Go get the latest release of the bit torrent engine. There are quite a few improvements, especially on the bandwidth use of the tracker. Note that you might have to re-associate bit torrent with your preferred client after installing this, it will probably change your .torrent associations back to the default client. My client of choice is Azureus, which is java-based and thus runs on any OS. And as a bonus, they happen to have a new version out this week as well. Get downloading!
Monthly Archives: March 2004
This year’s Independent Games Festival is almost here
The game business increasingly looks like the movie business – 1000 clones of a succesful formula for every 1 interesting game. The Independent Games Festival is one of the places where you can still see creativity in abundance. Gamespot is running an article covering this year’s IGF finalists that’s worth a look. I’ve tried many of the games – so far my favorite is Bontago, but Starshatter is also pretty cool.
It’s interesting to note though how the two games I’ve enjoyed the most are variations on known themes – Bontago is a clever variation on the tetris school of puzzle games, and Starshatter is a well executed space sim. So while I laud IGF for encouraging creativity, I still gravitate towards known game types, while things like Facade, which really does push off in new directions, interests me on an academic level but not so much that I would actually play it. I guess Electronic Arts, purveyors of the same fine game tropes year after year, really does know their customers 
Wake up folks
Geez. Someone needs to shout this from the rooftops, or maybe as commercials that run during Oprah and American Idol. Something needs to be done one way or another – the link is to an article on the New York Times website about how obesity will soon eclipse smoking as the number 1 cause of death in the US. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic – richest country in the world turns into a bunch of disease-ridden lard asses, funeral at 11. I’m starting to think we should have sin taxes for nutritionally useless foods in the same way that we have them on cigarettes – if my tax dollars have to subsidize your triple bypass because you didn’t have enough sense to stop gorging on super-sized ‘value’ meals, it’s time for you to start paying for the privilege of destroying yourself.
RSS at the turning point
There’s an interesting piece about RSS feed requests exceeding homepage requests on the infoworld site. This means more folks are reading their content using their RSS reader than with their web browser. This is huge. While this has started with a technology site, you will see this trend make its way out into the larger consumer sites over the course of this year. It has big implications for me (I’m a web developer after all) but also for info consumers, ie, as I have been saying endlessly, get on the bandwagon and try RSS readers, they’ll change the way you access content greatly for the better.
Videogames as art
For the second time that I’m aware of, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York is putting part of its collection of videogames on display. I missed the last exhibition, but a couple of my friends went and loved it. While I can play all the games on display using M.A.M.E., but there’s definitely something to be said for playing using the original hardware. Anyone interested in a trip to NY for some nostalgia-filled gaming fun?
The perfect pocket knife?
Well, not really. But Victorinox, makers of the popular swiss army knives, has introduced a new model that incorporates a USB flash memory module. I’ve kept a swiss army knife on my keychain for years and I would actually consider this, though the asking price (roughly $90 for a 64MB model) is too steep. If they get the price down to a reasonable range, I would replace the one on my keychain in a heartbeat.
Sopranos starting tonight
Don’t forget to set your tivo. The new season of the Sopranos starts tonight. I’m very psyched. The Sopranos are the reason I ended up getting and HBO subscription a couple of years ago and the reason I’ve stuck with it even though sometimes it seems like a waste of money. Tonight makes it all worthwhile, assuming the show maintains it’s level of quality and doesn’t jump the shark this season. I’ll be compiling a couple of DVD’s of the entire season, so start sucking up to me now if you expect a copy
Beautiful day on my birthday
So, today’s my 37th birthday, and lucky me it’s an absolutely georgous day out. So what am I planning to do for the day? Sit around inside working on computers. He he. Story of my life the past 5+ years. I took tomorrow off though and I’m going to go hiking along the coast for half the day.
I finally decided what to get myself for my birthday after much consideration. I ordered up a new MP3 player for myself this morning to replace the Neuros (which I sold off on ebay a few weeks ago for only $5 less than I paid for it). After much consideration I ended up choosing the Rio Cali Sport 256MB. The other models I considered were the Nomad MuVo and the iRiver IFP390T. The main features I wanted in a player were expandable storage and the ability to mount the device as a drive on windows or mac. Unfortunately no one makes such a device so I had to make trade-offs. I discarded Creative because I’m still disgusted with how they treat their customers and with how absolutely crappy their drivers are for their soundcard products. This left me a choice between no expandable storage with the iRiver or no mounting as a drive with the Rio Cali. I chose to go with the expandable storage. I really hope the bundled software for managing the music on the device is better than the stuff that came with the Neuros, or this thing will be up on ebay within a month or so and I’ll be looking for another player again. I’ll post about the player after I’ve had it for a month or so and have a good feel for how well it works.
I’ve also decided to cheat and get myself a couple of gifts – the other one is going to be a basketball hoop to replace the one the contracters pulled down two winters ago. I really miss playing hoops after work and the warm season is soon to be here. I don’t want to have another summer without one.
Thread on the PVR software I’ve been using
There’s a story on slashdot.org about the software I’ve been using on my ‘tivo’ computer, Beyond TV. I’ve been very happy with it despite some occasional glitches and the thread is well worth a look if you’ve been considering setting up your own personal video recording box.
One word of advice that only a few folks mention in the thread – if you’re serious about doing it, invest in an MPEG encoding card for the machine you’ll be using. The difference in quality is night and day.
Shareware windows strategy game
Leylines is similar to Age of Wonder or Warlords. It’s a bit more involved than the one I posted last friday, and well worth checking out if you’re running Win32 and looking for that friday gaming fix.
DnD geek cravings
Ok. A childhood of Tolkein and Dungeons and Dragons has left me secretly craving these new dungeons and dragons miniatures. I’ve actually accumulated miniatures over the years, in the theory that I would spend the time to paint them. But numerous aborted attempts have led me to conclude I lack the aptitude or patience to seriously take up miniatures painting as a hobby. But these come prepainted, and besides, what child of the 70′s wouldn’t want an ochre jelly miniature for the top of their computer monitor?
Finding focus on digital cameras
Check this out – a new way to make lenses entirely from fluids. No more precision grinding of glass, instead very malleable lenses can be built from a new technique that utilzes two non-miscible fluids and electric fields to manipulate the lense shape. Fascinating stuff – in theory it will enable a new generation of less expensive digital imaging products because the lense systems will be significantly cheaper to manufacture than traditional ground glass lenses. Plus the system uses much less power than traditional focusing systems in cameras, meaning more battery life for your camera. Unfortunately the article doesn’t touch on how precise the lenses are in comparison to existing ones. My guess is they’re less accurate and thus likely to be showing up in lower-end cameras.
Image editing on the cheap
From Europe comes a great image editing app. It’s not going to compete with Photoshop, but if you’re looking for a compact, easy to use tool for editing those images that come out of your digital camera, PhotoFiltre is definitely worth a look. The price (free) is especially appealing, plus as with photoshop there are a ton of free addon filters for it. The only downside is that most of the support material including the forums are not available in English, and it’s Win32 only.
free games workshop boardgames
Games Workshop is probably best known for their Warhammer miniatures game and its spinoffs, but actually they’ve been making games for decades, and used to have a line of more traditional paperboard counter wargames. For a kick you can download one of them, The Battle for Armegeddon and it’s supplement, and print it out yourself and play. The game got a good review on the Boardgamegeek, and it’s very tough to get ahold of on ebay. Go forth and conquer
The power of the sun in a jar on your desk
Cold Fusion is the holy grail of energy research. If scientists can unlock the power of cold fusion, the sky’s the limit for energy production, and we can offer a not so fond farewell to the era of petrochemical energy production. You might recall the furor the Stanley/Pons research caused in the late 80′s/early 90′s, when they claimed to have discovered a method of achieving cold fusion. To say that didn’t pan out would be an understatement, but now there’s a second round of research out [warning, NY Times link, registration required] on an alternative method of achieving cold fusion that is gaining positive commentary from the scientific community. Could this be it? Time will tell, it’s very cool though that the initial reports are so promising.
Singing the praises of Eucerin
I spend so much time complaining about products and services on here, I thought I might try praising a product for once. Every winter I suffer from dry skin. This can actually turn into a dangerous health issue for diabetics, so the past two winters I have been paying closer attention to it and trying various things to alleviate the dry skin. Hand creams have done ok on the dry skin on my hands and face, but it’s particularly bad on my elbows, and basically nothing had helped. My doctor suggested I try Eucerin, and lo and behold, two weeks later my elbows are soft and the skin is alive again. Got dry skin? Give it a try.
[this message sponsored by Dave's no longer dry skinned elbows ]
Beating the RSS drum again
There’s a great article covering the how and whys of content syndication and aggregation. It’s a quick read and well worth the 10 minutes or so it will take to read through it. If this doesn’t help you understand why you should be looking into RSS readers and thinking about how you handle your information consumption I don’t know what will. Take a minute and look it over.