July 06, 2008
BillG's Last Day At Microsoft
- feat. Jay-Z, Bono, Napoleon Dynamite, Bill Gates playing Rock Band Guitar Hero (!), and so much more...
[more inside]
July 01, 2008
Ever wondered what your Myers-Briggs "letters" were? This subject just came up today in emails with a friend of mine, turns out we have the same letters.
So at my last job there was one co-worker within R&D who was really into Myers-Briggs personality testing, she had read so much about it she could usually guess people's letters based on their behavior. I was an odd duck for her though and she needed me to take the test to figure it out. The reason for her confusion is cause until me she had never run across an ENFJ. Most of the folks in R&D were INTP's, go figure.
At my current job we actually had to take a personality test and had a workshop centered around learning more about our coworker's personality types and how to improve our communication with each other based on what we learned about each others communication styles from the personality testing. It wasn't Myers-Briggs but it had several common features. I actually found it to be a really good exercise.
So if you're ever wondered about the whole Myers-Briggs thing (choose the Jung typology test), the above link will let you know where you fall. I have a sneaking suspicion there will be a lot of INTP's here too. ; )
June 20, 2008
Spore Creature Creator Available for Free Trial Download Spore has their creature creator up now for a free trial download. It is a biggish download.
Now I haven't touched a game in years but I have to admit, I think I might buy this one when it releases. I'm really geeking out on it.
May 31, 2008
twitter@mars - when is the APS getting a twitter presence? [more inside]
May 25, 2008
May 09, 2008
May 01, 2008
Well, until they fix this, enjoy the wifi - free for everyone willing to pretend they're iPhone, courtesy of Starbucks/AT&T/BarnesEnnoble.
I love learning about the "Clearly stated, Universally accepted, Accessible idea from a Field quite different from your own, that you have Never heard of". So here is Porter's "Five Forces" analysis of business strategy in a competitive marketplace. Now what lead me to this is an article attacking the orthodoxy but either way I found both worth reading. [more inside]
April 24, 2008
Cool software that allows you to visualize gravity. One of Julio's coworkers wrote this great piece of software. Check it out!
April 18, 2008
The Infocom Disk - Andy Baio of Waxy just found the Golden Ticket of geek journalism.
From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in possession of the "Infocom Drive" — a complete backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I've ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. ... For obvious reasons, I can't share the whole Infocom Drive. But I have to share some of the best parts. It's just too good.
So let's start with the most notorious — Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the unreleased sequel to Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
March 29, 2008
Paralles? Win4Lin? Have you used them? Are they easy? Which do you think is better? What if windows is already installed?
Discuss. [more inside]
March 20, 2008
Launchball - Speaking of science+games... the top web award @ SxSWi went to Launchball, and after taking an illicit peek I can see why. Roughly quoting the whole of their acceptance speech, "We designed a game called launch ball where you learn science by launching a ball. And now we've won an award for it. Pretty remarkable, really. Thank you." It's as addictive as Portal or Lemmings or Tower Defense, but with a very well thought out science education component that enriches the whole thing. [more inside]
Be creative in moving a ball around. At the annual Game Developers Conference, it appears the buzz wasn't about the game-world's equivalent to the summer block buster, Gears of War II, instead everyone was a chatter about a neat little game that allows you to draw in objects to try and help you move a ball to a star shape.
I thought it was pretty cool. Check out the demo thats embedded in the news item linked above.
March 17, 2008
"If there's no porn, the tool doesn't work." I mean, really, what more can be said? Actually, it's both geeky-educational and kinda funny. Completely SFW.
March 14, 2008
March 12, 2008
CIA to root out Orc extremism Ah, homeland security, always on the ball. Thanks, open left
February 24, 2008
Interesting article on the Great Firewall of China - wonder if MsC will be able to read this.
February 20, 2008
Obsolete Skills - from Adjusting Rabbit Ear TV Antennae to Zipping Archives Across Multiple Floppies
February 14, 2008
February 08, 2008
Wired magazine turns 15 years old this month (which for some of you is just another reason to realize how damn old you are.) I remember paying the insane (for me, at the time) subscription prices of $40 a year back in high school so I could learn about Push technology. Now they send me a note every few weeks begging me to come back for $10/year.
Anyway, here is a nice reminiscence/review of the first issue as seen through the jaded 2008 reader.
February 07, 2008
So, maybe you certainly wouldn't call yourself a hardcore gamer and you couldn't win an online game of Halo or COD4 to save your life. On the other hand, you know video games and you play video games enough to be better than most complete noobs. Is there a place for you in this crazy world? Maybe you can be a midcore gamer. (Okay, you got me, I just wanted you to watch the youtube video of the person playing what is effectively DJ Hero).
February 05, 2008
Homeland Security, Doing Good by Doing what it does Well - DHS has for almost a year had a program to comb common industrial Open Source software products (the Apaches and the Linuxes and the Firefoxen &c) to detect and repair security flaws. This is perfect for everyone involved -- it has a real effect on security, and highlights why openness is a superior approach to security; it signals to whomever still doubts it that open source software can be industrial strength; and it's a contribution that enthusiasm-driven open-source projects struggle with but that a government agency is superbly equipped to provide. It's also cheap, as far as I can tell ($300k/year). More of this and fewer of the airport anal probes please DHS. [more inside]
January 20, 2008
Well, crap. I made a long nerdy post about the fun you can have now that computers support multi language alphabets. But checking an older machine shows that for many the future is not here yet. Here instead is a link to the Firefox v3.0 beta. [more inside]