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Archive of entries posted on January 2009

Twitter annoyances

Posted by  on 28 January 2009, 4:12 pm

Generally, I really enjoy using Twitter.  I’m not exactly sure why that is, but all in all I like it.  I think it mostly has to do with exposing me to a subset of people that I don’t get in my IRC and IM windows.  However, there are some trends in use that piss me off…

  1. Thanking people for following you. Stop it, right now, everyone.  Just freaking stop it.  If over 1% of your tweets are thanking people for following you, I will smack you when next I see you.  Maybe I’m bucking the etiquette, but this annoys me more than anything else.
  2. Feeling that you need to follow the people that follow you. No, you don’t.  Its a broadcast medium, and while it can be used for chat, it doesn’t mean you have to.  The closer your following:follower ratio is to 1:1 the less I think you actually have to say and thought you put into Twitter.  If you’re reading the whole world, how to you have time to create your own thoughts?
  3. Changing your avatar more often then you change underwear. You’re not that pretty nor witty, knock it off.
  4. Tweeting only that you have a new blog post. Stop it! I already have an RSS reader, kthx.

That’s my top four.  I’m sure I’m guilty of some from time to time, but damn it, stop it! I try to.  And I’m sure I’ll come up with more, maybe I’ll make this a series.

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No, I haven’t started doing commercials

Posted by  on 23 January 2009, 2:30 pm

But I am always up for a game of strip specifications.

Thanks to David Harris for pointing out my doppelganger on twitter.

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Recent readings

Posted by  on 19 January 2009, 11:31 am

13 Things That Don't Make Sense 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks



My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
Great read, worth reading for anyone who likes to get their science geek. Gets as deep as it needs to into what it covers, but not deeper. Light fun science reading


Princeps' Fury: Book Five of the Codex Alera Princeps’ Fury: Book Five of the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher



My review


rating: 5 of 5 stars
My favorite of the books so far. Sarah argues that it doesn’t advance the story far enough for her, but the characters are well fleshed out including Tavi growing into his own. The bad part is now I have to wait a month for the next book.


Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud



My review


rating: 5 of 5 stars
A great breakdown and examination of how comics work and their place among other works of art. It gave me a much deeper appreciation for the language of comics that I had subconsciously learned.


View all my reviews.

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IRC: yes, people still use it

Posted by  on 18 January 2009, 9:29 pm

So, I’ve been having a very geeky IRC-filled Sunday.  It started with my morning RSS reading where I saw Daring Fireball point out the port of Colloquy that appeared in the iTunes App store.  And to answer DF: Yes, I remember IRC, I use it everyday.  I could go into this whole things about how I’m still tight with people from college who are all over the place, but I think that goes without saying, its the whole damn point of the internet, DURH.

As with any iPhone app not made by Apple, when you leave it, it will shut down and that won’t be much good until the notification API is up and around, and even then, it’d need IRC servers to support doing the notification and keeping some sort of connection/client information.  That’s right out as I don’t see any IRC servers really wanting to take on that additional tasks.  Reading the Colloquy FAQ, it suggested that one use an IRC bouncer/proxy.

On and off I always have considered making a middle wear irc server to persist connections and so I could use multiple clients.  However, I’ve never been motivated enough to really do something about it.  In general, gnu screen and ircII/irssi have filled my needs.  With the mobile Colloquy, I’ll want to be able to keep a persistent connections coming in and out of the app.  So I get the happy circumstance of where I go “I’d like something like this” and the Internet provides and saves me a bunch of time and gives me a working solution.  (The downside is a lot of cool coding I could have done, but probably never have gotten around to.)

After doing some quick web searching, I’ve decided to give ZNC a go as that middleware layer.  It seems to do everything I want, including the ability to have multiple irc clients hook into the instances its running for me.  It also works with any standard IRC client, which is a huge plus.  I didn’t have to retrain myself at all.  It doesn’t matter if I’m using irssi from Linux, Colloquy from my MacBook or iPhone, or xChat from wherever, its all the same irc instance with the same messages AT the same time.  Each client hooks into ZNC which has already hooked into the servers and channels that I frequent.  I can hook into ZNC over ssl from any standard IRC client and it just works.  I can also see writing a module for ZNC that will take advantage of the iPhone notification API should it ever arrive.

About 6 hours in, and I’m loving it.  IRC session ubiquity and I’m happy.  I can pop it up on my phone and IRC on the go, or just use a local client on my mac instead of sshing back home and using irssi.  I’ll probably still use irssi 99% of the time, but having options and being able to jump on from my phone will help.  IRC, how like crack you are and how I can’t quit you.  I did run into one problem with irssi and it not being able to do multiple connections to what it thinks is the same host, but I found a way around it after reading this.

Also, in rereading this post before I put it out on the web, I realize it doesn’t take much to amuse me these days.

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MORTAL KOMBAT!!! and, uh, some other games

Posted by  on 2 January 2009, 11:18 am

batmanFor Christmas I got am embarrassment of video game riches for presents.  I had purchased a PS3 a few months ago, but until Christmas I only had one game.  Okay, technically we had two, but one of them was “Sarah’s.”  In any case, pre-Christmas, all games were Lego games (Batman and Star Wars) so I’m happy to have some non-lego games to report on.  However, the theme of the subjects seems to hold too…

First, the games I’ve spent the most time playing:

Buzz Quiz TV – The name pretty much sums up what it is, a multi-player trivia quiz show for your PS3 and a very welcome addition to our house.  There are numerous versions of this game for the PS2 and PSP with different question slants and this is the series first entrance onto the PS3.  It comes with 4 wireless “buzz” controllers for the players.  Its a nice little interface that works well with the game.  A common complaint online, and one that I have as well, is that for a game called “Buzz” you hardly ever use the big red buzzer at the top, most of the time you’re using the multi-color answer buttons.  We’re enjoying it a lot, especially when you have more than 2 people playing.  At least two of the multi-player rounds work better when you have more than one competitor to pick on.  If you don’t have any friends with you, you can also play ‘sofa vs sofa’ online.  The game is also easily expanded through additional categories purchased via the Playstation Store or via user-content quizzes created at MyBuzzQuiz.com.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe – One day the people at Midway’s video game division said “Keith Garner does not own enough of our stuff, how can we make a game JUST FOR HIM.  Let’s see, he’s a big DC comics dork and he’s always been fond of Mortal Kombat, while not always being that good at it.  Hey!  Let’s make him a video game peanut butter cup.”  Honestly, I like this game too much so I don’t know if I can honestly say if its a good game or not.  The gameplay has gone back to more classic Mortal Kombat mostly 2D fighting compared to the last two PS2 games, which is good for me as a player.  (You can still move in a 3rd dimension usefully, but its not a huge requirement.)  The characters from both universes look really good (thanks, Unreal engine!) and the DC characters special moves are pretty good and in-line with what they should be.  For example, Captain Marvel does have the awesome Shazam lightening attack that’s been popular post-Kingdom Come.  It just makes me giddy as a school girl to hear things like “Kitana vs. Green Lantern…FIGHT!”  This game sets the fan-boy in me to 11.  Even if you don’t like DC comics, its a pretty good fighter.  You can also go online to get embarrassed with how bad you are.

The games I’ve played a bit, but not enough:

Fallout 3 – I’ve always been a big fan of the Fallout series, despite not completing the first two.  Come to think of it, I was a fan of Wastland way back in the day, which was done by a lot of the same people.  I think I’ll be firing up Parallels just to play those first two again and actually try to finish them.  I’ve played about an hour of Fallout 3, which means I’ve just barely scratched the surface.  To be fair, I played the first hour twice as I was working to understand the UI and combat the first time.  Its not that its bad, I’m just rusty with these games.  In fact, I find the interface really nice now that I’ve gotten the hang of it.  I do find myself being a little too goody-too-shoes, but that’s my nature, I guess.  In any case, the feel, the voice acting, and the concepts so far are stellar.  I just need to find time to lock the kids away and play it.  Looks like lots of late nights coming up.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – I downloaded the demo on the PS3 and liked it enough to request it as a potential Christmas gift.  So far, I’ve only played the first mission.  You get to play a Jedi in full control of his powers in a 3D environment, how can you go wrong?  So far, I’m liking it.  Again, I’m still getting the hang of the interface and powers, but I’ve done the first mission (or 2 if you consider the prologue) and am looking forward to playing more.  My only complaint with this game is load time.  Despite loading 2.5 gig of stuff onto the hard drive, it seems to take forever to leave the game environment and go to the options screens and then to move around in the options screens.  I’m not sure if that’s a bug in the current version of the game, or if its just being hampered by the PS3′s “measly” 256MB of RAM.  In either case, that’s been an annoyance.  As long as you stay in the game, its a non-issue though.  I just had too much Evan messing with the remote, jumping on my lap, etc when last I played so I really noticed it then.

I should also mention I got the Sony PS3 Wireless Keypad.  For the PS3′s browser, Sony Home, or any game that has some text input/chat, this keypad isn’t too bad.  It can snap onto a sixaxis controller or you can use it separately, as it has its own battery.  It reminded me of typing on a Hiptop/Sidekick so I was right into it.  Not sure if its a good value at $50, but its been a good accessory to have.

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