Well, its been a week without updates. I have some things to blame, including a full day without any utilities(the cable company hit a gas main outside my complex this weekend), rebuilding my brother's Band Web site from scratch(I never seem to be satisfied with any work I do.) and hard work on several intiatives at work. One of my goals is to get back to daily updates this week, so here goes.

Episode One hype is at its height this week. I am trying to ignore it, and at times embrace it. Lots of negative reviews(Time, Newsweek) and some positive ones. Does it really matter? Will it stop people from going to see the movie?

I think that this movie is insulated from this. I know that no one that I have spoken with even gives a hoot what critics say about any movie. As usual, I prefer to evaluate things on my own, and I invite you to do the same.

On that subject, there are some Episode One icons for your computer and some really visually striking desktop wallpapers at IconsPlus .

I got an email letting me know that darth-sidious.com is for sale on EBay. I have too many unused domain names as it is.

I went to the Apple WWDC satellite broadcast here in Atlanta. I am happy that they seem to be delivering on what they promised one year ago. It's refreshing because they were changing direction once a year. The new Powerbooks look nice, and I am going to try and budget myself so that I can get one. I wasn't too excited by the Sonata demo, but they are building in features(albeit more elegantly) that have existed in the Windows world for a long time. Sherlock II and Quicktime 4 reveal clues as to what the interface elements for Mac OS X will be.

CamWorld's latest rant is about Weblogs . Cameron has really good perspective. To do this right, I would have to devote more time to it than I can. Will this stop me from doing it as much as I can? Absolutely not, I enjoy doing it.

Web Review goes more into depth on the engine that the PlayStation II will run on. Without a doubt, this machine is designed to be far more than a traditional console gaming unit. I'm happy that they are building support for the first unit's games into the new one.

I'm loving the new Beth Orton CD . I had to work my way through six pages from bethorton.com to actually get to her real site. That's not good usability folks.

I am so tired of MP3 hype. Just listen to some music. The music industry is not getting it.

I have no energy. I seem to be in some kind of funk that is beginning to interfere with things. Perhaps I should get more sleep.

I also have become very excited about the release of the new Star Wars movie.

In case you missed it, here's a great Star Wars line story posted to a newspaper site recently.

If you don't want to ruin the movie for yourself, don't read the titles of the songs on the soundtrack. After months of avoiding "spoilers" on the net, I ruined the plot for rmyself by looking at the soundtrack.

Lucasfilm posted four new television commercials yesterday. They are quite good.

I was out at Toys 'R Us Sunday night at midnight for the release of the Star Wars Episode I toys. What a madhouse. There were somewhere between 150 and 200 people in line. Things were surprisingly civil considering. It seems like the figure everyone wanted was Darth Maul. All of the figures and other stuff is available online at shop.starwars.com . The figures are really nice and very detailed. I managed to get a whole set. I think I may be trying to make up for a lack of Star Wars toys as a kid the first time around.

There has been some discussion on the Camlist over the last couple of days about Weblogs , the reasons for doing them and their evolution. I like getting my thoughts out, and if people want to read it, that's great. I am not looking at making this page anything more than that, a neat place for my thoughts and Web links. It's cathartic, and I find that the people in my life have learned a lot about me from reading these pages. It's a journal of my mental process that I can go back to when I want to. It also helps me draw conclusions I might not otherwise find. I think that it's kind of dumb to do it for the other reasons stated in the article I linked to above.

I'm still looking for the holy grail of high speed access at home. Now I want static IP's and to build the serving of everything in house. I discovered a company that is doing this with DSL for $135 a month through the ScriptMeridian list. They are coming to Atlanta soon. This would be perfect(and I would finally get Frontier on my server).

TidBITS has a review of PhotoGIF that is worth reading if you make Web graphics.

Now that MCI Worlcom is considering entering the ComCast bidding , we here at Bump would like to say we have no intention of making a bid. 

Sunday, and I've put in almost ten hours already today. The first project I am trying to put to bed is 90% done. Got some graphics to make and one large coding malfunction to figure out, and it's done.

There is an insane amount of Star Wars Information on the New York Times Star Wars Page . It includes tons of articles, but also links to the trailers on the net and other resources. They also have a long profile on George Lucas today.

Thunderlizard has handouts from their past shows up on their site . some of this information is really good. Best of all, it's free.

I've been experimenting with a right navigation bar for this site that contains links and the search engine for the site. I can't find a combination that I like that doesn't either look like other sites or clash with the current green color scheme. Looks like I'm going to have to rework the navigation banner.

Robot Wisdom has become a daily read for me again. I seem to almost forget about sites sometimes. Jorn has a running thing going now with WebCams. Worth an amusing look. 

I'm finally approaching 100% after my bout with some kind of flu bug.

I did some work on the links page . Since I use it as my home page, I need to make sure that it's a correct listing of the sites I frequent. It's not currently.

Salon Magazine's most recent 21st column is a two side look at Yahoo . The half that looks negatively on Yahoo, Boo for Yahoo cliams that Yahoo's directory integrity is compromised by their commercial intentions. That their commercial success and market valuation have led to less improvement of service. It's hard for me to say whether or not this is true. I know that I have rarely been dissapointed by Yahoo's listing.

Are they evolving to give us better service? They are the portal that all of the others have modeled themselves after, but that design has changed little in the last couple of years. I think that this model has grown clumsy in the face of newer Web technologies. There is a lot of room for someone who does it better to come in and compete. I wonder what their vision of the future, aside from being a commerce site, is?

Reuters- United States, Russia Ponder Nuke Danger Of Y2K

Really scary. I was wondering about this a week or so ago. There isn't any easy way to establish how the bug will affect the computer monitors on either side.

E! Online -New "Star Wars" Trailer Coming