I am currently in the process of moving all of my posts from LiveJournal over to my new Typepad powered blog at TrapperMarkelz.com. If you are reading this feed from livejournal, you will have to do one of two things:

If you are reading this from your friends page, you will have to add my new site as a friend:

http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=trappermarkelz

If you are reading this from an RSS Reader, you should unsubscribe from this feed and get my new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TrapperMarkelz

I haven't migrated all of my posts yet, but I am working on it using a tool I found... and when I do, I lose all the comments... but this is for the best. I already run two other blogs on Typepad and every time I come back here I always get pissed that the interface isn't the same.

I will be maintaining my LJ account (in free mode) so I can still offer the friends page to those that read to it off tjmweb.com. As for everyone on my friends page (and those that aren't), I follow your feeds through my Newsgator reader anyhow, so no change for me there.

So long and thanks for all the fish LJ.

The radio interview about my BSG blog last night was fun! We essentially walked through my most recent posts and talked about the different items. I had a few moments of ranting about the show, a few moments of praising. All in all I tried to keep it pretty balanced. I cut an MP3 of the half-hour I was on. You can download it here:

Battlestarblog.com Interview on LVRocks.com 11/29/2005
(right-click Save As) - (24 megs)

I don't think I sound like a complete chief... so mission accomplished!

That's right. I am on a radio show tonight LIVE discussing my fan site for Battlestar Galactica. Here are the listening instructions:

The first half hour of the program is "News to You" news items that readers found interesting during the week that were sent it are discussed and commented on as well as the big news of the day and week. Then the second half hour of the first hour is our Political Discussion with Justin from the Donklephant centrist political blog.

The second hour will kick off with the Pop Culture Discussion with Blogcritics.org and then ending the program in the final half hour will be our Battlestar Galactica Discussion with Trapper Markelz from Battlestarblog.com.

To listen to SUBJECT2DISCUSSION go to www.LVROCKS.com Tuesday at 7pm PT, 9pm CT or 10pm ET and click on LISTEN and click on CAM/CHAT to join us in the chatroom.

For those who miss the LIVE program, can join us via podcast with or without an IPOD. If you have an IPOD here is the IPOD rss url:

http://podcasts.lvrocks.com/rss.aspx?channelid=5

If you do not have an IPOD you can still listen to the podcast via this address:

http://podcasts.lvrocks.com/details.aspx?castid=5

By clicking on that address it takes you to a screen where you can pick and choose the previous programs to listen to.

How geeky can it get? Tune in to find out!

I read an awesome book last year by Robert Wright called Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. It is one of those books that really makes you see relationships (between people, things, companies, etc) in a whole new way. The concept of non-zero sum definitely speaks to the optimist in me and I was delighted to come across this article which distills it down a bit into a more applicable form:

The World's Worst Disease

Two new videos uploaded:

Tickling Hannah (no really, she likes it)

Static Hannah (fun with science)

Enjoy!

Honestly, there is a part of me that likes going out on Black Friday. There is something about the sales and the people and the atmosphere that is distinctly capitalist... and I appreciate that.

However this year we decided to skip the madness. I did stop in to Best Buy for about 5 minutes to check (however misguided) if there were any Xbox 360s. It actually wasn't that busy, although the big sales are all before noon, so I was probably there with all the slackers. There was quite a collection of coffee cups and McDonalds rappers outside the store, the remnents of a long line of shopping soldiers who stormed the Best Buy beaches at dawn.

On Saturday we did head to the local mall with Hannah for a little passive consumerism. She was wide-eyed and smiling the whole time. She seems fascinated by people... their movements... their voices. Her latest deal is a fascination with clapping, real or virtual. I have this live jazz trio CD and every time the audience claps she stops whatever she is doing and seeks out the noise. It is very pavlovian of her at this point.

Since I was unable to get an Xbox 360 at launch, I decided to travel as far away from "next generation" gaming and explore the arcades of my childhood using MAME. It is a "Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator" that you run on your computer. I downloaded MAME32. You then download ROMs (Rom Nation) of old arcade games and they play perfectly. I picked up a USB Logitech game pad to add to the experience.

I was always a huge horizontal/vertical shooter fan. I did a few searches on Google for things like "Best shooters ever" and "best arcade games ever" and managed to find a few that have kept be busy all weekend:

• 1944
• Daioh
• Darius Gaiden
• Dragon Blaze
• P-47 Aces
• R-Type Leo
• U.N. Squadron
• Vapor Trail

Out of all of those, Dragon Blaze and 1944 are my favorites of the moment.

U.N. Squadron was the whole reason I started this quest. It was a game I use to play a lot when I was younger. When I first moved in with Maureen, the laundry mat we used had the original coin-op of this game and I played it every couple of weeks, beating it every time.

I may not have an Xbox 360 yet, but there is no shortage of game playing going on!

Update 11/27/2005 6:53pm CST

Ok, so I just had a real long chance to sit and play Darius Gaiden and it ROCKED my world. It has a branching level feature so the replay value is huge! If you are a shooter fan, this game alone is a reason to get on the MAME-wagon.

I was playing around with Google Video and posted two clips of Hannah. Check em out.

Hannah in the command center

Hannah on the floor

Awesome video titles... eh?

I came across this site:

Silk Tide Site Score

Type in the URL of your website and it runs a bunch of tests to see how well your web app is put together.

I think I scored pretty good... landed a 9.8/10 in the site design category which tests how well designed and built the website is... so that is good.

The new Xbox 360 video game system went on sale at midnight last night. I tried to get one by checking the various Best Buy stores, but most of them canceled their midnight launches. For some rabid geeks, that didn't matter. At 10pm, the Best Buy in Skokie had a line of 30 people waiting for the 8am opening the next day!

Knowing defeat, I promptly went home and distanced myself from the geekiness by grabbing a beer and sitting down to watch the Greenbay/Minnesota Monday night football game. That didn't last long... I strangely found myself over on the G4 TV network watching live coverage of the Xbox launch in the Mojave desert.

I set the alarm this morning and headed down town to see if I could get in line at either CompUSA or the Virgin Megastore. When I got to CompUSA at 7am, the line was already 15 people long. Turns out they only had 14 systems to give away, so I headed over to Virgin. When I got there, the rumor was that they had 20 systems. I was number 17 in line so things looked good. At 8:15am, the store manager came out with wristbands. Turns out he only had 15 systems... so I missed it... by two people. I would feel bad about that but the guy in front of me lined up at Sears this morning. Sears only had 5 units and he was number 6 in line. Now he missed getting a system again by one person. He was a cool guy though and didn't let it dampen his spirits.

So here I sit... with no 360... envying my buddy Steve who is home rallying his new system.