A Touch of Nostalgia

Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines – Intro.

For anyone who is too young and too unlucky to have seen reruns of this series, you at least owe it to yourself to watch the intro. It’s an amusing glimpse into the annals of cartoon history.

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Low-Stress Batch File Copying

Ever started a gig or two of files copying and went out only to come back to find that it stopped at a prompt five minutes after you left? I anticipated and worked around that whenever I needed to, but it was still a pain because my solutions were hackish messes.

Enter Ycopy for Windows and Midnight Commander for Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Both are free and both solve the problem in the same way. A prompt like “Overwrite?” doesn’t prevent it from copying the other files while it waits for input.

Of course, for you Linux users who don’t already know Midnight Commander, I highly recommend it. It’s a real swiss army knife when it comes to file management and if you like using keyboard shortcuts, it might be more comfortable than GUI equivalents like Krusader and Gentoo.

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Amateur Sci-Fi Favorite #1

Every so often, you find a web-published work of fiction which deserves print sales. In this case, I’ve got an entire collection for you. Of course, I suggest starting with these ones:

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Windows XP Absolute Minimum Requirements

Ever wonder what the real minimum Windows XP system requirements are? (As opposed to usable minimums)

Now you know

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Inspecteur Gadget – Thème de Sophie

Did you know that, with the french release of Inspector Gadget, there existed a theme for Penny? (under her dubbed name, of course)

Take a Listen

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Fanfiction – Browncoat, Green Eyes

Available at: FanFiction.net

I wasn’t planning to post two ratings in a single day, but I was flipping through my personal “stuff I’ve read” list and I realized that I’d never rated this… so I decided to make an exception or two.

For those who don’t already get the references, Browncoat, Green Eyes is a crossover between Firefly/Serenity and Harry Potter. In fact, I’d have to say that it’s the Firefly-HP crossover. Despite a lot of searching, I have yet to find anything that comes anywhere near this quality-wise and it definitely deserves a 5/5 rating.

The basic plot is that, following the events of Serenity, the alliance goes looking for a low/no-cost way to get rid of the embarassment that River Tam has faded to and they end up waking up a roughly 150-year-old Harry Potter who put himself into stasis before Earth was abandoned. The first chapter starts two years later when an unusual green-eyed fellow signs on to be Serenity’s backup pilot.

The story is extremely well written with a captivating plot and very entertaining character interactions. Unfortunately, I don’t want to spoil things, so all I can really do is say that Harry is searching to figure out why he is seemingly the last wizard in the verse… and provide you with a few of the shorter, less-revealing quotes:

Oh yes, it’s all fun and games until someone gets mauled by a poodle.

“Good plan,” Jayne frustratingly admitted, still smarting over the lack of support for stealing guano china.

“Yup,” Harry explained. “Those aren’t conjured food either. That’s real sustenance. A never-ending pouch of ham cubes. I used to have a never-ending pouch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but that was before I went to sleep.”

Oh, and don’t forget the squirrel jerky. 😛

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Fanfiction – Naruto: The Rival

Available at: FanFiction.net

Like Naruto and looking for a laugh? “The Rival” is a poetic look at Gai from Kakashi’s perspective and, as the name vaguely suggests, it’s a parody of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”. It has it’s flaws, but it’s quite amusing.

I think it deserves a full 5/5 on my new rating scale.

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