Archive for September, 2004
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30 Sep 2004
Today is the one-year anniversary of the original release date of Half-Life 2. It doesn’t look like we have much longer to wait, though.
PC Gamer’s Half-Life 2 review (not preview) gave the game a score of 96%. The story is that it tied the highest score that the magazine has ever given a game. And the previous record was set by Half-Life.
Hype is one thing, but this is quite another:
Halflife2.net: Was Half-Life 2 what you expected?
Chuck Osborn (PCGamer Editor): MoreDiscuss -
30 Sep 2004
The Kleptones’ new release, A Night at the Hip-Hopera is damn rockin. A lot of Queen and Beastie Boys sampling, and it’s free for download! There’s also a sample listing reference, courtesy of Andrew Baio (who I get lots of my links from BTW).
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29 Sep 2004
Half-Life Fallout has a list of purchase options for Half-Life 2. Six CDs, three different Steam packages, and Counter-Strike: Source available for play by next week. Does that mean HL2 will be available at the same time, or shortly thereafter?
But it’s gonna cost more to get HL2 (through Steam) with CS:S than without it? Ouch, that’s gonna be a tough choice.
Update: HLFallout.net is running a bit slow, Halflife2.net has the information on their front page, also.
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29 Sep 2004
This would make a good “This is Broken”: some guy was able to order 150 Windows XP SP2 CDs from Microsoft, and they sent them all, and in individual envelopes. Microsoft should put in a little dupe checking in that script of theirs.
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29 Sep 2004
The Nascar Song by Tim Wilson – This song is funny, my dad especially will get a kick out of it. If you haven’t had enough experience with Nascar to recognize the names, though, you probably won’t find it amusing.
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28 Sep 2004
Not that you see them as often as Yuppie Food Stamps, but the firty-dollar bill got a new design (including color). Here’s a comparison with the newest $20 design, just for reference.
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28 Sep 2004
The Incredibles, trailer 2. Hell, yeah. Take that, dilettante Dreamworks dickheads.
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28 Sep 2004
A few weeks ago, Canadian Journalist Scott Taylor was kidnapped by insurgents in northern Iraq. A Google search helped save his life. (Streaming audio)
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27 Sep 2004
Return of the King Extended Edition info:
Release date: December 14 Pre-ordering starts: October 1 (This Friday) Movie length: 4 hours, 10 minutes More information here Update 09-28: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition is 208 minutes. The Two Towers Extended Edition is
208231 minutes. The Return of the King Extended Edition is 250 minutes.208 + 208 + 250 = 666 minutes. Update update: IMDB and Amazon disagree about Two Towers’ runtime. I’d be likely to agree with IMDB, though, so that means the symbolism is broken. Oh well! -
27 Sep 2004
Everyone who’s a citizen of the United States should be required to read the Voters Information Guide for the 2004 Election. The best part is the link to Just Vote in the absentee section. Those of you who live in New York and are still registered in Connecticut should definitely check that page out. I’m looking at you
Chris andMari. -
27 Sep 2004
Zoom in to a zipcode with zipdecode. I hate it when I see something and realize that I’ve wanted something like this, but just never connected the synapses to think that it would be either possible or cool.
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26 Sep 2004
This weekend, Justin upgraded PostgreSQL on Eris (translation: the database software on my webhost). Best-case, this will solve all the weirdness that I’ve been experiencing with rebuilds, but more likely it’ll cause more problems until I can actually fix the tables. Again, reply or email me if you see anything seriously funky.
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23 Sep 2004
Spreadfirefox is giving away Gmail invites to people who put a Firefox button on their websites. That’s not that amazing, really, but what is amazing is that they got two thousand donated invites. That’s a hella lot. Are there that many people who still want Gmail accounts and don’t have them?
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23 Sep 2004
Download Firefox 1.0PR or a recent nightly build. Install. Run it. Go to Help -> About Mozilla Firefox. Click the “Credits” button. Wait for it.. wait for it.. there it is.
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22 Sep 2004
Just after passing behind the Sun (“conjunction“), the twin Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) have received another six-month mission extension.
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22 Sep 2004
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22 Sep 2004
I do three kinds of things at work:
- Work. Sub-things: programming, monitoring management
- Not work. Sub-things: surfing, programming
- Semi-work. Usually proof-of-concept programming. This is the most interesting thing I do. WEBoggle started as a “what’s this DOM thing I keep hearing about” semi-work. Here’s another one.
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22 Sep 2004
I finally saw Terminator 3 last night. I had heard mixed reviews of it when it first came out, and I was not expecting anything more than a decent action movie. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought that it was very well incorporated into the greater timeline of the series.
Looking up some trivia online, though, people can’t seem to decide what the model number of the Schwarzenegger Terminators are. I’ve seen “T-101″, “T-800″, and “T-801″. The proper series number is “T-800″. Although the HTML is terrible, eterminator.com has a great reference on the Terminator models, taking information from all three movies, the T2-3D ride, and all of the novel-ifications.
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21 Sep 2004
I gave an interview today. It was a totally surreal experience. I think I was more nervous than he was.
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21 Sep 2004
In the same vein as the PSone, here comes Sony’s PStwo. (Okay, that’s not the real name, but it should be). That thing is ridiculously tiny. Barely more than an inch thick and one-quarter of the volume of the original. Yikes.
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21 Sep 2004
Although it hasn’t yet been unveiled (so I can’t quite reveal details), I can now mention that I have been spending the last month or so working on a project for the Mozilla Foundation, specifically the Spread Firefox campaign. After reading a blog post calling for Web programmers, I responded and was recruited as one of the “two top candidates” out of roughly 115 responses.
It seems that my project will be announced either this week or next, and then you can revel in its amazingness. If you needed evidence, here’s a spreadfirefox news item mentioning me and my “very important piece of code”. Stay tuned!
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17 Sep 2004
The Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Half-Life: Source Release Candidates have been sent to Vivendi. Now we play the waiting game (some more).
The waiting game sucks. Let’s play Hungry, Hungry Hippos!
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16 Sep 2004
This is the most amazing thing I’ve read in weeks, about Stanley Milgram’s other study: ‘Excuse Me. May I Have Your Seat?’
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16 Sep 2004
The are a lot of good reasons to drink a glass of red wine every day. Now, there might be just as many to drink a pint of stout, too. Bring on the Guinness!
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16 Sep 2004
If I still read it, I would have known about this earlier, but Michael Jantze ended The Norm, apparently as of this last Monday. The story is that his wife is trying to raise money so that Michael can make the comic strip purely online. This, combined with PvP‘s “free for newspapers” deal makes this an interesting time for print comics. Let’s hope this is the start of change in the industry.
But let’s not hold our breaths.
