What can I say about the third Mummy film? It's terrible, in almost every way. It doesn't even feel like its part of the same series as the previous 2 films. It's boring, the dialogue is terrible, the characters are dull and irritating, and the film just doesn't flow well. The special effects were pretty good though.

Avoid it, unless you are really, really, bored.

It's a shame. I really liked The Mummy franchise and was looking forward to the third part. Oh well... lets see what Tropic Thunder brings.

I've long been a fan of ClarkConnect, it's very easy to use and has all the features most home users would want in a home gateway/server machine, such as:

• DHCP server
• Firewall/Proxy
• Web server
• Bandwidth allocation
• and much more

However, the one thing that is missing from the free version, though it is available in the commercial version, is load balancing multiple Internet connections. Now for the majority of people this is not an issue as they only have 1 Internet connection. I was the same until only recently. Seeing as I am not willing to pay for the commercial version, I need to look elsewhere for a solution, and I have settled upon pfSense.

pfSense is not as complete a solution home server solution like ClarkConnect. It is specifically a firewall/proxy that does support load balancing multiple Internet connections. I haven't played with it much, and actually have a problem likely due to unsupported hardware in the machine - which I'm hoping the newer BETA 1.2.1 will support. I plan to have another look at it over the next day or two.

Both are great products, and I'm hoping I will be equally pleased with pfSense as I am with ClarkConnect.

We all have fond memories of video game introductory movies and sequences. In fact, I can remember buying a game primarily from seeing the introduction movie. I've only chosen pre year 2000 games as modern games generally have very high quality pre-rendered or in-game introductions. I'm only interested in those uncommonly great introductions. Here are a couple that spring to mind:

1. Mechwarrior 2

This has to be my all time favourite intro. Damn near perfect for it's time, from the skull being crushed by the Mech's foot, to the fireball engulfing the screen - brilliant. All the Mechwarrior games had good intro's.

2. Syndicate Wars

This hasn't aged well, and is in fact quite poor, but at the time I thought it was cool.

3. Command & Conquer

Whilst the intro movie itself isn't spectacular, the entire experience was. Everyone should remember the very fancy installer and the movies throughout. All the Command & Conquer games had good movie sequences - except for Generals.

Any others that you can think of?

Well, I finally got home from watching the opening ceremony at a friends' house. I have to say, there was some pretty spectacular stuff. Apparently much of the drumming was reciprocated by the baby in the womb - similar types of noises, such as the fireworks, seem to effect the little fella.

As far as the idea of the 4 major Chinese inventions, I wonder what the Korean's think about the movable type claim? I believe China considered Korea to be part of China at the time, perhaps they still do... Maybe you could argue Tibet invented movable type?

My only complaint, and it's a sizeable one, is waiting, for what seemed like 4 hours, for the athletes parade... I think most of us would've gone home earlier if we weren't waiting for Australia, which as luck would have it, was third last.

Here's a final thing for you: How the Beijing Olympics got its logo

I just finished watching Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (yes, there was a Starship Troopers 2) and quite enjoyed it. It returns to the style of the original movie, rather than the darker atmosphere present in the second film.

The good: New bugs, new ships and new breasts to look at.

The bad: The special effects really could've done with a few more $$.

It's been a while since I've posted my favourite Firefox extensions, so here is my current crop, and yes, they all work with Firefox 3.

• Adblock Plus
  Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

• Adblock Filterset.G Updater
  This is a companion extension to Adblock or Adblock Plus and should be used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days.

• Firebug
  Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

• Firesizer
  Allows you to resize the window to specific dimensions.

• Forecastfox l10n
  Get international weather forecasts from Weather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar.

• IE View Lite
  This is a cut down version of IE View by Paul Roub, which is 47.4 KB. All the same UI and features are there. It has a right click menu item to open a page in IE and a list of sites to always open in IE.

• Operator
  Operator leverages microformats and other semantic data that are already available on many web pages to provide new ways to interact with web services.

• OperaView
  Open pages in Opera from Firefox and Mozilla context menus, in the same was as IE View operates.

• PDF Download
  PDF Download relieves the pain experienced when encountering PDF files on the Web. Whenever you click on a PDF file, PDF Download lets you know before trying to open it, and then offers you choices such as downloading, opening, or converting it straight to HTML.

• Stop-or-Reload Button
  A Stop-or-Reload. Saves some screen real estate.

• Tamper Data
  Use tamperdata to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters.

• Webmail Notifier
  WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts and notifies the number of unread emails... Supports : gmail, yahoo, hotmail, daum, naver, empas, nate and more.

Are there any others that you use?

I love Firefox 3, but I did wish that it had the nice glass effects from say Internet Explorer 7. Fortunately with Glasser, currently at 1.0.16 BETA, you can. It's still being developed and as such there are some things requiring further polishing, but for the most part it does the trick. Don't forget to read the post for further information on getting Glasser to work as you want.

This pretty much sums my experience up:

Cyanide and Happiness

I'm intrigued with the lack of support for Windows Vista's Aero effects within Windows Live Messenger 8.5. It was released almost a year after Windows Vista and there was certainly time before that to play with pre-release builds of Vista. Version 9 of "messenger" is being prepared for release, but there doesn't seem like any sign of Aero support at this stage. I'm hoping there is a good reason why it wasn't included, but the more I read about the development of messenger, the more I feel the development team just isn't pulling their weight enough. When I read that 2 of the 5 currently known new features of messenger are being able to use animated gif's for your display picture and being able to click links in personal personal messages, I can't help wonder why it will take almost a year to implement those "features".

It hurts even more when we have to put up with things like white boxes appearing on conversation windows and youtube links being blocked.

I like messenger and I use it a lot, however there doesn't seem to be much advancement going on at the moment. 8.5 is pretty much the same as 7, just with a new skin. Why is it that Yahoo's new messenger looks so much cooler on Vista than Microsoft's own product?

My rant is over for now. Bed time.

Just watched it this evening, and whilst I was a little drunk, I enjoyed it.

Silly, but fun.

Unfortunately I don't have any shots that are particularly good, but here are a couple more of our baby boy:

Well I finally got around to installing Windows Vista (64bit Home Premium).

I'm still pretty much of the same mind, I don't hate it, but I don't particularly love it either.

The new interface is inconsistent and somewhat confusing, and whilst I like the new effects Aero provides that alone doesn't overcome the overall amateurish feel of the whole system.

However, the thing that has caught my eye is Vista Media Center. The programs interface, from my limited use so far, is very slick. I'll have a play with it a bit more but if I can get it to do what I want, I may use it instead of Media Portal.

Is Battlestar Galactica created by the Wachowski brothers? It's certainly appearing so.

How does a series that started so well, seasons 1 and 2, end up as the mess that is season 4? It's been going downhill since season 3 and this weeks episode of season 4 has just killed it for me. I found myself skipping through parts of the episode, just to try and reduce the boredom of watching it. Not good.

As many of you are now aware, I'm going to be a father late this year. It is due in the first week of November. Here's the first photo.

It's currently healthy, and was very active whilst we were watching on the ultrasound.

Reminds me of my favorite House episode.

It's the one where they get a patient who's got some really bizarre ailment, and everybody thinks they know what to do, but nothing works until finally House figures out what it really is.

Love that one. Best one in the series hands down.

mooingyak (720677)