2010 Sep 27, 3:15This is awesome and similar to something I got a cube for. Wikipedia runs its videos through a service that sets up torrents for arbitrary URLs. So awesome! Now if only this were built into the user
agent rather than requiring hardcoding the sites to use it...
technical p2p wikipedia network networking torrent web 2009 Nov 23, 12:38Update to SVG Web: "SVG Web is a JavaScript library which provides SVG support on many browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Using the library plus native SVG support you can
instantly target close to 100% of the existing installed web base."
svg development web browser ie firefox safari javascript technical 2009 Sep 18, 5:47Photos of the NYC garbage cubes
humor art trash nyc new-york photo 2009 Apr 7, 11:58
This past week I finished Anathem and despite the intimidating physical size of the book (difficult to take and read on the bus) I became very engrossed and was able to finish it in several orders of
magnitude less time than
what I spent on the Baroque
Cycle. Whereas reading the Baroque Cycle you can imagine Neal Stephenson sifting through giant economic tomes (or at least that's where my mind went whenever the characters began to explain
macro-economics to one another), in Anathem you can see Neal Stephenson staying up late
pouring over philosophy of mathematics. When not
exploring philosophy, Anathem has an appropriate amount of humor, love interests, nuclear bombs, etc. as you might hope from reading Snow Crash or Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed Anathem.
On the topic of made up words: I get made up words for made up things, but there's already a name for cell-phone in English: its "cell-phone". The narrator notes that the book has been translated
into English so I guess I'll blame the fictional translator. Anyway, I wasn't bothered by the made up words nearly as much as some folk. Its a good thing I'm long
out of college because I can easily imagine confusing the names of actual concepts and people with those from the book, like Hemn space for Hamming distance. Towards the beginning, the description
of slines and the post-post-apocalyptic setting reminded me briefly of Idiocracy.
Recently, I've been reading everything of Charles Stross that I can, including about a month ago, The Jennifer Morgue from the surprisingly awesome amalgamation genre of spy thriller and Lovecraft
horror. Its the second in a series set in a universe in which magic exists as a form of mathematics and follows Bob Howard programmer/hacker, cube dweller, and begrudging spy who works for a
government agency tasked to suppress this knowledge and protect the world from its use. For a taste, try a short story from the series that's freely available on Tor's website, Down on the Farm.
Coincidentally, both Anathem and the Bob Howard series take an interest in the world of Platonic ideals. In the case of Anathem (without spoiling anything) the universe of Platonic ideals, under a
different name of course, is debated by the characters to be either just a concept or an actual separate universe and later becomes the underpinning of major events in the book. In the Bob Howard
series, magic is applied mathematics that through particular proofs or computations awakens/disturbs/provokes unnamed horrors in the universe of Platonic ideals to produce some desired effect in
Bob's universe.
atrocity archives neal stephenson jennifer morgue plato bob howard anathem 2008 Nov 20, 11:30KITH + Portal! "We're not sure how deep into the goof juice the Kids in the Hall were when troupe funnyman Scott Thompson started sulking and playing Portal in the back of the tour bus, but something
got into Kids during this sad little gaming session. Yes, the comedic stylings of Valve writer Erik Wolpaw are most amusing, as is the struggle of watching Thompson attempt to do anything more than
move a cube - uncrouch already! - but something tells me there's something magical in those cups. Thanks for the tip, Sascha23!"
portal video humor valve kith scott-thompson 2008 Sep 8, 6:51Neil prints out brain cross sections from an MRI and pastes them onto a set of wooden cubes forming a model of his brain. "Last month I took a left-right MRI scan, reconstructed it, and rerendered
top-bottom and front-back scans... Another method to visualize a complex 3D object is to build a model. The dimensions of the MRI data cuboid are almost exactly 3x4x5. Accordingly, I obtained 60
one-inch cubes ... arranged them appropriately, varnished the 94 outside faces, printed nine carefully selected cross-sections and their mirror images, sliced the prints into 266 squares and glued
them to the correct internal faces."
art design brain toy model wood 2008 May 12, 4:05
Sarah and I have finished playing through the games "Paper Mario", "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door", and "Super Paper Mario" last week (including the various Pits of 100 Trials). We played
them all on the Wii, because even though Super Paper Mario was the only one released explicitly for that platform, Wii maintains compatibility with Game Cube games such as Thousand-Year Door and
Paper Mario although originally released for the Nintendo 64 is now available as a pay for download game on the Wii's Virtual Console. So, yay for Nintendo!
I think my favorite of the three is Thousand-Year Door mostly because of the RPG attack system. In Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario when you come into contact with an enemy you go into an RPG
style attack system where you take turns selecting actions. In Super Paper Mario you still have hit points and such, but you don't go into a turn based RPG style attack system, rather you do the
regular Mario jumping on bad guys thing (or hitting them with a mallet etc...). Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario are very similar in terms of game play but Thousand-Year Door looks very pretty
and has made improvements to how your party-mates are handled in battle (they have HP and can fall as you would expect) and there's an audience that cheers you on during your battles.
Even if the gameplay sucked the humor throughout the series might be tempting enough. Mario's clothing and mustache are mocked throughout and standard RPG expectations are subverted. I hate to
describe any of these moments for fear of ruining anything but, for instance, an optional and very difficult enemy who may only be killed after hours of work only results in one experience point,
or a very intimidating enemy who you imagine you'll have to fight actually challenges you to a quiz.
Despite how I personally rank them, all the games are great and I'd recommend any of them.
mario videogame paper mario nontechnical 2007 Nov 28, 5:07Vishu, my ex-office-mate, has left Washington and Microsoft for California and Facebook. Vishu and I shared an office for a while and I really enjoyed it. We were able to distract one another from,
and help each other with work. We'd often bounce ideas off of one another, work related or otherwise. For one such idea I recently received a Microsoft patent cube, a small marble cube inscribed with
my and my invention's name. There are some photos of
other people's patent cubes on flickr. Vishu would have
received one for this idea too since we developed the idea and wrote the document about it together, but they wait a long time to send you the cube and he was gone a few weeks before they sent it
(don't worry, he got the credit and other rewards though).
A week or two after I got my cube Vishu was visiting the Microsoft campus just before moving his family down with him to California. A bunch of us joined him for lunch that day and it sounds like
he's enjoying his new job already. Have fun Vishu!
microsoft facebook vishu cube patent nontechnical 2007 Nov 27, 4:19Cool life size weighted companion cube plush toys.
humor portal weighted-companion-cube hl2 valve toy purchase via:boingboing 2007 Oct 22, 4:47
I purchased the
Orange Box off of Steam a bit ago and like
others before me who have
discussed elsewhere, I already owned two of the five games that come from the Orange Box. However, the combined price of
HL2E2 and Portal, the two games I actually wanted was supposedly equivalent to the price of the Orange Box bundle. Incidentally, if anyone would like HL2 or HL2E1 I can
gift them to you.
HL2E2 was excellent of course but the big surprise for me was Portal. (Mild spoilers follow) It has a sort of zen simplicity: there are a few simple game-play mechanics, a handful of textures and
objects, and a deceptively simple story all used well and tied together to produce an entertaining and polished game. It seems a bit short but its probably better to end with the gamer demanding
more. The humor and the sort of
play within a play aspect of the game is what really sold me though. It has the funniest
ending theme I've heard (also
blogged
by the creator). The voices of the automated turrets are so adorable I would feel compelled to hug them if they weren't always trying to kill me. Additionally the
weighted companion cube seems like an experiment in understanding gamers' attachment to NPCs. In this case the NPC is a box
and yet I still felt awful incinerating it. The whole time I was vaguely reminded of
Solitary the reality show that sticks contestants alone in small rooms
forcing them to endure various tests all the while being watched by a humorous computer with a female voice. Someone should sue...
RPS has articles on Portal including
a Portal review, a page
suggesting Portal is a tale of
lesbianism, and
others.
hl2e2 game hl2 solitary valve portal nontechnical 2007 Oct 17, 11:47A weighted companion cube you can make out of paper!
game games humor portal blog article 2007 Oct 17, 11:45Background images based on the game Portal featuring the weighted companion cube.
portal game desktop background images 2005 Mar 27, 4:48Nintendo forces players to buy game cube, 4 game boys, house, whores, food, etc.
comic penny-arcade nintendo humor
My previous window office was ripped from me when our team moved buildings but now I've got another. The
photo is poor because I didn't get the lighting correct and it depicts the office before I've moved all my crap into it. I have a lovely view of our parking lot and freeway which Jane spun as an
'urban view'. At any rate I'm not complaining: I like knowing what its like outside and that there is an outside. The day after I found out about my office, I also got two new patent cubes. I didn't have any pictures last time so I took some now
and blacked out their text for fear of laywers.
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