The Grover's Prayer

This came to me in Physics today.

My bother, that art question seven
H.A.L. now is my bane.
My boredom come.
My work isn’t done,
On the earth, nor my paper on heaven.

Give us this May our daily dread.
And forgive us on our finals
As we forgive those who pass instead of us.
And lead us not into education
But deliverer us from Civ section L.

For ours is the boredom,
And the fear of Brower,
And the glory of weekends,
For ever and ever. Amen.

I.P. [needs] A Lot [of work]

Ok, I've never really been a fan of the current Draconian system of Intellectual Property, but this list is disgusting. Among my favoites were:

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s estate charges academic authors $50 for each sentence of the “I Have a Dream” speech that they reprint.

RENTAMARK.COM makes money by claiming ownership of 10,000 phrases, including “chutzpah,” “casual Fridays,” “.com,” “fraud investigation,” and “big breasts.”

Link

This essay by Michael Crichton is worth reading too.

Amp-U-Loss

Lynn and I had fun coming up with this tonight.

We believe that it speaks for itself.

Click to enlarge.
Here is the original.

Felis Useless

Cats are wonderful...


... especially with honey mustard.

Mouse This

Multiple Monitors... $300
Multiple Keyboards... $60
5.1 Surround Sound... $80
Multiple Wireless Mice... $70
Multiple Cursors (that can be used simultaneously)... Priceless.
There are some things that are open source...
for everything else... there's Mastercard/Visa/Paypal.



Some friends and I were conversing about the ability to have multiple mice control multiple cursors, and I thought that would be fun to say the least. I looked around online and discovered CPNMouse.

Here is the documentation and software to get it working (hosted here).
Here is the official installation guide.

Reasons to try it:

• It's cool.
• You can use it to play multiplayer games (on one machine).
  
• It might have some useful purpose.
• It increases your nerd coefficient.
• You can say that you did it.

The Downside:

• Dual displays are not supported.
  

Perhaps one day this will become a mainstream feature. There are a few bugs now, but given time they will be worked out, and hopefully this will get integrated into things like Photoshop. I really like the idea of being able to resize objects using two corners at the same time.

Happy Pi Day
(note that this was posted at 1:59)

Digg it!

Live is Google Not

I offer my sincere congratulations to Microsoft for destroying Google with Windows Live. I remain unsure as to whether or not this is a good thing (e.g. would launch a massive battle of search engine awesomeness vs. sucking my soul through my keyboard).

But seriously. Holy crap…

They have two incredibly sweet innovations:

• Local – pwns Google in terms of resolution and usability. It allows for multiple search results per page (much better for figuring out where things are in relation to each other).
• Image – zooming thumbnails when you mouse over and unlimited results per page. You can easily scale the size of the images as well. That and it opens the desired image in a “frame” so you can keep browsing the thumbs on the left side.

The interface is incredibly dynamic (shows which results you’re looking at… e.g. 4-7 out of x in real time). However, all this comes at a price (aside from your soul). That cost is the user interface. It is slow, clunky, and generally harder to read than Google (it’s an aesthetic thing).
Thus far, I will say that I’m not especially keen on the Search and News functions. However, I’m willing to have a little faith.

Link

Feeding Randomness

In case you didn't know, this blog has an RSS feed for your reading pleasure Two variations are currently being offered:

• XML Atom - quick and simple - Link
  
• Feedburner - offers handy features like adding it directly to your personalized Google homepage and other we based RSS readers. Link
  

You should give RSS a try, it makes life "simpler" by aggregating your favorite websites in one simple interface, such as RSS Owl.

Jack Thompson & Left Behind

Jack Thompson – person/thing - A Florida lawyer, on a vicious and seemingly endless crusade against the video games. He claims to be doing so in the name of Christianity, the religion of Love, but his tactics are full of hatred and engender nothing less in the gaming community. See also Religion of Peace, Muhammad Cartoon Riots for more irony.

The Brain of Chad
March 5, 2006 – 7:54 pm

Jack Thompson had a Modest Proposal (a reference to a piece of satire by Johnathan Swift about solving the problems of overcrowding with cannibalism) for the video game industry. He gave the story of a father‘s rampage after his son is killed by a gamer in rather gruesome detail. From killing the CEO of the video game company and peeing in her brain, to rampaging through Circuit City and an arcade, Osaki Kim (the father) leaves behind a trail of blood and irony.

Thompson also announced that he would donate $20,000 to charity if the game was produced. You can download this "Thompsonsoft" masterpiece here. I laughed all the way through it.

As if that wasn’t ironic enough…



Left Behind Games has announced the creation of a Real Time Strategy game based on the bestselling books (63 million copies in 20 languages or something like that).Here’s the official description:

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is set in the future when the faithful have been gathered up and ascended to Heaven during the Rapture. In the chaos that follows, the Antichrist has taken the reigns of power at the United Nations and is gathering the countries of the world under his banner. But a small resistance, the Tribulation Forces, have formed to oppose Satan's legions.

According to IGN, it will also feature the most realistic rendering of NYC ever. Apparently the developer, more than 500 city blocks were scanned in for this game.

Check out the trailer. Low. High.

Five Free Addicting Games

For the last few months I have been straying away from mainline video games (with the exception of Halo 2 and Call of Duty). I have become quite taken with freeware entertainment. These are some of my favorites.

Splash Back – At first glance this Flash based game appears to be a reasonably simple game, however, Splash Back is a master of disguise and unleashes hours of addictive game play. This is a game primarily based on strategy and resource management. You learn to live for the chain reactions that clear the level.
Link. Download.

Rumble Box – This is a fighting game with an interesting twist. The three dimensional environment changes throughout the game as the bodies of your slain foes pile up. This somewhat gruesome sounding feature is essential to completing the goal of the game: armed only with an awesome physics engine and two fists, you must escape the box (fortunately they’re only made up of cubes and spheres).
Link. Download.

Battle of Endor – This is my favorite Star Wars fighter simulator. It was conceived as a retro style arcade game, and fulfils that goal wonderfully. With swarms of TIE fighters and a trio of Star Destroyers to annihilate, this game is amazingly entertaining. This is simply a must for any Star Wars fan.
Link. Download.

Plasma Pong – If you have any appreciation for retro gaming or fluid dynamics, or just like lots of pretty colors… check this out. I find it to be the most enjoyable variation of pong ever.
Link. Download.

Halo Zero – This is the “prequel” to the Halo series. It involves side-scrolling, Covenant killing fun. Halo Zero is worth grabbing not just because it involves Master Chief, but because it is entirely too amusing to play Halo in two dimensions.
Link. Download.

IGN Sucks

O’re the course of the past few weeks, a couple of IGN's Top 10 lists have made the front page of Digg:

• Top 10 Worst Video Game Controllers Link


• Top 10 Video Game Weapons Link
  

My gaming sensibilities have been grossly offended by both these lists. It is no so much what is mentioned, but what ISN’T.

The Worst Controllers version had two distinct problems. First, the Duke Xbox controller was number two on the list. Yes, it is huge, but that is an advantage in nearly any situation. Whether you’re using it as a flail or simply meleeing your Halo-mates it is clear that size matters. That and this is just more comfortable for those of us with opposable thumbs.

What is missing is the original NES controller. Don’t get me wrong, I love the NES, it’s just the complete lack of ergonomics that makes me hate the controller. The single most effective engine in limiting my play time came bundled with the controller: massive hand cramps.

For the latter article, I offer my list as a rebuttal

10. Mario Kart - Blue Shell

Hunts down and kils the leader of the pack and any that drive in the way.


9. Red Faction - Rail Gun

It can see through walls and kill anything that breathes. All this with none of the Tripping-On-Acid style of the FarSight in Perfect Dark.

8. Metriod - Samus' Cannon

Charge. Aim. Kill.


7. Super Smash Bros- Donkey Kong Hammer

The hammer knocks foes flying like no other. With this you're nearly invincible... nearly.


6. Halo 2 - Energy Sword

Slices and dices through hordes of Covenent, innocent bystanders, etc. Lock. Lunge. Kill. Repeat.


5. Unreal Tournament - Redeemer

Single most powerful weapon in any game. Ever. It has two fire modes: 1) straight shot, 2) fly by wire for up close goodness.


4. Legend of Zelda - Master Sword

Only the Hero of Time can weild it. Perfect for the day to day destruction of evil.


3. Halo 2 - Rocket Launcher

Best rocket launcher ever. Two lock-on rockets-of-death can be fired without reloading.


2. Doom - BFG

The name says it all. Don't let The Rock's acting fool you, this gun is awesome.


1. Halo - Pistol

The single most versitile and powerful weapon. You just don't need anything else.

Tracing News

In the beginning… there was Slashdot and it was good. Good enough anyway. It was News for Nerds… Stuff That Matters, but the articles were few and far between. It was nearly impossible to discern fascinating from fruitless unless you go by the number of comments, and that was merely an indication of the article’s controversy.

It took me a few years, but I added BoingBoing to my puny repertoire of daily news sources. I would continue to gradually extend my daily news intake until it looks likes this.

Now that I’m reading 20+ RSS feeds per day, it is interesting to observe the dissemination of information. This is particularly fascinating phenomenon that news flows up and down. There are three distinct varieties of news: tech news, news, and everything else. This last category is intentionally ambiguous so that it may continue to prove my point regardless of counterexamples. However, it is the aforementioned dissemination of information that I find particularly fascinating. I took some time and investigated a wee bit.

I naturally opted to use an article outlining the stupidity of Americans. This article explains how "Americans know more about The Simpsons TV show than the US Constitution's First Amendment." I chose this article for two reasons: 1) I find it depressingly hilarious 2) it has appeared on several news sites that I read.

I have attempted to compile a flow chart of the logical path of the article across the internet (e.g. the original AP article came before the sites that had the article), but there are glaring discrepancies in the times. This PowerPoint has links to each article.


Click for enlarged & detailed version.

And while I'm on the subject of the Simpsons... This video is extremely cool.

Kick Off

This is a horrible thing, but it made me laugh.