Analysis? Selling Links for Money Spam

Either I’m beginning to become a connoisseur of referral spam or I’m just bored with the usual offerings. Today brought something slightly different to my Blogger stats that piqued my interest: http: // prlog . ru / analysis / from-the-sidelines . blogspot . com . Having my blog address in the spam brings such a warm, fuzzy feeling. Wait.. no, that’s indigestion. Anyway, it was a blink and you’ll miss it hit and run.

Ever curious, I fired up my copy of Ubuntu on a virtual machine and used TOR to anonymously check out the site the link came from. Don’t try this at home unless you know something about security or reformatting your hard drive. Never click on suspicious links like this, leave it to crazy people like me.

Health 12-16-2013

Eleven straight days of weight training after todays workout indicate my theory of keeping the body confused may hold water. Time will tell.

I’m very tired today, due to quite a bit of running out and about starting on Friday. A trip to and from La Crosse to see the second The Hobbit movie was followed up by a trip to a party thrown partially for me by the Taylors, older friends from church. Good food and good company made up for getting stuck trying to go up the driveway.

Between being spoiled by the Subaru and having trouble gauging my level of force on the accelerator (a byproduct of doing weights), I’m having a deuce of a time relearning how to properly drive in winter conditions.

Sunday featured more driving than usual, because I’ve been brain dead and triple booked myself for after church. Fortunately for me, things worked out and I was able to make all my stops. I held up very well by my standards, so that was encouraging.

Even though I’m not up for doing much today, it isn’t as bad as it’s been the past couple of years.

Memories of a Past Virtual Life

For those of us who have been on the Web for a long time, part of the wired existence is watching  sites take root, bloom, and then wither away. Some were casually visited sites, but there are the ones we sank way too much time and attention into. They are virtual communities, that perpetual next big thing on the Internet, serving as places to socialize, argue, befriend, defriend, and quite often reflect the social order of high schools.

I’ve been online in some form or another since 1993 with two decades of watching all this happen. Experience is a great educator and a little over thirteen years ago I got quite the education about people online (and offline) thanks to a movie news and fan site called CountingDown. Due to various soap opera experiences and a decision to embrace “real life,” I departed it permanently around 2003. I never looked back.

Which makes it strange that I’d be flashing back to that period of my life this week. I had the feeling the site was no more and sure enough, www.countingdown.com doesn’t even bring up an error message. So I did a search for information about it being shuttered and at first only came up with people asking the same question.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug In Theater Review

Better than its predecessor, the second The Hobbit movie still lacks the emotional depth and nearly flawless execution that made The Lord of the Rings trilogy a masterpiece. With that statement out of the way, I’ll go into a few particulars.

First, do not take small children to this movie. The giant spiders and the titular dragon are perfect material for childhood nightmares. Also, if you have arachnophobia, you’ll want to keep your eyes closed for one of the better action sequences in the movie.

Next up is the simple fact that The Desolation of Smaug is an action film with no real breathing room. There are a few slower scenes, where there isn’t wall to wall action, but this film is all about spectacle and 3D!!!

While I saw it in 2D, far too many shots screamed “look at me” in the gratuitous shoving of objects in your face. In fact, there is no such thing as restraint in the CG effects – it is almost Michael Bay style film making. Then there are the endless decapitations which seems to be an obsession of director Peter Jackson’s.

A Monsterous Tease

The official teaser for the Godzilla remake just surfaced on YouTube and boy is it a dandy:

 

This has to be the most atmospheric take on the big G since the original Gojira. It looks absolutely stupendous, is filled with a sense of terrible dread, and only hints at what the monster looks like. Add in the music from astronaut Bowman's going through the Monolith to amp the tension and this might be a perfect example of how to tease a movie.

Yeah, this is my most anticipated film of 2014, bar none. Time to watch the teaser again.

Games People Play

With the year approaching its ending, I’ve found myself looking back at more than the past twelve months. For some reason, nostalgia has been hitting me harder than I’m used to.

It has been twenty years since DOOM from Id Software was released. I remember waiting for the shareware first episode to download over the glacially slow dialup connection I had through America Online.  Eager anticipation led to mild disappointment after firing up the game only to find I had to run it in a reduced box to get acceptable frame rates on my Packard Bell 486SX-25. That disappointment dissipated once actually running and gunning through the eerie atmosphere of darkened base on a moon orbiting Mars.

My first PC games were Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, Dune, and Orel Hershiser’s Strike Zone. They weren’t graphically intensive, though Dune was one of the most lovely 256 color games every put out. Having played Castle Wolfenstein 3D, I couldn’t wait to play Id’s next game.

Two decades later and I’m playing games that look like this. How things have changed!

Health 12-9-2013

For once, I have something positive to record. After musing over the successes I had in boosting my health fourteen years ago, I decided to recreate some of what I did then rather than what’s considered medically sound.

Step one was going back to using NADH no matter the financial drain and after taking it for eighteen months I can say it has helped with improved memory and alertness.

Step two began Friday after I remembered how I used to do weight training. Instead of doing it every other day like you are supposed to, the routine is being done daily. In fact, I just completed todays sets with some amazement that they weren’t very difficult.

Four days in a row, which equals the total number of preceding workouts this year, if I haven’t forgotten any. Close enough for government work.

Perfection in pulling it off every day is not expected due to health problems, but this is a good start. In the short term, the hope is that back and neck problems will improve. Long term will result in a host of benefits, if my body doesn’t completely rebel against the routine.