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::: Friday, March 28 ::: |
Score: Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
I got my copy of LoZ:TWW yesterday. I've only played it briefly, but I have to say that my initial reservations about the cell shading were misplaced. Not to say that the initial animation concept wouldn't have been sweet as well, but I can sort of understand why they went with a softer style. With the glut of games using hyper-realism right now, it's a welcome and refreshing change.
On another note, LoZ:OoT Master Quest from the bonus disk is *way* harder than I remember the N64 version being. Supposedly they only changed the dungeons, but it seems like the regeneration rate and the overall ferocity of the baddies has been cranked up as well.
[Originally posted to Dan's comments]
10:01 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Thursday, March 27 ::: |
Mmm: Floetry
I saw their video for Say Yes on BET last night and was immediately captivated. My only hesitation is that I might be more enamored of this particular song than the of artist... I've certainly done that many times in the past. I may have to check out their CD when I pick up meteora.
5:02 PM CST :: tell me a story
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Yep: Flash needs a replacement
I was talking with a colleague the other day about this very subject. We both agreed that had you asked us back in 1990 if computers would still be using hard drives in ten years, we'd have thought you were crazy. Yet here we are nearly a quarter of the way through 2003 and our solid-state savior, flash memory, is getting far outstripped by spinning disk technology which is consistently getting physically smaller and offering ever growing capacity. Not to say that flash isn't getting better, it most certainly is. It just doesn't seem to be advancing nearly fast enough to keep up with the rest of the hardware world.
9:06 AM CST :: tell me a story
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Hmm: Macromedia frees Flash from the browser
Maybe I'm reading too much into this announcement, but bear with me for a moment. The original promise of Java was "write once, run anywhere". This programmer's utopia has never really materialized for a panoply of reasons, but most markedly because Java allowed programmers to include platform-specific hooks to improve runtime performance.
Flash, in case you haven't been paying attention, has evolved from a largely annoying animation language to a burgeoning appdev environment including some pretty sophisticated form and database capabilities. You see where I'm going here? Flash runs anywhere there is a runtime and, as far as I know, is completely platform agnostic.
Taking Flash out of the browser "sandbox" opens up some intriguing possibilities for rapid app prototyping and perhaps even front-end processing for database apps. It will be interesting to see if Macromedia can complete their little end run around Sun and finally deliver a "write once, run anywhere" software ecosystem.
It's entirely possible given my limited Java background that I'm completely off-base. I'd certainly like to hear comments from someone who could fill-in some of the blanks for me.
8:43 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Tuesday, March 25 ::: |
Uh-oh: Who lied to whom?
It appears that some of the decisions leading up to the war were based upon forged documents and, worse yet, bad ones. The article does a good job of exposing the facts, but when it comes down to it I think it's a simple case of people seeing what they wanted to see. When you want something badly enough your blind eye tends to be dominate.
[thanks to Ceej for the link]
11:46 AM CST :: tell me a story
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Sigh: Adam Osborne 1939-2003
My boss at my first computer job had an Osborne 1 that he used to lug to our trade shows. It was really effective at getting techno-phobes to admit that technology had progressed by leaps and bounds and that maybe they should consider computerizing their business. It's sad that Mr. Osborne will be remembered more for the mistake that doomed his company than as the visionary he truly was.
10:12 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Friday, March 21 ::: |
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Hmm: Cisco heads home with Linksys buy
In my mind this merger could go a couple different directions. Cisco could embrace the strengths of Linksys in the consumer market and merely lend its considerable marketing prowess to the SOHO vendor. This would be the optimistic outcome.
On the other hand, Cisco could just as easily end up mishandling Linksys the way Nortel did when they purchased Bay Networks. The products absorbed into Nortel from the Bay merger have far inferior documentation and support compared to their step-siblings. Nortel just couldn't quite grasp why anyone would want to buy an inexpensive, but limited switch instead of a much more capable, but pricey alternative.
Only time will tell. Cisco has demonstrated remarkable agility for their size in the past, here's hoping they don't screw this one up. For all its warts, Linksys is worth having around for the long term.
9:00 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Wednesday, March 19 ::: |
Ugh: The impact of Bush linking 9/11 and Iraq
Please make it stop:
In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens.
It's no wonder half the world thinks we are beneath contempt. Every time I see Jay Walking or Street Smarts I weep for America. I simply can't understand why so many people are under educated when the percentage of college graduates has been rising every year since well before my birth.
Yes, there will always be a percentage of the general population who are not intellectually gifted, that's no surprise and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. What is surprising, at least to me, is that the percentage of sheer purposeful ignorance seems so tragically wide-spread. When did being an empty vessel become so hip and why aren't more people ashamed of it?
[thanks to Wendy for the link]
2:10 PM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Tuesday, March 18 ::: |
Yep: Get behind the M.U.L.E.
"Ask most game designers what their favorite computer game of all time is," says Wright, "and you'll get M.U.L.E. as an answer more often than any other title."
Damn straight. If anyone would port M.U.L.E. to a modern console -- even without a graphical update -- they would have a block-buster on their hands. It is simply the most complete (and addictive) game concept ever conceived.
3:38 PM CST :: tell me a story
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Uhm: Philips Streamium
Maybe I'm thinking too hard, but wouldn't you assume that a stereo which can connect to your WiFi network and stream MP3's wirelessly would have wireless speakers? Well, you'd be wrong in this case. How dumb is that?
[thanks to Gizmodo for the link]
3:32 PM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Monday, March 17 ::: |
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w00t: WTF Comics
My step-brother just started an EverQuest-based web comic. We don't see each other much any more, but it's cool to see he's still polishing his skills. Who knows, someday my signed original of Scorpion from MK might be worth something!
10:50 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Friday, March 14 ::: |
Hmm: A Radical Meta-Methodology of Software Development
"People tolerate stupidity because they think the company has a lot of slack and they like the people involved, or whatever. Don't ever fall into this trap. When the company runs out of slack in nine months, you won't want to remember that you made it all happen by tolerating bad decisions early."
David Zink is my hero.
9:17 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Thursday, March 13 ::: |
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::: Wednesday, March 12 ::: |
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Whatever: Microsoft to abandon struggling Corel
The only reason Microsoft invested in Corel was to make damn sure there was another Office Suite on the market if they ran up against anti-trust sanctions from the DOJ. Now that the DOJ has bid them to go forth and sin no more, they have no need for Corel or WordPerfect Office.
StarOffice and OpenOffice.org on the other hand...
10:38 AM CST :: tell me a story
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Sweet: GTA 1
Rockstar is offering Grand Theft Auto 1 for download. The bandwidth impaired need not apply... the download is a whopping 358MB.
Although I'm sure no one will be downloading this at work to burn onto a cd for home use, any sysadmins out there might want to block that IP as soon as possible. Just, you know, as a precautionary measure.
10:13 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Tuesday, March 11 ::: |
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::: Thursday, March 6 ::: |
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::: Monday, March 3 ::: |
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dinoneil[at]newdream[dot]net
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