MIFF 2010 - It's a Matter of Taste

MIFF aka Melbourne International Film Festival has just launched their 2010 web site. Also the festival passes (for MIFF members) and mini passes have gone on sale. I've ordered my 2010 festival pass.

They've also released the MIFF First Bite program preview

 I'm counting down the days to July 22nd

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Stars appeared to be Right last night. I'd just finished running another session of Call of Cthulhu for the Tuesday Knights group and was getting a lift home from Dave. On the radio was playing an Iron Maiden song. The song was very familiar, but I'd not heard it (or any other Iron Maiden for that matter) in a very long time.

Software for my t101mt

First thing I intend to do (and am currently doing) is uninstall all the 'extras' the a store bought PC comes with. And go through all the things that load at startup and see what I can trim back.
Then load up

• Office 2010 (especially Onenote)
• Some parts of Asus tools (eg Penwrite which has palm rejection)
• Show/Hide Asus PenWrite
• TabletTools - set of finger-friendly control tools
• Flicks2 -  extend built-in Windows 7's flicks to take multiple flicks
• Firefox as well as some touchscreen friendly addons - Blumpit, Grab and Drag, User Agent Switcher
• As well as my standard addons - Addblocker plus, better gmail, better greader, MinimizeTo Tray revivied, flashblock (check if necessary now), DownThemAll
• try out some of the touch screen interface tools such as Asus Touchgate, Blue Dolphin and others I find
• ereader software ReadThemAll for Windows and others to try out.
• I may try out Chrome with the chromeTouch extension and see how it compares to firefox.
• test out MMCE for Comic books

I've been considering wiping the HDD and loading things from scratch. Just discovered a tool called RT Se7en Lite, which allows you to make a lite/customise a version of Windows 7. I'm going to have a play with it and see if I can come up with my own build for the the netbook.  

My new netbook

I've taken the plunge and purchased a Asus T101MT netbook. It's what is known as a tablet netbook. It's just turned up at the office. The site I bought it from still had a status of "Distributor Processing Order" so I was surprised when it arrived. Only took a couple of days after I paid for it.

Starblazer Adventures Session Eight

Some thoughts of Professor Alonso Scapelli on what has been happening - The Diary of Professor Scapelli (written by his player)

And Max 'Atomic' Jackson being 'interviewed' as to how it all began (written by his player)

 We'd taken off from Mars and started heading towards the Glitter Belt. So as not to attract any undue attention I had to pilot the ship as if we were some run of the mill small cargo freighter. It felt like we were going in reverse we were flying so slow!

Call of Cthulhu - Session Four

For the time being I'm no longer going to use the word summary in the title for my RPG session writeups, as they aren't summaries.
(Previous sessions - one, two, three)

Continuing Thursday 28th April 1921

Starblazer Adventures - Session Seven Continued

Had meant to finish this last week, but better late than never.

We found out that Heinrich had disappeared about a month ago after putting Abigail up for sale on the black Market, then withdrawing it. Al recalled some previous conversations he had had with Heinrich, where he had talked about "Abigail" as something that affected the various senses and caused hallucinogenic visions.

Fringe season 2 Ep 20

Astrid and Walter babysit Olvia's niece Ella. Walter tells Ella a story involving the characters of the show which is set in a 40's noir with modern touches (mobile phones and PCs). It also has singing!

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode with it's mix of Chandler and Hammett with touches of Princess Bride and Willy Wonka.