I usually don't prattle on about games, but a demo video for a new one really caught my eye. I found this on the Ubuntu Gamers Arena; It's called Nosferatu and can be found here: http://www.nosferatuthegame.com/ The video is below.
One of my all-time favorite works (in any form of media) has just released an update. The online/print comic Platinum Grit now has issue/episode 18 "FOR A PAIR OF FINE CARROTS pt 1" up for your viewing pleasure. This is also the first issue to bear the ominous yet intriguing NSFW credentials. As always, the ever increasing size of the issues, the latest 208 pages, still seem entirely too small once finished. I am now eagerly awaiting the next installment... Damn you Trudy Cooper, I love you.
Saw a link to this little beauty on the Mozilla Links site. It is just a simple little unread article counter that resides in the Firefox status bar. The original article can be found here, the extension here.
was good while it lasted. Just finished a tremendous meal of country fried cube steak, jasmine rice, green beans cooked with onions and bacon, poached baby carrots with butter and brown sugar, and a hot, crispy loaf of white mountain bread. Dear God that was good. I never can seem to time the gravy so it is ready with everything else though... oh well.
Someone who will not be named had to remind me of the release date for the seventh and final Harry Potter book... you macadamia nut... so it is unfortunately right at the forefront of my thoughts. It's so bad that I have even took a step into the world of fan fiction and read the remarkably satisfying "Harry Potter and the Seventh Horcrux" by Melindaleo, a 34 chapter novel which, while certainly not written to the standards of J.K.Rowling, attempts to maintain a level of consistency with the original works that surprised me. This book is in fact making the rounds on torrent sites, claiming to be a leak of Deathly Hollows.
I've installed the latest official Ubuntu release 7.04, Feisty Fawn, and must say I am quite pleased. The new Restricted Driver Manager made installing the proprietary ATI driver a snap, it seemed to have a problem replacing the original xorg.conf file when i disabled it. Simple enough to fix, however. After making my way past the error messages, I logged in to the text console, sudo'd to root, and replaced the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the backup copy: xorg.conf.original-0
For some unfortunate reason, the ati driver decides to max out my video's contrast settings about 5 minutes after booting up. Have to see about fixing that... At least the power management for this notebook seems to be far better supported in this release, and it's always a pleasure to see all of the extra polish in each new release.
I just can't believe Kilgore Trout is dead. Between this, and the death of Raul Duke, I have no heroes left.
Human Interface Guidelines for Command Line Applications. I've always wished that Command Line apps were a little more usable. I think that a few guidelines, if followed would make the command far more approachable and intuitive. The GNU habit of using single dashes for abbreviated arguments and double dashes for full text is handy, but can often be confusing when described in man, info and simple descriptions. I am sure that there is documentation on these design standards for GNU tools, but until I find it, I wanted to post these ideas, based on what I have found useful in the command line apps I have used.
* All programs, when run with no arguments, should not execute but display a simple description and list of common commands.
Example:
$>foo Description:* When running in a non-interactive manner, a command to stop the program should be displayed.foo is a sample application meant to serve as a example of proper command line behavior.Examples:To start foo: foo --start
To start foo with a file: foo --start filename.ext
$>foo --start* If the program is passed an argument that it does not understand, it should produce a "friendly" error message and display the simple description.
To stop foo, press control+x at any time.
$>foo --barExample 2:
foo does not understand your request to "bar"
Description:
foo is a sample application meant to serve as a example of proper command line behavior.Examples:
To start foo: foo --start
To start foo with a file: foo --start filename.ext
$>foo bar
foo could not find a file named "bar"
Description:
foo is a sample application meant to serve as a example of proper command line behavior.Examples:
To start foo: foo --start
To start foo with a file: foo --start filename.ext
Sorry for the missed update yesterday. I was picking my mother up from the hospital. Selfish bastards. You, not mothers. Mothers are wonderful people. Well, most of them. Selfish bastards. So,I actually worked on this stupid list. I have quite a few complaints, as anyone who has met me could tell you. These five, however, are places where I really feel google dropped the ball. things that they absolutely should have implemented, and just didn't. Or haven't yet. With the exception of #2, there is no excuse for these features to be missing. So, without further non-sense, My Top Five Google Complaints:
Ever since enrolling in a crappy high school pottery class, I have had a love for sculpture. I always regretted my lack of skill with pencil, pen, and brush, but clay was my bitch. I blame an early affair with play-dough. While not having a readily accessible kiln has hampered my ceramic works, I have continued with my three dimensional diversions. Don't get me wrong, it's all crap. But I don't do it for acclaim or fortune (fortunately) I do it for me. Since I mainly work with found materials, I found the works of the following artists to be quite... um diverting.
I mentioned in part one that Sunergos was supposed to be an operating system. That's not completely true, but we'll stick with that for now. I didn't describe exactly what Sunergos was meant to be, and there is one reason for that: Mission Creep. It is the bane of all project leaders, even when that project is naught but vaporware.
Initially, Sunergos was born on windows, when I worked for a tech support company and nearly every application I used was web based. At this point, I'd had almost five years of web development under my belt. After setting the windows shell to use Internet explorer, I set about creating an interface for all of the resources I used for my day to day work. With that an idea borne of a bit of ambition, normally absent from my psyche, reared it's ugly head: A browser-based desktop. Not a new idea, I know. but in that idealistic turn of the century, it was certainly something I had never seen.
Working on a windows based platform (first 98, and later 2000) posed some serious stumbling blocks, not the least of which was the availability of free information. While I was far from an expert with *nix, my experience with Openbsd and later Mandrake 7.2 led me to the (correct) assumption that the open source community was the ideal outlet for this nearly all consuming idea. With an open source operating system as a base I could customize the entire environment, tuning everything to my purpose, and distribute the whole thing.
This put me at a serious disadvantage, though. As I have previously indicated, I had limited experience with this environment. However, that great electronic oracle-- the Internet-- could provide all that I needed and I set myself to achieving a state of complete saturation with my newly adopted obsession. Unfortunately, during my journey toward enlightenment, to a zen like oneness withTeh Source, the infamous bubble did it's infamous bursting. Instead of using my new-found free time to advance my cause, I took more of a chicken little approach and started stockpiling rice, beans, and 12 gauge ammunition...
Hmm, starting to get flashbacks here. I'm going to go and make some plywood squares to mount over my windows, clean my guns, and check the canned food stocks. But, I promise to be back soon for another exciting installment of "What the Hell is Sunergos." Now that the history is essentially explained, I can cover some of the stolen inovative ideas that, when combined, would have made Sunergos "The Best OS Ever"
I just finished watching Cool Hand Luke. Other than being really impressed with the (admittedly heavy Christian) imagery, I have to wonder if the bespectacled antagonist from the Cohen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou was intentionally modeled on the "road boss" in Cool Hand Luke.
So, I've been looking at Ruby on Rails for developing a combination blog/wiki/forum/cms solution. Seeing as I am a poorly expereinced programmer, Ruby was an obvious choice. This is seriously a... well, for lack of a better word, Zen programming language. For anyone who interested in an incredibly easy to learn language that still has the power to take over the world, I recommend Ruby. It is well documented and portable enough that I will give you a personal money-back guarantee that it will work on your computer. There are many resources available for free, as I have come to expect from open source projects. I have included a quote from one that I am enjoying far too much for it to actually be programming "manual."
why’s (poignant) guide to ruby :: 2. Kon’nichi wa, Ruby
For more fun and games, I highly recommend why's blog as well.
Well, the spirit of napster, anyway. Sorry, I know I said that there would be something of substance, but thanks to the following article on Techcrunch, I've spent the last two days watching scrubs on GoFish... I mean, just looking at the listings. I'm not confessing anything here. I'm not under oath. God, don't you pigs have anything better to do?
Forget YouTube: Go To These Sites If You Want Hard Core Copyright Infringing Content Michael Arrington 97 comments »
YouTube is clearly the most popular video sharing site on the web. But limits
on video length, DMCA takedown notices and billion dollar lawsuits have damaged
Full length copies of well known TV shows and/or movies are readily available on a number of YouTube competitors. Watch, for example, The Office on DailyMotion
Or, a quick look at a few of my favorite pages which have sprung up with all of this web 2.0 nonsense. The Google "Suite" were just going to be a part of this article, but there are so many I've decided to split it up into two parts and devote the first half just to the big G:
Gmail - Perhaps the first mainstream appearance of the web too point oh, and frequently referred to as "web mail done right" Gmail features massive storage space (and seems to increase it at a rate of ~1 gigabyte per year) a great search function, handy dandy labels, an excellent filter system (and I don't just mean spam), unobtrusive advertising, free pop and smtp access, and idiot-proof integration with the google chat service, Google Talk, in an easy to use interface. Everyone should have gmail. Seriously. Call your congressman, send a letter to the UN, something. If you have more than one gmail account, I highly recommend the firefox plugin "Gmail Manager" which acts as an account manager and mail notifier, allowing you to monitor both accounts and access them quickly, in addition to allowing sendto: links to work with gmail. Reader - Google Reader is an aggregator for rss feeds. In addition to plugin-free integration with firefox (2.*) this reader features a sharing function, allowing you to create your own rss or html feed of articles selected from your aggregated feeds. I swear, it's as neat as a snake eating it's own tail, and from what I hear the practically-trademarked super-slick minimalist google interface is up for improvements in the near future. I'm not sure how they intend to improve on perfection, however. Docs and Spreadsheet - I'll roll these two together, even though they are two separate services. Spreadsheet was google's baby and docs, if I am not mistaken, was birthed after the acquisition of startup http://www.writely.com/. Regardless, this is stone simple office document creation right here, although simple may be a deceptive word. I admit that my needs are generally simple, but I have yet run into a feature here that I needed but couldn't find. I think that the sheer brilliance in this user interface, when compared to MSOffice, OpenOffice, or even my favorite, Gnome Office, comes from its inability to hide features in the menu bar. Everything just has to be there on the page. Again, collaboration and publication is built in so that it feels down right cozy. Have to wonder why Google Docs is missing the discussion tab that Spreadsheets feature. Pages - I am sad to say that while I like Google Pages, it is the most poorly implemented service I have tried. As far as Google services go, I mean. The interface is smooth and clean and well thought out, everything I would expect, but the layout/editing engine seems buggy as hell. Seriously, it reminds me of Microsoft Word circa 1996. At least with Pages, I can go to the code and fix those little bugs as they arise. Still, I would expect more from a wysiwyg interface, even one as advanced as this. There is also a limited selection of templates, considering the tech powerhouse that is backing this home page service. What I would really like to see are theme generators, a la the proliferous myspace layout generators. The ability to make your Google page your Google Wiki should be there too. Not a full blown world-writable Wiki mind you, but an invite only affair. Google is really pushing collaboration in all of their other services, I'd like to see Google Pages catch up. Calendar - This is a very functional, clean, standards compliant, and easy to use service-- Although I have to admit that sharing your calendar feed should be easier. This is another service made all-the-more valuable with a Firefox plugin. While there is no official plugin, the aptly named "Google Calendar Notifier" is quite effective and adjusts well to personal preference. Having said all this, Calendar is seriously hurting for some Gtalk notifications, a la Remember the Milk. Notebook - If you have ever tried Microsoft's OneNote office application, Google Notebook will seem familiar. I'm really not using as often as I should. The Firefox plugin (recently overhauled)for this is the one thing that really makes it worth having in my opinion, although it can act a bit of the insect at times. As someone who constantly saves snippets here and there from various web pages, it should be essential for me. Still a little hooked on notepad though... this essentially makes notes into a scrapbook for the web, and like most of Google's other offerings, you can make your notebook publicly viewable and search-able. Blogger removes the hassle of remembering yet another - The new non beta blogger is quite nice indeed. Those rat-bastards who designed myspace should really look at how the new template editor works (while taking extensive notes) and then shoot themselves in the head. The fact that I can now use my Google loginusername and password, too. Unfortunately, The interface still seems a little out of place with the rest of the minimalist-yet-hyperfunctional offerings from Google. Integrating the editor into the post management page would go a long way toward fixing that though. BTW: looks like you can now post to blogger directly from Google Docs as well as Reader. Groups - Oh, man, Newsgroups. Nothing can quite pique fond memories of those early days of the web like newsgroups. Ok, so they were mostly used for porn and posting copyrighted material for public download, but at one point newsgroups were *the* forum for expressing our simian ideas. Google groups manages to capture this wondrous past and breath new life into the service whilst making the whole shooting match indexed and searchable. That's all for now kiddies. Did you learn anything?
I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.You can find the full article here.
While this has been in the news a bit, I decided to try my hand at ActionScript recently and felt I would pass on my findings. There is an Eclipse setup (I am told) for flash development, but the massive IDEs aren't really my cup of tea, So I have found a few tools that may be of help to like-minded seekers of curiosities. First stop should probably be the Open Source Flash project at http://www.osflsh.org/ This is the holy grail of OS flash resources and where I found links to swfmill, an xml to swf and swf to xml processor, as well as the Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler, better known as MTASC. Both of these tools are available in Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For more information on setting up these tools for flash development, see "How to structure and set up a Flash project without using the Flash IDE" on the OSFlash site.
I always wondered what was up with character encoding and I found an excelent article that explains how different encodings work as well as their various origins. While it is geared more towards developers, It shouldn't be hard for anyone to grasp the concepts that are explained within. But, rather than rehash someone else's work, I'll just give you a link: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
I love music. I play music in the car, when I work, even when I sleep. So, when my sister offered to buy me a new mp3 player, I got really excited. The video ipods looked so nice, all clean and black and shiny-- they even play videos. But then, so did my old one. So I decided (and strangely enough have yet to regret) passing over the video ipod for a shuffle. For anyone who doesn't know, the shuffle is the smallest of the line-- in size, price, and storage capacity. And when I say small, I mean it. I'm too damn lazy to find my vernier calipers, but the case supposedly measures 1.07 inch tall, 0.98 inch wide, and 0.33 inch deep. It has an integrated clip and is extremely light weight. It uses a single port for audio, power and data transfer. Yeah, weird, takes a little getting used too. On one edge are two tiny sliding switches for power and shuffle/repeat, and the other has the jack and a status led. The face has 5 buttons, a combination play/pause, volume controls, and fore and back track switching. The play/pause button also hides some other features. By holding it in for three seconds locks out the controls from accidental triggering, and pressing it three times in succession will reset the playlist to the first track. In short, it is quite possible that the second gen shuffles are the best balance of technology and simplicity engineered to date, and I really am glad to have it over the full-sized pocket TV. This next (and last) item holds a special place in my heart, as do all devices intended to hurl copper jacketed chunks of lead at super-sonic velocities. A sub-compact .40 caliber Springfield Arms XD. This Pistol is really interesting, but I won't ramble on about all of the little features that make it special. Suffice it to say that the design is inspired by both Glock and John Browning, and when activated it goes BOOM!
For a *very* long time, I never saw any redeeming value in flash. Period, end of story. It did nothing but make web pages difficult to see and navigate. Of course, that is really the designers fault, but that is not my point. I still don't see any point in using flash for web pages, but as content for those pages, the beast has been redeemed in my eyes. I know that flash and shockwave games are nothing new, but the quality (in my opinion at least) tended to be sorely lacking. A few days ago a friend showed me Orisinal Games, a collection of horribly addictive and entertaining games by Ferry Halim. The games manage to be both simple and challenging, and there are more than a few that I could spend hours playing. After that, I started poking the internet with my google stick and asking it to give me games. That brought me to a fairly new site, Kongregate, which is attempting to be the flash game analog to xbox live. My favorite game there has to be The Fancy Pants Adventure, a side scrolling game in the spirit of Super Mario Bros. and the like. The first world is fun, but the demo for the second world has left me salivating. Fancy Pants led me to Armor Games, which has a nice selection of flash games and several playable demos for installable games. The flash games vary in quality, but some are simply amazing. On in particular, Chaos Faction, left me stupefied. I never would have believed that a game so... feature complete could be made with flash. If you have ever played Super Smash Bothers for Nintendo, then you should feel right at home. Chaos Faction even includes a level editor! I was really impressed with this one, I just cant express that enough. All that aside, flash pages suck.(period)