kinda like Batman, but with a wife and 3 kids
Tuesday October 26, 2004
Took Jason Jr. to the mall last night so he could spend his $20 gift certificate at the toy store (thanks Jenny and Elijah!!!!). On the way out of the mall, we saw the ubiquitous picture-taking booth, so we got our pictures done. =:) I think they look pretty good….. =:) Here’s the prints. In other news, Jason Jr. and I are now entering serious training in preparation for the coming release of X-box Live-enabled Street Fighter in February. Josh, you’d better get ready….
Sunday October 24, 2004
Woot, baybee!! It was a good weekend, this. And, to top it off, I played halo for an hour and 20 minutes tonight, and I feel absolutely fine!! I played upstairs, in the dining room this time, and I think that’s what made the difference. It’s in the middle of an open room, with a couple of flickering candles around the room, and lots to keep my brain from getting confused, I think. But the coolest part is that I actually captured the flag a couple of times tonight!! =:) Came in second place even! =:) WOOT! I’m quite the newbie at this tho, so my “strategy” was limited to the smash-and-grab variety. It was quite the adrenaline rush, tho! Read more…
Thursday October 21, 2004
In other non-related-really news, I got an e-mail from the infamous jwz last night. He has patiently outlined all of the issues related to replacing the not-exactly-unugly xscreensaver unlock dialog. It was kind of funny–the e-mail that he sent had 18 recipients, of which I was one. The docu-page that jwz posted read VERY much like all of the questions and answers that I still have in my IMAP mailbox from when I was working on doing this bit of side-coding. =:) It was pretty funny reading it–just about all of the questions I asked jwz and all of the answers he so patiently gave me are on his explanatory page. jwz, for those of you who have been living Read more…
Wednesday October 20, 2004
I’ve been hit again in another round of comment-spam, apparently. So, I’ve activated the auto-close-comments plugin that I found the other day. That and I turned off “e-mail me whenever anyone posts a comment” and only left “e-mail me whenever A comment is approved or declined” on. That combined with the Comment Authorization plugin, and I think I just might have this crap beat. Oooh–also, WordPress’s comment moderation absolutely ROCKS!! This is a VERY well-thought-out interface and program!! =:) Awesome job, WordPress guys!! =:) I read somewhere that one option people have chosen is to rename some WordPress files so that the comment-spammers can’t script their ilk, but I’ve decided that it’s not worth it to me to do this. Read more…
Tuesday October 19, 2004
“End-users run applications, not operating systems.” A Gartner guy came into my place of business the other day and said that. It’s a pretty profound thing to say, honestly. I think that it accurately describes many/most of the corporate people in the business places that I’ve seen. However, I am not an end-user. Nor are MANY people that I know. That is to say that there are MANY people that DO care about what their computer is doing without their permission. They DO care about things deeper than just what applications they are running. They DO care about having a choice and not having something forced down their throats because someone else decided it was best for them. They DO Read more…
Danged, stinking, stupid comment spammers. There are some induhviduals that are not worth the powder it would take to blow them up, honestly. Some knucklehead, let’s call him “Author : free texas holdem (IP: 193.237.254.13 , gardeenhc.demon.co.uk)”, for the lack of a better name, has decided to comment-spam me. So, a quick google search for “wordpress comment spam” turns up this page, which outlines several things one can do to combat this sort of stupidity. So, I’ve added the Blacklist Comment Spam Plugin, and I think I’m going to add the Comment Moderation Plugin, and the Auto shutoff comments one too. Piece of carp…. [update] I’ve decided to use the blacklist comment spam plugin only for the time being. I Read more…
Monday October 18, 2004
phew. it’s all about learning…. wow. this is the sickest I think I’ve felt yet. I probably pushed myself too hard tonight. I played for 2 solid hours this evening, much to the delight of my kiddos. my little bride was tired and shagged out and spent the evening relaxing/snoozing. =:) *hi honey!* =:) I played online for a good hour, I think. I placed last (like the newb that I am) in the 2 CTF (capture the flag) games that I was in. And I placed 5th out of 7 in every man for himself (what is the proper name for this one?). yay for the newb!!! =:) Erm, so anyway, now I feel quite ill. BUT… several things Read more…
Sunday October 17, 2004
and finally…. a post on slashdot that give me a slight glimmer of hope… You *can* train yourself out of this. The UK RAF does this for pilots over a matter of months: its worst for navigators because they do the reverse of what we’re speaking about: they look at a motionless screen while being subjected to motion. The USAF actually sends their vomiting pilots to the RAf to be debugged on this one… of course… everyone knows that you can believe everything you read on slashdot…. as for me, I tried setting our 2 cheapo old computers at home up to run Halo–just to see if maybe using a different computer/hardware/CRT would help, but the one is a P3-600 Read more…
Saturday October 16, 2004
Man, I’m excited about this…. I found this…. All I can say is… Josh, you’d better get yer game back, baybee…. =:) Ooooh. This looks soooo intense. If you’ve never played any of the Street Fighter games, well, you’ve probably wandered onto this page accidentally. The unquestioned king of fighting franchises is coming to the Xbox for the first time, and it’s going to be the first time the series has ever allowed players to do battle online. As the title suggest, there are a bunch of games on the disc, including the many flavors of SF2, as well as the wonderful SF3: Third Strike. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the online play yet, as the game was recently Read more…
So, I found this bit of research today….. I’m finding plenty of pages that document that existence of simulator sickness, but haven’t yet found anything that talks about how to combat it. =:/ Still looking…. My newly-purchased Halo PC game just arrived in my mailbox today. I’d like to think that I’ve not just wasted $27. NECESSARY TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND PRIMARY RESEARCH CHALLENGES Unfortunately, a phenomenon exists that may pose a threat to the ultimate usability of this new technology. That phenomenon is referred to as “simulator sickness” and it is a well-documented effect of simulator exposure (Reason and Brand, 1975; Kennedy and Frank, 1983; Kennedy et al., 1989; Casali, 1986). Simulator sickness is similar to motion sickness but can Read more…
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