Shifting Out the Graphics

Tomorrow is going to be my most challenging final so I'm a little scared about it. In fact, I'm going to go to mass right before it to make sure that God is happy with me beforehand. I should've studied more today than I did, but I got caught up on my pet program like the loser I am, but I also went to Din Ho for dinner and it was some yummy stuff. The most appealing thing to me today was the fact that Microsoft has decided to move Avalon, the UI for Windows Vista, outside of the kernel. What does this mean? The kernel is the meat and potatoes of an OS and as such it has undisputed control over all the memory in a computer. Hence, anything inside of it could cause serious damage (ala freezing) if stuff goes wrong, which many Windows users are already aware of. If the UI and the drivers are run in user mode, Windows can recover from such problems much more gracefully. It's an extremely smart move that has taken them way too long to figure out. Mac does this and it makes the OS X GUI less dependent on the hardware. In fact, it leads to the richer graphics that most Mac lovers are accustomed to. It used to be that if it wasn't in the kernel that it would mean that everything would take a huge performance hit, but in this day and age of 1 GB RAM and 3 GHz processors, I'm sure that won't be a problem.

Google is always up to some new service, and this week they rolled out Google Music, which makes it easy to get more information on your favorite artists. You can check out all their albums, find lyrics, and buy the music through iTunes or Real Rhapsody among others. I think most of us has used eBay at some point, and hopefully you haven't gotten swindled, but now eBay has come under fire for not working very hard against fraudulent auctions. Maybe some of us have gotten too comfortable with buying stuff on eBay; just try to be more careful. Harvard Medical School is claiming that keyboard usage is not a dominant factor in getting carpal tunnel syndrome, though it can cause other problems. I kind of doubt the study though because carpal tunnel really does seem to fit. Lastly, if you're curious as to the history of personal computing then Ars Technica has a really in depth look at it.

To continue the series of trailers this week, we now have one for American Dreamz and it's a lot better than I would've though. The movie is basically a critique of how focused our society is on pop culture and I think it could turn out very well. There are a couple of extra creepy clips from Hostel at Yahoo! Movies in case you're scared by finals and don't realize that there are worse things. I don't know how I'll sleep after seeing this one because it's basically about sadism. We also have a clip from Apocalypto, which is the first we've heard of from Mel Gibson since that little Christian movie he put out last year, and it's about the end of Mayan civilization. It doesn't look too good yet, but we barely have anything at all to go off of. LikeSoundtrack.net has some great clips from the Munich soundtrack, which is composed by John Williams and sounds pretty damn good. Spielberg has worked with him a couple of times before, so I think it makes for some good chemistry. Bryan Singer has gotten the gears turning on a documentary about the Superman legacy and it will have a limited release, but he wants it to be on a Superman Returns Special Edition DVD so I'm sure it's not too far away. Lastly, we have a poster for Miami Vice and I think it looks pretty neat.



Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
What is a word that your family uses that would not be considered common?
One word we use is "chalo" when we want to leave somewhere, which means "let's go" in Hindi. It's really just random Indian phrases like that.

Soup
What theme of calendar do you have on your wall this year?
It's one with family pictures that my cousin's wife made for everyone. Usually I get the Chick-Fil-A calendar, but this one has served me just as well except that I don't get free food with it.

Salad
Name 3 people you speak with on a daily basis.
That's tough. Probably Robert, Bethany, and myself! I don't tend to talk to certain people every single day.

Main Course
If you could put a new tattoo on someone you know - who would it be, what would the tattoo be of, and where would you put it on them?
I'd probably put a tattoo of Kate from Lost on John. I think he'd like it.

Dessert
What is the last beverage you drank out of a glass bottle?
That would be a Shiner on Sunday night. That is the best beer in the world, for future reference.