March 2003 Archives

Got Game?: gaming, networks, multiplayer, strategy, personal technology, consoles - Corante.
Bookmark this now! You have to!

This blog is about tracking the rise of games as a medium of popular culture, and perhaps the medium of the times. The Jones' kids all have game consoles, but more and more it's not just Saturday morning entertainment - games are impacting peoples lives in a way never seen before. There are fan sites, art books, academic theses, and a massive entertainment industry all waking up to the fact that these things are a lot more important than we gave them credit for. Already games are under fire as the evil corrupting the youth: a place formerly reserved for the likes of Rock'n'Roll, Hollywood or Ragtime (depending on your era). This blog is about watching the emergence of a medium, right before our very eyes.

Over time, I collect links on my desktop that I'd like to share. Typically, I do this so that during times when content is slow I'll have some backup material to post. Sometimes, though, I go a little too far and collect a little too much stuff. My desktop ends up covered in links. One of the biggest problems with that is that some of the content is time sensitive, that is it becomes less relevant and more moldy the longer I wait to post it.

In any case, consider this a link queue purge. The following are things I found interesting, and you might too...

• How to set up your own Certificate Authority using OpenSSL on Windows: A great and useful tutorial for those who want to have an SSL certificate but don't want to buy it from verisign. The drawback to this method is that some browsers alert the user to the fact that the cert in question isn't signed by a major cert granting authority. The connection is still encrypted, though, so with a proper explanation, your consumers should still feel safe and you'll have some extra cash to do something else... Like buy a beer...
• A while back, Blizzard published a short interview with Harley D. Huggins II, Ghost Cinematics Project Lead to discuss some of the aspects on the cinematic creation process used in Blizzard games. There are some storyboard examples and a video that shows some of the development process. At 6.84mb, the video takes a little bit to download on a modem, but it's great to get a better look at the creation process used by one of the better game development companies out there.
• Over at Zoode.org, Ahmet is a geek's geek. Smarter than smart, his blog has a lot of information about programming, everything from java to ActionScript. Here's a post about Duff's Device, a way of optimizing loops by unrolling them and using switch statements. I've heard of and used these techniques before, but Ahmet has a port to ActionScript that he says works as advertised. Definitely worth a bookmark.
• Anti-Aliasing and Anti-Anti-Aliasing, both by John Gruber, discuss the anti-aliasing differences between various OS X browsers. Although the article has a heavy Mac slant (it is a mac oriented site), there's a lot of useful information in here if a) you don't know what anti-aliasing is, or b) you're a "font nerd".
• Ever want to write a Movable Type Plugin? The MT system is extremely powerful as is, but the wide variety of system hooks and strong plugin API allow for an infinite number of extensions. Developing Movable Type Plug-ins by Timothy Appnel gets into the nitty-gritty of using the different features of the MT plugin API and is a good way to get started if you want to add new features to what I think is one of the best personal content management systems around.

sylloge: eyebees
Similar to Microsoft's MSN 8 surf with a buddy feature, from what I can tell, this is a way to surf with others. Definitely worth future perusal.

via :: sylloge

Blogmedic : day to day in ems
Andy's got a new post over at Blogmedic. Kind of gross, but I'm just glad he posted!

We need to support our troops, but at the same time, we need to remember our emergency staffers at home. People like Andy and the responders who cleared out the Park Street station earlier today are important too.

The Boston T's Park Street stop was closed this morning. For those of you not in the know, the Park Street stop is the intersection of the Red and Green Lines. The only information I was able to get was that it was closed due to earlier "police activity". Last week a FedEx package was found addressed to Saddam Hussein, causing similar delays while it was inspected by a bomb squad.

In the process of walking to work from the Downtown Crossing stop, I passed by the Park Street stop. There were numerous firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances. My first instinct was that there had been a threat or a bomb scare, however, I believe trains were being allowed to proceed through the station, they just weren't allowed to stop.

I'll post more info as I come across it. In the meantime, if you know something, feel free to leave it in the comments.

Update: The Boston Globe says it was a strong odor that caused the stop to be closed, source still unknown.

Update: Channel 5 news also notes the strong odor, but again, no cause.

Update:Channel 5 now reports that the Hazmat team found nothing and was unable to detect a smell. The stop was opened 45 minutes after the call was reported. Probably nothing big, but it doesn't make me feel any better about my commute home.

algorhythm/Creeps & weirdos
Check out the pic that goes with this post! Sooo funny! Where's the matching advertisement for the Boston T?

U.S. forces rolling towards Baghdad

"The U.S. Navy will bring in trained dolphins this week to hunt for seaborne mines in the waters around Umm Qasr, Navy officials said. The animals will seek out floating mines and mark them for Navy divers to inspect."

Ok, so CNN didn't really say dolphins were better than Frenchmen, but at least the dolphins are useful, right? Best quote so far: "Let's give France back to Germany".

In the right hand column, you'll see a little banner that says 'I Support Our Troops'. It's not a big banner, it doesn't move, and it doesn't say the war is either good or bad. It just says 'I Support Our Troops'. Whether you're for or against what's going on, you can at least hope that our soldiers come home safe and sound so they can resume their duties as husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, and brothers. They're merely doing their jobs, following orders, and trying to serve their country.

Feel free to copy the image to your own server and use it. Feel free to modify it or edit it. Feel free to support or protest the war. But please, don't feel free to take our troops for granted. Their sacrifices are what American freedoms are built on.

Update: For google searchers coming to this page, you'll find the banners on my Support Our Troops Banner Page.

History repeats itself, and once again the Iraqis have set fire to oil wells. Shortly after the Gulf War I read an article about Red Adair, a gentleman involved in extinguishing those fires. I couldn't find the article, but I'll summarize as best I can.

Oil wells burn at a incredibly high temperature and typically have an endless supply of fuel. Water is basically useless by itself. In order to fight these fires, engineers use water to cool the fire down and then use a series of explosives to cut off the fire's air supply (remember, fires need oxygen to burn). It's like blowing out a candle. Once the fire is extinguished, the well needs to be capped in order to protect against further environmental damage as well as waste.

The whole process is extremely involved. The wells are in the middle of the desert, requiring pipelines to be built that can pump in seawater for firefighting purposes. The smoke can be extremely toxic and deadly, and due to the extreme heat the fires are hard to get next to. Many skills are needed, requiring teams of experts to be flown in. At the same time, the oil fields are basically a warzone. After the Gulf War, one of the biggest hurdles was cleaning up booby-traps and munitions left over from the battles fought there so that the environment would be safer to work in.

Since the Bush Administration is counting on oil money to help subsidize the rebuilding of Iraq as well as to help lower fuel prices thereby kickstarting the American economy, it is extreemly important that the fires be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

For more info, see the following links:

• Boots and Coots Group: One of the four major participants (the others were Red Adair, Safety Boss, and Wild Well Control, Inc.) in extinguishing the Gulf War oil fires. They specialize in preventing these types of disasters, but also have a task force to deal with emergency situations. If you think you'd like to buy their stock, though, you'd better think again as before the war they were filing bankruptcy.
• OSHA on Oil Well Safety: OSHA has numerous guidlines to help ensure the safety of personnel working in the oil fields. The information here gives a good understanding of how dangerous this is on a normal day, as well as what equipment is used and how it works.
• Fighting Oil Well Fires: Part of the Gulf War Illness site, this page gives a good summary of the oil well firefighting efforts. The toxicity of the smoke from these fires is believed to be the cause of some of the illnesses found among Allied Veterans of the Gulf War.
• The Language of Drilling: An oil well blowout is when oil is forcefully ejected from the well due to differences in pressure. During normal drilling, mud is forced into the well to help counterbalance these forces. This dictionary (in word) has very basic explanations of many other terms related to oil drilling.

kottke.org :: The war

Weblogs are supposedly the antidote to this. With some very notable exceptions (journo Kevin Sites blogging live from Iraq and this Iraqi's personal weblog), this just isn't true. Most webloggers "covering" the current situation are either peace advocates unwilling to enter into a debate (see above) or too busy whipping each other into a hawkish frenzy in the pursuit of getting linked, being seen, driving up page views, and trying oh-so-hard to scale Mt. Instapundit.

I've always appreciated Kottke's point of view on things, but then again it's a proven fact that in our daily reading we tend to gravitate towards people with views similar to ours. Check out the rest of the post for his other thoughts about the soon to be started war with Iraq.

Here's some stuff from today you might find interesting:

• The Floor Plan With a Plan:"Retail design guru Paco Underhill explains the little things that make such a big difference in Apple's newest and best-performing boutique."
• This Makes me Nervous: "That makes me wonder if We the People don't have leaders who ignore protests and attack anyway so that We the People can be afforded the luxury of having our rights defended while self-righteously blasting our iron-fisted defenders from the relative safety of our popcorn bowls at home in front of CNN." Good disscusion going on over at Cory's place. Check it out and keep it going.
• I saw a guy with the atari logo tattooed in the middle of the back of his neck. Hard core. (Dave says that the atari symbol is Kanji for the letter A sound in the word atari)
• A guy came off an exit today while I was on the highway. Merge from the left into two lanes, car to my right, no where to go. I was doing seventy, he sped up to try and cut me off and merge ahead of me. After getting in front of him and jacking my breaks because he pissed me off, I took the next exit to get gas. When I got back on, in an infrequent moment of justice, I passed him getting a speeding ticket. There is some balance to the world.
• Today I got email with a friends address in the to line and my address in the cc line. It was spam. Is this a new spammer trick? If so, it is very very tricky and devious... Maybe spammers should be stoned to death in order to atone for thier sins.

I got a great comment yesterday, and some neat email ensued. A couple of days ago I wrote a little piece of code that pings weblogs.com. It was for my friends who use homegrown systems. After implementing it they noticed an increase in traffic, as a weblogs.com listing inserts your blog into a lot of other people's software.

As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that the way blogs grow is interesting. I've been working on mine for a few months now and I've seen more and more traffic. My friends started theirs around the same time or slightly after me and their traffic started to grow. As we get better , we increase each others audience; our links to each other create a small network. We live vicariously through each other, each being a little geeky, sharing strange user agent strings and celebrating as a group when important people show interest in us.

What's interesting is how small groups like ours fit together. Collectively we all read different types of blogs. We form links between different communities, and then we bounce ideas off of each other. The sad thing is that not all of this happens on our blogs, a lot of it happens in instant messenger. It disappears into the ether after that.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Just wanted to throw it up here for future thought provocation.

Things Bob Actually Does Know About Women:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve

He didn't do it, so someone had to. Above is a list of "Things Bob Actually Does Know About Women". I found Bob's site tonight by digging through the bottom half of Technorati. Note to the Technorati people: flip those newcomer and up and coming lists upside down and they become even more useful in my opinion. In any case, Bob knows a lot about women, and he's more insightful than I am. Check them out; not only will you be amused, but you'll be getting an education at the same time. Thanks Bob!

(this is) Sour Bob

And like that, you can feel the door finally closing. You have trouble breathing again, but the hurt doesn't last--not because of the loss of them, but because the life you'd planned on has died. You're free now, but like an astronaut on a spacewalk is free. You worry that the wrong move might send you drifting forever.

RE_INVIGORATE
For Future Exploration.

NOW: Bill Moyers Talks with Chris Hedges | PBS

During a lull I dashed across an empty square and found shelter behind a house. My heart was racing. Adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream. I was safe. I made it back to the capital. And like most war correspondents, I soon considered the experience a great cosmic joke. I drank away the fear and excitement in a seedy bar in downtown San Salvador. Most people, after such an experience, would learn to stay away. I was hooked.

I'm still reading through this, but what an amazing piece. via :: The Wonderchicken

Sampling networks accurately (kottke.org)
Extremely interesting thoughts from kottke. I've been thinking about how blogs all fit together in blogaria myself, and I can't come up with anything that makes sense.

I'll be thinking about this. In the meantime, feel free to comment.

• A-ray 360 degree panorama inside mouth: So cool. via :: kottke.
• Advanced drawing methods in Macromedia Flash MX: Great examples of some Flash widgets. Using these types of controls and the ability to create Flash movies dynamically with things like php, I'm sure you could make some pretty neat applications.
• I love this guy.
• Bigha blog: I don't know how they found me, but these guys have some pretty sweet bikes. Custom made, and everything. Be sure to check out their video, their pictures, and their site. I wish I was that skilled with my hands...

I heard on the radio, and was only able to confirm in a Canadian newspaper, that McDonald's will soon be offering one hour of wireless internet access with the purchase of a combo meal. The technology will be rolled out in New York, Chicago, and an undisclosed location in California.

Although not interesting in iteself, as places like Starbucks have been offering wifi access for a while now, it does raise a question about how this affects McDonald's concept of what their business is. As a company that helped define the term "fast food", do they really want to encourage customers to sit around for an hour watching flash movies, sending email, and IM'ing their friends?

McDonald's has tried in the past to serve different types of food, like spaghetti, which are considered more "sit-down" type meals. Last I checked you couldn't order spaghetti there anymore, as those trials failed miserably. Hell, they don't even have comfortable benches, installing cold plastic slabs instead so that you'll leave more quickly and allow another cow to get in and feed at the trough.

It's a neat idea, but really. Didn't we learn in the 90's that 'e' everything caused more problems than it was worth? Won't this just drive the price of a hamburger and fries even higher? Will customers even use it? In my opinion, there are a lot of interesting questions here, questions that I'd be curious to see if McDonald's will address.

Google Dance
I love google. Do you love google? If so, check out this article, as it's got some great technical details about how the google index gets rolled out and refreshed month to month.

A new feature: If you mouse over the name and date of a new comment in the righthand sidebar, in modern browsers the title of the post the comment was made in relation to will appear as a tooltip.

I recently found caterina.net and added it to my list of daily visited blogs. If you like words and literature, she's worth a read. You'll also find some links there that will interest you.

While I'm on the subject, check out this post for the "eew, gross... but interesting all the same" factor.

Stewart, over at Sylloge has some links about MMOGs for your perusal, but even better is a quote from Raph Koster, creator of Ultima online. A piece:

The consumers that are the future of [gaming] are everyday, ordinary people. Most of us in this technology-mad industry frankly have no contact with them. The technology we need to develop isn't the technology of more polygons or better 3d sound or more accurate simulations. It's the technology of people. Of giving them what they don't know they need.

As an aside, Stewart is an employee of Ludicorp, the company currently working on Game Neverending. His is full of insight not only into specific games, but the concept of gaming. Another blog worth checking out.

I've mentioned Shawn Yeager and his site algorhythm a few times in the past, but I thought I'd mention it again. If privacy is of interest to you, his blog is definitely one to check out.

His latest post is regarding Delta Airlines. He says:

Having learned of Delta’s participation in the CAPPS II program via the Boycott Delta site, I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Specifically, I contacted Delta via email, stating that I would no longer fly them due to their decision to participate in CAPPS II, and asking them to cancel my SkyMiles account. Following is the reply I received:

I typically don’t write about personal things, or personal occurrences. Today is different. Depressing and morbid material ahead.

Qwerticular Facies Markitus

(n) The impressions left on the face by falling asleep on a keyboard. Often referred to as Qwertyface. Syn: qwertyface, gridface, keypunched, ergonomic nose dysfunction. Ant: Dvorakular Facies Markitus

In an attempt to test our ability for world domination and such, Dave and I have conspired to name a new affliction: Qwerticular Facies Markitus. While not life threatening, it could definitely put a damper on a geek's sex life. I mean really, stoned chicks like Ellen Feiss want no part of anyone who's been keypunched, especially since it sounds like another nasty phenomenon...

The horror of blimps

Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINSITER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my body has.

via :: Sam

The Pi Search Page
This is great! The pessimist and cynic in me, though, thinks it would be just as easy to tell the user their string is at position (generate random number here) as opposed to searching an aribtrary piece of pi.

I always find the subway in Boston to be surreal. The tunnels aren't clean, the walls are not white, and the trains are not shiny. The people shuffle back and forth in jerky movements, stepping over a discarded newspaper, around a slower commuter, all while making sure not to brush against the wall. In the background, musicians play, trying to get tips. For me, this is the strangest part, as the songs in the air are usually quite strange: polkas on an accordion, light melodies on a banjo, angst filled pseudo punk on an acoustic guitar. The songs float through the air making the people shuffling back and forth seem all the more distanced from each other, their environment, and me. It's so strange, yet so fascinating.

Today was Ash Wednesday. Today people moved back and forth wearing their religion proudly for all to see. In our current state of war and turmoil, it's understood that some religions are more equal than others. As people wandered from stop to stop, one train to another, no one's demeanor was changed. No one was more polite today than yesterday. Religious holiday or not, it was just another day, another banjo song drifting away through the air. Deep down we're all people, and right now many of us are scared/nervous/worried about the world we live in. Deep down, though, we're all people.

shellshocking: The Complete Military History of France
While we're on the subject of political humor, check out Shell's posting of an email currently floating around.

Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare: "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."

Cox & Forkum: End Around
Like political cartoons? Interested in politics and current events? Extremely opinionated?

These guys are for you.

College Student
In college or graduate recently? Maybe you've been gone for a while. In any case, this will probably strike quite a few people as funny or at least bring back some memories...

Erik Benson's Weblog: Morale-O-Meter
What a great little tool. Man. Why didn't I think of that?

Wired News: Google: Net Hacker Tool du Jour

"When your medical records are indexed in Google, something's wrong."

Amen.

EmptyBottle.org: Dirt Stick Stone

And today, as weblogorrhea reaches epidemic proportions, Dr Pepper's soulless, clue-deficient marketing shills are actually giving it a go, boys and girls.

The Wonderchicken has some extremely interesting things to say tonight about blogaria and advertising. Definitely worth a read.

First of all, let me just say I'm glad ole Stavros is back and writing things like this. Secondly, let me say that I think he didn't just hit the nail on the head, he put it through the board.

For this to work, it won't require the top bloggers to participate. It'll only take the millions of teeny-boppers to post a link. By sheer volume they'll get to the top. The people will start to bitch about the phenomena getting more attention and more links. Based on the way google works (see the post two back about PageRank) the ad monkeys will rejoice.

Blech.

Duncan Wilcox: PageRank 2.0

Google's current relevance ranking should be called "popularity ranking", as Krishna Bharat once told me "if 1 million people say that that's IBM, for us that's IBM".

Many other interesting points here by Duncan. I think it's interesting to see what people think about Google's purchase of Pyra, merely because there's the obvious and then there's what will actually happen. The latter will probably be something quite different than what was expected and more exciting than we thought it would be. I mean, come on... Haven't you seen google labs?

Family Favorites is a collection of cards that were made for a game. Some of the art is well done, and some of the cards are quite amusing. For more info about the game, see The Blank White Cards History.

I've started a little experiment here at BTB. I want to know if those wacky googlers stick around after their messed up search strings bring them in. Here's what I've done:

• Assigned each user a session id
• logged the time they visit, the page the came from, and the page they're going to
• set it up so when they close their browser, their cookie resets

This means I can't tell if you come here often, because you don't keep your cookie. I can't tell if you look at porn, because, well, I just can't. All I can do is try to figure out what your path through my site was. I'm not big brother, and the only thing this does is satisfy my curiosity. If the site asks you to accept a cookie, please don't be alarmed...

[: VaxCave :] - Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Dave has an audio clip up at his site of Mr. Rogers at a Senate hearing.

In 1969 the US Senate had a hearing on funding the newly developed Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The proposed endowment was $20 million, but President Nixon wanted it cut in half because of the spending going on in the Vietnam War. This is an audio clip of the exchange between Mr. Rogers and Senator Pastore, head of the hearing. Senator Pastore starts out very abrasive and by the time Mr. Rogers is done talking, Senator Pastore's inner child has heard Mr. Rogers and agreed with him. I also have this in video format, but due to bandwidth worries, I'll only show it to you if you are willing to mirror it. Enjoy.

I listened to the feed and it's definitely striking. The soft-spoken, polite Mr. Rogers facing off against the real world, nasty old senators and coming away victorious. I wonder what Mr. Rogers thought about the world before he passed away?

Rest in peace Mr. Rogers, cause if there's a better neighborhood out there, you're there.

GameSpot: The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring details
Gamespot has a tiny write-up about the LOTR real time strategy game being developed by black label games. The write-up is useles, but the screenshots (which are really just art scans) are pretty good. The one of Sauron, based on my reading of the Silmarillion, is probably the best depiction of him I've ever seen.

Main: AgentFrank
Agent Frank is a personal proxy. I'm downloading it as we speak.

If you've known me for a while or you've read my blog for any length of time, you know I like search engines. The way they find meaning in what they interpret as zeroes and ones compared to what we interpret as language, symbols, etc is interesting. I've looked at different sorting algorithms, different indexing techniques, and spidering technology. I've also experimented with AIML (artificial intelligence markup language) and some other weirdness that fits in as well.

When you put the personal web proxy in a bowl and stir in all of the other pieces, you get a pretty interesting product. You have a piece of software that can learn about you, teach you, answer our questions, and do things foryou/on your behalf. Having some company be in charge of this is scary. Having a program on my computer that does it for me sounds like fun.

What could it do you ask? I'm not really sure, but it seems to me that it could do a lot. From checking the weather to aggregating feeds to finding news that's important to you to checking stockquotes against your portfolio to remembering birthday's and anniversaries to remembering what sites you've visited and how you got there and how you can get back.

It seems to me that all of the pieces are around us and by assembling them we'll gain a lot. To me, it's just a question of when...