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Showing posts from December, 2004

Favorites of 2004

This is my year end wrap up of my favorites things of 2004. The things weren't necessarily new in 2004, they didn't even have to be new to me in 2004. This is just the stuff that had the most resonance with me this year. Music I don't think I've ever blogged about my musical tastes before. I know I've gone on about how much I like my iPod but never anything on music in general. This isn't because music isn't an important part of my life, but rather because I find writing about it so hard. Anyway, here goes, my first music review. I've been a Neil Young fan since the mid 70s. I don't like everything this eclectic artist produces but when he produces something good I generally think it's pretty phenomenal. Neil's album Greendale is just that. Greendale isn't a typical collection of random songs, instead the songs tell the intertwined stories of the Green family and the small town they live in. While that may sound like stan

Where are all the dead animals?

With the death toll of the Tsunami now expected to reach 100,000 this article from Reuters raises an interesting question. Why were not more animals caught up in this event? According to Sri Lankan wildlife officials they can't find any dead animals. Perhaps they are just being overlooked given all the dead humans around. I doubt they have a 'sixth sense' as the article mentions but they certainly pay attention to their surroundings more and have a more active fight or flight mechanism.

Half-Life 2 review

I've been playing the game Half-Life 2 over the past week and it is as good or better than I expected. The mechanics are standard first-person shooter but rather than playing some assassin or commando you play Gordon Freeman a physicist turned freedom fighter. The game features a violent story line strewn with engaging puzzles to solve all rendered with state of the art graphics and sound. My home system isn't cutting edge so I'm not getting the best from the game but even so the it's great. What has impressed me the most about the graphics is the real quality of the lighting effects. When you move into sun light from a room with artificial light the hues change, things get a richer tone. It's a very immersive effect. The quality of the faces has also improved greatly. They still have a ways to go to be truly realistic but Valve has made great strides in their overall quality. As with the original game, this is just as much about solving puzzles as it is

The bear of my memory

When I was a kid my parents had a vacation house in North Conway New Hampshire. Every weekend in the winter my parents would load up the station wagon and take us kids skiing. Because I was the youngest (this was before seat belts or car seats) I often had to sit in the way back with the luggage. The trip took a little over three hours so I was always happy when it was almost over. My signal that we were nearing the end was a gas stations we drove past in Conway that had a small yellow bear sign out front. I looked forward to seeing the bear on all our trips as it meant we had almost reached our ski house. Many years later when I discovered the music of the Grateful Dead and the culture of the Dead Heads I was struck my the similarity between the Grateful Dead's dancing bear symbols and the little bear sign I remembered seeing as kid. When most of my Dead Head friends chose the more traditional skulls and skeleton symbols for their Dead garb I instead gravitated to the

Tsunami

I awoke this morning to read the death toll from the weekend Tsunami in the south Pacific had reached 22,000. That's a lot of people; more than I can really wrap my brain around. It's like a giant wave hit Fenway Park and took half the people. I grew up by the ocean and have a lot of respect for and fascination with the dangers it holds. Luckily however I have nothing in my experience on a scale that approaches this tragedy. If you watch Discovery Channel you have to realize we on the east coast of the US are not immune to this sort of event. Granted, the poor people living in the the low-lying areas of south east Asia do seem to be particularity susceptible to water level issues but even so a similar surge of water would kill a lot of U.S. citizens too. It's with that haunting thought 'it could happen here too' that I read this short account of some U.S. Honeymooners who survived the Tsunami on Phi Phi island off the coast of Thailand. I hope we hear more o

No one wants a skinny Santa

Ever wonder what Santa does with the reindeer that don't make the sled team? Reindeer recipes

Jellied Moose Noses

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While researching Jellied Moose Noses I found this loop. I don't know which is funnier.

Castanea being cooked with flame

People have been circulating lists of obfuscated carol titles around the holidays for as long as I can recall. I don't know how this started but I always enjoy deciphering them. Here are a few lists I found on the web. 1. Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief 2. Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds. 3. Nocturnal time span of unbroken quietness. 4. An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestrial sphere. 5. Embellish the interior passageways. 6. Exalted heavenly beings to whom harkened. 7. Twelve o'clock on a clement night witnessed its arrival. 8. The Christmas preceding all others. 9. Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem. 10. Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders. 11. Omnipotent supreme being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males. 12. Tranquillity upon the terre

Beer Drinkers Against the Mistreatment of Beer

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I'm probably falling into their trap, but here goes. While reading some sports headlines on Yahoo I noticed this prominent add for Beer Drinkers Against the Mistreatment of Beer. While I'm all for supporting beer its a pretty strange add for a major web portal like Yahoo. To make things even odder, when you follow the link all your get it a banner with a 'Coming Soon' notice. My guess is it will be a Miller add campaign targeting Anheuser Busch or something like that. Who else but a major company could afford such a weird add. Update The Legal Information page on the site indicates the company behind this is Unibev LTD. From what I can tell, Unibev is the maker of Killians. They were once a subsidiary of Coors but they appear to have been divested.

The Man Without a Past

I stumbled across the Finnish film Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past) on cable this week. It's a very nice film and unlike anything your going to see from an American director. Set on the working waterfront of Helsinki, it tells the story of a man with amnesia who builds a new life with the help of fellow poor and down trodden. What really differentiated and made the film for me wasn't the story however, it was the Finnish personalities and lifestyles. This movie looks like it could have been set 50 years ago but it's contemporary Finland. It's a fascinating look at a place I know very little about. I highly recommend it.

Ski Foils

I never plan to use a Ski Foil but they are pretty cool to watch . I've had enough hard wipeouts while doing simple water skiing to be in total awe of these crazy folk.

Worlds Highest Bridge

The worlds highest bridge Le Viaduc de Millau was inaugurated today. Conceived by British architect Norman Foster, the slender white viaduct in the picturesque Tarn Valley will provide a new motorway link between Paris and the Spanish border, easing congestion in the Rhone valley during the busy summer months. I would hate to be stuck in a traffic jam in the middle of that thing. Yikes. This short film shows some workers raising one of the suspension towers. It gives a good view of the scale of the bridge.

Search and Destroy v 0.3

I've made some progress over the last few weeks getting Search and Destroy 's game mechanics working. Lots of the basic move and exploration commands are now functioning well. Unfortunately the computer player's AI still needs work so it's not available to play against. Currently you can create all the unit types. Units that carry other units can be loaded and unloaded. Combat resolution is functioning well as is damage repair. Probably the biggest feature of recent days has been the addition of Unit Paths. A Unit Path is a pre programmed destinations for units that enter or are created in a city. Unit Paths can apply for ground units, sea units, air units or any combination of those types. A Unit Paths must start in a city but can end in any reachable hex. Unit Paths are a great feature for managing the automatic movement of your resources. Unit Paths can be created from the menu or by shift-dragging from a city.

Rattlesnakes, endangered worm and other stuff

I just read a report of a Massachusetts man being bitten by a Timber Rattlesnake. While out jogging a couple of years ago I found a dead and squashed rattler on the side of the road. Most people I've told that to have been pretty skeptical. Maybe now more people will believe me. While looking for more information on timber Rattlers I found this comprehensive list of plants and animals offered protection by the state of Massachusetts. I was a bit stunned by the number of invertebrates on the list. I'd never heard of the Sunderland Spring Planarian , the Tidewater Mucket nor the Persius Duskywing .

Programming Fonts

I've pretty much standardized on Lucidia Console as my programming font of choice. But after having read this article on fixed width fonts over on Kuro5hin I may give some others a try. Ironically, this link to Kuro5hin came from the Rusty Spigot .

Hand Gesture

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Indian gesture language for Merry Christmas, and is to be read "Sun shine in the heart a baby boy, Great Mystery, born on this day." While looking for something on a completely different topic I ran across this page of hand gesture signals. Some of the pictures are quaint, others plain silly, but I found it interesting none the less. Of course this got me interested in what documentation I might find on more modern gestures. This page offers quite an interesting take on some familiar gestures.

Non static inner classes

It’s funny how you can know about a language feature for a long while before you really get it. That’s the way I feel about non static inner classes. I’ve generally avoided them until now for a couple of reasons. First, you often see non static inner classes used in Swing code samples in their anonymous form like: setButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { // do something… } }); I’m not a fan of this style of coding for more than the most trivial declarations. I just don’t like how the code reads. Second, there’s some overhead associated with non static inner classes that can be avoided if you make them static so I’ve also avoided them on principle. So this begs the questions, why the change of heart. I was working on some old code I wrote yesterday that was really irking me. The main class in question had a bunch of public methods. Some of the public

Ships in Storms

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I love pictures of ships in storms. While looking for images to use in my game I came across this picture of the Aegis Cruiser U.S.S. Lake Champlain (CG-57) handling some rough seas. via Atlantic Fleet Sales