2009 Year End Awards

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things Feb 11th, 2010 | No Comments A little late, but here are my 2nd annual “Best of the Year” awards. Best Movie: Star Trek I only saw two movies in the theatre in 2009: Star Trek and Transformers 2 (both in IMAX because I only see IMAX movies in the theatre nowadays). But I did watch lots of movies on DVD (I have Netflix). Out of all of these, my favorite movie of 2009 was Star Trek. I’ve always been a Star Trek fan and this film did a great job of modernizing the classic. 2nd Place: District 9 Best Album: Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown Eagerly anticipated by many, Green Day didn’t disappoint...

iPad Musings

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Apple, Interesting Things Feb 2nd, 2010 | No Comments I don’t know if the iPad is something I’ll get, but it sure looks cool. I’ve already had two friends of mine, who are not computer-savvy at all, say they really want one! One friend just bought a netbook because she wanted a small, portable computer to do some light internet surfing, email and general writing. I tried to talk her into a Mac, but even used ones were more than she wanted to spend. After the iPad announcement, she said “I’m returning my netbook and buying and iPad. It’s exactly what I want.” Another friend owns a hair salon and was looking...

Rocking While I Work

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things May 26th, 2009 | 1 Comment I like to listen to tunes while I’m working. And my choice of tunes is often something I can play loud with lots of guitars and screaming! I recently started using Lala and Napster to try out new music and they’re worth a mention here. Lala Lala is a combination streaming service and music store. You’ll need a computer to play music through the browser. It works fine on OmniWeb on OS X. When you create a free account you get 50 song “credits” with Lala. You can play any song on Lala once for free, but if you want to add it to your library (so you can play it any...

Random Pop Culture Musings

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things May 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is officially cancelled. That makes me sad. SCC was a really great show. I find it ironic that given all the hype surrounding Terminator: Salvation (which opens tomorrow) that the TV show could not find a big enough audience. What was up with the CG of the sub leaving the island on the next-to-last episode (Follow the Leader) of Lost this season? It was laughably bad and looked like it was done on an Amiga! I can’t stop listening to the new Green Day album, 21st Century Breakdown. According to iTunes, I’ve listened to American Idiot more...

StackOverflow!

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things May 18th, 2009 | 2 Comments Woo-hoo, I finally broke 1,000 reputation on StackOverflow. And I’m now over 300 reputation on ServerFault (StackOverflow for IT questions; it’s still in private beta right now). http://stackoverflow.com/users/25615/paul-lefebvre

Selling Stuff on Craigslist Sucks

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things May 4th, 2009 | 4 Comments Has anyone had much luck selling stuff on Craigslist? It seems like it would be a fabulous way to sell things, but I tried selling an older laptop on it last month and it proved to be nothing but a headache. Is there some trick to it? 99% of all the responses I got were from scammers wanting me to ship the laptop somewhere, usually Nigeria. In the end, I ended up donating the laptop to my church to help raise money at the Christmas Fair. That proved far more satisfying. I have bought a few things from Craigslist (Asus eee PC, Apple Cinema Display and recently a Palm TX). At the time I was surprised...

Now on Alltop

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things Jan 20th, 2009 | 1 Comment I’m happy to announce that Software Made Simple is now featured on the Programming section of Alltop. If you don’t use Alltop, you should really give it a try. It provides a great aggregate of some of the most respected sites on the internet, all grouped within a wide variety of topics.

Year End Awards

Posted by Paul Lefebvre in Interesting Things Dec 31st, 2008 | 2 Comments It’s the last day of the year so it’s time for my first annual “best of the year” awards where I dole out awards for things I liked best in 2008. I decide the categories and I pick the winners. Feel free disagree with my choices or offer your own suggestions in the comments. Best Movie: The Dark Knight I saw quite a few movies this year, but The Dark Knight was the best movie I had seen since Return of the King. It is moving, distrubing, suspenseful and more. Heath Ledger was brilliant, the action was spectacular and the story was great. I just saw it again last weekend...