General mind-dump of Jonas Wæver
In a way, it’s kinda sad. I’m sure this version is crammed full of new security features and performance optimizations, and yet the only feature that stands out to me is that when you drag something from a page (such as an image or a block of text), a shadow of it follows your cursor.
Speaks to the importance of interface, doesn’t it?
Or possibly it just tells you how easy I am to impress.
I’m gone for a week, and I manage to get 12 spam comments in the mean time. I think my CAPTCHA is broken, time to finally switch to ReCAPTCHA. Of course… I need to get my ‘net connection back first.
Our connection went mental on Wednesday - it didn’t die, it just sort of lost its mind. About half the pings we send time out, and when we do manage to connect to a site, it goes incredibly slowly. Most of the time I can’t connect to MSN, and when I do, about half my messages are never delivered or received. Worst of all, I can’t get my mail. I had 41 mails waiting for me when I last tried to check on Friday night, and surely I will be drowned in mail when I finally regain my connection.
The main problem is that my ISP, YouSee, has pretty terrible service. It’s not for a lack of trying, but their internal communication could use some work. It seems their support department and their technician department only communicate through some sort of helpdesk system, and I can’t contact the tech department directly. So I need to talk to the supporters, who then tell the technicians they should call me, and the technicians will then call “between 8 am and 4 pm”.
So, uh, I should just stay at home waiting for them to call…? The first appointment we made with them was for them to call us Monday between 8 and 10, but they never did. Then we called their supporters, who reminded the techs (via the helpdesk) to call on my cell phone, which they did 4 hours later. In the middle of my second viewing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. At this point my dad was home, but they didn’t think to try the home number when nobody answered my cell phone.
So, uh, if TDC Cable wanted more customers, maybe they should’ve improved their customer support workflow a little instead of just changing their name to YouSee?
After a week without ‘net at home, I’m seriously starting to go a little crazy. Not a lot, I’m just constantly slightly frustrated, restless, and uneasy. It’s a mix of boredom and the complete absense of my social network. Sure it’s not a disaster for TNM if I take a week or so off from the project, but it’s a week I could spend improving the mod and fixing bugs which is instead being spent playing GTA4 when I don’t really want to play at all.
Three things I’d take to a deserted island:
The indomitable Master_Kale has presently released his FTP program, WormholeFTP. While aimed largely at the IT-impaired, I was lucky enough to secure an early release candidate for testing and have determined that the program is also supremely suited for the lazy (such as myself). Since obtaining it, I have entirely stopped using FireFTP for uploading files to my blog - and because of our implementation of SVN into The Nameless Mod’s organizational structure, I’ve almost completely stopped using FireFTP in general - because WHFTP is simply far more convenient: It just sits there on my desktop, waiting for me to drop files into it at my leisure, and presenting me a direct link in return.
The program is very simple, which is indeed its strength as well as its main feature: You simply drag a file over to the little window and drop it into the wormhole graphic, then a progress bar appears, and once the file is on your server, the progress bar is replaced by a download link. Click the link to open the file in a browser or right-click it to copy it to your clipboard. At my request, it is possible to define the URL in the program’s settings seperately from the upload directory setting, such that the program can give you a functional URL even if you’re using an esoteric subdomain. It really is a splendidly handy program, and at $8 it presents very good value for the price.
I need a new headset, and it has to be USB because I’m tired of messing with my sound card.
Anybody got any good recommendations?
I both hate and love PC/console arguments. There are so many interesting similarities and differences to discuss, both in terms of game library, interface, hardware platform, business and pricing models, marketing efforts, development conditions, monopolies, etc. You’ll almost always find something interesting to take away from such discussions, but at the same time it takes immense maturity to discuss the dichotomy without falling back to stereotypes and simple case study.
Lately I’ve been trying to keep up with the “The PC as a gaming platform is dying!” “No the PC as a gaming platform is doing fine!” debate, and frankly it’s not very easy. A lot of the participants in this debate have something at stake (it’s difficult to trust the pro-PC gaming arguments entirely when they come from Valve and Epic who have massive market shares to lose if the PC dies as a gaming platform) and I have significant problems digging down to the facts at the heart of the debate.
I was just forwarded this news article about a headset that can read the player’s brain activity and translate it into commands for a game:
Brain control headset for gamers
Immediately a score of game ideas swam into my mind, and telekinesis was just the most obvious of them. How about a fantasy game where the power of your spells is influenced by how much brain activity you’re experiencing? Or where your spells might fail if you get too excited? A game where you get a time-limited berzerk if you get very agitated or an adrenaline bonus if you get excited during combat. Your aim with the sniper rifle steadying if you meditate a little. Your nemesis taunting you with how shocked you are to see him again after you thought he was dead!
Last weekend, the right shift key on my keyboard broke. This raised my awareness of two things: First of all, I use the right shift key a lot. I use both shift keys a lot, in fact. Within 10 minutes I had gone half crazy trying to rewire some neurons in my brain to use the left shift key instead, and I dug out an old b0rked keyboard from the cellar.
Secondly, it appears my keyboard demands have become somewhat crazy. I think it started with my previous, now broken, keyboard which was a silver/white electron-luminescent keyboard from Zitech. This keyboard was perfect. I was almost in love with it. When I tried to describe my feelings for that keyboard to Shane, he suggested I marry it, and the idea appealed to me. But alas, it was already broken by then, and I had to find a new keyboard. This turned out surprisingly hard. Here is my list of demands for a keyboard:
A keyboard that fulfills even the first two criteria is really difficult to find because almost all laptop-style keyboards also have a laptop-style layout where the Ins/Home/Del console and the keypad are in the same console as the alphanumericals, if there is a keypad at all. I hate that! I did manage to find a board that fulfilled all of these demands, excluding of course the last one. The aluminum Enermax Aurora keyboard pictured to the right. I’m already very happy with it, it feels almost exactly like my old Zitech board. And although it has no SD-card reader, it has two built-in USB slots, which is pretty damn handy. I just might marry this one instead, Shane.
Comments are down because OTP has changed hosts. Something got budged up with the SQL database, and it’s probably a small wonder the rest of this blog is intact. Larry is working on it 
All good, comments are up again.
I love my computer. It’s fast, it’s powerful, it has two delicious TFT monitors, it can run any game smoothly on the highest settings (until Crysis comes out), and I know exactly where everything is - almost. But there’s one thing about it that just irks me to no end. During start-up, the BIOS checks for IDE harddrives, and since my disk is connected with SATA, it finds none. In a pathetic attempt to communicate this, it prints prominently:
Detect drives done. No any drives found.
I’m used to programmers who are horrible at spelling. I’m not sure how it works out, but it’s no rare occurrence to find a horribly spelled and syntaxed comment in otherwise flawless code. They type functions like this up perfectly: else if (((AnimSequence == 'Pickup') && bAnimFinished) || ((AnimSequence != 'Pickup') && !IsFiring())), yet they can’t spell “canister”.
But seriously. When you write something that I have to look at every time I turn on my computer… please get somebody who can spell to check your work afterwards.
I’ve been running Linux and Windows as a dual-boot setup on my laptop since I bought it used a few weeks ago. The laptop is mainly for taking notes during classes, but being a geek, I am exceedingly happy with all the power it’s packing; just knowing it thinks faster than I do is necessary to my enjoyment of working on it.
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