Grogmaster

Links for 2008-10-02 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Kennedy Pool - Kennedy Pool
This is the most amazingly badly designed website possible. Particular note: instructions on how to use a website, including telling people to "double click" on links.
ニンテンドーＤＳｉ
SHINY! (Also, I hope it has WPA support. DS is only WEP, which doesn't work well on Airport networks.)
Hullabaloo - The Last Frontier
Interesting look into life and government in Alaska.

Links for 2008-09-28 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Questionably acted, technically problematic, and puerile…
But it wouldn't reflect the Internet if it weren't.

Links for 2008-09-26 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

⌘C ⌘V Character
Useful! (Thx, mezzoblue!)

Links for 2008-09-05 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Talking Points Memo | Mystery Solved!
Mystery of the green screen solved. Incompetence prevails.

Links for 2008-08-23 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Rush Plays Rock Band Backstage at Colbert | Comedy Central Insider - The Comedy Blog for Comedy Fans
Heh... Geddy Lee's range isn't what it used to be. Also, Neal Peart looks like Animal at Fozziwig's party.

Links for 2008-08-18 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Feministe » Hair-pulling and braid-weaving
Good analysis in the post and comments about Braid. Caution, spoilarrrs, etc.

Links for 2008-08-04 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Quicksilver Screencast: The Clipboard | The Apple Blog
Nice overview of the Clipboard module for Quicksilver. I'm trying it out to replace the one thing I used Butler for

Photos for 2008-04-06 [Flickr]

nobody@flickr.com (OldMainstream) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:51:32 PDT

Palin Markov

Pete — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:30:00 PDT

Sean is back with more Markov: Sarah Palin

This seemed like an entirely plausible quote:

They cannot be allowed in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us to remind Russia that it's in their country and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say never again will we be taken advantage of.

Word up in the House, &tc.: Another version of “Lukey”

Pete — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:29:00 PDT

Thanks to Lala.com, I found another Great Big Sea cut of “Lukey,” recorded with The Chieftains for their 1998 album Fire in the Kitchen (which is here attributed just to Chieftain Paddy Moloney). It’s appropriately raucous.

And now, a test of the emergency Canadian music <embed> system:

CrossOver Chromium: Chrome (kinda) on a Mac

Pete — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:57:00 PDT

CrossOver Chromium runs the open-source build of Chrome with Wine to make it work (more-or-less) on an Intel Mac. It's very Windows-y, as one would expect (you'll need to use the Control key for keyboard shortcuts, for example) but it gets some amount of the job done. The visual display is a bit rough at items, with weird flashing as things get re-drawn.

But it's enough to write this post, at any rate, though it did crash once. I need to get the autosaving going in this new post editor...

Thx, Scudder!

A Cascandinavian

Pete — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:01:00 PDT

Thx, Dad!

Give, Yo.

Pete — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:36:00 PDT

American Red Cross

Don’t overlook the “Where the Need is Greatest” category. That gives the Red Cross the freedom to use the money to best serve their mission.

Spreading the word: Is Sarah Palin Pro-Choice?

Pete — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:56:00 PDT

Cait made a helpful new website: Is Sarah Palin Pro-Choice? Click for the answer.

Also, fair shot she and McCain to rollback Griswold, too. Hope you like babies! (Or not having sex.)

In which e-commerce confidence is not inspired

Pete — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:35:00 PDT

I’m ordering a replacement charger for my drill because I lost my old one. Here is the exact entirety of the only e-mail I’ve gotten from the company to confirm my order:

EVEN THO IT MAY WORK THE TOOL OR APPLIANCE OR TOY READ THIS FIRST!!
CHECK YOUR ALL USED BATTERIES BEFORE USING THE CHARGER! USE A VOLT METER TO MAKE SURE THAT THE USED BATTERY HAS NO LESS THAN (.6) VOLTS LESS THAN THE STATED VOLTAGE OF THE BATTERY.
EXAMPLE: IF A USED BATTERY THAT SAYS IT IS FOR A 12 VOLT TOOL READS WITH METER 11.6 OR HIGHER IT IS (IN MOST CASES) A GOOD BATTERY GO AHEAD AND CHARGE THE BATTERY.
IF THE USED BATTERY READS WITH A METER 11.5 OR LESS IT IS A BAD BATTERY AND NEEDS TO BE REPLACED!
CHECK YOUR CHARGER WITH A VOLT METER TO MAKE SURE IT IS PUTTING OUT THE CORRECT VOLTAGE!
IF THE CHARGER IS PUTTING OUT A UP TO 2 1/2 VOLTS HIGHER THAN STATED VOLTAGE (RELATIVELY STEADILY) IT IS
(GENERALLY) A GOOD CHARGER AND OK TO USE TO CHARGE YOUR BATTERY.
EXAMPLE: CHARGER STATES 12 VOLTS. WHEN USING THE METER IT READS 14.6 IT IS A GOOD CHARGER.
IF THE NUMBERS ARE MOVING ALL OVER NOT NEAR STEADY AT ALL OR LOWER THAN 11.6 OR HIGHER THAN 14.6 CHARGER MUST BE REPLACED!
YOUR CHARGER IS YOUR MOST DELICATE TOOL! IT MUST NOT BE DROPPED, HIT OR GET A VOLTAGE DROP OR SPIKE!
NEW BATTERIES NEED TO BE CONDITIONED TO GET A GOOD READING BEFORE USING!
TO CONDITION A BATTERY BEFORE FIRST TIME USE CHARGE FOR FOUR DAYS WITH A DAY OF REST BETWEEN EACH CHARGE!
THIS WILL CONDITION YOUR NEW BATTERY FOR LONGER LIFE!
A PLACE LIKE RADIO SHACK WILL TEST YOUR USED BATTERIES FOR YOU FOR FREE!
THERE ARE NO RETURNS FOR ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT.
ALL RETURNS MUST RMA ASSIGNED NUMBERS ON THEM OR THEY ARE NOT ACCEPTED!

Is even a "Dear Mr. Hopkins" too much to ask?

Luckily for them, only two other companies on the Internet appear to sell this product, and my first choice, the official Black and Decker parts website, had a bug that kept me from logging in at all.

Braid is Sweet. So is Chronotron.

Pete — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:29:00 PDT

If you have an Xbox, go play Braid. The gameplay and presentation are near-perfect and, as far as I can tell about a third into it, well-deserving of the megascore.

For more time-bending fun, try out the Flash game Chronotron on Kongregate (it’s free!). You play a robot who can go back in time. This lets your present and past selves interact with each other and the environment, sometimes several times over. It’s much more explicitly puzzle-y than Braid, and less touchy-feely artistic, but its gameplay is brilliant.

OmniFocus Tip: Linking to Gmail

Pete — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:24:00 PDT

Gmail is my alpha and my omega at work. (I didn’t get much done on Monday.) Almost nothing I do is not either prompted by an e-mail thread or significantly informed by one. And, in my attempt to get things done, I try to pour all of those tasks from my inbox into my good friend OmniFocus.

This can present a problem, however, when I’m working through a context and realize I need some of that information from an e-mail in order to complete an action.

Handily enough, Gmail is very clever about creating unique URLs for all of its “pages” by appending URL fragments. When there’s an e-mail conversation I’ll need to refer back to when working on a project or specific action, I just copy the URL from the browser and paste it into an OmniFocus notes field. Example:

https://mail.google.com/a/google.com/#inbox/11bc36975726453b

I used to use a combination of starred conversations and search (inbox is, of course, at zero), but linking directly to the thread works several hundred times better.

The one tiny problem with this technique is that it will open a new Gmail page rather than re-using an existing one, but that’s no more than a few seconds wait. Gmail itself is quite capable of handling two windows open at once with no consistency issues.

Next Vacation: Laptop

Pete — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:54:00 PDT

I resonated a bit reading John Dickerson’s recent Slate piece giving the presidential candidates lifehacking advice for their vacations. The piece touches off from Obama’s recent admission to Tory leader David Cameron that he searches for chunks of time during the day to just think.

Dickerson’s advice is to take the opportunity during vacation time to think, and he zeroes in what the candidates do for their best thinking:

Barack Obama will probably spend some of his vacation writing. It's clear from his autobiography, and from the model answers he gave students when he was a law professor, that he processes ideas by working them out on paper. … McCain would design the opposite regimen for his vacation. He's not a writer; he's a talker. … On his vacation, maybe McCain could schedule off-the-record bus tours with reporters, editorial writers, and experts in various fields.

Having just come back from a short vacation of my own — which was certainly pleasurable but leaves me feeling even more rushed and hectic heading into the week — I wonder if camping in remote Maine was necessarily the best possible vacation.

I’m struck by a bit of a paradox: given that I am in the admittedly extremely lucky position of loving what I do for my job (coding and blogging), my vacation from it took me away from my best thinking. Of course, it also took me away from what I don’t like about my job (see Clichéd List of Knowledge Worker Gripes, Volumes I–III), and for that I’m quite grateful.

I think that for my next vacation, that campground in Maine is still a good idea, but I should bring a sand-proof laptop and copy of Coda.

The Rock-afire Explosion at ShowBiz Pizza Place

Pete — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:10:00 PDT

As with all important things, should should consult the exhaustive Wikipedia article on the subject. Choice quote:

Eventually, the ShowBiz restaurants themselves were converted to Chuck E. Cheese's locations, in a process called "Concept Unification". The company had decided to shift its focus away from animatronics and more towards video games, food, and quality of service.

You can bid to get a song performed by the band. Coming next, Arcade Fire.

Make sure that you watch at least through the rap break.

You’re the birthday, you’re the birthday, you’re the birthday boy or girl.

Important addendum:

There are a few restaurants still using the Showbiz Pizza Place name and animation. All are located outside the United States, and have no connection to the original company. Known locations are in Lebanon; Dubai, UAE; and Kuwait. [via Wikipedia]

It gets better: The ShowBiz Pizza fan site. Exhaustive!

Daft Hands: Stronger

Pete — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:47:00 PDT

Pork and Beans led to Daft Hands and Daft Bodies, and then I found this:

Blogging is easy when you just post YouTubes.

More Pork and Beans: Tay Zonday and Brian Bell

Pete — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:33:00 PDT

Stupid Weezer broke the embed I had of the full video. This one is fun, though:

Quit it Yourself!

Pete — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:56:00 PDT

Updating iTunes is stupid.

Things I’ve Been Up To Recently

Pete — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:06:00 PDT

Quick rundown of the last month or so:

Became a landowner, moved into the new place, learned that our couch is too big and heavy to fit up the stairs to the living room.
Grieved a loved one, survived the church service.
Went on a trip to celebrate my first anniversary, came home without my ring. (That’s not a metaphor. It fell off in the ocean.)
Got Civilization for the DS and tested my battery’s remaining capacity: about two back-to-back games’ worth.
Went to work, most days at least.

Giant Bomb and Ambrosia

Pete — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:57:00 PDT

I got a few points on Giant Bomb for filling in a handful of details about hometown heroes Ambrosia Software. Giant Bomb is pretty cool, but — alas! — my memory does not match my previous obsessive playing and testing of old Mac games.

Look for me on there as OldMainstream.

Markov and Garkov

Pete — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 04:35:00 PDT

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror wrote a good introductory post to Markov chains, with a link to Garkov, a Garfield comic generator that uses them.

I think that the humor in Garkov is probably the same as could be achieved by just putting random captions from other strips together, however. For something truly generated-awesome, see Atwood’s example Paul Graham essay:

You can feel the need to take advantage of increased cheapness, however. You're not all playing a zero-sum game. There's not some fixed number of startups; we fund startups we fund to work on matters of passing importance. But I'm uncomfortably aware that this is part of any illusions about the problem of overeating by stopping eating. I couldn't simply avoid the Internet had become, because the company is the new trend of worrying obsessively about what it meant for someone, usually an outsider, who deliberately stirred up fights in a startup than just start it. You know how the A List is selected. And even that is more work.

I tried running the last 100 Blogger known issues through the online Markov generator. I don’t think there’s quite enough diversity, though, as I recognize a lot of full sentences, but here are some random Blogger problems:

Some users are experiencing problems with the new version of Blogger in draft users are experiencing problems with FTP publishing that may affect image upload do not have "www" at the very bottom in the Blogger edit post form to upload one photo at a time or shrink photos larger.
Some users have been affected by this bug. If a blog or post, regardless of how many total comments the blog reviewed and the iGoogle gadget. Update, 1/28: This has been.
Some users report that they can be moderated. Comment feeds should now show the earliest comments. A temporary workaround is to click on the fix, one quick recommendation would be to clear your browser's cache and cookies and then go to.
Some users may be able to set your blog's language. Readers with Internet Explorer security settings set to a FeedBurner feed. The workaround is to exit Picasa.

Once you’ve had enough fun with Markov chains, move on to the Metropolis algorithm to generate samples based on a distribution that you can’t sample directly.

Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” Video

Pete — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:18:00 PDT

Flashbacks to ROLFcon, yo.

Saturday’s Nearly-Twitters

Pete — Sat, 17 May 2008 11:34:00 PDT

I just Twittered about my current web implementation issues. Since I like to keep the number and frequency of my Twitters low so as not to overly annoy, here are some things I would have Twittered today:

VMware on this laptop is slow enough that I could probably save time just installing / uninstalling Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
WFH is better than WFW because I can read videogame blogs in my downtime instead of e-mail. And I can drink beer.
Hoping that Safari’s textarea resizing makes it to other browsers so that I’m not wasting my time.
Seriously. F IE.

That’s all for now. Unless I think of more.

More Hidden Mozy Cleverness

Pete — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:18:00 PDT

Hot on the heels of Mozy’s SimCity 2000 reference, there’s an easter egg in their EULA.

Enjoyable, yes, but it kinda scares me since I totally clicked through without reading it (as always). Now I am legally bound not to taunt happy fun ball.

(Thx to that Wikipedia article for the EULA note. Thx to Dan for reminding me about happy fun ball.)

MicroPlace on 1UP.com

Pete — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:57:00 PDT

I was surprised and happy to see MicroPlace, eBay’s wholly-owned subsidiary for investing in microcredit, in ads plastered all over 1UP.com. Interesting demographic targeting, but I hope they have success with it.

Microcredit in general is a great idea, but by securitizing it, MicroPlace gives you a whole lot of leverage for your contribution. Your “donation” is not seeing your money for 18–36 months and getting 1.5-3% annual interest. (Though actually that rate is looking not that bad in today’s economy.) Therefore, one can afford to put more money into the system than if it were just a gift, which means the organizations have more to loan out.

Mario Kart Wii Online Info

Pete — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:31:00 PDT

This is important enough to call out in a post. From Eurogamer’s Mario Kart Wii Review:

Multiplayer is Mario Kart's lifeblood, and as you'd expect, the Wii version offers a very solid set of options: two- to four-player split-screen, online racing with up to two players per machine, team racing, battle modes, and the excellent Mario Kart Channel for keeping track of your friends, ghost data, online rankings and Nintendo-created competitions. The Channel goes some way to making up for the Wii's lack of voice chat or proper social features, such as a centralised friends list.

Emphasis mine. Can you add more emphasis? I want more:

online racing with up to two players per machine

Zomg. Zomg zomg zomg.

Be careful. Cait and I draft each other like an unscrupulous speed-skating team.

Assorted Recent Video-Gaming

Pete — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:52:00 PDT

Some notes and recommendations from recent videogaming I’ve been doing:

Rock Band
After Harmonix’s announcement that Rock Band for the Wii would be the lame PS2 version, with no Internerdy downloadable songs, I sprung for a ~~Rock Band machine~~ ~~game system~~ Blu-ray player to get my fix. Though the Xbox 360 is probably a better gaming platform than the PS3 right now, I have more than enough good, unplayed games for my Wii, with more coming. Might as well be able to watch high-def films instead, and Stevey has pretty much convinced me I should try Uncharted.

My PSN username is OldMainstream. I wish I had a fancy badge thing to put on this blog, but not everyone understands the Internet. At least there’s no monthly fee.

And Rock Band is total amazing awesome, but you probably knew that. There are subtle touches that make it killer, such as call-and-response sing-along from the crowd. I can’t wait for a bass, and my neighbors can’t wait for drum pads.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl
The single player Subspace Emissary is weak, unfortunately, due to Smash Brothers’ floaty controls. They’re really frustrating in the platforming parts.

I’m having trouble playing the fighting part locally because Cait won’t stand for all the random shit, and I’m having trouble playing online because of Mozy. (I’m suffering the paranoia of the recently crashed.) I remain optimistic, however, that good gaming will come to me.

Friend code available upon request, but honestly it’s a losing battle. FNintendo.

Desktop Tower Defense
This is a crazy-fun free Flash game. Yes, I’m late to the party, but there’s a new version out so it’s okay. If you haven’t played, give the easy level a try. Build towers, withstand monsters. It has a bit of a SimCity feel — if you’re into that, which you should be — in the “build a bunch of things then sit back and hope it doesn’t go to Hell” kind of way.

I’m playing on Kongregate (thx, 1Up Yours!), where I am OldMainstream, and have been having much fun. So has Cait.

There are some other tower defense games out there, but they’re more complicated, which takes away some of the fun. Leave tips in the comments if you have recommendations.

Grow Island
Grow is an ongoing series of Flash puzzle games, of which Grow Island is the latest. The format of the games is that you add elements to a scene one at a time. If you add them in the right order, they interact and “level up” with fun/cute/clever animations.

Though there are 8! (40,320) different possible orders in Grow Island, you can use hints from the way the pieces interact to guess the correct order in an hour or two.

If you try and like Grow Island, make sure you play the others in the series. I’m particularly fond of Grow RPG, though Grow Cube is also quite awesome. And, since remembering 1 out of 40,320 is pretty hard, they have a good replay value a few months on.

My source for casual games is Jay is Games. Go there and have fun.

Mozy: Reticulating Splines

Pete — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:10:00 PDT

It made me smile to see this videogame reference in Mozy. Anyone else remember where this comes from? I won’t spoil it.

What the “J” Key is For

Pete — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:34:00 PDT

When I confessed to Eric Case at SXSW that I worried that my friends (that’s you!) who read my blog or follow my shared items might not care about the nerdy or videogamey things I’m most into now, he made a good point:

That’s what the “J” key is for.

So a fair chance from now on that I might pick up the blogging pace a little bit. Please skip over as desired. I shall be enjoying this delicious dogfood.

Image credit: paulovalde. Note to Dvorak typists: I am not skilled enough to Photoshop a keyboard for us. But you know what I mean. “C” FTW.