Boston is allowing anyone who got a ticket on December 1, 2, or 3 to pay for it in toys. Toys for Tots, that is. This is the best decision I’ve ever heard, and I imagine the only reason it’s not being done on a larger scale is that the Police Department probably depends on the income to pay its officers.
Too bad, really. I’d bet they see a much higher “payment” rate for those three days.
One of the things that’s a little upsetting about the Half-Life story is that you’re pretty much in the dark about what’s been going on between the two games. And even if you knew that, you’d be missing the big picture story. What’s the G-Man’s motivation? Who the hell is he, anyhow? What’s the relationship between the Combine and Xen? Well, someone’s mixed everything we’ve been told or shown with a little creative speculation, and come up with the Half-Life Saga Story Guide. Amazing.
I’ve imported some ancient plutor.org blog entries from a text file I came across this morning. Now, you can start from the boring beginning!
I talked about self-destructible DVDs before, but I could never analyze its big downfall as well as this MeFi comment.
A cereal restaurant. Fucking brilliant. Goddamnit that’s a good idea.
Check out this video of the guy who created most of the Gnome icons creating a new one. The high-speed version is great and only a minute long.
Somehow, his style (at least the style of this icon) reminds of Chris' drawing.
Someone has been considerate enough to put a flash-powered working World of Warcraft demo online. Realistic!
A full list of G-Man sightings in Half-Life 2. I can’t believe I’ve missed so many; I think I’ve seen him twice.
Update 19:00 - I finished the game. Spoilers inside.
The ending was quite abrupt, but when I think about it, a "last guy" is so inappropriate. It'd make the game feel like a game. The best thing about it was that it was so immersive. No cut scenes and load times broken up to keep them to as short as possible. I look forward to the inevitable Gearbox expansions and Half-Life 3.
The super gravity gun and the last chapter or two of the game were absolutely amazing. The game absolutely got better as it went on.
Next step, see how far I can get in difficult, and wait for the SDK release.
How to eat sushi. You may wonder why this is really necessary, but you must remember that sushi eating (and the art of making it) goes back to the time of the samurai. The rituals are detailed and wonderful, and this howto makes me want to visit Japan. Bonus: Includes a section on fugu!
The most recent news post for Steam contains this gem:
Next week we will be releasing the Source SDK, along with a surprise for the community.
The New York marathon did a fantastic job with the photos. You can search by runner name or bib number. For example, here are the photos for Jeff, including several of him crossing the finish line.
They clearly had some sort of automated system set up, likely connected to the wireless dongle that the runners had to wear on their shoes. The only way this could be improved, IMHO, is if the individual pages for the photos indicated the time the photo was taken, the distance the person had run, and maybe even a GPS location.
The photo prices, however, are ridiculous. The best value might be the $90 photo CD, but only if you were hypothetically very happy about the photos taken of you.
As of this morning, I am now using Remote Clip to synchronize the clipboards on my SunBlade 100 desktop (running Solaris 10) and my IBM T40 laptop (Windows XP). It’s got exactly the feature set I always wanted in ClipCopy, and since I don’t suffer from NIH syndrome, I have no problems abandoning the latter for the former.
The Adventures of Spelling the Vacuum. What the hell, folks? My life is like a Douglas Adams novel.
IBM’s monthly teaser, Ponder This, seems like fun. Part 1 of November’s only took me about 5 minutes and 66 characters of Perl. Part 2 is a little more analytical. I’ll work on it at lunch.
Stephen Spielberg will be filming a part of the War of the Worlds remake in my home town of Naugatuck sometime before Christmas. I’ll have to keep my eyes open for calls for extras. Nevermind, this article says “extras will not be needed for the scene shot in Naugatuck”. Oh well.
Mathowie has turned MetaFilter signups back on, for a $5 one-time fee. Totally worth it. I hope the MeFi stats get updated, or Matt announces how many new signups there were today. I’m user #17646.
Update 11-19: Matt got enough signups to pay for a full year of webhosting! My calculations show roughly 1200 new users in the last 24 hours, although there are certainly people who bailed between signup and donate in that count.
First thoughts on Half-Life 2:
I have other thoughts, but they aren't important. This game is great. Steam worked perfectly. I wonder when the first mods will start coming out..
Imagine going to see a Broadway play, and discovering that it was based on your own life. This true story launches us into a sketchy world of ownership, idea-ness, and copyrights, and Malcolm Gladwell isn’t sure on which side of the argument he stands.
Fox is planning on creating twenty-four one-minute shorts based on characters from 24 for display on cellphones. I don’t have a phone capable of playing videos, but it would be mad cool. They’d make good TV advertisements, too, I bet.
Also: Mark your calendars. Fox has scheduled the two-hour premiere for Sunday 9 January at 8pm (or whenever the football game ends). Episode 2 is the next night at 9, in the show’s new timeslot.
RealPlayer is a steaming pile. I didn’t want to install it on my computer unless I absolutely positively had to, but NPR archives are all in streaming Real audio format. So I set about trying to be able to play Real audio and video with some sort of spamware-, spyware- and uglyware-free solution. Here’s how I did it:
Real Alternative. This contains the codecs needed to decode the Real file formats. If you don’t mind Media Player Classic, make sure you select it during the Real Alternative install, and you’re done.
If you prefer Winamp (like me), don’t install MPC. Get Tara’s Real Audio Plugin for Winamp. You’ll need to close and restart Winamp for it to recognize the new plugin, and it should even prompt you to associate itself with the proper file types.
Just before Halloween, the Mars Rovers silently passed the 50,000-image milestone. They have now sent back twice as many pictures as the three previous Mars missions combined. With another five months of their six month extension to go, they may be able to double that.
Oh My God It Burns, a humorous science experiement. Can a Brita filter turn vile cheap vodka into Ketel One™? This is the ideal science experiment. Repeatable, organized, funny, and most importantly the scienticians get drunk!
What’s the earliest news event that you can recall when it occurred? For me, it was the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle. In fact, I remember being afraid of pieces falling on me (even though I lived in Colorado at the time). The earliest political event I remember is the the fall of the Berlin Wall fifteen years ago today.
More on America’s non-existant red/blue divide: a fascinating analysis of Election result maps and cartograms.
Flickr is fun, and the tag system is perfectly done. For example, check out the photos tagged with marathon.
Some other good photos at amitgupta.com.