I have had a simple dream for many years. That dream: to have an arcade in my house. I have many fond memories of pumping quarters into “After Burner” and “Mortal Kombat” at the Tysons Corner Mall while waiting for movies to start when I was in middle school. I remember beating the X-Men arcade with the mammoth screen at the mini golf course in Naples, Maine. In college, I used to swing into the local record store to sneak in some games of “Street Fighter II” after class. More recently, I get my arcade fix from “Barcade” in Brooklyn when I happen to be in town.
However, my personal nirvana involves having some classic cabinets at home. As a starter, I am hoping to put together a unit that runs the MAME arcade emulator software courtesy of a small form-factor PC I have around not being put to use. Dream Arcades sells kits for assembly that get well-reviewed, and I think a cocktail cabinet might be a nice place to start. If I ever need to impress a house guest I can always throw a table cloth over it and pretend it is something a lot less geeky.
While I was spending some quality time with my Tivo this weekend catching on my Saturday morning cartoon guilty pleasures, I came across a rather remarkable commercial. The advertisement was pushing Kellogg’s latest contribution to the breakfast scene: Eggo Muffin Tops.
Any Seinfeld fan can appreciate why this is such a hilarious product. The classic episode, “The Muffin Tops”, features Elaine going into business with Mr. Lippman in a muffin top business. Eggo’s new product begs the same question that Elaine solved: is a muffin top a quality treat if it never was attached to a muffin bottom? I am in dire need of a trip to the grocery store, so when I go I will definitely check these out to see if they live up to the hype.
I have been a fan of “VG Cats” for some time now. The brilliant mind behind it is Scott Ramsoomair, and he fills his comic with enough video game, 80’s cartoon, and internet meme tom-foolery to make any good geek giggle. His latest creation is a comic dubbed “Super-Effective” that covers the world of Pokemon. For any fellow Pokemon players, past or present (I won’t say which camp I fall into), it is definitely worth reading and is shaping up to be another hysterical romp.
So click here to go back to the first comic and catch up. There have only been three so far, so you’ll be up to speed in no time.
I came home from out of town yesterday to a rather distressing sight: where my bike usually is locked up there was no bike. Someone stole my bike (and it seems some others in my building) from out of our garage while I was up in NorCal. They just cut the lock cable and took the u-lock and all, so there wasn’t a trace of my baby left behind. I had just gotten the bike several weeks ago as a birthday present, and was really enjoying taking my beach cruiser out around Venice.
Obviously, this made me a little angry and a little sad. I filed a report with the Santa Monica Police, but I’m not holding my breath. Instead, I’m figuring out how to get a bike that can better live without the fear of behind snatched from my possession. I am looking into getting a lightweight, folding bicycle that I can stash in my apartment. I have spent a fair bit of time scouring the web reading up on the market segment. There are some definite trade-offs, but I think I found the right bicycle that mixes, practicality, nerdiness, and portability: the Strida 5.
It features a remarkably awesome folding design and weighs under 20 lbs. I’m hoping to find some time this weekend to find a dealer in LA and take it for a spin. If anyone else has a suggestion on which path I should go down, please comment away.
My favorite alliterative-loving Linux company, Ubuntu, is gearing up to release version 8.04, aka “Hardy Heron” tomorrow. I have been using Ubuntu intermittently for years now. Usually, I end up playing with the latest version, reveling in the nerdy self-satisfaction of getting to embrace and tweak an open-source OS, getting frustrated by the random quirks, and fleeing back to OS X a week later.
I’ve been testing the release candidate build, and have been quite impressed with a number of tweaks that really add up to a vastly improved OS. The general software includes seem better, and I have had a much more pleasant networking experience. I’ve been eying buying an ultraportable notebook for a long time now, and am hoping to combine this release with one of the new lightweights debuting this summer. So gear up your bandwidth and get prepared to grab the latest Ubuntu build when it goes live. Maybe this creature will be the one that keeps me in the Ubuntu stable.
So, I wanted to take a moment to share this very cool, and very creepy website with you. It takes a bunch of different facial parts from different people and randomly selects the various pieces to create one crazy composite. Enjoy!
The main way I get all of my news updates is through RSS. I use the most-excellent Growl notification application to let me know whenever a new post comes in, and I make it a point of clearing out my feeds every day. With around 50 blog subscriptions, this can take a bit of time, but it is a great way to unwind at the end of the day.
Up until this weekend, I had been using a fantastic piece of open source freeware, Vienna, as my RSS reader. It can be configured to have a column-based browse interface, which I find the most effective, and has an elegant and light-weight user interface. Also, there is an integrated browser, which means you don’t have to leave the app to diver deeper into a post. However, as the number of blog subscriptions I read has continued to grow, Vienna has started to choke. The app began to consistently freeze up when trying to refresh the feeds, and this sometimes would cause open browser tab to be lost when the app restarted after crashing. I finally got fed up with the problem and decided to find another reader.
Luckily NewsGator has made their RSS reader, NetNewsWire, available as a free download. This app can be configured to run in a similar way as Vienna, and offers the added benefit of being able to sync your subscriptions across machines through an online account. In order to get my subscriptions out of Vienna and into NetNewsWire, I just exported the OPML file from Vienna to my desktop and then imported into NetNewsWire. My one piece of advice here would be to make sure you have read all the posts in your old reader, since OPML doesn’t preserve read/unread.
Getting into the swing of things with NetNewsWire has been a painless process. It isn’t plagued by the slowdown or crashing problems like Vienna was. The one problem is that the shortest automated refresh interval you can set is 30 minutes, which is a bit long for me. You can still refresh manually, and that is a small price to pay for stability. Plus, I dig that there is an iPhone interface through NewsGator.
So, while I am sad that I can’t be supporting open source through using Vienna, I am quite happy with NetNewsWire, but will check back in with my old friend from time to time in the hope that maybe things have changed for the better.
Sorry Eva fans, there is no secret governmental organization working to protect Tokyo-3. Instead, NERV is Cisco’s “Networked Emergency Response Vehicle.” This specialized vehicle serves as a mobile command center to aide during disaster relief.
I have been in the market for an ultra-portable laptop that would serve as a lightweight travel companion and coffee shop buddy. I am a rabid Apple fanboy, but while the Macbook Air is incredibly lightweight, its footprint is no smaller than many other notebooks. Also, it lacks built-in mobile broadband, and has a glossy screen which provides a high degree of glare and has over-saturated colors.
So, since Apple can’t give me what I need, I have been on the prowl for another UMPC. Luckily, the success of Asus’ EEE PC has spawned a host of competitors. Recently, I had my hopes pinned on HP’s 2133 Mini-Note. The specs were right (bluetooth, 6 cell battery, 1.6 GHz Via processor) and the size seemed perfect. I was all set to time the purchase with the latest Ubuntu release (8.04) and get myself a perfect road warrior machine.
The laptop was finally officially announced last night, and within minutes of reading the initial reviews, my dreams were dashed. It turns out that the Mini-Note doesn’t just have a reflective screen, but it actually has a full glossy surface on top of the display to offer protection (click here for the review). While this might be a good feature for the educational market they are targeting, it is a deal-breaker for me.
So, now I am back where I started. I need a lightweight laptop that has a matte screen, bluetooth, preferably mobile broadband, and enough juice to get me from LA to DC. My only hope is that the next round of UMPC’s heed my call. Otherwise, off to Dynamism I go.
Here is a fascinating article about a ban by Bowling Green State University on Nerf guns. Live Action Role-Playing, or LARPing, is a sub-genre of of RPG’s that takes gameplay into the real world. At Bowling Green, students began a game of “Undead”, which is a flavor of the LARP “Humans vs. Zombies”. The game involves two teams, the Zombies and the Humans, and the goal is for the humans to evade being “bitten” by the zombies. The humans can fight of the horde of undead by defending themselves with Nerf guns, among other weapons.
Apparently, the LARPers started causing a commotion and disrupting campus, and so the administration cracked down and forbade the player from using the great foam defense. They were allowed to fight of the zombies with socks and marshmallows, but this limitation still upset the participants. This has caused a bit of controversy on campus, and the LARPers are rallying to get their weapons back. The story continues with more interesting twists, including a relative who worked at Nerf coming to pay a visit to campus.
I am very interested in the phenomena of LARPing and Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG’s), and so, as these forms of entertainment become more pervasive, I am sure there will be more conflicts as we see play continue to spill over into the real world.
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