Star Wars: A Different Point of View

I just stumbled across the “A Different Point of View” series of podcasts. The episodes are a set of somewhat humorous, but serious essays disproving myths about Stormtroopers and Star Wars universe from the point of view of a sand trooper.

A Different Point of View is a series of essays about the Star Wars Universe as seen through the eyes of lowly sandtrooper, TD-0013. It takes everything you thought you knew about the Star Wars saga and flips it around to expose the ugly underbelly of the Rebellion, The Jedi, and everything else.

The series is a couple years old, but it’s new to me and incredibly awesome for Star Wars geeks like me.

Halo: First Strike

The third book in the Halo series is title “First Strike.” Eric Nylund, author of the first Halo book “The Fall of Reach” returns to finish some of the unresolved plots from the first book. The book takes place between Halo 1 and Halo 2 video games.

The novel also provides the Halo gamer with insights into how Master Chief returned to earth after Halo: Combat Evolved (Halo 1) and how the Covenant discovered the location of earth.

"Hey, look at me"

Results of a new survey conducted by San Diego State University found that:

Nearly 60 percent of college students polled by San Diego State University agreed their age group uses social networking sites for narcissistic, self-promoting and attention-seeking reasons, it was announced today.

The poll also found that two-thirds of the respondents agreed their generation is more self-promoting, narcissistic, over-confident and attention-seeking than previous generations, according to SDSU.

… research has shown that narcissistic people thrive on sites like Facebook, where self-centered people have more friends and post more attractive pictures of themselves.

– San Diego Union Tribune, August 25, 2009

I’d have to admit that I agree that most social networking sites are outlets for attention-seeking people. I also feel that the vast majority of tweets are just complicated 140 character expressions for “hey, look at me!”.

SubSonic 3.0

I’ve used SubSonic 2.x for a while and I’ve blogged about how useful it was as a tool to aid my development projects. A few weeks ago, SubSonic 3.0 was released and I hadn’t spent much time reviewing the updates and changes to version 3.0 until this week.

At the present, I have several large projects using SubSonic 2.x and I have a new smaller project starting this week. So I decided to download and install SubSonic 3.0 and use the small project to get familiar with the updates prior to updating my other web sites from 2.x to 3.0.

Comic Con 2009

Last week, I attended Comic-Con for a half-day for my second year in a row. Just like last year, the convention was sensory overload and standing room only. KPBS reported that there was about 126,000 attendees and another 25,000 exhibitors in town for the four day event. Over the four days, it was estimated that the local businesses reaped in about $42 million.

While I was strolling the aisles, I came across Stan Sakai’s booth. He was selling autographed copies of the 1987 Fantagraphic’s Usagi Yojimbo: Samuri! issue #1 for only $5. At first, I thought I was mistaken to see the 25 year old comic for just $5. I mostly remember Usagi Yojimbo from the TMNT TV series and comics of the 1980s. After snatching up the autographed #1 issue, I discovered that the un-autographed issue’s street price is somewhere between $14 and 17. I just wish I could pick stocks and mutual funds with a 200% profit…

Getting your personal DNA profile

I’ve thought about personal DNA tests for a while now. On one hand, I’m extremely curious to know everything that I can know about myself. I feel that not knowing might somehow have a negative impact. On the other hand, I feel that knowing too much might change my lifestyle too much.

One of the companies offering personal DNA tests is the San Diego company Pathway Genomics. For about $350, you can get a test that includes your health conditions, ancestry, carrier status, personal traits, and drug responses. You can view their full list of detectable conditions. You can also purchase individual tests, such as only your ancestry test for $200 and only your health test for $250.

How to merge pages from a PDF document

A few months ago, I wrote a small article about extracting pages from a PDF document to create a new PDF document. This article will use the same library, iTextSharp, to merge pages from one PDF document to create a second PDF document.

For this utility, imagine having a PDF document with pages that are 8 1/2″ x 11″ and you want to combine 2 pages into one larger page. The resulting output document would be 17″ x 11″ and show two pages from the input document on one page on the output document.

Star Wars Padawan Training Available in July 2009

I just discovered this unique and interesting toy via Scott Adams (Dilbert Blog). Well, it’s not so much a toy as it is just a cool device.

Wearing a custom built device that slips on your head, you can use your brain waves to move a sphere vertically in a container. There’s no wires and no interaction via control pads or buttons. The wireless headset reads your brain activity, similar to an EEG medical test, to translate the brain waves to physical activity.

Loving Day

I first learned of the US Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia when I was researching constitutional laws and court cases regarding same-sex marriages. The SCOTUS decision overturned Virginia’s law against interracial marriages and ended all state’s raced-based restrictions on marriage.

In 1966, interracial marriages were illegal in 17 states. Before this court case, interracial bans were considered legal as long as both parties were equally punished.

May 35th, 2009

Twenty years ago, I was just a student in high school, but I remember watching the events unfold on the national news. I was a bit shocked, but it took many years later after understanding the events, growing a bit older, and reading a lot more that I began to fully understand what had happened.

The day in 1989 is censored by the Chinese government which is why it is now becoming known as May 35th instead of today’s date (since that date is blocked by the censors). This year those speaking about the day are trying to refer to it as “May 35th,” “535″ and “VIIV” (Roman numerals).