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Matthew

Personal

A 6 foot, 330lbs robot, built to save us… uh huh… why don’t I believe that

robotOk, maybe its just me, and the fact I have watched to many movies and TV shows where creating a robot, in some way or another, ends in our destruction.

I came across this post on Reddit Yesterday which links to an article on Wired entitled “This 6-Foot, 330-Pound Robot May One Day Save Your Life“. My brain automatically started referring to BattleStar Galactica, mainly for the fact I am only now watching the series (10 years too late, I know).  Then the though of movies like Terminator, i Robot, and The Matrix (Thx to robotsongs for bringing up it up as I forgot to mention it).…

Rants

Another Email Scam – Gotta love these

In the past I have made posts on some of the scams I get in my email.  I came across another one today just made me laugh.  Apparently it’s from Mr.Timothy F. Geithner, Under Secretary for International Affairs of the United States Treasury Department. There are several RED FLAGS that get raised while reading it. I will note each one with a number in red, like this1 and explain why it’s a red flag at the end.

From: Mr.Timothy F. Geithner <officefileoffice0001@yahoo.dk>1
To: Undisclosed Recipients2

DEPARTMENT OF INT’L3 AFFAIRS
(Office of the Under Secretary)
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington D.C.

…

Game On! Season 1 Episode 2

Battlefield 4 is out and I finally got a chance to play around a little. Sadly though I have yet to be on a winning team (See my profile).  In this episode I take a look at the Battlelog Interface and play around in the Test Range.  I also show a comparison between the Artillery Rocket vehicle and attack helicopters from both Battlefield 4 and Desert Combat, the Battlefield 1942 mod which started it all.…

Rants

How far do we have to bend over backwards before we snap? (Figuratively speaking)

1374122_10151985945300522_1029092397_nI was on Facebook today and came across the image to the left.  Now I live in Canada, and its no different here.  We have changed so much to be politically correct and socially acceptable that we have forgotten who we are.  In 2009 headlines were abuzz with the fact that schools in New Brunswick were no longer going to sing “O Canada”, our National Anthem, sadly for purposes of privacy, the exact reason Parents didn’t want their children singing was not mentioned.  (Story here)

Canada, unlike the States, is huge on Multi-Culturalism (The United States is usually refereed to as a Melting Pot) but why should our acceptance of other people’s faith, religion, culture and ways of life, make it so that we have to give up our own?  …

Personal

Exporting a transparent video from Adobe After Effects, then importing it into Sony Vegas

While processing my first Game On! video I came across a bit of an issue.  I had rendered a lower 3rd banner in After Effects and wanted to import it as a layer into Sony Vegas which I use to do the final processing of my videos.  The problem was when I imported the video, it usually imported with a black background.

I had done a search for this in Google and surprisingly found very little in ways of importing transparent videos, all I could find was how to import transparent backgrounds (usually involving a PNG file).  I did how ever find one saving grace, one of the youtube videos explained exactly how to do it.…

Android Technology

My concerns about Touch-less Payment systems. Android NFC capability a risk.

IMG_20131021_110656Quite a while back I noticed a new symbol on my bank card, it looked similar to the RSS logo you’d usually find on a website. I already knew what it meant, and knew what was coming. Shortly after I noticed merchants with debit machine carrying the same symbol, my worst fears had been confirmed. A few weeks ago, I decided to test it out to see if my fears were really as bad as I thought, or if I was just over reacting. My fears were indeed as bad as I thought they were. I had purchased a coffee at local Timmies (Tim Hortons), but instead of inserting my card, and putting in my pin, I simply pressed my card up against the screen, and read the feedback… Approved.…

Considered Normal? Presents Game On!

Earlier this month I got to partake in the Battlefield 4 Open Beta. On October 4th EA and DICE announced that access to the Open Beta, however to gain access you had to pre-order the game, as an avid player of the Battlefield series (since Battlefield 1942 was released back in 2002) this was not an issue. Sadly I had gotten a chance to play Battlefield 3 (its on my list of games to get) and I was not about to let another title slip by.

As the beta only contained one map, it was fairly limited, and to begin with they only had 2 game modes, Conquest (Small and large) and Domination.…

Rants WTF

Have Schools gone too far? Students doing good, are being punished…

Today another article was released showing how schools seem to be over stepping their boundaries.  A high school student in the states drove to a party to be her friends Designated Driver.  Erin Cox’s  friend called her, saying she was drunk.  Cox then drove to the party to find her friend to get her home safe.  Unfortunately,  the cops were called in and upon arrival arrested several under-age party goers, including Cox, who is 17 years old.  However Cox was cleared by the cops as she was not in possession of alcohol and did not have any in her system.  However this didn’t mean anything to North Andover High School, which suspended her from the volleyball team for 5 games due to their Zero Tolerance Drug and Alcohol policies.  …

Personal

Would you buy a product with no Pre-Sales Support? If no, the PostBox Email client isn’t for you.

Well this is new to me.  With the news of Mozilla taking development resources away from Thunderbird (Announced sometime last year), we are looking for a new Email client that can support the amount of email some of the staff at work accrue.  In once case, over 14GB of email (the person has not deleted an email in about 4 years).  In the past (and maybe they fixed it) Microsoft Outlook only allowed a max size of 4GB for its database files.  Thunderbird allowed an unlimited amount as it’s method of archiving was different.

I use eM Client which 1. Has a structure that allows a theoretical unlimited size for its files and 2.…

Personal

Blast from the past – Digital devices from a time long past.

While browsing the Gadgets Subreddit today I came across a post that blew me away. It seems someone scanned a 1980’s (maybe) Sears catalog, probably the Christmas catalog they put out.  The post contained over 200 pages from the catalog, a few of which I have listed below:

hqD0p dq3DP 8T3sV 0RUQY

What really amazed me was that they had CD players, Which, surprising to me, were released in 1982 (I was 3 years old), however I do not remember seeing CD’s till the early to mid 90’s.

You can see the full set of images at this link. Shows pictures of old calculators, electric typewriters, Atari systems, etc.  …