Finished Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten this morning. It was a wonderful book; I can’t believe it was her first. I was very skeptical of the whole ‘modern day werewolves’ theme, to be honest, but damned if she didn’t pull it off nicely, telling us a riveting story while giving us glimpses into the whole werewolf mystique and leaving room for many more stories to come (I hope).

Overall she kept a tight leash on things (yes, pun intended) until the very last parts of the story where she got a little careless about leaving bodies behind, so to speak. This is forgivable in that the reader is so caught up in things by then that they’re probably just as happy to not have to pause for the explanation of how a fight scene is cleaned up. Ideally, though, we wouldn’t be left with questions of “What will the police think when they find….” and so forth.

That’s a minor nit, though. The story moved along really nicely; a real page turner. Elena is a believable modern day heroine. She’s got flaws and she has some very dense moments (perhaps a few too many — several times I was shouting the Bitten equivalent of “DON’T GO IN THE BASEMENT!”) but she’s still likable and a very sympathetic character.

I’m looking forward to reading more from Ms. Armstrong.

PodWorks

OH MY GOD! You folks who have an iPod and more than one Mac, you NEED this software. It allows you to copy songs from your iPod onto your Mac, making syncing two copies of iTunes so much easier.

But get ready to spend the big bucks…the developer wants a whopping $8!!

CNN.com - Video game ’sparked hammer murder’

Here we go again. The old “Videogames turn kids into killers” saw. You knew it was coming when Manhunt was published.

And honestly, while I certainly don’t think that this kid went apeshit on his friend because of playing Manhunt, I also don’t see the need for games that are this violent.

I’m not saying the company doesn’t have a legal right to make and sell them. I’m just not seeing the need for this much glorification of violence, personally.

Yes, it was rated for mature audiences but the facts are, at this stage of the game, its still too easy for kids to get ahold of mature-rated games to push things this far. It shouldn’t be that way, but we don’t live in a perfect world.

Building a Minesweeper-type game in JavaScript

This is kind of a neat and fun little project for you geeks out there.

AirPort Express: A bit of ‘geek heaven’, by, well, me!

A bit of shameless self-promotion on my part; CW asked me to do a quick hands-on of the Airport Express, so I did!

Tech giants go for the games

Interesting piece, but in some ways these guys still don’t get it.

“Sharding” is a commonly accepted technology limitation now, he said, but “I’m not so sure consumers are going to be willing to put up with that in the next generation of online games.”

Sojourn’s Cerra agreed that improvements in server and networking technology will change what consumers expect from online games, with larger online worlds and faster responses becoming key. “Things like having a no-sharded world will be real differentiation factors for a successful multiplayer game,” he said.

I’d love to know what they’re basing this ‘wisdom’ on. Among my friends, I can’t recall ever hearing “Gee, if only all the players were on the same server.” In fact, I hear quite the opposite. Some people want to play on a designated RolePlay server, others want to play on a Player-vs-Player server, for instance.

People complain a lot about crowding now. This isn’t just about the network connectivity. If you have an audience of 10,000 users spread over 5 servers, your gameworld only has to support 2000 people; I’m talking content here. You need quests to keep 2000 people happy. You need enough geography for 2000 people to fit on. On the other hand, if all 10,000 of your users are on one server, you need to build 5 times the quests and supply a world that has 5 times as much geography, or else you’re going to be crowding players.

And crowded players are unhappy players.

PC: Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth

Check out the screenshot on the first page and tell me you don’t have any interest in playing this!

And in our ‘awkward sentence of the week’ award category, we get:

Once you have become accustomed to the way the game handles, the gameplay is where the game begins to shine.

CNN.com - Mercury mission set for launch

Check back in 2011 for details!

Xbox: Xbox 2 - Everything we know!

This is an old-ish (June 29th) article from Gamespy, but I’m a bit behind in my email reading.

New York Times hacker Adrian Lamo gets home detention

I remember seeing this guy on TechTV’s The Screensavers. Then, after the warrant was issued, they did a phone interview with him while he was on the lam, so to speak.

Back then the story we heard was different. That Lamo had hacked into the Times, made a few minor changes to prove he was there, and then notified The Times that he’d hacked into their network so they could fix the security flaws. There was no mention of LexisNexis back then.

The story was he’d done the same thing to other companies (such as Yahoo) who had thanked him for his help. He was definitely portrayed as a “White Hat” hacker.

So what’s the true story, I wonder? Let’s do some digging.

In fact, in Sept. 2003 IDG News Service posted:

His surrender followed reports last week that the FBI was investigating Lamo’s alleged unauthorized intrusion into the internal networks of The New York Times Co. in February 2002 (see story). The Times learned of the break-in after Lamo contacted the company through SecurityFocus reporter Kevin Poulsen, according to Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman for the newspaper.

Lamo frequently trespassed on the networks of prominent companies, uncovering security holes and accessing sensitive information. He then informed the companies of his exploits and often worked with them, as a consultant, to close the holes.

‘Homeless Hacker’ Lamo surrenders to feds

and in Feb 2002, Computerworld posted:

Toby Usnik, a Times spokesman, confirmed that the company had been notified of the security breach and has since fixed the holes that allowed Lamo to enter the intranet.

Security holes closed in New York Times intranet after hacker intrusion

But in the recent IDG News Service story, we read:

Lamo confessed to the Times break-in during an interview with Securityfocus.com, a computer security news Web site, in February 2002. That confession prompted an internal investigation by the Times that uncovered evidence of Lamo’s activities, and resulted in a case being opened by the FBI.

But no mention of the fact that Lamo had initiated the contact via SecurityFocus.

History is indeed written by the victors, eh?

ESPN football takes a new approach to beat EA’s Madden

I didn’t realize ESPN NFL 2K5 released at a $20 price point. I might pick it up.

Carm’s kitten is sick and we’ve been struggling twice a day to give her liquid antibiotics. How it works is, I essentially tackle and maul the poor animal. Once she’s subdued (aside from yowls of outrage and frustration) Carm pries open her mouth, sticks a syringe inside and shoots the antibiotics in there. Then I let the cat go and she scowls and storms around, shaking her head in displeasure at the taste of the stuff. And it finally dawned on me why this works…

Cats can’t spit!!!!

A baby would just spit the foul tasting stuff out, right? But think about what a cat (or a dog…I also realized that dogs can’t spit either) does when they bite into something they don’t like. They open their mouth wide and point it at the ground and hope gravity does the job. I’ve seen mean people throw a ‘treat’ to a dog that’s something vile. The poor dog can’t get the item out of its mouth at all easily!

So dogs and cats can’t spit. WHY? People can spit. Camels can spit. Spitting cobras can spit.

Can chickens spit? Can cows? What about chimps?

There must be an evolutionary reason why some animals can spit and others can’t. But for the life of me, aside from the spitting cobra example, I can’t figure out what it is…

I’ll no doubt spend my entire weekend contemplating this!

LinuxDevCenter.com: Stratagus: Open Source Strategy Games

This is about the open source game once known at FreeCraft before Blizzard’s legal department went after them.

So suddenly I’m on a crazy Backgammon kick, and I’ve been playing at DailyGammon.

But I haven’t played in years, so I assumed I was going to suck. I dislike sucking at things that I do so went out looking for a book on backgammon and more or less at random picked Backgammon for Winners by Bill Robertie. And it turned out to be a decent choice.

It’s a fairly thin book, which I liked. I didn’t want to spend 2 weeks reading about the history of the game (at least not right now). Robertie jumps right into the meat of the subject, first giving the rules and a bit of broad strategy as well as best opening moves for every possible first roll of the dice. But the bulk of the book is taken up with three different sample games, and Robertie analyzes each move of each game, giving lots of explanation for why something was a strong or poor move. While he suggests you set up a board and move the pieces yourself, there were enough illustrations that you don’t have to do so (I didn’t).

By the time you work through these three sample games you’ll understand backgammon notation, the different phases/styles of a backgammon game, why control of certain points is more important than others, and you’ll even see examples of when the ‘rules of thumb’ should be broken. He does a good job of urging you to go back and reread a section if its covering difficult material, keeping you from glossing over it with an ‘I’ll figure this out later” shrug.

Overall, I’m thinking this is a good first backgammon book. Recommended.

So you think you know everything? - DailyGammon Discussion
A silly but fun post over at the site where I’ve been playing Backgammon.

Apparently the QE II can move 6″ on a gallon of diesel fuel.