Puzzler?
Posted 28 Feb, 2006 at 15:51 by blue in /Games | Permanent link
Here is a link to a nice little puzzler.
Gameplay is fairly easy to figure out, though it will likely take you a couple of tries to win it (by the theory that it took me two tries to win, and everyone is like me... right?) Okay maybe not, but it's probably worth a minute or two if you're looking for something as a brain break.
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Yet another free MMORPG...
Posted 28 Feb, 2006 at 08:17 by blue in /Games | Permanent link
Actually, I was reviewing several recently, but figured I'd share one of te cuter ones here... Dofus.
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I know what my next monitor will be
Posted 27 Feb, 2006 at 12:20 by brent in /Science | Permanent link
This is so cool, I almost went outside and simulated one using yellow dots in snow. 3D in air image generation
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The Music Genome
Posted 27 Feb, 2006 at 09:57 by wendy in /Music | Permanent link
I don't think anyone has mentioned Pandora here yet. It's like a radio station where you train it by telling it what you like and don't like, except that instead of basing its recommendations on what other people who like the same songs like, they've actually gone through and classified songs, so you don't just wind up with the most popular stuff.
It's also pretty smart in that it doesn't ask you to register until you've listened to a few songs first. I suspect that more sites will start doing this, suck you in by letting you use their product for a while and then ask for your personal info. Pretty slick actually. Apparently the free version has advertising, but I didn't see any yesterday so maybe they haven't found advertisers yet. Honestly, this is one of the few things I've found on the web that I might consider paying for.
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What's Up?
Posted 24 Feb, 2006 at 14:58 by blue in /World | Permanent link
Want to know what is going on around the world? A pretty cool interface for seeing headline news around the world was sent to me this morning.
While I think it can be greatly improved on (the ability to configure it, set keywords/interets, level of detail etc), it is a neat start. Some may say "what's the big deal? get an RSS reader" and they would be right... this isn't much different... but I'm a visual person and this is pretty.
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Bored?
Posted 24 Feb, 2006 at 08:37 by blue in /Social | Permanent link
For those of you who live in the United States, here is a little something fun you can do...
Get a stack of $2 US bills and try to spend them.
'$2 bill' you say? 'No such' thing exists you say? Apparently, it does.
Don't think it would be entertaining? Here is a short story that illustrates some of the fun you can have.
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World's cultural loss during times of war
Posted 23 Feb, 2006 at 08:26 by blue in /World | Permanent link
Regardless of your beliefs, this is a terrible thing.
If the image doesn't mean anything to you, you can read one of the many news articles on the bombing of the Golden Mosque at CNN or Wikipedia.
I remember when I visited Germany in 1992 and saw scaffolding around many buildings. When asked about it, our guides indicated that in many cases it was to do restoration on old buildings... removing soot and other effects from things such as acid raid (notice how you don't hear about that in the news anymore? Do you think acid rain really stopped, or we just have new catch phrases for the media?).
However, many of the buildings were also having a different sort of restoration done. Repair from damage from World War II and allied bombings. One church I visited had photos of their stained glass windows... pre-1944... done by various masters of the craft. They currently had about 6 of the 30 windows restored and were working on collecting funds to do the rest.
Now consider that... a wealthy, prosporous nation like West Germany was still repairing things.
Irag, and a city like Baghdad, probably one of the oldest cities on the planet, just had the American war machine roll over it. I know that the US military actively tries to avoid directly bombing targets of cultural or religious significance... but war is war. Terrorist attacks, and, those who are in fact specifically targeting locations of cultural significance are even less discriminating - need I remind anyone of the Buddha's destroyed in Afghanistan?
Regardless of your cultural background, I think it is a profound loss when one of these achivements is detroyed or lost. I was pleased to see, and hope that it is followed up on, that the US Ambassador to Iraq has offered US help in rebuilding the mosque. That said, things rebuilt can never be quite the same. Don't you agree?
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Sneakers
Posted 21 Feb, 2006 at 14:49 by brent in /MovingPictures | Permanent link
Sneakers--one of the movies no one watches because of the title. It took some friends who had seen it to show us the movie.
I really enjoyed it. It was a fun caper movie. A full description including cast is here at Amazon
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Games... Of the Olympic Variety
Posted 21 Feb, 2006 at 14:44 by brent in /Games | Permanent link
Random question popped into my head after popping out the inside of the cap from my diet Pepsi (tm, r, or whatever). I was wondering what sort of promotions occur in other countries regarding the Olympics (and I didn't feel like logging in to www.pepsi.ca to see if I won getting my picture taken with Wayne so I thought I'd write about it instead).
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DanglingConversations.com is registered
Posted 20 Feb, 2006 at 13:05 by brent in /System | Permanent link
OK, I've registered the domain and linked it up. Matt is fixing up some pathing stuff to support both the original (www.goldenempires.com/dc) and www.danglingconversations.com.
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I have a dirty, dirty mind
Posted 15 Feb, 2006 at 13:07 by brent in /Games | Permanent link
This was so much fun to do I thought I'd share it with you all. Do the following with Lord Vader with the object "Porn Star". Sith Sense.
Enjoy!
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US Government inconsistent?
Posted 15 Feb, 2006 at 11:24 by brent in /World | Permanent link
If you haven't read it, there's a wonderful set of comments coming out of the US government about the tech industry complying with China's rules and regulations about information. Such as that here: 'Nauseating collaboration with a regime of repression'. I find this fascinating that the US government wants compliance by say Google and other search companies to hand over there records and yet they consider China oppressive?
First question: Is this hypocritical of the US Government? Second question: How are these rules different from say house building code regulations? Aren't the rules and regs involved designed to help protect the people?
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Valentine's Day Love
Posted 14 Feb, 2006 at 20:28 by kael in /Technical | Permanent link
In the Toronto Star today, there's an article about a couple who implanted themselves with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips. This isn't exactly superbionic. Think of it as a quickpass injected in to your hand.
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Happy V-day!
Posted 14 Feb, 2006 at 08:05 by kael in /Chatter | Permanent link
For those of you desperately searching for cards, and with access to colour printers, you might want to try something from the following for your special someone:
- Dilbert
- Firefly Set 1 and Set 2
- Law and Order: Special Valentines Unit
- Some random, Design Contest cards
- And last, but not last, Penny Arcade (Okay, so it's not a card)
So, for all of you, have a happy smoochie sickeningly sweet Valentine's day!
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You say you know what he did
Posted 13 Feb, 2006 at 23:48 by matt in /Music | Permanent link
Happiness is rediscovering a great song that you completely forgot.
I quite enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums when it came out. Yes, it was very self-consciously quirky, but done so well --- and with so much sincerity from the cast --- that it could be forgiven. I've seen the film twice, the last time over three years ago, but I've got a lot of bits of it stuck in my mind. The most intense of these bits (which I remember seriously creeping me out in the theatre) is a sequence where one of the characters attempts suicide; it's spooky to me for a lot of reasons, but the thing that really drove the scene was the music in the background.
Of course, it's often the soundtrack that gives a movie scene its emotional impetus, as The Opposite of Sex observed so cleverly. The song itself, lyrically and musically, fit perfectly with the narrative of the film; moreover, it was the only really contemporary song in a film whose soundtrack was heavily based in older music, and even not knowing the song in advance the difference in production values communicated something to me.
Anyhow, the point of this is: I really, really liked the song at the time. And then the rest of the movie happened, and the song didn't really stick around in my head. Same thing a year later, watching the movie on DVD: great song, and then gone. I've recently discovered it again --- Needle in the Hay, by Elliott Smith --- and have been grooving on it.
It's a song that will always have association of suicide for me: from the character in the movie, and from Smith himself who took his own life in 2003. It's not by any means a happy song to begin with, full of anger and yearning. And yet... it makes me feel better when I hear it. It fills a hole in my mind, and I'm pleased to have rediscovered it.
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Multi Touch Screens
Posted 13 Feb, 2006 at 10:35 by blue in /Technical | Permanent link
We're all familiar with the standard touch monitors that get used in places like airports and so on.
With current screens though, they can usually only register one point of contact at a time.
Check out this neat video demonstrating some applications possible with a multi-touch monitor.
Personally, I like a couple of the applications (the photo sorter, the mapping tool) and would love to see this become a reality.
What other applications do you think this would be good for and would you use it? Or are you a fan of the mouse and keyboard?
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One Red Paperclip
Posted 08 Feb, 2006 at 07:49 by blue in /Chatter | Permanent link
What would you trade for a red paper clip?
Would you trade for a cube van?
That is so far what this guy has been able to do.
Starting with a red paper clip and trading up for constantly bigger and bigger things has thus far netted him a cube van. His goal? A house. Personally, I'm curious to see if he can do it.
So... umm.. I've got several red paperclips... what will you give me for them? ;)
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Calling All Browncoats
Posted 07 Feb, 2006 at 00:05 by kael in /MovingPictures | Permanent link
A survey to see what the best method of distribution of a seconds season of Firefly would be.Comments (4 comments so far)
Max Stevens...
Posted 02 Feb, 2006 at 11:52 by blue in /Chatter | Permanent link
... you come across people in the strangest places...
While looking for information with regards to Internet Explorer 7.0 I came across a familiar name to many here who read this.
I feel like breaking out into a chours of It's a Small World...
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The History Of Gaming
Posted 02 Feb, 2006 at 08:11 by blue in /Games | Permanent link
For those who have been long time gamers... here is an amusing set of games that take you through the history of gaming.