The Empty

WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
“What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

True Lie Detection

For Christmas I got am embarrassment of video game riches for presents.  I had purchased a PS3 a few months ago, but until Christmas I only had one game.  Okay, technically we had two, but one of them was “Sarah’s.”  In any case, pre-Christmas, all games were Lego games (Batman and Star Wars) so I’m happy to have some non-lego games to report on.  However, the theme of the subjects seems to hold too…

First, the games I’ve spent the most time playing:

Buzz Quiz TV - The name pretty much sums up what it is, a multi-player trivia quiz show for your PS3 and a very welcome addition to our house.  There are numerous versions of this game for the PS2 and PSP with different question slants and this is the series first entrance onto the PS3.  It comes with 4 wireless “buzz” controllers for the players.  Its a nice little interface that works well with the game.  A common complaint online, and one that I have as well, is that for a game called “Buzz” you hardly ever use the big red buzzer at the top, most of the time you’re using the multi-color answer buttons.  We’re enjoying it a lot, especially when you have more than 2 people playing.  At least two of the multi-player rounds work better when you have more than one competitor to pick on.  If you don’t have any friends with you, you can also play ’sofa vs sofa’ online.  The game is also easily expanded through additional categories purchased via the Playstation Store or via user-content quizzes created at MyBuzzQuiz.com.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe - One day the people at Midway’s video game division said “Keith Garner does not own enough of our stuff, how can we make a game JUST FOR HIM.  Let’s see, he’s a big DC comics dork and he’s always been fond of Mortal Kombat, while not always being that good at it.  Hey!  Let’s make him a video game peanut butter cup.”  Honestly, I like this game too much so I don’t know if I can honestly say if its a good game or not.  The gameplay has gone back to more classic Mortal Kombat mostly 2D fighting compared to the last two PS2 games, which is good for me as a player.  (You can still move in a 3rd dimension usefully, but its not a huge requirement.)  The characters from both universes look really good (thanks, Unreal engine!) and the DC characters special moves are pretty good and in-line with what they should be.  For example, Captain Marvel does have the awesome Shazam lightening attack that’s been popular post-Kingdom Come.  It just makes me giddy as a school girl to hear things like “Kitana vs. Green Lantern…FIGHT!”  This game sets the fan-boy in me to 11.  Even if you don’t like DC comics, its a pretty good fighter.  You can also go online to get embarrassed with how bad you are.

The games I’ve played a bit, but not enough:

Fallout 3 - I’ve always been a big fan of the Fallout series, despite not completing the first two.  Come to think of it, I was a fan of Wastland way back in the day, which was done by a lot of the same people.  I think I’ll be firing up Parallels just to play those first two again and actually try to finish them.  I’ve played about an hour of Fallout 3, which means I’ve just barely scratched the surface.  To be fair, I played the first hour twice as I was working to understand the UI and combat the first time.  Its not that its bad, I’m just rusty with these games.  In fact, I find the interface really nice now that I’ve gotten the hang of it.  I do find myself being a little too goody-too-shoes, but that’s my nature, I guess.  In any case, the feel, the voice acting, and the concepts so far are stellar.  I just need to find time to lock the kids away and play it.  Looks like lots of late nights coming up.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - I downloaded the demo on the PS3 and liked it enough to request it as a potential Christmas gift.  So far, I’ve only played the first mission.  You get to play a Jedi in full control of his powers in a 3D environment, how can you go wrong?  So far, I’m liking it.  Again, I’m still getting the hang of the interface and powers, but I’ve done the first mission (or 2 if you consider the prologue) and am looking forward to playing more.  My only complaint with this game is load time.  Despite loading 2.5 gig of stuff onto the hard drive, it seems to take forever to leave the game environment and go to the options screens and then to move around in the options screens.  I’m not sure if that’s a bug in the current version of the game, or if its just being hampered by the PS3’s “measly” 256MB of RAM.  In either case, that’s been an annoyance.  As long as you stay in the game, its a non-issue though.  I just had too much Evan messing with the remote, jumping on my lap, etc when last I played so I really noticed it then.

I should also mention I got the Sony PS3 Wireless Keypad.  For the PS3’s browser, Sony Home, or any game that has some text input/chat, this keypad isn’t too bad.  It can snap onto a sixaxis controller or you can use it separately, as it has its own battery.  It reminded me of typing on a Hiptop/Sidekick so I was right into it.  Not sure if its a good value at $50, but its been a good accessory to have.

Tips on how to get aorund the stripping of embedded stuff in wordpress-mu

Yet another plugin for doing podcasting. Seems to be under active dev unlike some others.

How to tell the dpkg/apt system about something you#039;ve hand installed. Could be useful in the future.

I’ve been meaning to do some blog posts, but I haven’t had the motivation.  It doesn’t help that I’ve also been distracted by all the video games I got the past week.  (More on those in a future post.)  In any case, I got some motivation in the case of being tagged by a meme.  Evo called me out and I guess I should respond.  By the way, I loved Evo’s #3 as I share a similar outlook/philosophy/happenstances.

This meme requires me to share seven facts about myself.  The hard part about this will be coming up with 7 facts that will be interesting to people not me.

1. I too often accept things the way they are. This description will be mostly slanted in looking at myself as a pogrammer, but this is where I can identify it best.  On a day to day basis this acceptance often makes me feel stifiled in creativity due to my lack of skill in identifying problems.  I can come up with great and creative solutions, but actually finding the interesting problems to solve if difficult because I accept that’s how things are, and don’t find shortcuts/solutions/whatever to make them better.  Eric Raymond described that as the “itch” that drives programmers to create…  As a programmer, I’m not itchy enough.
2. Beer snob: I iz one. To anyone who’s been reading this blog or watching my twitter feed this is not news.  Part of the blame lies with Jon Roma who introduced me to the good stuff first when I started drinking.  I never went down the good old fashion macrobrew route.  I’ve learned to tolerate the macrobrews so I can drink beer at ball games or social events when something better isn’t available, but its rough going.  I’m no Charlie the Beer Guy, but I’m working on being on his level.  I’m just too lazy right now to take up my own brewing.  Maybe once the kids are older.  In any case, give me a Duvel, something from Stone, Goose Island, etc.  Don’t offer me anything named Bud, Miller, etc.
   Bonus fact 2.5:  I didn’t start drinking until I was in my junior year of college at age 20.  Given that when most people think of me they think of beer, this is probably a surprising fact.
3. At heart, I’m a Geek’s geek and I’ve come to accept it. A few months ago, I finally accepted If there is a stereotype for being a geek, I probably fit it.  Again, not news for those who have been playing along at home for awhile.  There are exceptions, but all in all, I’m a geek.  I full embrace the geekiness and let it wash over me.  There are much worse ways to view yourself so it works for me.  (Notable exception: I have never played any desktop roleplaying type games such as D&D.  Not sure why that never happened, but it didn’t.)
4. Needles piercing my skin send me into panic attacks. Its weird, I don’t mind blood, I don’t mind seeing myself cut, and I don’t mind looking at needles, but knowing one is about to pierce my skin turns me into a sweaty little girl.  It doesn’t matter if its the dentist, a lab tech taking blood, or whatever, I get tense and sweaty.  When having blood drawn I’ve learned to mitigate the effects by getting them to take it while I’m lying down, but that’s about it.  If I’m sitting up, I’ll pass out.  Its probably an anticipating thing, but I’m okay when I get cut when doing yard work or making dinner or something like that, but know I’m about to get a needle stuck in just puts me over.  I’m not sure what the deal is.  I guess the good news is that this is yet another sign that I’ll never get addicted to heroin.
5. I hate small talk. I just can’t stand it.  It could be that I’m just not very good at it and that’s why I don’t like it, but the whole idle chit chat thing does nothing for me.  I’m good and I look forward to actually connecting with people and having deeper discussions, but if I have nothing in common with someone, its very painful for me to try to force the small talk.  I am faced with the slight challenge of how do you know if you have something in common with someone without having the small talk, but there are ways around that and I get by okay so I don’t worry too much about it.
6. I love presenting and educating if I know the material and/or have a story to tell with it.  One of the great things about my old job and my still-employeer was that on a more than monthly basis I was giving presentations to our members on subject matter I had down cold.  Once I know the “story” I want to tell to educate others I love putting the presentations together, guiding discussions around the material, and generally helping people see the light.  Nothing made me feel better than to see the look of realization and/or understanding on someone’s face.  Or the look of horror once someone realized that they’d have to change their ways to make something work for them, but that’s a different story…  Either way, it means the message got across.  Someone would say this somewhat contradicts #3, as geeks aren’t well known for being showman, but I’ve always had a bit of an extroverted streak in me.  I guess I’m only extroverted in the right circumstances…
7. I watch way too much TV and my reading and video game playing suffer due to it.  Part of it is the young kids and the job that just leave me energyless at the end of the day, some of it is I just really like good TV.  Heck, I probably like shitty TV too, but I try to keep it on the good side with things Battlestar Galactica, CSI, and Lost.  But I do have the mindless popcorn like Eureka and How I Met Your Mother.  I’m not sure where to put Heroes on the scale these days, but I think its falling in mindless popcorn.  I still love to read, but I manage to only really do it on the commuter train or just before bed as long as Sarah is okay with me leaving the light on.  The video games, those have really suffered, but I’m trying to make up for it now.

Bonus fact so that I cannot be accused of ignoring my wife: I was asking Sarah for some ideas for this post, and she gave me “I like to uphold family traditions.“  I don’t really see that in my indentity when I think about myself, but looking at past actions and what I like to do with the kids, I can agree with this.  From eating under the tree at Field’s Macy’s at Christmas time to vacations in the same spots I went as a kid, this certainly appears to be true.

Okay, so next up I have to call out seven people:

• Jason Lindquist, because I know Linky will have something good
• Dan Woolley, if only because he’s been neglicting Tzetze Fly while in start up mode
• Saul Pwanson, again due to blog neglect
• Byron Faber, because I’m really curious as to what he’ll come up with
• Jon Roma, because he was named in this post
• Heather Norton, cuz she’s a meme magnet
• Mark Notarus, if only because this will annoy him

To quote Evo who tagged me: “I subscribe to all of your blogs, so I’ll know if you didn’t do it…”

Oh yeah, the rules part:  Do not talk about meme club…er.. wait

1. Link your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

This is THE perfect tool to manage perfeclty your WP 2.3, 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 tags

Show the recent comments in your WordPress sidebar. You can limit the number of comments, set the maximum length of excerpts, filter out pingbacks and/or trackbacks. You can also enable or disable the avatars, resize and reposition them. Besides above, it supports WordPress Widget. And now, you can turn to the newer or older comments when you clicked on the paging buttons.

hpijs the OS X port. I#039;m using this to print from my laptop to the HP Photosmart 7960 attached to the lone windows box in the house. Awe-some.

Looks like an awesome resource to help optimizing ubuntu on the PS3. Already gave me tips for getting the controller to act as a mouse pointer

The TV I had went into service mode with this magic code. Not sure if I need the rest of the hint...

A couple of weeks ago I was in Arizona for work.  As I often do when I find myself in Phoenix, I ended up on a podcast.  This time around it was Evo@11, hosted by noted new media douchbag, Evo Terra.  (Hey, that’s his twitter description.)  Along with Evo every episode are his wife Shiela and sound engineer and Strongbow drinker Debbie Walker.  They record at the Gangplank Studios, which is a really cool place I’d spend way too much time in if it was pre-marriage and pre-kids and I lived in AZ.

The episode I was on clocks in at about 25 minutes and I didn’t make too much of an ass of myself.  A lot of random talk, and a heck of a good time.

After the podcast we went to Sheila and Evo’s place to continue the conversation and drink a bit more.  Awesome people, awesome hospitality.  Whenever I’m in AZ again, I’ll definately try to visit them.  Hopefully they do the same when they are out this way.

photo credit: CC Chapman

I know what I#039;m setting up tonight...

It took a bit more work than I expected, but, through trial and error and some careful scrutiny of Xcode build logs, I eventually puzzled out the appropriate combination of compiler/linker flags and environment variables. And since I don#039;t think anyone else should have to rediscover what I learned, I wrote a little shell script that automates the process.

Gruber is having a similar problem to myself. quot;My email #039;system#039;, such that it is, is pretty simple. For each of my main accounts I use just two mailboxes: an inbox and an archive. The inbox is for new mail, and the archive is where all messages go when I’m done with them. I can’t say I follow Inbox Zero, Ringo, but I’m trying. I’m tryin’ real hard to be a shepherd.quot;

Calaboration makes it easy to set up iCal to synchronize with your Google Calendar calendars. It automatically finds all of your calendars and allows you to add any of them to iCal with the press of a button.

Under the windows cmd shell, there’s a command start that “does the right thing”. Give it a file, it’ll launch the right app and open it. Give it a directory, you get an explorer window there.

This doesn’t exist under cygwin’s shells, which is a PITA.

Here’s a zsh function to do the same thing. Put it in your .zshrc and call open FILE or open DIR.

[+]View Code ZSHopen() { if (( ${#argv} == 0 )); then targetDir="." else targetDir=$1 fi /cygdrive/c/windows/explorer.exe /e,`cygpath -w "$targetDir"` }

We hosted the family for thanksgiving, which was fun.

We did the turkey in a fryer (saf-t-fryer from lowes, it’s a little pricy but it had a lot of safety features). We learned a few things (”if your fryer has a thermal cutoff, do not run the flame too hot, or it will over-protectively shut down the flame”). It’s got a very low center of gravity, and doesn’t want to tip, which was part of why i bought this one. After dinner, while the oil was cooling, we got a first hand example of how well designed it is– a possum crawled up the side, over the top, was hanging on one edge, and lapping at the used oil. Didn’t tip. Wish we had a picture of it.

The turkey came out great. I’ll have to get the name of the butcher from Leah, they were great and very reasonably priced (about $2.70/lb). We used this marinade and it came out GREAT. Turkey was super tender, the skin was awesome, and the meat was all very tasty.

All in all, definitely a repeat, I think.