--- Blessed be! ---
/|\ Taran MacDuir
Friday, August 10, 2007
Time to splitt up!
So, it's time to say good bye… Well, it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds, but I have recently gotten a few other accounts and I'm going to make a few changes. This blog, the Duirstep, will from now on be a more specifically pagan blog. The tech stuff will get moved to another blog, it's under construction. I've also gotten Yahoo! 360ยบ, MySpace and Facebook. Why? Friends! I've got friends on all of these, and now I'm there to. I will come back later and tell you where to find all this.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Maybe some pics eh?
Just thought I'd try and ad some picture from the Luanys festivities. Not that you can get the feelings we did, but hey, it doesn't hurt!
Blessed be!
/ | \ Taran MacDuir
Luanys
Luanys came and went, and after that summer seems to have begun in Scandinavia. On the 1st we went to a farm an got some eggs, veggies and other things and then had a ceremony under the mighty oak in the light from the happy fire, lit in the name of Ceridwen. It was truly awesome! (No, not like a hot dog, truly awesome)
Blessed be!
Blessed be!
/ | \ Taran MacDuir
Apple to announce new Mac realted…stuff!
On August 7th Apple will be holding a press conference to announce… And that's just the problem, as per usual no one actually knows anything, which is of course setting the rumour industry ablaze. It has been confirmed that Steve Jobs will be attending, but nothing more.
Personally I would go along with Leo Laporte, Adam Christianson and just about everyone else, and that is that we almost certainly will see a new iMac. This is the model most over due, not only in terms of spec, but also in terms of it's design. After all the current iteration started life way back as the iMac G5. Again, according to rumour we will probably see an aluminium iMac, similar in style to the Apple Cinema Displays, and perhaps a new keyboard looking something like this. Needless to say, this would make for decidedly 'droolicious' machines, especially if the 30" screen suggestion turns out to be right!
Other than that, who knows. We could possibly see something about a new iLife, though I would think they'd save that for the release of Leopard in October. Maybe some announcement regarding the Mac Mini. As it stands now, word on the grape vine is that it will be discontinued, but I hope not. An upgraded machine, perhaps merged with the Apple TV? Pure speculation, but it would be a seriously cool computer.
May your computer be blessed, and your keyboard always at your hand,
Personally I would go along with Leo Laporte, Adam Christianson and just about everyone else, and that is that we almost certainly will see a new iMac. This is the model most over due, not only in terms of spec, but also in terms of it's design. After all the current iteration started life way back as the iMac G5. Again, according to rumour we will probably see an aluminium iMac, similar in style to the Apple Cinema Displays, and perhaps a new keyboard looking something like this. Needless to say, this would make for decidedly 'droolicious' machines, especially if the 30" screen suggestion turns out to be right!
Other than that, who knows. We could possibly see something about a new iLife, though I would think they'd save that for the release of Leopard in October. Maybe some announcement regarding the Mac Mini. As it stands now, word on the grape vine is that it will be discontinued, but I hope not. An upgraded machine, perhaps merged with the Apple TV? Pure speculation, but it would be a seriously cool computer.
May your computer be blessed, and your keyboard always at your hand,
/ | \ Taran MacDuir
Friday, July 20, 2007
Back in the game!
So, if you, like me, were born in the 80's and grew up in the 90's, chances are you played, or wanted to play, games like Simon the Sorcerer, Beneath a Steel Sky, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Gobliiins or a host of other point-and-click adventure games, then this is for you. ScummVM!
ScummVM stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine. What this little beast does is that it acts as a Virtual Machine for these games. So finaly you can get into these games again, and it doesn't matter if you have the MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga or Atari TOS versions of the games, all will work. If you don't have any of these games you can find some demos here, and the Public Domaine games here. Oh, and did I mension that ScummVM is available for a multitude of platforms: Amiga OS 4, BeOS (and presumably it should run on Haiku OS), Mac OS X, Windows a host of Linux flavours and many more (most notably SEGA DreamCast, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP).
This is a lot of fun and I whole heartedly recommend this. I hope you to find that these old games are still very good, and a lot of fun.
ScummVM stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine. What this little beast does is that it acts as a Virtual Machine for these games. So finaly you can get into these games again, and it doesn't matter if you have the MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga or Atari TOS versions of the games, all will work. If you don't have any of these games you can find some demos here, and the Public Domaine games here. Oh, and did I mension that ScummVM is available for a multitude of platforms: Amiga OS 4, BeOS (and presumably it should run on Haiku OS), Mac OS X, Windows a host of Linux flavours and many more (most notably SEGA DreamCast, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP).
This is a lot of fun and I whole heartedly recommend this. I hope you to find that these old games are still very good, and a lot of fun.
---Happy Gaming---
/ | \ Taran MacDuir
Thursday, July 19, 2007
A little on Mr Potter
So I did promise to get back with my impressions of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and yes, I did like it. But…I still feel it lacked some of that magic you usually get. This probably has something to do with this Potter movie being the shortest one, and at the same time derrived from the thickest book so far. Over at IMDb it gets a 7.9 rating, and Rotten Tomatoes it gets 77%, both very good ratings. And I would agree with them. I certainly don't think it's a bad movie. ut it seems to require you to have read the book to really get the full impact of it, which is a little anoying if you haven't. And also I was surprised that the spectacular scenes in the Department of Mysteries and the Weasley twins leaving Hogwarts weren't more spectacular. The were deffinitivley more fantastic in the book, and could have been done better.
Even so, both J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers are impressed enough to let the same director, David Yates, at it again for the next film: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Also returning is screenwriter Steve Kloves, who has written all the screenplays except the pressent one.
Over all though, it is a great and dark movie, and I think everyone who is even remotley intressted in J.K. Rowlings world of Wichcraft and Wizardry should go see it right now! It does feel a little cramped, but it's still Harry Potter. Now all we have to do is wait for the 7th book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Head on over to Mugglenet, or listen to their PodCast, for more on everything Potteresque!
Even so, both J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers are impressed enough to let the same director, David Yates, at it again for the next film: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Also returning is screenwriter Steve Kloves, who has written all the screenplays except the pressent one.
Over all though, it is a great and dark movie, and I think everyone who is even remotley intressted in J.K. Rowlings world of Wichcraft and Wizardry should go see it right now! It does feel a little cramped, but it's still Harry Potter. Now all we have to do is wait for the 7th book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Head on over to Mugglenet, or listen to their PodCast, for more on everything Potteresque!
--- May you be blessed ---
/ | \ Taran MacDuir
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