BugMeNot Gets Booted, Restored
Site registrations suck. I don’t mind logging in if I’m paying for a service (and I will pay for a quality service) but all these ‘free’ registrations are just annoying as hell.
(And I say that as someone who works on a site that has just instituted free registration…trust me when I tell you I voiced my opinion about this idea loudly, but of course was ignored).
So BugMeNot is my friend, and I’m sure glad to see that its back online!
Y’know, the real problem here isn’t that these virtual goods sellers are hiring some poor Russian dude to farm in-game cash for $100/week.
The problem is that the games are so damned TEDIOUS that people would rather BUY their way to the good stuff than play the games.
If the journey was fun, then everyone would be happy doing it.
Paying to play a game, and then paying more to a third party to get to the good stuff? What’s wrong with this picture?
I have to promote Legacy a bit. What a fun game for your PDA (versions area available for PalmOS, PocketPC & Symbian). Remember back when we were playing Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder on our computers? Well Legacy will take you back to those days, with a first person perspective, turn-based RPG dungeon crawl. Magic users, clerics, knights and adventurers…they’re all here (up to 4 in your party at once). Highly recommended, if you enjoyed those RPGs of old!
Neat stuff. I was just reading about this project in Rodney Brook’s Flesh and Machines, but that was before they moved the project basically outside of the eye. Its amazing how fast technology progresses!
Teleportation goes long distance
I’ve read about this entanglement stuff in Hawking’s Universe in a Nutshell but I still don’t really understand it.
But it sure sounds like an interesting experiment!
Parallel Park Game – Time yourself parallel parking
This is just too silly and fun!
I finished Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood today. I’m still trying to decide if I liked it or not.
The premise is that the titular wood is the home to creatures of myth, but that these creatures are created out of a kind of race-memory of people. So for instance if enough people truly believe in Bigfoot, Bigfoot would be found in this wood.
It was an interesting premise but it made it all feel kind of artificial. Like it was one huge delusion. And the fact that the protagonist took everything pretty much in stride when he learned about what was happening in the wood made it all feel even more so. There was very little time spent on disbelief and coming to grips with what was going on. “Ah, so Robin Hood and King Arthur’s Knights and some kind of proto-druid tribe all live in the 6 mile stretch of woods? OK, I’ll buy that. Let’s go explore it!” Umm…?
If you can set those two facts aside, then it was a really enjoyable book. What added a nice layer to the whole story was that ‘present day’ for the protagonist was 1948 or thereabouts. Shortly after the war, in any case. So even the non-fantastical portions of the book had an air of ‘other-worldliness’ to those of us too young to have lived through that time.
I guess I can best sum it up this way. I liked it enough to add the next book in the series (Lavondyss) to my Amazon wishlist, but I’m not going to run around raving about the book. On a scale of 1-5 I’d give it a 3 or a 4. Holdstock’s voice is what makes it worth reading. I’m hoping the next book has just a tad more polish. If it does, it should be truly great.
Activision CEO predicts second PSP delay in U.S.
June ’05? Fine. I’ll still buy one.
I half-heard an interesting factoid on NPR this morning (I have a clock-radio alarm and this was on the radio when it went off, so perhaps my sleepy brain misheard). $1.00 will buy you, on average, 100 calories worth of good healthy food. The same $1.00 will buy you 1000 calories worth of fatty, salty or sugary junk food. The person making this statement said that this is why obesity is such a problem in poverty-stricken communities.
I add that it might be part of the reason those of us who really don’t give a rat’s ass about food constantly fight our weight. Fast food is easy food, and spending time preparing dinner is, to me, a huge waste of time.
Well, I gotta go. The pizza delivery guy just arrived….
PS It’s true! I just realized something. Today I’m eating a greek salad, a cup of soup and a bottle of water. This cost me about $7.50 at the company cafeteria. Yesterday I had a cheeseburger, french fries and a bottle of Mountain Dew and it cost me about $5.50! And really filled me up, whereas I know today’s lunch will putter out at about 4 o’clock and I’ll be hitting the vending machine for a snack.
Schwarzenegger to consider video game bill
Well this sounds reasonable. The law would just require places that sell video games to have signs up explaining the ESRB system. You’d think in all fairness that it should also require places that sell movies to post signs explaining the movie rating system though, wouldn’t you?