http://www.metamusing.net/weblog Life and times of a webgeek Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:21:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Broccoli is a superfood. Almost every week there's another study pointing out some healthful benefit of eating it. I've been linking over to them fairly often. Today's example is a study presented at a recent American Association for Cancer Research conference indicating broccoli may lower the cancer risk for current ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/19/is-there-anything-broccoli-cant-do/ You have to be a gamer and have spent some time on xbox live or played some other online competitive game to appreciate this animated gif that tells the tale of WWII as if it had been fought as an online game, but if you have this is funny as ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/14/what-if-wwii-was-a-game-on-xbox-live/ I have a thing for Roman History, mostly because of a couple of great courses I had back in college, and I adore I, Claudius, both as a novel and the BBC dramatic series. Google recently announced the availability of a virtual tour of ancient Rome (circa 320ad) for their ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/13/virtual-rome/ [caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] Last winter I noted that HBO had optioned the rights to George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. I incorrectly assumed this meant they were going into production but it turns out that at the time they simply optioned the ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/12/more-news-on-george-rr-martin-on-hbo/ Susan and I saw Before the Devil Knows you're Dead this weekend, and we both liked it to differing degrees. Susan didn't care so much for the open ended conclusion, wereas I thought it was pretty great - otherwise we both enjoyed it. The story concerns two brothers with cashflow ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/10/before-the-devil-knows-youre-dead-two-thumbs-up/ [caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image of Desktop Tower Defense via Wikipedia"][/caption] I mentioned a week or two ago how I had finally gotten the last and hardest badge for Desktop Tower Defense over on Kongregate.com and how I needed to find a new pastime for my lunch hour. I've found it. ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/07/friday-fun-warzone/ [caption id="" align="alignright" width="162" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] We use Drupal at work and are pretty happy with it. I'm happy for the folks behind it because for the second year in a row they've won open source CMS product of the year from the folks over at Packt publishing. It's also ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/07/drupal-wins-open-source-cms-of-the-year/ So I'm driving to work. I normally take this backroads way to the office during the school year because the major road passes through South Hadley and the campus of Mt Holyoke College, ie it's slow when the students are here. The road's speed limit varies from 25 - 40 ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/06/the-fates-were-kind-to-me-today/ ... if you're not a carpenter. Andrew asked me to post some pics of the work I did on our basement staircase, so here they are. First, a beautiful illustration of the problem: {wp-gallery-remote: gallery=0; rootalbum=11116; imagefilter=include:11692;} As you can see, the staircase has some almost paper thin joints on it, and ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/06/what-slapdash-carpentry-looks-like/ [caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] If you have a PC and you don't buy this game, you don't love fun. Audiosurf is this fantastic little music game that uses your own music collection to build levels you fly through, collecting tokens for points as you go. At $2.50 over ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/05/audiosurf-on-sale-for-only-250-this-week/ [caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] Susan and I ordered a pellet stove in July, figuring on the most expensive heating oil ever this winter. While that's looking less likely to be true, we still have a pellet stove coming this month, and part of the installation involved the removal ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/03/half-a-day-of-carpentry-work-for-naught/ Susan and I have two dogs, Soolin and Nori. On Saturday they were flipping out in the yard, so we went to check it out and discovered what appeared to be a stray dog sniffing noses with them through the ~4' chainlink fence that surrounds the yard. We live on ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/03/incredible-leaping-dog/ I grew up reading men in tights comics, mostly the Marvel stuff, and David Banner shares my first name so I loved him as a little kid, predisposing me to like this movie. Instead I was mildly disappointed. The last 20 minutes or so are fun, with competently executed action ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/02/the-new-incredible-hulk-movie-mediocre-at-best/ I agree with the sentiments over on osnews.com, where there's a brief discussion of Apple's refusal to allow Opera to appear in the Apple Apps store because it 'competes' with one of their products. This is hardly the first example of Apple doing this and using this justification. This is ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/11/01/apple-shooting-themselves-in-the-foot/ No, I'm not talking about the razor blade in the apple type stuff. A reminder to folks as your kids wander about harvesting candy tonight: when companies make announcements like this (halloween candy from a particular manufacturer has no melamine problems in the US - it's only the Canadian candy ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/31/ware-the-halloween-candy/ Image via Wikipedia Susan's a member of a local CSA farm, and she often picks up celeriac, which I'd never had until a month or so ago. Celeriac is the root of a particular kind of celery plant. It looks like a very large gnurled potato, but it ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/31/delicious-food-tip-celeriac/ So, the last post might have bummed you out because it was PC only? Here's some halloween themed Zombie action anyone with the flash plugin can play: The Last Stand 2, over on kongregate.com. You're one of the few survivors after the zombie apocalypse, and you have to make your ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/31/friday-fun-link-part-deux-more-zombies-this-time-in-flash/ Armed Assault is a first person shooter that aims to be more of a simulator than a run and gun action game. It got decent reviews when it came out, and was notable for the strength of its mod community and the tools available for it, along with the size ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/31/friday-fun-for-halloween-zombie-outbreak/ That title pretty much sums up what recent statements by US federal health officials revealed, reported on here on US News & World Report's website. I don't have too much to add to this, just getting the word out. They don't go into much detail in terms of causes of ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/31/incidence-of-type-2-diabetes-doubled-in-the-last-decade/ If you have an Intel Mac or are running Linux on Intel hardware, Codeweaver is giving away their Crossover Pro product, which includes both Crossover Pro and Crossover Games. This lets you run many Windows apps and games on a Mac or Linux box without running Windows. You can score ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/28/got-mac-or-linux-codeweaver-tools-are-free-today-only/ Some months ago, Netflix announced that they would be introducing new fees to cover the cost of customers like me who have Blu-Ray and opt to get Blu-Ray movies over DVD when they're available, because the discs cost more to purchase than regular DVDs. I was irritated by this. While ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/21/credit-where-its-due-netflix-and-blu-ray-fees/ So a slightly embarrasing admission: for the last 8-9 months, I've often spent my lunch hour playing desktop tower defense, this excellent flash game where you build mazes out of little defensive towers with various capabilities, attempting to stop endless waves of creeps from making their way to the opposite ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/21/no-better-way-to-enjoy-a-lunchbreak/ Check out this little 4.3" USB powered monitor, selling now in asia for ~$200. It's too spendy for the uses I'd put it to, but when I saw it I imagined one or two velcroed to the side of my machine running my IM client and Mediamonkey MP3 software. If ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/19/excellent-geek-toy-usb-powered-monitor/ Back in the day, I had a Commodore 64 and loved it. There was a brutally difficult little platformer on the C64 called Spelunker, featuring you as a miner making his way to the deepest depths of a mineshaft infested with critters out for your blood and a constantly depleting ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/12/spelunker-returns/ From the 'why we're fucked' file, here's a great little sample from a lengthy thread over on metafilter covering what's up with credit default swaps: 20Rafaelloello, yes, that is true, but as I understand it, most holders of CDS have them hedged off to someone else. ..." In (most?) lines of insurance ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/10/one-mortgage-infinitely-leveraged/ I have two MP3 players, a 1st generation Ipod Nano and a Creative Sansa 250. I have issues with the software on both of them, and last week I installed Rockbox on the Sansa to experiment. It's going on the Ipod this weekend, because Rockbox completely rocks. I could go ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/03/praise-for-rockbox/ Here's my take on how the debate went last night. Imagine the following exchange: Ifil: Next question. Governer Palin, you first. Can you explain to us how you would bake a chocolate cake?' Palin: Sure, I'd be happy to. Let me tell you about the time I was at the game with ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/10/03/my-impression-of-the-vp-debate/ My sister's dalmation Helena (more commonly 'the poot,' or 'pootie) passed away recently. Pretty sad news, I really loved her. She had a great, full life, and made a remarkable recovery from an infection of the heart to live to a ripe old age of 13. My sister's written a ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/09/29/an-ode-to-the-poot/ Lost in all the noise about the economic crisis we're facing is that we may also be facing a crisis in our food supply. The same rationale of deregulating the financial markets appears to be impacting the oversite of our food supply as well, the chinese milk melamine tainting scandal ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/09/29/are-we-also-facing-a-food-crisis/ Good Old Games is this fantastic new software store developed by the folks who produced The Witcher. They're selling old, classic games for $10 and under, with the DRM removed and the games patched and tweaked to run on modern systems. Many excellent games are to be had for ~$6, ... http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/2008/09/25/good-old-games-one-free-invite/