If McCain Wins, I’m Moving to the Bottle City of Kandor
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Monthly Archives: October 2008
The Secret Saturdays Cryptid Lab
To promote its cryptozoological-influenced cartoon The Secret Saturdays, Cartoon Network has added a Flash-based Cryptid Lab that lets the user design their very own cryptozoological creature buy selecting from various parts and then modifying/re-coloring them.
It’s no Spore Creature Creator, but considering it’s all done in Flash there’s a surprising level of customization possible.
Cross Stitched “Home Is Where the Controller Is”
Domestic Scientist made an awesome looking cross stitch,
Path of A Hero – Blog Your WoW Toon
Path of a Hero is a website that will let you blog your favorite toon’s activities in World of Warcraft and provide a nice visual representation of your progress over time.
The idea here is you regularly take a screenshot of your character at the login screen and then upload that along with some text describing your character’s latest adventures, etc. This gets turned into a blog post that includes the image, the text and an import of various data from the WoW Armory.
After you’ve got a few dozen entries there’s a nice slider feature so you can visually watch the transformation of your character’s look, etc., as it levels up and gets better gear, etc.
The one thing I noticed missing is any sort of syndication feature (but then, it’d be nice if the Armory itself had some sort of syndication feature).
Personally, I’d like to see a WordPress plugin that would let me accomplish this locally (specifically the WoW Amory data import)
Stream YouTube, Netflix, etc. to Xbox 360 with PlayOn
Microsoft’s upcoming update to the XBOX 360 will add the capability to stream from Netflix to the device, but I was intrigued when I read some positive reviews of Media Mall’s PlayOn which promises to let the user stream not only Netflix, but also YouTube, Hulu, ESPN and CBS and, eventually, others.
Installing the software on my server was a breeze and my Xbox saw the PlayOn server with no problem. Netflix streaming worked very well…I had no problems watching numerous videos in my Instant queue on the Xbox. You do still have to go the computer to add things to the Instant queue (I’m assuming the XBOX update will have some way of searching within Netflix).
YouTube also worked great. I was able to scroll through recent videos, top rated videos, my favorites and my playlists.
I had problems with Hulu. The PlayOn software wasn’t properly buffering the Hulu streams, so shows there drop after about 10 seconds. The PlayOn software is still in beta, so I’m assuming that’s some sort of bug that will be fixed by the time they get to release.
CBS and ESPN worked fine, but neither had any content worth watching (CBS, for example, didn’t actually have any shows but rather just short clips which is weird since some of the same content is available on Hulu.)
The thing I don’t understand is why Microsoft just doesn’t provide this sort of functionality to watch YouTube and other video sites natively within the Xbox instead of forcing users to go pay for a separate piece of software that then has to be installed on a Windows PC, etc.
Acer Aspire One
My wife’s been looking for a laptop for awhile, but instead opted to go the netbook route for the extreme portable convenience. I ordered her an Acer Aspire One that arrived yesterday, and just finished configuring everything over lunch.
So far, I’ve been extremely impressed with the Aspire. It’s amazing just how much they packed in this tiny package. The screen is obviously small but cranking up font sizes takes care of that pretty quickly.
The keyboard is very good given the size. I touch type around 120 wpm and substandard keyboards really annoy me, but I found myself typing at more-than-acceptable speeds after about an hour of using it. I hated the trackpad/buttons on the Aspire (the button placement on either side of the trackpad is especially onerous), but then I usually pack a trackball with my laptop anyway because I can’t stand trackpads in general.
The real test, though, was 3D gaming. Downloaded the World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade clients, went through interminable patch updates, and finally logged in. The result was respectable. I didn’t install Fraps, but I’d guess it was in the 22-24 frames per second. Wouldn’t want to go raiding with that, but easily passable for doing solo questing, logging in trick or treat on an hourly basis, or doing auctions.
And considering just how small and cheap this was, simply amazing.
I’m also getting a netbook, but am opting for the MSI Wind which while reviews say it has a couple other issue, does not have what I consider the major defect of not only the Acer Aspire One, but pretty much the majority of laptops produced these days — those goddamned glossy screens that add nothing but glare to the computing experience.
The MSI Wind has a matte screen and usually comes in fairly close to the Acer in reviews, so I’m opting out of the extra glare.
Nerd Bling – Life Counter Rings
OMG, I so need several of these Life Counter Rings. That just takes CCGs to the next level.
A Keen Theory of Value
For someone who rants and raves about the evils of giving things away for free on the Internet, it is amazing how much of his stuff Andrew Keen allows to be made available for free on the Internet. In his latest rant, Keen argues that the economic downturn is going to kill YouTube, Open Source, blogs, and probably a kitten or two,
Of course not. One of the very few positive consequences of the current financial miasma will be a sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor. Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals. The altruistic ideal of giving away one’s labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and VCs queued up to fund revenue-less “businesses” like Twitter. But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley’s wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project.
. . .
When, in 50 years time, the definitive histories of the Web 2.0 epoch are written, historians will look back at the open-source mania between 2000 and 2008 with a mixture of incredulity and amusement. How could tens of thousands of people have donated their knowledge to Wikipedia or the blogosphere for free? What was it about the Internet that made so many of us irrational about our economic value? It was a “mania,” these mid-21st-century historians will explain, like the Dutch Tulip mania of the 1630s or South Sea Bubble of 1720 — a mania that ended with the great crash of October 2008.
Hmmm . . . when I look at my server logs to see where folk are coming from to read stuff I’ve written, I’m surprised how often someone has referenced an article I wrote on Wikipedia. In some cases I spent a lot of time tracking down odd facts and verifying information for specific articles. And, to a large extent I write because I enjoy it.
But it is also true that I receive far more in value from the free things on the Internet than I give back. For example, I know how to do some elementary scripting, but how software that I run on my server (such as WordPress or Social Web CMS) is actually written or maintained is largely unfathomable to me. The value to me of these free software packages is literally thousands of dollars.
The free availability of those tools effectively subsidizes my own free production. If I had to spend $500 every time I wanted to install another instance of WordPress, I’d probably have fewer domains and less time to write (since I’d probably have to put in more work to afford those additional costs).
The same thing goes for the YouTubes and Wikipedia’s. As long as there are millions of people all contributing either on these sites or on their own blogs, or turning out open source code, or recording hilarious/poignant videos, it is not altruism so much as mutual benefit that motivates people to contribute.
Keen admits he doesn’t have a firm grasp on economics and that shows from his apparent belief that unless actual money is changing hands when knowledge is shared that someone is getting ripped off. Thank goodness the Internet is largely populated by creative types who do not share Keen’s clueleness and realize that they are frequently receiving in kind far more value from free content on the Internet that any one person could possibly contribute.
Obama Derangement Syndrome
Before I get into my main point, let me make it clear that I think both major party candidates for President this year are about as qualified for the office as my cat. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have repeatedly demonstrated they are more than willing to sell out personal liberty as long as it will get them the votes needed to take office. Since the current administration decided to push the pedal to the floor in accelerating the consolidation of power in the executive, the future under either of these yahoos (or the respective morons each chose as a running mate) is dismal at best.
Okay, with that out of the way, it is hilarious to watch “conservatives” like Andrew McCarthy bemoan the possibility of a “socialist” Barack Obama bringing on “the death of freedom”. It’s not that I disagree with his analysis on Obama, it is that I don’t see how this is a substantive change from the current administration which McCarthy has routinely sold his principles to defend.
On the socialism angle, fine Obama’s a socialist. In a country where the “conservative” president pushes a ridiculous $700+ billion bailout deal, however, who in the major party duopoly isn’t? The difference is at best one of a small degree in details rather than any bedrock principle. McCain and Obama may disagree on specifics, but both stand steadfastly for the continued expansion of federal intervention in the economy. In fact, as was clearly the case with Bush, I’d argue that McCain is far more dangerous on that point because Republicans will fall in almost lockstep behind the creeping “conservative” socialism with little protest (imagine if this were Al Gore’s second term and he was proposing such massive intervention in the market? Then the Republican slugs might actually grow spines).
All the “death of freedom” nonsense against Obama is hard to understand from Republicans who have stood by and excused the use of torture on terror suspects; the ridiculous security theater at airports and elsewhere that instills fear and violates our rights while doing nothing to protect us from terrorist attack; the wholesale re-creation of insidious domestic intelligence operations. And these folks then presume to lecture us that freedom may not survive and Obama administration unscathed?
Frankly it is hard to understand the vehemence with which Democrats and Republicans support their particular presidential candidate or oppose the other party’s selection. Both fundamentally stand for using the power of their office to punish and persecute those whom they deem unworthy — the only point they ever seem to disagree is in the detail of who precisely the victims will be.
Ah, yes, American elections — nothing but year ’round special pleading.
Grey Matter Theme for WordPress
Most WordPress themes seem to rely on a few core design principles: a) there’s no such thing as too many columns — 4 is good but 5 or 6 are even better; b) you just can’t have too many distracting visual elements — nobody visits a site for content, what they really want to see are giant icons; c) garish backgrounds and header graphics help drive traffic — if visitors can easily read the content the first time, they might never come back.
So as much as I like it, it is clear that Nikolaj Masnikov’s nicely understated Grey Matter Theme is probably not the theme you’re looking for,
What the hell? A simple, straightforward color scheme? Where are the garish buttons? Why would anyone want to put the title of their blog up at top when a high contrast picture of clowns or perhaps daffodils would be so much easier on the eyes?
Man, what was that guy thinking?
