Radio Diatribe

Blu-ray version of There Will Be Blood, which goes on sale today in North America, is sold out, and it’s only 3 a.m. on the east coast.

Is it the killer title Blu-ray camp has been looking for, or did Paramount screw up manufacturing and couldn’t deliver enough discs on the release date?

Paul F. Tompkins says so, so it must be.

Xavier: Renegade Angel, the new show from Vernon Chatman and John Lee (of the Wonder Showzen fame), centers around Xavier, half-man, half-bird superhero with a snake for left arm, who travels the world “[f]acing rednecks, inflicting righteousness and preaching religiously about the ’strong, silent types’ and moralism.”

The premiere’s at 6 p.m. ET on [adult swim], which, of course, is not available in Canada.

I guess I’ll be watching it… umm… some other way that may or may not be entirely legal.

Update: The first episode has now been posted in full.

I still do think it’s really neat, but I am not sure it’s the effort to implement now.

Hmm. So, I guess it’s not my greatest idea ever since it’s not great enough to motivate me to implement it?

Karl Rove to Resign At the End of August [WSJ]

Will I find it to be really lame next week? We will see.

Rescue Dawn! Open July 4 in LA, NYC! July 13 in 7 more cities (probably San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto and a few others)! 50 cities by July 27! 93% positive review on Rotten Tomatoes! Hooray!

Impossibly cool, super-crazy director and eternal pessimist Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, a dramatic adaptation of the 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, also by Herzog, is finally going to shown in theatres.

If the early reviews are any indication, it’s probably going to join the rank of Herzog masterpieces alongside Woyzeck and Fitzcarraldo.

Now, there are some people saying that this movie glorifies war and even has pro-Bush political motivation to it. Well, these people are complete retards, and if you know anyone who thinks this, you should put him or her on call-block immediately. The movie only tells the story of Dieter Dengler (played by Christian Bale), the only person to escape successfully from a Pathet Lao prison camp. It is not supposed to be and does not present itself to be a commentary on the war itself.

In summation: yay Rescue Dawn! yay Werner Herzog! go see the movie!

Update: Apple has the trailers up on its web site.

My sister bought a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 recently, and (surprise, surprise) it only came with the 32-bit version of Windows Vista. In fact, it only came with a 4GB recovery partition on the hard drive. No Windows installation disc, no recovery CD, nothing. The idea was that if something bad happens, you press the ThinkVantage button and load a fresh factory installation image from the recovery partition. And of course, this way, there is no getting away from all the lovely pre-installed bloatware that makes even the fastest PC crawl (to give Lenovo some credit, most of the pre-installed ThinkVantage utilities are actually quite useful). Also, you can never install 64-bit version because you never got the 64-bit version. And apparently, some vendors (e.g. Dell) are refusing to give out 64-bit OEM discs to their customers who only got 32-bit discs citing a “business contract” with Microsoft (which sounds like a complete bullshit, by the way).

It seems like the solution to this is to borrow a 64-bit disc from a friend who bought Windows Vista retail (all retail versions of Windows Vista, except Home Basic, come with both 32-bit and 64-bit installation discs) and install it with your own key. You know, from the Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) sticker on the computer.

Not so fast. Microsoft does not allow you activate Windows Vista installed using a retail disc with an OEM key. You will be able to install, but once the 30-day grace period is over, you will get locked into “Reduced Functionality Mode.”

There is a way to get around this though. Here’s how.

DISCLAIMER: THE DIRECTION IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATION ONLY. I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU MAY CAUSE TRYING TO FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS.

1. First, you will need a 64-bit Vista disc. Borrow it from a friend, or order a 64-bit Windows Anytime Upgrade disc (which is essentially same as the retail 64-bit disc) here.
2. Don’t do anything yet with the disc though. You need to extract some information from your current OEM factory installation.
3. You need two bits of information. The first one is your factory OEM key. This key is different from the one written on the COA sticker. Follow the instruction on this website to extract the key.
   • Write this key down. You will need it to install the 64-bit disc.
4. Go the following directory:
   <Your Windows Directory>\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService
\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareLicensing
   1. You can’t enter the directory directly into your address bar because some directories require administrator previlege clearance. You will get an error if you try to. Get to the directory by browsing and clicking on Windows Explorer.
   2. You will also need to make hidden folders visible as AppData directory is hidden. (If you don’t know how to do this, you should probably stop right now. You’re going to mess up your computer.)
   3. Once you get to the SoftwareLicensing directory, copy the Token.dat to another directory.
5. We must now take a peek inside Token.dat and extract the OEM certificate from it.
   1. You need a hex editor such as HxD.
   2. Open the Token.dat from HxD.
   3. Search for the following string: “OEM Certificate“
   4. Find the string “<?xml ” directly preceding the string “OEM Certificate“.
   5. Find the string “</r:license>” directly succeeding “OEM Certificate“.
   6. Select from the “<?xml ” to “</r:license>” and copy into another file.
   7. Save the file with .xrm-ms file extension onto an external media (USB key, web hard drive such as box.net, whatever).
   8. You might want to save the Token.dat to an external media too just in case you’ve made a mistake while extracting the OEM certificate portion.
6. Put in the 64-bit Vista disc and start the install process. Use the factory OEM key you’ve extracted in step 3.
7. Once the install is complete, copy the .xrm-ms file onto the hard drive.
8. Open “Command Prompt” with administrator privileges.
9. Within the command prompt, navigate to the directory where .xrm-ms is.
10. Type the following and press enter: slmgr.vbs -ilc <Name of your .xrm-ms file>
11. Go to Control Panel - System and Maintenance - System. Scroll down to the bottom. It should now say that Windows is activated. If not, it’s not my fault.

A men’s room at a Tim Horton’s in one of those yucky Vancouver satellite cities that smell like fertilizer: it’s the kind that just has one sink and one toilet and locks from the inside.

As I was washing my hands, I noticed the following:

1. A bloody strip of toilet paper hanging out of the trashcan.
2. An empty blister pack of Viagra on the floor behind the toilet.

Pretty disturbing, no?

Unfortunately, it is now removed.

HBO needs to option Alexyss K. Tylor’s book immediately and produce a series about four skanky thirty-something black women living in Atlanta.

Can you imagine it: replays of each woman’s sexual encounter interspersed with the main character’s cute, funny remarks analyzing the situation in terms of “vagina power” and “penis power”?

[via Attempt to be Hip and Gawker]

Update: CollegeHumor has posted the video.