citizen because you'll obviously have to do more dishes and laundry and extra trips to soccer practice!


IMF is actually a group of private bankers, much like the US Federal Reserve is just a bank unrelated to American Government. Think of the Rockafellers and Rothschilds families, the stupidly rich beyond dreams people. Note that since they are a private organization, they are beholding to no government authority.

It sunk in... finally

Yes, I realize that I'm probably the million-billionth person to realize this, but it finally dawned on me last night. Stephen King's "IT" is an adaption/translation of HP Lovecraft's "(The call of) Cthulhu".

Back when I was in my late teens, I remember getting my hands on the Metallica Album "Master of Puppets". Third song on the album was "The Thing that should not Be", which when I reflected on it at the time seemed to me would make a great basis for either a scary movie or BOOK! Yes, I bet Stephen King could write something especially Scary based on that song, it's got a ton of creepy elements and stuff! (hey, I was young then, cut me some slack, please) Link to Metallica Lyrics. I had read a couple of S.King books at that point and was generally impressed that he was a great writer with an active imagination, so I thought of him. Metallica also had a song from Ride the Lightning called "The Call of Ktulu" but it was an instrumental.

Sometime later I read Stephen King's "IT" and enjoyed it through and through. Well, obviously that's not exactly correct, some of the parts are particularly nasty and bad, but they were designed to be that way on purpose. So kudos to SKing he did a good job.

Over the years, through pop culture I have heard and read about Cthulhu from many sources, in fact it has a right proper Wikipedia Entry here, with many links and even an artist rendering of the creature.

Because I'd heard so much about HP Lovecraft and Cthulhu over the years, I finally went and bought the book, or rather I paid $8 to download "The HP Lovecraft Collection of Ebooks". I wasn't impressed much. 3rd person story telling, and plots that begin with "let me tell you what I went through Years ago" remove all stress that the main character might get "eaten by the boogie man" or whatever. You know it's going to turn out OK even before it starts.
Kind of like telling a Murder Mystery years after the fact... "hey did I ever tell you about the time The Butler killed that guy?" I have yet to be impressed by any of HP Lovecraft's books, but I'm told that he continues to have many fans despite my opinions. (The very Nerve!)

ok, so back on track...

Last night I was thinking about "IT" and then I realized that "IT" is very much like "Cthulhu" if you look at the nature of the creatures. To look at the creature in it's natural form causes madness. The creature is thousands of millennium old, and came here from another planet. The creature feeds on fears, and resides underground or undersea.

Of course, IT is underground and Cthulhu is entombed in a city under the sea, so there are some differences. IT comes out every 30 years (or so) to wreck havoc and feed, while Cthulhu has been 'not dead, but sleeping' for who knows how long.
Cthulhu is actually one of a group of "Old Ones" that came here long ago, and he isn't even the head dude of the mythos. He's the High Priest who is supposedly going to call forth the other "Old Ones" when the time comes.

But yes, now I see the Lovecraft influence on SKing's IT.
Sorry it took me this long to catch up with the rest of the class.

I still think SKing should re-write the actual Cthulhu mythos, that would rock!

Trojans.... I've had a few

But then again, too few to complain.

So I was looking for some trial software yesterday, and I downloaded the wrong file and blammo! Trojan Attack! Anti-virus software didn't see it until after I did.

But of course, with every trial of patience comes a lesson or two.
- update AV Defs more often!
- screw trial software on those shady websites!
- Reboot into Safe Mode with Command Prompt, then delete the files that are locked down by the system.


Also of note, I found a couple of good-to-have around programs.

Autoruns v9.54
Autoruns is a tool that checks all of your registry entries and pulls up a list of everything that auto-runs at boot-up. So you'll find listings for your audio drivers and such, but more importantly you find malicious files that start & hide at boot-up. The web link above has a better description and a screenie, but trust me it's a worthwhile application.


Elite Toolbar Remover - ETRemover v2.1.2
This is a program designed to go in and kill those extra IE Toolbar apps like Weather-bug and such, but it cleans a bit more and can actually delete files that you can't sometimes. Helps to run it in Safe Mode, but everything I needed it to do was accessible to me in normal mode. I believe the company that makes this program is Italian. From a short look around on their website, looks like they offer other freeware that can help clean your system up, but they aren't a major player in the security field yet.

Really, I should have more to say about this issue, it has eaten up about 7 hours of time in the last two days. But most of the troubleshooting can't be described. Really though, those two programs listed above did me a world of good, better than my AV program (Comodo) or Ad-Aware (Lavasoft).


Ok, one last thing... The Trojan, when activated, was so blatant and obvious that I have to wonder what the code writer was thinking. Isn't the idea to be subversive? This trojan would open up 5 extra random windows every time I opened my browser and go to advertisers. Not sure what they were advertising, I just closed the screens as soon as possible. But come on guys, have a little subtlety.


----- UPDATE-----
Oct 2, 2009 - 7:40 am

Again I have reached a point where I feel like I just might possibly be CLEAN. I think I've gotten everything quarantined, removed, deleted and sanitized.

The latest program that I can recommend is Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware after everything else I have tried, I ran this program and it found and removed things that all the other programs had just given a miss or had been unable to touch.

Particularly there was a trojan in the system-restore folder and since that is a "heavily protected" folder, I couldn't manually go in and look at it, and other programs couldn't touch it.

MalwareBytes' was able to get past that and actually allow me into that folder where I was then able to manually delete every offensive file I found. Well, I did go a bit crazy and think everything was offensive, but screw it, it's been 3 days now of this trojan crap and I wanted to be SURE.
Also MalwareBytes found the reason it was seemingly attached to browser function. In Prog Files\Mozilla\ there were files to be deleted that other programs had completely missed.

So, after a long and tiresome battle, I think that maybe, just MAYBE I might be free of trojans for now.

If they "reappear" or something, I'll update this blog with new info, but for now the final word was the MalwareBytes program.

EvE Online – PVP – my opinion

After a bit of study on this issue, I have come to the conclusion that PVP in EVE sucks.

The outcome of 98% of all PVP in EvE Online is determined as soon as you undock your ship from station and head out to the void.

- Who has more Skill Points?
- Who has the “correct” fittings, ammo, consumables?
- Who has the most ships? (Note, 5vs1 isn’t really PVP, it’s just a gank.)

The other 2% determining factor is simply about who got the jump on whom, and if you remembered to trigger your equipment. To face facts, a 2M skill point “noob in a frigate” can blast a 40M skill point “veteran in a battleship”, if the “veteran” was afk and/or left his shield boosters or armor repairers turned off.

Skill Points?
Well if you’re going 1v1 with two ships that are equally fitted, including ammo and consumables, it simply is a matter of who has the most skill points. If Person A has 2.8M skill points in shields, and Person B only has 1.2M, guess who’s gonna die first… yeah, Person B. That’s not about personal ability, like the person controlling Ship A did anything specifically “better”, it’s just straight numbers. Person B is taking more damage, so his ship goes POP first.

Correct Fittings?
Recently I was a victim of PVP due to my own stupidity. I was flying an industrial ship with no guns, warp stabilizer or real defenses and made the mistake of jumping into a 0.4 security system. A solo gate camper took out my ship and that was sad for me, but of course it was my own fault. I didn’t follow the basic precautions for traveling in low security space.
One piece of hardware (a warp stabilizer) would have saved me a few Million ISK and the time it took me to buy and refit a new industrial ship. That’s not PVP, that’s just a stupid oversight on my part. One I hope not to repeat, again.

Most Ships?
Ok as I pointed out earlier, 5vs1 isn’t really a fight most of the time. I have been in situations where I should have gotten out fine, I was in a tough ship and if it had just been 2 or 3 attackers I probably could have outlasted them. But with 5 people on my ass, there was no way that my tank was going to keep up with their DPS. I was target scrambled, warp scrambled, webbed, and there was at least one NOS draining my cap. With 5 people attacking me, each could focus on one countermeasure and use the rest of their fittings for DPS. My ship fought well, but there was just too much DPS.
Contrarily, I have read some EvE-Pirates stories of a PVP’er going up against 10+ PVE’ers at once and kicking butt, but that goes back to fittings and skill points, not personal talent of the person flying the computer.


Some people pretend that there are Tactics involved. Like “Focus Fire” to take out specific targets “in order”. That’s not really what I would call a Tactic but rather just smart business. Focus your DPS is something that applies to both PVP and PVE, only noobs don’t know to do it.
Tactics is a word for what you do IN Station, not really so much for what you do out in the void. I propose that the outcome of any PVP Battle can be pre-determined by simply looking at what each “side” brings to the field of battle.
One PVP thing that I’ve seen used, but I do not consider being an actual “tactic” is fighting at a gate or station. That’s tantamount to saying I’ll fight, but just in case I didn’t load the right equipment and I start to lose, I’ve got an out so that you can’t actually blow up my ship. It’s a chicken sh*t way of playing the game, just like showing up for a 1v1 with 5 friends at your back. Some would suggest that this is a “time honored tactic”, but I contend that it is used simply because 98% of the battle was decided at the fittings screen back in station. No matter how well you personally control the mouse and keyboard, you simply cannot overcome the fittings screen, so your only hope is for a quick and unpreventable escape.

I’m tempted to mention that I used to play The Big MMO that shall remain nameless. In that game, the PVP wasn’t just about “focus fire”, there were actual tactics to be used in different situations and dependant upon what you were up against. It wasn’t just about who has the best gear, it’s about how you use your gear and abilities that really makes the difference. Timing your ability to catch an advantage, not just fighting when someone is at low health, but playing smart and using the environment. How you move your character can greatly effect the outcome of different PVP situations. Things like using the environment are simply not possible in EvE. You can choose when to pump energy to your shields or armor repairers, how often to overload your racks and use Nanite Paste, but if you didn’t bring it with you it doesn’t matter if you have the skill to use it. Nanite Paste sitting in your hanger does you no good. You lost the battle while you were still sitting in the station.

That's why I really only play EvE for the PvE.

Youtube to DVD - again

Sept. 11, 2009
Ok, so I'm trying to do the whole Youtube to DVD thing again.

First off, link to Keepvid.com
With keepvid you can copy the url from a youtube or google video and it will allow you to save the file to your computer. Comes out as either MP4 or FLV file format.

Next you'd need to convert that into something that is actually usable. Those two formats do not easily (for free) convert to something a dvd creator software can use.

for this conversion I'm currently using Pazera Free MP4 to AVI Converter

Also it doesn't hurt to get a handful of Free Codecs so that your encoder has something to work with. I went with the general codec pack on this page. LINK

Next step is that you'll need a Good DVD Authoring software.
As soon as I find that, I'll update this post. Right now I'm still in the middle of converting about 35 video files.

============= Update
Sept 12, 2009
Ok, so the Pazera Free MP4 to AVI converter is solid. Clunky to get used to, but it works great. By putting your video through the Pazera program first, you can have them output all as the same format and size so that you shouldn't get any picture jumps when you change from file to file.

Now that your files are in a usable format, you can burn them.

DVD FLICK is a Free and pretty easy to use program. It's definitely NOT a "Full Featured" DVD Authoring software, but did I mention it's Free? It has an option to output the "dvd" as either an ISO file, Burn directly to disk, or make "audio/video" folders and store the data as IFO and VOB on your hard drive.
On the plus side, it does let you choose the number of threads when processing the raw video into dvd format, so it actually uses both cores on my DualCore Processor. I used the highest priority option when doing the work, and it was only using about 68%-70% of the CPU time.

I used roxio disk copier to actually do the burning, but that's software I already had available. Not Free, but for me no cost today.

A new Flight 77 Pentagon video

Well, I'm not sure how I stumbled across this video, but I thought I'd share.

It's called NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT - SENSITIVE INFORMATION
so, you know the people that wrote it think it's important.

I watched the video all the way through.
The basic premise is about Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on 911 or rather did it hit?

The evidence shown in this video is in two parts, first the official flight data recorder (black box) and radar readouts from 911. The second part is where the video crew goes out to the site and talks to people that were there and witnessed the plane on that day.

The people that they interviewed have already given testimony for the government archives. The video notes which government archives they were interviewed for and etc.

Thing is that all of the people interviewed as eye-witnesses say the plane did not follow the "Official flight path" They talk about "I saw it come over this building, and go that way." When the interviewer suggests another flight path (the official one) each person disagrees that it could have been "over there".

Pretty good computer animation showing the different flight paths and such. It's worth a view. But the video does claim to be "proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that the 9/11 attack was a false flag, government run Black Operation".
I do not believe that this is 100% proof, but it does open the possibility.

Video link on Youtube

I would like to take this opportunity to say that the flight path described by this video, because it is at a different angle than the "official story" cannot explain the damage done. The trajectory of the plane as described by these witnesses is 30 degrees (or more) from the trajectory of damage through the building. So the question would still stand.. if it wasn't Flight 77 traveling on the official trajectory that hit the Pentagon, then what was did hit it?


A simplistic drawing of mine.


The video has better graphics work than I do.

Who's a Chicken? ME!!

The other day I got an EvE-Mail from an agent asking me for a stack of Kernite, in return for which he will give me a coveted +4 willpower implant.

Kernite? I don't have that stuff laying around, it's only found in Low-Sec space so not much chance of me finding any of it. I dismissed it, even though that implant would be nice to have. I went on to other things, and found that I needed to fly through some 0.4 (low-sec) space to get a new rig for my ships. While flying through I found a system (Mara) that has no stations, just some asteroid belts with nice amounts of Kernite. Checked the local population, just me. Nobody around.
I flew to one or two of the asteroid fields. Plentiful, but the rats are a bit larger.

So I started to consider it, hey that +4 implant would be really nice to have!
I've been looking at the situation and I've decided that I would like to do this, but being just a 2man (both of them Me) operation is a bit dicey. Will have to fly one ship that is fitted for mining, and one ship that is fitted to protect the miner. And since there aren't any local stations, everything will have to be hauled through the nearest jump gate back to another solar system to actually dump off and store. So it's hauling x2.

So I fitted out a mining vessel with a Warp Stabilizer, because you don't want to get stuck not being able to run away. Then I started moving some stuff over to a system next to Mara. Piekura (where do they get these names?)

I grabbed a couple cheap ships and my characters jumped into Mara. Wanted to make sure they both have the same bookmarks for "Skram" sites. I've set up two pretty far from everything so that if something goes down I can just bug out to dead space. So while I was bumping around the solar system, I kept an eye on local.

Last time I was here a few days ago, the system was empty. Today it is NOT.
and the people that are here are pretty much all pirates. I would say that there were 14-18 people in the system, 4 of them branded as outlaws, a few with bounties on their heads (not much), and a few of them were in corps together.

So a bunch of PVP looking dudes, and me trying to run a mining operation by myself. Nope, not today! I bugged out of the system without ever coming close to any "action".

So that's me, I'm chicken.

Winamp Search Engine? WTF!!?

So this morning I turned on WINAMP to listen to some music while I was doing something on the computer, and it popped up a message that they have an update. I downloaded the v5.56 distro and went through the install. I really wish there was some setting to say "no" to all the freaking new shit they come up with every time they patch up a new version. Like in v5.541 they offered to hook you up with AOL friends listing, then with v5.55 it was something else, some strategic partner wanted you to consider an offer of blah-blah-blah.
Somehow there should just be an option for "no, not now, not ever, never-ever, I mean it. Final Answer." But that's just me being cranky I guess, it only takes 5 seconds for me to uncheck every "new option" they throw in, not really a big deal I guess.

So what made me write in my blog today?
There's an option to make Winamp your Default Search Engine.
WTFH is THAT about?
Winamp... a search engine?

incredulous is my word for the day.