This is a great little novel if you're a Halo fan. I've (obviously) played through all the games but, like most games, the Halo series fails to explain the history of the conflict. A lot of the characters you meet in the games have very colorful histories, and perhaps the most surprising to me, was Captain Keyes. Even Master Chief, the hero of the series, known for being the silent type and nearly void of personality, has a lot of secrets in his past. There is one other character who has some very interesting twists, but I'm not going to spoil that one. Lets just say he/she only looks sweet and innocent in the game.

If you're a Halo fan, The Fall of Reach is a must-read, especially before Halo: Reach comes out this September. There are so many details in the book that clear up the story lines in the games. It makes me want to play through all the games again now that I know more of the back-story.

If you're not a Halo fan... you should be. I'd honestly recommend playing at least Halo: Combat Evolved before reading the book. The book is good but I don't think it would be as interesting to someone who doesn't already know the characters and the ending. I could be wrong. It's hard to judge this book on it's own without taking the games into context as well.

If I've piqued your interest, head over to Amazon and pick it up! There are many other Halo books available as well and I will be digging into those soon (I might opt for the audio-books to make my two hour daily commutes more interesting). Now, time to fire up Halo CE!

We also bought Playon around the holidays when they had a ridiculous sale going on. With Playon, we can stream all kinds of media from various sites (like Hulu) to our TV via our Xbox 360. It's a great deal even at the regular price. Since we enjoy movies so much, we also subscribe to the three dvd Netflix plan which includes instant view which also streams to our TV with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. For $17 per month, it's a fantastic deal if you watch a lot of movies.

If you haven't figured it out already, it was well worth it! If the price of cable packages drops dramatically, we may consider signing up again, but I find that pretty unlikely. We're pretty happy with our media options and we're saving quite a bit. If you've been thinking about cutting the cable but are holding back, let me know! Maybe I can help you pick out hardware, software, and alternate service plans. Just leave a comment!

Maybe they'll name it "John" with the abbreviation "Mc."

Scientists Discover Heavy New Element - New York Times

If you don't know by now that I have a life long connection to the Smurfs by namesake, you should just leave this blog and never come back. Just kidding. I saw this today and was amazed. This is SOOOO cool I want to build one myself and keep it in my non-existent office, right next to all the other geeky things I want to build (like a Mame cabinet).

Pure. Awesome.

It’s a Smurfy Day | The Brothers Brick | LEGO Blog.

Thanks to bs angel of Hawty McBloggy for thinking of me

Five geeks I'm lovin at the moment are-

#1 Smurph "Mind if I defrag your hard drive?"

#2 Jay Baruchel "Every animal in God's creation is pooing in the jungle and its raining 12 times a day so theres just a good ol influx of fresh feces for us to enjoy"

#3 Valerie Poxleitner "I'm lights- a fairly small-sized, Canadian girl who makes Intergalactic-Electro music"

#4 Mila Kunis "Oh yeah, you gotta be in a guild...every 12 year old boy knows what I'm talking about"

#5 Seth Rogen "I just wanna have sex with that bag right now" - talking about his love for ketchup flavored potato chips

Tech Support Cheat Sheet - [xkcd]

So here we are at TriggerHappy.me!

Old links and feeds will still work so nothing needs to be done on your end unless you don't like seeing the old domain. Happy Fragging!

100 Essential Skills for Geeks - [Wired.com]

I never thought I'd see the day. Google Apps is finally out of beta. But just in case removing the beta tag lessens its "cool" factor, you can re-enable the beta tag in the logo from the settings menu in Gmail.

Google may have a different view of "beta" software but I think its a wise route to go. Especially in Google's case where they're providing such feature rich online applications for free. Besides the obvious liability issues, they also gain some breathing room when it comes to implementing new features. If something doesn't work the first day they put it out, they can avoid a lot of flack by saying its in beta. While that might seem like a cop-out, it allows them to test with a huge volume right off the bat to eliminate scaling and compatibility issues. Its not always ideal for the end users but that's something you just have to weigh against its obvious benefits as well as against its competitors. Personally, I haven't had any major issues with any of the Google Apps and they are extremely handy.

The only reason I regret to see Google Apps leave beta is that it may slow the rate that they implement new features. The Labs features will remain but they certainly won't be moving features into the mainstream as fast as they have in the past. Of course that's just my speculation, but taking the beta tag off usually implies they'll keep the products stable and will try their hardest to avoid introducing new bugs. That means they'll have a more careful and slower development cycle.

Google Apps is out of beta (yes, really) - [Official Google Blog]

In order to compromise this, one must either have control of ALL the onion routers, or break the multiple layers of encryption. Sounds pretty solid to me.

I just have to note one thing though, the Wired article is inaccurate since its saying they're poking holes in Iran's firewall. Really its not poking holes. Poking holes implies you've hacked the firewall and opened up access to something that was previously blocked. This tech is sending encrypted packets through protocols and ports that are apparently still open. Whoever controls the firewall could easily block known onion routers or block the protocols/ports they're using, making it a much more difficult first hop. They also do not mention if this traffic is masked as simple web traffic or what. Onion routing is simply a means to disguise the origin, destination, path, and messages, not for bypassing firewalls. However, if the firewalls block Twitter.com, for example, the firewall would not know to block these onion messages going to a random onion router who's final destination is Twitter.com. Still, that's not "poking holes" in anyone's firewall. That's just being sneaky.

Must reads:
Activists Use U.S. Tech to Poke Holes in Iran Firewall - [Wired]
Onion Routing - [Wikipedia]