Had brunch with Nick N. and Claire. Pilgrimaged to The Cube to check out the iPhones. Putzed around with one for about ten minutes. They really are that cool. Then we went to The Park. Really nice day. I might go out to dinner with Nick and his MN friend tonight.
As I mentioned in the last post, I am painfully confined to Windows for the duration of my internship. The only upside is that I can play games again! Sam and I built my computer with gaming in mind, but my then-state-of-the-art graphics card (GeForce 6800 Ultra) is now three years old and showing its age. I gave the Quake Wars beta a go and it was a slideshow. I can still handle more moderately modern titles (anything on Source) with ease, but recently I'm playing a real technical relic: Natural Selection. Modding the 9-year-old HL1, NS is just a really fun game. The atmosphere and art are uniquely compelling. I'm on pins and needles for NS2. I'm also playing a lot of Geometry Wars. It's a great distraction while waiting for compilations (though I'm probably not speeding things along by playing) and it's ridiculously addictive. Best $2 I ever spent.
Around the time I picked up Full Pipe, someone drew my attention to another esoteric game out of Russia called Pathologic. I read a review which panned Pathologic for bad translation, frustrating gameplay and lackluster graphics, but praised the unique narrative paradigm which included near-Brechtian mechanisms of self-reference. I've actually given thought to the use of Brechtian techniques in games, so I was thoroughly intrigued. I acquired the game and have only just gotten around to installing it. I've played for a few hours and I'm still very much uncertain. The game may be deliberately calling attention to its "gameness," or it could just be really bad. It's hard to know just yet. I'll give it some more time.
Another unusual game has caught my eye and I'm debating its purchase. Vigil is a pseudo-adventure French game with a striking visual identity. The demo is ludicrously terse and the only review I've found claims the gameplay is severely lacking (which I doubt not), but it just looks so damn cool. I also like to support independent developers. It's supposed to be the first game in a series so I'd love to see the franchise improve, and it's only $8 for the next week. Maybe I'll get it.
I also need to finish/replay Oblivion. God that game is good. Anyhoo, happy iDay and happy GPL3 day!
Update
Of course, no sooner did I publish this post than I bought Vigil. I'll let you know just how bad it is.
Just finished the book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. Fascinating read. I highly recommend it to everybody.
I have to use Windows for my internship. It reminds me just how much I love Ubuntu.
Saw Black Sheep last night, then had an awetacular pool party, broken glass and all! Then, this morning:
I had another weird dream about Jim Lehrer. I dreamt that he was yelling invectively into the camera about Steve Jobs. It was something to do with the iPhone and he was really pissed off. Jim didn't seem to notice that Steve Jobs was sitting right in front of him. Then Steve and I became friends and I showed him my cool watch that I designed myself.
I'm totally not getting an iPhone, by the way.
Saw Eagle vs. Shark. It was alright. Nick Neglia is back in town. That's exciting. More exciting still, Black Sheep is playing at the Sunshine. Totally seeing that sometime.
Done with first semester summer school. Aced my Logic final and finished my theatre studies papers. Two of them were a titch late: let's hope my teacher likes me. I started writing my six page final at 4 in the morning of the day it was due. Usual Scott style. I did a similar thing last night with the two outstanding assignments. I woke up at 6pm today. Ah, college.
Pardon me while I geek out. I wrote this post a while ago but its still relevant.
Microsoft has long been the enemy of Free and Open Source Software. Some people at Redmond are beginning to change that, but prevailing forces continue to hamper progress. Luckily, Bill's boys are fostering FOSS anew, and they don't even know it! As Microsoft enters its second decade of desktop dominance, also-ran software vendors are trying a new strategy to gain market share: open sourcing.
It began with Netscape. Bleeding market share thanks to MS's (not so legal) IE bundling practices, Netscape decided to open source the browser. That project became Mozilla and that became Firefox - the thing you're using right now (right?!). A right Cinderella story of open source. They proved that open sourcing works as a competitive strategy and boy are they cashing in.
More recently, Sun open sourced Java. To the keen observer, the reason is obvious: MS is pushing .NET full tilt. (Full disclosure: I work on the Mono project which is an open source implementation of .NET. I also happen to think that .NET kicks Java's ass).
More recently still, Adobe announced plans to open source Flex. As pressure mounts from Silverlight and the <canvas> tag, I think Adobe would be wise to GPL the whole Flash stack. They've already released their Tamarin ECMAScript VM.
In conclusion, Microsoft is now driving other companies to seek market share by any means necessary. Increasing this means open sourcing, and that's good news for us in the open source community!
So I did my stand up set at a comedy club last night. It went very well despite the fact that I was running on very little sleep. It's a lot like speech. I'll post a video when I get it. Maybe.
In other news, Geometry Wars is on Steam. Thus ends whatever productivity I might otherwise have had.
If you have 20 minutes, watch this video. Summary:
To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Bringing this new brain science to computer devices will enable powerful new applications -- and it will happen sooner than you think.
As you may have read, I have a Mystery Porch just adjacent my apartment. Two weeks ago, my neighbor Lane and I were hanging out out there and I remarked, "You know what this place could use? A pool. A fucking pool." Two weeks later:
I spent the weekend in MN for my sister's graduation. It's was nice, her party was big and I got to see some friends.
'Grapefruit' is both redundant and misleading.
Just got back from a talk by Vint Cerf at Google NY. He's an incredibly articulate, intelligent and nice man. His work on an interplanetary networking protocol is fascinating.
It's one thing to be 21, but it's another thing entirely for someone to call you 21. I am old.
Our feet hold the weight of the world.
My mom always used to tell me not to drag my feet. I didn't listen to her at the time but I don't do it anymore and I find people who do to be very annoying. I don't have an opinion on heals, except to say this: if you do wear them, know how to walk in them. A women who drags her heals is best shot. Not to sound misogynistic, the same goes for men in heals. This is the only strong position I have on footwear.
An apple - one Granny Smith apple - at the corner deli costs a full US dollar. $1.00. One dollar and zero cents.