Well, I’ve moved the site to it’s new home www.stonesand.net. All previous sites now refer to here. It’ll be a few days while I sort out the visual look, but everything should be functional. Some of the advanced features, like email notifications of updates and the Xbox 360 gamertag callouts, have not yet been replaced. I’ll get there.

More exciting, Corvallis Technical is running full-steam ahead! We do IT support for small and medium-sized businesses in the Corvallis/Albany area. Check out www.corvallistechnical.com for more info.

The Shower. A poem by Stonesand.

I am protected by a thin plastic curtain
Where I may hide from things uncertain
Warm running hope washes Night’s fears
And I may scrub behind my ear.

I’m going to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress (2.1.2) sometime in the next few days. During this process, you may not be able to comment on articles, it may look hideous while I make a new theme, or it may simply drop off the net for a few days. I’m currently running version 1.5.1.3, and it’s getting long in the tooth. See you on the other side…

-Ben

My wife Amanda gave birth to a wonderful baby boy Thursday @ 4:12 am. I wanted to briefly summarize the experience in this post, and show some pictures of the new Brewster!

Asher Scott Brewster weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces, and is 19 inches long. A little guy! So far, he enjoys sleeping, eating, and integrating 5th degree polynomials in his head. He keeps the results to himself, though.

Awake and moving!

New and cranky!

Still sleeping!

Tired Family!

Beautiful Amanda and Asher

Dad and the kids, one of which is a fake

I’ve been messing around with USB flash drives, and after seeing the idea on Engadget.com, I thought that I could do it better. Or at least do it the same. Or at least not totally screw it up:

This little guy even glows in the dark:

Oh, the humanity!

I thought about telling a story involving a parrot with a knife, a USB drive, and an old Pound Puppy, but it just wasn’t funny:

Anyway, the little guy is up for sale on eBay. Heh.

I received my Xbox Live Diamond card in the mail today. You go to the website, print off the coupon, and present the coupon and the card to get phat loot. Seems pretty easy!

I’m seeing discounts from Target, Carls Jr., Circuit City, Dairy Queen, Quiznos, Papa Johns, YMCA, Ace Hardware, Avis Rent-a-car, Powell’s Books, Bulwinkles in Wilsonville, TCBY, Mr’s Fields Cookies, and even iRobot! If you haven’t ordered yours, do it now at xboxlivediamond.com. Most of the food deals are buy one get one free, and the merch ones are like 10% off. The Target one is for online purchases, too.

Yay! I greened out my little number so youz guyz don’t use it. Na na na! That little see-through window is pretty cool.

The jokes simply write themselves. The Vice-President shotgunned a lawyer in the face. In the face. The worst part? Lawyers weren’t even in season. I tell ya - if you haven’t tuned in yet, you have got to watch late-night talk shows tonight. I have the feeling that it’s going to be hilarious.

Dear Vice-President Cheney: I voted for you, and I’ll vote for you again. And I promise I’ll whistle before meeting you the first time - just so you know I’m there.

Well, I suppose it was inevitable. You know that horrible sinking feeling - when you start to see your online nick get used by more and more people you don’t know? I started searching around for a more unique name recently, and I finally decided to take the plunge.

“Sandstone” seems to be used in a quite a few places. My new name, Stonesand, seems to be totally unique. Already, I have this secured for my Xbox Live Gamertag and Slashdot account - two places where uniqueness is very hard to achieve without putting a lame number behind your name, ala “Hunter2641″, funky punctuation, ala “_-*Beebop*-_”, or strange spellings, ala “DaT3|2m1n8er”. The nice thing about uniqueness, is that I shouldn’t have to change names again. Right?

Anyway, the new site’s name is Stonesand, and thus changed, I am. Those of you with access to post stories to the site still have access, so feel free. I’ll try to roll some of the graphics soon.

Sandstone is dead; long live Stonesand!

-Benjamin Brewster

UPDATE: I’ve finished converting the site - if you see any instance of the word Sandstone around, comment on it on this post, and I’ll take care of it. Also, you can see I’ve put my Xbox Live 360 Gamercard on the sidebar - those of you with editing power, let me know if you want yours there, as well, and I’ll add ‘em.

UPDATE: I’ve added Editor’s Gamercards to the sidebar.

This post is about the Halo Movie Project. I put it here in the General Section since we are talking about a movie, not a game.

I just got the new Official Xbox Magazine and they had an article on the Halo Movie. Talks and negotiations are moving along slowly. There are very few details, here is what we know:

Unfortunately not a lot of movie studios are excited about the project. Here are Microsoft’s demands according to the June 10th New York Times. Microsoft demanded $10 million for the rights to the film, cast and director approval, 15% of gross box office, a production budget of no less than $75 million (that’s before hiring a director and actors), and they want creative control over filming, topped off with 60 first class plane tickets to shuttle Microsoft representitives to the film’s premiere.

On June 6th Microsoft sent out actors dressed in full Master Chief gear to deliver movie scripts to all of the movie studios. While the studio executives read the scripts the Master Chiefs stood there watching the executives every movements. When they were done reading the Master Chiefs took back the scripts and then left in place a movie proposal. Could you imagine that, reading a script nervously as a group of Master Chiefs stares at you. After all of that only Fox and Universal are interested in the project and now everyone is in the negotiating talks.

Microsoft says that they want to be so involved because they do not want the movie to suck. They do not want the movie to be a different idea than what they have already put in place through the games. By being involved they can be assured that the movie will be what they and all of the fans want.

So, who wrote the scipt for the Halo Movie? None other than Alex Garland. He was rumored to be paid around $1 Million to write it. So, who is Alex Garland? Well, he was born in London, England in 1970. He is a writer and on the Internet Movie Database website he currently has five films to his name: The Beach, 28 Days Later, The Tesseract, Sunshine, and then Halo. I don’t know about you but I haven’t seen any of these movies so I don’t know how good of a job he might do.

As for the Official Xbox Magazine, they put together a list of people who they could see as being Master Chief. Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Viggo Mortensen. I will leave that discussion up to someone else for a different time.

Well, it happened again. Yesterday lightning killed one Boy Scout and it injured three others while they slept in a shelter at a mountain scout camp in Utah, just East of Salt Lake City.

In case you didn’t know this is another in the long line of Boy Scout deaths this year. Last Thursday a Scout Master and a 13 year old scout were killed by lightning in the California Sequoia National Park.
On July 24th four Scout Leaders were electrocuted in front of all of their Scouts at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Virginia, when the tent pole they were using to pitch their tent accidently fell and hit a power line. That’s not all folks, the day before at the Jamboree a Scout Master died of an apparent heart attack.
The best moment at the Jamboree had to be everyone waiting outside in the scorching heat for President Bush to arrive to address the scouts. But wait he postponed his visit because of the threat of thunderstorms. So what of all those scouts waiting for the President. Well, sun-sick Scouts began collapsing and more than 300 people were treated for heat-related illnesses.

I know that this is a sad matter at the Jamboree but what was everyone thinking? I thought their motto was “Be Prepared”. There are going to be a lot of law suits filed against the Boy Scout Organization, namely for putting tents under power lines (which I remember from my days as a Scout is a big NO-NO), and not keeping everyone properly hydrated.

I use to think that Scouting was a safe and postive activity. I am starting to worry when I have kids and what will happen to them when they go out to Scout Camp.

Site feedback time: there’s several new features, and I want to know how they work:

• See the countdown calendar on the right? Any additions to what’s there?
• See the map on the bottom of the sidebar? Nifty, huh? Are you using IE? It doesn’t look as good there as it does in Firefox. On IE, the map has these darn scrollbars that I can’t seem to get rid of. It also might make the site very slow to scroll up and down: please let me know if you encounter this behavior.
• There’s a comment preview system in place so you can see (more or less) how what you’re typing is going to come out. The next thing I’m going to upgrade on the site is to try to make the comment posting have as many controls (links, bold, italic, etc.) as the article posting does…
• Emails go out with new articles and with comments (if you’re signed up on that article). Is this working out ok?
• What about graphics? Is the moon too distracting? Color scheme too annoying? This will also be upgraded - I’m just not sure what to try next…
• Any other ideas for upgrades or changes? Let me know!

EDIT: I’m currently updating the look of the site. Thus, it may look ugly right now. Keep checking back - let me know what you think of the finished product!

EDIT: Done! What do you think? I still need to improve compatibility with IE - it looks great in Firefox, though.

EDIT: IE Compatibility pass complete. Let me know if you see any strange behavior (e.g. slow scrolling) in IE.

Wow. I like Bush - I certainly voted for him… what would this be like with Clinton in office, though?

For those of us who don’t know the Constitution’s Amendments by number, click here.

On a slightly unrelated note, after reading this article, I promise that I won’t post another link unless I am going to provide comment on it, as well. So, here goes.

The problem with having unlimited terms in office is not that some poor under-represented minority gets their views squashed. The problem occurs when the majority of the people vote for someone who they think is doing “good”, when he in fact is doing “evil.” Or, when the majority of the people choose “evil” on purpose over “good”. My opinion (your mileage with this may vary): Bush is preferable to any abortion-sponsoring candidate, period.

A parting shot: this picture is funny, but represents the wrong opinion about the war on terror. It’s U.S. versus anybody who blows up buildings to make a point.

Here are the slides I used in my recent DirectX presentation hosted by the ACM here at Oregon State University. Let me know if you like them!

On a related note, here are the slides I used in a recent presentation about keeping you computer clean from viruses, spyware, spam, etc. Take a look.