Here’s a free, handy little utility for windows, Driverview, that provides a full list of every driver on your system. There are already ways to get this info but this little utility makes it more convenient to get at, puts it all in one place, and lets you export it to a text file.

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So google maps has added a few new features this week, including coming to close to delivering something I’ve wanted for ages: topo maps. They haven’t quite provided that - instead they’re delivering shaded relief maps - but it’s close, it’s very useful, and it further enhances their already superb map tool. Now please just add topo features as a checkbox under shaded relief, please?

Also be sure to check out major metropolitan areas using the new terrain feature - they give you a cool isometric 3d view of the buildings, styled as if it was an architectural drawing. While I can’t think of a use for this view, it sure is cool looking.

My mom and dad came to visit for Thanksgiving and spent a couple of days hanging out at my place. We had a great time. For the first time in about 10 years, I cooked the thanksgiving meal. I experimented and brined the turkey, which worked out great. We also went out to eat and wander around a bit in Northampton, the local touristy town, and toured the area including 4 of the 5 local college campuses because they were both interested in them. The weather was brisk which inhibited our exploring a bit, but all in all we had a good time. Anyway, here’s a picture of them just as they were leaving:

First, an embarrassing admission for a dedicated gamer to make: I’ve solved only one Zelda game, the second one on the original Nintendo machine, which was called Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. I came very close on my favorite of the series, A Link to the Past, but a move to Maine way back when and the loss of access to the Super Nintendo my family had at the time ended that run. I never owned a Nintendo 64 until well after its time had passed so I didn’t play the two legendary Zelda games that came out for that platform until years after they were past their prime and I was just interested in seeing them in action and less interested in playing through them. I had a gamecube and played a good bit of Wind Waker but ultimately the endless sailing about in that game put me off of it.

I never played any of the Zeldas that came out for handhelds until I picked up Phantom Hourglass about a month ago for the DS. I was skeptical about it even though it was getting pretty good reviews, mostly because I figured the stylus-based controls would suck. As it turns out, they actually work really well - the only problem I had with them was finding myself constantly obscuring my view of the action with my hand as I dragged the stylus around. Instead what sucked was the premise that I must return to the central ‘dungeon’ of the game, repeating sections I had previously cleared in order to get to the deeper levels each time I acquired a new ‘key’, while on a timer. Designer who came up with this idea? Fuck you, I sold your shitty game on ebay. Don’t. DON’T. DON’T make me repeat the same stuff over and over and over again, nothing puts me off a game faster than doing that. It’s not charming, it’s not clever, it’s not novel, it’s just boring, frustrating crap. Yeah, I know you tried to alleviate this a bit by making it possible to skip past parts of the earlier levels as I acquired the standard Link toolset (boomerang, bombs, bow and arrow, etc) but it was too little too late. Better luck next time, and meanwhile if anyone has tastes similar to mine and can’t stand repeating areas in games - stay far away from this one.

In case you didn’t notice, Amazon is making the rounds pitching their new epaper-based ebook device, the Kindle. My reaction? Amazon, you can bite me. Go back to your publishing partners and explain to them that there is no way in hell I am going to pay for a device purporting to allow me to read books that has less features than, you know, an actual book made of paper. I can’t loan my kindle books to someone else, I have to rely on Amazon maintaining the service in perpetuity because if they ever shut it down I could lose all access to my book collection, or I have to have faith that Amazon will do a one time ‘remove all DRM from all books upon shutdown of the service’, which I’ll guarantee won’t happen, in fact I’ll guarantee it’s in their contracts with the publishers that they can’t. The device also has really limited file format support, including a lack of pdf support, and to convert files to the kindle format you have to have the amazon.com website perform the conversion. Additionally, apparently some file formats can only be moved onto the device for a fee. The device lets you read blogs and other web content on it…again for a fee. Amazon may gloss all this in a ‘yeah but you get free wireless internet access to all this great stuff, and the books cost the same or less as paper ones,’ but it’s all smoke and mirrors designed to get a trojan horse DRM’d to hell print content distribution device into lots of people’s hands.

Get back to the drawing board, Amazon. In short, your DRM schemes designed to appease your publishing partners are shit, and I hope your device fails miserably as it deserves to. Anyone with half a brain should stay far, far away from this thing. Sony manufactures a similar device for less money that allows you to put whatever content you want onto the thing. It’s not perfect, and it’s missing some of the interesting features of the Kindle (get your daily newspaper automatically on the thing, shades of the Dynabook), but you don’t have to sell your soul to a DRM scheme designed by (greedy) idiots.

Have some tasty spam fajitas, we think you’ll like them! That was a text ad above my gmail email box today, which I only noticed because I was looking to hit the ‘report spam’ button and right about it, it said spam. Threw me for a loop, then made me laugh. And yeah, that’s a real recipe for fajitas made with spam. Feel free to try it and report back on how they are - me, I’m staying far away.

Just a brief mention that today saw the first snowfall of the year, and it’s sticking, an inch so far with a bit more to come. This has come much earlier this year than last year, when we were still seeing daytime temps in the 50’s into mid-December. It’s also unusual in that I saw not a flake of snow until today when it’s sticking. Usually come winter I’d see a number of flurries and brief spats of weather before we got our first real storm - this is the first year I can recall where the first snow of the year was sticking to the ground.

So back when, in my college days, I used to dance a lot - at live concerts especially, but also at parties on campus, social events, and whatnot. Somehow as I’ve aged I’ve become more reserved and self conscious about it and rarely if ever dance, to the point where it’s occasionally been an issue with my girlfriends over the last 10 years or so. I mention this because this weekend I visited my friends Dave and Lisa at their new place in Westport, MA, and Friday night we went to see Dark Star Orchestra, a Grateful Dead cover band. By the second song I was on my feet bopping with the rest of the crowd, without even thinking about it. I had a blast, and it definitely made me nostalgic for my free wheeling self back in the 80’s. It was the first time I’d seen DSO and they were great. I guess they often play actual setlists of Dead shows, but Friday they were just winging it, playing songs from many eras. The highlight was a 10-15 minute take on Alligator, which was less like Pigpen’s drunken bluesy take on it and more rock/jam band, but it was great and rocked the place.

I was also surprised to see how much dope folks were smoking. The show was in Lowell, MA, in a small concert hall, and there were only a couple of hundred people there, and I saw the cops drag out two folks and security track down several others, and yet still folks were smoking dope all over the place - great clouds of it were gushing up over the floor during the sets. Either these folks are fools (most likely) or the penalty for possession must be trivial in Massachusetts.

Anyway I had a blast, I’d definitely go see DSO again, they were great and the crowd scene brought back a lot of fun memories from my teen/early 20’s years.

I’ve mentioned a few times here how much I love live music, and how to escape paying the music company cartels I stopped buying cd’s years ago but kept grabbing live music whenever I could find legally available options, from places like archive.org for example. I recently found the Ultimate Bootleg Experience and it’s become one of my favorite feeds - just in the past couple of days I’ve grabbed a cool Stones show from ‘72 with amazing audio quality, and a decent radiohead show from 2003, and over the past several weeks I’ve found all kinds of great stuff on the site. They consistently link to excellent concerts in a variety of genres. Add some variety to your daily listening by checking out the site or adding it to your RSS feeds.

Call of Duty 4 is great, both in single player and multiplayer. I finished the single player game last night and it was a fantastic ride. It’s a very linear, scripted experience but for almost all of it that works very well and effectively makes you feel like you’re the star in a blockbuster Hollywood action movie. The graphics are great, controls are tight, audio is superb, technically the engine is rock solid, the pace is frenetic while never overwhelming, the ‘feel’ of the weaponry is just right, and the plot and writing are decent. The end is also great. A lot of times in FPS games you end up fighting some uber cheesey boss battle, but the last level and conclusion in CoD4 are about as good as it gets. About the only criticism I can come up with is that the game is fairly short. I didn’t track exactly how long it took me to finish, but I’d say roughly 6 hours. I didn’t feel cheated because of how engaging the whole experience is, and because the multiplayer is also fantastic.

On the multiplayer side the game reminds me most of an update to the old Urban Terror quake 3 mod I was so fond of, mostly because generally the MP maps are relatively small and feature building to building skirmishes with modern weapons and great weapon physics. There are newish features to the MP though, the quasi role playing system being my favorite. As you play you earn points for killing other players and achieving map objectives. These points allow you rise in level from a lowly private up through the military ranks. Higher ranks entitle you to new weapons, addons to your weapons  (things like silencers, laser sites, scopes, better grips and so on), and perks (things like the ability to carry more grenades or shoot through thicker walls). You can also build customized characters , and as you rise in ranks you can have more of them, so you can develop specific character ‘builds’ - a sniper, a heavy weapons guy, a speedy little stealth attacker, and so on, and when you’re in a match you can choose from any of your builds when you respawn, allowing you to adapt to the situation in each match. There are also achievements you can strive for, like, 100 kills with a specific weapon, or 100 headshots, which provide bonus points to your levelling up. All of this adds up to digital crack - every 2-3 matches you play earns you at least 1 or 2 new toys to play around with and means you never want to log out.

Couple this with really great map design, lots of game modes, speedy matchmaking, and a system that rewards kill streaks with in-match abilities (like calling in an attack helicopter to go after the other team, or an airstrike, or a tactical rader that reveals the location of the enemy team’s players) and you have an unbelievably compelling multiplayer FPS. I can’t really think of a criticism - I’m enjoying it as much as I have been enjoying Team Fortress 2, which I also think is a fantastic game.

I should note that I played this on the Xbox 360, where everything is technically solid. I haven’t tried it on the PC, though if the mod scene picks up on this game, which I really hope they do, I will end up buying it for the PC as well - the game is that good and a wealth of additional maps would be fantastic. Anyone who enjoys FPS should consider checking this game out. And for my friends who read this blog - consider getting an xbox 360. The community gaming features, and the ability to ignore the hardware update treadmill you are stuck on with PC gaming, make it a really great value. You have to wrap your head around using a joypad to control things but anyone can adapt (I’m proof of that) and the benefits are outstanding.

Atari has a special place in my heart. The Atari 2600 was the first console I owned, paid for in part by the proceeds of a paper route I had when I was 10 or 11, and it contributed much to my lifelong love of videogames. I’m saddened to note this story on joystiq about Atari’s most recent death.  Granted, they’re not closing down shop, but once again they’re not making games, and once again the future looks dim for the storied father of videogames. They’ve risen from the ashes before, and perhaps they will again, but at some point you have to wonder if they’re cursed and better left to die, permanent-like.

I jest, but I don’t stray far from the truth. Check out this piece in the daily mail, which covers research indicating that beer is actually better at quenching your thirst after exercise than water is. Sports drinks are best of all, but who wants that sugary crap when you can have a couple of pints of fine lager? Plus, who knows, if this takes off the players could soon be joining the fans in drunken revelry on football sundays. I’m sure it will do wonders for defensive line play at the least.

One of the early, truly great online shooters was the Quake engine derived ‘quakeworld,’ and it lives on to this day thanks to Id’s practice of opening the source code of their game engines to the public once their commercial lifespan ends. There are many quakeworld ‘distros’ these days, and much work has been done to bring it into the modern graphical age with better lighting, texturing and so on. None is easier to get going than nquake though, and it’s this weeks friday fun link. This runs on basically every platform known to man, but do be aware that you need pak1 from the original commercial quake release to play. You can score it unbelievably cheaply if you don’t already have it sitting around from back in the day or on the DVD for Quake IV. You can even score it off of Steam for ~ $10.

Check out Visuwords, a cool little flash-based visual dictionary. Type in a word and it’ll pop up the definition along with connections to other similar words along with their definitions. Reminds me of touchgraph, a UI for relationship illustration that I was enamored of.

Here’s a clever idea - put a wifi chip on a memory card, add a receiver to your PC, a little software magic, and viola, for ~$100 you have a digital camera which automatically publishes your photos online or sends them off to be printed. It’s got pretty broad support too - everything from Smugsmug, flickr and their ilk to things like the Gallery software that I run. It’s somewhat impractical for me in that mostly the photos I publish are of the hikes and adventures I go on, where there is no wireless. While I do a good bit of ebay photography around the house, it’s not enough to make the $100 expense worth the convenience, I think, but still - slick idea.

Dollar in collapse, and the first tangible effect is…not enough hops in my beer?!? Turns out the combination of a poor hop harvest and lower US dollar means many US microbrews are having to change their recipes because they can’t secure enough hops. Oh the tragedy! I’m wondering what my favorite US IPA, Dale’s Pale Ale, will taste like this time next year. Details to be found in the CBC article in the first link.

Sonic FA is another asian shmup, this one from the curtain fire school of design, with great pixelicious graphics and an absolutely brutal difficulty level. It’s otherwise pretty conventional in design - kill ships to get powerups to upgrade your shot power, blast everything in site whilst avoiding the bullet storm. Fun, if frustrating, and a worthy friday fun link. Since the homepage is in japanese, some clues - use your arrow keys to move, and the z and x keys to fire your guns and missiles. Here’s a direct download link as well. Oh, and windows only, sorry mac and linux folk.

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