I’ve mentioned a number of times how much I love my PVR, the tivo-like device I built that sits in my stereo setup. Griffin Technology, maker of many beautiful, cool and even useful products, has another gadget for me to lust after - the radioShark, which is a USB powered AM/FM radio for your computer that comes bundled with PVR software for radio. I will definitely be adding one of these to my home theater setup so I can record Fresh Air, in tune by 10 and the BBC news hour for later listening. Cool cool stuff, for only $70 or so. I’ll be waiting on the reviews before I buy though just to make sure the radio works reasonably well. The software is less of a concern for me, there are a number of packages out already and I’m sure they’ll adjust them to work with Griffin’s device.

…I thought I might point out a few games worth attention over the next several days. First on the list: Gate 88 by Queasy games. This is elegance in gameplay mechanics personified. It harkens back to the old school arcade games of the 80’s in terms of controls and graphics, but the gameplay is a great riff on games like Herzog Zwei. We’ll call it an action RTS, though it’s really mostly an action game with a few elements (resources, bases and research) of RTS. Best of all, it’s free and has a great multiplayer action. This is really well worth checking out if you’re on the PC, and you might even find it runs acceptably in emulation on a mac since it has modest system requirements.

Next year’s Independent Games Festival isn’t until March, but IGF has just posted a list of entries for the upcoming festival.

I poked around a bunch of the entries last night. Nothing has really grabbed me yet, though I am encouraged to see several final fantasy tactics-like games, a genre which is almost dead on the PC (last year’s excellent Silent Storm notwithstanding.

I’ll post a followup if I find anything really noteworthy, like last year’s Bontago

Even if I don’t post a followup, it’s well worth spending a little time digging around in the entries if you’re at all interested in game design. You’re much more likely to find something innovative and interesting in these IGF entries than you are in the big commercial releases from the large software publishers, and if you’re on a budget it’s also a great way to find a few cool free games.

I’ve mentioned before how audiobooks make great mp3 player content while I’m jogging. I just happened across audiobooksforfree.com, which has a great, ever-growing collection of free, legal audiobook downloads. Looking for some rights free content for your mp3 player? This is another great resource.

This is for my own records more than for any of you
I’m finally out of debt. No job/paycheck for like 10-12 weeks all told, coupled with a lot of vacation activity coupled with some ridiculously profligate spending (I prolly bought about 10 ps2 games alone since I left Bowdoin) left me with a $2500 credit card balance.

A month and a half of fiscal responsibility and a moving expenses payment from Skidmore later and I’ve zero debt again. Woot! Time to buy me a zoomy game or two

…I’m not quite dead yet! Another trip to the docs this week, more prepscriptions (an anti-inflamatory this time) and more theories about what’s been going on. Short version: fainting/passing out - bad reaction to the antibiotic. Abdominal pain: combination of ecoli infection which is now almost certainly gone, and a muscle tear somewhere in my abdominal region, this last item leading to the anti-inflamatory. As you can imagine, I’m much relieved, though since the diagnosis and prognosis have been wrong once already on this I’m still a little apprehensive. I’m waiting on lab test results and also have to go back in for bloodwork and a followup visit, all of which I hope will ultimately lead to a clean bill of health.

Meanwhile I am definitely feeling much better, and the doc even cleared me to return to exercising and even better, drinking coffee

So…this place is going to be quiet for a while, sorry to say. I’m getting sicker rather than better, starting to think something else is going on with my health beyond the initial diagnosis. I had fainting spells this weekend and the worst attack of whatever it is that ails me on Friday night. The dizzyness seems to come and go and the fainting spells where I literally had to fall down have only happened twice so far, but as you might imagine they were freaky scary. Meanwhile I can’t get in to see a doctor no matter what I try, the best I’ve managed is an appointment for this coming Monday. I now think I can’t wait that long and am heading back to the emergency clinic this afternoon as soon as the dizzyness passes. Assuming nothing dramatic happens I’ll post here with details on what happens from that.

…a chopstick? Strange as it seems, it’s true. Great scrambled egg texture anyway. Instead of using your spatula to mash your eggs about the next time you go for scrambled eggs for breakfast, use a chopstick instead, and use a swirly motion on the eggs as they cook. Makes for a much better texture to the eggs than the typical spatula mash.

These folks have been running a retro gaming internet radio show for the past 3 years and somehow I never ran across it until now. Interviews with developers from the dawn of electronic gaming, the homebrew scene, classic game reviews, tips on equipment, these folks cover it all. Cool stuff if you’re into the old school gaming scene or just want to reminisce about the games you played in your youth.

The shows are downloadable as mp3 files, or you can order up a DVD. Enjoy!

Updated regularly, this site can help you keep track of who’s likely to win this November’s election. It’s been depressing watching Bush steadily take over since the convention. Let’s hope Kerry can show something during the debates or it seems likely we’re doomed to 4 more years of Bush.

One and all should go grab the new version of firefox that’s out, it’s the best browser available these days by a long shot. Mac users will find this handy - instructions on how to make sure firefox ALWAYS opens new links in a tab instead of in a new window:

For the users that complain that links/URLs from external apps don not open in tabs but new windows you can change the behavior as follows. you need to edit the mozilla startup script(I have been doing this way back by entering some code manually but now they have in entered for you you need only comment and uncomment a line.) To do this edit / /firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox You can do this on the command line with vi if you know how or you can use textedit in the finder(you must also right click/control click on your firefox application and select show package contents to do this in the finder). in the script about 190 lines down you will see two lines “_open_type=”window”" and “#_open_type=”tab”" comment the window line so that it looks like #_open_type=”window” then remove the # sign from the tab line. Now firefox will spawn new tabs from links from external apps… Hope this helps some users out there…

I got these instructions off of versiontracker.com, kudos to db23 for posting this.

And now for something completely useless, or almost - a nicely done map of Springfield, with an comprehensive set of locations from the show mapped onto the town. This is a good candidate for flashification imho, imagine binding this with a bunch of media assets from the show (audio, still images, video and so on).

So, once again my body is complaining. This time I’ve come down with an internal infection, probably e coli bacteria, and it’s attacked one of my internal organs. Fun stuff. I’m on a course of antibiotics to fend it off, and hopefully it will clear up without too much trouble. But anyway that’s why I haven’t posted in about a week. I’m feeling somewhat better now. The worst thing for me is, no exercise for at least a couple of weeks, and I had stopped exercising a few weeks ago when I first started feeling sick, so by the time this is all through I’ll have gone at least a month without any real exercise. I’ve already lost 4-5 pounds (I was 157 when I weighed myself this morning), and I think it’s basically all muscle mass I’ve lost. Lame. Let me tell you, this aging business in conjunction with crappy genes is the pits.

Yahoo has a story about a new alternative to LASIK eye surgery that’s just been approved for use in the US. Some of the potential downsides actually sound scarier than the ones with LASIK, but alternatives are always good and if they can solve the potential degeneration issues this could be a great solution, especially if it’s cheaper than LASIK. Basically they implant a lense in your eye in this technique.

My bet is there’s been more than one time in your life that you wished you knew that this website existed so you could send the url to someone who’s just asked you a ridiculously dumb question. Well, now you know, and so the question becomes: do you have the chutzpah to actually send it? More than one of you is likely to see this one at some point or another coming from my IM client to yours